GW "Economy Bailout" Idea.

Dunno if this is in the wrong forum :P oh well but anyways...
Was reading through a couple posts, and came across a few comments about a economy bailout to raise ecto prices etc.

Seems like a pretty good idea and for kicks. So im wanting to actually try it. Ive talked to some friends in my guild and they think it would be fun since were quitting soon anyways to move onto the Darkfall Beta and etc, we have a boatload of money to burn, so why not.

Currently in total we have around 9.6 million (3 mill each I guess) were willing to put forth to try this.

So what im looking for now is for more people who have lots of cash to burn, who either dont care anymore or want to do it for kicks to try out this "Bail-out" idea. Could be interesting if it worked eh.

Im thinking were going to have to organize a date and a meeting place where we can all GWx2 our accs and start buying millions of ectos. Personally id want to try it a few weeks from now or maybe a month or two, let the prices decline some more first so when we do it, it would impact the market LOTS.

If your interested or want to discuss some more first let shoot.

I would join in since I quit, but all my money is in rare items so I have no ectoes.

There is nothing wrong with the economy. Ecto price is dropping as UW is easier and less people are crafting new armor. If people who have invested in ectos are angry about losing gold due to this, they should only be angry about themselves.

I think it will take much more than just a few millions to create a lasting effect on ecto value, but go ahead and try...


Also, ready this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornering_the_market

interesting wiki :P but hey like i said weve got money too blow our goal here is not for it to work its just for kicks and a bonus if it did.

plenty wrong with the so called "gw economy"

I'd be interested in the results. I have no cash to throw around but I'd like to know just how much it could be affected.

If someone with less than 20 mil could affect market significantly, we would see it happen.

I always assumed that the best way to royally screw up a virtual economy would be to run a huge Ponzi scheme or a pyramid game. You don't need anywhere near the initial capital required to corner the market and the scam gains momentum until the inevitable collapse. It's quite unclear whether it would even be technically against the EULA other than the catch-all 'sole discretion' clause. In any case it would be a lot of fun as a social experiment should somebody feel like roleplaying an ecto futures broker

you forget also that the trader doesn't have an infinite amount of ecto. once they're gone they're gone, and then you'll have to sell them all back in order to get some in the market


EDIT: thanx snograt, i had both open and posted in the wrong one. lulz i am teh noob

No deleted posts here - are you maybe getting confused with this thread, Rak?

Like I said in the other thread, even quite a few people wouldn't affect it much. Prices are influenced heavily by player demand, and if you changed the price somehow you would have a lot of people selling ecto's the price would only rise temporarily, the problem right now is just more people UW farming, which isn't even a problem really, it was obviously bound to happen. You can't fight off the inevitable, I think you will only make some people richer (like the Ecto investors)

I see you want to do it for fun though, and honestly im kind of interested what kind of impact this would do.

The key in solving the GW economy is knowing that there is no economy. It's all hot air with no value whatsoever. Get over it and play, or find another game.

the bailout could work but eventually it would fall back to the way it was. if we really want to see a change we need to nerf the farming builds so the little pink globs aren't overfarmed.

Economy 101. There are sources from which new stuff springs into existence. There are also sinks that remove stuff from existence. What happens in between is the economy but ultimately it's all about sources and sinks.

If we denote the total rate of creation of an item i by C_i and the total rate of destruction of the same item by D_i then the accumulation of the item in the economy is simply A_i = C_i - D_i. Then the relative scarcity of item i in comparison to another item j can be expressed as S_ij = int_0^t A_j(t) / int_0^t A_i(t). What this means in layman's terms is that if ectos are getting cheaper then their accumulation rate is faster than that of gold (the 'value' of ecto is just a measure of the relative rarity between ecto and gold).

You suggest decreasing C_ecto as a way to combat its devaluement. However, there are three additional ways to accomplish the same thing, those being:

• increase D_ecto
• increase C_gold
• decrease D_gold

The four measures have the same effect on the value of ecto while causing different side effects. Instead of jumping the gun, I would expect a discussion on the relative merits of each approach before calling for action.

i thought it was funny to see the word "bailout" on here. Its just funny to see people stoop so low. In anycase, the problem nowadays isnt the price, its the demand. It all started when hard areas were becoming ever so easier to farm. Weapons and items that used to be worth a bundle are less, because the price dropped, more and more people were able to get their hands on them due to overfarming. Elemental Swords for example were a hot ticket item back in the day, a Req 9 Perfect was worth 100k + 20ecto is now worth barely 15k, why? Because everyone and their mom has one or more, its no longer a rare item. Im willing to bet you samething is gonna happened to Voltiac Spears, if it hasnt already. Gloom Shields, Demonic Aegis, Draconic Aegis, Amthyest Aegis have all gone down is price, because demand for them is low, people would much rather have a Tormented Shield. You take a look around and think about all that once was expensive is cheap, and you can only blame it on demand. Its low and no one wants it.

there are other reason besides just rareity you also have to factor in that the HOM did a lot to prices if we like it or not.

