Guild Wars 2

Let me preface my post by saying I’m not completely opposed to minimum increments for bids. I just think the FIFO/undercutting/overcutting argument is a poor justification.

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell.

Let’s look at the payoffs. Undercutter: Saves time, lowers risk of market reversal, effectively equal payoff. Previous lowest bidder: Loses time (low amount in a demand surplus market), higher risk of market reversal, effectively same payout as undercutter. Buyer: Saves time (wants the item now, pays premium), no market risk, pays effectively the same price set by previous lowest bidder.

In my opinion all of the bidders at that price point are wasting time. The undercutters are wasting time by constantly having to monitor the TP to make sure that they are always first in line, the previous lowest seller is wasting time either by agonizing over the undercutters getting “his” sale or by listing at the wrong price for his desired time frame. The previous lowest seller had to have undercut someone else, so why wouldn’t the person they undercut be upset that their sale was stolen?

If I were going to play the market I wouldn’t mess around with 1c increments. I’d do my research, pick a price point, and make an investment and wait to see if it pans out. My guess could be wrong and I’ll lose money, but I will have more time to make more guesses and hedge against any losses than I would if I sat around and micro-managed my bids. I’m not going to do that, because I don’t have fun doing that, and being informed enough to not brute force your plays is a lot of work. I’ll save that for my real money investments

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping.

This is assuming an excess supply market drops without sales on the way down, but they don’t. Items do sell and those items are undoubtably going to go to 1c undercutters far more than people who don’t. So under both market states the 1c undercutters gain something, or a lot more, than others without having to give up anything.

So what if the undercutters get sales if your item sells, which it will eventually if you priced it correctly? I think you’re making a mistake in assuming that the 1c undercutters are the ones getting the majority sales. If I really want something to sell and the market looks weak, I fill a buy order or price the item to move. I believe there are quite a few other players with similar strategies but without trade information who knows? shrug

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

Why is it better? What advantage does having a 1c pricing bracket have over a 0.1% price bracket?

It was pointed out to me later in the thread that minimum increments on the bids could have the effect of bringing prices into equilibrium more quickly, and I think that would be a good thing.

I however, don’t have the expertise to know the best way to implement minimum increments. I might have missed some interaction that incentivizes behavior that would be bad for the virtual economy, and I don’t really see any huge problem here from a market standpoint. All I see is folks that have a feeling that the current system is unfair and given how badly governments have mucked up real economies by trying to make folks feel better, I’m reluctant to support messing with something that is working OK (if not exactly optimally) economically.

I’m sure if John hasn’t already been thinking about this, this thread might have got him thinking about it, so if minimum increments actually make sense we’ll see them eventually. Or maybe there is a better way to get the same effect.

Wanze.8410:

tolunart.2095:

And of course Anet could have avoided such obvious errors if they had actually hired someone with some sort of training or education in the economics field instead of just randomly assigning control of the TP to one of their interns.

Here is the LinkedIn Profile of the “Intern” in question.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-smith/56/487/8b4

It’s so hard to convey sarcasm in written form. Is there an emoticon for eye rolling?

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Especially in a market where there is low supply and high demand, you will most likely miss the more reasonable buy offers and asks because they will get snatched up quickly.

Only ‘especially’: only. The only markets that what you’re talking about applies to are high velocity markets where demand exceeds supply and so there is upwards price movement.

What we’re talking about is low velocity markets where demand and supply are approximately equal. In those markets you can very easily see which orders are being fulfilled and which items are being bought because the cost of listing is so significant in real money terms that relisting isn’t an option.

I think you’re making a huge assumption about how many sales happen based on the orders you see. There’s no use in our discussing our different views because neither of us have the information we need to support what we believe to be true. I know I sound like a broken record but without actual trade data, it’s all speculation.

A long time ago, John posted a little snippet of data on how many sales of a particular high value item had actually taken place (sorry, I can’t remember the exact discussion) . I was surprised by the volume, and I’m biased toward believing that there is far more activity than I can see from the asks and bids.

Afya.5842:

I thought it’s self explained.

Not all market move so fast that as soon as you put it up, it sells. It’s not uncommon for something to sit on the TP for quite a bit of time to sell. Something not selling this week doesn’t necessarily mean you overprised, it could be just no one buy it. Wait another week then it might sell. What you suggest only make it more ridiculous having to relist things everyweek.

