Guild wars Economy My View

OK, my excuse is being an economics graduate... I can't help finding this shit interesting.

I’ve been in GW for a couple of months now, and as in that time I’ve made some observations of the structure of the economy, for all I know I could have missed some fundamental game mechanic that makes this entire post redundant….. Either way meh lol

I'm writing this mainly in response to so much concern being voiced about new items destabilising the GW economy, and also because I’m a great big no-it-all who likes to have his say

I'd like to start by explaining a little about how the GW economy is currently structured before I start to voice my opinions on how it could be improved. I’m going to keep this as simple as possible. For both my fingers sake and your eyes, and if you feel I’ve missed something (I probably have) or have any other comments, please feel free.

Most of you will probably find this really really dull. Don’t worry, I neither expect anybody to read it all, or expect them to have any positive feedback….. would be nice to be wrong though

This is after all only my personal opinion.

There are three factors that govern the economy in Tyria;

1) The Tradable Items
2) The Gold
3) The Players

These three factors are fundamentally linked, and form the basis for the GW economy as we all know and love it.

Without us, the players there would be no economy whatsoever, we are the driving force.

Players effectively manufacture items. We find Dyes, weapons or crafting materials whilst we quest. We also go out and “farm” for specific items in specific areas. Either way, this is the same as production in the RW, and, as far as I’m aware Anet has not placed any upper cap on the quantity of Charr Hides or Vampiric sword hilts that can exist in the game at any given time. Instead the quantity of each item is controlled by its percentage chance to drop from given monsters in given areas. What this means is that the quantity of a given item that exists in the game at any given time is a direct function of the amount of monsters killed, and can be presented for item X as follows.

Quantity X in game = Function of (Chance of X dropping * Quantity of monsters killed)

And since:

Quantity of monsters killed is directly proportional to the age of the game, it can be said that:

Quantity of X in Game = function of (Chance of X dropping * Age of game)

Basically what this boils down to is that the more you kill the more you find, and as the longer the game goes on for, the more of each item will exist.

So, we have the first element of our GW economic model, an exponentially increasing volume of tradable items.



Gold, the most important commodity in Tyria, everything is valued in it, without gold you would have no measure of worth, even those precious ecto’s are valued in gold, all-be-it 10 or even 12k in places.

Gold is very interesting in the fact that not only is it the “currency” or mode of transfer within Tyria, but also because it is freely available. Gold can be acquired through trading, farming … or even E-bay. No matter how you acquire your gold, fundamentally it comes from the same source, Monsters.

Whether its collecting actual gold that drops on the floor when an unfortunate Charr falls clutching his throat and drops his wallet, or whether its from collecting items that you later convert to gold via a merchant, or another player, it all (except v small amounts) comes from killing beasties.

Now, this clearly means that gold acts in the same way as items. The ammount of gold in the GW world is rising exponentially. It is freely availible.

This causes one major, Uber big, economy Slaying problem

INFLATION

Anet must have realised this could manifest into an economy killing problem whilst creating the game, that would at least explain the cap applied to the maximum amount of gold you can carry on any given Character/ account.

In a static game world where the number of accounts was fixed, the gold cap would indeed be enough to stem inflation, or at least that inflation due to gold.

However, we do not play in a static world (Phew), and there is a constant increase in the number of accounts. There is not even a limit to the amount of gold available to a given individual, as no one is stopping you from purchasing separate accounts.

So;

Amount of Gold in the game is directly proportional to the age of the game, and the number of active accounts.

Gold = Function of (Game Age * Active accounts)

Therefore gold will increase exponentially, until account levels begin to drop.



So what does this all mean?

Basically it means that the price of all items will increase over time, this will be mitigated slightly by the increasing volume of those items, but, not enough I fear.

But surely, if the value of all items is increasing, then there can be no problem?

Well yes, but, no. This would be true if the value of all items were to increase proportionally to each other, this however will not happen. The inflation will only effect those items traded from player to player, not those sold or bought at merchants.

