Improving the low-end gold items market

While I was replying to someone, it became clear to me that the lower end of the gold items market was hit too hard on both sellers and buyers side (arguments below).

Since A-net want's to promote this market (see second quote) and it's the market most 'casual players' would be active on, I think it's reasonable to ask both the GW community and A-net to share some thoughts on this subject.

The proposed solution is a 'weapon shop' with limitations to make sure it only facilitates the low-end market.
I know similar surgestions have been made, this is only an example.
First discussion should be if the low-end market (items below 5K) is indeed hit too hard compared to A-net's intentions.


Agree, but it's not solved by removing loot scaling.

Some parts of A-nets comment on this:

The way I read this, loot scaling was never intended to remove the very high prices on some weapons.
However, when lootscaling hit the game, there was a sudden rise in prices.
Hence the exempt list.

What did happen can be compared to a real market situation.
Consider a factory making bikes.
Since bikes are not needed for survival, not everyone wants them.
They make 5000 bikes, $15.000 / year selling those.
Others see that and also start making bikes.
This puts some pressure on the market, lowering the first factory's profit to $10.000.

Now there is an other event in the market, that is causing their customers to have less to spend. This is because their income is reduced, but also because they want other luxurious articles.
Since they still need to survive, they will not spend as much $ on bikes.
Since factories don't want to stock, they start selling at even lower prices.
This results in even less profit for the first factory, let's say $5.000.
Part of the loss in profit is due to more marketing expenses.

Now this first factory is considering: I make $5.000/year selling bikes.
And when I convert to metal working, I make $15.000/year again.

Now there is this other factory.
They produce only one bike / year. The SuperVelo2007, GWEN edition.
It sells for $250.000
They have a select number of customers, people having more than $5.000.000 to spend.
While the reduced income hit their customers, the factory is not really hit, because they focused on a limited number of customers in the first place.
When too many people reach the $5.000.000, they just increase the price of their bike.

On the customer side, we have a couple of persons from the 'Bikebuyer' family. Government set additional taxes on income above $10.000/year.
Some are hit, others are not.

Now we introduce Joe Average Bikebuyer.
He had an income that was enough for the bike and a computer, but was hit by additional taxes. He has to consider whether $15.000, $10.000 or $5.000 are fair value for a bike, or that he better spend that cash on a new computer.

Now we have Peter New Bikebuyer.
He just got his first job, making more $ than he needs to survive.
But not the $10.000 for additional taxes.
But when he enters the market, he finds bikes are $15.000.
That's too expensive.
Several months later, he returns to find out bikes dropped to $5.000, which is a fair price for him.

And we have Paul 'I want that SuperVelo2007' Average Bikebuyer.
He has a fair income, with wich he thinks he could buy that SuperVelo2007 in about 1 year.
He only forgot about the fact that the factory increases the price when too many people can afford it.
He suddenly finds himself in a position where he realises that he can't reach the SuperVelo2007 without winning the lottery.

And we have Bill 'Gates' Bikebuyer.
He has more than enough cash on his bank account, can afford the SuperVelo2007 easily and does not really care about the additional tax.

The only person that was really hit by the taxes is Joe.
He was able to afford the bike, but now he has to consider his options, since he cannot afford a bike and a computer at the same time anymore.
Paul thinks he was hit, but does not realise that he could never afford the SuperVelo2007.
Bill could not care less. And Peter is happy, since he can buy a nice and shiny bike.

So far, so good.

Now, we have one HUGE problem.
While all the Peters, Joes and Pauls in the world can afford bikes at $5.000, there is less supply because factories start looking at better ways to make income.

This is worsened by inefficient market mechanisms.
For example, buyer and seller must meet each other, but there are several locations.
Sellers and buyers have little room for adverticement and again they must be in the same location.
Furtermore, prices are not transparant anymore. Buyers think $5.000 is the right price and won't buy for more, while factories can make more elsewere and therefore quit making bikes. This should cause a raise in price, but has not done so far.

This leads to Peter and Joe willing to buy a bike and having the cash, but unable to buy one. Leading them to spend that cash on a computer.
Both factories and customers lose in this situation.

I think this reflects the current GW situation.
Farmers (factories) have to spend time (marketing costs) to sell something that's not worth that much. So they move to other items.
Players (the 'Bikebuyer' family) can afford items, but the sellers are hard to find.

I think the way to solve this is not to revert the loot scaling.
This would cause the old situation, where a lot of people could not enter the market except by farming (and thus causing inflation).

Traders would be nice, but are too complex for weapons to implement.
Perhaps this can be done for weapon upgrades, like rune-trader.

Auction is not wanted, this is low-end market, 'fixed' prices are the way to go.

