Guild Wars 2

Oh for the love of God why do you have to make equipment soulbound? I was crafting a harpoon gun for my second character using my first character. All went fine and I even bought a superior sigil of bloodlust. I put the harpoon gun to bank and logged in to my second character.

“Soulbound to another character”

10 gold down the drain.

What ****ing purpose does this serve?

Soulbound items are good for the economy.

Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

no crafted exotics are not soul bound…… untill you put a sigil on it or use it with a souldbound popup.

so transfer both weapon & sigil [not bound together] to which ever character you want then use the sigil on weapon.

as soon as you put a sigil on a weapon it becomes soulbound to that character.

It stops the market being flooded with hand-me-downs, otherwise all the weapons and armor that you put up for sale on the TP would be worthless.

Equipment is not soulbound when crafted. Only happens when a toon equips the item. I can’t recall if putting a sigil in soulbinds or accountbinds an item. Either way, there should have been a pop-up warning you that you’re about to soulbind an item. Put in a support ticket.

i thought they are not soulbound before use

Zenith.6403:

Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

That’s only applicable in a world of limited resources.

In a world where animals poop out swords and pants when killed, then are magically replaced by an exact clone 3 mins later, this doesn’t quite work.

Oh… and those swords and pants can be repaired to new at no monetary or material cost, thus lasting forever.

All ascended gear is account bound.

TL:DR. Zenith didn’t look at the warning when he attached the sigil and now is mad about it.

There was no warning. It’s just poor design anyway.

Zenith.6403:

There was no warning. It’s just poor design anyway.

There definitely is a warning, I just tried it. It clearly says that it will make the item soulbound. You probably just clicked yes without reading it.

Yes, I was so sure it would be one of those useless “are you sure you want to apply this upgrade to this item” messages and indeed just clicked yes without reading it carefully.

I honestly wonder what went through the designer’s mind when they made this kind of system. If the item is not soulbound in the first place, why would applying upgrade to it make it soulbound?

Zenith.6403:

Yes, I was so sure it would be one of those useless “are you sure you want to apply this upgrade to this item” messages and indeed just clicked yes without reading it carefully.

I honestly wonder what went through the designer’s mind when they made this kind of system. If the item is not soulbound in the first place, why would applying upgrade to it make it soulbound?

Because reasons. Don’t even try to understand why game build around account progression has soulbound items.

Zenith.6403:

Yes, I was so sure it would be one of those useless “are you sure you want to apply this upgrade to this item” messages and indeed just clicked yes without reading it carefully.

I honestly wonder what went through the designer’s mind when they made this kind of system. If the item is not soulbound in the first place, why would applying upgrade to it make it soulbound?

If you could sell a random weapon with a random sigil then there would be at least 500k different weapons on the trading post. My suggestion is to make them account bound and if you equip it with one of your characters then soulbound.

You were warned.

But, all is not lost. When you are done with a weapon or armor piece (and you will always eventually be done with it), salvage it. For exotics, use at least a master’s kit, and you have a good chance of getting globs of dark matter (or whatever it’s called), which can later be used to craft ascended stuff.

I salvage a handful of exotic items every day. I even purchase some cheap ones just to salvage; that’s how valuable those globs are.

Zenith.6403:

Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

How would this apply?

A misunderstanding is not an accident or an eventuality in the same sense.

Milkshake.4038:

Soulbound items are good for the economy.

I disagree with this too.

The best gear (namely ascended rings) is account bound. You only need to build one set of ascended gear in any particular insignia so it is not in your best interest to work towards the greatest materials or most expensive materials since to change the armor or weapon all you need is an insignia of your choice.

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Legendary weapons further undermine this notion.

DGraves.3720:

I disagree with this too.

The best gear (namely ascended rings) is account bound. You only need to build one set of ascended gear in any particular insignia so it is not in your best interest to work towards the greatest materials or most expensive materials since to change the armor or weapon all you need is an insignia of your choice.

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Legendary weapons further undermine this notion.

