Trading Post; a bloke's conundrum

Hey all, I'm gonna raise a topic will see some cheers, and a lot of pitchforks and torches, propably;

10% tax, paid in advance, to be even allowed to touch the trading post. Is it still of this time?The reason I'm bringing it up is; it has happened more than once, that I have something worth selling. But am not allowed to. I have to look at SEVERAL of my friends, borrow big chunks of money of them, sell the item, and then pay them back. It seems a little backwards.

I get the tax, I am all for that. but can we not change the system a little:When listing an item, you pay 10% tax in advance, and then the TP withdraws 5% upon sale.When selling to a highest bidder, the TP simply withdraws 15% upon the sale, without needing the 10% up front.

This seems to make sense to me, since you won't be listing, but rather, selling to a highest bidder. So there's not really much point to having to pay the 10% in advance.Because of this behavior, people have turned to reddit, to seek help of middlemen to make the sales. These middlemen keep some profit, but generally make it so that people who don't make enough gold to pay for the 10% tax, can still make their trades.And we're not talking about selling a few materials, or ectos, or even taxes of 2-5g. We're talking precursors, rare drops, unlisted Black Lion skins, things that require a 10% of over 50g, all the way up to 200-500g tax.

Agree, Disagree?

I think the purpose is so that people don't use the TP as free storage for stuff (for example by listing their 1000 extra mithril ingots for 100gp each) or post a lot of nuisance thing at ridiculous prices (listing a common item for 10 million gold, just for the lolz, or as a way to launder gold-buying.)

But, yeah, having to come up with enormous listing fees ahead of time is ridiculous. They ought to be able to come up with a better system. Finding, say, an invisible boot box is kind of like winning the lottery but having to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii to claim it.

@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:I think the purpose is so that people don't use the TP as free storage for stuff (for example by listing their 1000 extra mithril ingots for 100gp each) or post a lot of nuisance thing at ridiculous prices (listing a common item for 10 million gold, just for the lolz, or as a way to launder gold-buying.)

That's why it would make sense to pay the 10% tax in advance when you list an item, but not when you sell an item. since listing is playing the economy, and selling is just.. well.. selling.

I take it you found and tried to sell a i-boot box? ;)

Your suggestion makes perfect sense to me. Selling to the person with the current highest buy order is an atomic transaction anyway so it shouldn't have any affect on anything.

First, the amounts are backwards in the original post:

• There's a 5% listing fee
• And a 10% sales tax.

The 5% is paid by the seller. The 10% is paid by the buyer (which reduces the amount of coin received by the buyer).

Second, the most important reason for the 15% total fees is that it sucks massive amounts of gold from the economy. This has prevented the gold inflation that plagues MMO economies. ANet isn't going to tinker with that level of sink unless someone can show them data demonstrating that it's no longer necessary or does actual harm, neither of which is likely since their data will show it is a positive force.

Third, there are two reasons that a third of the fees are paid upfront by the seller:

• It discourages everyone from using the trading post as unlimited, free storage.
• It discourages sellers from "testing the market" by trying the highest sale prices first and then lowering only when they can't sell.

The second applies to buyers without the coin to pay the listing fee as well as those who have it.

Fourth, as a technical matter, we don't "instantly sell"; it just looks that way. We list at the same price as the highest offer, and, as long as someone else hasn't sold first, the transaction goes through right away. But sometimes, it won't (this happens vaguely commonly while buying, and is less commonly noticed when selling, for a variety of reasons).

Fifth, not charging a listing fee for selling to the highest offer would encourage a race to the bottom, because it would encourage people to sell for less, especially when buy & sell offers are close, and especially when the market is crashing (e.g. what happened just now to Black Lion Dwayna skins, e.g. the Axe skin dropped from 100g lowest sale offer to 20g in less than a day; it would be far worse if instant selling had no listing fee).

And finally, it is hardly fair to charge 15% to some people and only 10% to others.

tl;dr the fees keep gold inflation in check. The listing fee specifically does several things, including protecting prices in a falling market.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:First, the amounts are backwards in the original post:

• There's a 5% listing fee
• And a 10% sales tax.

I agree with most of what you said. At least it makes sense what you say. Slight error on my end, yes.

However, you seem of on 2 points.First, it won't be a free infinite storage because you would only pay the tax afterwards in case of an instand sale, but you'll pay you front to list it.So there wont be a moment of storage.

Your other other point is that the economy would suffer from the loss of a gold sink. but won't be the case. I'm not saying remove the tax. I'm saying retract it from the transaction value, rather than paying it up front.I will still pay the 5% tax like now, and the recipient 10%. However, what changes is that i can sell the items without needing to have that 5% up front.

