Poorly thought out maintenance times and their conflict with economy mechanics

Zamuro

so the maintenance times suck for both na and eu.... nothing surprising

Darkmage1337

As I mentioned in a very closely-related thread/topic: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/284445/why-only-5-guilds#latest

One of the biggest problems with the guild-kiosk system and large trade guilds is that members in the largest & most-active guilds greatly overlap with each other. I outlined this "issue" / phenomenon in the other thread, but I'm going to re-quote myself here, and expand on my previous point a little bit more.

Trading-guilds typically take up 2 to 4 slots on an ESO player's account (especially for accurate MM data). It doesn't make much sense because so many players are overlapped into the same guilds, which inflates the actual number of _unique members_ within the guild.
(For example, many of the same people are all members of AV, AUT, ATU, ETU, BBC, and so on.. [the guilds that own traders in Rawl'kha and Mournhold]). What is the point of these guilds bidding against each other on kiosks when the majority of the most-active members in each guild (the primary gold-donors and main contributors) are also a member of that guild's main competition?
I'm a GM of one active 500-member guild and co-GM of another guild, yet I am a member of other large trade guilds (AUT, for example). It is important to note that the most active and "elite/hardcore" players, traders, and guild leaders are members of their potential rival/competition guilds. (Such as my membership in AUT even though I lead AV). I'm guilty of it. All players are.
A minor solution would be to increase the max number of sales-slots per guild, from 30 to 50, 100, or even more (to consolidate the desire for needing so many "trade-guilds; OR, lower the account-wide guild-limit from 5 to 3).
We need guild consolidations and guild merges, not expansions of new guilds with the same exact same most-active members.
And for the record, I am totally okay with playing devil's-advocate if it leads to a better in-game system and mechanic, in the long-run.

moonbat

moonbat wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.

By procedure, the transactions that humans perform are only possible AFTER they have engaged in playing (at least one part of) the game. One must fish, or farm, or grind, or in some other manner must PLAY the game before a single transaction may be performed.

The economy is built on the foundation of playing the game, and therefore the game must take priority over any trade issues.

People seem to forget that the economy is the aggregate of human action, and that human action will always continue to exist even if they delete the program code for guilds and guild traders completely.

Hard truth - the economy will not disappear if the maintenance times mean that no trade guild gets a cart anywhere on the map. ESO is a game of killing monsters and enemy characters, not the 1995 game Capitalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_(video_game)

Except it is ZOS' fault for inventing the system of guild trading which puts players in the bind that they are in now. Perhaps people would not have to work so hard if ZOS had not implemented this system in the first place. ZOS implements the system and then punishes players for it.

And this argument is also stupid because I don't see anyone arguing that maintenance should *not* happen at all because of traders. What they are asking is that ZOS not punish traders because of a flaw in their design.

Cryptical

moonbat wrote: »

moonbat wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.

By procedure, the transactions that humans perform are only possible AFTER they have engaged in playing (at least one part of) the game. One must fish, or farm, or grind, or in some other manner must PLAY the game before a single transaction may be performed.

The economy is built on the foundation of playing the game, and therefore the game must take priority over any trade issues.

People seem to forget that the economy is the aggregate of human action, and that human action will always continue to exist even if they delete the program code for guilds and guild traders completely.

Hard truth - the economy will not disappear if the maintenance times mean that no trade guild gets a cart anywhere on the map. ESO is a game of killing monsters and enemy characters, not the 1995 game Capitalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_(video_game)

Except it is ZOS' fault for inventing the system of guild trading which puts players in the bind that they are in now. Perhaps people would not have to work so hard if ZOS had not implemented this system in the first place. ZOS implements the system and then punishes players for it.

And this argument is also stupid because I don't see anyone arguing that maintenance should *not* happen at all because of traders. What they are asking is that ZOS not punish traders because of a flaw in their design.

Moonbat...

You just replied to me with "except its Zos fault...", and then called your own reply stupid.

Are you feeling okay?

Regarding the issue, the guild store system was invented to serve a trade function among those who play the game, as a secondary element. It is the participants that have taken the guild store invention and treated it as the primary element of ESO, as if the purpose of ESO was to participate in a virtual storefront and amass profit.

A market correction of these bubbles must occur.

moonbat

Cryptical wrote: »

moonbat wrote: »

moonbat wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.

By procedure, the transactions that humans perform are only possible AFTER they have engaged in playing (at least one part of) the game. One must fish, or farm, or grind, or in some other manner must PLAY the game before a single transaction may be performed.

