Gold discussion... again

Hallepaurion - Dreamweaver · October 2010

OK... so I'm one of those who can remember when Gold hovered around 110-120k.

Packs and sales and general inflation and greed contributed to a general rise in the price of Gold.

WE KEEP GETTING TOLD that the now 520k+ Gold Price is a concern to the operators and that they are "working hard" to develop a sustainable economic system...

Here are some of their solutions.
- 1Mill Coin boxes (were supposed to keep gold around 200k because of hammer price)
- 3* equip decomposition nurfed
- lower prices on DQ items
- no coin payment for TW
- harder TT3's (more difficult to farm)
- Jolly Jones events with supposed coin sinks
- new coin sink quest (that NO ONE DOES!)

AND WHAT HAVE ALL THESE BRILLIANT IDEAS PRODUCED!?!?!?! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING except for extreme frustration from long term players.

Tell me I've missed something... Tell me the Gold prices which are the highest I've (almost) ever seen them are figments of my imagination...

OR tell us that you have no idea what you're doing with the economics of the game and admit utter failure. At least then I would stop hoping you can actually do something about it!

Paramedic - Dreamweaver · October 2010

Periodic increases in the price of gold are profitable for pwe , because more casual gold sellers decide to charge

Susylu - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Paramedic - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Periodic increases in the price of gold are profitable for pwe , because more casual gold sellers decide to charge

Not to mention - people willingly buy gold at those player set prices.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · October 2010

Alot of the game is tuned for the chinese version's economy where gold is like 2m I hear.

You can look at the conversion of best tokens to boutique items for example. A bride pack costs 13 best tokens (65m coin) but only costs 30 gold. Also 2 best token for a perfect citrine pegs citrine price at 10M while on sanc it only sells for 3.5m.

Basically alot of NPCs seem to think server has about 3 times more coin than it actually does which sounds like the chinese version.

Ubiquitious - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Heck I remember when gold was around 60-70K. Now its just ridiculous...

anwynd · October 2010

Ubiquitious - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Heck I remember when gold was around 60-70K. ...

so do ib:dirtyb:dirtyb:dirty

Sneaky - Dreamweaver · October 2010

honestly blame the CSers lol. its there RL money stoof thad u wanna take over wich is called *gold*

not to judge them but if i wanna trade RL mooneh for pixel mooneh i would put it up thad igh also .___.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · October 2010

Hallepaurion - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Here are some of their solutions.
- 1Mill Coin boxes (were supposed to keep gold around 200k because of hammer price)

Actually, this one was never intended as one of their solutions to high Gold prices. The rest were, but as you correctly point out they didn't work.

The idea that Chest of Coins was supposed to prevent Gold from going over 200k was an idea started by people who completely fail at economics. There's quite a lot of people who get basic economic concepts exactly backwards, and this was one of them.

For example:

Sneaky - Dreamweaver wrote: »

honestly blame the CSers lol. its there RL money stoof thad u wanna take over wich is called *gold*

not to judge them but if i wanna trade RL mooneh for pixel mooneh i would put it up thad igh also .___.

See? Completely backwards.

He's blaming the suppliers for raising prices. Basic economics 101: More Supply = Lower Prices.

Susylu - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Not to mention - people willingly buy gold at those player set prices.

As a Pack seller, I can vouch for the fact that people will balk at "high" Gold prices, yet they'll then turn around and happily buy out shops filled with Tiger Packs selling at 5% higher than the current Gold price.

So when Gold is 550k, but a 0.675 Gold Tiger Pack (ie. 371k) will sell quickly at 399k, I know Gold is actually very cheap and will buy as much of it as I can.

Frankly, it's nothing more than feeding gambling addiction, since the Packs actually are only worth about ~340k on average, but people are greedy and are hoping to get-rich-quick.

Azura - Lost City · October 2010

Just wait until the sale is over, price will go down again.

Anri_Rose - Archosaur · October 2010

Azura - Lost City wrote: »

Just wait until the sale is over, price will go down again.

Packs are perm,, Sale is never over.. /thread

MoonUsagi - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Just like irl inflation . . . almost never go back to original price. b:surrender
Lately i am disguise my self as newbie, just for fun.
Then i found most people today too busy trying to make a way to make money or lv up, and people that like to help without interest is kinda rare.
Like there an encounter with player of same lv with me, when i mentioned that i have cs wing. The other player quickly add me to the friend list. While few minute ago he keep bla bla about having end game lv character on other server. Then the other people on the party join the show off party, i just keep quiet and acting as noob. b:pleased

Gwendolynne - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Sneaky - Dreamweaver wrote: »

honestly blame the CSers lol. its there RL money stoof thad u wanna take over wich is called *gold*

not to judge them but if i wanna trade RL mooneh for pixel mooneh i would put it up thad igh also .___.

