I don’t want to quote your entire post but let me try answer you as clearly as I can since there seems to be something that you aren’t figuring out right.
First statement I want you to make clear in your head is, There are difference in real life and virtual. You can’t always compare both. Most logical people in the world don’t spend thousands of their own money to grief others while in game, that happens more than necessary.
Firstly in my post I said if there was NO tax I would put a storm as an example up for 1000g and I wouldn’t really care if it sold because i wouldn’t be taxed for it. (then you went on to give an example of how TAX does give an incentive (which is my point) for people to sell i.e. 1000g item has 50g tax (who would put up an item except the obscenely rich just for fun)
Now onto the point, if tax didn’t exist, people would put up items at obscene prices just so they can use it as one of the following things:
Put it up there just for fun
Use it as an unofficial bank
Manipulate the prices of low supply items.
Sure, some people will put up an item with the intention of selling it while many others may not. The biggest issue is if you have no tax fee. There will an undercut war going on constantly. People will always be undercutting each other by 1c at a time on the sale post and it will be highly unproductive. Imagine yourself never being able to sell an item because you’re constantly being undercut by someone else who is 1c cheaper thanks to there being no 5 % tax to minimise that from happening to you. I assure you, if there was no tax, there would be so much undercut going on that the people who actually get to sell their items are the guys who spend 24/7 on TP watching every trade and undercutting it by 1c at a time.
Now you can say that what if I apply my 1g concept, that way tax fee still acts to control it. Oh ho no it doesn’t. As I will go on to say, 1g is nothing in comparison to a precursor price. I will gladly pay that 1g just to undercut someone else selling it for slightly lower. I’m losing out on 1g in order to make a profit of 598.99 minus trading fee. Thus again another undercut war where the most active guy wins.
Now onto a situation where someone picks up a precursor worth 600g but cant sell because he only has 11g. Let me outline to you that is a USER problem.
If the person doesn’t have the money to pay the initial trading post cost, then he will have to gather it up in order to post it up. It is by no means Anet or the trading posts fault if the player cannot sum up the amount of money to make the sale. 30g isn’t even that hard to earn. 1 (2 weeks at most) for most average players.
As I have also mentioned, that is why tax gives an incentive of putting up realistically sell able prices. I.E. if this user wanted to make sure he made the sale without losing out on his tax, he would hae to put it lower. Like 550g? if he puts it at 600g and the price drops, he can either, wait it out for the price to rise again OR take it out and fork out the tax again. That is what keeps the price from fluctuating excessively. People actually have CONSEQUENCE for putting up unrealistic sale prices.
1g is nothing compared to a precursor worth 600g.
I didn’t say 5 % was nothing. I said it was little already. I would up it to 10 % maybe, just to bring the prices down to a more realistic degree.
“If it causes higher prices, it would be because of inflation (which is something I stated in my original post), not because “LOL SELLERS CAN SET WHATEVER PRICES THEY WANT”. In the real world, do you see people selling toilet paper for $1,000,000 just cuz they can? No, of course not. People are intelligent enough to realize that the costs (in time, labor, or whatever) of taking an item off the shelf over and over again to reprice for the entertainment value is ridiculous, and just a loss of money. Eventually, they’ll have to realize that they’re losing money by wasting time.”
Lastly, to quote you here. You can’t compare the real world with the virtual world. In the virtual world, no matter what you do, you’re not taking any real risk towards your real money i.e it’s not a real money auction house. It’s a game. Some people will set whatever the price they want with the above reasons I have mentioned further above. Do you remember when the first twilight was put on TP? I think it was at about 5000 gold. Do you think anyone bought it? Even now, the precursors are all put at somewhere between 2-4k g. I doubt many of them sell but people just put it up there.
