Potential Guild Trader Exploit! Please Investigate and Fix ASAP!

schnooty

This is old news. Been going on for a long time.

Viveun

nooblybear wrote: »

Being merely the former GM of a disbanded guild, I have some insights which I hope are relatively neutral on this matter.

I recall that this happened (or still happens) on console, where someone accused a group of people of doing this so that they could "sell" the spot for real money on Facebook. The issue there was the selling-spots-for-real-money, not the disbanding of the guild.

I really fail to comprehend how this could be described as an exploit. This is working exactly how Zenimax intended it. If they didn't, then the trader would stay blocked when the guild had disbanded. It isn't necessarily ideal behaviour, but why should one guild be "made example of" because they came up with a solution to what is a disgustingly broken system?

Explanation: The bidding system is currently broken in that a call to GuildKioskPurchase can somehow be interpreted as GuildKioskBid on the back-end, and lock a guild into an out-of-the-way trader that happens to be bugged out (showing that it has no trader and can be hired) for the next week. This has been a long-running issue and the responses that I've heard from various Zenimax support tickets ranges from "Nothing we can do about it" to "We don't know how the system works so we can't fix it" (paraphrasing mine). This happens regularly when guilds are attempting to hire an empty, back-up trader and something "goes wrong". There are no debates about this. (Almost) Every trade guild in the game has fallen prey to this bug.

Back to the "exploit": If the guild in question did indeed get locked into another trader (which is what I was told when I heard about it from a friend earlier), then they had to not only put together a guild of 50 people, but transfer an amount of gold equivalent to how much they would traditionally bid to this new guild, then bid with it. Then take the risk that, upon disbanding the guild, anyone had the opportunity to hire the trader. It seems like an extremely risky, potentially no-win situation. This is not the simple method people seem to think it is.

On the matter of other people talking about monopolizing traders and such, that's certainly something for Zenimax to address, but a well-funded group could potentially do this regardless. Some of the methods being described by people in this thread do not even require the disbanding of the guild.

Finally, there are a number of negative responses from the GMs of guilds strongly associated with a guild who, in the best of terms, can be described as "at war" with the so called "guilty guild". These are the same guilds that, when the "at war" guild decides to move against the "guilty guild", take the spot being vacated for a low price in order to ensure that the "guilty guild" can't hire for nothing.

I'm not implying any partisanship on their behalf, but I'd like to make it utterly clear that people in this thread cannot be considered completely neutral on the matter, or free of ulterior motives.

Especially myself.

Sounds eerily familiar.

At the risk of presenting myself as a sheep for slaughter, my guild was a bidding party in precisely this hypothetical. I can tell you I spent days corresponding with ZOS to ensure that our actions were not a reportable offense (as the move invoked the mass reporting power of a competing guild). Zeni assured us repeatedly that this is not a violation of ESOs terms of service.

Do agree that it's ethically questionable and leaves the door wide open for malicious exploitation, but thought I'd shed a little light that ZOS did take a stance in my emails with them and it was basically, "Not a violation of tos. Don't ask for help if it fails."

redmoonga

Viveun wrote: »

Sounds eerily familiar.

At the risk of presenting myself as a sheep for slaughter, my guild was a bidding party in precisely this hypothetical. I can tell you I spent days corresponding with ZOS to ensure that our actions were not a reportable offense (as the move invoked the mass reporting power of a competing guild). Zeni assured us repeatedly that this is not a violation of ESOs terms of service.

Do agree that it's ethically questionable and leaves the door wide open for malicious exploitation, but thought I'd shed a little light that ZOS did take a stance in my emails with them and it was basically, "Not a violation of tos. Don't ask for help if it fails."

What you experienced and did might have been very different than what happened here. Not all the details have been posted to the forum to be sure. What may have been okay by one ZOS employee in your case, might not be okay in this case where more of ZOS might be involved. Either way, what happens to the guild in question is totally up to ZOS, and what they have asked for is discussion and suggestions on how to improve / fix the problem. Having been an "insider" on this kind of tactic, why did you feel you needed to do it and what could have been changed that would have prevented it? That would be really helpful here because I have not heard of ideas from anyone who has done this.

Thanks,
-red

Viveun

redmoonga wrote: »

What you experienced and did might have been very different than what happened here. Not all the details have been posted to the forum to be sure. What may have been okay by one ZOS employee in your case, might not be okay in this case where more of ZOS might be involved. Either way, what happens to the guild in question is totally up to ZOS, and what they have asked for is discussion and suggestions on how to improve / fix the problem. Having been an "insider" on this kind of tactic, why did you feel you needed to do it and what could have been changed that would have prevented it? That would be really helpful here because I have not heard of ideas from anyone who has done this.

