SF/Chaos Plains Farm Will Not "Ruin Teh Economyz"

I'd think it'd be more close to something such as stock, seeing as oil is a necessity to the majority of the US whereas ectos are not an integral part of playing Guild Wars. Regardless, this has merely turned into a QQ fest about people complaining that they've lost money on an investment.

so i guess the fact that ecto's are now 3.9k@ trader has no relevance at all to SF farmers....must be those damn gremlins again

I'll just answer to the first point:
It has a big impact on the price since it is so damn effective at dropping ectos that people don't even bother selling them to people.
And since people buying ectos rely on the traders prices, which are lowered because of lots of people merching ectos, it does have an impact.

SF/chaos plains is causing the deflation of ectos.
Simply because it has never been easier, and it has never been so reliable.
People complained because they didn't get a single ecto in 5 runs.
Now they complain because they get only 3.

I'm not saying it's bad. I don't care. But saying it has nothing to do with SF/chaos plains farming efficiency is just blind.

EDIT:
So someone already made the same point, answer was:
To that i'll answer:
Look at the facts,
look at the number of complaints,
look at the variation at trader,
and have a look at when it started. Come back and tell me with a straight face that it has nothing to do.

I know there must be some people to go against the river but seriously you're sinking there.

People who were farming ecto's for making gold instead of crafting an armor will soon farm something else that makes more profit. Gemstone sets will be hot again with the comming update.
Prepare for some QQ threads about Ursan-way and Cry of Pain spikers.


You're right. People use them as a currency. Using crafting materials as a currency is gambling. Some people were lucky while others were unlucky.

I don't have much gold in my storage but I gambling right now... I bought nothing but UW-scrolls last week for 1.3K and yesterday they were allready at 1.7K. I recall them being 2,5K before the double SS/LB failor-weekend that granted months of favor.


Anyway, low ecto prices are only bad for those who use them for other reasons than crafting an armor. Sux to be greedy and selfish... even more in a fantasy world.

I don't see you conducting ecto giveaways.

Hypocritical self-righteousness fails.

was there an update planned today?

I can explain why...

because I don't have many ecto's.

They've been pushing back a skill balance + the HoM update for a while now I think.

Ectos are used in trading. You can't deny that! And they are worth a lot more than a gold piece, which is why they are needed. So they are the $100 bill of Guild Wars. But it's sometime $100, and sometime $60 (and dropping...!)

Anyway, you can't ignore the economic impact, because without it, there is no problem. (After all, would anyone complain if the PermaSin could all of the sudden farm wood! "OMG, the price of wood is plummeting at the Material Trader! The economy is in shambles!!")

What if Anet introduced a fixed price, high value item, that was not obtainable as a drop in the game? Something worth, say 10 Platinum. It has to be fixed in value, and not farmable. This would then be used in high-end trades, and decouples the material/money issue from ectos. People can still farm ectos, but it then becomes just another material good, like rubies and diamonds. There would be one mad rush on the Rare Material Trader to liquidate the huge ecto supply sitting in storage boxes everywhere, but once that was over, the economy could recover, and return some point of stability. (Maybe they would need to institute a fixed value exchange between ecto and this new item. Otherwise the rich and uber rich could get seriously screwed by the deal...) Thoughts?

I will say it again...... LOW PRICES IN LOOT SCALING ERA=WIN FOR ALL.<------Close thread now.

No.
12charsss

Yes........




4 Mule characters.

The OP agrees that SF caused the ecto price drop, just not in the way everyone is saying or thinking. Read his post again.

/signed to close yet another accursed SF thread

"Unleash the dogs of war!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Lolwut?
China (and India, to some extent) begs to differ.

This would just intensify the ecto sell-off, as people would rush to convert ectos to this sort of item.

In principle, it's a good idea. So is removing the gold cap on trades/storage.

