Guild Wars 2

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

A month after the expension, did it work? HEEELL NO
Gold is harder to get, now instead of a fifteen minute dungeon you have to do meta events but the price haven’t moved.
You still need 300 po to get a tag, you still need a huuuuuuge pack of gold for guild halls.
Which mean that if you want to survive in this economy (lol) you need to buy gems with real money.

Yes, in order to play the game (as it is intended), you need to use your credit card.
(That is why a lot of people are going back to wow by the way).

THis is another exemple of an Anet Idea followed by poor execution.
Lowering the economy isn’t bad per se, but with an execution that bad, you are just ruining the game

my opinion is that it was about time they nerfed some systems giving gold, like dungeons, we didnt have enough gold sinks and gold inflation had its steady growth the last year. In dec the fractal patch may make fracs profitable, which will be ur new dungs. There is also a high demand on materials now, knowing which ones, where to get them and when to sell can give u a hefty gold boost weekly. If i sell stuff at the right time after a weeks work itll equate to about 15 to 20g per day x 7, which is only about 30 to 40 mins work daily, so it adds up quick

nacario.9417:

If i sell stuff at the right time after a weeks work itll equate to about 15 to 20g per day x 7, which is only about 30 to 40 mins work daily, so it adds up quick

Uh no… The new materials get cheaper and cheaper on the trade post, because each week that passes their rarity lowers.

And the fractal patch will only increase the drops, not the liquide gold from what i understood

YaYa.5879:

nacario.9417:

If i sell stuff at the right time after a weeks work itll equate to about 15 to 20g per day x 7, which is only about 30 to 40 mins work daily, so it adds up quick

Uh no… The new materials get cheaper and cheaper on the trade post, because each week that passes their rarity lowers.

And the fractal patch will only increase the drops, not the liquide gold from what i understood

The buy orders vary, which is why it takes me a week till i sell them at an acceptable price giving me the income i want. The supply and demand shifts quickly

ANET did this intentionally.

They needed to do it from their business model perspective.

Why?

Too much gold was being held by players on the sidelines and those amounts where growing based on what the dungeons, Fractals, and Bosses where dishing out.

This also impacted negatively the amount of Jewels bought by gold rather than using actual cash currency.

Remember that ANET makes 90% of their money off the TP. Recirculating gold earned in the game into jewels by players gives them Zero Income.

I agree with most that this strategy has failed and has only driven more players AWAY from the game.

However, as with most companies, trying to convince them that their decision was wrong and that they should institute a correction is a pipe dream.

These types of companies would rather sink with the ship than admit failure.

nacario.9417:

my opinion is that it was about time they nerfed some systems giving gold, like dungeons, we didnt have enough gold sinks and gold inflation had its steady growth the last year. In dec the fractal patch may make fracs profitable, which will be ur new dungs. There is also a high demand on materials now, knowing which ones, where to get them and when to sell can give u a hefty gold boost weekly. If i sell stuff at the right time after a weeks work itll equate to about 15 to 20g per day x 7, which is only about 30 to 40 mins work daily, so it adds up quick

I partially agree. We didn’t have proper gold sinks (and the ecto gamling is a joke) but the TP prices didn’t go down the slightest bit. Hell some things even became more expensive.

And considering they gave us things like the legendary fractal back which require you to salvage ascended armor makes it even more kittenty that we don’t have a proper source of liquid income.

I mean I’ve made quite a bit gold in the past few weeks, too, but that was basically just me leveling my professions so that I’d be able to craft ascended gear. Now I’m at the point at which I need to farm a kittenload of low lvl crafting mats to be able to get my ascended gear. And then I need even more to craft armor which I could salvage for dark balls of energy for the legendary backpack(this point alone makes me think I’ll never actually be able to get it).

Before HoT I was finishing my first legendary. Dungeons really helped. I made about 5-10 gold per day(only played 1 -2hours or so) and used that to get the things I still needed (like charged lodestones etc). After HoT I HAVE to use the TP to get gold in the first place because any other resource is not effective.

No matter what I farm I still have to sell it on the trading post to get any gold. Sure, champ bags give a little bit of silver and it really adds up over time but I’m mostly done with farming those after I finished luminescent armor earlier this year. It’s just too tedious to open them all.

Event farming really is no option until Arenanet gives us an option to either sell champion bags directly or makes it less annoying to open hundred s of them at once.

I really hope the upcoming update to fractals gives us either a reliant source of gold or a much much better chance at ascended armor drops (while that is no solution to the gold problem at least it helps me getting closer to one of the few skins I really like in this game)

What bugs me is the forced-emphasis on crafting. I’m someone who hates tradeskills with a passion. So when I found out about collections, I was excited. Now I can be rewarded with items for my collection list that help me progress to my legendary but if Tier 2 and Tier 3 require mats so you can craft – that just annoys me. Figured they’d just rehash the same method to get the pre-reqs =/

It’s not a fail, it’s EXACTLY what they wanted.

Ronin.7381:

What bugs me is the forced-emphasis on crafting. I’m someone who hates tradeskills with a passion. So when I found out about collections, I was excited. Now I can be rewarded with items for my collection list that help me progress to my legendary but if Tier 2 and Tier 3 require mats so you can craft – that just annoys me. Figured they’d just rehash the same method to get the pre-reqs =/

Yeah I really don’t get the emphasis on the crafting too, it seems to be the “new idea” they have because it makes it easier for players?
I never really liked the whole crafting system in this game, it just seems needlessly complicated and convoluted, though then again I’m not a fan of the original method of obtaining legendaries either, it’s just pot luck.

