Guild Wars 2

We all know that people complain about Mystic Coin and Hardened Leather prices a lot. Anet came out and said people are holding onto them because they are “hoarding” them. However as someone with an Economics major, I am not sure if that’s the correct way to characterize those people.

Store of Value vs Hoarding

In economics, there is the concept of store of value, which are assets like “savings account” and “retirement fund” that you use to keep the value of your wealth as time passes, usually against inflation or other economic risks.

Because Mystic Coins and Hardened Leather Sections have had limited supply and a steady demand since HoT, their values have steadily increased since HoT. If you were to look at the gw2spidy charts for them for “all” timeframe (Mystic Coin, Hardened Leather), they are basically upward sloped curves.

It is obvious from those charts that since the release of HoT, those two assets have been better “stores of value” than gold. Thus the aforementioned “hoarders” are not hoarding per se, but are in fact “informed investors”. And they are not holding onto those coins/leather as “speculative investment”, but are holding onto them in lieu of holding gold.

I can say with certainty that as long as there is inflation, there would always be some item (or collection of items) that is better “store of value” than gold. (This is self-evident if you understand inflation from an academic standpoint.)

Going forward

Now what can we do here? IMO, our behavior should be dependent upon our expectation of Anet’s future action.

So what can Anet do here about Mystic Coin and Leather? As an economics major, I can list a few scenarios (not an exhaustive list):

• Anet does not intervene – In this scenario, it would be prudent for everyone to use those items as “store of value”. Price of those item would continue to increase until end-of-life for the game. There might be short-term bubbles, but that won’t dampen the increase of price of coin/leather in the long-run.

• Anet intervenes directly hard: demand is sharply fulfilled by supply – In the short-term there would be a “bubble” for leather/coin and their prices would collapse. In the long-term, another “store of value” would likely emerge.

• Anet intervenes directly softly: demand is slowly fulfilled by supply – Depending on the severity of the intervention, those items could continue to be “stores of value”, but a more lucrative “store of value” might emerge.

• Anet introduces a 3rd item that’s better “store of value” than coin/leather – the 3rd item would slowly supplant Mystic Coin and Leather as “store of value” of choice, but all their price would continue to increase relative to gold. The slope of Coin and Leather might be flatter in the long run due to distribution of demand.

This argument suffers greatly by lumping mystic coins and leather into the same explanation. The two situations are drastically different.

The high price of mystic coins is partly a design choice: the supply is deliberately controlled to give players a secondary source of easy coin, if they don’t care about shinies. It does not limit players economically or practically; it only annoys people used to the previous low price or who think that they should be able to farm as many as they like. In short, it’s a matter of design or style preferences.

The leather situation is at least partly an issue of economics, but it too has aspects of preference. Should each type of primary mat be similar in market cost? Should all weights of armor be comparable in crafting costs? A lot of folks would argue: absolutely, they should — but that’s a matter of design & style, not economics.

tl;dr I can’t support a proposed solution based on a problem statement that misstates the problem.

So you hit the nail on the head, and no one even needs an economics major to see that (not trying to belittle your major, its just blindingly obvious). Its easy for JS to say “there are tons of MC, people are just hoarding them and IDGAF why”, but he never seems to look at why people are hoarding MC. If he would do that, he’d notice that with no incentive to stop hoarding them (and indeed with incentive, directly from JS himself and the comments he’s made, are encouraged to hoard _ even more_ MC), people aren’t going to stop. So the bubble will never, ever burst on its own.

He needs to intervene, at least with leather.

After the legendary armor news players bought/retired 25k mystic coins from tp. The stock went from 37k to 12k units. The price hasn’t change anyway. Just a report

Acnologia.6934:

After the legendary armor news players bought/retired 25k mystic coins from tp. The stock went from 37k to 12k units. The price hasn’t change anyway. Just a report

A while back there were two deliberate attempts to manipulate the mystic coin market, by buying out stock to the 5g level. In both cases the market responded by recovering to normal within a day or so.

There is plenty of supply, much of it not listed. I’ll bet a bunch of people are selling off their stored value at the moment because of the burst from the armor.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

This argument suffers greatly by lumping mystic coins and leather into the same explanation. The two situations are drastically different.

The high price of mystic coins is partly a design choice: the supply is deliberately controlled to give players a secondary source of easy coin, if they don’t care about shinies. It does not limit players economically or practically; it only annoys people used to the previous low price or who think that they should be able to farm as many as they like. In short, it’s a matter of design or style preferences.

The leather situation is at least partly an issue of economics, but it too has aspects of preference. Should each type of primary mat be similar in market cost? Should all weights of armor be comparable in crafting costs? A lot of folks would argue: absolutely, they should — but that’s a matter of design & style, not economics.

tl;dr I can’t support a proposed solution based on a problem statement that misstates the problem.

this is irrelvant to his point. he isnt talking about why people want it cheap, he is talking about why people hold on to the item.

basically that the reason people dont put these items on sale, is because they outvalue gold in the long term.
if you leave the game with a bunch of materials, worth 100 gold, when you come back they will be worth more than 100 gold most likely.

basically he is saying if they dont want people holding items, they need to make better investments for people’s money.

guess guild wars gonna have to start selling stocks and bonds.

