Guild Wars 2

Hahahaha OP you poor soul, you think that those players listing the items don’t know that they’re undercutting the NPCs? They do! And that’s the truly sad part. When I look at prices for my green crafted weapons I just salvage ‘em, they’re simply not worth selling unless they’re yellow. Even with the yellow weapons I see people selling them for less than the cost of making them which is just utterly daft.

Everything i want to say has been said.

I’m for the “TP is working as intended and doesn’t need to be changed.”

This i think could benefit the game though would be:

1. HIGHER TAX ON NOT-SAME-WORLD GOODS with a “total cost” message before purchases are made. This should help with hedging some of the over-supply.
2. NO LIMIT TO SELLING PRICE. i mean literally, let people sell 1s stuff for 1c if they want, let scavengers make the money.
3. SELL LISTING LIMIT AND EXPIRATION, since i’m sure treating the TP as an extended bank is by no means intended.

My reasoning is simple: “for as long as good green item sellers (and other such rares) price higher than vendor+1c, i know the TP is working as intended.”

Title is misleading, its not a thread about how the TP works, its about how players should be using it.

Thread title made me think you had a suggested improvement for the functionality of the TP.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Mayam.8976:

Wow, I um…. okay lets condense this further. Forget the monopoly, that was worst case. Let me try this; Should it be difficult convincing people that: charging more (in line with the market price) = drumroll more profit! That kind of argument kind of resolves it self.

Higher prices means you will have to make more to afford stuff you want to buy. So all this extra profit you think you’re going to make is not going to amount to much at all if you actually play the game and buy items off the TP. And I think you’re confused about what “market price” means.

There is a mountain of historical evidence that arbitrarily fiddling with prices in a real economy rarely turns out well. You’re only considering the selling end of the trade, you aren’t considering the buying end. Inflation is bad, especially because when the prices go up, our enemies don’t drop more money or loot to compensate for it.

Assuming I turn right around and spend my profit, if I put it in my pocket (or a large enough percentage of my profit) then I come out ahead, that’s part of the only point I’m trying to make. Anyone who wants to pocket more cash than they began the transaction with is better served in most cases just going to a vendor the way things now stand.

I don’t want to get into a debate about the meta-economy on a global, national, or historic level. I’m just trying to focus on a discussion about people selling items on the Guild Wars 2 video game’s Trading Post for a price below what an NPC vendor will buy them. It’s forcing many of us who would like to use the player item auctioning mechanism to turn a profit of in-game currency (as has been the common function of similar auctioning markets in many other MMOs) to either take a financial loss, thus making the exercise pointless, or sell the item to a vendor, effectively “destroying” it.

We don’t need to turn this into a heated debate or an e-kitten comparison on an intellectual level. My simple, and only point is that the market is effectively rendered useless for the point of making money when prices actually undercut what a vendor would offer.

And unless I’m wrong, market price, in the vernacular at least, means the average price the market will bare (I like to believe I have enough command over the English language to work that one out); i.e/ if a purveyor were to offer say gas at double what all his local competitors do he is well outside of the “market price” and no one will buy it. Yeah sure, the market will likely correct it’s self in such a blatantly obvious case. There are but two ways for the market to react to this, self correct or cease to be. I just don’t want to see people start to not even consider posting items (which many I’ve talked to have decided on until it does correct) because it pretty much nullifies the point of the market existing.

The fact still remains that the Trading Post is but a couple weeks old and we’ve all had a huge head start to stock pile items and mats. I’m pinning my hopes on that rectifying the gap. It’s just unsettling to see people actually post at a loss, that’s just plain, well we all know what it is. Hopefully it is just a case of taking the loss to empty bags on the fly without having to head to town to do so. At least I hope that’s what it is.

Save the insults folks. Let’s just sit back and count on the market catching up to the stock piled merch. No one is an idiot here for pointing out that many item’s prices are set at a loss on the TP currently. It is just a statement of fact and many have pointed out the cause several times over in this thread and why we can at least hope it is likely to correct over time.

It’s just my hope that the community en masse will decide to up their pricing into the range of profit. Hopefully correcting the discrepancy sooner rather than later. I guess it’s just a matter of time though. We’ll see.

Market price is the price that the an item is offered in the marketplace. So you were confused when you said “charging more (in line with the market price)”. Market price right now for certain items is 1c over vendor cost. Unless I was confused and misunderstood what you were trying to say there.

The way that ANet has set up the trading post and the number of people participating in the market have made it a good simulation of a real economy. If you don’t want to talk about how real economies work, then you can’t be convinced that what your proposing will be bad for the game economy.

Mayam.8976:

My simple, and only point is that the market is effectively rendered useless for the point of making money when prices actually undercut what a vendor would offer.

You’re wrong. I’m making plenty of money off of the TP and I guarantee you that anyone else that understands supply and demand is doing as well as I am. Here’s a hint: when you see 500 units of something listed by 1 seller you don’t try to compete on price. When you see 5 items listed by 5 sellers, there may be pricing room there. There may not be though. It could be there’s only 5 on the market because nobody wants that item.

