Guild Wars 2

Gold seems to be a big problem in gw2, it’s just a nuisance IMO. It causes so many problems, inflation, rewards imbalance, farming of content which did not have the intent of being farmed, pvp/pve imbalance as pvp doesn’t give any gold etc etc. If you remove gold than all these problems will be gone, you don’t even have to hire an economist anymore. Just let people set up flea markets to trade their items with other people for whatever other items they think it’s worth. That way people will play your content not just for some virtual currency but for the reward that actually matters. IMO just remove gold, I don’t really need to be slaving away in a game to earn virtual currency when I’m already doing that out of game to earn real currency. This way it’ll add more community bonding to the community as well as people trade and negotiate instead of just putting a price tag on their items.

We would just start using potatoes as new currency and after a month 1% of players would control most of the potatoes and the rest would whine about that.

If you earn enough real currency you can buy virtually currency by buying gems and selling them. But that is part of the point. This game is at least partially funded by people selling gems to get gold.

How do you recommend Anet replace that lost profit, OP?

If you think about it it also makes sense to remove gold from all rewards. I mean take dungeons for example or fractals, we’re supposed to be heroes fighting the bad guy and after defeating the bad guy someone just mysteriously gives us a set number of gold on a daily basis. Isn’t it weird? Isn’t that why you are merging dungeon rewards because you think they people are too caught up in dungeons as a farm for gold instead of playing it as an interesting piece of content in your game? If you mysteriously give us as some gold at the end of the content, players will inevitably only do the content because of that mysterious gold which happens to be the best reward for their time. If you add more gold to fractal rewards it will eventually turn out the same as dungeons where people are just looking to farm it for gold. It’s like a cycle, you can’t combat gold farm with another gold farm.

Maybe they could add more skins to the tp? Or maybe add tradable skins to the tp? That way non real money spenders can buy exclusive tp skins from money spenders. And in return money spenders get to have what they want in game. Note only skins should be tradable so as not to upset the balance of the game. Now instead of buying gems to convert into gold, players will be buying gems to buy skins to trade with other players don’t the items they want. See? It’s a win win

Well at least if people started farming potatoes it would make sense, I mean why do somethings in the game drop gold for no apparent reason? It just doesn’t make sense for gold the main reward for most of the content in gw2. Gold shouldn’t be the main focus of what players want.

Basically ectos in GW1.

Same difference. Same result. There’s too many mats to just take gold out of the equation as a mat will just fill it’s place and you forget that like it or not work simulation is a large part of these type of games.

Take gold out of the game and the market is controlled and dictated purely by the players. No thanks.

I get your buzz though OP. CoH for example was a game where currency was largely irrelevant early on in it’s life cycle due to the ease of farming. People would just give it away and a veteran set me up on my first day of play with enough cash to last me years just for having a friendly chat. On the first day I played currency became a non-issue and this was normal.

I was gob-smacked and it still brings a smile to my face but in the majority of games like this it just doesn’t work. Capitalism is the most embraced financial model as it keeps players playing, and that’s what most game makers want.

It also creates a level playing field.

Eliminating gold would just shift focus from garnering reward for doing pretty much anything to reward for farming the mat that everyone has replaced gold with.

Vayne.8563:

If you earn enough real currency you can buy virtually currency by buying gems and selling them. But that is part of the point. This game is at least partially funded by people selling gems to get gold.

How do you recommend Anet replace that lost profit, OP?

As I just gave them more money their profit isn’t my concern they’re overboard on money grabbing

The reason money even exists is convenience. Let’s say you have 10x and want to buy 2y and 3z. 1y is worth 0.4x, and 1z is worth 0.3×. Now you have the problem if you trade 1x to 2y you make a loss of 0.2×. So you would have to trade 2x for 5y to make no loss. But now you have 1x less and 3y more than you actually wanted.
Money solves this problem and makes these exchanges convenient. The leftover money can be spent on other things. In this example z. Having no money gets more and more complicated and you need more and more trades if you want differently valued stuff. There’s also the convenience to find trading partners, as some only might want to trade u for v for example, but you want to trade u for w.

