Controversial - Kill the Economy

We can’t make babies online. The last utility to compete and cooperate for in a virtual community is virtual money. You got to come up with something way outside the box to get a multiplayer computer “rpg” community to establish value not measured in “gil”.

I’m assuming that guildwars was not designed to have a competitive market, mostly because to compete in it one most spend their time doing so instead of spending time competing in player vs. player activities - the games ultimate purpose. If it were beneficial to win in pvp by playing the market it would be called grinding the way guildwars is set up. (One notable exception in mmorpgs is Eve online where the ultimate intention is to compete using the market)
I’m not sure if the evolution of this game is following the developer’s visions or community activities....maybe it’s an even mix of the two. But from what I assume was the original game design for “no competitive market” got put into perspective around the time sigils and ecto became a currency early in the game.
And so, because players will devise some sort of market value amongst themselves in any online rpg, Anet is making ways to keep virtual value valuable to its players while balancing it against the grind necessary to obtain these things for pvp purposes.

Another idea, if you want to end the press and win ebay problem you could simple remove all player-to-player trade features. Replace it with the often request trade and auction system. If put in right this could also reduce trade scams close to zero.
As for storage issues, I agree with you. Equipping your character’s items has become of as equal of importance as equipping your skillbar. If you're gonna make the investment to have a pve/pvp character your gonna need the inventory to hold all that gear.
I personally don’t have inventory problems, I got mule slots. Logging in and out for gear is annoying though.

On a side note, I like player to player interaction, but not through trade. I’ll go ahead and say that I don’t feel the trade spam in guildwars pulls players together, excluding the few serious market players that can brag to each other over their profits and earnings.
Guildwars economy is very lackluster and maybe even anti productive to this cause. (If you’ve ever turn off chat to avoid trade spam...)
Increasing player to player interaction is a whole different monster to tackle though.

A lot of people are posting post without really understanding what I'm saying.
I am NOT saying that goals should be removed, I am merely suggesting alternative methods of achieving those goals.
I am NOT saying that everything should be unlocked for everyone; I am saying that by improving quest rewards, one could achieve unlocks through adventuring and then have the flexibility to use those unlocks whenever they like.
Whether those unlocks be skins, weapon mods, runes, inscriptions, it's all the same. Quests should be designed with each of these things as a reward.
For more desirable things, quests should be given by hard-to-reach NPCs and consist of a good challenge.

As for you guys who enjoy playing the market, more power to ya. Personally I'd rather be playing the game as opposed to playing the market, but whatever floats your boat.

Removing the economy: Design document

1) No form of currency may exist anymore

- Gold is removed
- Materials are removed

Resource traders and merchants become obsolete, and are removed.

2) Linked systems are adjusted

- Dye is removed in present form, since there's no purpose for it to exist. Add armor customization to character screen
- Runes and rune traders are removed. There is no more need for them to be represented with physical objects. Add rune bonuses to character selection screen
- Armor traders can no longer function, since resources and money has been removed. Since armor can no longer be crafted, it's provided through character selection screen.

3) Additional side-effects.

- Since everyone gets all skills, there's no point for skill points or xp anymore.
- Make everyone level 20, since levels are also unbalancing

To sum up:

You want to give PvP characters access to PvE. In addition, you want each character to have all unlocks.

I won't even condone that, but if I had to guess, I'd say the first thing you look for in game is god mode. Then you play through the game in 2-3 hours on easy/hard mode unable to lose, and get satisfaction from beating the game.

What you fail to understand though, is why everyone else plays the game. There's nothing left to be said here.

But without economy, every single skill and every single object is worthless.

Economy (supply/demand) determines what is valuable and what isn't.

Why are some objects so expensive? They are rare drop. Nothing is worth a lot since it's hard to reach.

You propose removing economy, but you want rare/expensive items? This is paradox. You cannot have one without another.

Value of an item is defined with it's desirability vs. supply ratio. In your scenario, you have items, which are extremly hard to reach. So what? Once someone obtains it, they cannot trade it, they cannot give it to someone, they can show it.

