Why is there no player trading?

[Gehenna.3625]

double post

Edited May 22, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

My argument is simply that it would be nice to have player trading as an option for those bulk sales that have huge trading post listing fees. How is that a stupid argument to have?

 

Trading post fees are one of GW2's gold sinks.  It's healthy for the in-game economy.

1 hour ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

An actual player-to-player trading system will ensure nobody gets scammed in the transaction 🙂

 

This is a delusional expectation.  Good luck with that.

[Erise.5614]

There technically is player trading in the form of trading guilds.

But there's good reasons not to explicitly support it and make player trading so convoluted and risk.

The fact that it takes gold out of the economy is incredibly important to keep prices stable and help newer players progress. And instead of just claiming that, let me explain why.

Stable prices are important because more gold in the economy doesn't change what is traded. It just changes the cost upwards. Everyone just keeps accumulating more and more gold. Will trade that gold in cycle without it being removed from the total amount of currency in circulation. It will lead to experienced players owning absurd amounts and trading prices being extremely detached from anything else. Meaning anyone who doesn't have a substantial amount of gold has a hard time buying anything at all and the experience for new players just gets worse and worse over time as they have a harder and harder time to catch up.  

It's even helping new players more directly because it reduces the incentive to manipulate the market (because it would be expensive) and keeps the system operating in the format it was originally intended to. Giving everyone a steady amount of materials, however, players who have been playing for a long time need a massive amount of those and new players often don't need most of them or not soon anyway. Therefore transferring wealth from experienced players to inexperienced players. Rather than directly to the most wealthy stock traders in the game.

And lastly, it's important because gems are pegged to gold. Meaning it's important for ANets profits for the conversion to seem reasonable and it's important for ANets profits that the economy remains at least semi stable. Otherwise players might regret converting between the currencies since the value of gold decreased so quickly or they might feel the game is pay to win as you only get a few gold from playing but can buy hundreds of gold for 5 dollars. Which will eventually happen if you have continuous inflation. The amount of gold you receive for a gem will increase continuously making the game look worse and worse over time. 

And any attempt by ANet to fix it by giving new players more gold will only make the problem worse. 

Edited May 22, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Orthonen.9470]

We do have it, we just don't talk about it.

[Strider Pj.2193]

1 hour ago, Aridon.8362 said:

We do have it, we just don't talk about it.

Hey..  We warned you once.  Remember the first rule of that club….

[captrowdy.9561]

One of the things I like most about this game is the trading post. 

[DarcShriek.5829]

8 hours ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

Do you work for Arenanet?

These are not good reasons from a players perspective.

Do you work for Anet?  Seriously, they explained this in the past. 

[Thon.3780]

I think Both are good , just compare the overall which one show big problems in long term.

 

TP

- high tax

- ?
- ?

 

p to p

- scam

- real money trade for item

- ?

[Vayne.8563]

9 hours ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

Do you work for Arenanet?

These are not good reasons from a players perspective.

Gold sinks keep inflation down which is a boon to all players, even ones that don't realize it.  Yes, I want gold sinks in the game.

[Fuchslein.8639]

9 hours ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

I thought of this again today when I was deciding whether or not I wanted to sell a stack of rare materials on the trading post. Upon seeing the 25 gold listing fee, I hesitated and sighed to myself, why doesn't GW2 have player trading?

Why not just use the Reddit Black-market when you have no issues about People probaly being scammed. I mean, YOU would never get scammend, right? So go for it. It's the same as setting up a trade ingame, where you would first need someone who pays the price YOU want and then trade with him.

I personally don't think with an ingame-trading, that you would get away better than at the moment with the trading post and the trading fees.

[CodyG.6975]

There is plenty, I trade in my guild, gw2 exchange on reddit, overflow trading company on discord. 

Edited May 23, 2022 by CodyG.6975
Spelling

[Mik.3401]

I wish there was the option to do that as well. Like the old days you could catch a good deal sometimes. In the current game every aspect is centrally controlled and unified just like drops as well. It probably works better indeed, but it doesn’t have the same flavour anymore.

[AgentMoore.9453]

6 hours ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

Why not just use the Reddit Black-market when you have no issues about People probaly being scammed. I mean, YOU would never get scammend, right? So go for it. It's the same as setting up a trade ingame, where you would first need someone who pays the price YOU want and then trade with him.

Not quite. The trading system in GW1 is an actual system, not just the ability to give stuff to another player (which is what GW2 has). It brings up a window where you can hover over each item in the trade to check its identity (which is important as many items share icons) and notifies you if anything about the trade has been changed so that you can hover over everything again and make sure nothing has been swapped out or removed.

If both players are satisfied, they click accept on the trade, if a change is made to the offer, they have to reconfirm. Most of the scams that happen in GW1 rely on distracting participants or hoping people don't check what they're trading for, much like how phishing scams work. Theoretically, if you're using your eyeballs and a small bit of your brain, you'll be fine trading player to player in GW1.

I happen to prefer the trading post we have in GW2, but I thought it was worthwhile to explain that what the OP is asking for is not the same as what people are suggesting as a substitute.

