Guild Wars 2

Filaha.1678:

Wanze.8410:

I think one of the biggest problems, if item-for-item trade would be implemented, is that it will result in a less efficient economy.

Generally, there are 2 kinds of supply, supply that is listed on the tp for trade and supply in peoples possession. In general, the more of the overall supply is listed on the tp, the more stable the price will be. If there is less supply listed on the tp, prices are more prone to price spikes, for example.

If a decent amount of trading gets done over direct trade between players, the high velocity of the market will also suffer, which is one of the biggest reasons why prices find equilibrium as fast as they do now.

I just dont see how a minor convenience feature for some players would warrant unbalancing the economy.

Evidence?

FF14 and SW:TOR have (or had, last I played SW:TOR) stable economies despite having a player-to-player trading feature.

Do you have evidence that that will happen rather than an assertion that it will despite other games being able to support both?

Do SWTOR and FF14 have global economies and their trading post works exactly the same as in GW2? No? Then you cant use them as a counter arguement that it will not unbalance the economy in GW2.

I cant give you evidence but logical proof:

Lets assume there are 100k iron ore listed on the tp in a range from 1s to 10s.
If demand for iron goes up, it will take more time for the price to rise compared to when only 1k iron ore are listed on the tp. Once the 1k iron are gone, the main source or buying iron (or trading for other mats) will be player to player.
Right now, we can buy iron from anybody on any server with an intend to sell iron via the tp. If those sell listings are gone, we only have access to sellers, who advertise their intend to sell iron on the same map as i am (maybe 100 players overall per map).
I dont see how this would not negatively inpact the economy overall.

If you dont think that this is true, please argue otherwise.

Filaha.1678:

Izaya.2906:

Again, you’re talking about what you will do.

Which, to be honest, is insulting to the playerbase to make them pay for a secure trade system which is free in practically every other MMO.

Even regardless of how I or anyone would use it, it’s terrible customer care to make it so that your only options for trading are either “Risk easy scams” or “Spend unnecessary gold”.

How is being fair to all players insulting to the playerbase?

Joe has to deal with TP taxes if he sells his ectos, lodestones, t6 mats and other random stuff.

And if Joe wants to buy Dusk he will pay for it with gold.

Why should Jack be excused from TP taxes just because he got Dawn to sell instead of random stuff like Joe?

You fail to understand that TP taxes is applicable to everyone. Just because you think you should be excused in a particular transcation doesn’t mean they should facilitate it for you.

I suggest you post here to get an answer from Anet’s economist regarding if a player to player trade can be harmful to the economy and why or why not, he should be the most qualified to do so since he has access to ingame metrics etc. :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/first

Wanze.8410:

Do SWTOR and FF14 have global economies and their trading post works exactly the same as in GW2?

Depends on how you define “works exactly the same”. Can you access the markets from anywhere? No. So it’s not exactly the same. However, that’s hardly an important distinction, is it?

What parts of it do you say need to be the same in order for them to be similar enough?

Also, define “global economies” for the purpose of your argument.

Lets assume there are 100k iron ore listed on the tp in a range from 1s to 10s.
If demand for iron goes up, it will take more time for the price to rise compared to when only 1k iron ore are listed on the tp. Once the 1k iron are gone, the main source or buying iron (or trading for other mats) will be player to player.
Right now, we can buy iron from anybody on any server with an intend to sell iron via the tp. If those sell listings are gone, we only have access to sellers, who advertise their intend to sell iron on the same map as i am (maybe 100 players overall per map).
I dont see how this would not negatively inpact the economy overall.

If you dont think that this is true, please argue otherwise.

Okay, now let’s go back to what I have actually already suggested in this thread.

Namely, the trade system that I am suggesting does not need to include money since we already have a TP that you can use if you want to sell things for money. I specifically am suggesting an item-for-item trade system that doesn’t include monetary exchange, only exchange for items.

I have also already suggested that they could add it as another section to the TP, where a person could put up a requested trade and everyone can see it. To use the same example I’ve been using, if I want to trade Dusk for Dawn, I could go onto the ITP (Item Trading Post), pop my Dusk up and specifically request a Dawn for it. Then someone who wants Dusk can come along, look at the ITP, see that I have a listing up there for Dawn, and oh look, they have Dawn! So they trade it.

This system would solve the following problems:
1. By being part of the TP, it can directly pull the values of the items (current highest buy price and current lowest sell price) and show those values in the UI, which means everyone is expressly told the relative value of the items traded, leading to no scams.
2. It allows for everyone to have access to it at all times, negating the need for spam, because people can just put it up on the ITP just like people don’t spam that they’re selling things now because they can put it up on the TP.
3. It doesn’t “remove supply”, because the items are still on the market.

Now, since people in this thread seem to try to take examples as all-inclusive lists, I’ll point out that I’m aware that if I wanted Dawn but had Dusk, I could sell the Dusk and still have more money left over after buying Dawn, but that’s an example. It’s the same as if I suggested trading my Dusk for 100 Bolts of Damask.

Which leads to another inherent problem with the current system: Equal values are not equal values. If I want to trade my Dusk for 100 Bolts of Damask, despite the fact that 100 Damask is 1513G and Dusk is 1539G, I cannot. Because the actual value of my Dusk, were I to trade it, would be about 1308G. So a 1500G weapon is not equal value to 1500G worth of cloth in a trade.

Izaya.2906:

How is being fair to all players insulting to the playerbase?

I’ve already stated how it is.

Firstly, many other games offer secure trading without cost. Why should the playerbase have to pay to not risk getting ripped off?

Secondly, as I just posted in another post (good timing):

Which leads to another inherent problem with the current system: Equal values are not equal values. If I want to trade my Dusk for 100 Bolts of Damask, despite the fact that 100 Damask is 1513G and Dusk is 1539G, I cannot. Because the actual value of my Dusk, were I to trade it, would be about 1308G. So a 1500G weapon is not equal value to 1500G worth of cloth in a trade.

Under the current system, I cannot trade a 1500G weapon for 1500G worth of cloth without either A. risking someone running off with my weapon, or B. spending an extra 225G to cover the difference. It’s insulting to make one have to spend extra money to make an equal value exchange.

Why should Jack be excused from TP taxes just because he got Dawn to sell instead of random stuff like Joe?

Why should Jack have to pay taxes if someone else is (claiming to be) willing to directly trade their Dusk?

You fail to understand that TP taxes is applicable to everyone. Just because you think you should be excused in a particular transcation doesn’t mean they should facilitate it for you.

I don’t think you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve said in this thread, especially past the parts where I’ve said that I think they could remove trading for gold from it since there already is a TP. There would be no evasion of necessary taxes, only no need for unnecessary ones.

I suggest you post here to get an answer from Anet’s economist

I would if A. I thought he would give me an entirely unbiased answer (I’ve already pointed out that they have a financial interest in keeping gold low), and B. I’ve already expressly stated that I want to know if the players can justify it without referring to what “an expert” has told them.

Filaha.1678:

Wanze.8410:

Do SWTOR and FF14 have global economies and their trading post works exactly the same as in GW2?

