Guild Wars 2

Afya.5842:

juno.1840:

With regards to sell orders, I recommended a LONG time ago to make sell orders expire after a certain amount of time. This encourages sell orders to be meaningful and also penalizes some obnoxious behaviors (although still allows them so the market is still free and open).

And discourage long term investment.

J.Smith tossed out a similar argument (with the same level of explanation as yourself — i.e. none). Long term investments can still be made: (1) put the item in your vault, (2) sell when you are ready to liquidate. There’s no need to use the TP as your investment vault.

Wanze.8410:

Isengard bids 5.

I must be the only one who enjoyed this — nice Wanze!

I’d still be in that MMO if it has the coop friendly mechanics of GW2. It has GW2 beat in every other category.

juno.1840:

Afya.5842:

juno.1840:

With regards to sell orders, I recommended a LONG time ago to make sell orders expire after a certain amount of time. This encourages sell orders to be meaningful and also penalizes some obnoxious behaviors (although still allows them so the market is still free and open).

And discourage long term investment.

J.Smith tossed out a similar argument (with the same level of explanation as yourself — i.e. none). Long term investments can still be made: (1) put the item in your vault, (2) sell when you are ready to liquidate. There’s no need to use the TP as your investment vault.

I thought it’s self explained.

Not all market move so fast that as soon as you put it up, it sells. It’s not uncommon for something to sit on the TP for quite a bit of time to sell. Something not selling this week doesn’t necessarily mean you overprised, it could be just no one buy it. Wait another week then it might sell. What you suggest only make it more ridiculous having to relist things everyweek.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kaon.7192:

I was wondering why all these people are defending the clearly broken and unfair status quo that allows people to cut in front of queues with negligible costs…

Define “negligible costs”. What is “negligible”? What is “negligible” for me may not be “negligible” for you and different for someone else. How much should “negligible cost” be, exactly?

Again having a fixed percentage of 5% does not work in all situations as I have pointed out. If you want to propose a blanket-wide TP modification then you have to ensure that your proposal works on ALL items, not just some items.

Listings on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s
…

What you and I believe to be negligible doesn’t matter. What matters is the overall agility of the market.

The market mechanism of competitive bidding is intended to drive prices as quickly as possible toward equilibrium through competition. With a 1c minimum order on a 1000g item in the status quo, it is possible for 1000 “competitive” bids to move the price of the item by only 0.01%. This is not an efficient market by any definition.

Before you start saying you can choose to bid in more than 1c increments, it is completely irrational to do so in the current market climate on higher priced items because the abundance of trading post bots and notifiers means that your order will be beaten by 1c soon after you place it regardless how large your increment is, as long as there is still a spread larger than the profit margin.

This new system will ensure that every 100 competitive bids will move the price by at least an order of magnitude, and that non-competitive bids will be filled on a FIFO basis as it should be.

The option of buying from sell orders or selling from buy orders on highly priced, low volume items will become more feasible once market prices can move at a faster pace and spread becomes more reasonable as a result.

Afya.5842:

If someone has that patience and time to always adjust the buy order, they should be awarded with that effort.

Funny, I thought the purpose of the TP was to allow players to get items they need and sell items they don’t want — not enable MMO “daytraders” to extract economic rents using third-party software tools.

I don’t really care if people want to do that, but the idea that the system should be designed around them — as this one is at present — is absurd.

Afya.5842:

juno.1840:

Afya.5842:

juno.1840:

With regards to sell orders, I recommended a LONG time ago to make sell orders expire after a certain amount of time. This encourages sell orders to be meaningful and also penalizes some obnoxious behaviors (although still allows them so the market is still free and open).

And discourage long term investment.

J.Smith tossed out a similar argument (with the same level of explanation as yourself — i.e. none). Long term investments can still be made: (1) put the item in your vault, (2) sell when you are ready to liquidate. There’s no need to use the TP as your investment vault.

I thought it’s self explained.

Not all market move so fast that as soon as you put it up, it sells. It’s not uncommon for something to sit on the TP for quite a bit of time to sell. Something not selling this week doesn’t necessarily mean you overprised, it could be just no one buy it. Wait another week then it might sell. What you suggest only make it more ridiculous having to relist things everyweek.

Oh no!!!! You’d have to relist… every week… omg the agony!!!! (queue unnecessary jab regarding entitlement)

Seriously though, that’s your argument? You’d have to actually relist? Something similar to every other game and even RL?

An no, it’s not “self explained” with regards to investing, nor did you attempt to explain how that’s investing. You did succeed as explaining how it’s lazy though…

Afya.5842:

I thought it’s self explained.

Not all market move so fast that as soon as you put it up, it sells. It’s not uncommon for something to sit on the TP for quite a bit of time to sell. Something not selling this week doesn’t necessarily mean you overprised, it could be just no one buy it. Wait another week then it might sell. What you suggest only make it more ridiculous having to relist things everyweek.

I’ve sold items weeks after I list them. I knew the market was going to come back eventually, so I set a price and waited so I wouldn’t have to constantly check. I don’t really enjoy messing with the TP in any game, so I’m willing to take a hit in either price or turn over to not have to do it much.

@Kaon you are assuming that everyone who outbids will only outbid by 1c. I know how “fragile” a single copper is so I routinely overbid by a lot more than that. So I haven’t optimized my costs. I don’t optimized my sale listings either by underbidding by only 1c either. Actually I frequently don’t underbid at all, I look at the range the sell prices are fluctuating in and post somewhere in that range.

