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Inflation as a problem for money making.

RAYZZ

New Member
Hello,

Before i start i wanna clarify that English is not my first nor even second language. I will do my best in order to be clear as i can.

So, my point is that obviously the quantity of gold in the server is higher than the begining of it. This, in economy, its called inflation. When the monetary offer increases, means the quantity, there are some consecuences like; raises on prices.

The problem with this is regarding the "profesions" that dont interact with the market. Trade runs, fishing, etc. Why? Simply because while the general prices are rising and all the trades on the AH are working according to the market, we have profesions like fishing and trade runs that doesnt have any connection. So its like any other intervetionist policy that we can find in the real world. In this case we can do an analogy with setting a maxium price to a good. Ocasionally the profesion will become no profitable so the people will stop doing that activities.

I could explain this better and longer, but i think its quite clear. Im not implaying anything or demanding changes, this all remains to devs discretion. All im trying to do here is to expose a reality and if that reality is getting taken into account by devs.

Thank you so much,

RAYZZ.
 
The reason prices in the economy are higher than expected is a two-fold explanation.

The first explanation: There are no bots. On retail, bots were not only prevalent on one server, but EVERY server. As a result, material costs dropped, which meant the cost of making weapons and armors also dropped.

The second explanation: Purchase precedence. When I first joined this server back around July, Cold Anguish was selling for 75 gold. One day someone took it upon themselves to buy up all the Cold Anguishes, and post one of them for a 450 bid/700 buyout. Someone bought it for 450. From then on, you never would see another Cold Anguish posted for less than 200g. Why? Because someone bought the item for 450g, therefore MORE people would be willing to buy it for 450g, and it established a precedent for that item. And this problem is all over the place. Obsidian weapons were 7k, now they're 11k. This was all because people have the gold (which is another point against your argument that "gold-making professions don't interact with the market) and are impatiently willing to spend it to buy an item that was listed on the AH inexplicably high, and that made it the new golden standard of price tags for said item.

Admins setting a max price will not fix the issue, because the issue is a two-fold issue: supply is limited, and those contributing to demand are willing to overpay for an item to get it immediately. If you have the labor to make gold via trade routes and fishing, you have the labor and time to farm your own materials to craft an item for yourself that costs YOU significantly less than it would cost you to buy the same item off the Auction House. If you choose not to, don't desperately buy an item for more than you know it's worth, because not only are you telling the seller that someone would pay for an inflated price, you set a standard that people are greedily adhering to.
 
I think you didnt understand my point or more probably i couldnt explain my self correctly.

Basically i was trying to say is that profesion that have their income estipulated from the server like trade runs, fishing are, as the time goes and economy growths, turning into non profitable activities, or less profitable. So theoricaly as the time goes by and the economy grows this profesions will became, at one point, non worth it. So no one will be doing trade runs and fishing.

Im also not demaning any changes, im just trying to describe the situation. Maybe, if the devs want to keep this profesions/activities alive, they should increase or check this income that this profesions deliver.
 
Trade runs will never become not worth it for making money. Fishing is not worth it for an entirely different reason than what people expect.

On retail, they nerfed the gold you get from fishing. That made the silver per labor ratio not worth it. Here, they un-nerfed gold from fishing, but we have 4x the labor as a Patron on retail. As a result, the silver per labor ratio isn't worth it because you'll be making labor back faster than you'll catch the fish...meaning you can make your gold somewhere else with your labor and be better off.
 
I understand your concern. Prices for items go up, but the gold earned from traderuns etc stays the same.
Boosting gold entering the game is by far the worst idea. Itll just strenghten inflation and not help with anything.
The only way to counter it is to take gold out of the game. Easiest way to do so in my eyes would be to increase ah fees, both, the listing fee & the cut from selling it. This however, would make cheap everyday items barely profitable for anyone selling those. If you were to only include expensive items in the increase of fees, people will just list them even higher to compensate the new loss of gold, or just not list them at all and trade them instead, creating the exact opposite of what was supposed to be achieved.
It's a tricky one

Another idea I have is to make people buy from NPCs more. This will take gold out of the game aswell. Maybe put a few items from the cash shop that are needed for every player at some point, to the general merchant, like it's done with specialization snowflakes.
 
