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RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Economics of Mystic Coin & Hardened Leather
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.
First of all I didn’t say you were trolling but the one posting the image might be. No different than using a chat code to say you got a precursor or some equally expensive thing to drop at some event instead of the usual daily rare with two blues and a green. Plus it’s a lot easier for a large guild to accumulate that many through conventional means. I still believe that the amount found across the tens of thousands of “normal” players far out number what a few groups are holding.
Also while it’s true that Mystic Coins are used for cosmetic items, this IS Fashion Wars 2. And I don’t consider Legendary Weapons and soon armors with their ability to change stats just a pretty skin.
And it doesn’t alter the fact that ANet added a challenging group event to earn additional ones if you want. Which sounds just like the language they used to describe the leather farm.
As for T6 leather, I don’t believe any dev said “we are fixing T6 leather prices”. They may have acknowledge the price is out of whack and they will “investigate”. The rest was the community echo chamber on Reddit and the forums twisting that into “fixing T6”. And why should ANet correct this false belief? Did they correct the community’s redefining “suspended” to mean “canceled” when it came to delaying additional new Legendary Weapons? The community already decide what it means and any attempt to correct them would be seen as “lying” or “breaking promises”. So the original statement is long forgotten but instead is collectively “remembered” as “we are fixing T6 leather”.
And really, it costs 420-490 gold for the ascended mats needed to make a full set of ascended armor, the 65 gold for the T6 leather sections to make the insignia isn’t that significant.
No no. I wasn’t saying you said I was trolling. I was saying I don’t think that person’s screenshot was trolling.
Also, I said ArenaNet said back then that they were going to “do something about hardened leather”, not that they were fixing anything or doing anything about the prices.
This whole thing is one confusing mess. When the hell does this happen in the game?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNIwlRClHsQ
There’s something charming about rangers.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have seen screenshots of entire bank tabs filled with stacks of MC, Ecto, or whatever is the topic at hand. Dozens? Hundreds?
I am not saying that I have evidence of that image being a fake…but in order to assume that its not I have to assume that its practically commonplace for individual players to have tens of thousands of MC or ectos in storage….and multiple of every legendary.
Whats the purpose of having a bank in the game , if not to put stuff in it ?
Im unaware of any limits set by Anet of what you can put in your bank and in what quantities.
Nobody is complaining about a saving mats, if it was an issue then ANet wouldn’t be selling collection expanders.
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
It would be interesting to see, using the average daily addition of Mystic Coins to the game., how many “days” of inventory of Mystic Coins are on the player base,
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
(edited by Behellagh.1468)
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.
Guilds need a lot of resources in order to upgrade themselves and they’ll need over 1k MC in order to do it as well. A guild isn’t an individual character and its acquisition of Mystic Coins are on a donation basis either from players donating willingly to their guild or the guild tapping into guild funds to buy on the TP. When Guild Halls were introduced it only made sense for for guilds to store as many MC as possible because of current and future upgrade costs. Furthermore for a large and active guild that had peopel actually donate then that’s not alot of MC at all. If every guild member donated one MC every time their daily login granted them a MC then it wouldn’t take long at all. Even if your guild is only 100 members thats 4 different MC donations in a month equaling 400MC a month and in 12 months that’s around 4,800MC.
At the same time considering the nature of the mat it only makes sense for a guild to hoard the coins. Currently a guild needs maybe 1k MC for their upgrades alone currently but with new upgrades in the future who knows and thus a guild should keep them around. No one cares about the stockpiles of a guild because they can pull a little bit from a vast amount of players and gain most resources quickly. I hope Anet is wise enough not to consider the coins held by guilds as part of the MC in the wild for a guild would never put those coins back on the market opting instead for upgrades or crafting rewards to lottery off to the guild.
The reddit user who posted that obviously wouldn’t have gotten any real traction whether it was photo shopped or not mainly because it wasn’t an individuals bank but instead of guild bank. Unlike leather Anet didn’t tamper with MC and break the market with their actions instead when a product gets in high demand such as a car or a book the supplier will up their production to try and maximize their own profits however unlike all the other mats in this game there isn’t a hoard of players trying to farm MC in order to make a profit primarily because MC can’t be farmed. Thus it won’t naturally fix itself because this is a game and there are restrictions.
I gringe whenever I see someone from the studio use the term ‘hoard’, it implies irrational or malignant selfishness. I can understand a studio being frustrated by low rates of market participation or participation efficiency, but referring to the lower raters as ‘hoarders’ will not increase the rating. Imo, don’t talk about that mechanic or frustration if you have to use the term ‘hoard’ and look for ways to make it easier to search our banks with filters linked to the BLTP. Make it easier to understand the Tyrian gold value of our bank and inventory assets. Thank you for providing such a high standard of living without needing much Tyrian gold. It is easy to not care about gold.
I’ve never met an economist, but here’s my two cents.
TDLR The overall maturation of the crafting rewards marketplace will help Mystic Coins weather ‘asset valuation and currency’s ability to do work’ and they will remain a stable asset.
Yes, the Tyrian marketplace has an economic creator, it is a designed economy. The studio should be held responsible for how it manages the demand for Tyrian gold. The studio maintains the terms and conditions for an open offer on Tyrian gold and/or gems. It would be in the studio’s and the player’s mutual interest to maintain a stable Tyrian gold value, its ability to do work. I hope both want the marketplace to genuinely emerge from a democratic valuation of Tyrian assets.
Imo, the structure of MCs have a distinct contribution to that genuinely player emergent valuation. As a login reward asset, they measure the range for minimum player participation in the reward market place and maximum asset creation regularity. MCs have a small recipe footprint and most are being destroyed to make prestige gear. The prestige tier of crafting rewards sits upon a steeply inclined mountain of crafting assets. The mountain is obvious and so is the decision whether to climb. Mystic Coins are a square deal between those who are most willing to work for prestige skins and those not. The regular creation rate of MCs will heavily influence the production rate of prestige skins. As long as the crafting reward marketplace maintains a steady supply of players maturing through reward tiers and investing in prestige skins, demand for MCs will persist. Mystic Coins are designed to be very liquid, a consistently created asset with a persistent demand remaining accurately valued by the player base.
