Let’s discuss the GW2 Economy

Lately I have seen a trend of items which people have bought as investments lose a large amount of value. There are a lot of factors that contribute to them loosing value. But the main factor are the items that were added as common drops in the various black lion chests and the implementation of the black lion statutes.

Examples of items which have lost a lot of value are:Living World Season 1 ItemsMost dyes in generalLodestonesHome nodes

This has already affected the whole GW2 economy and most of the items effected will not gain the old value ever back again.There are few things I think they can do to help fix the economy.

These are things they should remove from the Black Lion Chests that are having effect on the economy:

1. Remove dyes from common or uncommon drop!
2.  Remove Season 1 Memory Boxes
3.  Remove Large Crafting
4.  Remove Heavy Crafting Bag
5.  Remove Black Lion Material
6.  Remove Toy Miniature Eggs

Another action that can be taken to help boost the economy is to give players more stuff to craft that will use more uncommonly used materials. The crafting has been heavily concentrated on Mithril and Elder Wood. There are so many other materials that could be used that people have a lot of and never use like silver or gold.There has to be stuff in the game that will allow players to use their materials to make cool stuff without having to farm endlessly for them.

In any case let me know what you think in the comments below and if you can think of anything that they can do to revamp the economy and not keep making stuff loose their value.

@Sombra.3246 said:Lately I have seen a trend of items which people have bought as investments lose a large amount of value.

Any investments have risk, if people invest in buying or hording items then they have to be prepared to take a loss if the values drop. I don't see why anything should be done to try and increase the value of items just to guarantee a profit for people who might have invested in them.

@killermanjaro.5670 said:

@Sombra.3246 said:Lately I have seen a trend of items which people have bought as investments lose a large amount of value.

Exactly, personally I don't believe that anything should be done to the game in order to increase the profits some speculators make. The TP is not the game.

Blaming drop rates for the drop in prices?Please...

Consider the fact that there's finally in the chests worth getting. The price of the chests themselves have jumped from a spit of copper to 5 silver when I checked earlier this week. People are buying/farming keys and finally opening BLCs. With that many being opened, more of the rare items are going to roll out and hit the market.And I couldn't be happier. I sold Meteorlogicus and bought my hair contract at a fraction of its worth compared to 6-8 months ago. And I got a merchant contract.I am actually buying and obtaining things, which makes the game better for me, instead of chasing the usual moving goal posts brought on by inflation or market flippers.

Dyes are lower in value because they are account bound, and the birthday gifts blissfully grant access to most of the older sets, reducing demand. I consider it an extra bonus that each of my way-more-than-9 characters gets this gift, and it's a nice kickback for buying those character slots. With actual money.

Season 1 boxes can stay. If someone's ego is tied to in-game gold account or the "prestige" of a digital item, that's not my nor the rest of the community's problem.

Another action that can be taken to help boost the economy is to give players more stuff to craft that will use more uncommonly used materials.

This I can agree with. And I look at FFXIV as something of an example. There are several crafting/provisioner quests that take stray materials in exchange for experience, reputation, and currency. ANet tried this with provisioner tokens in HoT, but of course it wasn't enough because it was limited to specific gear.

We have Amnoon and Lion's Arch, two great ports of trade. So why aren't we trading?First, find a way for GW2 to automate daily sinks based on market value. (Amnoon needs blueberries! Trade in 100 for a daily token.)Then, make the reward for those dailies have both long term goals (armor pieces, outfits, minis, weapon skins... rotate them out for scarcity) and short term consumables (magic find buff, karma buff, special food, special enhancement, special stat boost that stacks with food/utility) or if we're feeling really ambitious, a gem or two.

No. Nope. No thanks. They’ve finally gotten the BLC to the point they’re worth opening. Nerfing them to protect player’s investments on the trading post isn’t a good idea.

However if you're that concerned about player’s investments you can buy the Black Lion weapon skins I got ages ago as an investment. They never got very high since they keep being re-released so I’m sure you’d like to help me out here. I’ll sell them to you at 200% times current price. /grin

@Sombra.3246 said:if you can think of anything that they can do to revamp the economyThe economy has been revamped, just not in a form that investors happen to like. It's been great for people making their first (or 8th) legendary for themselves.

and not keep making stuff loose their value.First, items have lost market value; the personal value to those who want the shinies presumably hasn't changed that much. Second, why should ANet do anything to help out speculators?

