Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

Ursan.7846:

Scams cannot be eliminated completely, because they rely on lack of knowledge of the victim. No mechanical limits will absolutely eliminate scams. Just think of how many people, when closing unsaved documents, quickly press “yes I want to close without saving” without thinking and regretting it later?

Scams still exist. Have you seen the “X item is going to skyrocket/crash” topics on this forum? The mechanical limit I proposed for direct trades only prevents the fast swapping of items/values like removing a zero from your side just before the other player accepts.

Ursan.7846:

Also to clarify, when I say “scam” I don’t mean just outright thievery. They also include cases in which people persuade others that the value of certain items are much lower than they would believe and potentially rip off other people in terms of the true value of the item they wish to trade. (When someone finds a “great bargain,” you’re also ripping the trading partner off)

I encountered this a lot when playing Magic. In many cases the person didn’t care when I mentioned the value difference. They wanted what I was trading and were willing to give up more monetary value for it. They didn’t feel ripped off. Those who did feel ripped off later learned to research or ragequit. I don’t like ragequitters and don’t care if they leave.

Ursan.7846:

Regardless though, the question you then have to ask is, why would anyone want to directly trade, instead of going through the TP?

And the answer always invariably is “To avoid the tax.” Which cannot be a good thing to the economy. Imagine the inflation that would occur without (IMO) the biggest gold sink in the game.

There are always item for item trades. If the 2 items are of the same value, the tax would prevent you from selling and buying. Inflation has occurred and will continue
to occur. The large majority will continue using the TP out of convenience, set it and forget it. The gold sink will be only slightly affected. WoW auction house is still (or was last I played) the primary trading method despite there being a trade feature.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

No-one “chose” the price. Friedrich Engels said “what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”

The price of precursors was set by the players answering these two questions :
How much gold would it take for you to part with a pre-cursor?
How much gold would you be willing to spend on a pre-cursor?

And the result was a price that neither side of the transaction is entirely happy with, but will accept.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

The “community-driven” marketplace.

It’s been discussed to death by both the community and the Anet economist how precursor markets are not monopolized.

Striker.9413:

There are always item for item trades. If the 2 items are of the same value, the tax would prevent you from selling and buying. Inflation has occurred and will continue
to occur. The large majority will continue using the TP out of convenience, set it and forget it. The gold sink will be only slightly affected. WoW auction house is still (or was last I played) the primary trading method despite there being a trade feature.

I understand the appeal of bartering, but what is the up-side for ANet of encouraging bartering? Directing all trade through the TP has many benefits from a support, a code maintenance, and a economy management perspective. What would bartering add other than pleasing the portion of the community that wants it? I see a lot of down-side for ANet, and can’t think of a single up-side.

Ursan.7846:

Striker.9413:

I consider it a design flaw. Scams are easy to avoid. I have suggested an additional confirmation window to trades in many others games to avoid quick switching items/values; no one has implemented it. A read-only confirmation window summarizing the trade would eliminate that completely.

Scams cannot be eliminated completely, because they rely on lack of knowledge of the victim. No mechanical limits will absolutely eliminate scams. Just think of how many people, when closing unsaved documents, quickly press “yes I want to close without saving” without thinking and regretting it later?

… or search the forum for the number of people who have ignored the warning message when applying upgrades to items!

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

The “community-driven” marketplace.

It’s been discussed to death by both the community and the Anet economist how precursor markets are not monopolized.

I would love to read this thread where the community accepted the actual price and constant limitless growth and what the economist said to explain it.
Also, the core of my post was “we want names, buyer and seller, we want to know who is doing what, who is manipulating prices even buying low priced items reselling them at minimum price of his choice, about the TP manipulation in general”. Mark them, destroy them, not buying anything from those scammers anymore. Target them, put an end on this abuse.

Far miles from the “awesome” term. Nor a gaming industry interest or proof of nothing.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

The grinders and the tp players mostly…a minority of the player base sets those prices.

Yes, i know. The famous manipulators. Time to put an end on it.
And avoid them and anything they sell.
Mark prices on stones. Discuss real time with the community any minimal variation of the price and why, about anything, like wow ah do. On this very section.
Dig manipulators. If an alt is used to keep up, will be useless.
Price will be community driven, manipulation will not last.
Simply providing names on the TP clients of buyers and sellers.
Anet must give us names. Or shut down this BLT tool at all.
After all, they are proud to be a realistic market , right? Real market have names.
And scammers don’t last long. We cannot apply laws, we can apply a “community” pricelist. And “kick out” those sharks.
Be part of the game you bough. Put and update price on wiki or any other community website dedicated to it, so it’s clear and written on stone even for a newcomer.

Results? A way better game, more enjoyable, a sane market.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I understand the appeal of bartering, but what is the up-side for ANet of encouraging bartering? Directing all trade through the TP has many benefits from a support, a code maintenance, and a economy management perspective. What would bartering add other than pleasing the portion of the community that wants it? I see a lot of down-side for ANet, and can’t think of a single up-side.

The upside is pleasing customers and gaining a boost in PR. Whether ANET thinks that benefit outweighs the cost is not my call. Although, as long as people are willing to throw paychecks into the casino, I’m not hopeful in receiving nice features.

Striker.9413:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I understand the appeal of bartering, but what is the up-side for ANet of encouraging bartering? Directing all trade through the TP has many benefits from a support, a code maintenance, and a economy management perspective. What would bartering add other than pleasing the portion of the community that wants it? I see a lot of down-side for ANet, and can’t think of a single up-side.

The upside is pleasing customers and gaining a boost in PR. Whether ANET thinks that benefit outweighs the cost is not my call. Although, as long as people are willing to throw paychecks into the casino, I’m not hopeful in receiving nice features.

