Controversial - Kill the Economy

Now this one will get a LOT of people riled, but I'll pre-empt that by stating that those who hate this idea the most will be those who play GW purely for the economy.
I also in no way, shape or form expect this to be implemented, even though one of the benefits to ANet would be killing off the eBay gold market.

Kill the economy.
Destroy it, dispatch of it, remove the need for it.
In a game, I see no need for a market that tries to emulate real-world economies.
At the moment, players are beginning to feel more and more disenfranchised with what little reward they get for playing GW PvE. Only those who play the market and continuously farm can afford to get their hands on the best bling.
And yet quest rewards have actually gotten worse.
Where you used to receive skills for completing quests, now you just receive a piffling amount of money, some XP and maybe something you can trade for a key or superior salvage / ID kit.
There is no reward for completing a hard quest line, just a "Well done, have some pocket change" from the quest giver.
So...
Make max armour free as and when you find the crafter and do his quest.
Do the same for weapons.
Make all dyes free, and I'm sure you'll see a LOT more variety in characters.
Make "Bling" armour and weapons a reward for completing a quest.
Unlock armour and weapon mods for completing quests, then let the players apply them to their armours at will in outposts in much the same way as the PvP gear window works.

Cons:
You would lose player-to-player trade, resulting in a loss of social interaction.
Drops would become non-existant. There would be no point after all, and even I must admit to a little pleasure when something cool drops off of a monster.

Pros:
People could not exploit and scam others.
Local chat would clear up miraculously, allowing people to use the channel for socialising.
The eBay market would disappear.
You could use someone's appearance in game to judge their competence to some degree at least.
With more options more widely available, there would be greater individuality.
Players would be able to better advise others on builds knowing that everyone would have access to the best gear, improving player knowledge overall.

Let the flames begin...

No flames, but if the current GW games does away with the PvE gradual economic progression and reward system in favor of "get it quick, get it now!", then there's nothing for players to earn and strive for. Without allowing characters to gradually evolve, re-playability dies out very FAST.

Hence the quest rewards.
Make the most prized stuff hard to get by making players do a series of quests in a chain, and for the really good stuff, make each one of those quests "Master" in difficulty.
This whole idea relies on the developers constantly adding new stuff to the game, in the shape of quests, gear, whatever.
THERE'S your replayability problems solved.

That would require anet to consistently update content, which goes against their business model.

You are kidding right?, well ok the economy might seem to be a bit off in GW, but basicly because it's thons of pll out there following way overpriced forum lists, you can usaly get the best items for 1/3 of guide prices If you spend some time serching the marked.

Wouldent that result in a lot of pll constantly nagging their guild for a droknar run "for free as there is no economy", and a bunch of pll running around with identical wepons, and probably wery identical builds to suport the wepon?

Yeah right???? I think you would find whole towns full of black armors, the dye economy actualy makes the variety, as the prices go up and down pll will buy different colors. If you think about the dye mixing part, I realy think it's way to many out there loving black.

Combine that with your free armor of choice, now you got a lot of black pll with identical armors (as the more expencive ones do look cooler) identical wepons and identical builds running around wondering what to do after they finished the storymode in PvE.....

ok ok, im putting it way on the edge here, but removing the economy?

I'd lose interest in the game. I like making money to buy things, I like taking that time to make that money, I don't want things handed to me and I don't want things hard. I think that would take away a lot of the fun with the game.

Unfortunately, the cons far out-weigh the pros here.

Reasons behind economy in games:
Create a basis of "Good items" vs "crappy items". This is a very easy way for newer players to realize what is worth finding compared to what is crappy even though it sounds good at first.

Gives people a reason to play the game, when not questing. If there were no economy, you would quest to the end of the game, then probably quit. There would be no need to talk to anyone in town, since most of the time (just go to the temple of balth) it turns into a raunchy internet chat room thanks to one dick joke.

Makes finding items worth the trouble / Gives you a reason to spend the money you've aquired. If you just collect money, as is the case in single-player RPG's, you end up saying "what the hell can I spend my money on? 9,999,999 Phoenix Downs?". When there is a market for items, you can make money / spend money depending on your current financial situation.


