Guild Wars 2

I realise that its one of the biggest gold sinks in the game and it scales to counter inflation but god kitten I hate it, despite it’s neccesity.

Firstly, I hate the fact that I need money to sell things. I mean, I’ve just invested my money into these lodestones here and I can’t even sell them to people because I can’t pay the listing fee. It makes me want to ask them to take it out of my profit I make. And I know this wont work because of my second point.

My second point is that the fee is a listing fee and not a selling fee. You pay to put your things up there and so if you place your item up there and someone undercuts you with 100 of your item. You’re going to have to wait for a long time. All I want to do is lower my price by 50c and relist it but doing so would double the listing fee and consume ALL the profit I was set to make. Could someone explain to me why its impossible/a bad idea to hand back the listing fee if you take an item down? Would it be possible to allow you to change your pricing as long as you dont just take the item off.

EG: List an item for 120 silver. Someone posts 100 of the object for 110. You want the money now, so you simply change your listing price to 105. The game calculates the difference between the listing fee’s and hands that to you. Or if you set your price higher then the game calculates the difference and hands it to you.

I’d also like the ability to see a listing fee calculator. At the moment if Im figuring out how much I would make/lose by promoting cores, I need to grab something out of my backpack, pretend to list it for a gold just to see the fee.

Just a note, the listing fee is 5% and the transaction fee is 10% for a total of 15% TP tax. If pretending to list it is easier for you, keep doing it that way, but you should be able to figure out the math without doing that.

This listing fee is there so when someone offers something up for sale they are more likely to price it reasonably first rather than offer it for something high and then keep pulling it and posting it at a lower price, repeating until it sells.

If someone undercuts you, to bad, maybe your offering price should have been less so it would sell before someone came along and undercut you.

Behellagh.1468:

This listing fee is there so when someone offers something up for sale they are more likely to price it reasonably first rather than offer it for something high and then keep pulling it and posting it at a lower price, repeating until it sells.

If someone undercuts you, to bad, maybe your offering price should have been less so it would sell before someone came along and undercut you.

But if I was able to take something down immediatly then the price would follow the exact same pattern just slower. I mean if you see an item where the buy/sell difference is 10 silver, someone is going to be making profit. But if 5 people are all undercutting each other constantly they price is going to stabilize in a matter of minutes.

I think it’s also to prevent ppl from using the TP as their personal bank slot. “Hey I don’t have enough bank slots, lets list these items at 10000g so no one will ever buy it and I can remove them whenever I need it”

RiKShaw.8795:

Behellagh.1468:

This listing fee is there so when someone offers something up for sale they are more likely to price it reasonably first rather than offer it for something high and then keep pulling it and posting it at a lower price, repeating until it sells.

If someone undercuts you, to bad, maybe your offering price should have been less so it would sell before someone came along and undercut you.

…exact same pattern just slower.

Bingo. It’s a way to help the market hit the equilibrium as quick as possible.

It also makes flipping less profitable, so players that are really good at playing the market can’t create a wealth gap as fast.

RiKShaw.8795:

Behellagh.1468:

This listing fee is there so when someone offers something up for sale they are more likely to price it reasonably first rather than offer it for something high and then keep pulling it and posting it at a lower price, repeating until it sells.

If someone undercuts you, to bad, maybe your offering price should have been less so it would sell before someone came along and undercut you.

But if I was able to take something down immediatly then the price would follow the exact same pattern just slower. I mean if you see an item where the buy/sell difference is 10 silver, someone is going to be making profit. But if 5 people are all undercutting each other constantly they price is going to stabilize in a matter of minutes.

It’s not about stabilizing prices or preventing inflation. (Inflation happens when the growth of money circulating in the economy grows unchecked). It’s about requiring the seller to think about what is a fair price for the item they are selling while trading off between size of profit and speed of sale. If you don’t care if it takes a week to sell so you can get your 10% profit on the flip then price it and check back in a week. If you want to sell it ASAP, they you may have to set the price to provide a much smaller profit with the benefit that you will get your profit quicker. If you measure cash flow as in g/day, selling often with a small profit may net you more in the long term than a large profit infrequently.

