Guild Wars 2

Psientist.6437:

John Smith.4610:

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.

The EULU allows Arenanet et al to data-mine chat logs.

John Smith, there are so many ways to shape information for thermodynamic effect. Your response to this player is almost caustic.

Questions!

1. The RMT algorithm, does it process every gold and gem bit as individual bits (ie do gem and gold bits queue in a single line), process bits as batches, or both?

2. The RMT algorithm, would it translate simultaneous “no demand” for gems and gold into a vector?

1. It’s more complicated than that, but as you know I cannot discuss the specifics.

2. If I’m understanding correctly then no. The exchange requires player activity for change, it does no interpret a lack of activity as value.

Ayrilana.1396:

He’s referring to the conversion rates of gem and gold within the gem store most likely.

Ah, I see.
As a note, while RMT is accurate, it is generally used to refer to third party traders, hence my confusion.

Psientist.6437:

John Smith.4610:

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.

The EULU allows Arenanet et al to data-mine chat logs.

John Smith, there are so many ways to shape information for thermodynamic effect. Your response to this player is almost caustic.

Questions!

1. The RMT algorithm, does it process every gold and gem bit as individual bits (ie do gem and gold bits queue in a single line), process bits as batches, or both?

2. The RMT algorithm, would it translate simultaneous “no demand” for gems and gold into a vector?

I don’t understand what you mean by RMT algorithm, could you elaborate?

Michael Walker.8150:

Quoting myself, adding some questions, for every question answered I will give 1 gold to the next drunk quaggan.

Michael Walker.8150:

Hi John!

Cool idea, would love to hear some of your experiences when creating the BLTP

-Can you explain how you started designing the BLTP when approached by Anet?
-How big was/is your team, how many variants and iterations did you come up with and how different were they?
-Did you have to change some aspects that make perfect sense economically but didn’t fit lore?
-If there have been others, what were the alternative names for the BLTP?
-How many hours approximately did you spend working with sound engineers & audio artists?
-How much gold do you have in game?
-Have you ever contributed something to the lore behind the economy or helped?
-Who had the idea for the mystic forge conduit? Love mine and it worked well (?) as a material sink. Can you give that person a cookie?

Angel’s post was really interesting

//edit
@Wanze
Questions aren’t about the current economy, still fits the spirit of the thread I hope. More than one because I don’t want a specific answer.

-Can you explain how you started designing the BLTP when approached by Anet?
I did not design the BLTP, the concept of it was in place upon my arrival. There are many major aspects that went into the design including programming and design and I wouldn’t want to speak for those individuals.

-How big was/is your team, how many variants and iterations did you come up with and how different were they?
The internal structure inside arenanet is complicated (yes I’m sidestepping the question, sorry).

-Did you have to change some aspects that make perfect sense economically but didn’t fit lore?
Almost, but lore was added to merge the world and the BLTP system together.

-If there have been others, what were the alternative names for the BLTP?
I’m not free to say, sorry.

-How many hours approximately did you spend working with sound engineers & audio artists?
Me personally? None unfortunately, our sound and music guys are fantastic.

(skipping a couple)

-Who had the idea for the mystic forge conduit? Love mine and it worked well (?) as a material sink. Can you give that person a cookie?

Izzy and I brainstormed that event with the conduits together, it was a lot of fun and very successful.

tolunart.2095:

Rouven.7409:

I’m not sure if John can, but if not, is someone else perhaps able to elaborate on the implications? Thanks in advance – and thanks John for participating here, love it!

Because most activities produce in-game currency (“gold” or whatever) from nothing, the amount of money in circulation tends to go up as the game ages. Currency sinks like repair costs are a major concern to new players, but a minor annoyance to more experienced players. Inflation of player-controlled market prices is expected, simply because it takes a lot of work to have 10 gold to spare on your toon while leveling, but when you’re at max level for six months you don’t upgrade or repair equipment as often so more experienced players have more gold to spend.

