Guild Wars 2

Encountered this many times.

Hippocampus.8470:

Maxster.4521:

And how exactly they enforce return of a loan?

It’s my understanding that you can attack and kill characters and take all of their stuff, so maybe something like that?

Nah, it will never work. Create character, pay with isk for plex, then take a loan a lot greater than cost of plex – transfer to your real character, and delete temporary charater(or|and just abandon the temporary account).

But in any case, as I said it is possible to abuse pretty horribly.

Player “Cally” won at EVE Online despite it being a massively multiplayer game with no victory condition. Other players earn ISK (game currency) by mining, completing quests or killing each other. Cally, on the other hand, simply asked for it. And it worked, and there was nothing they could do about it. Because while the other losers went into the economy as honest workers, or corporations, he realized he could go in as a bank.

He spent months running the “EVE Intergalactic Bank (EIB).” This offered loans for start-up EVE corporations and miners who wanted to buy tools, with interest rates and repayment plans and yes, we’re still talking about a game people apparently play for fun.

Cally certainly had fun: He fulfilled the secret fantasy of every bank manager in history, when one day, he walked in and just took all the money. All the money was 790 billion ISK, about $170,000 in real dollars, which he used to become the greatest video game villain of all time. He spent a huge chunk of the money to buy a ridiculously powerful warship, another chunk posting a huge bounty on his own head, then sailed off into space just daring people to kill him.

Yeah, that’s why banks will never work in any mmo. And random loans.

Hippocampus.8470:

People have set up banking in EvE, and it’s easily taken advantage of over there. That’s all within the framework of how EvE is supposed to work, but GW2 isn’t meant to be the same sort of game.

And how exactly they enforce return of a loan?

Cancer.9065:

Unnless you guarantee the loan with Gems!!! then Anet can actually become a RL loan shark.

And how that differs from selling gems for gold?

But if you gather those mats incidentally, by going around killing things through the normal course of the game, I wouldn’t say you’re selling at a loss, though admittedly it is less than you’d get selling the mats directly. Selling the mats directly wouldn’t have gotten me from 150 to 210 in Leatherworking yesterday, along with more than 2 levels of regular XP. So I’m pretty okay earning less for the finished products than I would if I’d sold all the mats as I got them.

You just lost some monetary profit in exchange for XP.
For a crafter selling lower than materials cost is a loss, there is no way around that.
Also, if you are okay with selling at a lost, it doesn’t make crafting profitable.

Only way you could get a loan, is when you some friends or RL life acquaintances, or you renown enough by community|guild that they trust you will return that loan.

eschlon.3842:

There is no problem with the tax (though they could make it more visible, that’d be fine).

The problem is people who think that spending time gathering 3g worth of mats, crafting them into items and promptly selling those items for 2g are somehow making a profit off the TP.

The TP is working as intended. It’s being driven by supply and demand. It’s just that the supply of crafted items is primarily being filled by morons.

Yeah, that way they just lose 1g (more with taxes).

If you want to make a profit crafting, don’t buy all the materials on the trading post. Problem solved!

Except it is not, because gathering is not free.

A random choice among goods at a particular price is perhaps the best fix, because then if there are already a hundred thousand orders, my new one for 50 will at least start going through before all 100k of the existing ones go through (which would be what happens with FIFO). Really, though, there are pros and cons for any option (LIFO, FIFO, random, small orders first, etc.). Probably someone will post here to complain regardless of what they do.

I’d like queue approach.
Like that:
Let’s say we have 10 sell orders at the same price. And queue of buyer with unknown quantities. First buyer goes to first order, if order is completely buyed out – goes to second and others in line. Next order to last order from which first buyer bought, goes to second buyer.
Also, while queue hasn’t reached 10th seller, there is formed another queue for a new sell orders of that price. When reached 10th seller, queue for new sell orders appends to the end of queue of served sell orders, and after that we start from the first seller in queue(and also create new queue for new sell orders on that price).

