Guild Wars 2

I made a comment about this in another thread, and I know there are other discussions about this. I have read through these discussions, and they are polluted with toxic amounts of ignorance. I would like to get straight to the point here.

Expensive orders being undercut by 1 copper (less than 0.01% of the order value) makes the 5% listing fee act as a punishment for being first to list. It does not encourage cheaper prices or a healthier market.

There is a simple fix for this problem: Allow sellers to lower their prices for free.

This will prevent micro-cutters from exploiting the 5% listing fee as protection and will allow sellers to retaliate by adjusting their orders down. In fact the market will be healthier, as prices on over-valued items will be driven down quickly until the market reaches an equilibrium.

Also, the trade post should enforce a minimum price difference between orders. Even something little as 1% would prevent people from exploiting micro-cutting. That is 1c on orders of 1s, and 10s on orders of 10g. I don’t think that is going to be a problem for anyone.

Just these two changes would immensely help in creating a healthier market for high-value items on the Tradepost. These changes have zero drawbacks, and will not allow people to circumvent the 15% sales tax. I’m not the first one to suggest these fixes, but I think they deserve their own thread for better discussion and visibility. Thank you for reading!

P.S: Please add a 1-2 week expiration date on orders. Expired orders should have their listing fees refunded, of course. Your Tradepost is clogged with tens of thousands of useless orders that will never be filled, and it doesn’t help on weekends to have a bunch of junk orders clogging the prices screen (and your servers).

Why should cutting by one copper be removed again?

Freyar.3254:

Why should cutting by once copper be removed again?

Because he hates coming in second place

Because he can’t compete. Maybe a participation medal?
I undercut you, you use your free adjustment to undercut me, then I use mine to undercut you…still second place. Expiration? Don’t even get me started…

illgot.1056:

Freyar.3254:

Why should cutting by once copper be removed again?

Because he hates coming in second place

Oh don’t worry, he’ll turn around and argue that you know nothing of economics.

Wazabi.1439:

Because he can’t compete. Maybe a participation medal?

Everyone gets those, even my very challenged nephew who really doesn’t really participate, unless by participating you mean taking off your shirt in the middle of the football game and running around the field yelling “MY LITTLE PONY!”

illgot.1056:

Everyone gets those, even my very challenged nephew who really doesn’t really participate, unless by participating you mean taking off your shirt in the middle of the football game and running around the field yelling “MY LITTLE PONY!”

Creepy. Even by my standards.

Omg…. I’m having midterm tommorow and you are giving me nightmare…

I like how everyone sells crafted good for below costs so that they lose money on each item crafted.
It makes items cheaper for me as I continue to ignore the crafting money sink.

Amen to that…

The NPC vendors won’t let anyone undercut you.

Seems like a pretty good fix.

Freyar, illgot, and Wazabi. It seems like you are having a fun circle jerk in here. While adding nothing to the discussion, I’m glad you are having fun! Please do try to post something constructive, instead of ad-hominem attacks. Thanks!

Read some of my post to realize how flawed your idea is…that’s constructive.

KDragon.3208:

Freyar, illgot, and Wazabi. It seems like you are having a fun circle jerk in here. While adding nothing to the discussion, I’m glad you are having fun! Please do try to post something constructive, instead of ad-hominem attacks. Thanks!

Please stop making “yet another thread” when we’re already discussing it elsewhere.

Either way, your suggestion’s terrible as outlined in the other thread.

I’d say no to the free relist, yes to the expiration ( i remember disliking this idea too but i cant for the life of me remember why so il vote yay for now )

Free relist = infinitely lower prices (until the floor is hit). Thats no fun and no way for anyone to profit but grinders that dont craft or waypoint. I’d rather just delete an item than contribute to that.

Freyar.3254:

Please stop making “yet another thread” when we’re already discussing it elsewhere.

Either way, your suggestion’s terrible as outlined in the other thread.

It wasn’t being properly discussed elsewhere. Those threads weren’t specifically discussing a solution. Also, those threads were polluted with trolls and circlejerks, which I see you are spreading here.

So, you say my suggestion is terrible. Care to elaborate?

If you can adjust for free, so can everyone. Doesn’t change the fact you aare second, so it doesn’t address the problem(which i don see it as a problem to begin with) you intend to solve.