I'm generally a poor bloke, and only recently got my first precursor. I decided to craft it, and then sell it. However, in order to sell to the highest bidder i need to have 230g in my wallet. And that seems redundant to me. If i sell it, i will have the 230g to pay the gold sink, but i won't have it now, or then, without looking at my friends for each of them to lend me a big chunk of gold

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:I think the purpose is so that people don't use the TP as free storage for stuff (for example by listing their 1000 extra mithril ingots for 100gp each) or post a lot of nuisance thing at ridiculous prices (listing a common item for 10 million gold, just for the lolz, or as a way to launder gold-buying.)

Nope, but often thought about how the heck I would sell it if I got one. :dizzy:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:I will still pay the 5% tax like now, and the recipient 10%. However, what changes is that i can sell the items without needing to have that 5% up front.Wait, when would the 5% be paid? Would it need to be taken from your account the moment that the sale goes through? What if there's no money in my account to cover that cost? Would it be taken from the funds you have waiting in the TP upon the sale? Then you now have an infinite storage option in the TP; you can store as many items as you'd like at a very high price on the TP at no cost.

The bigger point that seems to have been lost: if you want to change the policy and see an entirely new mechanic, you have to convince ANet; it doesn't much matter if all of us on the forums agree. And ANet's stance is likely to be: "it ain't broke, so let's not invest time & effort into changing things." They'll need a more compelling argument than "armchair economists don't see how it would impact the economy" or "but I don't want to pay upfront to list."

@Ayakaru.6583 said:I'm generally a poor bloke, and only recently got my first precursor. I decided to craft it, and then sell it. However, in order to sell to the highest bidder i need to have 230g in my wallet. And that seems redundant to me. If i sell it, i will have the 230g to pay the gold sink, but i won't have it now, or then, without looking at my friends for each of them to lend me a big chunk of gold

The most expensive precursor is 800 g; the listing fee for it is 40g at most. The most expensive tradeable legendary (other than Eternity) is 2700; the listing fee is 135 gold, not 230 gold. In order to craft that legendary, you needed at least 100 gold coin, to buy the Icy Runestones. Surely if you can find the wherewithal for that plus all the other components, you can come up with another 150g.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:First, it won't be a free infinite storage because you would only pay the tax afterwards in case of an instand sale, but you'll pay you front to list it.So there wont be a moment of storage.That's only one of the reasons for a listing fee.

Your other other point is that the economy would suffer from the loss of a gold sink. but won't be the case. I'm not saying remove the tax. I'm saying retract it from the transaction value, rather than paying it up front.I will still pay the 5% tax like now, and the recipient 10%. However, what changes is that i can sell the items without needing to have that 5% up front.It still impacts the economy: as long as you don't have to pay upfront, you'll think differently about what price to list for.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

I'm generally a poor bloke, and only recently got my first precursor. I decided to craft it, and then sell it. However, in order to sell to the highest bidder i need to have

230g

in my wallet. And that seems redundant to me. If i sell it, i will have the

230g

to pay the gold sink, but i won't have it now, or then, without looking at my friends for each of them to lend me a big chunk of gold

...I'm sorry about going off on a tangent here, but what in the name of the Eternal Alchemy are you selling for 4,600 gold? I can't think of anything I would ever want in this game that I would be willing to part with that much gold to acquire.

@Greener.6204 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:I will still pay the 5% tax like now, and the recipient 10%. However, what changes is that i can sell the items without needing to have that 5% up front.Wait, when would the 5% be paid? Would it need to be taken from your account the moment that the sale goes through? What if there's no money in my account to cover that cost? Would it be taken from the funds you have waiting in the TP upon the sale? Then you now have an infinite storage option in the TP; you can store as many items as you'd like at a very high price on the TP at no cost.

no, currently, you pay 5%, and then when you sell something to the highest bidder, you get the gold immediately, minus 10% nowin my suggested form, you sell something to the highest bidder, you get the gold immediately, minus 15%.

The end result is the same. You sold the item, the recipient gets the item, the recipient loses 100% of the transaction value, and you get 85% of the transaction value. Those values are the same before and after. 15% disapears into the void, which all goes out to sea, as Zommos would call it. so nothing would change in the economy except for the fact that I don't need to have the 5% up front

@tinymurder.5791 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

I'm generally a poor bloke, and only recently got my first precursor. I decided to craft it, and then sell it. However, in order to sell to the highest bidder i need to have

230g

in my wallet. And that seems redundant to me. If i sell it, i will have the

230g

to pay the gold sink, but i won't have it now, or then, without looking at my friends for each of them to lend me a big chunk of gold

yes, may bad, at the time I was still stuck on the thought I paid 10%, but it's 5%, Sunrise costs 115g to sell, not 230g, my bad.

