Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone. Hopefully we can get the opinion of ANET here. This is meant to be as respectful as it can be.

Idea:
Maybe a tag can be added to items you buy in the TP.

Mechanics:
The tag will contain the information of how much did you pay for it and the date the transaction was effected.

Then add a condition to selling in the TP where if the date in the tag of the item is less than a month it wont allow you to sell it for more than what you bought it for (that way you can sell the thing you buy by mistake).

Purpose:
This will not eliminate flipping but it will mitigate flipping since people are going to see that actually gathering the items will be more profitable than flipping the TP, also even if some employee tells someone outside they will have a month to mitigate the impact in the market.

Anyhow, this is meant to recompense the players that work for things instead of buying stuff and inflating the price in the TP.

Sooooo…. Pros, Cons and future Opportunities:

Pros:
- Leaks from employees of ANET wont impact the market as much.
- Hackers wont see it that viable to use the stolen account as bots for flipping TP and selling the gold.
- More people will actually play content for the rewards.
- If you buy things by mistake you can still sell it for the same cost it had.
- (Add your own in the comments)

Cons:
- People will actually have to work for things
- A lot of flippers will be mad.
- (Add your own in the comments)

Future Opportunities:
- By more people working/playing for different items they need, ANET can improve the drop rate of different items in a fair way.
- (Add your own in the comments)

Sorry for my bad English, and I hope people aren’t annoyed by this.

It’ll create more harm than good. Flipping is a pretty important part of the game economy.

You can look anytime you want to to see how much you paid for something. Or when it was bought. Are you actually just wanting something to show off to other people when you bought something and how much it was? You also want to penalize people for buying something and not wanting it anymore and selling it within a certain amount of time?

Ninja’ed by PyrateSilly Like they said, check the Recent Transactions menu for your purchase / sell history.

As for flipping? Let’s not mess with that aspect. If flipping were discouraged, our guild’s scribe would be screwed and we’d have to devote a lot more of our time in making sure he had the funds to maintain our treasury and his personal finances.

I don’t think this actually does anything, and would require massive amounts of server resources. It’s not realistic from a technological perspective.

Ensign.2189:

I don’t think this actually does anything, and would require massive amounts of server resources. It’s not realistic from a technological perspective.

I don’t have access to the data, so I don’t know what is or not viable. That is for anet to analyze.

Now, if this is addressed, botting will be reduced for hackers that use stolen account to do the flipping.

And for the guild that centers their economy by flipping the market… Well that is the main problem, and drop rates should be addressed. I believe that if you do Guild Missions you should make the items required to do the Scribe craft.
Edit: I say this, because the person in the guild that does the Flipping must be bored and burnt like crazy.

Everyone have made good points, its good to know the perspective of others. Ty.

There is already a mechanism in place to mitigate flipping. Taxes and listing fee. The item also needs to have a decent balance of supply and demand.

I buy a lot of sand. I usually never buy enough when I place buy orders, so for those last minute purchases I go to people’s sell orders. If there are people currently flipping coarse sand, then I thank them for offering me a lower last minute price. It’s what they do.

As for tagging each item purchased with a price- and time-stamp, how would Anet ever be able to appropriately mark each pile of sand out of my hundreds? How would I be able to go through and separate them if I wanted to sell them?

If you’re having trouble buying or selling an item, look at the two prices you see on the Trading Post (e.g. 1s86c and 2s47c). Those are the prices that the item is currently not trading at. Think of a value between those that you’d be happy to buy/sell the item for (lets say 2s10c), and place that order. If someone is trying to flip those items, they’ll either cut heavily into their profits and try to outbid you, or they’ll have to wait for your order to be filled.

This is a horrible fix for something that isn’t a problem in the first place.

I don’t know why you dislike flipping so much, but the economy relies on flippers to function (and I’m getting tired of explaining this).

Flippers enable people to buy and sell instantly — and make it cheaper for them to do so. If you don’t like flippers, just create buy and sell listings for everything you buy and sell.

Note that this argument applies to flipping, not hoarding, which can be a problem.

Limiting what you can sell an item for on the TP based on how much you originally paid for it wouldn’t solve anything. More often it’s the conversion of an item to another that results in a profit (i.e. Salvaging rares for ectos) but that’s just one of hundreds of examples.

I would however like to see some kind of monitoring of the purchasing practices done by what I call “psychic” flippers. These are the ones that somehow know for a while before a game patch that there will be a sharp increase in the value of an inexpensive item and then slowly over the course of a week or so purchase large amounts slowly so the price doesn’t spike until the patch is released. I am seeing this becoming more common and I suspect their “psychic abilities” are somehow being assisted.

There is one very easy way to get rid of flippers completely. Stop selling to buyorders.
No need to add more complicated and harmful ways.

Oh … and this will fail to work on any item that is stackable like crafting materials.

ekarat.1085:

This is a horrible fix for something that isn’t a problem in the first place.

This…

Khisanth.2948:

There is already a mechanism in place to mitigate flipping. Taxes and listing fee. The item also needs to have a decent balance of supply and demand.

This wont affect supply since flipping is done on the existing supply. They literally buy the supply and sell it again for a higher price.

Khisanth.2948:

Oh … and this will fail to work on any item that is stackable like crafting materials.

true… back to the thinking table.

Muusic.2967:

Limiting what you can sell an item for on the TP based on how much you originally paid for it wouldn’t solve anything. More often it’s the conversion of an item to another that results in a profit (i.e. Salvaging rares for ectos) but that’s just one of hundreds of examples.

