Guild Wars 2

The former game director of Diablo 3 seems to have admitted to their AH being a bad influence on the game. What is your thought on this? How does it translate to GW2 or does it do so at all?
I’ll keep out for now but I’ll eagerly read your comments and chime in back later

Source: Joystiq

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

I agree!!

It’s simple, easy to use, and is completely player driven. The only complaints I see are in regards to REALLY high level items, or the items used to craft those items. Many of which the majority of the player base probably shouldn’t be worrying about anyway.

While I’d like to see some improvements to the UI and the information we can get from it, overall, I think the Trading Post is a wonderful, much needed tool.

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Information brought to you by a completely unbiased source. :P

Seriously though, I love the way ANet is handling the TP. That they’ve brought economists onto their team to handle the economy in itself speaks volumes about them. I really don’t have any complaints about it, and I’m looking forward to continuing using it in the future.

I think its great. Way better than having to stay at Kamadan announcing your products.

There’s another thread on this, but I will reiterate what I said in that thread.

GW2’s TP has a tax. D3’s doesn’t. D3’s economy has seen runaway inflation due to the lack of gold sinks, while GW2’s economy has been remarkably stable.

In D3, character power is gated by money. Content is arguably gated in that game. In GW2, power is not gated by money. Hence content is not gated by money.

A seemingly endless supply of in-game gold has always plagued the Diablo franchise. I remember, way back when, in the first Diablo, I would end up dumping gigantic piles of money on the ground all over town because my character, nor bank, could hold it all.

With an endless supply of money, prices will increase indefinitely.

The gold sinks in GW2 are what keep inflation in check and keep the prices of items reasonable…..which is why many items on the Trading Post don’t dramatically fluctuate or increase on a daily basis.

D3 inflation is crazy. GW2 is not.

TP in GW2 is doing it’s job. TP in D3 is not.

The ‘goals’ for each game are very different. D3’s items are unique, each randomly rolled. So when you play, you’re primarily looking for new and better stat combinations. GW2’s items all have identical stats (at a given level) in set combinations. You’re playing for how they look, or to explore new content, not to try to improve your gear. So a way to buy gear is going to affect the games differently because they are fundamentally set up differently.

Plus, GW2 is just better. I was bored in D3 within a month, and then I hit the gearcheck level of progression, so I stopped playing. My issue with GW2 is generally more of ‘well I want to do x, but also level y, and what about trying builds q and r for character z?’

While we do not have the rampant inflation that D3 has/had we do however suffer the some of same consequences from a TP centered economy. Atm some of those are going unchecked, which is very worrisome.

D3 doesn’t have rampant inflation. Seriously.

It has a problem of never sinking items, and having zero horizontal item progression. As a result, all the value of items in the economy is concentrated in the very best items.

You could have an economy with 1000 items changing hands at a price of 1 gold each, or an economy with 1 item priced at 1000 gold and 999 with a value of 0. The aggregate price level is identical, but they are very different economies.

That’s what happened to D3. As time goes on, fewer and fewer items you find will have any value at all, but the value of the few items you do find that are better than is what already on the market will be worth more and more. It is exactly what a basic macro model scribbled on the back of a napkin tells you would happen, and it is exactly what did happen.

It’s very destructive to the economy. But it is not inflation.

Ensign.2189:

D3 doesn’t have rampant inflation. Seriously.

It has a problem of never sinking items, and having zero horizontal item progression. As a result, all the value of items in the economy is concentrated in the very best items.

You could have an economy with 1000 items changing hands at a price of 1 gold each, or an economy with 1 item priced at 1000 gold and 999 with a value of 0. The aggregate price level is identical, but they are very different economies.

That’s what happened to D3. As time goes on, fewer and fewer items you find will have any value at all, but the value of the few items you do find that are better than is what already on the market will be worth more and more. It is exactly what a basic macro model scribbled on the back of a napkin tells you would happen, and it is exactly what did happen.

It’s very destructive to the economy. But it is not inflation.

I agree with what you are saying regarding where the location of the money is, however i’m afraid that D3 have a horrible inflation.

as you are saying, all items are constantly losing value because more and more items enter the system without any items disappearing. and you are right, this is not inflation.
so what is inflation? ok, i’m no, economist and i don’t know how the exact definition follows, but i’m quite sure it’s in the lines of: “if a currency is losing value towards time spent then the currency is inflating.” so if it takes 1h to make 1$ in day 1 and it takes 2h the next day then it means the currency have lost 50% of it’s value over 1 day.

ok, so what stops or slows down inflation in a game like d3 or gw2?

