Guild Wars 2

Please release some comestic item that cost 1000g-5000g Liquid Gold with some 50g-100g for the smaller players.
It has to purchase from a vendor as its the only direct and effective means of removing gold from the economy.

This will drain some gold from the richer because the TP fees cant keep up inflation.

Having less gold in the system means players can purchase more for less, something that benefit YOU, the consumer.

They already released several relatively large gold sinks in the past few releases. The circus weapons, that 1,000 gold title. The new collection to obtain the Koda’s Warmth aura.

Not to mention, we already have 29 legendary weapons in the game, each one being a cosmetic item that costs thousands of gold to craft. Legendary armor will be coming soon as well, on top of all of the new auras we have been getting recently. There are plenty of high value cosmetic items to go for, and very few people already have all of them.

I agree with Donari

In addition is practically impossoble to drain the currency as not only are their multiple currencies but the truth is we have far to many so called gold sinks. To the point that people don’t even bother to attempt the gold sink.

A gold sink only works not if people want it but if people want to save up for it. Ascended, Legendary, Holiday items, and assorted mystic forge recipes and so forth to many exist to the point that people don’t bother with it and instead opt for cash to gold. People convert cash into gems and gems into gold because unless your flipping the market your not going to get a steady stream of gold and even then flippers spend more tiem flipping than playing. They don’t have to worry about time limits for their auctions either.

If you want to drain gold from the econ then you do it through taxation of the Auction hall as well as a fee to place an item on the auction for a set period of time not indefinite. This golden whales of ingame gold selling items for thousands of gold on the TP should be held to a standard 24-48 auction period maybe even a week but their needs to a time period. That way you drain some gold from the 1% and they can reach the upper edges as easily because while higher items sell their going to have to be posted multiple times before a buyer gets hooked meaning multiple payment fees.

To late for such a thing in this game so might as well get used it because if you add a gold sink people will just straight up buy it thus adding even more gold into the system since you can’t buy a specific amount.

Sky.7610:

Please release some comestic item that cost 1000g-5000g Liquid Gold with some 50g-100g for the smaller players.
It has to purchase from a vendor as its the only direct and effective means of removing gold from the economy.

This will drain some gold from the richer because the TP fees cant keep up inflation.

Having less gold in the system means players can purchase more for less, something that benefit YOU, the consumer.

Please cite your evidence that currency inflation is an issue and that greater gold sinks are therefore necessary.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use the circus weapons

And here’s a five-day old thread of someone asking for fewer gold sinks:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Money-Sink/6418590

For transparency, im a TP player and what some may consider a TP whale, despite having not played for 2 years, and just got back im still in the 1% of gold worth even by today’s standards so there will be some bias but suggestions is made with valid concerns.

mtpelion.4562:

Sky.7610:

Please release some comestic item that cost 1000g-5000g Liquid Gold with some 50g-100g for the smaller players.
It has to purchase from a vendor as its the only direct and effective means of removing gold from the economy.

This will drain some gold from the richer because the TP fees cant keep up inflation.

Having less gold in the system means players can purchase more for less, something that benefit YOU, the consumer.

Please cite your evidence that currency inflation is an issue and that greater gold sinks are therefore necessary.

Gold to gem steady increase is the best indication that inflation is not only real, it places heavy burden for newer and casual players to experience the richer features of the game. This extends to the overall TP. Things become more expensive as an overall trend. Newer players takes the hit as more things become more out of reach. While TP whales like me may have their currency a bit less valuable, we ultimately will still be able to afford anything and everything that catches our fancy.

Adding armor sets (skins) to the gems store instead of only outfits would works as a gold sink at least for me.

Exchanging gold for gems or gems for gold does not create any new gold, it just shifts around existing gold and gems between players, so has no effect on inflation at all.

I’m up to 8g now. Drain your own gold, leave the rest of us alone.

Ubi.4136:

I’m up to 8g now. Drain your own gold, leave the rest of us alone.

Only the more wealthy will be more incline to drain their gold for comestic, and as a side effect, your 8g will have more purchasing power as more gold is drained from the economy.

Always hoped for a new tier of racial armor. Tier 4 pieces could sell for 250-500g (numbers can be tweaked) each. That would delete quite a bit of liquid gold.

Sky.7610:

Ubi.4136:

I’m up to 8g now. Drain your own gold, leave the rest of us alone.

Only the more wealthy will be more incline to drain their gold for comestic, and as a side effect, your 8g will have more purchasing power as more gold is drained from the economy.

I think you’re completely wrong that only the most wealthy people would spend a lot of money on cosmetics. Maybe in some games where you’re constantly chasing new and better stats and need to spend your gold on that to be able to complete content that would be true, but GW2 does not work like that.

Do you think everyone who posts in the ‘Post a pic of your character only if your armor is mix-n-match’ topic is a “TP whale” with thousands of gold on their account? What about all the people who talk about saving up to be able to make a legendary?

I think I know far more people who care about how their character looks and are willing to spend all their gold to get the look they want than people who only ever buy cosmetics because they have a lot of gold and can easily afford it.

