Curse

SBOSparda · Nov 04, 2005, 08:56 PM // 20:56

alright i would just like to say this *sry if neone has said this i just skimmed* do people really have all this money to be able to spend 100k + 30 ectos on items i really would like to say that also tears up the economy i dont know "honest" people have that much to spend freely

Yichi · Nov 04, 2005, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by SBOSparda

alright i would just like to say this *sry if neone has said this i just skimmed* do people really have all this money to be able to spend 100k + 30 ectos on items i really would like to say that also tears up the economy i dont know "honest" people have that much to spend freely

yes there are people that can do that. I could if i chose too. but i dont see how spending 100k+30 ectos for something that i can get from the collector and mod myself for abotu 1/4 of that price will differ me any. what because it looks different im supposed to do more dmg or me godly and cannot die?

and yes ive gotten the "OMG YOU HAVE TO EGAY UR GOLDZ". well sorry to inform these people but the onyl time i ever spent real life money on this game was when i bought the game from the store. other than that i have worked hard to get what i have.

It comes down to 3 things. time/patience/effort. with those in mind you can become wealthy in this game. it isnt hard. Salvage and sell things that get dropped to merchants. save the gold. if you can take old bows and such and salv them for wood. then go to the crafter above sardelac sanitarium and for 5 wood and 5 gold hell make u a parchment. get a stockpile of those. you can resell those for 100g a pop at Droks. simple stuff liek that can help make you money in this game. same thing with drops. find a decent mod say a +25 health pommel off a crap sword that dropped. sell it to another player for 3-4k = insta profit. it takes the time/effort/patience to achieve anything wether it be in this game or in life as a whole.

striderkaaru · Nov 04, 2005, 09:26 PM // 21:26

hi. i originally had a very long post attempting to address the issues at hand. but for everyone's sake, i will keep things nice and simple.

all of this discussion about economics and such is interesting and all, especially for economics majors, but i'm wondering if any of you are even paying attention to the gw economy at all. theorycrafting may be fun, but not when it's completely wrong from actual practice. if you paid attention, you'd notice that prices are down all across the board. things aren't as expensive as what they used to be.

you brought up the point of more gold coming in as the game gets older as a reason for inflation, but you forgot about one key thing: consumable goods. gw has none, which is why there is no inflation. prices are actually down because more and more items are flooding the market.

and in terms of equilibrium price, try selling a +30 hp pommel for 200k or try buying one for 5k. you'll never be able to do either. but if you're in the price range of around 60k, chances are that you will close a deal. if this isn't price equilibrium, then what is?

lastly, the weapons that sell for ridiculous prices do so not for functionality, but for rarity. the power traders know this, and that is why they offer a lot for rarer items. as more items flood in, they become less rare and thus lose value.

i honestly don't see what the problem is. go browse through the trade forums or look at prices ingame and you'll notice that the opposite of inflation is happening.

Sample Attack · Nov 04, 2005, 09:59 PM // 21:59

My two cents :P -- In GW, It Like MLM (Multi Level Marketing) Gold being create (Generate) without any cap, Players are getting richer, I see more players able to afford Fissure Armor...(Farm, Trader, Ebay) whatever the source of income, The more you play, the more hours you put in, chances are you will able to afford anything in the game.....Rare item like Fellblade, Choas Axe , won't be very rare anymore, More players will able to afford, high-end perfect mod.... There are Already Green Items (Perfect mod) Razorstone , reasonable price ...
Players that only play 2 hours/day are one can't even afford Forge (regular) Armor ... without a good guild support, drive those people away from GW... very difficult for them, to have a decent armor and weapon....
Once in a while, very luckily , they found a very rare item like Crystaline , b/c they don't know how much it worth , sell it for 5k or 10k...
Instead of "Value 250 gold" , show the last actually in game sell price for that similar item, so nobody can be cheated ....
As far as Economy goes , Gold being generate way out of hand, There' no limit, It's like Gold raining down from the sky... which encourage Ebay or Online Gold selling Company to their advantage... most players will find the easy way out, people that love GW and can't spend hours of farming, will def pay those Virtual gold with the Real life money......

