Guild Wars 2

My suggestion: Either take the tax off of the TP or add trading.

LONG ARGUEMENT BACKING MY SIDE:
I would like to start out saying that I LOVE ways to sell and buy items without the hastle of spending time in Kamadan American District 1 for six hours power trading back in guild wars. But there really is no option to not use the trading post. If i want to use the trading post to sell my items, i get a tax on it, fine whatever! But if i want to go take to time to sell the items in person, i have to RELY ON TRUST, when that should NOT be an issue. Gold is hard enough to make in this game. We are not supporting a government, the tax to the Trading post makes an AD POPULUM arguement. Most governtments have a tax? Makes sense to have one for no reason right? Well most taxes actually fund somewhere else, and get reused. I saw the post on how guild wars economy is better than the United states, well obviously, you are making and deleating tons of money every day. That is not needed to control the prices. Say you are taxing for the service? Fine, but where is that money going? Back into the ground. Theroetically it makes sense, but then again it is makeing your economy like every other economy, power traders exploting prices become rich, the hard working group stay mostly poor. The drops are rare enough, doing redundant dungeons over and over for one item. Add trading, or take off the tax, give players the choice, it is a game for the players.

The tax is there to keep prices stable by reducing inflation. Just like any other gold sink. However the tax has one very useful feature that other gold sinks lack: The higher prices get, the more effective the gold sink is. Meaning that when the developer doesn’t correctly balance the sinks against the gold creation methods, the tax will automatically adjust to compensate.

So the tax stays.

Okay that makes fair sense, but why not add trading to the game?

Falcon.8509:

Okay that makes fair sense, but why not add trading to the game?

Because ANET decided that secure player to player trading is net detriment to GW2.

For example, have you ever seen an MMO with trade spam as infrequent as it is here ?
I haven’t. The reason for the lack of trade spam is that, with no way to safely trade, the payoff to the spammer is vastly reduced.

There isn’t trade spam because there is not a trading system. What if players want a trading system? Or a differant way to get the items? Anet could easily slap in a town for trading.

Falcon.8509:

There isn’t trade spam because there is not a trading system. What if players want a trading system? Or a differant way to get the items? Anet could easily slap in a town for trading.

But why would you need to trade in person?

You can already mail gear and gold between friends, so that’s a no.

You can already buy and sell the stuff in Trading Post, so no benefit there either.

The only thing I can see is trying to work around the 15% tax, which is a bad move. The tax is there for a good reason. Also, trading in person brings trade spam and scamming to the table.

So from a developer point of view, adding in personal trading only brings bad things for the game.

So why add it?

1. Some people prefer to trade in person. 2. The tax can be alot of money when a player is just starting out because there are not alot of ways to actually make money besides luck. When i get a rare drop from a dungeon i do not want 15% of the profit from it sucked up, especially with all of the expensive gear running round, Cultural, Legendary, ect.

With player-to-player trades also come spamming and third-party auction sites that alter the experience for the rest of the players.
Filling the chat with repetitive lines no one really wants to read and creating elitist micro-economies in which prices artificially raise.

With a player-to-player trading feature would have to come a trading chat channel and strict rules about spamming trades in any other channel.
Also, the trading panel would have to have a view of the price of the items traded in the trading system and still the taxes, and a warning when you are going to pay more for the stuff than what you’ll have to pay in the trading post, and also register the transactions just as if they were done in the trading post…
It’ll have to be effectively like trading with the trading post, you’ll just choose with whom you are trading.

And it’ll all be a hassle for something that would be used mostly by a few greedy guys who want to powertrade by becoming middlemen who intercept items to sell them at higher prices by auctioning them in third-party sites.

If you want something, it doesn’t mater where it came from, it’ll be the same item when you just get the cheapest one. And that’ll ensure that prices stay controlled and reasonably low for most items, while rare items stay high, while keeping things controlled as trying to create wealth by trading is much harder thanks to taxation. Buying to sell is affected, while buying to use is not.

If you want to give stuff to friends, you can still do so.

If buying to use and giving to friends is not affected, what’s left?

The trading post is a great feature to this game. I understand the issues with the tax for power traders, but in GW1 how many times would you just see everyone under the moon spamming all chat channels to sell something.

Only thing I would like to see is a more stock market like front page that shows current buy and sell prices on items ticker.

I do use http://www.guildwarstrade.com/

But it would be nice to have something in game where it is real time with price movement on items and demand.

One of these would be gold to gem pricing.

Hypothetical abuse:

Scammer: WTB all [X], Paying [Y]
Players scurry to check the TP for Xs, and note that several are available for less than Y. Players purchase all X valued under Y.
Scammer: I already have enough, thanks… also, thank you for buying all mine off the TP for far more than they are worth.

Forcing the TP tax also curbs inflation by requiring the seller to have a percent of the asking price before listing the item. With this portion being forfeit if the item is not sold, it discourages people from knowingly overpricing items.

Honestly, the way the game is designed a trade system wouldn’t be much of a benefit. We can already mail items and cash to other players, and aside from the convenience of being able to bypass the TP tax, there’s zero reason you’d want to trade anyway.

I’d rather see a fix that would allow us to preview items on the TP

Falcon.8509:

When i get a rare drop from a dungeon i do not want 15% of the profit from it sucked up, especially with all of the expensive gear running round, Cultural, Legendary, ect.

For the long term health of the GW2 economy, it is essential that the 15% tax is taken from everyone. Your greed is a very poor reason to harm the economy as a whole.

I think there should be tax but lower like 5% or 10%

Increase your prices by ~18% and you will get the amount you want and pass the tax on to the buyer. It is all a matter of perspective.

The trading post is not broken. The ability to send COD mail would be nice, so long as it CLEARLY states that it will COST money to receive these items. WoW and WAR had issues with this at first. It was confusing if the COD was a gift or a charge. Otherwise, the trading post is fine. I would like a small way to send items to friends at cost (as I am not that wealthy in-game).

-Hate

I assume normal trading isn’t available because having a trade feature would result in higher value items being traded in person to avoid taxes.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Falcon.8509:

When i get a rare drop from a dungeon i do not want 15% of the profit from it sucked up, especially with all of the expensive gear running round, Cultural, Legendary, ect.

For the long term health of the GW2 economy, it is essential that the 15% tax is taken from everyone. Your greed is a very poor reason to harm the economy as a whole.

You call me greedy yet you do not even know how much gold i have? I could have a low amount struggling to make it, but you just assume because i dislike the trading post that I am “greedy”. I have to pay way more to merchants than i get from drops, and i think that it isnt right.

Falcon.8509:

I could have a low amount struggling to make it

Why do you say you “could” be someone struggling to make coin rather than someone who is struggling ?

If you’re struggling, go ask for help. Expecting ANET to just make things better when you are the one making mistakes seems rather lazy. Laziness is also no reason to ruin the entire economy.