im bad at sarcasm
Update on the Economy
Or working according to plan.
Remember what we see as supply on the TP isn’t really the supply that’s out there or an indication of the supply being injected into the game on average daily. ANet can. What determines the day to day price on the TP is only the supply the players are willing to post daily, not the amount they use or keep or sell on the TP way outside of the trading range, effectively using the TP as storage.
The only concern I have with this laissez-faire approach of waiting for the market to “break” so the hoarded mats will flood onto the TP thus resetting the price is that unlike a real economy, players can check themselves out if it becomes intolerable. That will hurt the player population and that’s bad for the game as a whole.
And while I agree that ANet shouldn’t be twiddling with the economy’s knobs and levers frequently, sometimes I think they let it run open loop for far too long.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
(edited by Behellagh.1468)
I am no economist so I don’t know anything about the science behind all of this market stuff. All I know is that I am a casual player with only time to play on the evenings or on the weekends and that crafting a full exotic armor set of any kind requires 60 cured hardened leather squares. To farm them takes forever and to buy them would costs way too much to afford it regularly. Because as a casual player who plays the game for fun and does not like grinding (be it maps (SW, AB) or nodes) I am rather poor.
There was a time were a player like myself could afford to craft exotic armor for several characters. These times are gone apparently. Nowadays casual players should stick to karma armor or play WvW. And don’t even think of making a viper’s armor for more than one character. I am curious how long it will take for the market to regulate itself (or whatever the plan of Anet is). I only hope that this trend to make necessary crafting material so inaccessible for normal players does not expand to other materials. Otherweise I might not be around to see the market regulate itself.
Oh, yes and I am most definitely hoarding every material I cannot farm easily. You never know when you need it and who much it will cost then. But do not worry, it is not much anyway.
(edited by aikatara.3462)
There are a lot of strategies for “poor” players. You can get level 80 exotic armor from Dungeons, WvW, the temples on Orr, Fractals, each with their own game mode currency and sometimes a bit of gold (karma with Orr). You may have to do a little research to figure out where to go for which stats.
Then there’s using crafting tools like those on GW2Efficiency to determine the cheapest way to craft a particular item, like buying intermediate items (with buy orders) from the TP than 100% crafting from scratch. Plus craft pieces when you have the mats. No reason to wait until you have all the mats for an entire set.
Then there are alternative sets on the TP you can find with tools like GW2BLTC which allows you to search by prefix stats. For example looking at Level 80 Berserker medium armor, yes it would cost you 60 – 85g to buy an Emblazoned set with an empty rune slot but there’s also Niko’s armor that has Superior Runes of Infiltration baked in for 20 – 30g.
Plus if you do your dailies while playing, that’s 2g each time. And sometimes you need to rob Peter to pay Paul. Note what mats you need for your short term crafting goals and sell the rest to raise capital. Sometimes it’s surprising to find out how much the mats you are simply accumulating in your bank’s collection tab is worth. For that setting up an API key for GW2Efficiency and have it calculate the value of your collections tab. Sometimes you will be surprised that unused pile of T1/2 gems or food mats are worth that much.
And while it’s hard to farm for hard leather, it’s easy and quick to farm say Potatoes and Elder Wood at their daily farm locations and sell them, with sell orders not sell immediate. You can find those as well on GW2Efficiency along with permanent ore node locations. Plus at various times players have posted routes where you can farm high demand wood relatively quickly (under half and hour) and sell them for a couple of gold a day. This may be quicker than trying to farm T6 leather.
I’m just listing alternatives since we were all in your shoes at one time.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
…
And while it’s hard to farm for hard leather, it’s easy and quick to farm say Potatoes and Elder Wood at their daily farm locations and sell them, with sell orders not sell immediate. You can find those as well on GW2Efficiency along with permanent ore node locations. Plus at various times players have posted routes where you can farm high demand wood relatively quickly (under half and hour) and sell them for a couple of gold a day. This may be quicker than trying to farm T6 leather.I’m just listing alternatives since we were all in your shoes at one time.
Out of curiosity (as I am a previously proven non-economist), would you believe it healthy for some people to view the economy more as a barter system than a monetary one?
