Guild Wars 2

Anet WANTS new players to open up their wallets to buy gold…. why the hell else would they bother making these recent economic changes which are CLEARLY MAKING IT HARDER for players who recently joined gw2 to make wealth….

My credit card insta-farms and yours can too

They clearly said we’d have some chaos after the expansion came out and they told us not to worry because it’d settle down soon.
Can’t have everything we want on day 1, you’ll have to survive somehow.

One of the biggest things ive seen as far as widening the gap is the ascended crafting, making the insignias require more mats, instead of changing the composition alone.

If they made it require 2 damask n 2 leather, it would’ve reduced the value of damask (which is currently insane at more than double the value of any of the others) and brought up the value of leather. As is, it’s even more expensive to make ascended armor, and even harder for people to want to make ascended.

Disclaimer: I have like 6 full sets of ascended armor, don’t need more, so while this doesn’t affect me, I still think it was the wrong way for them to go about the ascended.

SkiTz.4590:

No offense Wanze, but thats terrible logic.

Tell, how did gold get spread around more???

Can you say with a straight face that its easier to make gold for a new player now compared to before??? You do realize dungeons were the best source of actual gold for new players…

LESS gold IS ENTERING the game now, thats a fact since they nerfed the biggest gold printing area (dungs) and added gold sinks as well (like the nightfury crap).

this is done for one reason and one reason ONLY: to get more players (specifically, new players) buying gold from the gemstore.

OK, I will give it a last try. I think we just have a different point of view, you look at the situation from a micro-economic pov and I from a macro-economic pov.

I agree that with the dungeon nerf, the individual player has a harder time to target farm direct gold rewards. But that doesnt mean, that less gold is entering the market.

A simple example, fictional numbers.

Before, 5 people farmed dungeons for 1 hour and made 20 gold each, 100g total.
Now they upped the gold rewards in fractals and they used plenty of dev ressources to support fractals and will do so in the future. Now, for every 5 players that stop running dungeons, 20 new players will run fractals and earn 5g direct gold rewards from it, totaling 100g. The overall gold supply doesnt change, the only change that happened is that gold faucets stopped pouring into a fair few wallets and now drip into alot of wallets.
John Smith, the Game Economist, answered plenty of questions on reddit, after his blog post about economic changes (dungeons nerfs) was posted. Here is the link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ogusa/the_guild_wars_2_heart_of_thorns_economy/?sort=old

But just because a new player cant target farm direct gold rewards anymore, doesnt mean that he cant earn a decent amount of gold by selling his loot.

Without a doubt, there is a wealth gap in GW2 between new players and traders like me but also to veteran players, who have clocked 5k+ hours, even though those veterans primarily earned their wealth by playing the game. I think GW2 addresses that wealth gap pretty well by making loot that drops in lower level maps and primarily to lower level characters valuable to veteran players. Ascended crafting was the first step and now with HoT many other low level mats have seen a significant rise in value, as they are demanded by veterans, who have a bigger wallet and are mostly earned in lower level areas. Some examples:

t1 leather – 200% increase in value since hot launch
t1 wood – 60% increase
Potatoes – 500% increase
iron ore – 50% increase

Flax seeds and fibre is another thing. Its nothing a new player really needs, its easily accesible in HoT (if youre lvl 80) and sold for 10-40s each during the first week, mostly paid for from people with deep pockets (nightfury) or big guilds who can pool funds (guild upgrades, scribing).

I think there are great mechanics at work to transfer gold ressources from those that have them to those that need them.

I think many players, especially new players, have a hard time calculating how much the materials and items that drop for them per hour of gameplay, are actually worth. And its understandable. Most of the time, they struggle with bag space and deposit mats on a regular basis without considering, if they need the mats at the moment or if it might be better to sell them because they are in demand and will fetch a good price.

If you, or any other player is interested in getting more information about the value of the materials you get, there are some websites, that can do that for you, using the new API keys. Right now, I am using gw2bltc.com or gw2shinies.com

Actually, i just tried both websites again and they arent up to date yet with some new items, for example. The API info and endpoints are also updated quite regularly i think these days, so it will take some time until everything runs smoothly. Nonetheless, those websites offer great info on trading history and current trades, account wealth, account unlocks, account bank, wardrobe, etc. So they are well worth checking out and setting up a (free) account. You need to create an API key and permissions, you do that by clicking on your account, top right of this forum page, and then go to applications.

