Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

As I’ve said before, it’s not about the market, it’s about the one player making much more money through flipping the traiding post than the one player soloing dungeons which is exhausting and requires a lot of skill or the one farming the materials you are flipping.
In terms of just watching a video, I can just repeat the question others have made so often: If it’s that simple, why don’t more people do it? If you are that certain that it is that easy, you can watch a solo guide if you like and try it. We can talk afterwards.

Let’s say that doing solo dungeon runs and selling spots was the most profitable way to make gold followed by flipping. Would there no longer be an issue for you then?

It is already the most rewarding activity after flipping the traiding post. The problem is that traiding post flippers get way too much gold for what they do. They should get an even amount of gold like 200g per day maximum. That’s the margin a real hardcore dungeon seller could achieve. Flipping the traiding post requires skills that don’t belong to basic MMOs skills. Soloing a dungeon is the supreme discipline of basic MMO skills.

You missed what I was asking. If dungeon sellers made more gold than a TP flipper, would you care?

EDIT: And to follow up with that, what percentage of players do you think are able to do both?

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that. Based on the current state of the game, selling dungeon paths wouldn’t give that more revenue than the current traiding post flipping does now over selling dungeon paths.
I think that many people would be able to do both. Not on a pro-level certainly, but relative effective. But most people wouldn’t even bother palying the traiding post, they don’t do now, why should they afterwards?
However the gold would be spread more evenly and it would also award all kinds of “skill” the same way.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So at first, your argument was that TP traders should not make more money than you. This led to your feelings that you dislike rich people, as per your previous post.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me

But now that you’d be able to make more money than someone else, it’s completely OK? Because now it benefits you? You lost this argument on multiple levels now.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

1) So your argumentation is that you’re allowed to get so much gold because you’re not creating new one? That’s as stupid as it can get as an argument.

Let’s address this shall we? The mere fact that you don’t understand the concept is one thing. But to call a factual argument “stupid” when you don’t even understand the argument to begin with is another.

It’s like when a child calls me a meanie because I tell them Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

No, there is nothing to discuss. Claiming you have the right to earn more than anybody else because you’re not responsible for inflation is just over the top.

Aidan Savage.2078:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

However my point still stands: traiding post flipping should not offer the greatest revenue in game.

It’s not. Anyone claiming flipping is the greatest revenue is a resounding failure in the game.

Yeah those guys with multiple thousand gold simply dropped of the air…

HHR LostProphet.4801:

No, there is nothing to discuss. Claiming you have the right to earn more than anybody else because you’re not responsible for inflation is just over the top.

Actually, there hasn’t been anything to discuss in the last several pages. The fact that you don’t understand how economies work, coupled with your dislike of rich players, made this debate one-sided since the beginning. I’ll post this quote again, since this is the key issue thus far:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me

Thanks you for answering my question as I was hoping it would make my point.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So you’re fine if dungeon runners make the most gold over TP flippers but not the other way around. This is conflicting and shows total bias on your part. Your problem is not that there is a disparity between the methods. Your issue is that TP flipping makes more gold than the other methods. This is because you do not believe the TP flipping is a legitimate means to play the game and make gold.

We’re essentially back to my post where I was saying that this entire thread is about you not thinking TP flipping is a legitimate activity in GW2. It really as nothing to do with the disparity.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Based on the current state of the game, selling dungeon paths wouldn’t give that more revenue than the current traiding post flipping does now over selling dungeon paths.

So you’re saying that in the current state of the game that they’re about even? Why is there an issue then?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So at first, your argument was that TP traders should not make more money than you. This led to your feelings that you dislike rich people, as per your previous post.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me

But now that you’d be able to make more money than someone else, it’s completely OK? Because now it benefits you? You lost this argument on multiple levels now.

Nice quoting, you won all my internetz. I’m neither flipping, nor selling dungeons runs, so there will always people who are richer than me. Poor me. :’(

Seriously if you only aim for letting me look like I’m just a jealous child then kittening leave this thread. If you can’t argument on facts and even feel the need to quote me that badly then I have no interest in hearing your opinion.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So at first, your argument was that TP traders should not make more money than you. This led to your feelings that you dislike rich people, as per your previous post.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me

But now that you’d be able to make more money than someone else, it’s completely OK? Because now it benefits you? You lost this argument on multiple levels now.

Nice quoting, you won all my internetz. I’m neither flipping, nor selling dungeons runs, so there will always people who are richer than me. Poor me. :’(

Seriously if you only aim for letting me look like I’m just a jealous child then kittening leave this thread. If you can’t argument on facts and even feel the need to quote me that badly then I have no interest in hearing your opinion.

Thank you for participating in this discussion.

Ayrilana.1396:

Thanks you for answering my question as I was hoping it would make my point.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So you’re fine if dungeon runners make the most gold over TP flippers but not the other way around. This is conflicting and shows total bias on your part. Your problem is not that there is a disparity between the methods. Your issue is that TP flipping makes more gold than the other methods. This is because you do not believe the TP flipping is a legitimate means to play the game and make gold.

We’re essentially back to my post where I was saying that this entire thread is about you not thinking TP flipping is a legitimate activity in GW2. It really as nothing to do with the disparity.

Go back and read again. I want the revenues evened out. If dungeon runners would as conclusion come out ahaid, then I would have no problem with that since I still consider actually playing the game worth more than standing by the merchant flipping the coins.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Based on the current state of the game, selling dungeon paths wouldn’t give that more revenue than the current traiding post flipping does now over selling dungeon paths.

So you’re saying that in the current state of the game that they’re about even? Why is there an issue then?

That’s a misspelling on my part. I meant that if dungeon running would offer more gold than flipping the traiding post, then the difference between both ways of acquiring gold wouldn’t be that great as it is now.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So at first, your argument was that TP traders should not make more money than you. This led to your feelings that you dislike rich people, as per your previous post.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem I have with traiding post flippers is a simple one. I simply don’t like others to be richer than me

But now that you’d be able to make more money than someone else, it’s completely OK? Because now it benefits you? You lost this argument on multiple levels now.

Nice quoting, you won all my internetz. I’m neither flipping, nor selling dungeons runs, so there will always people who are richer than me. Poor me. :’(

Seriously if you only aim for letting me look like I’m just a jealous child then kittening leave this thread. If you can’t argument on facts and even feel the need to quote me that badly then I have no interest in hearing your opinion.

