In game economy. How does it work?

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

Ok, every online game seems to have an economy. Nothing new there. My question is, how do they work? In GW2 for example, I see items on the BLTC that they can't give away, and they number in the millions. Tons of white level gear, blue, green, and I always wonder how they arrived at making things that accessible instead of doing a quest to obtain it? But then perhaps you need it to do the quest. How does balance enter into availability? I remember musing about the BLTC and how it should have been destroyed during Scarlets attack in LA. Like hitting the reset button. But many have things on there to sell, so I guess that couldn't happen. Or wars causing diminished availability of some things, etc adding a sense of realism. Ontop of all this some buy and sell based on trends. It's like it's own ecosystem. I picture an entire team dealing with all things BLTC.

 

So, educate an old gamer, how does it all work?

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The BLTC is a player driven economy with no direct involvement by ANet. They look at overall balance of rewards, and have periodically adjusted recipes to increase or decrease sinks of materials. And added time gating. But they have no mandate to make sure that each & every item in the gem shop has more than vendor value.

 

On the whole, as much as people complain about low prices, if ANet changes recipes to add sinks, then (different) people will complain that the costs are too high.

 

 

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

The BLTC (aka "TP" for "Trading Post") has prices that, subject to lower limits that are determined by the "sell to merchant" price of the item, are set entirely by the players. Every single item listed there was placed by a player for a price he chose, and every single item bought from there is bought by a player, from a player. All that white/blue/green gear is just players hoping to get a better price than the vendors would give them, and failing because every single one of those pieces of gear is obtainable in unlimited quantities for any player willing to commit a little armed robbery.

 

It is the ultimate exercise in Microeconomics 101: Supply and Demand. So there is no specific team dealing with all things BLTC. There might be some automated tools that scan the prices to look for anomalies, but ArenaNet doesn't need a team of humans to do this.

 

Items that are needed for quests / hearts / achievements are generally dropped from in-game enemies, although some items that you need for collections are sold by vendors, but wherever they come from, they are not resellable once you've registered them for your collection.

[Soa Cirri.6012]

GW2 has periodically had an Economics "team," if one person can be called as much: [John Smith](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/John_Smith "John Smith") of the appropriate surname.

 

He left/was let go last year, and until that point, his track record was controversial to say the least. This is mostly due to his [enthusiasm](http://dulfy.net/2015/10/13/gw2-economy-questions-qa-with-john-smith/ "enthusiasm") for the alleged economy improvements which were planned for HoT, only for HoT to throw the economy into chaos. Thus, most of the severe HoT/Post-HoT game economy fluctuations were laid at his feet, and complaints against his decisions were, for the most part, stubbornly ignored.

 

As for what ANET does now, I have no idea. But they definitely have regulated the economy in indirect ways, and sometimes direct ways by making things tradeable or untradeable, and all trades are regulated to an extent by their merchant price and BL trade taxes. ANET also began to introduce inflation with the increase of gold rewards in dailies, and especially dungeons and fractals. The dungeon gold rewards had a significant impact on the game economy and led to a rapid increase in inflation, until they severely nerfed the dungeon gold rewards in 2015, which did help to stabilize the market somewhat. Fractal gold rewards are however still a major influence, and have only been buffed over time.

 

A few people have written comprehensive analyses of GW2's economy, but none recently that I know of. There are also many more casual analyses, of course.

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130426/191346/Guild_Wars_2_Economy_Review.php

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/35084/an-economist-looks-at-tyria-gw2-prices-and-deflation

https://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/columns/an-economic-evolution-1000011480

 

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

@"Soa Cirri.6012" interesting, thanks for the link. I've wondered why they allow white/blue/green to be sold to the bltc. In GW1 we longed for an Auction Hall. Now I kinda miss the old way. Ahhh Spama-dan

[zealex.9410]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> The BLTC is a player driven economy with no direct involvement by ANet. They look at overall balance of rewards, and have periodically adjusted recipes to increase or decrease sinks of materials. And added time gating. But they have no mandate to make sure that each & every item in the gem shop has more than vendor value.

>

> On the whole, as much as people complain about low prices, if ANet changes recipes to add sinks, then (different) people will complain that the costs are too high.

