Missing from the TP: minimum increments
Second, if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, depending on the spread between the min selling price and max offer price, the more expensive items may stop being worth flipping due to the TP taxes.
Third, even if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, you can still be outbid by someone who stands around the TP all day! For lower priced items, the increment can be so small that we go back a full circle to your argument that the increment is too insignificant.
It depends on how the minimum increment is handled. I believe that with some thought there might be a way to use it to get the prices near equilibrium more quickly, which benefits a lot of players, including the traders I think. When you find an opportunity, the faster it resolves the faster you can move on to the next one.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
Whether the minimum increment is 1c, 1s, 1g or 1%, there are people who will always top your bid by the minimum amount they can. It won’t stop the frustrations, in fact it will cause more frustrations because now instead of rebidding 2c higher you have to rebid 2g higher. Then another 2g when the same bidder tops you again, and again…
Actually, no, that’s not the case. I do not have a problem being properly outbid. I have a problem with a system that says “I match his bid but sell to me first”. And that’s what the TP is now. Topping my 12g bid by 0.00083% is NOT a real overbid, it’s just an attempt to skip to the front of the line for offerers.
There’s a reason nearly all systems like this in the real world use minimum increments.
Whether the minimum increment is 1c, 1s, 1g or 1%, there are people who will always top your bid by the minimum amount they can. It won’t stop the frustrations, in fact it will cause more frustrations because now instead of rebidding 2c higher you have to rebid 2g higher. Then another 2g when the same bidder tops you again, and again…
Let’s say that ANet follows your logic and decides to take it to it’s logical conclusion: Limiting bids to 1c is bad for competition. So now 1c can be divided down to .000000001c, enabled in an advanced options menu for power traders so as to not annoy casuals.
So you want to sell a green sword level 79 for 2s. 2 seconds later someone with the same green sword comes along and lists it for 1s99.9999999999c
Is this a properly functioning market to you? Is your advice for me to ‘price it properly’ to begin with? What price is ‘proper’, when the next person can take the same amount of payoff minus an amount so insignificant that it may as well not exist?
For a high velocity market this may work as you could luck out and have two people buy the sword and no other undercutters appear, but this still results in 1 undercutter getting more time and more profit than they should under proper competition, and 1 buyer who how to pay more than he would have under proper competition. Two people have been hurt regardless of the outcome to the benefit of someone providing nothing of value to the market.
But take a low velocity market such as precursors: now effectively the same situation occurs. Undercutters can list at 0.000001% less than the lowest seller. This is what leads to the gigantic gaps between buy and sell price for these items, no competition exists because sellers know their offers will be undercut regardless of how lowly they list their items.
Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.
I don’t find the things the OP lists as problems unless a person doesn’t understand how the market works. Annoying? Sure, but they aren’t problems. Don’t confuse competing for goods on the market as a casual shopper as a ‘problem’. That’s simply not how this market is set up in the first place.
I have a problem with a system that says “I match his bid but sell to me first”. And that’s what the TP is now. Topping my 12g bid by 0.00083% is NOT a real overbid, it’s just an attempt to skip to the front of the line for offerers.
While you have a problem with that, it’s not a problem. That’s just other vendors competing with you.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
I don’t find the things the OP lists as problems unless a person doesn’t understand how the market works. Annoying? Sure, but they aren’t problems. Don’t confuse competing for goods on the market as a casual shopper as a ‘problem’. That’s simply not how this market is set up in the first place.
I have a problem with a system that says “I match his bid but sell to me first”. And that’s what the TP is now. Topping my 12g bid by 0.00083% is NOT a real overbid, it’s just an attempt to skip to the front of the line for offerers.
While you have a problem with that, it’s not a problem. That’s just other vendors competing with you.
The intention of competition is to drive down prices. Allowing people to reap the benifits of competition without actually sacrificing profits is a market failure: it makes buyers and sellers worse off.
0.00000000001% is not an appropriate sacrifice. 0.000000001% doesn’t make buyers better off when competition should be giving buyers real price savings.
It’s not ‘annoying’, people complaining about this don’t ‘not understand’ markets. It’s a real problem that leads to non-equilibrium and destructive behavior.
Efficient markets in real life specifically combat this situation with reasonable limits.
Try going to a professional auction and bidding 1 cent more on a thousand dollar auction, or a million dollar auction. That’s what the TP currently allows.
