Guild Wars 2

This is an interesting idea but I think Wanze underestimates how often normal players sell their daily loot. If I get 300 Karma from an event I wouldn’t want to see it go up in smoke if I decided to sell 60s worth of items on the TP I also got from the event.

The 100g or so I get from playing monthly from selling drops, salvage, forging, crafting would translate into needing 50K worth of karma I would have to burn to sell those items. While I’m acutely aware how much gold I make daily, how much karma is a mystery to me above the 600 I get from my daily.

Behellagh.1468:

This is an interesting idea but I think Wanze underestimates how often normal players sell their daily loot. If I get 300 Karma from an event I wouldn’t want to see it go up in smoke if I decided to sell 60s worth of items on the TP I also got from the event.

The proposal is for BUY orders.

IndigoSundown.5419:

eithinan.9841:

On topic: I dont know what the true end result of a karma cost would be but I know the fastest karma farms would be found by the player community which would help all players.

As karma is already a desirable currency, the fastest karma farms are already known. Also, knowing what these farms are only helps those who are willing to endure the boredom (or who don’t find doing those things boring). Thus, “help all players” is inaccurate. The game already pushes people who want “stuff” into the farm content, while those who prefer to play much more of the game are behind the curve reward-wise.

I don’t mind my play-style being less rewarding than others. I do object to adding yet another reason to farm which will also put me further behind the curve — especially when the pay-off is to appease those who can’t stand seeing flippers prosper. Honestly, I don’t believe the problem needs to be solved, and any attempt to solve it must first prove the problem needs to be solved — providing reasons greater than I’ve seen.

As already mentioned, the whole karma aquisition needs to be rebalanced for this anyways. I am aware that this would need alot of resources but i think its a desirable change in itself, it doesnt matter if the karma tax will be included in that revamp or not. Many players complain that they have neough karma and nothing to spend it on and many players argue that it takes too much time to accumulate and the most efficent ways of getting it are mostly repetitive and boring.

I think my later suggestion of adding 100% karma gain buffs to different content would put a different rotation to the karma train. If its on WvW, people will still be flocking to eotm but when its on PvP, more people that used to karmatrain 7 days a week in eotm, might actually go to pvp because on that day the best way to earn karma is there or they like pvp better anyways and only went to eotm to get karma.
Next day they might actually go and run a couple of dungeons or fractals.

The lack of proof that a problem actually exists atm is noted as a con because it was brought up multiple times already.

NuclearBuddha.8641:

Behellagh.1468:

This is an interesting idea but I think Wanze underestimates how often normal players sell their daily loot. If I get 300 Karma from an event I wouldn’t want to see it go up in smoke if I decided to sell 60s worth of items on the TP I also got from the event.

The proposal is for BUY orders.

Buy orders that get filled, to be precise. You would never have to pay karma up front to POST a buy order. It will be paid when you pick it up from the tp. If you dont have enough karma to pay your tax, you wont be able to pick it up until you earn more.

NuclearBuddha.8641:

Behellagh.1468:

This is an interesting idea but I think Wanze underestimates how often normal players sell their daily loot. If I get 300 Karma from an event I wouldn’t want to see it go up in smoke if I decided to sell 60s worth of items on the TP I also got from the event.

The proposal is for BUY orders.

My bad.

But that does affect my MF, salvage and crafting sidelines where I buy in bulk and return to the community mats and items that are in demand. We are talking 500 karma per 1g worth of orders. There were times in the past where I’ve bought 20-30g worth of items to salvage and 10-15K of karma is a pretty big tax for breaking down items into mats to make 4-6g. That’s over half a month’s of daily karma rewards for a few hours of nursing orders.

The 20c per karma is way too high of a tax.

Wanze.8410:

As already mentioned, the whole karma aquisition needs to be rebalanced for this anyways. I am aware that this would need alot of resources but i think its a desirable change in itself, it doesnt matter if the karma tax will be included in that revamp or not. Many players complain that they have neough karma and nothing to spend it on and many players argue that it takes too much time to accumulate and the most efficent ways of getting it are mostly repetitive and boring.

I think my later suggestion of adding 100% karma gain buffs to different content would put a different rotation to the karma train. If its on WvW, people will still be flocking to eotm but when its on PvP, more people that used to karmatrain 7 days a week in eotm, might actually go to pvp because on that day the best way to earn karma is there or they like pvp better anyways and only went to eotm to get karma.
Next day they might actually go and run a couple of dungeons or fractals.

I can see karma re-balance as a worthwhile endeavor independent of your suggestion. The idea of featured content offering bonus karma on a rotation has merit in terms of moving the karma farmers around. It might even offer a tiny little bit of extra karma to players like myself who do not follow the farm trains. Whether that would be enough to cover any possible increase in need for karma will very much depend on how much on both sides of that equation. Given past performance, I expect that players like me would be shafted yet again.

From my perspective, a better solution to move people around to other content would be more severe DR on karma gain. This would not impact players who already move around as a play style. I’m sure you can guess how popular that move would be. Couple that with moving karma gain for dailies and monthlies back closer to where it was pre-nerf. Ensure that PvP dailies also offer that karma, and another demographic would benefit.

I also believe that the discrepancy between those who have “too much” karma and those who have “too little” is caused by the relative lack of desirable things that can be done with karma. If one chooses the Ascended/Legendary chases, then karma is necessary and scarce. If one has that stuff, or doesn’t want it, then karma is superfluous and plentiful.

Karma was supposed to be a reward currency. Being able to place and fill buy orders on the TP should not be a reward — especially since the intelligent use of buy orders is one way to limit the profits of flippers without an artificial change in mechanics. Your idea could very well discourage some flippers or at least require them to do other stuff. It could also mean that more non-flippers who use buy orders now would just fill sell orders so as not to spend the karma. Sure, flippers place more buy orders, but I’d say there are a lot more non-flippers.

I have nothing against this idea. I rarely put in buy orders so it wouldn’t effect me much, and even when it does I have such a surplus of karma it wouldn’t be a big deal.

but as a bunch of people seem to not have too much karma than they know what to do with, what about adding a new currency? granted, I admit I’m probably pretty bad at economics so I’m not saying this idea is fool proof, just something to get the stones rolling.

the currency could work in multiple ways

-The first idea I had would be that you earn the currency via sell now/buy now. say, 1-5 tokens per item sold/bought. then when you put a buy order/sell order and that order is filled, it costs 1 token. It would lower the profit that tp flipping is so notable for, without destroying it completely. the problem I see is that it wouldn’t “force” them to “play the game” like so many people seem to want (personally I don’t mind if it’s all they do.) which brings me to my second idea

-Tokens earned by just playing the game. fairly self explanatory. it’d have to be semi-decent drop rates, possibly an 80% chance to get 1 for every bag opened or item salvaged, or 1-5 per enemy killed

-My last idea is that you can convert any currency (excluding gold) into it. the main idea behind this is semi-selfish, and that is that it would make WvW more profitable in comparison to other gamemodes, due to the abundance of badges and lack of anything to spend them on. Of course, it would have to be different for every currency, but we could use the same Idea that you used in the OP, I’d think.