-coin sinks
-lowered rewards ( or lowered drop rate of gold)

in d3 there is only 1 major coin sink. it’s the 15% listing fee (there are other but they really fades away in the magnitude). now, the 15% listing fee is great, because the more money that gets traded the more money gets flushed down the sink. so at some point the inflation will stop right? because at some point the 15% listing fee will remove as much g/h as the player base generate, and thus we have a equilibrium.

however, that’s not how the game is built, the game is built to increase your g/h as you progress into the game. simply put, the more gold u have, the better gear you have and the higher level you can farm = more money as the gold rewards increases by level and by gear ( gold find). so once you can farm the highest level you can start replacing your gear with equally strong gear but with extra goldfind/magicfind. getting to max gear and max stats is basically impossible. so thus pepole will always increase the g/h and the gold will thus lose value. ergo, inflation

yes the inflation isn’t as crazy as it was when it began, but there is still a inflation, and yes there is a inflation here in gw2 aswell ( as you might have noticed on the legendary weapons) but the inflation dosen’t hurt you as much because it’s slowing fast because more and more people are hitting the max g/h that they can produce. this is because it’s very easy to get max gear and farm the highest rewarding content witch is something that isn’t true to D3.

TLDR
there is a inflation in d3. because the g/h generated in the player base will always increase

Charismatic Harm.9683:

A seemingly endless supply of in-game gold has always plagued the Diablo franchise. I remember, way back when, in the first Diablo, I would end up dumping gigantic piles of money on the ground all over town because my character, nor bank, could hold it all.

Why would you need money in Diablo 1 anyway? Everyone just duplicated the same items: Kings Sword of Haste, Godly Plate of the Whale, etc. =)

caiomacos.1694:

Charismatic Harm.9683:

A seemingly endless supply of in-game gold has always plagued the Diablo franchise. I remember, way back when, in the first Diablo, I would end up dumping gigantic piles of money on the ground all over town because my character, nor bank, could hold it all.

Why would you need money in Diablo 1 anyway? Everyone just duplicated the same items: Kings Sword of Haste, Godly Plate of the Whale, etc. =)

Because I don’t play games the way others do. I attempt to play games the way there were designed. I don’t cheat. I don’t dupe. I don’t partake in things that “seem too good to be true”. Whether other people did or didn’t….that doesn’t matter to me. I play games for the enjoyment…..and I really don’t care if other people have “better stuff than me”.

Maybe I’m naive, but I’d like for the games that I enjoy not to be tarnished by people looking to get ahead by cheating.

They didn’t say the auction house was bad for D3, they said the real money market was bad for it. The TP isn’t real money.

If Blizzard hired economists like John, their in-game market wouldn’t have been so unstable.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

caiomacos.1694:

Charismatic Harm.9683:

A seemingly endless supply of in-game gold has always plagued the Diablo franchise. I remember, way back when, in the first Diablo, I would end up dumping gigantic piles of money on the ground all over town because my character, nor bank, could hold it all.

Why would you need money in Diablo 1 anyway? Everyone just duplicated the same items: Kings Sword of Haste, Godly Plate of the Whale, etc. =)

Because I don’t play games the way others do. I attempt to play games the way there were designed. I don’t cheat. I don’t dupe. I don’t partake in things that “seem too good to be true”. Whether other people did or didn’t….that doesn’t matter to me. I play games for the enjoyment…..and I really don’t care if other people have “better stuff than me”.

Maybe I’m naive, but I’d like for the games that I enjoy not to be tarnished by people looking to get ahead by cheating.

I was just making a joke. Internet is just too serious sometimes…

Panzen.4625:

The former game director of Diablo 3 seems to have admitted to their AH being a bad influence on the game. What is your thought on this?

I think that the D3 AH troubles are just a symptom of deeper game design issues and really doesn’t tell us anything about the TP in GW2.

I’m a Diablo fan girl – I’ve spent more hours than I can count playing Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo II, and Lord of Destruction. I pre-ordered D3 and desperately wanted it to succeed. I have to say that I got my $60 worth of enjoyment out of it and there were some awesome moments, but it rapidly became unfun because of design issues.

A huge change was allowed to happen during the later part of the beta – runes were changed from drops to bonuses you get by leveling up, apparently because itemizing that many different things is hard. That kind of fundamental change should not happen that late in development unless you’ve piddled away too much time with no direction.

