Guild Wars 2

why was the little profit tool tip changed to to remove 10% taxes from tp sales and why is there no way to turn it off. this an utter pain for figuring out real profits. plz change it back.

What I want to know is if i sell something for lets say 2 silver 41 copper the list fee is 12 copper but the projected profit says 2 silver 17 copper. Correct me if i’m wrong but 2.41 sell tag minus a list fee of .12 equals 2.29 and not 2.17. That would mean that the list fee is .24 and not .12. Is there something wrong with the Trading Post math? Why are we getting double billed for something?

its taking out the 10% sales tax not the list fee

Lets us your example of 2 silver and 41 copper item, there is a selling few of 5% which is 12 copper, but there is also a selling fee of 10% which is about 24 copper. You pay the listing fee out of what you have in your inventory but the selling fee was taken out of the price the item sells so instead of getting 2 silver and 41 copper you would get 2 silver and 17 copper in the trading post pickup window. The trading post math is correct and you are not getting double billed.

To figure out real profit take the item you buy off the trading post and multiply by 1.18 and this is the break even point anything above that is profit. I remember reading that the break even point was 1.178 somthing on the forums.

I want to thank Darx for pointing out that 1.15 was not working so i adjusted it to the safe value of 1.18.

5 × 1.18 = 5.9
5.9 × 0.15 = .885 about .89 so I should gain 1 copper

Using the other method mentioned by Tallenn below,

5 divided by .85 = 5.882 so either method will work.

I also checked the tpcalc.com site and it had the point of profit at 5.89 and the point of loss at 5.88

It seems like the method using the divison is the faster of the 2 if you do not use the tpcalc website.

Mira that math is off. I’ll make this simple so everyone can understand.

5 × 1.15 = 5.75 (Your projected “break even” point) Okay, lets test this “break even” point.

So if you resell at 5.75, you should break even, right? Wrong.

5.75 × 0.85 = 4.88.

You didn’t break even, you lost 0.12. If we were speaking in terms of gold and silver, you would have lost 12 silver.

As you can see using the “1.15” method on your buy price will end up losing you money unless your margin is high enough that the incorrect math doesn’t matter.

The best way to find your profit is to look at the current sell price. Let’s use 5g for a current sale price and 4g 20s for a current buy order price. This is pretty realistic with a lot of the items I come across.

5g x 0.85 = 4g 25s — This is what you get after fee’s if you resell the item at the current market value.

4g 25s – 4g 20s = 5s profit.

The moral of this lesson is that going from 1.15 and 0.85 aren’t the same thing. Percentages are just that, percentages, not fixed amounts. 15% of a higher number will be more than 15% of a lower number.

What’s strange to me is the numbers don’t seem to add up.

I put up 250 soft wood logs at 19c, which means the total sale price was 47s50c (which is displayed correctly when I put it up). However, the strange thing is that the “Projected Profit” is displayed as 42s50c.

If you take 10% off 47s50c, the result should be 42s75c, not 42s50c. What’s going on there?

Either way it needs to be made more obvious.

I thought only 5% of my monay was going to the dogs when first starting buying choc cookies at 1c each and reselling for 3 only to find out after thousands of purchases, im somehow only breaking exactly even…

1c-3c would be a profit even with the 5% listing fee and 10% tax.

You just have to make sure you put them up for sale in quantities larger than 1, otherwise you’ll get hit by rounding issues.

On that note, if you put just a single item up for 3c, how do the taxes and listing fees work out? The GUI says “Projected Profit: 2” with a listing fee of 1 (I guess it’s rounding this up), so I guess that means you would indeed only end up with 1c.

In other words, how does the TP handle rounding? My guess is that it always rounds up both the listing fee and sales tax, so selling in small quantities at low prices is not generally a good idea.

Are you sure that site is correct for small values?

