Guild Wars Depression - Solutions?

Hey! Those cheap greens are cheap! I love em! And money CAN buy happiness! We just don't have enough money yet to buy it!

steady there, before you go and buy a crap load from the trader, sell every ecto you own first so i can buy a load at 20g each, then you can buy loads to sky rocket the price

You are quite correct. i'm making more money now playing pvp than I ever did playing that silly pve game. It's easy to make 100k a week just playing the simple pvp arenas. FA and JQ have become quite good in gaining easy faction to trade in for zashien keys and then sell those for 5k each. Even RA is quite lucrative since there's no waiting in that arena hardly ever.

The economy is great for making profits with little effort now. Who cares if you can't sell greens or golds. By the time someone sells one of those rediculous priced items I've already made that much and didn't have to stand around in some silly town hawking every 2 seconds. The only things of great value worth hawking are the tonics and rare pets anymore. Everything else is pretty redicuously easy to obtain doing it yourself or with a group of friends or guildmates.

So, everyone should be getting a nice bank account of plat now since you really don't need to buy anything. Just play the game and outfit yourself and your heroes with whatever you find. No use wasting money on vanity anymore.

I cannot believe nobody recommended that we get in on the government bailout package!

To all who complain about the economy, please do the following to fix the problem:

Buy all the items you consider to be too cheap and destroy them. This will increase demand and reduce supply and fix the economy. To all others: just buy what you need and enjoy the affordable prices.

This old man doesnt want to worry about the economy of Guild Wars. Guild Wars to me is an escape from reality and to enjoy life. I play it like an rpg not a business game.

I don't get it, people want to force prices up so new/casual players can't enjoy the game as much as the people who play it 24/7? I don't think the prices are the issue, I think the people with too much money who want expensive ways to waste it are.

hmm... items of any "game" value nowadays are cheap but, the items of "epeen" value nowadays are pretty costly. They are much costlier than what they used to be before. Thanks to monthly zkeys infusion and UWSC. Unfortunately, with game being old, people only buy those vanity items rather than anything else and thanks to designers, people flock to UW as being invinci has never been easier.

An old friend of mine said, "Ursan took the skill out of the game and then SF took the fun out."

The economy isnt at an all time low at all - there has never been more money flowing through the economy, its just that the introduction of inscriptions to the game was a double edged sword.

People now have access to the majority of the skins they want in the stats that they want at a very affordable price.

However this has taken out the differed gratification aspect that was so predominant in guildwars in the first year or so, whereby you would have to save for a decent item and gain a certain level of satisfaction when you got it. It also impacted on the rush you recieved when you yourself got a decent drop knowing its sale would get you something you wanted but couldnt previously afford.

Let's give everyone 100k this is the answer to it all.


haha

It is not that bad atleast you still got a jop and aren't laidoff and still have GH to go home to.

Nobody cares about the economy of a dying game.

You should never call a game dying. Games have been known to revive

Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest

I would say the economy isn't in a terrible shape atm.
However, I think they made a mistake by making almost everything accessible to everyone. It takes away the thrill of finding something rare / unique.
The combination of Lootscaling, Hard Mode and the exception list made prices implode too much and EotN introduced more ways to get rare skinned weapons.
I think low prices are good, but a sharp decrease in demand, like happened shortly after the introduction of lootscaling , HM and exception was a bit too much.

In the current state, a lot of things are considered 'worthless' pushing the price of things that are considered valuable up.

I'm not sure a fix is possible though (and even not sure what would be the best to fix)

Guild Wars 2

Exactly.

/thread

easy solution - add in new weapons, items, and gold sinks. the design-a-weapon contests and Z-chest were a great start. can you imagine what things might have been like without them?

The problem is simple. Guild Wars was never meant to be item based.

Deal with it.

[skill]Rebirth[/skill]

ohyeah

Wikipedia defines a depression as the following:

'...a depression is characterized by abnormal increases in unemployment, restriction of credit, shrinking output and investment, numerous bankruptcies, reduced amounts of trade and commerce, as well as highly volatile relative currency value fluctuations, mostly devaluations. Price deflation or hyperinflation are also common elements of a depression.'

Yet, during the Guild Wars Great 'depression' we're aparantly experiencing, I just seem to keep getting richer and richer. Why? Simple;

It isn't possible to be 'unemployed' in a computer game, what I mean by this is as long as monsters drops items and gold, I can (and do) earn money from them.

