Guild Wars 2

There seems to be a lot of market manipulation going around by very rich people with thousands of gold, so I have the following suggeions.
1) Make things you bought on the trading post temporaly account bound (say 24h) and make it impossible to sell old stocks (not account bound) of that item for the same duration.
2) If you sold an item make a cooldown on it until you can buy more of the item.
3) Add an extra 10% listing fee + 5% sale tax for items you previously bought on the trading post (lets say for the last week).

market manipulations are just people trying to make money. why is that a bad thing? all market manipulations are ultimately temporary anyway, s they can cause no lasting harm

What causes you to believe that this market manipulation is happening in the first place? Given the size of the market (global TP), any manipulation will only work in the short term.

As someone who engages in flipping, I have a vested interest in not seeing your suggestions implemented. But my buy orders generally give sellers more money for their goods and my sell orders generally give buyers goods at a slightly cheaper price. If you restrict arbitrage in the market, then it will become harder for sellers and buyers who wish to have gold/goods instantly to get a decent price.

I don’t see any evidence in markt manipulation. I’m sick of all the comments about market manipulation. I’ve never seen any evidence for something like that. And I spent a lot of time only trading and made a lot of gold. So please. Provide evidence, that there is such a thing.

And then the next step is, tell us why is it bad. And why it is harmful.

Disagree with all 3. The effects of this would be terrible – the spreads between bids and asks would grow significantly, making it worse for most regular players.

Margin Traders / Market Makers are doing everyone a service, not only by stabilizing prices but also by increasing the total volume of trade (more gold leave the economy through the fees).

Could you please describe why the spread would happen, so we can discuss about that?

Samuirai.4561:

Could you please describe why the spread would happen, so we can discuss about that?

In general, a lot of people who flip stuff on the market place their buy orders at a higher bid price than the current buy price in order to get their goods in a timely fashion. They also tend to place their sell listings at a point lower than the current sell price so that their goods sell faster.

If you restrict the ability of players to buy and sell within the current buy and sell price margins, then the spread will take longer to narrow. In addition, players wanting to flip stuff will have to look at buying lower and selling higher in order to mitigate the increased risk they face from market movements during the time in which they hold goods that they are restricted from selling.

John Smith.4610:

I would very much disagree with all of these suggestions. I would also be curious to know what evidence you see of market manipulation.

It’s impossible to prove manipulation as we simply lack the data on who sells or buys what. So that one is a bridge too far. Look at my topic here though: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Mad-Market-Manipulation.

Given the timing and the magnitude of that operation, I’d say it was one party buying up well over half of all these Halloween weapons and bumping the price up by at least 50G.

Obviously, you could say I can’t prove manipulation but I think that is as close I you can get given the data available to us… So yeah, you can always hide behind “you can’t proof it”, but how are we suppose to ever prove it then?

On the other hand everyone knows there’s tons of bots running 24/7 making serious amounts of gold. I don’t think it is unrealistic that these parties are also playing the market and that they are large enough to do so. Some markets aren’t particularly big, like the one for these weapons. I’d say this example involved maybe 2K gold and I’m sure some people can cough that up.

P.S. I’m not saying I agree with the OP’s suggestions btw :-)

Market manipulation is part of having a trading system in place and if people want to play the markets to make money that’s their prerogative. Even if gold sellers are playing the markets that is not the issue it’s them selling the gold made. Police that and you it will help but there’s no use punishing everyone for doing something valid.
It’s no different to real world markets – while some people are interested in the company shares to reap the company profits others are simply there to buy and sell shares to make a profit from that and they will use whatever knowledge they have to speculate and the direction prices will go and at times can even influence share prices by moving large volumes of shares. If criminals are investing in the share market we don’t try and control the market – it’s irrelevant to their criminal activities even if they buy shares with dirty money.
What you are suggesting is controlling short term selling and I think that is wrong (controlling it not doing it) unless there is inside knowledge which is not the case for BLTC. No one has any more knowledge than anyone else except for the designers and devs who will be aware a patch is going to increase/decrease stock and cost of acquisition of a particular item.

