Guild Wars 2

wwwes.1398:

pdavis.8031:

So as long as we are asking questions…what about champ trains and event trains “ruining the economy”? I’ve seen this argument as the reason that the champ trains and event trains were nerfed. Apparently, according to some, that they were nerfed because too many people were making too much money, and that was bad for the economy as a whole. Can you shed any light on this? Or were they in fact “increasing inflation” as has been claimed. Thanks!

I’d be interested to hear about champ trains, too, but a slightly different directions. Do you have a hand in sort of attempting to guide the zerg towards events that will help balance the economy or is that primarily something done for the sake of gameplay?

And as for champ bags, are these used as a testing ground for experimentation? Seems an ideal control given that it’s usually the same players every day.

Champ trains were a mix of things. I said before in my blog post that we wanted to redistribute content participation a bit and that was definitely true. Do they add input into the economy/money supply? Sure, definitely, how could they not, but that is by no means the entirety of the reason for the change.

Second question:
With stuff like this I try to intervene on a more macro scale and provide input, but we have experts in design that are much more suited to creating guiding events and objects of that sort.

Lastly, are the bags an experimentation object. I would say no, the game is live, nothing is an experiment. Every change we make is with the intent of it being successful.

Bombsaway.7198:

Is special consideration given to how you build a macro economy based on the age of the consumer in the market (how long they have played)?

Yes, this is a major aspect of design.

Bombsaway.7198:

How are you evaluating price to resource ratios across different gameplay modes which each generate more/less resources? Do you, for example, worry about the WvW player who collects resources at a lower rate than, if for example, the same time was spent in EOTM?

We make heavily data driven decisions when comparing apples and oranges, but the differences do require a group of experts working together to make good decisions that are fueled by data.

Bombsaway.7198:

Are your models more supply or demand driven?
Are you more macro focused or micro customer cluster/segment focused?

1. I ’m not sure I understand what you mean
2. Time constraints often require a more macro focus, but I prefer to work in both when possible.

Serophous.9085:

I just have one question:

Why isn’t it possible to put superior runes and sigils in the mystic forge to gamble? This would at least start using up the lowest priced runes and sigils on the market, and allow us to at least try for an unsoulbound rune.

I can’t discuss the origins of why. I can say that the market isn’t in a state where it would handle changing that very well. The markets need a more fundamental change.

Buttercup.5871:

John, I have only one pressing question. I even created a thread on it a while ago.

Why are WvW badges treated differently, forge-wise, than dungeon tokens?

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

They’re a fundamentally different item. Though I expect that’s not the answer you’re looking for. Could you elaborate a bit more on the question?

Safari.3021:

Is there any concerns over insider trading, and do you actively watch for/monitor the in game trading practices of anet staff and sub-contactors?

For example, I wish I’d have known to save my silk and not traded it all away at the zephyrites last time around

I’m sure there is nuggets of information contained on the in house dev build that could affect future markets

The Anet devs themselves are trustworthy (though I have been known to make disproportionately extreme threats if anyone treats it as a joke). Also the CBA of insider trading at your workplace doesn’t add up.

Lonami.2987:

Nice thread. Some questions!

• Could we see recipe changes in the future? For example, silk bolt and weaving recipe being nerfed, or leather recipes being buffed. I’m not discussing current recipes, just if there’s any chance for some of them to change in the future, more radically than the silk bolt and leather square change from 2 scraps to 3, or even towards lower requirements.

Never say never.

Lonami.2987:

• Would it be viable to let us recycle composite crafting materials? There’s some of these, like bronze helmets, that have a ridiculous supply and price, and there’s no real way of getting rid of them, we’re talking about millions in some cases, and growing.
• Medallions and co. are useless. Why don’t transform them into inscriptions, and use them for crafting?

I think these questions may be too big for my current medium and time commitment.

Lonami.2987:

• Aren’t you worried about situations where a lower tier material is more expensive than their higher tier counterparts? Why not implement fixed conversion recipes for basic and fine materials, to maintain prices and value appreciation? (Rare materials, like shard, cores and lodestones already have fixed 2->1 recipes) While some of these materials can be farmed easily by going to their level zones and gathering their nodes, others like cloth and leather can’t be farmed as easily.

No. The materials are diverse intentionally.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Three questions:

• Was it always intended that the game should offer asymmetric data on the custom offer screens? e.g. buyers can see competitive offers, but sellers can only see the highest WTB and lowest WTS.
• Post-wardrobe, did ANet intend it to be difficult to recover runes and sigils from equipment? Similarly, is it an oversight that some gear can’t be forged due to its source? For example, you can forge but not salvage karma-bought armor and you can’t even forge badge-bought armor.
• A recent patch made some changes to the mystic forge output for L75+ average gear inputs. You stated at the time that you thought we’d be pleased with the results. Have you been?

1. I’m not an expert on UI and cannot speak on that.
2. pass
3. I stated that you would be pleased with the final form. When it reaches the final form you may tell me.

