so why no player to player trading?

[Nick Malone.5641]

Another reason not to allow P2P trading is to help fight RMT currency buying. A common tactic used by RMT "merchants" in games that allow P2P trades is for the buyer to sell a trash item for a huge price (the amount of currency they are buying) and the RMT seller uses that trade to transfer the illicit currency. With the TP, the first kind of trade is hard to do reliably, and is easily flagged as suspicious. In a P2P trade environment, monitoring every trade for suspicious activity is more difficult. While an automated system could be developed, why bother when we have a TP that works fine?

[alcopaul.2156]

@"CaelestiaEmpyrea.2617" said:Another reason not to allow P2P trading is to help fight RMT currency buying. A common tactic used by RMT "merchants" in games that allow P2P trades is for the buyer to sell a trash item for a huge price (the amount of currency they are buying) and the RMT seller uses that trade to transfer the illicit currency. With the TP, the first kind of trade is hard to do reliably, and is easily flagged as suspicious. In a P2P trade environment, monitoring every trade for suspicious activity is more difficult. While an automated system could be developed, why bother when we have a TP that works fine?

this could be prevented by making a database script that compares the gold paid vs the price of item in the market. if fishy, then ban.

but your point is a strong one since database script must be in-memory running 24/7 to monitor.

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

Although I'm not interested in P2P trading personally, I thought of a situation when it might be useful that I don't think has been covered in this thread. My understanding is that, with the TP, it's possible that you can't sell an expensive item because you can't afford the listing fee. For example, if I found a Chak Egg Sac, the lowest price I can sell it for on the TP is 10,000G (because there are orders for that much, and you can't sell for less than the highest order) - thus if I don't have 500G (the 5% listing fee), I can't sell it at all on the TP. Is this correct? If so, it seems like P2P trading would be useful here, since presumably the 15% tax could be taken when the trade happens, rather than when the listing happens.

(Of course this is hypothetical, but I'm pretty sure I read about an example of this actually happening: someone had made a legendary weapon with the intention of selling it, but having blown all their money making the legendary, they couldn't afford the listing fee.)

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:Scam? What Scam?

Player A opens a trade window with player BPlayer A drops the item / Money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer B drops the item / money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer A and B , after inspection of both items, click "confirm trade" or "cancel trade"

Only if 2 confirm trade are clicked, the pending trade is released. Otherwise, it's canceled.It's exactly like it worked in GW1. Somehow, the scams still were an everyday occurence.

@"Nasbit.3240" said:Used / modified items are autom. soulbound by the game. There are almost no items that are worth trading that looks like scap. And gw2 has much better tooltips/naming - so its not like it was in gw1.In Gw2 you instant see if someone give you 10g or 10s - so what possible scam from gw1 could happen samewise in gw2?Very simple one - the one where the seller/buyer takes advantage of the other party not knowing the price of the item. Which is actually the most common type, far more common than the examples mentioned in the thread before. And it's more insidious, because the people that profit off it usually don't even consider it to be a scam.

...let's be honest, there are 2 primary reasons why people might want p2p trading. First is to circumvent the TP tax (i don't need to explain why Anet might not think it's a good idea, right?). Second is the reason mentioned above - traders not wanting the price to be easily known to other party, in order to be able to profit more at the other party's expense. I don't think i need to explain why this is a bad idea as well.

There's a third reason as well - to trade items at prices above TP price cap. This is something that may be worthwhile for a small number of players (and an extremely selected number of items), but in this case i believe their convenience is not worth introducing a system that would cause problems for everyone else. Also, i don't think any items with such a huge value should even be in the game in the first place.Notice also, that those types of items would be a primary sources of scams, as they drop for random players, and have no price on TP, thus making it much easier for a potential buyer to "explain" to a lucky player with a drop what is the "correct" price. Correct for the buyer, not the seller, that is.

