Auction House

Dradhok

A well constructed AH only serves to create an equitable well-functioning system were all players have a common place to buy and sell their wares. The people that are vehemently opposed are the people that are deeply invested in their guild trader and monopolize.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Avidspark wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

And it's not like I can be a blacksmith,woodworker, alchemist, enchanter, provisional guy all on the same character

u can, and even play your build.

Nah I've two builds. I'm a wood worker and clothier, I have 8 skill points left. It's not a reasonable end game amicability to do every single quest that requires a skill point(which I've done many) and I probably still wouldn't have enough points if I did to max others out. You can't master every single skill with one character Why would they allow that

I have (every crafting skill mastered), and still play my DK mage build with ease...it's not as hard as you're making out.

I too have mastered all 6 crafting on my 1 main toon, have plenty of skill points, (at 320+ SP atm), and about to get another next time I go PvP. Yes, it is completely possible to max all crafting on 1 toon...:)

idk

Dradhok wrote: »

A well constructed AH only serves to create an equitable well-functioning system were all players have a common place to buy and sell their wares. The people that are vehemently opposed are the people that are deeply invested in their guild trader and monopolize.

Define a well functioning AH. I have yet to see one. Additionally, I request supporting information to back up your oppinion of those who support the guild traders.

I respect that you voice your opinion, but ask you support your generalizations.

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Avidspark wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Verbalinkontinenz wrote: »

And it's not like I can be a blacksmith,woodworker, alchemist, enchanter, provisional guy all on the same character

u can, and even play your build.

Nah I've two builds. I'm a wood worker and clothier, I have 8 skill points left. It's not a reasonable end game amicability to do every single quest that requires a skill point(which I've done many) and I probably still wouldn't have enough points if I did to max others out. You can't master every single skill with one character Why would they allow that

I have (every crafting skill mastered), and still play my DK mage build with ease...it's not as hard as you're making out.

I too have mastered all 6 crafting on my 1 main toon, have plenty of skill points, (at 320+ SP atm), and about to get another next time I go PvP. Yes, it is completely possible to max all crafting on 1 toon...:)

Easily can be done. I have three characters maxed on crafting. 2 can dps and heal. The third can dps and tank which requires even more points. I have more than a few points left over on each.

If it is thought that crafting is a good way to make gold, think again. It has never been worth trying to sell crafted gear. Selling crafted enchantments yes, actual gear, no. One has to look for those posting in chat they want someone to craft certain gear for them to make that work.

bedlom

As much as I love guild traders, unless they do something to keep the bidding reasonable and fair.
Then I think it might be time for zeni to start considering some sort of standard world auction store.

Beardimus

The issue with this thread is those support AH seem to ignore all the comments around people asking what it is they are spending these hours trawling for. These 'constant daily trawls' getting in the way of their game play.

I really don't get it. I trawl for sure, for rare set pieces or things im feeling lazy to farm and love a deal. But if you are using traders to buy all your day to day stuff then you are just darn laz and creating yourself a headache that you think AH is needed to fix

Do the crafts, takes no time to level if you focus, craft all your daily stuff in bulk then all you need traders for is rare stuff. Which is no effort

Reads to me like the instant gratification squad are too lazy to craft, want to buy it all, aren't event happy with that and want to buy it all now, easily and for one price. Man. Just play the game!!!!!

phairdon

Stated many times before about an auction house being a good idea. Joined a trading guild about one month back. The guild lost its trader a week ago. Cannot sell anything obviously. Not only can no guild member sell, we also help out by putting money in the guild bank to help keep/obtain a trader. Losing more money than made, that is for sure.
About time this game added a auction house.