I’ve sold items weeks after I list them. I knew the market was going to come back eventually, so I set a price and waited so I wouldn’t have to constantly check. I don’t really enjoy messing with the TP in any game, so I’m willing to take a hit in either price or turn over to not have to do it much.

Qaelyn.7612:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers.

Huh? Are we playing the same game?

I just fully geared my first character with exotics and since my gold is tight I couldn’t just buy everything at what was being offered. So I put in bids higher than the current ones but lower than the lowest offer.
(snip)
Now, in what universe is this a system that doesn’t require constant monitoring?

Well the way it worked for me is I looked at the gear, figured out what it was worth to me, but up a buy order, came back the next day and it had been filled. No constant monitoring is necessary because I chose a reasonable price. Maybe some folks got their orders filled before mine, but it didn’t prevent mine from getting filled.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Pandemoniac.4739:

That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.

You’re again not getting it. It doesn’t matter if you do the 1 copper thing or not. You can increase your bid by 10s, and in less than an hour someone else will overtop you by 1 copper. Maybe you’ll eventually get your item, and maybe you won’t. But you’re guaranteed to get it after the guy who “me too’d” you for a copper.

It doesn’t matter because the way I price my orders, either mine will get filled before I’m overbid, or both my orders and the ones that overbid me will get filled.

Edit I just want to clarify my point a bit… I’m not a trader, and I believe there are lots of players like me who will pay retail to not have to hassle with checking the TP all the time. My goal is not to get the best deal. My goal is to get what I want for a price I’m willing to pay. For example, I will likely never own a legendary, because I’m not willing to spend that much of my gold to get it. I don’t see that as a problem.

Risingashes.8694:

Pandemoniac.4739:

It’s not a queue at all. It’s a market.

The folks who get priority are the bids and asks that you never see because they get filled too quickly. You’re obsessing about the bids that you can see and ignoring the ones that are getting filled while the bids that are all within 10c of the wrong price aren’t getting filled.

They’ll probably get filled eventually when the prices shift, but I guarantee you that the person that just overbid you by 1c is still behind the potentially many other folks that are overbidding by significantly more.

You’re talking about high velocity markets. I’m, and basically every other post in the topic, are talking about low velocity markets.

The Copper Ore market isn’t a problem, 1c is a significant proportion of the total value, and the market moves so fast that individual undercuts/overcuts are irrelevent. The Dawn market is something different: 1c is nothing compared to the price and only a few are sold each day.

So instead of talking about a situation that no one was actually discussing, where worrying about 1c undercuts is certainly irrelevant, how about you instead address low velocity markets where your blanket denials don’t hold up as well?

There’s nothing about what I said that doesn’t apply to low velocity markets other than picking an arbitrary 10 c number.

You don’t see the actual trades, so you have no idea whether the person that just “cut in line” is actually benefitting at all from it. You can’t tell whether the bids go away because they are cancelled or filled. Especially in a market where there is low supply and high demand, you will most likely miss the more reasonable buy offers and asks because they will get snatched up quickly.

Even the third party charting sites wouldn’t catch the faster transactions because I think the fastest sampling is on the order of 15 minutes. How long do you think a Dawn listed at say 540 gold would last? You think that no-one lists it for that price, but you don’t know because you don’t know what the actual last sale price was. The only data you have are orders that have been sitting there a while. The longer something sits, the less likely it is priced right.

Risingashes.8694:

Let’s put it this way: Do you think the TP should be a FIFO system or a LIFO system?

Should getting a bid in first entitle you to priority? Because currently, for higher priced items, it’s effectively a LIFO system as people can get effectively the same profit and yet get priority by listing at 1c, or 0.00000001% the total price lower.

It’s not a queue at all. It’s a market.

The folks who get priority are the bids and asks that you never see because they get filled too quickly. You’re obsessing about the bids that you can see and ignoring the ones that are getting filled while the bids that are all within 10c of the wrong price aren’t getting filled.

They’ll probably get filled eventually when the prices shift, but I guarantee you that the person that just overbid you by 1c is still behind the potentially many other folks that are overbidding by significantly more.

Qaelyn.7612:

Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.

I disagree – the incentive is you don’t have to constantly monitor your bids/offers. That’s my incentive for choosing the prices I chose and I don’t do the 1 copper thing. It’s a waste of my time. I’ll take (potentially) less profit so I can check the TP once or twice a play session.

