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Now I know that there may be performance reasons why a character in a game (usually RPGs) can only hold so much of the in-game currency. I'm not talking about limits imposed for those reasons. What I am talking about is when the game developers pick a number out of thin air (in Guild Wars we can only hold 100k on each character) and then say that no character can hold any more than that.

Does doing so have any purpose ?

I've asked about this on various Guild Wars forums in the past and someone always responds that it limits how much things trade for between players. When I point out that players adopt another item for a secondary currency to bypass this limit, they either don't respond or say that the secondary currency is irrelevant without saying why.

Personally I'm thinking that because the secondary currency bypasses the limit, any effects it has on limiting trades also get bypassed, thus removing any advantage the limit had. But it still leaves the hassle of players converting between the primary and secondary currencies.

So would I be right when I say that overall, an arbitrary limit on in-game currency is a bad thing ?

Considering that in Real Life we can effectively hold a million dollars in our hands in a tiny piece of plastic (think 'debit card with a mil on the balance'), plus your idea of 'secondary currency', then it's stupid. Also, you can code for effectively the same mechanic ingame by making a 'charge card stone/egg/crystal/etc.' that draws off your ingame bank account.

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:Also, you can code for effectively the same mechanic ingame by making a 'charge card stone/egg/crystal/etc.' that draws off your ingame bank account.

I don't think this would be a coding issue. If it was a fantasy MMO, I'd write something in the game manual to explain it unless I avoided discussing it completely. After all, have you ever seen anyone ask about it of games with basically unlimited currency storage ?

Which games have currency limits ?

Guild Wars does, with a secondary currency for the expensive things (you pay 100k in gold, with the balance in the secondary currency). Well, actually for the really high end trades where you can't transfer enough of the secondary currency people have agreed on another item to be used as the currency (so they pay 100k + 6 stacks of the secondary currency + some of the third item, as there is only room for 7 stacks).

I remember Diablo 2 having one as well. I never played it multiplayer, but I've heard that inflation was so bad there that people used SOJ's as the primary currency and didn't touch gold at all.

Does doing so have any purpose ?

Yes, it does.
It keeps the game somewhat realistic in that a player (unless aided by magic of some kind) can only carry so much gold or other precious metal*.
For a real world analogy, go to your bank and get (if they even have them anymore) 500 Eisenhower 'silver' (they aren't silver, but the nickname has stuck) Dollars and try to carry them around for a week while conducting your everyday business.
Then repeat the experiment while carrying around $500 in paper currency.

The point I'm trying to make is that in most 'fantasy' games currency is made from precious metals, and a character can only physically carry so much weight.






*I'm assuming we're talking about games where the currency is literally made from precious metals.
Obviously if we're discussing a game that uses the concepts of paper currency, banking, and credit/debit cards, the sky's the limit.

Glocksman
I have never seen anyone use that explanation before. But I've got these problems with it:

1 - I've always viewed realism as a very poor choice to add in features that detract from the gameplay, unless we are talking about a simulator program of some sort.

2 - A realistic limit would still be much lower than the limit for most games. So we are still talking about a player hauling around a large weight unless the gold pieces are really tiny. For instance in Guild Wars a player can carry 100'000 gold, or as its displayed in-game, 100 platinum. So for a typical fit human, could I get an estimate on how heavy each platinum piece could be without having any noticeable effect between holding none or 100 of them ?

3 - The main problem with the limit is that it also places a limit on how much gold gets transferred in player to player trades, even if both players are standing right besides the magic storage box* they are limited to trading how much gold they can carry, not how much they can have in storage. In Guild Wars you can have 100k on each character, 1000k in storage. If you were near each others safes you should be able to easily transfer the 1000k from one safe to the other given the weight estimate from point 2, add in the 100k on each character and you should have a limit of 1100k. But in guild wars you can only trade 100k at a time.

*The magic storage box is the NPC that when you talk to you can store your stuff there (sometimes a character, sometimes just a box on the ground). When other people talk to it, they access their vault instead of yours. And it somehow manages to reach every town before you, no matter how secret and/or deep into hostile territory the town is. Most MMO's have it in some form or another.

The limitations only apply to games which strive to maintain 'realism' WRT what a single player or group of people can carry unaided.