Is that value too high?
I think an accurately measured square deal is close enough to a square deal
Increase the supply of Mystic Coins?
The cost of MCs will influence production rates for prestige skins, but not by much and I don’t think a modest decrease in the price of MCs would create more demand for prestige skins. The difference in workload for the prestige crafting tiers is too great for a small decrease to cover many people. A similar number of people would be competing over the supply of assets. Increase the supply rate of a particular asset and that competition will resolve using less currency but a lot of the income competition will move to other materials needed for prestige crafting and the savings to someone working towards prestige skins would, I think, be in single digit percentages. A small increase in the production rate of prestige skins (the last crafting tier before maturing out of the crafting asset marketplace mind you) would produce a proportional decrease in the production rate of gear statistics and skins that share not-MC recipe requirements with prestige skins.
“No! You can’t eat the ones that talk!
They’re special! They got aspirations.”
Finn the human
They’re special! They got aspirations.”
Finn the human
Mystic Coins are fine – they’re vanity items for high-value crafting.
Leather is a problem because it’s interfering with basic production, punishes medium armor users unfairly compared to the others due to intrinsically more expensive gear, and it’s crippling the value of cloth as well because of the imbalance (Can’t spend cloth without leather).
That the imbalance in crafting persists in spite of the glaring problem (Patches requiring more leather than cloth is the biggest culprit), and failure to recognize the vast imbalance in economic input/output compared to the similar other basic crafting materials is indicative of kitten ing economic incompetence on the dev team. Yes, I’ve read the arguments and statistics put out to defend the design decision – and they’re short-sighted and seeing less than half the picture.
Indeed.
In an MMO there is nothing that any player cant acquire if they want too, which is totally differant to a real world economy.
eg if in the real world I want a mobile phone, I have to buy it of someone else because I cant make one myself.
There is also no requirement that players who put stuff in their bank are somehow obliged to sell if the price on the TP passes some arbitrary value.
Many ppl including myself collect stuff and put it in the bank simply because they will be needed later in the game.
The price of them on the TP is irrelevant as to whether I sell them or not, simply because Id rather have the items than the gold.
If I sell my items, its quite likley that when I need them later, Ill have to buy them back which means I immediately take a 15% hit in their value when I sell them , and as most MMOs suffer from inflation, the price will be higher when I want to buy them back.
If someone has a gazillion mystic coins in their bank, they must have either got them from someone else, or got them from the various methods available to get them.
A process thats available to everyone.
The leather price is crazy. Do something that will really help pls. Eg crafting it from cheaper leather etc using shards etc
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The leather price is crazy. Do something that will really help pls. Eg crafting it from cheaper leather etc using shards etc
You can already promote leather.
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 probably not going to be able to model it with such detail (both because of data available and my own time). Maybe someone working at Anet would be able to? And potentially blog about it?
If inflation is positive. Is inflation positive? Why should we expect inflation to be positive?
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.
You are right. I assumed the economy has ongoing inflation based on my prior experience with earlier generations of online games. However, after thinking about it, most of the value we get from loot in this game are not from NPCs vendors, but instead are from other players.
I have been thinking about pulling the API, and try to measure the inflation. Maybe I will look into it.
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
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No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
their price being stable doesnt really illustrate reaching effeciency. If this item is designed to be consumed, and the people who dont want to consume the item arent selling, and people who want to buy arent buying…
then its not really fullfilling its purpose.
the item design using mystic coins assumes that some percent of the supply will be sold.
its like… if the government gave everyone hamburgers, knowing half the people wouldnt care, and designed the supply so that there was only enough hamburgers for 50% of the people. the assumption is 50% will sell theirs, who have no need.
but instead the non eaters choose not to sell, only a few buyers are willing to pay the market price, and you have a build up of demand and supply, and an impasse.
the hamburgers are not effectively serving their purpose, but making more hamburgers is a waste. they are basically failing as a product.
of course this is just a possibility, it could be that everything is performing as expected. it really depends how much coins are being held with no intent to use or short sell them, which would be pretty hard to tell.
its interesting because the implication is gold has very little value in this game. People would rather hold items than turn it into gold.
i wonder if they had some investment system, or something where you could spend money to increase wealth, would that flood the market with excess hoarded goods? perhaps the bank needs to generate some type of interest for stored gold.
or perhaps it just needs more things people want to spend gold on regularly
For the record, 100% of my Mystic Coin buy orders have been filled to date, so the idea that there is a shortage of supply is false.
1g per MC is not an outrageous price for a pure luxury item, and it hasn’t prevented me from making profits on the items I craft with them.
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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.
The goal should be an unsatisfied player base because that is what makes the most money for Anet and NCSoft! Good idea!
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
I don’t know how it would be as a statistic for total players, but I can say you described my leather purchasing / hoarding habits 100% correctly.
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
Yes but unfortunately your view is unrealistic. The playerbase (at least a majority of it) does not go about looking at longterm profit or availability.
Case in point, the current price spike once leggy armor was announced to release. Other examples? Every single addition of new items which players could prepare for yet prices still spiked.
The majority of players (as in the real world) have a price point at which they are willing to sell assets because they feel the value they receive in liquid currency matches the value ot they item they are holding on to. It’s actually one of the most basic economic priciples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply).
Will there be a part of the playerbase which will hold on to their mystic coins expecting further price increases? Sure, it’s called speculation. This amount will be castly smaller than the increase in sellers simply due to the risk avert nature of most humans.
The common proverb going with this goes:
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
Yes but unfortunately your view is unrealistic. The playerbase (at least a majority of it) does not go about looking at longterm profit or availability.
Case in point, the current price spike once leggy armor was announced to release. Other examples? Every single addition of new items which players could prepare for yet prices still spiked.