Depends on how you define “works exactly the same”. Can you access the markets from anywhere? No. So it’s not exactly the same. However, that’s hardly an important distinction, is it?

What parts of it do you say need to be the same in order for them to be similar enough?

Also, define “global economies” for the purpose of your argument.

Lets assume there are 100k iron ore listed on the tp in a range from 1s to 10s.
If demand for iron goes up, it will take more time for the price to rise compared to when only 1k iron ore are listed on the tp. Once the 1k iron are gone, the main source or buying iron (or trading for other mats) will be player to player.
Right now, we can buy iron from anybody on any server with an intend to sell iron via the tp. If those sell listings are gone, we only have access to sellers, who advertise their intend to sell iron on the same map as i am (maybe 100 players overall per map).
I dont see how this would not negatively inpact the economy overall.

If you dont think that this is true, please argue otherwise.

Okay, now let’s go back to what I have actually already suggested in this thread.

Namely, the trade system that I am suggesting does not need to include money since we already have a TP that you can use if you want to sell things for money. I specifically am suggesting an item-for-item trade system that doesn’t include monetary exchange, only exchange for items.

I have also already suggested that they could add it as another section to the TP, where a person could put up a requested trade and everyone can see it. To use the same example I’ve been using, if I want to trade Dusk for Dawn, I could go onto the ITP (Item Trading Post), pop my Dusk up and specifically request a Dawn for it. Then someone who wants Dusk can come along, look at the ITP, see that I have a listing up there for Dawn, and oh look, they have Dawn! So they trade it.

This system would solve the following problems:
1. By being part of the TP, it can directly pull the values of the items (current highest buy price and current lowest sell price) and show those values in the UI, which means everyone is expressly told the relative value of the items traded, leading to no scams.
2. It allows for everyone to have access to it at all times, negating the need for spam, because people can just put it up on the ITP just like people don’t spam that they’re selling things now because they can put it up on the TP.
3. It doesn’t “remove supply”, because the items are still on the market.

Now, since people in this thread seem to try to take examples as all-inclusive lists, I’ll point out that I’m aware that if I wanted Dawn but had Dusk, I could sell the Dusk and still have more money left over after buying Dawn, but that’s an example. It’s the same as if I suggested trading my Dusk for 100 Bolts of Damask.

Which leads to another inherent problem with the current system: Equal values are not equal values. If I want to trade my Dusk for 100 Bolts of Damask, despite the fact that 100 Damask is 1513G and Dusk is 1539G, I cannot. Because the actual value of my Dusk, were I to trade it, would be about 1308G. So a 1500G weapon is not equal value to 1500G worth of cloth in a trade.

There are some cornerstones that mark the global economy in GW2:
Sell Listings and Buy Orders are available from ALL players and for ALL players, no matter on which map or server they are. Due to the high amount of players trading, there is a high market velocity, which results in fast price equilibrium, if supply or demand shift.
Its very fast and efficient the way it is and offers equal opportunity to everybody.

Your only reason to implement player to player trading is to bypass the gold sink.
Give me one good reason why Anet should do that. Even though you stated that Anet has removed gold sinks before, they actually rebalanced them. When they removed the gold sinks for repair costs and retraiting, they also removed a good chunk of the gold faucet that were champ bags.

Wanze.8410:

There are some cornerstones that mark the global economy in GW2:
Sell Listings and Buy Orders are available from ALL players and for ALL players, no matter on which map or server they are. Due to the high amount of players trading, there is a high market velocity, which results in fast price equilibrium, if supply or demand shift.
Its very fast and efficient the way it is and offers equal opportunity to everybody.

So specifically you’re asking if every single person in the game has access to the same items? Then no, because they don’t link every single player together.

However, I don’t see how that makes much of a difference, so if you’d like to explain how a larger number of people significantly affects it, please do. If you’d also like to link that to how it would be affected by people trading an item for an item securely without having to pay extra money to cover the cut taken in order to make an equal-value exchange, please do.

Your only reason to implement player to player trading is to bypass the gold sink.

My reason is that one should not have to pay 150G to trade 1000G worth of product for another 1000G worth of product.

Give me one good reason why Anet should do that.

I have yet to see a good reason why they shouldn’t that doesn’t rely on supposition and assertions.

And here’s your good reason: Because 1000G worth of product should equal 1000G worth of product.

If I want to trade an Xbox game with a friend for their game, I shouldn’t have to go to Gamestop and sell it to them then buy the game that my friend sold to them. Why would that be ridiculous in real life yet it makes sense here?

When they removed the gold sinks for repair costs and retraiting, they also removed a good chunk of the gold faucet that were champ bags.

And then gave us Dry Top, which has an average of a champ every 5 minutes as well as extra champ bags from opening chests with lockpicks.

And then gave us this latest living story, wherein one event can result in (allegedly) about 8 champs with enough people there to scale it and taking their time (which is actually really annoying when you want to just get it done and go on with the quest).

One hand takes away, the other hand gives it back.

Filaha.1678:

How is an ineffective coin sink more of a hindrance than an effective one? If I want to trade Dusk to someone for Dawn and have to pay 15% tax (225G) on the Dusk to do it, how is that less of a hindrance to me than having to pay a few silver for a repair?

All coin sinks are a hindrance to the players. An ineffective coin sink might not be more of a hindrance, but it’s an unnecessary hindrance since it’s not achieving its intended goal. Unnecessary hindrances should be eliminated.

Yes you did. You specifically said that a lot of people would spend on the traits rather than working to unlock them. You used yourself as an example of someone who did. So I asked you to prove that it applies to more than you, to a degree where it’s “worth” having, since according to you, they’re only worth having in as gold sinks if it’s a significant amount.

Oh come on. The simple fact that they are even offering an option to outright buy the traits tells you that ANet had reason to believe that there would be a significant number of people who would buy the unlocks.

Except they’re not. People will download keyloggers and viruses and/or share their passwords. Does that make passwords “irrelevant”?

A password that is not functioning as a password is, by definition, irrelevant.

You mean exactly like I suggested?

I took the word “additional” as meaning a separate tab, which would effectively hide the information from view. That is not what I want. The information needs to be clearly, obviously visible.

And why have I not said that? Because my suggestion and argument is not about simple player-to-player trading, but item-for-item trading. Not selling. Not discounting. Trading. Whether it’s equal value or not is, and should be, up to the player.

And I keep telling you that item-to-item trading can already be done in the TP if you’re willing to pay the honest asking price and the TP listing fee. Asking for item-to-item trading basically amounts to you saying that you do not want to pay the TP fee or that you want to buy items at prices cheaper than the market price.

Which is why I don’t care what he said. Appeal to authority is a fallacy. A secure trading system does not open up any more shady business than is currently possible in the game. If one could fall for a scam when they have a secure trading option, they could also fall for a scam through mail as well.

John Smith is not committing a fallacy of any kind by letting the players know ANet’s official stance on player-to-player trading.

I would be guilty of being fallacious if I simply believed what John Smith says because he’s from ANet. I don’t, I saw the reasons that he put out and saw that they made good sense.