I would however like to see some kind of monitoring of the purchasing practices done by what I call “psychic” flippers. These are the ones that somehow know for a while before a game patch that there will be a sharp increase in the value of an inexpensive item and then slowly over the course of a week or so purchase large amounts slowly so the price doesn’t spike until the patch is released. I am seeing this becoming more common and I suspect their “psychic abilities” are somehow being assisted.

Transforming items you buy in the TP to other items and selling them is not flipping and yes idk how some people get info of changes before they happen.

Flipping is misunderstood. It only happens in markets where the highest buy offers are far, far below the lowest sale offers. Flippers make money by offering higher-than-market prices to impatient sellers and lower-than-market prices to impatient buyers. Flipping removes extra coin from the economy (in the form of extra fees) and helps the market reach equilibrium more quickly.

In other words, flipping benefits the community (including, of course, the flippers, who make a relatively-low-risk profit).

If you want to end flipping, help all your friends to see the benefits of putting in custom offers (buy and sell). At the very least, you can always put in an offer at approximately the mid point between the lowest WTS and the highest WTB — that generates (or saves) a decent chunk of coin and rarely costs much in the way of extra time. If everyone did that, there would never be any flipping.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Flipping is misunderstood. It only happens in markets where the highest buy offers are far, far below the lowest sale offers. Flippers make money by offering higher-than-market prices to impatient sellers and lower-than-market prices to impatient buyers. Flipping removes extra coin from the economy (in the form of extra fees) and helps the market reach equilibrium more quickly.

In other words, flipping benefits the community (including, of course, the flippers, who make a relatively-low-risk profit).

If you want to end flipping, help all your friends to see the benefits of putting in custom offers (buy and sell). At the very least, you can always put in an offer at approximately the mid point between the lowest WTS and the highest WTB — that generates (or saves) a decent chunk of coin and rarely costs much in the way of extra time. If everyone did that, there would never be any flipping.

Agreed, though I do not currently have the patience to explain this anymore.

Jhoul.6923:

Khisanth.2948:

There is already a mechanism in place to mitigate flipping. Taxes and listing fee. The item also needs to have a decent balance of supply and demand.

This wont affect supply since flipping is done on the existing supply. They literally buy the supply and sell it again for a higher price.

Some people are probably doing that but I expect that to be relatively rare. It is very easy to end up losing money with that approach unless you are big gaps in prices somewhere. The supply would have to be low enough and demand high enough for the relisted items to sell in a timely manner.

Deja vu all over again.

Same thing has been said many many many times over the years since release, with the same answers (including responses by the on-staff economist). This is a solution for a problem that only exists in the complainers’ minds.

Khisanth.2948:

Some people are probably doing that but I expect that to be relatively rare. It is very easy to end up losing money with that approach unless you are big gaps in prices somewhere. The supply would have to be low enough and demand high enough for the relisted items to sell in a timely manner.

It’s possible but difficult, and easy to end up with a bunch of TP listings that don’t sell because you misread the market. Most TP action is probably looking for low priced equipment, salvage, and sell the mats for a profit. Which involves a lot of clicking but if you’re careful you can end up making quite a bit from fluctuations in prices.

ALL market economies rely upon some version of “flipping”. They have to. Flipping diminishes the gap between buy and sell orders. On the New York Stock Exchange as in Guild Wars.

In fact, I would argue that GW would do well to add even more options, like short-selling and options trading. But, those are probably too complicated for such a small economy.

Jhoul.6923:

Hi everyone. Hopefully we can get the opinion of ANET here. This is meant to be as respectful as it can be.

Idea:
Maybe a tag can be added to items you buy in the TP.

Mechanics:
The tag will contain the information of how much did you pay for it and the date the transaction was effected.

Then add a condition to selling in the TP where if the date in the tag of the item is less than a month it wont allow you to sell it for more than what you bought it for (that way you can sell the thing you buy by mistake).

No. Just no. You pointedly ignore, whether out of ignorance of it or willful act, that flippers actually keep prices manageable. They bring equilibrium to the markets they dabble in.

Beyond that, such a suggestion is technologically unfeasible for so many reasons I’m not going to bother going into them.

I think this is being driven by the report that Mystic Coin prices are being ratcheted up by flippers. Most of that is simply hype in the hopes of pumping up the price so those doing the hyping can dump them for big profit.

Currently it’s under 70 silver after it’s Reddit screen shot showing it around 1 gold. Welcome to the power of the market.

Here’s the proper way to mitigate flipping:
1. Go to a site that monitors trading post prices over time.
2. If you want to buy something, place a large buy order for it at around the lower end of the stable spectrum. If the market’s unstable, you’ll probably want to aim a little bit higher to catch the next ‘dip’ in price without being perpetually overcut. By doing so, you cut into Flippers by denying them a customer, and undercutting their profits.
3. If you want to sell something, place it as a sell order at about 12% lower than the stable price, so flippers can’t profit from buying it, and it cuts into their profits if they try to match it. Why yes, it does mean you gross less money from the sale than they do – but such is the cost of fighting the good fight. And, you don’t have thinned profit margins!

Jhoul.6923:

Anyhow, this is meant to recompense the players that work for things instead of buying stuff and inflating the price in the TP.

This phrase, from the OP reveals the thread starter’s prejudices and misconceptions, which are the sole reason for the suggestion.

ewww no thanks op
there is no flipping “problem”, that just sounds like someone who doesnt want to take advantage of the concept trying to make sure that nobody can