Guild Wars 2

Part 3. The Infamous (Mis)quote: Play How You Want.

Yes, some farms are toxic, (borderline) exploitive and harm other players’ progress. But this is not an excuse for saying “farmers are baaad”. Firstly, because this is not true: farmers are the same players as you, they just have different priorities. Secondly, because gamers are human, and human psychology has been studied enough to make wise game design decisions preventing toxicity in the first place.

• You may be playing for “fun”, spending an hour on a CoF path with your Nomad’s rifle warrior killing every single critter, and the process itself is what you seek. You might never go out of your way to get something you want, because doing boring stuff is boring, and you may just buy gems or skip on the item altogether. That is fine as long as you enjoy it (and have 4 more people who share your view in the party, that is).
• Other people grind mindlessly for months, looking for best places to maximise gold per hour, because a shiny item in the end of the journey is their definition of “fun”. They will do it until they reach their goal, even if they have to act like zombies. And this is also fine as long as they enjoy it (and do not offend other players or block their progress, that is).

When you have both types of people in an MMO, you can get a healthy economy and a healthy community, where some people spend their time and provide supply (and find it fun) and some people spend their money and provide demand (and find it fun). The Silverwastes chest farm was a good example of how a farm can be healthy (just open LFG and choose a farm/non-farm map) and fun to an extent, as well as showed us how collective farming can actually draw prices down. I think this was an interesting case, and we will learn something good from it.

Cheers, and good luck with your “mindless farming” or “casual playing”, whichever you prefer!

doesn’t change the fact that prices of those exotics are simply high because of collection stuff.
As all of them were in range of 15g max, some are for 70~150g.

And funniest thing is that amount of supply barely changed.

Everything you asid was right, but…You seem to completely ignore the other side of the coin.

If a farm is too profitable a number of things happen that are bad for the game:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

Lishtenbird.2814:

In this thread, I want to look at how farming works, and why moderate farming is actually good for all players in mid-term.

Moderate farming has always existed in GW2, and continues to do so.

the problem with your whole theory is every one in the game is a farmer. So decreasing the value of goods, due to competition, and effecient farming can also hurt casual player earnings.

Basically they increase their wealth through grind, and decrease your wealth for not grinding.

Its a more complex situation than you think.

But the way i see it, it all boils down to a reward system where you cannot target rewards.

In normal life the fact that a method of obtaining massive amounts of a specific item exists, merely means the value of farming that item will come into equilibrium with how difficult/desired that item is to obtain. Lets say someone comes up with a way to create silver out of sand super easily, the value of silver will go down only, until it reaches a price which the populace feel is worth the effort of obtaining.

But here? 90% of items drop anywhere. The best way to get anything is to kill as much as fast, and as easy as possible. and doing this lowers all markets. Its always the best answer. Therefore there isnt a value placed on different playstyles, difficulties, knowhow, or prefered enemies etc.

So the problem isnt really farmers, its just the natural progression of the system they put into place. As long as the drops structured the way they are, you will always get the easiest most effecient way to kill massive amounts of enemies with the least work possible as the main way to succeed.

Very interesting, if long, post.

My problem with farming, is that it is SO much more rewarding than playing the game how it was intended to be played.

It’s like Anet’s message is: want to play for fun? ok, have fun with the limited content we throw at you. You want to play for rewards? switch your brain off and be prepared to throw your day in the trash bin.

From a gold or gear point of view, this game only cares about how much time you throw at it, and how repetitive the things you do are. More time + more simple, repetitive stuff = more gold or gear

Just the opposite of what it should be, if you ask me.

Lishtenbird.2814:

So when you see a farmer get a Vicious Claw, you think “Dat =@#:! just got 50 silver! Inflation, exploit, ban!”, while in reality he only generated 13 copper which is the vendor price of the item! Let’s see what happens when the farmer sells this item to you:

• The farmer places a Vicious Claw (which has a vendor value of 13c) for 50s.
• A casual player who doesn’t want to mindlessly farm buys it.
• The TP subtracts the two fees (5% and 10%) for a total of 7s50c.
• 13c-7s50c = 7s37c removed from the money supply!

That is what a lot of people really don’t understand i think. The same as many think
that buying gold via gems creates new gold out of thin air while in reality its also
just gold that other players have farmed that is moved to the buyer.

Well written. +1

Tao.5096:

doesn’t change the fact that prices of those exotics are simply high because of collection stuff.

Summer has ended and it’s snowing. It doesn’t change the fact that Alice still wants to get field flowers from Bob.

Tao.5096:

And funniest thing is that amount of supply barely changed.

The funniest thing is that you call a 12 times increase (21→270) “barely changed”.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

How do you measure “wealth”? Is it directly tied to being happy in a game? What is more important – amount of gold in the bank or being able to get the thing you need after several fixed reward dungeon runs because others have farmed enough of it and brought the price down? How long will a farm live until it balances out with every other thing in the game and put everyone on equal ground?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

See this paragraph at the very top:

Lishtenbird.2814:

In this thread, I want to look at how farming works, and why moderate farming is actually good for all players in mid-term. (In long term, the desired scarce items may be the only reason for people to continue playing, and if there are no scarce prestigious items, many players may not have a reason to play at all – but these situations will require extreme farming anyway which can only happen in an abandoned game).

