Guild Wars 2

Hi All,

Okay – it has been a few months since HoT was released and the economy is stable – according to John Smith (AKA: GW2 Guru Economist from the Matrix)…

So a quick summary:
Liquid Gold income has been reduced from many sources including Dungeons (which may get raised). It is now harder to earn liquid gold – it is becoming a rarer commodity.

Gems -> Gold has been slowly going down (on average)- more $ required for liquid gold [small decrease]

Materials have increased in cost across many areas – due to a demand created for guild halls, legendary items which will taper off in the next year or so.

Potions have reached rock bottom as there is very few people running dungeons (due to gold nerfs). They become unprofitable to run in many cases on a gold/HR vs skill required ratio.

Prices should be falling of many goods – or at least stabilising (see – Precursors: many have fallen in value and will continue to do so: eg Zap which can be crafted for about 460g via MF – see www.gw2profits.com). The increase of exotic drops from raids and 300% MF across more players due to the Chinese New Year celebrations.

We are moving more toward a material barter system X worth Y compared to Z.
Materials are now worth more kitten many items are required for new legendarys moving forward. Materials farmed from dungeons such as dust, chocolate, butter – have all reduced in supply raising prices. There has been increased demand for T6 refined time gated materials: Elonion Leather, Damask, Spirit wood – which is now being supplied by Raids – prices will slowly fall of these as these items were stable for last few months.

It has become harder for players to earn gold recently unless they are swapping real $ for gold (hence gem rates slowly falling).

Scribing costs will be reduced / reworked in the near future .

Black lion skins are slowly reducing in cost – which is a good thing !

If the removal of liquid gold in the dungeons have been proven to not have that large effect on the economy as the rewards may be increased moving forward (AMA Reddit thread)- do you think we will return to an inflation on many items as players return to this format?

Generally it has been a success in maintaining prices of items within reasonable thresholds over the long term – John has been a genius – a true economic architect with carefully crafted price swings – moving gold into hands of a small % vs the majority.

This could be a major shake up to the economy moving forward – what do you think will happen if the (a) scribing costs reduce (b) increased liquid gold is put back into dungeons? © we have had much success reducing the amount of gold in the game?

Any thoughts where we might be heading next?

An analysis of a fake economy is always interesting to read.

“do you think we will return to an inflation on many items as players return to this format?”

Yes. Unfortunately. Liquid Gold is always toxic to an economy because of the lack of scarcity.

Dungeon gold may have been nerfed but gold from doing events was increased. The main difference it’s not big chunks going to people disappearing into dungeon instances but smaller chunks going to people staying out in the world. The gold income is more spread out, going to everyone not just to dungeoneers. The net result may have been a zero change in liquid gold flowing into the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shiny_Bauble

Fractal encryptions seem to be a good source of ‘liquid gold’ Its an easy 10 gold/day just for the dailies, which consume almost no time at all. Might not seem much, but I guess we have more players doing fractal dailies than we had people doing any dungeon but cof.

You can say dungeons are unrewarding in your opinion but not unprofitable unless you can show me the gold you are spending to just do them isn’t equal to the amount you can get from them, including selling off all the loot you don’t care of.

Now looking at raising the liquid gold amount in dungeons is probably due to two things, one a decrease in the active players who only showed up for dungeons; and two, because gold is draining faster than it’s being replenished by the active players because of GH and items that require both coin and non-tradable event tokens.

Behellagh.1468:

You can say dungeons are unrewarding in your opinion but not unprofitable unless you can show me the gold you are spending to just do them isn’t equal to the amount you can get from them, including selling off all the loot you don’t care of.

Now looking at raising the liquid gold amount in dungeons is probably due to two things, one a decrease in the active players who only showed up for dungeons; and two, because gold is draining faster than it’s being replenished by the active players because of GH and items that require both coin and non-tradable event tokens.

the way people figure dungeons as unprofitable is by efficiency
if i could earn x amount of gold doing dungeons for an hour but can earn x + 5g for doing fractals for an hour then by spending that hour on dungeons i would be ‘losing’ that 5g

Goatjugsoup.8637:

the way people figure dungeons as unprofitable is by efficiency
if i could earn x amount of gold doing dungeons for an hour but can earn x + 5g for doing fractals for an hour then by spending that hour on dungeons i would be ‘losing’ that 5g

And in my book a GAME should never even be about such decisions (unless it was always supposed to be an economy simulation). It should be about enjoyment, relaxation, heck even challenge if you want, but not about profit maximization. We have that already in our crappy real-world economy. But the way this game is set up turns it to be like that, since so many things of value are buyable + there is a gem/gold conversion.

