Guild Wars 2

Since it’s impossible to fill orders beneath NPC price, couldn’t you make it impossible to place the order in the first place?

In fact, could you also make it impossible to place a buy order for an item that can’t be sold period (such as Lemons) to clear up some of the clutter?

That’s how it works right now, however there is a few “below vendor value” orders left from people that have ordered before this was taken into place.

:edit: Ah man ninjad by John Smith himself.

however, i think its possible to place/fill an order that is under [vendor price] * 1,176, witch is just stupid becaus the seller still looses money on it. ( 1.176 * .85 = 1)
so in order for the seller to earn money the lowest price should be [vendorprice] * 1,176.
however this might allready be in place, im not sure.

Thats still not right.
You should forbid pricing lower than NPC vendor price +15% tax cost.
So essentially the lowest selling limit for any item should be :
= (vendor selling price) + (15% tax)

The 1.176 takes into account the taxing of the extra added to pay the 15% tax. Simply using Vendor*1.15 would only work if they didn’t tax the extra 15% along with the base vendor price.

1.176 do take into account for the 15% of taxes they take. and here is proof

1,15 * 0,85 = 0,9775

1.176 * 0.85 = 1

you can test this with your calculator and see that it’s correct.

I would also like to adjust the formula to this:

([venodor value] +1) * 1,176 = the lowest possible price

:edit:
Man, ninjad again!

Actually that would be vender price +15% +1c in order to maintain the 1c higher than vender. I’m not sure if someone thought about that when the fee was implemented. As I see it there is no way someone thought hey lets make the minimum price 1c above vender but expect players to lose coin over selling to the vender to sell on the TP due to the fee. Which is why I’m pretty sure the minimum price was set and then later on the fee coded into the TP forgetting that the minimum price was vender price +1c. Even during the beta no thought would have been given to that since everything was at least listed for twice vender value so unless you happen to be the first person to list something you didn’t even see the minimum value default.

I think what people are asking for is
floor(v/0.85) + 1
where v is the vendor price.

On the whole, it doesn’t really matter that much though.

I have twice found items listed for sale below vendor price.

lackofcheese.5617 I guess whichever is best to make sure there is at least 1c profit over the vender price. When using 10c vender price the difference between v/0.85 + 1 and v * 0.15 + 1 is 0.2c. at 100c (1s) the difference is 2.647c. So the floor price is actually 3-4c over vender. at 10,000c (1g) the difference is 264.7c (2s 64.7c).

The situation is more complicated than any of that and most obvious with low value items:

You have 1,000 widgets which vendor for 1c a piece.

If you sell 1 widget at the minimum of vendor + 1c your listing fee is calculated as 2c*.05 (.1c). That is .1c which is rounded up to 1c. If someone buys it there is a 10% tax which is 2c*.1 (.2c) which is rounded up to 1c. So you have 2c in fees and revenue of 2c which is 100% in fees. In this example at 200% of vendor price the profit is 0% of vendor price (major loss).

If instead you sell all 1,000 in one go: Listing fee is 1,000*2c*.05(100c). If someone buys all 1,000 at a time your taxes are 1,000*2c*.1(200c). You have 300c in fees on a 2000c transaction which is the (not really) advertised 15% in fees. Again at 200% of vendor price the profit is 170% of vendor price (significant profit).

If on the other hand 1,000 people buy 1 widget a piece the listing fee is still 100c but the taxes are now ceiling(2c*.1)*1,000 or 1,000c. Now you 1,100 in fees on the 2,000c transaction. Finally at 200% of vendor price the profit is 90% of vendor price (minor loss).

