Guild Wars 2

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss. The person can get use out of it, it might make a difference to them, the vendor is essentially destroying it. I would rather benefit my fellow players by supplying an item they may want.

I’ve thought about your side of the issue as well, and keep it in mind. I’ve been in your shoes before, trying to make some extra gol and finding it slow going because there is just not a very high demand for what you have to offer. But I’m prfectly fine with the fact that by offering goods at minimum prices it’ll strong arm others into also selling on the cheap. The seller doesn’t need the item they are trying to get rid of, any amount for it is a good amount. The buyer does need the item they’re buying, and cheaper allows them to afford it with higher probability.

That’s my logic anyway.

But to be constructive to your plight… I recommend you take a moment or twelve and look around the Trading Post listings… look at what kind of stuff is cheap, and what isn’t cheap. You can get an idea of how many listing of that Item are too, wich is very handy. Look around and find a few things that are in short supply and high demand that you think you can provide, then figure a way to provide it and … wait for it… profit.

I agree, kind of sick of taking a loss when i put stuff on TP. ANET should make the minimum price for stuff on the TP to be at like 5% more than the vendor value plus post cost.

While i agree with Ravn that i like selling stuff that i can’t use to other players that can use it rather then vendoring it, i just don’t want to make less money doing so. To somewhat avoid this i just stop putting everything in the TP except greens or higher, and vendor blues and whites since people seem to price greens a bit better.

Bradach.4913:

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

1st off, give the market a while to stabilize (let’s say a week or 2), right now everything is very much in flux, which makes it very hard to do anything on there.
Personally, I’ve started vendoring my basic Artificing products, because in general you’ll be making a loss after deducting the listing fee. Jewellery tends to have a small profit margin, but I’d rather recycle them to get the gems back and reuse those.

Once the market starts stabilizing, actual trading should become an option, right now I wouldn’t bother because it’s just too unstable.

There is too much loot being generated in game, and we can only use 1/3rd of the armor and maybe 1/4th of that has the right stats. So basically everyone is finding gear they do not need which floods the TP.

Why do people keep selling items so cheaply, even to the point where they make less than vendering the item? Because when they are out in the field it is much easier to sell it at the lowest possible price on the TP than run to a vender and junk items.

What really gets me is when a person sees an item for 10 silver for sale, then adds their item, but not at 9 silver and 99 copper, but really drops the price to 5 silver. Why do people, who post 20 of the same item, post it at 50% what the current market was asking? The only thing that will happen is the next person that tries to sell will be forced to go lower than them!

Ravnodaus.5130:

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss.

That would only make a sliver of sense if you would have said “Give a item to a person rather then vendor it”

You cannot put items on the TP any lower then the vendors price so they may as well buy them from a vendor and in turn the market economy would not be on itskitten because of your misguided reasoning.

The game just got out. Lots off people is still leveling thats why. it’s the same for all new MMO’S Lots of lowbies leveling, crafting, farming, Finding items. One thing arena net coud do (not sure if they just did) is to Limit the amounts of items you can put on TP like in Diablo3. Or just Change the whole loot table dropp rate that would be a huge waste of time and have a huge hit on crafting proffersions like (Armor’s,weapon’s)

There is an under-supply of gold in the game at the moment, (because nobody’s had a decent chance to build up a good supply of it yet) and an over-supply of certain crafting materials. You should do one or both of the following:

1) Focus on selling crafting materials that are rare enough that nobody is over-supplied, or finished products that are so in-demand that people will spend their small amounts of silver on them.
2) Earn silver yourself and buy materials at the same-as-vendor prices where you know they will eventually go up, then bank them to sell later when you can get a decent margin.

And yes, I agree that Arenanet should be waiving the fee or increasing the minimum price to include their fee for those situations when people are trying to sell items at the vendor cost. (like, say, wood)

Ari really explained the situation as I would have done. This is really the issue at hand. People have just stockpiled so many materials waiting for the TP to come up, and there’s just too much supply for the market to handle higher prices.

I’ve even noticed the whole 1c above the vendor price when the very tax of putting items on the auction house are 3-6c. So in fact, there are -hundreds- of people out there spending money to sell items.

I’d strongly suggest to just wait on TP’ing items that are being sold at ridiculously low prices. Eventually this stock will sell out, and people will begin to up the price.

There is just 1 global TP.
1 person putting item for “reasonable” price.
Next person putting same item for 1 copper less.

