Guild Wars 2

monkeynaughtybits.8267:

Went thru 15 boxes or so today, looking for the new weapon skins. What I DID get was a name change contract. “Hurray!” I said. “Something new!” I was excited. But then it hit me….I don’t WANT to change the names of any of my characters….

No big deal, right? I’ll make some cash for it….except it’s account bound.

I empathize – I have a total make-over kit sitting in my bank. Maybe I’ll find a use for it someday, but probably not. It would be really bad though to allow folks to turn gems into gold without going through the gold<->gem conversion process.

Maybe it would be feasible to allow folks to turn unwanted random stuff from their chests back into gems. Sort of like vendoring where you don’t really get the item’s full value, but at least you get something. Then you could put it toward more keys to support your habit

Jemmi.6058:

I agree that in game voice chat would help with communication, but vent and teamspeak work OK.

Yes they work fine when you’re running with friends, but I’m not handing out my server password to random folks I pick up for a pug. I had a lot of issues with DDO, but one thing that was really nice was the built in team chat. No firing up a separate client (or trying to figure out if everyone had the right client), no exchanging server info, no figuring out which room to go to, and no trying to match up server logins with character names.

You don’t have to say much, but when you do need to say something, you don’t really have time to type it. Mostly we just chit-chat, but it’s really nice to be able to say “I’m down”, “Dropping an ice bow”, “My interrupt is ready”, “Assassin targeted”, etc.

I know voice chat is unlikely to be added after the fact – it seems like something you’d want to design for right up front, but being able to macro a line of text that you could /say with a hot-key would be good enough. When folks don’t have defined roles, you have to be able to co-ordinate your actions, and you can’t do that easily right now when you’re playing with a pick-up group.

Jemmi.6058:

I was thinking back more to Guild Wars 1, the trinity in general and Guild Wars 2.

I agree that GW2 does not require a healer and tank as it is. If they were added, the game would need to be entirely restructured.

That said, I would like to see more support added to the game in the way that GW1 had it. A big one is increasing interrupt skills. You could bring an interrupt ranger who’s entire role would be to interrupt throughout the run.

And what happens when the player that is 90% focused on doing one thing has to pick up the slack for someone else on the team when they’re downed? Or when the interrupt ranger you brought along has an unlucky moment and gets knocked off the edge of something or downed and can’t do the only job they’re there to do? Team wipe and try again and hope that no-one else has an unlucky moment and gets taken out of the fight? If a team member gets downed, it potentially takes two folks out of the fight – is it really a good idea for folks to not be able to switch modes for a minute and take up the slack?

It is so much better and more fluid to have any team member be able to pitch in with all three roles – damage, support, control. We don’t need shorter cool downs, we need more aware/adaptable players. If someone has dropped their team heal, notice it and don’t plop yours down until it’s needed. If you’ve managed to strip all of the stacks of defiant from the boss, co-ordinate who’s going to interrupt the next big attack.

This game doesn’t need a trinity, or massive changes to the skills, it needs team voice chat, or chat macros so that pugs can co-ordinate more easily.

RebelYell.7132:

However, I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the OP just because he used the word “trinity”. There’s a legitimate issue here that needs addressing: professions have poorly defined roles on a team.

I like being able to choose a profession based on the class mechanic I find more interesting than having to choose based what role I’m going to play with that character. Yes, it is more difficult for folks that don’t want to dig into the details, but I really like being able to switch up my character’s role just by equipping different gear and changing up my skills and traits. It’s so much better than ending up on a PUG with a bad tank and not being able to progress. I can change my role to be more DPS or more support on the fly in the middle of a dungeon if I have to – you can’t do that in a game with strongly defined roles based on profession.

RebelYell.7132:

City of Heroes, a game I cannot go back to even if I wanted to, also did the “Damage/Support/Control” thing in a notable manner. Each “archetype” is designed for those in differing degrees. There were tanks and healers, but they were part of the grander scheme, and having done every type of content, from story arcs, to task forces, up through raiding, I never once encountered content that I needed a tank or healer to complete.

