Guild Wars 2

Alright look, I am just want to say that this has been an issue that I absolutely had from day one. I am just now talking about it because I knew deep down that Anet would see the issue and take care of it. Since they seem to think its ok I want to call bullkitten.

There is absolutely no reason to take a 5% listing fee AND a 10% sales tax from the seller. The only reason you have for this is to bleed money out of the economy to force people to continue farming/buying gems to convert to gold. If you absolutely must continue with this make the fees 5% and 5% and have the buyer shoulder some of the burden.

It seems illogical to me that the SELLER should have to pay a 10% sales tax!!!! How does that make sense? If I am doing the favor of creating the supply why am I being penalized so heavily?

Oh and one more thing fix the “projected profit” to include both fees. At least then the box won’t be lying about how much you will profit.

In the perfect world you would charge a 5% listing fee and have that be the end of it. There is no need for a sales tax at all.

Oh boy… Oh my..

If you want the buyer to share in the tax, just sell your item for 10% more. And if you don’t like the taxes at all, feel free to sell your goods to the merchant. Problem solved.

Wow, I think it’s been more than a day since the last TP fee rant.

Shadowy Dawn.4703:

Alright look, I am just want to say that this has been an issue that I absolutely had from day one. I am just now talking about it because I knew deep down that Anet would see the issue and take care of it. Since they seem to think its ok I want to call bullkitten.

There is absolutely no reason to take a 5% listing fee AND a 10% sales tax from the seller. The only reason you have for this is to bleed money out of the economy to force people to continue farming/buying gems to convert to gold. If you absolutely must continue with this make the fees 5% and 5% and have the buyer shoulder some of the burden.

It seems illogical to me that the SELLER should have to pay a 10% sales tax!!!! How does that make sense? If I am doing the favor of creating the supply why am I being penalized so heavily?

Oh and one more thing fix the “projected profit” to include both fees. At least then the box won’t be lying about how much you will profit.

In the perfect world you would charge a 5% listing fee and have that be the end of it. There is no need for a sales tax at all.

It’s easy enough for the average player in this game to acquire enough items to sell on the TP, more so than a buyer having a need for a certain item. So I believe the seller should definitely assume most (if not all) of the burden.

Furthermore, a high fee for the seller will discourage players to overprice their goods and will help achieve lower prices for the buyer. Lower prices will help players of all levels and hours of gameplay achieve their content goals.

When it comes to games, I think lower prices for buyers (and less wealth for sellers) is much healthier for the game.

Shadowy Dawn.4703:

Oh and one more thing fix the “projected profit” to include both fees. At least then the box won’t be lying about how much you will profit.

Only part I can agree with. The argument that every method Arenanet uses to take money out of the game exists for people to convert gems→gold is getting really old. If that were true, by now the game would be a ghost town even in the most populated servers, which is not the case. I don’t see the fees’ existence as a problem at all.

The fees act as a money sink to help keep the in-game economy afloat

Shadowy Dawn.4703:

There is absolutely no reason to take a 5% listing fee AND a 10% sales tax from the seller. The only reason you have for this is to bleed money out of the economy to force people to continue farming/buying gems to convert to gold. If you absolutely must continue with this make the fees 5% and 5% and have the buyer shoulder some of the burden.

The reason for the listing fee is to keep people from listing at outrageously high prices and re-listing at successively lower prices. This keeps people from stying up all night constantly adjusting their items (and some players would do this if there were not a penalty). A reason to split the fees is to not overly penalize someone who makes one bad decision by charging a 15% listing fee.

You seem to be misunderstanding some economic principles. There is no meaningful economic distinction between the buyer and seller paying the tax in a sales tax transaction. If sales tax is 10%, the seller lists at 11% higher than he otherwise would in order to make the desired profit. Anyway, technically buyers pay the sales tax and sellers the listing fee.

The taxes pay everybody in the form of reducing inflation. Inflation reduces the value of the money you hold. Gold sinking reduces inflation. If the TP removes 25% of the gold from the economy over a time period, that increases the value of all the gold you hold by 33%. Games where the currency sinks are less than what players can generate have economic collapse and currency becomes almost worthless.

