Guild Wars 2

2) Allowing reselling makes Anet’s job much, much, much easier.

In other words, preventing reselling would require them to spend significantly more resources managing the economy. They would have to ensure the exact amount of available mats and items to satisfy the player base across all activities, because players would not be able to change their decision making as the game changes and/or new content is released, and in turn reallocate their resources to others, even if those other people value them more.

To go back to my first example of Bifrost, say you’ve accumulated 100 unidentified dyes when some new use for them appears and the price increases. Well, tough luck, you can’t resell them, even if they otherwise would have allowed you to buy a different weapon that you similarly value. Instead, Anet has to ensure a constant supply of unidentified dye drops to meet both your needs (as you still need the remainder) and the needs of others, or else fine tune recipes so that they don’t produce these effects. This is incredibly difficult (if not impossible), and it’s much easier to just allow the market of players to determine value and shift goods to where they are more valued. Preventing reselling would make this impossible.

There would be other effects as well, including the need to increase drops across the board so as to provide sufficiently fair mat accessibility to each player, the unforgivingness of making a mistake on the TP, the destruction of fine armor/weapons as a category, which let you try out gear for free or essentially “rent” it as you level, and so forth. But the main problems are discussed above.

Anyway, I commend the basis of your thinking, as fairness and equity are important principles (more so in real life, a bit less in a mmorpg). But eliminating reselling would present a number of problems and exacerbate others, while simultaneously eliminating a feature that both helps Anet and much of the player base.

You don’t have to love the market or its potential to increase wealth disparity, but you should at least recognize its efficiency in allocating resources to those who value them most. And in a game like this, we want to maximize such value allocation, not restrict it.

Sorry again for the wall of text.

tl;dr if wealth disparity does prove to be a problem then there are ways to combat it. preventing reselling, however, is likely not one of them

Behellagh.1468:

Bri.8354:

Having an economical system which rewards those who spend all day trading more than players who run even the hardest content undermines the entire reward structure of a game.

It’s not an economical system, it’s simply a trading post for unwanted goods with the alternative is selling the item for a pittance to a vendor or simply deleting it.

Now the side effect of a trading post is that players who want cash for their item immediately or simply don’t care about maximizing the amount of cash they get, and conversely is willing to spend more for immediate delivery of an item instead of waiting for a lower bid be filled, creates an opportunity for players who are willing to put cash up front to buy goods that they think they can sell later for a profit (because otherwise why bother?).

Without them if you are looking to sell an unwanted item you better hope someone is looking for a “fair” price. Otherwise you will have to wait for such a buyer to come along or accept a pittance from the vendor just to get it out of your inventory.

It’s only because of the sheer volume of players dumping items onto the TP for a quick coin and free inventory space that these “player vendors” can earn the amount of money they do. A few copper profit times thousands of items per day can add up quickly and in the background, still letting them play the game like everyone else.

I wasn’t just referring to the trading post, but the entire reward and value structure of the game and how to trading post fits in to it.

laokoko.7403:

I used to play Diablo 3, and a term that keeps coming up is Auction House Tycoon. Where people literally stop playing the game(aka fighting monster) and spend all their time looking at the Auction house flipping item.

I think some what the same thing is happening GW2. Probably not to the extend Diablo 3 have. But that is literally what happened. People end up spending more time on the trading post and looking at spidy than actually playing the other part of the game. In all, the trading post have become a game by itself.

For some, playing the trading post is fun, and for others they don’t enjoy it, but the TP just seemed too good of a tool to make money to not use it. So the end results, is people start complaining about flipping.

Personally, I’m never very good of a flipper myself, but I find it silly to keep money, since in the long run, the average item seemed to rise in price, so I always keep more items instead of raw cash in my portfolio.

I’d like to point out that D3’s market was HORRIBLE. They didn’t have a John Smith there, so inflation killed the game.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

laokoko.7403:

I used to play Diablo 3, and a term that keeps coming up is Auction House Tycoon. Where people literally stop playing the game(aka fighting monster) and spend all their time looking at the Auction house flipping item.

I think some what the same thing is happening GW2. Probably not to the extend Diablo 3 have. But that is literally what happened. People end up spending more time on the trading post and looking at spidy than actually playing the other part of the game. In all, the trading post have become a game by itself.

For some, playing the trading post is fun, and for others they don’t enjoy it, but the TP just seemed too good of a tool to make money to not use it. So the end results, is people start complaining about flipping.

Personally, I’m never very good of a flipper myself, but I find it silly to keep money, since in the long run, the average item seemed to rise in price, so I always keep more items instead of raw cash in my portfolio.

I’d like to point out that D3’s market was HORRIBLE. They didn’t have a John Smith there, so inflation killed the game.

Some what true. But they made a very simple fix. Make legendary bind on acquire. And turn that game back in to an item hunting game instead of an auction house flipping game.

People weren’t even be complaining about flipping if they can get what they want by not engaging in the trading post activity.

I have just gotten a third Yakkington’s pants drop. One I have equipped, the other I sold, this third one I can salvage, destroy, or vendor.

No, you should be allowed to sell it on the TP if you like, because YOU got it as a drop. Now, if you purchased three Yakkington’s pants from the TP, then you would have to get creative in dispensing of them. It would never be a problem that would effect people’s own loot.

Whatever your opinion of flipping may be, a world with a crippled TP should be an obvious nightmare

Only if you fix it the wrong way, as you propose, rather than fixing it the right way.

Trying to buy anything as a lowbie would be absolutely impossible. Instead of a disparity between rich flippers and poor mob farmers, you would instead see a TP where nobody can afford anything.

Affording anything as a lowbie already is impossible. even the basic T1 crafting mats cost a fortune relative to what a low level character brings in.

Want to run the Frostgorge train for a few hours to afford one or two ectos?

If you ran Frostgorge for a few hours you’d have enough rares to make a dozen or more ectos, and then sell them for cash if they’re selling for that much.

It’s not an economical system, it’s simply a trading post for unwanted goods with the alternative is selling the item for a pittance to a vendor or simply deleting it.

Now the side effect of a trading post is that players who want cash for their item immediately or simply don’t care about maximizing the amount of cash they get

Don’t try to conflate “the trading post that facilitates the players” with “the trading post that allows people to make money from money,” as if the two things HAVE to be related in any way to each other. You can have the former no problem without allowing for the latter.

You thus realize that you should have been buying the dyes over time, when they were cheaper. But this too has problems in a world where you can’t resell. Notably, once you’ve invested in some of the dyes, you have no choice but to keep buying more, because you can’t change your mind and relist. So, you’re locked into creating that legendary, even if your taste or goals have changed.

First, few items have only one purpose. Dyes, for example, can be used as dyes. You could keep them or discover them and sell those. If you collect items you don’t need, at the very least you could salvage them. Of course you might lose money on the deal, but nothing is perfect and even flipping has its risks, nobody is asking for a system in which it’s impossible that you couldn’t have gotten a better deal, but a no-resell system would work much better overall.

Continued. . .

The opposite effect can occur as well. Let’s say you want to craft that new ascended armor that is soon to be released. Well, before you know the recipe ingredients you’re unlikely to invest in mats, because if you buy the wrong ones you can’t resell them.

This all happens anyways, changing it would make zero difference to the average player, it would only change the buying patterns of that who already speculate on the markets. What it would offer, at least, is that the prices would fluctuate in result of actual demand, rather than in anticipation of potential demand. It would be lower risk, since you wouldn’t be buying things thinking that they might come in handy, but instead only buying them when you know that they are currently handy.

In other words, preventing reselling would require them to spend significantly more resources managing the economy. They would have to ensure the exact amount of available mats and items to satisfy the player base across all activities,

New supply is constantly added to the game. Most major resources have tens of thousands of units laying on the market if needed. Player supply is relatively assured, even without resellers.

And again, this is already largely true, the prices on things DO skyrocket as new uses are added to the game, and ANet should keep an eye on such things and add new sources of supply to go hand in hand with new sources of demand. That they often fail in this is to the detriment of everyone, except for those that speculate on the TP by buying up materials that they wager will come into new demand, well before anyone who will eventually want those items thinks to do so.

Basically, you present a bunch of ways that you believe players would be hurt by this change, but really it’s only the flippers that would be hurt by it. The average player, the non-flipper, is already feeling the effect of these “nightmare” scenarios, the only difference is that it’s currently other players that are inflicting these problems on them, rather than ANet directly.

tl;dr if wealth disparity does prove to be a problem than there are ways to combat it. preventing reselling, however, is likely not one of them

So wealth disparity IS a problem, and if there are better ways to fix them, then what would these ways be? If you can offer a better alternative then I’m all ears.

