Burner Traders, an “Exploit” that needs to be fixed.

Ramber

We just got outbid for the second week by an empty trader ffs... they are paying millions in gold to sell nothing, 17 blue items in their store. how does this go unnoticed? are they selling guild spots to make the gold back or just trolling smaller gilds that dont make any gold that just want to have a trader??? I dont know what to even do now.

Ramber

yodased wrote: »

The702Guy wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

I understand exactly what is happening.

The same way corporations make shell corps and tax annuities to mitigate their risk of loss or evade issue.

The problem is proving they are burner guilds and not a real guild, also its not a free market if they dont allow cutthroat practices.

The way to beat them is to make more money than them and outbid them, but may be impossible because they are that far ahead of you.

Basically ZOS would have to decide to level the playing field and they have cone out and said they are not interested in that.

Fair market is a fuct name cause nothing fair about it, in game or life.

I don’t think you read the original post, I’m not saying to regulate the big guilds. What I’m saying is make it so they can’t disband a burner trader and secure it with their main guild when they lose. If there is no benefit then this won’t happen anymore.

I did read it. The point is you can't regulate any guild activities and have a free market.

Also, you cant prove these are burner guilds before they are disbanded.

If you ask them to regulate bidding then you are asking them to regulate the free market. Again, which they said they will not do.

You just dont want to understand what im saying because you are mad about the situation and it affects you personally, i understand that, but it doesnt change facts.

You certainly can prove it, if they have no items to sell why do they spend millions on a trader? whats the logic to waste all that gold?

Jayne_Doe

Ramber wrote: »

We just got outbid for the second week by an empty trader ffs... they are paying millions in gold to sell nothing, 17 blue items in their store. how does this go unnoticed? are they selling guild spots to make the gold back or just trolling smaller gilds that dont make any gold that just want to have a trader??? I dont know what to even do now.

It has happened to the big guilds, too. On XB NA, there are several sister guilds with a certain common name, and they snipe the large trading guilds. There was even one week where 2 of them were in Mournhold. They never have anything for sale and are clearly designed to snipe the larger trading guilds, as I've only ever seen them in Mournhold, Elden Root, Wayrest, and Craglorn and maybe Reaper's March. I even saw one in Coldharbour, not with the same name, but with a name indicating that their sole purpose was to snipe guild traders.

I suspect that the recent increase might be related to players now being able to buy gold with Crowns and someone has a lot of gold to throw away each week. Just a theory, mind.

Ramber wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

The702Guy wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

I understand exactly what is happening.

The same way corporations make shell corps and tax annuities to mitigate their risk of loss or evade issue.

The problem is proving they are burner guilds and not a real guild, also its not a free market if they dont allow cutthroat practices.

The way to beat them is to make more money than them and outbid them, but may be impossible because they are that far ahead of you.

Basically ZOS would have to decide to level the playing field and they have cone out and said they are not interested in that.

Fair market is a fuct name cause nothing fair about it, in game or life.

I don’t think you read the original post, I’m not saying to regulate the big guilds. What I’m saying is make it so they can’t disband a burner trader and secure it with their main guild when they lose. If there is no benefit then this won’t happen anymore.

I did read it. The point is you can't regulate any guild activities and have a free market.

Also, you cant prove these are burner guilds before they are disbanded.

If you ask them to regulate bidding then you are asking them to regulate the free market. Again, which they said they will not do.

You just dont want to understand what im saying because you are mad about the situation and it affects you personally, i understand that, but it doesnt change facts.

You certainly can prove it, if they have no items to sell why do they spend millions on a trader? whats the logic to waste all that gold?

There is no logic other than to be a jerk, as far as I can tell. As I said above, there is a suite of guilds with the same word in them and they snipe top trader spots and have ZERO items for sale. It's possible that they want to try and break up some of the larger trading guilds, but all it's done is to increase their numbers (I've seen a couple of new guilds belonging to a particular family crop up in the last couple of weeks). Now, whether any of these top trading "conglomerates" create ghost guilds for backup bids, I have no idea.

AndrewQ84

Central Auction House.

notimetocare

AndrewQ84 wrote: »

Central Auction House.

I'd quit selling outright and would quickly be unable to buy anything except overpriced items from 10 people

KMarble

notimetocare wrote: »

AndrewQ84 wrote: »

Central Auction House.

I'd quit selling outright and would quickly be unable to buy anything except overpriced items from 10 people

I would stop buying. Not buying means those who "invested" their gold into speculation by buying all the available silk (for example), will lose their money.

Saucy_Jack

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

If your "top-tier" guild feels it's necessary to bid on burner traders like this just so they have a "backup spot" - you're not really in a top-tier guild.