Those are just a couple reasons as to why an economy is worth playing games for.

On the other hand:

Inflated prices thanks to shady businessmen causes a lot of frustration when you really just need a weapon but collector's weapons are just crappy / never have the right combination of mods you seem to be looking for.

example: Ghial's Staff. It's widely advertised as "the best MM staff in the game." This is false. It's not an MM staff, or it would have corpse exploitation benefit in some way. It's a Death Magic staff. Just because it's Death Magic doesn't mean it's only usable by MM spec's. If anything, The Nightbringer is a better MM staff if only for it's 40% faster casting speed. Getting that Flesh Golem out faster than the Ghial's wielder makes that "omg uber" staff worthless.


Greedy players will, instead of doing what you should do with in-game items: sell them / use them in-game, will turn to Ebay to sell these farmed items for real life money. First of all, I want to meet the people that buy green's from Ebay, so I can get them to buy me stuff since they obviously have a very disposable income. Secondly, what kind of person even thinks to sell something they found in the game on a website designed for REAL items?

Scandalous. That's really all there is to that.



Basically, without an economy, we might as well be playing Solitaire with a chat room.

The problem with proposal is that it requires more overhead manpower than what the game's non-subscription model can handle. Also, quests are generally good for only 1 run per character before it loses general player interest (no more surprise factor).

The replayability problem hasn't been solved if manual intervention is required to keep players interested.

Games like Diablo1 + 2, and consequently GW, have proven random treasure drop system that appeal to the general masses. Randomness = surprise factor = sustainable living, interactive economy. Get rid of this random drop system, and you lose the popular player base.

Let me start off by saying I don't do much trading. Only when I get something really good dropped do I attempt to do other than merch it. I also don't farm much. I have one area I go to if I'm low on cash, but I try to keep a good nest egg. I don't spend much, so I don't farm much. That being said:

While I agree on the money, I actually like getting an id or salvage kit. It saves me money since I was doing the quests anyway.
If you make things free you do take away the fun of getting them, as someone already stated. There is a great satisfaction in earning something you want.
"Bling" Armor is a reward for a quest. Its called Obsidian Armor.
Here,again, I like things the way they are. I can see the upside of having weapon mods always accessible(it would certainly help put together a weapon to go with your build) but definitely not for armor. I, too, enjoy seeing that gold drop come off. I don't pvp, but I do keep track of the mods I unlock. I am most proud of the progress I've made on certain superior runes.

On one side yes, but the other side is that 'uber' accounts would still be sold. People would also simply start paying to have quests done for them.
Just as some people can be seen to be competent through their FOW armor? Appearance shouldn't be used to judge competence(same with titles), and won't show the difference between a competent character that doesn't want to bother with fancy gear, and an Ebayer that does.
True to a certain degree. There are several factors in why people show individuality: they want a certain item for prestige, or its all they could afford. If anybody could get anything through a simple quest(not even like FOw which has a high cost), then desiribilty goes down and you'll see a lot of people simply stop caring. They'll end up making the same choices for different reasons, and 'individuality' of appearance will not change.

But the biggest factor in my disagreement with making items questable, with no gold involved, no materials involved, is that I want a challenge. I want a purpose in the game that my character can go for as I write his story. I want a goal for him, whether it be to get GMC title or simply to be able to switch to an armor I like better. If you start making things easier, people will start getting bored.

But that's just my two cents

I don't even know the rough percentage of ebayers playing GW, but even if they make up 50%, why should the rest of us have the gameplay ruined in an attempt to get rid of them.

So far, the only armor for which I have spent time collecting materials, is my warrior's 1.5k Kurzick. But now I like the looks of the Vabbian for my mesmer, so I have a new goal outside finishing the game. This keeps your interest in the game and gives you a sense of accomplishment when the goal is reached.

So, your suggestion would take away that pleasure from my type of player just to punish ebayers. Who would just quit GW and move to a more exploitable game, leaving the rest of us with nothing to work towards.

When I see FoW armour in game, the cynical side of me automatically thinks "They eBayed the gold to get that". I know that there's a lot of players out there who don't do this, but come on, all FoW armour is about is cash. The quest to get the armour itself is trivial.

