Guild Trader - Limit who can see bids by rank!!!

Bouvin

We need to be able to limit who can see bids for Guild Trader....

As players can be members of up to 5 guilds, the fact that the bid is visible to everyone is causing issues and an unfair advantage for some in the auction.

Right now we are getting outbid each week because we have members telling their other guilds what our bid is. This is not fair, and there needs to be some control over who sees the bids.

Slurg

As a member of more than one guild, I want all my trade guilds to win their bids. I think I deserve to know how much the GM is bidding. They're funds from my sales after all.

Are there really people out there sabotaging their own guilds? Are they new members who just join up to spy or something? That's the only way this makes any sense.

Iorail

Slurg wrote: »

As a member of more than one guild, I want all my trade guilds to win their bids. I think I deserve to know how much the GM is bidding. They're funds from my sales after all.

Are there really people out there sabotaging their own guilds? Are they new members who just join up to spy or something? That's the only way this makes any sense.

It happens, it did to my guild 2 weeks ago, but we adjusted and we haven't lost again. Not going to go into details about what we are doing to prevent this but it's a real pain to have the exact amount of the bid sitting right there for everyone to see: kind of goes against the blind secret bid proccess. Maybe an oversite from ZOS, who knows.

ZOS_GaryA

Hey there folks,

This is currently being investigated as a bug. When more information is available, we'll be sure to keep you updated. Thanks for your patience.

Slurg

The blind bid process is supposed to be even blinder? I'd prefer it to be transparent to everyone. Then you don't have to worry if your guild members who belong to other guilds are spies.

Obviously I'm not a fan of guild masters who want to hide what they're doing with the guild's money from the guild's members.

Maybe I can earn some more passive aggressive lols with that.

GnatB

Slurg wrote: »

Obviously I'm not a fan of guild masters who want to hide what they're doing with the guild's money from the guild's members.

Eh? If you win the bid, I'm pretty sure the deduction is listed in the history. If you lose, the guild keeps the money. I fail to see any reason why it's necessary for all guild members to see the bid*.


* this assumes the history is long enough that it isn't too easy for guild leaders to hide the transaction.

Cuyler

Slurg wrote: »

Are they new members who just join up to spy or something? That's the only way this makes any sense.

That's what the OP is saying here. Offer the option by rank so new members (the lowest rank) with the intention of spying cannot.

EDIT: Why do we have 5 guilds again? Promotes dissent I say.

Iorail

GnatB wrote: »

Slurg wrote: »

Obviously I'm not a fan of guild masters who want to hide what they're doing with the guild's money from the guild's members.

Eh? If you win the bid, I'm pretty sure the deduction is listed in the history. If you lose, the guild keeps the money. I fail to see any reason why it's necessary for all guild members to see the bid*.


* this assumes the history is long enough that it isn't too easy for guild leaders to hide the transaction.

The change thus recently, it goes to like 180? Days now so not that easy to bury up, not it needs to be bury anyway, so if people are withdrawing money, also not easy to bury up.

I agree 100% on members not seeing the bid amount, but also not the winning bid amount either, there is no need for that at all, and I'll explain why. If people take out money (not bids, but physical withdraws) this will show in the history regarless, so no fears for the membership about people stealing the money as they can clearly see who is stealing. But bids are never return to the person but back to the bank, no need for members to know at all as the money is use for kiosk 100% and if they loose the bid, the money it's returned anyway and there is no message for this either on the guild history already. My point is, make all bids posted, hired and return(this one is already hidden) blind to all members except those with trader hiring rights and all this spy/bidding base on history issues will go away.
@ZOS_GaryA

Slurg

Here's the thing. Every time there's one bad apple in a guild the answer always seems to be take something away from the rest of the guild members.

Someone stole everything out of the guild bank? Take access away from the rest of the members!

Someone told another guild leader about the guild trader bid? Take access away from the rest of the members!

Adding to the length of the history helps deter thievery but no I have not always been able to see the results of the trader bid coming out of the bank after it was over. Maybe this is part of the bug ZOS_GaryA referenced. Or maybe this is what they're taking away entirely.

Of course no one wants people in their guilds undermining it but I don't think it's unreasonable for rank and file guild members to be able to see that their guild leaders are working to secure the guild a kiosk from week to week. I'd at least want to see after the fact.

Bouvin

The point is, you can't win a bid if someone in the guild is just reporting your bid and their other guild is poaching it at the last second.

So while I don't agree taking away from all guild members is a good practice, the advantage of knowing another guild's bid and outbidding them by only a few coin is unfair IMHO.

Sylvyr

On the other side of the coin, I wonder how it will settle with guild members that are being charged weekly fees to pay for a trader and not knowing how much it is actually costing the guild.

Iorail

Sylvyr wrote: »

On the other side of the coin, I wonder how it will settle with guild members that are being charged weekly fees to pay for a trader and not knowing how much it is actually costing the guild.

If the guild is charging members, then the members deserve everything they get. A guild DOES NOT need to charge it's membership AT ALL to get a good trader location, and my guild has proven that over the past weeks. We make enough in taxes to sustain it without the need to CHARGE MONEY. A well organized and fully stock store will maintain the trader all by itself, and this is a fact.

Bouvin

Sylvyr wrote: »

On the other side of the coin, I wonder how it will settle with guild members that are being charged weekly fees to pay for a trader and not knowing how much it is actually costing the guild.

I guess it depends on the guild you're in. This is a potential issue as the trader bids sometimes cost more than what the auction fees put into the guild bank.

