Guild Wars 2

Flax is hardly a good example. We needed thousands and thousands for the guild hall and other stuff like Oiled weapons for specialization collections.

People weren’t paying 3-4s because they thought it was worth that much, it was because you guys added so many sinks at once that even parking 20 characters are the flax nodes in VB wasn’t enough to grind for it (this was me at HoT launch, 30 characters at VB flax farm).

The only reason now it’s dropped below 3s is because most of us finished the sink and can sell our excess as well as the fact you guys added so much flax drops to the mobs in every map and even bloodstone fen has a few flax nodes.

Also the fact that you think Mystic Coins and T6 leather are similar enough to Flax for comparison really shocks me. Flax is highly farmable with plenty of nodes (TD/VB/Bloodstone Fen patches) yet the other 2 are relatively static in supply (low as well). There isn’t a reliable way to farm T6 leather unlike flax so it isn’t we believe T6 leather should be 25s each but rather we have no way to obtain the leather reliably ourselves outside of the TP.

Then take a look at mystic coins, get 20 a month and need 500 or more per legendary. Over 2 years of logging in 1 account and you wonder why nobody sells any?

nice update right here mr economist

“hey guys im just dropping by to announce we’ve been doing nothing for a while and we’re planning on keeping this up, cya in 4 years”

So, the price of Mystic Coins has only grown for about a year and you chose to “take a step back”, basically encouraging every player to hoard them even more with the guarantee that the game will not be flooded with Mystic Coins anytime soon, making them an even better investment. Why would anyone start selling with these informations? That doesn’t make any sense.

Moreover, Mo just said in the AMA that the long awaited new HoT Legendaries are finally back on track and expected to be released in the upcoming months. Since they require 250 Mystic Coins, not even counting for the clovers, that is yet another incentive to not sell your Mystic Coins.

Anet “taking a step back” for a few months guaranteeing no new acquisition method for Mystic Coins + demand will only increase in the upcoming weeks with the prospect of new legendaries coming.
Now, I may not be a “Studio Economist” but by the look of things I don’t see any reason for the price to magically go down. That does not make any sense. Players are not going to sell.

I think this is a step in the right direction.
But you also should make all items valuable. Mithril for example. Or Essences of Time. Or coarse sand. Or ambrite. Plenty of no value items that need boosting.

I may be an example of what’s hurting the economy and not allowing prices to match the real supply coming into the game with the demand from players.

Everything I get, I salvage, and then auto-deposit into my bank. Out of sight; out of mind. My materials and goods rarely get evaluated against the Trading Post. I don’t give things to people who are willing to buy them. The supply given to me doesn’t help balance the players’ demand.

A few anecdotes:

1. Mithril: I had hoards of it. I didn’t sell it on the trading post. When guild halls demanded it, I tossed it there (didn’t participate in the economy). When I get too much now, I convert it to an ascended mat and store it (not participating in the economy).
2. Mystic Coins: I had 500 of them. When I heard guildies needing them, I gave them away (not participating in the economy). I saw a legendary I wanted and burnt through my supply (not participating…). I get them from dailies and I auto-deposit them (not participating…)
3. Leather: I had full stacks of refined and sections of all types. Guildies needed some, and so did the new halls. I sank them there. (yada yada)
4. Silk: I currently have many stacks because I’m too lazy to get rid of it. (yada yada).

I figure you can be an active speculator which is hoping that hoarding will pay off, or you can be a tacit non-complier like me and throw off the actual supply to demand equation.

I guess my only question is, what could change my habits? I really don’t have an answer to that one.

Greener.6204:

I may be an example of what’s hurting the economy and not allowing prices to match the real supply coming into the game with the demand from players.

Everything I get, I salvage, and then auto-deposit into my bank. Out of sight; out of mind. My materials and goods rarely get evaluated against the Trading Post. I don’t give things to people who are willing to buy them. The supply given to me doesn’t help balance the players’ demand.