The OP is making assumptions about why players are holding onto MC and leather. These assumptions are based on less data than are John Smith’s assumptions and so, IMO, are more suspect.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

This argument suffers greatly by lumping mystic coins and leather into the same explanation. The two situations are drastically different.

The high price of mystic coins is partly a design choice: the supply is deliberately controlled to give players a secondary source of easy coin, if they don’t care about shinies. It does not limit players economically or practically; it only annoys people used to the previous low price or who think that they should be able to farm as many as they like. In short, it’s a matter of design or style preferences.

The leather situation is at least partly an issue of economics, but it too has aspects of preference. Should each type of primary mat be similar in market cost? Should all weights of armor be comparable in crafting costs? A lot of folks would argue: absolutely, they should — but that’s a matter of design & style, not economics.

tl;dr I can’t support a proposed solution based on a problem statement that misstates the problem.

I merely have a minor in economics however the argument has been made countless times that the price of Mystic Coins effects the crafting of all the high tier items from legend to Mystic Forge recipes. Those recipies require a vase amount of other mats in addition to coins and if less people are selling and buying coins then less people are crafting and thus less people are purchasing from the larger pool of other mats. Farmers for different mats won’t get proper paid for their work and thus they abandon those farms for something else like how people demanded the leather farm. Other mats are so heavily devalued the only reason to farm them these days is for personal use. Even Mystic Coins which are partially kept high because guilds and f2p players are pretty much forced to buy coins unless your in one of those fairy tail guilds whose members will willingly give up like 1k MC for all the upgrades.

As for leather this is a video game it doesn’t act like the real world and to be honest I wouldn’t lump leather with coins either or even blame the economy its all 100% on Anets meddling with the economy.

http://i.imgur.com/cdQ5ndN.jpg

As for a solution all they’d have to do is ignore the coins and instead work on clovers. Whatever they do the most expensive legendary weapon they’ve ever released is about to hit the market and at these prices I expect many posts regarding both the weapon and armor.

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

if the mayority of the player base is holding leather and MCs as store of value, they have no ground to complain about high prices.

About mystic coins:

Probably a dilemma for the market specialist at Arenanet.

There is a saying that “the market is always right”. If I look into the price history of mystic coins, I see that it developed to the current price steadily with no spikes. So I assume the demand is greater than the supply for all the time, otherwise the price would decrease and not increase.

It doesn’t matter if coins are hoarded (and the demand is driven by the desire to hoard) or if the coins are requested for consumption. Either way the coins are withdrawn from the market and can be considered as “consumed”. Be it really destroyed or permanently kept away in some storage.

The item seems to have become a trader item. As long as this is the case, and the supply and demand stays the same, the situation will not change.

I see only one way out: increase the supply to a level that it’s not possible to buy it away into storage. Then the price will drop immediately to the ground and stay there, because of 3 things:

- the demand decreases, because traders withdraw to buy it as speculation object
- the supply even raises more, because traders try to sell their stock before it is worthless
- the supply is permanently much higher than the demand, so the price drops and stays down

As consequence, a huge part of the cost of items that are created through the mystic forge is permanently gone, because the supply cannot be reduced again – the whole spiral would start again. So the price stays down. It’s in Arenanet’s hands to decide if this is acceptable or not.

I think a market reasoning may work for leather : the supply is more or less identified as farming, and the demand relates to crafting costs. Every ascended armor needs a lot of it, so as the demande exceeds the supply…

Now, for mystic coins, I’m more mixed feelings about it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m sitting on little less than 1000 of those. Why so much ? Here’re some reasons :

• I could use them, but :
  • I’m not currently running after a legendary
  • I’m not really interested by the items you can get using them in the mystic forge.
• I could sell them but :
  • I’m positive that even if the supply is predictable, it’s a time investment, so I’m keeping them to save time, just in case I’d need them.
• I could turn them into gold. I do it from time to time, mainly to buy gems afterwards.

In a nutshell, I have no use for them right now, but I’m keeping them just in case something useful will pop. Then I’ll use them then, or turn them into gold (aka. sell them) according to my needs. In a sense, I’m using them as a store of value, but I’m also just storing them for an uncertain future usefulness, therefore using their intrinsic value.

My question is : how many people are doing like me ? Does ANet count my ~1000 mystic coins in the overall game stock ? Because that’d make a big shift between all the mystic coins stored just in case, and the amount traded between those who don’t care at all about them, and those who are craving for them.

Wanze.8410:

if the mayority of the player base is holding leather and MCs as store of value, they have no ground to complain about high prices.

its not the people storing their value complaining, its the people who want to use tbe supply for goods.

ThomasC.1056:

My question is : how many people are doing like me ? Does ANet count my ~1000 mystic coins in the overall game stock ? Because that’d make a big shift between all the mystic coins stored just in case, and the amount traded between those who don’t care at all about them, and those who are craving for them.

