Curse

Taisayacho · Jun 16, 2008, 05:16 PM // 17:16

I have this idea that most likely won't be received well but I thought I'd just stick it on here.

I think we need some oldschool mercantilism in GW, meaning some protection of the economy. Since (as far as I understand), prices at traders reflect the market, like more people selling to trader and the price goes down, more people buying it goes up, I think the game needs some sort of mechanism to stop sudden fluctuations in price at traders (especially Rare Mats, we all know why).

Say a bunch of people sell to the trader at once, the price will drop, rather suddenly if it's enough people. I think that the price should still drop, but not by such an extreme measure. They should be controlled, kind of like the Guild Lord's medallion, ish, if you catch my drift. That way, also, people wouldn't be able to buy a certain "object" at around 3.2k and then, since everyone is buying them that cheap, and the price shoots up sell them for more. Said "object" should have some controls so the change in prices are gradual or non at all.

You have permission to laugh at my suggestion, and also if my information about traders is wildly inaccurate.

N1ghtstalker · Jun 16, 2008, 05:19 PM // 17:19

you want that prices can't go down under a certain level?
like lockpicks and stuff
/signed
this way ectos won't end up like the onyx gemstone

Taisayacho · Jun 16, 2008, 05:21 PM // 17:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by N1ghtstalker

you want that prices can't go down under a certain level?
like lockpicks and stuff
/signed
this way ectos won't end up like the onyx gemstone

Well, they could, but it shouldn't be sudden, it should take weeks, a gradual change.
Lockpicks have fixed prices already tho at merchants, but yeah.

N1ghtstalker · Jun 16, 2008, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taisayacho

Well, they could, but it shouldn't be sudden, it should take weeks, a gradual change.
Lockpicks have fixed prices already tho at merchants, but yeah.

sounds great to me

Tatile · Jun 16, 2008, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Fixing prices, hmm?

It seems to working in the young Chinese economy, so on a small scale here it may have some value, if only to make it easier to buy certain things (such as weapons).

/signed
(Yes, I'm quite aware China is 'communist', but it's seems to more of a capitalist society these days, just authoriatrian about it.)

Sindy · Jun 16, 2008, 05:54 PM // 17:54

Perhaps i'm missing something. If prices don't fluctuate rapidly, then it just creates a longer window where farmers are selling their goods at a high price. If you ask me, prices don't fluctuate enough because the game can't keep track of selling between players. Once ecto drops low enough, it will make it less beneficial to kill mindblades over and over and over.

If you want to make sure your ecto remains valuable, ask them to make farming harder/more time consuming. This will do more to stabilize price than "price-fixing"

Sparks Dawnbringer · Jun 16, 2008, 06:45 PM // 18:45

/signed I think that there aready price fixes in the game for the max something is worth. I've never seen d steel raise over 950 a piece, and some stuff never goes up. I think there should be a minimum for something too. I think we should let the market fluxuate between the set max and min. For instance if the minimun for a piece of onyx is 3k and the highest is 12k then the player would always get at least 3k for onyx. Which means the traders would sell an onyx for about 3.8 or 4k. GW would need to use the price fluxuations that have been happening in the game to set the max and min. We already have price fixing, we might as well admit it, set reasonable highs and lows per item and publish a list so we can sell and buy accordingly.

Steboy93 · Jun 16, 2008, 06:47 PM // 18:47

/signed

Sounds good, i'm all for this.

Proff · Jun 16, 2008, 10:25 PM // 22:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taisayacho

You have permission to laugh at my suggestion

ROFL ++++++1

januscht · Jun 16, 2008, 10:44 PM // 22:44

the economy system you talking about excist already, the price of the materials changes over time due to the fact of how much of that item is in the market: lot of ecto in the market makes it cheap, offer <-> demand

ask ppl to stop farming uw for a week and ecto price will be raised

Snow Bunny · Jun 16, 2008, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taisayacho

I think we need some oldschool mercantilism in GW, meaning some protection of the economy.