A few anecdotes:

1. Mithril: I had hoards of it. I didn’t sell it on the trading post. When guild halls demanded it, I tossed it there (didn’t participate in the economy). When I get too much now, I convert it to an ascended mat and store it (not participating in the economy).
2. Mystic Coins: I had 500 of them. When I heard guildies needing them, I gave them away (not participating in the economy). I saw a legendary I wanted and burnt through my supply (not participating…). I get them from dailies and I auto-deposit them (not participating…)
3. Leather: I had full stacks of refined and sections of all types. Guildies needed some, and so did the new halls. I sank them there. (yada yada)
4. Silk: I currently have many stacks because I’m too lazy to get rid of it. (yada yada).

I figure you can be an active speculator which is hoping that hoarding will pay off, or you can be a tacit non-complier like me and throw off the actual supply to demand equation.

I guess my only question is, what could change my habits? I really don’t have an answer to that one.

It isn’t your responsibility to change for no reason, it is ANet’s responsibility to either give you an incentive to change, or to make an economy that works in response to many other people doing the same thing as you.

Honestly, in-game economies should be an optional activity for those who enjoy them. Players should be able to be self-sufficient. I have absolutely no interest in playing markets, I want to do Fractals or SPVP (generally). But everyone is forced to deal with whatever nonsense the economy throws their way, as huge amounts of content is locked behind participating in the market system, or hours and hours and hours of mindless grinding.

Some players are hoarding for the next legendary update. If A-net put in 3-4 legendary in the next update that most players want, then those stockpiles will disappear. Their are not many long term projects left for some of the older hardcore players.

too much reward chest driving me nuts

Conncept.7638:

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.

Of course I can only speak for myself, but I am in the final leg of crafting a legendary (Incinerator, for those of you who might remotely care) that requires me to have a full stack of all T6 reagent materials. This is no small thing, and I find myself engaging in behavior that could be considered “hoarding” from a strict economic standpoint.

John Smith.4610:

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing;

By chance, will this include the removal of DR? I could seriously do without my: no drop, no drop, no drop, bone, no drop, no drop, no drop, white bow +2c, no drop. Or my do a chain of events: 246 karma, 200 karma, 50 karma, 25 karma, 24 karma, 24 karma

I wouldn’t worry about Mystic coins, no one looking to make money with an ounce of economic sense is going to hoard them. They dropped a legendary into the game that requires 250 of the things, and the price still didn’t jump much.

Slashmeehup.1495:

I wouldn’t worry about Mystic coins, no one looking to make money with an ounce of economic sense is going to hoard them. They dropped a legendary into the game that requires 250 of the things, and the price still didn’t jump much.

Perhaps. I wonder what would have happened if it was Greatsword instead? You know, something that 5 out of 9 classes could use.

Seera.5916:

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.

I wouldn’t call that hoarding either.

Basically I only sell mats from drops or salvaged drops when my collection space overflows, currently at 1000. Then I sell 250 of them on the TP.

My reasoning is I have a lot of crafting disciplines I haven’t leveled to max yet, so let me save everything so I don’t have to buy anything if I can avoid it when I do start to level them.

The only overflow mats I have in my bank are ascended raw mats like bloodstone dust which are account bound. Well that and Mystic Coins due to their price back when I was quite poor.

A totally unregulated market leads to many people living in the streets or working on low wage jobs, a dwindling middle class which clings to their last shreds of dignity while a chosen few soak up all the wealth and barricade themselves in their ivory towers.

Luckily this is just a game here.

Edit:
I want to apologize to you, Mr Smith. It was not my intend to insult you or your knowledge of the craft of economics in general.

Check the price/the drop rate of the Invisible Boot Box, a random drop which costs more than legendary weapons.

“I don’t play the game, just the market, and the market seems fine.”
- John Smith

No way I’m selling any leather I get my hands on, these things are needed by the dozen and why should I sell them just to buy later?

