ZOS Our guild leaders are stressed by biding wars

Pevey · August 21

Ph1p wrote: »

It would help if ZOS could provide some quality-of-life features to make this easier and encourage more people to take active roles in guild management. For example:
Allow a very limited number of guild-wide mails (e.g., 1 or 2 per week) and make it possible to select specific guild ranks as recipients. Guilds sometimes need to communicate with all their members without having to rely on add-ons, risk a social ban, or do excessive manual work.

...

Please no. ZOS rightfully calls this spam. There are tools like Discord for guild communication. With those tools, users can adjust their notification settings however they want. Sending an in-game message is like when someone calls you instead of texting to convey basic info. It just shouldn't be done.

hiyde · August 21

Pevey wrote: »

Please no. ZOS rightfully calls this spam.

They do? Is there a source you can cite for this? ZOS has been allowing addons (i.e. GodSend) to send guild-wide mails since the start.

There are tools like Discord for guild communication.

A large portion of members do not join Guild Discords (or pay attention to them if they do join).

With those tools, users can adjust their notification settings however they want. Sending an in-game message is like when someone calls you instead of texting to convey basic info. It just shouldn't be done.

Just as people are free to avoid e-mail notifications by dropping guild if they are offended by guild communications.

Sending an in-game message is like when someone calls you instead of texting to convey basic info. It just shouldn't be done.

Sending guild-wide mails (smartly) is the most impactful way to directly reach members of the guild. If you don't want contact from the guild management to keep you updated on important things happening in the guild, it's easy enough to drop the guild and find one(s) that better suit your needs...and that's what happens to guilds that spam e-mails that members do not find useful.

Pevey · August 21

Guild leaders come here to say they’ve been social banned for sending emails pretty regularly.

I have dropped guilds that send lots of mails. It doesn’t need to be encouraged.

Pretty sure zos has said art one point the reason they don’t add voice chat to PC is that options like Teamspeak (this was years ago) exist, and there’s no need for them to try to recreate that in game.

If players don’t even join discord, they definitely don’t want your mail.

Nharimlur_Finor · August 21

There is no requirement for any Guild to have the same trading location every week.
There is no requirement for a Guild to have a trader at all, every week.

There are guilds that have been operating like this for years.

Ph1p · August 21

Pevey wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

It would help if ZOS could provide some quality-of-life features to make this easier and encourage more people to take active roles in guild management. For example:
Allow a very limited number of guild-wide mails (e.g., 1 or 2 per week) and make it possible to select specific guild ranks as recipients. Guilds sometimes need to communicate with all their members without having to rely on add-ons, risk a social ban, or do excessive manual work.

...

Please no. ZOS rightfully calls this spam. There are tools like Discord for guild communication. With those tools, users can adjust their notification settings however they want. Sending an in-game message is like when someone calls you instead of texting to convey basic info. It just shouldn't be done.

I disagree. Spam is characterized by its irrelevance for the recipient and often by a malicious purpose, such as phishing or spreading malware. None of that applies to trading guilds reminding specific members who aren't meeting requirements or announcing guild-wide events. Especially if it can only be done once a week.

If a guild lead abuses this, then members will vote with their feet, just like you rightfully did. Pointing to Discord is not helpful either. That's like saying your company can't mail everyone that they'll get a raise next year, but may only post it on Slack, which is not not officially supported by IT or pre-installed on employees' computers.

Besides, sending an in-game message is literally a text message and nothing like a call. You can read (or ignore) it in your own time, you don't have to respond, you don't need to talk to anyone, and there is a temporary record of the information.

EDIT: Addressed a technicality with my definition of spam. It now doesn't have to have a malicious purpose.

hiyde · August 21

Pevey wrote: »

Guild leaders come here to say they’ve been social banned for sending emails pretty regularly.

I have dropped guilds that send lots of mails. It doesn’t need to be encouraged.

