Guild Wars 2

Cyninja.2954:

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.

This was actually something John Smith covered in a recent Q&A. It was kind of interesting reply compared to what you would expect.

Q.
Do you feel that WvW needs a boost to its gold gain to match the other gamemodes?
A.
I don’t currently feel that way, but it’s another one of the things we’ll be watching after launch to see how everything settles.

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

Cyninja.2954:

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.

Ah Well I was explaining the ramifications of allowing both farming and TPing behaviors with respect to said activities’ impact inflation of certain items. Specifically when you asked me about my third point (which was to do with farming). I highlighted two negative impacts of farming on those who don’t. Once is direct in lowering value of goods, the other is more indirect and a consequence of unequal distribution of wealth.

“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. "

Vastly more bulk of these materials is generated by farmers whom do not represent a sink for the materials produced. One might say that perhaps if it wasn’t a hugely frequent by-product of farming that there would in fact be some value to it. The bulk that farmers generate of it contributes to its devaluation. More supply means lower prices if demand is the same. They increase supply but not demand.

Also there is some value to Mithril it is produced in the majority of my salvagings. But that’s just to point out a counter example to your general theory about bulk… unless you consider it to be a special case as well… in which case there are many so as to make the special cases not very special.

“Have enough farmers and price will drop since they all sell their loot on the trading post.”
Yup and thus farmers reduce the price of goods that non farming folks will count on selling to be able to afford the finer things in life. Ok now I think we’re not disagreeing.

“If you have enough gold influx into the economy without going through the trading post prices will definately rise.”

Sorry is there an example of how gold influx"es" into the economy by going through the trading post? This sounds sort of reduncant. Even if gold does go through the trading post, you only loose a sink of 15% so prices would still 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. "

I don’t disagree… what I’m saying is that farming and TPing exacerbates the problems I mentioned.

“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.”

I’m actually not asking for that… I’m pointing out what farming does to devalue goods that those not farming have a larger reliance on selling in order to obtain scarce things.

“[b]Could arenanet try to keep farming and regular play close together? [/b]

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

Well there are other options as well… they can produce less unintentional by-product, as opposed to just nerfing. So that someone farming on the latest hot spot doesn’t have as great a chance of dropping the value of some material relatively unrelated to the sorts of things their killing and their geographic location.

“[b]Will they achieve absolute equality between every game mode and every farm?[/b]

- 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."

Agreed you’d never want enforced absolute equality. Perhaps you should enforce more severe and effective means of diminishing returns in order to dissuade farmers. Thus they won’t get too far ahead on any given day. Another thing that should probably be looked at.

“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).”

Right so we should find ways to fix the convenience of farming perhaps… I think we’re in agreement.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

How does my wealth unbalance the game and negatively impact their gameplay?

Just because i might have 100 times more gold than other players doesnt mean i consume 100 times more items than the reguar player.

Once I unlocked a skin, i have little need to buy another one, for example, so I am not competing for that skin anymore, even though i could afford to buy 100 of them.

Anything i do or have achieved until now can be done by anybody, who invests as much time as me into it.

If people want to earn lots of dosh with their skills, they can set up competitions for dungeon speed runs, jumping puzzles or pvp tournaments, where everybody chips in with some gold for the winners cash purse.

Most people just have a problem with the fact that they have to invest in order to be able to to earn mad cash and there is a risk of losing it involved.

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

since I asked here, I actually found what I wanted (spidy historical prices: http://www.gw2spidy.com/api/v0.9/json/listings/30689/sell/1 and http://www.gw2spidy.com/api/v0.9/json/listings/30689/sell/2 (Eternity is id 30689))
I had asked a similar question over on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ow5wt/gw2efficiency_crafting_calculator_including_own/cw28jmh
I’m incorporating this and will have some data soonish
I’ll be doing several groups of items. legendaries, precursors, named exotics, Berserker exotics, crafting materials, … anything I can think of got suggestions?

the ‘slight increase…’ I mentioned was in level 80 exotic items named ‘Berserker …’, which is basically just the crafted berserker exotics. I’ll be including non-‘Berserker’ berserker exotics in the next results.

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

How does my wealth unbalance the game and negatively impact their gameplay?

