If you're going to outbid on the trading post, it should be by a minimum of 5%

[Zeivu.3615]

If what you are asking for is reasonable or an item is in demand, it isn't ever an issue. Well, at least not for long.

[Seera.5916]

> @Bollocks.4078 said:

> Here's why this is a problem: when someone outbids a buy or sell order on a high price item by 1 copper they are effectively butting in line. The new offer is essentially the same price but now the new bid is first in line. If someone wants to outbid the existing buy or sell offer it makes perfect sense that they should have to change the bid amount by enough to make it essentially a new offer, not the same offer.

>

> This is in no way at all about being outbid or about being impatient. Why does the first bidder have to be patient and wait but the penny increment bidder doesn't? If the next bidder wants to buy or sell for the same price then they should bid the same price and take their place in line behind other bids of the same price, not be able to butt in line.

 

The Trading Post isn't an auction house. It's like the two gas stations at the corner who start competing to see who get more customers by dropping their cost to $0.01 below the other to get people to buy from them.

 

The game just doesn't let players choose who they buy from. They assume all players want to sell for the highest and buy at the cheapest.

 

Anyone doing anything other than instant buy/sell is gambling that no one else will be willing to buy or sell at a better price before someone comes along and fills the order. There's also a good chance that the first bidder "outbid" someone else by 1 copper as well.

[Kichwas.7152]

If you want a 'trading post' system designed to be "fun" for the sellers and speculators go play ESO...

 

Players who want to play the MMO and just get stuff and clean inventory hate it... but traders love it.

 

You can buy 'traders' and literally restrict who can sell things and track how well different traders in your 'trade guild' are doing and then recruit or kick them based on performance or things like 'underbidding'. Or charge them a tax to sell through your trading posts.

 

You get an opportunity every week (or is it month?) to literally buy away another trading guild's 'traders' and thus lock them out of selling... or force them to use far out of the way hard to reach traders in obscure zones...

 

 

The result... traders and sellers have a complex competative game to play... and players who just want to 'get back 5 more slots in their bags' have a major hassle... if you're a player looking to get '5 pieces of crafting mat X' good luck finding out which trader has it... You end up having to basically get to know your sellers and build up some 'brand loyalty' or use an external app / website that scans all the traders daily and updates who is selling what and where to find them this week...

 

They also have a 'guild vendor'... you can sell your stuff to your own guildies and avoid the traders... but this requires being in a guild large enough that there's odds somebody will be selling something you want... and of course, with that system built in... guildies don't like to just share things, even if it would "help the raid out". Seller's paradise... buyer and sharer's nightmare.

 

Most people end up just vendoring their loot...

 

But hey... traders love it... so many tools built in to fix prices and lock out competition...

 

 

There's a lot of things I like about ESO... but I'll take GW2's trading post anyday over the nightmare of a system designed for sellers...

 

[Menadena.7482]

If you want to talk a bad TP try simcity on a phone. Every 30 seconds it will list a random set of offers, most of which are for the same basic mat. For most items it is look-wait-refresh-look-wait-refresh-repeat to find the item.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

Man this thread is hard to wrap my head around.. despite reading through everything, I'm still trying to grasp the problem. People have to understand, the market is only what people are willing to pay for an item. For example, if 100 eternities were listed between 500-1000g and nobody buys them, they aren't worth that. If people are only willing to pay 1c that is all their worth, that's the market

 

If you've listed an item at say 500g, and someone comes along and bids 499g 99s, 99c, then so be it; you should have lowered the price enough to begin with so it would have flown off the shelf.

_think about it this from a common sense perspective, if you come along and want to sell your item right away, you aren't going to list it at 500g or more than that, you are going to list it at less, which for some people will be 499g 99s 99c. For me, that's too much clicking, If I see an item for 500g, i'll sell mine for 499g._

 

If you've set a bid for an item at 500g and someone comes along and bids 1c more.. I first ask the question, why don't you just buy the item outright to begin with if it's that important to you? Failing that, just put it at the max price you're willing to pay? It's not like this game is hard to make gold.. hell even in WvW you can rake in decent coin now

_like before, think about it from a common sense perspective, you really want an item, you see someone has bid 500g on it, you want to save a penny, you up the bid by 1c and hope the other person doesn't notice and loses the bid. Why pay more when you don't have to? I'd still ask this person the question though, why not just dump the max in you're willing to pay, this game is easy to make gold._

 

I mean, it seems to me like you're coming from a point of view where you want to buy the item for as cheap as possible and turn around and sell it.. obviously it'd be in someone's best interest to buy it as cheap as possible. If this is the case, I don't think you're going to find much support from people on here as this simply artificially inflates the price unnecessarily (if you are mentioning low ball or lower grade items). If I had my way, any and all items purchased on the TP would immediately made account bound, no flipping.

[penelopehannibal.8947]

What if 5% = one copper? Then what "should" we do?

[mtpelion.4562]

If the old forum is up, the OP can go find their Dev answer there. This topic was brought up several times, debated several times, and discarded by ArenaNet several times.