Second, fees attached to posting discourage speculation, encourages careful pricing. Removing it does e opposite.

Third, timed expiry affects the stock of the item, not supply source, hence only short run price increase, but in the long run price still determined by demand and supply.

For details read the last few of my post here

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Solution-How-to-solve-the-dead-Trading-Post/page/2#post125227

And, an economic textbook for reference, specifically chapters on supply, demand, equilibrium price, price elasticity, perfect competition, long run and short run dynamics would greatly help.

What you propose is poorly thought, brings little to no improvement, and will actually screw up the market by making speculation easier.

Constructive enough?

Masterpyro.4310:

I’d say no to the free relist, yes to the expiration ( i remember disliking this idea too but i cant for the life of me remember why so il vote yay for now )

Free relist = infinitely lower prices (until the floor is hit). Thats no fun and no way for anyone to profit but grinders that dont craft or waypoint. I’d rather just delete an item than contribute to that.

Well I don’t think it would be infinitely lower prices. The prices would lower to something more stable, but aren’t they supposed to?

Truth be told, I actually benefit from the micro-cutting. It’s not the micro cutting itself that ruins the market, but the combination with the 5% fee. It suppresses the market and keeps prices artificially high. It allows myself and other to use the TP as a speculation machine, while selling the actual items off-market through trade chat. My server has constant exotic trades spammed through the map chats of Lion’s Arch, Orr, etc.

On the flip-side, buy orders are free to relist, and the exact opposite happens. Microcutting happens, but then I raise my buy orders by significant margins. Eventually the micro-cutting stops and buy orders stabilize.

So, here is a situation where buy orders are free to relist, and things work great! People are not spamming map chat with exotic buy orders. However, sell orders on TP cost 5% to relist, and everyone is spamming map chat looking to sell. The TP is obviously not working as intended for selling exotics, especially on my server. I’ll continue to spam map chat and make a killing like everyone else, but I’d rather Guild Wars 2 be a better game for everyone.

Wazabi.1439:

If you can adjust for free, so can everyone. Doesn’t change the fact you aare second, so it doesn’t address the problem(which i don see it as a problem to begin with) you intend to solve.

It absolutely addresses the problem, and I know this from experience, because I have to deal with the exact same thing with buy orders.

On buy orders, if someone undercuts me by 1 copper, I undercut them by 10 silver. We can do battle in a bit of market PvP (which is fine) until my buy order reaches a price that my competition doesn’t want to compete with, or that I don’t want to compete with. Everyone participating figures out what they’re willing to pay, relent, or simply not compete with. From that competition, a sense of value is obtained.

This makes sense. I am completely fine with this. On the selling side of things, the above does not happen. There’s no fair competition to discover the value of selling the item, because you are penalized for relisting. What ends up happening, is the item price stays artificially inflated, and everyone is gambling on when to place their -micro-cut order to possibly steal the sale. The guys with the best chances of winning are playing closest to peak times, where their limited time as lowest seller has the most possible exposure.

Second, fees attached to posting discourage speculation, encourages careful pricing. Removing it does e opposite.

Then why is the exact opposite happening for the exotic market? The exotic market on TP is rampant with wild speculation on sell orders.

How does it encourage careful pricing? If anything, it encourages speculation even more, in the opposite direction. The high value market moves much slower than commodities and lower value items. If I want to sell my item within a reasonable time frame:

A) I play around peak time, where market activity is high and there is possibly enough demand to cut through the 1c undercutting on my order.

B) I speculate on what value I can sell the item so that nobody would bother undercutting it, which is far below what the fair value would be if I were to list my orders around peak time.

The 5% fee does not scale properly to higher valued items, and it turns into a punishment for players who list items outside peak hours. This is not how it’s supposed to work. Auction house systems work much better in achieving a fair price for the buyer and seller, regardless of timezone restrictions, but that would be a much bigger project for anet to implement.

Also, by using the above logic, removing the fee should increase speculation and discourage careful pricing (which makes no sense to me). Except the exact opposite happens with buy orders, which are completely free to adjust. Buy orders are much more stable and better representation of demand for an item.

If the listing fee were a good thing, then people would be spamming public channels with buy orders, and using the tradepost for sell orders. The exact opposite is happening. I don’t think your logic makes sense.