Just because i might have 100 times more gold than other players doesnt mean i consume 100 times more items than the reguar player.

Once I unlocked a skin, i have little need to buy another one, for example, so I am not competing for that skin anymore, even though i could afford to buy 100 of them.

Anything i do or have achieved until now can be done by anybody, who invests as much time as me into it.

If people want to earn lots of dosh with their skills, they can set up competitions for dungeon speed runs, jumping puzzles or pvp tournaments, where everybody chips in with some gold for the winners cash purse.

Most people just have a problem with the fact that they have to invest in order to be able to to earn mad cash and there is a risk of losing it involved.

The issue becomes apparent with items of higher rarity and inelastic supply. Even though you being rich only want 1 precursor, and there are 10 others like you who are wealthy… and there are 2 precursors total…. you get the following situation I’d previously made an example of….

“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?

…. 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)

(edited 2 days ago by shion.2084)

2 days ago

"

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

At any rate, if I do 12.5 hours of key runs I price the skin on that. I don’t consider the value of account bound boosters or enchanted powder or even a mini I might sell. I consider those as bonus income for that run and I don’t factor it into my weapon selling price.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

shion.2084:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

True. But at whose value? ANet prices (values) the majority of the items I get at far higher prices than I am willing to pay. If they price something at 30 gems but I would not pay more than one gem, then just because I get ten 30 gem items, doesn’t mean that I got 300 gems value for my efforts. If I only value those items at 1 gem then I only got 10 gems value.

Since I (and from the majority of people’s comments on the forums who call the contents junk) don’t value the items highly, then counting items as income that I would not buy and can not sell leads to a false value for a key run.

For example, they could put a doodad in the chest that does absolutely nothing at all or very little, 2 seconds of swiftness perhaps, is account bound and they price it at 1000 gems. If I get one, that does not mean my key run was worth 1000 gems to me. What they price account bound items as is somewhat irrelevant, if it’s something I would not buy.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

True. But at whose value? ANet prices (values) the majority of the items I get at far higher prices than I am willing to pay. If they price something at 30 gems but I would not pay more than one gem, then just because I get ten 30 gem items, doesn’t mean that I got 300 gems value for my efforts. If I only value those items at 1 gem then I only got 10 gems value.

Since I (and from the majority of people’s comments on the forums who call the contents junk) don’t value the items highly, then counting items as income that I would not buy and can not sell leads to a false value for a key run.

For example, they could put a doodad in the chest that does absolutely nothing at all or very little, 2 seconds of swiftness perhaps, is account bound and they price it at 1000 gems. If I get one, that does not mean my key run was worth 1000 gems to me. What they price account bound items as is somewhat irrelevant, if it’s something I would not buy.

Yup yup, I was actually not just talking about stuffs in the BL chest (which you can consider equal to what you’d get if you opened by paying for the keys so even as you stated…) but actually the extra stuff gained worth gold while doing your key farming runs.

That’s extra proffit in gold on the running side which reduces the cost of those keys effectively.

shion.2084:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

shion.2084:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DennisChrDk.9823:

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.

It’s not free either to do a key farm. Not if you compare the time to do a key run against doing a dungeon for example. Back before the first nerf (and at the time he bought his chaos skin) it took about 50 keys to get one ticket. Let’s say 15 minutes from start to finish, complete (this includes character creation and cleaning out inventory afterwards)

15 min X 50 runs (on average) = 750 minutes = 12.5 hours
So, 12.5 hours of doing key runs back then (on average) to sell one skin for 100 gold.
12.5 hours doing key runs for that 100 gold is a fair amount of time spent.

You are neglecting all the other 140 items he got from the chests…

I didn’t count it because it is the same number as from buying keys, so they are equal in that regard. It’s the amount of time (key running) and real money cost (buying keys) in relation to the sell price of the weapon skin that I wanted to discuss.

So to further your example about whether 12.5 hours makes 100 gold reasonable, you’d look at how much you could reasonably expect to make from 12.5 Gold over what you were earning during the 12.5 hours you spent key running. And I guess that subtraction factor is what Wanze is commenting on?

So if I spent my 12.5 hours running dungeons and all time spent was equal to me… then what would I have earned and that – The 140 chest stuffs found while key running is the opportunity cost to have invested in getting those keys.

