Something Beyond Platinum

I've stopped playing Guild Wars and something I've noticed is the heavy reliance on items being used as a second currency.

One reason for losing interest in Guild Wars was having to use other items to buy things with on top of the 100k and I rarely had the time to spend a decent time in game (UW/FoW) to get what was needed so I would end up having to play the unpredictable economy of ectos.

Would it not make life easier if something beyond platinum was introduced or the cap on money increased per character?

Money cap is likely a data storage issue. Gotta cut corners whenever you can when you don't charge a monthly fee...

But removing the cap would fix that problem.

That's not likely at all. I'd assume ANet uses a 32bit Int to store money. They cant use a 16bit (not enough room for the existing cap), and there's no reason to use anything in between those since it would require their own custom data type. Plus 32 bits is absolutely trivial compared to the amount they must need to transmit for even something like a character move, or to store for your character name.

So if that is the case, a 32bit int can contain values in the range -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647, if you need negatives, or (as would be the case with money) if you don't, values in the range 0 to 4,294,967,295. The current cap of 1,000,000 is very very far under that range.

Cutting a corner here on data storage makes absolutely no sense. The cap is almost certainly in place for balance reasons.

No. The cap is to limit market so it do not goes 'tower of babel'.

@_@ i'd have to get that much money first before i can argue about turning my plats into bonds XD

It's not really needed because most players don't reach the cap, I myself usually have in the storage between 50-150k at any time(not including the diamonds I'm saving just incase they rise for GW:EN).

QFT. The cap is most likly in place for market and trade control. Would be nice if it was raised, but Anet might have some "game economic" logic behind the present level that we don't know about.

Not being a collector of high end items, I'm okay with the current system.

Wow. Cutting corners.

[Internal discussion at Anet]
Boss: Can we afford to use a BigInt (8 bytes per BigInt, unsigned for 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615) to store how much cash a character slot has?
DBguy: Making the player_cash field a BigInt (8 bytes per BigInt, unsigned for 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615) is something we can't afford. Using 1MB for each 131,000 characters slots could kill the DB.
Boss: Well... then make it a regular int (4 bytes), cap it to 1000, then add another int (another 4 bytes yay) for something we are going to call platinums. Oh, and also reduce stacks to 250 items each, we can save one MB or two and our DB will be happy.
DBguy: Done.

I would hope the behind-the-scenes way it works is that it just stores how much gold you have, and the platinum/gold division is computed from that. As in, 55p + 140g (displayed in your inventory) is stored as a single int, 55140 (stored in your character's database entry).

And if that's the case, as I said above a regular old unsigined int data type (longs aren't even required) is enough to increase the gold storage by more then 1000x.

I said the cap is probably there "for balance", but I meant something more like what Mithran said.

So wait, you want some reliable risk-proof way of storing a lot of gold value?

Uh, no.

The more money you have in the game the more inflation you have and the more _everything_ that is player traded costs. The reason that dyes, runes and loot are so cheap now is that loot scale curbed inflation.

Do you really want superior runes to sell for 75k/ea again? How about celestial sigils for 50k/ea?

That sounds terrible to me.

Blame Anet for not having some items drop enough that you'd need to pay more than 100K for it.

Or, stop ignoring the real cause; greedy players. The only reason anything goes for over 100k is because someone is willing to pay that much.

I remember way back when I played runescape (yes yes.. I know.. it was only for two months though) that people were selling things for 4-6million gold. I never want to see anything like that in guild wars.

Yes, and yes. I made millions on ettin farming those runes I remember selling sup vig for 95k each!

Carrying 30-50 in my bag per day of course

I had no life back in seventh grade summer

edit:
I also got sup abs more often, I made so much on those too. Those were around 80k when I started ettin farming.

If you've stopped playing, why do you care?

you dont pay attention to higher end items much do you....

Loki just pwned this thread, lol.

/notsigned btw

Yes this would work. Until another item is chosen as a supplementary currency to bypass this limit, then the market continues in whatever direction it was going in anyway.

Oh wait, that happened shortly after release. And some items do have their price above 100k. So if that is the reason that ANET wanted to limit the gold traded, it hasn't worked.

Actually has it ever worked ?

If the cap is removed without any other changes I see two things happening:

1 - The ecto price crashes hard as the rich players liquidate their stacks. I'm thinking it would hit the price floor within a few hours of the change. But once everyone has finished selling off their ecto (and once it hits the floor I'd expect a lot of people to merch it because the merchant is quicker) it should climb again, just not back to where it once was.

2 - Prices may increase because with less ecto going through the trader there is less gold sinking going on. But this requires the rich players to be buying the ecto from the trader, not from other players. I doubt this increase will be much percentage wise, especially as a lot of the rich players just had their in-game worth slashed.

3 - Lots of whining from the rich players.

Loki, I may not play the game but I still have an interest in it. The point of these forums is to make your opinions and ideas heard, and the fact I created some sort of discussion is the point.

