Guild Wars 2

Dear Developers,

Please, for the love of god, implement a new posting policy to the Trading Post! There needs to be a time limit set on items posted in order to keep the economy fresh and viable. Please implement a 3 to 5 day expiration on all items posted. If the item hasn’t sold by then, it is returned to the owner, less a posting fee.

The TP is absolutely cluttered with items in the thousands that are listed at or below vendor value. Especially crafted items that are being sold for less than the value of the mats. I believe most of this to be leftover from players at launch, as well as players no longer playing. Perhaps some “math deficient”players that don’t understand the fees associated with listing and selling items.

The bottom line is, the TP is horribly skewed with blue and crafted items. I think a "flush"of the postings, and an implementation of a time limit with keep the economy flowing and keep the active players engaged in the various markets.

Thanks for reading!!

I disagree with this, you never know when a player will come around that wants some random white item, maybe just for looks.

In addition, you cannot sell an item for lower than vendor price. If the price is at the price for a vendor, which is allowable, then you may either sell to a vendor, or as a buyer purchase from the countless available items until they run out and the demand for the item kicks in.

I don’t see an issue with the “clutter” you speak of. Narrow your search results to master/rare/exotic if you must but you can’t get upset because something that you clicked to search for appears. You can also narrow by level or weapon/armor type to further this. Aside from narrowing light/medium/heavy armor they already have most filters that are needed to solve your problem.

The only change that needs implimenting is to extend the “you cannot sell for less than vendor price” restriction to buying offers as well… I am tired of going to sell items and seeing 5000 posts to buy for 1copper on half the stuff I try to sell.

The point is not buying items…it’s selling them. To the reply mentioning selling items for less than vendor, you CAN list an item at vendor or say 1 copper over, BUT, your take away is actually LESS than vendor after the fees. I understand filtering items for the other reply, but when you are selling an item, there is no need to filter.

The TP is filled with items that are crafted and found on mobs. When you can sell crafting mats for more money than the finished item, there is a problem. What is wrong with returning items to people if they haven’t sold in a few days? Either the price of the item was not market ready, or the item isn’t in demand. By returning unsold items after a few days, the market will adjust quicker, and stay relevent.

Panda.1967:

The only change that needs implimenting is to extend the “you cannot sell for less than vendor price” restriction to buying offers as well… I am tired of going to sell items and seeing 5000 posts to buy for 1copper on half the stuff I try to sell.

im pretty sure you cant, those items are merely leftovers from before the patch that made it impossible…

I don’t feel to share any items with players, because they are to cheep!
And nearly all items are the same looking…. I’m used from GW1 that we struggled for days to get awesome gear and share it ( i’m not saying to not being able to get it solo )
it’s just annoying that i don’t feel to share anything with my friends… all i can do is:

Do u need anything? ‘’ Yes, karma and pretty much all items for my legendary, that’s all, i think? xD "

OK WTF do something with trading post because all items lost value.. there is no we can count on fingers how many valued items we can get to share.

While I do see some improvements that need to be made to the Trading Post, I don’t really think a timer is necessary (since it isn’t an “auction house”).

Some improvements that do need to be made:

• Preview Items off TP
• Search Option for Stats or Stat Combinations
• Search Option for Armor Type (Light/Medium/Heavy)

I’d love to be able to search items at the main trading post by profession as they put it, unless I’m missing something, when I drop down Armor then Helms, I’d like to now choose Ranger, otherwise, I’m clogging the server while standing at the trading post, scrolling through armor that I can’t even wear.

I actually agree with the timer.

I played some games with auction houses (@jwaz, it works exactly like auction houses) and I have to say, the games that had timers would make the items be worth for their skins, even when those skins had smaller stats then the bigger ones people would still want them because they were unique and not easy to find.
A timer of 5-7 days is enough to limit how much garbage is sold in there while also keeps the market alive in terms of balance.
In the beguinning, people just sell in TP in order to empty their inventory knowing it will sell sooner or later, even if they stopped playing or wait for months/years untill that happens. There are still many items there waiting for the price to go up and make their sellers rich. This is why most skins that could be AWESOME, are just “meh” because it’s too easy to get them. And this also gave the opportunity for many players to start controlling many items worth in TP with less risks because they know their items will sell for the price they made sooner or later even if it take months/years (unless they made it with a price too high for what it’s really worth) .

That’s why most items lose value, if you want to buy something you just have to go there and buy it, knowing you will find it there.
What’s even worse, there are so many items with the same skin in there that skins lose value too, and that is making most gear in this game even less valuable.

It’s a place with limitless stock in most things people would really want if this was another game, the same things that were suppose to give meaning to the progression of the game that many players claim it’s missing right now and the same things that were supposed to give more activity in many maps – because the skins in those maps are unique and should be hard to get. But now they aren’t neither of those.

With a timer, many items will reset their stocks or there will be a lot less available. Their value will go up, skins will be harder to find and people will find what items are really worth or not, with a bigger amount of items in the “real-worth-list” and a smaller amount in the “lets-control-this-item-worth-list”.

No, the way it is now actually keeps level appropriate gear at prices that a player can actually afford. In every other MMO, level appropriate leveling gear always ended up being priced at what a max level character could afford to pay for their alts, it was very very new player or slower leveling player unfriendly. With the system in GW2, gear is actually in the realm of being affordable for a new player or slower leveling player.