But it doesn’t work like that. At the moment people who want the money now sell immediatly and people who want to wait will undercut the top price.

You say that it requires people to think about whats a fair price but no one does that. They just undercut.

If the listing fee was refunded when they took it down then it’d go like this:

New Item is released
Buy offers set at 50 silver
Sell offers get set at 2 gold.
Someone undercuts straight away at 190 silver.
The 2 gold offer then gets taken down, resold at 180.

This trend would continue and in a matter of minutes the price would be at something reasonable like 70, wherein the undercutters would not think it was worth it, and stop. Price of a new item, stabilized within minutes.

If the listing fee is not refunded, people leave their items listed at 2 gold until there is a huge amount of the object being shoved into the market. NEW items would have to be farmed in order for the price to drop.

If they are willing to wait, why would they undercut? You only undercut when you want to sell quickly.

If the highest buy is set at 50s then why would you ask for 2g? Because you’re being greedy. Someone might come along eventually and pay 2g but it’s more likely one or more other sellers would say "well I need to sell it for more than about 60s to break even on a 50s flip, and I don’t want too long for my payday and around 10s (20%) profit on each isn’t asking too much so I’ll post it for 70s.

The posting fee is an incentive to post your item only once for a price that’s affordable for buyers while still being able to make a profit, not a killing. If you are going to hunt downwards it will cut into your profit every time you pull and post.

Lets say you’re flipping. Your profit can be expressed by the following equation.

P = 0.90Sf – C – 0.05(Sf + S1 + S2 … + Sn)

where

P is profit
Sf is final selling price
C is cost of item
S1 to Sn are the other sell prices you tried along the way

Realize that depending on the gap between Sf and C, it won’t take too many times pulling and posting to completely wipe out your profit.

So choose wisely, don’t try to make a killing. You will make more flipping 250 items at 10s a piece profit a day than hoping that other sellers would leave you alone long enough to make 1g20s a piece and sell your stack eventually.

But people are greedy. They will go for the undercut, rather than selling low to start with and it will get sold because everyone else selling will go for the high price.

Now yes, they wont chop and change their price but think about if they could. They would all go for the undercut but in the end (and the end being a few minutes) they would arrive at the same price.

In your example, people start to sell the item at 70 silver. Well if they refunded the listing fee the item would decline from 2 gold to 70 silver as people post offers, get undercut, repost offers. They’d still end up at the same equilibrium. And this way you’re not relying on the saint who posts their offer to cut themselves out of 180 silver per item.

RiKShaw.8795:

But people are greedy.

And their greed will cost them. If it’s not a lesson they are willing to learn, too bad. Many thanks for removing your excess money from circulation and help to keep overall inflation in check. Have a nice day.

The purpose of the listing fee is to ensure adequate supply at scaling prices.

Constant relisting of goods benefits no one. Ever try to place a buy order for 76-80 exotic weapons? If you’re not reposting every 3 minutes or so, you’ll be lucky to have 2 orders filled ever (at least with daggers, which is the only one I’ve personally played around with). With how slow the TP likes to be on my connection and the somewhat clunky interface, if I want to save that 60s/item spread between buy orders and instant buy I have to spend around half an hour of non-stop work in game just to buy around 10 daggers.

That’s how the system currently works for that type of item when there’s no “listing fee” (obviously I mean the bidding equivalent here). It’s an awful, painful, annoying system that benefits no one. That’s also exactly how it would behave on the other end for the same class of items if listing fees weren’t required. If anything needs to be changed, I recommend adding (much much much smaller, like 1% or maybe 0.1%) bidding fees.

I think it should just be a 15% transaction fee. They will pay for their greed by competeing with other greedy people. In the end everything ends up the exact same except better and you’ve still provided no reason otherwise.

I can see no downside to merging the listing fee into the transaction fee.

RiKShaw.8795:

I think it should just be a 15% transaction fee. They will pay for their greed by competeing with other greedy people. In the end everything ends up the exact same except better and you’ve still provided no reason otherwise.