I have long since given up on maximizing my profit while playing and I guess that is the reason why I still play. I don’t care for the expensive stuff anymore. I am glad the elite spec weapon collections where introduced, most of that stuff you have to acquire by playing the game without regards to profits. Good stuff, that.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

Behellagh.1468:

You can say dungeons are unrewarding in your opinion but not unprofitable unless you can show me the gold you are spending to just do them isn’t equal to the amount you can get from them, including selling off all the loot you don’t care of.

Now looking at raising the liquid gold amount in dungeons is probably due to two things, one a decrease in the active players who only showed up for dungeons; and two, because gold is draining faster than it’s being replenished by the active players because of GH and items that require both coin and non-tradable event tokens.

the way people figure dungeons as unprofitable is by efficiency
if i could earn x amount of gold doing dungeons for an hour but can earn x + 5g for doing fractals for an hour then by spending that hour on dungeons i would be ‘losing’ that 5g

That’s not profitability, that’s efficiency. Two different concepts. It’s not unprofitable, it’s inefficient compared to other activities or compared to the way it was before.

Current dungeon rewards aren’t bad, just not absurdly heads and tails above just about everything else in game in terms of gold generation including drops.

The gem:gold ratio hasn’t changed much in 2 years. It goes up to 20-22g:100 gems when there’s stuff that everyone wants; it drops down to 18g or less when there isn’t. The previous two Wintersdays it dropped as low as 14g for brief periods (probably due to gifted gem cards). WD 2015 was different — ANet released stuff that people wanted (at discounts), which kept the ratio from going much below 16g/100.

tl;dr the gold:gem ratio isn’t a good indicator or even proxy for what’s happening in the TP economy. It’s a good indicator of RL holidays and ANet gem shop offers.

TPMN.1483:

Hi All,

Prices should be falling of many goods – or at least stabilising (see – Precursors: many have fallen in value and will continue to do so: eg Zap which can be crafted for about 460g via MF – see www.gw2profits.com). The increase of exotic drops from raids and 300% MF across more players due to the Chinese New Year celebrations.

The 460g Zap is only theoretical. In practice you are not able to buy those swords for 1-1.2g, because others outbid you in <10 minutes 24/7. It is possible that you will buy a few, but do not expect hundreds of them, and also the number of items is limited (low volume). It is easier to simply flip them, you will get the same profit.

TPMN.1483:

Hi All,

Okay – it has been a few months since HoT was released and the economy is stable – according to John Smith (AKA: GW2 Guru Economist from the Matrix)…

So a quick summary:
Liquid Gold income has been reduced from many sources including Dungeons (which may get raised). It is now harder to earn liquid gold – it is becoming a rarer commodity.

Gems -> Gold has been slowly going down (on average)- more $ required for liquid gold [small decrease]

Materials have increased in cost across many areas – due to a demand created for guild halls, legendary items which will taper off in the next year or so.

Potions have reached rock bottom as there is very few people running dungeons (due to gold nerfs). They become unprofitable to run in many cases on a gold/HR vs skill required ratio.

Prices should be falling of many goods – or at least stabilising (see – Precursors: many have fallen in value and will continue to do so: eg Zap which can be crafted for about 460g via MF – see www.gw2profits.com). The increase of exotic drops from raids and 300% MF across more players due to the Chinese New Year celebrations.

We are moving more toward a material barter system X worth Y compared to Z.
Materials are now worth more kitten many items are required for new legendarys moving forward. Materials farmed from dungeons such as dust, chocolate, butter – have all reduced in supply raising prices. There has been increased demand for T6 refined time gated materials: Elonion Leather, Damask, Spirit wood – which is now being supplied by Raids – prices will slowly fall of these as these items were stable for last few months.

It has become harder for players to earn gold recently unless they are swapping real $ for gold (hence gem rates slowly falling).

Scribing costs will be reduced / reworked in the near future .

Black lion skins are slowly reducing in cost – which is a good thing !

