Guild Wars 2

This games economy is greatly screwed buy the Trading Post, not the only thing screwing it, but the largest contributor. Due to the way taxes are implemented nearly everyone ends up posting items on the trader for less than what you can get for selling to a normal vendor. Example: item vendor value is 90c but everyone puts the item for sale as 91c and the tax is 3 copper, so not only is the seller not going to get his profit but buy doing this it prevents anyone from making a profit. It also forces people to look outside of game to get in game money, because people are purposefully blocking the ability of others to make a profit (I describe this as what is happening because the alternative conclusion is that 90% of this games players are idiots, so since that is LIKELY not the reason for the above scenario, it is most likely a real money conclusion).
REMOVE TAXES!!!! It only hurts the game, will help the economy, and is pointless to have them anyway.

PS: If you think “well people just want to help others out by posting items for less” think again, it is too much of a coincidence that 80% of the items on the market are posted as 1 copper above the vendor price. I would agree that some people just post at the lowest price set, but then that would make you one of the idiots for not noticing the tax amount and you not making a profit therefore contributing to the need for real money to generate in game money.

That’s my thought of the day which makes this game that much less fun to play and has me looking for the next.

I am wondering if ‘vend almost everything because almost everything is worthless on the TP’ is the economy they wanted.

I’ve gotten some Masterwork low to mid-level stuff and thought it was sellable, only to go to the TP and see it’s listed for ONE COPPER.

Why? How’s that work? The vendor would give you anywhere from 50c to 1s and change for these items… the materials you’d salvage would be worth almost that much you’d think…

You know what, when people farm dungeons, they will just sell the greens in TP at vendor price. Too many drops, not enough of space and not worth the effort to find a merchant to sell. They do so just to free up some space.

BUT, if you re-read my post… they are not putting it AT vendor price…. they are posing it below vendor price.. THINK.. sure they just want that one really good item to sell, but where is anyone getting the money to buy said one really good piece… if no one is making a profit?

Personally I only try and sell rares and exotics in the TP, everything else besides mats are usually a waste of time. I vendor blues/greens and salvage all whites.

You may not realize but the fee that is stated on the TP is NOT the full amount that they charge you either. If memory serves me right it’s more closer to 12-15%! So people that sell at the price of just above vendor price truely are blind or stupid I have to say…..

Vac.2037:

BUT, if you re-read my post… they are not putting it AT vendor price…. they are posing it below vendor price.. THINK.. sure they just want that one really good item to sell, but where is anyone getting the money to buy said one really good piece… if no one is making a profit?

That is the bidding price. You can’t sell an item below vendor price, the TP will not allow it. However you can only place order/bid an item at any price.

I can’t post anything below vendor price, they button is greyed out and there is red text informing me that the item must be above the vendor price.

Wouldn’t the vendor equivalent items help more than it hurt? I always just assumed the only people who bought these items were going to salvage them into crafting mats.

Don’t you get it ? Arena.NET loves it with it current state. Actually I’m pretty sure gem prices will increase more and other mats since some ppl ( you know it already if you following reddit ) buying huge sum of gem with their real life money and TP is money fountain for Arena.NET and they are sending New Year Celebrations Cards to their huge sum gem buyers with team signs.

So please don’t complain if you playing this game since you know there is a legendaries TP and I bet Arena.Net behind it for pumping gem store and their cash flow.

And Arena.NET don’t have enough team to manage any patch or bug but they already have an economist for it from start and he pretty well managed to kitten all of us.

I only sell rares and exotics (That I don’t want to keep) for the most part; I vendor greens and blues as the above poster, and salvage whites that will turn me a profit. Very rarely are there whites or blues or greens that give a well-above-vendor profit. There are some, but they are indeed rare. About as rare as… rares.

And yeah, the total margin you have to make to break even is 15%.