I don’t think getting alerts that you’ve been outbid is “illegal”. Having bids automated sure, I’m vehemently against that. This isn’t eBay. The TP isn’t an auction site. Interested buyers aren’t entering their spending limit and letting the TP take care of the assumed outbidding until there’s a “winner” among the interested buyers.

What I’m seeing are players who don’t understand the nuances to flipping, blundering into the TP thinking they can simply buy low, set a high price and expect to clean up because they are setting their sell price at 3x their buy price. Sure you can shoot for 75s a stack but if you go for 7.5s a stack you’ll probably sell out that stack a lot quicker and with such a low margin the opportunity to undercut you is significantly reduced.

On one hand we have players who think the TP is broken due to flippers and on the other we have players who think the TP is broken because they can’t make money from flipping because someone else is “cheating” or cutting in line or some other excuse other than admitting it’s a lot tougher and requiring a lot more time and effort than they are willing to spare.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it and if everyone would be doing it there would be no profit so then no one will be doing it, except those who understand it isn’t easy.

Kaon.7192:

Before you start saying you can choose to bid in more than 1c increments, it is completely irrational to do so in the current market climate

It is not completely irrational to do so. I do that sometimes if I want to discourage competitors. There are also many times I prefer to buy instantly than to spend time in a bidding war. It is the old time vs gold trade-off.

Your idea of increasing the bids increments for high prices would just put expensive items even more out of reach of most players other than the super rich. Furthermore, it would destroy flipping markets at the higher price items. If the item with 10g selling price has a buy order of 8g40s, then there is really point in flipping anymore because you would have to bid 8g50s which would break even. So instead of the bids being able to go as high as 8g45s in the current system, flippers would have to stop at 8g40s and the sellers would also earn less in your proposal. Fewer people being able to bid or flip would just throw more money out of the TP buy orders and increase inflation on other items.

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Especially in a market where there is low supply and high demand, you will most likely miss the more reasonable buy offers and asks because they will get snatched up quickly.

Only ‘especially’: only. The only markets that what you’re talking about applies to are high velocity markets where demand exceeds supply and so there is upwards price movement.

What we’re talking about is low velocity markets where demand and supply are approximately equal. In those markets you can very easily see which orders are being fulfilled and which items are being bought because the cost of listing is so significant in real money terms that relisting isn’t an option.

I think you’re making a huge assumption about how many sales happen based on the orders you see. There’s no use in our discussing our different views because neither of us have the information we need to support what we believe to be true. I know I sound like a broken record but without actual trade data, it’s all speculation.

A long time ago, John posted a little snippet of data on how many sales of a particular high value item had actually taken place (sorry, I can’t remember the exact discussion) . I was surprised by the volume, and I’m biased toward believing that there is far more activity than I can see from the asks and bids.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

It’s all automatically checked – and sometimes automatically incremented – by programs.

If ArenaNet allows it, then who are you to say otherwise? Also why do you think that they have released an official API which has been giving third party programs and websites even further advantages?

The programs and websites have been free and publicly available, if you choose not to use them yourself then don’t blame others who do. Learn to take responsibility for your own decisions rather than throwing a tantrum on the floor and crying “not fair!”

Wait, what? I’m the one who is taking the hard path remember? I chose not to cheat. I will not use several scripts to scan the entire TP for me. You chose that road. So if anyone should be taking responsibility in this debate, in which it is plain to see for everyone that you’ve created a huge advantage over players that don’t use such programs, it’s you. I’ll remind you of some the questions you should be asking yourself constantly, despite having provided them in my earlier links above:

“Our general policy is that anything that gives advantage is forbidden; anything that imbalances the game in favor of one player over another is strictly disallowed.”

Mmmmm. Let’s see. Yes those scripts/programs do.

“Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”

Yes. The “faster” part is the give-away here. You thought 16 seconds to a) check all current buy offers, b) remove all buy orders that were no longer first in queue, and c) replace them with new ones – was’t even fast enough! You said that was slow, lol! Yea I know that was for a botter, but it just means the scripts that you write are even worse in calculating power when analyzing the TP for you.

Better? Heck yea, as those programs scan the entire TP for you, spotting, calculating and alerting you to opportunities on the fly. You couldn’t even do that yourself in game if you tried, especially not at that speed.

Try not to lecture me on responsibility, and I’ll avoid lecturing you of what those are. Because this is just a fraction of the stuff you signed up for. The user agreement is even more explicit.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kaon.7192:

Before you start saying you can choose to bid in more than 1c increments, it is completely irrational to do so in the current market climate

Your idea of increasing the bids increments for high prices would just put expensive items even more out of reach of most players other than the super rich.

It would make each competitive bid tangibly drive prices toward equilibrium. Whether it be higher or lower than the status quo is up to the current level of demand. It is impossible to judge where the actual equilibrium lies for certain items precisely because of the lack of agility in current market prices.

This will reduce spread and reduce (but not remove) the opportunity for profit in flipping for high priced, low volume items. That is the whole point of this change.

A lower spread benefits everyone except traders that depend on spreads to flip items and turn a profit, because actual buyers can buy immediately at lower prices and actual sellers can sell immediately to higher buy orders. And everyone will be getting closer to what the market deems to be a fair price i.e. the equilibrium price point.