Sevveral people are using this to have an advantage over other traders.

Yes, we are :P

MF Panda.5874:

Ephiny:

I don’t see how that is any different from what I did. I simply multiply the listed sale price by .85 (i.e. 100%-15%). This takes into account the listing fee in addition to the 10% tax in one simple calculation.

It seems he have some wrong calculations

Example – you buy 100 coriander seeds for 1 silver
total cost = 1g

If you sell those seeds for 1s 50c each
total proceeds are 1g 50s and gross profit is 50 silver
however listing price is 7s 50c (5% of 1g 50s)
sales tax is 15s (10% of 1g 50s)
net profit 27s 50c and total received is 1g22

you pay 7.5s listing fee.
your account is now -7.5s.
Sale tax is 15. You sold item, received 150-15=135s from TP.
Add to your account 135+(-7.5)=127.5s

From where did he get 122s, i don’t know

Wazabi.1439:

maxster…you beat me to it.

Hehehe
Actually, real problem that TP is used as garbage bin.

jamescowhen.1562:

Yea, they just added that not long ago >< I’m a big trader and it really annoys me trying to list in bulk. Seriously up the 250 or put a higher threshold to trigger the cooldown on sell!

Experienced that once, more than a week ago.

Ephiny.9831:

Example – you buy 100 coriander seeds for 1 silver
total cost = 1g

If you sell those seeds for 1s 50c each
total proceeds are 1g 50s and gross profit is 50 silver
however listing price is 7s 50c (5% of 1g 50s)
sales tax is 15s (10% of 1g 50s)
net profit 27s 50c and total received is 1g22

As i said exactly 15% and there is nothing comlex here.

Ephiny.9831:

Actually MF Panda you are wrong – on those buy and sell prices he is breaking even. There isn’t a 15% deduction on both listing and selling. The fees are 5% on listing price and 10% on total sale price (many people say the tax is 15% but its actually much more than 15% depending on what the item sells at.

reference:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Marketplace

The calculation is difficult to do manually but there is a great GW2 app you can download for android that does all the calculations for you called the “GW2 Trade post calculator”

It is exactly 15%, especially for high cost items. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

I wonder, how exactly did he got 8s tax. 5% is 12.75s, 10% is 25.5s, 15% is 38.25s.
I have no idea, really.

“Let me just state that I spent 3 hours farming today and have nothing to show for it….”

then

“Also, many people will say you need to manage the trade post and work the economy…that sounds like god darn work and I want to play this game for fun, not play wall street with fake money…”

I am just curious, not trying to be rude, but how is farming for 3 hours NOT work yet working the economy IS work? I am pretty sure that nothing in this game should feel like “WORK”

If it does… you are doing it wrong :P

That is simple. Grinding non-stop for 3 hours is entertainment, sitting half-afk trading on TP is work

Lostknight.8936:

The 15% is fine, it’s idiots that post items for 1c more then vendor price that is killing any form of profit >.<

What profit would that be, if there is no demand for those items?

Though that spurs a question – are traders people who have less time to invest in the game and this is their solution to be involved in the game in an meaningful way? (rather than leveling, exploring, gathering, crafting etc).

I personally just hate grinding. And like to have some game money, without investing too much rl money, or time. So i just seek most profitable activity with less risk and spent time.
But i’m not “shark” and not motivated enough for constant trading and making gold. GW2 is a very easy game, in all aspects, so there is no real reason for me to make something like 1000 and more gold.

Wazabi.1439:

Given that crafting is so easy to level in this game, I don’t foresee changing the drop rate would significantly increase the price of crafted items.

It’s just not enough. Adding some not easy to get recipies could also help.

AndrewWaltfeld.4621:

I have to say, it is fairly easy to make a profit on the TP, however if you are expecting fields of gold that is easy to get – then your dead wrong. The market usually hovers 5-10% profit per 250 stack for a lot of the items I deal in. Sometimes I can score a 15, 20 or 30% percent profit on a stack, but that is very rare. You only score maybe 5-10 silver profit per stack. It takes time to be frankly honest and farming is a lot faster than buying/selling on the TP unless the market is in busy mode.

