Economy 101

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear · August 2009

Someone posted about TW coin reward for having land.

Now I know this is crazy. And a lot of people would hate it. But, what if there wasn't a TW once a month and no reward. This would make sure that millions of coins weren't being pumped into the economy.

This is just a thought.

*Goes and hides in a corner b:shockedb:sadb:cry

Noggin - Dreamweaver · August 2009

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Someone posted about TW coin reward for having land.

Now I know this is crazy. And a lot of people would hate it. But, what if there wasn't a TW once a month and no reward. This would make sure that millions of coins weren't being pumped into the economy.

This is just a thought.

*Goes and hides in a corner b:shockedb:sadb:cry

The TW people are going to come on in minute and let you know how much TW costs and that it doesnt make a profit.

But this is an interesting point, if as they say TW profits are used to finance charms and suchlike for future TW's why not just cut out the middle man. Make TW land rewards charms and pots rather than coin. It would decrease the ammont of coin coming into the servers and increase the supply of charms. Just an idea that is probably going to get me shot

Of course, the simpliest and surest method to drop gold prices is to kill the coin chests. No matter how many people say they arn't the problem, it seem like too much of a co-incidence that the gold prices shot up at the same time they appeared.

Or just be happy that $10 can buy you more stuff at the moment.

TheGoliath - Heavens Tear · August 2009

as a barb I can clearly say that the only TWs where u gain something is when u have only 10k refunds attackers/defenders

as a DD class u pay less than a barb ofc, but I don't know if they actually gain something r not

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear · August 2009

After re-reading my post i just wanted to say that I didn't mean to imply no rewards for TW land owning in general. Just skip it once a month.

*Still hiding....b:shutup

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · August 2009

TW is more of a gold sink than a coin sink.

Coin sinks of a 3 hour TW:
1) build 14 towers per side (2.8 mill)
2) Use up 100 cat scrolls (2 mill)

Gold sink of a 3 hour TW:
1) Roughly ~100 charms worth of charm used up (400 gold)

so its about 5 million coin used up and 400 gold for every 3 hour highend TW.

AdvanceZero - Heavens Tear · August 2009

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

TW is more of a gold sink than a coin sink.

Coin sinks of a 3 hour TW:
1) build 14 towers per side (2.8 mill)
2) Use up 100 cat scrolls (2 mill)

Gold sink of a 3 hour TW:
1) Roughly ~100 charms worth of charm used up (400 gold)

so its about 5 million coin used up and 400 gold for every 3 hour highend TW.

Wow, how do you afford it all. Do you have to buy gold from the AH??

Olba - Sanctuary · August 2009

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

TW is more of a gold sink than a coin sink.

Coin sinks of a 3 hour TW:
1) build 14 towers per side (2.8 mill)
2) Use up 100 cat scrolls (2 mill)

Gold sink of a 3 hour TW:
1) Roughly ~100 charms worth of charm used up (400 gold)

so its about 5 million coin used up and 400 gold for every 3 hour highend TW.

Now tell me, how many lands do the factions own again? 15? 20? 10 millions each and you're looking at a sizable plus in coin. Even at 200k per gold, the amount of coin that they get covers all the expenses you listed here.

And besides, how many 3 hour TWs happen on Sanctuary every week?

Quilue - Sanctuary · August 2009

i wonder how much you guys spend on drugs each tw? b:chuckle

but tw only pays for itself when you have a lot of land. tell me, do you think reg's 1 land for that week paid for their charm burn for like, the past month? you can't say tw in general covers for losses because factions don't always have that much land. therefore, tw in general is pretty much a gold sink

Nelae - Heavens Tear · August 2009

Then again, we players made it a gold sink. Non of the CS items are must have.

I vote "ban CS items in TW"!!!

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · August 2009

Olba - Sanctuary wrote: »

Now tell me, how many lands do the factions own again? 15? 20? 10 millions each and you're looking at a sizable plus in coin. Even at 200k per gold, the amount of coin that they get covers all the expenses you listed here.

