Guild Wars 2

Playing a trading post game or “flipping” as we call it should be prevented, why?
Because it’s ruining gaming experience for every one.

Lets keep it real trading is one thing.
Buying extremely low items and resell them hundreds of times more expensive over and over again so people can’t effort them any more is other thing.

But don’t people do that in real life?
Well concept is the same, but tax is not realistic.

Example of how this would look in real life:
Imagine that one company would buy every bread on the world for lets say from 1€-5€, all breads on market… and sell them at price of 25€. Water, 1L=20cents.. company again buys all the water, and sells it at 5€. You are hard working person, and lets make this real life example where you earn (lets say looking at my country) 600€ per month. If you want to eat bread every day you’ll pay 750€(by current market price), but then you have to drink too ? right ? But you can’t effort it?! Because you already work hard to get this 600€ per month, so what to do next? You find new job, you get 2000€ payment, finally you get enough money to eat and drink every day, but then more market flippers came, and suddenly bread is 100€, and water is 50€, and you can’t effort to eat and drink again. You try so hard to find new job, but every time you do, you market price rises extremely.. You are desperate and you don’t enjoy game no more, you only work to eat and drink.. But then one day you decide to play the market game (trading post), and you see that HOLY COW, you can make tons of money, but WAIT?! You sadly notice one thing, you don’t do the job that you did enjoy so much, you notice that all you do is trade, to get enough money for your every day needs.

People would say, but then you go out and farm for yourself, I do. And what you want is luxury not a simple need! Indeed, but why would you ever try to go out and explore world and farm for yourself, if you can earn tons of gold just by flipping the market?

What does this story tell you? Maybe that, flipping is getting to the point that every one is doing it and this triggers the chain reaction of crashing the trading post so badly that people start to play more trading post then actually play the game. More and more people are involved into this and sadly, game stays the same, gold flow is the same, money sink is the same, but the trading post inflation is getting out of hand.

Trading post should help us buy or sell things, not exploit it and abuse it to avoid playing the actual game.

TL:DR: Trading post “flipping” is ruining the gaming experience for every one.

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

Firelysm.4967:

Playing a trading post game or “flipping” as we call it should be prevented, why?
Because it’s ruining gaming experience for every one.

Lets keep it real trading is one thing.
Buying extremely low items and resell them hundreds of times more expensive over and over again so people can’t effort them any more is other thing.

But don’t people do that in real life?
Well concept is the same, but tax is not realistic.

Example of how this would look in real life:
Imagine that one company would buy every bread on the world for lets say from 1€-5€, all breads on market… and sell them at price of 25€. Water, 1L=20cents.. company again buys all the water, and sells it at 5€. You are hard working person, and lets make this real life example where you earn (lets say looking at my country) 600€ per month. If you want to eat bread every day you’ll pay 750€(by current market price), but then you have to drink too ? right ? But you can’t effort it?! Because you already work hard to get this 600€ per month, so what to do next? You find new job, you get 2000€ payment, finally you get enough money to eat and drink every day, but then more market flippers came, and suddenly bread is 100€, and water is 50€, and you can’t effort to eat and drink again. You try so hard to find new job, but every time you do, you market price rises extremely.. You are desperate and you don’t enjoy game no more, you only work to eat and drink.. But then one day you decide to play the market game (trading post), and you see that HOLY COW, you can make tons of money, but WAIT?! You sadly notice one thing, you don’t do the job that you did enjoy so much, you notice that all you do is trade, to get enough money for your every day needs.

People would say, but then you go out and farm for yourself, I do. And what you want is luxury not a simple need! Indeed, but why would you ever try to go out and explore world and farm for yourself, if you can earn tons of gold just by flipping the market?

What does this story tell you? Maybe that, flipping is getting to the point that every one is doing it and this triggers the chain reaction of crashing the trading post so badly that people start to play more trading post then actually play the game. More and more people are involved into this and sadly, game stays the same, gold flow is the same, money sink is the same, but the trading post inflation is getting out of hand.

Trading post should help us buy or sell things, not exploit it and abuse it to avoid playing the actual game.

TL:DR: Trading post “flipping” is ruining the gaming experience for every one.