What you are proposing, is creating a single player game. Each of those games exists in separate world, but none can influence another. So what, if I have Sword Of Thousand Truths. You can get it if you beat the game as well.

Then what. You have your Sword Of Thousand Truths. Do you think anyone will care? It's like posting a screenshot of you beating some game. Will anyone care?

Achievements are praised. In this system, there is no more achievement. Beating a mission is not an achievement no matter how hard, since it's inevitable. If you whack on it for long enough time, you'll get it. And then, the reward is the same for all.

Sorry but I entirely disagree with what the above post says (Edit: someone posted befire me, I meant the one above the one above). You're basically saying everyone plays the game to solo farm? We're talking about shifting the focus of goals i.e. quests/missions not solo farms.


Personally I see this as the best solution:

Make quests and missions have OBSCENELY more gold value than drops. I mentioned this somewhere else. But if every major quest gave 4-10k gold along with 4-10k experience, would anyone solo farm? no. Is this more realistic? yes (Woot that gargoyle with no pockets just droped 100gold pieces!!!). Would this switch the focus of play? yes. Would this Upend the market? no. It would create a mild increase in the gold which would naturally fluctuate prices.

I never mentioned solo farming. I mentioned progression.

Loot (is valued in gold) is obtained from mobs. As you play, you obtain more of it. This, in turn, is used to upgrade your equipment and progress your character. It's of course possible to bypass the system and solo farm, thereby progressing faster.

In case anyone wants to see how this turns out, there's a game that did this. It's called New Game Enhancements to Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided.

All loot is worthless. All weapons and armor are given to you as you level up. Some "rare" weapons are obtained as you complete certain end-game quests.

All lootable objects that were valuable were removed, or changed into decorative objects with no function.

Crafting is still in game, but it serves no purpose. Tens of thousands of items are still in game, but also serve no purpose.

At level 90, there is nothing left to do. You can, if you wish, collect items. These serve no function, and can be displayed in your house.

In order to complete the storyline, you do not need to perform a single purchase, or single trade. All weapons, as obtained through progression, are exactly the same across all characters.

The only objects that have incredible value, are the "pre-nerf" objects, the ones from before the change. Mostly, because they are no longer obtainable.

In under a year after these changes were made, subscriptions dropped to 20-30% of what they were before this happened.

Not obscenely, but a 500%-1000% increase will do.

Someting like...
Instead of 100 gold, 1000.
Instead of 200 gold... 1750
Instead of 500, 2500.
Instead of 1000, 5000..

And so on.

There are a couple of self exclusive quests in Istan, if you do one, earn 500 exp and 200 gold.
If you do the other, ou earn 2500exp, 15 sunspear points and 25 gold.
Everybody will chose the sunspear points, for they will alway prefer 25 sunspear points than 175 gold... so...

What about between 1750 and 250 gold?
A-haha...! with this situation they'll doubt!

Yup. a Sighlty increase in gold rewards will do, for now.

killing the econamy would kill off 1/2 of guildwars players.

1) "bling armor" as you call it, is a status symbol, make it a quest reward and anyone can get it

2) the fire imp dies... BLACK DYE! Sweet! I can get that armor now! <-- that kind of happiness would not happen

3)while we are at it, lets make it so you can not interact with others at all! this is gona be FUN!! (not )

you may want to kill the econamy, but 99% of all guild wars players dont. if you want to have no econamy, go to some 3 square mile communist country in southwestern europe, or hell

If you increase the amount of gold given by quests, or simply make it more easily obtainable, gold will lose its value. You got 1000 gold instead of 100? That item you want just went form costing 100 plat to 1000.

If you've ever read A Connecticut(sp?) Yankee in King Arthurs Court, you know what I'm talking about. One guy made more money, but paid more for his food. The other guy made less money, but paid less for his food. Yet the guy who made more money, and paid more, considered himself wealthier despite the fact that he was making about the same, if not less money than the other.

But that's just my two cents(and Mark Twains, too, I guess)

I like your world view, Goonter.