The economy is built on the foundation of playing the game, and therefore the game must take priority over any trade issues.

People seem to forget that the economy is the aggregate of human action, and that human action will always continue to exist even if they delete the program code for guilds and guild traders completely.

Hard truth - the economy will not disappear if the maintenance times mean that no trade guild gets a cart anywhere on the map. ESO is a game of killing monsters and enemy characters, not the 1995 game Capitalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_(video_game)

Except it is ZOS' fault for inventing the system of guild trading which puts players in the bind that they are in now. Perhaps people would not have to work so hard if ZOS had not implemented this system in the first place. ZOS implements the system and then punishes players for it.

And this argument is also stupid because I don't see anyone arguing that maintenance should *not* happen at all because of traders. What they are asking is that ZOS not punish traders because of a flaw in their design.

Moonbat...

You just replied to me with "except its Zos fault...", and then called your own reply stupid.

Are you feeling okay?

If you look at the previous page I was expanding on an earlier reply that I had made to someone who had made a strawman argument that those who want to end the conflict between guild trader bids and server maintenance are arguing for an end to server maintenance.

And it seems that the original comment was not nested within the quotes here...the forum software only included my reply..

Lady_Ems

We need to hear from ZOS on this matter.. Even if it's just a go play in traffic type thing.. At least let us know you hear us. Treat us like you treat others.. If you post on other threads, why not this one?

Elsonso

Lady_Ems wrote: »

We need to hear from ZOS on this matter.. Even if it's just a go play in traffic type thing.. At least let us know you hear us. Treat us like you treat others.. If you post on other threads, why not this one?

Well, we are hip deep in the weekend right now, and heading into the console drop week. We would not hear anything before Thursday, at this point. And... that is assuming that this rises to the point where someone crafts an answer for Gina or Jessica to post.

The problem with this thread is that it covers too many different parts of ZOS. That means that it is 2 or 3 times more work to get an answer. This is not just a simple instant message to Wrobel asking a question. This gets into how the bids work, when they are processed, and what time maintenance happens. Programming, game design, server operations, and who knows what else. The common point of "management" between all of them might be Firor, for all we know.

No, I don't expect an answer any time soon.

acsquared

hiyde wrote: »

I'd like to take this opportunity to lay out a few of the issues we have with Kiosk flip times. Despite our best efforts of asking about this and suggesting specific solutions for over a year, we've never had any sort of response.

Bid Spying
It remains a huge issue in the game and is extremely easy to do. It is possible to calculate EXACTLY what a guild has bid *before* the bids process. This forces guilds in a competitive location to be on just before the kiosks flip to "top off" their bid. Numerous suggestions have been put forth to eliminate this issue once and for all. Removing bids from the history (which used to be posted after the bids processed) has accomplished nothing other than reducing transparency to members while allowing bid spies to keep right on spying. This also creates paranoia and bad blood between guilds.

Flip Time
In the summer, Kiosks flip at 5AM PDT / 8AM EDT. It's even worse in the winter - an hour earlier!
Highly active trade guilds typically do their biggest events on Sunday night and then have just a few hours to grab some sleep and be present for the flip. Even if bid-spying was eliminated, Officers still have to be on to search for an open location if the bid is lost. Why does this have to take place before the sun comes up on a *Monday* morning?

Maintenance
And now, maintenance has added a special new layer of hell. That means placing final bids at 4A East / 1A West and then being at the mercy of whenever servers come back up to know the results and search for a location if the bid isn't won.

Why do kiosk flip times have to be early Monday morning? How about something closer to peak play time so people don't have to interrupt their sleep 1-2 times every Monday just to secure a kiosk?

I realize this affects a small slice of the community and there are far more pressing issues that affect bigger portions of the population. But c'mon. These have been our main "pain points" with Trading Guilds for a very long time and despite extensive and thoughtful feedback, we can't even get an answer, let alone any sort of improvement to the situation.

Suggestions:
- Eliminate bid spying once and for all.
- Move kiosk flip time to something at or near "prime time" on Saturday or Sunday nights, when we're all online holding our end of week guild events.
- If the above isn't possible, can we please be told why? And if that's the case, then yes, the last resort would be a request to move maintenance so it doesn't directly conflict with this critical game mechanic for trading guilds, but it seems there are much greater benefits to moving Kiosk flip times instead, to a time that would never interfere with regular maintenance and would allow people to get a good night's sleep. Mondays are hard enough as it is!