Between example 2 and 3 the seller did the exact same thing it was the behavior of the buyers that changed. This is why the profit in the UI is only an estimate and setting a guaranteed profit number the would be appropriate for people with different comfort levels with risk would be difficult.

yes, you are right nephlm. it becomes quite weird on very low numbers. but even then it makes even less sense that the floor is at v+1c … if we use your example with an item worth 1c at vendors. then the placing price would be 1c and then the profit would be between 0 – 0,9*x (where x is the amount of items you listed) not even giving the chance of having a gain.

if we use the v/0,85 + 1c then we would atleas maybe make a profit of it . ( the profit would be somewhere between 0 – (1,7*x*0,85) ( where x is amount of item listed)

yes, profit isn’t guarantied. the only way to be 100% sure to make proffit it is to make it v/.085 +3c at witch point it would also work on very small values.

If you sold 100 items with v of 1c at v+1c, listing fee would be 5c and taxes 10c-100c. So revenue would be 95c-185c vs vendors 100c. I’m not sure how you come away with no possibility of gain with a price of v+1c. Some gain is the most likely outcome. This is made extreme by v+1c being 200% of v, which is a sizable starting margin.

In this case v/0.85 + 1c = 2.17c. Since the minimum v+1c requirement is met, I’m not sure which way this gets rounded. If it’s rounded to 2c, it is the same situations as v+1c. So let’s round up to 3c.

At that point at 100 units listed at 3c the listing fee would be 15c and taxes will be 30c-100c. So revenue would be 185c-255c. If/when they sold it would be guaranteed gain in profit vs vendor price.

A single unit at 3c would cost 1c in listing fee and 1c in taxed leaving 1c in revenue which would match the vendor price.

yepp, you got me agian … i forgot that the listing fee wasnt 1c / unit when they all bunch up. so once again you are right.

but would’t the formula v/0.85 +1c be more accurate ? Sure, it would’t work 100% of the times but it would work as long as the price of the unit is larger than about 20c ( idk for sure i wont bother calculate the exact price right now).

Are you sure the upon sale fee is based on the quantities at which it sold? And not on the total amount of the sale of the listing size? I’m almost certain I listed an item in quantity of 250 for 12c each and it sold in about 8-10 chunks and I got 25s 50c which is the total (250 * 12c) minus 15%.

I agree with Direwolf. The lowest price you can sell for on the TP should should take into account the 15% take of the TP.

Why would Anet need to implement a feature to stop player from listing what would net them a loss? If those players are willing to take a loss my posting on the TP instead of going to a vendor then that is on them.

John Smith.4610:

It’s my understanding that this is already in place. We still have some unfulfillable orders up that we need to clean, but no more should be created.

And you can, in under an hour, write an auto updating SQL script to clean them all up.

It’s not hard if you cheat and use Excel to set up your values.

Colonel Kernel.7506:

John Smith.4610:

It’s my understanding that this is already in place. We still have some unfulfillable orders up that we need to clean, but no more should be created.

And you can, in under an hour, write an auto updating SQL script to clean them all up.

It’s not hard if you cheat and use Excel to set up your values.

Yes, I do not understand why those under-valued items are still there. Any decent DBA could come up with a pretty easy SQL that sets them all to ’’cancelled’’ and makes them available for pickup at the TP.

Something like…

update TP_DB
set cancel_switch.TP_DB to TRUE
where item_ID.TP_DB in
(select item_ID.TP_DB
from TP_DB, merchant_DB
where offer_price.TP_DB < buy_price.merchant_DB
and type_item.TP_DB = type_item.TP_merchant)

… or something like that (has been a few years since I wrote an SQL, lol).

Am I the only one think it should be the other way around? Instead of limiting the lowest bid, it should open to sell at lower than vender price. There are reasons to lose money selling on TP, as you can sell from anywhere. To get vender price you have to leave whatever you are doing and run to a vender.

No, that suggestion has been brought up elsewhere, too. The argument being that if people are already willing to sell at a loss (since selling at or just above vendor price only gets you about 85% vendor price after taxes), let them do so. Nothing wrong with the most abundant items being the cheapest.

(And stuff would likely never fall much below vendor price, anyway, since at that point it’s profitable to buy up all the cheap things on the TP and flip them to a vendor for a guaranteed (albeit small) profit.)

