The Guild Wars Economy - in fine shape?

I have no idea if it's good or bad, because I have no idea what makes a good economy or a bad economy.

I personally think Runescape knows what they're doing. They have a set price for everything in game so when you trade with someone, you have to either buy it for a little below or a little above or exactly on the price that is set.

This completely abolishes merchanting and makes prices more reasonable.

Everlasting Beetle Juice Tonic <<<< link to wiki

ah cool thanks for filling me in ravi

No, it's not.

It is slow and only for a few.
Many people just play 'standalone'. Getting items and gold for them, and rarely purchasing items from others.

A healthy economy is one with PLENTY of transactions. It's more important to have 1000000 transactions of 100g than 100 of 1000000 gold.
The more the gold moves, the healthier the economy.

That's why the only thing needed in GW economy is somwthing like the Xunlai Market, something to set quick transactions without wasting time in outposts or external forums. Just myriads of direct sales.

Runescape has something called The Grand Exchange. You put the item you want to sell in a "box" and leave it there. Someone else searching for that item then puts money in to buy it and receives the item. Once this happens, the player is alerted in game that their money is in the Grand Exchange collection box.

I pretty much agree with this.

I think one problem we have is that a "good" economy means different things to different people. Some like a robust high-end market. Some like a lot of transactions. Some like to have great personal wealth. Some like a narrow gap between richest and poorest. Some like price stability. Some like a lot of volatility so they can play the market. Some like easy wealth creation for all. Some like a decent amount of "lottery" items that can make you instantly richer if they drop. Some like new players to have a decent chance to outfit themselves.

The problem is that a lot of goals are mutually exclusive. If it is possible to get "rich", you can't really control the gap between rich and poor. If price flucuations are highly stable, the chances to play the market are limited. If everyone can easily get some "valuable" item, that item stops being rare and its value plummets. If wealth creation is too easy, gold loses its value and prices rise.

I don't think in any real sense the economy is "broken." I see a tremendous amount of trade going on. I use party search every time I pass thru "Spamadan," and I make a quick purchase or sale based on the offerings. It is not hard for new players to get what they need. Gold is reasonably stable with modest deflation.

It's not without flaws. I agree the trading system could still be greatly improved. I think crafting professions would give more reason for people to trade - something we might see in GW 2.

While far from perfection, the economy is a lot healthier than many Guru posters are willing to admit.

You see people in every town with multiple sets of elite armor and KOABD titles simply because this game has been out for over 2 years. People have had plenty of time to get those things...and it used to be easier to make money.

A good economy is a stable economy, and GW's is anything but. GW's economy is hosed for several reasons.

The lack of an auction house or convenient means of selling certain items has had a huge impact. It is bad for players on both sides - buyers can't find what they want, and sellers can't find the buyers - and players often don't know exactly how much an item is worth because there are no set guidelines. Player to player trading in this game is so frustrating that many people opt out of it entirely.

Imagine if there was no means of mass communication or global commerce. If you want an ear of corn, you have to haul your ass to a farm and buy it from a farmer in person.

Farmer #1 sells his corn for $200 each, and lives in Springfield.

Farmer #2 sells his corn for 50 cents-$1 each, and lives in Chicago.

Farmer #3 buys his corn from Farmer #2 and resells it at double the price, and lives in Champaign.

Joe Schmoe grows his own corn in his back yard, and only grows enough to feed his family.

People in Springfield are clueless that they're being way overcharged for their corn, while Farmer #2 lives in poverty because he undersells his crops, and Farmer #3 makes out like a bandit at Farmer #2's expense.

Eventually, Farmer #2 can no longer afford to grow and sell corn, and Farmer #3 starts reselling Farmer #1's corn for double the price. People are left with paying outrageous prices for their corn, and everybody suffers. The community says "WTF any idiot can grow corn!", so many of them do so. When the community stops buying the expensive corn, the Farmers have to lower their prices significantly just to be able to sell it at all. Corn starts selling for a penny or two each. Now everybody has corn, but the Farmers have everyone's wealth in their pockets - and though they now only make measly pennies off their corn, they are still the richest people in the world.

