Guild Wars 2

On Bots and TP
Bots supplying mats in the TP is one of the reason price declines. The other reason is that players had moved beyond the earlier tiers of crafting, hence resulting drop in price of low tier mats. We have no access to data to justify if it was caused “solely” by botting…nor can we justify the magnitude of price drop contributed by botting. Anyone making definate conclusions that botting causes price drop is only basing on subjective observation and gut feeling.

Does people complaining the economy even knows how an economy works? If an economy doesn’t work to your advantage (i.e: able to sell your things for a profit, able to buy expansive legendary items), it does not necessary means the economy has flaws. Granted, botting can have a severe effect to the economy…but no one buy Anet has the information on how severe the effect is. A collective of bots generating 10g/hr compared to a player base that generates 10000g/hr will have a negligible effect. We can often easily identify bots in a zone while we’re playing…but did we bother to count how many other “normal” players that we encounter? The conclusions drawn through observations are usually biased and the effects exaggerated.

On value of Gold
John has it right. Value of gold, being the primary currency here, is determined by its scarcity. Since it is a fiat currency (not based on anything), it’s value will be largely determined by the amount in circulation. The price of an item is determined by the disparity of it’s supply and demand. The value of gold scales the price accordingly.

Are people here just jealous that a small minority got the legendary item (exploit or no exploit) and they didn’t?

Yup…seems healthy to me too…people got so used to unhealthy economy that they think it’s normal.

Frankly…nothing is wrong…it’s just not the type of economy op is expecting…an economic culture shock if you would.

well…I’m sure many will find it easier to call you stupid for doing so and supposedly screw up their profits and the economy rather than spending some time to think rationally.

@ounkeo.9138
yup. A cross server economy has much more participants in it than any other MMO to date. This is off course purely based on the number of players. The actual amount that log in every hour will be significant smaller, to the point that it might be comparable to Eve.

Legendary were never meant to have uber stat…it’s just a vanity item. Crafting was just another avenue for you to gain xp…not compulsory. Many aspect of GW2 is very different from the traditional MMO… I would say many like you experienced a culture shock.

crafting is for xp and legendary components… only on rare cases where you are actually able to make profit.

Welcome to the largest MMO economy ever created.

On Adding more money
Assumptions made by those who suggest this is that once more money is in circulation, the price of the item they wanted to buy won’t change. The assumption is wrong. Increased money circulation will initially increase the purchasing power of players, in which they will use this new found wealth to bid up the price of high demand items. Price would increase, and eventually the purchasing power will remain the same.

On inflation
A person price the goods they buy or sell with expectation on future inflation. Under a stable inflation environment, the price will be stable. Under an environment where inflation is not controlled, this will cause price instability in the market increases market uncertainty…not a good thing.

On Fees’s impact on crafted goods
Fees only impact the cost of selling a crafted item…not buying them. Also, the equilibrium price of a crafted item (any item infact) is due to the supply and demand…fee plays a very very limited role in it. Even without fee, the price of a crafted item with plenty of supplier but little demand is still going to be low. People selling it under the cost to make it is not stupid…it’s because they can’t sell it at any higher price due to the number of sellers, and they had already gained the xp they needed from crafting it. The biggest impact of fees is that it discourages speculation…which benefits all players. The only way to make a profit in crafting is if Anet makes crafting harder and costlier so that only a small percentage of people reached lv400…or introduce some rare recipe drop.

TLDR: we need cash sink and fees to maintain market stability. Price of crafted items are determined by supply and demand, not by fees.

Considering the factor time vs the self appraised value of the item and the probability of selling, a seller will post the item for sale at a certain price…or sell it to the highest buyer. There is no “true” value of an item as the amount that is transacted varies across transactions and across time. The price posted is just a function of the three factors above, with the self appraised value being a self estimated function of supply and demand. If I believe something is worth 10s less than the current selling price (putting in the factor of time and probability of selling), and someone buys it at that price, a transaction will occur. Undercutting at 1c or 10s is all natural occurrence when the market tries to adjust/correct to the equilibrium price.

I believe it’s due to legality that is making it difficulty to ban players outright for buying gold. You need to proof that they really did violate the terms, and that’s often not as simple nor straightforward.