Ask yourself, will you ever pay 500gp for a basic Rin Blade, or 100gp per plank of wood?

I wouldn’t, not when the merchant over the road sells them for 10gp each.

So, those items that are available at merchants, or drop like rabbit babies, will continue to be sold at merchants / salvaged, or will remain fairly stable in price.

However, those items that are not sold at NPC vendors will suffer, this creates a situation where a new player joins the game and starts selling there items for 20 – 100 gp each. But since the minimum price for that perfect axe is inflated to the point where its costs 15+ ecto’s, and ecto’s are valued at 50k + each.

Even so, if you’re an established player, who currently has large quantities of wealth, in today’s terms, then you should find it fairly easy to keep up, and inflation shouldn’t physically bother you that much.

There are however two major game destroying problems:

1) It looks really really silly.
2) It alienates new players.

The fact that extremely inflated prices looks silly may not seem like too much of a problem, but assuming most people are like me, and do there research before deciding which game to buy. Over inflated prices could severely reduce the potential for new players to join, just because it “Looks” unachievable to ever be able to compete with the big boys (and girls).

New players who do join will find themselves separated from the established gaming community by an enormous ravine, they haven’t grown with the inflation, and so have to “catch up”. You end up with a situation like Diablo 2, where all the good items require SoJ’s to buy them, but hardly any players can afford SoJ’s themselves and they drop so infrequently as to be akin to rocking horse shit.

So, what you end up with is a situation where gold gets replaced by some other over inflated commodity which can have its price/value controlled by players.

This gives you the situation where new players strive to accumulate these high value items, but can never acquire enough to breach the “Money Gap”.

So, what happens?

They go to E-bay, or, they go to another game.

The resulting effect is a reducing game population, which eventually results in a dead (or very close to) game.


What gets me is that almost every game out there has this problem in some form or another.

It would be so easy to fix, it would be so easy for game manufacturers to give there economies eternal life, and still be able to constantly throw new items and content into the game.

How?

Well in my opinion the answer lies with the gold, if the programmers can control or regulate the amount of money slopping around in the game. In other words remove the players ability to write bank notes.

Don’t just have cash sinks, have cash loops, where money you spend at NPC’s loops round and re-enters the game some where else.

Maybe (and I know this may not meet with approval) deduct an amount of gold from a player each time they die, then filter it back into the game through drops or quest rewards. Not only would this re-distribute wealth around the player-base, but would also add a touch of risk to any endeavour it applied to.

When a new account is created the total money available in the economy should be increased to avoid Depreciation.



A game economy should function much like a RW economy, it should be allowed its freedom, but it should also be subject to control.

You cannot maintain stability in a system where you apply control to one aspect but not the other. Ie controlling the price’s of crafting materials etc through the use of NPC’s but not controlling the quantity of gold.
Either apply control to both, or, control to neither


Anyway, that’s my 10 cence worth.

Sorry if it was dull / inaccurate / unfounded/ bullshit

I had fun

yea it takes awhile for newbs to catch up to seniors. 3+months...
it gives them something to strive for.

theres no other game like GWs.
i wish they went to silver pieces first. silver is valuable right?

& i enjoy farming among my other activities. but bot farming. anet can suspend/ban those accounts & make a profit.

Wall of text'd.

Anyways, from what i saw skimming over it, this is about controlling inflation, either making more gold-sinks availible or decreasing gold's actual value. Either way, I don't see how it would affect new players, other than making matters worse; most runes are cheaper than ever (sorry monks), i frequently find people willing to run to droknars and other places for free, and the average new player does not even know that his weapon sucks, nor will he need a "godly" one for some time.

My .02$.

What half if not more of the GW population thinks is that if i dont have the best, rarest weapon in the game, im not good. Where as in other games you had to have th best,rarest, most sought after items in the game in order to be competitive. This is not the case in GW. Examples:

1) A max 15% in stance crystaline with 10/10 sundering, +30 health will do the EXACT SAME THING as a max dmg 15% in stance collectors long sword with a 10/8 sundering and a +28 health pommel. whats the difference? about 1 million in gold. The miniscule amounts of percentage differences when it comes to stuff like that honestly isnt that big of a factor.

