How does an economy develop around this guild trading system?

Thecapeo

I'm hoping PC players may be able to explain how the economy developed on the PC side. I picked up the game when it came out for PS4 and have been enjoying but I just recently joined some trade guilds and I'm struggling to see how this whole system works. It would seem to me that limited guild trader kiosks vs unlimited number of potential guilds plus the 500 person restriction leads to a lot of bottlenecking and people not being able to trade efficiently to the entire player base.

Have the game makers ever given an explanation as to why they implemented such a system as opposed the general auction house every other MMO has? Because I currently see no upside to this weird system. Issues I'm already seeing (granted there's no real economy on the PS4 servers yet):
Buying:
1. It's a raging pain in the butt to check a bunch of different kiosks just to hopefully find someone selling what you want. It's ludicrous really.
2. Comparing prices on the same items is awful. Particularly if the guilds selling what you want have their kiosks in different zones.
Selling:
1. There are no filters or any means to even examine what items you want to sell are currently going for, even within your own guild.
2. Stacks are just broken. Having to break up stacks beforehand is silly. How is it that I can't just pick the quantity I want to sell?
3. On that note, not being able to sell from your own bank is odd too. Not game breaking or anything but nonsensical all the same.
Overall:
The entire system is just a level of chore placed on the player. Too many hoops. You have to find a good active guild to begin with. That guild has to have a good kiosk spot. How is this any better than simply walking up to any market board and simply putting the stuff I found/crafted up for sale? I don't get it.

So how did this all shake out on the PC side? Did there just end up being some dominant guilds eventually? Did all the guilds goods become comparable eventually or was everything still hit or miss?

Ranique

Buying 1. It's a raging pain in the butt to check a bunch of different kiosks just to hopefully find someone selling what you want. It's ludicrous really.

Re: I'm in two trading guilds on the PC (leading one of them) and in 2 social based guilds. 95% of the time I can find in those guildstores what I want (and cause I'm a member they are all at the bank as well). The other 5% of the time I find it at one of the traders in a major town.

Buying 2. Comparing prices on the same items is awful. Particularly if the guilds selling what you want have their kiosks in different zones.

Re: On the PC we have add ons. One I use is called master merchant. It tracks the sales in all my guilds and keeps a record of it (1 month back). when I look at an item that is sold, it shows the price it is sold for and how often it is sold. It even has a nice graph and all. Sadly on the console there are no add-ons. I think they should take the top 50 most popular addons and put them in the console games with an option to turn them on. This is the wrong place for such a suggestion, but feel free to do so in the general discussion. As a PC player I would very much support it!

Selling 1. There are no filters or any means to even examine what items you want to sell are currently going for, even within your own guild.

re: this is again on the PC by the add on.

Selling 2. Stacks are just broken. Having to break up stacks beforehand is silly. How is it that I can't just pick the quantity I want to sell?

Re: honestly, I actually find the opposite, that it is a pain for the buyers. I normally split stacks up to quantities of 50 max just as a convinience for my buyers. They can decide to buy 3 stacks for 150, or just one for 50.

"That guild has to have a good kiosk spot."

Re: I disagree here. The good spots are also very expensive. It is even doubtfull it is worth it. It depends a bit on how much powertrader you are. The guilds with the good spots are interesting for powertraders. What I see a lot is that those powertraders go round the traders in the lesser spots, buy up all the items that are reasonable cheap and sell them in the more popular places expensive. Cause most clusters of guildstores have multiple stores, it is never an issue to find what you want (unless it is something ultra rare). The "good spots" offer the convinience of more complete collections. The lesser clusters offer the convinience of better and cheaper deals. Thats why there is a healthy balance between big ass guilds and the smaller trading guilds.

delphwind_ESO

It's more of a sellers Market.

First you need to find what sells, Materials, Set items, etc.

Then you join 4 trade guilds, and 1 "homestyle" guild. Pop into each trade guild and check their store at your local bank, buy up all the items that people generally buy, then resell them to whichever trade guild is selling them for the most, or that does not have any currently for sale.

This may sound slimy, and lets be honest ... it is, BUT this is how an economy is created. People buy low and sell high which promotes economic growth.

I believe the upcoming housing system will solve some of the issues you are speaking about as far as traveling from zone to zone to look through other guilds AH's. Currently people just use their own, or whichever guild currently owns the kiosk in their major city.

See how DAoC did their housing as an example, I have a strong feeling we're going to see a very similar setup here.

Allyhoo811

PC Player here, so only speaking for that side of things:

First off, there is just no way around saying it...The basic interface for the inventory, banking, and guild store systems is terrible. It is my biggest hope for ESO that the game developers will spend some time streamlining these processes so that they are less frustrating to use. With the console launch complete, I see a small ray of hope that this might eventually get done because console players do not have the benefit of the add-on community fixing things for ZOS (so maybe they will actually have to fix it themselves).