Basically the complaint is that it’s not fair that someone that is constantly monitoring their bids can sell more quickly than someone who doesn’t. I don’t see how adding a minimum increment is going to fix that. Surely there are better arguments to be made.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Second, if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, depending on the spread between the min selling price and max offer price, the more expensive items may stop being worth flipping due to the TP taxes.

Third, even if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, you can still be outbid by someone who stands around the TP all day! For lower priced items, the increment can be so small that we go back a full circle to your argument that the increment is too insignificant.

It depends on how the minimum increment is handled. I believe that with some thought there might be a way to use it to get the prices near equilibrium more quickly, which benefits a lot of players, including the traders I think. When you find an opportunity, the faster it resolves the faster you can move on to the next one.

defrule.7236:

I think an issue worth considering is that the TP is the only market maker in town. I would have like for players to form markets and allow for people to get better deals than TP if they are willing to put time to find them.

There was a very good discussion about that in the Guilds as Third-party Trading Channel thread.

It’s a bad idea to divert the market off the TP for several reasons. If you think folks are getting taken advantage of by traders now, it will only get worse when folks have even less idea of what things are really worth. Most of those better deals will be folks getting taken advantage of.

tolunart.2095:

(snip)
If you really want to spend more money needlessly, just buy the lowest sell offer instead. What you are really arguing against is the fact that when you place an offer you have to wait for someone to sell it to you, and this delay gives someone else a chance to get in line ahead of you. The amount of the overbid is irrelevant, it will happen no matter what the minimum increment happens to be.

That is why there are sell offers, the item is already held by the TP and ready for immediate purchase. Otherwise, you bid the maximum you are willing to pay and wait for someone to accept the price.

I was writing up a post that said pretty much the same thing, but you’ve articulated it better.

I do think minimum increments might be worth looking into for other reasons, but overcutting/undercutting isn’t one of them. I wonder if a lot of the angst over prices on the market is because folks do what everyone believes to be the most efficient farm, so certain types of things get oversupplied, instead of looking for unfilled demand in the market. I also wonder if the lack of information on actual sales is impacting how folks are pricing things.

I just sold off two batches of stock from the same company with two different limit orders. One batch I priced to sell quickly (Christmas is coming) and one I priced to sell if the price was right (I would make a decent profit at that price and it could go lower if Congress doesn’t get their act together). They both sold regardless of the intraday volatility, one just took 3 days longer than the other.

If I priced them wrong, they would have never sold, even if they got to within one penny of my limit. I didn’t set the price one penny under the current ask – I set it at the price I thought it would sell within my desired time limits. I don’t see the order book as a queue that folks can cut to the head of – it’s more of a supply/demand indication.

Gasoline.2570:

I agree. These essential upgrades are way overpriced, and now that the gold to gem is so steep, how is one supposed to get them without paying with real money?

“Well ur not its convience u dont need it but ignoring the fact not having it will make ur life quite a pain in the game blablabla.”

I want a Bugatti Veyron but there is no way I will spend that much money on a car that’s probably going to end up with me losing my license. Is the car overpriced or do I just not want it enough to pay what it’s worth ?

Compared to a lot of subscription-less games, the bank space, character slots, and bag space in GW2 is pretty reasonable. What exactly in the gem store is so gamebreakingly necessary?

Behellagh.1468:

Who cares about FIFO unless multiple players listing the same price. Economic competition isn’t just a buyer and seller haggling over a price, it’s sellers competing among themselves for buyers and vice versa.

I agree. That the minimum increment would be useful to make the competition resolve more quickly is more compelling than the “I was here 1 second ahead of you” argument.

TopBadge.3569:

Point one still stand guys.

Point one is your opinion, which you’re entitled to. I disagree – I think the items in the gem store are luxuries and the prices aren’t that outrageous. Everyone values things differently. I have bought an extra character slot, but I don’t buy extra bag slots because to me they aren’t worth it. My husband has bought bag slots and thinks I’m foolish for buying the Pirate’s outfit (Yarr!).

If you think it’s too expensive for what you get, don’t buy it. If enough folks don’t buy something it will probably go on sale or have it’s price lowered.

TopBadge.3569:

Also $10.00 is not the same as £8.52

Also Also why does the UK pay the most for gems? wtf.

The US doesn’t have VAT, and we pay our sales tax on the back end partly because it’s regional (different states have different rates and rules about who has to collect the tax).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/gems-1-1-1/first#post90768

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/UK-gems-higher-price

Ursan.7846:

http://www.relicsoforr.com/?p=2861

Very interesting interview which goes over several topics which are discussed daily in this forum.