2) Take the warrior for example. His Gladiators armor from droknars forge will have the same stats and the same function as the 15k gladiators or the FOW gladiators. difference? The fact that you can buy your whole armor and materials to make armor and majr runes for the price of 2 of the 5 pieces of 15k armor or 2 of the ectos that you need for the FOW armor.

3) runes. WHile some runes do make it worth your while to have a superrior rune over a minor or major, some just dont make sense. It is proven that a Major rune of Vigor is only 9 health less than a Sup Vigor. Difference? 9 health and 70k gold. IF you honestly need another 9 points in health to live, youre dead anyway.

But what it mainly boils down to is Looks > function. Astetically they have to have that Max crystaline of uberness and the 15k armors. Yes i have fow armor on my monk, but my wand is a quest item from grenditch courthouse that beats the crap out of the brohns rod and i use a collectors 20/20 healing ank. best combo ive used the whole 500+ hours i have on that char alone. One of the best shields in the game is the collectors 45/-2 stance shield located in the desert. but for some reason everyone wants that godly ugly green/blue eternal shield.

For anyone starting this game, i would tell you that collectors items are the key for you having the godliest weapon without spending a whole lot of money to get one. the 15% enchanted long sword from the desert will do the same thing as your 15% while enchanted fellblade u want, but will cost you a hell of a lot less.

Sorry for the rambling, just my $.02

MisstressYichi says it as it is. Inflation is a problem, you don't need to be an economist to understand that (no taxes or government etc to regulate the money supply and players manufacture the cash themselves) - classic example: go stand in Augury's Rock near the exit leading to prophets path, there is an uncontrolled RIVER of w/mo and mo/w streaming out of there and you can bet pretty much 100% of them are going to farm for gold and items. SF is not too different at camp deldrimor. So yeah inflation is just going to get worse as people want more expensive things and thus farm more (vicious circle anyone?)

Yes, it really is all fundamentally "flawed" in the sense you can get the exact same stat weapons and armours for 1000x cheaper. In that sense the newer players aren't at that big a disadvantage, since max damage weapons etc are relatively not too hard to get hold of (and relatively cheap too) if you can settle for a falchion or tribal blade or regular droknar/collector's armour etc. The stats for that 500g-1k weapon may well be close to or identical to that 100k one someone is trying to flog in Lion's Arch. Only difference is the look in most cases or that 1% which for some reason makes a difference of like 50k for something...

perfect example of this. Sword pommel of fortitude with health +30 sells for 60k. a pommel with +29 health u can get for 15k. 45k for one health is way too much of a price jump for that one extra hp

Man, that's MY style right there. I go for the Bow grip +24 or something. I can get them for like 400 gold. And 6 health doesn't matter to me - jesus, I play a ranger. If that 6 health ever matters, I'm not doing my job right.

I think it's all about the mental status. Saying you have a perfect sundering, perfect fortitude gold fellblade and 15k armor makes a person feel special. Right up untill the guy with the 15% above 50 long sword he bought in droknars slaughters him with better skills and tactics

Here's a simple yet earth=shattering concept that will fix-all, cure all.

Delete gold. Remove it from the game entirely. Go to a pure barter system for trades... things for things. Forget the whole faux economy altogether.

You want the "15K" armor? You need the materials to build it, plus instead of gold you add a percentage of the required materials to compensate the crafter.

Simple, sweet, and so foreign to modern thought that it's likely very few will grasp the concept.

Everyone is missing the point of the OP.

The problem is that when monsters drop gold, that gold isn't being recycled, it's being CREATED.

The amount of gold in the game is directly related to the total number of mosters that have been killed in the game. It's not a fixed amount, and this is a serious problem.

