Guild Wars 2

Why can we no longer just trade between players, like we can STILL DO in GW1? What happened? Did ArenaNet decide this was player friendly?

Why do we need trading for?

What can Trading do that TP can’t?

Discounting the map spam chat and scamming possibilities.

runeblade.7514:

What can Trading do that TP can’t?

What can restaurants do that take-away food can’t?

Direct trading lets players save 15% in the cost of transactions, allows human interaction with other players, allows crafters to suggest items that casual players might not even know about, and which might be useful to them, improves the RP aspects of GW2 (which was advertised with the line “Putting the RPG back into MMORPG”), allows sellers to link items so that buyers can actually preview them, and so on.

Most MMOs have at least 3 forms of trading (face to face, CoD mail, and a marketplace / AH / TP).

It’s strange (to say the least) that a game trying to be as “social” as GW2 doesn’t have any built-in support for direct trading between players (or, at the very least, CoD mail), and instead tries to push everyone towards a totally impersonal (and broken – still no preview after 8 months of public access!) alternative like the trading post.

Account.9832:

Direct trading lets players save 15% in the cost of transactions,

Bypassing a gold sink means more inflation. Thus it is a bad thing for GW2 as a whole.

I don’t see how bypassing the gold sink can be considered a good thing if you are thinking about anyone but yourself.

allows human interaction with other players,

In theory, yes. In practice this interaction is mostly something like:
– Seller in map chat: WTS x for y gold
– Buyer in whisper: I’ll buy
– Trade happens
– Both players say thanks.

That’s it. No meaningful interaction while the trade spam makes meaningful interaction in map chat much more difficult.

allows crafters to suggest items that casual players might not even know about,

I never saw that in my years playing GW1. Why would GW2 be any different ?

and which might be useful to them, improves the RP aspects of GW2 (which was advertised with the line “Putting the RPG back into MMORPG”),

Be more specific. How does flooding map chat with trade spam help RP aspects ?

allows sellers to link items so that buyers can actually preview them, and so on.

Finally an actual advantage. However it is also something which can also be done with the Trading Post. Therefore it doesn’t count.

Most MMOs have at least 3 forms of trading (face to face, CoD mail, and a marketplace / AH / TP).

So what ?
Just because it’s popular doesn’t make it good.

ANET chose to not include a trade window or CoD mail. They have said why in previous threads. If you want to know why, go find those threads. All I’ll say about ANET’s arguments is that they apply equally to a trade window and CoD mail.

I generally ignore ANET’s arguments in favor of one thing I have seen: With no trade window, the trade spam in GW2 is vastly less than any other MMO. That alone justifies removing it, though other arguments do have plenty of merit.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Bypassing a gold sink means more inflation.

Inflation is far more easily controlled by limiting the amount of money entering the game (i.e., the gold rewards from dungeons, events, renown hearts, etc.). Using the TP is entirely optional. If you want to reduce the amount of gold in circulation, you simply tweak the game to generate less gold in the first place.

The fee on the TP is there to prevent people from simply using it as temporary storage. Direct trading cannot be used for that, so the problem wouldn’t exist.

this interaction is mostly something like:
– Seller in map chat: WTS x for y gold
– Buyer in whisper: I’ll buy
– Trade happens
– Both players say thanks.

That’s it. No meaningful interaction

Thanks for summing up all possible human contact in four lines.

I guess now we know it’s absolutely impossible that one might add the other to his or her friends list, that the buyer might ask the seller if he recommends some other item, that the seller might spontaneously say “I have something else which might be better for your class”, that the buyer might ask the seller for some item he doesn’t have, prompting him to go look for the recipe (and maybe discover something new about the game or his own crafting profession in the process), or anything like that.

Nope, none of that can possibly happen and in fact never does in any other game…

the trade spam makes meaningful interaction in map chat much more difficult.