Actually the taxes attempt to keep the active player money supply in check and that in turn helps keep inflation at bay. But I nitpick.

Sounds like the OP forgot about the fees when pricing the object for sale and ended up with less than he was expecting and is transferring his anger from himself to the TP.

How else do u think they pay all the TP representatives throughout Tyria, with Zhaitaffy and kisses? I think not!

Behellagh.1468:

Actually the taxes attempt to keep the active player money supply in check and that in turn helps keep inflation at bay. But I nitpick.

Sounds like the OP forgot about the fees when pricing the object for sale and ended up with less than he was expecting and is transferring his anger from himself to the TP.

I did not forget the fees.

Here is the problem for me. I know that in this game there are people who are just completely unable to make money. Through ineptitude, play time restrictions, whatever. But I also know that there are people sitting out there with 2000g in their bank just chilling. I have nothing against either of these class of players. What I do have a problem with is that the people with the tons of money literally have nothing to fear for buying everything they could ever want off the TP.

With the game the way it is it is very easy/cost effective to create a quasimonopoly on certain items. If there is no fee for buying, someone with loads of money can just go in and say hey I want everything of said item and be done with it. If there was a 5% sales tax they had to pay that would be a fairly large money sink on said ventures. The average player wouldn’t really notice the difference but it would be a small burden off the sellers shoulders.

I am not saying this is perfect and I know that in reality it will make little difference but it just seems unfair to me to heavily tax the sellers and never charge anything of the people that buy loads of stuff off the TP.

I think you are completely overblowing the number of people who attempt to corner a market.

2000g is not enough to corner a market, unless you’re talking about those cheap items worth a few copper each.

And even those rich people are not dumb enough to invest in such a thing.

“With the game the way it is it is very easy/cost effective to create a quasimonopoly on certain items.”

Look up “Silver Thursday”, that should explain just how “easy” it really is.

People kept saying that “someone” was trying to corner/influence the price of Ecto’s, until Mr Smith slapped them down by showing that in the average month something like 140,000 ecto’s change hands. The total volume of trade is far too high for anyone to control it, no matter how deep their pockets are.

This isn’t WoW, where each server/market only had a few thousand people in it… the BLTC is cross server and has millions of players involved.

Lets not forget that on average, around 10 Dusks get traded in 24 hours, as stated by Mr. Smith.

Yeaaaa, try monopolizing that.

Shadowy Dawn.4703:

Behellagh.1468:

Actually the taxes attempt to keep the active player money supply in check and that in turn helps keep inflation at bay. But I nitpick.

Sounds like the OP forgot about the fees when pricing the object for sale and ended up with less than he was expecting and is transferring his anger from himself to the TP.

I did not forget the fees.

Here is the problem for me. I know that in this game there are people who are just completely unable to make money. Through ineptitude, play time restrictions, whatever. But I also know that there are people sitting out there with 2000g in their bank just chilling. I have nothing against either of these class of players. What I do have a problem with is that the people with the tons of money literally have nothing to fear for buying everything they could ever want off the TP.

With the game the way it is it is very easy/cost effective to create a quasimonopoly on certain items. If there is no fee for buying, someone with loads of money can just go in and say hey I want everything of said item and be done with it. If there was a 5% sales tax they had to pay that would be a fairly large money sink on said ventures. The average player wouldn’t really notice the difference but it would be a small burden off the sellers shoulders.

I am not saying this is perfect and I know that in reality it will make little difference but it just seems unfair to me to heavily tax the sellers and never charge anything of the people that buy loads of stuff off the TP.

In the same breath, you complain that there are players who are unable to make money, then go on to say that you want to punished those players with a tax on things they buy?

Wow…

• remove TP fees alltogether
• disallow reselling of any TP bought item for 30 days
• fixed

the fee is only necessary because of flippers. they could buy cheap and sell a little less cheap and still make profit. right now they at least have to do some work to find lucrative items.

while it’s possible ANet also need the goldsink aspect of it, I find it rather doubtful (there are easier and subtler ways to counter inflation if you control the supply of literally everything)

How would they control inflation without a gold sink? Oh, they could lower the drop rate.

