Guild Wars 2

Check how the demand of “Decorative Molten Jetpack” from only 350 to 1,300,000 today!
I had noticed this kind of issue long times ago, people can just put a requirement for a thing with only 1c on trading post, and it counts a demand… really?

alot clicking for 1,300.000

guess some API bots did this job

And this is why it’s important to look at demand by price breakdowns as much as supply by price breakdowns when playing the TP. Otherwise you may think something is heavily traded when it isn’t or understand why there are these sell price spikes when supply drops a bit (re: price gap to unreasonable).

hope arenanet stop this BOTTING

now Lightning Catcher Skin, Molten Jetpack, Super Greatsword on first page

make everyone have to click to set orders or allow for everyone to do it

weird, when i check the actual listings, there are about 20….
Maybe a bug?

you see only last 20 listings and not the 1+mio on1c

Well 1.2 million listings at 1c for an item thats traded around the 500g mark isnt realy something that makes sense to me. I’ll happily ignore it and continue on with my schedule.

It’s a trick to not show you the data on what they are actually buying and selling. I’ve seen this going on for quite a while now. Basically, you got to see the decoy – rather than the hustle and bustle around the next hottest products in town.
Similarly, it’s very easy to muddle up the data by, for example, increasing the price of silly stuff like “jug of water” by 300% to kick out the item you’re actually buying from the list everyone sees in spidy and gwtp. Because now, the price of what you’re actually buying increases by too little to show up on the front page of these websites.

Just a thought here

Let’s say I was a nefarious, heavy market speculator in limited, rare items. I.e. Monocle, jetpack, halloween weapons, molten dyes, e.t.c.

Many players are unaware of these items simply because they are out of sight, out of mind.

But what if I wanted to advertise that these items are still out there, and that they are so rare that you should get them? And what if I could advertise these items for free?

What I would do, if I were a nefarious trader, would be to create false demand on the TP by making millions of 1c order listings so that it would push these items to the top of the TP home page, where it can be viewed by thousands of players every day.

Now I’m not sure if that is what is happening here, considering some of those items are not rare but irrelevant such as foods.

But just a thought !

Wow I didn’t realize this was going on, but it’s rather nefarious imho. I think the API makes this kind of stuff possible to a large degree (but it’s not the only reason).

Do you think the fanboys and koolaid drinkers would actually classify this as a form of manipulation in the GW2 market?

juno.1840:

Wow I didn’t realize this was going on, but it’s rather nefarious imho. I think the API makes this kind of stuff possible to a large degree (but it’s not the only reason).

Do you think the fanboys and koolaid drinkers would actually classify this as a form of manipulation in the GW2 market?

People who follow website trends that use the API won’t fall for this trick. It’s those who just look at the TP and act impulsively that get burned.

And I wouldn’t call it manipulation, just deception, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s no different than, say, undercutting an item by a lot to create an artificial price spread.

I.e. buy/sell order for Ecto averages at 30s/34S. I may post 1 ecto at 30.1S which will cause those who do not pay attention to these prices to automatically list their ectos at 30.1S even though I only listed 1 ecto at that price when they could have listed it at 34S.

1.25 million demand… even for 250 per order thats still 5000 clicks. Well… I guess thats still a lot less clicks then magic find boosting :P

@Vol: I have to disagree with your statement that there’s “nothing wrong with deception”. Honestly there should be no place for that. In a way it’s gaming the system.

It also impacts the summaries on the TP UI in the game (highest demand items, etc).

This specific example of 1 million+ buy orders supports a mild form a regulation. Bounds are required in every system.

Disdroid.6109:

1.25 million demand… even for 250 per order thats still 5000 clicks. Well… I guess thats still a lot less clicks then magic find boosting :P

I’m pretty sure there are programs that can do hundreds/thousands of virtual clicks per second.

For us normal folk, the best alternative is to bind scroll wheel to Left Click and scroll away…

juno.1840:

@Vol: I have to disagree with your statement that there’s “nothing wrong with deception”. Honestly there should be no place for that. In a way it’s gaming the system.

It also impacts the summaries on the TP UI in the game (highest demand items, etc).

This specific example of 1 million+ buy orders supports a mild form a regulation. Bounds are required in every system.

Deception was probably too strong of a word. There is no lying happening here, it’s just that there is a lack of detail provided in the TP interface. This results in misinformed or impatient players losing out.

Vol.7601:

juno.1840:

@Vol: I have to disagree with your statement that there’s “nothing wrong with deception”. Honestly there should be no place for that. In a way it’s gaming the system.

It also impacts the summaries on the TP UI in the game (highest demand items, etc).