Which means this result is what those keys cost you.

EDIT: My bad, Wanze was talking about the chests opened with the keys… not the map completion rewards or rewards gotten while running for the keys….
So I guess I’m making a new point then… that you have to subtract the incideental value you are likely to earn from your key running for 12.5 hours.

True. But at whose value? ANet prices (values) the majority of the items I get at far higher prices than I am willing to pay. If they price something at 30 gems but I would not pay more than one gem, then just because I get ten 30 gem items, doesn’t mean that I got 300 gems value for my efforts. If I only value those items at 1 gem then I only got 10 gems value.

Since I (and from the majority of people’s comments on the forums who call the contents junk) don’t value the items highly, then counting items as income that I would not buy and can not sell leads to a false value for a key run.

For example, they could put a doodad in the chest that does absolutely nothing at all or very little, 2 seconds of swiftness perhaps, is account bound and they price it at 1000 gems. If I get one, that does not mean my key run was worth 1000 gems to me. What they price account bound items as is somewhat irrelevant, if it’s something I would not buy.

Yup yup, I was actually not just talking about stuffs in the BL chest (which you can consider equal to what you’d get if you opened by paying for the keys so even as you stated…) but actually the extra stuff gained worth gold while doing your key farming runs.

That’s extra proffit in gold on the running side which reduces the cost of those keys effectively.

Yah. No doubt. But since what you get is RNG, the value of the items you get is RNG and changes from month to month as they update the chests, and since truthfully I have no idea what I’ve gotten, since some I’ve sold and some I’ve kept and I haven’t kept records of either then there is no way for me to bring those numbers into the debate, not realistically.

When people do dungeon runs, they only count the gold they got when they talk about how much they get. Not the number of greens they also got and salvaged, even though those add value and add up over time.

I compiled some stuff you might find interesting
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ikG1iO3WAzXcXi4d7ahv0y75XJ6r88gXXzknPRLLTl8/pubhtml
uhhhh, it’s much more crude than DennisChrDk’s, but I think it contributes. I’ll work on making it look pretty
There are several pages
Down the left side of each page is a list of all items included in each page’s results, date, total value, number of items with a listing, and average value for each day since ~8/25/12 (prices are from spidy’s historical api).
On the right is a graph, with date as x-axis and average prices for y-axis
the prices are of sell listing values
the # of items changes because some of the items included didn’t have listings on that day, or had multiple listings (spidy keeps more than 1 record a day for the last month, so I just lumped those all together into a single day)
I commented out any values that had unusually low # of items or very stray average values

my personal comments:
legendaries show a little inflation but not very much (like 2500g to 2800g)
precursors show a lot of inflation (like 250g to 600g), which roughly accounts for the inflation seen in legendaries. ooo, I’m going to do one where it’s (legendary – precursor). edit: I did the legendary-precursor, and it was anticlimactic :P basically just the legendary graph that has been slightly vertically squished.
named weapons have gone up, but I have a feeling it’s more due to specific ones being added (such as Arachnophobia) I’m not as familiar with which of these have been added since the game started, but I’ll try to exclude the ones that have been added. edit: I limited items to items introduced before nov 19 2012 (excluded 56 items) and the only thing it did was make the average price after ~oct 2014 about 20% higher. (I assume some lower-value named exotics were added at that time)
named armors have not changed.
Crafting Materials have shown inflation (from about 5s to 15s). with these, I was able to exclude materials added since the beginning of the game such as snowflakes and plastic fangs and ambrite
Crafted level 80 exotics have not changed.
Crafted level 80 berserker exotics show inflation
common, fine, gemstone, and cooking crafting materials show some inflation, but not rare materials.
inscription/insignia show inflation
not much deflation in anything I can find.

any other groups of items you want me to compile? or am I doing this wrong? :P

It only takes 50 keys if you are only talking about full tickets and you start with 0 scraps. Even with the old numbers it came out on average, over a large number of chests, about one ticket every 25. It’s just starting from 0 scraps it’s actually closer to 40.

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

shion.2084:

Wanze.8410:

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.

Was this in response to me? If so I can tell you that my complaint wasn’t that I don’t make as much gold from loot as a trader would. I was pointing out the consequences of allowing trading and farming activities on those whom would prefer no to do so.

