Guild Wars 2

The TP most definitely does remove gold; it’s quite possibly the biggest gold sink in the game – the 15% tax, remember?

The “stock market” effect is not part of the intended role, but it’s a natural side-effect of a market system, and in a number of ways the effect is a positive one.

lackofcheese.5617:

The TP most definitely does remove gold; it’s quite possibly the biggest gold sink in the game – the 15% tax, remember?

The “stock market” effect is not part of the intended role, but it’s a natural side-effect of a market system, and in a number of ways the effect is a positive one.

Doh slaps head that is correct. The 15% is a sink in the economy — thx for that!

I’m not sure the stock market effect is a positive one. In my opinion it’s not. It doesn’t provide any benefit to the players outside of the buy/sell behavior. In fact it’s a negative impact to everyone else by constantly skimming off the low buys and feeding in high sells.

It’s also enabled with “buy orders” that allow players to queue up huge transactions with 1000’s of gold. Without the buy orders, player would be forced to deal with stock on hand. That makes it more challenging to play the market.

Another way to look at it… features in an MMO are designed to entertain the majority of players. A bad feature does the opposite (to a majority of players). Is stock-market behavior in the TP hurting majority of the player base? I think the answer is yes. Whereas the buying/selling/trading of goods does benefit the majority.

We’re straying to different topics, but I think it’s good conversation.

Samuirai.4561:

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.

How am I wrong? I didn’t say anything that was definite. I used legendary precursors as an example because of how rare they are. In MMOs the less of a certain item there is the more chances there are to create a false demand for that item by buying them up then watching the price rise till your satisfied.

I don’t see evidence of any sort of market manipulation, just slightly suspicious price jumps on the TP which doesnt mean didly squat even to me. I also wonder how people supposedly “knew” about the rarity of such items to know that the price would soon skyrocket. Maybe mine the .dat file?

I don’t think the problem here is people playing the TP other than it is bots/gold sellers constantly putting massive amounts of gold into the economy, effectively lowering the value of gold to the point items start rising in prices while the poor farmer earning his wage through dungeons, events, gathering and killing mobs(pretty much just playing the game as intended) can’t keep up with the cost of things because of the gaps between earning gold and high item prices growing larger.

tl;dr: bots and gold sellers are the problem. May Anet strike them all down with lightning.

Dromar.1027:

tl;dr: bots and gold sellers are the problem. May Anet strike them all down with lightning.

exactly. thanks.

Traders remove a lot of gold from the economy. Stocking up single items, like useless halloween skins doesn’t do any damage at all.

I laugh at people who think buying low and selling high is a honest way to make money. You raise the price for people who want to buy items for personal use and add nothing to the economy, except maybe removing some money by paying the trade taxes.
Its not like in GW1 where there wasnt a worldwide trading post. Traders added to the market there by saving impatient people time. Thats not the case here.

So playing the market = market manipulation.

And dont tell me its like that in real life, too. Thats unfortune enough. Why do we need these silly practices in virtual fantasy worlds?

What I can understand are long term investmens, like you assume rare item xyz will have more uses in future and stock up on it. But buying items with the whole intent of reselling it quickly after it stupid.

lackofcheese.5617:

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.

It’ll be a serious concern in six to nine months from now, especially if Anet decides not to bring them back when the next Halloween comes around.

Although I wouldn’t worry about it too much, seeing how lodestones are currently priced at lol.

Malediktus.9250 you should take an economy class.

Malediktus.9250:

I laugh at people who think buying low and selling high is a honest way to make money. You raise the price for people who want to buy items for personal use and add nothing to the economy, except maybe removing some money by paying the trade taxes.

Can you please explain, why buying low, selling high would push the prices up?

1. in GW1 people were “tricked” in low prices to buy them cheap. and others were “tricked” i paying much. This is definitely not a healthy economy
2. in GW2 every player sees the price of an item (same information base for everybody) and therefore traders can’t use the information only they knew (the real value of items) and turn it into profit.

You also underestimate the “remove some money by taxes”… One trader can remove hundreds of gold each day from the economy. I have probably payed several thousand golds in taxes. Tell me how this doesn’t help economy.