How long it takes, to get so low prices copper by copper ?
In WoW it might take a while .. but here ? with no stable economy ?

Lol seriously?

Perhaps if there are tons of people selling what you’re trying to sell at minimum price the items you got are, I don’t know junk?

Asking for an increase in the minimum price is just stupid. A minimum shouldn’t even exist. If somebody wants to sell stuff cheaper than what he can get for it from the vendor so be it, it’s his loss.

I don’t think you know how the economy works when you’re asking for crap like this. Increase in item price means you might make more from selling one item and then in turn have to pay just as much more to buy another item from the TP. We got a term for that, it’s called inflation and it’s bad.

What bothers me the most is not the greens or drops that are being sold for really cheap prices.

What bothers me is the rare and exotic items being sold for less than cost price.

Currently i’m trying to sell an exotic earring that costs 2.25 gold to make, and while i didn’t buy all the materials, 2.25g is the cost of the materials used if they were bought at the Trading Post at the time of item creation.

The trading post took 15s as a listing fee for this (selling for 2.9g), and if the item gets purchased, the TP will take an 8% commission from the profits, this effectively makes my profit 26.8 silver.

Then comes another person who also wants to sell the same item, so he listed for less than my price to sell faster, but this kept happening a few times until the item now sells for a low of 2.74 gold, which makes the profit for the item 13.08 silver, which is very small.

And the prices keep getting lower, and will keep getting lower as long as there’s people with no grasp on basic economics or appreciation for the effort put into the items they create, until it reaches a point where you’ll make more profit by selling the raw materials for that item which renders crafting useless.

First off, the 8% commission taken from the profits should go away, i didn’t pay a listing fee just to get more money taken away from my profits, it’s not like ANet’s doing anything with that commission.

Secondly, there should be some sort of supervision on the prices, not letting them drop below a certain point, like an equation or something to calculate the cost value of an item based on the material prices at the time of listing.

But at the moment, i see no real use of the trading post other than being a dump for people with full inventories.

Tirelin.3581:

RapidSausage.4620:

What bothers me the most is not the greens or drops that are being sold for really cheap prices.

What bothers me is the rare and exotic items being sold for less than cost price.

Currently i’m trying to sell an exotic earring that costs 2.25 gold to make, and while i didn’t buy all the materials, 2.25g is the cost of the materials used if they were bought at the Trading Post at the time of item creation.

The trading post took 15s as a listing fee for this (selling for 2.9g), and if the item gets purchased, the TP will take an 8% commission from the profits, this effectively makes my profit 26.8 silver.

Then comes another person who also wants to sell the same item, so he listed for less than my price to sell faster, but this kept happening a few times until the item now sells for a low of 2.74 gold, which makes the profit for the item 13.08 silver, which is very small.

And the prices keep getting lower, and will keep getting lower as long as there’s people with no grasp on basic economics or appreciation for the effort put into the items they create, until it reaches a point where you’ll make more profit by selling the raw materials for that item which renders crafting useless.

First off, the 8% commission taken from the profits should go away, i didn’t pay a listing fee just to get more money taken away from my profits, it’s not like ANet’s doing anything with that commission.

Secondly, there should be some sort of supervision on the prices, not letting them drop below a certain point, like an equation or something to calculate the cost value of an item based on the material prices at the time of listing.

But at the moment, i see no real use of the trading post other than being a dump for people with full inventories.

please, don’t talk about “grasp on basic economics” if you’re such a fool and simpleton. That thing is called dumping, and is quite normal for real world economy

fine, i won’t call it economics, i’ll call it simple logic.

Bradach.4913:

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

Trading Post inflation will happen over time when players have generated more gold. There’s no point selling products if no-one can afford them.

Considering Trading Post has been down since essentially the start, players have not been able to start the Trading Post inflation until later on. This is just my take on it though.

The problem here is that we can sell our stuff on the TP wherever we are!
People are too lazy to run to a merchant. It’s much easier to just sell it on the TP from wherever you are…

Anet should disable this, and make it so that you can only sell your stuff on the TP at the NPC…

psydrome.1468:

The problem here is that we can sell our stuff on the TP wherever we are!
People are too lazy to run to a merchant. It’s much easier to just sell it on the TP from wherever you are…

Anet should disable this, and make it so that you can only sell your stuff on the TP at the NPC…

i agree to this.
but don’t disable viewing the trading post though, so at least we can assess the value of items to decided whether to vendor or salvage or trade.

