Economy Discussion

[SouthPaw.9705]

Hello there!

OK, so I just logged in for my dailies and grabbed 4 Mystic Coins. Awesome. 

Out of curiosity I looked at the exchange price on the Trading Post and...wow! They are less than a gold now? That really threw me because I had a stack i accumulated over time (I never really needed to use them) and thought I could make some nice gold from them. Guess I'll hold on for a rainy day instead.

 

But I've also noticed the same has happened with Rare and sometimes Exotic items after a few world boss runs.

 

I used to be able to sell most rare loot around the 20 Silver mark, now i'm lucky if I get 15. Exotics (depending on what dropped) would be around 60 silver and up. Right now most I find and sell are around 40 Silver top. I sometimes just salvage it for the Dark Matter instead now.

Heck, even my Dusk (a one time build item) is only selling for 400 Gold right now. 

 

So, my question;

Is this the effect over long time content ( i.e expansions, new materials), or did one piece of content affect the stock like this? I know stocks go up and down in game but my, these just seem to be going down and I can't see them going back up.

 

Thoughts?

Edited June 24, 2022 by SouthPaw.9705

[Hotride.2187]

Ectos seem to be dropping in price too, probably why rares and exotics are getting cheaper. Dunno what is driving the ectos price down though.

Either there is a new better source with eod (if so, must be strikes, meta rewards are lame af)... seems unlikely. Or there is just less demand. I dont even remember what you need ectos for. Maybe the money now is in gen 3 legendaries and their skins.

The gen 3 recipe seems to require way less clovers, so maybe mystic coins are cheaper now by extension? Or the changes for clovers from strikes somehow made clovers more readily available (but I doubt that many players do strikes....).

Could also be market manipulation, cause the ectos price dropped kinda fast.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Dawdler.8521]

... from release in 2012 mystic coins coins was around 10 silver until 2016 (dipping below 1s too), hovered around 1g until 2019 and only shot up to 2g in 2021. 

I'm sure the economy is RUINED.

[Labjax.2465]

Eh, I mean that's always the risk of holding onto assets over currency. Maybe it pays off at some point, maybe it doesn't. Kind of absurd system on the part of humans, but It's designed similar to RL stock market. And like RL stock market, sometimes the big G steps in and changes stuff. Or in this case, the big A for Anet. But some of it is just supply and demand shifting over time.

[Wolfb.7025]

Part of the Rare and Exotic Gear, as well as Ectos devaulation is because of the huge amount of Rares and Exotics EoD activities are giving, and the amount of people playing that expansion in the past months.

Mystic Coins are because you can buy them through the various gamemodes, people used to complain these costed too much and anet added better ways to farm them and it was bound to drop in price. I'm just surprised they didn't go below 1g until now though. Also, just like you, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that are thinking similar and are panic selling/listing mystic coins, which causes the price to drop even more.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Wolfb.7025

[SouthPaw.9705]

6 minutes ago, Wolfb.7025 said:

Part of the Rare and Exotic Gear, as well as Ectos devaulation is because of the huge amount of Rares and Exotics EoD activities are giving, and the amount of people playing that expansion in the past months.

Ahh, I hadn't thought of that but yeah that does seem reasonable. 

In fact that actually makes perfect sense!

 

20 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Ectos seem to be dropping in price too, probably why rares and exotics are getting cheaper. Dunno what is driving the ectos price down though.

Either there is a new better source with eod (if so, must be strikes, meta rewards are lame af)... seems unlikely. Or there is just less demand. I dont even remember what you need ectos for. Maybe the money now is in gen 3 legendaries and their skins.

The gen 3 recipe seems to require way less clovers, so maybe mystic coins are cheaper now by extension? Or the changes for clovers from strikes somehow made clovers more readily available (but I doubt that many players do strikes....).

Could also be market manipulation, cause the ectos price dropped kinda fast.

Yeah I had noticed Ectos dropped quickly too. Thought that was just a side affect from cheaper loot.

 

I'm not fully versed in gen3 legendries but I know that ectos are still used as currency in certan merchants. Usually ascended items/recipes will want 50 ectos with another currency.

Edited June 22, 2022 by SouthPaw.9705

[Astralporing.1957]

MCs were significantly overvalued because everyone assumed their price will never go down. Once it did, a lot of investment hoarders realized it's not as sure of an investment after all, and stopped mindlessly investing. Which brought the prices more in tune with the real supply/demand.