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In-game gold is a great tool to use in making people want to play the game, as it make them feel that they "earn" something for their work. It is preying on one of human's basic emotions, that which is the joyous feeling when you get as you "earn" and develop and grow stuff.... which in this case, the stuff is your vitural bank account.

The gold can not be taken away, but could be de-value and de-emphises in several way.

The question is what do you fill that void with? Especially to the end-game PvE? Recall the time you play the game for the story, progressing between mission to mission. For that time, the gold is plentful, and enough for most use, and you never mind too much about it... because your goal is to get through the story, and not earn gold.

However, once people reach end game, with no further set goal to do, they start setting goal for them self, which many choose farming and earn more gold than needed as goal.

If there is a continues goal (that is none-gold related) given to players (which are fun to do), than it will surely de-emphises the gold drive. PvP work, but not all PvEers would want to change to that. Would be interesting to see what other idea could be use to fill in that void.

The problem you have here is you're just suggesting a synonymous system. Ok, instead of being rare drop-wise things become rare because they're hard to quest to. That alone will create an economy (see books or amulets. Everyone can get them and people still buy them) as some people get them before others.

Then you've got the rarity problem again. If you make the rewards rare you have a functionally identical system to what we have already. Any changes would be trivial and a waste of time. If you make the rewards easily accessible then they lose all value and no one bothers for them. Customers leave due to lack of goals and Anet loses money. I really think there isn't any way for you to solve the rarity problem that doesn't rely on you mirroring the system we aleady have. I think it basically defeats your argument and I don't think you have a response to it. I certainly can't think of one.

While the anecdote makes a valid point the analogy is not the same as being presented by us and so is different. If all sources of "income" were multiplied by ten, yes there would be no change. However, if one source of "income" was increased while another remained the same, the income that was raised would be preferable.

In other words, if quests gave more more money, and drops remained the same, quests would be preferable to solo farming.

Once again, you didn't solve anything.

Let's say each quest gives 10k.

You introduce more money into economy.

How does economy compensate? The rare axe, that was 100k + 50e, now suddenly costs 100k + 500e.

Not only that. Since farming is no longer viable for cash, it becomes incredibly important for making money. Ironic? Nope.

Let's say you make a total of 500k by questing. Then there's no more quests.

But let's say you find a nice loot. An axe worth 100k + 500e. You wouldn't need to do another quest in your entire playtime.

So you have two options. Slowly do boring quests or boringly farm for a chance of rare drop. Chest running also becomes the norm. And since rewards are increased, Id and salvage kits, materials, resources, and all that must be increased in price as well.

All these: Let's fix the economy theories only address one single point - usually personal pet-peeve. The beauty of economic system is, that they balance themselves out. Most often, not for that particular individual.

For most, collecting gold and buying rarer and more expensive items is the most pleasurable goal.

What better way to say: Look at me, than by expensive armor, unique weapon, or snazzy title?

Gold, like money in real life, is an abstraction of an achievement. The green paper you pass around isn't worth burning to keep yourself warm. Yet a stack of $100 bills says something.

Titles? Sure. once again, you'd be left behind by power-levelers.

Missions? I'm sure you'd be happy to see players who finish entire content in under 24 hours.

Quests? Yep. People run every single one.

What is the common line here?

Competition.

This is why people play online games. Gold is one way of saying I'm better than you. Pvp score is another. Titles yet third. Items, dyes, ....

All online games are about "I'm better than you". Not only that, GW is CORPG. C stands for competitive.

There are games that offer much better story-driven experience. GW story is, afterall, rather bleak, unrewarding, and unimersive.

If you feel money is redundant, why care about it? If money and items are so worthless, why want that 100k +50e sword, when a quest reward is exactly the same stats, just different skin. Why want 15k armor, when the 1k armor is exactly as good.

Competition. All these items are just a way of saying: "I'm better than you." And all proposals to adjust the economy are merely a way of changing how this is achieved.

Some say they don't care about the others, or aren't competitive. But they still enjoy if a random person asks them about an item, advice on a quest, or help with a task. That too, falls under competition. Being more knowledgable than the others, being friendlier, ...

/signed

I know it's not going to happen, but i already suggested similiar ideas.

