Anet tanking economy... why?

Why does anet keep re-releasing time limited BLC skins and now doing stuff like putting infusions from HOT meta events in with Black lion chest loot as well as from the zephirite festival event. Why not add more loot and keep the stuff we have somewhat exclusive. THe economy in all area's is pretty much tanking, and this is just making it worse. Soon, nothing will be exclusive or special or rare.

Cause everyone wants everything that is available. And sooner it later it will all be obtainable.

I imagine it is because having an infusion that costs more than the money cap is unacceptable. I, for one, am glad that some of the ridiculously rare and expensive stuff is in the BLC, because then it means that I have a chance to get it.

Increasing availability on a highly limited set of cosmetic items is not "tanking the economy". We've had common materials (our usual rewards for participation) languishing into a spiral of vendor-fodder, and at least some of those are starting to gain value again. (Trophies and cooking stock when ANet?)

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I imagine it is because having an infusion that costs more than the money cap is unacceptable. I, for one, am glad that some of the ridiculously rare and expensive stuff is in the BLC, because then it means that I have a chance to get it.

U already have a chance to get them, ingame.

@"Drecien.4508" said:Cause everyone wants everything that is available. And sooner it later it will all be obtainable.

Plus the game is nearly six years old by now. If they're not in serious "how do we gracefully wind down GW2 eventually"-planning mode, or already working on GW3, they'll need to start any week.

So at this point it's more about keeping the already playing population content for a few more years. You're not going to make a massive marketing push, you're not going to win any prices, or woo anyone with your graphics. Keep people playing, slowly give in to demands steadily, work on the next big thing.

Mithril ore just about tripled its sell price overnight. Not all aspects of the economy are tanking.

The other things is black lion keys cost gems, which are probably often going to be bought for real money. Where as items on the trading post don't generate as much (they get some based on gold disappearing, and if people sell gems for gold, some goes away through that also, but then someone else has those gems instead of buying them).Anet is probably smart enough to look at items that lots of people want, and then go and figure out how they can make money by making it available.

They could have raised the drop rate if they just wanted to reduce its cost.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Mithril ore just about tripled its sell price overnight. Not all aspects of the economy are tanking.

cries in 15k+ Mithril Ingots :(

As a side note, the price for the Air-Filtration Device has fallen like a meteor! From 60G to ~ 20 silver =)And I wanted to buy that thing the other day... now would be a more appropriate time, it seems.

As for the BLTC: Not getting them anyway. When I think about how much chests it took me to get that elemental sword... never gonna buy those keys again.

Come back in 3 weeks, see if you feel the same after we've had a look at all the economic repercussions. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet, so it's hard to say just what markets were disrupted, which were mildly adjusted, and which aren't really affected.

People keep complaining about the economy tanking, but I don't see how. Prices have universally gone down, and players have more money to buy what they need. I don't see the issue. Is an economy only working when most of the player base are struggling? Everyone seems to be doing good right now, and yet some claim the economy is "failing". A bad economy is when prices are too high and no one can make enough money to afford anything. Right now we have the opposite. I hope it stays like this.

Why not add more loot and keep the stuff we have somewhat exclusive. ... Soon, nothing will be exclusive or special or rare.

What's the point of "exclusive" in a video game? We're talking about pixels, not a Picasso. I've been around since beta but I'm glad new players have a chance to get old items too. Just because more people own an item I enjoy that won't make me enjoy it less. Being selfish over pixels is silly.

@Haishao.6851 said:They could have raised the drop rate if they just wanted to reduce its cost.

But that doesn't sell Keys.

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@Haishao.6851 said:They could have raised the drop rate if they just wanted to reduce its cost.

The boxes are bought with normal materials like wood leather and cloth.

@"Hot Boy.7138" said:People keep complaining about the economy tanking, but I don't see how. Prices have universally gone down, and players have more money to buy what they need. I don't see the issue. Is an economy only working when most of the player base are struggling? Everyone seems to be doing good right now, and yet some claim the economy is "failing". A bad economy is when prices are too high and no one can make enough money to afford anything. Right now we have the opposite. I hope it stays like this.