One possible solution would be to introduce a 'tax' for all players, and have the revenue from that tax 'fund' the gold drops from monsters.

none of you work for anet so whining about this stuff is pointless.
but if you guys somehow did cause a change in the games economy, it would throw everything out of wack, and you would be back to whining online. "it feeds apon itself" i think would be an accurate phrase

And doing away with gold altogether wouldn't fix this?

the price of items haven't been going up, with these new green items there's pretty specific prices for them and are actually lowering the prices of items, before sarrow furnace 15% 50> req 8 chaos axe was around 3-4 mil, now it's more like 800-1mil at the most, more people are actually complaining about the sarrow's furnace because of the green items that they came up with, it pretty much broke the economy there is no more inflation in the economy, you can get a req 10 15% 50> longsword for around 40-60k which used to be around 200k before green item and the chests, anet came up with this because they wanted to make the game have these items for everyone to be able to get, but by making these changes it broke down the seperation between new players that have been playing for a month having an item that someone who has played since beta has, anet is digging themselves into a hole, if they would have left farming the same in tyria and had just put in chests in or put in any weapon class to drop in any area it would've made people happier instead of making people leave the game. When they put in green items with the chests it broke down the seperation pretty much between a new player who has been playing for a month and a veteran in the items that they took pride in getting when they got it, anet seems like they're trying to be the stablizers but the only people who wanted it were the people that wanted the items, in which they could have gotten by farming when or they could've asked around how to get money, they're are people that will help you out in the game by giving you information and tips

I like the idea of gold being removed if you die...but on a more practical level, this really is difficult to achieve.

How about a tax?????

Transactions between players will cost the seller a certain percentage. More expensive items have higher % and generally cheap stuff like common materials have lower %.

How about your cost of items are proportionate to your total gold??

get off the tax idea, it wouldnt work on an onlinegame, it even fails in reallife

I think ANet just needs to stop getting so involved. It's PVE, for God's sake. You're against the environment. What difference would it make if everyone was runnin around with Crystaline Swords and FOW Armor. Make some really hard impossible quest that tests your SKILL, not the time spent farming, to determine what kind of weapons you get. Sure, that sounds like PvP, but that's more competitive tha some people like.

Point being:
Stop trying to make things so right and just make it fun. Give more Ecto drops. Make gold easier to get. et cetera.

Remove gold altogether. Period.

FFXI Jueno Tax - Worked till about 2 years latter then merchant "towns" out side in the shared zones.

Or Anet can add a whooole lot of content that players will want that they can buy that cant be drop or shared. ...like how they did with armor.

One thing i didnt like was the idea that when you die, you lose gold. That is one reason I chose GW. You lose nothing when you die. I didnt like being taxed either and i cant see either of those ideas working. Players would just bypass it buy buying something such as ectos and have no gold what so ever.easily bypasses except to players that dont have enough to buy an ecto. They will be constantly losing money while those with money(ectos) will stay at the same wealth. And since everyone is using ectos it will technically be the new form of "money" and the cycle will repeat.

Well, being in economics myself.

It's just demand and supply, as well as elasticity.

I mean, look at the trader resets. People went for the elastic items, ones that are luxuries, instead of, say, buying out all the minor runes.

Also, as supply decreases, demands increases. As demand increases, price increases. What I've been noticing is that, unlike in the real world, there seems to be NO equilibrium price.

In a shortage, buyers will bid prices up, until equilibrium is reached. But, seeing as how there are increased amounts of players, many with four characters, the supply will never reach equilibrium.

