Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

The middle man offers a service.

He does not “offer” anything. He insists on it. If middlemen offered their services then that would be fine, because nobody would take them up on it, but this is essentially like going into a Starbucks, and when the barista calls your name, a complete stranger grabs your cup and offers to give it to you for a modest fee. Nobody asks the middleman to get involved, he does so anyways. You cannot call it an “offer” without an offer actually being made.

Bad comparison. It would be more like this: you buy cookies at a bakery sale for $1, then, later, you sell them to a friend for $1.50. He doesn’t steal your goods, he buys the goods, from you now, then makes a profit by being willing to wait for someone willing to buy them at his prices.

Ohoni.6057:

In case you didn’t catch my drift last time, should always implies opinion. By the fact that you use should to describe your main point here invalidates it.

That would be your opinion. Most things are opinion, consensus is the sum total of opinions. Most issues cannot be resolved one way or the other without opinion playing a role, so saying “you raised an opinion, therefore you lose” is just nonsense people say when they know they are in the wrong but for whatever reason do not want to admit to it.

By the same token, you can’t say, “I think this, therefore I am right.” You can’t prove to me what I quoted is true in any other way than “because I think so.” Also, you bring up consensus, but do you have consensus supporting your side? Or does it support mine? Or neither?

Ohoni.6057:

So we should only look at the negative cases that support your argument? Rather than looking at the whole picture?

Not necessarily. You presented, however a condition that is at best a neutral one, one in which the parasites have not caused harm, but neither have they provided any significant benefit. Given that, they really don’t bring anything to the discussion, they neither reduce nor offset the example I provided, so why raise it at all? It’s like saying that plenty of smokers die from things that have nothing to do with smoking. Well true, but plenty of them do still die of smoking, and the other things they die from they would have died of regardless, so why bring it up other than to try and distract from the flaws in your own position?

All you seem to say is because it doesn’t meet your requirements (having the trader be part of it, which he does), then it isn’t relevant. The trader does technically play a part, not by what he does, but what does not happen with him. In those cases, Player C gets it at the prices that the trader buys at, and in all of those cases (which you dismiss), your point is completely eliminated. You say it happens all the time, so why do you dismiss such an important set of trades?

Ohoni.6057:

That example does not work, because the cost of getting Dawn on average from the mystic forge (the only non-drop method currently) is probably far more than 200g. Traders have not created an illusion of Dawn being hard to get, it IS that hard to get.

And yet there are always drops too. Not every price has to be based entirely on the mystic toilet. Even John Smith said that increasing precursor drop rates is unlikely to actually lower their sale price, and he knows the secret numbers.

The drop rate is incredibly low. Just because those weren’t acquired in the same fashion as I mentioned doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as valuable (which is created by rarity and usability) as the ones from our toilet here.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

It doesn’t matter to me, all that matters to me is the impact they have on other players. If they are harming the game experience for their fellow players, then they should either be prevented from doing so, or, if that is impossible to achieve, they should be ejected so that the other players can go about their business without them. I believe there are ways to curtail TP Gold Farming without actually banning anyone though.

What is your evidence that they can only harm the player base? All you seem to have is opinion and the Plaers A/B/C example (see above)

Ohoni.6057:

This is the most interesting definition of nothing I have seen unless you are referring to the bots above.

It’s an accurate one. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. It’s taking an item off the shelf, putting it back up, and pocketing cash for doing so.

So you hold the opinion that someone that did no research, didn’t bother to get a basic understanding of how the TP works should reap about the same amount of benefits as a person who has spent their entire life studying economics and how markets work?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

Summary (excluding all taxes to make the numbers simple):

Player A – Sold rune for 7 gold.
Player B – Made 2 gold profit
Player C – Satisfied with rune
Ohoni – Not happy to see rune resold, but his opinion doesn’t matter since Player C is satisfied with the price he paid.

Moral of the story – Capitalism works. Any argument otherwise means that person wants a state controlled distribution of wealth.

But C is only happy with it because he is ignorant to the fact that he could have gotten it for 7g instead. He would be very annoyed if he realized that someone had scammed him for 2 gold.

Heavens forbid! A missed opportunity because he wasn’t online at the time! He must be being scammed for any higher price! /sarcasm
Really?

Ohoni.6057:

And player A would be annoyed if he realized he could have charged 2g more and it would still sell.

One of two things must have happened: 1) Player A listed it well below the seller above him. In this case it is entirely his fault for not getting that additional profit. 2) He listed alongside others and they were all bought up by the trader. In this case, he couldn’t have known that the trader was going to buy it, and no one is to blame but human lack of knowledge.

Ohoni.6057:

Ideally he would have just charged 8g and they both would have been happy. The one least deserving of any returns in that scenario is player B, who did nothing bout making the whole thing worse.

If true, then 9g would be the equilibrium pricing in this situation. You, however, seem to consider any loss of potential profit (whether in-cash or in item worth) as bad, which would make 8g theoretically the worst. You will have to explain how B made it worse because if C was only willing to pay 7g he could: place a buy order and wait if the current buy price was <7g, place a buy order and hope while waiting if the current one was >7g, or he could simply leave.