I don’t think halloween items will have a big value in 9 Months… It has somehow an elite factor during the event. “Look at me! I have one of these super rare event weapons”… in 9 months not many people will be interested in them (except some collectors)… But this is just my opinion on that.

I think Halloween weapons might be underpriced currently, considering crafting costs several times as much as buying them from the TP. It reminds me to buy a mad moon shield for my guardian and warrior before it goes up.

Samuirai.4561:

Can you please explain, why buying low, selling high would push the prices up?

Buying pushing prices up… selling pushes them back down.

Where it breaks down is the complete purchase of the current supply with limited supply coming into the system. You can argue this is supply and demand, but the demand in this case is initially manipulated by a small set of players buying up all the stock then letting it back out slowly, at higher prices. RL diamond market may be a good comparison — although I hate to compare anything in an MMO to real life.

I agree completely with a previous poster about gold farmers as the root cause of the problem.

I would love to see some statistics from ANet on the economy. One insightful metric would be the distribution of wealth in the player base.

juno.1840:

Buying pushing prices up… selling pushes them back down.

Where it breaks down is the complete purchase of the current supply with limited supply coming into the system. You can argue this is supply and demand, but the demand in this case is initially manipulated by a small set of players buying up all the stock then letting it back out slowly, at higher prices.

You don’t get it. If they slowly release them, there is still supply and when people buy it, then this is the value of the item. Nobody forces them to buy it. They buy it, because they think it’s worth it. When the prices were lower before only means, that they were undervalued. What’s so difficult to understand? They wouldn’t sell on higher prices, when this is not their value. Demand and supply curves will meet:

[img]http://blog.phonesandplans.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/demand-supply-curve.jpg[/img]

Yes there are people who buy the items on high prices. But they can’t sell everything. So they have to lower the price, until more buys them. If they can sell everything high, then this is the intersection.

The problem in the real world with diamond and oil market manipulation is, that there are other economies which need them. You can’t stop buying oil or diamonds. But in this MMO economy (in this example the stated halloween items) are soulbound after use. And only a skin. Nobody needs them. They are pure luxury. Therefore you can’t force people in paying higher prices. If they do, they do it because they undertsand the high value too.

juno.1840:

I would love to see some statistics from ANet on the economy. One insightful metric would be the distribution of wealth in the player base.

Which would say what? It would only say, that some people are beter at trading than you. Just because somebody has money doesn’t make him a manipulator.

John Smith.4610:

market manipulation.

… well that’s unfortunate that the head Econ guy doesn’t see “Flipping” as Manipulation.

I’m just curious what else you’d call it when the entire point is to manipulate the final sales price for a bigger profit on something that would have been a lot cheaper if there was no short-term speculating middlemen driving up the prices.

Flipping isn’t market manipulation lol. Buy low, sell high has been around since god knows when.

Of course flipping is market manipulation, you artificially inflate prices to make profit on the expense of players who do not know the proper price level of the items. If flipping wasn’t market manipulation, it wouldn’t work because you would never make any profit.

frellingfahrbot.7152:

Of course flipping is market manipulation, you artificially inflate prices to make profit on the expense of players who do not know the proper price level of the items. If flipping wasn’t market manipulation, it wouldn’t work because you would never make any profit.

It isn’t market manipulation. I have the same infos on prices as the next guy, a perfect market would put all the items in the TP with highest buying price = 0.85 * lower selling price, but they’re not all showing this gap (which is the Market Maker gap, where MM=Anet with its commission on selling items), so it must mean that not all players in the market are savvy enough to make the right calculations. And this ofc goes way beyond the intersection point of supply-demand curves.

Heck, there’re still a LOT of selling orders equal to vendor price + 1c. So, by the same logic, we should state that there’re people who are deflating intentionally the prices. No, they’re just really BAD at math.

I dare to say that Dominar Rygel didn’t teach you enough.

What prices are you artificially inflating? If you’re making a buy order, you’re offering to pay more than what other people are paying – which is good for the seller.

Then, you relist it at the lowest (or undercut by 1c) sell price, which is good for a prospective buyer.