It wasnt a response, it was a statement, otherwise I would have quoted you.

My appologies then.

You are correct… if they were to make a complaint along those lines it should be that the method you are currently able to use in order to generate wealth disparity is overly effective and unbalancing to the game and thus negatively impacting their game play experience in some of the “end” aspects of the game perhaps?

They might legitimately wish for a combative skill equivalent that could generate these kinds of returns for roughly the same effort invested. (of course then they’d have to be willing to accept riks, such as the old armour repair charges).

How does my wealth unbalance the game and negatively impact their gameplay?

Just because i might have 100 times more gold than other players doesnt mean i consume 100 times more items than the reguar player.

Once I unlocked a skin, i have little need to buy another one, for example, so I am not competing for that skin anymore, even though i could afford to buy 100 of them.

Anything i do or have achieved until now can be done by anybody, who invests as much time as me into it.

If people want to earn lots of dosh with their skills, they can set up competitions for dungeon speed runs, jumping puzzles or pvp tournaments, where everybody chips in with some gold for the winners cash purse.

Most people just have a problem with the fact that they have to invest in order to be able to to earn mad cash and there is a risk of losing it involved.

The issue becomes apparent with items of higher rarity and inelastic supply. Even though you being rich only want 1 precursor, and there are 10 others like you who are wealthy… and there are 2 precursors total…. you get the following situation I’d previously made an example of….

“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?

…. 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)

(edited 2 days ago by shion.2084)

2 days ago

"

You bring up 2 good examples but both have flaws. I would like to respond to them but i think this discussion is going fairly off topic and i actually really like the effort the OP put into collecting and showcasing his data (even though i dont neccessarily agree with his conclusions), so i dont want to further derail this thread.

I gather from your posting history that you are a fairly new player, so i guess you dont know too much about the history of the game economy or are familiar with John Smith, the game economist, or me, who has been very involved in the game economy (and active on the forums about it).

Many months ago, I would have mostly agreed with your post but since then, i learned that it includes some misconceptions, most of my issues based on personal experience and statements from JS in another thread, that i opened last year in july.

So i gonna paste your post to that thread and respond there.

Here is the link to it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/21#post5613723

I’m pretty sure luxury item value does not inflate based on the value deemed as “high cost” by the lowest common denominator. That’s usually not how economies work.

Usually it’s based on the demand and how difficult it is to actually get said item or service at said quality. A precursor being valued at 100G based on an economy with perfect wealth distribution implies that all events leading to said wealth are worthwhile to sacrifice for said item (or aren’t). In which case, the demand is either still much greater than the supply, or much less, and wealth distribution still means nothing, because ultimately only one person ends up with the precursor, and in the end, the wealth is no longer evenly distributed because one player has 200g and another has 0g and a precursor. Typically, any number of informed agents in any system will act similarly, and thus, the attitude of spending or not spending everything for a precursor will be mirrored across the board.

A zero-sum system would imply that people are only ever allowed to have 100g’s worth of value on them, which means the buyer of the precursor would end up never able to trade again, and the seller would end up with 100g still – a meaningless trade. Not to mention that even if he was allowed to store up to 200, it means almost nothing since the rest of the game would need to be balanced around spending that 100g, and if he ends up with excess in said scenario, he has nothing to spend the extra 100g on, also nullifying the purpose of the trade.

Realistically, I can’t see distribution of wealth having any impact on the price of the item, especially given the ability for players to generate currency at will. Ultimately a better comparison is treating time as the currency, and RNG kills the “fairness” and effective stability of the system when high-value items are taken into account. The health of an economy should be measured by accessibility to commodities – the reason the Big Mac Index is quite valid.

Hey OP, just some general feedback and maybe to some other people posting in this thread.
I am not sure if OPs original intent was to learn more about virtual game economy data analysis or data research/programming for it.
If the latter is the case, it might be helpful to ask a mod to move this thread to the API Development Subforum https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api.
If you are into programming spreadsheets or websites, you should definately chekc it out, its the only subforum that got a CDI (Corrabolative Development Initiative) ongoing since the start of the year and threads on the front page without a dev response are are in minority.