Thanks,
-red

An option to retract bids within the first 5-10 minutes of placing would've saved us a lot of stress in this situation.

We had an accidental bid occur during an attempted hire. We contacted ZOS in desperation to have the error reversed - to no avail. We then contacted ZOS about the above exploit. We fully disclosed our intentions. We would lose the wilderness bid to the guild that habitually held that stall. We then created a "dummy" guild comprised of officer alts. We used the funds we would usually use (multi millions) to secure Morg in Wayrest. Then disbanded that guild and hired with our main. In our situation, the group at risk was ourselves. A competing guild New exactly what we were doing and parked a body on the stall all night to try and keep us out. It was a risk we accepted.

I fully disclosed to my guild what we had done and recognize that it's a questionable tactic at best.

alexkdd99

dustinoverfield wrote: »

It seems what happened is a guild has found a way to exploit the system and by using this method they essentially got themselves 2 bids. I think ZoS should quickly make an example of that guild before this becomes a regular practice for many trade guilds. Such a shame to see a trade guild sink to this level

Make an example? Is this against the rules? I don't think it is.

So why should zos do anything? Seems smart to me. Either way they are paying for the bids.

If someone wants to throw away gold then so be it. I really don't understand how you could see this as an exploit. People can throw away gold if they want.

Also all these people saying what zos intentions are have no clue what zos intentions are. Unless they have responded to you with their intentions then all of the claims it is an exploit is pure opinion, not facts.

redmoonga

Viveun wrote: »

An option to retract bids within the first 5-10 minutes of placing would've saved us a lot of stress in this situation.

We had an accidental bid occur during an attempted hire. We contacted ZOS in desperation to have the error reversed - to no avail. We then contacted ZOS about the above exploit. We fully disclosed our intentions. We would lose the wilderness bid to the guild that habitually held that stall. We then created a "dummy" guild comprised of officer alts. We used the funds we would usually use (multi millions) to secure Morg in Wayrest. Then disbanded that guild and hired with our main. In our situation, the group at risk was ourselves. A competing guild New exactly what we were doing and parked a body on the stall all night to try and keep us out. It was a risk we accepted.

I fully disclosed to my guild what we had done and recognize that it's a questionable tactic at best.

I must salute you for keeping it real. You turned your experience into something positive for everyone here as a group instead of trying to say how right your were and how okay it was for you to be doing it.

and while I'm in salute, I want to give a shout out of my admiration for those of you that did dust off your old forum accounts or created ones to add comments to this issue. It shows you have passion about your guilds and it always makes me feel good to see that in the community here.

-red

Scaena

alexkdd99 wrote: »

dustinoverfield wrote: »

It seems what happened is a guild has found a way to exploit the system and by using this method they essentially got themselves 2 bids. I think ZoS should quickly make an example of that guild before this becomes a regular practice for many trade guilds. Such a shame to see a trade guild sink to this level

Make an example? Is this against the rules? I don't think it is.

So why should zos do anything? Seems smart to me. Either way they are paying for the bids.

If someone wants to throw away gold then so be it. I really don't understand how you could see this as an exploit. People can throw away gold if they want.

Also all these people saying what zos intentions are have no clue what zos intentions are. Unless they have responded to you with their intentions then all of the claims it is an exploit is pure opinion, not facts.

Definitions of exploit:

"a software tool designed to take advantage of a flaw in a computer system, typically for malicious purposes such as installing malware."

"Make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand:"

A flaw in the trader system was used in an underhanded way to get multiple bids for one guild.

This screws over smaller guilds who can't afford to compete with large guilds. If large guilds can use multiple empty worthless alt guilds to place bids then you are going to end up with half the traders becoming worthless and small guilds being shut out. The one guild, one bid system is to allow small guilds to compete and grow.

BUT... if this is fine then I'll be more than happy to take over Tamriel and force all guilds into my cartel.

Stormahawk

.

Scaena wrote: »

alexkdd99 wrote: »

dustinoverfield wrote: »

It seems what happened is a guild has found a way to exploit the system and by using this method they essentially got themselves 2 bids. I think ZoS should quickly make an example of that guild before this becomes a regular practice for many trade guilds. Such a shame to see a trade guild sink to this level

Make an example? Is this against the rules? I don't think it is.

So why should zos do anything? Seems smart to me. Either way they are paying for the bids.

If someone wants to throw away gold then so be it. I really don't understand how you could see this as an exploit. People can throw away gold if they want.

