Guild Wars 2

So, I, like pretty much everyone else out there, have a full time job, am raising a family… basically have a pretty hectic life outside of gaming. I play these games to relax, step away from my life for a bit…like everyone else.

A HUGE part of any game for me is crafting, I love it. I also love the whole buying and selling thing. I’m not a huge PVP’er, and while the PVE in GW2 is great, its only part of the story for me. So, I have to say the difficulty in making money in this game is killing me. I see all these posts about how easy it is to make money on the trading post.. walls of text that seem to basically imply I need to work on Wall St to be able to know how to make any money here… I do not work on Wall st, I do not play the stock market IRL…nor do I want to strain my brain to figure it all out, I strain my brain enough IRL, thankyouverymuch.

A big problem is the players… I have seen an 18 slot bag, that cost over 2g to make listed on the TP for 2g3s. Really? First.. you my friend have lost money…. second, now I, or anyone who wants to sell a bag can not make money either, until your listing is gone. 18 slotters dont sell very fast.. so we are all just waiting…and waiting. But then someone will come along and undercut that price.. so its gets even worse.

Another case in point.. 15 slot invis bags. Cost about 52 silver to make, so you need to sell them for at least 59s to break even. I was looking at listings today and the last 2 on the list were for over a gold. the third one was for 67s! Undercutting from over a gold to 67 silver is ridiculous. So of course the prices go down from there until we are down to about 61s. Wooo, 3 silver profit. I’m not trying to be greedy, I don’t want to make a gold selling these bags, but more than 3s would be nice.

So the problem here is two fold. Pricing WAY to high and undercutting WAY to much. If those listings fell off after a few days, then the price ranges would fluctuate, rather than just keep going down and down and down until no one can make any money.

As we have all seen, supply is getting to the point where it is outweighing demand. Eventually (pretty much now) nothing will be selling for any kind of profit because everything listed on the TP will be at vendor pricing… at that point, why bother using it at all.

And for me… that’s almost a game breaker.

Sorry for the wall of text… I had more on my mind than I thought apparently.

Fifteen-slot invisible bags are not falling in price over time, and neither are 18-slot silk bags. There are fluctuations on shorter timelines, to be sure, but that doesn’t indicate any overarching trend that will eventually lead to their being sold for 1c above vendor price the way midlevel blue and green items are.

Also, I’m not sure I understand your complaint about pricing too high and then undercutting too much. If you think prices are too high, then the undercutting should be good. If you think prices are too low, then the high asks should be good. How are both of those things bad?

Of course undercutting is fine, but rather than undercut from 1g23S to 67 S.. how about to 1g? or maybe even 90s…. giving the spread a little more leeway than jumping right down to 67 which brings the price very close to cost much faster.

Bags are already be sold nearly at cost.. some folks sell them at a loss… which blows my mind.

I just think if listings weren’t eternal, the prices would fluctuate more rather than just take a nose dive and pretty much stay there.

You can’t undercut from 123s to 67s unless the highest current buy offer is less than 67s. If it is, then perhaps the people looking to buy the item aren’t willing to pay 123s in the first place, and you’re doing everyone a favor by dropping the price.

And how would decreasing the duration of listings help the price come back up? The listings that stay up the longest are the ones asking for the most money.

If you’re talking about the crappy items that sit in a huge clump 1c above vendor price, limiting the duration of listings would only reduce that number somewhat, it wouldn’t eliminate it. Those items are so cheap because buyers aren’t willing to spend much more than vendor price for them.

Or perhaps the people looking to buy the item are incredible cheapskates like the majority of MMO players and here are empowered to place buy orders at whatever price they wish so long as it’s above vendor price.

And technically they’re not even that limited, but the AH won’t fill orders for under vendor price so the only thing that does is clog the system with junk orders

Bags are not a long-term viable product. Instead of complaining about the pricing, you should be requesting a sink (like the ability to salvage or soulbind bags). Or, better yet, moving on to a different product.

There is absolutely no motivation (and nearly no method) to remove bags from the economy. People occasionally make bags to gain skill points instead of to use personally. People upgrade their bags and then toss the old ones onto the market.

Long term, most of those bags will sell for vendor price, because there is no way to get rid of them. The only reason that they aren’t already at the price floor is because the general population hasn’t had time to level all their alts, gain lots of gold and materials, and fill all their slots with the best bags.

Bags will stop being profitable at any level very soon. Low-level bags are already permanently below cost. Only the maximum size bags have potential to be profitable long-term, and even that I’m skeptical of.

To OP:
1. If you think any item is priced below cost or too low, then buy it up and reprice higher.
2. If you feel any item is priced way too high, then make one at a much lower cost and price just below the overpriced one.
3. Don’t craft items that people are undercutting and selling below cost to make.

If you are not in a position to do either of the above(1&2) and still ignore #3 then do not complain about others and their pricing.