Olba.5376:

All coin sinks are a hindrance to the players. An ineffective coin sink might not be more of a hindrance, but it’s an unnecessary hindrance since it’s not achieving its intended goal. Unnecessary hindrances should be eliminated.

Right.

That’s why I’m saying there shouldn’t be a fee to do a secure item-for-item trade. Because it’s unnecessary.

Oh come on. The simple fact that they are even offering an option to outright buy the traits tells you that ANet had reason to believe that there would be a significant number of people who would buy the unlocks.

They also originally had repair fees, suggesting they had reason to believe that repair fees would be worthwhile.

Regardless, what it actually suggests to me is that they recognized that not everyone would want to do the required unlock requirements and gave an alternative option. Not that they necessarily thought it would be a significantly popular option.

A password that is not functioning as a password is, by definition, irrelevant.

So you think we should get rid of our passwords because a minority of people using them are insecure, and you think that secure things that a minority of people will insecurely use are irrelevant.

I took the word “additional” as meaning a separate tab, which would effectively hide the information from view. That is not what I want. The information needs to be clearly, obviously visible.

If I meant a separate tab, then I wouldn’t have added that to the suggestion, given that if it were to be a separate tab, there would be no need for it since the normal TP would serve the same purpose.

That being said, no, what I meant by section was, for example, a section possibly below the item or list of items which shows the total value of the item(s) offered. Right in front of the person, and only missable if the person intentionally chooses to not read it.

And I keep telling you that item-to-item trading can already be done in the TP if you’re willing to pay the honest asking price and the TP listing fee. Asking for item-to-item trading basically amounts to you saying that you do not want to pay the TP fee or that you want to buy items at prices cheaper than the market price.

If I want to trade 1000G worth of a product for 1000G worth of a product, give me a good reason why I should have to pay another 150G so my 1000G of product actually cost me 1150G. Why should my 1000G of product not be worth another person’s 1000G of product?

And again, how am I suggesting buying items at cheaper prices if gold is not a part of the trade at all?

John Smith is not committing a fallacy of any kind by letting the players know ANet’s official stance on player-to-player trading.

I didn’t say he was. I linked to the definition of Appeal to Authority. He’s the authority, not the one speaking the fallacy.

I would be guilty of being fallacious if I simply believed what John Smith says because he’s from ANet. I don’t, I saw the reasons that he put out and saw that they made good sense.

Except “simply believing it” doesn’t have anything to do with the fallacy. The fallacy is using the authority as the argument.

I find it humorous that OP still thinks he has a “right” to things. This is a game, things are designed a certain way with a purpose in mind. What makes sense in the real world isn’t applicable here.

Filaha.1678:

Right.

That’s why I’m saying there shouldn’t be a fee to do a secure item-for-item trade. Because it’s unnecessary.

It’s not unnecessary. Coin sinks are very much necessary to keep the inflation down.

Regardless, what it actually suggests to me is that they recognized that not everyone would want to do the required unlock requirements and gave an alternative option. Not that they necessarily thought it would be a significantly popular option.

Could be. Doesn’t change the fact that the coin sink from retraiting has effectively been moved to trait acquisition instead.

So you think we should get rid of our passwords because a minority of people using them are insecure, and you think that secure things that a minority of people will insecurely use are irrelevant.

No, I think that some people are stupid. Simple as that.

If I want to trade 1000G worth of a product for 1000G worth of a product, give me a good reason why I should have to pay another 150G so my 1000G of product actually cost me 1150G. Why should my 1000G of product not be worth another person’s 1000G of product?

Well, the listing fee isn’t on place only to be a coin sink. It’s also there to prevent people from using the TP as a storage. Of course, part of that issue is rooted in the fact that the TP does not have an expiration for offers, which has a few other issues.

The thing is, the coin sink will never go away. It’s the most effective place to put a coin sink in. The only real question here is: Where should that coin sink be? Currently, the seller pays extra for the listing. You could just as well make it so that instead of paying extra for the list, they simply receive less. Selling your 1000G item would net you 850G.

So if you want to make that 15% go away, you’ll have to come up with another place to put it in.

1. Would you like higher waypoint fees?
2. Would you like repair fees to come back with a revenge?
3. Bring back the trait reset fees with a major increase?
4. How about fees to crafting?
5. Needing to pay to open up a dungeon?
6. What about making everything you buy from an NPC cost Gold, even if it already requires another currency as well?

Tell me, can you see the problems that each of these suggestions would have?

And again, how am I suggesting buying items at cheaper prices if gold is not a part of the trade at all?

Because that’s one of the things that item-for-item trading would enable.

Lightsbane.9012:

eithinan.9841:

I think the lack of chat box spam in this game would be enough of a reason and pretty obvious.

really? that’s not a problem in other games. at all. don’t want to see it? change the chat filter. i said logical reasons. at least the first reply made sense. then again, almost all trading scams are incredibly obvious and count on the ‘victim’ not having a shred of common sense.
the reason it would(is) be useful, is that there are sometimes items in a game that are so outrageously overpriced(precursors, usually) that you might be able to cut it down a little bit by making an offer.

No. I’ll give you 4 reasons:

Filaha.1678:

So specifically you’re asking if every single person in the game has access to the same items? Then no, because they don’t link every single player together.

However, I don’t see how that makes much of a difference, so if you’d like to explain how a larger number of people significantly affects it, please do. If you’d also like to link that to how it would be affected by people trading an item for an item securely without having to pay extra money to cover the cut taken in order to make an equal-value exchange, please do.

If people dont have to pay any taxes on p2p trading, they will try to do that, in order to maximize their profit. That leads to a hoarding mentality which results in more supply being stored in peoples inventory (or your proposed ITP) instead of the regular tp. Less supply on the regular tp means prices will be more volatile and subject to higher price shifts. I, as an experienced trader see so many ways, i could exploit this for higher profit margins.

And how do you prevent your ITP being used as free storage? Want to store 100 stacks of iron ore? just list a hundred trades, 1 stack of iron for 1 dusk.

Filaha.1678:

Izaya.2906:

I suggest you post here to get an answer from Anet’s economist

I would if A. I thought he would give me an entirely unbiased answer (I’ve already pointed out that they have a financial interest in keeping gold low), and B. I’ve already expressly stated that I want to know if the players can justify it without referring to what “an expert” has told them.

You already answered yourself there.

Yes it is in Anet’s interest to keep gold low, it is also in our interest to keep it low. I think you already know as a game grows older gold becomes more worthless, allowing people to evade a universal gold sink is counterproductive in this situation.

You stated its a trade of 1000g worth of item(s) for 1000g worth of item(s). What purpose will the TP have if you allow these item trades then? You are just evading the gold sink in this transcation, nothing more.

There are millions of transactions on the TP that pulls out gold from the economy. That is the ultimate goal, to pull money out of the economy so new players aren’t overwhelmed by how much “old money” is present and can catch up.