I can see no downside to merging the listing fee into the transaction fee.

I’ll give you a HUGE reason why 5% + 10% is better.

If there’s no listing fee, you’d never sell any expensive item again without babysitting the hell out of your item on the TP as everyone would keep relisting 1c below you.

You’d be trying to sell an item for 50g that has 20 other sellers, then once all of you are paying attention an hour would go by and the end result would be the low seller selling it for 49g 93s 68c or something after hundreds of 1c undercuts by everyone pulling their item and relisting multiple times.

If anyone thinks undercutting NOW is bad, it’d be an absolute nightmare with no listing fee.

I think its BS that GW2 has no COD so to force players to either be at the hands of con artists or be at the hands on Anet, neither of which is more trust worthy.

sostronk.8167:

I think its BS that GW2 has no COD so to force players to either be at the hands of con artists or be at the hands on Anet, neither of which is more trust worthy.

Why would they design a huge money sink for the game and then give you an easy way around it?

Money sinks are good for the game, as they are good for all games.

I think the listing fee is great, if perhaps too low.

There are multiple reasons why the listing fee makes sense for the game.

• It’s a gold sink and virtual economies need many such sinks, to slow down the inevitable inflation.
• It prevents people from using the TP as part of their storage system.
• It forces people to ask more reasonable prices: ask too high, you waste your listing fee.
• It reduces the ability of market “players” to control the market for very long and it reduces the profit from flipping (buy low and quickly sell for 25% or more).
• It makes it too expensive to keep undercutting the competition for the same item.

These reasons don’t necessarily apply to every player or every situation: some people are still going to ask too much, flip, relist, or undercut — the listing fee just increases the cost of doing these things without considering the risks more carefully.

Minion of Vey.4398:

If anyone thinks undercutting NOW is bad, it’d be an absolute nightmare with no listing fee.

Undercutting is not an infinitely continuing phenomenom. There will be a time where the buy and sell price are 1 copper apart. Having no listing fee will allow EVERY item to reach this. Every item will be undercut by 1 copper until the price reaches a place where no one in the world wants to go that low OR there is no difference in the buy/sell price.

All this will happen in minutes. In fact it might cause people to jump down more than 1 copper because they are trying to not be undercut. It might lead to people automatically selling 1 copper above the highest buy offer because they know thats where its going to go. You wont see any of this “bad undercutting” because its already done! Finished! All you’ve got is the end stabilized price.

You are thinking that you just found/bought/made a umm… lets say, a vial of powerful blood (even though this item would be instantly stabilized due to its popularity). Now
ou got one and you’re like, I need some money, I’m going to sell this.
You look at the price, 28.64 silver. Cool. I’ll just put it on here for 28. You believe that instantly there would be someone putting it on for 27.99. Well there very well might be. But then there will be someone for 27.98. And 27.97.
Now you’re sick of this kitten and you post it for 20 silver. Now, this process may indeed repeat. 19.99, etc. However the highest buyer is 19 silver. You then place your item for 19.01. And it gets sold. Now, every vial of powerful blood, will be sold at 19 or 19.01.

All that happened in less than 5 minutes and it will never happen to anyone else unless nobody want to buy them or nobody has any available which would likely be never. (But in that unlikely case the process would start again at a new price, but most likely the same price).

I think the listing fee is fine where it’s at.

That being said, I wish they would make the outpost a true auction house with a time limit and bidding, comparable to Diablo 3.

Not going to happen though, since that would require an overhaul of the current system.

RiKShaw.8795:

Minion of Vey.4398:

If anyone thinks undercutting NOW is bad, it’d be an absolute nightmare with no listing fee.

Undercutting is not an infinitely continuing phenomenom. There will be a time where the buy and sell price are 1 copper apart. Having no listing fee will allow EVERY item to reach this. Every item will be undercut by 1 copper until the price reaches a place where no one in the world wants to go that low OR there is no difference in the buy/sell price.

All this will happen in minutes. In fact it might cause people to jump down more than 1 copper because they are trying to not be undercut. It might lead to people automatically selling 1 copper above the highest buy offer because they know thats where its going to go. You wont see any of this “bad undercutting” because its already done! Finished! All you’ve got is the end stabilized price.