Griff Mon · Nov 04, 2005, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Some gold does drop out of the economy. Those players that simply stop playing, uninstall the game, get banned, etc. That money goes into the ether and helps reduce the supply of gold circulating.

MSecorsky · Nov 04, 2005, 10:21 PM // 22:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by MistressYichi

Those things are RARE for a reason. They have a situation very similar to what youre talking about. its called collectors. monsters drop certian items which the collectors then trade for items. they have been and always will be a very valuable too to where u dont have to be rich or uber to get good weapons/armor/offhand/shields, but everyone seems to overlook this fact. i have the full collectors armor for my monk. was first max defense armor she had. was easier to get than spending all day farmign for materials and gold to buy armor with. same with weapons and such. all easily attainable, but because they dont have "THE LOOK" 99% of the people in this game dont want them.

The reason is habit. Face it... other games made the rare type items vogue, so now all games will have similar.

Why not just drop the whole concept altogether, as well as gold? All it adds to is farming, ebay and grief. Still have ectos, sure... but enough so anyone that wants them can get them easily or find someone with plenty to share. Still have fellblades... but without gold or 'rare' drops they're worth the same as any other sword, just look different.

Don't breed the greed to feed the need. Barter system ftw!

daninarizona · Nov 04, 2005, 10:36 PM // 22:36

I wish it could be that way but the world is full of greed and unfortunately that what drives the economy in game such as real life and as long as gold selling companies can make their cash nothing seems to be stopping them. I really dont agree with it but our dialogue here wont change it sadly. Me personally I never want to pay money I worked for to get gold in a game. I can spend it buying lipstick LOL

MSecorsky · Nov 04, 2005, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by daninarizona

I wish it could be that way but the world is full of greed and unfortunately that what drives the economy in game such as real life and as long as gold selling companies can make their cash nothing seems to be stopping them. I really dont agree with it but our dialogue here wont change it sadly. Me personally I never want to pay money I worked for to get gold in a game. I can spend it buying lipstick LOL

All they have to do is simply change it. People will adapt.

Hash Mama · Nov 04, 2005, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by mm00re

sharing or distributing the wealth is an idea that i do not consider a viable option in real life nor would I consider it in a game. That sounds more like a socialism viewpoint than anything and we have enough problems with that in the real world than to have to worry about that mentality in a game.

So sad true socialism ruins everything and anet trying to be real comunists,we allow u that and not allow u something else.FFS what are u gods or u have so many complexes,just leave us alone .We can manage our ingame economy our selfs and i can assure u it will work properly(why politics in my country dont want to understand that RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO the central planing)

Btw nicccce avatar

Dolyak forever!

one more thing d2 economie colapsed couse of jerx with HAX....

Diablo™ · Nov 04, 2005, 11:44 PM // 23:44

The inflation issue in this game is not as bad as it seems, there are sinks and commodities (non refundable items) that treat the problem (like dyes and salvage kits), however they do not cure it...inflation IS long term problem. By that i mean that the victims here will be newbie players (like what the OP said). For someone who just bought the game and came out of presearing, who only has about 200g in his pocket and storage combined, paying 5-10k for a shield and 8-12k for a sword may seem discouraging. Ultimately would cause a decrease in the Guild Wars community and the population in Tyria.

Another issue I see here is doing away with gold permanently and making ectos and shards drop more often, there's a few levels of answers for that. First off, GOLD is the only accessible drop for all levels, may your character be level 2 or level 20, everyone have access to it, by simply killing some monster outside the door. Without gold, there is no longer a common "Need" between the level 2 player and the level 20 player. For example:

The level 20 player may possess a purple shield that would be perfect for the level 2 player, but what the hell does the level 2 player have that may interest the level 20 player? Some Grawl necklace?? Hell no! The level 2 player would be forced unable to trade until he can find something of interest to the level 20 community.