Ajax_22

How would this solve anything? The people who lost their spot would just shuffle their members around to their best backup location. It would create nothing more than a minor inconvenience on the leadership, and members.

Kidgangster101

And for this reason we should just eliminate guild traders and use a global ah so everyone can sell items and we never have to deal with this system where it is abused by people.

It is unfair in this game that you can't make any real money without having one of the more popular trading spots. (I've said it in many threads I have money so don't think I'm saying this as someone that is mad at the system) I'm saying this to allow newer players to the game and casual players that don't want to be forced into a guild trader an option that doesn't require them to join a traders guild. The current system is broken and abused so many ways.

Global ah can be abused as well but guess what? It can be controlled just as easy as well by the entire community not just the select few in that area/zone. If there is 1 guy trying to jack an item up simply don't buy it and in 30 days they get their items back. But if the community thinks the item is actually worth the price it's up there for it will sell. Pretty easy to use and not complicated at all.

Minyassa

Would it help if they made it so you can't disband a guild until a week after it's won a trader?

Jhalin

Minyassa wrote: »

Would it help if they made it so you can't disband a guild until a week after it's won a trader?

That’s the solution being proposed, and it would work for the majority of ghost trader cases. Yes some guilds will still be spiteful enough to blow millions just to take a competitor’s spot for a week, but it will be at a complete loss because they will have no way to sell the trade spot.

Everyone saying a global AH would solve anything are just naive and likely haven’t experienced one as a seller. They’re a nightmare for pricing and in this game, totally unfeasible

alanmatillab16_ESO

meh, just get rid of the trading guild system and go to a proper auction house.

Never going to happen though.

ArchMikem

Just have a Trader bid require the bidding Guild to have a certain number of members. Easy, simple.

code65536

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

Siohwenoeht

code65536 wrote: »

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

I wonder if it's as big a deal on console as it's made out to be. At least with my experience on xb1, I've run into maybe one "ghost" trader and it didn't make a whole lot of sense because it was in a fairly out of the way place. It had a ridiculous name that I can't remember and nothing listed in the inventory.

I haven't checked op's platform but maybe it's a bigger deal on PS4.

The thing is, even only shopping the big areas, Alinor, Elden Root, Rawl'kha etc, you can see pricing that is competitive. I'm just not convinced of the cabalish activity.

Kidgangster101

Jhalin wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Would it help if they made it so you can't disband a guild until a week after it's won a trader?

That’s the solution being proposed, and it would work for the majority of ghost trader cases. Yes some guilds will still be spiteful enough to blow millions just to take a competitor’s spot for a week, but it will be at a complete loss because they will have no way to sell the trade spot.

Everyone saying a global AH would solve anything are just naive and likely haven’t experienced one as a seller. They’re a nightmare for pricing and in this game, totally unfeasible

@Jhalin

Lol I only played EverQuest, ff11, ff14, world of Warcraft, star wars, DC universe online just to name a few of the bigger games that all have/had a global ah and making money was never a problem in one of those games and buying items wasn't much harder either it just depended on how lazy you were wanting to be at farming. I made billions of gold in all of those games and they all have good econemys for them where everyone can make money someway somehow all they had to do was watch the ah for all the more popular items........

Minyassa

Jhalin wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Would it help if they made it so you can't disband a guild until a week after it's won a trader?

That’s the solution being proposed, and it would work for the majority of ghost trader cases. Yes some guilds will still be spiteful enough to blow millions just to take a competitor’s spot for a week, but it will be at a complete loss because they will have no way to sell the trade spot.

Everyone saying a global AH would solve anything are just naive and likely haven’t experienced one as a seller. They’re a nightmare for pricing and in this game, totally unfeasible

I did, I mean I've played other MMOs besides this one and they didn't have weird setups like this, they had central AHs. I found them easy to use and make money from, pricing really wasn't an issue once you learned the baseline, there were no monopolies because of availability and stock turnover, and I didn't waste a lot of time and energy I would otherwise be using to play the game and enjoy life. Good times, and something I don't get to experience in ESO, the one major stain on the game for me.

Tommy_The_Gun

jonswowgothackedub17_ESO wrote: »

Sounds like something a universal auction house would fix, at least everyone gets a chancce to sell their junk.

Yep. Maybe not an "auction" house but rather "trading" house (no auctions, just a price you set). There is huge potential in small guilds / solo players economy wise. If they will have some way to sell even limited number of items per week (lets say like 5), even that will do. Also I can see those items becoming bound when sold. This would in my opinion cause some of the monopoly % that big guilds tend to create to be negated.
People don't realize this but it is not like economy in RL. We don't have limited number of shops / stores in RL economy (imagine what would happen if we had like 10000 cap for shops in USA / Europe . ).