VincentDW.9376:

Thanks for all your responses, John. Even if you aren’t permitted to go into great detail, it’s reassuring to hear that there are carefully considered reasons for certain things behaving as they do, and that decisions made regarding them are not arbitrary or casually made.

On that note, I also have a question: is there any aspect/feature of the economy that you would have designed differently, but that was essentially baked in and no longer changeable before you started in your economy oversight role? Or were you part of the design process of the game from the ground up, so to speak? If you’d prefer to answer more abstractly, is there an economy-related feature you would be sure to include in your own personal dream MMO that we don’t (currently) have in GW2?

Each time you make a game you get better at it and realize all the things you should have done.
What I would personally, as a player, love to have is a derivatives market. It could be a lot of fun, but there are also a huge quantity of problems that go along with it, so it would most likely need to be build into the game from the very beginning.

phys.7689:

How effecient is the currency exchange, in terms of risk assumed by anet.
essentially, if the currencies were real, would anet be losing money or passing fluctuations in value to the exchangees, remaining mostly untouched, and gaining value/breaking even through the spread.

How does it compare in this respect(this type of effeciency) to a direct exchange system with a tax. (like the TP kinda) from the perspective of anet as a currency exchanger.

what are the advantages and disadvantages of each style over all, from the perpective of a currency exchanger

I would argue that the comparison between the exchange and a direct exchange with a tax is is a good one. I also recognize that it’s very easy to argue for it being similar and dissimilar. I’m not currently at liberty to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two versions (sorry), but I would definitely say that our current system was the right choice.

Lord Kuru.3685:

John Smith.4610:

3. Halloween 2 candy corn sinks. There was an insane amount of candy corn in the world (10’s of billions) and we underestimated the distribution of those materials and cranked up the sinks too high. This made it very difficult to interact with those sinks at all and it didn’t feel good.

Can we infer from this that a large number of people quit the game between Halloween 1 and Halloween 2, essentially taking those billions of candy corn out of the economy (without literally doing so)? Or something else?

I wouldn’t infer a smoking gun, rather a series of different possibilities that all add up.

I’ve fallen a bit behind, but don’t stop asking questions, I’ll try to get to them all.

wwwes.1398:

Keep your questions vague, people! This isn’t the place to argue decisions, it’s to learn why decisions are made, albeit in a way that isn’t possible to profit from.

Oh, I have one more. John Smith is a pseudonym, right?

It’s a long story…

This is not a thread to talk about precursors. There several of them out there already with data and responses. This isn’t the place for that, let’s not get the thread shut down.

Ryan Mozo.9581:

Hi John,

First and foremost thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

I too have a question:

How does volatility/stability get manipulated (from your end) through updates such as the Living Story, which itself incurs volatility on certain items through player demand? Or do you let this type of volatility change just run its course to stabilize on its own?

Thanks!

We design in some volatility and some stability (silk wasn’t an accident ). We use our past experience, mixed with data to make predictions of what will happen given our choices. We then select outcomes that match whatever goals we have and use the data/experience to match those outcomes. We’ve gotten surprisingly good at this, but if we do make a mistake, the robustness of the player market helps smooth any bumps. For example, at one point a long time ago, we had an ecto exploit with snowflakes. This exploit produced a decent amount of ectos and put them into the market, but the market absorbed that and return to normal in a very short period of time.

Conncept.7638:

but there is no way you have the numbers to claim that the players think so, from a psychological perspective.

You’re adorable.

Economists have ways to measure how much your parents love you and the scariest part of all… it works.

wwwes.1398:

I have three questions:

1) Is precursor crafting something being held back because of technical concerns or because of economic concerns, ie a massive surge in demand for certain types of materials? I know you’re limited in what you can speculate, but I have a theory that the crafting is largely being held back because legendaries and precursors are possibly the biggest driving force of the economy and a change in how they function could cause massive waves. Wanted to know if I was correct in this.

2) When you consider game inflation, do you primarily look at the prices of farmable material and blues/greens or do you take into account super-rare items acquired from drops, rewards or gems? Is the reason you say inflation isn’t a problem simply that the items with crazy high prices are the only things with a price rising so rapidly?

3) Can you give an example of a situation where what seemed a good idea for balancing had ridiculously bad consequences? A true learning experience in GW2, I suppose you could say.

Also thanks for doing this! It’s extremely interesting every time you have something to say.

1. All I will say about this is that any discussion about precursors, that I’m involved in, involves a discussion about the materials and markets involved.

2. When looking at inflation I use a large bundle of common goods
(the bundle changes depending on the time frame and the game state). I never use super-rare items or anything involving gems.

3. Halloween 2 candy corn sinks. There was an insane amount of candy corn in the world (10’s of billions) and we underestimated the distribution of those materials and cranked up the sinks too high. This made it very difficult to interact with those sinks at all and it didn’t feel good.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

John Smith.4610:

LordByron.8369:

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

If by “really perceived” you mean that you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken, then no… I don’t care.

