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Gem prices are going out of control


nellone.5836

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Don't know exactly what is causing this, maybe all the "free gold" got from the wizard's vault, but the gems are getting absurd conversion prices, i was thinking it was pretty crazy when yesterday i saw 41golds for 100 gems, but today is going over 54!
Is it maybe the case to force the price at a fixed rate, like Anet already did in the past?
I hope for the best....

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2 minutes ago, nellone.5836 said:

Don't know exactly what is causing this, maybe all the "free gold" got from the wizard's vault, but the gems are getting absurd conversion prices, i was thinking it was pretty crazy when yesterday i saw 41golds for 100 gems, but today is going over 54!

When people were farming Baubles in VB the conversion rate always went up by atleast 10%, I remember seeing 160g - 400g exchanges. If all the "free gold" from WV was the cause the prices would have changed sooner than 3 months after Soto's release. 

There's sales going on still, that's a more sane reasoning for the price spike than WV.

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Exactly!  If players were purchasing gems with real cash, then there would be more gems in the pool which ought to lower the price. 

I agree that it's due to gold being much easier to obtain through the WV.  I'd guess Anet is ok with this as it might drive players to purchase rather than convert.  At the end of the day, Anet wants the cash, not the gold.

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31 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Exactly!  If players were purchasing gems with real cash, then there would be more gems in the pool which ought to lower the price. 

I agree that it's due to gold being much easier to obtain through the WV.  I'd guess Anet is ok with this as it might drive players to purchase rather than convert.  At the end of the day, Anet wants the cash, not the gold.

How come that the gold - gem conversion skyrocketing lines up with the sales and not.. Soto's release or the new WV cycle release like it would be if WV was the reason?

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It's pretty straight forward...

  • Items go on sale
  • Many players want the items, so they convert gold into gems
  • Gem pool decreases, gold pool increases
  • Gold-to-Gem price goes up

Fewer players are getting their wallets out for gems, or rather, more players are converting gold into gems. Given the sale you'd probably find both are up, but particularly conversions.

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If you look the graph on gw2efficency you can see the price that kept stable around 30 gold, until this year, but the last months started to grow constantly and from november the price is skyroketing.
If this trend continues, only the veterans will be able to convert gold into gems... and i don't think it will be good for the commuinity and for the game in general.
I agree with the fact that Anet may want people to buy with cash, but i hope the currency exchange functionality could be still a thing in the future...

No one is saying that WV is the only cause, i'm assuming it is one of them, along with the other things you mentioned, like the discounts and the other stuff...

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1 minute ago, nellone.5836 said:

 

If you look the graph on gw2efficency you can see the price that kept stable around 30 gold, until this year, but the last months started to grow constantly and from november the price is skyroketing.
If this trend continues, only the veterans will be able to convert gold into gems... and i don't think it will be good for the commuinity and for the game in general.
I agree with the fact that Anet may want people to buy with cash, but i hope the currency exchange functionality could be still a thing in the future...

No one is saying that WV is the only cause, i'm assuming it is one of them, along with the other things you mentioned, like the discounts and the other stuff...

I think WV is probably the biggest reason, again for the infusion of gold into the economy.  Also, a lot of oft-requested items are currently on sale, so that will affect the conversion ... which, IMO, is made easier for players due to the ease of obtaining gold via WV.  🙂  

I agree that this may not be healthy for the in-game economy in the long run.

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Just so we're clear, because i feel like we're getting off on the wrong foot, i'm not saying the gem prices aren't crazy atm, but looking at the Data, the WV isn't the cause.

If we look at the Gold> convertion rates since SotO's release https://i.imgur.com/YxI42Vh.png
we see a steady price from August 22nd when the Vault was introduced up until October 17th, this suggests that the WV has no notable effect on the price of Gold>gem conversions: the Oct 17th spike coinicides with the start of this years Halloween event where multiple sales were held and new items released, this trend continued up until Nov 21st, where we see the start of the black friday deals

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15 minutes ago, IndigoSundown.5419 said:

When did this happen?

some time ago... in the first months of 2018, they fixed the price for quite a while

  

  

19 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

Just so we're clear, because i feel like we're getting off on the wrong foot, i'm not saying the gem prices aren't crazy atm, but looking at the Data, the WV isn't the cause.

If we look at the Gold> convertion rates since SotO's release https://i.imgur.com/YxI42Vh.png
we see a steady price from August 22nd when the Vault was introduced up until October 17th, this suggests that the WV has no notable effect on the price of Gold>gem conversions: the Oct 17th spike coinicides with the start of this years Halloween event where multiple sales were held and new items released, this trend continued up until Nov 21st, where we see the start of the black friday deals

You are exposing a good point, finally that "wrong foot" is gone 🙂
Btw the alloween event has never pushed the prices over the 50s.... i repeat, i feel like this is a combination of contributing factors.