I hate to say this, but I think you're missing this important counter-point:

Everyone can already get max armor and weapons with little trivial effort. So why does a very large segment of the GW players sink many countless hours into questing and farming to obtain fancier looking versions of the same stat armor and weapons with fancier eye-candy?

Nothing dearly treasured is ever easily obtained. Remove the effort involved in getting any item or title, and that item/title loses its inherent worth. By making everything questable, the effort required to obtain the sough-after item goes away, and so does that item's value.

15>50 crystallines for 1g anyone? It'll take only 1 hour to quest for!

Uh. No.

sounds alright but i think it would take the fun out of getting armor and weapons

if they made quest for armors and weapons they would be forced to put the quest on Difficulty witch i know no one likes i havent even ben able to complete one of them

All that does is change the emphasis on HOW to make money, it doesn't change anything about the nature of economies. Ok, now to make gold you do quests instead of farm (you wouldn't of course, but that's a separate issue) but so what? How has that changed anything, made anything better? There's very very little difference between farming and questing. A GW quest is basically, "Go to place A and kill creature(s) X." That's exactly what farming is. The only difference is that for a quest some NPC gives you a thumbs up at the end. Making quests give more gold wouldn't change a thing, relatively speaking. Oh, an item would cost 60k instead of 50k, but that's about it- a cosmetic change.

It all comes back to the rarity problem. People want to show off, and the only way to do that is if they have something other people don't. Hence, rarity. Making quests give people money is pretty much exactly the same thing that we have now. It's a trivial distinction so why waste the time?

I like this idea as much as I'm sure very few people do. To be honest, I haven't read anything but the original post and the last one on the first page so don't expect me to consider anybody else's view.

I agree that quest rewards have gotten worse. 200 gold? For some of the final quests in Nightfall? That's pathetic. I make 200 gold after killing 2 hydras alone with my warrior. In fact, since my Warrior is already level 20, I did nothing but primary quests because 200 gold, and some crappy trade items aren't worth the 30 minutes beating into level 28 enemies. It's faster to just kill Hydras in the desert solo for cash.

Heaping amounts of EXP should reward somehow... if not a stupid title which people lord over, then maybe some shiny armor, at every 1 (or 2) million EXP?

"Prestige" armor, in itself, is a joke. The only armor I think isn't a joke is 15k faction (by faction I mean kurzick or luxon) and primeval armor. Those are the armor sets you actually have to put some sort of effort forth to acquire. It doesn't require any effort to buy 2 million gold on eBay and then pay a group of people heaps of gold to run you all over Tyria and help you get your ever-so-ugly FoW armor.

Yup. Except you'd actually do it with other people as opposed to sitting in a bunch of trolsl by yourself. Which is a step forward to cooperative play like GW was meant for.

Which means?

O and by the way im fed up with this money issue leave us some peace for awhile ive had none with all these nerphes and updates I mean geez and im a necro i got 3 major builds 2 of them got damaged alittle and soon all three will. Im talking of the ss, 55 nec, and the mm. This isent only happining to the necro eathier XD

Gold is another mean to sucker player into keep on playing. Can try to take away gold, but need to replace it with something else, if GW still want continues players on their server.

(which actually they don't need, for they already bough the game. But it does make the number look better, and tie them to the future games)

maybe another thread to discusses such ideas...

Nope. GW wasn't meant for that.

GW was meant for another thing. To prove yourself.

I farmed for a month. That gave me enough money to start trading. I used money I made from that to make better builds to go after green and gold items. I used this money for the following: To get any armor I want, any weapon I want. To hire runners to get me through missions. To hire spider cap service. To buy ectos for FoW armor. To buy gear for heroes. To buy large ammounts of ale and tickets to advance titles.

Yes, there's a story in GW. It involves Mursaat, Shiro and some other thingies. I watched the cutscenes 18 months ago when I started playing, I skip them every time now.

I group for masters missions, since that's about only part where people make things much easier.

But above all, I use money to say: This is the stuff I did, this is what I have.

It may not be your goal, but this is why people play PvE in GW.

