Some people just scream about inflation and increased price of luxury goods (I assume they mostly mean precursors with this) and as game designer and virtual economist of another MMO I just want to comment on this and explain briefly how it works.
If we take precursors for example. The drop rates of these items are intentionally very low, as they are a long term goal.
I’m going to simplify things a lot to make this example clear, so don’t go nitpick, I know there are some flaws in this example.
Anyway, say precursors are so rare, that on average, 10% of the players get a precursor drop through normal gameplay every year. You can be the lucky 10%, but odds are of course much bigger that you’re one of the 90% of the people that don’t get any.
Some of the people that are lucky rather have the money and put their precursor up for sale. However, since it is such a rare item, there is limited supply and very large demand from amongst the 90% that have none, but might want one.
Thus, since supply is low and demand is high, prices start to increase. And increase they will.
However, the average player notices that halfway through the year, he has learned a lot from playing the game effectively, and is now making much more money than before. But he also notices that the price for the precursor he wants goes up, continuously pushing it out of his reach! No matter how good joe average plays, the precursor remains unaffordable by him. So he goes to the forums and screams NOT FAIR!!! INFLATION!!!
But let me tell you the cold hard reality. The reality in this example is, that this year, there are only enough precursors in circulation for 10% of the players. So 90% WILL NOT GET ANY THIS YEAR, no matter how hard they try. Only the richest 10% of the people will be able to purchase them off the trading post. Throughout the year, the average income of players likely went up, as players learned to play more effectively and earn more gold per hour. But this increase in income is global. So if you’re joe average, it will not be enough. To have enough gold for the precursor, you need to be in the top 10%. So either you have to farm 80 hours per week or you need to adopt clever ways of making gold. Playing the game the way that 90% of the people do, is simply not good enough.
Of course, the situation is likely even more dire. As in the real world, the top 1% of the players likely make a thousand times more gold per hour than the average player. Since there is no limit on the amount of legendary weapons a single player can have, they’ll likely buy more than one precursor. So you see some players with 5 legendary items and others still having none. And the chance for you getting a precursor this year is not 10%, but maybe 5%.
So more come screaming to the forums, NOT FAIR!!!
Just tell me how this example is not fair. Why would you be entitled to an item that drops for 10% of the players per year, if you play mediocre? It is not like you don’t have a chance at getting the item yourself at all, you still have 10% base chance from luck, of course this is scaled by the amount of time that you play the game as well, but still you always have a chance. And if you’re not lucky, you just have to play more or better. Who deserves the precursor more, a guy playing 80 hours per week or someone that casually plays an hour per day?
Of course people will now point out that players flipping the trading post make the most gold of them all. This may be true to an extent, but you can still earn plenty of gold, enough for a precursor, if you play smart.
For example, I don’t play the TP that much, as I do enough spreadsheets in real life already. However, I can easily get 15-20g per hour from normal gameplay. So what do I do? Just look which mats are high in demand and farm those like crazy. Lately, linen was very costly. So I went killing flame legion and got many stacks of linen and sold them. Whee. Before that, platinum was crazy in value. So I stripmined zones for platinum on multiple characters, picking up many nice logs along the way too.
Nowadays, I just keep the gw2stuff open for world events, ofc with 3 pages so I can also guest on 2 other servers and farm those events as well. Melandru and Grenth temples are very fine event, so many trash mobs and champions, you’re almost guaranteed to get 10 rare mats and an exotic from attending that, on top of bags full of blues/greens/T5 mats.