RapidSausage.4620:

psydrome.1468:

The problem here is that we can sell our stuff on the TP wherever we are!
People are too lazy to run to a merchant. It’s much easier to just sell it on the TP from wherever you are…

Anet should disable this, and make it so that you can only sell your stuff on the TP at the NPC…

i agree to this.
but don’t disable viewing the trading post though, so at least we can assess the value of items to decided whether to vendor or salvage or trade.

I Agree! When is Anet going to open their suggestion thread? I have alot of other suggestions!

psydrome.1468:

The problem here is that we can sell our stuff on the TP wherever we are!
People are too lazy to run to a merchant. It’s much easier to just sell it on the TP from wherever you are…

Anet should disable this, and make it so that you can only sell your stuff on the TP at the NPC…

Nope, ANet should not mess with TP in any way — if people want to sell loosing gold by all means let them do it, TP will stabilize as game gets older (little longer as it global tho).

I never put anything on TP for the price I think is ‘fair’ regardless on whats currently on offer, if do not sell … well I can always use salvaged mats for something.

psydrome.1468:

RapidSausage.4620:

psydrome.1468:

The problem here is that we can sell our stuff on the TP wherever we are!
People are too lazy to run to a merchant. It’s much easier to just sell it on the TP from wherever you are…

Anet should disable this, and make it so that you can only sell your stuff on the TP at the NPC…

i agree to this.
but don’t disable viewing the trading post though, so at least we can assess the value of items to decided whether to vendor or salvage or trade.

I Agree! When is Anet going to open their suggestion thread? I have alot of other suggestions!

This is actually quite a good idea.

Oh dear, the capitalists.

High prices generate high prices.

If the prices would be higher, yes, you would make “more” money, just as you would have to pay more.

What changes? The fee cuts get higher and drops get worthless, thats it, good job.

I rather get only 10 silver for a item, and pay also only 10 silver for what i need, while the gold and item drops i get from monsters still matter, than getting 10 gold for a item, while i have to pay also 10 gold for what i want, while it’s completely useless to actually play the game, because random drops are useless.

Good luck in a fair and social economy, now you can proceed in kitten up the real world economy.

RapidSausage.4620:

Tirelin.3581:

RapidSausage.4620:

What bothers me the most is not the greens or drops that are being sold for really cheap prices.

What bothers me is the rare and exotic items being sold for less than cost price.

Currently i’m trying to sell an exotic earring that costs 2.25 gold to make, and while i didn’t buy all the materials, 2.25g is the cost of the materials used if they were bought at the Trading Post at the time of item creation.

The trading post took 15s as a listing fee for this (selling for 2.9g), and if the item gets purchased, the TP will take an 8% commission from the profits, this effectively makes my profit 26.8 silver.

Then comes another person who also wants to sell the same item, so he listed for less than my price to sell faster, but this kept happening a few times until the item now sells for a low of 2.74 gold, which makes the profit for the item 13.08 silver, which is very small.

And the prices keep getting lower, and will keep getting lower as long as there’s people with no grasp on basic economics or appreciation for the effort put into the items they create, until it reaches a point where you’ll make more profit by selling the raw materials for that item which renders crafting useless.

First off, the 8% commission taken from the profits should go away, i didn’t pay a listing fee just to get more money taken away from my profits, it’s not like ANet’s doing anything with that commission.

Secondly, there should be some sort of supervision on the prices, not letting them drop below a certain point, like an equation or something to calculate the cost value of an item based on the material prices at the time of listing.

But at the moment, i see no real use of the trading post other than being a dump for people with full inventories.

please, don’t talk about “grasp on basic economics” if you’re such a fool and simpleton. That thing is called dumping, and is quite normal for real world economy

fine, i won’t call it economics, i’ll call it simple logic.

Still wrong.

Selling all the materials would’ve made you 2.25*0.85 = 1.91g. So for somebody that farmed the mats to make that ring he could’ve sold the mats seperately for 1.91g profit or craft the ring and make 2.33g profit. Now why would he go for the first option?

Not to mention there’s also the benefit of having only 1 item for sale instead of 5 different small pieces. Especially when you’re used to games where you got a limited amount of auction space and are used to rather sell one item instead of five pieces.

Freakiie.8940:

RapidSausage.4620:

Tirelin.3581:

RapidSausage.4620:

What bothers me the most is not the greens or drops that are being sold for really cheap prices.