That sounds stupid and sucky, right? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, Joe Schmoe never gets ahead, and nobody really knows WTF the price of corn should be...

But that is how we do it in GW. Farmer #1 = the "i have 1mil gold and multiple stacks of armbraces" players, Farmer #2 = average players, Farmer #3 = the NPC traders, and Joe Schmoe = casual players.

Months later, the economy has evened out a bit because those who started growing their own corn had money to spare, and those who bought the cheap corn saved a hell of a lot of money - but they refuse to pay more than pennies for their corn because they now have an overabundance of it and have realized there's more to life than just corn. Joe Schmoe has been completely left behind.

Rinse and repeat every 6 months with Farmers #4-9 and a crop of potatoes and soybeans. Ooh, potatoes, COOL SHINY NEW POTATOES EVERYONE MUST HAVE! Not that that part is Anet's fault...people like shiny stuff, that's just the nature of things. A high-end boom is bound to happen with the release of new items into the economy.

Anyways...a healthy economy should be stable and regulated, even adjusted when necessary. There should not be just two classes of items: 100k+ or jack squat. Adding an auction house (global commerce) AND NPC traders (mass communications) for other items from the beginning would have prevented this. Anet's bright idea? Add more money sinks. Yeppers, that's just what we needed...not. Who cares what the rich do with their money? They can pile it up and roll around in it for all I care - they are not the people Anet should be concerned with. There is no such thing as "too much money", but there is certainly such a thing as too little. You're destined to be poor or just "scraping by" unless you get a lucky high-end drop.

/soapbox

Exactly. Seems the people that complain about a screwed up economy made most of their money farming & selling golds & greens for insane amounts of money. Now most everyone that wants those rare skins have them & you actually get more money playing the game instead of farming for hours & spending weeks trying to sell an overpriced item "the market is screwed".

Your example was poorly designed, and invoked the dreaded 'casual player'.

The casual player doesn't care about this. The casual player plays and stops as willingly as they started.

Poor Joe Schmoe, right? What people want is available, and what's more, people know where to go. If you want something, it's quite probable you will find it at Kamadan. If it's some sort of niche item, like a rare req7 or something, then you can still find what you're looking for in other major towns. Kaineng Int1 is a black market for the rare and obscure, especially at low prices. I purchased a Req8 15^50 stormbow there for 80k. People know where to go if they want something. Your farmer's example doesn't make sense because most of the transactions worth anything in Guild Wars are conducted in one of the three major cities, and occasionally EotN.

The economy doesn't really require regulation in this instance. There's a very dedicated curve to pricing with regards to weaponary.
If you want something cheap, usuable, and perfect, like a Forgotten Sword it'll cost you quite little (5-10k) because there's so much supply. If you want to build your own and distance yourself from the crowd, you can pickup a gold inscribable sword and mod it yourself for roughly 20k. If you want something a little more unique, like a Broadsword/Shinobi blade for instance, the skin'll cost you ~30-50k with an additional 10-20k for upgrades. Up from that, you enter the high-end area, and at that point, things are going to scale very sharply according to availability, which is why Crystalline swords are still quite valuable.

The only way ANet could regulate the economy at this point is to remove lootscaling or inscriptions or both. However, removing lootscaling, (and this is really theoretical) would drive prices up, with sellers believing in a greater ease of accumulation and thus more disposable plat.

So really, what can you do with regards to regulation here?

Snow Bunny: You can take out the inscriptions and lootscaling of course, but Anet has already chosen to sail that proverbial ship; with Gw2 looming and such, the chances are minimal they will do anything about it. Your analysis is pretty accurate though, but again not much we can do about it except theorycraft endlessly.

Honestly with GW2 on the horizon does anyone really care about the economy anymore?

I actually designed this thread with GW2 in mind. If the GW economy is screwed up, there will have to be a major reconstruction of distribution of loot and so on, as well as weapon rarity and flexibility.

