Guild Wars 2

Let’s face it, the Trading Post isn’t working as it should work. It is swamped with trash items and is overly super uber low low of the lowest low price.

There are a couple of reasons why this is so:

1. Because we can list items in the TP regardless of where we are, many players are using it as a “trash bin”
2. Because items do not expire (correct me if I’m wrong but my items still haven’t expired), we get swamped with even more trash items
3. Because there’s a feature and automatically selected “match the lowest seller”, the prices stay low even for non-trash items

Combine two or all of those above together, we get the kind of TP that we see today. And personally, I highly doubt it will fix itself in the next 12-24 months even if more players have 1000gold and that’s being generous.

How to solve it? Here’s a solution I can think of currently:

1. Add expiration to listed items: 1-day, 3-days, 7-days, and 15-days
   1. The longer the days, the expensive the listing fee is
2. Make the hidden sales fee react to the type of item being sold – it’s rarity colour
3. Remove the “match the lowest seller” and replace it with “current average price for the past 24 hours”
   1. The average price of the item takes into account all the prices of the item that is listed for the past 24 hours. Every 24 hours, the average price is recomputed.
   2. Probably add some other wildcard factor there like the rarity of the item or how many items were sold, listed, or expired for the past 7-days, so players won’t be able to game the average price.

That way, TP will be able to recover and be useful. People will probably start converting gems to gold even once the prices goes up. There will also be a lot of gold to gems conversion since people will start earning from TP for real this time.

Feel free to improve the suggestion, that’s just what is on the top of head right now.

:)

And more importantly – remove the ability to post from anywhere! This is the real culprit, people who farm events have full bags and dump it all on TP as if it was a omnipresent vendor!

If players had to go somewhere to sell items, the prices would instantly rise and most of the trash would be removed from TP, natural selection would kick in and vendor items would go to vendor, leaving only valuable items on the market. People would not carry a few copper items halfway across the map to sell on TP under vendor price when there were a vendor next to the market NPC. Simple.

Why does trash items being sold for “trash” bother you? If it’s trash then why would anyone pay more for it then they do now?

Only thing I agree with in OP and first reply is that players use TP as a “trash bin” to free up inventory. Certainly that can be regarded as an exploit of sorts?

I like the idea of not being able to sell anywhere. However, that only means trash items being sold to vendors instead of in the TP. Selling price for such trash item will only be determined by it’s intrinsic value….and supply. If no one wants it or if it’s over supplied, its value will still be low. Maybe not 1c above vendor price…but the price probably won’t make you a significant difference in net profit compared to vendoring it. It will not magically improve your profit for selling them. Basic economics.

Expiry on listed item has 2 impact:
1. more money will be suck out of the system due to reposting
2. More posting around the clearing price rather than extreme range
3. costlier to speculate (which is good generally)
Impact? not much to prices since people will be more conservative in their posting price in order to sell it quickly…it actually encourage selling 1c less than the lowest seller.

On replacing “match lowest seller” with average price. I don’t mean any insult…but any competent traders will know that average price doesn’t mean anything. Average price could be 100c when most of the time the clearing price of the item is at 80c. What matters is the trade price and volume on the list.

Most if not all of your suggestions will only create a theoretical (yours) illusion of what you want, but it will not magically increase the selling price of your trash loot significantly, and thus will not suddenly make you wealthier.

Even if I’m wrong and you’re right, and even assuming money supply is not a factor, then everyone is selling their trash loot at a higher price, and are thus wealthier…thus you’re still paying more to buy stuffs. Your real purchasing power still remains the same.

The world money supply will be a huge factor on how much prices are inflated. When that happen, I have no doubt the gem exchange rate will change to reflect that.

TP is not broken, it’s just not working in a way that you’re familiar with. In fact, it is more real.

Shael.4703:

Long quote

+

Only thing I agree with in OP and first reply is that players use TP as a “trash bin” to free up inventory. Certainly that can be regarded as an exploit of sorts?

I rarely do this. There’s no profit for putting up trash items, cause there’s a 15% cut for the TP, usually selling to the vendor is more profitable. Furthermore, the only items I would put up on TP while out in an instance are items I would put up there anyway (Like crystals/orbs I mine, for instance). There’s merchants everywhere, so why would anyone use it to ‘free up inventory’? Do you have any proof of this?

