You people are the worst economists I've ever seen...

The only ones defending skyrocketing prices are the ones who profit from them, of course. Then, in their defense, they hide behind their favorite buzz term (which they hardly understand). I'm sure you've heard it... Supply and Demand, anyone? This game uses that basic principle very loosely. There are two asynchronous markets. The NPC market and the Player to Player market. The problem is, players govern the NPC market by withholding items, which in turn governs the prices of the Player to Player market. Which isn't true supply and demand. It's exploitation that turns into inflation and price gouging. Once you drive prices up, you sell only to players so the NPC price never goes down and people just assume the demand is still high.

How can this be fixed? Simple. ANet needs to make the NPCs buy at higher prices (short term fix). 50-75% of the price it sells for would be a huge incentive to sell to NPCs and not spam trade chat. For long term, we need an Auction House (which ANet better be working on). The FFXI Auction House would tear this inflation to threads. Just because, if you wanted to ever sell anything in a timely manner, you'd have to sell at lower and lower prices. Because lower listings sell first. As long as supply is high, prices naturally go down. It's an awesome system and it takes the power away from the wealthy. If it was your only option to sell anything, it would be the truest display of supply and demand this game has ever seen.

Capitalism doesn't belong in GW. It wasn't designed for that. And when we're all on equal footing, I'm gonna love to watch you wealthy cry.

Who's crying?

I don't think the trader buying at less than about 75% will make people sell to him consistently.

I'd sell off any and all runes, materials, and dyes to the traders if I could get 50% the selling price.

me too much easier much faster much better for everyone

I agree, I hate selling.

I'd much rather see an auction house though. It's a shame they didn't think about that before release.

Perhaps, you should read my statement again? It was obviously said in future tense...

I sure as hell would, but I'm sure there would be a few hold outs. Good for them. I hope they enjoy trade spamming. It's definately something I look forward to...

The one factor you are leaving out is dependancy. Yes there is a supply and demand factor, but there is only a limited market of items that sell.

If you use FFXI as an example where good seller like Meat Mithkabobs had several ingredient thatother player could buy and sell. I didn't cook, but I made good money farming the meat from Taber Beaks(I can't name the type of meat for some reason the filter doesn't like it), and maybe someone else made good money growing Khazam Peppers both I think are ingredients in Mithkabobs. (it's been a while). Lower level player can farm silver pieces and crystals, which are in turn bought by higher level crafters, ect. Before things got out of hand FFXI had a pretty good AH system I though, and yes you could have fun playing the market.

In Wow For example you might not get any Epic drops right away but you can mine metals which crafters at a higher level depend on....and make a very good living.

EQ2 used to have dependancy but not so much anymore which ruined it, IMO...and the fact you got to sit in your room to post things on thier broker listings.

Basically, what I quoted from you up there makes absolutely no sense to me, and no, not because I am stupid. I have logged MANY hours on the game, through various characters, and not once has any of the economical pitfalls,inflations,or any other such woe is me bullshit happened to me, my guild, or anyone on my friends list. It simply exists in the head of like 456 people or something. And you will not shut up about it.

It all comes down to personal choices. Do you spend that 90k you have saved to get that item that 'captain walmart' seems to have 9 of? Do you pay that egotistical worm in Beacons to run you to the forge? Yes? No?

People love to blame the economy in real life rather than take a long hard look at their own choices in spending, saving, and whatnot. The same is true here. Yes, there have been many things Anet has had to step in and mediate over, fix, and sometimes outright REMOVE, but this whole economy issue, and the 90 identical threads that feed the mass hysteria, are based on personal deception and outright ignorance of the choices we as gamers make in a game world.

Stop blaming the system, and start contributing to your own in-game success. Because, sorry to say, people like me are saving their gold, and we have no reason to bitch, other than hearing YET AGAIN gets sooooo tedious

When I can make 10K a day selling to merchants, I'm not about to complain about the economy and that's what I can make a day easily. I'm really getting tired of the whinners complaining about Joe Blow who makes more than them because he "knows where to farm" and they don't. That's pretty tough, we took the time to find out, to analyze to calculate and compare to find the best spots for our income. Hell others make more than me per hour and I don't complain. 10K a day is good income and I see no reason to change the npc market just to apease the handful, very few, the vocal minority cause they can't have what Joe Blow got in one day.

