Guild Wars 2

Will we ever see them implemented into the game? It would make trading much more interesting and open a whole new dimension to the game.

No. There are few enough players who don’t understand the TP as it is. Adding derivatives, no. Just speculate if you think the price will be going up.

Before going into derivatives it would be fantastic to be able to borrow TP tradeable assets to go short dream on though what with all the anti-market central economic planners out there (with quite a couple threads on the 1st page of the BLC forum)

Problem with shorting is that there is infinite downside which can be more than what the shorter has available.

For those who don’t know or understand shorts here’s an outline.

Player 1 wants to short <item>, say Unidentified Dyes, expecting the price to go down over the next <time period>, say a week. So they would borrow 250 Unidentified Dyes from Player 2 for a fee and a promise to return them at the end of the week. Player 1 would then sell those 250 Unidentified Dyes for gold. Now if their price drops, they would buy 250 UniDyes, return them to the Player 2 and pockets the difference.

Problem comes when the price goes up instead. Player 1 still has to return 250 UniDyes by the end date which now may cost more than Player 1 has.

Let’s look at an example with numbers. Say UniDyes are at 30s but Player 1 is betting they will plummet in the next week. They borrow 250 from Player 2 for a 3.75g fee and sells them for a windfall of 63.75g That means the price needs to drop to bellow 24s to make any profit. If it turns out they do drop and Player 1 can buy them at 20s, he ends up with 10g profit. But what if it goes up to 35s? First Player 1 needs 87.5g to place an order or 27.5g more than he got selling them in the first place. Even if they only drop to 25s Player 1 will be out 2.5g.

So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? Right now the TP simply acts as a escrow agent holding both cash and the item. You can’t do this with the short. Player 1 could simply sell off the gold to a RMT and never log in again. Player 2 would be hosed. You would have to have Player 1 establish an account in escrow containing funds well in excess of the value of the shorted item to cover the call. Too messy, too much chance for abuse.

Behellagh.1468:

…
So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? …

I’m sure gnashblade has some means… maybe reach into Player 1’s collections tab and inventory and randomly grab the debt in various high level materials at current price

Join a big guild a do it yourself? ‘Borrow’ from all willing investors in the guild, short their commodity, skin, or whatever item and buy it back at a future date?

KarateKid.5648:

Behellagh.1468:

…
So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? …

I’m sure gnashblade has some means… maybe reach into Player 1’s collections tab and inventory and randomly grab the debt in various high level materials at current price

The whole point of a futures contract is that you don’t have the items when you make the contract. You make money by acquiring the goods cheaply to fulfill the contract in the future. If you have them now, it makes the exercise pointless.

If player 1 can’t come up with the goods, and quits the game, there us nothing for GB to take.

Futures are different than shorts. Two entirely different things. zeibars brought up shorts.

Futures are simply the right to buy X of an item at a particular date. You buy and sell the contract hoping when that date comes around you paid less for the contract than their actual value of that many items on the market. When you hear about oil prices going up or down what is actually being talked about is the futures contract’s price (the one that’s coming due the soonest) going up or down. You can buy a contract on oil that’s due in December and that’s currently $102.44 a barrel for 1000 barrels. If by that time oil is actually $110 a barrel, you got a deal, it it’s $90 then you got hosed because the contract says you will buy them at $102.44 each.

Really it’s just another form of speculation.

Next thing you guys will want is buying on margin.

Behellagh.1468:

Futures are different than shorts. Two entirely different things. zeibars brought up shorts.

Shorting is done with futures and/or forwards. You can’t short sell immediately, it makes no sense.

Wanderer.3248:

KarateKid.5648:

Behellagh.1468:

…
So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? …

I’m sure gnashblade has some means… maybe reach into Player 1’s collections tab and inventory and randomly grab the debt in various high level materials at current price

The whole point of a futures contract is that you don’t have the items when you make the contract. You make money by acquiring the goods cheaply to fulfill the contract in the future. If you have them now, it makes the exercise pointless.

If player 1 can’t come up with the goods, and quits the game, there us nothing for GB to take.

“well, I see you’re all out of crafting materials… say, that’s a nice legendary you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it.” Oh that could never happen, you say? This is the same guy who deserted Lion’s Arch in a time of need.

The TP has already killed much of fantasy and immersion by giving gold to businessmen just as in real life. Lets not feed it more stock exchange features please, I’d hate to leave this game for good.

As a commodities trader, no.
As a conumerologist, BIG NO.

This would do little for but a handful of players and would cause John all sorts of modeling fits. Price volatility would be quite a bit higher and I might add doing it right would take quite a bit of computing power not needed to be wasted on this.

At best, it would make the “economy” (spits when using this term) far less predictable.
At worst, . . . .

KarateKid.5648:

Wanderer.3248:

KarateKid.5648:

Behellagh.1468:

…
So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? …

I’m sure gnashblade has some means… maybe reach into Player 1’s collections tab and inventory and randomly grab the debt in various high level materials at current price

The whole point of a futures contract is that you don’t have the items when you make the contract. You make money by acquiring the goods cheaply to fulfill the contract in the future. If you have them now, it makes the exercise pointless.

If player 1 can’t come up with the goods, and quits the game, there us nothing for GB to take.

“well, I see you’re all out of crafting materials… say, that’s a nice legendary you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it.” Oh that could never happen, you say? This is the same guy who deserted Lion’s Arch in a time of need.

And what if the player has nothing? You can’t force them to keep playing to pay off the debt, like you could IRL.

Wanderer.3248:

KarateKid.5648:

Wanderer.3248:

KarateKid.5648:

Behellagh.1468:

…
So how do you guarantee that Player 1 can make good on returning the borrowed items? …

I’m sure gnashblade has some means… maybe reach into Player 1’s collections tab and inventory and randomly grab the debt in various high level materials at current price

The whole point of a futures contract is that you don’t have the items when you make the contract. You make money by acquiring the goods cheaply to fulfill the contract in the future. If you have them now, it makes the exercise pointless.

If player 1 can’t come up with the goods, and quits the game, there us nothing for GB to take.

“well, I see you’re all out of crafting materials… say, that’s a nice legendary you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it.” Oh that could never happen, you say? This is the same guy who deserted Lion’s Arch in a time of need.

And what if the player has nothing? You can’t force them to keep playing to pay off the debt, like you could IRL.

hmmm, random encounters throughout open world vs some elite “enforcers” out to break a random limb?

EDIT: Such is life trading on margin

How about just letting us trade out of our “to be claimed” funds and setting some basic things like linked orders?