ECOn 101 Uderfarming is killing GW and GW2

I keep hearing opinion's on people wanting to change PVE to suit their moral compass. Yes, for those of you who complain, you do so for the fact you want the rest of the world to conform to your viewpoint. That is a moral bias. Applying that to a game is hilarious. Let me educate you as to why complaints and the associated nerfs cause decreased prices for elite items.

First you must understand economic basics. These translate surprisingly well to MMO player economies. Supply and demand balance via the local currency very quickly. Adjustments to these factors can happen in a matter of hours in an electronic game world. Supply is what is available and demand is what is wanted. Example: feathers were worthless prior to essence of celerity. After the introduction of a highly desirable effect prices shot up for a basic crafting material due to the wide us of this item. Understand?

I know this seems arrogant but follow me here. Tracking the cost of ectos AND armbraces is the quickest way to watch the economy and the impact of the environment quickly. Make no mistake ANET tries to watch these things and fails with their responses. Watching the trader for ecto prices and messages in Spammadan can quickly give us this information as well. Ecto prices have steadily declined due to less active players (demand) over a 2 year period. Sometimes this slide levels due to environment changes. However, anyone who has been playing during this time has noticed this. Armbraces have held steady in total cost at first glance. The cost was high when NF first dropped but decreased as more people reached the endgame. This is normal economic behavior. More player capable of entering the elite area makes the cost of associated items drop to the point where skill and determination determine activity UNLESS there is a drop in demand. With the intorduction of torment items in HOM the price of armbraces spiked and held the new prices for a while. However, declining interest and population contraction causes the price of armbraces to fall alongside that of ectos.

What has been written above is basic and most who will read this thread will understand the information. The wild card in a artificial environment like GW is the changes introduced by developers. The consequences are far more reaching than changing YOUR immediate game. Whenever there is a nerf, a few players give up on their aspirations for the game and quit. They may still play a little here and there, but they no longer seek to fill their HOM or get elite items. This would not be a problem but ANET is not getting many new players to fill their economic shoes. The basic view is whenever we lose a player who contributes to the game economy, the econom y CONTRACTS causing supply to be a tiny bit larger than demand. 1 player dosn't make a difference, but 100 do.

Some examples, Ursan drove the prices of ectos down to 3.5k at one point due to overfarming and massive elite area activity. Those who had stockpiled ectos (the wealthy) cried and complained for a nerf so other would not be as elite as they. When Anet did so the price of ectos went to 5.5k at the trader and leveled off. However, the demand for elite skins dropped as well as many people quit. Why? When the demands on their time to complete the HOM for GW2 became harder the reason for wanting the wealth wasn't worth the effort. GW2 is vaporware and HOM is a POTENTIAL benefit. Without concrete evidence of GW2 existing and the benefits of HOM the need for every armor and title no longer has meaning. Leet skins mean nothing to gamers who don't play. The intention was to cause prices to rise , but diminishing supply is balanced be decreasing demand.

UW brought many ectos into the enviroment soon after as solo Sin farming and speedclear became the next farm. Prices did NOT fall during this time as active player saw an opportunity to grind gold to fill their halls. Ecto prices hovered at 5.5k. Like the Ursans before them , Permas were not the only people to benefit form the spike in economic activity. Less complex farms were still viable due to the increased demand for crafting materials. Speedclear needs cons and those groups won't gonna drop speeclear to farm those materials. Speedclear groups were buying elite skins and crafing materials for armors because they could afford to do so. Farming tengu outside lion's arch takes only minutes, but the demand for feathers means even a noob can farm something that has value. EVERYBODY becomes involved in the economy at large. Demand goes up as well as supply but everybody is moving to a larger goal.

Now speedclear is nerfed. Many who did speedclear to fill HOM and afford the titles see no point in trying anymore. GW2 is vaporware. HOM has no definable benefit. Farming 30 hours a week isn't worth it. The immediate effect 12 hours after the nerf? Ectos dropped 500g .