That depends on sell rate of a position, how you’re playing(slower with higher price faster with lower) and your overall money reserve. Especially by last. At some point, you’ll just forget about gathering.

Cancer.9065:

Well Maxster, you kinda missed the part about mats being priced more because of high demand for leveling crafting. Once this demands dies down mats and finished good will become indifferent in price (assuming everyone has all prof, otherwise finished goods will have a profit).

No, I did not. It could be somewhat profitable for a short period of time
Also, you seem fail to get that price of crated item determined by demand. So, because that’s a themepark, price for crafted items steadily goes down, for those items, that have actual demand atm. Those items which do not have demand for them, lie in piles on TP with floored price and no buy orders.

Again look at the TP copper is down from 25c+ g to about 20c and still dropping. Nobody needs them to level anymore so prices drop. If everyone has all prof then mats or finished good become indifferent. If not everyone has all prof then a buyer has to look at whether is cheaper to level said prof or buy the item from a craftsman.

And? Crafting still unprofitable, and will be because of no demand(or diminishing demand).

What you are doing is comparing what happens while you are leveling a trade against an uncertain future when everyone is already leveled just to try to prove your point.

Who started to talking about max level and max crafting? Not me. So that quote goes back to you.

Leveling your trade is unprofitable just like when you go to college you have to pay to learn your chosen trade, understand this please. You are “devaluating” (as you say) the values of mats to gain XP and a higher level in your trade (don’t dismiss this just to prove your point).

You just don’t understand what opportunity cost means. Yes, by crafting item from exact materials which costs 20s, and selling it for 10s, you lose 10s.
And XP have nothing to do with that, unless you assume that you will get profit from crafting at 400. Which is possible in some rare cases, and if you have a lot of gold to buy materials. Which you don’t, if you’re not playing market, grinding like crazy or just bought gems from anet with real money.
Also, by that quote, you’re basically admitting, that crafting on level less than 400 is unprofitable. Just as i’m said.

Finally Just because you can’t profit from it doesn’t mean no one is doing it. When +magic find items where in high demand many crafters made a lot of gold simply because not everyone had all crafts (yet) at the correct level.

It just not worth the effort. I’ve made a lot more gold from playing TP.
Also, only items worth crafting – is rares(and some exotic). Which need a lot of money to start crafting for profit. And, their price are slowly falling.

My opinion is that people are lazy and that not everyone will have all trades maxed out (PvP’ers prob won’t even start one) others will quit before leveling to 400. So I’m taking a risk and leveling a couple of trades which I believe will become profitable with current market tendencies.

When you’ll fail at that, I’ll just say “i told you”.
And my point was, 1) gathering is not free 2) crafting unprofitable by design( and if you don’t have any serious money influx, to craft rares and better – crafting is huge money sink) 3) there is no adequate reason for making crafting unprofitable.

Cancer.9065:

Ethic is right and Maxter is right and Rhaj is

The real problem here is that everyone can have all max prof for a relatively low cost.

Here is the thing:

Normally finished goods costs more than the mats used to make but in GW mats are more valuable than finished goods.. why?
because people are getting something more from the mats than the finished
goods. XP and having a Profession (think like paying college tuition, you pay now
to earn later).

Real reason is that there is not enough demand for crafted items, because of drop. And somewhat higher demand for crafting materials. And first is more important than second.

Ok so then will someday I be able to make profits (large or small) out of crafting?
It depends, if one finished good has more demand than other and you can craft it
then yes you will make profit (large or small). As it has been correctly pointed out
unless you farm the mats its hard to make a profit. This will settle once everyone
has finished leveling their prof and stop demanding the mats. Once this happens
mat prices will drop. Look at TP basic mats are plummeting! why? most people
are already beyond 75+ in crafting.

