I hope GW2 has a better weapons economy.

There was nothing wrong with the weapons economy until inscriptions turned up and the fact that there is nothing in game that can be considered rare, when compared to how it was.

Yeah I had forgot about inscriptions and insignias yup that helped to ruin the economy as far as high prices go as well. Most like the low market items now though. I can't remember the last time I bought anything but tomes from another player.

Ahh, the myth of inscriptions destroying the economy again....
My best sales were inscribable and that new system finally made it possible to get certain offhand stats. Have you ever tried to get recurve bow with +5energy before inscriptions?

The economy is down, because of overfarming certain quests (dead swords were 100k+ in the first few months of NF) and additional availability through hardmode (said best sale of mine was a colossal scimitar) and most importantly because there was no new campaign for 18months (no character slots to be filled, no new professions to be outfitted). It's natural market saturation!

No myth, how many 15/50 weapons were dropping prior to being able to buy an inscription of the same?
Additionally the ones that were around were still fetching reasonable money.
Whilst the inscription system didnt single handedly ruin the economy , it was certainly a factor in it becoming the stagnant deadpool it is now.

Looking through my old auction pics.... i would say enough.
Want a selection?




Want to see what i sold in high end for higher prices?




Yes, i got more for a purple inscribable Sephis Axe or a blue inscribable Eternal Shield back when the skin were rare than for the r10 15^50 Gothic Sword.
A single of the scimitars fetched double the price of the r8 15^50 axes together. This was before hardmode.

Inscriptions being the reason for low prices is a myth and repeating it doesn't make it true.

p.s. getting decent caster items before inscriptions was nearly impossible (greens & collector items can't cover everything)

GW is at its core still more action-adventure diablo style than MMO.

So it has a hard time to adapt concepts like this for example (Ultima Online):

Weapons lose durability, and need to be repaired by a smith. Each repair reduces max durability by one. (e.g. 36/42 becomes 41/41 after repair)

The best weapons were the 10% "more than perfect" blades of all kind crafted by Blacksmiths. These sold for more money than the 90% normal ones. They had no advantage besides higher durability.

But as 42/42 means 100% weapon damage, higher durability is desirable.
49/50 means 98% of max damage, 24/25 only 96%.


This system worked, and made crafting meaningful.


But given the casual nature of GW, and the fact that people would hate their epic weapons fading away, I doubt people would like this system at all!



What GW really needs is more variety in inscriptions.

15>50 and +5 Energy
are the most popular and common inscriptions for good reasons.
15% while hexed is too conditional, 20% below 50% HP is also undesirable, 15% while enchanted works IF you are enchanted.


The dilemma is, do we want a system where weapons get specific boni against certain mobs? We already have +20% vs X pommels, and they are fairly unpopular.

We need some more variety, more than +15^50/+30 HP. Some might use +5 AL instead, but you get the idea.


The problem is how to make inscriptions and weapon boni more interesting without being imbalanced or just causing superfluous weapon stacking, i.e. tons of weapons for specific tasks. We already have this with shields, str, tac, mot and command could be reduced to 1 attribute, if you meet the r9 in any of them, you get the full bonus e.g..


As for the weapons economy per se, with all weapons being equal in power and only looks being the difference, there is no chance that the "economy" will get "better".

All prizes are set up by the players, remember Colossal Scimitars and the fast price drop after HM farming of Zehlon Reach, nowadays many people do not even want the oversized thingies anymore.

As long as all weapons are equal and only skins the difference, inscriptions being readily available, I see no chance for this to change ever at all. More like "never"... at the same time we want balanced weapons and inscriptions, equal chances and gear for everyone. As long as we want this, which is a good thing, the weapons economy will never become better.

But I would dare to say, the weapons economy is not bad. GW is just not a good game for an "economy" at all, it is still more an action-adventure style RPG, which also has its good sides.

