Less than a month ago the Lover bow was a little over 300g. Twice now all the bows on the market have been bought and raised in price. First the guy put them back up for 500g and now they’re 700g.
So my question is will there be something put in place to protect the tp from being abused like this in the future from trolly people who have too much money?
Except right now the few people who are buying their legendaries are spending the money on gold sellers instead of anet, but, then again, we don’t know if anet or ncsoft has directly any involvement with those gold sellers. Who knows.
Goldsellers are a plague on the gaming industry, plain and simple, I would sooner associate with Ralphie from “The League”… much, much sooner
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/bltc/Gold-sellers-vs-BLTC/first#post581941
I hope that eventually the gem->gold conversion becomes comparable to the black market sellers in an economy where you feel like you can actually get something useful for your money. As it stands, I don’t feel as though I get enough bang for my buck in this economy from gems, and I refuse to support black market traders, so I just don’t spend any money at all; it is frustrating when I’d like to spend the money and get some value out of it, but don’t feel that I can.
This is impossible. If you look at the exchange value trends and the black market trends the black market will always move in sync with the exchange, but significantly cheaper. If it isn’t cheaper virtually nobody would use it, so their prices have to adjust to our prices. They’ll continue to undercut by 300%-500% no matter how cheap the exchange gets until they go out of business and there is no black market.
Couple of problems though:
1. Players control that market
2. If we were to step in and do that, we would inflate the economy and the extra value you were getting in real terms would be negligible
We are always adding new items to the gemstore and plan to do so. I have my own plans for the goldsellers, they just don’t know I’m coming for them yet.
Are you speaking of precursors or in general?
As soon as you begin referring to luxury goods as an inflationary issue I start skimming instead of reading. Within the last hour I’ve specifically said that you’re mistaking inflation for what is not inflation. Precursor prices aren’t changing due to inflation.
As soon as you begin referring to luxury goods as an inflationary issue I start skimming instead of reading. Within the last hour I’ve specifically said that you’re mistaking inflation for what is not inflation. Precursor prices aren’t changing due to inflation.
They are providing the mechanism for exponential earning of wealth via the TP, which, yes, indeed is driving inflation.
I’m a bit busy for the moment, can someone step in and explain why this isn’t true please?
You are mistaking increasing demand for rare items for inflation. Wealth consolidation does not cause inflation. Inflation is a measure of change in the value of currency (in this case gold), not the value of rare high demand items; it’s only really affected by the volume of gold in the economy, and the TP removes it.
No, inflation is not only affected by the volume of gold. It is also affected by demand. Stuff get more expensive when people demand it more.
Take for example a character that makes -say- 5g per day.
The first x days after hitting 80, the character buys useful things like exotic armor & weapons, fancy food and superior runes.
This drives the prices of those things up. Plain and simple. More demand. The character may have the same amount as before, but when all players are all after the same x items (say Superior runes of Divinity), the price go up.
Sure, you need more gold for prices to rise. But it is certainly not the only factor.
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Also… for an economic forum, few people here do not ask the most fundamental economic question: where does Anet gets their money?
They get their money from (only) two sources: selling games to new people and selling gems to existing players.
When prices of items, like dye or superior runes or exotics, are too high for people to grind for the gold, Anet makes money because a certain % of people will buy gemls to convert to gold.
And THAT is why prices are so high.
Not because players make them so high.
Not because of gold hording.But because Anet sets the parameters for these prices (they determine the droprates, they determine the uses, they determine the altrnatives) and it is in Anet’s intrest to have prices high enough that people buy gold with gems.
Personally, I do not have any problem with Anet manipulating the prices of items, to maximise their own income. Someone has to pay the bill for this great game!
I fully understand that a company needs to make money and since they only have two sources to make money03
It is perfectly reasonable that they ensure that they make money with gem-to-gold converters.But it is odd that most people that post economic theories here on the forums do not take the most basic economic law of the game into account: Anet needs to make money.
Several people on these forums have pointed out why this isn’t true. Mainly, the assumption that this is profit maximizing behavior is false.
Yes. The cost inflation of “luxury” items does indeed incentivize behaviors that then directly lead to inflation.
However, it’s more than that. Speculators can and do cause prices of goods being speculated on to increase due to the artificial demand created by those same speculators. The greater the wealth accumulation by the wealthiest players, the greater those players have the ability to manipulate the prices on the TP.
There have been numerous examples of real world markets that have been manipulated by speculators to levels that have nothing to do with consumer demand and consumers end up paying more for those commodities than they would if there were no speculators manipulating the markets.
As I stated previously, it’s worse here because there are no real world pressures to keep prices in check. Ordinary players can either grin and bear it, become speculators themselves, buy gold or quit the game. None of that effects the speculators and manipulators and even if things should reach a critical mass due to a player exodus from the game, causing the in game markets to collapse, they don’t lose anything other than imaginary money.
Inflation in this game is not because ordinary players are earning too much money. The same can be said about the US economy. Lower and middle income earners have seen wage stagnation or deflation over the past decade or more, yet real inflation has been increasing steadily. Ordinary Americans are not driving inflation, they are just getting by with less and less for every hour worked.
The same thing is happening in GW2.
When players that play actual game content see their earning rate remain stagnant, while the price of goods increases rapidly on the TP, then there is something wrong with the economy. When players feel they either need to play the market for profit or buy gold just to afford to play the game, there is something wrong with the economy.
The 15% “tax” on TP sales and the listing fee are gold sinks, but it’s still a much lower “tax” than in game gold sinks impose on players who actually play game content to earn currency. Not only can you earn a lot more money per hour playing the TP than playing game content, but you get to keep a much higher percentage of your earnings.
Scarcity just increases inflation. It isn’t a hedge against inflation. It also creates the environment for speculators and manipulators to earn the currency needed to truly demolish the economy.
Tightening supply of costly goods just rewards speculators, while making life more difficult for people just trying to play the game.
Centrally managed economies have no place in the real world, but if you are going to have a full time economist running your in game economy, that’s exactly what you would want. Tuning of supply, (and money sinks), to ensure that prices remain in a narrow range and limiting the opportunities for speculators and manipulators to push inflation.
I can see the value of a game that is an economic simulator, but that is not this game and the current economics of GW2 seem destined to eventually ruin the play experience of many players, seemingly just to preserve the right of the few to enjoy the role of market profiteers.
Several people made some really good posts explaining why what you think is wrong. This is really long diatribe with even more misunderstanding of economic theory and economic terminology. It’s time to sit back, do a bit of research and come up with a reasonable argument for what you are trying to say.
Let’s get back to the original topic. The OP was asking about stopping manipulators I believe, but there is two different ideas going on. One is the general term, and one is the price of precursors. Which are we speaking of?