Well, There is nothign wrong with spendign a little money on "pixels" its called entertainment, and there is nothign wrong with spending money on entertainment. You spend money to go see a movie or go to a concert, its not tangible you can't hold it, you can't have it forever. Its there for one night and all you have left are memories of it.

everyone one of these QQ threads seems to forget about the NATURAL inflation of gold prices. There will NEVER be a time when Gold is that cheap... Gold was that cheap when MOST of the playerbase was at lower levels.

Lower Levels Generate less coins in game. While As a levle 100 Cleric I can grind out 1-2 mil in DQ and Drops form mobs within two to 3 hours of constant grinding.

While PWEs cash shop influence has definitely affected things... Having Gold any cheaper then around 200k would be rather ridiculous with the amount of coin a player can generate in game.

IJS. Don't blame everything on PWE, any economist can see clearly the NATURAL inflation applies quite nicely.

Azura - Lost City · October 2010

Anri_Rose - Archosaur wrote: »

Packs are perm,, Sale is never over.. /thread

Well, lately we have had weeks when they only packs we have are coral packs. Since those packs have a slightly lesser change to give something good only a few people buy them. Therefore, during those weeks the demand for gold drops a lot. To me having only coral packs permanently is like not having them at all.

Sam_ - Harshlands · October 2010

Turn off duke shouts already b:sad

MoonUsagi - Heavens Tear · October 2010

I think what makes people blame the company is, the company decision to make rapid inflation growth.

Stage 1
People reach higher lv mean more coin created in game.

Stage 2
Instances, cube, TW introduced more way to make money.

Stage 2,5
Legendary pet for venomancer, people start QQ.

Stage 3
1st type Boutique sales type. (still ok since nothing really affect end game or rapid lv up at that time)

Stage 4
Chest of Coin from cube show up + perfect hammer, fixing gold price at 200k. (bonus the supply box)

Stage 4,1
Chest of coin : officially a way to buy coin in game.

Stage 5
Anniversary pack show up, yay !! (tha terror b:victory) + red wall

Stage 5,1
Generated way to boost number of in game coin drastically via token of best luck.

Stage 6
2nd type Boutique sales start showing quick shortcut to endgame, high price mount + best aerocraft, new fashion start consume insane amount of pigment. (remember some people yelling on pigment price)

Stage 6,1
People start crying and venomancer QQ the gold price make legendary pet so expensive.

Stage 6,2
No matter how high gold price, there always people that buying.

Stage 6,3
Tideborn show up, people say psychic need high refines. And endless QQ of assassin.

Stage 7
More packs more packs more sales.

Stage 8
Oracle for sale in boutique b:victory then hyper show up.

Stage 9
3rd type Boutique unlimited packs + endless sales + DQ price cut + introduced bidding hall + more red wall.

Stage 10
High lv instances become too hard. (and people start saying only heavy cser can do it)

Stage 11
Genesis expansion making bad rumors.

I stop on stage 6 though but a bit enticed on stage 9 the dq price cut.

Solandri - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Sneaky - Dreamweaver wrote: »

honestly blame the CSers lol. its there RL money stoof thad u wanna take over wich is called *gold*

The CSers who spend RL money lower the price of gold. Spending RL money creates gold out of thin air, which when sold on the market creates excess supply which reduces the price of gold.

The people causing the price of gold to go up are the the CSers who refuse to spend RL money, and buy their gold at the auctioneer. They create excess demand for gold, which drives the price up. In other words, the people complaining about the high price of gold are the ones causing its price to go up.

Airyll - Dreamweaver · October 2010

The inflation we're seeing, in the end, would have happened to some degree naturally. All pack sales managed to do was increase the speed at which the economy changed at a pretty drastic rate.

People buying gold and selling it at 500k are selling it at the price because it's going to, you know, eventually sell at that price. I remember one point on DW where all gold under 600k had been completely bought, leaving about 2 gold in the auction house at a ridiculous price of 10 million coins or something ridiculous.

And the fact of the matter is as long as people to continue to buy gold at this price, the price will not drop. You can call the developers greedy, and I wouldn't deny it, but players are equally as greedy and 99.9% of them are going to sell an item or a piece of gold for as high as they can manage without making a loss.

(Unless of course they suck at economics or end up holding on to an item for too long, resulting in a lack of profit and sometimes not even breaking even.)