The problem is that there are so darned many ectos out there that this isn't a Pareto-improving solution without going a step beyond. It could work if ANet were to freeze ecto prices for a period of time to enable the changeover, or temporarily implement a collector that will exchange one for the other at a fixed rate.

Note that this is often how governments solve hyper-inflation problems in RL, by the way. Declare the old currency worth X fraction of the new currency, make the old currency not legal tender, and open a window during which people can convert the old currency to the new.

Only works if the new currency can't be printed as aggressively as the old, of course.

Breaking alot of bad arguments made within this thread.

Issue 1:

Define: Currency

A currency is a unit of exchange, facilitating the transfer of goods and/or services. It is one form of money, where money is anything that serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a standard of value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency

Define: Commodity

A commodity is anything for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a given market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

Question: Which is considered as legal tender as currency officially ( As dictated by Anet, you can read this up within your Newbie players manual ) within GW ? Is it Gold or Ectos ?

If it was accepted legal tender in GW as a currency, all the npc merchants and traders would directly allow Ectos as a medium of trade for other goods. But this is not so, thus, Ectos cannot be considered as legal tender, or thus, an Anet dictated "currency".

Issue 2:

Fact: Ectos is indeed a rare commodity. But it is not a key essential to any player. Players can still play through the entire game, going all through all 3 campaigns without seeing a single ecto dropped or used by himself.

So, why are Ectos being directly compared to oil ? Oil is like an undisupted commodity which is key to almost EVERY single country in the world, affecting the growth of nations.

Ectos do not possess such a power. If anything, Ectos are more like Diamonds in real life. They are expensive and rare, and is a key component in some limited industries, but, they are not a key essential ( to the broad world economy ) as a whole.

Hence Ectos should be seen as a luxury item, which tends to be useful only for a very limited scope of usage within GW.

A.) To increase personal net wealth over the official 1000 plat limit.

B.) Trade for selected special high end goods.

Issue 3:
Fact: More players are farming and getting more ectos with the SF buff. This does increase the relative supply of the material which does not meet the rise in demand. Thus prices are dropping. But is this truely affecting the GW economy as a whole?

Question: How many players are holding on to stacks of ectos within GW ?

Question: How many players have wealth in excess of 1000 plat in GW ?

If anything, by what we established, Stacks of ectos are only in possession of a relatively minute amount of players, if compared with the players with less then 1000 plat in excess in GW.

And by minute, I mean say, a drop of water ( Stacks of ectos holder ) vs a glass of water ( > 1000 plat players ).

If so, the only thing happening is this, only a small group is actually getting poorer, while the majority is still not affected.

It is like saying that, the "glass of water players" would have their wealth significantly increased or decreased as a result of ectos going up or down in price. Since the majority do not have a significant holding amount of ectos, why is the GW economy being affected then ?

Issue 4:

Question: Are Ectos legal tender in the real world ?

Going through so many threads, how many players actually realise that, the time GW's servers are shut down, none of the stuff you accumulated counts for squat in real life. ( Thats a matter of "when" not "if" )

Of course, you could mention in your curriculum vitae that you were an expert trader in GW, maybe you could land a job as a real life commodity trader... ... .

He's just dead wrong. Most of the ectos in the economy are static - they don't move around much. Lotta people have lots and lots of stacks.

When the rate of generation quadruples, it causes a massive shift in the normal behavior of the market. Since there is a certain segment of the market for whom time is money (ie: the bots), ectos start getting tradered more aggressively. Trading ectos ceases to be worth the time price for the bot farmer, as it takes too long to recover an extra 200-400 gold per ecto given the glut of supply. Further, more ectos to sell means more time price in and of itself.

Once the price starts to decline, it is fully rational for the holders of large blocks of ecto to ascertain that the price is going to continue to fall for some time.

At this point, the market gets flooded.

This is fully rational behavior. It's neither panic nor hysteria. Every individual actor KNOWS that other actors will dump ectos, and further that there is no way that these decentralized actors can coordinate to stop the massive liquidation.