To me the only method that felt rewarding to obtain a legendary weapon was in WoW’s questlines in their last expansion.

Gold is hard to get these days, there’s not really a “clear” way to earn it.

dronzer.8392:

Yeah I really don’t get the emphasis on the crafting too, it seems to be the “new idea” they have because it makes it easier for players?

No, because, for the new players or even old ones without all the professions capped at 500, it’ll be a huge cost of money, now more than before.

And for them, as I said, it’s good, more people that probably will open their wallet to buy some gems.

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Anet never said the value of gold would raise. There is no failure here.

What are you people talking about, gold is just as easy if not easier to get if you know where to farm. Cursed Shore farm, you get a charged loadstone aka 3 gold per 3 events. SW farm is still good. And just by gathering wood nodes you can earn a lot of gold.

Do none of you actually play the game or use map chat, why no one here knows these.

warbignime.4610:

And the difference is TP gold benefits the economy while liquid gold doesn’t, TP transaction sink gold and deflates gold to gem exchange rate which is beneficial to players, while liquid gold deflates gold making gold to gem exchange rate higher therefore needless to say is not good foe players. The fact is gold is easier to farm than before if you knows how.

Please never dedicate yourself to economy. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Dungeons were only the main source of gold for dungeon running players, not for PvErs in general. Very few people I know ran more than a few dungeons. They earned gold through other methods.

Further, the price of just about everything went down, if it wasn’t part guild/scribing, legendary/collection, or ascended gear. T5 mats are nearly vendor price, exotics of various stats can be head for less than a gold, some luxury items (such as poly-lumi jewels) dropped 50-80%, and precursors are (for the most part) significantly reduced.

In any case, it takes far more than a month for a market to come to a new equilibrium after a shock like the sudden changes brought by HoT.

tl;dr the economy isn’t as narrow as claimed in the OP (some items crashed, some spiked) and the markets remain in flux, i.e. it’s too soon to say that the changes were good for the community or bad.

Galandil.9641:

warbignime.4610:

And the difference is TP gold benefits the economy while liquid gold doesn’t, TP transaction sink gold and deflates gold to gem exchange rate which is beneficial to players, while liquid gold deflates gold making gold to gem exchange rate higher therefore needless to say is not good foe players. The fact is gold is easier to farm than before if you knows how.

Please never dedicate yourself to economy. You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

I doubt that you have, if you agree with OP in any way.

Prime Greek.1092:

ANET did this intentionally.

They needed to do it from their business model perspective.

Why?

Too much gold was being held by players on the sidelines and those amounts where growing based on what the dungeons, Fractals, and Bosses where dishing out.

This also impacted negatively the amount of Jewels bought by gold rather than using actual cash currency.

Remember that ANET makes 90% of their money off the TP. Recirculating gold earned in the game into jewels by players gives them Zero Income.

I agree with most that this strategy has failed and has only driven more players AWAY from the game.

However, as with most companies, trying to convince them that their decision was wrong and that they should institute a correction is a pipe dream.

These types of companies would rather sink with the ship than admit failure.

The thing is though people earned that gold by playing content.

Galandil.9641:

dronzer.8392:

Yeah I really don’t get the emphasis on the crafting too, it seems to be the “new idea” they have because it makes it easier for players?

No, because, for the new players or even old ones without all the professions capped at 500, it’ll be a huge cost of money, now more than before.

And for them, as I said, it’s good, more people that probably will open their wallet to buy some gems.

New players are probably the ones that’re most reluctant on spending money on something they’re indecisive of.

They’d choose to leave rather than swipe their credit card if they realize they need so much money to get anything now. (One can argue materials also sell for more, but when you look at what they actually need, all low level gears are getting more expensive, and the crafting fee is quite insane with the current material price)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Dungeons were only the main source of gold for dungeon running players, not for PvErs in general. Very few people I know ran more than a few dungeons. They earned gold through other methods.

Further, the price of just about everything went down, if it wasn’t part guild/scribing, legendary/collection, or ascended gear. T5 mats are nearly vendor price, exotics of various stats can be head for less than a gold, some luxury items (such as poly-lumi jewels) dropped 50-80%, and precursors are (for the most part) significantly reduced.

In any case, it takes far more than a month for a market to come to a new equilibrium after a shock like the sudden changes brought by HoT.

tl;dr the economy isn’t as narrow as claimed in the OP (some items crashed, some spiked) and the markets remain in flux, i.e. it’s too soon to say that the changes were good for the community or bad.

There’d be a shock in economy every 3 months just so you know. Anet’s going to release new legendaries every 3 months.

The premise of this whole thread is fundamentally flawed. You are positing that gold is harder to get, and everything is more expensive.

Where do you think everything comes from? Those are people selling the mats for a profit, AKA making gold. You can make gold just as easily by gathering materials and selling them. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that things are more expensive, you should be celebrating that it is far faster to get gold due to how much everything sells for. Since the release of HoT, I’ve been making bank. Not by running dungeons or flipping on the TP, but by just playing the game and gathering materials.