AFAIK yes they do count your coins as “in stock”. And this is based off of JS’s last reply about MC (which was about a year ago) where he said that there was more incoming supply that coins being taken out of the game (ie sold to vendor, deleted, or used in a recipe). But he didn’t mention how many of the coins in the game were actually moving between accounts (which I strongly suspect is because those numbers would back up how a lot of players who speak up about MC feel towards them)

ThomasC.1056:

I think a market reasoning may work for leather : the supply is more or less identified as farming, and the demand relates to crafting costs. Every ascended armor needs a lot of it, so as the demande exceeds the supply…

Now, for mystic coins, I’m more mixed feelings about it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m sitting on little less than 1000 of those. Why so much ? Here’re some reasons :

• I could use them, but :
  • I’m not currently running after a legendary
  • I’m not really interested by the items you can get using them in the mystic forge.
• I could sell them but :
  • I’m positive that even if the supply is predictable, it’s a time investment, so I’m keeping them to save time, just in case I’d need them.
• I could turn them into gold. I do it from time to time, mainly to buy gems afterwards.

In a nutshell, I have no use for them right now, but I’m keeping them just in case something useful will pop. Then I’ll use them then, or turn them into gold (aka. sell them) according to my needs. In a sense, I’m using them as a store of value, but I’m also just storing them for an uncertain future usefulness, therefore using their intrinsic value.

My question is : how many people are doing like me ? Does ANet count my ~1000 mystic coins in the overall game stock ? Because that’d make a big shift between all the mystic coins stored just in case, and the amount traded between those who don’t care at all about them, and those who are craving for them.

most people are doing what you are doing, because its the most logical thing to do, unless you need gold right now, most materials hold their value better.

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

if the mayority of the player base is holding leather and MCs as store of value, they have no ground to complain about high prices.

its not the people storing their value complaining, its the people who want to use tbe supply for goods.

yep, a vocal minority, while most of the players are fine keeping them

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

You are literally storing them because you think you can get some gold for them. That’s storing them for their value. You’ve now said it yourself, twice.

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

You are literally storing them because you think you can get some gold for them. That’s storing them for their value. You’ve now said it yourself, twice.

I think that he means that he is not using them as a means to store his liquid gold. He seems to be missing the point that whether or not he ever used liquid gold to purchase them he is storing value.

*My apologies if I used the incorrect gender pronoun.

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

You are literally storing them because you think you can get some gold for them. That’s storing them for their value. You’ve now said it yourself, twice.

I think that he means that he is not using them as a means to store his liquid gold. He seems to be missing the point that whether or not he ever used liquid gold to purchase them he is storing value.

*My apologies if I used the incorrect gender pronoun.

Just because an item has value doesn’t mean that it’s being used to store value. I guess everyone that hasn’t cared to sell their material storages are storing value? Those broken spoons are storing value too? How about green wood logs?

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

You are literally storing them because you think you can get some gold for them. That’s storing them for their value. You’ve now said it yourself, twice.

I think that he means that he is not using them as a means to store his liquid gold. He seems to be missing the point that whether or not he ever used liquid gold to purchase them he is storing value.

*My apologies if I used the incorrect gender pronoun.

Just because an item has value doesn’t mean that it’s being used to store value. I guess everyone that hasn’t cared to sell their material storages are storing value? Those broken spoons are storing value too? How about green wood logs?

Technically, yes even if not intentional. It’s just that it may not be worth the effort to actually realize their value.

Someone on Reddit was doing a little bragging about something (nothing wrong with that) and implied in a post later in the thread that he/she seemed to be collecting a certain something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/68aed1/it_dropped/dgx2aky/

And the player’s screenshot in their Reddit post (his/her screenshot has sensitive stuff about his/her guild blacked out already): https://i.imgur.com/FYwDYZU.jpg

This is proof of what has been said about players hoarding these, and why ArenaNet won’t do anything about it.

So there you go. Nothing to see here folks. Moving on.

ANet has said that they look at supply flowing into the game Vs being consumed and try to have supply around 10% higher. This may work if they are looking to nerf an excess of supply flowing into the game however consumption may simply be low because the unit price is so high and keeps moving upwards. This discourages outright selling because the next day/week/month it will cost more.

Now ANet has added additional ways to acquire both Mystic Coins and T6 Leather Sections. For Mystic Coins there’s the Ley-Line Anomaly Event that spawns every two hours that once a day will drop a Mystic Coin per account and for T6 Leather the LWS3E4 “leather farm”.

The thing with both of these is from the 10 KM level ANet may be seeing an uptick in supply flowing into the game and figure job done. Problem is for the individual player on the ground a single Mystic Coin or a dozen T6 Leather Sections isn’t worth the time relative to the reward, as you could take that time and do an activity that would supply you with more gold than it would cost to buy a similar amount from the TP, so why bother?