You just don’t want involve yourself with the gold sink in this situation. In a item trade transacation were you get to keep 100g more in your bank, you and others who they facilitate to trade can pay a higher price for other items and cause unnecessary inflation harming new players. This only favors players who accumulate wealth for a long period of time and hurts new/casual players who won’t be able to keep up.

It’s only natural that if you keep more gold circulating that people can pay for gold for more items and new players/casuals have alot of a harder time to get what they want.

You may feel its unfair for you in this single transaction but its a universal gold sink applied to millions of transactions daily, no one should be exempted no matter how they feel.

Olba.5376:

It’s not unnecessary. Coin sinks are very much necessary to keep the inflation down.

It’s unnecessary specific to itself, even if the concept is necessary.

Could be. Doesn’t change the fact that the coin sink from retraiting has effectively been moved to trait acquisition instead.

Could be. Of course, retraiting was an ongoing cost, while trait acquisition is a one-time deal, so if they just wanted to remove more from the service, they could have increased retrait costs.

Well, the listing fee isn’t on place only to be a coin sink. It’s also there to prevent people from using the TP as a storage.

Would it surprise you to find out that I could come up with several ways that could be avoided without necessitating a fee? Not the least of which is the mentioned expiration time (or lack thereof).

The thing is, the coin sink will never go away.

Could probably have said the same thing about repair costs and retraits a year ago.

You could just as well make it so that instead of paying extra for the list, they simply receive less. Selling your 1000G item would net you 850G.

Or they could give a service where 1000G worth of product is worth 1000G of another product, not 850G of another product.

So if you want to make that 15% go away, you’ll have to come up with another place to put it in.

1. Would you like higher waypoint fees?
2. Would you like repair fees to come back with a revenge?
3. Bring back the trait reset fees with a major increase?
4. How about fees to crafting?
5. Needing to pay to open up a dungeon?
6. What about making everything you buy from an NPC cost Gold, even if it already requires another currency as well?

1. Sure. They’re pretty low as it is right now. Running around Dry Top, I make enough off of events and kills alone to offset the cost of the waypointing around.
2. Sure. TBH, I don’t even see the point in forcing us to repair now if it’s free anyways.
3. Considering they used to have a gem store item which would allow you to respec anywhere, they could put a cost on respec for the ability to do it anywhere, yes.
4. Depends on what you mean by “fees to crafting”. However, had it been thought about to begin with, each tier of crafting (75, 150, 225, etc.) could have required the use of a manual or further training from the master, for a cost.
5. That would be silly.
6. They could do that.

Tell me, can you see the problems that each of these suggestions would have?

Apparently not. However, you seem to be intentionally trying to find inconvenient gold sinks and not considering convenient ones.

How about options for vendors? If you don’t want to spend 62,000 karma on a cultural weapon, you could optionally buy it for 30G. If you don’t want to farm a dungeon for the tokens to get a dungeon armour set, how about spending gold on that? Maybe the cost of a cultural set of equivalent level.

How about Ascended back item resets so you can repick the stats for a fee? Most people wouldn’t gather up the crafting materials to craft another back item just for other sets, but I’d bet a good portion would pay a few gold to reset their stat choice to pick another.

How about premium fees to unlock certain skins (especially ones which cannot be obtained any more)? Or missed minis at a premium rate?

How about a gold sink in Lion’s Arch to help rebuild it and donate to the families affected by the devastation, and in return you get Karma?

They could also put things like a barber shop into the game directly for gold rather than requiring the “to-gem” conversion first and then buying the kit. They could also make it so that you could change specific aspects of your appearance for varying fees. For example, 5G to change your hair colour, another 10G to change style, 5G to change eye colour, 5G to change skin colour, 20G to change face, 10G to access the sliders on your current face, etc. As things stand, if I want my character to have darker skin, I have to buy a whole makeover kit to do it. I won’t do that. Spending a fraction of it, though, I would.

They could also make current gold sinks more obvious. I didn’t know until I stumbled across it that you could buy Influence gains for your guild for gold. They could either figure out a way to make that more obvious or just make a way to buy influence for your guild directly through the interface.

Do you see any problems with those? Could those not possibly be potentially good gold sinks for both the players and the economy?

Because that’s one of the things that item-for-item trading would enable.

Only if people are trading their items for items of lesser value. Which they could do now by selling their item and then buying the other. I mean, if I wanted 850G of product for my 1000G product, I can do that now.

Filaha.1678:

So specifically you’re asking if every single person in the game has access to the same items? Then no, because they don’t link every single player together.

However, I don’t see how that makes much of a difference, so if you’d like to explain how a larger number of people significantly affects it, please do.

TOR is an example of what you do not want in an MMO economy: crafted items that sell for less than the cost of their materials, cash shop items that sell for millions of (game currency) and pretty much the only way to get that much money is either buying cash shop items for real money or grinding dailies with max-level characters.

Free-to-play members cannot even carry that much money, or even have enough money at one time to buy most account unlocks (conveniences like being able to quick travel or display a title, or even hide a toon’s helmet!), and newer players can’t earn enough money to buy the “special” gear without spending $100 or more on cash shop items and selling them for game currency.

Further, the trading post there is server-specific, and it costs about $15 to transfer servers, so if you started out on a server where the stuff you want is priced out of your range, there’s little opportunity to look for a better deal elsewhere. The same item can be 10k credits on one server, and 25k on another.

Finally, your quote above demonstrates a significant lack of knowledge about this particular subject. The global trading post is perhaps the single most defining trait of the GW2 economy, it normalizes prices over every server and leads to faster sales and better prices because nearly every item you want is almost always available for sale and multiple sellers compete with each other. The game’s economy would be very different indeed if each server had its own marketplace.

Wanze.8410:

If people dont have to pay any taxes on p2p trading, they will try to do that, in order to maximize their profit. That leads to a hoarding mentality which results in more supply being stored in peoples inventory (or your proposed ITP) instead of the regular tp. Less supply on the regular tp means prices will be more volatile and subject to higher price shifts. I, as an experienced trader see so many ways, i could exploit this for higher profit margins.

Okay. Name some ways in which you could exploit an ITP to make extra money off of items that you couldn’t do now simply by buying up items, and which doesn’t rely on other people pulling supply off the normal TP.

Also, what types of items are you expecting people to put up on there? I doubt most people will bother to pop up 250 Iron Ore for specific other items since that would be far more inefficient than just selling them.

And how do you prevent your ITP being used as free storage? Want to store 100 stacks of iron ore? just list a hundred trades, 1 stack of iron for 1 dusk.

Let’s see.

Limited space to put up trades.
A limitation on difference in price based on the normal TP (as in, you can’t put up something worth 3.5G for something worth 1500G).
Limited time on trades.
A time limit where you can’t access the item for a certain amount of time after you cancel a trade.
A fee for cancelling a trade.
A combination of the above.

Should I keep listing more possibilities?

Izaya.2906:

Yes it is in Anet’s interest to keep gold low, it is also in our interest to keep it low.

How is it in my interest to spend 150G to trade 1000G of items for 1000G of items?