We have a global market. With 2million(?) players. Maybe 100.000 really active. Maybe 1.000 of them have more than 100g. And maybe 100 of them really want to buy a halloween weapon. These are wild guesses, but just because there were like 50 weapons bought doesn’t mean anything. I also know people (and this includes my self) with “panic” buys. You see the price slowly increasing and you panic, because you wanted to buy it. So you buy it before it’s too high.

I always think about methods to manipulate the market but I can’t find really good examples. Could you please describe what you could do, to control the market AND make a profit out of it? So we can discuss what would or wouldn’t happen if somebody does it.

Playing the market != manipulating it

I think what the OP is refering to is this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/So-what-are-you-flipping/first#post610491

Flyfunner.2093:

commie! It’s fine the way it is, smart people make money, while the rest get left behind. It’s how it works

Well actually we have a hybrid fixed and free market because essential items and services are fixed at vendor prices. A bit like some socialist countries fix the price of milk, bread and even travel but otherwise have a free market. Without this it would mean a new player is immediately unable to even buy essential items for surviving in Tyria. So it’s not a pure capitalist society

Samuirai.4561:

Playing the market != manipulating it

I have to agree with that. I stand corrected on my previous statement that manipulation is part of the trading system but everything else stands in terms of playing the market and what the OP is concerned about.

there is no such thing in game that’s absolutely unobtainable over time and some bit of luck. So a free and open market to it’s maximum extend is the healthiest way to keep everything in place. Just like what we are doing everyday in real life.

Supply and demand determines the price and drive the force into he high profitable area. You just need to understand the system really well and have some faith on your own speculations.

I really like the current system as is, and i do alot of speculating on the trade post daily, roughly 1000g atleast specifically being used because i think those items are being sold to cheap at this moment and i am expecting a price rise.

Some items i may lose a small amout or a may make a small amount but the volume of goods being bought and then resold is a profit overtime. This is your key to having basically an unlimited supply of gold, however it takes alot of work and the trade post interface is very very cumbersome, its not very efficient at all and to keep your orders on top all the time is next to impossible.

The way around all this is to try and speculate on a great number of different things, where the overall profit margin is your goal, not the individual items!

I like one persons suggestion to remove the ability to see the depth of the market. Then prices would move toward their real value.

I know its a strategy but I can’t stand people who put sell orders for 100 items at 25% less just to try to force people to sell cheaper or sell to a buy order.

NoOneShotU.3479:

I like one persons suggestion to remove the ability to see the depth of the market. Then prices would move toward their real value.

I know its a strategy but I can’t stand people who put sell orders for 100 items at 25% less just to try to force people to sell cheaper or sell to a buy order.

I don’t think this would solve the problem however, and may in fact make it worse. If I can’t see how many items are listed at the lowest price or whether there is a significant gap between this price and the next lowest price, I’m likely to assume the worst and sell my items for less. In effect, your suggestion would mean people could use smaller item stacks to try to get their desired result.

NoOneShotU.3479:

I like one persons suggestion to remove the ability to see the depth of the market. Then prices would move toward their real value.

I know its a strategy but I can’t stand people who put sell orders for 100 items at 25% less just to try to force people to sell cheaper or sell to a buy order.

I don’t see how restricting access to information would improve the functioning of a market system.

Morrar.1764:

Given the timing and the magnitude of that operation, I’d say it was one party buying up well over half of all these Halloween weapons and bumping the price up by at least 50G.

I’d say it’s a perfectly rational market reaction to the announcement that the Mad King’s dungeon would be closing down when stage 4 of the Halloween event started. What did you think was going to happen when A.Net announced that the spigot dumping those items into the game was getting turned off?

I’ll readily admit I’m a bit jealous of those rich traders, and frustrated that the potential profits from speculating on the TP dwarf any other way to gain gold in the game. That doesn’t make it manipulation however.

Only ArenaNet manipulates the market now and then, by introducing those temporary chest recipes for example, and they do it not for profit, but to combat excesses like the bazillion stacks of unwanted mats lying around at the time.

Aside from the limits set (and changes made) by ArenaNet, the GW2 market is about as free as you can get. All parties have equal access to information and it’s impossible to directly interfere with competitors. It’s also impossible to mislead buyers with fake or low-quality products and practically impossible to create artificial demand through advertising.