They aren't getting any more now than they were before the current round of inflation started, and keep in mind the current inflation started with the Battle Pet Pack sales and those took hundreds of millions of coins out of the economy.

So blaming TW for inflated Gold prices is a red herring.

The_Wall - Heavens Tear · August 2009

Please don't let me use boutique items in Territory Wars. b:surrender I cannot control my spending habit.

RAWR! I'm a tiger

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · August 2009

I was just identifying the effect of TW on the economy

There isnt much coin that is drained for a TW: towers, repairs/ammo, cat scrolls, -10% bid refund, maybe res scrolls. These are the only things where you have coin in a players hand that just kinda goes away.

Holding land generates something like 520m coins per week per server. These coins get distributed to players who then buy charms for TW. Buying a charm just transfers the coin to another player but also drains gold (not coin). So TW doesnt affect the supply of coins much at all (not nearly as much as holding land increases the supply) but it does add a large demand for gold which increases gold prices. If there was no TW there would be much fewer charm sales in a given week.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

and keep in mind the current inflation started with the Battle Pet Pack sales and those took hundreds of millions of coins out of the economy..

Where did those coins go? Sales from the cash shop just cause people to exchange coin from one person to another. Unless there was an NPC in arch that sold a SoF for 2k each the coins didn't get drained.

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary · August 2009

Ok so some people still think the chest of coins isn't the reason gold prices are so high. Let's go back to econ 101 on supply and demand for a moment here:

Would you agree that prices would increase if the item is rare (supply is low)?
I would hope yes, otherwise you just failed Econ 101 >_>.

So the assumption I'm making is that gold is the supply that is low and thus prices for gold is now high. Agree?

The question now comes to, what is making gold so rare in AH? This gold isn't the gold people use to buy stuff, but the gold used to sell to other players that sets the prices. The assumption that I and many other people are making is that the Gold Chests are what causing this rarity in gold because many people don't resell their gold at 100k to other players.

Where do they spend their gold after charging their zen? Why...they buy a hammer. Why would they buy a hammer? Well because they can buy a gold chest for 200k or less or *gasp* have chests of their own from Rebirths and cube. Why resell the gold for 100k each when you could get 200k per gold by opening your own chest or even at 180k per gold by buying a gold chest at 200k each? You don't. Reselling gold even when you can make more money from another source is plain stupidity and most of us aren't that stupid.
What does all of this do to the gold in AH?
1. There won't be many people selling those gold to other players because they used it on their hammer.
2. Low gold availability or low supply
3. and thus HIGH demand for gold. So you see high prices for gold.

This mostly applies to higher lvl players because they can do RB to get their own chests. Low level or non-RBing players would have to buy these chests or sell gold to other players. So what you have here is that most of the gold in AH would be from lower levels because they don't know where to get the gold chests for cheap or know what those chests are.

The only way I can see the gold chests NOT affecting gold prices is IF most if not all of the gold being bought in PWI comes from newly joined players AND they don't know what gold chests are. <--Very unlikely.

Ok class over.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · August 2009

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Where did those coins go? Sales from the cash shop just cause people to exchange coin from one person to another. Unless there was an NPC in arch that sold a SoF for 2k each the coins didn't get drained.

If my memory is correct, I estimate that I moved about 30,000 SoF/Feathers during the Battle Pet Pack sale, paying an average of about ~150k per Gold.

That means I passed about 55million through the Auction House, which at 2% means 1.1mill was taken out of the economy by my shop.

Between me and my immediate competition around West Archo teleport, we probably took 20mill out. I don't know what kinds of sales were happening elsewhere, but I do know that Auction House sales of SoF/Feathers were booming too, and those have an additional 5% tax on them. If half the people bought from us and the other half from the AH, then there's at least another 50mill gone.

However, we were bit-players in the whole sale. Everyone who bought SoF/Feather from another player had to be two things:

1) Rich
2) Kinda Clueless

If you were rich and had a clue, you bought Gold from the AH and bought the SoF/Feathers yourself, thus avoiding the 5-10% markup sellers were adding to the cost.