 

The issue boils down to:

1. No player has actually substantiated that this change is needed or would be good for the game and

2. Setting any arbitrary minimum bid would just lead to new requests for a different arbitrary minimum bid. Fixing it to the minimum currency increment is the only objective way to do this.

[Bollocks.4078]

> @Seera.5916 said:

> > @kitten.4078 said:

> > Here's why this is a problem: when someone outbids a buy or sell order on a high price item by 1 copper they are effectively butting in line. The new offer is essentially the same price but now the new bid is first in line. If someone wants to outbid the existing buy or sell offer it makes perfect sense that they should have to change the bid amount by enough to make it essentially a new offer, not the same offer.

> >

> > This is in no way at all about being outbid or about being impatient. Why does the first bidder have to be patient and wait but the penny increment bidder doesn't? If the next bidder wants to buy or sell for the same price then they should bid the same price and take their place in line behind other bids of the same price, not be able to butt in line.

>

> The Trading Post isn't an auction house. It's like the two gas stations at the corner who start competing to see who get more customers by dropping their cost to $0.01 below the other to get people to buy from them.

>

> The game just doesn't let players choose who they buy from. They assume all players want to sell for the highest and buy at the cheapest.

>

> Anyone doing anything other than instant buy/sell is gambling that no one else will be willing to buy or sell at a better price before someone comes along and fills the order. There's also a good chance that the first bidder "outbid" someone else by 1 copper as well.

 

Yes, it's not an auction house. That's really not relevant. That's just a flimsy argument people are using to try to derail the basic idea of this thread. Your gas station analogy is way off. Here's how that would work. There's one gas station with one pump. All gas is bought and sold by individuals. Sellers have two choices: sell for whatever price per gallon the current highest buy offer is or set your own price and wait. Buyers have two choices: buy for the whatever is the current lowest sell offer or set your own price and wait.

 

Here's the problem part of it. You pull in to the gas station to buy 10 gallons. You think the lowest sell price is a little high so you specify a price you feel is reasonable. It's half way between the high buy and low sell. While you are waiting for someone to come along and sell gas for your price, someone else pulls in wanting 15 gallons. They offer 1 penny more than your offer so now they are ahead of you in line. Someone else pulls in and offers 1 penny more than your offer. They are now right behind the other guy but in front of you. A new person pulls in and offers 1 penny more than the other guys (2 pennies more than you). They are now in front of you and the other guys. Now there are 3 people who are offering virtually the same price as you but have effectively butted in line in front of you.

 

There are a lot of other posts here that seem more aimed to falsely derail the suggestion without actually saying anything meaningful about why this basic idea is bad. The % doesn't specifically have to be 5%. It could be whatever makes the most sense. If that % on a super high value item seems like too much gold there can be a high cap on the increment. There's currently no increment of coin less than 1 copper so if the % is less than or equal to 1 copper then the bid increment is 1 copper.

 

Saying that if someone outbids you by 1 copper on a 500g item really doesn't make sense. They would have outbid by 1 copper no matter what reasonable price you set. If you tried to sell for 400g instead of 500g they would have done 399.9999g. If you had offered 600g instead of 500g they would have offered 500.0001g.

 

No matter how you slice it, a 1 copper increment allows people to butt in line on the TP for higher valued items. It's just silly to have a 1c increment on a 500g item.

[Faaris.8013]

Ok, I believe some forum members are on a different track because it wasn't made very clear what the issue is. I'll try to explain it with an example (if I got OP right).

 

Last weekend I wanted to buy 7 black diamonds. Let's say people offered to pay **1g 40s 10c**for one, and people were selling for 1g 60s and higher. I didn't want to wait long, but I also didn't want to buy instantly and pay 1g 40s more than necessary (for a total of 11g 20s). I offered to buy for **1g 41s**. A few seconds later I noticed someone offering to buy 3 diamonds for **1g 41s 1c**, exactly one copper more than me. I removed my purchase offer and put a new one up for **1g 42s** (and it didn't cost me anything but time to cancel and repost). A few seconds later I checked again, there was no offer anymore for 3 diamonds each **1g 41s 1c**, but an offer to buy 3 diamonds for **1g 42s 1c**.

 

This was clearly the same person trying to get the next 3 diamonds sold for only 1 copper more than the next bidder, me. Now, it was only 3 diamonds in this case. I can understand that saving 1 copper per piece is a big deal if you buy 20k of something, but for 3 diamonds? In this case, I would have been happy if this person had been forced to put at least a silver coin on top of the next offer, like I did. I upped one more time with a silver and got my diamonds. I didn't check anymore but I can imagine that guy cancelled his offer afterwards and set up a new one for 1 copper more than the next bidder.

 

This is ridiculous, and in some cases, you are almost forced to cancel your offer if you want to get an item the same day. If you just want to buy 100 elder wood, and someone puts up an offer for 17k elder wood for 1 copper more, are you going to wait until he got his 17k wood before it's your turn? (this really happened)

 

These microlevel bidding wars are a waste of time, and could be shortened quickly if there was a fee for posting a purchase offer, or if you had to offer 5% more than the next player. One diamond cost 14.010 copper, offering 1 copper more means you are willing to pay 0,007% more, how generous...