The majority of players (as in the real world) have a price point at which they are willing to sell assets because they feel the value they receive in liquid currency matches the value ot they item they are holding on to. It’s actually one of the most basic economic priciples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply).
Will there be a part of the playerbase which will hold on to their mystic coins expecting further price increases? Sure, it’s called speculation. This amount will be castly smaller than the increase in sellers simply due to the risk avert nature of most humans.
The common proverb going with this goes:
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Ignoring something not released yet isn’t the same as holding onto a good because you already need it for current projects. It’s not “I need to save this leather for this shiny new Legendary Armor coming out” – it’s “I need to save this leather for the Gift for the 5-year-old legendary weapon I’m thinking of pursuing, and the set of Viper armor I maybe want for my backup Ranger I play once a month, and Celestial armor for this cool guardian build I want to try out, and maybe I’ll finally switch my warrior from PS greatsword to the meta condi, but I don’t want to commit my current set of armor to it, and I’ll still need leather for inscriptions to convert even if I would. And I’ve always wanted to try Thief, so I’ll need leather to quickly gear that up in Marauder armor once I finish leveling her.” Because the demand for leather is tied to so many things (All armors, several legendary weapons), every player has a reason for wanting to hold on to it instead of sell without having to speculate on the market or future releases.
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
Yes but unfortunately your view is unrealistic. The playerbase (at least a majority of it) does not go about looking at longterm profit or availability.
Case in point, the current price spike once leggy armor was announced to release. Other examples? Every single addition of new items which players could prepare for yet prices still spiked.
The majority of players (as in the real world) have a price point at which they are willing to sell assets because they feel the value they receive in liquid currency matches the value ot they item they are holding on to. It’s actually one of the most basic economic priciples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply).
Will there be a part of the playerbase which will hold on to their mystic coins expecting further price increases? Sure, it’s called speculation. This amount will be castly smaller than the increase in sellers simply due to the risk avert nature of most humans.
The common proverb going with this goes:
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”Ignoring something not released yet isn’t the same as holding onto a good because you already need it for current projects. It’s not “I need to save this leather for this shiny new Legendary Armor coming out” – it’s “I need to save this leather for the Gift for the 5-year-old legendary weapon I’m thinking of pursuing, and the set of Viper armor I maybe want for my backup Ranger I play once a month, and Celestial armor for this cool guardian build I want to try out, and maybe I’ll finally switch my warrior from PS greatsword to the meta condi, but I don’t want to commit my current set of armor to it, and I’ll still need leather for inscriptions to convert even if I would. And I’ve always wanted to try Thief, so I’ll need leather to quickly gear that up in Marauder armor once I finish leveling her.” Because the demand for leather is tied to so many things (All armors, several legendary weapons), every player has a reason for wanting to hold on to it instead of sell without having to speculate on the market or future releases.
Sure it does. Your reasoning is slightly different but all it does is shift your price point up. Also legendary armor was known material wise for months now, that’s no different than people going:“I might make legendary xyz, I need to hold on to these materials.”
If for example Mystic Coins were to hit 10 gold a piece, I guarantee you a LOT of players holding on to them at 1 gold would sell them off, especially new players. Why? because for many of them that would be insane value per MC per month compared to effort invested.
Would some hold on to Mystic Coins at that price? Sure because they might expect future price increases. That’s called speculation. The majority of the market does not work that way though.
For the record, 100% of my Mystic Coin buy orders have been filled to date, so the idea that there is a shortage of supply is false.
1g per MC is not an outrageous price for a pure luxury item, and it hasn’t prevented me from making profits on the items I craft with them.
its not always about shortage.
like lets say something that happens to beef it goes up to 5 dollars, but overall consumers arent willing to pay 5 dollars, and sellers would rather keep it at 5 dollars.
essentially the amount being exchanged is not representing the historical demand, and the amount being consumed doesnt represent the amount people are selling.
which implies there is some non supply/demand based reason people are holding on to the item.
No, ANet’s assumption is that Mystic Coins would be handled like every other mat, as the price goes up, it would reach a point where players would sell rather than hold. This is normally true if new supply is elastic, that players can control acquiring more of that material.
Mystic Coins however are rationed out a little bit at a time and while ANet did add a “farm” to get one a day, it’s not easy. And as the price on the TP reached a tipping point, players who had sold the ones they got stopped. As long as the price keeps marching upwards, why sell? Especially if not selling is what’s keeping the price going higher.
This doesnt make sense.
People stop selling, once MCs reach a tipping point? In my opinion, they will start selling at a certain price value. And I would argue that is what actually happened, once they hit 1g at the start of the year. Sine then, their price has been incredibly stable at that value .
Yes it does – at some point, the price is so high re-acquisition becomes prohibitive (I think this has happened to Leather, which is required for EVERYTHING). You can’t sell it, because you’re going to need it later. The short-term profit from selling isn’t worth the long-term cost of not having that good later. And for those genuinely interested in selling – why sell now, when you can wait as the price continues to rise?
Yes but unfortunately your view is unrealistic. The playerbase (at least a majority of it) does not go about looking at longterm profit or availability.
Case in point, the current price spike once leggy armor was announced to release. Other examples? Every single addition of new items which players could prepare for yet prices still spiked.
The majority of players (as in the real world) have a price point at which they are willing to sell assets because they feel the value they receive in liquid currency matches the value ot they item they are holding on to. It’s actually one of the most basic economic priciples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply).
Will there be a part of the playerbase which will hold on to their mystic coins expecting further price increases? Sure, it’s called speculation. This amount will be castly smaller than the increase in sellers simply due to the risk avert nature of most humans.
