Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

But as it’s been brought up multiple times what is the difference of being one upped by someone under/overcutting you by 1c or whatever this minimum bid price would be? Someone will still cut in front of you and someone in front of them and so on. All you are doing is replacing the jerk who says “and one” with a jerk who says “and X”. It’s no less annoying and now to compete against them you now have to adjust your price by a greater amount as well.

One difference is that the person saying “and X” deserves to be in front of me because he is actually offering a potential buyer or seller a better deal. The “and one” guy is just jumping ahead of me in line while effectively offering nothing to the other party.

And the other difference, as several have pointed out already, is that “and X” serves to actually close inefficiency gaps between buyers and sellers so that those actually getting and using the items get a better deal.

If I offer to buy an item for 10g, right now 10 people can overbid and the price could still be 10.001g. With a minimum of 5%, 10 people overbidding would move the price to at least 15g. And that means those who overbid have to actually think about whether they want to pay that much, not just mindlessly skip to the front of the line.

My suggestion is as follows:

Listings (bids and asks) on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s
…

If 1% granularity is not low enough this can be debated, but essentially what we need is to make costs of undercutting relative to the cost of the item traded, so that prices can actually move toward equilibrium in a meaningful way with every competitive bid, and that every non-competitive bid will be filled in proper FIFO order.

Kaon.7192:

My suggestion is as follows:

Listings (bids and asks) on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s
…

If 1% granularity is not low enough this can be debated, but essentially what we need is to make costs of undercutting relative to the cost of the item traded, so that prices can actually move toward equilibrium in a meaningful way with every competitive bid, and that every non-competitive bid will be filled in proper FIFO order.

And I suggested as a compromise an minimum increment that’s 5% of the difference between ask and bid, rounded down, minimum of 1c. It’s not a fixed increment, you aren’t limited to say 5s/10s/15s bids if the value was 5s but you could bid 5s3c if you want. The dynamic nature also allows finer tweaking of the price as the two prices close in on one another. The problem with fixed size increments is whoever gets closest to the 15% margin first wins because the next increment would make flipping unprofitable.

That sounds like a smart solution to me.

Note that a minimum increment doesn’t preclude bidding more than the minimum. If the current bid is 10g and the minimum increment is 5%, you could bid 10g50s or 10g70s or 20g13s if you want. Just not 10g00s01c.

They’d have to make it universal….ie minimum sell increments as well.

Essence Snow.3194:

They’d have to make it universal….ie minimum sell increments as well.

Of course.

It’s not an AH…….
You don’t bid stuffs….

Behellagh.1468:

Kaon.7192:

My suggestion is as follows:

Listings (bids and asks) on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s
…

If 1% granularity is not low enough this can be debated, but essentially what we need is to make costs of undercutting relative to the cost of the item traded, so that prices can actually move toward equilibrium in a meaningful way with every competitive bid, and that every non-competitive bid will be filled in proper FIFO order.

And I suggested as a compromise an minimum increment that’s 5% of the difference between ask and bid, rounded down, minimum of 1c. It’s not a fixed increment, you aren’t limited to say 5s/10s/15s bids if the value was 5s but you could bid 5s3c if you want. The dynamic nature also allows finer tweaking of the price as the two prices close in on one another. The problem with fixed size increments is whoever gets closest to the 15% margin first wins because the next increment would make flipping unprofitable.

I thought about something like this too, but I couldn’t really figure out how bids for items without asks would work. The extra calculations will be more difficult to implement as well and possibly have performance implications at the scale that the current TP is operating at.

There is also the issue of how to transition from the current system to the new system for existing orders that don’t adhere to it. The process can get rather complicated with a dynamic incrementing system, while with a fixed increment you only need to pool together orders by rounding up/down and refunding the difference to the lister.

The system you suggested could probably work if all the details can be worked out, but whether or not the additional complexity is worthwhile is debatable.

I also wanted to comment specifically on this part:

Behellagh.1468:

The problem with fixed size increments is whoever gets closest to the 15% margin first wins because the next increment would make flipping unprofitable.

This is where FIFO comes into play. Isn’t it only fair that the person who posts to a certain price first gets his order filled first? Anyone coming in later can simply place the order behind him in the queue if that is the limit of the profit margin, since in this new system, queuing up is now a viable way to place orders.

Afya.5842:

It’s not an AH…….
You don’t bid stuffs….

Bid in the context of bids/asks is a term used in markets in general, not just auctions.

tolunart.2095:

JS has already demonstrated that he has access to far more information about how the TP is used, has the expertise to interpret the data, and has a willingness to step in when things are not going according to plan and make changes. The fact that the TP has gone on for over a year without a major overhaul indicates that it is, in fact, working as intended.