Realize that when I quote your exact words, these are “facts”. All of our arguments are not based on opinions, but based on facts, while yours is based on biased opinions that benefit you.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Wanze.8410:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

You have absolutely no idea how much work and time a skilled slipper put into learning the market and how to flip efficiently, do you? You assume that someone can do it right off the bat, which if was the case, there would be no profit from flipping. And again, you saying that there must not be a disparity between those that flip and those that don’t is an opinion.

Can you solo a dungeon? It does seem so because, according to you, it requires way less skill than flipping the traiding post. Not to mention that gw2spidy does the most work for you.
And no, there shouldn’t be that disparity, since it shouldn’t give more reward than any other content of this game. The most efficient way should ge a mixture of all things: Do easy dungeons, sell some paths, farm some materials and flip some coins on the traiding post. Purely flipping the traiding post shouldn’t be the way to get as much gold as possible.

Soloing dungeons is not efficient…
Rewards are not based on participants…

If you think gw2spidy does most of the work then you really have no idea what most flippers have to do.

The last paragraph is an opinion.

Soloing dungeons is the most effective way in PvE to make gold, since you can sell the slots left at the end.
And no, enlighten me what you have to do that gw2spidy doesn’t, except searching the database for the most efficient way to flip.

It also doesnt take much more than watching a youtube guide on how to solo a dungeon, someone else already done the work for you. Another difference is that this is a linear and repetitive task because the AI doesnt behave randomly.

I will show you a different point of view:

You already conceded that flippers and speculators have a beneficial function to the economy. In order for prices to be close to equilibrium and to accelerate the process of finding a new price equilibrium , if a sudden demand spike sets in, a certain amount of flipping and speculating (“trading for profit”) has to be done per day.
Lets assume the global daily flipping volume is 1 million gold and the daily investments for speculation are 1 million as well. Flipping gives 15% (150k gold) profit, long term investments give 50% (500k gold).

Now i agree that flipping/speculating isnt the favourite gamemode of most players.
But the 650k gold of profits are up for grabs every day, they have to be consumed, otherwise the market goes more out of balance and profit margins get even higher.

if there are only 6.5k traders, they will make a daily profit of 100g but ifthere are 65k traders, they only make 10g profit per day.

Think of trading for profit as a dirty deed, an unwanted task by most people. It has a daily volume and a fixed profit pool. In order to meet the daily quota, those profits have to be distributed somehow. If only a few people do it on a daily basis, they get lots of profits but the more people do it and share the load, the less profits for everybody.

Its self regulation, quite simply.

As I’ve said before, it’s not about the market, it’s about the one player making much more money through flipping the traiding post than the one player soloing dungeons which is exhausting and requires a lot of skill or the one farming the materials you are flipping.
In terms of just watching a video, I can just repeat the question others have made so often: If it’s that simple, why don’t more people do it? If you are that certain that it is that easy, you can watch a solo guide if you like and try it. We can talk afterwards.

Well, its been mentioned before, all you do now is complaining, which is your good right, and this discussion is going in circles and doesnt add anything new that hasnt been said. So i think its quite useless to continue.

I just had an idea about adding a karma tax to buy orders and formulated in a new topic.
I think it would to some degree remedy your situation, so i would appreciate, if you check it out and give some feedback.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Add-Karma-tax-to-buy-orders/first#post4169321

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

Thanks you for answering my question as I was hoping it would make my point.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If dungeon runners would earn more than traiding post flippers, then I would be completely fine with that.

So you’re fine if dungeon runners make the most gold over TP flippers but not the other way around. This is conflicting and shows total bias on your part. Your problem is not that there is a disparity between the methods. Your issue is that TP flipping makes more gold than the other methods. This is because you do not believe the TP flipping is a legitimate means to play the game and make gold.

We’re essentially back to my post where I was saying that this entire thread is about you not thinking TP flipping is a legitimate activity in GW2. It really as nothing to do with the disparity.

Go back and read again. I want the revenues evened out. If dungeon runners would as conclusion come out ahaid, then I would have no problem with that since I still consider actually playing the game worth more than standing by the merchant flipping the coins.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Based on the current state of the game, selling dungeon paths wouldn’t give that more revenue than the current traiding post flipping does now over selling dungeon paths.

So you’re saying that in the current state of the game that they’re about even? Why is there an issue then?

That’s a misspelling on my part. I meant that if dungeon running would offer more gold than flipping the traiding post, then the difference between both ways of acquiring gold wouldn’t be that great as it is now.

Wow. The quote tags are completely messed up now. Anyway…

For the first part, no. The revenues being evened out don’t matter to you. You, yourself stated that you would not care if dungeon runners made more gold than TP farmers. Clearly if things were the other way around, this thread would not exist as you would not care that there would be no balance.

For the second part, a misspelling? Your explanation of your misspelling is actually changing the entire meaning of that part of your post. And it also doesn’t make much more sense.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Go back and read again. I want the revenues evened out. If dungeon runners would as conclusion come out ahaid, then I would have no problem with that since I still consider actually playing the game worth more than standing by the merchant flipping the coins.

Again, your argument fails. Money made from doing a Dungeon run is not the same as profits from the TP. Thus they can never be compared to each other.

Ayrilana.1396:

Wow. The quote tags are completely messed up now. Anyway…

For the first part, no. The revenues being evened out don’t matter to you. You, yourself stated that you would not care if dungeon runners made more gold than TP farmers. Clearly if things were the other way around, this thread would not exist as you would not care that there would be no balance.

For the second part, a misspelling? Your explanation of your misspelling is actually changing the entire meaning of that part of your post. And it also doesn’t make much more sense.

Thanks that you know better what I mean than I do. And it’s 4 AM here, I’m lazy.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wow. The quote tags are completely messed up now. Anyway…

For the first part, no. The revenues being evened out don’t matter to you. You, yourself stated that you would not care if dungeon runners made more gold than TP farmers. Clearly if things were the other way around, this thread would not exist as you would not care that there would be no balance.

For the second part, a misspelling? Your explanation of your misspelling is actually changing the entire meaning of that part of your post. And it also doesn’t make much more sense.

Thanks that you know better what I mean than I do. And it’s 4 AM here, I’m lazy.

