Your views toward Trading Guild Monopolies

ssorgatem

Nothing prevents a bunch of small guilds to join efforts and use a common "brand" if needed.

Ah, but then they are part of the "monopoly", right?

You can't talk of a monopoly ig there's more than one guild holding the traders.

And I've never seen all traders in a trader hub held by the same guild complex.

Oligopoly? Maybe.
But still, the competition for trader sppots is extremely fierce. That's like the opposite of a monopoly.

Itacira

@Aralon Mr_Walker's very likely a troll

Gargath

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Pffft, you know you are wrong, everyone knows that uber-rich people make poor people richer due to the well documented dribble-down effect.

Are you drunk?

Streega

There is quite a simple solution to flipping (however I have no idea if easy to code): once you bought an item in the guild store you shouldn't be able to put it in the store again. Send/sell via mail - yes, but not resale in a store. That would make flipping so difficult it wouldn't be worth the time.
Or even make all purchased items BoP, but that would be to extreme.

frostz417

They are there for a reason. Because they’re good traders and they can keep the funds to maintain such traders. Nobody really cares to fix this because it’s not an issue. Wanna sell stuff? Don’t waste time in a smaller trader. Or just sell your items in chat

Carbonised

Streega wrote: »

There is quite a simple solution to flipping (however I have no idea if easy to code): once you bought an item in the guild store you shouldn't be able to put it in the store again. Send/sell via mail - yes, but not resale in a store. That would make flipping so difficult it wouldn't be worth the time.
Or even make all purchased items BoP, but that would be to extreme.

I think that a lock-out period of time would be the best solution as well, to combat price manipulation. buy something through a trader, and you cannot list the item in another trader for x amount of hours, or days. Steam has this system as well, where you cannot list items in x number of days after having obtained them.
It would be a nightmare for crafting items, but maybe they should be excluded. Most crafting items are of such a quantity that it's hard to manipulate them anyway, it's mostly the recipes that are falling victim to that. So a lock-out of reselling non-craft bag items for x number of days. It's worth considering anyway.

Vandellia

There are so many Mega guilds on the PC servers, in other words conglomerates of 5+ guilds all run by the same person that take control of a place like Rawl or other places and dominate a town. This amounts to price fixing, yea it makes for a costly game, and hinders game play for the people that can least afford, but sadly it is legal. I don't have to like it, and in fact I tend not to shop in the towns where i know a mega conglomerate guild holds the traders. Not buying from them is the only way to not feed these price inflating machines. They have flippers that buy things things and resell them on their guild stores at a profit, and they do so to "price fix" to maintain their profit. its not against the tos and there there is zero you can do about it as its not illegal.

Odovacar

☠ Reapers Of Death ☠ PS4/NA

Anyone wants an invite LMK... you could be ESO rich in a week. 15k dues.

Chaos2088

ZOS_RogerJ

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goldenflameslinger

It takes a ton of work to run a trading guild. If people are willing to put in the hours to be a "Monopoly," I cannot hate them for it. They didn't get that powerful by doing nothing. They put in the time, earned the gold, made connections, and now they are the ruling class....sounds a lot like real life. I don't hate Jeff Bezos for dominating the world with Amazon. If anything, I hate myself for not having the idea or the drive to have done it myself.

RavenSworn

goldenflameslinger wrote: »

It takes a ton of work to run a trading guild. If people are willing to put in the hours to be a "Monopoly," I cannot hate them for it. They didn't get that powerful by doing nothing. They put in the time, earned the gold, made connections, and now they are the ruling class....sounds a lot like real life. I don't hate Jeff Bezos for dominating the world with Amazon. If anything, I hate myself for not having the idea or the drive to have done it myself.

its not about dominating the world, its about allowing some chance for the smaller, casual guilds to be able to sell as well. If they want to control the main areas like in hubs and capital cities, go right ahead. But that doesnt mean that there isnt any mom and pop store somewhere else is it?

i respect the ton of work to run a trading guild, i really do. but again, there has to be some other chances to be given by these guilds. Each time a new dlc or chapter is put out, what really puts me off is the fact that "shadow" guilds are being used to 'book' the place out. That's just plain wrong to me.

Kingslayer513

Carbonised wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

mague wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

But the real monopoly is created through item flippers, who vaccum all the other traders clean of specific high-end expensive items, and resell them in their traders for a huge profit, essentially creating a monopoly and earning large sums by doing very little work themselves. All it takes is the starting gold to ensure the monopoly.
There's no way to break this monopoly, if you list something at a more reasonable price, it gets sucked up by the vacuum cleaners and relisted 5 minutes after at the inflated price.