If the economy's fine, how much needs to be changed?

How so? By making aspects like that a little more available to the casual player?

Guild wars is unique in it's appeal to a casual player because of the lack of a monthly price tag. It means you can put it down and pick it back up at will, and never feel like you're not getting your money's worth if you don't play it.

Casual players want cool stuff too, and as the economy currently stands, it's not unreasonable for casual players to work for a few "cool" things.

Now, casual players won't have storage bins full of 15K armor, maxed weapons/mods, or such, but they can get a few of the things they think are cool. This is for the long time or more active players. But since all you see is what they're wearing, it's easy to say "Look, there's another rich noob!" when you spot some casual player sporting chaos gloves or some other rarity.

New rare skins have been created, very recently in fact (Last month). I wouldn't be surprised if more don't eventually happen, as it's fairly easy to add in a new skin.

Ultimately, the "problem" with the GW economy is that almost all the expensive stuff (Runes and weapon mods aside) adds no functionally to the game, which limits it's long term marketability, particularly on items that drop.

Now, one "fix" would be to rotate out some current rare skins for new ones every few months. This would allow for some rare items to be passed around in the upper markets, and even if it was a yearly cycle, the values would go down as they dropped, and then go up as the time from which they dropped passed.

But ultimately, the economy looks fairly good for the most part. It seems to me that this is not a game where the rich simply get richer, and that is the biggest complaint I'm seeing, and if that's the case, that's good for the game as a whole.

Inscriptions and the terrible trade system are the problem with the economy. Any crappy weapon can be fixed. There would be a massive reduction in the flood of weapons if you actually had to get a rare drop and then have it have the particular mod you needed on it. The end chest drops from the elite areas could still have an inscription slot as it's relatively challenging to complete a full elite mission. And seriously the trading is just horrible, spamming wts and wtb for hours.

I think the economy is great. It takes less than a second to sell anything I find due to the fact that they've put merchants in every town and possible to get any weapon/armour easily due to crafters/collectors (well mostly... they're are sorely lacking most of the +10vs shields).

If skills cost 500g instead of 1k and if they added an upgrade/inscription trader I'd say everything was perfect.

When GW2 comes out you will see the economy soar in GW1. As with most all sequels half of the population will move to the new game. Thus the supply will drop drastically while the demand will continue to be high as bargain bin hunters will enter the old GW1 getting the complete set Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and EOTN for $19.99. Supply will never climb out of it's hole that will be left behind by the GW2 stampede thus those that remain and farm will get richer quicker and can demand any prices they want since the market will no longer be saturated by all the items like they are now ever again because the population will never reach what it is now ever again after GW2. <grin>

I see two primary arguments for opinions regarding the economy...

1. The economy sucks because I can't sell things and become uber-rich
2. The economy is great because I can buy almost anything without spending a fortune.

It's the corporatist vs the liberal... the 'few with the most' vs. the 'everyone is middle class'.

What the corporatist seem to forget is that none of this is real. These are bits of data in a game. Let the majority have the most fun and you'll have a better game as a whole.

I am going to have to disagree with that, although you do bring up a valid point. It is not healthy that most players in a game like GW can afford perfect weapons with ultra rare skins. Short of a few minis everything else in the game is very affordable if you have been playing the game long enough.

I have no problem with everyone getting every item/armor they need; and no problem at all with vanity items having no advantage over much cheaper ones. However; IMHO, there should still be some items/armor left for those of us who have been playing the game since its release, and who like show something other than grind-based titles.

Yeah, because mini polar bears have SO MUCH EFFECT ON GAMEPLAY.

Look, there will always be some few items in this game so incredibly rare that having them brands the owner as obscenely wealthy on sight. They are prizes for people who play the powertrading game just as hard as they can. If you're not a powertrader but you want those items, you'd better learn to play that part of the game. Whining about it makes as much sense as me whining that my name isn't on a Tournament trophy in Great Temple of Balthazar.

