Guild Wars 2

Your random blues and greens aren’t worth anything. They will likely never be worth anything. 1 cp undercutting doesn’t kill the market for items with a healthy demand and supply. It kills the market for things with a huge supply and little demand.

It has no direct effect on market at all. Just puts crafters in disadvantage(in comparison to speculants), which will have some indirect effect in the future.

Dishconnected.8360:

Cub Discus Gig.2176:

The problem isnt the undercutting it’s the fact you cannot compete with it without relisting your items and incurring a large penalty.

Just give people thekittenoption to change the price of listed items DOWN only so they can compete, which will nullify undercutting. Currently the Trading Post works on a last in first out system, even if they keep saying it doesnt. Who ever posts their item last gets first sale for no real price difference.

Simple fix tbh.

Wrong. It’s FIFO and unless you have data to back up your claim there is no reason to accept your conclusion as valid. Recant your statement or admit you don’t know how it truly works.

Before you come back stating that you can undercut by 1c and therefore be “first” in line… when you undercut by 1c and 5 people come in behind you at the same price, yours will get sold first at that price assuming you are not undercut by another 1c. It’s still FIFO.

Also, your solution will not nullify undercutting. It will make it easier for you to make profit because then you only have to take the 5% listing fee into account once.

If you undercut by 1c your item will get sold first, you were the last one to list an item. I really hope that isnt too difficult to follow. Yes on SINGLE items if everyone sold at the same level then you would be first in first out, but what happens is the next person undercuts by 1c again so jumps to the head of the queue..

The intention of the TP is First in First Out but the reality of it in practice is Last in First out.

It’s even worse for Mass resale items like crafting materials, as FIFO is completely broken if you sell in the smallest denomination of those listing at that price your order gets filled first even if someone has had the same price listed, this is how you can make margin money flipping ore even if the highest buyer and lowest seller coefficient is close to break even because your items get sold first for rapid turn around. Yes this is thoroughly tested, dont believe me – try selling 1 copper ore at the lowest current value it will get sold before the other 200k.

My solution is simple and will improve the situation, because you dont seem to understand or have misread the concept. The option of allowing price changing down of LISTED items, that means they stay listed but you can switch the price to those of the current lowest, WITHOUT taking them off the TP.

No where do I say remove the 5% listing fee – something which is essential to the TP in my opinion. All im suggesting is allowing people to only lower the price of listed items – never increase btw because you can abuse the charge of listing low then resetting price to higher.

IF a person takes the item off the TP then they would still loose the listing fee, but it reduces the effect of queue jumping which is what is happening at the moment, because people can simply change their listing price without being penalised for being the first person to sell the item. Hope that is a bit more clear for you.

Essentially you will just have everybody sitting on one price. It won’t work.

No where do I say remove the 5% listing fee – something which is essential to the TP in my opinion. All im suggesting is allowing people to only lower the price of listed items – never increase btw because you can abuse the charge of listing low then resetting price to higher.

I would like to add, timer to change(lower) price, like 10 minutes(or more) on order is also needed.

The same issue happens in EVE Online too. It’s called .01 ISK wars. It’s been happening constantly for years and years, and the solution comes up on its own. Eventually the price will dip low enough, one person will buy a majority of stock and relist it at a significant profit – starting the cycle anew while making a handsome wad of cash.

The key to that trick is buying up almost all of it listed for that price, so others have no choice but to buy from you at the new high price.

That probably won’t work in GW2 as the markets are global to not just one server everywhere, but the entire game across all servers. Buying up entire stock of something like a crafting material would take orders of magnitude more gold than is even in the game right now.

Undercutting of any amount isn’t a problem if demand is equal to or greater than the supply. The problem with so many items other than most crafting materials is that the supply exceeds the demand and so the price falls as the supply increases because most people want they money sooner than later. But some items that aren’t crafting materials the supply doesn’t exceed the demand and even if you are undercut yours eventually sells. I’ve listed over 100 different items on the TP and almost all of them I was undercut and they all sold eventually (in a day or two) leaving them at the price I picked when listing the item. In fact recently I’ve listed over 40 crafted items that I felt the lowest sellers prices were too low. I listed mine from 50% more to as much as twice the lowest price. 5 of them sold within hours even though there were some 50-100 listings cheaper than me. These were green crafted items for reference purposes. The others will eventually sell as long as supply doesn’t shift to exceed demand.

But some items that aren’t crafting materials the supply doesn’t exceed the demand and even if you are undercut yours eventually sells.

Don’t forget, demand for items like weapons and armor is diminishing, unless there is a constant increase in player base.

Let people list items with a range, that automatically adjusts when someone undercuts them. Problem solved.

CdrRogdan.8907:

Let people list items with a range, that automatically adjusts when someone undercuts them. Problem solved.

Really?

