Guild Wars 2

Hey, are mass buy orders against the tos? People are bumping different items to the “Top demanded items” list in order to bring up the price even more.

All that 1c mass orders do is increase awareness that the item exist and deceive foolish people who don’t investigate that an item is suddenly popular. It’s targeted at players who think flipping is just firing up gw2tp.com, filter by spread and sort by demand.

essentially its a dishonest practice used to manipulate peoples behavior, however, as far as i have heard, its not illegal.

phys.7689:

essentially its a dishonest practice used to manipulate peoples behavior, however, as far as i have heard, its not illegal.

So is about anything you see on TV, so I guess it certainly would not be illegal then.

Sylvari.6083:

Hey, are mass buy orders against the tos? People are bumping different items to the “Top demanded items” list in order to bring up the price even more.

How about you read the ToS and state which part of the agreement those buy orders are violating?

Wanze.8410:

Sylvari.6083:

Hey, are mass buy orders against the tos? People are bumping different items to the “Top demanded items” list in order to bring up the price even more.

How about you read the ToS and state which part of the agreement those buy orders are violating?

i think he was just asking a question, if he knew the answer it wouldnt be a question, but a statement about how he feels about it. Also, really the TOS is full of grey areas, and gives anet the right to make judgement calls on many things, so honestly, only an anet staffer can give the real answer. However it is possible that you guys have heard an answer from a staffer outside of the TOS, hence it makes sense for him to post here, and ask the question.

For all you know, he has plans to do it, and wants to make sure its not a bannable offense.

Perhaps the most popular items should use a better algorithm. Something that takes into consideration the ratio of orders that exists at an upper range vs the overall number. I’m not a math-guy, so I don’t know how this sort of magic works, but I’m sure there’s a way to get a better image of real demand vs fake 5,000,000 minimum possible offer orders.

This happens to varying levels every few weeks. As a player, my only concern would be “how” those orders are being placed. If via mass-automation (a bot) AND if it’s lagging the TP, then I’d hope Anet would stomp the user(s) doing it.

Otherwise, it has no real effect on the market and I just don’t use the TP landing page overview screen for a couple weeks (which is fine, because it’s of so little real use, I only use that landing page as a quick link/bookmark to ectos most of the time, anyway).

Yes, it’s called breaking out a calculator and looking at the buy orders yourself. The TP lists up to the top 20 bids based on price.

Kruhljak.2705:

Perhaps the most popular items should use a better algorithm. Something that takes into consideration the ratio of orders that exists at an upper range vs the overall number. I’m not a math-guy, so I don’t know how this sort of magic works, but I’m sure there’s a way to get a better image of real demand vs fake 5,000,000 minimum possible offer orders.

I’m still fuzzy on how order popularity (on either side) is even conveying a real and useful message to a potential trader…

Number of items actually SOLD or BOUGHT would be useful, but that landing page (and most of the hype on the GW2 “M@ke G0ld Nao! with our secret method” web sites that are out there) is not.

There’s nothing wrong with mass buy orders, and I do not see how that would be against the ToS.

If someone wants to put three million orders at 5c a piece for an item, they have a right to.

What is against the ToS is using automated programs to input these buy orders.

The key thing here is the use of automated programs. Whether they are involved in putting buy orders, spamming chat commands, or spamming “click to join” for TTS runs, all that matters is that automation is used and Anet has the authority of punishing those using them, if they choose to.

Vol.7601:

There’s nothing wrong with mass buy orders, and I do not see how that would be against the ToS.

It’s probably not against the ToS, but it is essentially dishonest because it is only there to convey false information about the market.

It’s not against ToS (as far as I know), but it is embarrassing for Anet the info they’re putting up for everyone to see is so easily gamed.

I don’t believe it’s against the ToSm but it should be dealt with. Botting the TP as well, we know it’s possible. (I have written code that can place buy/sells through a session key, and it’s easy to write an hft algorithm to trade on it, but doing so is against my intentions.)

If you are trading on the tp you should know better than to use one indicator for demand/supply.

It would be easy to fix by only considering buy orders within 50% of the highest buy order or the total demand of the top 50 prices. The people placing mass buy orders would need to put up 10000x or more gold to place those orders.

Anet probably likes it though. Advertising for expensive items that people will buy gems to get.

Conceptually I don’t really like it, but I don’t believe it’s illegal or against the ToS. More people need to be educated that just because buy orders have gone WAY up, doesn’t mean it’s an indication of true demand.