Any team of decent players could tackle any of the content in COH regardless of the team make-up, especially if they were co-ordinating over voice chat. I don’t think that COH is the best example of a game with strongly defined roles though. Certain classes were perceived to have strongly defined roles, but the roles were defined more by the power sets than the class. They were more defined than in GW2, but my best DPSer was a defender (perceived as a support archetype), and my blaster (perceived as a DPS archetype) was set up for support.

All that having roles strongly associated with a particular class accomplished was to encourage a bunch of terrible players to roll empathy defenders named healbot so they could get teams to carry them. It also made it really difficult for folks that thought outside the box to find teams.

darkace.8925:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I could probably come up with a few more that aren’t so close to poultry.

I had in mind “pork” when I made the thread, and was hoping for pork chops, glazed pork loins, bacon on everything, etc. But you’re right, there are certainly plenty of ingredients in the game with too few recipes (I’m looking at you, grapes).

Oh, I see where you were headed. The thread may have gotten more response if it was a bit more open ended… or maybe not. I think the folks that take up cooking for the fun of it are vastly out numbered on the forums by the folks that do it to level quickly.

And here’s my contribution to fix the grape recipe deficiency :
Mayo (or sour cream I suppose) + grapes + poultry + walnuts = chicken salad

It’s an interesting idea, but “slab of white meat” isn’t a very inspiring ingredient. White fish fillet, mustard, chunk of crab meat, pineapple, shark steak, peas, … I could probably come up with a few more that aren’t so close to poultry.

It might be interesting to take an ingredient already in the game – there are a bunch that only have a couple recipes.

Nut butter (oil + almonds) + loaf of bread + grape pie filling = a GW2 style PB&J add a glass of buttermilk an you have yourself a nice lunch

Seasoned bread crumbs (loaf of bread + parsley + oregano) + clams + lemon = stuffed clams.

Mayo (Eggs + oil + lemon) + eggs + green onions + loaf of bread = egg salad sandwich

Hmm I think that fresh bread and spicy capacolla I bought earlier has got me stuck on sandwiches. Anyhow, you get the idea.

Mystic.5934:

I’ve twice seen a human female dressed as Wonder Woman, named (you guessed it): Wonder Woman

I think “Plunder Woman” dressed as a pirate was more interesting.

phys.7689:

i sort of agree, but it doesnt have to be just crafting, the key here is to make it intentional, whether that be hunting specific monsters, going into some hard to access zone, or crafting it up. The problem with farming in this game mats is your still competing with tons of accidental competitors, take the bags for example. did 90% of the people farming in cursed shore want to actually get a peice of leather? probably not, but you will have to compete with them in the market.

Well does it matter if it’s intentional or accidental? You’re always going to be competing with tons and tons of other players. As soon as the price of leather goes up, more people will go intentionally get leather because it’s more profitable, then the price goes back down.

No matter what mechanic is introduced, there will be thousands of other players doing whatever it is and earning more gold. More gold getting injected into the economy will cause things to get more expensive, and then you’ll need more gold for whatever purpose you’re collecting it for, and then you’ll be right back where you started.

The only way to make more money than the average player is to know more about what’s going on, know the best places to get certain materials, have a character build that lets you get those items more efficiently, etc. In short, you have to know more about the game than the average player, and it’s a moving target. As soon as someone posts a video on youtube about some farming spot that will earn you tons of gold, that spot is worthless. You have to keep ahead of the herd

I know it isn’t correct, but it got stuck in my head as ore-RICK-ulum. I like it better than the correct way, so I’m keeping it. Texans have a propensity for doing that sort of thing :P

John Smith.4610:

Here are the assumptions that I’m operating under for this question:
1. You feel that PvE and TP have difference levels of gold earning
2. You feel that PvE and TP should have the same level of gold earning

What would be your plan for implementing a reward system that would achieve what you desire, given the constraint that you may not get rid of the trading post?

Well given that folks probably want more gold so that they can buy things from the TP, and that the traders will capitalize on that newly minted demand, that’s a tough nut to crack. The only thing that comes to mind is highly desirable items that can only be crafted from materials collected by farming. Geez, it’s a wonder that isn’t already in the game.

On the other hand, I don’t think the traders have an advantage over farmers. Folks who pay attention to the market trends have an advantage over folks that ignore the market. For example, it makes no sense to farm Karka shells if the shell prices have tanked or if there’s a huge demand spike for powerful blood.