That’s why people with more liquid gold should pay higher taxes while selling via TP, while poor or new people pay just symbolic amount. There already exist system to calculate your liquid gold (money + items in bank/material storage which can be sold), so it shouldn’t be hard to implement. For example if you’re poor and your liquid gold value is less than 500g, you should pay like 5% of tax at most while selling items. between 2000 – 3000g, tax should be as it’s now, so 15%, with additional 5% every 1k gold to maximum of 30%. This would stop hoarding and manipulating market, while helping poor people to get bit richer. Probably there would be many pros and cons to this idea, but it’s just idea.

Piles of gold don’t cause inflation. Inflation only occurs when gold is spent. Depending on the requirements, adding more recipes could increase inflation (an increase in cost to maintain a lifestyle without a change in supply or demand) because it would turn the potential for inflation (piles of gold not being spent) into the kinetic reality of inflation.

Imo, the best way to limit the effects of income and wealth inequality is by limiting recipe overlap. Looking at you hardened leather.

Sky.7610:

Ubi.4136:

I’m up to 8g now. Drain your own gold, leave the rest of us alone.

Only the more wealthy will be more incline to drain their gold for comestic, and as a side effect, your 8g will have more purchasing power as more gold is drained from the economy.

If things will cost more (which is what you’re really advocating), then no, his gold will have even less purchasing power.

Sinks or no sinks, those that can afford the most costly ones will still be able to replenish their loss much, much faster than those on the other end of the wealth spectrum.

Sky.7610:

For transparency, im a TP player and what some may consider a TP whale, despite having not played for 2 years, and just got back im still in the 1% of gold worth even by today’s standards so there will be some bias but suggestions is made with valid concerns.

mtpelion.4562:

Sky.7610:

Please release some comestic item that cost 1000g-5000g Liquid Gold with some 50g-100g for the smaller players.
It has to purchase from a vendor as its the only direct and effective means of removing gold from the economy.

This will drain some gold from the richer because the TP fees cant keep up inflation.

Having less gold in the system means players can purchase more for less, something that benefit YOU, the consumer.

Please cite your evidence that currency inflation is an issue and that greater gold sinks are therefore necessary.

Gold to gem steady increase is the best indication that inflation is not only real, it places heavy burden for newer and casual players to experience the richer features of the game. This extends to the overall TP. Things become more expensive as an overall trend. Newer players takes the hit as more things become more out of reach. While TP whales like me may have their currency a bit less valuable, we ultimately will still be able to afford anything and everything that catches our fancy.

Gold to gem exchange rates are wholly unrelated to currency inflation. They are exclusively based on limited supply and demand. There is a finite quantity of gems on the market, and the price is set using an algorithm based on that quantity.

The Gold Price of Gems goes down as people trade gems for gold. This raises the Gem Price of Gold.
The Gem Price of Gold goes down as people trade gold for gems. This raises the Gold Price of Gems.

Due to the ease at which gold can be farmed, it is much less common for people to spend Gems on Gold, this means that the exchange rate will always tend towards more Gold for Less Gems, since there is much more demand for Gems than there is for Gold.

This is not inflation, but a simple exchange market that has limited supply and high demand for one side of the ratio.

Meanwhile, there’s another very recent post complaining that prices are down: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/everything-cept-ecto-s-at-new-lows/first#post6419724

Might it be that the economy, over all, is quite healthy? Most things are getting cheaper – possibly the high-value items are driven up, which is a common effect of richness. But as a whole things are getting cheaper…

amidare.9561:

That’s why people with more liquid gold should pay higher taxes while selling via TP, while poor or new people pay just symbolic amount. There already exist system to calculate your liquid gold (money + items in bank/material storage which can be sold), so it shouldn’t be hard to implement. For example if you’re poor and your liquid gold value is less than 500g, you should pay like 5% of tax at most while selling items. between 2000 – 3000g, tax should be as it’s now, so 15%, with additional 5% every 1k gold to maximum of 30%. This would stop hoarding and manipulating market, while helping poor people to get bit richer. Probably there would be many pros and cons to this idea, but it’s just idea.

I have an alt account that is primarily used for login rewards and has only one gold in its bank. With your proposal, I and all others with alt accounts can do all trading through the alt account and forward the trade results to my main, bypassing any extra tax on rich accounts.

amidare.9561:

That’s why people with more liquid gold should pay higher taxes while selling via TP, while poor or new people pay just symbolic amount. There already exist system to calculate your liquid gold (money + items in bank/material storage which can be sold), so it shouldn’t be hard to implement. For example if you’re poor and your liquid gold value is less than 500g, you should pay like 5% of tax at most while selling items. between 2000 – 3000g, tax should be as it’s now, so 15%, with additional 5% every 1k gold to maximum of 30%. This would stop hoarding and manipulating market, while helping poor people to get bit richer. Probably there would be many pros and cons to this idea, but it’s just idea.

I suspect this would just lead to players “hiding” gold from the system to get around paying higher tax. Just like we see in real life, but even easier to do.

I’d put it in my private guild bank. The guild actually has 5 members (all me or my husband) and several non-bank upgrades so I don’t think there would be any easy way for Anet to tell it apart from a genuine small guild. And if they could I’d just use my inactive guilds bank – only officers can access the smaller section and I think I’m the only officer who still logs in.

