Curse

Kelvin Greyheart · May 16, 2012, 04:42 AM // 04:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

but the reliance on ectos is actually working against inflation at the moment because the material traders take their cut off those transactions. Other items are purely benign.

Not only that but the value of ectos is largely faith based at the moment. Ectos are worth what they are because people treat them like they are worth that. People treat them like they are worth because they need them to conduct transactions.

If ectos/braces/anything valuable are no longer required the market will get absolutely saturated as the faith in them as currency rapidly declines. Look at every depression or blip in the economy in the last several hundred years. The bank collapses, the housing market popping, the dot com bubble. All of them happened as a result of rapid depreciation of certain assets because people realized they were heavily overvaluing things, and the drop was exacerbated by people panicking, and trying to get out of those markets.

There are probably billions of gold sitting in ectos. If not it's certainly in the high hundreds of millions. I myself have several million stored in ecto alone, and millions more in DoA related materials, and I'm a pauper compared to the big wigs. They serve as a means to hold money. There are far more in the game than will EVER be used. Maintaining them as a form of currency keeps them out of circulation, and keeps their value at least somewhat stable.

Simply put, a market needs a relatively stable currency to function in any useful sense. This is why the majority of real world transactions are done in the US dollar. It's been unbelievably stable, and even with the recent hiccups of the past decade, it's been far more stable than MANY alternatives. Ectos have been a solid form of currency for years, and people use them because of this.

Removing the need for them as a currency will cause a panic as everyone that gives a damn tries to be the first person to cash out so they can get the most. We can't just agree to pretend that their value is fixed. It's an open and free market. As soon as a few people make a cash grab selling low, they depreciate. The only solution is for everyone to engage in the cutthroat behavior because only the first comers will actually get anything out of it. Even if most people refused to sell below certain thresholds the material traders will raise no objections to buying anything you have, and eventually they will undercut the stalwarts.

Congratulations, you just removed an enormous amount of gold from the economy so that it sits in banks till the end of time, accomplishing nearly nothing. In exchange for flooding it with now worthless ectos. The same hold true for braces, zkeys, other rare mats like shards, and anything else that people use as alternative currency that is backed on faith. You've also removed the material trader's interference to curb inflation And to what end and purpose have you done this?

Mokeiro · May 16, 2012, 09:34 AM // 09:34

Ectos and armbraces will not become worthless, just become the thing it was mean to be, a way to craft something and useless for itself.
Some of you say, it's crazy, you can not remove dollar from economy and force people uses pennys, ectos are an stable currency, you can't change this.

But i feel it's me the person that can teach you some economy, the economy of GW is broken because the "currency" ectos are easily farmable and have a value not based on their rarity, but in the people thinking they are valuable, i cannot print new money, every time someone goes to UWSC and take out some ectos its like they are injecting more money in the economy, like a goverment printing money dont stop.

Why this is wrong? Because ectos has made gold worth nothing, but GOLD worth lots, as is harder to obtain.
Make a simple test, go to UW with empty storage, get everything you can, whites, blues, gold, ectos, and sell everything but ectos to merch, i did the test, i got 4 ectos on a run and selling everything i got i got a mere 3,3K, thats is the game gave me 3,3K in gold but as everyone want ectos to be a currency, and 4 ectos worth 32k, so i hava injected 32k in a game that was supposed to give me only 3,3K.

Like in the real life state bubble, and credit bubble we are living in the ecto bubble.

Kelvin Greyheart · May 16, 2012, 02:25 PM // 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokeiro

ectos are an stable currency, you can't change this.

You saying this does not make it so.

To put it bluntly, I don't think you've taken even basic macroeconomics courses. This is covered in the first half of a semester of one. Ecto has nearly no value as a material. It's not rare. There's so much of it that every person who wanted to could craft several sets of obsidian, and the market would still be completely saturated. It's value is inflated because it is perceived as a stable means of storing money, and because there is currently a need for a stable means of storing money due to the gold/trade caps

Removing the need for that will crush their value, and flood the market with them. Every single stock crash has followed the exact same pattern. I fail to see how you can pretend this is any different.