That site says you’ll end up with 2c if you sell one item at 3c, but based on the “Projected Profit” and listing fee it seems like you may only end up with 1c after listing fee and sales tax.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trade

15% fee of the total sales price.

So 2 silver, 41 copper will net you 2 silver, 5 copper (mathematically rounding).

I guess that’s just another way in which “Projected Profit” is showing incorrect values, then.

Incidentally, if you sell something for 24c, you only pay 1c listing fee and 2c tax, which works out to 12.5% total – a 2.5% saving! That means you can make an extra 60c by selling a stack of 100 one unit at a time (Yes, I seriously doubt anyone would do this, but it’s amusing to think about).

Darx.9842:

Mira that math is off. I’ll make this simple so everyone can understand.

5 × 1.15 = 5.75 (Your projected “break even” point) Okay, lets test this “break even” point.

So if you resell at 5.75, you should break even, right? Wrong.

5.75 × 0.85 = 4.88.

You didn’t break even, you lost 0.12. If we were speaking in terms of gold and silver, you would have lost 12 silver.

As you can see using the “1.15” method on your buy price will end up losing you money unless your margin is high enough that the incorrect math doesn’t matter.

The best way to find your profit is to look at the current sell price. Let’s use 5g for a current sale price and 4g 20s for a current buy order price. This is pretty realistic with a lot of the items I come across.

5g x 0.85 = 4g 25s — This is what you get after fee’s if you resell the item at the current market value.

4g 25s – 4g 20s = 5s profit.

The moral of this lesson is that going from 1.15 and 0.85 aren’t the same thing. Percentages are just that, percentages, not fixed amounts. 15% of a higher number will be more than 15% of a lower number.

Indeed. However, there is an easier way than the trial and error method mentioned above.

Instead of multiplying your cost by 1.15, DIVIDE your cost by .85.

In the example above, 5 / .85 = approx 5.88. 5.88-15% ( aka 5.88 * .85) = approx 5. There may be differences of 1 or 2 cp on the total due to rounding, but this method is completely accurate otherwise.

@lackofcheese Quote isn’t working again, so I’m going to reply twitter style.
“If you take 10% off 47s50c, the result should be 42s75c, not 42s50c. What’s going on there?”
It is because of rounding, every item is sold individually so one 19c * .9 = 17.1, this is then rounded down to 17c, and 17c*250=42s50c. It’s something to keep in mind, because if you found an easily flipable item that was selling for 24c, then 24c*.9=21.6c, which is then rounded up giving you an extra silver per stack.

Edit: I should say, I’m basing this off the wiki but I haven’t double checked it for myself. It’s easy to check though, if you take your stack of 2s50c and put in a price of 24c you should get a projected profit of 55s instead of 54s.

Sorry meant, stack of 250 not 2s50c, but edit is also not working for me atm.

Actually on second thought this probably wouldn’t work and its probably the reason why the trading post says estimated profit instead of actual profit. If someone were to buy your stack one item at a time, then that is the profit you would get (i.e. (itemprice * .9) * 250) which is how the estimated price is calculated, but if someone were to buy your entire stack in a single purchase, I’m betting it would be (itemprice * 250) * .9

EDIT: That’s a good point about it being “Projected Profit” – it illustrates that it’s not guaranteed. Mind you, you could equally say that it’s “Projected Profit” because there’s no guarantee your item will sell in the first place; it might never sell, after all.

However, it seems that the “Projected Profit” is inconsistent and works differently for different prices. Here’s what it reports as the profit when type different prices for a quantity of 100 units; prices are 1c, 2c, 3c, and so on (units are coppers, dropped for convenience):
1) 90
2) 100
3) 200
4) 300
5) 400
6) 500
7) 600
8) 700
9) 800
10) 900
11) 990
12) 1080
13) 1170
14) 1260
15) 1300

Unless the real system works in this kind of inconsistent manner, I’d have to say that the “Projected Profit” display is bugged. Either way, I’d like to know how the system itself works.

