Guild Wars 2

I’m a relatively “end-game” player. Roughly 5400 hours have seen me crossing and re-crossing Tyria.

Recently, I’ve been looking to get or build my second legendary, The Incinerator.

Here’s my point; I could easily choose to buy the gems and buy the pretty dagger. The problem isn’t finance it’s the principle of the thing. Speculation has driven the price to something like 300 USD.

That’s just insulting. So, I gameplay for the money. It’s slower, but I don’t feel like I’m being ripped off.

So, ANET loses the money from that transaction. I’d spend 100 USD for a vanity item, but 300 is just beyond the pale for a video game.

In high school history class we would have called this a case of “elastic demand.”

My suggestion; ANET should cap trading post prices to nerf speculation. This will ultimately increase micro transactions and serve the game by keeping prices reasonable.

No. This would be very bad. You’re also confusing speculation with general demand/supply.

I would be bad for a small segment of the community that spends it’s time TP flipping. The reality is that the practice of TP flipping harms the game. It causes outlandish prices. Such prices discourage people like me from buying gold.

Ithilwen.1529:

I would be bad for a small segment of the community that spends it’s time TP flipping. The reality is that the practice of TP flipping harms the game. It causes outlandish prices. Such prices discourage people like me from buying gold.

No. You’re not focusing on the impact it would have on the entire market if the prices were capped. What you’re seeing with the prices for precursors is not speculation.

You’re also making a mistake by basing part of your argument using gem to gold prices which operate entirely outside of the game economy.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m a relatively “end-game” player. Roughly 5400 hours have seen me crossing and re-crossing Tyria.

Recently, I’ve been looking to get or build my second legendary, The Incinerator.

Here’s my point; I could easily choose to buy the gems and buy the pretty dagger. The problem isn’t finance it’s the principle of the thing. Speculation has driven the price to something like 300 USD.

That’s just insulting. So, I gameplay for the money. It’s slower, but I don’t feel like I’m being ripped off.

So, ANET loses the money from that transaction. I’d spend 100 USD for a vanity item, but 300 is just beyond the pale for a video game.

In high school history class we would have called this a case of “elastic demand.”

My suggestion; ANET should cap trading post prices to nerf speculation. This will ultimately increase micro transactions and serve the game by keeping prices reasonable.

I don’t think that would have the intended effect you think it would. While you may be cool with spending $100 for a vanity item, I would dare say a majority of players are still willing to spend exactly $0 for a vanity item. Capping trade post prices would just make items easier to get for everybody (which I’m not against in theory, but I’m against it from the principle of a ‘free economy’ perspective). I don’t think it would translate to more micro-transactions at all. If anything it would make people grind more because items would seem more in reach without having to resort to buying gems.

It’s not usual for people to flip Legendaries. The 15% cost to selling means the flipper would have to tack on that much just to break even. The Incinerator for example is selling for 3250 gold. One flip of that would require an additional 487 gold increase in price or the flipper would lose money on it. If you look at the price, you can tell it is not increasing by 500 gold plus at each step, therefore it’s not being flipped. The high price is a result of scarcity, the cost to make, and demand.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/30687-incinerator

If the max was say 1500 gold. No one would bother selling one on tp at all. Yet alone bother making one unless it’s for themselves

Due to the margins involved, there is almost no speculation with Legendary weapons, and certainly no successful speculation.

Also, it costs 300 USD not because of the Trading Post, but because of the gem exchange.

You’re conflating two separate non-issues into a fictional problem.

The problem with putting a cap is that some things will cost more than that to craft. This means it won’t be sold on the trading post and it will be sold by player to player. This will lead to an increase in scams, especially since there is a 500 gold per week limit with gold through email.

You might be interested OP, in the thought that putting caps on prices is one of the reasons why Communism failed as an economic model. People were not allowed to price items according to their true cost, but only as the state priced them. This resulted in scarcities for even the most basic items. There were long lines at any store that was selling anything at all. It was so bad, that if people saw a line they got in it first and then asked what was selling.

Fundamentally changing the economy, supply, demand and prices on many valuable items in the game so you dont have to spend 200 more dollars on legendary sounds like the worst idea ever.

There are people that spend 1000s on this game. A person whos spending limit is 100 bucks arn’t the target market for the gem store. Blew my mind when the first halloween when there was a mad rush for keys came and people were complaining about the 300 dollar max daily limit per credit card. Trust me dude Anet doesn’t need to cap anything to get people to spend more money.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Fundamentally changing the economy, supply, demand and prices on many valuable items in the game so you dont have to spend 200 more dollars on legendary sounds like the worst idea ever.

There are people that spend 1000s on this game. A person whos spending limit is 100 bucks arn’t the target market for the gem store. Blew my mind when the first halloween when there was a mad rush for keys came and people were complaining about the 300 dollar max daily limit per credit card. Trust me dude Anet doesn’t need to cap anything to get people to spend more money.