The offers on the TP of 1c have been annoying me for a while now its as if someone purposely went and did this for as many items as they could find. The TP doesnt even allow u to sell the item at this price

I only use the TP to sell by undercutting the lowest price by 1c. If I find a item that’s listed as the same price on the TP as a merchant (or the cost of the item’s worth) it get’s vendored. Whites, Greys, Blues and Greens all get vendored now.

The gear-centric game, max level gear, makes for everything before lvl 80 obsolete. Except for superior upgrades which are ’through the roof’ now. I want to assume this is a control feature of the economy by changing loot drops.

I have barely over 1g. I play with Fine/Rare gear, Fine/Rare upgrades. I believe there are a couple features that need to get implemented. And I could guess it will tick people off or cause a debate.

Trade posts need to expire. You paid a ’fee’ to post your product, You lose your ’fee’.
Trade posts need to expire from inactive players.
Suggest to remove ’buy’ orders.I think this causes a bit more confusion than what it is.

I was looking forward to getting to 80 and getting out of the ’crafted’ look. I’ll argue that the most important part of a mmo is how your character looks. Anyways, Knowing the pricing of the alliance armor (1.2g + 1.8g per piece give or take) Knowing it’s only RARE gear, I had the impression that the cultural armor was similar. I was pretty excited only to get my bubble burst. If I may coin a phrase ’Are you kidding me?’ The stats that come on the armors are less desired therefore I want to assume others have the same re-skin thought as I was having. C’est la vie!

Lets not even discuss superior tier upgrades. lol

Vac.2037:

It also forces people to look outside of game to get in game money, because people are purposefully blocking the ability of others to make a profit (I describe this as what is happening because the alternative conclusion is that 90% of this games players are idiots, so since that is LIKELY not the reason for the above scenario, it is most likely a real money conclusion).
REMOVE TAXES!!!! It only hurts the game, will help the economy, and is pointless to have them anyway.

The tax is there to keep gold from inflating/remove gold from the economy. It’s a good thing. And actually, you ARE still making a profit when you sell on the tp since that item was technically “free”.

Also, you probably overestimate the intelligence of the community.

Take off your tinfoil hats

The taxes are a nessecary evil – every transaction on the TP takes 15% of the trades value out of circulation. It’s a gold sink, if they didn’t take gold out of circulation inflation would rise uncontrollably.

If you want taxes gone from the TP then they have to take that gold out of somewhere else; such as drasticlly raising the cost of waypoint travel, repairs, cultural armour, salvage and harvesting tools etc.

The biggest “losers” on taxes are the traders since they spend the most gold there – this actually means there is a disproportionate amount of the gold sink being paid by the richest part of the community; this is good, it means JoE Average has affordable repair bills and stuff; take away taxes and your life is going to get harder not easier because it’ll take the gold sink away from the rich and slap it evenly across everyone.

And if you don’t reallocate the gold sinks, then catastrophic inflation occurs and things get even worse

The tax should remain.

But it should be scalable, not simply a steady 15% for all transactions.

This would help the “poorer” players making some money as selling low cost items would pretty be much tax free, while keeping the power traders/goldsellers/exploiters (sorry if you are a legitimate power trader that I put you in the same bag as these other two, I mean no disrespect to yourselves directly) in check by making it a 30-35-40% tax depending on the price items are listed.

That, for example, would pretty much guarantee to remove exploiters/golf sellers from putting up legendaries on the TP or putting bids of 600g on stupid things like a peach or lemon (only reason to do that is to be a kitten who wants to show off/laugh at the pleb).

Selling twilight for 9500g ? Sure, that’d be a 45% tax, thank you!
Selling a handful of low level mats and a masterwork, rare ? Alright, let’s make a deal and I’ll charge you only 2 or 3%.

This is what needs to happen. Keep the speculation in check, but encourage small businesses to grow and bloom.

Groovy.6749:

This would help the “poorer” players making some money as selling low cost items would pretty be much tax free, while keeping the power traders/goldsellers/exploiters (sorry if you are a legitimate power trader that I put you in the same bag as these other two, I mean no disrespect to yourselves directly) in check by making it a 30-35-40% tax depending on the price items are listed.

