Guild Wars 2

Following a previous topic, of scamming, WoW has had C.O.D trading by mail since forever and LineageII has had personal trade or swapping where both parties could see the correct trade items were in place and accept and if you took out your part trying to scam it stopped the trade, that has been done for over 10 years. Personal trading is quite easy but I would say Anet does not want to implement it. I do not agree with them on it but for those who say or think it cannot be done….. think again. Safe personal trading has been around for years in other mmorg’s. What ever your response do not make it a rant if you do not want the topic shut down. It should be discussed with a view to asking Anet to make it happen here too. Lord knows it is tough enough to get ahead in the game financially as it is.

if you want safe trading, use the trading post. personal trading encourages map chat clogs and scams as i’ve experience on other mmorpg

GW1 had personal trading and scamming was still rampant. The TP exists for a reason and to be honest, I’d rather not see map chat flooded with WTS messages.

ungascarlo.7459:

if you want safe trading, use the trading post. personal trading encourages map chat clogs and scams as i’ve experience on other mmorpg

They could make a trading channel – Edit: allthough I realize that people would still spam in main chat

You can make a trading system where you can’t scam, Rift has one etc.
You send an item to a person, the item is locked untill he pays the ammount that the sender has requested. If he doesn’t pay the item will automaticly be sent back to the sender.

The trading post also is used as a necessary gold sink and if its not enough through that, then they will need to put it in somewhere else, perhaps the armor repair or increase in prices for supplies like salvage kits or harvesting tools.

In other words, if there were person to person trading like you suggest then you would still have to pay through some other ingame tax. So since there will be taxes, why should they put in a system that will avoid the current taxes?

ArenaNet and anyone that played Guild Wars is quite aware that player-to-player trading is possible, as it was implemented previously in said game.

Guild Wars suffered from trading spam in map chat (thus, the nickname SPAMadan), and countless cases of scamming.

I’m sure the Devs considered implementing it in Guild Wars 2, as well, and weighing the pros and cons, decided the Trading Post had more benefit to the playerbase, as a whole, not to mention the very necessary gold sink.

The trade-off of using the Trading Post, is that annoying 15% trading fee placed upon the seller.

For example, I want to sell a weapon skin at 100 gold, but in the end I am only going to receive 85 gold for it. If I had the ability to find a buyer without the middleman, I could charge the 100 gold the buyer is going to pay regardless, and not lose out on the 15 gold that gets taken from me.

TP prevents scamming and works very well. I can’t see any limitations and problems with current system so please stop advertising the archaic p2p trading. The game is above 2 years old and this topic has been discussed many times. Don’t waste your time posting such threads.

I’ve often wondered why no one has come up with an e-bay style site with ratings for users for in game trades in gw2. all posts happen on the site, people get rated on a 5-star rating system and you only trade with people with good ratings. if i am willing to trust people with RL money why wouldn’t i trust people with fake money? we cut out the 15% and everyone is happy, no?

Kross.6428:

The trade-off of using the Trading Post, is that annoying 15% trading fee placed upon the seller.

And that’s the single best hedge against inflation that the game currently has. If it weren’t for that removing 15% of the gold from every transaction, inflation would be much worse and most everything would be more expensive.

If you were to take that out of the game, what would you introduce to replace it to siphon gold out of the economy?

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Kross.6428:

The trade-off of using the Trading Post, is that annoying 15% trading fee placed upon the seller.

And that’s the single best hedge against inflation that the game currently has. If it weren’t for that removing 15% of the gold from every transaction, inflation would be much worse and most everything would be more expensive.

If you were to take that out of the game, what would you introduce to replace it to siphon gold out of the economy?

It also is incredibly important to minimize the amount of non-productive economic activity.

Flipping, arbitrage, and price manipulation are still possible in GW2, but that large fee helps to keep it much less prevalent than in other games.

Frankly I know this because in other games I was able to do it extremely effectively- in WoW I never had to work for gold after I figured out the economy. I always had more gold than I knew what to do with, barring some of the extreme cosmetic gold sinks (and even then I had a few).

I haven’t been able to do that in GW2. I have to make money by playing and doing contributory economic activities.

This is a good thing.

Thunderbird.8036:

Lord knows it is tough enough to get ahead in the game financially as it is.

That statement is enough proof to why ArenaNet should not add personal trading to the game.

Although I would have liked to see player to player trading in at launch I think that it would be a bad idea this late in the life of the game.