Players in a virtual world don’t die nor starve. In that light, I stand by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Want to earn more gold, put in the effort. Tired of seeing people whining and blaming everything but themselves because they lack the skill to make money.

An item can’t sell for a price if no one can afford it…it will gradually be lowered. Even if those who can afford it are cheaters or exploited what ever bug…the number is finite and small in comparison to the rest of the players. When they had got what they need, what do you think will happen to the price?

Legendary are meant to be rare and hard to obtain. Making gold quick and legitimate in this game is not impossible…it is obvious many people, even though only a small number were able to do so. This may be through effort, skill, knowledge, ingenuity or a combination of all. In that case, the problem lies with you, not the system. You may think you are hard working, smart, creative…but that’s not necessarily true. All too often the system gets blamed for failure that could had been attributed to the person himself because of our inherent need to protect our ego.

Removing the surplus won’t necessarily increase the price. If the demand is so low, removing surplus won’t change anything at all. Also, changes in surplus only affects the supply stock of the item, not the supply rate. That will only lead to at best a price increase for a short term before price moves to near/around equilibrium again. If you want the price of an item to be higher in the long run, the demand/supply rate needs to change…not the supply stock.

Not sure if you have access…but for D/D, I usually go with fire 3, fire 4, arcane wave, fire 5, fire 2, earth 4 (2sec knock back), arcane shield (invul for 3 hits), earth 5(big bleed), earth 2 (small bleed), water 4 (cripple…could be water 3), water 5 (heal), back to fire, rinse and repeat. Not sure if you have some of the utility skills listed here though. Up to date armor (vit/tough spec) and weapon (condition dmg) helps.

You can’t fix stupid without first admitting to it, wanting to change, then learn. All these crying for dev to put in mechanisms to protect stupid only serves to remove the repercussion of being stupid.

Removing the limit to sell at above vendor price will let the price fall to a lower level…so people looking to get cheap item can benefit from that. For those using TP as a storage, they can still list it at vendor price, collect it later and sell to vendor at a 5% lost. However, I don’t see how the price will fall much with removing the restrictions…rational and informed player won’t sell it less than vendor…better to pay the 5% listing fee, de-list it, then sell to vendor. For those selling well below (for any reason), yes, others can profit by buying them…but it will take effort, in which the reward is the profit…I don’t see anything wrong with that.

I would think it’s a combination of bots unloading their mats, player attrition, and progress to higher level. Both player attrition and progression should gradually move the price, but the sudden movement within a few days could be the result of a sudden flood of supply to the market…

The responsibility is on the player for not taking the time to research the price of the item they are selling. Granted, the interface doesn’t makes this easy…but that doesn’t takes the responsibility away from the player. Not everything is spoon fed. This thread reveals a more severe underlying flaw on player’s mentality where they expect the game developer to spoon fed them with everything…much like what nanny government is going to their subject citizens just because no one wants to take responsibility that they failed through their own action and suffer some consequences

But most player thinks that selling at vendor -15% is a lost, not a profit.

If there are more supply and demand, rest assured that the guy who needs it is going to get it at the cheapest possible price. If you are really that altruistic, just post it in chat to give it away.

No one ever trade for zero profit…trading will always be a zero sum PVP game. Is this post really to demonstrate/encourage altruist behavior or just another looking for excuses for not able to withstand competition in the market?

Speaking only for PVE, I liked being able to AOE multiple mobs at the same time…in fact, I think I had a much easier time with Ele than my Mesmer. I won’t say weather it’s op or not since I’ve only played 2 classes….but I felt that it’s not the nightmare that everyone seem to think playing Ele.

some of the step-by-step guides I’ve seen out there are a little out dated because the market condition has changed. Best is to read them, get an idea on how to minimize cost, then do your own research.

I think you might have just picked the two most expansive craft to level.

It’s hard to harvest sufficient materials to level crafting…best you can do is to harvest every single node that you see, explore the map you’re in, and complete every event that you can find. Do some calculation to see if it’s better to sell your loot to vendor or to salvage it. Identify farming spots, and go back there to farm from time to time for the mats you want. With the money, put in some buy order at a lower price. It takes planning and research in order to level those two craft in the cheapest way possible.