Why is this important? ANET set the goals for PVE. When a farm opens that can generate larger than normal financial returns erupts the economy gets better as more people feel they can meet the goals of the PVE metagame (HOM). When a farm is closed many simply don't see the point anymore and leave (sometimes in droves) because this is a GAME. If there is no fun why play? If I can't fill my HOM for a possible sequel without spending a year to do so what is the point? HOM isn't worth having an online second job to casual gamers. Hardcore types will persist but who will they sell their high end items too?

Community size is most important to ANET. Gaining new customers for GW is not going so well and if they are to open GW2 they need a vibrant base of players to create the new community, which attracts new gamers etc. Supply and demand are the only goals left in PVE GW. Whenever ANET screw with this, Nerfs, they cause people to leave. Good riddins? Whta are the chances of a GW2 releaseif GW is a ghost town before development is beyond the point of no return? Do you really believe the masters of Anet will fund development if they don't envision success? Real world business is driven by money. The funny thing is we are seeing a correlation between a fake economy and a real business model in real life.

Anet failed to release expansions of content for PVE along their stated intentions. When the metagame became so complex they wanted a reboot to make their development lives easier. The alluded to GW2 (vaporware) and created HOM to try and keep as many PVE folks interested for as long as possible so they could develop GW2 with a built in fanbase to lessen the potential for failure on release. A good plan, but horrible implementation


In conclusion, every nerf lessens demand for goods and services inside Gw as the investment capital (farming) is less available. Furthering eroding the crumbling economy is the exodus of economic activity due to the grind being less relevant when the difficulty of achieving goals is deemed less valuable than time spent by individual players. Don't believe that the potential for economic activity is greater than we currently see? Watch wintersday and the demand on the servers. There is the proof of potential.

Solutions? Those who qq quit whining. Your ectos are worth less due to lessened demand, not overfarming. UNDERFARMING is killing us. ANet you better stop killing farms and show some real evidence on GW2. As long as GW2 is vaporware HOM is not worth effort and people will continue to leave GW. Killing the favored farming builds is having a detrimental effect to those who choose to stay active. ANET is not replacing these builds with other alternatives so why stay? The PVE enviroment may not be what ANET envisioned, but it is what it is and better than nothing.

Let the flamers begin.

tl;dr version - PvE has nothing left but farming and if you don't farm moar ectos GW2 will never exist.

If that's seriously how you look at it then I suggest you relook your own views on the community instead of laughing at us and saying that we have a moral bias. God forbid people play GW because they enjoy the actual game.

If people leave because Ursan or Shadow Form or whatever they farm with gets nerfed, not only were they not enjoying the actual game in the first place, but they clearly wasted their money on getting the game because last I checked this isn't Harvest Moon. Farming in itself is fine, but when you start saying that the entire future of GW2 is based on buffing Shadow Form back up for UWSC, you've taken it to ridiculous proportions.

More to say but I'm tired now, maybe more tomorrow.

Oh non. What to do? La vie n'a pas de sens!

It's a game, who cares about the economy in a game? >.>

Here's another possible theory to explain the fluctuation in ecto supply/demand. Maybe a bunch of people recently quit doing UWSC and cashed out a few hoarded ectos.

lol, OP just made my day.
7/10, would have raged if i wasn't already laughing.

Just anyone, who likes the game and understands how crucial the economy is to it; how big a part it plays in keeping people interested and playing. Bad economy = few people = dead game. If you care about the game, you care about the economy, it's as simple as that - yes, pvp'ers included.. without pve people making the jump to pvp, there's no fresh blood for pvp and pvp gets stagnant, so yeah.. the economy affects them, too.

To the OP - personally I regard the farm nerfs as signs of GW2 being post-poned. Anet obviously wants to keep their customers until GW2 hits the shores, but since HOM is the only way to do that, they try to balance out the time it takes to fill it with their development efforts for GW2. A simple illustration of this - GW2 will take us (anet).. say, another 2 months. People will at the current rate fill their HOM in approximately the same time (don't take these numbers seriously, I know it takes longer.. just arguing here) with a farm that has emerged. We hit a roadblock.. something gets in the way and we see that it will take us 6 months instead of 2 to get GW2 out. We start sweating - obviously. What is the player going to do once he has filled his HOM? Probably grow bored and quit. He's certainly not going to vq everything again on another char! So, how do we keep him from leaving? Well, we could start by making it take longer to fill that HOM..

