Economy 101

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

Im sick of hearing QQ over gold prices, so I've decided its time for a little lesson in economics.

The ENTIRE reason gold is trading near double its past rates is the greater availability of coin. As the population of PW grows older and wiser (higher level) we are getting richer in game. Remember those days back when you started and 100k sounded like a fortune? Now most of us have at least 1 million on hand at all times.

We are no richer in lr. In real life we still have our same salaries, same allowances, same pensions, and same amount we are willing to spend on the game. We are pumping little more real money into game than we used to.

The greater availability of coin is also due to unintended consequences of events like the 1 million coin chest reward in the cube and Jolly Jones giving away items of greater value than their cost. These events require a purchase from the boutique but give a reward valued in coin. Thus players trade their coin for gold, purchase the required boutique item, receive their coin reward, and repeat. Massive repetition of this cause a gold trading spike and a few players becoming massively rich until trading prices rise to the point where it is no longer profitable.

To a small degree sales have effected trading prices too. However, sales alone cannot cause a permanent jump in gold trading prices, merely a short term run on the banks.

The supply of coin has massively increased while the supply of gold has not. Im sorry to say, PWe has little control over much of this. The only way they can effect change in the gold trade price is to alter the amount of coin available in game, or the amount or gold purchased from site. Their options are:
1. A massive gold sale would pump more purchased gold into the economy and the greater availability of gold would drive trading prices down.
2. Removing the 1 mil gold reward from the cube would also drive trading prices down. Alternately...
3. Sell the hammer at the merchant instead of from boutique so the 1 mil cube reward would not effect the gold trading prices.
4. Stop making events with coin rewards dependent upon gold purchases from boutique.
5. Create an event that would give a gold reward for a coin purchase (reverse of current events) or perhaps a gold reward for a quest. In either case this would pump a lot more gold into the system. I don't like this idea myself since it could easily get out of hand and pump far too much gold in.

However, these measures will not drop prices to their former lows. We players still have a lot more coin and a greater willingness to spend it. We will have to learn to live with the higher prices.

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

Darksylph - Heavens Tear wrote: »

There's your problem. That's like the government saying "we're going to stop inflation, by dumping tons of cash on everyone!" Jolly Jones did nothing to drain the economy, because ppl used cash shop items, which are paid for with money outside of the game economic system. Now if Jolly Jones' ONLY option was the 100k, then it would be a valid cash removal method, but the fact is, noone used the 100k system, but rather paid with guardian angels. On top of all this, they introduced Cash Boxes (rewarded in Cube & Rebirth) where by paying 5 real life dollars you can pump 1 mil coin into the economy. Between the 2 things, alot more cash was added to the economy, and none was removed. Seems the PW economists need to be Fired! Out of a canon!

Also on a macro-economic note; The amount of money in an economy, for determining its effect on inflation, isnt just the literal amount of money spread around. Its that total money multiplied by how many transactions are made with it per day. For example, if everyone was banking their money & not spending it, deflation would set it (which is the problems in a recession that can lead to a depression, and shows how economic confidence plays a role). Conversely, If I spend my money by buying something from you, & you immediately turn it over to someone else, & that cycle continues, it would be as if alot more money is in the economy (which shows again how economic confidence creates its own boom). My point in all of the above, is PWI consistantly createsCash Shop sales these days, creates massive amounts of buying and selling with game coin as well, and as such adding to the incredible inflationary problem as well.

I like this. Darksylph actually has her head screwed on straight. They seem to suggest that their intention with these events was to drain the coin from the economy. The effect has, of course, been the opposite since the reward is in coins. Instead they have drained Gold.

Mothergoose - Sanctuary

This fails, lol. The entire reason gold prices doubled overnight is the nonstop sales and hammer + gold boxes. Nothing natural about this artificially orchestrated inflation. There is no coin drain whatsoever. All the gold trading just means coins are changing hands and circulating within the economy. Only when you give coins to NPCs, such as in crazy stone, are they actually drained, trading to players just adds to circulation. The gold boxes are draining gold (from hammer sales) and pouring more coins into the economy.