As for the devs having to add quests, I'm not saying add more areas or even add more monsters. Quests themselves seem to be very easy to put together thanks to GW's robust instanced world and the way it can change depending on the player's quest log. A quest is basically an NPC quest giver, a page of text with a "Yes / No" response and some monsters placed somewhere in an existing map.
Come on, that's not equivalent to writing a whole new chapter.
I'm just surprised we haven't seen MORE of these quests added. But ANet seems intent on pumping out special weekend after special weekend, adversely affecting the economy by creating over-farming for a short period of time.
If they put half the work into providing weekly simple quest updates that they put into, say, the Dragon Festival, we'd have hours and hours of new quest material on a weekly basis.
Players couldn't rush through a quest chain that was updated weekly, and could work towards a reward at the end. There's your sense of achievement and reward rolled into one.
Focussing purely on financial rewards distorts the world and enforces this ridiculous economy GW has.

It also makes completely the WRONG thing more valuable than others.
For example, the tried and trusted 15^50 weapon mod.
For PvE, there are a LOT better mods out there if you think about your build for more than 2 seconds (+15% in stance, +15% -5e, +15% -10AL etc.), but the majority of players never even consider these due to how inflated the price on 15^50 gear has become. Players are being misinformed by market trends.
Another perfect example is sundering weapons.
Generally considered utter junk by the more experienced players, sundering commands ridiculously high prices and has become so ridiculously popular that the majority of greens in Nightfall now have this, quite frankly, junk mod.

If people had free access to weapons with a wide range of modifications, they would be able to better choose a weapon based on the circumstances they find themselves in. Better informed players makes for better grouping due to people knowing their stuff.
As it stands, we end up with thousands of players forking over ridiculous amounts of their hard-earned (or ebayed) gold for substandard junk because it has mods that the market has made seem attractive due to restrictive pricing.

It's positively laughable.
I look at my gear, and whilst not being the height of bling, it's the best damn gear I can get (as far as I'm concerned). I have weapons for every circumstance I can imagine, a set of each of the best armours with alternate helmets and gloves depending on build, and the best part? It was all dirt cheap, or even free thanks to collectors.

Now the pain in the arse is this gear is taking up ridiculous amounts of storage, something that is only needed if you have an economy.
If I were able to change my gear in the same way PvP players could, I wouldn't NEED storage. I could pick and choose equipment depending on what I'd unlocked. In fact, given that ANet has always been big on trying to integrate PvE and PvP, I can't understand why such a model isn't ALREADY implemented.

So make that another argument for ditching the economy: No more storage.
This means players won't be able to horde stuff and falsely inflate or deflate prices based on how much stuff they release into the economy.

Other examples of expanding replayability?
Look at the impact titles have had on the PvE game.
People LOVE them. They love the idea of being able to pimp their achievements under their names and other players aspire to some of the titles they see on others. I recently made another suggestion regarding Kill Counts and monster bestiaries, both things that are probably incredibly easy to implement for the devs. These things could also be linked to titles, as suggested in that thread.
Suddenly there's a whole plethora of things to pursue instead of just more money, all of which require minimal effort on behalf of the devs.
Hell, they've already linked salvage chance percentages to one of the titles, so let's take this even further: you can only get certain skins if you've achieved a certain rank in a title...

With a little imagination, there really is no need at all for an in-game economy.

I like to make some crafting NPC a quest rewards, but... if you want instant stuff.. go to PvP.

The only thing we should get rid of is any transaction over 100k. That maimum is there for something.

Starting off an argument with a character attack on the opposition is very poor form. It's also a fallacy which you can read more about here.

I question whether that is actually a benefit, but let's leave that issue aside for the moment.

Need? This is a game, there's no conception of necessity, only desire (aside from logican entailment based on desire of course). It is not a question of needing an economy, it is a question of wanting one. And the reason Anet wants one is because it allows for a good drop reward system. In multi-player games with no economy rewards are meaningless. You can have merely what everyone else does, since everyone is capable of doing the same quests and areas. Lack of variety is boring and unfun, and neither of those sell games.

