Gm Make New Plan to Lower Gold Prices please.

calavera wrote: »

Current conditions stand to benefit only people charging massive amounts of zen (hundreds of dollars) or people with already considerably fortunes (200mil+)... and maybe their friends and a few speculators. The rest of us (that is the remaining 90% of the playerbase, both CS users and free players) have to either grind 2-3 times longer or charge 2-3 times as much to keep up. When some of the people that may be charging $50 a month realize they have to spend more of their time doing dull, boring stuff i think you have a situation where the high gold prices benefit no one, regardless of apparent short term benefits.

Not true. It only benefits them the most. It would be interesting when the month is up to see how the event helped each person and how much if any money they spent on it. There's more to the event than the rare items from packs. Tokens are amazing, I wish they left packs in forever considering how affordable they make well... a lot of items.

I edited after I posted, sorry about that. I guess you saw the post before I edited, I included the reason in there. But basically it's because there's more to the event than only the rare warsong, lunar glade, frost, and so on items. Normal luck tokens are very beneficial to the playerbase in general, they've brought the prices down on so many items... subs, flawless/immaculate/perfect shards, apocalypse pages, mana potions, pet food, and so on. All of those items and more have all gone down drastically in price due to the event, and the lower prices mean... more availability to that 97% or more of players that aren't ultra wealthy and on top of that, many of the items made more affordable, were items of the level that only the wealthy were able to afford before (all 79 skills, shards, etc...).

Brael - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I edited after I posted, sorry about that. I guess you saw the post before I edited, I included the reason in there. But basically it's because there's more to the event than only the rare warsong, lunar glade, frost, and so on items. Normal luck tokens are very beneficial to the playerbase in general, they've brought the prices down on so many items... subs, flawless/immaculate/perfect shards, apocalypse pages, mana potions, pet food, and so on. All of those items and more have all gone down drastically in price due to the event, and the lower prices mean... more availability to that 97% or more of players that aren't ultra wealthy and on top of that, many of the items made more affordable, were items of the level that only the wealthy were able to afford before (all 79 skills, shards, etc...).

Don't worry man, i will point out that all the items you mention as going down in price are things you can get without using the cash shop, which goes to the point i've been making through several posts that as the value of things you can get ingame diminishes it becomes more necesary to spend larger amounts of time dedicated to dull tasks. The packs raise the price of gold and while they may seem to offer advantages to people charging zen, they make the rewards for what they do on an everyday basis diminish... unless you're so rich this doesn't affect you, lost revenue on farming or obtainig this things as drops will hurt you midterm imo.

BludShot - Lost City wrote: »

Fo the love of all that is Tina Turner!! some1 plz kill this post!!!... P.S. I fail, u fail ....hell we ALL fail!

All we want is life beyond thunderdome

calavera wrote: »

The system is closed because those coins are exchanged for someting else ingame (they don't just disapear) so their intrinsic value is preserved.

Well, at higher lvls you can spend around 70k daily for some exp in Crazy Stone. The coins are gone forever and you have your exp, which is nice value and maybe even very well worth the money, but you can't go buy anything for it. Well, ok, you can load it into your genie and maybe sell it later, even though for a price you can't estimate very well in advance. The point is, in most cases you can't turn that value back into money, that value is consumed and produces a small amount of enjoyment in the process

calavera wrote: »

PW has a regulated economy and it's been failures on the regulator's side that have created high gold prices...

They didn't go out and said, for now on the gold will cost 400k+, did they? No, they made efforts to stimulate the demand in hope that it will increase their sales. I've no idea how much they succeeded, maybe if they post their financial report

There's also no scarcity of key goods themselves (are you talking about charms? hammers?), just gold supply.

I very much doubt PWE will ever regulate gold prices directly by buying or selling gold at auction themselves, in fact I'm not even sure they're giving a damn about regulating, their goal is to increase sales, and all we see here are just some side effects.

I can pretty much agree with you on the outcome for the "poor" people and that the gold won't cost what it used to cost.

calavera wrote: »

Bull... and what all people trading gold are impaired with ADD? This would only encourage people to list higher prices...

So you think if the offers to buy gold say:

380,000 - 4
360,000 - 16
359,000 - 87
358,000 - 28

And I'm interested in buying 50 gold, but not for 380k. So I spend 4 gold to buy out the top offer so it now says:

361,000 - 50
360,000 - 16
359,000 - 87
358,000 - 28

You think this will somehow encourage other people to list higher prices than before I did my little manipulation?