Nothing can be done to level the playing field between the high-information player and the low-information player; the high-information folks always have the advantage.

I don’t play the market because it’s too much work to do it properly and I already work a too much. I’m sure if I put as much effort and thought into my gathering as some folks put into their TP strategies, I could make comparable money.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Pandemoniac.4739:

And it’s not because that’s how it’s done in the real world, because I just gave you an example of eBay taking its escrow fee from the transaction proceeds.

Read my post again. Focus in on the example of buying stocks. You’ll have your answer.

That’s not an answer, that’s an example of someone else charging the fee up front. I gave an example of someone taking the fee from the proceeds. It’s done both ways. Why would someone choose to do one over the other in a system where the fee is just there to delete the money, and not to collect the money to use for something else?

Behellagh.1468:

A quick survey of other MMOs (DDO, WoW, EVE, LotRO) I’ve only saw EVE having a no listing (broker) fee for immediate sale. Otherwise you pay to list, it’s not refundable.

That has nothing to do with my question. I’m not opposed to the fee being charged.

I’d be perfectly happy with a relevant guess from a player. I’m not calling out any dev, I just haven’t lost hope that I can make y’all understand what I’m asking.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This isn’t just a matter of “you pay because that’s how it works” or “because people are familiar with Ebay”. You are using a tool that’s acting as a 3rd party to connect you with another player. If you have something to sell, the TP finds you a buyer. If there’s something you want to buy, the TP finds you the goods and seller. And if you want to use this tool to complete the transaction, there’s a fee.

Argh. I have no problem paying the fee. I think the fee is a good thing, and the same fee should be charged regardless of whether I’m filling a buy order or posting a sale order. When I’m filling a buy order, why do I have to have the fee in cash instead of taking it out of the proceeds of the transaction? Why does it matter if the gold is deleted from the transaction or from my inventory?

And it’s not because that’s how it’s done in the real world, because I just gave you an example of eBay taking its escrow fee from the transaction proceeds.

Behellagh.1468:

No, if you have something to sell, setting up an auction costs you money up front, (snip)

And why not make a system recognizable? Just because it’s a virtual world doesn’t mean something as simple as a player trading system should be new and unfamiliar to all.

The TP is not an auction house. It’s a commodities exchange. Placing a buy order is not the same thing as bidding on an auction, and neither filling a buy order nor placing a sell order is the same thing as placing an auction.

While it does make sense to keep things familiar, I don’t think that needing a percentage of a the sale price in cash to sell an item to a buyer for a price you both agree on is something that was put in just because people are used to doing it. When someone sells items, they don’t have to give the sales tax the local government before the sale. The eBay escrow service in its instructions for sellers says

Escrow.com

If you agreed to pay all or some of the escrow fee, it’s automatically deducted from the purchase price.

If my question was “Why did ANet make the sky blue in GW2 when they could have picked any color?”, I would accept the answer "because that’s what people are familiar with and ANet wants people to feel like they’re on their home planet and not on some alien world. I don’t accept that a team of knowledgeable folks dedicated to building GW2’s virtual economy decided to charge a fee a certain way because that’s the way eBay does it.

Behellagh.1468:

Why did they do it? Anyone sell items on eBay? There it’s called an insertion fee, also paid up front and non-refundable, usually based on opening bid or reserve amount. And since net savvy individuals have been using eBay since the mid 1990s it was THE model of an online marketplace that everyone decided to use but with their own twist.

Why invent from scratch when you have a real world example of what works to draw upon.

Because you’re building a virtual world, not simulating the real one.

So, people post orders for things they’d like to buy for a certain price on Ebay, and the folks that want to sell those items for that price have to put up a percentage of the sale price in cash to finish the transaction? Wild. I thought people just auctioned stuff off on eBay. I haven’t looked at eBay for a really long time though.

Olba.5376:

Well, one thing that comes to mind is that it lowers the early prices of rare stuff, as people didn’t have that much gold.

That’s a good thought. Now the folks that can afford the rare stuff probably buy up the cheap ones and re-list at a higher price.