This fallacy is appeal to authority — except it’s worse, you’re just assuming that because no action has been taken then the person who is an authority is happy with the status quo. None of your message was actually a response to the arguments for a minimum bid increment; the closest you came was saying that you’re happy with the status quo, and so are many other players. (I will grant that, with the caveat that some of those who are happy with the status quo would be happier with the proposed change.)

If you’d ever been responsible for a production system, you’d understand that there are always improvements to make — but it takes time to make each one (especially if you want to limit bugs), and you work through them in something like priority order (priority, or (benefit / cost), or some combination).

I agree that obviously this hasn’t been a priority; that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a good change.

Kaon.7192:

I also wanted to comment specifically on this part:

Behellagh.1468:

The problem with fixed size increments is whoever gets closest to the 15% margin first wins because the next increment would make flipping unprofitable.

This is where FIFO comes into play. Isn’t it only fair that the person who posts to a certain price first gets his order filled first? Anyone coming in later can simply place the order behind him in the queue if that is the limit of the profit margin, since in this new system, queuing up is now a viable way to place orders.

And now we circle back to the problem I have with this whole notion, that is what’s “fair”. Because objectively what’s fair is the player offering the most money or selling at the lowest price, even if it’s only 1c IS the winner. Your subjective argument is that 1c difference is “noise” and all the players tacking 1c on after your “legitimate” offer is simply cutting in front of you but that’s no different than someone sniping an auction in the last seconds on eBay. Their offer is just as legitimate as yours because they aren’t welshing on it and the seller or buyer is getting more money or paying less, even if it is just a few coppers.

If you are selling something and you don’t want to take the “sell now” price then it’s the nature of the beast that whatever price you are asking for, someone(s) can and will come along and put one up for sale for less. I’ve put items up for an amount that’s 1 or 2% below the current low ask and within an hour there is a dozen lower priced entries at various quantities with a large quantity at one price significantly what I asked. It didn’t matter that the price history at GW2TP showed that the price that I bid below was that way for hours before my posting of that item for sale. I started the avalanche and as Kosh says “it’s too late for the pebbles to vote”. Undercutting asks simply hurt you more because of the posting fee but it doesn’t matter if it’s 1c or 1g because the fee isn’t refundable. I’ll lose it if I pull my item so I have to ride out the avalanche and hope that the price recovers and my turn comes. It may take awhile but if I did my homework it should eventually sell, all I have to do is wait.

Of course bids on the other hand is a camping situation since there’s no fee and you are hoping that someone sells an item to high bid when that bid is yours. In that case it doesn’t matter if you lose by a copper or 10 copper or 1 silver. You weren’t the top bid, you don’t get the item. Only difference is the bid will rise faster with fewer participants needed to reach the price where the item is no longer profitable, whatever you were planning to do with it. It’s just with a slower rush to your cap there’s more of a chance that you’ll get a couple of items.

linuxotaku.4731:

This fallacy is appeal to authority — except it’s worse, you’re just assuming that because no action has been taken then the person who is an authority is happy with the status quo. None of your message was actually a response to the arguments for a minimum bid increment; the closest you came was saying that you’re happy with the status quo, and so are many other players. (I will grant that, with the caveat that some of those who are happy with the status quo would be happier with the proposed change.)

Appeal to authority is not always a fallacy, especially not when virtual “reality” is concerned. Had there been a JS post indicating that minimum increments are out, then it wouldn’t matter what logical arguments were posed, the “deity” of this reality has spoken and his authority is absolute.

linuxotaku.4731:

This fallacy is appeal to authority — except it’s worse, you’re just assuming that because no action has been taken then the person who is an authority is happy with the status quo. None of your message was actually a response to the arguments for a minimum bid increment; the closest you came was saying that you’re happy with the status quo, and so are many other players. (I will grant that, with the caveat that some of those who are happy with the status quo would be happier with the proposed change.)

Congrats on learning how to use wikipedia. It’s not an assumption, JS has posted that he considers the TP to be part of the game. “Playing” the TP is therefore encouraged by the system they have in place. If they wanted the most efficient system possible there would be no TP, just a series of vendors that buy and sell items for fixed prices.

I’m not going to debate the dubious merits of the proposed bid increments because I don’t feel it’s worth consideration. The source of the complaint is sour grapes over being unable to always get the best deal possible because one has to share the TP with other players. It’s the downside to a market run by the players, you can set whatever buy/sell price you want for an item, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to accept it.