It doesn’t matter, account bound or soulbound items cannot go back to the market. Account bound items are a little help for casual players as they don’t have to grind to make multiple sets of ascended armor.

Milkshake.4038:

It doesn’t matter, account bound or soulbound items cannot go back to the market. Account bound items are a little help for casual players as they don’t have to grind to make multiple sets of ascended armor.

You can deconstruct ascended items now so that isn’t true. Furthermore accountbinding and soulbinding have different economic precedents. Soul binding means you have to buy 1 of each for all of 9, account means 1 and you’re done, but because there’s no net effect on the marketplace between either when considering maximum effectiveness soulbinding becomes frivolous.

DGraves.3720:

You can deconstruct ascended items now so that isn’t true. Furthermore accountbinding and soulbinding have different economic precedents. Soul binding means you have to buy 1 of each for all of 9, account means 1 and you’re done, but because there’s no net effect on the marketplace between either when considering maximum effectiveness soulbinding becomes frivolous.

Anet can see the playerbase better, if they make a change it has a good reason. They made ascended items and legendary weapons account bound in 2014, because they saw something and they wanted to react.

I don’t know much about ascended salvaging, but:

1. it has a cost
2. you will get account bound items: Ball of Dark Energy and Vision Crystals (Stabilizing Matrix is so rare and cheap that is has no impact)

Milkshake.4038:

Anet can see the playerbase better, if they make a change it has a good reason. They made ascended items and legendary weapons account bound in 2014, because they saw something and they wanted to react.

I don’t know much about ascended salvaging, but:

1. it has a cost
2. you will get account bound items: Ball of Dark Energy and Vision Crystals (Stabilizing Matrix is so rare and cheap that is has no impact)

That’s the point. The only aspect that matters is what can be traded. Ascended Salvaging basically goes into the Legendary system which in turn is all account bound removing the value of it’s happenstance from the economy by and large. In essence nothing happens. Crafting a legendary once makes sense, because you shouldn’t have to 9 times, but crafting elements like exotic whatever is frivolous because you can get all the components for free (so the market for them has zero effect) and they are not terribly rare. Furthermore the market works by basic hotswapping; your tooth for my scale, so again the net effect is zero or too minimal to consider, thus soul binding items has no real economic effect.

Does it have an effect on stopping exploitation? Not as far as I can so.

So what is it’s purpose other than frivolous frustration? It just makes items worthless, and not “worth less”, just worthless; this is counterintuitive.

lol… this thread has become interesting in an incredibly nerdy way.

In reference to soul/account binding, there is a real economic impact. It is true that you can salvage a bound exotic item and resell it’s constituent parts, but those parts are less than the whole, thus removing these constituent parts from the economy. E.g. if you crafted and item then salvaged it, then wanted to craft that same item again, that results in a net loss of resources. Those teeth you used are gone forever and never traded for scales. Legendaries are even better as resource sinks… they cost x100s more than exotics and once crafted there is very little reason to salvage it, thus removing ALL materials from the economy. Ascended falls somewhere in the middle.

It is true that account binding is less effective than soul binding in this respect, but look what items are account bound. Each item removes a large amount of resources (mats, time, laurels, etc) but effectively return zero when salvaged. E.g. an exotic weapon that costs 5g in material to craft may return 10-20s of tradable resources when salvaged, whereas an equivalent ascended costs 80-100g to craft and then would only return a similar amount of tradable resources (you cannot consider non-tradables even if they are valuable like Balls of Dark Energy because there is no way for you to unlock that value on the market)

Why is this a good thing? It prevents deflation. Imagine a game where all your resources are endlessly recycled. Because there is no cap on resource generation (i.e. Tyria will never run out of iron nodes, whereas the real world can exhaust iron mines), this results in infinite resources. How much is a resource worth if there is infinite supply? Zero.