Edited by nellone.5836
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47 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

How come that the gold - gem conversion skyrocketing lines up with the sales and not.. Soto's release or the new WV cycle release like it would be if WV was the reason?

Same reason they up fuel prices at holiday times 😑... because they know people will want to buy more at that time.  They definitely up the exchange rate at festival/holiday times and during sales.  One could say that's consumer demand,  but it's really to get you to swipe the card and not use in game gold.   Real money vs in-game.  

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The sales are really good. Like Living world -30% is something rare. Or -75% on deluxe. Serious stuff. It is possible to ransack your material inventory and sell everything to buy gem. There is also alternative currency conversion. LIke using pile of 2mil karma to some gold.

The market will balance itself. At some point players will just run out of materials to sell. Also the sale wil end and there will be no more need to convert.

Protip: Convert gems when price low, and wait for sales even if it is months ahead.

The gemflation happens since 2022, but dont know what exacly was a trigger.

https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/gems

Edited by evilcat.6817
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1 hour ago, nellone.5836 said:

some time ago... in the first months of 2018, they fixed the price for quite a while

Do you have any proof for a fixed price? I checked the graph and yes there are some long flat parts from about Jan. - May 2018, but I also found posts that the API for the exchange was bugged and reported this wrong prices, so I see no evidence for a price manipulation here.

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22 minutes ago, RoseofGilead.8907 said:

That's . . . not how it works.

You sure? If people's real money would give them more gems than their in-game gold would, that would be an incentive for them to buy and give the game profit.

Also, are you a writer at ArenaNet? 😉 I made a post the other day about the use of unnecessary pauses. You should check it out. I think you'll find it... interesting. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/140490-some-of-the-dialog-in-soto-is/

 

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3 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Exactly!  If players were purchasing gems with real cash, then there would be more gems in the pool which ought to lower the price. 

I agree that it's due to gold being much easier to obtain through the WV.  I'd guess Anet is ok with this as it might drive players to purchase rather than convert.  At the end of the day, Anet wants the cash, not the gold.

Indeed. You are somewhat forced to spend cash if you want an item from the store. But the sale is only when you use real money. Because the gold to gem price got ridiculous high i am sure the items cost more now with the sale then before without the sale. Even more bad is. You have to pay more gold to get something. And if you buy gems with real cash you can only buy a few things. 2k gems for 25 isnt much. So if you really need items you have to spend more cash. And if the items go away from store after sale. And come back next year then it hurts even more. But i think ppl who really wanted something From the store would be prepared and already got the gems. Atleast i had when i wanted some armor sets. 

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I agree that it's most likely because of the sales. The conversion rate always jumps up during sales and right now might be the biggest sale they've ever had. They didn't bring everything back, but it's the most stuff I've ever seen in the Promotions tab at once, and most of it was discounted.

Also regarding the impact of the Wizard's Vault: don't forget that's not entirely new. It's replacing the items from login rewards (many of which could be converted to gold) and 2g per day from the daily achievement. I think the new system does work out more profitable, especially if you're willing to skip stuff that can't be converted to gold, but it's not a huge change to what we had before.

In theory the exchange rate should shift back over time because when gems get more expensive gold gets cheaper, now is probably the best time to convert gems to gold for those who want to do so. But just like people tend to convert gold to gems when there's sales or new stuff, not when the exchange rate is good, people tend to convert gems to gold when there's an exciting new gold sink, not when the exchange rate is good, so it might take a while to go down.
 

6 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

Indeed. You are somewhat forced to spend cash if you want an item from the store. But the sale is only when you use real money. Because the gold to gem price got ridiculous high i am sure the items cost more now with the sale then before without the sale. Even more bad is. You have to pay more gold to get something. And if you buy gems with real cash you can only buy a few things. 2k gems for 25 isnt much. So if you really need items you have to spend more cash. And if the items go away from store after sale. And come back next year then it hurts even more. But i think ppl who really wanted something From the store would be prepared and already got the gems. Atleast i had when i wanted some armor sets. 

If you converted gold to gems before the sale started you could still get a good price. I always do it when I have some gold to spare and I think the exchange rate is good, then save the gems until there's something I want to buy, because I know when that happens gems will be more expensive.

Also how many things you can get by converting real money to gems is entirely dependant on how much real money you can afford to spend. I sometimes buy gems with real money as well (especially if there's a big sale and I don't have enough gems saved up from converting gold) so I always work out the real money price of gem store items to decide if it's worth buying. Even if it's a big discount over what it normally costs if it's not something I want that much it's not worth getting.

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