The nerf to dungeons was a nerf to the amount of gold dropped from the sky. There are still ways to make money drop from the sky that doesn’t involve running dungeons. Every event you complete, every bag you open, every item you sell to an NPC vendor, every bauble as a map reward, you are getting gold from thin air. Every player is. Gold is still being put into the economy.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The premise of this whole thread is fundamentally flawed. You are positing that gold is harder to get, and everything is more expensive.

Where do you think everything comes from? Those are people selling the mats for a profit, AKA making gold. You can make gold just as easily by gathering materials and selling them. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that things are more expensive, you should be celebrating that it is far faster to get gold due to how much everything sells for. Since the release of HoT, I’ve been making bank. Not by running dungeons or flipping on the TP, but by just playing the game and gathering materials.

The nerf to dungeons was a nerf to the amount of gold dropped from the sky. There are still ways to make money drop from the sky that doesn’t involve running dungeons. Every event you complete, every bag you open, every item you sell to an NPC vendor, every bauble as a map reward, you are getting gold from thin air. Every player is. Gold is still being put into the economy.

You think it the wrong way. TP is not where the money used to come from.

What money used to come from is dgn/fractal gold reward and vender selling.
Gold does not magically pop out of TP. The gold you get from TP by selling mats are those gold that people originally got from dgn/fractal/vender. Now the main source: dgn/fractal has a decline in gold reward, the gold becomes much more scarce.

Aomine.5012:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The premise of this whole thread is fundamentally flawed. You are positing that gold is harder to get, and everything is more expensive.

Where do you think everything comes from? Those are people selling the mats for a profit, AKA making gold. You can make gold just as easily by gathering materials and selling them. You shouldn’t be lamenting the fact that things are more expensive, you should be celebrating that it is far faster to get gold due to how much everything sells for. Since the release of HoT, I’ve been making bank. Not by running dungeons or flipping on the TP, but by just playing the game and gathering materials.

The nerf to dungeons was a nerf to the amount of gold dropped from the sky. There are still ways to make money drop from the sky that doesn’t involve running dungeons. Every event you complete, every bag you open, every item you sell to an NPC vendor, every bauble as a map reward, you are getting gold from thin air. Every player is. Gold is still being put into the economy.

You think it the wrong way. TP is not where the money used to come from.

What money used to come from is dgn/fractal gold reward and vender selling.
Gold does not magically pop out of TP. The gold you get from selling mats are gold that people originally got from dgn/fractal/vender. Now the main source: dgn/fractal has a decline in gold reward, the gold becomes much more scarce.

You have completely missed the point. The point is you can still have an income that doesn’t involve gold coming out of thin air.

Prime Greek.1092:

ANET did this intentionally.

They needed to do it from their business model perspective.

Why?

Too much gold was being held by players on the sidelines and those amounts where growing based on what the dungeons, Fractals, and Bosses where dishing out.

This also impacted negatively the amount of Jewels bought by gold rather than using actual cash currency.

Remember that ANET makes 90% of their money off the TP. Recirculating gold earned in the game into jewels by players gives them Zero Income.

I agree with most that this strategy has failed and has only driven more players AWAY from the game.

However, as with most companies, trying to convince them that their decision was wrong and that they should institute a correction is a pipe dream.

These types of companies would rather sink with the ship than admit failure.

Which is why they never should have listened to John Smith. Potential losses of revenues to the gem store due to gold accretion were only that – potentials, a fantasy cooked up in a sterile theory crafting environment.
And never mind that the folks who were capable of spending enough time per day to earn fifty gold each day via dungeoning were as small a percentage of the populace as those who’re able to dedicate themselves to hardcore raiding(just as an example).

Most others split time(or did) between dungeoning, fractals, pvp, wvw, world bosses or exploring with friends for world completion. Dungeoning might consist of two or three paths a day- assuming they played every day(not all do.) That gold might add up over time and be converted to gems yet it would still be dwarfed by the moneys spent via game cards or credit cards to make impulse purchases on ‘limited time only items.’

Yet Smith or someone over him spun a tale of how all of that fantasy lucre would be magically converted to actual credit card sales, after a short term of upheaval, if they just made a shortfall of gold earned in game.

It’s the same rhetoric the Paiz’s were bandying about when lotro was criticised for over monetisation, that ‘players would complain but otherwise would keep playing and paying.’ That, rather than -oh I don’t know- feeling cheated, duped, taken for granted and quitting, and so in turn with what ever spending they’d done in the store.

The history is there, of eroding promises, of systems such as organised raiding, dungeoning, and pvp(the ettenmoors, lotro’s wvw/pvp) being left to wither on the vine in favour of experimental gambles(war steeds, mounted combat, Big Battles as well as fiddling with the fundamentals of how player characters are crafted trait trees etc.)and of the resultant eroding of the player base and following server consolidation. Lotro is only just trying and hoping to climb out of that hole but now has the added obstacle of being an outdated game built on an outdated engine. Is any of this sounding familiar? It should.

And yet somehow, in spite of so many examples only a click away, Smith and co have sold Anet this line, guaranteed success on little more it seems than instructing them to stick their fingers in their ears and chant incessantly, ‘That was them but it won’t be us.’ Even more improbably, Anet seems to have bought into it.

