Guild Bank Gold Withdrawal Limit Applies to Own Deposits... Why?

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

For those who don't know, there's a 500 gold limit to gold received via mail and guild bank withdrawals per week to avoid real money trading. Unfortunately I didn't know this until yesterday. I ran a weekend event for my guild with a legendary weapon as the top prize, which I converted gems into gold to purchase. I safely tucked the 3000 gold away in a personal guild bank to make sure I didn't spend any of it on personal stuff, then when I went to withdraw it to award prizes I found the withdrawal limit.

 

I understand the need to crack down on real money trading, but for people that like to use personal guild stashes as a sort of savings account we really need to be able to withdraw as much of the gold we put in as we want. The guild bank already records deposits, so the information is there to determine if a player should be able to withdraw more than 500 gold.

 

As it is, it'll be a month before I can access enough of my own gold to pay out tournament prizes I promised to my friends.

[Calistin.6210]

I agree, some of the things Anet does to "limit" gold seller doesn't really work that well and just punishes it's legit playerbase.

[MikeG.6389]

It's probable that the coding on the weekly 500 gold limit simply doesn't track how much gold each guild member puts in - or donate, as it were. And it shouldn't. Normally, when you give gold to your guild, it's to be used by the guild, i.e. it's not your gold anymore but the guild's. This is the same whether the guild has 500 members or just one.

 

Using a one person guild as an extension of your account bank is an unintended use of the guild system. Nevertheless, a lot of players - me included - "abuse" it for this purpose. Personally, I never ran into an issue like yours and if I ever do, I'll just wait it out. At least next time you can plan accordingly.

[Rasimir.6239]

As far as I know, inviting buyers to a personal guild bank to let them withdraw gold (for which they paid real world currency) from said bank was one of the ways rmt services were shifting gold towards their buyers, so restricting the gold flow through guild banks is one way for ANet to make rmt more difficult.

 

Guilds were never meant to be "personal savings accounts", so I doubt ANet will change support that in any way.

[MikeG.6389]

> @"Calistin.6210" said:

> I agree, some of the things Anet does to "limit" gold seller doesn't really work that well and just punishes it's legit playerbase.

 

How many times have you maxed out the 500 gold weekly limit? Normal gameplay shouldn't warrant a larger amount. Besides, you can still send high value items instead of money without limitation.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

> It's probable that the coding on the weekly 500 gold limit simply doesn't track how much gold each guild member puts in - or donate, as it were. And it shouldn't. Normally, when you give gold to your guild, it's to be used by the guild, i.e. it's not your gold anymore but the guild's. This is the same whether the guild has 500 members or just one.

>

> Using a one person guild as an extension of your account bank is an unintended use of the guild system. Nevertheless, a lot of players - me included - "abuse" it for this purpose. Personally, I never ran into an issue like yours and if I ever do, I'll just wait it out. At least next time you can plan accordingly.

 

I suspect that's the reason. Whilst Anet must be aware that 1 person guilds exist (before HoT it was quite common to create a guild for the bank space) I suspect it's one of those things they tolerate but don't encourage, so they're not going to make special allowances for them when designing guild functions.

 

However since the game does already track who deposited gold and when it might be a relatively easy thing to change, and since I can't imagine it would do any harm to let players withdraw the gold they put in I would be nice if they did allow it.

[Linken.6345]

You could always used the trading post as a savings account instead of guild bank.

Just throw in how many lowball trade orders on chac egg sacks as you want 2k ( or how ever much you want to save) a pop and if you buy any of them then you made a 8k-18k profit depending on were you resell it.

[avey.4201]

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

> > @"Calistin.6210" said:

> > I agree, some of the things Anet does to "limit" gold seller doesn't really work that well and just punishes it's legit playerbase.

>

> How many times have you maxed out the 500 gold weekly limit? Normal gameplay shouldn't warrant a larger amount. Besides, you can still send high value items instead of money without limitation.

 

Well, I don't know if you've leveled a guild, or decorated a guild, but for someone leveling a guild you can eat 3k gold worth of upgrades in 30 minutes.

Decorating is similar, at one time Magguma Lilly used to be 10-12 gold and we thought those were pretty, many many other decorations are expensive.

I remember maxing the mail cap once, and then we used guild bank when I was running to LA and back grabbing mats for my friend to decorate her guild.

With a 250g mount, 300g commander tag, 150g commander tag, among other ascended/legendary things you craft you can hit the cap rather easy depending how things are moving.

Not to mention giveaways have been common place in gw1 and gw2.

[MikeG.6389]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> I suspect that's the reason. Whilst Anet must be aware that 1 person guilds exist (before HoT it was quite common to create a guild for the bank space) I suspect it's one of those things they tolerate but don't encourage, so they're not going to make special allowances for them when designing guild functions.