>

>

 

I think thats exactly what the ppl complaining are asking for.

[zealex.9410]

> @"Soa Cirri.6012" said:

> GW2 has periodically had an Economics "team," if one person can be called as much: [John Smith](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/John_Smith "John Smith") of the appropriate surname.

>

> He left/was let go last year, and until that point, his track record was controversial to say the least. This is mostly due to his [enthusiasm](http://dulfy.net/2015/10/13/gw2-economy-questions-qa-with-john-smith/ "enthusiasm") for the alleged economy improvements which were planned for HoT, only for HoT to throw the economy into chaos. Thus, most of the severe HoT/Post-HoT game economy fluctuations were laid at his feet, and complaints against his decisions were, for the most part, stubbornly ignored.

>

> As for what ANET does now, I have no idea. But they definitely have regulated the economy in indirect ways, and sometimes direct ways by making things tradeable or untradeable, and all trades are regulated to an extent by their merchant price and BL trade taxes. ANET also began to introduce inflation with the increase of gold rewards in dailies, and especially dungeons and fractals. The dungeon gold rewards had a significant impact on the game economy and led to a rapid increase in inflation, until they severely nerfed the dungeon gold rewards in 2015, which did help to stabilize the market somewhat. Fractal gold rewards are however still a major influence, and have only been buffed over time.

>

> A few people have written comprehensive analyses of GW2's economy, but none recently that I know of. There are also many more casual analyses, of course.

> https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130426/191346/Guild_Wars_2_Economy_Review.php

> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/35084/an-economist-looks-at-tyria-gw2-prices-and-deflation

> https://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/columns/an-economic-evolution-1000011480

>

 

The number one complain was that mistic coins were to expensive while anet was saying that ppl just hold on to them. When ppf came out and ppl came back/sold their coins the price dropped massively. Who would've thought.

[Soa Cirri.6012]

@"Evon Skyfyre.9673" Sure thing. In terms of both security and the health of the economy, player-to-player trading is far superior, IMO. Auction houses are much more vulnerable to bots, insider trading/speculation, and market cornering. However, p2p (player2player) makes it much more difficult to move massive amounts of materials quickly, especially things like crafting mats, fractal boxes, &tc. which GW2 has in droves, and introduces more of with every expansion. Imagine how painful it would be to have to individually sell every item in your inventory p2p after running Silverwastes or Dragonstand!

 

Sadly, because of the thousands of different kinds of loot you need to accomplish many given collections and recipes, an auction house is functionally necessary in order to make items more accessible to everyone. I imagine that's why the white/blue/greens are BLT sell-able—so everyone doesn't have to personally farm every little item or material they need, and can gain them instead by doing other content for gold to buy those items with.

[Dreadshow.9320]

Mithril is cheap because there is more high level players in high level areas than low lvl players in low level areas so that resource is mined more and offered more. But during the first months of the game life, Mithril was rare and thus more expensive.

[Ashen.2907]

> @"Dreadshow.9320" said:

> Mithril is cheap because there is more high level players in high level areas than low lvl players in low level areas so that resource is mined more and offered more. But during the first months of the game life, Mithril was rare and thus more expensive.

 

Also because new sources of mithril are being added continuously.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"zealex.9410" said:

> > @"Soa Cirri.6012" said:

> > GW2 has periodically had an Economics "team," if one person can be called as much: [John Smith](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/John_Smith "John Smith") of the appropriate surname.

> >

> > He left/was let go last year, and until that point, his track record was controversial to say the least. This is mostly due to his [enthusiasm](http://dulfy.net/2015/10/13/gw2-economy-questions-qa-with-john-smith/ "enthusiasm") for the alleged economy improvements which were planned for HoT, only for HoT to throw the economy into chaos. Thus, most of the severe HoT/Post-HoT game economy fluctuations were laid at his feet, and complaints against his decisions were, for the most part, stubbornly ignored.

> >

> > As for what ANET does now, I have no idea. But they definitely have regulated the economy in indirect ways, and sometimes direct ways by making things tradeable or untradeable, and all trades are regulated to an extent by their merchant price and BL trade taxes. ANET also began to introduce inflation with the increase of gold rewards in dailies, and especially dungeons and fractals. The dungeon gold rewards had a significant impact on the game economy and led to a rapid increase in inflation, until they severely nerfed the dungeon gold rewards in 2015, which did help to stabilize the market somewhat. Fractal gold rewards are however still a major influence, and have only been buffed over time.