While this sounds more or less reasonable in theory, and is actually how it would work for certain high volume items, it’s definitely not how it works in practice for other item types.

As I mentioned earlier (and you so conveniently ignored) we already can see how a no listing fee system works on the trading post by looking at buy offers. For high volume items like crafting materials, salvage materials, and supply bags, it functions well and without problem. For low volume items, that’s not the case at all. For example, level 76-79 exotic daggers about a month ago were 1.30g. Placing a buy offer for such an item at a 1c increment would get you outbid on average in about 3 minutes. Larger increments are outbid at the same pace, so there’s no incentive to make larger increments. It has taken a month for the price of (a few of) those items to rise to about 1.80g where they were when I last involved myself in the market (on Friday I believe). Trying to purchase those items is a major chore.

On top of that, it exposes the market to potential severe price spikes. Right now there’s only about 250 total supply across 8 items. A single person could easily end up clearing out the supply. Prices would no longer scale because all the intermediately priced items would have been relisted. This has the potential for prices to jump 100% or more between listings, which isn’t likely going to contribute to a healthy market for anyone.

Trade is supposed to be competitive. You go to an auction they dont ask people to pay per bid and yet all the items get sold (granted that someone actually wants them).

You are supposed to be able to haggle for items. Someone will want an item more than you. Someone will want to sell for less than you and if you want to beat them you beat them.

Those exotic daggers, yes, its taken months for it to climb to 1.80 but that just means that no one has bought any for months. You say that larger increments are outbid at the same price? Well that simply means that a large amount of people are willing to waste a lot of time. If you want that dagger now, buy it. A lot of those daggers are held by people who are not willing to sell it for 1.80 and haven’t been willing to sell for 1.80 for those months. So all these people undercutting for 1c aren’t getting anything.

Except for randoms. someone who got it as a drop and wants some fast cash. Yes, the top guy at the time that they sell it, happens to get the dagger. This just means that if you want to spend a lot of time and effort, unlisting, relisting, undercutting then yes, you may get your dagger but its unlikely.

On low demand items sales aren’t being made and that means that those people undercutting are wasting their time. If I see a low supply object I want (lets say, “The Crossing”) and I see the top offer is 75 gold, I’m not going to pay 75.0001. I’m going to pay something close to the buy offer. 100 gold maybe. If people start undercutting me there then those people have been wasting their time and I made an incorrect judgement of the true price of the object. I’ll list at 115 (I think the top sell is about 119) and no body undercuts me then maybe thats the true price? Everyone who posted 75g offers will take theirs down and then wish to buy for over 100g at least.

If you’re having a problem with people overcutting you as you’re trying to buy then that means that their buy offers aren’t being filled and you need to buy higher.

Literally nothing you just wrote is coherent or accurate.

While I don’t have Mr. Smith’s transaction data, I can tell that hundreds of those exotic daggers are exchanged every day. There’s a lot of them changing hands, but they’re extremely difficult to purchase via buy order because bids can be reposted for not cost.

You obviously have absolutely no idea how these markets work or perform. Rather than make up random assumptions and claim those as fact (then fight to the death about their accuracy) you’d be a lot better off if you just accepted that you have no idea how these markets perform.

You said that they were items that didn’t sell.. Im just going on what you told me. Either they dont sell and you can go on what I said, or they do, and you admitted that it’d work.

If it gets very hard to buy with an order at the same time it gets hard to sell with an order then everyone will eventually just want to buy at the same price. There will be a point where both the sellers and the buyers have an agreed upon price and anyone who wants to buy and sell higher/lower than that will not be able to because there will be many happy people trading at the equilibrium.

RiKShaw.8795:

You said that they were items that didn’t sell.. Im just going on what you told me. Either they dont sell and you can go on what I said, or they do, and you admitted that it’d work.

As I said, your comments aren’t even close to being accurate. The statement you’re struggling with so hard is that buy offers are outbid at a faster rate than they are filled. Hundreds of orders are filled every day (and that’s not even touching on instant-buy transactions).