If someone paid 10g a pop for Abyss Dye (as I did) expecting an easy 20g in a few months, it's sad for them that ANet keeps releasing the Shadow Dye Kit (which drops Abyss), driving the market price down to under 3g. It's great for those who want a better-than-budget black.

The only reason that ANet should consider worrying about the the various markets is that people like to have the chance of getting something of great value (to keep or to sell). And currently, most items/containers in the game are simply valued for their materials; the TP prices for named exotics is very low now (1g or less for most weapons), which means every veterans of only a few months won't be too excited.

tl;dr there's no reason ANet has for protecting investments or investors. There might be a reason to adjust drop rates to make loot more exciting for the masses, but that's a different topic.

Translation:"My account value on gw2efficiency is dropping so clearly the developers are doing something wrong"

The OPs definition of boost the economy seems to be make everything on the TP more expensive which is normally indicitive of runaway inflation, which fortunately this game doesnt have.

I have 0 sympathy for TP flippers. You lost your gamble.

You don't happen to be one of the investors? ;)savethewhales thoughtsandprayers4OPsAccountValue

Considering MMOs typically struggle with runaway inflation I actually take it as a good sign that things will drop in price over time as well as increasing.

I suppose technically I've been affected by this, as I've bought items which later dropped in price - most memorably I bought The Lover when it was about 800g (now around 200g) and my mini Karka which only cost me about 17g because I got it the first weekend it was available, but it went up to about 3,000g and then dropped to 40g. But it doesn't bother me because I don't buy things as an investment, I buy them because I want to have them. Someone in one of my guilds actually got really angry with me when I told them I added the mini karka to the wardrobe as soon as it was possible - they kept going on about how I'd 'crashed' my account value because I couldn't sell it, and would not accept that I wouldn't sell it anyway so it didn't matter. The precursor is a bit annoying, because by the time I had everything else for the legendary the price was back down to about 500g, but I didn't know that would happen, it had been rising the entire time I'd been working on the legendary (as had all the other precursors) and there was no indication that would change.

The one exception is I sometimes buy black lion weapon skins to sell later on. But as I never buy keys and only get the weapon skins when I have more tickets than I think I'm likely to need I don't worry too much about the sell price because it's basically free gold.

Nah. Generally speaking, I'm happy with the current state of costs.

@Sombra.3246 said:Another action that can be taken to help boost the economy is to give players more stuff to craft that will use more uncommonly used materials.

This is something I can agree with, and not just from an economy standpoint, I would really like to have more skins available to craft.

@Sombra.3246 said:

This has already affected the whole GW2 economy and most of the items effected will not gain the old value ever back again.

Perhaps they should not regain their old value. Perhaps the current value is more appropriate.

There are few things I think they can do to help fix the economy.

Perhaps the economy does not need fixing.

In some perspectives this IS fixing the economy. Do you really think that it's healthy for a game economy to have some items be priced so high that their value exceeds the maximum trade price on the TP? Do you think it's healthy for commonly used crafting materials to be un-affordable to normal players for basic ascended crafting?

So, you didn't like the response you got to the demands you made in your previous thread, and you posted it again with different wording?

Theres nothing wrong with the economy, theres nothing thats needs fixing.The simplest way to tell if the economy is working is count the number of players who are standing in front of a TP in any of the more populated cities.A failed economy will have none.Prices on the TP will wander all over the place depending on what players are doing in the game.Its a pure supply / demand based economy and the only issue that needs some watching is to prevent hyperinflation due to the games infinite money supply.

I agree with some of what the OP has observed.

There seem to have been steps taken to reintroduce some of the nigh-impossible to obtain items such as some of the Season 1 items, and a few other high-ticket items. I think it's deliberate and well-targeted and probably not a bad thing, though it's certainly going to upset those who have been sitting on some of these items. These items are now available to a wider audience. I think that's a good thing overall.

There's not really a good reason for something like an Iron Node to cost 5000+ gold...they fixed the "supply" side on that particular one and now they're not so hard to obtain, and of course the price dropped significantly. That's not hurting the economy. Arguably helping it, as these are now changing hands much more frequently. It's also better for those that actually want to consume the item.

