Official Discussion Thread for "Update 23 Brings Improvements to Guilds, Crafters & The Undaunted"

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

This is the official discussion thread for the Update 23 Brings Improvements to Guilds, Crafters & The Undaunted blog article.

Check out some of the big quality-of-life improvements and changes coming soon with Update 23!

VaranisArano

Disallowing "ghost guilds" is an improvement.

I'm not so sure about Multi-bidding given the feedback on PTS, but sorry guys, I guess our feedback doesnt mean much. We'll have to see what happens when it goes Live.

Good luck making your bids and defending your trader spots!

ListerJMC

I'm really concerned about what multi-bidding is going to do to guilds with less buying power... Are you planning to add a lot more traders in future to help out with the demand?

Tyrion87

I wouldn't call multi-bidding an improvement... It will (and, in fact, already has) hit an average player the most since many trading guilds already raised min. sales per week and even introduced obligatory weekly fees to afford and secure the best spots. It will cause more harm than good.

devildog13_93

Will RNG for the refinement be the same? Or if I refine 1000 mats do I get 1 gold mat? Or will it be less or more?

anitajoneb17_ESO

devildog13_93 wrote: »

Will RNG for the refinement be the same? Or if I refine 1000 mats do I get 1 gold mat? Or will it be less or more?

According to people who tested this on PTS, everything is the same. RNG, rates, etc...
The only difference is that you don't get to press the R key a millions times, but just one time, and it's all done at once. Including the tempers dropping.

Jayne_Doe

Don’t miss out on a Guild Trader location

...meaning there was a risk that some Guilds could miss out.

Hilarious quotes from the article. Even with multi-bidding, some guilds will still miss out on a guild trader. All this means is that the big guilds probably won't, if they're able to place high enough bids on alternate spots. But there are still far more guilds than there are trader spots, so guilds are still going to miss out and not get a trader, since there aren't enough to go around.

While I don't think it's possible to have a trader for every guild, and too many traders might lead to over-saturation and customer fatigue, I think that more traders could be added and trading hubs improved.

Why do only the 3 capital cities have 7 traders and the other zone cities (in the base game) only have 5? (Craglorn does have 6, but it was originally an expansion zone.) Could they not at least have 6? And why did Elsweyr only get 6 traders, where both Morrowind and Summerset have 12? Even Orsinium has 10. And could we finally add more traders to the starter areas? There are at least 2 empty stalls in each of the starter locations. Heck, there's even an empty stall in the Hollow City. Surely we could add one more so that there are 5 traders there.

Even making some of the trader hubs more convenient could help. Who wants to go to the traders in Abah's Landing, for example. They're quite a distance from the wayshrine and inconveniently located in the city down on the docks. Or Riften - why are those traders outside the city, near the furthest gate from the wayshrine? Other locations are similarly inconvenient. I get that they want to create a variety of locations, but why make some of them purposely not as good as others? I think more players would be willing to shop around more if more locations were more easily accessed. Of course, this is largely a concern for consoles, as PC has TTC so they can shop for what they're looking for online and then go to the location, even out in the wild, to buy the item. Of course, there's no guarantee that the item will still be there.

Anyway, I lurked quite a bit on the PTS feedback thread and I'm concerned how this will all play out. I'm not a GM, but I'm in a couple of good trading guilds and so wonder how they'll fare in this new system. It really seems like ZOS just want to shake up the trader system and see more movement among trading guilds, rather than having them occupy a single spot. That's not really good for consumers, though (if that is their aim) as on console, at least, finding your usual traders that you know sell what you're looking for will be a pain.

And, let's not kid ourselves here. Unless more trading spots are added, there will ALWAYS be guilds that lose out on a trader. Of course, as I said before, even adding spots won't accommodate all guilds so there will always be guilds that lose out no matter how many traders there are, but I think improving various locations would help to make more trading hubs desirable and would also help customers to find what they need more easily since there would be more locations with more stalls and more locations that are easier to access.