Of course, this isn't MSecorsky's point. I was merely citing what may "seem" like his point. MSecorsky's point is actually something that may seem more reasonable, that if Ectos, Shards and Black dyes can drop like theres no tomorrow by simply running outside of Ascalon city and killing some level 3 devourers... there wouldn't be any more need to adjust the economy, everybody would have what they want... but in fact this almost entirely eliminates the need to trade at all. If a level 2 player can run outside and pick up a Perfect Gold Max Dmg Sundering Chaos Axe from a level 0 Aloe Seed outside of presearing Ascalon... what the hell does the level 20 have that would interest the level 2 newbie?? Virtually nothing. Farming would be a thing of the past... Is this a problem though? Not exactly but in a different form... yes.

If a level 2 character can recieve practically everything he needed by killing some devourers and gargoyles, there will be no point to continue playing after he's level 20, or after he's past the missions (which doesn't take that long if you guys remember). The guy can practically have all perfect weapons with FoW armor, all dyed black before he even reached level 10. XP is useless and without gold, I can only assume that all skill traders give you skills for free (or practically free because XP can be so easily obtained). In a nutshell:

If there is no gold, If all the rare items are no longer rare, everybody would have everything they'll ever need in the game.... Why should they continue to play if there's no longer the need to?

Life expectancy of all players would be reduced dramatically simply because there's no longer the "need" of commodities and "desire" of the rares. ( Like Marx's Socialism theory, it sounds good in paper but wouldn't work in real life) Simply put, Capitalism is a NECESSITY, the uneven distribution of Wealth is better than the even distribution of Apathy.

wolver1ne · Nov 05, 2005, 12:47 AM // 00:47

I find it sad to see people paying 100K+ for weapons and items. And the saddest thing is that it didn't take that long for prices to jump up to such ridiculous heights. From day one people started putting ridiculous prices on items. The more people played the game, the more money people had from farming and whatnot, so the prices automatically went up and up and up.

I started playing from day one and after a week or so I came to LA and bought from someone a gold axe (almost max) with +28 HP for around 400g. By that time items were already in high prices so I thought I got a pretty good deal, which it was. The thing is I still use that same damn axe along with another maxed out one and I am quite happy with both of them. I completed the game with my first axe and almost completed SF with it as well... Ok that was a bit random.. BUT.. what I don't get now is why people have the need to buy more weapons if they already have the ones they use, which apparently are maxed out. Is it about status and greed to have more and the best.. I think it is.. and that makes the game less and less interesting. You see more people selling items in LA or other large cities instead of actually playing the game or say.. help someone with a quest or something. Trade channels have become useless as if you want to sell/buy something you need to spam the hell out of it in order to get others to hear you.

Removing gold might be the only solution to fix the economy and ever rising prices for items. More people are forced to farm in order to get money for those "precious" items. In the end it will be Farm Wars and not Guild Wars.

Bilderberg · Nov 05, 2005, 01:07 AM // 01:07

Gentlemen,

First Relax.... Open your minds and read some more interesting material:

-First the mention of "Re-distribution of Wealth" is what will kill a game. (Like it's killing Contries now.) Theres an Idea. Lets rip off people who work harder (or smater) to make more money and give it to noobs who are like poor people on welfare. Doesn't work in reality, doesn't work in GW.
(E.G. Person who has knowldege of how to farm, basic GW econmics that elite items generate serious $$$$, the know what, when, and where to aquire these items. This guy is like an VP of Mangement to Boardmember of corporation.... Now new guy entering the game is like a guy fresh out of High School. He can either go to school pay attention and learn how the world works, or go pump gas & flip burgers at the local SuperBurger. It's up to him, but he is limited on knowledge. If you work hard to achive it he can one day be a VP or Boardmember, but if he just slacks through the game, he becomes the "would you like fries with that?" guy.

-No reason to worry about gold because an account can MAX (1,000,000 in Storage) and 100K per customer resulting in a possilbe total of 1,400,000 per account. GW programers set it up that way off basic econimical equations and probability. Even buying gold from e-bay is still getting it from another character who legitimately farmed it (or groups of poor chinese people farmed it) from the game. Plus account starts with Zero and the overwealming majority of players don't buy from e-bay, the likeliness that you could achive 1,400,000 by questing or normal play is rare and would take months to achive.