RiKShaw.8795:

If it gets very hard to buy with an order at the same time it gets hard to sell with an order then everyone will eventually just want to buy at the same price. There will be a point where both the sellers and the buyers have an agreed upon price and anyone who wants to buy and sell higher/lower than that will not be able to because there will be many happy people trading at the equilibrium.

And this is where it becomes so painfully obvious that you’re not looking at what’s actually being stated, and instead are making up your own guesses at how the market functions and asserting that as inalienable fact. As I already stated, it took over a month for the price to close 50s of the gap between bid and ask, and we’re still in a situation where there’s at least another 50s to go before they’re approximately equal. By the time those numbers come close to approaching each other, odds are the market will have undergone sufficient fluctuations that supply and demand are no longer even close to where they were before, and the gap will reappear. Yes, ceteris paribus, the market would eventually reach long run equilibrium and the issue would more or less disappear. But as is always the case, ceteris paribus is useful for theorycrafting and understanding concepts, but is never actually present in real markets.

The market doesn’t behave the way that you’ve imagined it does in your head. No amount of whining on a forum will change that.

Geikamir.6329:

sostronk.8167:

I think its BS that GW2 has no COD so to force players to either be at the hands of con artists or be at the hands on Anet, neither of which is more trust worthy.

Why would they design a huge money sink for the game and then give you an easy way around it?

Money sinks are good for the game, as they are good for all games.

The choice in sink was poorly designed. Thats why.

We should be getting the gold back and the item, if said item does not sell for a duration of 30-45 days or the sale is cancelled by the seller. It seems really quite stupid to allow for items to sit on the trade post, clogging up some kind of data on a server that will potentially never sell. I bet a database query would show tons of items sitting there that somebody put up and is no longer even playing the game. A prime example of this being if you were to put up an item for 10,000 gold. Highly unlikely that this item will ever sell but you’ll pay 1,000 gold to list it and never see the listing fee money ever again. What if Sir Stupid quits playing for 3 months, his legendary left sitting there and the public value of said item decreases to 1 gold. You are going to retain 1,000 gold from Sir Stupid just because he is stupid enough to post an outrageous sale?

So in crafting an extremely rare legendary item, as ridiculous as that price may have been or unrealistic, is it fair for Sir Stupid to not get his money back? Regardless of how stupid I think he is, I think he deserves the money he put up attempting to sell his item. In essence, the item is completely worthless game wise. It has absolutely no value what so ever until it is sold to another player, so why gouge the heck out of everyone?

Arena Net, this is going on my list of top 20 things that really need to hit the re-design table and be fixed. The game does not bolster enough coin to even bother wasting posting anything on trade. I have had one Orrichalcum 20 slot box sitting on the trade post for over a month now. Why? Because some clown who can’t do math undercut the crap out of me and is willing apparently, to do people a good deed and sell it for less than the cost of the materials and rune.

But that I will save for a completely different discussion as that too is broken.

Please do something to resolve this.

Best,
Vancien

Yes, if Sir Stupid put an item up for 10Kg and paid a 500g listing fee (it’s 5%, 10% more upon sale) it’s his own kitten fault if he then pulls it and repost at 10g (and then pays 50s).

Undercutting is a fact of life with this system, learn to accept that than shout on the rooftops how unfair that other players undercut your asking price and the market will penalize you for pulling and relist it at a lower price. This is how the market works in the game, ANet isn’t going to change it to satisfy players who can’t adapt to it no matter how much noise they make.

So price wisely first and learn to be patient Ed Gruberman (how long will that take?) for your item to sell. I’ve had items take over a week to sell because I priced poorly on an item with more supply than demand but it eventually sold.

As for your 20 slot box, yes it looks as if it’s only profitable, and not by a lot, if you gathered your own Orichalcum orr rather than vend it from TP. The only other explanation for the current price is excepting small loss is better than tying up you money indefinitely waiting for it to sell.

