Guild Wars 2

Not even close.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Svarty.8019:

Yes they should drop like a stone with all the rares from world events, but I’m on an epic run of 0 ectos from master salvage kits atm. I hate RNG.

I’m not sure it’s RNG… I have a run of 1 ecto from 25 uses of BLK’s… that has a chance of:

0.000003% chance of happening… seems unlikely it’s due to RNG. I think they may have nerfed ecto drop rates to compensate for the increased drops. So ecto prices might not plummet as much as I originally thought.

Lets start this train early with this patch. We did not nerf ecto rates of any kind, we’ve never nerfed ecto rates, if we change ecto rates, it will be in the patch notes I promise you.

PS. Your math is incorrect, salvages are independent statistical events.

You can get low level stones from the gemstore, or map completion or black lion chests. High level stones only come from black lion chests and gemstore I believe.

Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.

As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.

Svarty.8019:

I think that now John Smith has announced that saying anything about plans for precursors will “shock the market”, I think the price of t6 mats should be shooting through the roof.

Here’s why:

Implications of the phrase, “shock the market”.

• If, after months of complaints that precursors are too difficult to acquire, Arenanet were to announce that precursors were to become even more difficult to acquire, there would be a public outrage.

• If Arenanet were to announce that the precursor system were not to change, then there would be no shock.

• It therefore seems much more likely that the shock will come due to precursors becoming easier to acquire.

In addition, we have this from Colin yesterday (though I haven’t seen the original in any official capacity yet, so this may not be true), “There will be other legendaries in the future. Priority is resolving ways to get precursors, including the scavenger hunt 1/2” — this adds fuel to the fire, if genuine.

Repurcussions
If precursors are easier to acquire, then t6 mats should increase in price due to everybody buying them for the completion of their legendaries.

Actually, any of those actions would cause a market shock.

Hey all, we have two threads about the sale going on at the same time. I’ve responded in the other one so I’m going to close this one so everyone can be on the same page.

It’s probably just a misreading of the UI. With the sale on bank and bag slots, the demand for gems increased dramatically. Inside the currency exchange as players receive gems for their gold, the gems become more scarce and the exchange rate is adjust to reflect the different level of scarcity. This in turn creates a better rate for Gems -> Gold in which the players will receive more gold for their gems. This generates additional demand for Gold. So the sale has created two distinct increases in demand, for both gems and gold.

I’m curious, assuming the argument that a 20% discount should apply to the gem exchange rate (I think people here have done a good job of explaining why the sale isn’t a sale on the exchange, so lets leave that be). What system do you use to create a moving 20% discount on exchange, keeping in mind that the supply of gems is not unlimited, and that the exchange does not fabricate gems?

Sorry, I didn’t have time right now to read the whole thread, but I’ll throw this at you. In the past 72 hours well over 30 dusks have sold to and from different individuals.

Any official reply to this would shock the precursor market. All I can say is we’re watching.

Tyria is a its own world. The Black Lion Trading Company exists in that world and plays the roll it was meant to play. The TP was intentionally designed to be part of the game and, much more than real life, you may choose to live how you like inside Tyria. It’s your world to live in.

That UI is for US Tax, VAT is added into the price. We pay 20% on all transactions from Europe.

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

John Smith.4610:

You’re saying you prefer market failures because it adds a sense of opportunity?

In a way that is exactly what im saying, a healthy game market should in my opinion have a sense of opportunity, I rarely get that feeling at all in the current market, even when I do find a item with high return rates, it always ends up as a boring 1cp up pricing war.

Not fun at all.

One example of this is d3, It was a absoluty HORRIBLE game, and the amount of inflation in the ah made it progressivly worse.

But the sense of opportunity was great, It actually felt worthwhile to sit down and watch the prices of items for hours upon hours, actually getting rewarded for learning the actual value and demand of a item, rather then having the game tell you the demand etc.

The current TP works great for high quantity items like crafting mats etc, but for higher value items I don’t like it at all.

Infact chances are precursors would go down naturally in price if players wernt instantly informed that they can get 500g for them trough tp.