SteveCampsOut

The702Guy wrote: »

So I’m sure there have been other guilds out there that have bid on a trader just find out they lost to burner guild and now don’t have a spot for the week, nothing is more frustrating then that when it comes to the bidding system. I’m not talking about getting outbid by another actual guild, I’m talking about getting outbid by a “guild” that has been created by a bigger guild for the sole purpose to reserve a second spot in case they lose their bid. For those who don’t know how it works, big guilds (especially ones with multiple sister guilds) will bid on one or multiple spots in smaller cities with a “guild” that they have made with the minimum 50 members so in the event their main guild loses its bid they can disband this burner guild and then secure that spot for the week with their main guild. What ends up happening is other smaller trading guilds will lose their spot to these types of traders and sometimes they don’t even get used leaving an empty trader all week. This really hurts smaller guilds because these bigger guilds have hundreds of millions of gold and can outbid a smaller guild without thinking twice. Now I used exploit in quotes because as far as I know there is no rule against this but a lot of people really feel this is an exploit. Now here is my suggestion to fix this issue. Most people know that if you can find an unsecured you can hire it for 10k, what I suggest is in the event that a guild is disbanded that has a trader for the week the trader goes to the next highest bidder from the previous set of bids for 10k. If the runner up managed to find an unclaimed trader for the week then it would go to the next guild that bid and so on. The only way it would be open is if there were no other bids that week. This would prevent big guilds pushing out small guilds with their burners because they would no longer be able to disband and then secure with their main guild. Any other thoughts on this?

In order for them to "DO This" they would have to keep your guild's gold for the entire week to hold your spot in the bidding pool for that trader. Is this a tradeoff you can afford? Currently, when you lose your bids all gold is returned to the guilds that lost their bids immediately. In order for this new system to work the trader would have to hold onto your bid gold for the rest of the week or until the "Burner" dissolves and as far as I'm aware most of these Burners just hold the traders all week long. Our guild got outbid for a couple weeks last month by a guild that had 1 page worth of items. I'm assuming this is what you called a burner guild that would have dissolved if the main guild needed them. I don't think they dissolve the guilds anymore unless they need them for their main guild and that would tie up your gold for an entire week waiting for their dissolution.

DBZVelena

Jhalin wrote: »

Minyassa wrote: »

Would it help if they made it so you can't disband a guild until a week after it's won a trader?

That’s the solution being proposed, and it would work for the majority of ghost trader cases. Yes some guilds will still be spiteful enough to blow millions just to take a competitor’s spot for a week, but it will be at a complete loss because they will have no way to sell the trade spot.

Everyone saying a global AH would solve anything are just naive and likely haven’t experienced one as a seller. They’re a nightmare for pricing and in this game, totally unfeasible

you obviously have never actually seen a well made global AH before. GW2 has one and its glorious. Of course it also doesn't employ the mail system as the way to send out bought items. Instead you have to go get your bought items at the npc. but you can sell from anywhere in the game. The system taxes you both on placement and on the profit you make. so still works as a gold sink similar to the trade system here. cept there is no monopoly guild trading.

SteveCampsOut

For the record. The Dev's of this game, some of them anyway, came from a game that had traders available for every house in their housing district and no auction house. This game was Dark Ages of Camelot. You had central auctioneers who could direct you to the house that had the items you wanted to buy but it wasn't a central auction house. Everyone who could afford a house in the housing district could pay for their own trader and guild houses ALL had their own traders. They know there are other methods. The have chosen to go with this one. We're seeing it gamed just as much if not more than any auction house system with unsavory practices. This didn't happen in DAoC. It's a shame they didn't carry that lesson over to this game when they took the 3 faction PVP model from DAoC.

DragonRacer

ArchMikem wrote: »

Just have a Trader bid require the bidding Guild to have a certain number of members. Easy, simple.

That is already a requirement. You have to have 50 members to bid on a guild trader. This does not prevent the rampant ghost guild problem we have on PS4 NA.

Siohwenoeht wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

I wonder if it's as big a deal on console as it's made out to be. At least with my experience on xb1, I've run into maybe one "ghost" trader and it didn't make a whole lot of sense because it was in a fairly out of the way place. It had a ridiculous name that I can't remember and nothing listed in the inventory.

I haven't checked op's platform but maybe it's a bigger deal on PS4.

The thing is, even only shopping the big areas, Alinor, Elden Root, Rawl'kha etc, you can see pricing that is competitive. I'm just not convinced of the cabalish activity.