Have you ever done any ForEx trading? Gold and coin are just two different currencies. Any trade between them is perfectly symmetrical. Anything you do selling gold, you can do selling coin. Anything you do buying gold, you can do buying coin. Any conspiracy theory you can come up with about how gold sellers are driving up the value of gold (driving up the cost of gold in coin), can be applied equally to coin sellers driving up the value of coin (driving down the cost of gold in coin).

Also, people seem to miss the point that the gold system depends on the interaction of an open system (everyone's wallets) and a closed one (ingame economy) ever heard of thermodynamics?

This is incorrect. You're assuming the in-game economy has a fixed amount of coin. It doesn't. Both systems are open (as you've defined them). The amount of gold in the system depends on how willing people are to open up their wallets to PWI. The amount of coin in the system depends on how willing people are to spend time in the game grinding and doing other activities which create coin (as opposed to things like cat shops which simply move coin around).

That's the main problem I have with the current event. The best luck tokens being converted to ten million notes are injecting a huge amount of coin into the system. It's essentially printing money without a corresponding creation of wealth, leading to devaluation of coin and thus inflation in prices. After the event ends, there's going to be so much more coin in the system that unless some huge coin sinks are added, we're not going to ever see gold prices fall to where they were before this anniversary event.

Well those Coin Boxes and Best Luck Tokens are sort of just the 'kick out the door' for F2P players in the PWI economy. The very few things you needed coins for (Skills, Teleports, and some minor things) can now be bought directly from the Cash Shop without the need to go through another human being. But I don't think they are the most important factor in the shifting balance, as I don't think enough time elapsed to allow them to contribute enough "bought/counterfeit" coins in the economy as to cause the gold price inflation that we have seen. (The fact that anything and everything seems to be for sale in the cash shop is to blame.)

Mistimancer - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Yes I am one of the QQer...

Yes I will probably be flamed....

And yes.. I guess that "free" game does not exist... but at least.. when gold was sold for 100000 to 150000 I was able to farm enough coins to get either charms, sockets or guardian.... but now.. no way in hell I can...

Lemme explain.. I don't work.. I am a full time stay at home mom with a very demanding autistic child.. just her assessement was 2600$....so I cannot buy Zen, I simply cannot afford it .. and when I have a little 20 minutes to myself.. I come here.. kill some mobs.. release some steam.. then I am back to reality....

1-2 times per week.. I can have a 2-4 hours to myself.. I usually help others or my faction help me do some of my instance... etc.. I used to be able to get charms to even be more efficient... but now... I cannot.. no way I can grind enough to gather 700000 coins for a charm that will go 1/2 in 1 instance ... so I live without.. I buy pots Over a year I play this game.. and I finally been able to gather 2 million for the 1st time...
Some of my faction mate noticed my struggle... and been nice enough to buy the item for me and sell it to me in the old fashion way.. 100000 per gold... so I finally been able to get charms and some guardian scrolls because of them

Yes I know.. my case is probably 1 in a million...and I should not complain 'cause.. HEY.. nothing is free in life... why should I expect to be able to have fun with little time and still be able to have what others can get with cash... but the reason that made me start play PWI was that it was free... I used to play other paying game ( LOTR, EQ etc) but I had to stop due to my IRL situation... ... THAT IS ALL.. NOW FLAME on and say my post was useless .. it made me feel good to post it...

now need to go... my 10 minutes of free time is over .. BYE

Well, I won't flame you because the huge problem with this event is that not everyone has a huge amount of coins and not everyone can afford ZEN. Sadly, because of 10 mil notes, those that don't have money become poorer (since they make only enough to buy charms/guardian scrolls at current gold prices), and those that are either really lucky or rich become richer (since they have a greater chance of obtaining 10 mil notes by having 2 tokens of best luck).

If the increase of coins was evenly distributed (an increase in mob DQ and coin drop rate might produce this change), then I doubt many people will be complaining about gold prices. However, this is not the case, and even though I can understand why gold prices should be around 400K at the moment, the gold prices are quite unfair to those that can't afford gold.

I'm responding only to recent posts, e.g. Solandri and preposterous on this page:

I would support the system preposterous suggests, except that it would only be a temporary fix. What we have now are certain elements which create artificial floors on gold prices. Chests of Coins were one such floor (just under 200k), and now Anniversiary Packs create another, if more loosely defined, floor. Combine that with the availability of 10mil big notes, and you get the deflation of coin value which Solandri spoke of.

If you multiplied all coin drops and DQ values by 4? That'd fix the current system, yes... not for any future states of the gold market though, I'd wager.

I dunno, it just strikes me as a little inconsequential if the value of coin goes down. As long as you can still buy things, who cares? You worry about deflation of your currency if you have other economies to compete with... which is only the case in the real world. Each server's economy is isolated from the others, and even if they weren't, they all still share the same basic financial dynamic because what PWI does to the CS affects them all.