Of course this might put a focus on tp flipping that wasn’t intended, and due to that I think we should be able to use this currency for other things as well. special skins, materials, or even a static way of converting every currency into gold (vendor X currency into the new currency, then the new currency into gold)

tl;dr wanze to replace evon gnashblade

Okay, people need their legendaries, were already being restricted by the amount of gold we have; this is a horrible idea, I’m pretty sure that it would just make most incoming tp flippers ragequit the game.

Wanze.8410:

dodgycookies.4562:

if they removed the 250 limit on buy orders and had a increasing cost up to a reasonable limit, it would be a decent idea, otherwise there would be some issues with large/many legitimate orders like leveling crafting or siege crafting.

Also k-trains are terrible and shouldn’t be further encouraged.

What 250 limit?

stacks, if you could say buy say 2000 wood with 1 order rather than 8. If you implement tax then legitimate uses such as crafting a full set of ascended or mass siege production by a wvw guild would also be impacted.

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

Etienne.3049:

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

His suggestion should limit the profit you could do out of the traiding post. And it does, because it basically means that you have to farm karma first to place buy orders. So the amount of money you could make is not only capped by the amount of gold you’re able to use but also by the amount of karma you have. This is a good idea in my mind, since any other activity in the game is capped by time instead of karma. Even karma farming is capped by time. So this change would basically mean that traiding post flipping would also be capped by time, as is any other activity in the game, that gives reward. Thus traiding post flipping would be brought in line with any other activity.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Etienne.3049:

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

His suggestion should limit the profit you could do out of the traiding post. And it does, because it basically means that you have to farm karma first to place buy orders. So the amount of money you could make is not only capped by the amount of gold you’re able to use but also by the amount of karma you have. This is a good idea in my mind, since any other activity in the game is capped by time instead of karma. Even karma farming is capped by time. So this change would basically mean that traiding post flipping would also be capped by time, as is any other activity in the game, that gives reward. Thus traiding post flipping would be brought in line with any other activity.

Keep in mind that some people have 5 to 10 million Karma unused. And these players could be TP Traders. Thus their flipping wouldn’t reach a cap for years to come. This is why I support this.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Etienne.3049:

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

His suggestion should limit the profit you could do out of the traiding post. And it does, because it basically means that you have to farm karma first to place buy orders. So the amount of money you could make is not only capped by the amount of gold you’re able to use but also by the amount of karma you have. This is a good idea in my mind, since any other activity in the game is capped by time instead of karma. Even karma farming is capped by time. So this change would basically mean that traiding post flipping would also be capped by time, as is any other activity in the game, that gives reward. Thus traiding post flipping would be brought in line with any other activity.

Keep in mind that some people have 5 to 10 million Karma unused. And these players could be TP Traders. Thus their flipping wouldn’t reach a cap for years to come. This is why I support this.

That is basically a queastion of how much karma has to be used to place buy orders.
The fact that many players have still so much karma is one of the reasons why I’ve suggested that the karma price per item should rise based on how much items you want to buy. It should be very low for players who just want to get some items and unrewarding if someone wants to set up thousands of buy orders (numbers aren’t final).

Wanze.8410:

Hi Guys,

just had a wild thought about how you could maybe regulate profits on the TP and link them more towards other content played.

Frequently we see new topics popping up from people who complain about the tp and the profits being made by hardcore flippers/traders.

Many people think that it should be limited and be more in line with rewards from other gameplay.

I am one of those people that make lots of profit on the tp but that doesnt mean that i want to keep the status quo and i had this idea:

The main reason why i make so much profit is because i buy mostly everything on buy order.

So in order to limit my profits Anet would have to limit the amount of buy orders i can purchase stuff with.

So why not tax buy orders with an account bound currency?

I understand your concept. You link ‘real’ gameplay to TP participation so it forces TP barons to participate in more varied elements of the game. I do have some problems with this.

1. It forces people to do something they may not want to do without limits. From what I see, that violates some fundamental concept of the game.

2. Prices will go up.

3. I think you would agree that there is no need for this; it only panders to the ignorance and bias people have to the TP. If a goal of this idea is to appease this ignorance, it won’t work because it’s based on people’s false perceptions.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Etienne.3049:

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

His suggestion should limit the profit you could do out of the traiding post. And it does, because it basically means that you have to farm karma first to place buy orders. So the amount of money you could make is not only capped by the amount of gold you’re able to use but also by the amount of karma you have. This is a good idea in my mind, since any other activity in the game is capped by time instead of karma. Even karma farming is capped by time. So this change would basically mean that traiding post flipping would also be capped by time, as is any other activity in the game, that gives reward. Thus traiding post flipping would be brought in line with any other activity.

I strongly doubt it would be brought in line with other activities. In fact, while many flippers would be pushed out, flippers that do other content or have karma stockpiles would have greater margins and less competition.

serapheles.5409:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Etienne.3049:

I can’t see this being a good idea. Adding costs to buy orders would mean they need to be even lower for people to make a profit which should increase the difference between buy and sell prices which seems undesireable to me.

His suggestion should limit the profit you could do out of the traiding post. And it does, because it basically means that you have to farm karma first to place buy orders. So the amount of money you could make is not only capped by the amount of gold you’re able to use but also by the amount of karma you have. This is a good idea in my mind, since any other activity in the game is capped by time instead of karma. Even karma farming is capped by time. So this change would basically mean that traiding post flipping would also be capped by time, as is any other activity in the game, that gives reward. Thus traiding post flipping would be brought in line with any other activity.

I strongly doubt it would be brought in line with other activities. In fact, while many flippers would be pushed out, flippers that do other content or have karma stockpiles would have greater margins and less competition.

He actually doesn’t know that Wanze is one of the game’s biggest market gurus, next to Vol. The idea is just as you stated, competition would be pushed out, making profits for those with millions of Karma skyrocket.

I wasted about 5 million Karma on stuff like Orrian boxes and Karma armor salvaging, and I still have another 5 million left over. Not all players sit by a BLTC rep all day long. If HHR LostProphet understood the mechanics being suggested, and how it actually works against certain players, he wouldn’t be endorsing this.

You’re suggesting increasing the price of buy orders, this will lead to a decrease in the number of buy orders. This results in a reduced buy price, and an increased spread.

The people who will be hurt by this are people who get drops and wish to sell them. They’ll either need to sacrifice time by listing the item, or money by accepting the lower buy price.

What benefit do you imagine is worth hurting the market equilibrium, and why do you value people without items over people who have received items?

If your aim is to increase participation in different game modes then argue for an increase in rewards over on the general forum, don’t attempt to hurt trading and then patch it back up again.

So would those opposed to this idea on a fundamental level (not just tweaking and ironing out kinks) be in support of removing all of the other DR and time gates in this game so people can do whatever they want as far and as much as they want?

If not, would those in fundamental opposition be able to detail whether and/or why:
1.) this proposal is not comparable to DR, or
2.) why this proposal should be an exception and be immune to DR

DaveGan.8065:

So would those opposed to this idea on a fundamental level (not just tweaking and ironing out kinks) be in support of removing all of the other DR and time gates in this game so people can do whatever they want as far and as much as they want?

