Anonymous sales listings

Arrodisia · January 1

This suggestion is mostly self explanatory. Total sales should be tracked natively in game. No names should appear on listings on vendors or in TTC. It would remove a lot of the bloat, and a variety of problems currently on the live servers, most especially the excessive gold selling.

Arrodisia · January 1

There is one small edit. I accidentally left out one word. The last line should read.

"It would remove a lot of the bloat, and curb a variety of problems currently on the live servers, most especially the excessive gold selling."

wolfie1.0. · January 1

Arrodisia wrote: »

This suggestion is mostly self explanatory. Total sales should be tracked natively in game. No names should appear on listings on vendors or in TTC. It would remove a lot of the bloat, and a variety of problems currently on the live servers, most especially the excessive gold selling.

How would it curb gold selling exactly? Because I dont see how your suggestion would make a dent in it.

Arrodisia · January 1

Interesting question. So to answer, it would be at least one step harder to find someone's specific wares to trade for real money if their names aren't on it anywhere. Plus, they probably would have to join the target's guild or trade directly which would make it easier for devs to track them and their alts down faster. Washing goods would also be a step more difficult.

Would it completely eliminate it? I highly doubt it, but it would slow down and deter some. Doing nothing won't help it. So maybe they could at least try something, which has other plus points. Guild leaders and players wouldn't have to track sales anymore. That's a huge win all by itself.

I honestly, think. Most players will be equally interested in having less trolling going on and less annoying add ons to install. Some of the players in my guild liked the idea. So I put it here.

johnjetau · January 1

Arrodisia wrote: »

Interesting question. So to answer, it would be at least one step harder to find someone's specific wares to trade for real money if their names aren't on it anywhere. Plus, they probably would have to join the target's guild or trade directly which would make it easier for devs to track them and their alts down faster. Washing goods would also be a step more difficult.

Would it completely eliminate it? I highly doubt it, but it would slow down and deter some. Doing nothing won't help it. So maybe they could at least try something, which has other plus points. Guild leaders and players wouldn't have to track sales anymore. That's a huge win all by itself.

I honestly, think. Most players will be equally interested in having less trolling going on and less annoying add ons to install. Some of the players in my guild liked the idea. So I put it here.

???

If someone is buying items for real life money, they'd already be in communication with one another and would already know where to go.

And it would be easy for the gold buyer to know what items the seller is doing cause it would be the stack of 200 Mundane Rune for 3Million gold for example.

Your suggestion would not in the slightest stop gold sellers.

I've been part of guilds who have turned a blind eye to such trades, cause of the fees the guild receives from said transactions.

Cooperharley · January 1

Arrodisia wrote: »

Interesting question. So to answer, it would be at least one step harder to find someone's specific wares to trade for real money if their names aren't on it anywhere. Plus, they probably would have to join the target's guild or trade directly which would make it easier for devs to track them and their alts down faster. Washing goods would also be a step more difficult.

Would it completely eliminate it? I highly doubt it, but it would slow down and deter some. Doing nothing won't help it. So maybe they could at least try something, which has other plus points. Guild leaders and players wouldn't have to track sales anymore. That's a huge win all by itself.

I honestly, think. Most players will be equally interested in having less trolling going on and less annoying add ons to install. Some of the players in my guild liked the idea. So I put it here.

This would not curb gold selling at all. Posting things anonymously if you want to, sure. I don’t see the problem with that.

If you buy gold you’re directly talking to someone. This would do absolutely nothing for that

Arrodisia · January 1

johnjetau wrote: »

Arrodisia wrote: »

Interesting question. So to answer, it would be at least one step harder to find someone's specific wares to trade for real money if their names aren't on it anywhere. Plus, they probably would have to join the target's guild or trade directly which would make it easier for devs to track them and their alts down faster. Washing goods would also be a step more difficult.

Would it completely eliminate it? I highly doubt it, but it would slow down and deter some. Doing nothing won't help it. So maybe they could at least try something, which has other plus points. Guild leaders and players wouldn't have to track sales anymore. That's a huge win all by itself.

I honestly, think. Most players will be equally interested in having less trolling going on and less annoying add ons to install. Some of the players in my guild liked the idea. So I put it here.

???

If someone is buying items for real life money, they'd already be in communication with one another and would already know where to go.