Pretty sure zos has said art one point the reason they don’t add voice chat to PC is that options like Teamspeak (this was years ago) exist, and there’s no need for them to try to recreate that in game.

If players don’t even join discord, they definitely don’t want your mail.

Agree to disagree. The people offended by guild mails will leave, resulting in a guild full of people who have some interest in what the guild is up to.

To be clear, I have no issue with that or any animosity towards someone who might leave over it, I just place higher value on members that are engaged & interested.

As for social bans, those are auto-triggered by sending rates and/or words that trigger filters for things like gold spammers. Social bans that got auto-triggered for these reasons are always reversed upon request. If ZOS didn't want Guild Mails going out via addons, they've had the option to disable it this whole time.

Gabriel_H · August 21

DragonRacer wrote: »

Trading guild GMs have to fundraise almost constantly because sales tax alone does not support trader bids.

Because ALL the GM's fund raise, thereby they create the extra work for themselves and others.

i.e. If no GM did additional fundraising, then sales tax alone would support the trader bids.

the1andonlyskwex · August 21

This is one of the (many) fundamental problems with the guild trader system. There are so few actually viable trader locations that the bigger guilds are essentially required to bid so high as to virtually guarantee they win their bids. Otherwise, they get stuck with an undesirable trader location and essentially go out of business over night. The net result is that all of the larger guilds are deathly afraid of ever lowering their bids for fear that they might accidentally go low enough to lose, even when item sales go down and a true free market should result in lower bids.

Welcome to the oligopoly that is the ESO guild trader system.

Gabriel_H · August 21

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Welcome to the oligopoly that is the ESO guild trader system.

The inevitable endpoint of capitalism.

A possible solution would be to "break up" the guild by sales type. So a guild has to select what it will sell and the system wouldn't allow items in the same selling stream. For example, if the guild sells mats they can't also sell anything made from those mats - so crafted gear/furniture/pots etc.

Another solution would be to have x number of guilds accessible from the same interact point, or have guilds have x interact points, like a city, as well as an outlaws refuge, and a town.

Of course, this doesn't solve the biggest problem - people are lazy - so wayshrine to interact point distance will still remain the driving factor. If ZOS want to deal with that problem, and obviously moving everything to be equi-distant would be an impossible ask, then ZOS could impose a sales tax of varying % depending on distance to a wayshrine - that would effectively work a gold sink as well as the gold disappears from the game.

The final step would be to revise the bidding process. Whereby location is determined against any RNG roll, that a trader fee can be used to increase your odds (to a point), but doesn't directly affect what city you get - just an example I thought of while typing, not a seriously thought out suggestion.

the1andonlyskwex · August 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Welcome to the oligopoly that is the ESO guild trader system.

The inevitable endpoint of capitalism.

A possible solution would be to "break up" the guild by sales type. So a guild has to select what it will sell and the system wouldn't allow items in the same selling stream. For example, if the guild sells mats they can't also sell anything made from those mats - so crafted gear/furniture/pots etc.

Another solution would be to have x number of guilds accessible from the same interact point, or have guilds have x interact points, like a city, as well as an outlaws refuge, and a town.

Of course, this doesn't solve the biggest problem - people are lazy - so wayshrine to interact point distance will still remain the driving factor. If ZOS want to deal with that problem, and obviously moving everything to be equi-distant would be an impossible ask, then ZOS could impose a sales tax of varying % depending on distance to a wayshrine - that would effectively work a gold sink as well as the gold disappears from the game.

The final step would be to revise the bidding process. Whereby location is determined against any RNG roll, that a trader fee can be used to increase your odds (to a point), but doesn't directly affect what city you get - just an example I thought of while typing, not a seriously thought out suggestion.

I think the best solution is a traditional global auction house. There's a reason it's the system that virtually every other successful MMO uses.

Pelanora · August 21

Guild locations only matter for console players. PC can search for what they want on the ttc site, and go to the trader, and don't care where that is.