That said, I am not a very articulate man, nor am I a econmics wizards, So I am prob not the best person to explain how to do this or come up with how it should be done.

I do how ever know what I like in Mmos after 15+ years of playing them, and being able to get deals is one of the major draws for me, and it is something that has been possible in almost every single mmo up to date, with the exception of gw2.

Gw2 tp just seems to end up as a cold number crunching game to me, and I can’t find the fun in it.

and im gueesing im not the only one.

Edit: Dan, that is kinda my point, I feel allowing access to that info outside of game is a mistake.

I have to make the argument that your deals are coming at the expense of another player. You are arguing against market efficiency because you want to exploit other people easier, I don’t agree that’s a positive goal for the game overall (though I make no judgement about personal goals).

You’re saying you prefer market failures because it adds a sense of opportunity?

I feel like this has gotten a bit off topic, I haven’t read thoroughly enough to grasp what the debate is. Lets start a new thread relative to exactly what we’re discussing . Someone (third part neutral) should summarize the current arguments in the new thread if possible.

Ursan is correct, there are many, many players who have earned enough money to purchase or create a precursor outside of the TP.

No, the Precursor market is not controlled by goldsellers.

I’m attempting to educate individuals that goldsellers will put anything in their mails that they think makes it stick, what it is, is irrelevant.

That comment wasn’t sarcastic. This thread is evidence of why they put precursors in their mail, because it makes you think about it. That’s how marketing works.

Most certainly.

This post is evidence that their methods are effective.

Tallis.5607:

Lenneth.1372:

I really think they need to adjust lodestone drops.

Then the prices of lodestones would drop

In a virtually economy like this one, that isn’t necessarily true. Because of the ease of entry, it’s not uncommon to see an item become more common, more players receive the item naturally and enter the market, creating more demand and increasing prices instead of decreasing prices.

Mystic.5934:

One thing I have wondered:
if someone sells 10,000 gems for gold, then someone else buys 10,000 gems with gold, will the gem->gold price be the same after as before? (is it the same increase as decrease?)

also, I’d like to point out (I’m not sure if Anet has thought of and accounted for this):
if you sell 100 gems you get (as an example) 1.5g. if you buy 1.5g worth of gems, you will only get like 85 gems (for example). However, when someone sells 100 gems for 1.5g, the exchange rate goes down so the next 100 gems may only give 1.499g. and that 1.5g would then buy 85.01 gems. If this is the case, then it’s only a matter of quantity before it’s possible to make instant profit from buying/selling gems. example: sell 100,000 gems and get 1,500g, then price of gems goes down to 100 gems for 1g, then you buy 100,000 gems for 1,150g (I’m assuming it costs 15% more to buy gems than selling them will bring)
This was an exploit in Fable and many other games. I would hate for it to exist here as well. It is very possible to have less simplistic mechanics that make this impossible.

I thought of this before release, it won’t work; although I highly encourage you to give it a shot

The oddly straight lines we see sometimes are caused by bugs in the graphing, not a lack of trading.

It’s different people.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/page/6#post705345

Giles Marchand.6970:

The price of gems has been confirmed to be completely controlled by ArenaNet, who confirmed it, ArenaNet, in a previous post in this forum. I don’t know if the number of people purchasing gems has anything to do with it.

What post would that be?

Think about the total supply of money.
Then also consider happenings inside the game (sales, new items) and how the currency exchange works.

You’ll have your answer.

Not even close: 9 and 11

A quick note here to reinforce that supply orders do not necessarily imply supply. In the last 24 hours apprx 50,000 of these were sold on the TP.

The botters weren’t “manipulating” the T6 markets, they were just pushing an unnatural supply that wouldn’t normally exist. How quickly those markets snapped back to the intended equilibrium after the bans shows you how high the velocity of those markets is.

My apologies, != is a programming term meaning not equal, in the future I should just say not equal and not use shorthand that everyone isn’t accustomed to.

I should correct then and say, that forced redistribution doesn’t change the disparities of wealth in the society, simply changes those holding the wealth. To be fair though, in almost every occasion it goes rogue in a few years and those people end up poor or dead anyway.

