Guild Wars 2

I’m sure this has been mentioned in the past, but I couldn’t find a proper discussion on it, so I thought I’d raise the issue here.

Minimum custom offer price:
The trading post is already smart enough to not let me sell an item at below NPC merchant’s value. So why doesn’t it apply this filter to the buyer? That is, as a buyer, I shouldn’t be able to post a an offer less than (NPCvalue+1)/.85. If I post an offer at that price, after the 15% “tax,” the seller will get NPC value +1 copper, the minimum profit for the effort.

Inventory price filter:
While we’re at it, as a seller, when I open the “sell your inventory on BLTC” tab and see my whole inventory, I think it’d be really spiffy if there was a filter to display only my items that selling the item to the highest buyer would yield a x% profit over just vendoring it. Those items could be “no brainers” for me, and then for the rest of the items I could evaluate what I wanted to do.

I agree with this, I actually laugh when I see requests for items below vendor sell value, or even items that cannot be bought on the TP like lemons (which are of course account bound).

I also think that the minimum sell value should be raised to 20% above vendor value. Right now with the posting fee, the transaction fee and the fact that everyone and their grandmother is posting things 1C above vendor value means to actually use the TP you will lose 15% of potential profit. Granted this is mainly do to people just not paying attention to what they are doing.

I would bet that what we see is a result of a quick patch to the TP and not the final resolution to the issue.

I don’t think there should be a minimum sell value, just a warning about vendor price and fees. I do think there should be a minimum buy value of vendor +15%.

Why limit how low people can sell items?

If a person sells an item below vender price, less money is being generated than if the seller were to just vender the item.

Item sells, -15% of the sale price.

Item venders, no money sink.

If people do not pay attention to the base value of an item and sell it cheaper on the TP, why should we “protect” them?

If people want to just get rid of an item fast and cheap and knowingly post it for less than vender price, why should we stop them?

As for the price filter, sure, but why do we need it? If someone is too lazy to click on each item in their inventory and see if it’s worth posting… let them just vender everything. We already have a surplus of items, do we really need another system to tell us to add specific items and flood that market as well?

I’m sure this has been mentioned in the past, but I couldn’t find a proper discussion on it, so I thought I’d raise the issue here.
Minimum custom offer price:
The trading post is already smart enough to not let me sell an item at below NPC merchant’s value. So why doesn kitten apply this filter to the buyer? That is, as a buyer, I shouldn’t be able to post a an offer less than (NPCvalue+1)/.85. If I post an offer at that price, after the 15% “tax,” the seller will get NPC value +1 copper, the minimum profit for the effort.

Why, pray tell, should the system force everyone to profit?

Secondly, what is your solution to devalue the currency such that it combats the inflation this creates?

Inventory price filter:
While we’re at it, as a seller, when I open the “sell your inventory on BLTC” tab and see my whole inventory, I think it’d be really spiffy if there was a filter to display only my items that selling the item to the highest buyer would yield a x% profit over just vendoring it. Those items could be “no brainers” for me, and then for the rest of the items I could evaluate what I wanted to do.

If there’s anything we can glean from your post it’s that your solutions are to create “no thought” from a seller’s perspective.

We call this “the path of least resistance”.

Your first proposal is unfortunately not going to work without a solution to balance out the inflation; your second is a nicety but stop being lazy.

Unfortunately I have to agree with illgot and Dishconnected here as your first proposal would need some modifications to actually make a ‘positive’ overall difference to the health of the marketplace. Although in theory any items sold on the TP would always make a profit, the end result of this would actually lower buyer frequency – as people who would normally buy the undervalued items to clean them off the TP would now possibly consider getting them through alternative means, thus causing inflation of the items that will now sell less then if the value was slightly under the merchant.

However, I do agree that ‘something’ needs to be done; as the more time progresses the more some items will become inflated and the TP will generate less and less profit for the average person.

Thaiden.3487:

However, I do agree that ‘something’ needs to be done; as the more time progresses the more some items will become inflated and the TP will generate less and less profit for the average person.

One something is organic – inflation in currency.

Another something that is organic – knowledge. People will learn to vendor more items and therefore less items will be available and the prices will go up for some things.

Want to make an impact? Teach everyone you know how to make money in this game and have them stay away from the TP when it won’t make them money.