The common proverb going with this goes:
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
except real people sometimes dont follow these rules. the fact that devs called it hoarding, suggests they dont believe its speculation, or rather its not reasonable speculation.
consumers arent willing to buy at this price (in the numbers they should), and yet the people holding it arent willing to sell, even as the non traded supply grows.
which if the devs believe is the case, they wont want to increase supply, because the in game supply may represent the real demand, adding more would just flood the market.
i think the devs are seeing, what they feel is illogical behavior. hence they think of it as hoarding.
the op is saying its not illogical, its storing value, but as you say, not everyone invests. in fact they can probably see people arent investing in other items with better or similar growth/demand
so basically the devs just gonna wait for the unrealistic player behavior to pass.
and if it doesnt, its just another case of humans sometimes breaking the paradigms
(edited by phys.7689)
I am probably not going to be able to model it with such detail (both because of data available and my own time). Maybe someone working at Anet would be able to? And potentially blog about it?
Well this is less about what the actual data looks like and more an exercise in checking your own assumptions.
For instance, you might expect prices to keep rising if the gold-to-coin ratio is increasing over time. I’d push back and ask why that expectation isn’t priced into the market price (insufficient investor liquidity), but it’s not an unreasonable assumption. Ok, but what if that ratio is decreasing? Why would it decrease? Well, if people are hoarding coins but not hoarding gold, you’d expect that ratio to drop as gold is sank but coins aren’t.
I have been thinking about pulling the API, and try to measure the inflation. Maybe I will look into it.
It’s not easy since we do not have readily available volume information, but would be really cool if it could be estimated consistently. Just know it’s not going to involve pulling some data points from the API, but doing a lot of monitoring studies.
Sure it does. Your reasoning is slightly different but all it does is shift your price point up. Also legendary armor was known material wise for months now, that’s no different than people going:“I might make legendary xyz, I need to hold on to these materials.”
If for example Mystic Coins were to hit 10 gold a piece, I guarantee you a LOT of players holding on to them at 1 gold would sell them off, especially new players. Why? because for many of them that would be insane value per MC per month compared to effort invested.
Would some hold on to Mystic Coins at that price? Sure because they might expect future price increases. That’s called speculation. The majority of the market does not work that way though.
That is assuming everyone participates, and is willing to give up or bet on mystic coins goals in the game. Knowing it’s a rising price atm, and that it might become worth even more and that it’s ridiculously timegated, it’s hardly any different than selling T7 materials (Deldrimor steel, spiritwood planks, etc) which youre most likely better saving up for ascended armor or a precursor journey
Selling them at price X is just as much of a bet as holding onto them. Some people don’t want to make any bets on the market with items they may care about later.
There’s better ways to make ingame gold than selling mystic coins that you get. No matter the price point.
I can say that there’s no pricepoint for mystic coins at which I’m willing to sell them at, and more that there’s is an amount of mystic coins where i’m willing to sell mystic coins, namely when they cant fit in my inventory.
“It isn’t working!” CL4P-TP
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik
Ingame Name: Guardian Erik
its interesting because the implication is gold has very little value in this game. People would rather hold items than turn it into gold.
Well, gold is just a medium of exchange. You can hold gold to store value to spend later, or you can hold other assets. Other assets aren’t costless, but it’s cheap (storage space), and it does insulate you against demand surges – for instance, being able to make legendaries out of inventory instead of having to buy a bunch of materials off the trading post saves me both time (since consuming from inventory is instant) and money (since I don’t pay trading post fees on my inventories, let alone bid/ask spreads).
Plus there’s a hedge against inflation or surges in general – T6 is more volatile than gold, ectos track a bunch of markets, mystic coins are negative beta…
But the real question is how much do people hoard materials, as opposed to hoarding gold. For instance, the tidbit from A.Net that people ‘save’ 10% of net Mystic Coin generation (10% more generation than consumption is a 10% savings rate, net). What is that for other goods? What is that for gold – how have gold savings increased over time, even with its high churn and taxes?
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.
The goal should be an unsatisfied player base because that is what makes the most money for Anet and NCSoft! Good idea!
You haven’t made any attempt to understand me here if that’s what you think I’m saying. Frankly, you are delusional if you think that Anet can fix the game to make every single person satisfied with it. That’s just completely unrealistic.
The question isn’t what to do if people are dissatisfied with something. The question is if it’s worth doing something about it in the first place. I don’t see anyone really justifying this other than “because I want stuff”. Everyone just comes in guns blazing with sensationalized ideas to ‘prove’ it’s the next big problem that needs to be fixed … well get in line because there are hundreds of those next big ideas.
I think lots of people attempt to look at the economic theory here to come to some conclusions about it’s good, it’s bad, it’s whatever they want it to be ….
The practical reality is that all mats on the TP are simply and naturally determined by very simply concepts of what people are willing to do. The market prices and volumes are just testament to the FACT that on average, what you see happening is representative of what the population of players is willing to sell or pay for a given mat. Any concept of absolute value “What a mat SHOULD be” is really just nonsensical. We already know what it should be, because the market tells you that.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
Well 11 months ago a dev said this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178
Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.
Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. —-Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.-—
In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.
Although he didn’t specifically use the word “hoarding”, he gave a pretty good impression that: Most of the mystic coins are in FACT being hoarded by players intent on keeping the price high, because apparently some players seem to not mind the higher prices.
Oh and, remember earlier I pointed out a dev on Reddit said that 30k coins were purchased by 2 players? Well………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dmnfm/before_leaving_gw2_i_invensted_in_stuff_in_case_i/da5owid/ That was posted some time after the dev’s comment. Someone talking about buying 15k mystic coins for a future investment.
There’s something charming about rangers.
(edited by Charrbeque.8729)
Sure it does. Your reasoning is slightly different but all it does is shift your price point up. Also legendary armor was known material wise for months now, that’s no different than people going:“I might make legendary xyz, I need to hold on to these materials.”
If for example Mystic Coins were to hit 10 gold a piece, I guarantee you a LOT of players holding on to them at 1 gold would sell them off, especially new players. Why? because for many of them that would be insane value per MC per month compared to effort invested.
Would some hold on to Mystic Coins at that price? Sure because they might expect future price increases. That’s called speculation. The majority of the market does not work that way though.