This specific example of 1 million+ buy orders supports a mild form a regulation. Bounds are required in every system.

Deception was probably too strong of a word. There is no lying happening here, it’s just that there is a lack of detail provided in the TP interface. This results in misinformed or impatient players losing out.

I think deception was a pretty good word for it. There is no real intent on the orders ever being filled. They are there solely to provide the appearance of players wanting more of an item. They were placed full well knowing they wouldn’t be visable to other players and most likely would not have been if they were. This all fits rather well into deception’s definition.

To take it a step further, I also could argue that it is an attempt at manipulation.

Somewhat related/unrelated to deception, looks like a bunch of investors made a big mistake and invested in the wrong company! Quite hilarious if you ask me.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/15/nestor-google-inc-nest-stock/

Vol.7601:

Somewhat related/unrelated to deception, looks like a bunch of investors made a big mistake and invested in the wrong company! Quite hilarious if you ask me.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/15/nestor-google-inc-nest-stock/

Similar thing happen when Twitter went public. Some group of investors ended up buying stock in the nearly defunked Twitter electronics store chain.

I guess what everyone can learn about this is that no matter what you are investing in, do your research before blindly rushing in and pressing buttons!

It’s also very possible that speculators figured that others could fall into this trap and would take advantage of the incorrect share purchase. Nefarious, but smart!

Vol nailed it. I thought the same when I saw them on the most demanded list on the TP. It’s just a strategy to advertise those items because many players might forgot about them long ago or even don’t know that those exist.

There’s also another tool that speculators use to advertise and increase the demand on items that they have been stockpiling for weeks and that is Reddit. Many spikes in prices happen right after someone datamines something and posts it on reddit providing that it gets enough upvotes to make it to the frontpage.

I still remember one guy that was advertising dragon food because it was and it still is cheaper than its equivalents. He did it in a way that it wasn’t pretty noticeable that it was pure advertising and he got many upvotes, but eventually he made so many posts that the community downvoted them inmediately.

It seems to be having the intended effect. Lightning Catcher selling price is sitting at double what it was a week ago right now, and at its high point it was 2.5x the previous price. Even the buy request price is higher than the previous selling price.

I’m not complaining. I’ve got one sitting in the bank, one of the few rare items I actually have in sellable form.

Electro.4173:

It seems to be having the intended effect. Lightning Catcher selling price is sitting at double what it was a week ago right now, and at its high point it was 2.5x the previous price. Even the buy request price is higher than the previous selling price.

I’m not complaining. I’ve got one sitting in the bank, one of the few rare items I actually have in sellable form.

Might want to sell it. Bazaar will be coming back in the future, perhaps as close as this summer.

So in essence people need a third party program to see through the deception.

It’s blatantly obvious that manipulation is going on. Just ignore the numbers (because they’re clearly fake).

Buttercup.5871:

So in essence people need a third party program to see through the deception.

No. The TP shows you the highest 20 buy orders. In high value/low velocity items, it doesnt matter how much listings have been posted at 1c because they will never get filled. It is actually the 3rd party program, that delivers the deception.

The comment regarding doing research imo is spot on. I cannot even think of how many hours I have spent doing that.
When I invest or sell I always have a reason why I do so. Not just because all of a sudden buy or sell orders have went all crazy. But a reason that would seem logical.

panic buying or selling has been many a traders undoing. And yes imo there is way more market manipulation going on that what many realize. I see it day after day. Sometimes nothing major but so very obvious.

Vol.7601:

I guess what everyone can learn about this is that no matter what you are investing in, do your research before blindly rushing in and pressing buttons!

It’s also very possible that speculators figured that others could fall into this trap and would take advantage of the incorrect share purchase. Nefarious, but smart!

Now just wait a second… are you saying that I have to do work and understand how the TP operates to make money as a trader? That’s not what all those folks on the forums and all those guides on the Intertubes told me!

On a more serious note, marketers, realtors and other salespeople do similar things to misrepresent how desirable whatever they’re selling is and there is always enough people that fall for it to make it worthwhile. I could predict the drop in real life gold simply by watching the exponential growth of the advertising trying to convince me to invest in it. No one is trying to hard sell me on the commodities being used in metamaterial research though… how strange

danielrjones.8759:

And yes imo there is way more market manipulation going on that what many realize. I see it day after day. Sometimes nothing major but so very obvious.

I beg to differ. Prices are being driven by the general public most of the time. Even or especially in high value markets, you will never be able to control a market as most of the supply of any profitable item will be stored in account storage and not the tp, making the majority of the supply not available to the public.