Here’s my random thoughts on the impacts of the 5% cash up front requirement :

• Filling buy orders is not more attractive than posting sale orders because both require the same amount of cash up front.
• Keeps some supply of very expensive items off of the market (or delays their posting), because folks don’t have the cash to fill the highest buy order, and may not be willing to list at a much lower price they can afford. Can you post for less than the highest buy order? It would make sense to me that you should be able to if you can’t afford the listing fee for the highest buy order, but that kind of assumption is what started this whole thing
• You can’t “launder” money by giving someone an expensive item to sell in lieu of cash
• Botters can’t use the TP as a vendor to clear out their inventory by automatically filling the highest buy order because they will eventually need more in listing fees than the money they’re generating while they’re botting.

I’ll probably have some more after I sleep on it a bit.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I don’t think you understand my question.

See the 2nd paragraph in my previous post.

Yes, the one where you demonstrate that I didn’t do a good job of explaining the question I was trying to ask.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The Black Lion Trading Company is a tool. You are paying “fees” or “taxes” to use this tool. Be it placing a Sell Order, or filling a Buy Order, you are using the tool, and thus are subject to the fees. It’s like going to a vending machine, and buying a Pepsi or Coke. You gotta pay first, not after you press the button and retrieve your soda.

Granted the original question wasn’t as clear as it could have been, I clarified it later as

I just don’t understand the economic reason behind requiring the fee for filling a buy order to be paid in cash instead of taken from the proceeds of the transaction.

Basically, what you’re saying is “You have to pay the fee up front both when you’re filling buy orders and posting sell orders, because that’s how it works.” I know how it works, I’m trying to figure out why it would be designed that way.

The ANet folks don’t seem to do much arbitrarily, so whether it was a decision to leave it that way because it made the code easier, or it was a decision to require folks to have 5% of the value of what they’re selling in cash, I think it’s likely that it was an intentional decision.

Regardless, we’re all just guessing and I’ve realized that it’s unlikely at this point that anyone will improve on the “it was easier to code that way” guess. I was hoping that forcing sellers to have gold to make a sale would have some intended market impact. I have a niggling feeling that there’s something there, I’ll have to let it stew for a while.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Behellagh’s post, while long and quite funny, answer’s the OP’s question. However, I can understand why he doesn’t get it. So I’ll try to make it a bit more simple.

Well first, I’m a “she” and second, I understand quite well the purpose of the fees, I think they are a good thing, and I have no trouble paying them. I don’t think you understand my question.

Behellagh.1468:

Here’s my question to you. Why the fuss?

shrug I like knowing stuff. Some people collect stamps, I collect knowledge. Someone abbreviated guardian as guar in a forum topic, so now I know a bit about the cluster bean that’s the source of guar gum (which it turns out is a better stabilizer than locust bean gum) and found some tips on abbreviating English words. Yeah, I know I’m weird. I’m mostly harmless though. The Priory is so obviously the Order for me

Every time I dig into some aspect of GW2, I’m impressed with the thoughtfulness behind their design decisions, so I’m far more inclined to think that they had to ship and it was easier to have one logic path for both creating a sell order and filling a buy order than to believe they put the fees in the TP because that’s the way it works in real life.

Behellagh.1468:

You are still using the market as a match maker. The TP may be virtual but it’s simulating how such a business works.

No, I think you’re missing the point. The 15% tax isn’t there because it’s part of a simulation of the real world. The 15% tax is there because it takes gold out of the economy and prevents inflation. I’m trying to figure out what purpose forcing a seller to have a percentage of the item they’re trying to sell in cash serves when filling a buy order.

There aren’t invisible gremlins in the TP expecting payment. The money from the 5% listing fee gets removed from the economy whether it’s taken out of the player’s inventory, or it’s taken out of the proceeds of filling the buy order. So either:

1) It serves no economic purpose, it was done that way because of development contraints.
2) Something bad can happen to the market if you allow sellers to trade without having to use actual gold, and this “bad thing” is worse than folks not being able to sell high value items like precursors because they don’t have 5% of the highest buy order in cash.

I’ve only been thinking about high value items, but what if you could unload a lot of low cost items with no cash? Does that make it easier for the botters?

I’d rather see a reprise of the State of the Economy that John did shortly after release.