Accusations aside (The vast majority of traders are perfectly legit), this wouldn’t work anyway.

Power traders; as the name implies, trade on the economy of scale, buying in vast quantities – a 5% profit on 100G of goods is still 5 gold. I routinely buy and sell materials in blocks of 4 or 5 thousand, but the individual materials are the same T5 and T6 items that Joe Average trades in. If the tax is based on item value, then I’d be paying the same (reduced) tax as Joe Average does.

If the tax is based on net value, then I’d just split the trade into smaller blocks (Which creates extra work for the server and is thus actually not desirable from NCSoft’s angle).

The only people affected by an item-value tax would be the precursor and legendary traders, which contrary to popular belief are not actually the main source of trader’s wealth (Typically it’s bulk trading and speculation). Further more, as inflation grinds onwards you’d have to readjust the tax bars because otherwise Joe Average will end up paying progressivly higher taxes on what are baseline goods

PolarApe.9351:

I am wondering if ‘vend almost everything because almost everything is worthless on the TP’ is the economy they wanted.

I’ve gotten some Masterwork low to mid-level stuff and thought it was sellable, only to go to the TP and see it’s listed for ONE COPPER.

Why? How’s that work? The vendor would give you anywhere from 50c to 1s and change for these items… the materials you’d salvage would be worth almost that much you’d think…

Completely agree with the op. I don’t understand how it can be a higher quality item masterwork for example be listed for 1 copper in the TP then we go to vendor it and it is only 1 silver 4 copper.??? The same goes for the other items Like rares. Has anyone else noticed that? How rares are only worth a couple of silver from a vendor or exotics are only worth a tiny fraction of what the runes of holding cost for example? Not that I’m saying we should sell these things to vendors but I would love a more realistic approach to how much vendors give for these items.

The same goes for the mats these things drop when one tries to take them apart with a salvage kit. I pretty much don’t use any of the other salvage kits anymore because they really aren’t worth the cost. What’s the use of using a masterwork or fine salvage kit if that’s all that’s going to be given to you from salvaging masterwork or fine items is the same stuff you’d be getting when you use the basic kits. Doesn’t make any sense. so basically you have an entirely useless line of items that don’t give you any rare materials from the entirely useless line of drops.

Basically you can just go thru the entire game not salvaging anything but whites, with basic salvaging kits no less, and vendoring the rest because putting the rest on the TP doesn’t get you a thing but pennies or a single penny in this case, and the tiny amount of silver that you get from vendoring these things really doesn’t add up to even a quarter of a gold usually from one farming session and barely takes care of the teleportation costs most incur.

Ryuujin.8236:

Groovy.6749:

This would help the “poorer” players making some money as selling low cost items would pretty be much tax free, while keeping the power traders/goldsellers/exploiters (sorry if you are a legitimate power trader that I put you in the same bag as these other two, I mean no disrespect to yourselves directly) in check by making it a 30-35-40% tax depending on the price items are listed.

Accusations aside (The vast majority of traders are perfectly legit), this wouldn’t work anyway.

That is why I said right after I meant no disrespect to the legitimate trades. But rreading it back, I can see where you’re coming from despite my lame apology xD.
What I badly tried to say was those with enough assets to actively alter the economy (yes, I am aware no indiviual has actually enough trading power to directly and immediately affect/manipulate the economy, but at times all it takes is a gentle push in the right direction to cause a snowball effect) should be the ones targeted by this tax.

As you rightly pointed out, you could start buying in smaller blocks to dodge these sort of tax…maybe what we need is then some sort of system that keep records of how many transactions were made, and how much gold was involved in them and the higher it gets the higher the tax increases.
After a certain set amount of time, it would start decreasing but that could keep problems like market manipulation at bay. You could still have a go at it, but it’ll start costing you a lot rapidly and thus eventually forcing you to take a half from it, if only for a while (which is why I suggest it should be made account bound and not only character only to avoid alt jumping).