Implementing a 'simple' trading system could be a possible solution.
Not an auction-style thing, but more a 'weapon shop', where people can put one item in storage on sale (commission 10% on sale) and buyers can see and compare the items. Max price in this store could be like 5K or 10K, to make sure it's only supporting the low-end market. Items remain in shop for 1 day.
Commissions will make sure more gold leaves the game economy.
To prevent 'sniping' abuse, people can only buy 1 or 2 items/day.
Selling can be limited to an amount of gold or number of items.

I don't know much about economies and such, but your bike factory/buyer analogy sounds solid. However, I believe an (cough)auction house(cough) would be better.

I know about the auction house proposals...

What an auction is, is a way to set the price for something that has no fixed or unknown value. People that want the item take bits (disclosed or undisclosed) and the highest bid wins.

From the low-end market perspective, auctions do not add value.
Consider a new Guild Wars copy.
As a buyer, you look for the lowest price possible which you can get relatively save and without too much effort.
As a seller, you want to sell as much of them as possible, meaning you can't price too high.

When putting a copy of Guild Wars in an auction, the bids will never exceed the price of the game when obtained by other means.
While the buyer might get a bargain, the seller will not benefit from it.
Also, a buyer might not want to wait for the time to close the auction and there also is possibility that someone snipes the auction.
It could also be a reserve auction, where he did a winning bid and does not get the copy of Guild Wars he wants so bad because the bid is too low.

The same would be true with ingame items.
A req9 15^50 Tyrian Dead Bow has a relatively fixed market price.
People will not bid higher than a price they can get on the market and sellers will not sell for much less. There is (or could be) a large supply of those, since they are not that hard to farm.
People buying and selling Dead Bows will benefit from a store solution, where they can compare items fast and make a buying/selling price on that.
Personal experience with (in-game) stores learns that prices will stabilize around a certain price. Underpriced items are bought fast and overpriced items will never be sold.
When you want to sell fast, drop under that price, when you want some profit, price higher and take your time.

Compare that to a req 7 15^50 Crystalline.
This is an item that will benefit from auction.
The reason is that we simply don't know the market value of that item.
It's high, but we don't know how high. It might be 100K+100 ectos, but can also be 100K+1000 ectos. Or even more.
The reason is that supply is very limited, but we don't know how much people are willing to offer. We only know that there are more people that can afford the item at 100 ectos as there will be with 1000 ectos.
From combined seller and the buyer perspective, auction ensures the best price at that given time (given the auction is not pushed by people that don't want to buy, but only bid to get the price up).

But this takes us away from our first discussion point:

That's true, the low-end market was hit quite hard but it should stabilize itself given time. Making small changes to the economy is like peeing in a pool, you might see a little difference at the start but in the long run there is none. To actually "fix" things, the whole system would have to be reformed, like it's been said over and over and it's unlikely that it will ever happen. If we spent as much time making money as we do whining we'd probably have no reason to do so.

Again.

I sympathize with you.


Here's the problem.


For every q9 15^50 fellblade....there are 50 q9 dead swords.
For every q9 15^50 Stormbow....there are 100 q9 15^50 dead bows.

These low end items are undesirable because they are so easy to acquire.

The value of gold is high right now....roughly 1.5x that of what is was pre-NF.
Weaponary is low right now, I can get 5 undesirable weapons 55ing any number of spots within 10 minutes.

Basic economics.
Supply vs. Demand.



It was like those idiots at Beacon's the other day, complaining that no one charged 5k a head for a Drok's run antmore. Most of the Derv runners were charging 1-2.5k.

These two guys kept saying,"They deserve 5k, the run is a 5k run, they should charge 5k."

Well. If you're not getting clients at 5k, then the run is obviously NOT worth 5k. If a runner's getting a full wagon at 2k a run, then the run is a 2k run.

Snow Bunny,
Your reaction is targeting the sellers perspective and does not take the buyers perspective in account.
Short: what if you want a Droks run, but all runners have gone, because the market would simply not excist (anymore) and finding a Droks run would take several days?

If the sellers perspective was the only problem, I would not have started the topic.
I don't give a rat's butt about loot scaling and the low-end items.
I posted in an other thread that I merch most of them and the rest is hero stuff or salvaged for the mods.

This however, has everything to do with supply and demand (or better, the lack of supply and demand), what you call basic economics.
What I observe is that the 'costs' on both buying and selling side are too high on the low-end market to make it work.

To give you an ingame example: when I was playing the game about a year ago, I wanted to get one of those green mesmer staffs from Tomb of Primeval Kings. I searched for ages before I found one, because there was no supply.
This lack of supply was caused by the value of the item (about 1K) compared to the time it took to sell. Spam WTS in Droknars for > 1 hour or farm trolls just a short walk from there, gee, I wonder which would make more gold
This lowers supply.