Revenue for any product is bound to taper off over time as the novelty wears off, the goal is to draw that out somehow rather than hasten it.

But the sudden changes to traits, the gating, the grinding and the ‘disincentivising’ – a slimy word if ever there was one- smack of cutting the roots in hopes of saving the tree. That they’d even entertain such a notion says enough to me about what’s changed and what hasn’t and where Anet is heading. Nowhere good.

Yes, the removal of dungeon rewards was a cash grab. Its not like inflation of in-game currencies is a reoccurring problem in MMOs or that the gold to gem conversion scaled with inflation anyway.

Iozeph.5617:

It’s the same rhetoric the Paiz’s were bandying about when lotro was criticised for over monetisation, that ‘players would complain but otherwise would keep playing and paying.’ That, rather than -oh I don’t know- feeling cheated, duped, taken for granted and quitting, and so in turn with what ever spending they’d done in the store.

The history is there, of eroding promises, of systems such as organised raiding, dungeoning, and pvp(the ettenmoors, lotro’s wvw/pvp) being left to wither on the vine in favour of experimental gambles(war steeds, mounted combat, Big Battles as well as fiddling with the fundamentals of how player characters are crafted trait trees etc.)and of the resultant eroding of the player base and following server consolidation. Lotro is only just trying and hoping to climb out of that hole but now has the added obstacle of being an outdated game built on an outdated engine. Is any of this sounding familiar? It should.

Omg thanks for pointing out the Lotro case. Yes, “experimental gambles” is what we have in HoT. Lotro’s gambling a whole expansion on “mounted combat” immediately gave the scent of “one huge grind” and that was when I left Lotro. Tried to check it out the other day but the graphics and engine are indeed out of date, so .. nay.

Atm goofing in WoW with a bud who never played it before so we are having fun starting new toons playing casually there. I intend to skip WoW’s failed experimental gambles too. :p Hopefully one day GW2 will go back to the vanilla game. That is when I will return. If not, at least it was a fun ride. Glad I did it.

P.S. Never bought Lotro’s failure expansion, did not buy HoT either. So atm I’m not bitter at all. Just in shock, like watching another Titanic show. There must be many reasons why the devs went that route… but not my place to figure out. I’m just a customer. I’m guessing they studied a lot of data to decide.

hmmm …. strange, i found the gold is a lot easier to come by now…..

It isn’t strange, you just didn’t specify in what kind of way you earned your gold.
There is a difference between creating it out of thin air and earning it by selling something to other players, actually decreasing the total amount of gold in the economy (15% tax).

While HoT brought alot of opportunities to make gold off other players, the amount of gold you can make from stuff that doesn’t include >>>Selling<<< has decreased.

It’ll be interesting to see how mat prices fluctuate as time goes on. So far the trend seems to be slowly downwards from the initial demand spike caused by all the new mat sinks. Eventually I assume they’ll bottom out at a fairly low point (higher than pre-hot, lower than now by some considerable margin) which will make gathering less profitable and overall gold acquisition harder than ever before for the average non-TP savvy player when combined with the reductions to gold from other avenues.

The main problem with the economy is the economy.

Somewhere down the road leading to Guild Wars 2 Anet forgot to make a game. Mining is boring. Wood chopping is boring. Harvesting plants is a little less boring.

Dungeons are boring and 0 rewards now unless going for Empyreal Shards for Ascended. It’s actually more productive now to just go do chest farming.

Farming is boring. Farming is boring because farming doesn’t exist unless you are converting what you farm into gold.

The problem is gold.

Everything leads to gold.

Gold leads to everything.

It’s not a game if the only thing the game leads to is gold.

This is a mechanical issue and it’s gotten to the point with the gold nerf that there’s terribly nothing to do.

Aomine.5012:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Dungeons were only the main source of gold for dungeon running players, not for PvErs in general. Very few people I know ran more than a few dungeons. They earned gold through other methods.

Further, the price of just about everything went down, if it wasn’t part guild/scribing, legendary/collection, or ascended gear. T5 mats are nearly vendor price, exotics of various stats can be head for less than a gold, some luxury items (such as poly-lumi jewels) dropped 50-80%, and precursors are (for the most part) significantly reduced.

In any case, it takes far more than a month for a market to come to a new equilibrium after a shock like the sudden changes brought by HoT.

tl;dr the economy isn’t as narrow as claimed in the OP (some items crashed, some spiked) and the markets remain in flux, i.e. it’s too soon to say that the changes were good for the community or bad.

There’d be a shock in economy every 3 months just so you know. Anet’s going to release new legendaries every 3 months.

You & I are talking about very different things. The “shocks” to which I refer were monumental changes to game mechanics, introducing new items, new mats, and changing supply & demand for nearly everything traded on the TP.

Adding a few new legendaries 4x/year is going to affect things, but it’s not going to “shock” every single market, just the ones relevant to those legendaries. That might mean that demand for certain scarce items remains high, but in the meantime, the general population will have adapted. Already more people are rethinking whether to craft time-gated mats (for use or to sell) and more people are starting to change how and where they farm.

In other words, I can’t agree that we’re going to see “shocks” like HoT 3-4x/year.

I know what you mean, but after WoD, I don’t trust Blizzard, either.

In fact, I trust them even less.

