Guild Wars 2

I’m curious why? For instance I was selling something for 8gold, I got taxed off 1gold and had to pay 30ish silver to put it on TP. The 30silver I can understand, but the 1GOLD?! why?

EDIT: Btw I know it’s percentage, so the higher the value the higher the amount of money gets taxed off

Simple answer: To combat inflation.

The war against the elder dragons aint cheap

Sef.6918:

The war against the elder dragons aint cheap

my sides.. you have hurt them! lol

It’s a money sink. They have to take gold out of the economy in order to rein in inflation; not saying it’s working very well, but that’s the intention.

It’s to prevent you from making money by reselling items. Like buying something for low and reselling it for higher.

cause if you make too much money in auction house you wont buy gold from anet

Because Queen Jennah’s wardrobe needs more shiny dresses.

Bro we are getting taxed. Jon Peters collects and buys all ascended items and legendarys then buffs warrior underwater combat so he can use his spear better

15% total taxes really sucks. I’d have to agree that the tax paid is horrendous, and I think there are a couple of reasons. First, clearly trying to control (control is the operative word here folks, read on…) inflation, and the other major one, IMO, is that they are trying to chip away at our ability to profit by buying and selling. A lot of the time that 15% IS your profit margin, so there is no point.

However, I actually think that the tax might actually be aiding inflation. Firstly, 15% loss is very substantial – consider for a moment that devs consider 10% a substantial enough difference to use that number a lot for their skill buffs and the like. So when players are discouraged to try their hand at buying and selling, because that 15% eats significantly out of the profit, you see greater demand for goods due to a lesser supply. Where there is lower supply, there is naturally a greater demand, thus forcing prices up and INFLATION occurs.

*Our community buying and selling habits can/would undermine the value of gold, thus making the need to purchase it from Anet, or trade it for gems (thus stimulating the gem economy which is based off of…you guess it…your Real money), not as necessary. *

So IMHO, it ultimately serves to discourage people from even trying to bother to buy and sell for profit….it really narrows the window for a trader’s margin of profit…I stopped doing it awhile ago because I got tired of going so quickly into the red when my little bit of margin got eaten by that 15%. In the end the relatively HIGH tax CONTROLS the market. Not that it shouldn’t be controlled to some extent, but man…15% is steep IMO.

With all that said, I just think the tax should be lowered to a total of 8-10%. It makes me really sad that, being the kind of person who has always loved and reveled in playing “market trader” in other MMOs, find it so frustrating; players like me just get no love from the TP…we’re discouraged a bit from a behavior that is really just another element to the game, especially since it gives dedicated, smart, and crafty players an ALTERNATIVE TO FARMING.

Note: I have, can, and know how to profit from the TP, but I stopped doing it because it got too tedious, and ultimately wasn’t always reliable due to the whims of ignorant seller trolls paired with the 15%.

Can you tell I’m a bit of a disillusioned Buyer/Trader? :P

Up front, you have a 10% fee to post the item in the first place.
Then there’s a 15% “transaction tax”, so you get only 85% of what the buyer paid.

This results in essentially making only 75% of your asking price in net profit.

In-world, it makes sense simply because the BLTC makes their profits this way.

In the context of gameplay, it is a gold sink, as described above. Serving the dual purpose of removing some gold from circulation (just as Waypoints and armor repairs do) and ensuring you cannot “powertrade”, something that was particularly rampant in Guild Wars 1. (Buy 15 ectos for 100k. Sell 14 ectos for 100k. Repeat.)

Similar to how the Gold/Gem ratio won’t let you profit with every little fluctuation, because gems sell for only about 80% what they cost to buy.

But, in the end, I don’t see as it particularly matters. Anything worth selling on the post will turn you a profit compared to dropping it on a vendor. (It is possible to make a loss if you sell for just over vendor price – the transaction losses mean you get less than you would from the vendor. Which is why I specified “anything worth selling”.)

Sure, it means that someone selling a precursor for 200 gold will have to pay 20 up front, and will only get 170, meaning that they only make a net profit of 150 gold… but at those levels, does 50 gold even MATTER?

