Traders not AH

/unsigned

Think the trading system in the economy needs some of these things bought and sold between players to support it. Not sure removing more things from that market helps.

Tomes trader is an odd one. People would stand at it and buy them en masse to acheive UAX, until prices topped 1k and then one might as well just go buy the skill. Also, Elite tomes come from playing hard mode and is one of the incentives, in a way, to go do so.

Clean weapons trader. Well what skins are you going to put in there? How rare? Between this and inscriptions its pretty much all farmers trade in these days. Not sure it helps the market either if I can just go buy what I want at a trader.

Not terribly much left to sell on channel, except maybe greens and other unique or odd things. Following the logic, where do we stop? Greens trader? Minipet trader? Sure, like materials, you could play in the market selling your weapons and inscriptions under the trader price, but we arent exactly accomplishing much here.

correction: wasnt thinking about the tomes. duh lol. Still do not think more traders is the way to go.

I /agree with Eremos. Sorta what I was trying to say in my previous post

and come someone explain to me what AH means? I'm not a noob (look at my guild <-- ) but I've never heard the term before.

You cant get UAX with tomes. You have to have the skill unlocked already to use a tome.

Traders are an easier way to trade between people. If its possible to make a trader for it, it should be done. something like clean weapon trader may be tough/not possible but things like mods and inscriptions would most likely be easier since the basis for it is already there.


AH = Auction House

AH I assume means Auction Hall, a populr request for the game.

/signed for adding tomes to the scroll trader and max only mod/inscription trader. Both of these seem reasonable to me.

The worst the tomes can do is help you get a Skill Hunter title on a character, since the skill must be unlocked already.
The inscription/mod trader would be of great use in reducing, but not eliminating, the amount of trade channel messages, assuming people use it.

How exactly will the trader make the market unstable ?

The market for runes doesn't look unstable. Neither does the market for dyes, crafting materials, scrolls, celestial sigils. In fact compared to the market for things that aren't on traders, they are very stable.

So whats so different about the other items we propose traders for that would make a trader not work for them ?

As much as I want an auction house, it requires coding from scratch. However the traders already exist, meaning that all ANET needs to do is copy the code and change which items it works with.

We aren't removing them from the market. Instead we are having the trader act as a middleman to make trading them for fair prices easier, because you don't have to find the person your trading with. If you do think that somehow the rune trader removes runes from the market, please tell us why you think that.

1 - The tomes only work for people who have already unlocked that skill.
2 - The tome trader is mainly a convenience for the people selling the tomes they don't have any use for, because the trader will allow them to sell a tome within seconds instead of spending a lot of time trying to sell them.
3 - Elite mode isn't the only source of tomes. The tomes are currently tradeable, so buying them off another player is also a valid way to acquire a tome. All the trader does is stabilize prices and make such traders easier.

1 - The clean weapon trader doesn't look like it will work, for reasons mentioned above.
2 - For an item to be sold by a trader, a player is first required to sell it to the trader. By acting as a middleman the trader is able to quickly provide price checks (which adjust quickly to changes in the market) and allow people to easily trade the items they want.

And what exactly is wrong with using the traders for items that the traders can handle ?

Or if you want more gold, you could spend the time you would of spent trying to trade farming for more items to sell.

Well said bilateralrope.

Even if you had a trader for every item in the game people would still sell items using local and trade chat to get better prices than the traders offer. Just as we see people buying ectos and other materials in hat rather than from the trader.
The people that traders would most affect are those who are casual gamers. The peeps that arn't so worried about scraping the maximum gold value they can get they'd rather just have a little cash for it. That's what a trader can do, you still find those 'high-enders' selling stuff in chat and keeping the market stable.

My Big Yes to:
-Trader NPC with all All normal and Elite tomes + Rare Scrolls, including Passage to FoW/UW
-Mod and inscription trader. Sooooo much needed. Should only deal with perfect versions, no need for 1% off crap, theyre already worthless.

I have no opinion on a clean inscribable weapons trader.

/notsigned

if this would be done, then the next suggestion would be to make GW an offline game ..

How do the traders, which require a sizable number of players to work, follow on to someone suggesting guild wars becoming an offline game ?

In fact, reducing the number of players in guild wars below a certain amount would worsen the traders as it becomes possible for rich players to be able to control the pricing by buying up the entire stock in the trader.

Exactly for someone who doesn't spend much time playing Guild Wars why would you want spend that limited time trying to sell? As such not only does it let everyone have more time of actual game play but it also allows the game to be worth playing for those that play say 1hour a day. If I want to sell stuff on a weeknight then I won't have any time left for real game play.

to bilateralrope

"How exactly will the trader make the market unstable?"

let take the Tomes trader foe e.p if u look at the market price u will see ppl sell it from 2k - 500g and tome do not drop in normal mode if u make a trader for it will go like this at first the price will be crazy like the brown dye when it first introduce so ppl who have access to Hard mode at that time will get dam rich but the other ppl who want those tome will rather buy the skill because it will be much cheaper than the tome by the time price of the Tomes trader will drop to the ground like it will be 100g or something in this cause why ppl bother to play and get xp for 1 skill point to buy a skill for 1k ppl will rather unlock the skill with one char then they will buy the tome for much cheaper and it is like this if the price of the tome more than 3k it will be not worth to buy it

to MAnderson

if u don't have time to sell ur goody then sell it for merchant or sell it to ppl for very low price and that will not take more than 10 min to sell ur stuff then get back to ur doing and believe me selling to ppl is part of the fun of this game

/signed

It has it's kinks, but it can be worked out.

However, I can't see the clean wpn trader working. I'm not too crazy for a tome trader either, as mentioned above.