I really don’t find stories about the richest people in a virtual economy that compelling. How are you going to describe the great achievements in game? “Early in his 40s, IPwnU was grinding totems. A lucky market fluctuation led to his first windfall and he started investing in Ectos.” Yawn.

I do like statistics and data analysis though.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Does anyone know what happens right now if there is only one buy order to fill, but 5 people try to fill it?

Does one person sell it to the buyer and the other 4 create sell listings? Or….does one person sell it and the other 4 get an error stating the trade has failed?

I believe, but I am only 98% certain, that the trades fail. What I don’t know is if the listing fee is refunded through the pick up tab, or if it is never taken out because the trade didn’t go through. It depends on how the transaction is rolled back.

It might be interesting to put together a test with some really lightly traded food that is only going for a few coppers.

justkoh.4073:

Ysengrin.6428:

Sickyl.1056:

Is it possible that people are logging their alt’s near nodes and logging this in once an hour?

Some folks are, but they still look and act like a normal player when they do so. The current crop of bots is only visible for a couple of seconds over the node and disappears before the gathering sound loop even starts, usually popping up at another nearby node before the sound loop finishes.

With regards to players leaving alts near nodes, I trust that Anet will properly investigate a player’s movements once a name has been provided and differentiate between the botters and the alts. After all, what does a screenshot really prove anyway except that the reported name is correct?

If it looks suspicious, I will report it. The investigation, I leave to Anet.

I have a number of screenshots of folks logging in their alts for a node that I’ve had to toss out. If you pause for a second, it becomes sort of obvious what is happening. With teleporting bots you rarely see 5 of them pop in one after another. When in doubt however, make the report and let ANet sort it out.

This is why I like to file a follow up support ticket explaining why I think they’re a bot instead of just using /report. It should be fairly easily to separate a teleporter from someone logging in alts, and it narrows the data that ANet has to look at. I haven’t had that many bots to report lately, so it’s not that big a time sink.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Iruwen.3164:

When you list it, simply include the fee, problem solved. The buyer will pay all of it.

This isn’t the question at hand.

Well to be fair, the original question kind of got hijacked The original question was

Smuggler.6739:

why would you a tax in a game plus a listing fee with total of 15% of the item’s price

Healix.5819:

It’s simply the way it is because it was easier to make it that way.

That’s what I assumed, but because there seem to be some negative impacts and a lot of care was taken in the design of other aspects of the market, I wanted to toss the question out there to see if someone could come up with a reason I had overlooked.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

The heavy moldy bags were an excellent source of T6 materials until the last patch. They still are, but the Pent/Shelter events where you could gain a whole stack of these fast were buffed with champions.

The champions are only at events where there are a horde of players. If you don’t hang around the events where the zerg is, you can still do quite well.

I can’t think of why you would want to make filling buy orders cheaper than posting a sell order by dropping the listing fee. The 15% fee is there for reasons I completely accept as necessary for a good economy. I’m not against paying the fee, I just don’t understand the economic reason behind requiring the fee for filling a buy order to be paid in cash instead of taken from the proceeds of the transaction.

There are good reasons for making a seller invest some cash up front when the post an item, and for that fee to be proportional to the price they’re asking for their item.

The question came up in the “Selling Tax” thread about why you are required to have 5% of the sales price in cash when you’re filling a buy order. I’m really curious and I didn’t want the question to get buried at the end of a long thread that was originally a different topic.

The listing fee makes perfect sense to me when you’re posting a sell order. It keeps people from constantly changing their price and puts downward pressure on the prices because you don’t want to lose your 5% by listing too high.

I don’t understand the reasoning behind requiring it up front when filling buy orders. It has a negative effect of keeping some folks who got a lucky drop of something very valuable from being able to sell it at even close to the going price, and I imagine would keep some items off of the market while the owner tries to raise the capital to sell it.

I can’t think of a reason why the entire 15% shouldn’t just be deducted from the sale proceeds when filling buy orders. It certainly would make filling buy orders a lot more attractive than posting a sell order for really high price items, but is that a bad effect?

Because a picture is worth a thousand words…

Here is a screenshot of me trying to fill a buy order for a major sigil of luck with no money in my inventory. The sell button is disabled because I don’t have 18c for the listing fee.

