Three Economic Discussions

Three topics I think it would be fun to debate/discuss/opine regarding, please add your comments on any one of the three:

1. What does the future hold for the Guild Wars economy?

2. What is proper etiquette with an auction (when can you retract? how long are bids valid in a changing economy? when is the seller obligated to sell the thing?)

3. What are some of your negotiation/auctioning tips and strategies that help you get maximum value when selling and good deals when buying?

Talk about whichever of the three you want. I'll post my thoughts in a separate post.

1. My speculation on the economy is that it will slide until it hits a point that people find it is no longer worth it to farm or buy keys at all, and a new equilibrium will be reached. It already takes much longer to sell that razorstone than it took to find it, so maybe it is time to quit farming certain things. Anet created some brilliant gold sinks, I think, and the wealth in the game has been distributed more fairly now and those hoarding their wealth in items have certainly lost considerable value. Once the new equilibrium point is hit, though, at least there should be vastly less trade spam, and people will only buy and sell really exceptional stuff. Everything else will be given away to friends or new players or dumped at the NPC merchant. As people rebuild wealth slowly, the keys and farming spots will be attractive from time to time, but not in the same ways they once were.

2. My thoughts on auction etiquette: under common law in the United States, an offer is only valid for a "reasonable time" so bids, while they should be viewed as binding, also should be assumed to "lapse" after a "reasonable" amount of time and be open to negotiation again. Also, when a bid gets exceeded, the old bids have been beat and are no longer valid. So even if the higher offer is subsequently retracted, I don't think a person ought to insist on the earlier offer being honored. I have certainly knowingly overpaid on items because I feel strongly about honoring my bids unless I have a compelling reason not to, but I don't expect the same from others.

3. Finally, here are some of my auctioning tips from another thread. My very few auctions are high end items, and they are ecto only. Example, http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=67638

There are a lot of reasons why.

• Ecto only auctions are fantastic for ensuring a reasonable bid increment
• Ecto only auctions appeal to the wealthy people who buy high end items
• Ecto only auctions are more secure trades that do not require trust or moderation
• When you cannot hold anymore gold anywhere, ecto is the only way to go

And here are a couple of my auctioning secrets:

• Low ball bids and off topic discussion are good things, generating interest and keeping the thread bumped
• I always try to stick in a few things that are very hard to value or that reliably get a few low ball bids on purpose to generate bumps on my thread (good choices are unusual shields or HoD swords)
• Keep your auctions to a couple of themes and only around a dozen items
• Set reasonable buyouts (everyone wants the most possible, but people decide whether you are expecting too much on the basis of your buyout prices on the items that they can value, even if you have some items they cannot value; plus it helps to have a few things bought out quickly to show that you are selling for somewhat reasonable prices)
• Set your own buyouts, not buyouts your friends told you to use: how much do you really want, regardless of whether you might have been able to get more? Pick an amount that you know someone would take and you can be willing to live with

1. Regarding the high-end economy, it is my opinion that prices will continue to slide and will normalize at 40%-50% of pre-Furnace value (Fells, Sephis, Eternal, Storm, Crystalline, etc. will normalize at 70%-80% of their previous value). The mid-level economy will die, and I actually think it is safe to say it is dead (try selling a 13>50 req 8 Long Sword/Flamberge or a req 8 40+ health while enchanted shield and see how many offers you get). Green items will lose value unless they have a unique graphic or spec, e.g. Willcrusher/Drago’s Flatbow, because for the most part, I can build a weapon like Rago’s Flame Staff for under 40k. I am not happy with the declining value of items, but it give one more reason to hand a lvl10 Axe Warrior a Gold Shadow Shield and Purple Chaos Axe for free, and let him really enjoy the game.

2. I am guilty of retracting the occasional bid. I also believe that if I bid 50k on an item and the OP makes a statement like, “ I probably won’t be selling for much less than 150k,” I can legitimately beginning looking elsewhere and feel no remorse in declining when the OP then decides he wants to sell at 50k. If you need to retract, do it before the auction ends rather than when the OP contacts you to complete the sale. Additionally, I believe it is the buyer’s responsibility to know what they are bidding on.