That is assuming everyone participates, and is willing to give up or bet on mystic coins goals in the game. Knowing it’s a rising price atm, and that it might become worth even more and that it’s ridiculously timegated, it’s hardly any different than selling T7 materials (Deldrimor steel, spiritwood planks, etc) which youre most likely better saving up for ascended armor or a precursor journey
Selling them at price X is just as much of a bet as holding onto them. Some people don’t want to make any bets on the market with items they may care about later.
There’s better ways to make ingame gold than selling mystic coins that you get. No matter the price point.
I can say that there’s no pricepoint for mystic coins at which I’m willing to sell them at, and more that there’s is an amount of mystic coins where i’m willing to sell mystic coins, namely when they cant fit in my inventory.
so essentially, players have been trained in gw2, that gold has little value. hoarding is logical because anet has built an economy where you will probably need many things, so there is no value in selling them, because you ll just have to buy it later.
if mystic coins go up in value, it just means you need to save more, because you arent willing to pay the price.
but the suggestion is that people are saving more than they could use, or else they wouldnt refer to it as hoarding.
so basically people no longer believe in trading items, because in the game you probably need everything at some point.
which is true, there are few basic goods that you wont need. if there are items you think you wont need, chances are, eventually anet will make you need them.
mystic coins the desire to futureproof is larger because it isnt something you will be able choose to farm if the price is too high, so you ll jut end up buying it back at a loss.
the logical extension of this type of thinking is an economy where people check out of trading building block goods.
they probably messed up by making everyone need to craft. and needing all disciplines,
it is true that you will probably need all your items eventually, and you will probably take a loss if you buy or sell most things.
so basically the market relfects only the supply of a few, and price points only a few are willing to pay.
interesting
people just dont feel like trading is that worthwhile
Well 11 months ago a dev said this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178
Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.
Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. —-Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.-—
In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.
Although he didn’t specifically use the word “hoarding”, he gave a pretty good impression that: Most of the mystic coins are in FACT being hoarded by players intent on keeping the price high, because apparently some players seem to not mind the higher prices.
Oh and, remember earlier I pointed out a dev on Reddit said that 30k coins were purchased by 2 players? Well………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dmnfm/before_leaving_gw2_i_invensted_in_stuff_in_case_i/da5owid/ That was posted some time after the dev’s comment. Someone talking about buying 15k mystic coins for a future investment.
what it suggests is that an unusual amount of coins being traded arent being consumed. non flippers are, by an unusual percent, niether interested in buying or selling.
basically as the above poster said, not interested in the coin market at any price. well, unless it was cheap maybe
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.
The goal should be an unsatisfied player base because that is what makes the most money for Anet and NCSoft! Good idea!
You haven’t made any attempt to understand me here if that’s what you think I’m saying. Frankly, you are delusional if you think that Anet can fix the game to make every single person satisfied with it. That’s just completely unrealistic.
The question isn’t what to do if people are dissatisfied with something. The question is if it’s worth doing something about it in the first place. I don’t see anyone really justifying this other than “because I want stuff”. Everyone just comes in guns blazing with sensationalized ideas to ‘prove’ it’s the next big problem that needs to be fixed … well get in line because there are hundreds of those next big ideas.
I think lots of people attempt to look at the economic theory here to come to some conclusions about it’s good, it’s bad, it’s whatever they want it to be ….
The practical reality is that all mats on the TP are simply and naturally determined by very simply concepts of what people are willing to do. The market prices and volumes are just testament to the FACT that on average, what you see happening is representative of what the population of players is willing to sell or pay for a given mat. Any concept of absolute value “What a mat SHOULD be” is really just nonsensical. We already know what it should be, because the market tells you that.
actually there are market failures, where things arent performing according to supply and demand.
if a lot of players begin to see items like the poster a few posts back does, it creates a marketplace that doesnt do its job of making players feel like trading goods.
ie the marketplace begins to only represent a small subsection, which has snowball effect
or rather IF this is the case, its a problem. however increasing supply may not help in this case.
most likely they need to stop people from needing everything, and increase the amount of buyable goods of value.
its probably too late though they already made everyone a crafter, and endgame items need practically every thing. it is genuinely a bad idea to sell/buy basic goods, and players caught on.
actually there are market failures, where things arent performing according to supply and demand.
OK, but that isn’t the case here. People buy and sell MC’s and hardened leather so obvious there is supply and demand happening. Again, you’re going to dig deep into some economic theory; I don’t see how that’s relevant. The TP is there to allow people to sell and buy mats … and people have proven every day they are willing to do that. It’s what is relevant here. Are you honestly telling me that if you think you can prove the market for these mats is a failure, that will demand Anet take action to fix it, even though anyone can still buy and sell mats in the TP? I think you must be kidding! If there is are equilibrium points for these mats, how can you even being to claim the market fails for them? That makes no sense.
Don’t beat around the bush … you simply want cheaper mats and you think you’re going to con Anet into doing so with hints of market failure? This only gets better from here I think.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
Well 11 months ago a dev said this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178
Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.
Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. —-Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.-—
In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.
Although he didn’t specifically use the word “hoarding”, he gave a pretty good impression that: Most of the mystic coins are in FACT being hoarded by players intent on keeping the price high, because apparently some players seem to not mind the higher prices.
Oh and, remember earlier I pointed out a dev on Reddit said that 30k coins were purchased by 2 players? Well………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dmnfm/before_leaving_gw2_i_invensted_in_stuff_in_case_i/da5owid/ That was posted some time after the dev’s comment. Someone talking about buying 15k mystic coins for a future investment.
what it suggests is that an unusual amount of coins being traded arent being consumed. non flippers are, by an unusual percent, niether interested in buying or selling.
basically as the above poster said, not interested in the coin market at any price. well, unless it was cheap maybe
True. Lack of interest in using mystic coins is the reason why they’re being hoarded in order to keep the price up. And those that actually intend to use them are willing to pay the higher price. (If you’re working on a legendary, you most likely have the gold to pay the higher price anyway)
Which brings me back to my point: the supply is there. It’s basically not moving. And because of that, the devs aren’t going to do anything about it.