The actual problem isn't because of location based issues and fighting for sites, it's the absence of a real time info system. The market failure is information.

You could leave the whole guild and trader system in place, if zos provided the info to all players on what was for sale where, up to date, on real time.

Then location of trader wouldn't matter, price to bid wouldn't matter, fees etc on players all would go.

That would be an easier fix for zos than actually redoing all the buying and selling systems and trader systems and guild systems etc etc etc

Gabriel_H · August 21

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

I think the best solution is a traditional global auction house. There's a reason it's the system that virtually every other successful MMO uses.

Disagree. That leads to a massive influx of bots, scams, and people literally wearing diapers while forced to farm.

Gabriel_H · August 21

Pelanora wrote: »

You could leave the whole guild and trader system in place, if zos provided the info to all players on what was for sale where, up to date, on real time.

The consequence would be an earthquake sized price crash that makes the current one look like a burp.

Pelanora · August 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

You could leave the whole guild and trader system in place, if zos provided the info to all players on what was for sale where, up to date, on real time.

The consequence would be an earthquake sized price crash that makes the current one look like a burp.

Excellent. Luxury materials markets can crash.

vsrs_au · August 21

Ph1p wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

It would help if ZOS could provide some quality-of-life features to make this easier and encourage more people to take active roles in guild management. For example:
Allow a very limited number of guild-wide mails (e.g., 1 or 2 per week) and make it possible to select specific guild ranks as recipients. Guilds sometimes need to communicate with all their members without having to rely on add-ons, risk a social ban, or do excessive manual work.

...

Please no. ZOS rightfully calls this spam. There are tools like Discord for guild communication. With those tools, users can adjust their notification settings however they want. Sending an in-game message is like when someone calls you instead of texting to convey basic info. It just shouldn't be done.

I disagree. Spam is characterized by its irrelevance for the recipient and a malicious purpose, such as phishing or spreading malware. None of that applies to trading guilds reminding specific members who aren't meeting requirements or announcing guild-wide events. Especially if it can only be done once a week.

If a guild lead abuses this, then members will vote with their feet, just like you rightfully did. Pointing to Discord is not helpful either. That's like saying your company can't mail everyone that they'll get a raise next year, but may only post it on Slack, which is not not officially supported by IT or pre-installed on employees' computers.

Besides, sending an in-game message is literally a text message and nothing like a call. You can read (or ignore) it in your own time, you don't have to respond, you don't need to talk to anyone, and there is a temporary record of the information.

No, spam doesn't necessarily have a malicious purpose:

https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ wrote:

irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

Note the word "advertising".

Gabriel_H · August 21

Pelanora wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

You could leave the whole guild and trader system in place, if zos provided the info to all players on what was for sale where, up to date, on real time.

The consequence would be an earthquake sized price crash that makes the current one look like a burp.

Excellent. Luxury materials markets can crash.

It wouldn't just be luxury materials, it would be everything, and would reduce the incentive for people to trade. The unintended consequences are impossible to model fully but could result in a massive drop followed by a massive spike as suppliers exit the market. It would be months, if not years, of disruption to the economy.

the1andonlyskwex · August 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

You could leave the whole guild and trader system in place, if zos provided the info to all players on what was for sale where, up to date, on real time.

The consequence would be an earthquake sized price crash that makes the current one look like a burp.

Excellent. Luxury materials markets can crash.

It wouldn't just be luxury materials, it would be everything, and would reduce the incentive for people to trade. The unintended consequences are impossible to model fully but could result in a massive drop followed by a massive spike as suppliers exit the market. It would be months, if not years, of disruption to the economy.

A global auction house is the solution. I would gladly sell tons of stuff for 10x less than the current trader rates, but I'm locked out of the market by the guild trader system that requires me to join a guild and pay dues or hit weekly quotas. A global auction house would make almost everyone a seller overnight by reducing barriers to entry to the market. Yes, prices would go down (a lot), but there wouldn't be any shortage of sellers.