@ZOS_GinaBruno

AGREE! This is getting insane. Like running guilds that make enough gold to bid millions every week isn't hard enough, let's add the icky flip time and maintenance times, so your officers have just that extra bit of work.

And don't get me started on bid spying.

hiyde

lordrichter wrote: »

Lady_Ems wrote: »

We need to hear from ZOS on this matter.. Even if it's just a go play in traffic type thing.. At least let us know you hear us. Treat us like you treat others.. If you post on other threads, why not this one?

Well, we are hip deep in the weekend right now, and heading into the console drop week. We would not hear anything before Thursday, at this point. And... that is assuming that this rises to the point where someone crafts an answer for Gina or Jessica to post.

The problem with this thread is that it covers too many different parts of ZOS. That means that it is 2 or 3 times more work to get an answer. This is not just a simple instant message to Wrobel asking a question. This gets into how the bids work, when they are processed, and what time maintenance happens. Programming, game design, server operations, and who knows what else. The common point of "management" between all of them might be Firor, for all we know.

No, I don't expect an answer any time soon.

Trade Guilds, in meeting with ZoS for well over a year, have been asking for help on these "pain points".
We've posted these issues to the forums (along with well thought out suggestions).

There has been no response and no relief. We have been beyond patient.

Even this post is approaching the 1 week mark.

No one is expecting solutions in 5 minutes. But some sort of response + a commitment to take action would at least be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Dromede

As a member of 2 trading guilds, i feel terrible for guild managers. So much work and planning can be wasted just because of poor timing, on top of human factor

Elsonso

hiyde wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Lady_Ems wrote: »

We need to hear from ZOS on this matter.. Even if it's just a go play in traffic type thing.. At least let us know you hear us. Treat us like you treat others.. If you post on other threads, why not this one?

Well, we are hip deep in the weekend right now, and heading into the console drop week. We would not hear anything before Thursday, at this point. And... that is assuming that this rises to the point where someone crafts an answer for Gina or Jessica to post.

The problem with this thread is that it covers too many different parts of ZOS. That means that it is 2 or 3 times more work to get an answer. This is not just a simple instant message to Wrobel asking a question. This gets into how the bids work, when they are processed, and what time maintenance happens. Programming, game design, server operations, and who knows what else. The common point of "management" between all of them might be Firor, for all we know.

No, I don't expect an answer any time soon.

Trade Guilds, in meeting with ZoS for well over a year, have been asking for help on these "pain points".
We've posted these issues to the forums (along with well thought out suggestions).

There has been no response and no relief. We have been beyond patient.

Even this post is approaching the 1 week mark.

No one is expecting solutions in 5 minutes. But some sort of response + a commitment to take action would at least be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I have not been part of any guild meetings with ZOS, so I have nothing to say about that.

This thread, however, has been on my radar since it was posted and no response from ZOS is to be expected. Like I said, this is not just something that Gina or Jessica can fire off to someone and get an answer back in a couple of hours. This crosses what I expect are some hard lines inside ZOS, so answers have to be pieced together. Most of the questions that get answered are easy compared to what this thread has become.

It gets into things that ZOS does not want to talk about, like why they schedule maintenance at the time they do.

It includes a feature request to stop spying. ZOS never really talks about feature requests other than the standard "we would like to do this, but hell has to freeze over" response. That is, until they have decided to deliver it.

It also includes a timing request to move the bid processing if not the maintenance. This requires conversations, meetings, and discussions, just to set up a time to sit down and say "we'll think about it."

So, maybe the "standard answer" will be forthcoming, but I would be terribly surprised if this got a real answer.

hiyde

lordrichter wrote: »

This thread, however, has been on my radar since it was posted and no response from ZOS is to be expected. Like I said, this is not just something that Gina or Jessica can fire off to someone and get an answer back in a couple of hours.

Just to re-state, the bid spying and kiosk flip time has been discussed in person and on this forum for over a year. Trade Guild GMs & Officers have been exceedingly patient.

As for the new maintenance times, if issues 1 & 2 above were addressed at any point in the past year+, we wouldn't even be having that conversation.

With the old maintenance time of 8A EDT, we at least knew if we won our bids or not (even if we couldn't do anything about it until after maintenance ended). That was bad enough.

Now bids must be in by 4AM "ish" and the servers may or may not be back up before the flip (it's been "not" so far).
This is absolute heaven for bid-spyers and a nightmare for trading guilds who bid honestly.

Elsonso

hiyde wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

This thread, however, has been on my radar since it was posted and no response from ZOS is to be expected. Like I said, this is not just something that Gina or Jessica can fire off to someone and get an answer back in a couple of hours.

