Are you kidding me? You can’t get scammed if it’s p2p interaction. Both people would have to hit accept for the transaction to occur. The TP-only method also has a tax percentage, which could also be considered a “scam”.
Are YOU kidding me? GW1 had a “Both parties must accept” p2p trade system too, and people got scammed ALL the time. Here’s some common scam techniques:
1. Buyer puts the price in silver instead of gold. Seller doesn’t notice and hits Accept. Scammed!
2. Seller advertises for an item, but puts in a different item with the same icon. Buyer doesn’t notice and hits Accept. Scammed!
3. Seller advertises for an item in bulk, but in the final trade, puts in one less 0. Buyer doesn’t notice (very easy to happen when you’re buying materials in the thousands) and hits Accept. Scammed!
You grossly underestimate the amount of people who are too inattentive, too tired, too drunk/high or too greedy to stop themselves falling for scams. “Who cares? Just let them pay the price for their own stupidity!”, I hear you say? Well, each of those people will still go screaming to ANet, who has to spend time reviewing their complaint and verifying/banning the scammer. (Because why should criminal scumbags get to enjoy the easy life?)
And if you choose to do nothing at all, each of those players will quit, depriving ANet of future revenue, and further badmouth ANet for “terrible customer service”, costing them further new players who hear that GW2 is a “we don’t care what happens to you” kind of game.
No, it’s far better to just protect people from their own failings and make all trades go through the TP in the first place. Prevention is better than a cure.
Not to mention that the TP taxes are a crucial element of keeping game inflation under control, but that’s already been mentioned before.
That’s the fault of the player though. All of that could be avoided on closer inspection. I also don’t see how that’s any different than the TP. Players that don’t pay attention to numbers can also buy things with extra 0’s, or sell things by mistake.
Your reasoning is illogical, by grossly exaggerating your argument that people would be quitting because of scams, which in turn would reduce the playerbase to “megaserver” status (i hope you see the irony). A lot of MMO companies have a policy where they don’t reimburse player’s because of their own inattentiveness, including Anet, and for good reason.
I should’ve been more clear though, i wasn’t specifically talking about the TP only. I was mostly talking about the Mail system, and how it’s less convenient than p2p interaction, since both players cannot accept the deal to confirm the trade through the mailing system. The suppression limit is also less convenient.
Step outside your traditional MMO boundaries. Shake off your chains. Accept what is better than kittening player to player trade. I don’t want to filter out everything except guild and party chat due to ‘S> Ectos 35s, 2k in stock’ spam
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Beastgate | Faerie Law
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i dont want interplayer trading. defend it all you like but the fact of the matter is that in gw1 being able to trade player to player lead to way too much chat spam, thats almost all i ever saw.
perhaps a better alternative might be to lower the tp fee if you are filling a buy order
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Are you kidding me? You can’t get scammed if it’s p2p interaction. Both people would have to hit accept for the transaction to occur. The TP-only method also has a tax percentage, which could also be considered a “scam”.
Are YOU kidding me? GW1 had a “Both parties must accept” p2p trade system too, and people got scammed ALL the time. Here’s some common scam techniques:
1. Buyer puts the price in silver instead of gold. Seller doesn’t notice and hits Accept. Scammed!
2. Seller advertises for an item, but puts in a different item with the same icon. Buyer doesn’t notice and hits Accept. Scammed!
3. Seller advertises for an item in bulk, but in the final trade, puts in one less 0. Buyer doesn’t notice (very easy to happen when you’re buying materials in the thousands) and hits Accept. Scammed!
You grossly underestimate the amount of people who are too inattentive, too tired, too drunk/high or too greedy to stop themselves falling for scams. “Who cares? Just let them pay the price for their own stupidity!”, I hear you say? Well, each of those people will still go screaming to ANet, who has to spend time reviewing their complaint and verifying/banning the scammer. (Because why should criminal scumbags get to enjoy the easy life?)
And if you choose to do nothing at all, each of those players will quit, depriving ANet of future revenue, and further badmouth ANet for “terrible customer service”, costing them further new players who hear that GW2 is a “we don’t care what happens to you” kind of game.
No, it’s far better to just protect people from their own failings and make all trades go through the TP in the first place. Prevention is better than a cure.
