Trade Kiosk Prices Skyrocketing?

Nova Sky

Ladies and gentlemen:

Why is it that now even many secondary and tertiary locations in ESO are going for millions of gold each week? And what does that say about the primary trade hub locations?

This is unsustainable. Something has got to give. Bid prices are insane, and there's no way sales are covering those bids. And when some guilds are now charging 15,000 to 20,000 gold a week in membership fees, you know those GMs are feeling the heat, too.

Maybe it's time for an auction house. Yeah, I know, those dreaded words: an auction house. It'll probably never happen, but short of that, what can Zeni do to put some sanity back into bid pricing and, on a larger scale, the ESO economy as a whole?

Pele

This happens because there are extremely wealthy trading guilds that can afford to jack up prices. If you think that's bad, you won't like an auction house because that makes it much easier for those with lots of gold to do exactly what they're doing now.

The current guild trader kiosk system is the only thing that keeps monopolies in check.

Xylthax

I don't want an auction house. Simply because it means less diversity in prices, everyone will undercut each other and values on most items will depreciate. (Since it would be obvious what the cheapest items are).

If anything, higher prices in secondary and tertiary locations are a good thing, because it means that individual guilds are having less of a dominating impact on the economy and smaller guilds are becoming more important to the average eso consumer, at least gold-wise.

CrazyCleatus

Don't know what everyone has against auction houses. I made a lot of money in WoW starting with absolutely nothing on two different servers, each with different economies. I would start by buying and reselling stacks of cotton, and eventually worked my way up to buying and reselling high priced items.

It was actually a really fun process. The trading system in this game is pretty bogus compared to it, especially being on console, which makes searches insanely clunky. I also hate having to travel everywhere to find good deals. I'd waaaaaay rather it all be in one convenient place.

This current system is also awful for new guilds who can't afford the ridiculous bidding prices. Everyone should have equal opportunity to sell their goods.

And for everyone yelling "monopoly, monopoly, monopoly," in my years of playing WoW, they never stopped me from making it rich.

Feanor

It's in stark contrast to the fact only certain items sell well now...

Betheny

ZOS needs to bite the bullet and admit their little trading experiment failed. Time for an auction house.

You know a trading system is broken when people can't actually afford to sell their items!

FloppyTouch

CrazyCleatus wrote: »

Don't know what everyone has against auction houses. I made a lot of money in WoW starting with absolutely nothing on two different servers, each with different economies. I would start by buying and reselling stacks of cotton, and eventually worked my way up to buying and reselling high priced items.

It was actually a really fun process. The trading system in this game is pretty bogus compared to it, especially being on console, which makes searches insanely clunky. I also hate having to travel everywhere to find good deals. I'd waaaaaay rather it all be in one convenient place.

This current system is also awful for new guilds who can't afford the ridiculous bidding prices. Everyone should have equal opportunity to sell their goods.

And for everyone yelling "monopoly, monopoly, monopoly," in my years of playing WoW, they never stopped me from making it rich.

The only ppl against it are the ones running it and making it hard for any new guild to get in. They are also the people that are making insane profit by buying the low end traders stuff and reselling it in the prime areas. They don't want an AH bc this will be taken away from them.

CrazyCleatus

FloppyTouch wrote: »

CrazyCleatus wrote: »

Don't know what everyone has against auction houses. I made a lot of money in WoW starting with absolutely nothing on two different servers, each with different economies. I would start by buying and reselling stacks of cotton, and eventually worked my way up to buying and reselling high priced items.

It was actually a really fun process. The trading system in this game is pretty bogus compared to it, especially being on console, which makes searches insanely clunky. I also hate having to travel everywhere to find good deals. I'd waaaaaay rather it all be in one convenient place.

This current system is also awful for new guilds who can't afford the ridiculous bidding prices. Everyone should have equal opportunity to sell their goods.

And for everyone yelling "monopoly, monopoly, monopoly," in my years of playing WoW, they never stopped me from making it rich.

The only ppl against it are the ones running it and making it hard for any new guild to get in. They are also the people that are making insane profit by buying the low end traders stuff and reselling it in the prime areas. They don't want an AH bc this will be taken away from them.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure most of the people against it are the ones who help make the current system so broken.