Risingashes.8694:

This isn’t a la-di-da commune where we sing coom-bye-ya and howl at the moon. We’re all capatalists here. Competition is a valuable aspect of markets. If you get underbid or overbid then cry crocodile tears, them’s the breaks.

I don’t see how picking an arbitrary point in the undercutting and saying at THIS point someone is getting priority when they shouldn’t, but not at THIS point over here, makes any sense at all as a logical argument.

The person that gets priority is the one with the best price. If your price point sticks around long enough that other folks can list at essentially the same price point and your stuff doesn’t sell within the time period you want, you picked the wrong price.

Risingashes.8694:

People asking for a change aren’t asking to stop undercutting. They’re asking to fix an area where competition is being limited by a market failure.

The person really hurt here isn’t the undercut person, it’s the person buying the item instantly, or the people selling items instantly. They’re paying more, or getting less than they should be if the market was operating properly.

I don’t understand your point here (probably because I’m not seeing the “market failure”). There is no imaginary correct price that folks are getting screwed out of here – if the price isn’t right, folks won’t buy the item. I don’t pay any more than I’m willing to pay for anything I buy on the TP. You can hypothesize all the scenarios you want to about how the item could have been sold for less or might have been sold for more, but what it comes down to is the item is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and not 1c more.

I understand the feeling that somehow it’s unfair for someone to list something at essentially the same price and sell theirs first. I actually go out of my way to buy items that were undercut by such a small increment that it’s sort of insulting to me that the undercutter thinks I’ll prefer his price.

I poked around the TP a little bit however, and I’m just not seeing a lot of overcutting or undercutting by 1c over an arbitrary sampling of items. Maybe the solution isn’t minimum increments, maybe it’s to allow the seller to fill the buy order they choose, even if it isn’t the best price. I know it seems silly to allow folks to do that, but in the cases where the 1c over-bidders are trying to cut in line, the seller could make a conscious decision not to do business with them, and still instantly sell their item.

Risingashes.8694:

If the current sell price for an item is 500g, and you think “that’s silly”, I’m going to move this fast and sell at 450g to sell it fast. Everyone is getting items in the same way, there is no such thing as efficiency when it comes to item aquisition. So if you can sell for 450g and be happy with it, others are going to also think that’s profitable- not as profitable as 500g mind you.

So the undercutter will list at 449g99s99c, and they’ll have priority over you. It’s impossible for you to find a price point where it’s not just as worth it for an undercutter to list at -1c, because -1c is nothing compared to the total price.

My item will most likely have sold before the undercutter found it, and if it didn’t sell before it was undercut, both mine and the undercutters’ will have sold because the price is so attractive. It might even be bought up by a trader who will flip it at a higher price. I don’t care because I got the money I wanted for it in the time frame I wanted to get it.

You can create all the hypothetical scenarios that you want, but I never see the folks undercutting me. All I see is the indicator that I have stuff to pick up in the TP. 90% of everything I list or bid on gets executed. The other 10% was mostly gambling to see if I could do better.

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I just think the FIFO/undercutting/overcutting argument is a poor justification.

It’s a poor justification because you don’t know how it would effect things and therefore shouldn’t be done?

Well the glib answer would be “If it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it”… or maybe “First, do no harm”.

In my opinion, it’s poor justification because it’s based on feelings of unfairness and hypothetical scenarios that are basically how folks imagine things would play out. I think getting prices to their equilibrium point more quickly is a better argument because it’s more objective.

We don’t have the information to know how big a problem 1c undercutting actually is in economic terms nor exactly what effect minimum increments would have. That doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it and speculate, but I think it’s counter-productive to argue it as the only possible solution. I don’t even think we’ve managed to agree there is a problem to be solved yet.

Behellagh.1468:

Kaon.7192:

I also wanted to comment specifically on this part:

Behellagh.1468:

The problem with fixed size increments is whoever gets closest to the 15% margin first wins because the next increment would make flipping unprofitable.

This is where FIFO comes into play. Isn’t it only fair that the person who posts to a certain price first gets his order filled first? Anyone coming in later can simply place the order behind him in the queue if that is the limit of the profit margin, since in this new system, queuing up is now a viable way to place orders.

And now we circle back to the problem I have with this whole notion, that is what’s “fair”. Because objectively what’s fair is the player offering the most money or selling at the lowest price, even if it’s only 1c IS the winner. Your subjective argument is that 1c difference is “noise” and all the players tacking 1c on after your “legitimate” offer is simply cutting in front of you but that’s no different than someone sniping an auction in the last seconds on eBay. Their offer is just as legitimate as yours because they aren’t welshing on it and the seller or buyer is getting more money or paying less, even if it is just a few coppers.

