Guild Wars 2

If you want to put yourself at risk, DarkSpirit, you go right ahead with your “broker system.” It’s obvious you’re devoted to your cause, DarkSpirit, and your opinion isn’t going to change. It’s also apparent that you’re not convincing the rest of us, though you certainly gave it your best effort.

But think about this: when you try to convince others that they should put themselves at risk with such things, then you should feel partially responsible for those transactions that go sour. If someone sees your posts here and considers them more convincing than our replies, they may decide to go with a broker for a big trade. They did so because of your recommendation. If that broker is honest, they dodged a bullet; others may not be so lucky. And if that broker is dishonest (or “short-sighted”), then that seller— and buyer— just lost a lot of money. The blame is shared, of course: the scammer bears most of it, but the scammed will probably blame themselves as well for trying to circumvent the legitimate Trading Post with a broker, all for the sake of their greed. The “victim” may not even remember you, but you planted that seed here.

It’s like a cigarette advertisement. No, that ad didn’t give you cancer, and there was a chance that the cigarettes wouldn’t, either. It was a risk the smoker chose to take. But what do you think about a man who introduces himself as an advertising agent for a major tobacco company?

I’m not trying to vilify you. You’re probably a good, honest person who is so morally upright as to not see the potential for catastrophe here. I just want you to think about what you’re doing by advising people to take their chances. As I see it, you’re trying to get more people to circumvent the Trading Post, taking a big risk in order to appease their greed.

I think Syeria really isolated the core of the problem in the post above. There really are no serious repercussions for scammers in the grey market, aside from a possible account ban if the victims report it to ArenaNet. Your grey market relies on greed to attract clients, “trust” to arrange the transaction, honesty to complete the sale, and the developers’ time and effort to punish those who abuse the system. Make no mistake, there is no other way to enforce it; you’re expecting the people who worked hard in bringing you the Trading Post to care enough to ban scammers in their game.

I am certainly in no position to vouch for any random stranger who volunteers to broker for trades and I have always said that it is a bigger risk. I have also said that, I never expected ArenaNet to help out if you lose your items this way.

On the other hand, I don’t think that every single person cannot be trusted with a legendary either. I have hope for humanity and that some people can prove themselves to be honest and reliable. Besides, there are probably more successes, if you go through a trusted 3rd party, than failures. People don’t announce successful trades on the forums. But people who do it wrongly and got scammed, tend to announce it to the forums. So the perception of the general forum reader tend to be skewed from actual reality.

When I began this thread, I didn’t have large transactions or high priced items in mind. What I had in mind were bulk transactions (250 stacks of ores, leather, cloth, wood), something like a wholesaler selling his goods to a retailer. The price would be set higher than the Buy Offer, but lower than the Sell Offer. The transaction fee charged by the broker would also be lesser than the 15% fee.

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

nastyjman.8207:

If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

You can always fill a buy order if you don’t have the cash up front. You might not make as much as you could, but if you’re strapped for cash and the buy order is reasonable, it’s an option. It also insulates you from the price of the item dropping before someone buys it and being stuck with an overpriced listing that is cost prohibitive to remove and re-list.

Alright this isn’t a solution, I was confusing GW2 with something else. Filling buy orders can be a good strategy, but you’re still going to have to have the listing fee up front.

nastyjman.8207:

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t see how a net saving of 150g, over a 1000g trade is foolish. But like I have said, if you personally can’t tolerate the risk, that doesn’t imply that it would never work for anyone.

I think we are going around in circles at this point. Some say it is not worth the risk, but having successfully broker before, I say it is worth it, provided that it is done right. There is no point going back and forth on this.

DarkSpirit.7046:

nastyjman.8207:

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t see how a net saving of 150g, over a 1000g trade is foolish. But like I have said, if you personally can’t tolerate the risk, that doesn’t imply that it would never work for anyone.

I think we are going around in circles at this point. Some say it is not worth the risk, but having successfully broker before, I say it is. There is no point going back and forth on this.

It was interesting when the issue of a big ticket item was mentioned. Although it was my fault since I did not explicitly say that bulk transactions is the viable trade for the broker system. Having big ticket items added in the broker system comes with a higher risk. The foolishness comes in part of the buyer and the seller.