[Friday.7864]

Do you understand the concept of inflation?
If you just keep throwing more and more money into the economy, money itself loses value. As a result you'd just end up paying more and more gold for the same thing as time goes by.
Gold sinks are a necessity and a good thing, whether you understand the concept or not.

That being said, if you want to do some relatively safe player trading "Overflow Trading Company" has a discord server for that.

[Fuchslein.8639]

57 minutes ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

Not quite. The trading system in GW1 is an actual system, not just the ability to give stuff to another player (which is what GW2 has). It brings up a window where you can hover over each item in the trade to check its identity (which is important as many items share icons) and notifies you if anything about the trade has been changed so that you can hover over everything again and make sure nothing has been swapped out or removed.

If both players are satisfied, they click accept on the trade, if a change is made to the offer, they have to reconfirm. Most of the scams that happen in GW1 rely on distracting participants or hoping people don't check what they're trading for, much like how phishing scams work. Theoretically, if you're using your eyeballs and a small bit of your brain, you'll be fine trading player to player in GW1.

I happen to prefer the trading post we have in GW2, but I thought it was worthwhile to explain that what the OP is asking for is not the same as what people are suggesting as a substitute.

Ah, i see~. But even then, you need to be activ and find trade-partner who are willing to pay your'e price. My first MMO i ever played had such a system, and map-chats where full of text selling stuff and phrasing this in the creatives or most annoying way, so people would see their offer onto the full spam of trading-offers.. And there where even a restriction how much you could write in the map-chat but even then, it was overflowing as heck.

So, an even bigger no from me.

[Orthonen.9470]

I'm always stunned when I see players comment that they love and defend the trading post, I for one do not, it has an aggressive tax of 15% with 5% of that being the listing fee, and always has proponents ready to undercut you at the spot.

 

No matter what way you look at it the economy  in this game is almost 100% risk dependent, your listings can get undercut, and BAM you've lost your ability to sell "haha jokes on you!" style. Then there's the insta sell where if the margins are far apart you end up losing MORE than 15% of your profits! Crazy! 

 

It makes making gold in this game harder than it needs to be, but if Anet made it easier, they end up losing money in real life. Player to player trading is a risk sure, BUT, you'll have the ability to move in the economy much faster than sitting and waiting for stuff you listed to sell.

 

By the way, while you can get away without using the trading post no matter what eventually you will have to use it if you want gold. Gold is the ultimate buying power in the game, but players will use other forms of currency to barter and trade for the things they want.

 

Something I see a lot is people panic undercutting stuff like crazy, and it's a toxic environment because when they do it, they do it by hundreds of gold at a time unnecessarily, not looking or analyzing at the graph or a trend, or using any form of speculation.

What goes on in their head is "I do not want to wait several days for xyz to sell so to make life easier, let me just undercut by hundreds of gold to make the buyer want my stuff." The reality is that the buyer is actually someone swiping their credit card for gems to convert to gold to pay for those items worth thousands of gold, and they actually do not care at all about how much they have to pay so long as they get their item.

I even had one guy talk to me (and it was just him I was only listening) for two hours about why he won't farm for anything in the game when he can just pay for it using real money. He hates it, he vehemently hates it, no joke the guy payed for enough gems to build his entire legendary armor.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Aridon.8362

[Fuchslein.8639]

14 minutes ago, Aridon.8362 said:

I'm always stunned when I see players comment that they love and defend the trading post, I for one do not, it has an aggressive tax of 15% with 5% of that being the listing fee, and always has proponents ready to undercut you at the spot.

 

No matter what way you look at it the economy  in this game is almost 100% risk dependent, your listings can get undercut, and BAM you've lost your ability to sell "haha jokes on you!" style. Then there's the insta sell where if the margins are far apart you end up losing MORE than 15% of your profits! Crazy! 

 

It makes making gold in this game harder than it needs to be, but if Anet made it easier, they end up losing money in real life. Player to player trading is a risk sure, BUT, you'll have the ability to move in the economy much faster than sitting and waiting for stuff you listed to sell.

 

By the way, while you can get away without using the trading post no matter what eventually you will have to use it if you want gold. Gold is the ultimate buying power in the game, but players will use other forms of currency to barter and trade for the things they want.

 

Something I see a lot is people panic undercutting stuff like crazy, and it's a toxic environment because when they do it, they do it by hundreds of gold at a time unnecessarily, not looking or analyzing at the graph or a trend, or using any form of speculation.

What goes on in their head is "I do not want to wait several days for xyz to sell so to make life easier, let me just undercut by hundreds of gold to make the buyer want my stuff." The reality is that the buyer is actually someone swiping their credit card for gems to convert to gold to pay for those items worth thousands of gold, and they actually do not care at all about how much they have to pay so long as they get their item.

I even had one guy talk to me (and it was just him I was only listening) for two hours about why he won't farm for anything in the game when he can just pay for it using real money. He hates it, he vehemently hates it, no joke the guy payed for enough gems to build his entire legendary armor.