Yes, it would certainly make it harder to track all the “LF1M FOTM 27” lines. And it’s not like it would be possible to have a separate trade channel or anything like that.

allows crafters to suggest items that casual players might not even know about,

I never saw that in my years playing GW1. Why would GW2 be any different ?

I saw it (and did it) all the time. I have no idea why GW2 would be any different for you (other than the fact that it’s a different game, with a lot more players, etc.), but I also see no difference why it should be different for me. We’ll call that a tie.

and which might be useful to them, improves the RP aspects of GW2 (which was advertised with the line “Putting the RPG back into MMORPG”),

Be more specific. How does flooding map chat with trade spam help RP aspects ?

“Hear ye, hear ye! Pierre Van Hoelbrak, the great norn chef, has come to Divinity’s Reach! For a limited time only he will be offering his services for free near the cooking station. Bring your ingredients and watch as he turns them into works of art. Tips appreciated, a norn’s gotta drink.”

Specific enough for you?

allows sellers to link items so that buyers can actually preview them, and so on.

also something which can also be done with the Trading Post. Therefore it doesn’t count.

Really, you can preview on the trading post? You must be running a different version of GW2.

Most MMOs have at least 3 forms of trading (face to face, CoD mail, and a marketplace / AH / TP).

So what ? Just because it’s popular doesn’t make it good.

You have it backwards. It’s not good because it’s popular; it’s popular because it’s good.

And anyway, you do realise that when discussing the desirability of a feature, being “popular” is the same as being “good”, right…? That’s kind of the definition of “popular” – something that a lot of people like.

You probably meant to say “common” instead of “popular”, but there was some freudian slippage (i.e., you know that it is popular).

Shame this forum doesn’t support polls, or we could see just how popular it would be (and the same with the ability to mail items to your own alts).

Inflation is far more easily controlled by limiting the amount of money entering the game (i.e., the gold rewards from dungeons, events, renown hearts, etc.). Using the TP is entirely optional. If you want to reduce the amount of gold in circulation, you simply tweak the game to generate less gold in the first place.

Except that the trading post gold sink is the only gold sink that will eat more gold as inflation happens (as inflation rises, the tax take does also, slowing inflation until the tax take is eating more gold than is being created. Then we have deflation and cycling around an equilibrium). Meaning it is the only goldsink that can stop inflation.
Remove that sink and the GW2 economy will be left in one of three situations:
– More gold is coming in. Thus inflation.
– Less gold is coming in that going out. So players are losing money. Until they stop using goldsinks and we move back to the previous scenario.
– Somehow ANET has perfectly balanced the rates of gold creation and destruction. This balancing needs to be exact. Any variation is a problem. Any balance change will break the equilibrium. Thus I don’t consider this option viable.

The fee on the TP is there to prevent people from simply using it as temporary storage. Direct trading cannot be used for that, so the problem wouldn’t exist.

I can’t see that as being anything more than a side effect of the tax.
Which games actually have people storing items in the trading system ?

Thanks for summing up all possible human contact in four lines.

I’m only summing up every single trade I’ve had in GW1 after I realized that almost nobody was willing to haggle. Each line of my summary represents a single message, except the last one which is two. The only thing that ever happened differently is one player stating their location.

…
Nope, none of that can possibly happen and in fact never does in any other game…

Sure, it can happen. But I’ve never seen it, so it must be extremely rare at best.
That’s your problem. You’re looking at the best cases and ignoring the rest.

Yes, it would certainly make it harder to track all the “LF1M FOTM 27” lines. And it’s not like it would be possible to have a separate trade channel or anything like that.

FOTM group formation is another problem that needs solving with some form of dungeon finder.

As for a trade channel, spammers will know that using a channel that everyone views will make their spam much more effective. So how do you plan to keep them in the trade channel ?
They will bypass any chat filter setup, and ANET doesn’t have enough moderators to keep gold sellers in check, let alone trade spam.