The raw currency a Player has is time. That’s why time gated materials hurt. That’s why materials/items behind RNG hurt. Now one purpose of the TP is to help alleviate the issues with RNG because if Player A doesn’t need X and Player B does, the TP will act as the intermediary. But that in reality relies on GOLD as the medium of exchange and so if nearly everything can be bought with gold, players evolve play styles optimizing on acquiring gold in the shortest amount of time.

Now if it only took five minutes instead of fifteen to do the Ley-Line Anomaly Event to get the daily Mystic Coin, more players would likely do it. Because lets be honest, nobody is going out of their way to do this event for 200+ karma and 50+ copper.

The Leather Farm is more problematic. If it’s too rewarding for the time invested, it could cause a flood of leather of all tiers flowing into the TP and tanking the price and we’ll be right back to where we were pre-HoT. Because unlike ore and lumber, the leather farm isn’t selective as to what tier(s) you get which means you will sell off the tiers you don’t care about. Now if it dropped only T5 and T6, since it’s a level 80 zone, that would be different. True T2-T5 is used in crafting T7 leather so they aren’t totally useless but it’s easy to forget that if you want to craft a new set of insignia today because the meta changed or your role in the raid changed and you only care about T6.

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later. I’m not using them to store value.

……. Are you serious? That’s literally holding them to store value. You are holding onto them for their worth, and banking on them going up in price, you aren’t holding onto them because you actually want to use them to craft anything (based on what you said).

No it’s not. I’m not converting my gold into them which is itself using coins to store value.

You are literally storing them because you think you can get some gold for them. That’s storing them for their value. You’ve now said it yourself, twice.

I think that he means that he is not using them as a means to store his liquid gold. He seems to be missing the point that whether or not he ever used liquid gold to purchase them he is storing value.

*My apologies if I used the incorrect gender pronoun.

Just because an item has value doesn’t mean that it’s being used to store value. I guess everyone that hasn’t cared to sell their material storages are storing value? Those broken spoons are storing value too? How about green wood logs?

Nope, but if you specifically state that you are holding onto something because of its value (present and future) then you are storing their value.

For example:

Ayrilana.1396:

Well I could be holding onto mine because I think that I can get more gold for them later…

Of course you said, “could be,” not, “am,” but the principle stands.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

if the mayority of the player base is holding leather and MCs as store of value, they have no ground to complain about high prices.

its not the people storing their value complaining, its the people who want to use tbe supply for goods.

yep, a vocal minority, while most of the players are fine keeping them

i have no data on the numbers on each side.

keep in mind the majority of the item bieng held is not neccesarily the majority of players.
1 item saving player may hold 10 times or more than a non item saver. I’m sure that you re capacity to store far outweighs the average player.

also id say the marjority is probably on neither side, many players arent at the stage where they need these things or store mass amounts

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

That…no, that’s not how asset pricing works.

There isn’t any interest or rent producing capital in the game. Expectations about the price trajectories of various assets are priced into their market prices.

I.E., if it was certain Mystic Coins were going to appreciate in the future, people would start buying them now at higher prices – until the price is high enough that people didn’t see any more upside to holding coins over holding gold anymore.

I would argue that you’re cycles of falling risk premiums (as A.Net does nothing to address the fundamentals), followed by rising risk premiums (as prices spike and the risk of intervention rises).

Overall, though, no, there’s no guarantee that there are assets that will outperform gold in the long run. There’s no guarantee of inflation in the long run, and there have been plenty of short run periods of deflation.

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

Behellagh.1468:

ANet has said that they look at supply flowing into the game Vs being consumed and try to have supply around 10% higher. This may work if they are looking to nerf an excess of supply flowing into the game however consumption may simply be low because the unit price is so high and keeps moving upwards. This discourages outright selling because the next day/week/month it will cost more.

Now ANet has added additional ways to acquire both Mystic Coins and T6 Leather Sections. For Mystic Coins there’s the Ley-Line Anomaly Event that spawns every two hours that once a day will drop a Mystic Coin per account and for T6 Leather the LWS3E4 “leather farm”.

The thing with both of these is from the 10 KM level ANet may be seeing an uptick in supply flowing into the game and figure job done. Problem is for the individual player on the ground a single Mystic Coin or a dozen T6 Leather Sections isn’t worth the time relative to the reward, as you could take that time and do an activity that would supply you with more gold than it would cost to buy a similar amount from the TP, so why bother?

The raw currency a Player has is time. That’s why time gated materials hurt. That’s why materials/items behind RNG hurt. Now one purpose of the TP is to help alleviate the issues with RNG because if Player A doesn’t need X and Player B does, the TP will act as the intermediary. But that in reality relies on GOLD as the medium of exchange and so if nearly everything can be bought with gold, players evolve play styles optimizing on acquiring gold in the shortest amount of time.

Now if it only took five minutes instead of fifteen to do the Ley-Line Anomaly Event to get the daily Mystic Coin, more players would likely do it. Because lets be honest, nobody is going out of their way to do this event for 200+ karma and 50+ copper.