> >

> > A few people have written comprehensive analyses of GW2's economy, but none recently that I know of. There are also many more casual analyses, of course.

> > https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130426/191346/Guild_Wars_2_Economy_Review.php

> > https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/35084/an-economist-looks-at-tyria-gw2-prices-and-deflation

> > https://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/columns/an-economic-evolution-1000011480

> >

>

> The number one complain was that mistic coins were to expensive while anet was saying that ppl just hold on to them. When ppf came out and ppl came back/sold their coins the price dropped massively. Who would've thought.

 

It wasn't that simple though. Mystic Coin supplies are gated on population, and its demand limited entirely to high end crafting. This means the casual population, who have no interest in high end crafting, are the only reliable suppliers of MCs in the game. The influx of returning players are statistically made up of mostly casual players, who then dumped a huge supply into the market seeing huge increase in value from the last time they played, with no desire to use it themselves.

 

"Holding on to them" is a misnomer, because the shortage in supply and the speculation that comes with it, is reason they're not being posted. If we could farm Mystic coins like we did leather, the market would have enough confidence to post them more often without fear of a project stopping shortage. Because if you think about it..... Mystic coins are the only time gated material thats needed in stupidly large amounts for recipes that demand it. A Forge skin is 50 Coins, Feast recipes 50, Gen 2 Legendary 250 in raw coins, and the Clover recipes if you don't spend any time in WvW/PvP: Gen 1 Legendary ~250 for Clovers, 270 for Legendary Armor.

 

What shouldn't make sense is the level of demand of Legendary gear due to the ratio of casual players with no interest in them...... but the small sub set of hardcore players (ones with the time and resources to pursue it) spend huge amounts of material/wealth to obtain multiple weapons or sets of armor, largely due to lack of competing demand at that tier of play. Also note how we're heading into a rut following POF, and the remaining players are steadily moving into high end crafting now that theres nothing else worth doing besides farming. All farmable mats are around the lowest prices they've been since Ascended gear created ongoing demand, and all materials where the source is time gated have maintained their value (becoming a bottleneck in the process).

 

This is the same problem we saw with Cloth after Ascended gear was added. When a hard to source material is in higher demand, it stalls the demand for other associated materials, because its blocking people from moving forward with crafting. Leather prices tanked while Cloth prices skyrocketed. Then they added Leather to the base recipes to more consistently sink them, and those prices inverted. Our big problem with the overall economy is how the only significant long term crafting projects are both finite in life span (only need X number of weapon skins or armor sets), and their spread of material demand too easily hung up on 1 or 2 specific items. The mistake with Legendary armor is not enough people are going to pursue it, and the few that do are in high risk of saturating on it within 2 years.

 

The whole thing is a tangled mess, but thankfully its fairly stable overall. However, it also requires periodic addition of sinks, which throw the market into chaos for a few months as most players would be overly focused on it. We've needed a better on-going sink for a long time.... but players are too afraid to invest in anything that isn't a permanent bonus. Thus we keep getting stuck in cycles of ever bigger, ever more ultimate "end game" items. At this rate, they may have no choice but to do something stupid like universal stat treadmills such as Artifact Power (which just looking up again, is apparently being depreciated from WoW).

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

If I understand you correctly, the economy is tied to crafting in that one effects the other directly and indirectly?

[TexZero.7910]

> @"Evon Skyfyre.9673" said:

> If I understand you correctly, the economy is tied to crafting in that one effects the other directly and indirectly?

 

Not really.

 

The economy is a multifaceted beast, one part of it is crafting. Other parts include supply, demand, speculation and luxury item trading.

While some crafting materials directly have sway on others (Ecto and Crystaline) others can be a bit more abstract like the market value of Ghostly Infusions. You'll like never see these below 100g as that's the fixed NPC purchase price so people will naturally mark them up to account for TP fees to make sure they aren't just losing out on value.

