Guild Wars 2

Ensign.2189:

Cyninja.2954:

Careful here, this is untrue. aproximately 28% of that gold leaves the economy.

If John Smith is remotely competent (note: John Smith is exceedingly competent) then the amount of gold leaving the economy through the gem exchange is exactly 0.

Ah … the difference between exchange rates is there due to the gold sink in the exchange.

I player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems and player two pays 100 gems for 13 gold the change in the number of gems in the exchange is 0 and that 7 gold is removed from the game so the change in gold in the exchange is also 0.

pdavis.8031:

I disagree…if you simply show that prices are increasing, without examining the “why”, all you have is a list, or a chart, that shows prices are going up.

…which is everything you need to show to identify inflation. A methodologically sound chart showing that aggregate prices are going up is exactly what you would do to establish inflation. This is textbook.

pdavis.8031:

At that point it’s easy to say “See!? Prices are going up because more gold is entering the economy, and not enough is leaving. This is classic inflation!”

Eh? If you demonstrate the rate of change of prices over time you have established the inflation rate, but that doesn’t tell you anything about about whether those changes are due to supply shocks (lots of materials flooding / leaving the market!), production shocks (new recipes!), changes in aggregate player behavior (such as wealth effects increasing saving and lowering velocity), or good old boring quantity of money (more gold entering than leaving!). It could be all or none of these in different combinations. A measure of inflation doesn’t capture that (though other data may provide insight).

The point is that it doesn’t matter, because a measure of inflation isn’t designed to capture any of that – it just wants to capture aggregate price movements. You can then try and explain why we observe the trend that we did, if you so wish.

Cyninja.2954:

If you were to buy gems from gold you lose 15% value. If you then convert those gems to gold again you lose another 15% (in total about 28%).

This is correct.

Cyninja.2954:

Why you would want to keep this at 0 I have no clue.

Let’s say for simplicity that the gold to gem exchange rate is 20 gold for 100 gems. To balance transactions, the exchange could seek to match such a transaction with a conversion of 100 gems into 14.45 gold. In this case, the exchange sinks 5.55 gold (27.75%) from the economy and trades are in balance. This is how I presume you think the exchange works.

There is an alternative. Instead of matching as above, the exchange would seek to match a 20 gold for 100 gems transaction with a 138.4 gems for 20 gold transaction. In order to keep it in balance, the exchange sinks 38.4 gems (27.75%/(1-27.75%)) from the economy.

Both of these versions have a 15% transaction fee each way, as observed. The difference is that the former sinks some in game gold, while the latter pockets a lot of real money for A.net.

Behellagh.1468:

Ah … the difference between exchange rates is there due to the gold sink in the exchange.

I player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems and player two pays 100 gems for 13 gold the change in the number of gems in the exchange is 0 and that 7 gold is removed from the game so the change in gold in the exchange is also 0.

Once more for emphasis.

Player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems, player two pays 140 gems for 20 gold; the change in the amount of gold on the exchange is 0, and the 40 gems removed from the game are equal to $0.50 deposited into A.Net’s bank account for the service provided.

Essentially, if you are running a currency exchange with a service fee you can choose to pay yourself in either currency being exchanged. Why would A.Net want to be paid in gold when it could be paid in dollars and euros?

Ensign.2189:

Cyninja.2954:

If you were to buy gems from gold you lose 15% value. If you then convert those gems to gold again you lose another 15% (in total about 28%).

This is correct.

Cyninja.2954:

Why you would want to keep this at 0 I have no clue.

Let’s say for simplicity that the gold to gem exchange rate is 20 gold for 100 gems. To balance transactions, the exchange could seek to match such a transaction with a conversion of 100 gems into 14.45 gold. In this case, the exchange sinks 5.55 gold (27.75%) from the economy and trades are in balance. This is how I presume you think the exchange works.

There is an alternative. Instead of matching as above, the exchange would seek to match a 20 gold for 100 gems transaction with a 138.4 gems for 20 gold transaction. In order to keep it in balance, the exchange sinks 38.4 gems (27.75%/(1-27.75%)) from the economy.

Both of these versions have a 15% transaction fee each way, as observed. The difference is that the former sinks some in game gold, while the latter pockets a lot of real money for A.net.

Behellagh.1468:

Ah … the difference between exchange rates is there due to the gold sink in the exchange.

I player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems and player two pays 100 gems for 13 gold the change in the number of gems in the exchange is 0 and that 7 gold is removed from the game so the change in gold in the exchange is also 0.

Once more for emphasis.

Player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems, player two pays 140 gems for 20 gold; the change in the amount of gold on the exchange is 0, and the 40 gems removed from the game are equal to $0.50 deposited into A.Net’s bank account for the service provided.

Essentially, if you are running a currency exchange with a service fee you can choose to pay yourself in either currency being exchanged. Why would A.Net want to be paid in gold when it could be paid in dollars and euros?

Lots of mumbo jumbo and stawmaning for a very simple transaction process:

Let’s assume 1to1 transaction of gold to gems, the actual rate doesn’t matter since it endsup the same:

We start with 100 gold for player A.

Player A spends 100 gold on gems and receives 85 gems (15% fee).

Player A now spends 85 gems on gold and receives 72,25 gold (15% fee). He could alternatively spend ~133 gems to receive 100 gold again.

Player A is now left with 27,25% less gold than he had before. There is no matching. There are 2 pools of currency that get weight against each other.

Either way, the loss to the game economy is 27,75% total unless more gems are spent on readding it. So no, keeping the goldloss near 0 is not what is happening.

Ensign.2189:

Player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems, player two pays 140 gems for 20 gold; the change in the amount of gold on the exchange is 0, and the 40 gems removed from the game are equal to $0.50 deposited into A.Net’s bank account for the service provided.

Essentially, if you are running a currency exchange with a service fee you can choose to pay yourself in either currency being exchanged. Why would A.Net want to be paid in gold when it could be paid in dollars and euros?

1) Anet doesn’t profit off of the Gold “tax”. The Gem Exchange is simply a convenience for players who don’t want to spend real money on microtransactions. The “tax” is a sink as well, helping to keep inflation in check.

2) Without the “tax”, players like me who have real world investing and currency experience would absolutely dominate the exchange, leading to pure wealth imbalance.

Isn’t the purpose of the sink to prevent it from becoming a stock market with speculation?

Cyninja.2954:

We start with 100 gold for player A.

Player A spends 100 gold on gems and receives 85 gems (15% fee).

Player A now spends 85 gems on gold and receives 72,25 gold (15% fee).

Sure. Now look at what is going on inside the exchange. After transaction #1, the exchange is +100 gold and -100 gems; all 100 gold is added to the exchange, 85 gems are sent to the player, and 15 are pocketed by A.Net.

Transaction #2 puts the exchange +72.25 gems and -72.25 gold; the player spent 85 gems, 12.75 are pocketed by A.Net, 72.25 are added to the exchange, and the player gets 72.25 gold.

Between the two, the exchange sees a net change: -27.75 gems, +27.75 gold. This pushes the exchange rate up. The total gold between the in-game economy and the current account remains unchanged.