If we eliminate those 3 types of reasons, there's nothing left that would make p2p trade better (or even as good as) than TP. The only "advantages" it may have are only in those 3 points (and those are advantages only to a selected people, not to all players). In every other case TP is strictly superior.

So, why do we exactly want to have that direct trade system again?

[mauried.5608]

RMT sellers can simply use the mail system to send gold to any player.If RMT selling is a big concern in the game , then the mail system should not allow the transfer of gold or items .Wonder why no one will support this.

[Linken.6345]

@mauried.5608 said:RMT sellers can simply use the mail system to send gold to any player.If RMT selling is a big concern in the game , then the mail system should not allow the transfer of gold or items .Wonder why no one will support this.

And mails are easily tracked by anet so the accounts get shut down, p2p trades everywere in the game world would be much harder to track

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

@Etria.3642 said:SWTOR has rampant inflation and I made millions on their market not...scamming per say but kind of.

They have armor boxes that come with two pieces of gear that you cannot preview. I would buy those for one price, open, and sell the two separate for MUCH higher because people just wouldn't look for the boxes. It was as much as paying 4500 for a box and selling the gloves for 4500 and the chest for 450000.

Some times more, depending on whether the chest looked nice. I would even tell Guildies to OPEN the boxes and sell yet they would tell me it was 'too much trouble' because there is a five day wait before you can sell.

I love the gw2 tp.

SWTOR does indeed have rampant inflation, but:

• You can preview the armour in the box, but not by clicking on the box. Open the Collections interface, find the armour in there, and bingo, you can preview the whole set rather than just the two or three pieces in the box.
• The wait time is 36 hours, one and a half days, not five days.

[Pirindolo.9427]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Scam? What Scam?

Player A opens a trade window with player BPlayer A drops the item / Money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer B drops the item / money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer A and B , after inspection of both items, click "confirm trade" or "cancel trade"

Only if 2 confirm trade are clicked, the pending trade is released. Otherwise, it's canceled.

Yes, nice theory there. Still didn't work in a real life scenario.

The TP is here to stay and direct player to player trading will not get implemented. Period.

Oh, really?

Go play Star Wars The Old Republic a couple of years, like I did, and then tell me that this system is just a theory that didn't work in a real life scenario.

Catch you in a couple of years.

Actually I did. I also played Diablo 2 and Guild Wars 1. Take a guess which games had a ton of scammers?

Go read Gailes official response on just this subject from Guild Wars 1 IN THIS THREAD.

Catch you once you've realised that the system is not fool proof and people still got scammed.

While we are at it, maybe go check if there is absolutely 0 trade scams in SWTOR, once you've realized that's not the case, come back and let's have a talk. You know your kinda wrong when not even your example works.

LOLDude, we all know that anyone (except for you) is kinda wrong when not sharing you radical opinions.SWTOR player to player trade system works perfectly. If you want to trade something for something, you just have to pay attention to the items in the trade window. Only that. There is no way that someone could scam you if the items in the trade window are the ones you want to include in the trade.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Scam? What Scam?

Player A opens a trade window with player BPlayer A drops the item / Money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer B drops the item / money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer A and B , after inspection of both items, click "confirm trade" or "cancel trade"

Only if 2 confirm trade are clicked, the pending trade is released. Otherwise, it's canceled.

Yes, nice theory there. Still didn't work in a real life scenario.

The TP is here to stay and direct player to player trading will not get implemented. Period.

Oh, really?

Go play Star Wars The Old Republic a couple of years, like I did, and then tell me that this system is just a theory that didn't work in a real life scenario.

Catch you in a couple of years.

Actually I did. I also played Diablo 2 and Guild Wars 1. Take a guess which games had a ton of scammers?

Go read Gailes official response on just this subject from Guild Wars 1 IN THIS THREAD.

Catch you once you've realised that the system is not fool proof and people still got scammed.

While we are at it, maybe go check if there is absolutely 0 trade scams in SWTOR, once you've realized that's not the case, come back and let's have a talk. You know your kinda wrong when not even your example works.

