Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

I would like to be able to compete with him by merely playing the non-TP portions of the game. That’s all I’m asking, for the other aspects of the game to have profit potential competitive with the TP.

Again, making money on the TP cannot be compared to rewards from in-game.

Again, it absolutely MUST be compared to rewards from other areas of the game. There are macroeconomic distinctions, and those need to be accounted for, but the game ALSO needs to account for the personal distinctions, the “this player receives this amount of gold” distinction, and that needs to be balanced with other methods in the game. It’s complete nonsense to suggest otherwise.

Rather, we’re paying them the price of their goods that they’ve decided on. This is Capitalism at it’s finest. They labored for 2 hours to sell me a stack of Mithril, and I paid them the price they asked.

An it reminds me of classic gold rush communities, in which miners rarely made much money, but shop owners typically made a killing. It is classic capitalism, but only in the very worst aspects. Pure communism is bad, pure capitalism is even worse, a balanced economy that works for the average citizen has to have both elements in balance, a system in which capitalist principles allow for innovation to profit, but that also ensures that hard work is fairly rewarded.

so I guess these are your demands? playing the game income is normalize against the TP traders?

so I guess these are your demands? playing the game income is normalize against the TP traders?

Give or take. It’s hardly a “demand” though, I’m in no position to issue ultimatums, it’s just what I believe would be healthier for the game overall.

Ohoni.6057:

so I guess these are your demands? playing the game income is normalize against the TP traders?

Give or take. It’s hardly a “demand” though, I’m in no position to issue ultimatums, it’s just what I believe would be healthier for the game overall.

Sometimes I wonder about income distribution. I wonder how long it will take before somebody is so wealthy that they become the modern day Mansa Musa where he sent so much gold that he literally caused inflation in the economies he visited.

I am not sure if any game has reached that point

It’s unlikely for that to happen in GW2 just because it’s a single centralized economy. One person can have many times more than the median, according to Efficiency at least one player has ten times the wealth of the median 5000 hour players (and 150 times the median 1000h player), but there are a lot of players in the game, so while people with that wealth influence the flow of the luxury markets, they aren’t likely to be able to cause large commodity shifts (at least not without taking a huge loss in the process). It would be a different story entirely if GW2 had a decentralized economy, like each server had their own isolated TP, but you could shift your own wealth from one server to the next, or if there were unique markets in each city and you could manipulate them individually.

Everyone is just as capable of learning about economics and how to flip things on the trading post, there isnt some special group of players that anet has deemed as the only ones allowed to do it. Its your own choice not to persue that knowledge and use it to your advantage.

The reason people in this game are richer than you is because they worked at it. Even if you got your way and redistributed the wealth, in a few months everything would go right back to the way it was because those rich players will continue with the playstyle that made them rich in the first place, and everyone else will go back to their normal playstyle and make about the same as they did befor

Ohoni.6057:

An it reminds me of classic gold rush communities, in which miners rarely made much money, but shop owners typically made a killing. It is classic capitalism, but only in the very worst aspects. Pure communism is bad, pure capitalism is even worse, a balanced economy that works for the average citizen has to have both elements in balance, a system in which capitalist principles allow for innovation to profit, but that also ensures that hard work is fairly rewarded.

In this game there are no mine or shop owners who can enforce low wages or dirty cheap buy prices.
Every single worker has free access to its own mine, its own tools and its own shop, and absolutely zero resposabilites towards any capitalist associate other than the system natural sinks.

What there is, however, is a free market, and the completely ridiculous situation where miners happily sell their hard earned ore for much less than what smiths are willing to pay.
I don’t really think the system should be the one to blame for this.

Seriously dude, it’s really obnoxious how you refuse to quote people by their names. I’m sure this has come up before, but I want to reiterate how difficult it is to keep track of conversation threads.

Ohoni.6057:

Actually, no. It’s in their best interests to make as much profit as they can as reliably as possible for as long as possible, but this doesn’t necessarily mean raising the profit gained from as many players as possible. If they can make more courting the whales, then that’s what they’re going to do.

Sure, but there’s no reason to believe that those with a lot of gold are any more “whales” than those with little gold. They’re still best off appealing to those who actually play the game, rather than those sitting around in LA.

“Whale” is actually an industry term, not just a catch-all I invented to refer to the source of money. A Whale is part of the very small percentage of gamers in a free-to-play game who fork over enough money to keep the company afloat. Ok so you know League of Legends? The vast majority of their players never buy anything with real money (or buy very little), but it’s still one of the most profitable games in the world because some people have been willing to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to unlock a huge number of skins.

Most players aren’t willing to buy anything except maybe expansions. It’s important for those players to be kept happy so they continue to play the game and act as party fodder, but the real money comes from that smaller proportion of players who are willing to spend obscene amounts of money tricking out their characters. As such, it makes more sense to go where the money is rather than to endlessly chase the tightwads who are happy to log on for an hour or two a day but don’t want to hand over their credit card information. Hence why the Gem Store is so well-stocked and we had to wait just about 3 years for a few new sets of armor in-game: because that’s where the money is. ANet makes plenty of mistakes, but poor financial ($$$) decisions does not seem to be one of them.

Ohoni.6057:

(and yes, for the context of this discussion, TP profits DO count as “rewards,” however much the flipper insist otherwise).

TP profits counting as rewards is as valid a statement as a janitor making the same salary of the CEO because “balance and equality”.

Ohoni.6057:

True, but in a game, players should be entitled to a general sense of fairness, that while you have to work for what you get, every other player is expected to work just as hard for what he gets.

Who says Wanze isn’t working hard? If you’re suggesting that your gameplay takes more skill, or more hard work than him, why not take the easy route and play the TP?

Ohoni.6057:

So if a 15% tax is great, then wouldn’t a 20 or 25% tax on those who bring in hundreds of gold per month be even better! Think of all the gold sunk!

Speaking on fairness, I would be ok with this if it applied to every single player, and not the top 1% that you seem to have such a hatred for.

Ohoni.6057:

I would like to be able to compete with him by merely playing the non-TP portions of the game. That’s all I’m asking, for the other aspects of the game to have profit potential competitive with the TP.

/sigh You can’t. Rewards from playing the game (i.e. quests, FotM, Dungeons, etc) are not the same as TP profits. Stop with this comparison because I know you understand that it’s completely different. We’ve explained it to you for years, so there’s no excuse for you to not know.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, it absolutely MUST be compared to rewards from other areas of the game.

Nope. See above.

Ohoni.6057:

Pure communism

There are no social classes in this game. There are no TP Barons, or laborers. There are players. Some players are smarter than others, thus they earn more in-game currency. Just as some PvP players are more skilled than others, so they win $100,000 tournaments.

Ohoni.6057:

Give or take. It’s hardly a “demand” though, I’m in no position to issue ultimatums, it’s just what I believe would be healthier for the game overall.

The Soviet Union thought the same with their government. Where are they now? And why do you think the Unite States is the largest economy in the world? Because Capitalism works.

Yep, our healthcare, college tuition, housing markets are all awesome b/c you know capitalism…..lol

Everyone knows that purely capitalistic system do not work. They start off fine but descend into tragedy.

Oh boy, lots to cover.

Ohoni.6057:

Then tell me, what would be driving this rapid shift? (1)How would eliminating TP traders and making everyone aware of these ‘bad deals’ in any way make an economy move rapidly towards equilibrium? (2)Why would it stop within ~5%? (3)Why, at that point, would people sell to buy orders and buy from sell orders now that (under your theoretical ideal) they understand how it works? Where do you draw the line between a ‘bad deal’ and a ‘good deal,’ and how can this line be objectively derived? How do you even define a ‘bad deal’ and ‘good deal?’

1. Removing TP hustlers wouldn’t help things move towards equilibrium, but the better UI feedback likely would. When people know that the item they want will move/arrive in a timely manner even if they place an order in the middle of the existing values, then the will be more likely to move towards those values.

I have not been opposed to better UI. Earlier, you said that under your system items would move ‘rapidly towards equilibrium,’ so I asked how that would happen. You now admit that removing TP flippers would slow that movement down and have provided no evidence or reason for why it would move toward equilibrium.

Ohoni.6057:

One value I’d like to see, particularly on craftable items, would be to have a simple line with dots on it, ~snip~ That might not be the ideal way to display it, but something like that sounds like a good idea.

I don’t even disagree.

Ohoni.6057:

2. No particular reason it would stop at 5%, it could balance out at 1c difference, the point is that it would be as close to zero as the market would bare,

Fair. You haven’t demonstrated that this would actually happen though.

Ohoni.6057:

3. Because they would have a better understanding of the risks involved, that placing a slightly lower sell price is almost guaranteed to sell the item before they’d need the money, and at a higher price than just fulfilling the buy order.

If they now understand what, why would someone ever sell to buy orders or buy from sell orders? If they know that it won’t take much longer for the sell order to sell, and that the sell order is even slightly higher, why wouldn’t they just make sell orders? The only real answer that that if they didn’t, items wouldn’t move, players wouldn’t get what they want without getting a worse deal, and your position is meaningless.

Ohoni.6057:

4. The “good deal,” for both parties, is when the price arrived at is as close to the highest/lowest amount that most people would be willing to pay. If someone pays considerably more than that, or accepts significantly less, then someone in that exchange is getting a bad deal.

But let’s make sure to not consider the other side, that sellers get less money for their items and/or buyers have to pay more for their items, no, that’s not an effect of what you want to happen. Let’s also not pay attention to how vague ‘significantly’ is.

Ohoni.6057:

When gold is distributed in an uneven manner, yes. It creates an imbalance.

Let’s compare:

But I don’t care that you get it first. I don’t mind that at all.

Yeah. You really don’t.
/s

And I don’t care if some people get things first, so long as it’s not as far first as the current system allows for. It’s a matter of degrees, not absolutes. You can’t perfectly balance anything out in these cases, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying towards balance.

The two quotes were both in the exact same context, precursors. You said mutually exclusive things about acquiring the exact same items. So no, you can’t say that you don’t care if I get it first, the say that you do care, then say you only care about certain degrees.

Ohoni.6057:

Thank God.

Don’t worry, I’m back to repeating myself.

Ohoni.6057:

Okay, so:
-you wanted more ways to acquire high-end items
-Anet adds to the game a new way to make precursors, part of the highest-end gear
-you complain that the new method requires things you don’t want to put in the effort to get
-you still want more ways to get things
Huh.

Yup.

Well, there we go.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ I just generally favor solutions in which you can choose various varieties of effort with which to pursue the goal, like having a sprawling building where you can reach the top on the opposite corner by either using hand-cranked elevators and walking straight lines, or taking stairs between the floors, or taking a ramp that spirals around the place, they would each take the same combined amount of effort, but different types of effort.

Right now, you can go kill boars in Queensdale, getting items and money from them, sell the items, slowly stockpile money, and eventually have enough money to buy the item you want. It may not be efficient, but you can do it. The only person that wants to remove ways to reach goals is you.
To extend your analogy, you are complaining that Anet won’t make the building shorter because you see someone high up on the ramp.

Ohoni.6057:

Separately, I also believe that the amount of effort/cost they ask for certain rewards are just more than they should reasonably ask of ANY player, some combination of RNG, material costs, or busywork that is just inappropriate for the value of the reward in question. I believe the costs involved in those items should come down for ALL players.

You can hold that belief as long as you want, not everyone else does and you don’t get to force that belief on everyone.

Ohoni.6057:

And of course thirdly, I believe that the gold economy in this game has been so horribly distorted by market abuse that it should not at all involved in acquiring most high end items anymore. It could have worked, but they did too poor a job of policing the system over the past three years, and it’s really too late to fix it (not that they shouldn’t take what steps they can to try).

See above.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ve never claimed it was an “exploit” according to ANet. ~snip~ ANet does not currently view this as an exploit, but they could choose to at any time, and I argue that they should do so.

Thus far you have failed to provide any objective argument with any evidence-based backing. All you have said is either your opinion, or a claim that is utterly unsubstantiated. Provide some evidence if you want to make an argument.

Ohoni.6057:

Here’s your problem Ohoni. The game already allows all players to be as rich as they want to.

No, that’s just false logic. Just because someone could potentially do something with their account, does not mean that “anyone could do it,” any more than saying that “anyone could win a gold medal in the Decathlon.” Some people are better at manipulating money than others. This really should not confer any significant advantage in an adventure game, but even if you disagree on that, it’s completely insane to argue that it would be fair for it to offer as huge an advantage as it does in this game.

I’ve said this before: advantages only exist when you are competing for an end goal. You are not in any competition to get a high-end item. Your decathlon analogy falls apart in the exact same way. And the potential to do something means that they could do it, that’s just the meaning of the word potential.

