Guild Wars 2

tl;dr “the prices are out of whack, so to fix them, we’re doing nothing and hoping they’ll fix themselves”

This is why I’m not an economist. :-)

Dang, I was hoping they jacked up the precursor drop rate

Huston prepare to launch ! Mystic Coins are ready to launch to the orbit of Tyria … In 5…4…3…2..1…
We have ignition,bois we have ignition !

That is a real wordy post for “we feel the economy is in a good place so we are letting go of the wheel and letting it coast”.

Which I agree. Economy is doing great. Just two things that I think should be looked at before distribution tweaks stop being made.

T6 materials seem way out of proportion with each-other. The two extremes being t6 leather and cloth. It seems like the it is quite disproportionate compared to other two T6 materials. It doesn’t seem particularly balanced that top tier mat prices are so out of whack with each-other.

Mystic coins. I know that it was stated that no change felt like was needed because alot of them come into the game. I think the price of these can get out of control fairly quickly as more legendary items are added to the game.

What I personally would be looking at is how much of that supply actually moving. The vast majority of the ones coming into the game are generated passively at a fixed rate and probably has the highest supply spread over the population over other materials. Players generally don’t have the means to generate anymore or any less than what they are producing so there is no reason for players to justify selling them as they need nearly a year’s worth to do anything with them. Nor can they directly produce more for resell or consumption.

So what you have really created here is a material that can never drop in price and will always go up when demand for them is added. Save some kinda random event that prompts everyone to sell their coins. Is it at all concerning for you that the price of these can only go up at this point making legendary items more pricey? Or is this something that is intended to make log in rewards worth something?

timmyf.1490:

tl;dr “the prices are out of whack, so to fix them, we’re doing nothing and hoping they’ll fix themselves”

This is why I’m not an economist. :-)

him telling us this will help stop stagnation and speculation that the “hand of god” (so to speak) will sweep in and fix things for us.

in some cases, the problem is that hoarders be hoarding and its restricting the ability of the market to compensate and reflect where a price should be. in other cases its the opposite. in all cases, perhaps john thinks that saying “we will do nothing” will catalyze the market. and maybe it will.

Look. All we want, is consistency.

2 Iron Ores makes 1 Iron Ingot
2 Silk Scraps makes 1 Bolt of Silk
2 Thick Leather Sections makes 1 Cured Thick Leather Square
2 Hardened Leather Sections makes 1 Cured Hardened Leather Square
3 Softwood Logs makes 1 Softwood Plank

Please fix it, thank you.

Interesting times ahead in the “we need more data” sense. But I really do appreciate that GW2’s economy is relatively stable, and probably the most stable of the MMOs I’ve played. Some of that may have come about through consistent meddling, so I wonder what a long moratorium will bring. We’re still chaffing in the wake of a few potential overcorrection; definitely leather, and silk, while cheaper, doesn’t ‘feel good’.

John Smith.4610:

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing; in fact, we’ve actually already started doing that.

This statement confused me a bit.

Using the flax example, exactly what steps was ANet taking to “balance” the price?

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Look. All we want, is consistency.

2 Iron Ores > 1 Iron Ingot
2 Silk Scraps > 1 Bolt of Silk
2 Thick Leather Sections > 1 Cured Thick Leather Square
2 Hardened Leather Sections > 1 Cured Hardened Leather Square
3 Softwood Logs > 1 Softwood Plank

Please fix it, thank you.

They really cant fix that because the players decide how many ingots, bolts, and squares are in the game. They don’t actually drop on a loot table.

The raw has more value than refined because the raw materials can provide crafting exp by producing the refined version. So people leveling crafting buy the raw version more often.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Look. All we want, is consistency.

2 Iron Ores > 1 Iron Ingot
2 Silk Scraps > 1 Bolt of Silk
2 Thick Leather Sections > 1 Cured Thick Leather Square
2 Hardened Leather Sections > 1 Cured Hardened Leather Square
3 Softwood Logs > 1 Softwood Plank

Please fix it, thank you.

