Guild Wars 2

If anyone ever noticed when using the Trading Post, we’re allowed to price our goods for whatever price we feel like. But then comes the problem with undercutters who are undercutting the undercutter’s prices. This can lead to a Price War between the suppliers, and protracted wars lead to less profits (though Buyers would benefit greatly).

I believe us TP players should all agree to an informal agreement while on the marketplace. We should agree that if an item is being sold, and another player undercuts that person, other players should not undercut that price further. We should wait until the item is sold before we post competing prices.

Granted, this isn’t official, but rather a Gentleman’s Agreement between players. I think the trading community could actually get along if we all work together, striving for a better economy. The up side to this is that both sides (Buyers and Sellers) would benefit from a stable market. The down side is that we would need to take more care in watching prices and listings before posting.

What does everyone think? Would you like to form a forum community group and work together to normalize prices?

Not going to work.

Malediktus.9250:

Not going to work.

Creating an informal Union could be a way to get all players to work together. A lot of angst in the community right now is because some don’t like the competition of a free market. However, without Anet having to change any game mechanics, us players could come up with our own Codes of Conduct when trading in game.

For example, we could agree to limit undercutting. If someone’s item is for sale, and another person comes in to undercut that price, we should stop posting lower prices after five rounds of undercuts. Something like that. It’s a great compromise to the constant item battles we’re seeing now.

I agree that this simply won’t work, but that doesn’t mean something doesn’t need to be done. having a free market is a good thing, but many people don’t have the common sense needed to make it work. Currently on my server, almost every item in the TP that I’ve come across, except for high demands such as crafting items, have dozens of sellers that are pricing at 1 c above the vendor value. Now think about this for a second. The TP charges a percentage of the sale so these people are actually selling their items for LESS than they would get than just dumping their junk at an npc. I’ve actually found that in many cases i make more profit dumping into npc’s than trying to sell to other players and that’s just sad.

Traders are not the people who undercut most of the time, at least not if you do it correctly. The normal player selling his goods is the guy who undercuts, so yeah.

Oh man, I hope this works.

That way, it’ll be all the more effective when I undercut to sell.

LFk.1408:

Oh man, I hope this works.

That way, it’ll be all the more effective when I undercut to sell.

This is why the op’s suggestion never gonna happen.

Of course not. But all the more power to him!

Also, Butterblume’s above post has some merit. The mast majority of the “1c undercuts” are not people who trade for their income. It’s the general, run of the mill content player, who only wants whatever they can get for their findings, and quickly. In other words: the vast majority.

I do find myself using the 1c undercut from time to time, though. It would be all the better if somehow, everyone else except me stopped

It’s a pipe dream to try and band enough together to represent a significant % of the population. However, I wish you good luck!

LFk.1408:

Oh man, I hope this works.

That way, it’ll be all the more effective when I undercut to sell.

I’m just trying to find a way to compromise between different types of players. People hate me for undercutting, and that’s not a good feeling. I figure if I can meet them half way, perhaps they’ll hate me less.

All I know is that the current system works well, and there’s a lot of anger at players who use this system to it’s fullest.

Really? I’d implore you to have thicker skin.

It’s a mob. Mobs are angry when they see others succeeding where they have not, and seek to trivialize it. In turn, they are angry to see changes that could trivialize their own past success.

Efforts to “not be hated” are a futile effort. All the same, there’s nothing wrong with trying, I guess. It’s your time!

If you wanted my advice, it’s to use the market tactics that are the most beneficial to your time, and your purse. Undercutting isn’t always the answer, but when it is, do it. Take that gold, buy a hat, buy a sword, do a few dungeons with your guild, and have fun. When it’s no longer fun, leave These sort of societal efforts are admirable… I suppose… but ultimately wasted.

Draigon.4570:

Currently on my server,

TP isn’t by server…

Price fixing.

I am one of the people that undercuts the lowest seller by 1c in almost all cases. How does agreeing to your proposal benefit me ?

I can see how getting a large number of people to agree would benefit me if I don’t agree to it. So I wish you luck.

Draigon.4570:

I agree that this simply won’t work, but that doesn’t mean something doesn’t need to be done. having a free market is a good thing, but many people don’t have the common sense needed to make it work. Currently on my server, almost every item in the TP that I’ve come across, except for high demands such as crafting items, have dozens of sellers that are pricing at 1 c above the vendor value. Now think about this for a second. The TP charges a percentage of the sale so these people are actually selling their items for LESS than they would get than just dumping their junk at an npc. I’ve actually found that in many cases i make more profit dumping into npc’s than trying to sell to other players and that’s just sad.

