Guild Wars 2

So I have a bunch of stacks of 250 Copper ore in selling. They’ve been listen as 21c for a few days now.
Whenever I put up more. As long as it’s not a full stack (let’s say 200), it sells within minutes.

Why is this?

Because it’s not first in, first out. It stacks. Meaning the last person to match the price will be the first person to sell. I’m not sure if this is intended or not but it’s how it is. Basically, this means there is no reason to underbid unless you think your product won’t sell at the current offer.

Logun.5360:

Because it’s not first in, first out. It stacks. Meaning the last person to match the price will be the first person to sell. I’m not sure if this is intended or not but it’s how it is. Basically, this means there is no reason to underbid unless you think your product won’t sell at the current offer.

First in first out is logical. Why would it be any other way? Last in first out is asinine.

I started suspecting they used a ‘last in first out’ system, but someone on another forum told me that it is most likely a matter of the TP trying to match the sizes of the stacks sellers offer and buyers request so it doesn’t have to break up seller’s stacks when it doesn’t have to. If this is how it is done, that’s pretty unfair.

Here’s an example from a few days ago:

While crafting, I discovered a rune, and I immediately crafted one more because it was sitting in the sweet spot for crafting experience gain.

I posted these 2 identical runes WELL below the lowest asking price, I wanted a quick turnover, so I could reinvest in crafting materials and continue crafting. Well, no such luck I’m afraid! It took me 6 hours to sell it, during which time I periodically checked the status on the TP. I witnessed the number of items at the price I first set rising and falling again and again, getting as high a 7 at one point, and frequently dropping back to 2. My two, that had been on there the longest. Dozens of sales must’ve taken place before mine finally sold.

Whatever the technical reason for this, it’s not exactly a fair way of doing business. I expect to be beaten to a sale by people who undercut me, but I certainly don’t expect to be beaten by people arriving later and selling at the same price.

Had this happen to me multiple times.
I’ve had stacks of 250 set on a reasonable price and they didn’t sell over the whole night!
I then made a stack of 100 and one of 150 (wasting another 5% listing price) for the same exact prices and they sold within seconds.
This is very annoying if you are sitting on a lot of items as I have to periodically check to see if a stack got sold to sell the next -_-

SoulBurn.7596:

Had this happen to me multiple times.
I’ve had stacks of 250 set on a reasonable price and they didn’t sell over the whole night!
I then made a stack of 100 and one of 150 (wasting another 5% listing price) for the same exact prices and they sold within seconds.
This is very annoying if you are sitting on a lot of items as I have to periodically check to see if a stack got sold to sell the next -_-

Well, your and my experience above does seem to point to the problem being with bundled items. Lacking an official answer (so far), I’ll just stop putting big bundles up for sale, or even small bundles if it’s items people tend to buy singles of. If that doesn’t help, at least it won’t hurt either, except for a little bit of extra time spent on the TP.

It is possible that the TP tries to sell a suppliers complete amount in a single trade, so if a buyer purchases 100 copper the TP would make the sale from a seller who listed exactly 100 copper.

The full stacks may be favoured for small sales and not show as sold until the full amount is sold.

I’m just speculating here though.

If they do anything like that, it’s probably completely transparent and innocuous for items traded in large volumes, like base materials. Matching buyer stack size to seller stack size would have a nasty impact on people bundling up things that are usually bought in singles though. Every single bought would be matched by a seller offering a single, and the bundled items would not sell until all singles are gone.

By the way, I have seen stacks I posted shrink, and partial revenue turn up in my pick-up tab. They definitely don’t wait until a stack has been completely sold.

Another notion just crossed my mind: I don’t know if it’s just me or if this happens to everyone, but some things I put up on the TP will be shown as posted “seconds ago” when I look at my status tab, even hours later. If the TP does use a straightforward ‘first in first out’ system but my items are always considered posted just seconds ago, perhaps they get lost in the shuffle because of that.

Whatever the reason, there’s definitely something odd going on with some of my sales.

We need a response on this one. If it really is last in first out it needs to change IMMEDIATELY

The GLOBAL economy depends on it!

But seriously. If we had server based trading posts you wouldn’t be competing with so many people to make this that much of an issue. In the GLOBAL market it’s just ludicrous.

They had someone post saying atm it is last one in first out, and that they are aware of the issue and will fix it.

Well, that’s that answered, thanks! I wish I’d seen that topic before.

For reference: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Last-in-First-out-Please-tell-me-the-TP/first#post104484

While it doesn’t seem like LIFO, there does seem to be a bug at least for stacks of 250.
I haven’t tried selling a stack of 249, but a stack of 190~ got sold in seconds while the stacks of 250 just hang around for hours and likely days.
Also, the time posted shows “seconds ago” even though they were up for a couple of hours, making me think the system just re-queues the large stacks at the end of the line and therefore never selling.

It feels like its last in first out and its annoying. I have so much stuff Im trying to sell stuck in the tp from 2 weeks ago. the price is on par with market sinces its been moving up and down. Its the most annoying issue I have with the tp.

I always assumed that the system was designed to minimise the number of orders being tracked so automatically cleared out smaller orders first to improve performance.

It’s a good way for lowbies to make money on margin trading high volume traffic items like ore, were even if you buy and sell at current prices you will make 1 copper a sale, and by putting through multiple orders at lower stacks your items are turned over first, so no wait or slow turn around to make it unviable – just a steady stream of profit from margin trading thousands of ore or leather.

It’s probably no complicated like an actual stock market with all or none order types where all or none have to be bought or sold in order to complete the buy or sell order. It’s probably more like a open market where I bring X potatoes (for example) and anyone can buy any number of potatoes at the price I’m asking per potato. So say I’m the last person with the cheapest potatoes and someone comes along and wants more potatoes than I have they get whatever I have left and the rest comes from the next cheapest seller(s). I’ve observed this with buying quantities that exceed the quantity from the cheapest seller(s) . I’ve also observed my buy orders filled in pieces from more than one seller. Which means all that matters is that the items are sold FIFO so that everyone who listed at the same price eventually sell their stuff as long as they aren’t undercut with a supply exceed demand scenario.