So what % of rich players don't know how to use Gold trading? Maybe I'm being optimistic by thinking that most rich players have figured out how Gold trading works, but I estimate maybe only 30% bought from resellers.

So perhaps hundreds of millions is high, but I suspect it's within the ballpark.

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear · August 2009

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Between me and my immediate competition around West Archo teleport, we probably took 20mill out. I don't know what kinds of sales were happening elsewhere, but I do know that Auction House sales of SoF/Feathers were booming too, and those have an additional 5% tax on them. If half the people bought from us and the other half from the AH, then there's at least another 50mill gone.

Warren, you of all people should know that in the big picture even 70mil is a trifling amount to be taken out over that period of time. That would be negated by 70 Coin chests opened server wide in the same period for example. Or 14 level 90s grinding and generating 5 mil each.

As long as Cash Shop sales continue to dominate the introduction of desirable items into the economy, Gold will stay high.

PWI really needs to start selling some of those items through NPCs and not hogging them in the Cash shop.

As an example if the Silvermane had been introduced as an NPC sold mount for say 5 Mil, I think billions would have been drained out of the economy. PWI would still have profited though not as much from people buying Gold with cash in order to get coin for the Silvermane. But the net effect would have been an increase in demand for Coin which would have driven Gold prices down.

wynke · August 2009

The following is based on gold trading in Sanctuary AH at 180,000 gp each. This is about an average price over the last 2 months or so, by my non-scientific reckoning. It's really probably a bit closer to 182-185K, but the figures below prove the point I want to make well enough. I'm basing the price of the "million gp boxes" on what I most see in Arch and WC/Trade chat. Yes. generalizations and not terribly scientific, but look and tell me if you disagree.

Perfect Hammer costs 5 gold. 5 x 180,000 gp = 900,000gp
Price to buy a box containing one million gp = 200,000 gp
900,000 + 200,000 = 1,100,000 to obtain a net loss of at least 100,000 gp

Now why would anyone in their right mind buy those boxes, or for that matter the hammers either? Well, except to open your stash boxes.

I honestly often see the boxes going for much higher prices. It's generally hard to find anyone who is willing to sell the hammers for gp. I frequently hear privately from people (yes, even from folks far more experienced in PWI than myself) that they did one box before finding out the hammer is consumed/single use only. Most people who have the boxes on offer have a LOT of them. Wonder what they think is going to happen to make them worth the bank slots?

Two weeks ago, I was on a rather empty part of Broken Plain killing like my 4th batch of solo mission mobs (flowers maybe?) when a bunch of those damnable boxes starting showing up all around me. I had my display settings on basic, so I missed seeing who was dumping them. Kind of ticked me off, since I generally clear all my drops and these things started cluttering up my pack.

Point of all this is: how can these stupid worthless boxes have much impact at all on the game economy? Who is fool enough to fool with them? One box per person is sufficient to learn the absolute futility of even picking them up, isn't it? Am I just still so newbish as not to be seeing something here?

Edit: Regarding how many players know how to work the arbitrage/gold trading system in AH, my guess is not THAT many, and even fewer are able or have learned to do so very well. Merely the use of the word "arbitrage" has netted remarks something like "huh?"

I invite your comments. I generally lurk around the forums to learn.

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary · August 2009

wynke wrote: »

The following is based on gold trading in Sactuary AH at 180,000 gp each. This is about an average price over the last 2 months or so, by my non-scientific reckoning. It's really probably a bit closer to 182-185K, but the figures below prove the point I want to make well enough. I'm basing the price of the "million gp boxes" on what I most see in Arch and WC/Trade chat. Yes. generalizations and not terribly scientific, but look and tell me if you disagree.

Perfect Hammer costs 5 gold. 5 x 180,000 gp = 900,000gp
Price to buy a box containing one million gp = 200,000 gp
900,000 + 200,000 = 1,100,000 to obtain a net loss of at least 100,000 gp

Now why would anyone in their right mind buy those boxes, or for that matter the hammers either? Well, except to open your stash boxes.

