Guild Wars 2

Right, I’m not after a flame war, I’m just trying to get some opinions of the players out there at the moment.

There are a large number of repeated threads at the moment, especially ‘ascended blah blah’, ’I’m quitting’ and the such but there is also two threads which tie in together, often mentioned by people in similar veins…

People are ‘unhappy’ that their favourite methods of farming gold are being nerfed, which, at it’s base level, yes is annoying. But then, there are a large number of people complaining about the ‘state’ of the economy, I’m guessing with the given inflation levels at the minute.

Has no-one realised these two things are directly linked? All gold farming is going to result in inflation, all prices will rise. The more gold there is in game, the less value it has, you can’t expect everything to stay at knock down prices while everyone is still farming gold and throwing it around. The gold farm is exactly the reason why the economy is the way it is.

In my opinion the fact that Anet is actually taking measures to reduce gold farming is a good thing, they’re aware of the damage it’s causing to the economy so they’re restricting it. I am frustrated because every now and then I did love to run around filling my bags with random loot from Plinx for an hour or so and raking in the gold.

People need to look at the bigger picture. If you want a stable economy, you can’t have easy access to gold; if you want easy access to gold, you can’t have a stable economy.

Farming is akin to printing money to use in circulation, it devalues it. Think hyperinflation (at the extreme end of the spectrum) and you should be able to see why they HAVE to continue nerfing gold farming methods.

I tried many times to explain the basics of how the trading post, gold sinks, gems, value of gold and cost of legends/ascended are all closely linked and backed it up with copious charts and evidence to support it – but some people are just hell bent on believing that this is all a big scam on arenanet’s part them from their hard earned money and they can “fix it” with the wave of a wand.

What you’re saying here is entirely true and important but I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting the message to sink in.

When life gives you loonys, sell tinfoil hats.

Stopping real players from farming in order to stop gold farmers is like cutting off one leg of every citizen in order to stop thieves from running away with the loot.

It’s bound to not be practical or popular.

Ryuujin.8236:

I tried many times to explain the basics of how the trading post, gold sinks, gems, value of gold and cost of legends/ascended are all closely linked and backed it up with copious charts and evidence to support it – but some people are just hell bent on believing that this is all a big scam on arenanet’s part them from their hard earned money and they can “fix it” with the wave of a wand.

What you’re saying here is entirely true and important but I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting the message to sink in.

When life gives you loonys, sell tinfoil hats.

No no, it’s just power traders that are “speeding up the supply / demand process”.
We would’ve reached this inflation in 2014, but they sped it up, come on just a little tiny teensy bit.

Horheristo.3607:

No no, it’s just power traders that are “speeding up the supply / demand process”.
We would’ve reached this inflation in 2014, but they sped it up, come on just a little tiny teensy bit.

Power traders are a gold sink

Power traders do not generate gold, they merely transfer it from A to B, buying low (From their pocket) and selling high (From other peoples pocket), with a 15% tax slapped on top, so 15% of the gold involved in the transaction vanishes into thin air

If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation. People love to blame the traders for all their woes, but traders arn’t the ones causing inflation.

Alk Trio Fan.6357:

Has no-one realised these two things are directly linked? All gold farming is going to result in inflation, all prices will rise. The more gold there is in game, the less value it has, you can’t expect everything to stay at knock down prices while everyone is still farming gold and throwing it around. The gold farm is exactly the reason why the economy is the way it is.

I think what you’re forgetting is that people dont really farm gold per se, they farm tradable goods. An increase in supply means lower prices and an increase in the value of gold.

Ryuujin.8236:

Horheristo.3607:

No no, it’s just power traders that are “speeding up the supply / demand process”.
We would’ve reached this inflation in 2014, but they sped it up, come on just a little tiny teensy bit.

Power traders are a gold sink

Power traders do not generate gold, they merely transfer it from A to B, buying low (From their pocket) and selling high (From other peoples pocket), with a 15% tax slapped on top, so 15% of the gold involved in the transaction vanishes into thin air

If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation. People love to blame the traders for all their woes, but traders arn’t the ones causing inflation.

Ok, I get the idea that you are one. No need to break it down to me my dear friend.