Edit: To add an anecdote (as I believe perspective plays a big role), I’m currently in need of a lot of empty kegs. I’ve been gathering flax for months. I’m also currently annoyed with the overflow of linen scraps on my main character (I guess I just filled my bank). Yet at no point up until now did I think, “Hey, my friend Tippy over there has some kegs and wants some linen; maybe we should trade.”
As a person who places little-to-no value on gold, trading seems like a reasonable process.
G R E E N E R
(edited by Greener.6204)
I’m not the most savvy when it comes to all this hoarding and price fixing but I do know how to watch the trends. Doing nothing (A.K.A. hands off) seems an odd solution unless Anet has somehow been helping these hoarders/fixers up until now. No tinfoil hat, just a thought based on the information provided.
It’s also strange that the supply of higher value items (ie. Personal bankers) has risen since this post. Does this mean that this post is causing more of these items to be listed or is the actual number of the items increasing?
Out of curiosity (as I am a previously proven non-economist), would you believe it healthy for some people to view the economy more as a barter system than a monetary one?
Edit: To add an anecdote (as I believe perspective plays a big role), I’m currently in need of a lot of empty kegs. I’ve been gathering flax for months. I’m also currently annoyed with the overflow of linen scraps on my main character (I guess I just filled my bank). Yet at no point up until now did I think, “Hey, my friend Tippy over there has some kegs and wants some linen; maybe we should trade.”
Yes, this is exactly how you should be thinking. Trying to gather just the materials you need is not the way to go – if you need 1,000 flax, go gather 1,000 other resources and sell them for the item you need.
I get what JS is saying, but it irks me none the less. Anet has screwed up certain markets with a heavy hand (leather) and is now deciding to let it crash and burn. I think that’s what makes me the most annoyed. I like the little steps like introducing leather/cloth nodes and the unstable scraps. What I don’t like is the major steps like the patches and the varying amounts of material for refined goods. What they did was try to adjust it through major steps rather than the smaller ones and are now surprised that those markets are screwed up. I mean they just tanked the seaweed market in the most recent patch. It’s not like they haven’t been thinking of taking this step so they make one more heavy-hand adjustment before saying ‘hey, we’re stepping back’. It seems so inconsistent to me.
Could they not make a few adjustments for consistency (raw to refined mats) and THEN let the market go wild? Since they didn’t do this, it’s still them telling us that leather is inherently more valuable than ore, not even taking into account that ore is easier to farm on demand than leather. This economy has always frustrated me and I’m not happy with this message.
I’m all in favor of introducing more optional sinks (snowflake sinks were fantastic!) but am salty about the changes in recipes that are short-sighted. I find it hard to believe no one could see that this might be a problem long-term.
TL:DR – they broke it, I don’t buy it.
Well then. Don’t really know how to take this, because there are several markets that you should step in and address ANet. You kittened the leather market. It was in a bad place, but you made so many changes simultaneously that you took it to an equally bad place on the other end of the spectrum.
I don’t think you’ve learned at all, as now you appear to be doing the same thing but to your policies regarding the economy instead of the economy itself. All you need to do is start making smaller changes, and making fewer changes at a time.
Take leather for example, you could have started off by only increasing the amount of leather scraps needed for refinement, and then evaluated if that had the desired effect or not enough.
Take seaweed. Instead of adding a farm, you could have added an extra node or two in a few different maps that were easier/quicker to get to than the old ones.
Well then. Don’t really know how to take this, because there are several markets that you should step in and address ANet. You kittened the leather market. It was in a bad place, but you made so many changes simultaneously that you took it to an equally bad place on the other end of the spectrum.
I don’t think you’ve learned at all, as now you appear to be doing the same thing but to your policies regarding the economy instead of the economy itself. All you need to do is start making smaller changes, and making fewer changes at a time.
Take leather for example, you could have started off by only increasing the amount of leather scraps needed for refinement, and then evaluated if that had the desired effect or not enough.
Take seaweed. Instead of adding a farm, you could have added an extra node or two in a few different maps that were easier/quicker to get to than the old ones.
But like PvP class balancing, the general economy isn’t something you want to micro manage.
What we don’t see is the raw number of mats actually being injected into the game as well as their true consumption. All we see is the excess, due to being overpriced, accumulate on the TP and call it supply.