What bothers me is the rare and exotic items being sold for less than cost price.

Currently i’m trying to sell an exotic earring that costs 2.25 gold to make, and while i didn’t buy all the materials, 2.25g is the cost of the materials used if they were bought at the Trading Post at the time of item creation.

The trading post took 15s as a listing fee for this (selling for 2.9g), and if the item gets purchased, the TP will take an 8% commission from the profits, this effectively makes my profit 26.8 silver.

Then comes another person who also wants to sell the same item, so he listed for less than my price to sell faster, but this kept happening a few times until the item now sells for a low of 2.74 gold, which makes the profit for the item 13.08 silver, which is very small.

And the prices keep getting lower, and will keep getting lower as long as there’s people with no grasp on basic economics or appreciation for the effort put into the items they create, until it reaches a point where you’ll make more profit by selling the raw materials for that item which renders crafting useless.

First off, the 8% commission taken from the profits should go away, i didn’t pay a listing fee just to get more money taken away from my profits, it’s not like ANet’s doing anything with that commission.

Secondly, there should be some sort of supervision on the prices, not letting them drop below a certain point, like an equation or something to calculate the cost value of an item based on the material prices at the time of listing.

But at the moment, i see no real use of the trading post other than being a dump for people with full inventories.

please, don’t talk about “grasp on basic economics” if you’re such a fool and simpleton. That thing is called dumping, and is quite normal for real world economy

fine, i won’t call it economics, i’ll call it simple logic.

Still wrong.

Selling all the materials would’ve made you 2.25*0.85 = 1.91g. So for somebody that farmed the mats to make that ring he could’ve sold the mats seperately for 1.91g profit or craft the ring and make 2.33g profit. Now why would he go for the first option?

Not to mention there’s also the benefit of having only 1 item for sale instead of 5 different small pieces. Especially when you’re used to games where you got a limited amount of auction space and are used to rather sell one item instead of five pieces.

i said that prices will keep going down, until the item costs the same as the price of the materials, and crafting would be pointless.

I just yday found out you can actually sell them to the vendors. Tried the regular merchant a couple of times and it never showed under “sell” tab. Then figured that I couldn’t sell at all and that the TP is the only choice.
(didn’t know you could sell to the Armor and Weapon merchants obviously)

I’m sure that I’m not the only one like this. Give it time and people will realize that they are actually getting a lower amount of money from TP than from a vendor and it will work out towards what you wish.

the fact that the Trading Post is global between servers makes it unstable… i hope at least that it will become stable at some point …

anyway at the moment the Trading Post disencourage crafting… at least if they added an option the crafting items to carry a brand of its creator it would give an other dimension and happiness at crafting
for the moment gather is awesome, storage beyond expected but crafting needs kinda grind and headache to find new recipes in order to lvl up, and fills you with useless items which you cant sell them even to players ..! and trading is sad cause everything looks worthless …

I started a post about this a few days ago, but I totally agree. I mean, on one hand I have been able to buy materials super cheap, but on the other it really sucks to lose money for items that should have more value.

I kinda agree that the trading post should be available only at trade houses/npc’s. I didn’t even think about it, but I can totally see how people would be just dumping thier extra inventory into the TP.

If it sells, great, if not, you can always recover it later, but it either way basically gives you an unlimited inventory on the road. I think the idea of limiting the actual listing, and perhaps buying until you’re at a physical location would help curb this.

I have more issues with the TP than this, but I have a related question…why is it in MMO’s there are those players that list low cost items at the most redicilously high price? I never understood that.

I agree, it’s a good thing?

Smackjack.5071:

Ravnodaus.5130:

Personally, I would rather sell an item to a person than vendor it. Even if I take a very small loss.

That would only make a sliver of sense if you would have said “Give a item to a person rather then vendor it”

You cannot put items on the TP any lower then the vendors price so they may as well buy them from a vendor and in turn the market economy would not be on itskitten because of your misguided reasoning.

Aww, that’s adorable, you’re trying to look clever!

If I gather a bunch of wood, and there are 1000+ wood listed at vendor price+1, I can list that on the TP at the same vendor price+1. But if I do, I still have to pay the listing fee, and the commision when it sells… That’s called a loss. Very small one, but I would have made a little bit more coin simply vendoring the stuff.

And have you found a vendor that sells wood? Maybe you could direct all of us to this mystery vendor so that we could all stop chopping it down ourselves.