Shoot me a pm, if you have a question about using those websites.

Anyways, in order to easily calculate, how much value in mats you make per hour, use those websites in order to determine, how much your material storage and bag inventory of the character you are playing is worth, before you start playing. While you play, deposit everything you can (which you do anyways) and at the end of the session, check again.

lets say this is true-anet is suffering because players are buying gems with gold instead of with cash. in that case wouldn’t it make perfect sense to bankrupt players (lower their gold making opportunities)? in fact forcing them to buy gems with cash. this isn’t hard to understand and makes perfect sense-from the company’s perspective.

the dyes are of course artificially priced. once the artificial price is established then the speculators can operate within some framework of ‘rationality’ but the supply is completely irrational.

the ‘market’ no more decided the price of this product than it decides anything else-which is not at all. again the price could be 100 gold or it could be 10 silver(if the dyes dropped in game)…the traders/speculators have room to manipulate but that is largely it.

with no control or even idea(for how could one have an idea about the supply of something infinite-digital items) of the supply of items one is simply playing betting games on arbitrarily ‘priced’ items. applying rw economics to an ‘economy’ with one producer (and that producer also has the power to set purchasing power!) is simply foolish.

john smith and the traders pretend this is an ‘economy’…john smith to attempt to put a figleaf of legitimacy on what is an obvious farce(the markets) and the traders tell these lies so they can make gold and make it all seem above board.

and as outlined above i’m not against the company making money (i paid for the expansion) but there has to be some balance between pure greed and the price of the expansion.

notes-should have hit refresh when i got back from lunch …this post is a response to a post earlier. the points still stand on their own but might be a bit confusing at first glance.

Wanze.8410:

anahiDelrey.7601:

Thank you for your reply, Dengar! It is my feeling, as well. Unfortunately, there has been a couple let-downs lately, and I do think as you do; we must voice it! Hopefully, that will be sooner than later; I want to be ready for the raids.

The first raid wings they will introduce dont need you to be in ascended gear.
And i would guess that by that time they introduce the final wings that need ascended gear, you will have enough drops of random ascended armor and weapon boxes from the first wings, wvw, pvp or lower level fractals, to have a full ascended built as you can change the stats on ascended gear for a cost that equals the cost of an exotic set.

Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, Anet has already retracted their statement that Ascended armor would be needed to do any of the Raids, it might be recommended, but it is not necessary. You will be able to complete the Raids in Exotic armor.

ok while u guys are econ101 or 10000-ing, lets go back to OP’s post and stop digressing Wanze, appreciate ur passion on trading but still control youself !

Traders can be and will be defending the current economy no doubt because it is fun for them however, the problem is imminent that player base of another type has to surface and claim the disparity is grower larger and that fun is subjective.

In the larger picture irregardless whether the economy is a thriving one or not, this is something Anet should look at.

I will just leave this link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1drDuaQXm_U&index=265&list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187

The main problem is not economy. #justSayingForThoseWhoDontRead

Selkirk.4218:

what a noble fellow. his actions affect no one and he just amasses gold for the sake of it. but let’s assume not everyone is as kind and humble as wanze. what if some of the trading post flippers were gold sellers?

what if they were making tremendous amounts of money off of ridiculous trades (flax seeds) and selling that gold to a now impoverished player base. wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of the traders?

the dungeon runner who was told he is too rich has to now tolerate lectures from the tp flippers…more than a few eyes are rolling.

bad analogy. it can also be said, what if dungeon runners are gold selling bots and can make tremendous amounts of money off runs. wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of dungeon runners? this can apply to gold grinding bots off mobs.

Selkirk.4218:

notes-i do find it odd that they nerfed dungeons (content) and the traders are having a field day. wanze said he made 500 gold in one day-one wonders why they haven’t cracked down on the traders? a transaction limit should be rather easy to implement-the outliers will stand out from normal players.

i’m not happy i’m not part of rich trading crowd. but if we stop overpaying and just go and work (aka grind) for what we need, then traders won’t have such a field day. don’t limit anything just for the sake of it. anet gets a cut from the tp of 15% if you didn’t know. it’s 5% tip for listing and 10% tip for item sold. if you remove and resell, you don’t get your 5% tip refunded. let’s not try to bankrupt anet’s bank ok?