Also all these people saying what zos intentions are have no clue what zos intentions are. Unless they have responded to you with their intentions then all of the claims it is an exploit is pure opinion, not facts.

Definitions of exploit:

"a software tool designed to take advantage of a flaw in a computer system, typically for malicious purposes such as installing malware."

"Make use of (a situation) in a way considered unfair or underhand:"

A flaw in the trader system was used in an underhanded way to get multiple bids for one guild.

This screws over smaller guilds who can't afford to compete with large guilds. If large guilds can use multiple empty worthless alt guilds to place bids then you are going to end up with half the traders becoming worthless and small guilds being shut out. The one guild, one bid system is to allow small guilds to compete and grow.

BUT... if this is fine then I'll be more than happy to take over Tamriel and force all guilds into my cartel.

It is an exploit and I hope the guild responsible in this case has action taken against it by ZOS to show that this behavior is unacceptable. If ZOS wanted guilds to bid on more than one spot, that feature would have been built in.

Using an "accidental" bid as an excuse for what this guild did to bid on two stalls and exploit the traders is kind of nonsense. It is not something on forums anyone can prove, and whenever accidental bids happened in guilds I have been in, they would either bid for that stall that week or back off and try to hire an open trader. I can certainly say that the guild in question is one of those large guilds that would have no problem winning whatever stall they "accidentally" bid on.

I have seen some good suggestions brought up in this thread and I would like to highlight some that I think would be the easiest to implement technically (at least I think so).

Regarding accidental bids, one suggestion overall that has been repeated is to be able to retract a bid within the first hour or so of trader flips to address accidental bids, or to modify the UI making it harder accidentally bid. I also suggest on that topic maybe hiding or making the bid button un-intractable maybe for the first hour after traders flip.

Back on the main topic, two suggestions regarding the exploit that I have seen that I think would be the least intrusive and manageable from a technical standpoint are: not allowing guilds to disband while they have a trader, or not allowing the trader to be hired if a guild that has it disbands.

I think the first one (not allowing guilds to disband while they have a trader) would be the best one since any trader stall is better than an empty stall, and an empty stall no one can hire might look glitched to players. It is already rare enough that a guild disbands. In my 2 years playing ESO, I have never seen a trading guild disband while owning a trader, so in the unusual case it happens, the leader can wait until Sunday. Maybe it will even allow the hypothetical guild leader to rethink disbanding and let them pass the leadership onto someone else and then leave, who knows.

GreenhaloX

Well, on console, you can't access the guild store or bid, unless you have min of 50 members. So, I haven't encounter this on console (PS4). Must be a PC thing, so far.

Nacacia

NerdyHayseed wrote: »

ElfFromSpace wrote: »

No, this is not the solution. As others have said, new players wanting to break into the trade system already have a serious uphill battle to reach 50 members before they have a kiosk. They basically have to recruit 50 desperate noobs who don't know any better and or don't care about their guild slots. It would be perhaps reasonable to require at least 60 items in the guild store before a bid can be placed. That would force people to plan ahead before bidding and to have at least 2 people paying listing fees, that would be lost in the case of shenanigans.

However the suggestion I think would fix this problem quickest and easiest would be to not reopen the spot for hire if the guild disbanded. Simply leave the spot empty for the week thus removing the incentive and ability to exploit. Then, long term, we are still hoping that ZOS has some other improvements to this current bid system.

This really is the simplest, quickest and best solution. It removes all incentive to finagle 2 bids. If a guild accidentally bids on a backwater trader, they get to improve the rural locale for a week. Tough. Furthermore, an empty "prime" trader stall won't make or break anyone or the trading aspect of the game. If a guild loses members over a week of a less than prime spot, perhaps they should re-direct their focus on creating a guild ppl want to be in through feast and famine. :^

I think that it would be better if the trader just kept the list of bids and auto-assigned trader to next highest bid pro-rated to the number of days left in the week. That would remove the incentive to hostage take a guild trader to extort whatever (cash, gold, first born) from another guild. Nobody would know who was next up.

You'd have to lock the guild trader bid for the week, but that could easily be refunded on Saturday a few hours before the guild bids need to be placed.

dotme

Scaena wrote: »

The one guild, one bid system is to allow small guilds to compete and grow.

Guilds exist for PVP, PVE, RP, Trading and many other reasons. Some are pure trading, which is fine. I can't imagine the stress of being a GM of a trading guild and not having a store for a week. Membership must take a huge hit when that happens.

This ghost guild strategy seems to be happening because of the three rules of real estate - Location, location, location.

So why can't ZOS change the bidding system? Take away the fear of getting NO trader at all, while someone with a lower bid in another location gets one, and you're on your way to solving the issue by eliminating the reason it happens in the first place.