And it would be easy for the gold buyer to know what items the seller is doing cause it would be the stack of 200 Mundane Rune for 3Million gold for example.

Your suggestion would not in the slightest stop gold sellers.

I've been part of guilds who have turned a blind eye to such trades, cause of the fees the guild receives from said transactions.

I didn't claim. They would definitely be stopped. This was also about multiple annoying issues which can use a change for the better. You literally quoted me saying it wouldn't be eliminated, at least not with this one measure alone. It's an idea and ideas can be fleshed out, combined with other ideas, and so on.

Also, we should remember the rampant undercutting and with this we can now begin fleshing out the idea.

Players aren't always in direct contact with their gold seller, especially if they value their real life assets and privacy at all. Besides, we can list something and quite often within a couple minutes, sometimes within seconds, another player has undercut the items. Maybe if the devs combined anonymity and bunching up the sales of same items to force the lowest items on a vendor to be sold first not every transaction would happen quite so fast.

Here's why.

Imho, not being able to directly get to the often overpriced wares being traded for money, without purchasing other cheaper items is an overlooked flaw in the system. The gold seller having to purchase the other items first in order to reach those overpriced ones, or change/cancel the transaction imho would make it less attractive to do in the volume it's been happening.

The money being spent to play should be going to the MMO, not to gold sellers.

It's a topic, MMO's are generally burdened with. If any MMO found a perfect solution, all games would already have it or no? That doesn't mean an MMO should rollover and try nothing new at all.

Many leaders turn a blind eye for the gold and sometimes even RMT profit and yet some don't. I'm trying to offer ideas, hear other player's ideas and even have players help tweak each others ideas until something which works even a little is formed.

The system as it is, has become way too corrupted. It's time for change.

The original idea was made to help with multiple problems plaguing the live servers, not just the gold selling, and since my guild mates like it. I posted it here, which means other players are hoping for a solution on those fronts as well.

I will be posting multiple ideas over the next few weeks about different parts of in game systems which can benefit from more anonymity, some systems need mild and some more extensive upgrades and/or overhauls, not just trade. I hope to hear other solutions and tweaks from other players as well. So the current and future players have less problems finding their fun in ESO.

Arrodisia · January 1

Cooperharley wrote: »

Arrodisia wrote: »

Interesting question. So to answer, it would be at least one step harder to find someone's specific wares to trade for real money if their names aren't on it anywhere. Plus, they probably would have to join the target's guild or trade directly which would make it easier for devs to track them and their alts down faster. Washing goods would also be a step more difficult.

Would it completely eliminate it? I highly doubt it, but it would slow down and deter some. Doing nothing won't help it. So maybe they could at least try something, which has other plus points. Guild leaders and players wouldn't have to track sales anymore. That's a huge win all by itself.

I honestly, think. Most players will be equally interested in having less trolling going on and less annoying add ons to install. Some of the players in my guild liked the idea. So I put it here.

This would not curb gold selling at all. Posting things anonymously if you want to, sure. I don’t see the problem with that.

If you buy gold you’re directly talking to someone. This would do absolutely nothing for that

I don't believe gold sellers are always directly in contact with every sale, since it's common knowledge in the internet that isn't always the case. I mentioned this in the answer to another post. Simple searches tell usenough and this isn't always true. Not forgetting to mention some gold sellers are straight up scammers and can "in many cases" get to your personal information, even steal your credit cards, banking information and that's just for starters.

Anyway, to stay on topic I thought maybe if it were combined with other measures it may do more. For example, by implimenting another change at the same time. Players would no longer be able to pick out the price they choose. They would have to buy the current cheapest ones. The logic behind these 2 together is since a lot of gold sellers often sell their items moderately to highly overpriced, that would push extra costs on them to have to purchase every item undercutting it.

Who knows maybe even the purpose of guilds could get an overhaul to be more balanced and not so extremely focused on trade. Bidding 10 vendors is ridiculous and having no guild oriented gameplay goals or benefits to work towards together is also a missed opportunity to get players busy playing again.

It's not a catch all solution, but I do think bundling up some kind of deterance is long overdue and it's better than doing nothing at all, especially with the high level of corruption in the system. There's no limit to how many ideas can be bundled together to see some improvement on that front.