This means that someone who wants to sell and is willing to wait (by putting up a sell order) has to offer a price more friendly to the buyer (ie, lower than a trader would offer it) and that someone who wants to buy but will wait (by putting up a buy order) has to offer more to the hypothetical seller.

This, in turn, benefits people who don’t want to wait to buy or sell items. What’s wrong with that?

EDIT: Well, I guess buying up the lowest sell orders and relisting them higher is kinda mean, but with the 15% fee (5% listing, repeatedly if you have to relist, and 10% always), that’s riskier to do because you have to be able to force the sale price to increase more than 15% to even break even, and you can’t undercut people who undercut you without paying listing fee again and eating into any potential profits.

That’s what the listing and sale fees do to make it harder for people to manipulate the market. Whereas if there was no fee, there’d be less “danger” in saying “i’ll buy everything less than 15s and force everyone who doesn’t know the true price of this item to buy it from me because I have all the stock”.

That’s what market manipulation is. Flipping is buying with a buy order and selling with a sell order, generally, or buying during a low-demand time period and selling during a high-demand one. Neither are artifical manipulation.

juno.1840:

Samuirai.4561:

Can you please explain, why buying low, selling high would push the prices up?

Buying pushing prices up… selling pushes them back down.

Where it breaks down is the complete purchase of the current supply with limited supply coming into the system. You can argue this is supply and demand, but the demand in this case is initially manipulated by a small set of players buying up all the stock then letting it back out slowly, at higher prices. RL diamond market may be a good comparison — although I hate to compare anything in an MMO to real life.

I agree completely with a previous poster about gold farmers as the root cause of the problem.

I would love to see some statistics from ANet on the economy. One insightful metric would be the distribution of wealth in the player base.

what it does is stabilize them into a creep. The direction of creep will go in the direction in favor of the largest traders.
And the largest traders are the already rich. Have you looked at the US economy lately? nearly half the country lives below the poverty line. We are turning into a nation of peasants and lords. This is what uncontrolled capitalism in a mature economy ALWAYS does, as much as the Chicago school economists are loathe to admit.

The exact same thing is happening here, for exactly the same reasons. The difference is in real life people can’t quit the game. Here they can. And they will.

John Smith.4610:

ilr.9675:

John Smith.4610:

market manipulation.

… well that’s unfortunate that the head Econ guy doesn’t see “Flipping” as Manipulation.

I’m just curious what else you’d call it when the entire point is to manipulate the final sales price for a bigger profit on something that would have been a lot cheaper if there was no short-term speculating middlemen driving up the prices.

Keep in mind there is a difference between Moving along the Supply Demand curves, and shifting the supply demand curves.

I don’t recall making any statement about what I consider market manipulation? Have a forgotten something?

Again a rather simple and uninformative post on the matter… You asked us to prove market manipulation and yes you failed to define it yourself (just like the OP). However, if you had read the topic, you’d have seen it moved beyond that and we did define manipulation.

It was defined as the ability to set rather than follow the market pricing trends. Thus it is about being able to control prices in (a segment of) the market. Two methods for achieving this were also identified: a) through deception, spreading misinformation b) by owning a very significant share in (a section of) the market. Method a has happened (posting false Mystic Forge recipes on popular websites), but in this thread most concern was raised about method b (gaining a monopoly).

What many of the above posters fail to understand is that it is a matter of scale. Nothing wrong with flipping a few items, but if you are able to flip the prices on all the items in a specific section of the market, then it becomes problematic. If you gain a monopoly in the market, you’re pretty much free to determine the price.

Now – as also stated before – we simply lack the data to prove whether monopolies exist in the market. However, we do know that some market segments are rather small. The Halloween weapons were a perfect example and so are the precursors. Both market sections have very limited supply, making it easier to control them. It boils down to the size of these market sections and the investment needed to gain control.

Related to that, we know that there are a lot of gold sellers active and that these folks make a lot of money. Their bots run unhindered for weeks on end, injecting a huge cash flow into the economy. Players running these bots could easily gather enough funds to also start controlling sections of the market.

