Appraiser and Consignment Store

obligatory "if this has been said, I'm sorry". (i searched back to early Feb)


The most frustrating thing to me about GW is the commerce element. There has got to be a better way to buy and sell unwanted items. My best suggestion would be the following:

1) Establish a NPC "appraiser of items". This NPC can draw upon all of GW's resources of knowlege (i.e. in game data available) (drop rate, skin rarity, existing P2P trade's, etc) to establish a fair market value for an item. the appraised value should then appear as a seperate "Appraised value" line when placing the curser over the item. If the player re-mods the item the appraised value disappears (to prevent re-moding with lower value mods and positioning as higher value for a sale). The player can always have the item re-appraised changed or unchanged as the value may increase (or decrease) over time as well. When trading or selling in-game the appraised value can be viewed by the potential customer by placing the curser over the item (as when done to view the stats). This service could be established as a "per item" fee such as 25g per apraisal. Thus, it is a nice gold sink for GW.

Consignment Stores: Let's face it we're not all on GW 24/7 (well I'm not. ;-)) and thus sometime finding buyers (or sellers) of specific items can be challenging. I've had rare skin focus items that I KNOW someone somewhere would really like, but I've sat there in the trade window for an hour without a single inquiry. I'm not looking to get rich on selling. I just want a fair price for a good item. It would be great if there were consignment stores where I can just drop the item off and have the gold hit my account when it sells. A store for each profession could be set up so that items can be suitably sorted and organized. Sellers could choose options to "sell for appraised value" or set an asking price. Here's the catch the fee is 20% for the house. 10% up front and 10% on the sale. So, if you want to list that item really high it will cost you more to list and you risk scaring off buyers. This would be nice for buyers who are looking for a specific item (rare skin,specific stat or mod) and would save time searching the trade window and dealing with people who write "WTS R9 STR shield cheap" only to ask for $40K for a common skin shield when you travel to a new dist and hunt out the seller in the sea of players. As a buy you go to the store and if you see an item you like you pay the price. I ask anyone who's tried to find a specific item before, "how increadibly wondeful would this be, eh?". Again, the 20% fee helps keep prices in check and acts as a gold sink for GW.

Ulitmately, these two changes would increase my game satisfaction by orders of magnitude. I could spend a lot more time in mission etc rather than spending time bouncing back and forth between Kam and LA looking for the item(s) I want. it would also be a nice way to enhance the commerce aspect so that players could get an assesment on a item to determin what to do with it.

Just glancing through, it sounds like a Marketplace would be easier.

One of the main things holding back their marketplace implementation is they wanted you to sell said items straight from your inventory.

If they were willing to devote some storage space (e.g. 1-5 marketplace seller/buyer "slots") on an account basis, then it could be done.

I'd have to know more how you define a marketplace, but it would still be limited to only reaching actively logged on players. A consignment store allows for a leave behind and the sale could occure while you're logged off. Plus, it places many of the available items in a centralized location making shopping easier. I can't tell you how much time i feel is wasted sometimes looking for even common items. I'd rather buy and go!

That sounds like a great idea as I too am not a 24/7 player with alot of great items I just don't have the time to sell.

/signed

Things are made by players really... Prices are made by demand. Some skins are as rare as others, but player demand REALLY drives up the pricing. There are rare skins that no one really wants so they aren't really that expensive. Besides that, how would ANET have the ability to write such extremely advanced programming. You should know how hard it is just to make the NPC itself, but to also include the option of price checking every item is fairly difficult. There are many items with different mods, so the system would eb very very complexed and TBH when its finished it probably would not be that accurate.

All in all I agree with the idea that the marketplace would be easier to do... I would really love to be able to just browse throught the internet and assign prices, but with the recent layoffs at ANET its really hard just to do the monthly updates as it is since most people have be designated to GW2.

The amount of coding necessary to put in an NPC to be able to give a type of fare market price, would be far easier to just put in a standard auction house system. Actually it would probably require less coding to make an entirely new game.