What ANet didn’t foresee that the sudden spike in price caused the supply that normally flowed onto the TP to constrict as players who once sold their excess moved to hoarding. So while demand increased as expected, supply to the TP suddenly constricted and you end up with a positive feedback loop that pushes prices higher which encourages more hoarding which pushes prices higher still.
Their hope is when the price gets high enough, the lure of a pile of gold will be too great. And once the price looks like it may go into freefall, it will as others start dumping their hoard. Once the urge to hoard is gone, the market will stabilize in the price range ANet expected, based on the true supply and demand they but we don’t.
That’s why I would love to see the actual number bought/sold on the TP over the last 24 hours and the average unit price. That velocity is more useful in my opinion that how many overpriced items and underbid offers have accumulated on the TP in it’s lifetime or the current low ask and high bid.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
What we don’t see is the raw number of mats actually being injected into the game as well as their true consumption. All we see is the excess, due to being overpriced, accumulate on the TP and call it supply.
This is true. However, I just recently saw a post on reddit that is sticking with me. Opening and salvaging over 1800 caches netted so many leather/ore/wood/cloth. Yes, I know – small sample, veracity of poster, all the qualifiers. However the results were rather stark. There was about half as much leather as any other material. Out of all of those bags only 4 salvaged to hardened leather. Like I said, take it with a grain of salt but it feels true to me based on my experiences.
I also know this is not quite what you were talking about with regards to supply into the economy and consumption. Maybe it’s more balanced than we realize and the other mats are dropping in excess, but it feels bad. I am always starved for leather and that’s my bottleneck when I want to craft. And it’s not like I am crafting like a madman.
(edited by Shaaba.5672)
What we don’t see is the raw number of mats actually being injected into the game as well as their true consumption. All we see is the excess, due to being overpriced, accumulate on the TP and call it supply.
This is true. However, I just recently saw a post on reddit that is sticking with me. Opening and salvaging over 1800 caches netted so many leather/ore/wood/cloth. Yes, I know – small sample, veracity of poster, all the qualifiers. However the results were rather stark. There was about half as much leather as any other material. Out of all of those bags only 4 salvaged to hardened leather. Like I said, take it with a grain of salt but it feels true to me based on my experiences.
I also know this is not quite what you were talking about with regards to supply into the economy and consumption. Maybe it’s more balanced than we realize and the other mats are dropping in excess, but it feels bad. I am always starved for leather and that’s my bottleneck when I want to craft. And it’s not like I am crafting like a madman.
This is my observation as well. Frankly, I think that, if they want the market to be neutral, they should make it so – Equalize refinement and salvage rates across materials. Have all materials refine at a 3:1 ratio, and Inscripitions/Insignias craft with 50/50 ratios of metal/wood and leather/cloth, instead of the current monstrosity. Then let the economy balance around that.
I get all my leather and cloth for my personal use out of salvaged armor. The trick is knowing the estimated drop rate, so you can bid at a price that will save you significant coin and what level ranges the tier you want drops from.
I would rather put up a bunch of bids and go play what I want to do rather mindlessly farm the same content I feel I need to, for weeks, to simply the mats I need for free. My game playing time is more valuable than that.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
What we don’t see is the raw number of mats actually being injected into the game as well as their true consumption. All we see is the excess, due to being overpriced, accumulate on the TP and call it supply.
This is true. However, I just recently saw a post on reddit that is sticking with me. Opening and salvaging over 1800 caches netted so many leather/ore/wood/cloth. Yes, I know – small sample, veracity of poster, all the qualifiers. However the results were rather stark. There was about half as much leather as any other material. Out of all of those bags only 4 salvaged to hardened leather. Like I said, take it with a grain of salt but it feels true to me based on my experiences.
I also know this is not quite what you were talking about with regards to supply into the economy and consumption. Maybe it’s more balanced than we realize and the other mats are dropping in excess, but it feels bad. I am always starved for leather and that’s my bottleneck when I want to craft. And it’s not like I am crafting like a madman.
This is my observation as well. Frankly, I think that, if they want the market to be neutral, they should make it so – Equalize refinement and salvage rates across materials. Have all materials refine at a 3:1 ratio, and Inscripitions/Insignias craft with 50/50 ratios of metal/wood and leather/cloth, instead of the current monstrosity. Then let the economy balance around that.