It must be possible to count the number of "browsing" and "purchases" by location, regardless of who owns the store. Accumulate those stats over a few weeks, and you have a way to RANK all store locations in the game.

Now when bids come in, you get assigned a trader based on your bid. #1 bid gets #1 location, etc. The "Undaunted" cities probably see the most activity, and there are what - 7 or 8 traders per city there. So the top 21 bids get an undaunted city trader, and so on. What am I missing?

NerdyHayseed

@Nacacia The problem with that is that "runner-up " guilds would have likely secured another trader. So that solution would create a domino effect with stalls

code65536

dotme wrote: »

What am I missing?

The guilds affect a location as much as the location affects the guilds.

Take, for example, Belkarth. For much of 2016, Belkarth on PC/NA was a second-tier trader hub, after the biggest guild that had anchored the traders there moved away in late 2015 (Belkarth climbed back into the top tier after One Tamriel, though). In contrast, on the PC/EU server, Belkarth remained a top-tier hub throughout 2016.

Nacacia

NerdyHayseed wrote: »

@Nacacia The problem with that is that "runner-up " guilds would have likely secured another trader. So that solution would create a domino effect with stalls

The idea is that there would be less reason to create disposable guilds to control a trader as there is no way to determine who would get it next. You couldn't transfer it to someone, you can't disband a guild to buy again on the cheap, you couldn't sell it, it would go to whomever the first legit bidder was.

Mrs_Malaka

Aaru wrote: »

Could we please get an official response from ZOS on whether or not this bidding on multiple traders thing is acceptable?
@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Forum mods:

Taleof2Cities

Mrs_Malaka wrote: »

Forum mods:

Agree. As other forum-goers have noted:

This exploit is too large (potentially a game-breaker) for ZOS to stay silent about it. An official response would really help the thread.


We did have one mod chime in to keep the discussion from going off the rails ... but that was it.

(The humorous picture of Homer Simpson is well-timed, by the way, @Mrs_Malaka ...)

NerdyHayseed

Let's 'check the plug' and make sure...

Has anyone with pertinent details submitted a ticket with CS? Is that what it's going to take to get ZOS to address this exploit officially? Should we each submit a ticket asking for an official response? I'm quite baffled why we can't get a ruling on this underhanded maneuver. I dread Sunday evening's trader flip. There's no doubt guilds are already taking ZOS' silence as consent.

Should we all start our dummy guild preparations just to hold a spot anywhere???

Could we please get an official response from ZOS on whether or not a guild can have 2 trader bids by using a dummy guild?
@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

The brainstorming on solutions is moot if this is an acceptable practice and won't get ppl banned or a guild disbanded.

PathwayM

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Mrs_Malaka wrote: »

Forum mods:

Agree. As other forum-goers have noted:

This exploit is too large (potentially a game-breaker) for ZOS to stay silent about it. An official response would really help the thread.


We did have one mod chime in to keep the discussion from going off the rails ... but that was it.

(The humorous picture of Homer Simpson is well-timed, by the way, @Mrs_Malaka ...)

Agreed, hopefully they will provide their opinion on the matter soon.

Until then, many of us are just sitting with our fingers crossed waiting for them to take some kind of action.

PathwayM

NerdyHayseed wrote: »

Let's 'check the plug' and make sure...

Has anyone with pertinent details submitted a ticket with CS? Is that what it's going to take to get ZOS to address this exploit officially? Should we each submit a ticket asking for an official response? I'm quite baffled why we can't get a ruling on this underhanded maneuver. I dread Sunday evening's trader flip. There's no doubt guilds are already taking ZOS' silence as consent.

Should we all start our dummy guild preparations just to hold a spot anywhere???

Could we please get an official response from ZOS on whether or not a guild can have 2 trader bids by using a dummy guild?
@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

The brainstorming on solutions is moot if this is an acceptable practice and won't get ppl banned or a guild disbanded.

I disagree, I think the brainstorming is still good to provide solutions that can fix the issue without necessarily punishing anyone. We need to solve the problem, not necessarily punish those who take advantage of it.

NerdyHayseed

@PathwayM My only point is that there's nothing to fix (no problem) if it's fine with ZOS to finagle 2 (or more) bids. I personally don't care what happens to the guild that already used this maneuver. That's done and gone.

Criminal_Scum

nice clever move! i need to use this mechanics, so i need create dummy guild first

its not against rulers i believe right
just need another $10 for new eso account

PathwayM

Criminal_Scum wrote: »

nice clever move! i need to use this mechanics, so i need create dummy guild first

its not against rulers i believe right
just need another $10 for new eso account

ZOS hasn't given an opinion on the matter yet.