Gabriel_H · August 21

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

A global auction house is the solution.

As I already said: Disagree. That leads to a massive influx of bots, scams, and people literally wearing diapers while forced to farm.

Actual world harm for the sake of convenience in an online game. No thanks.

Ph1p · August 21

vsrs_au wrote: »

No, spam doesn't necessarily have a malicious purpose:

https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ wrote:

irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

Note the word "advertising".

Fair enough. I considered ads covered under the "irrelevance" aspect and wanted to highlight the more harmful examples of actual spam. Still doesn't apply to the kinds of common and relevant guild messages I shared earlier.

Pevey · August 21

I get tons of spam every day that is targeted to my business and quite relevant. It’s still spam.

One way to avoid this in ESO is to put whatever specific account is sending the mails in ignore. I personally don’t do this. I just leave. But I know some others do.

To be fair, the mails are 100x better than when people update the guild info several times per week to trigger Notifications that way. Zero people read these to try to spot the changes. Thankfully, most PVE guilds realize how distracting those notifications can be when trying to do organized group content, and they almost never update those. Just putting a link to the discord and the guild house enough. If you get a unique discord invitation link, you never have to update it.

Anifaas · August 21

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

A global auction house is the solution. I would gladly sell tons of stuff for 10x less than the current trader rates, but I'm locked out of the market by the guild trader system that requires me to join a guild and pay dues or hit weekly quotas. A global auction house would make almost everyone a seller overnight by reducing barriers to entry to the market. Yes, prices would go down (a lot), but there wouldn't be any shortage of sellers.

I agree. A global AH works just fine in the other MMOs. They are also WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more user friendly. Trading in ESO is unnecessarily onerous. But so are many of its other systems. Anything to draw things out I suppose.

Heren · August 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

It wouldn't just be luxury materials, it would be everything, and would reduce the incentive for people to trade. The unintended consequences are impossible to model fully but could result in a massive drop followed by a massive spike as suppliers exit the market. It would be months, if not years, of disruption to the economy.

That's just your propaganda. Maybe people will just continue to trade and appart for all the doomsayers here and there propaganda, nothing else will be felt by the players. Who knows ? Certainly not you I bait. But certainly you're going hard pretending you do.

Veinblood1965 · August 21

LamiaCritter wrote: »

... These are merchants in a computer game, my guy. What do these trader guilds 'work hard for' aside from making an occasional key click to say 'Yes, I bid for this trader'?

Trading guilds are useful.
But they're not exactly these 'foundational pillars vital to the existence of the game itself' that it sounds like you're implying.

"Stress" and "workload". On a mere video game shop-guild? Forgive me if I find that this beggars belief.

Have you managed a trading guild?

Gabriel_H · August 21

Heren wrote: »

That's just your propaganda. Maybe people will just continue to trade and appart for all the doomsayers here and there propaganda, nothing else will be felt by the players. Who knows ? Certainly not you I bait. But certainly you're going hard pretending you do.

1) It's an opinion, not propaganda.
2) I didn't say people would stop trading, I said the incentive would be removed
3) "Who knows?" - That's what unintended consequences refers to, but some outcomes can be modelled by people who understand economic theory.

Aurielle · August 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

A global auction house is the solution.

As I already said: Disagree. That leads to a massive influx of bots, scams, and people literally wearing diapers while forced to farm.

Actual world harm for the sake of convenience in an online game. No thanks.

That might be one of the most hyperbolic statements I’ve ever read. Global auction houses work perfectly fine in other games without causing “actual world harm.”

Stafford197 · August 21

Implementing an Auction House was always the best solution here. Scattering hundreds of Guild Traders all over the place which need to be individually visited is a chore to interact with.

Guild Traders also make town design worse, and are the reason why nearly all towns except for the major ones are empty. Players pack into places which have lots of traders and all services. I’d prefer to stay in a settlement that I enjoy being around instead, and not be cut off from essential functions by doing so.