It's really not that difficult to make money in auction house systems, and it's really exciting when you get into bidding wars for an item worth much more than what the current bid is at... I have fond memories of countless tense moments waiting that final 30 seconds for an item that'll give lots of profit, hoping no one else bids on it, and having to react quickly if they do, lol.

Edit: Or waiting until there was like 5 seconds left in the auction to make my bid, all but guaranteeing me getting that item cheaply.

Urza1234

Pele wrote: »

This happens because there are extremely wealthy trading guilds that can afford to jack up prices. If you think that's bad, you won't like an auction house because that makes it much easier for those with lots of gold to do exactly what they're doing now.

The current guild trader kiosk system is the only thing that keeps monopolies in check.

Also proves that the decentralized Guild Trader system is actually working better now than it ever has been. No one would be bidding on tertiary traders if no one was buying at the tertiary traders.

The other BEAUTIFUL aspect of the bid system is that its an extremely scalable and targeted gold sink. The people with the most gold who run the guilds and have the highest sales volumes are the ones who pay the most into the gold sink.

[Edit to remove insulting content]

Turelus

Nova Sky wrote: »

Ladies and gentlemen:

Why is it that now even many secondary and tertiary locations in ESO are going for millions of gold each week? And what does that say about the primary trade hub locations?

This is unsustainable. Something has got to give. Bid prices are insane, and there's no way sales are covering those bids. And when some guilds are now charging 15,000 to 20,000 gold a week in membership fees, you know those GMs are feeling the heat, too.

Maybe it's time for an auction house. Yeah, I know, those dreaded words: an auction house. It'll probably never happen, but short of that, what can Zeni do to put some sanity back into bid pricing and, on a larger scale, the ESO economy as a whole?

You answered this already, if it's unsustainable then it will crash and go back down.

Betheny

Urza1234 wrote: »

and thats fantastic for all of us normies who occasionally see daylight.

No, it's not. It means most members of the server can't sell their goods most of the time, when their guilds can't afford to get a spot or get outbid most weeks because the competition for trader spots is out of control.

Urza1234

FloppyTouch wrote: »

The only ppl against it are the ones running it and making it hard for any new guild to get in. They are also the people that are making insane profit by buying the low end traders stuff and reselling it in the prime areas. They don't want an AH bc this will be taken away from them.

Are those profits really that insane? I somehow doubt that in terms of gold/hour these scalpers are actually making that much. Their travel times are huge, their search times arent great, they do in fact sometimes take losses, they have to compete with other scalpers.

I frankly suspect that potato heads running in circles farming trash mobs in the overworld make comparative amounts of gold/hour.

If someone can prove me wrong I would actually welcome that, because this is an area in which I would like to be moar right.

Urza1234

CrazyCleatus wrote: »

This current system is also awful for new guilds who can't afford the ridiculous bidding prices. Everyone should have equal opportunity to sell their goods.

And for everyone yelling "monopoly, monopoly, monopoly," in my years of playing WoW, they never stopped me from making it rich.

Ive quit and resubbed at least half a dozen times now, each time I'm in a different decent trading guild making a profit within a week of resub.

I would argue that my experience at least is that its not hard to get into a profitable trading guild, at all. Thus the number of interested traders does not exceed the number of slots in viable guilds.

Yeah its probably nigh impossible to start a brand new trading guild without amassing a fortune first in an established trading guild. Yeah its probably hard for some random RP or pve guild to also run a sustainable business on the side. Neither of those two points are problems or signs of a failed game economy.

Betheny wrote: »

Urza1234 wrote: »

and thats fantastic for all of us normies who occasionally see daylight.

No, it's not. It means most members of the server can't sell their goods most of the time, when their guilds can't afford to get a spot or get outbid most weeks because the competition for trader spots is out of control.

An edit to my original statement then, its fantastic for all normies who dont have all 5/5 of their guild slots filled with RP Khajiit orggy guilds. Not all guilds are competitive and thats ok, because its as easy as falling over to get into one of the competitive guilds.

No its not easy for every guild to participate in trade, thats true, but since most players only need 1 of their 5 slots to be a trading guild the only people who are disadvantaged are the rare individuals who really do have 5/5 slots filled with Khajiit orggies, or the GMs of said unprofitable orggy guilds.

