Your views toward Trading Guild Monopolies

blacksghost

Last night in one of my guilds a guy was berating everyone for “under cutting “ his prices. His argument was that everyone suffers if someone lists for less. Basically he wanted the prices to be fixed. Turned out all he was selling was zirconium platings, and irony of irony he was undercutting the mm price and others. I don’t think half the people trading understand economics, profit v turnover, break even points etc. Any sort of monopoly wether that’s to artificially inflate prices or to hold down prices must contend with so many variables that it is unsustainable, South sea bubbles abound.

Ri_Khan

Based on what I've experienced using the guild traders over the past year or so, having to suffer it's precious interface, combined with the lovely attitudes demonstrated by many of the players who support the whole mess, I'd rather just farm my own stuff.

Unregulated markets are a disaster.

wolfie1.0.

mxxo wrote: »

Flipping could be stopped by a resell countdown or an overprice limit. Lets say you can only add 50% of the price you got it for. Another method would be to decrease the rarity of certain items.

Sub-Guilds shouldnt be allowed.

And how do you prove that a guild is a sub guild? Most of the affiliates and subsidiaries are offline. An account can only be the GM of one guild. Other guilds are set up with alternate accounts or by officers or alliances. The only way to prevent this is to eliminate guilds.

As far as your overpricing idea? No if people want to overcharge for crap let them.

Jhalin

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Jhalin wrote: »

It’s cant be a monopoly if everyone has exactly the same opportunity to acquire those items as anyone else

You either save time or you save money, you don’t get to have it both ways

They don't mean monopoly like the game, they mean monopoly in terms of antitrust. The long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

Their meaning was obvious, you’re the one who isn’t understanding. Guilds are not nebulous entities of singular thought to fix prices some certain way, it’s not 1 or even 50 trade guilds “fixing prices”, it’s a collection of players that are at worst vaguely connected to each other all seeing profit where someone else just wanted a quick sale or were just ignorant of an item’s market value.

A monopoly/oligopoly is not possible in this system because supply is infinite and requires no cost but time. If someone values their time more than their gold, then they’ll pay more not to farm it themselves. If they value their gold more than their time, then they’ll farm it themselves.

No one at all is preventing players from becoming successful traders.

Nothing is preventing dedicated players from putting enough effort into a trade guild to get a high traffic spot, but it’s up to the players to work for that spot. It isn’t and should never be handed to them for no effort at all.

josiahva

I buy from whoever has the cheapest price for what I am looking for...dont care about the names.

wolfie1.0.

ArchMikem wrote: »

As I've come to notice, there are Guilds that manage to hold a recurring presence in multiple Hubs simultaneously, using multiple sub Guilds. On Xbox NA, Lunacy, Old Man Meta, and Sauce are some big players. When a guild such as those become Company sized organizations they create sub divisions under the same main branch, different names, same Guild, more income from sales. Having several Traders at once creates a Monopoly on the Player market as more and more players will see your Guild name and associate a level of "professionalism" with it, thus whenever they desire an item, they'll think about your Trader first. This can ultimately hurt other smaller Guilds as they won't even be considered since their name is unfamiliar, regardless of what's being listed or not. This leads to players deciding its best just to join them, rather than try to compete.

Technically it is impossible to have a complete Monopoly in ESO as a player, only ZOS has that. A monopoly is defined as:

Monopoly 1. the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.

Instead what we have is groups of people that have significant influence over the market. There is a difference. There is not a single item available for sale in a trader that you cant obtain in game from other sources. (Discontinued items not considered).

Flipping by its nature is a high risk venture but it can be lucrative. I occasionally flip items but I can honestly say that losses have been taken on said flips, along with gains. So it's not all sunshine and flowers for everyone. It's just that some people can afford or offset the losses better. Right now though I am in the undercutting business. I make millions of gold selling items under par value. Am I as rich as I could be? No. But I get yelled at just as much as the flippers because I am undercutting them. And if they buy me out? I just go farm more stuff and keep undercutting.

The only reasons that people who flip stuff make gold is because of impatience, laziness, lack of time, and scarcity. Most of the time these are luxury goods.

geonsocal

kargen27

idk wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

"What I'm getting at is the fact that most guilds don't even have a slight chance of selling it to the public because while there maybe 200 trading locations, a percentage of it are being occupied by the same guilds. This business of creating a new guild, bid for a spot and then disbanding it to open up the bid for the real trading guild is, IMHO exploitive."