You stated its a trade of 1000g worth of item(s) for 1000g worth of item(s). What purpose will the TP have if you allow these item trades then? You are just evading the gold sink in this transcation, nothing more.

Two purposes.
1. You will still need gold to buy other things that are not being traded for or are account bound. Gold will not lose its necessity in the game.

2. It’s not “I will trade 1000G of my item for 1000G of any other item offered”. It’s “I will trade 1000G of my specific item for 1000G of this other specific item”. That means that if I want to trade a 1000G weapon for 1000G worth of Bolts of Damask, then the other person would need to specifically have 1000G worth of Bolts of Damask. That makes simply using the ITP as an alternative trading post be inconvenient to avoid using the normal TP. It would be faster to get some value off the item to just sell it. It would, instead, be a more convenient and safer way to trade specific items for specific items.

There are millions of transactions on the TP that pulls out gold from the economy. That is the ultimate goal, to pull money out of the economy so new players aren’t overwhelmed by how much “old money” is present and can catch up.

Which could be offset by putting in more and/or better gold sinks that aren’t merely an inconvenience.

You may feel its unfair for you in this single transaction but its a universal gold sink applied to millions of transactions daily, no one should be exempted no matter how they feel.

If they’re too lazy to come up with gold sinks that aren’t pure inconvenience, that doesn’t mean that the system is good.

And I still haven’t seen anyone give a good reason why 1000G of a product should not be equal value to 1000G of another product.

Filaha.1678:

And I still haven’t seen anyone give a good reason why 1000G of a product should not be equal value to 1000G of another product.

It does have equal value. And you are free to trade it via mail with another player.

2 pages of replies and i dont think a single one agreed with you that p2p trading is a good idea. Let it go.

Wanze.8410:

Filaha.1678:

And I still haven’t seen anyone give a good reason why 1000G of a product should not be equal value to 1000G of another product.

It does have equal value. And you are free to trade it via mail with another player.

2 pages of replies and i dont think a single one agreed with you that p2p trading is a good idea. Let it go.

I think the OP already gave up, this guy seems to just be enjoying the attention that comes from kicking the hornets’ nest.

Wanze.8410:

Filaha.1678:

And I still haven’t seen anyone give a good reason why 1000G of a product should not be equal value to 1000G of another product.

It does have equal value. And you are free to trade it via mail with another player.

2 pages of replies and i dont think a single one agreed with you that p2p trading is a good idea. Let it go.

I could give the same advice. Two pages of replies and nobody’s convinced me that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Why, then, do you keep trying? Clearly I won’t accept the reasoning being constantly restated.

Besides, a majority of the responses seem to be based around not even reading what I’m saying and arguing points I never made. Don’t know how many times I had to restate that my suggestion didn’t include money being traded and only item for item.

At no point was I under the impression that I would convince Anet that it should be done, since I already stated it’s clearly in their financial interest to keep gold low so that they can sell more gems for people to trade into gold.

Actually, it’s in the players’ best interest to keep the value of gold low, so that new players don’t have to grind until level 30 in order to afford level 20 gear. If you think precursors are expensive, imagine if the TP only covered a single server, and on some servers there was exactly ONE dusk for sale during the entire month. The seller could ask whatever he wanted for it, and someone would scrape up the gold for it. Or servers where there are none at all for an extended period, and players go around advertising Dusks in chat and scamming people out of thousands of gold…

If Anet acted only in their own interest they would allow gems to be traded for gold but not the other way around. If you want an expensive item, either grind the gold for it or spend $10 on gems, what is the casual player going to do, spend the next two weeks of his limited play time farming, or get out his credit card? Get free stuff from the cash shop just by playing the (subscription-free) game? Nooooo, buy gems if you want these shinies…

Looking at SWTOR, it’s obvious that most of the development work goes into cash shop items, new versions of their Black Lion Chests come out every few weeks with reskins of armor, mounts, weapons etc. while months go by with no real content updates except repeats of old events.

If you look at it objectively, it’s obvious that while Anet wants to make money, their first priority is delivering a good game environment for players to enjoy, not squeezing every last dollar out of the player base before the parent company decides to shut down the servers because it’s getting too expensive to keep the lights on.

I can see where you’re coming from, Filaha, but I feel you’re underestimating just how important the TP taxes are in controlling inflation. The amount of gold being generated every day in GW2 is VAST. We have players who say they can easily earn 10g a day through a number of activities (and while I’m not one of those players, I’m familiar enough with the methods they use to know that what they claim is accurate).

The fact that GW2’s economy hasn’t turned into a mess like Diablo 3 is a strong supporter for continuing to compel players to trade through the TP. Yes, the TP taxes make us grumble, but they’re a necessary evil for maintaining the game’s overall health.

Zaxares.5419:

I can see where you’re coming from, Filaha, but I feel you’re underestimating just how important the TP taxes are in controlling inflation. The amount of gold being generated every day in GW2 is VAST. We have players who say they can easily earn 10g a day through a number of activities (and while I’m not one of those players, I’m familiar enough with the methods they use to know that what they claim is accurate).

The fact that GW2’s economy hasn’t turned into a mess like Diablo 3 is a strong supporter for continuing to compel players to trade through the TP. Yes, the TP taxes make us grumble, but they’re a necessary evil for maintaining the game’s overall health.

Is Diablo 3’s economy a result of not having market taxes?

And is the relative stability of GW2’s economy the result of having market taxes?

Also, are the people claiming they earn 10+ gold a day earning it from the game or from farming things and then selling them on the TP? Because the latter isn’t creating gold.

And if TP taxes are so important that they negate the plausibility of a secure trade function that you don’t need to pay for, maybe they should think of putting in some gold sinks that would be effective and people would want to participate in. Ah, but that’s a topic for another thread, another time.

1. Generally, yes. The key difference between D3 and GW2’s economies was that GW2’s TP taxes were an omnipresent gold sink that just about everybody in the game used. In order to be successful, any gold sink has to be widely used by the vast majority of the player base. I’m having trouble thinking of another gold sink that would be as widely used as the TP and ALSO not cause excessive amounts of hassle. (For example, greatly hiking the waypoint fees might be a way of introducing another gold sink, but it would hit both poor and rich players in a way that poorer players would be much more severely affected.) We’ve seen some examples of small gold sinks being put in like the gold cost for the Nomad’s/Ventari’s recipes, but again, these would only hit a very small amount of the player base.

2. It varies, but I’m thinking primarily of dungeon runners. But even discounting them, the increase in general prices between launch and the present day shows that there has been an enormous influx of coin into the game. In fact, it’s actually outpacing the TP taxes. Fortunately, there is enough demand for other materials balanced with material supply to keep prices and earning power roughly on par with each other.

See I don’t have a problem with item for item trading among players in a secure, informed environment. I don’t think this would make a huge impact on either supply or inflation. But I suspect that most who want player 2 player simply wants to avoid the 15% sink buying and selling for gold and that can’t be allowed.