So there is reason to worry and what players want to know is;
- Does ANet keep track of the market and the parties playing in it?
- Is ANet monitoring these data actively or not?
- Are there any signs of monopolies as suggested in this thread?
- If this were the case, would ANet intervene or just leave them be?
- Are gold sellers an issue at this point and what is being done against them?

On these issues we haven’t had any significant information for weeks. The official topic on botting was simply closed. The last information we got contained meaningless numbers (10K banned, which probably equals the amount of bots on a single server) and hollow marketing phrases (‘operation bot destruction’). No information on whether accounts associated with botting (e.g., trading accounts, buyer’s accounts) were also banned. No information whether an effort is being made to remove the illegally obtained gold and items from the market. No information on why bots aren’t banned immediately, but are allowed to run until the next ban wave. Etc.

I find this lack of communication rather worrying. I think many players are concerned about the economy and ANet’s capacity to govern it. People see bots running rampant for ages. If you Google these bots on the web, you’ll see they have large communities using them. Their methods become more advanced too; strategies for avoiding detection are being openly discussed and programmed into the bots.

Meanwhile players are getting more and more worried that they can’t compete with the gold sellers and that these parties will gain control over the in-game economy. ANet just goes on to ignore these concerns and thereby alienates from their customers. The quoted post is just another example how the whole discussion in this topic again gets blatantly ignored. Surely, it will be no different after this post.

Morrar.1764:

John Smith.4610:

ilr.9675:

John Smith.4610:

market manipulation.

… well that’s unfortunate that the head Econ guy doesn’t see “Flipping” as Manipulation.
…

Keep in mind there is a difference between Moving along the Supply Demand curves, and shifting the supply demand curves….

Again a rather simple and uninformative post on the matter… You asked us to prove market manipulation and yes you failed to define it yourself (just like the OP). However, if you had read the topic, you’d have seen it moved beyond that and we did define manipulation.
…

“Flipping” is unfortunately not viewed as market manipulation by the majority these days. It’s common practice in inflating economies. GW2 has an inflating economy. The reason for this is that market value is always determined by consumer utility in the end. Lest the product has a short life cycle (like our halloween costumes).

The real problem for the GW2 economy is that it’s slightly mirroring the real world. Exogenous problems interfere with the economy making it unstable for the majority. In GW2 the problem is bots, they inflate the economy through tireless acquisition of gold. ANet recognises that and tries to combat them. The problem ANet is facing is that botting practice is far larger than they can handle. Furthermore it is phased by a population not scrutinising botting, but actually willing to buy their gold and/or implement bots themselves.

You shouldn’t be concerned about alleged “market manipulation” or “virtual stock markets”. It doesn’t hurt the economy as long it isn’t facing exogenous problems like bots.

What you should do is go about with a zero-tolerance for bots. If you care so much about this you should gather what information you have on bots (forums, tactics, download sites, etc.) and mail it directly to ANet support staff. You should also be careful of what you buy at the BLTC, and also report, denounce and shame anyone who participates in botting, buying gold from sellers and selling gold.

The root of this problem lies in people willing to pay gold farmers for gold. If we keep a zero tolerance for such people they will find themselves excluded from the community, which for most people is undesirable.

Flipping to me is buying underpriced items and selling them for fair market value. Market manipulation is using limited supply and excess gold to force the market value to go up. While flipping can slow the decline of market value, it is a temporary situation. If supply exceeds demand, prices will drop. People that practice flipping usually want quick sales and low stock. Manipulation is a long term control of prices and stock levels.

Remember when playing a game was about playing the game? And not about having spreadsheets to track market trends? Shouldn’t the richest people in a MMO be the people who have achieved the most spectacular feats, not people who sit in front of a NPC manipulating imaginary items for a few minutes a day?

Plague.5329:

Remember when playing a game was about playing the game? And not about having spreadsheets to track market trends? Shouldn’t the richest people in a MMO be the people who have achieved the most spectacular feats, not people who sit in front of a NPC manipulating imaginary items for a few minutes a day?

believe it or not, some people like to do this for fun.

and as for heros/traders wealth, traders will always have more money, because there is more gold available on the TP then in the field.

Plague.5329:

Remember when playing a game was about playing the game? And not about having spreadsheets to track market trends? Shouldn’t the richest people in a MMO be the people who have achieved the most spectacular feats, not people who sit in front of a NPC manipulating imaginary items for a few minutes a day?