If not, would those in fundamental opposition be able to detail whether and/or why:
1.) this proposal is not comparable to DR, or
2.) why this proposal should be an exception and be immune to DR

Nah dude. Removing DR and gates would destroy the economy. Ever wanted to buy a single Mithril ore for 10 Silver?

But I’m not against Wanze’s idea. I fully support it, since it benefits me greatly.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

DaveGan.8065:

So would those opposed to this idea on a fundamental level (not just tweaking and ironing out kinks) be in support of removing all of the other DR and time gates in this game so people can do whatever they want as far and as much as they want?

If not, would those in fundamental opposition be able to detail whether and/or why:
1.) this proposal is not comparable to DR, or
2.) why this proposal should be an exception and be immune to DR

Nah dude. Removing DR and gates would destroy the economy. Ever wanted to buy a single Mithril ore for 10 Silver?

But I’m not against Wanze’s idea. I fully support it, since it benefits me greatly.

I fully understand and agree. I’m just pointing out that Wanze’s idea is simply a sort of DR for the trading post. Perhaps a more direct DR would be a gradually increasing tax bracket (lol)…

The question was posed for people opposed to this DR on a fundamental level. Is it because they are opposed to DR in general, or is it some irrational clinging to inertia and the status quo?

As far as the “no DR = ruined economy” bit, a hypothetical to consider: If dungeon DR was out of the question, what would be the next best solution, and is it actually “worse” (and why?) than implementing DR?

DaveGan.8065:

So would those opposed to this idea on a fundamental level (not just tweaking and ironing out kinks) be in support of removing all of the other DR and time gates in this game so people can do whatever they want as far and as much as they want?

If not, would those in fundamental opposition be able to detail whether and/or why:
1.) this proposal is not comparable to DR, or
2.) why this proposal should be an exception and be immune to DR

All other activities in game, that are rightfully affected by DR, are item and money creating activities. You put in effort and the game magically creates things.

Trading is a gold sink, every trade destroys money (15%). This makes it fundamentally different than other activities and the more trading there is the more beneficial to keeping inflation under control.

What you’re asking for is for a beneficial activity with no barriers to entry, to be punished because farmers are hurt they can’t grind 24 hours a day while causing massive inflation.

DaveGan.8065:

This proposal is not comparable to DR.

How they’re similar:

• DR: exists to target a variety of activities depending on what DR you’re talking about
• Proposal: would exist to target one specific activity

How they’re different:

• DR: Kicks in only if you do certain things over and over for a long time
• Proposal: would apply to every filled buy order

• DR: does not require expenditure of a currency.
• Proposal: does require expenditure of a currency.

• DR: is a solution to problems identified by ANet
• Proposal: is a solution to a situation that ANet doesn’t believe is a problem. Nor has this problem’s existence been proven by anyone complaining about flipping.

• DR: can be gotten around by going and doing almost anything else
• Proposal: can be gotten around by filling sell orders, the very behavior that enables flipping in the first place.

Risingashes.8694:

All other activities in game, that are rightfully affected by DR, are item and money creating activities. You put in effort and the game magically creates things.

Although I personally agree on the bolded, I do think it’s an assumption not everyone will accept. It goes fairly in line with ANet’s vision for this game, but not everyone has and agrees with this vision, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Risingashes.8694:

Trading is a gold sink, every trade destroys money (15%). This makes it fundamentally different than other activities and the more trading there is the more beneficial to keeping inflation under control.

I feel like this is the biggest problem in this game. There are no effective gold sinks outside of the trading post. The extreme degree to which DR is implemented (in this game, compared to many other games), along with the rapidly rising costs of some items (precursors) is a big sign to me that the game needs a real sink.

There are posts in this thread about how some players don’t want to be forced into this or that. Then other posts all over the BLTC forum about how other players feel like they’re forced into playing the TP to “keep up” with their idea of endgame. I have a hard time seeing the difference between the two, and why the game necessarily should cater to the former while ignoring the latter.

EDIT: While we’re on the topic of direct DR on the TP, what if trades above a certain threshold (amount of trades, transactions, or gold) every day had their listing fee or tax increased from 0 up to a max of 5% more? I propose this not because I believe in it, but because it’s an example of how even the TP can feasibly get DR.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

I have nothing against this idea. I rarely put in buy orders so it wouldn’t effect me much, and even when it does I have such a surplus of karma it wouldn’t be a big deal.

but as a bunch of people seem to not have too much karma than they know what to do with, what about adding a new currency? granted, I admit I’m probably pretty bad at economics so I’m not saying this idea is fool proof, just something to get the stones rolling.

the currency could work in multiple ways

-The first idea I had would be that you earn the currency via sell now/buy now. say, 1-5 tokens per item sold/bought. then when you put a buy order/sell order and that order is filled, it costs 1 token. It would lower the profit that tp flipping is so notable for, without destroying it completely. the problem I see is that it wouldn’t “force” them to “play the game” like so many people seem to want (personally I don’t mind if it’s all they do.) which brings me to my second idea

-Tokens earned by just playing the game. fairly self explanatory. it’d have to be semi-decent drop rates, possibly an 80% chance to get 1 for every bag opened or item salvaged, or 1-5 per enemy killed

-My last idea is that you can convert any currency (excluding gold) into it. the main idea behind this is semi-selfish, and that is that it would make WvW more profitable in comparison to other gamemodes, due to the abundance of badges and lack of anything to spend them on. Of course, it would have to be different for every currency, but we could use the same Idea that you used in the OP, I’d think.

Of course this might put a focus on tp flipping that wasn’t intended, and due to that I think we should be able to use this currency for other things as well. special skins, materials, or even a static way of converting every currency into gold (vendor X currency into the new currency, then the new currency into gold)

tl;dr wanze to replace evon gnashblade

I used karma as tax currency in my suggestion because it is the most abundant and most common. Mostly everybody has karma and a relation to its acquisition. All other account bound game currency (tokens, badges, skillpoints etc.) isnt as widely available as karma. This would force people to do even more specific content in order to get pay their tax on filled buy orders and that is not desireable, at least not to that extent.

But your suggestion to use a completely new account bound currency, that is distributed through all other aspects of the game except the TP, is a very good suggestion.

It shortly crossed my mind as well, when i wrote the OP but i used karma in my example because i thought it would be easier to do than adding a new currency.
However, we since have established that the introduction of the karma tax would need to involve a completele revamp of karma acquisition. So by now i would think that adding a new currency wouldnt take more ressources to implement than overhauling karma.

It would definately fix 2 counter arguments that have been brought up multiple times:
- People that have stockpiled large amounts of karma could still get lots of buy orders filled
- Adding a new mayor karma sink (and tweaking the faucet) will bring its value in huge disequilibrium.

A new currency, that is used to pay the tax would fix both. Everybody starts at point blank and the status quo of karma wont be touched.

I think it would definately help to simplify the discussion, if we base it on a new currency

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: Kicks in only if you do certain things over and over for a long time
• Proposal: would apply to every filled buy order

What about a “daily allowance” of free orders (say, whatever is equivalent to 5 gold, because this is probably already more than the “casual player” earns, much less spends, in a day)?

