Showing Posts For Venge.6893:
If it is indeed 15% then that is Far too high. Currencies exchanges are different than products. IRL a good currency exchange fee is around 2%, and those places don’t profit from the currency itself (Gem selling).
I suspect that the large gap between the two rates is intended to discourage currency speculation. This would also explain why there isn’t the ability to place buy/sell offers on the exchange.
So I guess the question would be, should players be allowed to speculate on the currency exchange? Additionally, what would be the benefits/drawbacks of letting them do so?
The benefits would be cheaper costs for users and possibly more use affecting price in itself. There’s the possibility of the lowered cost and possibly use affecting cost swaying people away from gold sellers.
The only drawback is that some people may be able to make money currency swapping. I don’t think this is a real bad thing. A currency market is so big that any one speculator could not affect the market on a wide scale. I suppose it still might be possible with a group of rich people, but it would be difficult to organize and still a risk.
If it is indeed 15% then that is Far too high. Currencies exchanges are different than products. IRL a good currency exchange fee is around 2%, and those places don’t profit from the currency itself (Gem selling).
Trading Gems for Gold should decrease the Gold price of Gems for both ways, and vice versa. Currently instead of doing this, people are turning to gold sellers which means that less and less people are trading real-money bought Gems for Gold. This means the supply of Gems is MUCH smaller than what it could be and thus Gems are MUCH more pricey than they should be.
In a FREE Market, these people playing the market to make a profit, and those who now buy gems for real money from A-Net instead of the gold sellers, both drive the price of Gems down. The people making the profit wouldn’t even be able to do that until the prices settle anyway.This would be fine if the primary concern was to maximise the number of gems that can be bought with in-game gold. What about those people who would like to maximise the amount of gold they can receive for the gems they bought with RL money? I will agree that ideally, the price should stabilize to some kind of equilibrium point, but given an ever-increasing gold supply, that is unlikely to happen (IMO).
Well first off I’d really like to know the currency exchange fee. In the real-world you can exchange currency for a simple 2% fee. Given the prices I would think the fee is a lot higher and if it was reduced you could get more gold for real money.
Secondly MMOs need to have a gold sink to control ever-increasing gold supply, but I believe the most effective way to do this is giving the choice to the players. The Gem Store is a perfect opportunity for this, if there were more useful or cooler items on the store then players would ideally pour gold into gems to purchase them if they had gold thus driving up the price of gems in gold. Which gets you more gold for real money if the gem store had desirable items. But alas, only some of the utility stuff is useful and I personally think the first armors they put on there look terrible.
But we have a lack of transparency about what the real numbers are and what the currency exchange transaction fee is. I’m thinking it is 15% which is Way too high for currency. This is different than the item trading post and should be treated so.
Thus it’s not the free market that would harm the gold value of your real-money, its the fee and lack of people wanting to use gems. I, think combined what I argued earlier, these things would help everything. If more people turn from the gold-sellers to buying gems with real money sure it will lower the gem to gold price, but it’s the burden of A.Net to provide the gem store with more useful items than character, bag, bank slots, or a select few boosters to offset this.
So many people have so much disdain in the idea of a free-market. The person that said they’re 50 years old and seen the failings of a free market? What country were you living in at the time? The American market hasn’t been free for at least 70 years. “Speculators will run rampant” I don’t see how that would happen in such a large and open market. Maybe an intelligent person could watch market changes and make a profit, but for someone to have enough capital to change the market is laughable at best. This isn’t the stock market with investors controlling large % of the shares. This is a currency that is very spread out with control in the hands of no one save for A-Net.
Trading Gems for Gold should decrease the Gold price of Gems for both ways, and vice versa. Currently instead of doing this, people are turning to gold sellers which means that less and less people are trading real-money bought Gems for Gold. This means the supply of Gems is MUCH smaller than what it could be and thus Gems are MUCH more pricey than they should be.
In a FREE Market, these people playing the market to make a profit, and those who now buy gems for real money from A-Net instead of the gold sellers, both drive the price of Gems down. The people making the profit wouldn’t even be able to do that until the prices settle anyway.
