Guild Wars 2

How do these posts directly relate to the Trading Company?

Mathemagician.1836:

The motivation for my idea is that there is already a precedent protecting the user from selling something at below vendor pricing. Clearly ANet wants to provide some protection for the seller.

I absolutely agree. I think they recognized that there was going to be a lot of ignorance out there about how a trading post such as theirs works… not to mention the fact they had to create a price floor SOMEWHERE, which is always the vendor price of goods in MMOs. I can see an argument being made this may be different in Eve… but I am unsure about vendor pricing there and how it may affect the economy at large.

It just seems to me that they did it in the most obvious way: without considering their own price “taxes.”

You really think that nobody recognized that this would create a gold sink as price sunk to < 1.15 x vendor price? Nobody? Ok. I disagree.

For a game that’s supposed to be streamlined and skill based, it occurred to me as being counter to the game’s goal. There’s no “skill” in punching a number into a calculator to see if you’ll actually profit on it, and why should I need to waste my time checking every value against the calculator?

You’re lazy and you want the effort of profit to be ANet’s responsibility. I don’t see any other reason.

What they’ve done is built in a trap option into the game, and then obscured it in two ways:
1) by not making the 10% selling fee “abundantly” clear and,
2) by providing a false safety net by not allowing you to sell at below vendor value, but it does allow you to sell at below vendor value after taxes.

1. If I recall correctly… millions of people played WoW without the AH specifically stating their profit or loss, although addons certainly could. I was aware there would be fees on the TP from previous MMO experience but I don’t remember that information not being available before launch of GW2.

2. It isn’t a false safety net. It’s a price floor so they have a baseline to value everything in the economy. It also eradicates the possibility that someone will have an effectively infinite stream of profit without any risk by reselling something to a vendor. ANet doesn’t want that, you don’t want that, I don’t want that. Nobody should want that kind of exploiting. However, by allowing people to sell at any price greater than the vendor price they are allowing a gold sink to exist along with giving people the freedom to sell at a loss if they so desire.

Introducing a higher floor price is only going to serve to increase prices across the board via inflation and this does not solve the original “problem” you’ve introduced.

I will admit there IS an argument to be made in the (extremely rare, from my experience) case that in the field, away from all vendors (including completed hearts), that your inventory is full and you have nothing to salvage and no collectibles to deposit (I bet you like this lazy option!), that you would consider posting to the trading post at below value.

Depositing collectibles is convenient but if I didn’t have to do that I’d have to visit town more often. I’d accept it as part of the gameplay but that isn’t how it is so I definitely enjoy it! Regardless, people can play how they want to a certain extent.

In light of such a case, then I think the calculation should be built in. That is, it already pops up a message that says “you can’t sell for below vendor cost,” it could just as easily say “after posting and selling fees, you will earn less money than you would if you sold this to an NPC, do you wish to continue?”

Why does their responsibility extend this far? Those price floors are to stop exploits and create a baseline for the economy, not to do all the work for you. :P

This highlights the trap and informs the market to check out the “mysterious” selling fee.

ANet’s responsibility isn’t to force you to profit or to lose. It’s to provide you the mechanism to make responsible or irresponsible choices and then let you do it. If you sell at a loss that is your choice – you shouldn’t be forced into the decision one way or another.

Responding to you has me wondering how much of “protecting the seller” played into their decision making processes, though. That remains unclear.

keelaunaw.3285:

Soutalgon.3827:

Really, can you guys do something about it? Rounded up its currently $5 for every 1g you want through gems.

exactly. i bought 1600 gems the other day, checked the exchange rate, a lil over 4g. so twenty bucks for 4g.

heres the skinny for the schlub off the street:
i have played a few f2p games, most arent very graphically appealing as much as this (and i know this isnt a f2p game im comparing economies), but when it comes down to money and what you get for it that makes a big difference in whether or not you keep players. i can go to, say, eq2, and buy a permanent flaming whatever mount for less than $15 in their currency. here in gw2, to buy the racial shoulder armor, ONE PIECE, would cost me about $100, would have to exchange gems for gold, then get it.

i doubt i will need any more gems. that 1600 i got was a 1x purchase. and i certainly wont go to a gold farmer. so this is what will happen; either the gold becomes at least somewhat easier to get in this game (then jack up the price of that gear by more gold, keep it hard to get), or it becomes overrun by gold farmers and bots and there will be no one left to give a kitten how cool and innovative it could have been. thats a fact boys and girls, its happened before.

In 2 days of gameplay I could have made that 4g on my level 65 Ranger and saved myself $20.

I must be doing something different that allows me to be successful in this game. I think it’s patience.

DarkSider.1079:

This is a double edge blade here, increase the gold people buy and more people are going to take advantage of spending real money on the game (which does provide some real advantages for gear/weapon etc buying) but not to the point that it inbalances the game. The other side of it is seeing the constant spam of chinese gold farmers selling 4-5x more gold for the same price. Granted some of it may be legit/illegit attained, it gets rid of the incentive for players wanting to legimately purchase gold/gems from anet versus 3rd party. I’m not advocating buying chinese gold, as I wouldn’t risk my account being banned, but about $5 for 1 gold (4k gem pack for $50) is a bit ridiculous. When you figure in at lvl 80 waypoints and armor repair goes way up, that cost doesn’t go far.

I can make 1g in less than one day. Why on earth would I pay real money for that? Oof. Makes no sense.

Solution to devalue some of it? Offer gem deals, such as 50% off sales or double the gems sales. During that time people would purchase more and feel their actual money and time was more valuable. Of course this affects some of the gold2gem and gem2gold exchange, but the market itself balances out over time.

You already have the solution – it’s called patience.

Actually the only thing I am looking for is for the TP to be useful and not be used as a garbage bin for people too lazy or too busy to locate a vendor.

You may disagree with other people’s playing styles but your judgment isn’t going to change anything because people will continue to do this. Another solution must be found and you may not like the answer but such is life – alter your perception.

Right now it is useless for selling crafted items or random drops. When more money is made vendoring these items than actually trying to sell them on the TP, this makes crafting worthless.

You are in a market where there is more supply than demand. Of course crafting is going to be “worthless” in comparison to where there is more demand than supply.

What exactly were you expecting right after the initial release of an MMO?

Your drops are only worth vendor price? Then vendor them. They aren’t going to net you any more profit on the TP so stop beating your head against the wall.

Tyler Cole.4210:

It’s an issue we have on our list and we’re working on a fix for it.