They really cant fix that because the players decide how many ingots, bolts, and squares are in the game. They don’t actually drop on a loot table.

The raw has more value than refined because the raw materials can provide crafting exp by producing the refined version. So people leveling crafting buy the raw version more often.

I think “>” here is meant to represent the recipe/crafting process, not a comparison of value. Think of it as “→” instead.

Some clarification:

ANet is acknowledging that many items in the game have prices that aren’t representative of what the market determines they “should” be, based on how often those items are actually consumed by players. This is largely due to players hoarding these items and/or refusing to buy or sell them for values outside of what we the players determine they “should” be, and ANet is taking some of that blame. They’ve put the idea of what the value of certain items “should be” in our heads through the pricing of recipes and other things, and we’re stubborn and won’t let that go.
The bottom line is they’ve determined the best medicine for the situation is to let the market get strained enough until players stop assigning arbitrary values to things, and start moving their materials again. At that point, when the market is actually in charge, they’ll be able to use their levers to control prices again. Until that point, anything they do is likely to just create a panic-induced buy/sell craze that swings prices rapidly (largely because of the huge supply hoard out there right now).
TL;DR: it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because that’s the only way they can regain control of the levers on the market. Panic and speculation are ruling the economy right now, not rational decision making. If you want to help, start selling those bank tabs worth of kitten that you’re all hoarding.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/56cx1y/update_on_the_economy/d8i9c6n

insanemaniac.2456:

in some cases, the problem is that hoarders be hoarding and its restricting the ability of the market to compensate and reflect where a price should be.

Is it really hoarding when it’s literally “I need 300 of these to complete one crafting step”?
I tease, a bit, but that’s how it is with some of these crafting materials, and it just seems like the game relies on fewer-but-larger sinks instead of filtering out materials with daily quests. The vendors in HoT that take rares in exchange for currency were a good start, but it still ends up being “ANet wants me to do this how many times?” to where I’m not sure most people are actually going to do it, so the material market was probably unaffected.

Curious side question, though. With the introduction of mass salvages ( <3 to the UI devs for this! ), did we see a spike in the Mithril supply from unintended quick-salvages?

Did you devs did some stealthy nerf on mystic clovers recipe in mf it went from 33% change to 5% or less.you wanne go for 1g mystic coins or wat??

I wonder….will this announcement, alone, have some great effect on the market?

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 2-3 months.

I’m no economist, but how is not doing anything supposed to fix people’s idea of the value of it? I can see if any new non-consumable items that require a resource will balance over time. In the case of flax, like you said the supply has been increasing since ever since July but the price has stayed the same. People will always buy and sell baised on what public opinion is.

What I think should be done is lower the public opinion. The easiest path would be giving more flax from nodes, but this will also flood the market that may require a change further down the road. The other is adding cheap daily alternatives to gold. Adding a bag of flax seeds to the currency mechants (guild trader, ley line matter converter, etc..) would allow competition for gold and push price down.

Leather and resonating silvers are two other markets that are seriously skewed right now that doing nothing will probably do nothing.

Why not add new recipes for existing items that use mats that are over-valued in price? Like make a new recipe for scholar runes that doesn’t need a charged lodestone?

How about adding items that are no longer obtainable in game to a world boss reward’s drop table? Like the Assault Knight Power Cores? You could even add these to BLT chests for all I care, at least then the prices will drop on something that hasn’t been available in game outside of the Trading Post in almost 2 1/2 years.

https://www.gw2tp.com/search?name=power+core

Bring out legendary armor or whatever so there is another material sink. A lot of mats have lost value, look at ectos. People are hoarding because the value is too low to sell, and they are waiting for the price to pick back up when the next big craze comes out. Also uncertainty about what/how many mats will be needed for the next new item adds to this behavior.

