moved

wenchmore420b14_ESO

No

LejonTryne

Yeah, a global auction house will be nice! I wonder why there is non yet!

Sevalaricgirl

Yes

The problem I have is the requirement to be in a trade guild to sell. It really peeves me which leaves me a pauper player. Oh well. I'll never leave ESO but I'll never be rich in it.

Beardimus

No

Flat no.

Trading is interesting right now, it rewards effort. Don't wreck that cos people are lazy

Cpt_Teemo

Yes

Beardimus wrote: »

Flat no.

Trading is interesting right now, it rewards effort. Don't wreck that cos people are lazy

What you meant was that it rewards those that have the time to play, and not the one's that can barely fit the time to play.

Sevalaricgirl

Yes

Beardimus wrote: »

Flat no.

Trading is interesting right now, it rewards effort. Don't wreck that cos people are lazy

It has nothing to do with being lazy. I have tons and tons and tons of stuff which is why I have a lot of mules. I just do not want to be in a trading guild and I shouldn't have to be. No other game requires it to sell stuff. ESO, and I've been saying this since day 1, did it wrong.

kargen27

boombazookajd wrote: »

Yes. Guild traders are a massive waste of time. Why would I spend an hour or two hunting down an item in guild traders when I could just go to any capital city and go to an auction house.

Most of the time I don't even bother which sucks because I'm not using a part of the game because of its massive inconvenience.

It takes me FOREVER to find things at a trader. Scrolling through pages and pages of motifs or various mats. I want to sort my mat, not price. I want to search for a particular motif, not stare at the screen till purple words turn white.

Going to a guild trader is a literal headache. An auction house like WoW would be easy to use, instantly accessible, and a central area where I can go to find what I am looking for, without the headache.

Because when you go to the auction house for the perfect roe you need for a recipe you find that there are none to be had. You check in the next day and still none. Day three finally a few appear in the auction house but the cost is astronomical compared to what they were just five days before.

We don't need an auction house. What we need is an intuitive search within the guild trader menu.

And speaking of WoW there are actually guides (easy to find guides) on creating a monopoly in the auction house. Also many many threads across a multitude of sites asking if monopolizing items is against the rules in WoW and what can be done about the problem if it isn't against the rules.

Beardimus

No

Sevalaricgirl wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

Flat no.

Trading is interesting right now, it rewards effort. Don't wreck that cos people are lazy

It has nothing to do with being lazy. I have tons and tons and tons of stuff which is why I have a lot of mules. I just do not want to be in a trading guild and I shouldn't have to be. No other game requires it to sell stuff. ESO, and I've been saying this since day 1, did it wrong.

Disagree. It's a part of the game some enjoy.

I want trials weapons I have to do them
I want AP I have to go PvP
Trade, trading guild

It's very simple. Don't wreck a part of the game as you want to shortcut it. If we all did that the game would get easy very fast

Beardimus

No

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

Flat no.

Trading is interesting right now, it rewards effort. Don't wreck that cos people are lazy

What you meant was that it rewards those that have the time to play, and not the one's that can barely fit the time to play.

Disagree totally. I have very limited play time and current system used correctly is efficient

Fight against it. Sure it's a time burn

I craft all my basics in a 15mim admin slot per week. I'm in 4 guilds with traders so access 4 stores from any bank.

When I fancy a deal or looking for an item to sell higger or an item I don't have, I spend 20-30 mins tops hitting up a load of traders. And I do that rarely.

Used eight the system is efficient as is. And you wreck bargain hunting if you have an AH.

Why dumb down an area of the game Many enjoy because the few dont want to both with it. As I posted above, I have to bother with trials to get weapons, people plan Pvp for AP. Trading is no different

It's this view that its a time.burn for bigger and better things thats the wrong mentality, its an MMORPG for heavens sake

vyndral13preub18_ESO

Yes

DoctorESO wrote: »

ARGUMENT AGAINST A GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE:

Fast forward a few months after we implement a global auction house, and what do we have? A broken system that benefits the richest 1% and harms the other 99%. With our current guild trader system, it is nigh impossible to corner "the" market because we essentially have a whole bunch of different regional markets with no way to centrally purchase mass quantities of commodities. There is a reason why Diablo 3 had a global auction house at launch and then later shut it down.