The problem is buying at less than vender value while may benefit those few that want a freebie more or less to use but it doesn’t benefit the game. Think about it. If you could buy the items for less than vender value and people actually sell the items then you can turn around and vender them and make money. And that is why they would never allow items to sell for less than the vender value. Too easy to exploit. And not the same as being smart and flipping items for profit. Since there is risk involved in flipping. But buying for less than vender value is guaranteed gain (no risk).

Yesturday I sold a stack of 250 green wood at 9c each. It sold in two lots (164 and 86) my proceeds after the sale was 20s 25c. I can’t seem to get what I made to line up with the fees even with rounding. Every way I run the numbers I calculate less than that amount. Not that I’m complaining but I’m posting the info as I said I would next time I remembered to check on the sale of a stack. Any incite?

Why should it bother ArenaNet that some people may make a profit? Besides, it does benefit the game, because 15% of the sale price goes into a gold sink, and gold going into gold sinks is generally good for the game. Besides that, it would pretty quickly become the case that most items have buy orders at 1c below vendor, so the profits would typically be negligible.

Having the ability to sell an item for less than vendor value is an option that people may want to take advantage of for plenty of reasons. Saving the time, effort, or inventory space required to visit a vendor could easily justify that 15% loss to someone – who are you to decide for someone else whether they should be able to do this?

Oh my I forgot what thread my reply was in and my reply wasn’t on topic. I think I revived a sort of getting old thread. I posted the following in another thread on the same OP of selling through the TP for less than vender value. I hadn’t thought of it before, but if items can sell on the TP for less than vender value then they can be bought and then sold to the vender to make a profit. While in theory selling lower is giving someone a good deal if they are going to use the item it is not beneficial in the whole as it ends up being an infinite source of income.

It’s not an infinite source of income, because it’s limited by the amount of stuff that gets sold. There are plenty of ways to make money on the TP, and frankly this wouldn’t even be a very good one if it was available.

Think about all the trash that gets listed on the TP at vender value now. If all of it were listed for less than vender value then anyone could go in and buy it all vender then rinse and repeat for as long as people are too crazy to list it for less. The reason it is all listed that way now is because the floor price is what it is, with a floor of less than vender value then that stuff would get listed for whatever the floor is just like it is now. With literally millions of items listed every day like that there is no way that it wouldn’t be an infinite source.

That’s not a very good use of the word “infinite”.

More importantly, though, competition between people wanting to profit off such items would result in lots of buy orders at vendor-1c, so there wouldn’t even be that much income to be had.

I don’t really see why you think that it would be detrimental.

I may have misunderstood in part your post. The problem wouldn’t be as bad with buy orders for less than vender value. I thought you meant sell listings for less than vender price. So yes buy order competition would reduce such an attempt to profit that way. So I guess perhaps with that in mind it’s not as bad as l was thinking when I thought we were talking about listing items for sale for less than vender value.

But out side of those recent thoughts I still stand by my original position of there is no point to selling stuff for less than the vender gives you for it. That price is already so low that if there is any demand at all for the item it will sell. Heck even the trash loot I think has a little demand at the low levels for people who want to go fast salvage achievement. Though if you play enough in a month that wouldn’t be needed. I don’t think you can profit off of the salvaging but it would be a cheap and fast easy complete.

Clearly you’d be allowing both sell and buy orders, and not just one or the other.

As for selling below vendor price, while there is generally little reason to do it, I see even less reason to stop people from doing it. After all, someone might want to do it for items that will pretty much never sell at vendor+1c, but they might not want to go to a vendor to sell it for whatever reason.

As for people who do it without really thinking about it, they might end up better off as well – having an item sell below vendor price is better than leaving it up to never sell at all.

If there was a time limit on all orders, this would solve a lot of the issues.

No, once again, it wouldn’t.

