Guild Wars 2

In BWE1 the limit was 10000 and I’m sure a lot of you remember how insufficient even that was back when the economy hadn’t yet settled.

But now the 250 limit is a joke. It’s clearly not a technical issue, so someone at ANet must have thought that this was a good idea- it’s not.

All the 250 limit does it cause excess order spamming by high frequency traders and causes RSI.

Does anyone out there actually think the 250 artificial limit is a good idea? Why?

First world problems.

(Also what the hell are you trading that many of?)

Chrysalis.5983:

First world problems.

(Also what the hell are you trading that many of?)

Butter?

@Chrysalis.5983

How about just about everything. Instead of being sarcastic, how about actually defending the benifit of the 250 limit? Because to my mind it’s only actual result is to create frustration and physical pain to people providing liquidity to the market.

If there is some benifical result from this needless limit then I’d be happy to know it.

Well they had to come up with a short turn solution to getting rid of the flood of materials on the market in terms of Chest. So perhaps the limit is to help subdue the problem. I think its logical, annoying, but logical.

shrugs to be honest, I see it as a way to prevent people from clogging up the market with 10,000 buy orders that get sorted thru first preventing others from getting their orders in. Unless I am mistaken on the buy orders, it’s usually a first-come, first-served basis.

@AndrewWaltfeld.4621

What does ‘clogging up’ mean? Why are people with 10,000 of an item punished as opposed to someone with 100 of an item?

If someone has an item be it 10 of it or 100,000 of it they should be able to quickly offer such goods at whatever price they want for them. It’s then up to the buyers whether they want to purchase it or not.

If someone with 10 items wants to sell their items then they should just offer it for 1c less like most do now.

Clogging up seems to just be a negative interpretation of providing goods to people. When did this become frowned upon?

@Alyssa.7254

It works both ways. The chests were already being given away in massive quantities, allowing more than 250 to be purchased could have quickly cleaned that up if someone with gold was willing to purchase the chests.

But under the current system no human would choose to purchase more than 25000 items so any gluts are essentially permanent. Going through the buy process 100 times and sell process 100 times is just about enough to cause physical pain.

Risingashes.8694:

@AndrewWaltfeld.4621
If someone has an item be it 10 of it or 100,000 of it they should be able to quickly offer such goods at whatever price they want for them. It’s then up to the buyers whether they want to purchase it or not.

If someone with 10 items wants to sell their items then they should just offer it for 1c less like most do now.

Clogging up seems to just be a negative interpretation of providing goods to people. When did this become frowned upon?

What does ‘clogging up’ mean? Why are people with 10,000 of an item punished as opposed to someone with 100 of an item?

I put it in a negative light because I believe it will harm the market with both buyers and sellers. That is why I put it in negative light.

I wouldn’t call it punishment to be honest. It’s hardly a punishment for having that much resource. I see it as a blessing as my recent experience with the tiny totem market recession and me losing 14 gold in the process. If I had done what you suggested, the repercussions would have been far worse for me and everyone else who was in that market. I was able to quickly adapt as the market receded and recoup my losses at 7 gold which was at -30% loss. If I had act later , I wold have had 60-70% loss right now.

Simply put, by forcing you to put in quantities of 250, I believe that there is seavral reasons for this.

1) It is simply far easier for the Trading Post Database to keep the numbers low and deal in those stacks. I believe by forcing people to sell in lower quantities, the trading post is easier to keep up.

That is probably why they bumped it down so low from the first beta weekend. Even with the low amount of people during that weekend, they probably saw the signs of stress on the trading post and realized they need to a way to disperse it the processing load.

By keeping the stacks at 250, they realized that the trading post was able to keep up much more efficiently. As the beta tests grew in size, the trading post was able to keep up until launch week when it couldn’t handle the strain of 2 million players (or however many million).

2) It’s a form of protection for the Buyer/Seller. IF you post 10,000 tiny totems, any other players is going to see that in the TP.

As you can tell on the market for many items, people barely tolerate 1,000 of any item on a sell list or buy list before they decide to either undercut or increase the buying price to beat you. It prevents you from sinking tons of money/resources into a system, especially selling, from you getting screwed over.

