Poorly thought out maintenance times and their conflict with economy mechanics

silvereyes

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

I think that's the point. Many GMs are temporarily sacrificing for their communities to maintain a kiosk right now, but they refuse to do so indefinitely. It's *not* worth sacrificing their lives over. Running a big guild is more than enough sacrifice and hard work as it is already.

phaseadept wrote: »

Large trading guilds have requirements, like minimum sales, mandatory donations, etc.
So it's not fun to join them.

Most non-casual guilds have requirements, like TS or needing to be on for certain events. For me personally, my time isn't flexible enough for event-driven requirements, and so I don't join such guilds.

However, as someone that enjoys the trading mini game and the process of making gold no matter the time of day, sales requirements aren't a burden. I meet them doing what I enjoy anyway, and it's nice to have standards that ensure my guildies are also serious about trading. I would never recommend joining such a guild if the requirements are going to be stressful.

phaseadept wrote: »

There's no good reason someone should fear losing their guild because they don't have a trader for a week or two or three.

The point is, it's not an odd week here or there. If someone doesn't stay up to bid until right before maintenance hits, due to bid spying, they *will* be outbid. Every. Time.

Nobody who is in the guild just for the trading will want to stay on with a perpetually lost kiosk. It's likely the core of the guild itself would remain for the community and friendships, but it wouldn't be a trading guild anymore. And if the leadership turns toxic and/or gives up on the game they feel betrayed them, then the guild will become a purposeless, leaderless guild. Under such circumstances, could you blame the guild from disbanding?

silvereyes

phaseadept wrote: »

People can still sell within the guild, use public chat, etc.

As has been mentioned before, in-guild sales account for a small fraction of total sales.

And ... public chat? Do you really want to unleash hundreds of OCD traders with surplus inventory on zone chat? If you think the WTS spam is bad now ... just wait.

nooblybear wrote: »

These issues affect everyone in the game, and they're not going away any time soon. Please fix them.

Just so.

phaseadept

silvereyes wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

People can still sell within the guild, use public chat, etc.

As has been mentioned before, in-guild sales account for a small fraction of total sales.

And ... public chat? Do you really want to unleash hundreds of OCD traders with surplus inventory on zone chat? If you think the WTS spam is bad now ... just wait.

nooblybear wrote: »

These issues affect everyone in the game, and they're not going away any time soon. Please fix them.

Just so.

Thank you for countering the arguments that many use against having a public trading type system.

The complaints here that sometimes Maintence runs long are temporary.

There's already other ways to trade in the game. A guild trader is not a requirement. It's a convenience.

code65536

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

And many are starting to choose not to, which is the whole point of this thread.

zerosingularity

Now that the DLC is released on console, aside from monitoring bugs there, hopefully this thread will get the attention it not only requires, but deserves. If anyone is attending PAX West and this issue is not addressed by then, make sure to adamantly bring it up. Though by then it may be too late.

phaseadept

code65536 wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

And many are starting to choose not to, which is the whole point of this thread.

That should have never been a choice in the first place. It would be nice if people realized it's just a game, the big guild traders have been monopolizing orices and the economy for awhile, and now they are complaining because a guild store may be lost when it costs millions to bid in the first place.

First world problems is what it looks like.

The big guilds should be advocating for more spots to have traders, better access for more people. Then complaints like this wouldn't ring so hollow.

Otherwise, the majority of people could really care less about the "problems" the 1% of elder scrolls is going through.

We need a Bernie Sanders to fight for fair guild stores. . . *wink*

Drishtan

Hey Hey im Unbanned ;-)

Anslay

phaseadept wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

And many are starting to choose not to, which is the whole point of this thread.

That should have never been a choice in the first place. It would be nice if people realized it's just a game, the big guild traders have been monopolizing orices and the economy for awhile, and now they are complaining because a guild store may be lost when it costs millions to bid in the first place.

First world problems is what it looks like.

The big guilds should be advocating for more spots to have traders, better access for more people. Then complaints like this wouldn't ring so hollow.

Otherwise, the majority of people could really care less about the "problems" the 1% of elder scrolls is going through.

We need a Bernie Sanders to fight for fair guild stores. . . *wink*

So in short, you think cheating should be allowed? Presently that is the heart of this problem.