Is there ever a situation where the economy might be changed (for the worse) due to the majority perceiving a problem and thus hurting Anets bottom line?

Has there been any pressure for this to happen?

Also when will we see new legendary weapons/trinkets

When we first released we made a couple of mistakes with some low level crafting components and they were worthless way over-supplied. This made new players feel like gathering and crafting materials were worthless and changed their play patterns. We didn’t feel that was positive; I wouldn’t say it necessarily it affected our bottom line DIRECTLY, but issues like that can effect retention and that affects our bottom line.

LordByron.8369:

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

If by “really perceived” you mean that you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken, then no… I don’t care.

Zenguy.6421:

John,

Is the following a reasonable summary of the key factors driving MMO economies and their impacts on in-game markets/prices?
If not, what’s incorrect or missing? (just the key stuff)
(I know real world economies experience many of these factors. The question is whether these are the key ones for MMO economies.)

In MMOs, player rewards create ever increasing supplies of in-game currency.

• MMOs offset this by include in-game currency sinks (e.g. the 15% TP trading tax).
• Players’ expectations that they will get richer the longer they play means:
  • Currency sinks are always set at levels lower than the overall currency supply.
• The currency surplus resulting form this imbalance causes inflation.

IN MMOs, player rewards and crafting systems create ever increasing supply of in-game items.

• MMOs offset this by:
  • Limiting supply of higher value items (e.g. low drop rates for precursors)
  • Making items have limited use (e.g. account/soul bound on equip)
  • Providing mechanisms to remove items from the game (e.g. salvaging items for magic find)
• Player expectations that they will get progressively better gear the longer they play means:
  • Increasing demand for more powerful items
  • Overall, demand for lower level items is significantly lower than for end-game items
  • Mechanisms for removing items are set lower than overall item supply
• Surplus items collapse in value
• Supply constrained items increase in value

Where MMOs include open market systems, the combination of these two aspects results in:

• Ongoing inflation caused by increasing currency supply
• Prices for desirable scarce items increase far faster than overall inflation
• Prices for surplus items collapse
  • (the extent of this may be concealed by the overall inflation of prices)

There’s a lot here, but I want to present something that may make you think slightly differently about your questions. Are economies static? MMO Economies move at hyperspeed and games change very quickly. This is especially true in Guild Wars 2 when we constantly update the game adding new content and changing the game. For many of these questions there isn’t a single answer, but we move in cycles; we increase and decrease, we update and change, we add volatility and stability sometimes both. The change makes the market more interesting, more fun and allows us to keep the economy balanced.

If you like I can still answer those questions in general about working in MMO economies, or I can wait to see if you’d like to rethink the questions at all for GW2 specifically.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

John Smith – The Tzar of the Bazaar

You should really charge Gems for your economics lessons. I’m more than willing to pay 500 Gems per question answered.

ArenaNet is kind enough to foot this bill for everyone.

Wanze.8410:

My question is:
In order to have a balanced economy, are you monitoring that ratio for all/specific items and can it hurt the economy in any way, if this ratio spikes/drops?

The short answer is yes we monitor supply.
You are correct in assuming that the TP doesn’t contain all items in the game as players tend to hang on to a large quantity of items for their personal use. It’s possible for an item to be technically oversupplied inside the game (that is that we give out more of that item than people need), but still maintain value on the TP due to willingness to sell. So the supply curve on the TP isn’t the literal supply of all items in the game, it’s really the willingness to sell curve that I’ve mentioned in other posts. Often TP prices are still a good indicator of the total supply of an item, it just isn’t conclusive.

Could it hurt the economy if something were to change and all of some item were dumped into the TP at once? Yes and no. Yes, supply shocks are bad, they’re bad for faith in stability and they’re bad balance in the game and the economy and it can be damaging. No, in the sense that our economy is massive and has a tendency to adapt very quickly to changes. This helps insulate us from any major shocks likely to happen, it’s one of the many many benefits of having a pseudo-global economy.

Hey Fantastic,

Unfortunately the crash has damaged most of the crystals that have fallen into Dry Top and their power fades much more rapidly than in the cliffs. Each crystal will grant you 15 seconds to use skills before the crystals power has dissipated.

It’s not a bug. When you complete a story step with another player, it asks if you wish to accept progress and advance to “name of next story step.” If you want to keep playing with that other player and accept progress, it will move you both to the next step together, even if your character normally wouldn’t follow that storyline. The alternate would be to NEVER allow you to accept progress, which would make playing co-op rather annoying, since you’d have to play each story step once for every player.

Hey guys,

Thanks for the reports. The way these are set up, you should be able to leave the map and come back and the coins should be back. Please let me know if that is not the case and we will investigate further.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

LordByron.8369:

During war people is willingly to pay absurd prices for food and medicines.

People gathering stuff to resell are consideered criminals.

This is a game and even if stuff is not needed as food would be, its basically the same thing.

Since the purpose of the game is FUN, people is forced to trade mostof their rewards in order to be able to have fun.

This is where your economy is totally wrong.

Wow…