 

A 5% rule would mean that guy had to offer 6 silver more than I did. Maybe that's a bit too much, I myself only upped for 1 silver. But you get what I'm saying I hope. The problem is that removing and reposting for a copper is rewarded. It's not about someone "willing to pay more", that's ridiculous, we are talking about a drop of water in a barrel full of it. Had I put just 1 copper on top of my offer, does anyone really think that guy would have said "nah, I'm out at this price"? The only reason to increase your offer for 1 copper is to get the next instant sells, it's not about the market. The market value was determined when I got my diamonds for 3 silver more than my initial offer. Had I played the same game as that guy and only did 1 copper per change, we would be still at it. The suggested change would speed up the bidding process, we would end up with the same result just in less time and less clicking, and I think that's a win for everybody.

[Belphor.3296]

> @Faaris.8013 said:

> Ok, I believe some forum members are on a different track because it wasn't made very clear what the issue is. I'll try to explain it with an example (if I got OP right).

> [...]

> A 5% rule would mean that guy had to offer 6 silver more than I did. Maybe that's a bit too much, I myself only upped for 1 silver. But you get what I'm saying I hope. The problem is that removing and reposting for a copper is rewarded. It's not about someone "willing to pay more", that's ridiculous, we are talking about a drop of water in a barrel full of it. Had I put just 1 copper on top of my offer, does anyone really think that guy would have said "nah, I'm out at this price"? The only reason to increase your offer for 1 copper is to get the next instant sells, it's not about the market. The market value was determined when I got my diamonds for 3 silver more than my initial offer. Had I played the same game as that guy and only did 1 copper per change, we would be still at it. The suggested change would speed up the bidding process, we would end up with the same result just in less time and less clicking, and I think that's a win for everybody.

 

I believe some forum members are on a different track because there simply is no problem to begin with.

Your whole example shows perfectly clear that YOU are the problem and not the TP. You said yourself that a minimum increase of 6s (5%) would be too much for you, but 1 copper is not enough. Instead, you want it to be completely arbitrary at 1 silver. Who are you to decide that? There is simply no logic in this request.

 

You could have solved the "problem" with your very first order by increasing the price by 3 silver, as you said yourself. Why didn't you? You wanted to buy as cheap as possible and as fast as possible, exactly like the other guy, he was simply smarter than you by achieving the exact same thing for less investment.

Nobody is stopping you from offering 550g instead of 500g 1c, problem solved. If someone bids 550g 1c it was obviously not enough, so set it to 600g next time.

 

On a side note, offering 1 copper more is by far the fastest method to place several orders in a row, it's only two clicks, where setting an individual price requires much more time.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Faaris.8013 said:

> Last weekend I wanted to buy 7 black diamonds. Let's say people offered to pay **1g 40s 10c**for one, and people were selling for 1g 60s and higher. I didn't want to wait long, but I also didn't want to buy instantly and pay 1g 40s more than necessary (for a total of 11g 20s). I offered to buy for **1g 41s**. A few seconds later I noticed someone offering to buy 3 diamonds for **1g 41s 1c**, exactly one copper more than me. I removed my purchase offer and put a new one up for **1g 42s** (and it didn't cost me anything but time to cancel and repost). A few seconds later I checked again, there was no offer anymore for 3 diamonds each **1g 41s 1c**, but an offer to buy 3 diamonds for **1g 42s 1c**.

 

The key point is "and I didn't want to wait but I didn't want to ...pay ...more" — you (and your competitors) are in the same boat: you want the item for less, you want it sooner rather than later. But the OP (and apparently you) are asking to have it both ways, without a willingness to accept the chance that things might not work out as planned. Why should your offer at 1.4100g be be offered more protection than the one at 1.4010g, if someone willing to pay more, even just 1.4101g? How is your outbidding by 90 copper somehow superior to overbidding by merely 1 copper?

 

The fact is that two of you wanted your item for as little as possible above 1.4000g and were in competition for it. One of you will ultimately be willing to pay more and go through more trouble than the other and will be the first to buy. But here's the thing: on commodities (like wood or even black diamond), unless the market is going up up up, both of you are going to get all the units you need (just not necessarily during the half-hour period you want).

 

For lower velocity items (i.e. those selling in less quantity), that might not be true... but then the point is that whatever lowball price **both** of you are offering is too low to interest enough sellers. And again, you still have the option of paying the sell offer or even halfway between.

****

 

If you want something now, be willing to pay more. If you want something for less, be willing to wait. That's the risk and we all get to choose how much risk for how much convenience|cost we're willing to accept.

[Biff.5312]

It really seems like the issue is that YOU keep changing your bids by 1 copper increments. If someone's outbidding you, offer a more substantial price. If you're being undercut, lower your price more than 1 copper below theirs. The whole point of the system is to reach an equilibrium price. If people are undercutting each other by single copper amounts, you haven't reached it. When I purchase or sell, I always build in a fair difference from the best existing offer, and I have no problems. Requiring everyone to do what you should just do on your own is needless.