Other ways to get around it include placing bids on the TP that are never going to get filled – like 500g for Eternity (there is no tax on buy orders), sending it by mail to someone you trust to send it back or simply keeping less valuable items – keeping certain bags unopened, keeping wood logs, cloth scraps etc. instead of the refined versions, making the account bound intermediate steps to ascended materials but not the tradable final version and so on.

I suppose they could factor in all those things and others I’ve forgotten but I doubt they could make the system fool-proof and I’m not sure it would be worth the work involved.

I actually think inflation in this game is very low compared to others I’ve played. Obviously it has gone up over time, but not much. Especially compared to older games like Ultima Online where desirable player-traded items (like a placed house, which had limited supply and could only be bought from other players) would go for millions of gold. (To be fair to UO’s developers MMOs were very new and I think worrying about inflation in a game was unheard of before, I believe the situation has gotten better since then.)

At the moment there’s only 2 items which cost more than 4,000 gold on the TP (Eternity and the Chak Egg Sac), which is pretty good for a 4 year old game.

I also think the 2g added to the daily does a lot to even the playing field. At the upper end 2g a day is nothing, I’ve heard some people say it would lose them money because they can make more than 2g in the time it takes to complete 3 dailies. But to a low level player or new level 80 that 2g can be a lot and make getting things they want much easier.

I’ve even noticed it myself. I’m not a rich player by any stretch of the imagination. I do have some valuable items (most notably the mini karka, which I got back when it was 17g) but very little liquid gold. I think right now I have less than 1g. But even I’m much more likely to do the dailies on my free account because on my main account I can make gold at what I consider to be a decent rate (about 10g a week normally, more when I make an effort), whereas on my free account where my highest level character is in the 20s it takes about a week to make 1g (admittedly partially crippled by TP restrictions) so that 2g a day is huge.

Every time you make over 1k gold, the game could just take it all off you.
That would keep the cost of any single item under 1k gold, increase gem sales and I dunno.. have some other effects on the market that I’m going to claim are beneficial.

It must be terrible to have so much money that you’re worried about the inflation of the whole game. I strongly suggest in-game giveaways of your money until you reach the average amount that normal players have because I don’t worry about inflation at all.

mauried.5608:

Exchanging gold for gems or gems for gold does not create any new gold, it just shifts around existing gold and gems between players, so has no effect on inflation at all.

IIRC the exchange like the TP actually destroys some gold every time a transaction is performed through fees. So it does have an effect just in the opposite direction.

I have an evil idea on how to accomplish this but it would have to be announced (and then implemented) before a game went live. If you dropped this on a mmo community in a random update, a pitchfork wielding mob would burn down your head office – with some degree of justification.

At several random points during the year, the moment when players logged on and before they could interact with the game, give them the option to receive an account bound, unique and never again available reward for 80% of their stock of a random specific currency – or abandon the offer and never get the chance to get it again.

For instance, on logging on you get offered the chance to lose 80% of your stocked unbound magic, or 80% of your ascalonian tear, or 30% of your gold for a unique quaggan backpack or some recoloured glider – and have these things crop up quite often.

If you have very few ascalonian tears or very little gold, these are essencially free or underpriced offers. If you have horded gold or have massive stocks of a single currency, accepting these deals with cost you massively – while turning them down will deprive you of a unique item which all the poor people will have gotten.

Evil idea which would force most people to diversify their farming habits – to ensure their wealth isn’t locked into an single currency they could be robbed of.

Ameepa.6793:

Adding armor sets (skins) to the gems store instead of only outfits would works as a gold sink at least for me.

Seconded. Mostly because I’m sick and tired of the outfits that you can’t customize and therefore HAVE to look the same as anyone else wearing the outfit.

Gerrand.3085:

I have an evil idea on how to accomplish this but it would have to be announced (and then implemented) before a game went live. If you dropped this on a mmo community in a random update, a pitchfork wielding mob would burn down your head office – with some degree of justification.

At several random points during the year, the moment when players logged on and before they could interact with the game, give them the option to receive an account bound, unique and never again available reward for 80% of their stock of a random specific currency – or abandon the offer and never get the chance to get it again.

For instance, on logging on you get offered the chance to lose 80% of your stocked unbound magic, or 80% of your ascalonian tear, or 30% of your gold for a unique quaggan backpack or some recoloured glider – and have these things crop up quite often.

If you have very few ascalonian tears or very little gold, these are essencially free or underpriced offers. If you have horded gold or have massive stocks of a single currency, accepting these deals with cost you massively – while turning them down will deprive you of a unique item which all the poor people will have gotten.

Evil idea which would force most people to diversify their farming habits – to ensure their wealth isn’t locked into an single currency they could be robbed of.

What if you don’t keep much currency on hand?

I put buy orders for Etenity at regular intervals to use as a type of savings account. Currently I have 900 gold in buy orders and 5 gold in my bank. I’m pretty sure that losing 30% of 5 gold or 80% of my ~ 30 Asconian Tears is a cost I’m willing to pay for a unique skin.