Interesting story. Whats your offered solution?

PS. I was about to go all paragraphy about the reasons and stuff and why flipping is not end of the world until I noticed you just gave a nice story without actually offering any way of “fixing” this problem.

“Fixing it” is trivially easy – anything bought from the TP becomes account bound on pick up. The end. Flipping dies before drawing another breath.

The question has always been “does flipping benefit the game environment” and our resident economist has always been a staunch supporter of “Yes”.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that almost every one does it even if they deny it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

Nike.2631:

“Fixing it” is trivially easy – anything bought from the TP becomes account bound on pick up. The end. Flipping dies before drawing another breath.

The question has always been “does flipping benefit the game environment” and our resident economist have been a staunch supporter of “Yes”.

Thus people flipping move on to second tier goods or ressources. Let’s make those account bound too.

Let’s make everything account bound, but then we are left with no ingame economy.

Firelysm.4967:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that every one in my guild does it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

The only thing you are forgetting, for flipping to work you need a wide customer base willing to pay your in-/deflated prices.

Working as intended.

Firelysm.4967:

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

Sorry but no, jsut no, opening a shop to sell bread IRL would first of all require a shop to sell from which would cost a LOOOOOT of money in itself, and then you need to get a “business license” (not sure what the correct name is for it really) before you even allowed to, among a lot of other stuff, so it is FAR from that simple

Flipping has its uses and issues, but the only case when it can be really troublesome and affect other players negatively with the actions of a few is with very, very low occurrence items.

With items that come into the trading post frequently, they can’t buy entire stocks and sell them back higher, as people keep selling the stuff and outselling them, so they’ll only lose money.

But with the rarest items, they are safe. They can buy entire stocks and very few people, if anyone, will outsell them, because the item rarely drops. The market for those items is so slow that they can just keep watch in the trading post and quickly buy anything under their price and put it back higher.
With that they can hijack the market and keep items artificially high with relatively small risk.

That’s why for those items, and for those items only, once the item goes through the trading post once it should become account-wide, and they should be purchasable only one by one, to make much harder getting accidental double purchases you can’t sell back.

That would make those items “buy or sell”, l but not both, thus preventing a few players from ruining parts of other player’s game experience by artificially inflating the price of an item with a drop that may be bugged or rarely drop because its related event is bugged or bugs very often, or stalked by people that quickly kills the boss without waiting for others, to make sure anyone else’s chances for a drop are drastically reduced.

But ONLY for these items that are extremely rare and people is highly unlikely to need more than once.

One great example of this are trinkets in collections.

Some pretty serious flaws in the OP.

1) if no one can afford it then the flippers couldnt sell it.

2) as you pointed out we are not talking about survival necessities here.

3) if flippers are making a ton of money then people are buying what they have to sell at the prices they set.

Your entire complaint is predicated on an assumption that is not only demonstrably false, but which you admit to be false in your post.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Flipping has its uses and issues, but the only case when it can be really troublesome and affect other players negatively with the actions of a few is with very, very low occurrence items.

With items that come into the trading post frequently, they can’t buy entire stocks and sell them back higher, as people keep selling the stuff and outselling them, so they’ll only lose money.

But with the rarest items, they are safe. They can buy entire stocks and very few people, if anyone, will outsell them, because the item rarely drops. The market for those items is so slow that they can just keep watch in the trading post and quickly buy anything under their price and put it back higher.
With that they can hijack the market and keep items artificially high with relatively small risk.

That’s why for those items, and for those items only, once the item goes through the trading post once it should become account-wide, and they should be purchasable only one by one, to make much harder getting accidental double purchases you can’t sell back.

That would make those items “buy or sell”, l but not both, thus preventing a few players from ruining parts of other player’s game experience by artificially inflating the price of an item with a drop that may be bugged or rarely drop because its related event is bugged or bugs very often, or stalked by people that quickly kills the boss without waiting for others, to make sure anyone else’s chances for a drop are drastically reduced.

But ONLY for these items that are extremely rare and people is highly unlikely to need more than once.

One great example of this are trinkets in collections.

I agree on most of this but there would be an even simpler solution. (I’m not a fan of over regulation since the problem just shifts to a different area.)