GW is a strictly Market Economy (or was until some of the price caps). You can see how that effects everything. Personally, I don't have a problem with this for most items, because they're there for vanity purposes.
~~~~~

As everyone else will say. Get the HP+27 instead of 30. Unless. of course, the margin of benefit of having that item is greater than the margin of cost. For some people, that's the case.
~~~~~~

Has anyone done an extensive economic breakdown of GW yet?

yes gold is created whenever it drops but at the same time gold is also gone whenever someone buys anything from a trader. Which while is not equal to the amount of gold being farmed it does slow it. Secondly... who honestly cares that much about pve... i barely pve at all these days, i mean it just gets old. Inflation isn't going to be a problem because items are becoming more frequent and people aren't getting massive amounts of money.. and greens are also great because there godly wpns cept alot more common and frequent drops. Mainly your thinking about the game to closely, another solution would just be to cap all the trading materials at 5k... so that ectos can't be worth the 10k that they are, and to take the most money a player can have down to 400k in storage and 100k on each char.. thus taking care of builds up of money and possibilites of inflation, secondly if there does become an inflation problem anet could release a weapon upgrade trader that sells perfect upgrades for like 20k and some materials thus forcing players to take their prices down..... but making there be a set amount of gold is retarded, because then you have to constantly manage it because as you slowly get more and more players and people with gold stop playing or don't spend it then everyone slowly gets poorer and poorer and money would slowly drip away and their would be deflation... which would just complicate things more so.. soo leave it..

OK, firstly i'd like to thank you all for your comments so far

The point i was making in its simplist form is this,

Anet has no choice in the matter, it has simply got to manage the economy in its current state, this means constant reviews of the level of inflation and creation of new more complex god (Edit: Gold) sinks.

Basically this means that the valuable time of programmers is being spent managing and controlling the natural tendancy of the GW economy to over inflate.

But FFs they could be spending 100% of there time on new content, new maps, new pvp arena's.

How?

By spending some time now in setting the economy up so that it self regulates, this could be done easily enough with the minimum of effort on the part of anet, and the initial disruption caused would settle down aftre a short time, leaving us with a stable economy, and more people concentrating on the fun parts of the game.

It's amazing that the thought of simply removing gold from the game is so alien to todays mindset that people don't even seem able to discuss the possibility.

We really don't need it, and it causes more headaches than it's worth.

Someone has something you need? Trade them for it by barter, or maybe they'll give it to you. You have something extra? Barter or give it away.

Simple. No problems.

One problem that would still remain is that people will want to trade, for example ecto's or some other kind of droppable. This means others will go farm for those items. In turn this means the sellers will ask for more of those items. The inflation problem will still exist - farming + dropped items + buyers will as for more over time = more inflation

what if the only fun for some players is to trade and become rich?They only play this game for money.Personally, i trade only for fun and i dont ebay.
i like money and good items,i only want to collect them and nothing else
different ppl have different play styles,trade is just a style of playing and anet shouldn't ruin it.I know lots of players quit cuz anet's action.It is not just against traders but against the free will of ordinary players.If they want to stop Asian botters,they can ban IP from asia, they dont have to ruin our fun:d

Sound simple in theory, but it won't work. If there is no gold, what will happen is another item will become the currency unit. You already see this happen with globs of ectoplasm and obsidian shards. If gold is the $1 bill in the game, obsidian shards and globs of ectoplasm are the $50 and $100 bills.

As far as looping the total gold in the game, the remedy requires fixes that will cause the players to complain like there's no tomorrow. The monsters have to stop being money mints and instead only hand back money that they have somehow otherwise acquired from other players. There's a couple of ways manifest that. Monsters drop very little to no money or loot because the players have the bulk of the wealth. When a player dies in PvE, all of the money and item on him is gone because the monsters loot the body. If you have the former, how would anyone starting the game get anything? If you have the latter, ArenaNet might as well put the PvE game on a shelf. You can have a tax/fee/surcharge system, but what are the players getting for paying a tax? It makes no sense that they are paying a tax so monsters have money to drop, doesn't it? I agree that there is essentially a money printing machine that is constantly on, thus generating pressure for inflation. However, the fixes that seem so simple in concept may not be practical in a game.

Depends on the 'rareness' of the drops. If ectos and shards become more common, they don't have the 'value'. Replace gold drops with 'things' instead, and get rid of the rareness of items. Really, where this game is based upon the skills you acquire and how you use them, items should be almost a non-issue, as should wealth.