Removing Inscriptions would not really save the "economy". It would make weapons with max stats rare and more valuable, but would just go against the idea that people can puzzle together their own weapon of choice. While it would make some skins more valuable, due to having a low req and 15^50 e.g., it would also cause lots of people to run around with collector and crafter stuff.

I disagree. I'm perfectly happy with weapons being near worthless. If I want to wield a weapon with a particular skin, I am able to buy it for a few k's.

Don't forget, a 15^50 Falchion is as good as an 15^50 Crystalline. I see no need why the Crystalline would be much higher priced. Yes it's rare, but it doesn't make you better having one.

I suppose this thread is all about people getting rare drops but aren't able to sell them for lots of money. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But then, I don't care much about the weapons I use.

Looking through my old auction pics.... i would say enough.
Want a selection?

@Seut only three out of the six screenies show pre inscription 15/50 weapons, my point is that these weapons were a rarity and worth considerably more than they are now,simply because they didnt just drop with any regularity.

The present day scenario whereby you can simply buy a 'perfect' set of mods for any weapon via inscriptions, has devalued most of the weapons that drop now, i have lost count of the golds i have merched that would have, pre-inscription fetched better money than the pittance offered by the merchant, to say that inscriptions did not influence in any way the market is simply not true, the market was in decline to a point prior to incriptions due to market saturation and overfarming, that i agree with , but inscriptions really shafted it.

This would be fixed if they just would remove Inscription slot, Then "Perfect" items would be much rares and Non perfects and badder skins would have more demand. imo

Angelic, do not forget the positive effects of inscriptions.

Max Gear does no longer mean either a really expensive weapon or using crafter items. Gives you more options, allows more variety in skins.

Getting a shield with desirable mods was near impossible before inscriptions, and getting a 20% HCR "Forget Me Not" inscription is still quite expensive, this mod does not drop often.


As Arduinna already pointed out, low prices for weapons is a good thing.

People give too much about money, and I wonder why.
Besides 15k Armors and Hero Equipment we have only few vanity items where we can spend tons of gold for.



The good old times were not that good.

15^50 weapon drop > BINGO, LOTTERY WIN. Just like the Zaishen Chest Lottery (tm). But the rest also went to the merchant, namely the many undesirable modded weapons.

Now you can farm yourself a certain skin, maybe not r9, but r10 and mod it yourself... this is much better.

We do not play the game because of its great, non-existing "economy", after all!

P.S., I never understood people who do not customize their weapons and prefer to fight with less than max gear because of vanity reasons, just because a weapon is rare or looks better, Pleikki.

Yes, please remove all inscriptions so that all my current gold r9 weapons would skyrocket in value! What an ingenious idea!

Motives are translucent, they are.

Face it, bitching about inscriptions will do no good. It didn't do any good before they were implemented, when they were but a whisper in PC Gamer before Nightfall, and it still won't do any good.

The economy is screwed, and has been screwed ever since Prophecies went live. Why? Because it rests entirely on aesthetic value, and there is no trade system outside "WTS/WTB." All we can do is hope for Xunlai House until GW2. Until then, enjoy your pretty weapon skins that you'd rather use to show off than kill things with.

An Auction house with Set prices/item would be great, gamers naming there own prices is ridiculous.

@Longasc, hmm maybe time has clouded my memory

There are indeed many positive aspects of modding weapons i agree with that , but from an alternative viewpoint maybe 'back in the day' when you had to work a little harder to get things a good drop could certainly brighten up your day, and it felt more like a reward than it does now, but again you could say that after two and a half years perhaps i am more blase about the game?.
Lol i dont know, i still feel that inscriptions put paid to the weapons economy.


@Arcane, money and the pursuit of it in game does not interest me anymore, i have all i need concerning weapons armour and whatever.
Upon reflection i may have been thinking that removal of inscriptions will put things back , but it wont i guess.