Hasn’t flipping been around like since the beginning of MMO’s with market places Where you get that idea of feats from?

market manipulation is not so bad. Someone makes an offer on an item.
Let’s say this offer is 50% reduction on its selling price., the person who has the item has the choice to sell it or not with 50% reduction or not.

If the person does it, well good for them, they have a direct cash income. The person who bought it cheaper is also happy.
Everyone is happy, and even if some prices increase, the offers for items increase too (because of high demand from speculators) so everyone has more money to buy what they want.

The only thing ANet has to manage is the rate for exchanging gems and gold. They also have to manage the prices from merchants. And to make sure some money disappear from the game with rates in TP and costs for teleporting and repairing.

Speculating =/= Market Manipulation.

Is there a working trade interface in the game yet? One possible way to avoid this so-called market manipulation (via monopolies on items with very limited supply) is this:

If you have that item and are wishing to sell, sell it to someone you know wants to use it via a private trade. You could setup a forum for people looking to buy and sell wares, maybe exclusively for things like precursors, and require people to post screenshots of the item soulbound afterward if they want to use that trading forum again.

Sure, there are ways of getting around even that (i.e. if someone already has that item soulbound). That said, my guess is it would be more trouble than it’s worth, and bot owners/trade moguls using the forum would be pretty easy to spot.

Perhaps that’s a bit extreme, but the basic concept I think is sound: selling to buyers you know are purchasing the item for use. This can be as simple as trading to your friends/guildies, or something as elaborate as a specific online trading forum used expressly for that purpose. Of course this would require a working trade interface, and I thought I heard one doesn’t exist currently (maybe that was only shortly after launch though).

You WANT people to flip items in this system. Items being bought and sold more than once thus get hit with the 15% tax more than once. More transactions means less money in the economy which means less inflation.

@jihoko there is no market manipulation its just really a word people are throwing around and then more people that don’t know what they are talking about hopping on the bandwagon. So everything that happens on the TP will be called manipulation.

Everyone has access to the same information the buyer and the seller. People that use that info better are the people that get ahead that can be the buyer or the seller. Their is nothing wrong with the tp outside of excess of stuff from the bots.

I think that people are grossly overestimating the number of people that have 10g, 100g, or even 1000g.

Echo.7634:

I think that people are grossly overestimating the number of people that have 10g, 100g, or even 1000g.

10g is easily achievable. My main character is only level 75 and has just over 8g funds (and this is after buying 700 gems with gold last week for one of the halloween costumes). Admittedly, I’m expecting to have things I want to spend some of this on once I reach level 80, but I’m also confident that I will be easily able to make more.

With 100g or 1000g, I have no idea how many players may be able to boast those sorts of balances, but from my experience with playing the market, the more money you are able to invest into it, the more money you are able to make from it. If I’m making 15% profit (after fees) from each transaction, and if I keep reinvesting those profits it doesn’t take long till my funds far exceed my original starting capital.

Edit: typo and filter

I can tell you from experience, in this game after you have hundreds of gold…it starts being difficult to find ways to invest all of it to get the huge exponentially increasing gains you figure on.

When you have 20g in the bank and you’re investing with 15g of it, it’s not too hard to get a hold of 15g worth of stuff that’s worth flipping. When you have 1000g in the bank it’s not so easy to do the same with 900g of your funds. Most things don’t trade in that kind of volume. If you try to flip very expensive things, it’s common for them to just sit there. Then a few more go up and you’re facing the very real possibility of wanting to take it down and relist.

Also when things go wrong (and they will), you can lose a whoooole lot of money.

TLDR going from 20g to 40g while staring at the TP is much easier than going from 1000g to 2000g. By leaps and bounds.

@Minion of Vey: I don’t disagree.

I probably should have put some emphasis in the line “the more money you are able to invest” to reflect the fact that even with my (relatively) small amount of funds I’m not able to put all my capital to work sometimes (usually due to lack of time as I mostly play the TP when I’m getting ready for work in the mornings…)

Buying from tp with the only aim to resell it when the price increases is one of the ways for getting money. If you prefer spending hours farming the same event in orr it’s your call. Just don’t try to limit other people gameplay just because you don’t like it/play like that.