Thus, blame needs to be placed on the catalyst - the dev update. NOT the rational responses of individuals.

@Mewcatus:
But what are diamonds to RL then!!!
hehe j/k

What is happening to the ecto market is called inflation.

If you would like to compare it to real world money see it this way;
Gold = Dollars
Ecto = Dollar Bills

There is an 'unlimited' supply of ecto's, just as there can be a nearly limitless supply of dollar bills.
Inflation is a bad thing, regardless...

Here's a small anecdote for you;
In a country far, far away, there was poverity all around. Luckily for that country they had some very, very smart people leading them.
"If there isn't enough money, why don't we just make some more money bills?! Everybody will be rich and have more than enough."
And so it happened, they printed more and more money and everybody was overloaded with money. However this caused inflation, and it went from bad to worse.
Eventually people started to burn money to stay warm! Why you ask? Because it was cheaper to burn money than to buy wood.

There!

The difference is that there is neither a cap on the number of dollars/euros/pounds sterling/yen I may hold in RL, nor a cap on the number of that currency that may be traded in any given transaction. Something's gotta give here.


Liquidity is a service. The players holding all of those ectos are the same players that give you a market for high end items.

Destabilize those markets sufficiently, and you can't trade anything of value. This won't affect you if all you do is outfit ugly, high-req weapons with mods. However, if you like rare items that look nice, and you like the rarer miniatures that the devs have put into this game, you should care about whether or not people are willing to transfer such items from player A to player B.


See last paragraph. Markets for high-end items die when uncertainty exists.

Naive much?



To me, this argument is about the principle of the thing. The consequences of the dev update in question were easily forseeable, as we've had this problem once before (Hard Mode release). If you mess with the rate of ecto generation, you get VERY undesirable consequences due to the number in existence. This simply doesn't happen with other commodities - they don't get hoarded because they aren't used as a standard in trades.

Anyone could have told you that permitting Shadow Form to stay up permanently without requiring an Me secondary just isn't a good idea. If it didn't get broken in UW, it would get broken elsewhere. End of discussion.

From what I interpret, you are probably saying that that ectos is still considered as a "currency".

That in itself is wrong already. Only Gold is a legal tender "currency". Ectos are still considered as a "commodity".

Inflation occuring on a "commodity" has a different effect on the economy in comparision to inflation on a "currency".

Inflation on a "commodity" is easily circumvented when traders move between commodities. When one commodity is devalued, they shift it to another one. Thus, only 2 things are true.

1. Inflation on a "commodity" causes the value of the "commodity" to go down aka devaluation. Value of "Currency" is not affected actually. The value of basic necessity items are not affected as a result.

2. Only players who are holding on to significant amounts of the "commodity" is affected.

Question: If his holdings (and trades only in) are purely in gold and in lockpicks ( 1000 plat + 500 full stacks of lockpicks ), is the value of his personal items affected by the devaluation of ectos ?

If anything, as long as he keeps his holdings in stable commodities, or never exceed 1000 plat, he would never be affected by the falling ecto prices.

Hence, as you can see, there is a key intrinsic difference between "commodity" and "currency" and how inflation might affect it.

Bwahahaha OP fails on the whole line, such a poor understanding of how economy works, and such a high concentration of misconceptions in 1 post is uncommon even for a GW forum.

It's just a miserable epic fail at trolling, and not worth my time on a quality detailed response.

And the fact that it goes from being the $100 bill, to the $60 dollar bill (do those exist?) to the $20 dollar bill is no problem unless you want to buy something for a billion dollars and have only one suitcase to fit the money in. A problem very few people ever face.

This is largely how the ecto price drop should have been received.

That would probably end the complaints by the rich and uber rich who don't want to see their ecto stacks devalued, and prevent a repeat of this scenario ever again.