I came from a game where the money supply ballooned out of control due to lack of an economic adviser. Players were actually exceeding the 4 billion currency limits for their character bank and had to become creative how to store their excess currency. Common items that should go for 250-1000, and once did, were going for 50K because it didn’t matter. “Let me buy a McDouble, here’s a $100, keep the change”. Highly desirable items went for BILLIONS. My main character was a pauper with only a few hundred million.

MMO inflation is an ugly and terrible thing. Thank the Gods that ANet keeps a lid on reward rate and have significant sinks. And yes, that previous game had Player to Player trading which avoided the sink in it’s trading house.

Filaha.1678:

-snip-

Again you’re just talking for yourself on this matter.

I have sold a perma hairstyle kit, several precursors, legendaries etc. costing me thousands of gold in TP fees.

I don’t find the TP fee an inconvenience at all but a necessary balance for the economy, the new players/casuals won’t be able to afford anything if I(and everyone using the TP) had more gold to spend on high demand items I like to use for myself.

A 1000g of a product is equal to 850g gold on hand(after sales) in this virtual economy not 1000g or 1000g worth of items, and I emphasize virtual economy.

If they were to introduce trading, then they would have to come up with a way to funnel out that 15% gold.

And regarding Zaxares comment about 10g a day, I do 20-30g a day purely from dungeon running depending on how much time I have and if other people are online to run with, that doesn’t include selling drops mind you so his example is a conservative number.

Now, let’s say we all agree to person to person trading, can you kindly suggest a gold sink that will remove 10’s or 100’s of thousands or millions(I don’t know exactly because I don’t have access to metrics) of gold from the entire GW2 population daily?

It’s easy to suggest something for your personal convenience at the expense of the general population but if you can’t come up with a feasible solution to the negative side effect then it’s also not feasible to implement the suggestion in the first place.

It’s as simple as that.

Izaya.2906:

And regarding Zaxares comment about 10g a day, I do 20-30g a day purely from dungeon running depending on how much time I have and if other people are online to run with, that doesn’t include selling drops mind you so his example is a conservative number.

Definitely a conservative number. 4.5 gold for simply running AC 1-3 from bonus box. With kill gold and champ boxes easy 5-6 gold of new money per person running it.

Player to Player trading is a bad idea, as has been explained in many of the posts above. At this point in the thread, if you are still clinging to the idea it is due to one of the following:

1. Bias – It was your idea so you love it. You’ll stick with it by skimming over all the criticism, plugging your ears, and looking away.

2. Ignorance – You don’t know anything about economics, and your reading comprehension skills are so appalling that you’ve been unable to see how ignorant you were.

3. Maliciousness – You are a scammer. You understand that Player to Player trading is bad and that’s why you want it in the game. Your goals are selfish, malicious, and unethical, but you don’t care.

Player to Player trading is an antique design flaw that exists in other games because they were made prior to the knowledge of how bad the idea is. Newer games are phasing it out or outright eliminating it because it does not add anything positive to the game, but does bring several negative things.

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

As to the TP tax and avoidance thereof: Well, in RL I’ve never kvetched about income taxes. I just figure 1/3 of my salary was never mine in the first place, and that employers offer the salaries they do in the understanding that not all of it will stay with the employee. If the government wasn’t taking 1/3, you’d get 1/3 less at the front end. And the government actually needs the money so you can have roads to drive on and parks to walk in and police to keep you safe …

Anyway, in the TP if you only get 850 gold on a 1K gold sale, then 850 gold is your profit and the other 150 never existed. It’s a mental trick that can save you many an ulcer.

Donari.5237:

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Guild Banks, just saying.

Wanze.8410:

Donari.5237:

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Guild Banks, just saying.

Works for guildies, but assuming your friends are in different guilds, you need to be in the guild for 3 days to have access to the bank.

This argument / discussion has been done multiple times in the past. The fact of the matter is, the game was designed from the ground up to NOT support player to player trading. Get on with your life.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This argument / discussion has been done multiple times in the past. The fact of the matter is, the game was designed from the ground up to NOT support player to player trading. Get on with your life.

The game was also designed not to have a dedicated healing class, but we still have people trying to roll a healer.

Esplen.3940:

Wanze.8410:

Donari.5237:

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Guild Banks, just saying.

Works for guildies, but assuming your friends are in different guilds, you need to be in the guild for 3 days to have access to the bank.

If they were in other guilds they wouldnt see his offer to give away dyes in guild chat anyways.

Wanze.8410:

Esplen.3940:

Wanze.8410:

Donari.5237:

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Guild Banks, just saying.

Works for guildies, but assuming your friends are in different guilds, you need to be in the guild for 3 days to have access to the bank.

If they were in other guilds they wouldnt see his offer to give away dyes in guild chat anyways.

Nice nit you picked there

Donari.5237:

Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Wanze.8410:

If they were in other guilds they wouldnt see his offer to give away dyes in guild chat anyways.

See bolded section.

Esplen.3940:

Donari.5237:

Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

Wanze.8410:

If they were in other guilds they wouldnt see his offer to give away dyes in guild chat anyways.

See bolded section.

Donari.5237:

I do see a valid point that’s been sidelined in all this: the mail spam limit is ridiculously low. Suppressed on the third set of dyes I send to guildies when I listed dyes in gchat and asked who wanted which ones? A royal pain! I understand the need to throttle gold sellers but as has been noted many times by many people, it’s too harsh when it throttles legitimate interaction. Given that the only way to give something to a friend or guildmate is to mail it, we need to be able to mail it.

So only guildmates can be friends?

#wanzesheadexploded

laughs

That was just one example. There’s trying to hand out food to PuG members in a dungeon — or even to guildies therein — when a bank isn’t handy. Or RP feasts out in the wilds but no, no soup for anyone past your first 2 attempts!

This is all a side point, however.

Direct P2P trading would rob millions of players of the opportunity to buy the items that are traded P2P. It would turn a wonderful, inclusive economy into a horrible mess. Desirable items would become currency for the very rich, and outsiders would be paying them through the nose for a little taste of anything that’s not common as muck.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Direct P2P trading would rob millions of players of the opportunity to buy the items that are traded P2P. It would turn a wonderful, inclusive economy into a horrible mess. Desirable items would become currency for the very rich, and outsiders would be paying them through the nose for a little taste of anything that’s not common as muck.

It’s really not as hard as people make it out to be to become rich. I’ve been making at least 5g a day and I work “part-time” while taking summer courses.

The truth is I’m outside of the house, on average, for 58.5 hours a week. I don’t go to school or work on Saturday and Sunday, so I have an average workday of 11.7 hours. Travel time is between 15 minutes and an hour (carpool or public transit). On one day, I work for 9 hours, followed by a 2 hour night class, followed by waiting for the next bus which takes 45 minutes to leave and then an hour to go home.

And that 5g a day isn’t really true either. I do 2 runs of Arah (Path 1 and 2) followed by Fractal 49 or 50, which is over 7g before counting chests, loot, and some sources of gold. Additionally, I do my dailies.

On the 11 hour “workday”, I am actually away from home for 14 and a half hours due to travel to work, school, then home. I only do dailies, if even that, on this day for obvious reasons.

If I actually join any of my speedrun groups, I can make upwards of 23g before counting loot in about 2-3 hours.