[MMAI.5892]

> @Faaris.8013 said:

> A 5% rule would mean that guy had to offer 6 silver more than I did. Maybe that's a bit too much, I myself only upped for 1 silver. But you get what I'm saying I hope. The problem is that removing and reposting for a copper is rewarded. It's not about someone "willing to pay more", that's ridiculous, we are talking about a drop of water in a barrel full of it. Had I put just 1 copper on top of my offer, does anyone really think that guy would have said "nah, I'm out at this price"? The only reason to increase your offer for 1 copper is to get the next instant sells, it's not about the market. The market value was determined when I got my diamonds for 3 silver more than my initial offer. Had I played the same game as that guy and only did 1 copper per change, we would be still at it. The suggested change would speed up the bidding process, we would end up with the same result just in less time and less clicking, and I think that's a win for everybody.

 

So, how much are you willing to pay for those black diamonds? Here's what they would cost today (roughly) based on a price of 41.06s at launch of POF if all bids were placed at 1s increase- ~1g 70s (ironically, near the lowest sell order now) or, by the op's method of 5% and allowing for some people not placing bids, about 12g each. If most of those bids were still placed, you'd be looking at ~50g per black diamond.

 

We can say that the prices *might* be lower due to less people being willing to place orders. The other side of that is that prices might very well be higher for things like black diamonds that are necessary components for desired stat combinations.

[phys.7689]

> @Mercury.9784 said:

> > @TexZero.7910 said:

> > ...if someone is willing to sell me an item for less than you, who am i a consumer to turn them down ?

>

> That's fine. I'm not putting any blame on someone who accepts the order. By all means, accept an additional 0.0001% on a high ticket item, if that floats your boat. The problem comes when you actually reward players who are willing to outbid by pennies for hours. These people get substantially tangible benefits for doing something that is tedious and annoying. And what's worse, depending on the item, there are people who will put in an order unaware that it's virtually impossible that it will ever be filled unless they come back every ten minutes to fight with somebody over the price.

>

> I imagine ArenaNet prefers not to have that sort of thing in their game.

>

> Imagine someone entering into a real brick and mortor auction house and engaging in the same behavior. No matter what the bid, they put in an additional one cent, and then two people spend literally hours doing that until eventually we finally reach someone's limit.

>

> Obviously the auction house would (and almost certainly they all do) have a minimum increased bid, so that we avoid that nonsense.

>

> I still remain curious why anyone would object to this. If I'm interpreting correctly, nobody disagrees that this is unpleasant, but they just want me to 'man up' and deal with it and have a bad time because... screw me, I guess?

>

 

stop outbidding people by a penny. Pick a fair price and wait for a sale. If the item doesnt sell, it means your price wasnt low enough. Having a certain percent commitment sounds good, but really its arbitrary.

 

basically, the only time bidding wars work is when more people are selling an item than are buying an item. the bidding war represents sellers not finding the price they are happy with, or buyers not finding the price they are happy with. Giving sellers and buyers less options to find their true value doesnt help much if its done perfectly, and if its done incorrectly messes with market pricing, so why bother?

[Despond.2174]

Not a good idea, I see no problem. If I see people outbidding by 1c, based on the item I will just outbid by quite a lot and still receive the item. Either way, that's the game of bidding, there's an artform with timing and making judgements based on the item. Your way has too many issues with higher items, the current way is the best with the most flexibility. Because it "annoys" you isn't enough reason to change the whole system, don't fix what really isn't broken and it's a good way for people to have another avenue of gold income other than the usual methods.

[Seera.5916]

> @Bollocks.4078 said:

> > @Seera.5916 said:

> > > @kitten.4078 said:

> > > Here's why this is a problem: when someone outbids a buy or sell order on a high price item by 1 copper they are effectively butting in line. The new offer is essentially the same price but now the new bid is first in line. If someone wants to outbid the existing buy or sell offer it makes perfect sense that they should have to change the bid amount by enough to make it essentially a new offer, not the same offer.

> > >

> > > This is in no way at all about being outbid or about being impatient. Why does the first bidder have to be patient and wait but the penny increment bidder doesn't? If the next bidder wants to buy or sell for the same price then they should bid the same price and take their place in line behind other bids of the same price, not be able to butt in line.

> >

> > The Trading Post isn't an auction house. It's like the two gas stations at the corner who start competing to see who get more customers by dropping their cost to $0.01 below the other to get people to buy from them.

> >

> > The game just doesn't let players choose who they buy from. They assume all players want to sell for the highest and buy at the cheapest.

> >

> > Anyone doing anything other than instant buy/sell is gambling that no one else will be willing to buy or sell at a better price before someone comes along and fills the order. There's also a good chance that the first bidder "outbid" someone else by 1 copper as well.

>

> Yes, it's not an auction house. That's really not relevant. That's just a flimsy argument people are using to try to derail the basic idea of this thread. Your gas station analogy is way off. Here's how that would work. There's one gas station with one pump. All gas is bought and sold by individuals. Sellers have two choices: sell for whatever price per gallon the current highest buy offer is or set your own price and wait. Buyers have two choices: buy for the whatever is the current lowest sell offer or set your own price and wait.