In the end, the only reason that A and C lost potential profit was because of ignorance, and for that, they have to be told, or educate themselves.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, and as I’ve said, I do not want a PvP Trading Post. I want to play a PvE-only trading post, where players help other players find items they need, and pay a reasonable transaction fee for doing so, and nobody tries to skim money off of either of them. I do not want the TP to be a game in and of itself, I just want it to be a way of facilitating the rest of the game.

So…..you want to prevent people from doing what the want/like to do because you think they shouldn’t be able to make money off it?

Ohoni.6057:

You seem confident in your position that middlemen skimming off the top are a good thing, however ridiculous that might seem to someone who isn’t drowning in Kool-aid.

Now you are just making personal attacks.

Ohoni.6057:

Player C wanted it now. Putting in a bid at 7g introduces an unknown factor, when will that order will be filled. He’s willing to pay the 2g to both eliminate that unknown and allows them to get the item immediately.

That’s no different between someone buying something from Amazon Vs the Mall. Sure Amazon may save you money but you can get your hands on it now at the Mall for only $X more. It’s the buyers choice whether the difference in price is worth the immediacy of acquisition.

A middleman isn’t necessary to ensure an immediate purchase though. Initial sellers are perfectly capable of placing sell orders, I do so myself on a nightly basis.

Initial sellers are generally physically capable of making sell orders. It is whether they are informed/choose to do so.

Ohoni.6057:

In an idealized world middlemen would only be in the business of speeding up the process, of buying reasonably priced sales and reselling them as reasonably priced sell orders, but you know a well as I that middlemen more often buy things up at times when they are cheap, creating artificial scarcity, and then dribbling them back in the market to attain the maximum price for each.

The middleman, as you say yourself, drives the prices of items closer to equilibrium when they drop, and by dribbling them in, he creates a larger variety of sell orders, which may slowly drive the price down a bit, as well as possibly creating artificial common-ness.

Ohoni.6057:

This is good business sense from their self-interested perspective, but is not the behavior of someone looking out for the best interests of the community.

And what is this ‘best interests of the community’ based upon, if not just your own opinion?

Sorry for the double post, couldn’t fit it all it one.

Ohoni.6057

The trading post should be a utility, not a game.

Here’s where I do have to disagree with you, Ohoni, despite my general support of your stance. While I, personally, do not find gaming the TP to be enjoyable (and thus do not engage in trading to profit), I acknowledge that it IS something that other players do enjoy. It’s a highly specialised form of PvP, and even though I don’t participate myself, I still enjoy reading about the tactics and strategies players use, and learning about all of the complex factors that go into speculation and other TP activities.

As long as the TP Barons do not (and I believe John Smith when he says they cannot, simply because the market is so huge) use their wealth in attempts to hinder the general playing experience of others, I believe they should be allowed to continue to use the TP as their “battleground” if that’s the experience they enjoy in the game.

DeShadowWolf.6854:

…you know a well as I that middlemen more often buy things up at times when they are cheap, creating artificial scarcity, and then dribbling them back in the market to attain the maximum price for each. This is good business sense from their self-interested perspective, but is not the behavior of someone looking out for the best interests of the community.

What you describe here is a service that actually benefits the economy – players buying low and selling high are smoothing out prices over time. Players doing exactly this hold prices high even when drops are abundant, giving more value to the players farming the drops and selling them as they come in. The price then takes longer to rise once the supply goes down, as inventories trickle back into the market.

Smoothed prices are a huge boon to the naive trader – he doesn’t have to concern himself nearly as much with the timing of when to buy or sell, because it doesn’t matter much when prices are smooth. He can then focus on the parts of the game he actually cares about, and will reliably get good prices on the TP without having to put much thought into it.

Ohoni.6057:

Your model only works if we assume that everyone who isn’t actively flipping items is some form of sheep, incapable of setting his own prices and content to sit at poor prices without some kindly third party to do that work for him. If a flipper can make a profit at 82/98, then an initial supplier can and will too.

The model is simplified so that the explanation doesn’t take up 50 pages, since that’s how a normal market works.

But regardless of anything, the fact is that flippers are a source of demand and of supply. Whereas normal traders are simply sources of either one or the other. Removing traders removes supply which must increase the price of sale orders and removes demand which must decrease the price of buy orders.

As such suppliers are worse off as they receive less when selling in to buy orders, and consumers are worse off because they have to pay more in order to get something immediately.

This is true regardless of the velocity of markets or the complexity of uses.

The result of all this is everyone waiting longer for their trades to go through, or an increase in the lack-of-patience tax that flippers, by their nature, drive down.

None of this relies on false assumptions or class warfare, it’s the reality of markets. Fewer participants means less competition means less pressure on prices.

What do you guys think about this (my) scenario?

It’s June and living story is currently doing the Aetherblade Retreat. I’m always looking for a good investment, and notice the new recipes have some really good potential.

Recipe: potent master maintenance oil
Recipe: potent superior sharpening stone
Recipe: potent master turning crystal

Each have a supply of under 200 units, the dungeon isn’t very popular, and yet the recipe is pretty useful, because you get double the amount of buff time, for only 20% more crafting cost. Each of the recipes prices are ranging from 30s-1g depending on the recipe. During the event I put in buy orders, untill the event is over, then i bought out stock to the price of 2g. I ended up with a little more then 200 assorted recipes.