Indeed, this is a problem with human psychology. Developers are trying to balance it out so that people always have long-term goals but some short-term goals are still achievable. That’s why they nerf farms which make long-term goals considerably shorter. However there always are people who believe that long-terms goals are too long and are made such to squeeze extra real world money out of players who can’t invest enough time (and I also believe this is what’s happening).

Aenesthesia.1697:

It’s like Anet’s message is: want to play for fun? ok, have fun with the limited content we throw at you. You want to play for rewards? switch your brain off and be prepared to throw your day in the trash bin.

From a gold or gear point of view, this game only cares about how much time you throw at it, and how repetitive the things you do are. More time + more simple, repetitive stuff = more gold or gear

Just the opposite of what it should be, if you ask me.

In an ideal world, a game has infinite new things to do with infinite amount of cool rewards for it. In real world, developers have that much real world money to develop that much content, and have to gate rewards behind repetitive grinding and/or real world money to keep players playing until they come up with something new. That’s how all MMOs are, it’s business.

Nicely written except for this part; “unlike in real economy where money is backed by real limited amounts of gold, money is generated out of thin air.” – that is not the truth, a government can and does generate money our of thin air too its called a ‘bail out’.

If that comment didn’t stop you in your tracks and make you question your very existence this might do better its short you won’t have too read much.

This is a game (eg. not reality) why do we go to such extreme lengths to emulate our reality in which we are trying to escape?

aerial.7021:

Nicely written except for this part; “unlike in real economy where money is backed by real limited amounts of gold, money is generated out of thin air.” – that is not the truth, a government can and does generate money our of thin air too its called a ‘bail out’.

I wanted to add “generally”, or “supposed to”, or anything like it to that part, but thought no one would care anyway /sigh

Lishtenbird.2814:

aerial.7021:

Nicely written except for this part; “unlike in real economy where money is backed by real limited amounts of gold, money is generated out of thin air.” – that is not the truth, a government can and does generate money our of thin air too its called a ‘bail out’.

I wanted to add “generally”, or “supposed to”, or anything like it to that part, but thought no one would care anyway /sigh

At this point they are simply nit picking because they don’t want to admit (to you or themselves) that you have an overall valid point. People don’t like being wrong.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Summer has ended and it’s snowing. It doesn’t change the fact that Alice still wants to get field flowers from Bob.

Snow is a lie. My garden is still green.

Lishtenbird.2814:

The funniest thing is that you call a 12 times increase (21->270) “barely changed”.

and does that 12 times increase apply to all items?
In supply quantity, yes, I saw some items to have increased in vast amount, but mostly it didn’t change that much to not fit in “barely changed” .

Lishtenbird.2814:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

How do you measure “wealth”? Is it directly tied to being happy in a game? What is more important – amount of gold in the bank or being able to get the thing you need after several fixed reward dungeon runs because others have farmed enough of it and brought the price down? How long will a farm live until it balances out with every other thing in the game and put everyone on equal ground?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

See this paragraph at the very top:

Lishtenbird.2814:

In this thread, I want to look at how farming works, and why moderate farming is actually good for all players in mid-term. (In long term, the desired scarce items may be the only reason for people to continue playing, and if there are no scarce prestigious items, many players may not have a reason to play at all – but these situations will require extreme farming anyway which can only happen in an abandoned game).

Indeed, this is a problem with human psychology. Developers are trying to balance it out so that people always have long-term goals but some short-term goals are still achievable. That’s why they nerf farms which make long-term goals considerably shorter. However there always are people who believe that long-terms goals are too long and are made such to squeeze extra real world money out of players who can’t invest enough time (and I also believe this is what’s happening).

Aenesthesia.1697:

It’s like Anet’s message is: want to play for fun? ok, have fun with the limited content we throw at you. You want to play for rewards? switch your brain off and be prepared to throw your day in the trash bin.

From a gold or gear point of view, this game only cares about how much time you throw at it, and how repetitive the things you do are. More time + more simple, repetitive stuff = more gold or gear

Just the opposite of what it should be, if you ask me.

In an ideal world, a game has infinite new things to do with infinite amount of cool rewards for it. In real world, developers have that much real world money to develop that much content, and have to gate rewards behind repetitive grinding and/or real world money to keep players playing until they come up with something new. That’s how all MMOs are, it’s business.

as far as your dungeon farming theory, most players/casual players do not earn much direct gold. Dungeon runners arent really casuals. But yeah, for dungeon runners, prices going down is good. For regualr players, most of your money comes from selling crap on the TP.

As far as coming up with infinite content, and grind, hmmm id say that MMO developers should focus on two things
1) creating a very easy system for creating content/adventures
2) focus primarily on creating highly repeatable content.

Reward goals should be to incentivize the most entertaining aspects of play, and also to incentivize the type of play you want players to have.

of course, thats a lot harder than just giving some items a drop rate, and making a recipe/npc that wants 1000 of them.

farming as a playstyle is all good, but generally these games at least create different areas/methods to farm, and the more valuable the item, the more difficult it is to farm. That is often not the case here.

i remember in another game, there were so many various means of earning money, from growing plants, to crafting, to fighting 100s of weak monsters to fighting one huge super powered monster, to hunting a rare monster, and even hunting treasure chests and robbing enemies. eh well. whatevs.

at the end of the day if they had fun new content people would care less, but the reward system isnt really working to the game contents advantage very often, as has been noted with most of these nerfed farms.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

There is no split. Stop looking at gold. Gold is absolutely and completely irrelevant. Gold isn’t the end, it is a MEAN to buy stuff. What you should be looking at is how easy it is to buy things and with farms, it becomes super easy. When mat prices hit vendor price, it means that it’s super easy to buy them. So everybody wins and the poor aren’t actually poorer, because their purchase power increases too, due to the lower prices.