If the removal of liquid gold in the dungeons have been proven to not have that large effect on the economy as the rewards may be increased moving forward (AMA Reddit thread)- do you think we will return to an inflation on many items as players return to this format?

Generally it has been a success in maintaining prices of items within reasonable thresholds over the long term – John has been a genius – a true economic architect with carefully crafted price swings – moving gold into hands of a small % vs the majority.

This could be a major shake up to the economy moving forward – what do you think will happen if the (a) scribing costs reduce (b) increased liquid gold is put back into dungeons? © we have had much success reducing the amount of gold in the game?

Any thoughts where we might be heading next?

What are the other many sources that got liquid gold rewards nerfed, except dungeons?
And just because arguably the biggest gold faucet got nerfed doesnt mean that there is less gold coming in across the whole player base. It would be interesting to see, if the former dungeon rewards before HoT or the new shiny baubles pump in more gold into the economy.

I cant deny that more people seemed to have exchanged gems for gold but prior to HoT, plenty of people had a good stash of gems from the higher priced pre purchase deals. Those that purchased these bundles might have mostly been veterans, who already have plenty of account upgrades (bags, bank slots, permanent gizmos) unlocked, so they are more prone to spend their gems on gold rather than something else in the gem store.

The reason why it might seem like there is less gold in the economy and prices for many items are going up is because we are simply destroying it at a faster pace than before. In the 6-9 months before HoT, not much new content came out and people didnt consume as much goods and gold but since then, most players started consuming again, for guild halls, scribing, new legendary and ascended gear.
So i think the only macroeconomic change that has happened is that we were used to earn more mats and gold than we spent before HoT and now we spent more than we earn. I think the changes to the supply side didnt have as much of an impact as the changes to the demand side.

I supply and hardly consume materials. Combining my experience with that reported by others, the main thing that happened with liquid gold is that the flow has changed direction and magnitude. I’ve never made more gold as easily as post-HoT. And I still don’t know what to do with it.

Wanze.8410:

The reason why it might seem like there is less gold in the economy and prices for many items are going up is because we are simply destroying it at a faster pace than before. In the 6-9 months before HoT, not much new content came out and people didnt consume as much goods and gold but since then, most players started consuming again, for guild halls, scribing, new legendary and ascended gear.
So i think the only macroeconomic change that has happened is that we were used to earn more mats and gold than we spent before HoT and now we spent more than we earn. I think the changes to the supply side didnt have as much of an impact as the changes to the demand side.

This is what I keep telling people. The supply acquisition didn’t change with the expansion. Take ascended mats for example.

Before HoT, you needed them just for ascended armor and weapons.
After HoT, now you need them for ascended armor, weapons, Guild Halls, Legendary backpack, precursors, etc. All the while, the supply remained basically unchanged (Timegate).

When I did craft Twilight like two years ago I cost it trough running 5+ dungeons a day just to save gold, and it took me ~8+ months to buy the whole components. At that time I was able to get maybe ~160 gold coins x month.

Last November I took the decission to craft Sunrise, Flameseeker of Prophecies and the PvP backpack legendary, and found it exclusively trough gathering minerals and wood (~75 minutes x day). I bought the Sunrise and Flameseeker’s precursors in January and now I’m finishing Sunrise. I did earn ~750+ gold coins in December and January, ~700 in February and probably will reach ~650+ this March.

So far, I’m earning x4-x5 more gold than two years ago with half of the time/effort, which gives me the chance to focus in PvP which at the moment is to me the only part of the game in which I have interest.

This is the point :
Gold may be coming from fractals – but many players are starting to stop playing this due to the swamp mess monsters are booring.

Ascended mats are now dropping like crazy from raids (see raiders chest).

More gold is currently being earnt/HR swapping mats> TP (than doing skilled events after the Fracs). This has made the game go from a high skilled event game → I can harvest and sell game (low skilled). Dungeons for all their faults still required some degree of skill and certainly required more skill than harvesting nodes.

If more players stop doing fractals through Bordem- will the mats being generated and gold(eg shiney baubles) be enough to stop a large deflationary pressure?

TPMN.1483:

This is the point :
Gold may be coming from fractals – but many players are starting to stop playing this due to the swamp mess monsters are booring.

Ascended mats are now dropping like crazy from raids (see raiders chest).