Notice I didn’t mention gold (the currency). My above scenario applies to a resource unlimited, gold limited world (i.e. gold sinks still exist). In MMO world, vendors pay a fixed amount for your resources regardless of the player economy. Thus in this world, unless the gold sinks are very large; infinite resources = infinite currency. I can’t even imagine what an economy of infinite resources and infinite currency looks like, so I’m not even going to try

The reason for soulbound isn’t to have an effect on the market as you can sell them prior to equipping them. Only the “bound on acquire” do because the methods of obtaining them are far too simple ( such as karma, wvw tokens, dungeons etc).

The reasoning for soulbound items is their issues with account security. In gw1 we had the option to customize (aka soulbind") weapons or not. Keyloggers and security holes resulted in people losing everything that wasn’t bound. They are still having security issues. Of course though you are free to dismiss it as a tinfoil hat conspiracy though I don’t recall other games wanting email, ip and now text verification to protect bound items that mostly have bound salvages.

“I can’t even imagine what an economy of infinite resources and infinite currency looks like, so I’m not even going to try.”

This is one.

There is no scarcity within MMOs for the most part, that is to say, all items you require to play the game can be bought within the game itself and all of these items are infinitely produced by the game itself. The value of all items including the currency is de facto zero. So how do prices arise?

Buyers. That’s how. In a truly competitive market, I.E. an MMO for example, you have people willing to pay X currency, which has no worth, for X convenience, which has worth; the thing is in a truly competitive market the selling price and the buying price are rarely far apart for very long and furthermore the selling and buying prices are not based on scarcity but popularity.

In real life if you were starving an item of food costing normally $1 would be worth $10 to you if offered at that price because you need it. In a game other than pure impatience you can wait indefinitely for a price to come down and prices tend to over time lower. They just always do. Even with price spikes due to new content and uses they always drift south.

This also breaks into the law of supply and demand a little bit because unlike real-life where supply is controlled by demand in MMOs demand is actually controlled by supply, that is to say if there were 10,000 Eternity on the market it would be worthless (not “worth less”) to acquire because everyone has one and the goal is to have something others do not meanwhile if there were only 3 of said super rare weapon skin it’s worth an incredible amount simply because of it’s rarity. However it’s rarity is not equivalent to it’s scarcity. It can be acquired by others infinitely by doing whatever is required but they just don’t want to.

This means that GW2 has a “service” market, not a “goods” market, in which people pay for the convenience, not the actual rights, to the items bought. Gold sinks exist specifically because of this reality; gold is worthless so giving gold value by diminishing it constantly means that items have a boost in value despite also having an equivalent value of natural zero.

Fun stuff.

DGraves.3720:

“I can’t even imagine what an economy of infinite resources and infinite currency looks like, so I’m not even going to try.”

This is one.

There is no scarcity within MMOs for the most part, that is to say, all items you require to play the game can be bought within the game itself and all of these items are infinitely produced by the game itself. The value of all items including the currency is de facto zero. So how do prices arise?

Buyers. That’s how. In a truly competitive market, I.E. an MMO for example, you have people willing to pay X currency, which has no worth, for X convenience, which has worth; the thing is in a truly competitive market the selling price and the buying price are rarely far apart for very long and furthermore the selling and buying prices are not based on scarcity but popularity.

In real life if you were starving an item of food costing normally $1 would be worth $10 to you if offered at that price because you need it. In a game other than pure impatience you can wait indefinitely for a price to come down and prices tend to over time lower. They just always do. Even with price spikes due to new content and uses they always drift south.

This also breaks into the law of supply and demand a little bit because unlike real-life where supply is controlled by demand in MMOs demand is actually controlled by supply, that is to say if there were 10,000 Eternity on the market it would be worthless (not “worth less”) to acquire because everyone has one and the goal is to have something others do not meanwhile if there were only 3 of said super rare weapon skin it’s worth an incredible amount simply because of it’s rarity. However it’s rarity is not equivalent to it’s scarcity. It can be acquired by others infinitely by doing whatever is required but they just don’t want to.

