Guild Wars 2

There are several discussion threads about market manipulation, precursors, legendarys, TP bots, etc.

I am curious what your opinion is in regards to adding the sellers name to the TP auction.

I just think it would be interesting to see who I am bidding against. I am a very casual player and I prefer to enjoy the game content and not play the market. Therefore I have little capital but I do enjoy the game. I make enough to satisfy my needs with an occasional splurge.

I didn’t play GW1 but I did play Aion and I see a lot of similarities. And in Aion you could see who listed items for sale on the market. I found it useful because I could tell if it was 200 people selling one item or one person selling 200 of a given item.

Would it be beneficial or detrimental?

Detrimental, people will start raging against people who undercut them

The trading post already shows how many people have items listed (but not how many by each). But I don’t see how knowing who is selling something is helpful. Anyway, in a sense, Anet is buying the item from the seller, holding it in escrow, and selling it to you, to prevent fraud. And the anonymity keeps players from skirting the trading post to contact the seller directly to buy via email and possibly get defrauded.

That would be a great idea if you want the hackers to know who are the rich players in the game. Otherwise it will do more harm than good.

If we had names attached, you might as well make a huge trading guild which would bypass the BLTC and, in turn, get rid of a huge gold sink that they have in place.

Speaking from a personal perspective, I would be heavily against this.

I maintain a great deal of my profit margins because it’s easy to mask what i’m doing in this market. I don’t want my fingerprints all over my buy orders.

LFk.1408:

Speaking from a personal perspective, I would be heavily against this.

I maintain a great deal of my profit margins because it’s easy to mask what i’m doing in this market. I don’t want my fingerprints all over my buy orders.

Your name seems familiar, aren’t you the guy that manipulates the market via threads in this section… especially with words like:

because it’s easy to mask what i’m doing in this market. I don’t want my fingerprints all over my buy orders.

All good points. Thanks for the civil responses.

LFk.1408:

Speaking from a personal perspective, I would be heavily against this.

I maintain a great deal of my profit margins because it’s easy to mask what i’m doing in this market. I don’t want my fingerprints all over my buy orders.

Haha. I am very in favor of this suggestion if it stops market manipulation like this. If you need to hide your name to make your “business strategy” work, than its very unhonest way to make gold.

Malediktus.9250:

LFk.1408:

Speaking from a personal perspective, I would be heavily against this.

I maintain a great deal of my profit margins because it’s easy to mask what i’m doing in this market. I don’t want my fingerprints all over my buy orders.

Haha. I am very in favor of this suggestion if it stops market manipulation like this. If you need to hide your name to make your “business strategy” work, than its very unhonest way to make gold.

Yeah, I was about to say, his post alone made me want the names in.

I think “anonymity” isn’t simply a “feature” of the Trading Post, as it is a policy of the Black Lion Trading Company, and it is a common policy for these kinds of organizations.

What I’d like to see is ways for players to write their name on the game world itself. Legendaries are a start (you see someone wielding a legendary, you know they’re good at the TP), but I’d also like to see things like player housing and such. In other words, more conspicuous modes of conspicuous consumption, so the really good traders can show off… while at the same time spending some of that money.

Player housing would be a nice gold sink, so would guild housing and whatnot.

Today I had a little spare time so I was bidding on some lodestones. Other people were actively bidding too and I would get a few, then be out bid, etc.

So I pulled my buy order and focused on outbidding every single person who bid against me. We ran up the price a bit but it was kind of amusing seeing people try to wait a bit, then bid over you, then you do it back, etc.

Now was this one or two other players or half a dozen? I have no idea and neither do they and it’s best that way because seeing the same person over bid you by 1c for about 15 minutes is kind of annoying but in actuality, it’s harmless – eventually the price goes to high or people get bored or just get everything they need and stop. Seeing the names of the other bidders has the potential to stir up animosity and have it spill over into other areas. For all I know, I could have been doing that to my friends or guildmates.

The other side of the coin is actually more sinister and problematic:

If bidders and sellers could communicate directly, they could organize and collude against other people in the market.

There is no end to the monkey business that could come from this.