Last I heard, they were threatening to repeat the flying/no flying will we?/won’t we? game, again…

…and wasn’t that fun? ><

If I feel the need to be psychologically duped and messed around with, like that, I can always bring up the question of outstanding DIY jobs, at home, for free. xD

Not to mention that, unless I can be bothered to find out whether they are reinstating LFR difficulty and rewards, I will have no reason to go back, anyway.

As LFR was my main (relatively relaxing) thing, there.

Same goes for enforced personal loot.

Having to try to have and screenshot loot rules convos, for the inevitable ticket, after the inevitable loot scam, isn’t high on my list of fun activities.

…and then, there’s the human female char models.

Much as I complain about the lack of body type choices, in this game, when I think of what they did to human females in WoW…

Running back into Blizzard’s fickle and misleading arms, ATM, would almost certainly be a mistake for most people.

It’s one thing not getting new things right, first time; but, intentionally, removing your own, previous, good additions (especially to please scammers and other psychos and control freaks) is pretty much unforgivable, in my eyes.

You knew exactly what you were doing, Blizzard and yet, you still did it.

YaYa.5879:

Gold is harder to get, now instead of a fifteen minute dungeon you have to do meta events but the price haven’t moved.

Ever thought that the gold dungeons used to give is the reason for high prices? People that farmed the dungeons all day every day were bringing ~ 350g per week into economy. That’s gold created form thin air mostly.

That lead to some players amassing huge amounts of currency, while the rest barely scraped by. Now, with he reduced rewards and plenty of mat sinks, those people have reasons to spend that gold on TP to get stuff faster.

Yes, it hurts those that didn’t have gold, because they still need to pay the costs of guild halls, etc. but since it’s now based more on material rather than gold, it is possible to farm them. That’s why low and mid tier scraps, ore and leather are so expensive now. That’s what new player can farm to earn gold.

I recently leveled my alt, and outwith going out of my way to mine every ore and cut every tree, without doing more than 30% world completion, i made over 100g from the junk i got. That’s money exchanging hands rather than being given by game.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aomine.5012:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Dungeons were only the main source of gold for dungeon running players, not for PvErs in general. Very few people I know ran more than a few dungeons. They earned gold through other methods.

Further, the price of just about everything went down, if it wasn’t part guild/scribing, legendary/collection, or ascended gear. T5 mats are nearly vendor price, exotics of various stats can be head for less than a gold, some luxury items (such as poly-lumi jewels) dropped 50-80%, and precursors are (for the most part) significantly reduced.

In any case, it takes far more than a month for a market to come to a new equilibrium after a shock like the sudden changes brought by HoT.

tl;dr the economy isn’t as narrow as claimed in the OP (some items crashed, some spiked) and the markets remain in flux, i.e. it’s too soon to say that the changes were good for the community or bad.

There’d be a shock in economy every 3 months just so you know. Anet’s going to release new legendaries every 3 months.

You & I are talking about very different things. The “shocks” to which I refer were monumental changes to game mechanics, introducing new items, new mats, and changing supply & demand for nearly everything traded on the TP.

Adding a few new legendaries 4x/year is going to affect things, but it’s not going to “shock” every single market, just the ones relevant to those legendaries. That might mean that demand for certain scarce items remains high, but in the meantime, the general population will have adapted. Already more people are rethinking whether to craft time-gated mats (for use or to sell) and more people are starting to change how and where they farm.

In other words, I can’t agree that we’re going to see “shocks” like HoT 3-4x/year.

It clearly will. Spiritwood price went from 9g to 16g THE MOMENT Anet fix a bug that prevent Nevermore part 1 collection. This is 90 time gated materials we’re talking about, and can ONLY be able to obtained through crafting.

Staff is not even the most popular choice of weapon.
Imagine when the new Legendary GS, Sword, and Hammer come out, what would happen to the economy when they ask for another 90~100 time gated materials that COMPETE with all the other precursors.

Aomine.5012:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aomine.5012:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

Dungeons were only the main source of gold for dungeon running players, not for PvErs in general. Very few people I know ran more than a few dungeons. They earned gold through other methods.

Further, the price of just about everything went down, if it wasn’t part guild/scribing, legendary/collection, or ascended gear. T5 mats are nearly vendor price, exotics of various stats can be head for less than a gold, some luxury items (such as poly-lumi jewels) dropped 50-80%, and precursors are (for the most part) significantly reduced.

In any case, it takes far more than a month for a market to come to a new equilibrium after a shock like the sudden changes brought by HoT.

tl;dr the economy isn’t as narrow as claimed in the OP (some items crashed, some spiked) and the markets remain in flux, i.e. it’s too soon to say that the changes were good for the community or bad.

There’d be a shock in economy every 3 months just so you know. Anet’s going to release new legendaries every 3 months.

You & I are talking about very different things. The “shocks” to which I refer were monumental changes to game mechanics, introducing new items, new mats, and changing supply & demand for nearly everything traded on the TP.

Adding a few new legendaries 4x/year is going to affect things, but it’s not going to “shock” every single market, just the ones relevant to those legendaries. That might mean that demand for certain scarce items remains high, but in the meantime, the general population will have adapted. Already more people are rethinking whether to craft time-gated mats (for use or to sell) and more people are starting to change how and where they farm.

