GW's economy question

In general. Do players have to much money or not enough? I have an idea if players generally dont have enough money...

In general, the average player doesn't have so much (few of the players here are average).

I seem to remember hearing Andrew talking a few months ago about this topic. He said that 90% of the player base has less than 10k. My numbers may be slightly off, but they're pretty close.

It was on the offcial site I think, if anyone cares to dig up the link.

I think the numbers were 80% and <20k.

I believe it.

I feel bad for a lot of them sometimes. It's this mad weird paternal feeling I get. Then I realize they probably suck IRL so then I don't care.

Thanks, Snow Bunny, for correcting me.

I just remember being psyched at the time cuz I had my first 50k. I thought I was leet. Then I joined the forum...heh.

EDIT: Oh and OP, if you idea has anything to do with buying gold or any other type of cheating, it's gonna be /facepunch.

me---not enough...I do usually keep about 20k in storage (for emergency purposes, guess rl does effect me in that way), but if I ever want more than 1 piece of elite armor (the 15k ones) I must work hard to get it.

I need Treasure Hunter and Lucky and probably drunkard/party for my 30 max titles (1.3 mil lucky now) but I only have 300k left and I really don't know of any way to make cash nowadays besides HFFF, and we all know how boring that is.

I'm an average player, I think.

I play everyday. I can't solo farm. I don't power trade. I rarely trade anything to other players. Instead I pick up and merch all my drops, saving those few rarities for the Ventari's Sell forum. I guess my skill level is average. If I go outside by myself, I'm quickly killed. I can survive some high end areas with 2 or 3 heroes by my side and I find HM vanquishing with a full set of heroes to be completely do-able and sometimes easy depending on the area.

I don't buy a lot of high end luxury items. I have 1 set of Elite armor for my warrior (not obsidian) and I have my eye on a 2nd set for my ranger. I own a small menagerie of mini-pets with the Lich and Kuunavang being the most expensive ones in the group.

Today I have 156k in storage (after spending 140k on the rings last weekend), 56 ectos, 40 shards and a handful of sapphires, rubies, diamonds and onyxes. Most common and the cheaper rare materials are maxed. I have tier 1 sweet tooth, drunkard and party animal. All achieved without spending a dime on the titles. I also have tier 4 lucky and unlucky. Achieved by spending a mass fortune on the titles.

I'm not poor, but I'm not considered wealthy by any standards. I remember the feeling of earning my first 100k. I've never felt that I was struggling for money. From day 1 in the game, I've always had enough cash on hand to buy what I need. I can't afford the mini beetle and mini panda that I desperately want, but I don't consider those "needs".

Earning money is not difficult at all. If you are constantly poor then take a look at your spending habits. Why are you always poor? Do you buy too many keys? Do you have to have the latest weapons and armor immediately? Before buying that minipet or weapon that was just added ingame yesterday, wait a week. The item will likely go down in price quickly as more copies are added ingame.

I'm an average player

We need to define what we mean by not enough or too much before any of this makes sense. Even if the particular stats are correct, we still aren't in a position to say that the vast majority of players (the 80%) don't have enough.

20k is not enough to buy 15k armor, thats for sure, but that still doesn't mean that 20k is not enough in the more general sense we seem to be looking for here.

For one, you have to consider what the goals of the majority of players are, and in reference to their ends is that enough money. I suspect many players don't really care about wealth and items accumulation and are simply looking to play through the storyline and quest around a bit, or maybe they just want to pvp. In those kinds of cases the 20k range is more than enough

second, we may as a community think that rarity makes a game interesting. So if everyone in the population could without any real effort achieve anything then it undermines the idea that some things should be marks of time and effort spent. At this point this idea is pretty much dead. Nice armor and weapons are pretty much commonplace. Imagine if the same thing held for titles? No one would care about them any longer, they would not hold anyones interest if anyone with little effort could achieve them.

What I think is far more important to ask - I guess how I think we should measure 'enough' - is whether for the average player it possible to obtain the tools that would allow them to achieve the wealth necessary for their ends. Financially speaking I think the answer is yes, players have enough money to do so. Getting armor and runes that are functionally up to the task is very easy.

The only real barrier to wealth accumulation in this game is time and maybe just maybe a little bit of ability

When I had no life and was playing the game constantly I had more money.... now I don't play as much and because of that I end up draining all my small reserve of money when events like lucky weekend come up.... poor me... HA! Not. I has a real life now yes I has do . lol

Oooookay. So that was my little aside Currently I have 163g in my storage lol. I drained about 20k this weekend. I usually hover around 10-20k lately but when I was playing more I had more money like around 40-50k and was always buying 15k armor which was a real money sink....

