85 replies to this topic

[Hibiki]

absolute, on 20 August 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Don't Worry.

Be happy/

Edited by Hibiki, 20 August 2012 - 11:52 AM.

[Switchback]

To stop gems from inflating ridiculously they are going to need other valuable items that can be bought with only gold.

Otherwise, what is the incentive for someone to buy gems (with real money) and then sell them for gold? Gold will have next to no value if you can maintain all your gold costs simply by playing the game normally. There needs to be luxury items that you don't need, but that many will want, that are also paid for with gold, not just gems.  This way people with lots of disposable income are encouraged to sell their gems for reasonable prices to the people that have more time to play in game, and thus have more gold.

Short of this, gems will reach prodigously ridiculous prices, as the only things people want will be in the cash shop, and it will begin to look like an excessive money grab.

[Duveth]

there isnt economy in gw2, rare items must be soulbound or people will be able to buy them with real money and that would make the game pay to win, economy in gw2 is only for low level, mats or trade gold for gems.

[Spitfireqt]

TegidVeol, on 19 August 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:

worried about economy in GW2

Don't worry, Goldman Sachs has no branch in Tyria.

Edited by Spitfireqt, 20 August 2012 - 12:03 PM.

[Hibiki]

Switchback, on 20 August 2012 - 11:58 AM, said:

To stop gems from inflating ridiculously they are going to need other valuable items that can be bought with only gold.

Otherwise, what is the incentive for someone to buy gems (with real money) and then sell them for gold? Gold will have next to no value if you can maintain all your gold costs simply by playing the game normally. There needs to be luxury items that you don't need, but that many will want, that are also paid for with gold, not just gems.  This way people with lots of disposable income are encouraged to sell their gems for reasonable prices to the people that have more time to play in game, and thus have more gold.

Short of this, gems will reach prodigously ridiculous prices, as the only things people want will be in the cash shop, and it will begin to look like an excessive money grab.

Because of gold farmers, gold will never ever be valuable

Edited by Hibiki, 20 August 2012 - 12:06 PM.

[TheHanzou]

Hibiki, on 20 August 2012 - 12:06 PM, said:

Because of gold farmers, gold will never ever be valuable

Exactly, people would have to pay equal or more than gold farmers with bots would be willing to pay. And thats not possible.

Same thing happened in D3. Gold dropped from 10$ for 1 Million to 1$ for 10 Million in a matter of days, because of Bot farmers. While Items went from 5Million to 300Million. How do you get 300 Million Gold in D3? U dont. Just farming Gold would take you month. A new player visiting the auction house would think hes dreaming looking at the prices.

This is also the second problem. Gold farmers can get as much gold as they want with bots (in D3 they have trillions). They can dictate the gem price by just buying all the gems (which represent real money basically) with a virtual currency (ingame Gold) that they have in infinite supply.

so on the one hand gold is plumping down with hyperinflation due to bots, on the other hand gems prices are skyrocketing since bot farmers can pay any price...

Its even worse since in D3 u can basically farm 'Gems' (Items) and sell them for Gold or cash (and thus bypass the inflated gold market), and cash is a stable currency because unlike Gold it cant be created out of thin air within the game itself. But in GW2 u cant farm Gems. Gem prices will never have much inflation because they can only be gaines with Cash.

Its basically garantueed that noone can buy gems for gold because of the bots. They could (and thats what STO does which has the same system) regulate the market price of gems artificially, saying gems can never cost more gold than x and never less than y. But that wouldnt really solve the problem.

The only thing normal people can hope for is that they give us means to bypass the auction house for gems (like ingame quests rewards and dailies).

Edited by TheHanzou, 20 August 2012 - 01:44 PM.

[Corvindi]

There was one thing I would do in WoW (not on a big scale, I was no trader) to make a little extra profit.  When I saw someone buying out all the low priced goods, I'd post mine higher than the real value but low enough that they'd buy mine, too.  That way I profited from their manipulation.  Of course, that also means I was helping them, as they would have more to sell at their spiked prices.