I agree with the amounts and the need for a fee and all that.
what sucks is how they report them to you. worded totally wrong and not intuitive.
a better way:
Quantity: [ 250 ] [ Sell Maximum ]
Unit Price: [ 0 ][ 1 ][ 23 ]

Listing Fee: [ 15 ][ 38 ]
Estimated Final Value Fee: [ 30 ][ 75 ]
Estimated Projected Profit: [ 2 ][ 61 ][ 37 ] [ Sell ]

couple things to note:
‘projected profit’ is the actual profit you project to have. it includes /all/ fees
the final value fee and projected profit are estimates because the fee is rounded up in the case of someone only buying some of yours. if they buy 1 at (1)(23), the final value fee for that purchase will be 13 instead of 12.3. if 250 people did this, the effective total final value fee would be (32)(50) instead of (30)(75). that rounding can suck sometimes, but it’s as it should be.

The listing fees don’t seem to be too much trouble. It’s a good fair set amount and doesn’t knock too much off the player’s earnings.

In my opinion the problem is not with the listing fee, but rather the fact that you can undercut an item worth 100g by 1c (which is the same price, for all intents and purposes) and have it sell earlier than someone who listed the item before you.

This essentially makes the current market a First In Last Out system for high price, low volume items. It doesn’t matter how low a price you list the item at initially. Another seller can come along and post the item AFTER you, for 1c lower, making essentially the same profit margin, yet sell his item BEFORE you do. In a fair market, to get ahead of the queue, you should be willing to take a loss to your profit margin. Currently, no such loss needs to be incurred, so everybody engages in it to get ahead. (Before someone starts telling me 1c is a loss: No, on these types of items, it’s a rounding error at best.)

The listing fee only compounds this problem by discouraging further competition from the original seller to drive down the price, significantly slowing the pace at which items drop down to equilibrium price.

I strongly believe a minimum undercut (and/or “uppercut”) threshold that scales with the item’s current listing prices would make the system a lot more fair to both buyers and sellers by respecting the First In First Out nature of the market for all items, not just those with high trading volumes, and promote healthier competition by allowing item prices to reach equilibrium much faster.

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, if Sir Stupid put an item up for 10Kg and paid a 500g listing fee (it’s 5%, 10% more upon sale) it’s his own kitten fault if he then pulls it and repost at 10g (and then pays 50s).

Undercutting is a fact of life with this system, learn to accept that than shout on the rooftops how unfair that other players undercut your asking price and the market will penalize you for pulling and relist it at a lower price. This is how the market works in the game, ANet isn’t going to change it to satisfy players who can’t adapt to it no matter how much noise they make.

So price wisely first and learn to be patient Ed Gruberman (how long will that take?) for your item to sell. I’ve had items take over a week to sell because I priced poorly on an item with more supply than demand but it eventually sold.

As for your 20 slot box, yes it looks as if it’s only profitable, and not by a lot, if you gathered your own Orichalcum orr rather than vend it from TP. The only other explanation for the current price is excepting small loss is better than tying up you money indefinitely waiting for it to sell.

I really hope you aren’t trying to follow all of my posts on these forums. But since you seem to be such an advocate of “Deal with It because Arena Net made it that way” and “The sooner you accept hardship the happier you shall be” let me enlighten you to something you seem to fail at realizing.

ArenaNet is a company. They have a business to run. If all they did was put out products and said; “Deal with it if you don’t like it, tough!” Do you think they would have sustainable profits? Do you think people would continue to play or invest money into their game? Do you think for any reason they would even have a suggestion forum period? No. They’d destroy themselves and their player base. Unlike many game development companies out there. ArenaNet actually puts their players first and listens to what they have to say and adjust according to their recommendations.

The point is not that people shouldn’t have to pay for being stupid. By example, Twilight being posted on Trade not long ago for 9,000 gold I think it was, which nobody realistically in game is going to have. And how that person even got the gold to pay the fee blows my mind too. But either way, given your point I see where I may have also failed in properly getting my point across.