Thanks for sharing that link. I found the last question and answer to be interesting given the discussion about making more things account bound.

Interview with ArenaNet Economist John Smith and Lead Designer Izzy Cartwright

How are the economics of account/soul/unbound gear items taken into consideration when creating an item?

Izzy: Really, it comes down to the goal of the item. If the goal of the item is to be a great reward, like a rare drop from a dungeon, then you want it to be tradable. If the goal of the item is to be very prestigious, then you want it to be account-bound or soul-bound on acquire. As we create the item we look at the goals of that item and what is it trying to solve, and that normally tells us pretty quick how the item will be bound.

I like it the way it is because it makes dye drops more special (and lucrative!). If folks only ever needed one Abyss for all their characters, there would be a lot less demand.

I think having the dye unlock for the character so you can use it as often as you like balances out that it only unlocks for one character. I’ve taken a break to play some other games where dyes are consumables attached to a particular piece of gear and not unlocks. Now that’s expensive and annoying.

John Smith.4610:

I’ve already banned Martha Stewart, so we’re ahead of the game.

So did she lie, or was it more of a preemptive thing to keep her from encouraging players to decorate their home instances with shabby chic crafts made out of jute scraps and drops of magic glue?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Thanks for the suggestions and feedback i will make sure to do a summary and list actions on Monday.

I don’t want to derail the thread but i would also like to know how everyone would like the next topics to be chosen. Simply would you like to vote again or would you like us to pick the second topics on the respective lists?

I would like to see Anet choose the topics based on what y’all think would be the best use of everyone’s time to go into more detail on. Some feedback doesn’t need a lot of discussion, some topics can be settled in the nearer term, and some topics might need a lot of iteration to come up with a good solution. We don’t have visibility into the technical and business constraints so I think it would be best for y’all to prioritize the topics.

I realize that means a group of posters will be disgruntled when their issues aren’t addressed immediately even though they are popular, but is this a PR initiative or a development initiative?

Aye.8392:

I have absolutely no problem with instances that scale to the number of players in a group allowing 1 or 3 or 5 to go in with a reasonable chance of success. But I definitely don’t want instances to be created that force people to solo. I play this game with friends/family/guildies — it’s why I’ve chosen the MMO game-type to begin with.

I agree that scaling is the best answer. I like dungeon type instances for the challenge and the content, and it’s just tough sometimes to get a full team of folks that don’t mind taking their time and exploring the content instead of just rushing to the end reward. It would be nice if an instance could support both modes of play.

Curby.4897:

You have had an entire year to listen to the community and you have ignored us. Why should we expect these topics to be any different?

That’s unfair. Two things I can think of off the top of my head that were in response to discussions on the forums are magic find changes, the wallet. There are others too. Just because all the various conflicting ideas on the forums haven’t been implemented doesn’t mean we’re being ignored.

Brushfire.3125:

I wish the story mode in dungeons would be reasonably soloable so I could experience the entire story without a guild/pug.

Kinda my problem with the personal story 75+ also. It requires a group.

I’d like to be able to experience the story modes solo or with a duo, even if they were difficult. We’ve 3 manned a couple after folks had to drop, but you can’t do that with all of them. I didn’t have much trouble completing my personal story solo (except for the dungeon of course) but I think that could be class dependent.

Nunoma.7861:

Pandemoniac.4739:

There are mini-dungeons in almost every zone that are challenging but soloable. They aren’t instances but I rarely run into other folks in them. Even if you do run into folks you don’t have to group up, although I generally do because the folks I run into are there to enjoy the content and not speed run.

I’ve soloed or duoed most of my time in GW2 without feeling the need for more instances. I also like tackling group events on my own. Are you looking for more challenge or more story?

I’m looking for more of a challenge. I really like the dungeons but there are (to my knowledge) no other instances that are like that and solo-able.

Check out the Mini-dungeons page on the wiki – I found most of them when I was exploring, so you might not want to go too deep into that page if you don’t like spoilers. There are some jumping puzzles involved in some of them and many are challenging solo but not impossible.

There are mini-dungeons in almost every zone that are challenging but soloable. They aren’t instances but I rarely run into other folks in them. Even if you do run into folks you don’t have to group up, although I generally do because the folks I run into are there to enjoy the content and not speed run.