More gold is currently being earnt/HR swapping mats> TP (than doing skilled events after the Fracs). This has made the game go from a high skilled event game -> I can harvest and sell game (low skilled). Dungeons for all their faults still required some degree of skill and certainly required more skill than harvesting nodes.

If more players stop doing fractals through Bordem- will the mats being generated and gold(eg shiney baubles) be enough to stop a large deflationary pressure?

just because a couple of people start raiding wont mean we will run out of gold anytime soon. And Shiny Baubles are generated through map rewards, not fractals.

Its not about running out of gold – but the generation of gold is slowly becoming less.

The Shiny Baubles – are a slower gold/hr than other map rewards.
Such as the famous week 6 – map rewards from Frostfang with Powerful Bloods/Charged Lodestones etc – which are being swapped for gold. Many players are getting 500g in a single day on the map reset for swapping from karma.

That gold is not being produced as easily in the past.

How do powerful blood and charged lodestones generate gold?

Manasa Devi.7958:

How do powerful blood and charged lodestones generate gold?

These are the material swaps for gold.. they are just the swaps for X being made.
They are just a distribution of items for karma – for those getting pact supplies.

I would argue that gold generation X in actual liquid rewards has probably gone down.

TPMN.1483:

Manasa Devi.7958:

How do powerful blood and charged lodestones generate gold?

These are the material swaps for gold.. they are just the swaps for X being made.
They are just a distribution of items for karma – for those getting pact supplies.

I would argue that gold generation X in actual liquid rewards has probably gone down.

But selling anything on the tp for gold doesnt create gold in a macroeconomic sense, it destroys it via fees and taxes. You might claim that it has become harder to target farm liquid gold or items to sell for every individual but that doesnt mean that less gold is entering the market. The gold faucet is just distributed more evenly now. While before 10 dungeon runners might have generated 90g overall in one hour in liquid gold and 90 more players generated 90g through regular gameplay (coins from monsters, event rewards, rank chests, champ bags etc.). Now dungeon rewards got nerfed and other gold faucets buffed and all 100 players get 1.8g per hour. Its still the same amount of gold coming into the economy.

Wanze.8410:

TPMN.1483:

Manasa Devi.7958:

How do powerful blood and charged lodestones generate gold?

These are the material swaps for gold.. they are just the swaps for X being made.
They are just a distribution of items for karma – for those getting pact supplies.

I would argue that gold generation X in actual liquid rewards has probably gone down.

But selling anything on the tp for gold doesnt create gold in a macroeconomic sense, it destroys it via fees and taxes. You might claim that it has become harder to target farm liquid gold or items to sell for every individual but that doesnt mean that less gold is entering the market. The gold faucet is just distributed more evenly now. While before 10 dungeon runners might have generated 90g overall in one hour in liquid gold and 90 more players generated 90g through regular gameplay (coins from monsters, event rewards, rank chests, champ bags etc.). Now dungeon rewards got nerfed and other gold faucets buffed and all 100 players get 1.8g per hour. Its still the same amount of gold coming into the economy.

That concept does not apply to this game because there are no centralized monetary institutions. In order to apply the taxes and fees have to stay in the system (weakening the monetary unity) but they are essentially deleted having no effect. Median gold income would be the only valuable measurement.

That said distribution itself weakens Median Income overall and lowers economic prices in general due to a lack of necessity. Scarcity slows the effect but eventually all items would settle at a baseline of their vendor price (or below if allowed) presuming new players joined at a slower and slower rate since eventuality would work it’s magic.

DGraves.3720:

Wanze.8410:

TPMN.1483:

Manasa Devi.7958:

How do powerful blood and charged lodestones generate gold?

These are the material swaps for gold.. they are just the swaps for X being made.
They are just a distribution of items for karma – for those getting pact supplies.

I would argue that gold generation X in actual liquid rewards has probably gone down.

But selling anything on the tp for gold doesnt create gold in a macroeconomic sense, it destroys it via fees and taxes. You might claim that it has become harder to target farm liquid gold or items to sell for every individual but that doesnt mean that less gold is entering the market. The gold faucet is just distributed more evenly now. While before 10 dungeon runners might have generated 90g overall in one hour in liquid gold and 90 more players generated 90g through regular gameplay (coins from monsters, event rewards, rank chests, champ bags etc.). Now dungeon rewards got nerfed and other gold faucets buffed and all 100 players get 1.8g per hour. Its still the same amount of gold coming into the economy.