A dozen players with 10k gold wouldn’t even scrape one of those markets.

marnick.4305:

John Smith.4610:

It is just a spread forced by us, but you can look at it as a fee too.

Is there a reason gem>gold is over an exchange instead of through buy and sell offers? I wonder what the formula behind this is, in GW1 the traders were known to have ridiculous prices because the formula made no sense.

Yes, many, many good reasons.
I don’t currently have the time to go into the reasons as it’s a vast discussion. I think it may have been discussed some time ago on these forums, I don’t particularly remember.

Noerknhar.3826:

Dear John,

while I appreciate that you jumped in our discussion, I am a bit disappointed that your only comment was about the definition of inflation. If you had a look at the completed transactions for t5/t6 materials, ectos, bufffood and ingredients in the most common/most used bufffoods, you’d noticed that those prices went up by a lot in the last 4-8 weeks. I think ‘inflation’ kind of is the right word to describe such a situation.

Even if not, I don’t want to discuss the definition of a word. I want to discuss the main point of my first post in this thread: (casual) players don’t really earn money as prices go up and up. They will NEVER get a legendary as the precursor is the blocking factor.
Those two points are what i wanted to discuss.

Ah and by the way: I think that orders are a good indicator for inflation and that there actually is no need to view the completed transactions as orders are always “close around” completed transaction prices. gw2spidy’s data is the best available and it’s not bad.

The points in the first and third paragraph have been brought up and answered in other threads…several times. I’ve made my points on both inflation and GW2spidy and measuring value. I’ve not only specifically told you how you are incorrect, I’ve provided data for it.

Not sure what’s going on with the title here I only ever changed it once, to what I said before. I’m guessing Firegoth is having a giggle, but no matter!

I think whether or not legendaries represent an achievement is an interesting topic, but I don’t think buying some of the parts really changes it. If we want to have a discussion about that, it should be in a new thread.

On the topic of forced redistribution of wealth, I was hoping someone would point out that it doesn’t work. France, China and a myriad of other places have revolted due to income/wealth inequality, but this doesn’t really redistribute wealth.

I changed the title to “Why do the rich continue earning wealth”. I attempt to stay pretty informal on the forums, because when I stayed terse it upset people. Another alternative would be to stop participating on the forums, my goal overall is to create a positive environment here.

Spidy only show orders, not completed transaction.

Abstracts are tiny, but summaries are not. In this case it’s the type of summary that details your plans for your research, not the summary afterwards.

I’ll need a 10 page abstract and summary details your methods first.

fixed

It is just a spread forced by us, but you can look at it as a fee too.

There is a 15% fee calculated into the quote you are receiving, there is no fee beyond that. What you see is what you get.

Fiontar.4695:

Yes. The cost inflation of “luxury” items does indeed incentivize behaviors that then directly lead to inflation.

However, it’s more than that. Speculators can and do cause prices of goods being speculated on to increase due to the artificial demand created by those same speculators. The greater the wealth accumulation by the wealthiest players, the greater those players have the ability to manipulate the prices on the TP.

There have been numerous examples of real world markets that have been manipulated by speculators to levels that have nothing to do with consumer demand and consumers end up paying more for those commodities than they would if there were no speculators manipulating the markets.

As I stated previously, it’s worse here because there are no real world pressures to keep prices in check. Ordinary players can either grin and bear it, become speculators themselves, buy gold or quit the game. None of that effects the speculators and manipulators and even if things should reach a critical mass due to a player exodus from the game, causing the in game markets to collapse, they don’t lose anything other than imaginary money.

Inflation in this game is not because ordinary players are earning too much money. The same can be said about the US economy. Lower and middle income earners have seen wage stagnation or deflation over the past decade or more, yet real inflation has been increasing steadily. Ordinary Americans are not driving inflation, they are just getting by with less and less for every hour worked.

The same thing is happening in GW2.

When players that play actual game content see their earning rate remain stagnant, while the price of goods increases rapidly on the TP, then there is something wrong with the economy. When players feel they either need to play the market for profit or buy gold just to afford to play the game, there is something wrong with the economy.