PWI's whole purpose in doing this is drain gold, artificially rise gold prices, so players will have higher incentive to charge zen. All free to play mmorpgs have done this near the end of their lifespans. Milk the cow as hard as they can before it dies, lol.b:chuckle

TheGoliath - Heavens Tear

problem is that PWI is actually splitted between players that are rich and players that aren't that rich

for example 90+ are now farming Rebirths Delta and gaining like 4-5M coins every day (probably more) while lowbie players aren't gaining that much, therefore the rich players can afford insane gold prices while the lowbies come here and complain about'em

but I agree that the cube coins stashes have to be removed

Tatuaje - Lost City

I do agree that a HUGE reason for gold hikes is that Hammer in the CS and the purpose behinds its use.

If the hammer were to be able to be made or bought in-game somehow then I beleive that there would be easily a decress in gold prices.

DarkSnow - Dreamweaver

i think the reason for rising prices are the new mounts, cloths etc in boutique. I remember the same story when the wings came out....the prices for mounts did also rise. Then we had boa, horses, cloths etc...every second week, which made people want to get the newest and best item. But not everyone could afford to pay for it in real cash so they started to buy gold (effect: gold gets expensive) or buy it from shops (effect: prices for new mounts rises). Because people assume (wishful thinking) that other people earn/grind more money, they start to match the current price level (effect: everything gets expensive)

I think one possibility to get prices down is stop releasing new stuff in boutque and just do some charms sale etc. With that, people would calm down and stop byung new stuff since they are satisfied with the current items (effect hopefully: price stabilizes).

...i might be wrong tho but it started when the boutique shop started to get crazy and everyone wanted wanted a new dress or a new mount.

Zoe - Heavens Tear

The high levels completely ignore the good of the server, and the fact that there are new players wanting to play the game that can't hope to afford anything. By selling gold high you are slowly but surely killing off the game.

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

Mothergoose - Sanctuary wrote: »

This fails, lol. The entire reason gold prices doubled overnight is the nonstop sales and hammer + gold boxes. Nothing natural about this artificially orchestrated inflation. There is no coin drain whatsoever. All the gold trading just means coins are changing hands and circulating within the economy. Only when you give coins to NPCs, such as in crazy stone, are they actually drained, trading to players just adds to circulation. The gold boxes are draining gold (from hammer sales) and pouring more coins into the economy.

PWI's whole purpose in doing this is drain gold, artificially rise gold prices, so players will have higher incentive to charge zen. All free to play mmorpgs have done this near the end of their lifespans. Milk the cow as hard as they can before it dies, lol.b:chuckle

Fails? I think I said the same thing as you (mostly) just in different words. You say it is orchestrated inflation. I said it is supply and demand from coin availability due to natural wealth, poorly designed events, and some from sales. I get the feeling you didn't read the entire post... sorry, it was long. But I get the sense that you are a doomsday prophet forecasting the end of PW.

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The high levels completely ignore the good of the server, and the fact that there are new players wanting to play the game that can't hope to afford anything. By selling gold high you are slowly but surely killing off the game.

I thought about this too Zoe. I remember when I came to PWi from Malaysian server. The gold prices there were ridiculous (like 500k to 1). It was a welcome relief to see that I could actually afford boutique items with coin here. New players may find this prohibitive now.

VictoryPets - Dreamweaver

I don't see the coin chests from cube/rebirth as being a huge source of rising gold prices on the servers..most people are just holding onto them as they are currently worthless.

What has caused and continues to cause a rise in gold prices is more and more coins ingame and less and less people buying real gold to post into auction house.

It's simply supply and demand as the server population reaches higher average levels.

At the beginning of the game, there are several large money sinks which keeps the amount of coin in game low. As you reach lvl90+ the money you needed to raise skills, buy new weapons/armors/upgrades etc is no longer spent so quickly or just circulates.