-In walks the Capitalist.....Free Economic freedom..... Hey if I'm just smater or have better information than the next guy I make more. Limited knowledge (On average how many noobs just starting the game will farm, and on top of that how long will it take them to learn how to do it?) Think about how long it took you to do it unless you had friends to provided you with that knowldege.

-Supply and Demand -- those who control the supply will thrive (Super Uber Farmers of Green & Elite Items / Ectos / Shards / Etc...) as long as there is demand for those items. People want new Green items or, elite weapons to improve characters, and gather ecto's in search of the famous FoW items. If another Armor came out that was better than FoW, but required Saphires per say instead of Ecto's and shards what would happen? Every noob and elitest would need to get his hands on it. Suddenly Ecto / Shard prices drop and those who control the Saphires would control price.

-If it's not true then answer why I changed the price (Or had a pretty damn good effect on it solo) of Ecto's on 11/2. I have been saving up for FoW item for one of my characters, and almost reaching 700K from Farming and Trading I decided to bo and buy up as many as possible. I purchased 55 Ecto's one right after another in the course of 5 min and watched the price go from 13 - 14 - 15K. Don't know where it is today but I'm holding off on the other 55 until the price drops again or I can find people willing to unload mass quantities of them for a 2-3K less. Special NOTE: Price changing as direct result of buying from Merchant vs. People.

Don't take this as a Flame post, it's not..... It's just for Me a good Friday and I'm on my Third RedBull....

Diablo™ · Nov 05, 2005, 01:29 AM // 01:29

To reiterate what Accurax said about the three factors in the game being the Goods, the Gold, and the Player driven economy: in real life, the exchange of goods vs gold is almost equivalent, goods cannot be produced without gold and gold cannot be acquired without the exchange of goods, this cycle is broken in the game because both goods and gold can be acquired without an actual exchange... it looks inevitable.

My suggestion may seem infeasable, but its just an idea. If the Goods vs Gold cycle cannot be fixed, perhaps we can subsitute it with a different form of cycle? Instead of Goods vs Gold, we use Buyer vs Seller, for example:

All players will take the role of a consumer (Buyer), and all npc will assume the role of the farmer (Seller). Monsters will no longer drop golds or goods (DONT FREAK OUT YET... please hear me out first......), instead they only drop crafting materials... hides and fibers. Buyers will give the seller crafting materials and gold in exchange for Gold Weapons, Armors, and green shields (subsituting the drops that would normally only be obtained from farming). At the same time NPC would now sell and buy weapons and items back at the same price... ie. you can buy a black dye from an NPC for 20g and then sell it back to the NPC at the same price.

Now about the Gold, gold can be regulated by having a set amount of gold in the game at all time (much like reality), it may be monitored occasionally by the Treasury (Anet) from time to time in case someone deletes a character with a storage full of gold... in that case Anet can artificially feed gold back into the system by either having a little "Government Liquidation" or "Giveaway event"... This way gold is no longer increasing exponentially but is kept in check by a third party.

If you haven't noticed already I was trying to implement as much of the real world economic system into the game as possible, with Anet being the Treasury, NPC is the manufacturers, and us players be both the Material Farmers and Consumers.

So, the NEW three economic aspect of the game is:

1.) Gold:
NPC give and take gold at a regular non-fluctuating price. Without a source to flood the system with gold (farming), the amount of gold would always be recycled, and stabilized.

2.) Materials and Goods:
Materials: Droped from monsters, and consumed by the manufacturers (NPC).
Goods: Produced by manufacturers (NPC) using materials and gold, and can be sold back to the NPC for the same amount of gold (but no material refunds).

But alas, my suggestion is not without a flaw, while writing this post I just came across a small problem...

3.) The Players.
This is one factor that can NOT be controlled. New people will buy the game and new players will join the world of Tyria, but with a fixed amount of GOLD, theoretically in the near future, people would become poorer and poorer (quite opposite of the problem we have now...)

so thats the jist of it... if I can somehow come up with a fix to that third part... this may just be a good idea...