The motivation for my idea is that there is already a precedent protecting the user from selling something at below vendor pricing. Clearly ANet wants to provide some protection for the seller. It just seems to me that they did it in the most obvious way: without considering their own price “taxes.” For a game that’s supposed to be streamlined and skill based, it occurred to me as being counter to the game’s goal. There’s no “skill” in punching a number into a calculator to see if you’ll actually profit on it, and why should I need to waste my time checking every value against the calculator? What they’ve done is built in a trap option into the game, and then obscured it in two ways:
1) by not making the 10% selling fee “abundantly” clear and,
2) by providing a false safety net by not allowing you to sell at below vendor value, but it does allow you to sell at below vendor value after taxes.

I will admit there IS an argument to be made in the (extremely rare, from my experience) case that in the field, away from all vendors (including completed hearts), that your inventory is full and you have nothing to salvage and no collectibles to deposit (I bet you like this lazy option!), that you would consider posting to the trading post at below value.

In light of such a case, then I think the calculation should be built in. That is, it already pops up a message that says “you can’t sell for below vendor cost,” it could just as easily say “after posting and selling fees, you will earn less money than you would if you sold this to an NPC, do you wish to continue?”

This highlights the trap and informs the market to check out the “mysterious” selling fee.

Mathemagician.1836:

The motivation for my idea is that there is already a precedent protecting the user from selling something at below vendor pricing. Clearly ANet wants to provide some protection for the seller.

I absolutely agree. I think they recognized that there was going to be a lot of ignorance out there about how a trading post such as theirs works… not to mention the fact they had to create a price floor SOMEWHERE, which is always the vendor price of goods in MMOs. I can see an argument being made this may be different in Eve… but I am unsure about vendor pricing there and how it may affect the economy at large.

It just seems to me that they did it in the most obvious way: without considering their own price “taxes.”

You really think that nobody recognized that this would create a gold sink as price sunk to < 1.15 x vendor price? Nobody? Ok. I disagree.

For a game that’s supposed to be streamlined and skill based, it occurred to me as being counter to the game’s goal. There’s no “skill” in punching a number into a calculator to see if you’ll actually profit on it, and why should I need to waste my time checking every value against the calculator?

You’re lazy and you want the effort of profit to be ANet’s responsibility. I don’t see any other reason.

What they’ve done is built in a trap option into the game, and then obscured it in two ways:
1) by not making the 10% selling fee “abundantly” clear and,
2) by providing a false safety net by not allowing you to sell at below vendor value, but it does allow you to sell at below vendor value after taxes.

1. If I recall correctly… millions of people played WoW without the AH specifically stating their profit or loss, although addons certainly could. I was aware there would be fees on the TP from previous MMO experience but I don’t remember that information not being available before launch of GW2.

2. It isn’t a false safety net. It’s a price floor so they have a baseline to value everything in the economy. It also eradicates the possibility that someone will have an effectively infinite stream of profit without any risk by reselling something to a vendor. ANet doesn’t want that, you don’t want that, I don’t want that. Nobody should want that kind of exploiting. However, by allowing people to sell at any price greater than the vendor price they are allowing a gold sink to exist along with giving people the freedom to sell at a loss if they so desire.

Introducing a higher floor price is only going to serve to increase prices across the board via inflation and this does not solve the original “problem” you’ve introduced.

I will admit there IS an argument to be made in the (extremely rare, from my experience) case that in the field, away from all vendors (including completed hearts), that your inventory is full and you have nothing to salvage and no collectibles to deposit (I bet you like this lazy option!), that you would consider posting to the trading post at below value.

Depositing collectibles is convenient but if I didn’t have to do that I’d have to visit town more often. I’d accept it as part of the gameplay but that isn’t how it is so I definitely enjoy it! Regardless, people can play how they want to a certain extent.

In light of such a case, then I think the calculation should be built in. That is, it already pops up a message that says “you can’t sell for below vendor cost,” it could just as easily say “after posting and selling fees, you will earn less money than you would if you sold this to an NPC, do you wish to continue?”

Why does their responsibility extend this far? Those price floors are to stop exploits and create a baseline for the economy, not to do all the work for you. :P

This highlights the trap and informs the market to check out the “mysterious” selling fee.

ANet’s responsibility isn’t to force you to profit or to lose. It’s to provide you the mechanism to make responsible or irresponsible choices and then let you do it. If you sell at a loss that is your choice – you shouldn’t be forced into the decision one way or another.