Ursan.7846:

Grimwolf.7163:

Surely the difficulty in fixing a problem should be at least as important as the severity of the problem, and I can’t imagine this is a difficult fix.

I’d like to point out that you can’t imagine it because you don’t actually work for the company.

I’m pretty sure they take ease of fixes into account. Problem with judging that though is that we will never know what’s easy to fix and what’s hard to fix.

Lastly, putting less priority in fixing small bugs does not mean they are never fixing small bugs. That is a leap of logic that you’re making.

Well and I’ll tell you as a developer, not only do you prioritize by big/small easy/hard you also take a look at risky/not-risky.

What if someone has a typo and clears out a bunch of valid buy orders along with the invalid ones? And don’t forget, you have to make sure everyone’s 1C gets refunded to them properly. What if you mess that up and accidentally dump thousands of gold into the economy? Try taking free money back from folks… it will get ugly.

When you’re touching sensitive systems, it makes sense to aggregate changes and test the crap out of them instead of doing a bunch of minor changes onesy twosy. You need to be as sure as you can be that you aren’t going to create a problem worse than the one you’re fixing.

Hmm, I think the way I asked the question is causing confusion. I did in fact go into game and verify that if you have 0 gold in your inventory, you can not fill a buy order. The listing fee appears in red and the button is disabled.

I’m confused, because if you’re selling an item instantly, I don’t see the need to have to have some cash on hand. The fees are a percentage of the sale price, so you can’t fill a buy order that doesn’t cover the cost of the transaction. Although, I suppose you could fill a buy order for 1C and get nothing in return.

I’m inclined to think it’s a limitation of the UI/code logic and not an intentional part of the design, but I might be missing something.

Ursan.7846:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Well I’m embarrassed. I’m helping a friend with a project they’re working on and I must have got my wires crossed. I’ve been pounded with exchange driven changes this past week and it’s made me quite the scatterbrain (I’m looking at you NASDAQ).

I wonder if that is an intentional part of the design, or a by-product of the UI. It seems unfortunate for the folks who find something really valuable and are too broke to pay the listing fee. The gold is getting removed from the system regardless, why would it matter if it’s on the front end or back end of the deal?

Because if you list an item and remove the listing, you still lose the listing fee. I imagine it’s to encourage people to really think carefully about their prices when listing sell orders.

I get that part – the listing fee puts downward pressure on the sale prices, but if you’re filling a buy order, why would you need the listing fee up front instead of just deducting it from the sale?

Leablo.2651:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Uh, yeah, but you don’t have to have 5% up front, it’s deducted from the sale.

Wrong. Please test things like this before you post crap.

Well I’m embarrassed. I’m helping a friend with a project they’re working on and I must have got my wires crossed. I’ve been pounded with exchange driven changes this past week and it’s made me quite the scatterbrain (I’m looking at you NASDAQ).

I wonder if that is an intentional part of the design, or a by-product of the UI. It seems unfortunate for the folks who find something really valuable and are too broke to pay the listing fee. The gold is getting removed from the system regardless, why would it matter if it’s on the front end or back end of the deal?

Rev.1453:

Hmm that’s a good point, so I’ll do that. I do think they need to make clarifications, since it’s patently obvious to anyone who looks into it that the rule against accessing memory is violated by gw2spidy, and they don’t seem to care.

It may be obvious if you’re using common sense, but it’s a completely different story when you get lawyers involved

FirstBlood.7359:

John Smith.4610:

If you study economics you should have no trouble sitting down and thinking about the problem and coming up with an answer.

Just because the economy is virtual, doesn’t mean it isn’t subject to market failures or other economic constraints. In the case of the answer to this question, virtual economies are much MORE subject to this pressure than regular economies.

I strongly disagree. In the real economy taxes are needed, in a virtual they are not.

Just because they are needed for different reasons, doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary.

I would talk to them directly through the support system. That will make sure that your question gets the attention of the right folks without making it too public before things have been hashed out.

You’ll probably have to wait a bit before you get hooked up, but I think the signal to noise improvement will be worth the wait.

ANet would be crazy to post anything publically that might be construed as them giving folks a free pass on some provisions of the TOS, even though they are willing to make specific exemptions.