LOLDude, we all know that every people (except for you) is kinda wrong when we don't share you radical opinions.SWTOR player to player trade system works perfectly.

If you want to trade something for something, you just have to pay attention to the items in the trade window.

Only that. There is no way that someone could scam you if the items in the trade window are the ones you want to include in the trade.

And there is your incorrect assumption. You assume players pay attention all the time. Real life experience has shown this not to be the case, in any game mentioned.

Thus we are back to:Nice theory, reality has been different.

[Ol Nik.2518]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ol Nik.2518 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ol Nik.2518 said:

1. barter, aka direct exchange of goods

Barter can be helpful if you are looking for something rare that is hard to get from TP.

There aren't any items that are "hard to get from the TP" that aren't simply hard to get at all.>

Does this disprove that rare items are good candidates for the barter system?My point is that it's not a meaningful benefit, because only a few people would benefit from this.There are maybe four such items in the game (more if you count the stat-swapping variants, but they have identical sources so it doesn't affect the total supply). Further, if ANet cared about the issue, they could much more easily raise the trading cap of 10k gold to e.g. 30k gold. (There are potential economic issues with that, so they might have to add a feature that enables a cap break in the API: by default, the cap would be 10k; they could adjust it for specific items.

Expensive infusions are good candidates for a barter system. People might be unwilling to sell them because they do not need cash, but might be willing to trade them for other expensive infusions or rare drops like invisible shoes.And nothing stops that from happening now. In fact, there are anywhere from 4-20 new offers daily in the relevant subreddit (and more in the gray market Discord community).

You are just proving my point.The benefit you want already exists. People who don't want to use the TP ... already don't use the TP. How would adding P2P trading benefit the game?

Do not get me wrong, I agree that p2p trading would be beneficial only to a small number of people in limited situations. I also do not think it is essential for the game. If anything it would be mostly quality of life feature.

Nonetheless, to answer your question, the main benefits, as I see it, are a simplification of barter exchange and a safety mechanism for transactions with specific people. The shrinkage of the grey market and an additional gold sink (if p2p trade is also taxable) would be other benefits. I do not insist that these benefits are cost-effective. If I were a developer it would be the last thing on my list.

2. trading with a specific person

I can imagine a variety of situations where I might want to trade with a specific person.And yet nothing stops this from happening now. You can sell directly to anyone you want for any price that you like.

It is not possible to have a 100% safe transaction with a specific person in the current system. An in-game p2p trade system can address the safety issue.First, no, it cannot. It can remove some of the mechanisms that scammers use, but it cannot eliminate the possibility that you aren't getting a "fair" price.

I am not suggesting that p2p trading should replace an existing system. If it is to be implemented it should be done only as an addition to the system in place. Thus, everybody can check the TP for current prices. Sorry, I am not going into 'fair' price discussion.

Second, the vast majority of people don't need 100% safe P2P transactions because everything they trade is available on the TP. (I'm not ignoring the so-called too-rare items; I don't agree that is relevant for the purposes of determining whether the game needs this.)

No argument here. P2p trading is a quality of life feature, not a necessity.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You may find this an interesting read (this game uses the P2P Trade window in question):https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scam#Identifying_a_scam

Good luck.

[Pirindolo.9427]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Scam? What Scam?

Player A opens a trade window with player BPlayer A drops the item / Money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer B drops the item / money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer A and B , after inspection of both items, click "confirm trade" or "cancel trade"

Only if 2 confirm trade are clicked, the pending trade is released. Otherwise, it's canceled.

Yes, nice theory there. Still didn't work in a real life scenario.

The TP is here to stay and direct player to player trading will not get implemented. Period.

Oh, really?

Go play Star Wars The Old Republic a couple of years, like I did, and then tell me that this system is just a theory that didn't work in a real life scenario.

Catch you in a couple of years.