Just to re-state, the bid spying and kiosk flip time has been discussed in person and on this forum for over a year. Trade Guild GMs & Officers have been exceedingly patient.

As for the new maintenance times, if issues 1 & 2 above were addressed at any point in the past year+, we wouldn't even be having that conversation.

With the old maintenance time of 8A EDT, we at least knew if we won our bids or not (even if we couldn't do anything about it until after maintenance ended). That was bad enough.

Now bids must be in by 4AM "ish" and the servers may or may not be back up before the flip (it's been "not" so far).
This is absolute heaven for bid-spyers and a nightmare for trading guilds who bid honestly.

Oh, I won't disagree with you, if you are heading down the path that the Guild Trader system has been, in general, neglected since they rolled it out.

I think that they do a lot of systems like this. They build it, then let it run without tuning or updating until they come back to it for some grand overhaul.

I think that they need to have a different number of traders for each megaserver, based on the average player population. It is odd to think that one size fits all really demonstrates the optimal solution here. I am pretty sure that guild traders are the same on PS4 and PC, but I bet the populations are very different.

They need to rework the UI for the guild store. I don't know if they have someone at ZOS that does usability, and maybe for games that person would get in the way, but if there is such a person at ZOS, they were on vacation when the guild store UI was created.

I really don't have a position on the spying, other than to say that it should either be completely secret, until the bids are processed and then anyone can find out what was bid, or make it completely public so that anyone can see what the current bid is. If spying is intended to be a thing, then it should be part of the trader UI.

They need to address the conflict between bid processing and maintenance. There should be no regularly scheduled in-game event, like bid processing, that happens during a regularly scheduled real-world event, like maintenance. There is absolutely no reason for this, unless the maintenance is what does the bid processing. Anything other than this is just the ZOS left hand not knowing what the ZOS right hand is doing.

ishilb14_ESO

Only people that have permissions in a guild to place a bid for a kiosk, should be able to see the bid amount.

Ixtyr

ishilb14_ESO wrote: »

Only people that have permissions in a guild to place a bid for a kiosk, should be able to see the bid amount.

That doesn't solve the problem, since that's how the system works. People have addons that they use to track Guild Bank balance and they simply add up incoming revenue with withdrawals and the difference is what the current bid is. Pretty massive loophole in the system that they haven't resolved.

As for @lordrichter's comments, I agree. The thread has gotten away from what the initial point was - which is, quite simply, that we need the Maintenance and the Flip to NOT EVER OVERLAP. Period.

I'll deal with the BS from bid spying for a few more months if I have to, but this maintenance crap requires, let me say it again - basically NOTHING. They move maintenances around all the time. Make it Tuesday, the entire issue is resolved. I can't fathom how this is a difficult thing for anyone, in the community or at ZOS, to comprehend.

sylviermoone

ishilb14_ESO wrote: »

Only people that have permissions in a guild to place a bid for a kiosk, should be able to see the bid amount.

And this is "kind of" how it works. Only members that have permission to bid can see in the guild history that a bid was placed, and only members with permission to bid can see that a winning bid was placed, or that a losing bid was refunded.

HOWEVER: The gold still leaves the bank the moment a bid was placed. If you know a starting balance, it is fairly easy to track, with a spread sheet or addon, what is coming in and out for taxes, raffles, etc, and what the "missing" gold amount is (ie, it isn't in the bank, but doesn't have an event tied to it's removal). This is your bid, and this is what bid spies are doing when they spy.

Given that ZOS has addressed issues they *thought* were related to spying (removing member's ability to see the bid amount AFTER a bid was won or lost) in the interest of stopping "spying", it is fairly clear the what is still happening is NOT how the system is intended to work. They need to address how the bid amounts are moved/displayed, and who has access to that information, in order to stop that particular problem. Which would be fan-freaking-tastic.

Or.....they could you know....just move the maintenance time back so that it doesn't conflict with this game mechanic. That is NOT hard, and they've shown repeatedly that they can and will change maintenance time.

Ixtyr

sylviermoone wrote: »

ishilb14_ESO wrote: »

Only people that have permissions in a guild to place a bid for a kiosk, should be able to see the bid amount.

And this is "kind of" how it works. Only members that have permission to bid can see in the guild history that a bid was placed, and only members with permission to bid can see that a winning bid was placed, or that a losing bid was refunded.

