Guild Wars 2

Astraea.6075:

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

My guess is that it would probably be very similar to real world economics, where 1% of the people own 99% of the wealth.

If they start posting confirmations on this, we’ll end up with an “occupy wall street” movement in game. Players flooding the trading post in protest. Players refusing to buy/sell materials until changes are made to the game. Huge market crashes as the wealthy players try to offload everything they own in response. Chaos.

While there will be some superficial similarities, I seriously doubt the wealth inequality in game will mirror real world inequality as there are a number of factors that drive inequality in real economies that don’t exist in-game

For example, in the real world, having wealth enables you to create/find rent-seeking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking) opportunities that don’t exist in this virtual economy. As a result, those who have already wealth in this game are generally not able to use that wealth to prevent others from gaining wealth.

You are correct. There are several good reasons why wealth distributions in game don’t mimic the US Economy.
Another reason is that the growth of wealth is exponential in many developed economies, where it’s closer to logarithmic in GW2.

The entire set of reasons would be a very interesting discussion…Well for me at least

Less than 200 Total Bans

This looks like a place for Game Theory

John Smith.4610:

without using Black Lion kits.

lDeadeyesl.9156:

The equation for those who are curious about the returns on investment.

Cost
Snowflake + Ecto = 50 Silver (80% Retention Rate) ~ 10 Silver loss
Mithril = 6.4 Silver

16.4 Silver for a lv 75 Rare Ecto Drop Chance.

With T5 Mats trading at 80 copper right now
T5 = 12 Silver
Silk = .5 Silver
Silk Spools = 5 Silver

17.5 Silver per Salvage

These are the rates the markets were at when they shut the loophole. Yes you could use a black lion kit for a 100% retention rate, but each salvage would cost you 25 silver if you bought the black lion kit making it all worthless. Hopefully some of you guys out there understand the math and realize this was not nearly as lucrative as people thought.

The people who made the big margins were those who knew how to get the flakes really cheap, being a smart trader is not an exploit. These were the market margins.

You are honestly calling for a ban on people for making rares one silver cheaper than you can make them at this second. I hope you take a second and realize how quickly you guys overreact.

You are mistaken. There were several recipes that produced significantly more output than the input required and could be easily and reliably cycled without using Black Lion kits.
You are correct playing the market is not exploiting, but finding a loop that reliably produces more and more items in a cycle is an exploit. Check out the name of this thread.

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

Gold sellers hack accounts
When you give them money, you are funding hacking of accounts
Your account may be hacked, but it isn’t a direct transaction

When you buy gold from goldsellers you’re attempting to get a better deal from people who steal accounts, hurt the gaming industry, and steal credit cards. To me, that’s an awful thing to do.

Which profession you open it with does not make a difference. No worries.

Playing the market is not the only viable way to make gold. Not even close.
Also this wouldn’t work. If you attempt to artificially increase prices without a change to supply, you’ll just get an oversupply of incomplete transactions.

The issue is placing orders for account bound items. I wouldn’t recommend it, one day it may complete…

Please do not use them as such.

These forums are for educated and intelligent conversation about the BLTC, answering questions, solving problems and helping people. Lets use them for that!

Arbitrage is transferring value between two markets, flipping is attempting to create opportunity between buy and sell price in a single market.

You vastly underestimate the currency exchange and GW2 market.

Darmikau.9413:

So, curious: Is there an optimal market rate the Econ team wants to see? Like a baseline for how much a Legendary should cost, or a projection for expected inflation that you’re attempting to hold stable?

I cannot go too far into our process, but we often set goals; in an expanding market though there is a split between preventative and reactionary measures. If you read my last blog you may remember one of my favorite aphorisms, "Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”

Celestea.4105:

John Smith.4610:

The lost shores event was not the only modification to precursors.

We’re tracking the changing economy. The changed prices come from a lack of supply relative to demand, not from a substantial increase in inflation (this is apparent when you look at the TP as a whole bundle of good rather than just a few items).

Does this mean you are looking at ways to bring up the supply to meet the demand, or are you waiting it out a bit more to see what happens?

None of the processes are black and white. What I can say is that making decisions (or assumptions) without a complete understanding of everything involved would be a mistake. When dealing with large economies, small changes can have huge effects, it’s important to understand the effect of any changes on the game as a whole in both the short and long run.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Ryuujin.8236:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

You did not really rebut anything I said. The money sink in this game still does not offset the growth in the money supply from hour 0 to current times. It is an aggregate issue and not micro issue. You seem to get hung up on micro subjects like money sinks.

On the contrary, you made a blanket statement that there IS a growth in the money supply on the basis gold is coming into the system.

But as I pointed out, the system has both an input and output, and unless we have data for both in and out, we can’t know for a fact whether the value of gold is rising or falling.

I disproved your statement mathematically

No you did not. You are not accounting for the fact players displace money sinks.

You are confused here. Money sinks are not specifically a micro or macro issue. You discuss sink as a micro issue individually to players, or you can discuss them as an aggregate. Either way players do not displace money sinks.

The lost shores event was not the only modification to precursors.

We’re tracking the changing economy. The changed prices come from a lack of supply relative to demand, not from a substantial increase in inflation (this is apparent when you look at the TP as a whole bundle of good rather than just a few items).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Please-change-Buy-Orders-to-forbid-pricing-lower-than-NPC-price/first#post463778

The armor types of the armors must still match, it’s most likely that you’re trying to transmute light → medium or something to that extent.

The global trading post provides a large number of huge benefits at virtually no cost, outside of the complicated technology required to support it.

