Fixing asymmetric information in the TP.
Lazy people pay the price when they are lazy. Unlazy people set their own buy/sell orders. This is not manipulation this is taking advantage of lazy people. A perfectly acceptable practice in a economy.
Every time I sell to highest seller and buy from highest seller I know I am loosing out on money the majority of time. But when I do I know I am being lazy and paying the price for it.
Of course it is acceptable and legal, but in Economics it is still considered asymmetric information and thus a market failure. In a market economy, the regulatory agent usually takes actions to prevent this by trying to make as much information as possible available, but economic agents still can buy and sell at the price they want. And lazy people will always be lazy and not read the information even if available.
I don’t understand what piece of information you think is asymmetric. The original seller that tanked the price has access to the same information (quantity @ price) that subsequent sellers have.
Thanks for posting this. There are actually several other examples:
- Sellers can see their lowest existing listing for an item; buyers can’t see if they are already buying an item or at what price.
- Buyers can see around a dozen existing instant-sell offers and a similar number of custom offers; sellers can only see the lowest instant-sell offer.
- When searching for an item, the TP lists the instant sell offer; it provides no information about custom buy orders until you visit the panel to make one.
- Similarly, when sell items, the TP lists the instant buy offers; it provides no information about custom sell prices.
This isn’t about laziness; this is about providing buyers & sellers with equal access to the same data, something required for a truly free market. Whenever there is “asymmetric data,” one party has the advantage of the other.
OP is saying information can be “hidden” by manipulative traders and impatient or clueless sellers. Something like
50 silver, 1 seller
75 silver, 5 sellers
76 silver, 10 sellers
76.5 silver, 15 sellers
hides the “true price” of an item. This information can still be obtained by trying to “buy more” before selling, and the question is whether this step should be necessary.
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
yeah this is pretty accurate. I think the UI and information provided could be updated, but UI work seems a valuable resource for all the development teams.
OP is saying information can be “hidden” by manipulative traders and impatient or clueless sellers. Something like
50 silver, 1 seller
75 silver, 5 sellers
76 silver, 10 sellers
76.5 silver, 15 sellershides the “true price” of an item. This information can still be obtained by trying to “buy more” before selling, and the question is whether this step should be necessary.
It’s a bit more difficult than the OP is making it out to be. In order to work the market like this, the market you’re doing it in needs to have a lot of room between buy/sell orders. That means it’s extremely unlikely to be done in markets that are, to quote them, “supplied in great quantities.” Main reason being that if the market really does have that much supply, it’s also going to be a market that sells extremely quickly. Second, you cant list lower than 14% of the current low without using multiple bids, otherwise someone will simply buy your sale listing and repost at a profit.
Or it could just be someone who’s listing items at lower than sell listings, but higher than buy listings, because they want to sell the item quickly.
Second, you cant list lower than 14% of the current low without using multiple bids, otherwise someone will simply buy your sale listing and repost at a profit.
This doesn’t help someone who is listing theirs right after the undercut gets posted but before someone else sees it and snatches it up. The 14% is irrelevant, though, since it may well have been “70 silver, 1 seller”.
Just as likely, using multiple bids as you mentioned:
55 silver, 1 seller
60 silver, 1 seller
65 silver, 2 sellers
75 silver, 5 sellers
76 silver, 10 sellers
76.5 silver, 15 sellers
Of course the market will stabilize back to ~75 soon. But perhaps not before OP sees only kitten when he sells his. Most of the time this situation doesn’t happen, and all of time it doesn’t happen for long. But some of the time it does/will happen for brief instances.
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
That is why you write your own application with TP API, and never use the horrid in-game gui
You want to know the worst part about how horrible the TP UI is ?
The trading post is a copy of Eve Online’s market that ANET made worse. Some of the changes make sense. For example, item location would be meaningless when we have waypoints. Without location mattering, the minimum transaction size for buy orders is also be pointless.
But removing some parts doesn’t make any sense. For example, the window showing every single buy and sell order in the region. Or the chart showing data on the prices the item sold for (green bars down the bottom are trade volume).
What I think happened is that ANET decided that spreadsheets and charts didn’t fit the ‘painterly’ ascetic they want for GW2. So they tried to remove them from the TP. Problem is that spreadsheets and charts are the best way to display the data.
City of Heroes’ Consignment House style market did show the time and price of the last five transactions. It gave you the information to judge what a fair price was and how frequently sales occurred. It still didn’t tell you the amount sold at each transaction so you don’t quite have a handle on volume but include a 24hr total volume and running average transaction price on our TP would be very informative.
RIP City of Heroes
If the screen only shows a limited number of transactions (n), the same “UI manipulation” as the OP points out could continue by putting in n+1 false transactions….. If you can’t see the full list of buy / sell orders the problem isn’t really corrected.
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
Way to apply bayesian game theory to gw2! I give you props OP.
Taking a break from GW2 to play various
Nintendo games..
The issue being described by the OP isn’t one of manipulation … it’s one of a seller desiring a quick sell and being unaware of the trends/value of the goods they sell. The responsibility is on the seller to be aware. No one needs their hands held here.
Admittedly, I would like the internal market tools of the game to have some historical info but anyone behaving as the OP describes is much more significantly affected by their own ignorance than some real time fishing of low selling goods.
(edited by Obtena.7952)