The game is self stationary driving as if it’s a Google car . Content is on the shelf and small bits released. Time is being bought by releasing paragraphs and not chapters. Arenanet employees (devs, lore and other enthausiasts) are leaving en mass.
Arenanet is creating a self manageble game, which need less energy, means more profit due to less operational costs. Just like Guildwars1. The economy will manage itself. Mr Economy shall leave the company or the project soon. He is not needed anymore.
Oh wait, there is a secret project Arenanet is working on….

Dear Arenanet, What is your vision about the future of Guild Wars 2? Or should we wait for Amazon to release their MMO killer with the recent hired Arenanet employees in 2017/2018.

And last but not least…why are silver doubloons dropping in price so quickly. Oh wait they are added to the map dailies. Bot’s farm events making more supply then demand so prices drop. The period you are automatically logged out of the game after a period off ideling is raised lately.

And last but not least, maybe Arenanet could add skinning to the game , just like WOW did lately. “Skinning is a gathering profession that allows players to collect leather, scales and hides from slain beasts”.

Please show us you’re timetable and highlights of content we can expect in the future.

I am confused about leather as well. If I get 10 T7 in a week I am lucky and I need many hundreds for what I want to do. So I won’t buy and won’t make what I want because it is not really worth it without a constant known supply source.

I hope something will be done about rares hitting nearly 20s this week. Some are already as low as 22s a piece. Plus silk is worthless taking the old leather spot, leather still too expensive compared to the rest (just add new sources to old maps too, not just the bloodstone fen salvage stuff etc..) I think AB multiloot should also be fixed, I figured I’d participate yesterday and I could hardly believe the enormous amount of loot you get from it.. It took only 1 octovine kill and one commander to organize a squad and 50 people had a loot galore (and it wasn’t even the only squad).

And fixing silk really shouldn’t be done the same way leather was, that was way too extreme.

I hord all materials that I could use in future to build legendaries. Sometimes I sell a few materials if I run out of gold, but if I have enough gold why bother selling? It could mean that I have to rebuy said materials for a higher price (even if it is at the same price I loose 15% due to taxes) at a later time when I want to consume them.

Seabreeze.8437:

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).

i farmed silverwastes for about 4 hours to get a stack of gear and purses and 100 heirloom pouches. opened them all and got 25 hardened leather sections. thats a kittenton of work for that little hardened leather.

sophiewhite.3149:

i farmed silverwastes for about 4 hours to get a stack of gear and purses and 100 heirloom pouches. opened them all and got 25 hardened leather sections. thats a kittenton of work for that little hardened leather.

Sounds about right, I did 6 hours of Bloodstone fen and got 30 back before Ember Bay came out with map hopping UG and tagging as many events as I could.

fishball.7204:

sophiewhite.3149:

i farmed silverwastes for about 4 hours to get a stack of gear and purses and 100 heirloom pouches. opened them all and got 25 hardened leather sections. thats a kittenton of work for that little hardened leather.

Sounds about right, I did 6 hours of Bloodstone fen and got 30 back before Ember Bay came out with map hopping UG and tagging as many events as I could.

thats far too long for so little of that resource. esp when i need 500 of it or 250 refined.

Hardened Leather is another example where ANet introduced a new use (patches) for a heavily overstocked material (T6 leather) and it went from glut (5 million pre HoT) to shortage (25-50K post HoT) in a few months. Since T6 mats for cloth and leather are gathered via salvaging, with only a chance tied to the salvage kit quality, or high level bags, it’s much tougher to farm than T6 ore and wood.

And instead of the price stabilizing, supplies got low enough that it became the new flipping poster child which then encouraged players who think they may need them for future crafting to hoard any that they got rather than help discourage flipping by undercutting asks on the TP.

ANet’s solution is to add cloth and leather nodes to GH and WvW. But I don’t think that it will be enough.

One of the major influences in our economy still is the gold/coins and the gold/gem exchange rates. Material, equipment and skin prices are important as well, but everything relies on the gold market. As ANet uses the gem-store to make money, they still have a great impact on the economy, even if they do not touch the other sections at all.