As much as I enjoyed the EVE trade wars, which is what my significant playtime ultimately devolved into with that game, the ability to reprice an item for a nominal fee essentially relegated the market “0.01 isk’ing” (similar to the “1c’ing”) to the dreaded bots. Yes EVE is notorious for script controlled characters continuing to update their orders in a humanly impossible manner, and CCP (the developer of said game) was unfortunately motivated in the opposite direction, since even a script controlled character pays a monthly subscription (or more likely bought PLEX, but that still lines CCP’s pockets just the same). To be fair, even if they got motivated to go after market bots, it would devolve into a cat and mouse game, with the botters likely staying one step ahead since the script to operate the market bots can be run over the top of the client in a nearly invisible manner. I know I tracked several bots myself, and often profited just fine from their predicted foolishness, but even as I made isk at their expense, I’m sure they raked in an order of magnitude more, and without killing themselves actually watching the market.

TL:DR, repricing items for free (or a nominal fee) sounds nice, but unless bots could be reliably eliminated from the game forever (not likely, unfortunately), I think the move to penalize relisting with a relatively high non-refundable listing fee is the right one.

CdrRogdan.8907:

Let people list items with a range, that automatically adjusts when someone undercuts them. Problem solved.

I kinda like this idea, basically setting your low price (and starting price, which is needed to allow people to price lower than 1c less if they so choose), with automatic 1c’ing of others until you either reach your low price, or are sitting next in line. The problem here is that the barriers to enter the market as a seller are basically non-existent, and a lot of novice sellers might price their items so low that a huge cascade would happen so rapidly that radical price swings for large volumes of items would happen very quickly. Also, it would be tricky to prioritize more than 2 competing sellers at a given time, and allow for the prospective buyer to potentially depress the market to optimize their buys.

So, while interesting, might not be feasible.

TL:DR, repricing items for free (or a nominal fee) sounds nice, but unless bots could be reliably eliminated from the game forever (not likely, unfortunately), I think the move to penalize relisting with a relatively high non-refundable listing fee is the right one.

Maybe you’re right, seeing how arenanet incapable handling bots in game. Without including bots, possibility to lower price on sell orders would be good, but if include bots in equation – it could(and with high probability) became worse.
Crafting is screwed anyway, and for traders, listing fee is just an annoyance.

Prioritizing could either be done randomly (not recommended) or the order of sale would go to the first person that posted it within that range.

I also don’t understand how botting would affect anything, since the 5% listing fee would still apply and the range would be unchangable after posting. That is to say you tell it to sell between 2.4 gold and 2.6 gold and if you want to later change that range, you must remove the sale and pay the listing fee again.

As far as a massive drop is concerned.. I suppose this could be exclusive to equipment and other post-craft goods or you could add a button that you have to click first to post the item with a range.

how about people just man up and either let their items sit at 1 copper above the lowest price or cancel their listing and relist at 1 copper below the lowest sale order.

Really, unless someone just posted 100+ of that item at one copper below theirs, their item will sell quickly if it is only 1 copper above lowest pricing.

What people are really complaining about is being undercut by multiple people and for that, relist your item and take the hit in the listing price if it worries you about not selling quickly.

Most of my items get sold overnight even when being undercut…unless I’ve severely overpriced my item.

WatchTheShow.7203:

“Colorofviolence.7964:
“how do we kill free market competition? I don’t like it.”
Yes, because selling something for 0.1% less because it forces yours to be bought before the other guy is “competition”.
Hey that gives me a great idea! I’m gonna go open a car dealership and sell cars identical in every way, shape, and form to my nearby competition, but for 1 penny less!
I’ll turn over my inventory WAY faster than that other guy!”

Hah that’s funny because when I see gas for $3.64 at one station, and there’s another gas station not more than 1 mile away selling gas for $3.63, I buy the gas that’s $3.63.

duh! It IS competitive. If you want to get rich, find/make something rare that is not on the BLTC yet, and set your own price. Stop trying to sell junk items that everyone has and lists for 1c less than yours. I have a better idea, there’s this button called “sell to highest buyer”. It works GREAT! You should try it sometime.

Even if the listing fee was insignificant or non-existant it would still encourage people to camp the auction house to constantly repost their wares, and the majority of people have lives that would not allow this behaviour.

Reducing the value of an item by .01% to jump the queue is not market competition, it is gaming the system. Also your gas example serves to indicate that there are other factors involved besides price, because it costs gas to travel, and you may have actually lost money traveling to the further station.

The highest buyer for most equipment is typically not set to cover costs after the 15% fee, and you would only serve to lose money attempting to trade that way.

In all seriousness, what would be the disadvantage to allowing people to post a range of sale for their items?

Everything we do in game or RL depends on how much time we spend on it. Being able and willing to spend more time often result in an advantage. What’s wrong with that?

How is price reduction not competition? Isn’t that happening everyday? Since there is a finite amount of customer wanting an item, I am willing to lose out a little profit to sell mine first, or to deny the sales to you. The reason that I am able to do that can be that I have a more efficient means of production (farming item) than you…or that I don’t care if I earn a little less. You do not have to sell to a buy order…but if you want the cash fast, and I’m willing to buy it, then there’s nothing to argue about that. What I do with the item later (destroy, resell, consume) is up to me. I take on a risk that I might not be able to sell the item later.

