Market Taxation - Why?

[Kafein]

The marketplace transaction tax only affects in a non-negligible way people that do several market transaction per day. The same people that have more than a few millions of disponible gold/heirloom value for trading and make more gold through trading. Taking gold from those people is a lot better than taking gold from everybody.


Besides, the tax is only scaling with the amount of gold in the transaction. Heirloom vs heirloom trades are still free (save the offer listing fee of course)

[Penitent]

Lower the taxes!  1% or 2% max.

5% is harsh when selling looms priced very high....harsh on the poor people (like me).

If the problem is that ultra-rich player are manipulating the market...

Tax the rich, spare the poor!

[Lichen]

Is this the topic where we whine cause we ALL have to pay a tax (which scales correspondingly to the item amount) now? Yeah this will certainly 'chill' the market...I'll take my looms/loompoints and go sell them in another game!

[Garem]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this- but direct heirloom sales for gold only are virtually non-existent anymore.

Call me crazy, call me prophetic, or simply admit that there's a reason for this happening. People aren't trading gold anymore because getting taxed 75,000 gold to buy a 1.5 million gold item isn't worth it when you can trade shitty heirlooms around instead with gold on top.

The problem is, this doesn't do the people who don't have spare masterworks laying around any good. I have a swathe of them at my disposal and it's STILL hard to trade items quickly and easily.

To make matters worse, now the Clan Bank is getting taxed too. So no matter what, it costs a large sum of gold to move around any pile of gold worth moving.

Please, reconsider the reasons for having a tax at all. It's a hollow gold sink. The market is a very fun aspect of the game, but it's enormously frustrating and becoming slower and more limited every day. Nobody benefits from this tax- and this is a game, after all. We have the real world to worry about taxes in.

[oohillac]

Agreed!  Heirlooms are barely selling these days, even for ridiculous sums (1.2m for good masterworks).

Perhaps for a gold sink, increase repair fees across the board on heavy armour and high-end weapons.  Maybe add in armour recolouring or something similar.  Vanity items!

Just stop taxing the market!

[Miwiw]

Does anyone know if the gold sink actually changed prices on the marketplace, or is it rather the time that changes loompoint and loom prices (meaning the longer people wait to sell their items they go down with the prices and by time loompoints are costing less)?

However to be honest, gold is not worth a lot. Depending on your team and the time to play you have, you easily earn a good amount of gold (and depending on gear of course).

50 gold per minute, 250 gold at max per minute (less with upkeep).

Actually no one really needs gold, only for upkeep. Looms aren't needed after all. :p
(though everyone wants them)

[Kafein]

I personally think the market tax is a little too high, at least when it comes to trades with a lot of money involved.

I'd rather see a fixed 1k listing fee for creating an offer, an additional ~5k when the offer is accepted and only 0.5% - 1% of the traded gold being taxed. Of course this should apply only to trades with heirloom points or heirloomed items, others remaining tax-free (except maybe a smaller listing fee).

[CrazyCracka420]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this- but direct heirloom sales for gold only are virtually non-existent anymore.

Call me crazy, call me prophetic, or simply admit that there's a reason for this happening. People aren't trading gold anymore because getting taxed 75,000 gold to buy a 1.5 million gold item isn't worth it when you can trade shitty heirlooms around instead with gold on top.

The problem is, this doesn't do the people who don't have spare masterworks laying around any good. I have a swathe of them at my disposal and it's STILL hard to trade items quickly and easily.

To make matters worse, now the Clan Bank is getting taxed too. So no matter what, it costs a large sum of gold to move around any pile of gold worth moving.

Please, reconsider the reasons for having a tax at all. It's a hollow gold sink. The market is a very fun aspect of the game, but it's enormously frustrating and becoming slower and more limited every day. Nobody benefits from this tax- and this is a game, after all. We have the real world to worry about taxes in.

Also, I think if you are able to give money or trade that money to clan-mates through the clan bank, it shouldn't be taxed...although I suppose that could be abused by someone just creating a new clan.

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[Tzar]

I think its fine the way it is.

People who use extreme upkeep gear use the market to make it work by trading stuff to retards who pay 50k or 100k to try out a new set of +3 gloves fx.
I think they should increase the tax even more so that people wouldn't be able afford wearing their heavy armor an +3 poleaxe along with their +3 heavy lance an destrider / war horse..

Also increasing upkeep?? are you completely whacked in the head  : you do know that cRPG still have new players without huge sums of gold to make a crasy gold buffer ect ect ect...

If anything chadz should make it so that you cant make gold while exchanging items with one another.. that would work alot better then everything else

:EDIT why do we even have upkeep anyways? only way to make upkeep work would be a full reset of everyone's gold

Upkeep only works if your a new player.

Also what happened to all the gold people had hoarded from using the no upkeep bug?

[Garem]

Does anyone know if the gold sink actually changed prices on the marketplace, or is it rather the time that changes loompoint and loom prices (meaning the longer people wait to sell their items they go down with the prices and by time loompoints are costing less)?

However to be honest, gold is not worth a lot. Depending on your team and the time to play you have, you easily earn a good amount of gold (and depending on gear of course).

50 gold per minute, 250 gold at max per minute (less with upkeep).

Actually no one really needs gold, only for upkeep. Looms aren't needed after all. :p
(though everyone wants them)

Although I cannot answer with specificity, I can say that from my close amateur observations since late 2011 to today, yes, prices changed, but there are a variety of factors that all came into play at once so it's hard to pinpoint what input caused what output.

What I CAN say, somewhat to your point, is the following formula:

A 1.5 million gold deal is taxed 75,000.
The average multi in game is a 1.8, or so I've heard. Let's just round that up to 2.
That means people make 100 gold per in game round in-play minute. You don't get 60 minutes in an hour, closer to 45-50, but let's pretend we do for now.

60 minutes x 2 multi x 50 gold = 6000 gold an hour revenue
75000 / 6000  = 12.5 hours of play

You would have to play unarmed and naked for half a day to produce just enough to pay the tax on a MW deal with the most favorable numbers I can give. Start deducting 25% from the fact that ticks are by game minute, and decrease for even modest upkeep and you see the problem... nobody produces that much unless they're a naked stick-wielding wonderman... or a banner-leecher extraordinaire, which are legion.