Compare that to real-world markets where Apple and Samsung are in dozens of lawsuits trying to deny each other access to markets, where various (mostly) Asian companies are pumping out fake brand products from shoes to military-grade electronics and 80% of products are advertised as making you cool or feel good, when they do no such thing.

Ensign.2189:

Morrar.1764:

Given the timing and the magnitude of that operation, I’d say it was one party buying up well over half of all these Halloween weapons and bumping the price up by at least 50G.

I’d say it’s a perfectly rational market reaction to the announcement that the Mad King’s dungeon would be closing down when stage 4 of the Halloween event started. What did you think was going to happen when A.Net announced that the spigot dumping those items into the game was getting turned off?

Seriously, take a closer look at the data, especially the sell listing volumes (raw data). It’s not just about pricing, it’s much more a tale of volumes here.

- The whole operation ran in just under half an hour
- As much as 80% of the weapons were bought
- This happened for all three weapons
- Listings went down 80% then up to the same level, suggesting relisting

It’s the combination of factors here that is important here. The timing and the scale are crucial. I find it very, very unlikely that this pattern would emerge with multiple parties acting independently. This was a coordinated effort simple as that…

People can come up with all sorts of explanations that may hold some merit, but it is the combination of factors that makes me believe someone was manipulating the prices in this case and at a rather large scale.

Now people arguing that manipulation or playing the market is fine are right up to some degree. It is all a matter of scale; monopolies are a threat to the free market, just as they are in a real economy. We also have measures to deal with them, because it is well known that free markets don’t operate well when monopolies exist.

I think this example shows that there are currently parties who can corner a market. Not the whole market, but portions of it. We will see this pattern again if future events follow the same silly formula (high price ceiling due to crafting + temporary high availability). We also see this pattern in the precursor market.

ANet will never admit to this, because we all know which parties are able to obtain a monopoly in the market; it’s botters / gold sellers. ANet is trying to convey that they are tough on bots; read the post where they banned 10.000. However, just Google around for bot programs and you’ll find that the number of downloads goes well over 100.000.

In my opinion, it is completely naive to think that such numbers don’t influence the market, where money can be made more swiftly than anywhere else (once you have some capital to invest)…

If it was a single party, why would it take them an entire half hour?

The fact that it happened to all three weapons is also not very notable, given that the connection between them is obvious.

lackofcheese.5617:

If it was a single party, why would it take them an entire half hour?

The fact that it happened to all three weapons is also not very notable, given that the connection between them is obvious.

First off, the data is from a crawler that runs every now and then so the half hour isn’t exact. But to buy and relist over a hundred items, I think you’ll need that time given the kitteny UI of the Trading Post.

The connection is obvious, but the pattern is so similar especially in time and magnitude.

Malediktus.9250:

There seems to be a lot of market manipulation going around by very rich people with thousands of gold, so I have the following suggeions.
1) Make things you bought on the trading post temporaly account bound (say 24h) and make it impossible to sell old stocks (not account bound) of that item for the same duration.
2) If you sold an item make a cooldown on it until you can buy more of the item.
3) Add an extra 10% listing fee + 5% sale tax for items you previously bought on the trading post (lets say for the last week).

Ok, but if we start penalizing people with thousands of gold, we have to penalize people with lots of free time to play the game too. And the people who earn a lot of money IRL. And people who can organize. I mean 12 people can come together and together they will have a few thousand gold, so they can manipulate just as well as a single person. What you suggest will hit everyone, the average joe who wants to make his 2g on the TP just as well as your gold mafia making their 2nd million. It’s like, you know, it’s like dropping a 10 megaton nuke on NY to get rid of the rats. Yeah you will hinder some rats, but most will survive and thrive because you wiped out all the humans. Way to go!

Seriously OP either you are plain ignorant or lazy to the trading post, what is so different than that of real world stock market??? Plus this TP is whole wide servers for NA servers, say you have 3,000 gold, you will not be able to control several items for quite long time. You vs hundreds of thousand other player, do your math.

Second fact even if you do manage to conjure up your own “Meryll Linch” company you would still not be able to control price of hundred of items being traded daily.

So I suggest if you can’t make money in TP go back to grinding and stop making stupid rumors about TP, its just making you more Troll tbh.