Scaena

NerdyHayseed wrote: »

Let's 'check the plug' and make sure...

Has anyone with pertinent details submitted a ticket with CS? Is that what it's going to take to get ZOS to address this exploit officially? Should we each submit a ticket asking for an official response? I'm quite baffled why we can't get a ruling on this underhanded maneuver. I dread Sunday evening's trader flip. There's no doubt guilds are already taking ZOS' silence as consent.

Should we all start our dummy guild preparations just to hold a spot anywhere???

Could we please get an official response from ZOS on whether or not a guild can have 2 trader bids by using a dummy guild?
@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

The brainstorming on solutions is moot if this is an acceptable practice and won't get ppl banned or a guild disbanded.

Yes, yes you should be prepared. I already have 2 alt guilds ready with my partners and hoping to have a third by Sunday. The conquest of Tamriel will shortly begin and all your guilds SHALL FALL!!

You will all become my minions as I take Guild Trader after Guild Trader. Zenimax has had plenty of time to answer and say whether this against ToS or not and they have not so I can only take it as an allowed loophole.

I'm guessing they either want to wait and see what happens over the next couple of weeks OR they are working on a fix and just don't want to tell us anything until they know they are going to plug it.

NerdyHayseed

Scaena wrote: »

Yes, yes you should be prepared. I already have 2 alt guilds ready with my partners and hoping to have a third by Sunday. The conquest of Tamriel will shortly begin and all your guilds SHALL FALL!!

You will all become my minions as I take Guild Trader after Guild Trader. Zenimax has had plenty of time to answer and say whether this against ToS or not and they have not so I can only take it as an allowed loophole.

I'm guessing they either want to wait and see what happens over the next couple of weeks OR they are working on a fix and just don't want to tell us anything until they know they are going to plug it.

Have to agree. It seems to be an allowed maneuver since it would seem prudent for *someone* to say it's against TOS even while they work on a fix. Well there goes the fun in trading.

Lady_Ems

Still waiting on some type of official word from Zos @ZOS_JasonI @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_TristanK @ZOS_EveP @ZOS_GaryA

Yeap I tagged anyone who popped up in my bar... Maybe one of them will answer

ComboBreaker88

This has been that way since beta. ZOS doesnt care. Guild stalls are the BIGGEST gold sink in the game. This "exploit" dosent negatively impact that sink. And does not impact the guilds in the game. You want a stall, you have to out bid the others trying to get it.

Scaena

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

This has been that way since beta. ZOS doesnt care. Guild stalls are the BIGGEST gold sink in the game. This "exploit" dosent negatively impact that sink. And does not impact the guilds in the game. You want a stall, you have to out bid the others trying to get it.

We'll see how it effects guilds over the next few weeks. Everybody knows about it now and so more guilds will now be using it.

My plan is to start taking stall after stall hostage and sell them to other guilds maybe even the ones who lost the bid.

code65536

Scaena wrote: »

Everybody knows about it now and so more guilds will now be using it.

This isn't exactly new, though. Maybe new to PC/NA, but there have been countless threads here and on Reddit about console guilds doing this and selling trader spots, sometimes even for real-world money. I've been seeing threads and stories about this for at least a year. And it's pretty clear from their silence in this thread and in all previous threads about this that they don't care--it's a sketchy gray area, but it's not like their TOS explicitly forbids it, either.

Jemcrystal

Doesn't effect me much so I'll just sit back and watch it play out.

redmoonga

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

This has been that way since beta. ZOS doesnt care. Guild stalls are the BIGGEST gold sink in the game. This "exploit" dosent negatively impact that sink. And does not impact the guilds in the game. You want a stall, you have to out bid the others trying to get it.

ZOS, those who work there and respond here, have a system. For illustration purposes I'm going to say they run the biggest guild in the game. There is a lot of member input, they have to discuss it with the other guild leaders and find out the impact on the guild. Bonus, someone is going to be upset no matter what happens. I suggest we let the machine run, give them good and sound input, and remain positive. Would you want to converse with someone if they say you don't care? (it's their job, professionals, let's try and treat them with respect.

Traders Guild Sink: Totally agree, on both accounts.

Doesn't impact guilds though? I would say judging by the amount of responses and people getting forum accounts just to respond that it's already had an impact. I'm just as eager to find out what happens as everyone else. To see if it's going to continue to impact guilds and how so moving forward.

Bidding: To quote BB King, "You have to pay the cost, to be the boss."

@Redmoonga