That concept does not apply to this game because there are no centralized monetary institutions. In order to apply the taxes and fees have to stay in the system (weakening the monetary unity) but they are essentially deleted having no effect. Median gold income would be the only valuable measurement.

That said distribution itself weakens Median Income overall and lowers economic prices in general due to a lack of necessity. Scarcity slows the effect but eventually all items would settle at a baseline of their vendor price (or below if allowed) presuming new players joined at a slower and slower rate since eventuality would work it’s magic.

The first question would be how median income is measured. Of course, its gold created out of thin air but in which relation? in relation to account numbers, active account numbers or overall hours played by the player base?

I would find it hard to believe, if anybody claims that less gold has entered the market since hot compared to pre hot, for the simple fact that the active player base was probably way bigger in the three months after hot compared to the 3 months before.

Wanze.8410:

The first question would be how median income is measured. Of course, its gold created out of thin air but in which relation? in relation to account numbers, active account numbers or overall hours played by the player base?

The easiest way to measure this would be to simply look at current farming techniques and their monetary value. Unlike the real economy video-game economies fluctuate way too quickly to produce any long-standing behaviors so time played and active players and so forth and so on are too unstable to use. You can only use short-term monetary terms and windows to measure it accurately.

I would find it hard to believe, if anybody claims that less gold has entered the market since hot compared to pre hot, for the simple fact that the active player base was probably way bigger in the three months after hot compared to the 3 months before.

Since gold comes out of thin air and disappears the same interestingly enough the amount of gold in the system has no effect on the prices of items. The inflation of a price is based on utility or prestige alone, a perfectly competitive market and theoretically the best type, where all merchants have the same power and it is consumer side economics.

That’s why you would use Median Income; the amount of gold players have as well as the utility of the item are all that dictate cost and at times is why things as a whole cost less than their parts. So the flow of gold into the game, because there is no centralized entity actually controlling that, is not real. There is no SEC.

Now that leads to another really boring and long-winded point so I’ll spare you.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Dungeon gold may have been nerfed but gold from doing events was increased. The main difference it’s not big chunks going to people disappearing into dungeon instances but smaller chunks going to people staying out in the world. The gold income is more spread out, going to everyone not just to dungeoneers. The net result may have been a zero change in liquid gold flowing into the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shiny_Bauble

Dungeons may have been abandoned but large numbers of people now do at least one run through fractals instead. Many dungeoneers have moved to event areas which offer high payouts.

Okay let me explain further – where are the liquid gold sources right now:
Fractals (limited) – max N Gold via dailys.
Dungeons (limited) – reduced rewards
RAIDS (limited) – once/week for each boss kill : Cost of raiding outweighs the liquid gold profit.

Many Events are generating more materials:
Octovine (end chests),
Dragon Stand (Materials pumped out: Not liquid gold).
SW (Materials pumped out: Not Liquid gold).

Oh wait.. more liquid gold source:
PVP – its slow but not much !!!

Best gold sink… Ability to buy currencies with gold.

I’m personally seeing almost no one running dungeons.
I’m also personally seeing almost no one running fractals swamps.
Raids aren’t coming anything close to the kind of gold I used to get from dungeons.

swamps might give some liquid gold each day – personally a full set of dailys i might get 10g liquid. and a few silver in mats.

or I could farm meta events and get mostly materials ( things i’d end up buying with the liquid gold anyway).

In my experience, those I raid with aren’t really getting a worthwhile amount of loot from the raids ( lol, spirit vale half loot, be lucky to see people bother outside of shard capping). With food costs, and the initial outlay for asc gear ( which is now more expensive than ever to make).
There is also significantly fewer actual ascended drop rates coming out of fractals, which also has an impact on demand for materials.

The opinions expressed in this thread seem to be along the lines of “I’m earning more gold than ever”, but what seems to be overlooked is that is gold from trading materials, not liquid gold directly.
What happens when the people you’re selling materials to run out of gold? Your materials won’t sell. and material prices fall.

Seems like a lot of people ( perhaps John Smith included ) expected material prices to fall much faster than they have (lol, GH material vacuum + scribing + raised ascended crafting ). Indeed demand seems to be a much bigger factor than supply ( especially given supply is in theory higher than pre hot).

shiney baubles are pretty restricted as to which maps they are coming from at any given time. Though it is nice when they are up on a meta map. They also don’t drop that often to really raise the income that much.