Example: I recently had 2 Gold UnID Fiery Dragon Sword (req 11) in an auction. A certain person outbid the original bidder and when it came time to complete the trade informed me that they thought they were “req 8.” Great excuse, except that my auction had a pictures of the items for all to see.

If the seller does not clearly state that they reserve the right not to sell or that they have reserves on their items, they are obligated to sell at whatever price the item ends at.

3. No real tips on getting maximum value, but if you are buying something, have a predetermined limit and do not go over it. There is always someone with more wealth than you that can outbid you, get used to it. If it makes you feel better, assume they have purchased their “wealth” from ebay using real money…

1. i think the prices are going a bit down (20-40%) but we are on the way to the standar market prices imo.

2. i never retracted a bid here coz when i want smtg even if it's expensive i will enjoy it so i don't care and imo all bider should think like me don't be sad coz u lost 10-100k on a item if u have what u wanted be happy with it.

3.no real tips for my items when i sell ig i ask a fixed price no less no more "take it or leave" and if i buy i ask the price if i like it i buy no more discuss

1: It Think that Normal High-End weapons will become 40-50% their previous value, and Fissure and UW items will level off at 30-60% their previous value. Fissure items have taken a major hit, especially chaos axes which have become quite common.

2: When a person becomes overly greedy. Its one thing when a person wants a lot of money to buy new things for themselves, but is ridiculous when someone turns down offers far above the value of an item.

3: A few things i go by:

- Have at most 15-20 items at a time in your auction, and make it visible upon opening the auction. I know that when i open an auction and there is 50+ items, I rarely bother looking through them all.

- Be formal and make all stats visible prior to opening the web page. Example: Max Gold 15>50 req 8 Fellblade, HP + 30, 10% Furious is much better at attracting people then WTS MAX GOLD FELLBLADE 15% DMG MOD

- Have a spending limit on certain items. Often see some of the smarter, richer traders (Nef in particular) that will bid only a certain amount, but after that they back out of an auction, unless they intend to use it.

- Dont post your next bid immediantly after being beaten, as this will drive up the price very quickly. Wait it out, and post near the end of an auction.

One thing I was just thinking that probably addresses both topic #1 and #3 is this: with the economy in upheaval, when I am trying to get really nice items without overpaying for them, one of the very best ways to overcome the seller's "irrational emotional attachment" to the item is to offer other items in trade. If they really think that 15>50 chaos axe is worth over a million gold even though it isn't, maybe you can trade them a 15>50 storm bow which has also lost a lot of value but is still very prized by its owner. Your warrior gets a cool axe, his ranger gets a cool bow, and everybody is happy, and even if they lost value, at least they have an item that they would each prefer. I think we will see more WTT in addition to all the WTS and WTB, which I think is a good thing.

My opinions, as usual...

1. A few thoughts:

-- after the introduction of new items (i.e. such as the Green items), you will find a significant devaluation (over 50%) of the existing items that have similar characteristics of the new items. I call this the "flavor of the month" impact.

--Once the novelity of these items wear off, the "uniqueness" of some of the other older items will start to regain strength. You are starting to see that now with some of the items that absolutely cratered after the greens were introduced.

--This will also substantially increase the elite items of the game to cause their price to escalate to disproportionate amounts (e.g. sickles). The reason - all of those people sitting on tons of cash now have fewer items to spend that cash on, which makes the bidding for the elite items even more intense.

--Overall, I agree with the concept that the changes in the game have equalized the economy. I think that the changes really, really hurt those whose wealth was invested in items rather than commodities (e.g. Gold, Ectos, etc). It also made better items available to the poorer players, such that the gap between the quality of items of the rich and the poor tightened significantly.

Lessons:

--Watch out for items in your inventory that are currently valuable due to their skin or their modifications. In the next update, those may become more available, which will cause their value to plummet.