I’m not sure that would solve anything. Remove gold and something else will take its place as a currency. There’ll always be something people use to trade, whether that be gold or ectos or potatoes.

Somebody’s grumpy.

Gold isn’t a problem. New gold, gold directly from rewards are a problem. If too much is being generated than is being removed it’s a problem for every player since it contributes to the classic definition of inflation, too much money chasing too few goods.

Activities like the silverwastes drop most of it rewards as items and materials that can be sold on the TP for gold. Gold earned this way is not new gold, it’s gold from another player and part of that is destroyed by the TP in fees and taxes.

I get what you’re going for here, Zach. Why it won’t happen is simple: Buying gems to sell for gold is easily the #1 reason people buy gems in the first place.

If Anet were to cut their own throat like that, they’d never recover financially because there’s not even a close #2 to grow as a profit leader in the absence of #1. (It would probably be lockbox keys but that’s a guess.) Even if there were, your replacement suggestions – more skins, more items – is extremely work-intensive. 3D modeling of new items is not a trivial task. It requires manpower.

Selling gold does not require that much manpower.

Finally, with a legal option to purchase gold, we don’t have to deal NEARLY as much with scammers and spammers as other games do. That alone is worth its weight in… well, you get the idea.

TL;DR: The concept of currency, while thoroughly antiquated, simply isn’t going anywhere for economic reasons. -Sid

Another is creation of trash items which can only be sold, which makes them basically nothing but proxies. The use of proxies would make sense if the money going around would be finite (a merchant having only x amount of money), thus this would just exchange money. But as money in this game is infinite (a merchant can purchase every bit of kitten you have) gold is generated at all times, and there are few things merchants sell that are worth buying, thus only removing a little gold. The biggest gold sink is in the TP, but still it’s an arbitrary number which has no correlation to gold generated.

Also don’t forget that gold from selling gems isn’t created from nothing, it came from players buying gems with gold. So while it’s true that players can buy gold via gems, it’s not “new” gold and by selling gems for gold, it keeps the exchange rate from going into orbit.

Gems to gold is basically the only system that’s sufficiently regulated based on a finite amount (which is good). Every other system in the game is basically totally random and currently favors inflation (which is bad).

Zach.2618:

Well at least if people started farming potatoes it would make sense, I mean why do somethings in the game drop gold for no apparent reason? It just doesn’t make sense for gold the main reward for most of the content in gw2. Gold shouldn’t be the main focus of what players want.

But a player-run economy would happen either way.

The only way to undermine that would be to forbid all trading of any form, flat out. That’d work. Gold would lose most of its value, too. In a way that’s what you’re asking for, but it’d be a pretty big change to how things are now. For example, getting any specific color, skin or item would be virtually impossible since you had to farm it yourself.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

If you earn enough real currency you can buy virtually currency by buying gems and selling them. But that is part of the point. This game is at least partially funded by people selling gems to get gold.

How do you recommend Anet replace that lost profit, OP?

As I just gave them more money their profit isn’t my concern they’re overboard on money grabbing

Since I highly doubt you have had a look into arenanets books, you are in no position to make such a claim. I doubt you’ve even made the effort to read up on NCSoft last financial report which could at least shed some light on how well GW2 is doing economically.

On topic, removal of a currency does not remove the trade it enables. While a common currency allows for easier transfer of goods and services, it is not the reason for the exchange.

Simply put, remove the gold and alternative means of trading currency will show up. In this case people would simply start trading in ectos (which are ironically perfect for this since arenanet tries to keep their value static as far as possible – perfect). This has occured in multiple games before: Diablo 2, GW1, etc.

No offense to OP, but I hope you live in this century. Our society had stopped using that trading method a long time ago. Without currency, it was only chaotic lol

Its not the gold that is the problem but the perceived lack of it for some players, who think they should be compensated for playing a video game.