We've advocated for many great things that would help ALL guilds and the two things you've mentioned have been brought up and discussed at numerous points. What you're failing to realize is that those things aren't harming our guilds, making us lose sleep, and preventing us from securing a backup trader should our trader be lost.

I'll pull from silvereyes awesome analogy:

If you were in a trials guild where someone had to be online for extended periods of time on Sunday night / Monday morning to ensure that your guild had the ability to run trials that week, yet someone cheated and prevented your guild from being able to run said trials, you might stick around one week, maybe two, but if you couldn't run trials for a few weeks as a trials guild, you and your guildmates would move on and that community / group of friends would fall apart.

Any successful guild leader has invested a lot in building a their community. To know that the primary purpose of your guild can be taken away from you by another guild CHEATING is horrible. Add to this the maintenance overlap of trader turnover (THE ONLY GAME MECHANIC THAT REQUIRES ACTION AT A PARTICULAR TIME WEEKLY) further enabling the cheaters and preventing means of securing a backup just makes it all the more painful as a guild leader.

The bottom line is that cheating is being rewarded in this game! I know a couple of trading guilds that bounce around and bid spy to get their trader almost every week. They're doing well as guild BECAUSE they are cheating.

We've invested a lot in our communities and our communities have invested a lot in us. Had it started off this way, I guarantee most of us would choose not be running a trading guild in this game. All trading GMs/Officers that are still here are trying to tough it out for the sake of the community that they care about.

hiyde

phaseadept wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

And many are starting to choose not to, which is the whole point of this thread.

The big guilds should be advocating for more spots to have traders, better access for more people. Then complaints like this wouldn't ring so hollow.

The "big guilds", in meetings with ZoS over the past year and in posts elsewhere on these forums, have been advocating for all kinds of improvements/changes to help *all* trading guilds, including:

- More Kiosks in busy hubs like Rawl (where there's only 5)
- More convenient layout in other existing cities and NEW cities (didn't happen in Orsinium, Hew's Bane or Gold Coast)
- Bidding on the city instead of specific spots (therefore, top 'x' bids win and spots are auto-assigned)
- Changing kiosk flip time to primetime so that people can hunt for backup locations at a convenient hour
- Raising the price on kiosks open after the flip so that a dead guild with no product can't obtain a spot for 100g.

Most of those proposed changes would NOT be advantageous to "elite" guilds..and yet we've proposed all of the above and more to make *all* trade guilds stronger and provide more opportunity.

Moltyr

sylviermoone wrote: »

Ok, this is freaking ridiculous.

The ENTIRE economy of ESO revolves around one mechanic: the Kiosk flipping time. It used to be that the bids closed at 5 minutes to 8 Eastern, flip happened at 8 Eastern, and then servers went down for maintenance. During the winter, there was an extra hour to run around looking for a stall if you happened to lose. While it isn't ideal to have maintenance happen directly AFTER the kiosk flips, it is SO MUCH BETTER than having your maintenance time DIRECTLY in conflict with this one mechanic.

Please ZOS: Get your *** together. This new maintenance time, and its direct conflict with the Kiosk mechanic on the PC/NA server is INSANE. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be taken out back and flogged.

For the love of The Eight: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE move the maintenance time back to 8 AM Eastern on Monday. Or 8:15 Eastern. Or any day but Monday. OR ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS CRAP IT CURRENTLY IS.

ZOS Response: "But we has to wake up early!!! We don't like making all this money and having to wake up super early!!!"

Immortal_Dark410

code65536 wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

There's still an unanswered question: why are people sacrificing their lives for a guild trader?

And many are starting to choose not to, which is the whole point of this thread.

yup the time required to do is ridiculous in itself

covenant11b14_ESO

There was a short period of time when maintenance was happening on Tuesday. This was the absolute best. This allowed a reasonable amount of time for bidders to make bids and follow up after. As it stands you make a bid, cross your fingers. For the third time in six weeks my guild does not have a trader because of the conflict between maintenance and trader budding.

Immortal_Dark410

covenant11b14_ESO wrote: »

There was a short period of time when maintenance was happening on Tuesday. This was the absolute best. This allowed a reasonable amount of time for bidders to make bids and follow up after. As it stands you make a bid, cross your fingers. For the third time in six weeks my guild does not have a trader because of the conflict between maintenance and trader budding.

ya that is the crappy part with the current system set up, I also believe people @ZOS don't care about the Economy or how it functions, no matter the amount of input us as players might give them. They in the end will do whats they want.

esofan86

Still zero input here from ZOS. Message recieved. They do not care about this issue. Period.