I don’t find the things the OP lists as problems unless a person doesn’t understand how the market works.
Actually, it’s more a matter of a lot of folks in this thread not understanding why the current mechanism leads to inefficiency.
When you decide to bid you should either bid the same as the other people are currently offering, and thus have an equal chance of getting the item, or you should actually go out on a limb and say “I’m willing to pay more”. The current system instead lets people offer no more in real terms, yet go ahead of other bidders. It thus rewards only those with unlimited amounts of time and/or those who use software tools to assist them.
Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.
That is the case in the real world, those who have the time to go to auctions and sit throughout the auction, get a better chance of winning said auctions, against those who make 1 bid and then leave while the bidding is still going on.
If that still bothers you, you can always buy it instantly by paying the minimum sale price. You can also give an offer that is just 1c less than the min sale price so nobody would be able to outbid you in the offer queue.
The only reason why those options would not appeal to you is, you are also cheap, you want to pay the minimum amount that you need to, to win the auction. And guess what? That is also why people paid 1c increment in the first place.
It is not that we don’t understand what you are trying to say, we simply disagree with your views and you don’t seem to understand our counter arguments as you are not even attempting to address them. And as far as the software tools are concerned, they are freely available out on the Internet, you don’t even need to be smart enough to write one yourself. You have only yourself to blame if you decide to deprive yourself and disadvantaged yourself with respect to others.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
The intention of competition is to drive down prices. Allowing people to reap the benifits of competition without actually sacrificing profits is a market failure: it makes buyers and sellers worse off.
0.00000000001% is not an appropriate sacrifice. 0.000000001% doesn’t make buyers better off when competition should be giving buyers real price savings.
True, but there are more than one seller for an item and all offering competitive pricing, then your assessment of what’s happening in the market isn’t accurate. The proof is to actually SEE all the sell orders and what prices they go for. If you do that, you will see buyers ARE getting price savings.
It thus rewards only those with unlimited amounts of time and/or those who use software tools to assist them.
So what? That’s not a problem. Listen to what you just wrote … people are rewarded for giving their time and tracking the market. Why is this something you think is unreasonable? You don’t think that someone should be rewarded in line with their efforts in the game? Again, that’s not so much a problem as simply recognizing that’s how the market (should) works.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.
I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers. That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.
Basically the complaint is that it’s not fair that someone that is constantly monitoring their bids can sell more quickly than someone who doesn’t. I don’t see how adding a minimum increment is going to fix that. Surely there are better arguments to be made.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
It thus rewards only those with unlimited amounts of time and/or those who use software tools to assist them.
So what? That’s not a problem. Listen to what you just wrote … people are rewarded for giving their time and tracking the market. Why is this something you think is unreasonable? You don’t think that someone should be rewarded in line with their efforts in the game? Again, that’s not so much a problem as simply recognizing that’s how the market (should) works.
Let’s put it this way: Do you think the TP should be a FIFO system or a LIFO system?
Should getting a bid in first entitle you to priority? Because currently, for higher priced items, it’s effectively a LIFO system as people can get effectively the same profit and yet get priority by listing at 1c, or 0.00000001% the total price lower.
As someone who believes a FIFO system is preferable, I want this to end. I want competition to be a force for all items so that prices are lower and those who profit do so by providing value to the market.
Let’s put it this way: Do you think the TP should be a FIFO system or a LIFO system?
Should getting a bid in first entitle you to priority? Because currently, for higher priced items, it’s effectively a LIFO system as people can get effectively the same profit and yet get priority by listing at 1c, or 0.00000001% the total price lower.
It’s not a queue at all. It’s a market.
The folks who get priority are the bids and asks that you never see because they get filled too quickly. You’re obsessing about the bids that you can see and ignoring the ones that are getting filled while the bids that are all within 10c of the wrong price aren’t getting filled.
They’ll probably get filled eventually when the prices shift, but I guarantee you that the person that just overbid you by 1c is still behind the potentially many other folks that are overbidding by significantly more.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
Let’s put it this way: Do you think the TP should be a FIFO system or a LIFO system?
Should getting a bid in first entitle you to priority? Because currently, for higher priced items, it’s effectively a LIFO system as people can get effectively the same profit and yet get priority by listing at 1c, or 0.00000001% the total price lower.