This is another sad example of "everyone wants to be a JEDI" from SWG's and the DEVS gave into them and ruined the game. Everyone doesn't need to have 15k armor at the same time, everyone doesn't need the best weapon of their class at the same time, everyone must "work & earn" what they get over a given time frame for the amount of time they can play. That's the way the game works and should work and I would hope continues to work. If you want the best stuff then you have to "work for it" and "pay the price", just like the ones of us who already have did. Get a clue, this game and all other mmorpgs/mmo's weren't meant to be 10 year old Tommys silver platter wahh wahhh temper tantrum I want it NOW wahh wahh.

(light-hearted sarcasm) - But now you are being a flamer because you disagree with the hive! LOL

Never underestimate the power of stupid, self deluded people, in large groups.

All too often I see requests for an auction house. Please explain what you want here, because the auction house from final fantasy is impossible given the instanced nature of guildwars. Explain in depth to the designers how they could do something that would work for you. Crying "Auction house! Auction house!" isn't going to help. Realize that there are thousands of people playing this game at any given time, but only 50 or so can be in the same instance. You can't have your items appear in more than one instance or else they would be easily duplicated. You might as well ask for an auction house in Diablo II. It's just not possible here due to the very nature of the game.

It would be nice, but until someone tells them how to do it, it's not going to happen.

The problem with the GW economy is that there is a huge imbalance between the income rates between different play styles. People who run the hall of heros are gaining huge ammounts of gold through their collections of sigils. So they can afford pretty much what ever price the game comes up with for items. Items they want become 100 plat items. Items they don't want drop to zero. It's basic fixed point theory. The prices will settle down to a fixed point... in this case 0 or infinity (the machine version... not the calculus one). The myth that there will be some reasonable equilibrium reached is preposterous, and mathematically unsound. If the desired goal of the game is to have some stable equilibrium point... set the prices at that point and let us play. We didn't buy this game to play armchair economists.

If that is the gods-touched truth, why are all these whining nincompoops NOT RUNNING HOH??????

Gee wally, I guess all these hours of playtime spent farming orr emblems instead of exploring and attaining new abilities so that HOH can actually BE useful to 85% of the population of the game is all for nothing!

No, they want a handout and are pissed off because in their minds, someone has one and they do not. Run the HOH. Otherwise, that part of your post has no sensible solution.

Mr. Economist, the Variable knows all.

There's nothing wrong with the economy. Things are selling people are buying.

If you're even thinking of quitting because of the economy you're not very bright because the economy almost has nothing to do with GW.

Items that matter are easy to come by and anyone that can ascend while doing the skill quests should be able to buy the best stat armor in the game and easily obtain the best stat weapon in the game. They've stripped the important items in this game completely away from the economy.

That leaves luxury items and nobody has to buy them at all so you're just whining about your black dye and ectoplasm for fissure armor. You can get those items by hunting you know. When enough people say enough is enough the price will drop.

That's what the market will bear.

Variable is dead on here, the inflation is heavily due to the way the NPC traders are set-up. They are broken. I can sell a rune to them for less than half of what they sell it to other players. I have no reason to sell my rune to the NPC trader. Thus they never get items sold to them and the prices skyrocket. However since even with 100k price tag on a rune you get crap when you sell that rune to the trader no one ever does. If you got a decent take (75% is perfect) people would return to selling stuff to traders. However those who wanted to sell it themselves could still make a profit.

The second factor is nothing grounds prices in the player trading. Prices are largely governed by idiocy. Put godly in front of an item and idiots think it is worth 200k+, then other people see that and start trying to sell their items for fantasy prices. A good example of this is a guy who tried to sell me unidentified gold armors for 7k each. I flat out told him he was a moron and they were barely worth 500 each (I could buy an UID superior rune for 5k-15k.) Pretty soon you have all the newbies running around asking for insane prices for items that aren't worth it. Some form of a market place would help put things in perspective.

the merchant buys at fine prices, you just have to WAIT. the common price of iron ingots person to person is 10 a pop, but i sell 10 for 115 at the right time. u people have no patients

Changes in the economy in that game had more to do with who controlled what areas, as it dictated which npcs were available to sell in different areas. Crystals were the easy part, the real materials were the things that were in flux.