/agree

I would even go as far as saying they need more of these items. Not just minis, but more vanity weapons and armor.

For me it's:
3. The economy sucks because I have to spend ages spamming text and wasting time in outposts or resort to external sites like forums to sell single items.

Most of the time, the time it takes to sell an item is not worth the gld you will get by selling it. And so, people only sell items when they have a big bunch of them or when they have one really expensive item. And most of the time, not even that.

That is: The market is SLOW.
Being slow is what can be worst for economy.

- Faster routes.
- More clients.
- More sellers.
- More transactions.

That's what is best for economy always since ancient times.
Those with the faster route can get to the stuff faster and bring it faster to the clients.
Those that attrack more people can sell stuff cheaper and gain more cash by selling more for less money.
The more sellers there are, the more competition is between sellers, and the better the prices get to the clients.
The more transactions are made, the more movement money has, and the more healthier the economy is.

Currently, GW economy is only for those with time to waste and will to spend selling. That is, less than 20% of the players.

What the economy needs is to welcome everyone. Faster sellings, more transactions, no time wasting.
Yeah. What we need is something like the Xunlai Marketplace. Nothing else will do.

Until that s done, there will be no 'economy' other than the made with traders.
Other than that, there will be only a small 'trading' circle with those that bother with the current slowpoke system.

Birthday minis are crap, they are not high end. High end are oni, naga, zhed, shiroken, panda etc.

In my opinion, the economy as a whole looks healthy.
Starting players don't have to save every penny to get decent gear and a decent build if they don't buy every weapon and skill available.
Players who put some effort into it should be able to make roughly 10k/hour with farming. Could be even more.

On the other hand, trading facilities are bad.
I don't want to spend ages to sell something when I could make more gold while playing or farming.
Some gold items I merch could make someone happy and I don't mind selling them at merch prices, since that is what I get for them now.

On the other hand, I do understand that A-net would perhaps not support that very much.
Because introduction of trading facilities on those 'low end' items would kill the gold sink called crafter weapons. If anyone still uses those.

From my point of view, trading would give better insight to the market for all and I think both buyers and sellers could benefit from it.

What is slow for you is average speed for a lot and fast for the majority, who bought GW for having fun doing missions and killing stuff. As said many time above, each person has its own vision of what the state of the economy is, which often amounts to "how happy I am with buying what I need/want and selling the rest". Overall, I guess Anet is doing a good not pissing too many people.

I noticed in a year-old dev article on Loot Scaling (see other thread) that they were aiming at introducing regularly new (uber-)rare stuff so that the top bunch of GW entrepreneurs can always find something to do (no judgment here, some people love to be a significant node in the GW economic map and that's perfectly fine). It really is an art to balance the requirements from so many people.

It only takes as much time as you want it to. I can sell anything in under a minute. Of course, I need to sell below the 'market consensus' price, but I don't give a rat's rectum. The opportunity cost of time spent trying to get a good price is just too big for me.

Even when I sell req9 gold skins for 1k It takes ages to sell anything, regardless of the skin.

In the time I'd sell any of most items I'd like to sell, I get more gold just by playing normally.

I sell those within a minute too, at nearest merchant. When I posted what I posted, I assumed we were talking about items that belong on the player market. Only a very few skins apply.

Agree, we realy need an auction house, Xunlai Marketplace * dreams *

Frankly, I don't agree. Even selling under the norm, I'll make more without a decent trading system than with it. When offering items up for sale becomes too convenient, every Tom, Dick and Harry is going to put up stuff for sale, and prices will plummet even further.

Trading is fine the way it is at the moment. It's an activity that demands a time investment, and that's how it should be. When the time investment part disappears, we'll have deflation like we've never seen before.

Why that difference?
Not everyone sells at the same time.
Not everyone sells at the same outposts.
Not everyone sells in the same 'world' (Europe, International, America, Asia)

And if everyone went to the same International outpost, not everyone would sells in the same language. So probably what you are looking for is there, but you cannot read it!
And even if everyone used English, the Party panel list would move so fast that seeking in it would be a hell!