Woot, thanks. Any ETA?

keelaunaw.3285:

no. this situation makes people buy from gold farmers, which gets more accounts hacked and banned, which makes anet put more people on the ‘hacked accts’ jobs, which takes away from devs to remove bugs, which takes away from the bot removal team cuz they take gear from events we need to sell on tp, to have a half assed chance to make gold in the first place. anet is creating this problem, we are just dealing with it the best we can.

Nice slippery slope there.

People buying from gold farmers is their own problem. The solution is to have more patience or risk willing to get banned/hacked. shrug

keelaunaw.3285:

Dishconnected.8360:

Shayde.2564:

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

And then outside sellers would undercut them again. Now what?

by then gold farmers would have to sell gold so cheap it wouldnt be worth their time, and not many complaints by the players feeling the need to go to them. THATS what.

If someone is complaining about having to go to gold sellers… that is their problem, not mine. If they are taking that risk that is of their own accord. They want to take the risk for the reward then do it. No crying whe the banhammer strikes.

I agree that 3rd party gold selling needs to be controlled as ANet wants that revenue… the means by which they are going to accomplish this is up to them. They are not going to willingly cut off their nose to spite their face by reducing their revenue stream from sales they already make unless it can be justified that move is actually going to be profitable.

As they aren’t doing it, they have either decided it isn’t profitable to do so, they haven’t decided/are in the process of doing it or haven’t thought of it at all/are not making any moves. I doubt the latter.

This post hands down takes the cake for the most pretentious response yet and I’ll tell you why.

Risingashes.8694:

This is a strawman you’ve created, no one suggested that 10,000 were gathered, but this disgust you’re leveling at traders is unwarranted. Traders give people money who ask for it and provide goods to those who ask for them. All three parties are satisfied.

I am with you here.

With no trader the seller would sit with goods and no money and the buyer would sit with money but no goods. Everyone’s unhappy.

The trader in this game is called the Black Lion Trading Post. You’re trying to replace that and profit off of it. This isn’t novel or noble of you.

Why the extreme negativity, and how can you possibly claim that a trader does not provide liquidity- all a trader does is provide the definition of liquidity. They profit, sure, but what else do you think the trader should be motivated by? Love of their fellow man- grow up.

Given this condescending response it’d be easy to see why anyone would respond to you negatively. The TP provides the function you are trying to pick up in your noble quest to slay the windmill but you said it yourself – your motivation is profit and nothing else.

They buy goods off sellers and sell goods to buyers. How horrible, these monsters, to trick people using a completely open system- competing with every single player of the game. How can they live with themselves?

By rationalizing their selfishness? Guilt is assuaged then but only temporarily.

Me and my filthy ideas, wanting to benefit the fat cats, siphoning money from the proletariat. How dare I. Manipulation, I say. Tricks and lies. Offering goods for sale, and buying goods offered- magic and witchcraft.

The only magic and witchcraft here is how you managed to get so high up on that horse!

In BWE1 the limit was 10000 and I’m sure a lot of you remember how insufficient even that was back when the economy hadn’t yet settled.

But now the 250 limit is a joke. It’s clearly not a technical issue, so someone at ANet must have thought that this was a good idea- it’s not.

All the 250 limit does it cause excess order spamming by high frequency traders and causes RSI.

Does anyone out there actually think the 250 artificial limit is a good idea? Why?

So there’s your original post…

I didn’t think of it in any terms until now, actually. It wasn’t an issue. It was probably a programmatic decision as the cap for goods in a stack is 250 so they used the same module for the TP.

I think the onus isn’t on us to prove it is a good idea since you started out the thread insinuating that ANet is full of sadists. How about you convince us of that instead?

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Yes, but it’s not just server capacity, it’s one of Anet’s ways to control the market without dictating prices to people. As well as to control artificial inflation.

Ugh. Server capacity? While it may factor here I don’t see that we’re having performance problems with the TP database any longer. I’m sure ANet’s DBAs know more about this, though.

This is about keeping people engaged in the market so they are buying and selling goods. For people who only have lower amounts of goods to sell, larger amounts are intimidating. Do you honestly think many people really sell copper ore on the TP anymore?

Your responses make me itch inside. People will use the TP because… it’s… there…
If people aren’t honestly selling copper ore on the TP….. then who is? What are you saying?!

if you feel like getting your money a month later or never depending upon the circumstance (Copper Ore)- that’s your choice. seriously, who would want to compete with a listing of 10,000 by 1 person? They already under cut any price that’s over 1,250+ items listed for many of the profitable items.

ME! That person listed copper ore at once price, ON PURPOSE, 40 times to get 10,000 supply up. And I’m going to come right behind him with my 90 and undercut him by 1c. :P

I feel People don’t quite understand how the trading post operates with sellers/buyers. I believe a large portion don’t even realize there is a 10% sales tax for example. For them the typical line of thought for most people is that it’s first in – first out.

It’s supposed to be but it isn’t. :\

By having it sit in stacks of 250 – each one is counted as a seller at least giving the illusion that there is multiple people selling. This is healthy as to players they will see that there is multiple sellers and not just 1. So they are more likely to post at that price rather than undercut. Will they? some will. Not all. Of course there will always be under-cutters.

What? No. One person selling is one person selling. Where is your evidence that each 250 stack counts as a different seller? Something you will learn in your studies is that this is absolutely TERRIBLE database design, never mind coding it in the software… you are introducing extra variables, data points that are going to cause massive performance hits and for absolutely no realization in value.

What purpose would it serve ANet to cause Player A selling 250 X to be calculated as Player A AND B if they are selling 500 X? It doesn’t serve a purpose and it causes unnecessary storage problems as you cause insakittenwth in the data table.

Person A sells X, and X probably has no limit nor should it. The only difference is Person A can only add 250 to X at a time.

You want to make TP easier on yourself since you traffic a lot of goods, but you fail to realize the potential consequences on the market. If you don’t believe the amount of goods posted will negatively affect the health of the economy and thus your profit margins – that is up to you. I believe they will. There is a very good reason why Arena Net did it.

It isn’t going to negatively impact the economy in my opinion. I think it will definitely hasten price discovery as people DASH to undercut someone foolish enough to post 10,000 of anything in this economy. I would impact someone like the OP also but that’s the risk they take.

Perhaps you should ask yourself why they did it when they originally had it so high? They certainly don’t do things for the hell of it. There’s a reason/motive behind it we might never know. I feel it’s directly related to keeping the economy healthy and fit as possible while giving players as much freedom as possible in terms of pricing.

I agree in terms of keeping the economy healthy – it causes someone trying to game any particular good to have to put in more effort.