As for the other stuff, general disinterest in EoD might have lowered demand for stuff. A number of players that were originally interested in gen3 legendaries got put off by pricing of Zhaitan skins as well, which also probably had an impact.

[SouthPaw.9705]

33 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

... from release in 2012 mystic coins coins was around 10 silver until 2016 (dipping below 1s too), hovered around 1g until 2019 and only shot up to 2g in 2021. 

I'm sure the economy is RUINED.

They hit 2 gold? Wow, I thought the average was just around 1.

I never really needed them except the odd occasion so they just got stored away for the last 7 years. Whenever I needed a bit of cash I could sell a few coins and have enough money to get what I needed for the projects I was working on.

Edited June 22, 2022 by SouthPaw.9705

[Danikat.8537]

I think the drop in Mystic Coin price is at least partially due to the fact that a lot of people were stock piling them expecting many new uses in EoD (in particular expecting the new legendaries to require a lot of them) so they were either saving them for their own use or hoping the price would rise even more and they could make more of a profit selling them. Then we got a few new sources and relatively few new uses (for example the new legendaries 'only' require about 100 mystic coins each, which is less than gen 1 or 2).

I suspect there was also a knock-on effect where some people sold their stockpiles regardless and that caused the price to drop, which caused other people to sell because they saw it dropping...and so on.

Personally I suspect it will settle around 1g, but will of course continue to fluctuate a bit, at least until the next expansion comes out.

There will be other factors which affect the price of other items, but it will be specific to each one. There's too many items and too many sources and uses for most of them for any one thing to have a comparable effect on everything.

[Kurrilino.2706]

People play this game now since 400 years.

Most of the population already reached everything and doesn't require any materials or gold or whatever.

This is why all prices sink, it's normal even in a real economy

 

 

[SouthPaw.9705]

2 minutes ago, Kurrilino.2706 said:

People play this game now since 400 years.

Most of the population already reached everything and doesn't require any materials or gold or whatever.

This is why all prices sink, it's normal even in a real economy

 

 

I suppose it's good for new players and anyone joining the Steam release now then? They'll need certain materials, demand goes up and prices rise again?

[Kurrilino.2706]

4 minutes ago, SouthPaw.9705 said:

I suppose it's good for new players and anyone joining the Steam release now then? They'll need certain materials, demand goes up and prices rise again?

 

I wouldn't bet on that.

The veterans farming material, are not stopping.

If any it will be a little price bump followed by even lower prices since players can get what they need faster than we people who played from day 1 when nothing was available.

[Silent.6137]

43 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

As for the other stuff, general disinterest in EoD might have lowered demand for stuff. A number of players that were originally interested in gen3 legendaries got put off by pricing of Zhaitan skins as well, which also probably had an impact.

That makes no sense at all. Why would  a general disinterest in EoD (as you love to claim) or people being put off by the Zhaitan skins (which hardly cost that much to obtain) have major impacts on the demands. If that is so, then instead of Gen 3, they would make Gen 1 or 2. Players are not going to stop crafting legendaries.

[Khisanth.2948]

47 minutes ago, SouthPaw.9705 said:

I'm not fully versed in gen3 legendries but I know that ectos are still used as currency in certan merchants. Usually ascended items/recipes will want 50 ectos with another currency.

That sounds like the laurel vendor for ascended trinkets. Those have been bad since they were added to the game.

 

As for other things.

Gen3 uses half as many clovers as gen 1 and 2.  The fractal/strike vendor reduces clover cost from 3-4 ecto and coin down to 2.

[Ashen.2907]

Supply and demand.

ANet drove up the supply while reducing demand. 

I keep a stockpile of MC and ectos for personal use and cant say I am happy to see its value drop so radically, but I wasnt likely to sell them in significant quantities so not a huge deal. 

[Khisanth.2948]

1 minute ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Supply and demand.

ANet drove up the supply while reducing demand. 

I keep a stockpile of MC and ectos for personal use and cant say I am happy to see its value drop so radically, but I wasnt likely to sell them in significant quantities so not a huge deal. 

I do the same but I never had much intent to sell so a price change is basically irrelevant. Although I probably should have sold the stack that I was running out of space to store.

[notebene.3190]

I hope wrecktoplasm recovers to 22s some day. Even dragon boxes started off super low and stayed that way this year.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

Caused by ANet actions as noted by Ashen.