As far as the weight of each individual money piece and its value in the game goes, that'd depend upon the authors.
To give you an idea of how a 'realistic' game would work using precious metal money, the term 'pieces of eight' came from the practice of cutting Spanish silver coins into eight equally sized pieces that were valued for their metal content.
Imagine a current 1 ounce gold coin cut into such size pieces and their value in paper currency.

While one could carry 20 pounds in gold ($166,000 at $650 an ounce), it wouldn't be all that comfortable to carry (gold is dense and 20 lbs wouldn't take up much space), that makes 20 pounds less of carrying capacity that can be used for supplies, weapons, and so on.


Naturally a Magic Storage Box or 'Bag of Holding' from the old AD&D game renders such limitations irrelevant.

Glocksman wrote:The limitations only apply to games which strive to maintain 'realism' WRT what a single player or group of people can carry unaided.

And how many RPGs do you know of that strive for realism ?

As far as the weight of each individual money piece and its value in the game goes, that'd depend upon the authors.
To give you an idea of how a 'realistic' game would work using precious metal money, the term 'pieces of eight' came from the practice of cutting Spanish silver coins into eight equally sized pieces that were valued for their metal content.
Imagine a current 1 ounce gold coin cut into such size pieces and their value in paper currency.

My point was that if the size of the currency was too small it would be difficult to measure accurately, and that at the amount being carried around in Guild Wars we are talking either a lot of weight or tiny pieces of currency.

While one could carry 20 pounds in gold, it wouldn't be all that comfortable to carry (gold is dense and 20 lbs wouldn't take up much space), that makes 20 pounds less of carrying capacity that can be used for supplies, weapons, and so on.

If there was a weight limit for what you could carry then it could only make sense if the gold also had a weight. But under that system you would get players going naked just so they could carry the gold for the expensive stuff, while leaving their heavy gear in a secure location. Well, unless a secondary currency gets established.

So even then we are having a lot of gameplay hassle added, for a very minor lore benefit. And in my experience, there are very few MMO players who care about details this small in the game lore. Especially when for player to player trading it can easily be explained by saying that you don't actually have much of it on you (you just have what you find on the ground, which gets put in the bank at every town), you just have some way of communicating with your bank where it actually is, and the bank transfers it between accounts. Since an MMO will have real time communication between players*, its not a stretch to have the same communication with your bank.

So since we can handwave around the lore, I don't think it makes a good reason for a currency limit.

*If the MMO doesn't come with in-game communication across the game world, players will use a system like vent for it instead.

So since we can handwave around the lore, I don't think it makes a good reason for a currency limit.

Since I'm thinking more in terms of the old AD&D game instead of modern MMORPG's, you're probably right.
My inclination is to lean towards the side of 'realism' WRT currency carrying capability, but that's because I'm an old fart who didn't want my games turning into 'Monty Haul' scenarios where the PC's were the richest people in a 1000 mile radius.

Dark Age of Camelot has a carrying limit of 216 plat and something odd in change or somewhere around there. When the game started nobody ever expected to hit the limit and even now someone with 200p is pretty rich.
I like having that limit. It keeps the prices on the consignment merchants reasonable for some of the top end drops that people are selling away.

Stormin wrote:Dark Age of Camelot has a carrying limit of 216 plat and something odd in change or somewhere around there. When the game started nobody ever expected to hit the limit and even now someone with 200p is pretty rich.
I like having that limit. It keeps the prices on the consignment merchants reasonable for some of the top end drops that people are selling away.

Assuming that one plat is 1000 gold:

Unless there are drops that would go for over the limit if it was removed, I doubt it actually makes any difference.

If they would go for above the cap, then they will be traded with a secondary currency*. If this means that they then can't be traded with the in-game system, then I'd expect people to stick them on it at max price. Then other people will buy them up and resell them at a higher price, unless its only slightly over and the conversion costs of using the secondary currency outweigh the profit involved.

So how exactly would the currency limit restrict prices ?

Though it does sound like the limit was chosen as a number players would never reach, not as a price limiter. But 216k doesn't make sense as a system derived limit. So are you sure that the limit is around 216k, not 262'144 (2^18 - 1) ?

*It doesn't even need to be a widely adopted secondary currency. The buyer and seller just need to agree on the value of some other item in a bartering fashion.

There's a scam which involves 100k bilateralrope.