Ohoni.6057:

When you allow players to make more money from farming events or quests, you increase the rate of inflation by a rate equal to the new wealth generation. And because TP playerss’ revenue is based on other player’s wealth, you basically increase their earning potential by the same rate as the new wealth generation. In laymen’s terms, the more money you make, the way more money Wanze will make.

Which is why if they introduce new faucets, they will also have to introduce more sinks, but more importantly they need to include methods of reducing the profit potential of working the TP, so that this money does not flow up to the fatcats.

Again, this is your opinion, not everyone holds it and you can’t force everyone to abide by it. Not that you’ve given any reason for anyone else to hold it. I hope you realize that TP traders sink large quantities of money out of the economy

Ohoni.6057:

If the world existed how you wanted it to exist, every person who goes to Vegas would walk away with a lot of money. Vegas would then go bankrupt, and there’s be no more Vegas. Take my analogy, replace “Vegas” with “GW2”, and you have the outcome of what your suggestions would do.

Nope.

Any actual refutation of his point, or any evidence that he isn’t right? Nope.

Ohoni.6057:

Your suggestion is akin to asking for the removal of the Trading Post entirely, and replacing it with a glorified merchant.

Honestly I’d prefer that to the alternative of leaving it as is, but that’s not what I’m asking for. Supply would still be determined by how many of the items the players bring into existence, demand would still be determined by how many people want that thing, all I’d be doing is reducing the role of the middleman taking his cut in the middle for providing no actual value to the scenario.

If the ‘middleman’ actually has no function, why do people buy the items he sells and sell their items to him? Surely if it had no value, no one would participate, because they could do the exact same.

Ohoni.6057:

Your idea hurts way more players than it helps, because a vast majority of the players who purchase goods from the TP want instant gratification. Remove the players who provide that instant gratification, and you have angry players who will complain that they have to farm 5,000 Mithril ores themselves. Oh wait…

Nobody’s talking about removing the people who farm those 5,000 mithril ores. Those 5,000 mithril ores would still get farmed, and still get put on the market,

You missed the point. People don’t want to farm 5000 mithril, they want to buy it now, and oh look! TP traders will put that sell order supply up.

Ohoni.6057:

and the people doing it would make out just as well, likely better than under the current market, as would their customers (one or the other might end up doing slightly worse, but between the two of them they would make out better than they would currently).

Any numbers, evidence, or general proof that that is actually true? No, because it isn’t. You don’t even understand the concept of undercutting, one of the most basic selling strategies.

Ohoni.6057:

What would be removed is the people who buy those 5,000 mithril ores at one price, and relist it at a higher price (either immediately or at a later date), forcing the people who actually want to use those mithril ores to spend more for them or do without,

No one is forcing anyone to buy any mithril. If those buyers want to place buy orders, they are just as capable of doing so as the trader. Again, you demonstrate the failure to understand the most basic method for selling items, undercutting. No one is forcing the buyers to buy at the sell price anyway, so that’s just a blatant strawman.

Ohoni.6057:

while the people who did mine those ores would not be seeing any of that profit.

Maybe because they already saw their profit after choosing to fill buy orders. If they had wanted the money from sell orders, they can list at sell order prices.

Ohoni.6057:

If someone gets a better deal in a transaction, it should at the very least either be the end-user of that item, OR the original creator of that item, not someone who’s only contribution was in making the deal worse for both of them.

The seller chose to forgo some money to sell the items immediately. The buyer chose to spend more money to get the items immediately. The only way that they would be getting a better deal is if you forced the seller to make a sell order and the buyer to buy it, in which case the buyer is getting a worse deal, or if you forced the buyer to place a buy order and the seller to fill it, in which case the seller is getting a worse deal. So in your idea of a better transaction is actually no different than what already happens, except you’d force each side to do it.
As to the idea that those people should be the original creator and the end-user, that is your opinion, not everyone shares it, and you can’t force it on everyone.

Tigaseye.2047:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There is no injustice or unfairness, but rather laziness. Asking Anet to give you something because you don’t want to use existing mechanics to get for yourself is pretty much Entitlement.

No, it’s not laziness either.

Not wanting to play one, EXTREMELY inactive part of the game, is not “laziness”.

Since when were we talking about very inactive parts of the game? as far as I can tell, that’s just a red herring.
What you are doing is this:
-not doing something because you don’t like it
-complaining that someone else profited because they were fine with doing it
-demanding that they not get that profit because you don’t like that someone else can profit doing something you don’t like
Laziness isn’t quite the right word, but it’s close.

Tigaseye.2047:

I’ve also said, previously, that most people simply don’t enjoy playing the TP, so won’t want to do that.

No one is forcing you to. But you want the benefits of doing it without being willing to actually do it…

Ohoni.6057:

]It might be even more interesting if, when you get your DR scaling relatively high, if you list something at a sell price, it instead goes automatically to the person with the highest buy order, and you only get back what they offered (although you do get a refund of the listing fee difference).

Tigaseye.2047:

In other words, make the TP randomly do exactly what the person didn’t want to do so that they randomly earn less money. Maybe they should also add something where if you use too many attacks, it will have a chance to use a random attack (including heal, utils, and elite) instead. Or instead of doing an attack it will just give you an automatic, uncleansible, unbreakable 10s stun. See how little sense this makes? No, of course you don’t.

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ and also gives people a much more accurate idea of the true value of the item, since the price would be more likely to rise until it hit a true “max reasonable price.”

So to you, a price based on the idea that someone might sell you an item they hadn’t meant to sell you is an accurate, reasonable price. I have no other words for how nonsensical this is.

Tigaseye.2047:

If people actively dislike standing around in LA, flipping things on the TP, they will not continue to play for long, if that is the only well-paid option.

No one is forcing you to trade on the TP. You can get high-end gear without ever trading on the TP.

Tigaseye.2047:

Now, as far as I see it, Anet have three possible solutions:

Solutions to what? You haven’t actually proven that there is a problem.

You telling people, repeatedly, that they are jealous/lazy/“Entitled” for not wanting to flip the TP, in a game, all day long won’t change anything.

Strawman, he isn’t calling you entitled for not wanting to do it, that’s fine. He’s calling you entitled for not doing it then wanting things as if you had.

Tigaseye.2047:

If enough people are unhappy, they will just leave.

That’s probably true. You haven’t demonstrated that people are leaving because of this specifically, that there is a large enough quantity of those people for Anet to care, or that any solution proposed in this thread will fix this issue without breaking larger/more important things. So that statement is perfectly true, and perfectly useless.

Ohoni.6057:

Edit – You may not understand my analogy, so I’ll break it down. GW2 has mechanics in place that let’s you buy something or sell something at whatever price you want. If you don’t want to sell an item that another player is willing to pay for, that’s your choice. No one is forcing you to sell the item. But that also means you don’t get to complain about an “issue” that you created for yourself. No one forced you to take the $100 when you could have had $10,000.

Yes,. but it’s not nearly as simple as you make it out to be. Yes, you never have to buy or sell at the prices given to you, but if you like “yolo” it and put whatever price you think is fair, without any regard to market conditions, then chances are that the transaction will never complete, or at least not for a very long time.

Strawman. What he’s saying is that you are taking the $100 (not trading on the TP), then whining because someone else got the $10000. You aren’t even talking about the same thing as his argument.

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re going to push the system effectively, to get the best prices for the item that you can reasonably get, you need to have a better than zero grasp of how well that item tends to perform. This requires a level of research and knowledge that at the very least could be said to be more than what an average adventure game player is particularly interested in acquiring.

And that is why people aren’t getting as much money/saving as much money as someone who does do that research when selling the same item. They choose to pay more rather than try to minmax it.

Ohoni.6057:

Ideally you would also concede fairly plain point that not everyone is capable of judging these factors as well as others, no matter how much they might apply themselves to the task, and it’s unreasonable for the privileged to take advantage of that fact.

With ‘unreasonable’ being the incredibly weaselly word that it is, you’ll just define it such that it is whatever your argument needs it to mean. Regardless, part of the skill of TP trading is being able to evaluate information. Your real point here is that you don’t like that it may be possible for some people to be able to earn more money than you, so whatever they’re doing is ‘unreasonable.’

Ohoni.6057:

And again, the problem is not that these players can turn their skill and experience into advantage, that they can benefit by being more knowledgeable than the other guy, the problem is entirely in the DEGREE of advantage it offers them over other game types and skills, that not only does it earn them more money, it earns them WAY more money, relative to time and effort involved.

So, you don’t like that other people are capable of earning sizable amounts of money through their choices, so you want the choice they make to be eliminated. And again, the only place where advantages exist is in a competition between players for getting something first; you are the only one viewing it this way.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is not that anyone “forced you to take the $100 when you could have had $10,000,” it’s that you have no idea whether the best you could reasonably get is $10,000 or $101, nor should you really have to.

You don’t have to, and no one is arguing that you were forced to. What we are saying is that you chose to take the $100, then complained because other people were able to chose the $10000 and benefit from it. Maybe you should go back and read what was said, because you are arguing as if this is about TP prices when it isn’t.

Ohoni.6057:

You telling people, repeatedly, that they are jealous/lazy/“Entitled” for not wanting to flip the TP, in a game, all day long won’t change anything.

Yup. If people want to play a market-flipping game, they should play a game that is just about market flipping, they should not be messing up the economy of GW2 in the process.

You say TP traders are ‘messing up the economy of GW2.’ What evidence or proof do you have for this assertion? I see none. To the part you are quoting: we aren’t saying you’re entitled for not wanting to flip on the TP, but rather that you don’t do it but want the benefits of doing so.

Tigaseye.2047:

I’m just saying that, if people are unhappy with the amount of gold they can make, by playing the parts of the game they enjoy, some (or all) of them might decide to leave, sooner or later.

In other words, I’m stating (what should be) the obvious.

That is perfectly obvious.. It also has no bearing on reality until you can demonstrate that this particular cause-effect happens. It would also help your argument if you could prove that this happens frequently enough for Anet to care.

Tigaseye.2047:

False. That’s only how you feel.

No, it’s not only how I feel.
I’m not even talking about myself, here.

We have maybe 3-4 people that have contributed to this thread in favor of your side. You speak for yourself, maybe a couple friends, and maybe a couple other people here. If you mean that you speak for any larger group than that, you have given me no reason to believe that to be true.

Tigaseye.2047:

No, I don’t particularly enjoy ripping people off on the TP, as it happens, but I know for a fact I’m not alone in that.

Your phrasing betrays you.

Tigaseye.2047:

But, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you enjoy it, think it’s morally good, or want to have to do it.

No one is suggesting that you should be forced to do it, forced to enjoy it, or forced to have a good opinion of it. The only people who want to eliminate a playstyle is you.

Tigaseye.2047:

If I’m not having fun, I just leave games, sooner or later

…and I’m not alone.

Then prove that you have enough people that agree with you for Anet to care.

Tigaseye.2047:

I mean, honestly, what a ridiculous conversation.

Having to explain that people might leave games if they’re not happy.

No one is arguing with that. I am arguing that you haven’t shown that enough people are so unhappy over this that they will leave. And I argue that because I have seen no evidence to suggest it.

Tigaseye.2047:

I know Anet already take a small cut, with the TP fees, but they could do far more to very successful TP players, than that, if they liked.

Not saying they necessarily should, or shouldn’t, but of course they could.

The basis of the position of people like you and Ohoni is that they should do something like that. And yes, they could. But you haven’t given a single, evidence-based reason why they should.

Tigaseye.2047:

If enough people stop playing, or play far less, the game dies.

No one disagrees with that. It’s just that no one has given me a reason to believe that enough people are or will stop playing over this.

Lothirieth.3408:

They’re rich, so kitten you

If you believe that is what I am saying, you haven’t read a single one of my posts.

Lothirieth.3408:

I honestly think some of them possess zero empathy (laughable for someone who thinks he is an expert in psychology), are unable to understand that people have different interests and that a good game should cater to multiple interests (regarding fun, rewards, etc.)

Ad hominems are unbecoming…and untrue.

Lothirieth.3408:

They’ve got theirs and since they enjoy that method of money making, which also happens to be the best, then everyone should too. It’s ludicrous.

No, I think you should play however you want. The only people who want other playstyles to be eliminated is you.

Harper.4173:

Except this will never happen because guess what – the average player is so out of touch with everything it’s not even funny.

That’s a really curious statement. Can you explain what you mean?

Tigaseye.2047:

The thing is, much as you’re trying to accuse Ohoni of wanting to change the game, to suit himself, the truth is it wouldn’t make his life any better than it could otherwise be, if he was like you.

The key phrase here is, ‘if he was like you.’ The fact is, he isn’t, and he does stand to gain from it. In fact, the basis of his position is that him and people like him would be better off. Not, mind you, that he’s actually lent any evidence to it.