3) Especially selling. I’m not repeating this and making it own individual category because it’s willy nilly. I’m doing it to hammer a point you have over looked heavily.

To sell 10,000 items on the trading post for example is a listing fee of 1 gold, 55 silver with a sale fee of 3 gold, 10 silver at the price of 31 copper per unit.

If everyone undercuts you – and they will 100% Of the time – you just lost 1 gold, 55 silver just to re-post those items. Did I mention the profit is only 2 gold 35 silver?

By forcing you to put in 250 stacks, you’ll only put in 4-5 at a time so you don’t flood the market with product.

4) Encourages players to buy and sell on the trading post. There is no one guild or server controlling the market of something. By posting in stacks of 250, the average user’s confidence in selling something will remain average/constant unless the product tanks heavily in the market.

If you see people posting 10,000 of something, your immediately thought is that you only have 100 or so, your product is not going to sell very well for a profit. So you don’t bother selling or you give in, and sell it to probably the same person who posted 10,000. Which leads to inflation as people stop posting product on the market for people to buy/sell. (Less Supply = higher prices because demand increases).

They will feel they can not sell the product and thus they won’t bother with the trading post. That is a very bad thing for this game and is essentially that the trading post remain an major hub of commence for this game. It provides not only health trading/commerce but server health as well. As everyone feels they can usually make some money off of the trading post.

5) Trading Post Ghost Bug

Need I say more? Do you really want to bet 1,000 or 2,000 or 10,000 resources and hope that small chance never happens? You won’t ever be able to get those resources back and that’s 31 gold down the hole for you. A small chance it could happen – yes. But the chance of it happening to you once increases as time goes on. Better to be an small quantity of 250. 250 is less of a hurt in your wallet.

That is why I believe the quantity of 250 is fine as it is. Both for physical reasons (Server processing speed/traffic) and protection for both Buyer/Seller. The quantity is a shield as much as you may dislike it.

Side Note -

I also have a few observations about the market ever since it came up after they fixed the exploits and fixed the other problems.

I no longer believe the trading post is world wide and I believe it’s divided by region or by clusters of servers. As a programmer and server admin with some experience with Android, C++, Website Designing, Databases and a little Server Administration – there is very little reason for me to think the trading post is worldwide. I totally admit – I am just over a year from graduating with a Bach degree in Technology Management with minors in Leadership Studies and Business Administration. I do have Associates in Computer Technology with a focus towards Server administration. Does this mean my opinion worth any more than anyone else? Nope. I’m just stating why I think the way I do about this subject and where I’m coming from/thought flow.

I say this because there is a distinct lack of resources that we saw when the trading post was up during the launch. And by that I mean, the crap load of copper and other resources. Thousands upon thousands of it. Much like butter and logs etc are now but those aren’t selling.There is not simply enough buyers and sellers on the markets to justify it’s still worldwide.

If it was still world wide – we would have saw an inflow of absurd amounts of resources as people leveled up there characters but we haven’t. We’ve only seen thousands of resources but not tens of thousands which an very active population of over a million should be able to easily do on a daily basis. Even with the bots right now – certain crafting items have very few items listed in it. I highly doubt everyone is using that huge amount of resources produced by the active population.

Another reason why I say this is that with the world population, there would be more back and forth going on in the market place for prices as people would constantly jockey for best selling/buying price. Right now, it’s kind-of too smooth selling for the supposed amount of people.

important note —-——————————————
It is very possible I could have missed this event – I was fairly busy with real life and college early in September and for most of it. I don’t believe I have though.
—————————————————————————————-

Server load:

Do you really think 1 million people hammering away at the server selling 250 stacks is less strain than 1 million people selling the exact amount they currently want to sell?

To me that can reduce the server load by 50%, 75%, or at least a large percent. How do you justify claiming that it would increase server load when the number of individual transactions would have to fall if the 250 limit was removed?

Seller protection:

If you are listing 10000 items you would have to expect being undercut. But that doesn’t mean you loose 1.35g it just means you need to wait until the buyers buy your products.

