Commendation Pricing (fix for unethical trade behavior)

I often see people offering to buy Imperial Commendations or Monestary Credits (or the Luxon and Kurzick versions, also) for way less than their "basic" cash value. For instance, as explained here:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Imperia...erting_to_cash

This is basically just a way to rip people off who don't know how much the commendations are worth. It would be really nice if ANet just changed these items to have a base value equivalent to what you could get if you traded them in and them immediately sold items the most efficiently (so 400 gold for Commendations, 100 for Credits, etc.) This would prevent what I see as the most prevalent "scam" in the game today. (If you sit in Kaineng Center or Shing Jea Monestary for five minutes, you are almost guaranteed to see someone trying to buy these items for less than they are worth, usually like 25% of the value.)

You could argue that it's not really a scam, but it is certainly taking advantage of uninformed players to straight up take money they could just have and put it in your own pocket. Just printing the value on the commendation itself (which I assume is a fairly trivial change for ANet to make) would eliminate this unethical behavior instantly and entirely.

So Dear ANet: Please set a reasonable, useful vendor price for these items!

That would be impossible due to the fact that some of the items that you trade the commendations for are also sold by the varied merchants and due to the fact that the merchants prices are always changing, how could you set a value on the commendations?

Actually, the things you can excahnge commendations, etc for have set, unchanging values. You don't see keys changing price, or salvage kits, etc.

well theres
Scroll of Hero's Insight
Scroll of Berserker's Insight
Scroll of Slayer's Insight

according to wiki.

Maybe you could add a description to them that tells you what they're for? Like: "Imperial Commendation, Quest Item, Redeem for rewards at Imperial Quartermasters." It's not a lot of writing, short and to the point and it would help the less informed players avoid the scam. Ideas? Thoughts?

Replace the "Quest Item"-tag with a "Reward Item"-tag or something similar, plus a quest/tutorial/something on how to reclaim the rewards using the items, I'd say... Funny seeing people even up at Cavalon/HzH where to use Luxon Totems/Equipment Requisitions... But who's to blame them, there is no mention at all about the Quartermasters anywhere, so only way to know is to run in city and talk to every possible NPC..

Well if there was a set price people wouldn't buy them anyways. If you were trying to get a cheap salvage kit, would you sit in KC spamming for a Commendation that sells for 100g? No, you would go buy one for 100g at the merchant. If these didnt sell a little cheaper no one would buy them really.

But they definatly should add a Reward Tag instead of Quest Item.

i disagree for the following reason.

there are quartermasters all over and the first thing i did when i saw this strange new NPC was to go over and click on him to see what he would say/do/give information.

It may be a scam but it isn't cheating. It would be good if there was a better explaination of credits/commidations, early in the game so people could get oriented, but making commedations themselves worth more basicly destroys the whole point of having imperial guards to trade them with, you can just sell them for their net value and buy whatever you need from a trader, thus destroying that whole niche.

I would say there are much bigger fish to fry than educating and protecting newbs from their own ignorance, I imagine you got scammed in this way or you wouldn't even care either, overall it is a very small loss.

I see weapons sold for upwards of 20K regularly, because we don't have decent weapon and mod traders available to restrain costs. It is sad that players will take advantage of any opportunity out there, I say work on the greater evils instead of the insignificant.

Since when? Traders price varry - merchants' never.

I agree the imperial recomandation scam is pretty low. However you can hardly give a price to recomandations. You're suggesting 400g, which is indeed the most you can get (well you get 200 from selling sup salavage kits). The problem is that the items you get from the same number of recomandations don't have the same price. So if you do so, you can remove the quartermasters as well, as no one would exchange 3 recomandations for a sup idk for example (ie something casting 500g) when they can get 600g from selling those 3 recomandations.

Even if you are more curious than the average peep, doesn't mean everyone is. If the NPC has a ! above his head, I go and see what he wants to say. If the NPC has the [What the NPC does]-tag after his name, I go and have a chat. I haven't paid much attention to the others, and Quartermasters go into the same category. Especially when Quartermaster is a military rank/job, so I sorta automatically labeled them as Guards, which never have anything interesting to say. I had no idea what the commendations were for before there was talk about them on the local channel

When i see people buying them for 50g, i would warn the people the min price for said item.

Commendation = 200g and credits = 100g if i remember correctly, sure, you can use 5 to trade for a 2k item, but you can only sold it for 1k. so thats make commendation worth at least 200g.

Indeed---which, to me, is half the point of playing an RPG: exploring and finding things out for yourself. And messing with the NPCs, naturally.

"I like swords."
"Welcome to Corneria!"
"I like swords."
"Welcome to Corneria!"
"I like swords."
"Welcome to Corneria!"
-8BT

What about buying 10 linen for 150g, as I saw yesterday? Similar principle, with no effective solution a la merchanting stoneset prices.

I think that particular part of the game is quasi-realistic, in that you kinda have to learn the price of rice in China if you're going to be a rice trader. You may make some silly decisions in your first days, but if you don't learn, you won't be a rice trader for long.

On the other hand, what you're arguing is that it's an economically unsound principle when it's so highly profitable for people to spend their time buying credits and making hoards of money off of them. That aspect, I believe, was a slight mistake on the part of ANet to have 5 impies trade for a sup salvage. But I yet stand by that the monesters are kosher, as one would be quite foolish not to glance at the monestary quartermasters and notice the salvage kit and suchlike. Impies are foolish as well, but more dangerously marketably so.

I'm more disgruntled at the price of sup salvage and sup ident kits: four times the value at five times the cost...

The extra cost is for the saving up storage space on your inventory^^ at least, i think thats why they cost more. So, you use only 1 space instead of 4.

That would be the obvious rationalization of the pricing decision. Nonetheless, I disagree with it.

actually that is the real reason.

people asked for bigger kits so they took up less space in inventory and the devs said all right but the convenience will cost extra.

at the high end of the game that 1 extra gold will not be noticed and at the start you can get the exact same thing in a smaller economy size.

personally i get 5 regular and salvage almost everything as i go and as i use up kits those slots magically appear and i save 1 gold per salvage (4 expert) which is worth saving for me.

i could afford the other but why waste gold?