What you are proposing is that in the first transaction, the exchange first sinks 15% of the gold, so the net internal balance is +85 gold, -85 gems; then the exchange sinks gold after the exchange the second time, making the internal balance +85 gems, -85 gold, for an internal (current account) value of 0, 0, and a sinking of 27.75 gold. It is possible for them to code it this way, but it makes no sense to do so – why would they want to sink gold and not gems? Gems get them paid, gold will just get sunk on the trading post anyway at no cost to them.

Cyninja.2954:

He could alternatively spend ~133 gems to receive 100 gold again.

For clarity – same first step as before, exchange is +100 gold -100 gems from first transaction, with A.Net pocketing 15 gems.

Second exchange would be ~118 gems for 100 gold. A.Net pockets 18 gems, exchange gets +100 gems and -100 gold. Total current account change is 0, 0. A.Net has sunk 33 gems from the transaction on the whole.

Ensign.2189:

Cyninja.2954:

We start with 100 gold for player A.

Player A spends 100 gold on gems and receives 85 gems (15% fee).

Player A now spends 85 gems on gold and receives 72,25 gold (15% fee).

Sure. Now look at what is going on inside the exchange. After transaction #1, the exchange is +100 gold and -100 gems; all 100 gold is added to the exchange, 85 gems are sent to the player, and 15 are pocketed by A.Net.

Transaction #2 puts the exchange +72.25 gems and -72.25 gold; the player spent 85 gems, 12.75 are pocketed by A.Net, 72.25 are added to the exchange, and the player gets 72.25 gold.

Between the two, the exchange sees a net change: -27.75 gems, +27.75 gold. This pushes the exchange rate up. The total gold between the in-game economy and the current account remains unchanged.

What you are proposing is that in the first transaction, the exchange first sinks 15% of the gold, so the net internal balance is +85 gold, -85 gems; then the exchange sinks gold after the exchange the second time, making the internal balance +85 gems, -85 gold, for an internal (current account) value of 0, 0, and a sinking of 27.75 gold. It is possible for them to code it this way, but it makes no sense to do so – why would they want to sink gold and not gems? Gems get them paid, gold will just get sunk on the trading post anyway at no cost to them.

Cyninja.2954:

He could alternatively spend ~133 gems to receive 100 gold again.

For clarity – same first step as before, exchange is +100 gold -100 gems from first transaction, with A.Net pocketing 15 gems.

Second exchange would be ~118 gems for 100 gold. A.Net pockets 18 gems, exchange gets +100 gems and -100 gold. Total current account change is 0, 0. A.Net has sunk 33 gems from the transaction on the whole.

I was almost expecting you do mention the change in the exchange. To bad that was never the issue bevore hand and you were the one to bring it up.

The disscussion revolved always around the taxation and changes to the ingame economy. Hency your quote was false placed. If you went back and read through the thread, you’d notice that.

DennisChrDk.9823, I’m curious where you got your price history? did you just look at spidy history by hand? I want to try something similar with other items via an api but haven’t found one that saves prices going back years.

I found gw2shinies, but it only goes back to 3/15/15 (15/3/15. I agree this date format is better, but it still just looks too weird for me to use reliably :P)
I tried it with just those 7 months and got some neat data. my idea is to do this with ‘normal’ commodities, such as exotic Berserker gear. (even in just the past 7 months, it looks like a slight increase in average price, from 1g30s to 1g50s).

I’d use the cost of things like precursors and tier 6 mats to measure inflation. Although the gold to gems conversion rate connects to inflation in some ways, I don’t think it directly correlates. That is, when the exchange rate went from about 100 gold per 800 gems to briefly over 200 gold per 800 gems, that doesn’t necessarily mean that inflation doubled, merely that the demand for goods sold for gems increased more than the supply of gems did. I suppose you could call that “gem inflation”, but it’s not gold inflation. If the things bought for gems could then be sold on the TP, there’s be a stronger connection between gem inflation and gold inflation, but gem purchases are an economic dead end.

In a real world economy, some of the things that can cause inflation are printing too much currency (analogous to the fact that there aren’t enough gold sinks in GW2) and something that has sweeping effects across the board economically, like an increase in the price of oil, raising minimum wage, or a serious trade deficit. In the video game world of GW2, pretty much the only thing that really causes inflation is the lack of gold sinks. The prices of vendor goods never changes. For the most part, drop rates of most items does not change.

T6 yes because it’s needed to craft exotic but precursors (and legendaries) are purely a luxury item and shouldn’t be factored into any inflation calculation.

Behellagh.1468:

T6 yes because it’s needed to craft exotic but precursors (and legendaries) are purely a luxury item and shouldn’t be factored into any inflation calculation.

This is true. But what gets me though, is precursors and other luxury items are often used in reference to “the horribly broken economy” in this game. (Not this thread, but the QQ about things costing too much threads.)

I wonder why that is? The same type of people when looking at the real world economy, see the prices of everyday items go up, could care less about the prices of yachts, motorcycles, luxury cars, etc. and seem to understand that such things are not really much of a factor in the general economy as a whole. But if it’s a precursor, or highly sought after skin, it’s “Inflation!”…

Here’s items I would include if you decide to set up an index for WvW consumables. WvW sinks are one of the main non precursor gold sinks in the game and ought to be looked independently of the main gear-up-look good markets.

Plus, main of these items have cheaper substitute goods. So if you want to weight the index to account for velocity, you can include the cheaper substitute good in the index (example: Rams have a higher velocity than Golems, so include both superior and regular rams in the index but exclude both golems)

Items I would include in a WvW index:

Superior Ram, Ram, Superior Arrow cart, arrow cart, Guild Catapult, Superior catapult, Superior Golem, Omnomberry Compote, Bowl of Roated Lotus Root, Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup, Plate of Truufle Steak, Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup, Bowl of Seaweed Salad, Toxic Focusing Crystal, Rare Veggie Pizza, Superior Sharpening Stone.

If there’s a way to track high velocity consumables, I may have missed some. Again, you weigh the index by including the substitute goods of the highest velocity consumables in the index.

Well I’ve not been able to cover the thread for the last few days do to work and my upcomming midterms and there are so many replies. I can’t answer all of you so I’ll do some of them. I have read all though!!!

First of all, I saw a few of you discussing whatever gems have a place here. As I’ve already said, I’ll create and index without gems (one with and without)
My friend is still working on the script, in order to me to finish some of the smoothing and in order for me to add a lot of these materials and items that you have suggested. As soon as he is done (he’s just working a little whenever he has time for it) I’ll start working on improving the spreadsheet. I do plan to go through all the weights again and based on your feedback, John and Isaish I’ll change some of them (not sure which ones yet, have to come of up with a better system). It might be a few weeks though with the upcoming expansion and midterms.
I’ll work a little on all these things while gathering data from the first 2-3 months of the post HoT economy. Then I’ll make a new post here on reddit in order to share my findings. I’ll keep update this post though so please do keep up these discussions, I’ll try to be more active and respond to more of you.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Isn’t the purpose of the sink to prevent it from becoming a stock market with speculation?

No not really. It’s to prevent the money supply in the game from increase to much. If the money supply increase it causes inflation, since more and more players will by the same items and therefor drive up the prices of these items.

Mystic.5934:

DennisChrDk.9823, I’m curious where you got your price history? did you just look at spidy history by hand? I want to try something similar with other items via an api but haven’t found one that saves prices going back years.

