Too Many Guilds... Not Enough Kiosk

Sneak_Thief

I see many spots where an NPC guild traders should be added, so when are they coming?

There are several issues regarding traders, which are becoming problematic.

Last week I screenshot all the guild traders in all locations (NA Server), 126 total. Today I go back through and realize that here are 38 new traders that didn't have a kiosk last week. Which means 38 traders are without a kiosk because they lost one, not including the many others who may have also bid.

And here is the dilemma #1, there really is no traders left when the traders reset.. I lost a bid this morning and had several people looking just minutes after the reset and not one to be found.. weeks ago I remember getting traders several hours after the fact..

Dilemma #2, spots which have 4-6 traders are starting to cost way more than its worth, which is causing a lot of guilds with legitimate inventories to lose bids, which moves along to..

Dilemma #3, when these large guilds lose bids, due to the shear fact there is way too many guilds and lack of kiosk, there is virtually no "back-up" for them to go get.

And the end result is you have way to many guilds with only 1-2 pages or so of inventory consuming majority of the locations, leaving guilds with larger inventories with no way to provide gamer's with their selections.

I visit these same 126 kiosk daily, I see the trend and its getting worse.
There needs to be a solution ZOS.

ZOS PLEASE CONSIDER THIS PROPOSED SOLUTION..

To combat the fact that large guilds simply are "out of luck" when failing a bid, since outright buying an unbid trader is fairly non existent.. Please consider this alternative.. Let us make a secondary bid, yes, we would need have the capital in our bank to do so, but would give us an option to hire back ups.. (If both bids won, the primary would be your trader and the runner up of the secondary would get their kiosk)

This decision would ultimately bridge the gap from 100g bids and overpriced city kiosk.. Why? Because we wouldn't feel the need to put all our eggs in one basket (which drives up the cost), this will allow legitimate stores to have backups(while weeding out stores who sell nothing). The only reason why these out of the way traders get taken is because they only need 1 bid, so this solution would ensure that traders have to make an effort to actually bid and not just get it for 100g or being the only bidder.

Slurg

If there were more kiosks even more guilds would put in a bid for them, which would lead to demands to put in more kiosks, then more guilds putting in for them, etc until Tamriel is full of kiosks. Up side is they'd probably be cheaper to get.

I have not done as thorough research but I have many times experienced the kiosks with less than one page of items on Monday shopping excursion. It would be nice to have a minimum number of items in the store requirement to bid.

AlexDougherty

The thing I notice is that despite the fact they have one purpose, you have to select the guild (I mean he/she only has one guild), you don't open up immediately into the guild store (which you should really)

So maybe they could let a guild vendor have two or three guilds to choose from, not sure if this would add to lag, but it's worth thinking about ZOS.

AlnilamE

I definitely agree we should have more guild traders. The infrastructure seems to be in place for that, too.

Though if you are placing your bids on a trader that has competition and you lose it, you can't fault other guilds for having a different strategy and going for a smaller trader to begin with.

Sneak_Thief

AlnilamE wrote: »

I definitely agree we should have more guild traders. The infrastructure seems to be in place for that, too.

Though if you are placing your bids on a trader that has competition and you lose it, you can't fault other guilds for having a different strategy and going for a smaller trader to begin with.

No its nothing to do with faulting, but the current issue is there is no options, which did exist which is why you could buy em on the spot.. the issue is that's not viable anymore. But yeah the infrastructure is here, Id like to see them make use of it.

Sneak_Thief

AlexDougherty wrote: »

The thing I notice is that despite the fact they have one purpose, you have to select the guild (I mean he/she only has one guild), you don't open up immediately into the guild store (which you should really)

So maybe they could let a guild vendor have two or three guilds to choose from, not sure if this would add to lag, but it's worth thinking about ZOS.

Yea this may be an option too

ers101284b14_ESO

I think they are waiting to see how many they actually need. If I remember right they did it with bidding so that a guild that can afford a kiosk the first month wont be able to the second month so that all guilds can cycle through. They may still be tracking to see if they need more or not. Or not who knows.

Sneak_Thief

Slurg wrote: »

If there were more kiosks even more guilds would put in a bid for them, which would lead to demands to put in more kiosks, then more guilds putting in for them, etc until Tamriel is full of kiosks. Up side is they'd probably be cheaper to get.

I have not done as thorough research but I have many times experienced the kiosks with less than one page of items on Monday shopping excursion. It would be nice to have a minimum number of items in the store requirement to bid.

Yeah I agree completely here about a minimum number of pages or items... the problem I see is many guilds have inactive players thus have their 50 but then you only see 30 items listed.. its a problem..

In regards to more kiosk = guilds.. while more guilds would take them up, this doesn't correlate to more people making guilds because there are more kiosk..