Not to mention that the TP taxes are a crucial element of keeping game inflation under control, but that’s already been mentioned before.
The convenience of the TP is nice, but in other games I frequently undersell items in order to help newer players (or at least those without large stockpiles of in game currency) get something nice without it being a handout. In GW2 that is not really a viable option.
Few months ago I still saw people on the map channel offering some items for player in need (just like many of us saw them since launch). I think you can just pass items free and you will be as much reassured if that person really needs them or not.
Also new players gathers a lot of gold in expensive mats that drop on lower levels so for me they have few gold for exotics on the max lvl and silver for gear on the way and with recent changes and loot rewards it will be even better for them.
P2P trading would also put certain ultra-rare items beyond the reach of some people, because you can only reach a very small percentage of the playerbase at a time. And these are exactly the items that people would want to sell off the tradepost, because the tax on them is huge.
Of course, people would find ways around that, through auction websites, and once such 3rd party resources exist, more and more items will go through those instead of the BL TP, because everyone wants to avoid tax where possible.
The end result would end up being exactly what we have now, except split up over several browser-based trade meet-up ‘tradeposts’ where there’s no tax. Buyer convenience would suffer severely and we’d probably end up with other gold sinks to complain about, that compensate for the loss of the current TP goldsinking.
i dont think i want player to player trading i so hate seeing seeing something in map chat in other games i played. so im fine with the tp and glad about the update they implemented
As a big trader in Spamadam I was skeptical of BLTC but I NEVER EVER want to go back to player trading.
And the main reasons
No spam chat
Having to trawl through player listings
It is so much easier to find want you want on BLTC
Easier to sell
And so much more time in game rather than in selling mode.
The one downside I dislike is the 5% listing penalty if you take something off the market but it is probably an important mechanic to make people list correctly in the first place.
For those mentioning GW1, how long ago did you quit ? Because once the party search was correctly done, there was pretty much no trade spam left (unless you ticked on /trade).
For those mentioning GW1, how long ago did you quit ? Because once the party search was correctly done, there was pretty much no trade spam left (unless you ticked on /trade).
right up to gw2 coming out it got less in map but still people did and al the scamming going on you had to check everything good plus scrolling through the windows or watching the trade chat window plus trading wasnt global the tp in gw2 is way easier .
The problem, RedStar, was that in order to get a full description of what people were selling you HAD to keep an eye on the chat. The party window cut off a good portion of what people were posting and the only way to read the whole thing was to keep the spam chat open.
Corwin Grimjaw: Guardian (80)
Yak’s Bend Server
Crimethink [ct]
I’m against direct trading. While it might squash some niche cases (Ashen’s underselling, for example, or selling potions to party members in a dungeon,) I think the Trading Post is better in the vast majority of cases. I haven’t forgotten how great it was at launch to be rid of trade spam, and it makes buying/selling a lot more straightforward.
Sounds like some people don’t want direct trading as much as they want looser theft detection, so they can send more items to their friends without the system thinking they’re clearing out a stolen account. That’s a valid complaint, but direct trading is tangential to actually solving that particular complaint.
P2P trading would also put certain ultra-rare items beyond the reach of some people, because you can only reach a very small percentage of the playerbase at a time. And these are exactly the items that people would want to sell off the tradepost, because the tax on them is huge.
Of course, people would find ways around that, through auction websites, and once such 3rd party resources exist, more and more items will go through those instead of the BL TP, because everyone wants to avoid tax where possible.
The end result would end up being exactly what we have now, except split up over several browser-based trade meet-up ‘tradeposts’ where there’s no tax. Buyer convenience would suffer severely and we’d probably end up with other gold sinks to complain about, that compensate for the loss of the current TP goldsinking.
No thanks!
This is a thought-out and well-written assessment of a likely problem. If they did implement direct trading, I’d still like to see taxes on it. Yeah, it’s aggravating to have to pay a lot of gold out of a high-end transaction, but if it applies to everyone, it’s just the cost of doing business. If it didn’t apply to direct trading, the whole trading post is going to get undermined by third-party solutions just to avoid taxes, to say nothing about what happens to the gold sink aspect of it.
Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.