How high or low to set the bar would remain in ANet’s hands but I believe this could help with helping to control those with the means to somewhat control it (even if only a tiny part of it).

The average joe would never get close to this limit before tax gets seriously heavy, thus navigating between 2,3% and 15% (including farmers, without which they’d be no steady supplies) while the bigger boys ( aka not farmers but those with enough coins to significantly raise or crash the prices) would find themselves in the water of 30-45% tax eventually.

I just think those wanting to contribute and partake in the economy should be encouraged while those seeking to manipulate it or generate “undeserved” profits by continuously buying/selling stocks should be reminded that it isn’t wall street :p

YPC.6349:

Vac.2037:

BUT, if you re-read my post… they are not putting it AT vendor price…. they are posing it below vendor price.. THINK.. sure they just want that one really good item to sell, but where is anyone getting the money to buy said one really good piece… if no one is making a profit?

That is the bidding price. You can’t sell an item below vendor price, the TP will not allow it. However you can only place order/bid an item at any price.

NO NO NO… the TP does allow you to put it below vendor price, the tax puts the price lower than vendor… Honestly I think you are Trolling,,,,

Rustypipes.6238:

I can’t post anything below vendor price, they button is greyed out and there is red text informing me that the item must be above the vendor price.

Wouldn’t the vendor equivalent items help more than it hurt? I always just assumed the only people who bought these items were going to salvage them into crafting mats.

read my first post and test it out, if vendor is 90c yes 91c is higher than vendor but tax is 3 so no profit because all you get is 88c which is mmmmm… BELOW VENDOR

Sorry everyone, I see no good purpose for the TAX… for those who think there is some sort of good inflation relation with the tax and in game currency, ummm.. you’re wrong… IF this were true all prices in game would reflect it including NPC prices…. with out all prices being affected by by said inflation the only use for it is to cause everything in game to have no value but legendary… OH hell.. I’ll just stop here pull out my credit card and gem 5K gold gear my 80’s and stand around Lion’s Arch saying " Look at me Look at me" until another pay to win game launches….

you seem like a great guy to hang out with irl.

L2T learn to trade

It’s funny you say that because that’s exactly why i love TP so much.
In Diablo III (i know they aren’t the same genre) everything cost in millions and it would take forever to get a single average sword with nice stats.
Here – everything is affordable – i can equip my chars whenever i want(except some items like legendery and some exotics).

true, it’s on the other side of the spectrum and it may hurt guys trying to play “traders” in this game but still, i prefer this then the lather

The asking price for many items is 1 copper above what a vendor offers. Why is that? It’s because the items themselves are not valued by purchasers.

If there were a demand that was greater than the supply, then there would be requests to buy, and buyers would be forced to outbid each other. Since that isn’t happening, the only possible conclusion is that the game is producing more of these items than there are people who want to pay for them.

This means their only real value is either the amount you can get from a vendor, or the value of any salvage results. Even if there was no “tax,” your profit margin isn’t going to go significantly above vendor price anyway. The only way to “fix” this would be to reduce supply (i.e, lower drop rates). Imagine how well that would go over.

lighterthief.4631:

L2T learn to trade

What a constructive post.

Also correct me if I’m mistaken, but I thought the game was called Guild Wars 2 not Trade Wars 2.

I do partake in the economy but I do not view the TP as my source of income. If you do enjoy doing that, then it isn’t my right to tell you whether to do or not do it.

But the tax as it stands right now puts those who use TP as main income and those who don’t in the same basket. Meaning small time traders are generally penalized while those do are the big traders aren’t. This needs some re-adjusting so everyone can be on an equal footing.

Taxes actually are the only RIGHT thing with this economy (ideally, it should prevent inflation).

Economy that is indeed screwed, but not because of taxes.

I’m not understanding on what this has to do with the overall economy?