Sneak_Thief

Or maybe even a change like this.. 50 players get you a store, but 100 allows you to bid on a kiosk, this may address the problematic portion.

chipputer

I'm not seeing the problem?

Maybe I'm not fully comprehending your post (and please explain to me that I'm not, don't worry about hurting my feelings), but the way I see it is that the kiosks are built upon a capitalism style competition where the higher bid, whether it has more inventory or not, gets the spot. If a guild with only a few pages gets to sell their things, while your trade guild doesn't, then so be it. If you're a trade guild and not moving any product unless you have a kiosk then I think you have a bigger problem than not having a kiosk, that being all supply and no demand within your own guild.

Slurg

Sneak_Thief wrote: »

Or maybe even a change like this.. 50 players get you a store, but 100 allows you to bid on a kiosk, this may address the problematic portion.

I wouldn't want to see a member barrier to small guilds that actually have things to sell. And I was once in a dying trade guild that had over 200 members inactive over a month before I left it. Lots of members doesn't equal lots of items for sale.

The worst kiosk I saw had two items for sale on a Monday morning after the change. Yay for capitalism and all but it starts to look like griefing legitimate trade guilds at that point.

By the way there are tons of existing guilds that don't bother with kiosks now but might if they seemed more plentiful and cheaper to get. I just have to wonder if people keep demanding more kiosks and ZOS provides them for every little 1 trader plus 50 inactives guild then where does it end?

Sylvyr

This current system is grossly bad.
This bidding system is a c--p shoot, unless you have spies which can you give some edge.
If you miss a bid you can easily lose members to another trade guild. If you miss consecutive weeks, probably a lot worse.

As a thought experiment, what if ZOS reduced guild merchants? That would mean less trade guilds, less items available to all, super high bidding (I'd bet most guilds would have to pay out of pocket abvoe and beyond what they make in texes).
So it would seem, adding more kiosks would be better.

Even better...

All guilds should be able to have a kiosk. Either by flat fee or by tax. This limited amount and bidding system is a more lose lose than win win.

s7732425ub17_ESO

There may only be 126 kiosks, but let's be serious for a second... only 15 of those kiosks actually have guild stores worth visiting.

Pretty soon the small guild stores that are paying 300k+ to get a good spot are going to realize that they are literally throwing money away. The prices need to come down. However, you must let the market do that.

Right now one of my guilds pays 100k a week for a trader. However, the total amount of goods sold per week is actually less than 100k gold. This means that we get 10k in taxes, and are losing 90k each week. People seriously need to stop being this stupid.

radiostar

I vote for a guild having enough inventory to warrant a trader before participating in the bid process. It's a let-down to go on Mondays to shop and there's nothing to look through. Even the minimum 50 members, if each puts up 30 items for sale, that would be a lot of inventory to browse.

AlnilamE

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

There may only be 126 kiosks, but let's be serious for a second... only 15 of those kiosks actually have guild stores worth visiting.

Please keep thinking that way. I get to keep the bargains to myself. :-)

chipputer

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

There may only be 126 kiosks, but let's be serious for a second... only 15 of those kiosks actually have guild stores worth visiting.

I think it's more that there are only a few guild stores in worthwhile locations to visit.

Do I really want to go visit your store out on Bleakrock? Probably not. I'd rather the easy visit to the large number of them in Mournhold, since that's my go-to hub for deconning purposes and winding down after anything I do.

AlnilamE

chipputer wrote: »

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

There may only be 126 kiosks, but let's be serious for a second... only 15 of those kiosks actually have guild stores worth visiting.

I think it's more that there are only a few guild stores in worthwhile locations to visit.

Do I really want to go visit your store out on Bleakrock? Probably not. I'd rather the easy visit to the large number of them in Mournhold, since that's my go-to hub for deconning purposes and winding down after anything I do.

Ha! The trader in Bleakrock is right by the wayshrine and it's were I got the only purple recipe I ever bought (it was a steal and it was not a V5 recipe!). To each their own.

Heishi

Welcome to commerce. Really, it's basically a supply and demand situation. The large guilds aren't going to bogart the kiosk and pay premium price if they're not making it back. So basically we're looking for the top of a swell (thinking of it as a bell graph). This will change based on many factors. If there's a hot selling new item (like the dwemer pages) people will be spending more on kiosk to sell the hot item at a higher price and making money to support the initial cost.

Nestor

chipputer wrote: »

Do I really want to go visit your store out on Bleakrock? Probably not. I'd rather the easy visit to the large number of them in Mournhold, since that's my go-to hub for deconning purposes and winding down after anything I do.