Do you see, where I'm going with this?

You are missing the point. Enjoy the game. I do. Play with friends and help guildies. I do. Try theme builds instead of trying to play for overpower. I do. But we must realise that a large part of the community is trying to achieve Anet's stated PVE goals. If that becomes harder many do stop. Economy matters because eventually less people will cause the servers to close. Look at ANET's motivation, if GW doesn't feed GW2 there is no reason to maintain the client. There is no fee for play. ANET is banking on GW2 to be profitable. Every player who quits is a potential customer who will get hooked on another game and not buy GW2. Most of us are intelligent people. Look past the obvious kneejerk reactions and try to see the total picture. Killing off players makes the game less relevant to maintain. WOW feeds these very ideals by making good gear essential for more difficult areas. THAT is why it is successfull. Withoput similar motivations GW will not stay around very long and GW2 will die before it gets out of developement. Saying other player's motivations is junk is making YOUR motivations junk. C'mon people you think better than just flaming.

To Riman: I know ANET is trying to lengthen the grind to keep us around. But doing so has largely caused the opposite to happen. New content even in smaller forms has done much better. Tome introduction, Mox quests and rescaling Allegiance titles helped to maintain interest far more than any nerf does. Nerfing is easier though than adding new things. My thread was directectd at ANet as much as the QQr's Not that any of them will listen . ANet's own responses and failures addressing the problems of an eroding player base jsut proves my point. Thanks for making an intelligent response.

Applying 101 Eccon on MMO is pretty bad because there is much more beyond Supply & Demand theory; framework that supports it in RL is absent in MMOs. High-impact things.

Great post Op!

Just one moment, instead of nerfing something developer need to add new money(ecto) sink in game. Becouse, do nerfing and you will see many unhappy players(customers), but add more possibilities where player can spend theyr gold, this rise more interest to play.

Yes, anet time to time add new money sink, but this is not enough IMHO.

:3

finally a suitable post!

some interesting stuff

Ummm. whut?

All that work shot down with 4 little words...

Sadly I am inclined to agree. I've worked in games dev for almost 10 years now and the lack of solid info from Anet regarding GW2 is deeply worrying. In my experience it's almost always because there are serious issues involving it's development normally financial and often terminal.

Edit: I was referring to the vaporware comment ofc.

Read the whole post and figure it out. Underfarming means not enough people to buy ectos. They quit or gave up on FOW get it?

I didn't read single word you posted but let me guess. It's about the nerf to SF and ecto inflating amirite?

Since you keep saying the same thrash over and over, I'll just quote you with what people already quoted you.

Then I got bored and stopped looking for more so I'll end it here.

I think you have overfarming and underfarming mixed up. Overfarming is when you farm to much, and as such prices decrease because people have the ectos they want - therefore no need to buy them. Along with that, you have horders who horde and horde ectos (among other items) to try to keep prices up. They fail horribly because farming is so easy that no one needs to buy ectos and there is an unlimited supply of all items in GW.

If, and that is a big if, items in GW were at a set number, THEN underfarming might harm us. But as there is an unlimited amount, farming is what hurts the "economy."

None of those quotes are in this post. Try reading, i know it's hard but use your words. Ectos are not the only commented on nor are they most important. LMFAO commenting on a post you can't read.

Dumbass. He didn't bother reading, not that he couldn't read. And he took that because it's on the same topic. You made this thread in a response to the thread the quote was from. So therefore, your post on the other thread is just a summarized version of this. You expanded, pulling more shit from your ass.

It actually does still fit.

KK Azrael I am Not flaming u. Your posts are pretty good all over these forums but I meant UNDERFARMING. The technical term is deflation. When there isn't enough money available or demand things drop in price. See current US economy as an example. When farming is nerfed less gold and most importantly less players (the angry ones rage quit) means deflation sets in. Not everyone farmed ectos. I farmed a lot of consets myself. Easier solo runs and bonus runes for guildies use. People do buy ectos constantly. They have to hoard them because of gold caps on storage and trades. that is why following ecto prices is a perfect economic barometer for GW. They have uses, but primarily they are for trading 100k+ items.