It’s not a queue at all. It’s a market.
The folks who get priority are the bids and asks that you never see because they get filled too quickly. You’re obsessing about the bids that you can see and ignoring the ones that are getting filled while the bids that are all within 10c of the wrong price aren’t getting filled.
They’ll probably get filled eventually when the prices shift, but I guarantee you that the person that just overbid you by 1c is still behind the potentially many other folks that are overbidding by significantly more.
You’re talking about high velocity markets. I’m, and basically every other post in the topic, are talking about low velocity markets.
The Copper Ore market isn’t a problem, 1c is a significant proportion of the total value, and the market moves so fast that individual undercuts/overcuts are irrelevent. The Dawn market is something different: 1c is nothing compared to the price and only a few are sold each day.
So instead of talking about a situation that no one was actually discussing, where worrying about 1c undercuts is certainly irrelevant, how about you instead address low velocity markets where your blanket denials don’t hold up as well?
It’s not a queue at all. It’s a market.
The folks who get priority are the bids and asks that you never see because they get filled too quickly. You’re obsessing about the bids that you can see and ignoring the ones that are getting filled while the bids that are all within 10c of the wrong price aren’t getting filled.
They’ll probably get filled eventually when the prices shift, but I guarantee you that the person that just overbid you by 1c is still behind the potentially many other folks that are overbidding by significantly more.
You’re talking about high velocity markets. I’m, and basically every other post in the topic, are talking about low velocity markets.
The Copper Ore market isn’t a problem, 1c is a significant proportion of the total value, and the market moves so fast that individual undercuts/overcuts are irrelevent. The Dawn market is something different: 1c is nothing compared to the price and only a few are sold each day.
So instead of talking about a situation that no one was actually discussing, where worrying about 1c undercuts is certainly irrelevant, how about you instead address low velocity markets where your blanket denials don’t hold up as well?
There’s nothing about what I said that doesn’t apply to low velocity markets other than picking an arbitrary 10 c number.
You don’t see the actual trades, so you have no idea whether the person that just “cut in line” is actually benefitting at all from it. You can’t tell whether the bids go away because they are cancelled or filled. Especially in a market where there is low supply and high demand, you will most likely miss the more reasonable buy offers and asks because they will get snatched up quickly.
Even the third party charting sites wouldn’t catch the faster transactions because I think the fastest sampling is on the order of 15 minutes. How long do you think a Dawn listed at say 540 gold would last? You think that no-one lists it for that price, but you don’t know because you don’t know what the actual last sale price was. The only data you have are orders that have been sitting there a while. The longer something sits, the less likely it is priced right.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
Especially in a market where there is low supply and high demand, you will most likely miss the more reasonable buy offers and asks because they will get snatched up quickly.
Only ‘especially’: only. The only markets that what you’re talking about applies to are high velocity markets where demand exceeds supply and so there is upwards price movement.
What we’re talking about is low velocity markets where demand and supply are approximately equal. In those markets you can very easily see which orders are being fulfilled and which items are being bought because the cost of listing is so significant in real money terms that relisting isn’t an option.
come to think of it again, what we have in GW2 in not an Auction House. it is just a simple trading post.
increment only exist in an auction house.
hopefully Anet will introduce a trading post with an auction house feature (increment, buy out etc)
Anet might want to look at how LOTRO implement it.
Cutie Phantasmer/Farinas [HAX] – CD Casual
Archeage = Farmville with PK
Archeage = Farmville with PK
(edited by azizul.8469)
I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers.
Huh? Are we playing the same game?
I just fully geared my first character with exotics and since my gold is tight I couldn’t just buy everything at what was being offered. So I put in bids higher than the current ones but lower than the lowest offer.
Every single item I had to check over and over again and change the bids because someone had overbid me by one copper. In at least one case, after about an hour it looked like this:
4.00.17
4.00.16
4.00.15
4.00.04
4.00.03
4.00.02
4.00.01
4.00.00 <— my bid
In some cases, I had to cancel and rebid 3 or 4 times. If I had left my original bids in, I’d never have gotten my gear, even though multiple pieces would have sold at virtually the same price I offered.
Now, in what universe is this a system that doesn’t require constant monitoring?
If I bid 4g and someone else wants to pay 4.5g, then more power to them. They are actually offering more money. Someone offering 4.00.01g is not (for all intents and purposes) offering more money. He’s just trying to cut in line.