Look at any number of nations that have undergone hyperinflation because of complete lack of faith in their currency. When nobody cares about your currency, it devalues, and that makes people care even less. That's why you end up with situations like what's happening in Africa where some paper money is so worthless it's better used as wall paper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokeiro

But i feel it's me the person that can teach you some economy, the economy of GW is broken because the "currency" ectos are easily farmable and have a value not based on their rarity, but in the people thinking they are valuable, i cannot print new money, every time someone goes to UWSC and take out some ectos its like they are injecting more money in the economy, like a goverment printing money dont stop.

You do realize the US govt has been generally increasing the amount of money that exists since the federal reserve was established, right? The only difference here is there is no central governing authority to regulate the rate that money is injected. Now depending on which economic practices you follow, and what your goals are, this is good and bad, but it's not purely so.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokeiro

Why this is wrong? Because ectos has made gold worth nothing, but GOLD worth lots, as is harder to obtain.
Make a simple test, go to UW with empty storage, get everything you can, whites, blues, gold, ectos, and sell everything but ectos to merch, i did the test, i got 4 ectos on a run and selling everything i got i got a mere 3,3K, thats is the game gave me 3,3K in gold but as everyone want ectos to be a currency, and 4 ectos worth 32k, so i hava injected 32k in a game that was supposed to give me only 3,3K.

The whole point of 'elite areas' is that you are rewarded greatly for completing them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokeiro

Like in the real life state bubble, and credit bubble we are living in the ecto bubble.

I implied that we are in a bubble. However a bubble is not a problem if it is stable. It is only a problem once the bubble pops. Ideally you would never want to create a bubble in the first place, because of what happens when they pop, but once you have a bubble, removing it is exceedingly difficult to do without massive damage. The gold cap should never have existed to being with, but removing it now is a very, very bad idea.

What you are proposing will pop every single one of these bubbles and cause a market panic. It will not remove inflation, and in fact removes many of the controls on inflation that already exist (not that those controls are very effective, but it is better than nothing).

drkn · May 16, 2012, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Kelvin, you've made a great deal of valid points and outlined the system pretty well, saving me the need to do so, which i am grateful for

However...

Quote:

Congratulations, you just removed an enormous amount of gold from the economy so that it sits in banks till the end of time, accomplishing nearly nothing. In exchange for flooding it with now worthless ectos. The same hold true for braces, zkeys, other rare mats like shards, and anything else that people use as alternative currency that is backed on faith. You've also removed the material trader's interference to curb inflation And to what end and purpose have you done this?

On the verge of GW2's launch, depreciating ectos and shards would actually be a good thing, letting more people get their obsidian sets. ZKeys wouldn't be hurt that much, as people would still need them for their HoMs. Same thing with braces - they'd be simply flat ~220k each - after all, what's the difference whether you pay 23e or 200k for one?
So yeah, the only thing getting actually hit would be ectos and shards.
Who would lose? Those who keep their great fortunes in those materials, and only them. Who would gain? Everyone else.

As a fair commoner with a stack of ectos to my name at the moment, i'd gratefully welcome the proposed change.

Kelvin Greyheart · May 16, 2012, 07:34 PM // 19:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkn

ZKeys wouldn't be hurt that much, as people would still need them for their HoMs. Same thing with braces - they'd be simply flat ~220k each - after all, what's the difference whether you pay 23e or 200k for one?
So yeah, the only thing getting actually hit would be ectos and shards.

This is not true. Both of them have enormous reserves that are not in use, and never will be used as anything apart from large value currency. Zkeys may be partially exempt because they can be directly converted into a title, but I don't think their value stems solely from that.

Again, people don't keep dozens of braces/ectos/whatever because they like them, they keep them because they are literally forced to find some alternative form of money. As soon as you removed the absolute need for them as currency, they will deflate due there being no reason to use them over gold. I have my modest collection of braces partially because I cannot be arsed to trade them, but mainly because I quite literally cannot hold the gold that they have come to represent without them, or something similar.