AntMan100673

I've not played any other MMO's so don't have experience of AH's in other games, my intuition tells me the following would happen: It would be a lot easier for buyers to find what they're looking for; it would be easier for sellers to do a price check before listing; players just wanting a quick sale would undercut the lowest price by 1 gold; the prices of a lot of common and easily obtained items would plummet which would be good for the buyer but bad for the seller. The price of rare and hard to get items would skyrocket which would be good for the seller but bad for the buyer. The amount of gold you could then make from the AH would have a strong correlation with the amount of time you play and how efficiently that time is used so only the hardcore players would make decent gold from an AH. Casual players would mainly be getting their gold from selling low level common items and not getting much for it and then the forum would be filled with 'I cant afford to buy x in the AH, the prices are ridiculous' threads. I've had the game since launch on console and I'm up to about 430 CP's so I'm not super casual but I'd say the amount of time I get to play puts me closer to the casual end of the spectrum. I use the guild traders for both buying and selling, I like how it works currently as it gives me the option to hunt out bargains and flip them for a profit, none of the guilds I'm in charge a weekly fee or have a sales quota though I still donate tens of thousands of gold each week to help towards getting traders and only one of the guilds is up at 500 members and actively manages the roster so the argument some sellers don't have access to the market just seems like they're not making the simple step of joining a guild to me, it doesnt have to be a trade guild with a trader in one of the main cities, any trader will do. A lot of the gold I make from flipping common items as I'm sure a lot of other people do as well so as long as you set your prices low enough everything will sell whatever trader you have. Quite often the reasons I hear for people wanting an AH are because they want eg a level 23 sword of x with y trait and they cant find it anywhere, people don't sell those because hardly anyone buys them because they're outlevelled so quickly which means they wouldn't sell for a lot so aren't worth the time to farm, the only people getting them are other low level players and they're far more likely to use them for research or deconstruct to level up their crafting than sell them anyway. This is another reason to join a guild, most have at least a few crafters who can make any of the craftable sets

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

Makkir wrote: »

I guess its how we grew up with gaming. I believe in rewards behind hard work. Others want to be spoonfed selffishly because their content is more important than content for merchants (us, the group that enjoys haggaling, bargain hunting, maximizing our profit potentials).

Then there will be no problem with situation when two system co-exists. Currently you are defending the fun for few out of inconvenience for many.

how do you know it is only fun for a few and an inconvenience for many?

I was talking to people. And even in this thread almost every casual that comes there says that he or she wants AH. And there are much more casuals than hardcore traders. For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required. This is bad user experience, not speaking of the fact that choice offered by guild is too poor because of limited marked size. Only hardcore traders said that they like the guild trade system so far. They still could have their own guild trade playground if they want.

But you could try running a poll like:

1. I want trade system to stay the way it is.
2. I want Auction House added to the system with appropriate anti-botting measures with saving guild traders.
3. I want Auction House with appropriate anti-botting measures to replace the current guild traders.

I would choose a second option.

it takes some effort to find what you need so everything must change?

perhaps you should also be requesting that every toon created be cp510 with all skill lines maxed and a choice of full sets of end game gear? after all it does take some effort to get those things too.

jedtb16_ESO

missjackieb14_ESO wrote: »

I personally find it annoying to have to go to a million and one guild traders just to find some crafting mats. After the millionth trader and not finding the stuff I need, a central AH would be easier and less time wasting. Do you know how much time is wasted just by going to so many traders, just to find out that there's nothing you need on there?

yes i know exactly what its like.....so i go farm for whatever it was,

grom1024

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

Makkir wrote: »

I guess its how we grew up with gaming. I believe in rewards behind hard work. Others want to be spoonfed selffishly because their content is more important than content for merchants (us, the group that enjoys haggaling, bargain hunting, maximizing our profit potentials).

Then there will be no problem with situation when two system co-exists. Currently you are defending the fun for few out of inconvenience for many.

how do you know it is only fun for a few and an inconvenience for many?

I was talking to people. And even in this thread almost every casual that comes there says that he or she wants AH. And there are much more casuals than hardcore traders. For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required. This is bad user experience, not speaking of the fact that choice offered by guild is too poor because of limited marked size. Only hardcore traders said that they like the guild trade system so far. They still could have their own guild trade playground if they want.

But you could try running a poll like:

1. I want trade system to stay the way it is.
2. I want Auction House added to the system with appropriate anti-botting measures with saving guild traders.
3. I want Auction House with appropriate anti-botting measures to replace the current guild traders.

I would choose a second option.

it takes some effort to find what you need so everything must change?

perhaps you should also be requesting that every toon created be cp510 with all skill lines maxed and a choice of full sets of end game gear? after all it does take some effort to get those things too.

The problem that there is no efforts to spend on looking up item, as operations are too simple and even more so with addons. But there is just a lot of time to spend on walking between stores and working with stores, some of it even non-touching keyboard as addons downloads content of the store. So it is just useless timewaster rather rather interesting challenge for me. Some play meta-game around guild stores maximizing gold, good luck to you, you will be able to play your games on AH too. But for purpose of moving goods from seller to buyer the current system is horrible. It is only good for intermediates who concentrate on this aspect of the game by exploiting its defects. UX design team would have been fired for it IRL.