The economy isn't what it used to be. Yes.
Packs helped get it to this point. Yes.
It was also going to end up this way eventually, and as long as the majority of players continue playing as they are, the economy has since stabilised as best as it is going to with the constant sales of packs every two weeks along with permanent ****ty packs in the boutique.

Anri_Rose - Archosaur · October 2010

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The CSers who spend RL money lower the price of gold. Spending RL money creates gold out of thin air, which when sold on the market creates excess supply which reduces the price of gold.

The people causing the price of gold to go up are the the CSers who refuse to spend RL money, and buy their gold at the auctioneer. They create excess demand for gold, which drives the price up. In other words, the people complaining about the high price of gold are the ones causing its price to go up.

normally yea id say you are right but for the fact
at least on my server
there are instances of ppl literally buying ALL gold in the ah at one time,
just cus they can

also in response to another poster above
ya its ok to spend a lil money for fun on this game

what ruins it is when ppl spend thousands and make me go
O.o woot, but honestly if your not used to it by now you never will be
personally me
i wish more ppl would start to work together then just rage quit ..
Hard work is still something some of us do

SashaGray - Heavens Tear · October 2010

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Actually, this one was never intended as one of their solutions to high Gold prices. The rest were, but as you correctly point out they didn't work.

The idea that Chest of Coins was supposed to prevent Gold from going over 200k was an idea started by people who completely fail at economics. There's quite a lot of people who get basic economic concepts exactly backwards, and this was one of them.

i think you got the purpose of chests of coins backwards, they establish a gold price floor, not a ceiling, as it would be pointless to sell gold below a certain mark, i think it was 196k because you would make more coin opening chests then selling gold, it was never intended to keep prices at 200.

Anri_Rose - Archosaur wrote: »

Packs are perm,, Sale is never over.. /thread

tiger packs are not permanently in the boutique, corals are, but corals were keeping gold at around 380k, at least on HT

"This item will be in the Boutique from October 20th at 1:00AM Server time until November 3rd at 1:00am Server Time!"

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The CSers who spend RL money lower the price of gold. Spending RL money creates gold out of thin air, which when sold on the market creates excess supply which reduces the price of gold.

The people causing the price of gold to go up are the the CSers who refuse to spend RL money, and buy their gold at the auctioneer. They create excess demand for gold, which drives the price up. In other words, the people complaining about the high price of gold are the ones causing its price to go up.

yup. its a buyers market, buyers set the gold price, not sellers. However, pwi has become quite adept at manipulating buyer's demand, while a buyer can buy up all the gold in an attempt to corner the market, there will continue to be people who buy gold for IRL money and sell it for coins if they like the price the buyers are buying it at.

MistaBwanden - Sanctuary · October 2010

The lowered DQ prices was NOT to lower gold prices.
Learn2ReadForums

Anri_Rose - Archosaur · October 2010

I know the coral packs are the only ones there for good
And tiger packs give better drops
But my points still valid

i swear it is
Anyway its all good just have to work harder and harder

Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary · October 2010

Anri_Rose - Archosaur wrote: »

normally yea id say you are right but for the fact
at least on my server
there are instances of ppl literally buying ALL gold in the ah at one time,
just cus they can

also in response to another poster above
ya its ok to spend a lil money for fun on this game
what ruins it is when ppl spend thousands and make me go
O.o woot, but honestly if your not used to it by now you never will be
personally me
i wish more ppl would start to work together then just rage quit ..
Hard work is still something some of us do

What sense does it make to buy ALL the gold at once using coins you worked hard to save when the price is high? That makes no sense whatsoever... there is a very good reason why those who grind/merchant coin so desperately want to trade it in for gold right now--Dragon Orb Ocean and 1-Star Dragon Orbs at 33% discount. When the Ocean Orb comes out of the Boutique on 3-Nov, gold will start dropping back down to 300-400k.

As Solandri says, it is those that grind coin that are driving high gold prices, not those who charge Zen.

MANray_ - Sanctuary · October 2010

Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary wrote: »

As Solandri says, it is those that grind coin that are driving high gold prices, not those who charge Zen.

I think there really isn't any point in trying to portray any one group of players as responsable for economic turmoil. Such claims are not only divisive but imposible to prove given the interdependency intrinsic to our economic model.

The value of any given currency is relative. PW-China may have what we would consider an hyperinflationary model because of botting and gold farming, but even with a higher coin to gold ratio their players may be getting better value from their investment in irl money for all we know.