This I think is a fundamental point. I do agree with a lot of what Accurax has said but at the same time disagree with the other things he's said. I think there is a danger of inflation, but I personally disagree that it is at the moment a problem. I would also be interested by what A-net would have to say on the subject.

you forgot cool gaming terms like mudflation, but it was cool that u mentioned money drains/sinks. i agree that money should be used to buy materials and NOT to buy equipment. ---im takin economics too and its fun XD, "the real cost of something is what you must give up to obtain it"

My impression, the Green and collector items are suppose to keep the gold in check.

Collector items, only problem is the new / average players don't know they exist or if they did, think there the horrible version of collector items that the asclon collector give out and they don't know they become 10x better later. Id make a quest to get the items and have the collector in the town for the great weapons to show people they exist.

Green items, some are reasonable but if they really want to control the flow... flood them, not vary but turn the drops on 100% and don't let up.

[QUOTE=Carinae Dragonblood]Everyone is missing the point of the OP.

The problem is that when monsters drop gold, that gold isn't being recycled, it's being CREATED.

The amount of gold in the game is directly related to the total number of mosters that have been killed in the game. It's not a fixed amount, and this is a serious problem.
QUOTE]

Exactly, you and Accurax are correct in this - the issue is the never-ending supply of gold coming into the game.

What happens if in the real world, a country's government decides to keep on printing money endlessly instead of controlling it? Hyperinflation results in which you have those absurd high prices which nearly nobody can afford.

However, oddly enough, according to this thread http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=44867 (the OP keeps track of selling prices of weapon mods), the prices has been dropping.

I'm curious what Accurax have to say about this.

Well, first, to anyone stating "just get rid of the gold and it will solve all of the problems" are wrong - gold would simply be replaced with some other commodity, only harder to get. SOJs and the rune economy in D2 is the perfect example.

Second, ANet didn't "break" the economy by introducing green items, they actually brought it a bit under control. For the people sitting on gold max damage perfect stat everythings, to them it might appear that they got screwed - but that's the breaks. How do you think the folks sitting on 200 sigils felt when ANet reigned in the costs on those items as well? Now that sigils no longer drive the economy, ectos and shards have taken their place. For a while it was black dyes - monk superior runes went nuts but have become more realistic. It's the natural ebb and flow of economics.

The only really "broken" aspect of the game currently is the ridiculous prices of those uber pretty items that are only asthetically benefitial to the player, it has no impact on the game MECHANICS at all. New players don't need to spend 1 million gold on FOW armor to successfully play the game - in fact I constantly run into players in game thinking they were invincible and better than everyone else simply because they spent all of their money on that "uber" weapon or FOW armor, and turn into childish jerks when they ultimately die - blaming their death on the "noobs" because God forbid, it wasn't his uber leetness that caused it, heavens no. And this situation is being addressed in part via the green items.

The only last remaining issue is the current existance of the uber rich with millions of gold and inventories full of black dyes, ectos and shards and short of deleting it, I don't know of any real cure for that - except to flood the market with ectos, shards and dyes, making those billionaires into millionaires.

i hate the econemy in GW its almost imposible to sell anything on this game, if you get a inperfect item you get ranted at for selling it impeerfect, if you get a perfect one, no-one wants to pay that much for it, i hate the econemy in this game, apart from that, its the best game ever.

here here, i agree, IMO the perfect RPG is where you start out with 1 set of armour, 1 wepon and 1 sheild/focus there is no way of trading, no way to but items, and no drops. just good RPG fun.

Those things are RARE for a reason. They have a situation very similar to what youre talking about. its called collectors. monsters drop certian items which the collectors then trade for items. they have been and always will be a very valuable too to where u dont have to be rich or uber to get good weapons/armor/offhand/shields, but everyone seems to overlook this fact. i have the full collectors armor for my monk. was first max defense armor she had. was easier to get than spending all day farmign for materials and gold to buy armor with. same with weapons and such. all easily attainable, but because they dont have "THE LOOK" 99% of the people in this game dont want them.