The TOS are not there to beat up players who are not harming the game. They’re there to try to cover as many mechanisms as possible that could be used to harm the game so that ANet can legally terminate an account.

If you have a question about something you’d like to do, do what the creator of gw2spidy did and have a conversation with ANet. There may be implications to the game you didn’t consider, or it might not be a problem. You won’t know until you have the conversation about something specific.

Psientist.6437:

Giving us the ability to roleplay loan-sharking or indentured servitude would certainly be something.

Oh absolutely. We should go all out and add derivatives to the market, trading on margin, bankruptcy, and debtor’s prisons so we can get the full experience

ProxyDamage.9826:

While I can’t say that I empathize with your original point, I will say that certain characteristics of names seem to reflect certain characteristics of the players that choose them. Generally negative characteristics.

Speaking of which, were you trying to write “Denominator” …? Or is there something I’m missing?

I’m with you on having some name characteristics that make me less likely to interact with folks, but I assume that certain spelling mistakes are plays on words that I’m not getting.

I can’t tell you how many people gave me a lecture on spelling when they came across my sonic blaster “Dewey Decibel” in CoH. I was kind of asking for it though, the crowd that knows about the Dewey decimal system tend to be sticklers for spelling and grammar.

With popular multiplayer games it is really difficult to find names that you’re happy with that aren’t already taken. I have a few that are almost always available that are (probably mangled) words from other languages. I scan the roller derby registry for ideas a lot. It can take me a really long time to create an alt, I understand why some folks get frustrated and end up with less than awesome names.

On the other hand, there are those names that tell you a lot about what the player behind the avatar thinks is cool that give me fair warning that we’re not going to get along.

Geikamir.6329:

Ursan.7846:

Geikamir.6329:

What is unfair is that just because someone happens to like a dagger or greatsword better that they should be punished by paying more.

On the flipside, isn’t it also unfair then, that someone who actually wants a focus or a torch have to pay the same price as a GS/dagger, whereas in a player-driven market he’d most likely pay much less?

No, it’s fair by definition.

I think the problem is that you’re operating from an incorrect assumption that a dagger has the same value as a focus. It doesn’t – the dagger is more valuable than a focus because more people want it. It is not fair that they should be the same price.

You accept that underwater weapons are less valuable, because they get used less, but arbitrarily have decided that daggers are the same value as a focus, even though daggers get used more. That’s not fair. Your decisions about the value of things are not the same decisions that someone else would make. Fighting underwater in Frostgorge is something my ranger loves to do, and I think that the legendary speargun looks pretty cool and would take it over a dagger any day.

The market is very good at determining the value of things when it’s stable. Lot of folks making lots of purchasing decisions based on their personal calculations of value aggregate to end up with the fairest possible valuation of an item. That’s why the TP being cross server with a huge number of players participating in it is awesome. One person doesn’t decide what a fair price for something is, everyone collectively decides based on the current environment.

Low supply/high demand items are naturally more volatile than high supply items, and whether the going price for the pre-cursors is truly the right price and not due to some problem with the market is above my pay grade. In theory though, the market will set the fairest price, because a horde of buyers and sellers know more collectively than a few people on a committee trying to arrive at a price.

Essence Snow.3194:

If one were to compare anything in this game, the most suited would be the cow launcher where one can gamble 50s per go. The gambling that it offers actually has decent odds yet not many players play it. I wonder why?

Because it’s not conveniently located, not always open for business, and it’s an all-or-nothing game with a pretty steep cost and a fixed pay out? The forge always gives you something back, and it has some rules that give you some control over the results.

I’m not saying the forge is necessarily a better deal, but it’s definitely more attractive on its surface to the typical player.

Print screen, get their character name, add the character to friends (or your block list), right click to report. I usually get their account name from the list and follow up with a support ticket to explain what kind of bot I was reporting, but I understand if that’s more hassle than most folks want to deal with.

If you miss them the first time, get eyes on the next closest node on your map to have a second shot.

Leablo.2651:

You still pay all fees for filling a buy order.

Uh, yeah, but you don’t have to have 5% up front, it’s deducted from the sale. As I mentioned before somewhere else, it also insulates you from dropping prices. You take a price hit for selling something instantly (well, usually), but there are situations where it’s the smart thing to do.