Ab multimap…this seriously needs to be toned down it gives WAY too much for too little time and effort required. I would suggest either limiting the amount of chests people can open, or to change the drops to reduce the amount of rares. Or just change it so you get a effect icon (for ex. Hero of Tarir or w/e) after completing the meta which allows you to open chests, and changing instances removes that effect.

" If you want to help, start selling those bank tabs worth of kitten that you’re all hoarding."

My issue with this thought line in general is that there’s too many things that require those bank tabs worth of kitten in order to be completed. Some of us don’t horde for our health here.

Sledge Stone.9017:

Why not add new recipes for existing items that use mats that are over-valued in price? Like make a new recipe for scholar runes that doesn’t need a charged lodestone?

How about adding items that are no longer obtainable in game to a world boss reward’s drop table? Like the Assault Knight Power Cores? You could even add these to BLT chests for all I care, at least then the prices will drop on something that hasn’t been available in game outside of the Trading Post in almost 2 1/2 years.

https://www.gw2tp.com/search?name=power+core

Azurite Orbs are annother one… there should be a list of these….

Hoarding is a player action, not an ArenaNet action.

Again, what does John mean when he says “taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing”?

The implication is that ANet has balancing controls they exercise to affect the market. I’d like to know more on what “taking a step back” really means.

It’s just a suggestion but shouldn’t the daily achievement give 1g instead of 2 and the dungeon frequenter achievement with 5 dungeons instead of 8 to make people get less easy gold from dailies and make dungeons more rewarding

Can we do something about leather drop rate? Ignoring the hoarders, I think all of us personally notice a huge difference in personal supply. Getting cloth, wood, and metal is extremely easy via regular farming. I get tons of all of those via natural play activities, but leather is extremely scarce. I don’t think the price is due to hoarders who are probably doing what you’ve encouraged them to do anyway. If the drop rate was increased to be on par with other materials, we wouldn’t have this problem. It needs to be more easily farmable.

I think he said he’s off on an extended holiday but I’m not very good at interpreting this stuff…

John Smith.4610:

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing; in fact, we’ve actually already started doing that. We hope to see many markets adjust their prices to match the current state of the economy. We do recognize that there are some markets moving to a place where we aren’t looking for them to be; once we see the economy moving we can reassess the markets and make improvements, as we have in the past.

There is a big issue with this. Now, first off, I am very much in favor of allowing the market to work itself out. However, in a few specific markets, this plan won’t work, and its these kinds of markets that are the biggest issue already. These are markets where the average player cannot reasonable and purposefully create supply. Why do I say this is an issue? There are, of course, the supply and demand aspects of the market. Each has an effect on price. Seaweed is a good example. Seaweed was used in the recommended dps food for multiple classes including classes that raid groups stacked (eles). But it wasn’t overly simple to get. Ember bay added a seaweed farm and the price plummeted. Why? because before the price was high, so what did people do? they went out of their way (which wasnt as far anymore) farmed seaweed and flooded supply into the market to pull it down. In other words, purposeful action was undertaken by player in order to rebalance the market price. lower price may then, of course, increase demand pull price up a bit until equilibrium is reached.

So, purposeful action based on price affects supply and normalizes it based on player expectations and average subjective value over the player base.

Unfortunately, there are other items, like mystic coins, where players cannot do this. Price is still controlled by those that control the supply. As those that control the supply pull prices up, yes, its true that demand will go down as players say “screw it” on their mystic coin items so there is a soft ceiling on the price, but the average player can still do little to actually adjust the price to its true average, playerbase-wide, valuation.

In other words, while the market will reach its equilibrium point, that point is not between those that create supply and those that consume the supply, rather its between those that hoard/flip the supply and those that consume the supply. This does not and cannot increase the actual amount in the game and thus is not a real reflection of true market valuation. Some time ago Chris Cleary did say that the majority of coins on the market had been flipped in the past. In otherwords, the real volume on the market is not actually coming from new coin generation but from flippers.