I find it a little odd that people don’t think this is what is happening now. You can make all the arguements for and against you want, but both of them end with a system that benefits the richest 1%.

Tetrafy

Yes

DoctorESO wrote: »

ARGUMENT AGAINST A GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE:

The normal principles of economics do not apply in ESO, or any video game for that matter, for one simple reason - resources are not "scarce." In fact, they are unlimited. That's what happens when you play a virtual game. What this means is that people can and will easily flood the market. Anything and everything will be for sale, which will drive down the prices and make it very difficult for most sellers to make gold. Only the sellers of the rarest items will be able to make decent money.

There can be no denying this. When you allow anyone and everyone to sell anything and everything, and "anything and everything" is unlimited, all you're essentially doing is printing money. And when you print money, guess what happens? That's right - inflation, and the devaluing of currency. In the end, only the rarest of the rare items will maintain their value, and only the few people who sell such items will be able to make decent gold.

Also, with all of the add-ons available, it will be extremely easy to corner the market. With a global auction house, someone can just buy all the ancestor silk there is and then re-list them for sale at exorbitant prices. So the extremely rich (these are the only people who can do such a thing) get richer, and every other person, from the poor to the regular rich, get poorer due to having to pay higher prices.

Fast forward a few months after we implement a global auction house, and what do we have? A broken system that benefits the richest 1% and harms the other 99%. With our current guild trader system, it is nigh impossible to corner "the" market because we essentially have a whole bunch of different regional markets with no way to centrally purchase mass quantities of commodities. There is a reason why Diablo 3 had a global auction house at launch and then later shut it down.

Theres one problem here. If Im the top 1 percent Im already going to get richer by buying out the market of lower prices and keeping the price high. The Xbox NA prices are through the roof for this very reason. The way it is now is npt friendly towards new players at all. Unlike FFXIV where I can put in time and actually make money by being smart with prices following ups and downs.

Jhalin

No

You can really tell OP has no grasp on economics. It is lazy to demand everything be centralized for you because god forbid you use an addon to do your own price checks.

A Global Auction House would do many things, none of them good
1) Groups ALL items together. You think searching for items it bad now? Shoehorning every item for sale into one thing would make it even worse.

2) Getting good deals on items? Gone! Thanks you just made it even harder for casuals like yourself to get items for cheap, because everyone is seeing the same store you are, and just like in a Black Friday stampede, you definitely aren't the first one to grab the best deal

3) Undercutting and artificial inflating will reign rampant! Because you oh so kindly put every item in one place. Gone are the days of scouring 20 zones and 100s of traders to buy up all the low price items! Now people can go to a one stop shop and grab every listing all at once!

Those rarer items people like to collect, like motifs, and recipes? there is a price floor, and that's when people are going to vendor trash them, cutting down supply until the previously mentioned price adjusters will swoop in and fixed what the global auction house messed up.

So yeah, what you proposed is a lazy solution that would fix absolutely nothing, and would further enable undercutting and cornering of the market.


You wanna trade? Join a trade guild. There's plenty that are completely free if you bother to look.

Twenty0zTsunami

No

As much as I think it is a pain in the ass to utilize in it's current state, I also feel it is one of the few things that make eso unique.

Perhaps consider allowing guild traders to work for more than one guild; so if I search a trader in eastmarch, I'm searching all the guilds that have paid him for his services?

This would mean that even guilds that don't amass hundreds of thosuands a week might be able to take part in the marketplace, as well as allow a lot of guilds to loosen mandates on activity-- which in turn would eliminate a large amount of income from "taxation"

I have further ideas about guilds "registering" in home cities, giving them access to the local traders and merchants, meanwhile allowing them to "rent" space on traders elsewhere in the world-- but that's more along the guilds of a guild-systems-overhaul and isn't entirely relevant to the post.

Varana

No

The trading UI needs some serious overhaul - the UI is the major problem with the current system. (On PC, at least there are addons dealing with the problem - not perfectly but they make it bearable.)
The TTC is also a nice thing to have. I'm not entirely in favour of it being built into the game, though - currently, it's always a bit outdated and imperfect by design, and that's not bad. An official integration would have perfect visibility all the time, and I'm not sure I want that.
What could be better, is relocating some guild traders out there in the middle of nowhere. At least place them near a wayshrine.