Wait… no that would cause an outcry. Soulbind everything. Only allow sales to vendors.

No the fee siphons a fairly large portion of all the money, in coin or item, the game drops on us. Without that we would be seeing hyper inflation with basic mats selling for silver not copper and green items for gold.

All that “flippers” do is eek a bit of profit out of the psychology of the market. That most players are impatient and don’t want to be bothered picking a price to sell or buy at. Competition between “flippers” narrows the gap between highest offer/lowest sale price until all the profit is squeezed out of it.

Behellagh.1468:

No the fee siphons a fairly large portion of all the money, in coin or item, the game drops on us. Without that we would be seeing hyper inflation with basic mats selling for silver not copper and green items for gold.

I think you misunderstood my post – I didn’t claim there is no need for any kind of sink, I said I find it doubtful ANet couldn’t find a better way apart from fees on the TP. and if they could, as I assume, the fee would STILL be necessary because of the flippers, otherwise they run rampant.
and the biggest gold sink is and always was the mystic toilet, those 15% are nothing compared to the 100% the toilet takes.

as for inflation: there are other ways around it, except directly siphoning it away (exp consumables, gambling, rent etc). the problem is, everything which COULD be a good goldsink (BLC Keys, restyling, renaming etc) get’s gem-stored. that stuff in the store is what other games use as a goldsink.

Oranisagu.3706:

as for inflation: there are other ways around it, except directly siphoning it away (exp consumables, gambling, rent etc). the problem is, everything which COULD be a good goldsink (BLC Keys, restyling, renaming etc) get’s gem-stored. that stuff in the store is what other games use as a goldsink.

BLT is the best of gold sinks. Desirable properties as a gold sink:
1. It is completely optional. Anyone can avoid the sink by not participating.
2. It scales with inflation. The higher inflation gets, the better it is at removing excess gold from the economy.
3. It does not need to be constantly tinkered with. Other money insertions/sinks need to be monitored by developers to make sure they are not causing excessive inflation or deflation. Because this scales with the amount of gold in the economy, it frees up developer time from monitoring the currency economy and allows them to work on other things.

Another desirable side effect is it stopped trade spam that annoyed me so much in GW1.

Every game that has an auction house does it

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

BLT is the best of gold sinks. Desirable properties as a gold sink:
1. It is completely optional. Anyone can avoid the sink by not participating.
2. It scales with inflation. The higher inflation gets, the better it is at removing excess gold from the economy.
3. It does not need to be constantly tinkered with. Other money insertions/sinks need to be monitored by developers to make sure they are not causing excessive inflation or deflation. Because this scales with the amount of gold in the economy, it frees up developer time from monitoring the currency economy and allows them to work on other things.

Another desirable side effect is it stopped trade spam that annoyed me so much in GW1.

the best there is? I wouldn’t have thought so, but now that you say it so confidently, it must be true. why do people always have to use superlative and state opinions as fact?

of course there are positive aspects to the way bltc handles it, just as there are negative points to it. the taxes are not optional, as many items cannot be gained realistically without the TP (1 drop in 2000h gameplay is not realistical). there is also no workaround to buy from friends/guildies without gifting the item and hope they return some money for it (I’ve never seen an mmo without any form of direct player trade – because it would be pretty stupid to omit it). while the tax doesn’t have to be tinkered with, every item in the bltc is being manipulated to fit the ideal price they want it to have (not necessarily bad, rather the opposite). it would be a lot less timeconsuming just adjusting a few variables (which could be made configurable) instead of monitoring all items. it doesn’t need devs anyway, if they did it right, it’s not a programming issue to change a few values.

as I said, there are other ways around this. unlike you I’m not claiming I know everything, but I can confidently claim that the BLTC is not the best way, though it could have been the easiest way for ANet to implement.

as a sidenote: you know what would’ve stopped trade spam as well? a separate trade channel, just as many other games already have, because it just makes sense. it’s good to break with tradition to invent something new and better, but ANet sometimes just breaks with tradition only to say we’re not your typical mmo. I just wish that marketing wasn’t the only motivation and they’d actually think about a better solution before burning all bridges.