The system you propose is effectively the one that currently exists for PvP characters. How much variety do you see there? Prevalence equals meaninglessness. If I have something and so does everyone else, what I have is worthless. Worthless things make for bad rewards. Further, and I see that you note this, you highly reduce the amount of player to player interaction in a game based around that very idea. This is a very, very bad thing. In any multi-player persistent game you want to do two major things. First, you want to maximize player interaction. How many times have you seen someone say they stuck around for the people? Player interaction is one of the, if not the largest, reason people play multi-player games. The second thing you want to do is make sticking around worth their time. If they love the people and hate the game, the group just goes elsewhere. I can play with my buddes at NWN2 just as easily as GW, and if NWN2 is a better game then why should GW see my money? You have to encourage people to stick around. No one does this better than WoW, and WoW works off of one single axiom: Always reward people. WoW understands that people want to compete with their peers. They want to show off and be "uber" and "1337" and whatever else these sort of people say. By constantly offering rewards you give people incentive to stick around and play it one level further. These sort of people then go on to buy WoW XPacks, or GW1.1 or whatever for the game they're on.

Excellent point, GW needs a better reward system. The problem with your position is you saw a bad reward system and said, "We can fix this by removing rewards altogether!" instead of "We better make an improved reward system." The former doesn't work, the latter does. It's just that simple.

/signed

liked the idea overall

Example of social interaction in current trade:

A: WTS 1337 sword !!111!1!1!shift1
B: how much?
A: offer
B: 7k?
A: Noob!! "£$%^&*() it's worth at least 100K $%^&*

You bet I'll miss that kind of social interaction.

Make it so that the *elite* armors can only be obtained by doing missions like urgoz or the deep, with free dyes there should be more than enough customization anyway.

DIH49:
If you read my next post, I proposed very definite rewards that could exist WITHOUT an economy. Also, as far as social interaction goes, are you REALLY saying that "WTS" and "WTB" (but mostly "WTS") are valid forms of social intercourse?
Without the trade in local and hopefully a larger amount of quests to choose from with very definite rewards, local chat would hopefully consist more of people actually talking to eachother and discussing the difficulties associated with said quests.
I would hope that this would create a stronger community feel.

As for your argument regarding worth, it swings both ways. What value does anything have in the current economical system when anyone can go out and farm gold to buy the stuff they want?
You only have to look around to see how many people are having problems with Nightfall's difficulty, so not everybody could have something if you made the quests hard enough to do. Even better, if you had to work with others to achieve something, you're increasing social interaction again.

There's one fantastic example in the game at the moment of something that can't be bought and requires some dedication from the player to get: the UW Black Widow pet.
People form groups to go and get this pet, they spend time learning tactics from one another, and other people desire the pet and see it as something to aspire to. And there's no money involved at all (aside from the trivial UW entry fee).

I think the devs must know who uses ebay for gold.Or it must be easy to monitor.If a guy has 10k in his account then he gets 10 trades of 100k within 2 minutes from the same player i would be 90% sure he has not just sold items worth 1 mil.if that same person is found trading 1 mil again later on then anet must be able to be track it.If the game remembers every 0.1% of the map i have explored keeping track of high traders must be easy enough to do.

my old guild had a guy never rearly famed within 2 weeks he had fow armour for 2 of his chars.He might have had the greens of all greens but to be honest it does make you think he has got his gold from a gold site.

I do think its funny that people feel the need for status so badly they would spend £20-£40 just to wear armour,weapons in a game.

A fairly base and coarse form, but it is absolutely social interaction. But aside from this, regular trading occurs fairly commonly between all sorts of people. From the elovers trading each other presear flowers to my trading a sigil to my Guild Leader for a new hall. All of this would go away if you had an economy removal (as so long as trading exists economies will arise).

It wouldn't because you run into the issue of rarity again. So long as everyone has a thing, that thing is worthless. If you were to make all rewards quest based (like WoW) then the only way to make the rewards valuable is to make them rare. Like WoW, you may need to do the quest 30 times to get your Epic Carrot Top and another 30 to get your Epic Carrot Base. Of course, this does essentially the same thing we already have with weapons (though not armor). You go farm and rarely get a good drop that is then worth a whole bunch precisely due to its rarity. In your proposed system you don't want rarity. Since nothing is rare nothing is valuable, and since nothing is valuable no one goes after the things in the first place. And if they aren't going after the rewards then they certainly aren't making groups to get them (they'd just use heroes anyways, but that's a separate point).