The thing is it was that at the start and it quickly became obvious that some mats accumulated quicker on the TP, leading to a glut at vendor (or less at the time) prices. Trying to fix that particular glut is way Bolts of Damask’s recipe need twice as much T3/4/5 cloth as ascended squares and ingots. And to punch it up even more they increased the cost of refining bolts of silk from 2 to 3.
These are the knobs and levers ANet has available to influence the market. Salvage and bag rates, recipe changes and new uses. This asymmetrical nature with recipes is in response to gluts when symmetric failed.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
The thing is it was that at the start and it quickly became obvious that some mats accumulated quicker on the TP, leading to a glut at vendor (or less at the time) prices.
That’s because there wasn’t equal use for said items. there was a massive generation of t5 cloth, leather, metal and wood, for example, but only metal and wood had any significant use (for precursor forging mainly). Ascended introduction would have fixed that on its own, mostly, but they went on correcting spree, where they introduced more and more “fixes”. While some of those might have been a good idea in theory (patches), all were done in such heavy-handed way that they mostly ended up causing more harm than help.
Trying to fix that particular glut is way Bolts of Damask’s recipe need twice as much T3/4/5 cloth as ascended squares and ingots. And to punch it up even more they increased the cost of refining bolts of silk from 2 to 3.
All of those were done on top of introducing Ascended armor crafting, which is a good example of Anet’s idea of fine market manipulation (using a “bigger hammer” approach).
Yes, this is exactly how you should be thinking. Trying to gather just the materials you need is not the way to go – if you need 1,000 flax, go gather 1,000 other resources and sell them for the item you need.
That’s not the way a huge majority of people are thinking, and nothing Anet does is going to change that. If they will make (or allow) it so that you have to use TP in order to use some content mechanics (like crafting), instead of pushing people to use TP more, it will only cause many of them to stop interacting with said mechanics at all.
In this, Anet is, as usual, trying to look at the economics as their main and only goal there, while completely forgetting about players. So, instead of seeing economy as something that should serve the players, they look at players as merely the tools used to “properly” manage the game economy. And thus, instead of trying to adjust to behaviour of players, they try to force changes of that behaviour on them.
Game should be for the players, not the other way around.
And back on topic – personally, for one, i’m never again going to sell on TP any mats that i can’t farm in reliable way. Not until they overflow my (fully upgraded) mats storage anyway. And that’s regardless of the price (i don’t even bother to check those prices anymore). Mat requirements for most things that we see nowadays are just way too big to risk it.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
If they were truly serious about the economy, they would stop the AB multi-loot exploiters. The glut of rares and ectos coming from this has seriously devalued the rewards from most of the other activities in the game.
If they were truly serious about the economy, they would stop the AB multi-loot exploiters. The glut of rares and ectos coming from this has seriously devalued the rewards from most of the other activities in the game.
And yet the ML still is working against inflation since this farm takes Gold out of the Game.
What is interesting in the Ecto-Market is the Fact that in a Matter of just a few Days the Ecto Supply went from 240k to 500k while the Price just dropped 2 Silver at the same Time. Multi-Looters alone couldn’t have done this in such a short amount of Time, some Stockpilers went Panic here. Even more interesting is that, despite having such a high Supply of 700k now, the Price is still around 30s and didn’t completely crash, its not even close to the All-Time Low of 13s it once had. ( And if you don’t count this because it was close to the Release of the Game another Low at 18s, nearly one Year later )
a supply from 240k to 500k means 5200 multilooters offered their ectos from a single tarir multi loot run
260k/50 = 5200
across a few days that is easily possible considering the amount of people doing tarir multi loot
One of my 30 accounts (Malediktus.9250).
a supply from 240k to 500k means 5200 multilooters offered their ectos from a single tarir multi loot run
260k/50 = 5200
across a few days that is easily possible considering the amount of people doing tarir multi loot
No, it means hoarders that bought a ton of ectos predicting that aNet would do something about fixing the multiloot and the ecto prices would rise got rekt. Now they are trying to salvage some money out of it.
There might be some panic selling, but multiloot will get nerfed earlier or later. I would not put too much value into this “Update on the Economy” post.
One of my 30 accounts (Malediktus.9250).
What we don’t see is the raw number of mats actually being injected into the game as well as their true consumption. All we see is the excess, due to being overpriced, accumulate on the TP and call it supply.