Sounds more like you’re upset about no direct player to player trades, meaning a trading screen where both players place their items and coin to trade and both must confirm for the trade to happen. What we have is simply gifting via mail.

Basically you want a black market where players can avoid the tax and fees.

Behellagh.1468:

Sounds more like you’re upset about no direct player to player trades, meaning a trading screen where both players place their items and coin to trade and both must confirm for the trade to happen. What we have is simply gifting via mail.

Basically you want a black market where players can avoid the tax and fees.

ha, good one. next saturday I’ll go to the local farmers market and tell them they’re having a black market because they skip the grocery stores. are you sure you really understand what a black market is? just as a refresher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market
you could make an argument for a grey market (as it’s obviously legal in gameterms to trade items via mail, but not intended, as the high risk associated with it hints at)

the lack of direct player trade is just another symptom of the problem ANet decided to solve by adding fees because it was the easiest solution.
flippers are a problem for the economy, even if they come here telling everybody how nice they are and even provide a service for the public. the fees helps to keep flippers at bay, which is necessary. they also help with the inflation, though there are other ways to counter inflation.
it’s fortunate for ANet that a simple solution like this combats two problems at once, but in no way are the fees necessary to keep the economy healthy, they’re just the easiest way to do so.

if you read my post(s) carefully, you’ll see I never made an argument against the fees (even if you of course had to get personal and claim the opposite). I think the fees are probably the best solution in terms of cost/effect. they are easily implemented and solve a few problems at once. they are, however, not the best solution in general, as there are quite a few alternatives to counter inflation and flippers.

to keep it less academic: personally, I’m for getting rid of the fees, as long as the necessary measures are taken to counter inflation/flippers. if they can’t do that, it’s best the fees stay, despite my dislike.

Those at Farmer’s Markets still have to pay tax to the state based on their sales and if they don’t they can and do get into trouble. Heck we have stories about state and local officials shaking down little curbside fruit and vegetable stands. Same is true at swap meets, flea markets and dealer rooms at cons.

Okay, black market was a bit extreme, how about underground economy? ANet wants all player to player transactions to happen where it can be tracked and coin taxed. This way they can closely monitored the economy a quickly spot any hanky panky going on.

Not to mention how the TP tax is a gold sink that self-adjusts to the economy. Inflation? Gold sink becomes that much more stronger, without having to measure silly metrics like player wealth. The prices on the TP themselves are the metric.

It’s an incredibly elegant, simple, and effective gold sink.

Until ANet pushlishes the M1 of active players (logged in within the last 30 days say) in a nice friendly easy to read chart there will be players who insist that the TP gold sink isn’t necessary to halt inflation.

Behellagh.1468:

Until ANet pushlishes the M2 of active players (logged in within the last 30 days say) in a nice friendly easy to read chart there will be players who insist that the TP gold sink isn’t necessary to halt inflation.

True, but I’d argue the actual numbers doesn’t even matter. The concept does. The concept that this, along with the Gold/Gem exchange (which not every player participates in) are the only gold sinks which aren’t static. In a dynamic economy, a dynamic gold sink is needed. This fits the mold of a dynamic gold sink, with a built-in metric which it self-adapts to. How much more simple/effective can you get?

You can have player-to-player trading and still tax the items being traded, include taxes on the items in the player trading screens required to be included to complete the transaction. You include a weapon and a price in the screen, I enter the requested amount of coin and the tax is calculated based on what the requested amount of coin from you was and by my entering the requested amount and clicking Agree/Finalize, then the coin I agreed to plus the coin for the tax that was calculated is taken from my wallet. Coin goes to you, tax flies away on a bird, I get the item. When trading an item for an item, then the tax could be determined either by the trade screen running a quick query of the trading post for the values of the items, or based on a percentage of the vendor value times a predetermined value for the quality of the item (blue, green, rare, exotic, etc.) and both parties are then required to agree to pay their respective taxes and fees on the transaction.