About the only reason I can think of is it encourages cash equivalents. Ectos are the only medium right now, perhaps a few others, which are the same as cash because they can be sold to the merchant. It creates a more robust economy, not that GW's economy is robust at all. I'm getting fucking sick of it.

By the way I've given up my guild, taken too much time and hasn't given me what I want. If you still have links with XoO buddies, the ones who do GvG, message me. I'm looking for people to train me.

I've given the guild to Cpl Kendall and Mrs Kendall too... Mrs Kendall doesn't check her pms anymore but Cpl Kendall does, so if anybody needs to join a guild his is open. The problem is I think he needs to do housecleaning and kick 50 odd guys, and they're relatively new (not as in age but as in game experience and knowledge) to the game. I think Cpl Kendall wants to fill the guild with vets though.

Daggerfall handled this best of the games I've played. You could only carry so much gold, because it had weight unlike most game currencies, but you could maintain bank accounts and get promissory notes that acted as substitutes. Still had to watch how much you were carrying though. Course, the economy still got busted as all hell by the end of the game, but that's common across all RPGs I've played except maybe Jade Empire which sidestepped the problem by having very little economy to speak of.

Crazy_Vasey wrote:Daggerfall handled this best of the games I've played. You could only carry so much gold, because it had weight unlike most game currencies, but you could maintain bank accounts and get promissory notes that acted as substitutes. Still had to watch how much you were carrying though. Course, the economy still got busted as all hell by the end of the game, but that's common across all RPGs I've played except maybe Jade Empire which sidestepped the problem by having very little economy to speak of.

EQ2 does this too, with each coin weighing a certain amount, so as long as you have the strength, you can carry it.

brianeyci wrote:There's a scam which involves 100k bilateralrope.

Is this the one where both players agree on multiple trades but either the seller doesn't hand over the item in the last trade while getting their gold, or the buyer gets the item on the first trade and then doesn't hand over the rest of the money ?

About the only reason I can think of is it encourages cash equivalents. Ectos are the only medium right now, perhaps a few others, which are the same as cash because they can be sold to the merchant. It creates a more robust economy, not that GW's economy is robust at all. I'm getting fucking sick of it.

I don't see how a secondary currency can keep the economy stable when the price of ecto changes easily.

By the way I've given up my guild, taken too much time and hasn't given me what I want. If you still have links with XoO buddies, the ones who do GvG, message me. I'm looking for people to train me.

If your wanting to join XoO, apply through their website. If not, I can't really help you as I'm mainly a PvE player. Saying you know me through here might be helpful, but probably isn't needed.

bilateralrope wrote: Assuming that one plat is 1000 gold:

Unless there are drops that would go for over the limit if it was removed, I doubt it actually makes any difference.

If they would go for above the cap, then they will be traded with a secondary currency*. If this means that they then can't be traded with the in-game system, then I'd expect people to stick them on it at max price. Then other people will buy them up and resell them at a higher price, unless its only slightly over and the conversion costs of using the secondary currency outweigh the profit involved.

So how exactly would the currency limit restrict prices ?

Though it does sound like the limit was chosen as a number players would never reach, not as a price limiter. But 216k doesn't make sense as a system derived limit. So are you sure that the limit is around 216k, not 262'144 (2^18 - 1) ?

*It doesn't even need to be a widely adopted secondary currency. The buyer and seller just need to agree on the value of some other item in a bartering fashion.

With the Consignment Merchants there is no interaction between seller and buyer. You go to housing zone, search the market and either buy the item off the explorer with an additional 20% fee or go to the persons house and buy it off the merchant.
In private trades some items go for beyond the carrying limit of one character, most notably the first couple days of the new dragon drop weapons but usually the only way to arrange a personal trade of items of equal value is to spam chat channels for offers or use third party message boards.
Yes, several drops will sell for over the limit for a short time but something that valuable will be quickly chain farmed and the price will be brought down (interesting note, in DAoC Asian gold seller farmers help the economy by keeping prices on valuable stuff low). If the gold limit was higher, it would be convenient to charge more since the Consignment Merchants could be used rather than having to arrange a meeting to make an exchange for multiple chars worth of money and/or valuable items.

bilateralrope wrote:

brianeyci wrote:There's a scam which involves 100k bilateralrope.