And to repeat my suggestion: 1 possible solution is to come up with something players actually want to use mystic coins for. It would increase consumption, which in turn would encourage the hoarders to put more supply on the trading post to get as much gold as they can before the price gets too low to turn a profit. Which of course means the prices would decrease due to more supply being posted. And when a good portion of the hoarded supply is permanently removed from the game (due to players actually using them), then the devs can find a way to give us a better and more reliable way to obtain them. Just a theory.
There’s something charming about rangers.
Well 11 months ago a dev said this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178
Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.
Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. —-Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.-—
In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.
Although he didn’t specifically use the word “hoarding”, he gave a pretty good impression that: Most of the mystic coins are in FACT being hoarded by players intent on keeping the price high, because apparently some players seem to not mind the higher prices.
Oh and, remember earlier I pointed out a dev on Reddit said that 30k coins were purchased by 2 players? Well………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dmnfm/before_leaving_gw2_i_invensted_in_stuff_in_case_i/da5owid/ That was posted some time after the dev’s comment. Someone talking about buying 15k mystic coins for a future investment.
So…… that’s entirely misleading. I don’t know if Chris Cleary was trying to be misleading or not, but the information, as its presented, is incredibly misleading.
You absolutely must start looking at why average players will “hoard” their MC when they get them, instead of use them immediately.
Take a player who wants to craft 2 legendaries, Bolt and Nevermore, as an example. This player will need anywhere between 250 and 750 MC to craft both of those, depending on how many clovers they feel like farming from reward tracks and loyalty chests. That means that, if this player wants to obtain all of his MC himself, he has to wait about 8-10 months to get an entire stack of MC himself. This means that for 8-10 months, Anet sees him as “hoarding” his MC and not selling them, but they can’t see that he has already set them aside for aspecific recipe.
Because of the slow rate of acquisition and the high numbers needed in recipes, its not that rare for someone to “hoard” the MC they get from login rewards because they already have plans for them. Yet you are trying so hard to lump them in together with and act like they are the same as those players that will hoard thousands of MC to sell for profit. You need to stop doing that, or I can’t take anything you say on the matter seriously.
There is nothing misleading here if you simply take the market for face value; a place where people buy and sell mats. Does it really matter what Chris says if you don’t believe him anyways? Why is it an absolute must that we look at why players hoard MC’s? Does this conclusion change the fact that the market is working as intended?
The message I take from Chris is that hoarding isn’t discouraged, or at least Anet is in no hurry to do anything about it; simply another affirmation that players control the market.
so essentially, players have been trained in gw2, that gold has little value. hoarding is logical because anet has built an economy where you will probably need many things, so there is no value in selling them, because you ll just have to buy it later.
I think this is touching on something important that is a little tricky to pin down.
If you look at what players get from drops, it’s this mix of materials that everyone gets a ton of – and, importantly, everyone gets roughly the same mix of. It’s not like some people do content that produces blood and another content that generates fangs and they need to trade to get the mix they want – with a handful of exceptions, regardless of where you play in the end game you get more or less the same stuff.
Demand similarly takes somewhat different ratios of that stuff, but still draws on big piles of the same stuff.
So the big flows of trade, that you need gold for, are shifting between the very rare drop / gem store skin markets and the commodity markets. You trade rare thing for rare thing, or rare thing for a big pile of common stuff, or a big pile of common stuff for other common stuff.
If you aren’t trading out of the common stuff to get a rare skin, there’s basically no reason to sell, since all the goods are generic. You’d just be selling to buy back later, holding wealth in gold in the interim.
Within that, it’s interesting, because you have a couple different mechanisms. Mystic Coins have always been pretty interesting since they are time gated and can be traded, so they act like a negative beta good – when other stuff is rare and expensive, coins are cheap, and when other stuff is cheap, coins are expensive. So you see coins marching upward, which implies people are flooded with all the other crap needed to make endgame crafts. So far, so good.
Hardened leather, well…if you look within the bundle of commodities, leather, metal, fine mats, etc, everyone has a steady income of those, and you can’t really do much to tweak the ratios other than hitting that centaur camp hard. In that case, you’d expect prices on the higher demand (relative to supply ratios) items to, over time, eventually encompass the whole value of the output. Hardened leather looks like that item, so it’ll keep rising in price (while the value of non-hardened leather commodities, that are produced as byproducts of hardened leather, drops proportionally).
The former I understand pretty well. The latter, well…it doesn’t have great real world analogues, but I think the case is pretty clear – it’s the high demand portion of a farming process with tons of waste products, and thus captures a disproportionate bulk of the value of that process.
Well 11 months ago a dev said this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178
Most of this price increase revolves around players that are pushing the value up due to the players willingness to pay more. If players are willing to pay more for an item, it’s going to keep increasing until eventually it hits a ceiling for the commodity. We’ve seen the same thing occur with numerous commodities over time.
Right now there is a consistent supply of mystic coins entering the game (way more than are being consumed) and churning through the trading post at a very slow rate. —-Most of the coins on the market are ones that have been flipped.-—
In retrospect, this is actually causing the daily login reward to be worth significantly more to players who wish to convert mystic coins to gold.
Although he didn’t specifically use the word “hoarding”, he gave a pretty good impression that: Most of the mystic coins are in FACT being hoarded by players intent on keeping the price high, because apparently some players seem to not mind the higher prices.
Oh and, remember earlier I pointed out a dev on Reddit said that 30k coins were purchased by 2 players? Well………….https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5dmnfm/before_leaving_gw2_i_invensted_in_stuff_in_case_i/da5owid/ That was posted some time after the dev’s comment. Someone talking about buying 15k mystic coins for a future investment.
what it suggests is that an unusual amount of coins being traded arent being consumed. non flippers are, by an unusual percent, niether interested in buying or selling.
basically as the above poster said, not interested in the coin market at any price. well, unless it was cheap maybe
True. Lack of interest in using mystic coins is the reason why they’re being hoarded in order to keep the price up. And those that actually intend to use them are willing to pay the higher price. (If you’re working on a legendary, you most likely have the gold to pay the higher price anyway)
Which brings me back to my point: the supply is there. It’s basically not moving. And because of that, the devs aren’t going to do anything about it.