For tailoring, epaulet, glove, boot and helm cost the least materials. Then look for the cheapest insignia’s in terms of mats, and discover them. Sometimes, the components/insignia could be selling for less than the material cost to make them. You’ll have to make a judgement weather to buy it, or just craft it yourself if the difference is small so that you get experience crafting them. Craft all the components first while you can still gain experience. Plan ahead, drop a bunch of buy orders in TP before you adventure or log off.

Can’t help you much on cooking as I’ve got it maxed before the changes. Best not to touch it until you can find a steady source of income to support it.

maxster…you beat me to it.

Given that crafting is so easy to level in this game, I don’t foresee changing the drop rate would significantly increase the price of crafted items.

@MrMt and Kargion
Monetary policy is much more complicated than you think…I assume when you say loosening it means Anet putting more money into circulation… which will increase your income (assuming money is being circulated through quest reward), but not your purchasing power. Also, monetary policy is a mechanism that is used to stimulate production (GDP) subjected to interest rate, both which is non-existent in the game. Citing that as a reference to in-game economy is just plain wrong.

Rather than using big popular issues as a reference, the game economy can be described with simple basic economics of supply and demand, as detailed nicely by MF Panda.5874.

The reason people put a sale order rather than selling it directly to a buy order is that they think they can make a sale at a higher profit. Compare with the following 2 scenario, a bid/ask, and a price range.

Bid/ask:
My reservation price (lowest I’m willing to sell) is 100c, current price is 140c I think I can sell it at 150c. So I can put up to sell at 150c, at a higher risk that I’ll be undercut…or at 100c, lower risk of being undercut…or anywhere in between. If someone undercuts me when I put it up at 150c, i run the risk of not selling if there isn’t sufficient demand and too much supply.

price range:
Same as above, but I can put in at 100-150c.

I can see players reacting in 2 ways. Putting a range of 100-150c, or putting a range of 140-150c (lets call them type A) to maximize profit. Those who wants to maximize profit would had put up the sale at 150c under bid/ask system. For those that puts 100-150c (lets call them type, they would had probably just put in the reserve price under bid/ask. If the majority players are type A, I don’t think it will create much difference than the current system. If majority are type B, then the price will be push down to the player’s reservation price pretty quickly.

I would say the impact depends on how much of the player belongs to type B. In this system, I think it favors under-cutter, and punishes profit maximizer, and would also hinder speculation. It is a more complex than the simple bid/ask. Also, that might take away the incentive to participate (to sell) in the market if prices are always at the lowest/cost price (equilibrium). This would make crafting even more uninteresting as it stands now.

I do think both system allows for free market behavior as long as there aren’t any artificial restrictions like price ceiling and floor. Just that what you propose could bring the price to equilibrium faster. If this could really make the market more efficient, that means speculation will be very hard…taking away a sub-game that I enjoy. I would certainly like to hear what John has to say about this.

Common items are cheap because no one wants it. Bots won’t change that. Rare item has always been expansive. I’ve been watching the market on the weekend…price of fine materials seems stable to me. Keep in mind the economy is driven by 2million players…there has to be a significant number of bots to move the market for any significant length of time. Also, the number of items listed as for sale/buy in the TP is aggregated, not by a single player. I see no indication of the economy crashing as of now.

However, I am interested to see what you have to say about bots destroying the economy. Things I would suggest is to identify event hotspots that bots would camp, screen shot them at different time of day, travel through multiple zones and see if there are different bots around or just the same group, then draw a hypothesis from that on how many bots you think there are (don’t have to be an exact number), and how the activity of these bots leads to the collapse of an economy. That would give more tangible data to support your argument. You might also want to explain how you filter the demand effect, supply effect and bot effect that affects the price.

Well…if you can lose money due to cost of production…don’t sell to buy orders…no one forces you to.

THE BENEFIT
I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what adjustment you’re talking about, and how it associates with risk. I think you need to be more clear on this before we can proceed to discuss further.

THE IMPLEMENTATION
no point to talk about when the above aren’t clear…don’t want make any wrong judgement.

If anyone else knows what’s this about, please let me know…and please forgive my inability to interpret what you’re trying to say.