Not only do vendors not sell the stuff people ussually post for sale, but even if they did, the “vendor price” we are talking about is the “sell to vendor price”, not the “buy from vendor price”. Those are very different numbers.

My reasoning is very sound, you just don’t like it. It comes from a place foriegn to you, where personal gain takes a backseat to unrewarded generosity. I still have enough in-game currency, my gear is current, I have bags, I can afford to use waypoints and respec frequently, it’s not even that big of a deal to not make much money from the TP. There are many sources of it.

Thing is though, your real problem… it’s not that other people are selling for less than you, it’s that you don’t have the patience to sell it at the price you want for it. Eventually, maybe hours, days, weeks…eventually, someone will come along and buy yours. Especially if it’s a reasonable price, or even a slightly higher than reasonable price. It will just take a while, but it’s not like there are expiration times on listings. Set it and forget it. You’ll get the gold for it eventually. Patience.

Asum.4960:

Oh dear, the capitalists.

High prices generate high prices.

If the prices would be higher, yes, you would make “more” money, just as you would have to pay more.

What changes? The fee cuts get higher and drops get worthless, thats it, good job.

I rather get only 10 silver for a item, and pay also only 10 silver for what i need, while the gold and item drops i get from monsters still matter, than getting 10 gold for a item, while i have to pay also 10 gold for what i want, while it’s completely useless to actually play the game, because random drops are useless.

Good luck in a fair and social economy, now you can proceed in kitten up the real world economy.

Amen.

I don’t think selling mats for vendor price+1c is a problem, that is only market responding to oversupply.
Main problem is that people still don’t know how TP actually works, how much is it’s cut.
It took me 3-4 sales to realize that besides 5% listing fee there is additional 10% seling fee.
Players that are selling gathered mats for 1C over vendor are making less money on TP than they would if they sold it to vendors, but crafters that are buying those mats and selling it bought mats +1C are actualy loosing money with every sale.

in a nutshell: if you are a crafter that is selling on TP, recalculate your costs coz you are probably loosing money.

Freakiie.8940:

Lol seriously?

Perhaps if there are tons of people selling what you’re trying to sell at minimum price the items you got are, I don’t know junk?

Asking for an increase in the minimum price is just stupid. A minimum shouldn’t even exist. If somebody wants to sell stuff cheaper than what he can get for it from the vendor so be it, it’s his loss.

I don’t think you know how the economy works when you’re asking for crap like this. Increase in item price means you might make more from selling one item and then in turn have to pay just as much more to buy another item from the TP. We got a term for that, it’s called inflation and it’s bad.

I don’t think you understand how an economy works. Have you ever heard of price floors and ceilings?

It’s really just a case of huge supply — it’s a global market, and it’s huge. Most items are oversupplied. Artificially propping up TP prices to subsidize the trader set in the game is not the way to go. The supply will drop as the leveling phase of the game drops, but to be honest, the money supply is so limited in the game, it’s doubtful that the TP will ever be the in-game currency El Dorado that it has been in other MMOs.

Asum.4960:

Oh dear, the capitalists.

High prices generate high prices.

If the prices would be higher, yes, you would make “more” money, just as you would have to pay more.

What changes? The fee cuts get higher and drops get worthless, thats it, good job.

I rather get only 10 silver for a item, and pay also only 10 silver for what i need, while the gold and item drops i get from monsters still matter, than getting 10 gold for a item, while i have to pay also 10 gold for what i want, while it’s completely useless to actually play the game, because random drops are useless.

Good luck in a fair and social economy, now you can proceed in kitten up the real world economy.

I understand where you are coming from, but you are not thinking everything through here. The main problem I’m facing is saving enough gold to buy in game items from vendors. I had to save up a gold piece to buy my profession’s next training manual. The problem is that I saved it selling items for mere copper pieces, because no one would buy them for what I felt they were worth. If there was a slightly higher price floor on items I could have saved it up a lot faster. Sure, if you make things cost more you pay more. However, not all things will go up in price. Making certain things, that are essential, easier to obtain. I think the minimum for some items that I was selling for 84 copper should be somewhere like a 2 silver minimum. If nothing is done, I’ll get over it and enjoy the game. I’m just making a mere suggestion.

there ARE items that sell for substantially more than the vendor price

so the proper conclusion isn’t that the tp is broken or people are stupid, but that the vendor price floor must be set higher than supply/demand’s equilibrium

Azhrarn.6735:

1st off, give the market a while to stabilize (let’s say a week or 2), right now everything is very much in flux, which makes it very hard to do anything on there.
…
Once the market starts stabilizing, actual trading should become an option, right now I wouldn’t bother because it’s just too unstable.