There are good attempts. In EQ2 there have been sales crates for your house. If people travel to the house the price is lower as if they buy it from the the broker window. This works only with a global search. Its not 100% perfect, but the vacuum cleaners need to waste time for traveling. Tor grab all "cheap" hardeners it might take an hour or more, depending on the available offers.

You heavily underestimate how long it takes to go around the whole world and grab all the cheap items from out of the way traders. Even with addons on PC, not even talking about base game search UI on console.

The amount of item flippers and resellers on PC EU is more than enough to ensure that every "good deal" is gone from a trader within 10 minutes or less of being listed there, and shortly thereafter being relisted in one of the Craglorn guilds for 10x the original price.

C'mon, that's an exaggeration and you know it. I consider myself a novice trader, yet I can still go on a bargain-shopping spree binge and find items to flip easily. Unless you mean an item literally listed for 10 times cheaper than its average selling price - that's considered a steal, not merely a "good deal".

Mr_Walker

Itacira wrote: »

@Aralon Mr_Walker's very likely a troll

*sigh* Or maybe he was being OTT ridiculous in order to make a point. I would have thought the part where I said monopolies are good for an economy would have made that obvious.

So lets make it very clear.

Monopolies/oligopolies are bad for any economy, virtual or real. It's why regulators tend to be unhappy about their formation, and if zos were seriously about the "integrity" of their little economy, they'd do something.

Flippers, just like in any real economy, act as a drag on it.

NoTimeToWait

Carbonised wrote: »

The amount of item flippers and resellers on PC EU is more than enough to ensure that every "good deal" is gone from a trader within 10 minutes or less of being listed there, and shortly thereafter being relisted in one of the Craglorn guilds for 10x the original price.

You see, if there are many flippers, their profits will be laughable. For example (random numbers only for a showcase), every hour 10 deals (which are profitable for a flipper) appear on the market in the whole Tamriel. If there are 10 flippers active at the moment, on average each will get a bargain. Now, if there are 100 flippers, only 1 in 10 will get a bargain.

You say, that there are lots of flippers moving around. But that means most of them actually are getting nothing for the hours they spend (yes, it takes at least 2 hours to search 90% of backwater spots for decent specific deals, including Outlaw refuges, if you are looking for non-specific deals, that would be more like 4 or 5 hours of searching), because most of the time each bargain yields 10-50% profits of the original item price.

Thus, we have an answer: flipping items is not very profitable. Because on average you get 20-30k per hour (if we don't count any lottery wins like Aetheric Cipher bought for 300g)

Many people won't do it. Most of the traders won't do it, because they can calculate, and there are much better options.

P.S. Market manipulation is a viable option which works only with certain prerequisites.

Cpt_Teemo

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

The amount of item flippers and resellers on PC EU is more than enough to ensure that every "good deal" is gone from a trader within 10 minutes or less of being listed there, and shortly thereafter being relisted in one of the Craglorn guilds for 10x the original price.

You see, if there are many flippers, their profits will be laughable. For example (random numbers only for a showcase), every hour 10 deals (which are profitable for a flipper) appear on the market in the whole Tamriel. If there are 10 flippers active at the moment, on average each will get a bargain. Now, if there are 100 flippers, only 1 in 10 will get a bargain.

You say, that there are lots of flippers moving around. But that means most of them actually are getting nothing for the hours they spend (yes, it takes at least 2 hours to search 90% of backwater spots for decent specific deals, including Outlaw refuges, if you are looking for non-specific deals, that would be more like 4 or 5 hours of searching), because most of the time each bargain yields 10-50% profits of the original item price.

Thus, we have an answer: flipping items is not very profitable. Because on average you get 20-30k per hour (if we don't count any lottery wins like Aetheric Cipher bought for 300g)

Many people won't do it. Most of the traders won't do it, because they can calculate, and there are much better options.

P.S. Market manipulation is a viable option which works only with certain prerequisites.

There are things in game worth more than a Cipher as well a guildy of mine picked up a Murkmire plan for like 5k and sold it for 3.8m

Rungar

its a horrible part of the game but it is what it is.

-not transparent
-not user friendly
- players use 3rd party methods to go around it (pc)
- seems like nobody belongs to any guild. Just there to sell stuff.
- stop playing for more than 2 weeks and your out of most guilds.
- guild falls apart as soon as trader is gone.

a total failure if you ask me.

they should of went with what they had already. NPC guilds like fighters, mages and thieves guilds and did everything through that.