Everything we do in game or RL depends on how much time we spend on it. Being able and willing to spend more time often result in an advantage. What’s wrong with that?

How is price reduction not competition? Isn’t that happening everyday? Since there is a finite amount of customer wanting an item, I am willing to lose out a little profit to sell mine first, or to deny the sales to you. The reason that I am able to do that can be that I have a more efficient means of production (farming item) than you…or that I don’t care if I earn a little less. You do not have to sell to a buy order…but if you want the cash fast, and I’m willing to buy it, then there’s nothing to argue about that. What I do with the item later (destroy, resell, consume) is up to me. I take on a risk that I might not be able to sell the item later.

I won’t deny that there are people making a profit from buy orders. There are also people that put up buy orders to buy the stuffs that they need. I’ve been on both roles before. People don’t lose money selling to buyer…they just earn less. They have their reasons…or they are just ignorant.

Since you are the one challenging the system, what advantage would it bring by allowing people to post a range of price to sell their item? and how?

@john
I think CdrRogdan is trying to get a few point across:
- Proposal of using a price range rather than a discrete price for trading.

Intuitively, I fail so see how it could result in a better market since it is more complicated than the existing bid/ask system. Any mechanism that is complicated runs the risk of people not understanding it…thus limiting it’s efficiency. Heck, a simple bid/ask system had us cracking our heads and debating… On a more technical side, I’ve never had much interest in Auction Game Theory, which is what the price range thingy resembles. Given that the aim of any system is to me as Pareto Efficient as possible (I apologize for technicalities), I’m sure there is a way to determine if the price range system is more efficient than the bid/ask system. Looking at it on the surface, I don’t think so because if its complexity.

CdrRogdan seemed to have a distaste for buy orders, thinking that is is harmful to the economy. I believe me and a few others had addressed most of his other arguments, all I can say is that he has a very different idea on how economy work than what most people would think.

Scenario A: Dev didn’t block lower than vendor buy order. Result, you can’t sell it to highest buy order if it is below vendor.

Scenario B: Dev don’t allow lower than vendor buy order. Result, you can’t sell it to highest buy order because no one wants to buy at vendor price.

In both scenario, you still don’t get to sell your item. If people are willing to pay at or more than vendor price to buy an item, scenario A wouldn’t matter anyway because buy order will be higher than vendor price. If people are unwilling to pay at or more than vendor price to buy an item, scenario B won’t change anything. Hence, no effect.

Unless off course, you are willing to sell your item to a buyer paying below vendor price, , and paying the 15% tax, then yes you are correct. But, you will be better off paying 5% to list a sell order at vendor +1, take it down later, and vendor it.

Cooking was intended to be harder to level than other craft. I doubt that they would do anything about it.

If that’s the case then I fully agree with you. All sorts of technical bug needs to be fixed. Just that when you mentioned shifting prices I though you were referring to the nature of free market and competition in the market. I apologizes for misunderstanding.

I so totally and wholeheartedly agree to your proposal.

Reason I said that was because a single agree /15 char is deemed lack of content by mod.

@Idgarad.6105
Yup, I believe the problem that leads to most of the complaints about TP are competition and free market…both a foreign concept (despite the fact that many “think” they know) to many traditional mmo gamers.

Tweaking the demand/supply for item won’t stop the complaints though. Increase demand, we’ll have them complaining price of certain item is too high and that it is impossible to get their “sword of thousand truth”, which turns this into a grind, which is not GW2 promised. Increasing supply, we’ll have them complaining they can’t make money in the TP and price is being depressed, blaming it on gold farmer manipulating the market or a general currency devaluation.

How does that affects anyone? You can’t sell to buyer’s buying below vendor anyway…the only ones affected are those who put up the buy order.

@maxter

I don’t see how it’s a risk, and how it’s making harder to speculate.

When there’s no listing fee, you can put up an item for sale. If it doesn’t sell, you don’t loose anything…hence no risk (depending on how you look at it…there is actually still risk in holding the item).

When there is a listing fee, the 5% listing fee that you’ve paid is the risk you’ve taken to post the item. If it doesn’t sell, you lose it, resulting in a net lost.

Most of my items get sold overnight even when being undercut…unless I’ve severely overpriced my item.

