Trader Notification Glitches & "Dummy" Guild Exploitation Needs To Stop!

Anne13 · March 2017

Oh my lord it's like talking to a brick wall.

There's not once it was stated the dummy guilds appear on the same spot!
I also specifcally stated exactly which towns get covered by these dummy guilds.
You're also saying to put a bid on these traders..
you do realise no one knows who or where they have bid. With what guild or with how much.

Stop trying hard and reading in to it more than what your brain is capable of handling!
Guild owners do not own enough guilds to cover every area these dummy guilds might possibly bid on..

They only bid in a prime location...
otherwise what they do and why they do it would be completely pointless

It seems that some of you are trying to defend these guilds even though it's clear you have no clue as to how the trader system was intended by zos and how they glitch the traders for their finiancial benefit.

20 dummy guilds -created by 1 alliance - by several people and alternate accounts within that alliance.

They low bid every trader in the PRIME locations

If they win, it's then flipped to their big guild for 10k

Instead of a big guild paying 5m for a Deshaan trader. They use a dummy guild to exploit the system. Making it that they potentiinaly only pay 210k for a 5m on average trader.

Giving them the opportunity to take the donations and taxes made that week. For themselves..

Whilst other legit guilds can barely make enough to bid legitimately.

I repeat always prime areas
I repeat no one knows where or how much has been bid or whether a dummy guild has bid 200k or whether a legit guild has bid 5m

It's all blind folded and narrowed down to certain prime locations.

Some guilds do not have the gold or the number of guilds to get all those potential dummy spots covered.

Majority of the time only larger guilds and this alliances dummy guilds will bid in the prime locations. Due to the mass price tag..
sometimes it's possible that no one bids on a trader in one of these prime locations at all

Which is an easy win for their dummy guild, flipped by their main guild. Pocketed 4.8m profit and have a trader in a prime location.

Anne13 · March 2017

there isn't enough guilds on our PS4 Eu server. Especially not enough to compete with a mega alliance, dummy guilds and fake accounts.

Maybe this is where the confusion is.

Some may think, there's not enough non alliance big guilds to cover what they do. So their dummy guilds can not potentially get a trader for 200k in a prime location.

Some of you do get it and thank you for your comments. I fully stand by the 2 suggestions I made previously.

Make it so guilds can not disband whilst owning a live trader or
If a guild does disban whilst owning a live trader. That live trader will be frozen from use for the rest of that week.

It's quiet simple and I'm sure pretty simple to implement. I'd like to hope anyway

Nilsthebland · March 2017

Im glad to see this issue is finally getting some attention. As some already have mentioned, preventing guilds who are on a trader is the way to stop this practice.

Nilsthebland · March 2017

preventing guilds from disbanding*

Nilsthebland · March 2017

Anne13 wrote: »

Oh my lord it's like talking to a brick wall.

There's not once it was stated the dummy guilds appear on the same spot!
I also specifcally stated exactly which towns get covered by these dummy guilds.
You're also saying to put a bid on these traders..
you do realise no one knows who or where they have bid. With what guild or with how much.

Stop trying hard and reading in to it more than what your brain is capable of handling!
Guild owners do not own enough guilds to cover every area these dummy guilds might possibly bid on..

They only bid in a prime location...
otherwise what they do and why they do it would be completely pointless

It seems that some of you are trying to defend these guilds even though it's clear you have no clue as to how the trader system was intended by zos and how they glitch the traders for their finiancial benefit.

20 dummy guilds -created by 1 alliance - by several people and alternate accounts within that alliance.

They low bid every trader in the PRIME locations

If they win, it's then flipped to their big guild for 10k

Instead of a big guild paying 5m for a Deshaan trader. They use a dummy guild to exploit the system. Making it that they potentiinaly only pay 210k for a 5m on average trader.

Giving them the opportunity to take the donations and taxes made that week. For themselves..

Whilst other legit guilds can barely make enough to bid legitimately.

I repeat always prime areas
I repeat no one knows where or how much has been bid or whether a dummy guild has bid 200k or whether a legit guild has bid 5m

It's all blind folded and narrowed down to certain prime locations.

Some guilds do not have the gold or the number of guilds to get all those potential dummy spots covered.

Majority of the time only larger guilds and this alliances dummy guilds will bid in the prime locations. Due to the mass price tag..
sometimes it's possible that no one bids on a trader in one of these prime locations at all

Which is an easy win for their dummy guild, flipped by their main guild. Pocketed 4.8m profit and have a trader in a prime location.

Bingo. It really cant be made any clearer than this!

yodased · March 2017

This just doesn't make sense to me though. Why don't the tier 2 guilds just place a high bid on the trader they want? If the tier 1 guilds are blanketing the market with 200k bids, if you bid 5m then the market is 5m and they are s.o.l.

