32 replies to this topic

[Keepy]

Well my title said it all , when it reached 50 silver per i was already about to faint and no im not stacking on them i wasnt smart enough to do that. A guild mate of mine smart and quietly have like 20k+ gems he bought them when they were cheap i wish i was smart enough.

So i have a question.. there was a time in the USA when there was too many lobsters a phenomenon occurred in the bay area that there where too many of them, they was selling them so cheap that they even gave them to the people in jail, the used the lobsters to fertilize the soil etc. xD well so many lobsters = low prices of lobsters.

So what makes the prices of gems rise? I know many players are buying and buying i think that when a product like a Xbox or IPhone etc,.. is selling so good: 1. they arent highly overpriced they are added in a reasonable price and if theres too many of them they lower the price.

The change from yesterday to today is more than 10 silver, is dramatic(latetly fluctuate like that increasing fast) Im having hopes that it will go down but nope it keep rising. And when you enter the TP Gem exchange said is 50s per but when you are going to buy you have to pay 69, thats almost 70 silvers per gems gentleman and what im afraid and i will totally HATE is when i have to pay 1g per 125 gems more or less. Im already feeling like someone is grabbing my neck and i cant breath if it doesnt stop the price going up we will get used to seeing it that way and adjust and do the same and same and sadly this just remind me of jade Dynasty from Perfect World...
1 Jaden = 999 Gold (max price) - i remember when it was 50 silver per Jaden (Jaden=currency in game)


- I dont say they just want the game currency high so we are forced to buy gems with real money , i dont want to feel like that. Like i was on Jade Dynasty that was more cheaper to buy Game currency with real money than with gold in game...

So if the Diamonds are so rare.. is that why they are so expensive, but how the gems in this game become rare when they are infinite... Stop the price before is insane Arena.net you have the power to control the economy and you can be more efficient than the President on this one.

 gw09811.jpg   98.54K   425 downloads

 gw09911.jpg   95.21K   387 downloads

- Please dont troll my thread im really sad... A reason why many people like to play games is because real life sucks too many war and sadness, games dont have to be sad like life, game can actually be controlled and made better , funner and enjoyable.

Edited by Keepy, 18 October 2012 - 03:52 AM.

[Essence Snow]

Here's a tidbit from John Smith lead economist of gw2

Quote

That is correct, there has never been a completely free market in any MMO, patches and fixes modify markets

In other words they code it as they see fit. If they want the price to go up....they code it...if they want to to go down...they code it. Let's be honest here anet only benefits when the price goes up, so there is zero reason for them t to in-act any counter measures to the inflation. Ofc this is just my opinion based on my rationalization of common sense.

Somewhere I saw that Halloween has something to do with it. ...ie costume brawl will require gem shop costumes and something to do with tourny tickets. Ofc these reqs for these activiites was decided upon by anet, thus only furthering my theory that they want prices inflated

Edited by Essence Snow, 18 October 2012 - 03:56 AM.

[RabidusIncendia]

You're missing one thing: the primary reasons for gems, and not simply paying directly for cash shop items without gems, is to curb gold seller prices.  It's working, right now gold sellers have to sell extraordinarily cheaper, ten times in fact, than the gems price atm.  Directly controlling gems outside of supply and demand would only make people want to buy the then much cheaper gold from botters.

I just don't see directly changing it as an option.

Additionally, inflation is inevitable due to the lack of gear grind:  People having nothing left to spend gold on except vanity items and convenience, and the cash shop does this best.  Expect gems to hit the one gold mark pretty soon.

Oh and bots are not helping.  at all

Edited by RabidusIncendia, 18 October 2012 - 04:49 AM.

[rusticgamer]

Stop complaining. If gems stayed cheap who would buy gems with real money when they could just spend like 10 golds for a high amount. Thus Anet woudn't have sales and will have less income, which btw means less staff, which in turn means less updates, bug fixes, etc.
Anet should actually make them more expensive. Also if you would know how to make money then you wouldn't think it's expensive.

[Kraviec]

There is more currency in the market, people can afford buying significant amounts of gems, demand goes up and price goes up. Inflation is imminent in a MMO, cause you can't place too many gold sinks, cause that would make doing dungeons and farming unviable sources of money and well, make the game unrewarding.

[littleXuro]

Stock up while you can, at this rate they will hit the 1.5g / 100 around christmas and since christmas sells the most cash shop related items in every MMO I played, they might even skyrocket more.

After 5 days I'm now at 11.200 / 25.000 gems (might go for 30.000 if I can keep this pace of acquiring them up), I'm just using the profit I earn from farming and WvW every day

Edited by littleXuro, 18 October 2012 - 01:42 PM.