FFXI had a working economny as there was a flow of gil into the game and a flow of gil out of the game in addition to between player entities. GW does not have a flow of cash out of the game for post ascention characters. These characters will only continue to amass wealth with no real reason to spend at a npc vender in quanitty to offset their gain. This helps cause inflation to a degree. Then there is also the popular trends that cause swings in it, like rune prices. When people comment on trader buys, it is more commonly in reference towards things like runes, due to the out of whack buy system the npcs have, but can be related to any other item that is purchased from a vender.

Let me guess. P/O'd monk #(is it 6 or 7?) crying about his superior runes. The economy is fine, you need to piss on the farmer builds that are causing the instability.

You can't buy skill points - wealth is pointless in this game. Except maybe for people who are into fissure armor and hoarding a lot of black dyes - nothing wrong with that of course. Just you can't buy functional things like skills so wealth is pointless to PvP centric players like myself.

Long post ahead...a bit technical, too, but that's what economists are known for, right?

I assert that the trade "problems" within the game are mostly, if not entirely, demand-side issues. The primary reason behind this thinking is that the supply curve for high-end items, or any items for that matter, is perfectly inelastic for all practical purposes of analysis. To think otherwise necessitates the assumption that players are able to control the items which they "produce" through gameplay, farming, etc. This capability of predicting item drops does indeed exist on a very limited scale (e.g. running FoW for chaos axes), but in terms of the entire economy, its influence is negligible. The matter at hand is, after all, a rather simple one: the only alternative to having these items is not having them. The supply of items is proportional to the number of players that are online actively playing the game in search of them, and the single limiting factor is the number of real hours one can spend in-game.

It seems that some players are quick to assign blame for the imbalance of wealth upon the NPC traders. My suggestion: try to envision these characters as a GW eBay--a way to sift through information efficiently, spending fewer resources than if you blindly spam in town in hopes that someone else has the item you need. Believe it or not, the middle man does have a purpose, both in fictitious and real markets. Having said that, I will now commence my small rant regarding these stewards of capitalism. The most flagrant error in the way the traders operate is that they fail to recognize the existence of competition. As everyone knows, the player-to-player market arose because other individuals were willing to pay more for items than were the traders. I wholly believe, however, that the current arbitrage-riddled system could be ameliorated if trader prices were allowed to adjust gradually over time to reflect the stagnancy in player-trader transactions.

Example: Suppose that black dye is selling for 8000gp at the trader and 7000gp from other players. Additionally, assume that the trader's offering price for the dye is only 2500gp. Presumably, anyone seeking to buy or sell black dye is going to avoid the trader. Thus, with no increase or decrease in quantity of inventory, the trader's buy/sell prices will not change. However, if the prices were adjusted with respect to time, not just quantity, players would encounter a renewed usefulness in traders. My personal suggestion is that traders' buy/sell prices begin to converge at a rate of 5% per hour of inactivity, eventually reaching an equilibrium and eliminating the need for player-to-player trade. One must note, however, that the traders' buy/sell prices will never be equal to each other, but will stabilize at a difference small enough such that it's not worth the time to seek out other offers. This is how true-life markets function, and I really do not see why GW has to be any different.

I welcome commentary and criticism, opposing viewpoints, or any other reflections upon the matters discussed here. Hopefully, intelligent discourse can change the attitudes of at least a few members of this forum.

it really is those farmer builds causing all this. you need 5 sup runes to make one build, and these farmers are generally monks, so thats why the monk sup runes are so inflated. this sudden inflation only proves to show that this economy does indeed work on supply and demand. everyone that wants make a farm build wants sup monk runes...and now, their prices have skyrocketed. and thats all there is to it.

Ohh right why didnt I think of that...farm iron ingots ^_^

It is SO not normal when a trader sells a superior death rune for around 2.5 plat and he asks..89 gold for it. You'd think finding the 2nd most wanted superior for necro would yield even a small profit...

traded a monk rune of minor protection this afternoon, trader was buying at 1058gp and selling at 1373gp. the gap is closing.