If you can’t make more on the TP than a vendor, sell it at the vendor and vice-versa.

I have not received a drop that would make me instantly rich, but I recently got to 80 and have 20 gold and a lot of Karma Jugs. So what happens at 80? You want really good Exotic Everything right? I’m actually pretty impressed doing the math that I’m reasonably inline to get what I need at 45% map complete.

I’m looking at 4’ish gold per weapon that could be 2-4 pieces depending on your sets.

Trinkets and slots around another 15-20 gold I would say.

75 Gems are around 1.5 gold so I can get 50% karma boost on the jugs which I have many, which should take me near the 240K or whatever is needed for the full set of exotics.

So I still need more money, but I am only at 45% map completion. Pretty impressed though on what I have now, what I’ve done so far and what I will need with what is left to do. They are close to being right in balance.

I’m pretty sure a lot of people would be happier if ANet just canceled all those things below vendor, and put a warning when you sell something for less than 15% above vendor. Wasn’t the bug that allowed people to make listings below vendor fixed after the first week of launch? I’m sure those people don’t give a crap anymore.

Those under vendor prices are effectively the same as the items that don’t have a price yet. All the 1c crap does is confuse the newbies about what is normal so that they also sell things for as little as the game will allow.

Also, if an item does not have a current price on the TP or it is under the vendor + 15% why not change match lowest to match vendor + tax? I think part of the reason many of these people in dungeons sell so low is that they don’t have the time or patience to calculate the 15% tax. If there was a button to do it when there’s no reasonable price already, I’m sure it would kill this problem dead.

Vac.2037:

YPC.6349:

Vac.2037:

BUT, if you re-read my post… they are not putting it AT vendor price…. they are posing it below vendor price.. THINK.. sure they just want that one really good item to sell, but where is anyone getting the money to buy said one really good piece… if no one is making a profit?

That is the bidding price. You can’t sell an item below vendor price, the TP will not allow it. However you can only place order/bid an item at any price.

NO NO NO… the TP does allow you to put it below vendor price, the tax puts the price lower than vendor… Honestly I think you are Trolling,,,,

If you mean the listing fee and transection fee, then I have already answered your question. People were in the middle of dungeon, speed running I may add. They are making 1-2g/hr. It makes no sense for them to stop 10 mins to find a vendor to sell greens so they can save like 3c.

Vac.2037:

This games economy is greatly screwed buy the Trading Post, not the only thing screwing it, but the largest contributor. Due to the way taxes are implemented nearly everyone ends up posting items on the trader for less than what you can get for selling to a normal vendor. Example: item vendor value is 90c but everyone puts the item for sale as 91c and the tax is 3 copper, so not only is the seller not going to get his profit but buy doing this it prevents anyone from making a profit. It also forces people to look outside of game to get in game money, because people are purposefully blocking the ability of others to make a profit (I describe this as what is happening because the alternative conclusion is that 90% of this games players are idiots, so since that is LIKELY not the reason for the above scenario, it is most likely a real money conclusion).
REMOVE TAXES!!!! It only hurts the game, will help the economy, and is pointless to have them anyway.

PS: If you think “well people just want to help others out by posting items for less” think again, it is too much of a coincidence that 80% of the items on the market are posted as 1 copper above the vendor price. I would agree that some people just post at the lowest price set, but then that would make you one of the idiots for not noticing the tax amount and you not making a profit therefore contributing to the need for real money to generate in game money.

That’s my thought of the day which makes this game that much less fun to play and has me looking for the next.

You have to remember that this is a single auction house for many thousands of players. The fact that the prices get drove down so much so fast is that the supply is greater than the demand. It only takes a handful of people to make mistakes and not realize about the Trading Post tax to completely kill an items profit margin. Like I said, demand is very low for said item, and it will (most likely) never rebound.

