Guild Stores & Trading Development

StarlightNZ

I had an idea the other day in regards to pricing and the hawkers of the game. As a guild member I can post 30 items in my Guild store. while this is sufficent I have noticed as a result items I wish to buy (say ingredients for cooking) are rarely available. I believe this is because people only wish to sell items of higher value in the stores. It also means sometimes I buy things way over priced as I don't know what their value is.

I propose that ESO makes an amendment to the Guild stores that would allow the Guild itself as an entity to post items for sale in the Guild Store. I think this would lead to guild carts (world trader locations) offering a wider range of items at a more regulated price. I also believe that some Guilds would gain a reputation for fair deals or become known as specialist supplies of a certain type of good. I also believe it would make available more lower value items such as cooking ingredients and runes. Perhaps the Guild has a limit of say (100) auctions it can run at any one time so the members of said guild still post and sell items without the Guild itself cutting them out of their fair share of sales.

I believe the current Guild store system is Fantastic, it promotes player interaction and drives a floating market place for everyone. From my experience an Auction house that is global gives rise to nasty undercutting, an impersonal trading experience and bots that *** the world of goods for real players. Other MMO's I have played in the past have been out-rightly ruined by global trading systems that are corrupted by a select few greedy people. I love my Guild I enjoy the trading system as it is and I'd hate to see it change just to cater to lazy people who expect eveything at the click of a single button.

I think this small alteration would provide significant changes to the availability of goods for the common people of Tamriel without adversely killing the market for said goods. I do hope someone in ESO reads this and takes the idea, refines it and makes the change.

Yours Sincerely
StarlightNZ

P.S. I love your game, its awesome !

P.P.S If this idea does get used I'd love a Tee Shirt or something ; )

ThePonzzz

The Guild Stores are a ways off before they are perfected. I think a better solution would be to allow X number of items for sale per category. Currently, most people are either selling V14 items or traits. But if categories had limits, instead of a hard cap on inventory, you'd probably see more materials for sale.

Elsonso

Not every guild is trying to sell only high end items or is selling at crazy prices.

You need to know where to look. Some of the off-the-path traders in the mid level zones (Deshaan, Shadowfen, Grahtwood, Greenshade, Stormhaven, Rivenspire), sell low to midlevel items for a lot less than what you find in other places.

I can buy bait for decent prices at a trader in Malabal Tor most weeks.

AureateRN

StarlightNZ wrote: »

I love my Guild I enjoy the trading system as it is and I'd hate to see it change just to cater to lazy people who expect eveything at the click of a single button.


Yours Sincerely
StarlightNZ

P.S. I love your game, its awesome !

P.P.S If this idea does get used I'd love a Tee Shirt or something ; )

The main issue for me is that there's no universally available and reliable pricing index. Yes, there are AddOns, but they clutter my screen and mess with the UI, ESPECIALLY after patches. The people who design them get tired of updating them every few weeks and it's just a big pain in the butt-end trying to sell either within the guild or to the public at large at a fair price without over-pricing, which I do NOT want to do, or under-pricing, which is just foolish. That does not make me lazy, it makes me a good citizen of the gaming community who values integrity.

What it does not make me is a lazy person who expects anything at the "click of a single button." Quite the opposite; I am doing my first play-through, aside from required group content, 100% solo rather than having guild-mates or some in-game "significant other" carry my *ahem* lazy behind. I earn my own progress! I make my own things. I am self-sufficient and really don't like having guilds shoved down my throat just so I can make enough gold to subsist in the game. I, too, love this game and I am very optimistic about the direction I see things headed.

My point to "Starlight" (no comment) is that ANY system can and will be abused. I have seen guild members from one of the largest/most popular guilds I have the good fortune to have been accepted into (despite my "lazy" solitary ways) beg for items or buy them from other members at a greatly reduced rate just to then turn around and sell them either via zone chat spam or via another guild in another alliance. The greedy people that the "guild rather than free market auction house system" is allegedly protecting us from will ALWAYS find a way, and prices are still going to fluctuate wildly, no matter what. You cannot put artificial controls on human nature, no matter how many ad hominem attacks and sweepingly inaccurate generalizations you make about people you presume to be terribly flawed because they don't think exactly as you do.