Quite a bit thanks to the time function of money. Everyone knows that money = time, and pretty much everyone values their time to some degree ort another. So spending a certain amount of time at something confers a certain value corresponding with that time spent. This is the same way it works in Real Life. After all, one could argue that farming and getting a job are essentially the same thing. From your argument it would follow then that because I had a job that nothing in the economy was valuable. Absurd, wouldn't you agree?

A vague few have a difficulty with NF. The campaign is designed so that on average players can get through it while playing absolutely terrible builds. The vast majority of players would not have this difficulty, and therefore would achieve the reward you propose. Then we run into the problem of rarity again, which I mentioned in detail in my earlier post.

There's also an important point that you neglected to respond to. Namely, that people like playing the market game. People enjoy it, and a lot of people enjoy it. So many people in fact that calls for a better market system have been one of the largest, if not the largest, requests from the playerbase. When your customers really like something you do, the last thing you want to do is stop doing it. At least if you want those customers to stick around.

People are just way to different for communism to work. It's the age old flaw of communism, equality looks nice on the paper but the base requirement isn't met. How can everyone be equal when they're clearly not?
It allready manifests itself in something as basic as love.
I love my girlfriend because she is different from the rest, not because she is one of the horde of clones. She is special to me.

You need to quest to get the Elite Sunspear armourer available. You need to play through half the game (which includes a good number of quests) to get Vabbian armor, which requires rubies... and guess what, you can get those rubies by questing.

I get all my money from quest rewards, since I don't farm (and never have, not fun for me). Just playing the game through has gotten me enough for four 15k armor sets, and almost every skill.

/signed
/no-way-in-hell-its-gonna-happen-tho

I chest run the end of game chests and make a lot of money very fast. I bought books when nightfall came out for 50k and sold the greens I got from them for 200k. So I'm very rich now . And I would do away with it in a second to get rid of the economy and have people actually trying for the less econmically beneficial parts of the game like challenge missions, elite missions (yaya urgoz' bow, but do the math and the average gold rate you get is 20 times slower than solo farming).

Major quests/campaigns would be done for skill points instead of gold. You remember glint quests? and how they offered like 50k experience for the last one? and yet nobody did them anyways because they gave no gold? People would do them if it offered 50k GOLD tho. This is ridiculous and stupid.

Admittedly you would lose some people to the OMGWTFNOMOREGOLDANETDIESNOW people but you always get those. But no more eonomy would mean so much mroe fun in the entirely ignored areas of the game.

This, of course, will not happen tho. I know it.

/not signed

Even though I'm not rich, in the trading circles aware of prices, etc. With the npc collectors, crafters, green's, etc. and 1.5k versions of armor. I don't have the "bling" as you put it / able to afford it.

But you do have a compiling argument and to be honest if Anet implemented it... I would like the changes. I think it just too radical to implement and feel the sheer number of people leaving would kill anet.

I want quest/hard to get non-traded able/gold armor badly.

Honestly I dont think many people would leave. Instead of saying OMG I HAV A KRYSTLA SWORD they'd be like OMG I BET ALL TEH MASTOR MISSIONS or crap like that.

Quoted For Truth!

With less rewarding reward to earn, (as we are all greedy gold driven work machine consumer w**** deep down) What would be the "carrot" for end-game game play? What else could you fill that void with?

Economy are part of the fun of a online game. Granted that many over use it, and GW's economy has driven to a unforeseen level, but it still should be there.

GW gold need to be as they are, which are currency in a game (much like the monopoly money). I would "Hope" there be less emphasis on gold and gold farming, but more on true value of game play.... but don't see that happening anytime soon....

With less rewarding reward to earn, (as we are all greedy gold driven work machine consumer w**** deep down) What would be the "carrot" for end-game game play? What else could you fill that void with?

Economy are part of the fun of a online game. Granted that many over use it, and GW's economy has driven to a unforeseen level, but it still should be there.

GW gold need to be as they are, which are currency in a game (much like the monopoly money). I would "Hope" there be less emphasis on gold and gold farming, but more on true value of game play.... but don't see that happening anytime soon....