If you prefer grouping, and money is so irrelevant, why does it matter? One thing that matters nothing to me is HA rank. It's worthless and pointless. I prefer other PvP styles. So whatever they do with rank, I don't care. I don't want it, don't need it, and if I choose to play HA, I get people who will ignore my low rank.

And farming is the absolutely slowest way to make money. Especially killing trolls. Those places are suitable only for botting, since you need to spend 24/7 to make even moderate ammounts.

Meh. You know what I did to go from 50k to 1 mil in a few hours with one char? I bought end game books for 50k, got about 5 or 6, beat the last mission, sold the greens I got for it for 150-200k, and repeated that.

Money really doesnt prove anything. It proves your a good entrepreneur or an ebay buyer.

Woah the game the OP described just sounded like this game i know that doesnt exist cause it wont sell:

Hello Kitty Island Adventures.

Edit i think they use cookies as currency there, i am not sure though..best if you check with butters.

Exactly. You didn't make money by farming. You made it by being good at the game, using your knowledge to beat the final mission and entire game before most others, knowing the market, using that to your profit.

That is a great achievement. It proves your mastery of every single aspect of the game. What more could you want?

You consider money to be worthless, and to you, it may as well be. But using it, you advance your characters, have money for such endavours, and freedom to do what you want.

It's not about the number in the bank. It's all about what it allows you to do.

And it's not about eBaying. Someone who has no skill and eBays won't be able to do anything with that. They won' beat the game, they won't know how to play the market, they won't be able to help others. They'll have money, but they'll be soon outed. Someone might think that eBaying money will make them something more, but how long will it take till an eBay FoW warrior reveals himself?

So yes, money proves something, even if you never show it around.

Asking for greater rewards, for different goals, different playstyles is search for holy grail. You've done everything there is in the game, and there's nothing left that poses a challenge to you. Hoping for a revamp of game concepts won't change that.

hmm you do have a point But I do think its a pity that masters quests or challenge missions etc are so hard to form parties for. They're a good part of the game, but nobody does them because they dont lead to primevil or money -.-

Those players aren't interested into that. For many, beating the game is the goal.

I mentioned elsewhere, that GW should go for easier storyline. Let masters and challenge missions be more difficult, and more rewarding. Have more challenge missions. Tie them to titles. More elite missions. Make missions in such a way that they encourage real players for the challenge, not due to some forced requirement. Jade and Urgoz did a decent job at that. If they could be henched, they would have been - for many, that is a challenge in itself. But they encouraged complimentary team builds, specific roles, and in-depth knowledge of every aspect of the dungeons. The fact that at the end you could get a valuable item didn't change this.

As long as there's a direct reward, green items or hero armor, many will do it just because of that. Adding another reward on top of that is also a good way. Everyone does it for their own reason.

The lack of players for challenge missions demonstrates, that removing tangible rewards doesn't solve anything, people would simply stop playing. So, "tricking" them into doing something benefits others. And money is just an abstraction behind this "trick". A universal drive to incite others to get some perceived worth.

One flaw that GW had since launch, is lack of repeatable PvE. You can only do missions so many times, and you can only max out PvE titles so many times before it loses its apeal and becomes grindish routine.

...why tank you so much

I honestly dont like virtual economies though. I suck at real world economy as it is. It would be a damn shame for me to be great in game and then suck in life.
Im trying to think about it and I dont really have a place to attribute value in gws.
If anything, its creating and playing the build, winning the match and most importanly having fun winning or losing (but playing to win) as a team. There isnt a whole lot to show off if you play casually though. (ladder is everything)

soooo... I think i could dream up something for that. but I got some easier answers off the top of my head.