On the topic of distributing the income: why do so many still think being able to afk spam 1 while watching netflix on the other monitor should be equally ( or currently superiorly) rewarding as something intense or significantly challenging (comparatively) such as raiding? Sounds like communism to me.

TL;DR

People aren’t making more value (read: money) than before particularly.
Much less gold income, but more materials.
Material prices holding steady or raised considerably.
HUGE material demand is what is causing this weird state (which hasn’t slowed at anything like the rate it maybe should have).

Artemis Thuras.8795:

On the topic of distributing the income: why do so many still think being able to afk spam 1 while watching netflix on the other monitor should be equally ( or currently superiorly) rewarding as something intense or significantly challenging (comparatively) such as raiding? Sounds like communism to me.

Because people go where the money is, and that generally reduces the challenge for open-world content. After all – if the old Decimus Stones event (I’ve not seen it activate ever since NPE was implemented) paid out proportional to the challenge at the time, it would have been the most rewarding content ever – until the Zerg learned about it, and suddenly had half the game population camping an area right outside the Charr Starting Zone, and rendering one of the hardest individual events in the game into a complete cakewalk.

Frankly… I’m wondering if most of the liquid gold is coming from Gem Sales…

Keep seeing the ’dungeons rewardss nerfed argument" …

What is a reasonable amount of gold you can earn from doing a single fast path in a dungeon like CoF now, including selling the loot?

For comparison, just casual running around farming Malchor’s leap (no events, just killing trash and gathering), I can net average 3-4G per hour; more when lucky with rares.

Loot is not liquid gold – this is materials. Materials <> Liquid gold.

I can make 10-15G/Hr running around farming materials and selling back to the TP- hitting rich nodes (wood/ores) – you must be doing it wrong. This is not liquid gold again.

The argument is how much liquid gold is being produced.

Sartharina.3542:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

On the topic of distributing the income: why do so many still think being able to afk spam 1 while watching netflix on the other monitor should be equally ( or currently superiorly) rewarding as something intense or significantly challenging (comparatively) such as raiding? Sounds like communism to me.

Because people go where the money is, and that generally reduces the challenge for open-world content. After all – if the old Decimus Stones event (I’ve not seen it activate ever since NPE was implemented) paid out proportional to the challenge at the time, it would have been the most rewarding content ever – until the Zerg learned about it, and suddenly had half the game population camping an area right outside the Charr Starting Zone, and rendering one of the hardest individual events in the game into a complete cakewalk.

Frankly… I’m wondering if most of the liquid gold is coming from Gem Sales…

Gem to gold is wealth transfer, not wealth creation. When you buy gold with gems you’re getting the gold that another player is using to buy gems. It’s not a direct sell as the gems and gold both go into a pool and are drawn from that pool, but there’s no gold created.

The problem is the pool is big for gems its been inflated for a very long time – its a good wealth transfer back now for an individual to get liquid gold. The pool will take a very long time to drain.

I cannot see yet how there has been any increase in actual liquid gold across the players. Events reward XP (not gold).

Materials quantity’s have gone up for players which are being swapped for gold via TP.
It honestly looks like the plan is to drain the economy a bit more of liquid gold.

TPMN.1483:

The problem is the pool is big for gems its been inflated for a very long time – its a good wealth transfer back now for an individual to get liquid gold. The pool will take a very long time to drain.

I cannot see yet how there has been any increase in actual liquid gold across the players. Events reward XP (not gold).

Materials quantity’s have gone up for players which are being swapped for gold via TP.
It honestly looks like the plan is to drain the economy a bit more of liquid gold.

I think JS mentioned once they they are actually aiming for a general slight inflation. I wont disagree that the last couple of months might have looked like deflation to some people but i think its because demand for so much goods spiked as well. We simply destroyed more mats and items since HoT, compared to the 6-9 months before it, where we literally got no new content, plenty of people saved their stuff for HoT and not much new players entered the economy.
Its generally harder to re-balance supply and demand, when there is a bulk of undemanded supply of an item in the economy. Most demanded items went through the extra supply already and most found their equilibrium atm, even though that equilibrium seems a bit high for some mats atm. So i am pretty sure that we will see some iteration to some mayor markets with the next quarterly update. Im quite certain some common mats for asc crafting will be iterated, probably amalgamated gemstones as well.

