Guild Wars 2

How come the only way to sell items is through the trading post? Why no trading/bartering interface, or COD mail?

I like to craft exotics and sell them to players, but with the current system it’s a serious hassle, as at any point I can get unlucky and get instantly undercut by others on the TP when I list one of my crafted exotics, essentially forcing me to leave it there for many many days in the hopes that eventually all the ones that undercut me will sell, and mine will also sell, or take it down and lose a lot of silver (usually ~30-40s listing fees), and list it again, hoping that the same thing doesn’t happen all over again.

Some may say it’s to protect players from those who would use it to scam them. Others may say that, because the game allows you to exchange in-game gold for gems, it is necessary for ArenaNet to take gold from players in many different ways in order to facilitate the buying of gems with real-world cash (thus funding continued support of the game), and restricting all player-to-player sales to the Trading Post allows ANet to skim the listing/selling fees off the top and remove that coin from the economy. Either way, there have been a ton of suggestions for a traditional trade interface and COD mail, but I have never seen a company response suggesting that they were considering it.

no it’s to help curb spam and inflation. If there was a safe trade system noone would ever use the TP for high value items with the tax
.

If you played GW1 you would know numerous scams that came from direct trading . The TP removes any chance of that.