If you want more liquidity then it’s up to you, as the seller, to split your stack in to as many different packets as you think are nessesary. Maybe split it 25 times and relist once undercut, this means the removal of the 250 restriction has reduced your time wasted by 37%

The point being that this ‘protection’ is just putting a silver lining on a needless restriction. Given complete freedom each buyer and seller could each act in exactly the same way that the system current forces. The difference being that it would be their choice, their stratagy.

Ghosting bug:

I don’t think a system should be designed around a devastating bug. And considering most loses seem to be related to single item high price transactions it also seems entirely irrelevent.

TP Participation:

People buying in small parcels will always have an advantage over high quantity buyers/sellers due to the ability to undercut. You’ve actually stated this in your own arguement. How do you justify saying how large orders are uselesss due to undercutting while at the same time claiming that large orders would force small undercutters out of the market?

Seems to be internal inconsistancy.

Risingashes.8694:

Server load:

Do you really think 1 million people hammering away at the server selling 250 stacks is less strain than 1 million people selling the exact amount they currently want to sell?

To me that can reduce the server load by 50%, 75%, or at least a large percent. How do you justify claiming that it would increase server load when the number of individual transactions would have to fall if the 250 limit was removed?

Seller protection:

If you are listing 10000 items you would have to expect being undercut. But that doesn’t mean you loose 1.35g it just means you need to wait until the buyers buy your products.

If you want more liquidity then it’s up to you, as the seller, to split your stack in to as many different packets as you think are nessesary. Maybe split it 25 times and relist once undercut, this means the removal of the 250 restriction has reduced your time wasted by 37%.

The point being that this ‘protection’ is just putting a silver lining on a needless restriction. Given complete freedom each buyer and seller could each act in exactly the same way that the system current forces. The difference being that it would be their choice, their strategy.

TP Participation:

People buying in small parcels will always have an advantage over high quantity buyers/sellers due to the ability to undercut. You’ve actually stated this in your own argument. How do you justify saying how large orders are uselesss due to undercutting while at the same time claiming that large orders would force small undercutters out of the market?

Seems to be internal inconsistancy.

Yes, but it’s not just server capacity, it’s one of Anet’s ways to control the market without dictating prices to people. As well as to control artificial inflation.

This is about keeping people engaged in the market so they are buying and selling goods. For people who only have lower amounts of goods to sell, larger amounts are intimidating. Do you honestly think many people really sell copper ore on the TP anymore?

if you feel like getting your money a month later or never depending upon the circumstance (Copper Ore)- that’s your choice. seriously, who would want to compete with a listing of 10,000 by 1 person? They already under cut any price that’s over 1,250+ items listed for many of the profitable items.

I feel People don’t quite understand how the trading post operates with sellers/buyers. I believe a large portion don’t even realize there is a 10% sales tax for example. For them the typical line of thought for most people is that it’s first in – first out.

So in the mind of the typical player, you put in 10,000 – you just blocked off that price range probably indefinitely until the 10,000 is gone (if ever). People will just hover down to the next lowest price and operate at that. As other people post large amounts as well, the trend will tank whatever product as people will continue to undercut to “avoid” waiting for their goods to be sold.

By having it sit in stacks of 250 – each one is counted as a seller at least giving the illusion that there is multiple people selling. This is healthy as to players they will see that there is multiple sellers and not just 1. So they are more likely to post at that price rather than undercut. Will they? some will. Not all. Of course there will always be under-cutters.

On my lower level characters – I have a crap ton of logs, do I bother selling them? Of course not. I ended up taking a crafting that used them so I didn’t just toss them out of my inventory. It wasn’t worth my time, effort and, money (listing fee) to post them on the trading post when there is tens of thousands which could mean months before they are sold. Otherwise, I would just toss them out of inventory or give them to a friend who needed them.

I agree on the ghosting bug comment, however until that is fixed, it will continue to plague the market and could be affecting low cost items – it’s just the higher price item losses are more vocal.

Putting your suggestion into play means elevating your goods to the level of those rare items in terms of cost and money which as you stated seems to stay with high valued orders.