Well, to you it’s a nice feature, to me it’s taking volume off of the TP and adding an obnoxious amount of trade spam to general chat, so it is a bad feature. I was just wondering if you had any reasons other than “it would make me happy”.

You do realize that even with player to player trading, most folks will still value items based on their price on the TP less 15% right? You think precursor prices are bad now? Add player to player trading into the game and see what happens. Fewer will be traded on the market, which drives the price up, which makes the players that are trading them among themselves raise their prices. Yeah they’ll knock 15% off of the TP price (maybe) but that price will probably be quite a bit higher.

Everything that is expensive enough to make folks cry over the 15% tax will jump in price.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Yes, i know. The famous manipulators. Time to put an end on it.
And avoid them and anything they sell.
Mark prices on stones. Discuss real time with the community any minimal variation of the price and why, about anything, like wow ah do. On this very section.
Dig manipulators. If an alt is used to keep up, will be useless.
Price will be community driven, manipulation will not last.
Simply providing names on the TP clients of buyers and sellers.
Anet must give us names. Or shut down this BLT tool at all.
After all, they are proud to be a realistic market , right? Real market have names.
And scammers don’t last long. We cannot apply laws, we can apply a “community” pricelist. And “kick out” those sharks.
Be part of the game you bough. Put and update price on wiki or any other community website dedicated to it, so it’s clear and written on stone even for a newcomer.

Results? A way better game, more enjoyable, a sane market.

That seems like a lovely little project for you. Why don’t you start by trying to convince the people that own the precursors to sell them at the prices that you find reasonable?

I don’t see the problem. With sharks kicked out from the system , and price decided by the community, written on stone, the entire economy will stabilize.
Everything will be perfectly clear and visible. Who sell who buy, why that price. Who clearly is acceptable to be a bit higher than mats by mats. A resonable discussion made by the gw2 community on the main forum (this one) is needed about this “bit more”. And clearly the community medium resonable price must be the one online.
A precursor for 900-1000g? Forget it Make it 50g/90g at best. 100g is the scammer, tag him, don’t buy nothing else from him, he’s a powerseller, make him public, warning the community. This is how wow works, and how survived to the kid of the day thinking to be smarter than others.
So far WoW survived from years till today on this kind of economy, having the most succesful, enjoyable , and rewarding AH the world of mmo has never seen. What was worthy, was well paid. What was “bot-farmed” was common and cheap.
Clearly the price of base mats was quite variable and with particular spikes, expecially when a new expansion was online. Our crafting is commonly know to be a waste of time to even be 400, isn’t it
And obiouvsly if an event (Christmas, new content etc) bring us a reason to increase the price, that’s AGAIN discussed by the community and a new price appointed, commonly approved as resonable.
TP is better? Let’s start by names, and cleaning a bit this market from those manipulators. Time by time, everything will be just better.

Lucas,

There are millions of players using the TP every day. Every one with a guild wars account uses the same TP. Can you see why it would be impossible to “blacklist” anyone?

You say that you want the precursors to be 50/90g. There is a very limited amount of precursors on the market, if they where that price anyone that wanted one would be able to afford it straight away, and the waiting list for precursors would be years if your plans where implemented.
They are the price they are because there are players willing to pay that price for them.
Imagine Joe has got a precursor today as a drop, why should Joe sell that precursor for 50g to Tom if Jane is willing to pay 500g for it?
Is it fair for Joe that he looses out okitten0g just because Tom can’t afford it?

What you are asking goes against everything that society is based upon.

That would only work if Anet increased the precursor drop rate to ensure that everyone would be able to purchase one. If they did that you would also not have to dictate prices because the market would adjust itself and the prices would fall according to the supply.

Ooshi.8607:

You say that you want the precursors to be 50/90g. There is a very limited amount of precursors on the market, if they where that price anyone that wanted one would be able to afford it straight away, and the waiting list for precursors would be years if your plans where implemented.

You explained this really well. Another factor to consider is that when things are artificially cheap, folks consume more than they need, which contributes to the shortage.

You can get precursors for under 90G:
Venom is around 32G
Rage is around 43G
The Bard is around 70G

It’s not some mysterious cabal that is driving the prices up. The expensive precursors are expensive because there aren’t enough to go around to all the folks that want one. The precursors that fewer folks want are much less expensive.

Ooshi.8607:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Yes, i know. The famous manipulators. Time to put an end on it.
And avoid them and anything they sell.
Mark prices on stones. Discuss real time with the community any minimal variation of the price and why, about anything, like wow ah do. On this very section.
Dig manipulators. If an alt is used to keep up, will be useless.
Price will be community driven, manipulation will not last.
Simply providing names on the TP clients of buyers and sellers.
Anet must give us names. Or shut down this BLT tool at all.
After all, they are proud to be a realistic market , right? Real market have names.
And scammers don’t last long. We cannot apply laws, we can apply a “community” pricelist. And “kick out” those sharks.
Be part of the game you bough. Put and update price on wiki or any other community website dedicated to it, so it’s clear and written on stone even for a newcomer.

Results? A way better game, more enjoyable, a sane market.

That seems like a lovely little project for you. Why don’t you start by trying to convince the people that own the precursors to sell them at the prices that you find reasonable?

Maybe he should convince the people who currently buy them at these prices not to do so. The items seem to be worth it, so the system’s working.