Lishtenbird.2814, this is a great thread. Thank you so much for posting this! It was needed.

Oh look, someone who understand basic economic theory. Good job, excellent read. +1

That was several well thought out posts. A couple of additional points.

Before collections were introduced, Bonetti’s Rapier was in the 20-25 gold range and it was collections that shot the price up to the 40-45 gold range. It was pulled up to 65 gold just before the current LS chapter dropped when supply was bought up. Someone guessed wrong or knew and tried to pump and dump just before the patch hit.

Supply on the TP isn’t always a reflection of the current rate of supply flowing into the TP. A portion is “stale” with prices well above the current trade value which is why prices sometimes spike extremely as supply is drawn down exposing these “stale” priced items. Players may assume that’s the current accepted price but in reality it’s the price nobody but the most impatient would be willing to pay. In artificial supply shortages, the price tends to return near the price before the shortage because it’s difficult to control supply.

There is an underlining assumption among players that ANet intended that everyone will achieve all goals with a reasonable amount of play. I disagree with that assumption. While collections, ascended armor and weapons, and legendary weapons require a lot of work or gold to obtain; by making it difficult and, well random, that these rewards were to make each of our characters unique, special. The problem comes when they allowed some of these items to be traded which then focused players to earn as much gold as quickly as possible to buy these items so they too will feel special.

And when everyone is special … then no one will be.

Seems like a slightly more polite version of the other complaint threads about the chest farm being fixed, which is an improvement i guess.

Still no matter what arguments you come up with to justify you deserving to farm 10 champ bags every 5 minutes with 0 effort, rational people (ie the devs) arent going to agree. If they did agree then the queensdale champ trains or any of the other easy farms in the past would not have been nerfed.

Sizer.5632:

Seems like a slightly more polite version of the other complaint threads about the chest farm being fixed, which is an improvement i guess.

Still no matter what arguments you come up with to justify you deserving to farm 10 champ bags every 5 minutes with 0 effort, rational people (ie the devs) arent going to agree. If they did agree then the queensdale champ trains or any of the other easy farms in the past would not have been nerfed.

Ah but originally they didn’t have an issue with the QD champ train. As Colin stated, people were just playing the game. When they nerfed it later, they stated it was due to the toxic nature of the champ train, and it’s impact on a starter zone. Nothing to do with how quickly people were getting rewards from it.

Behellagh.1468:

That was several well thought out posts. A couple of additional points.

Before collections were introduced, Bonetti’s Rapier was in the 20-25 gold range and it was collections that shot the price up to the 40-45 gold range. It was pulled up to 65 gold just before the current LS chapter dropped when supply was bought up. Someone guessed wrong or knew and tried to pump and dump just before the patch hit.

Supply on the TP isn’t always a reflection of the current rate of supply flowing into the TP. A portion is “stale” with prices well above the current trade value which is why prices sometimes spike extremely as supply is drawn down exposing these “stale” priced items. Players may assume that’s the current accepted price but in reality it’s the price nobody but the most impatient would be willing to pay. In artificial supply shortages, the price tends to return near the price before the shortage because it’s difficult to control supply.

When posting, I always try to remind myself to find a balance between being concise and trying to show the full picture, so there’s always room left for “yes, but…” The speculation part of trading in GW2 looks very strong – one of the examples being Chaos of Lyssa recipes. When prices begin to rise, many people decide to hop into the last wagon and hoard some stuff for speculation and drive prices further up; when prices begin to drop, many people decide to hop out while they can and hop out, unloading the hoarded stuff to minimise losses. So the only one who knows the exact amounts of dropped, sold and hoarded Rapiers is John Smith.

Sizer.5632:

Seems like a slightly more polite version of the other complaint threads about the chest farm being fixed, which is an improvement i guess.

Still no matter what arguments you come up with to justify you deserving to farm 10 champ bags every 5 minutes with 0 effort, rational people (ie the devs) arent going to agree. If they did agree then the queensdale champ trains or any of the other easy farms in the past would not have been nerfed.

As I said before, I agree that this farm needed a nerf for the game to meet its current long term goals. The point of this thread was to show the people who overreact why the farm was good for them as players. That said, as a player I would be happy if the long-term goals were shortened and new goals were added later instead of the current policy of “invest a lot or buy with real money”; yet as a person who runs a business, I understand why ANet is sticking to this policy and I find it fair enough to keep being a part of the community.

Kasima.8143:

Lishtenbird.2814, this is a great thread. Thank you so much for posting this! It was needed.

You’re welcome.

phys.7689:

i remember in another game, there were so many various means of earning money, from growing plants, to crafting, to fighting 100s of weak monsters to fighting one huge super powered monster, to hunting a rare monster, and even hunting treasure chests and robbing enemies. eh well. whatevs.