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

@tinymurder.5791 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

I'm generally a poor bloke, and only recently got my first precursor. I decided to craft it, and then sell it. However, in order to sell to the highest bidder i need to have

230g

in my wallet. And that seems redundant to me. If i sell it, i will have the

230g

to pay the gold sink, but i won't have it now, or then, without looking at my friends for each of them to lend me a big chunk of gold

Ah, that make more sense. I think the most expensive thing I ever saw sold in the early days of the game was around 2,700 gold.

If this is happening to you on a regular basis then maybe you should keep some of the gold from those big sales to cover future sales fees?

I know a lot of people like to keep a fixed amount of gold on their account for this, or any other time they unexpectedly need a lot of gold. The exact amount varies (I've heard everything from 50g to 1,000g) but the important thing is it's enough to cover things they need to pay for without having to save up or borrow from friends.

I have to admit I don't do that, but then I almost never sell expensive items. There have been times I've been unable to pay the listing fee to sell something, but that's because I've managed to get down to almost no money on my account (usually by buying materials) and I had to either sell something extremely cheap first to build up a bit of cash or go out and kill some stuff. I am working on making a legendary which I'm planning to sell, but I don't mind having to save up the 110g (approximate) for the listing fee because I've spent a few months making it so waiting longer isn't a big deal.

The OP has a point. If you are selling to the highest buy-order then there is no concern with using the TP for storage or with someone relisting repeatedly whenever they are undercut. Certainly I would expect there to be very few players impacted by this situation (such as seems to be the case here with a Legendary, especially if you spent all of your gold to make it) and it seems fair to suggest that if the player can earn the gold to craft/buy a 2000g item they can probably earn a little more to list it, except in very lucky circumstances like getting a Queen Bee aura as a new-ish player in SW.

At no point did I see the OP suggest removing or lowering the 15% tax, in fact s/he specifically says that if you sell to the highest order it would still take the 15%. Admittedly there would be some issues in the rare occurrence when you sell to a buy-order and the game lists it instead, but (imo) that behavior shouldn't happen in the first place - if you choose to sell an item instead of list it is often because you want/need the gold now. Still, trying to change the system now may create more harm than good with the potential for bugs especially given how rarely I suspect it would be useful.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:The 5% is paid by the seller. The 10% is paid by the buyer (which reduces the amount of coin received by the buyer).Curious about this. As far as I know, all 15% is paid by the seller. None is paid by the buyer.ie. I list an item for 100 gold. I lose 5 gold.Buyer buys item for 100 gold. Buyer loses 100 gold.I receive 90 gold. In total, I spent 5g and forfeited 10g for selling my item at 100g while the buyer paid exactly what was listed.If the Buyer were to pay the 10% sale fee then the TP would request the Buyer pay 110g for the 100g item, then deduct the 10g and return 100 to me.

Of course, you could work backwards and say "I want 100g for this item. Therefore I will list it at 117.65g" but then you're paying a 5.9% listing fee and hoping that a buyer is willing to pay 17% more for your item.

Because without that upfront 5% tax, people would be undercutting each other by 1c over and over.I could take a system where the tax would be taken from revenue, or even not took at all, when selling to the highest buy order. For sell orders, the tax being upfront makes most people's life better.

@Glacial.9516 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:The 5% is paid by the seller. The 10% is paid by the buyer (which reduces the amount of coin received by the buyer).Curious about this. As far as I know, all 15% is paid by the seller. None is paid by the buyer.ie. I list an item for 100 gold. I lose 5 gold.Buyer buys item for 100 gold. Buyer loses 100 gold.I receive 90 gold. In total, I spent 5g and forfeited 10g for selling my item at 100g while the buyer paid exactly what was listed.If the Buyer were to pay the 10% sale fee then the TP would request the Buyer pay 110g for the 100g item, then deduct the 10g and return 100 to me.

They pay 100g. 90g goes to you and 10g goes to the TP in tax. You still lose the gold in the sense that it's never given to you, but they're the one paying it.

If you were paying the 10% fee it'd have to be something like they pay 100g and when you go to collect it 10g is removed from your inventory, or just vanishes as the money is transferred from the TP window to your wallet. But then I can imagine there would be a lot of support tickets to Anet about 'bugged' collections and 'stolen' gold.