--Try to identify and hoard those "overpowered" items that may get nerfed in the next update (e.g. the +5 HoD sword). I have some ideas on what some of those might be, but I'm not tellin'...

--Expect the old norms to get shattered with the next update. In other words, game basics such as 15>50 being the max and 7 req max damage items may go out the window quickly.

2. I think the lesson here is NOT for the buyer, but for the seller. Many, many of us (even the MOST experienced ones) let their auctions run way too long. Any auction that runs over four days, IMO, runs a substantial risk of the buyers not being there to collect. I think that setting an auction deadline is almost REQUIRED for many of us to bid nowadays, except for the most expensive items. I personally have stopped bidding on multiple item auctions where it doesn't meet those two criteria.

I also LOATHE anyone that reserves the right not to sell for:

--hidden reserves
--in game offers
--what they deem to be "unfair"

The solution to this is simple - MINIMUM BIDS. Contrary to what was said in other posts, you do not set a minimum bid to get interest going, knowing that you will not accept that bid. A MINIMUM BID should be that - the minimum that you are willing to accept for that item. Nothing, to me, hurts the reputation of a seller more than setting a minimum bid then not accepting it when the auction ends.

3. Selling - IMO, NEVER include more than 5 items in an auction. Anything more will likely result in one of your items getting buried, which substantially increases the risk of a lowball offer being the ONLY offer you will receive on that item.

Buying - contrary to the advice above, TARGET those auctions where a ton of items are listed. Chances are your bargains will come from those "clearance sales" where someone posts their entire inventory. Many hidden gems can be found in a stack of worthless items...which people generally don't have the time to rummage through.

I'm looking at these issues from the perspective of the not-so-rich...I'm polar to LBS.

1) I would have to agree with the current trend of item saturization yielding both a lower price in quality items & rare skinned, as well as removing lower end items from the market entirely. As LBS speculated, the bar on what is saleable will slowly rise as time goes by. I do think that, should ANet institute an in-game market ala EQ or WoW, I think there will be a brief lowering of the bar and increase in prices; this due to the large influx of items back on the market and renewed interest in speculation...when you don't have to waste your play time auctioning your wares or searching to buy them, shopping or setting up shop becomes much less hassle.

2) I'll retract a bid myself without hesitation, so long as I haven't already won or the auction is to close shortly. In almost every case where I've retracted a bid the auction has gone on far to long and I've found the item in question elsewhere; not because I've auctioned for it in game or posted a buy, but because I just happened to be looking here or in-game and someone was selling it cheaper. As more than one person has pointed out the longer you let your auction drag on the fewer people will keep interest. This relates directly to issue #3, so I'll go into more detail there.

3) While I'm not much of a seller here, I've managed to make quite a few purchases lately and I'd like to share what made the sale to me, or didn't. As stated, the biggest mistake is letting your auction drag on too long. Now, I understand if you have a perfect req 8 dwarven axe, that you'd want to collect bids over the period of a week...possibly 2. But when you're selling an un-IDd gold req 11, you're going to lose people after a couple days. Let's look at a good example thread (nothing against the seller here, seems quite honorable):

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=62725

This particular auction has been going on since 9/22 and isn't set to end until 10/15; that's over 3 weeks. Now, aside from possibly the Drogo's Flat, there's nothing particularly stellar in this auction. First let's look at the drop-off rate; at a total of 7 bidders, 3 have already retracted. That's nearly half of the sales lost and the auction isn't over yet.

Now, let's look at the impact of issue #1 here on this as well; we'll use my own bid as an example. I bid on a 5:1 vampiric string, and I'll admit I lowballed it; I'm apt to do that as I figgure it's a free bump and can always bid up later...I believe my inital bid was 10k. Now, at the time this acution began, the seller had a price in mind of 50k for the string; that was probably the high end, but not unreasonable. Since the start of this auction the price on all weapon mods, particularly vampiric, had dropped like a rock. As of today 25k is the very high end and 10k the low for a string; 3:1s go for 10-15k or less, and hammer hafts 10k or less. At some point I had upped my bid to 15k; I had seem someone selling for that in-game and decided to match that in the auction. That was over a week ago; yesterday I found one in-game for 10k and took the bait...I simply wasn't willing to wait any longer on an auction that even now I seemed unlikely to win (20k was the minumum, when one was finally set).