Yeah. If they really wanted to get people to spend more money then they could just have the first year Halloween skins to have a chance to drop directly from Black Lion chests during the next Halloween. It at the very least for a certain number of claim tickets.

It’s just expensive. The price didn’t change much compare to 2 years ago.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/30687

You can actually buy it cheaper now because gold to gem ratio changed.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m a relatively “end-game” player. Roughly 5400 hours have seen me crossing and re-crossing Tyria.

Recently, I’ve been looking to get or build my second legendary, The Incinerator.

Here’s my point; I could easily choose to buy the gems and buy the pretty dagger. The problem isn’t finance it’s the principle of the thing. Speculation has driven the price to something like 300 USD.

That’s just insulting. So, I gameplay for the money. It’s slower, but I don’t feel like I’m being ripped off.

So, ANET loses the money from that transaction. I’d spend 100 USD for a vanity item, but 300 is just beyond the pale for a video game.

In high school history class we would have called this a case of “elastic demand.”

My suggestion; ANET should cap trading post prices to nerf speculation. This will ultimately increase micro transactions and serve the game by keeping prices reasonable.

In my high school psychology class they would have called paying even $100 for a virtual item a case of ‘insanity’.

I’m at 3981 hours and with the two precursors I have had as drops I was easily able to craft both legendary’s primarily from items gained through playing.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m a relatively “end-game” player. Roughly 5400 hours have seen me crossing and re-crossing Tyria.

Recently, I’ve been looking to get or build my second legendary, The Incinerator.

Here’s my point; I could easily choose to buy the gems and buy the pretty dagger. The problem isn’t finance it’s the principle of the thing. Speculation has driven the price to something like 300 USD.

That’s just insulting. So, I gameplay for the money. It’s slower, but I don’t feel like I’m being ripped off.

So, ANET loses the money from that transaction. I’d spend 100 USD for a vanity item, but 300 is just beyond the pale for a video game.

In high school history class we would have called this a case of “elastic demand.”

My suggestion; ANET should cap trading post prices to nerf speculation. This will ultimately increase micro transactions and serve the game by keeping prices reasonable.

Hiya. My suggestion is that once you get to college, take some Micro and Macro Economics. I don’t know if it’s mandatory at all colleges, but if it isn’t, it should be. These two classes help teach students the basics of the Law of Supply, the Law of Demand, Shifts and Movements, and other core concepts of the market economy.

Now onto your argument. There are a lot of assumptions you’re making that aren’t accurate. I’ll break them down:

• 1) Not many people buy large quantities of Gems to convert to Gold. This is due to how the Gem Conversion ratios work. If a lot of people did this, the Gold to Gem rates would be much much much lower.
• 2) Not many people buy Legendary weapons directly from the TP. A lot of people will buy Precursors and then make their own.
• 3) Speculation isn’t what drives the prices of luxury goods. It’s Supply and Demand. There’s too much risk in investing in Precursors to profit, seeing as how Precursor crafting is coming. One of my Precursor’s value dropped by 35%, and I ended up selling it cheap just to get it out of my bank.
• 4) You’ve come up with a solution to your problem, not the economy’s. You want a luxury good that you can’t afford, so you wish to have the price lowered. Fair enough. But in doing so, you’ll wreck the marketplace. The Trading Post is a self contained entity that’s ever moving 24/7. Players can buy and sell goods at prices they see fit. By putting artificial caps on prices, you want Anet to fully control the market, and turn the TP into a glorified merchant. This school of thought is what brought down the Soviet Union. The global economy is in a good place at the moment, so there’s no real need to mess with it.

It’s closer to $360. But lets look back in time.

Oct 1st, 2013

Incinerator sells for 2450 g. Gems to gold is 3.75g per 100 gems. So you would need roughly 65,400 gems or over $800 dollars. So actually it’s cheaper today, by more than half, in real currency than it was almost two years ago.

If you look at the chart for Incinerator, it’s price has been fairly stable all this time. Right now it’s price is near the low for the last 16 months.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/30687-incinerator?full=1

Yes, it’s up noticeably since mid Aug 2013 but in terms of cash bought gems, it’s pretty cheap today because the exchange rate has gone up faster than Incinerator did.

High five to Smooth Penguin.5294 !!!!! totaly agreed !!!!!!!!!!!!

fred baker.1724:

High five to Smooth Penguin.5294 !!!!! totaly agreed !!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, one of SP’s best posts.

Ayrilana.1396:

No. This would be very bad. You’re also confusing speculation with general demand/supply.

Anet has decided to go with a player based economy, keeping little to no part in maintaining it, at which point it becomes supply and demand, these items are high price BECAUSE people will pay for them, when they don’t the price will lower, it should stay this way, capping prices because you don’t want to put money into the game specifically is outrageous, I still put money into the game to convert to gold to buy end-game items rather than spend a bunch of time.