TP is not broken. People do not fear the TP. They fear the stiff competition in TP that they are not used to seeing in other simpler trading system. Also, these people tend to be speculators that are used to be able to make a profit in a small market but do not understand how a big market works and lose money. In any trading system there will be price fluctuation. No one can say for sure how much is an item worth at any point of time. TP just makes it more visible than traditional P2P trade. Failure to make profit trading is due to a player making a wrong speculation, not the fault of the market. Blaming it on TP is like blaming other players for undercutting.

I’ve never encountered lost gold in using TP (haven’t tried Gem market). Seems like it’s due to a technical bug rather than failure of the market.

seconded!!! The interface would use some improvement.

@nurvus
I personally don’t mind…It makes it more interesting. It also increases the demand of those materials…but given that people are complaining about mat being too costly for them to level their craft…that will only lead to more complain…

@Siyeh.2407
Yup…I would agree that it will result in an empty TP in the long run.

I didn’t play D2….so I suppose what you say could be right…

Lol…
/15char

I can see the point that Shannae made on the relationship of price ceiling and inflation. If the ceiling is lower than the price that player is willing to pay, that means they are paying less for an item which is more valuable, thus they have a surplus of money to be spend elsewhere (increase in purchasing power), and when that happen, price of other item that has yet to hit the ceiling will increase.

If the price of an item is on ceiling, and the real value is greater, that decreases the incentive of a player to farm for those mat…which increases the scarcity of the item and should had pushed the price further up…but is capped by the ceiling. We’ll have a situation where there is no supply of an item (extreme case). In all, it screws up the balance of the market. Not a good thing. Item who’s value is below the floor won’t clear, so the only thing left to buy in the TP are items in between the floor and ceiling. The extra purchasing power of money will put pressure on them…pushing them to ceiling….you know what happens next.

@Siyeh
Gold is a fiat currency here. When there’s an unstable inflation/deflation, the “trust” in the value of fiat currency decreases as its expected value have a huge variation. In that scenario, people will move to using item as a currency as its value is preserves through it’s intrinsic usefulness. Then you’ll have your barter economy.

I like the idea of collector…it adds another subgame into it.

Adding NPC that buys/sell according to supply demand however, I don’t see the point of it. Price of item is already being determined by supply/demand of players, so I don’t see how it adds value to the existing system. There is also the difficulty on deriving an artificial model to price goods according to supply and demand…why do it when it is already been done with the current system with human players? It the point is to prevent the price from getting too low or too high…that’s artificially applying a price ceiling/floor…thus no longer reflects the true value of an item. It will create more mess and addresses nothing.

@Nkuvu.2570
Nice example with copper. It doesn’t take an economist to understand the basics of supply/demand.

I think that things people need to know about TP is that there is a hidden sales tax, and understand the law of supply & demand. That’s it.

Undercutting is a natural way of how market works. It isn’t right or wrong. It’s just how urgently I want to sell my items at a reduced profit…not loss. Do not undercut simple means whoever that first post the sell order determines the price, and everyone else should follow that and the price of an item will remain static forever…why would we need a market for that?

I can understand why people fear competition…but the market is competitive, no changing that. If you can’t take it…I don’t recommend playing the market.

@Error
probably people are accustomed to making easy money on other trading mechanism in other game in a much smaller market…so admitting that they failed at making money in this game is somewhat a blow to their ego that they rather blame it on the mechanics?

@mana
The listing fee is exactly the mechanism that puts some risk into trading…in that it makes it hard to speculate. For a purely honest trader, they will post their sale at a price which they think is reasonable, at the minimum that they are willing to sell. However, being the greedy human being that we are, we always try to maximize our profit….why sell at the reservation price (minimum) when people are willing to pay more for it? Thus we post it at a selling price higher than our reservation price. The minute we do this, we are speculating that the value of the item is higher than our reservation price. Off course… other game doesn’t have a listing fee attached, so there’s no risk of losing anything if you’re wrong. In all, we’re all speculators weather you admit it or not. But some are better at speculating than others.

thanks for the link! Is it only on gems?

@Shannae.6192:
I like the way you argue the limiting resources being time. High Distinction for you. I would love to discuss the rest of your post…but my brain just woke up…maybe later.