You can list items from anywhere. Selling to vendor requires going to vendor. End result: those who haven’t invested in bags and inventory increase are better off listing and moving on. All the time they would waste on going back to vendors is time wasted from leveling to 80 or 80 activities, and those pay well per hour.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People hate me for undercutting, and that’s not a good feeling. I figure if I can meet them half way, perhaps they’ll hate me less.

People have no idea if you’re undercutting them unless you advertise it for some reason.

Draigon.4570:

I agree that this simply won’t work, but that doesn’t mean something doesn’t need to be done. having a free market is a good thing, but many people don’t have the common sense needed to make it work. Currently on my server, almost every item in the TP that I’ve come across, except for high demands such as crafting items, have dozens of sellers that are pricing at 1 c above the vendor value. Now think about this for a second. The TP charges a percentage of the sale so these people are actually selling their items for LESS than they would get than just dumping their junk at an npc. I’ve actually found that in many cases i make more profit dumping into npc’s than trying to sell to other players and that’s just sad.

If the items are of such low demand that they can’t even move at 1c over vendor, nothing short of a radical drop rate / salvage change is going to alter that. Supply > demand.

Sorry, but business is war. Why would I want to enter into an agreement with people I don’t know, can’t know and will never meet?

It’s not like at some point down the road I will be at a Tavern and some Asura will walk up to me and say “remember when you were selling 27 unidentified dyes and you decided to list them at the same price as the 15 dyes already listed? yeah? well those were my dyes! thanks so much for not undercutting me!”

And even if 100 people agree not to undercut, there are still 100,000 people who will never read this or never care and since we can’t tell one bid from another on the TP, how do we know which bits we should “not undercut” and which bids are the proper, nice bids and which ones are the naughty, dirty, undercutting bids?

And what about the buyer side? If I want to bid on a permanent contract, of which there are very few, should I just bid equal to the top bidder and wait for their bid to be fulfilled, knowing that mine will be next? Or should I bid more money and try to buy one first? Because it seems to me that sellers need buyers to keep bidding more than the previous bidder in order to reach the prices we want as sellers. Is that bad?

How about this – why not just have 1 price for everything on the TP and you just list your items for this price and they sell when they sell – first in, first out.

Just because there are millions of green wood logs already posted, why should you try to cut ahead of everyone else and sell yours sooner by lowering the price?

Let me tell you a little secret:

If you have a lot of stuff to sell, don’t list it all at once, at one price. I often sell hundreds or thousands of items at a time, and if I list it all as a single sell order, then, intentional or not, it becomes a sell wall for other players.

If I list 985 ecto for 27.80 and you want to sell 9 ecto, why shouldn’t you sell it for 27.79? Why would you want to wait for my 985 to sell through before you get yours sold? The market could easily shift up or down while you’re waiting.

So even if your idea was workable in some way, you can’t just go on the “no undercutting” policy without including some kind of volume guideline such as “no posting more than 50 items at a given price so that the non undercutting sellers don’t have to wait too long”

Now how would that work? What about the other 935 ecto I want to sell? Should I just post it at a higher price? What if I undercut myself by posting 10 orders that are 1c apart? Am I only hurting myself?

These rules are so confusing!

Whatever “bad” you’re trying to avoid by coming up with this scheme will only create new, other “bads” that will be worse.

DancingPenguins.9875:

Price fixing.

Yeah… having people agree upon pricing rules is much shadier than undercutting. Much. No bueno.

“Gentelemen’s agreement” = monopoly trust.

The TP is PvP. Asking this is like asking the other side in WvW to go easy on you.

As far as I’m concerned, you guys are my competitors. My allies are farmers, crafters, and consumers. I will gladly screw my fellow traders to the benefit of those who do not play the TP.

Tarvok.4206:

“Gentelemen’s agreement” = monopoly trust.

The TP is PvP. Asking this is like asking the other side in WvW to go easy on you.

As far as I’m concerned, you guys are my competitors. My allies are farmers, crafters, and consumers. I will gladly screw my fellow traders to the benefit of those who do not play the TP.

Exactly – this is economic PvP.

Well said.

Smooth Penguin.5294 is a troll and is just trying to stir up trouble.