I fail to see how anyone can get legitimately scammed when trading comes down to “put things in this box, look at them, look at what the other party has put in the box, ready up if you agree, changing anything unreadies both parties”. Not reading item names/paying attention is your own fault.
“Legitimate scam” or not, if people complain and are unhappy about it, it becomes a customer service / customer satisfaction problem. The goal isn’t cut-throat capitalism, it’s customer satisfaction.
It’s partially the victim’s fault, sure, and partially the scammer’s. Just because you can sell Mursaat Tokens to careless players doesn’t mean you should if they’re expecting ectos.
ANet did Player to Player commerce in GW1. That is exactly why they won’t even consider doing it in GW2. Their experience in Guild Wars 1 was their teacher, and they learned their lesson well. (Why do you think their spam filters are so rigid in this game?)
In Player to Player trading, ANet could not be at fault for any bad transactions, whether an intentional scam or an honest mistake. But many victims would complain to ANet anyway. When ANet didn’t rescue them from their own mistake, then ANet themselves often got bad-mouthed. Nobody was happy (except the scammers, and so they thrived.)
For that reason alone, you can put this discussion to bed. This company is not going to go through that headache a second time.
(We, the GW1 players, petitioned ANet for years to create an “auction house” because we saw firsthand all the havoc that Player to Player trading wrought upon our game.)
Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm all day.
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.
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Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.
I fail to see how anyone can get legitimately scammed when trading comes down to “put things in this box, look at them, look at what the other party has put in the box, ready up if you agree, changing anything unreadies both parties”. Not reading item names/paying attention is your own fault.
Fault or not, people are tired, people have been drinking, people are distracted by real life. They have insomnia, they’re on medication..there’s a whole plethora of reasons why someone might make that mistake.
The fault is always with the scammer. If people didn’t scam, it wouldn’t matter.
Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.
I fail to see how anyone can get legitimately scammed when trading comes down to “put things in this box, look at them, look at what the other party has put in the box, ready up if you agree, changing anything unreadies both parties”. Not reading item names/paying attention is your own fault.
Fault or not, people are tired, people have been drinking, people are distracted by real life. They have insomnia, they’re on medication..there’s a whole plethora of reasons why someone might make that mistake.
The fault is always with the scammer. If people didn’t scam, it wouldn’t matter.
Oops, I bought something on the TP that I didn’t mean to because I was drunk/tired/medicated/whatever, it’s clearly not my fault and the TP is a bad design.
EDIT: It’s also worth noting that just because the option to trade directly exists, there’s nothing forcing you to use it if you find it too risky. I miss the direct interaction and haggling that system offers. Being asked to craft something for someone and getting a tip out of it is nice; makes craft skills feel useful rather than just a means to creating end-game gear for your own characters.
It’s important that direct trading isn’t more efficient than the TP, or the spamming starts, as people want to skip out on taxes. Even if taxes are applied to direct trading, we could still get chat advertisements, as people try to take advantage of those others not checking an item’s value. You might know that Orichalcum Ore is 5s72c selling and 4s87s buying, and I might know it, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to get someone shouting “WTB Ori Ore 4s/ea” in Lion’s Arch map chat. Even if we know better than to take that offer, we’re still hearing it.
As it is now, it’s very rare I hear anyone peddling in chat, because (insecure) off-TP trading is such an unpopular method. We could hope they’d all stick to /trade, but I’d rather keep that door shut entirely.
Here’s a curious thought: If people started direct-trading items for items, bypassing gold, I’m not sure what kind of effects that might have. Would it be taxable? Should it be taxable? Could a second economy theoretically form around an item currency, like ectos in GW1?
Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.
I fail to see how anyone can get legitimately scammed when trading comes down to “put things in this box, look at them, look at what the other party has put in the box, ready up if you agree, changing anything unreadies both parties”. Not reading item names/paying attention is your own fault.
Fault or not, people are tired, people have been drinking, people are distracted by real life. They have insomnia, they’re on medication..there’s a whole plethora of reasons why someone might make that mistake.
The fault is always with the scammer. If people didn’t scam, it wouldn’t matter.
Oops, I bought something on the TP that I didn’t mean to because I was drunk/tired/medicated/whatever, it’s clearly not my fault and the TP is a bad design.
The TP will happily let you sell any excess items back. Scammers don’t.