In an effort to, in the past, wait out the price and hope it reaches a point high enough that hoarded stocks would be released into the market, what the above statement is telling hoarders/flippers is, DONT release your supply, YOU have control over the price. If the market is to work out its own prices properly, the supply of these kinds of items must be more fluid, and must be subject to purposeful the supply creation by regular players and not to the spreadsheets of those who hold the majority of the supply.

DoctorDing.5890:

I think he said he’s off on an extended holiday but I’m not very good at interpreting this stuff…

I read that the same way. “I have 6 weeks of vacation time and will lose it if I don’t take it, so I’m gonna let the market do what it wants while I’m gone.”

At least, this is what his post sounds like to me, cause no one can say that T6 leather is fine.

That Guy.5704:

John Smith.4610:

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing; in fact, we’ve actually already started doing that. We hope to see many markets adjust their prices to match the current state of the economy. We do recognize that there are some markets moving to a place where we aren’t looking for them to be; once we see the economy moving we can reassess the markets and make improvements, as we have in the past.

There is a big issue with this. Now, first off, I am very much in favor of allowing the market to work itself out. However, in a few specific markets, this plan won’t work, and its these kinds of markets that are the biggest issue already. These are markets where the average player cannot reasonable and purposefully create supply. Why do I say this is an issue? There are, of course, the supply and demand aspects of the market. Each has an effect on price. Seaweed is a good example. Seaweed was used in the recommended dps food for multiple classes including classes that raid groups stacked (eles). But it wasn’t overly simple to get. Ember bay added a seaweed farm and the price plummeted. Why? because before the price was high, so what did people do? they went out of their way (which wasnt as far anymore) farmed seaweed and flooded supply into the market to pull it down. In other words, purposeful action was undertaken by player in order to rebalance the market price. lower price may then, of course, increase demand pull price up a bit until equilibrium is reached.

So, purposeful action based on price affects supply and normalizes it based on player expectations and average subjective value over the player base.

Unfortunately, there are other items, like mystic coins, where players cannot do this. Price is still controlled by those that control the supply. As those that control the supply pull prices up, yes, its true that demand will go down as players say “screw it” on their mystic coin items so there is a soft ceiling on the price, but the average player can still do little to actually adjust the price to its true average, playerbase-wide, valuation.

In other words, while the market will reach its equilibrium point, that point is not between those that create supply and those that consume the supply, rather its between those that hoard/flip the supply and those that consume the supply. This does not and cannot increase the actual amount in the game and thus is not a real reflection of true market valuation. Some time ago Chris Cleary did say that the majority of coins on the market had been flipped in the past. In otherwords, the real volume on the market is not actually coming from new coin generation but from flippers.

In an effort to, in the past, wait out the price and hope it reaches a point high enough that hoarded stocks would be released into the market, what the above statement is telling hoarders/flippers is, DONT release your supply, YOU have control over the price. If the market is to work out its own prices properly, the supply of these kinds of items must be more fluid, and must be subject to purposeful the supply creation by regular players and not to the spreadsheets of those who hold the majority of the supply.

He said they were lowering the amount they are doing to correct the economy, not that they were taking a break from correcting the economy.

zerorogue.9410:

Sledge Stone.9017:

Why not add new recipes for existing items that use mats that are over-valued in price? Like make a new recipe for scholar runes that doesn’t need a charged lodestone?

How about adding items that are no longer obtainable in game to a world boss reward’s drop table? Like the Assault Knight Power Cores? You could even add these to BLT chests for all I care, at least then the prices will drop on something that hasn’t been available in game outside of the Trading Post in almost 2 1/2 years.

https://www.gw2tp.com/search?name=power+core

Azurite Orbs are annother one… there should be a list of these….

Omg, I almost forgot Azurite Orbs existed…
My heart goes out to anyone wanting to craft Sentinel.