On thing no one seems to have mentioned is the large amount of funds received for completing rebirths, nor the biggest single source of coins appearing on the server- the 350 MILLION or so coins received from TW by factions each week, much of which is used to buy gold from the auction house to get boutique items hence pushing up the price of gold.

In common with most MMO's this one suffers from too simple an economy so that over time everything rises in price as the amount of coins in circulation is forever rising.

The continual sales in the cash shop really don't help the economy either, although I understand the game has to make a living!

Alyyy - Sanctuary

in be4 lock 0.o?

Mothergoose - Sanctuary

Vellamo - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Fails? I think I said the same thing as you (mostly) just in different words. You say it is orchestrated inflation. I said it is supply and demand from coin availability due to natural wealth, poorly designed events, and some from sales. I get the feeling you didn't read the entire post... sorry, it was long. But I get the sense that you are a doomsday prophet forecasting the end of PW.

Lol, yeah, I read the whole thing. Of course the observations are the same, but clearly not the conclusions. There is no coin sink anywhere in the recent patches, just gold sink. It's completely orchestrated. The doomsday prophet was right on other ftpmmorpgs that exhibited the same trend.b:chuckle

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

Mothergoose - Sanctuary wrote: »

Lol, yeah, I read the whole thing. Of course the observations are the same, but clearly not the conclusions. There is no coin sink anywhere in the recent patches, just gold sink. It's completely orchestrated. The doomsday prophet was right on other ftpmmorpgs that exhibited the same trend.b:chuckle

Damn, I hope you're wrong... Im just starting to enjoy my higher level.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

Vellamo - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Im sick of hearing QQ over gold prices, so I've decided its time for a little lesson in economics.

Hmm... why do people keep feeling the need to give classes on "basic" economics?

The part I find ironic is that the analysis are almost always based on over-simplifications that just aren't true. For example, during Jolly Jones people were giving Economics 101 lectures about how it was all due to the coin boxes, ignoring people like myself and others who were telling them point-blank, "no, we're the ones driving up Gold prices, and we're doing it because of Jolly Jones."

There's nothing going on right now with Gold prices that requires any sort of technical explanation. All you need is common sense and a grasp of the obvious.

MANray_ - Sanctuary

I share the OP's opinion that level (and faster leveling i might add) is a contributing factor to the higher gold prices we now experience. Also i welcome his suggestions, they're well thought out and seem sound solutions to me. However i don't see any of them as likely to be implemented any time soon. It is frustrating to see this game becoming increasingly unrewarding and while i do not agree that we have yet reached the point of it's obsolesence, things certainly don't seem to bode well for the future. Casual players are an important part of the comunity and the one that has taken the biggest hit with the rise in gold prices. Where before i could have made a modest contribution to the game and expect a couple of nifty items, I would now be forced to do so just so i could keep up with everyday expenses... A strong move towards restoring the economy is long overdue and without a clear signal in that direction i'm afraid i may have to settle for that big wildly succesful game where all the characters seem like ugly clones of each other. It's not something i would like to do, i really enjoy this game, but the idea of leveling only to have a chance at spending a lot more just to have an average char is really not appealing to me.

Baalzor - Heavens Tear

chest of coins is fail.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Baalzor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

chest of coins is fail.

Please mail me all your chest of coins.... I will sacrifice myself to take those fail items of your hands.

Baalzor - Heavens Tear

and when gold price goes to 200k+
you will pay me to take the chest of coins
gg

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Baalzor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

and when gold price goes to 200k+
you will pay me to take the chest of coins
gg

You are claiming they are fail, so I am sacrificing myself to take those horrible things out of your hands and be burden by their failness..... Isn't that enough?

Alyyy - Sanctuary

i saw onyl 1 chest of coins on the market xD

Baalzor - Heavens Tear

u r veno which means u r ebil which means i dont trust u b:pleased

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Baalzor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

u r veno which means u r ebil which means i dont trust u b:pleased

Well, one more reason to pass those ebil boxes to me...
Look into the light.... you feel sleepy.... very sleepy......