A huge problem of our great economy is still “play the market.” The fact that people can make money from just sitting afk in towns and just doing transactions while others play the game and farm, makes the situation nearly as awkward as in RL. Some of them are so efficient with it, that they earn more money than from regular farming. As in RL this could be stoped within a second, with a small change in the transaction-fee. But why changing a working system? So some of the difficulties we encounter on the market derive from “playing the market.”

About hoarding. Once I had 500 Mystic Coins, because they were on an all time low of a few silvers. When the price exploded, I sold them all at once and bought the remaining kegs we needed for the last guildhall upgrades. I created two peaks in gw2spidy, they are not very high but noticable. Compared to the long time progress, it was a breath in the wind. Space in this game is limited. And what people collect now and hoard, other people collect a few hours later. If all hoarders would sell their goods at once, we may notice a peak for the length of 2-3 hours? Then the farmers would stabilize the market again -as they already do. (imho)

But thanks for the official statement. When talking about economy ingame, I usually earn tons of ironic smiles, when I mention ANet has direct impact on the market. No ecomony works without a good controling system. The market is mostly stable and survived countless of money- and farm-exploits, which would have forced other game-economies to reroll or wipe more than once over the years. You’ve been doing an excellent job. Don’t take the laughs too seriously. The game would not be where it is today, without your work.

I never sell mats because I haven’t maxed all my crafters yet (not someone who sits there and maxes in one session). Also I have learned over time in GW2 that you never know when a resource is going to become important.

quality economizing

Djinn.9245:

Seera.5916:

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.

I wouldn’t call that hoarding either.

Then what would you call hoarding? Hoarding to me is anything that is kept that is not being used at the moment. The What If’s (I might need it later, it might be rarer later and I might get money from it). This includes things that don’t have a usage now but players think might in the future.

We all hoard to some degree. Some do so more than others.

Seera.5916:

Djinn.9245:

Seera.5916:

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.

I wouldn’t call that hoarding either.

Then what would you call hoarding? Hoarding to me is anything that is kept that is not being used at the moment. The What If’s (I might need it later, it might be rarer later and I might get money from it). This includes things that don’t have a usage now but players think might in the future.

We all hoard to some degree. Some do so more than others.

Hoarders save things for no reason. Ever see a story about someone whose house is filled with stacks of newspapers? That is a hoarder. They don’t have a plan, they just like having stuff. I save stuff I don’t need right now because I know that if Anet makes it usable for something later it will cost more to buy it then.

What JS is saying is we players get a price for X stuck in our minds, Hardened Leather at 50c or even 3s so when the price rises to 25s we hoard rather than sell, which would bring the price down. His solution is to do nothing in hopes that when it gets to 50s it’ll be too attractive not to dump our hoard onto the TP and that will crash the price hopefully to the point that the price will stabilize at a level that’ll not encourage hoarding.

Djinn.9245:

Seera.5916:

Djinn.9245:

Seera.5916:

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.

I wouldn’t call that hoarding either.

Then what would you call hoarding? Hoarding to me is anything that is kept that is not being used at the moment. The What If’s (I might need it later, it might be rarer later and I might get money from it). This includes things that don’t have a usage now but players think might in the future.

We all hoard to some degree. Some do so more than others.

Hoarders save things for no reason. Ever see a story about someone whose house is filled with stacks of newspapers? That is a hoarder. They don’t have a plan, they just like having stuff. I save stuff I don’t need right now because I know that if Anet makes it usable for something later it will cost more to buy it then.

Those are people who hoard beyond reason. And they have a reason. It’s just one that’s illogical to everyone else. They keep those things because they have value to them.

Everyone hoards to some degree. I hoard account bound food supplies for if I ever decide to make cooking recipes. I most likely never will, but I still keep them. That’s hoarding. I’m not hoarding to the degree that I’ve got more than a stack of them.

And you’re hoarding as well: you’re hoarding items that you think may be useful in the future. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Hoarding is only a problem if it starts to interfere with your ability to have fun in the game.