Just some quick thoughts. I didn’t really think through all possibilities, but wanted to point out that it really isn’t a “one or the other” kind of scenario regarding player trading and trading post, both can exist in harmony, and in some ways is actually beneficial to the economy as not all items will be put on the trading post , so supply to the post will not be as extreme and prices will equilibrate to a more appropriate level on many of the over-stocked items that are now listed that net the seller less than vendor value of the items.

Thoughts?

Blah run-on sentence. Might edit and clarify later.

Ursan.7846:

Not to mention how the TP tax is a gold sink that self-adjusts to the economy. Inflation? Gold sink becomes that much more stronger, without having to measure silly metrics like player wealth. The prices on the TP themselves are the metric.

It’s an incredibly elegant, simple, and effective gold sink.

well, we probably have different views on the term elegant. something really simplistic which just happens to work out so far isn’t elegant in my book. an elegant solution would be one, where casual players don’t get punished (and no, I don’t count myself to that group, I know based on my wealth I would be taxed) but richer people have to pay more.

join a guild of 200+ players and ask around how many of them could afford a precursor of their choice after 6 months of playing. mind you, only the precursor, ignore the really expensive stuff like 100 times 3-4 gold for lodestones or something similar fun.
we don’t have inflation in the lower 95% of the playerbase. the only reason there is talk about inflation at all is because of the top traders with their thousands upon thousands of gold.
yes, the overall amount of gold in the game has risen drastically, which, if you ignore everything else, may make you believe we have terrible inflation. if you consider the prices on the TP, we actually don’t, prices are more or less stable with some hickups. the biggest gold sink is flippers. once they start to release their wealth, good luck hoping the 15% taxes were anything more than an annoyance for casuals.

Behellagh.1468:

Until ANet pushlishes the M1 of active players (logged in within the last 30 days say) in a nice friendly easy to read chart there will be players who insist that the TP gold sink isn’t necessary to halt inflation.

actually, upon seeing the wealth-distribution of players the obvious conclusion is that the taxes do nothing to halt inflation – the fact that some players hoard all money, taking it temporarily out of the economy, is doing a lot more against it. I guess you can read every chart and see what you want to see.

The fee for trade post are perfect goldsink,if we dont have good goldsink your gold will get worthless do to inflation =)

Ah, the old “sales tax is regressive” argument. We aren’t siphoning off money to run the government here, we are siphoning off money to keep the active money supply in check.

Wealth idling on the sidelines does no immediate harm. It’s the amount of money actively circulating that needs to remain in check and a fairly sizable chunk of that money cycles through the TP which is why that’s where you siphon some off.

Oranisagu.3706:

the best there is? I wouldn’t have thought so, but now that you say it so confidently, it must be true. why do people always have to use superlative and state opinions as fact?

…you can’t think of any others, can you?

Behellagh.1468:

Wealth idling on the sidelines does no immediate harm. It’s the amount of money actively circulating that needs to remain in check and a fairly sizable chunk of that money cycles through the TP which is why that’s where you siphon some off.

exactly, idle money does no harm yet – it just helps hiding the true amount of inflation in the economy. as I mentioned, the real problem arises when all this money is getting back into the economy. as long as that doesn’t happen, the sales tax probably does its job. if richer people got taxed more than poor people, the inflation would still be kept in check, but the dormant money supplies wouldn’t be such a potential threat. only potential? lets ignore it! =)
cold war was a nice example of what a potential threat can do, even if nothing happened.

if the the ratio hasn’t changed drastically (it probably has, but not in your arguments favour) from the chart ANet published during beta (after just a few days),
50% players held 80% wealth. (see http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/24/guild-wars-2s-economist-treats-us-to-beta-analysis-infographics/ )
just imagine how those stats progressed, after nearly a year. ANet stated their goal was equality. if you honestly think that really happened, why they haven’t posted another chart like this, showing their accomplishment? (to be fair, gold/hour played would be a bit more informative, as it’s obvious players with more hours have more money – the question arises if some people with similar hours played have highly different wealth, as I suspect). unfortunately, ANet keeps quiet and we can only speculate about the real distribution.