Rauderi.8706:

insanemaniac.2456:

in some cases, the problem is that hoarders be hoarding and its restricting the ability of the market to compensate and reflect where a price should be.

Is it really hoarding when it’s literally “I need 300 of these to complete one crafting step”?
I tease, a bit, but that’s how it is with some of these crafting materials, and it just seems like the game relies on fewer-but-larger sinks instead of filtering out materials with daily quests. The vendors in HoT that take rares in exchange for currency were a good start, but it still ends up being “ANet wants me to do this how many times?” to where I’m not sure most people are actually going to do it, so the material market was probably unaffected.

Curious side question, though. With the introduction of mass salvages ( <3 to the UI devs for this! ), did we see a spike in the Mithril supply from unintended quick-salvages?

Some players are likely not holding onto items to make things immediately, but for the what ifs.

This may be a slight tangent but you really need to squish both the drop rate and amounts needed from t5 materials. Stop us getting 100 greens and blues from one meta chain. I know it may help sell bag slots and salvage-o-matics but it’s just silly now. It would make a lot more sense if we only needed a few bolts of semi-valuable silk to make a Spool of Silk Weaving Thread instead of 100 super cheap bolts.

From a player perspective the ideal loot system does away with things of little to no value. After all, what’s more exciting, getting 50 things worth 2 silver, or getting 1 gold?

People seem very confused. Let me try and clear up some of that confusion.

Example 1, ectos: Players think that ectos should be worth ~35s. John has repeatedly changed drop rates, added new drops, added sinks (salvage to crystalline dust), etc. to keep ectos at ~35s. This is what people have come to expect for ectos. Thus when AB multi-loot started dumping a crap ton of ectos into the market the market just kept absorbing them at 35s because that is what it expected them to be. People thought for sure that John would nerf AB to keep ectos at this price. Ectos actually gained value because people kept buying them up since they were sure it would be nerfed and ecto prices would rise anyway. Then the major patch came and no nerf was made. People panicked because they had been hoarding ectos for months since they were sure John would adjust the price. Since the nerf didn’t come the market finally crashed and ectos dropped from 55s to 25s in a month. Their price is still correcting but finally it is no longer tied to the perceived price but to supply and demand.

Example 2, Mystic coins: For some reason their is a perceived value of these being high. Even though these are showered on you just for logging in people have this perception that they are rare and valuable. John even came right out and said that far more are coming into the economy then are being spent. But people keep up this false perception. Even in this very thread people are predicting the rise of MC prices which is the exact opposite of reality. But the prices will rise because of this perception until people finally get a grip.

Other examples of economy interference: T2-5 cloth, leather, wood, ore being added as drops to new maps.

timmyf.1490:

tl;dr “the prices are out of whack, so to fix them, we’re doing nothing and hoping they’ll fix themselves”

This is why I’m not an economist. :-)

Actually by saying they are doing nothing, they are actually doing something.

It’s sending a catch 22 notice to hoarders, they can hoard all they want now, but that investment will more than likely fail in the long run once they start adjusting again.

It’s a way of subtly getting people to offload, perceived over-performing markets, while hinting to look into other more niche markets that are under valued.

TexZero.7910:

It’s sending a catch 22 notice to hoarders, they can hoard all they want now, but that investment will more than likely fail in the long run once they start adjusting again.

It seems to me the only way hoarders will be enticed to sell their hoard is if prices go up.

So maybe “stepping back” means elimination of some supply channels.

John Smith.4610:

Eventually players recognized that there was an abundance of flax and the price began to trend in a positive direction.

This statement doesn’t make sense. Excess supply, aka “an abundance of flax”, should imply that prices will be driven downwards to stimulate demand so that the flax market clears. Would you care to elaborate?

Seera.5916:

Some players are likely not holding onto items to make things immediately, but for the what ifs.

They wouldn’t be holding on to tons of mats if said tons of mats were likely required for said “what ifs”.