I would also like to point out if no cash limit was introduced then the only things to suffer in price drop would be materials and supplies. This would mean that they then become there primary reason they are in this game. Yeah there would be intial complaints but I would think it would sort itself out quickly. Weapon prices may change only because people would have to give them a whole cash value, although I wouldn't expect much, if any, change.

I accept that this would cost Anet more money though.

Is it just me .....wtf he talkin about

too many words O_O

Inflation ftl! Thats all i gotta say

maybe something to combat inflation would be to introduce armor repairing...

example:

Armor got some durability and after being pummled for so long requires some gold & some material to repair. That would prop up the demand for some materials and 'consume' inflated gold...

mayne

Basically, there are standards for how much memory can be assigned for storage. You'd want to assign the least amount of memory as possible to maximize space on the servers. What they are saying is 16-bit would allow up to 2^16 digits (I think that's right), which would be 65,536. That means the gold limit in storage would only be that much, rather than the 1mil we have. In order to allow for 1mil, they would have to go the next step up, which is 32-bit, or 2^32 = 4,294,967,296. That is of course well over the 1mil we are allowed.

So potentially, we could have the storage limit increased to over 4mil and still take up the same chunk of memory on the server. It would cost them nothing to do so, so there must be other reasons (economy balance) for the limitation.

me need monies...

Basically that unless ANET is doing something really unusual with the data storage for gold then players should be able to hold 4,294,967,295 gold on their characters and in storage should ANET decide that the artificial limit was removed.

So there aren't any technical issues with removing the gold caps.

The money cap issue is because anet never planned on the economy going to hell like it did.

I'd like to contribute 2 points, to dispel some FUD.

1. I see a lot of posters in here going on about how lowering the income in-game, and thereby lowering the total money supply, lowers prices. That affects demand, (of supply and demand fame) since players cannot buy items, and sellers will be forced to lower the prices. Anyone with basic economic theory will tell you this will work. They will also tell you that there is another way, a less painful way, to lower prices - and this is what all these posters cannot seem to grasp - supply. If everyone in normal play got a Sup Vig drop per day average, then Sup Vig would be virtually worthless overnight. Everyone would have 12. And the best part of all this is that everything is virtual - if we all had stacks of ectos then your (real) milk would still be in your (real) fridge. Scarcity in this game is artificial, and ANet seems to choose the more painful route, given any choice.

Oh, I can hear the screaming already - since this argument has happened before - of OMFG if everyone had Sup Vigs for all Heroes then the game will be even easier than it is now, no challenge, sky is falling. Well try this on for size - if you can whoop lv 28s with half cast times, then maybe the AI is the problem.

2. If ANet was thinking of lowering the in-game money supply, then why hit the income of the average player who is not participating in the "100 plat + 20 ectos" section of the economy? The problem is the multi-millionaire with their stacks of ectos and their 1000 plat across 3 accounts. So, give them something to spend their money on - and make it worth their while. I'd like to see them put in the means to buy dumba$$ titles like drunkard. Heck, they should open a shop and sell those DP-removing candy canes for a plat each. Those would sell like hotcakes, and pull money from the economy. As it is now, they have nothing of the sort for people with more money than they know what to do with to spend it on. Just a thought.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

o_O i see rich people O_O, if u need that extra storage space u know uve been playing too much, although i wasnt back in the old days so hell, what do i know, i make my money the hard way after all the nerfs were put in :P.
(If u dont know what im saying its ok, i havent slept for 3days and just got off a 11hour flight from summer camp so yeah.....)*goes off to get well deserved sleep......*

Tabasco has it covered.

It comes down to offering things for the different levels. If a guy wants to farm and save a ton of gold, give him something to spend it on. The Japanese had this problem in the 80's where they were such a savings-oriented culture that the economic flow was export-based, and the banks and government had to goad people with things to spend their money on. Give the gold farmer his Rolls Royce, and every time the price of a common item(such as a rune) hits the stratosphere, just increase the supply. You make the gold-hoarders happy while not giving the e-schlong to the rest of the gamers.

We all play for different reasons. there are ways in a fantasy world to make most people happy. They own the game. They just make it happen.

I just get so tired of people trying to use the current in-game economic status to justify hitting my (me, personally) in-game gold income per unit of time. I have never had more than 100 plat in storage, and that will always vanish when I go out and buy skills - which I still have many to cap.

I'm one of the casual players. I have a house, a job, and a family. My time budget is limited. That's OK by me, on my downtime I can get in and play, and this game does that right - the silly people who see GW as an achievement engine that is a substitute for real life can have their FoW armour which is no better than my 1.5K.

I have skills still to buy, and more/better runes for my Heroes, etc.

All my money does not stay in-game, I spend it on so-called "gold sinks".

When players have 1000 plat, and buy from other players, that money is not going out of circulation. That is the problem. There are no gold sinks for those people.