I'm sorry but every time I see one of these threads the gist of them is the same. People that want the economy nerfed so they can afford what amounts to vanity skins. How many times has it been said both by forum members and devs that you do not need to have a 15^50 sundering Crystalline sword of fortitude to be competitive in this game. In fact with the inscriptions it's really only the skin that drives high prices now. On that note I see no reason to dismantle the economy, which with the green drop weekends and other measures taken by Anet, has become much more stable.

/not signed

sorry but that is just an absolute load of rubbish.

Anyone in-game can afford anything they want, if they just have the sense to collect every item dropped and every piece of gold dropped.

Sell everything to the trader and you soon make more then enough gold for anything. You can make 2-5k easily doing one single quest and picking up items to sell.

There is nothing wrong with the economy as it is.

Yes we have high prices on certain items, but thats how it should be.

If prices didnt fluctuate by demand and supply, then we would have everyone owning the best armor and the best weapons.

People would have nothing to strive for. You wouldnt have people looking at another persons armor and thinking "i wish I could afford that", because they could.

You have to also remember that when items are first added to traders, they are very cheap. They only increase due to sales. So if prices didnt change, everything in the game would be easily accessible.

Or Anet would have to introduce items and automatically set them to high prices. Something which would soon cause outcry.

Because prices are determined by real-world physics such as supple and demand, then we cant go crying to Anet about them.

Just save your gold FFS!

Thank you for reminding me about what I forgot. I got some sleep, so now I remember what it was I wished to say about mods.
This is not Wow. Any emphasis on gear is initiated by the player him/herself. Finding a weapon with a 'bad mod' will do one of the following:
1)Make you change your build,to effectively use that mod(if its the best weapon you have), thereby changing your playstyle and making you be more creative.
2)Not have any effect because you like the way it looks, and you're too skilled to need a different mod.

Its nice to have the right mod for the right situation, but GW is about skill, not gear. That's why collector weapons have max stats, collector armor has them too. 1.5k gives slightly better stats but any armor higher than that is purely cosmetic.

Oh and on the issue of the green drop weekends and whatnot disrupting the economy with overfarming:thats actually the opposite. Watch this progression:
1) Weekend introduced
2) Greens 'overfarmed'
3)this means there is an influx of the popular weapons(because if you're going to take advantage of the weekend you might as well get the popular/expensive ones to sell)
4)prices go down due to the influx of popular weapons, thereby balancing the economy(in other words keeps it down below 100k+ecto)
5)poorer people can now afford a previously expensive weapon, which stats can be replicated with the right mods anyway.

But that's just my two cents

oh and /unsigned. I do think the economy needs work, but it doesn't need removed. And quests do need better rewards.

This weekend just netted me well over 150k just selling basic greens, which is more than enough to afford any full set of armor minus FoW and Vabbian. This was done over a 2 day time span.

GW gives players plenty of in-game gold-making opportunities. Like real-life, that wealth won't come to people automatically -- they still have to apply time and effort to move ahead and obtain the desired gear.

Also, max stat armor and weapons are ridiculously easy to get (collectors gear, 1k armors, etc). Vanity skins (crystallines, fellblades, elemental blades, 15k armors, etc) have more "bling" factor, but none have any more combat effectiveness that their common counterparts.

This thread's intent really sounds more like green bile and sour grapes to me. There are plenty other of combat-oriented games that don't bother with any monetary system, but they don't command the nearly the same popularity level as the economy-driven titles like GW, WoW, etc...


EDIT: yes, /notsigned!!!

I'd like the economy to remain. But increase the haves and decrease the have-nots in the game. Triple green drop events would be great as a 1 or 2 week long event. Then people can get more greens to equip themselves and their heros with. And the prices for them will be less in the market, making them more affordable. Besides with more greens around sellers will have more to sell so yes, the money schwindlers in a way may still have a way to grub some money off people. If they spend the hours to get that many greens, that's fine. Hopefully people will notice and only offer reasonable prices, to even things out.

Dyes would be nice if sold in a fixed and affordable price.

Candy canes would be great if they're available all year, so you don't have to give up 1k for one.