Is this the one where both players agree on multiple trades but either the seller doesn't hand over the item in the last trade while getting their gold, or the buyer gets the item on the first trade and then doesn't hand over the rest of the money ?

There's that and I think better ones. One that plays on sympathy and the other guy not knowing there's a 100k limit. The best scams guilt trip the guy so he never finds out.

"Secret" knowledge like this pisses me off. I'm about to quit because of it. At least in FPS you point and shoot a guy and he dies. I'm honestly more of a FPS player and this strategy/wargame/mmo phase of my life is almost over.

I don't see how a secondary currency can keep the economy stable when the price of ecto changes easily.

Stability doesn't always mean the same price, or the Yuan would be the most stable currency in the world. More complexity can add more stability in the form of redundancy, though sometimes more complexity doesn't add any redundancy at all. I think it does in the general case. Imagine if the entire world had one currency and had to pay for the US's retarded mistakes.

The problem is a little different with MMORPG's because the designers can choose to make the economy a post scarcity economy at the whim of a hat. Therefore, the only reason to make items rarer or more difficult to obtain is to keep player fanbase. I am a cynical guy and see their recent farming nerfs as an attempt to keep an ever dwindling player base: before you could get 8 characters with the best looking armor in the game and seven million in under a year.

At this point many players quit. If I was to start serious PvE now it would take me three or four years to accomplish the same feat simply due to lack of natural resources. In other words, it's akin to making your population suffer for no reason whatsoever if you consider farming suffering, and most players who farm do if it is repetitive. The first time you kill 100 guys it's fun but you do it over and over and three hours later you wonder what the fuck you're doing.

So in short at any time they can choose to make the economy more "stable" as you say and make people's lives more enjoyable by offering say +30 fortitude modifications for sale at a fixed price at a merchant. The entire game should move towards this and A-Net should just offer custom skins as the only reward. And why the hell not. Some people play for stats, but why the fuck does A-Net want to appease the stats people? The stats people are in PvP anyway and get max perfect shit all the time, so for the people who don't care about stats why not just give them a bonus of max equipment easily? It would at least make an easier transition into PvP.

Stormin wrote:In private trades some items go for beyond the carrying limit of one character, most notably the first couple days of the new dragon drop weapons but usually the only way to arrange a personal trade of items of equal value is to spam chat channels for offers or use third party message boards.

Yes, high prices are to be expected when new items come out. Though the fact that they do go for more than the carrying limit shows that its basically a useless limit that is causing problems, even if all items quickly drop under it.

Are there any items that stay above the limit ?

Yes, several drops will sell for over the limit for a short time but something that valuable will be quickly chain farmed and the price will be brought down (interesting note, in DAoC Asian gold seller farmers help the economy by keeping prices on valuable stuff low). If the gold limit was higher, it would be convenient to charge more since the Consignment Merchants could be used rather than having to arrange a meeting to make an exchange for multiple chars worth of money and/or valuable items.

Since there are trades that the in-game systems can't handle because of the gold limit, why should it remain ?

For Guild Wars there are a lot of people who have to store their wealth as ecto. This means that if the gold limit was removed, the ecto price would crash as people sell it, meaning lots of people whining. Then there are the deflationary effects which are likely to be massive.

brianeyci wrote:There's that and I think better ones. One that plays on sympathy and the other guy not knowing there's a 100k limit. The best scams guilt trip the guy so he never finds out.

How can someone reach 100k in gold and not find out about the limit

I don't see how a secondary currency can keep the economy stable when the price of ecto changes easily.

Stability doesn't always mean the same price, or the Yuan would be the most stable currency in the world. More complexity can add more stability in the form of redundancy, though sometimes more complexity doesn't add any redundancy at all. I think it does in the general case. Imagine if the entire world had one currency and had to pay for the US's retarded mistakes.[/quote]
And how does it add redundancy when the price of ecto is linked to the value of gold and easily converted ?

If something happens to the value of gold, ecto would also be effected. So what stability does a secondary currency add that altering the drop rate of items as needed doesn't ?

The problem is a little different with MMORPG's because the designers can choose to make the economy a post scarcity economy at the whim of a hat. Therefore, the only reason to make items rarer or more difficult to obtain is to keep player fanbase.

Yes, adjusting the drop rates of items is a much more reliable way to control inflation in-game.