Yes, it is. On PS4 NA, it's a very prevalent issue. Most recent example - just this past Sunday at trader flip, 5 of Alinor's 6 traders were taken by ghost guilds. By the next morning, 3 of those had then been bought by other guilds - some of them the "usual suspects". And by last night, the 4th ghost had been bought by another recognizable guild (sadly, one who had beforehand been outspoken against ghost guilds... guess they changed their tune).

The week prior, the top two spots in Vivec were taken by ghost guilds - with names VERY clearly mocking two of the big capital city guilds (one of which we know deals in the ghost guild racket). Within an hour after trader flip, two big capital city guilds (but not the ones who were being mocked) had moved into those spots.

It's at the point that even the most popular free trader guilds are being driven out of the 2nd tier spots (Vivec, Alinor, Rawl'kha) and told to go pound sand elsewhere.

code65536

code65536 wrote: »

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

So... anybody have an answer to this?

There are two strong disincentives to using dummy guilds. First, it effectively increases your weekly bid costs substantially. Second, if you do use a dummy spot--either for a main guild or to resell to someone else--you need to disband the guild. And unless you have 50 accounts at your disposal, recreating a dummy guild will require recruiting 50 strangers who are okay with wasting a guild slot for someone else's benefit.

So why aren't these disincentives working on console as they are on PC?

zaria

yodased wrote: »

I understand exactly what is happening.

The same way corporations make shell corps and tax annuities to mitigate their risk of loss or evade issue.

The problem is proving they are burner guilds and not a real guild, also its not a free market if they dont allow cutthroat practices.

The way to beat them is to make more money than them and outbid them, but may be impossible because they are that far ahead of you.

Basically ZOS would have to decide to level the playing field and they have cone out and said they are not interested in that.

Fair market is a fuct name cause nothing fair about it, in game or life.

Don't get how they can earn gold doing this.
Outside of outbidding a guild and then demand more money to sell it back.
This has the obvious problem that the guild could tell them to take a swim or offer an lower price than the original build
Guild traders has an short expiration date and your only buyers are the original guild or other guilds who lost their trader.
Know Brave cats trade has had their Rawl merchant bought out 2 times the last 2 years. Once it sat empty for days before an real trader showed up second time all the time so an loss.

This is only profitable if the original guild is known to buy trader back at an higher price.

Yes you could use a dummy guild to either try to get an better spot or as an fallback slot if your outbid on main trader.
However this is insurance who cost you gold.

Anne13

Just simply stop it so that guilds can not disband whilst owning a live trader location... or if a trader does disband a live trader location. That location gets blocked from use until next trader switch.

DragonRacer

Anne13 wrote: »

Just simply stop it so that guilds can not disband whilst owning a live trader location... or if a trader does disband a live trader location. That location gets blocked from use until next trader switch.

Yup, I've been saying those two solutions for a while now. It would resolve this situation.

ZOS does not care. This has been a problem for years now on PS4 NA and I assume will always be a problem at this point.

Universe

The solution to this exploit is so simple...
A timer of 7 days + 1 minute for disbanding a guild will be turned ON when securing a trader, that way it will not be exploited.
Only when the timer reaches to 0 it will be possible to disband a guild.
It's basically a change in the DB and/or a few lines of code.

Tan9oSuccka

code65536 wrote: »

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

I would say it’s a few GMs on PS4 that do it.

Unfortunately, they control most of the prominent guilds on the platform.

I’m not going to name any names, but it’s a big problem there.

Tan9oSuccka

code65536 wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

So... the question I have is this:

Why is this a problem on console and is virtually unheard of on PC?

So... anybody have an answer to this?

There are two strong disincentives to using dummy guilds. First, it effectively increases your weekly bid costs substantially. Second, if you do use a dummy spot--either for a main guild or to resell to someone else--you need to disband the guild. And unless you have 50 accounts at your disposal, recreating a dummy guild will require recruiting 50 strangers who are okay with wasting a guild slot for someone else's benefit.

So why aren't these disincentives working on console as they are on PC?

They charge 15K per week in dues.

On top of sales, raffles, ransom and donations they can easily buy several locations each week.

What they do is buy multiple spots using dummy guilds and hold them ransom for sale. (Usually guilds outside of their clique).

If they don’t pay, the vendor stays the dummy guild and buyers get funneled to their “legitimate” spot.

It’s a win win. That’s why they keep doing it.

Giraffon

The one thing that sort of helps the small guilds over time is the constant addition of new traders as new zones are released. Usually the big traders move to the newest areas so that tends to take some pressure off other locations.

At the end of the day, a group of traders near a portal is most prized.