But if there’s already a network that you have and maintain, then I applaud you. This was a concept that I bought up, but I didn’t know that a broker system is already in use. Not sure how many active brokers there are since I don’t see any brokers advertising their service in map chat.

nastyjman.8207:

DarkSpirit.7046:

nastyjman.8207:

High priced items never crossed my mind because it would be really foolish to circumvent the TP. If you can’t afford the initial 5% seller’s fee, it would be best to save up the money for it or borrow money from a close friend that you see face-to-face on a daily or weekly basis.

I don’t see how a net saving of 150g, over a 1000g trade is foolish. But like I have said, if you personally can’t tolerate the risk, that doesn’t imply that it would never work for anyone.

I think we are going around in circles at this point. Some say it is not worth the risk, but having successfully broker before, I say it is. There is no point going back and forth on this.

It was interesting when the issue of a big ticket item was mentioned. Although it was my fault since I did not explicitly say that bulk transactions is the viable trade for the broker system. Having big ticket items added in the broker system comes with a higher risk. The foolishness comes in part of the buyer and the seller.

But if there’s already a network that you have and maintain, then I applaud you. This was a concept that I bought up, but I didn’t know that a broker system is already in use. Not sure how many active brokers there are since I don’t see any brokers advertising their service in map chat.

Yes others have already thought about bypassing the TP fees using the in-game mail. But if your trade is low value, then you should either consult your trusted broker if he/she is willing to spend time and effort on it, or just use the TP. The TP is probably the best option for most trades.

It is certainly not impossible to bypass the TP fees, if it is done right. If it is impossible for this to work, then how did I manage to broker in the past? That is all I am saying.

@nastyjman.8207
While limiting the system to relatively small value, bulk transactions could mitigate the risk (no one’s likely to get too worried about losing a few gold in a scam) it also mitigates the benefits. In order for a broker system to be worthwhile, there has to be a fairly large currency value in goods being traded. If the value is low, the profits aren’t worth the investment, and the very real costs of doing business (see later in this post) outweigh the benefits. Assume for the moment that the broker prices and fees end up with an effective 5% tax rate instead of the 15% on the TP. So essentially players using the broker save 10% of the total value (it’s 11.8% of the net TP sale or 10.5% of the net Broker sale, so let’s just use gross values) on every transaction. So what currency value do players consider it worth their while to use this system? Is it 1g? 5g? 50s? If it’s 1g, they have to pass 10g worth of goods through to essentially break even. Even at only 50s, they still have to pass 5g worth of goods to make it worth their while. If we’re talking about Mithril, that’s 4.5 stacks that have to be sold for a 50s savings. A 5g savings would require 45 stacks of mithril. (Note, these are the combined preferences of both buyer and seller, separating the two makes for more formal analysis, but adds nothing to the discussion while making it a lot harder to follow.)

So what are the costs of using this system? Well, the obvious one is the risk of being scammed. If we’re keeping things to love value items, we’re mitigating that risk, however, we’re also severely limiting the value as well. In order to keep that risk mitigated, large transactions (like 45 stacks of mithril) need to be broken up into smaller transactions or else that protection disappears. That brings us to the next cost of business, trade velocity. In order for a broker working with small value items and therefore a very small cut for themselves to make a profit, they need to process a lot of trades. But trades are slow. There’s a physical cap to the trade speed if using the mail system as it suppresses transactions once a certain number of mails are sent over a period of time. If using a guild bank to move the items, players have to be added to the guild, given permissions, place/remove the items from the bank, and have permissions revoked. That’s a very intensive process that requires both the broker and at least one of the trading partners to be online and available at the same time. All of these things taken together lead to one conclusion, these transactions will be very slow. The TP is instantaneous for market value trades. The only transactions for bulk items that take any sort of time are the buy/sell orders significantly above or below market price, which wouldn’t be the target for these transactions.