The 15% “tax” on TP sales and the listing fee are gold sinks, but it’s still a much lower “tax” than in game gold sinks impose on players who actually play game content to earn currency. Not only can you earn a lot more money per hour playing the TP than playing game content, but you get to keep a much higher percentage of your earnings.

Scarcity just increases inflation. It isn’t a hedge against inflation. It also creates the environment for speculators and manipulators to earn the currency needed to truly demolish the economy.

Tightening supply of costly goods just rewards speculators, while making life more difficult for people just trying to play the game.

Centrally managed economies have no place in the real world, but if you are going to have a full time economist running your in game economy, that’s exactly what you would want. Tuning of supply, (and money sinks), to ensure that prices remain in a narrow range and limiting the opportunities for speculators and manipulators to push inflation.

I can see the value of a game that is an economic simulator, but that is not this game and the current economics of GW2 seem destined to eventually ruin the play experience of many players, seemingly just to preserve the right of the few to enjoy the role of market profiteers.

Several people made some really good posts explaining why what you think is wrong. This is really long diatribe with even more misunderstanding of economic theory and economic terminology. It’s time to sit back, do a bit of research and come up with a reasonable argument for what you are trying to say.

Let’s get back to the original topic. The OP was asking about stopping manipulators I believe, but there is two different ideas going on. One is the general term, and one is the price of precursors. Which are we speaking of?

Tallis.5607:

Eolirin.1830

You are mistaking increasing demand for rare items for inflation. Wealth consolidation does not cause inflation. Inflation is a measure of change in the value of currency (in this case gold), not the value of rare high demand items; it’s only really affected by the volume of gold in the economy, and the TP removes it.

No, inflation is not only affected by the volume of gold. It is also affected by demand. Stuff get more expensive when people demand it more.

Take for example a character that makes -say- 5g per day.

The first x days after hitting 80, the character buys useful things like exotic armor & weapons, fancy food and superior runes.

This drives the prices of those things up. Plain and simple. More demand. The character may have the same amount as before, but when all players are all after the same x items (say Superior runes of Divinity), the price go up.

Sure, you need more gold for prices to rise. But it is certainly not the only factor.

.

Also… for an economic forum, few people here do not ask the most fundamental economic question: where does Anet gets their money?

They get their money from (only) two sources: selling games to new people and selling gems to existing players.

When prices of items, like dye or superior runes or exotics, are too high for people to grind for the gold, Anet makes money because a certain % of people will buy gemls to convert to gold.

And THAT is why prices are so high.

Not because players make them so high.
Not because of gold hording.

But because Anet sets the parameters for these prices (they determine the droprates, they determine the uses, they determine the altrnatives) and it is in Anet’s intrest to have prices high enough that people buy gold with gems.

Personally, I do not have any problem with Anet manipulating the prices of items, to maximise their own income. Someone has to pay the bill for this great game!
I fully understand that a company needs to make money and since they only have two sources to make money03
It is perfectly reasonable that they ensure that they make money with gem-to-gold converters.

But it is odd that most people that post economic theories here on the forums do not take the most basic economic law of the game into account: Anet needs to make money.

Several people on these forums have pointed out why this isn’t true. Mainly, the assumption that this is profit maximizing behavior is false.

Fiontar.4695:

John Smith.4610:

As soon as you begin referring to luxury goods as an inflationary issue I start skimming instead of reading. Within the last hour I’ve specifically said that you’re mistaking inflation for what is not inflation. Precursor prices aren’t changing due to inflation.

They are providing the mechanism for exponential earning of wealth via the TP, which, yes, indeed is driving inflation.

I’m a bit busy for the moment, can someone step in and explain why this isn’t true please?

Nebilim.5127:

John im pretty sure he already used his item and cannot sell in game. He wants an option to transfer his used commander title to another character

I know, it was a joke because that is the cost of buying a new commander tome. I should stop making jokes

As soon as you begin referring to luxury goods as an inflationary issue I start skimming instead of reading. Within the last hour I’ve specifically said that you’re mistaking inflation for what is not inflation. Precursor prices aren’t changing due to inflation.

By I, I mean the game.