Compare/contrast this with 21 karma weapons?

Those were punished using an obscure catch-all “no exploit” clause. Is this immune to that clause, or is it up to ANet to decide to enforce it somehow?

The TOS is written in a way that just about anything can be a bannable offense if A-net wants it to be. If they considered this to be abusing the trading post, then yes. If they used a program to automate the buy orders (which all of these people do, otherwise it would take forever) then yes.

I can’t imagine this practice is against the rules, as long as they are placing the orders by hand.
that said, all 4 of those top-10 lists on the homepage are not useful in any way and should be changed. “most recently sold item” would be a good list, as would “most recently added item”

Mystic.5934:

I can’t imagine this practice is against the rules, as long as they are placing the orders by hand.
that said, all 4 of those top-10 lists on the homepage are not useful in any way and should be changed. “most recently sold item” would be a good list, as would “most recently added item”

Those would change so fast they’d be but a flicker.

Essence Snow.3194:

Mystic.5934:

I can’t imagine this practice is against the rules, as long as they are placing the orders by hand.
that said, all 4 of those top-10 lists on the homepage are not useful in any way and should be changed. “most recently sold item” would be a good list, as would “most recently added item”

Those would change so fast they’d be but a flicker.

ooops. I see the confusion. the first one, yes. however, it should only update when you load the TP (so it’s a snapshot). and it wouldn’t display more than one of the same item (if 4 people buy mithril ore, it only shows it once). yes, what items are shown would always be changing, so it would essentially be a preview of random items that people are buying.
the second one, maybe “most recently released item” would be better? the intention was to get things like Piece of Ambrite, Sheet of Ambrite, Nomad recipes, etc. on that list when that patch went live. sort of a “the latest thing added to the game” list.

As you can tell, I prefer top-10 lists that change instead of always show “mithril ore, ecto, iron ore, platinum ore, black lion chest…” then one day you get a ooooo moment when platinum ore bumps out iron ore for the #3 most supplied.
currently, most supplied only changes with major releases that consume an entire material (silk scrap disappeared from it when ascended armor came out). most demanded is for advertising. highest value never changes except for perma hair contract slowly moving up it. top traded also never changes.
home pages are supposed to be “what should I check on today”. currently, they are bookmarks to someone else’s favorite websites. they are currently fairly worthless, and should be replaced with something at least a little useful, such as announcing new items to the game or advertising a random item.
even better would be to have several options of what to show, and you can change what is shown for you.

I don’t see how see how a ban on manipulative buy orders could be enforced by ANet. For example, I have 1c buy orders for a bunch of dyes. Once in a while, I get a dye for 1c; that’s why I placed those orders. How could ANet reasonably determine that my orders are legit (i.e. I intend to make use of the dyes) and someone else’s orders are misleading?

However, I do support the idea of replacing that section with something more useful. Often, the listings are static, changing only a bit during certain in-game events. Instead, what about:

• Top Value Non-Legendary Items
• Trending Up
• Trending Down

I would rather see a column based on total volume of transactions for items. Bids and Supply on the TP can be informative but seeing how many of one item is sold during a day I think is even more informative.

cool that this advertising is being looked at I imagine a good solution would be that only orders within like 50% of the highest buy order would be counted.

I would like the trending up and trending down columns.
amount of items actually sold rather than just ordered or listed would fix this manipulation and be a better list than the current demanded/supplied, but I have a feeling it would also never change (mithril ore, silk scrap, elder wood, iron ore, ecto, etc.)
how about a least-demanded list?

Rather than top ordered and top supplied, I’d like to see a rolling daily and rolling monthly average sale price for the top items that actually sold.

I’d also like those averages displayed on each individual item.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t see how see how a ban on manipulative buy orders could be enforced by ANet. For example, I have 1c buy orders for a bunch of dyes. Once in a while, I get a dye for 1c; that’s why I placed those orders. How could ANet reasonably determine that my orders are legit (i.e. I intend to make use of the dyes) and someone else’s orders are misleading?

However, I do support the idea of replacing that section with something more useful. Often, the listings are static, changing only a bit during certain in-game events. Instead, what about:

• Top Value Non-Legendary Items
• Trending Up
• Trending Down

Mhhhh … do you have 1 million buy orders for the same dye for 1c?