Just reintroduce rare skins on a regular basis back into the game on certain time intervals. No reason to limit people on what they want to do, but everyone banking the skin will run a risk of overcommiting.

We have this situation with many of the seasonal event items and it works well enough. We also had the situation with Chaos and Torment weapons a few weeks back when prices crashed right after the patch that made them available again.

Cyninja.2954:

Thus people flipping move on to second tier goods or ressources. Let’s make those account bound too.

Let’s make everything account bound, but then we are left with no ingame economy.

Account bound after selling and account bound after dropping from the world are two very different things.

And yes, you could process some materials one time before selling them but at least you would have had some sort of participation in the process beyond buy out a hasty seller to milk a hasty buyer.

Again its a question of do you think flipping is good. If yes, no worries. If no, we DO have the tools to end it. Decisively. Because virtual economies have tags that don’t exist in the real world.

Nike.2631:

Cyninja.2954:

Thus people flipping move on to second tier goods or ressources. Let’s make those account bound too.

Let’s make everything account bound, but then we are left with no ingame economy.

Account bound after selling and account bound after dropping from the world are two very different things.

And yes, you could process some materials one time before selling them but at least you would have had some sort of participation in the process beyond buy out a hasty seller to milk a hasty buyer.

Again its a question of do you think flipping is good. If yes, no worries. If no, we DO have the tools to end it. Decisively. Because virtual economies have tags that don’t exist in the real world.

I am fully aware what you were going for. I was just hoping not having to go into to much detail.

For example:
Account bound after dropping would never be able to supply the amount of ressources traded each minute/day/week. This would completely destroy these markets. Probably make them spike insanely high since that’s like removing a huge part of the supply.

Second exmaple:
Ressources would become more valuable since they could theoretically get processed into items which then again could be resold thus circumventing the restriction (unless we make everything we create instant account bound). This creates more demand = prices increase. Not even going to analyse what making everythig crafted account bound on aquire would do to the economy.

I never said the tools where not there. I merely pointed out that it’s not a simple solution as most people believe and the OP didn’t even given any suggestion.

Firelysm.4967:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that almost every one does it even if they deny it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

No I think it might be you that misunderstands it… or maybe your own TP flips have prove to be a little on the dry side this month perhaps.

Look fact is it’s a game, played by a whole bunch of different people who happen to enjoy doing different things and many have different goals they want to achieve.
If people want to play TP games then all power to them and if your not happy with it then don’t get caught up in it and go explore, count butterflies or ooh yeah go get the items yourself.
TP flippers are only half the issue when it comes to items/prices…. the buyers only buy what they want/can afford so it’s really quite simple – if your not happy don’t buy, wait till price comes down or go farm it yourself.
Your RL analogy fails hard because.. this is a game and has no RL affect.. unless you let it affect you.

Now, I’m only so much of an expert on economics, what with playing videogames with economies and generally existing in the world, but from the sound of it you don’t understand how flipping works at all.

The thing with flipping and capital gains in general is that, in order to actually make money, you have to sell the object that you are trying to flip. If you put it at a price that no one can afford, the person who loses out the most is the guy who bought it. That is why, in the real world, some billionaire just doesn’t buy all the bread in the world and then sell it at unreasonable prices. The end result is that no one buys bread. Then, the billionaire is straight out of luck, having blown his fortune on a gigantic pile of roach food.

The same thing can be said of most supplies in the game. Though you individually can’t farm for specific mats, there is still a large income of materials in the game overall. Anyone who buys low and sells high still has to compete with the massive amount of people who find and sell their mats. This is good for the economy in several ways. First, people who are looking to flip are contributing to the players by placing various buy orders for materials, meaning there is always a market for those materials. Second, for those who don’t want to sell low to buy orders, they can sell at a price that is independent of the buying price, meaning that anyone who flips will have to keep their goods at their competitors prices.

There is nobody who needs to flip to make money. The only people who stand around flipping all day are either the ones who enjoy it, or the ones who’d rather take the risk to make money than play the game for fun anyway. As for the whole “crashing from too many flippers”, that probably won’t happen. The only way for items to be flipped is if there is an inherent value in those items. If no one needs or wants these goods, then there wouldn’t be a demand for these items. Unless the entire player base decides that vials of powerful blood are only good for trying to make money, they will retain their value.