>

> Here's the problem part of it. You pull in to the gas station to buy 10 gallons. You think the lowest sell price is a little high so you specify a price you feel is reasonable. It's half way between the high buy and low sell. While you are waiting for someone to come along and sell gas for your price, someone else pulls in wanting 15 gallons. They offer 1 penny more than your offer so now they are ahead of you in line. Someone else pulls in and offers 1 penny more than your offer. They are now right behind the other guy but in front of you. A new person pulls in and offers 1 penny more than the other guys (2 pennies more than you). They are now in front of you and the other guys. Now there are 3 people who are offering virtually the same price as you but have effectively butted in line in front of you.

>

> There are a lot of other posts here that seem more aimed to falsely derail the suggestion without actually saying anything meaningful about why this basic idea is bad. The % doesn't specifically have to be 5%. It could be whatever makes the most sense. If that % on a super high value item seems like too much gold there can be a high cap on the increment. There's currently no increment of coin less than 1 copper so if the % is less than or equal to 1 copper then the bid increment is 1 copper.

>

> Saying that if someone outbids you by 1 copper on a 500g item really doesn't make sense. They would have outbid by 1 copper no matter what reasonable price you set. If you tried to sell for 400g instead of 500g they would have done 399.9999g. If you had offered 600g instead of 500g they would have offered 500.0001g.

>

> No matter how you slice it, a 1 copper increment allows people to butt in line on the TP for higher valued items. It's just silly to have a 1c increment on a 500g item.

 

It's not a flimsy argument. Only auctions have minimum bid increments. Flea markets don't have a rule that states that no two sellers may have prices that are within X% of each other unless they want to sell for the same price. Gas stations don't have a requirement that states that two gas stations near each other who do not wish to sell for the same price must have a price that's X% different.

 

It's a free market. Players are free to place buy or sell orders for whatever they are willing to. The only rules that exists is that you may not buy or sell for less than the vendor price after fees are taken and you are limited to the max the TP is willing to accept which is 10K gold.

 

If you don't want to wait, then sell or buy at the instant. Otherwise be patient and chances are that within a week or two, the item will have sold at the price you listed it at for most of the items on the trading post. If you're that scared of being bumped to not being the next person, then post it at the absolutely most you're willing to pay for it or the least you'd be willing to sell it for. Chances are it's low/high enough that most people won't engage in a price war. Or maybe, you'll bring the item closer to the market equilibrium, reducing the chances of things being bumped in line. Equilibrium being the point where buy and sell orders are basically the same.

[Anthony.7630]

Here is my wisdom. For mithril ore the price is like 50 copper to 1 silver. 1 copper bids are ok because THE LISTING FEE IS CHEAP

 

If you have a legendary that is worth 2000 gold and someone under bids you by 1 copper at 1999 gold - to beat that price you have to pay A 250 + LISTINH FEE just to make it 1 copper less just to sell it fast.

 

Do you see the problem here ? The listing fee scales on the sell price of the item but selling it 1 copper lower for expensive gold items means you have to take huge listing fee hits and lose a lot of money.

 

You lose nothing when you relist inexpensive goods (listing fees are 1 copper) but expensive items arr hard to resale because the listing fee will eat your profit.

 

So whats my wisdom ?

 

Cheap items can easily be reposted for competitive pricing and drive down the price. For Goods you can try selling 1 item at 10 prices lower to manipulate the market.

 

For big slow goods. Its very risky and dangerous. You can only list it once and it sells so slow. Have to pick a good price and hope for the best.

 

If you want to play buy seller trader - go with something cheap and fast - like iron ore or soft wood.

 

Flipping expensive stuff has more risk and.more gain and is slower

 

Flipping iron ore is hardly risky and hardly any gains and is quick.

 

There you go. Hope i empowere traders.

[Essal.6501]

> @Mercury.9784 said:

> I keep getting into wars over individual pennies with other trading post users. It's not fun, but it's necessary if you expect to execute a trade on anything that has low trade volume. I understand letting people outbid each other, but you should have to do it by a minimum of a certain percentage, say between 1% and 5%, because then it indicates that you're genuinely interested in paying more or accepting less, and you're not just trying to screw up other users and trade for effectively the same price.

>

> I've been playing since launch and love your game. Please keep up the good work.

 

I got the karka hatchlings minipet i was so happy cause i knew it was like 1200g turns out nope i guess the price dropped a month before the the price was about 700g everyone told me to wait cause they would go up again so i did and yesteday when i looked at the price it was 158g... and i saw something that made my blood boile when some one had undercut some one from 649g all the way down to 350g so i would rather have a maximum since its so annoying when ppl put in 350g right after someone put in the same item for 649g and then ppl just ofc keep under cutting the 350g one. Lowering the value of the item so much its worth nothing.

[Faaris.8013]

@"Belphor.3296" and @"Illconceived Was Na.9781"

 

My point is that being allowed to increase your offer for 0,007% more than the other guy wastes everybody's time, while resulting in the same price at the end of the day. With 0,007% we are not talking about finding the market value of an item anymore.