Say OP wants to buy up 10,000 of something and then resell them for profit simply because they can? Or because they are bored? Well… it slows that process down. How much? Not really. I can purchase 10,000 of an item in probably about 30 seconds if I had the gold to. I have no reason to do that, though.

Now that I think about it, I really only see that cap as prohibiting one particular person from being a market mover because it takes more and more time to purchase and sell their wares.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

Side Note -

I also have a few observations about the market ever since it came up after they fixed the exploits and fixed the other problems.

I no longer believe the trading post is world wide and I believe it’s divided by region or by clusters of servers. As a programmer and server admin with some experience with Android, C++, Website Designing, Databases and a little Server Administration – there is very little reason for me to think the trading post is worldwide. I totally admit – I am just over a year from graduating with a Bach degree in Technology Management with minors in Leadership Studies and Business Administration. I do have Associates in Computer Technology with a focus towards Server administration. Does this mean my opinion worth any more than anyone else? Nope. I’m just stating why I think the way I do about this subject and where I’m coming from/thought flow.

I say this because there is a distinct lack of resources that we saw when the trading post was up during the launch. And by that I mean, the crap load of copper and other resources. Thousands upon thousands of it. Much like butter and logs etc are now but those aren’t selling.There is not simply enough buyers and sellers on the markets to justify it’s still worldwide.

If it was still world wide – we would have saw an inflow of absurd amounts of resources as people leveled up there characters but we haven’t. We’ve only seen thousands of resources but not tens of thousands which an very active population of over a million should be able to easily do on a daily basis. Even with the bots right now – certain crafting items have very few items listed in it. I highly doubt everyone is using that huge amount of resources produced by the active population.

Another reason why I say this is that with the world population, there would be more back and forth going on in the market place for prices as people would constantly jockey for best selling/buying price. Right now, it’s kind-of too smooth selling for the supposed amount of people.

---

important note —-——————————————
It is very possible I could have missed this event – I was fairly busy with real life and college early in September and for most of it. I don’t believe I have though.
—————————————————————————————-

You seem to have missed the 2+ million soft wood logs @ 2c, then. If that isn’t supply glut then I don’t know.

Regardless, this claim is very curious and you are essentially calling ANet liars. whistle

Thaiden.3487:

However, I do agree that ‘something’ needs to be done; as the more time progresses the more some items will become inflated and the TP will generate less and less profit for the average person.

One something is organic – inflation in currency.

Another something that is organic – knowledge. People will learn to vendor more items and therefore less items will be available and the prices will go up for some things.

Want to make an impact? Teach everyone you know how to make money in this game and have them stay away from the TP when it won’t make them money.

Ramza, that brings up a good point.

Black market. That is why illicit goods are more valuable – there’s inherently more risk involved. You can get better value per dollar but there’s a risk you’ll get banned.

So while you may be getting “shafted” by their prices you aren’t getting banned. You aren’t willing to risk it, they are.

Yashino.5713:

One thing though
I dont mind the tax thing
BUT
if you canceled an item that you’re selling on TP, Please allow FULL REFUND…

Completely removing risk by allowing a full refund will cause a distortion in people’s behaviors as they will be able to move in and out of the TP at will without having to put anything up for it.

John Smith won’t allow it.

Krosslite.1950:

what Trevien said.
Yes they are using it as a garbage can.
What needs to be done for this issue is not remove the tax, but add another tax.
One that is hurts the pocket book of those that do this.
In another thread I suggested that after 20 day in the TP. they are sent a warning (maybe at about day 15) that if they do not remove the item it will be returned to them at vendor cost.
EXAMPLE:

selling to vendor cost 15 copper.
person listed it for 16 copper.
they let it stay there for 20 day. Even after receiving the warning.
At that time the item is either returned to them or destroyed, but 15 copper is removed from their money as well.

Punishing people for their behavior is not an effective form of behavior modification for the most part except in rarer circumstances. Rewarding them for doing the desired behavior is more effective.

Your solution is to punish people for doing something you don’t like. They already took a 5% cut by using the TP as temporary storage. If they are storing at 1c over vendor they are taking a chance that someone will actually purchase it. If that happens they’ve lost 10% but that was a chance they took.

The reward of using the TP as storage is balanced against the risk of losing an extra 10% should they use the vendor+1c method and their item sells.

However, the stated problem is erroneous. If the issue is the vendor+1c and not being able to profit, then look somewhere else to profit. If a good is selling @ vendor + 1c… you wouldn’t profit off of it anyway – it isn’t valued at more than that in the first place. :P

Trevien.9236:

The 15% is not the problem. The minimum amount is the issues. It should be raised to 20% above vendor value instead of 1 C above vendor value.

The waypoint cost could also be lowered.

Raising the minimum amount will cause people to “profit” and then it will cause the price of EVERYTHING to raise in a correlation that is impossible to compute but it’s generally known as inflation.

It may give you warm fuzzies but then you’ll be asking for 30% while having solved nothing overall, unfortunately.

Ensign.2189:

The 15% effective tax rate is the only money sink that will stabilize the value of gold long-term.

Things like waypoint costs are more or less totally irrelevant to that end.

Let’s see the math, spreadsheet and data points that authorizes this statement.

I’m fairly certain you don’t have it.

I’m fairly certain that ANet does.

Icegrx.4697:

You already charge us to post an item for sale.
Please, whoever else agrees with me support this thread

This is a complaint without a solution. Why is your complaint more valid than anyone else’s?

I read the thread and you offered no solutions throughout.

If you are not making money, then you are either dying too much or not maximizing your revenue stream.

Here’s how I make money. Let’s assume you have a full inventory of goods.

1. I always carry crude salvage kits. They are cheap and if you start getting enough karma you can buy them from the weaponsmith trainer in Lion’s Arch.
2. I go to a merchant and instantly sell every green and blue over 40c that I cannot use. I also sell the junk using the handy button at the bottom.
3. Sell all white items over 25c.
4. Use crude kit to salvage all white items 24c or less.
5. Stow all collectibles.
6. If I have any yellows I check the price on the TP and then sell it. This is almost guaranteed to net me more than if I had sold it to a vendor.

I have no problems making money using this algorithm. Give it a shot. You’ll end up with valuables to sell [from salvaging] or to use in crafting to offset the costs.

Shayde.2564:

Anet could fix the issue at any time, they’re essentially the Federal Reserve and set the exchange rate of gems>gold. If Anet set the rate to be more competitive, say 100-150gems = 1gold, then even with their existing -30-40% gem-to-gold conversion rate, they’d still be right in line with outside sellers. $10 would be about 5-7g, and very reasonable.