Morrar.1764:

First off, the data is from a crawler that runs every now and then so the half hour isn’t exact. But to buy and relist over a hundred items, I think you’ll need that time given the kitteny UI of the Trading Post.

That’s wrong for several reasons.

First and foremost, if you were buying up a large amount to resell, you would buy them all up first instead of doing it a little bit at a time, because that minimizes the risk of other people buying them up. It’s also quite easy to buy hundreds of items with the current UI, because you can select them or type in a number and buy them up all at once.

Also, if you were intending to resell them, it would typically be a bad idea to put up a large amount all at once, because it would be expensive to relist them if you got undercut.

Morrar.1764:

The connection is obvious, but the pattern is so similar especially in time and magnitude.

If the timing coincides with an official announcement, or a post on a popular website like Reddit (e.g. this one), it could easily have been simultaneous action by a significant number of people.

In any case, even if this was the actions of one person and not many, it still doesn’t constitute manipulation unless there is an element of deception involved.

lackofcheese.5617:

Morrar.1764:

First off, the data is from a crawler that runs every now and then so the half hour isn’t exact. But to buy and relist over a hundred items, I think you’ll need that time given the kitteny UI of the Trading Post.

That’s wrong for several reasons.

First and foremost, if you were buying up a large amount to resell, you would buy them all up first instead of doing it a little bit at a time, because that minimizes the risk of other people buying them up. It’s also quite easy to buy hundreds of items with the current UI, because you can select them or type in a number and buy them up all at once.

The drop in sell listings was quite steep as you can see from the data. It happened pretty much at the exact same time.

Also, if you were intending to resell them, it would typically be a bad idea to put up a large amount all at once, because it would be expensive to relist them if you got undercut.

The relisting is slower indeed, but still rather fast for indepent actors in my opinion.

Morrar.1764:

The connection is obvious, but the pattern is so similar especially in time and magnitude.

If the timing coincides with an official announcement, or a post on a popular website like Reddit (e.g. this one), it could easily have been simultaneous action by a significant number of people.

Only if they saw that post all at the exact same time and responded at the exact same time. I find that highly unlikely, but I guess opinions differ. We simply do not have the data to reach any definite conclusions, so my bet is as good as anyone else’s bet. I’m not claiming to know the truth, but when you consider the alternative (thousands of bots with zero influence on the market) I find it quite unlikely.

In any case, even if this was the actions of one person and not many, it still doesn’t constitute manipulation unless there is an element of deception involved.

In my opinion, manipulating prices doesn’t necessarily involve deception, it could also be done through sheer volume / having a very significant share in the market. It is true that one can raise prices above ‘realistic’ values through deception, but it can also be done through gaining a significant power position. I guess this is mostly a matter of the definition of ‘manipulation’.

Finally, I would again like to state that I’m not in favor of regulation the market per se and definitely not according to the rules of the OP. These rules would rapidly kill trading and are way too restrictive. I would like ANet to take a more firm stance on players who obtain their means through ‘unclean’ methods such as botting. I also think they should monitor these players better.

Banning a few bots won’t help at all (even 10K of them). The bots don’t hold much gold because it’s transferred quickly to trading accounts (gold sellers typically run bot accounts + trading accounts + any number of hacked spam accounts). ANet needs to go after these trading accounts more actively and also needs to remove their excess currency from the market.

As it stands now, they have only showed that: a) they bet on the wrong horse with the DR system b) they have only begun to implement code to detect bots c) they don’t have a clue about whether gold sellers are influencing the market.

Morrar.1764:

The drop in sell listings was quite steep as you can see from the data. It happened pretty much at the exact same time.

I looked at the examples you brought up, and the data seems to indicate that these spikes actually took place over an hour or two, which makes it unlikely to be the actions of a single actor.

Morrar.1764:

The relisting is slower indeed, but still rather fast for indepent actors in my opinion.

Please explain what you mean by speed of relisting, and how you can gather this data from GW2Spidy’s data.

Morrar.1764:

Only if they saw that post all at the exact same time and responded at the exact same time. I find that highly unlikely, but I guess opinions differ.