Iruwen.3164:

Ooshi.8607:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Yes, i know. The famous manipulators. Time to put an end on it.
And avoid them and anything they sell.
Mark prices on stones. Discuss real time with the community any minimal variation of the price and why, about anything, like wow ah do. On this very section.
Dig manipulators. If an alt is used to keep up, will be useless.
Price will be community driven, manipulation will not last.
Simply providing names on the TP clients of buyers and sellers.
Anet must give us names. Or shut down this BLT tool at all.
After all, they are proud to be a realistic market , right? Real market have names.
And scammers don’t last long. We cannot apply laws, we can apply a “community” pricelist. And “kick out” those sharks.
Be part of the game you bough. Put and update price on wiki or any other community website dedicated to it, so it’s clear and written on stone even for a newcomer.

Results? A way better game, more enjoyable, a sane market.

That seems like a lovely little project for you. Why don’t you start by trying to convince the people that own the precursors to sell them at the prices that you find reasonable?

Maybe he should convince the people who currently buy them at these prices not to do so. The items seem to be worth it, so the system’s working.

The only reason it works now is mainly b/c of cof p1 and trading. If those 2 did not allow for such high levels of amassing gold, then it would definitely not work since the ability to gain gold elsewhere is not nearly on par….ie the system only works b/c of those and for those.

The anonymous trading post across all servers always has a very positive effect. It prevents collusion or a small minority from controlling certain segments of the market. Without names it’s difficult to make “agreements” and you never know which idiot undercuts you.
One of the few ways to achieve price collusion is by building a reputation and rewarding/punishing your competitors [reference: any basic lecture on Industrial Econ will do it].The lack of names on the TP succesfully prevents this.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

I don’t see the problem. With sharks kicked out from the system , and price decided by the community, written on stone, the entire economy will stabilize.
Everything will be perfectly clear and visible. Who sell who buy, why that price.

By showing names of people who are listing Buy or Sell Orders, that’ll make it easier for people like me to target them in bidding wars. For example, if there’s something who undercut me, I’ll remember their names, and purposely undercut their goods being sold or outbid their Buy Orders. And the best (or worst) part of it all is, it wouldn’t be considered “griefing”, as I’m able to buy or sell things for whatever price I want.

So long story short, your idea is a bad one, because it opens the chance for abuse. TP works fine the way it is.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

By showing names of people who are listing Buy or Sell Orders, that’ll make it easier for people like me to target them in bidding wars. For example, if there’s something who undercut me, I’ll remember their names, and purposely undercut their goods being sold or outbid their Buy Orders. And the best (or worst) part of it all is, it wouldn’t be considered “griefing”, as I’m able to buy or sell things for whatever price I want.

So long story short, your idea is a bad one, because it opens the chance for abuse. TP works fine the way it is.

Enjoy your target, you will have to fight quite a lot of players

Lucas,

There are millions of players using the TP every day. Every one with a guild wars account uses the same TP. Can you see why it would be impossible to “blacklist” anyone?

Do you have a vague idea of how many millions accounts play wow?
Curious, the system i explained worked for years and years, perfectly.

You say that you want the precursors to be 50/90g. There is a very limited amount of precursors on the market, if they where that price anyone that wanted one would be able to afford it straight away, and the waiting list for precursors would be years if your plans where implemented.
They are the price they are because there are players willing to pay that price for them.
Imagine Joe has got a precursor today as a drop, why should Joe sell that precursor for 50g to Tom if Jane is willing to pay 500g for it?
Is it fair for Joe that he looses out okitten0g just because Tom can’t afford it?

What you are asking goes against everything that society is based upon.

I don’t want nothing. I just made an example using resonable numbers where powerselling doesn’t exist and who attempt to raise the price is instakicked on his back, and tagged as powerseller. His marketing immediately ruined, noone buying anything from him. Funnily on gw2 you cannot simply “escape” on an other server where noone know you , so you can scam some more idiots. Here when names pops and you’re on a blacklist, better buy a new account and behave

That would only work if Anet increased the precursor drop rate to ensure that everyone would be able to purchase one. If they did that you would also not have to dictate prices because the market would adjust itself and the prices would fall according to the supply.

Obiouvsly.

The only reason it works now is mainly b/c of cof p1 and trading. If those 2 did not allow for such high levels of amassing gold, then it would definitely not work since the ability to gain gold elsewhere is not nearly on par….ie the system only works b/c of those and for those.

Clearly not just we need to restore the entire system, but clearly we need the help of Anet and their so claimed economists.
Obiouvsly a stupid weapon who is just 1% of the entire process of a legendary must have a WAY higher droprate. Also, CoF speedrun must be nerfed and the dungeon fixed. AC way more hard and challenging than what we already have (a miracle happened), Cof more challenging and harder than AC (it’s a higher lvl dungeon after all, isn’t it ). Clearly both gold sources works because of speedruns, so put an end of them , way less gold on your stash and tell me again people is willing to pay the actual price

As you see, not just i should convince a community of sheeps to wake up and be part of their game, contributing on a sane economy marking prices on stone and blacklisting “famous names” , but also convince the Anet dev team to work appropriately.
So far, the second task is way harder than the first, as proved

Let’s start with names. Slowly, we will build a sane market without collusion and famous names organizing a marketing, buying our stuff to scam us.

Take back your game, kick out those sharks.

@Lucas Ashrock: I don’t know which version of the WoW AH you used, but it was never one I saw implemented in that game over many years of playing.

Prices were never “written in stone” except by people (or groups) attempting to control the various markets they were involved in. There was no blacklisting for attempting to sell stuff for 1c higher than your competitors. Although the names of serial price-gougers did get out into the server community, it was not an instant process and I’m unaware of any of them being forced to “flee” a server due to a bad reputation (as most of them used an alt to list their items).

There are potential improvements that could be made to how the TP operates in this game, but mimicking the one from WoW would be a backwards step IMO.

Astraea.6075:

@Lucas Ashrock: I don’t know which version of the WoW AH you used, but it was never one I saw implemented in that game over many years of playing.