The players are some of the best “currency sinks” in this game; you don’t get to have loads of gold by spending loads of gold. A bit glib perhaps but it’s still true.

This idea will have no influence on the TP barons other than possibly to motivate them to play the TP more so they have more money to spend on buying this new gold sink stuff.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

I have an evil idea on how to accomplish this but it would have to be announced (and then implemented) before a game went live. If you dropped this on a mmo community in a random update, a pitchfork wielding mob would burn down your head office – with some degree of justification.

At several random points during the year, the moment when players logged on and before they could interact with the game, give them the option to receive an account bound, unique and never again available reward for 80% of their stock of a random specific currency – or abandon the offer and never get the chance to get it again.

For instance, on logging on you get offered the chance to lose 80% of your stocked unbound magic, or 80% of your ascalonian tear, or 30% of your gold for a unique quaggan backpack or some recoloured glider – and have these things crop up quite often.

If you have very few ascalonian tears or very little gold, these are essencially free or underpriced offers. If you have horded gold or have massive stocks of a single currency, accepting these deals with cost you massively – while turning them down will deprive you of a unique item which all the poor people will have gotten.

Evil idea which would force most people to diversify their farming habits – to ensure their wealth isn’t locked into an single currency they could be robbed of.

What if you don’t keep much currency on hand?

I put buy orders for Etenity at regular intervals to use as a type of savings account. Currently I have 900 gold in buy orders and 5 gold in my bank. I’m pretty sure that losing 30% of 5 gold or 80% of my ~ 30 Asconian Tears is a cost I’m willing to pay for a unique skin.

The 30 Asconian tears situation is intentional – as the idea is meant to only “sink” people who have large stores of currencies. Your bizzare method of creating savings accounts would cause issues if a random offer came up for 30% of your current gold – though I would consider this a bug and would suggest you look at the concept of the system as a whole, instead of unexpected ways to bug yourself past it.

Sky.7610:

Gold to gem steady increase is the best indication that inflation is not only real, it places heavy burden for newer and casual players to experience the richer features of the game.

No, it’s a terrible indicator. The gold:gem ratio has frequently gone up or down independently of the money supply. It’s a function of many things, including the amount of coin in circulation. The current equilibrium (~25-30g/100 gems) is largely due to folks (especially certain guilds) bandwagoning in GW2, as can be seen when ‘linkages’ change. Prior to that, the ratio was fairly predictable at ~15-20g/100 gems, going down around Wintersday/January (when people would get & spend gem cards they got as gifts) and rising during certain sales. In particular, the ratio spikes extremely high whenever BL keys are discounted, often by as much as 20%.

Further, while some things are currently more expensive, some things are cheaper, such as ecto and T5/6 mats. Currently, it takes less time for a new player to afford a full exotic set than it did during the early days of the game.

In short, gold:gem ratio is a poor measure of inflation and there is less of a burden on new players today than there used to be.

Gerrand.3085:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

I have an evil idea on how to accomplish this but it would have to be announced (and then implemented) before a game went live. If you dropped this on a mmo community in a random update, a pitchfork wielding mob would burn down your head office – with some degree of justification.

At several random points during the year, the moment when players logged on and before they could interact with the game, give them the option to receive an account bound, unique and never again available reward for 80% of their stock of a random specific currency – or abandon the offer and never get the chance to get it again.

For instance, on logging on you get offered the chance to lose 80% of your stocked unbound magic, or 80% of your ascalonian tear, or 30% of your gold for a unique quaggan backpack or some recoloured glider – and have these things crop up quite often.

If you have very few ascalonian tears or very little gold, these are essencially free or underpriced offers. If you have horded gold or have massive stocks of a single currency, accepting these deals with cost you massively – while turning them down will deprive you of a unique item which all the poor people will have gotten.

Evil idea which would force most people to diversify their farming habits – to ensure their wealth isn’t locked into an single currency they could be robbed of.

What if you don’t keep much currency on hand?

I put buy orders for Etenity at regular intervals to use as a type of savings account. Currently I have 900 gold in buy orders and 5 gold in my bank. I’m pretty sure that losing 30% of 5 gold or 80% of my ~ 30 Asconian Tears is a cost I’m willing to pay for a unique skin.

The 30 Asconian tears situation is intentional – as the idea is meant to only “sink” people who have large stores of currencies. Your bizzare method of creating savings accounts would cause issues if a random offer came up for 30% of your current gold – though I would consider this a bug and would suggest you look at the concept of the system as a whole, instead of unexpected ways to bug yourself past it.

Ahhhh. Someone who doesn’t understand the uses or value of a savings account. This method happens to be the frequently recommended way to save up gold in this game for big purchases, especially for those prone to impulse buys. Stashing gold away like this puts time before your impulse and gives you time for second thoughts.

And I’ll worry about unlikely bugs that affect everyone in the game’s buy orders when that happens. Why don’t you worry about the ways to so easily get past your suggestion?

Henry.5713:

Always hoped for a new tier of racial armor. Tier 4 pieces could sell for 250-500g (numbers can be tweaked) each. That would delete quite a bit of liquid gold.