Blackbird71

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)

That's a pretty pathetic excuse for not fixing the situation. Unless the fix would in some way make the "killing monsters and enemy characters" part of the game worse, all of the above really has zero relevance.

silvereyes

phaseadept wrote: »

the big guild traders have been monopolizing [p]rices and the economy for awhile

Sigh. Where to begin?

Nobody has a monopoly on the ESO economy. A monopoly implies structural control over supply and pricing, for which guild traders have neither. RNG + effort are the only two sources of supply in ESO, and all players have equal access to the same mechanisms for finding loot / materials. This makes an ideal environment for basic laws of supply and demand to dictate price. If prices are too high, or demand is too low, people won't buy; they can always farm themselves.

Economics are not zero-sum. The large guilds do not want the smaller guilds to fail. The more people that become successful traders, the more items of value will be harvested and the more gold will be made. The more gold everyone has, the more they can spend to purchase items. This makes the large guilds' members happier.

As for the implied populist complaints about guild traders not serving the interests of the 99%, I think we can find a lot of common ground.
* Yes, there are too many barriers to all players selling their loot.
* Yes, kiosk prices are too high for non-trade guilds to participate fully.
* Yes, kiosk prices are even too high for many smaller trade guilds to participate fully.
* Yes, most kiosks in low-traffic areas are basically useless.

None of these problems has anything to do with trade guilds. It is a problem with the quantity of kiosks that have good locations. This is a problem that most large trade guilds have implored ZOS to fix for well over a year now.

Neither will the current guilds collapsing solve anything. Kiosk bids may be reduced a bit by reducing demand temporarily, but there is still the problem of limited kiosk supply near high-traffic hubs. Such limited supply will always drive bid prices up, especially with bid spying in place.

What *will* fix these problems? ZOS investing some time in fixing what is broken. Only ZOS has that power. Trade guilds, by their success or failure, have no power to fix broken game systems.

It is in nobody's interest for players to engage in class warfare and fight amongst ourselves about what the preferred "ideal" system overhaul is. It's water under the bridge at this point, because it's too expensive for ZOS to rebuild. It will never happen. ZOS hasn't even bothered to make small incremental changes that cost little in development time, like a usable search UI. Do you really think they are going to spend months of developer hours replacing kiosks with an auction house? And even if they did, do you really want to deal with all the bugs introduced with such a massive code change?

Would it not be a better idea to unite behind the idea that the weaknesses of the current system should be fixed incrementally? That is what we have been advocating for consistently for a long time. ZOS never does anything in a non-incremental way. Such runs counter to good programming principles, risks too much, and doesn't provide sufficient benefit to the game to justify.

We all want the system to improve. Why not stand together and demand reasonable changes that might have a chance of being implemented?

Hadan_of_Rift

The whole bidding system is stupid to begin with. I'd rather they throw it out and come up with a new system.

phaseadept

[/quote]

*snip*

As for the implied populist complaints about guild traders not serving the interests of the 99%, I think we can find a lot of common ground.
* Yes, there are too many barriers to all players selling their loot.
* Yes, kiosk prices are too high for non-trade guilds to participate fully.
* Yes, kiosk prices are even too high for many smaller trade guilds to participate fully.
* Yes, most kiosks in low-traffic areas are basically useless.

*snip*

?[/quote]

Finally some acknowledgement

That's what's needed is a combined effort to make the economy useful for everyone.

As far as the collusion, nearly every trader on console in the high traffic areas is selling things for the exact same prices. No competition. That's a monopolized market.

silvereyes

phaseadept wrote: »

Finally some acknowledgement

That's what's needed is a combined effort to make the economy useful for everyone.

That's the goal!

phaseadept wrote: »

As far as the collusion, nearly every trader on console in the high traffic areas is selling things for the exact same prices. No competition. That's a monopolized market.

I don't play on console, so I can't speak for those guilds. However, I find it highly unlikely that 500 individual members of a trade guild would agree to fix prices. Like I said, traders don't control supply. Overpriced goods don't sell, and there are few things that a top trader dislikes more than stuff sitting on the shelves, taking up their limited slot space.