Removing the need for any these items as currency runs the risk of near total devaluation of them because of the saturation. The highest end farm could quite literally be raptor farming, or equivalents in a worst case scenario. I can think of few faster ways to utterly kill the moderate to high end player base than to remove any value out of their attempts to perform high end content. Like it or not, these types of people are the ones who keep large facets of the economy going with their desire for 'prestige' crap, and relentless consumption of consumable items. Killing high end clears kills material farms by extension, and so on and so on.

In addition, as the market becomes utterly saturated with ecto/braces/shards/etc, gold will be removed. You could conceivably grind a lot of trade to a halt purely because there isn't enough money in circulation to meet expectations.

Do I think the gold cap was an incredibly a stupid idea? Absolutely, but like it or not, it has become an absolutely integral part of this game's economy. I sincerely believe that shocking the economy this heavily will kill it. This is not real life. We are not forced to play.

You may as well just give everyone whatever stupid titles, armor, pets, and merit badges they want and call it a day. Nobody is going to give a shit anymore because like it or not, all that trivial cosmetic trash is what keeps the majority of the playerbase interested. Nice way to kill off an already aged and feeble game.

carnage-runner · May 16, 2012, 10:21 PM // 22:21

Just take away the ability to stack minerals in trade. lolwut? problem solve. *sarcasm*

I'd love it if they removed the gold cap for trading and storage. Then we could convince them to implement taxes. Then you could sell things for 24,999 + 10% Sales Tax. The sales tax goes back into the game immediately. Any time you trade materials they could tax them. So every 50e you trade you have to add 5 more as tax; those ecto go back to the merchant. Man I love getting these ideas. So exciting.

MithranArkanere · May 16, 2012, 10:39 PM // 22:39

You see, you don't reduce inflation like that.

There's inflation because gold is practically worthless for some people.
It's worthless for them not because people do not use it, but because those people can easily get lots of it.
They use ectos and armbraces to trade to go bypass the cap. But they do so because they can't pay stuff with gold, because gold is worth so little, because they can get so many of it in so little time.
That's because prices have been steadily increased, since those that get more gold can pay more, increasing the prices for the rest in the process.

If you remove the cap, those that farm more, can hoard even more gold, and still use ectos and armbraces anyways.
It won't make much of a difference for them. But it would only make things worse for the rest.
And you can't assume everyone can farm or should farm, because, well, it's not the way the game it's meant to be played alone.

Do you really want to reduce inflation?
Then you must DESTROY farming and SC's and add a market like GW2's.

But none of that is going to happen, and there isn't really any other solution, so you'll have to cope with the current situation, which has been stable for a long time.
People got used to it.

Helyanwe · May 21, 2012, 11:13 PM // 23:13

I voted to remove the cap simply because of gold transactions that I make. I personally don't care if ectos/shards/ambraces/keys or what ever else gets cheaper as I don't hoarde any of it cap or no.

Star_Jewel · May 22, 2012, 09:04 PM // 21:04

I'm not a power-trader and thus have no opinion about the trade cap, but I can see how removing that would devalue the investments that a lot of people have in ectos and armbraces, so I would vote no on that.

It's because of the points made about the delicacy of the value of those things that I have avoided storing my money in them. So I'm very much in favor of removing the storage cap.

jazilla · May 22, 2012, 10:12 PM // 22:12

dont remove the money cap and empower the dupers who are still doing their dark magik.

LanaDarkess · May 23, 2012, 05:19 AM // 05:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by carnage-runner

I'd love it if they removed the gold cap for trading and storage. Then we could convince them to implement taxes. Then you could sell things for 24,999 + 10% Sales Tax. The sales tax goes back into the game immediately. Any time you trade materials they could tax them.

Aren't there enough gold sinks in-game for you already?

So every time I trade something from my storage to my main account I am to be taxed?

The easy way to bypass that would be going into an explorable and dropping it for the other person anyway. This is not a feasible idea at all.

Blackwater Sniper · May 23, 2012, 02:07 PM // 14:07

Raise the cap to 250K per character.

When the game started, having so much per character at one time was unheard of. Now power players shuffle that around that on a daily basis.

The game needs to evolve.