No thanks.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

I have an evil idea on how to accomplish this but it would have to be announced (and then implemented) before a game went live. If you dropped this on a mmo community in a random update, a pitchfork wielding mob would burn down your head office – with some degree of justification.

At several random points during the year, the moment when players logged on and before they could interact with the game, give them the option to receive an account bound, unique and never again available reward for 80% of their stock of a random specific currency – or abandon the offer and never get the chance to get it again.

For instance, on logging on you get offered the chance to lose 80% of your stocked unbound magic, or 80% of your ascalonian tear, or 30% of your gold for a unique quaggan backpack or some recoloured glider – and have these things crop up quite often.

If you have very few ascalonian tears or very little gold, these are essencially free or underpriced offers. If you have horded gold or have massive stocks of a single currency, accepting these deals with cost you massively – while turning them down will deprive you of a unique item which all the poor people will have gotten.

Evil idea which would force most people to diversify their farming habits – to ensure their wealth isn’t locked into an single currency they could be robbed of.

What if you don’t keep much currency on hand?

I put buy orders for Etenity at regular intervals to use as a type of savings account. Currently I have 900 gold in buy orders and 5 gold in my bank. I’m pretty sure that losing 30% of 5 gold or 80% of my ~ 30 Asconian Tears is a cost I’m willing to pay for a unique skin.

The 30 Asconian tears situation is intentional – as the idea is meant to only “sink” people who have large stores of currencies. Your bizzare method of creating savings accounts would cause issues if a random offer came up for 30% of your current gold – though I would consider this a bug and would suggest you look at the concept of the system as a whole, instead of unexpected ways to bug yourself past it.

Ahhhh. Someone who doesn’t understand the uses or value of a savings account. This method happens to be the frequently recommended way to save up gold in this game for big purchases, especially for those prone to impulse buys. Stashing gold away like this puts time before your impulse and gives you time for second thoughts.

And I’ll worry about unlikely bugs that affect everyone in the game’s buy orders when that happens. Why don’t you worry about the ways to so easily get past your suggestion?

If putting your gold in orders helps you avoid wasting it, great for you. I find it an extremely weak gesture as you can cancel the order at any time – but whatever mind tricks work for your wallet behaviours is obviously sufficient.

On fixing my suggest, the response needs to be split into 2 halves. The second half is providing a fix for you, a rather trivial matter which could be handled in any number of different ways. The first half will be trying to hammer through the difference between proposing a conceptual direction and actual implementation – something I expect will be far more difficult.

For the first half, the original post was made to propose unpredictable flash deals which would make hording any singular currency extremely risky if you wanted the occasional promo-items. The intent being to add an unpredictable negative aspect to hording wealth which could cause huge loses for any player that spent excessive amounts of time playing any singular wealth generating system without cashing out. The crude suggestion this concept was attached to was to display how the system would interact with players of high and low wealth.

For the second half (on actually answering your question) when the promo is for gold, instead of forcing the immediate choice of “deal-or-no-deal”, put up a sign showing how much money the player is holding and how much money is currently stored in orders or letters and then state the amount of gold out of that total which would need to be payed to get the promo item – then give the player 6 hours to accept (and pay-up the specified amount) or decline.

The biggest problem with this suggestion is that it hinges on people actually wanting whatever is on sale. If it miss its make it would be a complete waste of time for ANet.

Khisanth.2948:

The biggest problem with this suggestion is that it hinges on people actually wanting whatever is on sale. If it miss its make it would be a complete waste of time for ANet.

Yes and no. It hinges not on wanting whatever is on sale in the current round but rather the user fearing that he might want a promo-item from a future flash sale. Most of the time even horders of wealth would only have to give up a random currency they weren’t stacking anyway (unless the choice of random currency was based on which currencies were being stacked the most by the population at large). What would keep most people in line is the dread that at some point, some item would be given away which they would want. Obviously this wont work on 100% of people but I reckon it would keep a majority % of them from overly stacking any one token source.

Gerrand.3085:

If putting your gold in orders helps you avoid wasting it, great for you. I find it an extremely weak gesture as you can cancel the order at any time – but whatever mind tricks work for your wallet behaviours is obviously sufficient.

On fixing my suggest, the response needs to be split into 2 halves. The second half is providing a fix for you, a rather trivial matter which could be handled in any number of different ways. The first half will be trying to hammer through the difference between proposing a conceptual direction and actual implementation – something I expect will be far more difficult.

For the first half, the original post was made to propose unpredictable flash deals which would make hording any singular currency extremely risky if you wanted the occasional promo-items. The intent being to add an unpredictable negative aspect to hording wealth which could cause huge loses for any player that spent excessive amounts of time playing any singular wealth generating system without cashing out. The crude suggestion this concept was attached to was to display how the system would interact with players of high and low wealth.

For the second half (on actually answering your question) when the promo is for gold, instead of forcing the immediate choice of “deal-or-no-deal”, put up a sign showing how much money the player is holding and how much money is currently stored in orders or letters and then state the amount of gold out of that total which would need to be payed to get the promo item – then give the player 6 hours to accept (and pay-up the specified amount) or decline.