Also, have you compared prices to those on PC? I can guarantee that my 4 trade guilds don't price fix (and provide sales price charts from MM to prove it if you like). If the prices are in the same ballpark, I don't think you have anything to be worried about.

This is a total guess, but I suspect what might be happening is more of a herd mentality on pricing. There are no addons like Master Merchant on console to give detailed market analytics, so everyone is just looking at the guy next to them to see what they listed at. It would take an extraordinary amount of patience and ledger work to manually tabulate other people's sales from the guild history, and I doubt many players bother.

phaseadept

silvereyes wrote: »

phaseadept wrote: »

Finally some acknowledgement

That's what's needed is a combined effort to make the economy useful for everyone.

That's the goal!

phaseadept wrote: »

As far as the collusion, nearly every trader on console in the high traffic areas is selling things for the exact same prices. No competition. That's a monopolized market.

I don't play on console, so I can't speak for those guilds. However, I find it highly unlikely that 500 individual members of a trade guild would agree to fix prices. Like I said, traders don't control supply. Overpriced goods don't sell, and there are few things that a top trader dislikes more than stuff sitting on the shelves, taking up their limited slot space.

Also, have you compared prices to those on PC? I can guarantee that my 4 trade guilds don't price fix (and provide sales price charts from MM to prove it if you like). If the prices are in the same ballpark, I don't think you have anything to be worried about.

This is a total guess, but I suspect what might be happening is more of a herd mentality on pricing. There are no addons like Master Merchant on console to give detailed market analytics, so everyone is just looking at the guy next to them to see what they listed at. It would take an extraordinary amount of patience and ledger work to manually tabulate other people's sales from the guild history, and I doubt many players bother.

PC actually has the tools to not only prevent what is seen on consoles, but also to shop more effectively.

Consoles is a completely different story

Bryndle

Anslay wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_RichLambert:

To be clear, this is all we are asking for right now:
"I have forwarded your request on to the management team, and will keep you informed of any progress."

We really appreciate you guys and gals. We love ESO and all the hard work ZOS does. We would just really appreciate at least the respect of acknowledging our request to deconflict kiosk flipping and maintenance times.

[edited for tone]

The team has been forwarding this feedback for a couple of months now and there has not been any followup, care, or response other than "it's been forwarded." In the mean time, the game is bleeding top tier GMs and stressing out the others that are remaining. I know several that have left; one of which is a close friend. I know others have cancelled their subs and I know that the part of me that loved this game has taken a huge hit. I only keep logging in presently because I care greatly for the people in my guild, but I've basically stopped playing the game otherwise.

Nothing is changing, nothing is indicating that anything is changing; it feels like there's a group of people that are thumbing their noses at our suffering.

I have always been very positive and supportive of ZOS in the past, but I cannot feel that way again until there is REAL change here on the issues we've stated as our BIGGEST PAIN POINTS:

(1) Bid Spying - we've BEGGED for a real fix for this for about a year and a half
(2) Maintenance Overlap w/Trader Turnover - I don't know how many other ways we can state how this horribly compounds the stress

The silent ignore treatment is BS; people's real lives are being impacted. We believed in a system that was put in place and are trying to live within the system while doing right by the communities we invested in. This is a FANTASTIC way to turn your biggest supporters toxic if that's what you're seeking.

If you can't turn this around easily (the presented solutions feel easy!), then please at least have the courtesy to explain 'why' and perhaps 'how long' it would take. It honestly feels like there's an active choice being made by one or more people to do nothing and just let this fester.

@ZOS_RichLambert

This - enough said. Please respond to your customer base.

silvereyes

Anslay wrote: »

our BIGGEST PAIN POINTS:

(1) Bid Spying - we've BEGGED for a real fix for this for about a year and a half
(2) Maintenance Overlap w/Trader Turnover - I don't know how many other ways we can state how this horribly compounds the stress

I'm a little unclear about bid spying but ... it seems like that might be the cheaper / easier thing to fix than a major management/scheduling change on ZOS' part. Would locking down who has the ability to see current guild bank balance to only those with gold withdraw privileges be enough to solve that problem?

And furthermore, would fixing bid spying be sufficient to allow GMs to place their bids well ahead of time to not worry about staying up until right before the maintenance time?

Obviously, this doesn't fix the problem of being able to quickly secure a backup trader in the event of a lost bid, but it seems like it might alleviate the worst of the stress and the cause of lost sleep for the least amount of effort on ZOS' part.