Prices were never “written in stone” except by people (or groups) attempting to control the various markets they were involved in. There was no blacklisting for attempting to sell stuff for 1c higher than your competitors. Although the names of serial price-gougers did get out into the server community, it was not an instant process and I’m unaware of any of them being forced to “flee” a server due to a bad reputation (as most of them used an alt to list their items).

There are potential improvements that could be made to how the TP operates in this game, but mimicking the one from WoW would be a backwards step IMO.

Tell me, while you was playing for all those years, noone ever linked you those website

http://www.wowhead.com/item=41611

http://thottbot.com/item=41611

Tell me, do you see the buyout price on both page? Tell me, do both price match? Now guess why and who wrote that price. Do you know how to sell thing fast? Undercutting a bit that price. Not surely raising it, you would be the clown of the day, and people whispering you “Hey bro wake up, the price is 62g 57 s, who you think to scam ”

A hint: those are the famous “price written on stone”

TP is better than WoW AH? An evolution?
Let’s start with names of who is playing our market ruining our game.

There’s a lovely Mark Twain quote that I’m dying to post but don’t really want an infraction, so I’ll just leave you guessing.

I’m out, this isn’t really a discussion.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Astraea.6075:

@Lucas Ashrock: I don’t know which version of the WoW AH you used, but it was never one I saw implemented in that game over many years of playing.

Prices were never “written in stone” except by people (or groups) attempting to control the various markets they were involved in. There was no blacklisting for attempting to sell stuff for 1c higher than your competitors. Although the names of serial price-gougers did get out into the server community, it was not an instant process and I’m unaware of any of them being forced to “flee” a server due to a bad reputation (as most of them used an alt to list their items).

There are potential improvements that could be made to how the TP operates in this game, but mimicking the one from WoW would be a backwards step IMO.

Tell me, while you was playing for all those years, noone ever linked you those website

http://www.wowhead.com/item=41611

http://thottbot.com/item=41611

Tell me, do you see the buyout price on both page? Tell me, do both price match? Now guess why and who wrote that price. Do you know how to sell thing fast? Undercutting a bit that price. Not surely raising it, you would be the clown of the day, and people whispering you “Hey bro wake up, the price is 62g 57 s, who you think to scam ”

A hint: those are the famous “price written on stone”

TP is better than WoW AH? An evolution?
Let’s start with names of who is playing our market ruining our game.

Sorry, I don’t play WoW, but are you trying to compare an in game market like the Black Lion with that of an out-of-game website auction site?

Both website are not an auction at all. Both website are the most famous community runned website where every single WoW player would know the price of anything. To not being scammed, and not be marked as a scammer. Nor selling something worth 67g 57 s for 5g with no idea of the value of something.

“Price is written on stone”.

This is a perfect sane market, a perfect AH. Our TP is missing auctions and bids, noone knows why, but that’s an other story.

So far, most of the playerbase posting on this forum is not happy of the current system, puzzled of who is maouvring the market.

Let’s pretend names from Anet, then tell me if things are still the same
Not a surprise most are panicking now we ask names, expecially some serial-scammer sharks

I’m familiar with the websites but never used them when determining what price to sell things for on the AH. In fact, for some items that I traded frequently I would often price at above the current buyout price as I knew that mine would sell eventually anyway.

Other posters have given you reasons why including names may be a problem, but the biggest one for me would be the opportunity it would create for price collusion amongst sellers.

Did you ever play on a low-population server where a handful of people controlled the supply of certain required items (such as crafted gems) or worse, some items were just not available at times?

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Both website are not an auction at all. Both website are the most famous community runned website where every single WoW player would know the price of anything. To not being scammed, and not be marked as a scammer. Nor selling something worth 67g 57 s for 5g with no idea of the value of something.

“Price is written on stone”.

This is a perfect sane market, a perfect AH. Our TP is missing auctions and bids, noone knows why, but that’s an other story.

So far, most of the playerbase posting on this forum is not happy of the current system, puzzled of who is maouvring the market.

Let’s pretend names from Anet, then tell me if things are still the same
Not a surprise most are panicking now we ask names, expecially some serial-scammer sharks

With the TP, you can see the price that people are willing to sell items for and the price that people are willing to buy items for without referencing an external website. Using your example, if I want to sell an item I will see that the price of the current lowest seller is 67g 57s as well the price of the current highest bidder (likely to be higher than 5g in this case). This price information is available to everyone and not just to those who know to check a website before selling stuff.

Astraea.6075:

I’m familiar with the websites but never used them when determining what price to sell things for on the AH. In fact, for some items that I traded frequently I would often price at above the current buyout price as I knew that mine would sell eventually anyway.

Other posters have given you reasons why including names may be a problem, but the biggest one for me would be the opportunity it would create for price collusion amongst sellers.

Did you ever play on a low-population server where a handful of people controlled the supply of certain required items (such as crafted gems) or worse, some items were just not available at times?

This happened because every server have his “internal economy”. Be sure, your price differs a spit. Try to sell that item for double price, then tell me if you sold it

I answered yet. Price colusion cannot happen. Everyone will see the name of everyone buying and selling. Every name of who is manipulationg ectos, precursors, legendaries , T6 mats etc will be “under the light”. And when this famous name is recurring buying at low price 5 precursors/T6 mat stocks and reselling them at triple price, everyone will be aware of it, those name on “blacklist”. The community must fight and dig them, reselling at the old same proper price decided by the community and perfectly visible (even on an external website like the 2 website i linked).