Besides, the ‘junk’ items you’re talking about, might come in handy or are actually useful for low level players. What’s considered junk to you, might be valuable for other players. Why do you care what’s on the TP? Is it your server that it’s running on, and you have to pay the bandwidth prices?

zogrim.6925:

Why does trash items being sold for “trash” bother you? If it’s trash then why would anyone pay more for it then they do now?

If you had to run or port across zones only to TP items, you would be forced to start analyzing the item value, to know what is worth keeping in your bags. Most wouldn’t bother doing that, instead vending items. This would naturally increase the value of greens and even blue items, making it worth for people who spend the time analyzing and running to TP to make some extra coin above what the vendor offers. Why reward those who don’t think instead those who do think? At the moment those who do not think, can dump everything on TP, hurting everyone. And yes, in GW2 lowering prices does hurt everyone, unlike in most other MMO’s. Because the less items cost, the less gold you can earn, the less you can buy from the gem shop, without having to pay real money. I’m talking here mostly bag space, which is very important.

you guys are crazy, this is one of the best auction house systems if not the b est system.
Its awesome that you can sale stuff from everywhere.

People put up trash? really? maybe they havent understood the broker costs yet.

The broker isnt broken!

I agree Cayenne, the trading post is great! Without it I’d never have a hope of getting a tier 3 cultural armor set, but right now I feel like its doable, if grindy.

The people putting up trash at 1c above vendor prices are ripping themselves off, selling at a loss often without realizing it and are happy to do so because of convenience. They’re not really hurting anyone else, not even someone else who wants to sell the same piece of trash. In fact, they’re helping me since sooner or later they’re going to list valuable things the same as the rest of their trash. And I’m more than happy to buy things at unreasonably low prices then re-sell it for profit. Right now it’s my only hope at getting a tier 3 cultural set while maintaining a real life at the same time.

If "buy low, sell high" sounds like a catch phrase with no meaning to you, then you probably want to check out Wazabi’s excellent thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/GW2-economics-for-dummies/first#post67530

zerospin.8604:

zogrim.6925:

Why does trash items being sold for “trash” bother you? If it’s trash then why would anyone pay more for it then they do now?

If you had to run or port across zones only to TP items, you would be forced to start analyzing the item value, to know what is worth keeping in your bags. Most wouldn’t bother doing that, instead vending items. This would naturally increase the value of greens and even blue items, making it worth for people who spend the time analyzing and running to TP to make some extra coin above what the vendor offers. Why reward those who don’t think instead those who do think? At the moment those who do not think, can dump everything on TP, hurting everyone. And yes, in GW2 lowering prices does hurt everyone, unlike in most other MMO’s. Because the less items cost, the less gold you can earn, the less you can buy from the gem shop, without having to pay real money. I’m talking here mostly bag space, which is very important.

I agree that maybe value of a certain green/yellow that is actually useful will increase because most would vendor it instead…but to say that lower prices hurt everyone is the most absurd thing I’ve heard from all the arguments.

The less the item cost, the less gold you earn selling, but you also pay less to buy stuffs, thus more to spend on gem shop. You “purchasing power” remains the same as if everything were more expansive.

average price will alow for a really screwed up market. putting items in for 9999g just to inflate the average price

even better solution:

stop being a Greedy SOB over pretend money and deal with the fact that i sell my items for vendor price, i cant use them, hopefully somebody else will.

you payed nothing to get those drops

Except, Blighton, you’re not selling them for vendor price if you’re listing them for vendor price +1c. You’re losing money because of the 10% sales tax.

I agree 100% with the OP. As it stands, the TP is almost useless.

I completely disagree. The trading post is an excellent tool.

• Those using it as supplementary storage pay for the privilege: 5% listing fee (and risk losing items if they pay too little).
• There’s a natural oversupply of certain items because everyone started the game in the last two weeks, so they are in the same areas, looking for the same goods (and want to get rid of the same).
• Not everyone knows how to use it; that will change with time (today, we see lots of people selling for 1c over vendor; eventually we won’t).

I think it’s great that you can sell your Red Herring of Magnificence from anywhere in the game. Why force people to cart stuff around?

I don’t see any problem with items remaining on the TP for decades. I bought some stuff cheap now because I think it’s grossly undervalued today. I predict (or hope) that the price will increase in a month or so and at that point, people will pay my asking price. For example, any food with +magic find should probably sell for more than the 1-3c they are getting today.

The system today rewards anyone who wants to make it work. At the same time, it’s also simple enough for people who don’t care about analyzing market trends to also earn money.

