“For the most part the continuous monitoring and balancing has led to an incredibly stable economy with sustainable growth and reasonable inflation levels,” he writes. “However, we’ve noticed a disturbing side-effect of that continuous balancing: For many markets we’ve accidently set the idea of a price, rather than the market setting the idea of a price. Flax is a great example of a market where the prices weren’t really reflective of input or demand, but rather the idea of a value. Eventually players recognized that there was an abundance of flax and the price began to trend in a positive direction. We’ve noticed that a large number of markets are exhibiting this behavior in both directions—resulting in their being underpriced or overpriced—and their prices no longer reflect the average wealth or income of players.”
To fix that, ArenaNet is going to stop working so hard to counter all you hoarders, farmers, flippers, and speculators. “We’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing,” he explains, presumably referring to drop rates and consumption sinks. “Once we see the economy moving we can reassess the markets and make improvements, as we have in the past.”
In other Guild Wars 2 PvP news — see what I did there? — Gaile Gray told players to expect a longer off-season between seasons 4 and 5, the better to finish up the league revamp, though “the next balance update will ship this month.” The studio will be polling players on upcoming queue changes too.