Even WoW took years before this system was stable and accepted by the playerbase. At beginning, they was on the same boat. NOone knows the price of nothing, everyone scamming each other.
Than, one day, someone discovered the fire: those website became the most popular, price was know, community accepted as resonable, perfectly clear even for newbies.
As you see, you cannot play any collusion when everyone know you’re the scammer ruining our game. At best, you will end up not selling not even copper ore.
When 0 is your gain, tell me again how many resources you have to keep scamming the community. Clearly, Anet must help us, cutting the legs to the money source, and increasing the droprate of what is creating this mess.
Time by time, everything will go back stable.
Until the community truly wants it.

With the TP, you can see the price that people are willing to sell items for and the price that people are willing to buy items for without referencing an external website. Using your example, if I want to sell an item I will see that the price of the current lowest seller is 67g 57s as well the price of the current highest bidder (likely to be higher than 5g in this case). This price information is available to everyone and not just to those who know to check a website before selling stuff.

You lost the goal of my post. I wasn’t suggesting a better way to know market movements. I was explaining what “price written on stone” means.

This is what we need. Names of buyer and seller, and price written on stone, discussed and decided by the community, not surely by “the famous richest”

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Both website are not an auction at all. Both website are the most famous community runned website where every single WoW player would know the price of anything. To not being scammed, and not be marked as a scammer. Nor selling something worth 67g 57 s for 5g with no idea of the value of something.

“Price is written on stone”.

This is a perfect sane market, a perfect AH. Our TP is missing auctions and bids, noone knows why, but that’s an other story.

So far, most of the playerbase posting on this forum is not happy of the current system, puzzled of who is maouvring the market.

Let’s pretend names from Anet, then tell me if things are still the same
Not a surprise most are panicking now we ask names, expecially some serial-scammer sharks

I see. So the “price written in stone” is mainly a community based website where players gather to say what’s acceptable?

But if someone is selling their Dusk for 700 Gold, and someone else pays that price, how is that not acceptable? They didn’t need to visit a fan-site to make that determination.

That website collect the current price , it’s update nearly real time.
That price is heavily discussed on the main forum, expecially if it raises , discussing the reason. And the company reads those threads too, making adjustment if needed, even doubling or making half the drop rate of the source. The community and the company both works together to keep the market stable.

So far, noone on this community is helping, nor the company cares of us at all.
Guys, is this one your idea of “TP is awesome, and better than others like Wow AH”?

As you said, people is willing to pay. How? Because they have a source of gold, turboruns of cof. Cut their legs, and tell me if they still want that price
Clearly, droprate must be adjusted too.
Still it’s Anet help what we need. Clearly, noone is expecting any.
John Smith is not reading my posts, telling us if i’m right. (I am, we all know).
At best a mod is reading my post waiting when can be deleted and infracted.

Rise my friends, take back your game. We are tired of those mysterious rises and manipulation, and noone know who is doing it.
We want names on TP, and Anet help.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

You lost the goal of my post. I wasn’t suggesting a better way to know market movements. I was explaining what “price written on stone” means.

This is what we need. Names of buyer and seller, and price written on stone, discussed and decided by the community, not surely by “the famous richest”

What you seem to fail to understand is that prices are decided by the community. Items sell for a price that both sellers and buyers are willing to conclude a transaction at.

If I try to list an item for double the price that someone is willing to pay, then I won’t sell the item and will have forfeited my listing fee. Conversely, if I put in buy orders at a price no one is willing to sell at, then they will never be filled. Remember, the other participants in the marketplace provide competition for people who wish to engage in excessive price-gouging. With names, I could enlist my competitors to help me keep prices high for our mutual benefit.

But if you make a “rare” item more common, via adjustments to the drop mechanics of Dragon Chests or from RNG of the Forge, then these items wouldn’t be rare anymore.

The underlying problem isn’t the TP or the people who use the TP to sell their goods. It’s the people who really want said rare item, but can’t afford it, so they complain or yell “manipulator” at every corner.

Astraea.6075:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

You lost the goal of my post. I wasn’t suggesting a better way to know market movements. I was explaining what “price written on stone” means.

This is what we need. Names of buyer and seller, and price written on stone, discussed and decided by the community, not surely by “the famous richest”

What you seem to fail to understand is that prices are decided by the community. Items sell for a price that both sellers and buyers are willing to conclude a transaction at.

If I try to list an item for double the price that someone is willing to pay, then I won’t sell the item and will have forfeited my listing fee. Conversely, if I put in buy orders at a price no one is willing to sell at, then they will never be filled. Remember, the other participants in the marketplace provide competition for people who wish to engage in excessive price-gouging. With names, I could enlist my competitors to help me keep prices high for our mutual benefit.

Price is not decided by any community. I can log now, buy the last 5 precursors and resell them for double/triple, right now. And it will be undercut a spit maybe attempting to steal my customers. I just buy again his weapons, keeping my price. Tell me again it’s a community decided price.

But if you make a “rare” item more common, via adjustments to the drop mechanics of Dragon Chests or from RNG of the Forge, then these items wouldn’t be rare anymore.

The underlying problem isn’t the TP or the people who use the TP to sell their goods. It’s the people who really want said rare item, but can’t afford it, so they complain or yell “manipulator” at every corner.

Adjustment must be made with both side helping: the community discuss prices. Anet read and actively do real time something.

I can convinve this community to do his part. I cannot help about the Anet side.
They are not interested to help us, seems.

Rise, my friends. Let them know we are tired of manipulators.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

~snip~
…manipulators.

And thus the whole conversation has come full circle.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Price is not decided by any community. I can log now, buy the last 5 precursors and resell them for double/triple, right now. And it will be undercut a spit maybe attempting to steal my customers. I just buy again his weapons, keeping my price. Tell me again it’s a community decided price.

Try it. You will be undercut quickly enough that you will be just throwing away gold if you try keep the competition out of the market. People will turn to the forge in greater numbers (at least until the prices of rares/exotics rise high enough to make your “new” price a more acceptable alternative).