Third, timed expiry affects the stock of the item, not supply source, hence only short run price increase, but in the long run price still determined by demand and supply.

Expiration dates had nothing to do with my original discussion, I merely suggested it as a possible solution to get rid of all the garbage orders on the tradepost that are sitting there for eternity. The TP is flooded with buy orders that are 1c for 50g items, buy orders on items below vendor value, and buy orders on items that aren’t even sellable. The TP is full of garbage orders and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s affecting stability.

Constructive enough?

That you try is more than enough. :-)

Edit: Cleaned up a bit.

KDragon.3208:

Expiration dates had nothing to do with my original discussion, I merely suggested it as a possible solution to get rid of all the garbage orders on the tradepost that are sitting there for eternity. The TP is flooded with buy orders that are 1c for 50g items, buy orders on items below vendor value, and buy orders on items that aren’t even sellable. The TP is full of garbage orders and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s

It’s a bug that people are able to list a buy order for less than an items worth. You can’t list a item for less than what it’s vendor worth is so all them buy orders are pointless.

Maybe 5% tax for buy orders? I would like to hear whining of speculants

I’m going to agree with KDragon here. If we want/need to revise DOWN a price, we should be able to do so for free. I’d add though that if we want to increase a price we should be able to do so but subject to 5% on the difference.

Yes it will cause pricing wars (good for buyers) but it allows traders more flexibility to compete AND CORRECT ERRORS which I view as the most important use case for this change.

And while we’re at is, let us adjust buy orders – my hands hurt with the current system :/

Person A sets an item for 50 copper.

Person B sets an item for 49 copper.

Person C sets an item for 48 copper.

Person A resets their price free of charge to 47 copper.

Person B resets their price free of charge to 46 copper.

Person C resets their price free of charge to 45 copper.

Repeat this, not with 3 people but with 200 people all freely undercutting each other until the floor is met.

Now, with the current system we at least take out 5% of the posting fee as a money sink each time people do this. This also stops people from radically lowering their price every time someone posts below them because eventually they will completely lose any profit by constantly canceling sell orders and reposting them for 1 copper to beat out the person that just undercut them.

I thought this would be obvious but I guess I have to spell it out for some people. Allowing players to freely change their sell price will do nothing but net you less for each item and do away with a decent money sink.

Person A sets an item for 50 copper.

Person B sets an item for 49 copper.

Person C sets an item for 48 copper.

Person A resets their price free of charge to 47 copper.

Person B resets their price free of charge to 46 copper.

Person C resets their price free of charge to 45 copper.

Repeat this, not with 3 people but with 200 people all freely undercutting each other until the floor is met.

Now, with the current system we at least take out 5% of the posting fee as a money sink each time people do this. This also stops people from radically lowering their price every time someone posts below them because eventually they will completely lose any profit by constantly canceling sell orders and reposting them for 1 copper to beat out the person that just undercut them.

I thought this would be obvious but I guess I have to spell it out for some people. Allowing players to freely change their sell price will do nothing but net you less for each item and do away with a decent money sink.

In EvE, actually, there is small fixed fee on lowering sell order price. And 5 minutes timer for change(once in 5 minutes, you changed – wait for another 5 minutes). For GW2, it’s like 15 minutes or something.
Speculants will whine on those changes.

Maxster.4521:

Person A sets an item for 50 copper.

Person B sets an item for 49 copper.

Person C sets an item for 48 copper.

Person A resets their price free of charge to 47 copper.

Person B resets their price free of charge to 46 copper.

Person C resets their price free of charge to 45 copper.

Repeat this, not with 3 people but with 200 people all freely undercutting each other until the floor is met.

Now, with the current system we at least take out 5% of the posting fee as a money sink each time people do this. This also stops people from radically lowering their price every time someone posts below them because eventually they will completely lose any profit by constantly canceling sell orders and reposting them for 1 copper to beat out the person that just undercut them.

I thought this would be obvious but I guess I have to spell it out for some people. Allowing players to freely change their sell price will do nothing but net you less for each item and do away with a decent money sink.

In EvE, actually, there is small fixed fee on lowering sell order price. And 5 minutes timer for change(once in 5 minutes, you changed – wait for another 5 minutes). For GW2, it’s like 15 minutes or something.
Speculants will whine on those changes.

