Guild Wars 2

The listing fee itself is not a problem at all, I agree that there should be a fee for putting items up the trading post etc etc. The problem I have with the listing fee is making items you put up earlier cheaper (or more expensive.)

This requires you to remove the item from the trading post entirely and put it back up paying a second fee, which sounds a bit unfair to me. You’re making the item more accessible after all. What I would like to see is if you already have an item on the trading post and want to change the price to a lower value you should be able to do this for free. Obviously if you want to increase the price it should add the % of fee on top of what you already paid.

Currently people are claiming it is “supply and demand” but only the demand part is actually true as there’s no cost on putting offers people can raise the offers unlimited times, where with the offers people not changing the price because they are only going to lose more profit on doing so. Resulting in them sitting and waiting for random rich guy X to pass a long as they are really not going to change their price downwards 10 times.

I think it would make the market more flexible as the “expensive” items will become more competitive in selling.

I agree completely. Take the really high price items for example, say precursors.

Let’s say the bottom price for X precursor is 350g and the lowest buy order is 200g, so you put yours up for 300g. An extended period of time goes by and nobody is buying. You would like to change the value you’re selling at to 250g, but in doing so your previous 5% listing fee of 15g is wasted, and you have to lose another 12.5g from an additional listing fee. The precursor prices stay high, and those that are selling are stuck.

Or look at a more common example. Let’s say you have a few stacks of X and you put them up for sale for 28c each. Let’s say through some method it took you 22c to get each of X item. In selling you would pay about 4c in tax per item, so buying for 22c and selling for 24c; net profit of 2c per X.

Let’s say the market fluctuates and 28c is simply too high, instead the common is 25-27c and nobody every buys your X for 28c. If you tried to remove all your stacks and sell for 27c, you would end up losing money. You would lose 1.4c per X from your first listing of 28c, plus an additional 4.1c per X from your next listing and selling at 27c. You’re forced to take a loss or leave your item up and wait.

If you were able to shift the price of the item you’re selling down without another listing fee, you would still be able to make a profit, and there would be more supply at a lower cost for buyers; everyone wins. You would take that 1.4c per X from your original 28c listing fee, and a selling fee of 2.7c from your 27c selling, and make 23c per X. A 1c profit is better than losing 1c per X.

TL;DR > Trading post steals your money for lowering items in price, keeping items expensive.

Come on guys, some input here. Can’t be that only me and Alarox have an opinion on this. I was hoping that some economics experts (from Arenanet) would show some magic in here.

listing fee NEEDS to be there… or you’d have constant re-listing of items 1 copper below the other person who just listed there’s one copper below yours. This would cause a cascading effect, and also would add unnecessary stress on the TP servers, and way too many re-lists.

I agree with everyone. The Listing fee discourages rampant price wars, but it also discourages sales. But look at it this way.

For example, you have 100 copper ore. You may think this is alot, and you list it at 22 copper a piece or whatever it goes for right now. Billy bad kitten comes along and undercuts you by 1 copper with a volume of 1000000.

Scenario A: You get buried forever due to endless undercutting, but consider this. If you’re getting buried that long, there’s obviously enough supply at a low price to keep the buyer population happy.

Scenario B: You get undercut by 1 copper, but volume sells out in an hour. Hooray, you’re now the cheapest listing and get sold.

Either way, constant relisting does seem like a bad thing long term. After all, there should be SOME stability in prices.

The whole point in the listing fee is to stop people re-pricing their items every time someone undercuts them.

If people did that all prices would hit rock bottom.

Jestunhi.7429:

The whole point in the listing fee is to stop people re-pricing their items every time someone undercuts them.

If people did that all prices would hit rock bottom.

Not really, if you’re selling an expensive item and you know roughly the amount you need to sell your item at to keep a profit you obviously will not go below that. At least that would be common sense for me. It just makes expensive items somewhat flexible in selling without getting punished for it. It would be the exact same thing as placing offers, people raise the price like crazy in a short period, should there be put a fee on that as well than?

Unknown.2796:

Not really, if you’re selling an expensive item and you know roughly the amount you need to sell your item at to keep a profit you obviously will not go below that. At least that would be common sense for me. It just makes expensive items somewhat flexible in selling without getting punished for it. It would be the exact same thing as placing offers, people raise the price like crazy in a short period, should there be put a fee on that as well than?

Then perhaps you can explain to me why there are already craftable items which sell for less than the sum of the material costs?

I think you give people too much credit. A person can be smart, but people as a whole are a different story.

Listing fee should never be that high. Max 2% of your item price with a minimum of 1C. Sales fee should be higher, but along with listing fee should never be higher than 10% of price. I’ve never seen any game taking more than 10% of price as total fee, usually it’s like 5%, tho the lowest I’ve seen was 2%

Orissa.1872:

Listing fee should never be that high. Max 2% of your item price with a minimum of 1C. Sales fee should be higher, but along with listing fee should never be higher than 10% of price. I’ve never seen any game taking more than 10% of price as total fee, usually it’s like 5%, tho the lowest I’ve seen was 2%

Why?