The other thing to remember is that precursors are not the whole of the TP market. Ectos and T6 mats are traded in such high volumes that it would be impossible for you to buy up all the supply and resell at double/triple the price. You might be able to buy up enough supply to temporarily raise the price for a short while, but it wouldn’t take long for the price to return to its “normal” level.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Astraea.6075:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

You lost the goal of my post. I wasn’t suggesting a better way to know market movements. I was explaining what “price written on stone” means.

This is what we need. Names of buyer and seller, and price written on stone, discussed and decided by the community, not surely by “the famous richest”

What you seem to fail to understand is that prices are decided by the community. Items sell for a price that both sellers and buyers are willing to conclude a transaction at.

If I try to list an item for double the price that someone is willing to pay, then I won’t sell the item and will have forfeited my listing fee. Conversely, if I put in buy orders at a price no one is willing to sell at, then they will never be filled. Remember, the other participants in the marketplace provide competition for people who wish to engage in excessive price-gouging. With names, I could enlist my competitors to help me keep prices high for our mutual benefit.

Price is not decided by any community. I can log now, buy the last 5 precursors and resell them for double/triple, right now. And it will be undercut a spit maybe attempting to steal my customers. I just buy again his weapons, keeping my price. Tell me again it’s a community decided price.

But if you make a “rare” item more common, via adjustments to the drop mechanics of Dragon Chests or from RNG of the Forge, then these items wouldn’t be rare anymore.

The underlying problem isn’t the TP or the people who use the TP to sell their goods. It’s the people who really want said rare item, but can’t afford it, so they complain or yell “manipulator” at every corner.

Adjustment must be made with both side helping: the community discuss prices. Anet read and actively do real time something.

I can convinve this community to do his part. I cannot help about the Anet side.
They are not interested to help us, seems.

Rise, my friends. Let them know we are tired of manipulators.

Try it. I dare you. No….I double DOG dare you!!!!

Pick a precursor….but up all the stock…..then relist for double the price.

I think you can do it. I have faith in you. You seem to have the Trading Post all figured out.

If you’re going to make claims, be prepared to back them up with data. If you can provide the community with data that a market is being manipulated (even if you manipulate the market yourself just to prove a point), then you’re more likely to be taken seriously.

Many of us have seen the data provided by ArenaNet….and I’m inclined to believe that data because it’s coming from the source where data is being collected. They have stated time and time again that specific markets are not being manipulated as some players think they are, specifically precursors and ectos.

The problem is, that no matter how much data they (ArenaNet) provides, the players “crying wolf” will always ask for more data, or believe that THAT data is being manipulated itself.

Personally, I would love to see one of the players saying a market is being manipulated step up and prove me wrong that ANY market can be manipulated.

So….my dare stands. Please….prove me and everyone else wrong.

We consistently see it in the short term. It doesn’t tend to work in the long run for most items. I have a guildy who put up a sell wall of 21k+@ 3s ea on an item and that wall has been there for well over a week. Now it’s down to about 7k items, but still in tack. It really depends on the item’s fluidity.

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Like to emphasize how the TP is good for the industry? blow your own trumpet by all means but don’t make silly immature statements.

I think the TP is fine as is but I wonder what kind of environment it would be if anything bought on it became acct bound.

Cod Eye.1632:

Like to emphasize how the TP is good for the industry? blow your own trumpet by all means but don’t make silly immature statements.

Everyone here was being mature until you said that.

Honestly, it’s doing a pretty good job as it is, and could only be improved by the addition of an auction feature. Yes, there are things on the TP that are expensive, but that’s because all lower offers have already been accepted.

The only outcome that will eventuate from including player names is more bans – because of people sending abusive messages to people selling precursors. Prices won’t change at all. I’m sorry, I don’t understand all of Lucas Ashrock’s explanations, they’re quite fragmented – but GW1 had a lot of player-driven infrastructure much the same as WoW, and it didn’t stop rare items being far too expensive for most players. I’m seeing the same thing in GW2, but the highest prices are on rare weapons instead of rare minipets.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

That website collect the current price , it’s update nearly real time.
That price is heavily discussed on the main forum, expecially if it raises , discussing the reason. And the company reads those threads too, making adjustment if needed, even doubling or making half the drop rate of the source. The community and the company both works together to keep the market stable.

… What?

First of all, the prices as listed on wowhead/thottbot are not put on a pedestal as you seem to imply. They are hardly “heavily discussed.” You are, in fact, the first person I’ve ever seen bring them up. That makes sense, too, considering that they’re merely “average prices” as determined by some algorithm. The actual price of any given item will vary from server to server and from moment to moment.

I also love that, above, you rhetorically ask, “Tell me, do you see the buyout price on both page? Tell me, do both price match?” as if that proves a degree of certainty/stability when it comes to prices. Do you know the actual reason they list matching prices on any given item? It’s because they’re using the same source. When you click the “buyout price” link on either page, you’re taken to a website called The Undermine Journal. And there, you’ll actually find your “price written in stone” theory is completely incorrect, as even for an item like an eternal belt buckle the price fluctuates.

That said, there is an equilibrium for prices. The thing is, it’s not the result of “developers and the community working together,” or blacklisting “scammers,” or anything along those lines. When a new arena season starts, for example, the price of gems tends to go up quite a bit, and jewelcrafters playing the Auction House make a lot of money. Why? Because demand rises. Supply and demand, as taught in basic economics, decides price – not micromanagement by the community or developers, although the latter do need to take into consideration things like drop rates, gold sinks, and so on.

There is aggressive undercutting, especially through mods like Auctioneer, but the basic principle of making money on the Auction House is “buy low, sell higher.” This picture you’re painting where people are called out for trying to make a decent profit, and this calling out creates a downward pressure on prices, is of an alternative reality.