Zypher.7609:

displacedTitan.6897:

Econ 101, please sign up for it.

If only people who talked about anything economic related actually required this. Or the experience equivalent of it.

Gets rather sad to read all the armchair economist posts. I enjoy when John Smith steps in to set things straight, it is a shame he is busy. I am sure he could have a full time job just commenting on some of the absurdities that gets posted.

john smith says currently demand greater than supply. thus prices high for certain items. he’s doing his job keeping me in the poor house. you don’t want anet to print i meant programmed more gems and gold to flood the economy do you?

It’s not difficult to acquire wealth in this game. The complaint surrounding those using the dungeon reward change is speed of acquiring wealth. They are looking for loot pinatas they could mindlessly hit repeatedly.

Why? They want whatever they want as fast as possible and the great equalizer for the RNG drop mechanic is gold and the TP. That or exchanging gold for gems because they don’t want to pay cash for gem shop items.

Some players simply react poorly when their prize is moved.

The principle of the OP’s argument is sound. For too long, Anet has made getting Ascended gear as mostly a craft-moar endeavor. Your chances of getting ascended gear from either boss events like TT or Teq or Fractals is VERY low (on the order of less than 5%). Luckily, they seem to be addressing this to some degree with the collection achievements that allow you to collect parts for an ascended weapon. After reviewing these achievements they seem quite doable… takes about the same as pure farming for crafting mats, but at least it has variety. Hopefully Anet continues to offer other avenues to get ascended gear like this.

If anything, HoT has made it so that smart, watchful people can strip rich, impatient people of their gold. The opportunity is there … IF you want to take it. Crying on the forums doesn’t get you any further ahead taking that opportunity.

Selkirk.4218:

what a noble fellow. his actions affect no one and he just amasses gold for the sake of it. but let’s assume not everyone is as kind and humble as wanze. what if some of the trading post flippers were gold sellers?

what if they were making tremendous amounts of money off of ridiculous trades (flax seeds) and selling that gold to a now impoverished player base. wouldn’t it make sense to get rid of the traders?

the dungeon runner who was told he is too rich has to now tolerate lectures from the tp flippers…more than a few eyes are rolling.

as to the new expansion and player rewards…wanze if you think 2 armor sets in a paid expansion is plenty-i don’t what to say to you. a shameless apologist? a fool? who knows and frankly who cares.

players know hot has next to nothing on the skin side. the expac not only has no loot but we now have less gold to purchase what little there actually is.

Just to clear up some things.

First of all, thanks for the flowers, even though they seem to be watered with a little sarcasm.

I have no problem with people venting their frustrations about the economy towards me and making me the source of all evil and the reason why they cant have what they want right now. But let me clear one thing up.

While my game wealth might be beyond belief for some players, I am by far not the wealthiest person, I am just the most vocal one on the forums (I have 143 pages of forum posts, Gaile Gray, whose job it is to communicate on the forums, has 176 pages).

I honestly cant tell you how wealthy I am in game because its hard to define wealth in game in the first place. If its just gold in the wallet, I wont even be in the top 10% as i mostly reinvest my gold profits, as soon as I get over a certain treshold. Actually, last night, i sold my forged nightfury for 4200g (and a forged Dawn to boot) and it was the first time since launch that I had more than 3000g in my wallet.

Of course, I have plenty of investments in 8 fully upgraded guild vaults over 3 accounts but do you calculate their value for their actual price or for the price i plan to list them?

On this account, i think i have 50k gold worth of listings on the trading post but they didnt sell yet, their current listing values might only be 15k gold.
And how do value the 100k gems i bought with gold? Do you rate them at the current price of around 2g per gem or at the value i bought them, which maybe was 80s on average?

Is the juggernaut, that i crafted nearly 3 years ago worth its actual value of 4k gold, its value of 2k gold when i crafted it or 0 gold because its account bound?

Ever since i got involved in posting about the game economy i got faced with the accusation that my wealth makes the game experience for other players less enjoyable because i drive up prices.

