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

Prices right now are unbelievable. I cant see how anyone can agree with such huge prices. Black dye is not worth 10k, and rune prices are just beyond retarded. Ive played 5 charcters to level 20 and I have found to date 1 superior rune, and I cant buy them either,thanks to insane prices. It sure would be nice to actually be able to afford runes,,they already have a hefty -75 health penalty. They advertised this game as rewarding skill not time played......in order to buy runes for 40k a piece, time played is all thats important.

Having played EQ2, I have to say they have nailed it.
You have a room, you buy a bill board and you place into your house vault what you want to sell, you can also browse the market from this bill board and adjust your prices accordingly, there are that many people buying and selling, it keeps the prices down to a reasonable level.
Now if GW did the same thing, but istead of you room, they just used you storage vault and had the storage npc's offer the same, but you would also buy direct from them it would be problem solved. No more chat channel spamming.
They could even turn it into a money sink like they have in EQ2, the broker charges 20% on all perchases. If you done want to pay the 20% then you have to meet the player and barter direct. Another beauty of this system is you can set up your shop log off, and return the following day, logg on and speak to the npc and recieve gold for what ever has been sold from your vault.
The could even expand this so that guilds have a larger vault / player store that can be linked into the rest.
Having a instanced Auction house would simple not work and have far too many issues.
Now I hope A.net take this system into consideration as it would be a awesome addition to the game.

The next thing I would like to see is weapons that are non warrior based, i.e. a necro sword that has blood req 12, and would basically be the equivelent of a warrior sword with 12 swordmaster req in damage output. This in conjunction with the various staffs that have class related requirements would increase the amount of items available to trade through the above system. They could even change the damage types, i'e a necro sword does cold dam, or dark dam. It would open up even more stratigic build possibilites.

Wow, someone with at least a basic understanding of Economics. Kuddos to you. Too bad it's impossible to have any productive discussion about much of anything in these forums without the "stop bitching and play the game!" crew showing up.

Inflation doesn't happen to people, though, inflation happens to economies. The only way to not be affected by the inflation in this game is to only buy that which has fixed prices... So, yeah, I guess if all the gold you've ever spent in GW was to purchase salvage kits and ID kits, you haven't been affected by inflation.

If you've bought something as basic as a dye in at least two given situations, you've been affected by a variation in price. What the OP is saying is that the tendency in GW's economy has been an increase in the difference between the "trader's market" price and the "player-to-player market" price, due to a very simple problem of lack of incentives.

People don't sell something to the trader because he's not paying them anything like what they can get by selling to another player. That reduction in the number of sales to traders makes the traders's selling price go up. Which makes people buy less and less from the traders, and more and more from other players. Which makes players sell less and less to the traders, because now almost everyone has decided to buy that item from players for a higher price than what the trader pays for it.

The problem is very simple... the traders have too big a profit margin. That basically renders them useless and forces everyone to switch to player-to-player trade if they want to sell an item for more than 5% of what they'd have to pay the trader if they were buying it instead of selling.

(People would sell to traders if they got a bigger cut because it's easier to sell to traders than to stand in Droknar's shouting "WTS STEEL" for an hour.
But when people realize that they'd have to sell the trader 20 materials they don't need so they could afford buying from the trader *one* material they need, they decide that shouting "WTS STEEL" for an hour might be worth it.)

It doesn't matter that you're saving your gold and choosing not to pay other players for anything - you're completely missing the point. There hasn't ever been anything wrong with the player-to-player market... a player-to-player market with easy access to information (ie: personal shops) would be a truly efficient supply and demand system (I could clarify this later, but it's beyond the point of this thread).

The problem is not the trader market in itself either - the problem is the co-existance of the trader market with the player-to-player market... here's how it goes:

1- Trader with high profit margins: you see that the trader buys an item for 1k and sells for 20k. So you have a huge incentive to sell that item to another player, because you can sell for 19k. Therefore, everyone will do that, and the price will go up and up and up, and then the trader will go out of stock.

2- Trader with low profit margins: you see that the trader buys an item for 1k and sells for 3k. So you have a small incentive to sell that item to another player, because you can only sell for 2k. Therefore, some people will prefer to sell to the trader (because it's easier, and you don't lose much), and they will keep the trader from running low on stock and from driving prices up.

The economy in example #1 is so unbalanced that when the trader goes out of stock, it actually *helps* prices stabilize - just look at black dye this week: it peaked at 18k, then went out of stock. The thing to realize is that the trader did everyone a favor by going out of stock - if he still had dyes in stock for 18k, everyone would have an incentive to sell them for 17k instead of 10k which seems to be the going price now that they're out of stock.

So, even the current form of player-to-player market *alone* generates less inflation than having both the player-to-player market and a high-profit trader market co-existing. I'm willing to bet my salary (and, as an economist, I make pretty good money ), that if every item went out of stock tomorrow, and players were left with only player-to-player trade available to them, prices would initially go up, but then they'd go down and stabilize almost permanently after a week or so.

ANet put the trader system in their game, then they gave players every incentive not to use it. While the trader has an item in stock, he's giving players an incentive to increase that item's price. Then when an item runs out of stock, it's price starts to be negotiated only on the player-to-player market, and it tends to never be re-stocked at the traders, rendering the system useless.

Yale, by any chance?

Why do we even have these dicussions anymore? It has been clearly established that 90% of the people who play this game are morons when it comes to economics. They just can't understand simple stuff even when it is layed out for them in clear terms.

So I'm tiring of this. To all those people who understand economics at at least a basic level and who understand the guildwars economy to a reasonable high degree I have set up forums at a different sight. PM me for the website and to have an intelligent conversation about the GW economy and how we can make lots of money off of it.

It is way easier then in the real world to get money, so people shouldn't be having these problems. Unless they aren't good at money management in real life.

Hmmmm....yah it can't be that. I mean everyone knows how much they spend each month in bills and use a budget in real life right?

Economic issues are always gonna exist, but money management is something YOU control.

The problem with supply and demand, is that in a game, there is nearly infinite supply, and due to either inflation for people ebaying money, there is always enough money. So the demand goes higher and higher and higher, as do the prices.

Reality + Virtual World = Crap

major vigor:

trader sells it for 11,9k

trader buys it for ... 25g.


Supply and demand.

The real funny thing is that Major run are really dirty cheap now

Most of the time even cheaper than minor rune.

That might be OT, but now the question stands:

Is -50 health +1 attribute really so bad that people are willing to pay like 7p to get a lower bonus?

Strenght Rune for example: minor nearly 8p, major 1p. I start to think I can live with -50 health and keep 7p

Louis,

"You people" threads and posts, as a rule of thumb, are stupid.

Isnt that exactly what organizations like OPEC do in the real world? So...it works in the real world, adn it works in-game. And you say we don't know what we're talking about *eye roll*

...which many people have been saying forever....

"...when the revolution happens..."