Guild Wars 2

Market manipulators…

I wouldn’t care if I wasn’t forced to use the TP to trade with people. In any other game, I can directly trade and not have to deal with such manipulators. Another player and I can agree on a price for something completely independently of anyone else.

But in GW2, not being able to directly trade forces everyone to use market value on items, which makes it very enticing for people to try and manipulate the market.

In GW2, if I want to sell you an item for some price other than what some person with more time and gold than I have has pricefixed on the TP, I’ve either got to trust that you’ll mail me the funds when I mail you the item, or put it on the TP and hope you’re the one who gets to it first, and not one of the manipulators.

I realize that you (ArenaNet) have said that you did away with direct trading because you fear scamming. Please, after months now, you must see that without direct trading, EVERYONE can be scammed by one person. Moreover, trying to circumvent this requires trust between two players, either one of whom may not deliver on the agreement.

Another thought (and I’ve got no evidence for this): logic tells me that many of said manipulators are of the RMT variety. They actually have the gold and time to manipulate markets (heck, it’s their job!).

Please Implement Direct Trading between players! Stop forcing us to use the Trading Post where prices may be driven by manipulators!

This could be fulfilled by a contract order just like in Eve online.

Will we see such a thing? Doubtful

If someone is offering you more cash than they could get an item for through the TP, they are scamming. Always. Period. End of story.

With an eye toward the game’s long term health, removing gold sinks is not necessarily a good idea.

The TP right now temporarily keeps inflation at bay, as well as several other noted benefits:

Consider how spammy Lion’s Arch would be if direct trading were allowed. The creation of a “Trade” channel would not help – people would simply spam the least crowded channel. Right now, map chat in PvE, and team chat in WvW are clean and efficient. Direct trade would instantly undermine all of this.

Consider ANet’s mission to inhibit gold sellers. Currently the mail system is being tracked, and it’s use is relatively low volume. Many, if not all gold sellers now resort to going through the TP using white items, and eating the 15% loss. Would they be similarly capable at tracking and distinguishing the millions, if not billions of individual transactions on direct trade? It would certainly be far more difficult to distinguish between gold seller and legitimate trade. I continue to value ANet’s efforts to combat botters, gold sellers, and cheaters. Sacrificing this is too high a cost.

I do not want direct trade in the game as it stands, as I value the polish of the game far more. If it were implemented, it hope it will also retain the 15% tax that the TP currently uses, i.e. every time gold changes hands, it is reduced by 15%. This would help keep some of the benefits of the TP that I value in place, while also letting others set their own individual trade prices if so inclined.

The point that direct trade would give another tool to gold sellers is valid, but insuficcient. They can already use the mail system, and there’s no reason direct trades couldn’t be logged and examined. Indeed, all they’d really need to do is have a program monitoring for either very high volumes of trades or very high value trades, sending a report to a human being who could look at it and figure out if it looks like a reasonable trade or a gift of gold that should be followed up further.

As to advertising gumming up chat, the solution is already present: make it an offense with some sort of disciplinary action (suspensions, bannings or what have you) and let other players report them for spamming.

Finally, the gold sink issue. I understand the necessity of gold sinks. I just don’t see enough volume occurring by way of direct trade instead of the trading post to undermine the gold sink. 15% is a lot… but people already pay as much as 200% more—or more—by clicking “buy now” than they would by posting a buy order. (Accommodating such individuals is how I make my money.) Very few would spend the time hunting for a seller for a 15% price break, and due to the inefficiency of direct trade relative to the trading post, I doubt they’d even find that.

I predict that a direct trade mechanism, were it implemented, would be used in one of three ways: direct marketing of rare, high value items to wealthy clientele; roleplayer “shops” that did very little business but were more for playing around (selling food and drinks at an event, for example); and a small network of independent traders who erroneously hold to their faith that somehow, they’d be able to do more honest business with each other than with the anonymous buyers and sellers on the trading post.

I would place a 5% fee on direct trades using a secure direct trade window. This would represent the cost of the provision of security to such trades, while being enough less than the 15% to stop anyone from blaming the fee for the failure of direct trade to catch on. I predict that the inherent efficiency of the BLTP would result in the vast majority of people continuing to use the trading post, and thus the gold sink would be preserved.

The only way I could see ArenaNet implementing direct trade is if it was a barter system ONLY.

No gold can be transferred during a trade. It could only be item(s) for item(s).

If you thought the message spamming in GW1 was horrible, a direct trade system, even if it was barter only, would be SO much worse.