I know this is just more hypotheticals, but what I’m focusing on is that you’re objecting to things that are very easily modified/tweaked.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: is a solution to problems identified by ANet
• Proposal: is a solution to a situation that ANet doesn’t believe is a problem. Nor has this problem’s existence been proven by anyone complaining about flipping.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. Is this not a problem, or not a problem that ANet has a practical solution for yet (and thus has chosen to stay silent/deny any issues)?

Is this some sort of trick to try to get the price of linen to increase even more?

Behellagh.1468:

NuclearBuddha.8641:

Behellagh.1468:

This is an interesting idea but I think Wanze underestimates how often normal players sell their daily loot. If I get 300 Karma from an event I wouldn’t want to see it go up in smoke if I decided to sell 60s worth of items on the TP I also got from the event.

The proposal is for BUY orders.

My bad.

But that does affect my MF, salvage and crafting sidelines where I buy in bulk and return to the community mats and items that are in demand. We are talking 500 karma per 1g worth of orders. There were times in the past where I’ve bought 20-30g worth of items to salvage and 10-15K of karma is a pretty big tax for breaking down items into mats to make 4-6g. That’s over half a month’s of daily karma rewards for a few hours of nursing orders.

The 20c per karma is way too high of a tax.

Good point. However, at this state of the discussion, it doesnt make sense to discuss the tax rate because we dont have numbers. in my 2nd or third post i offered a little equation on how to establish a fair tax rate and how to establish to which amount karma gain needs to be buffed in order to keep trade going.

You also described that karma already has a gold value now (by purchasing orrian boxes or forging karma gear and salvaging the outcome).

Those exchanges are a way to create gold out of karma, which adds to inflation.

We all know that the tp doesnt create gold, so when paying your karma tax, it would not be used in gold creation but in gold redistribution from one player to the other.

DaveGan.8065:

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: Kicks in only if you do certain things over and over for a long time
• Proposal: would apply to every filled buy order

What about a “daily allowance” of free orders (say, whatever is equivalent to 5 gold, because this is probably already more than the “casual player” earns, much less spends, in a day)?

I know this is just more hypotheticals, but what I’m focusing on is that you’re objecting to things that are very easily modified/tweaked.

Most changes to game design are going to have unintended consequences. The TP is a function of the game’s economy, which is based on gold. Karma is a reward currency, not a part of the game’s economy. Increasing karma gain to counter-balance the costs for buy orders could well have consequences that neither you nor I can predict. We don’t know what additional uses this reward currency might have in future. Increasing karma sinks without increasing access to karma could likewise have long-term consequences we cannot predict.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: is a solution to problems identified by ANet
• Proposal: is a solution to a situation that ANet doesn’t believe is a problem. Nor has this problem’s existence been proven by anyone complaining about flipping.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. Is this not a problem, or not a problem that ANet has a practical solution for yet (and thus has chosen to stay silent/deny any issues)?

Let’s put it this way. Some of the arguments for flipping being a problem are weak, boiling down to jealousy and/or ignorance. Other arguments, about TP use not being “playing the game” have been refuted by John Smith. Still others, about other types of play being less rewarding gold-wise have some merit. However, the issue there is more complicated than just TP v. dungeons (or insert whatever your poison is) and range from inflation concerns (since dungeons add gold, whereas flipping subtracts it) to player retention (time delays on rewards).

On the other hand, the arguments for flipping not being a problem (by Mr. Smith, and others) make a great deal of sense.

Look at your response. Rather than prove the existence of a problem, you chose to play devil’s advocate. If you had a card, you could have played it.

Obtena.7952:

I understand your concept. You link ‘real’ gameplay to TP participation so it forces TP barons to participate in more varied elements of the game. I do have some problems with this.

1. It forces people to do something they may not want to do without limits. From what I see, that violates some fundamental concept of the game.

2. Prices will go up.

3. I think you would agree that there is no need for this; it *only panders to the ignorance and bias people have to the TP. If a goal of this idea is to appease this ignorance, it won’t work because it’s based on people’s false perceptions.

1. Thats right. “play the game how you want to play” is/was a fundamental marketing slogan of Anet. But in the last 2 years they already introduced several timegates and restrictions that not neccessarily supplement that game design mantra.
While “play the game how you want to play” still holds true for casual players (to which the game was marketed) it doenst apply to hardcore players anymore to the same extent because you have to design different content and mechanics for them in order to keep them busy. They also have to try to keep wealth disparity between hardcore, longtime players and new ones in check.

2. Thats a generalisation. Do you mean buy orders or sell listings?

3. I do agree. But its not my only goal to appease those people. It will have additional side effects, like players playing more different content more regularly and even try completely new content that they havent experienced until now.
A point was already made in this topic that the best way to help those people understand some game economic concepts and how the trading post works in general, was to educate them about it and not change the Trading Post (which works fine atm) to appeal to their misconception.
Learning by Doing is still one of the most effective educational methods, so why not push those players, that always sell and buy directly, never use the TP as a tool to make profit and complain about rich people, to use the TP a bit more and make conscious choices along the way?

I think the TP is an incredible tool that has the power to enhance everybodies favourite playstyle, if you use it efficiently.

I once knew a player, who was one of those. She hated playing the tp as a concept and kept his interaction with it to a minumum, sold and bought directly all of his loot, while complaining about me getting rich off the tp. At some point i got so fed up, i paid her 50 gold, if she starts to sell all her loot at the price of the lowest listing for 1 month. Even though she strongly believed that she would have to wait too long for her listings to sell she reluctantly agreed. I never asked for a payback (her stopping to whine into my ears was reward enough) but after 2 weeks, she sent me my 50g back because she felt bad taking gold for a good tip. After the month was over, she sent me another 50g because she had the feeling, she got about 30% more gold for her loot now because she started doing 1 more click when selling.

Wanze, what about the crafters?

I’m particularly concerned about cooking, as some recipes require a large amount of expensive materials (e.g. revelry cake or all F&F recipes), and the profit margin is only to be found in 1) the difference between buy and sell order prices and 2) cooking in bulk. Without those, it’s no longer interesting to craft. So by adding your proposed tax, I think many will simply stop crafting. Which is not a good thing.

I’m not so sure about this proposal. It has many dubious knock-on effects. Another crafting example I could imagine is the many precursors crafters won’t be able to afford buying the mats, or have to buy the mats for too high a price, further increasing the precursor prices.

Edit: it also discourages new people to start crafting because they don’t have the karma.

Lukyromero.6780:

Okay, people need their legendaries, were already being restricted by the amount of gold we have; this is a horrible idea, I’m pretty sure that it would just make most incoming tp flippers ragequit the game.

So what? I don’t remember last time a TP flipper helped me complete an event, skill challenge or ported me to end of a jumping puzzle. People, who would be affected by Wanze’s suggestion do literally NOTHNIG in the game and therefore there is no reason to try to keep them around.
People, who combine TP and normal gameplay will definitely be experiencing significantly more profit. Why not? They sure deserve it. Anet’s philosophy has always been “the wider amount of content you do, the faster you will achieve success” as it was proven to us by PvP reward boosts that have already come and that are probably arriving in the future.
You just have to understand that if you play the game normally and use the TP ocasionally, this change won’t affect you at all (you might be even better off) and if you do TP solely, there is no need for you being in the game at all. Go find yourself a market simulator and don’t poison our RPG.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Look at your response. Rather than prove the existence of a problem, you chose to play devil’s advocate. If you had a card, you could have played it.