[OrbitalButt.5708]

It operates on a complicated chaos magic system

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

> @"TexZero.7910" said:

> > @"Evon Skyfyre.9673" said:

> > If I understand you correctly, the economy is tied to crafting in that one effects the other directly and indirectly?

>

> Not really.

>

> The economy is a multifaceted beast, one part of it is crafting. Other parts include supply, demand, speculation and luxury item trading.

> While some crafting materials directly have sway on others (Ecto and Crystaline) others can be a bit more abstract like the market value of Ghostly Infusions. You'll like never see these below 100g as that's the fixed NPC purchase price so people will naturally mark them up to account for TP fees to make sure they aren't just losing out on value.

 

Sometimes, well most times I think loot matters more to most, then the story. I was that way in the beginning of my gaming, now I prefer a well written story.

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

> @"OrbitalButt.5708" said:

> It operates on a complicated chaos magic system

 

Much like my life..lol

[Biff.5312]

I'm surprised to read that the prices are solely set by player interaction. For example, a lot of low-level blue/green items have inordinately high prices, and although I realise the supply may not be as great as high level items, it seems odd that people are paying so much for trash when a same-level rare is cheaper. I had assumed the prices were boosted by Anet so that levelling toons could earn some money selling. Also items of zero value, that EVERYONE has too much of, are often postable on the TP for a few copper. Even though there is zero demand, they usually sell. I had assumed this was Anet making sure people weren't getting left high and dry. It's amazing to me that anyone would buy some of those things.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

> @"Biff.5312" said:

> I'm surprised to read that the prices are solely set by player interaction. For example, a lot of low-level blue/green items have inordinately high prices, and although I realise the supply may not be as great as high level items, it seems odd that people are paying so much for trash when a same-level rare is cheaper. I had assumed the prices were boosted by Anet so that levelling toons could earn some money selling. Also items of zero value, that EVERYONE has too much of, are often postable on the TP for a few copper. Even though there is zero demand, they usually sell. I had assumed this was Anet making sure people weren't getting left high and dry. It's amazing to me that anyone would buy some of those things.

 

Remember that a Sell order price does *not* indicate that the item *actually sells* at that price.

[Evon Skyfyre.9673]

One thing I have noticed here, like other games is ridiculously high priced items that are literally junk. My first thought was gold sellers. But I have now learned some go fishing for suckers. They put a high price and swear blind someone will buy it. I mean, wow.. even fake economies are dangerous lol

 

[Biff.5312]

> @"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:

> > @"Biff.5312" said:

> > I'm surprised to read that the prices are solely set by player interaction. For example, a lot of low-level blue/green items have inordinately high prices, and although I realise the supply may not be as great as high level items, it seems odd that people are paying so much for trash when a same-level rare is cheaper. I had assumed the prices were boosted by Anet so that levelling toons could earn some money selling. Also items of zero value, that EVERYONE has too much of, are often postable on the TP for a few copper. Even though there is zero demand, they usually sell. I had assumed this was Anet making sure people weren't getting left high and dry. It's amazing to me that anyone would buy some of those things.

>

> Remember that a Sell order price does *not* indicate that the item *actually sells* at that price.

 

Sure, but aside from some hallowe'en tonics I have up there for 2c each or so, everything I've placed with a minimum sell price has sold. A lot of it is junk, and stuff that you literally cannot play without accumulating, so I wonder who's buying? Anyway it's a surprise.

 

Also when I mentioned the blue/green prices higher than the yellow, I was referring to the buy price, not the selling price. So why people prefer to get the lower-ranked item I don't know. Maybe it has a greater chance to yield something good when salvaged? Or maybe people just don't pay any attention.

[TexZero.7910]

> @"Biff.5312" said:

> Also when I mentioned the blue/green prices higher than the yellow, I was referring to the buy price, not the selling price. So why people prefer to get the lower-ranked item I don't know. Maybe it has a greater chance to yield something good when salvaged? Or maybe people just don't pay any attention.

 

Generally speaking those items are RMT bait. Bots place obscure/irrelevant items at a price that only they and the other party would know about and they trade real cash for gold that way.

 

There are the odd cases of items that are no longer in circulation, but typically when those are listed high its a boasting thing and if someone buys it well....their loss.