Guild Wars 2

Astraea.6075:

If you release too many details, then people will know exactly how much gold would be required to “buy out” the available gems, or rather, what quantity of gem buying would be required to shift the rate by more than 30% and into the territory of profitability.

Sure, they would know that buying 100 Gems would shift the going rate into profitable territory, but they also need to sell those 100 Gems back into the market. If the Gems → Gold rate goes to high, wont people will buy Gems for $real, and normalize the price again?

What real world economic models would fit this 3 currency system (gems, gold, $real)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

And the moment you release information on how Anet calculates the exchange, you give detailed tools for someone to figure out a way to manipulate the prices. But then again, thanks to Halloween, now I know exactly when to flip Gems for coins, and vice versa.

Right now, only Anet can manipulate the price, and they can do this behind the scenes without letting the customers know.

I’d rather it be in the the open, so we can tell if there is artificial manipulation going on.

Right now, someone with enough gold should be able to ‘buy out’ the gems avaialable on the exchange. Anet would then have to “Magic” gold and/or gems back into existence in the exchange to enable trade to occur again… They have said that they don’t do this.

If there was only 1 gem available in the exchange, would it cost an infinite amount of gold?

I’m indifferent on the Free Market question, but 100% FOR a transparent market.

You have been said that the Gem Exchange does not create gems or gold, merely facilitates in it’s transfer.

Tell me how much gold is currently in the Exchange!
Tell me how many gems there are currently in the Exchange!
Show me the Algorithm used to calculate the exchange rate!

I want to support this game financially, and would willingly buy gems if I understand the mechanics behind them. But with a black-box style exchange, I can’t be certain any gems I purchase will have any real buying power in the future.

I don’t understand Anets reasoning in this case.

Customer Does Wrong Thing
Anet Bans
Anet Unbans and asks people to delete ill-gotten gains, or they will be banned again.
People don’t delete things
Anets doesn’t Ban.

So from this, we can take away that Anet do not carry through with their threats
And that exploiting the game is the best way forward.

Those that profited from this exploit have a massive advantage over those that did the right thing, and have been able to parlay that profit even further (by having available funds to better take advantage of other game mechanics).

I’ll gladly take a 3 day ban in exchange for a large number of High Level gold weapons.

How can you hope to have a functional economy when the hand of god can just sweep across it and change everything?

John Smith

2) The Gold to Gem exchange isn’t an indicator of gold’s current value. Or rather it can’t be effectively used as one from your end. The demand for gems for Halloween items played a large role in the exchange recently. This doesn’t mean gold is less valuable, it just means gems were in demand.

Why is gold → and gem → gold not handled entirely via the regular trading post, to better reflect that actual supply and demand of the gold and gems.

Once again, players who took their time levelling are hit with Nerfs, leading to a 2-tiered economy (those who got to exploit X, and those who didn’t).

X can be Karma Weapons, Cheaper Armor Sets, Karma Before DR… The list goes on.

I know players with tonnes of Ori already in the bank, for me to get the same amount will take exponentially longer than they did, leading to an ever bigger divide.

IF these “changes” are to fix behavior classes as exploitative, then why is no action ever taken against those who exploited it?

Players exploiting a bug need to be dealt with separately from the bug itself.

To many organised teams know, that if they zerg through a portal together, they will have a certain period of invisibility to use as an advantage.

Is the exploit? or tactics/strategy?

The Gem→ Gold marketplace is what is at fault here.

Because it is not a straight up trade, it is not subject to supply and demand.

If I $cash buy gems, and swap for gold. The Gold is “created” at the point I purchase it.
If I trade in-game currency for Gems, the Gems are “created” when I purchase them.

While this provides liquidity, it does not reflect the true value of these goods.

Let freemarket take hold, and the price of gems, gold and cash bought gold will all equalize.