All of this said, I will admit I think it’s a touch high… but then, for all I know, any less would make the powertrading I described possible. I also don’t know how much currency, total, is floating around in Tyria – which will affect item prices. If gold becomes too common, it devalues, which inflates item costs (because it takes more gold to reach the same value). This DEFINITELY happened in GW1; in its later years, gold was cheaper than dirt.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Up front, you have a 10% fee to post the item in the first place.
Then there’s a 15% “transaction tax”, so you get only 85% of what the buyer paid.

This results in essentially making only 75% of your asking price in net profit.

In the context of gameplay, it is a gold sink, as described above. Serving the dual purpose of removing some gold from circulation (just as Waypoints and armor repairs do) and ensuring you cannot “powertrade”, something that was particularly rampant in Guild Wars 1. (Buy 15 ectos for 100k. Sell 14 ectos for 100k. Repeat.)

All of this said, I will admit I think it’s a touch high… but then, for all I know, any less would make the powertrading I described possible. I also don’t know how much currency, total, is floating around in Tyria – which will affect item prices. If gold becomes too common, it devalues, which inflates item costs (because it takes more gold to reach the same value). This DEFINITELY happened in GW1; in its later years, gold was cheaper than dirt.

There is a 5% non-refundable listing fee, and a 10% “commission” loss if it sells, meaning an item sold loses a total of 15%, not 25% as you described. 15% is still just plain high IMO, because I stated a few times, I really cuts into the small profits a buyer pockets while scouring the market. Any item worth trading in cannot be bought at 50% cost, and more likely, if you are lucky, you can get it at 30% cost….IF you are lucky. In my experience with my spreadsheet that calculated, I often ended up with a total of 10-15% profit margin AFTER the 15% loss. I define an “item worth trading in” anything that has a lot of traffic, as it will buy and sell much faster (and that had AT LEAST a 10% profit margin after the 15% loss…again I used a spreadsheet for this…“used” because I got sick and kitten tired of dealing with idiots/trolls/ignorants who undercut the going rate)

Also, if you are buying 15 and selling 14 for the same cost, that is not really a power trade as far as I am concerned. That is a poor profit margin :P

BTW, I do have a public spreadsheet to help keep track of profits, so if anyone wants a link, PM me.

Think yourselves lucky you dont live in the UK. We pay 20% tax just for the fun of it.. Want to travel abroad – the tax is more than the airfare..

As for the game, its a simple mechanic to take gold out of the system and control flipping on std items.

Ighten Hill.5038:

Think yourselves lucky you dont live in the UK. We pay 20% tax just for the fun of it.. Want to travel abroad – the tax is more than the airfare..

As for the game, its a simple mechanic to take gold out of the system and control flipping on std items.

Would you like to trade places with me? I live in the US and pay nearly your taxes (about 43% of my wages, commission based, and I make under 100k a year), but my government still wants me to pay for all medical, health, dental, vision, etc too. :P. Maybe there aren’t enough people out there complaining about the sad state of how money is prioritized by the US government :P.

Also, bringing this topic back from the dead, I really don’t think it is reasonable to hold a game to real world expectancies/scenarios…and I really don’t think I need to start listing the reasons why, right?? Do I really want to escape the world of taxes (among other things) and come into a game and pay what seem like high taxes to have someone try to justify it by comparing it to the real world? NO! The last place I want to be reminded of the REAL world, and ESPECIALLY TAXES, is in a game :P. FML! hahahaha

As Rurik said many ages ago, there are 2 things you can expect in Tyria:

Death and Taxes.

Mandar.9813:

15% total taxes really sucks.

Welcome to Urop.
15% sales tax is actually pretty cheap over here.

And yeah it´s a Gold sink to get rid of all the wealth constantly flowing in from people and bots farming.
Judging from the rising gold-gem exchange price, sorely needed.

It’s just virtual money, why do they need gold sinks and taxes to control the economy

Waypoint costs, repair costs, trading post taxes, it’s just starting to feel like real life with the goverment trying to screw every penny they can out of us.

It’s not neccessary, it’s a game, and supposed to be fun.

Quebec taxes brah, Quebec taxes.

Mandar.9813:

Ighten Hill.5038:

Think yourselves lucky you dont live in the UK. We pay 20% tax just for the fun of it.. Want to travel abroad – the tax is more than the airfare..

As for the game, its a simple mechanic to take gold out of the system and control flipping on std items.