Beyond wasting time, the system has additional defect, extremely the poor diversity of items in stores. Because market sizes are very small, only limited set of items sell. And not because there are no potential buyers, but because it does not worth buyers to browse items in stores. It does not makes sense to search 2 hours for specific level crafted or chest set item in stores when it would expire in 3 hours. Crafters could not sell their goods (except for high-level alchemy and enchantments), and even low level characters have to invest precious skill points into crafting. This disconnect between buyer and seller is horrible.

grom1024

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

If it is thought that crafting is a good way to make gold, think again. It has never been worth trying to sell crafted gear. Selling crafted enchantments yes, actual gear, no. One has to look for those posting in chat they want someone to craft certain gear for them to make that work.

This is not the way to make gold precisely because of the current system that heavily restricts market diversity. I've made a lot of gold in other game from crafting. Even low level crafted items sold, because potential buyers were able to find them with reasonable efforts.

Darkstorne

Beardimus wrote: »

The issue with this thread is those support AH seem to ignore all the comments around people asking what it is they are spending these hours trawling for. These 'constant daily trawls' getting in the way of their game play.

I really don't get it. I trawl for sure, for rare set pieces or things im feeling lazy to farm and love a deal. But if you are using traders to buy all your day to day stuff then you are just darn laz and creating yourself a headache that you think AH is needed to fix

Do the crafts, takes no time to level if you focus, craft all your daily stuff in bulk then all you need traders for is rare stuff. Which is no effort

Reads to me like the instant gratification squad are too lazy to craft, want to buy it all, aren't event happy with that and want to buy it all now, easily and for one price. Man. Just play the game!!!!!

Not all of us play regularly. And not everyone enjoys crafting (same way not everyone loves PVP, or raiding). Many of us would rather invest our skill points in combat, and for those of us who still don't even have a level 50 character... it's not possible to be able to craft anything we want.

I often only have an hour to play sometimes. I would love to pass an AH and think "I could use a new level appropriate sword with Training. Let's have a look." Instead I pass a trader and think "Chances are SOME traders in this game have a sword I could use, but no way I'm looking through all of them or that's my hour gone..."

They could easily implement a system with both. Guild traders stay the same, central city Auction Houses have all Guild Trader goods but with a 20% tax increase. Players are incentivised to use Guild Traders if they want to save money, or AH if they want to save time. Trading guilds still need to bid for Guild Stores to sell their wares, but know that the presence of an AH will likely increase their sales. Everyone wins.

grom1024

lordrichter wrote: »

This subject has come up before. There are a number of arguments not well represented in the current thread. Mind you, not all of these I necessarily agree with...

1. Overhead delivering the list of items for sale to you would introduce latency in the item list. (network load)
2. Server complexity dealing with contention on a wider scale (server load)
3. ZOS could not program a UI for guild traders, why would anyone thing they would make a usable UI for an auction house?
4. ZOS creates 2 bugs for every fix, not even counting new bugs for every feature. It could be years before an auction house actually worked. Exploits, item loss, and gold loss would be a certainty.

Every other game managed to create AH, I see not problem with. It is actually a simpler task than a group finder which involve quite a lot of math (theory of optimization). Different anti-botting measures might be implemented to prevent issues. Searches also could be reduced by time, result size, and search query size, etc. Daily transaction limit could also save server time.

lordrichter wrote: »

6. Guild Traders are a gold sink so an auction house would require a large "house cut" to compensate
7. Auction houses encourage and support gold sellers more than the guild system does
8. Cut-throat pricing is more frequent, so there would be more "one copper undercutting"

Restricting amount of daily transaction will make AH less interesting to bots, gold sellers, and market exploiters. For 1g undercutting, I could live with it and I have done it a lot too in other game because it was the way that market worked. It is not a big problem actually, as for popular goods I'll just get a bit later and for goods with big oversupply I'll just stop posting.

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

Makkir wrote: »

I guess its how we grew up with gaming. I believe in rewards behind hard work. Others want to be spoonfed selffishly because their content is more important than content for merchants (us, the group that enjoys haggaling, bargain hunting, maximizing our profit potentials).

Then there will be no problem with situation when two system co-exists. Currently you are defending the fun for few out of inconvenience for many.

how do you know it is only fun for a few and an inconvenience for many?

I was talking to people. And even in this thread almost every casual that comes there says that he or she wants AH. And there are much more casuals than hardcore traders. For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required. This is bad user experience, not speaking of the fact that choice offered by guild is too poor because of limited marked size. Only hardcore traders said that they like the guild trade system so far. They still could have their own guild trade playground if they want.