Of course, if enough people start noticing market manipulators buying stuff out, we could make it more painful for them by gradually raising prices as we post our items while they're doing their buyouts.

Rynhardt, on 19 August 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

Items were probably worth more during the beta since they had more short-term use. Then again we only had three day's worth of gold circulating. I can bet gems are going to skyrocket compared to beta and just keep going up as time passes.

One thing I wonder if they could do to prevent gems from skyrocketing quite so badly and to prevent groups from buying them up early and making huge profits later is to set the gem prices at a mid range instead of rock bottom, knowing it will go up, but not as steeply as it would if they set it very low.

[Ritualist]

Menehune, on 20 August 2012 - 10:48 AM, said:

Forum thread title : Who else thinks the price of gems is too high?

OP QQ post: WTF?!? Anet said you can buy gems for gold. WTF?!? Anet lied to us !!!!!!!! Who can afford 10g/gem?!?!?!?!?!?

I have gotten the impression that ArenaNet is quite serious about controlling in game inflation. They did after all hire an economist. Yes, they did say that gem prices would be subject to supply and demand, but I really don't think that they would let it run away to the point where hardly anyone would be able to save enough gold to buy any meaningful number of gems. ArenaNet need to, and I'm sure that they really want to, find a balance between maximizing income and player satisfaction. No doubt any cap would be fairly high, but still not so high that it would need hundreds of hours of gold farming.

A high gold cost also means that the people who buy gems with money get back a lot of gold. I am pretty sure that those customers, which happen to also be PAYING customers, will be less than thrilled with a cap on the price.

[absolute]

Hibiki, on 20 August 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

Be happy/

Foreverrr... and everrr...

[Corvindi]

Protoss, on 20 August 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

A high gold cost also means that the people who buy gems with money get back a lot of gold. I am pretty sure that those customers, which happen to also be PAYING customers, will be less than thrilled with a cap on the price.

But how will they feel if gems have such huge purchasing power that a few dollars buys hundreds or thousands of gold, thus causing farmers chasing gems to farm more and inflating the economy so that everything in the Trading Post costs a ridiculous amount?

Moreover, how will that affect people who do not buy gold with gems and struggle to ever buy anything off the trading post because of that inflation?

There are only two good things mitigating what gems will do to inflation.  No pvp twinking at low levels will be viable after a few weeks because there are no brackets to dominate, so it's pretty pointless even in WvW.

Players can, with time and effort, gather and then craft everything they could possibly need, and if they want more specific stats, they can always run dungeons for that gear, so no one will be hobbled by high prices on the market and if the market gets too out of hand, no one will buy anything, thus decreasing the demand for gold even if a few gems buys a ridiculous amount of it.

Now if only they'd remove the gold component completely from WvW, that would really make me happy.

Edited by Corvindi, 20 August 2012 - 02:34 PM.

[Rynhardt]

Crazy little idea here, what if global gem prices could only be affected by a single person so much in a period of time? So one person buying $100 worth of gems can't jack up the price on his own, only up to a cap of maybe the first $20 of gems influencing the global price, but instead gets a higher personal price that stabilizes over a long period of time? I imagine it could work the other way around, too. It could be called the "luxury tax" or maybe they just wouldn't announce it at all...

But so long as bots aren't a problem, this wouldn't really need to happen.

[PlzNot]

For the Gold to Gem exchange: If the price per Gem goes too high (subject to hourly Gold gain - which we don't know what it will be at level 80 yet); then the Exchange Market fails as too few people buy Gems and people stop bothering to try and sell their extra. What I would consider "fair" would be equal to 800 Gems for about two or three hours of play. That's less than Minimum wage; but then I'm playing a game not working. To me, less than that wouldn't be worth the time nor effort to trade Gold into Gems. Those without jobs may feel differently.

Also, having a 24 hour median delay on Gem prices would stop anyone or small groups of people from causing a spike in pricing. A median value change would self regulate any potential spikes or drops (this could even apply to all items in the Market too). If a single person buys out ALL of something and tries to gouge the price up; by the time the price change lands, a median value has already adjusted as other players have refilled what the market manipulator bought out.
Ex: if someone buys out all the copper and tries to push the price up; it would be against a 24 hour median and the fact that other players are still putting their own copper in. The market manipulator would then have a lot of copper on hand that they could only sell back at the average price.