DarkSpirit.7046:

This is why, the way the game is currently implemented, I am never going for a legendary, unless I have so much gold that I could just buy a precursor outright.

Me too. I think the standard gambling advice of don’t put more on the table than you can stand to lose applies. I know when I toss stuff in the forge the odds are against me, so I do it for fun on the off chance I’ll get lucky. I turned 4 major soul bound runes into a superior rune of divinity, and it made my day. I wasn’t particularly looking for that rune, but the gold I could sell it for is something I can use.

If you’re serious about getting a legendary, you should be working on amassing gold, not messing around with the forge. There are plenty of folks that got lucky that would rather have a heaping pile of gold than a pre-cursor.

Katz.5143:

I’m sure the 5% up front is so that people don’t use it as storage, but I really wish there was an alternative to paying up front (…)

There is an alternative – fill a buy order.

Iehova.9518:

I don’t understand.
You’re fully aware of the dosh you have but you don’t want to see it when you press ‘I’?
This makes no sense.

It makes it easier to keep track of the earning and spending of each character. I know how much money that my jeweler sitting in town doing nothing but making jewelry for the other characters is losing. I know how much my magic find character made in the last 30 minutes without having to make a note of the exact amount I have across all characters. She started with 1G and her food lasts 30 minutes. It’s really convenient.

Separating the money pools is helpful to some folks. I’d rather see the problem solved by being able to deposit money in the bank from anywhere than have my money pooled across all characters. That would make it really easy to deposit extra money on a character before logging off and makes collecting the money across a bunch of characters less painful.

I don’t know about withdrawing gold from anywhere. I’d have to think about the implications. It would make the BLT bank express items less useful.

Iruwen.3164:

It’s slightly annoying that the TP “forgets where you were” everytime you change tabs btw.

More than slightly I know there’s a lot of higher priority work that needs to get done, but I struggle with the UI for the TP every day and I’m not a trader. Watch lists would be a nice upgrade. Being able to see more than the lowest sell order when I go to sell something would also be helpful to me.

Rosella.9780:

Draygo.9473:

I currently use my 1c orders as a watchlist.

Can you please be more specific on how 1c orders work as a “watch list?”

(I’m relatively new to the game so not familiar with this trick)

If you put in a buy order that never gets filled, it’s very easy to go to specific items by looking at the list of items you’re buying. If you don’t do that, you have to search every time for the item. With the minimum buy order price, it can get expensive to keep up a large list of buy orders just so you can watch the price of something.

Some of the trader web sites allow you to favorite items so you can check the prices quickly, but it would really be more convenient to have it in game where you can act immediately on the information.

Dasorine.1964:

So no, no interest please, I’ve seen what happens when games have too much money income and not enough money sinks to counter it and it results in even the most common items costing ridiculous amounts to buy which only prohibits new players or poor players more than anything.

You’re right, being inhospitable to new players is probably the most significant impact of making it easy to amass huge amounts of gold. I know when we played City of Heroes we used to hang out in Atlas Park and give new characters with clever names or costumes a big pile of money because we knew they weren’t going to be able to afford their enhancements just by playing. We had been playing for so long with no money sinks, we had more than we could spend (even though we are both altoholics).

draakdorei.9436:

PinCushion.7390:

-If you don’t have a decent job, or are morally against paying money to a “free to play” game, grind out some gold and buy enough gems for a spare bank slot and perhaps a spare bag slot. You’ll be glad you did, as it’ll open up how much junk you can store up until it’s time to sell it or throw it away.

Adding onto this part…
If you have the spare gold to pay the Guild Rep vendor (2g for 1,000 Rep, 20g for 10,000 rep guy), then I suggest setting up a personal guild for the Vault. It’s cheaper than another bank slot (comes out to something like 1g50s vs the 5-8g in gems for a bank slot)

Actually my husband and I have a guild vault without spending a single bit of gold on influence. Granted, we’ve been a little lucky with the guild discoveries in black lion chests (and we used our story rewards) but we’re sitting on 10K influence trying to decide if we want to go for the next guild bank tab or not. If you have someone you trust, a duo running events can earn plenty of influence.