Simple solution for u my friend; charge admission.

Betheny

Urza1234 wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Urza1234 wrote: »

and thats fantastic for all of us normies who occasionally see daylight.

No, it's not. It means most members of the server can't sell their goods most of the time, when their guilds can't afford to get a spot or get outbid most weeks because the competition for trader spots is out of control.

An edit to my original statement then, its fantastic for all normies who dont have all 5/5 of their guild slots filled with RP Khajiit *** guilds. Not all guilds are competitive and thats ok, because its as easy as falling over to get into one of the competitive guilds.

You obviously don't know what's happening in the game servers...the competitive guilds are having problems with other competition...this is not about the RP guilds, the problem is happening to actual trade guilds.

The system is broken, time for an auction house. Sick of trade not working some weeks.

Bbsample197

if youre selling large amount of stuff then requirements wont affect you either way, if you just want to sell stuffs w/o requirements then there's plenty of ways you could try zone chat and what not join a trading guild without a requirement, yes they exist you just need to ask. i doubt zos will ever change their mindset with regards to AH...

DRXHarbinger

Most wealthy trading GM's are former gold glitchers from launch, there was also an item dupe glitch and they amassed huge amounts of gold with practically 0 penalty. You will never compete with them.

If you want to try, you will need to amass 500 other players, fill the guild up and ask them for 2k each (this is chump change in reality) giving you a 1M kitty then you can try and go for a Mournhold spot.

IF you are successful in the bid and they keep their listings full for the week you will arrive at, 500 players with 30 slots FULL, each player nets you 5k profit each for the week....see how much gold you have - Share the wealth. It's not that difficult. I say above you will not compete with them, here is why.

You need to farm GOOD sellers, not the people that list 27 Xivkyn Motifs, 2 Apples, 1 green recipe and 1 defending ice staff of the Red Mountain.

You need the people that actually want to make serious gold and play frequently. Getting them on board is the hard part. Most players only have 2 trading guild slots so you have to offer something. Like a rank that once you are in and contributed to the start up and it's up and running you are fee free.

Betheny

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Most wealthy trading GM's are former gold glitchers from launch, there was also an item dupe glitch and they amassed huge amounts of gold with practically 0 penalty. You will never compete with them.

If you want to try, you will need to amass 500 other players, fill the guild up and ask them for 2k each (this is chump change in reality) giving you a 1M kitty then you can try and go for a Mournhold spot.

IF you are successful in the bid and they keep their listings full for the week you will arrive at, 500 players with 30 slots FULL, each player nets you 5k profit each for the week....see how much gold you have - Share the wealth. It's not that difficult. I say above you will not compete with them, here is why.

You need to farm GOOD sellers, not the people that list 27 Xivkyn Motifs, 2 Apples, 1 green recipe and 1 defending ice staff of the Red Mountain.

You need the people that actually want to make serious gold and play frequently. Getting them on board is the hard part. Most players only have 2 trading guild slots so you have to offer something. Like a rank that once you are in and contributed to the start up and it's up and running you are fee free.

Yep and then you get to curse yourself with the hell that is bidding day, paying stupid amounts for a spot and still losing it...because if you don't go for a good spot good luck keeping the "serious traders", all you'll get is the 2 apples people.

This is a crashing system, the only people who will be able to keep up with it are the RMT people.

Urza1234

Betheny wrote: »

You obviously don't know what's happening in the game servers...the competitive guilds are having problems with other competition...this is not about the RP guilds, the problem is happening to actual trade guilds.

The system is broken, time for an auction house. Sick of trade not working some weeks.

Yeah u have a point that the bid system could be a bit better, but imo the volatility is not that bad.

Zerok

Xylthax wrote: »

I don't want an auction house. Simply because it means less diversity in prices, everyone will undercut each other and values on most items will depreciate. (Since it would be obvious what the cheapest items are).

I may be biased (I'm an economist in real life), but for me healthy competition means lower price for the consumer. Thus consumer well-being is higher because they can get more bang for their buck.

Asymetry of information in ESO right now creates two classes of players: those profiting from the current oligopoly and those who are exploited by it.

