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.