Inflation or Greedy Merchants?

lol good point. lol

After this game has been out for a while, assuming there are no changes, practically everyone will have "godly" weapons and equipment because they are always being found, and surely no one is going to toss the best equipment away. Also, if you already have godly equipment, you will probably sell the new pieces you find. This will lead to prices dropping significanly with time and everyone having maxed out equipment. bleak future :-p

I don't see this as wasting time. I don't need any gold or items. What good is gold anyway? people claim to be making 100k a day. Thats cool but why??? (To prove you are more l33T than me?) What are you going to do with it? you can buy the 15k armor and... thats about it. /sigh I guess I'll keep wasting my time with the lowbies.

Actually, your the one who IS NOT wasting his time

Because you realized that gold has no value to you, and because you realized that you have fun "giving stuff away for free" (note that charging 100g for it still makes it free from your POV, for they buyer it may be something though)

My point was explaining the merchants POV. If he does not like you, whats the point of wasting 10mins aka 1-5 plat to sell something for 1 plat? A merchant is not there to help you, and he wont make a profit if he sells low. Actually, the price on everything that is easy to get (minor runes) does not depend on the supply. It depends on "transport costs". The only currency in an online game is "time".

And value of gold: you can buy Black dyes from the merchant. (One of the possible new currencies (aka SoJs ). Some people also need unIDed runes, and as long as people sell them for gold, gold remains usefull

I noticed yesterday that you can buy silly amounts of gold on ebay. WTF???!?!?

IMO when ppl, especially ones new to the game, can get mad amounts of gold (300k was $23.99 with the "buy it now" feature on ebay) without working for it means that they can pay the exorborant amounts of gold that others are asking for ho-hum items. This leads to the continuation of serious inflation and should simply not be allowed. Once again, only my opinion- and this is the opinion of someone that has watched this sprial out of control since release....

well, when it comes to swords and bows, you get some pretty high prices. but when it comes to hammers, there are good deals. i got a 19-35 +15% dmg while >50% health, gold icy giantslayer of defense +5 armor for 2000. sometimes u just need to be at the right place to get the good deals.

"since release" is still not that long, and I could easily imagine that ArenaNet has had more important things to do.

However, they should still consider some kind of action soon, even if it's just an announcement that they are aware of it. (This will help fix the idea in people's heads that the economy could change, giving "fair warning" to people who are investing a lot of time right now trying to make money or whatnot.)

An even better reason to institute auctions of some kind. =)

Now, I'm no economics major, but I think your concerns are probably both inflation and personal greed. The effect you've noticed, however, would be best attributed to player greed. Many people in the GW community seem to believe they can slap any price on a better than average weapon and sell it. Sadly, I think many of them are able to in the end. Let's face it, the Guild Wars economy is unstable at best.

On a personal note, I feel the best way to make money is to sell everything a bit lower than the lowest seller of each respective item. I have always used this tactic in MMO's and I've never had a problem making money.

There are two really important issues brought up on this page. One is "time" is the most important resource in an mmo (in rl too). Second is "fun", if you have fun selling your wares or giving them away then that is what you should do. On another note, the economy is out of control with the minor rune market bottomed out and majors finally being relized how useless they are. The only things to spend money on are the items mentioned on this page. Rare awesome weapons, sigils, and unidentified armor. There is still a supply and demand with sup vigor and some other superiors which will cause high prices. Everything else should be given away for free or sold to the "official" merchants. The economy IS getting worse because mostly of the influx of kids done with school and more unaware buyers coming into the game who don't know they are getting ripped off. Some really good responses so far. Its not just me who sees these issues in GW.

Just my two cents (as I love the "Trade wars" aspect of GW), I find it fun to haggle with folks for items. And, yes, I sell my wares at a higher price them most people (ie. 400gp for minor runes, 250 for most rare items, 300gp furs, 12gp common items), etc.

Why? Because I can get it. Because its the challenge of getting folks interested in the stuff. I've met some real cool folks doing it too, almost like a chat room sometimes. I've got a friends list full of guild members that buy stuff for they're guild at *my* prices. I sell stuff for a high cost, sure, but I have the stuff you want when you want it.

There are people that don't care for my prices and that's fine. They can hunt around and find a better deal just as easy as I can hunt around and find people to buy at my costs. I don't sell Minor runes for 800gp because its not worth it to me. I am sure I can get one or two sales for that price, but I can get 10 or 20 sales at 400gp. An item is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and its up to me to adjust prices depending on how fast I want to sell them (cheaper=faster;expensive=harder work).

Does it matter that I bought the rune from an adventurer that "wanted to get back out there" and sold it to me for 150gp? Not really. He sold it so he can get on his way and have some dime to buy an armor upgrade later, my goal is to sell it for more (his goal was to fight baddies in the wild). So we both win.