Anyway, I don't think ZOS will change their mind anytime soon. And since they allow the use of addons like Tamriel Trade Centre (TTC), I assume they acknowledge implicitly the problem.

Storymaster

Having individual traders does two things for my enjoyment:

A - Contributes to ESO's sandpark feel by making the economy more real

B - Keeps the market from being dominated by farmers and min/maxxers

sadownik

C. Keeps at least of 75% players off the active trading.

But yes its a great system in which no matter how many players are on and how many trading guilds there are the limit on kiosks is the same. Isnt that wonderful?

NewBlacksmurf

Betheny wrote: »

Urza1234 wrote: »

and thats fantastic for all of us normies who occasionally see daylight.

No, it's not. It means most members of the server can't sell their goods most of the time, when their guilds can't afford to get a spot or get outbid most weeks because the competition for trader spots is out of control.

Sorry but that isn't what this means.
It only means the guild(s) you're a part of won't own a slot for you to list your items. Selling your items or not selling your items isn't dependent upon a trader slot.

What's funny is ppl keep complaining but either many with your mindset are doing one of these ideas which is the actual problem you all created amongst yourselves that the developers can't fix as it's player choice and player behaviors.

1. You've decided that you won't buy / sale from your own guild so you're farming items to list for others to buy. If this applies to others in your guild...that's a guild issue not a trader feature issue.
2. Your guild isn't a guild it's only a list of players who've come together in order to bid on a trader + #1 suggestions
3. Your guild is neither #1 or #2 but you've expect this game to be like another game you've played in the past so you refuse to learn how this game works best.
4. Other guilds have formed together to lock down a number of trader slots each week and also inflate other slots in order to better help sustain their preferred slots by draining gold.

In the end these all point to us players not a problem with the developers. If we assume that the design was intended that 5 different groups of 500 different people join together for different experiences and farm, sale, buy, explore, conquer with the main goal to first uplift those 500 and not to go to outside markets.

Also the developers allow traders for outside markets so as to not allow capitalism to take place to everyone but to instead establish a true economy based on player behaviors and choices that changes weekly.

I've been in different sides but after taking a few more classes recently, my perspective is that this topic is mostly player behavior not a design flaw. It's just that humans most often have gotten use to crying out to developers to force certain behaviors that we feel are best, regardless of if it is or isn't, any lack of a developer responding to that or deviating from familiar models is considered wrong and a need for developer change.

In the end it's us who need to change as it's their game design, we are just being offered the experiences they've dreamed up and designed.

sadownik

@NewBlacksmurf "true economy"? In what book i ask? You find a system in which no matter how populated server is and no matter how many trading guilds there are on the server as good for MMO?

Urza1234

sadownik wrote: »

C. Keeps at least of 75% players off the active trading.

But yes its a great system in which no matter how many players are on and how many trading guilds there are the limit on kiosks is the same. Isnt that wonderful?

They keep adding more kiosks, the fact that so many of them are considered secondary or tertiary indicates that this is not a problem.

Actually I notice that the main people who complain about the whole guild trader system are guild leaders themselves.

TTC provides plenty of competition so buyers are happy. TTC provides information about deals outside hubs subverting enough buyers so that even less competitive sellers are happy. Guild traders provide enough inconvenience for Scalpers so that both buyers and sellers are happy.

Between TTC and the guild traders themselves the only people who seem to have a bad time are scalpers, who I have no sympathy for, and guild leaders, who mostly need some quality of life fixes in the existing system, not a new system.

Lord_Eomer

CrazyCleatus wrote: »

Don't know what everyone has against auction houses. I made a lot of money in WoW starting with absolutely nothing on two different servers, each with different economies. I would start by buying and reselling stacks of cotton, and eventually worked my way up to buying and reselling high priced items.

It was actually a really fun process. The trading system in this game is pretty bogus compared to it, especially being on console, which makes searches insanely clunky. I also hate having to travel everywhere to find good deals. I'd waaaaaay rather it all be in one convenient place.

This current system is also awful for new guilds who can't afford the ridiculous bidding prices. Everyone should have equal opportunity to sell their goods.

