Economist(s) Working on GW2

Ya know what... in 3 years of playing, i have never once bought or used ecto for armor or trade or as material wealth or in any way shape or form. I've never touched it ever!

I've managed to survive, ive managed to buy countless elite armors, and other green weapons and finance myself easily. So NO!

There is nothing wrong with the economy at all!

Stop with this nonense that just because you cant make the vast sums of gold you once did, that all of a sudden your life is going to end and your enjoyment of this game die or some other rubbish.

You dont need to be rich to play this game and if you choose to farm items or materials which have fluxtuating prices, and you wish to use them for currency then just accept the fact that the price of stuff changes.

I really couldnt care less how the apparent fall of the economy impacts farmers and players who feel the need to be rich. I've managed for years now just using what gold I make from selling stuff to the merchant.

I think GW's economy is good as far as materials go. I mean, it's supply and demand. More people selling, price drops. More people buying, price goes up. It works well, even if the merchant's cut can be a little high sometimes.

What I don't understand is why this concept didn't go beyond runes, materials, and scrolls. Why not inscriptions? Mods? Skins/reqs? I mean, if we could go to a merchant who says that Cruel costs x, a Gemstone axe req. 11 costs y, and a +29 Fortitude mod costs z, so I will buy your axe for x+y+z-20% or whatever.

Fix the economy right there.

You want to make Guild Wars go communist, rofl wtf hell no! There is no fair in communism, the whole concept is ludicrous

Inscriptions worldwide, weapon/ofhand upgrade traders and the Xunlai Market.

That would inscrease a whole lot the amout of traders.

Regarless of the prices, a healty economy is one with a lot of transactions taking place.
For that, adding something like a Xunlai Maket, to allow the fastest possible trades, it's the key.

As for the need for a real economist maybe that would be too much, but economic education is a must for the designers of reward mechanisms and drop systems.
Maintaining a healthy ingame ecomony requires proper balancing of supply and demand, early predicting what players will need/want at which levels of advancement, the distribution of money and goods, rarity as a most important factor driving all economies. This is the economic knowledge required. But apart from that designers need to look into what players (and professional farmers) will do to quickly amass huge wealth - predict possible farming abuse as having ways to overfarm either cash or perfect items easily are the major economy killers. Making perfect unique items drop from a mob just outside an outpost is a terribad design decision and begs for abuse.

But do they really care about healthy economy? I doubt that, they care about earning some more $$$ fast out of an old game. Most recent example are the BMP rewards - infinite free supply of perfect inscribable weapons with top quality skins - can you imagine anyone having access to that going for example "WTB a nice gold max insc sword" or "WTB insc. Curses focus" ? That's a whole large part of the market going down!

and you keep spamming every random thread you find with one of the most terrible ideas imaginable.
Hundreds of pages were written about it so i'm not going to repeat, but seriously, another economic disaster isn't exactly what GW needs.

Well they do care about a healthy economy. Just look at the loot scaling. Farming is much less worthwhile now, so playing normally you may get similar rewards than just faming. So 'normal players' match better 'I only farm and almost nothing else' players.

XDD There's a spanish expression:
"Quien no llora no mama" it means "Anyone who do not cry, do not suck milk", it refers to childs, of course, not aout 'sucking' in a game, XD.
So, if you don't ask about things, you don't get things.
If someone asks what would balance economy better, I'll answer the truth I believe.
A perfect longsword inscribed may cost 1k..10k
A perfect longsword non-inscribed may cost probably 0g..50k. Most of the time 0.
The range is much better with inscriptions, so considering the possible drops, 50 different people getting 1k is WAY better than one getting 50k.

So Inscriptions balance economy.

You're basicly just one of those guys who thinks ectos should be 10k+ each, this has been discussed before and I believe there are many players who agree with this: A proper economy doesn't need to have expensive items. Inflation is actually bad for economy:O

Agree on trader for inscriptions.

Skins and req would be too difficult, a 'shop' or auction would work better here.
If I have req10 longsword for sale at 2K and someone sells a req9 for 1.5K, someone might but mine now because they might don't know about the req 9.
If the market was transparent and someone could see that there was a req 9 that's also cheaper, they would buy that one.

Hm... let's see if I'm getting the points...
- Transparency: People see easily other people's prices. On real time. No need to ask appraisers. If an items is sold at an everage of 10k, you would sell it normally by 9..11k depending on how much of them are.
- Speed: No waiting, so people would gain same or even more gold even by decreasing prices. No need to be lazy! Something that can be done quickly!
- Worldwide: Something that looks attractive to everyone, even the most lazy ones. Something that can be made quickly, do not require your input for purchases (only the buyers' ones) and can be done while playing. The more people use the system, the better.
- In the case of items that are widely variable and some of the variants may have no items at all being sold because no one would get much cash by selling them (as it currently happens with some runes, materials, runes, weapon upgrades), add traders so they have always a minimum of availability.
- Rarity maintained. It's nice that everyone can get anything. But that do not mean get anything easily. There must be items that people have to try harder to get, so those items are more valuable.
- No variable fixed properties. All warrior armors have 80 (+20 physical) armor. That's the base, anythng else should be added with upgrades. The prestige of the armor and the rarity of the upgrades must come separately, to freeze 'King of the Hill' cases. The same gos for weapons. Getting a damage and a req (base values) should come separated of getting the mods and varible values.
- Fixed maximums, at least in PvP. They are better if items are usable even if they are not maximum. Currently that's a bit of a Flaw in GW, nn-maximum items are almost worthless, since PvE and PvP items have the same rules; yet they still drop. This could be fixed by making the items become 'perfect' or 'limited' in PvP, even if they are not perfect or have 'too high values' while in in PvE. That way, in GW2, there could be really great weapons to use against monsters with almost maximum values that drop from monsters at level 100... ...that only have the typical lvl20 max values when brought to PvP.

You can't apply world economics to a game.

/thread

One of the basis of economics (if I understand it correctly from books and papers I've read) is called game theory. And it's not just an analogy (I'll leave you to solve the prisoner's dilemna applied to GW .

So, it has everything to do with a game, though you can always argue that this is not the most appropriate term. But to some, earning money (be it virtual) is as fun as killing monsters is for others. And both are games, so both have mathematical equations as underlying basis.

I'd be very interested if we were to talk about the economical impact of, say, GWG auction site. It's an amasing tool, both to the seller and buyer (for the ability to see prices quickly and by category) and for the economist who wants to study GW virtual economy (not sure about that though).

Ok for my 2 sence the biggest thing that really messed up the GW1 economy what the introduction of high end items "Mini's" that became unatainable. That and "duping" really killed the economy. The day people didn't need to farm to make tons of money is the day that the GW1 economy died. Since a fix to the GW1 economy is pointless i just hope that anet keeps very VERY close tabs so that somthing like duping is dealt with VERY swiftly. And if that is the case then the economy should remain quite stable. And the "rich" are people that have worked really hard getting that way and the "poor" are the people who don't need the best weapons or junk.