It isn't possible to have a depression in a game like GW, as long as there is a infinate supply of gold from monsters, money will always be extemely easy to come by.

Oh, and those rare unded pets I have in storage (those 'investments' from the above quote) just keep getting more and more valuable.

So, how do I (and many, many others) keep getting richer in a 'depression'?

another solution is to have a special event. For example they could have an area that only is accessible by taking up a quest and is very hard. If you complete the event you get a very rare one of a kind item.

Step one: Remove all items that currently exist in the game, from white weapons to armorsets to ectos
Step Two: Give everyone a free 50k
Step Three: ????
Step Four: Profit

On a more serious note, there is no real problem and there is no solution. Why is there no problem? Because this was all how it was designed to turn out. There is no limitation on items. Every item comes out of nothing and goes into nothing.

The only way to "fix" this problem is to impose a limit on how many of each, individual, single, item can exist in the game. And the easiest way to go that would be to go back in time. In other words, it's pretty much impossible, I'd assume, with how GW is programmed. It would take the whole Anet staff to reformat the system, and that won't happen.

That said, how the game is programmed, nothing is wrong, because there is a constant increase of supply, and while the demand stays relatively the same, the supply continues to grow. As such, the supply, over the period of time given, has been increased so much that it dwarfs the demand.

Therefore, the only thing we can really do would be to add in more money sinks and continue to eliminate farming.

In other words, find a way to increase the Brood Mother's strength, by changing the build, and add in some "Elite Raptors" in with the groups of youngster rapters. Then also nerf the common farming tools, such as Shadow Form, along with the other farming spots.

Then add in new weapon crafters, new armor crafters, etc. as money sinks.

The last part would be the only challenge, if new weapon skins are used, and armor sets are used. A challenge because they'd need a concept artist, then the to program it, set up the dyable areas, etc. etc.

However, I personally don't care about the economy anymore and I say let everything be dirt cheap. Then there would be only QQing from elitists and those wanting e-peens. And I would just laugh.

Lastly, those who say "add in new weapons" need to be more specific, if they are weapons that drop, then you'll just get a new rare item. This item will eventually act like the ecto and decrease in value overtime.

What is needed is the money sink, not new items. Whether that money sink comes in titles, items, or something different, does not matter. But the money sink is needed. This is why Sweet Tooth, Party Animal, and Drunkard would be good. They are money sink items - well, Party Animal isn't a true money sink due to no way to buy them from a NPC. We just need new NPCs selling new items.

Summoning Stones are a money sink. Add in new things like that which needs people to buy/craft them. Problem pretty much fixed.

For the time being that is, demand for the new items will deminish and new money sinks will be needed.

So depression is the wrong word to use then... Would you prefer virulent, uncontrolled inflation, which means that by getting "richer" you are at most keeping up with the market standard?

I have been thinking about this some and wonder if any of you have some insight... while I do agree that there are some money sinks in GW, it is a fact that items and gold are being produced literally 24/7. Now one would assume that at some point there would be so much of everything that things would become pretty much worthless. What I am pondering is this, there are apparently some (few) individuals who control a large portion of GW wealth (from what I understand, I have never personally met/seen these folks) now what happens when those players stop playing as so many say the elite/older players are quitting, are their super rare r7 items/stacks of ecto/dozens of armbraces removed completely and permenantly from the economy? What about all the banned accounts, same thing? And if this is the case, do you think the retiring wealthy players are more of a currency/item sink than the ones in-game?

I honestly will never understand the economy, I buy the weapons/armours that make me and my heroes look cool (imho), other people it seems buy (usually for a small fortune) the ugliest rubbish just because it's rare? If it makes them happy then go for it, guess I've not reached a middle life crisis point in GW's yet where I have to prove my e-peen'ness. Tormented staff (lol) no thanks, FoW necro armour (LOL) no thanks! Frog Sceptre (Are you kidding me?)

There is no depression , people just like pump things up.

The only thing that high prices do in the end is pamper the pockets of the gold sellers.

Give me a break. When gas, or milk, or bread prices go down, do you scream that the economy is failing and we're in a depression? Or do you scream when those prices go up and they become unaffordable?