The trading guild I do best with sells raffle tickets for 100 gold each...with awesome prizes donated by the leadership to help supplement the cost. So rather than being "charged" you are rewarded for helping pay for the trader.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Leeric

I know for a fact a guild I was apart of banked the money instead of dropping in the guild trader. Did it with a raffle to by giving out less raffles than what was donated. I should be able to see who bids on what.

Could have the bids posted AFTER it closes. That way i know where the money went.

Bouvin

Leeric wrote: »

I know for a fact a guild I was apart of banked the money instead of dropping in the guild trader. Did it with a raffle to by giving out less raffles than what was donated. I should be able to see who bids on what.

Maybe the solution is to hide the "bid" from those without permission, but log how much was actually paid for the trader if it's won.

This would help keep people more honest...

However, I know that one of the guilds I'm in is paying excess of 300k per week for our trader, and that the leadership was dropping a lot of their own gold to keep it going. So IMO the raffle was a good idea that benefited everyone.

redspecter23

If the blind bidding process is indeed meant to be blind, then the bids should not be showing up. I do understand the need for transparency, but when that transparency can lead to "spies" and "moles" keeping tabs on kiosk bids so that another guild can snipe the kiosk knowing exactly how much was bid, then you do have to put transparency aside and focus on a fair blind bidding process first.

As mentioned above, this appears to be a bug and will hopefully be taken care of soon. As a GM of a 500 member trade guild, I have enough things to take care of on a regular basis. Taking a number of extra precautions in an attempt to cloud over the bidding info is just a number of steps that should not need to be taken in order to try and gain some bidding security.

Iorail

Well, this just happened not on my guild but on another trading guild I was part off. About 25 minutes from 8 am est, an officer started to ask in chat if anyone was a part of another bidding guild and if they could please pm him the location of any bids for traders and the amount..... All I said in chat was that's not cool and left the guild. He pm me after with something like, "it's all fair as anyone can see the bids, just wanted to make sure they are not outbidding me...". Yeah right... Blind should be blind and only people with bidding rights should be able no see this, no one else.

skeletorz_ESO

redspecter23 wrote: »

If the blind bidding process is indeed meant to be blind, then the bids should not be showing up. I do understand the need for transparency, but when that transparency can lead to "spies" and "moles" keeping tabs on kiosk bids so that another guild can snipe the kiosk knowing exactly how much was bid, then you do have to put transparency aside and focus on a fair blind bidding process first.

As mentioned above, this appears to be a bug and will hopefully be taken care of soon. As a GM of a 500 member trade guild, I have enough things to take care of on a regular basis. Taking a number of extra precautions in an attempt to cloud over the bidding info is just a number of steps that should not need to be taken in order to try and gain some bidding security.

This.

Something needs to be done about this immediately. Like the poster before me said, it needs to be set so that only those with bidding rights can see the amounts that are bid.

HomerSamson

This entire system is f*****.

Create a 'trader camp' outside the capital of each faction where guilds can set up camp, hang their tabard and open a shop(there's your global-ish AH.)

Then make weekly trader stalls(what are currently guild stores) in towns bidable by individuals like in Wushu. There'd prolly need to be be more stalls available for the latter, but that shouldn't be too much work, most wayshrines could accommodate this.

Xalian

HomerSamson wrote: »

This entire system is f*****.

Agreed.

Regional markets would be a much better system. Bidding on store fronts? Who even thought of this? I want to play a game and sell the extra junk I have. Not get in a price war with other guilds over the ability to sell it. How is this even fun?

Sylvyr

Get rid of blind bidding period. Make it fee based where guilds that want to participate can on equal footing, not who lucks out or totally over spends to have a trader for a week. Only to go through it again the next week. This system bites.

someuser

Seems like there are two issues here:

1) Guilds being accountable to their members

2) Rival guilds taking advantage of the system to "steal" prime kiosk positions


Personally, I love systems that allow for sabotage and subterfuge. So, I freely admit my bias. I like that players are spying on one another. I think it is GREAT that rival guilds are "behaving" like rival guilds would in a medieval era

However, knowing ESO, they will cave to the carebear crowd.

Giraffon

Two things I think need to be changed:

1) Agree with OP - the ability to see the amount being bid should be limited to those with designated access rights

2) If I bid on a trader and lose, I should be given the winning bid amount. I lost a week of store time. I deserve to know.

Epona222

I am late to the party here, but I just want to say I agree wholeheartedly that it is a failing in the system that all members can see the amount bid on a trader.

I have never been involved in it before, so didn't have anything to say about it, but recently have become responsible for bidding on a trader for one of my trading guilds, and I think this is a massive hole in the system.

Why? Because I can bid on a trader for my own guild (in theory, I have no problem with guild members knowing what I am bidding, will happily tell them on a guild website, and happy to have the Guildmaster and other officers confirm what I am doing), but I can also see what was bid for which traders by every other trading guild I am a member of. I am a very honest person, and would never use that information to take a trader from another guild of which I am a member (I will not bid on a trader if another guild I am in has bid on it and I can see they have put in a bid), but not everyone is as scrupulous and honest in their dealings as I am. Unscrupulous people can go and bid 1g more at the last moment to get the trader, because they have inside information - it's like insider dealing.

Hide that information from everyone but guild officers (or whichever ranks the guildmaster wants to have access to that info), otherwise your 'blind bid' system has a massive hole in it that is open to manipulation and exploitation.

Dalglish

I think bids should be accessible, but only after a bid has ended.