That indicates to me that there really wasn’t enough thought put into the loot system and how adding an auction house was going impact that aspect of the design. That’s not a problem with the AH, that problem is laid right at the feet of the leader of that design team. Another indicator of not really thinking through the implications of your loot system on the economy: gems have no level requirement on them and it costs far too much to upgrade lower tier gems into higher tier gems given the drop rates. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it makes everything but the highest quality gems worthless. D3 is riddled with those kinds of problems.

By comparison, everywhere you look in GW2, the notion that players will be trading items in the game is designed in. For example, there are Mystic forge recipes that can upgrade low level materials into higher ones and the only way to get ectos is by salvaging high level rare items. It appears to me that a lot of thought went into creating a net of economic forces that would keep the economy fairly constrained. Is it perfect? Nope, systems that complex rarely are, but it is really well done in my opinion.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think that the D3 AH troubles are just a symptom of deeper game design issues and really doesn’t tell us anything about the TP in GW2.

I think D3 was just a big middle finger to the original creators of the Diablo series for leaving blizzard like they did. They went on to make Hellgate London which failed miserably but some of them stuck with what they knew and found success in the Torchlight series.

The storyline in D3 was tasteless and predictable. Environments were like a gothic take on the Wizard of Oz meets Candyland. They made the Barbarian go SSJ3 and they made Super Ultra Mega Diablo that you had to fight in heaven and smash all the way back down to hell. The gameplay and loot systems that brought people in and made them addicted to the original series was left untouched because they knew that was the true moneymaker.

Pandemoniac.4739:

That indicates to me that there really wasn’t enough thought put into the loot system and how adding an auction house was going impact that aspect of the design. That’s not a problem with the AH, that problem is laid right at the feet of the leader of that design team. Another indicator of not really thinking through the implications of your loot system on the economy: gems have no level requirement on them and it costs far too much to upgrade lower tier gems into higher tier gems given the drop rates. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it makes everything but the highest quality gems worthless. D3 is riddled with those kinds of problems.

The people they had on the development team for D3 had absolutely zero experience with that genre of game. A top-down isometric RPG like Diablo or Torchlight requires the depth of screenplay that an RTS provides but the feeling of character customization that is likened to table-top games. They got the first part right and the second part WAY wrong. In their defense, they had no idea what they were getting into.

If the guys at bliz really thought that there wouldn’t be masses upon masses of people hoarding server space for the littlest trades ever, then not only did they not play D2, they’re also completely oblivious to online markets. Everyone wants to trade what they don’t want for a type of currency which allows them to buy what they do want. Its how we all live our lives right now, why would it be any different in a game that allows you to do the same exact thing?

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

How exactly is this the case? I sense strong bias leading to inaccuracy.

The designers of Diablo 3 were blinded by profits. They built a system without understanding of the most basic laws of economics. Supply and demand.

A first year college student could do better than they did.

Calae.1738:

The designers of Diablo 3 were blinded by profits. They built a system without understanding of the most basic laws of economics. Supply and demand.

To be fair, I think their failing was that they treated the auction house as a game mechanic instead of a simulation of an economy. I don’t know that they had any economists involved in the game design. Pair that with an inexperienced lead designer an it’s a recipe for disaster.

I think their motivation was less about making boatloads of money, and more about taking the money out of the pockets of the RMTs and putting it in the coffers of the folks that invested the time, money, and effort into making the game (with a cut going to the players). Blizzard just made a huge mistake (unfortunately one of many) when they decided to allow players to make real money from the game instead of insulating the game economy behind a gem store like GW2 does.

I kind of understand why Blizzard wanted to let folks make real money off of the items they found, but they had too many lawyers involved and not enough economists. It seems like the team working on the auction house was too far removed from the team working on the loot system.

The gemstore is awesome. But Chest RNG is not.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Blizzard just made a huge mistake (unfortunately one of many) when they decided to allow players to make real money from the game instead of insulating the game economy behind a gem store like GW2 does.

Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The mistake with D3’s RMAH is that it exists independently of the gold economy. They should have required that all trades be conducted with gold, and the only way to get RM is to sell the gold. They should have had a single AH, for gold, and a simple feature to sell gold for RM (the conversion rate also scaling to supply and demand). Instead they allowed the RMAH to skip the gold conversion, meaning that all the top items being directly sold for RM (collectively worth multi billions of gold) did nothing to curb inflation. Those items are taxed 15% in RM, but 0% in gold. It’s really not too late for them to change this, but players aren’t likely to go back.