Your example makes no sense..
First you say “If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation” admitting that power traders contribute to the gold ciruculation.
And then you say “People love to blame the traders for all their woes, but traders arn’t the ones causing inflation”.
Which one is it?
Also, consider this – the rate of making gold right now DID NOT change compared to what it was before and after the inflation, which means…
Player A made 2g an hour before inflation.
A month later Player A still makes 2g an hour after inflation.

Blame Anet for turning me into an obsessive little graph-scrutinizing trader. I would have happily stuck with WvW PvP as per usual if Ascended gear hadn’t been introduced.

Seriously, though, I’m the biggest math idiot you’ll ever meet. No, I’m serious. I mean ever. If I can turn a profit on trading (and I have so far in spite of some serious mistakes) anyone can. Just Google Guild Wars 2 Spidy and play around with high-volume items for a couple of days, you’ll be making money in no time.

Power traders do not introduce new gold into circulation, which is what he’s talking about. They contribute to the act of gold moving between players but they don’t create gold themselves. Instead, they shuffle around a lot of gold that already exists, and the 15% trading post fee (total from listing and selling) removes gold from the economy. The trading post is a gold sink. It does not create gold. It removes gold, whic causes deflation.

Gold faucets are things that introduce gold – items that are sold to the vendor, the 26s from the end of the dungeon, bags of gold, and event rewards are all gold faucets.

Also, I think the rate of making gold did change compared to what it was before and after circulation. Before, if a user farmed 20 T5 bloods, 5 event completions, and 2 rares in an hour, they would end up with (after selling the items) less gold than they would now.

Farmers who make their income through event completions and vendor items make the same amount before and after inflation. They contribute to inflation.

Farmers who make their income through T5/T6 crafting materials or rares or gathering cooking materials make more after inflation. Interestingly, they also contribute to deflation (because they sell materials through the TP).

Corvindi.5734:

Blame Anet for turning me into an obsessive little graph-scrutinizing trader. I would have happily stuck with WvW PvP as per usual if Ascended gear hadn’t been introduced.

Seriously, though, I’m the biggest math idiot you’ll ever meet. No, I’m serious. I mean ever. If I can turn a profit on trading (and I have so far in spite of some serious mistakes) anyone can. Just Google Guild Wars 2 Spidy and play around with high-volume items for a couple of days, you’ll be making money in no time.

Glad someone accepting the truth of this situation and at least a man enough to admit it.
I’m not blaming you or your kind, but would be nice if people just admitted that this was their resolve due to the unfairness of acquiring high end gear / mats.

The harder players get hold of gold, the longer the players will be playing the game. Setting up high requirements for precursor, legendary will make players play longer. Low drop rate will make the players play longer.

If a game doesn’t have such requirement, it will end and die fast. So, play the game at your own leisure pace. :P

Horheristo.3607:

Ok, I get the idea that you are one. No need to break it down to me my dear friend.

Well of course I am, hat’s why I know anything about the subject.

First you say “If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation” admitting that power traders contribute to the gold ciruculation.

Don’t mix up circulating gold, with adding gold to circulation.

Inflation occurs when the amount of gold in circulation increases, the effective value of gold therefore decreases. But traders do not create gold, merely move it from A to B. That’s not to say trading has no effect on inflation, inflation is more complex than simply “gold in, gold out”, but no trader generates gold and by that virtue alone cannot be responsible for inflation beyond a certain threshold.

Also, consider this – the rate of making gold right now DID NOT change compared to what it was before and after the inflation, which means…
Player A made 2g a day before inflation.
A month later Player A still makes 2g a day after inflation.

It’s a good question “Where has the extra gold come from” – With the bots out the way the T5 and T6 fine materials market has bounced back up, and that means people can now get a decent bundle of pay for each item (This isn’t inflation, this is a market shift).

I think what’s happened is that with the improvements in T5/T6 value, and the advent of ascended gear, we’ve seen a lot of the rich players who were previously hoarding gold, putting that gold back into the economy in the form of buying lodestones and T6 mats for getting their legends and ascended, again this isn’t “new gold” but rather gold that had been temporarily held outside of the economy and had prevented past inflation taking it’s course

Horheristo.3607:

Corvindi.5734:

Blame Anet for turning me into an obsessive little graph-scrutinizing trader. I would have happily stuck with WvW PvP as per usual if Ascended gear hadn’t been introduced.