This is how it really works: http://ahaddict.blogspot.com/2012/11/buy-low-sell-higher.html

Markets decide the appropriate price. Not white knights.

Lucas Ashrock.8675

Smooth Penguin.5294:

But if you make a “rare” item more common, via adjustments to the drop mechanics of Dragon Chests or from RNG of the Forge, then these items wouldn’t be rare anymore.

The underlying problem isn’t the TP or the people who use the TP to sell their goods. It’s the people who really want said rare item, but can’t afford it, so they complain or yell “manipulator” at every corner.

Adjustment must be made with both side helping: the community discuss prices. Anet read and actively do real time something.

I can convinve this community to do his part. I cannot help about the Anet side.
They are not interested to help us, seems.

Rise, my friends. Let them know we are tired of manipulators.

I’m jumping in a little late here, but if I understand correctly, you think that precursors cost too much for some reason. Part of this reason is that it doesn’t drop enough.

You didn’t really answer penguin’s point about rare items being rare. This game has chosen to focus value on skins rather than weapon/armor stats so that people don’t feel they have to grind to play the game. In order for the game to have goals for hardcore players they need to have skins that are numerically rare.

If the developers were to increase drop rates, then the item wouldn’t be as rare and of course the price would drop due to normal supply/demand mechanics. Which would be fine if it didn’t destroy one of their key design goals: having numerically rare items that lots of players want to own.

I think you need to remember that Anet is making an MMO here and in order to keep the population up, they need to have things that keep people playing the game for a long time. Creating items with this kind of demand is one of the ways they do this.

Since Legendary Weapons are purely optional for playing the game, I could really care less what they do with them. I would actually like to get a few of them myself, but I don’t have the free time or pocketbook to get one right now, but from what I understand, there are a number of ways to earn these things in game over time, and they are actually working on more ways to get the parts of the Legendary Weapons, so it will probably just get easier over time (especially if they put in a LW even cooler than the ones in demand now).

As for price manipulation…with a global TP, I just don’t see it happening in any significant manner. Too many sellers and (since they currently don’t know who each other are) too easy to just price according to their own self interest. Which makes the TP a pretty decent implementation of the supply/demand mechanic.

Now if you disagree with Anet’s goals and with supply/demand, then you’re just never going to be happy with the TP, and you’re really just wasting your time as you have basic, fundamental disagreements with the game design. This would be similar to insisting that the game can only be played with monks and trying to run a guardian as pure heal and then saying that the other players aren’t helping you play the way you want to and ANet needs to change the way the guardian’s skills work so you can play the way you think the game should be played. At a certain level, you really just have to accept that this is how the game is played. There is plenty of room for individuality and creative play, but they can’t allow that in all aspects of the game. Even sandbox games have to have certain rules (like you need to use some kind of physical input device to issues some in game commands).

Pandemoniac.4739:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

No-one “chose” the price. Friedrich Engels said “what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”

The price of precursors was set by the players answering these two questions :
How much gold would it take for you to part with a pre-cursor?
How much gold would you be willing to spend on a pre-cursor?

And the result was a price that neither side of the transaction is entirely happy with, but will accept.

I do not agree on that. On the bottom of every contract are 2 signatures. Both are needed to make a transaction happen. If you don’t agree with the transaction … don’t do it. Same goes for buying a house or getting a job. Don’t put your scribble under something you don’t support 100%. Everything has a correct market-driven pricepoint.

The only thing that pulls those two appart, and as such hurts sales, is taxation. The correct price can never be achieved by either party as long as people have to consider taxation. Since Engels was pretty much the first communist, I find that a bit funny.

marnick.4305:

Pandemoniac.4739:

No-one “chose” the price. Friedrich Engels said “what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”

The price of precursors was set by the players answering these two questions :
How much gold would it take for you to part with a pre-cursor?
How much gold would you be willing to spend on a pre-cursor?

And the result was a price that neither side of the transaction is entirely happy with, but will accept.

I do not agree on that. On the bottom of every contract are 2 signatures. Both are needed to make a transaction happen. If you don’t agree with the transaction … don’t do it. Same goes for buying a house or getting a job. Don’t put your scribble under something you don’t support 100%. Everything has a correct market-driven pricepoint.

The only thing that pulls those two appart, and as such hurts sales, is taxation. The correct price can never be achieved by either party as long as people have to consider taxation. Since Engels was pretty much the first communist, I find that a bit funny.

Regardless of Engels political views, what he said is still true for a lot systems. Buyer and seller have opposing intentions, regardless of the tax. The buyer wants to buy an item as cheaply as possible, and the seller wants to sell the item as expensively as possible. The price where they meet in the middle isn’t the price either of them would set if they could – it’s a compromise that both can live with. That was the point of my two questions above – if you’re honest, the price that you come up with will be different for those two questions.

Market prices aren’t chosen – they emerge from a large number of individual buyers and sellers making decisions based on their particular situation. There is no “correct price” – there is only the price that the market will bear given the current state of everything – taxation, drop rate, supply, et. al. By each buyer and seller making an independent decision about what an item is worth, all of that information that each individual has about the current state of things gets aggregated into a general value, and that value changes as the situation changes and individuals make different decisions.

For this to really work though, you have to have a huge number of people participating in the market and they have to be making their buying and selling decisions based on how they want to allocate their resources, and not based on personal animosity or fear of being targeted as Lucas was proposing.

John Smith.4610:

Cod Eye.1632:

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Like to emphasize how the TP is good for the industry? blow your own trumpet by all means but don’t make silly immature statements.

It’s good for the industry because it demonstrates proof of concept. Not only for massively global trading systems, but for increased efficiency as the virtual economy scales.