Likewise, not everyone can play the TP for money. The economy can only handle so many flippers, largely because there is only so many items that can be bought low and sold for a higher price. Once we reach that saturation point, flipping no longer becomes profitable. The economy doesn’t crash when this happens. What happens is a bunch of people try flipping, either lose or don’t gain money, then go back to other methods of gaining money. Thus, equilibrium will be maintained.

Working as intended…

If something is rare enough that you can buy up the entire supply, then it should be expensive.

It is completely driven by supply and demand.

I think we should close all dungeons as dungeon gold rewards are clearly the main culprit of this insane gold inflation and the reason why i cant get what i want right now.

Firelysm.4967:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that almost every one does it even if they deny it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

Flipping on the trading post is as much a part of the game as anything else such as dungeons and world bosses to name a few. It’s a valid way to the play the gain no mater whether you feel it is or isn’t. You’re also forgetting the benefits of flipping by being a gold sink.

Your example/analogy is flawed in the context of how you used it but I’m pretty sure many of the other posters will have caught it by now and post about it if not already.

Nike.2631:

“Fixing it” is trivially easy – anything bought from the TP becomes account bound on pick up. The end. Flipping dies before drawing another breath.

The question has always been “does flipping benefit the game environment” and our resident economist has always been a staunch supporter of “Yes”.

That’d require flipping to actually BE a problem too though. Which it isnt. Flipping is a perfectly normal market health-sustaining activity. Without flipping around, prices could have a gap of 100%+ or more of the buying price (100g/buy, 201g+/sell).

A lot of these “anti-flipping” threads just read as a thread about “I just lost gold because I sold to a buy order instead of as a sell order, now I’m mad and will take it out on whoever bought it.”

edit: for those that think it’s possible for flippers to control any item, you’d be surprised to know the answer is actually not just “no,” but “a snowball’s chance in hell no.” Why? Because anything shown on the market could only be as much as half of what is currently available as a “salable asset” to as little as 1% of what’s available. If I remember correctly, Wanze tried it with a few items. From what he’s posted, he failed on each one.
Second, dont try to mention items like precursors. JS has already proven that precursors move comparatively fast on the market, and the number of identical sellers and buyers can be stated to be <1%, ie functionally irrelevant.

Wanze.8410:

I think we should close all dungeons as dungeon gold rewards are clearly the main culprit of this insane gold inflation and the reason why i cant get what i want right now.

Lol, that’s quite amusing coming from you, but to add on to the discussion, apparently the OP lives in a vacuum somewhere as there is RL flipping going on all the time…not necessarily with commodities, but certainly with stocks(and some commodities to an extent, all you ever need to do is look at the commodities markets). Wait, I stand corrected, one of the biggest money makers in the US right now is home flipping, though it has it’s risks just like any other type of flipping, there are a number of people that have invested in this market…I need to look to further than my own area to witness it, and as has been stated, as long as people are willing to pay the price there will always be people willing to buy and flip anything and everything(probably even including sex, though I wouldn’t touch that with a 100 ft pole).

GummiBear.2756:

Firelysm.4967:

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

Sorry but no, jsut no, opening a shop to sell bread IRL would first of all require a shop to sell from which would cost a LOOOOOT of money in itself, and then you need to get a “business license” (not sure what the correct name is for it really) before you even allowed to, among a lot of other stuff, so it is FAR from that simple

You went to deep in way of thinking, i’m just saying that you still have option if you want to, that’s my point.

Ashen.2907:

Some pretty serious flaws in the OP.

1) if no one can afford it then the flippers couldnt sell it.

2) as you pointed out we are not talking about survival necessities here.

3) if flippers are making a ton of money then people are buying what they have to sell at the prices they set.

Your entire complaint is predicated on an assumption that is not only demonstrably false, but which you admit to be false in your post.

1) You interpretate things wrong on purpose to throw the topic out of context. Lets say it this way. You earn 600€ you can spend those, but pppl that made 200k€ will have money to control the money and you as a low rank player that has highly any clue of the game, and what’s going on with the market, you’ll make this flippers rich, just because they can abuse this, instead of going out and sell things to people that they need. Concept of trading went partially wrong as it was intended.