--- note:
Don't get me wrong on the part about the gold, its not a way of fixing the difference between the wealthy and the poor. Gold must remain in the game, and so does the wealthy... and so does the poor. Its not a fix to the wealth gap, its a fix to the system of exchange and inflation.

Arly Strummer · Nov 05, 2005, 01:37 AM // 01:37

Silly, silly Keynesian economists...

Cloud Moonstalker · Nov 05, 2005, 01:48 AM // 01:48

I think the idea of throwing the use of gold out and going more towards bartering for items is really good. Theres my 2 cents.

Diablo™ · Nov 05, 2005, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilderberg

-First the mention of "Re-distribution of Wealth" is what will kill a game...

I'm not sure if you're quoting from my post, but I was in agreeance with capitalism and the preservation of the wealthy, the poor, and the difference between them. If you were not quoting from my post then please ignore what i just said... I'm just paranoid of being misquoted..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilderberg

-No reason to worry about gold because an account can MAX (1,000,000 in Storage) and 100K per customer resulting in a possilbe total of 1,400,000 per account. GW programers set it up that way off basic econimical equations and probability. Even buying gold from e-bay is still getting it from another character who legitimately farmed it (or groups of poor chinese people farmed it) from the game. Plus account starts with Zero and the overwealming majority of players don't buy from e-bay, the likeliness that you could achive 1,400,000 by questing or normal play is rare and would take months to achive....

I agree with you, that in the long end... there is a gold cap.. and that everyone cannot max out there gold beyond 1 Mill. gold. with the price rising, so does the player's wealth, therefore it shouldn't affect the system of purchasing and selling...

... however that only applies if all the players joined the game at the same time. What Accurax addressed is that the rising prices will affect is new players, new people who just joined the game yesterday. They did not have the luxury of 6 months to farm like some of the senior players... thus what may seem like a proportionally even market to the senior players, will seem like an impossibly unachievable market to newbie players... I mean that in a sense that its beyond just rich and poor.

If rich players can sell Max dmg gold chaos axe for 200g to newbie players... this might not be as much of a problem, but of course that isn't a permanent solution...

Diablo™ · Nov 05, 2005, 01:55 AM // 01:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cloud Moonstalker

I think the idea of throwing the use of gold out and going more towards bartering for items is really good. Theres my 2 cents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diablo™

The level 20 player may possess a purple shield that would be perfect for the level 2 player, but what the hell does the level 2 player have that may interest the level 20 player? Some Grawl necklace?? Hell no! The level 2 player would be forced unable to trade until he can find something of interest to the level 20 community.

Bartering really isn't a bad idea... but the only way to make the bartering system work in Guild Wars is to do away with the level differentiation... if all players start in PvE as lvl 20....but of course thats no fun.

Dax · Nov 05, 2005, 02:03 AM // 02:03

My only comment is what source do you base how the economy works. I'm not judging the information at the moment, I'm just curious.

Was your information on how the economy works directly from Anet or is it just an observation? I would guess that Anet is able to tweak the economy as they see fit if something gets too out of whack. They may not tell people this, but I'm sure they have server side tools for it.

Diablo™ · Nov 05, 2005, 02:08 AM // 02:08

If that's true then this whole thread would be for naught... which is a good thing. because we won't have to worry so much anymore

but of course that's still an "if" until some reliable source confirms it.

Dax · Nov 05, 2005, 02:28 AM // 02:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diablo™

If that's true then this whole thread would be for naught... which is a good thing. because we won't have to worry so much anymore

but of course that's still an "if" until some reliable source confirms it.

Well there are some valid points as well.

I think the major peeve of mine is that because the game wants us to focus on the battle part of the game, there is little to focus our energies on except a handful of items. There is no real value of low-mid level items except for what little crafting materials they yield. Level restricting items (a very sore subject with alot of people) would put a little more value into otherwise worthless items.
...But that would make the game just like just about every other MMO.