I think you’re missing a few important things here, the foremost of which is simply the enormous scale of GW2’s trade system. When you have a system with hundreds of thousands of players playing the same game, concurrent actions are much more likely than you think. Hundreds, or even thousands, of people reading a post or announcement and reacting to it within an hour is far from surprising. In fact, in many cases I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen.

Morrar.1764:

We simply do not have the data to reach any definite conclusions, so my bet is as good as anyone else’s bet.

Hence the most sensible position is to assume that the market is functioning OK and isn’t something to be especially worried about at the moment.

Morrar.1764:

I’m not claiming to know the truth, but when you consider the alternative (thousands of bots with zero influence on the market) I find it quite unlikely.

That’s an obvious false dichotomy. No one is saying that bots have zero influence on the economy. Influencing the economyis quite different to controlling or manipulating it, however – everyone who uses the TP at all has an influence on the economy.

John Smith.4610:

I would very much disagree with all of these suggestions. I would also be curious to know what evidence you see of market manipulation.

I’m sorry but this response is poorly done — and an example of horrible customer support.

You are ANet — you have the data already. All the evidence to resolve this discussion is at your finger tips. A better response would have been: “I looked at the data and found the following…”. Instead you are asking your player base to give proof. We raised the concern (which I believe to be legit).

IMHO the economy is GW2 is off to a horrible start because of various game bugs that allowed a portion of the player base to accumulate 1000’s of gold. There are also tons of bots generating gold — they are all over the place, just play the game and you’ll run into 50 rangers with bears, 20 signet warriors running as a pack, etc. I’ve even seen groups of signet thief bots. I’ve reported them all, but I’m tired of being the “police” when I really want to immerse myself in a RPG for a couple hours.

If ANet doesn’t wish to be open with metrics on their enconomy, then at least provide informative responses to our concerns…

@lackofcheese: The biggest spike happens in one hour (18:00 to 19:00), which also seems to be the frequency at which the bot scans the TP. Unfortunately, I don’t have more precise data. ANet has it perhaps as juno also indicates (but is unwilling to share any insights), but I can’t go beyond the data GW2Spidy provides. Furthermore, I looked at the raw sell listings as an indication of whether they were relisted or bought and kept. The fact that these listings take a hit, but quickly bounce back to their original level seems to indicate to me that items were being relisted.

I agree that the scale of the game is huge and I’m sure this creates certain patterns in the data. I’d still be a bit surprised though to see this sort of an increase simultaneously for all three items. But as I already stated, it’s guesswork and I don’t have access to data to check. You don’t find it extraordinary and I do and I’m afraid we’ll never be able to draw a final conclusion without more data.

Finally, about the false dichotomy; it’s not me who creates this dichotomy, it’s the people categorically denying that gold sellers influence the market in any substantial way (‘market is too big’). I’m trying to broaden the debate from influence versus no influence by advocating looking into specific market sections, such as Halloween weapons and precursors. These sections of the market could easily fall under the control of a handful of players and if that happens it hurts the game…

Anyway, I’ve speculated enough now. Let’s see what ANet says on the matter and how things evolve on the TP in the coming months. Like juno, I seriously hope for some more intelligent communication and less hollow phrases. I’ve meanwhile given up on reporting bots, I just can’t manage to report them all when there’s packs of 30-50 running in teams. I now just submit screenshots and mark them as game-breaking bugs… Still it’s wasting my time and fun.

I just ignore these stupid anet support rants. You argue like politicians. Without content and just empty phrases.

@Morrar.1764:
ok… let us assume, somebody bought 80% and relisted them higher to “manipulate” the market.
Two possible things can happen:

1. He can sell them. Which means the prices were too low in the first place and their value was in fact higher

2. He can’t sell them. Which means the prices he chose were too high and he has to lower them.

I don’t see a problem here. Nevertheless, my opinion is, that this was normal market behaviour because of the ending of halloween.

These items are “luxury” items. Compare it in the realworld to an Apple Laptop. You don’t need them.

Samuirai.4561:

I just ignore these stupid anet support rants. You argue like politicians. Without content and just empty phrases.

These are legitimate rants — asking your customer base to provide evidence in response to a concern is just passing the buck. It’s a horrible response to a real concern. I like to believe ANet takes pride in their product and would investigate things like this on their own.

