Remove money cap to reduce inflation

This may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but keep reading.

There is a cap of 100k to trade and 1000k in storage, this cap was put with the hope no transactions could be made over 100k so prices dont skyrocket like they did.

omgPOWERTRADERS i-wanna-be-rich-buying-cheap-from-the-noob soon invented a way to get rid of this cap by using ectos as a currency when everyone wanted a fissure armor, so you were quite sure ectos was a very sought after item.

When ectos were not enough to cover their unlimited greed then armbraces appeared as another currency, so actually we have (estimate)

Gold cap 100k
Ecto value: about 7K
Armbrace value: about 25 ecto: thats 175K

There are several problems:

1. Money cap has done nothing to keep inflation low, as we can see people buying minis for insanes 1500 armbraces for a ded panda (262,500,000 gold, almost 263 million gold)

2. Using ectos as currency means people keep them instead selling them back to trader when not needed (hey, i have all my toons with fissure and chaos gloves, now what?) so prices keep unusually high for an item is rare but easily farmable, i bet you there are 1000 times more ectos in game than rubies but their prices are the same.

3. Duping has made people suspicious about the source the ectos and armbraces he accepted as part of payment came from, and the risk of ban is always there, until now there is no news than money can be duped.


Without money cap we have several advantages:

High end traders can set a fixed value on gold, not depending the current value of ectos, (value we now is not real), ectos and armbraces will lower their value as they will only useful for crafting thing and not to hoard stacks of them, and duped items will be useless and wont affect economy, "hey luser, i dont want your 2000 duped ectos, just pay me 15 millions, oh dont have it? go and sell them to merchant, good luck with the bans.

Vote to remove cap, it's useless and has done the opposite it was mean to.

I pay in ectos whenever I can. 50k for a stack of pcons? Here, have my 7e! It's really convenient imo and it won't entirely stop just because you remove gold cap.

I see 20 votes but just 1 reply, please explain your vote so we can discuss this matter and know another point of view.

I'm not sure how removing the cap will reduce inflation. I also don't think ecto prices are particularly volatile.

WHile I am not at all sure this would help on inflation I vote yes remove it, since it is an artificial limitation that is not useful for anything.

i voted "yes" to remove the cap ..........cash should be the prefered form of currency, imho

Escuse me if im wrong but when did inflation rely just on money ?
I could have sworn that say if a material became saught after - say feathers as a gd example , the price rises due to demand and prices fall due to less demand.
Personally i like the 100k limit - how many of us in a trade have almost put wrong amount in , theres probably several thousand ppl who have got things wrong and put 100k insteak of 10k by accident and noticed.Now if amount was raised or made capless then its possible to make really costly errors.
Not only that but the only ppl who actually have more funds that storage can hold are usually powertraders and most of them use ectos or armbraces - the average player probably hasnt 1000k saved - quite a few times ive looked at my cash and thought damn im gettin close to 1000k and converted some cash to ectos .
Dont forget Ectos are like the stock exchange and they go up an down again due to demand .
Now id rather have 500 ectos which i had bought at a nice price and market price rises and my 500 ectos would increase in value - my 1000k wouldnt decrease or increase due to the markets - we dont get interest on our gold.
Just think of ectos and armbraces as the next level of currency - gold/platinum > ectos > armbraces and remember the market fluxes so one day 14e = 100k and next day it could be 12e = 100.
bottom line - we`ve had this currency setup for around 7yrs now and its worked so far

As for the ruby / ectos part - i can 100% say ive had more ectos drop in 5 years of gw than ive had either rubies drop or an item salv into a ruby , and if you need to know - ive only ever had 2 rubies drop and none salv yet i could go into uw and get maybe 1-3 ectos a run and after 3 runs id have more ectos than rubies drop again.
The big reason why both are expensive same time is simple - before HoM fow armor was quite the rage and vabbi armor was lower on a players to-get list but as vabbi armor is in HoM the prices rose and include availability to the ruby part - we know ectos have 2 - 4% drop rate on several foes and i`ll guess rubies have an even lower drop rate.

I would love the no cap rule, but at this day and age of GW, ectos have become part of currency, and is currency in GW. It too late to change that, anet would be screwing over many people, if they added the no cap rules, ectos price will plummet. Maybe 4-5 year ago i would vote yes. But now i would have to say no. Maybe allow us to hold more than 1000k would be fine.

this is like saying remove silver and gold and platinum from real life,

why would i carry 7 k when i can carry 1ecto , ecto prices shift up and down maybe my ecto is worth 15-100k somethimes 12-100k

i say no , this is used in real life and it wouldnt matter , i think some people are just mad that they cant afford armbraces or a stack of ecto

what difference having a stack of ecto or the same amount in cash

what weights more a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

If this was implemented from the start - Yes

At this point in the game - No

Fundamental misunderstanding of how an economy works on many levels here.

Removing the gold cap on trades and in storage won't magicly make gold have value. People trade with ecto and ambraces because they have value. Gold is worthless in guild wars, because its far to easy to obtain. If you want gold to have value in guild wars again, you'd have to make it harder to obtain, and add gold sinks to remove excess gold from the game. However as others have said its far to late in the life of guild wars to make changes like this.

Everytime this subject comes up, it gets put down. At this point in time, it makes no difference to me whether there is a cap or not. 2 or 3 years ago, I had enough gold to fill storage and most of my characters, and a higher or no cap would have been good.

I say remove the cap purely for those who don't have ectos, but have gold. Not all who have enough gold for x have ectos. Yes, they could buy the ectos themselves, but maybe they don't want to for some reason.

I say definitely remove the cap from storage.

Well if you believe that, feel free to give me all your gold!

I say remove it, it probably wouldn't change much this late but it would make things easier.

Removing the gold cap will do nothing to reduce inflation.

Pretty much this. The concept was to put a cap on high end trades, but like many other things they never considered how trivially easy it was to circumvent. As a result the entire foundation of the economy has grown up around the concept of some items having an artificial value. Removing that cap has the potential to collapse large segments of the economy.

And before anyone jumps down my throat about being upset at the prospect of losing a fortune, don't bother. At this point I don't even interact with the market anymore, and I never played heavily in it. I could quite conceivably play for years to come with the reserves of consumables and equipment that I have. I still feel that this idea is stupid, and will not accomplish the intended goals, regardless of whether or not I even agree with the stated goals.

Given that a Ton is also a measure of VOLUME, then clearly a ton of bricks would weigh more. Perhaps you should use Tonne next time?

As for the gold cap on transactions, do away with it... it is simply an artificial limitation that forces people into currency speculation on trade goods as a means of storing wealth or engaging in large transactions.

Please share your knowledge with the ignorants so we can learn.

The mere fact that the game market has remained relatively stable over a long period of time is impressive. World of Warcraft's Auction House can be manipulated easily by a small amount of players and exploit the economy around raids, pvp, holidays, etc.

People who have assloads of cash spend it on vanity items - if you're still working on HoM, then you're probably spending gold as you go. Gold acquisition has never been a problem in this game, but has only been improved with time; whether you PVP, solo grind, group for high end dungeon SCs, or even just play through the storylines without farming, you're likely to make what you need with minimal effort.

Like others have said before me, it might reduce inflation but why fix what isn't really broken?

Your suggestion is the equivalent of saying that the US can fix its money problems by getting rid of dollars and making everyone use pennies instead. Do I really need to go on or is that comparison enough?

Not that I have anything against getting rid of the money cap because its simply annoying, but the reliance on ectos is actually working against inflation at the moment because the material traders take their cut off those transactions. Other items are purely benign.