HOWEVER: The gold still leaves the bank the moment a bid was placed. If you know a starting balance, it is fairly easy to track, with a spread sheet or addon, what is coming in and out for taxes, raffles, etc, and what the "missing" gold amount is (ie, it isn't in the bank, but doesn't have an event tied to it's removal). This is your bid, and this is what bid spies are doing when they spy.

Given that ZOS has addressed issues they *thought* were related to spying (removing member's ability to see the bid amount AFTER a bid was won or lost) in the interest of stopping "spying", it is fairly clear the what is still happening is NOT how the system is intended to work. They need to address how the bid amounts are moved/displayed, and who has access to that information, in order to stop that particular problem. Which would be fan-freaking-tastic.

Or.....they could you know....just move the maintenance time back so that it doesn't conflict with this game mechanic. That is NOT hard, and they've shown repeatedly that they can and will change maintenance time.

HAH I beat you

Ixtyr

.

Dedder

hiyde wrote: »

I'd like to take this opportunity to lay out a few of the issues we have with Kiosk flip times. Despite our best efforts of asking about this and suggesting specific solutions for over a year, we've never had any sort of response.

Bid Spying
It remains a huge issue in the game and is extremely easy to do. It is possible to calculate EXACTLY what a guild has bid *before* the bids process. This forces guilds in a competitive location to be on just before the kiosks flip to "top off" their bid. Numerous suggestions have been put forth to eliminate this issue once and for all. Removing bids from the history (which used to be posted after the bids processed) has accomplished nothing other than reducing transparency to members while allowing bid spies to keep right on spying. This also creates paranoia and bad blood between guilds.

Flip Time
In the summer, Kiosks flip at 5AM PDT / 8AM EDT. It's even worse in the winter - an hour earlier!
Highly active trade guilds typically do their biggest events on Sunday night and then have just a few hours to grab some sleep and be present for the flip. Even if bid-spying was eliminated, Officers still have to be on to search for an open location if the bid is lost. Why does this have to take place before the sun comes up on a *Monday* morning?

Maintenance
And now, maintenance has added a special new layer of hell. That means placing final bids at 4A East / 1A West and then being at the mercy of whenever servers come back up to know the results and search for a location if the bid isn't won.

Why do kiosk flip times have to be early Monday morning? How about something closer to peak play time so people don't have to interrupt their sleep 1-2 times every Monday just to secure a kiosk?

I realize this affects a small slice of the community and there are far more pressing issues that affect bigger portions of the population. But c'mon. These have been our main "pain points" with Trading Guilds for a very long time and despite extensive and thoughtful feedback, we can't even get an answer, let alone any sort of improvement to the situation.

Suggestions:
- Eliminate bid spying once and for all.
- Move kiosk flip time to something at or near "prime time" on Saturday or Sunday nights, when we're all online holding our end of week guild events.
- If the above isn't possible, can we please be told why? And if that's the case, then yes, the last resort would be a request to move maintenance so it doesn't directly conflict with this critical game mechanic for trading guilds, but it seems there are much greater benefits to moving Kiosk flip times instead, to a time that would never interfere with regular maintenance and would allow people to get a good night's sleep. Mondays are hard enough as it is!


@ZOS_GinaBruno

Dear ZOS,
Occasionally you need to change the game to suit the players rather than the other way around. I know when Guild Wars (I not II) started taking away "avocations" people had created for themselves (such as "running" people through zones for a small fee) it took something away from the game... eventually many (including me) lost interest as the game became a bit stale and formulaic and lost a vibrancy that the players had creatively generated. Let's not do that here, I am still having too much fun!
Being an officer in a Guild is a wonderful thing and gives a sense of accomplishment to the fact that you are helping a lot of others in the game by helping to organize things for their enjoyment and success. However, it also takes a good measure of just plain work -- I know this as i was an officer in one of the most powerful alliances in Guild Wars and keeping our hold on House zu Heltzer, the main Kurzick city, was no small task (I’m proud of our accomplishment, can you tell?).
In ESO the players who author add-ons and are officers in our Guilds are similarly your most valuable players as their efforts make this game so much more fun to play for the rest of us. I would think that you would consider these players essentially ambassadors for ESO and make it as easy as possible for them to help the rest of us get so much more enjoyment out of our wonderful Tamriel. I firmly believe you realize this and will shortly be able to provide a solution to these (partially real-life) problems and eliminate the cheating and scheduling conflicts that are causing so much unnecessary work.
I continue to look forward to exploring the entire map of Tamriel! Let's do it together.
Faithfully,
Lord Dedder
Member: Dead Nirn Dealers, Bleakrock Barter Co., Amazing Deals of Tamriel, Blackbriar Barter Co., The Meat Market

silvereyes

I'm not a GM, but I am in 4 trading guilds and I see the toll the recent maintenance schedule has taken on my GMs and officers. I love these folks dearly for working their butts off week after week to make the ESO trading experience awesome for players like me.