A listing fee is fine, so long as the item sells. Which is why some don’t care. So you lose a little and gain a little. No big deal. The problem is, that money is gone forever if the item does not sell or you close the sale. Your item may sit there forever and you’ll never get anything back unless you by chance wait long enough and the item sells. (That is your logical point there, patience!) I think a better system would be that the trade post keeps 2 or 3 percent forever but 7 percent you get back if you cancel the item or the item does not sell in a duration of 30 days.

Sir stupid doesn’t deserve 900 gold back if he really is that stupid to think anyone would pay 9,000 gold for Twilight. I think at the time I calculated by real money that someone would have to spend $1,200 dollars on gems to then exchange currency. But that kind of chunk done all at one time would greatly effect gem value and likely cost even more money.

And no, I did not buy any of the resources except for the rune to make the bag.

Best,
Vancien

I think the best way to do it is to have a slowly returning listing fee. For example you might get back 1% of the listing fee returned upon taking it down, per day. If you want to instantly relist things over and over again on the same day you will take the 15% to the face every time. If 5 days go by and no one has bought your item? Its probably not going to sell.

Those that believe in themselves will keep it there. Those that want the item sold at a reasonable price, will relist it. Maybe after watching for 5 days they will better understand the item and wont undercut for 1c. Maybe they will but it will not be a huge amount of undercuts.

Opinions?

RiKShaw.8795:

I think the best way to do it is to have a slowly returning listing fee. For example you might get back 1% of the listing fee returned upon taking it down, per day. If you want to instantly relist things over and over again on the same day you will take the 15% to the face every time. If 5 days go by and no one has bought your item? Its probably not going to sell.

Those that believe in themselves will keep it there. Those that want the item sold at a reasonable price, will relist it. Maybe after watching for 5 days they will better understand the item and wont undercut for 1c. Maybe they will but it will not be a huge amount of undercuts.

Opinions?

While this idea sounds good on the surface, it would be a complete nightmare to implement. Think about having to track the duration of every single trade for every single player and calculate / recalculate based on a time scale in order to return the proper amount of the listing fee based on the sales price on a “just in case this player decides to cancel their trade” basis.

These fees are guaranteed gold sinks. They’re necessary to the overall health of the economy. Removing part of, or all of, the Listing Fee by returning it if you cancel an listing circumvents this system. We’re paying to use a service. We shouldn’t get refunds in this case because we did use the service….even though the item didn’t sell.

I can understand someone listing an item for too much accidentally….possibly by a factor of 10. In that case, maybe a full refund could be offered, but there would need to be a time limit associated with it…..say…..15 to 30 seconds. The problem with that though is it opens it up for abuse. “Free listing” bidding wars would start happening. At least with the way it is, it costs you something to pull your listing and lower your price.

Another option could be a lower listing fee to change your price…say….3% on a relist. Instead of removing your item, picking it up from the Pick Up tab, then re-selling it…..there could be a “Relist at a different price” option that would allow you to change the price of a current listing, up or down, for a 3% charge based on the new price. There is a possibility for abuse here though too….but maybe not as much. A player could initially list an item at a very low price to dodge most of the 5% listing fee, then relist at a much higher price at 3%. The only thing that would stop this would be if the current highest buy order was close to the current lowest sell listing, because currently, if you place an item for sale at or below the highest buy order, you will immediately sell the item to them.

Who knows what they could really do, but honestly, I think the listing and selling fees are just fine as they are. As long as you account for them when you’re selling items, you shouldn’t have a problem.

Vancien.1980:

I really hope you aren’t trying to follow all of my posts on these forums. But since you seem to be such an advocate of “Deal with It because Arena Net made it that way” and “The sooner you accept hardship the happier you shall be” let me enlighten you to something you seem to fail at realizing.

… (due to post length limits)

And no, I did not buy any of the resources except for the rune to make the bag.

Best,
Vancien

No I’m not following you, just certain topics.

And yes, ANet set up their market place a certain way. WoW has a traditional auction house, the late City of Heroes had a double blind Consignment House that displayed the time and price of the last 5 transactions (but not how many sold) and GW2 has a straight up Trading Post that shows the amount and price of all the items for sale. Each one of these have some fee associated to use it, usually nonrefundable and some cut of the sell amount as well to act as a gold sink.