But you could try running a poll like:

1. I want trade system to stay the way it is.
2. I want Auction House added to the system with appropriate anti-botting measures with saving guild traders.
3. I want Auction House with appropriate anti-botting measures to replace the current guild traders.

I would choose a second option.

it takes some effort to find what you need so everything must change?

perhaps you should also be requesting that every toon created be cp510 with all skill lines maxed and a choice of full sets of end game gear? after all it does take some effort to get those things too.

The problem that there is no efforts to spend on looking up item, as operations are too simple and even more so with addons. But there is just a lot of time to spend on walking between stores and working with stores, some of it even non-touching keyboard as addons downloads content of the store. So it is just useless timewaster rather rather interesting challenge for me. Some play meta-game around guild stores maximizing gold, good luck to you, you will be able to play your games on AH too. But for purpose of moving goods from seller to buyer the current system is horrible. It is only good for intermediates who concentrate on this aspect of the game by exploiting its defects. UX design team would have been fired for it IRL.

Beyond wasting time, the system has additional defect, extremely the poor diversity of items in stores. Because market sizes are very small, only limited set of items sell. And not because there are no potential buyers, but because it does not worth buyers to browse items in stores. It does not makes sense to search 2 hours for specific level crafted or chest set item in stores when it would expire in 3 hours. Crafters could not sell their goods (except for high-level alchemy and enchantments), and even low level characters have to invest precious skill points into crafting. This disconnect between buyer and seller is horrible.

you are contradicting yourself now......in the post i responded to you said "For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required" and then in your response to my post you say "The problem that there is no efforts to spend on looking up item, as operations are too simple and even more so with addons"

so which is it?

too much effort or too little effort?

it can't be both. (and if it takes too little effort what are you complaining about?)

also - the guild traders are sellers markets..... people offer what they want (and hope) to sell. that is not a fault of 'the system'. possibly a fault of your expectation though. that sellers market is self regulating - you offer something for sale and get a buyer, fine try it again. if you offer something for sale and it dosn't sell you withdraw it and try something else. it is a simple system requiring little external regulation and it prevents the abuses possible in a global ah.

grom1024

Grao wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

Averya_Teira wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Above are some people with hundreds of thousands of gold and are worried that they'll seem less rich in a working system.

People say this a lot and it's nonsense. I'm in a good trade guild with a prime spot and I don't see any collusion or exploiting the system, just weekly raffles and such like any other guild.

What supporters of the global auction house overlook is that people like me will game the holy hell out of a global store front. I've done it in other MMOs and I'd do it here as well. I wouldn't need a guild or raffles or any of that nonsense, just me and a couple hours hacking some LUA and boom, your markets belong to me. The current system makes such market domination infeasible for the solo individual and difficult for large guilds. A global auction house would make it trivial for everyone.

Your cure is worse than the disease.

Wouldn't that get you a ban though ? Well, with ZOS, a 3 day suspension I guess....

You could fully automate the process and yes, that would be a TOS violation... but it's not necessary to do so. I was thinking of a modified Master Merchant addon to scan the AH and an extension to AwesomeGuildStore that would automatically surface the best deals. I'd keep a laptop running ESO around and every half hour or so run a scan of the AH, buy up any good deals and immediately realist them for higher prices.

And it would not just be me, hundreds of people would do this. Many of them wouldn't just play the buy-low-sell-high game either, they would actively seek to control entire chunks of the market. And as long as people were not automating the process there would not be a single suspension or ban.

If there is account-wide limit 100 buy and sell deals per day, or 50 deals per day accumulated for 12 days max like enlightenment now, then your script will stop to work and load up servers with queries. And you assume that API would allow you doing it. It is not necessary so. Requiring human confirmation for sale or buy fill force you to sit near notebook, or violate ToS with perma-ban possibility by using third party program to skip this step. For each too-smart-for-own-good, there is possible improvement in the code that would make it worthless. Normal users will not notice such restrictions, only market players. They will have to play smart to squeeze any speculation income in such situation and focus on high-level goods.

That is a stupid idea no MMO worth its name would go with. Controlling the market, playing the market is considered a valid play style in MMOs. Creating silly rules to limit players from playing would be same as saying 'Oh you can only kill up to 20 people in PvP per day'. It is stupid.