/signed
inscriptions trader sounds gud to

I actually think it does eventually go up over time like Kool Pajamas suggested. Sigil Trader is basically the same case that you would have for greens and minipets. I recall sigils going for like 60 or 65k when they added the sigil trader. The trader had no inventory for like the first two weeks but then they were at like 65k the first time I saw inventory. So I'm thinking current code can handle the common minipets and greens but traders won't be able to handle anything over like 80k due to the gold cap on trades (100k - 20%) without a code change.

OK, agree with you so far... except for typing things like 'u' and 'ppl'. Two less letters to type aren't worth your dignity man.

Yeah those crazy brown dye prices . This has nothing to do with traders. If lots of people want an item (demand), it will be high priced regardless of whether people are selling it or a trader is selling it.

Why? Why do you think tomes will drop to 100g? You have to support your arguments. Again, if prices drop to the ground (high supply, low demand) it's a result of what people will pay, this has nothing to do with traders.

This has nothing to do with traders. If the trader has a high price you don't want to pay, you dont buy it. Same with somebody spamming

W T S TEH TOMEZ 4 3k GOLDZ!!!!111one

in general chat. Difference is I don't have to turn off a chat channel to avoid the trader.

Suggesting people sell high priced items for 100g at the merchant is basically a non suggestion. Like suggesting people just trash their items if they don't like spamming. Do you really think people should sell ectos to the merchant at 100 each instead of using a trader? It's the same case.

People still sell ectos now even though there still is a trader. The only difference is you don't see spammers trying to sell them for 9k each right now, they would be laughed at and the people would just go buy from the trader for 6k instead. And you don't see people selling them for 2k and a big loss just so they can get back to playing the game because they have a reasonable alternative.

You can still sell and have your fun even with new traders put in, the only difference is you won't get sales if your prices are way off base and people who hate spamming in LA won't be forced to do it.

Very nicely put Entreri

AH would be best, I hate having to stand around and sell items. Current system favors the hardcore sellers. If we can't have an AH count me as:

/signed

seems like an workable alternative.

You really need to work on your grammar and punctuation, as I'm not sure exactly what you are saying here. At least make use of fullstops.

And the traders will reduce the range people are trading them for. To me having a smaller range of prices suggests a more stable market, not a less stable one.

Are you saying the following ?:
- First the price will spike high, allowing people with hard mode to get rich.
- Then the price will plummet.
- Then people will buy tomes instead of the skills, because tomes are cheaper.

While this will probably happen I don't see how its a bad thing. Also the normal skill tomes will probably hover around 1k because whenever the price dips below that, the demand spikes upwards forcing the price back up. Elite tomes will be higher and probably only used for some of the annoying caps.

Also you said nothing about making a weapon mod/inscription trader in this post.

Which items are you talking about when you say you can sell them in 10 mins ?
We aren't talking the godly items here, we are talking tomes and weapon mods. So your examples better be for a range of tomes and weapon mods. Including some that are listed at being worth 1k. Or do you just merchant them like everyone else, making them very hard to obtain ?

How exactly is standing around spamming WTS <items> fun ?
Because until you get the attention of someone wanting to buy, thats all you will be doing.

How would a casual trader determine the price to sell an item at ?

You should also consider that when an items price drops below a certian value (which differs between players) the item becomes not worth selling via the trade spam, so just gets merchanted. People after that item then have to spend ages looking for a seller, then put up with whatever price that seller asks.

Be careful what you wish for...

I generally support more traders, but I do not think a 100% trader economy is a good idea. Even WOW, that dreaded game with the fantastic auction house, has never made enchantments tradeable via the auction house. Blizzard has stated they do not want to remove all player-to-player interaction. I think the full trader system outlined in the OP would do this to the detriment of the game.

That said, with no AH on the horizon and the trader process well established, more traders is a generally good idea.

Traders should not handle the rarest items in the game.

Therefore, I support traders for:

tomes
inscriptions
weapons mods (perfect to -2 from perfect is a good idea)
offhand mods
passage scrolls

I do not support traders for:

weapon skins
minipets

Well if tomes and passage scrolls were the same then all that we need is:

Change the scroll trader a little
Add inscriptions trader
Add weapon mods trader +/-2
Add offhand mods trader +/-2
That's hardly anything, c'mon anet you can pull it off

On the other hand Eve Online has a market system to handle the trading of all items except for the capital ships which I've never heard of people trading (though I have heard of people stealing them when the owners weren't careful enough), and it isn't lacking interaction between players. In fact its in-game economy is the most complex one I've seen. Yet is also very easy for a casual player to understand.

Then when I also consider that the trade spamming for trading is mainly you spamming around trying to find the person to trade with. Then you find the person, negotiate the price, either trade or give up then usually you will never see that person again. So I don't see how this kind of interaction is a good thing when it only benefits the experienced traders.

So how exactly would making trade systems hurt the Guild Wars ?

Lets put it this way. When a third party website pops up to help trade between players, I view that as a symptom that the systems provided by the devs are insufficient.

So for the items in WoW that the auction house can't handle, how do you go about trading them ?

Then again, the only items that traders can handle are items with fixed stats. If they have variable stats (such as any weapon drop) then the trader can't handle them.

Traders can't handle the rarest items in-game, because they have variable stats.

Well, I agree with this part.

I don't think the traders care about the kind of items they deal with. The only change is to copy the code and change the lines where it deletes and creates one item to work on another. So in theory ANET could merge all the traders onto one NPC (up until a limit of the number of items it could handle). But that would be very annoying for players to operate, so putting them on separate NPCs is best.

As for the mods below max, I doubt they would be worth sticking on the trader because people would keep buying max mods. Then again ANET can always add them, then later remove them later if they are shown to be unnecessary.