On topic this wont work. there are sooo many ectos out there that even if you could buy 3mil worth people would still have more then enough. yes there might be a small spike in the price at first but for the most part there just is no way. i for one know people who have stacks apon stacks of ectos just siting in there storage.

which makes me go back to what i am saying the ob armors ugly and so are the shiny pos chaos gloves why because everyone has them. i enjoy my other armor sets way more 1 because they look better and 2 because not very many people ware them. (dont get me wrong i could load up my heroes and a friend and go get my self a few sets of ob and chaos gloves but i dont want to because of what i just said)

Pity to those who are angry because the ectos they have been invested in are depreciated tremendously. I have already learnt to accept it a long time ago when I blew a huge amount buying rare skin weapons only to see it sold at 1/5 of the price I bought several weeks later.

Nooooo, dont blow your gold on ectos. Be charitable and give it to someone who is poor...
Give it to me!!!

on topic: I don't think that the economy in guildwars requires a bailout just yet, but I reckon that the amount raised won't make a lasting difference.

Seems kind of...
Well your spending gold to make more gold back on ectos that are sold.

PS: I'll gladly take your gold.

PPS: gimme gold!

Yeah! We need a bailout because stuff that used to be expensive is now cheap. Oh, what an economic disaster! Just think how much better the economy would be if you could still sell a two-function hand calculator for $500 (to the five people in the world who could afford one). I just don't see how the sellers can stay in business now that all the riff-raff can buy multi-function, programmable hand calculators for just a few bucks. Get the price back up to keep the merchants happy, and let the masses go back to using pencil and paper.

QFT

All this action would do is spike the prices up for a short amount of time and then get back down, the only thing that it would influence is people that are low on money and want to buy something in that period.

Anyone who thinks gw economy needs a bail out should study some economy and understand the concept of demand/supply. Just because people that hoarded ecto's for a long time have gotten a bit poorer now doesn't make me shed a single tear, it was to be expected. If you want ectos to be expensive again the only thing that would do that is making them less farmable.

a) was already attempted (Chaos gloves) as was proven to be insufficient, mostly because all ecto sinks have finite capacity per player.
b) would collapse other markets making it even less viable to trade at lowend (further decreasing mean time per sale needed to remain competitive with direct farming for gold)
c) Would mean that static gold sinks would be toned down, but that is irrelevant because rich players already got their 10k point titles and there is no gold sink beyond that, more casual players would rejoice, people who "did it hard way" would whine.

How interesting would it be to add a collector who'll give a conset for each ecto?

Just a random thought. no real chance of something like that happening.

You might be able to raise the price for a short time, but it wont change anything in the long term The demand for ectos is just not as high as it used to, mainly because there is nothing really left to buy in the game that requires massive amount of ectos (rare minis exception, but there is only so many of them). If you want to see the ecto price go back up, Anet needs to nerf a few of these farms or introduce new skins/tonics/pets.

Does Obama play GW? An "Ectonomic stimulus package" would fail just as hard as an economic stimulus package does. Quick temporary band aid isn't going to fix the root of the problem.

To be honest , your 9 million would have little or no lasting effect on the economy since its not a particularly large amount of money - approx 2000-2200ectos? Look at High end forum and see how often that gets bid for a single item.

If you dont want the money go find someone to give it to.

UWSC run "costs" one conset. But UWSC run produces at least 8 new ectoes for economy.

That is not exactly ecto sink. Not by far.

Consets are used for far more than just UWSC as Im sure you know.

As already stated I think it would take LOTS more than a few million gc to make a lasting impact. You would also have to fight the"leechers" who start buying up ectos from trader at, say 4600 ea a few days before you start the action, and then resell them as price raises above 5k from your struggling. So, unless you have way over 100million gc I think all it would do is channelling your money to the pockets of some sneaky traders.
It is IMO only Anet who has the power to change the situation, that would be by creating more ecto sinks like the FOW armor and chaos gloves, or by nerfing all kinds of UWSC.
Is it desirable? Not to me, with my 50 ectos in storage, I dont care much if they are worth 200k or 250k or 300k. To the average player who has less than 50 ecto or no ecto at all? It doesnt matter much to them, they might desire ecto price to drop to 1k so they could get chaos gloves easier. It is only rich players with stacks of ecto that would really benefit from raised price. And then, of course the UWSC people.