The game works much differently when 5% of the players have recently achieved max level vs. when 50% of the players are at max level and gearing alts. The market reflects this as a natural consequence of players involved in the game over time. The design of the game reflects this, for example removing repair costs makes it easier for newer players to accumulate gold while experienced players barely notice the difference.

Devs have to watch the effect of currency sinks and faucets carefully, and try to balance the amount of money in circulation with the sinks designed to remove it in order to make sure that new players can afford basic equipment as they level but experienced players can still feel as though they have goals to achieve. If either side is too rich or too poor the game suffers.

To add to this. There are many different types of currency sinks, but the most common error when attempting to control for inflation is to apply a set of large static sinks. An example of a large static sink is something like a commander’s icon. You want a bunch of these in the game, but you don’t want them to be your only tool for controlling inflation.

What I call “Dynamic Sinks” are important. These are sinks that either change naturally with the state of the economy, or a sink that designers can modify to pull more or less money out of the total supply. The trading post is an example of a dynamic sink.

Combining multiple types of sinks together allow you to more effectively control the money supply as well as don’t look terrifying to a new player when he sees that there are 900,000 gold worth of stuff he needs to buy at level 80.

Psientist.6437:

Would this derivatives market have anything to do with the unique features of Tyrian lore or just be an addition to our mercenary marketplace?

I would attempt to incorporate any game feature into the world as a piece of the world.

Psientist.6437:

Color me an impressed Tyrian.
I hope the color isn’t account bound because Wanze and John Smith deserve some of that color, in shades.
I haven’t made it through the first page and I had to post at least that sentiment.

My question:

Information releases that talk about changes to in game systems impact the market. The information concerning changes to the dye mechanic came in dribbles and the market reacted as any market would to incomplete information.

If it were up to you, would you have released all of the information concerning changes to the dye system at once?

Unfortunately, releasing problem isn’t a single variable problem. There is an unbelievable amount of work required to release information in an official/public way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ll re-examine the algorithm for top demanded items and see if it’s a problem. Pushing 1c orders on expensive items to change the front page isn’t the intended design (obviously) so we’ll take a look.

It’s working as intended.

siralius.9517:

Yes and when it is 100g for 1 gem and say a few hundred players decide to cash in w/their credit cards and go on a shopping spree on the BL what then

The rates are dynamic, you cannot set a high price then trade at that price, the prices will change as you trade, even inside a single trade if it’s a large enough trade.

siralius.9517:

Let me make this clear for you and for Anet as well. The ppl who aren’t buying gems with money most likely aren’t going to buy gems with money. It’s a supply and demand thing. If you’re not supplying something that constitutes someone spending real life money then the demand goes down. Or something like that.

They’re curves and the at every price the demand for each side is different, as the price changes, new users enter and leave the market and trade differently. It’s not as simple as some will buy and some won’t, the curves are quite dense.

Let’s calm down a bit, this is getting heated and it doesn’t need to be.

I want to go through a hypothetical to explain a point about the TP.
Before I start I want to restate (it was quoted earlier) that the TP is part of the Tyrian world, we don’t make monster killing games here, we make online worlds (in which you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome).

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

That being said, I’m often reading and interested in hearing your suggestions and you should feel free to present them. There are a couple of popular suggestions that do not meet my requirements of not making the game a much worse experience:

1. Server specific economies. I can’t even begin to describe the myriad of problems that server specific economies have, but I will tell you, most of them are so bad, you don’t even realize that they aren’t in their natural state.

2. Binding after purchasing items – this has been thoroughly explained in many forums the several ways that this would prove disastrous.

My biggest argument I would make against myself is that the fix for this is simply education or more information (I don’t mean academia, I mean education inside the game). I would argue that people naturally want to make the most money possible and the amount of profit available is enhanced, not by laziness, but by a lack of information or education.

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

I think both are good arguments, and the HOW of disseminating information is the interesting part.

There’s a thread open on this already that I’ve responded to, we should switch to that thread. Closing this one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Traidingpost-Flipping-should-be-stopped/first

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…

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Jansen.4753:

Flipping does not increase any price, in fact, without flippers sell orders could be higher, if you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand how it works, plus with the gold sink it creates its actually helping reduce inflation, which is good for everyone.