This is true. However, I just recently saw a post on reddit that is sticking with me. Opening and salvaging over 1800 caches netted so many leather/ore/wood/cloth. Yes, I know – small sample, veracity of poster, all the qualifiers. However the results were rather stark. There was about half as much leather as any other material. Out of all of those bags only 4 salvaged to hardened leather. Like I said, take it with a grain of salt but it feels true to me based on my experiences.
I also know this is not quite what you were talking about with regards to supply into the economy and consumption. Maybe it’s more balanced than we realize and the other mats are dropping in excess, but it feels bad. I am always starved for leather and that’s my bottleneck when I want to craft. And it’s not like I am crafting like a madman.
This is my observation as well. Frankly, I think that, if they want the market to be neutral, they should make it so – Equalize refinement and salvage rates across materials. Have all materials refine at a 3:1 ratio, and Inscripitions/Insignias craft with 50/50 ratios of metal/wood and leather/cloth, instead of the current monstrosity. Then let the economy balance around that.
I agree, especially since we can directly farm wood and ore from nodes, there should at least be an equal chance at salvaging leather/cloth/wood/ore from equips. If that doesn’t alleviate the worst of the problems with these markets (price of ore/wood would go up slightly, price of leather would go down significantly), then ANet could look at changing the refinement recipes. If that doesn’t alleviate enough problems in any market then they can look at changing the # of refined mats needed in popular recipes and try adjusting that.
ANets problem with the economy is that they like to change a bunch of things at the same time, and then they act confused as to why it didn’t actually help the market any (case in point, this very thread). They need to make fewer changes at a time and then see if any individual change affects the market in a good way and then leave it alone.
Simply abandoning the economy won’t stabilize it at all as long as there is such an imbalance with different base mats (ore vs leather for instance)
If hoarding is undesirable, then adding some sort of decay would discourage it, right? Moths and rust? If (for example) 1% of all of the materials in storage disappeared every month, wouldn’t that cut into the potential profits of long term hoarding of huge amounts of materials and push a lot of that material onto the TP? This is not advocacy of this approach, just trying to think along different lines than the usual “problems” and “solutions” that get discussed.
If hoarding is undesirable, then adding some sort of decay would discourage it, right? Moths and rust? If (for example) 1% of all of the materials in storage disappeared every month, wouldn’t that cut into the potential profits of long term hoarding of huge amounts of materials and push a lot of that material onto the TP? This is not advocacy of this approach, just trying to think along different lines than the usual “problems” and “solutions” that get discussed.
That would hurt players who aren’t hoarding. Players holding mats to put into a precursor or legendary. Players who are taking breaks but aren’t hoarding.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hoarding – in the long run it stabilizes prices by smoothing supply and consumption.
JS has posted several times that they like to look at input / output and not spend a lot of energy looking at quantities being hoarded – I think this is a mistake. Some materials are hoarded, others are not, and I think it’s valuable to understand the reasons why.
In particular it’s going to matter for how quickly markets will stabilize – if desired inventories are high compared to production, prices will remain high for a long time while those inventories are built up, especially is consumption is also high.
I would propose that desired inventories are related to the elasticity of supply of a particular commodity, in addition to the (obvious) trade volumes.
Hoarding, if you want to call it that, takes up bank space, and getting more bank space costs lots of Gems, so hoarding stuff isnt free.
Also many people, myself included store things for which I dont know their current use, but obviously have a use, otherwise they wouldnt be sellable.
Players also hoard gold and gems because they dont take up any space, but no one seems to care.
Superior Runes need to be looked at & balanced a bit for the ones that are <5 silver. I had a bunch of Strength,Hoelbrak,Traveler’s, and Melandru runes that are now worth a fraction of what they were. This is good for availability. I wouldn’t mind seeing all Superior runes below 2g (i.e. a set is <12g).
Ascended armor is ridiculous due to the spike in leather price
Ascended weapons are slowly dropping in value so that’s good
Desolation (EU) → Yak’s Bend (US)
In your backline: Elementalist+Mesmer+Necromancer
In your backline: Elementalist+Mesmer+Necromancer
(edited by Infusion.7149)
Hoarding?
Really?