Overall….

You want to make TP easier on yourself since you traffic a lot of goods, but you fail to realize the potential consequences on the market. If you don’t believe the amount of goods posted will negatively affect the health of the economy and thus your profit margins – that is up to you. I believe they will. There is a very good reason why Arena Net did it.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why they did it when they originally had it so high? They certainly don’t do things for the hell of it. There’s a reason/motive behind it we might never know. I feel it’s directly related to keeping the economy healthy and fit as possible while giving players as much freedom as possible in terms of pricing.

Risingashes.8694:

@Chrysalis.5983

How about just about everything. Instead of being sarcastic, how about actually defending the benifit of the 250 limit? Because to my mind it’s only actual result is to create frustration and physical pain to people providing liquidity to the market.

If there is some benifical result from this needless limit then I’d be happy to know it.

What kind of liquidity do you bring? Buy tons for cheap, sell for higher. That’s liquidity for your own pockets on expense of people that don’t want to bother with buy orders.

As for you gathering 10.000 of anything, by your own hand (or even 250), before selling it (and a trip to the city…o wait, you can press O button)…yeah, sure sure, cool story bro.
I know few people with tons of money, they manipulate TP, they don’t like 250 limit also coz they need to press moar buttons for same effect.

Lower stacks of 250 are actually better for liquidity, because people in general don’t want to store more than 250 of materials in collections coz then it eats up space. There, a reason.

So GTFO with your ideas that enable even more people to easily manipulate the market (guess for whose profit, hint: not the average Joe). Go play EVE, I heard they like sharks there.

@Novalight.7568

>people that don’t want to bother with buy orders.

Think about what you’re saying. If people don’t want to bother with buy orders then people who do bother with buy orders are exactly the people enabling them to do so. If no one bothered with buy orders then there would be fewer sell orders, meaning less competition, meaning higher prices. The people you’re trying to demonize are the very people who enable the practice you’re claiming to defend.

>10.000 of anything, by your own hand

This is a strawman you’ve created, no one suggested that 10,000 were gathered, but this disgust you’re leveling at traders is unwarranted. Traders give people money who ask for it and provide goods to those who ask for them. All three parties are satisfied. With no trader the seller would sit with goods and no money and the buyer would sit with money but no goods. Everyone’s unhappy. Why the extreme negativity, and how can you possibly claim that a trader does not provide liquidity- all a trader does is provide the definition of liquidity. They profit, sure, but what else do you think the trader should be motivated by? Love of their fellow man- grow up.

>tons of money, they manipulate TP,

They buy goods off sellers and sell goods to buyers. How horrible, these monsters, to trick people using a completely open system- competing with every single player of the game. How can they live with themselves?

Me and my filthy ideas, wanting to benefit the fat cats, siphoning money from the proletariat. How dare I. Manipulation, I say. Tricks and lies. Offering goods for sale, and buying goods offered- magic and witchcraft.

Well, is there a shortage of materials or pretty much anything on the market at the moment? (except some rare stuff, that is, well, rare and 250 limit doesn’t really come in to play). I certainly don’t see any shortage of stuff on TP which is the supposed consequence of the big bad 250 limit in your post.

You buy stuff, that is for sale, and resell it for more. Stuff would be on sale either way, people are flipping TP only to earn money, not for some philanthropic reason . If you want to go for RL comparisons: some market manipulation is allowed, but too much and it’s not ok (cartel agreements, stock manipulations and such).

As far as I’m concerned there is 0 valid reasons why more than 250 stacks are needed for TP. I’d see reasons for bigger stacks in collections perhaps but idk, anything over 500 would be overkill. Can I use more than 250..sure, I have 1000s of some stuff, but it’s a minor inconvenience.

Magic and witchcraft, sure, like people will start throwing away things and the TP will suddenly collapse if the 250 limit is not increased and no one will buy/sell stuff omg, the end is near, economic crisis in GW2 is upon us, invest in gold…o wait, 250 limit, noes!

@Novalight.7568

Thank you for being a bit less vindictive with your reply.

