Anet's attempt at fixing the economy

As sited in the last patch notes Anet introduced some gold sinks and nerfed item drops to try and halt inflation a bit. Is it just me or did it totally backfire? After the patches weapons that went for an average of 5 platinum now go for upwards of 50 platinum. I saw someone selling a clean max damage fiery dragon sword for 30 plat, and the price was rising as people bid. Wheresas only a week or two prior I could have bought such a sword for 3 plat. This is the fastest inflation I've ever seen in an MMO, it's downright rediculous.

1) It's not an MMO
2) They are still working on the inflation part
3) The inflation you are talking about is entirely player-created. Why sell something for 5k when some moron is willing to pay 30k?

Well then I guess I'll chock up the inflation to the assholes of the community then.

Yep that about sums it up. Yesterday there was some asshole in Ascalon City trying to rip off people by selling a 14-20 dmg long sword for 1 Plat. I know for a fact he got the sword from a trader outside of Quarrel Falls because thats where I got my sword. I just put some upgrades on mine. Its the damn twerps that use to play D2 trying to pull their scamming BS here.

The main question here is that: is there any quick and easy way for people to bot or farm gold after the patch?

I know that there were alot of people who had over 500 plats due to farming and botting prior to the patch.

Hmm, I dont think that everyone (or very many people even), who tries to sell an item for a vastly inflated price actually sells it, which is why they spam for so long imo.

So the percieved inflation may not be as bad as it seems. Personally I leave off trade channel unless I am using it (I sell all my stuff at 2xvendor price aside from weapons, which I sell at a fair, I think, price, runes I sell for 1/2 vendor price). Most people seem to think my prices are fair, but I haven't sold much more than a few weapons and some runes (rune trader was a good addition, allowing me to price my runes fairly).

There is not that much worth buying that you cant get fairly easily yourself anyway, with a bit of gumption.

Even think about using a bot and get found out and you'll be buying yourself a new game real quick. BOTS ARE STUPID

Yes, but there are many people out there who are stupid as well. Stupid people are drawn to stupid things naturally. Simple science

a-net don't create inflation, players does!

I seem so many people that is selling items, runes, or armors for 10plat or more... and i don't get it, why do you need all those golds? Are you going to wear a armors made of pure golds, or are you going to put some gold in your teeth? It seems that people who selling stuff WAY over the expected price is doing for two reason 1) to get better items or other stuffs 2) or to get enough gold for guild hall?

Ah, yes, Dwarven Ale! That'll curtail the rampant inflation caused by a complete lack of scalable money sinks in the game!

Oh wait.

Prices keep going up because gold is pouring into the economy and barely draining away at all. Until there are realistic gold sinks, you can expect to prices to continue to rise.

Peace,
-CxE

I wish some of that gold would poor into my pockets. I always seem to be broke, now with the inflated prices I cant even get enough gold to buy anything.

man, i keep running out of gold because i always buy new armors for myself. Most of the time, if i ran out of golds, i either sell some of my junks or go outside of town and start killing monsters for it.

Heh, I used to play Diablo II. Or was that Descent 2? I played both. I was a merchant in Diablo II and ran an online store which accepted real money and game currency for the service of finding items. (Selling items directly is a violation of the ToS. Oh, and the store never yielded a real money profit since the only real money I ever received from the store was by selling the domain and content on Ebay! For the most part, the store was really a guilded virtual exchange, so no flames please.) I wouldn't call that a scam, even if I did turn a real profit from the store.

A fair price is one which a buyer is willing to pay; however, a problem occurs when merchants attempt to set market value based on subjective fairness. That is, what's "fair" to one buyer is not "fair" to another. Every buyer evaluates products on the market based on factors such as real value (a.k.a. perceived market value), aesthetic value (e.g., dyes), experiential value (i.e., does this product make the game more fun for me?), cost (or how much will this purchase set me back?), and benefit (i.e., how can I make up for the cost with the product?) This is what makes the perceived market value subjective. Reliance on repositories of so-called market values of items is really what damages an online game's economy. There should be far more in-game negotiation than simple buy-outs.

That's another problem. Gamers aren't usually skilled in the practice of business. Item sellers might be willing to negotiate; unfortunately, they advertise a fixed price without mentioning their willingness to negotiate. Why? Usually greed, and sometimes honest forgetfulness or ignorance. Some sellers are simply fishing for a "good" offer. These "fishermen" typically aren't aware of the perceived market value of the items they're selling. This means they are more likely to negotiate or accept what you offer them.

Bottomline: If you don't know their situation, you should ask them. Or make an offer regardless of their sales ad's deficiency of mentioning willingness to negotiate.

I really wish there was a simple solution to this complex problem, but I'll tell you this... where I would freely give away max damage dragons and gold bows and the like, you can be damn sure I'm either holding them or selling them for ludicrous amounts of money. The alternative is, we all run around with collector's stuff. Just destroy the economy totally, remove gold and item drops. Afterall, it's not an MMORPG right? They want to alleviate the grind, right? That would do it.