Playing and controlling the market by few players reduce fun for other players and it even might make them quit. ZOS as owner of server might take any measures to prevent that. A lot of risk of unrestricted AH were outlined in this thread. This only means that reasonably restricted AH will be better solution. Daily transaction limit looks like a good solution to reduce many of outlined risks. Also this would make life difficult for gold sellers. IRL there are no unrestricted markets too, there are rules an regulation that prevent at least some market abuse scenarios.

I do not mind of leaving guild stores as they are, so might play into market control in them, leaving AH more tailored to casual players.

grom1024

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

you are contradicting yourself now......in the post i responded to you said "For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required" and then in your response to my post you say "The problem that there is no efforts to spend on looking up item, as operations are too simple and even more so with addons"

so which is it?

too much effort or too little effort?

it can't be both. (and if it takes too little effort what are you complaining about?)

also - the guild traders are sellers markets..... people offer what they want (and hope) to sell. that is not a fault of 'the system'. possibly a fault of your expectation though. that sellers market is self regulating - you offer something for sale and get a buyer, fine try it again. if you offer something for sale and it dosn't sell you withdraw it and try something else. it is a simple system requiring little external regulation and it prevents the abuses possible in a global ah.

You see, there are two categories of efforts:

• Challenging and rewarding efforts is what we come here for.
• Too much trivial, boring, and unrewarding effort IRL is why we come to game. And I do not want to do that in the game.

I have posted a lot on it above: the smaller the market, the less possible diversity. This is just pure math, and there is little way around it. Any market self regulates to diversity optimal for it. For small markets the poor diversity is optimal. For larger markets, greater diversity is optimal. It is just like petrol station kiosks (poor diversity and only most common goods) and Wallmart (great diversity with a lot of niche goods). Greater amount of guilds does not solves problems, what matter is size of individual market. We have a lot of pertol station kiosk, but the diversity in them is still poor, they are almost carbon copy of each other despite of different owners. Guild stores are also almost carbon copy of each other if we take goods that sells in the system.

logosloki

I love the asymmetry of guild traders (multiple markets) rather than faction/global auction house. What the current system needs though is the same amount of information that Eve Online gives its players to deal with a similar system, which is regional auction houses (markets) with a contract system. I should be able to look at an item and then look at trading volume, X day average price, the item's value in different guilds, etc.

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

you are contradicting yourself now......in the post i responded to you said "For buyer to reach seller too much effort is required" and then in your response to my post you say "The problem that there is no efforts to spend on looking up item, as operations are too simple and even more so with addons"

so which is it?

too much effort or too little effort?

it can't be both. (and if it takes too little effort what are you complaining about?)

also - the guild traders are sellers markets..... people offer what they want (and hope) to sell. that is not a fault of 'the system'. possibly a fault of your expectation though. that sellers market is self regulating - you offer something for sale and get a buyer, fine try it again. if you offer something for sale and it dosn't sell you withdraw it and try something else. it is a simple system requiring little external regulation and it prevents the abuses possible in a global ah.

You see, there are two categories of efforts:

• Challenging and rewarding efforts is what we come here for.
• Too much trivial, boring, and unrewarding effort IRL is why we come to game. And I do not want to do that in the game.

I have posted a lot on it above: the smaller the market, the less possible diversity. This is just pure math, and there is little way around it. Any market self regulates to diversity optimal for it. For small markets the poor diversity is optimal. For larger markets, greater diversity is optimal. It is just like petrol station kiosks (poor diversity and only most common goods) and Wallmart (great diversity with a lot of niche goods). Greater amount of guilds does not solves problems, what matter is size of individual market. We have a lot of pertol station kiosk, but the diversity in them is still poor, they are almost carbon copy of each other despite of different owners. Guild stores are also almost carbon copy of each other if we take goods that sells in the system.

who is this 'we' you speak of?

that's the thing about mmo populations - most of them seldom, if ever, visit the game forum. of those that do most are looking for a bit of information or a solution to a problem - can't find x or y or a quest dosn't seem to work. then there are the lurkers - people who follow stuff but do not ever post. then there are the people who do post - the atypical gamers, a tiny tiny fraction of the people who actually play the game. i do not claim to be speaking for anyone other than myself - i do not claim to know what the vast majority of the people who play this game think about it for the simple reason that i have no way of knowing what they think about it - and nor do you. so stop pretending to speak 'for the masses'. you are following your own (deeply flawed) agenda - stop pretending you have some magical insight into what the majority think.

how do i know those things? look at the research, there's lots of it.

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

grom1024

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

Updated:

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

who is this 'we' you speak of?