The BL trading tax is absurd. Still, it’s a whole lot better than getting ripped off.

The only way I can see personal trading working is through the trading post itself.

You select to “trade” with someone in their health bar, portrait or in the contact list, and you get a panel that is basically two sections with list on each and two sections at the top with the value of the stuff calculated from the TP, and the taxes the transaction will take.

So they can’t use personal trading to avoid taxation, and if they try to sell you something for more than the lowest offer in the trading post, it’ll appear on the panel so you know they are trying to scam you.

Although for this to work coins would have to become untradable except through the trading post, and so you would not be able to give away gold to some friend to get them started, unless you found some item with no entry on the TP.

A lot of work for something people won’t use since they only trade directly to avoid taxes.

Gw1 had a trade channel, its main city was filled with trade chat, it had p2p trading where you actually saw everything before accepting and people still got scammed.

The tp has made trading extremely convenient as you can buy, sell, search instantly and all with no fear on being scammed. There is a tax and fee on selling, but it is necessary to keep prices down otherwise people would just be able to charge whatever they wanted with no penalty and the market would have no stability.
Personally I love the tp because in gw1 there were times I would have to waste sometimes an hour or more just to find a kitten weapon upgrade tome or w/e. Now its all instantly available, or you can use buy orders. Whats not to like?

If there was player-to-player trading, it would have to follow a 15% tax like the TP already has, otherwise there will be two separate economies. Also the 15% tax is there for a reason, like many people have already mentioned.

The benefit of the TP is that you can be anywhere in-game if you want to sell something. A few clicks and the item has been removed from your inventory. You have no need to put up your own ad for your item and you don’t have to wait around for a person to agree to trade.

Oh… and the other massive benefit? You can’t get scammed through the TP. Even with GW1’s player-to-player ‘safe’ trading system, people were still able to swap items last moment with an item with a similar name or icon, or reduce the item’s quantity (e.g. changing 100 ectos to 10 ectos).

The only reason why people trade outside TP with randomers is because they want to evade the 15% tax. It’s not out of the kindness of their heart- trading is so insecure that it puts both trade parties at risk.

ANet just needs to make LFG/chat trade advertising a clear infringement of the rules and be done with it.

Zero need for this, the current system is perfect.

Also gw1 had free trade and it was a mess. Anet learned their lesson.

Certainly they can add player to player trading. They’d just add a 25% fee to use it. How’s that, solves your complaints of using the TP?

X T D.6458:

Gw1 had a trade channel, its main city was filled with trade chat, it had p2p trading where you actually saw everything before accepting and people still got scammed.

The tp has made trading extremely convenient as you can buy, sell, search instantly and all with no fear on being scammed. There is a tax and fee on selling, but it is necessary to keep prices down otherwise people would just be able to charge whatever they wanted with no penalty and the market would have no stability.
Personally I love the tp because in gw1 there were times I would have to waste sometimes an hour or more just to find a kitten weapon upgrade tome or w/e. Now its all instantly available, or you can use buy orders. Whats not to like?

Except what people are not realizing about GW1, and other games, is how the loot system works in GW2 including how easy it is to get gold compared to those games. Trading does not remove gold from the game and inflation will actually become an issue.

I would just use the trading post and be safe. The fee is worth the safety.

Some of you… probably the single toon or richer people among you have the “rich get richer, the poor get poorer” mentality. Others feel as I do that personal trading can work if done properly without that high % to the middleman. But at least this thread proves there are people on both sides of the fence so to speak. Some people, like me will probably never have much spare money so every bit in game counts. Those who think the poorer in game need to be kept poor because the rich ones are fine are no different to the real world where they want to always see poor people struggle. But do not speak to deny me the right to make the thread as it has been interesting reading. Have an opinion sure, but do not deny others theirs. Yes Anet can find hundreds of ways to rip gold out of us. Bottom line is if it is too hard for average people to get buy in game they may simply stop trying. I have answers for the problems mentioned but with the divided opinions it would be irrelevant to give them. I thank all positive input from both sides of the discussion.

Thunderbird.8036:

Others feel as I do that personal trading can work if done properly without that high % to the middleman.

Of course it can work, it’s worked in the past. That’s not the issue which drove the Trading Post to exist; it’s two fold. First, as noted, it’s a money sink to the economy (a persistent one which works better than other methods). Secondly, it’s an insulation against scamming – if you want to be sure you’re not getting scammed? To the Trading Post instead of the nice charr you just met today who said he’ll give you 5g for that Superior Rune, but you need to send him the rune first since his mail system is bugged.