A suggested fix for D3 AH may also work well here. I didn't suggest this; just saw it some time ago and I liked the idea behind it. On top of the fee to sell, a penalty is paid for items that do not sell within their time frame. The penalty is a flat % of whatever the asking price was. This stops players from 1) Using the Market place as a storage by asking way too much knowing no one will buy it 2) stops over pricing of goods. If the seller is asking too much, the product wont sell and he/she could lose money. Which means a fairer sales price would have to be listed.
Another penalty I saw once was one that once a seller places his/her item on the market; it's gone. If it doesn't sell within the sales window, the Marketplace pays out the NPC Merchant value. This would allow Anet to set the market as a base and keep inflation in check. Players may end up with a gazillion gold; but new players in years down the road wont hit the "Millionaires Marketplace" head on. Anet can then add in new gold sinks as time goes on without penalizing new players.

Anyway, just ideas for the topic. Not sure I agree with a few; but thought it might be good for conversation (as we all wait for release).

[Tallenn]

If the price goes "too high" then people won't buy them. As a result, the price will go back down.

A free market is a self-correcting market. There's no such thing as "too high" or "too low" when it gets right down to it. The price will be whatever someone is willing to pay / sell for- no more, no less. The price might be too high or too low FOR YOU, but if there are other people willing to pay more (or settle for less), you will have to wait until they have bought (or sold) all they are willing to, raise the amount you are willing to pay (or lower your asking price), or choose not to buy (or sell) at all. In other words, if the price is more than you are willing to pay, it's not that the price is too high, it's that your expectation of what the price should be is too low, at least at that particular point in time.

[Lachanche]

well that' s what you get for duplicating items, everything becomes inflated and the economy breaks down

[PlzNot]

Tallenn, on 20 August 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

If the price goes "too high" then people won't buy them. As a result, the price will go back down.

A free market is a self-correcting market. There's no such thing as "too high" or "too low" when it gets right down to it. The price will be whatever someone is willing to pay / sell for- no more, no less. The price might be too high or too low FOR YOU, but if there are other people willing to pay more (or settle for less), you will have to wait until they have bought (or sold) all they are willing to, raise the amount you are willing to pay (or lower your asking price), or choose not to buy (or sell) at all. In other words, if the price is more than you are willing to pay, it's not that the price is too high, it's that your expectation of what the price should be is too low, at least at that particular point in time.

Good point

[Meh_GW]

Its all about supply and demand. I can guarantee there will be guilds (like there are in other games) that are there to control certain items on the market.

For anyone who plays Fifa Ultimate Team you will know what im talking. "Price Fixing" is a term i use loosely.

This of course it me guessing, ive yet to even play GW2

[Corvindi]

Meh_GW, on 20 August 2012 - 06:07 PM, said:

Its all about supply and demand. I can guarantee there will be guilds (like there are in other games) that are there to control certain items on the market.

For anyone who plays Fifa Ultimate Team you will know what im talking. "Price Fixing" is a term i use loosely.

This of course it me guessing, ive yet to even play GW2

Indeed, this will happen.  I hope there are a lot of barriers Anet has put in place to prevent this sort of manipulation (direct or indirect) on gem prices.

The only thing that really comforts me is that I've played the market on a miniscule scale in other games just so I could get stuff sold at a fair price.  I've also spent a couple days doing some research on how to play the market a bit in this one (thanks, Freelancer, you really got me thinking about the market and how not to get ripped off as well as how to make a little bit-okay, a lot!-of extra gold!).

So now I get to add 'playing the market to accumulate a silly amount of wealth' as yet another GW2 activity I want to get into.  Which is kind of neat, except I already have so many other things I want to do as well!

Edited by Corvindi, 20 August 2012 - 06:33 PM.

[Cyvil]

If someone manages to corner the market on a particular item, and the prices skyrocket, couldn't Anet simply make that item available from a karma vendor? That is the other currency, currently available, that will help stabilize the market.