He’s, clearly, more than bright enough and more than dedicated enough to the game to work the TP, just like you do.

Tigaseye.2047:

He just morally objects to the idea of a few people becoming very rich, ingame, while others either can’t, or don’t want to, do what it takes to follow suit.

One person’s moral objection holds no weight in arguing for Anet to change it. If he can’t give solid, evidence-based reasons (and based on this thread, he can’t) for why it should be changed, then there is no reason to take it seriously.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Seriously dude, it’s really obnoxious how you refuse to quote people by their names. I’m sure this has come up before, but I want to reiterate how difficult it is to keep track of conversation threads.

I personally find it more than obnoxious. I find it rude. It tells me that he doesn’t care enough about others to take the time to properly quote people. And then has the gall to post quotes of MULTIPLE PEOPLE in the same post.

It’s why I’ve told him in other threads that if he doesn’t quote me, properly, he will not get a response from me. As I don’t have conversations with rude people. Ohoni, this still holds for this thread. Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t going to quote me properly.

As to the topic of the thread. That article was for real life economies, not MMO economies. You can’t take the results of the study that article referenced and apply it to this game. Or any MMO. Because there are variables that would affect how satisfied and dissatisfied a person is that that study would not have covered: the fact that GW2 and other MMO’s are games. I’m not saying that the same results would happen if the same study was done in GW2 or any MMO, with appropriate questions to determine if it being a game affected anything, just that you can’t copy and paste results from one subset of people onto another subset of people.

Which means you can’t use the article to claim that ANet needs to do something about the reward structure.

Seera.5916:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Seriously dude, it’s really obnoxious how you refuse to quote people by their names. I’m sure this has come up before, but I want to reiterate how difficult it is to keep track of conversation threads.

I personally find it more than obnoxious. I find it rude. It tells me that he doesn’t care enough about others to take the time to properly quote people. And then has the gall to post quotes of MULTIPLE PEOPLE in the same post.

It’s why I’ve told him in other threads that if he doesn’t quote me, properly, he will not get a response from me. As I don’t have conversations with rude people. Ohoni, this still holds for this thread. Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t going to quote me properly.

As to the topic of the thread. That article was for real life economies, not MMO economies. You can’t take the results of the study that article referenced and apply it to this game. Or any MMO. Because there are variables that would affect how satisfied and dissatisfied a person is that that study would not have covered: the fact that GW2 and other MMO’s are games. I’m not saying that the same results would happen if the same study was done in GW2 or any MMO, with appropriate questions to determine if it being a game affected anything, just that you can’t copy and paste results from one subset of people onto another subset of people.

Which means you can’t use the article to claim that ANet needs to do something about the reward structure.

It has been brought up before.

And the reason was……………….

Because they are responding to the points…not the people.

Seems to be hard to fathom that someone would actually debate the discussion points and not the people replying in the topic. Idk…….lol

Essence Snow.3194:

Seera.5916:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Seriously dude, it’s really obnoxious how you refuse to quote people by their names. I’m sure this has come up before, but I want to reiterate how difficult it is to keep track of conversation threads.

I personally find it more than obnoxious. I find it rude. It tells me that he doesn’t care enough about others to take the time to properly quote people. And then has the gall to post quotes of MULTIPLE PEOPLE in the same post.

It’s why I’ve told him in other threads that if he doesn’t quote me, properly, he will not get a response from me. As I don’t have conversations with rude people. Ohoni, this still holds for this thread. Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t going to quote me properly.

As to the topic of the thread. That article was for real life economies, not MMO economies. You can’t take the results of the study that article referenced and apply it to this game. Or any MMO. Because there are variables that would affect how satisfied and dissatisfied a person is that that study would not have covered: the fact that GW2 and other MMO’s are games. I’m not saying that the same results would happen if the same study was done in GW2 or any MMO, with appropriate questions to determine if it being a game affected anything, just that you can’t copy and paste results from one subset of people onto another subset of people.

Which means you can’t use the article to claim that ANet needs to do something about the reward structure.

It has been brought up before.

And the reason was……………….

Because they are responding to the points…not the people.

Seems to be hard to fathom that someone would actually debate the discussion points and not the people replying in the topic. Idk…….lol

But when the thread starts moving fast and you start responding to multiple people who may be saying conflicting things in the same post, it gets messy and hard for people to follow or even realize that Ohoni is responding to the things that they said, especially when they aren’t the first person they respond to.

Not to mention, this forum will link to the direct post. So that if the person who quotes crops out parts, other readers can click on the link and get the permanent link to the quoted post for more context if necessary. Since, Ohoni doesn’t do that AND crops out parts of the posts pretty much all of the time, context can be lost. This holds especially true for threads that move quickly.

If it was just Ohoni and one other person in the thread going back and forth for the most part, then ok, I could see dropping the quotes. But it’s rarely just Ohoni and one other person.

I also don’t see how using the proper quote system means you are suddenly not debating the points of the discussion. A debate requires multiple people. You can’t not respond to the person making the points. When in a group in real life you look at the person whose points you are responding to, or make a hand gesture. We don’t have the luxury on the internet of looking or pointing. The quote system is the response to that. It’s the looking at the person or the pointing. That’s all. Doesn’t mean the person isn’t debating the points.

So Ohoni not tagging comes off to me as not caring enough about the debate to do it properly. Which is rude to all who are participating in the debate. And I’m tired of trying to wade through his posts trying to find the points where he responds to me when I find having to do that rude to me and the others it happens to. So I save us both the trouble by informing him that if he isn’t going to tag me, he would be wasting his time to respond with anything he wants an answer to from me. I don’t want to have to wade through the petty back and forth between Ohoni and others when one of them decides to make it personal to find the part of Ohoni’s post that is response to what I said.

Seriously dude, it’s really obnoxious how you refuse to quote people by their names. I’m sure this has come up before, but I want to reiterate how difficult it is to keep track of conversation threads.

I personally find it more than obnoxious. I find it rude. It tells me that he doesn’t care enough about others to take the time to properly quote people. And then has the gall to post quotes of MULTIPLE PEOPLE in the same post.

It’s why I’ve told him in other threads that if he doesn’t quote me, properly, he will not get a response from me. As I don’t have conversations with rude people. Ohoni, this still holds for this thread. Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t going to quote me properly.

As to the topic of the thread. That article was for real life economies, not MMO economies. You can’t take the results of the study that article referenced and apply it to this game. Or any MMO. Because there are variables that would affect how satisfied and dissatisfied a person is that that study would not have covered: the fact that GW2 and other MMO’s are games. I’m not saying that the same results would happen if the same study was done in GW2 or any MMO, with appropriate questions to determine if it being a game affected anything, just that you can’t copy and paste results from one subset of people onto another subset of people.

Which means you can’t use the article to claim that ANet needs to do something about the reward structure.

It has been brought up before.

And the reason was……………….

Because they are responding to the points…not the people.

Seems to be hard to fathom that someone would actually debate the discussion points and not the people replying in the topic. Idk…….lol

Personally, reading the thread I find it makes his posts obscure and difficult to follow. If it’s actually a good idea, maybe everyone on this thread should start doing it for all see if it’s a useful way to quote.

Ohoni.6057:

Anet don’t really care how gold is distributed – only how much of it there is in the economy.

You might be right, but if so, they would be wrong, because that would be a very shortsighted way of looking at the situation, like saying that an event is working perfectly well just because it does not bug or stall or do anything outright glitchy, even if the actual content of the event is not fun for most players.

Almost as if making sure every event is unique and fun for every single player is impossible! Anyway, the whole point of QA, testers, and their feedback is to make sure the events are fun enough, at least for the time period and player types those people are, which I’m sure is diverse, so they can test the appeal to a more diverse set of player types. As I was pointing out earlier in this paragraph, they can’t appeal to everyone; there will always be some people that oppose any given part of the game. You are the small group that oppose the TP. And you haven’t given any reasons why people should agree with you.

Ohoni.6057:

They need to also ensure that players feel that the gold distribution is handled fairly, that playing in a way that is fun and engaging to them also feels financially rewarding, that it feels like a valid path towards the goals they have.

Anet does NOT need to coddle your feelings. And since you like to bring in psychology, let me bring some in. Anet does not only have no duty to coddle your feelings, they can’t. That link is a bit borked (you need to stop it from reloading), so I’ll also add a link to the book that it talks about.

Ohoni.6057:

They’re still best off appealing to those who actually play the game, rather than those sitting around in LA.

Standing around in LA is playing the game, AFKs aside. Whether it’s a way of playing the game or not, it is perfectly valid. But I think this little quote tells us all we need to know about what you consider actual gameplay.

Ohoni.6057:

I guess it must also be unfair for people knowledgeable and good at pvp to beat someone who just "yolo"s it as you put it

Again, no it’s not, as the game is currently balanced, but that’s because being very good at PvP does not confer any significant advantage over those who are not. If being very good at PvP brought in as much gold rewards as being very good at the TP, then it would indeed represent a very serious reward balance issue.

His point isn’t reward balance, it’s how borked your logic is, how little sense it makes when you use it on other ideas.

Ohoni.6057:

The only two things they can do moving forward is to 1. implement systems that reduce the amount of additional wealth players can accumulate off the TP, and 2. GREATLY reduce the actual value of having gold wealth, my ensuring that gold is completely unnecessary towards achieving practical goals, like by having Precursors crafting that costs no more gold than generic exotic weapons, guild hall upgrades that are entirely based on the guild achieving things, rather than the guild buying things, etc.

So, in other words:
1. eliminate the effectiveness of one playstyle because you chose not to do it and want the same rewards as if you had
2. Destroy the usefulness of what others have acquired so that they have to play the same way as you

Ohoni.6057:

Make it so that a player who has no gold is no worse off than a player with 10K gold, that he can just as easily acquire the very best things in the game, because those things cannot be earned using gold.

So, you want to make a player who has almost no investment in the game, just finished leveling their first character, to be just as well off and just as capable of getting high-end stuff as someone who has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours gathering materials (in this case gold). I fail to see the logic. All I see is the size of the backlash of the sheer number of veteran players who have just had their time and investment into this game be invalidated, because that’s how illogical this would be.

Ohoni.6057:

“So, just nerf the more lucrative outlier play styles.” in the name of fairness. Let’s examine my current play-style. I log in daily to get the login chest and mine some platinum. One day a week or so I run around the zone, harvest more mats, kill stuff and maybe do an event or three. Should that play style, which requires little to no effort, yield as much or nearly as much return as more involved play styles?

It should yield roughly as much as any playstyle that takes about that long. Of course playstyles that require more direct engagement, like the DS meta event, should reward more, but not magnitudes more.

Again, you may think that any given thing should be true. That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. You don’t get to force everyone else to think and play with the your opinion.

Ohoni.6057:

You don’t seem to understand this. What’s good for one doesn’t mean it’s good for the other. Allowing all players to be happy by asking for handouts has a high negative impact for the game as a whole.

nobody’s asking for handouts, everything would be worked for, all that’s being asked for is a better distribution of rewards (and yes, for the context of this discussion, TP profits DO count as “rewards,” however much the flipper insist otherwise).

I agree, nobody is asking for handouts. Handouts would mean teleporting you up a mountain that other people have climbed a lot of. What you want is for the mountain to be destroyed so that no one can ever be above you.

Ohoni.6057:

You’re not Entitled to making all the Gold you want.

True, but in a game, players should be entitled to a general sense of fairness, that while you have to work for what you get, every other player is expected to work just as hard for what he gets. This discussion is not about players feeling that they are entitled to more loot, it’s that they feel entitled to having as much loot as other players who are doing as much or less work than they are, and that Is a fair entitlement to have.

We both know ‘fairness’ is meaningless, or at the very least, any meaning it has is slippery enough to fit any of your arguments. And you can have as much loot as say, Wanze…if you put in the effort that he put in the way he did so.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s not a rip off if a player feels my prices are acceptable.

Again, whether they “feel” that your prices are acceptable or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it’s a ripoff. In almost every ripoff in human history, the victim “felt” that he was getting a good deal.

With the amount of this thread spent on your feelings, one would think that it is. Anway, you’re not quite right: In almost ever ripoff in human history, the victim’s knowledge of the value and uses of the item was inaccurate. No one is concealing the uses of an item, but in fact you can ‘/wiki Item Name’ as a chat command to find the wiki’s documentation of its uses. Thus, for it to be a ripoff, they must have an inaccurate understanding of the item’s value. So please, go ahead and argue that the prices that items are bought and sold at aren’t accurate.

Ohoni.6057:

And as I’ve said before, you’re not Entitled to the Gold people like Wanze makes because you’re not putting in the same efforts as he is on the Trading Post. You’re more than free to compete with him.