TexZero.7910:

timmyf.1490:

tl;dr “the prices are out of whack, so to fix them, we’re doing nothing and hoping they’ll fix themselves”

This is why I’m not an economist. :-)

Actually by saying they are doing nothing, they are actually doing something.

It’s sending a catch 22 notice to hoarders, they can hoard all they want now, but that investment will more than likely fail in the long run once they start adjusting again.

I see it quite opposite – that they aren’t going to touch anything, so you should probably still hold onto the materials on the rise (and dump those going down).
Also, a subtle way of saying that they’re not touching ABML anytime soon.

I also see it as admittance that they let the market to become so messed up, they have no idea how to fix that, and are going to wait till it blows over on its own… somehow.

There’s still no reason for anyone to sell mystic coins because they know you are going to continue to add legendary weapons that consume huge numbers of them, and in fact you’ve now flat out said that you aren’t adding another source for them so there’s no actual risk involved in hoarding them. The only way the price would drop is if everyone suddenly stopped hoarding them and unloaded their supply but there’s no incentive for them to do that so the prices are not going to normalize.

X T D.6458:

People are hoarding because the value is too low to sell, and they are waiting for the price to pick back up when the next big craze comes out. Also uncertainty about what/how many mats will be needed for the next new item adds to this behavior.

I don’t sell because having gold is wasteful. If John adds an earned interest rate on the gold in my bank, then I’ll convert more to gold. Otherwise, commodities are the better long term investment. I simply keep the things I get as drops, that’s all.

For the economy and the capacity to earn wealth in game, it feels more and more stifling and not fun. Every time I find something to do or farm, it’s removed. Again it’s Anet enforcing a “Flip or Flop” strategy.

Btw… why crash the Seaweed market by creating a farming node? It died in under 24 hours.

The word hoarder has been thrown around a lot as a pejorative. There are different reasons to hold on to things. Some may do so for the purpose of investment, buying low and selling as prices rise, but others like myself simply save for later use. Overall I prefer low usage of the TP. Not no usage, but I would rather gather and salvage the vast majority of the supplies I need for any given goal. That means that I end up with a lot of other stuff I don’t need at the moment, but end up using later. Recently my wife & I just craft leveled 2 professions from 0-500 and one from 40-400 mostly using materials from our banks that have been slowly building over the past 4 years. Now we are starting in crafting on our other accounts.

I almost never buy ectos, and I almost never sell them either. I imagine that by behavior I fall squarely into what some here seem to be calling a hoarder, yet I fail to see how my mostly self-supplied play style has any significant impact on the economy.

I do find it interesting that John Smith’s post comes shortly after a post I have been following regarding the price of ectos, and can’t help but wonder if he is in essence commenting on the substance of that thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ecto-s-at-an-all-time-low

Hoarding doesnt achieve anything in a game that has an infinite supply of everything.
All it does is temporarily remove some items from the economy, but it doesnt stop the supply of the same items to the economy by other players.
Most people who complain about the economy are players who want to buy something that they cant be bothered getting themselves, but find the prices are higher than what they think they should be , hence the economy is broken.
About the only gripe I have with the economy is the large number of items that cant be sold at all, because they are soul bound or account bound .
In any economy, anything that has value should be sellable, but most MMOs have these restrictions so there must be some reason for them.

How long will hardened leather continue to be absurdly expensive with no reliable means of gathering it?

Leiloni.7951:

Can we do something about leather drop rate? Ignoring the hoarders, I think all of us personally notice a huge difference in personal supply. Getting cloth, wood, and metal is extremely easy via regular farming. I get tons of all of those via natural play activities, but leather is extremely scarce. I don’t think the price is due to hoarders who are probably doing what you’ve encouraged them to do anyway. If the drop rate was increased to be on par with other materials, we wouldn’t have this problem. It needs to be more easily farmable.

^ This. After a complete Octovine loot run, I consider myself lucky if I scrap more than 2 hardened leather sections (not even enough for 1 square, by the way).