@eisberg, don’t forget one thing. In most of other games where that happended, the prices were fixed to one server only. Here, you have all the servers together in one place, which will still price the items at a lower level and still easy for new players to use it.
I was a casual player in some of the games I played, and I still found the Auction House of some of those games very friendly to players like me. What was hard to get were the skins most people wanted, because those were always disapearing in a flash, while other things like mats had true value. In here, many mats aren’t worth selling in TP are they? They are so easy to get that everyone sells them in TP and just waits for the time when the value goes up a bit to sell them for a more “fair” price, which will make the value of the item go down again because a lot of people want to make it cheaper in order to sell them faster. If the price they want to sell is too high, they just wait again.

I agree with the OP. Please do this.

Aztex.4895:

@eisberg, don’t forget one thing. In most of other games where that happended, the prices were fixed to one server only. Here, you have all the servers together in one place, which will still price the items at a lower level and still easy for new players to use it.
I was a casual player in some of the games I played, and I still found the Auction House of some of those games very friendly to players like me. What was hard to get were the skins most people wanted, because those were always disapearing in a flash, while other things like mats had true value. In here, many mats aren’t worth selling in TP are they? They are so easy to get that everyone sells them in TP and just waits for the time when the value goes up a bit to sell them for a more “fair” price, which will make the value of the item go down again because a lot of people want to make it cheaper in order to sell them faster. If the price they want to sell is too high, they just wait again.

I sell all my mats that I gather, and I gather them all, and when ever I put my stock into the TP, 95% of them are sold with a minute of putting them on the TP, with the 5% taking maybe up to 1 hour. And they all sell for more then what I can get from the vendor.

Also, there are no unique skins in this game that are from open world drops that a person cannot either make through crafting or buy them from karma. Take the Shadow set in light cloth for instance, very cool looking set there. That set can be crafted, get as a drop, or get from Karma vendors.

So the only reason to go with the OP idea is to artificially increase the price of items. All items in crafting can be gotten for free, so when you sell the gear you made to level up crafting, you made a profit because you are selling it more then what it cost you in mats.

This game has real supply and demand economics, and it not artificially being regulated to create an artificial supply.

A timer will reduce volume, however, it will be ultimately irrelevant.

Less volume on crap items won’t change the fact that very few people actually buy them. Thus nothing will change.

Less volume on rare items…umm…well, there won’t be less volume on rare items. The number of rare items is controlled by the loot tables, not players. Players that find a rare (and by that, I mean a good, uncommon item, not just a yellow) they don’t need will STILL sell it just as readily with or without a sale window. A narrow window will DEvalue items, not make them rise to what you may think is an appropriate level (and again, that level is not what you or I think it should be, but what the market decides) since people will be more wary about pricing to avoid repeated 5% listing fee losses.

This may, indeed, normalize prices, but it only serves to stick it to sellers, not buyers.

I could see ANet forcing out items that have languished for, say, a month, since they’re obviously not priced to sell in any current market scenario. Anything shorter, I see as simply external manipulation of players which I strongly discourage.

With that aside, this IS something ANet could adopt if only as another convenient gold sink. That 5% cut would see a lot more action within such an environment.

In sum, I think a sale window would just add an unnecessary hassle to those who do a lot of trading, whether individual items or bulk. The clutter issue is irrelevant as it won’t reduce the variety of items popping up in a search list, only reduce the numerical figures you have to look at (and possibly reduce the number of buy/sell entries shown)…to that I say: big deal.

Oh, and someone mentioned people crafting items and selling below the cost of the mats. Well, to that I say politely: none of your business. A large proportion of the items people are essentially forced to make in order to raise their crafting skill are worthless since no one wants them, not because there are millions. Besides, a lot of otherwise undesirable items still sell for more than merch price (counting the 15% overhead).

@eisberg, I agree with you, that’s why I also don’t like how Karma and Karma vendors have too many things available to players. I sill like crafting though and it’s always good to have the ability to craft everything with the right mats.

The problem with this game is that most things that have potential to be really valuable are, in fact, not wanted. They are too common and way too easy to get.
Skins are the best example of this, since they were supposed to be one of the main reasons for people to play this game instead of the stats treadmill we see in other mmorpgs. That’s not what’s happening, is it?

For me, the OP idea is one of the possible solutions for some flaws in this game. But I guess you’re right, the game itself doesn’t allow it to work as I thought.
Another possible solution? I have one, but needs much more changes in the game.
First of all, limit karma vendors and the items they sell. If many items were obtainable by loot dropping only in a certain map, or by crafting only with the right mats (which some of them are loot drop only in 1 map), we would see many more players in all maps just to get what they want. They could grind or do events/hearts, it doesn’t matter since the activity of the map is much bigger, the skins were harder to get and, as such, more unique and less common to see, and those items would also gain value.
But I guess ArenaNet is not in favour of big changes right now and I don’t even know if this would work.

so i read through most of this, but the clutter is the aftermath of the implementation of the vendor value limit, it just needs to be dealt with, but i can see how that isn’t exactly a priority, but i think the most needed thing in the TP is a 3rd drop down that gives the chose for armor to be heavy/medium/light. or maybe even a box to check your class so that you don’t have to look at great swords when you are a thief. but that’s a bit more than necessary but the

basically, we need a heavy/medium/light armor option

I think search choices to narrow down what you are looking for would work to solve the issue.

I don’t want them to put in a time limit. That will clutter up our mail boxes reaching the 10 mail limit quickly as I imagine it would mail one item at a time back to you. The only way I would be ok with a time limit is if it was for a long time…a month minimum and you were refunded your listing cost when the item was sent back to you.