I would like to be able to compete with him by merely playing the non-TP portions of the game. That’s all I’m asking, for the other aspects of the game to have profit potential competitive with the TP.

And all I’m asking for is that you stop conflating the TP with the rest of the game.
/s
When he said that you are free to compete with him, what was meant was that you are free to make the same trades, do the same things on the TP, etc. A market competition. What you want is to be able to do whatever you want, however non-goal-oriented it may be, and end up with the same result as, say, Wanze, who has been focused on getting one specific thing to the best of his ability, knowledge, and research. Are you starting to see the probl-no, of course you aren’t.

Ohoni.6057:

Rather, we’re paying them the price of their goods that they’ve decided on. This is Capitalism at it’s finest. They labored for 2 hours to sell me a stack of Mithril, and I paid them the price they asked.

An it reminds me of classic gold rush communities, in which miners rarely made much money, but shop owners typically made a killing.

The miners rarely made money because they were chasing a dream-story that didn’t exist, at least not as they thought it did. The shop owners made money because they provided what people wanted when there were a LOT of people that wanted those items. Basic supply and demand. I don’t see your argument.

Essence Snow.3194:

Seera.5916:

~snip~

It has been brought up before.

And the reason was……………….

Because they are responding to the points…not the people.

Seems to be hard to fathom that someone would actually debate the discussion points and not the people replying in the topic. Idk…….lol

I wasn’t going to bring it up, but adding the names does make things much easier to follow. If I want to see where a person got what they’re quoting, I can just click the name. If adding a name to the quote makes it irresistible to make ad hominems, that’s something you should think about.

Edit: just reloaded to see stuff about quoting, added that.

Essence Snow.3194:

It has been brought up before.

And the reason was……………….

Because they are responding to the points…not the people.

Seems to be hard to fathom that someone would actually debate the discussion points and not the people replying in the topic. Idk…….lol

What a spurious distinction. The content of the discussion doesn’t change by removing names, be destroying information that’s available either way. The only thing that’s accomplished is that the flow becomes much more difficult to follow.

Smooth, I can’t be bothered with this.

Whether you realise it, or not, we’re going around in circles here.

Oh and trust me, I don’t need a “101” on anything, from you, TYVM.

…apart from, possibly, sliding on the ice on my belly.

I will say one more thing, in general, though.

Someone, on here, I believe described the TP flippers as “whales”?

They are not “whales”.

“Whales” are people who spend a lot of RL money on a game.

They are not people who make a lot of in-game gold and then either sit on it, or spend it on gemstore stuff/other TP stuff.

The TP flippers are, typically, spending far less (or no – beyond the game/xpac price) RL money than the average player.

So, they are the opposite of “whales”.

In fact, in the Anet’s accountants’ eyes, they are less than plankton.

They might be forcing/obliging other people to buy more gold, via their actions.

But, that doesn’t make them “whales”.

Would it be shocking to suggest there’s more than one type of whale?

A person who can casually spend 10k+ gold is pretty rightly referred to by that term even if they didn’t buy that gold.

…Not that most of our resident TP moguls keep their wealth in any form so useless as coin…

Nike.2631:

Would it be shocking to suggest there’s more than one type of whale?

A person who can casually spend 10k+ gold is pretty rightly referred to by that term even if they didn’t buy that gold.

…Not that most of our resident TP moguls keep their wealth in any form so useless as coin…

Well, from what I have always understood, “whale”, in this context, refers to people who spend a great deal of RL money on a game.

That is the definition.

There isn’t, as far as I know, another definition of “whale” that extends to making a lot of in-game gold.

That probably has another name, but it isn’t “whale”.

ETA: Just been Googling and it would appear a few companies do refer to different categories of “whale”,

But I still think that the majority of people think of a “whale” as someone who spends a lot of RL money.

As that was the original meaning.

The definition of whale you are drawing on (commonly popularized in casinos, not videogame micro-transactions — we’re all tiny minnows compared to those antics) just means person who can and does throw a lot of money around. What kind of money isn’t the issue.

Nike.2631:

The definition of whale you are drawing on (commonly popularized in casinos, not videogame micro-transactions — we’re all tiny minnows compared to those antics) just means person who can and does throw a lot of money around. What kind of money isn’t the issue.

Well, in casinos, you can’t originally spend anything other than real money.

So, there wouldn’t be the same need to draw a distinction, there, would there?

It’s not like you can go to a casino, spend no RL money at all (aside from, possibly, a registration fee [to mirror the game/xpac purchase]) and then generate chips from absolutely nothing.

Whereas, you can in online games.

Obviously, a very small number of people in the casino might have won a lot of money, that they then continue to gamble, via a very small intitial stake; but the vast majority won’t have.

…and if at any time they wish to cash-in, they can.

Whereas, you can’t, legally, cash-in your “chips” in online games.

The RL money to gold exchange only works one way.

So, it’s a different situation, in a couple of ways.

Assuming you’re playing by the rules of the house…

Tigaseye.2047:

Whether you realise it, or not, we’re going around in circles here.

Oh and trust me, I don’t need a “101” on anything, from you, TYVM.

Actually, we’re not running in circles. I’m stating facts, and you respond with opinions. I’m willing to teach you about how things work, so feel free to PM me, and I’ll link you to my previous posts.

OK, moving swiftly on, before I say something I might regret.

Another thing I found, while Googling:

“5th Planet chief executive Robert Winkler revealed at the Game Developers Conference Online in 2012 that with its game Clash of the Dragons, 40 percent of revenue came from 2 percent of players who spent $1,000 or more. Ninety percent came from those who spent $100 or more, and the top whale had spent $6,700.”

So, if this is, even vaguely, typical, it would appear that the people you really have to try to please, as a games developer, is not so much the whales (or certainly not only them), but the dolphins.

The “dolphins” thing is my definition, BTW – no idea what they’re really referred to, if anything.

Tigaseye.2047:

OK, moving swiftly on, before I say something I might regret.

Another thing I found, while Googling:

“5th Planet chief executive Robert Winkler revealed at the Game Developers Conference Online in 2012 that with its game Clash of the Dragons, 40 percent of revenue came from 2 percent of players who spent $1,000 or more. Ninety percent came from those who spent $100 or more, and the top whale had spent $6,700.”

So, if this is, even vaguely, typical, it would appear that the people you really have to try to please, as a games developer, is not so much the whales (or certainly not only them), but the dolphins.

The “dolphins” thing is my definition, BTW – no idea what they’re really referred to, if anything.

Which would perfectly illustrate why various “let’s withhold money!” forum strategies don’t work. All you do is move yourself out of the category they need to concern themselves with. Their business is people who consistently spend hundreds of dollars, not the people threatening to withhold a couple of 20s. If you’re angry off about having to spend 12$ you pretty much just announced you’re a nobody.

And ‘dolphins’ is a good choice for what you’re describing .

Everyone is just as capable of learning about economics and how to flip things on the trading post,

No, that’s just nonsense. It’s like saying anyone can be an NFL player if they try real hard. Fantasy nonsense, and that’s even within the context of a fantasy game.

The reason people in this game are richer than you is because they worked at it.

And that’s fine. They can be richer. The problem is that this “one cool trick” allows them to be WAY richer than players who do not abuse it, it’s the massive disparity involved that causes a balance issue. If a player in PvP wins more matches because he’s a more skilled player, then fair enough. If he wins more matches because he’s playing the one class out of nine that is objectively far superior to any other class even when played by players of equal skill, then that’s not very fun for players who would prefer to play as the other eight classes, even if they do always have the option of playing the god-class themselves if they like.

Even if you got your way and redistributed the wealth, in a few months everything would go right back to the way it was because those rich players will continue with the playstyle that made them rich in the first place, and everyone else will go back to their normal playstyle and make about the same as they did befor

That’s why I’m not suggesting that they “redistribute the wealth,” I’m not saying they should scoop gold out of people’s accounts or anything. I’m saying that they should put breaks on the mechanisms that people currently use to profit so significantly on the TP, so that those methods are no longer profitable on a large scale. The breaks would be tuned such that normal adventurer traders would never really hit them, but those who spend all their time in economic PvP would no longer be able to rake in more money off the TP than other players.

In this game there are no mine or shop owners who can enforce low wages or dirty cheap buy prices.
Every single worker has free access to its own mine, its own tools and its own shop, and absolutely zero resposabilites towards any capitalist associate other than the system natural sinks.

And in most of these mining communities, each person owned their own plots, and could start their own shops if they wanted to, yet still they got exploited by the market forces. Market forces only very rarely work out for the general public, UNLESS they are reigned in by government to ensure things like labor laws and price protections. ANet has been a bit too laise faire so far.

“Whale” is actually an industry term, not just a catch-all I invented to refer to the source of money. A Whale is part of the very small percentage of gamers in a free-to-play game who fork over enough money to keep the company afloat.

I’m well aware of what a whale is, I was just pointing out that there is no reason to believe that TP tycoons are any more “whales” than any other group, and in fact a decent amount of reason to believe that they are each less likely to be whales (since they participate less in the actual gameplay and thus would be less interested in paying gems to dress up their many characters), and there are far less of them, so your discussion about whales really has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

Who says Wanze isn’t working hard? If you’re suggesting that your gameplay takes more skill, or more hard work than him, why not take the easy route and play the TP?

Because this is a game. I work at work, I don’t work in games. I play games to have fun, and I don’t have fun pouring over spreadsheets. I just want to have fun AND be able to afford nice things.

Speaking on fairness, I would be ok with this if it applied to every single player, and not the top 1% that you seem to have such a hatred for.

I don’t see the point of applying it to every player. How would that reduce the inequality? The entire point of it is that it would be like a progressive income tax, the more you make, the more of what you make you have to pay back in. You would still profit more by profiting more, you would just profit a bit less than with the current flat tax.

Rewards from playing the game (i.e. quests, FotM, Dungeons, etc) are not the same as TP profits.

But they MUST be considered as such in terms of reward fairness. Yes, you need to design the system in such a way that there is no significant inflation, but you ALSO have to make it such that TP rewards are in balance with other content rewards. If you can’t do that by just raising content rewards to TP levels (and I think we agree that this would be hard to pull off), then the solution would likely involve reducing TP profit potential to content levels, to make it so that the most you could pull down from the TP would be equivalent to farming Silverwastes or whatever the gold-farming method du jour may be.

Stop with this comparison because I know you understand that it’s completely different. We’ve explained it to you for years, so there’s no excuse for you to not know.

I understand why you want to insist that it’s different, but you seem to have made no effort to understand why they must be considered the same as well. Yes, there are macroeconomic concerns, which you and I agree must be dealt with, but you have zero concern for the individual level considerations, and I will always assert that these must be factored into it as well (not “instead of” the macro concerns, but “in addition to.”)

The Soviet Union thought the same with their government. Where are they now? And why do you think the Unite States is the largest economy in the world? Because Capitalism works.

But again, nobody is suggesting anything remotely similar to the Soviet Union. At least I’m not. Maybe you are? I’m a bit lost as to how you got there. But suffice it to say that there are plenty of socialist governments out there that have very healthy economies, many of them healthier than the US. I mean, the US is a bit of a juggernaut, but that has less to do with capitalism, and more to do with cheap energy, a large population, plenty of space to build things, government infrastructure projects in the mid-century, etc.

I have not been opposed to better UI. Earlier, you said that under your system items would move ‘rapidly towards equilibrium,’ so I asked how that would happen. You now admit that removing TP flippers would slow that movement down and have provided no evidence or reason for why it would move toward equilibrium.

Lol, I didn’t “admit” anything, I was just clarifying the system because you didn’t seem to understand it. Different components serve different purposes. Removing flippers was never intended to help bring equilibrium (nor do I think that it would slow it), that was intended to increase fairness. The added UI elements would though, and that’s part of my suggestion as well (and yes, I’m aware that you support that bit, you don’t have to keep repeating it). You asked how removing flippers would increase price equilibrium, and I answered you, it wouldn’t, but it was never intended for that purpose, and other elements of my proposal would do that.

Fair. You haven’t demonstrated that this would actually happen though.

Fair enough, and I’m not even sure how I would go about doing that. It’s what I think would happen, and it’d be nice if it did, but it might not, and if it doesn’t we would at least be no worse than we are right now. If you have any suggestions as to how to do it better, that’d be great.

If they now understand what, why would someone ever sell to buy orders or buy from sell orders?

Well, they have to transact a trade somehow, right? I mean nobody benefits from just sitting on the item. If a player realizes that he can make more money in a reasonable time by just undercutting sell, then he’ll do so. And another realizes he can still get his product fast by just overcutting buys a bit, then he’ll do that, and the two sides will move closer and closer together, one side more than the other if the balance point is not 50/50, but eventually they’ll be close enough that it doesn’t really matter which they pick so they’ll just buy whatever.