Seriously, though, I’m the biggest math idiot you’ll ever meet. No, I’m serious. I mean ever. If I can turn a profit on trading (and I have so far in spite of some serious mistakes) anyone can. Just Google Guild Wars 2 Spidy and play around with high-volume items for a couple of days, you’ll be making money in no time.

Glad someone accepting the truth of this situation and at least a man enough to admit it.
I’m not blaming you or your kind, but would be nice if people just admitted that this was their resolve due to the unfairness of acquiring high end gear / mats.

Woman enough to admit it, actually. But eh, comes down to the same thing. I’m making ‘money’ off people’s mistakes, ignorance, impulsiveness, laziness, or errors in judgement. But then again, the more practiced traders are making money off me the same way.

But as to whether traders make money or just shuffle it, because of the gems for gold thing, we have the potential to drive prices up and therefore drive more players to purchase gems and exchange them for gold.

If I remember right, they went ahead and seeded the game with gold for people to buy from day one, so there is no reason to think that no gold exists in this game separate from what players create. If that is true then traders can indeed create gold by driving up prices.

I’ll only address the subject of players earning “more” gold through the rise of the items they farm.
This is all artificial and I hope you’re realizing that as well…
It doesn’t matter if one makes 5g a day by selling the same high end items he needs, and at the same time other items rise in prices even more due to the constant power trading that is going on with the very same items.
Simple example: I got my 100 lodestones around 2 weeks ago for 120g, now it’s 300g, the very same mats that I sell to get my gold didn’t change in prices, yet another high end item did.
If by chance it was the work of a power trader, then do tell me how this didn’t affect the market? Right now he’s the proud owner of a stack (or two) of charged lodestones in this case, and slowly dripping them into the market earning double the profit.

Corvindi.5734 – my apologies

Horheristo.3607:

Simple example: I got my 100 lodestones around 2 weeks ago for 120g, now it’s 300g, the very same mats that I sell to get my gold didn’t change in prices, yet another high end item did.

If by chance it was the work of a power trader, then do tell me how this didn’t affect the market?

You answered your own question. Highlighted for clarity.

What you’re looking at is market fluctuation, not inflation. Due to a reduction in supply/rise in demand/possible market manipulation the value of one particular group of items has doubled yet the other markets remained essentially the same.

the cross-server TP sucks.

No worries, it’s not like you could know.

After messing with the market for a few days I’m not worried about other human traders anyway. Sure, they’ll skin me alive, and skin you and everyone else, but that’s what traders live for.

What worries me are the gold farming, account stealing botters who can use the silver and gold from stolen accounts to manipulate prices without losing a single copper of their own.

didnt know TP is cross-server and if it is i like it that way, what i hate is right now i need vicious fang like 150 and no longer have gold…i would like to grind this single item insteand of trying to get gold just to get an item which should be able to obtain by simple normal grindfest.

I am of the opinion<——key word there, that demand indirectly adds gold into the economy…….ex) demand for t6 mats causes players to farm t6 mats to sell to someone that uses gold to by them….thus gold is farmed via some means to get meet the demand. That said, traders do create demand (secondary demand mostly) and in doing so indirectly add gold into the economy, resulting in….wait for it….wait…….no peeking………inflation. Ofc this is much like saying something causes cancer when everything causes cancer.

Ryuujin.8236:

Horheristo.3607:

Simple example: I got my 100 lodestones around 2 weeks ago for 120g, now it’s 300g, the very same mats that I sell to get my gold didn’t change in prices, yet another high end item did.

If by chance it was the work of a power trader, then do tell me how this didn’t affect the market?

You answered your own question. Highlighted for clarity.

What you’re looking at is market fluctuation, not inflation. Due to a reduction in supply/rise in demand/possible market manipulation the value of one particular group of items has doubled yet the other markets remained essentially the same.

My bad! and I apologize for my lack of understanding in marketing terms.