Of course I don’t expect flippers to agree with this change due to conflicts of interest, but I’m sure most reasonable people can understand that having more items closer to equilibrium pricing is healthier for the game economy as a whole.

If you have the minimum bid size be dynamic based on the current spread rather than the overall price it would converge quicker like you suggest while allowing shaving of the profit that DarkSpirit is talking about. Note I said minimum bid size, not increment size. If the minimum bid size is 5s let players bid 5s2c or 7s or 12s.

Buttercup.5871:

Better? Heck yea, as those programs scan the entire TP for you, spotting, calculating and alerting you to opportunities on the fly. You couldn’t even do that yourself in game if you tried, especially not at that speed.

First of all, you really don’t know what you are talking about. Scanning the entire TP? What makes you think that our apps scan the entire TP? Flood control would have a field day.

Second of all, it is only a cheat because you PERSONALLY say it is, not ArenaNet. So when are you going to quit deceiving others in this forum by pretending to represent ArenaNet without an ArenaNet tag? But no matter, only the gullible would think that you represent ArenaNet’s views on this. Especially when ArenaNet has officially released even more API into their game giving even more advantages to third party apps and websites! Explain that.

Kaon.7192:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kaon.7192:

Before you start saying you can choose to bid in more than 1c increments, it is completely irrational to do so in the current market climate

Your idea of increasing the bids increments for high prices would just put expensive items even more out of reach of most players other than the super rich.

It would make each competitive bid tangibly drive prices toward equilibrium. Whether it be higher or lower than the status quo is up to the current level of demand. It is impossible to judge where the actual equilibrium lies for certain items precisely because of the lack of agility in current market prices.

This will reduce spread and reduce (but not remove) the opportunity for profit in flipping for high priced, low volume items. That is the whole point of this change.

A lower spread benefits everyone except traders that depend on spreads to flip items and turn a profit, because actual buyers can buy immediately at lower prices and actual sellers can sell immediately to higher buy orders. And everyone will be getting closer to what the market deems to be a fair price i.e. the equilibrium price point.

Of course I don’t expect flippers to agree with this change due to conflicts of interest, but I’m sure most reasonable people can understand that having more items closer to equilibrium pricing is healthier for the game economy as a whole.

Do not underestimate the number of speculators who use the TP, I wont be surprised if speculators make up as much as half or more of the players who use the TP regularly.

Also remember that for EACH order it may only look like a negligible increment of 1c to you, but for a flipper who buys 250 orders, it is an increment of 2s50c each time he tries to outbid you, which is hardly negligible. Many of those who claim that the 1c increment is too negligible simply forgot about the Quantity field.

And furthermore, keeping the bids of flippers out of the TP buy orders is just going to raise inflation at the detriment of the economy. Instead of having their gold locked up in TP buy orders, they are now free to use them on something else.

tolunart.2095:

And of course Anet could have avoided such obvious errors if they had actually hired someone with some sort of training or education in the economics field instead of just randomly assigning control of the TP to one of their interns.

Here is the LinkedIn Profile of the “Intern” in question.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-smith/56/487/8b4

DarkSpirit.7046:

Do not underestimate the number of speculators who use the TP, I wont be surprised if speculators make up as much as half or more of the players who use the TP regularly.

And if Arenanet intends the TP to be for that purpose, great. I thought it was to facilitate player trade, not to encourage electronic Carl Icahns.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Also remember that for EACH order it may only look like a negligible increment of 1c to you, but for a flipper who buys 250 orders, it is an increment of 2s50c each time he tries to outbid you, which is hardly negligible. Many of those who claim that the 1c increment is too negligible simply forgot about the Quantity field.

To quote a famous bandit: you’re kidding, right?

It’s about percentages. If the base item is 100g and your increment is 1c, yes, it is negligible, no matter what the quantity.

DarkSpirit.7046:

And furthermore, keeping the bids of flippers out of the TP buy orders is just going to raise inflation at the detriment of the economy. Instead of having their gold locked up in TP buy orders, they are now free to use them on something else.

That’s pretty hilarious.

What flippers actually do is raise costs for people who just want items to use.

Flippers provide liquidity. They provide both coin and items for those aren’t willing or to lazy to enter bids themselves, letting players trade waiting for immediate coin or item.

They are the natural byproduct of an inefficient system. They are the equivalent of the butcher who buys game from hunters to sell to the townsfolk because the hunter doesn’t want to bother with that.

Qaelyn.7612:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Do not underestimate the number of speculators who use the TP, I wont be surprised if speculators make up as much as half or more of the players who use the TP regularly.

And if Arenanet intends the TP to be for that purpose, great. I thought it was to facilitate player trade, not to encourage electronic Carl Icahns.

Are you saying that ArenaNet never expected that we would ever use the TP to speculate and earn gold? You’re kidding right?

It is part of the design of the TP to enable that.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Also remember that for EACH order it may only look like a negligible increment of 1c to you, but for a flipper who buys 250 orders, it is an increment of 2s50c each time he tries to outbid you, which is hardly negligible. Many of those who claim that the 1c increment is too negligible simply forgot about the Quantity field.

To quote a famous bandit: you’re kidding, right?

It’s about percentages. If the base item is 100g and your increment is 1c, yes, it is negligible, no matter what the quantity.

Like I have said many times, using your 5% increment is doomed to fail. 5% of 20c is exactly 1c, <sarcasm>big change here.</sarcasm>

DarkSpirit.7046:

And furthermore, keeping the bids of flippers out of the TP buy orders is just going to raise inflation at the detriment of the economy. Instead of having their gold locked up in TP buy orders, they are now free to use them on something else.