QuebraRegra

Yes

DoctorESO wrote: »

ARGUMENT FOR A GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE:

The two main arguments in opposition of a global auction house are:

1. Undercutting the competition, leading to a race to the bottom in terms of pricing

2. Cornering the market, leading to price gouging

These two arguments lack merit.

A global auction house allows supply and demand to take their natural course and lead to an equilibrium of price.

Cornering the market is tough, even with add-ons. This is because the volume of items is so high and every single person in the game has the ability to sell items, resulting in a very large and constant supply - one that can easily outweigh the demand, making it unprofitable to buy every single quantity available. Even with low-volume items and attempts to price gouge, there will come a point where people decide the higher price is not worth it and either forgo the item or farm it on their own, or they will get it off-market. Either way, the price gouging sellers do not make the sale, and no profit results, forcing them to lower the price to the point where it sells at the desired volume (in a way that maximizes total sales dollars).

And then there is undercutting the competition, leading to a race to the bottom in terms of pricing. So this means that within a month of the global auction house going live, every item will be selling for one gold? Of course not. Just as there is a price ceiling set by the buyers, there is a price floor set by the sellers - at some point, they will decide it's not worth selling an item for a lower price. If this were not the case, then every item would be available for one gold.

as a consumer, we like a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.

LadyLavina

>The debate to end all debates


Sorry bud, been done a thousand times before. Not going to happen.

Aeorath

Yes

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

Worked in WoW for 13 years, still working

Indeed. But tell these kids that... all they know is run around looking for a 'backup trader.'

Oh well.

Datolite

Yes

The only people benefiting from the current system are those who spend all their time browsing TTC for deals. A global auction house would even the playing field.

Tetrafy

Yes

Jhalin wrote: »

You can really tell OP has no grasp on economics. It is lazy to demand everything be centralized for you because god forbid you use an addon to do your own price checks.

A Global Auction House would do many things, none of them good
1) Groups ALL items together. You think searching for items it bad now? Shoehorning every item for sale into one thing would make it even worse.

2) Getting good deals on items? Gone! Thanks you just made it even harder for casuals like yourself to get items for cheap, because everyone is seeing the same store you are, and just like in a Black Friday stampede, you definitely aren't the first one to grab the best deal

3) Undercutting and artificial inflating will reign rampant! Because you oh so kindly put every item in one place. Gone are the days of scouring 20 zones and 100s of traders to buy up all the low price items! Now people can go to a one stop shop and grab every listing all at once!

Those rarer items people like to collect, like motifs, and recipes? there is a price floor, and that's when people are going to vendor trash them, cutting down supply until the previously mentioned price adjusters will swoop in and fixed what the global auction house messed up.

So yeah, what you proposed is a lazy solution that would fix absolutely nothing, and would further enable undercutting and cornering of the market.


You wanna trade? Join a trade guild. There's plenty that are completely free if you bother to look.

We dont get free guild traders on XBL. Like I said look at FFXIV a game that does it right. People refuse to look at better systems wonder why that is?

Runefang

No

I wonder how this vote would go if it was console users only? The system fails miserably there.

Tetrafy

Yes

Runefang wrote: »

I wonder how this vote would go if it was console users only? The system fails miserably there.

Im surprised that so many people vote against it. Considering ffxiv and wow are pc games that have way better systems. My guess it the people who like the system now are the elite on pc who are profitting by controlling the market. Regardless of how it is set up there will always be people who control the market. If anything locking it behind guilds actually makes it easier for the elite to own the market vs getting undercut.

I_killed_Vivec

No

Tetrafy wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

I wonder how this vote would go if it was console users only? The system fails miserably there.

Im surprised that so many people vote against it. Considering ffxiv and wow are pc games that have way better systems. My guess it the people who like the system now are the elite on pc who are profitting by controlling the market. Regardless of how it is set up there will always be people who control the market. If anything locking it behind guilds actually makes it easier for the elite to own the market vs getting undercut.

In your opinion, and your view is that a global auction house is good. Other people disagree and do not believe that a global auction house is good for the game, and will say that ZoS has the better system

Trading and trade guilds are part of the game, a global auction house would take that away... for your convenience maybe, but at a considerable detriment to the richness (as an experience) of the game for others.

MrGarlic

Indifferent

Not global, but regional. One for each map.