Out here in the real world, falling prices are generally a sign of a healthy economy. For example, back when digital watches and hand calculators were first introduced (clunky old things with LED displays), they cost hundreds of dollars and could only be afforded by the well-to-do. Now they cost next to nothing and everybody has them. That is something that happens when an economy is thriving, and it's a good thing.

Only in GW do people start predicting falling skies when prices go down. Bah.

I say we give everybody anything they want when they want it for free. Problem solved. Think about it.

In reality the gw economy should be hyperinflated, as gold/plat/ecto simply poor in out of thin air. However, there seems to be a small pool of hardcore players with literally tens of thousands of ectos (some gold sellers obviously) who simply hoard and/or sell for RL cash. Sure there are money sinks in the game to keep the overall money quantity in check, but it's relatively little to offset the major gold influx.

I suspect the reason for such low prices is that most players online now are newbie-types, with little gold to spend, and little idea of what items are desirable/costly. Those with decent/massive gold/ecto aren't buying anything really, other than rare/ultra-rare drops.

TLDR? Well, I suggest a way to at least fix the issues I see with unique green items. Make them sell to the vendor for 300-500g, and/or allow the 2-3 item mods to be salvagable (but not retroactive). I'd also cut the droprate to 10-25% of what it is now, or maybe even lower. This would also allow use of 'kewl' skins on currently crappy greens, as well as a new source of mods...

With green drop rate double weekend coming up - I'm not sure what to do. None of the greens really seem to be worth much, aside from that dwayna suntouched scythe...

Guild Wars was never intended to be gear based outside aesthetics.

If that's a problem your playing the wrong game.

Wait, Gw has a depression? All I see are less fortunate players finally getting a chance at obsidian armor and people who don't shut up about "da' good ol' days" QQing because they're not as "special" anymore.

The problem is the rate of transactions between players is going down. Except with holiday items. But, The game practically hands you max weapons and mods now.

The game really needed a trade system. Fat lot of good that'll do us now that the only thing to trade is ectos and title items.

Oh yeah and predictions = monthly income for doing nothing. On the other hand, loot scaling = close to no income for hard work.


SO!

Money isn't used for cool main goal items such as weapons and armor anymore.


It's kind of the point of no return. Though, I seriously would have bought a trade system instead of a new chapter if there was a choice.

The Guild Wars economy has been crucified upon a cross of ecto.

I still don't see why (other than jealousy) that people feel the need to hate on "the rich". I believe that the players that spend more time in the game aka GRIND should have more money, better weapons (yes I mean higher stats than regular/max dmg) AND rarer items, etc for putting their time in. If you can't put your time in, that's your problem.

This is coming form a retired farmer, and I still play a little too. =)

"people want items that EVOLVE and become MORE POWERFUL the deeper they get into the world/game"

Please don't speak for all of us, I love that about Guild Wars! I like the fact that power in this game comes from skills and skillz, not MY ITEM IS BETTER THAN YOUR ITEM! I like the fact that people can wear whatever set of armor, or use whatever weapon they like most, and STILL be on equal footing in terms of character power. You want to know what I think would fix this whole thing? Anet holding a contest every month for new weapon skins, and implementing the skins into the game every month or so, it would make sure that farmers always have something to farm for. By the time the item has dropped in price, BOOM you've got another unique skin that some people will drool over.

Or they could just give crafting materials some other purpose, besides collectors/armor and let certain materials give you faction. I'm sure the Sunspears would like it if you gave them X or X so they can make more armor for their initiates, and would give you sunspear points in return.

Before I read this thread I just wanna say..

The reason the prices on things dropped is cause of a few things:

Mod prices dropped because people QQ about not being good enough/lucky enough to get a certain mod for their weapon, and they think they should just because they spent $50. Anet was silly enough to agree with them, mostly because Anet didn't want to lose customers and that's what people who are bad I guess, do, leave. So Nightfall gave the first major blow to mod prices, then time added on to that. Without the NF punch, Mods would be worth a bit more today, although not as much as they would have been in 2005-2006, simply cause of like I said, time.

Weapons were a bit different. While I do think NF killed the price on a good number of weapons by adding in inscribables, it also increased the ability to sell certain weapons (even though for a lower price) and might have made a few select low req weapons worth more and added a few weapons to the market that might not have been sold otherwise. Things like Eternal Blade and Emerald Blade, if not inscribable would have 2005-2006 crystalline prices. Time, over farming, placing certain weapons in areas that are easy to farm etc, also dealt a blow to that market. Anet was smart though, and added weapons that weren't easy to get, so it got stimulated up again for the most part.