The only arguement here is from folks like you who seem to think that anyone who complains is a whiner, entitled, etc.

Also you are not the first player to mention “real world” when talking about the GW2 economy. Keep in mind there are thousands of laws governing our free-market economy. There are no such rules with the trading post — so don’t even go there. It’s a joke.

Having 1000’s of gold gives you the luxury to manipulate the market to some degree. You see it in WoW when one player buys up all the available ore then turns around and reposts all of it at substantially higher prices.

If all the weapons disappeared from the TP in the span of minutes, then a similar quanitity “magically” reappeared all at higher prices… the market was manipulated.

@Samuirai: Suppose there was one computer operating system on the market. If you wanted it, you had to pay a huge sum of money. Any competing operating systems were quickly bought of the market by the company owning the one big operating system. This would not be a problem to you? Obviously, one could argue you don’t need a computer nor an operating system…

This game is about cosmetics, about skins, about luxury items if you will. They are the goals people pursue in this game. Saying that they shouldn’t is basically saying people can stop playing the game.

I din’t compared the whole economy to the real world. I just compared to the difference between luxury items and consumable goods… Weapon Skins are not comparable to Ore. Ores are somehow a needed item. But weapon skins are inly luxury. If the price is too high, there is no demand. If prices for ore are too high, there is still demand, because people need it.
But when you come and tell me, that somebody with only 1000g can “manipulate” the ore market. I would argue, that the global market would regenaret really fast. Because the supply of ores is really high.
If you argue that somebody could control lodestones. Then I would tell you the same story of skins (because lodestones are only needed for luxury items like skins)…

I don’t complain about whiners in general, because I’m a whiner too. I just don’t like claims with no evidence…

Samuirai.4561:

I just don’t like claims with no evidence…

We have anecdotal evidence. We don’t have access to the raw data, so it’s not possible for us to provide anything else.

What was originally stated in this thread: three items on the market had all the lower-cost posts purchased off the TP within the same time window. That was followed by the same three items having a similar number of new posts all at higher prices, within the same time window.

I didn’t gather that information, I’m just going by what was stated already. If that information is correct, then that should be evidence enough for ANet to investigate — rather than blow off the concern with a “can you provide proof” response…

It would be a mistake for a single player to buy a large quantity and post up most of those items at once, due to the risk of being forced to relist. If anything, that’s evidence of it being done by a larger number of players, and not just one.

Also, an increase in price for an item which is no longer being dropped from a dungeon is an obvious occurrence – I don’t see why this constitutes manipulation.

lackofcheese.5617:

It would be a mistake for a single player to buy a large quantity and post up most of those items at once, due to the risk of being forced to relist. If anything, that’s evidence of it being done by a larger number of players, and not just one.

Also, an increase in price for an item which is no longer being dropped from a dungeon is an obvious occurrence – I don’t see why this constitutes manipulation.

Disagree on both points.

If the supply was eliminated then buying all the items on the TP and reposting is lower risk (see ore market example previously). You essentially cornered the market in buying all available stock.

A larger number of players probably wouldn’t buy all the items in the same time frame. In addition, this doesn’t explain a similar number items posted back to the trading post shortly afterwards. If the supply was eliminated, it would not be possible for a large number of new items to re-enter the market so quickly.

Again this is only anecdotal — but what else do we have to go on?

lackofcheese.5617:

It would be a mistake for a single player to buy a large quantity and post up most of those items at once, due to the risk of being forced to relist. If anything, that’s evidence of it being done by a larger number of players, and not just one.

You’d only have to relist if you get undercut by a substantial amount of items (in proportion to demand). However, supply was finite and had run dry, bar the items people had stock piled on (and from crafting, but that can be left out of the equation probably). Getting undercut in such a finite supply scenario only means you have to wait it out until the items undercutting you get sold. As there is no time limit on sell listings, this is not a problem at all. Or you could simply proceed buying up all items and relisting them at least 15% higher if you have the cash for it. With (nearly) finite supply, this is totally possible.

Also, I do not see why clumping a lot of items at the same price level would be indicative of multiple parties being involved. In almost every other scenario there is undercutting when there are multiple parties involved. In fact, after the huge price spike there was quite a bit of undercutting going on and sell listings rose slightly (e.g., more items were being brought to the market due to the high price level).