This means that GW2 has a “service” market, not a “goods” market, in which people pay for the convenience, not the actual rights, to the items bought. Gold sinks exist specifically because of this reality; gold is worthless so giving gold value by diminishing it constantly means that items have a boost in value despite also having an equivalent value of natural zero.

Fun stuff.

I think you misunderstood my point.

I was defending soul/account binding as a method of supply control, and used unlimited resources as an extreme example. In that example I also pointed out that soulbinding works because you cannot recover 100% of your original materials by salvaging.

I said if there was no method to control supply of resources, then resources would be infinite and worthless. However, soul and account binding is one of the major methods Anet uses to do this. Gold/karma/token sinks achieve the same thing for currencies. And time-gated items follow the same principle to put a value on time.

Thus by putting in these systems Anet is trying to replicate a real life economy where material, currency and time all have a value. This then enables prices to rise and fall depending on supply and demand.

You also need to factor a major source of demand that does not exist in real life:

NPC vendors who have an infinite currency supply and will pay a fixed amount for items regardless of demand.

These guys give value to otherwise worthless items, and are a source of infinite currency. In isolation, these guys create a huge problem, but other checks and balances keep that from happening.

lol… I’m really enjoying this discussion. I wish there was a way to break it off into its own thread and earn an economics degree too :P

There is in fact no way to actually control supply. It is player based supply (meaning that it is player based behavior that dictates how many of something there is; the game generates nothing for the TP as far as I know) so when fundamentally looking at the concept of acquisition and control soul and account binding do not have the desired effect. Instead what happens is you simply have items that cannot enter the market as they are but that does not mean they do not re-enter the market which is the problem, actually.

In order to enter the market they must be broken down which in turn raises the resource count of all items within those categories which cheapens them. This is good if you want to discourage convenience and encourage entrepreneurship, that is, the crafting system, because it will almost always be cheaper to craft the item yourself. The main issue with this however is that this bloats the economy in it’s own way because with people able to acquire an infinite set of resources and produce an infinite set of items which can be sold so long as they are not equipped but when deconstructed yield their main piece (the insignia) which is the base of the expense itself you have a truly free market surrounding equipment, resources to build, and all other elements tied to such.

The resources are de facto worthless because of this. You acquire items through gameplay that deconstruct into other items you need to construct. You can deconstruct items you once used for items that you need to construct. You can simply buy components which were salvaged and thus also have the same problem. The resources are actually not only infinite but also impossible to render worth anything more than the buyer’s demanded price. That is to say the price of mithril would not go up or down even if someone bought 75,000 of it in an instance simply because there is just too much and that much is being produced far, far faster than it is being depleted.

The reason why ascended crafting is time gated is because of this reality. They will get cheaper, but slower, because supply is slower which makes the convenience worth more. It isn’t that the time is valuable it’s that people are impatient that makes the prices what they are. In reality there’s actually still more than can be reasonably depleted. I hope Anet was smart enough to know it cannot replicate a real economy since real economies are based on actual scarcity; there are no “sinks” in real life because you don’t need them because allocation of a pool of funds that are not guaranteed and not infinite is dealt with in a totally different fashion.

Riveting.

Your point has some validity though.

Note: *"You also need to factor a major source of demand that does not exist in real life:

NPC vendors who have an infinite currency supply and will pay a fixed amount for items regardless of demand.

These guys give value to otherwise worthless items, and are a source of infinite currency. In isolation, these guys create a huge problem, but other checks and balances keep that from happening."*

They are not a benchmark. A vendor will buy a sigil of any type for a specific price, 2s 16c to be specific, but there are sigils players will not buy at all, ever, for that price and the system prevents selling below the vendor specifically because people would buy them for less than he vendor to sell them to the NPC. The NPC vendor in the game has no measurable effect other than a price floor which is not a major determinant in demand and thus buyer power and selling ability.

Well said DGraves.

Regarding the value of time, the fact that impatient players pay for their elonian squares gives time value. It is more valuable than it’s component parts, so at least some of that difference has to be attributed to time.

