Guild Wars 2

Have you ever wished that there was a trade option of sorts between players? Throw aside that wishful thinking because it’s most likely not going to happen. A more likely option that we can make happen is starting a local community for trading.

You might ask, what the kitten is that? Well, to put it simply, instead of waiting for a very unlikely event of ANet implementing a trade feature, we could instead start a community of sorts for like-minded people who prefer to take matters in their own hands with regard to trading activities rather than consigning it to the TP.

What if there’s no such thing in my server? Start one! Of course, just by yourself a community does not make. If you have some goods you wouldn’t mind waiting to sell for a chance of better gain say for instance popular trade goods like T6 materials, ectos and the like, try the /m for a change. It would be wise to be mindful of the interval you make your /m postings. [As for me, 10 minutes apart doesn’t seem to bother people as much]. In my earlier days in Tyria, I had a character named “Used Ecto Salesman” who I regularly use to solicit in Lion’s Arch /m to move my contraband [Globs of Ectoplasm]. Make your identity/reputation known! Plan fun community events like trivia with some prizes you wouldn’t mind parting with, and perhaps give even bigger prizes when you draw to a close. A community won’t happen overnight, but perhaps with some persistence, encouragement to other people to engage in the same, preventive measures to help mitigate scams, a local trading community might perhaps flourish.

A good rule of thumb is to set for yourself what you consider as acceptable risk and then divide the transaction into however many is needed depending on whatever is agreed upon after mutual discourse. Of course, this is not really an option when dealing with goods of high value and in low (or 1) quantities.

Perhaps with more people involved, we can make this a reality. Start by trading with your peers and work within your circles. If you’re feeling adventurous, try the /m channel and make new connections. I don’t know if I included it in the imgur album but having a history with people you’ve come to know helps a lot, to the point that you wouldn’t have any apprehensions sending say 250 ectos at a time or 500 like I did with another. Of course that didn’t happen overnight.

For some history of my ingame trading activites, here’s an album for your viewing pleasure. Hope that helps!
http://imgur.com/a/uHJkf#0

The problem with this is that there are very few commodities out there that can be traded in frequency and still provide value for both the buyer and seller.

For example, let’s use ectos. If everyone went to the Used Ecto Salesmen to buy ectos, he would have to have a large enough stock. He would have to buy them from the TP at the lowest price – through buy orders. And to make his ‘business’ worth it, he would have to sell it at a profit that is cheaper than the sell price on the market. The lack of listing fee and profit provide value for the seller, but how about finding the buyer?

Now for the buyer, what value can you get out of this? Trading for ectos is no different than placing buy orders on the TP. And there are two issues you have to deal with – risk and convenience. The Used Ecto Salesman probably won’t be available every single minute of the day, and other new entrants to this market carry risk.

However, this is an interesting concept, and one that I think can work if you have a trustworthy reputation out there as well as a sufficient amount of buyers. I have a large stock of ectos and I can experiment with my guild.

There was a good discussion of this idea in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Guilds-as-Third-party-Trading-Channel/1584371 including some input from JS. In short, encouraging trading outside of the TP does have negative impacts on the game and isn’t as simple as allowing players to trade the way they prefer.

it all comes down to reputation. and players are just not personal enough to remember individual people.
if there was a single account that bought/sold ectos for cheaper than the TP (would probably take <12 hours to pay you) and was well-known to guarantee not ripping someone off, that would work. It’s the whole getting started and having enough confidence that they won’t rip you off that’s the problem.

Vol.7601:

The problem with this is that there are very few commodities out there that can be traded in frequency and still provide value for both the buyer and seller.

Another thing I forgot to mention; it’s not that I am advocating for total abandonment of the TP. In fact, I like the TP for what it can do for most people. There’s convenience, exposure to the wider market, and buy/sell uptime for when a player cannot be online. It’s just too good to pass up on.

Goods that are exchanging hands by several thousand an hour like ectos, silk, orichalcum, are quite difficult to work with given the smaller gap between buy and sell orders. However, you could try narrowing your focus to select goods that you’d want people to recognize that you are the go-to person for those goods. As for sourcing, you can try from your local community or your stockpile that you’ve managed to accumulate (TP as last source) then move them as you find buyers. Surely Used Ecto Salesman wouldn’t be able to accommodate most people’s ecto needs as in his best days he could move 500 ectos, just to one person. (we had a regular thing going on until that sputtered out, mostly because i’ve moved on to other markets)

tl;dr: Find a niche, get recognized for it.