Dysprosium

Monopoly indicates 1 controls all and that is far from the case. There is lots of competition and choice out there.

geonsocal

I always feel a little sad for those poor guild traders located out in the middle of nowhere, or, buried deep in some dank outlaw refuge all by themselves...



i'm still in my very first trading guild which i joined - i still contribute gold to the guild every once in a while...it makes me happy to see when they get a guild trader slot...

it does matter to people...

Ramber

I fixed this years ago, i shop all over and only pay less then MM price for everything. The larger stores or monopolies as you refer to them simply are not, its more a problem of people shopping there instead of other places. The vast majority of traders have good to great deals so If you wanna pay 150 to 1000 percent over master merchant price that's on you pal.

Itacira

Mr_Walker wrote: »

Itacira wrote: »

@Aralon Mr_Walker's very likely a troll

*sigh* Or maybe he was being OTT ridiculous in order to make a point. I would have thought the part where I said monopolies are good for an economy would have made that obvious.

So lets make it very clear.

Monopolies/oligopolies are bad for any economy, virtual or real. It's why regulators tend to be unhappy about their formation, and if zos were seriously about the "integrity" of their little economy, they'd do something.

Flippers, just like in any real economy, act as a drag on it.

@Mr_Walker In which case I apologize. In my defense, some people genuinely hold such views and/or merely enjoy pointless provocation just to watch the world burn. Sorry for the confusion.

Kova

Try to consider the actual complaint. I believe it can be summed up in, "I don't like that bigger, more active guilds can control popular spots and make smaller, less active guilds unable to progress and sell at a rate I find fair and agreeable."

Anyone that agrees with the original post needs to reread that sentence until they understand the argument they're trying to make. If I reword the sentence:

"Bigger, more active guilds should not get to be more successful than my smaller, less active guild."

Doesn't sound very rational, and yet we see so many of these threads about different aspects of the game using this exact argument.

Unless you can provide a substantial basis of comparison for what "fair" is and why it's owed to you as a player, then we can't expect to continue the discussion fruitfully.

Tholian1

geonsocal wrote: »

I always feel a little sad for those poor guild traders located out in the middle of nowhere, or, buried deep in some dank outlaw refuge all by themselves...



i'm still in my very first trading guild which i joined - i still contribute gold to the guild every once in a while...it makes me happy to see when they get a guild trader slot...

it does matter to people...

The long loading screens make the outlaw refuge traders an absolute last resort for me. Usually I won’t even bother.

EQBallzz

Carbonised wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

mague wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

But the real monopoly is created through item flippers, who vaccum all the other traders clean of specific high-end expensive items, and resell them in their traders for a huge profit, essentially creating a monopoly and earning large sums by doing very little work themselves. All it takes is the starting gold to ensure the monopoly.
There's no way to break this monopoly, if you list something at a more reasonable price, it gets sucked up by the vacuum cleaners and relisted 5 minutes after at the inflated price.

There are good attempts. In EQ2 there have been sales crates for your house. If people travel to the house the price is lower as if they buy it from the the broker window. This works only with a global search. Its not 100% perfect, but the vacuum cleaners need to waste time for traveling. Tor grab all "cheap" hardeners it might take an hour or more, depending on the available offers.

You heavily underestimate how long it takes to go around the whole world and grab all the cheap items from out of the way traders. Even with addons on PC, not even talking about base game search UI on console.

The amount of item flippers and resellers on PC EU is more than enough to ensure that every "good deal" is gone from a trader within 10 minutes or less of being listed there, and shortly thereafter being relisted in one of the Craglorn guilds for 10x the original price.

This is why I never sell things low enough to be considered a good deal. #winning?

preevious

Hmm, that thread is interresting..

As I'm one of those who admit to flipping, I'll share my point of view ..

Flipping, in my opinion, is nothing but a way of farming. There are a lot of ways .. from time to time, I farm resources in craglorn, as well..but that gets dull quickly, and I tend to find searching for good deals more enjoyable, and yielding approximatively similar results.

I do not think that I steal "good deals" for players who might need the items that I resell. Actually, I'm trying to get every furniture plans learned, right now, so I need a lot of gold. When I flip an item, I'm using the gold to buy those, thus, inderectly having a "good deal" on those.

What I'm coming to is that flippers are not evil, or greedy per se .. they need gold to fund personnal projects within the game (furnishing a house, buying motifs, buying a skin, etc etc .. ). The good deals they get are then rightly used.

