OMG The Prices!

we are "moaning" about the major turnover of this game.
type /age, look at your stuff, then immagine that players got 100 times what you have in 5 minutes.

hf

I didn't get a chance to make big bucks with ecto, shards or superior runes, but I don't mind. What matters is that I can now sell stuff back to traders for decent prices (just unloaded my parchment and fur square vault). I too hated spamming WTS constantly.

Im too lazy to read all of this so I will just post my thoughts:

This update did two things:

a) made a few lucky souls very, very rich
b)made it impossible to buy superior runes since veryone is hordeing them now

And ? So i was right with the envy thing ? Why should I moan about it ? I have been playing since release and I have the stuff I wrote. I don´t mind if someone just bough the game week ago and became much richer than me for the past three months. Why should I be worried ? Does the wealth cause imbalance to the game ? Will they defeat you because they have more money than you ?
Seriously, I don´t get these complains.

Those who gott lucky can donate too me :3

U dont neeed that much money.... :0

I think the prices of merchant stuff will go down over time. However, the only thing merchants don't sell is weapons/shields. Those items are gonna soar in prices, because of the huge amount of gold the 'rich' people have ammassed. If you were smart, you'd sell the 'godly' items you have for an insane amount of gold, because somewhere out there someone will pay an insane amount of gold for it.

Why in the world are Monstrous Eyes 4k?

....but the "Godly" items prices have been restricted to some degree...People can only carry a max of 100k, so charging any more is no good. (Buyers AND sellers can scam eachother here if the price exceeds 100k and NOBODY is so trusting on the trader front).

Also "Godly" item prices have never been set, so people can still charge what they like regardless of how the economy is doing, just like they did before the update, and lets face it a Gold Max Dmg Storm Bow bought for 50-70k is no different in stats than a Max Dmg Ascalon bow obtained from the collector outside Elona Reach for a few dropped Minotaur horns. Only the richest who must have the asthetically perfect will bother, regardless of whether there is an influx of gold from the update or not.

wow, ecto-shards-ruby-sapphire are outta stock EVERYWHERE

Already posted my thoughts in another thread but nice screw job ANET, cause that's how I feel, despite the ANET sympathizers and fans.

If you don't at least see a problem with a guy who logged less then 20 hours with billions of gold compared to a guy with 500 hours with 500k and farms 24/7, your really something special.

Too bad I wasn't there... I think I just would have bought 3 sup vigors and 1 Sup Absorption... But now, I'll have to save over 200k for that.

Maagus : Yes they will defeat me. Because they'll be able to buy everything they want and I can't. I have to farm above 1 month for fissure armor (farming is boring) and they can buy 2, 3 or more sets in 5 minutes ectos buying. Thoses new millioners will control the economy, by owning all runes/ectos. They'll decide the future prices. Also they'll be able to outbid me at any moment for any item. So they always will defeat me. I don't accept that.

I agree with angelina. I'm a casual player. I'm not on all the time, and I sure as hell wasn't on when this price bs was going around. I was able to get on (around) midnight GMT -5. And that was about 16 hours after the last superior vigor rune was sold. I'm a casual player, and I was working hard to buy a superior rune at 80k, and hopefully finding one before it got that far. I was working hard to get FoW armor too. I don't have hours to play every day. I have an hour or two weekly. I've got a job, which makes it hard for me to use my uber telepathetic powers to know exactly when I need to get online next week to buy uber cheap items and sell for high prices.

Believe it or not the traders were working fine as they were before, its just that we need a market stall or auction house type system to balance the npc traders. Now that they have made artificial changes to things (price cap and fixed buyback percentage), they may as well make another change to help the buyers.. If something is sold to the trader, like a superior rune or glob of ecto, let a copy of it stay up for 20 seconds or something.. It is impossible to buy the ecto you see show up at the trader.. by the time you can click request quote he has run out of stock again.. is there someone, somewhere using some auto clicker or is this what they meant by challenge the worlds best? I guess I will have to go buy my ecto from some asshole upcharging it for 12k each.

you know what that means?

that means that every rich character that was holding up for fussire armor can now spend a dime for it!
and what do they do after that to not get bored? destroy the market again with the bagillions they have left!

and all the ppl who though "oh man, i could never get my fissure armor" still cant because they cant even sell the stuff THEY have now!
arggg >_<

Well I logged on and sold all 27 (!) vials of Silver dye that I'd amassed over the last month. Finally got a decent price for them; 800g each! That's a pretty nice boost to my otherwise-empty bank account, that's for sure.