I’ve soloed or duoed most of my time in GW2 without feeling the need for more instances. I also like tackling group events on my own. Are you looking for more challenge or more story?

I recently participated in a WoW churned players focus group and it was a surprisingly good experience. I don’t think everything they did applies here (there were only 150 of us), but there might be a few things that work.

The basic process was that we had to complete structured activities within a certain time frame, and then there was a section of the forums where the researchers would post a specific topic to discuss (usually based on the results of the activities), and there was another section of the forums for group members to post topics that occurred to them in the course of the other discussions.

In my opinion, we should have a sub-forum only for the CDI. ANet might start a focused topic that gets closed after some period of time, take some time to digest the responses and post a follow-up that drills deeper into a particular theme that came up in the directed thread.

The focus group used surveys and little web apps like taking cards with features on them and sorting them into three groups – very interested and, somewhat interested in, not interested in. That might be overkill, but it was a quick way to get a structured response to a particular question.

I think that what made it successful is the iterative approach of sparking an open discussion, then posting more specific follow up topics based on different themes from that discussion, and the combination of structured responses (surveys) and open discussion.

Aberrant.6749:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Aberrant.6749:

Being able to search/filter for heavy, med, light for armors would be #1 on my list.

I would like to see this too, but it’s not top on my list because I have a work around. There are only a few names of each armor type in each level range.

Yea but it’s 2 per quality per level range (at least), they are kinda random which they are for healm/legs/chest/etc, and that’s not intuitive at all and annoying as all kitten.

I agree it’s annoying – even with being able to search GW2DB for the names. But the top of my list is still trade information, which there is no work around for. The search filter is definitely in my top 5 though.

Aberrant.6749:

Being able to search/filter for heavy, med, light for armors would be #1 on my list.

I would like to see this too, but it’s not top on my list because I have a work around. There are only a few names of each armor type in each level range.

mtpelion.4562:

The one thing that I would love to have is an “Average Listing Age” stat show up.

When you are browsing the sell listings, every available price point should show the price asked, the number at that price, and the average age in days for the listings at that price.

I think trade information would be easier to interpret and get you to the same conclusions. Even if it was just last sale, Spidy or other sites using the interface would be able to chart it (probably) . Listing age is one step removed from actual transactions because it includes cancellations and relistings.

There’s already a 20 page discussion that’s been merged at least once: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Open-world-Duels-Merged/first Why not carry on that discussion rather than starting a new thread?

I’d like to see trade information, even if it is just last sale. I’d also like to be able to see the order book whether I’m selling or buying. I think those two changes would help traders and non-traders alike.

I’d like to see him recognized for his heorism, but it is a pretty big spoiler even if it’s specific to one order. Maybe something could be added to your home instance after you complete that arc. Maybe something already is… I have to admit I don’t go in there often

Imperatora.7654:

Min bid increments can actually make the problem worse if the min is too large. Nobody likes to lose money, and if the “established” buy or sell price is steady, no one wants to post a "worse: bid (lower sell price, higher buy bid). This can cause the bids to build up (at Xg and Yg) and take even longer to clear.

I don’t understand this point. It seems like you’re assuming that the only buyers and sellers on the market are traders. I don’t lose money when I bid-buy – I get something I want for a price I’m willing to pay. If the spread is really small, I’ll probably take the lowest ask instead of putting up a bid, because the immediate transaction has more value than the extra cost. In the same way, if the spread is small enough and the price is right, I’ll fill the highest bid.

Syeria.4812:

The increment helps people who want to insta sell their items. The reduced incentive to overcut helps those who want to bid-buy the item for use actually manage to acquire the item, and it helps the flippers or other investors to actually successfully place orders.

I see now – I got a bit of tunnel vision with the argument about folks undercutting the ask. I don’t bid-buy items very often.

Aechidna.3084:

Well, since there is so much negativity about public profiles then i just at least want to be able to view my friends’ profiles!!

I think there is so much negativity because this relates to the discussions about Why no /inspect I wouldn’t mind profile sharing, even though I argue against /inspect. Actually I don’t mind any information sharing as long as it’s consensual and I think showing off your builds and the look you’ve put together for your characters would be fun.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m sure traders have made quite a bit of money from items I’ve sold them. I don’t have any angst over it, because I don’t really want to put the effort in that goes along with making a lot of money on the TP.