As for the monopolies, well .. maintaining a guild is indeed a lot of gold, so, why not? The system is quite fine as is.

jaws343

RavenSworn wrote: »

goldenflameslinger wrote: »

It takes a ton of work to run a trading guild. If people are willing to put in the hours to be a "Monopoly," I cannot hate them for it. They didn't get that powerful by doing nothing. They put in the time, earned the gold, made connections, and now they are the ruling class....sounds a lot like real life. I don't hate Jeff Bezos for dominating the world with Amazon. If anything, I hate myself for not having the idea or the drive to have done it myself.

its not about dominating the world, its about allowing some chance for the smaller, casual guilds to be able to sell as well. If they want to control the main areas like in hubs and capital cities, go right ahead. But that doesnt mean that there isnt any mom and pop store somewhere else is it?

i respect the ton of work to run a trading guild, i really do. but again, there has to be some other chances to be given by these guilds. Each time a new dlc or chapter is put out, what really puts me off is the fact that "shadow" guilds are being used to 'book' the place out. That's just plain wrong to me.

But the smaller guilds do have a chance to sell items. Just undercut the pricing of the larger guilds in the better locations. You seem to be under the impression that a flipped item sells really fast. But that is mostly not the case. Often, those flipped items sit for a few days to a week before selling at the increased price. Why? Because buyers try to find the best deal. So always be the best deal in your trader. It shouldn't concern you if a flipper buys the item or a person who needs it buys it. The only concern a seller should ever have is if the item is selling. If it is, then nothing else matters. If it isn't, you priced it to high. Period.

There are no monopolies. And you aren't actually complaining about the actual problems that monopolies inflict on an economy. Everyone railing against these "monopolies" are not doing it to protect the buyers from price inflation. The complaint is that for some reason you can't sell items at the same price so it must be someone else's fault. But if flippers are listing an item at 10% above its actual cost and you are selling it for what it's worth, you both are making profit and you are probably selling items much faster than the flipper. The buyer is irrelevant and the monopoly is non-existant.

Monopoly would also mean that there is no other way for you to do business in the market. Which isn't the case. Smaller guilds still have traders and smaller guilds still make sales. I am in 5 guilds, 3 are in capital traders and 2 are out of the way. I often find that I can funnel more sales through the 2 that are out of the way by lowering the prices a bit and still making a profit than I do by pricing to cost in the major traders.

So I guess to sum this all up, this is a learn to trade issue.

And to add to what others are saying, on console, it takes time to flip items. It takes time to search for specific items. i think it took me an hour yesterday to search every single trader hub in every zone (not even counting the backwoods traders) just for a few specific items I needed. Checking every trader for every item that may be a deal takes considerably longer to do. And considering that items are added to traders in a constant flow, this is impossible to stay on top of. It just isn't happening that 1 person or guild is getting all of the deals all of the time, or even 1% of the time.

Tommy_The_Gun

All I want is to be able to sell like maybe.. 5 - 7 items a week without spamming chat WTS xyz or joining a guild that takes taxes just to be able to perma - take trading spots.

Idea:
How about a new system that would serve as an alternative to WTS xyz ? Something like steam market - so you could post limited number of items per week (no auctions, just a price you set). Sold item will become bound - not to break current trading guild economy.

Jaraal

Carbonised wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

People shouldn't complain about a gap in results when they are unwilling to put in the time to reach the same level. It is akin to complaining that some players can run vMA in forty minutes when it takes others several hours spanning a couple of days.

I make millions every week in my 5 trade guilds, 2 of them being the top 2 trade guilds on my server, and the 3 others being affiliate guilds.
Difference is, I don't flip items or resell, I sell surplus mats and items, and items I have crafted myself.

This was never a question of "time put in" or "expertise" or even envy. Some make their business through honest means and everyone else can easily compete with them by selling the same stuff in the free market if they wish, some make their business flipping high-end expensive items, and have the means to buy up all the competing sales and effectively create a monopoly.

If you can't see that then I guess the point went over your head.

There's a reason why every modern state has strict laws regarding monopoly, and why it is regulated in order to promote even competition. There's a reason why Apple, Amazon and Google have all been scrutinized heavily by the EU commission and even issues multimillion fines due to unfair advantages towards their competitors.

A monopoly does not benefit the customer, it does not benefit the competitors, the monopoly only benefits one with the monopoly.

Sounds like you’re saying that buying low and selling high is somehow dishonest. I would say that the onus is upon the seller to educate themselves as to the value of what they are selling before pressing the list button. If you decide that your Ayleid bookcase plan is worth 30k, be glad you got the 30k you wanted and don’t sweat the guy who bought it from you and resold it for 3 million.

Rake

I saw a mudcrab once. Horrible creatures.

Dawnblade

Arbitrage opportunities exist because the current system creates lots of market inefficiencies.

Adding more controls, limitations or cumbersome restrictions to the system won't magically solve whatever issues anyone currently has with the market, and would most likely result in higher prices / less supply.