One last point on the markets though. You mention that this would save the TP tax (partially) and set prices between the bid and ask, but for the types of items you’re discussing, there’s not often meaningful separation between the two, and prices can fluctuate through the day. At this moment, spidy tells me that the spread between bid and ask for mithril ore is 3 copper. Oftentimes it’s only 1 copper different. But 7 hours ago, the lowest asking price was 2c below the current highest bid. Within the past 48 hours there was a point where the price moved more than 10% over a period of 2 hours. How do you beneficially set prices in this market? Considering how slow moving the trades will be, there will be occasions where the price when they buyer actually receives the item will be lower than what he paid for it.

Essentially, in conclusion, I have to wonder who the target market would be for these bulk transactions. Anyone looking for a quick transaction to fill a market need (like those people crafting items who suddenly developed a profit margin) won’t use this because it’s slow. People needing a one time transaction to fill an immediate need (like people working for a legendary) won’t see enough of a cost benefit to make the risk worthwhile. The so called “Power Traders” don’t make transactions at market price, so the tax savings would have to be significant enough for it to outweigh their normal profit margins. This group would also likely suffer from a lot of no-shows on slow transactions as they’re likely to watch the market very closely, and might abandon trades if prices fluctuate. The pure gatherer farmers would like this as a solid market for them to sell their goods, but who is going to buy them? The only potential buyers I can really see coming from this are the “manufacturers,” people who consistently craft items in bulk. Frankly, I’m not certain those people exist in this game, at least not in large numbers. Even if they do, wouldn’t they be better off establishing their own relationships directly with the gatherers, and saving the full 15% instead of paying a broker fee?

I think this horse is dead. I think both sides understand the points made by the other. A broker network is certainly possible, although many of us question whether it would be worth the time and effort to set up. If someone wants to move forward with it after weighing the pros and cons we’ve discussed, I’m not going to keep trying to discourage them.

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Pandemoniac.4739:

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Plus the important fact that since I have successfully brokered before, it reinforced this notion in my mind that it can work. I am not being stubborn for no reason. People who have done it successfully before, would naturally be more optimistic that it can work than the people who have not done it before.

If you can find a trustworthy broker who is trusted by both the seller and buyer, most of that work is already done.

John Smith.4610:

We know that goldsellers will lie, cheat and steal

So you are saying that Eddie Guerrero (RIP) was a gold seller.

John Smith.4610:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Plus the important fact that since I have successfully brokered before, it reinforced this notion in my mind that it can work. I am not being stubborn for no reason. People who have done it successfully before, would naturally be more optimistic that it can work than the people who have not done it before.

If you can find a trustworthy broker who is trusted by both the seller and buyer, most of that work is already done.

Grey markets are not created in vacuum. Even if you, yourself become a trusted broker, creating that market creates opportunities for players to take advantage of each other. We know that goldsellers will lie, cheat and steal to get money, this market will be no different.

All I can say is, I am certainly not a gold seller.

I have never ever cheated anyone in an online game and I am not saying this because I am soliciting for business to broker trades. I would continue to caution everyone to not trust any random stranger. Using the TP is the still the safest route.

Having said this, if you have a real trusted friend and he is willing to broker for you, and the other party agrees, it can work but do that at your own risk.

John Smith.4610:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Plenty of folks have been wildly successful with ideas many told them wouldn’t work. Plenty have gotten a big bite of “I told you so” too. It’s hard to predict with certainty how things will turn out when you’ve got a strong opinion about it. What’s the harm in trying?

Plus the important fact that since I have successfully brokered before, it reinforced this notion in my mind that it can work. I am not being stubborn for no reason. People who have done it successfully before, would naturally be more optimistic that it can work than the people who have not done it before.

If you can find a trustworthy broker who is trusted by both the seller and buyer, most of that work is already done.

Grey markets are not created in vacuum. Even if you, yourself become a trusted broker, creating that market creates opportunities for players to take advantage of each other. We know that goldsellers will lie, cheat and steal to get money, this market will be no different.

Exactly what I was just thinking. Even if you’re honest, that will make players more trusting of other brokers, even the dishonest ones. The harder you work to show people that there are honest brokers, and the more they come to believe that, the more vulnerable they’ll be to scamming.

It’s almost like security on Windows and Macintosh computers. Windows had been the most popular operating system, so for years, almost all viruses were written for Windows. Folks started thinking (for some reason) that Macs didn’t get viruses, and when they became more popular, they became more attractive to malware authors. Now there are over 150 exploits for OSX.