People (maybe just you? I don’t really pay attention) keep saying this, but have yet to provide any evidence to satisfactorily back it up. A time limit would hurt the convenience of the TP without providing any real benefit, since those same orders could just be re-posted whenever they expire.

If someone wants to leave hundreds of gold (or an item worth hundreds of gold) just sitting at the TP indefinitely, why not let them?

@Hippo,

Because it allows people to fight for a sale.

Placing a bid below the item’s vendor price should not be possible I still see many items with them like that. It needs to be fixed.

Jia Shen.4217:

Yesturday I sold a stack of 250 green wood at 9c each. It sold in two lots (164 and 86) my proceeds after the sale was 20s 25c. I can’t seem to get what I made to line up with the fees even with rounding. Every way I run the numbers I calculate less than that amount. Not that I’m complaining but I’m posting the info as I said I would next time I remembered to check on the sale of a stack. Any incite?

250 × 9c = 22s25c.
You pay 10% sellers fee and thus keep 90%.
22c25c * 0.9 = 20s25c exactly the amount that you got.

Note that you also paid a 5% listing fee, but that is paid when you place it on the TP, not when it sells. The 5% is also harder to see, because it is taken from your inventory.

Hippocampus.8470:

A time limit would hurt the convenience of the TP without providing any real benefit, since those same orders could just be re-posted whenever they expire.

They can be reposted, but you got to pay 5% to list an item… People will not just list an item at some crazy price anymore when they got to pay 5% rach time they relist, they will try to get their item sold before it expires.

In my opinion, this is a good thing.

Cabbage.4085:

@Hippo,

Because it allows people to fight for a sale.

Placing a bid below the item’s vendor price should not be possible I still see many items with them like that. It needs to be fixed.

Because what allows people to fight for a sale? Can they not do that already? Could they not also continue to do that with time limits?

You can’t place a bid below the vendor price. They just haven’t cleaned out those old orders yet. Why does it need to be fixed, though? It’s not as if seeing those impossible offers actually affects anything in terms of your ability to trade things.

Tallis.5607:

Hippocampus.8470:

A time limit would hurt the convenience of the TP without providing any real benefit, since those same orders could just be re-posted whenever they expire.

They can be reposted, but you got to pay 5% to list an item… People will not just list an item at some crazy price anymore when they got to pay 5% rach time they relist, they will try to get their item sold before it expires.

In my opinion, this is a good thing.

People already incur a cost if they put an item up for too much money. They pay the 5% listing fee, and they don’t have that item in their inventory ready to sell again.

But what possible benefit is there to forcing them to relist it? If something only sells below, say, 50g, then only those other people smart enough to price their items below 50g will ever sell them. This will in no way be affected at all by the irrelevant presence of someone else’s 100g listing.

If, however, the price eventually rises, why do you think someone who priced an item high earlier on should be punished for that foresight, and forced to repay 5% to relist their item at the price people are now willing to pay?

—

Like I said: still no convincing evidence that time limits would accomplish anything apart from penalizing people who don’t pile onto only those orders likely to sell in the next couple of days or whatever.

>> But what possible benefit is there to forcing
>> them to relist it?

They won’t relist it if they have to pay 5% each time. It is not just a matter of time limits, but also of having to pay the 5% fee each time. They will lower the price so that it sells. They have to.

Take the following example…
Seller 1 : asks 1g
Seller 2 : asks 1g
Seller 3 : asks 1g
Seller 4 : asks 1g
Seller 5 : asks 10g
Seller 6 : asks 10g
Seller 7 : asks 10g

When you have no relist cost, seller 5, 6 & 7 will keep their item there forever.

This is a disaster, because sooner or later, someone like me comes along, buys the 4 lowest priced items and relists 1 of them for 9g99 each.

If it sells, I make 5g99.
If it doesn’t sell and someone else undercuts me to 9g98, I place a second on up for 9g97.
If it sells, I make 9g97.
And so on.