Not farming, just playing regular missions - my drops have been extremely crap the last two days. 6 hours or so, regular missions and some countryside strolling, as well as turning my monk into a smite farmer to verify some of the "fishing holes"... crap crap crap. But still collector baubles and gold, in the expected proportion.

So, you want a max dmg +14 >50% fellblade? 100k. it's not negotiable. They've made them rarer, then the cost is going up. And I'm sorry you have to compete with someone running a bot who's generating cash while he sleeps. I truly am. Tell you what, I'll throw in all the unidentified minor and major runes I have since they're devalued beyond the inventory slot they occupy...

That long sword & carapace shield from the collectors is looking better and better, huh?

I guess we scrap the economy completely.

I think we found one of the "assholes".

Tell us again... what are you going to do with that "ludicrous amount of money" you're charging for a rare (whoopie) pointy object? I forget.

Um? Why do you think i will sell something to you at all if its not worth it for me? The vendor gives me 10 gold, you give me 1000. But to find you, it takes me 20mins of spamming / going to trading websites. You know how much people can farm in 20mins? Right. Why should i bother? Players cant create inflation. NEVER.

Well I know a-net said they were going to fix the economy but I hope they get to it soon. Half the fun to me was finding and unlocking different items. Now that they nerfed farmers there is no way to get items solo. The items in missions have been crap, at least for me. I don't think I have seen a gold item since the patch and if I have, it's been utter crap.

To all those saying the player base made the economy what it is, I call bs. Anet set the item drop rate and removed the abilty to farm therby decreasing items and raising prices. Instead of 100 people selling weapons you now have 10 so sure the prices will go up. The worst part is you can't solo farm the drops to even get the dumb items from the vender. Some other poor sap has to help you. This game is worse off overall since the last patch. Sure skill capture wasn't a terrible change and neither was the infuse run, but overall they killed the economy and any hope for new players to have decent items.

In short, don't blame me for selling crap at 20x what it was going for. Yes it does sell that way now. I didn't change the way items drop or lower the amount of items for sell. If you want that max damage gold fellblade you are going to come up with 100k or do without because thats what I can sell it to all the people who bought it at release. Simple fact is the rich get richer and the poor, unless very lucky, will stay dirt poor and work a hell of a lot harder to get items then I did a month into the game. Don't like it? Me either so write in and let them know what they have done. I liked the game a hell of a lot better when I could farm, find neat new things, sell it cheap in 5 minutes, and move on with what I wanted to do.

Yeah, I'm hoping to see some positive changes with the next update.

It just didn't make sense - to see items drop less and less, how that would fix the economy. It only made rares even more rare (and even common items, not so common), generally increasing the price because the supply is so low.

And also, hard for people to afford, because how are we supposed to come up with the money to buy these rare items if we can't find enough items to sell for gold?

The worst thing is, the devs solution seems to be to make the collectors itemsthe best in the game. Leaving nothing left to search for.

Rare weapons are going up in value now because the Flesh Golem staffed rare weapon factory has been shut down. I would commonly pull 5 max damage purple/gold weapons with a "great" bonus each day, maybe more on a good day ("great" bonus being 11-15% while health > 50%, 15% damage while enchanted). This was in an hour or two, you'd be hard pressed to do that in 10 hours now.

ANet have stated that fixing the economy is being done over multiple updates. Until all those updates have been implemented and people have had time to test them then it's too early to really make comment. At the moment we're only at the beginning of the process, not the end, so any complaints at this time are premature. Patience

I hate being contrary but there's nothing wrong with the economy.

I'm not even sure we're playing the same game listening to these complaints. Everyone I know has comparable weapons and items. There's just not that much of a range.

If you can't afford the 100k then go out and win it in combat the way it's intended. If you can't win it in combat then just maybe you don't deserve it. Having or not having is not the difference between being competitive and not, this game is way too balanced for that.

There was a definite problem with sigils. People needed sigils to play GVG and the bottleneck for getting sigils was tight.

ANet fixed that pretty much. There's no bottleneck for the best weapons or items, even runes because their lack doesn't stop you from being competitive in GvG, PvP or PvE.

If you have a superior rune of Vigor vs a major Rune it's just not that important and the same goes for every rune. Runes are more of an influence than the different weapons so it's even less of a burden on the economy than you're portraying it to be.

then what do you call a Massive amout of Multiple players coming Online to play a game?

These guys probably don't know what they're talking about though...

http://www.guildwars.com/faq/default.html#details

"Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game)."

I'd rather call my monte carlo a ferrari....doesn't mean it is one

Thank you. Simple economics 101.

GW needs MONEY SINKS.

Creston

CHARGE MONEY TO FIGHT IN PvP!

If you built your own car from the ground up you could call it whatever you like. I think Ferrari is already taken, though.

that doesn't make much sense...the game they built falls into a classification of games that already exists....they can WANT to call it a CORPG but it's definately still an MMORPG. I also doubt very very highly that they built this game from the ground up....I'd put large amounts of money on the fact that the engine is recycled....seeing as 90% of the games built today are built on recycled engines.