A system to seek items regardless of language and location is needed. Otherwise all that are out of the 'hot' language and locations are out of the market.
No one should be punished for not being able to speak English when the game is fully translated in their languages.

On the contrary. This is the post of the year.

I just want to add that while some kind of auction house or store system would be AWESOME, its absence doesn't mean the economy sucks. It means the trading system sucks. Two different things.

The trading system is what first shapes the economy.

If the only a few trade, then only a few are inside the economy.
Luckily we have traders, but when it comes to anything without a trader, then we get the trouble.

Now, if you want a rune that no one sells, you can get it quickly for 100g, without having to spend ages farming for monster armor.

Now, if you want a weapon upgrade no one sells, you HAVE to spend ages farming for it. And if you have a PvP-only account and want to upgrade a Zaishen or Hero chest reward, you are done, you cannot get most upgrades. Why? Because those that get such things will never bother in selling them, they will sell only those that the majority of people would buy.

True^billionth power. Trading in GW is horrible. It's why I pretty much merchant 99% of what I pick up. Thankfully is not required since the items that are necessary are easy to get a hold of. Other than that it's terribad.

Not healthy for who, though? Some guy buys GW off the shelves, plays a month, sees a Chaos Axe, loves it, buys a r9 or r10 for 10K... how is this not healthy for the buyer or seller? Because the seller can't get the 100K + nn Ectos from the old days? The seller gets a lot more than the merch will pay and the buyer is now a much happier player and continues progressing through the game with his new chaos axe. Certainly seems win-win to me.

Reading this, I don't believe that you actually have a problem with the economy itself... you seem to have a "leet-loot" issue. Since there are still "elite" items out there that are extremely rare, I'm guessing you don't have any of those in particular and possibly you have items that were once extremely rare but have become more common, is this a correct guess?

You want to find (or buy) an ultra-rare item and have the warm-and-fuzzy that it will always be ultra-rare. This is not a problem with the economy. The economy is fine.

One other side note - I completely agree (as I think 99% of the GW population does) that we need a marketplace/trading center.

I don't think a lot of people realize that something like that is bound to bring down prices once everyone starts using it. Assuming you can set your own price on an item, there will always be tons of people who get drops and don't realize just how much they're worth and put it up for sale for way less than they should. Do you know how many people out there get something like a perfect sundering sword hilt and don't know its worth 7-8k. Assuming also that there is no limit to how many individual items you can list, people will list just about everything and prices for just about everything will plummet since the "get it while you can because so and so is selling one right now" mentality will disappear.

Well, of course, some will sell underpriced, but most people will see other people's prices before setting theirs.

Then they will increase or decrease theirs based on how many people ar selling already and how much they can wait for the item being sold.

It would be good for the system to set certain minimums to some items, like the merchant value or 1k for things like tomes.

Well, also, its not just that... standard competition will bring prices down. Think about it... if you go into a city and you're the only one selling a sundering sword hilt and someone needs it, you're going to get pretty much whatever you ask within reason. If a marketplace or auction house becomes a reality, theoretically there should be more than one of just about any item in there and people are going to start undercutting each other's prices to get THEIRS sold. Not to mention if the gold farming bots figure out how to use it, they'll undercut everyone and prices will fall even more since they don't care how much they get from an item as long as its them who sells it.

An auction house/market place is a good idea, but simply not worth the "effort" that Anet needs to put into it, effort that they can use to improve the game in a more significant way (pvp skill balances and updates cough cough ). Perhaps it would be before, when the buyer to seller ratio was much better, but now with like 5-10% of people in a district buying stuff it doesn't make sense.

I won't use a statistic for this either, but generally the only things u can sell to players now are over 100k, inscriptions, or mods. All the medium items are shit-hard to sell, and just worth merchanting (yet another indicator of a bad economy)

But the huge increase in the amount of sales will greatly compensate that.

You no longer sell 2 things and cast the rest to the merchant. You cast to the merchant the real junk and put to sale anything over 500g.