 

Offering 3 silver more right away wouldn't work, because the other guy would still add 1 copper. I didn't get my diamonds sooner because we found the market price, I got them because my offer happened to be on top in the same second someone sold his diamonds. You guys seem to think that players who farm a diamond and use instant sell are looking for equilibrium on the market. In reality, they just right click the item and instantly sell for whatever the highest bidder offers. There is no instant seller that thinks "oh, I could get 2 coppers more for my diamond, I'll stop what I'm doing and try later". That allows 1 copper bidding wars and the player whose turn happens to be the top bid in that second gets the items. It really has nothing to do with finding the proper market value. Let's say on average, every 40 seconds someone loots a diamond and instant-sells it. You could have 20 x 1 copper outbids by two players in that time, and the one who gets it is not smarter or better or faster, he was just lucky.

 

Know what, scrap the 5% or 2% idea. Add a cancellation fee to purchase offers like it already exists for putting items up for sale. Now offering to buy something is a no-brainer, just add 1 copper. If I had to pay a fee for removing an offer, I would actually think about what I'm willing to pay, set a price and probably not touch it anymore. That would effectively create a market where the price of an item reflects the market value, like in real stock markets.

 

+0,007% bidding wars are not healthy for the game and it's certainly not how any market works in the world. On a stock market, you usually have to pay a cancellation fee on limit orders because your broker gets charged for it and passes the costs on to you. He would certainly not list for free if you came to him every 4 seconds, asking to cancel your offer and put a new one up for 1 Cent more for Apple shares that you would like to buy for USD 150 while the stock price is USD 160.

[Ubi.4136]

I still think the seller should be able to list items on the trading post with a "not for resale" option. That would pretty quickly put an end to the speculation of how much the market was truly being manipulated by flippers. Other than that, no, I don't think they should create artificial minimum increments on listing the items on the TP. I'm on the fence with regards to paying a "handling fee" just for cancelling a bid on an item you never bought to prevent the back and forth 1c raises.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Faaris.8013 said:

> @"Belphor.3296" and @"Illconceived Was Na.9781"

>

> My point is that being allowed to increase your offer for 0,007% more than the other guy wastes everybody's time,

Again, the reason matters to a buyer is that they aren't willing to to accept the lowest sale offer; there's no overbidding in that case. I don't think anyone has an issue with trying to save coin by offering less; the issue is how much risk the buyer should assume. The OP is arguing that the first buyer should be protected from some of that risk by making it more difficult for those who come after, that somehow, the first one's price should define the second's, even if they show up less than a minute later.

 

> while resulting in the same price at the end of the day. With 0,007% we are not talking about finding the market value of an item anymore.

In a free market, we are always talking about finding the market price. A market with minimum 'raise' restrictions is less free than one without, so it might not even take less time to find equilibrium because some people would opt out of offering anything at all.

 

> On a stock market, you usually have to pay a cancellation fee on limit orders because your broker gets charged for it and passes the costs on to you. He would certainly not list for free if you came to him every 4 seconds, asking to cancel your offer and put a new one up for 1 Cent more

 

You already explained why the real world has fees for offers: because it costs the broker time & effort and they charge for that (and then some — like any business, they want to make a solid profit). In contrast, Gnashblade doesn't care if you change your bid every four seconds; it doesn't cost him extra. Brokerage fees don't exist to help the market find a fair price; they exist because that's how brokerage firms make money.

 

****

In the end, it comes down to choosing among:

* Saving coin

* Saving time

* Reducing effort

* Reducing risk

 

Choose two of above (only one if you're trying to minimize that one or three if you're not too fussy).

 

 

 

 

[Faaris.8013]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" you keep getting at the minimum raise restriction in response to my post, which I clearly changed my mind about and stated it.

 

You refuse to talk about what determines that a buyer receives the goods, which is not about the price offered but sheer luck that he was the one who put the +1 copper offer up. So if I match the max offer, what happens then? Let's say someone offers 1 gold for the item, and I decide to not offer 1 copper more but match the price. Who gets the next diamond? I haven't tested it, but it should be the first player who posted the offer. It would make no sense if the player who matched your offer later got the next sold diamond, right? But since 1 copper often is only 0,007% difference to the current max offer, we have that situation. 0,007% price increase is like zero price increase in practice. If the computer you want to buy costs not 1.000,00 Euros anymore but 1.000,07 Euros, you would treat it like zero price increase. In fact, we even treat a price difference of 0,1% like no price difference at all. When I see a computer that costs 999,00 Euros, I tell my wife that I saw a computer that costs 1.000 Euros. I know numbers are difficult to visualize for most people, but 0,1 is 14 times bigger than 0,007.

 

In practice, increasing your offer by 1 copper is the same as matching the maximum offer, but getting served first, and we have basically bidding wars of people who match the other offer just to get the next diamond.

[Bollocks.4078]

> > @Seera.5916 said:

> > @kitten.4078 said:

> > > @Seera.5916 said:

> > > > @kitten.4078 said:

> > > > Here's why this is a problem: when someone outbids a buy or sell order on a high price item by 1 copper they are effectively butting in line. The new offer is essentially the same price but now the new bid is first in line. If someone wants to outbid the existing buy or sell offer it makes perfect sense that they should have to change the bid amount by enough to make it essentially a new offer, not the same offer.

