Xunlai Bank Notes, a simple fix to the trade system.

I know that if something like this were to be implemented, many people would sell their ectos to convert to this more stable medium. This rapid selling would cause ecto prices to drop, which would be bad for a lot of people who are holding ecto because they have nothing else to put it into.

This makes this a bad idea, and Anet knows it.

i like this idea. Simply make the bank notes exchangeable for 100k gold . so now we would use these newly implemented bank notes as a new currency instead of ectos and because they cannot be farmed . a stack of bank notes (250) would just mean 25 million .

edit: to the post above me, give everyone a heads up first then. say 1-2 months to sell all the ectos away . if you decide to sell all your ectos immediately (this is when prices would fall the most), then its your problem. wait till ecto prices stabilizes before selling your ectos . then start implementing these notes .

Maybe freeze the price for ecto for 1-3 months on the day that these "Xunlai Bank Notes" would be introduced, so that the people who have alot of ecto can sell them without prices dropping.

yeah . sell them to the NPC or something .

Do you have the capability of logical thinking? (see a day without calling someone an idiot)

ok give everyone a heads up...you either sell or wait for them to stabilize...the issue here is...if you sell right away your going to get a low rate for your ectos...if you hold onto them it will stabalize...at about the price of diamonds...a sudden drop in demand as people are saying hey I won't need these soon to make high end trades I don't need to buy them....and the sudden influx of demand...(people with multiple stacks selling because they see that prices are going to go down) means that they will be worthless at best...

So your option is...sell them when they're worthless and hard to sell...or sell them when they are worthless and even harder to sell...

It's a lose lose situation for everyone who has any ectos.


If people read through everything they would see that this idea has been brought up...and isn't worth the trouble for something that is a mild problem at worst.

I like the Idea. I have max gold in storage (I don't buy anything LOL) now my chars are force to buy stuff or I can no longer hold gold. I buy ectos or Zkeys with the extra money on my chars just in case I do decide to do a high end item trade, but I would rather like to invest the gold into extra *bank notes* or something to that effect instead of wasting the Zkeys or ecto on a trade. /sign..............

Win situation for anyone who wants to buy Obsidian Armour, though.

true... though no matter how cheap ectos are...I wont get it for my ele...its to ugly...

The problem came about due to a lack of planning. The 100k limit was placed to keep most items from exceeding 100k in value. It was unforseen that people would be able to obtain gold so easily due to farming exploits, etc., and that people would under-utilize NPC gold sinks.

Ever wonder why NPC prices are SO low, especially for ones that have been in the game since the early days? It's because they were designed as the gold sinks for the economy as Anet envisioned it(with much less gold floating around), not the economy as it exists.

The reason ectos became currency was their difficulty to obtain combined with their use in Obsidian armor that made high-worth. I remember pre-factions, Obby shards were used as currency like ectos, though to a lesser extent because they weren't as expensive.

Surely Anet forsaw the use of other items as trading material above 100k(eg. rare item for another rare item+gold), but I don't think anyone involved in the development of prophecies envisioned an economy where a crafting material is used as a currency as much as gold. Due to the system of fluctuating crafting material prices, this caused a problem. It is the same in the real world. It causes major problems when a countries currency fluctuates wildly compared to other currencies.

Bank notes combined with MUCH more difficult farming would have prevented this from the beginning. However, it would ruin many players to implement this into the current system. Even if you gave people ample opportunity to exchange their ectos, keys, etc. for bank notes, there is still the problem of ectos becoming relatively worthless. Obsidian armor would no longer be an elite item. A better idea would be to provide further gold sinks (example: 100k+crafting materials for costumes/masks) and implement either bank notes or remove the gold storage limit in GW2.

I'm not quite so sure now that anet is willing to fix the trade issue, now. It all revolves around getting ectos, which are rare. To get them would be hard work and I know that this is what anet wants in the game: hard work for getting what you want. If I didn't feel too strongly about this, I would sign, though.

Maybe we should be able to buy Z-coins ?

apparently you don't know what freezing ecto prices mean . imo, i think that freezing ecto prices mean you can sell ectos to the npc without the value dropping . and if you had any capability of reading and understanding what we meant, you wouldnt have indicated me an idiot w/o logical thinking .

okay say xunlai bank notes don't work . what do you suggest would work then smarty pants ?

