Guild Wars 2

Problem: I’ve crafted up to 400 in two professions and have now started trying to accumulate gold for my guild and work on my legendary. One of the best ways in most MMO’s to make profit is through the game’s trading post or auction house. What seems to be the problem is that a vast majority of craftable items are worth far less than the raw items used to create them. The quantities that currently occupy trading posts are excessively large and in most cases seems to be posted for little or no profit(Why would anyone do that?). I wouldn’t want to waste my time selling an item on the trading post knowing that I would have to run to the TP in Lions arch to pickup my 3 copper profit. Most fine and uncommon drops during farming are vended or salvaged and added to the 100,000’s of other stacks sitting in the trading post.
Selling items on the trading post is not useful except for a few very specific items.
I’m open to suggestion but as it seems to me so far…
Suggestion: Wipe the trading post and return all(or at least some of) posted items back to their respective owners for a day. Having 1,000’s to 100,000’s of an item for sale at prices that make relatively nothing is taking away so much from the prospect of crafting, gathering or farming.

All that would do is allow a window for market manipulation until everyone has replaced their orders. Then the problem would come back. I’m betting less than 24 hours for it to be back where it was before the reset.

As for returning only some of the items, why should ANET ruin everyone’s trust in the trading post for no gain at all ?

To actually fix this problem, you need to address its cause: People are making items just to level crafting, either to get it high enough for a Legendary weapon, or to power level their characters via crafting. Which means they are perfectly willing to craft at a loss. There are enough of them that anything that requires anything less than max rank to craft will be sold at a loss.
As for max rank stuff, the only difference between people who are crafting is the price they are selling it for. So price competition will narrow any possible profit margin to almost nothing if everyone is rational. Get a few idiots who think things like “If I mine it myself it’s free” and they will drag the prices down even further.

Crafting for profit is not viable. A reset of the trading post wont change that. If people are posting crafted items at a loss then take advantage of that. Never craft your own gear if you can get it for cheaper on the trading post. Figure out at which price it becomes profitable to buy, salvage, then re list the components of an item. If there are only a select few items that are profitable to craft, only craft those items. If all else fails and you can’t, for the life of you, find a way make a profit, stop using the trading post.

not necessarily a reset but a day time.

example: once you get to 20 days item is removed from the TP

What I would really like to see is a anti-boting measures.

when you see an item listed like 3000 by 1 to 4 people to me those are bots.

These are the type of things that are messing with the TP economy and needs to be addressed

I’ve listed 1000 inscriptions at once before. they eventually sold, probably to people leveling their craft and too lazy to start with raw mats :P

The fact that crafting can’t be done for profit isn’t ANet’s fault, it’s the communities fault. Some genius thought that it would make sense to price items made from stuff that cost 3-5s, such as Omnomnom Berry Bars at less than what the price of making it is, and everyone just followed suit. I was about to make a rant thread on this very topic, but realized it would just get trolled because most people are incredibly ignorant. Maybe one day people will realize if you pay 5s to craft something it should sell for at least that, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Toast.6459:

The fact that crafting can’t be done for profit isn’t ANet’s fault, it’s the communities fault. Some genius thought that it would make sense to price items made from stuff that cost 3-5s, such as Omnomnom Berry Bars at less than what the price of making it is, and everyone just followed suit. I was about to make a rant thread on this very topic, but realized it would just get trolled because most people are incredibly ignorant. Maybe one day people will realize if you pay 5s to craft something it should sell for at least that, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

I use a simple model for pricing things myself

Lvl 1-10 sell at 10 copper per level
lvl 11-20 @ 15 copper per lvl for blues
10% more per lvl for greens
so forth and so on
with yellows @ 20%
Higher items I price @ my cost of salvage.

If items are listed below this i salvage and use or sell that

who knows it the TP needs a wipe, but i remember in some mmos useless items in the TP for the eternity and troll stuff like a lvl 30 helm for 3k gold, so yeah at some point the TP should be cleaned

The Tp dosen’t need a wipe it needs more time to stabalize itself

There are three kinds of useful crafting:

1) Crafting to get your discipline to 400
2) Crafting to make yourself goodies
3) Crafting for profit

All three will work, but to make a profit you can only make those items which are in heavy demand. There are hundreds of items that make an excellent profit. However, there are thousands that don’t. The secret? Don’t make the ones that don’t sell well.