I’ve taken enough college courses in economics to know the GW2 economy isn’t fine and has been a major problem with this game since it launched all those years ago. They say their stepping but they still have their thumb on it. Whether its to make sure the AH is stocked, keep a firm grip on the higher up items like legendaries, or even prevent people from flipping items. The economy in this game doesn’t flow as I can log in right now and no doubt have items in the AH I’ve put up ages ago.
The economy will remain in a bad shape until they put a cap on the amount of time you can keep an item in auction. You can’t keep an item indefinitely on a site or a newspaper without renewing it at which point you can alter your price and try again. The only bad side to this is reality as a person in the real world can make a lot of money flipping items. However in the digital world the concept of time doesn’t exist and they can flip hundreds of items for a profit in a single day. However having a 1% of extremely rich players isn’t as bad as the system we have now. All they can do with that money is fill their wardrobe their is no uber stat gear they can deck a guild out it. More importantly those people don’t have an off switch they may get tons of in game gold but they won’t really spend it since their constantly camping at the AH flipping so their rather self contained. A living gold distribution method that makes sure people get money for the items they post putting money in the pockets of the little man and making those with more money pay a higher price for the same item.
They should have taken a step back at launch
Hoarding is the wrong word for what most players do.
Most players just deposit mats at every opportunity and don’t pay any more attention to them unless they want to craft something or unless they overflow the storage. I fall into that category. I only sell stuff if I feel I need the gold. If you have max storage then that means you can have up to 2000 of each item out of sight and out of mind. It’s more “ignoring” than “hoarding”.
Having said that, I really don’t have a problem with players who want to play the markets. If they want to speculate on future prices then good luck to them. It’s their game too and it’s not like this is a difficult game to earn gold in.
And, um, none of it is real.
Runes need to be look at.
major/minor runes and most Superior Runes sit at vendor value and the most valuable runes are not much more valuable than that.
The problem is that no new rune since after the game launched was ever added to the random mystic forge loot table. If they were, then account bound runes like rune of the trapper would make the other runes more rare, and expensive crafted runes would drive people to buying up and forging.
Since this never happened, there is a glut and there needs to be a sink.
And this is such a fixable problem too. Just make the next new runes to be added mystic forge exclusive at first.
#24 leaderboard rank North America.
Hoarding?
Really?I’ve taken enough college courses in economics to know the GW2 economy isn’t fine and has been a major problem with this game since it launched all those years ago. They say their stepping but they still have their thumb on it. Whether its to make sure the AH is stocked, keep a firm grip on the higher up items like legendaries, or even prevent people from flipping items. The economy in this game doesn’t flow as I can log in right now and no doubt have items in the AH I’ve put up ages ago.
The economy will remain in a bad shape until they put a cap on the amount of time you can keep an item in auction. You can’t keep an item indefinitely on a site or a newspaper without renewing it at which point you can alter your price and try again. The only bad side to this is reality as a person in the real world can make a lot of money flipping items. However in the digital world the concept of time doesn’t exist and they can flip hundreds of items for a profit in a single day. However having a 1% of extremely rich players isn’t as bad as the system we have now. All they can do with that money is fill their wardrobe their is no uber stat gear they can deck a guild out it. More importantly those people don’t have an off switch they may get tons of in game gold but they won’t really spend it since their constantly camping at the AH flipping so their rather self contained. A living gold distribution method that makes sure people get money for the items they post putting money in the pockets of the little man and making those with more money pay a higher price for the same item.
They should have taken a step back at launch
Are you saying that based on economics, there is something factually wrong with the GW2 economy or are you saying that based on your study of economics you have an opinion that there is something wrong with the GW2 economy?
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hoarding – in the long run it stabilizes prices by smoothing supply and consumption.
JS has posted several times that they like to look at input / output and not spend a lot of energy looking at quantities being hoarded – I think this is a mistake. Some materials are hoarded, others are not, and I think it’s valuable to understand the reasons why.
In particular it’s going to matter for how quickly markets will stabilize – if desired inventories are high compared to production, prices will remain high for a long time while those inventories are built up, especially is consumption is also high.
I would propose that desired inventories are related to the elasticity of supply of a particular commodity, in addition to the (obvious) trade volumes.
I made a similar point on another thread (complaining about high leather prices and speculators). You have to be a little careful with the use of the term “desired inventory” here, since this isn’t precisely the standard use here. Are you talking about how much inventory Anet thinks people should be holding (which isn’t what they look at), or how much inventory speculators want to hold? Presumably the latter. But how much a speculator wants to stockpile depends on expectations of the price (in addition to amount available for investment and attractiveness of other investments).