2) Exactly you don’t need to craft ascended armor or exotic but you can get random stats from karma, or drops, so my point is still valid, you can get things to play the game, but to actually play the game as it is intended you need stats to make your build work out. Food, for example i NEED cactus soup in order to deliver what GvG commander demands from me, and its 1Gold per 30 min food, which is rather inflated for the materials that were predicted to be used and highly flipped.

3) I don’t understand your point right here, because sentence is shopped, can we collaborate this one again?

Sadly you gave me no good arguments to prove me wrong at an point, please give me some constructive argument so we can discuss if you desire so.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Now, I’m only so much of an expert on economics, what with playing videogames with economies and generally existing in the world, but from the sound of it you don’t understand how flipping works at all.

Sadly i know how it works, and I know how big of an issue this is.
I dare to say, that open world would give us noticeable change if aNet decides to break flipping for a month.

Firelysm.4967:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that almost every one does it even if they deny it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

Not “Everyone” dose it. I don’t, for one I don’t have the gold, or any idea where to start, shure I could google it or something. But I’m to busy playing the game to care, and I hardly buy anything of the TP, I tend to just sell mats and items of value. Or just wait till I have a few golds worth of mats that don’t sell for much then sell them in one go. I just sell items for what I think they are worth, some sell, others are still sitting there over a year on.

Firelysm.4967:

2) Food, for example i NEED cactus soup in order to deliver what GvG commander demands from me, and its 1Gold per 30 min food, which is rather inflated for the materials that were predicted to be used and highly flipped.

Correct me if im wrong but i think all ingredients for cactus soup can be obtained in game without having to use the trading post.

So how exactly do those that flip the mats for it in any way stop you from harvesting those mats?

You could also use bowls of black pepper cactus salad, which gives the same buffs, costs only 32s and 154 karma to craft and lasts for 60 min instead of 30.

Firelysm.4967:

2) Food, for example i NEED cactus soup in order to deliver what GvG commander demands from me, and its 1Gold per 30 min food, which is rather inflated for the materials that were predicted to be used and highly flipped.

You’re also making the assumption that prices are high because of TP flippers when it could be something as simple as supply/demand. Mango pies also do pretty much the same thing with vitality instead of toughness.

I’ve attached the cost breakdown for the soup as well as attached links to the price history of the top 3 expensive items that actually drive the cost of them.

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/24360-slab-of-poultry-meat
https://www.gw2tp.com/item/12336-dill-sprig
https://www.gw2tp.com/item/12142-onion

I’ll let you figure out exactly why those items have the prices that they have. Here’s a tip, it’s not because of flippers.

As a fairly casual player… Top shelf whining.

Suck it up and earn it if you can’t buy it. No one owes you anything and it’s not Anets job to protect you from having to pay high prices at the TP.

You’re forgetting some very important real world aspects like production value, subsidization and and customer satisfaction and retention. In the United States, anyway, the Farm Bill is a gross incentive for large farming firms to lower overproduction so they can pocket several million, if not billion, dollars in government subsidies. We have the direct capabilities of making man corn, wheat, soy and cotton-based products at a much lower price as it is – regardless of distributors.

The Trading Post in this game pales in comparison to any “real world” anecdotes, since it’s pretty much just an online retailer with an endless supply of production. I’d love to see this game have poultry or red meat shortages because of how frequently we slaughter the animals, that way the market can fluctuate with realism! Not to mention ore, wood and plant shortages as well. While we’re at it, since we’re busy cutting down all the saplings, our characters should struggle to breathe.

The TP flipping is working exactly as intended and I don’t think it’s that unrealistic or detrimental. I think people simply need to stop buying if they disagree with a price. If a seller sits on their products too long, it’s bound to go down – just like “real world clearance sales.”

Sigh… I miss the BLTC forum. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a good “TP flippers are scumbags” argument, and OP doesn’t even pretend to know anything about the subject. Try harder next time.

but but but, play how you want! if you couldnt flip on the tp all day long then the people who want to do that are screwed! omg!