Sorry for my spelling

yeah… no. How, in gods name, should people who buying cheap and selling expensive help keeping the prices down? It makes no sense.

When a player adds velocity or liquidity to a market, the result is often lower prices and often prices closer to equilibrium.
Given recent feedback let me try also this in other terms (I’ve tried this before and failed so bare with me).

Supply and Demand curves can also be called Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Sell curves. Essentially they are the shape of what people are willing to pay or how much people are willing to sell for. If everyone is will to pay $5 then the “demand” curve would be a flat horizontal line at $5.
In real markets the curves end up being curves because people have different preferences or costs. I might be willing to pay $100 for a new video game and you may be willing to pay $50 and yet another person $30. When you extrapolate this out you get a smooth curve of what people are willing to pay (it works the same way for the willingness to sell).

Balance (or equilibrium) occurs when those two lines meet, and people are willing to pay the same amount people are willing to sell. This price is decided by the market as a whole. Given the “freeness” of our market in GW2 people can sell for more or less than this price. In a textbook this would never happen because people always want to be in that balanced state. In real life though, especially in video games, people have different preferences outside of that market equation. Time is a major factor of this equation in real life. Imagine you could instantly sell items to a vendor for 1 gold or you could place them on the TP for 1gold 5 silver; some amount of player would be willing to sell straight the the vendor and save the time because their preference for time or convenience makes that a good trade off for them and that’s awesome, people should be allowed to make that trade off if they want. Now let’s say people instead just place everything on the TP for super cheap instead of vendoring because it’s easier. The prices these items are placed at are often placed below that equilibrium price which leaves room for someone to purchase those items and sell them at equilibrium price earning some profit per item. The person who purchases and resells values that trades and so does the individual selling easily, in this case both parties match what they want. Now the market has items placed at the equilibrium price for the standard buyers/sellers that sell at that equilibrium. Those sellers cannot change that equilibrium price and placing items above that price will result in the items not selling. They cannot raise the price, the market has decided the price and other people have decided their willingness to sell.

The first question to ask here is, “Isn’t the profit of the reseller directly equivalent to how much people are willing to trade off money for time or other preferences?”
The answer is yes, and more than that, the potential profit is split between all the different individuals attempting to buy and resell. Since the profit is finite and will become distributed between players, why wouldn’t people begin doing that until everyone only made little to no money? If everyone was the same person they would, but there must be some barrier to entry to that activity, there must be something that stops people from jumping in and distributing some of that profit to themselves. The most common and the most correct (but not complete) is that it takes time and skill, if it did not there would be almost no profit in the activity because the potential would be split between too many different individuals.

(Hello again econ and business people, I’m aware that this is very simple, but I’m attempting to introduce people to the ideas and attempting to explain complex concepts right away turns out poorly)

Nerelith.7360:

Astralporing.1957:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You can also refer to the post about half way down the first page by John Smith, the games economist who states pretty flat out that there is no inflation and you are dumb if you think otherwise. (He’s a pretty blunt guy lol)

He does not state that inflation does not exist (which would be untrue, by the way). He states that it is not a major problem for GW2. Whether he is right on this is a matter for another debate, though.

We also need to remember who butters his bread, I’ll give you a hint, it’s not us.

Just because he says it’s not Major problem, doesn’t tell us for whom it’s not a Major problem , or what he considers a major problem. Are we talking single digit inflation? Double-digit inflation? Hyper-inflation?

What is HIS defenition of Major?

Secondly, something might NOT be a major problem for Anet, but be a Major problem for the players.

Thirdly, since Anet butters his bread, part of his responsibilities is stabilizing the market. Even if it means… spinning the facts. Just because an employee of Anet says " all is well" is No reason to toss out the evidence of your own eyes.

John Smith says not a major problem. My eyes see Inflation. As I said… For whom is John Smith saying that inflation is not a major problem??

Us?

Anet?

Our interests are not Anet’s interests, and neither is Anet’s ours.