SteamKitten01

I completely 100% wholeheartedly DISAGREE that mutli-bidding will alleviate the issue of guilds not having guild traders after flip. There's still a limited number of guild traders and more guilds bidding on traders than possible trader locations means that even if guilds were given the opportunity to bid on 100 trader locations, some guilds would lose and not have a trader for the week because only 218 guilds can win a trader bid on a given week.

All multi-bidding means is that bigger guilds that have money saved up will be able to bid on decent backup locations, kicking out mid-tier guilds, who will have bid on backup locations in lower-tier locations, and the poor newer guilds trying to start out that can't afford a bunch of backup bids will be completely out of luck.

Gariele

Sigh. After all the feedback and talk from actual GMs it looks like it has fallen on deaf ears. So many better solutions. Killing ghost guilds, adding more trader kiosk, Now we watch as trade wars break out from the domino effects.

Jayne_Doe

devildog13_93 wrote: »

Will RNG for the refinement be the same? Or if I refine 1000 mats do I get 1 gold mat? Or will it be less or more?

Someone did some testing on PTS and found that the drop rates were similar to their data for live.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Undaunted keys as currency, good QOL change.
Multi Crafting, Thank you! Huge QoL....

Multi-bidding?
Has ANYONE at ZoS read ANY of the feedback about this? This is NOT a good QoL change!
There are other ways to deal with ghost guilds and such without the multibidding.
And 10 is just too many...imo...
Huzzah!

Dont_do_drugs

What on earth made zos going on with the bad QoL argumentation about multi bids, despite all critic feedback without even acknowledging anything of what had been written and addressing it in any ways, in firm of a comment, and who at ur headquarters chose to write that article then as if it never happened. Is it the "oh group finder isn't working?" game? Wait, there was a problem?

Pyr0xyrecuprotite

Re the changes to Undaunted Keys allowing you to buy shoulders from an Undaunted merchant instead of being used to open a Chest, does that mean the Treasure Hunter passive benefit is lost when using undaunted keys now?

Durnik

I'm not seeing a note on date. August, September?

DragonRacer

Durnik wrote: »

I'm not seeing a note on date. August, September?

There was an announcement at QuakeCon last weekend (though, yes, it can be hard to find that info and is strange they didn't put it in the blog). August 12th for PC and August 27th for consoles.

Feric51

SteamKitten01 wrote: »

I completely 100% wholeheartedly DISAGREE that mutli-bidding will alleviate the issue of guilds not having guild traders after flip. There's still a limited number of guild traders and more guilds bidding on traders than possible trader locations means that even if guilds were given the opportunity to bid on 100 trader locations, some guilds would lose and not have a trader for the week because only 218 guilds can win a trader bid on a given week.

All multi-bidding means is that bigger guilds that have money saved up will be able to bid on decent backup locations, kicking out mid-tier guilds, who will have bid on backup locations in lower-tier locations, and the poor newer guilds trying to start out that can't afford a bunch of backup bids will be completely out of luck.

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the whole multi bid process. So here's a breakdown to make it make more sense, and for simplicity we're going to assume this is in a vacuum of sorts.

SUPER TRADER bids on 10 stalls for 10 million gold each. Wayrest, Rawl'ka, Mournhold, Rimmen, etc etc. They win their preferred spot in Wayrest. The rest of the bids are simply returned. Net cost to the guild = 10 mil after trader reset.

Medium Trader bids 5 million on Wayrest, Rawl'ka, Mournhold, Rimmen, etc. They get outbid for Wayrest, but now SUPER TRADER's bid is off the books at Rawl'ka so they win Rawl'ka with 5 million and get all their other bids (including Wayrest) returned. Net total cost = 5 mil.

N00b guild bids 100k at Wayrest, Rawl'ka, Mournhold, Rimmen, etc. They get outbid at Wayrest and Rawl'ka, but win Mournhold with 100k and have all their other bids returned.