Leablo.2651:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Blizzard just made a huge mistake (unfortunately one of many) when they decided to allow players to make real money from the game instead of insulating the game economy behind a gem store like GW2 does.

Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The mistake with D3’s RMAH is that it exists independently of the gold economy. They should have required that all trades be conducted with gold, and the only way to get RM is to sell the gold.

That’s what I was getting at – the conversion of virtual value to real world value needs to go through a single point of conversion. Having two parallel and unconnected markets for game items makes it unnecessarily complicated to manage the game economy.

Waraxx.4286:

there is a inflation in d3. because the g/h generated in the player base will always increase

The g/h generated by the player base is increasing, for sure, and people are generating a lot more gold per hour than they were at launch. However, their items per hour are also increasing. You’re only going to get inflation to the extent that gold/hour increases faster than items/hour, to a first order of approximation. That ratio has only changed to the extent that people are selling more items to the merchant and picking up more incidental gold find from paragon levels.

Waraxx.4286:

as you are saying, all items are constantly losing value

No. If all items were losing value you’d have a very clear case of deflation. What you’re seeing in D3 is that almost all items are losing value. A very, very small percentage of items are gaining value. To a first order approximation, the amount that the ‘good’ items are going up in value is equal to the amount that the ‘bad’ items are dropping in value.

Waraxx.4286:

so what is inflation?

It is a change in the general price level of goods and services with respect to time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ensign.2189:

Waraxx.4286:

so what is inflation?

It is a change in the general price level of goods and services with respect to time. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is the general increase in price of goods due to devaluation of the currency.

Leablo.2651:

Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The mistake with D3’s RMAH is that it exists independently of the gold economy. They should have required that all trades be conducted with gold, and the only way to get RM is to sell the gold. They should have had a single AH, for gold, and a simple feature to sell gold for RM (the conversion rate also scaling to supply and demand).

100% this. There was a pretty major problem that over a certain value you were better off selling an item on the RMAH than on the GAH just to avoid taxes – even if all you wanted was other items. If you kept the money as a battle.net balance you only paid a $1 transaction fee instead of 15% on the GAH – when selling items for a hundred dollars or more, that was a huge difference in the effective tax rate.

They absolutely should have kept everything on the GAH, with a transaction fee to buy and sell gold for real money; that kept your game economy contained. GW2, by the way, did exactly that.

The system is great. Couldn’t be much better.
However, it takes too many clicks and stuff to get what you want. You should re-design the mechanics of it. For example I want to sell a stack of powerful bloods (everyones favourite money making material).

- I have to click on trade post (O).
- Then I have to wait until the gem store screen loads
- Then I have to press on trade icon
- Then I have to type the name into a search box
- Then I have to press search, or enter
- Then I have to find the item on the list and click on it
- Then I have to click on place a custom order tab (to check the price of the buyers)
- Then I have to note the price (either write it down or remember it)
- Then I have to go back and click on the trade icon again
- Then I have to find my stack of Powerful Blood in the list of the items in my inventory
- Then when I’ve found my stack, I have to click on it
- Then I have to put in the selling price
- Then I have to click on sell

Way too complicated. You should let me design something better for you.

All that is if everything goes smooth, without making any errors. If you make some error like forgetting the price or even remembering you should check potent blood price meanwhile, to make sure your decision is right. It just takes more time.

You’re welcome.

I miss the social nature of WTS/WTB, but appreciate the necessity of the trading post. Transaction history would be nice.

I don’t like the taxation system (and how it was opaque for the first few months), but I get it.

Like everything else in this game, I expect it will continue to be refined and improved over its lifespan.

Finally, there is John. In the beginning, during beta, I was very skeptical. As the game has grown, I feel that you have grown as well, into someone who is deserved of the respect you receive from the community.

Good job and thank you for your efforts.

I will go as far as saying that your role is the most important in the company, and you wear it well.

Allisa

Ps: what happened to Mike O’Brien? Did he cash out and retire, or is he locked in his office, killing Tequatl? quietest CEO ever, since launch! I can’t blame him, though.

Mike O’Brien is extremely busy manipulating the price of ectos and precursors, that’s why we haven’t seen him in ages….

Ursan.7846:

It is the general increase in price of goods due to devaluation of the currency.

Inflation is simply the rate of change of the aggregate price of goods. Inflation can be either positive or negative (or zero), though negative inflation is generally referred to as deflation.