The Leather Farm is more problematic. If it’s too rewarding for the time invested, it could cause a flood of leather of all tiers flowing into the TP and tanking the price and we’ll be right back to where we were pre-HoT. Because unlike ore and lumber, the leather farm isn’t selective as to what tier(s) you get which means you will sell off the tiers you don’t care about. Now if it dropped only T5 and T6, since it’s a level 80 zone, that would be different. True T2-T5 is used in crafting T7 leather so they aren’t totally useless but it’s easy to forget that if you want to craft a new set of insignia today because the meta changed or your role in the raid changed and you only care about T6.

Have you ever tried that ley-line anomoly event? It’s nearly impossible to complete. There were a ton of complaints about it on the forums in the past. In my experience, I tried it twice on 2 separate days in Gendarrin Fields. Both times there must have been at least 30 players chasing that thing. Both times we couldn’t even drop down to 50% health before time ran out and the stupid thing exploded. This particular event for 1 mystic coin per day wasn’t a favor for the community, and honestly I’m getting sick of this argument.

When you need hundreds of mystic coins for whatever reason, 1 coin per day from an almost impossible to complete event isn’t worth the effort. Even if you can manage to complete the event every day, it’s still not worth the effort.

The problem with mystic coins isn’t the supply. Just before your post I submitted proof that what has been constantly said is that, some players are hoarding thousands and thousands of mystic coins. The supply is already in the game. It’s just not being sold on the trading post because the demand for them isn’t very high.

Mystic coins are needed mostly for cosmetic stuff, not anything you actually need for the game. For example, you need ascended gear for high level fractals for the agony infusions and crafting said gear requires a lot of hardened leather. You can do fractals without it, but it’s going to be a lot more difficult and you may get hassled by other players for it. Before living story season 3 episode 4 released, a dev said they were going to “do something about hardened leather”, and later said that Lake Doric was going to include a leather farm. This implied that there is a real need for leather and not enough supply in the game.

Since the supply of mystic coins is already there (it’s just being hoarded by selfish players), they can’t do anything to increase or add new ways to get them. Otherwise hoarders will scramble to sell for what profit they can, and in turn the value of them will plummet. Then players will complain about there being too much supply and they can’t get anything for them in the trading post.

The only solution I can think of is to add something to the game that requires mystic coins to make that is actually needed. Then when the total supply in the game starts dropping, they can add new ways to get them or increase the amounts we already get.

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

That doesn’t make sense … designed economy does NOT mean players should get what they want, at the prices they want in the volumes they want. It has nothing to do with boring … it has everything to do with sensible.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

That doesn’t make sense … designed economy does NOT mean players should get what they want, at the prices they want in the volumes they want. It has nothing to do with boring … it has everything to do with sensible.

the boring comment was me explaining why an economics dude would want to talk about it.

the fact that the economy is designed means that player satisfcation matters to the economy. if enough people are dissatisfied it will change, because they specifically hired an economist so that the economy would be satisfactory to players, and also the company.

real economies exist no matter what, even if they result in war and strife.

not sure why you are saying its not their job, when its mostly what they do. They make changes they think will benefit the economy because they believe that benefits the players.

whether changes to mystic coins will benefit the economy and the players is the discussion. Or whether changes already made are hitting their targets.

no matter which side each particular economist (or economy interested party) falls, its the type of thing they might want to analyze and explore.

Ensign.2189:

That…no, that’s not how asset pricing works.

There isn’t any interest or rent producing capital in the game. Expectations about the price trajectories of various assets are priced into their market prices.

I.E., if it was certain Mystic Coins were going to appreciate in the future, people would start buying them now at higher prices – until the price is high enough that people didn’t see any more upside to holding coins over holding gold anymore.

I would argue that you’re cycles of falling risk premiums (as A.Net does nothing to address the fundamentals), followed by rising risk premiums (as prices spike and the risk of intervention rises).

Interesting perspective. You are approaching it from a micro-economic perspective. My argument approached it from a macro-economic and behavioral perspective. I feel, micro approach might be difficult to apply because people value utility and opportunity cost differently from real-life.

Also when I said “end-of-life”, i am actually referring to time at which the game is near the end, but actual time can be better predicted with micro approaches.

Ensign.2189:

Overall, though, no, there’s no guarantee that there are assets that will outperform gold in the long run. There’s no guarantee of inflation in the long run, and there have been plenty of short run periods of deflation.

If there is inflation, the inflation-measuring basket would outperform gold.

There might be short-term deflation, but I am doubtful there is long-term deflation since farms like Silverwaste/Fractal40 don’t suddenly become less productive.

Players are entitled to Legendary weapons, so Mystic Coins should be free to cheap. Like healthcare in America, Anet should subsidize Mystic Coin prices.

I highly doubt most ppl are holding on to them. that’s like saying most ppl participate in the stock market.

voidvector.2780:

There might be short-term deflation, but I am doubtful there is long-term deflation since farms like Silverwaste/Fractal40 don’t suddenly become less productive.

I dont do these farms but from what i heard, they are just profitable because they drop alot of loot that is being sold on the trading post and not raw gold rewards.