>

> However since the game does already track who deposited gold and when it might be a relatively easy thing to change, and since I can't imagine it would do any harm to let players withdraw the gold they put in I would be nice if they did allow it.

 

Sure it would be nice, but still, it's not the intended use of the system. Remember, for example, that you need to have the necessary permission to be able to withdraw gold (or anything) from the guild bank. These permissions are set by the guild leader, so in a one person guild it shouldn't be a problem. But, what about guilds with hundreds of members? If you allow anyone to withdraw the money they themselves put in, you take control of the guild away from its leadership. And I don't think you can separate one-man guilds from the rest that way, anyway.

[MikeG.6389]

> @"avey.4201" said:

> > @"MikeG.6389" said:

> > > @"Calistin.6210" said:

> > > I agree, some of the things Anet does to "limit" gold seller doesn't really work that well and just punishes it's legit playerbase.

> >

> > How many times have you maxed out the 500 gold weekly limit? Normal gameplay shouldn't warrant a larger amount. Besides, you can still send high value items instead of money without limitation.

>

> Well, I don't know if you've leveled a guild, or decorated a guild, but for someone leveling a guild you can eat 3k gold worth of upgrades in 30 minutes.

> Decorating is similar, at one time Magguma Lilly used to be 10-12 gold and we thought those were pretty, many many other decorations are expensive.

> I remember maxing the mail cap once, and then we used guild bank when I was running to LA and back grabbing mats for my friend to decorate her guild.

> With a 250g mount, 300g commander tag, 150g commander tag, among other ascended/legendary things you craft you can hit the cap rather easy depending how things are moving.

> Not to mention giveaways have been common place in gw1 and gw2.

 

I hear you. But I also think that there are many ways to circumvent the gold limit in many cases. Sending/donating mats and items instead of gold, for one thing. I think you can do that without limitation. I maxed out scribing and crafted quite a few decorations. We always had the needed materials collected instead of the gold to buy the mats.

 

This is in no way meant to be criticism, only my point of view.

[avey.4201]

> @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > @"avey.4201" said:

> > 500/week on guild bank now too?

> > I'm against pay to win in games, but when the company holds RMT's, I'm for player RMT's, that's capitalism, and prevents monopoly.

> > The gold caps only hurt players, but have no effect on RMT's as people trade items worth many thousands of gold.

> > Item caps on G-bank or mail would only hurt more players, and still not affect RMT's unless someone is buying many legendary, or maybe they do popular infusions.

> > The RMT protections are failed as liberal gun policy's.

>

> You mean the monopoly held on high end infusions held by off-site traders?

 

Far as I understand they act as a proxy sending people to other people and transferring real money instead of gold, like a trading post.

I think if they were to do the RMT's themselves they would be banned out of existence fast.

That would give them access to large funds, and as I understood gw2 has became like gw1 but instead of ecto/ambraces of truth those people trade infusions/expensive items.

Rich people currency isn't a monopoly, some people get stupidly rich, rare items are what they use as currency, but I wouldn't pay more than 1k gold for one, and we don't label real life gold/silver/platinum as a monopoly.

I don't fractal/raid/pveland anymore so my gold doesn't leave the double digits, as an old time gw1 player I enjoy watching the coveted items currency crash from time to time for keks.

[Calistin.6210]

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

> > @"Calistin.6210" said:

> > I agree, some of the things Anet does to "limit" gold seller doesn't really work that well and just punishes it's legit playerbase.

>

> How many times have you maxed out the 500 gold weekly limit? Normal gameplay shouldn't warrant a larger amount. Besides, you can still send high value items instead of money without limitation.

 

Look at it the other way, how many times has a gold seller ruined your day. Or do you really believe this really does anything to stop it?

 

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

 

> But I also think that there are many ways to circumvent the gold limit in many cases. Sending/donating mats and items instead of gold, for one thing.

>

[Strider Pj.2193]

One way to do this in the future: empty one section of your guild bank except for the gold, invite the members to your ‘guild’ that get the gold, set their ranks (this is the important part) to only have access to withdraw gold for that section, then, once they have withdrawn their gold, change their access.

 

It isn’t great, but it will work.

 

[Strider Pj.2193]

Of course, that only works if it is a 500 gold giveaway...

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"avey.4201" said:

> > @"starlinvf.1358" said:

> > > @"avey.4201" said:

> > > 500/week on guild bank now too?

> > > I'm against pay to win in games, but when the company holds RMT's, I'm for player RMT's, that's capitalism, and prevents monopoly.

> > > The gold caps only hurt players, but have no effect on RMT's as people trade items worth many thousands of gold.

