Curse

Winterclaw · Jan 27, 2008, 02:03 PM // 14:03

I think the value of having an economist is questionable based on his skills in the trade and his political leanings.

the_jos · Jan 27, 2008, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

I think the value of having an economist is questionable based on his skills in the trade and his political leanings.

Could be. What's perhaps also a good idea is to define what a good game economy should look like.
Based on that it would be easier to determine which actions would benefit it the most.

Malice Black · Jan 27, 2008, 04:00 PM // 16:00

Poor people - 1.5k armor, use purples, crap golds. No cash in storage.

Middle-low class - 1or 2 set of 15k, couple golds. <100k in storage

Middle-high class - Couple sets of 15k. Some vanity items. Couple of gold sink titles

High class - 1mill in storage/stack+of ecto. High ends items (vanity items are not high end). FoW armor on multiple chars

Rich - 20mill+

DarkWasp · Jan 27, 2008, 04:43 PM // 16:43

If GW2 has a Xunlai Marketplace or anything like it, the economy would hit a whole new approach.

Lemme make some assumptions if GW1 always had one, there woulda been:

Higher selling rates on purples (like 500-900g to newbies in ascalon who needed good weapons)

Higher selling rates on perfect but average skins (2000-5000 to people who are near level 20 or buying for heroes)

Lower selling rates on ectos (thus freeing FOW armor from the ebay-only status after the first year)

-------

Anyway, my point is, the market has a totally different curve because of the convenience of a trade system. Especialy on low end items. Low end items are the majority of the loot recieved by farmers, therefore making farming more worth while and profitable. It also gives people who are rushing through the game a chance to sell their common skin weapons without spamming hopelessly for 4 hours.

Zinger314 · Jan 27, 2008, 04:48 PM // 16:48

A real economist would require a greater salary than those of all of ArenaNet's employees combined.

MithranArkanere · Jan 27, 2008, 11:46 PM // 23:46

With the current system, selling is slow, so people only want to sell things that have high prices.

The players that trade more try to get and sell 'rarity spike' items.

Something like a Bazaar, with fixed prices and limited upper caps in price, would make selling much faster, thus people would stop casting to merchants req 7..13 perfect weapons and offhands, and putting them into the market.

We'll also see that people would only want the cheapest higher-rarity inscribed weapons with the mods closest to the ones thy want.

What's it? Since people would get more sells, they wont care about selling thins cheaper, because they would get more overall cash.

The amount of people that do not sell because it is boring and time-consuming is quite high!

If you turn all of the into merchants, market would go really active!

NecroticChanter · Jan 28, 2008, 03:50 AM // 03:50

I don't think a economist is really needed...soon we'll have a stock market xD

GW2 chat log:

The DOW Jones Industrial is up 51 points thanks to a recent nerf...Also ectos drop 10k followed by black dyes...

OMFG...better yet! The new class: Economist

U control the economy!

Skill example: Sale: All prices are lowered by 15%....60%.

Zahr Dalsk · Jan 28, 2008, 06:58 AM // 06:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

A real economist would require a greater salary than those of all of ArenaNet's employees combined.

Totally owned.

(By the way, I don't see a problem with Gw economy as it is. My elite armours still cost 15k per piece, I don't care if the high end traders are having problems.)

Holly Herro · Jan 28, 2008, 07:10 AM // 07:10

Don't threat everyone, Guild Wars 2 is coming.

It.Will.Save.Us.All

netniwk · Jan 28, 2008, 07:13 AM // 07:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

A real economist would require a greater salary than those of all of ArenaNet's employees combined.

yea,its time we release the poor monkys that they have working for them.
/facepalm

Saphrium · Jan 28, 2008, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by shoyon456

This may in part be a rant, so please excuse me if I wander off...

Now, I dont know what everyone else is thinking, but ecto, which has always been a staple, is basically not worth farming anymore. I did at least 5 uw smite runs today which yielded 1-2 ecto each, less than 400 gold each average, and the usual junk such as remains, white weapons, etc...

In my opinion, these things point to one thing: GW's economy is in the dumps, and has been for some time now. Instead of trying to keep up with players and nerf effecient smite solo builds like in the past, they have simply "given in" and instead relegated drops down throughout the game.

I am sorry to say, it does not make any sense. I don't see any logic connect the ecto example to the GW economy. If I try really hard to summary the cloudy reasoning used above, here is an abbreviated sentence: If ectos ever get lower drop rate, GW economy is screwed up, therefore the way to fix GW economy is to raise ecto's drop rate, and that's why Anet needs to hire an economist to raise the ecto drop rate, since Anet staff is not competent enough to do so.

And to everyone else: Economists are over-rated.

Siadena · Jan 28, 2008, 09:04 AM // 09:04

/Signed. Good call...