Ohoni.6057:

changing it would make zero difference to the average player, it would only change the buying patterns of that who already speculate on the markets.

I disagree. I think prices would be high for first-hand items, and much lower for second-hand items. That means that players who actually buy items in order to use them, with no plans of reselling, would buy at a fair price, while players who buy with the motivation to resell would pay a hefty but appropriate “speculation fee”.

Ohoni.6057:

So wealth disparity IS a problem, and if there are better ways to fix them, then what would these ways be? If you can offer a better alternative then I’m all ears.

You missed the main point of my wall of text (which is understandable, because it was a wall).

Allowing the relisting of items smooths out the edges of the economy by preventing massive spikes in the cost of items. Sure, prices still rise and fall, but the added supply and ability to resell mitigates risk, which helps keep prices stable. Moreover, flippers’ and speculators’ motives may be self serving, but they do provide (some) liquidity, which in turn further promotes long-term price stability. I agree they shouldn’t be rewarded for this (beyond a motivation to keep doing it), but they shouldn’t be penalized either (unless they convince themselves they are doing noble work for the good of the community, which is just obnoxious).

Furthermore, you do need to understand how much the free market helps Anet manage the economy. Because reselling allows players on their own to best allocate items to those that most value them, Anet can take a step back and let the economy self correct, only stepping in when it becomes clear that there is a severe oversupply or shortage of an item (like they are doing now with cloth). If they had to manage every single item and supply chain for each recipe and good, they’d have way too much on their plate. Instead, they can look at trends on the TP and see if things get out of whack, instead of crunching the numbers for every permutation of drop rates and recipe lists.

re: Unidentified dyes; if that example is not to your liking , how about Silver Doubloon instead. Very expensive, and very limited in use

Finally, I never said wealth disparity is an issue in GW2. If it does become one, as would be evidenced by a huge increase in price of legendaries and other super rare goods, than some corrective force would need to introduced. Examples could be progressively higher fees for more expensive goods sold on the TP, or forcing wealthy players to subsidize an Ascalonian Care Act that provides discounted repair fees to new players, or something similar. But restricting reselling has way too many problems to even consider, for both Anet and the player base. And right now, there’s nothing I see that calls for such corrective action, though please do give me examples if you have them.

I disagree. I think prices would be high for first-hand items, and much lower for second-hand items.

There would be no “second hand items,” everything would be for first hand purchasing. That might cause the costs of some of these items to rise, but that would be ok, because the profits on that would go directly to the people who brought the item into the world, who deserve it, rather than to flippers, who do not. If prices on items rose a bit, then it would only come hand in hand with adventurers making more money by selling those items, and therefore having more money to buy with, so income would keep up with inflation.

That’s the problem with the current in-game economy, there is a sort of inflation (whether Smith agrees or not), but it’s one that only favors flippers, because as prices rise, they make more money, and can still afford things. If they are taken out of the picture, then any increase in item costs would automatically correlate to a rise in player incomes, so it’d balance out.

Allowing the relisting of items smooths out the edges of the economy by preventing massive spikes in the cost of items.

Maybe, but it’d be a small price to pay to have those spikes if it meant the removal of the Market Tycoon from the game. I’m not saying that there would be absolutely no cost, but it would be costs worth paying. Maybe prices would swing more wildly whenever a new supply/demand change is made, but they would work themselves out soon enough, and the price would be at an appropriate level, and anyone who bought when the item was priced low would be someone who would use and enjoy it, and everyone who sold high would be profiting off of having sold something they’d earned, and both would deserve that, rather than some flipper profiting off the exchange, who deserves nothing.

Furthermore, you do need to understand how much the free market helps Anet manage the economy. Because reselling allows players on their own to best allocate items to those that most value them, Anet can take a step back and let the economy self correct, only stepping in when it becomes clear that there is a severe oversupply or shortage of an item (like they are doing now with cloth).

That really shouldn’t be necessary. Assuming they had an ounce of foresight, they should know exactly how many units of every mat enter the game world (via loot/harvesting/etc.), and exactly how many leave it (via crafting, mostly). If considerably more items are leaving than entering then they should be able to tweak up the baseline drop rate for that item a bit, and if the opposite is true then they can reduce the drop rate a bit. They can even automate alerts to such trends.

The market is not really necessary to them when they have access to actual usage data. The market can actually even be completely misleading, for example if people start deciding to hoard a specific mat because they speculate that it will be useful in a future patch, that would cause the market to reflect far lower supplies of the mat than are actually in the game, and might encourage them to increase supply to compensate.

re: Unidentified dyes; if that example is not to your liking , how about Silver Doubloon instead. Very expensive, and very limited in use

True, and also an item that would greatly benefit from ANet giving a blank about their rarity and actually upping their availability a bit. Still, that’s a real edge-case as items go, and even if the value of silver doubloons made them such that you didn’t want them anymore, you could always convert them to gold ones and offload them. There should always be methods of converting excess stock into saleable materials, they should just be methods that would drain the profit potential from them and make them into modest losses instead. There is always risk involved in either buying items in speculation of future need or in holding off until you actually need them, and that’s equally true today.

Continued. . .

Examples could be progressively higher fees for more expensive goods sold on the TP,

Terrible idea. All this would do is make it even harder for a normal player to afford such items. Whatever sale fees are added would not be eaten by the seller, they would be passed on to the consumer.

or forcing wealthy players to subsidize an Ascalonian Care Act that provides discounted repair fees to new players, or something similar.

But how do you define “wealthy?” Is it someone who has 5000 gold sitting in their bank, or someone with 10,000 gold worth of Unidentified Dyes sitting in their bank, ready to dump if they really need the cash? I have difficulty imagining a “property tax” in this game that fully accounts for a diverse portfolio, without punishing players that don’t really have the things that they want, but might have a few random items lying around that the game considers “valuable.” Trying to actively valuate a player’s items would be a computational nightmare too, given how many items ANet vendor prices at maybe 1 silver but that sell for several gold to other players.

And right now, there’s nothing I see that calls for such corrective action, though please do give me examples if you have them.

It’s simple, the fact that there are TP flippers with total values in the thousands, tens of times higher than what any players could have earned through standard gameplay. Half the reasons you provided for why flipping is good are the exact reasons why flipping is bad.

I give massive credit to Ohoni for this detailed testimony on something that will pretty much never happen.

But there’s one single thing I want to pull out from your wall of text that’s scary. Once they release Guild Housing, or Personal Housing, I’m extremely afraid of “maintenance fees” or “property tax”. The bigger your home, the more you need to pay to maintain it. It’ll be the most effective Gold Sink in the history of the game.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’d like to point out that D3’s market was HORRIBLE. They didn’t have a John Smith there, so inflation killed the game.

Their market was pretty bad, but not for the reasons you probably think. Inflation had little to do with what turned their economy into a flaming tire fire.

Bonus points to anyone who can explain why inflation wasn’t the culprit.

Fenrir.3609:

Or perhaps some kind of parody of all the other totally nonsensical and highly uniformed threads we see pop up on these boards every so often which posit major restrictions/nerfs to the TP?

Think of threads like this as a natural garbage collection system. It gives those who know the least a place to beat their chests and show off just how bizarre your conclusions can be if you truly have no idea at all what you are talking about. These threads put all that garbage in one place, easier to ignore.

Or to wallow in it, if you have been drinking too much and feel the need to point and laugh at the village idiot.

the only good part of flipping is the taxes…
Taxes fights inflation EXCEPT for demanded items that flippers will just hoard….

Now simply saying its a gold sink with more harm than benefits….we are not that far from diablo economy…..expecially if you want ascended LIGHT stuff.

There are better and more fair goldsinks that could avoid the harm made by speculators and flippers….

“I could, but I don’t want to. I don’t enjoy playing market tycoon, and I don’t believe that it should be the only reasonable way to earn money in what is billed as an action/adventure RPG”

That’s the crux of this, isn’kitten you don’t want to so no one else shoud?. I don’t care what the game was billed at, if people don’t want to play and just stand around the main towns chatting and use it as a social network…they have the right.

Anet added all game mechanics and people make their own enjoyment out of what’s offered. So far I have read all reasons, arguments and discussions about why it shouldn’t be, however no one has explained why their way of playing should be forced on other people.