I am just not seeing how this is a racket, I want to understand but it seems like there is some conspiracy here that I don't see. The quoted post above doesn't actually make sense.

If there is not enough guilds to bid 5,000,000 gold on the "top tier" traders, then they are not top tier.

Can someone who speaks english as their first language break this down for me because it really just seems like people are upset that tier 1 guilds are using tier 2 locations to hedge their bets if they don't get their tier 1 bid. That happens every day.

I want to understand how someone can get a stall in rwal'ka for 10k or 200k while other people are getting them for 5,000,000 i really do.

Just bid 5,000,000 on the trader you want and you will get it?

Anne13 · March 2017

Again could someone please read what's been wrote. Because clearly some people can't read. The fact you're calling them tier 1, tier 2 you have no clue what you're talking about. Or more so in the PS4 Eu server.
Try reading it again, and again and eventually you might understand. But doubtful.

What you've just said doesn't align with what myself and others have said seems to be twisted in context.

yodased · March 2017

What you wrote doesn't make sense, sorry

Anne13 · March 2017

A tier 1 guild uses dummy tier 0 guilds to place low bids in tier 1 areas. They cover all tier 1 areas.

Following so far?

yodased · March 2017

yeah I understand, but just outbid the tier 0.

Anne13 · March 2017

As said mate, on PS4 Eu server there isn't enough guilds or enough gold to do so.
That alliance knows this.
For their exploit to work logically their tier 0 guilds wouldn't bid no more than 500k for a usual 5mil trader in a tier 1 area.

Not only does the legit guilds have to bid, for instance any Deshaan trader over 5 mil to be in with a chance to win against other legit guilds and their main guilds. But we also have to cover every trader in hope to stop their tier 0 guilds from obtaining a 5m trader for 200k.
With not many guilds big enough and financially stable enough to do this on the PS4 Eu server. Therefore allowing their tier 0 guilds to place low bids on every trader in a tier 1 area. Which every week at least 1 of them tier 0 traders wins. They then flip and their tier 1 guilds take over and now have a 5m trader in a tier 1 area that only cost 200k.

For us to do that we would need 23 guilds to cover every known area their tier 0 guilds would bid on in a tier 1 area

yodased · March 2017

ok to make this better understood.

A top tier guild usually bids 5,000,000 gold for a stall in a major city, but this week they use a shell guild to bid 200k and they then bid 5,000,000 on another stall in that same city. If their main guild wins, great they have now taken a spot from another guild and they effectively have two spots in the main city.

If their main guild loses, they have the shell to fall back on because they use the guilds history and rely on the assumption they will be bidding 5,000,000 on their usual stall.

So the main guild loses the 5,000,000g bid, but gets their normal stall because they disband the shell guild at the very same time someone can bid on that same stall.

This then allows them to either take the 5,000,000g themselves without anyone being the wiser because same stall or have 10,000,000 next week to push the other guilds out.

Makes a lot more sense when it was explained to me this way. If there are multiple guilds doing this, because its a blind system you won't be able to curb it unless you have multiple other guilds all bidding up the top spots.

Not too big of a problem in PC/NA because the top spots will have big bids on them, but when you don't have multiple big bids on the spots, you can have a problem.

Royaji · March 2017

So, the economical situation on PS4 EU is just that bad and some of the top spots don't go for high prices. Yeah, it sucks, but I still can't see a major issue here. If they have won a 200k bid on a trader it means noone else wanted to bet more on it and everything is fair and square. If it actually was a 5 million location, as you state, they would've never won the bet with only 200k.

So the whole thing works exactly the same as on the other servers, just some of the traders in capitals are actually not top spots and are used as insurance by major guilds. It's not exactly good but I still don't think that's the end of the world. As I said earlier, they only won the bet because noone else wanted to bet on this trader anyway...

ComboBreaker88 · March 2017

The bigest issue is that any guild with 50 people can bid. Instead they should have a minimum item limit to bid. For example a guild can't bid on a trader unless it has at least 3000 items for sale. And they should also implement a cost of bid reduction for guilds that can maintain a set kiosk for a prolonged period. It is beyond frustrating when you go to a major city and find a gud with five items in it just because someone in that guild had an extra couple million so they out bid a solid trading guild.

Running a good trading guild takes a tremendous amount of work. And it's quite thankless. Often times you are fronting the guilds bids out of pocket just so your members have a good spot.

You cant blame them for trying to cover their bases. I mean it takes a bunch of extra work to bid on multiple locations so tour main guild has a spot. At least they are trying to keep the guild with a store front. Because @ZOS_GinaBruno (zos in general) offers ZERO support for guild management. And guilds are what make the game for thousands of loyal players.

If it weren't for my guild I would have just quit a long time ago because ZOS does nothing to support the communities within its community.