Of course, that is completely wrong. Devaluating items you gathered by crafting you gaining negative income.
And crafting will not become profitable, because( mostly) it is a themepark game. Which means that there is constantly diminishing demand for weapons armor and jewelry. It could be somewhat profitable for a short period of time, but real demand comes from new characters, which means constantly levelling new alts or stable influx of new GW2 players.

So what happens when everyone is a 400 crafter?
Here is where the problem comes to play either everyone maxes out all prof. in
which case buying mats or finished good is indifferent and profit will be really
difficult to make. Or not all prof are covered and you can sell your goods for a
better profit

Yeah, when that happens, market will die.

To the OP as you pointed out “I thought” and “I want” these are things you assumed you were going to be able to do, but not necessary Anet’s intention. Crafting is meant to make you self sufficient for gear not self sufficient for gold, you can make a profit if the conditions are right, but only time will tell.

There is no actual reason for unprofitable crafting. And it is made that way by design.
Also, you can not be self sufficient for gear, unless you spend lot of time grinding, or some( or a lot of) money on TP.

Just wanted to come here and say… Maxster.4521 is right. Gathering is not free, and that time you spent on gathering is of a certain value. Maybe not to you, but to everyone else it is. Cash equivalent assets are cash. So when you changed them to something of less value, you lost money. “Money” is just a represented value of commodities. And when the represented value is less than before, you “lost money”.

And that is exactly why Destroyer Core costs 19 silver and copper ore 18 copper. They both have value, measured in time and difficulty( it is a game, you know), but for some unknown reason Ethics.4519 believes that they are free. I’d like to see when someone will give him 200 Destroyer Core for free

Trevien.9236:

Maxster.4521:

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.
…

And how exactly it will solve problem of oversupply?

I do not believe that I was talking about any issue other than the minimum listing amount needs to be raised to account for the 15% cut that will go to the trading post. Over supply on the AH is another issue entirely and one that I do not really care about. As it stands more profit is made from vendoring items instead of posting them on the trading post do to the fact that people do no pay attention to the cost that items are put up for. Raising the minimum post amount to 20% above vendor value will allow people to actually make money when posting items. As it stands right now I would rather vendor them.

How exactly people will get profit, if there is no demand for an item? That will solve nothing at all.

Other options would be to limit the number of items people can have on the AH (not an idea I like but would prevent people from using the TP as a 2nd bank as I have heard is done). Or taking a larger cut when unsold items are pulled off the market, like 30% of list value (again, not an option I like, but targets the same group of people). Personally, I think raising the minimum amount is the best option… it will not fix the real issue with this specific concern, again, I do not care about what people consider oversupply, which is that people just blindly put things up for minimum amount as a form of storage while out doing other things.

First solution not very good.
Second is complete fail. Adding to already high cost of listing item(5%) 30% more – no one will use TP then.
Limiting listing items number, and allowing to increase that limit by using gold – would be better.

As for oversupply – if you change minimum amount – it will be same picture, just other price. No one will buy that anyway. Also, no one will store something, that has no value.
And if item has value, it could be bought by someone.

Wow, you have some seriously wrong misunderstandings of economics. Yes, you are losing the potential of the money. You aren’t actually losing the money, considering you never had it in the first place.

I understand the concept that time is money, however considering nobody is paying me to play guild wars2, my time is as valuable as I choose to make it.

If you want to get technical, which I can tell you’re trying to and that’s cute, you aren’t even thinking about the xp that you gain from crafting. That is also money, however you can’t ‘buy’ straight xp.

Profiting is also considered gaining bonus. You can profit from a mistake, as in you gain knowledge. Some people might just straight enjoy crafting, so they are profiting from the fun of it.

However, back to the original profiting of money (gold, silver, etc.) both are profitable. Just because one action will make you more money than other, doesn’t mean that the first option isn’t profitable. I could go make a pie and sell it for 2 dollars above material and time cost, or I could sell it for 5 dollars above material and time cost. Both will get me a profit, one is more profitable than another.