Tarvok.4206:

The point that direct trade would give another tool to gold sellers is valid, but insuficcient. They can already use the mail system, and there’s no reason direct trades couldn’t be logged and examined. Indeed, all they’d really need to do is have a program monitoring for either very high volumes of trades or very high value trades, sending a report to a human being who could look at it and figure out if it looks like a reasonable trade or a gift of gold that should be followed up further.

As to advertising gumming up chat, the solution is already present: make it an offense with some sort of disciplinary action (suspensions, bannings or what have you) and let other players report them for spamming.

Finally, the gold sink issue. I understand the necessity of gold sinks. I just don’t see enough volume occurring by way of direct trade instead of the trading post to undermine the gold sink. 15% is a lot… but people already pay as much as 200% more—or more—by clicking “buy now” than they would by posting a buy order. (Accommodating such individuals is how I make my money.) Very few would spend the time hunting for a seller for a 15% price break, and due to the inefficiency of direct trade relative to the trading post, I doubt they’d even find that.

I predict that a direct trade mechanism, were it implemented, would be used in one of three ways: direct marketing of rare, high value items to wealthy clientele; roleplayer “shops” that did very little business but were more for playing around (selling food and drinks at an event, for example); and a small network of independent traders who erroneously hold to their faith that somehow, they’d be able to do more honest business with each other than with the anonymous buyers and sellers on the trading post.

I would place a 5% fee on direct trades using a secure direct trade window. This would represent the cost of the provision of security to such trades, while being enough less than the 15% to stop anyone from blaming the fee for the failure of direct trade to catch on. I predict that the inherent efficiency of the BLTP would result in the vast majority of people continuing to use the trading post, and thus the gold sink would be preserved.

The first point is ideal, but somewhat impractical. Having a human being sift through what will be thousands upon thousands of flags is going to make this system very clogged and inefficient as far as catching gold sellers. The increase in volume over the current mail system is going to be something like ten-thousand fold. Right now very few people use the mail system. Flagging gold sellers through the mail is easier (I know of people getting banned for just sending gold to their friends, so it’s far from perfect), but at the very least, it has discouraged a lot of gold sellers from going through mail.

On a side note, I passed around a chunk of 200g to my friends for all to get the golden achievement without thinking about this, but none of us got any trouble, so i’m kind of curious as to how their flagging system actually works.

The gold sink value is significant. Players will create a virtual marketplace to make searching for direct sellers easier and faster. I see this in other games, very professionally done, and widely known in the game very quickly. Much in the way gw2lfg has caught on, if the game has a need, it will be filled by the community. The volume will be considerable. Placing a direct trade tax as high as the TP will negate any sink lost, though.

Making sell advertisement an offense is going to create one heck of a backlash But hey, I don’t really care about player complaints at all, so… point taken. If indeed everyone who spams chat with WTB/WTS is banned, and ANet follows through, it would keep the channels pretty clean.

You do have a point in your first paragraph. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what kinds of filters could reduce the workload, but the only way I could see it working is if the software had some means of tracking not only trades, but also character interacts generally: if and how often they’ve partied (I would have it be measured in time spent in parties, as opposed to number of times in parties), if and how long they’ve been members of the same guild (I would make this a weak component, since people who wanted to participate in a gold-selling market could just make a front guild), and so on. From this data, an invisible “friend score” would be generated. IF this could be accomplished, quite a few “friend-to-friend” transfers could be weeded out. I just don’t know if that could be accomplished, or if other players would even consider that desirable, even if it were totally invisible.

The point in your third paragraph is a very, very good point. I don’t have a lot of experience with MMOs (other than Ultima Online WAY back in the day, GW2 is the only MMO I’ve played to any great extent), and had failed to consider how easy it is to aggregate this kind of information via a third-party website. I still think direct trade would be less efficient… but not so much less efficient than I previously did.

However, there is an inefficiency you may have not considered. The TP links all players on all servers all around the world. Direct trade (I am operating under the assumption that traders would have to be physically adjacent to conduct a trade) could only be conducted with others on the same server or, in lucky cases, others on the same overflow. (This doesn’t even take into consideration potential linguistic difficulties between regions.)Trade between servers would be limited by overflow encounters and the week cooldown between transfers. I could see traders making money roaming between servers… but the fact is, I rather enjoy the idea of merchant characters, roaming from world to world, selling their wares…

Now, understand, I have no problem with the trading post. I like it, and use it extensively. I do, however, have sympathy for those who do not, and believe allowing the two competing systems is just plain the right thing to do. My question to those who would prefer to operate under a direct trade system: would you be okay with it if trades had the same transaction fee as the Trading Post? I still believe it ought to be lower (no higher than 10%, due to the absence of the TP’s “listing fee”) since the players themselves would be doing things that the trading post automates, but would you still be okay with it if the price were 15%?