That’s pretty hilarious.

What flippers actually do is raise costs for people who just want items to use.

Sure they raise unit cost by 1c, is that suppose to be a big deal? So now you want to raise the same cost by 5% increment instead?

Wanze.8410:

tolunart.2095:

And of course Anet could have avoided such obvious errors if they had actually hired someone with some sort of training or education in the economics field instead of just randomly assigning control of the TP to one of their interns.

Here is the LinkedIn Profile of the “Intern” in question.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-smith/56/487/8b4

It’s so hard to convey sarcasm in written form. Is there an emoticon for eye rolling?

DarkSpirit.7046:

Are you saying that ArenaNet never expected that we would ever use the TP to speculate and earn gold?

No, if I was saying that, I would have said that.

I am saying that while flipping is a natural consequence of many exchange mechanisms, in a game that is not what the exchanges are usually designed for. This is a pretty simple concept.

DarkSpirit.7046:

It is part of the design of the TP to enable that.

And I and others would like to see the TP become a more efficient means of trading, not flipping.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Like I have said many times, using your 5% increment is doomed to fail. 5% of 20c is exactly 1c, <sarcasm>big change here.</sarcasm>

This has been explained numerous times. A percentage based system using 5% wouldn’t change the minimum on a 20c item. But 1c is not 5% of 20g, it is 0.0005%. And that’s why minimum bids should scale based on the value of the item.

You know, like it works in pretty much every market.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Sure they raise unit cost by 1c, is that suppose to be a big deal?

It doesn’t raise the cost by 1c. It raises it by a lot more — or it makes the purchase much slower.

I decide I want to buy an item. The lowest offer is 27g. I put in a bid for 20g. A few minutes later someone using some cheesy software tool notices the price and puts in a new bid for 20.0001g. I don’t get my item. Next day I notice a pile more cheesy bids, so I put in a new bid for say 21g. Same thing happens again.

My only choices are to wait for days and days, sit at the TP all day and hope I get lucky, increase my bid to the point where the flippers can’t make a profit, or just cough up the 27g to buy the item listed. Regardless, the flippers have made the item cost a LOT more by their presence.

And of course, the higher-cost item I buy will likely be one that some flipper bought for 20.0004g or something.

It has to be this way, because all of the profit on any item flip comes indirectly from whoever initially found/made the item and whoever ends up actually using it. Flippers add no value whatsoever to this market. They are economic leeches.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Like I have said many times, using your 5% increment is doomed to fail. 5% of 20c is exactly 1c, <sarcasm>big change here.</sarcasm>

Really DarkSpirit? You do remember his examples are when the price is in the multi-gold range when 1c is an insignificant percentage relative to the current price.

Don’t accuse others about using poor debating techniques and then use one yourself.

Behellagh.1468:

Flippers provide liquidity. They provide both coin and items for those aren’t willing or to lazy to enter bids themselves, letting players trade waiting for immediate coin or item.

They are the natural byproduct of an inefficient system. They are the equivalent of the butcher who buys game from hunters to sell to the townsfolk because the hunter doesn’t want to bother with that.

Flippers do make markets more efficient by competing with each other to make a profit, and in doing so reducing spreads and driving items toward equilibrium pricing, which is good for actual users of the market.

But right now, the speed at which they are performing their intended function is appalling because most of what they do in the status quo involves outbidding by 1c on highly priced items, so they aren’t moving the price point or reducing spreads in any meaningful way.

Qaelyn.7612:

It doesn’t raise the cost by 1c. It raises it by a lot more — or it makes the purchase much slower.

I decide I want to buy an item. The lowest offer is 27g. I put in a bid for 20g. A few minutes later someone using some cheesy software tool notices the price and puts in a new bid for 20.0001g. I don’t get my item. Next day I notice a pile more cheesy bids, so I put in a new bid for say 21g. Same thing happens again.

My only choices are to wait for days and days, sit at the TP all day and hope I get lucky, increase my bid to the point where the flippers can’t make a profit, or just cough up the 27g to buy the item listed. Regardless, the flippers have made the item cost a LOT more by their presence.

Spending more time on the TP equates to saving you more gold. It is the old gold vs time trade-off that has been there for centuries. There is nothing unfamiliar about this.

I would agree that flippers bring in more competition but competition is suppose to be good for the market as a whole. It is bad for you personally if you are trying to buy the item, but you are not seeing both sides of the coin. As a seller, I would be happy seeing competition on the buy side reducing the spread between max offer and min sale prices.

And of course, the higher-cost item I buy will likely be one that some flipper bought for 20.0004g or something.

It has to be this way, because all of the profit on any item flip comes indirectly from whoever initially found/made the item and whoever ends up actually using it. Flippers add no value whatsoever to this market. They are economic leeches.

That is not true. Flippers make money from people who go for convenience or they need the gold fast. Some people just want instant sales regardless of whether they are buying or selling. That is where their gold come from. Flippers earn by trading their time to do their TP activity.

Essentially flippers are both buyers as well as sellers. Sure they jack up demand initially but having more demand is good for the sellers. By discouraging people to flip, it would effect the entire market in a negative way.

All those items that you got from your champ farming? Good luck trying to earn a profit when everyone is doing the same champ farm and flippers are now discouraged from spuring demand on the market.