It’s an anti-scam measure. I doubt there will ever be true player to player trading. So if you manage to trust someone enough, tade by mail, or use the trading post. Those are your options.
I find it about 50/50 fault. Yeah, scammers offer stupid deals and screw you over, but seeing as you were dumb enough to fall for it, it’s just as much you as the scammer. Takes two to tango, y’know.
I play Fort Aspenwood, I lead the 8 member guild, Sacred Storm [Strm] I am Jason Goes Mental.
I don’t raid, I barely fractal, and I suck beyond words at PvP and WvW.
But I try, and that’s what counts.
Here’s a curious thought: If people started direct-trading items for items, bypassing gold, I’m not sure what kind of effects that might have. Would it be taxable? Should it be taxable? Could a second economy theoretically form around an item currency, like ectos in GW1?
Pedantic reminder: the GW1 economy wasn’t built around ectos because of anything special about the mat, it was because you couldn’t trade more than 99,999 gold in one session. Using ectos, valued at 6-10k each, allowed sellers to get more than 100k/item.
Consequently, without a need for substitute currency, I’m not sure such a market would develop.
Impact reminder: the fact that ectos were a commodity without fixed value also allowed power traders to take advantage of novices: it was often harder for people to notice that they were overpaying (or being underpaid) relative to ecto’s market prices.
So that’s another good reason for not creating a convenient P2P trading mechanism.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I know ectos weren’t special; that’s kinda the point, that they were an uncommon item that gained special importance as a makeshift currency thanks to some advantage. Their advantage over gold in GW1 was that you could use them to trade over the currency limit, while the GW2 version’s advantage would be that you could trade them tax free.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s a good example of a bartering good that mutates into makeshift currency.
I know ectos weren’t special; that’s kinda the point, that they were an uncommon item that gained special importance as a makeshift currency thanks to some advantage. Their advantage over gold in GW1 was that you could use them to trade over the currency limit, while the GW2 version’s advantage would be that you could trade them tax free.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s a good example of a bartering good that mutates into makeshift currency.
Oh! I see what you mean now. And yes, if a P2P tool taxed coin transactions only, people would use barter transactions to avoid the fees. Good point (and my apologies for missing it in the first place).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Not at all- it’s kinda a strange line of thought, but one I found interesting. If players could trade items for items, that would either bypass taxes, or they’d have to cook up a formula for taxing them, which would probably be a bit of a mess.
Not at all- it’s kinda a strange line of thought, but one I found interesting. If players could trade items for items, that would either bypass taxes, or they’d have to cook up a formula for taxing them, which would probably be a bit of a mess.
Or nerf more stuff in the game so it’s even harder to obtain gold.
I know ectos weren’t special; that’s kinda the point, that they were an uncommon item that gained special importance as a makeshift currency thanks to some advantage. Their advantage over gold in GW1 was that you could use them to trade over the currency limit, while the GW2 version’s advantage would be that you could trade them tax free.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s a good example of a bartering good that mutates into makeshift currency.
#StonesOfJordan 5 gold to the first in game mail i get for identifying the game this was a “currency” in.
That’s the fault of the player though. All of that could be avoided on closer inspection. I also don’t see how that’s any different than the TP. Players that don’t pay attention to numbers can also buy things with extra 0’s, or sell things by mistake.
Your reasoning is illogical, by grossly exaggerating your argument that people would be quitting because of scams, which in turn would reduce the playerbase to “megaserver” status (i hope you see the irony). A lot of MMO companies have a policy where they don’t reimburse player’s because of their own inattentiveness, including Anet, and for good reason.
I should’ve been more clear though, i wasn’t specifically talking about the TP only. I was mostly talking about the Mail system, and how it’s less convenient than p2p interaction, since both players cannot accept the deal to confirm the trade through the mailing system. The suppression limit is also less convenient.
The difference between the two is that in one of them, a player is deliberately setting out to defraud another. Yes, I’ll agree that people can make mistakes using the TP, but in that scenario, they really don’t have anyone to blame but themselves. But if they got cheated by another player, then it is well within their rights to demand action from ANet (at least to get the scammer get banned for their crime). I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say that people would quit if scamming went unpunished too; would you stay in a game where somebody blatantly ripped you off and then got away scot free?