I found gw2shinies, but it only goes back to 3/15/15 (15/3/15. I agree this date format is better, but it still just looks too weird for me to use reliably :P)
I tried it with just those 7 months and got some neat data. my idea is to do this with ‘normal’ commodities, such as exotic Berserker gear. (even in just the past 7 months, it looks like a slight increase in average price, from 1g30s to 1g50s).

All of it is actually recorded by hand (it took forever)… A friend of mine is working on coding a script for me to important data from Spidy and do some monthly averages in order to smooth out the data and caputre more velocity.

What items did you do your calculations on, only excotics? A reason for the difference could be that my basket is primarily crafting items, so after the introduction of Silwervastes we have a shift in supply of all these items, which causes the prices to go down.
If you have excotics only the F2P will most likely start out by buying excotics insteadt of ascended (assuming they don’t do dungeons and don’t have enough karma). Which could cause a shift in demand, this is just purely speculations, but I could be a likely explanation.

nekretaal.6485:

Plus, main of these items have cheaper substitute goods. So if you want to weight the index to account for velocity, you can include the cheaper substitute good in the index (example: Rams have a higher velocity than Golems, so include both superior and regular rams in the index but exclude both golems)

Items I would include in a WvW index:

Superior Ram, Ram, Superior Arrow cart, arrow cart, Guild Catapult, Superior catapult, Superior Golem, Omnomberry Compote, Bowl of Roated Lotus Root, Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup, Plate of Truufle Steak, Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup, Bowl of Seaweed Salad, Toxic Focusing Crystal, Rare Veggie Pizza, Superior Sharpening Stone.

This is a very good idea, when I get the script to work I’ll definitely add these items. I never really considered siege either.
A lot of the items are already in the basket though. I did added a bunch of cooking supplies in order to cover the inflation on some of the most demanded foods.

John Smith.4610:

Running weights on the goods is something you should do, unfortunately the weighting can be slightly arbitrary and that drastically changes the results, so you end up with results entirely hinged on a series of variables that don’t necessarily have a scientific backing. Lastly, be very careful of putting variables in a model that feed into each other, that will cause the model to over-represent changes in a single set. Arguably you could fix this by proper weighting, but this gets really tricky when there’s a lot of variables mixing together. Oh, actually lastly, don’t use precursors, really don’t use anything that doesn’t trade at a reasonable velocity or anything that’s too much of a luxury.
Overall though, I think this is a great effort given the resources you have to work with and a really interesting read.

Thanks John!

Can you give me some sudgetions then in order to improve it? Do you see anything specific that could be improved in terms of the weights of the basket.

Isaish alreayd mentiond that the weithts of the comming crafting materials Tier 3-4 should be decreased and then increase the weights of Tier 1-2. But other than that he did not mention anything specific.

To get some insight from you would be a very big help and could improve it a lot, since we do not have access to the same data as you guys

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

I would be interested in seeing how inflation has occurred on the items everyone really wants that are limited by not being available anymore, or have exceedingly rare drop rates and superior functionality.

Take things like pre-cursors used in classes metas in a number of classes.(terrestrial).

shion.2084:

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

Can’t +1 this enough. Very likely going to save this for future reference.

There is another aspect to farmers that proponens seldom remember to mention and it will get potentially worse if there isn’t as much of a golden “faucet” say from dungeons.

While a farmer being wealthy will cause a rise in the rarer goods (as per the previous posting), they also do exactly what they tell you they are doing and lower the value of common goods. So for instance that minor sigil of bleeding…. there’s gonna be tons of them listed at the lowest price possible on the TP.

So what does this mean to someone who doesn’t farm? Well the goods they are likely to come across won’t sell for as much because farmers have glutted the market with them. And since you can’t get gold without trading too someone as readily anymore, this means your in a potentially worse position, beause not much your likely to come across through normal non-farming play is going to sell for anything.

Finally when a farmer bottoms out the market and people realize they might as well just go sell it to an NPC merchant…. that actually is the opposite of a gold sink, but rather generates exactly the kind of wealth that they argued they were combating.

Things never really mentioned….

shion.2084:

There is another aspect to farmers that proponens seldom remember to mention and it will get potentially worse if there isn’t as much of a golden “faucet” say from dungeons.

While a farmer being wealthy will cause a rise in the rarer goods (as per the previous posting), they also do exactly what they tell you they are doing and lower the value of common goods. So for instance that minor sigil of bleeding…. there’s gonna be tons of them listed at the lowest price possible on the TP.

So what does this mean to someone who doesn’t farm? Well the goods they are likely to come across won’t sell for as much because farmers have glutted the market with them. And since you can’t get gold without trading too someone as readily anymore, this means your in a potentially worse position, beause not much your likely to come across through normal non-farming play is going to sell for anything.

Finally when a farmer bottoms out the market and people realize they might as well just go sell it to an NPC merchant…. that actually is the opposite of a gold sink, but rather generates exactly the kind of wealth that they argued they were combating.

Things never really mentioned….

This is true to an extent. But you also have to figure that the items that they sell that bottom out, like the minor sigils, is not just due to farmers glutting the market, but that no one wants them. As cheap as major sigils are, and most non-meta superior sigils, why would one want to buy a minor sigil? If you are leveling, you are generally getting new and better gear as you level up. Also with the rate that you level up it doesn’t make sense to go buy a new sigil each time you get a better weapon that matches your current level. By the time you are level 80, minor sigils are essentially worthless, not only in terms of value, but of practical use as well. Even at level 80, and not fully geared out with exotics, I am not going to use a minor sigil, when I can get a major or even a superior sigil for a few silver more.

That means, generally those buying minor sigils on the TP are people tossing them into the forge in hopes of getting rares, to forge again into superiors, or to sell the rares at a small profit.

And don’t forget that things like sigils and runes are not being swapped out or consumed on a regular basis. Most people will find a build they like and stick with it, or go meta. Either way it means that the demand for such things is extremely low, which results in prices bottoming out, and having an excess supply on the TP.

shion.2084:

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

Gee, only the wealthy can get high demand/limited supply items. I’ll call the media.

Of course they are expensive, of course their price increases as the top tier increase their worth because the law of supply and demand is about maximizing the value of the supply. Since in this case supply is not in control of the players, supply is fairly inelastic, the price rises to only deal the few who can get into a bidding war for it.

Yes, this means that wealth disparity sets the cost of these low supply, high demand items at a point well beyond most players. But if it’s your assertion that it’s from trading it came from players who were indifferent in keeping their many. Plus you can’t bootstrap yourself from zero. They had to first earn their gold in game (or buy gold earned by others and willingly sold for gems).

How many players sell immediately rather than place a sell order? How many buy immediately rather than place a buy order? I don’t flip per se, I buy in bulk to promote, open, salvage and even craft for reasons not related to crafting to 500. I see how items come into the market, it’s not continuously, they come in fits and starts, different times of day, etc. My orders, both for buying and selling, are providing a higher buy price and lower sell price than what was already there. The individual selling and buying could to the same but they want their coin or item immediately so with out me, someone not buying items for my own use or selling what was dropped just on me, are providing a service.