I honestly often see the boxes going for much higher prices. It's generally hard to find anyone who is willing to sell the hammers for gp. I frequently hear privately from people (yes, even from folks far more experienced in PWI than myself) that they did one box before finding out the hammer is consumed/single use only. Most people who have the boxes on offer have a LOT of them. Wonder what they think is going to happen to make them worth the bank slots?

Two weeks ago, I was on a rather empty part of Broken Plain killing like my 4th batch of solo mission mobs (flowers maybe?) when a bunch of those damnable boxes starting showing up all around me. I had my display settings on basic, so I missed seeing who was dumping them. Kind of ticked me off, since I generally clear all my drops and these things started cluttering up my pack.

Point of all this is: how can these stupid worthless boxes have much impact at all on the game economy? Who is fool enough to fool with them? One box per person is sufficient to learn the absolute futility of even picking them up, isn't it? Am I just still so newbish as not to be seeing something here?

I invite your comments. I generally lurk around the forums to learn.

Gold sellers like these boxes because now they don't have to sell to players at a reduced cost of 160k or below per gold. They can buy the hammer and use it on their own chests that they got from RB. Do they need to buy a chest to make profit? Not really, it depends on the gold price atm. If gold price is high to say at 180k then they can sell instead of buying a 200k chest. But if gold is at 160k, then buying a chest and using a hammer on it would make more sense don't you think? This would mean gold wouldn't be able to go below 160k.

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary · August 2009

Cholla - Harshlands wrote: »

And here I thought rare items increased in price only when they have sufficient demand to drive their price up?

(Or do you really think potato chips bitten in pieces but not swallowed last Christmas by Barb McCloud, of 1559 South Lane, Salem, must automatically be high priced even though she only had 3 potato chips she did not eat?)

Would you say that when supply is high, and your quantity of that supply increases that the supply has become low? If so, then maybe I would agree with you. But, I have no clue how to measure "low" and "high". (For all I know, available gold has increased, but has not kept up with demand. Or maybe people spending cash now have some hope of getting better prices for their gold and are finding people with coins agreeing with them?)

1. Gold is in demand. Look at the mounts, cloths, and charms. How do you get these? Don't you need gold? And how many high lvls with coins will want these items?
2. Your usage of potato chips as analogy is misleading. Potato chips aren't desired by everyone else, especially old ones. You are comparing food to Gold that everyone needs to buy their gold charms, mounts, and clothings. The comparison just doesn't fit.
3. Again your understanding of supply is rather confused to say the least. Let me reiterate, if the item you want to buy has now increased in number. Say you now have 1000 gold on the market instead of the 10 gold people was selling before. Would the price for gold decrease? Yes it would because players don't like waiting for their gold to sell. They will price their gold slightly lower than the other guy so it would sell faster. There will be more competition when there are more gold in the market. If more gold is being pumped into PWI and yet prices are still high, then you must look at WHY it's still high. Here you would have to look at Mount, clothing, orbs, and charm sales. Anyone of these would push up demand for gold. If you haven't noticed, the gold charm sale was over for a while now. The cheaper charms are starting to disappear. People can't buy a Gold hp for 500k anymore. As long as there is a person desperate enough and have enough money to buy gold at a high price, the prices will remain high.

wynke · August 2009

But when gold prices are high, the hammer, in effect, itself costs more, thus making the gp in the chest less valuable. no?

Edit to mention that there is always going to be a lag whenever the market changes. Thats when the savvy investor/speculators make money if they move quickly in the right direction.

Mad_Doc - Sanctuary · August 2009

wynke wrote: »

But when gold prices are high, the hammer, in effect, itself costs more, thus making the gp in the chest less valuable. no?

