Guild Wars 2

This is essentially the opposite of Freelancer’s “buy high, sell higher” method of manipulating a market (i.e. sell low, buy lower). Check out the Tales of Tyria podcast on youtube for details.

It is not sustainable for a long period of time, but CAN be used to get deals in the short term. A market will not sustain an abnormally low price over the long run.

One easy way to fix this would be to show the depth when you are selling not just buying.

That way people could see that one guy with 70c and everyone else selling at 3s, they will sell at 3s (and if they are near the TP buy his one 70c order).

They need to show the book on both sides not just buying.

Obie.3268:

I’d love to see the price droppers work on the vanilla bean market. 1s80c for ONE vanilla bean is insane.

It’s that price because it’s rare enough that people are apparently willing to pay that price.

People who undercut the lowest sell offer can’t push the price below the highest buy offers, and those come from people who voluntarily offer to pay that much for an item.

The bully market of (This is the price and there is no way for you to check that, you just got to take my word for it) Ideology of the original GW is why I never bought a single thing from ANYONE EVER in that game. at least in THIS market its something people can track. Yes, it CAN be manipulated upwards too if one is so inclined. as happens in other games. people buy up all the thousands of the items for the amount Below their price just so the availability is only that of their higher price. Thus cornering the market. they then resell those previously bought cheaper items for a insane profit. Thus playing the marketing game. The sticky downwards trend right now will be a dream soon once certain exploiters get their resources accumulated enough they can inflate the markets through the stratosphere. The good part is demand will never get THAT high because we can get all the items in the game ourselves too. Lest say Iron ore was cornered and all the sudden every iron ore was listed at 50 silver. (never gonna happen) well all that would do is encourage everyone to mine Iron ore and try to sell for a cheaper price… and THAT is the balance to the system.

That being said the Bug on custom bids NEEDS to be fixed somehow. They cant be able to make bids for something that sellers are unable to list the item for that price because its under base value and the market will not let it do so. if we cant list it for that price they cant be able to BID for it below that price. it totally screwes up the market tracking system. so that just has to be fixed is all… then things will run as its suppose too.

wait a minute, you want to try to make sense of the economy in gw2 after 1 month of being live….am i the only idiot that sees this as a pointless endevour?

5-6 months down the line this will still happen but the effects will be less when there is more money in the players pockets.

1 year down the line this will still happen…same with all mmo games, and the effects will be lessoned still due to increased money in players pockets.

Precisely, which is why you put into place a balance now at the beginning to keep that inflation from being artificially manipulated and exploited. Thus years down the line prices are higher yes but not skyrocketing…

The key point to my post was that expiring bids and sales eventually will clear the artificial demand curve we currently have due to the market bug where supply can not meet the demanded bid cause of the price floor on posting items. thus the minimum bid can not ever be supplied. I’m all for the price floor at merchant values. cause people should sell tot he merchant if the price is not appropriate. this keeps supply in check. Conversely Demand is in check with expiration because if a price is too high that the market is unwilling to waste money on that item its not there forever. its expires and the seller is given an opportunity to lower their price to meet the demand curve. Of course they could repost at their same inflated price, but they pay a price for that inflation in their listing fee. So eventually they are ENCOURAGED to want to sell their item. Not just have it sit on the market being warehoused there, hoping for a sucker.

mulch.2586:

I just love the thread title. “kinda” and “completely” make a great pair

Now that you mention it, that’s truly funny.

to the OP:
it is called a free economy ruled by mathematically challenged teens. Even without the phenomenon you describe, which in itself is hilariously funny – mental note: gotta try myself – people are still selling items way below their actual cost, as they are unable to add 1+1 together.

The fact that I leveled several professions to 400 spending only half the money it would have taken me were I to make every component myself from raw materials tells a lot about the mental state of players and the resulting state of the market.

With every crafted item, it will always be a buyers market, as there are way more people doing the crafting, than there are players who would actually need the crafted items.. why would they? Leveling a craft to 400 only takes like a few hours and some minimal gold investment after all and then they can make their items cheaper while also gain about 10 levels in the process.

The fact that you are complaining about the prices of cooking items is extra spicy, to stick with the theme. Cooking is the laughing stock of all the professions of the game. Even the most useful crafts: lv400 MF food are trivial to make and require virtually no effort on the side of the person making it.

You get the recipes for free, you get the required materials in abundance and to top it all off, the bonus it gives is kinda ridiculous anyway, so even if you do not use those food buffs, you will feel virtually no difference.

You want to make money off the BLT? Stop looking at crafted stuff, and start trading. Abusing the same stupidity you observed so keenly will net you way more money on the long run (or even on the short run), than trying to make pennies on crafting worthless junk (food).

Alternatively, you can be a nice drone like so many others and grind your way to richness. See you when you get there, in 5 to 10 years.

I think it’s an interface problem, and like the idea of at least being able to see median price when selling.