[squalleonahar]

lucky my goal in GW2 is reaching 100k gems and then 1 mil gems.
so i bought 50k gems when it was 25s =100.
i hope it'll hit 2g = 100 gems by chrismast. muahahah
also with the botting running around farming, gold will lose value no matter what. also b/c topic like this people running to buy more gems => gems price raise.

[I swung 4 times]

Arenanet needs to continue to raise the Gold Value of Gems to put the Gold Sellers and the bots out of business.

[evilbob]

Gems are going up at the moment so dramatically because of the halloween announcement about Black Lion Chests having unique drops.  Chest prices have spiked and people are buying gems with their gold to get keys.

And when I say "people" I really mean the ~5% of the population who has tons and tons of gold from early speculating and lucky market flips.  I think the vast majority of players (I'm guessing over 95%) still don't have a ton of gold yet.

[DeConstruct]

I've concluded Arenanet is conning the players with the gem to/from gold conversions. Before release they said gem rates would be according a virtual supply. Supply would be created by players selling gems for gold or by spending real world cash on gems.

Following that logic, at release, the gem prices slowly went down as people injected their money. And they did. Prices went up again slowly as expected because the "spending peak" had passed.

Now as you may or may not know, sales of the game were blocked for a while after release, because of the overwhelming numbers. Few weeks after release the sales opened up again. Now, if the system were still intact, you would expect a similar phenomenon to release. As tons of new sales got made, real world currency would increase the virtual supply of gems (result: gold to gem prices go down). Except nothing happened. In fact, the gold to gem prices went up again, at a faster rate they did before.

I've concluded there are two possible scenarios in which this would happen.
1 - Arenanet artificially controlling the exchange rate. You could argue that it is to curb gold sellers. But all it does is shift the problem from one end to another. While gold inflation can be problematic for players, the exchange rate is the same. While the trading post is relatively unaffected by it, it will continue operating on ingame gold after all, we're about to reach a point of change. This upcoming Halloween event, all events following and increased Black Lion Trading Post items are going to put additional pressure on people to spend gold on gems. So Arenanet would rather con you themselves in this scenarios, than let gold sellers do it.

2 - Masses of players are hoarding gems by the hundreds of thousands, removing them from the economy. The irony is that this would probably be done by gold sellers as well. The idea behind it is with the current gem inflation the gems would gather interest, much like a bank account. The gem to gold selling will reach a point where the seller will get more gold than he bought them for. Also, Arenanet will keep adding items to the Black Lion Trading Post, effectively increasing the gem worth over time, which makes it attractive to hoard them.

What should Arenanet do to remedy this? In my eyes it's simple, but would be unpopular: Gem decay. In life, for every interest gained, there is a tax on the other end. Make it so every week, or month or so, a percentage of gems would re-enter the economy.

[Pysgasm]

Interesting concept but some of us have lots of gems we've purchased with our own money... I don't want to lose gems I bought with cash... it would have to differentiate between gems bought with gold and cash but we don't even know if they have that capability.

[Mireles]

There is a tax associated with converting gems into gold.... make sure when expecting things to appreciate in value that the profit over comes this tax.... this was put into place to make self inflating harder.

Edited by Mireles, 19 October 2012 - 06:40 PM.

[Keepy]

I dont understand how the gold sellers had something to do with this, dont get me wrong i dont like bots or gold sellers. But IF buying gold from other player would be cheaper for buying gems than buying the gem directly from the game company i think theres a problem there with the game company, meaning they are expensive. But oh well gems now are almost 80 silver per. This is not gonna stop i believe GG.

If they want people like me to buy gems with real money they can make a super awesome fashion with special effects that you can buy with gems using $$$ and with gems using gold (so is available to both players and a bit expensive) there must be balance in everything so we dont end like Perfect World and NEXON. oh God i hate those 2 companies. I wanted to play GW2 because of the mechanics of GW1,  they should have done same strategies etc. marketing. will see what happens.

[IDarko]

I should have bought a lot more when they were 21s. Having that said, i'm still going to make like 300%+ profit.

Do you guys expect them to drop after Halloween? Because i don't. Especially with the amount of new items that are coming after Halloween. The make-over stuff and wintersday stuff will also come soon. So i might hold them even longer.

[littleXuro]

IDarko, on 19 October 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

I should have bought a lot more when they were 21s. Having that said, i'm still going to make like 300%+ profit.

Do you guys expect them to drop after Halloween? Because i don't. Especially with the amount of new items that are coming after Halloween. The make-over stuff and wintersday stuff will also come soon. So i might hold them even longer.

After thinking about it, I decided to keep all gems I bought and still buying this weekend. With all future upcoming events, it would be stupid to sell them now and having to rebuy them in half a year for a new event when the price is maybe tripled or even worse.