It’s definetly not a monoply because there are some other huge market controllers I noticed that also bought up huge amounts of the recipe stock aswell. I’m guessing there’s probably 5 big players in this market.

One month later when they announced ascended armor and weapons, & I get skiddish about this investment. New crafting to lvl 500 could mean new better utility foods. So I decide to sell off 50-60% of this investment to cover is initial costs and make some money incase the market crashes. The recipes are selling for around 2-6g, & I ALWAYS sell using the 1c under lowest seller method, but get outbid often. Once there are about 5 units that have under cut me, I relist another one, but never cancelling the previous ones.

As time goes on, the other market controllers keep buying out the current stocks of these recipes, sometimes in one fell swoop. When the price goes to 10g+ I decided to sell half of what I have left.

It turns out the lvl 500 crafting was a good thing for these recipes. No new utility foods are introduced and because people want to use them to level from 425-450 they climb to 20g. I decided to sell half of whats left again. Eventually they climb all the way to 40g, and sometimes even hittin 80g. All this from something I originally bought mostly for under 1g each.

This was by far my best investment, and i’m pretty much out of stock currently. Which is why i’m telling the story. I have about 7 recipes left, that i’ll probably hold onto untill they are worthless, or they reach 100+ gold. Eventhough, I did sell most of my stock for around 3g-5g.

I feel these recipes were manipulated by me and some other players who i don’t even know. We made them scarcer then normal by buying them out, then refused to sell them untill stock started getting low.

The types of items that can be manipulated are thing that have no more supply, not an item like Emberspire. The living story and all this temporary content, does allow for other items like this. It might be a .001% success rate, but it does happen. If you can realize it, and act before others, and have the patience to wait it out, you can get very rich.

Curse Drew.8679:

manipulated

Why do you think of what you did as ‘manipulation’?

If it wasn’t for you tons of individuals would have bought and learned the recipe at well below the true worth of the recipe. Effectively wasting the item.

Because of you many people who truly valued the recipe were able to purchase it. You were rewarded for this with profit.

Unless you somehow tricked people in to buying an item they didn’t want, or held a gun to someone’s head and forced them to buy your item I don’t see how you can class it as ‘manipulation’.

We moved and controlled the market in the direction of our choosing. We didn’t decieve anyone, no. But manipulate is defined as:

: to move or control (something) with your hands or by using a machine

: to use or change (numbers, information, etc.) in a skillful way or for a particular purpose

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manipulate

Okay. That’s the dictionary definition. But manipulate is the battlecry of people that want the trading post closed completely, or that want itself bound on purchase.

If you simply want to discuss the dictionary definition then you don’t really need a discussion. You affected prices for a particular purpose. That’s a fact. Can’t really do anything with facts.

Now that that’s settled: do you want to deal with the subtext of how you phrased things? I doubt you actually want the TP shut down, but you’re certainly using the thinking pattern of the people that do.

You provided liquidity to a market. That hurt people who would have squandered resources, and benefited yourself and those that had a higher appreciation for those goods but didn’t have foresight or the ability to purchase them earlier.

I think that’s a wonderful trade off.

Thats true. If they remained under a gold, and prices were controlled by ANET as some people suggested, then there wouldn’t be any left. Everyone would of used them to craft from 425-450. Anyone can pretty much assume that would of happened.

The fact GW2 has a free market, allowed the price to raise as the supply was used up. It kept people from paying a cheap price until they were all gone, and allowed those who are willing to pay a higher price to still buy them. I don’t want the TP closed, that was never my intent. I was just offering one of the few instances i know for a fact the supply was controlled to raised the value.

Curse Drew.8679:

Thats true. If they remained under a gold, and prices were controlled by ANET as some people suggested, then there wouldn’t be any left. Everyone would of used them to craft from 425-450. Anyone can pretty much assume that would of happened.

The fact GW2 has a free market, allowed the price to raise as the supply was used up. It kept people from paying a cheap price until they were all gone, and allowed those who are willing to pay a higher price to still buy them. I don’t want the TP closed, that was never my intent. I was just offering one of the few instances i know for a fact the supply was controlled to raised the value.

But the supply wasn’t controlled. The supply was the supply – you didn’t prevent anyone from running the dungeon and generating more supply. You just made an investment and benefited from your patience and foresight. If you had been able to buy up the entire supply without competition, that might have been a problem, but you had to account for what the other folks in that market were doing.

You also had an incentive to sell off some of your inventory instead of just holding it forever because you couldn’t know what the maximum price was going to end up at, or whether the demand would crater with new items getting added, or you maybe you saw another opportunity and needed to free up some of your wealth. You assumed the risk and reaped the reward.

The price you sold the recipes at was what they were worth at the time you sold them, otherwise no-one would have bought them. The folks that sold you their recipes for around 1G got fair market value for them and got it quickly with no risk. They could have easily sat on them and waited for them to go up in price, but the bird in hand was worth more to them than the two in the bush.

buddy welcome to the real world, where money makes more money (with risks ofc).