Actually I did. I also played Diablo 2 and Guild Wars 1. Take a guess which games had a ton of scammers?

Go read Gailes official response on just this subject from Guild Wars 1 IN THIS THREAD.

Catch you once you've realised that the system is not fool proof and people still got scammed.

While we are at it, maybe go check if there is absolutely 0 trade scams in SWTOR, once you've realized that's not the case, come back and let's have a talk. You know your kinda wrong when not even your example works.

LOLDude, we all know that every people (except for you) is kinda wrong when we don't share you radical opinions.SWTOR player to player trade system works perfectly.

If you want to trade something for something, you just have to pay attention to the items in the trade window.

Only that. There is no way that someone could scam you if the items in the trade window are the ones you want to include in the trade.

And there is your incorrect assumption. You assume players pay attention all the time. Real life experience has shown this not to be the case, in any game mentioned.

Thus we are back to:Nice theory, reality has been different.

The only incorrect assumption I see here is thinking that a "SCAM" and "NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING" are the same thing. If that's what you think...

[Astralporing.1957]

@mauried.5608 said:RMT sellers can simply use the mail system to send gold to any player.If RMT selling is a big concern in the game , then the mail system should not allow the transfer of gold or items .Wonder why no one will support this.There's also a weekly gold limit on mail transactions (you can send as much as you want, but the person receiving has a limit on how much gold can they withdraw from mails every week). This is done to curb the RMT wealth transfers.It's something i didn't think of initially, but I guess any possible direct trade system would need to have this cap as well, or it would be used to circumvent that restriction.

@"Pirindolo.9427" said:The only incorrect assumption I see here is thinking that a "SCAM" and "NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING" are the same thing. If that's what you think...It's true, not paying attention doesn't automatically mean the transaction was a scam. It's only a scam if one of the traders creates that transaction for the specific purpose of hoping the other party won't pay attention.

The other side paying or not paying attention causes the scam to be a failed/succesful one, but it doesn't change the fact that an attempted scam still is a scam.

If you pull a wallet out of someone else's pocket, it's still stealing. Yes, that person probably should have paid more attention to that wallet, but him not paying attention doesn't make the thief to somehow not be a thief.

Basically, if the success of your whole transaction hinges on the other party making a mistake (not paying attention, not knowing the price, etc), it's a scam. And people being people (and internet having no real accountability) those kinds of scams are quite common in direct trade systems, unfortunately.

Edit:I'll give you another example of scam from GW1 times, one that didn't depend on trade window shenanigans.

Dyes were a relatively common drops in pre-searing (due to the drop tables being much smaller than the rest of the game, i guess). At the same time pre-searing inventory space was extremely small. So, quite a number of "honest traders" were offering to buy all those "cheap and common" dyes of the new players' hands for a slightly more than vendor price. Which happened to be not even close to the real price of those dyes in the rest of the game. Were the new players not paying attention? No, the trades themselves were 100% legit, with no tricks involved. The real scam happened before the actual trade.

Yes, i know there is a number of "traders" that are still salivating thinking of exactly such possibilities of wealth acquisition that would be opened with introduction of a direct trading system. Pardon me though for not wanting for seeing a repeat of those predatory practices. I don't see anything positive for the game that might come out of them.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:And the truth is that you can trade with the systems as is. You just have to work through a third party to avoid being taken advantage of. I can understand the desire to have ANet make that process easier for you. However, if the goal is interaction, the workaround offers more opportunity for it (you must communicate with the buyer/seller and the broker). Any ANet-supported process which would be more convenient for you is likely to involve negative consequences for others.

yes, I realize that lol, but its not true trading. there is no excitement attached from going through a middleman. while safer, it is also more boring.

[mtpelion.4562]

For a market to be "good", there must be perfect information. Perfect information is a state in which both parties are privy to the same information with regard to supply, demand, and current equilibrium price as well as anything that would inform regarding an upcoming change in any of those variables.