Right now, there are a million or more people using the trading post; it’s going to take time for it to come to an equilibrium. In the meantime, use the opportunity to buy a lot of cheap mats for all the newbie toons that will appear in six months demanding quality, low level armor.

The current system of posting an item at the lowest price works for the buyer and seller (it gets the item transferred and money out of the economy). This is not why there are a billion items being sold at +1 copper of the vender price.

My suggestion:

*People use the TP as a way to store items out in the field to make room in their inventory. Players know there is a 5% posting fee and 10% tax if the item sells, but by doing so, the player still gains more money than if they deleted the item to make more room in their inventory.

Because there are probably 59374985679 of that item already on the TP for that +1 copper vender price, it rarely sells and instead the seller cancels the auction the next time they are near the TP and sells it to a vender for the items value. Only 5% of that items value is taken out of the economy.

If items could be posted on the TP for -1 copper vender price, this is how a more beneficial system would work.

Players is out in the field will still post items at the lowest price possible to make room in their inventory or just because they do not want to vender what they think could be a useful item to another player.

If the items are posted at -1 copper vender price, another player in town will always purchase that item and sell it to the vender for a +1 copper gain.

Allowing players to sell items at -1 copper vender price does a few things.

First, there is no actual +1 copper generated in the economy. Instead, that +1 copper gain the purchaser receives by vendering the item is what would originally go to the seller if they vendered said item in the current system. So, no extra money generated in the economy by doing this.

Second, by constantly selling items at -1 copper vender price, the economy is stimulated because an additional 10% of that items value is permanently deleted from the economy which totals 15%. Instead of posting items at a 5% loss and canceling the auction in town to vender the items themselves, we now have items constantly being sold which nets a 15% loss vs 5%. This helps the economy on every server.

Third, we no longer have the servers tracking 59374985679 of one item (multiplied thousands of times). Instead we have players constantly cleaning up the TP and stimulating the economy because constantly selling an item may increase an items perceived value (items can sell for more than vender price if players just get into the habit of buying and selling).

Forth, the economy has no negative effects by doing so and instead benefits in every possible way because this process will always take more money out of the economy than the current system of only allowing items to be sold at +1 copper vender price.

Allow players to sell items on the TP for -1 copper of the items value and everyone wins.*

My post is actually in the Suggestion forums if you want to find it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/allow-players-to-post-items-1-copper-below-vender-price-it-will-help-the-servers-and-the-players/first#post78346

OP: No, no and no! Trading Post is FAR from dead and works almost perfectly – when there are no terribad limitations it can reflect the state of the economy the most accurately. Most blue and green items are just so common that there’s no buying power in the world that would buy them no matter what. Note the market for rares looks way better balanced.

My SOLUTION is going the opposite way – allow BUYING from anywhere! Help the demand side instead of nerfing our ability to sell! I mean item delivery through mail without the need to pick up personally (just like it works for the gem store). It could also be an additional optional gold sink – let us click on items that wait for pickup -> mail to me (pay 10c, for example)

Yawg.1294:

My SOLUTION is going the opposite way – allow BUYING from anywhere! Help the demand side instead of nerfing our ability to sell! I mean item delivery through mail without the need to pick up personally (just like it works for the gem store). It could also be an additional optional gold sink – let us click on items that wait for pickup -> mail to me (pay 10c, for example)

I like the idea but instead of just 10 copper make it 5% of the items base value or 10 copper. Gets more money out of the economy.

The system today rewards anyone who wants to make it work. At the same time, it’s also simple enough for people who don’t care about analyzing market trends to also earn money.

I like this one.

Right now, there are a million or more people using the trading post; it’s going to take time for it to come to an equilibrium.

Trash loot already at equilibrium price, which is vendor price.

Many of these changes are suggested due to a lack of understanding on economics. The ultimate goal is simple, increasing personal wealth. But some fails to understand how money supply & competition influence it, and only look at it at a nominal level rather than real. They also fail to look at purchasing power to evaluate their ultimate well being. The current TP is not a good mechanism for speculators to make vast profit easily…but not all players are speculators.

I can’t be a mogul via the TP QQ.

Ho hum, play the other bite of the game then.

Only thing annoying about the TP is not being able to filter out goods I cannot use. Apart from that, items are nice and cheap for levelling up, fine materials are expensive so it makes me farm them or not speed level crafting which a no big deals, and a fewe people won’t dominate the market and be ale to flex their kitten by controlling things in game as a compensatory act to being unemployed in real life.