I’ve seen that happen already on some commodities, where the prices get so close together that undercutting the sell order even slightly means that you’re picking up buy orders. The existing UI handles this situation very poorly, btw, they really should allow you to place your buy/sell order for the quantity that you want, even if some portion of that quantity would instantly be fulfilled due to existing buy/sell orders.

But let’s make sure to not consider the other side, that sellers get less money for their items and/or buyers have to pay more for their items, no, that’s not an effect of what you want to happen. Let’s also not pay attention to how vague ‘significantly’ is.

We could if you like, I really don’t mind. Yes, sometimes sellers would make more than they currently would, but each time they do so, it would be because a buyer would not be paying that higher price. And of course the opposite is true from the other side. Since neither side would have to deal with resellers, the same customers who would be getting worse deals one time would be getting better deals some other time, and it would average out to them getting better deals overall, since there wouldn’t be anyone skimming profit potential off the middle.

And “significantly” is intentionally vague because it would vary from item to item, from coppers to gold depending on the total amount of money involved, but basically it would be an amount of money that, within the scope of the transaction, most people would not particularly care. It’s like how most people don’t even bother working sales tax into their purchasing decisions. I’m sure economists have worked out some more specific way of defining that tendency.

Right now, you can go kill boars in Queensdale, getting items and money from them, sell the items, slowly stockpile money, and eventually have enough money to buy the item you want. It may not be efficient, but you can do it. The only person that wants to remove ways to reach goals is you.

Yes, but currently that method is not balanced against other methods. I think it’s reasonably well balanced against other adventuring activities, low pressure for low reward, but it’s not at all balanced against the TP method. To go back to my building analogy, adventuring would be taking the stairs and hallways, or taking the ramp the long way around, the TP method would be taking a system of powered elevators and moving walkways that will lift you to the destination in a fraction of the time and effort, but it requires you to know the passcode to access it. It’s not a balanced alternative. I’m not necessarily saying remove any alternatives, but any alternatives that exist must be balanced with the other possibilities.

You can hold that belief as long as you want, not everyone else does and you don’t get to force that belief on everyone.

Sure, but a lot of other people also seem to be complaining about the amount of grind/RNG/gold/etc. involved in certain rewards, maybe enough to care about, I don’t know, but ANet should really try to find that out.

I’ve said this before: advantages only exist when you are competing for an end goal. You are not in any competition to get a high-end item.

And I’ve said before, you’re entirely wrong on that, because the TP is a competitive landscape in which those who succeed do so only at others’ expense. You can’t make money without someone losing it, if both sides get a fair deal then they just break even on the transaction. Your argument that the economy is not competitive would be true ONLY if prices were fixed, and if I we were only racing towards a fixed gold vale as fast as we each could. When that goal value is also influenced by how much other players are willing and able to pay, then you’re constantly in competition to have more of it available than those who would also want that item.

And the potential to do something means that they could do it, that’s just the meaning of the word potential.

Yes, and again you are misusing it if you say that anyone can be a successful TP trader. Anyone can try, only some people are capable of succeeding at it. The potential to try yet fail is irrelevant to this discussion.

I hope you realize that TP traders sink large quantities of money out of the economy

They could always sink more.

If the ‘middleman’ actually has no function, why do people buy the items he sells and sell their items to him? Surely if it had no value, no one would participate, because they could do the exact same.

Because as we agree, the UI is inefficient, and this does not give them the knowledge to perform his role effectively. Just because someone does not have the wherewithal to defend himself does not mean picking on him is justified.

You missed the point. People don’t want to farm 5000 mithril, they want to buy it now, and oh look! TP traders will put that sell order supply up.

Yeah, but you don’t need TP traders for that. Where did the TP trader get his 5000 mithril? He got it from other players who were farming for metal, and who got less for their time and effort than the TP trader is going to get from reselling it. So someone comes along and wants 5000 mithril, he doesn’t need the TP trader to list it, because the mithril that trader would have bought and resold would still be sitting right there, just at a lower price.

And the thing is, if it’s impossible to re-sell materials, then let’s say that the sell price does creep up, because less people are listing sell orders. Well in that case, people who actually earned those materials could be making more money, which they actually deserve. Better that they make more than that middlemen make more, right? And if the price goes up, then that encourages more people to farm those mats, more of the mats enter circulation, and the prices come back down again. It would be no less stable than the current system.

Another solid UI element they need to be more complete is one that tracks items at historic peaks, so people would know what items are in particular demand.

The only way that they would be getting a better deal is if you forced the seller to make a sell order and the buyer to buy it, in which case the buyer is getting a worse deal, or if you forced the buyer to place a buy order and the seller to fill it, in which case the seller is getting a worse deal.

Again, you don’t have to force it. You just need the UI to do a better job of informing the buyer/seller of his options, so that he can make a decision that better suits his needs than he might otherwise make, and by eliminating middlemen, whichever side comes out on top, it’s not a middleman, it’s an actual player, and he might benefit on one transaction and lose out on another, but it would balance out to a net gain over the current options.

-not doing something because you don’t like it
-complaining that someone else profited because they were fine with doing it
-demanding that they not get that profit because you don’t like that someone else can profit doing something you don’t like
Laziness isn’t quite the right word, but it’s close.

Yeeeah, right up to that last bit. “Laxiness” is pretty far off the mark, “disinterest,” maybe? This is a game, it’s meant to be fun. Players should not have to do things that they don’t enjoy just to remain remotely competitive. Some activities can be more rewarding than others, but they should all be within a fair close min/max level of reward.

Strawman. What he’s saying is that you are taking the $100 (not trading on the TP), then whining because someone else got the $10000. You aren’t even talking about the same thing as his argument.

Perhaps, but only because his argument was itself a strawman of my position. I was just inverting the strawman.

And that is why people aren’t getting as much money/saving as much money as someone who does do that research when selling the same item. They choose to pay more rather than try to minmax it.

Right, which is why the system itself should make it as effortless as possible to mixmax it, so that instead of a few minutes per new transaction trying to figure out the best deal, they could tell at a glance what the best deal would be, or at least much closer to it than the current system offers.

We have maybe 3-4 people that have contributed to this thread in favor of your side.

Keep in mind, this is not the only thread discussing related topics. There are plenty of other threads discussing things like the cost of precursor crafting, guild halls, Scribing, etc. It is an issue that a lot of people seem to care about. Again, you can argue “not enough,” but neither of us can say how large the relative populations are. I think that the changes I proposed would benefit more of the players, since relatively few of them benefit from the current model, so whether they actually care about the issue or not isn’t particularly important.

It’s why I’ve told him in other threads that if he doesn’t quote me, properly, he will not get a response from me. As I don’t have conversations with rude people. Ohoni, this still holds for this thread. Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t going to quote me properly.

Thank you, whoever you are.

But when the thread starts moving fast and you start responding to multiple people who may be saying conflicting things in the same post, it gets messy and hard for people to follow or even realize that Ohoni is responding to the things that they said, especially when they aren’t the first person they respond to.

Why should you care whether I’m responding to you? Do you not care what your fellow posters have to say? You only want feedback on the things you’ve said? That’s pretty self-absorbed. It shouldn’t matter who I’m replying to, it should only matter what I’m replying to, regardless of who said it.

Not to mention, this forum will link to the direct post. So that if the person who quotes crops out parts, other readers can click on the link and get the permanent link to the quoted post for more context if necessary. Since, Ohoni doesn’t do that AND crops out parts of the posts pretty much all of the time, context can be lost. This holds especially true for threads that move quickly.

Whenever I have to look up the context of a comment, I do a quick word search for a relatively unique phrase, that usually turns it up.

Standing around in LA is playing the game, AFKs aside. Whether it’s a way of playing the game or not, it is perfectly valid. But I think this little quote tells us all we need to know about what you consider actual gameplay.

Well yeah, that’s sort of the point of writing it, to convey information. . .

So, in other words:
1. eliminate the effectiveness of one playstyle because you chose not to do it and want the same rewards as if you had
2. Destroy the usefulness of what others have acquired so that they have to play the same way as you

No, i think my phrasing was more accurate, but if that’s a point you’d like to make, go right ahead.

So, you want to make a player who has almost no investment in the game, just finished leveling their first character, to be just as well off and just as capable of getting high-end stuff as someone who has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours gathering materials (in this case gold).

No, that’s not what I said (you really do seem to have a habit of that, don’t you). You would need to progress towards the goal, you just shouldn’t be able to use gold to shortcut the process. I mean, you can have millions of karma, that doesn’t mean that you are owed the right to buy every legendary component for karma if you like. Just because you accumulate a ton of gold does not mean that they need to keep adding items that cost large amounts of gold. The problem with gold is that it’s far too unevenly distributed, and there really is no way to fix that at this point, so it’s better to just mostly ignore that currency, as they largely have with karma.

Again, you may think that any given thing should be true. That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. You don’t get to force everyone else to think and play with the your opinion.

You say some variation of this point a lot, and you seem to think that you’re actually challenging something I said. Of course this is all my opinion, and of course I can’t force it on anyone. That’s never been in doubt. I just believe that it would be in the best interests of the game, anyone is free to disagree on that and I’ve never portrayed it as otherwise.

I agree, nobody is asking for handouts. Handouts would mean teleporting you up a mountain that other people have climbed a lot of. What you want is for the mountain to be destroyed so that no one can ever be above you.

Eeeeeh, just leveled off a bit so that more people can access it. More Mt. Fuji, less Mt Everest.

And you can have as much loot as say, Wanze…if you put in the effort that he put in the way he did so.

and my position is that I should be able to have as much by putting in the same amount of effort, but directed at other parts of the game than the TP. If the TP is meant to be the only effective way to earn gold, then why even bother making the rest of the game? They could have done the entire thing in Java.

With the amount of this thread spent on your feelings, one would think that it is. Anway, you’re not quite right: In almost ever ripoff in human history, the victim’s knowledge of the value and uses of the item was inaccurate. No one is concealing the uses of an item, but in fact you can ‘/wiki Item Name’ as a chat command to find the wiki’s documentation of its uses. Thus, for it to be a ripoff, they must have an inaccurate understanding of the item’s value. So please, go ahead and argue that the prices that items are bought and sold at aren’t accurate.

Yes, but you have to look that item up via outside sources. In most land scams, people always have the option of tracking down documentation on that land, getting it privately assayed, consulting locals about potential future uses for it, whatever, but that doesn’t mean that the scammed has no obligation to be honest in the first place. Just because you can scam someone, and they could have avoided it, doesn’t mean you’re justified in doing so.

And all I’m asking for is that you stop conflating the TP with the rest of the game.

I would be happy to do so just as soon as items/gold bought or sold on the TP can no longer be used anywhere else in the game. So long as items/gold that pass through the TP CAN be used in other aspects of the game, the TP is a part of the game, and you cannot rationally argue otherwise.

What you want is to be able to do whatever you want, however non-goal-oriented it may be, and end up with the same result as, say, Wanze, who has been focused on getting one specific thing to the best of his ability, knowledge, and research.

I wouldn’t go that broad with it. I wouldn’t say that farming moas, for example, should be as profitable. But I think this is a pretty big game, with a LOT of things to do in it, and to argue that NONE of those activities should be even 1/10th as rewarding as TP flipping is a bit irrational. I think that the vast majority of core activities, activities that ANet otherwise seems pretty proud of including, should be roughly equivalent in personal gold rewards as using the TP is.

The miners rarely made money because they were chasing a dream-story that didn’t exist, at least not as they thought it did. The shop owners made money because they provided what people wanted when there were a LOT of people that wanted those items. Basic supply and demand. I don’t see your argument.

Really? Because you seem to have nailed the GW2 economy.

Would it be shocking to suggest there’s more than one type of whale?

A person who can casually spend 10k+ gold is pretty rightly referred to by that term even if they didn’t buy that gold.

No, that would be a completely inaccurate use of the term. “Whales” are only applicable when they are of high value to the business in question. Someone sitting on a casino floor and amassing huge stacks of monopoly money are not profiting the casino any, and thus are not whales, no matter how much monopoly money they have.

just means person who can and does throw a lot of money around. What kind of money isn’t the issue.

Whatever currency it is, it has to be one that the developers consider ACTUAL cash money. I play a cellphone game where you can amass “credits,” but real cash money things are only done in “crystals.” If I move a large amount of crystals, I would be a whale, if I had billions of times more credits than any other player, I wouldn’t even be a guppy.

In GW2 terms, the only “whales” are those who either buy gold with gems, or buy gem store items with gems that they acquired with cash. Those who buy gems with gold are a secondary influence on that system, but it’s the people who sold them the gold that ANet actually cares about.