So to argue against the Free Market is to argue for Expensive Gems, a flourishing black market (gold sellers), and a worsening economy.
Furthermore, this “transaction fee,” if this is the only thing there is and there is no price manipulation. Then what is the fee? It’s seems to me Way too high. In the Real-World this would be a Tax, and Tax evasion is HUGE. Except regular people do it and get in trouble, while the wealthy people and businesses, just move their businesses to tax havens. I would liken this to people moving to gold sellers.
There has been no price manipulation, there is a transaction fee, I don’t feel these are the same thing.
Then could we get transparency about how the gem prices fluctuate and why the big difference in the two different trades. With Gems>Gold and Gold>Gems usually about a 10~ silver difference last time I looked?
- The acknowledgement of price manipulation leads to more distrust of the current system.
Can you elaborate on this?
Hmm, perhaps I did not see a explicit acknowledgement. But I had thought it was inferred given all the assertions that it is happening and no comment to the contrary. In addition it seems evident given the disparity between the Gold>Gem and Gem>Gold conversions.
It’s sad that our society conditions us to think free markets are a bad thing, that they only benefit the few, that abuses are ripe, and that will end badly.
I believe these things to be true:
– The current lack of transparency leads to a distrust of the current system.
– The acknowledgement of price manipulation leads to more distrust of the current system.
– Distrust causes people to either ignore the gem market, unless necessarily, and then only for a limited range of useful items.
– Artifical prices drive people to gold sellers.
– The more people that turn to gold sellers because of better value for money, the more the gem market is hurt. Which undoubtedly causes a spiraling cycle.
Now what I think would happen in a free market in which gems could be traded freely without any rate setting,
- Smart players could trade gems/gold back and forth and make a profit.
- More players buy and use gems because of their transparency and potential profitability.
- Prices begin to stabilize, possibly aided by gem sales to get the gem-gold price towards more real numbers.
- Ideally the difference in value between the gold from buying gems and the gold from gold sellers closes, and people are more willing to pay a slightly higher price to A.Net due to convenience and security.
- Gem prices are lowered and ALL players benefit from lower prices, not just the ones making a profit from gem trading.
As far as I can tell, the gem/gold exchange rate is the way ArenaNet makes money.
Why do I say this?
No MMO company posts their subscriber numbers monthly.
No MMO company posts their “free to play” profit numbers, quarterly.
and…
ArenaNet is not transparent regarding how the exchange rate is set.Customers are ignorant of everything that matters in this context. For most, it doesn’t matter and they will happily pour their wallet into ArenaNets bank account. Without complete transparency, we will never know, and all these clever word games don’t accomplish anything that genuinely benefits the customer.
ArenaNet needs money to pay the bills. Wages, benefits, office space, hosting, space, power/HVAC, and internet transit are not free. They are actually quite expensive, and relying on greed and impatience is not a sustainable business model for years and years. It might create an initial burst of capital, but those monthly opex’s will consume it faster than people will buy new outfits and sunglasses. The gem/gold exchange rate is the "dial-a-profit’ widget for ArenaNet. They can make as much money as they want by changing that number, and there is absolutely nothing players can do about it, nor is there any way to know or call them out when they do it. You just pay. And pay.
Myself, I’ve played MMO’s since there have been MMO’s to play, and loathe, despise, and hate in-game trading, auction houses, and all the conveniences GW2 has promoted.
MMO’s need exactly one player-to-player transaction, and that is crafting items directly into another persons inventory. Everything else, all other rewards should be for you and you alone. No trading, no sharing, no mailing, just no. But alas, MMO devs instead “innovate” with sparkle ponies and glowing footprints, and continue to perpetuate all the ills of all the MMO’s made since 2005, expecting a different outcome. /boggle
I have zero expectations it will change. I suspect, in fact, it will continue to get worse and no-one will care, because MMO’s are now about profit, not about fun, challenge, and social teamwork.
I agree with most of this although I think they’ve done some great things on this game. But you are wrong that there’s nothing players can do about it. They can go to the gold sellers which is what they’re doing. if their prices were reasonable then they could sell more gems for real money. Instead it seems like more and more people are turning to the gold sellers, and to make up for lost revenue they’re continuing to constrict the market to squeeze money out of it. It’s a short term money fix but it’s going to hurt in the long term, as more and more people turn away from it or simply give up on it all together.