I am a cynical guy and see their recent farming nerfs as an attempt to keep an ever dwindling player base:

Actually, those farming nerfs were mainly designed to hurt the bots used by gold sellers as well as control inflation (prices of rare skin weapons dropped a lot within a few weeks after loot scaling came in). Though they did make some items exempt from the loot scaling to please the solo farmers who were after rare drops. In the first few weeks of loot scaling the price of most items in-game went down (a lot of players are saying it went down too far, as most skins are now worthless), so it has had an effect in-game.

before you could get 8 characters with the best looking armor in the game and seven million in under a year.

Personally I generally prefer the look of the cheap armors. After Factions came out I decided that the Kurzick 1.5k looked better than my FoW, so I got rid of the FoW. As it stands I have about 400k from just playing normally without farming anything, and that is only going to go up.

At this point many players quit. If I was to start serious PvE now it would take me three or four years to accomplish the same feat simply due to lack of natural resources. In other words, it's akin to making your population suffer for no reason whatsoever if you consider farming suffering, and most players who farm do if it is repetitive. The first time you kill 100 guys it's fun but you do it over and over and three hours later you wonder what the fuck you're doing.

Just remember that you don't need to farm to get max stat equipment. The expensive stuff is just there for vanity.

So in short at any time they can choose to make the economy more "stable" as you say and make people's lives more enjoyable by offering say +30 fortitude modifications for sale at a fixed price at a merchant.

As it stands now most of the weapon mods are easily affordable, if you can find a seller (which is hard for some mods as they aren't worth extracting from the weapon). I've seen a lot of people asking for ANET to make an NPC reusing the current trader code to make a trader who handles the max stat weapon mods since before Factions.

But that isn't really relevant for this thread. All I'm asking is if there are any good reasons for a currency limit when it adds hassle and opens the ability for people to scam others.

In simple terms, a currency limit encourages people to turn their assets liquid. Buy things, sell things, invest in things. A big issue in games is making adequate goldsinks. Without it, inflation is the obvious result, and that sucks for everyone.

In a singleplayer game, it's irrelevent, since gold in that situation is given only as the gamemaker wanted anyway. But in shared games, inflation is a problem. Unless you can find ways of sucking the gold out of people you'll get runaway pricings, and having a hard limit on currency is one way to add a top on the amount of cash you can ever horde.

I'd prefer if gold was less available in general, and passed about between economies rather than spawned endlessly from mobs and then burned out of existance at merchants. That might lead to some odd goings-on, but at least you can more easily police that than someone who just farms like a madman and sells his gil online.

bilateralrope wrote:And how does it add redundancy when the price of ecto is linked to the value of gold and easily converted ?

If something happens to the value of gold, ecto would also be effected. So what stability does a secondary currency add that altering the drop rate of items as needed doesn't ?

Moving into the general case, I'm not an economist or an economics student. The value of gold is affected in MMORPG's by basic items available at merchants, a Consumer Price Index. Meanwhile, cash equivalents such as ectos can be viewed as dependent on other factors such as farming which are in turn dependent on balance and player skill. The more variables affect the true value of gold the less violatile the currency. Imagine if the CPI was made up of only Soylent Green.

Gold is only worth something because others assign it value, and other currencies which are assigned value are not necessarily 100% dependent on gold just because they can be exchanged for gold. Cash equivalents may not be legal tender but that doesn't matter a shit: just because some government somewhere doesn't call it legal tender doesn't mean it isn't as good as money. That's the whole meaning of the definition of cash equivalent, tender which is dependent on other factors but can be easily liquidated.

You can argue whether a virtual world would be better off with one currency or not, but in the real world more currencies protects local markets which often have varying interests and goals. In fact, the economics of Guild Wars pisses a lot of people off, and they could do a lot to model the real world properly. Imagine a Kurzick dollar, or a Luxon dollar, which could buy unique consumables, all of which in turn have to be converted at a currency vendor, dependent on the Canthan National Bank's interest rates. You may say this is too complex for games, but for an MMORPG the king of time wasters, I think not.

Just remember that you don't need to farm to get max stat equipment. The expensive stuff is just there for vanity.