Back in the Canthan green triple drop event, I had fun trading greens just for the heck of it. Because the other person and I had two of the same greens, so we made a trade so we each had one of each of the two. We didn't care about the supposed "value" of it in the market. That's the kind of trading I like to see.

I don't agree with getting rid of it completely. I would rather things be set a certain price and not change. The devs kinda already do this with adjusting the drop rates/salvages of items to affect supply. If they want something worth more, it drops less. I have seen soo much iron and wood that I am pretty sure they don't want it to be worth anything like 1K a piece.

I just don't see the point in having fluctuating prices when they can influence the supply anyways to alter prices, and the economy doesn't work exactly like a real economy. Not overly important though.

QFT

You can get over half of the gem requirement just be questing and exchange with trade contracts. You can salvage the other half, and the quest reward money is enough for the armor.

I'm also not for getting rid of it entirely but certain aspects need to be killed and fortunately ANET is already taking steps in doing this.

The economy really shouldnt have gotten to the point where items could sell for 100k +ectos, especially in a game like GW.

Uhh Wrong. You need 7 contracts to get ONE gem. There's about 21 quests that give you contracts per character. So that's 3 gems out of 32 that you need. How is that half? And salvaging is a crap shoot...good luck trying to salvage 29 gems.

Unless there's some repeatable quest that gives you contracts hidden away somewhere that I dont know about.

Well the point I have beef with in the economy is not the "bling" factor but the mindset. With a removed economy, focus would perhaps be shifted from stupid solo farming to perhaps challenge missions or *gasp* even a shift to majority pvping?

/not signed.
I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy having some sort of economy in the game. While I admit that the economy is far from perfect, I struggle to think of any other system that would provide the same incentives and feeling of achievement that would keep me interested.
Now, I am only a casual player (and by that I mean I only have time for a couple of hours a day) and have never had the time/inclanation to farm. But at the moment I am trying to build up to Vabbian armor for my Mesmer, which I know is going to take me months to do. However, when I do achieve this my head is probably going to explode with excitement and I will feel a real sense of accomplishment. If there was another system that could reward me for those months of playing, while also providing me the excitement of finding that next rune/dye/weapon drop, I might get behind it, but I don't see one.
On the other hand, I agree entirely with the quest reward system, some quests seem hardly worth the effort (still do them, I am a completionist after all ).

Then why even bother posting this faulty excuse of an aspiration? Destroy the economy, make armor, dyes, high-end cosmetic material goods free to everyone...wow...you just crushed my source of accomplishment. I already do all the quests, go for masters rankings on missions, and explore every nook of every map sicne the release date. You know what drives me? The economy...and I don't mean that by making money.

I enjoy collecting green weapons, armor sets, and various other goodies. Take away the time it takes to gain these items and you've taken away the reason for me to even try. "What, the armor is free?! Maximum ranking armor and items with the click of a mouse?! Why would this appeal to anyone? I hate when people whine about the economy, and how some abuse it, some are insanely loaded, some aren't, some are in the middle someplace, some can't afford this, some are scamming, some aren't sharing...ect..ect Holy dollar bills Batman! That's just like every economy in the world! That's just the way life is, and always has been. People ask for a utopian society of complete and utter perfection. You can't have it! There never has been, and I'm sure the first 100% stable economy won't be derived from Guild Wars. (No offense GW, I love you ) That's just the facts of life. Deal with it.

Going back to the qoute above, why post this if it won't get anyone anywhere or accomplish anything. All this thread opens is another chance to "flame". Someone just needs to close this thread. It serves no purpose.

As you stated, all it is is "bling." As long as you don't care about bling, the economy affects you. If you care about bling, you are helping the economy.

the idea wont be taken. Anet may look at the thread anyways tho to see the points peopel make abut the economy. I say keep it

Just as the real world. People on wall street make millions a day while the avg working man gets a small fraction.

Besides you need something to work towards or what's the point of playing. I do agree with the skills. Skills need to be given as quest rewards again. Anet has made many gold sinks to battle the bots introducing huge ammounts of gold into the econemy. Problem with this is it makes gold worth that much more $$$.

I don't mind and econemy just not one so dependant on gold.