With regards to whether taxes are good or bad. In your specific scenario, removing taxes will do nothing. People will still post down to the vendor price, and we’re back to square one. The reason that the items are pushed down “80% of the time” is because that what the game limits you at before it throws up the big red sign on the Trading Post window. This is when people realize that they should vendor the item instead.

If the Trading Post is a source of frustration for you, I would recommend just selling your items to the vendor. I do not feel that the game forces you to buy gold. If you feel the need to “be rich”, I would suggest simply just playing the game. I never recommend outright buying gems/gold because all of it can be earned in game by just doing what you want in the game. The game does not force you to need gold.

Someone above already said it. It’s because people running a dungeon often fill their bag and put it up on TP at 1c above merchant value. Yes, with taxes it falls below merch value, but selling them at 85% merch value is still better than not picking stuff up because you don’t have the space. Consider it a convenience tax for not running to an actual merchant.

Groovy.6749:

lighterthief.4631:

L2T learn to trade

What a constructive post.

Also correct me if I’m mistaken, but I thought the game was called Guild Wars 2 not Trade Wars 2.

I do partake in the economy but I do not view the TP as my source of income. If you do enjoy doing that, then it isn’t my right to tell you whether to do or not do it.

But the tax as it stands right now puts those who use TP as main income and those who don’t in the same basket. Meaning small time traders are generally penalized while those do are the big traders aren’t. This needs some re-adjusting so everyone can be on an equal footing.

equal footing I like that. Legendaries and a cooked goose for all!!!!

lighterthief.4631:

Groovy.6749:

lighterthief.4631:

L2T learn to trade

What a constructive post.

Also correct me if I’m mistaken, but I thought the game was called Guild Wars 2 not Trade Wars 2.

I do partake in the economy but I do not view the TP as my source of income. If you do enjoy doing that, then it isn’t my right to tell you whether to do or not do it.

But the tax as it stands right now puts those who use TP as main income and those who don’t in the same basket. Meaning small time traders are generally penalized while those do are the big traders aren’t. This needs some re-adjusting so everyone can be on an equal footing.

equal footing I like that. Legendaries and a cooked goose for all!!!!

Yet another constructive post. I’m starting to see a pattern here.
Also just because everyone starts from the same point does not mean all will make it to the finishing line. So you can keep your sarcasm and legendary, I’ll take the journey over the destination anytime. Oh and that cooked goose too.

One positive effect of the 15% transaction fee is that it puts a damper on TP speculation. If you aren’t sure you can make more than 15%, you will not play TP tycoon. Of course if you think GW2 should support the TP tycoon profession, then the 15% transaction fee is a negative.

First there is no game economy in GW2. That word is thrown around like it is the neatest thing since chocolate milk. It is sexy to type “Economy”.

To have an economy there must be regulation, right now there is none. There must be finite resources, and regulation of those resources. Things must wear away, including all those nifty special items, this gives crafters a reason for being in the first place.

Money must have value in game, not out of game. Selling gold in a gemshop is simply wrong. Mechanics must be in place to prevent farming and grinding, Two things GW2 has failed at.

Right now there is a glorified trading post by the most extreme definition. Gold sellers post on the forums to try and raise or lower the price of materials, you see this every couple of days. RNG has no place in this game other than the want of the developers.

Want to see a working “economy”? Make things wear out, Everything, thats right. make resources finite, the game already has recycling to a large degree, why not take advantage of it. Mechanics can be put in place to at least make resources appear valuable or spawn in special ways. Things i have solutions for, why dont the developers, why not in the first place?

Make gold account bound and put proper mechanics in place to prevent guild gold distribution abuse. Like gold sellers bringing in a player to get gold by trying to bypass the bind to account rule, though i am sure they would have thought of that. Laugh.

Make mats for big ticket items bind to account. Change the drop mechanics, this needs to be changed anyway, RNG and DR need to go.

There are plenty of ways to make a semi working economy, leaps and bounds better than what there is now, but the gem shop would suffer because of these built in mechanics if they were to be changed.

Everything revolves around the gemshop. Thats why things are so kittened up (typed kitten on purpose).

