Ectos need to be reviewed

Meh I actually liked inscriptions. You know how hard it is to get shields/focii with the right mods without paying for anything?!

As for ecto, no it shouldn't change things are fine now leave them as they are. I hate when ecto drops cause it means I lose money. I don't want that, lots of people don't want that..seeing as you can't have more than what..2.5mill now with 15 characters and storage...that's no fun. Seeing as there are people like me who care about money even though it's in game my lack of it in real life gives me some security. Does it unbenefit the folks who aren't like that? Not at all! PvE should never be equal in all ways. There'd be no competition then, not that I compete with everyone on money just a few select people.

Anyways, stop whining about ecto going down. If you're poor it's your own fault and you can do something about it there's tons of guides and stuff on how to farm and hell wurm farming is really easy and can land you 10k in an hour if not more.

It's mainly true in GW, but I sold Totem Axes for 8K and people bought them for that price just because I was the only one who was selling.

You must have been slow. I was selling them for 15-25K and even higher for the first few. Then again, I was one of the first to solo them.

To the rest:

On another note. I've really had enough of the group of 'have-nots' that constantly try to bring down the economy. Get off your lazy tails and work like the rest of us did. Why do you expect everything to be handed to you when the rest of us had to put in the proper effort to obtain those things? There are plenty of ways to make money. Coming to the forums and bitching about the price of ectos isn't one of them.

The only use I can see of removing ectos as a form of currency would be to redistribute the wealth and bring down those that have made their fortunes in the past. A reason like this deserves no attention.

I too was one of the anti-inscriptionists in that infamous thread. I'm somewhat satisfied with the solution they provided as most of the old items still retain their value. My only problem is that items like eternal bows, gloom shields, and other weapons were made into inscriptable weapons as well.

Try that now People go on "guru" and see the price 3-5k and then they complain that it's hard to buy Of course it is, you will see 1-2 farmers a day in LA or Kaineng selling them for that price. And if I hear someone selling for 4-5k I buy the whole bunch. It's a good way to make money

Buy low sell high? works sometimes..

I bought Dragos non vamp at 4k and sold for 55k...but I hate that method of economy.

Sometime this works...
I make moeny through buying ectos from trader (at low price 6k) then wait till they get back up to 8k and get rich again lol! Ofcourse, this method requires you to have alot of money lol//(had around ~50ectos)


and...too lazy to get FoW? We got lives man! Gw is just fun

Okay what is this "OH I have a life (unlike you) and can't get FoW!" garbage. You don't need to not have a life to get it, it's very very simple. You can do 1 FoW run a night, land a lucky drop boom FoW (errm not anymore, unless C-Sword). You can do HoH nightly, boom get a lucky drop FoW. Chest Running, boom get a few lucky drops..FoW. I never really farmed for mine, all lucky drops. I did farm the shards though for warrior's. Did 2 runs nightly, no big deal, doesn't take up to much of my life easy peasy.

I think it works for some ppl, me included I even think it's fun sitting in a city, buying, selling. Got mine FoW in around 7 days.

On a topic of FoW design, I personally think that female warrior, female monk and male ritualist armor look really good. But you don't buy FoW armor cause it looks good (at least not your first set). You buy it cause it shows your status.

The have nots are lazy? That's hilarious. I've played the game for ages, but I don't happen to farm for ectos. I don't have a lot of money either but I do help friends out with quests and take multiple characters through all the campaigns. In 'normal' play you don't pick up vast wealth, but by repeatedly playing high end areas (erm, that's called farming) for the express purpose of getting rich, then hey, you're rich, but you can't equate my not having that playing style with being lazy.

There'll come a day when I choose to get some FOW. In the meantime I couldn't care less what happened to the price of ectos because like 75% or more of other players I'm not hording this crap.

When I want to get FOW, or some ectos for trade, I'll earn them like the noble and industrious hardcore players of this board. Or in the case of trade, buy them.

Am I lazy because I'm not farming my butt off. No.

Which is why I said most any product and not any product.

Nobody needs to buy ectos. If there are 12 people trying to sell them at 8k and they aren't getting any buyers you can be sure that they'll drop their prices until they do get some takers. If there are no buyers prices will drop until there are. Remember also that you don't see what is going on behind the scenes - I guarantee that one of the sellers would take a lower price if offered.