OP, there’s a reason why Arenanet doesn’t want the game to move towards the direction of having players trade items with one another. They have emphasized it in the past a few times already and why they recommend everyone use the trading post. Players can easily scam and manipulate prices (whatever the currency may be), if they traded with others directly. It’s also more inconvenient. The trading post has always been a pleasant experience since I’ve played at launch and I’m glad I don’t have to go through the troublesome process of trying to buy something directly from another player. That existed in earlier MMOs and was a nightmare when I played them back then.

I think we should use karma instead. Gold is gained by killing harmless, innocent creatures and by desecrating the landscape by chopping down trees, ripping ore out of the sobbing breast of our Mother Tyria and viciously slicing up plants that were harmlessly basking in the sun’s rays. Gold is a morally corrupt currency and every transaction with it is with hands dripping red with the blood of those murdered innocents.

Karma however is the currency of good deeds. It’s given to you by the grateful people of Tyria for defending them against the evils from the world and for entertaining their cows by dancing in front of them. Karma should be the currency that any non corrupt person would use for all transactions.

fireflyry.7023:

Capitalism is the most embraced financial model as it keeps players playing, and that’s what most game makers want.

It also creates a level playing field.

Hardly. Capitalism in no way shape or form guarantees a level playing field. The first rule of capitalism is they who have the gold make the rules, and history is replete with examples of exactly how “unlevel” the playing field can be made.

Now apply that to game economies where you have everything in an infinite supply. Obviously you can’t have that be the case as you’d rapidly wind up with Zimbabwe like inflation and the whole game economy collapses. So instead you create artificial scarcity. Certain things are harder to get or harder to make, rewards are scaled so that you don’t get millions of gold in matter of minutes, time gated rewards, etc. But since the economy is essentially unregulated you can still manipulate the market. And clearly, people do.

Eliminating gold would just shift focus from garnering reward for doing pretty much anything to reward for farming the mat that everyone has replaced gold with.

This I agree with. If you take out gold, the problem would simply arise in another medium of exchange. Worse, a barter system would be open to all kinds of potential exploitation.

Looks like some watch Democratic debate yday

Everyone starts the game with 0 gold, everyone has the same tools, in-game time and drop rates. It is the ultimate game of fairness. Your gold and success is strictly a measurement of your hard work and intelligence, nothing else.

If you find yourself with not enough gold then you need to take the time to think about why that is and why other people who started the game exactly the same as you have so much more gold.

The entire game is designed so that people spend real money on the gem store. That´s the only reason why gold is so hard to come by and there is no real reward for doing anything in the game.

Removing gold would only work if you had to pay a monthly fee.

I find this idea completely ridiculous. Granted I am part of those who can make gold fairly easily, but still, why remove gold? by doing that people would just start using lodestones/ectos/whatever to trade for things.

To be honest, you just seem like someone who is angry that you can’t figure out how to make easy gold in-game. If you want a game where there are no virtual currencies, dont play RPGs, and go play shooters, there it’s all about skill and you can bond with people of similar skill level.

Xyrus.6037:

fireflyry.7023:

Eliminating gold would just shift focus from garnering reward for doing pretty much anything to reward for farming the mat that everyone has replaced gold with.

This I agree with. If you take out gold, the problem would simply arise in another medium of exchange. Worse, a barter system would be open to all kinds of potential exploitation.

I concur I played a game without a currency system, and instead had a barter system where you traded mats. It was near impossible to determine the “value” on any particular material. Thus, when looking for another type of material I needed to upgrade my armor, I had to find someone who had what I needed, and then come to a trade agreement. But with no way to tell if said items were rare, or “valuable” one could easily exploit people by claiming desired material was rare, and worth much more then initially offered. This happened to me, and shortly after I traded a bunch of stuff, I ended up getting multiple of what I needed as common drops. Plus it was very time consuming and boring waiting around trying to find someone who had what I needed.