Anne13 · March 2017

Royaji you're missing the point considerbly.
You're not getting why they use dummy guilds and the benefits they get by doing so.. and the way zos made the trading system and how they intended it to work.
Why give an option upon losing a bid to search for a trader that's free to hire for 10k
When dummy guilds cover these ( only in prime locations ) to their advantage of saving x amount of gold each week.

It's simple...

Implement so that no guild can disban whilst owning a live trader location.

Or if a guild does disban during owning a live trader location. That trader location is blocked from use until the following trader reset.

How hard can this be?

DaveMoeDee · March 2017

film wrote: »

Tabbycat wrote: »

Instead of creating a bunch of so called dummy guilds, wouldn't it be more lucrative to just create an Alliance with a main guild and 4 sister guilds?

A Guild Alliance would seem far less sinister than "dummy guilds".

Just my two cents.

I'm not sure what's more lucrative: Joining a Guild Alliance or selling the 'dummy guild' spots to others for bid cost + finders fee?

How would they make money that way? If the other guild has that much money to fork over, they could have won the bid on their own. The profit margin would, at best, be tiny.

Edit: I figured it out right after I posted this. If there are 7 kiosks in Belkarth, they would place low bids on all 7 hoping that the many guilds interested in Belkarth would end up with their bids clustered on a few traders.

Is bidding done on a single trader? If so, that should be changed so that the bid is for the area. For example, you would bid for Belkarth, and the top 7 bids would get kiosks.

DaveMoeDee · March 2017

Anne13 wrote: »

They will always been in one of the 4 main towns. Both main and dummy guilds.

I impose that they could implement that any guild that owns a trader location can not disband a guild during this ownership. Or, if a guild disbands whilst owning a trader location that location then becomes unavailable, frozen out until the following trader switch.

Then they can remove all competition by making all kiosks unavailable besides their own.

DaveMoeDee · March 2017

Egonieser wrote: »

Hyrianeth wrote: »

This wouldnt happen on a global auction house.

My body is ready for your salt.

Yeah, it would be even worse. The richest players would buy out everything worthwhile and relisting for huge prices and cornering the market and dominating the entire economy, instead of just a few guildstores. Think before you talk mate.

That's awesome if they will buy up all my stuff.

Anne13 · March 2017

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Anne13 wrote: »

They will always been in one of the 4 main towns. Both main and dummy guilds.

I impose that they could implement that any guild that owns a trader location can not disband a guild during this ownership. Or, if a guild disbands whilst owning a trader location that location then becomes unavailable, frozen out until the following trader switch.

Then they can remove all competition by making all kiosks unavailable besides their own.

That's actually a very good point! They're sad enough to actually do this.

Anne13 · March 2017

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Edit: I figured it out right after I posted this. If there are 7 kiosks in Belkarth, they would place low bids on all 7 hoping that the many guilds interested in Belkarth would end up with their bids clustered on a few traders.

Is bidding done on a single trader? If so, that should be changed so that the bid is for the area. For example, you would bid for Belkarth, and the top 7 bids would get kiosks.

Yes Dave! Finally someone gets it first time

They do this in all 4 prime locations.
Because bids in these prime locations are stupidly high and not many large trading guilds are able to afford this large price tag. These traders go free for hire but are covered by said dummy guilds. Plus the usual high bid with their main guilds.

They benefit in many ways.
All other honest guilds lose out in many ways.

No one should condone this.

Anne13 · March 2017

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Is bidding done on a single trader? If so, that should be changed so that the bid is for the area. For example, you would bid for Belkarth, and the top 7 bids would get kiosks.

Yes one bid per trader.
But If they have 20 guilds in their alliance and 20 dummy guilds. The possibilities are endless.

The_Smilemeister · March 2017

Hi guys. I've been reading back and forth between the post and I'm glad to see people taking some form of interest.

Even if it's disagreeing with some of (or all) mine and other people's points raised, not understanding how the exploit is impacting trading, or even the occasion bit of banter, I'm glad this issue has gotten the attention it needs.

I just hope Zenimax sees this post and decides to do something about the exploit.

The_Smilemeister · March 2017

Just found another post by @PathwayM.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/315722/potential-guild-trader-exploit-please-investigate-and-fix-asap

Assuming this was the first post speaking out about this issue (and by the looks of it even before the practice started to spread), how comes Zenimax has allowed it to escalate and continue for as long as it has?

Why did you not solve an issue before it evolved into a real problem?

Carokube · March 2017

For the sake of argument, I would like to make a theoretical suggestion and am curious to hear your reponse:

1) Identify a 'prime' spot that a dummy (Guild Dummy) guild has bid on this week. Have your 'real' guild (Guild Awesome) bid on this spot. 150k or 200k or whatever you think it would take to outbid a dummy.