And then outside sellers would undercut them again. Now what?

Cancer.9065:

“The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<?gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.”

The Spread is there to avoid creating and infinite loop of gold. The spread is not the problem (its just another gold sink), its gold scarcity as soon as gold becomes more accesible then gems will become more valuable than gold.

“Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)”

The TP fee + TP tax is just a gold sink, again this makes gold more scarce so Anet can keep gold more valuable and profit more from the gold selling.

Let’s call it the Farmville model:

You want your barn built (in GW is cultural armor) so you log in daily to water your crops, gather vegetables, etc to get those points (can’t remember what they give you) to get the barn (in GW you kill mobs, do events, etc to get gold for the armor). By purposefully keeping the progression slow (scarce gold in GW) Farmville gives you the incentive to just pay to get that barn built today (in GW exchange gems for gold to buy that armor).

Now again this is not judgamental is just a business model same as all those F2P games out there. Thankfully GW2 is a little more ethical and all those items that you want are purely comestic so it doesn’t hinder you ability to play just your ability to feel “unique” and to rush toguh content, if at any moment the scarcity of gold prevents you from playing then it becomes a problem.

Gold is “scarce” because the game just came out and people haven’t generated wealth. ANet will always have gold sinks to combat inflation. Given enough time the “scarc[ity]” of gold will be a non-issue… although it isn’t an issue now.

Ethics.4519:

Yep, yawg is spot on. That plus the listing fee and 10/15% (forget how much) cut they take on in-game TP transactions… it’s keeping the poor poor =)

What keeps the poor poor is a lack of education.

Just playing the game one cannot stay poor unless they keep making poor decisions that cost them.

Listing fees aren’t going away and neither are transaction taxes so we need to learn how to play around it – IOW, make wiser purchasing/selling decisions.

Yawg.1294:

The biggest problem here is the absurdly HUGE FEE that Anet takes for gold<->gem transactions. There’s an almost 40% difference between the gem buy and sell prices!
This is one thing Anet could do, remove the obscene spread and let it be a real player-run market.

That’s not a problem. That’s how ANet stays in business.

Don’t want to buy gems for real money? Then earn the gold to purchase them, just like I and many other people are.

Don’t want to wait? Then buy them (just like I did initially to get bank/bag slots).

Cancer.9065:

Yes, but Anet is in charge of the gold flow in game, by keeping it scarce they give players the incentive to trade gems for gold.

While the exchange rate is given by supply and demand (and remember we are taking this on faith no one is regulating Anet to stay true to the system) by keeping gold scarce it becomes more valuable than gems. Since Anet is a gold seller (again indirectly) they profit more this way.

This is not judgmental, its just a fact.

It is a fact in theory but let’s see your evidence that ANet is keeping gold “scarce”. That’s a specific term with a specific meaning and it implies intent and you keep repeating it so you clearly think this is purposeful.

Inflation will happen as more people level and it’s going to cause gold to be less valuable. Them NOT having gold sinks would be detrimental to their profit margin.

Unless OP has something substantial to add to this forum I see this thread getting closed.

In the interest of actually having discussion:

What items do you suggest they add?

I’m sure this has been mentioned in the past, but I couldn’t find a proper discussion on it, so I thought I’d raise the issue here.
Minimum custom offer price:
The trading post is already smart enough to not let me sell an item at below NPC merchant’s value. So why doesn kitten apply this filter to the buyer? That is, as a buyer, I shouldn’t be able to post a an offer less than (NPCvalue+1)/.85. If I post an offer at that price, after the 15% “tax,” the seller will get NPC value +1 copper, the minimum profit for the effort.

Why, pray tell, should the system force everyone to profit?

Secondly, what is your solution to devalue the currency such that it combats the inflation this creates?

Inventory price filter:
While we’re at it, as a seller, when I open the “sell your inventory on BLTC” tab and see my whole inventory, I think it’d be really spiffy if there was a filter to display only my items that selling the item to the highest buyer would yield a x% profit over just vendoring it. Those items could be “no brainers” for me, and then for the rest of the items I could evaluate what I wanted to do.

If there’s anything we can glean from your post it’s that your solutions are to create “no thought” from a seller’s perspective.

We call this “the path of least resistance”.

Your first proposal is unfortunately not going to work without a solution to balance out the inflation; your second is a nicety but stop being lazy.

Paulus magintie.7432:

Am I the only one here getting chest drops but getting next to no keys??? I know you get good items and such in them so the keys need to be rare, I also know I can buy them from the trade post.

But could the keys be improved slightly as rewards for clearing area’s or something at least?? I spend a lot of time just exploring and completing area’s and all I normally get at the end are weapon transforming things. (Transmuation??) or if I complete the daily quest I get mystic coins.

What do you think is a fair ratio of keys dropping to chests dropping?
How do expect tweaking this ratio will affect the larger economy?
Have you considered selling your chests?

It SHOULD be FIFO but it isn’t and they are ironing out the bug.

Aga.8641:

I’m from England and to buy gems it’s £8.50 for 800 gems, for the Euro/dollar it’s 10 for 800 gems.

Given cuurent exchange rate, £8.50 is equal to $13.75, so if I was to buy gems I’d be paying $3.75 more, is this fair?…

What numbers are you using to say it’s $10 for 800 gems? I do not have in-game access at this time.

Fryman.6934:

Um…forgive me if I am stating the obvious, but this is a pretty HUGE bug!

So in order to sell a commodity right away you just have to list in ~50 increments @ the market price over and over until it’s all sold. If you post in bulk, you won’t sell ANYTHING unless everyone who lists after you sells first.

This is a pretty major oversight. I can’t believe people haven’t jumped all over this.

It sucks but it’s being fixed so I’m not going to make a stink about it. I’m having fun leveling my ranger. :o)

LIFO is happening.

It is a bug.

It is being fixed.

Now that the fires are out, let’s roast some marshmallows over the coals.

Obie:

Here’s a rather simple “analysis” you can perform. Go look at 8 slot jute bags or 10 slot wool bags. They should still have an ~20c gap between the highest buy order and the lowest sell order. They have consistently since the TP opened.

Since this has happened consistently for weeks, I am making a [potentially flawed but probable] assumption that if the lowest sell order went up [more people are buying than the current price], then the highest buy order will go up to stay at approximately 20c lower.

Why? For whatever reason the supply and demand curves for those two particular items are in a flux that isn’t being whipsawed by other things going on in the market. They follow each other in a tightly controlled pattern, quite possibly because there is high demand and supply.