Your idea for consignment is identical to the idea of an auction house. Furthermore I am surprised there hasn't been a player based initiative among powersellers to create such a system themselves.

This massive a change is just not going to happen for an old dead game that does not even have an economy.

Guru Auction house says hello.

Definetly would be nice if merchant values were more spot on with the rarity of the item
I would also love to wake up check my account and see my useless items sold and cash in my inventory w/o the hassle of sitting in town for hours
Hopefully that if this isn't implemented in GW 1 it will be in GW2

"Draws on all recent existing trade data."

So, you go up to your friend, trade him your q13 unisc AL 14 command tall shield for 100k, he trades it back to you for 100k, and you do this trade a few times.

You then get an appraisal and it says it's worth 95k on average.

Just one instance of this system being abused, and I thought of it within 10 seconds of reading the idea.

I'm not sure that a consignment store (where an item sits there with an established price) is identical to an auction house (where several players place bids for a single item). The programing behind handling auctions I believe would be far more complex.

Quite frankly, I like the consignment house better because it also helps to keep inflation in check as this places the consumer (buyer) in the leveraged position. A new seller listing an item may see that there are 4 others just like it in the store. They can list it higher, but lower priced items will sell faster. The auction puts the seller in the leveraged position. While the same 4 items may be available they may be available at different times thus creating a bidding frenzy...thus, driving up prices and price inflation.

The consignment store is perpetual and static. It's there until someone buys it. You may list an item at 6AM, but it may not sell until 10PM that night when someone who wants that specific item is logged in. With auctions you have to be on line when the auction is occuring to bid. Thus, I may want that item, but if I'm traveling or not able to play during the auction I may never have a chance to bid. To me the best solution is to have a store that is available when I log on that I can go and see what items are for sale and how much they cost. They may have been listed hours, days or months ago. I'm not held to the limitations of who's on-line when I am and what they want to sell. Same for the buy side.

1) Existing trade data is a component of the formula that would determine the appraised value along with other aspects listed.

2) If a very common item is trading for 100k I think there's enough capabilities in software programming to negate this anomoly in an appraised value.

3) Even if it weren't tracked (but I believe it would) it still needs a buyer who agrees with the assessed value. I guess there is (as PT Barnum says) a sucker born every minute, but I have to believe that If tried to sell that shield you're not going to get a lot of takers in the open market. The time it would take you to find the sucker in the lot- is it really worth your time? Also, if you list it at the proposed consignmet store you would pay 9.5K simply to list the artificially inflated item in hopes that someone will walk in and assume it's a great item just on the listed price. If no one bites, then you're out the 9.5k.

Ultimately, I believe there are (or would be) adiquate checks and balances.

My exact thoughts

Definately /signed, runescape has a systemlike this and it works excellently. when i used to play id pop in the items i wanted to sell in any quantity and then id go do something, and if get notified that it sold. if runescape can do this. then GW most certainly can with the fast selling of accounts bc of xunlai house tourny.

Wouldn't this kill power trading?

Look up at any existing auction house in any existing MMO. The price is set by the player and that player pays a % of the price to the Auction House. They are identical. Its like Ebay where the only option is buy it now; if they were created any other way it wouldn't appease the instant gratification mindset that most players require. For the same reason that the third party auction sites are largely unused.

All I see needed is a list of items that can be browser regardless of language, region, location or district.

It doesn't matter to me if the list can't be AFK, if it fits only one item per character or whatever.

My main problem with trades is:
- Not everyone speaks the same language, so if I set an item in any of the languages I know, I lose potential purchasers between those that do not know them.
- Different people trade in different places.
- I have to announce in outposts to trade.
- I have to stop playing to trade.

Maybe a NPC that work like the rune, material trader could work.

guru auctions and Ventari section of the Forum fill in for your idea. New game content doesn't need to be making gameplay convinient but introducing new playable options.
/get real, man

Not really much people go to forums or auction sites to trade.

They are actually quite a small part of the players.

The rule number one of selling is: "Get as much people as possible to see what you sell".

So anything outside the game is out of the question.