In addition to everyone "arguing" about lower/middle/upper class, here is an IG stat that might help. Albeit this is 6+ months old, but things couldn't have changed that drastically since then. Also, you need to take into account it's a free game, so some people create accounts, then leave the game and the account is still out there in cyber land.

*85% of GW accounts/players have a total of 25k or less on their account.

System_Crush · Jan 28, 2008, 10:32 AM // 10:32

GW economy needs the wealth to be spread.
Not money sinks, those affect e4y1, hence they must be balanced to the average of playerbase, which puts it low as 85% of the players that has less than 25K(includes me

)
So it won't do a good job of bringing down the rich players.

Rich players just trade vanity items amongst each other, keeping the money in their circles.
What is needed is to make sure people have a chance to get something that the people with money will pay for unfarmable, so that the people that want them will have to pay whoever has one and can't farm them themselves to get richer.

I'm not sure on how to accomplish this, so take the following examples with a grain of salt.
Best I can think of is making the sunspear battle recommendations, trade contracts and that all those useful for something people would want, other than trading them for a 2K superior salvage kit.
You can only get a limited number of each, so wealth would have to spread amongst everyone that does missions.
Also possible would be level locked area's in which consumables drop, so if you are over level ?16? you can't get underworld passes anymore; but that sounds like it will just annoy people.

Anyone have better ideas on how to make the upper class spread their wealth around?

MithranArkanere · Jan 28, 2008, 11:57 AM // 11:57

Inscriptions worldwide.

Fixed number of limited miniatures (those gained in contests and events) so after one is destroyed or dedicated, another one is added to the market, thus not increasing in price the less they are.

Usually, adding new things to the market decreases the price of the rest, and removing them from circulation increases the price of the rest.

So if the game had a way to keep track of how many rare things are there, and increases and decreases drop depending on hom many exist, economy would be a bit more balanced.

NamelessBeauty · Jan 28, 2008, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Lets talk about real word.

Before gold and oil are super high in prices due to hard-work of exploiting. But its price become less and less due to high-tech making it easier to exploit. Then due to the over exploiting, prices going up again because those stuffs are more scared.

Ok now talk about in game.

Ecto was really high in prices due to the hard-work of using simple skills to farm. Then more and more peopl know how to farm, over farm will make prices go down. The different between this and real world is that....ectos are unlimited lol. You can get as many as you want. Prices WON'T go up. That's no question. There is no way you can prevent this. UNLESS Anet make ecto become limited. For example, there are only 10 mil ectos in this game. As you use/sell ectos to trader. Others can farm it until the limit hit. Price at this time WILL be stable lol!

the_jos · Jan 28, 2008, 04:48 PM // 16:48

Quote:

*85% of GW accounts/players have a total of 25k or less on their account.

Is that due to too little income or too much spending?

Quote:

Anyone have better ideas on how to make the upper class spread their wealth around?

And why would we want that?

When talking about game economy we should not be talking about the vanity items.
IRL: not all people can afford a private jet or an Aston Martin car.

We should talk about basic stuff.
IRL: can someone pay his food and house.

Now we have a problem.
People want more than they can afford.
IRL: many people have a debt, for example mortgage, car loan or credit card.
Some are needed (houses are expensive), some are not.

It's not an economy problem, it's a greed problem!

HawkofStorms · Jan 28, 2008, 06:12 PM // 18:12

Some MMOs DO have a very productive and realistic economy.

The most obvious example is Eve Online. They hired a very reknown economist to create and moniter the game's economy system.

Fril Estelin · Jan 28, 2008, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Hey guys, I tried to start a general discusion on this topic here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10240342

May be you can salvage a few things and put this discussion on new rails.

I think that MMO economies are very different from real ones because you have the means to control each and every aspect of it, even if players ride the boat and direct the economy in particular directions. Ideally, I think that the aim is to make it fair to a big community of players, most of which don't see it as so important.

MithranArkanere · Jan 28, 2008, 08:44 PM // 20:44

Yeah, but along that limitation, there must be a way to keep track of transactions.

An ecto that is 2 years in storage it's like an ecto that do not exist.
So trading item with other character wold increase the 'existence' of the items, but after a time (1day..1year depending on rarity), the items stored would be considered 'abandoned' or 'Hold back' or 'blocked' (like when water do not flow), and a new one would be added.

This would work incredibly good, for example, if you buy something to sell it again for more gold, each trade would decrease the rarity of the item, thus stopping people from doing so, since no one would pay more extra gold for the item, and probably the last one getting it would keep it.

And customization is one of the keys of this.
Get a miniature, destroy it to add it to your account (like hats) and remove it from the market, a new one is added that someone may find an tade or keep again.

Winterclaw · Jan 28, 2008, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Siadena

*85% of GW accounts/players have a total of 25k or less on their account.

Yes, but of them, how many have elite armor, bought fancy weapons from others, etc?