I think the game economy is pretty well equipped for a temporary deflation of liquid gold due to the extra gold that the player base stored in the gem exchange and can be taken out again, if people think gold is too hard to come by.

I don’t really get what the big deal is. You dont need gold to survive or anything. That’s why they let you buy it, because it doesn’t give a huge advantage. I guess you could buy ascended armor and weapons, but they throw that at you if you just play the game. Then again, I’ve only been playing 3 months and haven’t done hot content and dont do many dungeons so I don’t really know. Correct me if I’m wrong. Interesting analysis though.

There are certain items which are fixed in price as gold sinks
e.g. Icy Runestones – 100g Minimum for Each Legendary
Commander Pins – 300g

If Gold becomes harder to acquire – these items in turn become harder to acquire.
This is why liquid gold and the ability to earn liquid gold can be important to a player.

If you are trying to get ascended armor – costs right now (without boxs) are about 600-700g for your first character. This gets you an entrance ticket to high end fractals and potentially raids (if that profession is required).
Which allows you to earn other fractal pieces over time.

These high costs have not gone down – they went up as the material prices went up.

they did say they are looking into and will increase the dungeon gold rewards. not that they will return it back as they were before but will increase it

All junk items (not just shiny baubles) generate liquid gold out of nowhere when you sell them to a vendor. Also, the current economy generates a lot of bags, and many of them generate liquid gold when you open them. It adds up, but you hardly notice it at the time.

There’s also an unknown percentage of players who either only want to play and don’t want to bother with salvaging or by selling through the trading post or they haven’t bothered to look up the best ways to get gold. They vendor everything at the nearest merchant when their bags are full and get whatever they get. All that gold is new gold into the economy.

The thing is – these ‘junk’ items and mat drops – are at the same rate as before.
This would still be a reduction in the liquid gold which has occured.

Listening to all this is fascinating. I’m not quite sure how you guys are coming up with your theories though since the amount of currency in a system with a purely competitive market makes little to no difference in how it operates. Since the gold has a standard (that is, vendor price) backing it it has real value within it’s own universe so all items are actually equivalent to liquid gold thus why you can convert farming into time since you don’t have to go through the extra step of discerning the value of the item in question as it has a base value even if all the TP stopped all at once.

Nope

You forgot to mention the problems with the Auction Hall which prevent the reduction from gold from having an actualy effect on the economy.

In other games and even in the real world you cannot leave an item for sale indefinitely. You have to repost and put up a new price after a certain amount of time those auctions only last so many days or hours before they close and if a buyer isn’t found to bad. You then repost it after having to rethink your price.

In Gw2 that isn’t the case the liquid gold is gone as you put it however the auctions are all ancient the items that were 1kg remain 1kg. Someone placing a new item for sale does so not on their own interpretation of the price but the interpretation of items that have been for sale since launch. Heck I can go to my history right now and find auctions I’ve had up for months and in those months no changes or decrease in liquid gold will effect those prices for all the items I had on the TP and it’s those static items that set the price.

i’m not an econ expert, but wouldn’t making gold easier to acquire make it less valuable?

Doam.8305:

…even in the real world you cannot leave an item for sale indefinitely.

You really can leave items up for sale indefinitely. The circumstances are dictated by the need for the intermediator publishing the list or human nature.

For example, people can choose to leave their house for sale at a given price for decades. (One of my landlords did this — they didn’t want to sell unless they get a ton of cash, so they just waited for the market to reach their asking price.) Most people don’t do this, because a long-lasting list price implies to brokers that there’s a hidden issue, which ultimately lowers the market value.

Similarly, the only reason e.g. Target or Walmart ever change the price on a poorly-selling item is that they want the shelf space for something else. The TP, as an electronic publication, has no need to clear out old offers to make room for new ones; it has no incremental maintenance costs. The reasons it includes fees at all is to sink gold from the economy and to discourage people from re-listing as the market shifts.

tl;dr whatever things are going on with the economy are not due to the TP having unlimited duration listings.

Crycerasobs.7864:

i’m not an econ expert, but wouldn’t making gold easier to acquire make it less valuable?