If undercutting by 1c is an “insignificant amount”, why didn’t you lower your original asking price by 2c?

No one‘s price point is sacred. You don’t need additional protections beyond FIFO.

Because FIFO is no protection when someone who posts later can get his order filled earlier by posting 1c less, regardless of what your original asking price was (including if your original order was 2c less to begin with).

Allowing higher bids and lower asks to be filled earlier is meant to encourage competition to drive prices toward equilibrium and lower spreads. But the abundance of 1c price difference orders on the market do not meaningfully move the price point or reduce spreads on highly priced items.

Nike.2631:

If undercutting by 1c is an “insignificant amount”, why didn’t you lower your original asking price by 2c?

No one‘s price point is sacred. You don’t need additional protections beyond FIFO.

Fortunately, FIFO is all I’m asking for. It doesn’t exist in this system.

tolunart.2095:

Qaelyn.7612:

The point is that the people with the copper increments aren’t really bidding more. They’re just butting in line. Why people can’t grasp this concept is beyond me, though I’d imagine a lot of the people objecting are in fact the ones that do little but stand around the TP all day…

Whether the minimum increment is 1c, 1s, 1g or 1%, there are people who will always top your bid by the minimum amount they can. It won’t stop the frustrations, in fact it will cause more frustrations because now instead of rebidding 2c higher you have to rebid 2g higher. Then another 2g when the same bidder tops you again, and again…

If you really want to spend more money needlessly, just buy the lowest sell offer instead. What you are really arguing against is the fact that when you place an offer you have to wait for someone to sell it to you, and this delay gives someone else a chance to get in line ahead of you. The amount of the overbid is irrelevant, it will happen no matter what the minimum increment happens to be.

That is why there are sell offers, the item is already held by the TP and ready for immediate purchase. Otherwise, you bid the maximum you are willing to pay and wait for someone to accept the price.

You missed the point. The claim is that minimum bid increments would cause the price to approach an efficient one (no significant profit to be made in the market) faster — this means that indeed, there is back-and-forth bidding, then indeed you will see the price rise faster. But it doesn’t rise forever — when it rises high enough, one or the other buy will stop outbidding the other.

Lack of a minimum bid increment means that this process is never likely to complete — if you increase by 0.0001% (1c / 1g), with occasional resets from people selling to the high buy offer, then you may never see the “efficient” equilibrium, where most of the profit is gone.

An efficient equilibrium would mean that flippers make less by increasing the bid price.

Personally — when I’m buying something, I’ll generally go over the current high bid by more than 1c — usually 1-10%, depending on the item (occasionally more). I do sometimes get overbid by 1c; then we repeat (with smaller increases on my part, usually about 1%) until the other person gives up. I’d be happy if there were fewer steps involved, and a minimum increase would accomplish that.

Kaon.7192:

Behellagh.1468:

Flippers provide liquidity. They provide both coin and items for those aren’t willing or to lazy to enter bids themselves, letting players trade waiting for immediate coin or item.

They are the natural byproduct of an inefficient system. They are the equivalent of the butcher who buys game from hunters to sell to the townsfolk because the hunter doesn’t want to bother with that.

Flippers do make markets more efficient by competing with each other to make a profit, and in doing so reducing spreads and driving items toward equilibrium pricing, which is good for actual users of the market.

But right now, the speed at which they are performing their intended function is appalling because most of what they do in the status quo involves outbidding by 1c on highly priced items, so they aren’t moving the price point or reducing spreads in any meaningful way.

And I think that’s because there’s been a flood of players who think they understand how flipping works, expecting that they can set the price and make huge profits and when they don’t, there must be something else wrong with the market. Just look at the trade history for Minor Rune of Divinity. How many of those buying and selling just are perpetuating the profit margin that GW2TP or GW2Spidy says they should be getting? Just look back a month and see where prices were. Look at the buy volume. Is there really a market or are players looking at the 200% profit margin GW2TP says it has and simply lemming along?

Qaelyn.7612:

Nike.2631:

If undercutting by 1c is an “insignificant amount”, why didn’t you lower your original asking price by 2c?

No one‘s price point is sacred. You don’t need additional protections beyond FIFO.

Fortunately, FIFO is all I’m asking for. It doesn’t exist in this system.

Of course it doesn’t exist. Why would you think it did?

That’s a strange question. Nike said I " don’t need additional protections beyond FIFO." And I said that we don’t have a true FIFO system now, and that wanting one is much of the point of the thread.

John Smith.4610:

When at the same price orders are FIFO

I voiced my doubts in that thread, but the statement is pretty unambiguous.

linuxotaku.4731:

You missed the point. The claim is that minimum bid increments would cause the price to approach an efficient one (no significant profit to be made in the market) faster — this means that indeed, there is back-and-forth bidding, then indeed you will see the price rise faster. But it doesn’t rise forever — when it rises high enough, one or the other buy will stop outbidding the other.

I’m not the one missing the point. I don’t have the exact quote handy, but JS has posted a comment here on at least one occasion stating that he considers the TP to be a part of the game. “Game” is the operative word, no one here is spending “real” money or getting rich in the real world by playing the TP. This is a game.

Anet set up the game to allow players to set their own prices for most items. I’m sure they regret some of their decisions in this regard (such as precursors) but if they release an item like a new armor or weapon skin that is tradeable, rather than soulbound or account bound, then this indicates they want it to be part of the TP game.

