GW "Economy Bailout" Idea.

Absolutely. I'd be down a couple of hundred ecto if I could stand to look at Chaos gloves, or even if they could be 'HoMmed'.

The old school traders and I done this many years ago with a lot more cash. Not a new idea, oh and makes little difference.

WOW, you really should read.

1. I never said anything about Fluf Fluff genorousity fixes anything about the Economy. Got that? The whole notion that people want to control a "Make believe economy" is asinine. Its not a real economy!!!!!!! ITS FAKE. And even if it was real, the mere fact that the premise to keep certain things higher in value so you can be greedy and MAKE MORE MONEY ..oh look at me im rich...is the most rediculous thing ive ever seen. The mindset of some people is so messed up nowadays that certain people only care about making money. MONEY ISNT EVERYTHING..NEVER WILL BE. Your thinking proves my point. Fluf Fluff gave out 3-8k to different people, it was a gesture. It wasnt anything other than that. He chose to do something else with his money. Whats 3-8k going to do for most players...nothing. It only helps the people with little to no money, and id be willing to make a safe guess that hardly anyone who got the money was actually broke. A gesture..somethign nice..thats it.

To me if you argue for Fixing the economy, that only means you want to be able to make your money when you want and how you want it. Whats for dessert?


2. Redristribution of supply isnt as simple as your statement suggests. If you hand out 5000 ecto to 500 people at 10 ecto a piece, chances are they will spend those ecto towards armor. But if you had out 500 ecto to 10 people, chances are they are going to use that ecto to buy high end weapons. You see where that ecto goes as apposed to the first? Its goes typically back into people who have a lot of ecto/wealth. Which they in turn typically hold it. Supply all the sudden is affected not always by how much is out there (total supply) but more on how much of total supply is available for exchange. This is extremely different than saying...."its just got spread out." Its not even as simple as i tried to explain things....

Something curious I noticed on the weekend...

The price of ecto spiked up to 5.5k on one day, then promptly sank back to 4.6 less than 24 hours later.

Did someone actually try this?

I would wait untill the next update in April. If shadowform gets nerfed, the supply of ectos greatly decreases and the impact of your 'bail out' would be greater. Many people are not able to farm anymore if their god mode disappears, so supply decreases.

Any impact on the price of ectos resulting from a Shadow Form nerf will be based on a panicky perception of scarcity, not reality. In reality, so many ectos were already farmed and horded before perma-SF that it only accounts for a tiny fraction of the supply out there. In reality, there's dozens of non-SF ways to farm ectos.

I would join in with this bailout idea but I have been severely effected by the fallen in-game economy.

The new line of mini pets should get the economy back up a bit too.

Wait a minute!!! You mean that UB was actually not God Mode, but it was SF all this time??!!! I demand that UB be un-nerfed on the grounds of being falsely accused of bringing countless hours of easy to play joy and entertainment to the masses!!

But anyway, as has been said many times before in any thread about the supposed problems with the economy, GW has no real economy that needs fixing. A true economy is based upon the concept of supply and demand with the assumption that supply has some kind of finite limit and that some sort of demand will always be present, at the core level. Since there is no such limit to nearly anything in GW, there is no way to fix an economy that does not truly exist.

Quite frankly, I find the attempt to manipulate ecto prices unimpressive. If someone wants to achieve a truly impressive feat, let's see them spike the cost of Bones to a few hundred gold, or even a platinum. THAT would be a feat worthy of song.

Hanok Odbrook

Shadowform represents like .01% of all the builds capable of farming ectoes. Nerfing SF will affect speed clears not the supply of ecto. Not even close. I can list a ton of builds off the top of my head. At least 1 build per profession minus paragon. (can't think of 1 but probably does exist)
If you're uncertain I can provide links and templates just to prove my point.

I'm not rich, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a limit on how much gold you can have on your account? If that's the case then they should do away with the limit, then people won't hoard money substitutes with no fixed value (unless they're greedy).

Yes there is a limit of 1000 platinum on the chest +100k in each character.

Your idea on the other hand won't make any difference. The ectos people have hoarded are but a pebble on all the ectos that can potentially be farmed.

So it is not like those ectos are creating a shortage on the general population.

Nerf on farming builds or on drop rates, on the other hand, will increase the value of those hoarded ectos and so making those players even richer.

Although I don't know exactly why they want to be richer since they already control most of the limited mini pets and limited weapons that don't drop anymore.

All the other items will keep dropping and increase in supply, slower or faster, but increasing.

As people have said, GW economy isn't economy at all. It is more a measure of how much time it takes to get something, call it armor or item skin.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=172

I've blathered about the utility of upping ecto prices before, so I'm in favor of the idea in principle. In practice, you simply won't have sufficient market power to actually change anything.