Then add in making some things easier, making certain weapons/runes drop more, changing certain mechanics also made prices drop.

So yeah.. as for what Anet can do to solve this:

For the mod market, there isn't much Anet can do. Unless they totally remove the option to choose which mod you want which would upset too many people. They could add in monthly mods, sort of like everlasting tonics. Rare drop rate, add certain bonuses. It would have to be PvE only and I'm not sure they can do that or they could make the bonuses not have an effect on PvP.

PvE wise, maybe a month of +40 health mods, 10/6 vampiric mods, 20% chance to cause daze or bleeding or crippled or deep wound or blind type mods. 1 of those dropping for a month would stimulate the economy on that end a bit, add in more ways to make money. Maybe instead of getting them off a weapon, they could be drops.

If the above isn't possible, maybe enhanced Salvage and Money mobs on both inscribable and non-inscribable weapons. 3 different versions, 2.5x increase in items you get from salvaging, 5x and then 10x 50 being the rarest to get of course. Same would go with show me the money type mods. For example, high salvageable cane with the 5x increase might give 25 steel ingots instead of 5.. or weapons with price increase or show me the money would be 1,500 instead of 300. I could see how the salvageable would decrease the prices on most common materials and a few rare materials so that might not a viable option, but the money one would be nice.


For weapons Anet won't ever increase the value of the old goodies. Instead of adding in new weapons (which would be cool), they could do a monthly or bi monthly event (maybe 1 week, every month) where they introduce req 7 max weapons/shields again, and increase the drop rate of req 8s in certain areas. Say in Nightfall the chances of a req 8 max weapon/shield dropping will be 10% instead of 1%, in areas with non inscribable weapons, 20% instead of whatever it is now. Then on req 7 times, they add a 5% chance for a req 7 to drop in the inscribable areas, and 10% in non inscribable areas.

That will make those weapons that do drop, a bit more expensive (drop rate similar to high end weapons currently), offer to people the ability to get weapons they might want at those reqs for collector items and also give people who are generally average GW income wise, the chance to score big.

For runes, they could do something similar to the mod thing I suggested above.

But yeah that's my opinion on what they could do to solve it, I'm not good with economy so my suggestions might not help, and they could have just been suggestions that I thought would add a bit more to the game but eh.

EDIT: I forgot green weapons and mats.

For materials, I think having them at a stable and somewhat low price is good for the economy as currently (and with my suggestions) there will be other ways to make money. But that might make things too easy to get (which while some people like, I think is boring) so Anet could up the merchant prices I suppose, or decrease the chances of getting materials as drops (not ecto/shards though) besides during those week events (scratch the month) that I mentioned.

For Green weapons, the best thing Anet could do with those is revamp skins or add new unique skins making people want them more. They could also add very few greens that are actually better than anything you could do with a gold/rare weapon. But they would also have to make them unusable in PvP which might not be possible. Ex: A bow that does 18-36 damage with 15% damage while enchanted or in stance, and +40 health, with the range of a recurve bow with slightly lower speed. Or if that's too overpowered An existing bow (that doesn't change the bow for people who have it already) that does something like
15-28 damage, 15%^50, +30.. and the string that gives +20% chance to inflict Daze, Cripple or Bleeding on target..
On critical hit deals..+5-15 damage OR
On critical hit Inflicts bleeding (or another condition) AND last but not least: If attack misses gain +5-20% damage increase for 15 seconds. Doing something like that and adding new greens, or adding a chance to get an upgraded (with the things I stated) version of the current weapon (in this case bow) from the boss that drops it*would open up that market again in a viable way.

* Example of that would be, Chkkrs Flatbow (normal) having it's normal drop rate and Elite Chkkrs Flatbow (upgraded version) having a lower drop rate than the normal version of the bow. Upgraded Chkkrs could have a "On critical hit, gain +10-20 energy" if that's too overpowered for you guys put on a downside "If attack misses lose 5-10 energy."

Probably wouldn't happen but it'd liven up the game a bit again, or at least in my opinion.

It is utterly sad what has become of this game.

Agreed.

The worm has certainly turned.

i quite like that everyone is on a even footing tbh. i think the decreasing prices are simply because demand has gone down, people have already kitted out most of their characters pretty well, and arent making new ones to the same extent as before