On a deeper level, I would also argue basically everything in a virtual economy is valued based on its acquisition time.

Someone running across Tyria mining iron: mining tool + WP + time. The gold for the tools and WPs come from doing various things in-game; thus time + time + time
Someone doing Silverwastes farm: shovels + time, and since shovels are earned by doing events; time + time
I’m ignoring any armor/weapon costs for the sake of simplicity, but they too are earned by doing stuff or earning gold.

In a closed MMO economy, I would argue that time is the ONLY thing that determines the creation of resources, hence making time valuable. Once you factor in supply consumption (i.e. crafting, etc) and player demand, you end up with the final market price of an item.

NB: Gems and other items bought with real world money means it is no longer a closed system. That creates a link between the real economy and the MMO economy. Thinking about that hurts my head too much, so I’m not going to

DGraves.3720:

A misunderstanding is not an accident or an eventuality in the same sense.

Parable of the broken window applies when it is said that soulbound items are good for economy. As the shopkeeper has to buy another window to replace the broken one, so must we buy another item because soulbinding makes them useless.

Well the question when we talk about the time value of any funding is “can we produce a model that expresses it?” to which I dare say, no. In GW2 buying an item of any type can be done in two ways:

1. Put out a bid. Someone (the seller) accepts your price as they are willing to sell at it.

2. Buy it at a price demanded by another person.

The TVM is ruined because when you talk about time value of money you need a stable element. For instance if I work for $22/hr. and I miss a day to go shopping on my brother’s birthday my opportunity cost, or the Time-Value of Money, there would be equivalent to at least $22/hr. In GW2 because the money is worthless, the components are infinite, and the exchange of components is completely possible through intermediary systems (The TP) you can’t produce a stable value. I guess if you wanted to all you had to ask was “What is the value of 1 hour of gameplay?” If you can find an answer let me know, because that’d be great, otherwise the time can be considered leisure and therefore also have no value.

I guess if you’re an esports pro that might be different though, but it definitely isn’t the primary case.

But this actually leads to a really relevant point on time in virtual economies. In truly virtual economies time is relative versus direct and linear; for instance we all must eat at least once a week so we have no choice but to buy food, it is a need, and without it we will die however playing every Friday with your guildmates is a privilege and if you have homework or work late or your children start trying to gnaw through cables again and you must save them or your leg falls off and your spleen falls out that time rapidly changes. Generally speaking people do not lose anything by not playing so then the balance of convenience is based more on whim than time.

So such we can explain people buying gems; presuming normalcy no one would buy gems with their last dollar over a loaf of bread and gems are a commodity. Gems however are indeed the only means of converting to a TVM so if you can’t show a TVM through gem acquisition there isn’t one.

For instance you say “let us look at the opportunity cost of mining iron”, but since all is luxury, I redirect your question to “let us look at the direct effect of mining iron on the player.” If you don’t need iron then even if you mine it to sell it you are not mining “iron” specifically. You are mining gold. Gold has no intrinsic value and therefore no time is gained or lost (no TVM) considering the endeavor. You are simply raising currency to do something else. If however you need Iron the equation changes, suddenly it is your time considered, but it is not the mining tool, because the tool is required to achieve your own desires. You are not concerned with the funds required to achieve the iron, only the acquisition of the iron, so in turn you can also write off the waypoint cost. Written in two other ways:

Profit = Selling price of Iron – (Tool + Waypoint (Cost))

Object = Iron for recipe / Time.

By the way we have to remove time from the profit expression specifically because we do not consider enemies, drops, or other elements which are A ) unpredictable and B ) impossible to truly account for. You may kill 10 enemies and get something that sells for more gold than all the iron you’ll collect for the next 10 years. You may kill 100 enemies during your expedition and get less than 5 lumps worth.

RNG ruins us for modeling.

This is also true of the creation of items. Salvaging yields unpredictable results so it may take no time, it may take an incredible amount of time, or it may just not matter due to the size of the playerbase. After all does it really matter how much mithril is going into the market today alone? Probably not. It’s a huge number. We know this. We know we can’t deplete it and it’s creation is both random and deliberate at the same time due to how salvaging works. The luck system makes this worse.