I thought this was more done for the external websites, I don’t pay too much attention to that list on the TP screen, I never found it useful for anything. The top value non-legendary might be a nice idea, but will probably remain very static. I’d rather have a “new on the market” or something like that.

John Smith.4610:

I’ll re-examine the algorithm for top demanded items and see if it’s a problem. Pushing 1c orders on expensive items to change the front page isn’t the intended design (obviously) so we’ll take a look.

Wait… after all the threads and months of this happening you guys are just looking into it now? I’m grateful that you are, don’t get me wrong… but this has been an issue for quite some time now…

The best and most easiest way to combat this is to institute a fixed vendor price. No more 1c vendor priced items.

Make it a price that is so expensive that it would be difficult to place millions of buy orders.

/proceeds to buy all BL chests for a few copper and thick leather

Just increase the vendor value of skins to 1g.

Problem solved.

excluding the winterday skins, make those 1s.

Aberrant.6749:

Wait… after all the threads and months of this happening you guys are just looking into it now? I’m grateful that you are, don’t get me wrong… but this has been an issue for quite some time now…

I don’t see an “issue.” I see a formerly nearly useless TP statistic turned into an vaguely interesting sociological statistic. I don’t see how the economy is affected in the least by what shows up as “top demanded,” except that the alleged manipulation highlights (a) some items that people didn’t even know about and (b) shows how much tedium people are willing to suffer in order to make a few extra coins.

It’s basically sellers advertising. I don’t see a problem with that, but I feel that if someone is advertising their wares, they also need to pay for that privilege.

Change Top Demanded Items to be by User count instead of individual order volume. If kittens want to manipulate, they will have to buy multiple accounts, a win for Anet.

Select top 10 ItemId, count(UserId)
from Orders
group by ItemId
order by count(UserId) desc

Otherwise algorithm should “normalize” Order quantity (based on total for UserId) based on daily or some other average order size, just adding additional complexity.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aberrant.6749:

Wait… after all the threads and months of this happening you guys are just looking into it now? I’m grateful that you are, don’t get me wrong… but this has been an issue for quite some time now…

I don’t see an “issue.” I see a formerly nearly useless TP statistic turned into an vaguely interesting sociological statistic. I don’t see how the economy is affected in the least by what shows up as “top demanded,” except that the alleged manipulation highlights (a) some items that people didn’t even know about and (b) shows how much tedium people are willing to suffer in order to make a few extra coins.

The same type of person that’s fine with manipulating people to gain a few virtual coins is also probably fine with breaking the rules a bit to get what they want. It’s not tedium… it’s people using a program to put in mass buy orders.

It also covers up what the actual top demanded items are, so now it’s not serving its intended purpose in multiple ways. That’s an issue if you’re trying to give that information to your players.

Aberrant.6749:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aberrant.6749:

Wait… after all the threads and months of this happening you guys are just looking into it now? I’m grateful that you are, don’t get me wrong… but this has been an issue for quite some time now…

I don’t see an “issue.” I see a formerly nearly useless TP statistic turned into an vaguely interesting sociological statistic. I don’t see how the economy is affected in the least by what shows up as “top demanded,” except that the alleged manipulation highlights (a) some items that people didn’t even know about and (b) shows how much tedium people are willing to suffer in order to make a few extra coins.

The same type of person that’s fine with manipulating people to gain a few virtual coins is also probably fine with breaking the rules a bit to get what they want. It’s not tedium… it’s people using a program to put in mass buy orders.

It also covers up what the actual top demanded items are, so now it’s not serving its intended purpose in multiple ways. That’s an issue if you’re trying to give that information to your players.

You’re equating two entirely separate actions. It’s always wrong to use 3rd party software to interact with the game in a way that gives someone an advantage. People who do that should get suspended/banned, regardless of whether there’s a provable impact on the economy.

So if we can agree to talk just about the people who are manually adding millions of orders to items, then again, I don’t see any harm done. In my strong opinion, the “Top 10 Demanded” list doesn’t have any useful data and so it doesn’t matter if the “real” top 10 items are “covered up.” Instead, it reveals information about items that market-savvy individuals think are under-valued. (And although they are doing so to make money, not out of any noble intent, I find that I can make use of that data.)

We probably do agree that it would be better to replace the list with something else, perhaps, “10 thinks that spiked in demand recently and also have a decent supply” or whatever that might be of value to the vast majority of players.