> > > Item caps on G-bank or mail would only hurt more players, and still not affect RMT's unless someone is buying many legendary, or maybe they do popular infusions.

> > > The RMT protections are failed as liberal gun policy's.

> >

> > You mean the monopoly held on high end infusions held by off-site traders?

>

> Far as I understand they act as a proxy sending people to other people and transferring real money instead of gold, like a trading post.

> I think if they were to do the RMT's themselves they would be banned out of existence fast.

> That would give them access to large funds, and as I understood gw2 has became like gw1 but instead of ecto/ambraces of truth those people trade infusions/expensive items.

> Rich people currency isn't a monopoly, some people get stupidly rich, rare items are what they use as currency, but I wouldn't pay more than 1k gold for one, and we don't label real life gold/silver/platinum as a monopoly.

> I don't fractal/raid/pveland anymore so my gold doesn't leave the double digits, as an old time gw1 player I enjoy watching the coveted items currency crash from time to time for keks.

 

They can and have controlled the supply chain of Infusions. Being a proxy doesn't change that, as bypassing them is neither desirable, or even practical; since they scoop up competing bids on the TP or act as brokers for exchanges. Some rare commodity markets work this way, since the supply is small enough to exert a similar level of control.

[FOX.3582]

> @"Aaron Forestman.4758" said:

> For those who don't know, there's a 500 gold limit to gold received via mail and guild bank withdrawals per week to avoid real money trading. Unfortunately I didn't know this until yesterday. I ran a weekend event for my guild with a legendary weapon as the top prize, which I converted gems into gold to purchase. I safely tucked the 3000 gold away in a personal guild bank to make sure I didn't spend any of it on personal stuff, then when I went to withdraw it to award prizes I found the withdrawal limit.

>

> I understand the need to crack down on real money trading, but for people that like to use personal guild stashes as a sort of savings account we really need to be able to withdraw as much of the gold we put in as we want. The guild bank already records deposits, so the information is there to determine if a player should be able to withdraw more than 500 gold.

>

> As it is, it'll be a month before I can access enough of my own gold to pay out tournament prizes I promised to my friends.

 

Wait ... You converted real money into gold to buy a legendary for some stranger? Hahahaha!

[Rasimir.6239]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> However since the game does already track who deposited gold and when it might be a relatively easy thing to change, and since I can't imagine it would do any harm to let players withdraw the gold they put in I would be nice if they did allow it.

Never assume that something is easily put into code just it looks like it's easy from the outside ;) . I strongly suspect that ANet does have base libraries of code snippets that are called from different parts of the client so they don't have to implement basic functionalities several times, so as to not make maintenance a nightmare. Imagine they want to change something about gold transfer. If they have one basic function that handles all of the security checks that gets called from both mail and guild bank, then they'll have one library doing the security checks. If they implemented them twice, once into the mail code and once into the guild bank code, there would be the very real chance of breaking stuff if they wanted to change the checks, since they had to make sure to put the same code into both checks.

 

Now with two pieces of code accessing the same library functions things are still ok, and changing similar code blocks in parallel looks doable, but it quickly gets out of hand if you add more places that want to do the same checks. At the same time, if you are working with a decent library base in your code, changing those library functions (in our example the ones that handle the security checks for receiving gold) always has the chance of breaking one or more of the calling code pieces.

 

Of course I don't know the code of this game, but I've seen some pretty weird bugs during my 20+ years in software development that came out of "this looks easy, I'll quickly change it" ideas that ended up having totally unintended consequences, that sometimes didn't surface until years later. In a large software project (and an MMO, especially one that is seven years old, certainly qualifies as "large") there is no such thing as a "relatively easy thing to change" ;) .

[titje.2745]

nice to read this. i always wanted to put gold in my own guild. but i was never able because i have to do stuped 3 mans guild missions. and i didn’t want to. but this don’t work as i see. in world of warcraft it’s much better. create a guild and inv ppl for some gold. and later they leave.

for (against gamble) i better have a guild for the gold then a buy order in the tp. but i think they promote gamble. loot bags and crates and mystic forge and the ecto. and more. gems and keys.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Rasimir.6239" said:

> > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > However since the game does already track who deposited gold and when it might be a relatively easy thing to change, and since I can't imagine it would do any harm to let players withdraw the gold they put in I would be nice if they did allow it.

> Never assume that something is easily put into code just it looks like it's easy from the outside ;) . I strongly suspect that ANet does have base libraries of code snippets that are called from different parts of the client so they don't have to implement basic functionalities several times, so as to not make maintenance a nightmare. Imagine they want to change something about gold transfer. If they have one basic function that handles all of the security checks that gets called from both mail and guild bank, then they'll have one library doing the security checks. If they implemented them twice, once into the mail code and once into the guild bank code, there would be the very real chance of breaking stuff if they wanted to change the checks, since they had to make sure to put the same code into both checks.