Most of the people that come to this thread and leave one comment are for AH.

As for the reason of playing game, the reasonable challenge is usual reason of game playing in general. There are exception like gold sellers or human bots, trying to make money off the game, but you aren't one them?

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

the big hole?

the amount of slots available for sales is unlikely to increase per player - my guess is it would fall for entirely practical reasons (server load). limited sales slots...

grom1024

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

the big hole?

the amount of slots available for sales is unlikely to increase per player - my guess is it would fall for entirely practical reasons (server load). limited sales slots...

The amount of sell slots does not needs to increase. Every AH I know of out there limits it and still supports goods diversiity. It is amount of visitors what needs to increase. I might choose wether to post cp100 Lich helm from dolmen for 700g or stamina potions for 600g. Now lich helm goes to deconstructing. I would have even introduced additional limits like limiting daily amount of buy and sell transactions to suppress bots and gold sellers and load off the server.

Grao

grom1024 wrote: »

Grao wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

Averya_Teira wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Above are some people with hundreds of thousands of gold and are worried that they'll seem less rich in a working system.

People say this a lot and it's nonsense. I'm in a good trade guild with a prime spot and I don't see any collusion or exploiting the system, just weekly raffles and such like any other guild.

What supporters of the global auction house overlook is that people like me will game the holy hell out of a global store front. I've done it in other MMOs and I'd do it here as well. I wouldn't need a guild or raffles or any of that nonsense, just me and a couple hours hacking some LUA and boom, your markets belong to me. The current system makes such market domination infeasible for the solo individual and difficult for large guilds. A global auction house would make it trivial for everyone.

Your cure is worse than the disease.

Wouldn't that get you a ban though ? Well, with ZOS, a 3 day suspension I guess....

You could fully automate the process and yes, that would be a TOS violation... but it's not necessary to do so. I was thinking of a modified Master Merchant addon to scan the AH and an extension to AwesomeGuildStore that would automatically surface the best deals. I'd keep a laptop running ESO around and every half hour or so run a scan of the AH, buy up any good deals and immediately realist them for higher prices.

And it would not just be me, hundreds of people would do this. Many of them wouldn't just play the buy-low-sell-high game either, they would actively seek to control entire chunks of the market. And as long as people were not automating the process there would not be a single suspension or ban.

If there is account-wide limit 100 buy and sell deals per day, or 50 deals per day accumulated for 12 days max like enlightenment now, then your script will stop to work and load up servers with queries. And you assume that API would allow you doing it. It is not necessary so. Requiring human confirmation for sale or buy fill force you to sit near notebook, or violate ToS with perma-ban possibility by using third party program to skip this step. For each too-smart-for-own-good, there is possible improvement in the code that would make it worthless. Normal users will not notice such restrictions, only market players. They will have to play smart to squeeze any speculation income in such situation and focus on high-level goods.

That is a stupid idea no MMO worth its name would go with. Controlling the market, playing the market is considered a valid play style in MMOs. Creating silly rules to limit players from playing would be same as saying 'Oh you can only kill up to 20 people in PvP per day'. It is stupid.

Playing and controlling the market by few players reduce fun for other players and it even might make them quit. ZOS as owner of server might take any measures to prevent that. A lot of risk of unrestricted AH were outlined in this thread. This only means that reasonably restricted AH will be better solution. Daily transaction limit looks like a good solution to reduce many of outlined risks. Also this would make life difficult for gold sellers. IRL there are no unrestricted markets too, there are rules an regulation that prevent at least some market abuse scenarios.

I do not mind of leaving guild stores as they are, so might play into market control in them, leaving AH more tailored to casual players.

A power house PvP guild controlling and obliterating in Cyrodiil reduces the fun for other players and has caused many players to quit PvPing and yet PvP guilds are allowed to go on strong. I think we should restrict PvP kills to a maximum of X per day because... Well, since we are limiting one play style, we might as well limit others as well.

>.>

Lord_Eomer

I like Auction House as much to see PVP Arena, One Tamerial but developers would not pay attention because ESO community is divided,

Many are happy with Guild Traders and just want few improvements in Traders.

grom1024

Grao wrote: »

A power house PvP guild controlling and obliterating in Cyrodiil reduces the fun for other players and has caused many players to quit PvPing and yet PvP guilds are allowed to go on strong. I think we should restrict PvP kills to a maximum of X per day because... Well, since we are limiting one play style, we might as well limit others as well.