You really don’t know what are you talking about.
First, read the thread name. It’s about crafting and profit. Specifically, monetary profit.

I understand the concept that time is money, however considering nobody is paying me to play guild wars2, my time is as valuable as I choose to make it.

That’s just demagogy. If you prefer to spend your own time on making negative profit from unprofitable crafting, that does not make crafting profitable. That just demonstrates your failure of understanding basic economics.

Profiting is also considered gaining bonus. You can profit from a mistake, as in you gain knowledge. Some people might just straight enjoy crafting, so they are profiting from the fun of it.

Read thread name. Demagogy won’t help you.

However, back to the original profiting of money (gold, silver, etc.) both are profitable. Just because one action will make you more money than other, doesn’t mean that the first option isn’t profitable. I could go make a pie and sell it for 2 dollars above material and time cost, or I could sell it for 5 dollars above material and time cost. Both will get me a profit, one is more profitable than another.

And that is where you fail.
Gathering is not free. So, when exact materials for crafted item cost 20s, and you’re selling crafted item for 10s, you lose 10s. You’re just selling below material cost, because, for some stupid reason, you believe that gathering is free. Go to Lion’s Arch and ask in map chat for 200 Destroyer Core for free. That will be fun. At least, you won’t get hit in a face, because it’s online game.

Oh, well, you can go to farm and ask to give you a pig for free. Or go to mine, and ask for 1000kg of free coal.

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.
…

And how exactly it will solve problem of oversupply?

@ Maxster False. That directly means that crafting can be profitable, just not as profitable as something else.

Gathering materials and crafting might make you 10s, but gathering materials and selling them might make you 20s.

Both are profitable, one is more profitable.

You clearly have no idea, what you’re talking about. Gathering is not free.
If you can sell crafted item for 10s, and materials, from which item is crafted, for 20s – you just lose 10s by crafting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

You only lose money if you buy items that are more expensive than what you sell. You do however lose ‘potential’ money. But if you gather the materials, you’re still gaining more than what you spent, because you only bought gathering supplies.

That is always making me laugh.
You do not lose “potential” money, you’re exchanging your personal time for gathering, which is not free. And lose real game money when you craft.

So, you can sell exact materials, for crafted item, for 20s. Item that is crafted from those exact materials, you can sell for 10s. By crafting it, you’re just lose 10s from gathering profit, and call that 10s “profit from crafting”, when you just lose 10s from gathering, which could bring you 20s. So, we have gathering profit 20s, and crafting profit -10s.

So, back to that item. Cost of exact materials for that item is 20s. By selling that item for 10s – you lose 10s + 1.5s tax, for selling for 15s, you lose 5s + 2.25s tax. By selling it for 20s, you lose just 3 s. And, because of tax, your profit starts when you’re selling over 24s.
Without tax, your profit starts from selling over 20s.

That was a good laugh, thanks.

Ethics.4519:

@Painking Sorry can’t use quote on this thread for some reason. I thought you were arguing that crafting is profitable. I guess it can be profitable but not as much as just selling the mats.

That directly means that crafting is unprofitable. You lose money by crafting materials in items.

Definitely should be FIFO. Are you sure it ain’t just people posting at a lower price?

Clearly shows that you never traded at TP. Every trader knows about 250 stack and LIFO on TP.

I think it is already too late.

I don’t think the TP has any inherent design flaw. Instead, the problem lies in any players ability to do anything with no limits. In addition, psychologically, there are no ‘necessary items’ that aren’t being reproduced by hundreds of thousands of players. In real life, this is not the case. Players need to rely on others for services, and are willing to provide a premium(or profit) to save time/pay for a service which they can not do themselves.