The current ZOS stance is more about protecting their bottom line than it is about providing an ideal gaming experience for players, but I'm sure you figured that out with all your many years of gaming experience, Starbright...er light...er whatever your name is. Open markets are inherently more difficult to manage, take up more resources and would simply cost ZOS more money than they are currently willing to spend. Hopefully in the future they will be secure enough in the game's success to give us more of what we as players want in the game, and for the moment I completely understand their position.

That said, I've already seen a great deal of positive progress. From the window of time I "lazily" participated in closed beta to game launch, huge strides were made and from April to now some truly significant improvements (and some nerfing I'm not thrilled with) has occurred, so I hold out every hope, no, expectation that ZOS will find a way to develop a player-friendly buying and selling platform that does not force every player to own and maintain unwanted AddOns AND waste hours and hours of precious gaming time searching out appropriate selling and buying prices for the goods they create and need. For a game in it's infancy it's an early walker for sure. I am looking forward to watching it continue to grow because there's never been one like it, and thank (fill in the god(s) of your alliance here) they didn't go the direction of EVERY OTHER GAME and make a WoW clone of themselves! I'd forgive almost anything for that alone!

"Lazily" yours,

M. T.
MSN, RNC, NICU
Former US Army

PS... Forgive the length of this semi-necro post. My next few will be extra short in balance. I promise.

Wizzo91

AureateRN wrote: »

StarlightNZ wrote: »

I love my Guild I enjoy the trading system as it is and I'd hate to see it change just to cater to lazy people who expect eveything at the click of a single button.


Yours Sincerely
StarlightNZ

P.S. I love your game, its awesome !

P.P.S If this idea does get used I'd love a Tee Shirt or something ; )

The main issue for me is that there's no universally available and reliable pricing index. Yes, there are AddOns, but they clutter my screen and mess with the UI, ESPECIALLY after patches. The people who design them get tired of updating them every few weeks and it's just a big pain in the butt-end trying to sell either within the guild or to the public at large at a fair price without over-pricing, which I do NOT want to do, or under-pricing, which is just foolish. That does not make me lazy, it makes me a good citizen of the gaming community who values integrity.

What it does not make me is a lazy person who expects anything at the "click of a single button." Quite the opposite; I am doing my first play-through, aside from required group content, 100% solo rather than having guild-mates or some in-game "significant other" carry my *ahem* lazy behind. I earn my own progress! I make my own things. I am self-sufficient and really don't like having guilds shoved down my throat just so I can make enough gold to subsist in the game. I, too, love this game and I am very optimistic about the direction I see things headed.

My point to "Starlight" (no comment) is that ANY system can and will be abused. I have seen guild members from one of the largest/most popular guilds I have the good fortune to have been accepted into (despite my "lazy" solitary ways) beg for items or buy them from other members at a greatly reduced rate just to then turn around and sell them either via zone chat spam or via another guild in another alliance. The greedy people that the "guild rather than free market auction house system" is allegedly protecting us from will ALWAYS find a way, and prices are still going to fluctuate wildly, no matter what. You cannot put artificial controls on human nature, no matter how many ad hominem attacks and sweepingly inaccurate generalizations you make about people you presume to be terribly flawed because they don't think exactly as you do.

The current ZOS stance is more about protecting their bottom line than it is about providing an ideal gaming experience for players, but I'm sure you figured that out with all your many years of gaming experience, Starbright...er light...er whatever your name is. Open markets are inherently more difficult to manage, take up more resources and would simply cost ZOS more money than they are currently willing to spend. Hopefully in the future they will be secure enough in the game's success to give us more of what we as players want in the game, and for the moment I completely understand their position.

That said, I've already seen a great deal of positive progress. From the window of time I "lazily" participated in closed beta to game launch, huge strides were made and from April to now some truly significant improvements (and some nerfing I'm not thrilled with) has occurred, so I hold out every hope, no, expectation that ZOS will find a way to develop a player-friendly buying and selling platform that does not force every player to own and maintain unwanted AddOns AND waste hours and hours of precious gaming time searching out appropriate selling and buying prices for the goods they create and need. For a game in it's infancy it's an early walker for sure. I am looking forward to watching it continue to grow because there's never been one like it, and thank (fill in the god(s) of your alliance here) they didn't go the direction of EVERY OTHER GAME and make a WoW clone of themselves! I'd forgive almost anything for that alone!

"Lazily" yours,

M. T.
MSN, RNC, NICU
Former US Army

PS... Forgive the length of this semi-necro post. My next few will be extra short in balance. I promise.

Nothing more to say. Totally agree.