Chobiko.9182:

The real problem for the GW2 economy is that it’s slightly mirroring the real world.

This is my #1 concern. And I definitely didn’t mean to incite any arguments against Mr. Smith and I agree with him very strongly on this:

“Keep in mind there is a difference between Moving along the Supply Demand curves, and shifting the supply demand curves….”

.

Look, I don’t like long analogies but since I suffer “Calculus dyslexia” like most americans, I have to relate this to boolean absolutes to make a case. The opportunity to make bigger profits is based mostly on Volatility. I think we can all agree on that.

We should also be able to agree that “buying low selling high” can be helpful to an economy when it is done in a fashion similar to how a Warehouse operates: which stabilizes volatility. IE: It plays by the rules of having “Overhead” and limited space. Therefore storage = earning potential / time. This creates Certainty and stabilizes prices which benefits Suppliers, most of whom are casual players in the lower end commodities. “A rising tide lifts all boats” and all that good stuff..

.

Where we get into trouble… is with this new video-game version of speculating. Exploitable volatility from massive Transparency issues and even more massive wealth Disparities…. or as FrellingFahr corrently stated: “you artificially inflate prices to make profit on the expense of players who do not know the proper price level” <— where not even the Ratings Agencies would know the proper price levels b/c the math was fudged. And what about Placing and canceling unlimited orders? 3rd party Gold-buyers and Gold-sellers playing by different rules than the rest of us. Bots that create mass volatility in very targeted market sectors. Mass buy-ins or buy-ups to force inflation itself to rise (again, due to lack of transparency). And unlimited orders/bids for a single account with “little tricks” that allow for unlimited potential storage. How much of this do we honestly want to expose ourselves to? And how would we even know when it’s taking place?

This is where I was in agreement with the OP 100% on there needing to be a system of making items Temporarily Account-Bound for a period of time (but allowing Crafting to un-bound them again). ….so that Buying Low and selling high once again resembles Warehousing and manufacturing instead of Flashtrading. That doesn’t remove “flipping” from the game, not by a long shot. It simply puts it on the same set of rules that every other source of income (dungeons, events, crafting) has to play by.

there is very strong market manipulation. this one guy has over 100 precursors and legendaries all for sale for real money. dont even know how this is possible

http://www.playerauctions.com/guild-wars-2-items/?serverid=5198

exum.3746:

there is very strong market manipulation. this one guy has over 100 precursors and legendaries all for sale for real money. dont even know how this is possible

Not clicking that link… but I’ll take your word that this guy is advertising these items as you stated. However, this isn’t technically the sort of market manipulation as is being discussed in this thread, instead it seems to me that this is more closely related to the goldseller problem.

Without knowing exactly how he obtained the items he is selling, we can only speculate as to what means he employed. What he doesn’t appear to be doing however is buying up all available precursors on the TP and relisting them with a huge markup. If he bought those items on the TP, then yes, he’s adding to the demand (and reducing the supply) that is behind the rise in price of precursors, but he is not actually directly controlling the price of precursors on the TP.

I’m in agreement with Astraea: one guy having multiple of an item does not indicate market manipulation. That just means the person was incredibly in-game rich, incredibly lucky, or breaking the rules somehow.

Or, the guy could be lying.

If I said I had a -thousand- precursor items and put them all up for sale would you believe me? I can make.. err.. produce screenshots too!

Regardless, none of that is market manipulation.

One of the biggest issues I see with threads like this from people who claim market manipulation is the lack of proof to back the claims. If someone makes a claim then they need to back it with strong evidence that indicates that the claim happens.

All too often people write “there is market manipulation” and when asked to show why they think so they come back with, “it’s obvious!!” – well, no, it really isn’t.

Most of the manipulations can be shown to have been caused by something other than purposeful manipulation. Sometimes it’s a “perfect storm” event, sometimes it’s a combination of factors, but, to date, I haven’t seen a really clean example of manipulation in the way that the author has tried to claim.

this isnt multiple of one item. this is thousands of dollars worth of in game item being sold.

exum.3746:

this isnt multiple of one item. this is thousands of dollars worth of in game item being sold.