In other words, I can’t agree that we’re going to see “shocks” like HoT 3-4x/year.

It clearly will. Spiritwood price went from 9g to 16g THE MOMENT Anet fix a bug that prevent Nevermore part 1 collection. This is 90 time gated materials we’re talking about, and can ONLY be able to obtained through crafting.

Staff is not even the most popular choice of weapon.
Imagine when the new Legendary GS, Sword, and Hammer come out, what would happen to the economy when they ask for another 90~100 time gated materials that COMPETE with all the other precursors.

you need 75 spiritwood and 5 deldrimor steel for the precursor and the gift of the raven spirit and the price is already going down again

I wonder how it must have been to make gold before HoT. I left for a year and returned a week before HoT hit and spent that week RPing and avoiding PvE.

I had around 160g.

HoT hits and I:

- Fully equipped my Revenant (not sure of the prices, but six Rune of Strength, exotic armor + weapons and Sigils of Strength and Bloodlust + trinkets).
- Bought the character starter pack (3.5k gems).
- Bought the Heavy Aether armor (800 gems).
- Bought the Monk outfit (700 gems).
- Bought the Zodiac Light Armor (800 gems).
- Bough the Bandit pack (2k gems).

HoT released October the 23rd and today’s the 30th of November, so in around one month I made… about… dunno… 1k gold? I vaguely remember 3.5k gems being 450g gems, the armors and outfits were around 160g each and the 2k gems were, I think, 340g. So perhaps closer to 1.2k gold in a month and a week.

I’m not taking sides on this ‘gold is hard to make, how do we earn gold now HoT hit!?’ but I’m left wondering at how much did people earn before.

I know what I’m making now is enough for my needs but it’s true I’m not making ascended armor (useless other than for fractals) or legendaries (lol@cost for a skin).

Let me translate:

“Economy Fail: price to high, gold too rare”

Is actually~

“Player freakout: Lots of others want the same stuff I do, gold not flooding in from the stuff I have on autopilot.”

Dungeons are easy and require nothing but dps. Some are doable solo. Anet nerfed gold rewards and its a +
Some highly expensive and rare items had their droprate increased and the price went down (im looking at you, charged lodestones). Its a +
Collections with valuable rewards were released, precursors can be crafted so all TP prices went down to match the costs of the craft. (Pre-HoT dusk ~2,5k gold, now ~1,1k) +

I’m no money kitten, after 3 years of running dungeons i enjoy doing meta events. I salvage all green/blue garbage, gather all wood/flax/ori/mithril and every 3-4 tarir/dragon’s stand runs i go to my bank and sell all collectibles. Profit: around 60-100g

Cant complain.

EDIT: Oh, and good thing is this is’nt mindless tag-farming like Crown pavilon (Grab a guardian with a staff, run around and spam aoe loot picking) or some other staff from the past. You have to actually participate to get better rewards.

Prime Greek.1092:

ANET did this intentionally.

They needed to do it from their business model perspective.

Why?

Too much gold was being held by players on the sidelines and those amounts where growing based on what the dungeons, Fractals, and Bosses where dishing out.

This also impacted negatively the amount of Jewels bought by gold rather than using actual cash currency.

Remember that ANET makes 90% of their money off the TP. Recirculating gold earned in the game into jewels by players gives them Zero Income.

I agree with most that this strategy has failed and has only driven more players AWAY from the game.

However, as with most companies, trying to convince them that their decision was wrong and that they should institute a correction is a pipe dream.

These types of companies would rather sink with the ship than admit failure.

Dungeons maybe.. but the real issue was their allowance of the failtrain farming and worst of all the silverwastes farm.. those two areas were yielding stupidly unhealthy amounts of easy gold, but they ignored all the shouts out because it was their only solution to keeping players in game over the last 12 months during the great content depression… now they want to claw it all back by hitting everyone rather than those exploiting mechanics like they were much sooner.
Hitting dungeons hard was not necessarily a good idea imo and I don’t even run them all that often to see the benefits, but all it’s done is discouraged players from coming back to play content they liked to run., who will then likely just leave all together.

ANET has focused in hard on gems to gold conversions .. hence their little gem of a post prior to HoT going live about suddenly stepping up their vigilance around gold sellers. If the issue was too much ingame gold was sitting around, why continue having the gem to gold conversion at all and instead just have gems sales for store fluff??

No ANET want wealth in the game but only by firstly starving players by cutting off the sources to generate it so they can hopefully become more inclined to spend real coin instead to get it… whether in fact they will or simply move on only time will tell.

“Some highly expensive and rare items had their droprate increased and the price went down (im looking at you, charged lodestones). Its a +”

Yeah, only the day HoT released. I stocked up on them knowing they’d go up again. Cores were 50s. I’m not reselling though since I (still) intend to make infinite light someday but am still on the fence about Nightfury and some of the dragon weapons (the staff, axe, and longbow look totally sick and all my classes except for warrior and maybe revenant can use staves)

Yea, I would say that the economy is in a pretty bad spot right now:

• Ascended gear drops less than ever.
• Dungeon farming was hit hard.
• Fractals don’t reward as much as dungeons did.
• Big gold sinks like guild halls and scribing have drained players’ savings.
• Raids have made the need for ascended armor higher than ever.