And ever since then, i tried to, as objectively as i can, determine, if that was the case.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion, that my influence to the economy is pretty insignicant. The player base is so huge that even if I have 1000 or 10000 times more gold than the average player, it wont matter, if I would stop playing today.The economy would develop the same way, as if I would keep on playing.

I am going a bit off topic, i think. The reason why I am responding to you was basically your first paragraph, especially:“what if some of the trading post flippers were gold sellers?”

As I said, there are people (or accounts) to whom my perceived wealth or impact to the economy would shrink into non existance, if compared to.

Gold sellers are one thing. They probably harm your game experience the most, every single one of them. They leech off your and Anets efforts, like no other. They steal peoples accounts, achievements, loot, and sell it to somebody else. Anets loses revenue, while gold sellers earn the profit. The first time something happens to a hacked account, Anet will most of the time roll back the account to a certain point in time and duplicate the wealth that account accumulated to a certain degree. That includes all tradeable goods on the characters, their account bound currencies, which can also be liquified, their gold wallet and gems. Even if the roll back is a nice hail mary for most players that got hacked, it usually involves alot of personal effort and communication with customer support and the unconvenience of not being able to play for a service you paid for. Anet has to pay CS payroll to provide that service and they just lost 100 bucks in revenue because someone bought gold for 100 bucks from someone else than them. And if that wasnt enough, they just had to duplicate alot of gold, mats and currencies, which is bad for the in game economy, the value of mats in game and the value of their product.

These days, ever since the announcement of the dungeon gold reward nerfs, quite a bit of discussion erupted on the forums about gold sinks and gold faucets.
There were rumors about the economy running out of gold and only credit cards could generate new gold.
There were rumors that that evil tp manipulators like me would leech every copper from average joe.
People claim that the trading post is the biggest gold sink and biggest gold faucet in game and that dungeons have been the biggest gold faucet in game, unless its the gem exchange.

The truth is, rollbacks from hacked accounts and restored gold in the wallet is probably and definately has been at times since launch been the biggest gold faucet in the game.

Whoever just hacked your account, if he is a good one, will not only sell your wealth for real currency online, taking revenue from Anet, devaluating their product, he will use your account to make life more miserable for everybody else. Whe will use your account for free advertisement via map chat and whispers. And he will use it to join the next group of evil influence.

2.) Botters

After they hacked your account, they will use it to run as a bot, farming mats. If you have complained in the last week, or in the 3 years since launch, about not getting enough value for your loot, these guys are the reason why, not me and my club of extraordinary gentle businessmen of [TIN] Foil Hats.
Whenever you loot an item that you dont need and would like to sell it, it would have been worth more, if some hacker didnt just compromise your best guildies account, along with 4 others and set up a farm party of 5 toons to farm the item, you just wanted to sell. Chance is that he will earn your loot reward 5 times faster without even doing anything and putting in personal effort.

Even if the top 5% of wealthy players would somehow unite and use their magic and superior knowledge to control markets, their influence would blush compared to what gold sellers and bots do to devaluate your game experience.

As much as I would think that I make a difference to the economy or community of GW2, I dont.

TL/DR: This got way off topic and is a better fit in my personal blog about the Game Economy after Hot, so i will copy/paste it. If you would like to reply to my post, please do so over there to not further derail this thread.

To OP, sorry to intrude your thread, if you feel that i went too OT, report me and a mod will sort it out.

Same goes to the person that i replied to, dont ake it personal, i went off topic.

I wouldn’t get you hopes up too much. The Raids are designed to be exceptionally exclusive.

HoT still included more of the big event maps that have been the standard endgame since launch.

I’m not trying to sound elitist here; I’m a burned out raider, so I really do appreciate the casual(no offense meant) event maps.

I think you have to ask yourself; do you really; want to be included in this content. If you are happy with GW2 pre-raids; is there any reason to imagine you won’t be happy by not participating in raids?

Wanze.8410:

Gold income wasnt nerfed

I’m calling bunk on this statement big time. Where is the replacement gold coming into the system? And again, Dungeons were not the only gold faucet reduced or removed.

DeWolfe.2174:

Wanze.8410:

Gold income wasnt nerfed

I’m calling bunk on this statement big time. Where is the replacement gold coming into the system? And again, Dungeons were not the only gold faucet reduced or removed.