Justify your proposed values please.

Jestunhi.7429:

Then perhaps you can explain to me why there are already craftable items which sell for less than the sum of the material costs?

I think you give people too much credit. A person can be smart, but people as a whole are a different story.

Well the craftable items you speak off are those made by actual crafting professions, at least I am assuming those are the ones you’re on about? People used these professions just to gain levels for their character and trying to sell it to get some money back they put into the crafting. With a massive player base doing this it just resulted in these “worthless” end products because the supply was higher than needed. The crafting materials obviously became more expensive because the demand is a lot higher.

I bet if crafting didn’t give you experience this wouldn’t happen at all. The motivation for people to take on a crafting profession is “gain 20 levels in 2 hours” rather than “I can make some nice weapons/gear to make some money”. Yes, the bandwagon people screwed everyone over that wanted to get some crafting going to make money but I would blame Arenanet for putting experience in crafting, assuming that’s an educated decision they made themselves.

@Jestunhi

Because trading post is shared among all servers from specific continent. Prices are changing pretty quickly and sometimes it happens that after 2-3 days we need to put whole new listings. For consumables and common materials it’s not a big deal, but when you’re trying to sell some rare/exotic items or rare materials you’re losing pretty much money. Ofc we can sit in LA and spam the chat with WTS offers, but it makes no sense, map chat should remain a party finder tool

As for sales fee it’s not really good when trading post is such money sink. We have enough money sinks in this game, crafters actually got to buy some additional materials from master craftsmen, rare/exotic items are not really common drops, even with magic find set/nourishment

Consider trading half-products for crafting, buying them and reselling ready items is making you lose pretty much money, even if material to product price ratio is balanced. It’s completely discouraging from crafting

During the early stages of game I’ve bought 2 pistols for 5G each, now I can see them for 3-3,5G each. If you’d put listing for 3,5G, you’d have to pay 17,5S for just a try. What if there are some people ready to lower general price to 3G (just for quick money) and you’d never sell this item? You’ve got to pay so much for stupidity of the others? I don’t think so

Prices change often, of course they do.

The people that bothers are the ones overpricing or undercutting someone who is overpricing by a tiny amount.

Then someone comes in, posts a sell order for 50s less, and everyone who is trying to sell it for more comes and complains in this forum.

I make plenty of gold on the TP and I have no interest in any of the commonly proposed changes (remove the ability to undercut by 1c, static prices, no listing fee, etc, etc).

If someone sells for considerably less than you and gets the sale while your item doesn’t sell… you think they are the “stupid” ones? The people who successfully sold the items rather than the people who overpriced their sell orders to the extent that they have to relist them rather than just waiting for the cheaper ones to sell?

:edit:

One more question.

Can anyone link me to an official ANet statement saying that crafting was designed to be profitable?

And FYI, each craft skill does have profitable items, but as prices change it’s not always the same. It’s not a case of crafting 100 of the same item and sticking them on the TP together, nor is it a case of crafting random items without doing any research and expecting them to be profitable.

If everyone will keep puting cheaper offers all the time, sooner or later rare/exotic items will become too cheap for the effort requiered to drop/craft them. For now some exotics with unique appearance have reasonable prices which should be kept fairly stable, it’s almost like with legendaries or cultural/dungeon skins, prices of those are never changing. But we can’t do anything about dynamic prices, as it’s huge free market. So if your listing fails because of inflation/deflation, you should always get a chance to fix your offer for a decent price

As for materials, there should always be a minimum price, but not 1C above vendor, it should be 1C above vendor after counting fees in

About crafting: noone said it has to be profitable, but also noone said it should requiere you to lose so much money on leveling it. Materials should be freely traded, as it’s something really common

Alarox.4590:

I agree completely. Take the really high price items for example, say precursors.

Let’s say the bottom price for X precursor is 350g and the lowest buy order is 200g, so you put yours up for 300g. An extended period of time goes by and nobody is buying. You would like to change the value you’re selling at to 250g, but in doing so your previous 5% listing fee of 15g is wasted, and you have to lose another 12.5g from an additional listing fee. The precursor prices stay high, and those that are selling are stuck.

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Sure, remove the listing fee so that people can list at whatever price they want which surely will not make any panic in the market such as precursors. Because there is no risk at all you know?

Hey fellow monopolizers, come and we shall rise together without losing a dime.

In my real opinion, 5% is perfect amount.

I won’t even say it’s more inclined to the buyer because if you put things up for sale and not be so god kitten greedy about what you get. It’s helps the market to stable and it benefits all. For the general population buying from the trading post and the traders like me playing the trading post.