Besides if you got rid of tp flipping the devs would have to actually manage the economy and put in some new gold sinks, and thats sounds so much harder then not doing anything.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Likewise, not everyone can play the TP for money. The economy can only handle so many flippers, largely because there is only so many items that can be bought low and sold for a higher price. Once we reach that saturation point, flipping no longer becomes profitable. The economy doesn’t crash when this happens. What happens is a bunch of people try flipping, either lose or don’t gain money, then go back to other methods of gaining money. Thus, equilibrium will be maintained.

It’s actually worse (better?) than that – as more people try to flip a given item, the margins grow smaller as they compete with each other to maintain the high buy order / low sell order. It’s not a zero-sum game; it’s a negative sum game, where more people trying to flip lowers the total profits to be split by all the participants.

In real world markets traders tend to be disciplined enough to make money on the razor-thin margins of a modern exchange; many players in game are nowhere near as sophisticated, and with enough suckers in the market it’s easy for profits to turn negative.

I don’t understand how flipping is harmful to the game. If someone is trying to sell an item for a high price, anyone can come along and set a lower price… Then the flipper has to buy that item, and the next one, and the next one, etc, just to maintain his stupid little corner of the market. Meanwhile the people selling for lower prices take his money.

Nike.2631:

“Fixing it” is trivially easy – anything bought from the TP becomes account bound on pick up. The end. Flipping dies before drawing another breath.

The question has always been “does flipping benefit the game environment” and our resident economist has always been a staunch supporter of “Yes”.

Agree, it can be stopped easily. Ofc an economist believes it supports the community, he is a capitalist and must believe that, or his entire career is a farse.

Wow, it’s been a while since a “flippers are ruining it for the rest of us” thread. Wonder what perceived injustice brought this on this time.

Firelysm.4967:

What does this story tell you?

Cool story, Bro. Tells me that there are people in this game that hate it when someone else wants to play the game some other way rather than their own narrow way. Oh and that the sky is falling..

Read a bit of the OP and a few of the replies, sssoooo, I’m not sure if it was stated already, but OP you are outside of your area of ANY knowledge or expertise and don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Mmkay, thanks….

Bonus challenge: Present for us a single case where anyone is/could “buy low and sell for hundreds of times more”. (I’m interested in some new markets!)

unless you are telling me you GvG 10 hours a day. I dont’ think 1 gold once every now and then matters that much.

and if you guys are that serious, I can’t imagine how much you guys spend on candy corn.

Zaklex.6308:

Wanze.8410:

I think we should close all dungeons as dungeon gold rewards are clearly the main culprit of this insane gold inflation and the reason why i cant get what i want right now.

Lol, that’s quite amusing coming from you, but to add on to the discussion, apparently the OP lives in a vacuum somewhere as there is RL flipping going on all the time…not necessarily with commodities, but certainly with stocks(and some commodities to an extent, all you ever need to do is look at the commodities markets). Wait, I stand corrected, one of the biggest money makers in the US right now is home flipping, though it has it’s risks just like any other type of flipping, there are a number of people that have invested in this market…I need to look to further than my own area to witness it, and as has been stated, as long as people are willing to pay the price there will always be people willing to buy and flip anything and everything(probably even including sex, though I wouldn’t touch that with a 100 ft pole).

Yes you do stand corrected, b/c, IRL, the percentage of ‘middlemen’ (flippers) is WAY higher than the amount of people actually producing goods (look at WalMart). For every factory that makes Nike shoes, there are hundreds of times more ‘retail stores’ that buy those shoes and sell them at a (highly) marked up value. To try to even compare ‘flipping’ to the real world is silly and ignorant and shows a complete lack of understanding of supply/demand AND/VS necessities/luxeries. These aspects of business are not even close to the same. #learntoeconomics

Personally I don’t think that flipping is the case:

If you look at the real world: There are a lot of persons that enjoy doing what they do. Maybe the real bankers (that flip the coins) earn the big money. But why should we care that much about money? I mean Gold is nice to have, that is true, but it is not the only thing in the game that makes it so fun. (Go play sPvP for example!):P You don’t get achievements from flipping coins (alright aside the banker one then), no experience in combat, only gold.:P

I don’t think it’s a problem. I actually think stuff like this keeps the economy healthy. I mean there’s lot’s of guys fighting over the crafting materials which can make it actually cheaper in the end. (Look at Ecto’s for example, they used to be over 50silver)

tolunart.2095:

Sigh… I miss the BLTC forum. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a good “TP flippers are scumbags” argument, and OP doesn’t even pretend to know anything about the subject. Try harder next time.