Giotto.2607:

Check how the demand of “Decorative Molten Jetpack” from only 350 to 1,300,000 today!
I had noticed this kind of issue long times ago, people can just put a requirement for a thing with only 1c on trading post, and it counts a demand… really?

Question: Do you only buy things on the Trading Post because other people want it as well?

This does feel like a shady advertising tactic to me, although I agree that any TP trader/user worth his salt isn’t going to fall for it. I’d like John Smith to comment on this if he can though; is this something ANet supports/frowns on as it masks legitimate demand and therefore prevents the TP page from displaying genuine information to players?

Zaxares.5419:

This does feel like a shady advertising tactic to me, although I agree that any TP trader/user worth his salt isn’t going to fall for it. I’d like John Smith to comment on this if he can though; is this something ANet supports/frowns on as it masks legitimate demand and therefore prevents the TP page from displaying genuine information to players?

I doubt that JS will comment on this. As he is tight lipped anyways and has to be, he usually doesnt comment if the right answer or comment has already been provided to a topic/question by a community member.

Electro.4173:

It seems to be having the intended effect. Lightning Catcher selling price is sitting at double what it was a week ago right now, and at its high point it was 2.5x the previous price. Even the buy request price is higher than the previous selling price.

I’m not complaining. I’ve got one sitting in the bank, one of the few rare items I actually have in sellable form.

Demand means nothing without supply. Price didn’t budge when demand went to 2 million, it shot up when supply went from 63 to 6. And once there the supply numbers started to return the sell price slowly dropped to where it is now with 54 available.

@Wanze, My comment regarding seeing it everyday was more about the price spreads. I will use totems for example. There was a time I was buying some of those to balance out having full sets of all t6, this was when they were selling for 17s and bids were in for around 14s. I would see one listed for 14.01 buy it and as soon as I would another would appear for 14.01 I would buy it and within 2-3 seconds another would appear for 14.01 Did this at least 15 times in less than 2 minutes. All the while there would be bids of a few hundred at 14s

I see this type of activity on many different items. I suppose its very possible someone could actually list it for 1 copper above bidding prices. What I find odd is many times it will only be one or two available at a time like that. And as soon as they are bought, one or two will appear again.

Not that I am against people doing this at all, whatever blows their skirt up I guess. (I don’t do it) If that is being done with the intention of getting unsuspecting people to just sell to low bidder thinking that’s what they are generally going for, I would call that manipulation.

Just like in the real world, control mechanisms need to be put in place to keep the TP from being abused. OR, at least safety protocols like lock out IP’s after a certain amount of transactions. Should be easy to quantify whats a real human clicking compared to a bot.

IP blocking never works and is never encouraged for any game.

The solution for this is to give these skin items a merchant sell value of 5s (or more), meaning that no player could put a buy order up for them for anything less than 5.01s, which ups the cost associated with this level of advertising 100-fold. I somehow doubt people are going to put 1 million buy orders at 5.01s seeing as that would cost 50,100g to do. I guess if you had that money and really wanted to put that many buy orders up you still could, but just having that sellback value would discourage this behavior heavily.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The solution for this is to give these skin items a merchant sell value of 5s (or more), meaning that no player could put a buy order up for them for anything less than 5.01s, which ups the cost associated with this level of advertising 100-fold. I somehow doubt people are going to put 1 million buy orders at 5.01s seeing as that would cost 50,100g to do. I guess if you had that money and really wanted to put that many buy orders up you still could, but just having that sellback value would discourage this behavior heavily.

Reasonable and easy-to-implement idea, I can get behind that.

danielrjones.8759:

@Wanze, My comment regarding seeing it everyday was more about the price spreads. I will use totems for example. There was a time I was buying some of those to balance out having full sets of all t6, this was when they were selling for 17s and bids were in for around 14s. I would see one listed for 14.01 buy it and as soon as I would another would appear for 14.01 I would buy it and within 2-3 seconds another would appear for 14.01 Did this at least 15 times in less than 2 minutes. All the while there would be bids of a few hundred at 14s

I see this type of activity on many different items. I suppose its very possible someone could actually list it for 1 copper above bidding prices. What I find odd is many times it will only be one or two available at a time like that. And as soon as they are bought, one or two will appear again.

Not that I am against people doing this at all, whatever blows their skirt up I guess. (I don’t do it) If that is being done with the intention of getting unsuspecting people to just sell to low bidder thinking that’s what they are generally going for, I would call that manipulation.

Its not a manipulation but an interaction with the market, or every interaction, wether you buy or sell an item, is also a manipulation.
Considering the guy is the same who has a bunch of buy orders at 14s and keeps listing at 14.01s, just keep buying them at 14.01s until he runs out as he makes 15% every time.

to list something to trick others into believing something different is going on than what is behind door number 2 is kinda where I was going with that.