Would you like to trade places with me? I live in the US and pay nearly your taxes (about 43% of my wages, commission based, and I make under 100k a year), but my government still wants me to pay for all medical, health, dental, vision, etc too. :P. Maybe there aren’t enough people out there complaining about the sad state of how money is prioritized by the US government :P.

Also, bringing this topic back from the dead, I really don’t think it is reasonable to hold a game to real world expectancies/scenarios…and I really don’t think I need to start listing the reasons why, right?? Do I really want to escape the world of taxes (among other things) and come into a game and pay what seem like high taxes to have someone try to justify it by comparing it to the real world? NO! The last place I want to be reminded of the REAL world, and ESPECIALLY TAXES, is in a game :P. FML! hahahaha

It’s not even remotely comparable. In RL when you pay those taxes you at lleast have the hope that your money is used to pay teacher salaries(so your kids can have an education), fixing roads(so you dun need to repair your car every week or change a tire every other day) etc. In this game you know your money just goes into a black hole and will never be seen again(I played an awesome game with player-run “government” where taxes where not just deleted, but instead used to upgrade temples to make the nation stronger). And since smb up there decided that we dun need a reliable trade system, you are basically doomed to be at a loss, no matter what you do.

What if the tax was used for something?

Powerball style lottery in game!? That’d be cool.

Or maybe they could make taxes based on daily revenue or weekly revenue (ie you sell all your stuff but only collect the profit when the daily changes or collect 100% value but at the end of the week there’s an automatic deduction) – that way it scales so the lower people aren’t taxed as much. Or maybe it could just be an item by item system – after you sell past X amount, the amount raises.

TWMagimay.9057:

Mandar.9813:

Ighten Hill.5038:

Think yourselves lucky you dont live in the UK. We pay 20% tax just for the fun of it.. Want to travel abroad – the tax is more than the airfare..

As for the game, its a simple mechanic to take gold out of the system and control flipping on std items.

Would you like to trade places with me? I live in the US and pay nearly your taxes (about 43% of my wages, commission based, and I make under 100k a year), but my government still wants me to pay for all medical, health, dental, vision, etc too. :P. Maybe there aren’t enough people out there complaining about the sad state of how money is prioritized by the US government :P.

Also, bringing this topic back from the dead, I really don’t think it is reasonable to hold a game to real world expectancies/scenarios…and I really don’t think I need to start listing the reasons why, right?? Do I really want to escape the world of taxes (among other things) and come into a game and pay what seem like high taxes to have someone try to justify it by comparing it to the real world? NO! The last place I want to be reminded of the REAL world, and ESPECIALLY TAXES, is in a game :P. FML! hahahaha

It’s not even remotely comparable. In RL when you pay those taxes you at lleast have the hope that your money is used to pay teacher salaries(so your kids can have an education), fixing roads(so you dun need to repair your car every week or change a tire every other day) etc. In this game you know your money just goes into a black hole and will never be seen again(I played an awesome game with player-run “government” where taxes where not just deleted, but instead used to upgrade temples to make the nation stronger). And since smb up there decided that we dun need a reliable trade system, you are basically doomed to be at a loss, no matter what you do.

The important point is that the money is also appearing out of no where.

That ettin you just looted 10s from didn’t earn it by selling crafting materals to a centaur, who lost 10s to gain the mats. It appeared out of no where when you looted the corpse. Similarly there isn’t a finite amount of money to go around. Someone looting that centaur won’t have to get mats instead of silver, and if someone else comes along and kills the ettin later they won’t get nothing because it hasn’t had time to earn more money. If more people are out there killing and looting things, or they’re killing things faster it would just pour more and more money into the economy.

UNLESS there’s an equivilent system to regularly remove money from the system to keep it balanced.

You can’t really compare a virtual economy to a real one, but I’ve seen a few virtual ones with no gold sinks and trust me, it doesn’t really work. It ends up like UO 10 years ago (not sure if they’ve changed it since) with people selling fairly common items for hundreds of gold and anything actually worth having for millions. Which is do-able for those who have a lot of time to play because they’ve got all this money coming in and nothing else to spend it on, but it means new players and those with limited play-time are priced out of the market even more than in most games.

Danikat.8537:

The important point is that the money is also appearing out of no where.