@Vargamonth.2047 said:Because without that upfront 5% tax, people would be undercutting each other by 1c over and over.I could take a system where the tax would be taken from revenue, or even not took at all, when selling to the highest buy order. For sell orders, the tax being upfront makes most people's life better.

That's only relevant when listing.We're talking about instant selling to the highest bidder. I hate coppercutters, but hey, all is fair in war and marketing.When it comes to instantly selling there is no coppercutting (luckily)

I tend to believe that games are better when players find a way to overcome the issues they run into rather than asking the developer to change things so they don't have to. How long does it take to earn 115 gold to sell a 2300 gold item? A week? 2? Less? More? Changing systems because players are too impatient to wait until they amass the gold does not seem like a needed fix.

If anything, I think the tax could be split more evenly. That will pressure speculators out to control the market. It is one thing to flip common items listed at a steep discount but another to buy all inventory of low volume items and re list them at inflated values hoping scarcity makes you a fortune.

There should be a time-value cost associated with the BLTP holding and listing inventory for us. One way to address that is to change the listing fee.

For example7% listing fee8% purchase tax

Another way is to charge by listing duration as well as list price.

For example5% up front + 5% additional per quarter deducted from the receipt upon sale

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:I tend to believe that games are better when players find a way to overcome the issues they run into rather than asking the developer to change things so they don't have to. How long does it take to earn 115 gold to sell a 2300 gold item? A week? 2? Less? More? Changing systems because players are too impatient to wait until they amass the gold does not seem like a needed fix.

About, maybe 3-4 weeks. Crafting the legendary after finding the precursor will take about 3, maybe up to 4 months.Considering I can make about 10-20g a day. Not because sources of gold are scarce, but because playtime is limited and valuable. As someone with little playtime, I’d hate to have to sacrifice so much of it just for the right to trade with other people.

I rarely if ever ask devs to change things if they’re hurdles. Went through all the hurdles and obstacles of raids, fractals, pvp and story, often getting annoyed at some design choices, but pulling out my own efforts everytime, heck, I even went and got the Griffon at only the cost of my human dignity. So i dont much like you calling me choosing the easy way out. I’m bringing this up specifically because its redundant, you’re not paying for the trade, you’re paying for the right to trade.

@"Ayakaru.6583" said:Crafting the legendary after finding the precursor will take about 3, maybe up to 4 months.Considering I can make about 10-20g a day. Not because sources of gold are scarce, but because playtime is limited and valuable. As someone with little playtime, I’d hate to have to sacrifice so much of it just for the right to trade with other people

You don't see any problem taking "3, maybe up to 4 months" to craft the legendary, but you see a problem with keeping enough liquid gold on hand to sell it?

@"Ayakaru.6583" said:I'm generally a poor blokeNot if you can afford to craft a legendary.You might be "cash poor," but you aren't "poor."

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Ayakaru.6583" said:Crafting the legendary after finding the precursor will take about 3, maybe up to 4 months.Considering I can make about 10-20g a day. Not because sources of gold are scarce, but because playtime is limited and valuable. As someone with little playtime, I’d hate to have to sacrifice so much of it just for the

right

to trade with other people

I do, kind off.I get your point.But that would essentially turn 4 months of crafting into 5 months of crafting if the right to sell it becomes part of the crafting process.And remind you, during those 5 months i cant play the game.I will be grinding gold in one location, palawadan, all that time, and will not be allowed to spend a single copper elsewhere in the game. Thats not playing a game, don’t you agree?

That is, if I dedicate my time to just that cause, naturally, I still want to play the game, so I wont be in palawadan all the time, not making money.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Ayakaru.6583" said:I'm generally a poor blokeNot if you can afford to craft a legendary.You might be "cash poor," but you aren't "poor."

Some truth there.But having found a precursor doesn’t mean I have gold :p nor will gold drop more commonly.Its like giving a homeless guy a brick of gold. Sure its valuable, but whats he gonna do with it?

I already sold my dignity for that griffon, I ain’t got nothing left :*

@Ayakaru.6583 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:Crafting the legendary after finding the precursor will take about 3, maybe up to 4 months.Considering I can make about 10-20g a day. Not because sources of gold are scarce, but because playtime is limited and valuable. As someone with little playtime, I’d hate to have to sacrifice so much of it just for the

right

to trade with other people

So just play the game. You literally spent 700 gold worth of mats on just the Gift of Fortune. You have the luxury of choosing to sell those mats now or wait however long it takes you to have the listing fee to make even more.

You have the "right" to trade; you have simply chosen to postpone that right to make even more money.