Due to the TP being down for the first week of release, I don’t see it stabilizing at all without ANet direct intervention to adjust it. It may require them to purchase at least 50-75% of the current supply and freely expire all purchase orders.

Even then, not sure how much of an impact it will have. Not having the TP during the first week severely damaged the economy. In our guild alone, I saw many guild members that weren’t interested in crafting (as they usually just purchase from the TP), pick up crafting out of necessity. So, now there are an increased number of crafters, which effectively removed buyers.

In summary, a huge bulk of the players are now level 40-80, and have adapted to being self-sustaining. We have a global economy with ever increasing supply, extreme low demand, and discouraged crafters. It’s definitely going to require more than a few weeks to stabilize and definitely will require ANet’s intervention.

Economics 101: You cannot lose money on something you obtained for free. Anything you sell it for = profit. Low-ballers understand this which is why they low-ball. Those 1-5c transactions really add up over a long period of time. Ever heard of scalping? Look it up, its a stock trading term.

Frankly being forced to sell at vendor prices is the wrong move! If people are under-cutting others that is the nature of the business time to deal with it.

ANet needs to say out of the market and let it adjust itself, which it will do that. Once you start mucking with the TP, just because of some whiners then you will destroy what makes the Trading Post fun for other people. Forcing people to sell at vendor prices sets a precedence of catering to those that “feel picked on” and whine about it.

When the less knowledgeable people realize finally realize that the TP takes an additional 10% from them when their items sell, then prices will go up.

I like it. it’s a buyers market.

Please dear god do something about this.. My suggestion would be to have a TP for each server. That way supply dips way down(nearly 6 million soft wood is available currently) and demand goes way up creating higher profits for all!

If this were a real market, I would agree with low amount of restrictions, but the goal of a game is fun, and I am having no fun playing in the market when I can’t make any decent profit. Sure the higher level stuff is less effected by this, but that leaves this part of the game only fun for max levelers and such.

Play the game, not the market..

Masterpyro.4310:

Please dear god do something about this.. My suggestion would be to have a TP for each server. That way supply dips way down(nearly 6 million soft wood is available currently) and demand goes way up creating higher profits for all!

If this were a real market, I would agree with low amount of restrictions, but the goal of a game is fun, and I am having no fun playing in the market when I can’t make any decent profit. Sure the higher level stuff is less effected by this, but that leaves this part of the game only fun for max levelers and such.

Profit goes to the smart and industrious. The trading post isn’t supposed to be there for your pleasure, its there to buy and sell items. There is no need to make it fun, only functional. Have you ever considered investing in gems? They work like a real-world futures market. Buy up gems with hard-earned silver, wait for new market releases, prices for gems will skyrocket due to demand, and you pocket a lot of cash. Course that is more long-term. I would expect new releases within a few months though.

Other strategies involve dungeon hunting for rare drops or crafting really high level stuff. You could scour the market for things that are underpriced, buy it up, and sell it at a more normal price. There are lots of things you can do if your interest is actually in playing the market.

If you want to make easy money that is another can of worms. The trading post isnt there to make ppl easy money, its there to move goods around. If you want to make money with it you have to put in the work. If its not fun just don’t do it and make money via other methods.

Yogo.7520:

Play the game, not the market..

Some of us are really into business and the market is a really intriguing part of the game

Its not so much that I want easy money, but iron is going for 5 copper right now, 1/4 the price of copper! Sure its basic supply and demand, more people need copper to level their early crafting so the demand is higher than iron right now, but it still doesnt make sense seeing as iron is a better metal than copper. Platinum IIRC is also very close to the same price as iron as well, which is complete garbage.

Supply and demand isn’t the only issue here, its people not understanding their real life time that they spent gathering materials is worth a helluva lot more than 5 copper a piece. Children are only interested in seeing that their item sells first, so they put it up for the lower than the last guy. Eventually everything will be vendor cost.