Seems to be all good really.

i like the ability to post for anywhere, as well as to mail from anywhere.

now i do like your idea for “daily average” bar, but i would like to also keep the lowest current as well. its has its use’s.

the real real problem isnt as much how the TP is set up. but that there was a 1 week period where we all were stashing items and couldnt sell them, then 1 weeks worth of items all went on sell at once with no one who had teh money to buy em.

besides all that cheap mats are fine, currently the that arnt cheap are the once being used the most, or the low lv mats. it will change in the future. Rare items still fetch a good price, they almost always get a good profit. only realy problem is the trash items, which are trash. just vender them no one wants em. people will figure that out soon enuff.

As it now stands, with the majority of items selling at merchant+1c the economy is stagnant. There is no reason to even have a market. The only thing that will allow the economy to become dynamic again is to set a time limit on the purchase with the item being returned to the person listing with no return for the listing fee. Then return every item in the system immediately to the poster less the listing fee and allow the prices to stabalize at a reasonable level.

Do people not realize that on a microeconomic scale they have just tied potentially liquid assets into frozen assets? They don’t receive ANY money until the items sell. If they never sell the 1000+ items listed before you put yours on the market at merchant+1c, you will not only have spent the listing fee, you will never receive any money for that item? None, nada, zip, zilch. You were better off throwing the item away or deconstructing it for mats. The mats will sell for something even if not what the item would have been worth to the merchant.

Break your common (white) items down. The mats stack to 250 and only take 1 space. If the space is getting restrictive, you send the mats to your collectoins tab from anywhere in the world. If your bags are still getting filled, do the blue items or spend some coin and get larger bags. Since there are 3 different crafting professions that can make containers anyone can use, there should be an ample supply of relatively inexpensive containers on the market.

There is absolutely no excuse or genuinely good reason for selling anything on the market for merchant+1c.

NO NO NO!
1. superb feature. i want convenience not realism, if ur into rp use one of the trading posts in the game.
i don’t want to spend travel time/costs, loading times and running around just to get to the tp. that would just be an ugly time sink.

2. no, like in wow people would just have to relist their stuff again and again, another big timesink. you like those don’t you?!

3. not having such features makes offering low values items not worth the hassle, why click through menus for minutes if you just make some copper…

it’s better to have too much items in the tp than not enough. if it’s to much of a chore to put items up, the tp would be quite empty and you would be whining in the forums that it is.
if you want to craft something and need some low dropping mat, you will be thankful that it’s so easy to put offers in the tp.

keep the tp as they are!

Tanaquil.9314:

Except, Blighton, you’re not selling them for vendor price if you’re listing them for vendor price +1c. You’re losing money because of the 10% sales tax.

I agree 100% with the OP. As it stands, the TP is almost useless.

dont care, it waste more time hunting for a vendor, and frankly i dont care enough. like i said if somebody else can use an item i got for FREE, by killing a mob or doing something i was going to do anyway, so be it.

im more disgusted with the AH by people putting crazy prices on crap, 3-5G for a dye, come on.

the prices for gear and armor in some cases is just stupid, IMO its just a pathetic attempt to gain riches and hold it over people ingame because your cant accomplish squat IRL, and you need to make up for it in a video game

or

your just so greedy you cant turn it off

No no no no.
The TP might not be in the best shape but this is no solution.
Why must things be inconvenient?

I think educating people about the fact that they actually lose money if they sell for 1 copper above the vendor price would be good enough.
Items are cheap because there is lots of them.
Look at the pre-legendary weapons and other sought after items – it works nicely for those.

Sal.4672:

Only thing I agree with in OP and first reply is that players use TP as a “trash bin” to free up inventory. Certainly that can be regarded as an exploit of sorts?

Are you kidding me here? What’s people’s problem with this?

An exploit? Seriously? Are you forgetting the listing fee they’re paying?…Do you still see it as an exploit now?

Is it going to stop you from buying on the TP, or selling? Does it matter?

Are you wondering why i’m using so many questions?

There are plenty of people who can make money off the AH, this is simply supply and demand.

People are posting more items onto the TP, and few people really want to buy those items. Sure some people are selling items for a loss, but they simply want to clear their bag space, so that’s the price cut they pay in order to have that convenience.

Furthermore, I’m sure a lot of people are enjoying these low prices, as now things are more affordable, and can be in the hands of more people.