To snipe an item on ebay or most other auction sites, you need to outbid by more than the minimum increment that scales according to the current max bid of the item. This is precisely to preserve the notion of “fairness” for its bidders and because an 1c difference on a $1000 item is in fact considered noise as far as ebay is concerned.

Kaon.7192:

To snipe an item on ebay or most other auction sites, you need to outbid by more than the minimum increment that scales according to the current max bid of the item. This is precisely to preserve the notion of “fairness” for its bidders and because an 1c difference on a $1000 item is in fact considered noise as far as ebay is concerned.

The TP isn’t an auction house, it’s a commodities market. There is no sniping of one unique and special item up for sale, there is only the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

tolunart.2095:

Congrats on learning how to use wikipedia. It’s not an assumption, JS has posted that he considers the TP to be part of the game. “Playing” the TP is therefore encouraged by the system they have in place. If they wanted the most efficient system possible there would be no TP, just a series of vendors that buy and sell items for fixed prices.

Having venders buy and sell items for fixed prices is unrelated to any of the proposals here.

To be clear — even in an efficient market, you can make money by anticipating where the market will go (e.g. buying items which are cheap because of oversupply during an event, with the expectation that they’ll become scarce later). This form of playing the market is clearly encouraged, and is a better way to make money anyway IMO.

tolunart.2095:

I’m not going to debate the dubious merits of the proposed bid increments because I don’t feel it’s worth consideration. The source of the complaint is sour grapes over being unable to always get the best deal possible because one has to share the TP with other players. It’s the downside to a market run by the players, you can set whatever buy/sell price you want for an item, but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to accept it.

If you’re not actually going to discuss the proposal, how about just ignoring the thread, instead of raising strawmen and non sequitor arguments?

AFAICT the argument for this isn’t based on sour grapes about having to share the TP — but rather on the fact that it’s tedious to be overbid repeatedly by trivial amounts. If you respond in kind, you’ll probably get a better deal than if you overbid by some fixed percentage each time, but it will require more time to figure out the price point at which point others stop overbidding. I’d rather just figure out that — sometimes others’ price point is over mine, and that’s fine too — in that case I leave in a low bid and see if it fills.

I would rather have the price converge faster towards what people are actually willing to pay, and I think a minimum increment would encourage that.

It’s not a big deal for me — when I do bother with this, convergence is still fast enough if I increase my bid at 2% each time, and paying an extra 1% is pretty minor — but I don’t think it is better in any theoretical sense with the lack of minimum bid increments.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Kaon.7192:

To snipe an item on ebay or most other auction sites, you need to outbid by more than the minimum increment that scales according to the current max bid of the item. This is precisely to preserve the notion of “fairness” for its bidders and because an 1c difference on a $1000 item is in fact considered noise as far as ebay is concerned.

The TP isn’t an auction house, it’s a commodities market. There is no sniping of one unique and special item up for sale, there is only the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

Yes but the ebb and flow of supply and demand in the TP will be much more efficient (i.e. reach equilibrium and minimize spreads much faster) if it didn’t have very the same noise issues most auctions would face if they had no minimum increments implemented.

Kaon.7192:

Pandemoniac.4739:

The TP isn’t an auction house, it’s a commodities market. There is no sniping of one unique and special item up for sale, there is only the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

Yes but the ebb and flow of supply and demand in the TP will be much more efficient (i.e. reach equilibrium and minimize spreads much faster) if it didn’t have very the same noise issues most auctions would face if they had no minimum increments implemented.

Well why not make that argument instead of talking about sniping?

Pandemoniac.4739:

Kaon.7192:

Pandemoniac.4739:

The TP isn’t an auction house, it’s a commodities market. There is no sniping of one unique and special item up for sale, there is only the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

Yes but the ebb and flow of supply and demand in the TP will be much more efficient (i.e. reach equilibrium and minimize spreads much faster) if it didn’t have very the same noise issues most auctions would face if they had no minimum increments implemented.

Well why not make that argument instead of talking about sniping?

See the quote I was responding to.

Kaon.7192:

Yes but the ebb and flow of supply and demand in the TP will be much more efficient (i.e. reach equilibrium and minimize spreads much faster) if it didn’t have very the same noise issues most auctions would face if they had no minimum increments implemented.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Well why not make that argument instead of talking about sniping?

Kaon.7192:

See the quote I was responding to.