Collectable cashin options just seem, blah. Getting the collectables is a farming activity but it could pay up in ways that could motivate players to want it. I personally dont want anything from collectable items or gear and I dont see many people caring otherwise also.
-Most runes should be able to be gained though collectable npcs.
-Some rare materals
-Inscriptions
-dyes
-Maybe a one time cap sig skill trade in from a trainer/collection npc
-Tickcts to skip world-at-war system into Fow/UW (i keep suggestion something like this)

Titles should pony up some other bonues. I liked how balth faction got a bonus and so did salvaging.
-All collection npcs will give discount requirments to 100% explorers of their chapter. (some better than others)
-Mission titles give some sort of book or amulet type trade in if you get 100%. Perhaps add to the bonues you get from npc collectors in some cases.
-Drunk titles should give /drunk emote option while your drinking
...i cant come up with anything else right now. but getting some specail emotes for titles is a pretty easy fix cuz it can be fun to show off.

...without sounding too generic, adding a lot of armor and other cosmedic options is a must, for the "adventurer" players anyhow.

I think adding much more pvp type gameplay like AB and stuff is good. If there were someway to merge a AB/RA/HA type pvp game (ill come up with one) then it would be great place to one-stop-shop and grind your "money" needs. (the idea would be to forget your grinding and just enjoy pwning the crap out of each other)

Most of this doesnt easily solve the have and have nots of the economy. But it could help it out a bit and maybe help place new emphasis on other things - like exploring the whole area to get a leg up in the economy or showing up drunk and throwing up on your monk. how cool is that?

/not signed

It's a wonderful idea, but it won't work. They did it for PvP and that was a success, because the competion is inherent there. It's horrible to say, but the economy, as far as you're describing it: the prices of ectos, gold weapons, and other armours, exists so that people can pwn nubs and show off their you-know-whats. The economy is created solely by players, to allow competion. As proof of this, I refer you to the Crystalline Sword, which is the rarest sword in the game, costs millions of gold, and looks like shit. As long as there is some item: a weapon, a shield, a flower, that is random and rare, people will trade it, and ebay gold for it.

Regarding better quest rewards, they tried to do this with Sorrow's Furnace and Tombs, by making those weapons very powerful compared to golds, and it worked for a while, but of course it didn't last, and now all those greens are worthless.

I hope you're not complaining about not having bling yourself. They added collectors and 1.5k armour for a reason. Everyone does have access to the best gear for a nominal amount of farming. That should have destroyed the economy before the game ever began, but it didn't. Your argument is naïve.

/not signed

i did not farm in NF and in noob island i made 10k... at docks i got myself AL 70 sunspear armour...

you don't need to farm to get top stat items... weapons?! collector, they are even cheaper than craftor

awhile ago, i got myself ancient 10k devish female armour... i was rather happy... and i feel delighted whenever i look at her, because i worked HARD for that armour... if i got it when i reached level 14 after doing a quest called "the eternal forgemaster" as a quest reward, i will NOT cherish it as much...

edit: though i have to say, quest reward is kinda broken... nowdays i do reward for the lore purposes, not for exp/gold purposes...

The main issue that I think we can all agree on (or most, at least), is the economy needs work - it simply doesn't function as well as we would all like. I think there are two main reasons for this: 1) eBay gold farmers & 2) the fact that some items have fixed prices (like armor), while others are player controlled.

Fixing the eBay problem is hard work. I don't think anyone has a definitive solution to that.

The other issue, of fixed price items and player-controlled priced items, could have a solution. The problem here, is that no matter how much gold is in the game, causing inflation, the fixed price items remain, well, static. The player 'income' in general is also static, unchanging.

Now, this is the purpose of gold sinks, and most of the gold sinks are the fixed price items. These are good for the economy. This means the constant flow of generated currency is being constantly taken back out of the game - thus 'gold sink'.

Unfortunately, this also means that player-to-player trading is bad for the economy. The more of this that happens, the more that the constantly generated currency remains in the game, only to switch hands. This causes more and more money to pour in, with few outlets.

Solution: Add more outlets - add more gold sinks. We need NPC traders for everything in the game. People need to be able to purchase item skins, mods, inscriptions, everything. This way the economy will still be player-controlled, just not directly, and not solely by WTSellers.

Nah, people would just do it with Heroes. There's no good reason to PvE quest farm with real people.

Try doing masters quests (not missions) or defend quests in tyria with heroes. You could but you wouldnt if you didn't have to.

Play PvP then. You get tons of free items there.