Who butters John Smith’s bread?

Just remembered this lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro

That’s a solid link, I laughed.

I think the problem here is two separate arguments are being made that shouldn’t be made at the same time.

1. Inflation is increasing prices drastically and causing a series of negative outcomes.
A. This simply isn’t true. Inflation is very, very well controlled in gw2.

2. T6 prices are too high, the material drops are too rare.
A. There are arguments that can be made here on both sides that I think are valid. (I know this is really frustrating so I apologize for the generic response) I can’t give my opinion on either side for fear of shocking those markets which won’t be positive either way. What I can say is that it’s something we watch, there’s always room for improvement, and we will continue to work to make the game better.

I very much don’t agree with several of the concepts you’ve posted here. Overall though, remember the medium and that “proof” is more to show evidence that a biased sample doesn’t necessarily represent the entirety of the population.

LordByron.8369:

You are wrong.
There are some reasons why inflation coesn t take in account value of alpacas in France.

For the same reason should not take in account all the stuff that has almost no (real) demand.

While T6, Precursors, lodestones, gems, etc etc etc should be the best indicators.

@Wanze… i won t answer since i don t find most of your comments “useful”.

First off, there is a huge amount of demand for alpacas, they’re pretty awesome.

Short and sweet:
If you think inflation is a major issue in Guild Wars 2, you should do more research on MMO economies and general economics.

The point I made a long time ago about precursor rates increasing price was speaking to an anomaly that can/did occur with a very specific set of market circumstances. It does not automatically applies to other markets or changes.

ZilentNight.5089:

John Smith.4610:

Fungalfoot.7213:

The reason why ANet won’t do anything about flippers hijacking markets is because it benefits them greatly to see these higher prices. Remember that gold as a currency is tied to gems which can be purchased for real money. They hope to drive new players into purchasing gold in order to catch up which is exactly why they keep on nerfing popular farm spots.

Unfortunately this short-sighted greed is having an extremely negative effect on the game as a whole. Short of getting extraordinarily lucky a new player will have no way to ever compete on the market. They’re strangling their own game trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of it.

I don’t agree. The best result for the game and therefor the best result for ArenaNet is for the markets to work as efficiently as possible (usually). Fortunately, the nature of the trading post provides a lot of natural force for markets to work efficiently. While nothing is 100% perfect, the large majority of every part of the game’s economy runs incredibly efficiently and we put a lot of effort into making sure that they remain that way.

Do you consider the precursor and Chaos of Lyssa market working “efficiently”?
I guess quite efficient for the flippers.

I suggest you head over the BLTP forums and check out the numerous posts I’ve made about the precursor markets.

Fungalfoot.7213:

The reason why ANet won’t do anything about flippers hijacking markets is because it benefits them greatly to see these higher prices. Remember that gold as a currency is tied to gems which can be purchased for real money. They hope to drive new players into purchasing gold in order to catch up which is exactly why they keep on nerfing popular farm spots.

Unfortunately this short-sighted greed is having an extremely negative effect on the game as a whole. Short of getting extraordinarily lucky a new player will have no way to ever compete on the market. They’re strangling their own game trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of it.

I don’t agree. The best result for the game and therefor the best result for ArenaNet is for the markets to work as efficiently as possible (usually). Fortunately, the nature of the trading post provides a lot of natural force for markets to work efficiently. While nothing is 100% perfect, the large majority of every part of the game’s economy runs incredibly efficiently and we put a lot of effort into making sure that they remain that way.

You should be fine now.

:)

Time frame is since 5/20/2014 00:00:00 UTC

.

People can put up sell orders for any value they want as long as they can afford the fee, that doesn’t mean the item is suddenly trading for that price.

edit: attempting to fix data image.

Xbon.9086:

Um… so are chinese and our TP linked?

No, The Chinese TP is not linked to the NA/EU Trading post.

Lux.7169:

Dusk sold for over 5,000g over there…
The game was out only 8 days when someone bought the dusk for 5,000 gold.

That didn’t happen.