Each skill costs one thousand bucks and I feel crippled if I can't use this skill or that skill. There are 1310 skills! Maybe it's because I am PvP, but GW is set up in such a way that only shut-ins can afford to set up more than one PvE character with maximum skill and maximum equipment. You say vanity, but that just handwaiving. I play the games for looks too, everybody plays games for looks. GW may be better than a lot of other MMORPG but that doesn't mean it can't improve dramatically.

bilateralrope wrote:

Stormin wrote:In private trades some items go for beyond the carrying limit of one character, most notably the first couple days of the new dragon drop weapons but usually the only way to arrange a personal trade of items of equal value is to spam chat channels for offers or use third party message boards.

Yes, high prices are to be expected when new items come out. Though the fact that they do go for more than the carrying limit shows that its basically a useless limit that is causing problems, even if all items quickly drop under it.

Are there any items that stay above the limit ?

Not after a period of time since such items get farmed massively. Once every spear hero has a Gloom Warder spear, who is going to bother paying 200p for one? And even if people would stop specifically farming the dragon for Gloom Warders, there would still be raids so new ones would still be going onto the market.
Personally I don't use the super expensive stuff, its easy enough to cap stats skills and have decent procs and charges without getting the rarest gear of each new expansion. For example, I still use my champion spear because it has better stats and I would rather use the 15% stacking haste charge on my crafted shield rather than rely on a 25% stacking haste proc on Gloom Warder.

Yes, several drops will sell for over the limit for a short time but something that valuable will be quickly chain farmed and the price will be brought down (interesting note, in DAoC Asian gold seller farmers help the economy by keeping prices on valuable stuff low). If the gold limit was higher, it would be convenient to charge more since the Consignment Merchants could be used rather than having to arrange a meeting to make an exchange for multiple chars worth of money and/or valuable items.

Since there are trades that the in-game systems can't handle because of the gold limit, why should it remain ?

For Guild Wars there are a lot of people who have to store their wealth as ecto. This means that if the gold limit was removed, the ecto price would crash as people sell it, meaning lots of people whining. Then there are the deflationary effects which are likely to be massive.

It should remain because it makes higher than limit trades inconvenient so gives incentive for prices to go down faster. For people who don't raid or don't get ahold of super valuable stuff that they have no use for, the options for getting money are slower. Grinding money from PvE , crafting, PvP, and Power leveling.

To the original question, I'd say it's more of a balance issue than anything. Of course you can have secondary currency, it's only natural with a gold cap. However, those secondary currancies tend to be higher level items/gear that lower levels don't use nor could quest/buy for.

The gold cap will force a lot of lower tier items to be cheaper than they would if there were no gold cap and the secondary currency was not needed.

Lets put it in WOW terms, if someone who's an armorer can make a high end piece of armor for 1000 gold, is that going to affect how he'd price is low end armor? If high end changed to 500 gold, would the low end change too?

Now at some point, secondary currency comes into the equation. Lets say, oh I don't know, fire motes. They can be a total pain in the ass to farm and seem to have a lower drop rate than the other motes. If I charge two stacks of fire motes to make and sell a piece of armor that takes one stack to make, how would that affect low tier items I can make? I venture that it wouldn't, the motes are worth more than the items themselves or the gold you could make from them.

So I think the gold cap and the alternate currency are planned to keep low end items affordable for low end characters while high end players start trading in high end mats and items instead of gold that low end characters couldn't even get so it doesn't affect them.

bilateralrope wrote:

Stormin wrote:In private trades some items go for beyond the carrying limit of one character, most notably the first couple days of the new dragon drop weapons but usually the only way to arrange a personal trade of items of equal value is to spam chat channels for offers or use third party message boards.

Yes, high prices are to be expected when new items come out. Though the fact that they do go for more than the carrying limit shows that its basically a useless limit that is causing problems, even if all items quickly drop under it.

Are there any items that stay above the limit ?

Rare minipets stay above the limit. I've got one worth approx 400 plat. Think I'm going to hold onto it though. There are others that go for 8k plat, simply due to rarity (Top 8 teams in a tourny get them, and that it, et al). Also, because of that, the price can vary wildly.

Given what you posted I'll agree that the ecto probably does stabilise the prices of the expensive items, but given the scams that the gold limit allows I doubt that this stabilisation is actually worth it.

brianeyci wrote:You can argue whether a virtual world would be better off with one currency or not,

That isn't what we are arguing here, though it could be an interesting game mechanic. What we are arguing about is weather a limit on the amount of currency you can trade at a time is a good idea.