To the other guy that replied, you do have some valid points which I intend to test out, its just lame being 80 and I have 20 silver because I had to either spend my time not leveling and grinding mats (only to be slowed by anti-botting code), or the option which I chose: buy the hard to get mats. I am finally level 400 tailor so at least I dont have to waste mats any more but im getting into exotics now and apparently I have to salvage exotics to get ecto to make my own exotics and bleh. I dont have that kind of money :/

I fail to see where crafting the items are costing people money. if you a patient enought to find the materials it should cost you little to nothing. I must admit I am still a low level crafter, but the only thing it costs me to craft is time. time spent gathering the materials.

If I want to sell something for 50 silver… i should be able to list it for 50 silver. It may of costed someone 1 gp to BUY the materials to make it…. but it didn’t cost me anything. So I have a net profit of 35 silver +or – after all the fees get taken out. All it cost me was time. Stop spending money for materials. You will not have a loss.

The other issue is the game hasn’t been out long enough for money to be generated in siginificant quanity. Hence things will be cheap cause people don’t have the coin to pay the outragious prices that it will soon become.

In most other MMO’s I have played the prices in the AH arekitten I am the guy that will severly undercut everyone, to ensure my stuff gets sold. It’s good buisness. I could care less if someone else dosent sell. Why should I. It seems the copper pinchers can’t stand not getting what they want for their items, and they are complaining about undercutting. Well how about what I want for my items?

It’s really hard for the producers(crafters) to make huge profit from this game because the way the market is at now. everyone, i mean literally everyone is a manufacturer. So if you are playing the market. well good luck. because it’s harder than playing the game IMO.

Bradach.4913:

I hate that people are selling items for so cheap on TP. I can hardly make any money there thanks to low-ballers. They could sell their items for the same price at a shop but go to the TP. That just does not make any sense to me. Is there any chance that the minimum amount to sell items for goes up? Or am I stuck with getting next to nothing for most of the items I sell?

You can’t sell items on the TP that are equal to or less than what the merchant will give you for them. Also, your items are only worth was others will pay for them.

Kailthir.6384:

I fail to see where crafting the items are costing people money. if you a patient enought to find the materials it should cost you little to nothing. I must admit I am still a low level crafter, but the only thing it costs me to craft is time. time spent gathering the materials.

If I want to sell something for 50 silver… i should be able to list it for 50 silver. It may of costed someone 1 gp to BUY the materials to make it…. but it didn’t cost me anything. So I have a net profit of 35 silver +or – after all the fees get taken out. All it cost me was time. Stop spending money for materials. You will not have a loss.

The other issue is the game hasn’t been out long enough for money to be generated in siginificant quanity. Hence things will be cheap cause people don’t have the coin to pay the outragious prices that it will soon become.

In most other MMO’s I have played the prices in the AH arekitten I am the guy that will severly undercut everyone, to ensure my stuff gets sold. It’s good buisness. I could care less if someone else dosent sell. Why should I. It seems the copper pinchers can’t stand not getting what they want for their items, and they are complaining about undercutting. Well how about what I want for my items?

Agreed

Kailthir.6384:

I fail to see where crafting the items are costing people money. if you a patient enought to find the materials it should cost you little to nothing. I must admit I am still a low level crafter, but the only thing it costs me to craft is time. time spent gathering the materials.

If I want to sell something for 50 silver… i should be able to list it for 50 silver. It may of costed someone 1 gp to BUY the materials to make it…. but it didn’t cost me anything. So I have a net profit of 35 silver +or – after all the fees get taken out. All it cost me was time. Stop spending money for materials. You will not have a loss.

The other issue is the game hasn’t been out long enough for money to be generated in siginificant quanity. Hence things will be cheap cause people don’t have the coin to pay the outragious prices that it will soon become.

In most other MMO’s I have played the prices in the AH arekitten I am the guy that will severly undercut everyone, to ensure my stuff gets sold. It’s good buisness. I could care less if someone else dosent sell. Why should I. It seems the copper pinchers can’t stand not getting what they want for their items, and they are complaining about undercutting. Well how about what I want for my items?

Walmart does it all the time, seems to work for them.

I’ll start this out with my primary concern:

The post-transaction tax is undocumented, in-game.

As the majority of traders realize that they are losing their earnings to a hidden tax, the number of sale listings will dry up. The listing fee is enough of a hit already to scare people out of trading (see the above statement about the problem of continuous front running). This may drive up prices, and mop up any “excess” gold generated within the game. At the same time, I find it quite shifty to clearly state the smaller tax, then make no reference to the larger one. This has the potential to really blow up in ArenaNET’s face, because…

Gems can be purchased with real dollars, then converted to gold.