This is my point – ‘liquid’ gold is harder to acquire now.
So the value of gold right now is worth more as you cannot get ‘liquid’ gold more easily.
The accumulation of savings resulted in higher mat prices – which will take a long time to fall (which makes sense).

This then has a bit more of a feedback loop reducing gold even more from the system (savings) and new generated gold (as players generate less).

There’s also increasing gold find% from drops, which is getting higher as accounts that log in regularly get older. Most of it is fairly trivial, but it’s a constant inflow that’s going up as gold find increases each month. Across all accounts this increase in gold inflow could be quite substantial. (iirc my gold find is 45% increase).

What might be interesting is to note your gold at the start of playing, keep track of costs and at the end before selling anything note any increase in gold in your wallet.

Crycerasobs.7864:

i’m not an econ expert, but wouldn’t making gold easier to acquire make it less valuable?

There are more monetary types than one. In this monetary type the answer to that question is “no” because it isn’t fiat at all.

Account gold find :
The increased account gold find % has very little effect even if it as ramped up to 1000.
This is as it is based on emenies killed- only where they do actually drop loot and gold.
Often the amount returned is in the coppers- and only applies pre HoT zones.
The HoT mobs do not drop gold so this buff is only of use in the core game.
More often than not a mob will not drop gold so it’s not even triggered in the core game.
I looked at this as my account is old and it makes naff all difference once I understood how it worked. I saw amounts of 2-3 coppers being dropped from a mob (and rarely)- so it has virtually no effect even in a large zone like Cursed Shore farming.

Other reasons why may prices have risen:
Decreased salvage rates – published long time ago. Makes salvaging more expensive and costs go up (less leather, wood, ore, cloth) from items dropped as each salvage has a cost associated with it. Less supply from event/mob farming.

Other items:
Some items cannot be purchased directly with gold – eg Raid rewards. So a black market wil exist where people will sell runs to gain gold (personal profit) in the hope that the buyer will receive a unique weapon or tokens allowing em to purchase a unique weapon in the future. This is currently a very expensive route (300g/wing- max 200g profit for the sellers each)- and is likely to get cheaper over time.
This is a transference of gold to individuals – the gold had to come from somewhere in the first place. The fall back currency is the Margonite which is limited to 100 shards/week.

So for equivalency :
A set of ascended armour via raids: 1300 shards, 47.5 gold- time sink: 13 weeks (based on 100 shards/week max : excluding minis)
OR
700 gold (get instantly via crafting).

Most groups in my experience will take 3-4 hrs or so and can shard cap (by failing a few times) if they are successful also [most people will do some training runs for others]. Gold generated (Spirit Vale): 4 gold.[For a single clear].
So the direct gold/hr = 1 g/ hr (nice and low right?). This excludes current food costs – which often negates most of the profit as people afk, etc – as organising 10 man content is well a nightmare. Does that mean the 1300 shards is worth: 700-45: 655 gold?

Probably not..
655g/(13 weeks x 4) = 12.5gold/hr if the cost of ascended armour does not move.
The cost of ascended armour will lower over time. If we use the ghostly infusion (~500g/1000 shards): still works out to 12.5g/hr – a mat conversion via the TP. This price is steadily falling too.

I expect the raid gold/hr to keep falling significantly if the material costs of ascended items falls : we know it will as they don’t like prices this high for the ascended armour.

Doesn’t really seem worth raiding does it now unless you want some of those more exclusive skins – which have to be bought with shards if you get bad RNG.

Silver wastes generates materials / drops – which gives about 10-15g/hr. Especially more if you can bounce breach events in a row or get a good chest farm going. Remember to open the bags on a lower level alt for maximised profits- it’s still mat conversion to TP to gold. It’s not direct liquid gold.

Material farming/harvesting which is not liquid gold generation can easily net you 15g/hr once you sell the mats back on the trading post. This is really handy for those watch work sprocket mining picks.

Dungeons currently offer about 4-8ghr in liquid gold (less up front costs than raiding) if you can get a good group. This takes some time to organise and requires skill. Most groups are failing badly or not forming as the gold/hr generated (even though it is liquid) requires skill and is one of the lowest gold/hr items in the game.

It’s funny how all things seem to balance the gold/hr generated in PVE mostly – yet material farming right now or SW still generates the most liquid gold for a player (after mat conversion) via the TP.

I still say you have to include returns from selling junk items in your liquid gold estimates.