>

> Now with two pieces of code accessing the same library functions things are still ok, and changing similar code blocks in parallel looks doable, but it quickly gets out of hand if you add more places that want to do the same checks. At the same time, if you are working with a decent library base in your code, changing those library functions (in our example the ones that handle the security checks for receiving gold) always has the chance of breaking one or more of the calling code pieces.

>

> Of course I don't know the code of this game, but I've seen some pretty weird bugs during my 20+ years in software development that came out of "this looks easy, I'll quickly change it" ideas that ended up having totally unintended consequences, that sometimes didn't surface until years later. In a large software project (and an MMO, especially one that is seven years old, certainly qualifies as "large") there is no such thing as a "relatively easy thing to change" ;) .

 

That's why I said it _might be_ easy to change, not that it is.

 

All I meant was they already have a system in place which tracks how much gold you've put into the guild bank, and when, so it is possible for the game to monitor and use that information. Even if they need to create a seperate code to serve the same function rather than using the one which is already there at least they have a starting point instead of trying to find a way to monitor something the game currently has no info on.

[avey.4201]

> @"titje.2745" said:

> nice to read this. i always wanted to put gold in my own guild. but i was never able because i have to do stuped 3 mans guild missions. and i didn’t want to. but this don’t work as i see. in world of warcraft it’s much better. create a guild and inv ppl for some gold. and later they leave.

> for (against gamble) i better have a guild for the gold then a buy order in the tp. but i think they promote gamble. loot bags and crates and mystic forge and the ecto. and more. gems and keys.

 

The "easy" 5 point trek, the single bounty you can cycle to trillia, and Obsidian sanctum jumping puzzle are the easiest ways I've found for being alone doing guild missions.

Raw gold is rough to move around besides keeping it directly on your person, and moving it via items.

[casualkenny.9817]

It might also make it harder (and thus discourage) attempts to circumvent the trade taxes for big ticket items - and also reduce the frequency of scams

[Bollocks.4078]

> @"Rasimir.6239" said:

> > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > However since the game does already track who deposited gold and when it might be a relatively easy thing to change, and since I can't imagine it would do any harm to let players withdraw the gold they put in I would be nice if they did allow it.

> Never assume that something is easily put into code just it looks like it's easy from the outside ;) ...

 

It would be equally wrong to make any assumption regarding how easy or difficult this would be by anyone who isn't familiar with the GW2 code. I feel like references to how difficult the coding might be are usually more of an attempt to derail the suggestion. It also seems to me that OP's suggestion doesn't even relate to security. The OP has the proper security to take gold out. This is a limitation that is not related to security. Aside from hindering RMT gold trading it may also be a security measure to prevent someone from stealing large amounts of gold from a guild.

 

I have nothing against the OP's suggestion but I also think there's a bit more to consider. For example, if someone deposits 3000 gold into a guild bank there may be nothing wrong with that person taking it back out the next day. But what about a month later, a year later, 5 years later? What if the 3000 gold is spent a week later for whatever it was intended for, then other people add more gold. How do you determine how much of that the person who put the first 3000 gold in should be allowed to take out. Think about how complicated this gets the more people there are depositing and withdrawing gold.

 

 

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

Update: I received an answer on my support ticket stating that Anet would not circumvent the withdrawal cap for me to hand out my prizes. We've had some good points here, so I understand the cap and how difficult it would be to allow cases like mine while keeping something like withdrawing thousands of gold years after you invested it in a larger guild, when it's not really yours anymore. I think it would be nice to at least have a warning when depositing over 500 gold in a guild bank that you won't be able to get it back right away.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

> @"Aaron Forestman.4758" said:

> I think it would be nice to at least have a warning when depositing over 500 gold in a guild bank that you won't be able to get it back right away.

 

A warning like that sounds fair!

 

For sequestering gold - there's no limit to withdrawing from the Trading Post, right?

A buy order of 30 Eternity @ 100 g each stashes away 3000 g for instant retrieval (as I understand it) with absolutely *no* risk of the order being filled.

[Seera.5916]

> @"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:

> > @"Aaron Forestman.4758" said:

> > I think it would be nice to at least have a warning when depositing over 500 gold in a guild bank that you won't be able to get it back right away.

>

> A warning like that sounds fair!

>

> For sequestering gold - there's no limit to withdrawing from the Trading Post, right?

> A buy order of 30 Eternity @ 100 g each stashes away 3000 g for instant retrieval (as I understand it) with absolutely *no* risk of the order being filled.

 

And if it is, then you can turn around and sell it for a huge profit if you didn't want it or a huge bargain if you did!