There are two ways to look at Kiosks in the hinterlands. Most of them are real close to the Wayshrine and are easier to get to than the ones in the towns or trading hubs if your coming from the Wayshrine. The one in Bleakrock is skip and a hop from the Wayshrine. A couple of towns have kiosks close to the Wayshrines. So, for me, hitting up the kiosks in the country are easier. The problem is, there is only one kiosk there. So, this gives me less of a choice for easier access.

Here is how they should fix this:

Rural Kiosks sell for 3 or 4 guilds or have more than one kiosk at the rural locations. More people will show up then. No increase to town kiosks if they go this route. However each wayshrine that has a Kiosk set up should serve 4 guild stores.

Traveling Merchants have a random access to a Kiosks inventory, perhaps limited to the kiosks that are in that zone, or maybe Guilds that don't get a kiosk can have this avenue available to them. This introduces a lot of luck into the process, but that is what we have now really. This will give more exposure to the Guild Stores. These traveling merchants will still vendor items we want to sell and offer repair services.

Iorail

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

There may only be 126 kiosks, but let's be serious for a second... only 15 of those kiosks actually have guild stores worth visiting.

Pretty soon the small guild stores that are paying 300k+ to get a good spot are going to realize that they are literally throwing money away. The prices need to come down. However, you must let the market do that.

Right now one of my guilds pays 100k a week for a trader. However, the total amount of goods sold per week is actually less than 100k gold. This means that we get 10k in taxes, and are losing 90k each week. People seriously need to stop being this stupid.

My thoughts exactly, we keep a trader in a very good spot, but we do get more taxes than what we bid on it, every single week. With that said, I have seeing plenty of stores with nothing for sale in better spots than mine, which I know for a fact are paying well over 300k just to kick the guild there out in a form of griefing. Then they are trying to sell the spot back to the same guild or another before the next bid, which I find stupid.

Also, making bids blind to everyone but the people with rights to bid needs to happen sooner than later already.

lolo_01b16_ESO

I'm playing on the EU server, but I assume, that you can compare the situation on both servers.
I personally think that there are enough traders, it's just the problem that you can be unlucky when you have blind bids and only can bid on one trader. I know that one of my trading guilds got a "top spot" trader for 30k last week, while my other guild lost the trader right next to it while bidding 200k.
One possibillity to solve this problem would be the following:
You are allowed to bid on as much traders as you want, if you have several successful bids, you'll get the one where you bid the most. That way you can have a back up plan and the prices will adjust.

SteveCampsOut

Sneak_Thief wrote: »

And the end result is you have way to many guilds with only 1-2 pages or so of inventory consuming majority of the locations, leaving guilds with larger inventories with no way to provide gamer's with their selections.

My guild has about 3 pages of content and this past week we lost a bid on our kiosk to someone who only had 6 items in their store. It happens. I agree we need more kiosks, but we also need the bidding to be limited to income from store sales and not over inflated by guild lotteries!

xaraan

Other than adding traders when they add new zones (like the ones mentioned at quakecon) I don't think they should just add them so every guild can have one. That doesn't even make sense. As it is now, some guild stores are horrible and are probably paying way too much for the little bit they sale (We've lost bids that I thought were too much for kiosks that had only a page or two of total stuff by whoever won it, so it seems some guilds are just overpaying to hold a kiosk.) How bad most stores are, on top of how easy it is to join a major trading guild, means we really don't need more stores.

What I think they should do is allow guilds to bid on multiple locations and rank their choices, so if they lose out on a mystery bid, they don't have to sit and wait another week to try that spot again or another spot.

Sylvyr

You have X guild merchants and Y guilds that can support up to 500 members.
X times Y times 500 (assuming all guilds with traders are full 500) = TOTAL

if TOTAL < total people that want to sell goods then you have remainder which doesn't participate in the ESO version of auction house. Instead they sell in zone chat, and get demeaned for it and told to join a trade guild. So what would the solution to that be? Make more trade guilds that fight over kiosks? Making the kiosk system worse?

This system just blows. It creates way more problems than solutions, it's not inclusive to all players thus alienating/making it a pain for a segment of players, it's based on "blind" bidding (AKA more often than not, luck).

I dunno. What it comes down to is people just want to buy and sell stuff. Just that simple. It shouldn't be a convoluted system within a web of pain in the buttedness and lots of time involved.

Selling in zone chat has it's own problems, it takes time to find a buyer and seller, people harp on you, often times you are in a zone to do commerce that you aren't playing in so it takes away from play.

Either way its just another thing that makes the game a frustrating grind, like inventory maintenance and muling.

It was better before guild merchants were introduced. Maybe looking at a general auction house or zone auction house system or something... would be better than this.

I wonder how many people just sell to vendor things that others would like because it's just so much easier.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

Too many guilds on the dance floor!

AlnilamE

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

One possibillity to solve this problem would be the following:
You are allowed to bid on as much traders as you want, if you have several successful bids, you'll get the one where you bid the most. That way you can have a back up plan and the prices will adjust.