GW2’s core design philosophy doesn’t give players any reason to ‘need’ anything but some exotic gear(to which millions of people are making). There is nothing to upgrade, there is no place anyone else can go that I myself can’t. And there is a lack of (none?) rare recipe ingredients to be used in tandem with rare recipes.
I’ll reiterate: The TP will never offer anyone any profit due to the design of the rest of the game.

That’s not close to truth in any way. Like spherical horse in vacuum.

I understand where you’re coming from and why a trader would place a buy order 15% under the current lowest sell order. However, sellers will only fill such orders if a) they want to make quick cash b) they expect the price to drop c) there are no other ways to make profit from the item.

mostly a), little b) and no c). If there is no way to make profit from item – there will be no buy orders at all.

Concerning a) people may be willing to give up some profit to get cash at that very moment. However, if vendors are offering that same option it puts a lower limit on buy orders. Both items and materials have vendor prices.

That is only in case of oversupply. And if there is oversupply – there will be no buy orders at all. Trading is not charity you know.

Concerning b) prices are quite stable for materials — it’s not very profitable therefore for traders to bet on materials for making profit. If you look at the price of Copper, for example, you’ll notice that the price is pretty steady, only going down slowly: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19697. Indeed the graph also shows the 15% margin as expected, being the 0 profit margin for traders.

This is where you are wrong. First, copper ore price are changed from 21-17 to 19-15.
In case of 21-17 there were profit 0.85 c from 1 unit. for 19-15 it is 1.15c from 1 unit. So now trading ore is more profitable.
Why you are wrong? Because for high sell rate – low cost materials “average price” will do you no good. Also, you should look at buy order/sell order overall size, and not just lower higher order. Because for high sell rate values like 100 and even 1000 – is nothing.

Fine materials – there is much more profit than base, like ore.

Concerning c) the biggest difference between items and materials is the different demand. As I outlined above, the supply of many items will infinitely outgrow the demand. So for items, the vendor price + 15% is pretty much the minimum, selling below that is just outright silly. Materials still have some use for crafting and that’s why the price is still slightly higher than vendor price (also an indication it’s not only traders in the market).

When supply infinitely outgrows the demand – there will be no buy orders. That is obvious.

Anyway, I think we mostly agree on why certain margins exist and for which type of items. However, this discussion may not be very relevant for the suggestion of the OP to allow people to withdraw or alter their sell orders. The point of my first post was to show that for items the problem lies more in balancing supply and demand than in the 5% fee or 10% cut.

I’d say that more than 15% margin will be where will be any buy orders. And where lower sell rate(like crafted items which have demand at all) – will be higher margin. And for higher sell rate – will be more close to 15%, but not equal of course.
I’m saying that 15% margin will not affect traders-speculants in any way. What affecting traders and everyone else – supply/demand rate.

Morrar.1764:

Well 15% is pretty steep, so no preventing it was worded a bit strong but it became a lot harder indeed. I’m not sure why you think the 15% will be the margin between buy and sell orders. If I remember correctly, one still pays a fee and cut even when fulfilling a buy order, but now I’m not 100% sure…

Not the one who posted the buy order.

It should at least be the margin between sell orders and vendor prices, even though that is currently not the case. This could be due to the fact that the 10% cut is listed nowhere in the UI, which is a big mistake on ArenaNet’s part in my opinion. The 5% listing fee is shown, however, but I have no idea why people ignore it. Could be ill understanding of the concept or related to inventory management and the ease of selling stuff on the spot. Or perhaps a preference for selling an item to someone who uses it rather than to a vendor… Who knows…
Not sure how to read that last line. Crafting is something you should primarily do for your own items and the convenience of being able to make the gear you want (with the stats you like best). Crafting was never meant to be profitable, except perhaps at the highest levels. Then again, leveling crafting literally takes no effort and thus the rewards should reflect that. You already gain a bulk of XP leveling a crafting discipline, why should it also be economically profitable on top of that?