Dude speaking of him or me? I am trying to be respectfull so maybe people will actuall try to see my point here.

Nevermind I figured it out, you are a moron. And the other guy is lazy. I don't need to pull out anything idiot. Obviously you must care what happens to GW if you are trolling these boards. I expanded my points because I assumed too much conventional wisdom was around on other posts. You want me to write it in crayon for you now?

I hardly see the respect anywhere. And respect isn't needed for people to see a point, it is needed for more favor in agreeance. Which, if you make a valid and logical point, to disagree would to be an idiot and because humans in nature want to better themselves, and how people view them, if the argument is logical enough, they will not disagree.

I am not trolling to be perfectly honest. I really do not care about the economy because GW is dying. I still play, I still buy, I don't farm. But you do not understand something.

Farming leads to more of an item, and less demand for said item. Why? Because there is a unlimited amount of items. That is the single most important flaw in the system. And farming only makes it worse.

Hording will not help, nor hurt, the economy. It will only worsen themselves because they think they will get something. The gold cap was there as a pathetic attempt to prevent high end trading, which in effect reduces the need to farm. But people found a way around it (very obvious way).

Ectos are not the "perfect" way around the cap, because for a long while they were at 15k, if not higher. Now they are cheaper than Black Dyes. Equal in price to Zkeys, and White Dyes. Ectos are just the most desired, and most common, way around it.

You are going about on the right topic - economy is bad - but you are going on it the wrong way. There needs to be a limitation placed on items and gold, not more farming.

More farming means more of an item, meaning more supply, and therefore less demand. See my point yet?

By the way, I use insults to try to get people to strengthen their arguments. By saying things such as "I think you have overfarming and underfarming mixed up" is not me saying that you don't understand terms, but that you are looking at the issue in the wrong perspective.

What you should be saying is not that underfarming is killing GW, but that the need (or more accurately, desire) to farm is killing GW. And as such, those who like to farm (in other words, who are playing a game not meant for them) are leaving because Anet is keeping the game as grindless as possible (although, yes, they did go away from that since Factions, they are going back with the new updates).

What is needed is not more farming, but the removal of the need to farm. And with the removal of the need to farm, the addition of new content. However, doing that will postpone GW2 even more.

GW1 will "die" if GW2 will "live." The two cannot live together with the amount of people Anet has, and Anet cannot (or just simply will not) hire more people to expand the GW1 team to allow GW1 to live longer.

The greatest enemy here is time and progress. The second greatest enemy is the unlimited supply of items.

GW1 will die, and all that can happen is prolong it, but by doing so will prolong GW2 from coming out - which effectively will reduce the player base even more.

In short, GW1 not just will die, but must die sooner rather than later for GW2 to survive.

Triple post FTW!

I can't read? I said I didn't bother reading your worthless posts. Learn to read. The only thing you're pulling out is sh** out of your ass. "How will you know if you didn't read!!?!" I just know it.

Oh wait! Are you telling me it's impossible to farm now? OMG no way! Let's all cry together with dasmitchies. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

You already made a similar thread like this and it got locked/deleted. Why start another? You also made similar posts about the same thing in other peoples thread. You won't get anything out of it. Too bad.

I rage posted and it was rightfully locked. You and azrael are missing the point here. Lost people are lost forever. I know GW must die. I also know if GW doesn't maintain a minimum active base of players GW2 will never be released. ANET can fix this by releasing concrete info on GW2's development and the real use of HOM. Farming is absolutely necessary to get the hall as complete as possible for those who want the benefits for GW2. I have posted on other threads similar topics but failed mightily because i didn't expand the argument. Increased supply isn't killing the game economy. Smaller demand is. This is a symptom of a much greater problem. I want to see GW2 work. I think GW was an awesome proof that freeplay MMO can work. If ANET doesn't stop screwing up GW we won't have a fanbase left to open GW2. If whatever overlord ANET serves isn't convinced that ANet can deliver enough copies sold in a short enough time frame they will axe GW2. I allready have my stuff, but my guildies and other more casual players will never fill HOM with the constant nerfing. Frustration isn't fun and people do not play games that isn't entertaining. Oh well whats the point? I don't care what qq's think and Anet will never read this.