JS has already demonstrated that he has access to far more information about how the TP is used, has the expertise to interpret the data, and has a willingness to step in when things are not going according to plan and make changes. The fact that the TP has gone on for over a year without a major overhaul indicates that it is, in fact, working as intended.

The complaints are coming from a few players who don’t like the way the TP is being run. There are many thousands of players who use the TP every day who at the very least do not have any complaints, and many of them find the TP game an interesting enough sub-game to make it a major part of their game play. I think that I’m not the one who is missing the point.

Anet is not going to change their game to suit an individual’s preferences. They have millions of customers to consider.

tolunart.2095:

Anet is not going to change their game to suit an individual’s preferences. They have millions of customers to consider.

Modifying the TP to require either reasonable bid increments or symmetric listing fees would dramatically improve its utility for the vast majority of players.

Change has to begin somewhere. The problem is that a forum like this will of necessity be tilted in its demographics towards people who exploit flaws in this sort of system, giving them an outsized voice in these matters.

I remember a few similar threads regarding the 1c overbidding/undercutting before.

Has John replied to any of them? Anything definitive regarding ANet’s stance on the current state of affairs?

Not having done anything about it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cool with the status quo.

There are always enormous technical and logistics hurdles that must be overcome when overhauling a system as large and complicated as the TP, and that takes time and resources that they might not be able to spare at the moment, or ever even.

I’m just interested in what the official stance is.

Same. I think it’s awesome that Arenanet has someone who plays this role (something I wouldn’t mind doing myself someday!) If he weighs in and says they want it this way, then I’m happy to drop it. But I’m sure not going to be bullied into silence by snark from the peanut gallery.

Qaelyn.7612:

That’s a strange question. Nike said I " don’t need additional protections beyond FIFO." And I said that we don’t have a true FIFO system now, and that wanting one is much of the point of the thread.

Better question, why would you think it should be? After all everyone can set their own prices for buying or selling. What kind of player marketplace were you hoping for? FIFO would only work if the buy and sell prices were fixed ahead of time.

So please do describe a player trading scheme which you would find acceptable that incorporates a FIFO. I’m genuinely curious.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Qaelyn.7612:

You guys are missing the point, which is that the ability to undercut by an insignificant amount simply leads to noise in the marketplace, and a system that, in effect, awards people for being later to offer at a particular price than earlier.

If I offer an item for sale at 7g 43s 99c and someone else offers it at 7g 43s 98c, we are essentially offering it at the same price, but the second seller will go before mine. If 20 other people later jump in at 7g 43s 97c, 7g 43s 96c, etc., my item could sit for days before it moves — even though it’s essentially the same price. The same happens with purchases.

This is why markets generally have mimimum increments.

I think you’re missing my point. The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell. If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping. There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

Absolute truth spoken ^ here.

Back to my +1’s

DarkSpirit.7046:

The OP’s suggestion doesn’t work. If the limit is 5% of the selling price of say 1s, then it is only 5c. If 1c is not a significant increment, is 5c then a significant one? I don’t think so.

It works perfectly. 5c is significant on a 1s item. It’s 5% of an item, 5% regardless of the price is significant.

Just as 50g on a 1000g item is significant. Or 2c on a 50c item is significant.

You’re acting like just because an item exists where 5% is equal to 1c means that 1c is a perfectly fine limit for ALL items. That is complete nonsense, and is no way a flaw in the proposed system.

That being said, I think 5% is far too high. That would negatively effect some lower priced markets and is unnecessary.

Let’s work with 0.1%. With a 0.1% limit it wouldn’t effect anything up until 20s, and then would only raise the increment to 2c instead of 1c. For a 1000g item it would limit bids to 1g above the current highest (or any amount below or at the current highest) and the opposite for sales offers.

This would mean people have to give up something in order to get priority but would leave the majority of offers uneffected. Not much, just 1g on a 1000g item, but at least that’s 0.1% as opposed to 0.00001%.

Behellagh.1468:

FIFO would only work if the buy and sell prices were fixed ahead of time.

You’re misunderstanding. FIFO doesn’t mean that the first bid regardless of price is executed. It’s offer price specific with the lowest offer or highest bid is always given priority and offers and bids grouped by price have FIFO applied to them.

The problem being that if the units offers and bids are measured in are ridiculously small FIFO effectively becomes LIFO as people can jump in to a lower price bracket with a 0.0000001% reduction in their offers/bids.

Think about if ANet allowed partial copper bids, so that you could offer your weapon at 0.00001c less than another person and get selling priority over them. Would this be okay with you? Because for higher priced items this is effectively what is happening.

Okay. But you are trying to distinguish a 1c difference from a 1s or 1g difference but more (or less) is still more (or less) regardless of the size of the difference. Is the aggravation going to be any less when someone under/over cuts you by 1%/5%/10% rather than 1c?

I’m sorry but the “it’s almost the same” doesn’t work for me because the prices are still different and the “buy now” and “sell now” price is better for the person choosing that option since they either spend less or get more.

Pandemoniac.4739:

The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell.

Let’s look at the payoffs. Undercutter: Saves time, lowers risk of market reversal, effectively equal payoff. Previous lowest bidder: Loses time (low amount in a demand surplus market), higher risk of market reversal, effectively same payout as undercutter. Buyer: Saves time (wants the item now, pays premium), no market risk, pays effectively the same price set by previous lowest bidder.