Tandor · January 1

Arrodisia wrote: »

I will be posting multiple ideas over the next few weeks about different parts of in game systems which can benefit from more anonymity, some systems need mild and some more extensive upgrades and/or overhauls, not just trade. I hope to hear other solutions and tweaks from other players as well. So the current and future players have less problems finding their fun in ESO.

Adding more anonymity to multiple parts of the game may lead to a situation in which multi-playing with other real people who are anonymous might as well be replaced with single player interaction with NPCs. Immersion may also be adversely affected if whenever we encounter other players in those situations they appear as anonymous.

I'm not suggesting these issues would necessarily arise from your forthcoming suggestions as I've no idea yet what they will be, but I'd simply ask that you bear them in mind when considering your suggestions.

Arrodisia · January 1

Tandor wrote: »

Arrodisia wrote: »

I will be posting multiple ideas over the next few weeks about different parts of in game systems which can benefit from more anonymity, some systems need mild and some more extensive upgrades and/or overhauls, not just trade. I hope to hear other solutions and tweaks from other players as well. So the current and future players have less problems finding their fun in ESO.

Adding more anonymity to multiple parts of the game may lead to a situation in which multi-playing with other real people who are anonymous might as well be replaced with single player interaction with NPCs. Immersion may also be adversely affected if whenever we encounter other players in those situations they appear as anonymous.

I'm not suggesting these issues would necessarily arise from your forthcoming suggestions as I've no idea yet what they will be, but I'd simply ask that you bear them in mind when considering your suggestions.

I don't see that becoming an issue. We still have friend lists to keep track of those we know, and public queue. Unless, of course, they get ignored. Then yes we should become anonymous to them in most major systems, especially ones currently being used to stalk players and monitor their activity. I fielded a lot of complaints about this as GM and still hear players complain to other GM's about this.

Unfortunately, many players don't remember what healthy online behaviour and boundaries are. That mixed with griefers, spammers and scammers becomes old and annoying fast on these servers.

DenverRalphy · January 1

Keeping listings public keeps sellers accountable. Mitigating price fixing, rampant undercutting, flipping etc..

I won't comment one way or another on the topic of flipping, because I simply just don't care. But there are many who have very passionate opinions on the matter.

hiyde · January 1

Am I misunderstanding something here?

You put out there, more than once, that "many" Guild Leaders "turn a blind eye" to laundering / RMT transactions in their guilds in order to collect the guild cut...(FYI, 80% of our kiosk bid is funded by raffles/auctions/etc, not the 3.5% we get from sales tax).

...while also advocating for seller names to be stripped from all transactions, which would remove all ability for guild management to see out-of-pattern sellers so that we can actually remove or report someone for suspected RMT.

Yes, there are a lot of GMs out there who actively try to block laundering/rmt from happening in their guilds. We even communicate with each other to identify trends / common scripts being used in guild apps. We report suspected RMT.
Stripping out seller names would directly harm these efforts.

(Meanwhile, does anyone think the gold seller is going to have any problem figuring out which stack of TA priced at 10 million gold belongs to their customer?).

It feels like there are other goals here that aren't being explained because if the goal is to battle RMT, respectfully, this is not how.

manukartofanu · January 1

Arrodisia wrote: »

This suggestion is mostly self explanatory. Total sales should be tracked natively in game. No names should appear on listings on vendors or in TTC. It would remove a lot of the bloat, and a variety of problems currently on the live servers, most especially the excessive gold selling.

Anonymous listings don’t solve a single problem, but they do add problems for trading guilds, which from that point on will no longer know who is trading and who is not.
A gold seller doesn’t need to know the in-game nickname of the person they’re selling gold to; it’s enough to know which guild it’s from, which item it is, and at what price. And that price is always so inflated that there won’t be a second listing like it.

Cooperharley · January 1

This ain’t it

mook-eb16_ESO · January 1

You just go to a website and buy gold for £3 per 1000k so it wouldn't stop anything. Zenimax has not taken action against these sites so the problem continues.

hiyde · January 1

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

You just go to a website and buy gold for £3 per 1000k so it wouldn't stop anything. Zenimax has not taken action against these sites so the problem continues.

