Raising Ecto prices possible?

Considering a few rich people (5-10) who are willing to sacrifice about 50-100k towards buying ectos from the trader, the demand of the trader would go up making the price higher yes? And with everyone buying and selling all these high end items, the economy would be boosted again through the ecto price raise right? So what I want to know is has anyone thought of this before and made an effort to get people together to try this? And would it work?

No it doesnt work, proper, you lose more then gain

But if you bought enough, the prices would raise, eventually giving you a profit if you sold back to the people, besides this is for the people who have a random 600k sitting in the bank and are bored with the countless UWSC and FoWSC

or we could just give the GW "economy" a bailout -_-

this seems like a dumb idea, but if you feel like wasting your money go ahead.

trust pleikki look at her guild XD

Cheaper ectos = affordable for more pple
Expensive = More power trading for those owning already stacks of them

Anyway if it gets too cheap, pple will prefer to buy them for trader than farming them.
If it get less farmed, its price will get higher again.

There is no reason to try to manipulate economy atm unless its for personnal interests.
What's hurting prices is overfarming, one can't expect an item to stay expensive if one overfarm it.

an interesting idea. trying to affect global economy through manipulation by few. one thing it would depend on is how people would react with the trader and wheter or not they decided to sell at trader. another thing is that this is no cheap endeavor. ur going to have to have some pretty financially sound backers willing to lose some money for something that may not work. u might be able to affect the global economy by a few 100g at best though, and more than likely it would only end up temporary.

Yep, wouldn't work for sure. Unless you get more than 10 people who have no care for this game anymore and are willing to blow about 500k, don't expect to see a change.

When it comes to the case of Ecto's and Material traders, the 2 are fairly loosely connected. (Afaik most people don't even buy from the trader, and selling it to traders is a waste imo, as its a rare item, you know, for crafting? Why would you sell a rare item to a merchant, its just like with any other rare item) Ecto farming is increased, so its only natural the price will fall. Personally I don't care, its just like the market in real life. If some people lose money because they invested into Ecto's then let them lose money.

Prices of other things will increase, the situation still isn't even that bad that you can't use them for 100k+ trades if thats what you're afraid of, even if something DOES happen to 100k+ traders another item will be found.

Z-keys and Ecto's are dropping, its called economy :P

What a brilliant idea! The GW economy would be SO much stronger if more buyers were driven out of the marketplace by prices they can't afford to pay. Just like the real world, eh?! Let's fix our economy by increasing the price of bread, milk, gasoline, etc. because we all know that huge prices signal a healthy economy. Ask the people in Zimbabwe. </sarcasm>

Considering the fact that we have another thread running with the same discussion ( http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...86#post4541786 ), would it be possible to close this one or the other?

It is annoying and confusing to have to post the same thing in both ...

Here is a real life story about a Canadian and a stamp.

There was a stamp dealer that decided he would buy all of one particular type of stamp thinking that if he owned all of the stamps he could set the price for them.

This man proceeded to buy up every last "bluenose" stamp that he could get his hands on. The man invested thousands in these stamps (here is a picture of them http://www.bennettstamps.com/cgi-bin...ot=2074&lang=1 )

Very soon after people started to notice a drop in supply and the prices went up a bit for the 50 cent stamp. Then, a report of a house fire sent the prices higher as the man who was hording them reported what he was doing and how he lost all those stamps!

The price jumped at first but then settled back down again to reasonable levels because the Royal Canadian Mint saw the demand for the stamps and simply did 3 runs to fill the demand.

Back to the game,

If the Rare material Trader STOPPED selling ectos or the people farming the ectos stopped farming them, then and only then would the price again rise enough to make it worth your while.

My suggestion would be to invest in something that Holds its value as a High end item and then trade that item for gold and then buy your ectos.

z-Keys is going through the same thing here. There are the Trappers thing that you can do and get your 2K factions points a day in like 5 minutes. So every account every 3 days gets a free key. I know that is what I was doing and my guild showed me that.

There is only one item that is holding its value in GW now and that is the SUP Rune of Vigor h+50. It floats between 18-20K

Ectos have fallen from 5.5K to 3.5K or a loss of 2K per ecto. At the high end price for an ecto it would take 4 to buy the sup Vigor at the low would be almost 6 for a net loss of around 4K.

The sup vigor only fluctuates by 2K so if you have a stack of ectos you have lost a net worth of 50 ectos over 63 Sup Vigor's. I realize that you would have to sell the vigors and buy the ectos but this again would help inflation on the ectos.

Deflation is what you are trying to do and the best way to do that is to buy up every last ecto that you can so that others that need to buy the high end items have to go to the trader to buy their own.

In the end...if an item that is 200,000 gold to buy it will still be 200K to buy. 100K+ (100k of ectos at half way between the traders buy and sell prices + 500 gold)

The problem that I think that you are having is that you are hording the ectos thinking it was a solid investment without fluctuations. Right there your assumptions have been wrong in the first place.