I’m making about 3g/hr just from shiny baubles in AB. Considering there are 1000’s of players in AB right now I suspect gold faucets have actually INCREASED since before HoT. That will level off in a few weeks, but the amount of loot HoT throws at you is just absurd.

The irony that most the people posting here are about TP/gold income/etc.
This just further proven OP’s statement about the disparity.

Eh I kinda get where your coming from and see the same attitude from some other guild mates.

The cost of crafting full ascended gear and begin higher level content (fractals) is very high. For the most part tho, you can easily get around with just weapon smithing and getting accessories. You really don’t need ascended armor until you begin 50+ scales(with +5s and the new attuned rings you can get 60 ar which is enough to do 50).

The issue here is how you play the game though. I would consider my self a hardcore player, but I never did armor smithing/leather smith or tailor. I have one full set of ascended gear and a pile of weapons (I only made two). The game does dish out a lot ascended chests you just have to play it. If you want to get ascended armor and not craft go play pvp, wvw or do mid level fractals(really what ever you enjoy). Your bound to get something eventually (the other day I got a zojas weapon chest, a box for gloves and a armor box in one day).

I had guild mates that told me I was nuts when I told them I would get the gear that I have the way I planted to. They got theirs earlier via crafting but complained about all the money they grinded and spent on their armor. Ive spent maybe 4g tops per piece to switch stats on gear. I got all my stuff from playing the game to enjoy my self and here I am. If a lot more people did this and had some patients the prices would be a lot lower. The game is really only a gold sink if you allow it to be by being impatient and deciding you want or need something now.

IMHO its a matter of perception and you allow your self to be capitalized on your perception.

anahiDelrey.7601:

Wanze.8410:

An MMO is about interacting with other players, trading with them is just that and Anet sees the trading post as an integral part of the game, they stated that many times.

If interacting with other players in various ways is not your cup of tea, maybe try solo rpgs.

I’m sorry but, an in-game window (The Trading Post) is ANYTHING but an interaction between player. It’s a system player can play with to get gold for their items, or get richer through dedicated market flipping. Sadly, everything revolves around it if you want to get something, now.

Getting together, in a group, accomplishing different steps to completing another component of a nice reward, is interaction.

Actually, that is remote interaction. What you seem to prefer is direct interaction.

To address the OPs point, I understand the argument about splitting the player base, but those groups have always existed. This expansion hasn’t driven a larger wedge between them, nor made either more distinct. Concerning getting the items you were after, it’s a bit unfair to use an expansion release as an example. A lot of things are in a huge amount of disarray due to the amount of gold and materials entering the economy right now, I think that we should all wait a little and see how things settle down. Furthermore, a lot of people have been listing two options on how to deal with changes to the system, and they are often “buy gold or farm money”. The thing about GW2 is this; you earn money and mats doing what you like to do. It may not be at the same rate as another way but wealth/mats are still acquired. No one is forcing you to buy the mats, no one is forcing you to buy gems. You aren’t locked out of enjoying endgame content because you are only allotted 1hr per day or less of play time. You will, however, have to wait longer to enjoy some of the content that is gated by time investment. You will still enjoy the game “to it’s fullest extent” on a longer timeline than the hardcore players.

I would like to thank all of you guys for your feedback! It was mostly constructive, apart from some ironic attacks (please keep it civil!) from some side. It did open my eyes on some things which I probably overlooked with a squint before. It was educating!

And Wanze, do not worry; all opinions are welcome! And your Economy thread is a bit huge for me to go -all- over it, but it seems like a sound idea. I think it would be a good idea to gather and compile some information; tips, advice, pieces of wisdom, that can assist people whom do not look as far you, or others, might have, into the income system. Without being exclusive to the TP, of course.

I think I will be patient, and see how things are a few weeks from now!

And do keep an eye out for good ways of making gold. That might also explain the inflation, because that’s where other “buyers” are probably getting their gold from.

I thought some of the “nerf” and spreading out the rewards were so not one place hold a Monopoly over resources then the others. It also why maps have visible rewards now too, to help you farm your own stuff. In fact, since prices drop on some things, that has to mean it easier to get your own stuff now too. Also of course some new items are worth more now, but soon, the appeal be gone, more people will sell off resorces and the items stabilize. To me this seem good, not bad.