Also, no Spamadan. That, alone, is worth the tax.

But at least this thread proves there are people on both sides of the fence so to speak.

. . . you’re not listening to some of the people anyway, given what followed this statement. The reasons to not have person-to-person trading have been cited, and experienced, by many of us GW1 veterans.

You’re rather focused on a different problem which isn’t a social or liability problem. These were the problems majorly cited as the creation of the Trading Post as an entity and peer-to-peer trading being disabled except through mail.

Thunderbird.8036:

~Snip~
Lord knows it is tough enough to get ahead in the game financially as it is.

Really, I don’t run dungeons, I don’t work the market(as in I never list items, just sell to highest bidder, but with the restriction that the price needs to be at a minimum 3 times Merchant value). I’m also not interested in a Precursor or Legendary so I’m not looking to make enough gold for that…and I just passed 400g with over 1500 hrs played. I know it’s not a lot by any standards, but to say it’s hard to get ahead in this game…unless you’re only doing certain tasks or are looking to make a Legendary play WvW exclusively(so I’ve heard, no real experience on the gold side there). I call your statement false…I’ve never been hurting for gold and I’ve bought a few things here and there I needed to raise a crafting discipline or for something I’m making. So no on the P to P trading, use the TP, I do to sell my excess crafting materials all the time.

jokke.6239:

You can make a trading system where you can’t scam, Rift has one etc.
You send an item to a person, the item is locked untill he pays the ammount that the sender has requested. If he doesn’t pay the item will automaticly be sent back to the sender.

It’s called the kitten trading post.

The ONLY reason people want player to player trading is to skip out on the taxes. The only way you’d get p2p trading is if you’re taxed on it just like the trade post, which unfortunately, invalidates p2p trading as a useful system. Ergo, stop acting like scrooge and sell on the TP. Your “loss” due to taxes are well deserved in order to maintain a minimal increase in inflation. I’ve sold 2 precursors in the last few months. It wasnt an issue to eat the tax fees because they’re miniscule compared the profit.

Kross.6428:

The trade-off of using the Trading Post, is that annoying 15% trading fee placed upon the seller.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

And that’s the single best hedge against inflation that the game currently has. If it weren’t for that removing 15% of the gold from every transaction, inflation would be much worse and most everything would be more expensive.

Silalus.8760:

It also is incredibly important to minimize the amount of non-productive economic activity.

Flipping, arbitrage, and price manipulation are still possible in GW2, but that large fee helps to keep it much less prevalent than in other games.

This is a good thing.

Fair points. I understand that a tax is important to any economy and adds balance somewhere within the market. However, the frugal (and greedy?) little voice in my head still doesn’t like paying extra fees. haha :P

Thunderbird.8036:

Following a previous topic, of scamming, WoW has had C.O.D trading by mail since forever and LineageII has had personal trade or swapping where both parties could see the correct trade items were in place and accept and if you took out your part trying to scam it stopped the trade, that has been done for over 10 years. Personal trading is quite easy but I would say Anet does not want to implement it. I do not agree with them on it but for those who say or think it cannot be done….. think again. Safe personal trading has been around for years in other mmorg’s. What ever your response do not make it a rant if you do not want the topic shut down. It should be discussed with a view to asking Anet to make it happen here too. Lord knows it is tough enough to get ahead in the game financially as it is.

You know that Lineage 2 was a scammers paradiese ?

Strange that trading on the LFG has increased as well as the scamming. Coincidence?

It only takes one 100% “tax” (losing your item or gold to a scam) to wipe out a multitude of 15% taxes you saved by player to player trading.

I play GW1 still and sometimes I will load into Kamadan and there’s an argument in map chat where one guy is complaining about so and so scammed me don’t trade with him and then for the next few minutes the scammed guy gets berated nonstop. Always a funny thing to read, and see why ArenaNet just directs everyone to the TP.

Still though, I’d personally like a peer-to-peer trade for this game like in GW1 as long as a new trade channel gets set up in cities and can easily be filtered out via a check box like other current chats in GW2.

and people will still use map chat since you get ahold of most people then

Linken.6345:

and people will still use map chat since you get ahold of most people then

People keep to the grey text trade channel in GW1 when buying or selling, and the same can be done in this game.