End result of all this is the seller losing income both in terms of volume and as impacted by deflation. The best format I think, both for the seller and prospective buyer, are the running auctions wherein bid minumums and ripening time (time till a standing bid is accepted) are both clearly stated. This way there is no guesswork; if you place a bid, you know if it is acceptable and when you can expect to potentially win your item. The shorter your ripening time the fewer withdrawn bids you'll see; I think 3 days is a good setting for staple items.

Only commenting on the second question (since I don't have much time right no), I believe that it's ok to retrack a bid, unless the auction is over. That isn't nice. However, in a game like Guildwars, great items can pop-up anywhere, especially with greens, chests and farming.

I only just recently retrackted a bid for a gold skeleton shield, simple because I was farming during the auction and suddenly found a skeleton shield much like the one I was bidding for. So I retracked my bid.

Only commenting on the second question (since I don't have much time right no), I believe that it's ok to retrack a bid, unless the auction is over. That isn't nice. However, in a game like Guildwars, great items can pop-up anywhere, especially with greens, chests and farming.

I only just recently retrackted a bid for a gold skeleton shield, simple because I was farming during the auction and suddenly found a skeleton shield much like the one I was bidding for. So I retracked my bid.

Im only making a breif comment here.

I think Anet have done a pretty decent job on keeping fair price values. However i think making it impossible to get certain items that were possible long time ago(hod , 15% unconditional ...) will make prices still go very high. And imo i think the prices for hod sword will continue to rise...

Just one theory.
Suppose in Anet's auction house you put up items, set a time limit, and away you go. Now what happens is, when you go to buy, you pick class first out of a dropdown, followed by what req, then you can either browse or set up your "uber" weapon and see if anyone has it. Would this lower or raise prices?

If an auction house (as in, an actual NPC who holds all the stuff) were to materialise, is there any way that any item can be sold for more than 100k in gold?

I can only think of 3 ways to settle this:

1. raise the limit on the amount of gold a character can hold
2. trade, run to storage, grab cash, run back, and continue trade (highly unlikely)
3. make payment straight from storage

I hope it doesn't end up like that. The NPC would be hoarded.

Maybe assign a new hotkey (T for trade?) and it opens up a menu of all the items available for sale at that moment. The seller has to be online for his item to be listed in there.

Blah...I don't even know what I'm saying. I lost my train of thought. Maybe someone can expand on my idea if they liked it.

Not really one of the big time traders here, and pretty poor as well, but hey, some thoughts

Thoughts on economy
- Upgrades have nearly stabilised. I think that current prices for all but the furious/max fortitude grips/sundering will remain for the foreesable future, and that the above 3 will drop, but only slightly (~ 10% at most)

- Superior runes will continue to rise in prices. With the loss of TSL, supply of superior runes is far lesser than demand. Already, Sup absorption has hit the price cap.

- Materials market will continue to fluctuate, around a small price range though. Exceptions to these who probably be ecto, which IMHO will rise slowly until enough solo farmers get back into the act :P, and rubies and shards, which I predict will see a price explosion about a few months before Chapter 2.

- Any item that can be obtained out of a chest will drop MASSIVELY in value. I'd say over the long run, all chest-available items will drop from 30% to 50% of their value, depending on the skin.

- Greens will drop. A rough guess, but in 2 months, the top end items (Malinon's Shield, Rago's Flame Staff, Drago's Flatbow) will be going for at most 50K and the rest way below that.

- Items that don't drop from chests will skyrocket though. The money needs to go somewhere

- Non-perfects are basically dead.