It could also be inflation as Siyeh has noted.

If you want to have a more concise approach to what is in “saturation”, look at the sell orders.

You will notice that the supply skyrockets exponentially like this:

20c 14,000,000
21c 7,000,000
22c 4,000,000
23c 2,000,000
24c 1,900,000

ETC

In other words, as the price drops the supply actually INCREASES. This happened with Soft Wood Logs. There were OVER 2 MILLION of them at 2c. John Smith and his buddies saw that and decided to get rid of the excess supply, among other things, by using them in mystic forge recipes.

It took less than 3 hours to clear through that supply of Soft Wood Logs once the firestorm broke – I know because I watched it happen. Rather fascinating, actually. The price spiked to 11c and last time I checked was at 8 or 9c.

If the price keeps gonig down and each iteration down in price the supply keeps increasing there is a excess of supply. People will just keep posting and undercutting but hopefully the ANet team will see that before it happens and quietly [or loudly, whatever] adjust drop rates to reduce the supply.

John Smith.4610:

Wazabi is almost dead on here.
Just a couple of things I would add. You’re last paragraph is correct, but only to a certain degree inside a game. There is much more examples in the game, than in real life, of people deciding not to maximize profit, or to have odd trade offs for personal preference inside the game that people don’t usually have in real life. People are still people in a sense, but people’s character in games often have very different preferences than the person in real life. This is a larger issue than I want to discuss here. I would argue that we have to be careful to remember that motivations in the game aren’t necessarily the same as motivations in real life.

Bold mine! That is the point I have been attempting to make to others, John. People cry foul on the forum and insult other players for their ignorance because they make two erroneous assumptions:
1. That other people’s playstyles are their own and
2. That they are acting “rationally.”

Motivations in the game are not the same as in real life but they are motivations nonetheless. It isn’t that difficult to understand them, either, because we can understand the variables surrounding their motivations in a very controlled setting and them tweak the economy to match those motivations for long-term survival of this game/community.

Secondly, not related to Wazabi being correct, is that applying pressure through the trading system to attempt to modify scarcity of an item in the game isn’t the way to solve problems. If an item should be more scarce, then the faucet/sink of that item is off, not the manner in which it’s traded.

Exactly. If I may, John – “We aren’t redesigning the Trading Post.” If this is incorrect, I will accept this but I have no reason to believe it’s going to be redesigned unless a fatal flaw shows up in the system. It isn’t fatally flawed, however – the faucets and sinks need to be adjusted. :P

Overall great discussions here everyone, we have a set of clearly educated and intelligent people in this forums and it rocks.

I love this forum. My favorite of all time and I actually contribute because I find it fascinating! :o) Join us more!! :o)

Wazabi.1439:

@dish
Nice catch on the price ceiling example…that was a tricky one.

Thanks. I want this game to be successful but we’ve got an army of complainers out there with terrible ideas so I’m trying to filter them out. :P

@cdrogdan
The price is already moving according to supply and demand in the current state. Removing bidding will limit speculation, but even without it, it only makes it harder to buy at whoever that decides to sell low, and and put them up for sale at a higher price when the time is right. Along with that, it removes an indicator of demand, and also removes the flexibility and convenience for someone who wants quick cash to get rid of their item.

Pretty much.

The game already have build in mechanism to impede market manipulation through sales tax, listing fee, and a large market. It’s even harder to both manipulate and exploit it for profit under this environment. As for speculation, I don’t see that as a problem as it is between 2 consenting person (buyer willing to buy at the price seller is willing to sell). So the question that remains is that is removing bidding worth it to forfeit the option to increase the liquidity of the market.

No, it is not. His stated solutions unfortunately do not work.

If only I can answer questions that you directed at me, I’m afraid you’re taking this too personal and it might cloud your rationality.

And I’m afraid that other people don’t understand that you aren’t saying this to offend him, you are stating a fact about human nature and it is clear that his responses aren’t coming in the form of well-formed arguments but from a desire to rid the TP of 1c undercutting just like everyone else when it isn’t a problem.

@ Disconnected I was actually asking Wazabi about his explanation not yours (sorry about the confusion), unless you are Wazabi.. in which case that explanation assumed both a completely poorly generated value, and that for some reason one that I proposed, nor did it provide any sort of theory..

I am not Wazabi. It was not clear who you were referring to. I suggest using the quote system.

The purpose of setting prices that move with supply and demand automatically, is to remove the ability to manipulate or exploit the market.

Yet causes distortions in the market that do not fix anything you are trying to fix. It isn’t clear in this thread you are trying to stop manipulation or exploitation. It is clear that you, in addition to the other bandwagon folks, dislike 1c undercutting and enjoy control over market systems, however.

Custom bidding as a result would be removed, but I propose this regardless.

Thank you for the idea. This will not happen.

It is also important to mention that the new recipes were only created due to the lack of means to sell items that are no longer in demand.

It was created because of an excess of supply in those items that were added to the mystic recipes.

That is to say if the market already used a system simlar to gem trades there would have been no need for this. As I said the price could be soft rather than hard allowing for strange scenarios such as with the super butter bags bug.

There is no need to create a floor or ceiling because there is already a floor and the ceiling is done away with by increasing the supply of the good. The super butter bags bug wasn’t a bug at all – Linsey goofed the drop and created a SUPER ridiculous amount of supply. :P

Also don’t be a kitten please. You were shoving words into my sentences.

GETS SUPER SERIOUS, LOOKOUT
takes off glasses
Listen here, you! hehe
Dude, we’re communicating through text. Not everything you say is going to be so obvious. If you hadn’t noticed, I respond to pretty much the entirety of anyone’s post when I do – it’s self-evident I take the time to respond to people’s posts and I even made a pointed effort to read and understand what you were saying because I didn’t want to get it wrong. That obviously failed or you are being defensive because I exposed the flaws in your arguments. It’s most likely the latter because instead of explaining yourself you are just complaining I do not understand you when I specifically asked you to explain yourself to me.

There is no way to have a civil or educated discussion when you refuse to read my posts.

I agree but since this isn’t the case then the problem isn’t with me here. It’s just that there was a misunderstanding but you do not want to be understood.

If you want to address the issues I posted, first read them before replying, otherwise you are just attempting to highjack this thread, to which I reply: go make your own about how the trading post is awesome and perfect the way it is.

Did you read my responses? I responded directly to everything you said.

I do not believe the trading post is awesome and perfect; I believe that your suggestions fail to improve anything and you have yet to explain how it doesn’t.

Q.E.D.