I think the worst effect of the current economy is that gearing for raids is now a heavy grind…which makes gearing for raids in GW2 feel a lot like gearing for raids in WoW.

Trinkets are pretty much free with laurels. Rings are free from fractals. You’ll need to craft a weapon if you want to be bleeding edge, but it’s not the stat difference from full ascended armor that will make or break a raid.

Full ascended (armor, weapons, trinkets) is 12.5% extra damage and the weapon by itself is a wooping near 6%. If you already have trinkets then full ascended armor is whooping 2% damage increase.

C’mon. You’ll get more out of not missing one auto attack than you will from full ascended armor.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

A month after the expension, did it work? HEEELL NO
Gold is harder to get, now instead of a fifteen minute dungeon you have to do meta events but the price haven’t moved.
You still need 300 po to get a tag, you still need a huuuuuuge pack of gold for guild halls.
Which mean that if you want to survive in this economy (lol) you need to buy gems with real money.

Yes, in order to play the game (as it is intended), you need to use your credit card.
(That is why a lot of people are going back to wow by the way).

THis is another exemple of an Anet Idea followed by poor execution.
Lowering the economy isn’t bad per se, but with an execution that bad, you are just ruining the game

You’re wrong and just making up that conclusion as it’s the only one that fits your narrative that you keep posting on the forums. There’s more than one way to make gold in this game. Players do not need to buy it. What you haven’t realized is that players can farm the items that are valuable and then sell them on the TP.

Kanto.1659:

Trinkets are pretty much free with laurels. Rings are free from fractals. You’ll need to craft a weapon if you want to be bleeding edge, but it’s not the stat difference from full ascended armor that will make or break a raid.

Full ascended (armor, weapons, trinkets) is 12.5% extra damage and the weapon by itself is a wooping near 6%. If you already have trinkets then full ascended armor is whooping 2% damage increase.

C’mon. You’ll get more out of not missing one auto attack than you will from full ascended armor.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Yea, the armor difference is minimal, but you’ll need 1-4 weapons, depending on prof and build for raids.

If you plan on having a different character raid-ready (as many player will since group comp in a raid is important and the raid may not need your chronomancer today), you’ll have to multiply that.

If you want to do Fractals, you will need the full ascended armor for the agony resist.

Ayrilana.1396:

YaYa.5879:

So before the release of HOT, i’ve read a post saying that they were gonna change the economy. The value of gold would raise, so they nerfed the liquide rewards on dungeons (wich was the main source of gold for PVE players). That being done, the prices would decrease.

A month after the expension, did it work? HEEELL NO
Gold is harder to get, now instead of a fifteen minute dungeon you have to do meta events but the price haven’t moved.
You still need 300 po to get a tag, you still need a huuuuuuge pack of gold for guild halls.
Which mean that if you want to survive in this economy (lol) you need to buy gems with real money.

Yes, in order to play the game (as it is intended), you need to use your credit card.
(That is why a lot of people are going back to wow by the way).

THis is another exemple of an Anet Idea followed by poor execution.
Lowering the economy isn’t bad per se, but with an execution that bad, you are just ruining the game

You’re wrong and just making up that conclusion as it’s the only one that fits your narrative that you keep posting on the forums. There’s more than one way to make gold in this game. Players do not need to buy it. What you haven’t realized is that players can farm the items that are valuable and then sell them on the TP.

I have been playing since GW2 Beta. I have two legendary weapons (NOT from drops) and full ascended gear on five or six of my alts and I have NEVER bought gold with gems. I have bought plenty from the gem store and I also have never bought gems with gold. I only pay for skins and stuff like extra storage. Only lazy/busy/rich people buy gold with gems and they are allowing the rest of us to play pretty much for free.

Ronin.7381:

What bugs me is the forced-emphasis on crafting. I’m someone who hates tradeskills with a passion. So when I found out about collections, I was excited. Now I can be rewarded with items for my collection list that help me progress to my legendary but if Tier 2 and Tier 3 require mats so you can craft – that just annoys me. Figured they’d just rehash the same method to get the pre-reqs =/

Crafting is emphasized because it’s a closed system. Crafting doesn’t put gold into the economy, which means it doesn’t contribute to inflation.

Its hard to say how much the economy is being effected by having less gold sources, but how the player feels in the streets is more important anyway.

What the OP is saying is it feels like its hard to get ahead.

Regardless one of the big points made that is accurate, is its not just whether you can make money, but how you make money.
In a video game, most people dont want menial tasks to be the main way to achieve their goals.

right now, from what ive seen, menial tasks are the best way to get gold (which is required for many goals)

The plus side is they added more ways to achieve goals that involve less gold, but if you are going for something like a legendary, or ascended armor, you are generally drawn back into menial tasking to get ahead.

Or you can play the market. Neither of which is how many players prefer to play an adventure game

the game plays a lot better when you can mostly ignore the economic incentives.

phys.7689:

Its hard to say how much the economy is being effected by having less gold sources, but how the player feels in the streets is more important anyway.

What the OP is saying is it feels like its hard to get ahead.

Regardless one of the big points made that is accurate, is its not just whether you can make money, but how you make money.
In a video game, most people dont want menial tasks to be the main way to achieve their goals.

right now, from what ive seen, menial tasks are the best way to get gold (which is required for many goals)

The plus side is they added more ways to achieve goals that involve less gold, but if you are going for something like a legendary, or ascended armor, you are generally drawn back into menial tasking to get ahead.