The weakness I see in your thesis?

In the real world, there was a fairly constant supply of gold. While new gold is still being mined, the total amount of gold available to be used as money was reasonably static.

In Guild Wars, though, there has been a constant influx of ecto (and pretty much anything else that gets used as a medium of trade) into the economy. While the price per unit of ecto has gone down, the addition of further ecto into the market - much faster than the addition of new gold in real-world economies - means that the total money supply has probably in fact gone up. This is doubly the case when you also consider the amount of ordinary gold also constantly entering the market.

The reason prices have gone down is due to their own supply/demand curves - supply of just about everything is increasing, while demand is decreasing as more of the people who are willing to pay price X already have all of item Y they want. As for the low-end trades that you're claiming doom and gloom over - I haven't noticed any real change in their frequency. Getting your niche items like a shocking hammer mod (been there, done that) through the trade channel was far from easy before the release of Factions, but through asking around in the right channels it was possible to acquire one in short order. I'm sure the same is true today - and probably for roughly the same price as it was back then.

Besides, I'm not convinced that purely inflationary measures really do anything but artificially increase inflation without actually doing anything to improve the economy. Look at Zimbabwe - can anyone really say that increasing the money supply has helped there? No, all it's done made the situation worse by adding hyperinflation to the existing problem.

But my point is... even if we assumed it did work, it's not applicable to Guild Wars, because the money supply in Guild Wars is still increasing even if the prices of individual units (such as ectos) drop - because that drop in price is almost always balanced by a much greater increase in supply. Those items that are limited in supply are, as has been observed, still constantly increasing in price, which seems to me to be further indication that the money supply is increasing rather than decreasing.

Well, there's also the fact that the population of Guild Wars is increasing at a much slower rate than the influx of gold/items (if it still is increasing at a measurable level at all), whereas in the real world the population size makes has a much larger impact on economic value.

Plus there's the simple fact that high end items are not valued solely upon the absolute number of ectos it is worth but the monetary value that the ectos represent. So, in essence, we have no backing to the monetary system used in GW - there is no standard to set the value of a gold piece. When the value of ectos decreases, a seller simply increases the required number of ectos needed to buy the item to compensate. So the base value of items really doesn't change, but merely the required amount of compensation needed to purchase said item.

We also have to remember that there is no unemployment in GW, nor really any class system as we think of it in the game. Any player can have a source of income at any time, and they are in complete control as to how much and how long they bring in that monetary flow. There is also no tax system in the game either - one can think of the gold sinks as a "tax" but aside from the plat or scroll needed to enter the UW or FOW, every single gold sink in this game that I can think of is non-essential and completely up to the player to use them or not.

Hanok Odbrook

Ever notice how these type of threads are solely about the ecto, because people have hoarded them?

Nobody whines about the much larger drops in value of "stuff"
Let's look at some classic examples
Superior Absorpsion rune - before factions ~95k at the trader/now - 100 gold
Elemental sword - a req 13 non perfect caster sold here on 1 Sep 07 for 100k+5 ecto/now - 3-5K if you are patient

Basically EVERYTHING that that isn't a finite number (rare minipets) has devalued as more come into the gameand less people attempt to buy them.

WOW! supply and demand - with an endless supply and a decreasing demand.

Here is some ideas that truly would drive prices up.

Adjust the monsters to STOP UWSC Add a skill like Soulrending Shriek at the top of the stairs and at random locations in UW. No more enchantment based farming!
/whine - "But I only play GW anymore to do UWSC!"

Cap the amount of everything in GW Once XXX number of ecto and other stuff is in play (including gold) no more drop! Doesn't this sound like fun! To truly make the whiners get vocal add a message stating what they would have gotten!

Remove ALL NPC traders from the game You want my "stuff", you have to pay what I am willing to sell!

/whine - "But I want MORE traders, not less! Where is the inscription trader I've been whining about!"

To me, this whole thread, and the many like it are truly a case of Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it!

I love how people are asking for build nerfs stateing the "economy" and oh noes ecto prices!.

Remember when ecto was 13-15k each and the 55/invimonk whatever its called took off back in the day?

Ecto's took a nose drive then, but i guess people where too busy farming their asses off to care.

I was one of those 55ers, lol. So Anet nerfed Protective Bond and the number of monks cut in half overnight.
Those that remained adapted and used Protective Spirit.
So Anet added the Dieing Nightmare to stop the 55 monk.

We already have a continuous economic stimulus bill in action: Xunlai Tournament House.

lol monthly welfare check for everyone.