^Yay for this!^

I’m actually surprised anyone can “flip” anything on this TP. It’s like so…
I’m prolly just spoiled from other games :P I mean if you can manage it, go for it lol. A single massive TP has gotta be challenging… if not monotonous.

I used to make pretty good gold from the TP early on though. At times I could buy mats to craft things such as sharpening stones and then load them onto the TP, make quite a bit of gold, depending on the fluctuating market. I still see it fluctuate, but not like it use to, and crafting like I did then is pretty bunk compared to just selling the mats now. That started after ascended crafting, and just too many people taking up crafting, saturated it all with the better items. Low level items were always saturated, but ascended crafting killed off the good scores at high level crafting.

Flipping isn’t even a problem, it lowers the sell order prices and raises buy order prices lowering the spread which is a Good Thing™ for your average TP user.

The ‘bad people’ are the speculator/manipulators and the like who artificially lower supply or raise demand and push prices up beyond what the market would be just for their own gains.

Flipping only exists because many sell their goods for too low a price. To benefit from others passing up potential profit is perfectly fine.

What is bad is, as others have pointed out, if it happens with incredibly rare items and a single person with a lot of gold at their disaposal to completely buy out any competition. That is a serious issue that indeed needs preventing.

The OP is on a wind up right?

Tman.6349:

Bonus challenge: Present for us a single case where anyone is/could “buy low and sell for hundreds of times more”. (I’m interested in some new markets!)

Probably television or internet, Americans love that streaming. You could probably buy it out and forge a nice monopoly – not ten times over, but perhaps at 120% of current market value. Good luck acquiring the tremendous fortune it would take to topple TWC, Comcast or Google though. I’ll be rooting for you.

Firelysm.4967:

Playing a trading post game or “flipping” as we call it should be prevented, why?
Because it’s ruining gaming experience for every one.

Lets keep it real trading is one thing.
Buying extremely low items and resell them hundreds of times more expensive over and over again so people can’t effort them any more is other thing.

But don’t people do that in real life?
Well concept is the same, but tax is not realistic.

Example of how this would look in real life:
Imagine that one company would buy every bread on the world for lets say from 1€-5€, all breads on market… and sell them at price of 25€. Water, 1L=20cents.. company again buys all the water, and sells it at 5€. You are hard working person, and lets make this real life example where you earn (lets say looking at my country) 600€ per month. If you want to eat bread every day you’ll pay 750€(by current market price), but then you have to drink too ? right ? But you can’t effort it?! Because you already work hard to get this 600€ per month, so what to do next? You find new job, you get 2000€ payment, finally you get enough money to eat and drink every day, but then more market flippers came, and suddenly bread is 100€, and water is 50€, and you can’t effort to eat and drink again. You try so hard to find new job, but every time you do, you market price rises extremely.. You are desperate and you don’t enjoy game no more, you only work to eat and drink.. But then one day you decide to play the market game (trading post), and you see that HOLY COW, you can make tons of money, but WAIT?! You sadly notice one thing, you don’t do the job that you did enjoy so much, you notice that all you do is trade, to get enough money for your every day needs.

People would say, but then you go out and farm for yourself, I do. And what you want is luxury not a simple need! Indeed, but why would you ever try to go out and explore world and farm for yourself, if you can earn tons of gold just by flipping the market?

What does this story tell you? Maybe that, flipping is getting to the point that every one is doing it and this triggers the chain reaction of crashing the trading post so badly that people start to play more trading post then actually play the game. More and more people are involved into this and sadly, game stays the same, gold flow is the same, money sink is the same, but the trading post inflation is getting out of hand.

Trading post should help us buy or sell things, not exploit it and abuse it to avoid playing the actual game.

TL:DR: Trading post “flipping” is ruining the gaming experience for every one.