The same is true for the buyers side.
When trying to get the item, I was spending time that I could also have played.
When this time is too long, I will stop searching and just play further (farm for more gold for easier to get item).
This lowers demand.

Hey, there are no sellers because there are no buyers and there are no buyers because there are no sellers. How did that happen?

What is further happening is that it's hard for normal players to get those items at a fair value, because the market does not support trading those items.

Consider the mesmer's staff again (I am taking this one, because I know it's a desirable item). At that time, the market value of the item was about 1K.
Now consider crafting the same item:
- Collectors staff (2 somewhat hard to get collectable drops)
- Insightful Staff Head, several K at that time
- Staff Wrapping of Fortitude, again several K at that time

Obtaining a similar item would have taken me several hours killing stuff to get the collectable items and about 10K on staff upgrades.

These are market conditions a huge part of the guild wars players are facing.
They might want a certain item that is low-priced, there might be someone that just found that item and is (theoretical) willing to sell for that low price.
However, the two will never meet, because the seller will merch the item because the costs of selling are too high. And the buyer will stop looking, since there is no supply of that item.

Taking the example of the 100 dead bows:
When those would be offered in a 'store', prices would go down fast, probably nearing merchant price.
However, there would be supply of the items.
I have this feeling that when I want a 15^50 dead bow, it's faster to farm it myself than try to buy it from an other player.

There isn't a low end market (with a very targeted exception group) because of the "democratization", if you will, of vanity weapons because of insignia.

I remember around october, the gold standard of a reasonably well off warrior was a perfect fellblade, q9 preferably. 100k+xxe weapons

I bought a q10 inscribable yesterday for 7k, to make into a caster wep.

This targeted exception group includes, but is not limited to: IDS's, Exalted Aegis, Forgotten Swords, Victo's Axe, Scar Eaters, Kephket's Refuge, totem axes - in essence, the low end market is perfect greens ('cept the IDS) that are easy to acquire, generally cheap, thus easy to sell.

There isn't a DESIRE nor NEED for a low end market otherwise. If you can get a Colossal Scimi for 20k, why spend 10k on a Vabbian scimi when you can save a bit and buy something much more noticable/reputable for just a bit more.

Off course there exists a high end market. But even this market is dwindling due to severe over farming.
There isn't a need for a low end market, because so much of the purported high end market has been made readily accesible.

My monk wields a q8 +5 energy noninscribable zodiac sword. I paid 490k for that puppy. You can get a q9 now for 50k.
You think some is going to buy your...+5 energy q9 non scribable Falchion for 30k when a much fancier and versatile weapon can be had for just a bit more?

The very democratization of weaponry that caters to more "impoverished" players is now biting you in the ass.

The only thing I would do about blue, purple and gold weapons would be this one:

Blue: have only one upgrade. Never or almost never perfect.
Purple: have only up to two upgrades. Only one of them may be perfect.
Gold: have always the max possible number of upgrades, with higher chances of being perfect and at least one always perfect.

Snow Bunny is correct in the sense that there isn't much of a high end market anymore. You can get a 15^50 max sword for under 4k now, no problem. Low end stuff (14^50) are worthless now since the low end (read, poorer skined items) 15^50 are cheaper.

Basically, its too late really.

This is not what I consider low-end.
In my first posting, I am defining it as the sub 5K market.

Agree, but also there the 'lack' of supply and demand is present.
Back then, I was selling some Kephket's staffs.
Problem there, again, was finding a buyer in a reasonable time.
For the then (low-ranged) value of 2K, it took me quite some time to get rid of the item. Most sellers were asking more, in the 5K range.
We can argue about 2K being too high or not at that time, but I still consider it a fair price.
During that time, VwK farming netted more than selling the green (comparing farming time to selling time).
The items are therefor not on the market, but moved to heroes when NF came out.

In an other discussion, someone mentioned:
I think Martin said that quite right.

Again Jos. You are not understanding a fundamental flaw in your assumption.

The "low end market". Uh-huh. Let's get down to that. The "5k" market. Alright now, so you have a common, inscribable gold, req9 though, so it's functional, that you are trying to sell. Let's give it a skin, say...aerowind blade, or a salient sword.

Alright, so you want to sell this sword. Well, what is defined as perfect? 20/20, 15^50, +30. Ok, even if I disagree with the logic behind 20/20, that's what is accepted as perfect.
Here's your problem.

I can buy your utility weapon for 3k, I mean, a q9 sword for 3k? That's not bad at all. Ok, but then I have to mod it to make it perfect. So...20k for the 20/20, another 15 for the +30, and....5k for the 15^50.