Do you think the top of pyramid do labour work to earn money? lol…. here that answered your question. Life ain’t fair and move on.

Zaxares.5419:

Ohoni.6057

The trading post should be a utility, not a game.

I believe they should be allowed to continue to use the TP as their “battleground” if that’s the experience they enjoy in the game.

The issue at debate here is really over what it means to “play” Guild Wars 2. Some view the game as fighting/exploring only, and thus that the TP is but a means to facilitate this form of playing. Others see GW2 as a sandbox world in which everything interactive can/should be pushed, pulled, and toyed with, including the trading post. Herein lies the debate.

But because this is an inclusive game with a large player base, everyone needs to realize that each aspect really does make the other parts of the game more enjoyable, and Anet deserves commendation for creating such a functionally interconnected and dynamic world. Having fun “playing” the TP requires others to go out into the game world and “earn” loot drops. Conversely, a liquid and dynamic trading post makes “playing” the open world more fun, by allowing easy access to almost any good or item.

And at the end of the day, the point here is to have fun, correct? Why not let both TP and open-world players have their fun, so long as neither is actively harming the other? Because, if you think about it, both open-world and trading-post gameplay are just different ways of pushing different buttons on the keyboard. Those who spend time mastering combos and professions and learning engagements are rewarded with achievements and drops. Those who spend time studying markets and mastering the TP interface are (and should be) rewarded as well.

Ensign.2189:

DeShadowWolf.6854:

…you know a well as I that middlemen more often buy things up at times when they are cheap, creating artificial scarcity, and then dribbling them back in the market to attain the maximum price for each. This is good business sense from their self-interested perspective, but is not the behavior of someone looking out for the best interests of the community.

What you describe here is a service that actually benefits the economy – players buying low and selling high are smoothing out prices over time. Players doing exactly this hold prices high even when drops are abundant, giving more value to the players farming the drops and selling them as they come in. The price then takes longer to rise once the supply goes down, as inventories trickle back into the market.

Smoothed prices are a huge boon to the naive trader – he doesn’t have to concern himself nearly as much with the timing of when to buy or sell, because it doesn’t matter much when prices are smooth. He can then focus on the parts of the game he actually cares about, and will reliably get good prices on the TP without having to put much thought into it.

Actually, that was said by Ohoni…bad syntax because I was tired and didn’t notice in the small box…sorry if I was misleading.

Credit is due where credit is due.

Also, something that couldn’t have been fitted into the earlier two posts now due to editing:

Ohoni.6057:

I believe that the system should not reward that disparity, that the average player should not HAVE to spend time and effort researching proper market strategies in order to make the most of the market system. That is not a skill that should be necessary in this game.

Again, This sounds like entitlement. You want people who don’t even have a basic understanding of the TP to reap about the same amount of benefits as those who understand it through and through.

Bad comparison. It would be more like this: you buy cookies at a bakery sale for $1, then, later, you sell them to a friend for $1.50. He doesn’t steal your goods, he buys the goods, from you now, then makes a profit by being willing to wait for someone willing to buy them at his prices.

If it were a fixed economy then this would be true, but since it’s a fluid one, by buying the item when you did, that price is no longer available. What I mean is, if you could buy the $1 cookie, and then your friend could either choose between buying the cookie for $1.50 from you or $1 from the original seller, then fine, let him make that choice. But as the market is currently structured, you’ve taken the $1 cookie off the table and are forcing him to take the $1.50 cookie if he wants any cookie at all.

By the same token, you can’t say, “I think this, therefore I am right.” You can’t prove to me what I quoted is true in any other way than “because I think so.” Also, you bring up consensus, but do you have consensus supporting your side? Or does it support mine? Or neither?

If ANet wants to, they would be in the place to judge the consensus. I believe I do represent at least the plurality of players, but I could be wrong, they can determine that better than either of us, and they SHOULD determine that sort of thing, because designing the system that would please the majority of their players is basically their entire job. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I just don’t think that I am, and you can’t convince me otherwise without some evidence of your own.

All you seem to say is because it doesn’t meet your requirements (having the trader be part of it, which he does), then it isn’t relevant. The trader does technically play a part, not by what he does, but what does not happen with him. In those cases, Player C gets it at the prices that the trader buys at, and in all of those cases (which you dismiss), your point is completely eliminated. You say it happens all the time, so why do you dismiss such an important set of trades?

Because the cases where it doesn’t happen are outside of C’s control. Again, thousands of smokers die of car crashes or knife wounds or bear attacks, but just because they do doesn’t mean that those deaths should be considered as counter-arguments to whether smoking causes other types of fatalities. Examples where a player C has been able to buy directly from a player A, while common enough, do not discount the fact that many other transactions involve a player B in the middle, and that these transactions are an overall negative to the game.

The drop rate is incredibly low. Just because those weren’t acquired in the same fashion as I mentioned doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as valuable (which is created by rarity and usability) as the ones from our toilet here.

Then why would John Smith say that raising drop rates wouldn’t lower their price significantly? If the drop rate were what was keeping the price high then if they doubled the drop rate you would expect the price to halve in fairly short order.