And to repeat my suggestion: 1 possible solution is to come up with something players actually want to use mystic coins for. It would increase consumption, which in turn would encourage the hoarders to put more supply on the trading post to get as much gold as they can before the price gets too low to turn a profit. Which of course means the prices would decrease due to more supply being posted. And when a good portion of the hoarded supply is permanently removed from the game (due to players actually using them), then the devs can find a way to give us a better and more reliable way to obtain them. Just a theory.
nah what it means is they dont care about profiting on coins any more, future possible use is more valuable to them than gold.
so either they would continue to save their coins, feeling justified that anet will continue to add things and one day they may want one.
or they will make the new items and start saving up again.
basically they are saying its pointless and a loss to sell something and buy it back later.
with that type of paradigm, no price is the right price. they see selling goods as a gamble, and they arent gamblers.
unless
they can no longer carry it
no longer think they need it
inventory is high and
when anet asks you for something they ask for huge amounts.
cost to make items from items is fixed, cost to buy materials is variable, and generally going to be most expensive at the point in time when you actually want them.
saving items is predictable saving gold is not, and most of the things you will want to buy are made.
so essentially, players have been trained in gw2, that gold has little value. hoarding is logical because anet has built an economy where you will probably need many things, so there is no value in selling them, because you ll just have to buy it later.
I think this is touching on something important that is a little tricky to pin down.
If you look at what players get from drops, it’s this mix of materials that everyone gets a ton of – and, importantly, everyone gets roughly the same mix of. It’s not like some people do content that produces blood and another content that generates fangs and they need to trade to get the mix they want – with a handful of exceptions, regardless of where you play in the end game you get more or less the same stuff.
Demand similarly takes somewhat different ratios of that stuff, but still draws on big piles of the same stuff.
So the big flows of trade, that you need gold for, are shifting between the very rare drop / gem store skin markets and the commodity markets. You trade rare thing for rare thing, or rare thing for a big pile of common stuff, or a big pile of common stuff for other common stuff.
If you aren’t trading out of the common stuff to get a rare skin, there’s basically no reason to sell, since all the goods are generic. You’d just be selling to buy back later, holding wealth in gold in the interim.
Within that, it’s interesting, because you have a couple different mechanisms. Mystic Coins have always been pretty interesting since they are time gated and can be traded, so they act like a negative beta good – when other stuff is rare and expensive, coins are cheap, and when other stuff is cheap, coins are expensive. So you see coins marching upward, which implies people are flooded with all the other crap needed to make endgame crafts. So far, so good.
Hardened leather, well…if you look within the bundle of commodities, leather, metal, fine mats, etc, everyone has a steady income of those, and you can’t really do much to tweak the ratios other than hitting that centaur camp hard. In that case, you’d expect prices on the higher demand (relative to supply ratios) items to, over time, eventually encompass the whole value of the output. Hardened leather looks like that item, so it’ll keep rising in price (while the value of non-hardened leather commodities, that are produced as byproducts of hardened leather, drops proportionally).
The former I understand pretty well. The latter, well…it doesn’t have great real world analogues, but I think the case is pretty clear – it’s the high demand portion of a farming process with tons of waste products, and thus captures a disproportionate bulk of the value of that process.
true, but i assume they are implying people are storing more than they will probably need.
like if people are storing amounts equal to what they need to make things its normal, not really worth mentioning.
a side note:
i was thinking the game may need more items which can be bought, but not created from basic mats, the rares as you say, but that would hit crafted items values overall, which is still the primary driver in the economy.
(edited by phys.7689)
I don’t sell my coins as I barely have any anymore, and I put them all into my guild for upgrades. So I’m not hording at all, but they are going into sinks whenever I get even 1. The same goes for t6 Leather.
Yumiko Emi Ishida 80 Ele, Hikari Kyoko Ishida 80 Guard TC-NA. Active RPer of NA megaserver.
I don’t sell my coins as I barely have any anymore, and I put them all into my guild for upgrades. So I’m not hording at all, but they are going into sinks whenever I get even 1. The same goes for t6 Leather.
yeah but apparently a lot are being saved, not like what you are doing
I’ve been so badly hurt financially when I’ve sold off stuff in previous years only to then need 1000s of it to craft something, that I hoard everything!! Pretty much every single crafting mat from the dregs to the very most expensive, I keep. I have a storage expansion to 500, when I hit that, I transfer to mules, & keep on filling up. I have ten of thousands of some mats. I don’t care, never again will I be pray to TP manipulators, recipe changes & new items spiking stuff. It’s a false economy when so much can be manipulated by wealthy players. I remember the very early days when it all started, when leg weps & precursors were simply bought out by a few players & then drip-fed back into the market when required. It happens all the time with everything that has any value, low to high. So now, I simply save absolutely everything.
personally I don’t sell anything that I can’t go and gather instantly anymore. cloth, leather, mc, etc, I keep every single piece I get. it doesn’t matter anymore what they are worth. mc could be 1000g each, but I still wouldn’t sell them.
besides selling them has no value to me. so I get a handful of gold, and what if I discover I need them a month later? then I can buy them back at a higher price? no thanks.
70 ‘mains’ and waiting for more slots
| 61 Asura | 5 Charr | 2 Norn | 1 Human | 1 Sylvari |
| 61 Asura | 5 Charr | 2 Norn | 1 Human | 1 Sylvari |
Leather prices will change…per the leak…very soon. Who knows
Mystic Coins is a case where if supply continues to be higher than the consumption rate (as confirmed by JS quote), ANet will add more and not less Mystic Coin sinks to the game.
The problem is that we know how JS thinks with his “economic policy” and the value of Mystic Coins changes from a good short-term investment but a great long-term investment as demand will increase further since supply is so saturated.