Or you can play the market. Neither of which is how many players prefer to play an adventure game

the game plays a lot better when you can mostly ignore the economic incentives.

There’s actually some pretty hard truth to back up what he’s saying.

Go to GW2Spidy.com and look up the value of high value black lion weapon skins that haven’t been re-released. These weapons historically trended up in value (unless they were re-released) due to scarcity and the increasing ticket cost. However, you now see the value of these weapons decreasing since about October.

Why has this happened? Decreasing demand. Players don’t have the expendable income that they used to for this kind of stuff.

Dahkeus.8243:

phys.7689:

Its hard to say how much the economy is being effected by having less gold sources, but how the player feels in the streets is more important anyway.

What the OP is saying is it feels like its hard to get ahead.

Regardless one of the big points made that is accurate, is its not just whether you can make money, but how you make money.
In a video game, most people dont want menial tasks to be the main way to achieve their goals.

right now, from what ive seen, menial tasks are the best way to get gold (which is required for many goals)

The plus side is they added more ways to achieve goals that involve less gold, but if you are going for something like a legendary, or ascended armor, you are generally drawn back into menial tasking to get ahead.

Or you can play the market. Neither of which is how many players prefer to play an adventure game

the game plays a lot better when you can mostly ignore the economic incentives.

There’s actually some pretty hard truth to back up what he’s saying.

Go to GW2Spidy.com and look up the value of high value black lion weapon skins that haven’t been re-released. These weapons historically trended up in value (unless they were re-released) due to scarcity and the increasing ticket cost. However, you now see the value of these weapons decreasing since about October.

Why has this happened? Decreasing demand. Players don’t have the expendable income that they used to for this kind of stuff.

Have you looked at the supply and factored in all of the keys players are getting by doing the one-time reward tracks, HoT story, and RNG SSC map complete?

And here I am making more money post-HoT than I was pre-HoT and have changed nothing…

Sounds like the dungeon farmers are the ones that can’t figure out what the heck to do.

My typical day is log in, do 3 dailies for the AP, do fractal dailies, log out. Weekends I’ll do some HoT mastery farming (events), but only weekends. I typically make 100g/week. That’s just with dailies and fractal dailies. Sell all stabilizing matrices (45s/ea), sell all ectos (~31s/ea), sell all mats and T5/T6, open all encryptions (for the chance at the 1g+junk items which I’ve been pretty lucky with—or sell them for 11s/ea), craft up Agony Infusions to +8’s (~4.5g/ea).

People are under this misconception that there are no ways to make good money in this game, versus the reality which is there are simply less ways to make good money now. You can either seek out the ways to make good money, even if its outside your wheelhouse, or you can pout about it and then quit for another MMO that you will quit for another MMO that you will quit.

Draknar.5748:

And here I am making more money post-HoT than I was pre-HoT and have changed nothing…

Sounds like the dungeon farmers are the ones that can’t figure out what the heck to do.

My typical day is log in, do 3 dailies for the AP, do fractal dailies, log out. Weekends I’ll do some HoT mastery farming (events), but only weekends. I typically make 100g/week. That’s just with dailies and fractal dailies. Sell all stabilizing matrices (45s/ea), sell all ectos (~31s/ea), sell all mats and T5/T6, open all encryptions (for the chance at the 1g+junk items which I’ve been pretty lucky with—or sell them for 11s/ea), craft up Agony Infusions to +8’s (~4.5g/ea).

People are under this misconception that there are no ways to make good money in this game, versus the reality which is there are simply less ways to make good money now. You can either seek out the ways to make good money, even if its outside your wheelhouse, or you can pout about it and then quit for another MMO that you will quit for another MMO that you will quit.

Think you’re missing the point. Lots of people just enjoyed doing dungeons to make gold. Myself included. “Selling mats” to make gold doesn’t really cut it for me, because I tend to be one of those players who stockpile mats in my bank for legendaries and other rare items, so now it feels like I’m constantly broke. Do I have liquid assets sure. But that’s not how I want to make a profit b/c chances are I will have to rebuy them later that way.

Chrono.6928:

Lots of people just enjoyed doing dungeons to make gold. Myself included. “Selling mats” to make gold doesn’t really cut it for me, because I tend to be one of those players who stockpile mats in my bank for legendaries and other rare items, so now it feels like I’m constantly broke. Do I have liquid assets sure. But that’s not how I want to make a profit b/c chances are I will have to rebuy them later that way.

“I miss doing dungeons for gold” is, I think, a reasonable point. However, the OP’s complaint involves considerably more than that. “It’s no longer worth my time to farm dungeons” does not equal, “There is no way to make gold except to spend RL money.”

As to mats… Ask yourself whether the mats you are storing are currently valued high, and whether they’re likely to continue to go up over time or will they come down as more players complete their goals? If so, as has been the case many times, selling some now and buying later might be to your advantage. The further advantage is that you can always re-farm them later if you need to.

Long term rewards in MMO’s are designed to be marathons, not sprints, and certainly not 1K jogs. If you “have” to finish the marathon in the lead group, then there’s going to be a lot more stress and concern than if you just want to finish at your own pace.