I have seen several times where the economy was over-balanced. now I sell nothing that I can’t gather easily. I have been through times where things were worth no more than vendor value on the TP, only to be balanced the opposite way. so, if it isn’t wood or ore or certain plants, I never sell it, whether I need it or not. I might need it at sometime, I may never need it, but I know one thing: I’ll never be buying it off the TP.

if Anet didn’t ‘balance’ things like they have, I’d probably sell off any excess. unfortunately that isn’t the case, so I will continue to be a ‘hoarder’ of materials. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

LMFAO, typical economist stuff. “Reality does not agree with what our models tell us should be happening, therefore there is definitely an error in reality.”

People keep stuff because there are tons of people who view anything gathered or dropped as “free”. It may be “wrong”, but it is how they behave.

People also keep stuff because there has been a history of introducing new items/sinks that require stoopid amounts of stuff that was formerly worthless. Sometimes the new items required mats that were worth some coin to begin with and the price of those mats shot up. Therefore, if you sell now and something new comes in that you want, you lose big by having to buy back those mats you sold at a much higher price.

nottsgman.8206:

I have seen several times where the economy was over-balanced. now I sell nothing that I can’t gather easily. I have been through times where things were worth no more than vendor value on the TP, only to be balanced the opposite way. so, if it isn’t wood or ore or certain plants, I never sell it, whether I need it or not. I might need it at sometime, I may never need it, but I know one thing: I’ll never be buying it off the TP.

if Anet didn’t ‘balance’ things like they have, I’d probably sell off any excess. unfortunately that isn’t the case, so I will continue to be a ‘hoarder’ of materials. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Same here. Anet’s idea of ‘balancing’ is going from one excess to the other. See what happened with T5 leather, or with mystic coins.

Behellagh.1468:

What JS is saying is we players get a price for X stuck in our minds, Hardened Leather at 50c or even 3s so when the price rises to 25s we hoard rather than sell, which would bring the price down. His solution is to do nothing in hopes that when it gets to 50s it’ll be too attractive not to dump our hoard onto the TP and that will crash the price hopefully to the point that the price will stabilize at a level that’ll not encourage hoarding.

Wouldn’t it makes sense just to flood the market with supply? This could cause people to hoard even more, but there’s only so much that players can store.

Question for anyone,

Why do they keep introducing new currency with nothing to buy with them?

Bloodstone fen magic, Ember Bay wood, Shards of glory for PvP, gift of battle memoirs for WvW and I and some of my guild mates have endless amounts of these now.

Its kind of become like karma to where people now have millions and millions of stuff/items that are utterly useless. In the case of WvW and PvP why even introduce these items?

Then he comes out with a post that Anet will do nothing, Wow great thanks for the update …………………..

Serious question, why do they introduce new currency and then simply walk away from it?

Now if I was a cynical person, I might translate this statement:

Since the last disappointing Quarterly sales report, we have seen a nice increase in Gem sales revenue in the last few months. This revenue increase is mainly due to players converting gems to gold in order to purchase materials which cannot be easily farmed or obtained consistently through regular game play, and as such, we are very happy with the current economy and won’t be applying any measures to try and ease this situation until such time as Gem sales start to fall again.

kdaddy.5431:

Question for anyone,

Why do they keep introducing new currency with nothing to buy with them?

Bloodstone fen magic, Ember Bay wood, Shards of glory for PvP, gift of battle memoirs for WvW and I and some of my guild mates have endless amounts of these now.

Its kind of become like karma to where people now have millions and millions of stuff/items that are utterly useless. In the case of WvW and PvP why even introduce these items?

Then he comes out with a post that Anet will do nothing, Wow great thanks for the update …………………..

Serious question, why do they introduce new currency and then simply walk away from it?

There’s plenty to buy with the currencies, and you can convert them to gold/materials thanks to loot bags. Memories of Battle are used by others crafting legendary weapons, among other things.