Actually, I think getting rid of the money cap is a good point. I mean, it's the fact that ectos are used as a currency that causes ectos to be so valued. People who want silverwing bows and stuff need to hoard ecto to buy them. I mean, a lot of people who don't even farm UW and have FoW armor already (like power traders) or have no interest in getting FoW have tons of ectos just because of trading.
Of course, if anything this would cause ecto prices to drop more, since then more people who have an abundance of ecto and just want cash could sell to the trader. Still, the point of the hard limit on cash a character can hold was designed to limit the value items were traded for. And that clearly didn't work.

Flat out untrue. The supply of gold in circulation has always been increasing as there aren't very many ways to destroy it while still getting value. Unlike ecto, which does have several ways to destroy it for value.

Declining prices on literally everything fairly clearly indicate that per capita money has gone down.

If that were the case, old unfarmed items would slowly go up in value over time as the overall number available declined due to players leaving the game (and thus taking their items with them) while new players entered. Instead, despite the lack of farming and the utility of many old items, their prices remain crap and they cannot be found.

I'm not really concerned with what convinces you. Individuals without significant economic training often make poor calls on whether or not something is a good idea because they rely on flawed "common sense" judgments rather than economic logic.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/...09/spn0901.pdf

IMF briefing on risks of deflation. 3% inflation is considered healthy. Guild Wars doesn't have inflation, so prices drop and markets fail.

You're assuming that money supply increases just because more ecto enter the system. The current steady ~5k price indicates that there must be about the same number of ecto entering as there are leaving circulation, or the price would change. Money supply cannot, therefore, be increasing. It remains static, and as a result markets begin to fail. Push up the price slowly over time and people will start spending more.

However, I'm pretty sure that the gold supply in the real world doesn't increase at anything near the rate that the ecto supply increases in the game world. Plus, while gold isn't really destroyed, its common usage as jewelry and ornamentation does serve to remove it from the economy. Yes, such gold can be returned to the economy, but usually it only does so when things have already gone really, really bad for the (former) owner.

Or that, you know, per capita supply of goods has gone up?

And I'd contest that 'literally everything'. From all I've heard, those items that do have limited numbers (CE and SE minipets, drops that can no longer be acquired) have been steadily increasing in price.

I'm not sure what you mean by these. Prophecies-era greens? Probably overshadowed by endgame greens and the increased flexibility made available by 'building your own'.

You know, from my own training (admittedly nearly a decade ago now), I was always under the impression that inflation was seen as the cost of growth rather something desirable in and of itself, and 3% was simply seen as the level that was considered 'acceptable'. After all, in the real world, we're more used to seeing demand-driven economies - growth is driven by increases in demand, which shifts the crossover point between the supply and demand curves to one at a higher price (inflation) and total units supplied (growth). Conversely, downturns are most often driven by contractions in demand, leading to the reverse situation.

However, while growth tends to drive inflation, they are not inextricably linked. A contraction of the supply curve can lead to inflation and economic downturn - as happened in the 1970s oil shocks and as has been happening in Zimbabwe. Conversely, an expansion of the supply curve not matched by an increase in demand can lead to both deflation and growth - not a common situation to occur economy-wide in real-world economies, but it can happen with specific products if significantly more efficient means are discovered to produce that product.

Now, in a game in which people have been finding more and more efficient means to farm most goods, including ectos, and where a larger proportion of the population is employing those methods, which do you think is a better model to represent the GW economy? Demand-driven, as most real-world economies are? Or could it be that the drop in prices observed is due to increases in supply as more and more ectos and other goods flood the market? I know which I consider more significant - although I daresay that, as there are less new players entering the market and older players increasingly have everything they want, contractions in demand are also contributing to the price decreases.

However, one demand-side effect I have seen is an increase in the value of shards as ectos drop over the past year or so (I don't have records of the prices, but I remember them being closer to 1k a year or two ago) - since this hasn't seemed to be linked to nerfs of farming builds that I've noticed, I'd theorise that this is due to ectos being generally more available and thus driving the demand for shards from people for whom obsidian armour is starting to look attractive due to the drop in the ecto price.

Anyway, I really don't see how artificially increasing the price of ecto - in effect, artificially causing the supply curve of ecto to contract - is going to have a significant effect on the rest of the economy - especially in the trade of minor items that you claim such concern over. And for the reason I mentioned above, it may even cause the price of shards to drop.

Or the total supply of gold is increasing at roughly the same rate. Or - although I really, really doubt this is the case - the supply of both could be decreasing at the same rate. Or the price of ecto could be being held steady due to its 'perceived' value as people attempt to sell high and buy low.

It's doable... as long as you can buy it up faster than they can farm it AND this will be just as hard, buy it up as fast as people sell it to the trader.

Ever go to a trader and he was out of something? If you really needed it, how much more did you pay to get it?

Example's of this happening is when uber assassin build hit and there were no runes. The merchant running out of Superior Vigors, etc.