So I say, feel free to do your thing with your 9M, but it would have same effect as giving to random newbs in ascalon or drop on the ground in some explorable area.

The fact that we have a 100% success rate in UW, getting every run done in under 30 minutes, doesn't mean everyone does...

I can think of several new ways to get rid of any surplus ectos ...

• new chaos armor pieces
• weapon crafter for chaos weapons of all types
• chaos miniatures / tonics etc. bling
• ecto lottery (like Z-chest or Coffer of Whispers)

These just off the top of my head, I'm sure that the community could suggest others

"PULL!!!!!" *click click* ya know im getting tired of this shotgun misfiring. Oh wait ..what are we talking about?

Its truly amazing at a time like this someone comes up with an "economic bailout" idea that mirrors what happens in real life. Here you are sitting a nice chunk of money compared to 80-90%+(might be higher actually) of GW players. So essensiallly you are rich. And what do most rich people do, try to obtain more wealth. Go ahead, buy your ecto's now at a bargain price. Try to force Economy God's hand to raise the value after you have bought so many. Go ahead, sit on all your ecto's. Check back in when they are a higher value, sell sell sell sell. Flood the market! Then have another thread like this. Ohhh im bored and quitting...I have now 12million that i dont know what to do with. Repeat and Rinse..Repeat and Rinse.

Wait..what does that do. It just gains more wealth for you, and makes its harder for the average guild wars player to obtain that one set of nice armor that they've been working towards. Seems to me you are "so" rich (not really) that you dont know what to spend your money on.
THE RICH GET RICHER...and the poor get...well are just SOL.

Im not saying this will happen in GW, but this is the crap that has killed today's real-life economy. Some people are never satisfied with their pesonal gain. Personal gain > others. The fact is...you can still be wealthy/rich/whatever and have a profound affect on others who are poor.

Whether it actually works or not remains to be seen? But why should you/the next person care right? Its just a game?

I'm going back to my clay pigeons. Please stop throwing lame ducks into my rotation.

P.S. I forgot. You could learn from a player named Fluf Fluff. I dont know where he gets his/her money from nor do i care. But for many days there he/she was giving away 2-300,000+ gold a night away to random people. Theres been plenty of others like that. Kudos to all who do such a thing.

Still, foo, look at what that means. If just ONE UWSC is a success, and you used 1 conset to achieve this, that's still a 1:8 rate of return. That means that for every successful UWSC, 7 others can fail and the supply of Ecto hasn't changed at all.

The idea to give the cash/Ecto to random players doesn't work either, because that keeps the gold/Ecto in the market/economy. Sure, some of the resulting spread wealth will be spent in a manner that classifies as a Gold Sink (armor, ID kits, Salvage kits, cons, etc.) but a fat chunk of it would probably wind up going to Player2Player trades for weapons and the like, and any P2P transaction only moves the available resources, it doesn't destroy them or get them out of circulation in any way.

The GW economy doesn't need a bailout. It's not in a recession. IT'S NOT REAL.

Nothing in GW can BREAK, which is part of the problem. Once you make some Armor or obtain a Weapon/Offhand, it's here to stay. -50hp Grim Cestas don't magically wear out and disappear because someone used them to 55 one too many times. My oldschool Chaos Axes aren't going to explode because I hacked one too many mobs to pieces using [[Cleave] or [[Eviscerate]. As such, there is an ever-growing supply, which means demand will continually reduce.

I, for one, thought that having no need to repair weapons and armor was absolutely awesome when I first started playing GW. I had to do repairs in Diablo and Diablo II, I have friends that have to do repairs in WoW, and sometimes it sucks, because expensive gear is expensive to fix... but then you look at it for what it is - a Gold Sink. It's something that HAS to be done for you to maintain your Armor and Weapons of Uber1337-Godliness, and in doing so it shunts gold out of the system, away from players' greedy, grubby little hands so that things can't be hoarded as easily.

You want to affect Ecto prices? Make Ecto temporary. Ectoplasm, after all, is a "ghostly" material, why shouldn't it fade away if you keep it sitting around collecting dust in your Xunlai?

This would increase the price for Ecto because it's a temporary item. Let it sit too long (and I'm not sure what a "fair" timeframe would be - this is a partial suggestion) and it goes "POOF". You have a limited time to gather your Ecto and then use it to craft your Obsidian Armor or your Chaos Gloves. Then players couldn't sit on stack upon stack of Ecto.