If you think a certain item is being selled at a loss AND you think people will pay more for it then buy it up yourself and resell for profit. Otherwise that’s an indication right there that resetting the tp will not do anything for that item

Crafting seems pretty dead to me as you can pick up an item in the Trading Post for a much cheaper price than crafting it yourself. Maybe add items that are unique to the profession that only the crafter can use? Once made it’s soulbound to that person. This would make crafting pretty interesting and useful.

If an argument is well said player can craft better rings as a jeweler then switch crafting professions and make a better weapon. Well you can only wield these items if you are a jeweler. Once you switch to weaponsmithing the rings are not wearable.

Valot.7954:

Crafting seems pretty dead to me as you can pick up an item in the Trading Post for a much cheaper price than crafting it yourself. Maybe add items that are unique to the profession that only the crafter can use? Once made it’s soulbound to that person. This would make crafting pretty interesting and useful.

If an argument is well said player can craft better rings as a jeweler then switch crafting professions and make a better weapon. Well you can only wield these items if you are a jeweler. Once you switch to weaponsmithing the rings are not wearable.

While this is mostly true at the lower crafting levels (< 400), once you get into the 300s the prices start to go up. Of course, so do the materials, but there are quite a few level 80 items with good prices.

GETTING to 400, now that’s a different story.

Krosslite.1950:

[…]

I use a simple model for pricing things myself

Lvl 1-10 sell at 10 copper per level
lvl 11-20 @ 15 copper per lvl for blues
10% more per lvl for greens
so forth and so on
with yellows @ 20%
Higher items I price @ my cost of salvage.

If items are listed below this i salvage and use or sell that

I have an even simpler system:

• Is the item’s rarity Basic?
  • Yes → Salvage.
  • No → Is the item usable by one of my characters or will be usable within their next 30 levels?
    • Yes → Store in bank for future use.
    • No → In the trading post, is the the projected profit of selling at the current highest offer minus 1 copper higher than item price?
      • Yes → Sell in trading post at current highest offer -1 copper.
      • No → Sell to merchant.

I bet most people does something like this.
They could even automatize this with an “automatic selling” in the sell panel or something, and lots of people would probably use it.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

All that would do is allow a window for market manipulation until everyone has replaced their orders. Then the problem would come back. I’m betting less than 24 hours for it to be back where it was before the reset.

As for returning only some of the items, why should ANET ruin everyone’s trust in the trading post for no gain at all ?

To actually fix this problem, you need to address its cause: People are making items just to level crafting, either to get it high enough for a Legendary weapon, or to power level their characters via crafting. Which means they are perfectly willing to craft at a loss. There are enough of them that anything that requires anything less than max rank to craft will be sold at a loss.
As for max rank stuff, the only difference between people who are crafting is the price they are selling it for. So price competition will narrow any possible profit margin to almost nothing if everyone is rational. Get a few idiots who think things like “If I mine it myself it’s free” and they will drag the prices down even further.

I see your point and no, I wouldn’t want the TP to be exploited either but getting to 400 and finding that relatively nothing I can craft has value outside of personal use because the mats were worth more is disappointing. Of course anyone that had to make 6 variations of the same mithril helm, boots, etc. while lvling a craft would be willing to take a loss but having mass quantities below vendor value? Vending >60% of loot is also seemingly unrewarding. I’m not complaining because regardless I still love this game and hope for only great things to come. I understand a TP wipe has the potential to diminish player trust(maybe a wipe would be too rough) but I feel that if they specifically isolated and addressed the disparities of TP saturation with adequate notification they will not have ruined anyone’s trust and the gain would be a significant amount of credence in Anet’s ability to handle complex issues and adapt.
Supply and demand maybe? find a way to create some sort of demand for some of the dead items?

The minimum prices should enforce some profit.
200% of Vendor price should be the minimum value you can set in BLTP.
So if you can vendor an item for 99c, you should only be able to put it in BLTP for at least 1s98c.