You have to keep in mind that people can buy their way into the economy with real money. So when you look at that pile of jute scraps and want to sell it for 25s, go look at the gem exchange rate and see if you feel it’s worth the equivalent in real money. I’ve found converting GW prices into real currency is an easier way to value items than comparing them to the vendor price. In other games I just used the going rate the gold spammers were advertising.

You also want to keep in mind that people can convert their gold into gems and buy items that you can’t offer on the TP. Ok I’ll stop there because I was about to get all intellectual on you again. Sorry, I’m an Engineer and I like understanding how complex systems work.

Good news! I just noticed at some point they have in fact changed a selling parameter requiring one to list an item at least above the price a vendor would purchase it for. I guess Anet caught on to this and realized they an extremely undervalued in-game currency would not be as conducive to their micro-trans market or who knows maybe they just wanted to put the spurs to the market to make up for lost time when we were all stockpiling! Either way I think it will be heading in the right direction now. Glad I checked the TP today wewt!

It’s not just your server OP, I’m on Gunnar’s Hold and it’s exactly the same. I’ve reached the point now where I don’t even use the Trading Post. For the week (and more) that it wasn’t working after release I saved lots of level 15-25 greens. They had a vendor price of between 30-60 copper but I thought “I’ll get a silver each for these easy once the TP opens.” No such luck. People are idiots. They’re listing a green with a vendor price of 58c on the TP for 58 copper, LOSING 4c due to the service charge.

Now you have to list items at least 1c higher than vendor price. Nothing has changed. They’re listing a green with a vendor price of 58 copper for 59 copper at the TP, still losing 3c on the service charge. I just vendor everything, including stacks of 250 wood which I don’t use. I’ll check the TP again in a few weeks to see if people have wised up a bit.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Market price is the price that the an item is offered in the marketplace. So you were confused when you said “charging more (in line with the market price)”. Market price right now for certain items is 1c over vendor cost. Unless I was confused and misunderstood what you were trying to say there.

The way that ANet has set up the trading post and the number of people participating in the market have made it a good simulation of a real economy. If you don’t want to talk about how real economies work, then you can’t be convinced that what your proposing will be bad for the game economy.

Mayam.8976:

My simple, and only point is that the market is effectively rendered useless for the point of making money when prices actually undercut what a vendor would offer.

You’re wrong. I’m making plenty of money off of the TP and I guarantee you that anyone else that understands supply and demand is doing as well as I am. Here’s a hint: when you see 500 units of something listed by 1 seller you don’t try to compete on price. When you see 5 items listed by 5 sellers, there may be pricing room there. There may not be though. It could be there’s only 5 on the market because nobody wants that item.

You have to keep in mind that people can buy their way into the economy with real money. So when you look at that pile of jute scraps and want to sell it for 25s, go look at the gem exchange rate and see if you feel it’s worth the equivalent in real money. I’ve found converting GW prices into real currency is an easier way to value items than comparing them to the vendor price. In other games I just used the going rate the gold spammers were advertising.

You also want to keep in mind that people can convert their gold into gems and buy items that you can’t offer on the TP. Ok I’ll stop there because I was about to get all intellectual on you again. Sorry, I’m an Engineer and I like understanding how complex systems work.

Ok seriously, we can all relax now. Anet took some action toward upping the “market price” or whatever I should be calling it. I think it was just a flooded market from the couple weeks without a TP. I’m sure some were making money, that was never my point. The topic began to shift this way and that as this mat does well but these don’t. I was just speaking in generalities about the TP carrying items that would produce more cash for the salesman by effectively “destroying” them from the game world.

I’m not an accountant, physicist or engineer, hell I hate gambling just because of the math involved ;P, and I’ve always despised higher math but I can balance my checking account and handle what my career does call for. All I knew was that selling on the AH gave me less profit than selling to a vendor and that’s before you take out the 15% service fee, and this didn’t seem “healthy” to me.

Now if we could just do something about my items with better stats but poopier graphics….

I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I checked and a sword in my inventory has a vendor price of 1s 14c. I can list it for 1s 15c with a listing cost of 6c. So I can still choose to make less than vendoring it.

People undercutting the vendor price is only a problem if people stop putting items on the TP and there’s a shortage of items available for trade. Then prices go up. Then more people sell instead of vendor and prices go down.

Just leave the TP as is – for items that truly have a greater demand then supply prices will go up. If items sell at vendor, then… Guess what, they are likely vendor trash! The color on the items name won’t change that fact. If no one wants it, it isnt worth anything. So just vendor it.

As for all the crafter bemoaning that they cannot turn a profit… Umm, its like that in many mmos, “leveling-up” crafting items won’t churn a profit because the demand is for mats, not for what those mats become. Once you hit max crafting, there will doubtless be some demand for certain rarer items.

That said, if you truly want to play the TP and make a profit, you can do it. Just be smarter about what you are searching for and what you want to sell. I’ve done it before, and made a small profit, but have not put much time into it because its not the more enjoyable part of the game for me.