Personally i find the ecto thing stupid as a way to stockpile cash. I can stock 1.8m to my account and not intend to buy an untrustworthy stock like them.
I would like to see thought an item valued 100k so that people can easy stockpile cash without considering them as a stock.
Then i bet the ectos price will fall because they will become uselless (except fow armors) and hundreds of Farming guilds will be disatisfied

So the actuall point here is :
Whom you want to support? The players or the farming minorities? And your answer to this question shows what you really are

Why didn't you sell them for 30k then (or even 10k)? Maybe because the buyers would have just laughed at you? If you didn't get any buyers at 8k, what would you have done? Kept spamming for 8k or lowered your price?

The buyers that day decided that a fair price for a Totem axe was 8k. As I mentioned in another post, nobody needs your product. The fact that you were the only seller at that time was the only reason you were able to get more, but the buyers are still the ones that ultimately determined the price.

My point is that Im not lazy and have better things to do...I'm better off with Vabbian and 15k armors. 3.2 Million Gold worths is really alot, but I bet that my equpment is worth alot more .... wish I could sell them lol, I can get FoW if I sell my Crystalline, but not gonna happen lol

You see, your last statement - the actual point, you say - isn't very fair.

I'm certainly not in the farming minority; I don't spend all day grabbing ectos, shards, chest running, so on and so forth. A good 75%+ of the money I currently made was had questing, selling random gold drops, so on and so forth. I'm definitely not super-rich, but neither am I poor. I enjoy purchasing items that cost more than 100k, and for me ectoplasm works as a form of hordeable currency, when I have the time.

Someone mentioned earlier the dependability of Ectoplasm within the game - and it wasn't me. The example was directed at a statement on the addition of some new currency, called "Globs of Torment." The addition of more and more options is going to complicate the situation, if anything.

Currently, Ectoplasm is accepted as a viable means of monetary trade among what I would assume is the majority of the Guild Wars population, as I've not seen anyone request 200k in gold, or offer to pay such an amount, in place of 100k + X number of ectoplasm - I've been on the buying and selling end of "high end items" for the bulk of my in-game life.

Think about money in the real world - outside of the digital realm of Guild Wars. At one point Gold Bars were considered currency. We now use other forms of cash, such as coins made of less precious metals, bills made of woven cloth-paper, and so forth. But the price of gold has not gone down, and it's still used as a bartering tool. It's valuable because we can make jewelry and other decorative items from it - much in the way Ectoplasm is used to craft Fissure of Woe armor sets - but that is certainly not it's only use (think of all the funny movies where random Italian Billionare #3 stores the bulk of his cash in the form of gold bars in random Safe X within one of his many homes, only to have it stolen by some thief because it's worth a bundle).

Ecto isn't a problem. It's a conversion. Much like gold it will fluctuate; fortunately for those of us who invest in it as a means of storing money, and not just to obtain FoW armor, the prices don't fluctuate much anymore (I was extremely surprised to see it at 10k per unit some time last night around 12:00AM EST US or so).

Whether or not you invest in it is entirely your perrogative. It's a gamble. We have them in our reality, so why not in our fantasies (which Guild Wars essentially is)? It's not about the Haves and the Have Nots, or the Casual vs. Hardcore players. I'm a casual player and I find that I get along just fine in a world where Ecto is an acceptable form of payment. Heck, if you're going to revamp Ectoplasm you have to revamp many other things, as I've purchased countless items using daimonds, sapphires, rubies, amber chunks, jadeite shards, black and white dye, etc. Anything that is worth anything is fair game when it comes to bartering; you just have to put a teensy-weensy bit of effort into it, and that's not really hard.

So all this talk about people who have lives and those who don't is complete and utter garbage. I have a life that I love very much; many more things go on outside of any game I play than will ever go on within. I've not had a problem to date with any current system, because it's not extremely beneficial or harmful - why offer extreme solutions, such as a few suggested in this thread (cutting out FoW? Absolute Nerfage? The removal of Ecto? Eh?!), for a problem that is anythiing but extreme?

Anet doesn't support or cater to farming minorities or casual players. They offer us a game world that functions much like our own. We make the changes ourselves, with or without their help. There are always unlimited other options if current systems do not work - I've made my own systems and worked with others when using them during times when I just couldn't do much with what was currently around me.

Sorry if this has already been stated, I havent looked through the enitre thread:

If what you're suggesting does become part of the game, i would feel FoW armour would rise in price. The fact is after the initial influx of ecto's, farming them would become a second rate business, though still making money, they wouldnt be as useful as before. Then the amount of ecto's on the market would drop, leaving the ecto farmers with a higher price. Also, with the analogy of oil, the main guilds and playersin the ecto farming market could with hold there finds, driving prices up. this would take co-ordination, but could feasibly be done.