Baalzor - Heavens Tear

as a matter of fact i do...
rb so boring

Deceptistar - Sanctuary

TheGoliath - Heavens Tear wrote: »

for example 90+ are now farming Rebirths Delta and gaining like 4-5M coins every day (probably more) while lowbie players aren't gaining that much, therefore the rich players can afford insane gold prices while the lowbies come here and complain about'em

lol............ how....
unless u think elemental alabaster, ruby, or whatnot immaculate and perfect shards have sky rocketed in price... tome fragments have dropped to 20-30k each. If you think that single citrine or garnet shard that drops to one person every 2 runs equals 4-5M for everyone then your very very wrong. Even old book pages go 500k per and drop 1-3 per whole run.

Deceptistar - Sanctuary

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Please mail me all your chest of coins.... I will sacrifice myself to take those fail items of your hands.

what a saint XDD

Brael - Dreamweaver

Mothergoose - Sanctuary wrote: »

Lol, yeah, I read the whole thing. Of course the observations are the same, but clearly not the conclusions. There is no coin sink anywhere in the recent patches, just gold sink. It's completely orchestrated. The doomsday prophet was right on other ftpmmorpgs that exhibited the same trend.b:chuckle

Actually, there are coin sinks. Specifically, damaged gear. Due to BH the harvested mats for TS's have gone up in price, which makes creating items for decomposing less beneficial (and there's already a high demand on existing 2* due to genies), therefore it's a somewhat acceptable alternative to decompose armor for chi stones. If mat prices continue to rise, like they have been on DW (not sure about other servers, especially pvp ones where this has bigger impact) then it becomes a better and better choice in order to get stones. Doing that ends up potentially removing money through repairs, and causes gear to be decomposed rather than vendored. Both of which are... coin sinks.

AndromedaB - Sanctuary

Deceptistar - Sanctuary wrote: »

what a saint XDD

u never heard of multi quote have you XD




okay now...


the problem is with the sales/1mil cubes more than with coin
if it were a prob with the coin gold prices would steadily increase before during after jolly however what we see is that the gold prices go up during sales to 200k+ then fall very very slowly to about 180k (on scant) the introduction of a blessing to make instances easier made it easier to finish RB that and the additon of a 1mil box that needs 5 gold to open means that the price of gold is pegged at a minimum of around 190k

the recent sales are an example of a gold and sink and less of a coin sink because gold is being consumed faster wich causes price to rise and thus more coin is being used however its not effective because it=high gold prices and the coin just comes back, a effective coin sink would be like increasing the price of CS, Repairs, Skills, or an event that involves coin more than gold, like how if jolly's option was only to use 100k coin to get the packs of spring gold prices would remain and there would be a effective coin sink,

all these sales is just because PWI is trying to leach as much money from their players as they can before the other main MMORPGs come out because they are scared, and rightly so, that a large mass of their playerbase will leave for it.

Mothergoose - Sanctuary

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Actually, there are coin sinks. Specifically, damaged gear. Due to BH the harvested mats for TS's have gone up in price, which makes creating items for decomposing less beneficial (and there's already a high demand on existing 2* due to genies), therefore it's a somewhat acceptable alternative to decompose armor for chi stones. If mat prices continue to rise, like they have been on DW (not sure about other servers, especially pvp ones where this has bigger impact) then it becomes a better and better choice in order to get stones. Doing that ends up potentially removing money through repairs, and causes gear to be decomposed rather than vendored. Both of which are... coin sinks.

Yeah right, no one actually uses mats to craft gear purely to decompose them for chi stones. It's a loser by far, even by mat prices before BH. It's no coin sink.b:chuckle

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary

AndromedaB - Sanctuary wrote: »

the additon of a 1mil box that needs 5 gold to open means that the price of gold is pegged at a minimum of around 190k

I've been selling my Chests for about 200k each. With other players who do Gamma selling around 200-250k for those chests. That means the bare minimum of gold should be around 160k each. The 190k that we see in Sanctuary AH now is due to the flying mounts, D. Orbs, and horses on top of the already high gold prices. But hey, low priced gold or w/e just means we have a lower value to compared to. Once everyone forgets that gold was ever at 100k each, 190k per gold might be the norm.