For the records, and while this isn’t exactly the focus of this discussion, I’m 100% against a free market.
Players want to profit. If, in order to have the biggest possible profit, they have to impact the other players negatively, many players would chose to do so. In an extreme, a completely free market would be one in which exploiters and scammers are allowed to act freely, and if a player falls for their schemes, the deceived player is to be blamed – “he should have known better”. Seeing the same issue from a less extreme point of view, players are willing to, for example, use profits to buy an item and resell it for a bigger price, using the resulting profit to continue doing the same thing and thus create almost a monopoly for one item, artificially inflating its price. This hurts the other players negatively, both by increasing the price of an item and by concentrating gold in the hands of a few players..
There’s always potential for abuse, even in a controlled economy. I prefer a system in which people are responsible for themselves. When you get on the internet there’s viruses, malware, and all sorts of scams that you can fall into. So, since there’s a massive potential for abuse, should the government take control of the internet? I don’t think so, I think the path of personal responsibility is better.
I just don’t see how A.Net could stop people from turning to gold sellers rather than their gem store without a free market. Short of maybe, eliminating the ability to mail gold. To me it seems similar to the prices charged for snacks at movie theaters or other venues where outside food is banned. The prices are clearly a rip-off, so some try and sneak items through, some buy less than they normally would, and others simply go without. If prices were reasonable people wouldn’t be so keen to try and skirt the rules, they would also be less likely to do without.
You can’t force someone to buy something they deem no worth it. Less people are buying gems because the people that traditionally would spend money on game items are getting a 600% better value from elsewhere. I think a free-market would allow the gem market to stabilize over time. Otherwise it’s just going to continue unless A.Net does something extremely like eliminating the ability to send money in the mail.
Central planning doesn’t work because there’s the human element. Humans don’t follow economic theories and algorithms. In a free-market everyone benefits. Sure maybe someone gets a raw deal occasionally, but in a healthy economy it’s very easy to bounce back. And maybe that person will make an attempt to get informed and make better decisions.
But alas, it seems my philosophy is outnumbered. So I suppose, as with our real-life economy, people will sit around and continue to sit around scratching their heads wondering where all their economic planning went wrong.
That is correct, there has never been a completely free market in any MMO, patches and fixes modify markets. For the sake of this argument though I think you have to assume (you know economist really don’t like assuming :P ) that the game design is static.
Hypothetically speaking even being as close to static as possible, The game still incorporates price controls via price minimum and also you have the monopoly of overpriced certain items which no matter how industrious we are in game we can never make for ourselves at a cheaper price. ie see the 10g Bag issue, it’s cheaper to convert right now to 400 gems and get a 5-15 item bag then it is to make or sell a 20 slot bag and it also has an eqel or greater return in value. In order for it to make sense 400 gems would need to cost around 10g and that is a scarryyy thought.
You also have 2 different versions of real cash to Gold conversions(one illegal, and one legal) I also think that is one huge reason for the Gold to Gem prices sky rocketing, You are not getting the offset of the people paying real cash to Anet to lower the Gem cost for those who don’t. (I assume anet wants to make some cash so it must play into the conversion rate) I hate to see this but it’s the same reason Insurance prices are so high, some people scam the system and it costs more for us. However Anet could lower their price to compete or find a way to stop gold sellers, really only 2 options there I currently see.
Anyhow, you can’t have a free market in this game the way it is set up. you can lean towards it, yes… You can’t have it though and free markets don’t work unless they are truly free. I think trying to juggle multiple economic ideas just causes more and more problems.
So NO I say to free markets, (I think I just had a mild heart attack, my libertartian ideals thought I was talking about real life for a second and tried to snuff me out)
Not to get off-topic, but if you’re speaking in terms of health insurance, the effect of scammers is relatively minimal. In reality it’s the pharmaceutical industry and the extensive government regulation lobbied for that drives the price up. It allows them to control the market and charge whatever they want. Maybe they profess to sell medicine and cures, but they’re always the most profitable industry in the US making a whopping 17% profit return on their revenue, the most of ANY industry. Health insurance is high because the pharmaceutics industry has a government-regulated monopoly, not because the free-market is being abused. Insurance companies carefully tread between profit and loss because the price of healthcare is so artificially high.