What a terrible idea. Someone who had a real 4000 gold buy order for Eternity and 5 gold in their pocket would be hit with an enormous price for that item and someone who only had 5 gold in their pocket would get a tiny price. It would stifle wealth building. Why should anyone build up wealth if they are going to be disproportionately charged more for the same item. They would be better off staying poor and get unique skins for cheap.

If this sort of system was put in place I wouldn’t sell my mats or accumulate gold. I’d simply stash what mats I could and sell only what I needed for immediate needs.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

If putting your gold in orders helps you avoid wasting it, great for you. I find it an extremely weak gesture as you can cancel the order at any time – but whatever mind tricks work for your wallet behaviours is obviously sufficient.

On fixing my suggest, the response needs to be split into 2 halves. The second half is providing a fix for you, a rather trivial matter which could be handled in any number of different ways. The first half will be trying to hammer through the difference between proposing a conceptual direction and actual implementation – something I expect will be far more difficult.

For the first half, the original post was made to propose unpredictable flash deals which would make hording any singular currency extremely risky if you wanted the occasional promo-items. The intent being to add an unpredictable negative aspect to hording wealth which could cause huge loses for any player that spent excessive amounts of time playing any singular wealth generating system without cashing out. The crude suggestion this concept was attached to was to display how the system would interact with players of high and low wealth.

For the second half (on actually answering your question) when the promo is for gold, instead of forcing the immediate choice of “deal-or-no-deal”, put up a sign showing how much money the player is holding and how much money is currently stored in orders or letters and then state the amount of gold out of that total which would need to be payed to get the promo item – then give the player 6 hours to accept (and pay-up the specified amount) or decline.

What a terrible idea. Someone who had a real 4000 gold buy order for Eternity and 5 gold in their pocket would be hit with an enormous price for that item and someone who only had 5 gold in their pocket would get a tiny price. It would stifle wealth building. Why should anyone build up wealth if they are going to be disproportionately charged more for the same item. They would be better off staying poor and get unique skins for cheap.

If this sort of system was put in place I wouldn’t sell my mats or accumulate gold. I’d simply stash what mats I could and sell only what I needed for immediate needs.

Well, it seems you finally understand the proposition. Well done -.-

My opening line was that it was an evil idea which could only be setup with a new mmo – not dropped into an existing one. It doesn’t stifle wealth building as a whole, it penalises direct wealth building. If you continually sink your gold into objects of value instead of hording wealth in the form of liquid gold then this sort of thing cant hurt you. If you horde gold, it can hurt a lot. This results in an extremely different economy to try thrive in – where trying to save up for things like precursors can be problematic (and would probably be better attempted through the precursor crafting system to avoid liquid capital build up).

Gerrand.3085:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

If putting your gold in orders helps you avoid wasting it, great for you. I find it an extremely weak gesture as you can cancel the order at any time – but whatever mind tricks work for your wallet behaviours is obviously sufficient.

On fixing my suggest, the response needs to be split into 2 halves. The second half is providing a fix for you, a rather trivial matter which could be handled in any number of different ways. The first half will be trying to hammer through the difference between proposing a conceptual direction and actual implementation – something I expect will be far more difficult.

For the first half, the original post was made to propose unpredictable flash deals which would make hording any singular currency extremely risky if you wanted the occasional promo-items. The intent being to add an unpredictable negative aspect to hording wealth which could cause huge loses for any player that spent excessive amounts of time playing any singular wealth generating system without cashing out. The crude suggestion this concept was attached to was to display how the system would interact with players of high and low wealth.

For the second half (on actually answering your question) when the promo is for gold, instead of forcing the immediate choice of “deal-or-no-deal”, put up a sign showing how much money the player is holding and how much money is currently stored in orders or letters and then state the amount of gold out of that total which would need to be payed to get the promo item – then give the player 6 hours to accept (and pay-up the specified amount) or decline.

What a terrible idea. Someone who had a real 4000 gold buy order for Eternity and 5 gold in their pocket would be hit with an enormous price for that item and someone who only had 5 gold in their pocket would get a tiny price. It would stifle wealth building. Why should anyone build up wealth if they are going to be disproportionately charged more for the same item. They would be better off staying poor and get unique skins for cheap.

If this sort of system was put in place I wouldn’t sell my mats or accumulate gold. I’d simply stash what mats I could and sell only what I needed for immediate needs.

Well, it seems you finally understand the proposition. Well done -.-

My opening line was that it was an evil idea which could only be setup with a new mmo – not dropped into an existing one. It doesn’t stifle wealth building as a whole, it penalises direct wealth building. If you continually sink your gold into objects of value instead of hording wealth in the form of liquid gold then this sort of thing cant hurt you. If you horde gold, it can hurt a lot. This results in an extremely different economy to try thrive in – where trying to save up for things like precursors can be problematic (and would probably be better attempted through the precursor crafting system to avoid liquid capital build up).

Evil, yes. It directly incentives people not to build up wealth. It would stifle trade as players wouldn’t be selling their mats. Why should they? Selling only hurts them. Dungeon runners wouldn’t run dungeons after they get what they wanted. It would end up with a stagnant economy as people stash mats and items away instead of selling them. As such, it’s a pointless suggestion as no rational economy would institute it.