Inflation does not necessarily have anything to do with devaluation of a currency; in fact, it rarely does in the real world. Sticking that qualifier on the definition not only makes your definition inconsistent with the technical use of the term, but with colloquial use as well.

Ensign.2189:

Inflation is simply the rate of change of the aggregate price of goods. Inflation can be either positive or negative (or zero), though negative inflation is generally referred to as deflation.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp

The rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising, and, subsequently, purchasing power is falling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inflation

a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency ( opposed to deflation ).

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inflation

a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services

The first definition, from investopedia, is correct. The second is incorrect. The third attributes the wrongness of the second to a general misunderstanding of economics, which is amusing in its own right.

I don’t understand what distinction you’re trying to draw between a ‘rise’ and a ‘rate of change’ in the price level. If prices are increasing by 2% per year, the rate of change would be 2% per year, and the rise would be 2% per year; is it that if it is falling at, say, 2% per year, the rate of change would be -2%, but inflation would be a meaningless term?

That is, is inflation ‘the rate of change in the price level, but only if it is positive’?

Ensign.2189:

That is, is inflation ‘the rate of change in the price level, but only if it is positive’?

If the rate of change is positive, it’s inflation

If it’s negative, it’s deflation.

The definition of the word “inflation” includes a direction.

I swear I’m not just being pedantic for the sake of it. This is not totally obvious.

When you talk about the ‘rate of inflation’, there’s absolutely no issue with negative inflation. It pops up that way on all the plots, and no one bats an eye.

But when you talk about it qualitatively, and say something like ‘the economy is ravaged by inflation’, the use of the word automatically confers that the rate is positive.

Yet saying that the rate of inflation is negative doesn’t cause any confusion either.

I think I’m getting stuck on thinking of ‘the rate of inflation’ as ‘inflation’ when they’re two different things.

In any case, you’re right, inflation is ‘a rise in the general price level’ or something to that effect.

Ensign.2189:

I swear I’m not just being pedantic for the sake of it. .

Pffffffffffft well I totes am being pedantic for the heck of it.

Personally I love and hate BLT at the same time.
It is really convenient to get anything you want up in BLT, but because it is too easy to access to the whole market as a whole, inflation occurs very quickly and very rapidly.
The price can gone way up in a matter of seconds if anyone find the opportunity.
This feature can be good for pro BLT players, but gives the majority of population a slap in face when the smart minorities take some quick actions.

It’s quite often that a profession’s definition of a word varies significantly from the general public’s definition of the word.

Arganthium.5638:

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Information brought to you by a completely unbiased source. :P
.

jajajaaja! XD

I would prefer BLM to be more like EVE online, much more useful and diversity of optionsthere. In GW2 i have to recur to external webs/programs not to complement but control basic data even

Its very simple, the AH was a bad idea for a game like D3 because of the nature of the game. Its not a MMO, its a RPG. And while it should not automaticly fail by that, it did because there is not enough content to make an AH worthwhile.

If you look at WoW’s AH, it does work, so blizzard just made a fatal error (design error), its not like their economists are totally crap, just mistaken.

I personally have started taking the trading post more seriously lately, leading me to use a program that allows me to use a calculator and browser from in game. Won’t mention product names as I don’t want to come across as a promoter but software does exist that can bypass the need to constantly alt-tab out to your browser.

The GW2 TP has some major flaws currently.

1. TP has a monopoly on secure trading. This makes player to player trading risky and near non-existent. It forces people towards using the TP.

2. TP restricts pricing options. You cannot sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer.

3. Not major, but TP lacks a way to bid on auctions. This alone can be an interesting game.

These things prevent the average user from obtaining bargains or items at a price which they think is fair.

There are other issues with the economy like gathering and crafting but don’t relate to the TP.

Striker.9413:

1. TP has a monopoly on secure trading. This makes player to player trading risky and near non-existent. It forces people towards using the TP.

This is not a flaw, this is a design choice the Devs made and a feature of this game’s economy. Player to player trading allows players to avoid one of the biggest gold sinks in the game while opening the door for many possible scams.

Striker.9413:

2. TP restricts pricing options. You cannot sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer.

Why is this a flaw? Why reason will you have to sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer?

Ursan.7846:

Striker.9413:

2. TP restricts pricing options. You cannot sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer.

Why is this a flaw? Why reason will you have to sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer?

It would be nice to be able to sell at a lower price if you can’t afford the listing fee. I can’t think of a reason to buy something at higher than the best price though. I don’t understand why when when you got to sell, you only get to see top of book, but when you go to buy something you get to see more depth.