The only thing I’m really seeing out of whack with the economy is the disparity in price/supply between top-tier base crafting materials.

Having formal education in economics helps in understanding his goal.

Economies are often confused for financial markets. They are not the same thing, but closely tie in with each other because cash is the medium by which we exchange.

Economies are based on supply and demand in the allocation of resources.

All economies are dispassionate and operate with perfect efficiency with no interference.

Essentially this is all he is saying. They are currently going to allow the economy to operate in a dispassionate way. In other words, some high-value items are going be allowed to bottom out and make people unhappy, but some people who have been struggling to acquire these same high-value items will become happy. This will be allowed to continue until a majority of items have reached an equilibrium point where supply and demand have operated together to create a realistic value for the item(s). He is making designs for items to be intrinsic in value rather than token.

I don’t think most people are against high value items bottoming out a bit (eg. let’s say T6 fine mats or ectos) because most players are on the “poorer” scale compared to the super rich (200k+).

The problem is when the average player needs so many mystic coins and T6 leather to do what they want to do and the prices are so high yet all the other stuff they farm (eg. AB) yields lower and lower gold every day.

In the case of T6 leather and Mystic Coins the demand outweighs the supply by far and it isn’t even due to speculators or “evil TP barons”. The fact is, ANet added far too many sinks but not enough supply or at least extremely inelastic supply (ie. I cannot go out and farm T6 leather reliably).

Their “data” might tell them that players are hoarding and not selling but have they thought about the fact that maybe the players actually need this material for their own use? Say a player has planned to make Eureka but only has 260 Mystic Coins so they have to either buy more or keep logging in for the next couple of months. They might decide not to buy (since they need money elsewhere) and the data looks like they’re hoarding 260 coins when in fact this is legitimate Mystic Coin demand.

Say right now I have 60 mystic coins, I have planned to make the legendary sword in the future so I am obviously not gonna sell the 60 I have. I feel like there’s a false assumption in that if players aren’t selling their loot and aren’t using it immediately they’re hoarding/creating false demand which is wrong.

Slashmeehup.1495:

I wouldn’t worry about Mystic coins, no one looking to make money with an ounce of economic sense is going to hoard them. They dropped a legendary into the game that requires 250 of the things, and the price still didn’t jump much.

Closer to 500 coins(like the rest of the HoT legendaries) unless you want to grind out the clovers through PvP or WvW but the coins are used in the last part of the process. There shouldn’t be a spike unless you think everyone who makes it can buy their way through the other 3 steps.

I doubt Anet considers anyone holding a stack or two of a material “hoarding”. The people hoarding Mystic Coins are the ones sitting on 4-5k coins. Remember – more coins are entering the system then there are leaving.

fishball.7204:

I don’t think most people are against high value items bottoming out a bit (eg. let’s say T6 fine mats or ectos) because most players are on the “poorer” scale compared to the super rich (200k+).

The problem is when the average player needs so many mystic coins and T6 leather to do what they want to do and the prices are so high yet all the other stuff they farm (eg. AB) yields lower and lower gold every day.

In the case of T6 leather and Mystic Coins the demand outweighs the supply by far and it isn’t even due to speculators or “evil TP barons”. The fact is, ANet added far too many sinks but not enough supply or at least extremely inelastic supply (ie. I cannot go out and farm T6 leather reliably).

Their “data” might tell them that players are hoarding and not selling but have they thought about the fact that maybe the players actually need this material for their own use? Say a player has planned to make Eureka but only has 260 Mystic Coins so they have to either buy more or keep logging in for the next couple of months. They might decide not to buy (since they need money elsewhere) and the data looks like they’re hoarding 260 coins when in fact this is legitimate Mystic Coin demand.

Say right now I have 60 mystic coins, I have planned to make the legendary sword in the future so I am obviously not gonna sell the 60 I have. I feel like there’s a false assumption in that if players aren’t selling their loot and aren’t using it immediately they’re hoarding/creating false demand which is wrong.

