Guild Wars 2

Since just selling the ingredients/matts is more often the best profit, why won’t crafters just raise the price of their completed item? Why are crafted items listed on the TP for less than the components are worth?

If crafters would raise their prices on completed items, then it would be worth more then its ingredients. Is it because there are so many “master crafted” and like items that are world drops, not player made, and auto-priced?

Because anyone can make them.
The pricing is to try to get some money back, not make a profit, because if it was priced to make a profit people would just make it themselves instead of paying more.

lisamee.2408:

Since just selling the ingredients/matts is more often the best profit, why won’t crafters just raise the price of their completed item? Why are crafted items listed on the TP for less than the components are worth?

If crafters would raise their prices on completed items, then it would be worth more then its ingredients. Is it because there are so many “master crafted” and like items that are world drops, not player made, and auto-priced?

because some people are dumb.

It’s the same reason why people post items on the outpost that would give less money than selling it to a vendor would.

Vol.5241:

because some people are dumb.

It’s the same reason why people post items on the outpost that would give less money than selling it to a vendor would.

Doesn’t nessicarily have anything to do with being “dumb”. Maybe people don’t care about profit and just want to provide loot to other people at the best possible price.

Though I’m sure there are people who don’t realize selling +1 above vendor value on the TP is actually worse due to the listing fee. Probably the same people who keep putting in buy orders for below vendor value.

Vol.5241:

It’s the same reason why people post items on the outpost that would give less money than selling it to a vendor would.

I wonder about this several times a day. I’ll check the TP to see if a drop I received could be sold and there are hundreds if not thousands selling for less then the vendor price.

If something vendors for 58c and the listing fee is 2c you’d have to be able to sell it on the TP for 60c total to break even on the vendor, yet I see stuff like that listed all the time for 59c, so they are losing 1c over the vendor price.

It’s only 1c, but hey, it all adds up in the end. Especially with the high cost of WP’s.

Halanna.3927:

Vol.5241:

It’s the same reason why people post items on the outpost that would give less money than selling it to a vendor would.

I wonder about this several times a day. I’ll check the TP to see if a drop I received could be sold and there are hundreds if not thousands selling for less then the vendor price.

If something vendors for 58c and the listing fee is 2c you’d have to be able to sell it on the TP for 60c total to break even on the vendor, yet I see stuff like that listed all the time for 59c, so they are losing 1c over the vendor price.

It’s only 1c, but hey, it all adds up in the end. Especially with the high cost of WP’s.

Actually they’re losing 6c or 7c because of the 10% tax on the sale, in addition to the listing fee.

lisamee.2408:

Since just selling the ingredients/matts is more often the best profit, why won’t crafters just raise the price of their completed item? Why are crafted items listed on the TP for less than the components are worth?

If crafters would raise their prices on completed items, then it would be worth more then its ingredients. Is it because there are so many “master crafted” and like items that are world drops, not player made, and auto-priced?

You an charge all you want, as can anyone else; the trading post is a free-market and it behaves as such. The phenomenon you point out has to do with different things:

- People craft things just for leveling crafting: we are all leveling crafting at the moment and we all go and build stuff we do not need just for leveling. The consequence of this is that the market is full with things people do not need, they just want to get some of the investment back. The way to fix this is to add variety, so that you can level your character without having to actually go through all the possible combinations, this way some of the combinations will have higher offer and demand than others.

- People can have all crafting professions: since any character can have all crafting professions and we get 5 character slots by default, it is very common that everyone can make every possible crafted item in the game, without having to buy it. Some people still don’t do this, but this added with the reason above, creates more offer than demand. The way to fix this is to add more crafting professions, for example, just like chef, there should be professions for consumables like tonics, instead of having them attached to the other professions. This way people would have to choose if they want to craft their gear and by their tonics or the other way around. Also, switching to a different profession should cost your more than just a fee. It should set you back in the progress of the other profession, so if you switch from tailor to armorsmith and your tailoring was 400, when you go back to tailor it will be only 375 and you would have to level it again to make 400 items. This has the effect of making 400 items less abundant and it also makes people thing twice before they switch to a different profession and it would also reduce the offer overall.

- Some people do not craft, they just use the trading post, massively: Some people use the rules of free market and their abundance of gold to use the flipping margins to make money. They go and buy cheap (but more expensive than regular people) and sell expensive (but less expensive than regular people). This pushes the market making the margins narrower and narrower. I do not see a way to fix this other than adding variety of items and creating item-spending activities, to reduce offer.

So, overall I think the market is working exactly as expected, and maybe at some point, when all people have their crafting professions maxed, things will be different and the offer will be reduced a little bit, but there are things that ArenaNet could do to improve the problem, and they are doing it by introducing new crafting recipes all the time. However, I think they can be much more aggressive with the changes I listed above.

What do you guys think?

crafted items can sell for less than the cost to make them for several reasons:
1) non-crafters find the item in the world and have 0 cost to make it, so they don’t really care what it sells for
2) craft it, post it, someone undercuts you, repost it, undercut again, repost, undercut, repost (absolutely no idea what original cost to craft was, but you’re not going to ever sell it if there’s always a lower price than yours = 0 profit)
3) leveling their craft, so proceeds from sales is just that much less they have to pay.
That’s the usual. there are some crafted items that do sell for a profit…

The reason a crafted item is cheaper than the raw material to make is because the crafter takes something from the raw material that can’t be sold. And that’s the XP from crafting the item. So the crafter takes something, extracts the XP, then sells the crafted item. Because the market values XP higher than the crafted item, the crafted item is cheaper than the raw material