As Wanze asked before, what’s the difference between someone like me who manipulates an item he buys (as in crafting, promoting, savaging) and someone who simply turns around and sells it at the going rate which would still provide them with some profit?

shion.2084:

Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

Well I asume this is directed towards my comment on the money supply, maybe it’s just my explanation that’s not perfectly clear. But as I’m said elsewhere in the thread (even in my original post), inflation is caused by many differet things. What I was simply giving an example as to why it’s good to have gold sinks in the game, since an increase in the moeny supply is ONE of the reason we have inflation, where shocks in demand and supply are among other causes.

I actually remember basic crafting materials costing 1-2 silver each close to launch, and now costing 15-20 silver each. Expensive items capped out around 200 gold. With the influx of farmers and the gem for gold store, MANY items are 450-2k gold.

If that’s not inflation, then what is?

For players who bought the game at full price then only used gems for cosmetic items out of a sense of fair play, I really feel that the economy has rebalanced to Pay to Win, this is the primary cause for inflation. High tier items being locked to characters or earned by completing story mission chains would reduce inflation a great deal.

Derenek.8931:

I actually remember basic crafting materials costing 1-2 silver each close to launch, and now costing 15-20 silver each. Expensive items capped out around 200 gold. With the influx of farmers and the gem for gold store, MANY items are 450-2k gold.

If that’s not inflation, then what is?

For players who bought the game at full price then only used gems for cosmetic items out of a sense of fair play, I really feel that the economy has rebalanced to Pay to Win, this is the primary cause for inflation. High tier items being locked to characters or earned by completing story mission chains would reduce inflation a great deal.

Without wanting to derail this thread, please explain what about your example is Pay to Win? Please also explain how someone who is paying is “winning” or gaining an unfair advantage over someone who is not.

While at it, read up on what Pay to Win means.

First off, Legendaries are no longer cosmetic. They have switchable stats. This makes them easily the most powerful items in the game intrinsically.

I am also posting a link so you can see clearly the stat differences in tiers of items

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor

If a player can go from the lowest tier to the highest tier, by giving cash to the gem store, that is equivalent to pay to win.

If you really are so misinformed that gear has little to no effect on the power level of players, just look at the stat difference in light armor between base to ascended:

armor rating 557 vs 967
primary stats
Major 252 vs 439
minor 180 vs 315

If you still can not see the advantage a player can straight up buy with dollars, I think possibly retaking sesame street math might be in order.

This is clearly pay to win.

Derenek.8931:

First off, Legendaries are no longer cosmetic. They have switchable stats. This makes them easily the most powerful items in the game intrinsically.

I am also posting a link so you can see clearly the stat differences in tiers of items

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor

If a player can go from the lowest tier to the highest tier, by giving cash to the gem store, that is equivalent to pay to win.

If you really are so misinformed that gear has little to no effect on the power level of players, just look at the stat difference in light armor between base to ascended:

armor rating 557 vs 967
primary stats
Major 252 vs 439
minor 180 vs 315

If you still can not see the advantage a player can straight up buy with dollars, I think possibly retaking sesame street math might be in order.

This is clearly pay to win.

Congrats! You qualify for a hat.

@Derenek.8931: people cant buy ascended gear from TP…. so they cant buy gems convert to gold then buy the best gear for best broken class.

see what i did here?

Aeolus.3615:

@Derenek.8931: people cant buy ascended gear from TP…. so they cant buy gems convert to gold then buy the best gear for best broken class.

see what i did here?

nope, you can only buy the mats. Somehow the materials required to make ascended mats and many of the mats themselves can be bought with gold… Strange….

Derenek.8931:

First off, Legendaries are no longer cosmetic. They have switchable stats. This makes them easily the most powerful items in the game intrinsically.

I am also posting a link so you can see clearly the stat differences in tiers of items

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor

If a player can go from the lowest tier to the highest tier, by giving cash to the gem store, that is equivalent to pay to win.

If you really are so misinformed that gear has little to no effect on the power level of players, just look at the stat difference in light armor between base to ascended:

armor rating 557 vs 967
primary stats
Major 252 vs 439
minor 180 vs 315

If you still can not see the advantage a player can straight up buy with dollars, I think possibly retaking sesame street math might be in order.

This is clearly pay to win.

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

On top of which the question if a pve aspect can really be “winable”, but let’s assume that having the best gear is “winning” (a very wierd notion, but hey I’ll bite).

Ascended items can get their stats changed too, for a minor cost. On top of which runes and sigils do not get changed, so switching the stats is almost pointless without switching the runes/sigils when switching builds, but keep trying.

I never said legendarys had no advantage. That is strawmaning at its finest. On top of, why would you compare legendarys/ascended to basic items?! I don’t even know where to start with that. Try comparing ascended to exotic or exotic with ascended mixed in (yeah, those 2% stat difference will break the game in full ascended vs exotic armor+ascended weapons and trinkets….. please).

Cyninja.2954:

Derenek.8931:

First off, Legendaries are no longer cosmetic. They have switchable stats. This makes them easily the most powerful items in the game intrinsically.

I am also posting a link so you can see clearly the stat differences in tiers of items

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor

If a player can go from the lowest tier to the highest tier, by giving cash to the gem store, that is equivalent to pay to win.

If you really are so misinformed that gear has little to no effect on the power level of players, just look at the stat difference in light armor between base to ascended:

armor rating 557 vs 967
primary stats
Major 252 vs 439
minor 180 vs 315

If you still can not see the advantage a player can straight up buy with dollars, I think possibly retaking sesame street math might be in order.

This is clearly pay to win.

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

On top of which the question if a pve aspect can really be “winable”, but let’s assume that having the best gear is “winning” (a very wierd notion, but hey I’ll bite).

Ascended items can get their stats changed too, for a minor cost. On top of which runes and sigils do not get changed, so switching the stats is almost pointless without switching the runes/sigils when switching builds, but keep trying.

I never said legendarys had no advantage. That is strawmaning at its finest. On top of, why would you compare legendarys/ascended to basic items?! I don’t even know where to start with that. Try comparing ascended to exotic or exotic with ascended mixed in (yeah, those 2% stat difference will break the game in full ascended vs exotic armor+ascended weapons and trinkets….. please).

lol, you are trying to artificially narrow the field of argument by implying the average player has exotics and that should be the standard for comparison. I am however using as basis for comparison, a customer who bought the game and played to level 80. It is not uncommon for many players at level 80 to run a mixture of blue and green gear.

And the nominal cost of stat change is shards, plus an exotic insignia. Go to the TP, and find a zerker insignia that is a reasonable cost.

Pay to win has many tiers, the point is that real world money can grant an advantage over a player who only plays the game without buying gold.

Pay to Win
Tier 1: subscription model+stat enhancements available for cash
Tier 2: Buy the game+stat enhancement available for cash
Tier 3: Free download + stat enhancements available for cash

Pay to Brag
Tier 4: subs only cosmetic enhancements available for cash
Tier 5: Buy the game + cosmetic enhancements available only
Tier 6: Free download +cosmetic enhancements for cash

Play to Win
Tier 6: sub fee, no items available for real money
Tier 7: Buy the game, no items available for cash
Tier 8: Free download, no items available for cash

Cyninja.2954:

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

Pay-to-be-faster is still essentially pay2win. The severity, and thus, the tolerance of such a system, is dependent on how much one must pay to be as fast as others.

Some games it’s a step up for those who pay a little more to keep the servers/staff humming. Some absolutely cripple you unless you pay.