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

He does not actually want anything he described in the original topic (as can be easily seen in his posting history). Don’t waste your time trying to have a reasonable discussion with him, and certainly don’t bother raging at him for what is a ridiculous suggestion- it’s what he wants.

Risingashes.8694:

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

The 1c thread makes fun of itself.

Tarvok.4206:

“Gentelemen’s agreement” = monopoly trust.

The TP is PvP. Asking this is like asking the other side in WvW to go easy on you.

As far as I’m concerned, you guys are my competitors. My allies are farmers, crafters, and consumers. I will gladly screw my fellow traders to the benefit of those who do not play the TP.

This is why we also need a more direct market… So I can buy from this guy.

There are a lot of people who buy and sell the same types on things continually and I think the right group of people would benefit from sort of a “vendor” style relationship where the seller makes a little more and the buyer pays a little less by avoiding the 15% TP tax.

It’s probably not worth the risk of a loss and especially getting flagged as a possible gold seller – with lots of money and goods moving through email…

Its an open market which lifes of its competition.

Add to that that only a small % of the players visit these forums anyways.

People seem to misunderstand my thread. Allow me to clarify. I have no problem with 1 copper undercuts. Because of this, jealous people rage at me, claiming that I don’t understand their feelings. I’m merely trying to offer an olive branch, a way to compromise so that all the angry people stop hating me for playing the game.

There are those who are trying to convince everyone that 1 copper is valued differently than 1 copper. To me, it doesn’t make sense, as if they’re saying their coin is better than mine, when we all have the same thing. Since I can’t understand this concept, I figured we can form a collective Union, and agree where we can be agreeable.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People seem to misunderstand my thread. Allow me to clarify. I have no problem with 1 copper undercuts. Because of this, jealous people rage at me, claiming that I don’t understand their feelings. I’m merely trying to offer an olive branch, a way to compromise so that all the angry people stop hating me for playing the game.

There are those who are trying to convince everyone that 1 copper is valued differently than 1 copper. To me, it doesn’t make sense, as if they’re saying their coin is better than mine, when we all have the same thing. Since I can’t understand this concept, I figured we can form a collective Union, and agree where we can be agreeable.

How exactly do they rage at you? Is there a new label that I missed saying “sold by smooth penguin”?

Leablo.2651:

Risingashes.8694:

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

The 1c thread makes fun of itself.

Threads like the 1c thread seem to be a side effect of the market system we are using. Eve Online uses the same system, and that had plenty of people complaining about the 0.01ISK undercutting. Guess what the smallest increment of the currency in Eve is.

Rouven.7409:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People seem to misunderstand my thread. Allow me to clarify. I have no problem with 1 copper undercuts. Because of this, jealous people rage at me, claiming that I don’t understand their feelings. I’m merely trying to offer an olive branch, a way to compromise so that all the angry people stop hating me for playing the game.

There are those who are trying to convince everyone that 1 copper is valued differently than 1 copper. To me, it doesn’t make sense, as if they’re saying their coin is better than mine, when we all have the same thing. Since I can’t understand this concept, I figured we can form a collective Union, and agree where we can be agreeable.

How exactly do they rage at you? Is there a new label that I missed saying “sold by smooth penguin”?

It all comes down to me defending my 1 copper undercut tactics, and they call me a troll. Then everyone started talking about how 1 copper undercuts are only ok in certain situations, but it shouldn’t be allowed in others.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It all comes down to me defending my 1 copper undercut tactics, and they call me a troll. Then everyone started talking about how 1 copper undercuts are only ok in certain situations, but it shouldn’t be allowed in others.

There will never be a consensus on certain topics. I wouldn’t worry about it.

This doesn’t make sense at all. How will you know which one was “undercut” and which one was the original price. This would only make sense for the items that only had a couple of items up, like legendaries. Nice try?

I disagree and I will happily undercut you.

It’s a free market, you can’t make me.

While I, too, hate getting undercut (or overcut on the buy side), let’s take a look at some simple math as to why a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” on this forum won’t work.

We’re going to have to make some assumptions….and some of them will be generous….

Let’s say there are 1,000,000 players playing Guild Wars 2…..

50% of those players use the Trading Post (500,000)
50% of those players use the Trading Post frequently (250,000)
10% of those players are power traders (25,000)
10% of those players read these forums (2,500)
10% of those players will read this thread (250)

So…..if you can get 250 players to sign your agreement…..what impact do you really think it will make on the undercutting issue?