The only SOLID investment is to go out and purchase yourself 2 or 3 more accounts. DO NOT LINK THEM. You will have 4 characters that can hold 400,000 gold + the chest for each of them at 1,000,000 gold. Multiply that by 3 + the one you already have is well over 5 million gold in real gold.

Remember 1 piece of gold is still worth 1 piece of gold but you can buy more with your gold NOW then you could THEN. So you had the right idea but with the wrong item.

If Anet decides to increase the amount of gold that you can carry on you to a million gold and the chests then can hold 10 million gold the the economy will surely tank as the demand for your ectos would be lost forever.

Change would last for a few days at most. When people continued to sell to the Rare Material Trader, the prices would go back down. The only way to get a long term change would be to convince people to sell to other players instead of the Rare Material Trader. But since many people are lazy or don't care, this won't happen easily.

You are greedy, and your effort would be futile.

Ecto prices are fine. The ecto economy is self-correcting. You are only stressing because we are at a lower point on the curve.

The z-key trend should be of more concern to you, since it was the introduction of a game-mechanic that has led to the downward trend.

So in other words, you want to try to make a desperate, yet inconspicuous attempt at raising prices at the loss of someone else, just so that you can try to make more money off an item that already has a decent value (mind you nothing like what it used to be)?

One word, greedy.

To answer your question... it won't work. Even if you could manage to find a large enough group of people with a large enough bank of money, to blow on your cause because they decided to either stupidly attempt to control the everchanging GW market or simply because they are bored out of their skulls and don't mink dropping large sums on a lost cause, as soon as the prices go people will immediately go to the trader to start selling what they have before the market innevitably falls, thus resulting in another price drop. The thing is, when the price drops this time, it will fall even further than it has in the past.

Sorry if this seems rude, but sometimes you just gotta think about things, and on another note, don't be greedy, there are plenty of players that have little to no money on GW that get all happy when an item sells for more than 100g, I've seen it... it's almost pitiful to see that end and then have someone complain about prices dropping on a high valued item. Again, sorry for any rudeness.

hey i'm one of those guys! Not to worry though its not real money.

But, at op. What is happening now (and does in ALL MMOs) is basic supply and demand. Supply is increasing therefore price is dropping. ok its slightly more complicated than that, but not much. An easier, and less expensive route to accomplish what you're thinking is to convince all the farmers that ectos should not be farmed for a long while this lowers supply therefore increasing price.

But, that being said have a care for someone who is going after his first set of FoW armor. I'm already looking at the input of money that is going to be required and having a heart attack. I don't want to imagine what it would cost me if ectos were suddenly three times as expensive as they are right now. The price isn't bad, you're still making money. just a little bit slower than you were 3 years ago.

well, wouldn't work, as others have said here:
1. it takes A LOT of transactions with the rare material trader to affect the prices.
2. if prices will go up people will notice it and sell to the merchant as it will still profit them, resulting in prices falling back down, and even lower than they are now.

since ectos are only dropped in UW/ToPK than nerfing permanoobtemplate and making these areas harder to solo/duo farm is the only thing that can really reduce the supply of ectos. cause otherwise the mobs in those places will keep on coming back to you so you can kill them over and over again and collect your ectos...

however prices will never go back to what they used to be 3 years ago because everyone and their mother has FoW Armor, Chaos Gloves, etc only new players and people who don't care about these items don't have them. so there's really no incentive to demand ectos now, besides the 100k limit on transactions, and even for that Zaishen Keys are a good competitor for ectos...

Vesio, when I started farming UW at the beginning of 2006, Ecto were valued at ~9k/ea. Prior to that, they sold for as much as 13k/ea.

And you think the cost of Obsidian Armor is bad these days.... lol

zling, once ANet gets everything FIXED with XTH and quits having problems assigning the actually won Prediction Points, ZKeys will stabilize better than Ecto ever could. Besides, farming Balth Faction is a sure thing, where as Ectos are still a % chance to drop.

Exactly. There is no "economy" in the real sense of the word since things like gold, ecto, and zkeys are unlimited - at some point in an item's life, enough players will have acquired their desired amount of an item, thus reducing the item's demand, and thus lowering the value one can hope to get for the item. Until an actual, tangible limit is put on the number of a particular item's existence, prices will always continue to fall.

Hanok Odbrook

This is actually something I have talked with guildies about, even though I don't have a problem with the economy. Does anyone want to go back to 97K, at the trader, for a Superior Absorb? Or 150K to set up a 55 monk? Not really, except when it affects something they have and might want to sell. (stacks of ectos).

I bought my tormented shield back when they were ~500K, and I don't care that they are half that now.

But, in response, the only true way to have an economy is to limit the supply of EVERYTHING in the game. Once that cap is reached, no more ecto, gold, itme, etc drops, until some are used, spent, etc.

Of course nobody wants to have that happen either. The average "the economy is broke" crowd just wants the value of their stuff to go up, but doesn't want to have to pay more.