It was essentially a yes or no question though. Either you did not care that dungeon runners made more than TP flippers or you did care.

I think the OP’s misunderstandings in this whole thread can be summed up as cultural differences. If you’re from a Communist based country, understanding the thoughts and ideas of a Capitalist based country can be hard. In American and Europe, we believe in free markets, where as other countries control everything, including the formation of barriers to entry and censorship. So the OP’s thoughts of “balance” in the acquisition of wealth probably come from the idea that everyone should share evenly in the fruits of labor. What do you think John?

Trade post flipping—the eternal topic.

Go outside, go on a date, go for a run, travel, learn something new, read a book, go to a bar, stay in and watch Anthony Bourdain make metaphors out of Gwenyth Paltrow’s colon after a three month juice cleanse (yup). Life is too short to get your knickers in a twist over a virtual game economy that’ll be a footnote in 10 years.

My point: TP flipping is here, it works in the company’s interest (gems to gold) and a segment of the players get their jollies doing it. I find it to be a bit too Ferengi for my tastes, but hey, whatevs.

Me? I’d rather throw $10 at ANet for ~100 gold than spend hours flipping crap. I’m not into the TP meta.

ANet’s resident economist, has repeatedly stated that he finds the economy to be healthy. His thoughts are very likely ANet’s thoughts. This is not a suggestion that will be implemented.

Have fun, and stop the second it stops being fun.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Read the thread I’ve said it numerous of times…
Fine, just for you:
Normal earning formula: Set amount of gold * time spend = reward.
Traiding post flipping formula: Variable amount of gold * time spent = reward.
This means: No matter how much gold a dungeon runner has, if he runs an ADAP run, he gets around 50g per day.
The traiding post flipper however can get revenues based on the gold he has initially spent. Even if a flipper just starts with 2 gold and just gets 5% more gold every day, he will soon get more gold per day than a dungeon runner.
And please don’t say that’s not how it is because I can assure you that all those guys who have 10k+ gold haven’t done an ADAP run yet.

Let me try to simply my response to this, as you clearly still don’t understand certain things. It might be that American isn’t your primary language, so bear with me.

1) Profits are not rewards. Rewards are newly generated wealth that never existed in the game. Profits are “existing” wealth that’s being transferred between players, and the TP takes away 15% of the value, acting as a sink. Your example fails because you’re comparing two completely different things.

2) 5% of 2 Gold is 10 Silver. Dungeon runners make more money per hour than that. In fact, I can make that money simply by mining Mithril ore, and selling it to a merchant.

3) You have yet to provide a valid argument that’s based on facts. All your points are opinion based, and get trumped by the fact that the economy is working fine.

1) You get gold. Gold is all that matters. People who do other activites on a ragular basis do also get gold, just way less.

2) Next day he has 5 gold, 10 silver to spend, the day after 5 gold 35 silver. Sonner than later he will make more gold than the one getting 50g per day.

3) It’s pretty hard to provide valid facts if you can’t look up how much gold players have made by flipping the traiding post, but you can take it as granted that the ones having multiple thousands of gold didn’t got them through doing ADAP runs.
At last, it’s not about the economy. It’s about how much one can earn through one activity.

1) But it does mater. Event rewards represent new coin and items entering the game. New coin is more destabilizing to the economy than existing coin exchanged between players.

2) But it can’t be grown infinitely. Daily profits as you describe is limited not only by the gap between bids and sell orders but the number of each item they can flip in a day. While basic and fine materials have a fairly high supply and consumption rate, the profit on each is relatively small so a lot has to be moved. It’s never as easy as I will flip one stack until I can afford to flip two until I can afford to flip three, etc.

3) And your arguments are overflowing with facts? The only person with hard facts is the person who oversees the entire economy and trading post and that’s John Smith who you dismiss. So where do you find your facts?

Edit: Oh look here’s John now.

John Smith.4610:

That being said, I’m often reading and interested in hearing your suggestions and you should feel free to present them. There are a couple of popular suggestions that do not meet my requirements of not making the game a much worse experience.

Would be great if you could glance over my new suggestion about taxing filled buy orders with karma. I think it meets at least some of your requirements and it would be great to get some feedback from you, especially on how you think price spreads of items and the volume of trading will be affected.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Add-Karma-tax-to-buy-orders/first#post4169321

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

The OP’s point is the TP should be altered so players can’t earn more money than, in your case, Dungeon Runners, because players playing the TP aren’t playing the same game everyone is.

He seems to have a difficult time grasping that the TP doesn’t care if 10,000 transactions an hour is going on between 10,000 different pairs or are first being funneled though 100 players from an item’s original player it was dropped on to the player seeking it for personal use (which includes using it as raw materials). To it, both cases are legitimate transactions where one party got the item they want while the other got paid for it, minus the 15%. Except now the item is sold twice and more than twice as much coin is removed from the global economy.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Go back and read again. I want the revenues evened out.

So, you’re withdrawing the suggestion you made in the OP? Because what you were after there was the complete elimination of TP flipping as an option, while also eliminating the sale of Legendaries and other forged items, as well as forcing crafters to farm rather than buy mats if they want to sell their products.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this is getting heated and it doesn’t need to be.

I want to go through a hypothetical to explain a point about the TP.
Before I start I want to restate (it was quoted earlier) that the TP is part of the Tyrian world, we don’t make monster killing games here, we make online worlds (in which you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome).

You’ve build the online world, where anyone can play the way he/she like. But you’ve also put plenty of invisible walls to limit that. For dungeons, loot, events – there is diminishing returns. For world bosses – time constraints. Gathering ores/wood – refresh of rich veins on daily basis. PvP Custom areas – limit of reward track point per day. Crafting – daily (half-products to ascended items, ascended) so if anyone want to focus on the favorite part of Tyria – is limited. Everyone? Except TP flipping – you can stay all day long and have just linear tax, which is covered by the margin. I’d wish the dungeons are also with linear taxed. So every run 1g – 15%-20%. But I see why this is not a good solution.

The only way to make this “fair” would be to introduce DR on TP which will not affect average player. Limit on margin is bad, because average player can have just one transaction and earn a lot of money. But… amount of sell orders and buy orders… This is a good place to start with. I’d suggest to increase tax on each sell order after nth by some percentage (non – linear). The reason to limit buy orders would be also beneficial to clear the buy orders from the launch – put 2g for precursor. Small price for potential luck of someone selling fast. But as buy orders are free, there should be also some price to put more than n buy orders.
What do you think about it?