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’d support it.

I listed that as kind of the minimum requirement to keep some of the benefits of TP in place.

There’s all sorts of ways to poke holes in my suggestion. For example, if Gold and Gold only is taxed, players would just create some kind of “chip” currency. If you ever played GW1, you’d be familiar with ectoplasms as currency. While that particular currency was created out of necessity, as a player could only hold so much gold, it could be revived in GW2 as a way of dodging trade taxes. There’s just no way to tax 15% of an item.

Simply put, there’s a unique combination of benefits right now that the no-trade, all-TP format provides that will be broken with any sort of trade implementation. The current system the game is under is simple, elegant, and conducive to spending more time playing and less time crawling forums and user-created sites. You can post an item and forget about it, if you wish, knowing that it will take care of being sold on its own. This would be completely undermined if user trading gave any sort of advantage.

Utilization of a direct user-user trade system would certainly steer a large percentage of buyers away from the TP, and to the private market. From a user perspective, it would cause more hassle. You can’t beat the private market prices – the only way is to join it, meaning more time spent meeting up with buyers face to face, more time manually executing trades, and less time available to play the game and also still sell everything you want. Maybe this is just the viewpoint of me, personally, as I am a very heavily market-oriented player.

No implementation of trade system is one I support, but if ANet ever does become adamant about making one, I’d want it strongly taxed.

LFk.1408:

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’d support it.

I listed that as kind of the minimum requirement to keep some of the benefits of TP in place.

There’s all sorts of ways to poke holes in my suggestion. For example, if Gold and Gold only is taxed, players would just create some kind of “chip” currency. If you ever played GW1, you’d be familiar with ectoplasms as currency. While that particular currency was created out of necessity, as a player could only hold so much gold, it could be revived in GW2 as a way of dodging trade taxes. There’s just no way to tax 15% of an item.

Simply put, there’s a unique combination of benefits right now that the no-trade, all-TP format provides that will be broken with any sort of trade implementation. The current system the game is under is simple, elegant, and conducive to spending more time playing and less time crawling forums and user-created sites. You can post an item and forget about it, if you wish, knowing that it will take care of being sold on its own. This would be completely undermined if user trading gave any sort of advantage.

Utilization of a direct user-user trade system would certainly steer a large percentage of buyers away from the TP, and to the private market. From a user perspective, it would cause more hassle. You can’t beat the private market prices – the only way is to join it, meaning more time spent meeting up with buyers face to face, more time manually executing trades, and less time available to play the game and also still sell everything you want. Maybe this is just the viewpoint of me, personally, as I am a very heavily market-oriented player.

No implementation of trade system is one I support, but if ANet ever does become adamant about making one, I’d want it strongly taxed.

They are not going to implement a secure P2P trading platform – ever. Of course I don’t speak for them, but there are tons of things they are working on putting into the game and this feature simply does not fit into their business model.

P2P trading is inherently insecure on purpose because encouraging that sort of trade has a lot of negatives.

Also, the TP fees are “fees”, not taxes and implementing a “tax” on Player to Player transactions would be a nightmare and serve no purpose.

Selling items via the mail with a CoD option has been in games for years. I just find the not being able to do a direct trade a right royal pain in the a** when I want to throw a load of resources to a mate to help with his crafting and after 2 mails I get blocked for a while due to excessive mailing!

Cerebelum.6087:

Selling items via the mail with a CoD option has been in games for years. I just find the not being able to do a direct trade a right royal pain in the a** when I want to throw a load of resources to a mate to help with his crafting and after 2 mails I get blocked for a while due to excessive mailing!

I see this one a lot, and if I may offer a simple, elegant solution: use your guild stash.

If you don’t have one, acquire one. It costs something like 2,500 influence for all 3 upgrades needed to get one, IIRC.

If you cannot trust your guild to leave things that don’t belong to them, my suggestion (aside from finding another guild) is to create one yourself. The cost is negligible, and you can freely change in and out of it when you need to exchange.

Market manipulation ?
When we have more than 2 000 000++ players ?
BLTC is really cool if you want to buy just buy it if you want to sell just sell it!
If you have firend that can craft you some item just send materials via mail and wait for your item.
If you see good deal (market manipulation) … just sell you item get cash and run for more items.
Free will.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

The only way I could see ArenaNet implementing direct trade is if it was a barter system ONLY.

No gold can be transferred during a trade. It could only be item(s) for item(s).