But I don't think a-net will do it. It's often said that the original design included the 100k cap for the specific purpose of putting a limit on the rich-poor divide. No item was to ever be worth more than 100k. The fact that a-net has consistently declined to intercede to stabilize 100k+ markets (most notably by not "rust-storming" the duped armbraces that got traded out into the market) makes me think there's some truth to that. Creating an official super-currency would fly in the face of such a "nothing is worth more than 100k" policy.

That's not possible. Computers cannot store infinitely large numbers. There must be a cap. Move the cap from 100k to 1,000k or 1,000,000k and you're still going to to run into the exact same problem -- people want to set a price over the cap and resort to clumsy ad hoc super-currencies to do it.

But apparently it was worth your time to stop by and flame me?

ANet has changed quite a few policies, including ones where they ended up with considerably more egg on their face. Ex: the "any guild with members that are employees cannot participate in tournaments" policy, retroactively changed (publicly, anyway).


Add a byte to everyone's account profile for this purpose and I assure you that you won't run into the problem until it becomes sufficiently silly so as not to matter.

If I can hold a million gold in my storage, that implies that the game can handle at least 1,048,575 gold in storage.

Multiply that by 256 and you get well over 268 million. That'll cover 1750 armbraces in present values.

I'm willing to agree to lose sympathy for the problem at that point if you are.

The economy seems fine, but also it isn't important.
Oh but nerfing SF would be cool.

I don't care if ectos drop in price. I'll be a happy camper if they drop back to 1k even if I loose lots of moneyz. I'm more worried about my storage problems. I can't do shit because all of my chars are armors, rares, and crappy items hoarders.

Inv space has "ruined the economyz" more than the ecto drop. Well that and the instant millionaires that Anet created on the famous trader reset that was not rolled back. Even with all the fuzz about it they never rolled it back.

Enough storage rants... On topic now, I agree with the OP. The ecto dropped.... so what!

True, but, might I point out, that you could have simply put ur holdings in a stable "commodity" like lock-picks, rather then Ectos. Choosing to put ur holdings in ectos, makes you susceptible to the rise and fall in prices.

If you are willing to take the risk, getting burned is not surprising.

Once again, this is an issue of "luxury" items versus "necessity" items. As I pointed out, there is a difference between the two. Only "luxury" items are adversely affected by this so called inflation.

Majority of the "necessity" items, like mods, in GWs, probably will never be affected by the rise and fall of commodity based items.

Remember, what is cool looking in the game != what is necessary within it.

You can still as easily go through the entire game without having ever to touch a "luxury" item.

That only means that the value for high-end items die.

Question: How many players hold on those high-end items and use them for trade ?

Question: How does the above compare to the amount of low-end item trading going on ?

Holding onto high-end items, are nothing more then just "commodity" trading. Even if the entire "high-end commodity" trading dies out, the game economy will still just chug along, as low-end commodity trading is not affected by it.

If anything, the game economy is just evolving, whereby, high end luxury items are worth alot less compared to low end necessities. And thats about it actually.

Based on the principle of things, and what I just read, you are just taking for granted that Ectos must have a stable value.

Question: Did Anet ever promised that Ectos have a stable value ? And did Anet ever say that Ectos must be the standard commodity for trade?

You made too many assumptions, which were not verified by the relevant parties, and if you got burned, you actually only have yourself to blame.

PRECISELY its just like paper money... they are not backed by anything but our feeling of how much they are worth... ectos are nothing but what we feel they are worth, because people were selling so much and saying SF NERF is destroying th economy, the prices fell, if someone were to stop ectos from dropping im sure hysteria of buying would ensue... its just how people feel they are worth, look at diamonds.. they went to 7k becuase ANET said diamonds would be used a massive amount of buying and people thought they might be rich.

Speculation can also cause the market to fall, the ecto market is very much liek the stock market, it goes down when people think its worth nothing simply because they believe it will go down, which it will because they fell that way.

Gladly. But I've already lost sympathy at the 100k level.