Funny thing is though, that people either haven't noticed the price changes, they're just stupid, or they're trying to rip people off. Even though red dye has dropped to 430g (as of writing), people are still trying to sell it to each other for 2-3k.

the problem isnt with petty items like red dyes. its with superior runes. sup vigor runes sold for 6k this morning from npcs are being sold for quadruple the amount to players because the NPCs no longer stock them. same hold true for ectoplasm, and shards. bought this morning for less than 1k gold each, are being sold at over 10k gold a piece.

I bet ANet never expected the complete Rune Trader buyout of the Superiors. Not just Monks, Vigors, and Absorbs either. As of a few hours ago (when I was last online) every damn class was sold out! Not only did this happen, it happened in hours after the fix. Unbelievable. We went from a broken economy to a fixed economy to a whole new economy (sold-out Rune Traders are now obsolete because you can't just go to them for stuff anymore) in the span of a day. And alllllllllllllllllllllllllll because they had to reset the prices.

Note to ANet: don't ever reset the prices again. Just add more freaking stock at the pre-existing prices, and with the trader buyback rates apparently fixed now, the prices will lower THEMSELVES as people sell to them. Although I have to say, it still may not be as easy as it sounds. A few hours ago, the common material trader was selling a 10-lot of wood planks for 190g and was buying mine for 100g total (10g each). As I kept selling my lots I noticed the buyback prices was lowering by 10g (from 100g to 90g and then to 80g), but the trader's selling price remained at 190g. Ummm, ok. Shouldn't his selling price for the lots go down too as he's gaining more stock (mine) ??? Maybe it just happens more gradually but it kind of sucks when the buyback price starts decreasing before I can even sell off 140 wood planks.

Than don't. Why care about FoW fashion if it only takes 7.5k to buy a set with simular stats at Droknar? Its your own choice.

Yet there are 2 things out of balance in this:
1. Part of the economy is based on fixed prices, and part on stock/demand.
2. Its no use resetting prices and refill the traders stock every 2 minutes so everyone can buy everything he/she needs; Players need a challenge. For Rhunex this is to get FoW gear, for others finding a specific item by soloing. There's nothing wrong by letting players WORK for this!

I don't understand why they couldn't have just adjusted the algorithms without resetting all the prices to 100g and refilling the entire trader stock. Either way the market will go into equilibrium. Before the traders were selling ectos for 15k when they had them. If they would buy for 12k, people who have alot may be willing to sell them (as that is the usual WTS price). All those monk runes priced at 40-60k would be sold by the people who horded them in the past too, because the trader would offer better price than the WTS price. Everything will come down to equilibrium. Resetting the prices and stock is like a random giveaway of ectos, shards, superior absorptions, superior vigors to thousands of players. Random players were allowed to make 10000% profit, and I bet most of them are the rich players too, because those are the ones who are usually online at that time.

In the long run, everybody will have a fixed economy, the people who were lucky will have the perfect chaos axe, perfect fellblade, perfect storm bow, etc (I expect it to be impossible to obtain any of these items for quite a while now, if I have a billion gold worth of stock, I wouldn't mind spending a million on one of these). Many sets of fissure armor will be generated from this (which at least drains some of the gold).

I think it would be good if in the next few days, A.Net drastically increases drops of Ecto and some other stuff. Because ALOT of gold has left the economy as people brought up materials (even right now at 9k gold, ectos show up at the trader about once every minute and it is brought in less than a tenth of a second by either a bot or many people clicking the trader like crazy, same with many superior runes). Not everybody was able to purchase ecto for 100g. The prices probably went up quite fast and some people brought for 3k, some for 4k, ... 7k, etc. If the item is suddenly devalued to say, 5k. ANet would have successfully eliminated alot of gold in the economy. What I don't understand is why Monk runes and Ecto are not going up in price whereas other stuff such as Vigor and Absorption seem to have reached their equilibrium prices.

one word is the solution to this all -

ROLLBACK

anet seriously should just roll it back before this update and make the set prices start at something more reasonable than goddamn 200g for thousands of ecto

Ok, your objective is to get the superior vigor (I haven´t one neither and I need it so I can use better combination of upgrades) and FoW armor. So if you get that in a few mins, wouldn´t the game get boring for you ?
Seems that I am alone with my opinion that you don´t need FoW armor and superior vigor to be competitive = no imbalance to the game between wealthy and poor people. I am not any hardcore player, I have about 350 hours since the release.
Also how someone has already posted, economy now needs time to stabilize itself after this shock.

yeah it really sucks sort of. Especially now when people are spamming stupid runes for slae like in the old days b4 trader!!