I don’t mean to dismiss your concern entirely, and I do think that the existence of this person is a very worrying sign of how much influence gold sellers have in the economy, but again, this isn’t market manipulation.

If the market had changed so that the only way to get a precursor/legendary was to buy it from a site like this, then a case could be made for manipulation.

Nice try to change the subject but that’s not Manipulation, that’s Monopolizing.

whiran.1473:

All too often people write “there is market manipulation” and when asked to show why they think so they come back with, “it’s obvious!!” – well, no, it really isn’t.

Prove there isn’t… You can’t. Why? Because there’s no transparency in the Bids and flips. There’s no traceable history. It’s all double blind flash-exchanges with no Data behind them… not even so much as a quantity of “Sellers” in each column of prices. And even less information about how many items were re-listed and when. …which is the perfect “dark room” for rigging prices and exploiting volatility that masks real price indexes to everyone but the most connected of users. Or worse, only those who fully understand all the tricks & gimmicks that allowed the manipulation in the first place.

So if flipping isn’t a problem, and encouraged by ANet for “healthy” economic reasons why don’t we have the luxury with Gems?

You can’t flip gems because the buy and sell systems are decoupled in some fashion. The only time was profitable was if you bought at 300 gems per 1gp, and sold in the weeks following the massive plunge to 100 gems per 1gp. Even then you’d make a piddly amount of money.

So, why does ANet keep the gem market tight and “unplayable”?

Should a similar decouping exist for buying vs. selling on the TP?

During the Halloween event i decided to purchase a few superior runes of the mad king for my thief. After farming for the golkittenpt and eye on the prices and i saw what i think is market manipulation. The price would be around 1g10s for a while and then all of a sudden 6 would be put up for sale at 1g [purchase price lingered around 86s during this whole time]. Then offers would drop below 1g10 and all of a sudden there would be a mass purchase by 1 guy (around 16) at 90s which would quickly be fulled as people sold in fear of the price drop and then the price would normalize to around 1g10s and the process would start again.

NameStlr.6971:

During the Halloween event i decided to purchase a few superior runes of the mad king for my thief. After farming for the golkittenpt and eye on the prices and i saw what i think is market manipulation. The price would be around 1g10s for a while and then all of a sudden 6 would be put up for sale at 1g [purchase price lingered around 86s during this whole time]. Then offers would drop below 1g10 and all of a sudden there would be a mass purchase by 1 guy (around 16) at 90s which would quickly be fulled as people sold in fear of the price drop and then the price would normalize to around 1g10s and the process would start again.

This could be a case of manipulation, but it seems to be a lot of effort for a small amount of profit. Buying at 90s and selling at 1g 10s means a profit of 4s 50c silver per unit. If he listed 6 units at 1g to trigger the panic, he spent an additional 60s in fees to buy and sell 16 units for a total profit of 12s (16 × 4.5 less 60).

I’m not sure what everyones definition of market manipulation is, but this happened last week.

I was watching abyss dyes the average price around 3.5g. I was refreshing about every 10 seconds, the quantity available was about 200. Then I refreshed, and the quantity was down to 100 in an instant. Over the next five minutes 100 dyes were listed at varying prices around 5g

I know it was just 1 guy because abyss dyes only come in about 10 an hour max and usually sell at that same rate. I’m sure this guy cleaned up, because it was an odd day when abyss dye was 3.5g when it’s usually 6.

Now I don’t really see a problem with this. He saw low prices and took advantage of it. Is this what people consider manipulation?

I wouldn’t expect Anet to see things like this, because it can happen so fast. But it’s laughable that they deny it happens.

So… let me see if I have this straight…

People see market prices changing. Therefore the conclusion is ‘Hey, someone’s manipulating the market, we must fix it by… ‘insert a market manipulation technique to “fix” prices’.

Greeeeeaaaaaaat idea, that – ‘Correcting’ a perceived flaw in the market by introducing the very thing you are claiming to want eliminated.

