Is there any good reason not to make all TP purchases account bound on acquire?

[Chullster.3608]

The only bad one I can think of is if you accidentally buy the wrong thing?

 

Other than that one issue, this completely removes speculation and TP flippers without harming anyone else.

 

I think Anet should implement this, but I doubt they will.

[Dante.1763]

This would kill the TP off so quickly, so imma say no.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

Items with the account bound property can not stack with non-bound varieties. You would not be able to store materials you bought and you would not be able to buy something for a friend.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

One reason is players could change freely the price but the main reason so far I know is a legal you could sell this stuff for real money and somewhere in the game you acquired this stuff through random luck even if indirectly this is legally gambling. Which require you been 18/21+ depending where you living and Arena NET licenses in countless countries.

 

This why 99% of all MMOs have their item shop stuff bound to the AC/player character the only exceptions I know are items which gives premium time (like EVE's ISk) and a FPS game.

[nGumball.1283]

Yes, there are many reasons as to why this isn't a thing. It is such a massive change that would kill the free market we have in the game, affect a lot of players negatively and lead to an outrage in the community . You make it sound trivial but a change like that could kill the market all together.

 

 

[Rikimaru.7890]

Like my Guild does Secret Santa every year where you give the person you rolled something worth around 10g, how would you expect me to send them asomething if everything I buy is account bound? Or are you expecting me to get a drop of that value on such short notice?

Also how do you expect to store materials where there will be account bound and none account bound versions now?

 

Another thing is it would not prevent selling back completely. Like I can buy a rare item and salvage it for Globs of Ectoplasm which i sell back on the TP, then someone will buy the Globs of Ectoplasm and salvage those for Piles of Crystalline Dust which they can now sell on TP yet again.

You would pretty much have to make everything we can salvage and craft account bound too for this to even work.

[Mewcifer.5198]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with TP flippers and so there is no reason to take measures against them.

[jbrother.1340]

> @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> There is absolutely nothing wrong with TP flippers and so there is no reason to take measures against them.

 

Agreed. And as someone who won't spend my time flipping really I am not bothered by others doing it.

 

Or the fact that others have more or less than I do.

 

OP get over it and play the game you don't need 50000000 gold to have fun. Nothing in there costs so much that you need that you cannot... oh why bother.

 

play the game or don't but don't think that your idea is a popular one. Without the TP this game would be far less fun and to make it all account bound removes the player from the equation as a seller. How does limiting the game actually increase "fun"?

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Mewcifer.5198" said:

> There is absolutely nothing wrong with TP flippers and so there is no reason to take measures against them.

 

And thats where you're wrong. Flippers in this system add no value to the market, which goes against the primary benefit of the Free Market concept. Even a real world flipper has to deal with logistical concerns; and adds their value by increasing market reach, item restoration, item improvement, or preservation. None that of that occurs in the majority of Digital systems, since items have arbitrary value, do not decay, have no hard sourcing limits, and our global TP system creates a single market segment divided only by type of demands.

 

All the flippers are doing is using their existing wealth to corner a market to create a de-facto monopoly on low volume items, or artificially drive the prices of items up on pure speculation. They don't add value to a system, and they actually hinder it by making the production side of the economy more expensive to operate. The parallels to stocks and futures, and all the problems associated with them, are what flipper deal in.... and we've all seen the long term effects when a small group has the capacity and incentive to control a bottleneck.

 

Frankly if it wasn't for a couple of aspects of the TP that makes exerting total control difficult, you could easily see the kind of EVE-like Station traders making money by simply being a parasite in the system.

[Cyninja.2954]

Oh I would love for Arenanet to implement this for say 1 day or 1 week (similar to how they did a no downstate WvW week).

 

It would shut people with no understanding of markets up so fast and any time such an idea came up we could just direct people to the disaster that was the trial week.

 

Got to love some of the ideas people come up with.