Do you have any idea how many weeks that would take? Further, it isn't like I'm not diversified - I agree that all risk in one place is bad.

Again, it's not a question of risk. It's a question of a terrible game design decision being made despite the fact that the consequences were both easily anticipated and certain to upset a whole lot of people.

The distinction is pointless in a game such as this. Mods, runes, etc. aren't "necessities" either. If all you want to do is play the PvE campaigns, and you don't suck at the game, you can get by just fine with a bunch of dirt cheap greens with bad mods, cheap insignias, major runes and a minor Vigor.

Sure, but you'd have quit by now.

On question one: more than you think. Remember, players are poor because they spend their income.

On question two: low-end trading doesn't happen because the time price of doing so is way too high. Most stuff gets merched because the inefficient trade system makes it simply not worth selling! You're better off going back down to the farm and getting more stuff to merch than you are spending half an hour to get 10k out of a decent item.

I'll additionally note that tradering ectos adds GOLD to the system. This causes inflation in everything else in the game - mods, runes, items, etc. It ends up taking more cash to acquire desirable commodities, because people can afford to buy more/better ones from the trader! Similar issue with mods if the farm adds cash to the system faster than it adds good mods (which is probable).

I'd respect that argument a lot more if the "evolution" weren't driven by a game design decision that is just obviously bad. Look, if you can keep SF up permanently and you can kill efficiently with it, you can do everything in this game solo (Vanquish, HM missions, etc.) unless there's a monster with a touch skill in the zone.

You can't seriously tell me that this is a good idea. Especially given that ANet's has consistently tried to stress team play.

See the above. The point isn't that the value of ectos cannot/should not go down. It's that the game designers shouldn't create a devaluation through poor decision-making. Further, they should own up to imbalance errors and correct the imbalance.

It's not like I'm going to suddenly be shirtless and have to sell my FoW and my nice items to eat. It really is the principle of the thing.

That's foolish given the game designers' decision to release extremely rare miniatures into the system.

Players will find a way to trade those items at market value if the game designers don't find a way to permit it in-game. Hence the need for super-currencies, with less predictable results than if you denominate everything in one currency.

Alternately, players will resort to methods ANet prefers even less.

Instead of blaming SF blame Anet, we have a gold restriction because of there slow reaction to the bots........and the fact that there system sucks and it allowed bots to run a mock, Ectos were never meant to be used as a form of currency, Anet needs to remove the Gold Cap limit.

The SF update didn't cause the price to drop.
It's the farmers using the updated SF which cause the price to drop.
And those farmers who are selling those to the rare material trader.

It's your mistake. I don't see people buying high end stuff like houses with oil do you? Thought so.

Ecto is being used as a currency which sets it apart from oil.

From my point of view, I get the feeling that this was actually intentional on Anets part. Creating the devaluation allows for more HoMs to be filled up.

And in turns gives players greater incentives to buy GW 2, as they promised that HoM will make a appearance within it. I boil down the devaluation of high-end goods as to more players filling the HoM.

In the end, it is actually a good business decision, to cause an easier rate of procurement of high end goods at the point in GW's life.

( Sly sly Anet, this goes beyonds the borders of gaming ).

True about the 1st portion, but the distinction is still there actually.

Question: If you could deck out your chars and heroes with mods, insignias and runes, would you do so ? Then would the average player do so ?

Thus I still stand by the argument that low end goods and trading still exist. And thus, the distinction.

Actually, I have the exact opposite belief of that. But all this is simply sematics and differing personal opinions, so it actually meaningless to debate this endless loop cycle.

Try logging in now and going to the major cities, and count the number of high end trades to low end trades, see how many trades involves gold values of > 100 000 gold.

Ah, but i did like to point out, is the inflation so much more greatly felt in comparison to the deflation of the value of ectos ?

Yet another stupid post... Mods please lock already..