Charrbeque.8729:

Someone on Reddit was doing a little bragging about something (nothing wrong with that) and implied in a post later in the thread that he/she seemed to be collecting a certain something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/68aed1/it_dropped/dgx2aky/

And the player’s screenshot in their Reddit post (his/her screenshot has sensitive stuff about his/her guild blacked out already): https://i.imgur.com/FYwDYZU.jpg

This is proof of what has been said about players hoarding these, and why ArenaNet won’t do anything about it.

So there you go. Nothing to see here folks. Moving on.

This is exactly why we can’t have nice things. You didn’t even stop to ask why people are hoarding coins. And people hoard them because of the stupid situation they are in. If it wasn’t this bad, people wouldn’t be hoarding them at nearly the same levels as they do now, because there wouldn’t be a need to hold onto them.

Until you can look at and understand why the coins are being hoarded, you’ll never see that there is a problem with them.

So the basic assertion here is that my need for mystic coins and hardened leather is greater than your need for the same items, so you should give them to me.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I highly doubt most ppl are holding on to them. that’s like saying most ppl participate in the stock market.

It’s a very passive stockmarket.

I think alot of people hold on to most items until their material storage is full. That deposit all button does that mostly. And how often are you going to look in your bank when youre not going for anything?

I really doubt more people actively sell their materials to gain gold than people lazily just deposit everything in their bank and don’t look at it at the end of the day.

Considering for mystic coins getting 250 if not upto thousands completely filled up taking years, especially if you do not login every day.

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

That doesn’t make sense … designed economy does NOT mean players should get what they want, at the prices they want in the volumes they want. It has nothing to do with boring … it has everything to do with sensible.

the boring comment was me explaining why an economics dude would want to talk about it.

the fact that the economy is designed means that player satisfcation matters to the economy.

Again … the goal here of the economy is not to ensure 100% player satisfaction with it. That’s a silly and unrealistic goal, whatever ‘designed’ implies. Therefore the premise that players should have ‘cheap’ leather/MC’s because they aren’t satisfied is nonsense to begin with.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

That doesn’t make sense … designed economy does NOT mean players should get what they want, at the prices they want in the volumes they want. It has nothing to do with boring … it has everything to do with sensible.

the boring comment was me explaining why an economics dude would want to talk about it.

the fact that the economy is designed means that player satisfcation matters to the economy.

Again … the goal here of the economy is not 100% player satisfaction … it’s simply mats available to players at market prices.

no one said its 100% player satisfaction?

what do you mean about mats being available at market prices? Keep in mind this thread is not really saying they must do anything about it, but rather saying what he thinks is the root cause of the behavior.

Basically anet says that a lot of item supply isnt going back into the economy or being consumed, which is why the values of certain items are off.

the OP is saying what he believes is the cause of the behavior, and talking about what may come to pass.

What is it that you object to about that discussion?

Charrbeque.8729:

Have you ever tried that ley-line anomoly event?

Yes, for a time right after it came out, once the event was understood. Never had an issue but it was done as a guild so lots of players in a squad rather than the usual flash mob of randoms. But it took quite a bit of time to complete.

When you need hundreds of mystic coins for whatever reason, 1 coin per day from an almost impossible to complete event isn’t worth the effort. Even if you can manage to complete the event every day, it’s still not worth the effort.

Which is what I said, for each player it isn’t much but game wide it may have been a plus for supply.

The problem with mystic coins isn’t the supply. Just before your post I submitted proof that what has been constantly said is that, some players are hoarding thousands and thousands of mystic coins.

No all you showed was a screenshot that may be proof or may be a photoshop troll. I don’t disagree that players are holding on to them, I have over 1500 accumulated over the years.

Mystic coins are needed mostly for cosmetic stuff, not anything you actually need for the game. For example, you need ascended gear for high level fractals for the agony infusions and crafting said gear requires a lot of hardened leather. You can do fractals without it, but it’s going to be a lot more difficult and you may get hassled by other players for it. Before living story season 3 episode 4 released, a dev said they were going to “do something about hardened leather”, and later said that Lake Doric was going to include a leather farm. This implied that there is a real need for leather and not enough supply in the game.

Other than for Insignia, you don’t need “a lot” of T6 leather to craft ascended armor. Only 30 sections per Insignia/piece. Hardly “a lot” when you are talking hundreds of T5 mats per piece. And it was the player base that assumed the addition of a leather farm was to exclusively provide T6 rather than providing a much needed way to farm leather for all tiers.

As I said in the post you quoted, the Players’ sole currency is TIME. But since ascended is locked behind a variety of time gates, taking 25-36 days to craft the T7 mats requited, is getting 3-4 T6 leather sections a day too much? I would think gathering the T2-T5 mats per day to craft the T7 mat a much tougher obstacle to overcome.

Funny in real life, the monetary policies are generally gear towards promoting economic activities, which increases circulation of goods and thus overall availability. In addition, you can rent out “hoarded” assets in real life, thus making it more accessible.

However those facilities are not available in an MMO.