The primary point though is that it isn’t really pay2win in gw2 because you are largely bypassing personal effort, not game systems. The only time gated systems we have so far produce account bound items so they can’t be bypassed no matter how much money you throw at them.

It also revolves around a zero sum system where gold earned by selling gems is supposed to be taken from players who payed gold for gems.

In theory it’s a finite amount held by the game that gets doled out and only used an initial seeding of gold at the beginning of the game.

Even if this isn’t the case and the game is generating gold and gems fresh with no central store of currency, it’s a safe bet that the amount of people buying and selling gems are essentially equal.

If they aren’t, I’d wager that more people buy gems than sell simply due to the cost of selling them and the low appeal of the idea when the selling point of the game is “buy to play”.

Derenek.8931:

Cyninja.2954:

Derenek.8931:

First off, Legendaries are no longer cosmetic. They have switchable stats. This makes them easily the most powerful items in the game intrinsically.

I am also posting a link so you can see clearly the stat differences in tiers of items

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor

If a player can go from the lowest tier to the highest tier, by giving cash to the gem store, that is equivalent to pay to win.

If you really are so misinformed that gear has little to no effect on the power level of players, just look at the stat difference in light armor between base to ascended:

armor rating 557 vs 967
primary stats
Major 252 vs 439
minor 180 vs 315

If you still can not see the advantage a player can straight up buy with dollars, I think possibly retaking sesame street math might be in order.

This is clearly pay to win.

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

On top of which the question if a pve aspect can really be “winable”, but let’s assume that having the best gear is “winning” (a very wierd notion, but hey I’ll bite).

Ascended items can get their stats changed too, for a minor cost. On top of which runes and sigils do not get changed, so switching the stats is almost pointless without switching the runes/sigils when switching builds, but keep trying.

I never said legendarys had no advantage. That is strawmaning at its finest. On top of, why would you compare legendarys/ascended to basic items?! I don’t even know where to start with that. Try comparing ascended to exotic or exotic with ascended mixed in (yeah, those 2% stat difference will break the game in full ascended vs exotic armor+ascended weapons and trinkets….. please).

lol, you are trying to artificially narrow the field of argument by implying the average player has exotics and that should be the standard for comparison. I am however using as basis for comparison, a customer who bought the game and played to level 80. It is not uncommon for many players at level 80 to run a mixture of blue and green gear.

And the nominal cost of stat change is shards, plus an exotic insignia. Go to the TP, and find a zerker insignia that is a reasonable cost.

Pay to win has many tiers, the point is that real world money can grant an advantage over a player who only plays the game without buying gold.

Pay to Win
Tier 1: subscription model+stat enhancements available for cash
Tier 2: Buy the game+stat enhancement available for cash
Tier 3: Free download + stat enhancements available for cash

Pay to Brag
Tier 4: subs only cosmetic enhancements available for cash
Tier 5: Buy the game + cosmetic enhancements available only
Tier 6: Free download +cosmetic enhancements for cash

Play to Win
Tier 6: sub fee, no items available for real money
Tier 7: Buy the game, no items available for cash
Tier 8: Free download, no items available for cash

The game is 3 years old. People were full exotic 1 week after hitting level 80 at launch.

If you don’t believe the average gear level of players is exotic or beyond, there is no arguing. But keep strawmaning.

You have obviously never played a pay-to-win game in your life.

Then again, I’ve gone through your posting history. You seem to be the person who likes to get swayed by the most vocal negative opinion to which you latch on to. Good luck with that mindset.

Substance E.4852:

Cyninja.2954:

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

Pay-to-be-faster is still essentially pay2win. The severity, and thus, the tolerance of such a system, is dependent on how much one must pay to be as fast as others.

Some games it’s a step up for those who pay a little more to keep the servers/staff humming. Some absolutely cripple you unless you pay.

The primary point though is that it isn’t really pay2win in gw2 because you are largely bypassing personal effort, not game systems. The only time gated systems we have so far produce account bound items so they can’t be bypassed no matter how much money you throw at them.

It also revolves around a zero sum system where gold earned by selling gems is supposed to be taken from players who payed gold for gems.

In theory it’s a finite amount held by the game that gets doled out and only used an initial seeding of gold at the beginning of the game.

Even if this isn’t the case and the game is generating gold and gems fresh with no central store of currency, it’s a safe bet that the amount of people buying and selling gems are essentially equal.

If they aren’t, I’d wager that more people buy gems than sell simply due to the cost of selling them and the low appeal of the idea when the selling point of the game is “buy to play”.

I agree to most of what you said, except for the pay-to-win. There are games out there (and quite a few I might add, especially free to play games) that have pay-to-win models in place.

I’d go as far as saying HoT might be considere pay-to-win simply because it adds featus to paying customers (new elite specs) that increase the powerlevel beyond what non-paying customers have access to. But that is a different debate and has nothing to do with itemisation.

Cyninja.2954:

Substance E.4852:

Cyninja.2954:

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

Pay-to-be-faster is still essentially pay2win. The severity, and thus, the tolerance of such a system, is dependent on how much one must pay to be as fast as others.

Some games it’s a step up for those who pay a little more to keep the servers/staff humming. Some absolutely cripple you unless you pay.

The primary point though is that it isn’t really pay2win in gw2 because you are largely bypassing personal effort, not game systems. The only time gated systems we have so far produce account bound items so they can’t be bypassed no matter how much money you throw at them.

It also revolves around a zero sum system where gold earned by selling gems is supposed to be taken from players who payed gold for gems.

In theory it’s a finite amount held by the game that gets doled out and only used an initial seeding of gold at the beginning of the game.

Even if this isn’t the case and the game is generating gold and gems fresh with no central store of currency, it’s a safe bet that the amount of people buying and selling gems are essentially equal.

If they aren’t, I’d wager that more people buy gems than sell simply due to the cost of selling them and the low appeal of the idea when the selling point of the game is “buy to play”.

I agree to most of what you said, except for the pay-to-win. There are games out there (and quite a few I might add, especially free to play games) that have pay-to-win models in place.

I’d go as far as saying HoT might be considere pay-to-win simply because it adds featus to paying customers (new elite specs) that increase the powerlevel beyond what non-paying customers have access to. But that is a different debate and has nothing to do with itemisation.

I think he/she meant pay2win as in pay to win in fashion wars…
that is the only aspect not directly accessible to players without spending either a lot of time or a lot of cash.

Path.2469:

Cyninja.2954:

Substance E.4852:

Cyninja.2954:

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

Pay-to-be-faster is still essentially pay2win. The severity, and thus, the tolerance of such a system, is dependent on how much one must pay to be as fast as others.

Some games it’s a step up for those who pay a little more to keep the servers/staff humming. Some absolutely cripple you unless you pay.

The primary point though is that it isn’t really pay2win in gw2 because you are largely bypassing personal effort, not game systems. The only time gated systems we have so far produce account bound items so they can’t be bypassed no matter how much money you throw at them.

It also revolves around a zero sum system where gold earned by selling gems is supposed to be taken from players who payed gold for gems.

In theory it’s a finite amount held by the game that gets doled out and only used an initial seeding of gold at the beginning of the game.