I did. You’re arguing about FIFO and fairness, not equilibrium and spreads. I’m just curious why you would go down that path instead of arguing from what I think is a stronger position.

The snipping comment was from me Pan, I guess Kaon considers that a poor analogy to line cutting. But this argument boils down to objective Vs subjective. Those asking for a minimum increment based on cost are arguing that a 1c increment for an item with a high asking price is because they see the ask as subjectively the same so it’s line cutting. But objectively it’s still higher if it’s by 1c or 1g.

And while a scalable increment could converge the price faster it doesn’t prevent another player from going “and 1” to the previous high bid. But what it does mean is it will provide fewer opportunities to rebid before all profits are squeezed out. And in the end the one out bid still loses, just now they feel better about it simply because the amount they lost by is larger.

This is what the whole topic is about, feeling better when you lose because you lost by more than 1c on a multi-gold item. Sure it’s window dressed up by saying the player on the other side of the transaction is benefiting because the price is higher than just 1c and the difference between ask and bid with close quicker but the real reason is so they don’t feel like they got shafted by a single copper.

Behellagh.1468:

This is what the whole topic is about, feeling better when you lose because you lost by more than 1c on a multi-gold item.

Ah you’ve caught me. I was hoping it could be diverted to a more interesting and productive discussion but I can’t get folks to let go of the subjective part of the argument. Probably the thread is too far along for that so I’ll stop with the needling

Pandemoniac.4739:

Kaon.7192:

Yes but the ebb and flow of supply and demand in the TP will be much more efficient (i.e. reach equilibrium and minimize spreads much faster) if it didn’t have very the same noise issues most auctions would face if they had no minimum increments implemented.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Well why not make that argument instead of talking about sniping?

Kaon.7192:

See the quote I was responding to.

I did. You’re arguing about FIFO and fairness, not equilibrium and spreads. I’m just curious why you would go down that path instead of arguing from what I think is a stronger position.

I have been arguing for that position in every single one of my posts in this thread prior to that one, so you’ll have to excuse me for forgetting to restate it yet again in a reply that’s specifically directed at what I felt was an inapt comparison to ebay sniping… =P

Why must you pick on the one time I try to be specific and not post in a wall of text… =/

Behellagh.1468:

The snipping comment was from me Pan, I guess Kaon considers that a poor analogy to line cutting. But this argument boils down to objective Vs subjective. Those asking for a minimum increment based on cost are arguing that a 1c increment for an item with a high asking price is because they see the ask as subjectively the same so it’s line cutting. But objectively it’s still higher if it’s by 1c or 1g.

And while a scalable increment could converge the price faster it doesn’t prevent another player from going “and 1” to the previous high bid. But what it does mean is it will provide fewer opportunities to rebid before all profits are squeezed out. And in the end the one out bid still loses, just now they feel better about it simply because the amount they lost by is larger.

This is what the whole topic is about, feeling better when you lose because you lost by more than 1c on a multi-gold item. Sure it’s window dressed up by saying the player on the other side of the transaction is benefiting because the price is higher than just 1c and the difference between ask and bid with close quicker but the real reason is so they don’t feel like they got shafted by a single copper.

The bottom line is the current system is both objectively inefficient and subjectively unfair (to most market participants that don’t engage in automated trading).

The system can clearly be improved to become both objectively more efficient (reach equilibrium and minimize spreads faster) and subjectively more fair (no more getting shafted by 1 copper in highly priced items, higher cost barrier and more risk for automated traders). Even your own suggestion accomplishes this.

If you can improve both aspects with a single change, why not?

Kaon.7192:

The bottom line is the current system is both objectively inefficient and subjectively unfair (to most market participants that don’t engage in automated trading).

I don’t see how minimum increments are going to solve the subjective problem (I don’t really see it as unfair, but apparently I’m in the minority), and I think the that whether increments solve the objective problem would really depend on the implementation. It seems like a brute force way to solve an issue that may be able to be solved more elegantly.

I wonder if sellers had an opportunity to select from say, the top 20 buy orders instead of being forced to take the literal best price if that wouldn’t take care of some of the problem. If the seller sees 4G and 4G +1c as the same price, why shouldn’t they be able to choose the 4G orders to sell to? It would be interesting to see how folks’ strategies for buy orders and selling patterns would change. I wonder if the buy orders would change to increments that try to say “Hey I’m not a bot!”.

If only I could steal John’s job for a few months…. I could make thousands of GW2 players my lab rats I don’t know how John resists the temptation.

And sorry for my earlier posts – I didn’t intend to pick on you Kaon.