Also I see it’s only a very small number of people making the arguments, and I am deeply gratified to see that the gaming company that I have invested my own hard earned money and time has no intention of denying players their freedom of rights and choices. Thank you!

So all of this is just rage against freedom of choice, please go ahead, as long as nothing affects my game or how I choose to play, for me thats all that matters.

Bunda.2691:

The main purpose of the TP is to facilitate the ease of transferring unwanted goods to others and subsequently to obtain goods that you value more than others or have trouble obtaining in the open world. The TP does this excellently.

A side effect of a large, fluid, and dynamic market is that it allows those with time and knowledge to profit off it. This is a small price to pay for the many benefits the TP provides to the rest of the player base.

I agree. It’s too late to go back and edit my post but to add to it, I would say I’m largely thankful for it as well, even in the huge disparity it can create. I’m able to easily sell my goods for what they’re worth as one can immediately find an item’s current value. I’m also able to place buy orders and save myself money. It’s a very accessible auction/trade system for the majority of people.

The problem isn’t the TP or flippers as those exist in every game. The problem is the reward structure I think. Far too much of item acquisition involves paying for components to make an item either through crafting or the forge. I’m used to MMOs where the people wearing best-in-slot items earned them through playing for the most part and not standing at the TP or staring at spreadsheets. It’s actually my biggest beef with the game. I’d rather earn cool gear through playing and not randomly grinding money through dungeons or gathering in order to pay for things. Flipping is something I just can’t and won’t do. I find it a wholly boring activity and nor am I good at it. But with the whole real-life money to gems to gold system, this won’t be changing and TP players will always unfortunately be on top, which is completely backwards to me.

mtpelion.4562:

I get that. All people are jealous. In fact, jealousy is what drives economies.

However, jealous is not a valid reason to limit the freedoms of others, especially when those freedoms do not in any way prevent you from doing what you want.

Not to be mean, but it’s mainly this type of attitude the breeds anger and resentment against those who play the TP. So I just want to establish that this opinion is likely not shared by others (at least publicly).

Jealously is a perfectly valid reason to suggest changes to a video games. So is inequality, and unfairness, and corruption. But in the case here, I don’t think anyone is jealous of wealthy players, they’re just upset at perceived imbalance in the ability to obtain high end goods. Overvaluing the role traders play in the economy is going to do nothing to decrease this sentiment.

Also, jealousy does not drive an economy. Rather, labor and capital do. Pretending otherwise glorifies the middleman at the expense of thinkers, creators, and hard workers. People who say greed and jealousy drive the economy are just making excuses for their own.

That all said, in the case of GW2, there is no reason to remove the tools that facilitate trading, because a) the economy is relatively stable and b) the TP serves important functions that improve the game for both the players and Anet. If this changes, and if extreme wealth starts making goods unobtainable for newer players (thus discouraging them from continuing to play), then we’ll no doubt see changes to the TP. But until then, accept the benefits that it produces, and ignore the self-agrandized traders who overvalue their individual role.

Bunda.2691:

mtpelion.4562:

I get that. All people are jealous. In fact, jealousy is what drives economies.

However, jealous is not a valid reason to limit the freedoms of others, especially when those freedoms do not in any way prevent you from doing what you want.

Not to be mean, but it’s main this type of attitude the breeds anger and resentment against those who play the TP. So I just want to establish that this opinion is likely not shared by others (at least publicly).

Jealously is a perfectly valid reason to suggest changes to a video games. So is inequality, and unfairness, and corruption. But the case here, I don’t think anyone is jealous of wealthy players, they’re just upset at perceived imbalance in the ability to obtain high end goods. Overvaluing the role traders play in the economy is going to do nothing to decrease this sentiment.

Also, jealousy does not drive an economy. Rather, labor and capital do. Pretending otherwise glorifies the middleman at the expense of thinkers, creators, and hard workers. People who say greed and jealousy drive the economy are just making excuses for their own.

That all said, in the case of GW2, there is no reason to remove the tools that facilitate trading, because a) the economy is relatively stable and b) the TP serves important functions that improve the game for both the players and Anet. If this changes, and if extreme wealth starts making goods unobtainable for newer players (thus discouraging them from continuing to play), then we’ll no doubt see changes to the TP. But until then, accept the benefits that it produces, and ignore the self-agrandized traders who overvalue their individual role.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

It is what facilitates trade. Drives people to do more. Encourages people to take risks. Motivates people to succeed beyond basic sustenance.

Greed is the thing that takes transactions and makes them into an economy.

Without greed, we’d all still be farmers, growing just enough food to live on and hoping we don’t have a drought.

So while greed may be the black stain that we love to point at and condemn (and granted, it frequently leads to horrible acts when you allow it to control you), it is the main reason we have civilization (well, greed and beer).

lol okay Gordon

Essence Snow.3194:

lol okay Gordon

It is true though. Greed is what makes us do more than what is necessary to survive.

Of course, it’s also getting off topic lol

mtpelion.4562:

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

It is what facilitates trade. Drives people to do more. Encourages people to take risks. Motivates people to succeed beyond basic sustenance.

Greed is the thing that takes transactions and makes them into an economy.

Without greed, we’d all still be farmers, growing just enough food to live on and hoping we don’t have a drought.

So while greed may be the black stain that we love to point at and condemn (and granted, it frequently leads to horrible acts when you allow it to control you), it is the main reason we have civilization (well, greed and beer).

Mmmmmmm. Greeeeed. I mean, beeeeeer.

I know what you’re saying, but don’t conflate greed with self interest. Lizards are self interested. So are dogs. And so are we. It’s biological. Economic and familial self interest may have helped advance civilization, but not greed. Rather, greed is by definition taking to excess, and we as a society look down upon this for good reason: it has the potential to harm others. This is why we punish autocrats and ponzi schemers, because unchecked greed harms others more than is benefits them. Idi Amin’s or Bernie Madoff’s wealth does not float all ships.

But that is the real world. In a video game … meh? I see no reason not to let people embrace their less socially beneficial feelings and have fun being whatever hero or villain they want—so long as their doing so doesn’t harm others’ gameplay. After all, we’re ok “killing” others in video games. Why is it then considered uncouth to take their gold?

ITT: People that keeps applying real life economics to a videogame universe.

I cannot hold my sides.

But the players are “incompetent, illiterate, and/or lazy” … well to be fair they are impatient and/or indifferent. Speed in setting up a sell order, speed in getting money or the item is more important than getting or saving coin. It’s a convenience issue from a player’s perspective.

Now these “player run vendors” set up shop, willing to pay for items other players get or farm, aggregate them and turn around and offer them up for sale. These PRVs compete against each other to purchase and then turn around their inventory. This competition results in higher bids and lower sale prices. Of course items with very low drop rates could be horded and manipulated but those are luxury vanity items. De Beers anybody?

Also these PRVs have to compete with Salvagers, players who buy items merely to salvage them, for their inventory which also raises the bid meaning a player selling gets more coin.

The belief that all it takes is to put in a bid for a lot of an item at a pittance and then turn around and sell at a massive markup is simply wrong. That is not how they are making their coin and it’s certainly not that easy.

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

lol okay Gordon

It is true though. Greed is what makes us do more than what is necessary to survive.

Of course, it’s also getting off topic lol

I guess people like Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi did not get that memo…

Greed, is what caused he economic crises not too long ago, a crises most of the world is still struggling to come to terms with. But then, if you don’t care about having a job or don’t have a family to support, you would probably not really care about that either.

Greed does not drive ambition, success, imagination… any of it. Greed, drives greed. Selfish indulgence, short sighted gluttony… yeah, a lot can be said about greed, nothing, I am afraid, good.

And if you think flipping deflates the economy, then you failed at basic math as well.

I am of the opinion (and this is only an opinion), that the GW2 economy is unhealthy, and getting worst. The real-world disparity between the rich and the poor is starting to show. Has been for a long time now to be honest…

Though, it is a video game, and to be fair, what does it make you for have 100k gold in GW2? I am guessing someone who is… in between jobs, for a lack of better terms.

MAGpie.7962:

I guess people like Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Gandhi did not get that memo…

The opinions of those people are irrelevant to the discussion. This was simply an appeal to authority fallacy mixed with a red herring.

Greed, is what caused he economic crises not too long ago, a crises most of the world is still struggling to come to terms with. But then, if you don’t care about having a job or don’t have a family to support, you would probably not really care about that either.