Even if this isn’t the case and the game is generating gold and gems fresh with no central store of currency, it’s a safe bet that the amount of people buying and selling gems are essentially equal.

If they aren’t, I’d wager that more people buy gems than sell simply due to the cost of selling them and the low appeal of the idea when the selling point of the game is “buy to play”.

I agree to most of what you said, except for the pay-to-win. There are games out there (and quite a few I might add, especially free to play games) that have pay-to-win models in place.

I’d go as far as saying HoT might be considere pay-to-win simply because it adds featus to paying customers (new elite specs) that increase the powerlevel beyond what non-paying customers have access to. But that is a different debate and has nothing to do with itemisation.

I think he/she meant pay2win as in pay to win in fashion wars…
that is the only aspect not directly accessible to players without spending either a lot of time or a lot of cash.

If winning fashion wars is considered “winning”, sure that would qualify gw2 as pay2win. Then again, I was arguing gameplay and advantages in general, not optional cosmetics.

All of this also only counts towards pve, spvp(essentially the only competative aspect so far ingame) is a completely different beast and shows how far arenanet are willing to go to have no pay2win aspects ingame. Same level playingfield and such.

Path.2469:

Cyninja.2954:

Substance E.4852:

Cyninja.2954:

No, all of your examples are pay-to-be-faster. Pay-to-win would be if players who do not spend real money had no access to those items.

Pay-to-be-faster is still essentially pay2win. The severity, and thus, the tolerance of such a system, is dependent on how much one must pay to be as fast as others.

Some games it’s a step up for those who pay a little more to keep the servers/staff humming. Some absolutely cripple you unless you pay.

The primary point though is that it isn’t really pay2win in gw2 because you are largely bypassing personal effort, not game systems. The only time gated systems we have so far produce account bound items so they can’t be bypassed no matter how much money you throw at them.

It also revolves around a zero sum system where gold earned by selling gems is supposed to be taken from players who payed gold for gems.

In theory it’s a finite amount held by the game that gets doled out and only used an initial seeding of gold at the beginning of the game.

Even if this isn’t the case and the game is generating gold and gems fresh with no central store of currency, it’s a safe bet that the amount of people buying and selling gems are essentially equal.

If they aren’t, I’d wager that more people buy gems than sell simply due to the cost of selling them and the low appeal of the idea when the selling point of the game is “buy to play”.

I agree to most of what you said, except for the pay-to-win. There are games out there (and quite a few I might add, especially free to play games) that have pay-to-win models in place.

I’d go as far as saying HoT might be considere pay-to-win simply because it adds featus to paying customers (new elite specs) that increase the powerlevel beyond what non-paying customers have access to. But that is a different debate and has nothing to do with itemisation.

I think he/she meant pay2win as in pay to win in fashion wars…
that is the only aspect not directly accessible to players without spending either a lot of time or a lot of cash.

I mostly just meant that any advantage one gets in GW2 by converting gems to gold is offset by someone else converting gold to gems.

Basically that GW2 has a system that appears to be a “pay2win” mechanic but doesn’t generate advantage without an offset elsewhere. Unless you are buying off the gem store that is.

If you simply gave Anet $10 and got ~100g then it would be pay to win indeed.

It’s really no different than the PLEX system from EvE that it was based around.

https://secure.eveonline.com/Plex/WhatIsPlex.aspx

If your character is level 80 and you don’t have exotic gear after a month then you are doing something wrong.

if we are not going to involve luxury items, then we must ask what subset of items constitute luxury.

In guild wars 1, you had one character slow per profession. In guild wars 2, you have about half of that. Is character slots then a luxury item? Same goes for bag space, bank space, and account upgrades.

A simple answer is that everything in the game is luxury items, since you don’t actually need to play a game to survive. I am excluding this line of thought from the beginning since it doesn’t help us to define a subset of items which to base the inflation on, as in that scenario every number is just get reduced to zero. A more complex answer is that luxury items are those which has a market penetration of less than 5%. This would likely work if we had data to show what is being bought and sold. It is also strongly questionable if precursors are bought by less than 5% of the player base, as its hard to even find a player who hasn’t built a legendary at this point (anecdotal data).

One way to find this subset of items is to collect the total number of items players has collected after 1 year, and based on those make assumption about what is being bought by players during the first year. With the new account API, websites are collecting data and someone could use this to estimate what constitute necessity for the player base. One problem of this would however be the lack of data over time, but it would be a start.

DennisChrDk.9823:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Isn’t the purpose of the sink to prevent it from becoming a stock market with speculation?

No not really. It’s to prevent the money supply in the game from increase to much. If the money supply increase it causes inflation, since more and more players will by the same items and therefor drive up the prices of these items.

I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. I understand why gold sinks exist. I’m referring specifically to the sink in the gem exchange.

If you don’t have a sink in both ends it allows people to buy and sell gold and gems like a stock market. By putting the sinks in both ends it makes it much more difficult to make a profit that way. You need very large swings in prices to make a profit doing so. If there was no sink it would be incredibly easy to make money based on speculation.

pdavis.8031:

shion.2084:

There is another aspect to farmers that proponens seldom remember to mention and it will get potentially worse if there isn’t as much of a golden “faucet” say from dungeons.

While a farmer being wealthy will cause a rise in the rarer goods (as per the previous posting), they also do exactly what they tell you they are doing and lower the value of common goods. So for instance that minor sigil of bleeding…. there’s gonna be tons of them listed at the lowest price possible on the TP.

So what does this mean to someone who doesn’t farm? Well the goods they are likely to come across won’t sell for as much because farmers have glutted the market with them. And since you can’t get gold without trading too someone as readily anymore, this means your in a potentially worse position, beause not much your likely to come across through normal non-farming play is going to sell for anything.

Finally when a farmer bottoms out the market and people realize they might as well just go sell it to an NPC merchant…. that actually is the opposite of a gold sink, but rather generates exactly the kind of wealth that they argued they were combating.

Things never really mentioned….

This is true to an extent. But you also have to figure that the items that they sell that bottom out, like the minor sigils, is not just due to farmers glutting the market, but that no one wants them.

I perhaps shouldn’t have mentioned minor sigils as an example… so consider then something that you’d argue people do have more use for like leather (the level 80 type). Until the recent speculation that they’d be decreasing the drop rate, it was pretty much at the lowest possible selling value. I was selling directly to the vendors in stacks of 250 and making maybe 80 silver or something off of it? not even sure as I just needed it out of my bank.

So I would conjecture that because it had such a wide variety of sources and was an incidental by-product of farming, farming directly and seriously contributed to its lowering in value. And those whom played the game more casually and produced more reasonable amounts of it, found that when they went to sell it it wasn’t worth anything.

But in any case specific examples are less interesting to me then explaining to those whom parrot the one sided advantages of TP flipping and farming while claiming there are no downsides. I find the bias and the general air of mockery off putting and so once in a while I feel compelled to point out exactly why what they do impacts my play experience.

The facts are,

1) farming can contribute to “new money” being brought into the economy if they bottom prices. and people sell to vendors

2) Playing for wealth maximization via TPing or Farming does affect people who don’t and want to purchase more rare items. (see long first post)

3) Farming / Tping can affect people who don’t do so by devaluing the things they are likely to come by and sell.