Yes, I realize this. And at the same time ectos were 13k ( i seem to remember even higher 14-15k +) obi shards were around 9-10k. some quick math there comes out to about 2.5 million gold. I'm well aware of what it costs. but don't want to get back to those days (as far as ectos go anyway)

That would be 10-20 ectos. It won't be very affective.

How long have you been playing this game?? Runes of Superior vigor were 60k a couple of years ago as far as I can remember (or am I wrong?).. Ectos were around 8k at the time, with a highest price of 10k (that I can remember of, people say they were 12-13k in the very beginning). So superior vigor decreased in price from 60k - > 16k atm, ecto from 10k -> 4,5k atm. Which do you think hurts more??? More constant of these seem to to be black, I think its only gone from around 9k to like 7,5k atm, but I never really paid attention to it

Only way to not have any fluctuations is to store pure gold. Thing is, it wont increase ever. Go all out on something such as a damn rare minipet, and I can promise you, as long as the game servers are still on and the number of player doesnt magically drop down 99%, you are going to see an IMMENSE increase of its value.

Dont believe me? Kuunavangs, which are not rare at all used to go for 70k before. Now its 100+ ecto (kinda hurts knowing I gave 2 of these to some random people last time before I quit). I got one of the fugly gray giants for 5k before, sold for 55k a couple of days ago. What about them asian pets? Do you really think a Kanaxai was worth 30000e when they first got distributed? Last PC I heard of one of those was for ~1000 armbraces, I guess you know how much that is

Prior to the April 26, 2006 update you are correct. Superior vigors were 45-60k each. The highest priced rune wasn't a vigor but a superior absorption, cost over 90k at the trader.

That update increased the drop rate of those two runes, so now the superior absorption isn't even worth salvaging.

I maintain that the "The economy is broke" crowd purely want the values of the stuff they have to go up, but don't want to have to pay ~150k for two runes for that new warrior.

People want to talk about devaluing - a superior absorption rune is worth 0.1% of what it was worth 3 years ago, much greater drop than anything else in the game. Of course you couldn't farm those effectively, so nobody "whines" about it. For the record, prior to that update I found ONE of those runes.

If people truly want ectos to go up in price, add the skill Soulrending Shriek to a monster or two at the top of both stairs, and at random locations around UW, much like the Dying Nightmare was added to stop the solo 55 monk. So long UW speed clears or any enchantment based farming!

Of course that would lead to the "I only play GW because of UWSC!! So now I quit!!" whine threads to start.

To me, the whole discussion on the "broke economy" falls into the Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it! category.

Meh I found a superior absorption rune only way after that update . Then again, I really think Anet messed things up with the change of absorption mechanics, that "physical" add to damage made it useless

As for that "skill", I kind of find those special monster only skills in GWEN a bit annoying - I'm just starting it, but it does look weird .

Facts:
-there is an infinite number of gold in game; but a finite amount that can be stored on each character/ account.
-there is an infinite nummers of ectos ingame; they are stackable and relativiely expensive making them the prime trading comodity of choice.
-except for a few rare items there is an infinite number of itmes in game.
-ecto price is determined by 2 things:
the first is trading ectos at the rare materials trader.
the second and imo most important factor at this moment is the supply and demand of finite (in general unique miniatures) items ingame. Time has a huge impact on this; for as time progresses the suply of finite items decreases (dedicated in the HoM); decreasing the demand for ectos IN GENERAL!

Contrary to what most percieve; the effort needed to acuiere wealth (of the infinite kind) has remained a constant over the years. In the beginning when god created guild wars; ectos traded for up to 20k; and obsidian shards for up to 15k. A full obi armor set cost well over 3000k. Now obi armor costs 1/5 as much. However in the old days there was no loot scaling and items cost 4/5 more in general than what they do today. So the net effort needed remained a constant. Only the introduction of (skills) builds for speed clearing and solo farming have eased the effort for acumulating wealth of the infinite kind nowadays.

It doesn't have to be that skill, just one of the enchantment removal skills that can bypass Shadow Form, Spellbreaker or Obsidian Flesh.

Maybe update UW with monsters/skill from Factions or nightfall, Signet of Disenchantment would also work.

This leads to a "fix" for the economy for the "it's broke" crowd. Of course this is purely hypothetical, since it is way beyond the ability of one designer and programmer.

Eliminate the Infinite Supply - Put a cap on every drop in game. Once that cap is reached no more drop, until somebody disposes of some of that item. Of course with would mean that no more more ecto drops, until some are used. Of course eventually no more gold drop or anything. Doesn't that sound like fun - kill monsters get nothing!

Eliminate the Traders - No longer is there a constant supply of anything. If you want my "stuff" you must pay what I want to charge! Wait a minute, many a thread exits here asking for MORE traders so we can devalue insignias.

For the old timers, you remember this was the way it originally was. Find a seller of the materials you need, or go without. Sure made crafting armor a challenge.

Q&A isn't a discussion or suggestion forum. There is a thread open in the right place:

GW "Economy Bailout" Idea.

Post there instead. Closed.