I suppose I could change the word from manipulation to deception for the unsuspecting. If what I mentioned is what someone is doing to get others to sell at a lower price.

Desert Rose skin and the dragon wings are “Top Demanded Items” too now….????…. Sure they are…. Can a Dev seriously get on this abuse issue. This is making a mockery out of the TP.

Put it this way, I’ll trade outside of the TP if it’s going to be nothing but, a sink whole of abuse.

They should create a trading license for each account. If you abuse it, you lose it. Simple as that. That includes monitoring transaction frequency to remove bots!

DeWolfe.2174:

Desert Rose skin and the dragon wings are “Top Demanded Items” too now….????…. Sure they are…. Can a Dev seriously get on this abuse issue. This is making a mockery out of the TP.

Put it this way, I’ll trade outside of the TP if it’s going to be nothing but, a sink whole of abuse.

I don’t understand how this bothers you or interferes with your TP use.

Zaxares.5419:

This does feel like a shady advertising tactic to me, although I agree that any TP trader/user worth his salt isn’t going to fall for it. I’d like John Smith to comment on this if he can though; is this something ANet supports/frowns on as it masks legitimate demand and therefore prevents the TP page from displaying genuine information to players?

I’d be more willing to believe some state actor using the game as a training ground.

But I am paranoid.

My main problem with this is that i cant imagine any human player spending the time to do this. And therefore that leads me to believe that bots have done it. Until now i’ve been fairly sceptical that Bots have lasted that long on the TP (it is ofc v easily possible to script one, dont fool yourselves). But these buy orders have survived leading to a few possibilities.

1. Its actually humans with way to much time
2. Its bots, but when a bot is banned its buy orders stay up on the TP
3. Its bots, but they arn’t being banned

I dont actually have any proof that it is any of these so i’m not going to comment on how likely the different options are, but if it is No.3 then thats not a good place to be.

Atmos.8105:

1. Its actually humans with way to much time

Yep.

Still an issue! The “Top Demanded” category should not be allowed to be used as font page advertising by a few whales whom wish to hock items they’ve been hording. It makes the category into a farce.

The category should be removed from the TP panel until a solution can be found. Either that or limit order volume to single digits! 250 is obviously way too generous and easy to abuse.

This issue only bothers me because I like reading that column to see what hot newness tons upon tons of players are now buying up. The problem with these buy orders giving artificial demand is that it tricks less-savvy players into thinking these things are super demanded and locks up that column from actually being otherwise useful.

I still think my previous idea is the best and cheapest approach to handling this.

DeWolfe.2174:

Still an issue! The “Top Demanded” category should not be allowed to be used as font page advertising by a few whales whom wish to hock items they’ve been hording. It makes the category into a farce.

The category should be removed from the TP panel until a solution can be found. Either that or limit order volume to single digits! 250 is obviously way too generous and easy to abuse.

I don’t even know why it’s there in the first place. Same goes for the other categories. highest price list has changed once in the last year and a half (perma hair stylist). top demanded never changed until someone realized they could do this. I could see them being interesting, but why are they front-page? I never gave those lists a moment’s attention until now that I could possibly notice which item this botter is promoting so I can buy it first before the price jumps, then sell a day later at 100% profit.

DONT YOU DARE reduce how many buy orders we can make. do you realize how long it takes me to buy 9,000 iron ore atm? if they remove the latency bug or reduce the stack size limit, placing buy orders for crafting will remove crafting from the game. If anything, increase how many we can buy at a time so I don’t have to sit there for 10 minutes: click field, type 250, click field, type 1, click field, type 10, click ‘place buy order’ three times, click field, type 250, click field… bah. then remove these useless lists from the front page. replace it with ‘newest additions to the TP’, most recently traded items (the last 10 items anyone has ever bought – it will basically give you a list of 10 random items to advertise random things on there) , ‘newest additions to the gem store’, ‘current gem store promotions’

At the very least, it makes Anet look stupid for putting up information that’s being gamed.

juno.1840:

Wow I didn’t realize this was going on, but it’s rather nefarious imho. I think the API makes this kind of stuff possible to a large degree (but it’s not the only reason).

Do you think the fanboys and koolaid drinkers would actually classify this as a form of manipulation in the GW2 market?

Of course it is. They are buying the items in bulk, throwing in large numbers of buy orders to push it onto the front page of the TP and once it’s there players see it and buy lots of it. This pushes the price up so they make a large profit when they sell it. Just look at Grinning Gourd. It was almost worthless compared to the other Halloween skins. Now it’s just under 100g and one of the “top demanded” items.