This is a pretty weak and low blow. The existence of a problem is largely opinion and would thus be impossible to prove sufficiently. (If it is objective, please list the conditions for which you might deem something to be sufficient proof)

The rest of your post is quite honestly an appeal to authority, using the quotes and opinions of John Smith and others to make conclusive remarks about said subjectivity.

Personally I believe there is a real problem (lack of real, significant, fixed non-percentage gold sink). Making statements from the standpoint of devil’s advocacy rather than stating personal opinion tend to be more effective in a thread replying to a person trying to appeal to authority.

Risingashes.8694:

You’re suggesting increasing the price of buy orders, this will lead to a decrease in the number of buy orders. This results in a reduced buy price, and an increased spread.

The people who will be hurt by this are people who get drops and wish to sell them. They’ll either need to sacrifice time by listing the item, or money by accepting the lower buy price.

What benefit do you imagine is worth hurting the market equilibrium, and why do you value people without items over people who have received items?

If your aim is to increase participation in different game modes then argue for an increase in rewards over on the general forum, don’t attempt to hurt trading and then patch it back up again.

I think this would also be part of the educational process to teach that farmer using the tp as a tool to enhance the rewards for his favourite playstyle.

Farmer John Boy´s favourite activity to earn gold is mining iron with his watchwork sprocket mining pick. He does it all day and sells whatever he has directly at the tp because he thinks its not worth the time to list and wait.
When the karma tax gets introduced, he realizes that the spread between buy orders and sell listings rises, of course he is furious because his favourite game mode just got a huge nerf in rewards.

But keep in mind that at this point we have only taken away demand for iron from speculators/flippers (which is demand for buy orders, mostly), the real demand from consumers is still there, so even if the sprice spread is higher, the demand for iron is still the same for sell listings.

Every day Farmer John Boy has to make a choice, receive less and less money for his iron from the buy orders or wait a little and reap the ever growing rewards of listing the iron?

Before the change, iron sold for 8c/10c and the 2 extra copper werent worth the wait for him to list it. But now the spread is 6c/12c and he realizes that he would get double the rewards now, if he lists them and it would still take the same amount of time until they sell as if we listed them for 10 copper before the change.
In the end, he will realize, that if we constantly lists his iron now, it will sell eventually and he makes 50% more gold than before the change because he gets 12 copper now instead of 8.

IndigoSundown.5419:

DaveGan.8065:

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: Kicks in only if you do certain things over and over for a long time
• Proposal: would apply to every filled buy order

What about a “daily allowance” of free orders (say, whatever is equivalent to 5 gold, because this is probably already more than the “casual player” earns, much less spends, in a day)?

I know this is just more hypotheticals, but what I’m focusing on is that you’re objecting to things that are very easily modified/tweaked.

Most changes to game design are going to have unintended consequences. The TP is a function of the game’s economy, which is based on gold. Karma is a reward currency, not a part of the game’s economy. Increasing karma gain to counter-balance the costs for buy orders could well have consequences that neither you nor I can predict. We don’t know what additional uses this reward currency might have in future. Increasing karma sinks without increasing access to karma could likewise have long-term consequences we cannot predict.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• DR: is a solution to problems identified by ANet
• Proposal: is a solution to a situation that ANet doesn’t believe is a problem. Nor has this problem’s existence been proven by anyone complaining about flipping.

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. Is this not a problem, or not a problem that ANet has a practical solution for yet (and thus has chosen to stay silent/deny any issues)?

Let’s put it this way. Some of the arguments for flipping being a problem are weak, boiling down to jealousy and/or ignorance. Other arguments, about TP use not being “playing the game” have been refuted by John Smith. Still others, about other types of play being less rewarding gold-wise have some merit. However, the issue there is more complicated than just TP v. dungeons (or insert whatever your poison is) and range from inflation concerns (since dungeons add gold, whereas flipping subtracts it) to player retention (time delays on rewards).

On the other hand, the arguments for flipping not being a problem (by Mr. Smith, and others) make a great deal of sense.

Look at your response. Rather than prove the existence of a problem, you chose to play devil’s advocate. If you had a card, you could have played it.

In response to the discussion about DR, i think its a little off topic here, unless we discuss introducing DR to karma while rebalancing it for the change. But at this point, its not really neccesary to go that far just yet, even though i have to admit that rebalancing karma has alot of potential in itself and alot of posibility, I am not sure if we should do it in this topic.

My goal is not to appease complainers about rich people, my goal is to push them towards participation because the fact that they DONT participate in using the TP wisely is the fundamental reason for the problem they complain about.

Try to see the TP this way:

Every day there is a limited amount of profit to be made on the Trading Post by flipping. Even though the amount of potential profit is huge overall, its limited nonetheless and alot of players are competing for it.

Its important to note that gold through profits on the tp is not generated but only redistributed.
So lets say, right now there is a potential value of 1 million gold available to be redistributed through flipping on the TP. Its there every day as a result of players giving different value to the same item.
If only a few pick up those profits, they will get a very big chunk of gold which will advance wealth disparity.
But if all those people that didnt partipate in flipping start doing it now (they are pushed towards it due to a higher spread) it will lead to more players particating in the TP and making good choices, which, in the long term, will lead to a more balanced economy than we have right now and slow down the process of growing wealth disparity.

TL/DR

The karma tax will reduce the slice of the gold cake that is the redistribution of wealth from profits through flipping that some harcore flippers get and make it easier accessible for other players by reducing the competition from hardcore flippers and raising the amount of profits to be made per paid karma tax over time.

: White Karma

I used karma in my original suggestion because it is widely available from a huge variety of content and everybody has a relation to it. However, during the course of the discussion it became clear that:

- Some people have too much karma
- Some people lack karma
- karma distribution could need a rework regardless of the tax being implemented because the best way to obtain karma is not desireable or engaging gameplay

To eliminate those critical points and focus back again on the core suggestion, to implement an account bound tax on filled buy orders and how that would impact wealth distribution, i would suggest to introduce White Karma that, for now, is distributed the same way as regular karma, plus for PvP.

Why a new currency?

- everybody will start form 0 acquiring it, offering a level playing field form the start
- it will give Anet a means of directing players towards certain content that they want to promote because that content enables players to get more gold from profits on the tp

To not have a too much impact on trading, White Karma distribution needs to be implement a coule of weeks before the white karma tax on filled buy orders.

Ok, so white karma.

What about crafting, as I asked above? Can you set out briefly how you think this will work out in practice for crafters?

I dabble in mystic forging for precursors and hence put in a lot of buy orders whenever I’m trying to stock up on the mats needed to craft rare weapons. I’ve also crafted a few legendaries (for personal use) and hence have used up alot of my karma. I currently have about 500k karma.

This suggestion would affect me negatively as I have a limited amount of karma and a “need” to put in a lot of buy orders. In the long run this would force me to stop crafting rare weapons and putting them in the mystic forge.

I’ll assume I’m not the only one in my situation, so in the long run this would potentially lead to decreased velocity on the market for crafting materials and fewer items leaving the game via the Mystic forge. It would also increase the incentive to take a risk and bypass the TP entirely through mail trading.