And that’s the situation I’d like to see changed. I don’t think that it should take any amount of effort to make money off the TP, or conversely that putting a lot of effort into the TP should make money. The TP is not something that should require skill or even interest to make the most of it, it should just be a tool for players to get rid of items they don’t want, or to find items that they do, not as a money engine for those that care to work it.

Lol, I would like for the job of professional athlete to not require so much skill and training so we could all have 10 million dollar a year contracts without having to put in the effort or have any talent. If wishes were horses… Oh well, if we all made 10 mil a year, I’d hate to think how expensive a hamburger would get.

The reality is that whenever there are limited resources, living things compete to get the greatest share of those resources. That’s how we lifted ourselves out of the primordial mud. Competition is the fairest way to allocate limited resources when those resources are not necessary to live. In a fair competition, the folks that put in the most effort or have the most skill get the most, and the folks who put in less effort get less. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

You can’t take the competition for money out of the TP and still have it function for the non-traders that you think you are making things better for.

Syeria.4812:

Imperatora.7654:

It only helps reach equilibrium in situations with a small bidding pool. About the only items with volume low enough for such a system to have a positive effect is the legendary market. Even the volume of precusors is too fast for a min increment to be a positive thing.

Wholeheartedly disagree. The only items that wouldn’t see a benefit are those under 50s and cores/lodes. With exotic daggers alone there’s 17 items which have > 2g profit margin on a flip and another 12 with at least 40s in flip profit. The Soldier’s and Magi’s Pearl Carver have approximately 50% profit margins on flip investments. These items, after about a year of fairly stable prices still haven’t reached a full equilibrium. While the existence of economic profit in these markets is to be expected, items with the volume these have shouldn’t have nearly so large a spread. Preventing 1c increments in bid (for Soldier’s Pearl Carver a 0.5% minimum would be 91c increments, you could even drop that rate to 0.1% for mere 18c increments) would dramatically reduce that spread without having a meaningful impact on the sell price.

So, it would make sense to only put the minimum increment on items where the lowest ask is above some threshold?

I’m not really clear on exactly how it would work. How would the minimum increment effect folks that are not undercutting? How would the minimum increment be determined? Would we have to add a closing and opening prices or would the increment change based on the lowest ask?

If I have something valuable enough to spend the time pricing it correctly, I almost never price it below the lowest ask. I price somewhere in the median between the undercutters and the next highest cluster and wait for the market to go back up (I’m a long term kind of girl and I don’t like messing with my auctions every day). I’m guessing I could only set a price in an increment of some percentage of the lowest ask?

Qaelyn.7612:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think you’re missing my point. The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell. If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping.

They’re all the same, but those who jump in later will sell their items sooner, sometimes MUCH sooner, than those who listed earlier. And because the increment is so small as to be meaningless, there is no way to combat this other than being willing to sell for far less or buy for far more.

Pandemoniac.4739:

There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

There is no “artificial price bias”. If you see an item listed for 9g 50s, you can also list it for 9g 50s. You just can’t list it for 9g 49s 99c.

All functional exchange systems have rules to prevent that sort of nonsense. Either in the form of minimum increments, or through more complex systems that allow automatic increases in bid or sell prices. I suggested the increments because they are simple to implement in a system like GW2’s.

I understand why you think this is a solution even though it isn’t. Without trade data it’s very difficult to see what is actually happening to the price. It is extremely likely if you see a list of folks undercutting your price, that there have been far more sales at prices below their prices that you never saw. Changing how much someone can undercut you by does not change the fact that your price is too high. Wait for the supply and demand to shift and prices to come back up, or lower your price.

Without trade information it’s very easy to assume that the only folks preventing you from selling your item are the ones that you see undercutting you. What you’re not seeing are all the sales made by folks that undercut you by even more than a few copper. Your price is too high for the current market if you can’t sell your item because too many other folks are selling it for less.

Corvax.1675:

Well, ArenaNet should introduce a global filter for the word ‘gold’ and automatically replace it with ‘4-slot leather bag’. Imagine the spam messages after that

Interesting idea. I like how the kitten filter changes the tone of the posts in the forum. Maybe the chat profanity filter could be tweaked to make the gold seller spam more entertaining. I’d turn it back on just to see the results.

Qaelyn.7612:

You guys are missing the point, which is that the ability to undercut by an insignificant amount simply leads to noise in the marketplace, and a system that, in effect, awards people for being later to offer at a particular price than earlier.