It scares me to see trading guild officers getting so burnt out by the kiosk bidding process. Lesser people would have already given up. It's amazing they are still going, but I'm sure even they have limits. The current demands on their lives to ensure stable traders for their guilds are not reasonable, nor sustainable.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert, please ... I'm afraid if something isn't done about this soon, the vibrant ESO trader culture I've come to know and love will collapse as guilds die off one by one.

Shadowshire

As a player and member of guilds which focus on trading, the current system often has seriously adverse effects upon my enjoyment and play of the game.

When a guild that should have had a fair chance to retain a Kiosk does not succeed, the outcome severely reduces the likelihood that I will continue selling enough items quickly enough to obtain the GP necessary to buy other items, needed for my characters, so that I can play the game more effectively.

The lack of attention and of action by Zenimax Online and by Bethesda Software to this major problem is significantly affecting our play of the game adversely. It is inexcusable! Are they not professionals?? (A suggestion follows the quote.)

AzraelAcid wrote: »

I'm personally ready to quit over it. I'm West Coast, so this is insanity for me. I've never seen any game run a system like this. ....
@ZOS_GinaBruno,@ZOS_JessicaFolsom we have provided feedback on this major pain point for so long. Please, for the love of all that is sacred, CHANGE THE BID TIMES so we can all get some sleep!

Changing the times so the bids are collected and resolved at 11:00 PM EST (or EDST) would save virtually every guild officer who is responsible for placing the bid(s) a lot of time, effort, and sleep. The outcome of the bidding could take effect either at midnight or after any patch maintenance which begins before 8 hours after the bid deadline has concluded. That bid time should be suitable enough for everyone to be available regardless of the day of the week, and it should remove conflicts with system backups and patch maintenance.

There is no apparent reason that the bid closing time cannot be changed. It seems that Z.O. simply wants to pretend that they do not have to do anything in particular to please their customers.

Further: Zenimax also must address the issue of "espionage" that allows players to determine the exact amount which a guild has bid on their current trader to retain it, so that the guild offer can be outbid. That is definitely not fair play!!

Asata

Personally, I think the mechanic of being able to jump on super quickly and snipe some other trader if your bid loses isn't a mechanic that should exist to begin with. If you lose, you lose, and that should be that. It would alleviate the need to wait around and try to be on immediately on a kiosk reset day, maintenance or not.

The bidding system for traders is a bizarre one though. You can't even see what your competition is bidding. Guilds could be overpaying millions higher than any other bids for their trader without ever knowing it. On eBay you can see all the other bids. It's more competitive when it's close to the time of the bidding to close, but at least you aren't totally in the dark.

I don't like the system to begin with. I'd much prefer a centralized auction house and no need for trade guilds. But, as long as fanboys will rabidly defend it that is never going to happen.

Darkmage1337 wrote: »

A minor solution would be to increase the max number of sales-slots per guild, from 30 to 50, 100, or even more (to consolidate the desire for needing so many "trade-guilds;

I agree with this. If I had more slots I would have no need for 5 trade guilds. I don't even like needing to be in so many trade guilds. At this point I think I'm probably going to trim it down to 2-3 trade guilds and open up some of my guild slots for a dungeon guild and a PvP guild. And well, if I don't have enough slots I'll just sell expensive stuff and decon/trash the rest. A lot of people do that already, which is why a lot of things can't be found.

Shadowshire

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.
....

Well, at least you got that right. As to the rest of your remarks, evidently you do not understand the role of the Guild Traders, i.e., of the "economy", in the play of the game. It is possible to design a game such as ESO without any provision for exchanging goods and/or services among players at all. But it would be a much less interesting game to play.

Trading allows players who have something that their characters don't need to exchange it for something that their characters do need. It also encourages and rewards players to use their characters to obtain and/or to create items that other players might need in order to exchange them for other items which they need for themselves.

One ESO feature allows us to trade items in "face-to-face" meetings between our respective characters, whether to exchange an item for Gold Pieces (GP) or as barter for another item instead. The Guild Store is another way to "sell" items for GP that we can then use to "buy" other items which we want. With the Guild Store, the seller does not have to be present, or currently playing the game, in order for the buyer to obtain what they want. This is convenient for both parties to the transaction.