“Hear ye, hear ye! Pierre Van Hoelbrak, the great norn chef, has come to Divinity’s Reach! For a limited time only he will be offering his services for free near the cooking station. Bring your ingredients and watch as he turns them into works of art. Tips appreciated, a norn’s gotta drink.”

Specific enough for you?

Then watch all the people jump on him calling him a scammer. After all, he can’t craft without the ingredients. So the person giving him the ingredients will have to hand them over in one trade window, then he hands back the finished product in another. Which is something that can be done with mail trades.

So could you give me an example that can actually rely on the security of a trade window ?

You also have the problem of the roleplayer being drowned out by the spammers.

Really, you can preview on the trading post? You must be running a different version of GW2.

Ok, I did make a mistake with that. But I see no reason why previewing is impossible within the trading post. It’s just something ANET hasn’t coded in.

You have it backwards. It’s not good because it’s popular; it’s popular because it’s good.

The popularity is irrelevant. I haven’t seen you say anything to convince me that the benefits of a trade window (limited to RP) outweigh the problems it brings (trade spam, avoiding gold sinks, etc)

since it’s still possible to trade by mail, i don’t see how actually implement a real trade could be raise the trade spam…
no one in my server is spamming for trade, but i bet you can still ask a person to sell you something and do it by mail right?
i noticed it’s almost a must to link in the chat box the loot you found in a chest, this reason alone would allow me if interested to whisper to that person and ask for a trade… so what is the problem to add a feature for people who ask it for the sake of role playing?

and besides, i like people role playing around me ^^

Amadan.9451:

since it’s still possible to trade by mail, i don’t see how actually implement a real trade could be raise the trade spam…

Have you ever seen an MMO with trade spam as low as the trade spam in GW2 ?
If you have, I’d like to know about it. If not, it must be that GW2 does something to reduce the spam. If it’s not the lack of a trade window, what is the cause ?

As for why I believe the lack of a trade window to be the case:

Trading by mail has a very obvious risk of the first player sending their part of the trade, then the second player not sending the part they promised. That risk makes a lot of people very reluctant to trade because they don’t trust the other person. They just see it as far two risky. Especially when there is always someone willing to call any trade spam a scam. The spammers quickly learn that they aren’t going to get any bites. So they stop wasting their time.

A proper trade window requires both players to lock in their offers and transfers them simultaneously. So the risk of the second person not sending their goods is gone. Even if you don’t trust the person you are trading with, you can still safely trade with them because you do trust the trade window.

Since trading with people you don’t trust is made safe, people will respond to trade spam that looks like a good deal. So the spammer sees the payoff from the spam in the form of the trade happening. So they think that spamming is a good use of their time*, meaning they will engage in trade spam.

*Even when it isn’t. For example GW1 has trader NPCs to assist in trading specific goods. Since their is a difference between the traders buy and sell prices, players would sell items at a price between them and earn more gold for that item than they would if they just sold to the trader. However selling to a trader takes seconds, finding a buyer takes time. Just selling the item to the trader and spending the time questing would consistently earn you more gold than spending the time looking for a buyer.
Yet I regularly saw people trying to sell items via trade spam that they could just sell on the trader.

so what is the problem to add a feature for people who ask it for the sake of role playing?

Because it will harm everyone.

seems to me you have a point! i didn’t think it that way

none of the arguments have made the one i would have pointed out first (their arguments are still great but this is a game and a game should be fun so the bottom line is…) i dont like spamming to trade, i dont like haggling, and i dont like sitting around waiting for buyers. this is a game i want to have fun. with the trading post aside from all the other many benifits, it spares me the hassles of trading and lets me post my items from anywhere. and if someone wants to buy it or i see and offer i think is reasonable i take it instantly. no wtt for half an hour fruitless or not. its done andi can do a dungeon or something fun in the mean time. as for a temporary storage. i do have a lot of items up for sale and could use it for storrage. but im not a cheap kitten and have bought extra bank slots as well as my personal guild bank. if someone wants to then let them. though i could only see them mass storing unvaluable items (why i cant imagine) in it due to the tax or a potential buyer snaking a valuable if overpriced item.