Then who did you write the 10+ paragraphs to? I doubt most people will read everything so you might want to leave some cliff notes at the end of your paragraphs.

example:

-anet nerfed so-and-so
-ecto inflated
-people are starting to leave GW.

You've erred in that you're connecting results with the incorrect cause. The reason for the drop in ecto prices was because of the ease and speed with which Planes could be farmed and that's essentially all that the competent player base did for a number of weeks. After the buff and the A/E build was invented and posted, ToA was nothing but a constant swarm of A/E Planes farmers. This, on top of the fact that favor was infinite at the time, means that far more ecto were dropping in raw numbers than ever before.

Some of these farmers were inevitably new, and since towards the end it became harder to sell ecto given that people who wanted them already had them, people sold to trader en masse, lowering the price as per trader value. During the heart of the farm ecto prices dropped, yes, but to levels we've seen before on occasion. It was towards the end that supply overwhelmingly surpassed demand and the trader got to buy ectos, driving it down to its lowest point.

Soon after the nerf to Planes, Ursan, whatever the order and timeframe were, ectos returned to fluctuation between a typical 5.5k and 4.9k. I think it's funny that whenever this fluctuation happens someone posts a "QQ farming nerf omg" thread. This is more or less standard deviation, like the slight day-to-day wiggle in the stocks of any company in the real world. The overall trend went downward with overfarming, and has now balanced out.

P.S. When you create a thread always double check the title so you don't look like an idiot and possibly counteract your own point. I wasn't sure if this was about underfarming or uberfarming. Who knows.

More farmers = FEWER ecto buyers, not the other way around. Deflation is caused by either an increase in supply without an increase in demand, a decrease in demand without a decrease in supply, or an increase in supply AND a decrease in demand. That is why ecto dropped so much when Ursan hit - Everybody and their brother were farming ectos with Ursan and flooded the market. (You even commented about it in your OP!) When they nerfed Ursan, the prices stabalized and actually crept UP a bit.

I read it exactly as is, uderfarming as in the German udermensch the term by which the Nazi party referred to other non-aryan races.

Imagine how bloody confused I was ...

tl;dr

Farming isn't the only thing this game has to offer, if you bought this game because of Ursan which went against 3 major principles of the game or Shadow Form it's better if you leave. In-game cash isn't all there is to it.

The economy in this game has been in decline for years. This decay has been fueled by one bad decision after another. Maybe 2 years ago something could have been done to avert the present state of this game but people have been avidly trying to express that for years and Anet hasn't listened.

The removal of elite armors having inherent bonuses took away the need for elite armor, much less having multiple sets and simply reduced it to a matter of vanity. Popular farms have been nerfed that actually fed the supply of rare and much needed items. In return, they made the much needed items so readily available that they no longer held any worth. High end runes began dropping everywhere, treasure chests started crapping out max weapons with max mods right and left, the introduction of inscr. weapons, etc, etc, and having max equipment became as common and easy as simply starting a new character.

For me, working toward having a decked out character was part of the fun and took quite a bit of money and time to do so. This was also a major part of what drove the economy. There is absolutely nothing needed in this game anymore that requires any significant amount of time or money.

The last faltering leg that this "economy" is standing on is people's vanity. Clinging to the fluctuating price of one or two "shiny" things is hardly worth calling it an economy, but unfortunately it has been reduced to that. So yea, nerf enough farms and it gets to the point where it's just not worth the trouble to get another title or a weapon with some useless, shiny animation.

Yeah, i thought part of the exclusivity of GW was suposed to be the lack for a need to grind. The last 1500 hours of 5000 hours i spend ingame i used to get from bigdeal10 to 20. My character didnt get any stronger and didnt get any better items, i already got all skills and all items in game. Heck i got unplayed characters holding spare weapons, enough to start a small army.