The problem is there are more coins and more T6 leather than there is demand. Just that most of the coins and leather aren’t on the market.

Which means anything that ANet does to affect those markets could lead them to becoming vendor trash.

ANet has come out and said that there are a large number of Mystic Coins sitting in players’ inventories. I wouldn’t be surprised if leather was in the same boat.

I mean only ANet has the data for that but I really don’t believe that the supply of coins/T6 leather outpaces the demand.

Demand is hard to measure, supply is easy. The problem with demand is that it shifts with price points and at the same time like I said before staggered demand over time is also a factor especially in MMOs like GW2.

With the likes of mystic coins maybe there are more coming in then being used because most players need 100 or 250 of them to do anything so while they’re waiting to accumulate it. Which means they “hoard” them for months until the login rewards manage to get them there.

fishball.7204:

I mean only ANet has the data for that but I really don’t believe that the supply of coins/T6 leather outpaces the demand.

Demand is hard to measure, supply is easy. The problem with demand is that it shifts with price points and at the same time like I said before staggered demand over time is also a factor especially in MMOs like GW2.

With the likes of mystic coins maybe there are more coming in then being used because most players need 100 or 250 of them to do anything so while they’re waiting to accumulate it. Which means they “hoard” them for months until the login rewards manage to get them there.

ANet has literally come out and posted on this forum and says that the generation of coins is faster than their consumption. And that the majority of coins are sitting in players’ inventories. And they implied that it was flippers that have sold the coins on the market (saying that the coins on the market are mostly ones that had been flipped). And flippers tend to buy in large quantities (like way more than 1 or 2 stacks) and sit on them for a while before selling them to let the price rise to increase their profit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mystic-Coins-again/page/2#post6157178

What does the “average” player use mystic coins for? I’m not sure if I ever used any in my 4 years playing.

Average players do not craft multiple legendary weapons.

Average players don’t try to one man a Guild Hall.

Average players don’t try to craft every exotic weapon with a unique name.

Why does an “Average” player need them to drop for free in the quantities you all are asking for? The corner stone to the crafting system is the TP, a place where players who have something they don’t want get sold to players who do want it, for gold so the 1st set of players can buy what they want from another group who is selling what they don’t want. We are all suppose to use it. It’s the primary gold sink. Yet there’s a segment of the population who refuse to use it, wanting to farm everything on their own, acquiring as much as they need quickly. A supply source like that would drive the price of everything down to vendor. Scarcity of supply is a cornerstone of a viable economy because it counters the voracious demand and sets a value on that scarce item to keep demand in check with the flow of supply into the marketplace.

Fifth.8169:

SO AURIC BASIN continues to behave as unintended ???

All you gots to do really. is add a 5 minute account wide time out on map swapping by the user.

auric basin is fine sure. but the issue is map swapping… remove the option ?

you ever thought they think its ok?

Fifth.8169:

SO AURIC BASIN continues to behave as unintended ???

All you gots to do really. is add a 5 minute account wide time out on map swapping by the user.

auric basin is fine sure. but the issue is map swapping… remove the option ?

Perhaps Anet thinks that ML is ok right now, with following Reasons.

1. It encourages Players to do the Meta Event.
2. It balanced out the Ecto Price. ( From 50-60 Silver to around 30 silver and right now it stays around 30 Silver even with the Supply now )
3. It is a Gold-Sink Farm. ( Yes you get Gold by selling Mats on the TP but it also takes a good amount of Gold out of the Game )

sophiewhite.3149:

Fifth.8169:

SO AURIC BASIN continues to behave as unintended ???

All you gots to do really. is add a 5 minute account wide time out on map swapping by the user.

auric basin is fine sure. but the issue is map swapping… remove the option ?

you ever thought they think its ok?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nyv3h?context=10000

John Smith also appears to be the dev in charge of Megaserver implementation (which is at the root of the AB multi loot issue).

The pattern seems to be – If it’s not working properly, do nothing and hope it goes away.