Feedback:User/Gwynna Vive/Pseudo Auction...an alternative

Undoubtably we have seen hundreds of suggestions for an auction. There's also likely as many different arguments pro/con. The game is established, and it would take much programming effort, people would abuse it, the economy would go awry... Here, I would like to offer a compromise.

I have at times farmed zones for a specific drop, nothing wrong with that. What I cannot stomach is when I need an upgrade such as a staff wrap, inscription, grip, etc, and am left standing in LA, Kaineng, or Kamadan for hours, only to end up paying far too much or worse yet, not get the item. Worse still, is the number of times I simply vendor "perfect" upgrades, simply because of limited inventory space. This doesn't happen with runes, thanks to the Rune Trader...

The game already has Priest of Balthazar that lists all the unlockable rewards for PvP, as well as Rune Trader, Dye Trader, Crafting Material Trader, Rare Material Trader...etc, that have a supply/demand engine which provides a method of selling and buying items at a price which is based upon current demand.

What I propose is a new NPC vendor, which deals strictly in items as listed under the "Unlock Item" tab, of the Priest of Balthazar, minus the runes of course. This could be implemented fairly easily using the current item table of the Priest of Balthazar NPC, and the "request quote" engine from the other material vendors. By allowing a feature like this, all control over pricing and availability will forever be exclusively in ArenaNet's hands, so they could monitor and/or adjust values to ensure that the economy remains stable. The feature could alternatively be added to all current Rune Traders in the game, making it that much simpler, and keeping the entire Priest of Balthazar item table under a single NPC.

In this way, we could still continue to sell items such as consumables, perfect base gold/purple items, greens, minis and the like independently, allowing those of us who enjoy such activity to continue, while letting those of us that would rather spend our precious playtime actually playing to do just that.

This could also be implemented for unique items, and/or Minipets at some later point if successful and popular enough, but for the time being, the ability to trade off our upgrade items without hours of standing around in a city, or buy that needed upgrade item from an NPC at a price consistent with supply/demand without wasting a couple days would go a long way towards improving the amount of productive play time, without compromising the game ecomony or requiring a massive undertaking from the programming department.