Sure, but the discussion here is the other 1/2 of that process, how the gold is delivered, which frequently happens via Auction Houses (or in the case of ESO, Guild Traders)

DenverRalphy · January 1

Dunno why anybody needs to list items for huge sums to purchase from a gold seller.You can mail gold in-game either directly or via CoD. The practice was used in older MMO's where transfering gold was more difficult. But why need it in ESO? Heck, via trader gold is actually lost due to listing fees.

Neither selling via Guild Trader or via Mail is a private transaction as far as monitoring is concerned.

hiyde · January 1

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Dunno why anybody needs to list items for huge sums to purchase from a gold seller.You can mail gold in-game either directly or via CoD. The practice was used in older MMO's where transfering gold was more difficult. But why need it in ESO? Heck, via trader gold is actually lost due to listing fees.

Neither selling via Guild Trader or via Mail is a private transaction as far as monitoring is concerned.

I don't want to veer into a "how-to" guide, @DenverRalphy but suffice to say there are reasons it's done via kiosks vs. mail or in-person trades.

wolfie1.0. · January 2

As hiyde has specifically mentioned anonymous listings dont do anything other than remove tools from GMs hands.

And as for gold sellers, i can think of a few ways to get around it, easily. Which I wont mention here, but anyone with some critical thought can figure it out. And as for why the traders are used... well apply the same thought process.

To be quite honest, the best way to shut down these types of schemes are honestly to give GMs better tools to track out own members activities.

Arrodisia · January 3

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

As hiyde has specifically mentioned anonymous listings dont do anything other than remove tools from GMs hands.

And as for gold sellers, i can think of a few ways to get around it, easily. Which I wont mention here, but anyone with some critical thought can figure it out. And as for why the traders are used... well apply the same thought process.

To be quite honest, the best way to shut down these types of schemes are honestly to give GMs better tools to track out own members activities.

not true. it was also mentioned these things would and should already be tracked natively in the game viewable by the player and gm's via native in game tools/systems. It would definitely reduce time spent for GM's, and reduce the in game addon bloat.

Arrodisia · January 3

hiyde wrote: »

Am I misunderstanding something here?

You put out there, more than once, that "many" Guild Leaders "turn a blind eye" to laundering / RMT transactions in their guilds in order to collect the guild cut...(FYI, 80% of our kiosk bid is funded by raffles/auctions/etc, not the 3.5% we get from sales tax).

...while also advocating for seller names to be stripped from all transactions, which would remove all ability for guild management to see out-of-pattern sellers so that we can actually remove or report someone for suspected RMT.

Yes, there are a lot of GMs out there who actively try to block laundering/rmt from happening in their guilds. We even communicate with each other to identify trends / common scripts being used in guild apps. We report suspected RMT.
Stripping out seller names would directly harm these efforts.

(Meanwhile, does anyone think the gold seller is going to have any problem figuring out which stack of TA priced at 10 million gold belongs to their customer?).

It feels like there are other goals here that aren't being explained because if the goal is to battle RMT, respectfully, this is not how.

yes 1st Another player originally made that statement. The part some players here are missing is the total sales will still be natively visible to the player and the gm.

It's a game and it's the developers responsibility to track infractions against the TOS not the players. That time wasted tracking something which the devs can already can see, could possibly be time given back to players to better spend running the guilds and playing more with members. imho it's a win win for everyone to knock out a flock of birds with a couple stones since it combined with another measure will also remove some trolling and stalking as well.

spartaxoxo · January 4

Decreased transparency wouldn't do anything to combat bad actors imo. Transparency goes hand in hand with accountability. It's on the devs to take action of TOS violations but it's on all of us to report them. Decreasing the ability for guilds to hold members accountable would lead to more stuff like gold selling, not less, imo.

hiyde · January 4

Every MMO I've ever played has a "report" button, for good reason. No dev team can catch everything and they all rely on the player base for assistance.

Keeping an eye out for bad actors has had zero impact on my ability to engage with and support the players in our guilds for 18 years running. We're good.

If ZOS wants to save us time / make changes that make guilds easier to run / more engaging, GM's and Officers (including me) have a whole list of ideas, which we've happily provided over the past 11 years. I've not seen a single GM/Officer of a trading guild ask to have seller/customer info removed.

Arrodisia · January 4

Everything is transparent to the developers.