HOW does it demonstrate proof of concept?
How does the TP show increased efficiency? IF you wanted it to be efficient you wouldn’t require us to run to an agent to pick things up. Things sell just as quickly on this TP then it does on WoW. WoW set the standards and you’re not even up to par with WoW’s standards, them let alone leading an industry.

TP- Did not work at launch for how long again? Oh right… like a few months….
TP DOesn’t work how often? Pretty much like atleast ten times a day it encounters an error.
TP Loading takes how long? Well let’s see… about ten seconds to a full minute.
WoW loaded how long? Instant
WoW had how many problems? Virtually none.
You did beat wow here though, in WoW you had to go up to an agent to sell, on the TP you don’t. I guess you win there. . . . .

How is this good for the industry?
All you did really was take what WoW already put into action and made a lot of changes for the worse( errors, loading time, not working correctly initially) and one change for the better ( sell anywhere in the world).

Orc Slayer.2780:

How does the TP show increased efficiency?

Efficiency in the way that John was using it refers to the way that price levels are determined. It is provably more efficient from an economic point of view than how WoW does things. There’s no room for debate about that.

Orc Slayer.2780:

HOW does it demonstrate proof of concept?

Hopefully John will chime in here, but I imagine he means Anet’s concept for how an in-game trading post should integrate into the game economy. I’ve only played GW1 and 2, so I’m not familiar with how other games have done it, but as I understand it WoW’s in game trading post works on a per server basis, whereas GW2 works across all servers.

How does the TP show increased efficiency? IF you wanted it to be efficient you wouldn’t require us to run to an agent to pick things up.

Again, I’d like to see John’s answer to this, but my guess (I haven’t taken an econ class in over 20 years lol) is that by increased efficiency he means that as more and more people use the TP and/or the game population increases, price corrections based on supply and demand as interpreted by the players happens more and more efficiently, which is another way of saying that prices reach some kind of stability even more quickly as the levers move (those being the supply of the items and the demand for them).

TP- Did not work at launch for how long again? Oh right… like a few months….
TP DOesn’t work how often? Pretty much like atleast ten times a day it encounters an error.
TP Loading takes how long? Well let’s see… about ten seconds to a full minute.
WoW loaded how long? Instant
WoW had how many problems? Virtually none.
You did beat wow here though, in WoW you had to go up to an agent to sell, on the TP you don’t. I guess you win there. . . . .

My memory may be hazy, but I thought it was only really borked up for the first month or so, then it worked with intermittent problems. If you are still having problems though, you should do some forum searches to find a solution, or just contact support. You shouldn’t still be getting errors like that. The TP has been great for me lately.

It does take a few seconds to load, but it’s interfacing with a website external to the game and has a lot of information and moving parts. If it’s taking closer to a minute, then, again, I suggest you take a look at the forums or contact support.

WoW’s been out a long time. Are you saying the current trading system was in place from day one and worked flawlessly from the start? Not to mention that having a subscription fee allows them to have a lot more support people than Anet’s business model.

I think having to go to the TP to get your items is by design to introduce delays between buying and selling things to give the player time to think over their transaction, but I’m not sure about that. Alternatively, it’s an incentive to spend money in the gem store on BL trader express items.

How is this good for the industry?
All you did really was take what WoW already put into action and made a lot of changes for the worse( errors, loading time, not working correctly initially) and one change for the better ( sell anywhere in the world).

Isn’t WoW using an auction house? I know that’s what they call it, and I saw you could bid on things, but I’m not sure if it actually works like a real auction where you put up an item (with maybe a min bid and a buy out price) and people can keep trying to outbid each other until the date the seller set. If so, that’s a bit of a different system than the GW2 Trading Post. There’s no real bidding, you decide what the price should be or what price you are willing to pay and you succeed in selling or buying if there is another party that agrees to your terms. So I don’t think it’s fair to say they just copied WoW.

If they have come up with an efficient way for players to buy and sell what they want with other players while still working as a significant drag on inflation and keeping scamming (and its related support headaches) to a minimum, I would think that would be good for the industry, players and developers both.

BladeDVD.6234:

How is this good for the industry?
All you did really was take what WoW already put into action and made a lot of changes for the worse( errors, loading time, not working correctly initially) and one change for the better ( sell anywhere in the world).

Isn’t WoW using an auction house? I know that’s what they call it, and I saw you could bid on things, but I’m not sure if it actually works like a real auction where you put up an item (with maybe a min bid and a buy out price) and people can keep trying to outbid each other until the date the seller set. If so, that’s a bit of a different system than the GW2 Trading Post. There’s no real bidding, you decide what the price should be or what price you are willing to pay and you succeed in selling or buying if there is another party that agrees to your terms. So I don’t think it’s fair to say they just copied WoW.

One thing that an auction house (and you’re correct in assuming that WoW uses an auction house and not a market) can’t do is allow you to place a buy order for an item that isn’t available. That creates an additional level of efficiency because I can give someone an incentive to make or find what I want by telling them in advance what I would give them for their effort. There might be someone with exactly what I want stashed away and if the price is high enough they’ll sell it to me.

I don’t think that auctions are as efficient as a market, because it’s many buyers to one seller and once you as a buyer have your capital invested in an auction, it’s risky to pull it out and put it into another auction that might be more attractive. There’s always the chance that someone will swoop in at the last minute and out-bid you so you’re stuck with the “bird in the hand” problem.

The TP is a many buyers to many sellers relationship. If I like your price, I’ll buy it from you outright, and if I don’t, I’ll put my buy order in and wait for a seller that likes my price, and you can wait for a buyer that likes yours. I think it more accurately reflects the real value of the item and it’s a lot less time spent looking for the right item at the right price for me.