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I understand your concern. Prices for items go up, but the gold earned from traderuns etc stays the same.
Boosting gold entering the game is by far the worst idea. Itll just strenghten inflation and not help with anything.
The only way to counter it is to take gold out of the game. Easiest way to do so in my eyes would be to increase ah fees, both, the listing fee & the cut from selling it. This however, would make cheap everyday items barely profitable for anyone selling those. If you were to only include expensive items in the increase of fees, people will just list them even higher to compensate the new loss of gold, or just not list them at all and trade them instead, creating the exact opposite of what was supposed to be achieved.
It's a tricky one

Another idea I have is to make people buy from NPCs more. This will take gold out of the game aswell. Maybe put a few items from the cash shop that are needed for every player at some point, to the general merchant, like it's done with specialization snowflakes.
or simply create more ways for people to obtain (by farming) more competitive gear
4 example to calculate the mats invested and the wisps recived by salvaging illustrious and make work bench on which to be able to directly craft mana wisps (even if they are character bound ) i was in a similar situation yesterday
i needed 8 one-hander mana wisps and there were only 6 on the AH posted at 220 g each some one bought them and reposted them 1 min later at AH for 350 g each and i was to chose between buying overpriced wisps or craft a peace of gear that i dont even need with the sole purpose to salvage it

and before people start explaining me how im suggesting to ruin Armor selling profession let me tell u that i prefer obsidian over ayanad and im not buying your stuff anyway just looking for options for crafting my high tire obsi without having to rely on people abusing the short supply of some progression deppending items on the AH
 
I understand your concern. Prices for items go up, but the gold earned from traderuns etc stays the same.
Even worse. Trade runs output has fixed price, but the input resources are inflated. So profit (gold earned) not the same, but gradually going down.
 
Even worse. Trade runs output has fixed price, but the input resources are inflated. So profit (gold earned) not the same, but gradually going down.

Well, its fixed price as well as the seeds/plants are always the same price (Merchants). You can plant/grow every resource for it.

Im working on my leather set and the prices for Corns (Small seed oil) are always rising, So I started to plant them instead of buying it on the AH, im saving a lot of money. This is the way economy all over the world works, you have a high demand and low supply, this way the price rises. When you start to plant your resource, the demand start to lower and also the prices drop.

It tooks more time but saves a lot of money.
 
I dont understand economics all that well but I do know that the amount of gold in the game is coming from somewhere. There's only a few things that generate gold out of nothing that I know about, trade runs and selling things to general store. (questing, both world quests and merits a little) I cant imagine trade runs ever becoming as useless as fishing is. I know of no ways of making gold other than trade runs and coin purses and with just these methods ive manged to finish my freighter, get a miners farmhouse and 2x p2w 16s and 2x p2w 8x8s in like.. 20 days or so.

When I started I wanted to be a fisherman but when I realized the prices of things I quickly came to the conclusion that fishing as a source of income (outside of selling lake essence which will keep growing in value as the inflation continues) is not realistic. I am dreadfully bored of trade runs but I just set up larders which means ill be making more money with less running back and forth and that frees up time to do other stuff.

Without a significant gold sink we can expect prices to keep rising higher and higher until eventually no new player will be able to break into the game passed the giant wall of gold required to buy anything they need.. mostly land.. unless they swipe and sell credits. As a new player traveling around imagine my surprise seeing that a 16x16 spot goes for 1500-3000 gold, some places 4500... when I had 120 gold in my pocket. This server is harder for a new player than the live game is because of the massive amount of labor people get to hog 15-20 plots of empty land. The price a new player has to pay to craft a farm wagon is upwards of 2k+ gold. How are they supposed to make that gold? Farm coin purses for a month? or even worse plant illegal farms in hopes of TS trees and have to constanly be fearful of someone stealing them or cutting their trees down just to be mean. Any sane person would quit before doing that with the amount of people who purple you in Auroria and reds/pirates that kill you as well.

My experience was just like this until I joined a guild that helped me move passed that intro point. Without nice people/helpful guilds this server would be much worse off. I would have quit without them.
 
