[PC] Does ESO have a Master Merchant problem?

zyk

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to Master Merchant. This is not a post directly critical of addons like it. Nor is this intended to be a discussion to debate the merits of a global auction house. That's a completely different topic. Though MM is not relevant for console players, the state of the Trader interface is. I am an active trader in a few trade guilds, so that influences my POV.

I consider most of the functions of Master Merchant to be essential. I can't believe they were omitted from the original design of the game. The game should have, at least, rudimentary features such as a sales history and sales stats. Since launch, these functions have become 100x more important because it feels like the game has 100x more items.

Features like those are easy and inexpensive to provide with the proper tools -- like a database server -- but extremely inefficient for addons to provide. This creates a lot performance issues for ESO players. I idle in ESO when performing tasks away from my PC because I hate logging in with my main character (the only one with MM enabled) because it takes so long for MM to load completely. After MM is loaded, it continues to add intermittent stutter. When I do play my main character in PVP, it's essential that I disable MM.

I believe ZOS should consider improving the trader interface because not only would players benefit from the new features directly but all players currently using addons like MM would enjoy a significant performance improvement. It wouldn't be apparent in FPS, but stutter would be reduced for anyone in a large trade guild.

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues. Many of its features are essential. They could be implemented by ZOS in a way that would eliminate the performance impact. Should improving the trader interface be a priority for ZOS?

VexingArcanist

zyk wrote: »

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to Master Merchant. This is not a post directly critical of addons like it. Nor is this intended to be a discussion to debate the merits of a global auction house. That's a completely different topic. Though MM is not relevant for console players, the state of the Trader interface is. I am an active trader in a few trade guilds, so that influences my POV.

I consider most of the functions of Master Merchant to be essential. I can't believe they were omitted from the original design of the game. The game should have, at least, rudimentary features such as a sales history and sales stats. Since launch, these functions have become 100x more important because it feels like the game has 100x more items.

Features like those are easy and inexpensive to provide with the proper tools -- like a database server -- but extremely inefficient for addons to provide. This creates a lot performance issues for ESO players. I idle in ESO when performing tasks away from my PC because I hate logging in with my main character (the only one with MM enabled) because it takes so long for MM to load completely. After MM is loaded, it continues to add intermittent stutter. When I do play my main character in PVP, it's essential that I disable MM.

I believe ZOS should consider improving the trader interface because not only would players benefit from the new features directly but all players currently using addons like MM would enjoy a significant performance improvement. It wouldn't be apparent in FPS, but stutter would be reduced for anyone in a large trade guild.

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues. Many of its features are essential. They could be implemented by ZOS in a way that would eliminate the performance impact. Should improving the trader interface be a priority for ZOS?

Lets start by admitting this game's entire merchant system is a complete joke.

srfrogg23

I’m pretty sure MM was omitted on purpose. People weren’t supposed to have access to that information. We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

Taleof2Cities

VexingArcanist wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to Master Merchant. This is not a post directly critical of addons like it. Nor is this intended to be a discussion to debate the merits of a global auction house. That's a completely different topic. Though MM is not relevant for console players, the state of the Trader interface is. I am an active trader in a few trade guilds, so that influences my POV.

I consider most of the functions of Master Merchant to be essential. I can't believe they were omitted from the original design of the game. The game should have, at least, rudimentary features such as a sales history and sales stats. Since launch, these functions have become 100x more important because it feels like the game has 100x more items.

Features like those are easy and inexpensive to provide with the proper tools -- like a database server -- but extremely inefficient for addons to provide. This creates a lot performance issues for ESO players. I idle in ESO when performing tasks away from my PC because I hate logging in with my main character (the only one with MM enabled) because it takes so long for MM to load completely. After MM is loaded, it continues to add intermittent stutter. When I do play my main character in PVP, it's essential that I disable MM.

I believe ZOS should consider improving the trader interface because not only would players benefit from the new features directly but all players currently using addons like MM would enjoy a significant performance improvement. It wouldn't be apparent in FPS, but stutter would be reduced for anyone in a large trade guild.

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues. Many of its features are essential. They could be implemented by ZOS in a way that would eliminate the performance impact. Should improving the trader interface be a priority for ZOS?

Lets start by admitting this game's entire merchant system is a complete joke.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion ... as well as ignoring the OPs purpose of the thread.