The fee is a requirement. The timer may help a little against 1-2 people in a war to try and undercut each other, but even they won’t undercut each other so much they lower the price to the floor.

A timer would be completely useless when 20-30 people are trying to undercut each other by 1 copper.

illgot.1056:

Maxster.4521:

Person A sets an item for 50 copper.

Person B sets an item for 49 copper.

Person C sets an item for 48 copper.

Person A resets their price free of charge to 47 copper.

Person B resets their price free of charge to 46 copper.

Person C resets their price free of charge to 45 copper.

Repeat this, not with 3 people but with 200 people all freely undercutting each other until the floor is met.

Now, with the current system we at least take out 5% of the posting fee as a money sink each time people do this. This also stops people from radically lowering their price every time someone posts below them because eventually they will completely lose any profit by constantly canceling sell orders and reposting them for 1 copper to beat out the person that just undercut them.

I thought this would be obvious but I guess I have to spell it out for some people. Allowing players to freely change their sell price will do nothing but net you less for each item and do away with a decent money sink.

In EvE, actually, there is small fixed fee on lowering sell order price. And 5 minutes timer for change(once in 5 minutes, you changed – wait for another 5 minutes). For GW2, it’s like 15 minutes or something.
Speculants will whine on those changes.

The fee is a requirement. The timer may help a little against 1-2 people in a war to try and undercut each other, but even they won’t undercut each other so much they lower the price to the floor.

A timer would be completely useless when 20-30 people are trying to undercut each other by 1 copper.

That’s depends on how fast sells particular item. If it’s like 10-15 in interval time – it will help. And, if it’s like 1 in a 4-6 intervals – those 20-30 people just go for another item.

KDragon.3208:

I made a comment about this in another thread, and I know there are other discussions about this. I have read through these discussions, and they are polluted with toxic amounts of ignorance. I would like to get straight to the point here.

Expensive orders being undercut by 1 copper (less than 0.01% of the order value) makes the 5% listing fee act as a punishment for being first to list. It does not encourage cheaper prices or a healthier market.

There is a simple fix for this problem: Allow sellers to lower their prices for free.

This will prevent micro-cutters from exploiting the 5% listing fee as protection and will allow sellers to retaliate by adjusting their orders down. In fact the market will be healthier, as prices on over-valued items will be driven down quickly until the market reaches an equilibrium.

Also, the trade post should enforce a minimum price difference between orders. Even something little as 1% would prevent people from exploiting micro-cutting. That is 1c on orders of 1s, and 10s on orders of 10g. I don’t think that is going to be a problem for anyone.

Just these two changes would immensely help in creating a healthier market for high-value items on the Tradepost. These changes have zero drawbacks, and will not allow people to circumvent the 15% sales tax. I’m not the first one to suggest these fixes, but I think they deserve their own thread for better discussion and visibility. Thank you for reading!

P.S: Please add a 1-2 week expiration date on orders. Expired orders should have their listing fees refunded, of course. Your Tradepost is clogged with tens of thousands of useless orders that will never be filled, and it doesn’t help on weekends to have a bunch of junk orders clogging the prices screen (and your servers).

copy/paste of mine from another thread asking for the same thing:

No, and you shouldn’t be able to. Here is why:

If you are allowed to change the price without the need to relist it again, people would post the item up for as low as possible so their 5% fee is also as low as possible, then up the price immediately to the market value of the item in order to get around the 5% fee as much as possible.

if they want to undercut you, then that’s competition, tough luck.
————————-

I do agree on some expiration, things shouldn’t last forever up on there. but not for server space reasons, as that’s not really an issue.

Expiration? Don’t even get me started…

I laughed xD

Omg…. I’m having midterm tommorow and you are giving me nightmare…

what was up with the “If you’re still in college…” comment earlier when you are too?

Though I am going to have to agree with Wazabi on this one, you shouldn’t be allowed to change the prices after you have posted as it would get you around the 5% listing fee.

If you are allowed to change the price without the need to relist it again, people would post the item up for as low as possible so their 5% fee is also as low as possible, then up the price immediately to the market value of the item in order to get around the 5% fee as much as possible.

And that was an answer for

There is a simple fix for this problem: Allow sellers to lower their prices for free.

Laughable. Learn to read.