Auction Etiquette
This is from the viewpoint of a buyer.
- Please state minimums, buyouts and reserves if present on the auction. While the last 2 may not always be applicable, at least give a minimum so that buyers know how much you value your item.
- Be open to ALL offers/comments, especially if your auction is getting no bids.
- Don't drag them on forever unless they're impossibly rare items. As a buyer, if I don't know by 2 to 3 days whether my bid stands a chance of being accepted, I'll generally pull the bid and place my money elsewhere.

Tips and Strategies
None, that's probably why I'm poor though My only motto is that when buying, splurge only you intend to collect/use that item. If you're looking to resell, unless the resale value is easily > 25% of your initial cost, its not worth spending.

Jetdoc has it right though, there are many gems buried in multiple item auctions.

my 2 pennys

I h8 you rich people :P. << had to get that of my chest

I hope that the prices will drop by alot tbh. I wana a cool sephis axe 15%>50% then i want to put Furious and HP on it and before i know it were talking 800k+. yes some people are sad and dont have a life and farm like crazy so there rich. But others find it near impossable to get an axe etc that they will love and use over and over again. I dont want the axe so i can sell it and make loads of money, why, cos it doesnt pay my morgage, i want 1 cos i would love to be running arround UW or FoW with it .

I wish sellers would take that into concideration when selling an item and sell cheep cos you know they will use and love it. I sell cheep to help people out and even give runes and wepons away cos i know they need them and will use them.
i think we should have a 60s revolution, and instead of free love its free items and shear shear alike . come on people feel the love

also i have a HoD sword for my monk and even if they reach 1000k there is no way in hell im selling it. Why, cos i love the thing and its the best item for monk imho. even for solo work is great. though 1 dmg is a pain when confrunting interupters... take a while to kill at 1 dmg .

p.s. some 1 give me an axe ^^.

p.s.s think i went off topic lol.

I'm anything but rich, yet I have everything I want to keep me happy (15k armor, crystalline, sephis axe, sweet tall+eternal shields, etc.) None of it wasn't handed to me... I still had to farm my rear-end off to make enough platinum to afford all the above, as well as learn how to group with others in order to maximize monetary gain over time. I'm sure many of the rich ppl went through the same fiery hoops (or ebay!) to get where they are now. Why hate them because they earned their GW-possessions? This seems to be just a matter of getting over envy... just ignore it, put in your dues, and join the ranks of the well-to-do's.

You don't have to worry... 15>50's weapons and perfect shields spawn all the time, and they usually aren't salvaged for their upgrade components. Since these items are always entering the economy and don't degrade (unlike a bunch of other Sony pay-for-play MMORPG's), you'll eventually be able to afford some for as little as 5k-10k (perhaps less).

Don't expect to make much unless you speculate the market or acquire the necessary class skills needed to accomplish/simplify your tasks/goals (e.g., "Charge" skill for running, Healing Hands for griff-farming, etc...). Try finishing the game if you haven't already, get all your skill caps, then go back and try farming or running for profit again.

PS: I have a full time job and work 40 hours a week. What's your excuse? j/k

my comment was intended to be a j/k, hence the :P.

i have completed the game about 6 times and have every skill/upgrade unlocked... need 2 more sups.. ranger ones. << just to clarify

i did however for the first time find a good wepon tonight in FoW. A shadow bow max dmg with +14%dmg while HP>50% req 9. (either 13% or 14% cant remember). I dont play/like being ranger so is kinda waisted on me tbh.

Well, that was a problem at one time with the rune traders; people were basically camping the trader. Perhaps this is best reserved for annother thread, but thoughts on how to prevent vendor camping are important to discuss at this time I'm thinking.

Just a 1st thought, and not a particularly good one; put limits on both searches and purchases. Say perhaps you can only refresh the vendor once every 10-15 minutes, thus preventing the same person(or, more likely, bot) from being able to buy up all the high demand items as soon as they hit the market. Same for purchases, limit perchases to 1 every 15-30 minutes or so.