Kiralyn2000

Heck with "rudimentary" features like sales history (shows I'm not that big a trader, that this feature seems like an advanced thing to me )

How about actual rudimentary features like keyword search and some better sorting options? Sales history of an item doesn't matter if you can't even find it in the first place.

edit: I suppose this is because I'm looking at the system as a buyer, not a seller. /ponder

Radinyn

VexingArcanist wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to Master Merchant. This is not a post directly critical of addons like it. Nor is this intended to be a discussion to debate the merits of a global auction house. That's a completely different topic. Though MM is not relevant for console players, the state of the Trader interface is. I am an active trader in a few trade guilds, so that influences my POV.

I consider most of the functions of Master Merchant to be essential. I can't believe they were omitted from the original design of the game. The game should have, at least, rudimentary features such as a sales history and sales stats. Since launch, these functions have become 100x more important because it feels like the game has 100x more items.

Features like those are easy and inexpensive to provide with the proper tools -- like a database server -- but extremely inefficient for addons to provide. This creates a lot performance issues for ESO players. I idle in ESO when performing tasks away from my PC because I hate logging in with my main character (the only one with MM enabled) because it takes so long for MM to load completely. After MM is loaded, it continues to add intermittent stutter. When I do play my main character in PVP, it's essential that I disable MM.

I believe ZOS should consider improving the trader interface because not only would players benefit from the new features directly but all players currently using addons like MM would enjoy a significant performance improvement. It wouldn't be apparent in FPS, but stutter would be reduced for anyone in a large trade guild.

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues. Many of its features are essential. They could be implemented by ZOS in a way that would eliminate the performance impact. Should improving the trader interface be a priority for ZOS?

Lets start by admitting this game's entire merchant system is a complete joke.

Another auction house boi...

Jitterbug

I consider not having average sale price in the vanilla interface to be actual trolling.

Jhalin

We're well beyond the point of "no one should know how items are priced" bs, and MM's sales tracking should be integrated into the base game. It only tracks your own guilds anyway, and it would certainly make sense to track our own guilds sales.

On top of that, Awesome Guild Store should be part of the base UI, with price settings, known/unknown options, proper categorization. It's ridiculous that the guild stores are barely useable without that addon.

Pennylong

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck with "rudimentary" features like sales history (shows I'm not that big a trader, that this feature seems like an advanced thing to me )

How about actual rudimentary features like keyword search and some better sorting options? Sales history of an item doesn't matter if you can't even find it in the first place.

edit: I suppose this is because I'm looking at the system as a buyer, not a seller. /ponder

Keyword search would be amazing.

Can that be done on MM?

Dont_do_drugs

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues.

ATT doesnt.

Ardan147

srfrogg23 wrote: »

I’m pretty sure MM was omitted on purpose. People weren’t supposed to have access to that information. We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

Then why would they even make that information available to addons via the API?

MrGarlic

For such an amazingly gorgeous graphical game as ESO is, it is seriously let down by an outdated clunky user interface that would have been fine 20 years ago, but has long been surpassed.

I came from Eve Online to this game and frankly I was amazed at how primitive the market system is implemented in ESO. We can't even set up buy orders. It was quite disappointing as I love to dabble in game economics.

Come on ZOS. Get with the programme and catch up to other MMOs.

Tandor

While I accept this topic is not about alternative trading systems, it is certainly valid for the players who want a different system to oppose the allocation of scarce developer resources to bringing the functions of a particular addon in-house in order to apply them to the existing system across all platforms.

Whilst that exercise might be relatively straightforward on PC, it is inconceivable that such a major change to the trading system would be implemented on PC only, and its application to the console platforms could well be substantially more problematic and time-consuming for the developers.

That would mean that it could only make sense as part of an overall review of the trading system even if the intention was to enhance the existing one rather than replace it. I'd certainly welcome that, but it would need to cover a lot more than just sales history and sales stats so as to provide, for example, a proper current listing and search UI. Such an overall review should indeed be a priority for ZOS, and is long overdue for reasons that go way beyond performance issues on the PC.

zyk

srfrogg23 wrote: »

I’m pretty sure MM was omitted on purpose. People weren’t supposed to have access to that information. We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

Even if you want to take an RP spin on it, even merchants in Tamriel would at least have ledgers and other information documenting their transactions. There would be trading companies with number crunchers producing the kind of data MM does.