Though I am going to have to agree with Wazabi on this one, you shouldn’t be allowed to change the prices after you have posted as it would get you around the 5% listing fee.

Here we get another speculant

My God… so much QQing over simple competition. I undercut people, and will continue to do so, as long as the price remains higher than the current WTB price. If there isn’t room for much price variance, I’ll just take whatever people are offering to make a quick coin. Such is life in the business world.

>Allow sellers to lower their prices for free

I can see this an a valid idea, on the condition that the initial listing fee stays the same. But keep in mind that if this were allowed, it would cause problems with the marketplace. People would just constantly undercut each other over and over (even in real time with market campers), thus ruining the in-game economy. Buyers would LOVE it, but item values would plummet in a price war, and that’s never good for both sides.

My suggestion for those who don’t want to get undercut: Sell to the highest offered price. That’s instant. If you want to make more money and post on the open market, realize it’s a slight gamble once you post. Undercutting is a legit tactic.

And no I’ve never played EVE.

I can see this an a valid idea, on the condition that the initial listing fee stays the same. But keep in mind that if this were allowed, it would cause problems with the marketplace. People would just constantly undercut each other over and over (even in real time with market campers), thus ruining the in-game economy. Buyers would LOVE it, but item values would plummet in a price war, and that’s never good for both sides.

That would be solved by appropriate timer on price change. Like 10-15 minutes.

My suggestion for those who don’t want to get undercut: Sell to the highest offered price. That’s instant. If you want to make more money and post on the open market, realize it’s a slight gamble once you post. Undercutting is a legit tactic.

In that case, no need to craft item. Just sell components, and you make more, than selling to buy orders.

Ziggy.7319:

copy/paste of mine from another thread asking for the same thing:

No, and you shouldn’t be able to. Here is why:

If you are allowed to change the price without the need to relist it again, people would post the item up for as low as possible so their 5% fee is also as low as possible, then up the price immediately to the market value of the item in order to get around the 5% fee as much as possible.

And the answer to that is still as unbelievably simple as it was last time: you charge them the difference in listing fees if they increase the price, meaning they still pay the exact same listing fee as if they had listed it at the higher value in the first place.

Maxster.4521:

If you are allowed to change the price without the need to relist it again, people would post the item up for as low as possible so their 5% fee is also as low as possible, then up the price immediately to the market value of the item in order to get around the 5% fee as much as possible.

And that was an answer for

There is a simple fix for this problem: Allow sellers to lower their prices for free.

Laughable. Learn to read.

…uhm….okay….. o.O
pretty sure that answers his question on why you shouldn’t be able to change a price once you’ve posted it. you should’ve pointed out to me what gimmethegepgun pointed out instead, then you’d be able to point that out. it’s obvious that i know he’d want to change price.

And the answer to that is still as unbelievably simple as it was last time: you charge them the difference in listing fees if they increase the price, meaning they still pay the exact same listing fee as if they had listed it at the higher value in the first place.

Oh I didn’t see that part.
while that’d help with the listing price, it still wouldn’t stop that other guy or people from undercutting again though.

Ziggy.7319:

Maxster.4521:

If you are allowed to change the price without the need to relist it again, people would post the item up for as low as possible so their 5% fee is also as low as possible, then up the price immediately to the market value of the item in order to get around the 5% fee as much as possible.

And that was an answer for

There is a simple fix for this problem: Allow sellers to lower their prices for free.

Laughable. Learn to read.

…uhm….okay….. o.O
pretty sure that answers his question on why you shouldn’t be able to change a price once you’ve posted it.

Except suggestion was about lowering price for free.

Repeat this, not with 3 people but with 200 people all freely undercutting each other until the floor is met. Now, with the current system we at least take out 5% of the posting fee as a money sink each time people do this. This also stops people from radically lowering their price every time someone posts below them because eventually they will completely lose any profit by constantly canceling sell orders and reposting them for 1 copper to beat out the person that just undercut them.I thought this would be obvious but I guess I have to spell it out for some people. Allowing players to freely change their sell price will do nothing but net you less for each item and do away with a decent money sink.

