Curse

EternalTempest · Dec 15, 2009, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

i'm gonna laugh so hard when the full HoM bonus in GW2 amounts to nothing more than a rare weapon and/or armor set, and maybe a few extra lines of dialogue. this is anet and guild wars we are talking about here, does anyone actually believe they'll gain any real (as in statistical) advantages with a full HoM?

oh, and obsidian looks pretty nice on female rangers too, but that's just me.

Kinda agree, I think the armor and weapon unlocks will be more of a weapon skin access, not the actual weapons.

Think about this those weapons and armor will be in neglect for over 250 years, I can see where you take the item to a smith and they go, oh I can make this armor (with comparable stats to gw standard stuff) and match the look design from your ancestor.

Martin Alvito · Dec 15, 2009, 10:26 PM // 22:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Now, it is a valid question: since the caps have failed at their purpose, why are they left in place?

In a word: chaos.

What would happen if the cap were removed? The need to transfer your wealth into another form would vanish. Demand for ectos and armbraces comes from somewhere, and it (largely) isn't demand for the "intended" function of those items. The result would be that the markets for ectos and armbraces would stop clearing until the price dropped sufficiently to bring in new demand. You'd also have problems with capital flight once the prices of ectos and armbraces started to decline, which would make the price declines hard to stop.

A lot of paper wealth would be eliminated by such a change. While the system is broken, this is a case where the remedy would be worse than the disease. Removing the cap is an issue for GW2, not GW.

Ensign · Dec 16, 2009, 08:44 AM // 08:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion seeing that the price of ecto has an inverse relationship with trader supply.

I don't care about the trader at all. I care about all the 250 stacks of globs sitting in inventories, that are not matched by comparable stacks of shards. The trader only ever sees a very small fraction of the total ecto traffic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowspawn X

This would be a huge mistake this time of the year. By shorting the price of ecto in December, January or Febuary you will fall victim to the "festival effect" which is a huge influx of gold generated by wintersday farmers.

You have it backwards. Festival farmers generate very little gold, especially after all the farming nerfs; they generate lots and lots of festival items that they want to *convert* into gold, however. It's also the time of year that title-hunters who have been saving up for months come out to spend big chunks of cash on festival items for their titles. The combination of the two creates a huge surge in demand for liquidity, which leads to widespread deflation in all asset prices.

Ecto prices consistently drop over the festival season, as stores of ectos are liquified to be able to buy festival items. Some of that is taken back up later in the season as the busiest farmers convert gold back into ecto; but the bulk of the farmers are fairly small scale, and don't need to buy ectos to store cash.

There's double reason to short ectos right now - not only are you looking at a market panic where people are overpaying for ecto, but there's also a wave of deflation coming in the next few months with the holiday rush.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trader of Secrets

Tru ecto is seen more as currency. I wonder how this happened though, how did ecto get chosen over shards way back then.

PUGs could do Fissure of Woe and pick up shards pretty regularly; those same PUGs got destroyed by Aatxes. Ectos were a bit more expensive in the beginning as a consequence, which made them the preferable of the two to use as your store of value. Once one has been chosen, its price starts to inflate rapidly, creating a positive feedback cycle that's very hard to break.

Quote:

Originally Posted by untouchable

Probably a little more than half the guildwars population has 1 mil in the bank. Why spend it when you can invest it and buy something you really want.

It's closer to a few percent. You grossly overestimate the dedication of your average player. A vast majority of players are casual and don't have much money at all. Well over half the player base has a net worth under 100k.