I actually love ESO's Trader system and economy. I understand others would prefer an auction house. However, that topic has been debated to death. If you want to start a new thread on that, feel free. I am sure ZOS is well aware of that polarizing topic already.

This thead is about how woefully insufficient the default trader UI is. It is practically required that anyone who regularly utilizes the player economy to use addons that come with performance burdens. If ZOS plans to stick with the current system, it *needs* to be improved.

TheCyberDruid

I'm not a huge fan of the ingame economy and I think that without MM it would be an even bigger problem. The whole guild trader system could use an overhaul, but a few features of MM are indeed essential and shouldn't be part of an addon. That being said I don't think we'll ever see any improvement on the trading interface or organisation as it doesn't generate any profit for ZOS.

Leandor

MM, and even more TTC, have basically achieved what some have been asking for: unified pricing serverwide. They have de facto eliminated the reason for the guild trader system. Prices for any commodities (i.e. items with big turnaround like tempers or consumables) are within maybe 5% across all traders.

Only rare and ultra rare loot is somewhat differently priced.

The performance issue is relatively unimportant, since you can run the addon on only one char used for trading and have your main chars disable it. Voilà, problem solved.

knaveofengland

every time i login master merchant there are thousands more added big drain on resorces game slows down , this is not good , esos system has a lot of grey areas really cant be asked teleporting to other places to try find what iam after .

perhaps they look at other mmos system and use thiers like eve online even runescape ,.

time to get the hat pin out .

Peekachu99

I think the fact that everyone and anyone who trades uses these addons (and/ or the TTC website), and yet we still have advocates against a universal auction house—which these addons literally serve the function of—is a grand example of human ignorance and hypocrisy.

Overhaul the whole system. Probably 90% of the people in guilds are there to sell stuff and that’s a clear, UI and social failure for an online community.

I’d like to see ZoS seriously invest in UI and social features for 2018.

MW2K

srfrogg23 wrote: »

We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

So this is Goldman Sachs Online, not ESO?

essi2

There are probably features from MM ZOS could implement in the game, but the trading addon that really need to be implemented in the core game is AwesomeGuildStore.

zyk

essi2 wrote: »

There are probably features from MM ZOS could implement in the game, but the trading addon that really need to be implemented in the core game is AwesomeGuildStore.

I agree with this completely. ZOS should hire its author. I would quit ESO without AwesomeGuildStore. No joke.

zaria

Leandor wrote: »

MM, and even more TTC, have basically achieved what some have been asking for: unified pricing serverwide. They have de facto eliminated the reason for the guild trader system. Prices for any commodities (i.e. items with big turnaround like tempers or consumables) are within maybe 5% across all traders.

Only rare and ultra rare loot is somewhat differently priced.

The performance issue is relatively unimportant, since you can run the addon on only one char used for trading and have your main chars disable it. Voilà, problem solved.

For the common raw materials prices are pretty standardized, however even for stuff like nirncrux you have an 20% difference between traders in the same city. And that is the issue with MM, it only work on traders you use not others.

Cryptical

Peekachu99 wrote: »

I think the fact that everyone and anyone who trades uses these addons (and/ or the TTC website), and yet we still have advocates against a universal auction house—which these addons literally serve the function of—is a grand example of human ignorance and hypocrisy.

Excellent point, the addons do serve to consolidate a player’s 5 guilds into a single point of trade and also pull all guilds closer to a single point of trade through the interconnected web nature of the guild members.

And on top of that the ttc site serves to erase the distance between guild store locations as much as possible, acting as a single universal trader.

The addons that are most popular with those who trade have effectively created a rudimentary auction house.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Hey Zeni, the players have spoken with their actions. The issue for you has moved beyond ‘should we make a single point of trade’ and has become ‘the players want it so much they kludged one together themselves. How will we respond to them?’

I think a similar situation happened with the iPhone. People jailbreaked the phone to get functions that didn’t exist in the base, like the control panel where you can quickly toggle WiFi or Bluetooth. Background images. Folders were first created by a jailbreaker. Apple listened, and incorporated such utility into the base operating system.