[PlzNot]

Cyvil, on 20 August 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

If someone manages to corner the market on a particular item, and the prices skyrocket, couldn't Anet simply make that item available from a karma vendor? That is the other currency, currently available, that will help stabilize the market.

Without normalization or a median the solution to that is simply don't buy and gather it ourselves; which then also means cashing in on high prices from un-wary people if we want to sell.

If the Gem exchange falls into this; I'm not sure how it would work itself out without Anet stepping in though. it could quickly become a cesspool like the D3 AH/RMAH. As Tallenn said too; a price too high for me might not be too high for another. Who knows, I'm sure there's someone out there that wont mind farming a full week to buy 1 Gem.

[Meh_GW]

I watched all of that Freelancer video and his method is actually genius.

Also threw out some great tips for average gamers who just want to have just enough money to get through without having to spends hours on end looking at the trading post.

Very nice!

[Switchback]

Tallenn, on 20 August 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

If the price goes "too high" then people won't buy them. As a result, the price will go back down.

A free market is a self-correcting market. There's no such thing as "too high" or "too low" when it gets right down to it. The price will be whatever someone is willing to pay / sell for- no more, no less. The price might be too high or too low FOR YOU, but if there are other people willing to pay more (or settle for less), you will have to wait until they have bought (or sold) all they are willing to, raise the amount you are willing to pay (or lower your asking price), or choose not to buy (or sell) at all. In other words, if the price is more than you are willing to pay, it's not that the price is too high, it's that your expectation of what the price should be is too low, at least at that particular point in time.

There are reasonable price goals for Anet to try and maintain. Just becuase you can find 1 person, let's say who plays the game 20 hours a day, who can and will afford to pay a price for something, we'll say gems, does not mean that the economy is working.

The whole point to having gems be purchasable with gold, is to have a way for them to be exchanged between people spending real money in the cash shop and those who don't, but spend more time in game perhaps, and thus have more game resources like gold.

If you are at a point where it takes months of, farming really, to earn enough gold to buy gems for say a armor set in the cash shop, then I think the system has failed mightily.

Edited by Switchback, 20 August 2012 - 10:10 PM.

[Slashiroth]

Are you actually worried, or is this just to make a topic?

Check out some arenanet interviews, they have an economist who will oversee all of Tyria in GW2. We should get some nice info out of him sometime soon, and also hes also shared a lot of information about gold sinks. The video is out there, just for you to find it.

[esteray13]

Spitfireqt, on 20 August 2012 - 12:01 PM, said:

Don't worry, Goldman Sachs has no branch in Tyria.

or do they??

[Tallenn]

Switchback, on 20 August 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

There are reasonable price goals for Anet to try and maintain. Just becuase you can find 1 person, let's say who plays the game 20 hours a day, who can and will afford to pay a price for something, we'll say gems, does not mean that the economy is working.

The whole point to having gems be purchasable with gold, is to have a way for them to be exchanged between people spending real money in the cash shop and those who don't, but spend more time in game perhaps, and thus have more game resources like gold.

If you are at a point where it takes months of, farming really, to earn enough gold to buy gems for say a armor set in the cash shop, then I think the system has failed mightily.

If real life has taught us anything, it's that attempts to control an economy ALWAYS fail. NO ONE has the intelligence to know what a price "should" be, and how it will affect the rest of the economy. Only the entirety of participants in the market, all working for their own enlightened self interest, can set prices "properly". Any attempt by an outside source, such as a government in the case of a real life economy, or the game company in the case of a game economy, will only muck things up, often with disastrous results. Just as in physics, for every action, there is a reaction. If the outside source implements any kind of price-fixing, there will be parts of the economy that figure out how to turn that to their advantage, at the expense of the rest of the market. Only a completely free market can keep that kind of thing under control.

A governing body's place in a free market (in this case, Arena Net) is to investigate and punish instances of theft, fraud, monopolization, scams, etc, and deal with them on a case by case basis. Any attempts to "prevent" these things will fail. They always have, and always will. Often, the very things that are supposed to prevent open the door to even worse methods. The only way to deal with them that works is to find and eradicate them after they have occurred.