Tekener.3257:

As crafting is one of the most important aspects of a game for me, I usually build my own gear – which usually worked well in a lot of games so far.

Well it doesn’t work for ME (obviously I’m the only one – but I can live with that) in GrindWars 2.

I understand the appeal but it won’t work in this game the way that you want it to.

I’m now close to L35 trying to finally be able to make my L30 gear. I hardly do anything else besides trying to farm small claws/blood/venomsacks/….. No need to do any quests/wvw or whatever… grinding for the gear yields enough experience – too much actually IMHO. The only thing it doesn’t yield is FUN.

That’s because instead of playing the game you have your head in a tunnel – you only want to craft yourself gear, everything else about the game bekitten So you GRIND for items that end up getting their drop rates nerfed as you do so. Eesh. :P No wonder it isn’t fun.

Soon I am at the point where I need 8 instead of 3 rares. Ok, I can buy 6×8 armor rares + 2×8 weapon rares = 64 items – for, lets say 1s each on the market… I hardly have that much money. Grinding some other stuff to get the money so I don’t need to grind the rares, doesn’t really sound as an huge improvement for me.

It doesn’t matter what it sounds like, it matters what the math says. And the math says you can do something else more profitable and afford to craft those items… but you’ll still outlevel your gear you make.

In addition it’s also a bit frustrating that all crafted armor of one tier looks the same so far, but at least it looks nice for light armor compared to heavy. The easiest way would just be to stop crafting and buy karma gear while questing… looks also much prettier than the crafted one. But as I already mentioned, crafting is very important for me (just imagine a huge pvp fan in a game with no pvp).

It’s huge for me too. I was incredibly disappointed I could not make money off of Jewelry but I realized why and then I wasn’t disappointed any more. I moved on to other aspects of the game I enjoy also and I’m having fun with it. :o)

Ok, as it seems I’m the only one with that problem I wish you all a lot of fun… I’m now happily back to building gear, ships and houses in Vanguard. And no, I keep my stuff in case ANet decides to adapt the crappy crafting to the good looking rest of the game.

As is the freedom for all to choose what to play… don’t play anything where it isn’t fun. Sorry this wasn’t fun for you.

CdrRogdan.8907:

@Dishconnected How can you post pretty much everything that I posted and then misread it?!

Seriously when did I say you needed to guarantee a sale?
How is the ‘Enterprise’ doing any manipulation?
Where did you get that I was proposing overcutting?

Please actually read my posts before reposting them with replies.

Using explanation points doesn’t make your point any clearer. If you are interested in a discussion, explain yourself. I do not live in your head. If you aren’t then … well, stop replying?

Let’s get into the relevant theory/math on this.

What purpose is there to creating a floor on the price? Increase the price of a good. Well, they already created a floor. On every single item in the game. It’s called the vendor price so we aren’t splitting hairs about whether or not there will be a floor but as to where that floor will be, which you clearly want higher. I’m not sure why because for items getting undercut 1c to an equilibrium price the floor provides no value in terms of increasing supply – market already decided. If the equilibrium price is lower than the floor, it creates excess supply. See butter & wood logs, eh? So you have to create demand for those items to get rid of the excess supply – see mystic forge recipes.

The negativity here is that… you are not solving anything by adding this into the game and by adding it into the game, you have to consider the opportunity cost of ANet implementing your ineffective solutions versus squashing bugs or developing a second iteration of the TP that better serves the community.

Price ceiling? This is a bit tougher but let’s think about it. Why do it? To make something more available to others who can’t afford it. So you take something people cannot afford [rare materials for crafting] and you force it down to 1s. Now EVERYONE can afford it… but it’s now a ghost town because there is excess demand. Now people will not complain because they can’t afford the materials; they’ll complain because the materials aren’t even available to begin with.

There’s the result that people will stop using the TP. Why would I sell on the TP @ 1s when I can just stand in LA and sell my goods for 20s because NOBODY has any? I make insane profit and the prices skyrocketed. Mmmm, black market.

Don’t screw with price controls. In a situation where you think a ceiling is needed, just increase supply and be done with it. A floor already exists so now what?

CdrRogdan.8907:

It doesn’t matter if fig newtons played the game, without limited supply of resources, difficult to calculate costs or unexpected events, a game economy does not mimic a real world economy. People that play The Game of Life, Monopoly, or Stratego don’t claim them to use real world economics, because they don’t, and some of them might even do a better job than this game does! Real people influencing the game does not determine whether it mimics a real world economy.

Yet people are still going to have the same desires, motivations and arguments. People that post on antique car forums, gun forums, computer forums or porn forums may not be talking the same issues but they are all people motivated by the same things – sharing ideas, values, opinions, arguing, attempting to further their education, help others… you get the idea.

Same here. People want to have fun, they want to acquire virtual currency, get virtual items, share in group wins/losses, compete, acquire knowledge, share their knowledge…

Do you also find it deliciously ironic that you sit here and argue that real world economics has nothing to do with this yet this game wouldn’t even exist were it for real world economics?

Those real world economics had a HUGE impact on the game’s development, and all other game’s development moving forward, because there are a LOT of people out there who can make real money by circumventing the controls of the system and they will stop at nothing to make it happen.

Consider that the gem trading system uses a controlled method of exchange. You cannot set prices, they are simply determined by supply and demand. It both works fine and is devoid of complaints, most probably because people wouldn’t want their -real money- affected by such horsemanure as 1copper (or gem) undercutting.

And this is also done primarily because ANet needed to find a way to stop their revenue stream from going to third party gold vendors.

However, seeing as this will get a large number of players’ panties in a bunch, I have proposed a couple alternatives. I think the range thing should be implimented at the very least. Though I really want to see custom bidding removed. A 25% gain in an hour or two of total wealth, while introducing nothing new into the game world is incredibly broken.

Your solutions do not solve anything, however.

Ahemm.. But I actually do want to hear your explanation on how price ceilings or floors would negatively impact the economy of this game. If that is not possible, you could use a real world example, and we can determine what aspects of that actually roll over to this game. I’m admitedly skeptical there would be any negative impact..

First off, my problem is abstract. I do not LIKE controls in systems unless they serve a necessary purpose. Like not allowing the value of a good to be sold on the TP for less than the vendor price. Or not letting something be sold or valued anywhere for less than 0c.

Therefore, it is naturally against my desire to have ANet control the prices of anything in this game because it will cause an artificiality to the economy and I prefer things to be left alone because it allows for organic growth. Therefore I have an abstract problem with you wanting to artificially control the value of any good because:

1. Who are YOU to determine that value?
2. If something is naturally less than the floor it needs to be left to devalue so something of value can take its place; if something is naturally greater than the floor it needs to be left to increase in value so people can follow their natural desire to get it.