*******************************

With that out of the way...I am actually a huge fan of the guild store system. I know that a lot of players prefer the convenience of one global auction house, but there is a huge downside to these types of systems (especially when playing on giant mega-servers) -- the "economy" becomes a joke because there is no real competition. Most items become useless to sell or trade b/c players undercut each other to the point that things are selling for vendor prices (and the players posting these items either don't realize or don't care that they are losing money because of auction fees). On the other hand, the few truly rare items keep going up in price beyond what they are really worth because the richest people in game can buy up everything on the market and create an artificial monopoly (If you every played Guild Wars 2 you would know what I'm talking about).

Having smaller guild stores helps combat this (doesn't eliminate of course), because there is always somewhere else you can go for what you want and few people have the time or resources to visit every kiosk in the game to snatch up all the rarest items and post them for exorbitant amounts.

All of this is just my opinion, and I know that the system we have can certainly be improved on, but I personally hope we never see a global auction house in this game. ESO currently has the closest resemblance to a real "economy" that I've seen in a long time.

TLDR; Improve on the system we have, for sure, but don't completely change the system with a global auction house JMHO

Cuyler

Thecapeo wrote: »

Have the game makers ever given an explanation as to why they implemented such a system as opposed the general auction house every other MMO has?

YES.

And with a quick use of the forum search function you may find hundreds of previous threads outlining the debate in detail.

Thecapeo

Ranique wrote: »

Selling 2. Stacks are just broken. Having to break up stacks beforehand is silly. How is it that I can't just pick the quantity I want to sell?

Re: honestly, I actually find the opposite, that it is a pain for the buyers. I normally split stacks up to quantities of 50 max just as a convinience for my buyers. They can decide to buy 3 stacks for 150, or just one for 50.

I agree totally that breaking into smaller stacks makes more sense for both the seller and the buyer. This issue is, at least on console, if I have 200 of something I have to use the stack function to break it into four stacks of 50. As opposed to just choosing a quantity of 50 to sell while in the Sell window. Worse, and maybe this is a bug, but even if you make smaller stacks they are automatically combined in Sell window. In order to take 200 of something and sell them in four stacks of 50 I have to first go into Inventory and make the stacks. I then have to go put 3 of those stacks in my bank. I then put one stack up for sale, go to the bank window to grab another stack, put it up for sale, etc. So many windows for something that should be so simple.

It's good to hear at least that on the PC side the economy reached a decent level of functionality. I guess I'll just have to see what happens on the console side.

Relothe42

All of this would be moot, for me, if we were allowed to advertise/buy/sell in the forums, or somewhere. The current system doesn't develop one economy, it develops several small, fragile economies. We need one main channel of trade, in some form or another.

Thecapeo

delphwind_ESO wrote: »

It's more of a sellers Market.

First you need to find what sells, Materials, Set items, etc.

Then you join 4 trade guilds, and 1 "homestyle" guild. Pop into each trade guild and check their store at your local bank, buy up all the items that people generally buy, then resell them to whichever trade guild is selling them for the most, or that does not have any currently for sale.

This may sound slimy, and lets be honest ... it is, BUT this is how an economy is created. People buy low and sell high which promotes economic growth.

I believe the upcoming housing system will solve some of the issues you are speaking about as far as traveling from zone to zone to look through other guilds AH's. Currently people just use their own, or whichever guild currently owns the kiosk in their major city.

See how DAoC did their housing as an example, I have a strong feeling we're going to see a very similar setup here.

Yeah, I can see how that works but I'm not looking to power trade. I just want a half-decent outlet for my crafted goods and found items where it's relatively easy to see what they're going for or what people are seeking. Something along the lines of some of the add-ons mentioned above. Something typical to every other MMO in other words. Though even a quite a few of my current gripes would disappear if the interface was streamlined making pertinent info easier to find.

Akavir_Sentinel

Relothe42 wrote: »

All of this would be moot, for me, if we were allowed to advertise/buy/sell in the forums, or somewhere. The current system doesn't develop one economy, it develops several small, fragile economies. We need one main channel of trade, in some form or another.

Zenimax has no intention of ever implementing a global auction house or a trading forum, so I created a multi-platform ESO trading site several months ago. See the links in my signature below. I would appreciate a sign up, but you are more than welcome to post as a guest. We are gaining new members all the time. Spread the word. The more players that know about ESO Trade, the better it is for all of us that hate the limited in-game trading system.

chevalierknight

Iv played wow and the marget ruins the game im glad they dont have one