But back on topic… A.Net can compete with gold sellers if gem to gold prices are lower. But I’m against doing this artificially. I don’t think they can ever really be lower than the black market, but I believe consumers would rather buy from A.Net if their prices were at least somewhat competitive, not 600% more expensive.
Out of curiosity, how many feel that a 100% free market would be a good idea?
You can’t have anything resembling a free market is this game (or any game for that matter), Anet, is basically the God of GW2, anything you do to the game (bugs, fixes, added content. Node respawns etc…) can destroy or create markets in minutes. So It would make no sense to do such a thing or even pretend to do such a thing.
That is correct, there has never been a completely free market in any MMO, patches and fixes modify markets. For the sake of this argument though I think you have to assume (you know economist really don’t like assuming :P ) that the game design is static.
It’s true that there’s always some hand in it, even with EVE. But with CCP it’s not done through price fixing or setting rates. They may have an event that effects the economy , but it’s usually done to spice and mix things up, and it’s a lot different that regulation and planning. I think the plan to get rid of bulk items wasn’t too bad, although I think the rewards were slim, at least consumers had the choice.
The free market is the only one that can work. In real-life and in-game. That’s why the free market libertarian economy in EVE works so well, and that’s why in the real world we have a prolonged worldwide economic depression even with all our extensive regulation and central planning. Artificially setting prices will haunt you later. Even if you made it a 100% free market today, there’s still damage that is already done.
Many players without confidence in the system will simply not use it. It doesn’t seem feasible at all to me to trade gems for gold. It’s not a free market so you can’t play the market by buying low and selling high either way. With the current system there’s no smart trading and the Real Money value is very skewed, thus the black market will flourish.
As of earlier; purchasing 10$ of gems from A.Net gets me 800 gems which I could change into approximately 3g 60s. You can say give or take since it does fluctuate slightly. Now, for comparison, I pick out a random gold seller and 10$ gets me 21 gold which if I wanted to I could turn into gems and get in upwards of 3000+ gems, maybe much more.
Now it’s understandable that gold sellers are always going to try and undercut you. But when gold sellers can offer you 6x more value for money, I personally think it’s hard to fault the customers given such a discrepancy. When I first saw the difference that’s when I really knew there was something wrong with the economy. In a free market your product should be relatively similar in price, but instead it’s 600% more expensive. While I advocate the free market, it will take time for it to stabilize. Prices will have to come down and consumers must have their confidence in a free system restored. I would love to play the gem/gold market, but it’s simply not economically feasible.
Btw ANet let me know if you’re hiring :P.
(edited by Venge.6893)
Thieves are that because they can get away. “A good thief doesn’t get caught.” If you don’t think they should be able to get away, to use stealth effectively, then what makes a thief? The fact that they have one skill called “Steal?”
If you nerf the thief’s stealth rather than fix the rendering issues. You’ll be left with a useless squishy predominantly melee profession.
Thieves that can stay stealthed for long periods of time aren’t speced for damage. Just because you heard a thief killed a guy in 3 skills, and another one stayed stealthed and prevented a point capture doesn’t mean it’s the same thief doing these things.
To do very high damage you have to spec for damage builds, which is almost devoid of anything benefiting stealth. (Save for “Hidden Killer” which can give you a glass cannon backstab build If you want a stealthy build then you’ll need to spec more defensively
Thieves are strongest as a hit and run class. Maybe you think the only classes should be kiting or brawling with heavy armor, but this is a different class. As a thief your biggest weakness is Immoblize given that only 2 skills cure immobilize. One is a healing skill that doesn’t grant stealth. And the other, Roll for Initiative, has a 60 second cooldown.
If you don’t like that there’s a class that can get away quick and sneak up on you, then idk? Too bad I guess, that’s how the game is designed and the abilities are there. The rendering is an issue but that doesn’t mean stealth is a problem. If the 3 cores are Damage, Support, and Control, then the Thief’s biggest weakness is not damage classes, but control ones.