Now look at it with a reasonable bid measure in place.

Undercutter: Same but with a lower profit. Previous lowest bidder: same. Buyer: Same but pays price closer to the true value of the item.

Controls have nothing to do with the previous lowest bidder, they’re irrelevant unless undercutting by 0.1% or 5% or 1% or whatever a reasonable amount is would truly make the item unprofitable for the undercutter. What it does effect is the buyers, who now benifit from competition in the form of lower prices.

Pandemoniac.4739:

If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping.

This is assuming an excess supply market drops without sales on the way down, but they don’t. Items do sell and those items are undoubtably going to go to 1c undercutters far more than people who don’t. So under both market states the 1c undercutters gain something, or a lot more, than others without having to give up anything.

Pandemoniac.4739:

There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

Why is it better? What advantage does having a 1c pricing bracket have over a 0.1% price bracket? Because the group it’s benifitting are not normal sellers, or buyers. Sellers are having time stolen from them, and buyers are having money stolen from them, assets which I assume they both value.

What disadvantage or market failure are you worried changing price brackets to a percentage will have? Which group within the market will be hurt?

Behellagh.1468:

Okay. But you are trying to distinguish a 1c difference from a 1s or 1g difference but more (or less) is still more (or less) regardless of the size of the difference. Is the aggravation going to be any less when someone under/over cuts you by 1%/5%/10% rather than 1c?

I’m sorry but the “it’s almost the same” doesn’t work for me because the prices are still different and the “buy now” and “sell now” price is better for the person choosing that option since they either spend less or get more.

Is 0.000000000000000000001c more?

Would you clip a coupon for 1 cent off a $20,000 car?

If deciding between a $2000 washing machine and a $2000.43 washing machine, would price be a factor in your decision?

But 1c is the minimum amount not some super fractional part.

As for the car and washing machine analogy, ever been to Walmart? Wii controller (folks have a Wii, they like bowling) and everywhere it’s $39.99, except Walmart where it’s $39.96. Would I drive out of my way to save 3 cents, no. Would I choose whoever had the lowest price online including shipping, even if it’s only 3 cents, sure, why not?

Behellagh.1468:

But 1c is the minimum amount not some super fractional part.

Would you consider 0.0000001% super fractional? Because that’s the fraction 1c is if you bought 1/3 of a legendary. I’d tell you for a full legendary but my calculator gave me 3.0303E-08 because it doesn’t work with decimals that low.

Behellagh.1468:

even if it’s only 3 cents, sure, why not?

In my country? Because there is no such thing as a 1 cent piece, the government decided that they were effectively worth nothing and it would save everyone far more in time just to eliminate them entirely.

Just because something has a whole decimal value doesn’t give it value. Things are relative, and when you have a relative value that is 0.0000001% of the purchase value you’d be crazy to have that enter your thinking pattern at all.

If it took you 10 seconds or more to double check that the difference between the prices is indeed 3 cents, you would have used more than 3 cents worth of time at the US minimum wage.

Let me preface my post by saying I’m not completely opposed to minimum increments for bids. I just think the FIFO/undercutting/overcutting argument is a poor justification.

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell.

Let’s look at the payoffs. Undercutter: Saves time, lowers risk of market reversal, effectively equal payoff. Previous lowest bidder: Loses time (low amount in a demand surplus market), higher risk of market reversal, effectively same payout as undercutter. Buyer: Saves time (wants the item now, pays premium), no market risk, pays effectively the same price set by previous lowest bidder.

In my opinion all of the bidders at that price point are wasting time. The undercutters are wasting time by constantly having to monitor the TP to make sure that they are always first in line, the previous lowest seller is wasting time either by agonizing over the undercutters getting “his” sale or by listing at the wrong price for his desired time frame. The previous lowest seller had to have undercut someone else, so why wouldn’t the person they undercut be upset that their sale was stolen?

If I were going to play the market I wouldn’t mess around with 1c increments. I’d do my research, pick a price point, and make an investment and wait to see if it pans out. My guess could be wrong and I’ll lose money, but I will have more time to make more guesses and hedge against any losses than I would if I sat around and micro-managed my bids. I’m not going to do that, because I don’t have fun doing that, and being informed enough to not brute force your plays is a lot of work. I’ll save that for my real money investments

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping.

This is assuming an excess supply market drops without sales on the way down, but they don’t. Items do sell and those items are undoubtably going to go to 1c undercutters far more than people who don’t. So under both market states the 1c undercutters gain something, or a lot more, than others without having to give up anything.

So what if the undercutters get sales if your item sells, which it will eventually if you priced it correctly? I think you’re making a mistake in assuming that the 1c undercutters are the ones getting the majority sales. If I really want something to sell and the market looks weak, I fill a buy order or price the item to move. I believe there are quite a few other players with similar strategies but without trade information who knows? shrug

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

Why is it better? What advantage does having a 1c pricing bracket have over a 0.1% price bracket?

It was pointed out to me later in the thread that minimum increments on the bids could have the effect of bringing prices into equilibrium more quickly, and I think that would be a good thing.

I however, don’t have the expertise to know the best way to implement minimum increments. I might have missed some interaction that incentivizes behavior that would be bad for the virtual economy, and I don’t really see any huge problem here from a market standpoint. All I see is folks that have a feeling that the current system is unfair and given how badly governments have mucked up real economies by trying to make folks feel better, I’m reluctant to support messing with something that is working OK (if not exactly optimally) economically.