>.>

Your analogy is too far-fetching. But on the topic, there are new and new limits in PvP system in relevant places. Running too fast, gap closures, and some now advocating that zerg runs should be prevented. Amount of kills just not relevant point of limiting for PvP. But limting to 100 items? Most of playing session would not produce that much sellable items anyway. Unless you want to sell every iron ingot separately. But for bots that would be a problem, and some people on this thread threatened to bot the system with notebook running 24x7, some system to prevent such botting must be implemented. I take their threat seriously. You might offer some other mechanism.

Update: For pro traders in the game, they just have to play smart adapting to market situation with such limit, rather than run simple lua script over and over again to spoil game for others.

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

Updated:

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

who is this 'we' you speak of?

Most of the people that come to this thread and leave one comment are for AH.

As for the reason of playing game, the reasonable challenge is usual reason of game playing in general. There are exception like gold sellers or human bots, trying to make money off the game, but you aren't one them?

and as i have already pointed out - the number of people who post - on any topic - is a tiny fraction of the people who play the game.

perhaps the reason you are so vocal on having an ah is because you want to be one of the ones exploiting it?

jedtb16_ESO

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

the big hole?

the amount of slots available for sales is unlikely to increase per player - my guess is it would fall for entirely practical reasons (server load). limited sales slots...

The amount of sell slots does not needs to increase. Every AH I know of out there limits it and still supports goods diversiity. It is amount of visitors what needs to increase. I might choose wether to post cp100 Lich helm from dolmen for 700g or stamina potions for 600g. Now lich helm goes to deconstructing. I would have even introduced additional limits like limiting daily amount of buy and sell transactions to suppress bots and gold sellers and load off the server.

the only way the diversity will increase is if the number of sell slots increases - the number of visitors makes no difference.

grom1024

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

what you call lack of diversity is simply the way the market regulates itself - people sell things that are going to net a profit - that's how trading anywhere works. having an auction house is not going to change that. the current system limits the number of members in a guild and the number of trade slots available to each member and the total number of trade posts - do you think that is an accident? or perhaps something to do with server load - a sound(ish) practical limitation.

when i trade i offer the things that i know will sell and net me the biggest profit - i suspect (though i do not know for certain) that other people do the same. i am not going to waste time selling low level gear for the simple reason that if i got that as a drop there is a good chance the several hundred thousand other people did too. so there is an ah - it will have a limited number of slots per player and (it seems reasonable to suppose) players will try to make the most of those slots by offering the things that are likely to make them the highest return exactly the same as it is now. your argument for ah increasing diversity has so many holes in it you could use it to catch fish.

For lower-level set gear, I have seen only some pieces, and I have never seen a complete set at right level. I would have liked to how some sets work. For low level set items likely reaction will be "I have interesting set piece from chest, lets look for others on AH". For low-level set items situation complicates by that you need all or nothing. Guild stores do not provide non-time expensive way to check if all items are available somewhere. So search is time consuming. I would like to see statistics on complete sets actually used.

And I only could only guess that you have skipped some economics classes if you have visited any at all. Your reasoning is right only if you reason within fixed market size. Market size is defined more by amount of visitors.

Lets say that 0.01% would buy the specific gear piece if they will see it (assuming appropriate price). So if you have 100 visitors per day, you will sell about 3.5 items per year. This is typical guild store w/o trader. So there will be no sales for you. With trader you will get about 1000 visitors per day, so you could sell 35 items per year, or about 4 per month. There is now small chance to sell, but mats will be still better. For auction house there will be much greater amount of visitors per day (lets assume 10000), so about 40 items will sell. It will might make sense to put item on AH if there is less than 20 available and price is good. This is how the diversity is formed. IRL mechanisms are a bit more complex because of greater amount of factors in play, but still these factors have major effect. Walmart could allow great diversity because it designed for large number of visitors and makes a lot from different niche goods.

And if you see holes, you could point to them.

the big hole?

the amount of slots available for sales is unlikely to increase per player - my guess is it would fall for entirely practical reasons (server load). limited sales slots...

The amount of sell slots does not needs to increase. Every AH I know of out there limits it and still supports goods diversiity. It is amount of visitors what needs to increase. I might choose wether to post cp100 Lich helm from dolmen for 700g or stamina potions for 600g. Now lich helm goes to deconstructing. I would have even introduced additional limits like limiting daily amount of buy and sell transactions to suppress bots and gold sellers and load off the server.

the only way the diversity will increase is if the number of sell slots increases - the number of visitors makes no difference.