So now that we’re treating each other like human beings I want to address some limitations of your claims.

As to shortages, no there are no ‘shortages’ but shortages were never the issue. Goods are always available but what is important to most is price. That is what liquidity is concerned with, creating a market with the lowest possible sell price and the highest possible buy price. This creates equilibrium and a stable market based truly upon supply and demand, and does so by turning traders against one another until riskless profit reaches zero.

Equilibrium (temporary, not permanent) is beneficial for consumers and for producers as each is able to buy and sell goods at a reasonable price (as determined by the market). Lack of equilibrium means that it will be likely that the buy price will be so low that producers are unhappy with the price and (at the same time) the sell price will be so high that consumers will feel ripped off.

Either can (in a market not in equilibrium) simply utilise buy and sell orders themselves- but as has been demonstrated and stated again and again- most simply don’t want to deal with the uncertainty and concentration playing the market requires.

This is where traders come in. In exchange for profit traders buy and sell up large quantities and then place those on opposing orders undercutting sell orders or one-upping buy orders. Traders are combative by default and multiple traders will quickly bring a market to equilibrium, as which point no more profit can be made and traders leave- some with profit, some stuck in a holding position until the market turns over. Traders will revisit previous markets periodically keeping the market in equilibrium often permanently.

So is this ‘manipulation’? How are we defining our terms? To me manipulation is an effort to push a price out of equilibrium in order to profit upon the false expectations of other actors. This certainly happens in reality, to the benefit of a few and the great harm of many (who’ll often never actually realise it).

However GW2’s system simply cannot be manipulated, as manipulation requires imperfect information, supply constraints, differentiated products, monopoly or some combination thereof. The BLT is completely open and accessible. Prices are not fixed (other than vendor floors). No seller or buyer information is provided so coordination is hard (or impossible). Fees are excessive, but that’s another topic- and not really that much of an entry barrier. But overall there is really no method of attack on the system as there is no inbuilt market failure- other than the physical constraints such as the 250 cap.

By putting in the 250 cap you restrain traders from tearing each other apart for the benefit of everyone. Instead we have many high volume items that are still outside the 15% range, allowing those with massive amount of funds to cycle through continuously without having to face competition from other traders who want to be able to use their hands in the morning.

TLDR: Manipulation is impossible due to GW2 not suffering from market failures of the real world. Trader competition results in equilibrium which benefits all.

There is 0 reason why we need more than 250 limit on a single transaction other than someone wants to kitten over everyone by getting all of something and reselling it higher.

Very solid arguments Risingashes.

Removing the limit on buy/sell orders has no negative effect on the general buyers/sellers while making trading much more efficient. If anything it helps the economy because more efficient trading only means it’s easier for traders to fight AGAINST EACH OTHER.

I know some people hate traders because they make money while seemingly doing nothing, but actually if you’re not a trader, you want as many traders participating in the economy as possible because it means more competition and smaller profit margins, ultimately benefiting the general economy.

Chrysalis.5983
First world problems.
(Also what the hell are you trading that many of?)

Wood is very common to be “that many of”

Tearex.3956:

Very solid arguments Risingashes.

Removing the limit on buy/sell orders has no negative effect on the general buyers/sellers while making trading much more efficient. If anything it helps the economy because more efficient trading only means it’s easier for traders to fight AGAINST EACH OTHER.

I know some people hate traders because they make money while seemingly doing nothing, but actually if you’re not a trader, you want as many traders participating in the economy as possible because it means more competition and smaller profit margins, ultimately benefiting the general economy.

You have it backwards it has no positive effect on anyone trying to do anything but kitten over everyone with huge market grab/markup, If raised alot it will have the bad effect of making it quick and easy to monoply and kitten over everyone.

Fluffycalico.2715:

You have it backwards it has no positive effect on anyone trying to do anything but kitten over everyone with huge market grab/markup, If raised alot it will have the bad effect of making it quick and easy to monoply and kitten over everyone.

No it does not make it quick and easy to monopoly, it makes it quick and easy to compete. Monopoly exists when other sellers are unable to enter the market, which can never happen in the Trading Post.