The best example of this happening with materials is when factions came out and there was the Great Steel Shortage*. There wasn't enough steel for the new armors and weapons. Prices went even higher due to dealers buying up anything that came into the merchant and reselling it. I had acquired 20+ stacks on a whim during the months leading up to it. My friend got into iron and I didn't want to compete, so I took steel. I was buying them up at 85-100 each. Factions came out and I was the cheapest dealer and still made a killing. Mostly selling just enough for armor or armor and weapons at a time to individuals. Other dealers offered more than that to buy all, but it was neat to be able to give people a "deal" and still make a killing.

Will you be able to do this with ectos, not until it gets less than 1k imo. You DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH GOLD since the vast majority of gold is tied up into ectos. Plus as soon as farmers see ectos rise back up, they will farm and sell to merchant for easy money. I think ectos are going to go the way of the onyx and diamond unless there is a huge influx of new players that want uber armors. Might as well buy uber pets or something less volatile.

*OK maybe not so great, but it lasted for a couple of weeks and I made out like a bandit.

I guess I would like to point out that there are hardly any actual money sinks in game. No decay, no repairs, marginal use of consumables, etc.

The bulk of player purchases are pure fluff, none of which are necessary to play the game. 5 plat armor and 5 plat weapons properly runed and modded are all that is needed to accomplish anything and everything in game.

A true economy is based on cost of items NEEDED to play the game, you cannot base a game economy on pure fluff and status items. If cost of raws to produce luxury armors exceeds the perceived status value of same, they won't be purchased save by very few.

Given the endless supply of ectos ingame, don't expect to pull a DeBeers and control a luxury item mkt, and that is all it is, a Market, not an economy.

Some more good points that seem to be forgotten or not even considered. A real economy is not only based on supply and demand, but the actual suppliers and manufacturers as well, and the fact that not everyone can make everything they need or want.

Anyone in this game can produce ectos by farming. The only difference would be how skilled one was. Unlike the real world where not everyone can manufacture a car or run a restaurant - every single player in this game has the same potential to produce ecto.

And then, as you mention, every single player in this game can set their own price for said ecto, much as you did with the steel. Since ecto costs only real world time to produce, there is no restriction on how low a player can sell the ecto for. Quite frankly, I can begin farming ecto and simply give them away for free if I so desired.

So not even creating or raising a set price on ecto at merchants or traders will work either, as Aeon221 suggests, since there is nothing to stop me from selling at a lesser price than what the cost is at an NPC or every other farmer out there. Multiply that by having my friends and guildmates do the same, and the price of ecto will drop even further as players will simply wait for one us to log on and buy it at our cheap rate as opposed to what every other player is selling them for.

Hanok Odbrook

Hanok Odbrook ,

I think your model lacks rational actions (to an extent) BUT is factual in a vacuum.

In the real world everyone sorta has the same ability to "acquire" any skill they wish to. The problem is time. If you learn to manufacture a car, you probably won't have the time to run a restaurant. This is the opportunity cost. Same can be said about stuff here. The problem is time. Since time is a resource, it can be used up doing one thing, thus not allowing you to do another. If you want to learn DOA and be great at it, you're going to spend less time being great at GVG. So, while everyone CAN learn to farm ecto, not all choose to.

Also, if the ecto trader did raise their price for ecto, i'm sure everyone who is selling ecto will as well. This is only rational. As a matter of fact it happens now. This is why there are power sellers for zkeys in the game. There are people who are willing to sell them below what the market is willing to pay, yet you won't see people waiting around all game for those people to sign on. Even the people who buy them cheap tend to resell them at a higher price because they know there is a market.

Keep in mind the rare material trader is a price ceiling for ecto.

With that post I was more or less giving the counter side to what the original OP proposed. Certainly for something like that to succeed, there would have to be enough of those players farming enough ecto that they could readily supply it.

The point is, there are too many factors involved here to make any talk of some kind of "bail out" pointless. All it really comes down to is a handful of players looking to keep their e-peen as large as possible, when the reality of it is, the vast majority of the players could not care any less about that e-peen. When push comes to shove, the end result will be that the average player will end up acquiring what he needs on his own, or getting it from another average player for what amounts to virtual breadcrumbs.

Hanok Odbrook

I dont care about the ecto and all that a lot.Only when i get a drop in UW or when i gather 5000 balthazar faction or tournament points.
To be honest i never used them in trades.Rarely they are larger then 100k,and if they are,thats probably items in stack,so multiple trades are possible.
Black dye and lockpicks should be used instead of ectos and zkeys.
Why?They are more stable.There is no way you can crash an lockpicks price.They have a static price.
Black dye cant be overfarmed because it drops everywhere and it drops at the same ratio.It is worth more then an ecto also.