Also I would like to see buy orders included in the system.

The trader bidding system we currently have is seriously corrupted. It's time for a change to make it more equitable.

Brother_Numsie

Yes

Since this is the debate to end all.... (tl;dr at end)

For lore reasons I can understand the lack of an auction house.

When Molag Bal initiated the Planemeld, things basically went to *** for everyone, and I would suspect it went especially bad for Aedric temples and their worshipers based in Cyrodill and Imperial territories. One of these Aedric Gods that might have been hit especially hard would have been Zenithar.
Zenithar is basically the God of crafting, communication, and commerce (so yes the God of Traders).
Currently during this timespan there may not be (because lack of in game) Temples, or Resolutions of Zenithar throughout the lands of Tamriel. These would be the places that you would most likely come across an auction house of some sort.
Now if you look at the racial traits for Imperials you will notice they have a trait called diplomat which increases the gold they gain. You can guess by this stat that Imperials, most likely, have an in with the Aedric God Zenithar. If they have this Favor of the God, then they most likely had lots of, or a really big temple devoted to him. That temple most likely had an auction house tied to it. In fact at this point in time this could be the only central auction house found in all of Tamriel. This Temple was most likely destroyed and looted by the followers of Molag Bal. Zenithar's worshipers at this temple would have been killed or escaped, fleeing across the lands of Tamriel.

For lore reasons I can see there being an auction house (of sorts) in game.

These devoted worshipers and priests of Zenithar would not sit idly by. Zenithar is seen as a warrior god, but not the type that would jump in irrationally into a fight, so you would expect his followers to do the same. So they would not give up, they would fight back by doing the thing they do, worship their god, craft, work harder, and promote communication and trade all the while being hunted down by Molag Bal's followers.
So secrecy is needed.
Some may hide in plain sight as merchants or some may be guild traders. Some may reside in other Aedric temples biding their time waiting for the right moment. Some may stay on the move as traveling merchants, keeping communication open between the different areas while peddling wares.
Some of those fleeing might have also been associated with the auction house. These individuals would need to be on the move, for if they stay in one place too long they may tip off those hunting them putting their and the inhabitants of wherever they may be in danger. They may create a traveling auction house, always on the move, showing up in one location and vanishing after a few days and popping back up again somewhere else after some time (every weekend or one weekend a month). Traveling merchants might have the information on where and when the next auction may take place (bribe, intimidate or persuade).
Not having an actual facility would also inhibit the amount of items that would be available to be auctioned at one time (so 5-10 listings at a time per individual).

Merchants located in thieves dens would be in the know on what is happening (trade wise) in their area (zone). For a fee (or intimidate or persuade) they would be able to give you prices and a location of a trader of the area (zone) they are in. So option pops up "Hey I'm not seeing what I want in your wares you wouldn't happened to have heard of anyone else in the area that may have come across this?" Merchant answers back with a maybe response, player can bribe intimidate or persuade. UI would then come up with a search function for all guild traders in zone with listings and prices, player selects what they want and the merchant marks the location of the trader on their map for them.

*tl;dr: So there is no reason we can't compromise and have both, lore in the game can support this, also better search function for finding guild trader auction listings and locations are needed in game. I gave an example of how this can be implemented.

Anotherone773

No

swippy wrote: »

i've read these threads over and over and i never see any reason why it's even called an auction house. when i google it, it just shows me tons of places where regular auctions are held, open and ascending (just like on tv with the people holding up paddles and trying not to cough).

this kind of auction is when an item (or lot) is up for bidding for a finite amount of time. someone (or an algorithm) would be assigned to take note of bids, and when the largest yet bid arrives, all previous bids are discarded. when time (or bidding) is up, it's awarded to the highest bidder.

i played a game with a different type of auctions, where it wasn't public knowledge what the current top bid is. this had a preset time limit on bidding. you decided what the item was worth to you, and if you fell short of the leading bid it was void. if your bid led, that amount was held until it was either exceeded or the item was won at the end. if the latter, you would probably be refunded some, as you were only charged 1 "gold piece" more than the guy who bid 2nd highest.

what we have now is kind of like a store. you go to the store and see if they have anything you want in stock. if it's not in stock, or you don't like their price, you can check a different store. this is at the risk of stock changing while you pursue.

it seems like the alternate system the vocal people would rather have is something else. maybe a searchable database of all listed items, probably in order of ascending price? (i played a game with that style before too.) is that correct? what elements am i missing?

because that system doesn't sound like an auction house at all. maybe the house part, but not the auction part. there's nothing auction-like about it that i can detect. why do we call it that?