All of a sudden, this rather mediocre weapon skin-wise, has now perfect stats wise. But think about it. You just spent 15+20+5+3 = 43k on it. So now you have a perfect weapon, with a crap skin. Now you see that...gothic axe, 15^50, for 30k.

You try and sell your weapon, to get money for the axe, but no one wants it because the skin is crap, despite the stats. You ask the trader to trade for the axe, same thing.

You have just wasted 43k, and you can't sell for more than 20k, but then it will be an enormous net loss.

Reverse the situation, and decline the 3k weapon, save a bit, you know, I famr a bit, 2 days later, and buy a fellblade for 20k. You mod it up, and now you have a q9 20/20 15^50 +30 fellblade. <----Fancy! You want that gothic axe? Sure! I'll mod my axe up, and i'll trade for your fellblade.

To put it plainly, your "low end" items are a waste of money. NO ONE WANTS THEM because we can get better. Unless of course, you have a perfect modded weapon for 3k, in which case it's a steal.

You want to sell your crap green/gold for 1k? Well I don't want it, I will save my 1k for another day and buy something better.

There isn't a demand for low-end, because we can get better for just a bit more effort.

your post is a long-winded explanation as to why you believe low-end sellers & buyers arent able to conduct transactions with any regularity. i find it funny that your actual proposal only takes up about 3% of you entire post.

in regards to your proposal of a "weapon store" that is directly linked to ones storage, that would basically be a redesign of the current system and anet has already stated that that isnt going to happen.

unfortunately, without a complete rehaul/redesign of our current in-game trading system [spam hell], the majority of items youre going to continue to see in abundance are mid/high-ends, mods, and tomes because those items are going to be the easiest to sell.

other then simplistic theories like supply and demand, real world economies and mmo economies are not based on the same principles; therefore, have very little in common.

Ok, now I understand what you are talking about.

It's been a while since I played in Elona, so I completely forgot about the inscribables.
I was thinking about the Tyrian and Canthan 15^50's, which don't have inscriptions.
Therefore, their inherited value would not be 5Kfor that upgrade.

For a sale in the low segment, I would sell it with the mods that were on the item, as long as those are not (almost) perfect.
Havinga 20/20 or 30HP on such an item would not be worth it indeed.


That's you. And me.
But I don't think we are the perfect example of players that would operate on this market.
Consider a good friend of mine. She plays GW once in a while and till very recent had no access to Nightfall.
Low-level green and gold items will make a huge difference for those players, because most have several (perhaps not perfect) mods that give them benefit.

The gap between low-level and 'perfect' items is quite large.
You are talking about 15-20K upgrades.
When a (non-inscribable) 15^50 sword would drop with a 28HP upgrade and a 18% sundering (to stick with your example), the value would suddenly have dropped to less than 5K.
For staves, things would be comparable.
A staf dropped with +4 energy would probably be less than 1K, Wrapping Fortitude +28HP the same. Combined on a stave, value would still be around that value, because of chance of destruction.

Gold items with those stats would be in the same segment as their low-end green counterparts.
It's now the choice for a player to take a 'perfect' green or a certain skin which he/she likes better, but has slightly less modifications (we are talking about 2HP and 2% sundering).

However, I think you made your point that the low-end market might not have been hit as hard as I expected, specially the Nightfall market.

Precisely. Try and sell Morrob's Axe, lol.

Two things:

1) "Low end" weapons don't have a large market because they are hard to sell, even at low prices. This is for several very good reasons:
-a skin can be bought separately from mods
-a regular req 9 clean weapon is pretty common
-certain greens are very easily farmed and have become just as cheap

2) Your solution doesn't make much sense because, if Anet had the resources to create an auction house or 'weapon shop' why would they want to exclude the rest of the game players by having an arbitrary sell cap of 10k?

Just the time spent on grabbing the gold item and go register it on the auction house defeats the profit u can gain from it.

In some places you can easly, while reading a book and playing a chess game making 800-1k every 6 minutes, more if u get lucky. Thats something like 10k/hour and there arent that many high end runs that can smash that easy constant incoming.

If you need a weapon you go get a green, uts pretty easy to get almost any green in the game. When I made a paragon I spent 2-3 hours farming and got a vampiric spear, a fiery spear and a furious spear, plus one motivation and one command shield (Tureksin's Spear, Shrieking Spear, Luluh's Spear, Shagu's Anthem and Wandalz's Refuge) and still got a few plats.

The hardmode made rare items so common, that perfect mods are so common that any other are worth 0.

So If you want them you go farming them for yourself, its easier and more profitable.

I dont try to sell anymore. I only say I want to buy. Sometimes I spot someone asking for that rare material, elite tome or some mod or weapon Ive in my my storage and quicly sell it. Other than that, i better spend that time farming, as I will get better results.