AlphaDuck.7592:

…you can’t think of any others, can you?

it’s a fortunate circumstance that those who can read carefully usually don’t make themselves look dimwitted, while others sometimes can’t and start to suggest and imply things to prove they truly didn’t understand.

Wealth on the sidelines doesn’t affect inflation unless it comes back into the economy, at which time it’s taxed.

How would you implement a “wealth tax”? Impose it once a week? And if you are going to go for wealth what about players with their wealth tied up in items for sale or bids or just sitting in inventory? What about the player who left for a month and comes back and find his bank account had been raided, think he’ll stay?

If your argument is the ultra wealthy are screwing with the markets then isn’t taxing them there the solution?

Oranisagu.3706:

as a sidenote: you know what would’ve stopped trade spam as well? a separate trade channel, just as many other games already have, because it just makes sense.

Guild Wars 1 did have a separate trade channel, but even when it cracked down heavily on trade spam it would never go away completely (and I define “completely” very loosely as less than twice per minute). There was an area called Kamadan which was so bad with trade spam, even in times of heavy enforcement, that most of my friends called it “Spamadan.” The Trading Post (along with a lack of a trade function, I suppose) completely eliminated it. I often turn off map chat in Lion’s Arch, but not because of trade spam anymore.

Behellagh.1468:

Those at Farmer’s Markets still have to pay tax to the state based on their sales and if they don’t they can and do get into trouble.

In Georgia and Wisconsin they do not unless they are selling something other than food or seeds of edible plants. However, you are correct, Farmer’s Markets have to follow the rules of other retailers. Flea Markets had sales taxes too the last time I went (about, oh, 25 years ago…).

You speak of the term economy but you hardly know how taxes/fees/tariffs work. Any tax/fees is payed by the consumer. Has always been and always will be.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

There was an area called Kamadan which was so bad with trade spam, even in times of heavy enforcement, that most of my friends called it “Spamadan.”

you’re right, if there’s no rule against using normal channels or there are not enough GM’s to enforce those rules, nothing will happen. I find it interesting you would say the rules were enforced heavily when there apparently were so many people ignoring them. a long time ago I played a game with some very strict rules and everybody just followed them, because every incident (reported or witnessed or caught by script and checked by GM) would mean timouts (from 10 minutes up to 2 weeks, even permaban). that was heavy enforcement and it worked extremely well. you say something similar happened in GW1 and yet people still were able to spam chats? that sounds.. improbable at best. you might have meant ‘they enforced the rules from time to time’ ?
I know how many times I’ve reported people for abusive language in GW2 – none of them even got a timeout. of course nobody seems to care about the rules. Inappropriate names? still see them at every world event.

Behellagh.1468:

Those at Farmer’s Markets still have to pay tax to the state based on their sales and if they don’t they can and do get into trouble.

the more you know – there are countries outside of the US. in general I agree, farmers pay taxes just like everybody else, in my country there are exceptions though. a farmer selling stuff directly from his farm is usually not taxed at all. income below a certain threshold doesn’t interest the government that much. lots of farmers even have a fridge set up with some foodstuff (eggs, milk etc) with a small piggybank next to it – only works of course if you’re in a region where people are honest, which means usually the more rural areas.
at a farmers market they pay fees/rent for the space they rent from the town, NOT on the goods they sell.

The first fee does an extra job of preventing people from using TP as storage.
Both fees do serve the purpose of “bleeding money out of the game” because they act as gold sinks to curb inflation.
The buyer pays part of the fee the same way we pay sales taxes; sellers just raise their prices to cover it.
Lastly, if you want some sort of lore reason, you’re paying the service fees because the BLTC is selling your items for you so you can adventure more, similar to how ebay charges fees.