 

Players complain the game is unrewarding, ANet responds by providing events that drop ever more of the mats or salvage bait items that provide more mats.  Players complain that mat X (e.g., mystic coins) costs too much, ANet adds a faucet.

[Rogue.8235]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I think the drop in Mystic Coin price is at least partially due to the fact that a lot of people were stock piling them expecting many new uses in EoD (in particular expecting the new legendaries to require a lot of them) so they were either saving them for their own use or hoping the price would rise even more and they could make more of a profit selling them. Then we got a few new sources and relatively few new uses (for example the new legendaries 'only' require about 100 mystic coins each, which is less than gen 1 or 2).

One of the biggest reasons for volatility after new releases.  There's slightly more to it, but this is the start of the cascade of events.  So, with far less demand for the Gen 3 legendaries (due to cheaper material cost), there is the beginnings of an excess in the supply side of things.  A lot of players held on to their mystic coins and realized they didn't need as much as they did.

The prices begin to fall as demand/supply surpluses begin to actualize into a new equilibrium and you now have the speculation part of the market reacting.  Once the speculators realize that they're holdings are decreasing in value, you have a "Sell Sell Sell!" mentality, which increases the velocity of the downward pricing trend.

Add to this you have returning players coming back to the game, many of which want quick gold injections to get new shiny things in the new expansion.  Although many players on the forums talk about their legendaries, there is still a majority of players that don't pursue legendaries (if someone can find that ArenaNet post talking about statistics concerning legendary items).  An easy way to get gold now is to sell materials hoarding up space, so:

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I suspect there was also a knock-on effect where some people sold their stockpiles regardless and that caused the price to drop, which caused other people to sell because they saw it dropping...and so on.

You got it on the nose.  Crashing prices are a mixture of too much stuff (supply) or nobody wants it (demand) mixed with a delta in market activity and an extreme delta in speculation activities.  

As with almost every economic change in macroeconomic environments, a multitude of factors came together to create the changes we witnessed.  The prices will stabilize soon and stay put until there is a new shock to the system.

Next up, the 2008 financial crisis. Learn why EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is at fault to some degree, with idiocy all around.

 

[Natedog.7549]

TP Barons lost confidence and started selling them. I am kidding of course...

[Ashen.2907]

7 minutes ago, Natedog.7549 said:

TP Barons lost confidence and started selling them. I am kidding of course...

You dont need to kid, that is part of the overall picture. Look at the WHY for lost confidence too.

[Natedog.7549]

7 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

You dont need to kid, that is part of the overall picture. Look at the WHY for lost confidence too.

I said that part so they wouldn't send their ninjas after me. They were betting the expac and gen3 would add more demand but didn't that much. Anet also moved some rewards from fractals to strikes. So more people had access to them. 

I also heard they was some rmt done through mystic coins. Maybe less of that is going on as well. 

[Caliboom.3218]

If it weren't for alt account daily login farmers, MCs would be higher in price now.

[Dante.1508]

6 hours ago, SouthPaw.9705 said:

Hello there!

OK, so I just logged in for my dailies and grabbed 4 Mystic Coins. Awesome. 

Out of curiosity I looked at the exchange price on the Trading Post and...wow! They are less than a gold now? That really threw me because I had a stack i accumulated over time and thought I could make some nice gold from them. Guess I'll hold on for a rainy day instead.

 

But I've also noticed the same has happened with Rare and sometimes Exotic items after a few world boss runs.

 

I used to be able to sell most rare loot around the 20 Silver mark, now i'm lucky if I get 15. Exotics (depending on what dropped) would be around 60 silver and up. Right now most I find and sell are around 40 Silver top. I sometimes just salvage it for the Dark Matter instead now.

Heck, even my Dusk (a one time build item) is only selling for 400 Gold right now. 

 

So, my question;

Is this the effect over long time content ( i.e expansions, new materials), or did one piece of content affect the stock like this? I know stocks go up and down in game but my, these just seem to be going down and I can't see them going back up.

 

Thoughts?

Its possibly less people buying stuff because there are less people in game so the prices drop.. I don't want to say dying but the game seems very empty for me lately.. Not just EoD.

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

Its possibly less people buying stuff because there are less people in game so the prices drop.. I don't want to say dying but the game seems very empty for me lately.. Not just EoD.

If less people are in the game would that not make it more expensive since there is less supply?