Wouldn’t this tactic be a form of scamming and be a violation of the rules? Sort of like the bait and switch scams of player to player trades in GW1. Except in this case they are using the sell at lowest seller price as the bait and switch instead of an item that looks like another but isn’t. Unless these individuals aren’t making out with a lot of gold then this might not be seen as a rules violation thing (aka not a scam). I mean it is one thing to want to give others a deal but it is another thing to cut a price way down on one thing to snatch up all the supply from the lazy people who don’t care to pay attention to what they are selling at. The problem here is that the victims probably don’t even realize they are being victimized. Which makes the scam even worse.

No, it’s not a form of scamming.

The responsibility is on the player for not taking the time to research the price of the item they are selling. Granted, the interface doesn’t makes this easy…but that doesn’t takes the responsibility away from the player. Not everything is spoon fed. This thread reveals a more severe underlying flaw on player’s mentality where they expect the game developer to spoon fed them with everything…much like what nanny government is going to their subject citizens just because no one wants to take responsibility that they failed through their own action and suffer some consequences

I see so then this isn’t some sort of way to exploit the TP into making things list for less than what people are thinking they are listing for; just people not reading to see that they are listing something for too little? In that case then I’m not sure what could be done to prevent people from doing something stupid then because if they just click I’m not sure if there would be any info you could display that would stop them form stupidly clicking. However as a player who likes to check what the prices are before deciding what to sell at perhaps it would be of benefit to provide the price list in the UI when selling an item along with the existing options. Chart data would be nice too. I seem to recall there being a chart in the UI for something on the TP during some or all of the beta.

You can’t fix stupid without first admitting to it, wanting to change, then learn. All these crying for dev to put in mechanisms to protect stupid only serves to remove the repercussion of being stupid.

Removing the limit to sell at above vendor price will let the price fall to a lower level…so people looking to get cheap item can benefit from that. For those using TP as a storage, they can still list it at vendor price, collect it later and sell to vendor at a 5% lost. However, I don’t see how the price will fall much with removing the restrictions…rational and informed player won’t sell it less than vendor…better to pay the 5% listing fee, de-list it, then sell to vendor. For those selling well below (for any reason), yes, others can profit by buying them…but it will take effort, in which the reward is the profit…I don’t see anything wrong with that.

I’ts 100% intentional and now it’s probably 75% automated. Good luck on buying low and selling high anymore.

Not trying to be rude REFLHEX but you clearly don’t have an understanding of economy 101. When a market starts out most of the prices will be inflated ie. priced higher than what they are really worth to the people making the market. There is a demand and a supply for every item. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand where these lines cross is called the “equilibrium.” This is the price where the supplied item settles at a price that the seller will sell the most at that designated price. If it is a highly traded, inflated, item ie priced higher than the equilibrium, drops and is traded in a higher volume then that is proof it was inflated in the first place. In a free economy all is fair. If you don’t like it (pardon my candor) but don’t be apart of it. I would hate to see you use the NYSE. You would feel cheated every day. But that’s just the way the market works.

If you buy up an item for 2s and post it for 75c, and 100 more get posted at that same price, then you have 100 people selling for every person buying. If there’s anyone who wanted it, then it would have be bought up when the price dropped. I think what you’re seeing is people who had listed it for a high ammount, then later realized it wasn’t worth that much, so they lowered their price hoping it would sell. And even then, it didn’t.

csebal.5936:

mulch.2586:

I just love the thread title. “kinda” and “completely” make a great pair

Now that you mention it, that’s truly funny.

to the OP:
it is called a free economy ruled by mathematically challenged teens. Even without the phenomenon you describe, which in itself is hilariously funny – mental note: gotta try myself – people are still selling items way below their actual cost, as they are unable to add 1+1 together.

The fact that I leveled several professions to 400 spending only half the money it would have taken me were I to make every component myself from raw materials tells a lot about the mental state of players and the resulting state of the market.

With every crafted item, it will always be a buyers market, as there are way more people doing the crafting, than there are players who would actually need the crafted items.. why would they? Leveling a craft to 400 only takes like a few hours and some minimal gold investment after all and then they can make their items cheaper while also gain about 10 levels in the process.

The fact that you are complaining about the prices of cooking items is extra spicy, to stick with the theme. Cooking is the laughing stock of all the professions of the game. Even the most useful crafts: lv400 MF food are trivial to make and require virtually no effort on the side of the person making it.

You get the recipes for free, you get the required materials in abundance and to top it all off, the bonus it gives is kinda ridiculous anyway, so even if you do not use those food buffs, you will feel virtually no difference.

You want to make money off the BLT? Stop looking at crafted stuff, and start trading. Abusing the same stupidity you observed so keenly will net you way more money on the long run (or even on the short run), than trying to make pennies on crafting worthless junk (food).

Alternatively, you can be a nice drone like so many others and grind your way to richness. See you when you get there, in 5 to 10 years.

this is not necessarily the case. its not that people cannot do the math its that people do not care and they want to get rid of it asap. they are not doing it for profit. if they are they would definitely do the math and realise its not worth it. you are way too arrogant.

and the OP’s scenario will only work with items with very low demand and no standing orders. otherwise as soon as he sells it will get auto snatched. it is possible to catch people off guard with this but i cant see this as the reason all the items are been sold low.

and when your inventory is full and there are no merchant around people may choose to sell it to trading post at minimum price. there cant be many explanations.