[TheHanzou]

you are all confusing real life economy with our virtual economy. Of course we have supply and demand regulating the market here too, but thats exactly whats BAD about it.

Gold Farmers with bots can pay any price for the gems, and they will, because their supply of gold is infinite. Its like having someone with infinite amounts of cash in real life. A normal players gold supply is limited by his farming time and will be much much less. Normal players cannot pay what bot farmers can pay. What happens next? Gem prices will skyrocket. Because if not then the bots can get insane quantities of them very fast and sell them via Ebay and undercut the shops gemprice by a lot. If that happens Anet is gonna lose a lot of money. Actually they dont even need to do that, they can just sell the gold equivalent to undercut the shopprice for gems.

what you need if you sell something like this is a highly regulated market. The only way to keep gems achivable for normal placers is via heavy price regulation by A.Net. because botters dont care about the price they purchase at. Its actually not in A.Nets interest to make gems tradable with ingame currency because it just lets Botusers undercut their cashprices via Ebay and destroys their profit. Thats why they should have cut down on their greed and make gems more optional than it actually is right now but only purchasable for real money.

how are gold sinks going to stop anything like this? botusers couldnt care less about any gold sinks. If anything it makes gold more valuable and thus increases their profit margin.

It doesnt matter if you have a real economist watch this, how is he gonna stop it? Look at other games that have real cash (or equivalent, like gems) purchasable via ingame gold. D3, Star Trek Online, EVE Online? What happened there? Hyperinflation. Items cost up to 600 Millions now, you need several months to farm this ingame. All because of Botusers. And its not a new trend, bots are really good constructed these days and you cant stop them. What happens is that some bots get banned every few month but they already farmed 100x the money for a new copy of the game in that time..

Edited by TheHanzou, 21 August 2012 - 10:49 PM.

[kitanas]

TheHanzou, on 21 August 2012 - 10:21 PM, said:

you are all confusing real life economy with our virtual economy. Of course we have supply and demand regulating the market here too, but thats exactly whats BAD about it.

Gold Farmers with bots can pay any price for the gems, and they will, because their supply of gold is infinite. Its like having someone with infinite amounts of cash in real life. A normal players gold supply is limited by his farming time and will be much much less. Normal players cannot pay what bot farmers can pay. What happens next? Gem prices will skyrocket. Because if not then the bots can get insane quantities of them very fast and sell them via Ebay and undercut the shops gemprice by a lot. If that happens Anet is gonna lose a lot of money. Actually they dont even need to do that, they can just sell the gold equivalent to undercut the shopprice for gems.

what you need if you sell something like this is a highly regulated market. The only way to keep gems achivable for normal placers is via heavy price regulation by A.Net. because botters dont care about the price they purchase at. Its actually not in A.Nets interest to make gems tradable with ingame currency because it just lets Botusers undercut their cashprices via Ebay and destroys their profit. Thats why they should have cut down on their greed and make gems more optional than it actually is right now but only purchasable for real money.

how are gold sinks going to stop anything like this? botusers couldnt care less about any gold sinks. If anything it makes gold more valuable and thus increases their profit margin.

It doesnt matter if you have a real economist watch this, how is he gonna stop it? Look at other games that have real cash (or equivalent, like gems) purchasable via ingame gold. D3, Star Trek Online, EVE Online? What happened there? Hyperinflation. Items cost up to 600 Millions now, you need several months to farm this ingame. All because of Botusers. And its not a new trend, bots are really good constructed these days and you cant stop them. What happens is that some bots get banned every few month but they already farmed 100x the money for a new copy of the game in that time..

wait, are you trying to say that botters, who are trying to sell people money, would try to drive up gem prices? that would mean that the people who want in-game gold (their customers) would be incentive to purchase gems and convert to gold.. they are in direct competion with the people who sell gold for gems.

EDIT: or are you saying that people would sell gems directly for cash? how would they do that...

Edited by kitanas, 22 August 2012 - 03:57 AM.