I agree completely. I think it’s ridiculous that with some of these higher tier items, I have to spend several gold just to list it. Then, if a bunch of people decide to sell 1c below me, I don’t want to have to spend another several gold just to relist it, just because I’m willing to sell it at a lower price. Maybe add in a modify current lists option to lower the amount?

No no no no the listing fee is essential for the very reasons you complain about. With the fee everyone needs to make a decision when making the sell order. If you set your price too high you risk being undercut, too low you risk losing some of your potential profit. The beauty of the system is that no one actually knows the best price all the time, everyone must make more or less informed guesses.

Edit: Just to clarify the fee itself isn’t making the above possible but what it does is forcing the seller to think it through. Too many bad sell orders will cut it into your profits fast.

Without a fee you’ll create a market that will make the wild west look like a tea party. If every seller can readjust their bad calls you will destroy the market.

A listing fee is completely unnecessary, and exists only because Anet have not thought of a better way of controlling the in-game money supply.

The listing does not:

• Prevent server overload.
• Stop prices collapsing. Goods prices are ultimately related to their in-world scarcity (or the scarcity of component inputs).
• Aid potential sellers in thinking about the value of their goods; it only adds an unnecessary element in the calculation.

All a listing fee does (other than confuse price discovery) is remove a quantum of money from the system, which helps keep a lid on inflation (though is a poor means of doing so).

Anet may have some concerns about market prices collapsing but I bet my last bronze piece that they are infinitely more worried about prices going through the roof because the in-game money supply grows much faster than the volume of desirable goods you can spend it on.

All that said, if you want a compromise why not impose a listing fee, paid the first time a good is listed? Seller can adjust the price as many times as desired without incurring any further fee (which I think is what The Eternal Grace says above). However, if s/he removes the item from the market, the fee is forfeit, and if s/he wants to relist, s/he pays again.

Barollo.4192:

All that said, if you want a compromise why not impose a listing fee, paid the first time a good is listed? Seller can adjust the price as many times kitten he wants without incurring any further fee (which I think is what The Eternal Grace says above).

From the point of view of someone who thinks the listing fee should stay, that doesn’t even remotely resemble a compromise. On the contrary, it makes it even easier to do the thing we want to prevent (endless 1c undercutting).

Just because it doesn’t achieve what you want doesn’t mean it is not a compromise.

Stand back for a second: what is the ‘correct’ price for any given product? Take something simple, like chilli peppers, which are reasonably scarce. Do you really think if the listing fee were removed, the price of such an item would settle at 1c?

There’s a few things worth commenting on here.

1. As its been said no relisting fee would lead to less stability on the tp overall. As it stands you see thousands of items listed at 1 price point. Now if you had no relisting fee you would see all those sellers try to undercut each other every few seconds.

2. This brings me to my next point. The listing option is to be seen as a risk vs reward type of thing. If you are looking for a quick guaranteed sale there is the offers option. Then you have the listing option where you can make more money but there is no guarantee anyone will pay your asking price. If there was no risk then there would be very little reason to ever sell for the highest offer.

3. Now with the listing fee the way it is now things are slowed down and a bit more stable. Since prices don’t typically change too fast you are able to add another layer to your selling tactics. Say you watch something you know trades fast and constantly. Right now you see a low price but see that there are only ten or said item listed. At that point you can make a confident decision to list your item higher and still have a high chance of it selling. Now that doesn’t mean much for most people looking to just get rid of their items but it does make the TP much more interesting and lively then just listing at the lowest price.

4. To address the issue with people listing crafted items for less then the sum of its mats. I attribute that mostly to the fact that crafted items have no difference what so ever to make them any more desirable from random drops that are rather common. If i farm events in Orr its not far fetched to get 5-8 rare drops that are identical or at least very similar to crafted gear. Now these items cost me nothing and since im not the only one doing these events then that means Joe, Bobby, Mary, and Frank also just got 5-8 rares at the cost of nothing but time. We have no use for said items and next thing you know the market is flooded with items just like the crafted items. At this point if i can get a random drop to be just as good as a crafted item then there is no point to pay more for the crafted then the random junk that drops. I’m not sure what could be done besides improving the graphics of crafted gear to help give them more value.

Yea the listing fee is a kitten but it’s necessary. Stops inflation. Look at WoW, gold is so inflated in that game that copper and silver have absolutely no purpose.

I am listing all my items every day with a cost of 10g! It hurts if you check 10 min later to see 5 ppl are already selling it 5 coppers cheaper

It’s the TP parasites flipping items that make a fee required. They take the deals and the sales so legitimate buyers and sellers can’t get a deal or sell. Even with the fees it’s a pain to try to trade. If there weren’t any fees, every single item on the TP would have an equal buy and sell price as it gets flipped until they’re equal.

If anything we need more fees or another way to prevent the unfriendly traders from ruining it for the rest of us.