We all understand the need for Anet to make money but really, what kind of people RNG a gemshop when customers use real money, not ingame gold. That issue by itself is too funny, just saying.

Sack Alan Krueger hire Graill a market where the Waltons would have twilight 3 minutes after buying the game is Kubar

Graill.8596:

First there is no game economy in GW2. That word is thrown around like it is the neatest thing since chocolate milk. It is sexy to type “Economy”.

To have an economy there must be regulation, right now there is none. There must be finite resources, and regulation of those resources. Things must wear away, including all those nifty special items, this gives crafters a reason for being in the first place.

Money must have value in game, not out of game. Selling gold in a gemshop is simply wrong. Mechanics must be in place to prevent farming and grinding, Two things GW2 has failed at.

Right now there is a glorified trading post by the most extreme definition. Gold sellers post on the forums to try and raise or lower the price of materials, you see this every couple of days. RNG has no place in this game other than the want of the developers.

Want to see a working “economy”? Make things wear out, Everything, thats right. make resources finite, the game already has recycling to a large degree, why not take advantage of it. Mechanics can be put in place to at least make resources appear valuable or spawn in special ways. Things i have solutions for, why dont the developers, why not in the first place?

Make gold account bound and put proper mechanics in place to prevent guild gold distribution abuse. Like gold sellers bringing in a player to get gold by trying to bypass the bind to account rule, though i am sure they would have thought of that. Laugh.

Make mats for big ticket items bind to account. Change the drop mechanics, this needs to be changed anyway, RNG and DR need to go.

There are plenty of ways to make a semi working economy, leaps and bounds better than what there is now, but the gem shop would suffer because of these built in mechanics if they were to be changed.

Everything revolves around the gemshop. Thats why things are so kittened up (typed kitten on purpose).

We all understand the need for Anet to make money but really, what kind of people RNG a gemshop when customers use real money, not ingame gold. That issue by itself is too funny, just saying.

Graill,

I admire your patience.
Most of the people that post here stating the BLTC works properly dont have the faintest idea about economics. They just learned the “supply and demand” sentence and use it without knowing what is behind that model.

The sad thing is that they will not learn from you either..:(

You have my vote to be hired and run the BLTC.

Merry Christmas,

Red

It’s only in because players can buy gems with in-game gold….

It’s actually very stupid and clever at the same time on Anet’s part for setting the game up like this.

With the money sinks and taxes in every aspect of the game, they can limit the amount of money that can continually be used to buy gems and inflate that aspect of the demand. They actually use it as a psychological tactic to drive people to spend more real life cash.

In turn, this limits the player experience and puts a lot of stress on the community. It’s nothing but a restriction for the sole purpose of ArenaNet letting people buy gems with gold.

If they simply took this feature out and made the cash shop less of a plague unto GW2 (unlike GW1 cash shop) by only allowing people to get the items through real cash…they would have some incentive to actually make things people would want to buy and not restrict the community and game by bloating the system with trash mechanics.

You know the Economy is failing or broken if you hear from random Fractal people that they running scripts all over the AH that raises every item 1 copper/1silver so that they getting a ton of gold. I’m sure it’s not the only script that is running all over the AH but ArenaNet seems not to care or Anet can/can’t track and does nothing about. And now where Legendarys are worthless because in a month can everybody just buy the Legendary status from the AH, yeah thats really a Accomplishment. Legendarys should be accountbound and not tradeable otherwise they are just another skin and don’t deserve the title Legendary and just shows that you´re a rich dou. che. bag.

I clicked this thread expecting something new that I hadn’t been in the loop of.
Instead, it’s another thread hating on the taxes. -sigh-

As mentioned above in some posts, the taxes are a Gold Sink.

In a game where currency is being infinitely generated, there needs to be ways to remove the money from the economy to keep item-prices reasonably stable.
That’s where things like WayPoint fees, Trading Post tax, and Gem-to-Gold exchange come into play. They remove tons of gold from the game everyday, which keeps items like Lodestones and Celestial Dyes from skyrocketing up 2 to 3 times higher then what they are now.