My biggest argument I would make against myself is that the fix for this is simply education or more information (I don’t mean academia, I mean education inside the game). I would argue that people naturally want to make the most money possible and the amount of profit available is enhanced, not by laziness, but by a lack of information or education.

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

So have you guys considered making this information more available to players? Perhaps updating the UI to include elements that are available at the various third party websites? Perhaps building first party versions of Spidy and Profits that you can trust, and then directly linking to them from inside the game like you can do to access the wiki?

You say that there is a “balance point” in any transaction, and that GW2’s economy tends to miss this high and low because people value their time differently, but for the most part this shouldn’t be an issue. Players should be able to tell, at a glance, what a reasonable approximation of this balance point is, and how much time it will cost them to go high of it. If an item has an order price of 1.5g, and a buy it now price of 1.9g, if I place it at 1.6g, will it be likely to sell right away? In an hour? In a day or a week? If I place it at 1.8g? What if I place it at 2g, perhaps this market is one in which the buy price rises over the course of a day or week.

There are ways that someone with access to the data can approximate these things and give reasonably accurate estimates of what your chances are, and some third party sites attempt this, but accessing them while trying to play the game is a clunky experience. It would be far better if you could just look up an item you wanted to sell on the TP, and see not only the current buy/sell values for it, but also see the average price it actually sold for over the last 24 hours, at minimum, and ideally you could also see those trend graphs of where the buy and sell prices have been over a period of hours, days, weeks, and months.

I do also concur with Szamsziel’s point, that this is a game in which a great many things are gated by money, or at least in which money can grease up those gates, and yet the easiest method of acquiring that money in vast quantities (if you put effort into learning the systems) is the one least compatible with the primary elements of the game, the adventuring. Now you claim that “fixing it would be hard,” and maybe it would be, but that is no justification for leaving it as it is. If there were one class that was supremely more powerful than the others, I don’t think the design team could get away with “it would be really hard to balance the class, so whatever, deal with it.”

Either make it easier for the casual “I don’t care about the economy” player to make just as much money as even the best TP flippers can with the same time and effort, or make money a far less useful resource to hoard, allowing players to buy all the same things with other, content-based currencies that the market cannot earn.

As a flipper in GW2, I sell my time for your convenience.

People sell/buy to/from me because their time spend waiting to sell/buy an item at a higher price is worth less than the difference in price I am buying it for.

Lets say you have a rare sword. You can sell it to me for 1g now, or sell it to someone else for 2g in a week. I’m not forcing you to do anything. I am offering you a choice. What you pick doesn’t even matter to me as a flipper.

Now, why do people do this? It makes no sense. You can wait a bit and make double the money. Why have you ever pressed the buy instantly button? When was the last time? Last time I did it, I needed food for WvW and didn’t have the time to wait, so I bought it at a higher price. My time wasn’t worth the wait for the order to be filled, so I paid someone else for the ability to have it now. I paid for his time waiting for someone to buy his product.

Why are you still selling to the highest bidder? Or buying from the lowest seller?

There are items on the TP that you can place a buy order for 10c wait 10 mins and sell it for 90c. That % profit is huge. If you are willing to do the volume, you can make good money (pls remove the error when selling too fast, thx).

I just don’t see how selling my time is unfair to anyone.

@Omnitek – I can say that as World Boss Runner I’m selling my time to generate items for TP, the same as dungeon runner. But opposed to you, I can do it only in limited scope – either hit by DR or by time constraints. How this is fair?

Now, why do people do this? It makes no sense. You can wait a bit and make double the money. Why have you ever pressed the buy instantly button? When was the last time? Last time I did it, I needed food for WvW and didn’t have the time to wait, so I bought it at a higher price. My time wasn’t worth the wait for the order to be filled, so I paid someone else for the ability to have it now. I paid for his time waiting for someone to buy his product.

I’ve used the buy instantly when I haven’t planned ahead, or in the rare cases where there is only a tiny difference between the two values, but yeah, in most cases, for most items, it must be ignorance, they just don’t understand what a bad deal they’re making.

I just don’t see how selling my time is unfair to anyone.

But the thing is, that isn’t a transaction that ANet should reward. ANet should be doing that job for us. Players should not be asked to spend their time juggling orders, nor should they be profiting off it. It should just be players putting up items for sale on one end, players buying items on the other, and no players needed, wanted, or rewarded in between.

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

So you saying that just bumping up dungeon rewards wouldn’t solve the problem because everything would stay the same, just on a higher level.
But we do have already that kind of revenue in the game. The traiding post flipping can offer the amount of gold you say would be unhealthy to the economy. It does affect less people because less people take the time to get good at flipping the traiding post, but the problem is already there. As I’ve said, I don’t want to stop traiding post flipping in general, even if I disagree with the stated “benefits” flippers offer to the economy, but I want to bring the revenue you can obtain through traiding post flipping on the same level as, lets say the rewards you get through dungeon running, just higher to make up for that great “risk” you take playing the traiding post.
I think Wanze’s idea is a good way to cap the revenue flippers can make, since they have to gather the karma first on order to get gold.

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem.

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

In this scenario, flipping keeps doing what flipping does and the economy works great, but highly skilled players can now make comparable gold to TP flippers because the items are hard enough to get (low supply), tradeable (make money), and highly sought after (high demand), and thus worth a lot without inflating the value of gold. In this case, we have successfully made it more profitable to run dungeons if you’re a good player. OP is happy, I’m happy, TP flippers are happy, John Smith is happy. It’s win across the board.

Tp flippers exist because despite this thread, gold isn’t important in the large view of things to many players. They are for the most part satisfied with their income by selling to the flippers and satisfied with what that income can buy instantly on the tp, and if they are not there is always gem to gold to supplement the occasional large purchase. As long as this system offers a pretty decent gaming experience, then they are happy regardless of what flippers are doing.

In the end, this is a game played for entertainment and many players don’t want to spend the time nor effort to learn economics research items prices or wait for sell orders just to earn a few more gold. It doesn’t make them stupid for having a different view of things. Flippers thrive on this and though a few more hints/suggestions can help, by in large there will always be someone to “take advantage of”.