That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.
You’re again not getting it. It doesn’t matter if you do the 1 copper thing or not. You can increase your bid by 10s, and in less than an hour someone else will overtop you by 1 copper. Maybe you’ll eventually get your item, and maybe you won’t. But you’re guaranteed to get it after the guy who “me too’d” you for a copper.
Basically the complaint is that it’s not fair that someone that is constantly monitoring their bids can sell more quickly than someone who doesn’t.
No, the complaint is that the current system doesn’t encourage actual convergence between bids and asks, it encourages cheesy “me too” bidding that never closes the large gaps in low-volume items. It specifically discourages making higher increment bids, because pretty much no matter what you bid, someone’s going to say “and 1 copper!” and get the item before you do. It makes the trading post more about luck and/or using scripts than actually trying to make fair bids.
I’ve already explained this at least 4 times so either I’m not good at explaining — and I explain stuff for a living — or people just don’t want to hear the argument. Either way, I give up, this thread is pointless. A moderator can just lock it if he/she wishes.
(edited by Qaelyn.7612)
increment only exist in an auction house.
Untrue. Minimum increments exist in ALL exchange systems — auction houses, commodity exchanges, stock exchanges, etc. And they exist to prevent the exact nonsense being discussed in this thread.
If I bid 4g and someone else wants to pay 4.5g, then more power to them. They are actually offering more money. Someone offering 4.00.01g is not (for all intents and purposes) offering more money. He’s just trying to cut in line.
Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you? You want to save as much gold as you can for yourself, but you don’t want to acknowledge that other people may want to save as much as they can for themselves too.
They hope that they can outbid you by adding 1c and they have the tenacity to stay at the TP and up their bid accordingly. If that annoys you, you can always put in more gold and buy the item right off or have a much higher buy offer to discourage competitors. If you are stingy, then you have to go through this annoying and time wasting process just like everyone else.
So make a choice, add more gold or spend more time in a bidding war. You can also choose to use the same software tools as them too since the tools have been free and publicly available, if you are willing to spend time to learn how to use them, just like what some other people did.
Furthermore, 5% increment is still too low for cheaper items, so it doesn’t solve anything for you. There is nothing wrong with the current simple system, you have choices and you just need to make up your mind.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
But does it make that much of a difference between 1c and say 1s for a 10g item? If someone wants to “cut in line” simply because they want to be first, grief, or simply want to spend less than the current “buy now” price, they still will.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
increment only exist in an auction house.
Untrue. Minimum increments exist in ALL exchange systems — auction houses, commodity exchanges, stock exchanges, etc. And they exist to prevent the exact nonsense being discussed in this thread.
And of course Anet could have avoided such obvious errors if they had actually hired someone with some sort of training or education in the economics field instead of just randomly assigning control of the TP to one of their interns.
Actually Qualyn hits home hard. He explains why those that use 3rd party programs to analyze the entire TP cheat. They skip the line. They don’t offer more, 1 copper on X gold isn’t more, they offer the same; their advantage is having cheating tools to quickly cheat the line. And no, the response time of those programs/scripts is not 15 minutes. Darkspirit himself, a programmer of such scripts, said it in another thread, where he considered a bot response time of 16 seconds incredibly slow.
And don’t tell me to also use a 3rd party program, I know for a fact that it violates the user agreement I signed.
(edited by Buttercup.5871)
And don’t tell me to also use a 3rd party program, I know for a fact that it violates the user agreement I signed.
Wrong. We asked ArenaNet many times and they didn’t say that it is disallowed. We even told them what the program does and also made it open source here:
As far as we are concerned we have already done all that we could to clarify this with ArenaNet. If it is really disallowed, then we would have been banned by now. Since ArenaNet themselves did not disallow this program, it is only you who is trying to take this program on as your personal war against it by spreading lies by pretending to speak for ArenaNet when they have never authorized you to represent them.
Right here in this official forum, ArenaNet always have the opportunity to say so, if this program is disallowed. So when have they ever needed you to speak on their behalf here? Even if you are still too timid to take the risk to use it yourself, you shouldn’t blame others who are bolder than you are.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you?
Remember that there is another side to this transaction: either a buyer is paying more than they would under proper competition, or a seller is getting less than they would under proper competition.