So, we see an unstable feedback loop — rising prices prompt more hoarding, which prompts prices to rise, but with diminishing returns. At some point, it ceases to be an attractive investment, and these excess inventories get dumped, which prompts the price to fall, which prompts more hoarders to dump. This is a classic bubble.
The more beneficial form of hoarding occurs when, say, people expect a legendary to come out and provide a huge sink for, say, mithril. Speculators will buy up excess stock of mithril in advance to sell after the legendary comes out. In the end, there is less mithril available before the legendary came out and more after it comes out (the increased demand will eat up that extra supply as fast as it comes out, but there will be more supply than if people didn’t hoard at all).
However, I’m not convinced that’s what’s happening here.
…and their prices no longer reflect the average wealth or income of players.
This hasn’t been the case in a very long time, so why is it just now becoming an issue?
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 PlankPlease fix it, thank you.
I 100% agree. Make everything consistent and then it will make everything much easier to balance if it is needed. If something is dropping to much in price when compared to similar items then you can add it to a new recipe or if gets real bad adjust the drop rate. If something is going to high then add new nodes or places for it to drop or if it gets real bad adjust the drop rates. There is no reason to complicate basic recipes. they should be static and all use the same basic formula.
So, from these basics assumptions, John Smith has decided to follow his former mentor Adam Smith and his invisible hand ?
I know that was bad I’m sorry for that.
Ok, I’ll just be leaving now …
Hi Keynes, sorry for you.
You have to be a little careful with the use of the term “desired inventory” here, since this isn’t precisely the standard use here. Are you talking about how much inventory Anet thinks people should be holding (which isn’t what they look at), or how much inventory speculators want to hold? Presumably the latter. But how much a speculator wants to stockpile depends on expectations of the price (in addition to amount available for investment and attractiveness of other investments).
Certainly not the amount A.Net thinks people should be holding (if that is even a thing); desired inventory is the target aggregate of the player base.
That’s not specifically the amount that speculators want to hold – it’s the amount that all players – speculators and non-speculators – want to hold. I would actually think the two would be negatively correlated – speculators want to hold onto stuff that your average player doesn’t naturally stockpile.
For instance, I would imagine a lot of non-speculators are holding onto a lot of hardened leather for their own use (current or potential future). As a speculator I don’t want to touch hardened leather at all – I see little upside in stockpiling it to sell to other players later, with a lot of potential downside risk.
So, we see an unstable feedback loop — rising prices prompt more hoarding, which prompts prices to rise, but with diminishing returns. At some point, it ceases to be an attractive investment, and these excess inventories get dumped, which prompts the price to fall, which prompts more hoarders to dump. This is a classic bubble.
Yep. Specifically, the price at which consumption would match production is lower than the current price, so the current price is only sustainable as long as players want to build up / hoard more inventory. Once player inventories are high enough, the price has to fall for markets to clear…and then the bubble pops.
The more beneficial form of hoarding occurs when, say, people expect a legendary to come out and provide a huge sink for, say, mithril. Speculators will buy up excess stock of mithril in advance to sell after the legendary comes out. In the end, there is less mithril available before the legendary came out and more after it comes out (the increased demand will eat up that extra supply as fast as it comes out, but there will be more supply than if people didn’t hoard at all).
However, I’m not convinced that’s what’s happening here.
I don’t think that is what is happening here – I don’t think speculators are bidding up the price of hardened leather with the expectation of making a big profit down the road. I think it’s inventory build up by non-speculators that rationally hold on to what they get in case they need it later, to mitigate the risk of a demand (price) spike pushing them out of the market. Speculators may be popping in as a secondary effect (hey, this is always going up, may as well get in on the ride!), but they aren’t driving it.
I’m thinking of it from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) perspective – if there’s supply risk of an inelastic good with no substitutes, you naturally build up bigger inventories (if not integrate to control suppliers) to hedge against the risk. If supply is elastic and there are lots of substitutes or sources, you don’t bother holding inventory beyond minimal working capital to economize on transaction costs.