The other fact's... people don't seem to:

a) haggle: if I say its 350 for a sword hilt and YOU think its worth 250, I may agree (but just want a higher price or more profit on a prior low buy). If I bought it for 100gp and sold it for 250gp then I'm happy. But I'll always try selling it higher in hopes you want to haggle to _your_ reasonable price. Half the folks just say "no thanks" -- when I ask "you want to counter offer?" they say "nope." They're loss, not mine. I'll sell 10 minutes later to the next guy that asks.

b) have manors: I use the key phrases "sorry", "excuse me", "please", "thank you sir" a lot. It keeps people feeling good about the purchases or haggles. Sometimes I give a price and the response is "your a **** n00b" (sometimes dropped on they're ignore list). For what? I wanted to sell 'em a steel for 250gp? How about "no thanks, I'm all set" or a "nvm"?

c) believe I can sell it: If I ask to sell charr hides and get four whispers for the items and I'm nice and tell the first guy "I'll sell it to you for 50gp since you whispered first" I don't need a "you can go sell it to your imaginary customers." -- I mean, its charr hides...they last about 4 minutes before they're sold. I don't need your bad attitude; buy or don't buy. There is no need to discredit me because I do this all the time, I know the prices that people will pay and I'm not making them up to screw over the community. I'm out to make money.

Its easy to discredit people for they're high prices, and plenty of people have tried to burn me with prices. However each and everyone will learn the max value of an item by attempting to sell it for a few hours. You can offer 20K for a sword all ya want, its not going to change the economy even if two folks are trying to sell for that price. The commoners (the 90% of the folks that are not rich or 20th level gods) won't hold out for a 20K sword when they can get full armor, a great shield, a great sword for less then 10K.

Again, just my two cense

CodeMonkey

Hey CodeMonkey that sounds like me about 3 weeks ago. Those were my methods you've stated. I would never publicly put up a price, only in pst. It looked like this...300g?....then no response or a flat no and run away. I would just sit there and wonder if people just don't know how to haggle. My question mark I think would tell them its not a set price and yet i've been given many rude comments. But for every bad apple there usually is a good one and my contact (friends) list did grow. I never sold to get rich but just to make a sale and to meet people. Since I solo alot that was my social activity. Now with the flooded market places and the rudeness of people going up I've left my merchant ways behind and just enjoy other aspects of GW much more. Thanks for your 2 cents, I wish there were more merchants like you out there.

what they need in this game are more ways for people to pay money back to the game... like the 15k armor, or to some extent, dyes. Eventually, people will get all
runes they need -- what will they spend their money on then? They should soon have
30k armor, or maybe something more imaginative for people to spend their gold.

otherwise money will forever be flowing into the game (via monster drops) but not out.

The whole concept of selling things for very high price and farming gold is pointless - once you have your best armour and weapon any gold you earn after that is meaning less.

Yes, I have a huge friends list now, and a bunch of people to talk to and adventure with just from trading. A few misconceptions:

a) people will eventually have all the runes they need: False. Why? Runes can be lost during an armor upgrade, they need replenishing. Secondly, most of the people I meet buy stuff for there "alternative" character. Third: Unless people stop buying the game there will always be new people looking for new stuff. Forth: you can only have 4 total characters; a lot of folks build up a character and delete them and start a new character (when they've hit there 4 character limit).

b) you only need so much dye: False. Many folks I meet want a different dye every week, they continue to revamp their outfit. It proves no benefit to there armor rating but they do it for aesthetic reasons (so be it). They also need 4 or 5 each time they do it.

c) farming gold is pointless: True. Playing a multi-player online game is pointless. Does that stop us? No! It entertains us, and it makes us forget the realities of life if just for awhile. Farming gold is the same as farming experience...just a different unit of measuring.

My first character has about 28K or so, my second character has 9K, and I have 4K for backup in the bank. I didn't collect all this money by 10-50gp drops. I collected it from good sales, trades, and swaps. Now when I need an armor upgrade, or a new rune because mine was destroyed I don't fear being able to buy one for an "inflated price" because money is not a problem for me.

One other oddity with trading. People always assume money transactions. I'll sell you a run for 150gp plus a steel ingot, or a blue dye and 10 cloth. Traders are there to _trade_ and sometimes converting a tough to sell item (axe haft of enchanting for instance) for a more viable sell (steel, fur, hide, scale) makes a trader happy because they can offload that scale or fur more easy then an axe haft (and you as the buy probably just want that axe haft and care not for filling your inventory with seemly useless materials).

Of course during the beta I made much more money in trades because I didn't have to compete with such things as [dye] and [material] traders

I'll continue to ply my wares and have a good time doing it, making friends (and enemies) along the way.

I think that the GW developers should consider a few districts meant only for trading. You hit district 1 and its like a warez IRC channel You can't keep up with the posts, but it can be a lucrative way to sell stuff. Recommendation: for ease of use, filter out the local and trade channel and post your "WTS" to the trade channel and await whispers. That way you don't lose a sale to rapid scrolling spammers.

Thanks,

CodeMonkey

This isnt true at all. Now you need to get your runes...