No don’t remove gold. Keep it as it is.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

If you earn enough real currency you can buy virtually currency by buying gems and selling them. But that is part of the point. This game is at least partially funded by people selling gems to get gold.

How do you recommend Anet replace that lost profit, OP?

As I just gave them more money their profit isn’t my concern they’re overboard on money grabbing

Getting money for creating a product isn’t money grabbing. However, if you don’t like the product you shouldn’t buy it. You have only yourself to blame if you do.

Removing gold doesn’t solve any of the issues raised by the OP. It will, however, add an entirely new set of issues.

Gold just makes everything have a fixed value regardless or personal value because of the trading post which is obviously driven my the community. For example if gold didn’t exist player A could trade a spark precursor for maybe the minstrel. It’s all up to person how much something is worth to him if there was no gold. But because of gold we are all lead to follow every single item with a fixed value just because of the tp. It’s just an interesting thought, I’ve played games with no gold and only trading between players and it is fun, negotiating with other players on their goods. The problem of there being excess mats is not the fault of the game having no gold but instead of the game design itself which generates an excessive amount of mats. It’s like mat inflation, you need 250 mats to craft a legendary if they would make just maybe a T7 mat you would only need 1. And than reduce the T6 drop rate, and reduce the amount of T6 mats required to craft other stuff. It’s possible to not have so many mats but I guess the game is designed to make you feel as if you have a ton of loot. Would you rather have a ton of loot that has very Low value or just a few loot with higher value. Some mats in the game are just inflated too much, that’s why I think they are going to implement some changes to salvaging drop rates.

But at the end of the day I’m not serious guys, it’s just an interesting thought on what gw2 would be if it revolved around trade.

There should be a sticky for these threads, as they pop up all the time.

“I’m not rich, therefore no-one else should be.”

OP. I will take care of all your problems with gold. Send all your gold to this account and you’ll be happy forever and after that you can start spamming trade messages in chat to trade your loot. Be sure to refuse to sell, only trade will be allowed.

Zach.2618:

Gold just makes everything have a fixed value regardless or personal value because of the trading post which is obviously driven my the community. For example if gold didn’t exist player A could trade a spark precursor for maybe the minstrel.

Except that player A would either read up on how much value his spark precursor has and know not to trade for the minstrel or he’d come to the forums later complaining that he made a very disadvantageous trade.

The only thing this open the game up to, is people taking advantage of the less informed. I would LOVE this, but since I know limits to my greed I’ll just say: terrible idea.

Zach.2618:

It’s all up to person how much something is worth to him if there was no gold.

Bullkitten. If there is no gold, that spark precursor will be worth 300 ectos. Even before currency was created, trades were not 1for1. No one traded a 1 goat for 1 chicken. You are clueless as to what you are talking about.

Zach.2618:

It’s just an interesting thought, I’ve played games with no gold and only trading between players and it is fun, negotiating with other players on their goods.

Please name one where this worked so we can read up and inform ourselves.

Zach.2618:

The problem of there being excess mats is not the fault of the game having no gold but instead of the game design itself which generates an excessive amount of mats. It’s like mat inflation, you need 250 mats to craft a legendary if they would make just maybe a T7 mat you would only need 1. And than reduce the T6 drop rate, and reduce the amount of T6 mats required to craft other stuff.

So now we want super rare mats on top of rare precursors? Sure, sounds stellar. /sarcasm off

The amount of materials needed is of no consequence if it’s in a healthy relationship to it’s drop rate. See Bloodstone Dust, way more than anyone could ever need.

Zach.2618:

Some mats in the game are just inflated too much, that’s why I think they are going to implement some changes to salvaging drop rates.

At the current price spikes and panic hitting the trading post, sure. Some items may be under- or overvalued. Longterm? No.

Zach.2618:

But at the end of the day I’m not serious guys, it’s just an interesting thought on what gw2 would be if it revolved around trade.

An intersting thought is one that actually makes sense and would solve problems, not one that creates new ones or throws an entire economy out the window.