Flipping is fine. Each time something is flipped money is taken out of the game since the TP is a gold sink.
Without this gold sink casuals would have a hard time keeping up with inflation.

Firelysm.4967:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

The difference to TP flipping and your real world analogy is that in game, anybody has the ability to TP flip or undermine a TP flipper.

If you don’t want to buy your bread at 25 euros, put a bid in for less. If you don’t want to buy an item at an extortionate rate, don’t. Just be patient.

As expected, you miss understand the point.
People abuse the buy and sell option, and avoid playing the actual game.

Buy sell trade tax should be higher, so people would actually use trading post when they need it. People actually play trading post game at least 1-5 hour per day. Trading post flipping went so far, that almost every one does it even if they deny it, even myself, because you can earn 100x more gold in few hours that you would earn in 1 week.

And I desire to stop this, so people actually go out there, and use the purpose of exploring, so people would think as trading post as something that they use when they need it, not to abuse it for making gold.

And for your argument, every one can open own store and sell bread too.

If you consider using the trading post and making money there as a “means to avoid playing the game” what would you consider buying gold with gems then?
I can literally dump 10 USD or Euros into 800 gems which will be roughly 100 gold.
100 gold would be roughly 80 something dungeon runs.

Your argument is invalid – people can already avoid playing the game and still make gold.

What about crafting? I craft things which give me around 3 gold/day. It takes me under 5 minutes daily. Am I not playing the game?

You have too narrow a definition of what constitutes “playing the game”.

Its a fair system. It annoys me greatly but I can’t really complain much about it. I prefer the extremes. Either a system where things bought off the trade post cannot be reposted or a system like Eve online, where there is no central market and the effort of moving and fetching items from decentralized markets gives some counter play to people ravaging the available supply of certain things.

I guess as long as people are manually clicking on the items they want to buy and resell. I’d be annoyed if people had constructed software to automatically interact with the Trade post in game to buy and sell items which deviated from a set worth -.-

@OP:

This is an economy, not a single-player game where the coin can be destroyed/is arbitrary and the economy is dictated solely by the player with static prices from NPC’s.

What flippers do exists exactly in real life, and is performed by many other companies. This is part of business.

And part of successful business is ensuring you get returns on your investments. As soon as a flipper prices his items too high to the point where it is not reasonable or optimal for the intelligent consumer to purchase, the consumer looks elsewhere for the same goods, and a demand for lower-price alternatives comes along and takes all of the profits, leaving the flipper broke with a whole pile of items that have either returned to their original price or have deflated in value causing a net loss.

I dare you to go ahead and flip the TP – it’s harder than you think.

Flippers are, for lack of a better analogy, player run vendors/merchants. They see a market where players are willing to buy an item at X and where players are willing to sell an item at Y. The sellers for whatever reason can’t be bothered to determine what the market is willing to accept as a fair price so they simply sell to who ever is offering most for the item. This supplies the player vendor with inventory that they then can price it at the true market value. It may take a little while to sell but if the player vendor understands the flow of that item as well as it’s price history and as long as they take the TP fee and taxes into account, they can earn a profit that other players aren’t willing to get for themselves.

And since any player can choose to place a sell order at a better price rather than selling to the highest bidder, player vendors aren’t “stealing” anyone’s money or manipulating price.

Cuddy.6247:

Tman.6349:

Bonus challenge: Present for us a single case where anyone is/could “buy low and sell for hundreds of times more”. (I’m interested in some new markets!)

Probably television or internet, Americans love that streaming. You could probably buy it out and forge a nice monopoly – not ten times over, but perhaps at 120% of current market value. Good luck acquiring the tremendous fortune it would take to topple TWC, Comcast or Google though. I’ll be rooting for you.

The thread was about flipping items and so was my post. That’s why I jokingly mentioned being interested in new markets. :p

Halan.7931:

Flippers (or Auction manipulators in other games) are parasites and leeches, just as stock/FOREX traders are in real life.

In my opinion, items bought from Trading Post should automatically become account-bound, and materials should go into some special part of the bank, from which they could only be used for crafting, so they can’t be resold.

Sure, can I already sign you up for one of the first to come whine again when ressource prices go through the roof? Not to mention most other items as well since people will hold on to them a lot more.