Now I must stop. I need to eat or else I will die.

Zenith.6403:

DGraves.3720:

A misunderstanding is not an accident or an eventuality in the same sense.

Parable of the broken window applies when it is said that soulbound items are good for economy. As the shopkeeper has to buy another window to replace the broken one, so must we buy another item because soulbinding makes them useless.

That analogy doesn’t apply to soulbinding. The shopkeeper is forced to get a new window otherwise rain/rats/little children will invade his shop. Your soulbound item is still perfectly usable, so you can go on killing and looting without ever needing to buy a replacement.

DGraves.3720:

Now I must stop. I need to eat or else I will die.

Likewise.

Btw, can I trade you a Degree of Economics (University of onevstheworld) for a Degree of Economics (University of DGraves)? It’ll look good on your CV.

onevstheworld.2419:

DGraves.3720:

Now I must stop. I need to eat or else I will die.

Likewise.

Btw, can I trade you a Degree of Economics (University of onevstheworld) for a Degree of Economics (University of DGraves)? It’ll look good on your CV.

Sure, it’ll be fun to show off on my wall.

DGraves.3720:

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Tell me how because with ascended cloth armor you will not see the 46 golds difference you mentionned. You will even lose golds if you don’t do berserk at the first place with the insignia.

You should compare such things with viper for example. But it would be a bad example too since you can’t sell viper insignia.

Khyan.7039:

DGraves.3720:

Basically you can build an ascended piece of armor as Cleric’s for 24g versus Berserker’s for 70g and then simply change the stats for 5g. It’s really not good for the economy at all and has no net effect because of the interchangeability and general state of matters.

Tell me how because with ascended cloth armor you will not see the 46 golds difference you mentionned. You will even lose golds if you don’t do berserk at the first place with the insignia.

You should compare such things with viper for example. But it would be a bad example too since you can’t sell viper insignia.

You’re probably right. I wasn’t thinking of buying the item outright but building the insignia for cleric’s using Elaborate Totems (which are about half the price of Vials of Powerful Blood) and then converting using Anthology of Heroes.

I would like to add a few thougths, you mentioned almost everything, it was fun to read it all

As I see, everything you do ingame has a gold/hour rate. RNG doesn’t count, because if you know the chances you can calculate your income. Of course your knowledge is important here.

You can do the best gold/hour activities (level 40 fractals, SW chest farm, in the past tunnel farm and keyfarm etc.), or you can do something you enjoy (WvW, creating backpacks, completing collections etc.). It is up to you, you decide what your goals are. This will greatly determine supply as DGraves mentioned it.

However it is possible to control supply, anet can nerf the best ways to farm something, they can reintroduce weapon skins in the gemstore, they can create new material/gold sinks like guild halls. Sometimes these only have a small effect, but they keep the market alive.

Just as soulbound items, they don’t change the market completely, but small effects add up and make a relatively healthy economy, where you are able to see trends, speculations etc.

The hardest part about reading this whole discussion is that it is premised on some very incorrect definitions and assertions.

#1: There is a “sink” in the real world. In fact, there are a lot of sinks. Everything you buy will wear and tear and break down, to the point where it doesn’t provide its original function, and thus the item effectively disappears. For example: food. When I buy a meal, I eat the meal, and it will give me pleasure in taste and the pleasure of being full, but that will fade, and I will need to buy a different meal. Thus, my stomach is a food “sink”.

#2: Not all of the game can be considered leisure. Grind, particularly grinding in MMOs, encourages players to play when the game is no longer fun. This is done in part via psychological trickery, which puts some kind of accolade or promise of fun behind a wall to climb. Thus, for many players (most, arguably), most activity in the MMO becomes “work”, where you work toward the part where you can have “fun”.