And for what? I have no idea. Is it going to be a glowing ball over my head? 2 balls if i rank further? Exclusive skills/items?

I stopped caring, i stopped playing GW altogheter 6 months ago, allong with 80% of my guild. I probably be back, IF there isnt another game released that totaly does it for me meanwhile.

I'm a hard core gamer and a invalid sitting at home, so i spend more hours in game then many ppl spend hours at work. I play a p2p game atm, i hate the bussiness model, and its much to expensive given the ammount of hours i spend in game. So i prolly wont play it for long, but one day i run into some subscription game and lose interest in GW.

When i find that game i prolly have 50% of my GW guild move over, cus i been playing with them for years now, and most of use are scouting for new games. (warhammer, pwi, etc).

Eventualy they risk losing us all to Aion. (In open beta in Korea for a Month now, and development news at least twice a month for over a year now...... aiononline.com ) Oh wait.. that isnt a bad thing for NCsoft. They made Aion.

Compared to Aion online's development news and the lack off for GW2, vaporware is a earned expression.

Jesus Jumped Up and Danced a Little Jig what the hell are we really reading here?

here's whats funny. its a video game. you either enjoy playing it, or you dont. It is NOT your job to oversee the Tyrian Global Economy. That cracks me up. You have any idea what's in my storage bank account or where I spend it? doubt it. You have any idea what's in my guildies' storage accounts, or what they spend it on? the people in towns you step into - know what theyve got, or what they buy? no, you dont, you know what a few are buying right then in TC. Do you know where I farm? what drops I get? what I do with them? know where my guildies farm? doubtful.
you think you have some great insight into game economic overview by going and looking at the trader's prices on ecto? give me a break. Youre not the Elonian Alan Greenspan. I'm SURE Anet appreciates your concern, really I am *cough*
/rollseyes.
look, ANET doesnt owe you a thing. they made a great game, hopefully they'll make a better one. BUT you need to be telling them thank you for thier hospitality instead of bitching. Compare the RL money you've spent vs hours played - then compare that little calculation to other games, and I'd bet a stack of ectos that you got a good deal. ANET trys hard to keep this thing going for your enjoyment. You dont need to agree with every decision they make to see that. Maybe they fail, maybe they score, but the thing is they already have your money, they owe you nothing current for it, and they still go out of thier way to keep you having fun and to change things up. Wintersday is an example. There's new content this year. did they have to do that? nope.
Everyone would be better off if folks could do a little bit more 'minding thier own business' and play -thier own way - and quit thinking they have all this insight into global affairs. you dont. unless you can tell me how much money I have, where I farm, for what purpose, and what I buy with what Ive got, you dont know half as much as you let on.
Now, whether you like killing monsters, or you like to stand around and spam your WTBs and WTSs, or you like to do your running and ferrying people who cant be bothered to play, or you like your titles, or whatever it is YOU enjoy about GW, keep in mind - its still there for you to do. You can. Maybe you enjoy being a PHAIL market-analyst, in which case, carry on, I guess, but the game you claim to enjoy is still there for you to play. (noone's making you, btw, if youre not happy move on, if you are happy then your post missed it's mark a bit.) You should tell ANET thanks for that fact.

The thing that is killing the "economy" (if you can say there ever was one) is the lack of sinks. Nothing is ever lost (except the consumables but they are too little, too late), so demand is in a constant decline. When new things are introduced, there is a slight uptick in demand, but it soon resumes its downward spiral.

If you want a stable economy, you have to have equipment be lost through the normal course of game play.

Dasmitchies, very good post. Lots of good points and thought put into it.

what is this I don't even

ECON100: Real-world economic principles do not necessarily apply to a fantasy world where money is created from thin air. Seriously.

As the supply of useless threads in Sardelac increases the demand for closures of useless threads increases. Ergo, I JUST BROKE YOUR ECONOMICS. WHERE IS YOUR HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION NOW?

Bitch at players in in Riverside or something. This isn't what Sardelac is for.