Generally, in games with an auction house system you have an an auction setup where you can set a start price, buyout, etc. Most people dont use the auction system though, they bypass it by setting a buyout and min bid price the same. The auction system itself is kind of a dated system with out of touch devs who think its still 2003.

Nestor

No

I am going to end this debate, because it does not matter whether you want a Global Auction House or not. It simply can't be done.

WOW has a Global Auction House because they have 200 plus servers in the US. Each one can have an auction house as there is one server for each Realm. So, it does not matter that WOW does this as far as this game goes. They use different technology.

ESO is on the Mega Server, so the entire NA, or Euro, population is on one server and can buy from any other guild in the server. So I bet it is technically impossible to provide a global auction house simply because it would add orders of magnitude more computing requirements to this game.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

No

ESO has a solid market as it is...changing it now its going to ruin it mostly to the point of trash...especially with so many moguls that can afford to buy and control market...at least now u have a chance but if u take EVERYTHING and put it in 1 place u basically hand in the key of power to them and them alone.

Tandor

Yes

DoctorESO wrote: »

ARGUMENT AGAINST A GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE:

<snip>

Fast forward a few months after we implement a global auction house, and what do we have? A broken system that benefits the richest 1% and harms the other 99%. With our current guild trader system, it is nigh impossible to corner "the" market because we essentially have a whole bunch of different regional markets with no way to centrally purchase mass quantities of commodities. There is a reason why Diablo 3 had a global auction house at launch and then later shut it down.

Diablo 3 had a real-money auction house designed to legitimise RMT but which was massively exploited and destroyed the loot-based economy - that is why they closed it down. It's a complete red herring so far as listing arguments against a traditional MMORPG auction house is concerned - nobody on these forums has ever suggested introducing a real-money auction house and proponents of an auction house only ever refer to those games that follow - very successfully in most people's experience - the traditional form of auction house with no real money involvement. Diablo 3 is not, of course, a MMORPG and plays very differently to MMORPGs.

As for the rest of the quote, " a broken system that benefits the richest 1% and harms the other 99%" is a pretty accurate description of the present guild trader system, not least on console whose players can't mitigate the broken aspects with add-ons.

I've used traditional auction houses in many other MMOs both as buyer and seller, casually and hardcore, and have never had a single problem with them. I'm happy to promote improving the present system rather than switching wholesale to a different one, as I have proposed earlier, but the arguments put forward against auction houses are spurious at best and equally applicable to the present system at worst.

Stonden

Yes

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO wrote: »

ESO has a solid market as it is...changing it now its going to ruin it mostly to the point of trash...especially with so many moguls that can afford to buy and control market...at least now u have a chance but if u take EVERYTHING and put it in 1 place u basically hand in the key of power to them and them alone.

The issue with this is the same moguls you speak of already buy and control the market. Like i stated earlier in this post. There are 3 or 4 mega guilds with 3 or 4 side guilds that take up all the premium space.

There is absolutely no completing with these people or guilds, by opening up the market to everyone by using a single auction house, you take away their power by not being able to charge people excessive dues to join.

kargen27

Tetrafy wrote: »

Runefang wrote: »

I wonder how this vote would go if it was console users only? The system fails miserably there.

Im surprised that so many people vote against it. Considering ffxiv and wow are pc games that have way better systems. My guess it the people who like the system now are the elite on pc who are profitting by controlling the market. Regardless of how it is set up there will always be people who control the market. If anything locking it behind guilds actually makes it easier for the elite to own the market vs getting undercut.

This is the ole grass is greener thing happening. I spent a few minutes looking around and found all kinds of message boards dedicated to WoW and auction house abuse was a really regular complaint in a lot of threads.

I also did a search for ffxiv and the predominant complaint there was with housing but there was a few complaining about the market. Everybody wants something better. I would like something better than what we have now but a central auction house is not the answer. That would make problems in ESO much worse. We could use a good search function inside the guild trader menu. That alone would help tons.