Nah dud didnt u hear? Economy is better than ever now and its recovering from the evil lord John Smith who brought it to its previous bad state xd

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Malediktus.9250" said:With 5 years of inflation in between. That is nothing short of outrageous and an economist like John Smith would have never let this happen.John Smith would never say anything close to that. Economists are entirely agnostic on the idea of a "good price". He'd tell you that there are just "prices".

When Season 1 was gone and people asked for rerelease a high ranked Anet person said they do not plan to rerelease such items because it would be unfair to the people who played during Season 1.That's not exactly what they said, but even if someone had said that, a lot of players felt that was the wrong attitude, especially since ANet has said, emphatically, that they have no plans to bring back LS1. That would lock a lot of items away from people who had no opportunity to play it.

Now here we are. They got released and at unreasonable quantities too.What does "unreasonable" mean? They could have released just a few, which leaves the items locked. Or they could release them in bulk, so anyone who wants them can afford it. Or anything in between. Some players will prefer one side of that spectrum, while others prefer the other extreme.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/42406 As you can see that price is lower than during Season 1 now for both buy and sell orders. It was quite a rare drop from a LS1 dungeon at first, personally I never got it to drop for me. And I also did not own it when it was worth 10k gold, so in a way I would profit from the price drop now since I could buy in cheap. But the skin lost all value to me the moment this oversupply got introduced.

Same with Mini Karka, it used to be very rare for a long time and one of my favorite Minis. Now it is back to its old price, just that the gold is worth like 10 times less now.http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37206 And the overall supply also seems to be 5 times higher now than during Season 1.Now its not even worth displaying anymore. Stuff worth less than 1k gold is junk tier nowadays.

I could keep this list going for the other Season 1 items, but why bother. People who like rare and expensive items seem to be the minority in this game lol.

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:No. Nope. No thanks. They’ve finally gotten the BLC to the point they’re worth opening. Nerfing them to protect player’s investments on the trading post isn’t a good idea.

However if you're that concerned about player’s investments you can buy the Black Lion weapon skins I got ages ago as an investment. They never got very high since they keep being re-released so I’m sure you’d like to help me out here. I’ll sell them to you at 200% times current price. /grin

So u are basically saying "they made something u can buy from the gemstore for rl money a great way to make gold pls dont nerf" But then again u cant buy better gear so this isnt p2w amirite...

@zealex.9410 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:No. Nope. No thanks. They’ve finally gotten the BLC to the point they’re worth opening. Nerfing them to protect player’s investments on the trading post isn’t a good idea.

However if you're that concerned about player’s investments you can buy the Black Lion weapon skins I got ages ago as an investment. They never got very high since they keep being re-released so I’m sure you’d like to help me out here. I’ll sell them to you at 200% times current price. /grin

Actually, you can’t make gold from the BLC, unless you’re very, very lucky. What I meant was that getting the skin unlocks makes the BLC worthwhile. So no, you aren’t “amirite”.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:No. Nope. No thanks. They’ve finally gotten the BLC to the point they’re worth opening. Nerfing them to protect player’s investments on the trading post isn’t a good idea.

However if you're that concerned about player’s investments you can buy the Black Lion weapon skins I got ages ago as an investment. They never got very high since they keep being re-released so I’m sure you’d like to help me out here. I’ll sell them to you at 200% times current price. /grin

I made alot of gold because blc are so profitable now.

@zealex.9410 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:No. Nope. No thanks. They’ve finally gotten the BLC to the point they’re worth opening. Nerfing them to protect player’s investments on the trading post isn’t a good idea.

However if you're that concerned about player’s investments you can buy the Black Lion weapon skins I got ages ago as an investment. They never got very high since they keep being re-released so I’m sure you’d like to help me out here. I’ll sell them to you at 200% times current price. /grin

In that case you should want them to stay as they are.

Edit: did you make gold or did you make a profit after expenses? Because the two are not the same.

1. Remove dyes from common or uncommon drop!

Id like to see these removed, that update did destroy that market completely, but the problem is the dyes that people want do not drop from the BLC's if they had put those ultra rare ones in there also then it would be different,

6.  Remove Toy Miniature Eggs

This one im split on, when the minis where first in game, Anet eventually removed anyway to get the series 1 etc, and whatever was on the TP was it, they then locked them behind an RNG loot box, that may or may not give you a mini egg.

I generally like the updates to BLC's they are a lot better now than they where a year or 2 ago, but could do with some further changes, id like the abiltity to buy the Wardrobe unlocks directly from the TP 200-300 Gems each.