The ability to use real dollars to create gold is the biggest inflationary driver for the game. We’re not in a closed economic system. There is an “invisible magic hand” that generates wealth out of thin Tyrian air, in much the same way the Federal Reserve does.

Since there is no ability to cash-out gems back to real dollars, increasing vendor costs, severe taxation and a continuously dropping exchange rate are the methods that can be used to slow inflation.

I would be very surprised if ArenaNET was not aware of this right from the start. Listing and post-transaction taxes result in real balance sheet earnings for the company, because of the gems-to-gold exchange system.

As the taxation drives sellers out of the system and increases prices, late joining players will be more likely to make gem purchases with real dollars to help them catch up with those of us who were here right from the start, which wasn’t possible with Guild Wars 1.

Decreasing exchange rates (demand) and increasing item costs due to sell side risk mean increased real dollar value for each in-game copper piece, which I am estimating is meant to balance out real dollar purchase inflation.

The real problem, though, is that ArenaNET is, without clear documentation, taking away gold (copper, whatever) that has been purchased with real dollars. It’s one thing for the customer to be a bad trader, but it’s another thing to secretly siphon profits out of their trades.

Users get banned for finding and using exploits within the game (which is great, I am with this). How does it work when a real (not in game) vendor is, and I say HOPEFULLY unintentionally, exploiting its customers misunderstanding of the trading system to take an undocumented profit?

SLIDING EXCHANGE RATES

From the beta events, I prepared by doing my gems-to-gold exchange at the first few minutes of pre-launch, predicting that the rate would only go down. At 9pm PDT on August 24th, the exchange rate opened at 30 silver per gem. Each time the trading post went up, the rate went down. We see it settling now at around 18-19. Predictions for the future?

ONE MORE THING:

This market opens the opportunity for a wealthy (or well stocked) player to short sell. As a previous poster mentioned, there are many times when you will see a sell order posted at significantly less than the market rate. In a slow moving commodity, this extreme front running can have that cascading effect on decreasing the price and drive it down quite quickly. Far from this being a “stupid trader” trying to get their deal through fast, the seller may use this technique to hammer down the price of a product, then purchase a large allotment at the now significantly reduced price. As long as the short seller can eat up all of the low prices quickly, they can then drive the market back up and sell at the “normal” price, once they have scared sellers out of the commodity.

I see the tax as an unfair burden on the novice trader and a potential windfall for the astute one, who understands market dynamics through real world experience.

BTW, I also somewhat agree with the poster who stated that the lack of a stable trading post for the first few weeks of this game has the potential to crash the game’s economy.. BUT, since it is a game, ArenaNET does have the ability (and has done so in BWE’s) to manipulate it however they see fit to correct it. How good a job they do, well that’s up to John Smith now, isn’t it? Hopefully he realizes, by now, how incorrect his BWE economy infographic was.

I’m enjoying the cheap prices… i have Armorsmithing, well-leveled, yet i still turn to the TP for greens and runes… i offer no less than 50% the vend price though.

Item NPC sells for 1s, Seller sells at 10s, buyers bidding for 1s 1c, i’ll offer 2s.

It seems like a fine deal for me and if anyone sells to me, effectively its a fine deal for them. I’m happy. Seller’s [assumed] happy. ANet’s happy with their commission. Haters… well, you know what they do.

I hear ANet hired an economist… wonder what he’s planning.

So, out of curiosity, what does everyone think the main factor is here?

Are the drops / availability too frequent? Was it the lack of TP for the first while? Are people not understanding the concept of the TP? Are people using it as an extended inventory?

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

So, out of curiosity, what does everyone think the main factor is here?

I think its the same “greed” exhibited in the OP. There is a “money rush” and the time-value of money is too good to pass up.

Remember, under-cutters do so with the assumption that they’ll make the money NOW. Its like saying “Hey, you’re greedy, i’m greedy, i’ll at least grab my money ASAP so i know at least some of my greed will be satisfied rather than being left hanging like those selling higher”.

I’m actually monitoring the price movement of some items, trying to look for an opening to strike.

If they are “effectively” losing money compared to NPC selling, its a benefit to some other player and the seller paid a holding cost to use an overhead storage. A gold sink is a gold sink. Only thing i’d probably like to see is higher tax if the items have to travel across worlds thus giving priority buying to local goods, maybe something related to WvW.