That’s getting away from the point though – I think hardened leather is a bubble, and mystic coins might be a bubble (though I’m less sure on the latter, given essentially inelastic supply and lots of long term demand). Bubbles are accelerated by speculators, but are not driven by speculators; I’d say that, colloquially, bubbles are driven by fear of missing out (FOMO), which leads to the inventory → buildup → flatline (hey inventories are big, no fear of missing out!) → crash cycle.
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
A few hundred gold?
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
how much time are we talking? i make 100 a day but i also farm a lot.
im bad at sarcasm
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
Based on the GW2efficiency numbers, median income is roughly 8 gold per hour for long term (> 500 hours) players.
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
Depends whether you’re really asking about average player income, or rather an income of average player. The second one will be much, much lower.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
So, from these basics assumptions, John Smith has decided to follow his former mentor Adam Smith and his invisible hand ?
I know that was bad I’m sorry for that.
Ok, I’ll just be leaving now …Hi Keynes, sorry for you.
Keynes is an idiot best ignored anyway.
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
As others have indicated, you would need to clarify the question in order to get an answer.
Do you want to know how much an average player earns per hour or per day? or are you asking what is the average total wealth of players?
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
how much time are we talking? i make 100 a day but i also farm a lot.
I can guarantee that is way above average from looking at GW2Efficiency……..
The average wealth of accounts (taken from https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/values.summary.value) is between ~5-10 gold / hour all the way up to accounts that have played well over 4,000 hours in the game. And that takes into account all of the sources of “wealth” you may have, so it is far higher than the liquid gold that people have.
Just judging from that alone, you make 10 – 20 times more gold / hour than the average player does, if not even more (my bet is closer to 25-30)
So, from these basics assumptions, John Smith has decided to follow his former mentor Adam Smith and his invisible hand ?
I know that was bad I’m sorry for that.
Ok, I’ll just be leaving now …Hi Keynes, sorry for you.
Keynes is an idiot best ignored anyway.
Kind of ironically, his work is more applicable to a game economy than a real economy.
If people are hoarding things which they could choose to sell, then you must ask why.
Some reasons could be that they dont see the need, ie the amount of gold they would get by selling their items is less than the effort needed in game to earn the same amount of gold.
Or , players value items over gold due to currency inflation which happens in all MMOs.
If its possible to make 100s of gold a day, then there would be little need to sell stuff unless it was simply cluttering up your bank.
Kind of ironically, his work is more applicable to a game economy than a real economy.
As a business nerd, I can appreciate your sick Keynesian burn you just laid down.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
fix freshwater pearl drop rate and make it so they show up in more then just HoT maps. that is my only request. thing is 8g+ for stat set only 1 class uses its impossible to farm or try to farm cause the drop rate is junk regardless of any level of magic find.
where there is light, shadows lurk and fear reigns.
stop player driven economy, its based on grinding, its bad and easily exploited.
do what bdo does, ban trading between players, dev control the price 100%
Kind of ironically, his work is more applicable to a game economy than a real economy.
I don’t follow – Keynes’ insights flow from introducing transaction lags and breaking the neutrality of money via finance, neither of which applies to a game economy (at least, not to the GW2 economy). What parts do you think describe the GW2 economy well?
Whats the average ingame income of a GW2 player?
how much time are we talking? i make 100 a day but i also farm a lot.
I can guarantee that is way above average from looking at GW2Efficiency……..
The average wealth of accounts (taken from https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/values.summary.value) is between ~5-10 gold / hour all the way up to accounts that have played well over 4,000 hours in the game. And that takes into account all of the sources of “wealth” you may have, so it is far higher than the liquid gold that people have.
Just judging from that alone, you make 10 – 20 times more gold / hour than the average player does, if not even more (my bet is closer to 25-30)
John SmithIn the last week, the median player earned less than 3 gold in the new content (that’s discounting all players who earned less than 1 gold).
Just so you remember the context: that was during the first Queen’s Gauntlet events, where you could earn over 20 g per hour from Deadeye farming, or farm champions in the Arena below for some really massive (even using nowadays standards) income. Don’t remember if the post was made after Scarlet Invasions already started as well (though i think it was). Even relatively casual players could easily earn over 100g per day then.
…and a median active player didn’t manage to earn 3 gold. In a whole week.
Somehow i don’t think it has changed that much, and so i am 99% certain that even the efficiency data is significantly above the real one.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November