But this was my example from the start…
Power traders literally destroy certain item groups value and make it near impossible to many players to achieve their goals
This fluctuation is a clear result of artificial supply/demand due to manipulation by power traders.

Buy orders combined with Guild Wars 2 Spidy data can help with costs if you have a few gold to tie up and if you are patient enough to wait for someone to fill your order.

The best part is, if you constantly find yourself getting overbid (say you want to pay 1.5 silver but the price never dips below 1.8) you can cancel your buy order and relist it higher for no cost.

I know why I didn’t get into playing the TP earlier (Black Lion not working right the first week or two after launch) but even so, it was pure laziness not to start using buy orders on some things right from the beginning. I’m much poorer than I would otherwise be because of that!

Can’t imagine how you guys got the patience instead of actually playing the game.
Would just like to finish here, that I make plenty of gold myself, not even touching the TP, as matter of fact I even sell at times that by hanging to my wares I could make much more gold.
Only because my personal value for gold is very little due to how fast I make it.

I still, however, believe that this whole system is wrong.

I do not want to farm or grind anything, i just want “good” loot to drop as i play the game, be that open world, instances, Dungeons and wvw (every where) I want my level req loot to drop and i would like to have no need of any silly “Magic Find” application to hinder my good loots (every where)

In short i want to be able to play casual and earn as much or a little less as a hardcore farmer earns, pretty sure thats what casual play means, i did not join GW2 to play economy markets or start a second job, so the game should be aimed at all types of players evenly..

Horheristo.3607:

Can’t imagine how you guys got the patience instead of actually playing the game.
Would just like to finish here, that I make plenty of gold myself, not even touching the TP, as matter of fact I even sell at times that by hanging to my wares I could make much more gold.
Only because my personal value for gold is very little due to how fast I make it.

I still, however, believe that this whole system is wrong.

It’s actually kind of neat if you get into it. I fantasize about day trading in real life. Luckily, I’m broke so I’ll never be able to afford to get started on losing catastrophic amounts of real money!

Horheristo.3607:

Ryuujin.8236:

Horheristo.3607:

No no, it’s just power traders that are “speeding up the supply / demand process”.
We would’ve reached this inflation in 2014, but they sped it up, come on just a little tiny teensy bit.

Power traders are a gold sink

Power traders do not generate gold, they merely transfer it from A to B, buying low (From their pocket) and selling high (From other peoples pocket), with a 15% tax slapped on top, so 15% of the gold involved in the transaction vanishes into thin air

If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation. People love to blame the traders for all their woes, but traders arn’t the ones causing inflation.

Ok, I get the idea that you are one. No need to break it down to me my dear friend.

Your example makes no sense..
First you say “If you stopped all gold entering the system, you’d actually experience deflation as taxes slowly drains the gold in circulation” admitting that power traders contribute to the gold ciruculation.
And then you say “People love to blame the traders for all their woes, but traders arn’t the ones causing inflation”.
Which one is it?
Also, consider this – the rate of making gold right now DID NOT change compared to what it was before and after the inflation, which means…
Player A made 2g an hour before inflation.
A month later Player A still makes 2g an hour after inflation.

1) Several methods that were subsequently nerfed allowed players to grind a lot more gold than usual – to the tune of approximately 7.5g per hour and more. This introduced a lot of new gold into the system. That is what caused the value of gold to inflate, which lowers the buying power of gold relative to goods.

2) Trading or flipping the trading post does not introduce new gold into the system. I think you’re misunderstanding how the trading post works, or perhaps misunderstanding the definition of deflation and inflation?

The items are in the system already because of farming. They have a certain sell value, decided by the market. If the seller decides to meet a lower buy price instead for quicker cash, that is a potential profit loss to him. Regardless, the seller will be paying a 15% tax.

The person who flips the trading post will be receiving that “profit” minus an additional 15% tax as they buy and then re-sell the item. This actually decreases the amount of gold in circulation. They are not creating a new item or new gold – everything exists in the system already.