Over time, certain types of gameplay will become obsolete anyway, while other types will become most profitable. Let’s take a look at GW2: you can still earn money

• by running dungeons (and fractals in highly organised groups),
• by playing seasonal content (Halloween, Crown Pavillion…),
• by playing new zones from LS (and crafting/selling unique mats),
• by playing the semi-WvW EoTM map,
• by hunting champs in old zones (Frostgorge and Orr),
• by killing certain mobs in old zones (linen anyone?),
• by doing world bosses and temples,
• by hunting Tequatl and Wurm in highly organised groups,
• by crafting daily ascended mats (but not mid-tier stuff which became obsolete because of drops and crafting used for leveling),
• by converting skillpoints and karma from open PvE,
• by playing on the TP (flipping),
• by soloing dungeons and selling paths.

And that’s aside from more and more non-tradeable thingies which become available by playing certain content and don’t require pure gold. So isn’t GW2 actually the same as that “another game”?

You don’t have to only play dungeons if you’re casual; but if you want to go around the maps killing random moas and joining dynamic events, the best you deserve as a “casual” player actually is some poultry meat and Orr karma gear.

It’s amazing how simple it is when you think about it, but few people actually really think about it.

I’ve seen so many different posters that want things like:

• Profits to be hard capped at the exact level/time in which they play
• Exclusive (maybe even overpowered) items that only they (in their dreams) can get for beating some sort of “challenging” content and no one else can obtain
• A TP tax increase that magically makes things cost less somehow and sends agents out to TP flippers’ houses to give them spankings
• All farmers banned for exploiting
• Legendaries as drops with a chance so low that maybe 1 person (hopefully the poster right?) will get in all of GW2’s run time
• An item so powerful that it shuts down the servers that is locked behind content so hard that nobody ever gets it
• Refunds on the game because it does not pay them gold automatically
• Removal of the trading post
• Removal of legendaries
• Moving legendaries to cost gems and removal of the ingame gem currency exchange
• Banning story progressing players for “trolling” the coil farm
• Subscriptions added to the game
• New content magically released every day with old content removed behind it
• Challenge missions that reward legendaries but ban players who try and fail
• TP flipping classified as an exploit
• Account gold capped at 1,000
• Names posted on the trading post so the community can hate on them for flipping

And no, I did not make any of these up.

So good job OP. You’re thinking on the right track. However, I’m not 100% on your side, but that’s OK. The goal is to focus on preventing one playstyle (farming) from obstructing the others. Not to remove that playstyle all together. The more people know about farming, the better. Even if they don’t want to do it.

Which is why I’m not necessarily agreeing with the chest farm statement though. As it was threatening the success of the meta event because people need an extra 50 IQ points to figure out they can do both at the same time. In addition, the chest farm creates champ bags which create around 1-8s per open which does cause inflation. Again, I have no opposition to opening the chests, but it should be done along with the events rather than instead of the events.

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

shion.2084:

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

There is a post on reddit where a guy compares prices (gems, gold and $$) of precursors and found that while the gold cost has been increasing, the actual $$ value is decreasing. ($$ value is if you bought the gold with real money vs. farming)

I mean, there’s two obvious problems here.

1) You assume lower prices for farmable mats are good. Low prices are good for buyers. They are not good for sellers. Let’s consider an extreme case where exotics are all worth 50 silver. Player X gets his first exotic drop… doesn’t need it, goes to sell it… it’s nearly worthless.

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant. Neither is supply. Simple supply/demand curves are not sufficient for this scenario.

In short, if you’re going to farmsplain economics, you need to be more rigorous.

Tree.3916:

shion.2084:

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

There is a post on reddit where a guy compares prices (gems, gold and $$) of precursors and found that while the gold cost has been increasing, the actual $$ value is decreasing. ($$ value is if you bought the gold with real money vs. farming)

I’ve pointed that out as well. The exchange rate is increasing far faster than general inflation or luxury items like precursors so buying them with gem converted gold is a lot cheaper than a year or six months ago.

timmyf.1490:

I mean, there’s two obvious problems here.

1) You assume lower prices for farmable mats are good. Low prices are good for buyers. They are not good for sellers. Let’s consider an extreme case where exotics are all worth 50 silver. Player X gets his first exotic drop… doesn’t need it, goes to sell it… it’s nearly worthless.

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant. Neither is supply. Simple supply/demand curves are not sufficient for this scenario.

In short, if you’re going to farmsplain economics, you need to be more rigorous.

First I like how 50 silver is now considered worthless. I use to get excited with Unidentified Dyes dropped and I could get a whole 15 silver for each (early 2013). It was like payday when it happened. I guess you delete those 50 silver items now as they are a waste of space in your inventory.

shion.2084:

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

Farming gold (dungeons) and farming mats (open world champ farms) have two different effects on the price of materials. In an ideal world the gold supply generated from dungeons will match the mat supply generated from open world and lead to price equilibrium/stability… which is basically where we have been for several months besides this last patch lowering material prices.

Need to point out an error: money in real life is backed by a limited amount of gold and in MMO it is produced out of thin air.

Money in real life is actually created out of thin air. The gold standard is how paper money SHOULD be produced but it is in fact no produced based on the amount of gold a country/bank has in it’s coffers.

The federal reserve has the sole right by law to issue bank notes. Which it sells to the government AT interest. That interest is not backed by gold NOR paper money. The money required to pay that interest DOES NOT EXIST!

Bankers learned a long time ago that they could lend out a large % of what they have in the coffers because the chances of everyone withdrawing all their money at the same time ( a run on the bank ) were slim.