And again. When the items sell with a higher price, the price was too low before.

Samuirai.4561:

And again. When the items sell with a higher price, the price was too low before.

Not true when the market is manipulated — that’s the whole point. If you personally bought 100% of available stock, you can set your own price. If the supply of stock is eliminated then you now have a monopoly.

There are players with 1000’s of gold (from botting, game bugs, gold purchases, you name it). This is influencing the market right now. These players can also play games like buying up 2500gp worth of limited stock and then setting their own prices on the resale.

I’ve been playing GW2 from launch — and there’s no feasible way I can have 1000+ gp right now from legitimate play. With that in mind, ANet should have software in place to limit the effects of those cash cows on the economy.

I have Sunrise (which costs 700-1000g) and still have more than 130g. And don’t forget the 2000 rare GS I threw into the forge and didn’t get a precursor. Just because you weren’t able to farm this money, doesn’t mean it can’t be done through trading without botting and so forth.

You can set the own price, but item’s wont sell when the people don’t see the same value in it. It’s still a luxury item. And if it sells with a higher price, that’s the price for it. gooosh. This is how economy works and is not manipulation.

The only possible market manipulation is releasing false information to increase/decrease demand or offer of items. But this doens’t affect you if you don’t fall for it. And economy recovers fast after such an incident.

If I had bought hundreds of units of an item that isn’t traded in large quantities, like this one, I’d put up listings for 1 or 2 units at a time so that I could respond much better to being undercut, especially if I get undercut again and again. You might say that it’s not a problem because it will sell eventually, but you’re missing an obvious downside – not having that money earlier means you don’t get to reinvest it.

It’s clear enough from looking at the current listings ingame that there are no listings of tens or hundreds of units of any of these three items at the exact same price point. Moreover, there is clear evidence of a lot of undercutting going on. For example, there’s almost 30 different listings of “The Crossing” in the 45-65g range, mostly consisting of 1 or 2 units in each listing.

As such, I see very little reason to think that there is any one person who has bought anywhere near 100% of available stock. Yes, it’s possible for one person to put up lots of listings at different prices, but it’s silly to suggest this when the situation is far better explained by the actions of multiple people.

juno.1840:

A larger number of players probably wouldn’t buy all the items in the same time frame. In addition, this doesn’t explain a similar number items posted back to the trading post shortly afterwards. If the supply was eliminated, it would not be possible for a large number of new items to re-enter the market so quickly.

There are quite a lot of reasons for this kind of thing happening in a small time frame; it’s not surprising for this to happen in the slightest.Typically, it’s the result of many players being exposed to the same announcement, or circumstances.

Considering that these game-wide events, and the announcements on the Internet, happen at the same time for everyone, it’s hardly surprising for players to react in similar ways at similar times. I think going to the TP to look at prices is a pretty natural reaction to the end of an event like this, don’t you?

Most of the items put up after the price jumped up were probably put up by players who had already had one drop for them, but were waiting a little while to sell it.

juno.1840:

I’ve been playing GW2 from launch — and there’s no feasible way I can have 1000+ gp right now from legitimate play. With that in mind, ANet should have software in place to limit the effects of those cash cows on the economy.

As for having over 1000gp, a good number of players have legitimately gotten that kind of amount from buying and selling on the TP, typically without anything that could reasonably called “manipulation”. The fact that you don’t have that much is not a good reason to penalize those who do.

Let’s not derail the discussion with examples; case studies don’t really help in reaching general conclusions.

Obviously, the price people are willing to pay for an item depends on how badly they want the item (subjective value, largely from comparing with other items available for gold) and the cost of alternatives. ANet erred on the side of crafting by making the list of materials for these exotics insanely expensive. The price ceiling therefore is pretty high.

And if a party is able to buy out all competition, there are no others sources for obtaining the items. This is the definition of a monopoly and that monopolies are a threat to a free market is something I don’t think needs much explanation… Whether you want to call it manipulation or not is a matter of definition. Fact remains that you don’t want monopolies in (sections of) your market.