For the most part, trading the public stock exchanges IRL doesn’t make “excessive” profits. This is why pensions funds (usually divested into large caps and bonds and managed by large firms) always seem under funded and other publicly held or traded funds do not have significant capital growth in adjusted “real” terms nor do they consistently “beat the market”. Truly large gains usually comes from other sources such as valuation growth in private capital and that is another matter altogether.

The overt wealth of finance industry comes not from a special understanding of the market but from the centralization of capital where even a minuscule slice (as fees or commissions) of a “mediocre” ROI is a huge amount in absolute terms. That is what the gw2 economy is, the flippers are taking minor advantage of a group of players who in the aggregate amount to large sums of gold.

My point is that this game is somewhat PHIW, with gold being the common currency that ties all content together, and the TP being the mechanism which makes rewards available for any player regardless of content. As long as Anet uses that philosophy to design rewards and content, then flippers will exist. You can place restrictions, but too much will be not just a deterrent against flippers but a detriment the majority users as well.

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

That being said, I’m often reading and interested in hearing your suggestions and you should feel free to present them. There are a couple of popular suggestions that do not meet my requirements of not making the game a much worse experience:

1. Server specific economies. I can’t even begin to describe the myriad of problems that server specific economies have, but I will tell you, most of them are so bad, you don’t even realize that they aren’t in their natural state.

2. Binding after purchasing items – this has been thoroughly explained in many forums the several ways that this would prove disastrous.

My biggest argument I would make against myself is that the fix for this is simply education or more information (I don’t mean academia, I mean education inside the game). I would argue that people naturally want to make the most money possible and the amount of profit available is enhanced, not by laziness, but by a lack of information or education.

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

I think both are good arguments, and the HOW of disseminating information is the interesting part.

In your hypothetical situation you lump in increasing coin, which is the Achilles’ heel of it. Take your same situation remove the increased coin and reevaluate it. Remember the increased item rewards can balanced and do not have to be increased so heavily where the supply crushes demand.

That aside, I would very much like to hear what you think about progressive taxation.

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.

Hypothetical: how about you start awarding people with bound armor/weapons/cosmetics as a reward from the dungeons, you know, like other games do. Seems you’d then satisfy more people. Flippers keep on flipping non-bound stuff, crafting materials, those that don’t have an interest in TP flipping can still go earn shiny stuff without having to worry so much about how much money they’re making. Also, I’d assume this wouldn’t mess with the economy so much either. This is the thing: a lot of us are asking for balance. We realise flipping goes on, that it’s not a bad thing and don’t necessarily begrudge the rich players that do flip as long as there are some rewards out there for people to go for that don’t involve being rich in order to obtain. In other MMOs, I didn’t worry about flippers because I knew I could go into raids and dungeons with my friends and still bling out my characters from the drops we’d get. I don’t necessarily want more coin. I want to go to ‘x’ challenging dungeon and have a reasonable chance at ‘x’ specific drop. Or I want to go through a long drawn out process of collecting bound drops or beating certain mobs to earn say, a precursor (like the mini moa chick or black moa pet in GW1 for example.. or even doing the Real of Torment ‘x’ times to get a tormented weapon.. and yeah I know you could sell the stones and ambrances there.)

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

Thank you very much for saying this. It gets SO tiring to hear from the same people on these forums that those of us who don’t play the TP are just stupid and lazy. They never seem to get it that some of us just don’t plain want to because we find it incredibly boring. Maybe since you’ve said it, it will finally get through their thick skulls. :P I largely appreciate the system you’ve created here. I miss buy orders in other games and I like how there’s one big economy rather than server specific ones. But no offense, I’d rather lessen the amount I interact with it and earn gear directly rather than from selling ori, ectos and whatnot on the TP to then fund what I actually want. It makes it all a lot less meaningful for me.. an entirely subjective and preferential thing that does have a large impact on people’s gaming.

John Smith.4610:

Let’s calm down a bit, this is getting heated and it doesn’t need to be.

I want to go through a hypothetical to explain a point about the TP.
Before I start I want to restate (it was quoted earlier) that the TP is part of the Tyrian world, we don’t make monster killing games here, we make online worlds (in which you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome).

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem. The profit from “flipping” items is a natural byproduct of people’s preferences inside a game. In my many, many years studying virtual economies I’ve never read or heard of an option that solves your personal dilemma without making the economy, the game and the players much worse off. The point of this hypothetical is the explain that even if I did think this was a problem (which I don’t) fixing it is much more complex than you may realize and you should incorporate that into your suggestions.

That being said, I’m often reading and interested in hearing your suggestions and you should feel free to present them. There are a couple of popular suggestions that do not meet my requirements of not making the game a much worse experience:

1. Server specific economies. I can’t even begin to describe the myriad of problems that server specific economies have, but I will tell you, most of them are so bad, you don’t even realize that they aren’t in their natural state.

2. Binding after purchasing items – this has been thoroughly explained in many forums the several ways that this would prove disastrous.

My biggest argument I would make against myself is that the fix for this is simply education or more information (I don’t mean academia, I mean education inside the game). I would argue that people naturally want to make the most money possible and the amount of profit available is enhanced, not by laziness, but by a lack of information or education.

To which I would respond that players have many resources for information and while some portion of this may be caused by that issue, it seems clear that it’s much more a matter of preference than education.

I think both are good arguments, and the HOW of disseminating information is the interesting part.

ok, some people ahead of me have hit the nail on the head. While i think people know they are selling fast, they dont really know what the alternatives really are.
if when some one was looking at an item they got very clear info,

lets say they are shown, for an item they are selling,
Price: the average price item has been selling at
sell now price: with % difference in value (Selling to buy order)
lowest sell order price with % difference in value

now when they actually click sell, they get more information with average time of sell based on what number they put in the box

projected profit should include the fee AND the tax.

Items that can be crafted should show next to it, its cost to craft (much like gw2spidy) based on current prices of materials. and % loss to craft

I do think many players are making decisions based on kittenumptions.
sometimes the sell now price is incorrect, they dont know how long they would probably wait to sell the item normally (some times its literally seconds)
and they dont really know what the average value of these items are.

but thats not the big issue, ill cover that in another post.

Now the real issue i see, is one of incentives, and control of production.

One major factor is that TP earnings scale with skill/knowledge/investment noticeably better than other activities.