In the TP, there is a state of Perfect Information. No player has an unfair advantage over another player because everyone knows the same information and it is incredibly easy to obtain.

In a P2P trade system, there is heavy imperfect information, which leads to gouging and rampant profiteering off of an information imbalance. No players know what the current prices are without doing a ton of manual research, and since most people aren't logging on to spend the next 2 hours finding out how much they should sell their mithril ore for, they are easily preyed upon by those who did spend that time. Essentially, P2P systems directly benefit a small minority of players who are willing to put in an inordinate amount of time on research while harming the vast majority of players as well as the economy on the whole. They are a bad system, which is why they have also ceased to exist in the real world. At this point in time, the only legitimate purpose for such a system would be in a game designed around allowing you to roleplay a medieval merchant class trader, and that's not what GW2 is designed to be.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Pirindolo.9427 said:Scam? What Scam?

Player A opens a trade window with player BPlayer A drops the item / Money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer B drops the item / money he is going to trade, from inventory to trade windowPlayer A and B , after inspection of both items, click "confirm trade" or "cancel trade"

Only if 2 confirm trade are clicked, the pending trade is released. Otherwise, it's canceled.

Yes, nice theory there. Still didn't work in a real life scenario.

The TP is here to stay and direct player to player trading will not get implemented. Period.

Oh, really?

Go play Star Wars The Old Republic a couple of years, like I did, and then tell me that this system is just a theory that didn't work in a real life scenario.

Catch you in a couple of years.

Actually I did. I also played Diablo 2 and Guild Wars 1. Take a guess which games had a ton of scammers?

Go read Gailes official response on just this subject from Guild Wars 1 IN THIS THREAD.

Catch you once you've realised that the system is not fool proof and people still got scammed.

While we are at it, maybe go check if there is absolutely 0 trade scams in SWTOR, once you've realized that's not the case, come back and let's have a talk. You know your kinda wrong when not even your example works.

LOLDude, we all know that every people (except for you) is kinda wrong when we don't share you radical opinions.SWTOR player to player trade system works perfectly.

If you want to trade something for something, you just have to pay attention to the items in the trade window.

Only that. There is no way that someone could scam you if the items in the trade window are the ones you want to include in the trade.

And there is your incorrect assumption. You assume players pay attention all the time. Real life experience has shown this not to be the case, in any game mentioned.

Thus we are back to:Nice theory, reality has been different.

The only incorrect assumption I see here is thinking that a "SCAM" and "NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING" are the same thing. If that's what you think...

Incorrect.

There was/is people who intentionally try to scam others even with this "safe method". 8/10 times the other party might notice, 2/10 times they might not. The result is a scam. The fact that people continue to try to pull this off is indicative of it working often enough to be worth their time.

This is evidenced by both the official statement in this thread, the countless complaint threads online to all mentioned games and other commentators mentioning this.

I will repeat for the third time:Your solution is fool proof in theory, when actually looking at any game where it was implemented this did not hold up.

Astralporing.1957 also did a nice summary of how even both party desired trades (in case of dyes in GW1) might be considered scams where one party takes advantage of the other parties lack of knowledge with the intent of swindling them out of part of their profit/value.

[kharmin.7683]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Yes, i know there is a number of "traders" that are still salivating thinking of exactly such possibilities of wealth acquisition that would be opened with introduction of a direct trading system. Pardon me though for not wanting for seeing a repeat of those predatory practices. I don't see anything positive for the game that might come out of them.This is probably one, big reason that ANet hasn't implemented a player-to-player trade system. I believe that it would be too much of a hassle for them to moderate/regulate and that the system currently in place meets the needs of the majority of the player base.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Yes, i know there is a number of "traders" that are still salivating thinking of exactly such possibilities of wealth acquisition that would be opened with introduction of a direct trading system. Pardon me though for not wanting for seeing a repeat of those predatory practices. I don't see anything positive for the game that might come out of them.