> > > >

> > > > This is in no way at all about being outbid or about being impatient. Why does the first bidder have to be patient and wait but the penny increment bidder doesn't? If the next bidder wants to buy or sell for the same price then they should bid the same price and take their place in line behind other bids of the same price, not be able to butt in line.

> > >

> > > The Trading Post isn't an auction house. It's like the two gas stations at the corner who start competing to see who get more customers by dropping their cost to $0.01 below the other to get people to buy from them.

> > >

> > > The game just doesn't let players choose who they buy from. They assume all players want to sell for the highest and buy at the cheapest.

> > >

> > > Anyone doing anything other than instant buy/sell is gambling that no one else will be willing to buy or sell at a better price before someone comes along and fills the order. There's also a good chance that the first bidder "outbid" someone else by 1 copper as well.

> >

> > Yes, it's not an auction house. That's really not relevant. That's just a flimsy argument people are using to try to derail the basic idea of this thread. Your gas station analogy is way off. Here's how that would work. There's one gas station with one pump. All gas is bought and sold by individuals. Sellers have two choices: sell for whatever price per gallon the current highest buy offer is or set your own price and wait. Buyers have two choices: buy for the whatever is the current lowest sell offer or set your own price and wait.

> >

> > Here's the problem part of it. You pull in to the gas station to buy 10 gallons. You think the lowest sell price is a little high so you specify a price you feel is reasonable. It's half way between the high buy and low sell. While you are waiting for someone to come along and sell gas for your price, someone else pulls in wanting 15 gallons. They offer 1 penny more than your offer so now they are ahead of you in line. Someone else pulls in and offers 1 penny more than your offer. They are now right behind the other guy but in front of you. A new person pulls in and offers 1 penny more than the other guys (2 pennies more than you). They are now in front of you and the other guys. Now there are 3 people who are offering virtually the same price as you but have effectively butted in line in front of you.

> >

> > There are a lot of other posts here that seem more aimed to falsely derail the suggestion without actually saying anything meaningful about why this basic idea is bad. The % doesn't specifically have to be 5%. It could be whatever makes the most sense. If that % on a super high value item seems like too much gold there can be a high cap on the increment. There's currently no increment of coin less than 1 copper so if the % is less than or equal to 1 copper then the bid increment is 1 copper.

> >

> > Saying that if someone outbids you by 1 copper on a 500g item really doesn't make sense. They would have outbid by 1 copper no matter what reasonable price you set. If you tried to sell for 400g instead of 500g they would have done 399.9999g. If you had offered 600g instead of 500g they would have offered 500.0001g.

> >

> > No matter how you slice it, a 1 copper increment allows people to butt in line on the TP for higher valued items. It's just silly to have a 1c increment on a 500g item.

>

> It's not a flimsy argument. Only auctions have minimum bid increments. Flea markets don't have a rule that states that no two sellers may have prices that are within X% of each other unless they want to sell for the same price. Gas stations don't have a requirement that states that two gas stations near each other who do not wish to sell for the same price must have a price that's X% different.

>

> It's a free market. Players are free to place buy or sell orders for whatever they are willing to. The only rules that exists is that you may not buy or sell for less than the vendor price after fees are taken and you are limited to the max the TP is willing to accept which is 10K gold.

>

> If you don't want to wait, then sell or buy at the instant. Otherwise be patient and chances are that within a week or two, the item will have sold at the price you listed it at for most of the items on the trading post. If you're that scared of being bumped to not being the next person, then post it at the absolutely most you're willing to pay for it or the least you'd be willing to sell it for. Chances are it's low/high enough that most people won't engage in a price war. Or maybe, you'll bring the item closer to the market equilibrium, reducing the chances of things being bumped in line. Equilibrium being the point where buy and sell orders are basically the same.

 

The analogy to auctions is for the bidding aspect. Flea markets and gas stations work completely differently. There's no bidding at all at gas stations and there are many gas station to choose from. How people decide what gas station to buy gas from is based on many factors, not just the price of gas, like brand, convenience, maybe even something like which one has better coffee. Flea markets work more on a haggling basis, typically between 1 buyer and one seller. It's probably pretty rare to have multiple people bidding against each other on the same item. If it does happen I seriously doubt the seller will be interested in waiting for bidders who go by a penny at a time. Try going to a flee market and see what happens if you offer $20.01 for an item that someone else just offered $20.00 for. I bet the seller doesn't even take you seriously and just sells to the other person.

 

1 copper bid increments on high price items lets people butt in line. That's simply not fair. Why is it fair for the first bidder to have to wait but not for the second bidder to have to wait? I don't see how it's fair to tell people that they have to buy/sell for the current offer or accept that other people can just butt in line in front of them for essentially the same price.

 

This is basically a loophole that people can exploit to butt in line in front of other bidders. Anytime there's a loophole that people can exploit there will be people who benefit and people to lose out when they do. Of course, the people who benefit by exploiting the loophole will be the ones arguing against closing the loophole. This wouldn't prevent people from outbidding others, it would just require that they adjust their bit by an amount that's reasonable relative to the current bid price. If you're not willing to do that then you don't deserve to be first in line on the bid and can take your spot behind other bidders.