Seabreeze.8437:

How long will hardened leather continue to be absurdly expensive with no reliable means of gathering it?

There is one loosely feasible way I have farmed it but its hard to ever find or create squads for is farming the cleric events in bloodstone fen. All the unstable trash items that drop salvage into random things like leather that are more difficult to collect/farm for. It would be nice though if there were squads setup to do it since its the one place where you do condi spam and such and no one complaining about it lol(the more players that are doing it there the more seekers spawn/higher quantity of the salvaged items and rare drops from completing each event).

On the economy itself the auric basin multi map which was fun to begin with but is rather boring since you don’t have to do anything and basically has dropped the value of mithril and silk down from where it used to be(there are other issues aside like druid being the main reason the leather has gone up so much higher). That is just my take on it since a lot of other content is fun to do but sometimes can’t find good maps because players just go to their one stop auric basin multi map and then wait a few hours before they can do it again.

We have the capacity to hoard X items (in many cases our capacity has been boosted by gem store purchases).

Even if John says the things we hoard aren’t going to suddenly spike in value, why would we stop hoarding?

People hoard items in this game because of Anet’s tendency to cause price spikes in things that are almost vendor value.
Anet has only themselves to blame for this tendency. I hoarded orbs for half a year when you could get Chrysocola for 2s 50c. Eventually it paid off. Same with +1 infusions (bought them months before the change), it paid off.
A number of people probably are hoarding mithril, though it’s not that good of an investment because the potential ROI (even if it went to 3silver each ore) doesn’t justify the amount of space it takes in your inventory/bank/etc. Still, people hoard these items because Anet has a history of making extreme changes resulting in profit for those who hoard.

Speaking of Mithril, it should be 100 ingots per mithrillium.

Ayrilana posted the most apt translation of Mr Smith’s post & I wish more folks would read it before commenting.

Ayrilana.1396:

Some clarification:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/56cx1y/update_on_the_economy/d8i9c6n

• ANet is acknowledging that many items in the game have prices that aren’t representative of what the market determines they “should” be, based on how often those items are actually consumed by players.
• This is largely due to players hoarding these items and/or refusing to buy or sell them for values outside of what we the players determine they “should” be,
• and ANet is taking some of that blame. They’ve put the idea of what the value of certain items “should be” in our heads through the pricing of recipes and other things, and we’re stubborn and won’t let that go.
• The bottom line is they’ve determined the best medicine for the situation is to let the market get strained enough until players stop assigning arbitrary values to things, and start moving their materials again.
• At that point, when the market is actually in charge, they’ll be able to use their levers to control prices again. Until that point, anything they do is likely to just create a panic-induced buy/sell craze that swings prices rapidly (largely because of the huge supply hoard out there right now).

TL;DR: it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because that’s the only way they can regain control of the levers on the market. Panic and speculation are ruling the economy right now, not rational decision making. If you want to help, start selling those bank tabs worth of kitten that you’re all hoarding.

(bullet points & spacing by me, not the original poster or Ayrilana)

John Smith.4610:

Hello everyone, I’m John Smith, the Studio Economist for ArenaNet. We’ve kept pretty silent about the economy recently, but today I’m here to talk about our current strategy.

Guild Wars 2 has an amazing economy, one of the largest and most active in-game economies ever created. ArenaNet takes pride in offering players an ever-changing world that lives and grows with them. As the game develops, the economy must develop as well, and that’s one of the many reasons we’ve made hundreds of changes to economy balance throughout the lifetime of the game.

For the most part the continuous monitoring and balancing has led to an incredibly stable economy with sustainable growth and reasonable inflation levels. However, we’ve noticed a disturbing side-effect of that continuous balancing: For many markets we’ve accidently set the idea of a price, rather than the market setting the idea of a price. Flax is a great example of a market where the prices weren’t really reflective of input or demand, but rather the idea of a value. Eventually players recognized that there was an abundance of flax and the price began to trend in a positive direction. We’ve noticed that a large number of markets are exhibiting this behavior in both directions—resulting in their being underpriced or overpriced—and their prices no longer reflect the average wealth or income of players.