It depends on which side of the equation you're on. A while ago a lot of people were complaining about ectoplasm being far too cheap and saying Anet "must" fix it, but I was really happy to see that because I was making a legendary and needed a lot of ectoplasm. I had been worried about getting it, but that topic let me know that not only were there easier farms than last time I'd looked but the price had gone down so it wouldn't be out of the question to buy what I needed.

It's the same with everything else: if you have more than you need and/or you're farming it and hoping to sell it a 'good' economy is one where prices and demand are high, if you're trying to buy it then a good economy is one where prices are low. I'm no economist but I believe in their terms a good economy is one where a lot of items are changing hands on a regular basis and the price doesn't matter except that universally high or low prices will reduce trade because people can't afford to buy or can't make enough profit selling to justify it.

IMO the important thing for an MMO economy is that we're not seeing massive inflation, which is usually a problem especially as the game gets older. Usually older players need to buy very little and/or have lots of ways to make gold (including items which are not longer available and so sell for a lot more than they used to) so popular items are priced extremely high and new players will find it difficult or impossible to catch up so they're priced out the market for most things. That doesn't happen in this game. Yes new players still start with nothing and will need time to build up gold and materials and learn how to earn gold reliably, but the short leveling time and wide variety of ways to make gold which are open to almost everyone makes it a lot easier than in other games. Which in turn benefits older players by providing a regular pool of customers for their goods instead of a slowly decreasing group of other veterans who will have less and less desire to buy more stuff as they get closer to having everything they want.

@Carighan.6758 said:

@"Drecien.4508" said:Cause everyone wants everything that is available. And sooner it later it will all be obtainable.

Unless something has changed with the overall arc of the story, there's still about 6+ years of content waiting around to be made...I'm not sure why they would start to wind it down now, and besides, they can probably do the exact same thing with GW2 they did with GW1...just put it in maintenance mode and let it run forever.

I cleaned out a bank tab worth of valueless materials buying boxes. I didn't get anything from the boxes, but the materials I didn't clean out have gained some value. So that's nice. 100 gold flushed, but other materials increased in value.

GW2 prob has one more full expansion... just like the original... The last expansion will wrap it up, and set the achieves for the next one ( if they decide to make another one)Or they could just keep developing small living stories and develop a new product. The sky is really the limit.

@Haishao.6851 said:They could have raised the drop rate if they just wanted to reduce its cost.

Yeah but then they can't make money off it, cause I guess the BLC keys are bought with gems. It's a common tactic these days to make something hard to get in a game and then monetize it, preferably with RNG. In that sense the BLCs are the loot boxes of GW2.

@"Zaklex.6308" said:Unless something has changed with the overall arc of the story, there's still about 6+ years of content waiting around to be made...I'm not sure why they would start to wind it down now, and besides, they can probably do the exact same thing with GW2 they did with GW1...just put it in maintenance mode and let it run forever.

I didn't mean to imply "wind down" as in "about to close the game".

Maintenance mode might be a better choice of words. Streamline and formularize content development so a smaller and smaller team can keep pumping out content at a pace fast enough to keep enough players playing, meanwhile you can shift the majority of your resources to other projects to secure future cash flow.

Supposedly the prices are set by "supply and demand."How many people actually calculate the cost of crafting something; total base mats, time for harvesting, time for crafting, cost per use of finite harvesting tools, etc? Versus looking to see what everyone else is selling the same thing at and adjusting their price accordingly.

I loved the price of ectos more than doubling ;)

Also they are "super rare" drops. Thousands of people do the metas and events/mushrooms every single day and the invisible boots for example aren't even on the TP. Egg sacs are worth more than the TP can handle and people trade them for 15k gold each outside of it.. yeah, no harm is done to anybody by temporarily giving them another way of acquisation. Most people crying about this don't even or will never even own any of these items anyway.

Finally a use for all these useless materials. It's amazing. Thank you Anet, very cool