Once brokers become accepted by a significant portion of the player base, they’ll be targeted by increasing numbers of scammers (including gold sellers). Do you really want to contribute to that?

John Smith.4610:

Pandemoniac.4739:

What’s the harm in trying?

Grey markets are not created in vacuum. Even if you, yourself become a trusted broker, creating that market creates opportunities for players to take advantage of each other. We know that goldsellers will lie, cheat and steal to get money, this market will be no different.

Well, I guess there is some harm in trying. I suppose there’s not a lot of harm done with a few folks doing an occasional brokered trade, but organizing some sort of network to help folks trade off market would be like staking out the sheep for the wolves.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Well, I guess there is some harm in trying. I suppose there’s not a lot of harm done with a few folks doing an occasional brokered trade, but organizing some sort of network to help folks trade off market would be like staking out the sheep for the wolves.

I would have to disagree with you on this. Like I have said, if you do it right, then I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. If you do it wrong, then you have only yourself to blame if it fails.

I believe that matured people should know what are the available options and be able to make informed decisions on their own. Of course there would be some players who don’t know any better, but I don’t believe in limiting everyone just for these minority.

Now for my opinion on how to deal with gold sellers: the best way to deal with them is to make it hard for them to be profitable. If the economy is in a state such that it is highly profitable to sell gold, then guess what? Gold sellers would swarm as expected.

Similarly, the TP fees are currently designed without a upper limit. This makes it desirable for people to think about skipping the TP fees when trading high value items. If the TP fees are capped, then the motivation for skipping them when trading high value items, would be gone or greatly reduced.

DarkSpirit.7046:

I believe that matured people should know what are the available options and be able to make informed decisions on their own. Of course there would be some players who don’t know any better, but I don’t believe in limiting everyone just for these minority.

Ah, I finally see the flaw in your thinking. You believe the ignorant are in the minority. Based on experience in this game, WoW, DCUO, PoE and many others that I haven’t played as much, ignorance is the majority of players. Most people don’t come to play a game with the thought of having to do a bunch of research just to play it. They are here for fun, not work. While you may get great joy in hoarding money, real or virtual, most people in the real world would love to never have to ever think about money. I feel it’s one of the last things on people’s minds when they come to a game unless they just can’t acquire enough of it to play the game.

Ian Smith.8690:

Ah, I finally see the flaw in your thinking. You believe the ignorant are in the minority. Based on experience in this game, WoW, DCUO, PoE and many others that I haven’t played as much, ignorance is the majority of players. Most people don’t come to play a game with the thought of having to do a bunch of research just to play it. They are here for fun, not work. While you may get great joy in hoarding money, real or virtual, most people in the real world would love to never have to ever think about money. I feel it’s one of the last things on people’s minds when they come to a game unless they just can’t acquire enough of it to play the game.

Ok, granted that no one has actually done a scientific survey on the maturity of the player population, we can’t say that it is a minority or a majority. But still I prefer the game to provide options for players to make informed decisions than the game to have limited options just to protect the stupid.

Playing a game for fun doesn’t mean you lose your brains. I enjoy puzzle games myself. Besides this game is already designed in a way that you would have to do calculations, otherwise you can stand to lose money (e.g. mystic forge formulae, vendor prices vs tp prices with tp taxes, calculate break even prices before overbidding/undercutting, etc.) Yes you can still choose to play the game stupidly and promote all your T5 mithril ore to T6 through the mystic forge for example, just don’t cry to the forums if you lose your gold.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Ok, granted that no one has actually done a scientific survey on the maturity of the player population, we can’t say that it is a minority or a majority. But still I prefer the game to provide options for players to make informed decisions than a game to have limited options just to protect the stupid.

I know you don’t see this, but what you’re talking about doing is setting up a way for scammers to easily identify folks that have very valuable items they want to sell and who are willing to forgo the protections of the TP. While you may be honest and acting in good faith, you’re setting up a situation that the people who aren’t acting in good faith will have a much easier time duping folks. And those folks aren’t stupid, you’ve just misled them (unintentionally) into thinking they’re safer than they actually are because they’re participating in an organized broker network.