Easy peasy money for me.
Result: the price of this item just went up with 900%.

This would be much harder to do when all sellers put their item up for 1g, which would happen when you got to relist and pay 5%: the sellers 5-7 will put up their item for less than 10g when it expires. they won’t pay 50s to relist an item that has virtually no change of selling before it expires again.

If the market will bear 900% higher prices, it means people are willing to buy the item for that much and it was probably underpriced to begin with.

This remains true whether the people listing at 10g originally posted at that price weeks ago, or they just now posted at that price because you bought up all the 1g ones.

You’re basically advocating making it impossible to speculate on future price changes. If the only example you can come up with to support that is an item that was obviously horribly underpriced to begin with, you have yet to make a worthwhile argument.

For a 900% increase to be “bad” in any purely economic sense, it must be the case that people aren’t willing or able to pay that much. If that’s the case, then no one will buy from the 10g listings, and anyone who wants to sell will have to meet a buyer’s offer or list their item lower than 10g. However, if it’s not the case that people are unwilling or unable to pay 10g, then 10g is a fine price.

Lately I am noticing some very strange behavior in the Black Lion Trading Post which I wonder if it is a bug or not. When selling an item that I found, I usually go straight to the Highest Buyer listings right away so that I can clear my inventory and make some cash. However it seems that more and more often, items will have a Highest Buyer price that is actually lower than the vendor Market Value. So the game gives me an error stating something like, “You cannot sell an item for less than the market value”.

1) If that’s the case, then why are there sometimes hundreds Highest Buyer listings for less than the Market Value?
2) Shouldn’t those players be prompted right away to put in a higher bid which is at least Market Value + Seller Listing Fee?
3) If the game prevents us from selling to those Highest Buyers with undermarket bids, then isn’t the money they used to place those bids locked in the system permanently? Or is it eventually released back to those players because no one will ever be able to sell to them?

It seems like a bug to me, but there may be other factors involved that I’m unaware of. Does anyone have any insight on this issue?

It’s old orders that haven’t been cleared yet. New buy orders cannot be placed below vendor price.

Tallis.5607:

250 × 9c = 22s25c.
You pay 10% sellers fee and thus keep 90%.
22c25c * 0.9 = 20s25c exactly the amount that you got.

Note that you also paid a 5% listing fee, but that is paid when you place it on the TP, not when it sells. The 5% is also harder to see, because it is taken from your inventory.

Ah this is where I was messing up, that’s what I get for trying to think when I’m too tired to stay awake and choose to post about it at the same time.

Hay Arena Net, don’t you think it’s about time you cleared out all those old buy orders that can’t be filled?

Just do a mass cancel and refund the money. The players obviously aren’t going to do it. I bet a bunch of them forgot they had those orders, and a bunch more don’t even play the game anymore. If you don’t clear them out, some of them will stay there forever.

Any update on when the unfillable buy orders will be removed? It’s rather annoying to see that message with every second attempted sale.

Also, I’d be in favor of a time-out for sell orders. Make it optional, I’d use it. (Currently I have to manually clean out my sell orders every few days – hardly worth the effort at my level, I might just scrap it all.)

Can’t you just reset all the orders? 4 months later, we are still stuck with some of those orders….

Agreed, anytime I go to place a lot of lower level items for sale I notice tons of 1c orders and even more placed a few coppers below vendor trash sale prices.

A clean up would be much appreciated.

4 months later and no progress on a simple task. Where is this game headed?

sostronk.8167:

4 months later and no progress on an inconsequential task. Where is this game headed?

There. Fixed that for you.

It’s a purely cosmetic change at this point. You cannot interact with them in a meaningful way. There are more pressing problems.

John Smith.4610:

It’s my understanding that this is already in place. We still have some unfulfillable orders up that we need to clean, but no more should be created.

Any ETA on when this will be done? The “Sell Your Stuff” tab of the TP would be much easier to read if the unfulfillable orders were gone.