And i have lost count of all the 15^50 hammers i had to merch before NF. At least i can salvage the inscription nowadays.
The effect of inscriptions on the market is largely exaggerated. Prior to hardmode and the discovery of certain farm runs you were able to fetch good prices for inscribables.
NF brought us another change that changed the market far more: the ability to select what you salvage.

So you agree that WTB/WTS spam is ridiculous...

At least with Xunlai Market, sellers could (potentially) put up multiple items, segregated into multiple categories to make it easier for buyers to find, and from all towns and all districts. Sure beats town/dist hopping and ENTER-Up Arrow-ENTER, and the eye-straining mess the party search window is.

If the XM was in the game since the beginning, the player economy would be at the very least easier to manage.

Actually, it would also cause problems.

Take a gold r9 sword that's worth 10k in the current economy.... Imagine an auction house where your sword goes up against 246 other people selling that same exact sword.

The results: prices plummet due to overwhelming competition and access to a tremendously huge supply.

Now your sword is worth 500 gold because the huge supply leads people to sell for just a tiny bit over the merch price.

The result would be that the sword decreases to its actual worth, as the true supply is finally made known. If it drops from 10k, that means 10k was an inflated price due to lack of information on the part of the buyers (and likely sellers, as well).

By easier to manage, I meant not only on the part of the players, but Anet devs, as well. They could adjust the rarity of items much easier by seeing their average prices on the market. That's a huge undertaking right now, but with a glance at the XM, it would be easy to tell how much any particular item is going for, even within days of release.

Anyway, my point is (and to stay on topic), a system like this, or an auction house, definitely needs to be in place the day GW2 goes live, period. It simply cannot be an afterthought. As long as the devs keep an eye on it and adjust rarity accordingly, the economy should be fine. Yes, even if it is based almost entirely on vanity.

More gold sinks and crafting would help, as well.

Agreed. All these ridiculous ideas would do nothing but piss off the majority of GW players even more. The GW economy is finally functioning exactly how it was described and advertised to work over three years ago; cheap max-level items for everyone and no need to grind for gold for equipment. If you don't like that, it means you didn't read anything about the game before buying it and should never have bought GW in the first place because you should have known it wasn't going to be some stupid stock-market game that some minority of people seem to enjoy.

Indeed!

A r8 15^50 Longsword drop really had this YEAAAAAAAH! effect on me, that I did not have since Factions release anymore. As you can see, I was already "done" with that excitement even before NF and inscriptions.
Equipping Heroes is mostly done with greens or collector items nowadays, times have changed a lot.


GW has the premise that everyone has functionally equal/max gear, which is GOOD. We only fight for fancy vanity skins, and those are still somewhat rare.

That the prize is now lower than in ages past can be contributed to a lot of factors, inscriptions, loot scaling and the game getting old.

I think the age of the game should not be underestimated, I am already well or even perfectly equipped and see no reason to get new deldrimor skins or weapon contest winners if I do not really dig the new skin.


I wonder how GW2 will be, if it will be more MMOish as many suspect.
GW is not really a MMO, and with the premise of easy maximum gear, the only difference being looks, it has hardly a chance to get even only a so-so "economy" that deserves the word economy at all.

Actually, seut already put this bluntly.

Item with that much copies around would not be worth 10k to begin with.

Anyway, you know what would happen with r9 sword costing 500 gold? It would disappear in seconds as people who have 500 gold and dont have decent sword (you know, casuall people, HUGE silent majority of players) would buy it all out.

Inital shock might suck, biut frankly, it it better overall to have 500 gold and emptz inventroz slot than occupied slot with "worth 10k" item you are not gonna ever sell. and if you would, time spent selling it would lower zour profit to something near those 500gold.

Its simple: If you spend 15 minutes selling 10k weapon you only gained that 500gold. Time has its value you can express in platinum too. The fact that item isn AH would cost way less owuld reflect that beucase people who lost money spamming for items would instead be out there picking up drops that make up for it.