That is a part of supply and demand. It is like the high price of gas. The Middle East is withholding the oil or selling it at a very high price. Unfortunately, they have the most abundant oil supply, so we all have to pay 2.5 times as much now as 7 years ago. The demand is high, but the supply is either low or expensive. Same as this game. If everyone held onto their ectoplasms and shards, the price would go even higher.

how messed up is the economy? Well...currently a bundle of 10 steel ingots is worth 12k, to sell (in 10 bundle) them to the merchant would give you back 600gp AND the final blow! you can buy them individually for 330gp.

Now, you can buy the bundle of 10 from the trader for 12k OR but 10 individually for 3.3K

I do.

Found a nice, mostly unknown farming spot, had luck with drops, got rich. I'm into PvP mostly, but I enjoy some farming from time to time. Skyrocketing prices? Everyone could profit from them, sir. I remember people selling their monk runes some days ago, convinced that the price was to drop. I thought "nah, with all the reports I've sent them (along with my guildies) they'll ban a bunch of bots". They did, supply collapsed, while demand was the same.
I'm not saying it was because of me or because of my guildies, of course, but they did ban a lot of botters recently.

Result: monk runes (and some other as well) now sell for 6 times they were selling 3-4 days ago.

warrior runes as well.

Economics in real life isnt like some law of nature or anything - it's a system of agreements and laws and conventions that allow things to happen in certain ways.

An economic system in a game is merely a loose abstraction of the sorts of things we expect to see in a real economy, and/or the sorts of things the developers want to see happen in game.

If they want everyone to be able to get everything at anytime, and everyone to sell stuff for high prices, then it can happen by how they structure the game.

It seems like, whether intentional or not, currently it's behaving under conditions of scarcity. Runes are expensive, people who forsaw it, got in early, have the right connections, or know the right farming spots, are rich and laughing, and getting richer, everyone else is poor and pissed. Heheh, sounds pretty realistic to me :P

I wonder what the devs' intentions are - do they want runes to be scarce and expensive? Or readily available to all? Prior to recent events, runes were cheap as dirt, but recently they've all risen dramatically in price. Seems like they've made the traders more inclined to raise their prices when people buy from them or something.

Maybe GW should drop its capitalist economy altogether and move to a extreme socialist model :P Free runes for all in need :P

Agreed. As I see it, GW would be like FFXI if all that people really cared about was buying and selling Emperor Hairpins and Balance Rings. It would be nice if GW put more importance on salvagable craft items.

I guess my point of this whole thing is that I think people are just so caught up on the big things and lower level player want to rush to make the perfect farm build that they miss the inbetween time when you can make plenty of money salvaging things.

When I was playing at those levels I had literally more money than I knew what to do with, but then again I didn't have to worry about paying someone to rush me, get the highest level armor right off the bat and get all the runes.
Seem like I've gotten all those thing without having to really worry about em.
Still I have all this money...for what?

So maybe if people looked at the overall rather than the how much money they can make for themselves the economy wouldn't look as bleak.

I wish people would stop bitching about money. I have 200 plat in my account from playing NORMALLY. Even when I first started playing, I made 20 plat by the time I got to Droknar's and that was more than enough to get max defense armor. If you want decent max damage weapons, go to a collector. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

As stated earlier in this thread, the problem is high level characters and experienced "farmer" who inadvertently keep prices high because they simply have the gold to pay the asking price and not quibble over the difference. And more power to them. Capitalism in it's purest form. Better that than Communism I say.

A question I would like the developers to answer though:

Does the game have in place variables that allow for seperate regions to naturally have varying economies. Take for example the US's economy. Identical apartments in New York City and San Antonio Texas are priced at a $1000 difference for the simple reason that the two cities have vastly different economies. Therefore, it stands to reason that a region like Ascalon, which is experiencing a depression would HAVE a depressed economy. Whereas, the city of Lions Gate is prospering.

It's also important to remember that in a supply and demand type economy, there are also variables that will drive the prices of specific items and types of items in directions not necessarily in line with the economy as a whole. Locals to a specific economy will place a higher value on items they deem necessary.