3) On another note, I’d like to point out that many times, power traders do not have the ability to permanently affect the market in the method that you’re describing in another post. It only works when supply is low, for whatever reason, of the item. The lodestones are a special case and Anet has already tried to fix it with higher drop rates in Fractals. I’m also not sure you can blame a power trader for Charged Lodestones – if you look at the tp, the supply is relatively low, 312 total across so many servers. And look at how many buy order demands there are for it, 3200. It could be that someone farmed the gold via the above method and finally had the money to keep buying and buying more Charged Lodestones for their legendaries/exotic skins. In that case, the price should drop back down.

Tl;DR: Low supply and high demand of one item allows for a high fluctuation and variance in the price.

looking forward though, those with gold from the last inflation will retain it won’t they?
They’ll invest it and or use it to generate more gold if they’re market savvy, and lets face it, we can avoid a LOT of gold sinks in the game.

nerfing farming spots eliminates the further creation of imbalances, but it doesn’t undo the damage that is done.

As for the lodestones, if they’re only available via drops, then that’s stupid in itself and probably part of the issues, everything is about drops and crafted stuff is garbage.

Oh and lets not forget the “power trader” item, lol cos we haven’t seen bad idea’s like that in other games where players were beginning to play the markets and make ridiculous amounts of ingame currency… lol

Money is only a part of the puzzle that is Economics. Money represents Buying Power. However, it needs to be balanced out with Product to buy, or else money is just meaningless.

In most economies, like the US economy for example, really smart economists measure stuff like GDP/real GDP (known as Gross Domestic Product), and try to get it to match GDI (Gross Domestic Income).

So what the heck does that mean?

Well for us, so long as Stuff is dropping (armor that people end up using, fine crafting materials, etc.) we’re generating Product.

And so long as gold is coming in from vendors, Dynamic Events, Heart quests, etc., we’re “printing money” and keeping money from becoming “too valuable”.

If the total rate of product created (which will take into account product that is destroyed) is matching the rate at which we’re generating currency (again, taking into account gold sinks) then inflation shouldn’t be happening.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Money is only a part of the puzzle that is Economics. Money represents Buying Power. However, it needs to be balanced out with Product to buy, or else money is just meaningless.

In most economies, like the US economy for example, really smart economists measure stuff like GDP/real GDP (known as Gross Domestic Product), and try to get it to match GDI (Gross Domestic Income).

So what the heck does that mean?

Well for us, so long as Stuff is dropping (armor that people end up using, fine crafting materials, etc.) we’re generating Product.

And so long as gold is coming in from vendors, Dynamic Events, Heart quests, etc., we’re “printing money” and keeping money from becoming “too valuable”.

If the total rate of product created (which will take into account product that is destroyed) is matching the rate at which we’re generating currency (again, taking into account gold sinks) then inflation shouldn’t be happening.

So in short you’re saying buying power is too high, and the demand for a lot of commodities no existant?

What you also don’t realise, you need gold for everything. If you want to craft exotics – that costs gold, if you want a pre-cursor…that’s a whole ton of gold. If you restrict the ways people can acquire gold, people will circumvent it – whether thats by using bots/gold farming websites or hacking.

What the OP said is true, but thats not going to stop or solve the problem. And right now, how to fix the economy is the 1,000,000 question.

Everyone is forgetting the massive bot ban. That is a LARGE part of the reason for price increases right now. I mean, surely you can’t tell me that not one of you noticed that within days of the bots being banned the prices of everything went up?

Less bots farming mats, getting dye drops, getting item drops, etc = higher cost of those items on tradepost since there will be so much less.

Honestly, I just view it as the economy evening out. It was balanced on the shoulders of the bots and gold farmers for so long, with them gone it needs to find a new base line. Give it time and it will.

On a side note- gems aren’t helping either. 500 gems was equal to almost 7 gold the day before yesterday. That’s madness.

Look I see your point and all but I’m honestly sick of feeling like you earn nothing for your time in this game. Yes making more money gold farming would result with inflation to the trading post.

Why do I seem to have no where near enough to buy stuff I want from regular in game vendors!? Everyone keeps saying just play the game you’ll earn enough money bull man. I barely had enough money to afford the skill books to unlock all my traits by level 80 ok.. this is beyond ridiculous if this theory of just playing the game brings in coin why on earth does no one just running around playing the game normally seem to generate enough money to buy things they desire from vendors without weeks or more of farming or buying gems to turn into gold?