There are two issues with this:

1) when you place a bid, that money is temporarily removed from your guild bank. If you win, it's gone forever. If you lose, it goes back to your guild bank. So you would be limited in the amount of bids you can place by the total of funds in the guild bank.

2) This will effectively allow large trading guilds to hedge their bets to the exclusion of smaller guilds, and I don't think that's fair. Right now, you pick a trader that you think is worth bidding on, and if you don't think the guy in Bleakrock is it, then another guild may be able to win that trader with a small bid. If a large guild is able to cascade bids across several traders, then those smaller guilds are not likely to stand a chance.

Also, while it's nice for an active trading guild to have a trader, it's not really essential. One of my two trading guilds had a trader pretty much since I joined them, and the other one didn't for a while, then got one, then didn't and now they have one again. But people were still buying stuff internally.

Whenever I want to buy something, I always start with my own guilds (including one that isn't a trading guild but has a store) and then I go elsewhere to try and find what I need.

Sneak_Thief

SteveCampsOut wrote: »

Sneak_Thief wrote: »

And the end result is you have way to many guilds with only 1-2 pages or so of inventory consuming majority of the locations, leaving guilds with larger inventories with no way to provide gamer's with their selections.

My guild has about 3 pages of content and this past week we lost a bid on our kiosk to someone who only had 6 items in their store. It happens. I agree we need more kiosks, but we also need the bidding to be limited to income from store sales and not over inflated by guild lotteries!

Yea your right, and I don't use lotteries because we shouldn't have to.. but sadly these lotteries allow guilds to grab competitive vendors based on the fact they get members to pay for it.. when it should be based on the content of the guilds inventories and natural ability to sell. And this is the ONLY reason why I have been outbid by guild with 1-2 pages (compared to my 40), and they are getting as bad as Rawl-Kha traders by spending way more than they make back..

Sneak_Thief

chipputer wrote: »

I'm not seeing the problem?

Maybe I'm not fully comprehending your post (and please explain to me that I'm not, don't worry about hurting my feelings), but the way I see it is that the kiosks are built upon a capitalism style competition where the higher bid, whether it has more inventory or not, gets the spot. If a guild with only a few pages gets to sell their things, while your trade guild doesn't, then so be it. If you're a trade guild and not moving any product unless you have a kiosk then I think you have a bigger problem than not having a kiosk, that being all supply and no demand within your own guild.

Well here is the problem, the secondary post reset bids are failing as they are non existent.. I honestly Think we need to be able to make a secondary bid, this way large guilds aren't just s.o.l when they lose a bid.

SteveCampsOut

Sneak_Thief wrote: »

SteveCampsOut wrote: »

Sneak_Thief wrote: »

And the end result is you have way to many guilds with only 1-2 pages or so of inventory consuming majority of the locations, leaving guilds with larger inventories with no way to provide gamer's with their selections.

My guild has about 3 pages of content and this past week we lost a bid on our kiosk to someone who only had 6 items in their store. It happens. I agree we need more kiosks, but we also need the bidding to be limited to income from store sales and not over inflated by guild lotteries!

Yea your right, and I don't use lotteries because we shouldn't have to.. but sadly these lotteries allow guilds to grab competitive vendors based on the fact they get members to pay for it.. when it should be based on the content of the guilds inventories and natural ability to sell. And this is the ONLY reason why I have been outbid by guild with 1-2 pages (compared to my 40), and they are getting as bad as Rawl-Kha traders by spending way more than they make back..

I will never hold a lottery in my guild for this precise reason. It unbalances the economy and over inflates the cost of doing business. I refuse to argue about it with people that use lotteries because they have an extreme tunnel vision on the subject matter and damned the logic. If my guild goes without a kiosk for a week or two, all that does is give us a break on the cost of the kiosk and a week to make enough off our sales to bid better the following week. It's certainly not worth going ballistic over as I have witnessed other GM's doing.

AaronMB

Are those short-list guild stores getting lucky and winning/re-winning a kiosk for their guild - to create more/better business?

I joined one guild with a kiosk and they had quite a bit of stuff. The guild lost the kiosk (not for lack of trying, as far as I understand) and lots of guildies split, leaving the store thin, at least in comparison; maybe this is bad form or the culture. I don't know.

But this guild (I stuck with them because they seem to be good folks) got a kiosk again today and a decent one at that. But it's starting thinner than ideal...

SteveCampsOut

I couldn't tell you the story of the guild that out bid my guild. I was also gone most of last week for the Thanksgiving Holiday and only logged in last night t o see we had lost our bid and went to check the kiosk owner. Maybe they had more items when they first won the bid but by last night there were no more than 6 items in the whole store. I can only guess at why that was.