Making the TP individual to each server opens up market failures across the board, including easy arbitrage and extremely easy market manipulation.

The global TP is easier to find items, harder to manipulate, and reaches equilibrium prices significantly faster and more efficiently than any other in game marketplace ever created.

There is no Diminishing Returns on the results of Salvaging.

Grey market trading outside the TP is not supported by us.

Logun.5360:

John Smith.4610:

Think of the trading post as a whole. These restrictions aren’t made to inconvenience you.

I understand but there are no limits on the number of buy orders I can do, so why the limit on sale orders? I find it hard to believe that your hardware cannot support it so it must be that you want demand to out pace supply. So, are these restrictions here so you can get a better return on gems sales by driving gold prices higher?

Currently 1 gold piece costs $1.61 to buy through gems. If ArenaNet can create artificial demand by allowing purchases to be made faster than orders can be listed then the price will go up on all items. What may have cost 1 gold piece, now costs 2 gold pieces, which you now have to pay $3.22 for.

John, did I guess right?

Lol, no. The limits are for technical reasons.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/gems-1-1-1/first#post90768

Think of the trading post as a whole. These restrictions aren’t made to inconvenience you.

Looking at the screenshots you didn’t have enough money to sell to the highest buyer, you may have made a mistake somewhere.

Nicolle Rodgers.4926:

This is a bug. We are aware of it and are working to resolve it.

To be more clear. The ability to post buy orders for account bound items is a bug we are working on.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Who-sets-Gem-prices/page/7#post705345

Astraea.6075:

John, thank you for confirming (at least in part) how the currency exchange works.

Another issue that is often debated is to what extent (if any) the initial exchange rates (and possibly initial supply of gold and gems) when the game launched have on the current rates. Are you able to provide any insight on this?

Virtually none at this point.

Just to be clear again. There is no DR for salvaging. There’s no stealth nerf on ectos.

Clear your mailbox.

There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

There’s no DR on Salvaging.
Also salvages are independent statistical events (which is very much related how you decide to think about probability here).
Lastly, you would need a relatively massive sample size to accurately understand the likelihood of each outcome.

Think about the consequences of having different fees between the two sets. Think about how that changes demand for items, and how that would change prices for items. Think of how that would modify the behavior of the TP.

Very true. It’s also quite difficult to write a survey that doesn’t produce biased results via the wording or method of the questioning.
I think we may have derailed this thread, as it’s about precursors

They can still be useful in the proper place.
For example, they’re much more effective when asking people what they liked, than when asking people what they didn’t like. It also helps for people to be perfectly informed, which requires they complete a survey directly after performing the task the survey is based on.

Ravax.1205:

What I dont understand is… why the buttershmackle didn’t A-Net do an in-game survey… to see how many people would want a changed to precursors, lodestones, etc.. And they would have more legit numbers on population’s happiness.. rather than just take into consideration this supposedly ‘large feedback’ which is basically the same people posting on one thread over and over again…

Actually we have pretty scientific methods for determining how players feel.

Surveys have a tendency to have two major flaws:
1. There is a massive sample bias in those willing to fill out a survey
2. People don’t say what they feel on surveys

Secondarily, all can rest assured that Legendaries will remain legendary.

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

Nope.

Delete the old mail from your inbox.

The price spike doesn’t represent a shortage, it represents prices returning to where they should be without bots. This change creates more opportunity for players playing the game to earn money. The oversupply the bots created hurt the legitimate producers of items. As the prices go up, more real players will enter the market.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts

I apologize for the lack of current details. What I can currently say about this topic is that
we’ve recently begun a renewed campaign against RMT and Bots. The change in these markets is a direct result of the success of that campaign.

You can expect to see more details coming out within the next couple of weeks.

This is not caused by market manipulation.

I don’t want to get into an argument, so this is the last statement I will make here:
Of the data that I have seen. Which is significant. It is reasonable to say
1) Goldsellers are a criminal group
2) Goldsellers damage games
3) Goldsellers cannot be classified as competition because they are not in the same industry

These are not statements of belief. They are statements of statistics.

I really want a new Koenigsegg. At the moment I cannot get one. I am an upstanding citizen and will not steal a Koenigsegg. I will hire someone to steal one from someone else and give it to me. If they weren’t so hard to get I wouldn’t NEED to have someone steal one. Oh, but would I want one if they were easy to get?

The currency exchange is not a lottery system, it is exactly what its name says it is.
Even if it were, the answer to your question would be no, because one entails personal/risk reward while the other requires you to account for the damage to this game and gaming in general which will fail an objective cost benefit 100% of the time.

Narkosys.5173:

For me it is simple change how to get a precusor or legendary. That now is one of the biggest sinks and Anet chooses to enable to gold sellers. So until that demand is satiated dont expect the botters to go away. Since they offer at a reasonable rate compared to anet they will always have a steady supply of customers.
TLDR: Anet keeps enabling gold selling by precusors the biggest $ sink right now.

I think you may be a bit confused, nothing here is true. Try to think of the game a whole for all players.

As a note, Karma is not technically a currency and cannot be compared to Gold.

Tallis.5607:

There is no way for you or for me to change the price of gems, they are exclusively decided by Anet.

False. Anyone watching the exchange rate relative to the the many factors that induce supply or demand will see an extremely simple pattern that shows that the price of Gems and Gold is in fact controlled by player demand and is pretty volatile as one might expect from a system.

I’d also encourage everyone to read my previous post about the damage of goldsellers.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gold-sellers-vs-BLTC/first#post581941