Blue items have hit equilibrium price (vendor price).
Greens/Yellows have yet to balance out because they get taken out of the system as they get used (Soulbound)

The easiest solution is to soulbind blue items, but honestly, I don’t think the TP needs any major changes.

I would just like to see them remove the “Sell from anywhere” ability of the trading post unless you buy and use a black lion trading post express item that you obtain from the gem store. As it stands, why would anyone ever buy one of those? You can already sell to the trading post from anywhere, the only thing you can’t do is pick up your profits, and really who needs to be able to pick up their profits while in a dungeon somewhere?

I fail to see how players losing money by posting items at a loss compared to vendor prices based on the sales tax/fees stops you from making money by being more educated about the way the economy works and finding a way to take advantage of it. The only reason to complain about so many trash items being listed on the TP for such a low price is because you can’t sell your own trash items for a higher price. Trash = trash, no matter the price and there’s plenty of room in the endless digital inventory space for the TP to hold it all. I’m also unsure why it matters that we can access the TP from anywhere since one could simply take a free PvP portal jump to get back to town instantly anyway. There are no travel/logistics in this game to factor into TP item costs, so it boils down to a much simpler supply/demand formula. I think the time-driven sales fees (1 day, 3 day, etc) can help to force players to make more thoughtful pricing decisions, but I think that would only reduce the amount of items in the TP that nobody is going to buy anyway. For the items that are actually being bought & sold on a regular basis, it would only serve to make more money for the seller if he doesn’t have to pay as much of a fee for something that will sell in less than an hour.

NO AVERAGE PRICE.

Please no, this ruined runescape’s market.
It’s fine outside of people using it as a trash bin.

Average price is not an effective way to educate players on selling prices. There is a certain percentage of people who will use the TP with a lot of thought to really maximize their profit, and others will just put items up to gain some profit while they play other parts of the game. The difference is a choice and neither is necessarily superior.

For a deeper look check out Default Behavior / Status Quo Bias

The TP is a dynamic vendor….thats what it is. Think about this carefully.

Imagine going to a vendor to sell and item, however, the price he sells an item to you and the price you buy the item moves dynamically based on supply and demand at any given time.

TP dead? Not really. I like that people are willing to take a loss on trash white/blue items that i can salvage into materials and sell for a profit or use without endless and tedious grinding.

Blighton.6425:

Tanaquil.9314:

Except, Blighton, you’re not selling them for vendor price if you’re listing them for vendor price +1c. You’re losing money because of the 10% sales tax.

I agree 100% with the OP. As it stands, the TP is almost useless.

dont care, it waste more time hunting for a vendor, and frankly i dont care enough. like i said if somebody else can use an item i got for FREE, by killing a mob or doing something i was going to do anyway, so be it.

im more disgusted with the AH by people putting crazy prices on crap, 3-5G for a dye, come on.

the prices for gear and armor in some cases is just stupid, IMO its just a pathetic attempt to gain riches and hold it over people ingame because your cant accomplish squat IRL, and you need to make up for it in a video game

or

your just so greedy you cant turn it off

You don’t need to try to be insulting. I’m not one of the people trying to min-max the TP to make stupid money. I do not fit the rather jaded view of people that you seem to have. I JUST want to be able to sell a tier 4 crafted item for more than it cost to make it, rather than 1/5th of what it cost to make it. As it stands, I can’t, so I just vendor every single thing my crafters make, because that is more money than I could dream of aspiring to on the TP. An economy that makes this more worthwhile than putting those items into the hands of other players is ridiculous.

your suggestions are awful. there is NO system in any other game in history as close to perfect as GW2’s TP

all servers are linked so that’s good for the buyer (lower prices) and the seller (you can sell anything).

the people who don’t like the TP have no problem with the TP itself, they have a problem with not exploiting/controlling an economy on a small server, probably in wow, like they’re accustomed to.

you’re no longer a big fish in a small pond. now you gotta learn how to beat the big boys.

Sal.4672:

Only thing I agree with in OP and first reply is that players use TP as a “trash bin” to free up inventory. Certainly that can be regarded as an exploit of sorts?

Yeah , it needs addressing bigtime asap.

Loeb Rahl.6782:

As it now stands, with the majority of items selling at merchant+1c the economy is stagnant. There is no reason to even have a market. The only thing that will allow the economy to become dynamic again is to set a time limit on the purchase with the item being returned to the person listing with no return for the listing fee. Then return every item in the system immediately to the poster less the listing fee and allow the prices to stabalize at a reasonable level.