It sounds like you are agreeing that the listing fee keeps prices artificially high for higher priced items. This does not make for a healthy market. Your example with copper is completely flawed, because the listing fee is nonexistant in those situations and allows healthy competition to happen. The market is much more accurate for lower value items because of this fact, which is why you see a more narrow window between buy and sell orders on commodities and lower value items. This is because the fee doesn’t prevent people from adjusting their orders competitiively. When you scale the listing fee up to higher orders, that insignificant price becomes astronomical, and it prevent players from actively competing on price.

Profit doesn’t scale linearly with price. The listing fee does. Combine this with the fact that higher value items trade more slowly at much lower volumes, and you get situations where the listing fee is completely disproportionate to any modest profit margin on the item. This leads to the prices of the item skyrocketing, and a small handful of suppliers playing a reverse game of musical chairs, where people compete to be the latest person to undercut by 1 copper. There isn’t any meaningful competition on the price of the item, prices stay artificially high, and people flock to map chat in hopes of a fairer market. This is exactly how the exotic market behaves, and how this can be seen working as intended is beyond me.

I can see this an a valid idea, on the condition that the initial listing fee stays the same. But keep in mind that if this were allowed, it would cause problems with the marketplace. People would just constantly undercut each other over and over (even in real time with market campers), thus ruining the in-game economy. Buyers would LOVE it, but item values would plummet in a price war, and that’s never good for both sides.
My suggestion for those who don’t want to get undercut: Sell to the highest offered price. That’s instant. If you want to make more money and post on the open market, realize it’s a slight gamble once you post.

I don’t believe that allowing people to fairly compete on price will whip them up into a mindless frenzy where they will start selling everything below value. This only happens in some cases on the low-end market because the supply for certain items is stupidly high and drop rates are completely out of balance. Again, buy orders have no listing fee, and low-end sell orders have an insignificant listing fee, and competition is very healthy. It is when you scale this listing fee up to higher end items that it goes from being a minor sink to something grossly disproportionate to the item’s profit value and completely restrictive of competition on the price.

Undercutting is a legit tactic.

Absolutely. undercutting is healthy for the market. The problem is that undercutting is not allowed to happen in a meaningful way. People are undercutting at percentages less than 0.01% of the item value, because the 5% listing fee protects them from the existing competition. The high-end market runs very slow, and people are betting their competition is already locked out and they’re the “last” to post a 1c undercut before a sale finally goes through. It’s a game of reverse musical chairs and not a real competition over price. It simply doesn’t work and traders in the exotic market see this evidence clear as day.

I wish I could say more but I have to leave. Bottom line the proof is in the pudding. Buy orders are healthy without a listing fee. Sell orders on low value items are healthy with an insignificant fee. Sell orders on high value items are artifically inflated and plagued with rampant speculation and price swings because proper competition and price discovery is punished by grossly disproportionate listing fees. Sellers flock to trade chat to compete on more even ground.

Thank you for your reply John Smith, although I guess you are strapped for time and only read into the side-note of junk orders on the market. I hope you do have some time to talk about the other points, mainly how the high-end market behaves opposite to the low-end market and the absurd listing fees on higher end items.

Realized something after reading that last post KDragon:
This stupid 1c undercutting turns higher end items into a FILO system instead of the FIFO any sane system would be.

@ziggy
I’m doing postgrad in economics.
John Smith pretty much sums it up… If you value your item at 100, that’s your bottom line that you’re willing to part with the item. You can sell it at 150, or 100. If you sell it at 150, and assuming free adjustment, undercutting will result in you selling at 100. If it goes below that, you won’t want to sell it. Without free adjustment, you can either set your price at 100 to begin with….or just undercut the current lowest price if it’s higher than 100…again…people can still undercut you. If you can adjust for free, then so can they, so it doesn’t change anything. Yes it could push the price down from competition…but that’s not the main factor of determining price…how much an item eventually sells is determined by how much demand and how much supply there is. Most people confuses the short run (SR)price and the long run (LR)price. Short run price can fluctuate due to imperfect information. No one knows specifically how much supply there is, and how much demand there is…hence the price in short run will fluctuate around a certain long run equilibrium value….but given sufficient time, price will gravitate towards that. I can look at the market of an item now and sell something for 100c, then maybe 5 minutes later at 105c…neither are the LR equilibrium price. But if the real value (not known to us) is 102 (lets say), then eventually LR price will gravitate towards that assuming a constant rate of supply and demand.