It's a pretty big loss for me right now (about 100g) but in the long term it will pay off for sure.

Edited by littleXuro, 19 October 2012 - 10:26 PM.

[squalleonahar]

my goal in GW2 is 1millions gems, not legendary, so i keeping them no matter what price it raised to. lol
but i think with those  bots running around, gold lose value even more untill Anet can solve that problem. plus chrismast comming soon too.
hope i can reach 1 mil gems in .....3 years muahahaha casualy play.

[pswendel]

DeConstruct, on 19 October 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

I've concluded Arenanet is conning the players with the gem to/from gold conversions. Before release they said gem rates would be according a virtual supply. Supply would be created by players selling gems for gold or by spending real world cash on gems.

Following that logic, at release, the gem prices slowly went down as people injected their money. And they did. Prices went up again slowly as expected because the "spending peak" had passed.

Now as you may or may not know, sales of the game were blocked for a while after release, because of the overwhelming numbers. Few weeks after release the sales opened up again. Now, if the system were still intact, you would expect a similar phenomenon to release. As tons of new sales got made, real world currency would increase the virtual supply of gems (result: gold to gem prices go down). Except nothing happened. In fact, the gold to gem prices went up again, at a faster rate they did before.

I've concluded there are two possible scenarios in which this would happen.
1 - Arenanet artificially controlling the exchange rate. You could argue that it is to curb gold sellers. But all it does is shift the problem from one end to another. While gold inflation can be problematic for players, the exchange rate is the same. While the trading post is relatively unaffected by it, it will continue operating on ingame gold after all, we're about to reach a point of change. This upcoming Halloween event, all events following and increased Black Lion Trading Post items are going to put additional pressure on people to spend gold on gems. So Arenanet would rather con you themselves in this scenarios, than let gold sellers do it.

2 - Masses of players are hoarding gems by the hundreds of thousands, removing them from the economy. The irony is that this would probably be done by gold sellers as well. The idea behind it is with the current gem inflation the gems would gather interest, much like a bank account. The gem to gold selling will reach a point where the seller will get more gold than he bought them for. Also, Arenanet will keep adding items to the Black Lion Trading Post, effectively increasing the gem worth over time, which makes it attractive to hoard them.

What should Arenanet do to remedy this? In my eyes it's simple, but would be unpopular: Gem decay. In life, for every interest gained, there is a tax on the other end. Make it so every week, or month or so, a percentage of gems would re-enter the economy.

People are hoarding them (your option #2) for a variety of reasons.

Gem decay is ridiculous. No. Why would people then even buy gems? It's moot for me to even comment on this, as it's not every going to happen.

[Renevas]

Gold sellers likely did have a part to play since the the inflation caused by players buying gems with gold wasn't offset by players buying gems with $$ due to poor conversation rate to gold compared to what the gold sellers offered. In a way this new inflated value could be good in that it may push gold sellers out of business and also lead to stabalizing of the gem prices. Also, I don't really seem the price dropping any until after the christmas event ends. Once the Halloween event ends people will just be stocking up gems again in preparation for wintersday.

[DeConstruct]

pswendel, on 20 October 2012 - 12:22 AM, said:

People are hoarding them (your option #2) for a variety of reasons.

Gem decay is ridiculous. No. Why would people then even buy gems? It's moot for me to even comment on this, as it's not every going to happen.

I said it wouldnt be popular. People would buy gems to spend them, not to keep them. Businesses dont have an endless supply of materials. You know why? Because there is a cost of keeping stock. It encourages them to lower their supplies. It already happens with gold. It becomes worth less and less due to inflation. It needs to be corrected on the other end.

[Castaa]

Ugh, I'm trying to acculate the 2,400 Gems required to purchase 3 additional character slots, so I can have a character of each class.

$30 is an outrageous amount to spend for those 3 additional character slots.  For $45 I could simply purchase another account.

Any suggestions?

Edited by Castaa, 22 October 2012 - 04:15 PM.

[Xanarot]

10 Euro = 800 Gems = 4g (something like that, but 4g keeps math simple).

Precursor go as much as 300g = 60.000 gems = 750 Euro.


Precursors should as such sell insanely well on ebay. If they dont sell good or at lower price, then it means the in-game gold to Gem ratio must still go up.

The entire supply in the system now, comes from all those people getting 2000 gems for free during Beta looking to cash out. When that supply runs dry, and it starts to rely on money->gold to supply gems, we can probably expect pricings well over 2g/100gems. Simply because nobody will put in that kinda cash into a game if there is no substantial return, such as say a full exotic armor set or exotic minipet in terms of gold recieved.

Edited by Xanarot, 22 October 2012 - 10:02 AM.