The way I see it, if you’re going to treat karma as a trading resource, then make it a trading resource; Lets say the karma tax is the same as for gold, 15%, then 10% could be removed from the game and 5% could be transferred to the seller. That could be an interesting approach.

Overall though I much prefer to leave karma out of trading entirely.

Very much disagree with karma tax, for those that purely play the TP and nothing else this tax would remove their ability to play the game how they want. It would seem that this karma tax idea is a way for soft TP traders to catch up to and stifle other TP traders.

Looking back at the posts in the thread it is obvious who wants to stifle their competition due to the fact they have stockpiled karma and cannot compete with them with current conditions .

Buttercup.5871:

Wanze, what about the crafters?

I’m particularly concerned about cooking, as some recipes require a large amount of expensive materials (e.g. revelry cake or all F&F recipes), and the profit margin is only to be found in 1) the difference between buy and sell order prices and 2) cooking in bulk. Without those, it’s no longer interesting to craft. So by adding your proposed tax, I think many will simply stop crafting. Which is not a good thing.

I’m not so sure about this proposal. It has many dubious knock-on effects. Another crafting example I could imagine is the many precursors crafters won’t be able to afford buying the mats, or have to buy the mats for too high a price, further increasing the precursor prices.

Edit: it also discourages new people to start crafting because they don’t have the karma.

I dont see a problem for crafting, as long as crafting for profit isnt the ONLY thing you do in game. In that case, you would be a problem for growing wealth disparity as well and will get hit as hard as the hardcore flipper, if not harder.

Right now (and also after the tax would be introduced), crafting for profit is just a more complicated way of flipping, buy low sell high.

As you might know, i made lots of profit with a wide variety methods, flipping, speculating, investing, crafting, forging, salvaging, lootbags, farming, you name it.
I propably could make more profit per day crafting than flipping because less people do it and its more complicated than pure flipping. You could call a good crafter an advanced flipper that knows how to monetize his account bound currency more efficiently.

If we would think in stereotypes, I would argue that the hardcore crafter, that does nothing else for 5 hours per day than crafting for profit makes more than the hardcore flipper than flips for 5 hours per day.

Actually crafters are already gated in their favourite game content and profit margins by account bound mats, which doesnt apply to the trader now as he deals only in 1 currency. The karma tax would change that. The crafter already cant craft ascended gear or items that use karma, skillpoints, dungeon tokens or fractal relics.
In order to enjoy ascended crafting and get some of those profit margins from items that aready use account bound currencies, he is already forced to complete other content apart from crafting.

About your other concerns:

Bulk production will be affected because it has a small profit margin. But that doesnt mean that there are other profitable items to craft.
Even though the karma tax would be tied to the value of filled buy orders, it essentially is a tax on profit margins, thats why i think its so effective.

Just like most other items, i would argue that the karma tax would increase the sprice spread on items that are crafted in bulk but that wouldnt mean that the average value of the item changes. An example:

Lemongrass Poultry Soup has a price spread of 25s/30s, so the flipper still makes 50c for every flip. The crafter can craft it for 24s, so he already makes 200% more profit than the flipper. But both wouldnt be very profitable anymore because the profit margin is quite low and they cant pay tax for it. People stop crafting it and price spread will grow. But is that neccassarily a bad thing?

After a while, the price spread might be 20s/35s. Even though the price spread is higher, it doesnt mean that the item is less consumed.
At that point, it might be more interesting for a flipper to step in and start flipping again because the ratio of profit increased while the white karma investment decreased. The crafter already started cooking earlier again because he realized that all the materials for cooking the soup are now available for 15s on buy order.
So basically the crafter earns more profit for his white karma tha nthe flipper.
If people hear that crafting has the best profit per white karma ratio atm, they might be inclined to try it out. Bad for the hardcore crafter but good for the overall health of the game and the economy.

The consumer is super happy because WVW Commander John Boy, who got tired of mining iron, can use up all the white karma he gets from playing WvW to buy Lemongrass Poultry Soup, which now costs 15 silver instead of 30s, if we crafts it himself.

TL/DR
The introduction of the tax will without a doubt bring a big market disequilibrium as it acts as a new market force. The biggest change will be higher pricespreads which doesnt neccesarily mean that the average value of items changes.
Higher spreads usually meant more profits for flippers but due to the introduction of the tax, this isnt as easily exploitable by flippers anymore because it is gated by completing regular game content. It gives regular players a higher value of rewards for their favourite content, consumers can profit from it by using their white karma to buy stuff cheaper on the tp.

Ishmel.1308:

I dabble in mystic forging for precursors and hence put in a lot of buy orders whenever I’m trying to stock up on the mats needed to craft rare weapons. I’ve also crafted a few legendaries (for personal use) and hence have used up alot of my karma. I currently have about 500k karma.

This suggestion would affect me negatively as I have a limited amount of karma and a “need” to put in a lot of buy orders. In the long run this would force me to stop crafting rare weapons and putting them in the mystic forge.

I’ll assume I’m not the only one in my situation, so in the long run this would potentially lead to decreased velocity on the market for crafting materials and fewer items leaving the game via the Mystic forge. It would also increase the incentive to take a risk and bypass the TP entirely through mail trading.

The way I see it, if you’re going to treat karma as a trading resource, then make it a trading resource; Lets say the karma tax is the same as for gold, 15%, then 10% could be removed from the game and 5% could be transferred to the seller. That could be an interesting approach.

Overall though I much prefer to leave karma out of trading entirely.

as a precursor forger you are trying to beat the highest buy offer of a precursor by forging it yourself and not spending more gold in the process, while aquiring the mats/weapons.
As the tax would result in higher pricespreads across the board, it would also be likely that you can purchase the mats/weapons at a lower price, using white karma (please read my added suggestion about white karma replacing regular karma as tax currency) and it is likely that you will earn more profit, when listing your precursor for sale than before.

Again, the fact that you have to put in alot of buy order for a huge quantity of t5 mats doesnt matter, its the value. If you manage to only spend 800g on buy orders to forge a precursor, you will still make more profit per karma than the flipper that has to spend 1000g as the lowest offer to sell it at 1300g lowest listing.

I am not sure if i understand your suggestion about adding karma (lets go with white karma) as a trading resource correctly.

Will the white karma tax be replacing the gold fees and taxes of the tp or will it be an addition?
Will the buyer or the seller pay the tax?
Who earns white karma through the transaction?

The problem isn’t flipping. The problem is the exaggerated wealth imbalance arising from a small portion of the player base doing most of the flipping and getting most of the profits (while everyone else is out PvP’ing and playing other content).

The karma cost idea potentially reduces this by limiting the amount of flipping, but at the risk of making the market less efficient (by reducing the amount of trading on the market) = not good after all.

A simpler solution is for Anet to do most of the flipping and keep the profits that arise. The result would be an even more efficient market and the TP being an even bigger gold sink.

NB: John Smith has yet to express a view on whether he thinks the wealth imbalance resulting from TP trading is good or bad for the game. So far, his arguments have advocated market efficiency, and having active participants in the market.