One could place items of worth in a Guild Bank(s). The game can’t tell who owns what in a Guild Bank.

Thus, difficult to implement.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Gerrand.3085:

If putting your gold in orders helps you avoid wasting it, great for you. I find it an extremely weak gesture as you can cancel the order at any time – but whatever mind tricks work for your wallet behaviours is obviously sufficient.

On fixing my suggest, the response needs to be split into 2 halves. The second half is providing a fix for you, a rather trivial matter which could be handled in any number of different ways. The first half will be trying to hammer through the difference between proposing a conceptual direction and actual implementation – something I expect will be far more difficult.

For the first half, the original post was made to propose unpredictable flash deals which would make hording any singular currency extremely risky if you wanted the occasional promo-items. The intent being to add an unpredictable negative aspect to hording wealth which could cause huge loses for any player that spent excessive amounts of time playing any singular wealth generating system without cashing out. The crude suggestion this concept was attached to was to display how the system would interact with players of high and low wealth.

For the second half (on actually answering your question) when the promo is for gold, instead of forcing the immediate choice of “deal-or-no-deal”, put up a sign showing how much money the player is holding and how much money is currently stored in orders or letters and then state the amount of gold out of that total which would need to be payed to get the promo item – then give the player 6 hours to accept (and pay-up the specified amount) or decline.

What a terrible idea. Someone who had a real 4000 gold buy order for Eternity and 5 gold in their pocket would be hit with an enormous price for that item and someone who only had 5 gold in their pocket would get a tiny price. It would stifle wealth building. Why should anyone build up wealth if they are going to be disproportionately charged more for the same item. They would be better off staying poor and get unique skins for cheap.

If this sort of system was put in place I wouldn’t sell my mats or accumulate gold. I’d simply stash what mats I could and sell only what I needed for immediate needs.

Well, it seems you finally understand the proposition. Well done -.-

My opening line was that it was an evil idea which could only be setup with a new mmo – not dropped into an existing one. It doesn’t stifle wealth building as a whole, it penalises direct wealth building. If you continually sink your gold into objects of value instead of hording wealth in the form of liquid gold then this sort of thing cant hurt you. If you horde gold, it can hurt a lot. This results in an extremely different economy to try thrive in – where trying to save up for things like precursors can be problematic (and would probably be better attempted through the precursor crafting system to avoid liquid capital build up).

Evil, yes. It directly incentives people not to build up wealth. It would stifle trade as players wouldn’t be selling their mats. Why should they? Selling only hurts them. Dungeon runners wouldn’t run dungeons after they get what they wanted. It would end up with a stagnant economy as people stash mats and items away instead of selling them. As such, it’s a pointless suggestion as no rational economy would institute it.

It incentivises people not to build up liquid wealth. If they funnel liquid wealth into material wealth like high level gear, existing gold sinks, rare skins and gems, they are safe on potentially losing out on flash-sale things. That said, I still find your view a bit simplistic. There is a lot of stuff to build and buy in GW2. Every time new (desirable) loot is brought out that players want, they will still need to farm for it – they are now just encouraged to farm for the things after they released instead of before they released – in the same way you can only start farming xp for consecutive mastery skills after they become available in game.

And as I’ve tried to get through to you in every single post: It is not a concept an existing economy could implement. Its a concept a new economy could be based around – as people would need to behave differently form the get-go to make the most of it.

The single biggest thing Anet could realistically do, without discriminating against players with more gold, to drain the currency would be to just increase the tax from using the TP. This would affect every player the same, and the only people who would be hurt that much by this is people selling stuff for near the max price, since they wouldn’t be able to just increase the price to compensate for the higher taxes. But even then, even if the tax was increased to 20% or even 25% they would still earn 7,500-8,000 gold off a single transaction.

I’m not advocating for this to happen, but if ANet decided that inflation was running rampant (disclosure: I don’t think it is), this would be the easiest, one of the most impactful, and most fair change they could make to the game to cut down on the amount of liquid gold.

They could also increase WP costs, but I wouldn’t want that to happen either as imo it unfairly hurts the newer players for whom a 4-8 silver charge to WP is already a decent amount of their liquid gold.

Gerrand.3085:

It incentivises people not to build up liquid wealth. If they funnel liquid wealth into material wealth like high level gear, existing gold sinks, rare skins and gems, they are safe on potentially losing out on flash-sale things. That said, I still find your view a bit simplistic. There is a lot of stuff to build and buy in GW2. Every time new (desirable) loot is brought out that players want, they will still need to farm for it – they are now just encouraged to farm for the things after they released instead of before they released – in the same way you can only start farming xp for consecutive mastery skills after they become available in game.

And as I’ve tried to get through to you in every single post: It is not a concept an existing economy could implement. Its a concept a new economy could be based around – as people would need to behave differently form the get-go to make the most of it.

It would kill the trading post. Everyone would have to farm all mats for everything they want as no one would want to sell their mats. The other thing it would do would cause a barter system to spring up to bypass this gold sink, with all the attendant trading spam in chat and people getting scammed and getting support involved.