#3: “Infinite” is very poorly defined here, and also it is not true. The word you guys are probably looking for is “fluctuating”, because while in theory there can be limitless resources in a game, in reality there isn’t. In any game’s lifespan, there will be a finite amount of any resource produced, due to the finite number of hours that every person will play the game for. At any moment in time, there is a fluctuating but finite limit on any resource, and this limit cannot be surpassed by the will of the players. For something to be infinite, it would have to be available instantaneously at any desired quantity. So in any practical sense, as well as in any real sense, the resources in the game are finite, unless the resource is programmed specifically to be available instantaneously at any desired quantity.

#4: Something can be of “no value” if and only if it is not desired. Thus, a virtual currency can have value. And since players do, indeed, desire in-game gold, then in-game gold is valuable.

That all said, personally I am for the soulbound/account bound system. Mostly because I have played games where there was unrestricted trade with no termination points and no hard restrictions on supply, and the end result was predictable: massive deflation over time. Though it is possible for this game to function without binding, several things in the game (I.E. Wardrobe system) would have to be changed to avoid economic problems.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So in any practical sense, as well as in any real sense, the resources in the game are finite, unless the resource is programmed specifically to be available instantaneously at any desired quantity.

Except they aren’t if you are comparing them to actual resources.

For instance, there is a finite amount of helium on earth. The resource is dwindling because it is primarily found in natural gas deposits and is no longer attainable once released into the atmosphere. Once it’s used up, it’s gone for the most part in terms of usability.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html

While it’s true that resource gathering in the game on the macro level is limited by the amount that can be gathered by the individual in a given time, the amount of people gathering, and the total play time they have available, these are factors that limit the amount gathered, not the amount that can ever possibly be gathered.

Increasing the amount of people logging in GW2 x1000 will just end up producing 1000 times more logs.

Doing the same with logging companies on Earth will result in no trees on the planet after a week.

The only way for a resource to ever be “over farmed” or “exhausted” is by the developers stepping in and deciding that too much is being gathered and manually reducing the supply.

There’s no automated global diminishing returns system.

That doesn’t make what I said false. That’s just getting into specific technicalities when comparing a real world resource to a virtual one, in that there’s an additional limitation in the real world.

Zenith.6403:

Ah the good old broken window parable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

I don’t think you actually read that article.
Or you just google’d “Economic fallacies” and grabbed the first thing you saw.

You got us TC.

Arenanet designed equipment to be soulbound over 3.5 years ago (even earlier since these kind of decision are made during design phases) knowing fully well you’d missclick the clear warning notification in order to troll you.

They are evil. You should consider to sue.

/sarcasm

Zenith.6403:

Oh for the love of God why do you have to make equipment soulbound? I was crafting a harpoon gun for my second character using my first character. All went fine and I even bought a superior sigil of bloodlust. I put the harpoon gun to bank and logged in to my second character.

“Soulbound to another character”

10 gold down the drain.

What ****ing purpose does this serve?

First, talk to support: https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new — they might be able to help with this specific situation.

Second, why did you ignore the warning that said adding the sigil would bind the weapon to the current character?

Finally, to answer the question you actually asked: soulbinding is an economic tool for sinking wealth from the economy, since it increases the demand for items (and/or the mats used to create them). Account binding has a more modest impact.

That said, I would prefer that items are account bound on upgrade and soul bound on equip. That, however, is something that probably needs to wait for GW3, since I doubt it’s easy to retrofit into the game.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The hardest part about reading this whole discussion is that it is premised on some very incorrect definitions and assertions.

#1: There is a “sink” in the real world. In fact, there are a lot of sinks. Everything you buy will wear and tear and break down, to the point where it doesn’t provide its original function, and thus the item effectively disappears. For example: food. When I buy a meal, I eat the meal, and it will give me pleasure in taste and the pleasure of being full, but that will fade, and I will need to buy a different meal. Thus, my stomach is a food “sink”.

The only thing close to this is planned obsolesce. Mandatory consumption is not a “sink” so food wouldn’t even …

I’m not doing this.