I think the best way of looking at it is to factor in time as a resource. With gold at roughly 100k it would have taken a player making 200k an hour a little over an hour to make 2 gold. Now, the same player would need to invest over two and a half hours at current gold prices juts to get 1. Yes, this misproportion has led to an unsustainable nad uncompetitive model from a player's perspective, but not necessarily a bad bussiness model. And this is a bussiness they're running... High gold prices will in general terms encourage more zhen being charged. However past a certain point they will affect population (by driving away those unable or unwilling to charge) to a degree that will make it unlikely anyone will want to invest on a char. While f2p MMOs really do come down to being wallet races, they need to mantain a certain equilibrium or else even heavy cash shoppers will be driven away. It is now become obvious a large part of the player base does in fact believe there is no such balance, while at the same time many people continue to spend decidedly large sums of money on the game.

The problem is one of proportion. Many posters have pointed out to time spent on a real job as being much more productive than grinding/farming but have somehow avoided the conclussion you'd be better off just getting all your resources irl and getting everything you would ever want (levels, gears, skills, etc.) on a single weekend. It would defeat the very purpose of playing this game, which should nominally be a relaxing and fun activity-- e.g. not work. The real culprit here is developers having made endgame gears available through the boutique, even if gambling was incorporated as a control of sorts. This decission obliterated any sense of balance as the original model relied on such content becoming available only through gameplay, even if using gold would provide you with an edge. Now, if it took most players an hour to farm the equivalent of 2 gold we would certainly be better off even with prices around 800k or even 2 mil. Gold and coin are both measures used to quantify ingame resources and not in themselves the issue. The problem is that investing any effort in this game is steadily becoming useless.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · October 2010

Thelas_Carr - Sanctuary wrote: »

What sense does it make to buy ALL the gold at once using coins you worked hard to save when the price is high? That makes no sense whatsoever... there is a very good reason why those who grind/merchant coin so desperately want to trade it in for gold right now--Dragon Orb Ocean and 1-Star Dragon Orbs at 33% discount. When the Ocean Orb comes out of the Boutique on 3-Nov, gold will start dropping back down to 300-400k.

I've bought out the entire Auction House on many occasions, since the sale announcements go up before the servers go down. So if the sale is a good one it makes sense to buy it out.

As for Dragon Orbs, they're not what's keeping Gold so high at the moment, Tiger Packs are. At 5% mark-up Tiger Packs will sell very quickly, but Dragon Orbs won't. In fact, once Gold went past ~500k I sold all my Dragon Orbs at a slight loss in order to switch over entirely to Tiger Packs. Had I held the Dragon Orbs or tried to sell them at a profit I'd have lost a lot of my leverage because they weren't selling anywhere nearly as quickly.

SashaGray - Heavens Tear wrote: »

i think you got the purpose of chests of coins backwards, they establish a gold price floor, not a ceiling, as it would be pointless to sell gold below a certain mark, i think it was 196k because you would make more coin opening chests then selling gold, it was never intended to keep prices at 200.

Hmmm... I think maybe you've misread me, because I completely agree with you.

My point was that many people got it backwards and insisted that Chest of Coins were holding Gold prices below 200k, when the exact opposite was true.

SteelStar - Heavens Tear · October 2010

There really is no way to "fix" this problem. They should of just never had gold trading in the first place along with HP/MP Charms, but it is a way to get people to spend money on the game so that is why they do it. This is F2P keep this in mind, If you want a evenly balanced game you'll have to look for a P2P. From my experience all F2P no matter how great they start out to be always end up going down the drain because of this: "What can we add to bring in more money". PWE's Perfect World has had a great run for us veteran players, but maybe its time to just move on.

Darksylph - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Ok, reading through all this **** of people who only see half the picture. The prices are not the fault of the sellers, NOR are they the fault of the buyers. The fault lies entirely with PWE. Now hold on, dont balk, let me walk you through it.

Ok for those unfamiliar with basic micro-economic principles mainly supply and demand, it can best be summarized;
More supply: price goes down
Less supply: price goes up
More demand (desire, number of ppl wanting to buy): price goes up
Less demand (desire, number of ppl wanting to buy): price goes down

Also the price changes have an effect backwards onto those 2 forces;
price goes up: more want to supply
price goes down: less want to supply
price goes up: less want to buy (less demand)
price goes down: more want to buy (more demand)

Those 2 forces of supply and demand reach an equilibrium price. So it falls not solely in the sellers laps to blame, nor fully in the buyers laps for blame.

Now we head over to PWE, lets face it, they WANT more gold bought. They couldnt care less what the actual price of gold is, as long as it encourages people to charge zen. They dont have many ways to actually effect the supply side of of the equation, other then zen sales, but that reaches relatively equal profits as they make less per transaction but sell more. It doesnt help their bottom line.