This concept of legal tender in a game is stupid. Its not against any law or rule made by anet to trade in ectos.

Furthermore, anet forced the community to create a currency other than gold because of the low 100k limit on trades.

You shut down ectos, you shut down the 100k+ economy, which will make a dying game even more boring.




How do you know there is even a "rise in demand" for ectos? All I see it 10 people in ToA spamming WTS, and only 2-3 WTB.


Where is your proof? How do you know that it isn't 50%, or 70%, of people playing guildwars have stacks of ectos. The point is you don't know, and you are just making up these statistics to benefit yourself.

You don't need 1000 plat to own stacks of ectos. If you have ever participated in a 100k+ trade, then you probably have owned, will own, stacks, or a partial stack of ecto, and this affects you.

/totally signed

k, have avoided threads like this until now, but the OP has it more precisely and succinctly than I could put it .. o and you too Mewcatus:}

amn't rich, have never created a 55 farmer and no intention to turn my Sin into it's equivalent
to repeat the mantra: Ecto is just a rare mat, was never meant to be a form of currency

Yes. I saw someone advertising a URL in Kamadan last night. 10 ectos for $5.99!

(I wonder how many times that guy got reported.)

I am going one up on the personal attacks by saying, yet another stupid poster. Please ban the m****r f****r for being a C*** B**.

At this point, you are simply shifting into trolling modes. Every statement made is created simple with words like "stupid" and "boring", which are nothing more then just feelings, which is no show-cause for justification.

Anet has not said its against the law, but you are simply doing it at your own risk. If you wish to keep doing it in terms of ectos, then do so, no one is stopping you.

But then again, Anet has NEVER made the promise that Ectos would become the definitive stable barter item of choice. That is a player economy imposed perception.

And like all player economy imposed perception, those can change everytime a major or minor update is made. So living with the risk is a fact.

When i refer to supply and demand, I refer to it in its generic form. You can simply see the changes actively if you are consistently monitoring the npc merchant.

To look at only at only 1 district in 1 location to justify this statement is nothing short of proof of shallowness and ignorance.

You want to compare the definition of "casual" to "hardcore" gamers actually ?

Question: How many "casual" players are there within GW?

Question: How many of those "casual" players do stock up on ectos for trading?

I only made that assumption up, and given that its officially stated that there are far more "casual" players then "hardcore" ones, I believe that it is actually true that there are less people who stack up on ectos purely for trade then keeping it for getting specific high ended armours.

I dare you to prove me otherwise then. As I at least am able to make somewhat inter-connection, can you ?

I dont dispute that, but then again, I would never use an unstable commodity for monetary storage purposes, it just makes lousy business sense unless you are speculating. Thus, everything done is purely your prerogative.


All in all, this is one poster who is looking to pick a fight rather then have a discussion. I never throw the 1st punch at anyone, but if I have to retaliate, and flame, no problem.

I think that a total market crash is what we need. It;s called self correction and it;s called life and it is also called we are stupid to keep using oil when it is clearly running out and we are stupid to buy big expensive houses that we cannot afford and have lots of luxury items that we clearly don;t need. When interest rates rise, oil prices rise, and people start losing their houses then some people say that the economy needs to be fixed... well guess what... i see that when lots of poor suckers lose their cash and the price of houses are low then i will start buying and then in 7 years i will sell and make mega profit.

It;s the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten. You can be sure that any smart person would have already traded out their ecto stacks for armbraces or z-keys. i mean, people were trading them in huge amounts about 3 weeks ago when the SF reversion came in....

Same on the ecto / gw market. I will buy ecto when the market bombs out. Maybe, i will help it along by selling ALL my ecto to the merchants. I encourage everyone to bring down the rich ecto hording bastards by selling huge stacks to the merchants.

Just a side note. I love how everyone opposed to the OP's post want this thread closed or just outright disagree without being able to come up with a sensible answer. Obviously they are just noobs who have no idea.