For another thing, your suggestion is for another game and its economy that is set up for this. This thread is for suggestions relevant to this game and this economy. Your suggestion is pointless as it’s not anything to do with this game, as you yourself admitted. Since it’s a suggestion that won’t work in this game then there’s no reason to discuss it further in this thread,

@Gerrand: you haven’t established that it would benefit the very people you think are at a disadvantage under the current system.

I can guarantee you that no matter how convoluted the system is, clever traders are going to be able to make money off of those who don’t understand the complexities of the system. The more confusing the system, the easier that becomes.

For starters, all the power traders with 10+ accounts are going to be at an extreme advantage from the start. They won’t be hurt by fungible currency accumulation, because they can move stuff around, leaving all the people just trying to play the game at an even bigger disadvantage.

In the end, this is going to hurt more people than it helps.

I have a lot of gold and I definitely would not throw my money down some NPC for a cosmetic. It would have to be really, really good and fit my more played chars perfectly in order to even get me to consider buying it. Aka won’t happen.
That change won’t do anything and many of the people with enough gold could get it back as easily, quite possibly at the cost of poorer players.

Bad idea all around.

Most of the MMOs Ive played which have a TP or something similar all have the same complaints about it , in that everything is too expensive and that means the economy is broken.
They think the TP is more like a shop where you can go and buy stuff at some record low price.
A TP must cater for both parties, both sellers and buyers and in any economy where you have sellers and buyers, its the seller who sets the price of what they want to sell.
Buyers are free to not buy items if they are too expensive, which will then cause sellers to either lower their prices or withdraw their goods from sale.
The system works and is self balancing.
More importantly there is nothing on the TP thats needed to play the game, so all purchases are totally discressionary.

Yes but most mmos also have a you can sell it for up to 72 hours then it will auto cancel and you have to repost.
That make people lower their sell offers aswell but that dont happen in Gw2 as it can be up for years for no additional cost.

Edit.
Imagine the 10k chack egg sacks having to be repost every 3 days for example or legendaries and precursors.

Linken.6345:

Yes but most mmos also have a you can sell it for up to 72 hours then it will auto cancel and you have to repost.
That make people lower their sell offers aswell but that dont happen in Gw2 as it can be up for years for no additional cost.

Edit.
Imagine the 10k chack egg sacks having to be repost every 3 days for example or legendaries and precursors.

Then sellers will just sit around waiting for people to put up a high enough buy order.

There is no need for such things in my opinion.
Personally im trying to collect all things that i can that isnt gem shop related such as minis, karma weapon/armor skins ,racial armor skins (starting with my main profession/race and then on with the others)

However i recently came to a conclusion that there are MORE sinks in the game than i realized.

Things such as the 1000gold title, various new s3 content rewards, the wintersday ho-ho-tron gold donation event in DR…just think how many gold will go in there every festival.
There are other types if sinks as well such as many achievements that are related to ridiculous amount of materials and items such as open 50 wintersday gifts, eat a TON of candy corn, the new raven halloween that requires you to buy it with over 100 candy corn cobs. Remember that most of these “currencies” come form the tp, nobody in their mind will grind over 100 candy corn cobs,so they buy it from the tp, and the tp takes a small amount of tax for every piece removing gold from the game.

Another HUGE sink, and this is where i actually started to notice these things, are the special “aura” items such as the first bat aura shoulders, later on the wintersday snowyflake shoulders. These are pretty expensive (and exclusive) stuff that one will most likely obtain trough mostly TP transactions.

This is why im against them adding a random merchant with a few skins that cost 100-1000 gold each…
This is also the reason why i reorganized my priorities when trying to unlock and collect all non gem shop skins/minipets and other gizmos as some are obtained trough fun and trough actual content such as fractals,raids,dungeons, questing for karma, guild missions ect and while others are obtained trough the power of gold and tp….

PS: This also reminds me of guild commendations and its new minipets…. im focusing on the old ones only as well as guild weapons (and at least 1 set of shimmering /tenebrous weapons) since everything else will take me yeeeears and yeears of regular max weekly guild commendation cap to get…

1. People that hoard gold and never spend it don’t cause inflation. In fact, not spending gold is basically deflation because they expect their gold to be worth more in the future.

2. There are already plenty of cosmetic gold sinks in the game, the wardrobe is over 300k gold cost not to mention the achievements/collections that sink gold too.

3. TP fees are the only thing that can keep up with wealth since it’s always a flat 15% tax regardless of how rich you are. Setting an arbitrary gold value doesn’t keep up with anything.

4. Having less gold in the system doesn’t inherently benefit the consumer, it also makes getting gold harder which could outweigh any decreases in costs. Deflation is a scenario where everything costs less but gold is harder to obtain and the situation ends up being bad for the consumer rather than good.

5. Gold to gem doesn’t indicate inflation at all, gold is but one factor in that equation since it is also determined by how many people convert gems→gold using real life money. Using it as an indicator of inflation is a poor idea at best and goes to show how little you know about GW2. At the very least, get a basket of goods in GW2 and do something like the CPI, come on.

Topic response : Drain your currency first.

One could say the exchange is mainly a gold sponge, holding gold being used to buy gems to pay those selling them. There is still a rather hefty sink involved as a cut is take both buying and selling gems.