Increasing trading post tax.

#44 - April 5, 2014, 1:01 p.m.

An increase in the tax rate would simply get passed on to consumers, with a little bit being absorbed by sellers. It would not be an effective tax on the rich.

#46 - April 5, 2014, 2:42 p.m.

There are about 17 reasons I cannot answer that question.

#268 - April 8, 2014, 6:23 p.m.

It’s possible I’ve missed it and I apologize if that’s true, but I haven’t seen any evidence or even a correct hypothesis that a group of the rich can negatively effect your gameplay experience. I think a clear set of ideas would help me understand and respond to the issue.

P.S. Don’t say luxury goods or I will refer you to the first rule of the tautology club.

#270 - April 8, 2014, 7:22 p.m.

Essence Snow.3194:

I’ll refer you to Shiller. I believe you can draw enough correlations to respond.

Could you provide a bit more context, I’m not as familiar with Dr. Shiller’s works as I probably should be.

#272 - April 8, 2014, 7:30 p.m.

I’ve seen his nobel lecture, but I don’t think that’s what you’re referring to.

#280 - April 8, 2014, 8:05 p.m.

This is not an acceptable comment and we will not spend time disparaging each others culture on this forum.

I do think it’s fair to say though that in many countries there is some unrest with the level of political power being wielded by smaller groups (note I’m making 0 value judgement on the concept itself, but it’s fair to say the idea exists) and this idea can sometimes be extended to an argument of wealth disparity. That unrest may be being projected into this environment, but I still see no evidence of that being an issue in GW2.

#467 - April 10, 2014, 4:54 p.m.

This is spiraling. Let’s stop discussing possible “solutions”. Before discussing a solution you must first prove a problem. I have yet to see any evidence internally or externally that there is a problem.

Speculation on player wealth is not evidence of a problem.
An anecdote is not evidence unless it demonstrates a systemic problem.

#470 - April 10, 2014, 5:10 p.m.

Flippers increase liquidity and bring prices closer to equilibrium, almost always lowering prices and providing preferences to other players. I see no reason why anyone would want to stop that.

#472 - April 10, 2014, 5:25 p.m.

This is a virtual economy, you may not assign the same speculative rules.
Read through why increasing wealth inequality is bad for a real economy and then apply that setting to gw2 as an argument.

PS Eve does not have a global economy.

#482 - April 10, 2014, 5:53 p.m.

phys.7689:

John Smith.4610:

This is spiraling. Let’s stop discussing possible “solutions”. Before discussing a solution you must first prove a problem. I have yet to see any evidence internally or externally that there is a problem.

Speculation on player wealth is not evidence of a problem.
An anecdote is not evidence unless it demonstrates a systemic problem.

Logic and reasoning are the only evidence we can have at our disposal, data points are something only you have access to.

Heres why having wealth disparity is bad.
People with an abnormal amount of wealth control the value of highly desirable items.

Now im not going to say they are manipulating or whatever, but the fact is, if you want to get an item that is highly desirable, you have to compete with people who can make much more than you can in the same time frame on the market.

Imagine you and a rich man have both lived your life in the pursuit of cool cars. Bill makes a cool car. You cannot compete with rich man for this car, even if you have put in equal work, because he makes more per unit of time than you do. In fact his earnings are geometric (to a limit) while yours are only additive.

Now, while this might be ok, if he was a better car man than you, he is not, he is simply better at making money.

Essentially endgame is controlled by the wealthy

This is the kind of post I mean when I say evidence. I don’t require numbers I require a coherent idea that makes sense in this setting. If I think it’s valid I’ll be researching it myself (assuming I haven’t already).
This one I have researched though. My response is a couple of points:
1. MMOs have homogeneous good, this means there’s no differentiation from your item from someone else’s copy of that same item. This comes into play because it rules out quality control/competition.
2. I know you said it already, but I’ll restate, that prices of high end goods aren’t being controlled.
3. The prices of high end goods are VERY close, if not exactly the same, to what they would be without any “TP Barons” wanting those items. There’s too much velocity for individual rich people to influence the supply/demand equation all that much, which is the only control they have if they aren’t manipulating prices.

#602 - April 11, 2014, 3:53 p.m.

Essence Snow.3194:

That’ll I can agree with. If we ever get access to some hard data, we’ll be in a much better place to say the least.

Please explain to me what your process would be for proving your theories if you had the data.

#612 - April 11, 2014, 4:12 p.m.

Essence Snow.3194:

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

That’ll I can agree with. If we ever get access to some hard data, we’ll be in a much better place to say the least.