All the money they lend out is also at interest. Where does this interest come from? There is not enough money in supply to pay off this interest! Where do you think the national debt comes from? And who do you think we owe trillions of £/$/€?

Money is just keystrokes into a computer. The banks create that money out of thin air.

Just wanted to say that. The gold standard is no more I’m afraid. Credit is the new gold.

Also, just as the federal reserve control the money supply and the price fluctuation of money through interest. I’m surprised nobody else has seen that very link with Anet doing the very same.

Anet charges a few for Wp use and for selling. Reported as a sinkhole for gold so there is not too much gold in the game ( first sign of currency control ). We can class this as an interest fee. I am highly confident that those fees do not simply disappear, but in fact go to an Anet holding account, which is then used to control the prices of certain items in game ie: precursors and legendaries. The holding account will easily have enough money to buy up all currently available precursors and legendaries, shrinking supply and increasing demand ( a concept you mentioned earlier ). This forces those wanting these high end incredibly expensive items to farm gold which ultimately results in nerfing which finally results in players having to buy gems with real cash to be able to afford them.

So as you can see, anet produce real cash out of thin air, from their own currency which was also produced out of thin air.

If you think the above isn’t possible then you are not paying attention people!

I think very few people argue that farming is bad for the game and the economy. We all farm when we want stuff. We farm when we don’t want stuff. We farm when we get bored. Moderate farmers = nearly every player in the game.

Ah, but then there are the other farmers. The ones that decide that their desire to get stuff slightly faster trumps everybody else’s enjoyment of the game. The ones that come on a Silverwastes map because they get taxied in for an Annihilator that spawned thanks to organized folk, head to Amber, throw up a yellow tag, and start taxiing people into what then becomes a chest farm. Everyone else gets screwed in the process, but hey, not their problem, right?

HARDCORE FARMERS RUIN THE GAME. Not the economy, the game that contains the economy.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Money in real life is actually created out of thin air. The gold standard is how paper money SHOULD be produced but it is in fact no produced based on the amount of gold a country/bank has in it’s coffers.

Leave politics out of this.

Woah, begging your pardon but where did I discuss politics? I was responding to the OP which talked about a similar thing.

Maybe you should find out the difference between economics and politics before you tell people what to do.

But I guess you know everything ;-)

Interesting analysis.

You charts depict the demand curve as being convex to the origin. And I think some of your argument relies on this assumption too.

In a game economy, as opposed to a real economy, I’m not that this is not a safe assumption. There could easily be scenarios where excess supply causes price to drop to zero. If the amber farm had been left running, I think there was a real danger that T6 matts would have ended up being near worthless bag fillers, only good for vendoring.

Taken to the logical extreme, if oversupply causes everything to end up at below vendor prices, then it’s very bad for the game.

That’s nice, so if I want to pay real money I can buy it… Not exactly epic to “win” my legendary weapon by handing over my credit card.

Lets put it this way, I’ve been playing my way continuously and making money at a steady rate. I used to be able to afford a precursor, and now they are astronomically out of my reach. However I’m told that farming is lowering the price. Makes me glad all these farmers are around or who knows how expensive precursors would be, eh?

Consider that farming tends to put money in a small subset of the populations hands. Lets say hypothetically even that there is no money generated or created by farming. Simply the redistribution of wealth to 10% of the game playing population will drive the price of rare objects so as to be astronomically un-reachable by those who do not also fold and do the same thing.

Now imagine there was less farming, and money was more evenly distributed between the members of the population. The price of a precursor would actually be lower I’m guessing, as 1400 G or whatever would be ridiculously impossible.

While there are arguments against this, and farming doesn’t just alter wealth distributions, you can see the reasoning. Essentially if you don’t play the farm game as well, then your just left behind would be the argument of the non-farmer. And I haven’t seen anything in this post yet to concretely argue against this.

Tree.3916:

shion.2084:

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

There is a post on reddit where a guy compares prices (gems, gold and $$) of precursors and found that while the gold cost has been increasing, the actual $$ value is decreasing. ($$ value is if you bought the gold with real money vs. farming)

timmyf.1490:

1) You assume lower prices for farmable mats are good. Low prices are good for buyers. They are not good for sellers. Let’s consider an extreme case where exotics are all worth 50 silver. Player X gets his first exotic drop… doesn’t need it, goes to sell it… it’s nearly worthless.

And you sell the items to get exactly… what? Shiny gold coins to hoard and look at? Okay…

You’re missing the fact that numeric representation of money is irrelevant, the value of money is. Player X then gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 50 silver, and buys 10 T6 mats for 5 silver each. Player X now gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 5 gold, and buys 10 T6 mats for 50 silver each. However if Player X runs a dungeon then he can get 20 T6 mats, but if Player X runs a dungeon now he can get 2 T6 mats.

timmyf.1490:

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant.

I do not assume demand is constant.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Need to point out an error: money in real life is backed by a limited amount of gold and in MMO it is produced out of thin air. -snip-

See this response:

aerial.7021:

aerial.7021:

Nicely written except for this part; “unlike in real economy where money is backed by real limited amounts of gold, money is generated out of thin air.” – that is not the truth, a government can and does generate money our of thin air too its called a ‘bail out’.

I wanted to add “generally”, or “supposed to”, or anything like it to that part, but thought no one would care anyway /sigh

I’ll just go and edit this part since people like to stick to this point and do not read the entire thread.