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing; in fact, we’ve actually already started doing that. We hope to see many markets adjust their prices to match the current state of the economy. We do recognize that there are some markets moving to a place where we aren’t looking for them to be; once we see the economy moving we can reassess the markets and make improvements, as we have in the past.

I agree, for the most part. But I do wish you would get off your butts and fix AB multimap already.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ayrilana posted the most apt translation of Mr Smith’s post & I wish more folks would read it before commenting.

Ayrilana.1396:

snipped for brevity

(bullet points & spacing by me, not the original poster or Ayrilana)

You do realize that John Smith has just set things up to allow Anet to never touch the economy again, right? Admitting that Anet had some fault in the matter was a drop in the ocean compared to blaming it on the players. Quite conveniently, from here on out, every time someone complains about the price on a given item, or a change in the pricing, Anet, along with a dozen or so people here on the forum that I could probably list by name, will jump up and say “It’s the players fault. Stop hoarding!”

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ayrilana posted the most apt translation of Mr Smith’s post & I wish more folks would read it before commenting.

Ayrilana.1396:

Some clarification:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/56cx1y/update_on_the_economy/d8i9c6n

• ANet is acknowledging that many items in the game have prices that aren’t representative of what the market determines they “should” be, based on how often those items are actually consumed by players.
• This is largely due to players hoarding these items and/or refusing to buy or sell them for values outside of what we the players determine they “should” be,
• and ANet is taking some of that blame. They’ve put the idea of what the value of certain items “should be” in our heads through the pricing of recipes and other things, and we’re stubborn and won’t let that go.
• The bottom line is they’ve determined the best medicine for the situation is to let the market get strained enough until players stop assigning arbitrary values to things, and start moving their materials again.
• At that point, when the market is actually in charge, they’ll be able to use their levers to control prices again. Until that point, anything they do is likely to just create a panic-induced buy/sell craze that swings prices rapidly (largely because of the huge supply hoard out there right now).

TL;DR: it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because that’s the only way they can regain control of the levers on the market. Panic and speculation are ruling the economy right now, not rational decision making. If you want to help, start selling those bank tabs worth of kitten that you’re all hoarding.

(bullet points & spacing by me, not the original poster or Ayrilana)

The only way that I see that happening is if there are desirable items that people want to craft/spend ingredients to buy.

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ayrilana posted the most apt translation of Mr Smith’s post & I wish more folks would read it before commenting.

You do realize that John Smith has just set things up to allow Anet to never touch the economy again, right? Admitting that Anet had some fault in the matter was a drop in the ocean compared to blaming it on the players. Quite conveniently, from here on out, every time someone complains about the price on a given item, or a change in the pricing, Anet, along with a dozen or so people here on the forum that I could probably list by name, will jump up and say “It’s the players fault. Stop hoarding!”

Couldn’t have said this better myself. Also…

If you want to help, start selling those bank tabs worth of kitten that you’re all hoarding.

Let’s use hardened leather a an example. Kind of hard to do that when hardened leather sections are so scarce to come by, and it is now required (in really large amounts I might add) for so many kinds of crafting , not to mention guild upgrades. If you have a secret farming method to reliably stock up on hardened leather sections, by all means, lay it on us.

Not all hoarding is from profiteers. I have a ridiculous amount of mats stocked up, for crafting, which I constantly put off, because GW2’s crafting system is watching hours worth of meters fill up and empty over and over again; and basically always involves two items, one which you get too much of from bloody everything, and one which you have to mind-numbingly repeat specific content days or even months worth of your playtime to get enough of to do anything with.

Some of us have a hard time fulfilling that second part, as we play the game for fun, not profit or prestige.

Get thee hence forum bug!