Nike.2631:

Tigaseye.2047:

OK, moving swiftly on, before I say something I might regret.

Another thing I found, while Googling:

“5th Planet chief executive Robert Winkler revealed at the Game Developers Conference Online in 2012 that with its game Clash of the Dragons, 40 percent of revenue came from 2 percent of players who spent $1,000 or more. Ninety percent came from those who spent $100 or more, and the top whale had spent $6,700.”

So, if this is, even vaguely, typical, it would appear that the people you really have to try to please, as a games developer, is not so much the whales (or certainly not only them), but the dolphins.

The “dolphins” thing is my definition, BTW – no idea what they’re really referred to, if anything.

Which would perfectly illustrate why various “let’s withhold money!” forum strategies don’t work. All you do is move yourself out of the category they need to concern themselves with. Their business is people who consistently spend hundreds of dollars, not the people threatening to withhold a couple of 20s. If you’re angry off about having to spend 12$ you pretty much just announced you’re a nobody.

And ‘dolphins’ is a good choice for what you’re describing .

Well yeah and I’m not, personally, suggesting withholding money, as such – more spreading it more evenly around various playstyles.

As a bit of a dolphin, myself…

…actually, I have been dangerously close to becoming a whale, this year, but it is (hopefully) mainly because it has been my first year playing…

…I am more inclined to spend RL money, if I feel I am getting enough ingame gold, doing the things I enjoy.

I know that probably sounds like a contradiction, to some people, as if I am getting too much ingame gold, that will stop me needing to spend any RL money (like the TP flippers); but when I say “enough”, I really mean enough.

Not totally excessive amounts; just enough.

I am more inclined, if I feel I am well on my way to getting something, to just help it along with a few quid of real money, than I am when I feel I would have to contribute all, or most of it, in that way.

…and that is, presumably, the balancing act they have to try to play, here.

The problem as far as I can see it, ATM, is that the TP has just become too prominent – too much THE way to make gold, as opposed to just A way.

…and that is exacerbated, by the fact that we’re (almost) all painfully aware that, every time we try to buy something on the TP, it may have had its price, artificially, increased by the TP flippers.

So, it’s like a double-whammy for people and that is very hard to ignore.

OK, when we sell something, they may also be, inadvertently, helping us to get a little more for it, too, but still…

The point is, that that is less likely to stick in the minds of people, who mainly buy.

If either, or both, weren’t the case, or weren’t so much the case, it would be far easier to let them just get on with it.

ekarat.1085:

Harper.4173:

Let’s not forget how Dungeon rewards were nerfed and then no other rewards were buffed.

They added map rewards in the old maps and the new maps have even better rewards.

It’s not clear if the amount of gold flowing into the economy is more or less than before the Dungeon nerf, but there are certainly more materials flowing into the economy (and more sinks as well).

Basically, they took the dungeon rewards and spread them out over much more content.

I simply don’t believe that’s true but even if it was the amount of work you have to put in now is much higher. The game is less rewarding after the dungeon nerf than it was before per hour of time played.

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

His agenda is the same as everyone else’s – but at least most other players aren’t hiding it behind “the masses” as all would-be communist ( excuse me – he prefers rational socialist) sympathizers do.

He wants to change the game to better suit him and work more towards his advantage. By promoting his vision he hopes to find support from others and perhaps attempt to make a change. It’s been done before – no change will come but people still try.

TP flipping being rewarding is good because it’s allowing them to control the economy – more flips = more gold being taken out of the economy.
Plus – through flipping only a few truly profit – and that doesn’t matter when most players aren’t affected by it being too lazy, uninterested or incapable to flip successfully.

I am profoundly baffled by your statement regarding my caring. Did you expect me to care? Do you care about me?

Do you honestly believe you’re more than a walking talking NPC for the majority of the people you meet in game?

Of course you’re “profoundly baffled” Harper, because you’re not like most of the rest of us.

Yes, most of us do care.

The only people I don’t care about, at all, are people who don’t care about other people.

Yes, there are quite a lot of them in MMOs, unfortunately.

Probably due to the fact that the real world, understandably, doesn’t react well to their kind.

Far easier to hide-out in games, or on the real life stock market etc..

The thing is, much as you’re trying to accuse Ohoni of wanting to change the game, to suit himself, the truth is it wouldn’t make his life any better than it could otherwise be, if he was like you.

He’s, clearly, more than bright enough and more than dedicated enough to the game to work the TP, just like you do.

He just morally objects to the idea of a few people becoming very rich, ingame, while others either can’t, or don’t want to, do what it takes to follow suit.

Whereas you, Harper…

You just want everything your own way, for your own totally selfish reasons and freely admit you don’t care, at all, about other players.

I know which one I prefer, by far.

Oh and BTW, communism and socialism are not the same thing, at all.

I live in Western Europe and people would be absolutely furious that you didn’t know the difference, or falsely tried to pretend you didn’t.

Not that I expect you care.

If you honestly believe most MMO players care about other MMO players in their game – you’re not close to the truth honestly.
You would also be surprised how many people don’t care about others in the real world. There’s a lot of social pressure in today’s society on one to appear and behave as though he cares – but on this matter my findings are that most people do not.
They care what society thinks of them if they don’t do “the right thing”.

I am selfish. Ohoni is too – I might defend my stance for my in-game “gold” while he might defend his stance in order to obtain I don’t know ? Peace of mind?
Ultimately we both are striving for ourselves – for our own reasons.

And when I admit something freely – I at least am not hypocritical and hiding behind a vale of false kindness. And I do care about other players – just not the ones like you or Ohoni. There are other “types” of players that I do care about.

Also I know full well what communism and socialism are – and his ideas tend much more towards one of them. Guess which.

Its so laughable that you think there is much skill involved in listing your loot for a higher price.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

You only see the benefits of a perceived high reward that traders seem to get in your opinion and want it for your playstyle as well.
You completely disregard the risks involved.
Once other reward structures get similar penalties applied to them, we can talk about buffing rewards.
You die? 1g deducted from your wallet.
An event you tagged or participated in fails? 25s.
A party or squad member dies? 25s.

You can claim as much as you want that profits on the tp are rewards.
They are claimable by everybody that earns tradeable loot.
Your argument that its too hard for the average player to list it at a higher value and expect it to sell at a certain time is completely moot because the trader has to take the same risk.

You expect the same profits but dont want to take the same risks.
Bottom line is that you ask for stuff handed to you on a silver platter.

Honestly, i dont care, if they award 10g liquid gold for a dungeon or a dynamic event.
Because my personal profits that i will be able to make then on the tp will rise proportionally and i will always be ahead of you with personal profits from the tp compared to your personal rewards from Anet.

Why?
Because i get my profits from other players and you dont.
If other players get more gold rewards, i get more gold from them.
You can claim as much as you want that profits on the tp are basically the same than rewards from Anet. They arent.
If you want to limit my profits compared to content rewards, you have to change the player behaviour and how they interact with the tp, not buff content rewards.

The sooner you accept this and change your own behaviour of interacting with the tp, the sooner your problem will be solved.

Wanze.8410:

Its so laughable that you think there is much skill involved in listing your loot for a higher price.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

I used to do that with mithril ore. I find it relaxing working out best efficiency harvesting paths in some of the Orr zones and then running 5-8 characters through them trying to improve my time on each run hitting 20-some nodes. While I kept the Oricalcum for my own crafting and the sense of progression towards certain rare skins I wanted, the thousands of mithril ores were just junk to me, a byproduct of my playstyle. I’d pick a mark well, well above the going rate (6 to 10 times higher) and just keep storing it up on the TP. Couple times a year I’d log in and BOOM, piles of gold waiting for me at the TP. Mountains of gold, really. Market would flux up to my insane (at the time of posting) price and I’d get the money I wanted at the time I wanted it: namely, ‘whenever’ because I didn’t care. Storage space on the TP is infinite.

Traders feed on haste — coming and going. If you are willing to wait more than sixty seconds you can be a much better TP participant and get much, much better deals. And if you want to act in haste KNOW that’ you’re paying a premium for it.

If you want to limit my profits compared to content rewards, you have to change the player behaviour and how they interact with the tp, not buff content rewards.

This really sums up right there, and I’ve usual found the trade savvy are often quite forthcoming with basic principles and strategies.

The Trading Post is economic PvP. There are minds on the other end of every transaction. Make an effort not to get fleeced. It’s good practice for everyone.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

And if it never sells because you gambled at a price that never gets reached? I do have at least a few orders on the TP that I’ve let ride for a year or more. Not everyone has the disposable income to tie up significant amounts for months on end without returns.

You only see the benefits of a perceived high reward that traders seem to get in your opinion and want it for your playstyle as well.
You completely disregard the risks involved.
Once other reward structures get similar penalties applied to them, we can talk about buffing rewards.

There are certainly ways to greatly reduce risk from the sort of “yolo” tactic you suggest. There are much safer bets to make with plenty strong returns, so long as you take the time to research and have the tools available to do so. If typical gameplay doesn’t involve enough “risk” to justify the sort of rewards the TP offers, I’d be fine with some sort of “self gambling” system, where a player could bet a certain amount of gold that he could complete an encounter without dying, or with only a fixed number of lives, and only if he beats the spread does he take home the prize. I don’t know that I’d want to gamble on the performance of others, there already enough of that just in time wasted when an event wipes.

It’s not like normal play is entirely without risk. Sure, you aren’t gambling money, you aren’t putting gold up front that you stand to lose, but you are always gambling time, and time is money. There are relatively low risk activities, so you can calculate a “baby slopes” income rate, but if you choose to do something with a higher chance of failure, like raiding or TD meta, or even Auric meta, then you’re chancing that the time you invest in the effort will not be rewarded as the event might fail, in which case you would be out those potential returns.

Your argument that its too hard for the average player to list it at a higher value and expect it to sell at a certain time is completely moot because the trader has to take the same risk.

Yes, but WITH BETTER ODDS. Do you watch John Oliver? He did a piece a couple weeks back on that online sports gambling thing, where they advertise that players make millions of dollars a week at it. And some do. But the ones that do are the ones with massive spreadsheets and algorithms that track player performance, weather, etc., allowing them to lose some, but win many more and come out ahead. Sure, a random guy can just “yolo” it and maybe his picks win and he makes money, but his chances of success are way lower.

Anyone can try, very few will succeed on a regular basis. A player that just “yolos” the TP might make more money on a very small percentage of his sales, but he will tie up the majority of his items in TP-purgatory, never moving, because he will not know which items might move at a higher price under the right conditions, and which never will. Best case he eats the listing fee and relists it, worst case it’s just him out the listing fee AND the potential profit of the item forever.

A player that knows what he’s doing isn’t taking much risk at all, really. Oh, he might take a risk on a few transactions, and lose on them, but he’d win on more than he loses and come out ahead. Would you ever really gamble so much of your wealth on a risky move that it would actually wipe you out? Or do you just make high risk plays with a tiny fraction of your net worth, and mostly make plays that you’re fairly certain will pay out?

That does not mean that those who do succeed deserve to make boatloads of coin off it though. They deserve to have some reward advantage, because they have some superior skill, but it should not be as extreme as in the actual game, it should be maybe a 5% advantage, perhaps even 10%, not a 600% advantage.

Honestly, i dont care, if they award 10g liquid gold for a dungeon or a dynamic event.
Because my personal profits that i will be able to make then on the tp will rise proportionally and i will always be ahead of you with personal profits from the tp compared to your personal rewards from Anet.

Right, which is why I don’t think increasing the rewards from other activities, at least not alone, would be a good idea. The solution would be more in reducing the profit potential of high volume TP trading. Progressive tax rates, diminishing returns. The more profit you take in, the more it’s taxed. You would always make more from profiting more, just less and less of it each time, until you’d eventually be making only 1% of your usual profit margins.

You can claim as much as you want that profits on the tp are basically the same than rewards from Anet. They arent.

I acknowledge the same difference that you acknowledge, that is not the difference between our positions. The difference is that I also understand that you acquiring gold, wherever you acquire it from, is still you acquiring gold, and it’s ANet’s responsibility to keep those systems in balance with all others. If they allow players to earn gold by taking it from other players, then it is their responsibility to make sure that this method is in balance with the other methods of a player acquiring gold.

Nike.2631:

The Trading Post is economic PvP. There are minds on the other end of every transaction. Make an effort not to get fleeced. It’s good practice for everyone.

Yeah, it’s PvP, but unlike WvW or sPvP this one is forced – an equivalent to open world PvP in a game where most players are strictly pve ones. This is the main reason why it’s so succesful.

Ohoni.6057:

“Whale” is actually an industry term, not just a catch-all I invented to refer to the source of money. A Whale is part of the very small percentage of gamers in a free-to-play game who fork over enough money to keep the company afloat.