Exactly, excellent points. I remember selling a shield once for 25k, which took me all of about ten minutes. A friend of mine happened to get an identical shield, and later bragged about selling it for 60k. Of course, it only took him 6 hours of spamming every major town before he got that.

I would love to have gotten 5k for that shield if it took less than a minute. In fact, I've got a load of golds sitting on my secondary acct that are probably worth anywhere from 20-80k each, but I would get rid of each of them for 5k or less if I could without setting up yet another auction on Guru or spamming around the world. Time indeed is money, and in the case of a video game, time is also fun. I'd much rather be out there playing than trying to sell crap any day of the week.

I don't think you're fully appreciating how HUGE supply is in this game versus actual demand. And every hour that passes, supply gets bigger relative to demand.

Several hundred thousand people play this game. Imagine if each and every one of them had access to game-wide auctions. Also consider the masses of farmers who would do nothing but pony up auction after auction while adding nothing to the demand.

And just what's the state of demand today? Most people have what they need, even for heroes. There are no new chapters coming, and there's more competition than ever in the MMO market. My gut tells me that the player base isn't growing right now, and might even be shrinking. This keeps demand low while supply keeps on going....

A player reaches a certain point in GW when they have all their characters/heroes equipped and are interested in only a small number of new items. They keep picking up gold after gold though, and flood the supply side of the economy.

Heck, on my treasure hunter character alone I've pulled 2000+ golds and dont ever plan to buy anything for her....

So I strongly disagree with you that people would rush to buy that r9 sword for 500g - because just about every r9 sword skin in the game would be selling for just a few hundred gold.

Also, people would regularly be auctioning r10-13 copies of this sword. The buyer would always have a cheaper alternative, thus tremendously increasing supply in another way.

That was a change for the good overall, and i guess, that would have impacted the market to a certain degree.

Are you sure?

As of now, i miss a lot of shields for paragon heroes, spears (and caster modded spears as well as spears for paragon hero use - thats a lot of spears)

I miss about ~60 staves and focuses of various attributes and coresponding mods.

My shopping list is very long (WTB 10x Heavy Spear Head, ya rly. WTB 50xStaff Wrapping of Defence. ...)

(10 characters for each primary, mind that)

There is reason why i dont have this stuff: It takes a lot of time. My time is better spent playing than spamming. If there was opportunity i would spend 100k+ in ~500gold items ASAP.

/agree

this crap about "the economy" is just people who love farming hoping to get 2billion gold off a rare item for the sake of being rich. It makes no sense. GW has 0 grind/farming compared to almost every other MMO. Making it like the others is purposeless.

I think that Inscriptions ended the point in farming for the weapon of your desire, compared to farming for money, as it meant that all weapons that you could have wanted, can now be found easier, and if found with shit mods, can be changed to make it 'perfect', so it makes it more worthwhile farming the cash and then buying it at such a low price because the rarity of that skin will be greatly decreased due to the increased amount of 'perfect' ones on the market.

Not that i care anyway, just my 2c.

For whatever reason people decide to play the game for if the game does not or stops providing that reason people will quit playing and quit buying the product. It behooves the developers to make every possible way for the game to be enjoyed by as many gamers that are out there buying their product. Remember everyone hasn't bought every copy of GW, some are just getting their feet wet on one chapter and if it doesn't provide them what they are looking for they won't buy the rest I can assure you.

GW through UB and different loot code system and insignias and inscribeables and Hard Mode and other things has changed the face of what GW was in the beginning there is no denying that. The question is were these changes effective in the long term of sales? Well 5 million copies sold total isn't anything to scoff at, but, when you have 4 versions of one game to makeup that 5 million sales it's not that great either. Diablo 2 had that much with just D2 and it's expansion. Since there is no pay to play their only source of income is sales of the versions out there and of course the instore stuff like extra characters and pvp packs and I guess silly curio items.

Don't forget NCsoft shut the doors on "Auto Assault" just poof and it was gone. Don't become so complacent that just because things are peachy to you means they are peachy to NCsoft.