Guild Wars 2

Apparently something is wrong with GW2’s economy.

First, inflation. Bots and farmers have dumped a tremendous amount of gold into the economy. On one hand, they flood the TP with cheap commodities and make many items attainable for casual players. On the other hand, they pump money into the economy make commodities unprofitable for players to sell. Second, Income Gap. Early bird gets the worm. Players who exploit loopholes fast and often are rewarded. Why are these a problem for you and me? Because there will be a point where a player can no longer participate in the game’s economy and feel left out.

First, casual player will find their 5 hours on GW2 a week become farm-a-thons just so they can afford anything on the TP. Then the social players will notice a drop in guild/server activities as casuals stop logging on all together. After watching their friends no longer logging on and their guilds dying, they will leave, leaving WvW maps outmanned save a select few servers. Little by little, people abandon GW2. Among these people are some of the most steady purchasers of gems, because they have the money but not the time to spend on farming for stuff.

Attempt to inject the economy with items in order to price comes back and bites ANet in the kittenfluffers. Remember The Lost Shores? I’m sure you remember the event chest and the few fast players who hpped around multiple overflows to farm them like a legendary precursor gold rush.

Did the precursor price drop as a result of increased supply? A little bit. However, the cost of legendaries overall, and the price of EVERYTHING jumped. What happens is that with more precursors lining up the pockets of many, everyone decides it’s high time to go on a shopping spree. Remember those 25s Powerful Bloods? Bot banning were not the sole reason for their jump from the mid 10s to mid 20s. Demand happened and made many things no longer affordable for many players.

Every way to quickly farm money results in an ANet nerf. Sure it slows the inflation, but it increased the wealth gap. Suddenly, you have a handful of players who can afford everything and a whole lot of people wondering how many decades it would take to buy enough mats for a set of exotic.

Here is a solution to all this: FEE BRACKETS.

Instead of a flat 15% profit reduction, make it an adjustable curve based on the value of the item.

Cheap items at low volume has reduced fees.
e.g.: your 20 jute scraps will cost you nothing to post. The TP will deduct next to nothing when they sell.

Expensive items cost more to post.
e.g.: congratulations on selling that Dusk for 350g. Here is your share of 190g and have a good day.

Cheap items at high volumes and/or frequences has incremental fees.
e.g.: your business of selling 1000 copper ores per hour made it the TP’s business to charge you 250 copper ore’s worth of fee for posting and selling.

did you notice when all the servers were full. then suddenly, they were all back at high. i think that thats all the ‘bot farmers’ that got kicked. just an observation.

Maybe someone needs to create a website to bypass the trading post an Ebay if you will for GW2 cutting out the middle man would be great.

Well, I think we have problem in GW2 economy too. Each update leads to an increase in Gold. Compare the situation now and at the beginning of the autumn . So, with this frequency of new Events, gold rate doesn’t have time to fall to its normal level . And imagine now that you come into the game and just can not buy anything for a normal life, ’cause the rate of Gold pulls up the price of resources and other items up too fast

Baldur.5791:

did you notice when all the servers were full. then suddenly, they were all back at high. i think that thats all the ‘bot farmers’ that got kicked. just an observation.

It was right after the events, too. It seems like they banned quite a few commercial bots.

Yeah I am concerned about the fast increase on all prices. I have only one piece of exotic armor so far because crafting is hard on my wallet. I have about 4-5 gold now but that’s probably what it’s going to cost me for my next piece, while my first piece cost me about 2 gold a few weeks ago.

Ironically I thought the fractals would lead to a decrease of the price for the exotic mats (since it’s no longer the highest gear) so I decided to wait for my 2nd exotic piece… horrible, horrible mistake.

I think the negative impact of a bad economy to GW2 is overweighted here. While a well functioning economy is critical to the enjoyment of the game, the major portion of enjoyment still derives from great gameplay.

I think it’s all just from the change to level 55+ stuff having better chances at level 80 gear and FOTM. My income has gone way up from just WvW kills because now there is good 80 gear. I’ve gotten more rares from WvW since the last patch than the entire time before it.

I’m doing FOTM just to fill up on 20 slot green bags and each run almost guarantees 2-3 rares and possible crafting mats that sell for 20s+ It’s just plain easier to get money this patch.

You are right about the economy. But your solutions are terrible.

It’s an interesting debacle….

It’s sort of a combination of bots no longer farming supplies and players mostly running dungeons/fractals which adds more gold into the system than supplies (and no real desire to use that gold prior to LS for anything other than maybe buying a precursor if they got the money). Post-LS, now there’s a resurgence in demand for supplies and prices have skyrocketed cause folks (on aggregate) are sitting on tons of gold, want supplies, but there aren’t many available.

I would say remove, or lessen, the DR from the non-dungeon/fractal areas. Now that there are less bots, players have to introduce the supplies…. and if players want to spend an hour blood farming over other activities, then they should be allowed to do it. I’m assuming the bot detection system is more robust now, so the DR isn’t as necessary to the degree it currently exists…

Bruno Sardine.2907:

It’s an interesting debacle….

It’s sort of a combination of bots no longer farming supplies and players mostly running dungeons/fractals which adds more gold into the system than supplies (and no real desire to use that gold prior to LS for anything other than maybe buying a precursor if they got the money). Post-LS, now there’s a resurgence in demand for supplies and prices have skyrocketed cause folks (on aggregate) are sitting on tons of gold, want supplies, but there aren’t many available.

I would say remove, or lessen, the DR from the non-dungeon/fractal areas. Now that there are less bots, players have to introduce the supplies…. and if players want to spend an hour blood farming over other activities, then they should be allowed to do it. I’m assuming the bot detection system is more robust now, so the DR isn’t as necessary to the degree it currently exists…

The problem is that almost anything they do right now will benefit those that are the wealthiest the most. Removing DR would make a lot of items unprofitable and casuals will no longer able to make the money they do now. It would just enable farmers and botters to make more money and take money from these players through the TP and move them into gold buyers’ hand.