This is typical fallacy. Increasing shelve sizes on petrol station is only way to increase expenses, because goods will wait forever for the customers. If you have a Wallmart store at each petrol station, the will generate about the same revenue as petrol station kiosks before at cost of much greater expenses. The amount of visitors will be just too low. This is why none is doing it.

To sell niche goods there is a need for high concentration of customers. Thus, Walmart is creating a customer stream by providing huge parking space, providing space for cafe (to increase duration potential customer is exposed to goods), limiting amount of their shops per population, and many other ways. So they are able to sell niche goods and make money off them. Any trade centre works this way. AH would also work such as in other games. Some goods are priced too high, but it is possible to find practically anything sellable. In contrast, only few goods sells in the current system. And it is because it is time consuming and boring to find them.

Iluvrien

grom1024 wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

If it is thought that crafting is a good way to make gold, think again. It has never been worth trying to sell crafted gear. Selling crafted enchantments yes, actual gear, no. One has to look for those posting in chat they want someone to craft certain gear for them to make that work.

This is not the way to make gold precisely because of the current system that heavily restricts market diversity. I've made a lot of gold in other game from crafting. Even low level crafted items sold, because potential buyers were able to find them with reasonable efforts.

Low-level crafted items sold here too until ZOS devalued crafted items by removing the level bonus, and this was in the days both before and after the Guild Traders existed. To a degree, they still do... but not through the traders. They sell through the Guilds themselves.

At least one of my Guilds (trading) contains people putting crafting requests onto chat 5-6 times an hour... and I only get to play during the off-hours for EU PC. I would imagine it is considerably busier during the on-hours.

The AH encourages solo play. One player on their own is able to buy, list and sell whatever they like with no contact with another human being required. The current system in ESO places incentives on a mix of Guild and Kiosk contact. It supports social contact for niche items and provides the Traders as a decent way of getting hold of basic/common ones.

I really like it. The UI bites, and text search needs to come to every platform, but the concept itself is one I enjoy greatly... and actually I do most of my business outside of the Kiosks through Guild or Zone chat. You know what is even better than a one-off sale through an AH? Making a good enough impression on a new crafting client that they come to you for every set they need. I've probably had dozens of those on my books over the last couple of years. Some even turned into lasting group-mates. All of that came about through a degree of contact required by this system that, I think, would be missing with a global AH.

That is why I disagree with the idea, and will continue to do so.

Korah_Eaglecry

Iluvrien wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

If it is thought that crafting is a good way to make gold, think again. It has never been worth trying to sell crafted gear. Selling crafted enchantments yes, actual gear, no. One has to look for those posting in chat they want someone to craft certain gear for them to make that work.

This is not the way to make gold precisely because of the current system that heavily restricts market diversity. I've made a lot of gold in other game from crafting. Even low level crafted items sold, because potential buyers were able to find them with reasonable efforts.

Low-level crafted items sold here too until ZOS devalued crafted items by removing the level bonus, and this was in the days both before and after the Guild Traders existed. To a degree, they still do... but not through the traders. They sell through the Guilds themselves.

At least one of my Guilds (trading) contains people putting crafting requests onto chat 5-6 times an hour... and I only get to play during the off-hours for EU PC. I would imagine it is considerably busier during the on-hours.

The AH encourages solo play. One player on their own is able to buy, list and sell whatever they like with no contact with another human being required. The current system in ESO places incentives on a mix of Guild and Kiosk contact. It supports social contact for niche items and provides the Traders as a decent way of getting hold of basic/common ones.

I really like it. The UI bites, and text search needs to come to every platform, but the concept itself is one I enjoy greatly... and actually I do most of my business outside of the Kiosks through Guild or Zone chat. You know what is even better than a one-off sale through an AH? Making a good enough impression on a new crafting client that they come to you for every set they need. I've probably had dozens of those on my books over the last couple of years. Some even turned into lasting group-mates. All of that came about through a degree of contact required by this system that, I think, would be missing with a global AH.

That is why I disagree with the idea, and will continue to do so.

Did you just seriously claim an AH promotes solo play? LMAO. Now youre seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

XHandsomexJackX

I would love to have one. Maybe one for each faction in the main faction cities but they are all connected. I remember when the Grand Exchange came to Runescape. Instead of spending an hour trying to buy items and resources for a quest I could go to the exchange and search what I needed and have it in 2 minutes. Its a good way to get what you need and cut out these guild stores where you have to be a member to hopefully find what you need.