2) Who wins the spot next week? Is it 3A) your "Guild Awesome", is it 3B) "Guild Dummy" (because you underestimated how much the dummy guild was bidding), or 3C) one of the "big" guilds from trade consortium (Guild MEGAMART)? (Or something else).

3A) If Guild Awesome wins, Guild Awesome should stay in this spot, and keep increasing their bid week over week. You may lose some weeks, but since you can guess at some point in the future it will be open again, just keep on keeping on. If you're a good trader, you will make more on this prime location in a week than you would in whatever little spot you were bidding at before could make in 4 weeks, so if you could hold onto it for 2 weeks a month it's still totally worth it. Eventually you will establish yourself at this spot, you'll win your bid more weeks than not, and Guild Dummy won't be a problem for you.

3B) If it was Guild Dummy: Up your bid next week and try again on this same spot. Then see 3A for your potential path to success.

3C) If it was Guild MEGAMART: If this is who won, then I assume Guild MEGAMART bid on this trader because they knew the spot would be open and it's a prime spot. But apparently Guild MEGAMART isn't staying here, because if they were, I don't understand why there was ever an issue in the first place. So try your bid again next week, maybe increase it a little. Then see 3A for a potential path to success.

4) Theoretically all of these paths could be the way for Guild Awesome to make it onto the big scene. But it takes patience. Maybe my 3C scenario is incorrect, and Guild MEGAMART stays here forever. Just pick a different Guild Dummy trader and try the process again.

Downsides: This could take a long time and loyal followers. But anyone on PC/NA who has a big trading guild went through a lot of trial-and-error week after week to get into their established spots. It took time and a crap ton of hard work. If you want to be a top tier trader, your money is no longer your own. You and your leadership team's pockets empty directly into the guild bank.

What just doesn't sit right with me about this whole Dummy guild situation is why aren't there established guilds in one of these spots keeping these low-balling bids from ever being an issue? I'm worried that they're just pushing people around and acting all scary, but if you had enough guilds willing to just stand there ground and say 'I'm not gonna take it anymore,' they'd have no where else left to go.

s7732425ub17_ESO · March 2017

Make the trader reserved for a week even if the guild disbands.

/fixed.

Pallmor · March 2017

Unless you get a refund for your trader when you disband a guild, I fail to see how these dummy guilds would be of any benefit. You still have to pay the winning bid, right?

Nullmagic · March 2017

I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe it's already been put out there, but here is how I would fix this problem (OP you may not like it).

All ZoS needs to do is allow guilds to bid on as many traders as they want. Once the bidding is complete, they can choose any single trader for which they've the winning bit, and all the others will then go to the next highest bidder. Problem solved, system more fair.

PathwayM · March 2017

So one thing that this exploit allows is for particular larger guilds to bully out competition with little risk. This happens when a large guild bids on a different spot that isn't their norm and had a backup guild bidding on their normal spot. If the guild loses their "bully" bid they didn't really risk anything because they have a backup. This behavior makes it extremely hard for small guilds to compete because the large guilds don't risk much and can push their competitors out.

Carokube · March 2017

PathwayM wrote: »

So one thing that this exploit allows is for particular larger guilds to bully out competition with little risk. This happens when a large guild bids on a different spot that isn't their norm and had a backup guild bidding on their normal spot. If the guild loses their "bully" bid they didn't really risk anything because they have a backup. This behavior makes it extremely hard for small guilds to compete because the large guilds don't risk much and can push their competitors out.

It sounds like even if ZOS changed the rules such that these dummy guilds could not disband, the problems would still exist to some extent because it's still worth it for them to eek you out. The problem seems to be more that there is a deficit in the number of large trading guilds that exist on the PS4 server.

Anne13 · March 2017

Pallmor wrote: »

Unless you get a refund for your trader when you disband a guild, I fail to see how these dummy guilds would be of any benefit. You still have to pay the winning bid, right?

The bids between their dummy guild and their main guild is approx 4mil
If they win with their dummy guild they save average 4mil

The main guild who lost gets a refund of say 5mil bid
The dummy guild wins another prime allocation usually won with a 5 mil bid. But this time it was not covered and their dummy guild won it for 200k

They disband the dummy guild, give it to the main guild who lost. This gets them a prime location for 200k let's say plus the 5mil they had refunded for losing with their main guild

If at least that happens once a week
That's a pure profit of 4.8 mil

^^ that's why. Well one of the reasons
The other reason is to make sure none gets a free trader to hire. At trader switch if a guild loses

The other reason is to increase, by a lot their chances of still having a prime location despite losing 5m.

With the PS4 Eu server not having enough guilds that's capable of countering their dummy guilds.

The chances of their dummy guild winning a 200k bid in a 5mil average location is almost guaranteed.