It would and so there is a cap on how high gold can go. As you see gold is around 180 to 200k and not going much higher. How high it goes will depend on sales. How LOW it will fall back depends on the hammers and chest of coins. So basically the hammer won't make gold prices spike to 200k, but it will keep gold from going back below 160k.

wynke · August 2009

In my opinion, only the desperate and the "small fry" or ignorant and impatient will sell gold at 160K gp. Granted, there are quite a few of those types, but at this time
I see far more people holding gold out of the market when prices slip even to 170K.
Look carefully and watch the listings, even if for just an hour or two, you'll notice a few things. For one, you'll see the amount of gold wanted to buy will be more than the amount of gold on offer to sell. You'll probably also see offers to sell gold withdrawn, and not replaced. The battle to meet in the middle can be subtle, but lately it really has been almost comical. To see an offer to sell (just for purposes of example) 20 gold at 200K gp withdrawn and immediately see a new offer to sell 10 gold at 195K and one to sell 5 gold at 180K, and one to sell 5 gold at 173500, when the current highest bid stands at offer to buy 20 gold for 171K. lmao It's like a trail of breadcrumbs, trying to lure the buyer to say, well ok,maybe a little more. And maybe a little more again . . . . so on. Surprising how often it works. If the gold sellers are patient, they can and will starve the server into higher prices. Human nature.

stockz · August 2009

why do people complain about no coin drain? crazy stones drain 70k for 81+ everyday. we are talking about thousands times 70k

JoslynJinx - Sanctuary · August 2009

With what Vellamo had said in the original post for this thread in mind, I have a theory. This may be way out there, this may be right on the ball, but I'm wondering if the GM's are simply preparing for the departure of many high LV's with massive amounts of coin. This would obviously take millions, possibly billions, of coins out of the economy. Especially of they don't come back. What does everyone think?

Hasukurobi - Heavens Tear · August 2009

The OP completely failed to address one of the most horrendous influxes of massive amounts of coin in the game...Namely Factions that hold territory. Especially any that hold massive amounts of it will get HUGE coin reserves which then allow them the power to spend that coin with complete disregard thus driving the value of coin down and down.

This is the equivalent of China suddenly spending Trillions of US dollars on relatively inexpensive items. I would heavily devalue the US currency as a result.

wynke · August 2009

Being myself both a conspicuous consumer and a deep-pocket investor, I can't say why some people say that. I have absolutely no problem spending every dime I make. Granted, I am addicted to alts (highest is 45ish?) and to having a few creature luxuries, ah, I mean basic comforts.

And trust me, I pick up every drop I can, no matter if it's vendor trash or DQ or whatever. I do spend more time in AH than most. But majority of that goes right back to AH/arbitrage. Seems I always am spending gp, and so I am steady pulling gp out of AH account. I'm just lucky that so far I can keep ahead of the drain.

Maybe it gets less expensive as you level up? Altho I really can't see how. Frm my understanding, TW is hellishly expensive in charms, pots, repairs, etc.

HxC_Cherry - Lost City · August 2009

rocinvader · August 2009

Ok, am no economist, but this is my take on the gold problem AND the problem of high level players opting for same gear/gettin bored doing TT runs,BH,Rebirth over and over....

what I suggest is a two pronged process:
1) remove all coin reqards from CS items. this requires removing jolly, chest of coins etc. u can keep the hammer but only for supply stashes.

2) have a massive event where you have to do quests AND pay coins for a decent amount of EXP. This may require removing easier alternatives like BH(plz dont kill me for saying this). Also, make the quests harder, more random, and increase the amount of coins required increase slowly...

Also, one reason for inflated gold prices is BH itself.
1)remember when there were fewer molds and you had to pay HUGE amounts of coins to buy one...well, increasing the FB runs means more molds, lesser coins required and well, we all know that one way to get coins is by selling gold.
2)more BH means less grinding, which in turn means lesser amounts of charms and Esotericas used. Now, this is not demand and supply but a reverse situation. When the demand for these items reduce, especially on lower levels, bulk sellers start selling them for more money. also, lower level players start "rationing" by using pots etc., which in turn reduces the demand

Another event that i suggest is to have a HUGE quest series for all levels and to have quest rewards in the form of customizable gear...this is to break the shackles of "standardized" gear and builds. I know, after some time this event would also lead to standardizations, but then we can scrape it, depriving new players of the customized gear, which would then sell for HELL prices, thereby requiring an in-flow of gold from those who can not generate coins by grinding

Economy 101

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