Unfortunately GW doesn't run the same way as a normal real world economy does, it doesn't even come close. It lacks all the complexities. What is more important how it functions in the game. Staying fair and balanced for ALL players not just a few to take advantage of.

The best yardstick in my view is to compare it to games that have a good economy that is almost purely player driven. Unfortunately until you give the player more of a variety of things that are worthwhile to trade, you never going to fix the problem. Either that or just give everyone the items they want...boring but problem solved.

The reason the merchants buy for such a small percentage of the sell cost is because the game doesn't have any other money sinks. If they increased that amount to 50% like you suggest without adding money sinks, the inflation would only get worse.

However, I do think that they should fix that situation, especially because player-player trade is so terrible. It just feels like your items are worthless. Personally, I'm sitting on a pile of nifty items that I'm sure someone would want, but I cant sell them because I won't spam for 30 minutes just to get someone to look. Yeah the forums work ok, but I'd rather not deal with that, and its not like I need the money anyway. Sigh.

Some money sinks I wouldn't mind seeing:

1) Attribute refunds costing cash instead of experience to replace.

2) A crafter that costs extremely large amounts of money but will increase any modifier by one point. For example, to raise a sword from 12% >50 to 13% >50, it could cost you 10k. Some sort of scaling might be prudent, like 5k for each additional point you raise. This would both make trading less necessary (some people don't like it, you know) while also removing the gold from the economy instead of just moving it around.

3) Assorted PvE fanboy desires, costing gold.

I could honestly care less about prices on anything. I used to play tombs when it was fun and because of it I can't remember having less than 100plat at any given time. I don't care about your fellblades or crytal swords or whatever you kids get your kicks from. That was the only good thing they did with pvp since release, make sure the people that work hard get useless money to show for it. Oh and I'm still short of rank 6. Maybe I'd play tombs if it wasn't the three S builds.

I'm pretty sure the current situation is started by The Hidden Coin to fsck the idea into the devs' numb skulls

No offense, I'm also a software developer, but I have to say that ANet devs make really STUPID mistakes sometimes, from this trader hoohah to that patch that made everyone naked in presear...

Do you guys even THINK and DESIGN before writing out code? Makes me wonder.

EDIT: I seriously do not think the traders are meant to be money sinks. Perhaps it will work in some idealised dream world where the police dance with criminals and men can safely hold hands with other men. In this real world.. it just doesn't work.

I'd do it too.

I think it's funny to read how people are getting worked up over the economy in a video game. People need to realize that any drop in this game can be won by any person, given that they are in the right place when it drops. Ecto, +30hp Upgrades, black dye, Superior Vigor runes, max dmg GODLY weapons.. all of it can be picked up off the ground by Joe Blow on any given day. I will admit though, the "vast conspiracy of people" driving up prices to make fake video game money are some smart people. They have impatient people paying 100k for items that with some time and luck, they can get on their own.

I realize that all I need for my character, I already have: A full set of Forge armor, a max dmg axe w/ +25 hp hilt, a max armor shield w/ +35hp when enchanted, a major vigor and absorption rune (both that I unlocked myself), and minor Tactics and Axe runes. All I want Gold for is to get a Guild Hall for my small guild. I realize that my contentness with items in this game may be different that someone elses, but that doesn't make me think that people are any less foolish for freaking out over a video game. If this was EQ where uber_item_01 could only be gotten 1 day a week, from a raid level mob that only drops 2 items out of a 12 item drop table, then sure.. that would be worth alot of money.

SOT, your avatar makes me giggle.

...okay, back on topic, I'll reiterate my previous statement in support of "supply and demand", that being prot bond monk farmers massively buying superior runes to lower their max hp.

However, that doesn't explain the sudden shortage, and price drop of black dyes. That doesn't go in flow with the theory of S&D. If black dyes were suddenly in shortage, and high demand, shouldn't their price soar, rather than plummet down to 1 plat?

My theory? A group of really rich, bored players decided to screw around with the economy and suddenly buy a lot of black dyes, and superior monk runes, or heck I don't bleedin' know anymore.