Which usually will not happen. Because there is still supply on crafting them. And in order to push prices up, you also need to push the materials up. Not to mention, that these materials are also needed for other stuff. And then you get these huge net of connected materials which influence each other.

Whether each persons opinion on this is manipulation or just making money fairly its always going to happen in a supply/demand free market economy which is the system GW2 uses. The smoking gun is when a group of people buy up items like legendary precursors to create a false demand then sell back for double than what they bought it for to the people that genuinely want the item. This is what happened when GW2 first launched and it happened in GW1 with q7/8 weapons after Anet removed them as drops from the game.

If there is evidence of individuals or groups of people creating false demand for super rare items then it would be considered market manipulation in the real world and its very hard to gather evidence to prove its going on, especially in a virtual world like an MMO. The question is does Anet condone it or not.

A good example of creating false demand is the company Enron. Google it.

This is wrong. Have you tried to obtain a precursor on your own? This is our google docs sheet where we keep track on our trys in the forge: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqjFp3hDPMLUdF9KdDNKR0dXSWxSRHotVGpUSVJpM2c#gid=0
Look on what we threw in. We haven’t got a precursor. It seems, that the prices of precursors found now their real value. And what happend was, the prices were too low in the beginning and some people recognised it and bought them, before everybody realizes that the prices has to be much higher.

It’s happened before in much more complicated systems. This system is pretty uncomplicated with the additional bonus that you can produce gold by farming.

ANet has put algorithms in place for farming — even in GW1 there was anti-farming code. This is to limit the influx of gold into the economy.

GW2 has these rules but we also have bots which work around those rules. In addition we’ve had bugs that temporarily skew the economy (karma wep bug, exotic drop rates in halloween events, etc).

The trading post is currently unfettered. There’s no reason ANet shouldn’t put some restrictions in place to minimize the impact of players with significant gold reserves (whether obtained legitimately or not).

If you have 1000’s of gold, do you really need to be deep into playing the market?

Is the purpose of the TP to allow players to sell their drops, obtain crafting materials, etc., or is the TP more like a stock-market?

Right now it plays like both. I don’t think the intent was for it to be a stock market. If that’s true, then there’s no reason ANet shouldn’t cap such behavior.

Having a market is essential for an MMO. Or have you seen one without? If anet would not provide something like the TP, people would trade with each other and create a market/economy this way. What do you think why anet chose something like a global TP. Because this provides every player with all the information needed. It stabilises the overall economy which helps regular players.

The purpose of the TP is to stabelise the economy and to remove gold.

Morrar.1764:

Let’s not derail the discussion with examples; case studies don’t really help in reaching general conclusions.

When the only evidence being presented that market manipulation is a serious problem consists of case studies, clearly case studies are relevant. However, I haven’t yet seen decent evidence of significant issues with manipulation, and I think that kind of evidence is needed to give this discussion actual meaning.

When the thread is titled “Suggestions to reduce market manipulation”, I would think that establishing how much market manipulation is going on is a completely relevant issue to the thread, no?

Morrar.1764:

And if a party is able to buy out all competition, there are no others sources for obtaining the items. This is the definition of a monopoly and that monopolies are a threat to a free market is something I don’t think needs much explanation… Whether you want to call it manipulation or not is a matter of definition. Fact remains that you don’t want monopolies in (sections of) your market.

Sure, monopolies are undesirable (except of course to the party doing the monopolizing). Where are these monopolies you’re talking about, though?

For example, you cannot monopolize precursors in this game, because no matter how many of them you buy people will always have the ability to put more items into the forge and make more precursors.

The Halloween items are theoretically vulnerable to monopolization since they rely on Candy Corn to craft, and it’s a limited resource, but given that there’s over 2 million units of candy corn currently on the TP, I think the concern is far from being a serious one at all.

I didn’t say anything about removing the TP lol… please stay on topic.

The TP does not remove gold — it’s not a sink. It simply transfers gold between players.

The real question is what are the all of the intended roles of the TP (as designed by ANet).

I’d wager that a “stock market” is not an intended role. Players buying 10,000+ items simply for resale falls into this category. Even trading houses in the RL market have limitations and penalties on quick-turn behaviors.

If the intended behavior is to allow players to buy, sell, trade goods, then restrictions on stock-market type behaviors do not inhibit this.