Showing Posts For Slean.6139:
It seems like the easiest solution to the gold for gems issue would be to make it function like the TP or like any real world equity market/exchange where buyers and sellers can each post the price they are willing to pay/receive for a fixed quantity of gems (say 100gems). To make this work however players need to be able to specify their own prices as well as view the bid/ask spread as well as quantities and several extra prices (the TP already does this for items listed).
AFAIK With the current system ANet essentially “creates” the purchased currency and “destroys” the paid with currency on demand. However its critical for price discovery that for someone to buy gems at a certain price there is another person willing to sell them at that price. By allowing players to set their own price, they can decide how much their real life work time or in game farming time is worth to them. There is nothing wrong with a transaction tax and as a gold sink its probably needed but it should be clearly listed. All of the “sophisticated” traders will figure it out in 5 seconds anyway its just the “casual” gold/gem trader that will get burned by it not being listed.
To address a couple concerns about “free markets” earlier in the thread:
Yes there will be speculation and arbitrage(flipping) with this system and that’s not a problem.
Speculation and arbitrage both contribute to liquidity (tl;dr your offer gets taken more quickly unless you want 100gold/1gem or vice versa) also arbitrage will help funnel more gold out of the system.
This would contribute to more rapidly fixing the gold seller issue although gem prices will likely jump since again someone actually has to buy the gems now from ANet with RMT to sell them to you for gold instead of ANet just deleting your gold. Over time legit prices will more or less fall in line with the gold sellers prices with some risk premium for buying from gold sellers based on how likely it is that ANet bothers to ban accounts/wipe gold from accounts caught buying from gold sellers.
Summary:
-Make all player gems/gold trades have a player counterparty.
-Visibility of offers (price and quantity)
-We already have free markets on everything else in game (that isn’t soul/accountbound) why not gold/gems
Possible issues: If players turning gold into gems through ANet is intended as the main gold sink (since there are no mounts and what not) then this is a moot point.