And I think it was a sensible choice to limit secure trading to the TP – I play a lot of multiplayer games, and every single one of them has had a scam that involved swapping items out of the player to player trade windows and/or exploiting latency between server and client.

Player to player trading only has the illusion of being secure. Even if the implementation is bulletproof, there are still ways to manipulate folks into accepting a trade that isn’t what they expect it to be… Yes, those situations could be prevented with a little caution and common sense on the part of the players, but the reality is that folks would get scammed and would expect ANet to sort it out because it is a feature they put in the game.

Pandemoniac.4739:

It would be nice to be able to sell at a lower price if you can’t afford the listing fee.

That’s actually a very good point. I personally think one of the peculiarities of the TP system is the need for a listing fee when you sell your goods to a buy order. Tax, sure, but listing fee? Mmeh.

Ursan.7846:

This is not a flaw, this is a design choice the Devs made and a feature of this game’s economy. Player to player trading allows players to avoid one of the biggest gold sinks in the game while opening the door for many possible scams.

I consider it a design flaw. Scams are easy to avoid. I have suggested an additional confirmation window to trades in many others games to avoid quick switching items/values; no one has implemented it. A read-only confirmation window summarizing the trade would eliminate that completely.

Ursan.7846:

Why is this a flaw? Why reason will you have to sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer?

I would purchase items that were more expensive based on seller name or simply to bypass the people undercutting by 0.1%.

I have not played a game with a global buy offer listing like GW2; nothing I can compare it to. I only see it as a method to prevent players from finding a great bargain. There really wouldn’t be a point in selling lower unless you wanted to give a specific person a deal (which leads back to having no other secure trade method). A fair amount (possibly majority?) of buy offers are simply flippers and not consumers. I’ve done my share of flipping.

Striker.9413:

I consider it a design flaw. Scams are easy to avoid. I have suggested an additional confirmation window to trades in many others games to avoid quick switching items/values; no one has implemented it. A read-only confirmation window summarizing the trade would eliminate that completely.

Scams cannot be eliminated completely, because they rely on lack of knowledge of the victim. No mechanical limits will absolutely eliminate scams. Just think of how many people, when closing unsaved documents, quickly press “yes I want to close without saving” without thinking and regretting it later?

Also to clarify, when I say “scam” I don’t mean just outright thievery. They also include cases in which people persuade others that the value of certain items are much lower than they would believe and potentially rip off other people in terms of the true value of the item they wish to trade. (When someone finds a “great bargain,” you’re also ripping the trading partner off)

Regardless though, the question you then have to ask is, why would anyone want to directly trade, instead of going through the TP?

And the answer always invariably is “To avoid the tax.” Which cannot be a good thing to the economy. Imagine the inflation that would occur without (IMO) the biggest gold sink in the game.

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Good for the industry? Sorry.. which industry? Gaming industry maybe? Because well, the wow AH would teach a lot to the gw2 tp. For istance, there isn’t one single manipulation of nothing on wow. Prices are “written on stone”.
Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price. Variations? Minial to nothing, and a community issue heavily discussed about “why this item should have this price, why now is higher” etc. Even on main world chat , everyone will be able to find an answer by someone.
A single attempt to scam someone overpricing 1 single copper would mark you on your server as a pathetic scammer. And your name, visible on the AH, will be remembered, ruining your market.
Talking about this, considering how many players (the majority) doesn’t find at all so “awesome” the gw2 TP, why we cannot see who buy and sell anything ingame?
Guess what would happens: we would finally discover who is manipulating famous objects like precursors, and well, his “marketing scamming around” will be marked , well know, and ruined real time, as soon as possible, everyone being far from him not buying one single base item. Exactly what happens to Wow ah, attempting to be “the smart guy of the day”. You’re ruined real time on wow in a few minutes until you have to escape from your server , desperate, hoping the next one noone knows you.
As the OP was attempting to discuss, this TP is absolutely something bad managed and wrong, ingame. Clearly our hope to see it disappear , is hopeless.
Even the WTB WTS on gw1 was well driven, price was well know, scams was rare and for fools. At worst, the scams was technical during the transaction by distracted users giving away money for an object with the same icon not reading carefully what he was gonna buy , and some other minor technical scams. What i see about the gw2 TP is the Anet way to skip all those issues, leaving to this system every item transaction.
(Was fun to read the famous bug of the TP duplicating items, i admit)
At least, program it in a proper manner. Beginning from vendor and buyer names.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.