Anyway, ecto's would drop in price, but then steadily regain their orginial value, and the creep above it.

My problem? I don't have one. I just gave a little hint that the post in question wouldn't go down well..and it didn't.

Hmm end soloing and farm runs..won't happen. Anet has no problems with farming as they realise it is part of any MMO type game.

Solution: No solution is needed because there is no problem.

the poster wasnt saying the prices were too high, he just wanted a more stable way to buy and sell....

obsidian armor is easy to get?! i can work and work for days on end and not come up with 50k...i would love to know how you get your millions...or even like 500k from just straight farming!

There are 3 things you need for making a lot of money via solo farming, no matter what build you use; Lets call them the 3 "D"s

1: Dedication - You have to want to make the money

2: Determination - You have to keep at it or the increase will be minimal

3: Discipline - You have to have the concentration to run a single build repeatedly, sometimes for hours at a time.

If you have these, then if you work at it constantly, the cash will come. It doesnt come that fast, but it does come eventually if you work at it. As for me, 100k is the most I've ever had, but oh well, I spend so much with my characters that it's no surprise (I have got >20 characters to look after, lol.)

Anet canNOT and will NOT muck with ecto. Anyone needing proof they won't screw it up on purpose ... remember the great roll back when the trader bugged. They had to roll it back because ... THE ECONOMY would have TANKED with the influx of tens of thousands of dirt cheap "high end" mats and runes. If Anet gave the above mentioned 10k or 100k stackable gold item people would unload their ectos faster than the economy could absorb them crashing the market. You don't wait 20 frigging months to turn the top armor into cheap 15k armor which is what fow armor would become over night. To those crying ... try typing less and farming your materials a tad more. If you don't like the idea of applying effort to get it then perhaps you don't need or deserve it.

Actually they only did a rollback the second time. The first time it happened they didn't do a rollback. They let them keep all the ecto's they bought for 100g.

I have been playing since day 1 as well. They didn't roll it back then because it was a short lived malfunction ... not enough were bought to manipulate the economy. The second one went almost an hour and so many were bought that it would have had an economy killing effect if they didn't rollback. Which is the same as everyone holding ectos now dumping them at the same time ... economic collapse.

no one person could influences prices for an even remotly substantial amount of time for more than 1 thing, and even then the cost woule be so absolutly astounding, they would have to be VERY careful in reinvesting in order to make an even marginal profit.
a while back, i aquired 4,800 ecto in about a months time. in order to lower the prices, i would sell my own stocks to the merchant to lower it by marginal amounts (you cannot raise or lower it by a large amount quickly or other people will notice the changes and simply correct the problem in the interests of making their own little profit), and then purchase far larger amounts of ecto, to save themselves money.
i am the ONLY player i have ever known to pull this off successfully; and what were the results?
i sold off 17.5million in ecto from my own stash to the trader, and purchased 36.9million from players during subsequent price reductions crated by my own selling (over the period of this month); with a net gain of 19.4million in ecto. by doing this i "gained" 6.24million gold by buying at cheaper prices, however, because i had to sell off a large amount of ecto at LESS than market value, i lost out on 5.04million; meaning, by doing this systematically in a well-planned-out, well thought-out and well-organized manner, i saved myself appx 1.2million.
a 1.2million gain, out of a base-investment total of 36.9million in liquid assets.
that is HARDLY worth the effort; a 3.25% net gain, about 1/5th-1/10th the gain i could have expected if i had just invested it into trade-capital...which is precicely why i never (and will never) did(do) it again.
and i wont even begin to pretend i could have done anything more than influence the prices slightly for anything more than a short amount of time, even with that level of investment.
quite frankly, thinking any 1 person can control the market is absolutly ludicrous.

This would screw those that worked to get their ecto. Bad idea.
/not signed

This would ruin the 100k cap per character and the 1 mill cap in storage....

ADDED: Akhilles your ways of being rich and your knowledge of the Guild Wars economy is outstanding even if it is only for a video game. Just one question, why one morning did you wake up and decide im going to create a system of becoming the richest man in Guild Wars. How did you find this system out, and how did you farm a butt ton of ecto in a months time?

I have to agree with the OP's premise that the price of ectos is higher than it would be were it not used as a currency substitute. However, whether or not anything should be done about it is another matter. I've always admired the ingenuity of the GW community in finding a way around the gold limit.