Please explain to me what your process would be for proving your theories if you had the data.

Start by seeing if there was a wealth gap, how large if present, and if it was growing. Then I could go from there.

This does not answer my question. Feel free to make assumptions as you go, fork the ideas as if drawing a decision tree. This is how I would recommend beginning the analysis with or without data.

#631 - April 11, 2014, 4:45 p.m.

DavidSev.6978:

Here what I want from the stats: I want to know how many players flip stuff, and what percentage of trades that is.

Doesn’t need to be an accurate figure, just a ball-park will do.

As to how to get that… It’s too late for me to properly engage my brain but I’m thinking get a month moving average of every players buys and sells for each item, and compare the variance between the number brought and sold. A flipper will be selling a similar number to what they brought, and a “normal” player will have most items being either mostly brought or mostly sold.

And then break it down by market. (EG T1 mats, dyes, weapons, etc)

If flippers only count for a few percent of trades, then who cares. If they are 90% then it’s a very important issue. A figure could be interesting though.

Interesting, but meaningless unless you’re interested in the GW2 playerbase’s personal preferences.

#651 - April 11, 2014, 5:56 p.m.

Prince, you’re not helping the discussion, if you continue to resort to ad hominem you won’t be welcome anymore.

#669 - April 11, 2014, 7:06 p.m.

Hey all,

Please stay on-topic and avoid the personal digs at each other. We do welcome the discussion and debate, but only if it stays on-topic and folks aren’t taking shots at each other. Thanks for your understanding.

#1071 - April 16, 2014, 7:02 p.m.

Essence Snow.3194:

You can quote that all day long but it wont be improving your position.

Like I mentioned b4 I am not going to do a whole write up on something that he already has information on. That’s busy work that serves no purpose but to amuse him, which I’m not gullible enough to do. It’s asking someone to run through hoops when there’s no need for it.

If he releases wealth distribution data I’ll be more than happy to oblige.

I fail to see how requesting that you lay out your proposed method for proving there is a problem is “busy work”. This is how science is done, create a hypothesis, create a test method, carry out a test. I’m sorry if this sounds pedantic.

#1073 - April 16, 2014, 7:14 p.m.

Essence Snow.3194:

That’s how science is done when you don’t already have the information. If you have the information the prep work is mostly pointless.

Why won’t you release the data like you did early on?

There’s a whole thread about it. Releasing information like that is incredibly time consuming and wildly expensive and it can’t be at the top of my priority list at the moment, because I have a lot of things to do. I come to the forums to still attempt to give you answers and interact with the community with what limited time I have.

#1095 - April 17, 2014, 1:02 p.m.

Rouven.7409:

The other would be the emotional side which always be dismissed as anecdotal evidence because no one is measuring it (e.g. surveys, exit interviews), or to phrase this better – measuring this would need additional steps and due to the nature of emotions (e.g. ragequitters) are not as accurate.

I actually do have ways of measuring the emotional side, but the forums are only one variable and have to be compared to other sources of data. I would definitely not use surveys or exit interviews as they are massively biased data sources and I personally am not a fan of either in this setting.

#1098 - April 17, 2014, 1:17 p.m.

I definitely would not consider the data “complete”, but you are correct that in large sets it’s telling and accurate. The specifics, I’m afraid, are proprietary at this point.

#1099 - April 17, 2014, 1:18 p.m.

Wanze.8410:

Rouven.7409:

John Smith.4610:

I actually do have ways of measuring the emotional side, but the forums are only one variable and have to be compared to other sources of data. I would definitely not use surveys or exit interviews as they are massively biased data sources and I personally am not a fan of either in this setting.

Interesting. Are you able to elaborate or give a general example of how this works? How accurate would you deem that way of measuring? I’m sure there are ways to establish patterns and cross referencing them (in-game TP browsing perhaps?) but surely this data cannot be complete, although I assume it will average out over the masses.

At the end of his shift he simply calculates, how much rare weapons have been thrown into the mystic forge. Destroying rare weapons generates players tears. The more rares are thrown in, the more tears. Thats how you accurately measure the emotional side.

Tears are the source of my evil powers, but not a source of data…………yet.

#1208 - April 18, 2014, 1:28 p.m.

Gene Archer.8560:

tolunart.2095:

What you need to do is demonstrate how to determine whether there is a problem and JS can plug in the numbers and see if there is some merit to your claims.

I already did this. It was ignored outright. And I don’t mean JS said “I put in the numbers, there’s no problem”

I mean he never even responded.

I honestly don’t know to what you’re referring, maybe I missed it?