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Why is it even necessary to entice players to sell them, hoarding or not? Why is it always Anet’s job to ensure players get MC coins at the rate players see fit at the price they want to pay? That’s not how it works. I would hope an Economics major could get that.

its a designed economy, so it kind of is their focus. If they were laissez faire as you suggest, they would never have hired an economics guy.

anet may choose to change it or not, but its still of interest to economy focused people because its one of the issues they deal with in designing and analyzing an economy.

note, he says IF they want to change the behavior, he knows that maybe they dont want to.

basically, while this may bore you, economy focused people would probably find it interesting

That doesn’t make sense … designed economy does NOT mean players should get what they want, at the prices they want in the volumes they want. It has nothing to do with boring … it has everything to do with sensible.

the boring comment was me explaining why an economics dude would want to talk about it.

the fact that the economy is designed means that player satisfcation matters to the economy.

Again … the goal here of the economy is not 100% player satisfaction … it’s simply mats available to players at market prices.

no one said its 100% player satisfaction?

Then why do you bring it up the idea that a designed economy means customer satisfaction if you understand that not all players can be satisfied in the first place? That’s a non-starter of an argument. I guess you just flip flop for whatever suits your position?

The fact is simple. The economy isn’t designed to make everyone happy. Furthermore, if someone doesn’t like the price because it’s expensive and that makes them unhappy, you can be assured that sellers are as happy that people are buying at that price as well … so you can drop the nonsensical ‘dissatisfaction’ ploy as a reason for Anet to do something here.

I hardly ever comment on this forum but really the whole Mystic coin and hardened leather issue keeps coming up like the devs almost expect it to go away and it wont.
I also agree that the 2 are very separate and different problems and whilst i dislike the price of mystic coins they are really use solely in “shiny” equipment .
Yes its a pain legendaries will cost so much but they are supposed to be an endgame goal .Whilst other exotics with “shiny” skins also require them it also makes them rare and another “endgame goal” ( looking at you firebringer)
The leather issue is another completely different scenario as its needed not just for BiS gear but just for general endgame gearing. Im not suggesting we completely collapse the market with a sledghammer like anet has a reputation of doing , but surely and dev with common sense can see that 30 pieces for 1 insignia is just a tad ridiculous.
they nerfed the salvage rate and pushed the requirements to an unnecessary level at the same time.
If they just dropped the requirements of not so much for insignias and patches surely the price drop wouldnt be so drastic and would make endgame gearing easier but also experimenting with different stats and builds easier which is all part of the fun.
It just seems like the solution is so simple but they keep choosing to ignore it

Natto.5819:

Players are entitled to Legendary weapons, so Mystic Coins should be free to cheap. Like healthcare in America, Anet should subsidize Mystic Coin prices.

This but unironically.

voidvector.2780:

My argument approached it from a macro-economic and behavioral perspective.

If you want to approach it from a macro perspective, be very explicit about your assumptions about the relative growth rates of the three asset classes (gold, coins, hard leather) over time – both flows and stocks – as well as your assumptions about their respective elasticities and how demand changes over time.

Which set of assumptions is necessary for your model to hold?

I am pretty sure there is a set of assumptions that is consistent with your conclusions (when combined with a pretty high discount rate, which I think you can take as a given), but there isn’t a ton of wiggle room in those assumptions and they aren’t obviously true.

voidvector.2780:

Also when I said “end-of-life”, i am actually referring to time at which the game is near the end, but actual time can be better predicted with micro approaches.

The discount rate is high enough that I don’t think the end-of-life condition is going to be a big deal.

voidvector.2780:

If there is inflation, the inflation-measuring basket would outperform gold.

If inflation is positive. Is inflation positive? Why should we expect inflation to be positive?

voidvector.2780:

There might be short-term deflation, but I am doubtful there is long-term deflation since farms like Silverwaste/Fractal40 don’t suddenly become less productive.

From a boring monetarist perspective, inflation is positive if the net rate of currency generation (relative to the stock of currency) exceeds the net rate of non-currency asset generation (relative to the stock of assets).

Is Sliverwastes farming inflationary? That is, is the ratio of gold to assets that it generates higher than the ratio of gold to assets in the game as a whole? If it is lower, efficient Silverwastes farming would be deflationary, not inflationary.

Etc.

Outside the initial burn-in of the game in the first year when the money stock was developing, is there a good a priori reason to think that inflation is still positive?

Behellagh.1468:

Charrbeque.8729:

Have you ever tried that ley-line anomoly event?

Yes, for a time right after it came out, once the event was understood. Never had an issue but it was done as a guild so lots of players in a squad rather than the usual flash mob of randoms. But it took quite a bit of time to complete.

When you need hundreds of mystic coins for whatever reason, 1 coin per day from an almost impossible to complete event isn’t worth the effort. Even if you can manage to complete the event every day, it’s still not worth the effort.

Which is what I said, for each player it isn’t much but game wide it may have been a plus for supply.

The problem with mystic coins isn’t the supply. Just before your post I submitted proof that what has been constantly said is that, some players are hoarding thousands and thousands of mystic coins.