Do people not realize that on a microeconomic scale they have just tied potentially liquid assets into frozen assets? They don’t receive ANY money until the items sell. If they never sell the 1000+ items listed before you put yours on the market at merchant+1c, you will not only have spent the listing fee, you will never receive any money for that item? None, nada, zip, zilch. You were better off throwing the item away or deconstructing it for mats. The mats will sell for something even if not what the item would have been worth to the merchant.

Break your common (white) items down. The mats stack to 250 and only take 1 space. If the space is getting restrictive, you send the mats to your collectoins tab from anywhere in the world. If your bags are still getting filled, do the blue items or spend some coin and get larger bags. Since there are 3 different crafting professions that can make containers anyone can use, there should be an ample supply of relatively inexpensive containers on the market.

There is absolutely no excuse or genuinely good reason for selling anything on the market for merchant+1c.

Well said all of the above

GW2 TP is the only mechanism aside form EVE-online who’s environment closely resembles that of a perfect competition. Pick up any economics textbook and you’ll understand that this is a good thing, and the proposed changes will not change anything. If I can understand this, then the economist under A-net’s employment will definitely understand it and won’t change anything.

Trash will sell for trash. You don’t magically earn more profit for selling it more expansive…someone else has to be willing to pay for it. You, the seller is a price taker in this market. Not allowing people to post on TP on the road won’t change that. How much will you pay for a piece of wet tissue paper? Or a jar of dust? I want to sell it at 10 dollars…will you buy it?

Timed post won’t change anything either. It will just make players more conservative in their pricing, so they will more likely to price it lower to make sure it sells before it expires.

I’ll have to agree with Sulmith Greysin.5124. The problem is that you want a system that you can exploit the inefficiency…so that you can sell for higher. The person buying have to pay more for that. That is no different than people selling dye for 4g. The TP hinders speculation. That’s why what you did in wow or other game doesn’t work here anymore. It is still possible to make profit from trading, you just need to have a fundamental understanding on how supply and demand works, and the application of that knowledge rather than just quoting it from wiki.

The TP isnt dead, you just need to know which items sell and dont sell.

The only problem with TP are the cheap epople with their lower-than-vendor buy orders, which seems to have been fixed now so you cant sell to them. Seems like TP now calculates the price minus the listing fee and cut and tells you if its equal to or higher than the vendor, if its less profit in the end the item cant be sold.

The cheap people need to learn to place proper orders on stuff, otherwise its just to put on those tools and start chopping, harvesting or picking on your own.

IMO stacks that are worth 1c per unit at a vendor should be worth atleast 2c at the TP. Single items such as armors and weapons should be worth 2x their vendor price at TP if people werent cheap. Lets face it, I’m not going to sell an armor piece for 2s 5c over the TP when I can get 2s at a vendor, that would give me less profit.

Shael.4703:

1. Remove the “match the lowest seller” and replace it with “current average price for the past 24 hours”
   1. The average price of the item takes into account all the prices of the item that is listed for the past 24 hours. Every 24 hours, the average price is recomputed.

I would advise against this, as such average price calculations are highly susceptible to market manipulations and tend to end badly, as anyone who played EvE this last year will tell you. In fact, with EvE, it ended up with devs manually readjusting the value to stabilize the situation.

I’m sure that so many things being posted on the TP that should be vendored instead causes a few database issues for Arenanet. Database issues reduces TP functionality for the rest of us.

The trading post isn’t acting like a trading post.

Explanation:

The trading post as it stands (except for some rarer items) is nothing more than a regular vendor with more items.

I do think people sometimes abuse the prices but as it stands now i feel it isn’t acceptable. I stopped putting items there altogheter as vendoring it or putting it up there is the same thing and I risk saying vendoring is even better.

So I agree, people need to move to a trading post to sell stuff. With no expiries the amount of kitten up there is getting to pretty sick numbers and that also results in trading post malfunctions due to the amount of items to be retrieved.

I’m sorry but a trading post is a place where you should be able to do business and you can’t right now and you won’t in any foreseeable future cause like I mentioned asides from some very rare drops nothing is worth even the bother to open up the panel.

And please remove the highest buyer/lowest seller crap. Its another thing that ruins an Auction House. Protecting people who don’t give akittenabout knowing how much stuff is worth? Well don’t use the broker then at least till you find out the real worth. Like this I bet you more than 80% of folks just keep getting the prices lower to points where it’s idiotic when you actually lose money by selling.