If you think that the vast majority of these people are manually entering that many bids I have a bridge I would like to sell you…

Aberrant.6749:

If you think that the vast majority of these people are manually entering that many bids I have a bridge I would like to sell you…

If you bind left-click to your mouse wheel, it goes quite fast and it still is manually.
I tried it once and i could actually place 75k buy orders per minute at 1 copper.
I also had my 8 year old nephew build me a little construction out of LEGO Technic, with a motor and a counter wheel that i could wedge my mouse under and that would place 300k buy orders per minute. I made a picture of it, if I find the SD card with the picture, I will post it.

So its entirely possible to place 3 million buy orders within 10 minutes without using an auto clicker.

However, cancelling all those buy orders at the same pace is not possible, not even with an auto clicker.

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

Aberrant.6749:

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

The policy is one key = one action. They didn’t say it has to be a person pressing the key lol!

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

I don’t think that logic would hold up if a-net decided to crack down bro…

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

just to be clear, i dont think anet cares if you make a machine that presses the button for you, or a program does it. They can ban you for either case

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

just to be clear, i dont think anet cares if you make a machine that presses the button for you, or a program does it. They can ban you for either case

If you read the ToS, they actually dont need any reason at all to ban my account and there would be nothing i can do.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

just to be clear, i dont think anet cares if you make a machine that presses the button for you, or a program does it. They can ban you for either case

If you read the ToS, they actually dont need any reason at all to ban my account and there would be nothing i can do.

That’s giving them a reason though lol. I’ve enjoyed talking with you in the past, so hopefully they don’t. I just don’t take any risks personally. Put too much into this game and seeing it go poof would suck : /

Aberrant.6749:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

just to be clear, i dont think anet cares if you make a machine that presses the button for you, or a program does it. They can ban you for either case

If you read the ToS, they actually dont need any reason at all to ban my account and there would be nothing i can do.

That’s giving them a reason though lol. I’ve enjoyed talking with you in the past, so hopefully they don’t. I just don’t take any risks personally. Put too much into this game and seeing it go poof would suck : /

I actually had a topic where i did some research on the different salvage kits to find out if the chance to salvage higher tier materials is broken or has a wrong tooltip ( they are broken). In that topic i said that i used an auto clicker for it and reported my own post, asking the mod to tell me, if its against the ToS and if so, remove my post.
Nothing happened.

I think it comes down to advantage or QoL.
if a macro gives you an advantage in the game such as lets you play without you needing to be there, they care about it and will ban you.
if you’re saving yourself from carpal tunnel and a new mouse from opening 100 stacks of bags or placing 100,000 buy orders for copper ore, then they don’t really care and likely won’t ban you.
however, as Wanze pointed out, they can ban you at any time for any reason. Their opinions on the matter may change without notice. But I will say that if I had to click 50,000 times just to open some bags I have, or enter 400 separate buy orders, that’s not a game I want to be playing in the first place.

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Aberrant.6749:

How does binding your mouse wheel stop you from needing to re-enter the bids?

That lego device… doesn’t sound “legal” since it’s not you actually doing it.

I still don’t see the vast majority of people doing this legit. That’s far too trusting of the type of gamer that would go around doing these things.

There actually is a latency between clicking the Button for posting your bid the first time and the amount value of your bid resetting, so you can order multiple stacks, if you click fast enough. Manually, i usually can order between 8-12 stacks with fast leftclicks before amount and value reset and i have to reenter them. With left click bound to mouse wheel, i get up to 40 stacks (10k buy orders) before i have to type in 250 into the amount window again. That only takes a couple of seconds.

About the lego device, its not a program or macro and it performs single key strokes for each action, perfectly legal. If i would want to go crazy in buy orders, i would attach the counter wheel that turns my mouse wheel ton electric drill, which has a way higher rpm than a lego motor.

just to be clear, i dont think anet cares if you make a machine that presses the button for you, or a program does it. They can ban you for either case

If you read the ToS, they actually dont need any reason at all to ban my account and there would be nothing i can do.

That’s giving them a reason though lol. I’ve enjoyed talking with you in the past, so hopefully they don’t. I just don’t take any risks personally. Put too much into this game and seeing it go poof would suck : /

I actually had a topic where i did some research on the different salvage kits to find out if the chance to salvage higher tier materials is broken or has a wrong tooltip ( they are broken). In that topic i said that i used an auto clicker for it and reported my own post, asking the mod to tell me, if its against the ToS and if so, remove my post.
Nothing happened.

Interesting