Although inflation is a problem, gold isn't hard to come by either. With a little bit of knowledge and some effort, you can easily get what you want/need in a short matter of time.
1. Loyalty tokens: 9 per day. Cashing out with a lucky moon/sunpoint at reasonable price points (750g moon, 1500 sun) yields easy income for just being in game/afk. Takes 5-6 days for a lucky moon, which translates to 125g a day (750/6). If you donate (even $5), you get 5 extra loyalty per day for 30 days. That 150 loyalty translates to 2250g (1 lucky sun, 1 lucky moon), which brings in another 75g a day. This is optional, but if you do donate, thats another 75g per day for doing nothing but being in game/afk.
2. Lord Coins. It's difficult, but not impossible to do (even as a low-gs player). 1 LC per day = 200-250g a day. Only requirement is a prestige-farming guild, mentioned right below.
3. Guild prestige. Don't need to be in a committed guild, there are a few prestige guilds that want nothing from you and this provides an easy method of getting lord coins as well as other profitable items by cashing in prestige. Check out the guild prestige shop as there are a variety of items that sell for various amounts. Regardless, this is another easy way of obtaining gold. You don't even need to have land to do experia's, you can just find a quiet place in the wild, plant them, and come back a few mins before it finishes growing.
4. Fishing/trade runs. Trade runs heavily vary because of location/vehicle, but no matter what, 100g a day is easy (even with a farm cart). Fishing brings in at least 60g per boat (can go up to 125g+ if rng allows), 120g minimum from a school of fish (2 trips). Risky as you can lose your boat, but even if you die, it's just part of the game and getting back out there will be a better option than crying about it. Even if you don't own a fishing boat, renting one is still just as good. Only takes one boat load to pay off the rental, then the rest of your trips is purely profit (6 hour maximum use). If you own your own boat, everything is profit (not including bait, rod, etc).

While this list is just a few examples of money making, there is no reason a person cannot make at least 500g a day (as this list is for anyone, not just for the rich). For those looking for gear, a simple divine weapon costs 8-10k. That's 15-20 days of dailies on AA. For those after land, a nice farmhouse goes for 4-5.5k, a week's worth of work for the most minimum amount of work.

Sure, the prices are inflated. However, the flow of gold matches inflation in my opinion, and will continue to do so even if prices inflate more. People just get overwhelmed when they see prices without knowing how to make gold, and that deters them from playing. Doesn't take much time to research and find these guides on money making, and you don't need anyone else to help you make it. I play solo and these few examples up above + my own secret methods make me at least 800-1,000 gold per day.
 
Sure, the prices are inflated. However, the flow of gold matches inflation in my opinion, and will continue to do so even if prices inflate more. People just get overwhelmed when they see prices without knowing how to make gold, and that deters them from playing. Doesn't take much time to research and find these guides on money making, and you don't need anyone else to help you make it. I play solo and these few examples up above + my own secret methods make me at least 800-1,000 gold per day.

I agree. I was overwhelmed when I started a couple weeks ago. I still am for the most part, and more so trying to branch out from just doing trade runs. There's so many things to do and I know so little about how to do them efficiently or "the right way" that its a daunting task; that decision making process. For now I just do my daily gilda quests (4 miners, 4 meals, 5 lutesong, 1 ahnimar, 1 seabugs), my daily merit/guild missions that are easily accessible, then run packs and harvest/replant until im out of labor. After that I sit in my house and read tons of info online trying to figure out whats outdated and whats relevant for 3.0.. ultimately being overloaded with information and closing the game until I have labor to run more packs. lol. Its a learning process for sure.. and I, for one, will definitely take your tips into consideration. Thanks :)
 
I agree. I was overwhelmed when I started a couple weeks ago. I still am for the most part, and more so trying to branch out from just doing trade runs. There's so many things to do and I know so little about how to do them efficiently or "the right way" that its a daunting task; that decision making process. For now I just do my daily gilda quests (4 miners, 4 meals, 5 lutesong, 1 ahnimar, 1 seabugs), my daily merit/guild missions that are easily accessible, then run packs and harvest/replant until im out of labor. After that I sit in my house and read tons of info online trying to figure out whats outdated and whats relevant for 3.0.. ultimately being overloaded with information and closing the game until I have labor to run more packs. lol. Its a learning process for sure.. and I, for one, will definitely take your tips into consideration. Thanks :)

No problem. I started playing at launch on live, and running packs was life all the way until i quit around 3.0ish. It was either that or coinpurses/AH flipping. The LC dailies and guild prestige updates really changed the game; and if you've played for a while it's hard to integrate these changes into your daily play time since you're so used to running packs for money.
 
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