Interesting Question:
What are the real effects of removing liquid rewards on the typical player being able to purchase the desired items in the game? Will reducing dungeons and generally making other “liquid rewards” harder to get be advantageous for the general player in terms of being able to acquire the things people “really want” in the game? will it make those whom already have large amounts of wealth even more rich by deflating?

Behellagh.1468:

shion.2084:

“The only thing we can be sure of is inflation du to more gold entering the economy, everything after that is a wild guess.”

ENOUGH!!!

This is untrue if the general items you are looking at are rare ones…. The DISTRIBUTION of wealth can cause inflation on rare items of limited supply.

(As an aside:
Increase in gold also won’t cause inflation on objects which are so trivially to get you end up with far more than you need whatever you do.)

Case A) 100 Players play the game. Every player has 100G. Total money in the game 10,000.

Someone finds a precursor they can’t use and decide to sell it, only 1 or two exist…. the likely price of that pre that people are going to be willing to spend is not much more than 100G.

In general, rarer goods are going to top out at around 100G in this scenario.

Case B ) You have TP flippers. They are far wealthier than those who’ve been spending the majority of their time playing event/dungeon content (what I’d call the game).

100 Players toatl. 95 players have 10 G. 5 players have 1810 gold. Total money in game 10,000G.

Now one of those guys doing events finds a precursor, there are only 1 or 2…. do you think the price that the market will be willing to buy for will still cap out at 100 G max?

So when farmers tell you that they are keeping prices lower…. OR a TPer tells you that it shouldn’t bother you that they are making money by manipulating the market to make wealth.. because how could that possibly affect you?….

they may mean in general on objects that you don’t care about as much because you can get fairly trivially. What they Don’t mention is that they can make the ones you really want and are very limited in quantity can be made astronomically higher.

TLDR;
Inflation is emphatically NOT only due to gold being added. But also a matter of scarcity of an item and unequal wealth distribution. Among other factors (see the aside)

Gee, only the wealthy can get high demand/limited supply items. I’ll call the media.

Of course they are expensive, of course their price increases as the top tier increase their worth because the law of supply and demand is about maximizing the value of the supply. Since in this case supply is not in control of the players, supply is fairly inelastic, the price rises to only deal the few who can get into a bidding war for it.

Yes, this means that wealth disparity sets the cost of these low supply, high demand items at a point well beyond most players. But if it’s your assertion that it’s from trading it came from players who were indifferent in keeping their many. Plus you can’t bootstrap yourself from zero. They had to first earn their gold in game (or buy gold earned by others and willingly sold for gems).

How many players sell immediately rather than place a sell order? How many buy immediately rather than place a buy order? I don’t flip per se, I buy in bulk to promote, open, salvage and even craft for reasons not related to crafting to 500. I see how items come into the market, it’s not continuously, they come in fits and starts, different times of day, etc. My orders, both for buying and selling, are providing a higher buy price and lower sell price than what was already there. The individual selling and buying could to the same but they want their coin or item immediately so with out me, someone not buying items for my own use or selling what was dropped just on me, are providing a service.

As Wanze asked before, what’s the difference between someone like me who manipulates an item he buys (as in crafting, promoting, savaging) and someone who simply turns around and sells it at the going rate which would still provide them with some profit?

I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I’m pointing out that when their are vague accusations made against farmers and TPers whom are wealthy, and the response is that the wealthy are in fact doing the poor a favour, that this is a hasty generalization. It is in fact disingenuous.

I find that the games condoning these styles of play does have a negative impact on the player who does things like explore the map, or do events they happen to come by, etc. This occurs when that player wishes to interact with the economy to purchase the more desired items.

The price of these items is dramatically higher than if people were not allowed to engage in the convenient methods of mass wealth accrual that exist. It goes beyond their being more money in the game but a matter of distribution of wealth that specifically makes this situation worse.

We perhaps should look at ways to reduce the disparity so that desired goods are more reasonably available to those whom choose less monetarily focused methods of play… like you know, helping a passing caravan out or saving a small village by building snow men… exploring a previously overlooked cave… or… being a hero…. rather than a mob of 5000 folks hitting their AOE to tag as many enemies as possible with no chance of dying..

shion.2084:

So I would conjecture that because it had such a wide variety of sources and was an incidental by-product of farming, farming directly and seriously contributed to its lowering in value. And those whom played the game more casually and produced more reasonable amounts of it, found that when they went to sell it it wasn’t worth anything.

But in any case specific examples are less interesting to me then explaining to those whom parrot the one sided advantages of TP flipping and farming while claiming there are no downsides. I find the bias and the general air of mockery off putting and so once in a while I feel compelled to point out exactly why what they do impacts my play experience.

The facts are,

1) farming can contribute to “new money” being brought into the economy if they bottom prices. and people sell to vendors

2) Playing for wealth maximization via TPing or Farming does affect people who don’t and want to purchase more rare items. (see long first post)

3) Farming / Tping can affect people who don’t do so by devaluing the things they are likely to come by and sell.

You are mixing and throwing together so many different factors it’s a bit hard to unravle.

1.) All farming does is increase the supply side of the supply and demand equation. If certain items drop to the lowest value (vendor price) that has not only to do with farming, but a severe over supply versus demand(farming only affects 1 side). Having base values at vendors (and now on the trading post) gives goods a ceiling or bottom (bottom in this case). This causes higher quality goods to keep certain values since no matter the supply, ressource abc will always cost minimum xyz. The amount of gold entering the economy should be insignificant compared to other direct gold sources otherwise there is a problem, yes.

2.) yes, but that is due to the nature of a trading post. With enough contributors it will balance itsself out near to where supply and demand push it. Unless there is marketspeculation happening, which has been pointed out numerous times, happen very very very seldomly with this amount of participants.

3.) Yes, farming can devalue certain items by increasing the supply of those items into the economy. TPing will result in rebalancing near to where supply and demand push a good. I don’t understand the point you are trying to make.

shion.2084:

Interesting Question:
What are the real effects of removing liquid rewards on the typical player being able to purchase the desired items in the game? Will reducing dungeons and generally making other “liquid rewards” harder to get be advantageous for the general player in terms of being able to acquire the things people “really want” in the game? will it make those whom already have large amounts of wealth even more rich by deflating?

The effects of removing direct gold influx to the economy is simple:

- if the reduction of direct gold is big enough, deflation will set in eventually
- if the reduction is not as high, inflation will get slowed or pushed towards 0

The average player will not notice a big difference if deflation happens. Why? The materials he farms will fall in value, same as the items he might want to purchase. This might not extend to high value items controlled by few though.

We also don’t know if the gold removal from dungeons is only a shift to new content (to encourage/force the purchase of HoT or certain content) or a straight removal from gold influx to the game. In 6 days we will know more (7-8 depending on how playable the game is on patch day).

Cyninja.2954:

shion.2084:

3) Farming / Tping can affect people who don’t do so by devaluing the things they are likely to come by and sell.

3.) Yes, farming can devalue certain items by increasing the supply of those items into the economy. TPing will result in rebalancing near to where supply and demand push a good. I don’t understand the point you are trying to make.
.

The point I was trying to make for 3 is that folks who play the non farm / TP way are likely counting on being able to sell the items they do come across in bulk to be able to afford a luxury item. This is made harder when the items they are likely go come across have been devalued by farmers.