Greed does not drive ambition, success, imagination… any of it. Greed, drives greed. Selfish indulgence, short sighted gluttony… yeah, a lot can be said about greed, nothing, I am afraid, good.

Without greed, you’d wake up, eat, and go to bed. It is what drives you to better your situation and acquire more than you need for basic survival. This is a commonly accepted truth in all forms of philosophy.

As with anything, too much greed is bad, just as too little greed is also bad. Greed, by itself, is neither good or bad. In balance it drives civilization. Out of balance is creates conflict and chaos.

And if you think flipping deflates the economy, then you failed at basic math as well.

Ha! That’s a good one!

I am of the opinion (and this is only an opinion), that the GW2 economy is unhealthy, and getting worst. The real-world disparity between the rich and the poor is starting to show. Has been for a long time now to be honest…

Though, it is a video game, and to be fair, what does it make you for have 100k gold in GW2? I am guessing someone who is… in between jobs, for a lack of better terms.

Income disparity is only a problem in the minds of those who desire to have what others have and no desire to do what others do.

As long as you have enough to survive, wealth is PURELY OPTIONAL.

That’s the crux of this, isn’kitten you don’t want to so no one else shoud?. I don’t care what the game was billed at, if people don’t want to play and just stand around the main towns chatting and use it as a social network…they have the right.

They do, they just don’t have the right for that to be the most profitable way to play. If they could design the mechanisms in such a way that the market could function as smoothly as it currently does, but that flippers would be completely incapable of making more than a couple of gold per day through their activities, then sure, let them flip as much as they like.

The problem is that flipping is SO much more profitable than any other activity in the game, that basically the only advice people can give to those who complain is “well, you should just flip too.” That isn’t right, the marketplace should not be the most profitable track in an action/adventure game. ANet needs to implement changes to prevent it from being so.

This is not an unreasonable expectation. Whenever an overly efficient farming method is introduced to the PvE world, such as farming CoF1 constantly, they take steps to pull back the profit margins a bit. You can still do that if that’s what you enjoy, but maybe you don’t make as much per hour doing so. That’s all I expect here, for them to peel back the obscene profitability of flipping, without harming the primary functions of the market. So far Bind on Purchase is the cleanest way I’ve heard to do this.

The difference is thousands of times because the executives are valuable as individuals while the workers are only valuable as a mass of labor hours. Nothing they add to the business is important enough on an individual level to warrant them being paid any more than they are currently. That is why those jobs are usually worked by high school kids while they live with their parents and save up for college/car/spending cash and NOT by people who are trying to sustain themselves… they aren’t providing a very useful or important function and are paid accordingly.

It’s myths like this that are making the world a worse place. 88% of minimum wage workers are over 20, and 30% of them are over 40, a third of them have children to support. There are a lot of them, but they do provide a useful function or nobody would pay them even minimum wage to do it.

It’s actually a flawless argument, your opinion is just divergent from it. Flippers increase the amount all players can sell their items for RIGHT NOW and decrease the amount it costs for all players to buy and item RIGHT NOW. That is what they add, and that is why they are getting paid.

They do neither. The person selling to the flipper is someone who doesn’t need the item, and the person buying from the flipper is someone who needs it, THEY set the prices. Flippers can’t take credit for both increasing the rices players get for their wares and decreasing the prices they pay for them, when the flipper is always paying the minimum amount and selling for the maximum amount they can get. Without the flipper, the producers and consumers would each be getting a better deal on every transaction.

Not true. There is no way to get a better price without a difference in time.

Yes, but often the “difference in time” is relatively negligible, 24 hours or less. It’s a very rare case in which a player absolutely needs his cash immediately, but often players are unaware that they can get significantly more for their wares if they are just willing to wait until tomorrow to claim it. If instead of listing only current buy and sell offers, the TP UI were to show the average SELL price of a given item over one, seven, and thirty days, then I think players would be far more likely to insist on getting the fair market value for their item, rather than settling for selling it at the buy order price, or picking it up for the Sell price when they don’t need it right away.

If your supporting argument is true, then nothing we are going to be able to do will “fix” the issue because the players will still be too incompetent, illiterate, and/or lazy to participate at an effective level.

Bind on Purchase. It may not make the average player into market tycoons, but it would greatly reduce the ability for market tycoons to do it either, which would therefore raise the relative income value of every other activity in the game.

Without them, the volume of trades would significantly be reduced, the prices you get from selling your items would be significantly lower, and the prices you pay to buy would be significantly higher.

That makes no sense. Either the amount you get would be lower OR the amount you pay would be higher, you can’t have both at once UNLESS you have a middleman buying low and selling high. If the middleman is not part of the equation, then every product where the seller sells low, someone is getting a good deal buying it, and ever product that someone buys for a lot, someone is getting a good deal selling it. The difference is, the benefit would always go to an adventurer, and not to a middleman.

You don’t begrudge it, but you want it deleted from the game because you don’t understand it? Sounds legit…

Yeah. It’s like PvP. I’m not a PvPer, but I get the attraction. I don’t mind that PvP games exist, but at the same time I don’t want to have to play on PvP servers. I don’t begrudge PvP players, I just don’t want them to be able to PK me. Likewise, I don’t mind that people want to economically PvP, I just don’t want them to be PvPing on the same economy I’m trying to use to play the PvE game. Like I said, I’d be find if ANet set up some sort of “PvP TP,” one that operates like the current one, only using items and currency that do not interact with any other aspect of the game, like the sPvP system this game launched with. I recognize the validity of the TP playstyle, I just think that it’s incompatible with the rest of the game.

Flippers do not hurt the economy, they do more to help it than most players. They stabilize prices, offer instant transactions at the best possible prices, and delete currency from the game and thus fight inflation. I dare you to offer an example of anyone who does more to aid the economy than the flipper.

Lol, take the adventurer out of the economy, what would the flippers have to flip with neither suppliers nor customers?

Ohoni.6057:

They do neither. The person selling to the flipper is someone who doesn’t need the item, and the person buying from the flipper is someone who needs it, THEY set the prices. Flippers can’t take credit for both increasing the rices players get for their wares and decreasing the prices they pay for them, when the flipper is always paying the minimum amount and selling for the maximum amount they can get. Without the flipper, the producers and consumers would each be getting a better deal on every transaction.

Its not like flippers are on some moral high ground for making money (they are trying to benefit too but they are offering a service) by essentially buying someones CD that they had at a higher interest rate and waiting for it to mature, that is what flipper essentially are doing the same sort of things these as buying out a settlement or annuity the other people get their money instantly while the flipper waits to get their money back. Also as there are many flippers in competition you probably are getting the best rate for your items by flippers trying to bleed out their competition?

Its not like flippers are on some moral high ground for making money (they are trying to benefit too but they are offering a service) by essentially buying someones CD that they had at a higher interest rate and waiting for it to mature, that is what flipper essentially are doing the same sort of things these as buying out a settlement or annuity the other people get their money instantly while the flipper waits to get their money back.

Yes, but typically if someone buys out a CD or annuity, it’s something that pays off in months or years. A lot of flipping activity pays off in hours. If you tell someone you’ll buy out their six month $500 CD for $400, they might take you up on it, but if it’s a day before it matures than I doubt they would, unless they’re really over a barrel, in which case you’d still be scum for pressing such a poor deal on them.

The reason most people play to the game of the flippers is because they do not understand the nature of the market, they do not track price fluctuations, they do not test how long it takes for an item to move, they don’t not understand how much money they are missing and how little effort it would take to avoid doing so. To some degree that is as much their fault as a newb that leaves a safe zone alone in a PvP game and gets jumped for his efforts, but it’s still predatory behavior to take advantage of it.

Ohoni.6057:

Whatever your opinion of flipping may be, a world with a crippled TP should be an obvious nightmare

Only if you fix it the wrong way, as you propose, rather than fixing it the right way.

So, what is this ‘right’ way(see more below)?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

Don’t try to conflate “the trading post that facilitates the players” with “the trading post that allows people to make money from money,” as if the two things HAVE to be related in any way to each other. You can have the former no problem without allowing for the latter.

They may not have to be, but they are. Sure, you can have a tp that facilitates player transactions….but if you remove what flippers offer to buyers and sellers, then its like an intersection with no stops, traffic lights, or organizers: kitteny chaos and very, very slow

Ohoni.6057:

tl;dr if wealth disparity does prove to be a problem than there are ways to combat it. preventing reselling, however, is likely not one of them

So wealth disparity IS a problem, and if there are better ways to fix them, then what would these ways be? If you can offer a better alternative then I’m all ears.