Account.9832:

Inflation is far more easily controlled by limiting the amount of money entering the game (i.e., the gold rewards from dungeons, events, renown hearts, etc.). Using the TP is entirely optional. If you want to reduce the amount of gold in circulation, you simply tweak the game to generate less gold in the first place.

LOL. You must not be very familiar with game-economy then.

Limiting currency-generation doesn’t change the fact that the flow of currency is infinite.

Infinite gold-circulation will always lead to inflation in any and every game.
There is no game where limitation the better method. It would be like saying sandbags are good enough defense against floods in a very rainy region – It’s not good enough.

The proper way to limit is through proper gold-sinks. Much like how cities need a good drainage system.
There are many games that don’t have enough of them, and gap between merchants and newbies widens to catastrophic proportions.

If you want trading in this game, you’ll have to agree to built-in taxing when exchanging gold. Something along this sort of line:

• Less then 10 silver = 5% tax
• Less then 25 silver = 10% tax
• 25 silver or more = 15% tax
• 1G or more = 20% tax
• 5G or more = 25% tax
• 10G or more = 33% tax

And don’t bother saying that’s too high. I’m being reasonable as to what I think is enough to keep the economy in-check.

Exchanges of 1G or more would need to be taxed more greatly then the trading post, in order to keep merchant-savvy players from trying to push prices up higher.
While we can allow trades of silver to stay at the same tax.

In case you haven’t figured it out.

This IS meant to keep players from getting rich. It’s meant to keep fortunes low, so that some level of economic equality can be maintained.
In a game where currency is always being generated – Economic deflation is impossible and something to be aimed for.

Account.9832:

runeblade.7514:

What can Trading do that TP can’t?

What can restaurants do that take-away food can’t?

Direct trading lets players save 15% in the cost of transactions, allows human interaction with other players, allows crafters to suggest items that casual players might not even know about, and which might be useful to them, improves the RP aspects of GW2 (which was advertised with the line “Putting the RPG back into MMORPG”), allows sellers to link items so that buyers can actually preview them, and so on.

Most MMOs have at least 3 forms of trading (face to face, CoD mail, and a marketplace / AH / TP).

It’s strange (to say the least) that a game trying to be as “social” as GW2 doesn’t have any built-in support for direct trading between players (or, at the very least, CoD mail), and instead tries to push everyone towards a totally impersonal (and broken – still no preview after 8 months of public access!) alternative like the trading post.

They don’t want you to save gold that’s why wp cost so much too because if you need go ld you’ll buy gems which gives them money

DarkVengeance.5042:

They don’t want you to save gold that’s why wp cost so much too because if you need go ld you’ll buy gems which gives them money

Or save up gold and buy more stuff off the Trading Post, causing prices to go up.
Everyone’s probably seen it happen with certain popular items already! :P

Example:

Unidentified Dyes – They’ll be 10 silver each one moment with maybe 50~100 in supply.
Then an hour later, there’s 2000+ of them selling for 13 silver each.

That’s the sure sign of a bunch of merchants trying to play the market.
They bought all the cheap dyes, and tried to sell high. Even if they don’t sell all their product, all the new dyes from random players will be priced 1 or 2silvers higher.

If tax were removed, people would generate more income and start doing this with things like exotic gear or rare crafting items, until we’re paying 10gold for a single Destroyer Lodestone.
And no, this isn’t a slipper-slope argument. It’s recognition of history.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Which games actually have people storing items in the trading system ?

Which games have a trading post or auction house with no listing fee? Show me one that does that and I’ll show you a game where any smart player uses the trading post as storage.

To use the obvious example: WoW allows players to trade directly with each other (with CoD or a fully-featured trade window – even allows enchantments, etc., to be performed directly on the window), and does not charge a fee on transactions. And yet still has a listing fee at the Auction House. Why?