In fact if you want to eliminate gold sellers and inflation why do you have a trading post!!! Make most items players want to buy available from a kitten NPC! Then players have to either work for said items or farm and buy precursors from NPCs The prices will never rise people can have as much frigging gold as they want because you could make it easier to get and people wouldn’t feel like it was a second kitten job to just get gold for items in a GAME read that its a GAME NOT A JOB so lets stop treating getting gold LIKE A JOB PLEASE!

Tolmos.8395:

Everyone is forgetting the massive bot ban. That is a LARGE part of the reason for price increases right now. I mean, surely you can’t tell me that not one of you noticed that within days of the bots being banned the prices of everything went up?

Less bots farming mats, getting dye drops, getting item drops, etc = higher cost of those items on tradepost since there will be so much less.

Honestly, I just view it as the economy evening out. It was balanced on the shoulders of the bots and gold farmers for so long, with them gone it needs to find a new base line. Give it time and it will.

On a side note- gems aren’t helping either. 500 gems was equal to almost 7 gold the day before yesterday. That’s madness.

It’s actually been weeks now, and this started before the bot ban which admittedly might have made it seem alot worse, but doesn’t remove the fact that it’s REALLY bad, there are no drops to speak of (yet there’s now evidence they may be working on this slowly) and there’s a big problem for pve’ers where no reward for time spent is common.

Gems aren’t the answer btw, i agree.

Hellkaiser.6025:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Money is only a part of the puzzle that is Economics. Money represents Buying Power. However, it needs to be balanced out with Product to buy, or else money is just meaningless.

In most economies, like the US economy for example, really smart economists measure stuff like GDP/real GDP (known as Gross Domestic Product), and try to get it to match GDI (Gross Domestic Income).

So what the heck does that mean?

Well for us, so long as Stuff is dropping (armor that people end up using, fine crafting materials, etc.) we’re generating Product.

And so long as gold is coming in from vendors, Dynamic Events, Heart quests, etc., we’re “printing money” and keeping money from becoming “too valuable”.

If the total rate of product created (which will take into account product that is destroyed) is matching the rate at which we’re generating currency (again, taking into account gold sinks) then inflation shouldn’t be happening.

So in short you’re saying buying power is too high, and the demand for a lot of commodities no existant?

I’m not saying that at all. I believe we can see product moving, meaning there’s a demand for it.

In short, I was saying We can’t consider “printing” more gold without also considering what we contribute in meaningful product. Only then can we say if inflation is happening or not.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Hellkaiser.6025:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Money is only a part of the puzzle that is Economics. Money represents Buying Power. However, it needs to be balanced out with Product to buy, or else money is just meaningless.

In most economies, like the US economy for example, really smart economists measure stuff like GDP/real GDP (known as Gross Domestic Product), and try to get it to match GDI (Gross Domestic Income).

So what the heck does that mean?

Well for us, so long as Stuff is dropping (armor that people end up using, fine crafting materials, etc.) we’re generating Product.

And so long as gold is coming in from vendors, Dynamic Events, Heart quests, etc., we’re “printing money” and keeping money from becoming “too valuable”.

If the total rate of product created (which will take into account product that is destroyed) is matching the rate at which we’re generating currency (again, taking into account gold sinks) then inflation shouldn’t be happening.

So in short you’re saying buying power is too high, and the demand for a lot of commodities no existant?

I’m not saying that at all. I believe we can see product moving, meaning there’s a demand for it.

In short, I was saying We can’t consider “printing” more gold without also considering what we contribute in meaningful product. Only then can we say if inflation is happening or not.

So you don’t think that there is an insanely pigeonholed set of profitable items, and that crafting is a giant waste of time aside from levelling?

You don’t think that the artificial demands of players pushing and flipping items is creating demand as opposed to you know, people trying to utilize crafting professions creating demand for materials?

By all means “printing gold” is not going to fix the problem, that’s not what I was getting at, what I was getting at is that there’s those that play the “pvp market” and those that just don’t bother, and there’s not much alternative to flipping due to the farming and crafting together being near pointlessly dismal in their gold returns compared to basic materials which have a demand.