To make this less the case, you have to come up with systems that reward differently based on how skilled/invested you are in something.

Basically the reason everyone doesnt flock to TP, is two fold, some people are just averse to the TP style of play, and, the results are based mostly on skill/knowledge.

put the same requirements into other content, and you will see similar value for the items it produces

which brings me to the other factor
Production of these rewards MUST be intentional, or else you shouldnt be able to bring them to market. IMO a HUGE problem is that most players are given items unintentionally, that they have no use for, and must then sell them to get what they want. You cant change the past, but you can change the future. People need to be making a choice to produce these items, and then they will be a lot more interested in actually competing in sales, they will also leave markets that arent profitable enough for them, which is one of the keys to good supply/demand/value relationship. Players have little control over what they supply, other than choosing to vendor an item.

I do agree the fix for this is education there are a few other items that is preventing people from staying up with the rest. One of those is time. The people who have been educated already have had more time to leverage that education in their favor. Someone starting out new has less monetary leverage to earn the cash needed to stay up with the Jones. Little do people realize that staying up with the Jones is exactly what got them into trouble in the first place. There is no fix for making it a level playfield due to time difference however. Nor should you. The only way someone in this game can level that field is converting gems to gold. If someone really wants to be on a even level they are free to do so.

The other is lazyness. Some people do know how to make the coin by flipping but just don’t care. Why? Various reasons one of them being they just want to play the game and will get things as they want them. The other is they just can’t be bothered. For both of those there is no reason to fix anything to make it fair to them. After all life is not fair. Everything is not equal nor should everything be as long as someone can get to the point that someone is now given enough time and hard work. Now given the person they are comparing themselves against may have got farther during that time. But there is no fix for that short of time machines. Any fix attempted to level the playing field of time disparity would only hinder those trying to get to the point that the top flippers are now.

Profit from dungeons scales with skill/knowledge. You can make very large amounts of gold per day from speedrun tours and path selling.

Which flies in the face of some of the arguments raised thus far. The gold you can gain from top end pve is more than enough to efficiently aquire luxury items. Moreover I would be interested to see people explain exactly how they are flipping out multiples of the amount you can make speedrunning/selling, on a regular, consistent, daily basis.

If you are worried about flippers, stop buying things off the trading post. Earn you own rewards. Gather your own materials. Pray that the RNG gods shine their light on you. Things have no value when people aren’t willing to pay for it.

there is a number of ways to enact my suggestions to reward changes.
this will not be simple, and it will not be easy, but my feeling is the game will continue to have dissatisfaction, and lack of feeling of reward, as long as everything remains as it is, also TP playing will always be the dominant method of achieving anything with a gold value.

• Step 1: breakdown the game into various gameplay types: you wont get them all, but get the major ones.
  • 5 man instanced content (right now this is basically dungeons/fractals)
  • world exploration (id say this is mostly treasure chests and jumping puzzles, mini dungeons)
  • pvp (WvW and Spvp perhaps one day add GVG and dueling)
  • open world (mostly dynamic events, and boss events)
  • Social (grouping up, talking in chat, organizing events, special mini events in towns)
  • gathering (mining yellow animal hunting harvesting logging)
• Step 2, create different systems for tracking variable levels of success at doing each activity.
  • 5 man instanced content – instance ratings based on time to complete, deaths, enemies killed, special objectives complete, and competitions
  • World Exploration add events/quests where you can try for fast times, or try to hit a certain amount chests/locations, or hit specific locations/mini dungeons.
  • Open world-how many events can you complete, special objectives for certain events, bonuses for saving parts of the world,
  • Social- basically two type, cool guy and cool leader, based primarily on a vote up system. Can vote up anyone in the zone. Leader is limited to one vote per day cool guy is limitless.
  • gathering, various endurance/knowledge based tracking
• Step 3 create rewards that match each type of content, up to and including skills/traits/titles special toys etc, the only way in which these rewards are introduced to the game is through these actions

• Step 4 people seeking these rewards choose an option to turn off all other rewards from the activity (aside from say experience, maybe karma, except for social) They then get some tokens based on how well they succeed at whatever parameters. Lets throw a bit of random in there with chances of getting certain things without paying the tokens (So its less of a grind/more exciting)

• Most of the rewards you can buy with these tokens are sellable on the TP (or you can sell the tokens possibly)

I think this would solve the problems of incentives, while offering people gold, as an option to get these things without having to do the content they dont like. It wouldnt stop TP people from getting rich, but it would allow people who are really good at something, something of value to sell, or strive to obtain for themselves. Essentially a means to get rich by producing something people value, and can only get through targeted play
It would make the best way to play the game, and get rewards that fit yourstyle, be to play that specific content, and give depth.
It wouldnt inflate the market because in choosing to enter this mode, you no longer randomly produce items, at the same time the rewards would have value, because you are turning off your other rewards while doing this. People who arent interested in this progression, will not opt in, and be able to get most of these rewards through their normal playstyles, via gold, but the value will be determined by the demand, and the players who specifically produce the good.

Death to capitalism! Death to bourgeoisie!

Dungeon farmers, orichalcum miners, dynamic event labourers, WvW zergers… comrades! Let us unite under the red banner of Tyrian Communist Party! Together, we shall send a petition to Arena Net, banning everyone who have more than 300 gold, dividing their money between its rightful owners – the working class!

New class will be featured – the worker! Every worker will be equal, and have gold cap set at 300 gold. If you don’t want to start your character from scrap, you can receive class conversion scroll for free. All other classes will be removed soon, so make haste before you are removed with them!

Trading Post will be removed aswell, because it’s a capitalist device of oppression!

Soviet Tyria – equality and happiness!

To reiterate my stand on this issue: I do not see flipping as an issue, neither do I see the rewards associated with flipping to be an issue either. Yes, people become rich through flipping items. Yes, these people comprise a small elite. However, there are many other players out there actually arbitraging (a nice way of saying “mending”) the market without making significant profit themselves. There are also a large amount of players attempting but failing, and an approximately equal amount “noise traders” (people creating chaos in the market. All of these players are necessary to the eco-system to maintain balance in it.