Responding to you has me wondering how much of “protecting the seller” played into their decision making processes, though. That remains unclear.

So, to pick a nit, it’s not vendor * 1.15. It’s vendor/.85, or vendor * 1.17647058824… which is another point entirely. How many people think that vendor*1.15 is the correct calculation, I wonder?

You’re welcome to continue to call me lazy; I don’t see myself as lazy. I value my time greatly, so I suggested a way that would improve my experience. Such a message would allow me to get back to the game quickly. Instead, it may be the case that I ignore the BLTC for most items, it’s not worth my time to check every price. For a single item, I agree, I’ll do the calculation, who cares. When it’s an inventory full of things I just crafted? Or the haul after several dungeon runs? The calculation times add up, and I’m not interested.

Question for you: From your perspective, there shouldn’t be a message at all about selling on the BLTC for less than the vendor cost?

name one exploit from people being able to sell items on the TP below vender price.

There is no additional money being generated if people sell below vender price on the TP. It instead helps the economy by creating a 15% money sink each time and item is sold (and I would suggest a minimum of a 5 copper sales tax).

Some people will gain money by camping the TP by purchasing the cheap items and vendering them, but they won’t make the kind of money I do by purchasing certain items and reselling them for 200% – 500%. Plus when people find out you can do it, more and more people will start looking which will spread out the gain even more.

I think World of Warcraft allows people to sell items below vender price, and you know what, it was never an issue in that game because you could step into a noob zone, farm copper ore and make much more money in much less time.

Dishconnected.8360:

1. If I recall correctly… millions of people played WoW without the AH specifically stating their profit or loss, although addons certainly could. I was aware there would be fees on the TP from previous MMO experience but I don’t remember that information not being available before launch of GW2.

WoW sends you a mail with the funds from each individual sale so you know what you receive. I know the mail has progressed over the years to provide more and more information (name of item, amount of sale, amount of fee, net sale), but GW2 doesn’t give any information about sales. When you list an item it give a fee, this is only 1/3 of the fee, not the whole fee. When you sell items, all the money is lumped together obscuring the fee further. The items I have sold list only shows the gross sale price, not the net receipts. Also, GW2 prohibits add-ons, so nobody but them can change this. Being aware there is a fee, some people will come to the conclusion the fee is 5% like stated at sale. Counting on outside information or a wiki to provide user training is not a sound decision.

Mathemagician.1836:

I will admit there IS an argument to be made in the (extremely rare, from my experience) case that in the field, away from all vendors (including completed hearts), that your inventory is full and you have nothing to salvage and no collectibles to deposit (I bet you like this lazy option!), that you would consider posting to the trading post at below value.

Listing an item below vendor or 10x vendor doesn’t make any difference. They both get the item out of your inventory instantly. Unless you have maxed out the trader (if this happens), minimum trader price doesn’t matter to make inventory room.

Dishconnected.8360:

I’m sure this has been mentioned in the past, but I couldn’t find a proper discussion on it, so I thought I’d raise the issue here.
Minimum custom offer price:
The trading post is already smart enough to not let me sell an item at below NPC merchant’s value. So why doesn’t it apply this filter to the buyer? That is, as a buyer, I shouldn’t be able to post a an offer less than (NPCvalue+1)/.85. If I post an offer at that price, after the 15% “tax,” the seller will get NPC value +1 copper, the minimum profit for the effort.

Why, pray tell, should the system force everyone to profit?

Secondly, what is your solution to devalue the currency such that it combats the inflation this creates?

Inventory price filter:
While we’re at it, as a seller, when I open the “sell your inventory on BLTC” tab and see my whole inventory, I think it’d be really spiffy if there was a filter to display only my items that selling the item to the highest buyer would yield a x% profit over just vendoring it. Those items could be “no brainers” for me, and then for the rest of the items I could evaluate what I wanted to do.

If there’s anything we can glean from your post it’s that your solutions are to create “no thought” from a seller’s perspective.

We call this “the path of least resistance”.

Your first proposal is unfortunately not going to work without a solution to balance out the inflation; your second is a nicety but stop being lazy.