Real world economics don’t mesh well with a fantasy world where things just pop into existence. You can have two people do the exact same amount of work in the exact same way and one may end up poor while another ends up rich. This also makes what we can create worthless because none of it is different than the things that just magically appear.

That’s why the idea of minimum wages exist. We have no real equalizer.

Being smarter is not the only factor. Mistakes are not the only factor. The amount of effort put in can mean everything or nothing.

Hellkaiser.6025:

So you don’t think that there is an insanely pigeonholed set of profitable items, and that crafting is a giant waste of time aside from levelling?

Did I say I didn’t believe there wasn’t?

Hellkaiser.6025:

You don’t think that the artificial demands of players pushing and flipping items is creating demand as opposed to you know, people trying to utilize crafting professions creating demand for materials?

If people are flipping items, they’re capitalizing on other people’s willingness to buy something. If something isn’t worth the price tag someone’s put on it, it means that it’s less likely to be sold at that price.

Hellkaiser.6025:

By all means “printing gold” is not going to fix the problem, that’s not what I was getting at, what I was getting at is that there’s those that play the “pvp market” and those that just don’t bother, and there’s not much alternative to flipping due to the farming and crafting together being near pointlessly dismal in their gold returns compared to basic materials which have a demand.

I am wondering if you believe my first post was in direct response to your post immediately above. My post was mostly a “general awareness” informational kind of post.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Hellkaiser.6025:

So you don’t think that there is an insanely pigeonholed set of profitable items, and that crafting is a giant waste of time aside from levelling?

Did I say I didn’t believe there wasn’t?

Hellkaiser.6025:

You don’t think that the artificial demands of players pushing and flipping items is creating demand as opposed to you know, people trying to utilize crafting professions creating demand for materials?

If people are flipping items, they’re capitalizing on other people’s willingness to buy something. If something isn’t worth the price tag someone’s put on it, it means that it’s less likely to be sold at that price.

Hellkaiser.6025:

By all means “printing gold” is not going to fix the problem, that’s not what I was getting at, what I was getting at is that there’s those that play the “pvp market” and those that just don’t bother, and there’s not much alternative to flipping due to the farming and crafting together being near pointlessly dismal in their gold returns compared to basic materials which have a demand.

I am wondering if you believe my first post was in direct response to your post immediately above. My post was mostly a “general awareness” informational kind of post.

The last part is probably where the wires got crossed.

Farm skill points and turn those into gold. Right now you can bank 4g with 1 sp if you know what to transmute

I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in the understanding of how inflation works. And I would just like to clarify that I do not have an in depth understanding of economics.

Tolmos.8395:

Everyone is forgetting the massive bot ban. That is a LARGE part of the reason for price increases right now. I mean, surely you can’t tell me that not one of you noticed that within days of the bots being banned the prices of everything went up?

Less bots farming mats, getting dye drops, getting item drops, etc = higher cost of those items on tradepost since there will be so much less.

Honestly, I just view it as the economy evening out. It was balanced on the shoulders of the bots and gold farmers for so long, with them gone it needs to find a new base line. Give it time and it will.

Of course supply and demand is another factor. The bots farmed a lot of the low level mats rendering them effectively worthless as the supply was so great, and yes, the economy will settle again.

BUT while there are ways of farming (and by farming I mean looting and selling to NPCs just for clarity) and earning large amounts of gold per hour, it will exceed that which people spend on TP.

People who flip TP items, fair play, I can’t be bothered with it, I play this game for fun, not to watch a market. If I wanted to do that I’d play the stocks in real life and make my money that way.

The perceived value of all the high end items will keep rising as the gold values decreases and the supply of items stagnates. A lot of it is perceived value as opposed to actual value, which is where the monopolisation of the market sucks as that is direct manipulation which I’m not a fan of. But everything is still easy enough to acquire if you’re unwilling to pay. I’m currently banking materials related to five named exotics that I want, and I’m attempting to do so without using the TP as best as I can. It’ll take a while but it’s my own personal F you to the greedy traders on the economy!