A rollback is not the answer. I capped like 8 elite skills yesterday, and I sure as hell don't want to have to go through Abbadon's Mouth 5x again just to get the damn Monk spider boss to show up.

I love all the complaining about the price update. Do you complain this much in the real world about the Military-Industrial elite raping you via taxes so they can buy ice statues pissing $100/bottle Vodka into a bowl at lavish parties on an exclusive island?

All while you sit in your dinky quaint houses, just trying to keep your electricity from being turned off.....

I just checked, and Superior Vigors and Absorbs are there -- at least for now. They cost an arm and a leg, but as I've been playing this game for 3 months and I've never bought even one, I don't know what the cost was before the reset.

I understand people's frustration with this, but, speaking as one of the poor... I was online yesterday during the update, and I'm still poor... and I don't really have a problem with that since (most) things are finally affordable again. Yesterday I spent my 10k (all I had in storage) on some dyes I wanted and some runes I needed. I find it more enjoyable to play this game rather than play the market. Then again, listening to how much some people made in a few hours does tempt me to rethink that statement.

The bottom line is this is a game. Right now I have 3k in storage. If I did have 3 million, what would I do with it? I suppose I'd buy some 15k sets (not interested in fow armor), and then pretty much be done with the game (already beat it with my main, have another in the Ring of Fire but haven't bothered to beat it with him).

All in all, I'm happy that ANet tried to do something about the screwy economy. Their implementation may not have been the most well thought-out, but I'm happy they're trying.

Agreed 100%.

One other thing... some people talk about buying all these ecto eliminating a lot of gold in the economy? Well lets see... if 2k ecto were bought at 200 each, thats 400k taken away from the economy. Right now though, if those 2k ecto were sold to the merchant, who pays 6.5k each, then now there is 13,000,000, minus the 400k, so 12,600,000 gold was just generated with the estimate of only 2k ecto at 200g, and I have seen one player in game who had 1750 ecto and claimed to have more, and he said he bought it all for 200-2k apiece. :/

Yes, actually. You're just in the wrong forum to see that sort of thing.

As a luker on these boards and being in GW for about a month, I'm seeing a very strange and unsettling occurance.

One half (made money) says this update rocks.

The other half (did not make mone) says this update sucks.

I do not have fissure armor. My War/Mo can't last 20 seconds in UW by himself, I have 30k in my storage, but I give away a lot to my guildies. I've had one shard drop in my entire play time. And I don't care. I have fun playing this game and to those of you with millions in cash, all the runes and fissure armor, I say, Kudos. (I'm not being sarcastic) If you find it fun to spend hours doing the same thing over and over, I'm glad you are doing what makes you feel good.

For those of you (like me) without those things, you don't really need them to have a good time and play the game. I may just be an arrogant blankhole, spouting my goody twoshoes rhetoric, but I play this game for fun. If I don't have super awesome weapons and fancylad armor, I'm okay with that. Personally? Drocknor's Platemail looks pretty damned cool, if you ask me. Just enjoy the game guys. It can be a lot of fun. I sometimes just take my warrior back to ascalon and Pikin to help out people who are new to the game.

Also? Life isn't fair. I personally find the game more engaging if it is also not fair.

Just have some fun.

A word on software development and fixes. I work in the IT industry, and frankly, based on what I'm seeing Anet has done a great, great job keeping regular patches, fixes and moderation coming for a non-fee game. They're doing the best they can and people who constantly bitch and gripe about "DEVS DON'T LISTEN" or "DEVS SCREWED UP" clearly have no concept of how massive a rollout like this game is. We're talking millions of players, who will/can find every exploit in the game. How can the development team (who's probably working on finishing Sorrow's and starting Chap 2, if you know anything about software development) be expected to find every bug and problem in the game. You wanna be pissed at someone? Be pissed at yourself for buying a game to bitch about. Enjoy what you can out of it and be thankful for it. I remember when Jedi Academy came out on PC and due to a coding problem, noone could play Multiplayer (which most bought it for). Now that's a serious problem. But the price of an item being too high? That's not a major issue.

Chin up kids, we're all here for fun. If you're not, go find something else that's fun to do.

Good post! As for Other things to do. They can clean up there rooms/mow the lawn/take out the garbage/etc. In other words: Build character!

I just had to say that being a Dad and all.....

Yep, all here for fun until it's needlessly ruined. Hope the one who had the great idea got fired.