I simply have to rofl at how someone talks about what would result from it, and you tell them that thats the wrong way, leaving that as a one-line response and alluding to a right way, but then demand a full alternative explanation from others. Well, I’d like to hear what YOUR solution is, that would fix those problems, yet still be the same implementation (bind on purchase).

Ohoni.6057:

Are you one of those people that thinks a burger flipper should make the same amount of money per year that an executive in charge of running a multi-billion dollar business does? Because it sure sounds like it.

Not the same amount, but assuming they put the same time and effort into it, the difference should not be the thousands of times that it currently is. I think in the current US economy, the people on the low end make way too little and the people at the top way too much, even if we can agree that the people at the top generally deserve to make at least a bit more per hour.

Someone already gave a good answer to this, but to add, how much skill does it take, beyond the knowledge of how, to run a machine? How much skill does it take to go through, understand, manage, and otherwise run a multi-billion dollar company? Just compare those for a moment.

Ohoni.6057:

If the TP flippers added nothing to the game, then they wouldn’t be able to get any gold from other players.

That’s a very flawed argument. You don’t need to add anything to take, you just need to be in the right place at the right time.

They do add, though. Convenience. They provide to those who are willing to spend more and get less for their items in exchange to get it NOW NOW NOW. How do stores make money? As an example, a company that sells clothes. Sure, you could buy all the materials and things, then make it yourself, but that takes time, effort, and skill. They do that work in exchange for the money you give them, some of which is used to pay for more clothes. In this case though, its waiting. A flipper waits for those who pay them and sell to them, in exchange for money.

Ohoni.6057:

Those other players CHOOSE to give their gold to the TP flipper in exchange for an instant transaction at a reasonable price.

Yes, but only because they don’t understand that they could get a better price with almost no difference in the time involved, and they don’t understand that by supplying the flippers they are making the cost of the items they need that gold for even higher. The flippers depend on the stupidity of strangers, which doesn’t mean that their actions are somehow just.

Either they don’t understand, or they don’t care. Both of them equate to the same thing: opportunity. There are only two ways you could really mean that flippers are raising prices: 1) Flippers overcut buy orders. This would happen anyway if the buyers understood how it works. Case closed. 2) Flippers raised prices by buying up low-value stock. This would generally only really happen if they are either buying lots of low-cost items for speculation, in which case, such as silk, only raises it by a little (I think the main increase was due to the actual demand for it) or if they are speculating on items that cost quite a bit and that they wouldn’t get easily with buy orders. I think this would only apply to a very few items that wouldn’t affect much of the playerbase.

Ohoni.6057:

The TP flipper adds convenience and gets paid for it.

What convenience do they add? Do they remove items from the players’ inventories any faster? No. An item sold via sell order is no less gone from the player’s inventory than one sold at the buy order. Do they bring money to the player faster? Yes, but usually only VERY slightly faster, the player could likely get the same price the flipper does within 24 hours, and it’s only a foolish player that does not have enough money saved up to cover himself for a 24 hour period.

Both of them remove the item from their inventory, they either don’t understand or don’t care. To be honest, if they can’t be bothered to get to that basic level of understanding, they probably don’t deserve the extra money. That goes for most of the paragraph.

Ohoni.6057:

And keep in mind, if flippers were removed, it wouldn’t mean that buy and sell orders would vanish too. People who need things for themselves would still place buy orders and people who sell their own stuff would still place sell orders, so if flippers were incapable of turning any profit on the transaction, the average player would still be able to sell his things instantly and buy things instantly, he just would likely get a better deal overall from both.

They wouldn’t ALL vanish immediately, but you might be surprised at how much less there would be. Get a better deal my Ogden’s Hammer. Sure, buy orders might lower somewhat, but, if the average player is as dumb as your posts suggest, the sell order would raise more if flippers stopped providing competition.

Ohoni.6057:

Wow, I can’t believe how many people want to destroy my dear, sweet, lovable trading post. It’s become an integral part of my game. As a mathematician that spends all day with spreadsheets, I absolutely love it. Thanks you ANet for build a game for people like me.

I get that attitude, and don’t at all begrudge it, but please understand that your gameplay fun comes at the expense of others who have to live in the same economy. If they can set up a “PvPTP” that is completely separate from the actual player economy, in which market tycoons buy and sell items in exchange for currency, none of which is actually usable or earnable through the normal gameplay and therefore a non-issue to normal players, then that’s great, but they should not allow TP players to profit at the expense of everyone else, no matter how fun they might find that gameplay style.

You’re missing half the point. I don’t, and I doubt others do either, find it fun to log on and go see “Oh, there are now 23 items listed below mine.” That competition isn’t fun. I’m not a very big, rich, or good TP flipper. I don’t have thousands of gold. I have a goal for my money, and I have a chosen method: TP. If what I get from it is, in every or even most ways useless, that defeats the point for me. Also, the Clothes Company Argument is valid here.

To be honest, if you don’t like the fact that someone is making more money than you, I only have one thing to say: L2P.

I second this.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s the crux of this, isn’kitten you don’t want to so no one else shoud?. I don’t care what the game was billed at, if people don’t want to play and just stand around the main towns chatting and use it as a social network…they have the right.

They do, they just don’t have the right for that to be the most profitable way to play. I

Why are we talking about rights in a video game? You have no rights to anything in it, Anet and NCsoft reserved them.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s actually a flawless argument, your opinion is just divergent from it. Flippers increase the amount all players can sell their items for RIGHT NOW and decrease the amount it costs for all players to buy and item RIGHT NOW. That is what they add, and that is why they are getting paid.

They do neither. The person selling to the flipper is someone who doesn’t need the item, and the person buying from the flipper is someone who needs it, THEY set the prices. Flippers can’t take credit for both increasing the rices players get for their wares and decreasing the prices they pay for them, when the flipper is always paying the minimum amount and selling for the maximum amount they can get. Without the flipper, the producers and consumers would each be getting a better deal on every transaction.

You are saying that flippers do not overcut other buy orders (raising the sell instantly price) and/or undercut other sell listings (lowering the buy instantly price). Both of these are common practice, and they work well too. So yes, flipper can take credit for both. The only better deals would be buy orders, which a lot of people are too dumb to use according to you.

Ohoni.6057:

Not true. There is no way to get a better price without a difference in time.

Yes, but often the “difference in time” is relatively negligible, 24 hours or less. It’s a very rare case in which a player absolutely needs his cash immediately, but often players are unaware that they can get significantly more for their wares if they are just willing to wait until tomorrow to claim it. If instead of listing only current buy and sell offers, the TP UI were to show the average SELL price of a given item over one, seven, and thirty days, then I think players would be far more likely to insist on getting the fair market value for their item, rather than settling for selling it at the buy order price, or picking it up for the Sell price when they don’t need it right away.

So you’re telling me that the average player is incapable of comparing TWO numbers, but giving them SIX more is going to make their comparing skills better? That is just illogical. If they don’t already know to place buy orders if they want items and sell orders when the don’t want items, then I don’t think giving them six additional numbers will help, but rather confuse.

Ohoni.6057:

The reason most people play to the game of the flippers is because they do not understand the nature of the market, they do not track price fluctuations, they do not test how long it takes for an item to move, they don’t not understand how much money they are missing and how little effort it would take to avoid doing so. To some degree that is as much their fault as a newb that leaves a safe zone alone in a PvP game and gets jumped for his efforts, but it’s still predatory behavior to take advantage of it.

If there is a factory worker that screws bolts onto car wheels all day, but they know they could make $1,000 a day with the same skillset they have now, do you think they would still do factory work? The reason that doesn’t occur much is because the factory worker probably doesn’t have the skills, training, and knowledge to be able to do that. Do you think a person who puts in almost no effort should earn as much as someone who does learn the nature of markets, track timing and price movements, and what they need to do to make more/evade loss?

Ohoni.6057:

If your supporting argument is true, then nothing we are going to be able to do will “fix” the issue because the players will still be too incompetent, illiterate, and/or lazy to participate at an effective level.

Bind on Purchase. It may not make the average player into market tycoons, but it would greatly reduce the ability for market tycoons to do it either, which would therefore raise the relative income value of every other activity in the game.