Serenstar75

Personally, it'd be nice if they ditched trader carts altogether and had global. However, it really is ridiculous that guilds are tossing down heavy bids (often losing sleep to put on those bids) and hitting a snag because the maintenance time is horrible. This is someone's failed brainchild.

As for the game aspect, if you run a trade guild people leave if they consistently lack a trader. Some people like harvesting for sales. There are many game aspects and this is what some enjoy.

d3nbark3r

This post is very characteristic of an American.... I could say "typical" of one at that. You're not taking into consideration that other people come from other time zones as if America is the only country in the world.

Playing on an EU server you have no idea how frustrating it is having our maintenance in the middle of the day just because they run at the same time as NA.

Guild traders flip just after mid day, sometimes people are working around this time and often enough I don't have one guild moderator online to run around trying to find another trader if we fail with our bid. We are not a big guild and don't bid for the more desirable traders, but we profit from our trader and it's something for our more pve related members to do... and often enough they come online after work to find out we have no trader.

Think about using logic before you post. Thank yourself lucky you guys have it as easy as you do.

hiyde

d3nbark3r wrote: »

This post is very characteristic of an American.... I could say "typical" of one at that. You're not taking into consideration that other people come from other time zones as if America is the only country in the world.

Playing on an EU server you have no idea how frustrating it is having our maintenance in the middle of the day just because they run at the same time as NA.

Guild traders flip just after mid day, sometimes people are working around this time and often enough I don't have one guild moderator online to run around trying to find another trader if we fail with our bid. We are not a big guild and don't bid for the more desirable traders, but we profit from our trader and it's something for our more pve related members to do... and often enough they come online after work to find out we have no trader.

Think about using logic before you post. Thank yourself lucky you guys have it as easy as you do.

Actually we have taken that into consideration which is why we've asked for kiosk flip time on the weekends and during prime time. While maintenance takes place at the same time for EU and NA, I assume the in-game timers follow your local time?

And please, let's try not to insult each other with generalizations.

Abeille

d3nbark3r wrote: »

This post is very characteristic of an American.... I could say "typical" of one at that. You're not taking into consideration that other people come from other time zones as if America is the only country in the world.

Playing on an EU server you have no idea how frustrating it is having our maintenance in the middle of the day just because they run at the same time as NA.

Guild traders flip just after mid day, sometimes people are working around this time and often enough I don't have one guild moderator online to run around trying to find another trader if we fail with our bid. We are not a big guild and don't bid for the more desirable traders, but we profit from our trader and it's something for our more pve related members to do... and often enough they come online after work to find out we have no trader.

Think about using logic before you post. Thank yourself lucky you guys have it as easy as you do.

So bids on EU server do not close during maintenance?

Because the problem being argued here is not the bids closing early in the morning. The problem is the bid closing happening in the middle of maintenance.

Molag_Crow

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Auction house.

silvereyes

sylviermoone wrote: »

For the love of The Eight: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE move the maintenance time back to 8 AM Eastern on Monday. Or 8:15 Eastern. Or any day but Monday. OR ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS CRAP IT CURRENTLY IS.

d3nbark3r wrote: »

You're not taking into consideration that other people come from other time zones as if America is the only country in the world.

Why you gotta hate on an entire country, my friend? It's not nice, even if the OP were inconsiderate.

However, that is absolutely not the case here. The OP clearly stated, and many Americans in the replies have voiced their preference for, moving the day of the week that maintenance occurs instead of the hour of day. Many other Americans in the comments have voiced a preference for moving the kiosk flip time instead of the maintenance time, so as to impact as few people as possible with jarring maintenance time changes.

The point has nothing to do with time zones or convenience for Americans only. It has to do with the fact that maintenance and kiosk flip time currently overlap. This is an international problem.

clayandaudrey_ESO

Molag_Crow wrote: »

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Auction house.

But I am sure that ZOS would make it so you could only list things for 7 days and the only time you access the AH to add things would be during the same hours as maintenance.

phaseadept

clayandaudrey_ESO wrote: »

Molag_Crow wrote: »

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Auction house.

But I am sure that ZOS would make it so you could only list things for 7 days and the only time you access the AH to add things would be during the same hours as maintenance.

Can guilds only bid during maintenance? Can guilds only add things during maintenance?

Flaming people who want more than guild traders will not help you