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Ectos economy regulation?


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Will there be done something against he rapid fall of the ecto price? As a veteran from the beginning this starts to worry me. In Gw 1 already ectos were a more or less stable constant that never crashed as extremely as it does now and is also taken as a reference like gold to money in reality.

Will the Palawadan flood stream on without barriers, no ecto sinks added and nothing done?

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@EthanLightheart.9168 said:Will there be done something against he rapid fall of the ecto price? As a veteran from the beginning this starts to worry me. In Gw 1 already ectos were a more or less stable constant that never crashed as extremely as it does now and is also taken as a reference like gold to money in reality.

Will the Palawadan flood stream on without barriers, no ecto sinks added and nothing done?

Why exactly does something need to be done? A depressed ecto market might be bad for those who bought up tons of rares/ectos 12 months ago, but it's great for people infusing their backpacks for the first time, those making their first legendaries, and so on.

Further, in GW1, ectos were never all that stable; the price fluctuated weekly by as much as 30% for as long as I followed it. It was fairly trivial to make money from buying ecto at a monthly low and selling at monthly peaks (sometimes you didn't even have to wait that long). While ectos fluctuate in GW1, it's never been enough to profit, especially due to the 15% transaction fees.

Personally, I'd be very happy if ANet would adjust something, partly because my wealth in mats would skyrocket, but more so because right now, loot feels relatively meager. The guaranteed rare from world bosses is now super anemic: a smooth Claw of Jormag fight might take 10 minutes for 30s worth of rares, whereas you can spend 1 min at a flax farm and earn 1.5x more. And even exotics are hardly worth much these days: under 50s for a lot of armor pieces, under 1g for even named weapons.

However, none of the solutions are all that great: nerfing ecto drops rates, adding massive sinks, nerfing Istani farming loot

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Thanks for the heads-up! I'm currently working on a legendary so I'll need a lot of ectoplasm over the next few weeks/months and I wasn't looking forward to farming it. Now I know it's actually a good time to just buy it, and I can focus my farming on other, more expensive materials. This is great news. :D

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Ectos, in GW1, at least during the height of the A/E solo farm, lost as much as 80% of their value. Admittedly Anet did put some effort into nerfing the solo farm(s) but that was as much to avoid trivialization of the content, encourage group play in elite areas, as it was to restore value to a commodity.

By the time I stopped playing GW1 I had 8 mule characters with every storage slot filled with stacks of ectos, all worth significantly less than had been the case earlier in the game's life.

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@SkyShroud.2865 said:Lol. This is free market, demand and supply yo. Furthermore, it isn't just ecto dropping, everything is. The game is inflated, not much new players while many old players. This is just sign of declining populations.

It is not a sign of declining populations. It is a sign that Anet is drowning us in rare and exotic gear since PoF (ectos worth less than when Tarir multiloot exploit was going on). Also a sign of Anet not adding enough mat sinks like in the early days of the game.

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@Malediktus.9250 said:

@SkyShroud.2865 said:Lol. This is free market, demand and supply yo. Furthermore, it isn't just ecto dropping, everything is. The game is inflated, not much new players while many old players. This is just sign of declining populations.

It is not a sign of declining populations. It is a sign that Anet is drowning us in rare and exotic gear since PoF (ectos worth less than when Tarir multiloot exploit was going on). Also a sign of Anet not adding enough mat sinks like in the early days of the game.

^^^ This.

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I'm not an expert by any means but I would have thought a declining population, especially if it was due to a lack of new players coming in whilst old players stayed around, would actually lead to inflation because it would mean the majority of players would likely have a lot of gold and/or know how to make gold relatively quickly, so they could afford to pay inflated prices and prices would rise accordingly.

Whereas new players don't have much gold and are less willing to spend it because they find it difficult to get more, so they only buy things that are relatively cheap - meaning if prices rise too much the demand drops because they can't afford to buy, until the prices drop again.

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@SkyShroud.2865 said:Lol. This is free market, demand and supply yo. Furthermore, it isn't just ecto dropping, everything is. The game is inflated, not much new players while many old players. This is just sign of declining populations.

Declining population is real. In my fl usually I see more ppl online at my hours but it's gone down largely. Doesn't look too good.I'm not relating population to market ecto price.

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While players certainly stop playing the game, especially after a bigger patch hit and most people finished their map achieves & are now waiting for new content to come back to, the price drop doesn't have anything to do with it at all.

Have you seen an Istan farm? Have you seen that you can get a full stack of rare gear in 12 hours plus at least 60 gold profit from the other loot? THAT is why the prices are steadily decreasing. Not enough people are actually in need of ectos, because the supply only goes up the more people wake up to this farm existing. Plus, the farm even got buffed last patch by making Amala spawn more champs in total + without waiting many minutes for them to show up beforehand.

In fact, I am seriously surprised by how many people have no idea about this. Many of my guildmates as well as random casual players were still shocked when they heard of it a few days ago. That just shows how many people either don't pay attention or simply don't farm - which is perfectly fine and also a big positive. These people are the ones that would create the demand.

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Ecto in GW1 was rare enough that it was treated almost as currency. You would see "WTS Uber Item of Stupendousness for 5P + 20 Ecto blah blah blah." In GW2, ecto is simply another material that stores in one's bank. It's not difficult to get (I have stacks from salvaging gear) and it's not used as a currency.

Asking ANet to do something about the price of ecto is like asking them to do something about the price of iron ore. It's not going to happen.