Wanderer.3248:

There could easily be scenarios where excess supply causes price to drop to zero. If the amber farm had been left running, I think there was a real danger that T6 matts would have ended up being near worthless bag fillers, only good for vendoring.

Taken to the logical extreme, if oversupply causes everything to end up at below vendor prices, then it’s very bad for the game.

See this response:

Lishtenbird.2814:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

See this paragraph at the very top:

Lishtenbird.2814:

In this thread, I want to look at how farming works, and why moderate farming is actually good for all players in mid-term. (In long term, the desired scarce items may be the only reason for people to continue playing, and if there are no scarce prestigious items, many players may not have a reason to play at all – but these situations will require extreme farming anyway which can only happen in an abandoned game).

Indeed, this is a problem with human psychology. Developers are trying to balance it out so that people always have long-term goals but some short-term goals are still achievable. That’s why they nerf farms which make long-term goals considerably shorter. However there always are people who believe that long-terms goals are too long and are made such to squeeze extra real world money out of players who can’t invest enough time (and I also believe this is what’s happening).

shion.2084:

Consider that farming tends to put money in a small subset of the populations hands. Lets say hypothetically even that there is no money generated or created by farming. Simply the redistribution of wealth to 10% of the game playing population will drive the price of rare objects so as to be astronomically un-reachable by those who do not also fold and do the same thing.

Now imagine there was less farming, and money was more evenly distributed between the members of the population. The price of a precursor would actually be lower I’m guessing, as 1400 G or whatever would be ridiculously impossible.

While there are arguments against this, and farming doesn’t just alter wealth distributions, you can see the reasoning. Essentially if you don’t play the farm game as well, then your just left behind would be the argument of the non-farmer. And I haven’t seen anything in this post yet to concretely argue against this.

As I said before, if a player goes around the map doing dynamic events and killing random moas, then the best he deserves really is Orr karma gear and some poultry meat. You can cry “farmers! farmers!” as much as you like, but unless you’re working really hard to earn money (harder than others), you won’t get anything – that’s basic economics and common sense.

Let’s imagine everyone in the game goes around the map doing dynamic events and killing random moas; there are no champ train farmers, no speedclearers, no Teq and Wurm guilds, no lvl 50 fractal frequenters. So how many precursors will exactly be dropped and available on the market with the current drop rates? 10 in a year, I guess. Will anyone want to sell an item which is an ultra rare drop and is available to 10 people out of 3’500’000 who bought the game, when there isn’t really anything better to do with the little amounts of money you actually get in return since no one has considerable amounts anyway? Will you be able to ever get your precursor at all, even at a prohibitive price? Take your pick – earn money faster than others or never get because there’s no supply.

More farmers – more drops – more chances at rare loot created out of thin air. Less farmers – less drops – less chances to see rare loot on the market at all; and if it does appear, people will ask you to sell your soul to get it, even if you can’t afford it now. Here, take a look at this item which is not being farmed but can be.

The core “problem” is not that some people can pay a lot of money for a precursor – the core “problem” is that there is a limited supply of precursors, and you need people to provide this supply, and people who’re providing this supply are mainly active players who are accumulating money anyway. I write “problem” because I don’t think this is a problem; be smart, play actively – and you can buy your precursor in half a year or so. This is a long-term goal and a race against other players, just like any other expensive item in an active MMO. You don’t want to race – you have to wait for the item to drop for you. But once you got your precursor, take a look at T6 mats and think about how many of those you can get in comparison to the fixed reward from a single dungeon run, and how the current “farm of the month” affected it.

Kasima.8143:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

There is no split. Stop looking at gold. Gold is absolutely and completely irrelevant. Gold isn’t the end, it is a MEAN to buy stuff. What you should be looking at is how easy it is to buy things and with farms, it becomes super easy. When mat prices hit vendor price, it means that it’s super easy to buy them. So everybody wins and the poor aren’t actually poorer, because their purchase power increases too, due to the lower prices.

If you only look at the very specific items supplied by the farm sure… if you look at the economy as a whole then what happens is exactly what I said would happen.

Certain mats get cheaper, everyone can buy those now. The people farming collect large quantities of gold, the people who don’t farm do not have this gold. The people who farm now have much greater purchasing power. All items not related to the farm increase sharply in price as the wealthy compete for these items and drive the price up. People who did not participate in the farm are completely priced out of the market and are much worse off than before.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kasima.8143:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

There is no split. Stop looking at gold. Gold is absolutely and completely irrelevant. Gold isn’t the end, it is a MEAN to buy stuff. What you should be looking at is how easy it is to buy things and with farms, it becomes super easy. When mat prices hit vendor price, it means that it’s super easy to buy them. So everybody wins and the poor aren’t actually poorer, because their purchase power increases too, due to the lower prices.

If you only look at the very specific items supplied by the farm sure… if you look at the economy as a whole then what happens is exactly what I said would happen.

Certain mats get cheaper, everyone can buy those now. The people farming collect large quantities of gold, the people who don’t farm do not have this gold. The people who farm now have much greater purchasing power. All items not related to the farm increase sharply in price as the wealthy compete for these items and drive the price up. People who did not participate in the farm are completely priced out of the market and are much worse off than before.

But thats the point of the supply and demand curve. You have to look at “value in players opinion” rather than “value in gold”. If many more people farm, the materials will become more common and worth less. Gold will be worth more, in turn increasing the amount of “value” those running dungeons acquire, keeping their purchasing power up.