I hardly ever do things now just to make money like I used to. Now when I come on to play its for a break and enjoyment so I would rather not spend my time doing something that feels like work. (Lucky titles are like work I guess but I AFK those for the most part anyways) Hence, I am broke lol.

ETA:

But do I care that I am broke? Heck no. I am having fun with the game and that is all that matters to me.

I see wut you did thar...

Also, to the OP: would you care to define what you mean by enough money? To some people *cough* Malice *cough* it's never enough.

Me too


12 chars

I've heard the same statistic, that most have less than 20k. I'm not into power trading either. Haven't done a lot of farming in a while. I've just been doing a lot of title stuff and that adds up. I do have tendency to shop, but I personally haven't felt gold woes.

And sure you are Malice...sure you are..:P

I totally agree. 20k is a fortune in this game. A thrifty player can buy max armor, max weapon and offhand, nice runes, his needed skills and still have money left over for an id kit, expert salvage kit, bags and belt pouches.

If a player is playing everyday and is really putting time into the game, they will have more than 20k to spend. If they only play once in awhile to relax then they likely don't care much about elite armors and titles and minipets which are the real money drainers.

When I create a new character I first head outside town, kill the 10 or so monsters it takes to earn 50g and immediately open storage. I withdraw a 1k allowance for the character to buy everything she needs and usually deposit 900g back into storage in an hour.

Wow, I thought I was poor now that I was down to 400k (with ten sets of elite armors), but I guess I am doing ok for myself. This thread makes me feel a little better since someone said earlier that 20k was a fortune.

I have about 50k currently, but I have been down in the dumps of cash (<10k) before. never had over 100k on any char or in storage ever, never had more than 20 ectos at a time, and never had more than 5 shards at a time, and I never get good gold weapon drops.

Most people have what they need. In an economy that was meant from the very beginning to have prices under 100k, having more was never something neccesary. It was a long time since now, when most prices finally are 'fixed' the way Anet meant them to be.

But something like the Xunali Market would be even better for this, since it would allow much faster transactions, and much more transactions would be done, and economy would be finally fixed.

One of my former guild members had more than 1400K in his characters. I always wondered... why? You can't show off that, even if you make a screenshot that could be faked. So why?
Unused money is wasted time.

i mean those stats are totally misleading... coz they dont account for multiple accounts... i mean mules or storages as u call them... also accounts that arent logged for 6 months or more, accounts that arent active by any rule... just bulk of the game...

i myself have 6 accounts...

i know ppl with more... more than half of my guild have multipla accounts...

most hard core pvp players hav eno money on secondary accounts...

so that percentage is much lower... i think that ppl that play this for 8+ months and have less than 20k... are born wrong or just arent trying...

idk.. maybe im not the best judge here i made my first 100k in first month of playing... 55 monk/solo uw/zealots+reversal spamming... easy... then drops from hoh chest... that stuff... in the early days... later sorrows, much alter cantan elite missions / whatever... there were always ways to make money... it just depends how well u know the game mechanics and how much time u want to spend playing it... if i loose fun factor and catch myself in grindfest i just alt+f4 its not worth it...

Currently I have 60k in storage. That's perhaps a little above average for me, but then I'm currently building up savings for cap sigs. Usually I'm down at about 30k, give or take, although with a taste for armor I often can have about 80k...before spending it.

I've rarely had more than 100k, and both times were when I was saving for Vabbian. Highest I've been is probably about 270k...most of which went on gemstones for armor.

Am I an average player? Well i have 10 characters at the moment, most of whom have at least one elite armor set. I play fairly regularly, couple of days on, couple of days off, a few hours at a time. Don't vanquish, very rarely go HM. Have finished all campaigns and EotN on at least one character

The brutal truth is, this is an RPG where you honestly don't need money to play.

Get 8 skills, some collector weapons and armor, and you can play. You won't be the best player - but really, spending the extra few thousand gold to get the best armor, and all the mods and runes you want, is not going to kill the avg player.

Anything over 10k is purely for eye-candy. It's a system I hope will go into GW2...

Not to mention, some of the best looking armor in the game is (IMO) Collector's. I was so happy when you could buy the starter armor with max stats in Factions!