Now, that was a gross exaggeration because at any time you might have 20+ guilds bidding on the prime spots so you're never going to get Mournhold for 100k. But the whole concept of ghost guilds bidding high on prime spots and then flipping the guild for a profit are gone. There's no point to bid on a trader for 5-10mil if you don't actually have stuff to list unless you're simply doing it out of spite to punish one of the trading conglomerates since you'll be unable to sell that spot now which will quickly deplete your spite stash of cash.

Meanwhile, big guilds won't have to create a bunch of "emergency" guilds to snatch up Riften, Daggerfall, etc in case their capital city stall gets sniped, they'll simply place one of their 10 bids there. So if they win their capital city bid, you won't have a ghost guild taking up a mid-tier stall anymore and it will fall to one of the mid-tier guilds (hopefully).

Anyway, I see it as a boon for mid-tier traders because they can bid on several mid-tier spots, and still put in some backup bids at Outlaw's Refuges, etc. to hopefully guarantee a spot instead of laying all the eggs in their preferred basket and being SoL if a ghost guild takes them out.


Edit: Main point of all this is just because a big guild bids high on a mid-tier stall doesn't mean the smaller guilds have to beat that bid. They just have to hope that the big guild gets its preferred spots so their mid-tier bid vanishes.

VaranisArano

Feric51 wrote: »

Edit: Main point of all this is just because a big guild bids high on a mid-tier stall doesn't mean the smaller guilds have to beat that bid. They just have to hope that the big guild gets its preferred spots so their mid-tier bid vanishes.

Exactly. It really sucks to be the low man on the totem pole.

There's no reason for everyone to not throw a backup bid at small, out of the way traders now, whether that's a big guild placing an "oh sh*t" bid or a mid-tier guild hedging their bet, or another low tier guild bidding on other traders in their tier just in case.

The lowest tier trading guilds have no real recourse than to raise more money for their bid and cross their fingers that everyone else wins their other trader bids before it trickles down to theirs.

Feric51

VaranisArano wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

Edit: Main point of all this is just because a big guild bids high on a mid-tier stall doesn't mean the smaller guilds have to beat that bid. They just have to hope that the big guild gets its preferred spots so their mid-tier bid vanishes.

Exactly. It really sucks to be the low man on the totem pole.

There's no reason for everyone to not throw a backup bid at small, out of the way traders now, whether that's a big guild placing an "oh sh*t" bid or a mid-tier guild hedging their bet, or another low tier guild bidding on other traders in their tier just in case.

The lowest tier trading guilds have no real recourse than to raise more money for their bid and cross their fingers that everyone else wins their other trader bids before it trickles down to theirs.

This is exactly why I think it will help alleviate some of the mid-tier ghost guilds we've seen historically. Many of the big traders would create ghost guilds to bid on their backup spots in case their one, and only, main stall bid got sniped. If they won their main bid, their backup bids became ghost guilds they could then auction off.

With being able to have up to ten separate bids from one guild. If they win their preferred spot, this is potentially nine ghost guilds that are now gone that would have been there under the current live version. Yes, the lowest of the low guilds are still going to find their spots highly competitive, probably even costlier than before since mid-tier guilds (currently) don't generally go to the extreme of creating ghost guilds to bid on the way out of the way traders. Now they can toss up emergency bids on the lackluster spots with no consequences if they win their preferred spot.

So, ultimately, this is a big win for mid-tier guilds/stalls and probably a bigger burden on the new/low guilds.

BenevolentBowd

Finally, they also offer the monthly monster shoulder style page for 50 keys (and this page has a chance to drop from regular mystery coffers, as well).

- Announcement

The monthly monster shoulder style pages will be available directly from the merchant for 50 keys each, in addition to continuing to be a rare drop from the mystery coffers, at the same rates as previously seen with the Undaunted chests.

Undocumented Patch Notes? ... the pledge vendors are selling previously offered Monster Style pages (shoulder). Not all of them but first 4...

princessl0llie

There's a few I'm already pissed about..not sure how much longer I can play eso if they gonna keep messing it up and NEVER listen to the players..in the end it's all bout greed n wanting money

Grimm13

Multi-Bidding is not a Improvement for Guilds. It's killing off small to medium size Guilds, as predicted.