Raising the amount of gold a character/account can have, whether by a direct increase or a fixed gold substitute at first sounds like an attractive option. However, stop and consider that these limits function as an artificial ceiling on inflation. If limitless wealth could be amassed, there would be a continual increase in available gold in the game, which would result in vastly increasing prices. It would become increasingly difficult for new players to get involved in the game as equipment would be well out of their price range. While the use of ectos as a substitute does still allow some inflation, it is kept somewhat in check by fluctuating market values, gold sinks, and the fact that there is a limited storage capacity per character. Increase the gold limit and you've just removed two of those three controlling factors.

If you think this is true and Anet would never consider destabilizing the economy, you probably weren't here when all the traders were reset and for a brief time there were 100g ectos.

I thought this was a rather interesting hypothesis for the future of ectos. Whether or not it will happen, I don't know, but it is certainly plausible, especially if Anet doesn't add anything new to the game that requires ectos.

QFT Personally, I've played this game for over a year and a half and I don't own a set of FoW armor, or even one piece. All the weapons I use I looted, and I only have a single piece of 15k armor. I've never had more than 300k on my account. I play a lot (probably way too much, 1,107 hours according to /age ), but I prefer missions and quests to mindless farming. So I'll probably never get FoW armor. Oh well, big deal. One day, GW will go offline and then it will all be deleted anyway, I'd rather spend my time enjoying the game than proving to everyone that I can kill the same creature a million times over. But I do find it incredibly ironic that Anet continues to do everything they can to stop farming while they put a highly sought after item in the game which, by virtue of the sheer number and rarity of materials needed to make it, can only be obtained by farming! Does anyone else find this a little hypocritical? Oh well, that's the game, we can find ways to enjoy it or we can stop playing.

Flame shields up, Mr. Chekov!

Lol I do find it kinda funny and ironic, but then you realise ANet is just trying to make these items, and in turn the things they make harder to get. It also may be to promote GW as being a multiplayer game, no a UW solo game...

Simple economics methinks. You can learn a lot in that class... If you can stay awake

I have a whole 2 ecto in storage, so a price drop wont really effect me, but this is really a bad idea. People have "worked" hours to get these stacks of ubermoney and probably wouldn't like to have their months work obliterated...

to answer the question vaguely on my reasoning.
in EVERY rpg (online or not) i have ever played, i have always continued a policy of "economics first, character development second." this leads me to having excellent equipment at early levels in mmorpgs where items make a difference.
in GW, they dont make nearly as much as a difference, however my policy held the same.
as for getting the ecto quickly; because i was manually lowering the prices, i would tell people i knew that i'd pay the market value +250gp.
yeah, i probably could have saved myself an extra 750k not doing this, but because i knew i could only INFLUENCE the ecto prices, and only for LIMITEd periods of time, speed was more important than being nitpicky...i counted on high volumes of bringing ecto in from different people in different districts, before the prices went back up, and i had to smite them back down again.
the whole process was quite organized and labor intensive, but it worked...the fact that the results were quite marginal, is the reaosn i'd never consider doing it again.
i do, however, suppose that if you got 10-15 wealthy players, all with a stash of about 2,000-3,500 ecto+, so sell to the merchant, and then buy en masse, or buy form the merchant and sell en masse, while periodically taking turns selling/buying to/from the merchant to stabilize prices to the range you want them in, a lot of money could be made, as you could control the prices for a far longer period of time.
in order for a single individual to be able to do this with any hopes of coming out ahead in large numbers; they'd probably need a base of 50,000 ecto (400 million in liquid assets) or more. but as i said earlier, they'd probably be looking at a profit margin of 3-5% (probably lower, since they'd have to dump/buy ecto VERY quickly; as in thousands per day, to break even).

tbh, i'd LOVE to have an alternative to ecto. i think fow armor is teh ugly and i'll never buy it, so i have no real use for ectos. i farm them and sell them to my guildies for cheap so they can get their fow armor.

but when i have an uber expensive item to sell in the 100k+ectos range, i get stuck with a bunch of ectos i don't want or need. then i'm stuck trying to sell the stupid things. imo, items such as ecto have no place in buying/selling unless the seller wants it. something like "xunlai checks" would be perfect, as i could hop over to the agent and cash the checks without spamming WTS ecto for an hour.

There is nothing wrong with Ectos.

If you want a more stable item for trading 100k+ items with use Keys. They are just as rare a drop as ecto and there value at merchants never change.

note: the addition of 'checks' would actually drive up the price of ecto not down. With less people farming them and fewer selling to merchant you would see the price for FoW armor climb back to the 5million gold area where it was about a year ago.