The only way I can see gold prices going down is if the TW maps would reset. This would encourage people who are not from the big factions to bid on land. These people would most likely buy zen and resell for the coins in order to have money to bid. I was playing the gold market back when TW was still diversed (more so than now). And when ever TW bidding time rolls around, gold prices would dip. Then all I do is buy low and sell high once bidding is over. Too bad there is only 2 main factions on the map now... Anyone who wanted to bid would only need to spend 500k because no one else would want to fight those guys.

AndromedaB - Sanctuary

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've been selling my Chests for about 200k each. With other players who do Gamma selling around 200-250k for those chests. That means the bare minimum of gold should be around 160k each. The 190k that we see in Sanctuary AH now is due to the flying mounts, D. Orbs, and horses on top of the already high gold prices. But hey, low priced gold or w/e just means we have a lower value to compared to. Once everyone forgets that gold was ever at 100k each, 190k per gold might be the norm.

The only way I can see gold prices going down is if the TW maps would reset. This would encourage people who are not from the big factions to bid on land. These people would most likely buy zen and resell for the coins in order to have money to bid. I was playing the gold market back when TW was still diversed (more so than now). And when ever TW bidding time rolls around, gold prices would dip. Then all I do is buy low and sell hit once bidding is over. Too bad there is only 2 main factions on the map now... Anyone who wanted to bid would only need to spend 500k because no one else would want to fight those guys.

thats exactly my point, sales are causing the inflated prices

and TWs are a cause like you said because more diverse TW=more charm spent etc=more coin/gold drain withought much of the inflation=more profit for pwi

Untamedchaos - Sanctuary

Vellamo - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Im sick of hearing QQ over gold prices, so I've decided its time for a little lesson in economics.

The ENTIRE reason gold is trading near double its past rates is the greater availability of coin. As the population of PW grows older and wiser (higher level) we are getting richer in game. Remember those days back when you started and 100k sounded like a fortune? Now most of us have at least 1 million on hand at all times.

We are no richer in lr. In real life we still have our same salaries, same allowances, same pensions, and same amount we are willing to spend on the game. We are pumping little more real money into game than we used to.

The greater availability of coin is also due to unintended consequences of events like the 1 million coin chest reward in the cube and Jolly Jones giving away items of greater value than their cost. These events require a purchase from the boutique but give a reward valued in coin. Thus players trade their coin for gold, purchase the required boutique item, receive their coin reward, and repeat. Massive repetition of this cause a gold trading spike and a few players becoming massively rich until trading prices rise to the point where it is no longer profitable.

To a small degree sales have effected trading prices too. However, sales alone cannot cause a permanent jump in gold trading prices, merely a short term run on the banks.

The supply of coin has massively increased while the supply of gold has not. Im sorry to say, PWe has little control over much of this. The only way they can effect change in the gold trade price is to alter the amount of coin available in game, or the amount or gold purchased from site. Their options are:
1. A massive gold sale would pump more purchased gold into the economy and the greater availability of gold would drive trading prices down.
2. Removing the 1 mil gold reward from the cube would also drive trading prices down. Alternately...
3. Sell the hammer at the merchant instead of from boutique so the 1 mil cube reward would not effect the gold trading prices.
4. Stop making events with coin rewards dependent upon gold purchases from boutique.
5. Create an event that would give a gold reward for a coin purchase (reverse of current events) or perhaps a gold reward for a quest. In either case this would pump a lot more gold into the system. I don't like this idea myself since it could easily get out of hand and pump far too much gold in.

However, these measures will not drop prices to their former lows. We players still have a lot more coin and a greater willingness to spend it. We will have to learn to live with the higher prices.

I soloute you, my non-moronic friend, most people don't see things the way we do b:victory