It is called “free market” and if someone wants to give away all his 15 slot bags at a huge loss because he replaced them all with 18 slots it is his/her prerogative to do so.

Indeed seller Sale expirations say a week at the shortest or a month at the longest would help a good bit on the market… Conversely the same on Bids if your bid is not met your currency is returned to you in the claim bin.

Here is why.
1: some EXPLOITERS hide money in markets. making them harder to find and track.
2: the bug where we can not sell something cause of custom bids being too low the market will not allow us to sell for that price cause its under what the base value is.
3: more activity on the market discourages overpricing something that will never be reached, This goes back to issue 1.
4: more supply being available in that prices will be sticky downwards to base values not inflation markets as happens in other games.
5: Crafters will offer more crafted goods like Bags if existing sales actually SELL as opposed to sitting on a stagnate market. If they do not sell and are returned they know either their price was too high or their item was not in demand. either way that encourages them to try something else with that item. (Mystic fountain, merch or salvage for something else, instead of perpetually sitting on a market thats never going to sell the item.) Again back to issue 1. this is how exploiters hide Game currency in other games.

The one factor that needs to be addressed the most is the custom bid bug. They can not be able to set a custom bid for under the base value of a item and have it listed, because Sellers are unable to list any items on the market under the base value of the item. thus those High demand items cant sell for the request price, Not because of unwillingness to do so, but because we are unable to offer it at that price. this bug alone is reason enough to add expiration of both bids and selling items. to clear it of these bugged transactions that are below the base values. It just needs to be done.. one way or another.

Its also worth noting that many large guilds do not craft bags for markets. we invest in larger bags and put them in the guild treasure trove when they are ASKED for by guild mates. asking mostly that the guildmate provide the rune of holding for that item. and in return we will make the bags for them. This is a good practice of Internal Guild Resource Pooling. The Donation options in teh guild make such things easy and convenient for everyone. I only wish we had a Guld Hall (Soon?) that would make this easier for us in that we could have our own guild Merchant with a supply of such inventory for our guildmates. this would be a fantastic use of Guild Halls if we ever get em.

Ingram of Haz.5987:

this bug alone is reason enough to add expiration of both bids and selling items. to clear it of these bugged transactions that are below the base values.

No, that bug alone is reason enough to clear out low bids and fix the bug. It doesn’t in any way imply that offer expiration is a good idea.

Also, I don’t know why expiring offers would push prices in either direction more than the other. Why do you think prices would go down instead of up? Why do you think it would be good if they did go down?

Sticky downwards means they stay as close to base price based on supply. if no one is crafting then the demand drops, if no one is salvaging mining then supply drops.

As to Rare drops those will ALWAYS be sticky upwards.. why because of the soulbound system. that item once used is not going to be resold. Thus the supply is always made intentionally low. Unless someone comes up with a hack that removes soulbound flag on items, (which is what happened in WOW on Epic weapon duping)

Inflation markets are bad because eventually. Years down the line prices get out of control. People coming into a game in such economies are discouraged from participating in it unless they go to illegal gold sellers to get enough funds to buy otherwise basic wares. indeed these illegal gold sellers are profiteers of inflation markets. they create artificial supply limits on high value items. If anyone underbids them they keep them off the market and relist. But if there is expiration they can not do this in perpetuity. Nor can anyone else using the same tactic. The same effect can be imposed with a limited number of slots for selling as well. say you have 50 items lists and none of them are sold. well at 51 you have no more slots available to list it so you have to wait for something to sell or delist something yourself. Either way is a good option. It limits manipulators from exploiting the market too much. Some sure, if its selling… if not them there is a problem and it needs to be reduced in price or removed for lack of demand.

Another option would be discounting items instead. but then that ends up causing more of the under market base problems. Discounting means that if somethign does not sell in a given time period the market discounts the item by say 10% to clear the item. if in another month its not sold still its discounted another 10%, and so on…

Just dont be an inflator and keep things reasonable on markets… Sure 20 slot bags are suppose to be expensive. look at the runes to make them for crying out loud. plus the materials and the time it took to get to that level of crafting. So I would EXPECT it to be a higher price. But materials to build it 100 to 500 times base value? Sorry I been in games with that mentality and they SUCK when you have to deal with the market to get basic goods. Rare items yes should have a higher value but not base goods. As more rare items become available and unwanted privately more will become listed on markets and more prices will rise as demand develops. there is nothing wrong with that. But if you just keep putting stuff on the market that NEVER sells there is something wrong with your logic in listing that item. either the price is Far too high or there is no demand for it. in either case it is a benefit to YOU to have it returned to you and used or liquidated for Base merchant price. And a benefit to the market that inflation is not able to work in perpetuity. Cause eventually that inflation will discourage new participants from entering the game, or turning to illegal resources, and thats not what anyone wants.