In other words, ruin some people’s fun and inconvenience everyone just so you can feel safe that nobody earns that much more than you while markets burn and items scream in terror as they are immolated on the spot? To stand on what you think is high moral ground while prices rise to drown those without money and people curse at Anet because 100 gems now costs 16 gold, since all those gold sinks drop away and inflation is on the high tide?

Ohoni.6057:

Without them, the volume of trades would significantly be reduced, the prices you get from selling your items would be significantly lower, and the prices you pay to buy would be significantly higher.

That makes no sense. Either the amount you get would be lower OR the amount you pay would be higher, you can’t have both at once UNLESS you have a middleman buying low and selling high. If the middleman is not part of the equation, then every product where the seller sells low, someone is getting a good deal buying it, and ever product that someone buys for a lot, someone is getting a good deal selling it. The difference is, the benefit would always go to an adventurer, and not to a middleman.

You make no sense. Either you don’t understand the nature of price competition and how the TP is FIFO, or you are just ignoring it to make a point. See: under/overcutting, common practice.

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t begrudge it, but you want it deleted from the game because you don’t understand it? Sounds legit…

I just don’t want them to be PvPing on the same economy I’m trying to use to play the PvE game. Like I said, I’d be find if ANet set up some sort of “PvP TP,” one that operates like the current one, only using items and currency that do not interact with any other aspect of the game, like the sPvP system this game launched with. I recognize the validity of the TP playstyle, I just think that it’s incompatible with the rest of the game.

See: What part of TPing is fun (hint: not finding half a dozen listings below yours).

Ohoni.6057:

Lol, take the adventurer out of the economy, what would the flippers have to flip with neither suppliers nor customers?

If the game is that dead, there isn’t much point. It’s nowhere near close to that far dead.

Couldn’t fit it all in one.

So, what is this ‘right’ way(see more below)?

The right way is one that wouldn’t cripple the TP, obviously.

but if you remove what flippers offer to buyers and sellers, then its like an intersection with no stops, traffic lights, or organizers: kitteny chaos and very, very slow

Lol, what flippers “offer” to the players, how very generous of them.

Someone already gave a good answer to this, but to add, how much skill does it take, beyond the knowledge of how, to run a machine? How much skill does it take to go through, understand, manage, and otherwise run a multi-billion dollar company? Just compare those for a moment.

We’re talking about human beings. Skill shouldn’t make a huge difference in income. Just because anyone can do something doesn’t mean that the people doing it don’t deserve compensation for time and effort spent on it. Just because you need to know more to be able to run a stock trade than to carry boxes around doesn’t mean that the former needs to pay way more than the latter.

They do add, though. Convenience. They provide to those who are willing to spend more and get less for their items in exchange to get it NOW NOW NOW.

No they don’t. You don’t need a flipper for that. Normal players put up buy orders too, normal players put up sell order too. Players that needs something NOW NOW NOW could still find it even without flippers.

They wouldn’t ALL vanish immediately, but you might be surprised at how much less there would be. Get a better deal my Ogden’s Hammer. Sure, buy orders might lower somewhat, but, if the average player is as dumb as your posts suggest, the sell order would raise more if flippers stopped providing competition.

The thing is though, there are still savvy players, and they would still get good deals on their buys and sells, because they would be paying attention, and they would still come out marginally ahead. It would just cut down in the volume of trading, you’d have people selling a few weapons per night that they looted themselves, or buying a few weapons per night that they needed, rather than buying dozens of weapons at low prices and selling them at higher.

You’re missing half the point. I don’t, and I doubt others do either, find it fun to log on and go see “Oh, there are now 23 items listed below mine.” That competition isn’t fun. I’m not a very big, rich, or good TP flipper. I don’t have thousands of gold. I have a goal for my money, and I have a chosen method: TP. If what I get from it is, in every or even most ways useless, that defeats the point for me. Also, the Clothes Company Argument is valid here.

Then why do you care whether they fix the TP or not? If they do, you can just do something else to make your money. The idea is to balance them out so that there isn’t a “best” way to earn gold, at least not one that is way better.

Why are we talking about rights in a video game? You have no rights to anything in it, Anet and NCsoft reserved them.

That’s the point I was making. If ANet decides that they don’t like TP flippers being vastly more profitable than other activities, and decide to patch out that little exploit, then the flippers have no right to complain.

So you’re telling me that the average player is incapable of comparing TWO numbers, but giving them SIX more is going to make their comparing skills better?

No, I’m saying show thre numbers, the actually SELL prices. Not the price people are asking to get it for, not the price people are asking to sell it for, the price people actually GOT. Right now, you can see that someone is asking 25g for something, and that something is offering 5g for it, so if you ask for 24.99g then will it move? If you ask for 6g will it move? No idea. You can guess, but you don’t know unless you’ve moved a few yourself. If, however, the system shows that they’ve sold several on average at 24g today, 25.5g over the week, and 25g over the month, then you have a much better idea that 24g will move fairly quickly, 23g will move it without concern, etc. It’s a much more informative number than buy or sell orders is, even if you track them long term.

If there is a factory worker that screws bolts onto car wheels all day, but they know they could make $1,000 a day with the same skillset they have now, do you think they would still do factory work? The reason that doesn’t occur much is because the factory worker probably doesn’t have the skills, training, and knowledge to be able to do that. Do you think a person who puts in almost no effort should earn as much as someone who does learn the nature of markets, track timing and price movements, and what they need to do to make more/evade loss?

I’m saying that in an action/adventure game, financial skills should not be at a premium. Skill at hitting things with a sword should make you far more money than managing stock tickers.

In other words, ruin some people’s fun and inconvenience everyone just so you can feel safe that nobody earns that much more than you while markets burn and items scream in terror as they are immolated on the spot? To stand on what you think is high moral ground while prices rise to drown those without money and people curse at Anet because 100 gems now costs 16 gold, since all those gold sinks drop away and inflation is on the high tide?

No, in none of those words. None of those words make much sense.

See: What part of TPing is fun (hint: not finding half a dozen listings below yours).

Again, if you don’t find playing the TP to be inherantly fun, then you shouldn’t complain if they make it so that other methods of the game are more financially rewarding. If they make it so that playing the TP is no more of a wealth creator than anything else, then do something else.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Edit – New game. Each time JS say something awesome, we need to buy Gems.

With real currency, right?

They could simply limit the stack volume, increase the taxation rate, add a decay rate to materials, and remove the API to balance out the Trading volume and speculation. Once players have to manually search the TP, it’ll make flipping at least a bit more time consuming.

Suffice it to say, a lot of players have issues with traders due to basic fairness and equality. It’s sad that babies and young children have a better sense of equality than we, as adults have. Most would simply like the gold generation/accumulation to be equal amongst the various play styles in game. As it’s been since launch, the TP isn’t balanced at all. I have no doubt that any thoughts of it being regulated would be met by traders expressing, “but, my special!”.

Of course, if players had any self control and self regulation, such contrived mechanisms wouldn’t be required at all.

The API is there because the TP has a web server front end. It’s not that ANet released an API, it’s that someone snooped on the data being sent to and from the TP web server and the game and worked it out. Can’t put the Dijinn back into the bottle.

this is a perfect example of “i wana hurt the people who dont play like me” OP is an ignorant person

They could simply limit the stack volume, increase the taxation rate, add a decay rate to materials, and remove the API to balance out the Trading volume and speculation. Once players have to manually search the TP, it’ll make flipping at least a bit more time consuming.

Perhaps, but all that would likely do is concentrate the wealth even tighter, as only the people who really know what’s going on could profit off of it, while everyone else would be hopeless. I don’t think it would make things any better that way.

The API is there because the TP has a web server front end. It’s not that ANet released an API, it’s that someone snooped on the data being sent to and from the TP web server and the game and worked it out. Can’t put the Dijinn back into the bottle.

Not that I’m saying it would be a good idea, but wouldn’t it be possible for them to restrict access to the web server to only the GW2 client itself, and not to, say, Firefox?

this is a perfect example of “i wana hurt the people who dont play like me” OP is an ignorant person

That misses the point entirely. It’s not about “hurting” TP flippers, it’s about balancing them verses other play styles. If, say, Warriors had a trait “Gains 1000% more gold from enemies and events,” and players expressed an interest in maybe either removing that trait or sharing it to the other classes, that would not be a case of them wanting to “hurt” the Warrior class, but just of bringing it back into balance with the others. Currently TP flippers are not in balance with the other aspects of the game. Efforts should be made to restore that balance.