It is not definitely a MMORPG. It has some of the qualities of an MMO, yes. But normal MMORPG's allow for random encounters, ganking, camping, etc., while Guild Wars has instanced areas. You can only do a mission with 8 people, and the PvP is like an FPS (throw two teams in the arena to eradicate eachother). The only time you are truly with a bunch of people is in the towns; but all those are really are chat channels

Some very basic economic factors are at work here right now. Throw all those factors together and you get outrageous price inflation: more people want rarer items that they will buy with gold that has been devalued.

It may seem that we're paying prices that are too high now, but the inflation will level off as the influx of new players slows. This is a new game, people are coming in droves and all of them want the same items. Eventually prices will stabilize, especially when worthwhile goldsinks are implimented and as new items are introduced. For now, the smart people will continue to charge what people will pay and we can all just wait for the dust to settle.

Ummm, how large are these amounts you're talking about?

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/guild...w_6095131.html

ArenaNet built its own proprietary graphics engine for the game, written by cofounder and programmer Mike O'Brien...

Arena net is not blameless in inflation, as their coding helps determine the drop rates and thus the supply side of the equation.

1. Other MMO's have instanced environments (which can be extensive) for one party or two and a Notorious or Named Monster, are they now CORPG's? GW is different in many ways; where others focus on the non-instanced gameplay, GW does not, therefore its the a different breed of the same animal.

2. As per the "Economy" we will see Anet continue to tweak, nerf, and so on for the length of the life of the game. It is a living organism and will have a continuous need for revamping.

3. Anet will never be able 'fix' the biggest problem of all online games. They can't prevent dipshits and assholes from buying it. The ignore list is the closest thing we get to being able to filter our experience. Whether its scammers and their ruining the economy, or blind (perhaps mentally disabled) players who take quests in the underworlds killing dozens of others. Hope your guild is a good one! Oh wait was that a guild member who just got us all killed....

I agree with gold sinks. I also think charging to enter PvP would be a good idea. Maybe x amount of for access until you lose a battle? Or, x amount per win if you really wanted to suck gold. Personally, I'm happy with the economy. It's nice to see that the game's default monetary unit still has value.

As for this game being an MMORPG, I guess you could say it is, but it also isn't. Like some people have said, you don't really see a large amount of people unless you're in the instanced town. Even then, you don't see all of them. Thanks to districts. The term massive could also describe the game world's size. I've played a single player game that has more coverable land than GW. Also, the zoning, in my opinion, sort of reduces the "massiveness" of it. You can't run from one end of the world to the other without going through a zoning process. It's not a 'massive', wide open world. In the end, I'd have to say this is an MMO in the same way that Diablo II is an MMO, except just a bit more 'massive'.

I think there needs to be higher level money sinks, but not money sinks all around.

Here's one problem I have with the economy. My secondary a Me/Mo just got to Yaks. I see a new armor there I like and it needs linens. I go to the material traders and linen goes for 360 per or 3200 for 10. So where is my PC going to come up with the 4500 needed just for linen? Am I going to have to buy them with my main and give them to my secondary?

People need to grind for PvP stuff, or be at a disadvantage. People don't like playing at a disadvantage. Grinding mainly gets useless stuff that sells for gold, and it takes a long time to be randomly assigned what you need. Therefore, lots of people have huge amounts of gold whether they care about it or not. Therefore, they will be willing to pay lots. Forcing PvPers to waste time grinding for runes is screwing over the economy.

Money to PVP?

Rofl. Make people farm PVE even more, I'm sure that will go over well!

BTW, people have been talking about the problems with the economy for over a year, and NOTHING has been done about it.

Know why?

Because GW isn't an item-based game. Once you have your max damage weapon and all the stuff unlocked, that's it. There's no more upgrades, crafting, no item repair/deterioration, like in regular RPG's. I mean seriously, how many times do you need to dye your armor anyway?

"MMO" simply refers to the technology behind an online game. If an online game is massively multiplayer (i.e., a massive number of players connect to a server with a client and are provided the ability to interact with an environment), the game is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Gameplay features (e.g., world persistence) is irrelevant to the technological definition of "MMOG".

Guild Wars is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game; however, Guild Wars is not a persistent MMOG. I slightly dispute categorizing Guild Wars as a Role-Playing Game because the player is provided little choice regarding their character's direction. For instance, the player is unable to play the role of a "dark side" character working with the Charr to eliminate the people of Ascalon. The player is also unable to explore beyond mission parameters due to the lack of world persistence. Guild Wars is, strangely enough, a non-persistent linear MMOG.

Personally, I think Guild Wars would be more fun with a persistent world, but then there would be monthly fees as world persistence increases bandwidth, server-side memory and CPU usage. Oh, I would also remove the shabby skill point system in exchange for a skill experience system where skill effectiveness is improved by use a la Ultima Online.

i do my part in keeping the economy under control...

i sell everything back to the game.