But if the market could be more efficient by supplanting the bulk of player trades with Anet automated ones, that exposes the question of “is better for GW2 to have a small proportion of players getting super wealthy from in-game trading? Or not?”
- Care to say anything on this, John Smith?

The idea is too complicated. It’s also just a bad idea. The current system works fine for me.

Nuance.4872:

Very much disagree with karma tax, for those that purely play the TP and nothing else this tax would remove their ability to play the game how they want. It would seem that this karma tax idea is a way for soft TP traders to catch up to and stifle other TP traders.

Looking back at the posts in the thread it is obvious who wants to stifle their competition due to the fact they have stockpiled karma and cannot compete with them with current conditions .

To give full time traders a chance to still play their favourite content and giving players the ability to value white karma more directly, we could introduce Craftable Consumables that require white karma to craft and also reward it upon consumption.

If it should be a straight trade or have a lesser output is up to debate but the crafting should be timegated. Lets go with this:

Right now, we have 10 different consumables that award karma upon consumption.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karma#Karma_consumables

The output ranges from 150 to 7500 karma, from drip to keg.
Assume the same consumables for white karma, craftable by every profession, unlocked every 50 crafting levels and each of them only craftable once per day.
So if you have 1 profession maxed, you can basically use ~35k white karma per day and sell it directly via consumables, which can be bought buy traders that cant be bothered to play other content.

Good enough for you?

And just to clarify about stockpiled karma. I didnt make this topic in order to make more profit from karma that i have stockpiled and with the introduction of white karma to my suggestion, i rendered stockpiled regular karma meanigless.

After i craftred my legendary about a year ago, i didnt really bother with karma. I always had more than i need and i didnt had to farm for it becasue i got rewarded enough through regular gameplay (mostly wvw) than i needed (mostly for wvw traps and ascended crafting).
I try to keep a stock between 1 million and 1.5 million. If i accumulate more, i try to monetize it or spend it on other stuff, like unlocking karma skins.

Wanze.8410:

Ishmel.1308:

snip

as a precursor forger you are trying to beat the highest buy offer of a precursor by forging it yourself and not spending more gold in the process, while aquiring the mats/weapons.
As the tax would result in higher pricespreads across the board, it would also be likely that you can purchase the mats/weapons at a lower price, using white karma (please read my added suggestion about white karma replacing regular karma as tax currency) and it is likely that you will earn more profit, when listing your precursor for sale than before.

Again, the fact that you have to put in alot of buy order for a huge quantity of t5 mats doesnt matter, its the value. If you manage to only spend 800g on buy orders to forge a precursor, you will still make more profit per karma than the flipper that has to spend 1000g as the lowest offer to sell it at 1300g lowest listing.

I am not sure if i understand your suggestion about adding karma (lets go with white karma) as a trading resource correctly.

Will the white karma tax be replacing the gold fees and taxes of the tp or will it be an addition?
Will the buyer or the seller pay the tax?
Who earns white karma through the transaction?

Part of my point was that karma, as suggested in your original post, would effectively act as a measure of playtime linked to TP purchases. Once you run out of karma (or you decide that your karma should go toward crafting a legendary weapon or ascended items) you’re effectively blocked from being able to purchase items at competitive (currency) prices. I argue that this would lead to people not buying items from the TP or finding alternate routes of buying items.

One way to aleviate that would be to have karma act as a tradable currency linked to selling items. In a hypothetical trade with a hypothetical amount of “karma tax” the buyer would have to pay the karma tax with 80% being removed from the game and 20% being given to the seller (again, the percentages are hypothetical and not suggested percentages). That way you would be able to both gain and lose karma in trades. This would be in addition to the normal gold tax.

With the above said, I still think the idea of a “karma tax” is a bad idea that will block or discourage people from trading on the TP and hence it would affect the market negatively.

Ishmel.1308:

Wanze.8410:

Ishmel.1308:

snip

as a precursor forger you are trying to beat the highest buy offer of a precursor by forging it yourself and not spending more gold in the process, while aquiring the mats/weapons.
As the tax would result in higher pricespreads across the board, it would also be likely that you can purchase the mats/weapons at a lower price, using white karma (please read my added suggestion about white karma replacing regular karma as tax currency) and it is likely that you will earn more profit, when listing your precursor for sale than before.

Again, the fact that you have to put in alot of buy order for a huge quantity of t5 mats doesnt matter, its the value. If you manage to only spend 800g on buy orders to forge a precursor, you will still make more profit per karma than the flipper that has to spend 1000g as the lowest offer to sell it at 1300g lowest listing.

I am not sure if i understand your suggestion about adding karma (lets go with white karma) as a trading resource correctly.

Will the white karma tax be replacing the gold fees and taxes of the tp or will it be an addition?
Will the buyer or the seller pay the tax?
Who earns white karma through the transaction?

Part of my point was that karma, as suggested in your original post, would effectively act as a measure of playtime linked to TP purchases. Once you run out of karma (or you decide that your karma should go toward crafting a legendary weapon or ascended items) you’re effectively blocked from being able to purchase items at competitive (currency) prices. I argue that this would lead to people not buying items from the TP or finding alternate routes of buying items.

One way to aleviate that would be to have karma act as a tradable currency linked to selling items. In a hypothetical trade with a hypothetical amount of “karma tax” the buyer would have to pay the karma tax with 80% being removed from the game and 20% being given to the seller (again, the percentages are hypothetical and not suggested percentages). That way you would be able to both gain and lose karma in trades. This would be in addition to the normal gold tax.

With the above said, I still think the idea of a “karma tax” is a bad idea that will block or discourage people from trading on the TP and hence it would affect the market negatively.

Generally I anticipate that the generation of white karma from the player base will be high enough to cover more than the actual trade volume we have now. That way we make sure that the velocity of the market stays the same. With the introduction of white karma, players can use their regular karma for crafting legendaries/ascended and take advantage of lower buy orders by using their white karma.

Hope that clears up some of your concerns.

About giving part of the tax to the seller instead of destroying it all:
I dont think it is a good idea because it awards more white karma to players that sell stuff to players that sell directly, which is not something i want to encourage.
It also leaves the option to earn white karma through speculation/investments.
Someone who bought t5 leather directly (but at vendor price) before the bazaar, wouldnt have to pay white karma tax for acquiring it but would earn it by selling it.
Its rather counterproductive to what i want to achieve.

Wanze.8410:

Nuance.4872:

Very much disagree with karma tax, for those that purely play the TP and nothing else this tax would remove their ability to play the game how they want. It would seem that this karma tax idea is a way for soft TP traders to catch up to and stifle other TP traders.

Looking back at the posts in the thread it is obvious who wants to stifle their competition due to the fact they have stockpiled karma and cannot compete with them with current conditions .

To give full time traders a chance to still play their favourite content and giving players the ability to value white karma more directly, we could introduce Craftable Consumables that require white karma to craft and also reward it upon consumption.

If it should be a straight trade or have a lesser output is up to debate but the crafting should be timegated. Lets go with this:

Right now, we have 10 different consumables that award karma upon consumption.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karma#Karma_consumables

The output ranges from 150 to 7500 karma, from drip to keg.
Assume the same consumables for white karma, craftable by every profession, unlocked every 50 crafting levels and each of them only craftable once per day.
So if you have 1 profession maxed, you can basically use ~35k white karma per day and sell it directly via consumables, which can be bought buy traders that cant be bothered to play other content.