Let’s take a look on the resource market. Ore, wood and all that.
Who will buy that? Crafters and traders. Crafting is unprofitable, therefore – used only for leveling. There is mostly no need for crafter-levelling to place buy orders, because you waste your own time waiting for buy order for fill.
So – majority of the buy orders(and obviously sell orders) comes from traders. Traders trading because we are expecting profit, not just because we’re able to. So if there is a buy orders – margin between buy and sell orders will be more than 15%.
Same goes for crafted items. If there is oversupply – there is no buy orders. If there is enough demand – margin between buy and sell orders are lot more(because lower sell rate, than resources) than 15%.
Cause – consequence.

To be honest, the listing fee is fine and prevents speculation as is already mentioned above by many posters. Having to make up for a 15% price difference (listing fee + cut) makes it harder to buy items in bulk and listing them again at a slightly higher price. At least in the case that there are no sudden price gaps and substantial amounts of items are on the market.

It does not prevent, just make it slightly harder. 15% price difference will remain as minimal margin between buy and sell orders. From where, do you think, comes majority of the buy orders(and sell orders), especially with unprofitable crafting?

Ghoest.3945:

EVE is a great game.(I have a current sub and have for years and years).

EVE has never had more than around 400K subscribers. It never will.

This game is fun because its NOT like EVE.
My casual gamer friends hate EVE. They love this game.

Either oversupply and price falling in themepark or high demand and sandbox pvp everywhere.
Themepark=diminishing supply on armor/weapons(and everything else). Because you need only 1(of specific level) per character, and you won’t lose it.

Error.4980:

Maxster.4521:

the TP is designed as a gold sink.

Wait! What?

Reason for eventual drop of price lies not with listing fee, but with themepark game itself.

wait! what?

nowhere did i say that the eventual drop of prices is due to listing fee. i am merely saying that tp taking 15% removes gold from the game

Nvm, just wrongly structured post. Part for reason in unrelated to quote.

Maybe we have different definiton of gold sink. Compare crafting designed as unprofitable, and TP, which is actually very profitable.

Sparkie.3465:

Maxster.4521:

Rule One of the Market Game: Never bet more than you can afford to lose.

Reminds me of the First Rule of EvE – never fly a ship you can’t afford to lose.

EVE is about profit. You cannot opt out of the EVE market. It is the same rule.

Nah, EvE is about killing in lowsec :P And profit is only to compensate losses and advance to new ways of killing.

I know that it’s the same rule. And obvious, that this rule is not for themepark “hardcore” players.

Rule One of the Market Game: Never bet more than you can afford to lose.

Reminds me of the First Rule of EvE – never fly a ship you can’t afford to lose.

TL:DR, repricing items for free (or a nominal fee) sounds nice, but unless bots could be reliably eliminated from the game forever (not likely, unfortunately), I think the move to penalize relisting with a relatively high non-refundable listing fee is the right one.

Maybe you’re right, seeing how arenanet incapable handling bots in game. Without including bots, possibility to lower price on sell orders would be good, but if include bots in equation – it could(and with high probability) became worse.
Crafting is screwed anyway, and for traders, listing fee is just an annoyance.

i imagine many people won’t agree with me and the few times i’m completely broke i’d slap myself for saying this but being able to get anything and everything comfortably whenever I want it ultimately kills the feeling of accomplishment. one of the main things in MMO’s that drives me to keep playing.

That is exactly the problem with themepark mmo. To achieve and accomplish something, to differ yourself from the other thousands of players – themepark games add grind, that is unacceptable for most of the players. So, in the end they get whiny raiders, those who can not be satisfied ever.
More funny although those, who want to influence mmo world through pve, at expense of other players. That always makes me laugh.

Adding more constraints to the market will NOT fix the “problem” that many people have with the economy. All it will do is make a bigger mess.
You cant fix over supply with trading rules – economies dont work that way.

Exactly.

the TP is designed as a gold sink.

Wait! What?

Reason for eventual drop of price lies not with listing fee, but with themepark game itself.