As I’ve said, I think green is the best side to have and red is the worst. Red has the worst supply camps. Red needs to garrison Pangaloss constantly. I would argue Anzalias is the border between Green And Red because it’s about halfway from the waypoints between the two keeps. The natural mountains and sort may make Overlook keep defensible, but it also makes it isolates their western side. This essentially turns Speldan and Anzalias into the middle between Green and Red. Anzalias is hard to reinforce given that you all land routes are out of the way, and the short land route takes you right by SM walls. The most effective way is jumping off of the overlook into the water and swimming. Which usually bodes bad for reinforcement zerg. Speldan is just in the middle of nowhere and reinforcements are almost certainly doomed to arrive too late.
Green Shard is the easiest for movement and reinforcements to any part of their home territory. Blue shard is second, they have some terrain difficulties, but everything is pretty equidistant. But for red, their western supply camp and tower qualifies as more of frontier rather than home territory. This frontier is an enticing target for Green and Blue is enticed by the loads of kill if they take Pang. This leads to a lot of 2v1s, not intentional, but the targets are much more enticing than if they attacked each other.
So while the Red Keep may be mighty, and the two close towers strong, the frontier, and the rampant supply issues are red’s greatest weaknesses.
While efforts were attempted to maintain balance between the sides. The terrain and locations are vastly different between the 3. Isn’t it at least feasible that one side may have an inherent advantage OR disadvantage, that doesn’t even out?
I’m sure some do not agree. But I would propose it be tested. Maybe HoD is just that good, and I’m fooling myself. But if they are, then surely they would want to take the challenge of defending another side, rather than the bore of continuing to defend the same side.
I think a lot of the issues are that people just don’t want to play when they’re loosing badly. It’s not that WvW rooms with the outmanned buff have low population on the servers, it’s that people are PvEing. What happens if you base it on population, people still loose badly, stop playing, but now the server that is winning is not benefiting as much simply because the other team gave up?
My suggestion to combat night-capping is to encourage friends or guildies that play late at night to represent in WvW. There’s plenty of people in the cities during said “off-peak hours”, advertise, form a group of 5 at night and get some of them into WvW. Some people simply want to PvE, but it helps if you pukitten.
Personally I think Green Shard is the easiest, both after observing HoD and after being on Green Shard as JQ this week. Maybe there are some potential weaknesses, but their territory is most conductive to movement. I think given that the most effective tactic in the game is zerging around, the base most conducive to movement, is the best base. Their supply camps, while relatively out in the open, are easy to recapture. Compare that with the weakness that is Pangaloss, where you need to commit a defending force lest you have the enemy set up in that nightmare.
Seriously guys? Night capping is the problem.
The solution is easy, you can only queue for WvW for 7 hours between 4-11PM, Eastern Standard Time, since that is the US Government’s Time. That way I, like many others, can play when I get off work and then get to bed at a reasonable time. Sure there’s a few kinks, like the West Coast, but honestly it’s all about the greater good right?
Someone srsly did not understand purpose of this thread at all.
I thought it was all about sarcasm. Guess I was wrong.
Seriously guys? Night capping is the problem.
The solution is easy, you can only queue for WvW for 7 hours between 4-11PM, Eastern Standard Time, since that is the US Government’s Time. That way I, like many others, can play when I get off work and then get to bed at a reasonable time. Sure there’s a few kinks, like the West Coast, but honestly it’s all about the greater good right?
Personally, in the Eternal Battlegrounds at least, I think some of it has to do with the particular side. The Green Shard, with Lowlands Keep, just seems much more suited to defense and offense. It’s easy to get out of the keep and to the towers, the supply camps are easy to retake, all towers and supply camps are equidistant, and the road out of the keep is straight both to Stonemist and to Anz.
I think the Red Shard is pre-positioned to get tag-teamed in that it’s an easy and appealing road to Anz for Green Shard, and the uber-chokehold of Pangaloss makes an appealing target for Blue, since a large portion of average WvW Red Shard players, from any server, will just pour manpower into that choke.