What you propose has a negative impact in that I do not like command control economies anywhere I see them because it puts the power into the hands of a few people and it ends up working out worse in the long run.

ANet, while they have an immense amount of brainpower, are here to service the customer, us. It is in their best interest to listen to us and all of our suggestions, even the ones I personally disagree with, because it provides them with alternatives. Linsey might have an ‘AH-HA’ moment and see a solution she didn’t see before reading one of these threads; likewise, so may I [and I did earlier, actually]. So abstractly the impact is that I abhor control except where absolutely necessary, prefer natural modes of things so they may exist of their own accord and their own will.

I’d rather see this market grow organically than not. (Cont…)

Rukh.9287:

They are hoping that if an item is at or below vendor price people will, you know, vendor the item. This reduces the supply of the item since people aren’t putting it in to the market and hopefully helps the price go up.

Then all that needs to be done is to make it clearly obvious that they are selling at a loss putting it on the TP, which can be done adding the calculation fields to the TP itself.
It will still happen but then people will vendor “trash”, destroy it at a faster rate and then achieve what you wish.

This isn’t happening as gold corporations are currently dumping on the market to try to push players out so that people are forced to buy from the gold companies instead.

Interesting theory but there is no reason to take this seriously.

Jia Shen.4217:

The problem is that sellers should not be expected to sell things at a loss compared to vender price for stuff that others want to buy.

Who expects this? You never have to sell at a loss compared to vendor because you can always vendor it. It does not have to be sold on the TP. There is no requirement for this anywhere.

And this is fixed by setting the floor price for listings to 1c over vender price + the 15% TP fee. That way anything no matter how small the demand will net at least 1c profit.

What is your proposal for decreasing the money supply somewhere else to stem the inflation this will inevitably cause? Keep in mind all that you have done is moved the floor price up, caused a distortion in the value of the entire market. Because of this what will happen initially… is that the spread between items will GUARANTEE profit until it balances out. Then what will happen is the prices of all goods will increase due to everyone having more gold.

Net result – you’ll make more copper and spend more copper on everything else. Worth it?

And trash will remain trash. The trash will eventually get sold to the vender as it should be since it will have no demand.

That could be done now…

And unless people are silly and don’t remove the trash listings to sell to vender so they only lose the 5% listing fee, the trash will eventually clear off the TP leaving mainly stuff that others actually want to buy.

The trash listings are… always going to be there… want to know how something is “trash”? Look at what it is. If it is not a crafting material and there’s a significant backlog looking like this:

25c 2500383 listings
26c 1839372 listings
27c 982383 listings

… then there is clearly too much supply of it and it’s “trash” [overvalued].

Items that have a larger supply than demand will potentially hit the floor price as would be expected but at least the floor won’t make selling to the vender better than supplying the items to the demand.

And now you will cause other goods to increase in price to compensate. I doubt you want that.

While items that have a demand equal to or greater than supply will continue to work correctly as they most likely are not at the current flawed floor price.

They will work the same with or without your input because … you aren’t changing the demand for those. As a matter of fact, the price of those goods will increase.

Hologramx.6402:

This happens in many popular items in the trade post.

Many people buy them for an extremely cheap price then sell them at 3-10 times they bought.

Which items? This is too vague to drive a sound argument.

This becomes serious for leveling because of these guys buying all the most desired gears and selling them at extremely high price. You can see most of these come from just a few players, can be possibly gold-sellers (easiest way to make money without interest in the game play at all).

What? Huh? I can see this making sense in terms of (4000 listings by 3 players)… but… this makes no sense. Which gear do you need for leveling that is being pushed to an extreme value by resellers?

Then selling all of them at the same price (you know it is the same guy or same group because there is almost no price competition in both buying and selling). In real world it is called monopoly.

What? You KNOW? Prove it. And this isn’t a monopoly because they do not control the resources or the means to purchase the goods and they cannot artificially inflate the price for very long, whomever “they” is.

Since “Buying” is supposed to be for real need of the player, not for selling at a higher price for profit, I think you should limit the BUY option to the maximum of the stack quantity. i.e. it can only be 250 for each material per player, but only 1 for gear (since gear cannot stack and usually you don’t need multiple pieces of same gear). This will prohibit someone from buying all the most needed gear then selling them at an extremely high price using monopoly.

So what happens when you craft more than one piece of gear that you do not need? How do you expect this to be coded on the back-end?

Need data/facts on the monopoly charge because it doesn’t hold.

Don’t ignore immoral please. This can become very serious. I already hate seeing all these every time I need to upgrade my gear, and sometimes you really have no choice but to benefit these probably gold-sellers if you need your gear immediately.

Specious claims. I’m not sure what your concern here is.

CdrRogdan.8907:

THE ISSUE
l
So for those of you that are not yet aware, you can use ‘custom bid’ to purchase items for less than the going rate, and then sell them back at the going rate. This is for the most part, risk free, assuming you don’t log out with purchases pending before going to bed, and increases your total assets by a percentage ammount.

Before you claim this is an exploit, it is providing a service – players that want instaneous purchases or sales rely on this type of trader. In addition Arena Net took down the trading post to look at just such things as this and did not make any change..

In any case, the issue here isn’t the exponential growth of one’s assets – although it is a part of it. The issue is that this form of trading is the best method of making money via trading. Crafting gear provides subpar returns and runs the extreme risk that people will continue to underbid your item by 1 copper and it will never be sold.

As I understand it this is yet another solution for getting rid of 1c undercutting because crafting isn’t profitable. No mention of the oversupply glut although you did go into it further on:

I never said that it was supposed to be profitable. I said it provides subpar returns, and in comparison to custom bidding, there is no reason to supply other players with gear. The idea with using a craft to make money is to turn your inability to craft a piece of gear into a monetary means to purchase it. Whether you profit is not the issue. The issue is that your attempt to sell an item can easily be circumvented with 1 copper uncercutting. It then becomes random chance on if you happen to post when someone is buying. And sadly there is no information to tell you that 100 of those items are already up for sale.

There is no reason for you to provide others with gear. Ok, I undertand that.
You are saying that you use profiting off of crafting to purchase gear you cannot make. Ok.
Whether you profit or not is the issue because you then explain in the next sentence why it is – because you cannot guarantee a sale. Pray tell, when can you ever guarantee a sale?

I’m also unclear why you state that there is no information telling you how many are up for sale. It’s there clear as day how many items are up for sale when you go to buy it. It tells you the quantity and the price they are selling at… so this comment is confusing.