[Ganathar.4956]

If you are posting this because of the whole sigil of nullification incident, I have to say that it wouldn't help at all. Not only would it cause restrictions to people who do not flip, but it would also not create the necessary supply anyway. It's Anet's fault that they made a sigil that cannot be crafted or farmed reliably a necessary component of obtaining the armor set. If they became account bound on purchase, they would all get bought up quickly by people making the armor. Most players would not get their hands on them though because the supply is so low, so there would still be problems. This solves nothing.

[Lambent.6375]

Why would they, tp flipping is part of the game.

[Healix.5819]

Making items account bound would just make a mess, more so for materials. It'd require them to double every item in the game to have an account bound version, or if they relied on a flag instead, it could probably be reset on salvageable items like sigils. Even then, it wouldn't prevent someone from buying out stock to convert, or simply because they wanted to manipulate the price.

 

If they were going to try to stop mass buyers, they'd probably just limit buying to a realistic number so you could only buy X of the same materials or Y of the same item every few minutes, similar to how selling is limited.

[Ferus.3165]

would be nice but will never happen because the trading post is the biggest goldsink in the game. And without those we'd have a big inflation. And then problems would show up at other places. There would always be some bottlenecks like mystic coins or other rare crafting materials that take a long time to aquire/accumulate/have high demand and those would be very expensive even with account bound items after you bought from the tp.

[PyrateSilly.4710]

> @"Healix.5819" said:

 

> If they were going to try to stop mass buyers, they'd probably just limit buying to a realistic number so you could only buy X of the same materials or Y of the same item every few minutes, similar to how selling is limited.

 

Any number that they can come up with would not be the right one ...

Just in the last week for no reason other than I wanted to, I have bought about 300g worth of various materials while upping the last couple of crafting professions to 500 on my main char. I still have a few lvls left on a couple of them. I only stopped when I went just under 100g in my bank, lol. Started building up the gold again so I can finally finish soon, lol. Meanwhile I am also out playing and harvesting everything I can.

 

Making things bought from the TP account bound is not a good idea.

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Chullster.3608" said:

> Is there any good reason not to make all TP purchases account bound on acquire?

> I think Anet should implement this, but I doubt they will.

You should consider why you think that they won't implement it. What do they know (or believe) that is different from what you know (or believe) that would cause them to have such a wildly different opinion of the how the TP should work?

 

****

 

> The only bad one I can think of is if you accidentally buy the wrong thing?

> Other than that one issue, this completely removes speculation and TP flippers without harming anyone else.

First, it's a mistake to think that there's something wrong with speculation or flipping.

 

Outside of major upheavals (such as we've seen in two items this week), flipping means that the highest buy offers more quickly get within 25% of lowest listed sale prices, which means that instant buyers spend less and instant sellers get more than without flipping. Obviously, flippers don't produce this social benefit out of the goodness of their hearts; they do it because they get a decent return on their investment for taking small to medium risks.

 

Long-term speculators ensure that items that might be useful to the rest of us later still show up on the TP long after their main faucets have disappeared. They also prevent prices from spiking more than they might otherwise, because they can resupply the market in quantity. Again, they don't do this because it's good for the rest of us; they take a higher risk (and tie up their money for longer periods of time) for the chance of massive profits (which are hard to come by for people who don't understand the markets well).

 

Additionally, hoarders, who hold on to stuff because it's stuff more so than to make a profit, also hold large caches of items. They, too, end up resupplying the market if the prices are high enough. In this case, they aren't taking a risk by filling up their storage, they just like having stuff, so it serves a personal desire or need.

 

The one thing that can't be prevented by the Invisible Hand of ~~John Smith~~ [Adam Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand) is the extreme change caused by novelty effects, as in this week's huge spike in the price of Intact Mosaics and Nullification Sigils. Flipping slows down the rise (by people buying high, hoping to sell higher, but still less than the other sellers). Hoarders & long-term speculators resupply the market (also slowing down the rise.

 

But of course, nothing is enough to stem the panic that's causes when people see "under 9000" supply for something that they perceive that _everyone_ will want (at 25 each). Capitalism has always been terrible about preventing irrational exuberance or fear.

 

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