Not to mention that some players HAVE managed to get refunds for inattentive behaviour too. There’s stories of players getting refunds after they accidentally bought two of the same Ascended Ring, or buying the wrong Precursor. It’s done on a case by case basis.
I WILL agree with you that the suppression limit can be rather draconian. It would be nice if there was a way you could add a “this person is a trusted messenger” flag to friends so that you can send them large amounts of mats etc. to help them out with something, but that could also potentially be abused by gold sellers.
At the end of the day though, I’m 100% certain that ANet will not introduce a p2p trading system because it would allow players to bypass the TP taxes, which is the game’s crucial gold sink. And if p2p trades ALSO got taxed at the same rate, I bet you’d see everybody sticking to using the TP anyway. (Let’s face it. The biggest reason why players want a p2p trade system is so they can avoid paying taxes.)
What people overlook about p2p trading is the inherent inferiority of your market size. Assuming its a similar system to what gw1 had, spam aside, you could only reach ppl in the zone you were in.
Personally I haven’t got a problem helping a newbie here and there by gifting them items, mats or gold. This is a game and items aren’t physically worth anything after all. Except to Anet
3. Those that think they can same money buy avoiding the fees and taxes.
“Psst. Buddy. I can get you a deal on some ectos that fell off the back of a Dolyak.”
I kind of wrapped that in with “scamming the system”, but yeah. Trying to skirt the tax system that helps the game.
paying tax helps the game in the same way that deleting your gold helps the game.
p2p trading has advantages for players.
not having to pay before you sell an item of value
setting up deals with repeat customers
not having your price determined by last sell
discussion of prices.
now, personally i dont care too much because i wouldnt use p2p trading often anyhow, but to claim its only useful for scammers and idiots is completely inaccurate.
paying tax helps the game in the same way that deleting your gold helps the game.
p2p trading has advantages for players.
not having to pay before you sell an item of value
setting up deals with repeat customers
not having your price determined by last sell
discussion of prices.
now, personally i dont care too much because i wouldnt use p2p trading often anyhow, but to claim its only useful for scammers and idiots is completely inaccurate.
I didn’t claim it was only useful for scammers and “idiots” (your words, not mine), I said that the only people who want it are scammers and the uneducated.
It is your representation of what I said that is inaccurate, not what I said.
Ability to send something COD through the mail would be nice. Works well in another MMO. If buyer doesn’t pay, they don’t get the item. Great for trades. Avoids scams.
Ability to send something COD through the mail would be nice. Works well in another MMO. If buyer doesn’t pay, they don’t get the item. Great for trades. Avoids scams.
It does not avoid scams. It prevents people from shipping an item without paying, which is not the same thing. It will not prevent people from misrepresenting the value of the item(s) they trade.
P2P trading allows savvy traders to take advantage less educated players, about how easily items are obtained, market prices, and so forth. The TP already offers goods at market price, it already allows you to set you own price.
It doesn’t allow bargaining, which saddens me, because I find it to be one of the most enjoyable aspects of MMOs. But that’s a small price to pay for having a system that is fair, incredibly efficient about exchanging goods, and one of the best MMO gold sinks ever created.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Ability to send something COD through the mail would be nice. Works well in another MMO. If buyer doesn’t pay, they don’t get the item. Great for trades. Avoids scams.
And ANet could put a 15% tax on the COD amount, too. To prevent COD spam.
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I’d love to have a normal trade function as well, in order to trade stuff with people without paying a 15% fee -_-
You can trade with people now, avoid fees entirely. What the game is unlikely to see is a dedicated mechanic for P2P trading, for all of the reasons covered in this post and several others.
The TP does nearly everything that P2P does, it does so more efficiently and without the need for Support to be involved. It only lacks the bartering aspect, that many of us (including myself) enjoy. Since that’s still possible using mail, albeit with higher risk, I don’t see ANet deciding to spend effort to make it easier for people to bypass the TP.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I’d love to have a normal trade function as well, in order to trade stuff with people without paying a 15% fee -_-
Which will never, ever happen because the entire point of the TP is to force you to pay the 15% fee so that money supply can be removed from the game, combatting inflation.
They will NOT give you a way to bypass the system because the system REQUIRES mass participation to work.