The 1c undercutter is taking money out of the other person’s pocket without giving up anything themselves.
You talk about normal traders like they’re somehow doing something wrong- like they should make huge profit sacrifices to reach some impossible state where undercutting by 1c will no longer be profitable. Do you get that doing so would require eliminating profit completely? Most likely even taking a huge loss on items?
The only way to stop 1c undercutting is to make your offer plus 1c no longer worth it, and no one can operate in such a system.
(edited by Risingashes.8694)
Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you?
Because that’s what a market is.
Remember that there is another side to this transaction: either a buyer is paying more than they would under proper competition, or a seller is getting less than they would under proper competition.
The 1c undercutter is taking money out of the other person’s pocket without giving up anything themselves.
You talk about normal traders like they’re somehow doing something wrong- like they should make huge profit sacrifices to reach some impossible state where undercutting by 1c will no longer be profitable. Do you get that doing so would require eliminating profit completely? Most likely even taking a huge loss on items?
The only way to stop 1c undercutting is to make your offer plus 1c no longer worth it, and no one can operate in such a system.
Why would they not be giving anything up? If the max offer price is 5s and they bid 5s1c then they are giving up 5s1c in order to get the item first. And like the OP, they bid by 1c because they don’t want to pay too much. What is unreasonable about that?
The OP is welcome to spend time in a bidding war with them or even bid a much higher price to discourage further competition, or buy it straight if he wants to. The OP has many choices to take.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
They can’t “disallow” these programs openly because they can’t enforce it without a complete overhaul of the TP, and you know it Darkspirit. In fact you know it so well that you have several scripts running at all times to cheat everyone in the most efficient way. A cheat is a cheat, I don’t care about what Arenanet doesn’t say, I care about the contracts I sign.
They can’t “disallow” these programs openly because they can’t enforce it without a complete overhaul of the TP, and you know it Darkspirit. In fact you know it so well that you have several scripts running at all times to cheat everyone in the most efficient way. A cheat is a cheat, I don’t care about what Arenanet doesn’t say, I care about the contracts I sign.
Wrong again. Zicore promised in the forum here that he would discontinue development in this program if ArenaNet states that they disallow it. Obviously ArenaNet never stated that they disallow it.
The only person that calls it a cheat is YOU, not ArenaNet. You can do all of us the justice of at least claiming it to be your personal opinion rather than pretending to be ArenaNet’s spokesman and declaring your stance as also ArenaNet’s stance on the matter. That is deceptive and just not right to misrepresent someone else who always has a voice of their own, if they so choose to speak.
Furthermore, like I have always said in this forum, if this program is not allowed, ArenaNet can always ban us. My game user id is clearly shown here and so is Zicore’s. As far as I am concerned we have been honest and aboveboard with what we do in this issue so far.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
The answer as to why Anet didn’t say anything on zicore is in the paragraph you quoted. Anet said enough in the various legal instruments you agreed to. I’m sticking to those.
Go ahead and cheat all those people that never visit a forum and don’t know there are cheat programs out there they can use; and even then, when they use those programs, the playing field isn’t level because their programmers use more advanced functions they don’t release and keep to themselves to maximize profit. It’s a dirty shady world, and I want no part of it.
(edited by Buttercup.5871)
The answer as to why Anet didn’t say anything on zicore is in the paragraph you quoted. Anet said enough in the various legal instruments you agreed to. I’m sticking to those.
That is also wrong and I hope you would stop trying to lie further by claiming your personal opinions to be also ArenaNet’s official opinions.
ArenaNet didn’t want to set any precedence on them giving app certifications. However, we did made it clear what the program does and we had always been waiting for an answer from them. After they have provided OAuth2 authentication in their official API, then we wont need the game session key anymore.
As far as advantages is concerned, the fact that ArenaNet released an official API is already giving third party apps an advantage. They believe in supporting third party developers to use their API to provide a compelling experience to their customers. Whether you personally like that or not is unimportant to me. The game belongs to ArenaNet, not you, so they set the rules, not you. And we would abide to their rules as much as we can, just not yours. You are giving yourself too much credit in this game, when it is not even yours to control.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
Back on topic, as I will now ignore comments from Dark to avoid further clutter of this thread, I think the 1 copper system is OK in a world without third party TP notifiers, scripts and autobidders. That’s not the TP we operate on though, so I agree the 1 copper increment system merits an overhaul.