Yes, that would be unfair. People who worked hard for their Ecto since day one of release would pitch a FIT if this were implemented, but nothing is going to change the "GW Economy" unless it's something DRASTIC. It's been far to easy of a system to begin with - all the perks, none of the drawbacks.

No, I don't ENDORSE the idea I just shared, or WANT it to happen - again, just a suggestion of the scope of what would have to happen for something to honestly change.

This means everyone needs to get a tissue, dry their tears about being poor, and get logged in so you can earn some money - cuz ANet isn't going to give you an easy way out. Period.

my $0.02...

While I agree that Fluf Fluff was VERY generous (tons of money just given away - the thread was amazing) it doesn't solve any "Economy" problems. It just causes lazy players to run rampant. Why? Because why should they WORK for their in-game cash? Fluf Fluff or some other patron will just Welfare it to them.

Nice gesture, I'm not knocking Fluf Fluff - they can do what they want to with their in-game cash and from what I saw in that Thread, FF is just a very, very generous person (kudos) - but that doesn't do a damn thing to better the GW economy. It's GW Welfare or GW Socialism, take your pick. Players who cba to earn money on their own now have the idiotic idea that players who have worked hard for their personal fortunes should now just "hand it over becuz Fluf Fluff did it" and have now become the underbelly of GW - the beggars and lazy idlers.

It also doesn't push demand for anything higher. Redistribution of the supply of wealth doesn't mean that supply got any lower, it just got spread out.

u would have to get a few people to buy out ectos faster than people selling em to merchants when the prices rise, gl

well yes things can run out from trader seen it with sup shadow arts runes but, when the trader runs out and poeple sellback then they sell again fast the price will go up slowly.

that and i think the trader has millions of ecto that would be why ecto is going down everyone is elling to him noone is buying from him.


i think it would be funny oen day my guild and alliance went to kamadon and la and spammed sf is going to get buffed again buy sup arts now before they go up in price. and with in about 5 hours the price went up 1k not a big change but it was funny

To OP:
The idea is good but the amount of money you have to start with is way to little to make a significant difference. Worth a try I guess so give it a shot and post the results!

Let me see if I can put this down as I see it in my mind.

People see the GW economy on a downhill slide. Many people see the game dieing. Maybe the two "go hand in hand?"

In the first year or so of GW, UW and FoW were only available to a "few" people. They saw the potential of becoming extremely wealthy by stockpiling ectos. As the game aged and its population grew, more people entered those areas, causing a slight decline in value of the horded materials. Now the game is in its 4th year, the population is starting to decline. Those playing today, have the Wiki builds that the farmers found most effective for farming the "elite" areas. (Why buy them, when they are "easy" to get yourself?)

Now, to "improve" the economy, or to make the rich richer, get rid of ALL the builds pages everywhere, then convince another 4 million people to buy the game. With all the builds pages gone, only the veterans will know how to farm the "elite" areas. With that kind of increase in the population, the "sky is the limit" on prices, until the population learns how to do the "elite" areas again.

To "stabilize" the economy, fix prices. Set a ceiling price at the traders, do not rely on supply and demand. The farmers can still make money by selling their items at or below the traders' prices.

I hope that I said what I was thinking.

Yes.... because we need to feed and provide medical care to all the people on welfare....
Oh wait, this is a video game. RL metaphors don't make sense since poverty in a game doesn't mean you die of starvation like in RL.

GW's economy was screwed up a long time ago. A.net knew what inscriptions would do to the economy (people like me pointed it out to A.net repeatedly) but they ignored those fears.
The economy in GW is beyond any measure of selfhelp. Really, all we can do is hope GW2 is designed in such a way that items actually have demand and value (an auction house will help a lot by removing the hidden time costs of having to powertrade).

Have I missed something here???

How do you each have 3million stored?
I hope the answer is not in ectos :-/

Luxury Items are Down Dissemination of Wealth is Better than it has ever been in this game. Sounds like a strong economy to me

Fact remains yes X.T.H. is puting more Wealth in more peoples hands while at the same time the Price of Luxury items are Remaining Close to Constant if not falling in Value.

Artificially Rasing the price of items in a economy that is Flooded with currency is a bad idea seance it will cause the Currency to Devalue (20-30 K ectos anyone?)

each person with a second account with 5+ char on each account can stole 3mil cant it? If u read OP's post, he did say use GW2 to buy ectos, meaning they have multiple accounts.

Fair enough :-)

I read the GWx2 part and couldnt make sense of it.... me bad

Thanks again