The moment it gets sold for 6.5k to the trader, it gets sold to another player (or bot) for 9k. So 2.5k has been eaten by the NPC in the transaction. Whenever anybody buys from the trader, money is drained from the economy. Whenever anybody sells to the trader, money is generated, but at a smaller amount, so as long as the trader isn't overflowed with stock, gold is being removed from the economy. So gold is being removed because people are still buying from the trader. In your situation, you didn't take into account that people will spend more than that 12.6 million gold buying up all the ecto again. 2k ecto sold at 9k gold each is 18mil, so 5.4 million gold would have been removed from the economy. However, the problem is that I don't think many people are selling their ecto to the NPC and they are just hording it and hoping to sell it to other players.

I predict I made about a million plat off this update....It was the dumbest thing ArenaNet has done to date. Not everyone that made money sees this update as a good thing. It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen a developer do.

Well isnt it a BIT TO EARLY for conclussions? Wait at least 7 days and see the price variables.

I was having a lot of fun farming, grinding, getting ectos, buying ectos at 12k a piece. Getting to the Forge Master after 2 hours of FOW and crafting 2 pieces of my armor. Now I have no money left. Then ANET decides to drop them to 100g about 30 mins before I went to bed for 3 hours.

People have fun in their own ways, so don't try to define how people are supposed to have fun.

ANET isn't perfect, that's obvious. They are doing great things in PVE and we shall see all their hard work in the summer update. However they haven't fixed the problem with PVP, the grind to get skills, natures, smiting, etc. They implemented faction in an attempt to solve grinding, which failed miserably. As a result, a lot of top guilds quit and more people are quitting. I don't need to say anymore because we already had threads on that topic.

Resetting the prices was the dumbest move ever. You don't have to be an economist to know that resetting prices wouldn't help lower prices in the future. You just allowed people to exploit the traders. I know one thing that may have come out of this: people who loaded up on runes and ectos might stop botting cause their so freakin rich now.

PS: Hey Algren Cole, cut me a deal on some ectos lol.

I didn't buy any ectos

I don't foresee a profitable market for ectos. I made a guess that ecto would be capped in the future. I bought a little over 40 Superior Protection Runes though

I must say this is perhaps one of those silly things that happens in a fake world. I am not sure why ANET decided to reset all the prices as well as putting a cap on prices in some traders... wouldn't it have been easier to avg the prices of the items in the 3 markets and set the trader prices to that?

Isn't ANET being communist about this (by capping prices), just in a terribly poor way (due to spreading wealth to those lucky enough to be online and buying)?

One of the reason I enjoy MMORPGs is due to a simulated real world environment where I can interact and trade with other players, usually in a free market... This new market is hardly free now, as there are limited supplies, high demand, and capped prices.

I got my degree in economics, and must say that one of the first things you learn in 101 micro is that when the government (ANET) puts a cap on prices below the equilibrium, while there is a greater supply than demand of the item, it will create a larger demand than supply. People are more likely to hold onto their items, as money isn't worth as much. There is a glass ceiling that sellers cannot get above in terms of pricing.

I think it was a good idea for ANET to try to control the inflation in the virtual economy, however they went about doing it in the wrong way. Instead of controlling it, they have actually staggered it in the long term. One way to control inflation rates is through the interest rates, which granted might be hard to implement.

ANET's other objective seemed to be wanting to control the amount of money flowing into the system, as ANET (the government) cannot control the printing of money (gold drops). Therefore, they should create a tax system, to take gold from players trading items... So there is a fee to use the trade feature, and the tax can be scaled as to not penalize new characters... I am sure they can work out something based on level, overall wealth on account, so forth...

The problem with the traders now is that capped items will stay sold and only exchanged between players... Why pay 9k for globs, when human players will undersell for 8k? Also, items that don't appear on traders will no longer have a real market value to be judged on, as what player wants to sell a superior rune for 30 gold?

I don't think this update was necessary at all, all that was occuring was just inflation, and ANET could have had much better solutions... all they would've had to do was pay a college economist $20 and gotten a much more viable solution. I realize they also wanted to control international trade, however, what is the point of fixing international trade when it's semi realistic? It is hard to set up international trade for long term profit, it is time consuming, and requires resources and talent.

When a government (ANET) makes extremely facist / communist actions to an economy, it creates what I like to think of as a dictatorship. It starves the poor, and a few select people get into the inner circle and live the good life. Seems to me from reading these posts, thats what has happened.

Oh well, time to find a new MMORPG, crafted fissure armor and all that anywho...

All I have to say is... I wish everyday were Christmas... and it's not

DAMM Noooo !!! i buyed 2 15k set and im dyed now