There is a second whammy in that by making disproportionate amounts of money by farming, a farmer also raises the price of the desired good itself. (so the average guy sells for less and has to pay far more than if money was more evenly distributed).

Then these farmers will tell you what favours they do for you, and how what they do is only good for the economy.

While I absolutely hate it they only recourse I could come up with to counter this was to start running money making farming activities myself… Or buying stupid things I didn’t care about to make money. I want to be a hero not be forced into being a merchant to get some precursor locked behind an RNG.

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

NOTE that precurosr was my particular case so I get that as of very recently they’ve now given you a non- RNG option, but substitute in whatever RNG item you want that is rare. Also note that the cost they’ve built in to make the precur item is based on of course what the TPers and wealth players have driven it up to… so there is still impact there.

So in the end I am in the sad state of running for the world boss, and who cares if some village gets taken over by grawl if those villagers weren’t going to reward me enough. Yup be a hero, play in tyria. Its gotten to a point where I actually feel bad for the world bosses these days… or corrupted temples in cursed shores…. poor kittens don’t even have a chance.

I basically have to engage in these activities to have a competitive chance of being able to keep up with TPers and Farmers, and in doing so I am contributing to the problem. And so this is the dirty part o fthe true impact of Farmers an TPers on the average player, for the next time the wide eye’d innocent claim of … but we don’t impact you and only make things better if we do, comes up.

shion.2084:

The point I was trying to make for 3 is that folks who play the non farm / TP way are likely counting on being able to sell the items they do come across in bulk to be able to afford a luxury item. This is made harder when the items they are likely go come across have been devalued by farmers.

There is a second whammy in that by making disproportionate amounts of money by farming, a farmer also raises the price of the desired good itself. (so the average guy sells for less and has to pay far more than if money was more evenly distributed).

I’m not sure where you are going with this.

There will NEVER be a situation where any item that drops “in bulk” or that many people come buy often will gain significant value unless specifically designed for (see silk shortage). The very nature of farming is to look for items that can get farmed easily and fast and converted to gold on the trading post.

Have enough farmers and price will drop since they all sell their loot on the trading post. If you have enough gold influx into the economy without going through the trading post prices will definately rise. What you seem to missunderstand is, no matter if farmed or not, MMOs generate a constant influx of goods and value (somewhere along the line of billions $$$ per day of virtual goods accross the entire industry). The only thing keeping this in check are goldsinks in games.

What you are asking for is for items that are in ambudant supply to have a high value. The mere fact that they have value means there is a scarcity and not oversupply. It just makes no sense.

Could arenanet try to keep farming and regular play close together?

-> Sure, they keep nerfing the most lucrative farming methods.

Will they achieve absolute equality between every game mode and every farm?

- That is literally near impossible unless we abolish items and loot altogether. Just ask WvW and PvP players how much they make per hour compared to any PvE. Even here arenanet are trying to imporve the loot/gold gained.

tl;dr: You can’t go against supply and demand. If something is scarce, it will be more expensive. Farmers will reduce prices on items farmed, and increase prices on items desired (which in turn will start getting farmed once they gain enough value).

shion.2084:

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

Someone must have put up that skin for 100g. They are happy with having sold that skin for 100g. If the supply for this item drops, but the demand stays the same, the price will rise.

It’s a tradeoff between now and future revenue. Those 100 gold you invested might have brought you way more when used for something else. It’s a risk you take. See what happened when arenanet reintroduced Chaos skins a while back. A lot of people bought skins via buy orders for way higher price than the market correction. You have no guarantee this will not happen to your skin.

This is nothing you will correct least arenanet makes all skin available constantly or introduce a rotation system of rewards.

I think its rediculous, if someone complains that he doesnt make as much gold from his loot as i do as a trader because you have the choice to offer your loot for basically any price you want.

Just list it at double or triple the current lowest listing and wait until it sells.

I do the same.

John Smith.4610:

Reposting Izzy’s and my reponses from before:
John Smith:
This is interesting, but I would point out some things to look into if you try this again. As Izzy said, we make a lot of balance changes so you have to keep major changes from balance changes in mind. Running weights on the goods is something you should do, unfortunately the weighting can be slightly arbitrary and that drastically changes the results, so you end up with results entirely hinged on a series of variables that don’t necessarily have a scientific backing. Lastly, be very careful of putting variables in a model that feed into each other, that will cause the model to over-represent changes in a single set. Arguably you could fix this by proper weighting, but this gets really tricky when there’s a lot of variables mixing together. Oh, actually lastly, don’t use precursors, really don’t use anything that doesn’t trade at a reasonable velocity or anything that’s too much of a luxury.
Overall though, I think this is a great effort given the resources you have to work with and a really interesting read.

Izzy:
Neat stuff some things to keep in mind is in a game economy players control then printing of currency irl governments tightly control that.
Also demand on items change greatly based on updates which can look like inflation but is just a shift in demand (this is more clearly seen in the precursors, or silk) this makes it hard to judge purely on an index alone.
We spend a lot of Econ balancing on managing supply and demand of each material and currency and tweak both sides of that equation. For example butter was rock bottom at the start but we rebalanced its in/outs so it’s increase is not from inflation.
Just some other ways to think about this stuff

ehh, id say legendaries are the equivalent of buying a house. Sure you can rent, but its fair representation of value/goals of players.

Now, from a pure numbers running infltion value his stuff may be imperfect, but i think his goal is more to get an idea of how regular players feel inflation in their game lives. The fact that iron ore could be really stable doesnt effect the real feel of inflation.

shion.2084:

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

Have you ever done the math on how much that bow cost the original seller to get?

Assume he used 30 keys to get it. (Current average to get scraps. Past average was 50 keys but we’ll say he was lucky and only used 30).
If he bought keys then 30 keys is 2520 gems. (At 25 keys = 2100 gems = $26.25€)
Assume he bought it when it came out on Aug 13, 2014. At that time 100 gems was ~15 gold 50 silver.

That means 2520 gems was worth ~390 gold.

You got a steal at 100 gold because people don’t sit down and figure out how much the weapons are actually worth, plus they undercut each other.

yes and thought myself a merchant and not a hero.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

So yup I saw the dragon hunter preview and bought a chaos bow… because they had bows and shot light arrows… and I guess they’d want a matching bow. This is what I’ve been lowered to. I have an engineer… couldn’t even use the kitten bow on it. And I imagine a lot of skins are bought on speculation… I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that a good number of the chaos skins, when they came back at around 100G, weren’t purchased with the specific intent to resell later.

Have you ever done the math on how much that bow cost the original seller to get?

Assume he used 30 keys to get it. (Current average to get scraps. Past average was 50 keys but we’ll say he was lucky and only used 30).
If he bought keys then 30 keys is 2520 gems. (At 25 keys = 2100 gems = $26.25€)
Assume he bought it when it came out on Aug 13, 2014. At that time 100 gems was ~15 gold 50 silver.

That means 2520 gems was worth ~390 gold.

You got a steal at 100 gold because people don’t sit down and figure out how much the weapons are actually worth, plus they undercut each other.

Well that’s kind of an unfair comparison. How many of the weapons on the TP are actually from players who have brought gems and used thoes to buy keys?

I would guess that most are from players keyfarming (though it has been nerfed). So the average price would be way lower.