If they don’t? There’s a nifty report and block feature you can use as well.

Dark Jericho.8609:

People keep to the grey text trade channel in GW1 when buying or selling, and the same can be done in this game.

If they don’t? There’s a nifty report and block feature you can use as well.

Except, I’ll point out, there’s no guarantee of you getting your money/goods back if you get scammed. In fact there’s an explicit guarantee you will not.

So, is it worth the risk?

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Except, I’ll point out, there’s no guarantee of you getting your money/goods back if you get scammed. In fact there’s an explicit guarantee you will not.

So, is it worth the risk?

I was referring to Linken’s post about spamming map chat, not getting scammed itself. ArenaNet already has a policy that works for outside TP “trades.”

I’ll edit my post with a quote so no one else gets confused.

The TP is -

1. Good for the economy as a gold sink.
2. Good for the economy as it brings all buyers and all sellers together, so prices find equilibrium.
3. Good for players, as it’s safe.
4. Good for players, as you can instantly see useful information about how much other people are buying/selling for. This makes it incredibly easy for new players, and those who don’t follow the economy, to get good prices for what they’re selling.

People trying to avoid TP taxes are just being greedy. Remember, prices are set by players. That means the 15% tax on the seller is already taken into account in how much people sell for.

I strongly oppose the introduction of any personal trading system.

Olvendred.3027:

I strongly oppose the introduction of any personal trading system.

+1

One either pays the TP tax or the Stupidity tax by getting scammed.

kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t. Might as well roast some marshmallows since there’s no getting out of this frying pan.

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

Azure Prower.8701:

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

It may be used as such, but it was never designed to be used that way. As such, it is use at your own risk. The TP can be used at no risk at all.

Berelious.3290:

Azure Prower.8701:

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

It may be used as such, but it was never designed to be used that way. As such, it is use at your own risk. The TP can be used at no risk at all.

So what was the point of not allowing secure player to player trades again?

Azure Prower.8701:

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

Can’t be prevented when you allow players to mail gifts to one another.

It also means ANet can track gold and high value item transfers to track down RMT mules and shut them down.

The tax is just the price of doing business safely.

Azure Prower.8701:

Berelious.3290:

Azure Prower.8701:

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

It may be used as such, but it was never designed to be used that way. As such, it is use at your own risk. The TP can be used at no risk at all.

So what was the point of not allowing secure player to player trades again?

duplicate to the tp and requires added staff to answer customer complaints of scamming.

Azure Prower.8701:

So what was the point of not allowing secure player to player trades again?

I think Gaile already answered this elsewhere.

Other people have answered with versions of the same answer which has been given since the TP was mentioned to replace direct trades. And yet, sure, people have found ways around this indirect, impersonal, and taxed method. And like in GW1, the trades are at ones own discretion and risk . . . and also like in GW1 – there’s a defined “we can not replace the items or money lost in a scam” which has been set down.

So, really, it’s just about the same as the previous game only with a secure option. If you don’t like it? Feel free to use the other avenues to your heart’s content. But don’t be surprised if there’s a scam waiting for you, because you were warned and chose to do it anyway.

You either pay taxes via TP fees to sink coin, or inflation will sink a consummate amount of value instead.

Tumult.2578:

The BL trading tax is absurd. Still, it’s a whole lot better than getting ripped off.

For a moment there you almost sounded like ‘revolutionary patriot’ from America’s early days. That blasted tea tax…

Reasons to use Trading post:
1. Safe and secure, no potential for scamming
2. Contains items listed from both US and EU servers, not just the map you happen to be on.
3. No message spamming. You don’t have to have your chat channel flooded by buying and selling ads.
4. Freedom to play. You don’t have to sit in a city constantly spamming WTB or WTS.
5. Expediency. You can buy or sell your items instantly without having to wait, unless you really want to.

Reasons not to use the Trading Post:
1. Potentially save a gold or two
2. You intend to scam.

I would support P2P trading under 2 conditions:

1. 50 gem per transaction fee to pay for the extra support staff
2. Perma ban for spamming trades in map chat

I need it. Currently in Guild Wars sorting my inventory to prepare for Canthan New Year, this trading is a beautiful thing.

Selling doesn’t even come to my mind, I tend to move things between my accounts constantly. But it’s like there’s this invisible wall keeping my characters apart even though they are right next to each other… It’s like I can’t properly reach.