If the sales are still visible inside the guild how is there less transparency? Players outside of a guild have no need to track that information whatsoever. It's there, within the guild, period and end of story. Writing answers which exclude this part of the information doesn't make anyone think this idea is less valid. In fact, it makes players question why wouldn't some players want something that is helpful to players on more than one front?

I can see some players might be upset they can no longer stalk and troll other players and other ridiculous shenannigans. I can also understand some players got themselves a little too involved in the game, and have difficulty stepping back. However, and again it would free up valuable GM time and still be viewable information. As a GM why wouldn't you want your members to play without be bothered by scammers and trolls?

Every game uses players to police? No, not so much anymore. A lot of companies have realised many reports are fake. Regardless, they'll still take reports from players to directly solve a legitimate problem. There are games with trade systems in place where no one can report a transaction at all, and yet the devs are on top of dirty trades.

I, surely, didn't suggest to take away the report feature. Even though, there have been many cases, were false reports have been lodged against players. It's my opinion those who do such should be held equally accountable. Yet, that's another issue and it can be discussed in a separate thread. In this case, the ability to report a player will still be there. So far, none of these arguments against it seem fully genuine. Since each time pertinent information is left out, while answering, to make it appear as if no one can report anymore which is completely false.

The fact is the information would still viewable, still trackable and still reportable. It's just wouldn't be so widely possible for non guild members to troll and stalk players anymore. The feature suggested with some tweaks would actually be a win win for the developers, since less trolling drama equals more players having a positive experience on their servers and less addons will be needed when the information is tracked natively within the guild.

queenlarxene · January 4

Arrodisia wrote: »

If the sales are still visible inside the guild how is there less transparency? Players outside of a guild have no need to track that information whatsoever. It's there, within the guild, period and end of story. Writing answers which exclude this part of the information doesn't make anyone think this idea is less valid.

I think they might be excluding it because you didn't say it originally?

In any case, I don't see how that detail changes that the lion's share of spotting people doing the wrong thing is already on GM's. Surely that just compounds the problem, since now the people who could spot the patterns is much more limited?

Arrodisia · January 4

queenlarxene wrote: »

Arrodisia wrote: »

If the sales are still visible inside the guild how is there less transparency? Players outside of a guild have no need to track that information whatsoever. It's there, within the guild, period and end of story. Writing answers which exclude this part of the information doesn't make anyone think this idea is less valid.

I think they might be excluding it because you didn't say it originally?

In any case, I don't see how that detail changes that the lion's share of spotting people doing the wrong thing is already on GM's. Surely that just compounds the problem, since now the people who could spot the patterns is much more limited?

Again this still sounds like players who are overly involved in gaming and unable to step back into healthy gaming. The devs can, should be and most likely are handling their own issues. Plus, It would still dial down so much trolling and remove the need for so many addons with this information being tracked natively within the game and guild. This kind of change is live and available in other games and it works. It could be a win for the devs to impliment such a change. It begs questioning. Why wouldn't GM's want their players to have less issues with scammers and trolls? Why wouldn't they want to reduce addons, especially since one of the complaints in the forums has been about too many addons?

I'm starting to notice what some others players have already mentioned in these forums. There are some players who don't want to see this game's systems improve and become more efficient. It's nice to know the developers have the final say on what's a fit for their product. It's not up to the players.

hiyde · January 4

Arrodisia wrote: »

It's nice to know the developers have the final say on what's a fit for their product. It's not up to the players.

And we, as players, have forums like this to discuss the game and make suggestions for it. I truly hope your unique suggestion gets the consideration it deserves from ZOS.

Arrodisia wrote: »

Again this still sounds like players who are overly involved in gaming and unable to step back into healthy gaming.

I don't think it's anyone's place on a forum like this to publicly call *anyone elses'* habits in a video game "overly involved" and "unhealthy".

Thanks for the conversation. Moving on.

agelonestar · January 4

I seem to remember ZoS confirming a while back that trade has minimal impact on servers - and addons only impact your local client (in the few instances where addons have crossed that line, ZoS has taken action).

Also, respectfully, you don’t seem to know how gold selling works. Nothing you do at the in-game end is going to impact real world sales that take place off platform. In fact any degree of anonymity might make things worse.