Because, if it didn’t, people would use the AH as infinite storage.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

So could you give me an example that can actually rely on the security of a trade window ?

I could. Thousands, even.

I won’t, though, because it’s pointless and I have far better things to do with my time.

You obviously think that human contact has no place in MMO trading, and either have never played other MMOs or never bothered to make proper use of their trading system(s). I think it does, and have.

If and when this forum supports polls, we’ll see which view is more popular.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Infinite gold-circulation will always lead to inflation in any and every game.

Actually, no. Circulation never leads to inflation (on the contrary; because some people will always accumulate gold, removing it from circulation, and increasing the value of the remaining currency).

What leads to inflation is the injection of more currency into the economy.

If the game had a proper closed system (where gold is never generated; where merchants keep track of how much gold they got and send that gold to other merchants, etc.), there would be no inflation. That would, obviously, be incredibly complex to code, and would put a lot of extra load on the server, so the economy is greatly simplified, with a lot of gold injection and removal.

To keep the amount of currency in circulation more or less constant (or constant per capita), all a game needs to do is adjust the gold injection to match the removal, or vice versa.

For inflation control purposes it doesn’t really matter where the gold is added or removed, but the choice of mechanism does have an influence on the game economy as a whole.

For example, the 15% fee that GW2’s TP charges is enough to make crafting unprofitable in 99% of the cases. The only profitable items are raw materials (especially rare ones) or drops (which essentially cost nothing, and are mainly a matter of chance). Without that fee, crafters would be able to make a profit (as you can confirm by checking GW2Spidy, for example).

However, if there was no fee, you could simply put all your items for sale for 10000 gold – ensuring that no one would buy them – and then take them out of the TP whenever you wanted to use them. And no one would buy bank tabs (or bag slots, etc.), which are one of Arena Net’s sources of income.

DreamOfACure.4382:

If you want trading in this game, you’ll have to agree to built-in taxing when exchanging gold. Something along this sort of line:
Less then 10 silver = 5% tax
Less then 25 silver = 10% tax
25 silver or more = 15% tax
1G or more = 20% tax
5G or more = 25% tax
10G or more = 33% tax

No, you wouldn’t. Trading doesn’t generate any gold, and therefore never increases inflation.

Besides, it’s already possible to trade at the TP and there is no increasing fee (it’s a flat 15% fee, in case you hadn’t noticed). Survival is not an issue in MMOs; there’s no need for “social justice”.

Your proposed system also has the obvious flaw that players could make two transactions of 20s instead of a single transaction of 40s and save 5%. All that would lead to would be a lot of smaller transactions, increasing server load.

Anyway, the idea is wrong to begin with, so no point in discussing the (pretty obvious) flaws of its implementation (or the difference between “then” and “than”). Inter-player trade never causes inflation because it doesn’t generate currency.

Sales tax / VAT can be used as a gold sink (at the expense of the economy’s vitality as a whole – and crafting in particular), but it’s perfectly possible to put that sink somewhere other than trading. For example:

• Crafting materials obtainable only from NPCs (thread, runes of holding, elonian wine, etc.).
• Expensive armour, pets or other items available only from NPCs (ex., cultural armour).
• In-game gambling (ex., lottery tickets, roulette).
• Cost of armour repairs.
• Quests, titles or achievements requiring players to pay NPCs.
• Recipes bought from NPCs.
• Etc..

Lots of MMOs (in fact, nearly every other MMO) supports direct trading between players and doesn’t charge a fee. Even GW2 allows players to trade directly, without deducting a fee (using mail); the only thing it lacks is a safe mechanism to do so (i.e., a CoD system or trade window, where the transaction is done in a single step, and accepting the item automatically sends the money to the seller).

Your policy is killing me! I -hate- shopping! Hate it, hate it, hate it. So I paid someone to shop for me. And he bought gear for me on the TP. And, he could not mail it to me. What gives?

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