How effective would this be at reducing inflation ?

For the purposes of this thread, unless you specify otherwise, a /signed will mean that you like this idea but don't think there is currently enough inflation to warrant it (this is my current position). A /unsigned will mean that you think this is a bad idea even if the inflation was bad. I'd prefer that we don't discuss how bad the inflation is in this thread.

As some of you may know, using an ID kit on most items (including whites) will increase its merchant value, even if the item isn't marked at "unidentified". In high level areas this increase will be more than the cost of using the ID kit (4g on a normal ID kit, 5 gold on a sup ID kit).

So what if the ID kits were changed so that they would only work on items which were marked as unidentified ?

How much gold would that prevent from entering the GW economy ?

"some of you" doesn't include me, apparently. I'll have to try that out sometime.

I only use ID kits on "unidentified" items anyway, so this wouldn't affect me.

As far as reducing inflation, I'm somewhat lost on how this really affects the economy on a grand scale. If someone could explain it in a bit more detail, I could give a better opinion on it.

"some of you" doesn't include me either.

I've never heard of anyone exploiting the ID kits on whites. I doubt that a significant part of the community uses this exploit. I guess, just for those few, a /sign would be in order, but the current scale of the problem seems to be negligible.

Now, the few hours when you could dupe Armbraces.... that has forever ruined the GW economy.

I do ID my whites and it does help, but if I have an inventory full of whites and I ID them all it's only 100 extra gold nothing big.

Although I have started to ID white weapons recently, I don't think stopping the ability to do that would really help the economy much. I really wish they would fix the economy though.... I remember when the dye prices dropped from like 10k+ for black dye to around 6 or 7k and about 6k for white dye to 3-4k in a week. I was so happy because I was going to buy a bunch of dye and then sell it when the price went back up in a little bit. How wrong I was lol....

IDing white items with no mods basically doubles the amount of money you can make in this game. If you aren't doing it... you are robbing yourself of money. It isn't an exploit. Its how the game is designed.

Now... this game is currently VERY deflated. I think it needs some inflation and some rare items again to raise prices. so /signed this would reduce inflation, but the game doesn't need it. Although, I don't think it would be THAT significant. As you can tell from the first couple of responses, many people even 2 years into the game still don't know that IDing whites increase there value significantly. So... it would only cause deflation to the "hardcore" section of the population that reads up on stuff in this game. Obviously, it wouldn't affect the part of the population that had never heard of this in the first place.

/signed although atm inflation isn't bad enough and I'm not rich enough.

I knew for a long time that using an ID kit on an identified item allows you too see it's value. I never though it actually changed the value.

I agree with

Well you could always attempt to publicise it in order to cause inflation

In other words this will hit the rich players a lot harder than it hits anyone else. Somehow, this appeals to me.

No it wont. Wont hurt us rich players at all.

Inflation? lol...
There's no inflation in GW since loot-scaling, the economy state is exactly opposite - it's most items that are losing value, so the same gold can get you much more.

So what's the point of thinking up a way to reduce something that doesn't exist? Why think about reducing inflation when the real problem is deflation?

Now hypothetically if there was inflation, not allowing identification of whites wouldn't change much, it's much less than 1% of gold entering the economy right now.

It was significantly more back when there was no lootscaling, when lots of people (and bots) used to solo farm for raw cash by doing quick 1-2 minute runs killing ~15 mobs per run and getting 1 drop per 1 mob killed. And most of those drops were whites (raven staffs anyone?). Now nobody does farming like that, because quickly killing 15 mobs will give you 2-4 drops. Also, we can assume that the vast majority of players don't know about the whole id'ing whites, as we know many forum regulars found that to be a new thing after reading one of the many threads about it.

So if all farmers actually id'ed their whites back in the old prophecies/factions days when there actually was inflation and solo farming merch food was the main source of gold in the economy, the effect of this change would be massive, up to even 5%.
But the reality nowadays is far different, farming is different, lootscaling greately reduces amounts of merched whites, hard mode makes more blues and purples drop instead of whites, and solo farming isn't the main source of cash anymore with lots of other sources of gold, and don't forget about majority of players not knowing about the method. So if such a nerf was done today, the effect would be close to zero.

So it's people ID'ing whites that causes inflation, and not dupers / bots / stupidly rich people!??!??

/notsigned btw

/notsigned

I don't wanna be mega-poor again.. just not-rich is fine.. I've been able to buy lockpicks and stuff ever since I discovered that you could identify white items.. I enjoy that..

I don't think there's inflation atm anyway.. all those nice gold items and upgrades are worth nearly nothing... I blame the greens though.. ^^

iding weps increases their value?! im gonna be rich! however back on subject about the whole inflation matter. ive never heard of someone doing this so i seriously doubt it would be of much consequence to the economy if there was a nerf. i however wanna test out just how much gold i can make doing this. so /notsigned

Nah... it wouldn't hit the rich. They have their money.

What I'm saying is, it would only affect the group of the population that reads forums/wikis and play the game regularly enough to know about this... which isn't neccessaryily the rich.

What inflation? Can you give a list of item that are gaining price at the moment? The only ones I know of are some high-end minis and some 'nerfed' items. And people who buy/sell them don't get their gold by IDing whites.

People don't know that iding whites increases value? LOL! I discovered that on my second day of playing the game, when i was iding stuff in ascalon. Seriously, all it takes to figure it out is a mistaken id, a bare minimum of observational skills, and the curiosity to test out your theory by comparing the prices the merchant offers pre-id and post-id.

You can identify:
- The backpack your are given in any new character.
- Green items.
- White items.
- Upgrades (Both weapon and armor upgrades)
By doing so, you can always get more cash that just selling the stuff.
If you get a 1gold weapon with an upgrade, you can identify it for 4gold, salvage the upgrades for 16..48 gold, identify them for 4..12 gold and sell them for 26..300 gold.

Having to ID whites to get the full amount of the cash only hurts bots and players that do not identify.

IDing whites is not an exploit. It's a wise thing to do.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Identify

I have joined in parties with people that left things around, without having the inventory filled. They only get cash by farming and trading.

But if you do 'the proper way', if you pick all items you can, identify them and sell them, you get 2k/hour by playing normally.

Removing the white idng do not hurt the rich that get money by trading miniatures and rare items, hurts the average player that gets money from all stuff the sell.

Curiosity...IDing 25 whites...does the profit beat the cost of another ID kit?