I do agree that the tax is probably applied per-transaction, in which case you could get different amounts depending on the quantities people choose to buy from you.

If it really does round up/down on a per-item basis, it would be pointless to sell something at 30c instead of 29c because you’d lose an extra copper per item to sales tax anyway. That’s pretty silly, though, so I doubt that’s how it works.

Knasher.5607:

Actually on second thought this probably wouldn’t work and its probably the reason why the trading post says estimated profit instead of actual profit. If someone were to buy your stack one item at a time, then that is the profit you would get (i.e. (itemprice * .9) * 250) which is how the estimated price is calculated, but if someone were to buy your entire stack in a single purchase, I’m betting it would be (itemprice * 250) * .9

X * Y * Z = Z * X * Y, no matter where you put the parentheses.

MF Panda.5874:

Knasher.5607:

Actually on second thought this probably wouldn’t work and its probably the reason why the trading post says estimated profit instead of actual profit. If someone were to buy your stack one item at a time, then that is the profit you would get (i.e. (itemprice * .9) * 250) which is how the estimated price is calculated, but if someone were to buy your entire stack in a single purchase, I’m betting it would be (itemprice * 250) * .9

X * Y * Z = Z * X * Y, no matter where you put the parentheses.

Normally yes, but the important question is when the rounding occurs, so appologies for not putting that into my formula. It should read instead (round(itemprice * .9) * 250)) and (round(itemprice * 250) * .9).

lackofcheese.5617:

EDIT: That’s a good point about it being “Projected Profit” – it illustrates that it’s not guaranteed. Mind you, you could equally say that it’s “Projected Profit” because there’s no guarantee your item will sell in the first place; it might never sell, after all.

However, it seems that the “Projected Profit” is inconsistent and works differently for different prices. Here’s what it reports as the profit when type different prices for a quantity of 100 units; prices are 1c, 2c, 3c, and so on (units are coppers, dropped for convenience):
1) 90
2) 100
3) 200
4) 300
5) 400
6) 500
7) 600
8) 700
9) 800
10) 900
11) 990
12) 1080
13) 1170
14) 1260
15) 1300

Unless the real system works in this kind of inconsistent manner, I’d have to say that the “Projected Profit” display is bugged. Either way, I’d like to know how the system itself works.

I do agree that the tax is probably applied per-transaction, in which case you could get different amounts depending on the quantities people choose to buy from you.

If it really does round up/down on a per-item basis, it would be pointless to sell something at 30c instead of 29c because you’d lose an extra copper per item to sales tax anyway. That’s pretty silly, though, so I doubt that’s how it works.

Well I’m rightly confused now. About all I can think of is maybe they have something in place that when the unit price is less than 9c, always round down, less than 15c do no rounding (until you have the figure to be actually displayed), and greater than 15c do rounding according to the wiki. I have no idea why they would do it that way, but it is about all I can think of to fit the figures you’re quoting.

Nah, that rule doesn’t work either. From what I can tell, it seems to treat rounding up differently to rounding down. With the exception of the single-digit numbers, if the last digit is 0-4, it seems to work normally and take of 10% from the entire sum, while if the last digit is 5-9 it seems to work on a per-unit basis.

The single-digit numbers are especially weird, given that it seems to be rounding up even when it should be rounding down. That’s especially notable when the price is 2c – there’s no way it makes sense that you would be taxed a whole silver for 2s worth of stuff.

I don’t think that the TP actually works this way, so I think it’s just a bug in the Projected Profit display that needs to be fixed.

I guess it’s not that weird when you think about it in terms of the code. There’s probably an if statement that branches on a condition like ((x%10) < 5), and one of the branches has the rounding done in the wrong order, just like you’ve suggested.

The behaviour for prices less than 10c is a little stranger, but I suspect that it’s probably due to it being treated as a special case. This might be related to the minimum listing fee of 1c.