Prices of Ecto and Shard since Nov 10/11

I have noticed that ecto prices jumped to 18k after nov 10/11 nerf and now it is back down to 14k (shard 3.6k). If it's harder to farm for these, shouldn't the price for these items go up? Just wondering if any had any insight/theory to what's going on with these prices.

Theory:
1) New chapter will not require shard/ecto to craft armor.
2) fow armor is so out of reach after nerf: Why save them.
3) People are quitting gw after nerf and are selling their money on ebay.

I'm pretty sure A-net has taken steps to ensure the prices remain what they consider to be "fair."

i belive the fow will have additional armor for the new classes for chapter 2

In the inital shock, players probably stockpiled what they could afford. Once they realized it could still be done (apparently), the price came back down. However, I've noticed that it keeps jumping from 13k to 17k. Yet for some reason, when I sell ecto to the trader I always get either 11k or 12k. Confusing system.

The trader will always keep prices in a range regardless to prevent players from causing price spikes.

Also interesting to note that private sales of ecto have remained at around 13K regardsless of the drop in price.

I just wish they would raise the cash limit on storage.

Don't think it's too serious an issue, the price has raised since the update but totally expected, and besides it's not as if without the old stuff it's seriously hard to get them .

yeah, i agree that the initial price spike was caused by people stockpiling in hopes of maybe gaining profit later on. they thought that uw couldn't be farmed anymore. however, some monks still solo it and mo+nec teams are now constantly farming it, bringing back the steady supply of ecto.

people have less gold and cannot make it as fast so prices will drop to what players CAN afford. this has been said over and over but most people still argue that the supply will drop causing it to go up. even if supply does go down if players cannot afford it they will not buy. simple as that.

also the market flexes based on the other servers.

I agree. Prices of Materials will settle eventually(hence me not buying ecto at the moment). But a key factor is that players getting more and more tired of waiting for eventually are driven to ebay instead.

Give people at least to feel as though they have a chance to make decent money and they'll stop going to ebay and eventually will happen a lot sooner

if soloing never happened in the first place it would have never been a problem.

It certainly wouldn't have been as large a problem as it is. ANet should just stop putting people who play in groups at a disadvantage.

They keep saying it because it's a constant truth, and it has been proven repeatedly in game.

Sigils were first.

Then Black Dyes.

Then Monk Runes.

Now it's ecto.

When the game first came out, sigils were the hot commodity. They were extremely rare, and prices skyrocketed. At first, it was 1K - then 2K, then 5, then after about a month - 100K. Then it was 100K PLUS gold items (UnIDed of course).

The Anet modified the sigil drop, and made changes to the sigil trader to make them more accessible. Prices dropped, and now a sigil is about 27K or so.

Then commodities like Black Dyes, Steel Ingots, Tanned Hide, etc all became hot commodities as players learned how to "play the market". By low, sell high. Buy them up in the morning, then sell them all in the evening. ANet had to fix the trading system to slow down these price spikes. It still goes on, but not as much as it used to.

Then the leaked "Iron Monk" build inflicted horrible damage to monk runes. Normal monks couldn't even afford a silly superior healing rune. And just a few days before, monk runes were consistently the cheapest runes you could buy.

The fallacy in your argument is that people have "less money". Nothing could be further from the truth. Gold is still coming into the economy at a fast rate, and is being hoarded and stockpiled - either in gold, or commodities like sigils, ecto, shards, jewels, rare items, etc. You'd be shocked at how many "millionaires" there still are in game.

ANet deludes itself with claiming that 80% of the player base has less than 20K in gold each, thus, the economy is fine.

I have about 9K gold in my account, but about 500K worth of "stuff" in my storage, including dyes, ectos, shards, jewels, rares, mods, green items, and other goodies. And I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I know guys with multiple clumps of 250 black dye piles. I'd say my total game "worth" is probably less than average, but that's just my opinion. You'd never know it based on how many people are sitting around begging for gold. Must be practice for their real life occupation.

you also forget the fact that in the beginning of the game you could make about 100k per hour easy. many people in my first guild hit 1 million in gold in less than a week.

you can't pull that kind of income now. the reason people were buying sigils and other items at extreme prices is because they could afford it back then.

imagine the most anyone had in their storage was 40k. would that sigil sell for 100k? not w/o a collaboration of gold from the guild (which people did do to buy sigils). its not feasible to ask a price that people cannot afford. if people are buying it at that price they can afford it. since the price of items have been droping each week that tells you that less people are willing to buy it at the current price. the price comes down to meet the consumer's price.

only bots hord money to sell on ebay. they really contribute nothing to the econemy. the people that buy that gold then purchase everything from traders. those are the ones creating the inflation. once you buy from traders you removed the gold from the game and increases the price until its brought back down. since most players are not going to sell that "rare" item back to the merchants the price will not come down. its a simple corrolation between how much is purchased from the merchants and how much is sold to them. bots will sell those "rare" items on ebay for real money instead of converting in gold (items sell much more than gold does for real money).

the less gold in market the lower prices. go look at the inflation in the 70s and look at what the government did in attempt to fix that. they printed more money. all that did was lower the value of the dollar and increase prices even more.

history teaches you more than simply speculation on supply and demand.

I just noticed that obsidian shards went from 3.8k (yesterday) to 4.6k (today for about 1hr). It is sitting at 4.4k right now. Someone is manipulating these prices. Shards today, maybe ectos tomorrow.

price is way low since before and immediatly after update. makes since people would be buying. that would increase the price. same has been noted for price flux of ecto between 14-16k.

manipulation is part of it but not solely.

For Sure bots, ebay, hoarders etc have all had an effect on the prices. But surely the root cause is a drop system that although perfectly logical is percieved as being unfair, random and nerfed.

The drop system caused a lot of people to solo(why go in a group and get 1/8 of the rewards when you can go it alone and get all of them). Buy gold from ebay(my time is precious and I dont want to spend 1000 hours getting Fow Armor)

By far the easiest way to fix the economy is to address the drop system so that a solo player gets as much as they do in a group, give high value materials such as ecto as quest rewards and increase the drop rate a little to at least give people hope that one day that sup abs/razorstone will drop. Now i'm not talking about letting ecto and gold items drop from leaves from a tree. But at least give people a hope that their goal is obtainable within a reasonable amount of time.

Attacking bots by nerfing drop rates and farming, price limits etc etc are all addressing the symptoms and in some cases making things worse. Address the reasons why people want to Solo, Ebay or hoard and you fix it for good.

twicky_kid is going on the assumtion that the prices are based on how much money the consumer has.

This couldn't be further from the truth in my experience both in alot of games and real life economical views.

Makes sense to me: the greater number of players in an "instance" = a greater number of rewards to be dispersed amongst the party!

so you are telling me that if a retail store has an item for $100 on it shelf and it doesn't move 1 unit that the price is going to stay at $100?

i don't think so. if the consumer cannot afford it they will not buy.

its not an asumption that the government in the 70s printed more money to battle inflation. they pumped so much money into the econemy that it degraded the value and caused more inflation. but i guess saying that farmers pumping gold into the econemy creating more inflation is just an assumption even though it happened in real life (more than once btw take a look at brazil's hyper-inflation in the 80s).

there is alot of gold out there in the game that is a known fact. people bought runes at 80k each. why did they buy those runes at that price? because they could afford them.

i think we will be seeing a flux in the market for a little while as prices start to balance out. the AI change has seemed to settle down after the mass hysteria and it doesn't seem to bother people that much.