-edit-

Oh, and stop worrying about the GW economy and pvp more. That's my 2 cents.

Actually, lol, to the person who says the GW doesn't behave like a normal economic system. I think you're wrong.

The GW system behaves too MUCH like the real system, and that is where the problem lies :O

But that is just how I feel. I am an expert farmer thanks to D2.. and even if I don't know the farming FOTM location I always seem to find one myself.

It isn't that difficult to farm to be honest. Even newbies should be able to if they read the forums. If you don't have the time, well it really doesn't take much time to be honest.

I understand your qualms. As a poor person in reality I know how it sucks.. :P but it is just a game.. and perhaps being "rich" isn't that important.

Yes, it's a video game... but it's not funny. The time we invest into playing a game like this comes at the expense of real life time, which is precious and valuable. Devaluing one's time spent ingame by saying "it's just a game" is to devalue one's personal recreation time. The ingame economy is requiring normal players to invest more and more of their recreation time into grinding, farming and trading just to get basic items for their characters in PvE, not to mention the cooler items... this process ideally is to be fun and enjoyable, as it is a game; but right now it feels more like work and a struggle.

The ingame economy shouldn't reflect reality anymore than traveling around the world map should reflect reality. Could you imagine if it took literally a month to run from Lion's Arch to Temple of Ages? Well when it costs +15 plat to craft a set of blue, pre-Lion's Arch monk tattoos with a couple of minor runes, it's the same kind of thing. In early post-Ascalon it would take a considerable amount of time to make 15 plat or more through normal questing and exploring.

Maybe later in the game it doesn't, but early on it takes a lOt of time. I mean we aren't talking about farming up 2k to 5k here anymore... we're talking about 15k or more just to craft a set of post-Ascalon armor with crappy dyes and minor runes. Yellow dye was over 1k the other night... I mean c'mon, yellow dye? Meanwhile the trader offers 1g when selling it. That's not right, no matter how one looks at it.

One positive side effect of it all is that maybe we'll start to see more purple mesmers in PvE...

It does seem like a lot of rich players decided to go buy up as many runes, dyes, and materials as they can. This means that the sell price at the NPC trader (which everyone sets their player-to-player trade prices off of) keeps going up endlessly. On top of that, sometimes the NPC traders give a decent buy price (50%) and other times it's crap, like 30 gold for a 3k rune. That makes even fewer people sell to the trader, but people still buy there, making the prices even worse. The price of everything is on crack. It seems like in response to all that, more people are panicking and buying up everything in sight because they're worried that the furs or scales or iron ingots or green dye or whatever they were planning on buying later will be some ridiculous price they cannot afford when the time comes that they actually need it. I seriously wonder if the traders will be out of stock on most of their items soon. You shouldn't have to go farm every spot 3 times between lion's arch and amnoon oasis to get enough gold or materials to make the armor that they sell in the oasis. Between the rising cost of materials and the lowered value of items and gold you get for each successive entry into a map (thanks to the anti-bot code) that's probably going to become the norm soon.

I was hoping that they can change the trader prices to reflect the number of items that exist in the game. I mean, they obviously have to know what we all have in storage and inventory anyway, otherwise our stuff would disappear all the time. But anyways, if the price was based on how much of an item is in existence throughout everyone's inventory, if people hoard stuff, it would only drive the prices lower. For example, if there are 11000 black dyes in the game, even if the trader only has 1 black dye in stock it would be 550 gold to buy a black dye at the trader. Why should it cost a lot if there are that many black dyes sitting around in storage that could be sold? It's not exactly a rare item at that point, and should not be expensive to buy anywhere. If people were actually using their dye instead of hoarding it, let's say that changes it to there being 4000 black dyes in the game. That means since people are using up the item, it is less widely available, which means it is harder to find at that moment, and should be more expensive, so now it's 2500 gold for one black dye at the trader. This should keep people from abusing the trader to inflate the price at which they can sell to other players. And if you make the trader's buy-back prices set at 50% like the merchant, it wouldn't be too terrible to sell your items in a hurry either. I'd still like to see more user-friendly buy-back price rates along the lines of 75% until they get the auction system worked out. Just a thought...