Ways to Buff Up Rare Item Values again

Ok, guild wars made some items to be worth more then others at the start right? To make some small, loose knit economy? Look at em now, things that were worth 100k on market to a player are now worth something like 20k, it's a killer for farmer aint it?

Here are a few ways to rebuff the economy (and it actually shouldn't take a lot of work to do them)
1. Increase the value of purple and Gold items when sold to an npc shopkeeper (I mean really increase it, so that players can sell it to the npc market for more then to other players, thus increasing demand (More people selling to npcs, less people getting the item and less of the item in general.)
2. Decrease chances of getting a Gold or Purple item, (Decrease supply increase cost, and it wouldn't have to be by much)
3. Just leave gw as it is and pretend I never said anything (you never know, that might be the best option too :P)

Anybody else have any ideas?

/unsigned. Pretty obvious why.
-You didn't have to post this twice.

I posted it twice? Crud.

Mods can you please delete the other post?

/unsigned, obvious reasons.

Mods please delete this topic altogether.

Yes please do (and while you're at it please delete Saphrium's account :P)

(I gotta get in my half thought out insult to someone who is obviously not very polite)

[QUOTE]they were never meant to be 100 K in the first place.

yup it is great especially with what is coming next

[QUOTE=Loviatar] Sorry to say they were and are meant to be what ever the player wants to sell for. Doesnt mean they will get it.


However, /UNSIGNED

Supply and demand. Things were worth more before because there were less of it. Now everyone and their mothers has a FDS.

You really think I'm going to merch an item that's worth 20k? And no one cares if you take items that are only worth 1k out of the system either. It won't rise in price significantly.

People will whine about this. Plus it'll greatly change the whole chest system.

Final comment: I don't see why people with little or no economics background keep making suggestions here to fix the economy. There's been a million pointless threads like these.

not to be rude but I really don't see you having any economics background or experience either... So you really don't have a right to criticize others in that perspective.

Hmm, you said it for me.

He's shown more economics background than you have.

Let's see: You're suggesting that the merchant pays what...20k for an item that's worth, at the moment, 20k on the P2P market? Oooooooookay. How's this: people farm their tails off and sell stuff to the merch unless it's one of the very few rare skins with the "best" mods possible, or just a low requirement if it's gold and inscribable. If you up the prices they're getting for doing what they're doing already (this includes high requirement rare skins...R13 ele swords for instance are being merched now), that's just more money being introduced to the market. This then results in inflation. You increase the money pool and don't give us any place for that money to go. The only option is to increase the prices for everything else you buy in the game...and nothing really has changed except the number value people place on items.

Decreasing supply of rare items won't make those items more expensive...those items are already in the hands of players. The market value of an item isn't how easy it is to get as a drop, it's how easy it is to find being sold by another player. If you cut off FDS drops altogether, there's still enough out there to keep the current prices stable. The prices just won't drop anymore due to more being introduced. You'd need to REMOVE stock from the hands of players, and that's not going to happen.

I DO have economics background and I DO have the right to criticize you on your lack thereof.

Woohoo, this is my kind of thread.

<---M.A. in economics

Weapons in GW are static (superdurable) goods in the sense that they never degrade or disappear unless a player does so intentionally. This is the primary reason that their prices decrease over time.

First let us think about supply. Even the rarest of weapons will become more abundant in the long run because, as already established, there is nowhere for them to go. They just accumulate and become more prevalent.

The other side is a matter of demand elasticity. Ponder this: back before Factions existed, there were only a handful of high-end weapon skins. We had Storm Bows, Chaos Axes, Crystalline Swords, and perhaps a few others. Compare that to the current day, in which each martial weapon class has upward of a dozen 'elite' styles. Whereas everything* is subject to diminishing marginal utility, demand for any specific weapon skin is driven down simply because the other options exist.

To summarize, items are at their most expensive point immediately upon their discovery. From that moment forward, prices will only decline unless exogenous intervention (read: ArenaNet) alters drop rates.

*Counterexamples are theoretical and inapplicable in this scenario.

sounds like another "i cant sell my crap for 100k +xx ectos anymore whine thread to me"

/notsigned

October Jade wins this thread.