HHR LostProphet: There is no easy way to illustrate this, but imagine the GW2 economy as a perpetual machine. If you remove the players who earn a lot from flipping on the tp by cutting their profits, then you would end up removing an element of the economy and creating imbalance. This imbalance would lead to higher disparity between say: prices, and thus creating high profits for the player willing to participate. Thus the machine reinstated the same element you just removed, and again you have players earning obscene (obs. obsolete) profits from the TP again.

What I am trying to illustrate is that high profits to a small elite is the byproduct of having an economy that rewards by input. We simply cannot remove the people who are rich by playing the TP without removing the TP itself, and even then we would have people who got rich by trading through other methods. I.e. The economy is a perpetual machine.

What you want to do is to create less distance between you and those who earn a lot, and by far the easiest way to do this is to educate yourself in what they do. Another thing that ANet can do is to make the TP more accessible to people like yourself, thus giving a better opportunity for you and others to increase profits from another aspect of the game.

One idea I have for that is something I have explained before.

I’ll re-post the idea here. I wrote it on another thread on this forum:

Snip… A suggestion of mine is to allow for re-adjusting prices for a smaller fee (and a cooldown) thus encouraging more liquidity in the market and freeing up a lot of stuck sell orders. This would of course create a shock as players would start to see revenues and supply increase, but I think with luxury goods (which is the product category which would see the largest increase of supply) a positive supply shock would push down prices enough to create incentive for poorer players to save up money. As of now 2000 G for a certain item is not available to many players (and the reason many luxury goods trade at such high prices is the lack of liquidity (not because of low supply, but a tax trap).

Secondly giving players a few more “layman” metrics by which to price items would educate them as to the equilibrium value of many items they sell on the tradepost, and as such would encourage them to put out “sell orders” instead of filling buy orders. I believe none but John Smith has full data on the average sell/buy fillings a player does but I think many people actually do fill sell orders but as mentioned above a lot of sell orders are stuck in the above market oblivion.

People are rather oblivious to math and economics in general. Should we believe research done on player habits, most people play GW2 (and other games) to escape the reality that is exactly numbers and hard thinking. While it is only anecdotal, I cannot help to notice that as it stands now some people are even selling below vendor value due to the inability to deduct the listing fee from their sell order and believes the “Projected Profit” value is indeed what they receive upon selling their goods. You cannot call them stupid of that reason, however. That indicator is indeed confusing and not in any way helpful to players interested in selling at the market while waiting for the commander in wvw to rally and continue rolling.

The TP has had only minor improvements over its lifetime, and I think it high time John Smith and the TP team take some time to develop better metrics and interface for players to interact with. Making the TP more welcome and more educating to players who lack the time and interest is key to improving the way players view of the TP and its affiliates.

Fenrir.3609:

Profit from dungeons scales with skill/knowledge. You can make very large amounts of gold per day from speedrun tours and path selling.

Which flies in the face of some of the arguments raised thus far. The gold you can gain from top end pve is more than enough to efficiently aquire luxury items. Moreover I would be interested to see people explain exactly how they are flipping out multiples of the amount you can make speedrunning/selling, on a regular, consistent, daily basis.

wanze just said he makes about 200 gold a day from buy orders. When i was trying to finish my legendary, i think i made about 60 gold a day from TP/merchanting/transforming items, and about 30-40 gold a day from pve, i spent way more time in pve than flipping.

The cap on dungeon direct earning is 36.5 and since dungeons primarily are good at awarding gold, they will scale poorly with inflation. The only way to not scale poorly is to offer some unique product. thats 25 paths, if each path takes an average of 10 minutes to beat(and move to the next one), thats 250 minutes, or 4 hours and 10 minutes or 8.37 gold per hour. you do make some more money in drops, lets say you make 10 gold an hour.
pretty skilled work, long hours
but from what i remember, selling everything(lowest seller), my calculations on frostgorge champ train was somewhere around 9 gold an hour. you arent really getting paid that well for that level of skill, except possibly in selling paths, and thats mostly because you are bringing something to market, even then i would love a breakdown of how long it takes you on average to solo the dungeon up to the boss (without exploits of course) and how long it takes to fill the party.

I was not a TP player of high skill, and i was beating highly skilled dungeon runners in earnings in less time, while i was at the same time making money from gold grind farms

Skilled dungeon play has a ceiling in rewards, and they cannot really raise it, because it currently would throw off other rewards, aside from path selling.

The current means of skilled dungeon play only track speed, they dont track deaths, they dont track what objectives you completed, and they dont track enemies killed, or quality of the enemies killed, it also doesnt track well to dungeon path difficulty. As a means of tracking your skill/success it is kind of shallow.

Aside from the gold awarded, the other items have little value attached (in general)

and just think, dungeons is probably the best awarded game activity aside from TP playing, that most scales in skill, just imagine the value of everything else besides it.

Dagins.5163:

Death to capitalism! Death to bourgeoisie!

Dungeon farmers, orichalcum miners, dynamic event labourers, WvW zergers… comrades! Let us unite under the red banner of Tyrian Communist Party! Together, we shall send a petition to Arena Net, banning everyone who have more than 300 gold, dividing their money between its rightful owners – the working class!

New class will be featured – the worker! Every worker will be equal, and have gold cap set at 300 gold. If you don’t want to start your character from scrap, you can receive class conversion scroll for free. All other classes will be removed soon, so make haste before you are removed with them!

Trading Post will be removed aswell, because it’s a capitalist device of oppression!

Soviet Tyria – equality and happiness!

you realize many people want a system where the most hard working/skilled people can make as much as the other players think their work/skill is worth?
the problem here is, tp has a different skill-reward scale and a higher cieling than anything else in the game. Therefore, other forms of skilled/hard working players will always make less.

Problem is right now, capitalism is only in the TP, regular play rewards are controlled, and limited. players dont controll supply/production outside of the TP, where the tp player chooses what goods to offer liquidity, sales, transform, etc.

@phys
In real life, you can be a very good doctor, mechanic, scientist, and still earn moderate salary, because you either don’t care about making money, or you don’t know how to utilize your skills to do it. Have you ever heard about a mathematician from Russia who refused award for solving one of Millennium Prize Problems?

People who play on Trading Post want to make money and know how to do it – therefore they have it, and it is 100% fair. But honestly, it’s not a rocket science, it just takes a little discipline and time investment. Nothing is wrong here.

John Smith 100% right. It’s already possible to get dungeon-specific armor and weapons. Here’s the problem, the people on the trading post can still get those armor/weapons and the people who would want/buy a legendary will still want them.