2 Wazabi.1439

The listing fee is exactly the mechanism that puts some risk into trading…in that it makes it hard to speculate.

I don’t see how it’s a risk, and how it’s making harder to speculate.
The first thing i did after learned about listing fee and hidden sale tax – changed strategy.
It(listing fee and inability to lower price) might somewhat slowed increase in purchase power, but that’s all about it. Unless you count change of strategy as “making it harder”.
Instead of selecting few positions and constantly monitoring them(changing price and other things) you just taking more positions and paying less attention for individual order. Actually, that strategy is better in any circumstances.
Also, inability to change(lower) price of sell order, punishes crafters. Because they just can’t easily add more positions.

1. Efficiencies are identical for all market participants

Normally, market participants have varying specialties. With the current crafting system, however, all participants are effectively identical in their specialty because they all rely on universally available crafting mechanics. That means that where in real life a market participant could force another out of the market through more efficient production or higher quality, market participants here have no way of improving their output, differentiating themselves from one another, or improving efficiency to afford higher offers. This means that raising one’s prices is not going to deter competitors because their profit margins are identical to yours, and anything you can afford, they can afford as well.

That’s unsolvable in GW2.
In EvE, that is solved by trade skills, refinement skills and production skills. Not quality, but craft base cost, production time and tax reduction.

Xfuryion.6835:

CdrRogdan.8907:

Items that are good to trade (and I recommend doing more than one at a time, to reduce risk) are:

Strawberries, Raspberries, Chili Peppers, Onions, Oranges, Vanilla Beans, Cotton Scraps, Peppercorn, Copper Ore, Darksteel Ingots, any (non-exotic) bolts.

The turn around for these items is different and the risk in losing money on the trade varies between products (vanilla beans are risky right now because a-net did something to the supply). I may have missed a few, but those are the ones off the top of my head. Have fun!

Copper Ore isn’t a thing you can make money with.
Currently you can buy them cheap at 16 and sell them at 19.
16×1.15 = 18 so you only have 1 copper profit.

This means that you need to trade 1.000 to only have 10 silver profit.

21-17 was better.

Streaky Haddock.4530:

Yes, but how did you figure out these were good to sell? Does the ‘Top most demanded’ items thing actually mean anything?

Resources trades better than crafted products. Sale rate higher for lower tiers.
Also, when you have some spare money, you can detect sale rate by trading some small quantities orders.
Of course, you analyze margin between buy and sell orders first.

It’s a necessary constrain in the game to sink gold and reduce speculation.

I’d say it should be detailed. Like listing fee.
Traders easily detected that, so it’s punishing other players.

Well, I’ve been using the TP dozens of times a day and I only noticed it for myself this morning because of the volume I was trading in and the high turnover on that particular commodity. I was sitting there for half an hour wondering why my order wasn’t getting filled, when I deliberately overbid to get priority. Noticed that the other order was there as well, and saw the net buy order getting filled, but none of it was coming to me. I just figured it was a display bug at first and that there was actually someone outbidding me I couldn’t see, but then the second the total order dropped to 220 my order started filling again. But what it basically means is that you’ve got the same chance of getting your order filled if you post it at the current highest bid as you would for upping the ante one copper, because anyone matching your price in either case would immediately supersede you.

Would be even worse for sell orders because, as was said, you’d then risk losing your deposit if someone dumped a 250-stack onto the market at “match highest seller,” exactly the same as if they’d under-bid you. WTB FIFO model, or at least random selection.

I’ve noticed that long ago. There also some funny things happening to 250 stacks
Actually, i’d prefer random selection.

The economy is fine. Learn the basics before you complain.

I’d say not fine, but that state have nothing to do with TP itself, except ability to change sell orders, but that’s minor effect overall, and won’t solve supply|demand problem, and crafting.

CdrRogdan.8907:

Let people list items with a range, that automatically adjusts when someone undercuts them. Problem solved.

Really?