That's not at all what mercantilism means. Mercantilism means that a stronger market extracts the resources of a weaker market at a lower price to maximize profit; it's the basis of colonization.

You're talking about a price floor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taisayacho

Since (as far as I understand), prices at traders reflect the market, like more people selling to trader and the price goes down, more people buying it goes up, I think the game needs some sort of mechanism to stop sudden fluctuations in price at traders (especially Rare Mats, we all know why).

This would cause inflation in the guild wars economy. Prices would skyrocket.

If ectos were fixed at 5.5, let's say. Well, assume you can farm 12 ectos an hour (about my standard with the A/E UW farmer) that's 66,000 gold an hour.

Players would raise prices in response to the fact that EVERYONE would be able to attain gold in such a ridiculously quick manner.

Quote:

It seems to working in the young Chinese economy, so on a small scale here it may have some value, if only to make it easier to buy certain things (such as weapons).

The Chinese have very little quality control in their economy. Take all of their figures with a tablespoon of salt.

Kanyatta · Jun 17, 2008, 04:11 AM // 04:11

This is another one of those "Should have been done 3 years ago, and now it would be too big of a hassle to go back and fix" ideas.

/signed, but sadly, I doubt it will do any good, especially to a mostly-dead game

Taisayacho · Jun 17, 2008, 12:04 PM // 12:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

That's not at all what mercantilism means. Mercantilism means that a stronger market extracts the resources of a weaker market at a lower price to maximize profit; it's the basis of colonization.

Mercantilism is the protection of the home economy mostly by protective tariffs to control prices. Yes, it was used in colonization a lot.

For example, England had cheaper wool than France way back in Louis XIV's time, so the French government put a huge tax on English wool so people would buy French wool and protect the French wool trade. Basically, protection of the economy.

Ate of DK · Jun 17, 2008, 12:57 PM // 12:57

The way the GW economy works atm is fine.

If they fix prices then we'll get many more QQ-threads about a fixed 20K sup. vigor rune and how the extra 9hp are nothing compared to the 3,5K major vigor rune!

Please fix ecto's at 10K like 2,5 years ago while you're at it. That way I could buy some armbraces with the comming future update that allows Tormented weapons into the Hall of Monuments.

Yawgmoth · Jun 17, 2008, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Free market with no price control works very fine in GW, all the prices depend only on supply and demand.
Setting up some minimum or maximum prices could lead to 2 kinds of imbalances:

1: having certain farming spots becoming guaranteed neverending pure cash sources never to dry up - this has never happened in GW, all possible (publicly known) farms that yielded better than average cash profit per hour got overfarmed to the point where the loot's value dropped so much the farm became just average. This will happen to ectos aswell, if nobody at Anet will wake up and see what's going on.

2: having some rare goods in high demand very hard to get even if you want to pay much more than it's set max price - this happened 3 years ago to Celestial Sigils when the trader couldn't set a higher price than 100k and was constantly getting bought-out. Something similar keeps happening every now and then, but not because of a set max price, but because of trader npcs too slowly adjusting their prices when getting bought out something that has became really hot (Shadow Arts runes now, Lumps of Charcoal after the end Prophecies weapons update, Glittering Dust at the Canthan New Year event, ...) Clearly, when the secondary market price is higher than npc's sell price, something is wrong.

DreamRunner · Jun 17, 2008, 06:53 PM // 18:53

The free market is fine. Its probably more or less, the way that Neoclassical economists wants. I am sure Milton Friedman would be proud.

The Meth · Jun 18, 2008, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Its obvious the intent was that no item in Guild Wars should be worth more then 100k, so its the players risk if they set up an economy for 100k+ transactions based on a fluctuating currency.

IMO, anyone worrying about ecto prices will be wealthy enough lowered ecto worth just means they can't buy vanity armor. The high end economy can die for all I care, all that matters is that every player have access to max weapons and 1.5k armor + runes.