And yes, it has a positive effect on the general public by facilitating easier competition between traders, which means greedy traders are less likely to succeed. They can lose a lot if they try to place huge orders to take advantage of big profit margins, which can be instantly made smaller by less greedy traders.

@Fluffycalico.2715

Please read my post 4 posts above yours.

It goes in to great detail explaining why what you said is false.

If you want to maintain your definitive claim then please explain how the reasons for removing the 250 limit I’ve provided are false or misleading.

You have this idea in your head that someone is screwing you over, but without explaining why and instead just claiming something without reason we cannot see who is wrong. Removing the 250 limit would in fact hurt traders by increasing liquidity (something I have gone in to great detail about)- please state why you hold the opposite opinion.

While you make nice sounding arguments I’m still pretty sure that market as a whole won’t benefit with having 10.000 stacks.

Your argument is liquidity (and subsequent price decrease)…and as I said, 250 stack limit helps liquidity. It means average people won’t keep stacks over 250, they will sell it. There is no evidence that prices now are too high, if anything, prices of A LOT, of different items are very low, on par or nearly on par with merchant prices, which speaks against your claim that market as is, is not working properly.

On the other hand, I can see how person(s) with a lot of money and nearly unlimited inventory space can manipulate market. You said that 10000 stacks would mean market manipulation would be harder…it’s the opposite, market is manipulated easier (as is, you have to use much of your space to hoard stuff at 250 stacks, much time to order/sell…it’s still doable, it’s just that it’s a bit inconvenient to buy tens of thousands of stuff).

And another note of your statement, that market in GW2 can’t be manipulated: it can be, how do you think people got 500+ gold (without the mystic forge exploit that is )… certainly not by doing charity and not with simple grinding, and I’m sure I don’t know the richest persons in the game and they operate pretty small scale. And the more gold you have easier it’s to manipulate stuff. I’d say it’s hard to manipulate longterm, because then with the high prices comes increased influx of goods/sharks and you won’t be able to keep up the inflated prices.

Ah, cba to argue anymore.

@Andrew Valtfeld: Idk, I switched servers quite a few times when it wasn’t 24hrs limit and prices everywhere were the same (EU and US). And really common stuff on TP was in hundreds of thousands or even millions for some gatherables. So dunno where did you see the TP was empty of the common resources.

Fluffycalico.2715:

There is 0 reason why we need more than 250 limit on a single transaction other than someone wants to kitten over everyone by getting all of something and reselling it higher.

This is exactly why I think they have it. To keep people from monopolizing items, price control.

Salacious.7358:

Chrysalis.5983
First world problems.
(Also what the hell are you trading that many of?)

Wood is very common to be “that many of”

If you sell the wood as you get it, instead of hording it until the price increases, this isn’t an issue. It takes hours if not days to farm 250 of 1 resource unless your botting. I almost always sell the resources I put on the market within a few minutes of listing them. If you want to force the price up and manipulate a market, you have to deal with their constraints.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Side Note -

I also have a few observations about the market ever since it came up after they fixed the exploits and fixed the other problems.

I no longer believe the trading post is world wide and I believe it’s divided by region or by clusters of servers. As a programmer and server admin with some experience with Android, C++, Website Designing, Databases and a little Server Administration – there is very little reason for me to think the trading post is worldwide. I totally admit – I am just over a year from graduating with a Bach degree in Technology Management with minors in Leadership Studies and Business Administration. I do have Associates in Computer Technology with a focus towards Server administration. Does this mean my opinion worth any more than anyone else? Nope. I’m just stating why I think the way I do about this subject and where I’m coming from/thought flow.

I say this because there is a distinct lack of resources that we saw when the trading post was up during the launch. And by that I mean, the crap load of copper and other resources. Thousands upon thousands of it. Much like butter and logs etc are now but those aren’t selling.There is not simply enough buyers and sellers on the markets to justify it’s still worldwide.