Would you suggest to freeze the ecto price for ever? Or for only a month or so, so people can convert their ecto to gold without losing 3/4 of their wealth?

Hmmm, isn't farming ecto a major source of income nowadays? What happens when they will deemed worthless because they aren't used for trade anymore? How will people get their gold?

Lots of questions, I know, just trying to wrap my head around the possible consequences.

I think 5k or 100k notes is an awesome idea. About the space, just make the notes like a material and add it to mat tab.
But IMHO every thread in sardelac is pointless because there's no way they're gonna be implemented this far out.

That doesn't solve anything, just shifts the problem to something new.

I honestly think this problem could be easily dealt with by making 2 ways to buy the 5k bank notes: either spend the 5k or pay 1 ecto. While some may consider trading 1 ecto for a 5k bank note to be a "loss of wealth" all it really is is a loss of potential wealth, unless you paid more than 5k for those ecto. The fact is, as the most wealthy players generally have stacks of ectos, any price decrease in ectos effects them all equally. As soon as the next big UW farm is released, the potential wealth of those ecto stacks drops anyway, and let's face it... its really only a matter of time before another UW exploit farm comes out.

Don't forget, we've seen ecto prices around 3-4k not too long ago. The Dhuum additional has shaken the prices up a bit, but eventually the trend will be downward once more, causing anyone relying on ecto to lose potential wealth anyway. The proposed bank notes would in fact be the only thing in the entire game to NOT lose wealth, and as such is a better idea than using ectos with their wildly fluctuating prices.

100k bank notes are much better . how do you suggest you'd buy something worth more than 7 stacks of 5k bank notes ?

I'll grant you, even with the bank notes there will be a maximum money value in any trade... with 5k bank notes, the max value is 5 x 7 x 250 + 100 = 8850k. While there are a few items the sometimes sell for more than this (are they really WORTH that much?? I doubt it...) I don't see it as a huge problem. Still, if it makes sense to do it, there could be bank notes in more than one denomination... say 5k, 10k, 50k, whatever. There's really no need whatsoever for a 100k note in my opinion, as that would increase the maximum trade value to 175100k... far more than anything in GW is currently worth (or is ever likely to be worth in fact, baring 50 years worth of in game inflation).

Inflation in general is caused by not having a sufficient gold sink. That's why you see the prices of rare items spike up so much. Prices of ectos are inflated even more because people use it as their savings account.

Having bank notes is a good idea since it takes ecto speculation out of the picture. It is probably very easily implementable. Switching from an ecto-based economy to a gold based economy is easy:
- take a fixed value of 100k per note
- let the Xunlai agent sell at notes for 100k, let them sell notes for 12 ectos, let them buy notes at 100k. This fixes the ecto value
- at some point (3 months?) don't let them buy ectos for notes anymore. At that point the ecto value starts to float again

It will also tackle inflation somewhat. It does not tackle the lack of demand for gold (still no gold sink) but it does tackle the supply of gold. Since ecto prices will come down, UW farming will be less profitable and less new gold will enter the economy.

And apparently you haven't noticed that the trader buys ectos for less then market? if you freeze the trader at the prices he's buying for now people are being screwed out of money...if you would also read i already went over that as far as we can tell anet can't control the trader prices they may be able to freeze it however as far as we know they can't raise the price to market prices unless they created a brand new trader just for this...goes back to it being to much work for such an inconsequential problem...and please read previous posts before you suggest something thats already pretty much been shot down?

Thargs way of doing it on the other hand is a bit better...It still seems like to much work...but it's better then what you want to do. Just having the person who would selll these "Bank Notes" accept ectos as payment is 1) completely possible unlike freezing them at the trader which as far as we can tell isn't possible 2) dosen't envolve the creation of an extra trader
Making its less unwanted then your solution.

and as for what i would suggest? nothing...its fine the way it is in my opinion.

edit: it also screws over people who may not be able to access the game? I have a friend hows overseas for a few months and won't be able to play... should he loose out because anet improperly designed something? he just came to mind no