Well, even if this was true, how is this a bad thing?

I'm playing Gw2 for over 5 Years now and except for the beginning, x-packs and my second account, i never spend RL-money on this game. And i could only do this, because other people acutally pay RL-money. These people have a choice. Would they not do this, yeah, eventually Anet would do something else with the TP. But it obviously works.

The only problems i have with the TP, are the slowness and Spam-lock(when i make gold with shards). I wish they would rework this.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Fuchslein.8639

[Orthonen.9470]

14 minutes ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

Well, even if this was true, how is this a bad thing?

I'm playing Gw2 for over 5 Years now and except for the beginning, x-packs and my second account, i never spend RL-money on this game. And i could only do this, because other people acutally pay RL-money. These people have a choice. Would they not do this, yeah, eventually Anet would do something else with the TP. But it obviously works.

The only problems i have with the TP, are the slowness and Spam-lock(when i make gold with shards). I wish they would rework this.

 

I'm not saying the players paying for gems is bad.

 

I'm saying the people on the trading post are bad, instead of waiting for someone else's item to sell for a price they want, no they go in and undercut, then they get undercut, then they take out the item and undercut again, despite having already lost roughly 10% in listing fees, and single-handedly ruining a market.

Nobody wins in that scenario repeating itself over and over again. But we just have to work with it. Thankfully the supply and demand concept works out, that is literally the only thing keeping the TP alive.

I always liked the ESO model, where you put up stores and that's how you make gold, it prevents this undercutting stuff from happening by having the items cycle based on the player's location. Instead of relying on a queuing process. But that's just me.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Aridon.8362

[Fuchslein.8639]

25 minutes ago, Aridon.8362 said:

 

I'm not saying the players paying for gems is bad.

 

I'm saying the people on the trading post are bad, instead of waiting for someone else's item to sell for a price they want, no they go in and undercut, then they get undercut, then they take out the item and undercut again, despite having already lost roughly 10% in listing fees, and single-handedly ruining a market.

Nobody wins in that scenario repeating itself over and over again. But we just have to work with it. Thankfully the supply and demand concept works out, that is literally the only thing keeping the TP alive.

I always liked the ESO model, where you put up stores and that's how you make gold, it prevents this undercutting stuff from happening by having the items cycle based on the player's location. Instead of relying on a queuing process. But that's just me.

Yeah thats true, people are impatient(this comes from the most impatient person on the planet ...). But thankfully i rarly have problem with this. Often i place orders even higher, because i know these things will get sold, even if it takes longer.

[Tukaram.8256]

17 hours ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

Do you work for Arenanet?

These are not good reasons from a players perspective.

Those are great reasons to have a trading post.  Direct player trades are rife with scams in every game I have played.  Also the in-chat spam is horrendous.  I think the trading post is a great way to go.  

I did like player run vendors at public houses in Ultima Online, but that it is very difficult to find a particular item... on some vendor...somewhere in the world. The trading post simplifies the system, adds in a great level of security, and is a built in gold sink.   😎

[Gorem.8104]

Because GW2 lacks many basic features (and QOL) found in other mmo's, It would be nice to have player trading but of course we'd gain an anti-scam system as you can't scam anyone with a well design trade system if you need to even just simply highlight any changes. If you make a good trade system you can't be scammed unless you have an extremely low IQ, yet the mail system is incredibly easy to scam someone, so we have the Gold sink that is the TP. 

 

You need to use a trade discord if you want to sell high quality items and get more money then anything available in game. And even then I still end up using the TP just because the mail system is so scammable. Compared to even Rifts trade system, an older game that had more QoL stuff then GW2 back at its launch. I still love GW2 mind you cause of the combat and wvw (Without Anet trying to ruin wvw that is). But I do wish I had the options found in some other mmo's. 

[Thon.3780]

Just my opinion  other than tax 15% we see

1. Economic and inflation control

2. spam control

3. We can go anywhere 

4. Legal gem trade

5 track data trading records . ( actually I think they can check grinder and bot farmer)

 

[Nyth.6714]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Golden_Sink

[BrendanMcCoy.1289]

3 hours ago, Aridon.8362 said:

Thankfully the supply and demand concept works out, that is literally the only thing keeping the TP alive.

 

It's funny because in all your verbosity you were just complaining about supply and demand as the mechanism you didn't like where people undercut others lol.

[ASP.8093]

1 hour ago, BrendanMcCoy.1289 said:

It's funny because in all your verbosity you were just complaining about supply and demand as the mechanism you didn't like where people undercut others lol.

It really is. The GW2 market is just… an actual market, more or less. And most of the complaints seem to be about that in one way or another.

 

Like, in that poster's case? The "sell immediately" option means you're able to move even super-high-cost super-low-variance trades instantly with zero risk, if you want to.

If you don't like that immediate price? I've sold 3-4 legendaries, all within 2-12 hours of listing — even if someone "undercut" me — by spending about 10 minutes on the GW2BLTC site feeling out what the market will bear.

The TP in general is great for letting both buyers and sellers make time-vs.-money tradeoffs.