[RabidusIncendia]

People got 2000 gems because of beta?  IIRC, the only gems that passed on to release were those bought via credit card, the free ones never passed on.

[Lordkrall]

RabidusIncendia, on 22 October 2012 - 11:04 AM, said:

People got 2000 gems because of beta?  IIRC, the only gems that passed on to release were those bought via credit card, the free ones never passed on.

Indeed.
Those free gems gotten in beta was removed.
Everything was removed between beta and head start, but any gems bought with real money was given back at head start.

[Pysgasm]

I wouldn't say they are skyrocketing, the progression is gradual and in line with the amount of disposable income that players generate.

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems

They are going to continue to go up. Sure I bet some people bought third party gold to purchase gems. Hopefully Anet is doing something about the buyers (because it is theft of their intellectual property) but that remains to be seen. Regardless I don't see anything that doesn't match up with the normal game progression.

[Havana Crab]

It's funny how cheap gems still were when this was written.  Anyone predict a slight decrease in gem cost after the holidays?

[xExitium]

It was even cheaper before this thread.  Like 18s/100. lol
I don't think the price of gem will drop alot during holiday event.

Edited by xExitium, 12 December 2012 - 07:11 AM.

[evilbob]

I don't know why the price of gems will drop again, ever.  It might be the case that a lot of people get some holiday money and decide to blow it on some gems and maybe buy a few gold, and that might make a slight dip.  But I wouldn't hold my breath.  I can see it leveling off at some point when buying gold with real money is so easy enough people just say "ah, screw it," but even then I wouldn't expect prices to drop back down - merely level off.

For future posting's sake, the price of 100 gems jumped to over 2g30s within the last 24 hours as Wintersday event hype gets to an all-time high. It's average recently has been a slightly more modest ~2g or so.  What we wouldn't GIVE to have the "faint-inducing" 50s price now, eh?  

[Soki]

evilbob, on 13 December 2012 - 07:41 PM, said:

I don't know why the price of gems will drop again, ever.  It might be the case that a lot of people get some holiday money and decide to blow it on some gems and maybe buy a few gold, and that might make a slight dip.  But I wouldn't hold my breath.  I can see it leveling off at some point when buying gold with real money is so easy enough people just say "ah, screw it," but even then I wouldn't expect prices to drop back down - merely level off.

For future posting's sake, the price of 100 gems jumped to over 2g30s within the last 24 hours as Wintersday event hype gets to an all-time high. It's average recently has been a slightly more modest ~2g or so.  What we wouldn't GIVE to have the "faint-inducing" 50s price now, eh?  

I knew it would happen.
Everybody called me stupid for liquifying my 30g into gems within the first month.
HAH!

[LFk]

I prefer it like this, and I hope it continues to rise. Gold is entirely too easy to make, and cheap gems would provide very little motivation for people to buy gems. I dislike it when people rag on a company for trying to make money: profitable games keep their staff employed, their funding from parent companies steady, and the game will continue to get developed. These are all things I want. Thus, I want ANet to make a buck.

In fact, I would have preferred no Gem/Gold exchange at all, making gem items meant to be paid for with money to support the company. After all. gem store items rarely incur any vast, ground shaking in-game bonuses, and ANet has been very reasonable in the scope of not making any of the items necessary to play the game. (Armor skins, costumes, tools, convenience services. Very modest bonuses for boosters. No equipment with any stats whatsoever.)

Still, I understand that ANet is *trying* to curb gold sellers, and like it or not, the gem conversion does put pressure on gold farmers by offering a safe, company sanctioned, fast, guaranteed way for those who want to buy gold. It's been shown in the past that many players want to buy gold, and will do it from 3rd party sites in the absence of any other option. I'd rather that money go to ANet than to bot-farmers. Bot-farmers will always have to keep their exchange rates better in order to compete, but at the very least their business is indeed cut into by those valuing security and convenience. Can't say i'm against that.

Edited by LFk, 13 December 2012 - 09:50 PM.

[evilbob]

I have absolutely no problem with the price of gems, except for the two things that I was sad about before the game even launched:  bank and character slots.  These are more than just quality-of-life improvements:  they are nigh-required to play the game.  You can't even make a character for each profession without buying character slots.  As someone who likes playing alts, this one really hit me hard.

And as someone who is still by most definitions a casual player, I am too casual to ever be able to afford these things via in-game gold.  I should have been better about buying a few gems here and there toward the beginning of the game, but throughout the 4 months this game has been live, "buying a character slot with in game gold" has been either impossible or it would take over 85% of my total resources (for a single slot), which is also basically impossible.  The idea that I was supposed to be able to play at my own pace and enjoy these basic parts of the game is just not true.