I’m sure if John hasn’t already been thinking about this, this thread might have got him thinking about it, so if minimum increments actually make sense we’ll see them eventually. Or maybe there is a better way to get the same effect.

It wouldn’t change much of anything. People will still just outbid you by the minimum required. TP flippers don’t care as long as there is a good profit to be made. If not, they just move to something better.

If you really need an item put in a higher buy order and most flippers will just let it go vs. tack on another order and drastically lower their profits on the next 1000 they buy… or you can buy the lowest offered one.

I do agree the current system is very bot friendly though. I hope they are able to do more about detecting/banning the bots on the TP without messing over the market.

I’m also against notifications for when you are outbid. It gives one player a sizeable advantage over another. Player 1 doesn’t have it and has to flip through all of his listings to check. Player 2 does and saves hours of work checking all of the buy orders. Doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Aberrant.6749:

It wouldn’t change much of anything. People will still just outbid you by the minimum required. TP flippers don’t care as long as there is a good profit to be made. If not, they just move to something better.

It would mean sellers who are in a hurry get higher prices, and buyers who are in a hurry don’t have to pay as much.

You all seem to be thinking about this in terms of underbidder and underbiddee, the person who is underbid is going to be underbid regardless. The real people missing out are the people entering the market without the benefit of competition, because some joker is able to come in and jump the queue without giving anything up.

The underbid don’t get any kind of royalty for their position, it doesn’t really matter whether they were overbid by 1c or 5s (other than being annoying). But it certainly matters to the person receiving or paying that amount.

Pandemoniac.4739:

The previous lowest seller had to have undercut someone else, so why wouldn’t the person they undercut be upset that their sale was stolen?

This isn’t a la-di-da commune where we sing coom-bye-ya and howl at the moon. We’re all capatalists here. Competition is a valuable aspect of markets. If you get underbid or overbid then cry crocodile tears, them’s the breaks.

People asking for a change aren’t asking to stop undercutting. They’re asking to fix an area where competition is being limited by a market failure.

The person really hurt here isn’t the undercut person, it’s the person buying the item instantly, or the people selling items instantly. They’re paying more, or getting less than they should be if the market was operating properly.

Pandemoniac.4739:

If I really want something to sell and the market looks weak, I fill a buy order or price the item to move.

If the current sell price for an item is 500g, and you think “that’s silly”, I’m going to move this fast and sell at 450g to sell it fast. Everyone is getting items in the same way, there is no such thing as efficiency when it comes to item aquisition. So if you can sell for 450g and be happy with it, others are going to also think that’s profitable- not as profitable as 500g mind you.

So the undercutter will list at 449g99s99c, and they’ll have priority over you. It’s impossible for you to find a price point where it’s not just as worth it for an undercutter to list at -1c, because -1c is nothing compared to the total price.

There could be someone who comes along and buys 2 of the item, and then who cares? The point is the ‘could’. It’s uncertain, and that’s what the undercutter is doing, reducing risk for zero cost. He could never have his item bought, it could sit up there forever- and yours will too. But his had far less a chance of that happening, because his order gets executed first.

Pandemoniac.4739:

So what if the undercutters get sales if your item sells, which it will eventually if you priced it correctly?

I was talking specifically about an excess supply market, as per the quote above the section. The reason you would not expect to sell your item is that only some items are sold on the way down to the new price point. These items are inevitably going to be undercutters as they are first in line. If all items were sold we wouldn’t be in an excess supply market.

The reason it matters is that the undercutter is not giving as high a price as they would under proper competition, as in order to gain priority in a properly functioning market they would have to offer more than others.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I just think the FIFO/undercutting/overcutting argument is a poor justification.

and given how badly governments have mucked up real economies by trying to make folks feel better, I’m reluctant to support messing with something that is working OK (if not exactly optimally) economically.

It’s a poor justification because you don’t know how it would effect things and therefore shouldn’t be done?

I’m weary of arguing against the incredibly poor economic reasoning in this thread, but this was a fair question asked nicely so it deserves a response.

Behellagh.1468:

Better question, why would you think it should be? After all everyone can set their own prices for buying or selling. What kind of player marketplace were you hoping for? FIFO would only work if the buy and sell prices were fixed ahead of time.

So please do describe a player trading scheme which you would find acceptable that incorporates a FIFO. I’m genuinely curious.

As RisingAshes said, we’re talking about two different things here, and I probably used the term inappropriately. I didn’t mean literally that whoever put the first bid in at a particular price should always get their order filled first. I’m fine with anyone who bids at a particular price level having an equal chance of buying or selling.

I simply meant that those who put the bid in last should not get fill priority over others who bid the same amount before them. The current system not only allows this but encourages it.

Or put another way: we don’t need FIFO, but we definitely are better off without the current LIFO.

So this goes back to bids being “close enough” so they should be counted as the same as multiple players bidding at the same price is FIFO.

But as it’s been brought up multiple times what is the difference of being one upped by someone under/overcutting you by 1c or whatever this minimum bid price would be? Someone will still cut in front of you and someone in front of them and so on. All you are doing is replacing the jerk who says “and one” with a jerk who says “and X”. It’s no less annoying and now to compete against them you now have to adjust your price by a greater amount as well.

True the player who is selling off their item to high bidder or buying from low asker is getting a better deal since the prices converge quicker but it does hurt those who are listing items to buy or for sale.