I won’t deny that there are people making a profit from buy orders. There are also people that put up buy orders to buy the stuffs that they need. I’ve been on both roles before. People don’t lose money selling to buyer…they just earn less. They have their reasons…or they are just ignorant.

Since you are the one challenging the system, what advantage would it bring by allowing people to post a range of price to sell their item? and how?

Claiming that you cannot lose money selling to a buyer assumes that the buyer knows how much that item costs to craft and has appropriately marked up his asking price by the listing fee as well as a surcharge so that the crafter makes a profit, which is much less likely than that buyer inputing a price based a random value placed by the most recent custom bid.

But whatever… that was really just addressing that the custom bids as a means of sale are a poor solution.

THE BENEFIT

First of all, it is important to note that in order to make a financial transaction appealing it must exceed the gains from efforts in other known activites. A 1 copper difference is highly unlikely to change the appeal of said transaction when it is less than 2 decimal places of a percent of that value.

However, by allowing such adjustments it drastically improves the risk of posting high value items on the trading post, that sit in queue constantly underbid by an ammount that had nothing to do with how fair, or unfair your price was.

Due to the nature if this increased risk, fewer people are willing to provide these items, and as a result the price of these goods is higher. Allowing a range illiminates the risk of being undercut by a value that does not adjust the price of goods by any significant ammount. Overall the price of goods decreases, and they become more available.

THE IMPLIMENTATION

There are two ways you could do this. The first is to make the range of the posters value visible, and the second is only to make their current price visible.

If the range is made visible, undercutting will still be possible, but the ammount that would need to be undercut would be at the bottom of the range and would be a -significant- difference to the offered price. Custom bids would often be provided at the lowest value in this range (heck you could even add an option to auto-sell if someone bids at this price). The risk of posting would then be placing the upper range so high that players would rather custom bid and wait for someone to craft. The downside is that posting the range might be misleading to buyers and an option to show or hide the range should be available.

There are a number of issues with only the current price being visible, but it allows for more free market behaviour, similar to how it works now. That is to say, everyone just keeps guessing until an equilibrium of sorts is reached.

Sales would be in order of the first person that placed that item within the given range. When you want to set a range for an item, you click a toggle (to prevent new players from accidently selling everything at 1 to x) and input a lower and upper range. The 5% fee is based on the upper range. If someone posts lower than you, but within your range, your price automatically lowers to that ammount and the sales fee is 10% of that new value. If someone posts underneath your lowest range, that price takes priority of sale, and your price is unaffected.

Well…if you can lose money due to cost of production…don’t sell to buy orders…no one forces you to.

THE BENEFIT
I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what adjustment you’re talking about, and how it associates with risk. I think you need to be more clear on this before we can proceed to discuss further.

THE IMPLEMENTATION
no point to talk about when the above aren’t clear…don’t want make any wrong judgement.

If anyone else knows what’s this about, please let me know…and please forgive my inability to interpret what you’re trying to say.

I agree with OP, make undercutting possible only if the undercut is equal to aproximately 20% of the item’s current sale price. This can be tweaked but that sounds more or less like a good margin to my ears.
This allows for 20% profits on sales which is really good in my opinion. Not only will this allow 20% profit margins but it will punish under cutters by making them earn 0 profit.

The adjustment of the sale price.. the 1 copper undercutting.

The reason people put a sale order rather than selling it directly to a buy order is that they think they can make a sale at a higher profit. Compare with the following 2 scenario, a bid/ask, and a price range.

Bid/ask:
My reservation price (lowest I’m willing to sell) is 100c, current price is 140c I think I can sell it at 150c. So I can put up to sell at 150c, at a higher risk that I’ll be undercut…or at 100c, lower risk of being undercut…or anywhere in between. If someone undercuts me when I put it up at 150c, i run the risk of not selling if there isn’t sufficient demand and too much supply.

price range:
Same as above, but I can put in at 100-150c.

I can see players reacting in 2 ways. Putting a range of 100-150c, or putting a range of 140-150c (lets call them type A) to maximize profit. Those who wants to maximize profit would had put up the sale at 150c under bid/ask system. For those that puts 100-150c (lets call them type, they would had probably just put in the reserve price under bid/ask. If the majority players are type A, I don’t think it will create much difference than the current system. If majority are type B, then the price will be push down to the player’s reservation price pretty quickly.

I would say the impact depends on how much of the player belongs to type B. In this system, I think it favors under-cutter, and punishes profit maximizer, and would also hinder speculation. It is a more complex than the simple bid/ask. Also, that might take away the incentive to participate (to sell) in the market if prices are always at the lowest/cost price (equilibrium). This would make crafting even more uninteresting as it stands now.

I do think both system allows for free market behavior as long as there aren’t any artificial restrictions like price ceiling and floor. Just that what you propose could bring the price to equilibrium faster. If this could really make the market more efficient, that means speculation will be very hard…taking away a sub-game that I enjoy. I would certainly like to hear what John has to say about this.