What is your evidence that they can only harm the player base? All you seem to have is opinion and the Plaers A/B/C example (see above)

It’s an innately harmful relationship. They take a transaction, make it cost more, and pocket the difference, reducing value from at least one of two other players for their own benefit.

So you hold the opinion that someone that did no research, didn’t bother to get a basic understanding of how the TP works should reap about the same amount of benefits as a person who has spent their entire life studying economics and how markets work?

More or less. This is an adventure game, not an economics simulator. Knowledge of economics should be of no more importance than having NASCAR experience for playing Mario Kart. If you do want to play an economic simulator, there are plenty of other games for that.

Heavens forbid! A missed opportunity because he wasn’t online at the time! He must be being scammed for any higher price!

If a player misses out on a good deal because some other player needed that item and got to it first, that’s too bad for him. If he missed out on an opportunity because another player bought the item, ONLY because he intended to sell it to that player later for a higher price, that’s just a kitten move.

And what is this ‘best interests of the community’ based upon, if not just your own opinion?

The most good to the most players, most of whom are not GP Gold Farmers and in no way profit from their actions.

Here’s where I do have to disagree with you, Ohoni, despite my general support of your stance. While I, personally, do not find gaming the TP to be enjoyable (and thus do not engage in trading to profit), I acknowledge that it IS something that other players do enjoy.

I get that it’s something that some players enjoy, I totally do, but it’s an element where their enjoyment is incompatible with the enjoyment of others. As I said earlier, I’m sure that there are players who would enjoy PKing newbs in the starter zones, but a lot of those newbs wouldn’t enjoy that, and ANet has seen fit to make that situation impossible in their game. Likewise, there are those who enjoy preying upon their fellow players in the market, and ANet could see fit to prevent that if they chose. I even suggested a compromise, the establishment of an “sBLTC” market, accessible from the Heart of the Mists, in which players can do all the hardcore market PvPing they like, but without messing up the markets that the PvE players have to trade with each other in.

What you describe here is a service that actually benefits the economy – players buying low and selling high are smoothing out prices over time.

-to their own benefit. By buying low and selling high they are pocketing the difference, it is not a charitable action. Smoothing the markets is something the community can handle by themselves, and when they do, the profits and savings involved go to the people who deserve it.

But regardless of anything, the fact is that flippers are a source of demand and of supply.

No, they are neither. They don’t create anything, they don’t destroy anything, they just move things around that are already within the market. If you remove traders, the supply remains the same. If you remove traders the demand remains the same. Things might not move around as fast, but they will still move. Think of it like a conveyer belt. One person puts things onto the belt, one person takes things off, and some other yahoo just keeps picking them up, spinning them around, and then putting them back on the belt unchanged, collecting his paycheck at the end of the day.

Okay. That’s the dictionary definition. But manipulate is the battlecry of people that want the trading post closed completely, or that want itself bound on purchase.

Nobody is talking about closing the TP. NOBODY. The people unsatisfied with the current situation only want controls put into the market to reduce the profit potential, and to lead it into one-way transactions, such that a single unit of sale only ever sees one seller, one customer, nobody in between.

You provided liquidity to a market. That hurt people who would have squandered resources, and benefited yourself and those that had a higher appreciation for those goods but didn’t have foresight or the ability to purchase them earlier.

No. What he (and others) did was drive up the prices by creating unnecessary scarcity. Would the prices have reached their eventual heights at some point? Sure, but if he sold off 100 recipes at ten times the price they’d been going at before, then that’s 100 people who paid ten times as much. Without him, they would have their recipes, AND 18g in their pockets. Instead of one person making 1800g profit off the transaction, you’d have 100 people each saving 18g, meaning a much more decentralized wealth base. I don’t begrudge people from playing the system as it exists, I just with that the system would not allow it.

Others see GW2 as a sandbox world in which everything interactive can/should be pushed, pulled, and toyed with, including the trading post. Herein lies the debate.

I think if this position were true, then there would be open world PvP. I think it’s strange how ANet went through with a fine toothed comb and removed practically every element of this game in which one player could make life any more difficult for another, except for the way the TP operates.

And at the end of the day, the point here is to have fun, correct? Why not let both TP and open-world players have their fun, so long as neither is actively harming the other? Because, if you think about it,

Curse Drew was talking about a method he used to earn, from what I can understand, well over 1000g. That’s more gold than I have earned from the game since launch, playing 8 level 80s. If people want to play the market? Fine, but it should not be the more profitable way to play, especially not when ALL of that profit comes off he back of their fellow player’s hard work.

You want people who don’t even have a basic understanding of the TP to reap about the same amount of benefits as those who understand it through and through.

Yeas, because this is not “World of Market Investment,” it’s an adventure game, and should not require economist skills of its players.

Ohoni.6057:

More or less. This is an adventure game, not an economics simulator. Knowledge of economics should be of no more importance than having NASCAR experience for playing Mario Kart. If you do want to play an economic simulator, there are plenty of other games for that.

I think it’s a great thing that ideological purity isn’t embraced in most corners of the world.