Who cares if people are putting up loot for less gold then what they would get from vendors? They got all that loot for free anyway!

tbh the economy is on the mend t6/t5 mats are dropping in price quite alot Vial of powerful blood is around 14s i use to sell em at 28s and thru this exos are starting to drop zerker exos were around 4g 80s they are now around 3g 50s and unid dyes are around 9s comaired to when they were peaking at 15s the only thing i hate about the TP is the 5% non refundable tax for listing is such a stupid feature have you ever put a item up for around 20g? just to have 10 other people put the same item up for 1c less 10 times in a row its extremely frustrating and what makes this worse is THAT THERE IS NO TRADE OPTION!!!! WHY NO TRADE OPTION ANET if they made it so the 5% listing fee was refundable that would honestly make so many people happy, but they would need to add a feature that would stop people using the TP as there bank by simply adding a feature that does not let you put X amount of items up at the same time this would also stop people from sabotaging the supply/demand on certain items like what w saw with t5/t6 mats

Lol i could not help myself not to post that

Finally I get it. I thought the listing fee was the only one to worry about. At least I always put items on the TP that have stated the projected profit was at least 1.5 times the vendor price. Now I can just subtract 15% from the price when selling an object on TP and know whether to vendor or not.
There is still one thing that continues to baffle me. Why is it that some white items are listed for double their vendored price? Sometimes the TP price is even more than double. Does this have anything to do with the chance for salvaging it for a T5/T6 mat?

I think the game still needs more gold sinks but not ones that will hinder a casual player like myself. I.e. adding a vendor that sells precursors for 100/200g that makes the precursor account bound the moment it is purchased. <— an idea from another thread/user I thought worth repeating.
That kind of sink is totally optional, takes away a huge chunk of gold from the ‘economy’, and the item can’t be sold on the TP thus it doesn’t put the gold back into circulation.
And no I have no gold to speak of. The most I have ever seen in my account is 24g. I attribute that to my love of crafting. I don’t sell mats since I only have 4 crafts mastered. I don’t run dungeons, except one single time in my 500+ hrs, and don’t generate much gold for myself at all. A vendor with a precursor at 200g would still be out of reach for me but I believe it to be a worthwhile sink.
I do enjoy the game but I see the inflation as something that makes the casual player lose hope. Even if the DR and RNG hates me I need my hope.
Just my opinion ofc.
SINK THE GOLD
… flame on… fireproofing as I type

In the end, ANet hates how the economy has turned out to be in GW2. It is out of control, which is a bad thing, as it is not predictable. They try to fix it, but they have no clue how to do so.
Most items are worth nothing, some items are worth everything. That’s a deathtrap. ANet is approaching it with minor fixes to droprates, but it won’t work in the long run.

This bloody 5% tax is not the problem. It is perfectly fine. But the ALL-OR-NOTHING loot is pretty much a failure, resulting in this economical chaos.

Future will tell if ANet can ever fix this broken mess…

Can someone explain how the GW2 economy is “out of control”? What do most people think the issue is?

To me it is obviously bots lowering the prices, and Ascended items driving up costs. However that doesn’t mean that the economy isn’t working, it simply means that there are pressures on the market which are then addressed by the market… you know, how an economy is supposed to work by allocating resources efficiently and responding to changes in the market.

However I never see anyone but myself stat this issue. It seems that most people just don’t want a gold sink, and they just spout out suggestions that would truly screw over the game economy with ridiculous regulations that you’d think some short sighted, populous politician (only concerned with short term political gain at the expense of future generations) thought up. It also sounds like some people do actually have a clue about what they are talking about, but they are still rather vague on what the issues actually are… or seem to want something entirely different.

I think keeping prices low was intentional. But I don’t think they intended to keep them THAT low. :P