Each skill costs one thousand bucks and I feel crippled if I can't use this skill or that skill. There are 1310 skills! Maybe it's because I am PvP, but GW is set up in such a way that only shut-ins can afford to set up more than one PvE character with maximum skill and maximum equipment. You say vanity, but that just handwaiving. I play the games for looks too, everybody plays games for looks. GW may be better than a lot of other MMORPG but that doesn't mean it can't improve dramatically.

Yes, getting all skills is expensive. But most of those skills you simply won't use, so you should be able to afford the ones that you will use if you get them as needed. But again I have to ask how this is relevant to the gold storage limit ?

Covenant wrote:In simple terms, a currency limit encourages people to turn their assets liquid. Buy things, sell things, invest in things. A big issue in games is making adequate goldsinks. Without it, inflation is the obvious result, and that sucks for everyone.

If the gold is changing hands between players, then the trading isn't doing much to curb inflation. So it only moves the gold around.

And that's assuming that the limit has any real effect on player to player trading, which I doubt. So how does the limit encourage people to trade more ?

I'd prefer if gold was less available in general, and passed about between economies rather than spawned endlessly from mobs and then burned out of existance at merchants. That might lead to some odd goings-on, but at least you can more easily police that than someone who just farms like a madman and sells his gil online.

Unless you can show how the gold limit controls inflation, discussing inflation controls would be a distraction here.

bilateralrope wrote:That isn't what we are arguing here, though it could be an interesting game mechanic. What we are arguing about is weather a limit on the amount of currency you can trade at a time is a good idea.

Problem is some people think more simulation of the real world is a good idea. Just because you can't get the real world perfect or even approach the real world, doesn't mean a few basic mechanics can't be put into the game. Like how much stuff a person can carry.

Your question is like questioning why there's an "inventory limit" on items and your rebuttals akin to saying there's ways to "bypass" the limit by storing items in different ways on different characters making the limit irrelevant.

By the way you didn't mention anything really serious. All you mentioned was it increased the "hassle" and I had to make your case for you with scams, which was immediately countered by many other points such as inflation control (you say the guy can't show but said hassle immediately means that all but the most high-end items are under 100k) and simulation of real world mechanics.

You're nitpicking at a very minute issue, and to be honest I imagine the only interesting part of this is comparing virtual economies to real ones to most people, not the actual limit. The limit is a very game specific, annoying problem only to high end PvE. I have never heard anybody complain about the limit before. And the fact that it's a guild wars thread haha and let me pimp out my own problems.

It curbs inflation because players hate wasting gold/time/experience in games where success is based on maximizing your usage of these things.

If there's a cap on the amount of gold you can hold in your bank account, someone is likely to continue purchasing things so that they don't cap their supply. If you can't have more than 2,000 gold, then players are less likely to want to go kill a dragon that may drop 500. If they have 1600 gold right now, that'd be 100 gold wasted. Someone would go "Well, I'll go buy 100 bucks worth of potions."

That's the ye olde goldsink. Without enough goldsinks, people build up cash and things get expensive. If my Pike of Bitter Mercy (which will be the best weapon in this Hypothetical game) is extremely in demand, I might ask for 5 million gold. Someone who has 10 million can afford to pay it. Someone who only has 2k can't. And if 2k is the hard limit, you really deflate the price of things. You may see things drifting up towards the 2k mark, but it's unlikely to get too much higher, unless people (as I said) start investing in more liquid assets. Swapping trade goods essentially.

I think it's naive to pretend that it doesn't help curb inflation. Goldsinks curb inflation, and currency caps encourage people to splurge on goldsinks. Combine that with the occasional expensive goldsink (a mount, a house, pets, whatever) and you'll quickly see people emptying their accounts every so often.

A Hoard Economy is bad for everyone. You can't stop guilds from working together to increase their buying power, but think of this:

If a single person has a Pike of Bitter Mercy and wants to sell it to Guild A, who is offering me 10k gold, and I can only hold 2k gold... then that's 8k wasted. They have no reason to offer me more than I can hold. So long as banks+players have a hardlimit that is relatively accessible, you encourage people to shuffle money either in groups (creating player-like corporations rather than simply uber-rich individuals) instead of hoarding money themselves.

Obviously you want to do what you can to stop Account Muleing as well, but that's a different issue.