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

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...