If you, as an individual, want to broker deals for folks using word of mouth, you’re absolutely able to do that without help or hindrance from ANet. In my opinion, you need to consider the ramifications before you start making it something bigger than that. You might be doing more harm than good to the folks you’re trying to help.

Whether someone wants to use a third party or not is still voluntary. If he doesn’t want to take the risk, who can force him otherwise?

Furthermore, if an organization is setup for broker trading, if it is not run well, then bad reputation would hurt its business and people would avoid dealing with them. This is the internet age afterall where information spreads quickly. If the organization is run well, then the leader should be able to sieve out scammers like that to an extent.

Lastly, even if I totally agree with you, there is nothing we can do if someone else decides to setup such an organization, unless ArenaNet steps in to prevent that. It is not our call as we don’t have the powers to stop them. So there is really nothing to gain convincing me one way or another. If you feel strongly about this, you should talk to someone in ArenaNet. The OP is not the first guy who thought of bypassing the TP fees and he certainly wont be the last.

Isn’t there a case in Eve Online whereby a player established a well trusted bank over the years and grew into quite big but then suddenly absconded with all the assets? Eve online being eve online he managed to get away without repercussions. It will be probably be different in GW2 but who knows what may happen.

Yep, the whole story is worth a read, what happened there was insane and somehow reflects what happens in real life sadly. And it actually didn’t happen only once, the first scandal at Dynasty was followed by a second, even larger one at EBank which was supposed to be its trustworthy successor:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/01/21/eve-online-player-embezzles-over-80-billion-isk-from-dynasty-ban/
http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/07/09/eve-online-bank-scandal

DarkSpirit.7046:

All I can say is, I am certainly not a gold seller.

I have never ever cheated anyone in an online game and I am not saying this because I am soliciting for business to broker trades. I would continue to caution everyone to not trust any random stranger. Using the TP is the still the safest route.

I’d say that too. And then I’m gonna rip you off so hard, you’re gonna quit playing and never want to start playing anything again.

Iruwen.3164:

I’d say that too. And then I’m gonna rip you off so hard, you’re gonna quit playing and never want to start playing anything again.

You can’t rip me off if you have not earned my trust and my trust is not easy to earn.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Whether someone wants to use a third party or not is still voluntary. If he doesn’t want to take the risk, who can force him otherwise?

This reminds me so much of Matchstick Men.

Roy: I’m not a criminal. I’m a con man.
Dr. Klein: The difference being?
Roy: They give me their money.

When you go into a gray market like this, you have to go in assuming you’re going to get ripped off some percentage of the time.

That won’t stop the market from functioning, as long as the losses due to fraud are smaller than the fees you’d pay to make a secure transaction on the trading post.

Seems like an awful lot of work and risk to take just to avoid a TP fee, however.

I like this idea but there’s always a trust issue no matter what. I’ve played games where people have scammed their “friends” after knowing each other for several years. Then there are people who lie for no reason telling that one person is a scammer because they just have something against that person or they’re jealous of their success.

It just will not work because people value their game items and money they have as if it was real money, they just don’t hand it over to strangers.

Just as a suggestion, there was this mailing system in another game I played that allowed tax-free sales, without much risk. Basically, item/s could be sent attached to mail. At the bottom, there is an option to indicate the money charge required for the player to obtain the attached item/s in the mail. The buyer has to agree to pay the money charge before he can get the item. There is also a default 24-hour return time, wherein the mail is sent back to the seller, with the item still attached. If the buyer decides he doesn’t want to buy the item, he can also send the mail back in the same manner.

Only issue I can see with this is while the trade is secure, people will be more likely to conduct trades in this manner, and not use the Black Lion Trading Company. There’s also the possibility of inflation, as people have more gold now that BLTC fees are bypassed.

Regardless of the trust issue, some people would still try this. Why? Because the current game design encourages this. As the prices of legendaries and precursors shoot up towards infinity, by passing the TP fees becomes more and more lucrative.

I have a small guild based on this concept, specifically to function as an escrow and tp market investment management guild. We charge 5% for escrow exchanges instead of the TP 15%, and a percentage of earnings for managing market portfolios, depending on certain factors (how much invested, trade frequency, etc.).