Lazy is a derogatory term that is not being respectful or community minded to the OP. I think you should refrain from calling people lazy and then smiling like it makes it any better that you insulted him. He brings up a very legitimate situation for many players as is reflected by the amount of thought others have put into the discussion. If things can not be listed to sell less then vender value then in turn they should not be aloud to be ordered less then vender value. It is simple not in anyway an expression of laziness. Would you suggest that he double check every posted order for the variance of vender values and orders requested paying price while using the market? I would think that is a bit excessive and extreme for an MMO.

Well, I think we can all at least agree upon the fact that the TP could use more information, such as the full item sale tax and sold item prices clearly displayed and organized.

Mathemagician.1836:

The motivation for my idea is that there is already a precedent protecting the user from selling something at below vendor pricing. Clearly ANet wants to provide some protection for the seller. It just seems to me that they did it in the most obvious way: without considering their own price “taxes.” For a game that’s supposed to be streamlined and skill based, it occurred to me as being counter to the game’s goal. There’s no “skill” in punching a number into a calculator to see if you’ll actually profit on it, and why should I need to waste my time checking every value against the calculator? What they’ve done is built in a trap option into the game, and then obscured it in two ways: ¹

1) by not making the 10% selling fee “abundantly” clear and, ²
2) by providing a false safety net by not allowing you to sell at below vendor value, but it does allow you to sell at below vendor value after taxes. ³

¹ I really don’t think it’s a trap unless you ignore the fact that what you’re listing probably won’t sell in the first place. I’d actually argue that they are protecting people more by not forcing them to pay an arbitrarily higher listing fee in order to NOT sell something.

If the minimum list prices were changed to a higher price, even fewer people would buy the goods. This is not a problem with trading rules or user interfaces, it’s a problem of unwanted items.

² I think most people agree that the 10% sell tax should be made more clear, but I don’t think there’s any kind of consensus or “best” way to do that other than publicizing. Maybe list it as a possible fee on the sale UI, though that could spawn even more confusion.

³ I really believe that this point, while correct, is pretty moot because of the problem described in ¹. You can’t force people to want unwanted items by changing trading rules (especially by making them more expensive!).

MF Panda, you raise some good points. The thread has lead me to retract at least my first point. I think the best change to the UI would be a 3 line deal, with a 4 line popup:
3 line version:

Posted price: x
Listing fee (paid immediately): x*.05
Total Revenue if sold x*.85

When this revenue is moused over, it could display:

Posted price: x
Posting fee (paid immediately, 5%): x*.05
Revenue after selling fee (10%): x*.9
Total Revenue adjusted for both fees: x*.85

The Total Revenue amounts could be displayed in red with a “Less than vendor value” warning.

illgot.1056:

Why limit how low people can sell items?

Because it’s stupid that people put in buy orders for less than a vendor buys the item for.

Why on God’s green Earth would I sell something on the BTP for less than I can get for it from a vendor?

It’s an annoyance and makes selling stuff on the BTP a pain in the kitten totally defeating the purpose of the buy order in the first place.

Example- there is a buy order on the BTP right now for a yellow 1h mace for 1c. All this is doing is blocking buy orders from legitimate buyers.

How does it block other buy orders? It does no such thing.

In any case, you can no longer place buy orders at or below vendor price; that change was made last time the TP went down. I guess at some point ArenaNet will refund all remaining orders that are at or below vendor price as well, although these orders would disappear in good time anyway.

Hostile.4925:

Example- there is a buy order on the BTP right now for a yellow 1h mace for 1c. All this is doing is blocking buy orders from legitimate buyers.

How does this in any way effect legitimate buyers? They can buy items listed for sale, and they can put in higher buy orders. It doesn’t remove the item because a seller can’t sell at that rate anyway.

While there must be a physical hard limit on the number of orders it’s possible for the system to store at any particular time, I somehow doubt anyone is actually finding that they can’t place a new buy order because the servers are full up with unfulfillable 1c orders.

Dishconnected.8360:

I can see an argument being made this may be different in Eve… but I am unsure about vendor pricing there and how it may affect the economy at large.

That argument can’t be made in EVE. While there are no vendors in the traditional sense there is still a floor price in the form of insurance (or more correctly, insurance fraud). But then again that game has an economy and systems that are miles ahead of this one either way.

Moving the minimum buy/sell price up won’t change the fact that you can’t profit from items (crafted or otherwise) everyone is selling and no one wants to buy. I don’t know why people keep trying to suggest other wise. The economic problems this game has is not because of the TP, it’s because of loot design and distribution and the way crafting works.