 

[Belphor.3296]

> @Faaris.8013 said:

> @"Belphor.3296" and @"Illconceived Was Na.9781"

>

> My point is that being allowed to increase your offer for 0,007% more than the other guy wastes everybody's time, while resulting in the same price at the end of the day. With 0,007% we are not talking about finding the market value of an item anymore.

>

> Offering 3 silver more right away wouldn't work, because the other guy would still add 1 copper. I didn't get my diamonds sooner because we found the market price, I got them because my offer happened to be on top in the same second someone sold his diamonds. You guys seem to think that players who farm a diamond and use instant sell are looking for equilibrium on the market. In reality, they just right click the item and instantly sell for whatever the highest bidder offers. There is no instant seller that thinks "oh, I could get 2 coppers more for my diamond, I'll stop what I'm doing and try later". That allows 1 copper bidding wars and the player whose turn happens to be the top bid in that second gets the items. It really has nothing to do with finding the proper market value. Let's say on average, every 40 seconds someone loots a diamond and instant-sells it. You could have 20 x 1 copper outbids by two players in that time, and the one who gets it is not smarter or better or faster, he was just lucky.

[...]

 

Increasing the minimum offer will not change anything. Take a step back and think for a moment what this whole thing is about. The point of the buy order is to save you money by exploiting the sellers lazyness/impatience/indifference. At the same time, the nature of the buy order means you will have to wait until a seller is found. So you exchange waiting time for profit, same as the seller, just the other way around.

 

The only way to "guarantee" your place in line (as that is what you seem to want) is to offer more money than anyone else is willing to pay. The system in place is perfectly capable of doing this, so there is no need to change it. You want to use buy orders to pay less for items, but you don't want anyone else (or as few people as possible) to be able to "steal your place in line". The system in place is the simplest and a perfectly fair solution everyone, additional rules would only weight it in someones favour. Buy orders are not some kind of waiting queue where you are entitled to anything. Buy orders are a way to make a profit by gambling.

 

There is still nothing keeping you from instantly buying the item you want, but you want to make a profit, same as almost anyone else. You just want to push additional arbitrary rules on everyone else, because it would be more convenient for you.

 

 

> @Essal.6501 said:>

> I got the karka hatchlings minipet i was so happy cause i knew it was like 1200g turns out nope i guess the price dropped a month before the the price was about 700g everyone told me to wait cause they would go up again so i did and yesteday when i looked at the price it was 158g... and i saw something that made my blood boile when some one had undercut some one from 649g all the way down to 350g so i would rather have a maximum since its so annoying when ppl put in 350g right after someone put in the same item for 649g and then ppl just ofc keep under cutting the 350g one. Lowering the value of the item so much its worth nothing.

 

This right here is a great example of how the system works perfectly fine and how increasing the minimum difference for offers doesn't change anything. Undercutting by huge amounts did nothing for the sellers, because the supply simply did not meet the demand. @Essal gambled and lost, because he did not want to sell at instant price, he wanted to take a risk and make a bigger profit, shit happens.

If the price drops massively like this it can only mean that either nobody wants this thing or the supply increased significantly. If it would have been any other way, the 350g offer would have been sold instantly and the price would have gone up again. Instead the price kept dropping because obviously nobody wanted to buy it, even at the "super cheap" price.

 

The example with the diamonds is the same. Instead of engaging in a bidding war, you could have waited 5 minutes to let the other persons offer be filled and just leave your offer as is. But you wanted the items NOW and as cheap as possible, but that is not the way the system is supposed to work. You are supposed to invest time to save money. If the supply matches the demand, your turn will eventually come and you will get your items for the price you want to pay. If not, you can either buy instantly or place a higher offer.

 

> @Bollocks.4078 said:

> 1 copper bid increments on high price items lets people butt in line. That's simply not fair. Why is it fair for the first bidder to have to wait but not for the second bidder to have to wait? I don't see how it's fair to tell people that they have to buy/sell for the current offer or accept that other people can just butt in line in front of them for essentially the same price.

>

> This is basically a loophole that people can exploit to butt in line in front of other bidders. Anytime there's a loophole that people can exploit there will be people who benefit and people to lose out when they do. Of course, the people who benefit by exploiting the loophole will be the ones arguing against closing the loophole. This wouldn't prevent people from outbidding others, it would just require that they adjust their bit by an amount that's reasonable relative to the current bid price. If you're not willing to do that then you don't deserve to be first in line on the bid and can take your spot behind other bidders.

>

 

You need to understand that there is no line. You are not entitled to anything and because of that it can't be unfair. You are not waiting for an item, you are gambling for profit by "exploiting" the seller. Your entitlement is the problem, not the system. The system is as fair as it can be, because everyone has exactly the same chances.

[Faaris.8013]

@"Belphor.3296" Since you either didn't read my posts or skipped the important parts, you keep going on about a minimum offers like Illconceived. I'm not suggesting to implement a minimum offer. I suggest to add a cancellation fee. I have written all about it that I think needs to be thrown out there, if you guys refuse to read it, that's fine. But please stop claiming I suggest X and then proceed to prove that X is pointless, while I simply don't suggest X and even stated that I'm not supporting X. Skimming long posts is totally fine, writing replies under false assumptions because you skimmed is not.