Yes it is exploitative but that isn't the issue here. That is a separate issue and it needs to be addressed. Quick fix would be the trader is locked to the winning bid for the week whether that guild continues to exist or not. Even with that exploit each guild only gets one trader. They use the ghost guild to bid on a secondary spot in case they fail to get their preferred spot. Either way they end up with one trader for the week.

"The word they are looking for is Oligopoly. Nitpicking over the term they use doesn't change the fact that the goods are monopolized, by multiple concerns in case of an oligopoly."

Oligopoly also does not apply. Over 200 traders does not an oligopoly make. And no one saying hubs do not exist. Obviously there are preferred locations in the game where multiple traders are near one another. Those traders do have an advantage of location. They also come at a very steep price. The out of the way places do not get the foot traffic but the cost each week makes them easily affordable to most guilds. It takes a different mind set to make tons of gold at the out of the way places. Don't stick your rare items there at market value unless you are willing to wait a while. They are a great place to stick materials and other common good at market price though as those types of items move fairly well anywhere. My rings for decon still sell near market value even in guilds that do not have a trader accessible to people outside the guild. Sales are slowing but still there.

All that said I think it would be a good idea to put another trader at each location where there is a single trader. That means more guilds get to participate and those out in the boonies traders might get more traffic.

And we really need an intuitive search inside the guild trader menu.

1. it is not an oligopoly or monopoly as there are many large trading guilds. To what OP is speaking to, there are some that have multiple guilds under their umbrella but even then they are often not in the best locations. Those that are truly strong trading guilds that may have multiple guilds that are in prime locations are far from controlling the market.

2. As for preventing guilds from using a sham guild to bid and hence ensure they have a location, your idea of locking that trader to the winning guild is not a bad idea. There may be unintended consequences that could be an issue though.

3. As for more guilds being able to participate, I am in two PvE guilds that do not push themselves or try to be a trading guild but often both have a guild trader without spending more than the minimum big. So it does not seem to be a real pinch point finding a guild trader. It is reality that no guild is or should be guaranteed to get their trader.

For number three I was looking at it from a couple of angles. More traders would mean more guilds participate. More important in my opinion people might be more willing to visit traders off the beaten path if there were more than one trader at that location. More traders might also add a bit of stability for the casual guilds. It takes a few weeks of having a trader for the guild to get a decent amount of items listed. If the guild consistently gets trader maybe they can get increased traffic as they have more stuff.

The intuitive search inside the trader menu is the one thing in the trading system I would really like to see though. When I was trying to get every recipe in the game on my crafter it took forever to find a level 25 green recipe that I needed.

Mettaricana

I miss global markets one of the many things eso is so far behind on. Moronic trader system, no alphabetical searchs, dead traders in remote regions that no one will shop at, bidding system thats exploited total garbage


They should add a trade house within all major cities with a all the trader npcs in there all tied to the a global market and to access the global market be in a guild of 50 members or more. Ditch the exploitable guild bank money add an alphabetic search mode and let it ride.

BWS2K

So... I'm not sure how this thread got so complicated? You can spend time getting the thing or you can spend gold buying the thing from someone who spent time getting the thing. The person selling the thing sets a price and you pay it or you don't. Prices won't go so high that nobody can buy the thing. What needs to happen is more people need to be more willing to spend time to get the thing, or the time to get the gold to buy the thing, but different folks play differently and spend their time differently so here we are.

Whether all the things are in one spot, or sold by (essentially) one guild, or being re-sold for profit, is irrelevant and just part of the way things work. You don't have to like it, but you don't have to like it. I'm unclear how this thread is five pages of economic history and splitting hairs. What's the problem we're supposed to be solving?

Korah_Eaglecry

D0PAMINE wrote: »

Larger trade guilds put a lot work to get to where they are. Smaller guilds looking to expand should encourage members to not only recruit, but advertise where their trader is located in popular zones, and inform the players in that zone what items they can expect to find if they choose to shop there.

No they dont. In fact its the opposite, they have it easy from the jump off. The larger Trading Guilds are almost always the oldest Trading Guilds. And as long as the Guild Leadership can stay on top of the bidding. Theyll easily surpass anyone new trying to compete. The longer youre in the game, the more funds youll have to secure your spot at the top. Meanwhile smaller newer guilds will have far larger gaps to close before being able to compete with the older guilds. Especially when those guilds have multiple shell guilds to utilize for control over high demand locations.

CompM4s

Unavoidable