Duke Nukem.6783:

this is a perfect example of “i wana hurt the people who dont play like me” OP is an ignorant person

No, fairness is not ignorance. Try harder.

Fairness doesn’t enter into it at all.

Any player can earn more coin and spend less coin if they are willing to sell the item at more than current high bid or buy an item by putting in a bid bellow current low sell price. The fact they choose not to presents an opportunity for someone to profit from it as long as the gap between the two prices is more than the TP fees and taxes.

Is it fair that a speed run group can earn more per hour in the same dungeon path I run with a PUG? Is it fair that by using a 3rd party web site you know which boss event is coming up next so you don’t have to wait around while others remain ignorant because the game doesn’t tell them?

In the first case you could say the speed run group has skill and knowledge allowing them to complete path. I would say it requires skill and knowledge to be successful in “flipping”.

In the second case you could say that those websites are open secrets and it doesn’t require much research at all to find them and use them to your advantage. I would say the same about all the various trading post sites that sample the entire TP periodically and can provide charts where anyone could see the trading range of any item as well as recent trends in the movement of the price as well as actual supply and so call demand.

Any player can earn more coin and spend less coin if they are willing to sell the item at more than current high bid or buy an item by putting in a bid bellow current low sell price. The fact they choose not to presents an opportunity for someone to profit from it as long as the gap between the two prices is more than the TP fees and taxes.

The “anyone can do it but choose not to” argument is self serving and disingenuous at best.

Is it fair that a speed run group can earn more per hour in the same dungeon path I run with a PUG?

Yes. Would it be fair for them to be able to earn 10 times as much? Probably not.

Is it fair that by using a 3rd party web site you know which boss event is coming up next so you do

Yes, although ideally those features would be built into the game’s UI. ANet has chosen to outsource them, but there’s nothing unfair about that.

In the first case you could say the speed run group has skill and knowledge allowing them to complete path. I would say it requires skill and knowledge to be successful in “flipping”.

Yes, but the profit potential is considerably higher for considerably less effort, and is done employing a gameplay style that is completely out of touch with this game’s core game mechanics.

In the second case you could say that those websites are open secrets and it doesn’t require much research at all to find them and use them to your advantage.

They aren’t secrets of any kind, I’m pretty sure ANet’s linked them themselves and they are using tools ANet themselves provided. There is nothing at all “exploit” about them, just like GW2lfg before they added the finder tool, they are just community aides.. The game’s events would be practically unplayable without them.

I would say the same about all the various trading post sites that sample the entire TP periodically and can provide charts where anyone could see the trading range of any item as well as recent trends in the movement of the price as well as actual supply and so call demand.

I would agree, nobody is really talking about shutting those down, but rather the mechanisms in the game itself that make those strategies so effective. Ideally though they could lock out the sites that charge a real money fee to get better trading data or tips, that’s just downright skeevy.

Ohoni.6057:

Any player can earn more coin and spend less coin if they are willing to sell the item at more than current high bid or buy an item by putting in a bid bellow current low sell price. The fact they choose not to presents an opportunity for someone to profit from it as long as the gap between the two prices is more than the TP fees and taxes.

The “anyone can do it but choose not to” argument is self serving and disingenuous at best.

No, your arguements are self serving and disingenuous at best.

The trading post is the most leveled and balanced part of the whole game. My gold is worth as much as yours at any given time. The fact that some people make more gold on the tp is purely skill and knowledge based. Everybody is given a choice to sell and buy for the price he seems fit and fair.

The reason why some people make more gold than others is not because of the system itself but because the mayority of the player base just doesnt care that some people make alot of profit.

You also cant compare profit on the tp to rewards in game because those are more or less guaranteed, for example gold rewards for dungeons. There is no guarantee that you will make profit on the tp and there is a risk involved.

The trading post is the most leveled and balanced part of the whole game. My gold is worth as much as yours at any given time. The fact that some people make more gold on the tp is purely skill and knowledge based. Everybody is given a choice to sell and buy for the price he seems fit and fair.

The fact that a gold is a gold does not support your argument in any way. The fact that people can make dozens of gold per day on the TP with relatively minimal time invested when compared to the hours of high tension combat it would take to earn that through even the most efficient adventuring means is a critical imbalance in the economy. That you can’t even admit that much is a sign that you’re either being deliberately deceptive or accidentally delusional.

The reason why some people make more gold than others is not because of the system itself but because the mayority of the player base just doesnt care that some people make alot of profit.

It’s patently insane that anyone could believe that. You honestly think that if you asked any player in the game whether he’d prefer to make more gold he would say “nah, let other people make more gold, I’d prefer to make less gold.” Even those kids in the insurance ad know better than that. Are there people who would prefer to run dungeons or world events rather than sitting at the TP managing orders? Of course, but they don’t prefer to get less reward for their chosen play style than for others, and ideally the game would not give them lesser rewards for playing the way they enjoy.

You also cant compare profit on the tp to rewards in game because those are more or less guaranteed, for example gold rewards for dungeons. There is no guarantee that you will make profit on the tp and there is a risk involved.

There is also risk involved in normal play. I’ve often participated in world events or dungeon runs that imploded and nobody got anything from it, especially now that they’ve added timers to world events. I ran the Marionette at least 20-35 times over its run and only cleared it TWICE. I’ve only beaten Teq once out of a dozen or so tries, and never been there for a Wurm win. There’s less risk to some aspects of PvE, but risk is still there.

And just the same, there are plenty of relatively low risk TP methods, which of course offer lower rewards than high risk ones, but are still possible and still more rewarding per time invested than PvE methods. The much riskier investments might be much more rewarding, but they aren’t the only path.

But even so, just because something is risky doesn’t mean that you’re owed a high payout for doing it. I could charge a champ boss solo, and maybe even win, but I wouldn’t get more than a loot bag for it, so I typically don’t bother. If they make the payouts not worth the risk, then people can just stop the gambling. The fact that the TP may involve some degree of risk does not mean that the returns are somehow justified.

Ohoni.6057:

The trading post is the most leveled and balanced part of the whole game. My gold is worth as much as yours at any given time. The fact that some people make more gold on the tp is purely skill and knowledge based. Everybody is given a choice to sell and buy for the price he seems fit and fair.

The fact that a gold is a gold does not support your argument in any way. The fact that people can make dozens of gold per day on the TP with relatively minimal time invested when compared to the hours of high tension combat it would take to earn that through even the most efficient adventuring means is a critical imbalance in the economy. That you can’t even admit that much is a sign that you’re either being deliberately deceptive or accidentally delusional.

The reason why some people make more gold than others is not because of the system itself but because the mayority of the player base just doesnt care that some people make alot of profit.

It’s patently insane that anyone could believe that. You honestly think that if you asked any player in the game whether he’d prefer to make more gold he would say “nah, let other people make more gold, I’d prefer to make less gold.” Even those kids in the insurance ad know better than that. Are there people who would prefer to run dungeons or world events rather than sitting at the TP managing orders? Of course, but they don’t prefer to get less reward for their chosen play style than for others, and ideally the game would not give them lesser rewards for playing the way they enjoy.

You also cant compare profit on the tp to rewards in game because those are more or less guaranteed, for example gold rewards for dungeons. There is no guarantee that you will make profit on the tp and there is a risk involved.

There is also risk involved in normal play. I’ve often participated in world events or dungeon runs that imploded and nobody got anything from it, especially now that they’ve added timers to world events. I ran the Marionette at least 20-35 times over its run and only cleared it TWICE. I’ve only beaten Teq once out of a dozen or so tries, and never been there for a Wurm win. There’s less risk to some aspects of PvE, but risk is still there.

And just the same, there are plenty of relatively low risk TP methods, which of course offer lower rewards than high risk ones, but are still possible and still more rewarding per time invested than PvE methods. The much riskier investments might be much more rewarding, but they aren’t the only path.

But even so, just because something is risky doesn’t mean that you’re owed a high payout for doing it. I could charge a champ boss solo, and maybe even win, but I wouldn’t get more than a loot bag for it, so I typically don’t bother. If they make the payouts not worth the risk, then people can just stop the gambling. The fact that the TP may involve some degree of risk does not mean that the returns are somehow justified.

You are still comparing loot, which is created out of thin air to profit on the TP, which is given to me by other players.

I dont get account bound mats on the tp that are earned through gameplay, i dont get dungeon tokens, guild commendations, karma or skillpoints on the tp.

Most of the time I ask people why they dont play the tp to make more gold, they say, they dont know how (not enough skill and knowledge) and they cant be bothered.