Every time we undercut you, you eventually sell to highest buyer.
Every time you sell to highest buyer, we undercut you with that item.
Every time you post a buy order, we overcut you.
Every time you buy from highest seller, you give us money.
Welcome to the world of flipping.
Ranger | Elementalist
The OP has many choices to take.
The OP has many choices, but all of them leave him being cheated out of time which the undercutters aren’t paying for, and doesn’t make up for the fact that under true competition the sellers would be getting far more for their goods than you are now (far closer to the ‘true’ value of those items).
That’s what competition does, brings prices closer to equilibrium. Overcutters that don’t need to actually pay a reasonable amount more to skip the queue are cheating sellers out of money, and buyers out of time.
As to your point on the irrelevence between 1c or 5s overcutting, the point is that the limit should be percentage based. If you undercut by 0.5% then that’s competition, complaining about that is just sour grapes. But currently the price of undercutting is 0.00000001%- that may as well be 0%, and that’s simply unfair.
As to your point on the irrelevence between 1c or 5s overcutting, the point is that the limit should be percentage based. If you undercut by 0.5% then that’s competition, complaining about that is just sour grapes. But currently the price of undercutting is 0.00000001%- that may as well be 0%, and that’s simply unfair.
The OP’s suggestion doesn’t work. If the limit is 5% of the selling price of say 1s, then it is only 5c. If 1c is not a significant increment, is 5c then a significant one? I don’t think so.
And happens if the selling price is just 20c, 5% increment then you brings you back to 1c increment, a full circle.
And at higher prices, it destroys flipping market due to the higher increment. Setting it up as a fixed percentage (5%) of the selling price doesn’t work in all situations.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
As to your point on the irrelevence between 1c or 5s overcutting, the point is that the limit should be percentage based. If you undercut by 0.5% then that’s competition, complaining about that is just sour grapes. But currently the price of undercutting is 0.00000001%- that may as well be 0%, and that’s simply unfair.
The OP’s suggestion doesn’t work. If the limit is 5% of the selling price of say 1s, then it is only 5c. If 1c is not a significant increment, is 5c then a significant one? I don’t think so.
And happens if the selling price is just 20c, 5% increment then you brings you back to 1c increment, a full circle.
And at higher prices, it destroys flipping market due to the higher increment. Setting it up as a fixed percentage (5%) of the selling price doesn’t work in all situations.
Yes let’s only judge this idea for what it does to the 20 copper to 1 silver range, when it was intended to fix an entire system, be it 1 silver, 100 gold or 3000 gold.
5 percent is 5 percent. Five copper on a 1 silver deal is still a big thing, yes. Especially if you’re trading 20 thousand pieces of them.
Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you? You want to save as much gold as you can for yourself, but you don’t want to acknowledge that other people may want to save as much as they can for themselves too.
Again, there isn’t any point even discussing this if people either cannot or will not even accept the basic argument.
I never said anyone should be forced to pay more than me. I said they should be forced to either pay the same as me, or pay a reasonable amount more than me. This gives buyers and sellers real options and enables bid/ask convergence. In the example above, if I offer 4g it doesn’t mean the other guy has to offer 4.5g (or whatever). It means he can offer 4g, or 4.5g or any price above 4.5g. Just not 4.0001g, which is what everyone does now, and which isn’t really a higher bid, just a way to butt in line.
And it looks like my suspicions about the motivations of those defending the current system were at least partially correct.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, a non-refundable price to place a buy offer would solve the problem as well, and be easy to implement. There’s no reason this should be for sellers and not buyers, and it would make people think twice about their niggling “me too, me first” bids.
(edited by Qaelyn.7612)
Again, there isn’t any point even discussing this if people either cannot or will not even accept the basic argument.
This is true. There is no point to discussing this because you are presenting a personal pet peeve as though it is a self-evident truth and expecting everyone to say “you’re right! I totally should be paying a lot more for everything on the TP because the system as it is now is not fair to you!”