I’m well aware of what a whale is, I was just pointing out that there is no reason to believe that TP tycoons are any more “whales” than any other group, and in fact a decent amount of reason to believe that they are each less likely to be whales (since they participate less in the actual gameplay and thus would be less interested in paying gems to dress up their many characters), and there are far less of them, so your discussion about whales really has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

Yet your polemic is about wealth inequality in general, not just TP flippers in particular, and whales are a huge part of that. Whales buy gems both for Gem Store items and also to convert into gold, gold which comes primarily from rich players. It is to ANet’s real-world economic advantage to keep those whales spending money, which means it is to their advantage to allow for players to earn extremely large amounts of disposable in-game currency so that whales have customers for their gems. If you equalize wealth, this system would crash. You’d destroy both the supple of gold available for conversion as well as the demand for that gold (since it would be possible to get whatever you wanted without too much work anyway).

Ohoni.6057:

But when the thread starts moving fast and you start responding to multiple people who may be saying conflicting things in the same post, it gets messy and hard for people to follow or even realize that Ohoni is responding to the things that they said, especially when they aren’t the first person they respond to.

Why should you care whether I’m responding to you? Do you not care what your fellow posters have to say? You only want feedback on the things you’ve said? That’s pretty self-absorbed. It shouldn’t matter who I’m replying to, it should only matter what I’m replying to, regardless of who said it.

I find several things troubling about this response.

First and foremost, it’s a strawman argument. The issue we’re pointing out is that stripping comments of their posters muddles the conversation, regardless of which thread one is trying to follow, and your response is to call us “self-absorbed”? That’s just fallacious, and it’s particularly galling since you’ve been quick to point out strawmen arguments when used against you.

Secondly, you’re missing the point: we’re not trying to say that a given argument will be more or less true based on who says it, or that only our points matter. We’re simply saying that context matters, and that by stripping away user names, you’re making the context harder to follow. This thread is (inexplicably) over 200 responses long, and responding to it is far from the only activity anyone here will engage in over the course of the day. By making it much harder to follow conversation threads — mine or someone else’s — you’re making it much harder to engage in the ongoing discussion.

Thirdly, your tendency to assume malice as our motive makes me question whether you’re arguing in good faith at all. I can’t speak for everyone, but I generally try to stick to just a dialogue between myself and the OP in part because I trust others to come up with their own responses, but also as a courtesy to the OP so that they won’t have to make several responses to a single comment. There are exceptions, of course, but I generally try to avoid contributing to the unwieldiness of threads. Forum threads have a tendency to become fractalized over time and if you don’t take steps to keep the conversation lean, the participants can quickly become trapped in a maze of masturbatory cul de sacs that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. This conversation about quotation etiquette is borderline, but I think it’s the lesser evil to allowing the thread complexity to grow unchecked without objection.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ohoni.6057:

“Whale” is actually an industry term, not just a catch-all I invented to refer to the source of money. A Whale is part of the very small percentage of gamers in a free-to-play game who fork over enough money to keep the company afloat.

I’m well aware of what a whale is, I was just pointing out that there is no reason to believe that TP tycoons are any more “whales” than any other group, and in fact a decent amount of reason to believe that they are each less likely to be whales (since they participate less in the actual gameplay and thus would be less interested in paying gems to dress up their many characters), and there are far less of them, so your discussion about whales really has no bearing on the discussion at hand.

Yet your polemic is about wealth inequality in general, not just TP flippers in particular, and whales are a huge part of that. Whales buy gems both for Gem Store items and also to convert into gold, gold which comes primarily from rich players. It is to ANet’s real-world economic advantage to keep those whales spending money, which means it is to their advantage to allow for players to earn extremely large amounts of disposable in-game currency so that whales have customers for their gems. If you equalize wealth, this system would crash. You’d destroy both the supple of gold available for conversion as well as the demand for that gold (since it would be possible to get whatever you wanted without too much work anyway).

Ohoni.6057:

But when the thread starts moving fast and you start responding to multiple people who may be saying conflicting things in the same post, it gets messy and hard for people to follow or even realize that Ohoni is responding to the things that they said, especially when they aren’t the first person they respond to.

Why should you care whether I’m responding to you? Do you not care what your fellow posters have to say? You only want feedback on the things you’ve said? That’s pretty self-absorbed. It shouldn’t matter who I’m replying to, it should only matter what I’m replying to, regardless of who said it.

I find several things troubling about this response.

First and foremost, it’s a strawman argument. The issue we’re pointing out is that stripping comments of their posters muddles the conversation, regardless of which thread one is trying to follow, and your response is to call us “self-absorbed”? That’s just fallacious, and it’s particularly galling since you’ve been quick to point out strawmen arguments when used against you.

Secondly, you’re missing the point: we’re not trying to say that a given argument will be more or less true based on who says it, or that only our points matter. We’re simply saying that context matters, and that by stripping away user names, you’re making the context harder to follow. This thread is (inexplicably) over 200 responses long, and responding to it is far from the only activity anyone here will engage in over the course of the day. By making it much harder to follow conversation threads — mine or someone else’s — you’re making it much harder to engage in the ongoing discussion.

Thirdly, your tendency to assume malice as our motive makes me question whether you’re arguing in good faith at all. I can’t speak for everyone, but I generally try to stick to just a dialogue between myself and the OP in part because I trust others to come up with their own responses, but also as a courtesy to the OP so that they won’t have to make several responses to a single comment. There are exceptions, of course, but I generally try to avoid contributing to the unwieldiness of threads. Forum threads have a tendency to become fractalized over time and if you don’t take steps to keep the conversation lean, the participants can quickly become trapped in a maze of masturbatory cul de sacs that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. This conversation about quotation etiquette is borderline, but I think it’s the lesser evil to allowing the thread complexity to grow unchecked without objection.

TP traders do not create gold thus the system would not crash as they do not supply what the whales are buying.

How can you call someone out for a strawman when they are replying to a strawman? “Hey man don’t color that yellow, I know I gave you a yellow crayon to color it, but that’s besides the point”

The same can be said for the intent. Several posters assumed Ohoni’s intent was to be rude. They replied to that and now it’s Ohoni’s fault that they assumed incorrectly?

Things on here never cease to amaze me.

Essence Snow.3194:

TP traders do not create gold thus the system would not crash as they do not supply what the whales are buying.

Yet they concentrate it and are the best able to leverage it towards gem purchases. Precisely because they have such an excessive amount of gold, they’re able to spend it more liberally than the players who might otherwise have it would. This isn’t the real world where average people tend to spend all their money whereas wealthy people store their money up. No one ever has to spend anything (you can even gear up in full Ascended without spending a single copper if you really wanted), so players with small incomes typically save for stuff they really want. Players with massive incomes, on the other hand, can afford to buy out the gem store because really, what else is there to do when you have 20,000 gold just sitting around?

Essence Snow.3194:

How can you call someone out for a strawman when they are replying to a strawman?

I’m calling him out for committing a strawman fallacy in the process of responding to an entirely separate point. You’re confusing different arguments together… which is to be expected when someone deliberately removes the best way of keeping things straight.

Essence Snow.3194:

The same can be said for the intent. Several posters assumed Ohoni’s intent was to be rude. They replied to that and now it’s Ohoni’s fault that they assumed incorrectly?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because Person A makes an insulting assumption about Person B doesn’t entitle Mr. B to make another insulting assumption about Mr. A. Then they’d just both be in the wrong.

That said, you’re, again, mixing up conversation threads. I went back and checked; in this particular instance, Seera said and s/he things Ohoni is being rude, not that Ohoni’s intention is to be rude. Those are two entirely different claims. The former is about externals, about how Ohoni’s words are coming off. This is possible to debate since the issue is, ultimately, with the written words of the thread which we can all see. The latter is about internal matters, something with very little evidence available to us. Statements about another’s intentions are not easily falsifiable, but whether a given action was rude or not is quite a bit more so.

You do realize that your “two wrongs don’t make a right” applies to your calling him out posts?…..This is a rhetorical question btw.

Wanze.8410:

Its so laughable that you think there is much skill involved in listing your loot for a higher price.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

The only issue I have really is…because of all this increasing prices on the TP.. and everyone trying to make the most amount of gold, eventually EVERYTHING is going to be way over priced and out of the hands of the poor and middle class players.

For example: Anton’s Boot Blade is valued (worth) 2s 64c by Anet (wiki) and is currently selling on the TP for more than 34 gold. That is way overpriced and for some players this could be out of reach.

Once you get into precursor and legendary weapons…that are selling at astronomical prices all because people are trying to make money off the TP. Not necessarily to buy something pricey, but because they wish to amass gold in the game.

So basically the “poor” will never acquire anything pricey, because by the time they make 100g, the price will have moved up to be 300g. Which I find rather sad.

Essence Snow.3194:

You do realize that your “two wrongs don’t make a right” applies to your calling him out posts?…..

I’m not trying to insult him, nor am I trying to puzzle out his intentions. I’m making a point of order about how he has been conducting himself in the thread because it’s having a negative effect on our ability to keep the various conversation threads straight. That’s entirely different from calling someone self-absorbed.

It’s not how they have been conducting his/herself. It’s how y’all feel he or she is conducting themselves. They have said multiple times they are not doing it to insult or offend anyone. In fact it’s the opposite. The self-absorbed comment I would assume is there as a reflection of that.

Lynne.8416:

Wanze.8410:

Its so laughable that you think there is much skill involved in listing your loot for a higher price.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

The only issue I have really is…because of all this increasing prices on the TP.. and everyone trying to make the most amount of gold, eventually EVERYTHING is going to be way over priced and out of the hands of the poor and middle class players.

For example: Anton’s Boot Blade is valued (worth) 2s 64c by Anet (wiki) and is currently selling on the TP for more than 34 gold. That is way overpriced and for some players this could be out of reach.

Once you get into precursor and legendary weapons…that are selling at astronomical prices all because people are trying to make money off the TP. Not necessarily to buy something pricey, but because they wish to amass gold in the game.

So basically the “poor” will never acquire anything pricey, because by the time they make 100g, the price will have moved up to be 300g. Which I find rather sad.

The vendor value Anet sets has very little to do with the value the players set for the item.
The increased prices on the tp are due to additional demand, as the player base as a whole is destroying alot of mats atm to craft stuff or upgrade guild halls, etc.
Its actually positive for poor and middle class players, if basic mats rise in price becasue they can easily farm them and therefore get more value for their loot.
In addition to that, most valuable items that have been traded for over 100g before hot and have no function as a requirement to gain other items, have fallen in value since HoT.

Lynne.8416:

The only issue I have really is…because of all this increasing prices on the TP.. and everyone trying to make the most amount of gold, eventually EVERYTHING is going to be way over priced and out of the hands of the poor and middle class players.

Not everything. Even if we imagine a world where everything on the Trading Post costs way more than what anyone can ever afford, you can still gear yourself up to an acceptable level for the vast majority of content just fine. I mean, it’s even technically possible to gear yourself up in full Ascended without buying a single scrap of silk over the Trading Post (though that would take you an absurdly long time). More feasibly, though, you could gear yourself up in full Exotic armor with just Karma, craft your own Exotic weapons using mats you gathered, and get full Ascended trinkets just by collecting your daily log-in rewards. It might take a while, but you can also get snazzy semi-exclusive Dungeon skins without making use of the Trading Post.

Also, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the GW2 economy is very different from the real-world economy in a few important ways. First, there are no inherent impediments that can prevent any individual from bootstrapping themselves into the aristocracy. There are no industry connections you need to foster, no legal system you need to navigate, no racial or gender prejudice which might make finding a well-paying job more difficult, no sudden medical or legal disasters that might wipe out your savings, no need to balance your desire to invest against your need to eat and pay the bills.

Crafting materials are in high demand right now and likely will continue to be in demand in the future, which sucks if you want to level up your crafting or put together a set of ascended armor, but if you just want gold for some fancy named Exotic on the TP, you can easily put that gold together by selling crafting mats. That’s actually how I finally got my precursor a few weeks ago: I took all the materials I had sitting around in my bank and put them up on the TP. Did you know you can make a cool 10gold/hour just harvesting Soft Wood Logs and Iron Ore from level 15-25 maps? It’s super easy, too, so you could be making serious money while watching TV or YouTube videos, talking to your parents on the phone, or just chilling out after work or between classes with some music playing in the background. Not to mention running the Silverwastes, Dry Top, or any of the HoT meta-events. Heck, even the gold/hour from running the Mad King’s Labyrinth was around 20 gold/hour.

Lynne.8416:

So basically the “poor” will never acquire anything pricey, because by the time they make 100g, the price will have moved up to be 300g. Which I find rather sad.