I couldn't help but think of this fascist propaganda when reading this:not every trader is some power hungry monster lol.

[yann.1946]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Yes, i know there is a number of "traders" that are still salivating thinking of exactly such possibilities of wealth acquisition that would be opened with introduction of a direct trading system. Pardon me though for not wanting for seeing a repeat of those predatory practices. I don't see anything positive for the game that might come out of them.

I couldn't help but think of this fascist propaganda when reading this:

not every trader is some power hungry monster lol.

Sure but even 1 would be a needless problem

[Etria.3642]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:And the truth is that you

can

trade with the systems as is. You just have to work through a third party to avoid being taken advantage of. I can understand the desire to have ANet make that process easier for you. However, if the goal is interaction, the workaround offers more opportunity for it (you must communicate with the buyer/seller

and

the broker). Any ANet-supported process which would be more convenient for you is likely to involve negative consequences for others.

yes, I realize that lol, but its not true trading. there is no excitement attached from going through a middleman. while safer, it is also more boring.

I don't understand the difference between using a middleman to make it safe and not using one makes it more exciting? Exciting how?? This really just yells scam. Exciting is clicking the trade window to see if the other person noticed??

[Cyninja.2954]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Yes, i know there is a number of "traders" that are still salivating thinking of exactly such possibilities of wealth acquisition that would be opened with introduction of a direct trading system. Pardon me though for not wanting for seeing a repeat of those predatory practices. I don't see anything positive for the game that might come out of them.

I couldn't help but think of this fascist propaganda when reading this:

not every trader is some power hungry monster lol.

Not necessarily, but it's Arenanets game. If they do not want to give people a platform to take advantage of others in this way, then that is up to them.

Other developers, say CCP in Eve Online, have a different stance and even encourage cutthroat behavior. The result is a different type of community.

I personally like both, GW2 and Eve, I do not expect many people in GW2 though to share this sentiment. That is completely without regard to the scam issue.

On that note, if you use extremes to argue things which are absolutely not in the sphere of that extreme, then you are pushing the conversation in said direction. I personally would not associate or mention fascism (or even its propaganda) over the lack of a direct trade system which is highly abusive and antiquated over an established system, the more functional trading post. It opens the door to so much toxicity and in no way proves a point. That is just me though.

[sorudo.9054]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:what about simply being able to trade, i don't give a rats kitten about taxes or anything, i just want to personally hand out something to a lone and under-geared player.and no, i don't think the mail box is good enough, it's so impersonal and distant.

How is it impersonal? You are directly communicating with the other player, getting as close as possible given that you are separated by two separate internet routings. Maybe your avatars aren't adjacent, although I consider that a positive, because it means I can reach out to anyone on the map without having to chase them down (or for them to find me). I've had some really good chats with people after doing this, even though my motivation is just to give those trying to help themselves a leg up.

I'm not sure how a different interface makes it more personal, unless the P2P window requires typing a message.

the mail is as personal as writing a letter, P2P is like calling someone.mail isn't personal at all, it's just a wall of text with nothing in it.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Etria.3642 said:I don't understand the difference between using a middleman to make it safe and not using one makes it more exciting? Exciting how?? This really just yells scam. Exciting is clicking the trade window to see if the other person noticed??well if you don't get it then you don't get it. I don't see how to explain it to someone.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:On that note, if you use extremes to argue things which are absolutely not in the sphere of that extreme, then you are pushing the conversation in said direction.take a chill pill I am in no way "using extremes", its just a joke.

[Jeknar.6184]

@Celsith.2753 said:I just wish theyd increase the maximum sell price and protect the richer players wanting to buy/sell high end infusions.

I'm not even sure why Trading Post have a 10k gold limit...

[MetalGirl.2370]

Scammers can easily be avoided imo.In GW1 and many other games you have to hover over the item in order to be able to accept trade, so surely you'd look carefully what you're accepting.So I don't see the problem.