However, what they CAN effect is the demand side of the equation. If they can increase demand, the price goes up. If the price goes up, the number of people wanting to supply increases. If the number of people wanting to supply goes up, PWE makes more money.

So how do they do this wonderful manipulation of demand increase? PACKS!

The demand is merely reacting to the high quality of goods obtainable in these packs, goods which generally are of more value then the investment in the price of the gold they need to buy from the AH. So honestly the buyers are not to blame. Wouldnt you buy something you wanted, at a price which is lower then it could otherwise be gotten? The supply side is merely reacting to the price increase generated by the increase in demand, and are selling for the best price they can sell it for. So honestly the sellers are not to blame. Wouldnt you try to sell something for as much as possible?

So there it is. Its entirely PWEs fault, and they will not own up to the mess they created.

End of story.

Tsunamin - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Susylu - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Not to mention - people willingly buy gold at those player set prices.

could not put it in better words, unless people stop buying them at those prices and make the greedy sellers wait it will more then likely go down, or just they will stop selling gold. That is the answer to this inflation but that more then likely wont happen as much as it would be nice ><. Supply and Demand. Look at scroll of Tome last year it only worth 100mil (tbh most the pack items are super inflated when some In game items almost as good) but since every single player went 5 APS, people marked it up 120mil.... all we can do is cope b:cry

Zoe - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The CSers who spend RL money lower the price of gold. Spending RL money creates gold out of thin air, which when sold on the market creates excess supply which reduces the price of gold.

The people causing the price of gold to go up are the the CSers who refuse to spend RL money, and buy their gold at the auctioneer. They create excess demand for gold, which drives the price up. In other words, the people complaining about the high price of gold are the ones causing its price to go up.

Not at all. The ones selling have the ability to NOT sell for a higher price. Raising the price just because they can is simply being greedy.

There is no "supply and demand" there is simply greedy people raising prices. It does not matter if you have the only item on a server that the rest of the server wants, does that force you to sell it for an obscene price? No. You, as the seller, have the unique ability to NOT sell for a high price. To not use this ability, only reveals your greed.

Alphae - Lost City · October 2010

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Not at all. The ones selling have the ability to NOT sell for a higher price. Raising the price just because they can is simply being greedy.

There is no "supply and demand" there is simply greedy people raising prices. It does not matter if you have the only item on a server that the rest of the server wants, does that force you to sell it for an obscene price? No. You, as the seller, have the unique ability to NOT sell for a high price. To not use this ability, only reveals your greed.

So then if you sell it at a below-market price, how do you control who gets it? which of the "needy" players is most needy? And who are you to decide?

Get real.

Cotherill - Raging Tide · October 2010

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Not at all. The ones selling have the ability to NOT sell for a higher price. Raising the price just because they can is simply being greedy.

There is no "supply and demand" there is simply greedy people raising prices.

But the point is that it is not rational for gold sellers to sell at the lower price, when they can sell at a higher price. If the market is willing to pay 600k+, why would you sell at less than that? If two IRL shops, identical in every way shape and form, were selling an item that was also identical, except one was at $10 and the other $20, would you buy from the $20 shop?

It's the same principle. People, unless they're struck by a sense of altruism, will always go for the $10 shop, because it's cheaper, and they pay less.

From a seller's perspective, if there were two buyers, identical in every respect except one was willing to pay $10, the other $20, would you sell to the $10 one?

Most would sell to the $20 one, because they get more money and are unable to differentiate between the two to any degree to warrant selling to the $10 buyer.

The world operates by the rules of supply and demand. I hardly think PWI would be so different and defy this.

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It does not matter if you have the only item on a server that the rest of the server wants, does that force you to sell it for an obscene price? No. You, as the seller, have the unique ability to NOT sell for a high price. To not use this ability, only reveals your greed.

If you are the only person with possession of an item, you in effect become a monopoly supplier. In such a case, to ask an excessively inflated price is in your benefit, but it hurts the market as a whole. But as long as there is a buyer, the price is valid, and supply and demand holds.

You have the ability to sell for less, it is true. But unless you felt charitable, why would you? You owe the PWI gold market absolutely nothing, and if roles were reversed, they would owe you nothing.

When acting in your own interests becomes greed, then one must think of how greedy the real world must be.

KageYingZi - Heavens Tear · October 2010

Zoe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

There is no "supply and demand" there is simply greedy people raising prices. It does not matter if you have the only item on a server that the rest of the server wants, does that force you to sell it for an obscene price? No. You, as the seller, have the unique ability to NOT sell for a high price. To not use this ability, only reveals your greed.

You need lessons in economics,though you are right that most humans are greedy by nature

Gold discussion... again

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