Guild Wars 2

Today, I went on because I thought of a little gap in the market that could work to my advantage, this particular Item was valued at 4g to buy at 18:00 gmt, it’s now 20:00 and they’re at 3g, This is unbelievably frustrating to those who do flip items quite often, myself included, and I can’t understand why people would want to sell their stuff so cheaply, making 90s profit instead of 1g 90s per item? it’s just frustrating.

Welcome to a player driven economy.

Wanze.8410:

Welcome to a player driven economy.

Flipping is always a risk. Sometimes, you lose.
But at least GW2 doesn’t have a tax form. I occasionally play stocks IRL, and I tell you what, that form is a kitten.

could be: 90s per hour >>> 1g90s per day
could be: someone trying to scare you away from their niche
could be: someone selling 2 to a buy order that only wanted 1, so the 2nd one becomes listed at that buy order price
could be: they’ve relisted it 8 times in the past week and really want it gone
could be: they got it as a drop instead of crafting and have no idea how much it’s worth but listed it for half way between buy and sell to be sure it sells without needing to relist

Welcome to flipping isn’t easy. Guess what? It never was.

It’s like people getting better at flipping, and more people trying to flip, are competing away the margins or something…

In no particular order, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that flipping gets progressively more difficult. The short version: increased competition and decreased opportunities, a typical progression in a healthy, player-driven economy.

1. There’s more information about how to flip every day, making it easier for folks to learn.
2. There’s better and better data about “best” flipping niches in the market, making it harder to find one without significant competition.
3. Veteran flippers get better; they’ve had 1-2 years to hone their skills.
4. The game always has new players; some of them will be flippers.
5. More and more players have the seed money to trade at a scale that is noticeable.
6. There’s an increased demand for flipping profits, since people tend to (mostly mistakenly) believe that it’s the “best” way to earn enough to pay the current prices for precursors.
7. The market is responding more quickly than ever to a lot of niches (for a variety of reasons), thus decreasing margins.

The longer you trade in your niche the more you notice others getting into it. Eventually new players to your niche will decrease your profit significantly. Also, note that daily price change depending on when people play. In the morning prices are high and in the afternoon prices are low. Did not have to place buy orders on my niche until more people got into it. In my niche now it is easy to get outbid every 10min with buy orders :P.

With longevity active markets become more efficient.

Basically the longer people play the TP, the more they learn about discovering the “right” price for the items they are trading.

More people playing the trade post increases the odds that a given item is followed by multiple people, meaning any gap in price has been narrowed.

In this example 4 gold was Not the true price people were willing to buy at over an extended period.

/Just my W.A.G.

Black lion pvp end game

I’m finding it easier to flip actually, feels like stuff happens faster than a year ago, including rising & falling prices.

And you said it yourself, you thought you could, which more often than not tends not to work out if you try to flip one.single.item.

Or just put it up for the price you want to sell and wait?

Also, look at graphs like this for motivation and try flipping more than 0.00(0)1% (?) of available items. www.gw2tp.com www.gw2spidy.com. https://www.goldwars2.com/ is free now? Never used it but I’ll check it out

Try something like this maybe?

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/12396-plate-of-coriander-crusted-meat-dinner

or an all time classic like

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/13155-mithril-helmet-casing

Mostly to boost your confidence and trust in your trading skills, just buy order a stack, re-list it for a competitive price (might be above current lowest sale offer) and wait for a week or two.

Don’t just flip every item you read about on forums without thinking about it.

hope everyone who flip on the tp to loose all their gold

Svetli.4276:

hope everyone who flip on the tp to loose all their gold

If we do, we lose someone elses gold.

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

I wish I could flip ;(

Svetli.4276:

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

Basically, you’re hoping that people who speculate will get unlucky — that they’ll expect the price is going up (because supply is less than demand), when the opposite happens. I guess I can understand a desire for schadenfreude — but be aware that speculators don’t ever need to sell the items they buy; and if they never sell, this helps maintain a stable price for sellers.

OTOH, when the price goes up … the speculators/flippers who correctly guess where the market is going help provide supply later on — partially by informing others of what items will be valuable.

A trivial example: Silver Doubloons. They’re a pain to get if you’re level 80 — and you need 250 for one of the legendaries. Some people noticed this, and bid up prices … but prices can only go so high before other people find a way to provide supply (parking 21-34 level chars on jumping puzzles, or mystic forge on T2 universal upgrades & gemstones) — which helps buyers who come along later and actually want to buy them. Prices are flat or down over the past 10-11 months because of this effect.

Based on game theory and economic analysis, it seems pretty obvious that TP participants have a net positive effect … I say that as someone who is somewhat left of center IRL — in this case, people with money from playing the market are providing a service, since you can’t make money unless you find an inefficiency or an unsatisfied demand, and you make money by reducing the inefficiency or satisfying that demand.

I think that service might be better provided by bots (many TP strategies are way too time-intensive for my taste — or I just don’t enjoy that part of it) … but given the design of the market, having more participants (including “flippers”) is good, even for you.

This is what happens when there’s no time limit on auctions. There’s a massive build up that has been happening since release, and it will only get worse with time. It’s actually up to the players to actively buy in order to gouge out the inactive auctions so the economy can liven up, but don’t hold your breath. That’s a form of altruism that requires a lot of coordination, which is the bane of any non-guild/raid event.

Also, every MMO has a large number of economy players who do exactly what you’re trying to do. Most of the time any profit is better than none, but a lot of the time it isn’t. If only we could rely on people, we’d be able to logically decide to hold off on undercutting ourselves into oblivion. There should really be a formula for undercutting that every player is taught when they start using the Trading Post. That way, when they start hitting the point of terribly diminishing returns, they can avoid the cascade reaction of everyone pushing X auction past Y ratio of profitable returns.

As it is? No one has any faith in humanity, so instead of holding out in hopes of the market fluctuating back to an acceptable price, it just plummets as everyone tries to screw each other over in their pursuit of gold. Misanthropy is hard at work in this part of the game…

Svetli.4276:

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

Good that I dont HAVE to sell anything and can choose my sell price anyways.
Hooray for a player driven economy.

Svetli.4276:

hope everyone who flip on the tp to loose all their gold

Svetli.4276:

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

While I do find this entire thread rather a “third world problem” kind of thing, you constantly wishing anyone that makes money on the TP ill will just reeks of rotten, sour grapes and is kind of pathetic….

The better balanced the economy becomes and the wiser the playerbase gets, the harder will become taking advantage of the system, injecting yourself to profit with intermediate transactions.

The day changes eventually make trying to flip pointless and unprofitable and the trading post is simply used to sell what you don’t need or what you crafted to sell and buy what you need, all with reasonable prices, economy will have attained a decent momentum and equilibrium.

That’s still far in the horizon, tho.

Without reading anything besides the thread title:

I have not noticed a change in gravity. Have you considered a loss of coordination?

Svetli.4276:

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

Look at this guy, he’s adorable
How’s that PVE grind working for you, huh?
…Oh, actually pretty good, it looks like.
Incredibly easy to make gold doing anything in this game, don’t get sour at people willing to actually do something.