1. I'm not a farmer
2. I've never sold anything to another player except a minipig pet
3. I'm just doing this because I hear everyone complain about it in the main cities and it's starting to annoy me when I'm bored enough to go there.
4. Maybe you should think about the fact that I'm an Ab PvP player before you make such statements
5. I highly doubt any of you actually "have" an economics background anymore then you claim to. And even if you do, I doubt it would halfway help you in a loose knit economy like guild wars (and even if it does guild wars economics is basically a player created thing)

get an eternal blade and stop whining imo...

October Jade wins. And Darkhill... if you can't even recognize that the stuff he said IS from an economics background... wow.

At a weapons crafter you may custmoise a weapon, meaning no others can use it meaning it is no longer useable by anyone other than yourself. That removes it from the economy, but there are alot more found than there are customised. So basicly the rason all the new items are relesed is so that there is always somthing rare to optain.

What killed the ecomomy is the inscription system and loot scaling.

The items worth 100k in the past being worth 20k now aren't a real problem, the problem is that stuff worth say 30k in the past are now straight merchant food, not worth the time to get that 3k out of them. The problem is a massive overabundance of goods with no real demand for them.

100% agree
not really, it didn't damage the economy but just reduce the prices (minus 30%-70%), but it didn't turn valuable stuff into crap, it's not what caused the economy crash, the real cause is:
1. mentioned above inscription system with 'potentially perfect' items being very common, which started it all,
2. Hard Mode's insane gold item drop rate, not affected by loot scaling, abused to the extreme by farming 15+ golds per hour, which came the same day as loot scaling and was the killing blow to the economy.

I'll repeat myself : the damage to the economy done cannot be undone at this point, no way to revert the design mistakes done. Reducing drop rates isn't the way to go as it would cause massive uproar and still not make the desired effect. Thinking up a reasonable solution that don't hurt anyone seems extremelly hard, as affecting existing items, power levels and balance is out of question. Only adding something absolutely new that players would want to get/buy/trade/collect could bring a new life to the economy.

Better let's think of ways to possibly buff up the demand for rare items, also not an easy task.

One thing, which many people forget, that could add some demand to the market would be encouraging players to play more than one character. Like in the past. Currently Anet's policy is exactly opposite, the make the life of players with multiple playable chars much harder (one time is fun, but if you have to get high titles for PvE skills for more chars its becoming a grind), HoM and all other kinds of PvE rewarding being character based, Wisdom/Treasure Hunter bonuses working only on one char, etc. This caused many, a really large % of the player base, including some of the rich and those playing many hours a day to play, to invest time in and develop just one character, leaving others as mules or for farming use only. It was different in the past and the demand for items for alternative characters was much higher.

Another thing could be updating the weapons monument in HoM to accept a wider selection of rare weapons, this could buff up the value of some things.

I couldn't agree more.

Less is more.

The less gold their is in the economy, the better the market is for the average player (who make up the bulk of the player base).

This is backed up by the abundance of gold sinks everywhere you go and the major hits to farming in GW history.

Less gold means that [generally speaking] people cannot afford to pay as much, therefore prices come down which is beneficial for the majority.

Um...you're half-right. Sorta. On a good day.

Deflation is only beneficial due to the caps placed upon wealth accumulation in the game. Falling prices reduce the need to rely on things like ectoplasm and armbraces as de facto currency, keeping their value more in line with the utility of their intended uses.

I argue, despite complaints in these forums that fissure armor is too common, that most players do not have realistic expectations to ever purchase a set. Keep in mind that fansites, even the largest ones, represent only a tiny, biased sampling of the total game population. The typical Joe Warrior probably doesn't give a hoot how much ecto costs.

Mr. Warrior might, however, see a difference when it comes to fixed cost purchases. ID/salvage kits, armor crafting, and skills all require the same amount of gold regardless of how much of it is floating around. Deflation actually hurts his ability to pay for routine character maintenance.

Even small changes to an economy can have many (often unforeseen) consequences. It's important to consider lengthily whom will be impacted and how before proposing such ideas.

Agreed. However, a.net did introduce a system to offset that by introducing Commendations, Kournan Coins, etc. Granted, Joe Warrior often spams Kamadon going "what the heck do these do?" so *shrug* At least a.net recognizes the problem with deflation (I think, could be coincidental).