So we have players who are not like me, and have lots of time to play the game and farm farm farm. If you reduce income per unit of time, then I get affected proportionally as much as the farm farm farmers.

A better solution, as I said before, is provide something that players will have an incentive to buy. That can be in one of 2 forms.

The first is a title type sink. Buying booze or keys for drunkard or lucky titles can drag some money right out of the economy.

They can also have consumables. They have to have a meaningful effect in the game to actually be worth buying. I thought that the candy canes that took out 15% DP, or all DP, were great consumables that were not game-imbalancing. At a plat for a 15% DP reduction, I'd say they would sell like hotcakes. I'd think that anyone trying Mallyx would want them in stacks of 250.

BTW, haggus, i'd /signed!!!!!! for increasing the drop rates on items.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Umm its a big NO NO for armor repair we dont need more WoW content here thank you wery much there are other ways you know and some popel who dont wana spend their money that they already have spent on 15K sepose to be Durable armor and no no to wasting 100 coins each time especialy for poeple who are out alot and being pummeled by all kind of attacks so thanks for Armor repair

In case you have forgotten, there was no money cap when Guild Wars first came out. They implemented it shortly thereafter.

Yes, armor repair is only in WoW. That is the only game that has WoW - that game is so original.

WRONG

there was a much tighter cap at 400K per account when GW came out

4 SLOTS HOLDING 100K EACH AND NO GOLD IN STORAGE

GOLD IN STORAGE CAME LATER

so yes there was a cap when it came out

A MUCH SMALLER CAP

Economics much?

The greed of the seller doesn't cause the demand for his item. Someone who sells for much lower than he could out of some twisted principle isn't altruistic, he's foolish, and will be taken advantage of by smarter businessmen. Conversely, someone who sells for a price someone is willing to pay - as you noted yourself - isn't greedy, he's smart.

You could blame the buyers, for being willing to pay so much for said luxury items, but... why? It's their money, to spend as they like.

100k keeps the economy in check. (even though its a pain to purchase high end items and forces you to run the risk of economic variables like ecto price drops)

How does the 100k limit keep the economy in check when we bypass it by using ecto as a secondary currency to get around that limit ?

To me it seems obvious how the 100k keeps the economy in check. I have never heard of anybody selling things for more than 100k and 7 stacks of ecto. Check out games that have no cap in trade or possession like Maple Story. People set up there vending stands and sell for as many 9's as the programming will allow. Sometime's it's an item you can by for a couple thousand from an NPC. Doesn't make sense, and it takes forever to find something you want at a price that makes any sense whatsoever.

Personally, I think the economy is in pretty good shape. Just like any economy, it has to do a tightrope walk but it also seems self-correcting. Mainly because economies do that naturally due to the laws of supply and demand. I always have stuff to do, I am always spending my gold as fast as I get it, and I am always progressing, coming out ahead of where I started. I have been farming LB/SS points the last few weeks, and opening every chest I see and IDing every items, going for 4 titles at once. When I started, I just finished my Elonian SkillHunter and was pretty close to broke. I sold some mats from storage and bought 5 keys. Used those 5 and bought 5 more. Used those and bought 8. Got some elite tomes and bought 15. I am now up to buying 25-35 keys at a time. And to top it off, my storage is now full of gold drops and tomes to sell. The only thing that has not generated profit for me was treasure hunting in normal mode. Missions, skill hunting, point farming, questing. It all generates wealth through normal gameplay. That makes sense. You shouldn't get poorer as you play. The pace I play is much slower than most, so I know others can rack up the gold much faster than I do. But it seems appropriate to me. If they can do it, good for them. I don't think that there are any "useful" items that are out of reach monetarily for anyone. The stuff that costs above 100k is sold for looks alone, not for game advantage. Some of the coolest looking stuff, IMO, is also the cheapest. maybe once I have put all I can into the gold sinks my money will begin to accumulate. So what? If I get so rich as to max out my capacity, I wouldn't care about how much money I have. I also wouldn't care whether I could get 100k for an item, or 10k. I hardly care about it now. All my assets are in lockpicks currently (less than 30), and storage items (no cash). The only thing wrong with the economy is people want to be "given" stuff that is purely "aesthetic" and will not settle for utility. When the game started, you could still sell purple items because they had good stats. Now perfect won't sell unless the skin is rare. Start BUYING less than perfect stuff and watch the economy return to normal.

For the record, I am not a power-trader, farmer, or anything of the sorts, and have never had more than 45k in storage. Right now is probably the wealthiest I have ever been, and I have no cash.

best way to resolve this problem, is to make fixed prices on real materials, like ectos set at 1K and increase armor prices, like 15K fow armor now cost 100K a piece. Leave the caps in there place. "In my dreams, right?"

Face it the economy is fine, the problem lie with greedy players, and cheats. However nothing in this game is out of reach, it just takes time to achieve it. By the way most ecto millionares are players who lucked out when bugs occurred that lowered ectos to 300gp each at the traders, happened twice already if not more.