Good enough for you?

So in order to keep to my current TP trading activities I would have to craft white karma up to the daily limit and then buy more, or just out right buy as I trade.

This sounds like a sub fee in order to play the TP that forces me to use funds elsewhere, this tax is something I would have to manage on top trading.

Why do we need a tax to address the wealth disparity between players (it doesn’t negatively impact anyone). I honestly cannot see that as your motivation for this tax, I’m sure you as a TP trader understands that this is a waste of time. I honestly believe you have an ulterior motive, not financial, but something else maybe to be a champion to the whiners of ‘he is richer than me and its not fair’ or to ingratiate yourself with John Smith.

Honestly a fruitless pursuit with no real outcome but to clutter the scene with another currency.

This has the solid foundation of a good idea. At the moment, as many people have pointed out, some players have substantial balances of gold making them wealthy enough to buy whatever they need. Then there are players like myself who do a mix of both, some TP’ing a lot of PVE, so my wealth is modest and income is sufficient to meet my needs, however my karma balance is fairly high, and doesn’t have anywhere to sink it except in to Orrian boxes. Legendary has been made and ob shard reserves for ascended mats are sufficient so now it just pools.

The balance needs to be quite fine. Karma income has to be high enough that isn’t prohibitive to buy order makers but not so much that it drives away all the flippers who don’t want to pve. On the flipside, the tax can’t be so low as to be negligible.

The tax needs to be very carefully defined. A couple of thoughts.

Hypothetically, what happens with a flat karma tax like 20c/karma

1 karma per 20c → 500 karma per 1g → 500k karma per 1000g

So for a player like myself, entering this arena would not be prohibitive in terms of karma use. However, volume traders would be very heavily affected, which is in part the whole point. But I feel that a system that slants so heavily against such traders is not fully justified. The idea is to encourage them to do other things not force them out of the market

How about a sliding scale? As an example (just a back of the envelope calculation).
1 karma per 20c for orders 5g and below → 2500 karma at 5g

1 karma per 22c for orders between 5g0s1c and 100g
→ so, ~2.3k karma at 5g0s1c up to ~45.5k karma for 100g

1 karma per 24c for trades between 100g0s1c and up
→ ~41.7k karma at 100g0s1c up to ~417k for 100g

The increments are just examples and not a solid idea. The tricky balance for a sliding scale becomes one of ensuring that buying near a bracket limit requires a bit of thought in terms of karma outlay. But you don’t want a bracket jump so large that it complicates trading near the threshold.

An MMO should strive for a balanced environment where players are encouraged to do things throughout the game to maximise their experience and not focus solely on one aspect. However, it should do so in such a way that is not draconian to anyone who has a bias towards one or the other. As it stands, Gw2 has players who are very wealthy gold-wise but karma poor and those who are wealthy karma-wise but gold poor, relatively speaking. By partly unifying the two currencies this would address the perception that time spent in the world is less rewarding (from an income standpoint) than time spent just trading all the time. It’s less about spreading the wealth and more about spreading the perception of wealth.

Nuance.4872:

So in order to keep to my current TP trading activities I would have to craft white karma up to the daily limit and then buy more, or just out right buy as I trade.

This sounds like a sub fee in order to play the TP that forces me to use funds elsewhere, this tax is something I would have to manage on top trading.

Why do we need a tax to address the wealth disparity between players (it doesn’t negatively impact anyone). I honestly cannot see that as your motivation for this tax, I’m sure you as a TP trader understands that this is a waste of time. I honestly believe you have an ulterior motive, not financial, but something else maybe to be a champion to the whiners of ‘he is richer than me and its not fair’ or to ingratiate yourself with John Smith.

Honestly a fruitless pursuit with no real outcome but to clutter the scene with another currency.

I dont know to what extent you trade and how much regular content you play that would earn you white karma. Worst case scenario, you never leave the royal terrace and your sole reason why you log in is to play the tp for fun. The gold you earn is a measure of success but apart from that its pretty useless to you because you dont need gold to outfit your character.As you can still keep on trading by buying kegs of white karma from other players, you favourite game content is still available to you and you will still be able to make gold profits as a good trader.

Lets assume the going rate for a keg of white karma is 2 gold atm and it enables you to pick up buy orders worth 10 gold. Some trades will be undesirable because your profit margin will be less than 2g and some will still be profitable because they are higher than 2g.
Of course that will mean that you make less profit in general than before but your profits can still be a measure of success and enable you to keep playing your favourite game mode. But some of your excessive profits will be redistributed to someone who completes content with less gold rewards.

Of course you can argue that huge wealth disparity doesnt negatively impact anyone but that swings both ways. Can you prove that a lower wealth disparity is an undesireable change?

If the disparity becomes too big, it can in fact negatively impact the game because that trader that never leaves the terrace and reaps huge profits with relatively little effort compared to regular players might become a Real Money Trader, which is bad for the game.

Wanze.8410:

I dont know to what extent you trade and how much regular content you play that would earn you white karma. Worst case scenario, you never leave the royal terrace and your sole reason why you log in is to play the tp for fun. The gold you earn is a measure of success but apart from that its pretty useless to you because you dont need gold to outfit your character.As you can still keep on trading by buying kegs of white karma from other players, you favourite game content is still available to you and you will still be able to make gold profits as a good trader.

Lets assume the going rate for a keg of white karma is 2 gold atm and it enables you to pick up buy orders worth 10 gold. Some trades will be undesirable because your profit margin will be less than 2g and some will still be profitable because they are higher than 2g.
Of course that will mean that you make less profit in general than before but your profits can still be a measure of success and enable you to keep playing your favourite game mode. But some of your excessive profits will be redistributed to someone who completes content with less gold rewards.

Of course you can argue that huge wealth disparity doesnt negatively impact anyone but that swings both ways. Can you prove that a lower wealth disparity is an undesireable change?

If the disparity becomes too big, it can in fact negatively impact the game because that trader that never leaves the terrace and reaps huge profits with relatively little effort compared to regular players might become a Real Money Trader, which is bad for the game.

You are right in terms of the impact to traders, as long as the white karma is tradeable it will mean lower profits without impacting my game play.

My biggest concern is wanting to achieve a lower wealth disparity and to redistribute trading power, the current system is fine and not negatively impacting anyone. Going to a system where wealth disparity is lower is good and not a bad thing either, but is it worth putting in developer time and effort to go from a system that is running well and fine to another system that is just as good. Edit: forgot to add that one of the main reasons i enjoy the TP is that you only have to manage one currency, I wouldn’t like the multi-currency system in pve to come to the TP, buts thats a personal opinion.

It seems like a pursuit to fix something thats not broken.

The current wealth disparity is large but no one I know would dare break the ToS or use profits to break the ToS

Nuance.4872:

It seems like a pursuit to fix something thats not broken.

The current wealth disparity is large but no one I know would dare break the ToS or use profits to break the ToS

What about the gem exchange? Does large wealth disparity contribute to pushing gold to gems out of reach of those on the lower end, effectively removing the option?