It’s human nature to want what you can’t have, and that won’t change, if you make one thing more available, then it just makes something else ridiculously valuable. The only other option is to just do away with the trading post, and that’s a terrible idea for SO MANY other reasons.

Frankly, too, the trading post system isn’t NEARLY as broken as the real world markets. The vast majority of people have next to no ability to make a ton of money on the stock market and simply never will because there’s no way for more than a small handful of people to earn millions and millions of dollars. It’s definitely possible to earn lots of gold in GW2, enough so you no longer care about gold.

Why are rewards obtained via dungeons, events, etc. capped or at least impacted by DR? All of these constraints exist because once players who play content for rewards get those rewards, they stop playing, complain about nothing to do or both. ANet has struggled with keeping people playing since shortly after launch.

I agree that there are few rewards for skilled play in PvE content. Why is this so? It is so because ANet chose to reward participation over skill in PvE. There are PvE players who believe this is better than locking rewards behind skill barriers. There are other PvE players who believe the opposite. So far, at least, ANet has provided much fewer rewards that are skill-gated.

So far, at least, I haven’t heard any TP players complaining that there’s nothing to do and threatening to leave the game as a result.

What I find amazing is the extent to which this troll is being fed. The OP is either so parochial that he cannot grasp anything beyond “I don’t like that other people have something that I don’t have and don’t want to work for, so it’s bad” or is just being a deliberate troll. In either event, you can’t convince someone of something they don’t want to believe (or admit to, for trolls).

Based on the evidence, I don’t see any structural problems with the GW2 market/TP. It’s fair, it’s transparent, and anyone who cares about making money can put in the effort to research prices and take advantage of the fact that a large portion of the playerbase just wants to (a) cash out their drops right now and (b) not take on the risk of posting a sell order. This isn’t like Wall Street, where (a) you have privileged access to free money from the federal reserve and will get bailed out if you fail, and (b)to get access to Wall Street firms, you have to have the right ivy league school on your resume or family connection to get in the door. There are no barriers to entry and no safety nets if you make bad investment decisions. And if everyone cared about making money using the TP, no one would because margins would crash to zero.

Moreover, the whole thing about “dungeon runners should get better rewards because they have more skill” ignores that (a) dungeon running has no risk of loss and (b)would allow players to introduce currency into the game at an unlimited rate. In contrast, TP is a currency suck, which helps mitigate against monetary inflation.

I sincerely think that threads such as this should probably just be closed.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Why are rewards obtained via dungeons, events, etc. capped or at least impacted by DR? All of these constraints exist because once players who play content for rewards get those rewards, they stop playing, complain about nothing to do or both. ANet has struggled with keeping people playing since shortly after launch.

I agree that there are few rewards for skilled play in PvE content. Why is this so? It is so because ANet chose to reward participation over skill in PvE. There are PvE players who believe this is better than locking rewards behind skill barriers. There are other PvE players who believe the opposite. So far, at least, ANet has provided much fewer rewards that are skill-gated.

So far, at least, I haven’t heard any TP players complaining that there’s nothing to do and threatening to leave the game as a result.

even if its not heavily skill based, its just not very deep. skill is one form of depth, but there are others. for example, 5th grade math is all roughly the same level, but there is many facets to it, you can have many problems, you can combine different aspects, its very deep.

Tp players have a constantly changing environment which rewards them based on time put in, skill, and intial investment. This is why tp players are generally pretty happy. (they also can cherry pick most rewards) That doesnt really exist for other forms of play.

but economicly, i would say the biggest problem (i have said it a lot) is the lack of control of production. players who bring items are always at a disadvantage, because they have finite inventory, and finite use, and in order to get what they want, they have to by and large trade.
You are basically requiring every player to know most markets, which is unreasonable, but if they were choosing a product, they would only need to know one market, and they would have a vested interest in maintaining the value of that market. If the market doesnt meet their desires they would abandon the market, lowering supply, and increasing its value.

Economically, imo this is the biggest flaw of the system, and gives TP focused people the advantage, because their business is knowing all of these things, whereas other people are just offloading things they create while breathing.

I’m curious and perhaps John Smith could answer this if possible.

How many people have over 10,000 gold?
What’s the highest amount of gold that someone currently has?

@HHR, the one thing you seem to have missed out is that flippers invest the one thing that no dungeon runner does in the same proportions and that is time. Dungeon running and path selling has been refined down so that it is optimally profitable for that player.

Flipping requires a great deal of patience and time, investment and competing with other flippers to bring in profit. Adventurers compete with nobody to obtain an income and this is the critical point. Adventurers can go step out and voila gold basically falls out of the sky. Even if you sold nothing on the trading post you can make an income. A pure flipper, someone who does nothing but flip (going to extremes here) cannot rely on a source of income that generates gold for them from nothing. Their revenue stream comes purely from the TP.

There is nothing wrong with flipping because a pure flipper gives up the ability to earn all the other forms of currency, laurels, karma, skill points from xp, dungeon tokens to be a pure merchant. If you converted all of their currency that they don’t earn into gold then perhaps you might see why you are so very wrong.

For example, my income is erratic as I generally adopt a more adventurist model. I go out into the world and do stuff that brings in an income much like what most players do. Periodically I sink some of those materials into the TP and make a very good profit. So I craft a load of items, might vendor a precursor I got as loot, etc etc. My gold balance is very healthy but I also have a solid balance of karma if I want to get stuff from those, a few thousand dungeon tokens that I could use to convert to gold if I wanted. So my “wealth” is diversified across a lot of different sources. If I converted all the time I spent gathering all those various forms of currency and spent it on flipping (presuming I make very few mistakes) I too could run a gold balance in excess of 10k gold.

This is why your argument fails. You are completely blinkered to against the things that flippers are not getting and cannot get because all you see is the gold balance

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m curious and perhaps John Smith could answer this if possible.

How many people have over 10,000 gold?
What’s the highest amount of gold that someone currently has?

Why does it matter? People with that much money probably don’t have any legitimate way to spend it, except on gems. There’s a practical limit on the ability to consume, particularly in this game, so gold has a sharply deteriorating marginal value. Assuming JS doesn’t allow people to manipulate markets (abuse of dominant position), there’s no harm in someone having and accumulating lots of gold.