I know you don’t want to haul your a** to a town to sell your stuff , well I don’t want your kitten cluttering up a tool i like to use and with your lazyness it’s basically ruined.

So again, stop people from being able to put up stuff in broker from anywhere. There’s something called “bank” for a reason.

This game drops crap like diablo on top of it so it even worsens it. It removes any emotion or joy of having a drop of a rare weapon or such cause you know its going to be worth at max 5-10s.

The problem is that a listing fee and expiration fee encourage undercutting the lowest price even further. Selling high or matching will give you a tiny bit more money while you risk not selling the the item and having to pay a listing fee again. While undercutting only costs you 1 copper compared to matching the lowest seller and has no risks at all.

Here’s a random thought: Allow for 1 free price drop per item. This will keep the listing fee intact, and because of that listing high will still cost more money. However people will be encouraged to come up with a clever price as they won’t lose the entire listing fee when it doesn’t sell. Instead they will be made aware of a fluctuation in the price of an item and will be given an opportunity to react to that.

Agenteusa.6380
Trading post is a place where trade takes place…isn’t that what’s happening there? It’s fine if you refuse to use it for whatever reasons…but anyone that uses TP to make money like me can tell you it’s far from dead. It is the reason that I log in only for 1 hr for the last few days without adventuring and still able to make gold.

I too sell my trash loot on vendor and I agree it is cluttering the market…so what? the Mats market and high level rare/exotic item market is pretty active.

highest buyer/lowest seller is a convenience tool. I use it to sell junks that I don’t really care how much I make from it because no matter how much it sells, I still make profit since it’s a drop. How does it ruins the TP? Noobs will probably misunderstand it…but that’s their problem for not understanding the game before they play…I couldn’t care less about that as they’ll always find something to complain. You think all these will magically allow your trash loot to sell at a higher price? To who? You don’t set the price for an item, but you don’t determine if it sells…the buyer does. Understand this and you’ll see the folly in your arguments.

@RaCio
I always undercut it I want to sell my stuffs fast…as long as the net profit is still within my pre-calculated margin. If I think I can sell it at a higher price than the lowest seller overnight, I’ll put it at a higher price.

I’m guessing that you think a free price drop will stop people from undercutting and encourage people to be more clever pricing their sales? Well…by not allowing a price drop, it is already encouraging you to be clever on your pricing…that’s why ppl undercut to make sure it sells. As for undercutting, it won’t stop that. If I put it at 50c, the lowest price, then you come in and undercut me at 49c, what I can do is using the free price drop to under cut you at 48, then you will undercut me at 47. It could actually creates more variation in the price…though a true trader won’t be bothered by these “white noise” as we call it since it doesn’t affect the real underlying value of the item at that point of time.

tufy.7859:

Shael.4703:

1. Remove the “match the lowest seller” and replace it with “current average price for the past 24 hours”
   1. The average price of the item takes into account all the prices of the item that is listed for the past 24 hours. Every 24 hours, the average price is recomputed.

I would advise against this, as such average price calculations are highly susceptible to market manipulations and tend to end badly, as anyone who played EvE this last year will tell you. In fact, with EvE, it ended up with devs manually readjusting the value to stabilize the situation.

It’s not just in EVE, also in the stock market. That’s why any self respecting stock trader don’t use that. It is meaning less in the sense that it gives the mean value when the clearing price is at 1 extreme end. Moving average on the clearing price however is interesting…but it will probably be misunderstood by a lot of players and then we’ll see another complain post like this.

Well said OP i completely agree.

whats worse is the TP will be clogged with all of the people that don’t care about keeping up with their sales and losing track, undercutters, etc…

since items will stay up on the TP forever, the economy will become very stale and prices will hit rock bottom. every incentive to buy, and no reason to sell.

Your understanding on economics is flawed.

Your understanding on economics is flawed.

then please explain to me how excess supplies won’t saturate the market and cause a price crash to where the value of the item would become undervalued as the supply curve shifts to the right.

some explanations here in respond to your post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/GW2-economics-for-dummies/first#post110902

But I’m gonna go more technical on this since you ask.
The supply demand curve you’re describing is a very simplified version to help students understand the relationship. Different goods have a different function, resulting in a different curve. When price elasticity is taken into account, the steepness of the curve’s slope will be different. What I’m saying is that the demand curve is a lot flatter horizontally. It is so flat due to the huge number of drops, and perfect substitution (alternatives) to that item.