Example: Req 9 tactics max def tall shield with +45/-2 dmg in stance goes for 100k easy. collector gives u one for free with a little time and patience and 5 bleached shells. those are much easier to farm than 100k is

Example 2: collectors armor (given youre in the desert and can have a friend or 2 help u get to the collectors or even with just hench, its what i used) you can get in a weekend and also earn a couple skill points for yourself to unlcok skills you might need. has max defence armor lvl, looks good, and again given a little time and patience is free.

Things do drop in this game that you can exchange for items/armor/offhands/shields, but aparently no one bothers with them and have too have that ugly fellblade of uberness. thats fine. when i roll through and do better with my Stefan looking collector sword and wipe you out with your fellblade, ill feel better knowing that for all my equipment i spent about 1/5th of what you did and it didnt make u any better of a player.

real life should have nothing to do with this game. i don't want taxes, i don't want my gold taken from me if my character dies (this is NOT diablo afterall), it is not my fault that a new player has nothing, let them get off their ass and earn it just like everyone else has.

I started with nothing and I earned every gold piece, blue/purple/gold/green item i have.

sharing or distributing the wealth is an idea that i do not consider a viable option in real life nor would I consider it in a game. That sounds more like a socialism viewpoint than anything and we have enough problems with that in the real world than to have to worry about that mentality in a game.

if there is an item i want i earn the money and i get it, i don't ask the developers to make everything cheaper for me, i dont sit around in a town begging for gold either.

To me that would be like blaming a guy that drives a bmw instead of a chevy, does he have to have the bmw? no, but if he can afford it then let him have it, i don't care and it's not my problem.

Quoted for truth. TY. If GW ever got to the point of taxing me or taking out gold for skill points/exp scrolls/salvage kits/etc.. or made me share what i worked my ass off for to give a piece of it to some guy who just bought GW, then id quit and never think about comming back to this game again. i have enough taxes and am forced to give enough of my real life money away to lazy people tyvm

Unfortuntely - most of the above.

The quantity of gold and items in the game does not increase without limit.

You do not understand the difference between NPC traders and NPC merchants and crafters.

The traders trade and take more than 20% of thier turn over as profit which is gold extracted from the economy.

The merchants sell items which are consumed removing a large amount of gold. They also buy items taking items out of the economy and adding a small amount of gold.

Players have limited storage space so items they can't sell to other players (directly or via an NPC traders) will be discarded or sold to merchants.

All customized items eventually become useless when the are replaced by better items or the character they are customized for is deleted. They are discarded or salvaged.

The economy isn't in any serious trouble and isn't heading that way, it has been deflating over the last couple of months. Most crafting materials are cheaper now that they have been in the past and the price players can ask for 'godly' items has also fallen.


Yes some players have loads of gold (I do) and I could spend a stupid amount of it on a weapon that doesn't work any better than something from a desert collector which cost 5 bits of crap dropped by monsters. New players can't do the same - so what?

The only problem for new (poor) players at the moment is the price of some of the superior runes. Runes are only traded so the price depends on supply and demand. ANet should increase the supply of some of the runes to keep the price within the reach of newer players.

I have been surprised by the price increase of these runes which I can only assume is the result of reduced supply. I thought the introduction of chests would increase the supply but it seems the nerfing of rune farming areas was more significant (or perhaps ANet also lowered the drop rates).

As for simply removing gold from the encomony as someone suggested - get a clue. Man has used a trading currency instead of bartering since the dark ages with good reason.

You dont always need superiors. case in point as i said earlier. Major vigor goes for about 5k. sup vigor goes for 75k. so 9 health justifies a 70k price jump? it wont help you counter upgrading from a minor rune to a major anyway without getting another health bonus from another source, so is it justified that you have to have a sup vigor over a major one?

Same with sup absorb. yes while an additional -1 dmg is nice, its not protecting you that much. so instead of getting hit for 50 against you you get hit for 49. ill save 95k and take the extra 1 dmg pve wise. for pvp i can unlock it with enough faction and not have to spend a dime