If it was still world wide – we would have saw an inflow of absurd amounts of resources as people leveled up there characters but we haven’t. We’ve only seen thousands of resources but not tens of thousands which an very active population of over a million should be able to easily do on a daily basis. Even with the bots right now – certain crafting items have very few items listed in it. I highly doubt everyone is using that huge amount of resources produced by the active population.

Another reason why I say this is that with the world population, there would be more back and forth going on in the market place for prices as people would constantly jockey for best selling/buying price. Right now, it’s kind-of too smooth selling for the supposed amount of people.

---

important note —-——————————————
It is very possible I could have missed this event – I was fairly busy with real life and college early in September and for most of it. I don’t believe I have though.
—————————————————————————————-

You seem to have missed the 2+ million soft wood logs @ 2c, then. If that isn’t supply glut then I don’t know.

Regardless, this claim is very curious and you are essentially calling ANet liars. whistle

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Yes, but it’s not just server capacity, it’s one of Anet’s ways to control the market without dictating prices to people. As well as to control artificial inflation.

Ugh. Server capacity? While it may factor here I don’t see that we’re having performance problems with the TP database any longer. I’m sure ANet’s DBAs know more about this, though.

This is about keeping people engaged in the market so they are buying and selling goods. For people who only have lower amounts of goods to sell, larger amounts are intimidating. Do you honestly think many people really sell copper ore on the TP anymore?

Your responses make me itch inside. People will use the TP because… it’s… there…
If people aren’t honestly selling copper ore on the TP….. then who is? What are you saying?!

if you feel like getting your money a month later or never depending upon the circumstance (Copper Ore)- that’s your choice. seriously, who would want to compete with a listing of 10,000 by 1 person? They already under cut any price that’s over 1,250+ items listed for many of the profitable items.

ME! That person listed copper ore at once price, ON PURPOSE, 40 times to get 10,000 supply up. And I’m going to come right behind him with my 90 and undercut him by 1c. :P

I feel People don’t quite understand how the trading post operates with sellers/buyers. I believe a large portion don’t even realize there is a 10% sales tax for example. For them the typical line of thought for most people is that it’s first in – first out.

It’s supposed to be but it isn’t. :\

By having it sit in stacks of 250 – each one is counted as a seller at least giving the illusion that there is multiple people selling. This is healthy as to players they will see that there is multiple sellers and not just 1. So they are more likely to post at that price rather than undercut. Will they? some will. Not all. Of course there will always be under-cutters.

What? No. One person selling is one person selling. Where is your evidence that each 250 stack counts as a different seller? Something you will learn in your studies is that this is absolutely TERRIBLE database design, never mind coding it in the software… you are introducing extra variables, data points that are going to cause massive performance hits and for absolutely no realization in value.

What purpose would it serve ANet to cause Player A selling 250 X to be calculated as Player A AND B if they are selling 500 X? It doesn’t serve a purpose and it causes unnecessary storage problems as you cause insakittenwth in the data table.

Person A sells X, and X probably has no limit nor should it. The only difference is Person A can only add 250 to X at a time.

You want to make TP easier on yourself since you traffic a lot of goods, but you fail to realize the potential consequences on the market. If you don’t believe the amount of goods posted will negatively affect the health of the economy and thus your profit margins – that is up to you. I believe they will. There is a very good reason why Arena Net did it.

It isn’t going to negatively impact the economy in my opinion. I think it will definitely hasten price discovery as people DASH to undercut someone foolish enough to post 10,000 of anything in this economy. I would impact someone like the OP also but that’s the risk they take.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why they did it when they originally had it so high? They certainly don’t do things for the hell of it. There’s a reason/motive behind it we might never know. I feel it’s directly related to keeping the economy healthy and fit as possible while giving players as much freedom as possible in terms of pricing.

I agree in terms of keeping the economy healthy – it causes someone trying to game any particular good to have to put in more effort.

Say OP wants to buy up 10,000 of something and then resell them for profit simply because they can? Or because they are bored? Well… it slows that process down. How much? Not really. I can purchase 10,000 of an item in probably about 30 seconds if I had the gold to. I have no reason to do that, though.

Now that I think about it, I really only see that cap as prohibiting one particular person from being a market mover because it takes more and more time to purchase and sell their wares.