You may not like the fees, you may think there are too many stupid players ruining the place for someone who would like to earn gold playing the market or crafting.

The crafting problem can be partially explained by the fact it’s so incredibly easy to level up to 80 in this game. EVERYTHING gives you XP. “Discover” a new area, XP. Go to a POI or vista, XP. Crafting something new, XP. Then we get to the actual whacking things in the head XP and bonus XP for whacking something that’s been around since the last time the area was rebooted. So leveling is quick.

This does two things, first it reduced demand on lower level items since players don’t stay at the level of their gear for very long. Low demand translates to low price and since crafters can’t avoid making low level items on their way to be able to craft high level items, the supply simply grows well beyond any demand.

Second, players would naturally migrate to higher and higher level zones as they level. As everyone congregates in those zones, T5 mats end up with a greater supply than lower tier mats so the cost of components for those lower level items are actually higher than higher tier mats (T6 is still rather rare however). So combine lower demand for lower level items with lower supply of raw materials with fix demand (got craft using them if you want to level your crafting skill to 400) means crafting is a losing venture until you reached a point where you can craft something that lots of players would be willing to pay a fair price while allowing you some amount of profit.

As for general undercutting/overcutting that’s going on. Well most people are terribly impatient. Few would grasp the idea it’s okay to place an order today that will get filled over time at the price they are willing to spend. No, they want to craft NOW and they need this component NOW and they are willing to either buy at whatever the going rate is. Some may be mildly patient and will just overcut hoping to get their order filled sooner than later. And the flip is true with selling.

As for flippers and dedicated crafters, an item up for sale represents their tied up capital. For someone selling a drop, they simply want to get X turned into gold so they can buy something they want. They don’t care if their undercutting is affecting someone else’s margins, they just want their cash NOW. They don’t care how the market works and they may not notice the posting fee but they do seem to notice the sales tax, noting the many grumbling threads about it.

Here’s the root of the problem, the market is being used by rational and irrational players, in terms of understand the market (not that they are crazy although an argument could be made…), and the irrational out strips the rational by a fair amount. Of course this still doesn’t prevent two rational players from PvPing each other on the market with a particular item.

Combine that with supply and demand problems due to the relatively quick leveling in the game as well as necessary requirement to produce items that are likely overstocked as is and you get what we have. Sure it sucks that other players can drive by undercut you and pulling and posting will cut into profits more so than the undercut because of the posting fee. But that’s the system we have, trying to convince the devs to alter it because you find it unfair or that it makes the market more inefficient is simply a waste of time. It is what it is and as long as it’s the means to turn loot into gold it’s going to be heavily used.

As for what that means for crafters, it means the start up cost until they can craft items players want will be high and when they do have items that they can sell for a profit, they need to be aware how the market works and price those factors into their selling price but be aware that somebody selling one of that item would upset the status quo and end up setting a new lower price point for a period of time.

15% tax has one purpose only. To stop or at least drastically slow down the power traders.

Rezz.8019:

15% tax has one purpose only. To stop or at least drastically slow down the power traders.

And to take additional money out of the game.

Geikamir.6329:

Rezz.8019:

15% tax has one purpose only. To stop or at least drastically slow down the power traders.

And to take additional money out of the game.

Yep – although I think 5% list and 5% sales tax (instead of 10%) would feel better.

I think 5% listing fee and 2% never returned if you:

A.) Cancel the sale.
B.) The sale is returned after a duration of 30 days removing it from the market.

3% you get back along with the item in either scenario.

This seems a lot more fair to me personally. I honestly believe that people are highly deterred at all from posting certain items they may have on the Trade Post due to the chance the item may not sell. Not to mention, circulation could be hindered if a person doesn’t even have the money to pay a listing fee at all yet.

And I have seen it very little but people could actually go around the trade post altogether if they wanted to sell things in general chat. I think ANet countered alot of this by not allowing players to openly trade one another. Items have to be resorted to trading in the mail system, which could cause a lot of hardship if mistakes are made. Not to mention, scam artists. But with masses of communities out there with forums, this is totally do-able as a private sale.