The first proposes a removal of custom bidding, and all player control from the economy.

No. Bad idea – command control economies do not work and in this case you are putting all of the eggs in one basket by assuming ANet will make all decisions rationally. Faithful but not realistic.

Instead items are provided a value with both a ceiling and a floor, that should be obtainable with the current market data. Sales exceeding demand reduce the value of this commodity, while purchases exeeding supply increase its value. The economy would become a living organism, rather than a manipulated enterprise, and exponential growth based on assets would be curbed.

Oi vey. So you want the enterprise to manipulate the value of a good by producing a ceiling and a floor on it based upon only the data they have… and then turn around and say that rather than having a manipulated enterprise we’ll have a living organism? No.

We already have a living organism so it doesn’t need to be toyed with. Sales exceeding demand and purchases exceeding supply already happen so this is an extraneous solution.

The second proposes an enforced 10% reduction on all sales lower than the going rate. That is to say if you post an item for 2.6 gold, that next person would either have to post it at 2.6 gold or 2.34gold. The market for items that are usuable by the community (other than consumables) will undoubtedly see an increase in supply, as the risk of being indefinately undercut would no longer be present.

So instead of allowing for organic undercutting, you want to do it forcibly and cause the floor to get hit even faster. No. So what happens when you cannot undercut by 10% any more? What is this supposed to alter in terms of behavior?

You want to increase the supply of the goods on the TP? This… does not change anything unfortunately without you being more specific.

The third would… products.

So you are trying to enforce the reverse. Instead of undercutting you want people to overcut by 1c which have the exact same effect the opposite direction – it will cause the highest buy offer to increase along with the highest sell orders.

All three of your solutions take the players control of the economy and removes them yet none of your solutions solve the “problem”.

KwwB.3895:

Wazabi.1439:

buying from custom bid is not risk free. First, someone have to decide to sell it to your lower price rather than posting a sell order. Then, when you post it up, someone have to decide to buy it at your selling price rather than putting up a buy order. Often, the spread is only slightly larger than 15% that makes the profit margin not worth the risk/time. When one is discovered through, it tends to balance out. If someone is willing to spend the time and take the risk, then they deserve the return.

Crafting was never meant to be profitable. Even if you don’t know that, the ease of maxing crafting should had told you something about it. If you still hold by the illusion taht crafting should be profitable, you do not know the laws of supply/demand.

Any price ceiling/floor only hurts the economy as a whole. Look for articles on deadweight. The market is already a living organism and price already reflects supply and demand. Your post only serves to demonstrate your lack of economic understanding. Read up the other post that addresses the issue that you are trying to “solve” rather than posting a new thread on the same topic.

Ohhhh you. Trolling another tread.

Not everyone is an professor of economics. This is once again another player providing solutions to what he perceives as an issue. Stop belittling people for trying to be constructive. It’s getting real old. I’m starting to think your actually a professor of economics with a side doctorate in trolling.

Once again, Game =/= Real World. This includes in game economy. Whilst they hold some of the same tenants they are NOT the same thing.

He isn’t trolling. He knows what he is talking about. The OP’s suggestions are creative but they will fail to serve the purpose he thinks they will serve.

As Wazabi continues to mention – REAL PEOPLE play this game and therefore economic theory can apply here. There will be obvious differences but you need only spot them and find an explanation for it.

Same “thing” or not it can still be analyzed and explained and our theorycrafting over the solutions for this mess are valuable, whether we agree or not about them.

Wazabi.1439:

Deflation is an overall decrease in price level of most if not all item. That can only happen when money in circulation shrink. Changes in the supply and demand can also lower price but that’s not deflation.

Seconded.

The economy isn’t tanking.

We have to define what that even means in the context of your post and it isn’t clear because you went off the rails about being the guy standing up for the individual and corporations and botting.

Botting is most definitely a problem… but… they sell GOLD. Screwing around with the TP is not in any botters interest, at all. As the profit margin disappears from botting they will disappear as well.

The server hop has been extended to 24 hours now so we will definitely see an increase as that was causing a supply glut.

Having said that, more people are getting to 80 also so there will be some see-sawing going on for a bit… not to mention the authentication problems they are having with their financial servers/databases.

Can we get back to the issue at hand?

I too lost some progress yesterday and I immediately recognized there was a rollback. Something serious went down with their authentication last night… errors with gems… something’s amiss this week and it’s pretty serious because it keeps taking down the TP… think financials database or something eerily similar.

Give it time.

Now that ore farming has been cut down to shreds by server hopping the price of ore is going to go up. WOOT!

LinseyMurdock.4165:

We did also reduce the amount of butter and chocolate you get from bags. I was a bit nervous about taking them off vendors since they are such a staple, but I’ll be the first to admit that I went a smidge overboard. It’s felt a lot better since the change went Live, at least from my own experience (and I do play the game a lot and do lots of crafting!) How do you all feel about how much butter you get now?

Could you perhaps quantify what the intended effect was? :o)

Maurier.6094:

I would also like to take this opportunity to call out Linsay on thier so called use of crafting in-game as stated.

IF…IF…IF you have even attempted crafting THE FIRST THING you notice is that your finished product is worth less the what it takes to make. (I have done leather and jewelry and not a single item sells for more).

I hate to be the one to break this too you since you are obviously living in denial, But crafting in GW2 is a terrible design. Personally I believe the biggest offender is crafted items sell for next to nothing to a vendor so all I see on the TP is them listed one copper higher. (NOT to mention that these weirdo dont even realize the 15% take from TP means they make LESS than just vendoring it.)

TIP For Future System Design: Always bet that the end user is stupid….its the smart bet.

In order to set crafting on the right path EVERY SINGLE item needs a higher vendor value … OR every SINGLE ingrediant for EVERY profession should be available via an ingame vendor via coin.

^^ This means EVERY item has a reasonable minimum price OR EVERY ingredient has a maximum value.

The ONE and i think ONLY thing swtor did right was materials, since they were gained via crewskills they had a minimum and maximum price threshold. There was a reason for this and you would do well to answer why all by yourself.

NOW, on the off chance you wish to reply and say crafting is worth while I would ask you respond with exactly what it is you are crafting to base this on, I will then compare any items you claim to craft and be worthwhile with the TP price for the ingredients and the finished product in order to remain in context.

You asked for feedback. The most objectionable feedback is usually the most valuable. You are welcome.

Clearly you are in denial about the implication’s of a buyer’s market. Cash is king and, well – your feedback is definitely objectionable.