Right now, farmers are already pushing everyone else out of the market. Except, in this case, the commodity being farmed is pure gold, rather than items. But it has the same effect.

Well written post and very informative.

I fear however that the people that go " farmers are bad" will keep at it since it’s more about a stereotype and personal experience than it is about facts and understanding what’s actually going on.

The majority of players who " hate on farmers" are players that at one point or another have interacted negatively with them and have now labeled them based on this experience.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kasima.8143:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

There is no split. Stop looking at gold. Gold is absolutely and completely irrelevant. Gold isn’t the end, it is a MEAN to buy stuff. What you should be looking at is how easy it is to buy things and with farms, it becomes super easy. When mat prices hit vendor price, it means that it’s super easy to buy them. So everybody wins and the poor aren’t actually poorer, because their purchase power increases too, due to the lower prices.

If you only look at the very specific items supplied by the farm sure… if you look at the economy as a whole then what happens is exactly what I said would happen.

Certain mats get cheaper, everyone can buy those now. The people farming collect large quantities of gold, the people who don’t farm do not have this gold. The people who farm now have much greater purchasing power. All items not related to the farm increase sharply in price as the wealthy compete for these items and drive the price up. People who did not participate in the farm are completely priced out of the market and are much worse off than before.

You might as well be saying “people who aren’t playing are being left behind by the ones that are playing”.

It’s common sense that if you want to earn rewards in a game you have to play it. If you want your rewards fast – you have to play it effectively.

Look at it this way – if farmers are farming and selling something they’re making money but the person buying it also achieves his goal of using said material to craft whatever they were going for.
Ultimately he’s completing a goal he set for himself.

The bottom line is this : if you want to be ahead in this game or any other you have to actively participate in it, inform yourself and use your knowledge and time in order to actually get ahead.

If you don’t do these things you will be left behind and that’s pretty much the way it is. It’s the same everywhere else in the world.

Harper.4173:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Kasima.8143:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. creates a split community. The people who participate in the farm quickly gain wealth, while those who don’t are left behind. This leads to a rich get richer, poor get poorer scenario where the community is fractured.

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

There is no split. Stop looking at gold. Gold is absolutely and completely irrelevant. Gold isn’t the end, it is a MEAN to buy stuff. What you should be looking at is how easy it is to buy things and with farms, it becomes super easy. When mat prices hit vendor price, it means that it’s super easy to buy them. So everybody wins and the poor aren’t actually poorer, because their purchase power increases too, due to the lower prices.

If you only look at the very specific items supplied by the farm sure… if you look at the economy as a whole then what happens is exactly what I said would happen.

Certain mats get cheaper, everyone can buy those now. The people farming collect large quantities of gold, the people who don’t farm do not have this gold. The people who farm now have much greater purchasing power. All items not related to the farm increase sharply in price as the wealthy compete for these items and drive the price up. People who did not participate in the farm are completely priced out of the market and are much worse off than before.

You might as well be saying “people who aren’t playing are being left behind by the ones that are playing”.

It’s common sense that if you want to earn rewards in a game you have to play it. If you want your rewards fast – you have to play it effectively.

Look at it this way – if farmers are farming and selling something they’re making money but the person buying it also achieves his goal of using said material to craft whatever they were going for.
Ultimately he’s completing a goal he set for himself.

The bottom line is this : if you want to be ahead in this game or any other you have to actively participate in it, inform yourself and use your knowledge and time in order to actually get ahead.

If you don’t do these things you will be left behind and that’s pretty much the way it is. It’s the same everywhere else in the world.

I completely agree with you, however if you look around at these forums you will find that it is not a popular opinion. People are constantly asking for precursors to be artificially reduced in price, farmers to be banned, even straight up saying that gold should be taken from players and given to poorer players.

Unfortunately the number of poor people who want stuff for free greatly outnumber the people willing to work and earn the items, and it seems people willing to work for their stuff are fighting a losing battle.

Lishtenbird.2814:

You’re missing the fact that numeric representation of money is irrelevant, the value of money is. Player X then gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 50 silver, and buys 10 T6 mats for 5 silver each. Player X now gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 5 gold, and buys 10 T6 mats for 50 silver each. However if Player X runs a dungeon then he can get 20 T6 mats, but if Player X runs a dungeon now he can get 2 T6 mats.

Right. The correct way to look at this is by comparing to fixed price items such as dungeon runs. You don’t think an economy in which a single dungeon path is worth 20 T6 mats is horrifically broken?

My point is that an exotic drop could go from 5-paths-of-value down to 1/2-path-of-value. I don’t see why you would immediately assume it’s a good thing.

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant.

I do not assume demand is constant.

“After patch, we still have 100 players who need 1 charged lodestone per week each (demand is constant), which makes 100 lodestones per week – nothing changed.”

Then I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Woah, begging your pardon but where did I discuss politics? I was responding to the OP which talked about a similar thing.

Maybe you should find out the difference between economics and politics before you tell people what to do.

But I guess you know everything ;-)

No one who understands both economics AND politics could fail to see exactly where you stand on the issue of monetary policy. You discussed a politically charged economic issue and did so very one-sided and not at all taking care to come off objectively. So forgive us for noticing, as we forgive you for being unable to hide your biases.

Your supply and demand explanation is on target, but a couple of points:

1) In the real world money is generally not backed by a supply of gold. Thank heavens for that.