Prices shift as supply and demand shift. Some of the supply changes may be explained by bot bans (tier 6 dust fits here). Some of the demand changes can be seen as people speculating in the market – buying it cheap to relist at a higher price. (I’ve seen that happen with candy-corn, more of it happen with the Mystic Forge conduits, and some other items). None of these is wrong – Speculating takes assets and risk. The speculators for mystic forge conduits got burned when prices dropped from 20 gold/ea, to the current price near 13g (a loss of a third of the investments – I shed no tears for monies lost by the speculators. Nor do I rage at people who made money selling their conduits at those 20g prices)

—

Darx: Every market transaction has speculation and risk. Even the ‘Sell Now’ or ‘Buy Now’ options involve risk. For a ‘Sell Now’, I risk not getting money I could have got for selling it at a higher price. For a ‘Buy Now’, I risk paying more for the item than I might otherwise need to pay. But in either case, I get what I want (the product or money) immediately. Look up ‘opportunity cost’.

No, seriously: look it up.

Opportunity cost is an important concept to understand, and applies to your observation about the dyes being purchased and re-listed. One person speculated ’I’ll get what I want by selling at 3.5g’ Another speculated ‘I can make more money, lets re-list these at a higher price’ The second person is ok with both the risk and opportunity cost the first was unwilling to pay.

If you want to eliminate speculation and risk, you’ll need to eliminate the marketplace. The two are not separable from it.

//Yamagawa

I truly dislike all the original suggestions.

From a selfish perspective, these all directly hinder my primary ways of generating cash. The assets I own now, i’d guess 95% is from the mystic forge, buying, and selling. 5% from drops.

From a philosophical perspective, the trading post is as close an approximation of a free market as we can hope to see in a video game, which is amazing to have. All of those suggestions directly attack that principle.

It’s actually harder than you think to “manipulate the market”, at least in the way you think is happening. Realize that you also absorb a great deal of risk in trying to affect supply and demand curves with your personal (or pooled) wealth. There are ways of managing this risk, of course, but I believe that is also a skill, which I prefer to see rewarded.

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).

Oh dear. I’m so sorry I offended you Malediktus with my first reply to your post.

These suggestions are completely ridiculous…BECAUSE:

1. It makes no sense to “temporarily” account bound an item bought on the TP. What happens when you refine a bound item, you get a now bound mat? Why shouldn’t people be allowed to buy/sell/trade on the TP?

2. Make a cooldown on what? Selling an item? You want a cooldown for selling a log of wood? And what is the sense in making buying more logs of wood, negating the cooldown?

3. It appears the entire point of your thread is that you don’t want anyone to profit on the TP. Why? Because someone undercut you and you’re mad about it so you don’t want anyone else to be able to do so? There’s nothing wrong with reselling. Keeps the economy moving, grinding and pumping. If you can’t deal with it then just sell to the highest buyer or the merchant and move along.

None of these suggestions would hurt or nerf the rich sellers which is what you purport to want. They would only help the rich players by making the TP even more prohibitive for poorer players.

Whats wrong with having more socialism in the market of a fantasy MMO? Its bad enough there is so much capitalism in real life.

It’s pretty ridiculous to suggest that micro-manipulation is not occurring. It’s the only way to make any money in this game.

Darx.9842:

I’m not sure what everyones definition of market manipulation is, but this happened last week.

I was watching abyss dyes the average price around 3.5g. I was refreshing about every 10 seconds, the quantity available was about 200. Then I refreshed, and the quantity was down to 100 in an instant. Over the next five minutes 100 dyes were listed at varying prices around 5g

I know it was just 1 guy because abyss dyes only come in about 10 an hour max and usually sell at that same rate. I’m sure this guy cleaned up, because it was an odd day when abyss dye was 3.5g when it’s usually 6.

Now I don’t really see a problem with this. He saw low prices and took advantage of it. Is this what people consider manipulation?

I wouldn’t expect Anet to see things like this, because it can happen so fast. But it’s laughable that they deny it happens.

This isn’t market manipulation. You yourself said that the average price of abyss dye was usually 6g. This person saw an opportunity to buy low and sell high, but even then, he did so within the existing margins in that market, by listing them at below the usual average price.