Everybody makes a concious choice to take part in what type of gameplay he participates in and partly, how much he deems his time is worth by offering his loot to other players for a specified price.

Anet doesnt reward players more gold for playing the tp, other players do.

You are still comparing loot, which is created out of thin air to profit on the TP, which is given to me by other players.

Yes, yes I am doing that, because both of them are the same ingame wealth. The only difference is that the adventurers earn the loot by fighting for it while TP tycoons just work the UI all day in town.

I dont get account bound mats on the tp that are earned through gameplay, i dont get dungeon tokens, guild commendations, karma or skillpoints on the tp.

No, you don’t, but you do gain gold, and almost anything worth having can be gained using gold, and very little in the game can be bought without it. I have tens of thousands of units of things like Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite Ore, they account for about 1/3 of my total inventory space between nine characters and the bank, and yet I can’t do anything useful with them because every recipe involving them requires getting my crafters to 500, which takes money, and then making items that cost large amounts of money to make. I also have enough Mists to make a couple of Ascended backpacks, but not the stacks of t6 mats that I’d also need, which again cost cash.

You can get a lot of stuff with money, there’s very little that you can get with the other currencies that don’t also take money. Almost every “BoA” material in this game requires an equivalent amount of cash to make it functional.

Most of the time I ask people why they dont play the tp to make more gold, they say, they dont know how (not enough skill and knowledge) and they cant be bothered.

Both perfectly valid reasons, but not a justification for those who do know how, and do both to make nearly as much money as they do. It’s just an unbalanced system. It’s not unbalanced in the way that I believe you were denying earlier, that it’s an “unlevel playing field,” but it’s unbalanced against other activities. It’s balanced in the way that a good FPS game is balanced, in that the best player will win and the game won’t favor one player over another, but it’s unbalanced in that it favors those who play this one aspect of the game well over people who play the entire rest of the game well.

IF they had marketed this game as an economics simulator in which you could also swing a sword around on the side, then sure, why not? But they marketed it as a grand adventure, so it’s their duty to manage the economy in such a way that the ADVENTURERS are the ones that win, not the stock brokers.

Anet doesnt reward players more gold for playing the tp, other players do.

Because of the way ANet designed the marketplace to favor them. Perhaps this was not a conscious choice on their part, but it was still a consequence of their design choices, to list buy and sell orders, but not the actual completed transaction prices. To allow players to buy items off the market, with no personal need for them, and instead then relist them at a more favorable price. They didn’t have to allow any of that, but they did, and they can still fix it.

The “anyone can do it but choose not to” argument is self serving and disingenuous at best.

No it isn’t. Where do you think the money a flipper earns come from? It comes from taking the risk of posting an item for sale NOT at the high bid and NOT buying items at at the current low sale price. You want to deny flippers their source of income? Then don’t use the TP like an NPC vendor.

I said this before, flippers are just player vendors willing to sell you an item for X but buy it back for much less than X. Exactly what NPC vendors do. They never buy back an item for as much as they are willing to sell it to you for. The difference is player vendors are willing to pay the player more for an item and consequently sell it for more as well.

Yes, but the profit potential is considerably higher for considerably less effort, and is done employing a gameplay style that is completely out of touch with this game’s core game mechanics.

But it’s not considerably less effort. Different effort. And I contend that both speed runs and champ trains are a degenerated form of game play, leveraging game mechanics in ways they were never intended. Speed runners know that enemy NPC leashes will keep the party from pulling ever critter along with them preventing a very messy battle when they do stop. And champ trains leverage waypoints, respawn times, encounter scaling and improved champ rewards to rack in the drops.

They aren’t secrets of any kind, I’m pretty sure ANet’s linked them themselves and they are using tools ANet themselves provided. There is nothing at all “exploit” about them, just like GW2lfg before they added the finder tool, they are just community aides.. The game’s events would be practically unplayable without them.

They why was it I only heard about them when I decided to check out the forums. Not every player joining an MMO is going to search the web for 3rd party tools. I went several months before I heard about TP sites like GW2Spidy, any of the event viewers, WvW aids, annotated T6 mat maps or the GW2lfg? ANet doesn’t advertise them in any official way. They don’t even have a list of links to player run sites.

I would agree, nobody is really talking about shutting those down, but rather the mechanisms in the game itself that make those strategies so effective. Ideally though they could lock out the sites that charge a real money fee to get better trading data or tips, that’s just downright skeevy.

Fine, eliminate the mechanisms that make speed runs doable. That train new players to level to 80 without every leaving the Queensdale Champ train.

It’s one thing being familiar with a dungeon path so you know about every encounter ahead of time, plan accordingly so you can do it efficiently and it’s another thing knowing you can bypass dozens of enemy by simply running past them without worry that all of them will be showing up behind you when you do stop to fight.

And preventing a champ drop if you received one in the last X minutes would discourage the rapid, repeat farming of champs as well as the poor gamesmanship that champ trains have created. Heaven forbid you and your buddies encounter a champ DE during your first night playing and finish it before the train arrives. Better have your flame kittenant undies on the the abuse that will be directed your way.

Basically you got your knickers in a twist because someone can earn more money understanding market psychology and research than just mashing buttons with a character built along a published template of traits, skills and items (MUST MAKE WARRIOR ZERKER BUILD), running a detailed speed run walkthrough or joining a train.

Ohoni.6057:

You’re missing half the point. I don’t, and I doubt others do either, find it fun to log on and go see “Oh, there are now 23 items listed below mine.” That competition isn’t fun. I’m not a very big, rich, or good TP flipper. I don’t have thousands of gold. I have a goal for my money, and I have a chosen method: TP. If what I get from it is, in every or even most ways useless, that defeats the point for me. Also, the Clothes Company Argument is valid here.

Then why do you care whether they fix the TP or not? If they do, you can just do something else to make your money. The idea is to balance them out so that there isn’t a “best” way to earn gold, at least not one that is way better.

1) Just because I don’t enjoy being undercut doesn’t mean that I dislike all parts of it. 2) You aren’t balancing. You are removing a method because it doesn’t suit your playstyle. You shouldn’t be able to force your playstyle on everyone, especially in a game that sold on the line “play how you want.”

Ohoni.6057:

Why are we talking about rights in a video game? You have no rights to anything in it, Anet and NCsoft reserved them.

That’s the point I was making. If ANet decides that they don’t like TP flippers being vastly more profitable than other activities, and decide to patch out that little exploit, then the flippers have no right to complain.

No, thats nothing close to what you said. You said, “They do, they just don’t have the right for that to be the most profitable way to play.” As if you get to choose what we have the right to have or not have in this game. As if you get to control how everyone plays the game, to fit how you play and what you want.

Ohoni.6057:

See: What part of TPing is fun (hint: not finding half a dozen listings below yours).

Again, if you don’t find playing the TP to be inherantly fun, then you shouldn’t complain if they make it so that other methods of the game are more financially rewarding. If they make it so that playing the TP is no more of a wealth creator than anything else, then do something else.

The TP is FAR FAR FAR less of a wealth creator than any other method. It is a gold SINK, not creator. It also helps to keep prices lower with that 15% taxation. And no, you simply cannot argue that the flipper is taking money or forcing players to buy their items or at their prices.

Your standard argument for that is Player A sells X to B, then B sells it to C for money. You seem to think that B is then stealing money from A, and/or ripping C off. Short term flipping, this isn’t true because Player A could have listed at about the prices B did, and made that money. Player C could have placed a buy order at about the prices B did, and would have gotten the item. They didn’t. This means that Players A and C are voluntarily giving up money over speed. If they don’t know how to place buy orders or sell orders, then I don’t think they deserve the money. Long term it is a matter of knowledge, forethought, research, and likelihood. Do you think someone should be able to get that same long term money for not having done the research, forethought, etc?

Ohoni.6057:

So, what is this ‘right’ way(see more below)?

The right way is one that wouldn’t cripple the TP, obviously.

You’re still deceiving yourself. You say that there is a way to implement your suggestion without ruining the TP, yet whenever you are asked about it or make a point, you cannot actually identify what it is. If you can’t give a straightforward and complete answer as to what that is and how you would implement it, your entire argument is null.

Ohoni.6057:

but if you remove what flippers offer to buyers and sellers, then its like an intersection with no stops, traffic lights, or organizers: kitteny chaos and very, very slow

Lol, what flippers “offer” to the players, how very generous of them.

Way to miss the point.