I could happily live with this. When the ele gets a greatsword drop, and the warrior gets a wand, it’d be nice if they could just trade.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

If you thought the message spamming in GW1 was horrible, a direct trade system, even if it was barter only, would be SO much worse.

Didn’t think the message spamming was a problem at all in GW1. Did you notice that you could open your Party menu and look at the Trade window to see what was out there?

At any rate, Map Chat is full of various kinds of spams and juvenile crap as it is. I mostly keep it turned off, anyway. Of course, if a Trade chat were implemented….

Chuo.4238:

Charismatic Harm.9683:

The only way I could see ArenaNet implementing direct trade is if it was a barter system ONLY.

No gold can be transferred during a trade. It could only be item(s) for item(s).

I could happily live with this. When the ele gets a greatsword drop, and the warrior gets a wand, it’d be nice if they could just trade.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

If you thought the message spamming in GW1 was horrible, a direct trade system, even if it was barter only, would be SO much worse.

Didn’t think the message spamming was a problem at all in GW1. Did you notice that you could open your Party menu and look at the Trade window to see what was out there?

At any rate, Map Chat is full of various kinds of spams and juvenile crap as it is. I mostly keep it turned off, anyway. Of course, if a Trade chat were implemented….

The WTS chat would frequently spill over into the main chat channel because anyone selling something is never going to be content to wait for customers and will solicit them through any available mechanism.

I think in the later years, Anet enforced some chat discipline, but in the first few years, it was very chaotic and spammy.

Direct trade between players is a feature i Expect in a MMORPG. It is a aspect of Role playing and a common feature of MMO’s. The scourge of Gold sellers should never be fought with restrictions that directly effect legitimate players. Once a developer starts removing features from a game to fight gold sellers then gamers have already lost.

I second this, sometimes i just want to send a friend a item and note using mail system works great when it don’t bug out on you. Twice has it happened now that i go to send something and they never get the item and its gone permanently from inventory. I have already been told that rare instances this does happen and theirs no way to retrieve the item. its not as secure as doing the black lion. So a secure person to person trade would be awesome or make the mailing system more secure.

I don’t get why you take this position that market manipulators are bad. They buy low and sell high (if they are good) why do you care? From what I’m understanding from you, you want to be able to sell your items at a higher price than what the lowest offer is which is something you can already do (just set a custom price). The only bonus I can see from having person to person trade besides the role playing implications is that you can rip oblivious people off.

@the person above me. Get new “friends” your current ones just scammed you. (or you sent it to the wrong person)

orrrr when you sent the mail your friends already had 10 mails and they need to delete one before they will see the one you sent you

TheAmpca.1753:

I don’t get why you take this position that market manipulators are bad. They buy low and sell high (if they are good) why do you care? From what I’m understanding from you, you want to be able to sell your items at a higher price than what the lowest offer is which is something you can already do (just set a custom price). The only bonus I can see from having person to person trade besides the role playing implications is that you can rip oblivious people off.

@the person above me. Get new “friends” your current ones just scammed you. (or you sent it to the wrong person)

orrrr when you sent the mail your friends already had 10 mails and they need to delete one before they will see the one you sent you

For starters I was referring to my other half who has his pc beside me. so no I didn’t get scammed, it really happened. Twice! and His mail is empty. its only ever happend to us twice during the entire time of games released but the most recent one was about was sometime during the windersday. And as for the idea I sent it to wrong person, I usually right click there name on my friends or guildlist, or I hit reply to a mail message.

Wants to get rid of scamming, opens up a large avenue for scamming.
Astounding logic, wouldn’t you say?

Wants to stop gold traders? well they can already mail the gold.

They’re zero for two, actually had to spell it out since it keeps getting cut for some odd reason…

I miss the days of trading stacks of ectos + gold for items with people face to face and actually having conversations with the people I’m trading with.

Why not just make an anonymous, put-my-item-up-and-check-it-later type trading system like the tp is set up to avoid spamming then? This one would just be with an item traded with another item though no money involved. To avoid people taking advantage by trading items that would be selling very high on the tp (like lets say one person sees that item1 is selling relatively high… that person decides to swap like 1000 of his item2 for item1 so he/she can sell item1 on the tp for more than he/she would make on item2) why not just limit the amount of one item people can sell within one time period? I’m not sure what this would do to the economy though and that would be a concern. Eh this is a reaaaaalllllllly rough idea (and i’m sure there are loopholes), but i’d rather see this than direct trading… at first I was surprised there was no direct trading in gw2, but there is no trade spam, which is pretty nice. If a secure way to trade items existed i’d be happy but so far I don’t feel an intense need for one. But that’s just me. To each his own :o.