Guild Wars 2

Alright so I really think that the 5% listing fee on top of the 10% sales tax on the person listing an item is ridiculous. It makes crafters unable to get good profit margins because we only get 85% of what we list the item for. It sucks not being able to get the full 2g you list an exotic item for. So I what if the consumer was taxed rather than the producer? Keep the 5% listing fee for the producer, but only tax the producer 5% for a sale. Then, shift the other 5% to the consumer as sales tax. Favoring the producer will allow people to make better money for their master-level crafting skills.

Crafting cannot be profitable. Take away the 15% fees, and you’ll just end up with more supply driving the price down. The problem isn’t the fee. The problem is that there are simply too many crafters. This is not a problem for those of us who are focusing on the adventuring part of the game; we’re reaping the rewards.

Indeed, getting rid of that fee would only benefit us demand siders. So yeah, get rid of the fee. :p

So long as people continue to value crafting skill points more than they value gold, there will be no profits in crafting in general. You have to carefully pick what you craft, meet gaps in production. That is to say, there is no profit in crafting, but there are profits in entrepreneurship.

It won’t change anything. The current situation is:
– Buyer puts x coin into trading post, gets item
– Seller has a net income of 85% of that coin
As long as this remains true, nothing will change. You aren’t changing it, just making it so that both the buyer and seller need to do tax calculations, instead of just the seller.

Right, I’m not saying to reduce the tax I’m saying shift some of the burden onto the consumer so the seller can enjoy a larger return

The point is that, regardless of which end the burden is on, the seller will get 85% of the money the buyer paid. Whether that’s because it takes it out of the seller’s account after the buyer pays it, or out of the buyer’s account before sending the rest to the seller, is irrelevant.

Listing fees (5%) are the thing that results in a real asymmetry, because that money is spent whether something sells or not, which means posting sell listings is riskier than posting buy orders. But the other 10% is only a “burden on the seller” in the sense that the seller is made more aware of it. It doesn’t actually change the amount of money going through the system.

Tarvok is right. The main problem is that there are far too many crafters when compared to buyers, and since just about anything that can be crafted can also be found by adventuring in the world, that just depresses the market further.

Keep in mind that in most MMOs, crafting is NEVER intended to be a source of profit for the player. Rather, it is simply another money sink designed to take away excess income from players. For me, I engage in crafting because I like the feeling of being able to make something for myself and not have to rely on somebody else selling it to me. (Other reasons for getting involved in crafting are to access unique armor skins as well as to work towards getting a Legendary weapon.) But from the start I held no illusions that I would ever be able to MAKE money by crafting.

The only ways to make money on the TP are by selling materials or by flipping, and you basically need to watch the TP like a real-life stock market if you want to do the latter.

You can also do flipping that involves crafting. Get a large enough pool of craft materials when material prices are low. Watch the prices of everything you can make, and see if anything sells for more than you got your materials for. Sell that. Don’t just craft and expect a profit. Watch closely for spikes in demand, and neglect on the part of crafters.

For instance, I often find that while one-ingredient cloth armor usually goes for well below cost, more complicated armor pieces often go at a profitable rate. This, I believe, is because you get the same number of skill points out of it regardless of how much raw materials goes into a particular piece, so people who are just grinding for skill points are dumping small pieces on the market, while neglecting the more complex pieces.

It’s not a tax. It’s a broker fee. You are a producer who doesn’t have time to run a wholesaler or contact the consumer directly (which you actually can do with chat mind you). So you pay a guy 5% of the price to store the item in a warehouse and look for customers. If he sells the item, he gets 10% for commission. This is how an actual economy works. If you want the consumer to pay that 15% then you have to raise the price.

I’m not proposing to change the amount of money being spent on fees from the trading post, just to be clear. I’m just thinking that if we make the buyer pay a sales tax rather than making the poster pay 15%, the poster will enjoy more money in their pocket. Idk maybe I’m wrong I don’t really know how that would effect the economy. I just think it’s unfair that the poster only gets 85% of what they listed the item for while the buyer just has to pay the listed price

Right, and what we’ve said to you a couple times so far, it’s nothing more than a cosmetic change, because either way you end up with the seller netting 85% of the money the buyer spends.

Firebelley, you seem to have missed the point that was made previously by a couple of other posters.

The point is that, regardless of which end the burden is on, the seller will get 85% of the money the buyer paid. Whether that’s because it takes it out of the seller’s account after the buyer pays it, or out of the buyer’s account before sending the rest to the seller, is irrelevant.

I’ll try to express it differently; maybe it’ll get the point across. I’m happy to admit that the point being made is actually a little bit mind-blowing, so it might take some thought to piece it together.

Let’s say you put up an item for 100g. You pay a 5g listing fee, and then at the point of sale, the buyer pays 100g and you get 90g – 10g was lost to sales tax. This is the current system, and it’s what you’re complaining about.

Now, let’s say the system was changed so that the buyer pays the sales tax. Here’s what it looks like:
You put up an item for 90g. You pay a 5g listing fee, and then at the point of sale, the buyer pays 100g and you get 90g – 10g was lost to sales tax.

As you can see, in my above example, the buyer pays the same amount, and the seller receives the same amount, so it’s the exact same transaction. The only difference is that the number on the TP that is shown as the “price” is a different number.

Basically, it’s the difference between including the tax in the listed price, à la the Autralian GST, or adding tax onto the listed price at the register, as is done in the U.S.

Granted, in the above scenario the tax numbers work out to a listing fee of ~5.55% and a sales tax of ~11.1%, but if what you wanted was a slight change in tax rates, then that’s what you should ask for, not a change in how the tax is paid.

Overall, I would say that it makes sense for the sales price because the seller already has listing fees to deal with, while keeping the buying process straightforward enhances ease of use.

This idea won’t change anything in the end. Profit is determined by supply and demand.

Crafting is mostly unprofitable because too many people craft simply to level up. Once that glut has gone away, it is possible that more items will become profitable to craft.

If not it is simply proof that people are willing to pay the loss in order to get XP without “grinding”.