Azurya

zyk wrote: »

TL;DR: MM causes a lot of performance issues. Many of its features are essential.

have one toon who trades, and you don´t have any issues on your other toons, you can disable MM for the other toons! Simple as it is, next problem pls!

zyk wrote: »

I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to Master Merchant.

I believe ZOS should consider improving the trader interface etc

it is obvious you are not grateful..........
and implementing the system in UI would mean making the performing issues available to all players, on every char they play?!? not a nice solution!

Leandor

zaria wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

MM, and even more TTC, have basically achieved what some have been asking for: unified pricing serverwide. They have de facto eliminated the reason for the guild trader system. Prices for any commodities (i.e. items with big turnaround like tempers or consumables) are within maybe 5% across all traders.

Only rare and ultra rare loot is somewhat differently priced.

The performance issue is relatively unimportant, since you can run the addon on only one char used for trading and have your main chars disable it. Voilà, problem solved.

For the common raw materials prices are pretty standardized, however even for stuff like nirncrux you have an 20% difference between traders in the same city. And that is the issue with MM, it only work on traders you use not others.

Can't say I have the same experience. Going from Belkarth to Mournhold to Rawl'ka to Wayrest, I find the same prices to within a hair's breadth. I am not spending too much time searching and comparing, though.

Feanor

ZOS simply outsourced UI development to the addon authors. It’s a win-win for them that way. We have almost the same base UI since launch (combat text and buff trackers got added, but that’s about it). It’s not going to change at this point.

srfrogg23

Ardan147 wrote: »

srfrogg23 wrote: »

I’m pretty sure MM was omitted on purpose. People weren’t supposed to have access to that information. We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

Then why would they even make that information available to addons via the API?

They didn’t. The ability to use addons was a thing way before guild traders. I’m betting they expected it for other UI customization related things, not turning the guild traders into a pseudo-GAH.

Zos doesn’t create the addons. That’s players going out of their way to “improve” the game.

srfrogg23

zyk wrote: »

srfrogg23 wrote: »

I’m pretty sure MM was omitted on purpose. People weren’t supposed to have access to that information. We’re supposed to run around spying on each other and looking at different merchants for hours on end, not looking up average prices with an addon.

Even if you want to take an RP spin on it, even merchants in Tamriel would at least have ledgers and other information documenting their transactions. There would be trading companies with number crunchers producing the kind of data MM does.

I actually love ESO's Trader system and economy. I understand others would prefer an auction house. However, that topic has been debated to death. If you want to start a new thread on that, feel free. I am sure ZOS is well aware of that polarizing topic already.

This thead is about how woefully insufficient the default trader UI is. It is practically required that anyone who regularly utilizes the player economy to use addons that come with performance burdens. If ZOS plans to stick with the current system, it *needs* to be improved.

Love it or hate it, the guild trader system was designed to create regional economies where trade guilds would compete with each other and players would have to shop around to avoid being ripped off by people who over-price things.

MM and TTC turns the guild traders into a global economy with fairly uniform pricing and predictability. That’s why Zos won’t go out of their way to “improve” the guild traders. They don’t view it as an improvement because it’s doing the complete opposite of what they originally wanted.

And, yes, if you’re this adamant that MM *needs* to be a baseline part of the guild trader system, then you are saying that the game also *needs* to be one step closer to a global auction house system, because that’s exactly what MM does.

smacky

I use AwesomeGuildStore as my trader interface, much more friendly.

As far as using MM goes, it only shows data for your guilds.

It is better to run MM aswell as TTC, which gives info on LISTINGS only, not sales across the whole game. When there are 200+ listings, you can generally feel confident in the AVG price on TTC being correct. That said, at the moment someone is skewing those numbers by listing a crapload of items for ridiculously high prices.

I'm not too sure they realise they have to pay listing fees xD

smacky

And, yes, if you’re this adamant that MM *needs* to be a baseline part of the guild trader system, then you are saying that the game also *needs* to be one step closer to a global auction house system, because that’s exactly what MM does.[/quote]

Not true. MM, as per my previous reply applies only to YOUR guilds.

Caff32

Honestly, while most of the information that MM provides is nice to have, a simple change to the console interface that allows the player to search for specific words would be the No. 1 thing they could do to improve the interface and it's not even close. The amount of time spent searching through page after page after page just looking for one particular item is infuriating.