Imagine what would happen if you got your way. Say the minimum bid increment of an expensive item like a precursor is 5 gold. You grind and save and sell everything you can to gather like 800 gold to put an offer on the precursor of your choice… and fifteen seconds later someone topped you with 805 gold. So you go out into the world and grind champions and run dungeons and come back a couple hours later with another 5 gold… to find that your outbidder was also outbid, and there are offers at 810, 815, 820, 825… so to be “first in line” you need to offer 830 gold, and still face the possibility of being topped by the other five bidders because some people have a lot more than 830 gold on hand to play with.
Your ideal solution may make you feel better, but it doesn’t work in practice. The buy offers don’t even work like an auction – the “high bidder” may get his item first, but if someone is selling three copies of an item than the top three offers are filled. You’ll get it eventually, the buy offer system is for those who are willing to wait a while to get a better deal. If speed is important to you, then cough up the extra coin to buy the cheapest sell offer and you’re guaranteed to get the item right away.
I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers.
Huh? Are we playing the same game?
I just fully geared my first character with exotics and since my gold is tight I couldn’t just buy everything at what was being offered. So I put in bids higher than the current ones but lower than the lowest offer.
(snip)
Now, in what universe is this a system that doesn’t require constant monitoring?
Well the way it worked for me is I looked at the gear, figured out what it was worth to me, but up a buy order, came back the next day and it had been filled. No constant monitoring is necessary because I chose a reasonable price. Maybe some folks got their orders filled before mine, but it didn’t prevent mine from getting filled.
That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.
You’re again not getting it. It doesn’t matter if you do the 1 copper thing or not. You can increase your bid by 10s, and in less than an hour someone else will overtop you by 1 copper. Maybe you’ll eventually get your item, and maybe you won’t. But you’re guaranteed to get it after the guy who “me too’d” you for a copper.
It doesn’t matter because the way I price my orders, either mine will get filled before I’m overbid, or both my orders and the ones that overbid me will get filled.
Edit I just want to clarify my point a bit… I’m not a trader, and I believe there are lots of players like me who will pay retail to not have to hassle with checking the TP all the time. My goal is not to get the best deal. My goal is to get what I want for a price I’m willing to pay. For example, I will likely never own a legendary, because I’m not willing to spend that much of my gold to get it. I don’t see that as a problem.
Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you.
—Paul Williams
(edited by Pandemoniac.4739)
This is true. There is no point to discussing this because you are presenting a personal pet peeve as though it is a self-evident truth and expecting everyone to say “you’re right! I totally should be paying a lot more for everything on the TP because the system as it is now is not fair to you!”
Using hyperbole and deliberately misrepresenting your opponent is not a way to win an argument.
As it happens, I have the flexibility to check the TP often and combat the cheeseball overbidding. And I use the TP to earn gold fairly well given that I’m pretty new. This thread is not about me specifically, it’s about the health of the system as a whole.
Imagine what would happen if you got your way. Say the minimum bid increment of an expensive item like a precursor is 5 gold. You grind and save and sell everything you can to gather like 800 gold to put an offer on the precursor of your choice… and fifteen seconds later someone topped you with 805 gold. So you go out into the world and grind champions and run dungeons and come back a couple hours later with another 5 gold… to find that your outbidder was also outbid, and there are offers at 810, 815, 820, 825… so to be “first in line” you need to offer 830 gold, and still face the possibility of being topped by the other five bidders because some people have a lot more than 830 gold on hand to play with.
If you only want to pay 800 gold for the item you can bid 800 for it just as you can do now. If others are willing to pay more, then you may have to wait a long time or you may never get the item at all, just as is the case now.
The difference is that right now, 1,000 people can overtop your bid and ensure you never get your item for 800g, despite them not actually paying more than you. You think there’s nothing wrong with that? I disagree.
Having barriers to “me first!” bidding also means that there will be far fewer people actually bidding higher than your price, because there is an actual cost to doing so. Right now, jumping in with an extra copper is free, and so it is abused.
In practice, in a system with barriers to cheesy overbidding like a minimum increment or a listing fee, the bid and ask prices will converge and the scenario you described wouldn’t happen often anyway.
(edited by Qaelyn.7612)
Using hyperbole and deliberately misrepresenting your opponent is not a way to win an argument.
Who’s arguing? That was a lesson. Someday you’ll learn.
Myself, I use the system as intended – if I want to buy something, I buy it. If I want to play TP-PvP I play musical buy orders. You don’t seem to realize that it was set up this way on purpose, and if you don’t want to get involved in the “me first” bidding wars, there’s nothing forcing you to do it.