I have 360g in pure coin right now, in liquidatable assets (meaning things that can immediately be sold) I have over 1000g (this is just counting Ectos, Charged Lodestones, and a Permanent Trading Post Contract). If we factor in everything else… well, I’m at work so I can’t and won’t do that math for you.

Of course, I don’t expect players to get a Permanent Contract, and I didn’t expect to get it (already had a different TP Contract since the release during Wintersday oh so long ago), but the result still stands, if you know how to save and play “efficiently” you can easily make money. It might not be fast, it might not be fun, but you can do it.

If you don’t want to actually go out and do dungeons, you can always flip things. I know plenty of people who don’t care about “min-maxing” gold gains and will sell to the highest bidder which almost always ends up being a flipper. Of course, they don’t like their toes getting stepped on, so good luck with that.

Why did you post that in reply to my post? I don’t see how your and my post relate at all.

Your post is complaining that the rich get what high-end items and the poor can’t ever reach them.

I’m disproving you by stating that it’s relatively simple to make money, just that most people don’t. I play “casually” by definition, yet I’m still in the GW2 “middle class” in terms of money.

No, my post isn’t doing that at all. Have you read it?

Manasa Devi.7958:

Direct P2P trading would rob millions of players of the opportunity to buy the items that are traded P2P. It would turn a wonderful, inclusive economy into a horrible mess.

Stating an opinion has been occurred. Proceeding to the next segment of post- the explanation why the opinion has been made.

Desirable items would become currency for the very rich, and outsiders would be paying them through the nose for a little taste of anything that’s not common as muck.

Desirable items have always been currency for the very rich. Outsiders have already been paying for items through the nose because of their lack of knowledge and laziness.

There are two things fueling the market:
Laziness and Greed.

The Greedy will attempt to control markets, such as owning a specific item, controlling prices of an item, inflating bids on an item they control, flipping item (although this isn’t particularly greedy), and hoarding items through speculation (again, not very greedy).

The Lazy will sell to highest bidder, buy from lowest offer, and stay poor.

Now that’s not to say that selling to highest bidder and buying from lowest offer are what make them poor, nor is it to say that those are bad ideas (in some cases they are ideal), however the concept still remains. The greedy are feeding off of the lazy and yet the lazy complain.

If some “outsider” is only able to afford muck, then the solution is to address the problem, not to ignore the problem and prevent nice things from happening.

P2P Trading can harm the TP, yes, but the TP is controlled by players and has “harmful” prices, where there are sought after items that people are unable to buy unless they grind for months on end. Yet people complain that they will never be able to obtain them even though the reality is they will not be trying in an efficient manner. If you want to get to the finish line badly, you shouldn’t take the scenic route.

The TP being inclusive isn’t harmful, but opening up P2P, in my opinion, won’t ruin it. When doing P2P, you don’t have information at your disposal (yes you can open up the TP, but remember, greedy feeding off of the lazy). The only downside is that the “muck-buyers” will be buying muck outside of the trading post, thereby ignoring the gold sink.

That’s actually the biggest issue, the lack of gold sink. I particularly enjoy purchasing items through map chat, and that’s how I finished my first Legendary a long time ago. It’s relatively safe as long as you know what you’re doing and, because of lack of trust, you don’t ever get suppressed since you don’t make that many trades. But the trades you do make tend to be bulky (well, not 100+ of an item unless they trust you).

Now, if you’d like to explain more as to why you think P2P trading would rob players of items and turn our beautiful TP into a cesspool of greedy people feeding off of the lazy players, go ahead, but I’m quite sure that the TP has already been festering for over a year.

Esplen.3940:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Direct P2P trading would rob millions of players of the opportunity to buy the items that are traded P2P. It would turn a wonderful, inclusive economy into a horrible mess.

Stating an opinion has been occurred. Proceeding to the next segment of post- the explanation why the opinion has been made.

No, it’s not an explanation of the opinion, it’s just the next in an enumeration of effects of introducing P2P trading.

Esplen.3940:

Desirable items would become currency for the very rich, and outsiders would be paying them through the nose for a little taste of anything that’s not common as muck.

Desirable items have always been currency for the very rich.

No, desirable items aren’t currency. Coin is currency. You can’t use desirable items to pay for anything.

Esplen.3940:

Outsiders have already been paying for items through the nose because of their lack of knowledge and laziness.

No, outsiders pay what the market arrives at.

Esplen.3940:

If some “outsider” is only able to afford muck, then the solution is to address the problem, not to ignore the problem and prevent nice things from happening.

Why do you insist that outsiders can only afford muck? That’s certainly not a point I raised.

Esplen.3940:

P2P Trading can harm the TP, yes, but the TP is controlled by players and has “harmful” prices, where there are sought after items that people are unable to buy unless they grind for months on end.

No player controls the TP.

Esplen.3940:

Yet people complain that they will never be able to obtain them even though the reality is they will not be trying in an efficient manner. If you want to get to the finish line badly, you shouldn’t take the scenic route.

Stuff that random people complain about has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

Esplen.3940:

The TP being inclusive isn’t harmful, but opening up P2P, in my opinion, won’t ruin it.

Yes, it will. Items of which there are fewer available for trade than there are servers, and the absolute split of US and EU servers will cause things to become unavailable globally. At that point, the TP is ruined.

Esplen.3940:

When doing P2P, you don’t have information at your disposal (yes you can open up the TP, but remember, greedy feeding off of the lazy). The only downside is that the “muck-buyers” will be buying muck outside of the trading post, thereby ignoring the gold sink.

The TP will no longer even function as a price indicator for certain items, because certain items will no longer ever appear on the TP at all.

Esplen.3940:

That’s actually the biggest issue, the lack of gold sink. I particularly enjoy purchasing items through map chat, and that’s how I finished my first Legendary a long time ago. It’s relatively safe as long as you know what you’re doing and, because of lack of trust, you don’t ever get suppressed since you don’t make that many trades. But the trades you do make tend to be bulky (well, not 100+ of an item unless they trust you).

The goldsink could be compensated for by other goldsinks, but how would you counter the collapse of global availability of every tradable item in the game?

Esplen.3940:

Now, if you’d like to explain more as to why you think P2P trading would rob players of items and turn our beautiful TP into a cesspool of greedy people feeding off of the lazy players, go ahead, but I’m quite sure that the TP has already been festering for over a year.

I’m not going to explain why P2P trading would turn the TP into a cesspool of greedy people feeding off of lazy players, because that’s not a claim I made.

Then explain your post. Just as you did, I can spew out an opinion that can be refuted, but I at least attempted to back mine up with evidence.

Zaxares.5419:

The key difference between D3 and GW2’s economies was that GW2’s TP taxes were an omnipresent gold sink that just about everybody in the game used.

Are you sure? I’m going to take this point to bring up something which, I think, people need to bear in mind here. Namely, correlation does not imply causation.

I don’t doubt that lack of a tax probably could aid a poor economy in a game, but is that the only reason?