All that being said... we're having problems because we have two currencies, not one, and one (arguably the more valuable one) has inflated in the cost of the other. Thus you have headaches like this... where you can't buy things at a non-laughable exchange rate. The rich do get richer, and the poor could stay where they were, except now they get shafted trying to buy just basic CS needs on coin... so in a sense, they get poorer.

The simple fact is that PWE (the higher-ups at PWE, that is... NOT the GMs, they're not to blame) has grossly mishandled this economy. It was built on a system of a 100k exchange rate - you can't quadruple that in the space of two months and expect the economy to magically deal.



To be quite frank (rant time here), I'm really tired of the profiteers coming into these discussions and telling us all to wait for the free market fairy to come along and fix all our problems. It's not going to happen. What's hilarious is how some of these people seem to have such faith in the free market that it's almost like Ayn Rand is participating in the discussion. -_- But - and listen close now, this is the important part - Rand would probably have a fit over our whole system (were it real), because the whole free market aspect is a sham. Why? Because we have a government (PWE) who has significant, if not near-total, power over every aspect of it. They can change the amount of coin available in the system... and they have. They can pump rare (and even common) items into the economy for players to fight over... and they have. They can blatantly manufacture new commodities which artificially raise the price of gold... and they have (*coughironhammercough*).

Just because the players are willing to pay these higher prices doesn't mean they're responsible. People will continue buying gold no matter what price it is. But PWE has total, if indirect, influence over that price.

It was by their sales and actions that the price of gold rose. They're the ones who need to take action so it goes down again. That's the bottom line.

Cococina - Lost City wrote: »

i say u should wait till the anniversary pack event will be over...gold price will come back to normal(max 150) if not:b:bye herc and my char

Max 150k huh?


b:thanks

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Have you ever done any ForEx trading? Gold and coin are just two different currencies. Any trade between them is perfectly symmetrical. Anything you do selling gold, you can do selling coin. Anything you do buying gold, you can do buying coin. Any conspiracy theory you can come up with about how gold sellers are driving up the value of gold (driving up the cost of gold in coin), can be applied equally to coin sellers driving up the value of coin (driving down the cost of gold in coin).

This is incorrect. You're assuming the in-game economy has a fixed amount of coin. It doesn't. Both systems are open (as you've defined them). The amount of gold in the system depends on how willing people are to open up their wallets to PWI. The amount of coin in the system depends on how willing people are to spend time in the game grinding and doing other activities which create coin (as opposed to things like cat shops which simply move coin around).

QUOTE]

Never done what i would informally call forex trading (i do have a portfolio so i may be wrong) but if you're refering to exchanging one country's currency for another, yes, i'm old enough that i remember what a nightmare it was to travel in europe before the euro. Manipulating listings, however a smart ruse it may be (and i know it's done irl) it's something not only people "playing the market" will avoid (hence the Atention Deficit Disorder joke, or do you change your trading strategy based on last hour's prices?) but that won't affect the market's price trends, only spike them. Yes, i imagine it may very well allow you to unload your 500 gold at a convenient price, but you do realize you're doing nothing but take advantage of the "chumps" that don't really know how to trade.

And as for the systems comment (which since it has brought nothing useful to the thread, i regret making) whatever part of "thermodynamics" made you think that i was refering to anything other than NEWTONIAN models? PW is a conceptually closed system because you can't take anything out of it, but interaction with the real world does allow you to put things in. Ofc technically speaking, you would need to account for the energy we need to run it on our comps, etc. if you want to get philosophically technical but that wasn't really the point... now we've all apparently become speed demons...

My take on this is simple.

PWI is a free to play game. (No one is forced to buy Zhen/Gold)

PWI needs income in order to function. (This is why we have a boutique. So, thank you to all who buy Zhen/Gold)

The ability to purchase Zhen/Gold in game is great. And its a privilege to all.

1.) Those who don't have RL cash to spend can get Gold.
2.) Those who want some in-game coin real quick can sell Gold.
3.) Those who have gold can purchase boutique items.

Its a win win for those who want to buy/sell. I find this system to be more then adequate. I mean Gold purchasers have a choice. If you say gold cost to much coin; I say coin cost to much Gold. b:chuckle

I get to play PWI for free, if I want. And, theoretically, I can eventually get everything I want in-game.

Falls - Sanctuary wrote: »

This thread is a problem, because it drowns out any rational complaints about the price of Gold with a bunch of; "GMs please lower the prices Q_Q".