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@"Ashabhi.1365" said:Ecto in GW1 was rare enough that it was treated almost as currency. You would see "WTS Uber Item of Stupendousness for 5P + 20 Ecto blah blah blah." In GW2, ecto is simply another material that stores in one's bank. It's not difficult to get (I have stacks from salvaging gear) and it's not used as a currency.

Wrong they are used as currency concerning tips. Also e ectos in gw 1 are also ver yeasy to obtain and there were plenty of farmers. We have this problem since palawadans flood.

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@SkyShroud.2865 said:Lol. This is free market, demand and supply yo. Furthermore, it isn't just ecto dropping, everything is. The game is inflated, not much new players while many old players. This is just sign of declining populations.

I think it's the other way around. The large decline in prices happened with an influx of new (and returning) players when PoF came out. This is deflation, not inflation. There is no sign of declining population.

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@EthanLightheart.9168 said:

@"Ashabhi.1365" said:Ecto in GW1 was rare enough that it was treated almost as currency. You would see "WTS Uber Item of Stupendousness for 5P + 20 Ecto blah blah blah." In GW2, ecto is simply another material that stores in one's bank. It's not difficult to get (I have stacks from salvaging gear) and it's not used as a currency.

Wrong they are used as currency concerning tips. Also e ectos in gw 1 are also ver yeasy to obtain and there were plenty of farmers. We have this problem since palawadans flood.

There has been a tendency to use ectos as tips., but this has stopped being so common. In any case, we already have a currency in-game: gold.

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@Danikat.8537 said:I'm not an expert by any means but I would have thought a declining population, especially if it was due to a lack of new players coming in whilst old players stayed around, would actually lead to inflation because it would mean the majority of players would likely have a lot of gold and/or know how to make gold relatively quickly, so they could afford to pay inflated prices and prices would rise accordingly.

Whereas new players don't have much gold and are less willing to spend it because they find it difficult to get more, so they only buy things that are relatively cheap - meaning if prices rise too much the demand drops because they can't afford to buy, until the prices drop again.

You are exactly right. We are actually experiencing deflation as a result of a flood of supply, exacerbated by an influx of new and returning players with no gold to spend.

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@Malediktus.9250 said:

@SkyShroud.2865 said:Lol. This is free market, demand and supply yo. Furthermore, it isn't just ecto dropping, everything is. The game is inflated, not much new players while many old players. This is just sign of declining populations.

It is not a sign of declining populations. It is a sign that Anet is drowning us in rare and exotic gear since PoF (ectos worth less than when Tarir multiloot exploit was going on). Also a sign of Anet not adding enough mat sinks like in the early days of the game.

Nope. It is a sign of declining populations. If we have plenty of old players that keep on playing everyday, gotten all the gears they already want to get, what will they do with the extra stuffs? Sell it off of course. Now, who buy those stuffs? Of course is the new players. Are there a lot of new players? Nope. If there are not enough new players, the market is not able to absorb all those items and thus the value goes down.

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@Malediktus.9250 said:Declining population does not affect prices much. Since it also requires in a proportional amount of less people grinding mats to sell

To emphasize that point: it really can go either way. In GW1, the prices of a large number of items remains much the same as when I was active, while some are much cheaper and some are far more expensive. Population drops lead to decreased supply and decreased demand, but the impact on price isn't linear for either.

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@polarbear.2497 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:I'm not an expert by any means but I would have thought a declining population, especially if it was due to a lack of new players coming in whilst old players stayed around, would actually lead to inflation because it would mean the majority of players would likely have a lot of gold and/or know how to make gold relatively quickly, so they could afford to pay inflated prices and prices would rise accordingly.

Whereas new players don't have much gold and are less willing to spend it because they find it difficult to get more, so they only buy things that are relatively cheap - meaning if prices rise too much the demand drops because they can't afford to buy, until the prices drop again.

You are exactly right. We are actually experiencing deflation as a result of a flood of supply, exacerbated by an influx of new and returning players with no gold to spend.

Everything's trending down. Drops I used to occasionally get would mean something. Oooh, an exotic armor piece worth 2 gold! Now named exotic armor pieces sell for what rare weapons used to go for. The excitement is gone unless there's a truly valuable, thank-you-RNGesus, drop. I have dozens upon dozens of unsold rares spread across my 5 level 80's because I can't even get motivated to sort through them and see what's worth selling on TP and what's just salvage fodder. Don't even get me started on the 500+ unopened trade caches and 5000+ unidentified gears I've accumulated. This is an incredible period of glut.

If you're crafting, there's probably never been a better time. But if you're playing to make some coin, a lot of items and materials have lost their value over the past 6 months.

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Just before PoF, ectos were selling for 38s, and they dropped to 26s a month after the expansion. If you look at all the other crafting material, you can see a sell-off occurring around the same time. No doubt many people were liquidating their storage to pay for their griffons and most of those materials slowly recovered their values. Ectos stayed at around 26s until Palawadan, but as others have pointed out the flood of rares and exotics have driven the market down.

I remember returning a few weeks before PoF when I set a price threshold for sell/salvage at 30s for rares. It seemed like the median sell price was around 32s, versus 13.5s in the current market. Not that it is difficult now to make gold, but the changes seem to push me towards certain content in order to do so. No longer is it worthwhile to pick whatever events interests me that day. As an example, ten or fifteen minute world events used to net about a gold, but now you're lucky to get half.

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