Oh, and on another more amusing note…

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is talking about closing the TP. NOBODY.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Removing-Trading-Post/first

Oh, and on another more amusing note…

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is talking about closing the TP. NOBODY.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Removing-Trading-Post/first

Ok, nobody rational, and certainly nobody that Risingashes was arguing with in this thread. It’s not a serious issue.

Ohoni.6057:

You provided liquidity to a market. That hurt people who would have squandered resources, and benefited yourself and those that had a higher appreciation for those goods but didn’t have foresight or the ability to purchase them earlier.

No. What he (and others) did was drive up the prices by creating unnecessary scarcity. Would the prices have reached their eventual heights at some point? Sure, but if he sold off 100 recipes at ten times the price they’d been going at before, then that’s 100 people who paid ten times as much. Without him, they would have their recipes, AND 18g in their pockets. Instead of one person making 1800g profit off the transaction, you’d have 100 people each saving 18g, meaning a much more decentralized wealth base. I don’t begrudge people from playing the system as it exists, I just with that the system would not allow it.

I think that is where the mistake in your argument is. You seem to think that price is somehow removed from demand. The recipes were scarce whether one person owned them or 100 folks owned them. Traders in GW2 can not control the supply of goods – your “hard working” farmers do that. The trader didn’t force the price up, he just predicted the demand and prevented the supply from being depleted before folks realized the value of the recipes.

You gloss over the fact that players sold those recipes to the traders for a price they were happy with at the time. You also ignore all the instances where a trader bought items from players for more than they ended up being worth in the future. By your logic, the trader got screwed by the players instead of the players benefitting from the trader’s speculation.

I’m sure traders have made quite a bit of money from items I’ve sold them. I don’t have any angst over it, because I don’t really want to put the effort in that goes along with making a lot of money on the TP. I make a fair profit off the things I find for the amount of effort I put into selling them. I don’t go back a month later and look at the prices of something I already sold and get bitter over not having gotten more.

I think that is where the mistake in your argument is. You seem to think that price is somehow removed from demand. The recipes were scarce whether one person owned them or 100 folks owned them. Traders in GW2 can not control the supply of goods – your “hard working” farmers do that. The trader didn’t force the price up, he just predicted the demand and prevented the supply from being depleted before folks realized the value of the recipes.

Sort of, but not quite. See, the thing is, when he got there, there were plenty of items already listed on the market at a low price. These items would not automatically go up in value just because demand increases. He bought them up and then relisted them at a higher price that was suited to the new demand. If the system brought in Bo$, then he could not relist these items, if he bought them, he’d own them forever. Now, individual sellers who’d listed the item at a low price might be able to pull them out and relist them themselves, but by and large the majority of these items would be sold at whatever they were listed at before the rise in demand, much of the demand would be filled, and the last few sold would probably go for less than in the current model.

To use a very basic example, let’s say that there are only ten of these items in existence (which would of course drive the price up crazy high, but let’s assume that this is representative of thousands of units). In the current model, the items are useless, nobody wants them, they are moving for ~4s on the market, so the ten items are listed there for 7s-6.5s-6.kitten-5s-kitten -4.3s-4.1s-4s-4s. Mr. Trader (perhaps representative of multiple traders) comes along and buys them all up, paying 50.8s in total. Then things change, demand increases, suddenly people are willing to pay much more. One is listed for 50s, it sells. One is listed for 80s, it sells. One is listed for 1g, it sells. one is listed for 2g, it doesn’t sell, but two more sell for 1.25g. three more sell for 1.5g, and one more at 1.7g, and finally that 2g one moves because it’s the last left. Mr. Trader has made a total profit of 12.5g. They do this under circumstances in which the people who originally recovered these items from the world receive only that initial 50.8, and in which the eventual users of those items are the ones paying those 12.5g.

Now, imagine Bo$ was in play. Maybe by the time the market shift happens, only one of those has sold, so there’s only 9 left. The first six sell very quickly, the remaining three get pulled by the original sellers before they sell, and are relisted for 80s, 1g, and 2g respectively, and all sell. Now in this scenario, there are two major differences. On the seller side, the listers of the lowest six items don’t make any different profit, but the ones that pulled and resold made significant profits. All in all, the “sellers” have made a notable profit over the current model. On the buyer’s side, seven of the people got what they’d wanted at a significant discount over the current model, and have hundreds of silver left in their pockets. The few that did end up paying in the same range as the current model were the latecomers to the party and still would have ended up spending even more under the current model (a total of 5.2g under the current model vs. 3.8 under the new).

The only one left out of the new model would be those that neither create nor use anything by money, they would get nothing, as it should be.

I’m sure traders have made quite a bit of money from items I’ve sold them. I don’t have any angst over it, because I don’t really want to put the effort in that goes along with making a lot of money on the TP.

And that’s the situation I’d like to see changed. I don’t think that it should take any amount of effort to make money off the TP, or conversely that putting a lot of effort into the TP should make money. The TP is not something that should require skill or even interest to make the most of it, it should just be a tool for players to get rid of items they don’t want, or to find items that they do, not as a money engine for those that care to work it.

