RAGE, on 13 December 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:
If there was no tax then everyone could put items up on the tp for ridiculous prices knowing they wouldn't sell, effectively using the tp as extra bank space.
Chalky, on 07 December 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:
It's a gold sink.
Gold sinks exist because gold is constantly being spawned from thin air, therefore it must also disappear into thin air in order to prevent the amount of gold in the world rising so rapidly that everything is worth 20000 gold after a year or two.
It's amazing that anyone still questions this. It's been a feature of MMOs since they were invented.
This. This. This.
I don't understand why people still can't think a single step ahead of the obvious.
The first thought is just "
I don't want to pay taxes, because then i'll have less money."
That's it. The train of thought is just stuck right there.
The next question
should be, "
if there were no taxes, then how would I behave?"
The first thing I would do is to stick everything i'm storing on the TP, to free up bank space. Set the sell values absurdly high for reliable storage. Even limiting the number of sell slots per player would not help: 20 slots still means 20 potential bank slots. ArenaNet does not want you using the trading post as another bank at
all, evident in many areas. For example, there's only a "take all" button, rather than allowing you to claim certain items. Otherwise, I personally would just use that to temporarily store items I don't immediately need.
Next, you should ask, "
How would people with far more resources than myself behave?"
Do you think power traders are already too rampant now? Have you complained about price manipulation and arbitrage lately? Well, I don't, because it's how I make most of my money, but in a world with no taxes, I doubt I can ever keep up. I just don't have the time. Taxes are what discourage the micro-transactions, the constant listing and re-listing. The listing fee encourages you to set a price you think is fair and let it sit, rather than just adjusting it every 3 seconds to try to keep the lowest price on the market. Power traders would need smaller margins to operate, meaning
everything suddenly becomes fair game. The number of transactions processed would skyrocket, leading to physical server restraints on the BLTP. In short, a whole bloody mess.
After that, you should ask "
What are the long term ramifications of increasing the gold supply?"
In short, inflation. The TP is currently the predominant form of trade, meaning that the 15% sink it provides is
the largest one by volume in the entire game. As Chalky mentioned, gold is simply condensed out of thin air. If it has no exit, it accumulates in the system. Prices would steadily increase across the entire board, making the eventual effect even worse: you may have more gold numerically, but your buying power is comparably the same, or less.
So, in summary:
- The listing fee keeps traders honest. It encourages people to set prices they believe are fair value, by providing a penalty for adjustments. It also discourages use of the TP as pseudo-storage.
- The overall tax provides a check against inflation. In addition, it also decreases the benefit of excessive arbitrage, and lowers the absolute volume of transations.
Bottom Line:
Taxes are necessary to maintain a healthy game.
Edited by LFk, 13 December 2012 - 11:49 PM.
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