2) If the supply of lodestones is cut in half in your example it is highly unlikely that the first 50 will sell at the old price of 2g each. The average price will jump almost immediately.

timmyf.1490:

Lishtenbird.2814:

You’re missing the fact that numeric representation of money is irrelevant, the value of money is. Player X then gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 50 silver, and buys 10 T6 mats for 5 silver each. Player X now gets his first exotic drop, sells it for 5 gold, and buys 10 T6 mats for 50 silver each. However if Player X runs a dungeon then he can get 20 T6 mats, but if Player X runs a dungeon now he can get 2 T6 mats.

Right. The correct way to look at this is by comparing to fixed price items such as dungeon runs. You don’t think an economy in which a single dungeon path is worth 20 T6 mats is horrifically broken?

My point is that an exotic drop could go from 5-paths-of-value down to 1/2-path-of-value. I don’t see why you would immediately assume it’s a good thing.

Firstly, how many T6 mats you need for an item in this scenario? 10 per one or some 300×8=2400, like silk for ascended? Is T6 top tier, or is there T7, T8, T9? How important is the item for general gameplay, is it a basic requirement similar to current exotics or some +100 agony for a new zone? If you’re going into fictional economy, you should show the whole picture, or the conclusions are far-fetched.

Secondly, I’ll quote this one more time:

Lishtenbird.2814:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. Mats become too common, continually falling in price until they eventually hit vendor price. This may seem like a good thing until you realize that the only thing that keeps most people playing the game is having long term goals. If they can suddenly buy every awesome skin they want in one day the game quickly becomes stale and boring and many players leave. This was a major problem in the beginning of the game and is why ascended gear was introduced. Devaluing ascended gear like this farm did is going to end up with a lot of players quitting and they may need to add in a new gear tier to bring them back.

See this paragraph at the very top:

Lishtenbird.2814:

In this thread, I want to look at how farming works, and why moderate farming is actually good for all players in mid-term. (In long term, the desired scarce items may be the only reason for people to continue playing, and if there are no scarce prestigious items, many players may not have a reason to play at all – but these situations will require extreme farming anyway which can only happen in an abandoned game).

Indeed, this is a problem with human psychology. Developers are trying to balance it out so that people always have long-term goals but some short-term goals are still achievable. That’s why they nerf farms which make long-term goals considerably shorter. However there always are people who believe that long-terms goals are too long and are made such to squeeze extra real world money out of players who can’t invest enough time (and I also believe this is what’s happening).

timmyf.1490:

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant.

I do not assume demand is constant.

“After patch, we still have 100 players who need 1 charged lodestone per week each (demand is constant), which makes 100 lodestones per week – nothing changed.”

Then I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Is there the same amount of players entering and leaving the game? Is there the same amount of players farming? Is there the same amount of players using the item? Are there new uses for the same item? Are the drop tables the same? Are there news of the farm being nerfed, uses added etc.? Under ideal circumstances in controlled environment, which are used in examples, demand is constant. When external factors appear, demand will go up or down based on the popularity of the item, player activity, rumours/news and speculators etc. Generally speaking, demand will be fairly constant in short term but can change over time.

Aside from that, demand is a curve. Demand can be constant, specific figures can be different if the supply side changes. Demand for Bonetti’s Rapier can be constant while it is bought in single numbers at 50g but in tens at 5g.

Ashen.2907:

1) In the real world money is generally not backed by a supply of gold. Thank heavens for that.

I already put a disclaimer but people are still nitpicking…

Ashen.2907:

2) If the supply of lodestones is cut in half in your example it is highly unlikely that the first 50 will sell at the old price of 2g each. The average price will jump almost immediately.

It depends on the information involved. Was the nerf in the patch notes, how fast people logged in, how many of them decided to relist items and lose money on it and so on. It doesn’t really matter in the end.

My assumption is that T6 mat requirements would remain the same since you didn’t state in your original post that T7, T8, and T9 mats would be introduced.

You’re of course welcome to your own opinion on farming, but it’s far less obviously beneficial to the entire playerbase than you claim. Farming has a purpose, an IMPORTANT purpose, but there’s still the matter of degree to worry about. A 100 Champ Bag/Hour farm is hard to justify, but I give you credit for trying.

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

2) You assume demand is constant. Demand is NOT constant.

I do not assume demand is constant.

“After patch, we still have 100 players who need 1 charged lodestone per week each (demand is constant), which makes 100 lodestones per week – nothing changed.”

Then I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.

Is there the same amount of players entering and leaving the game? Is there the same amount of players farming? Is there the same amount of players using the item? Are there new uses for the same item? Are the drop tables the same? Are there news of the farm being nerfed, uses added etc.? Under ideal circumstances in controlled environment, which are used in examples, demand is constant. When external factors appear, demand will go up or down based on the popularity of the item, player activity, rumours/news and speculators etc. Generally speaking, demand will be fairly constant in short term but can change over time.

Aside from that, demand is a curve. Demand can be constant, specific figures can be different if the supply side changes. Demand for Bonetti’s Rapier can be constant while it is bought in single numbers at 50g but in tens at 5g.

You assumed perfectly inelastic demand for what is essentially a luxury item. The way you presented it, demand was not a curve, as you claim it to be, but a vertical line ( 100 bought @ 2g, 100 bought @ 4g, two points define a line). This is severely flawed.