Guild Traders simply make the content of a Guild Store available to players who are not members of its guild. This approach has its advantages, but also has disadvantages. In particular, there is no limit to the number of guilds that players may organize, but there must be a limit to the number of Guild Traders. Arguably, Bethesda Software could increase the number of Traders beyond the current number, in order to offer more guilds an opportunity to sell goods in their stores to non-members. But it is doubtful whether there will ever be enough Traders for every guild that seriously wants one.

As to whether any player produces or otherwise obtains items for the sake of simply accumulating GP from selling them, I suppose that their greed does not, in and of itself, adversely affect anyone. Personally, I only sell items because I want to get the GP that I will need to buy others. Of course, the more GP that I earn, the more likely it becomes that I can buy rare items which are currently in high demand. Regardless, in ESO the Gold Piece primarily functions as a medium of exchange, not as a store of wealth.

Note that it is Bethesda Software which is responsible for whether an item is plentiful or is scarce, not the players. So, if you don't like the economy, then you know to whom you should complain.

Draxys

/sign

obscure7

I'm wondering what's behind the decision to make the trader flip time coincide with the maintenance time. why are these in deliberate conflict?

it's not good for the long term health of trade guilds and, consequently, not good for the long term health of the game.

ArchMikem

No one's ever happy.

Elsonso

Asata wrote: »

Personally, I think the mechanic of being able to jump on super quickly and snipe some other trader if your bid loses isn't a mechanic that should exist to begin with. If you lose, you lose, and that should be that. It would alleviate the need to wait around and try to be on immediately on a kiosk reset day, maintenance or not.

Ultimately, this is a bad idea. It puts more pressure on getting the bid right, which will bring out the worst in certain people.

Cryptical

Shadowshire wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.
....

Well, at least you got that right. As to the rest of your remarks, evidently you do not understand the role of the Guild Traders, i.e., of the "economy", in the play of the game. It is possible to design a game such as ESO without any provision for exchanging goods and/or services among players at all. But it would be a much less interesting game to play.

Trading allows players who have something that their characters don't need to exchange it for something that their characters do need. It also encourages and rewards players to use their characters to obtain and/or to create items that other players might need in order to exchange them for other items which they need for themselves.

One ESO feature allows us to trade items in "face-to-face" meetings between our respective characters, whether to exchange an item for Gold Pieces (GP) or as barter for another item instead. The Guild Store is another way to "sell" items for GP that we can then use to "buy" other items which we want. With the Guild Store, the seller does not have to be present, or currently playing the game, in order for the buyer to obtain what they want. This is convenient for both parties to the transaction.

Guild Traders simply make the content of a Guild Store available to players who are not members of its guild. This approach has its advantages, but also has disadvantages. In particular, there is no limit to the number of guilds that players may organize, but there must be a limit to the number of Guild Traders. Arguably, Bethesda Software could increase the number of Traders beyond the current number, in order to offer more guilds an opportunity to sell goods in their stores to non-members. But it is doubtful whether there will ever be enough Traders for every guild that seriously wants one.

As to whether any player produces or otherwise obtains items for the sake of simply accumulating GP from selling them, I suppose that their greed does not, in and of itself, adversely affect anyone. Personally, I only sell items because I want to get the GP that I will need to buy others. Of course, the more GP that I earn, the more likely it becomes that I can buy rare items which are currently in high demand. Regardless, in ESO the Gold Piece primarily functions as a medium of exchange, not as a store of wealth.

Note that it is Bethesda Software which is responsible for whether an item is plentiful or is scarce, not the players. So, if you don't like the economy, then you know to whom you should complain.

Oh, I understand the role of guild traders. What is apparently not widely understood is that the guild traders were not intended to be put to use this intensely.

There are signs that things with guild traders have gone beyond what they were made to handle.

Alphabetical listings are for long lists. No alphabetical listing option leads one to consider that long lists such as found on trading guilds are not what the design had in mind. Simple logic - if they expected long lists then they would have included better ways to navigate long lists.

Visible bank balance, bid history. Able to see the balance now and the original ability to see the history leads one to consider that the design considered these as safe things to see. It's only in these commerce-driven guild competitions that these pieces of data become sensitive info, so obviously the original intent did not include such commerce-driven guild competition.

Other guild-related elements point away from the driven-by-commerce model - chat channels, tabards, travel to player and mail both accessible through the roster and voice chat tabs. These are useless to the driven-by-commerce model as the primary info dissemination channel to the public would be motd and about-us.