Ohoni.6057:

Now, imagine Bo$ was in play. Maybe by the time the market shift happens, only one of those has sold, so there’s only 9 left. The first six sell very quickly, the remaining three get pulled by the original sellers before they sell, and are relisted for 80s, 1g, and 2g respectively, and all sell. Now in this scenario, there are two major differences. On the seller side, the listers of the lowest six items don’t make any different profit, but the ones that pulled and resold made significant profits. All in all, the “sellers” have made a notable profit over the current model. On the buyer’s side, seven of the people got what they’d wanted at a significant discount over the current model, and have hundreds of silver left in their pockets. The few that did end up paying in the same range as the current model were the latecomers to the party and still would have ended up spending even more under the current model (a total of 5.2g under the current model vs. 3.8 under the new).

This presumes that these sellers are consistently monitoring the prices and are ready to pull them whenever, as well as there being a large enough time gap for them to do so. The last line about 5.2g vs 3.8g is irrelevant because it is only based on made-up numbers that can be tweaked.

Ohoni.6057:

The only one left out of the new model would be those that neither create nor use anything by money, they would get nothing, as it should be.

Should be by what definition, except that you think so? What do you even mean “by money?”

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

And that’s the situation I’d like to see changed. I don’t think that it should take any amount of effort to make money off the TP, or conversely that putting a lot of effort into the TP should make money. The TP is not something that should require skill or even interest to make the most of it, it should just be a tool for players to get rid of items they don’t want, or to find items that they do, not as a money engine for those that care to work it.

So your plan is to get Anet to implement your Bind on Aquire thing, basically do a 180 away from a free market, just based on your opinion? Good luck, because that won’t get you anywhere.

Again, most of this is just “I don’t like what other people are doing, so they shouldn’t be allowed to do it.” A childish idea if I’ve ever seen one.

I am very glad to see that entitlement argument creeping up at every possible direction, because hey, it solves everything, doesn’t it!? Suggestions for improvement? Entitlement of course! Leave if you don’t like! lol.

Thanks for your contributions ohoni, people tend to lose faith in even bothering to show other perspectives because of the inanely forceful nature of the forums atmosphere. Even if it’s just the usual suspects. And I agree with you whole heartedly. The amount of money power traders are amassing is really getting out of hand and buyouts become more and more common.

Gasoline.2570:

I am very glad to see that entitlement argument creeping up at every possible direction, because hey, it solves everything, doesn’t it!? Suggestions for improvement? Entitlement of course! Leave if you don’t like! lol.

Thanks for your contributions ohoni, people tend to lose faith in even bothering to show other perspectives because of the inanely forceful nature of the forums atmosphere. Even if it’s just the usual suspects. And I agree with you whole heartedly. The amount of money power traders are amassing is really getting out of hand and buyouts become more and more common.

Spot on….15 charrssssssss

Ohoni.6057:

I’m sure traders have made quite a bit of money from items I’ve sold them. I don’t have any angst over it, because I don’t really want to put the effort in that goes along with making a lot of money on the TP.

And that’s the situation I’d like to see changed. I don’t think that it should take any amount of effort to make money off the TP, or conversely that putting a lot of effort into the TP should make money. The TP is not something that should require skill or even interest to make the most of it, it should just be a tool for players to get rid of items they don’t want, or to find items that they do, not as a money engine for those that care to work it.

Lol, I would like for the job of professional athlete to not require so much skill and training so we could all have 10 million dollar a year contracts without having to put in the effort or have any talent. If wishes were horses… Oh well, if we all made 10 mil a year, I’d hate to think how expensive a hamburger would get.

The reality is that whenever there are limited resources, living things compete to get the greatest share of those resources. That’s how we lifted ourselves out of the primordial mud. Competition is the fairest way to allocate limited resources when those resources are not necessary to live. In a fair competition, the folks that put in the most effort or have the most skill get the most, and the folks who put in less effort get less. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

You can’t take the competition for money out of the TP and still have it function for the non-traders that you think you are making things better for.

Bunda.2691:

Zaxares.5419:

Ohoni.6057

The trading post should be a utility, not a game.

I believe they should be allowed to continue to use the TP as their “battleground” if that’s the experience they enjoy in the game.

The issue at debate here is really over what it means to “play” Guild Wars 2. Some view the game as fighting/exploring only, and thus that the TP is but a means to facilitate this form of playing. Others see GW2 as a sandbox world in which everything interactive can/should be pushed, pulled, and toyed with, including the trading post. Herein lies the debate.

Its clearly not a sandbox which is the crux of the issue. If it was a sandbox there would be no argument, players are presented with a world and are free to make their own content out of the world. This is not GW2 and ohoni very succinctly summarises in his sentence above how many of us believe the TP should operate in the theme park game that GW2 is. Plus there’s the way that anet ‘manipulates’ supply and demand.

Bunda.2691:

But because this is an inclusive game with a large player base, everyone needs to realize that each aspect really does make the other parts of the game more enjoyable, and Anet deserves commendation for creating such a functionally interconnected and dynamic world. Having fun “playing” the TP requires others to go out into the game world and “earn” loot drops. Conversely, a liquid and dynamic trading post makes “playing” the open world more fun, by allowing easy access to almost any good or item.

I have access to almost any good or item in other theme park mmos where the TP is just a utility.