And for everyone yelling "monopoly, monopoly, monopoly," in my years of playing WoW, they never stopped me from making it rich.

Mostly guild ownets hiring trader will say no to auction house

This is needed for good trading system.

sadownik

@Urza1234 so in other words you see trade posts as bastardized auction house that has to be supported by a third party pages (and addons)?

Urza1234

sadownik wrote: »

@Urza1234 so in other words you see trade posts as bastardized auction house that has to be supported by a third party pages (and addons)?

yeah.

edit:
-TBH the guild traders have a *** UI, but so would anything else ZoS could replace it with, because the same dudes would be doing the replacing.
-TBH TTC's functionality should have been included on release. I believe it was intentional that it was not included. The devs took a chance on a completely different kind of in-game economy. What_they_produced + TTC > What_they_produced, but they could not have known that.
-The guild traders provide interesting and useful functions found in no other virtual game economy, because most virtual game economies frankly have too few costs of doing business, both in terms of time and money.
-TBH once TTC exists and does its job well can you really expect ZoS to replace it with their own proprietary clone? These are the people who still havent even included jewelcrafting.

Rickter

trade guild owner ship prices have gone completely out of control.

"tertiary" locations arent "millions" of gold as the OP stated but they are well over 500k just to prevent being snaked.

listen, i understand that these traders are not reserved for any one guild. and that there is a fair use policy for each and every one. but this is literally prohibiting any "start up" trade guilds from competing. this isnt good irl and its not good in game. ZOS needs to refine this trader acquisition process and it needed to happen before Morrowind launched.

Datolite

Storymaster wrote: »

B - Keeps the market from being dominated by farmers and min/maxxers

Farmers never really dominate, they grind long hours for profit. Trust me, I have met some serious farmers in the past and even they couldn't achieve in a month what I made in 1 week of reselling. I am talking about close to a million gold for a few hours of sniping high-priced items sold by poor noobs without TTC and marking them up sometimes by 100 times what I bought them for.

A player base shouldn't need addons to know what an item is worth. An auction house would prevent @ssh0les like me from taking advantage of newbies and making a killer profit off their ignorance. Anyone who is against an auction house is basically afraid that they won't be able to pull this crap anymore. I'm not proud of doing it, but it's a system that rewards ripping other people off so I made bank and now I'm openly admitting that it's way too easy for those on the inside to crush anyone else financially in this game.

Betheny

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Urza1234 wrote: »

and thats fantastic for all of us normies who occasionally see daylight.

No, it's not. It means most members of the server can't sell their goods most of the time, when their guilds can't afford to get a spot or get outbid most weeks because the competition for trader spots is out of control.

Selling your items or not selling your items isn't dependent upon a trader slot...

1. You've decided that you won't buy / sale from your own guild

Don't be ridiculous - 500 people with 30 slots each cannot provide the variety that might be needed at any one time for even one person let alone the other 499 people. Everyone would end up trying to sell the same things, with most of that being stuff nobody in that guild actually wants that week...you can't orchestrate random people.

And selling items is entirely dependent on a trader slot - the items you're trying to sell then might actually reach someone who wants to buy that thing.

The developers have set up a useless system that is entirely broken.

The system cannot work, and is not working. It's only going to promote the RMT people.

PocketAces13xb

Urza1234 wrote: »

sadownik wrote: »

@Urza1234 so in other words you see trade posts as bastardized auction house that has to be supported by a third party pages (and addons)?

yeah.

edit:
-TBH the guild traders have a *** UI, but so would anything else ZoS could replace it with, because the same dudes would be doing the replacing.
-TBH TTC's functionality should have been included on release. I believe it was intentional that it was not included. The devs took a chance on a completely different kind of in-game economy. What_they_produced + TTC > What_they_produced, but they could not have known that.
-The guild traders provide interesting and useful functions found in no other virtual game economy, because most virtual game economies frankly have too few costs of doing business, both in terms of time and money.
-TBH once TTC exists and does its job well can you really expect ZoS to replace it with their own proprietary clone? These are the people who still havent even included jewelcrafting.

What about console? I guess since you have addons it means this system works fine for you but not the people who hate these traders on console since it's hard enough to even find what you are looking for.