To put it in an example, suppose a market demands 10unit of item A. The supply is 1000 unit, so price gets pressed down. Your argument is that by reducing the supply to 100, price would increase, that’s correct. However, market still demands only 10. If selling item A in TP generates more value than to vendor, then players will still sell in TP, pushing the price down to the vendor level, in which they are indifferent into selling in TP or vendor. Note that item B serves a similar purpose…so you’re not only competing to sell item A against other item A seller, but also item B. Add to the fact that gears marginally improves your performance, and leveling time is not exponential, that again reduces the reliance on low level gear that drops like flies. That’s why you have a flat demand curve for trash loots.

If you want to make money in TP, play the crafting materials, lv80 exotics, or anything that people are having trouble finding, and just drop your trash to vendor.

Wazabi.1439:

some explanations here in respond to your post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/GW2-economics-for-dummies/first#post110902

But I’m gonna go more technical on this since you ask.
The supply demand curve you’re describing is a very simplified version to help students understand the relationship. Different goods have a different function, resulting in a different curve. When price elasticity is taken into account, the steepness of the curve’s slope will be different. What I’m saying is that the demand curve is a lot flatter horizontally. It is so flat due to the huge number of drops, and perfect substitution (alternatives) to that item.

To put it in an example, suppose a market demands 10unit of item A. The supply is 1000 unit, so price gets pressed down. Your argument is that by reducing the supply to 100, price would increase, that’s correct. However, market still demands only 10. If selling item A in TP generates more value than to vendor, then players will still sell in TP, pushing the price down to the vendor level, in which they are indifferent into selling in TP or vendor. Note that item B serves a similar purpose…so you’re not only competing to sell item A against other item A seller, but also item B. Add to the fact that gears marginally improves your performance, and leveling time is not exponential, that again reduces the reliance on low level gear that drops like flies. That’s why you have a flat demand curve for trash loots.

If you want to make money in TP, play the crafting materials, lv80 exotics, or anything that people are having trouble finding, and just drop your trash to vendor.

Of course it will pushed down to vendor level due to the (artificial) surplus in supply. this means that price would be pretty much tied to vendor price which is below the natural equilibrium, this resembles (while it is not because the nature is quite different, but resembles) a price ceiling that is set below equilibrium price. instead of the government forcing you to sell for less, the surplus of forgotten goods ends up tying you to vendor which would be less than what you should get in a more current market.

This ends up causing a dead weight loss, which is when a good or service isnt being provided in the market efficiently because supply is so great it isnt properly matching demand.

I think our difference is that you want the market to be tied to the vendor price.

But I’m saying it shouldn’t, it should be somewhere above the vendor price because it isn’t natural. other wise the cost of items will always stay the same. this is actually a bad thing as their prices won’t go up with game’s inflation. once’s more and more gold is generated for the market, the price of items will end up going up to match the increase of gold in the market. that way everything will proportionally stay at a same price (but with different numbers.

If market items stay tied with vendor prices, then those items will always remain at that price forever while the inflation of gold will cause everyone to accumulate tons of wealth, but it will not matter cause everything will have stayed super cheap instead of going up with them.

Not exactly…what I’m saying is that equilibrium is at the lowest possible price, which is cost. But since we have an artificial floor price which is for now higher than cost, thus it is the equilibrium.

The intrinsic cost of an item is just the materials it is made of in the game. If you can salvage a trash item for 10c worth of mats, then the cost of the it is 10c (slightly different for crafted items). Off course, it the finished goods are in higher demand than the supply, the clearing price will be higher. But if the supply is greater or that there’s simply no demand, it will converge to 10c. No one will sell it below 10c because they are better off salvaging and sell the mats. No one will pay more than 10c for it because there is little to no demand for the trash loot, and plenty of supply and substitution.

When the currency inflates, mat price will inflate. on a 10% inflation, say mat price inflates by that much, then so will the equilibrium price of the trash loot….to 11c.

In our case where there’s a price floor, the only reason the price of the trash will increase above the vendor price is when the cost of mats it is salvageable is more than vendor price. Remember, this is not a price ceiling, it’s a price floor. Another way for trash loot to increase above vendor price is that if there are people in the market willing to pay more than that, and there’s an insufficient supply. Excess supply will result in undercutting because it is more beneficial to sell at above vendor price, which will then depress the price to equilibrium.