Ph1p · August 21

Stafford197 wrote: »

Guild Traders also make town design worse, and are the reason why nearly all towns except for the major ones are empty. Players pack into places which have lots of traders and all services. I’d prefer to stay in a settlement that I enjoy being around instead, and not be cut off from essential functions by doing so.

There are many valid criticisms of guild traders, but blaming them for bad town design is a bit weird. It exactly the other way around. People flock to conveniently designed towns (Vivec City) or the presence of useful features like pledges (Mournhold, Wayrest, Elden Root) or dungeon/trial PUGs (Belkarth).

This high traffic makes the towns' traders more popular and attracts bigger guilds with better stocked stores, which in turn does bring in more traffic. But why do you think this system makes ZOS design towns in a worse way?

ComboBreaker88 · August 21

Ph1p wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Guild Traders also make town design worse, and are the reason why nearly all towns except for the major ones are empty. Players pack into places which have lots of traders and all services. I’d prefer to stay in a settlement that I enjoy being around instead, and not be cut off from essential functions by doing so.

There are many valid criticisms of guild traders, but blaming them for bad town design is a bit weird. It exactly the other way around. People flock to conveniently designed towns (Vivec City) or the presence of useful features like pledges (Mournhold, Wayrest, Elden Root) or dungeon/trial PUGs (Belkarth).

This high traffic makes the towns' traders more popular and attracts bigger guilds with better stocked stores, which in turn does bring in more traffic. But why do you think this system makes ZOS design towns in a worse way?

Really, they should redesign all the towns in the game and give reasons to visit each one. They can be different enough but and offer and availability of like conveniences with a certain distance of the Wayshrine. That would put all towns on a equal footing. The most popular towns are popular because of their layouts and amenities, including traders. But there's zero reason why all town in the game can't be similarly designed. I would even make it so each town has rotating reasons to visit each day/week/month. This would make it so each town would be desirable.

Gabriel_H · August 21

Aurielle wrote: »

That might be one of the most hyperbolic statements I’ve ever read. Global auction houses work perfectly fine in other games without causing “actual world harm.”

Really! https://mud.fandom.com/wiki/Chinese_gold_farming

ZOS reduce that risk by having a competitor trading system which keeps prices relatively in check.

Global auction houses have no such limitations and so prices get pushed higher and higher, as people bid more and more, which increases the profitability of such a real world "business". The developer, if acting in a moral and responsible way, then have to put more and more resources into stopping the bots, the scammers, the gold farming, thereby taking away resources from actual game development and maintenance.

You don't think that's real world harm? /facepalm

ComboBreaker88 · August 21

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Guild Traders also make town design worse, and are the reason why nearly all towns except for the major ones are empty. Players pack into places which have lots of traders and all services. I’d prefer to stay in a settlement that I enjoy being around instead, and not be cut off from essential functions by doing so.

There are many valid criticisms of guild traders, but blaming them for bad town design is a bit weird. It exactly the other way around. People flock to conveniently designed towns (Vivec City) or the presence of useful features like pledges (Mournhold, Wayrest, Elden Root) or dungeon/trial PUGs (Belkarth).

This high traffic makes the towns' traders more popular and attracts bigger guilds with better stocked stores, which in turn does bring in more traffic. But why do you think this system makes ZOS design towns in a worse way?

Really, they should redesign all the towns in the game and give reasons to visit each one. They can be different enough but and offer and availability of like conveniences with a certain distance of the Wayshrine. That would put all towns on a equal footing. The most popular towns are popular because of their layouts and amenities, including traders. But there's zero reason why all town in the game can't be similarly designed. I would even make it so each town has rotating reasons to visit each day/week/month. This would make it so each town would be desirable.

Come to think of it, why have they not done this yet?? They can see what areas are popular and which are not..