The other problem with Mystic Coins is that is requires a ton of them (similar to Amalgamated Gemstones or Flax Seeds etc.) in recipes. The newer recipes issues has only gotten worse with Scribing/Cooking/luxury item equivalents for other resources so short of a huge shift in needed consumption, Mystic Coins will continue to retain their value or increase.
This is further exacerbated by the growing portion of in-game players that are so annoyed with JS economic policy decisions that they are purposely manipulating this area of the market even though they have the potential to lose thousands of gold. This is what JS doesn’t seem to understand.
I’ve been so badly hurt financially when I’ve sold off stuff in previous years only to then need 1000s of it to craft something, that I hoard everything!! Pretty much every single crafting mat from the dregs to the very most expensive, I keep. I have a storage expansion to 500, when I hit that, I transfer to mules, & keep on filling up. I have ten of thousands of some mats. I don’t care, never again will I be pray to TP manipulators, recipe changes & new items spiking stuff. It’s a false economy when so much can be manipulated by wealthy players. I remember the very early days when it all started, when leg weps & precursors were simply bought out by a few players & then drip-fed back into the market when required. It happens all the time with everything that has any value, low to high. So now, I simply save absolutely everything.
You definitely take this to the extreme, but you point out a valid concern that a lot of players have regarding “hoarding” their items.
Anet has a history, especially in the last few years, of introducing new recipes/changing old recipes to require absolutely massive amounts of some mats. So why on earth would we have an incentive to sell something it, at any time, Anet could change a recipe to now require hundreds, or even thousands, of whatever items we just dumped our entire stock of? For a lot of players this risk isn’t worth the temporary reward of a few more silver, or a few more gold, because it has the potential to cost them way more than what they make in the long run.
Leather prices will change…per the leak…very soon. Who knows
That ‘leak’ was an attempt to spike the price of Sawgill Mushrooms, laced with a few well-known leaked data points to give it credibility.
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.
Wow that one has it.
And if they’re holding on to them because they feel they need them, or simply don’t interact with the economy?
And really, it costs 420-490 gold for the ascended mats needed to make a full set of ascended armor, the 65 gold for the T6 leather sections to make the insignia isn’t that significant.
The cost for ascended armor is not the only issue, though. I may have missed something in the 2 minutes I used to look this up, but fully upgrading a guild hall requires 5,950 Cured Thick Leather Squares (23,800 sections), and 1910 Cured Hardened Leather Squares (the squares and insignias, 5730 sections total). And that does NOT include the thick leather sections needed for all of the Elonian Leather that is required (I want to say that is 450-650 Elonian Leather, but my memory could be off a bit).
And that 65 gold for the ascended armor? Yeah, that’s per set, per time the meta changes. So its 65 to craft it, and it’s 65 to change that stat set when ANET nerfed Staff Ele, and 65 when Rev’s F2 got nerfed (okay, not really – revs just got dropped from the meta instead), and 65 when Grace of the Land changed for Druids, and 65 when (if) power necro ever gets let back into raids (like that’s going to happen).
You don’t hear me complaining about the 60,000 piles of flax seed that are needed for the guild hall (vials of linseed oil, the empty kegs, etc.). Because I can park my 7 toons in the VB farm and hit that every day when I log in. And so can the rest of the guild. Nor do you hear complaints about the number of quartz crystals we have to get (something like 1000 for all the ley-line infused tools…so 25,000 quartz crystals). You don’t because we can reliably spend a few minutes every day sourcing those materials over time – AND THEN GO HAVE FUN PLAYING THE REST OF THE GAME. Reliably sourcing the leather? Spend 2 hours killing the horses in Lake Doric for the leather equivalent of one vial of linseed oil…then do I go play the game for fun, or go to bed so that I can make it to work on time tomorrow?
(edited by Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946)
I’ve been so badly hurt financially when I’ve sold off stuff in previous years only to then need 1000s of it to craft something, that I hoard everything!! Pretty much every single crafting mat from the dregs to the very most expensive, I keep. I have a storage expansion to 500, when I hit that, I transfer to mules, & keep on filling up. I have ten of thousands of some mats. I don’t care, never again will I be pray to TP manipulators, recipe changes & new items spiking stuff. It’s a false economy when so much can be manipulated by wealthy players. I remember the very early days when it all started, when leg weps & precursors were simply bought out by a few players & then drip-fed back into the market when required. It happens all the time with everything that has any value, low to high. So now, I simply save absolutely everything.
You definitely take this to the extreme, but you point out a valid concern that a lot of players have regarding “hoarding” their items.
Anet has a history, especially in the last few years, of introducing new recipes/changing old recipes to require absolutely massive amounts of some mats. So why on earth would we have an incentive to sell something it, at any time, Anet could change a recipe to now require hundreds, or even thousands, of whatever items we just dumped our entire stock of? For a lot of players this risk isn’t worth the temporary reward of a few more silver, or a few more gold, because it has the potential to cost them way more than what they make in the long run.
Because one might want stuff now? Because it might suddenly collapse? (See resonating slivers?). Applies especially true for players that haven’t gotten equipment or account upgrades.
I’m not sure how well people are at farming liquid gold, but I like to keep a healthy amount of gems converted from gold to get whatever I need.
And if you have nothing to buy, then what use is wealth to begin with?
You people worry way too much. This isn’t real life where not having funds means you get kicked out or starve to death. So what if you missed out on hundreds or even thousands of potential gold? This is nothing over years of game time. Perhaps some of you should play some strategy games like Starcraft or Civlization. There you will realize that sometimes due to snowball effects that small advantages right now are more important than big advantages later.
Why is this? Well, that’s easy. Let’s say someone gives you $500 now. Or they could give you $30 once a year for the next 50 years. Assuming you could do something useful with the $500, it’s pretty obvious you should take the $500 even ignoring inflation. Because you could use the $500 to do something that will further your cause.
This is even more true for this game, because at this rate, one could continually “hoard” until they stop playing, and never actualize any of its benefit. What’s the point?
Just play the game. The more you cling onto how little you have, the less you will have.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)