I don’t find this to be a realistic description of what we’re seeing, particularly since you’re assuming wealth gain would remain static while costs rise. Yet it’s easier today for anyone to put together a big ol’ ball of cash than at almost any point in the game’s history. Anton’s Boot Blade may be quite difficult for some to acquire, but then again, this also makes getting one as a drop all the more lucrative.

Essence Snow.3194:

It’s not how they have been conducting his/herself. It’s how y’all feel he or she is conducting themselves. They have said multiple times they are not doing it to insult or offend anyone. In fact it’s the opposite. The self-absorbed comment I would assume is there as a reflection of that.

I’m not interested in how Ohoni is attempting to conduct him/herself. I’m simply irritated at the conduct itself. S/he has made the decision to prioritize making an inane philosophical point that has nothing to do with the conversation at the cost of conversational clarity. Regardless of why the decision was made, I find the conduct itself intolerable, and I’m evidently not the only one.

Ohoni.6057:

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

And if it never sells because you gambled at a price that never gets reached? I do have at least a few orders on the TP that I’ve let ride for a year or more. Not everyone has the disposable income to tie up significant amounts for months on end without returns.

You only see the benefits of a perceived high reward that traders seem to get in your opinion and want it for your playstyle as well.
You completely disregard the risks involved.
Once other reward structures get similar penalties applied to them, we can talk about buffing rewards.

There are certainly ways to greatly reduce risk from the sort of “yolo” tactic you suggest. There are much safer bets to make with plenty strong returns, so long as you take the time to research and have the tools available to do so. If typical gameplay doesn’t involve enough “risk” to justify the sort of rewards the TP offers, I’d be fine with some sort of “self gambling” system, where a player could bet a certain amount of gold that he could complete an encounter without dying, or with only a fixed number of lives, and only if he beats the spread does he take home the prize. I don’t know that I’d want to gamble on the performance of others, there already enough of that just in time wasted when an event wipes.

It’s not like normal play is entirely without risk. Sure, you aren’t gambling money, you aren’t putting gold up front that you stand to lose, but you are always gambling time, and time is money. There are relatively low risk activities, so you can calculate a “baby slopes” income rate, but if you choose to do something with a higher chance of failure, like raiding or TD meta, or even Auric meta, then you’re chancing that the time you invest in the effort will not be rewarded as the event might fail, in which case you would be out those potential returns.

Your argument that its too hard for the average player to list it at a higher value and expect it to sell at a certain time is completely moot because the trader has to take the same risk.

Yes, but WITH BETTER ODDS. Do you watch John Oliver? He did a piece a couple weeks back on that online sports gambling thing, where they advertise that players make millions of dollars a week at it. And some do. But the ones that do are the ones with massive spreadsheets and algorithms that track player performance, weather, etc., allowing them to lose some, but win many more and come out ahead. Sure, a random guy can just “yolo” it and maybe his picks win and he makes money, but his chances of success are way lower.

Anyone can try, very few will succeed on a regular basis. A player that just “yolos” the TP might make more money on a very small percentage of his sales, but he will tie up the majority of his items in TP-purgatory, never moving, because he will not know which items might move at a higher price under the right conditions, and which never will. Best case he eats the listing fee and relists it, worst case it’s just him out the listing fee AND the potential profit of the item forever.

A player that knows what he’s doing isn’t taking much risk at all, really. Oh, he might take a risk on a few transactions, and lose on them, but he’d win on more than he loses and come out ahead. Would you ever really gamble so much of your wealth on a risky move that it would actually wipe you out? Or do you just make high risk plays with a tiny fraction of your net worth, and mostly make plays that you’re fairly certain will pay out?

That does not mean that those who do succeed deserve to make boatloads of coin off it though. They deserve to have some reward advantage, because they have some superior skill, but it should not be as extreme as in the actual game, it should be maybe a 5% advantage, perhaps even 10%, not a 600% advantage.

Honestly, i dont care, if they award 10g liquid gold for a dungeon or a dynamic event.
Because my personal profits that i will be able to make then on the tp will rise proportionally and i will always be ahead of you with personal profits from the tp compared to your personal rewards from Anet.

Right, which is why I don’t think increasing the rewards from other activities, at least not alone, would be a good idea. The solution would be more in reducing the profit potential of high volume TP trading. Progressive tax rates, diminishing returns. The more profit you take in, the more it’s taxed. You would always make more from profiting more, just less and less of it each time, until you’d eventually be making only 1% of your usual profit margins.

You can claim as much as you want that profits on the tp are basically the same than rewards from Anet. They arent.

I acknowledge the same difference that you acknowledge, that is not the difference between our positions. The difference is that I also understand that you acquiring gold, wherever you acquire it from, is still you acquiring gold, and it’s ANet’s responsibility to keep those systems in balance with all others. If they allow players to earn gold by taking it from other players, then it is their responsibility to make sure that this method is in balance with the other methods of a player acquiring gold.

Do you think just because i am a good trader that my listings sell faster than yours?
I have over 400k items still listed on the TP, worth more than 55k gold, that havent sold yet. Many of them have been there for longer than 2 years also, closing in on 3 years.
So how are my odds better than everybody elses?

You are always talking about rewards/profits from the tp and you basically have no idea what you are talking about.
You claim they are too high and you cant even give a proper definition of what profits generated on the tp really are.

How do you measure it?

I guess you must have a pretty good idea about it somewhere hidden in your head, that you just failed to tell us yet, on how to define profits form the tp, if your intend is to nerf it or tax players more, who make more profit.

Wanze.8410:

I have over 400k items still listed on the TP, worth more than 55k gold, that havent sold yet. Many of them have been there for longer than 2 years also, closing in on 3 years.

You are a far more patient person than I. I would’ve relisted them after maybe a week.

Wanze.8410:

Lynne.8416:

Wanze.8410:

Its so laughable that you think there is much skill involved in listing your loot for a higher price.

Its basic math, just multiply the current value of your loot on the tp by 2 or 3, list it at that price and wait until it sells. Thats all there is to it.
Boom, you make as much as a trader.

The only issue I have really is…because of all this increasing prices on the TP.. and everyone trying to make the most amount of gold, eventually EVERYTHING is going to be way over priced and out of the hands of the poor and middle class players.

For example: Anton’s Boot Blade is valued (worth) 2s 64c by Anet (wiki) and is currently selling on the TP for more than 34 gold. That is way overpriced and for some players this could be out of reach.

Once you get into precursor and legendary weapons…that are selling at astronomical prices all because people are trying to make money off the TP. Not necessarily to buy something pricey, but because they wish to amass gold in the game.

So basically the “poor” will never acquire anything pricey, because by the time they make 100g, the price will have moved up to be 300g. Which I find rather sad.

The vendor value Anet sets has very little to do with the value the players set for the item.
The increased prices on the tp are due to additional demand, as the player base as a whole is destroying alot of mats atm to craft stuff or upgrade guild halls, etc.
Its actually positive for poor and middle class players, if basic mats rise in price becasue they can easily farm them and therefore get more value for their loot.
In addition to that, most valuable items that have been traded for over 100g before hot and have no function as a requirement to gain other items, have fallen in value since HoT.

I was actually referring to the fact that the poor will always be poor. Because they are not “farming” or “playing the TP” to make gold. They are just out there playing “their” particular part of the game (say PvP or WvW or mapping/exploring).

The rich will always find a way to be rich (as even when they go “broke” they know how to amass gold quickly). Some people play the game to amass gold because that is what THEY enjoy and they tend to control the price of items on the TP as they can afford to buy out the low and sell high.
Not saying it’s wrong, it’s just how life works.

Astralporing.1957:

Nike.2631:

The Trading Post is economic PvP. There are minds on the other end of every transaction. Make an effort not to get fleeced. It’s good practice for everyone.

Yeah, it’s PvP, but unlike WvW or sPvP this one is forced – an equivalent to open world PvP in a game where most players are strictly pve ones. This is the main reason why it’s so succesful.

But the not getting fleeced part is easy. It is also valuable and beneficial to all of the players. A lot of players seem to buy at the ask and sell at the bid. This is extremely foolish. It is pretty much the only way to guarantee you do get fleeced.

I am not a TP flipper. Nor am I rich. I am pretty sure I have never had more than 400 gold, though I tend to have a lot of mats just from being a pack rat. I have dabbled on the TP just a tiny bit, like one time I bought a bunch of bags and opened them all and sold the mats. I made a profit, but it was very tedious. Anybody who makes gold like that deserves it. I also speculated once and bought stacks of quartz. I did that simply because they were really cheap and I thought the price would go up. It did. I still have 10-15 of those stacks so if I sold them now I would make a profit. Should I feel like I took advantage of whoever listed them when I bought them? I see no reason to think so. Whoever sold them obviously wanted to get rid of them that cheaply.

I sometimes buy at the ask, especially if I want the item right now. But I very, very rarely sell at the bid. When i do it is only because there is such a small spread that it doesn’t matter. And even if the spread is 1 copper, I still usually list the item. Why not? If the spread is that small, the item probably sells a lot. I should probably list it above the ask. Traders probably do that very often. Obviously listing items means I don’t get the gold right now. But I get it usually pretty quickly. I may log in the next day and have 5 or even 10 gold waiting for me at the TP depending on what I did the previous day. TP barons laugh at that number because they have hundreds waiting for them each day. But I am not trading. This is just selling loot for me.

Here are a couple of examples of real TP transactions I made recently. I was about to log off last night and realized I had not crafted silk weaving thread. It is (annoyingly) time gated, so I wanted to do it before logging off in case I didn’t get back on before reset tonight. But when I went to craft it, I only had 91 bolts of silk. Now I could have gone and farmed that or I could have switched characters to find one that had some Silverwastes bags in inventory and opened them up to get silk, but I was ready to log off. So I just right-clicked to buy more at the TP and ordered 9 bolts at the ask price. I got my bolts, crafted the thread and logged off. Nothing wrong with that, right? But when I do that, I am paying somebody for that convenience, either a flipper or just somebody like me who usually lists at or near the ask.

Day before this, I was opening a bunch of bags on my Reaper and noticed that my inventory had only 15-slot bags instead of 20. I was filling it up quickly opening bags so I decided it would be good to buy a couple of Halloween pails for more space. So I went to the TP to buy candy corn or candy corn cobs. Of course I wanted it right then, but those cobs were trading at around 2g90s bid and 3g40s ask. I didn’t want to pay “full price” for them but didn’t want to wait for days if I only offered the bid. So I decided to offer somewhere in between and see what happened. I put in an order for 6 of them at 3g4s and went on with opening bags and such. In just a few minutes I saw the TP notification that my order had filled. Wonderful, right? Somebody wanted to sell them at 3g40s. I didn’t want to pay that and wanted them cheaper. Somebody else wanted to buy them at 2g90s. And one other person (or people) was willing to sell them to me at 3g4s. Probably wasn’t a flipper, but if it was I don’t care. I got what I wanted at the price I was willing to pay. Best I can tell, everybody involved in that market is getting what they want. It is awesome that we can all play how we want and swap the stuff we get while doing that for other stuff that others get by doing something we don’t want to do. Win-win for everybody. If somebody is getting rich off of it, good for them as long as there is a free market so I can trade my stuff for other stuff I want at the prices I am willing to pay.

tl;dr – I love the trading post/economy. It is one of the best aspects of GW2.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Wanze.8410:

I have over 400k items still listed on the TP, worth more than 55k gold, that havent sold yet. Many of them have been there for longer than 2 years also, closing in on 3 years.

You are a far more patient person than I. I would’ve relisted them after maybe a week.

Which illustrates another reason why i probably have more gold than you.
You relist it, so you pay 20% in fees and taxes instead of 15% and you probably already spent whatever gold you got out of it, while mine is still on the tp and i didnt spent the gold.

Wanze.8410:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Wanze.8410:

I have over 400k items still listed on the TP, worth more than 55k gold, that havent sold yet. Many of them have been there for longer than 2 years also, closing in on 3 years.

You are a far more patient person than I. I would’ve relisted them after maybe a week.

Which illustrates another reason why i probably have more gold than you.
You relist it, so you pay 20% in fees and taxes instead of 15% and you probably already spent whatever gold you got out of it, while mine is still on the tp and i didnt spent the gold.

Yup. I’ve tried playing the TP but I don’t really like it. I get paranoid that the price is going to drop and the order will never fill. Usually I just stick it out, but I have an irrational aversion to leaving old orders on the TP.

Still, I’ve managed to eke out a Bifrost just playing the game and have put together a nice look for each of my 9 characters, so I’m not too fussed about my relative poverty. I kinda wish I could afford to get at least my two mains in full Ascended, though. We’ll see.