Guild Wars 2

I am curious why the decision was made to change the new Trading Post default from “lowest seller” to “highest buyer”. The behavior of people is extremely complicated as to which items they sell immediately vs listing at a set value, so any notion of “most sellers do this…” is inaccurate, at best. Since you really can’t use seller prediction to make the choice, it comes down to one thing —- tragic, irreversible error avoidance.

Trying to unload bags of items is a time consuming affair, even more so adapting to a new interface. It can certainly become frustrating and errant clicks are made. You have now made it so with a single errant click, a seller can off-load their 15 Gold whatever to some speculator who has lodged a 99 silver bid. Previously, if you unintentionally listed something, you could retrieve it back in just a few seconds from within the TP. Now it’s gone. That’s it. Considering most items on the TP (outside of crafting materials) have a top purchase bid drastically below market value, there is a genuine chance of this occurring on a regular basis.

You claim that all Anet employees play the game, and as a player, this problem should have occurred to you in seconds, or at least the first time you used the trading post. It’s also very troubling from a control standpoint. You have a vested interest in the marketplace not becoming a predatory arena where people go out of their way to take advantage of casual or new players, yet you have enabled them to do just that. Combined with standard difficulties in adapting to the new interface (and your glorious pop-ups) and a lot of people are going to come away with negative feelings. I can’t understand how this even got past the group discussion phase in a meeting.

Default to highest buyer is what it was for years.

Many people just sell their junk, rather than matching lowest selling price. Matching lowest sell price is usually only done for more expensive items.

Perhaps more important than the convenience of selling junk are the economic implications.

Selling to lowest buyer keeps prices down. Matching, universally, to the lowest seller, gradually inflates the economy over time.

It is a wise decision by the reserve bank of ANet to revert back to tradition.

Your response is that Anet should deliberately create interfaces that cause players to act in error? How is this consistent with the new -players are helpless and need guidance- policy?

Regardless of the effect on the economy, the main point is the TP defaults to a state where the transaction is irreversible. If they can address that, than the point is at least debatable. I would hope they are not as insidious as you are implying.

I use the TP to offload lots of unwanted items at one time and was VERY glad to see it default back to matching highest buyer.

This is why the notion that consumers act intelligently is one of the greatest fallacies of economics.

I found the change obnoxious. I almost always match lowest seller or set the price higher than the lowest seller if I believe the item is in sufficient demand.

crossoverAtt.9680:

This is why the notion that consumers act intelligently is one of the greatest fallacies of economics.

Do you think before you purchase a good? I do.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

crossoverAtt.9680:

This is why the notion that consumers act intelligently is one of the greatest fallacies of economics.

Do you think before you purchase a good? I do.

If you are of minimum age, you must have taken some sort Economics class at least once in your life and should be familiar with the phrase. It’s not a character judgment. I fully understand that some players make a conscious choice to take less money from selling their goods than sift through the TP for an extra 2-3 minutes.

However, it further illustrates that preferences and actions vary substantially and we can post all night about how you sell your goods and get a wide variety of differing approaches. The reasoning wasn’t about preference, it was about new and experienced players making a 1 click error that is irreversible. I am not comfortable with the idea this is intentional and Anet wished to devalue the currency by increasing the chances players will inadvertently sell their goods for a lower cost than intended.