No all you showed was a screenshot that may be proof or may be a photoshop troll. I don’t disagree that players are holding on to them, I have over 1500 accumulated over the years.

Mystic coins are needed mostly for cosmetic stuff, not anything you actually need for the game. For example, you need ascended gear for high level fractals for the agony infusions and crafting said gear requires a lot of hardened leather. You can do fractals without it, but it’s going to be a lot more difficult and you may get hassled by other players for it. Before living story season 3 episode 4 released, a dev said they were going to “do something about hardened leather”, and later said that Lake Doric was going to include a leather farm. This implied that there is a real need for leather and not enough supply in the game.

Other than for Insignia, you don’t need “a lot” of T6 leather to craft ascended armor. Only 30 sections per Insignia/piece. Hardly “a lot” when you are talking hundreds of T5 mats per piece. And it was the player base that assumed the addition of a leather farm was to exclusively provide T6 rather than providing a much needed way to farm leather for all tiers.

As I said in the post you quoted, the Players’ sole currency is TIME. But since ascended is locked behind a variety of time gates, taking 25-36 days to craft the T7 mats requited, is getting 3-4 T6 leather sections a day too much? I would think gathering the T2-T5 mats per day to craft the T7 mat a much tougher obstacle to overcome.

You just aren’t getting it. I don’t think the screenshot was faked in any way.

Here is why: back in January 2017, on 1 day the supply of mystic coins suddenly tanked, and the price shot through the roof, over 4 gold each.

A dev confirmed at the time that 30k mystic coins were sold in the trading post that day. Someone asked if it was 1 player buying all of them, or was it that many total sold that day. The dev responding by saying “it was 2 people”. That’s right. 2 players bought 30k mystic coins in a single day. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5nbdxj/someone_just_bought_10k_mystic_coins_price_is/dcb764k/?context=1000

Which furthers my belief that someone posting a screenshot of him/her having a guild vault full of dozens of stacks of mystic coins isn’t trolling nor do I believe it’s a photoshop job. Because in the past it has been proven that only a few players had purchased massive quantities of the kitten ed things.
———————————
Here is what happened before living world season 3 episode 4 released:

A dev said they’re going to do something about hardened leather. Then later they said that Lake Doric was going to have a place to farm leather. So yeah, naturally, the community assumed the leather farm in Lake Doric was the answer to the hardened leather issue, even though ArenaNet never specifically stated the leather farm was to address the issue. Then again, I don’t recall a dev ever correcting the community by saying the leather farm wasn’t the answer to the hardened leather issue or that they still had plans to do something about it. Because of their silence on the matter, the community further believed the leather farm in Lake Doric was answer to the hardened leather issue. And of course, it wasn’t a solution at all. Hardened leather drops from the leather farm aren’t any better than anywhere else in the game, and naturally the prices haven’t gone down in the trading post (at least not much since the farm was added). They prices have been pretty stable.

Charrbeque.8729:

A dev said they’re going to do something about hardened leather. Then later they said that Lake Doric was going to have a place to farm leather. So yeah, naturally, the community assumed the leather farm in Lake Doric was the answer to the hardened leather issue, even though ArenaNet never specifically stated the leather farm was to address the issue. Then again, I don’t recall a dev ever correcting the community by saying the leather farm wasn’t the answer to the hardened leather issue or that they still had plans to do something about it. Because of their silence on the matter, the community further believed the leather farm in Lake Doric was answer to the hardened leather issue. And of course, it wasn’t a solution at all. Hardened leather drops from the leather farm aren’t any better than anywhere else in the game, and naturally the prices haven’t gone down in the trading post (at least not much since the farm was added). They prices have been pretty stable.

The problem is that the player base and Anet have identified different issues: The players were the opinion that hard leather is too expensive and Anet mentioned that they had an issue with the unelastic supply of leather, which makes it hard for the player base to balance out the prices and supply themselves in time of demand.

Anet introduced a solution for the issue they had seen but they player base assumed it was a solution to their problem of high prices, even though all Anet did was giving the players a tool to fix their own problem.

Ponch.1652:

1. Yes its a pain legendaries will cost so much but they are supposed to be an endgame goal .Whilst other exotics with “shiny” skins also require them it also makes them rare and another “endgame goal” ( looking at you firebringer)
2. The leather issue is another completely different scenario as its needed not just for BiS gear but just for general endgame gearing.

1. I dont think the current price of MC has as big an impact on leggie weapons as you might think.

For the gen 1 leggies, they make up roughly 10% of the overall costs and around 1/6 of the overall costs for gen 2 weapons, as they need a stack more in addition to the 231 you need to forge the clovers. But by now, Mystic Clovers have many different faucets, not only the forge recipe, so its possible to negate those MC requirements and farm clovers directly.

If you buy all the needed mats for the newest legendary, the HMS DIvinity, you pay more gold for elder wood than mystic coins, even if you forge your clovers yourself but i dont see any complaints that elder wood is too expensive for crafting legendary weapons.

2. T6 leather is hardly used, if at all, for BiS gear (asc and leggie).