Bunda.2691:

And at the end of the day, the point here is to have fun, correct? Why not let both TP and open-world players have their fun, so long as neither is actively harming the other? Because, if you think about it, both open-world and trading-post gameplay are just different ways of pushing different buttons on the keyboard. Those who spend time mastering combos and professions and learning engagements are rewarded with achievements and drops. Those who spend time studying markets and mastering the TP interface are (and should be) rewarded as well.

As an economic simulator the TP isn’t a good one though, the UI is poor and doesn’t offer nearly enough in the way of information.

morrolan.9608:

Bunda.2691:

The issue at debate here is really over what it means to “play” Guild Wars 2. Some view the game as fighting/exploring only, and thus that the TP is but a means to facilitate this form of playing. Others see GW2 as a sandbox world in which everything interactive can/should be pushed, pulled, and toyed with, including the trading post. Herein lies the debate.

Its clearly not a sandbox which is the crux of the issue. If it was a sandbox there would be no argument, players are presented with a world and are free to make their own content out of the world. This is not GW2 and ohoni very succinctly summarises in his sentence above how many of us believe the TP should operate in the theme park game that GW2 is.

Sandbox isn’t quite the right word. What I think he meant was whether the game is just exploring/fighting enemies vs. a place where everything Anet has put in can be used, tried, and messed around with to the fullest ability of the player (not counting bugs/exploits). Imo, the former is just a piece of the latter, and the latter is the truth.

morrolan.9608:

Bunda.2691:

But because this is an inclusive game with a large player base, everyone needs to realize that each aspect really does make the other parts of the game more enjoyable, and Anet deserves commendation for creating such a functionally interconnected and dynamic world. Having fun “playing” the TP requires others to go out into the game world and “earn” loot drops. Conversely, a liquid and dynamic trading post makes “playing” the open world more fun, by allowing easy access to almost any good or item.

I have access to almost any good or item in other theme park mmos where the TP is just a utility.

Strawman, but I will answer it. The trading post is a utility to the common player dealing with loot, that people who know enough and are experienced enough can use it for more.

You dealt nothing with the main point of Bunda’s paragraph, which is basically that different people find different things fun, and Anet should be applauded for creating such an interconnected world. I will add to that by saying that you have no right to ruin another’s fun just because you don’t like it, or that you’re jealous of what they have.

Bunda.2691:

And at the end of the day, the point here is to have fun, correct? Why not let both TP and open-world players have their fun, so long as neither is actively harming the other? Because, if you think about it, both open-world and trading-post gameplay are just different ways of pushing different buttons on the keyboard. Those who spend time mastering combos and professions and learning engagements are rewarded with achievements and drops. Those who spend time studying markets and mastering the TP interface are (and should be) rewarded as well.

As an economic simulator the TP isn’t a good one though, the UI is poor and doesn’t offer nearly enough in the way of information.[/quote]

Again, strawman. His point was about how, since they are just different ways of getting rewards, people who learn how to play the TP should benefit, just like a dungeon runner benefits from learning the dungeon. And that both TP people and open-world people can have fun together. He didn’t say anything about simulators, or UI info.

Ohoni.6057:

And that’s the situation I’d like to see changed. I don’t think that it should take any amount of effort to make money off the TP, or conversely that putting a lot of effort into the TP should make money. The TP is not something that should require skill or even interest to make the most of it, it should just be a tool for players to get rid of items they don’t want, or to find items that they do, not as a money engine for those that care to work it.

So basically your argument is that you don’t want to, or care to take the time to earn money, so you want an easier way to do it? Classic “Entitlement” argument. I’ll give you an example:

Player A – I have 1,000 Gold and worked hard to get it

Player B – I have 5 Gold, and I deserve to have 1,000 Gold too.

Player A – But I dedicated hours of my own time to learn how to buy and sell on the market to earn my money. I didn’t even level my characters to 80, or complete the story yet.

Player B – I don’t care. The Trading Post is a tool that should make earning money easy without working hard. So I want 1,000 Gold now, and at the same time, I want you to be able to not make money so quickly and easily.

Player A – So why do you get easy Gold, and I don’t?

Player B – Because it’s fair that way.

TO A GOOD HOME

Add a check box when posting items that indicate the item must be sold to “a good home”: when purchased via TP this item becomes account bound. For items that stack it is place in a separate stack that include only similar account bound items.

When buying via TP a check box allows ‘to a good home’ items to be viewed (the default would be to filter them out. the check box is to opt in to see them). This way customers are less likely to accidentally buy something they cannot re-sell/flip.

People selling in ‘to a good home’ mode should expect to get less money for their items – after all, the only people who can buy them are people who intend to actually use them. But they also get the knowledge that their goods are not being juggled for profit.

For buyers who intend to use the item it creates a parallel market with lower price and a direct from initial seller relationship.

For flippers it moves a percentage of their market into a parallel track. Then we find out if the people actually harvesting/getting the initial drop really care about the so called “service” of arbitrage… Do they want to sell fast to arbitrage liquidity, or slower to people who will use what they are buying?

Interesting idea, Nike… I doubt it’ll ever be implemented, but I’d be quite curious to see the effects that would have on the market.