Could not the method of acquisition of items have contributed? For example, the RNG chance and cost of even attempting to get a precursor from the MF results in a lower supply both due to RNG and because less people will even attempt it, but make it a decent random drop off any champion in the world and the rarity would reliably drop because more people will have more chances at it. Is there anything similar in D3? Granted, I haven’t played the series since D2, but back then, you could achieve anything by simply farming the right monster as long as it took.

I’m having trouble thinking of another gold sink that would be as widely used as the TP and ALSO not cause excessive amounts of hassle.

I gave several examples of potential gold sinks earlier in the thread which would potentially be used by a significant enough number of people without causing excessive amounts of hassle. (Heck, if they put dungeon skins up for the same price as cultural sets so I didn’t have to farm the dungeons themselves, they’d remove a good thousand gold from me alone the first day). In addition to that, introducing new armors or skins but not overpricing them in gold could go a good distance too. BLTicket skins have an increased rarity not only caused by the RNG but because less people will hunt for them due to the RNG. But would they not remove a fair amount of gold if, instead of putting them for tickets, they put a new set of weapons out for a specific gold price? If a current skin goes for 100G on the TP, that would remove 15G from one person. But if that same skin was offered to all for 20G or 30G? More people could buy it, at a greater gold-removing rate. It makes it more convenient for the players to obtain, and is more effective as a gold sink than the taxes on the skins. Is there any problem with that which doesn’t revolve around hurting Anet’s bottom line by removing key purchases?

But even discounting them, the increase in general prices between launch and the present day shows that there has been an enormous influx of coin into the game. In fact, it’s actually outpacing the TP taxes.

Yes, that happens when I can freshly introduce into the game 1,000+ gold a week simply by clicking “Confirm” on the “buy gems” page and then converting those gems.

Izaya.2906:

Now, let’s say we all agree to person to person trading, can you kindly suggest a gold sink that will remove 10’s or 100’s of thousands or millions(I don’t know exactly because I don’t have access to metrics) of gold from the entire GW2 population daily?

A gold sink? No.
Several gold sinks? Sure. I already did start off earlier in the thread.

However, I feel it also prudent to point out that the inclusion of a trade function would not remove all TP taxes entirely and suggesting that it be all or nothing is fallacious.

As such, I don’t see why I would need to come up with a new gold sink to replace TP fees entirely when a trade function would not remove TP fees entirely.

mtpelion.4562:

At this point in the thread, if you are still clinging to the idea it is due to one of the following:

Or I don’t feel that anyone has sufficiently proven to me how it would be a bad idea without relying on assertions and suppositions as nobody has, yet, provided any evidence, say of a game with an economic system exactly the same as GW2’s except it has a trade feature, which has thrown everything into disarray. So if you would like to refute my argument, do so. Otherwise, I would thank you to not assume my reasoning and try to use that as an argument against me.

If you think I’m wrong, attack my argument, not me.

Newer games are phasing it out or outright eliminating it because it does not add anything positive to the game, but does bring several negative things.

Name them, with statements from the developers which show that the reason why it was not put in was because nothing good comes of being able to trade items.

Brother Grimm.5176:

This argument / discussion has been done multiple times in the past.

Then you are free to not take part in it.

Filaha.1678:

Are you sure? I’m going to take this point to bring up something which, I think, people need to bear in mind here. Namely, correlation does not imply causation.

I don’t doubt that lack of a tax probably could aid a poor economy in a game, but is that the only reason?

Could not the method of acquisition of items have contributed? For example, the RNG chance and cost of even attempting to get a precursor from the MF results in a lower supply both due to RNG and because less people will even attempt it, but make it a decent random drop off any champion in the world and the rarity would reliably drop because more people will have more chances at it. Is there anything similar in D3? Granted, I haven’t played the series since D2, but back then, you could achieve anything by simply farming the right monster as long as it took.

I’ll grant that it may not have been the ONLY reason (another major factor being gold farming bots), but most analyses by game designers have all accepted the primary cause of D3’s runaway hyperinflation to be the lack of an adequate, omnipresent gold sink. GW2 has gold farming bots too, and I must assume that Blizzard is as strict on cracking down on bots as ANet is, so why did the two economies end up so different?

I only played D3 during the beta and quit after deciding it wasn’t to my taste, so I can’t
speculate on the structure of rare drops in that game, but game-wide, there are actually more Precursors being generated each day than people tend to think. John Smith once posted data that said that within a 24 hour period, 50+ Dusks were traded, at almost the same ratio of unique buyers and sellers too. I’m sure you’ve seen a marked increase in the number of people using Legendaries in game too.

I gave several examples of potential gold sinks earlier in the thread which would potentially be used by a significant enough number of people without causing excessive amounts of hassle. (Heck, if they put dungeon skins up for the same price as cultural sets so I didn’t have to farm the dungeons themselves, they’d remove a good thousand gold from me alone the first day). In addition to that, introducing new armors or skins but not overpricing them in gold could go a good distance too. BLTicket skins have an increased rarity not only caused by the RNG but because less people will hunt for them due to the RNG. But would they not remove a fair amount of gold if, instead of putting them for tickets, they put a new set of weapons out for a specific gold price? If a current skin goes for 100G on the TP, that would remove 15G from one person. But if that same skin was offered to all for 20G or 30G? More people could buy it, at a greater gold-removing rate. It makes it more convenient for the players to obtain, and is more effective as a gold sink than the taxes on the skins. Is there any problem with that which doesn’t revolve around hurting Anet’s bottom line by removing key purchases?

I’m actually partially with you on this. I’ve always advocated for a completely free market in GW2, being able to buy and sell ANYTHING. So your suggestion for being able to buy/sell dungeon weapons and armor on the TP? I’d totally support that.

As for making BLTC weapons and armor skins directly purchasable, I’d like this too, but I think it’s probably safe to say that ANet has looked at the numbers, and this current system is far more profitable than offering them for direct sale at lower prices to capture wider market share. This reflects what we know from other games with microtransactions. Zynga once revealed that of the millions of players who play Farmville, only 5% of these actually spent any money on the cash shop. But this 5% ended up paying them millions of dollars. It’s likely that the players who spent lots of money on Black Lion keys probably dump hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars on them at a time. I’m not sure if ANet selling the skins for $5 or $10 each could make up for the income by these players. The current system must be working, and working well, otherwise why would so many companies be going for these “whales” now?

Bear in mind that I, personally, don’t quite like this system either. It feels vaguely predatory to me, preying on players who are more susceptible to impulsive purchases or gambling urges. But at the end of the day, ANet IS a business. They will do what will make them the most money.

Yes, that happens when I can freshly introduce into the game 1,000+ gold a week simply by clicking “Confirm” on the “buy gems” page and then converting those gems.

Actually, no, the gold you get from selling gems on the exchange isn’t freshly created. It comes from gold that was farmed in-game by other players. No new gold is actually being created. Likewise, players buying gems with gold aren’t actually supporting ANet financially either; the vast majority of the gems on the TP were originally bought by someone with real money. (I say the vast majority because it is possible to get free gems through AP chests, but this is like a drop in the ocean.)