This post hands down takes the cake for the most pretentious response yet and I’ll tell you why.

Risingashes.8694:

This is a strawman you’ve created, no one suggested that 10,000 were gathered, but this disgust you’re leveling at traders is unwarranted. Traders give people money who ask for it and provide goods to those who ask for them. All three parties are satisfied.

I am with you here.

With no trader the seller would sit with goods and no money and the buyer would sit with money but no goods. Everyone’s unhappy.

The trader in this game is called the Black Lion Trading Post. You’re trying to replace that and profit off of it. This isn’t novel or noble of you.

Why the extreme negativity, and how can you possibly claim that a trader does not provide liquidity- all a trader does is provide the definition of liquidity. They profit, sure, but what else do you think the trader should be motivated by? Love of their fellow man- grow up.

Given this condescending response it’d be easy to see why anyone would respond to you negatively. The TP provides the function you are trying to pick up in your noble quest to slay the windmill but you said it yourself – your motivation is profit and nothing else.

They buy goods off sellers and sell goods to buyers. How horrible, these monsters, to trick people using a completely open system- competing with every single player of the game. How can they live with themselves?

By rationalizing their selfishness? Guilt is assuaged then but only temporarily.

Me and my filthy ideas, wanting to benefit the fat cats, siphoning money from the proletariat. How dare I. Manipulation, I say. Tricks and lies. Offering goods for sale, and buying goods offered- magic and witchcraft.

The only magic and witchcraft here is how you managed to get so high up on that horse!

In BWE1 the limit was 10000 and I’m sure a lot of you remember how insufficient even that was back when the economy hadn’t yet settled.

But now the 250 limit is a joke. It’s clearly not a technical issue, so someone at ANet must have thought that this was a good idea- it’s not.

All the 250 limit does it cause excess order spamming by high frequency traders and causes RSI.

Does anyone out there actually think the 250 artificial limit is a good idea? Why?

So there’s your original post…

I didn’t think of it in any terms until now, actually. It wasn’t an issue. It was probably a programmatic decision as the cap for goods in a stack is 250 so they used the same module for the TP.

I think the onus isn’t on us to prove it is a good idea since you started out the thread insinuating that ANet is full of sadists. How about you convince us of that instead?

Dishconnected
You seem to have missed the 2+ million soft wood logs @ 2c, then. If that isn’t supply glut then I don’t know.
Regardless, this claim is very curious and you are essentially calling ANet liars. whistle

Shrugs Just a theory. I put in many “I could be wrong” sentences that I don’t see a problem. It’s just a observation. Nor am I calling them liars either. I have no doubt in my mind they very much tried to make it global but the server could not keep up with the demand. So they could have switched it to regional.

Side note – on your remark with my other post – You are most likely correct and I’m fine with that since you bring up many valid points. My main concern is that it seems like the market is no longer getting an large influx of in/out items that should be happening with the large player-base we have. It very well could be other variables are affecting this and creating it – but I’m not sure. Shrugs It’s not really my concern. I just want casual players selling on the market not to feel intimidated and won’t sell their goods.

As for the FIFO method, to be honest, that is a horrible method, especially if someone decides to post – you know, 10,000 of one item.

I know that when I use the EU trader at 10pm US time (very early EU time) there is still constant trading. This pretty much tells me that the market is global. Also, 10,000 of some items is nothing compared to the volume that the trader moves in a day. If you sell your 10,000 is more price dependent than volume. If you are holding out for a higher price, people are gonna see the profit and undercut you forcing you to either buy theirs and resell or wait until theirs are gone. I like the economy of scale the trader represents currently to keep scalpers at a minimum. Hopefully in a few months this won’t change.

@Dishconnected.8360

I do not need to apologize for doing things that benefit me personally. That doesn’t make me a monster. Your attempts to make out that I’m claiming to be a benefactor of all mankind are confusing, you’re making assumptions about what I should aim to be.

All I want to do is profit in a video game by providing goods at a lower price and paying people more than others are willing to. I’m not a charity worker in real life and I have no intention of being one in a virtual world.