Individually, these each can be dismissed as easily as a random drop of water falling from the sky. Taken together, they motivate one to go find an umbrella.

The 'trading guild' superstore that competes against other superstores was not an intended result. They made eso as a heroic sword and sorcery game, not as a build-a-superstore Walmart / Kroger / Costco game.

The problem isn't zos ignoring the people who turned the friendly guild trader system into a competitive business model... The problem is that people turned the friendly guild trader system into a competitive business model.

Zos has been supporting the elements of guilds that align with their intended use. I believe I saw a green text quote that they are working on the roster jumping when people log in or out. That's an element of participating in a friendly community - looking to interact with others, so it gets developer love. An alphabetical listing of items is not interacting with others at all, so it doesn't get developer love.

Real example - @ZOS_GinaBruno pass this along - Xbox the respec cost is still 1 gold per point. Last night some guild mates were running wayrest and getting wiped, then came into guild chat needing a healer. Another guild mate lamented that she had just respec'd out of her healing skill lines, but if they gave her a few minutes she would flip back and come help out. Does that happen if the point cost had been put back to 50 per point? Very doubtful. Low respec cost got developer love, because it assists people actually playing the heroic sword/sorcery game rather than some other thing. So I hope it doesn't get put back to the way it was before, because it then acts as a barrier to events like last night.

moonbat

Cryptical wrote: »

Shadowshire wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.
....

Well, at least you got that right. As to the rest of your remarks, evidently you do not understand the role of the Guild Traders, i.e., of the "economy", in the play of the game. It is possible to design a game such as ESO without any provision for exchanging goods and/or services among players at all. But it would be a much less interesting game to play.

Trading allows players who have something that their characters don't need to exchange it for something that their characters do need. It also encourages and rewards players to use their characters to obtain and/or to create items that other players might need in order to exchange them for other items which they need for themselves.

One ESO feature allows us to trade items in "face-to-face" meetings between our respective characters, whether to exchange an item for Gold Pieces (GP) or as barter for another item instead. The Guild Store is another way to "sell" items for GP that we can then use to "buy" other items which we want. With the Guild Store, the seller does not have to be present, or currently playing the game, in order for the buyer to obtain what they want. This is convenient for both parties to the transaction.

Guild Traders simply make the content of a Guild Store available to players who are not members of its guild. This approach has its advantages, but also has disadvantages. In particular, there is no limit to the number of guilds that players may organize, but there must be a limit to the number of Guild Traders. Arguably, Bethesda Software could increase the number of Traders beyond the current number, in order to offer more guilds an opportunity to sell goods in their stores to non-members. But it is doubtful whether there will ever be enough Traders for every guild that seriously wants one.

As to whether any player produces or otherwise obtains items for the sake of simply accumulating GP from selling them, I suppose that their greed does not, in and of itself, adversely affect anyone. Personally, I only sell items because I want to get the GP that I will need to buy others. Of course, the more GP that I earn, the more likely it becomes that I can buy rare items which are currently in high demand. Regardless, in ESO the Gold Piece primarily functions as a medium of exchange, not as a store of wealth.

Note that it is Bethesda Software which is responsible for whether an item is plentiful or is scarce, not the players. So, if you don't like the economy, then you know to whom you should complain.

Oh, I understand the role of guild traders. What is apparently not widely understood is that the guild traders were not intended to be put to use this intensely.

There are signs that things with guild traders have gone beyond what they were made to handle.

And that is the fault of ZOS' faulty mechanics, *not* the players. You are blaming the players for something that was poorly implemented by ZOS.

Edited to add: And furthermore, stop telling people how to play. This game has something for everyone. You are tut-tutting people for not playing the game the way *you* think it should be played. How arrogant.

Elsonso

Cryptical wrote: »

Alphabetical listings are for long lists. No alphabetical listing option leads one to consider that long lists such as found on trading guilds are not what the design had in mind. Simple logic - if they expected long lists then they would have included better ways to navigate long lists.

You might think that, but I think you are wrong. ZOS has a history, in my opinion, of doing "good enough" and as long as you can traverse the list of items, that could be considered "good enough". They undoubtedly had the intention of revisiting things, when they have the time, That is one of their tenants: MMOs games are never done. Why implement today what can be implemented tomorrow.

The problem with that line of thinking is that tomorrow might be a long time from now.

If you remember this, a lot of the decisions that result in what we see become a lot more clearly defined.