(edited by tolunart.2095)
Your ideal solution may make you feel better, but it doesn’t work in practice. The buy offers don’t even work like an auction – the “high bidder” may get his item first, but if someone is selling three copies of an item than the top three offers are filled. You’ll get it eventually, the buy offer system is for those who are willing to wait a while to get a better deal. If speed is important to you, then cough up the extra coin to buy the cheapest sell offer and you’re guaranteed to get the item right away.
I wish it worked that way. You know, that world you describe of “just waiting”. It doesn’t. Not anymore. It’s all automatically checked – and sometimes automatically incremented – by programs. You don’t have a program? Go and sit on the item and keep watching, or no candy for you. You’ll be paying the full amount, and guess what, you’ll be paying it to the guy that beat you to it with his program and who’s now selling it 1 copper below the lowest seller.
Using hyperbole and deliberately misrepresenting your opponent is not a way to win an argument.
Who’s arguing? That was a lesson. Someday you’ll learn.
Oh, so it was what, trolling? Er, thanks for the clarification.
Buttercup, grind your axe somewhere else. I’m not buying what you’re selling.
The minimum increment is irrelevant. You will bid until you reach the maximum amount you wish to spend at which point you will stop bidding. If you feel it is taking too long to get to that point or if you feel you are being forced to camp your bids for rebidding, you are always free to bid in whatever increments you wish.
Server: Devona’s Rest
There’s no penalty for undercutting a buy order. I find this frustrating as some players use tools to constantly adjust their buy order so it’s always first in line. The tools use the current web services to simply tell them (within a couple minutes of accuracy) that their buy order is no longer the highest.
With regards to sell orders, I recommended a LONG time ago to make sell orders expire after a certain amount of time. This encourages sell orders to be meaningful and also penalizes some obnoxious behaviors (although still allows them so the market is still free and open).
Consider if the TP was not a TP but an auction house with time limited posts — do some of these problems go away? What new problems are introduced?
Part of me thinks that someone in ANet was thinking “hey, wanna see something funny? Watch this…”
I was wondering why all these people are defending the clearly broken and unfair status quo that allows people to cut in front of queues with negligible costs…
Of course the people who exploit this weakness in the system to cut in line are the first to defend it.
I really should have known this forum would be dominated by trading post bot/notifier users that make most of their profit from high spreads and the lack of agility of the current system in bringing prices to equilibrium.
ANet really needs to clearly state their official stance on these programs and start to detect suspicious trading post activity. Because the status quo is pretty far from what should be their ideal of a fair, competitive, and efficient market, at least for those who don’t use these programs.
That should be the first step. I bet the sentiment toward a minimum order increment feature would naturally change once this aspect of the market is removed.
I was wondering why all these people are defending the clearly broken and unfair status quo that allows people to cut in front of queues with negligible costs…
Define “negligible costs”. What is “negligible”? What is “negligible” for me may not be “negligible” for you and different for someone else. How much should “negligible cost” be, exactly?
Again having a fixed percentage of 5% does not work in all situations as I have pointed out. If you want to propose a blanket-wide TP modification then you have to ensure that your proposal works on ALL items, not just some items.
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
It’s all automatically checked – and sometimes automatically incremented – by programs.
If ArenaNet allows it, then who are you to say otherwise? Also why do you think that they have released an official API which has been giving third party programs and websites even further advantages?
The programs and websites have been free and publicly available, if you choose not to use them yourself then don’t blame others who do. Learn to take responsibility for your own decisions rather than throwing a tantrum on the floor and crying “not fair!”
(edited by DarkSpirit.7046)
There’s no penalty for undercutting a buy order. I find this frustrating as some players use tools to constantly adjust their buy order so it’s always first in line. The tools use the current web services to simply tell them (within a couple minutes of accuracy) that their buy order is no longer the highest.
If someone has that patience and time to always adjust the buy order, they should be awarded with that effort.
With regards to sell orders, I recommended a LONG time ago to make sell orders expire after a certain amount of time. This encourages sell orders to be meaningful and also penalizes some obnoxious behaviors (although still allows them so the market is still free and open).
And discourage long term investment.
Consider if the TP was not a TP but an auction house with time limited posts — do some of these problems go away? What new problems are introduced?
[/quote]
TP is not AH and TP > AH.