Even if you replace "GMs" with "PWE Developers", they don't control what people will do with their money and time, and they don't set the exact price, but they can and do influence it by controlling the quality/value of the items in the Cash Shop versus that of the items available in the game itself (F2P). The gap in quality grows with every update, which increases the gap in enjoyment for many of us.

I understand it from a business stand point, and see it a lot these days. Entertainment products and other luxuries have become more expensive to enjoy, but I just don't think that in this instance "the price is right", especially when considering the alternatives.

*I voted 100K by the way xD, because when prices were that low was the only time that coin actually served a purpose for the majority of players in game, outside of being the currency that I needed to convert my Gold/Grinding into to use in trades.

And to all the people that want this thread to die, stop BUMPING it. "Rational" to you apparently meaning blind faith in "players set gold prices" yea, i really see your point about your feeling threatened that someone might discuss your dogma. I'm perfectly aware this may have become a nuissance which is the reason i've stayed away from threads like "gold prices (again)" even tho people continue to use their "players set gold prices" discourse in there as a way to shut down anyone with legitimate complaints over the gold price situation. I don't buy it, i've presented rational arguments and aside from smart answers from a few people, i've received mostly trolling and comments from simpletons that can't bother reading a post before responding to it.

If the truth threatens you out of a feeling of "control" or "security" grow up. As deluded as you may be about the situation you know the anwer is not in pleading with or organizing the player base. No, we don't "deserve" this because we've been "greedy" it's not about morality. PWI can turn the economy around, they either don't realize how or don't care to- You, on the other hand, are powerless. Now bury the uncomfortable truth...

calavera wrote: »

or do you change your trading strategy based on last hour's prices?) but that won't affect the market's price trends, only spike them. Yes, i imagine it may very well allow you to unload your 500 gold at a convenient price, but you do realize you're doing nothing but take advantage of the "chumps" that don't really know how to trade.

That wasn't my point. I agree with you that long-term this sort of manipulation doesn't impact the market price. My point was that if someone selling 50 gold can do it (like the OP I replied to claimed), then someone selling 20 million coin could do it as well. Hence the claims that this sort of manipulation is going on by gold sellers is hardly evidence that the price of gold is higher than it should be. Hence even if this sort of manipulation did impact the price of gold, it wouldn't necessarily cause it to go higher since it can also be used to make it go lower.

And as for the systems comment (which since it has brought nothing useful to the thread, i regret making) whatever part of "thermodynamics" made you think that i was refering to anything other than NEWTONIAN models? PW is a conceptually closed system because you can't take anything out of it, but interaction with the real world does allow you to put things in.

Think about it more carefully. The in-game coins are not a closed system. When you kill a mob, the coins it drops are not taken away from somewhere else in the game. They are created out of nothing. Just like when someone buys Zen and lists gold on the market, the gold are created out of nothing. Both are external.

The real world has conservation of matter and conservation of energy which provide natural boundaries on the laws of thermodynamics. The game world has no such limitations. So if you're going to apply thermodynamics to the game world, you have to artificially impose those limitations yourself logically. In-game coin drops come are created out of nothing, so for the purposes of the "in-game system", they have an external source. Hence the coins in-game are not a closed system.

And I disagree that your application of thermo brought nothing to this discussion. I think it's a useful model for analyzing things like this. You're just forgotten that conservation of matter/energy is a requirement (since it automatically applies to everything in RL). Once you start applying it to in-game stuff, you'll see what I'm talking about. For the in-game economy to be closed, monsters would have to take coin and items from players they killed, raid towns to loot and pillage the merchants, etc., then drop those coin and items when they died.

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

And I disagree that your application of thermo brought nothing to this discussion. I think it's a useful model for analyzing things like this. You're just forgotten that conservation of matter/energy is a requirement (since it automatically applies to everything in RL). Once you start applying it to in-game stuff, you'll see what I'm talking about. For the in-game economy to be closed, monsters would have to take coin and items from players they killed, raid towns to loot and pillage the merchants, etc., then drop those coin and items when they died.

Well, we do seem to agree on the market thing then. As for the model, i may have glossed over the asumption that mob/mat spawning are simply a representation of the world's resources. Yes, you and i know that spawning esentially repeats ad infinitum, but you could also visuallize said resources as originating from a very large resource pool (very much as in irl earth) and while their depletment becomes esentially a non factor, this allows you to deal with two systems; one in which labor by the world's inhabitants produces wealth, and an outside adition through the gold system. This was the original intent of my analogy, as i sought to make the point that the asumption you can play without being affected by gold prices dismisses the fact that both sets of systems are intertwined in such a way as to make the position untenable.