If I offer an item for sale at 7g 43s 99c and someone else offers it at 7g 43s 98c, we are essentially offering it at the same price, but the second seller will go before mine. If 20 other people later jump in at 7g 43s 97c, 7g 43s 96c, etc., my item could sit for days before it moves — even though it’s essentially the same price. The same happens with purchases.

This is why markets generally have mimimum increments.

I think you’re missing my point. The prices are all essentially the same, so if there is more demand than the supply being put on the market, all of those essentially the same price items will sell. If there is more supply than demand, only a portion of those essentially the same price items will sell and the price should be dropping. There might be something to the idea that the price should drop in slightly larger chunks, but I think it’s better to err on the side of more granularity than introduce an artificial price bias.

If you are having trouble selling items in the time frame you desire at a particular price because of folks undercutting by 1c, either your time frame or your price is wrong. You’re approaching the TP as if it was an AH instead of a commodities market.

If there is demand for what you’re selling at the price you’re asking, it will eventually sell at that price. If there’s enough supply that folks can undercut you for longer than you’re willing to wait for a sale, your price is too high.

Romek.4201:

they can – it need just a filter cause its always same Seller-Site and same message they spam

And then the spammer changes their message by a few characters or sets up a new domain that forwards to the old one, and all that effort is wasted. It is much more efficient for players to report and block.

Ohoni.6057:

You provided liquidity to a market. That hurt people who would have squandered resources, and benefited yourself and those that had a higher appreciation for those goods but didn’t have foresight or the ability to purchase them earlier.

No. What he (and others) did was drive up the prices by creating unnecessary scarcity. Would the prices have reached their eventual heights at some point? Sure, but if he sold off 100 recipes at ten times the price they’d been going at before, then that’s 100 people who paid ten times as much. Without him, they would have their recipes, AND 18g in their pockets. Instead of one person making 1800g profit off the transaction, you’d have 100 people each saving 18g, meaning a much more decentralized wealth base. I don’t begrudge people from playing the system as it exists, I just with that the system would not allow it.

I think that is where the mistake in your argument is. You seem to think that price is somehow removed from demand. The recipes were scarce whether one person owned them or 100 folks owned them. Traders in GW2 can not control the supply of goods – your “hard working” farmers do that. The trader didn’t force the price up, he just predicted the demand and prevented the supply from being depleted before folks realized the value of the recipes.

You gloss over the fact that players sold those recipes to the traders for a price they were happy with at the time. You also ignore all the instances where a trader bought items from players for more than they ended up being worth in the future. By your logic, the trader got screwed by the players instead of the players benefitting from the trader’s speculation.

I’m sure traders have made quite a bit of money from items I’ve sold them. I don’t have any angst over it, because I don’t really want to put the effort in that goes along with making a lot of money on the TP. I make a fair profit off the things I find for the amount of effort I put into selling them. I don’t go back a month later and look at the prices of something I already sold and get bitter over not having gotten more.

Septemptus.7164:

That is why I said that bots are made better these days… So it saddens me they don’t check those reports as good as they should.

The bots have evolved, and it may make more sense for ANet to collect information about how to combat the new and improved bots and mass ban them, than to tip their hand by banning them the second they’re reported. I wouldn’t expect ANet to waste their time stomping each ant individually when they can take out the ant hill.

Curse Drew.8679:

Thats true. If they remained under a gold, and prices were controlled by ANET as some people suggested, then there wouldn’t be any left. Everyone would of used them to craft from 425-450. Anyone can pretty much assume that would of happened.

The fact GW2 has a free market, allowed the price to raise as the supply was used up. It kept people from paying a cheap price until they were all gone, and allowed those who are willing to pay a higher price to still buy them. I don’t want the TP closed, that was never my intent. I was just offering one of the few instances i know for a fact the supply was controlled to raised the value.

But the supply wasn’t controlled. The supply was the supply – you didn’t prevent anyone from running the dungeon and generating more supply. You just made an investment and benefited from your patience and foresight. If you had been able to buy up the entire supply without competition, that might have been a problem, but you had to account for what the other folks in that market were doing.

You also had an incentive to sell off some of your inventory instead of just holding it forever because you couldn’t know what the maximum price was going to end up at, or whether the demand would crater with new items getting added, or you maybe you saw another opportunity and needed to free up some of your wealth. You assumed the risk and reaped the reward.