That ettin you just looted 10s from didn’t earn it by selling crafting materals to a centaur, who lost 10s to gain the mats. It appeared out of no where when you looted the corpse. Similarly there isn’t a finite amount of money to go around. Someone looting that centaur won’t have to get mats instead of silver, and if someone else comes along and kills the ettin later they won’t get nothing because it hasn’t had time to earn more money. If more people are out there killing and looting things, or they’re killing things faster it would just pour more and more money into the economy.

UNLESS there’s an equivilent system to regularly remove money from the system to keep it balanced.

You can’t really compare a virtual economy to a real one, but I’ve seen a few virtual ones with no gold sinks and trust me, it doesn’t really work. It ends up like UO 10 years ago (not sure if they’ve changed it since) with people selling fairly common items for hundreds of gold and anything actually worth having for millions. Which is do-able for those who have a lot of time to play because they’ve got all this money coming in and nothing else to spend it on, but it means new players and those with limited play-time are priced out of the market even more than in most games.

There are gold sinks and gold sinks. People easily get over repair costs, travel costs, buying stuff from NPCs(the most epic gold sink I saw was an NPC selling lottery baggies, within 2 weeks more than half the gold was removed from the economy, because people really wanted to gamble for that 1 awesome item with 0.00001% drop rate) etc. But the TP is badly designed and this is why:
1. You basically get a fake price when selling an item. It’s says 2g and then your projected profit is noticeable less.
2. The tax is not reflected anywhere. It shows you a price and a listing fee. You’d expect your profit to be the price minus the fee. But it’s actually lower, again, noticeably so.
3. This actually bugs me the most. Items don;t expire. Ever. So, if today I enlist xxx item for 100g and in 2 weeks the price is 50g…I either have to accept that I just lost the listing fee and tax(which is not small on a 100g item) or keep that item in hopes that maybe…one day…price will be 100g again.
4. No trading system forces people into using the TP to avoid scamming(seriously, what were the devs thinking?!) and is literally setting you up to lose. If I have a precursor that I don’t need and it’s around the price of the precursor I do need…I can’t just trade A for B. I have to pay 20g+. For what? So I don’t get scammed. This is the first game I’ve ever seen that takes measures to make scamming easier instead of harder.

Lastly, as I said, I played a game where the tax money wasn’t “sunk”. And the economy was doing just fine with other gold sinks(repairs, special crystals to enter high lvl dungeons, build changing). Strangely enough, nobody was complaining about those… And it’s not like GW2 allows you to make massive amounts of gold out of thin air anyway….

PS: How on Earth do you know what etins do in their free time? Maybe they work hard for their loot xD

[i]

It’s just virtual money, why do they need gold sinks and taxes to control the economy

Waypoint costs, repair costs, trading post taxes, it’s just starting to feel like real life with the goverment trying to screw every penny they can out of us.

It’s not neccessary, it’s a game, and supposed to be fun.[/i]

Because then you get what GW1 had, where the value of the gold piece was ruined because just about everyone had hundreds of thousands of gold, and many people had scads of liquid assets (pink balls, pretty bracelets, you know the stuff).

Result: prices shoot up. And up. And up.

If people hoard gold, and it is not taken out of circulation, prices WILL inflate. Even in a virtual economy, certain economic principles hold true.

You can say it doesn’t matter BECAUSE it’s a virtual economy, and you can just earn more gold to buy things…. but then the game becomes a “job” – you are forcing yourself to repeat the most profitable things, rather than experience new or fun parts, in order to make the money to earn something. For someone who professes to play this game to get away from real economics, this sounds even worse than the system as it is.

2. The tax is not reflected anywhere. It shows you a price and a listing fee. You’d expect your profit to be the price minus the fee. But it’s actually lower, again, noticeably so.

You are told the expected profit. There’s a line for that near the upper right of the window. It tells you what you can expect to receive for the sale, after the Black Lion takes its cut.

Also, ettins get their loot by squishing people into paste and peeling the loose change from the puddle of organs. To an ettin, it is not hard work (most of the time – some of those humans have sharp objects or can make pretty fire).

Anrothan Aimhirghin.7381:

Sef.6918:

The war against the elder dragons aint cheap

my sides.. you have hurt them! lol

I have been left in the same boat, though I’m imagining Logan saying this.