The economy takes a hit, I'm not happy

So the latest patch nerfed the buying prices of the merchants so that those of us who despise trading have to either waste time repeating WTS in 40 districts or take a hit on selling rare materials. What happened, Whose brilliant idea was this? Do they think that forcing people to trade to increase their gold stash will make the game more exciting?

That 100,000 for $10 on Ebay is looking mighty good now. I bought this game to play, mot to join a bazzar of idiots ecking that last gold piece out of each bolt of fur I make from charr hides.

Yes, but rare materials are worth so little, both now, before, and to people that need them, that it's almost irrelevant. There are so many other ways to make so much more gold, not to mention so little for someone to spend it on that it's rather pointless.

I made 6 plat in about two hours...guess what I was doing.


holy mother of crap....I WAS PLAYING THE GAME!!!

Congratulations, you have 920 hours left to get your Fissure Armor and 1.897.097.907 hours left until someone cares.

Black dye, furs, ectoplasm, they aren't insignificant and were worth much more than they are now. The profit ratio for the merchants seems to be 100% now, and for the little guys, that just sucks.

It's called a gold sink. All that expensive stuff is not, in any way other than looks, better than the cheap 1.5k armor. If you have the money to buy it, good for you. If you don't, well, it's not affecting you in any way (other than taking away bragging rights). The whole point of the 15k armors is for the rich people to have something to blow money on.

yeah, because everyone *needs* fissure armour to compete...

fissure armour and to an extent 'normal' 15K armour are carrots, designed to keep people playing if they rely on 'stuff' for enjoyment. I don't think you are supposed to get it in one week, one month or even one year of casual playing.

i'd prefer it if fissure armour was removed, at the moment it's being used as the excuse that lots of farming is necessary. Unfortunately it is impossible to implement long term rewards in mmo's because everyone wants stuff now and is prepared to grind for it.

haha, 300k is going for 21.95 on ebay...well, more power to them i guess

someone is selling a blue collectors flame artifact, labeled it godly and rare, and is selling it for 2.50

Come on, be happy!

I bet some pretty *powerful* people are really taking over the materials market, at least there is no other reason why material prices will shoot so ridiculously high (with ultra rare materials always out of stock..)

Just rid on the curtails and trade your wares at prices like never before! Anet screw us traders, we screw the little guys

What goes round comes round!

I have to say actually playing seeing how the patch is actually starting to have the effect of lowering the price of everything except - Ecto, Shards, Black Dye, and Gold/Max dmg, I'm happy. Still ticked Arena.net hasn't said anything official about it but starting to really like it (was opposed at first I do admit).

And for trying to manipulate the traders, how do you know anet hasn't rigged the traders to have special low pricing on items (ignoring the demand) under certain conditions/triggers.

Actually it is not reducing the prices of anything at all, check the prices of cloth, fur, steel, parchment, linen, damask..

These have all exploded, in varying degrees from 150% to something like 300-400% for damask.

I just find it quite ironic how these "improvements" are causing new issues, but then again it is capitalism at work. Since the trader isn't going to play far, people just drain them outright and become the ones dictating the prices now.

Runes have also gone up. For instance, I bought (last week) a minor rune of swordsmanship for my warrior....about 150gp. Today I upgraded that armor piece and went to buy another for it....854gp. That's a huge increase and pretty darned pricey for a MINOR!

why would I want fissure armor? it adds nothing to my current armors stats....

Amen. For me it's kind of like "meh" if it isn't any better AC wise than my Droknar's 1.5k armor.

For you, Algren, it's just another way for those guys to show off, huh? *hugs Algren* I'm just teasing, you know.

I just see the fissure armor for what it truly is...and not as a "present from anet to those who farm"....It's not a present guys, it has no AC upgrade over the 1.5k armor because it was never intended to be put into the game. The 15K armor and the 100K armor are gold sinks...and a SUPER effective way to make YOU tell arenanet where you are farming....You over farm your spots, this triggers a reaction on their server...they nerf where you are farming....and after you've wasted 100's of hours of your time farming spots and looking for new farming spots you go and spend the 1 million gold on your fissure armor...effectively deleting hundreds of plats from the economy....you've accomplished nothing....great you look different.

Meh, trade spam has increased so much. ;_; When I first read the update notes, I thought prices would reflect more accurately.. since it was based off of player demand and supply, I figured, if prices are high, then they are running low, and they'll be buying high to bring supply back.. so prices can drop.. but now I'm seeing items at traders selling for prices I haven't seen for a very long time: 7 platinum for black dye, 800 gold for fur squares.. ecto used to be 13 platinum, and then last time I checked, it didn't even show up on the list. Buying prices were horrible.. fur squares were quoting at 10 gold, and occasionaly, 120 or so.

As for fissure armor, I don't feel it should be removed, but I feel that the way to attain them should change. I wrote a suggestion for this on this thread and it is basically about questing for armor.

Here's a quote from Gaile:

I wanted to let you know a bit about how pricing works in Guild Wars. There isn't a fixed ration of sell price to buy price. Traders will pay up to 80% of the sell price for items that they need. But, as their inventory of an item starts to fill -- and it will because there are more sellers than buyers -- the merchans will begin lowering what they're paying for an item to try to even out the number of buyers and sellers. They're sort of AI-operated capitalists.

So the merchants will lower their buy price to avoid buying things they can't sell, and then they'll slowly lower their sell price until they find an equilibrium. The programming is pretty nifty for that, I think.

My conclussion:

The price the merchants sell items at is going to drop to near zero and the price they buy stuff for is going to be zero. That equilibrium point that Gaile predicts is clearly zero. Items are being produced at a far greater rate than they are being consumed. This is even true for the current favorites, the materials used to make high end armors. Each player who uses 15k armor uses a finite ammount, yet produces an unbounded quantity. As we continue to play after ascention, we're adding stuff to the economy at a far greater rate than it's leaving.

So what's going to happen is that prices will drop and drop and drop. People won't be getting the reward they feel they deserve and will grow more and more disgruntled at the merchant system.

It seems some of you missed the point entirely. Gold drives the economy. For many players not lucky enough to find the best weapons and upgrades from salvage, the only way to get them is to buy them from someone who HAS them. And the only way for many of them to get gold is to SELL materials to the traders. When the prices offered by the traders drops to near ZERO, the grind as we know it makes the game even more difficult for many.

Those who have could care less. Those who want have just had another door slammed in their faces. And like so many of you who refuse to finish the last areas before Ascention with nothing but Warriors and Monks on your teams, the imbalance continues to drive good potential players away.

And you could care less.

This goes on in every game... just because it offends you doesn't mean that they will suddenly stop auctioning off things they got through bugs and exploits. People are greedy by nature. If it bothers you that much don't play MMO style games.

I don't see why it offends anyone. Why not make money off your 500+ hours of play time? Atleast you get something back. If the people who buy don't want to farm for the rest of their lives for a 15k armor set, then by all means let them! O.x