The answer is none. It won’t make any difference and those 250 players will only be hamstringing themselves.

It would be nice if we lived in an ideal world where people actually cared about other people….but we don’t live there….and Tyria is DEFINITELY not there.

This is a game. People are out for themselves and only themselves. It’s a sad, but simple, fact!!!

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Leablo.2651:

Risingashes.8694:

This entire post is just trying to make fun of the 1c thread.

The 1c thread makes fun of itself.

Threads like the 1c thread seem to be a side effect of the market system we are using. Eve Online uses the same system, and that had plenty of people complaining about the 0.01ISK undercutting. Guess what the smallest increment of the currency in Eve is.

Well the nice thing about EVE is if I see you doing it and if it has a negative effect on my business I can outright attack you. Even if all I can do is suicide gank, the option is still there.

lol, I hope this works!
let’s say it does work and /everyone/ agrees to it: first thing I do is go buy every ori ore on the market, then relist them for 1g each. then no one could ever undercut me and I’d be the only source of ori ore! wahahahahahahahaha

dude, undercutting is the driving force behind supply and demand. with fixed prices, markets crumble and /everyone/ is unhappy (how many of those do you think I’d actually sell? O.o people would just put more attention to mining their own)

It’s annoying to get undercut, but get over it! if the going rate for what you’re selling is less than you’re selling it for, then stop overcharging!

Well, I tried to be a nice guy about this. But a majority of the community is against this idea, so I’ll be going back to my 1 copper undercuts.

Thank you everyone for your input.

1c is not that bad but i’ve seen 1 silver to 1g undercutting are more who knows. most of the time the mats sell for more then the item you make aka weapon/armor.

Smooth Penguin, there’s nothing wrong with your 1 copper undercuts. Sure, some selfish traders who exist in a constant state of kitten might have a problem with it, but enough 1 copper undercuts adds up to happy consumers.

Dominant strategy and prisoners dilemma here. If you and the collective conscience of all other sellers for a good can make a binding agreement, you as sellers would be better off and making more profit.

For my example, the economy of Jute Scraps has 100 sellers. However, without knowing what the other 99 sellers would do in a competitive economy, you are best off as an individual pursuing what would give you the best results in both cases that the others either do or no not follow this agreement. If 90 players agree but 10 players don’t, you’ve just created a whole window of profit for those that don’t agree at your own expense.

I was gonna make a thread on Game Theory one day when I had time. Nice that you bring that up Highly.

In the real world what OP wants to create is a Cartel – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
Not to be confused with a drug cartel.

Such an agreement will help help sellers but not buyers. In other words – help the richer. In real life cartels and price fixing in most occasions are prosecuted by the law.

When I see someone come in with a large quantity and undercut my listing I figure it is a trader. What I do is pull my stack reduce it into 3’s and list them all at significant lower prices than the original under cutter driving down the market price enough that theirs either dont sell at all or are forced to pull and re list to keep up.

Turn about is fair play and this is war. I have deep pockets too so taking a small loss here for fun doesnt matter to me at all.

I like reading these because it does give insight into Game Theory. But I can’t help but be amused that there are people that complain about 1c undercutting, and people that complain when people undercut by large amounts which drive the price of that item down further than it has to.
Personally, I think that 1c undercut is not the whole story. For example: 1c undercut on globs of ecto is not only meaningless for both sides of this argument, no one even minds it. That market is too fluid – it’s too likely that one person will place an order for 1000 ecto and buy the 1c undercut, your listing, and 10 listings above you.
People only get aggravated at 1c undercut when the turnover rate of that item is low. 1c undercut a legendary, for example. There’s going to be a significant time difference between when both of those sell.

you know, after thinking for a minute, I think that 1c undercut is not even what people are so mad about. It’s that they were undercut at all and their listing won’t sell as quickly. 1c is just the most common.
Let’s say it’s a medium fluidity market, like lvl 80 berserker’s exotic armor. You list one for 1g. someone else lists one for 99s99c, you’re kitten that yours won’t sell for a meaningless difference.
But what if instead they listed theirs for 90s. would you really feel that differently about it? There’s no way you would see that and be like “oh, that’s a totally reasonable thing to do – I’m ok with them making a sale before I do”. If that happened to me, I’d be like “gerrrahhhh! now I have to take a puppy 15s1c profit loss to put mine below theirs so it sells quicker”