The price you sold the recipes at was what they were worth at the time you sold them, otherwise no-one would have bought them. The folks that sold you their recipes for around 1G got fair market value for them and got it quickly with no risk. They could have easily sat on them and waited for them to go up in price, but the bird in hand was worth more to them than the two in the bush.

Redenaz.8631:

Zerole.7306:

I think the TP is pretty vital to the game, and it would require a major re-work of the economy if it was severely altered (or removed).

That said, I think the biggest thing to hurt Diablo 3 is that it wasn’t very good.

Zing!

I wouldn’t be too hasty to look at D3’s situation and take away from it, “Auction houses/trading posts are inherently terrible.” Diablo is a substantially different kind of game from GW2, and while there might be some useful object lessons in the case of Diablo 3, what works best for one is not necessarily the best for the other.

It’s not that D3 is a substantially different genre of game that makes the lessons learned not translate to GW2 – it’s mainly (in my opinion) that it has an auction house and GW2 has a market. Almost every item in D3 was different from every other item because of the random attributes, where all items in GW2 are commodities (which is why I like the TP better than any AH in any of the many many games I’ve played that have them).

Also, D3 had terrible design issues around loot and crafting that were reflected in problems with their auction house, but not necessarily caused by the inclusion of an AH in the game.

I don’t know how many folks calling for the removal of the TP suffered through the early days where issues kept the TP from being available for extended periods of time. It was painful, and I’m not a trader or a farmer. I am not going to enjoy any game where I have to sit in a hub for hours on end with my thumb up my … er nose… trying to find someone that has what I need for a price I want to pay.

juno.1840:

I have spent zero in the gem store, and will continue to spend zero until there’s content that deserves my purchase.

If you want to punish ANet for not creating content you like, you should stop playing the game entirely. They don’t know why you’re not spending money in the gem store – maybe you just don’t have the means right now. If the population drops because the new content doesn’t hold folks’ attention, well that sends a much stronger message, don’t you think?

Spending money in a cash shop isn’t the only way players support an MMO.

sorudo.9054:

i can spend nether of them, my income is simply to low and the exchange is going way out of hand.

I’ve been there – I’ve actually been in circumstances where there was no money for Internet or games. It doesn’t last forever.

I’m not sure that some folks not being able to buy stuff in the gem store is a reason to change the game mechanics for everyone.

Ursan.7846:

sorudo.9054:

however, a game economy has more to do with time spend rather then gold gained, you get allot more money by simply having a ton of time while ppl who actually need to work and have a family to take care of have little time to get what they want.so in your logic, someone who works hard has to get less then the spoiled kids who have plenty of time to waste.

This is why the Gem/Gold exchange exists, so that people who can’t spend as much time in-game can convert time spent out of the game into in-game rewards.

What Ursan said.

You can either spend money or time. Gem prices in money are fixed. The exchange rate for gold->gems represents how much in-game time/effort is worth not having to spend $1.25 on 100 gems or how much $1.25 in gold is worth to not have to spend the time to most of the market.

The way folks calculate the value of their time or their money or their gold is unique to their tastes and circumstances. For me, it’s easier and more enjoyable to earn $15 than 50 gold, so I prefer to spend real money on gem store items.

If the price of something makes everyone happy, there’s some hidden cost that someone doesn’t realize they’re paying.

I’m not entirely sure how much I’ve spent over the course of a year. I took a pretty significant break when life got crazy between work and family stuff.

Let’s see – I have both the Chef’s outfit, and the Pirate’s outfit (the toys with those are so much fun), but I bought them when they were on sale. I picked up the molten mining pick, five keys when they were on sale, a few transmutation stones, bank slot, character slot, karma boosters…. Roughly 4600 gems worth of stuff and I have 550 left over. It’s just a guesstimate because I don’t remember the sale prices. It would be really nice if there was a ledger instead of just recent purchases.

Oh and we pre-ordered two copies, and I think my man has spent maybe a little more – he didn’t buy the town clothes, but he did buy bag slots for several of his characters. We really haven’t gone that crazy.

Flanar.5981:

I really think its easier to just implement a filter instead of multiple channels.

It’s better to just describe your requirements than to try to come up with an implementation. Let the folks that know all the details about how the chat system works and what technology they have access to come up with the best way to meet your requirements. ANet’s solution may be to set up more regional servers, or to implement some sort of chat filter, or something we haven’t thought of.