Are Resellers Considered OK?

lbattros_ESO

Some of the mega-rich old-timers have been buying up those craft items necessary for advancement, (such as zircon, things to rersearch and make speed and triad jewelry, Hakeijo, dreugh wax, zircon, chromium, etc) and reselling at inflated prices. Tamriel trade then Centre automatically increases it's suggested price and permanant inflation happens as normal players set their prices by that. Are the devs OK with that?

Me, I've been here a year now so I have enough to buy the stuff at those prices but I hate it and this makes it impossible for some newer players to progress so they go play a game where the economy works for everybody..... and maybe even have an auction house so guilds can be guilds and not be obsessed with raising money for their selling spots.

Just strikes me as hurting the fun.

redspecter23

Spoiler alert. If there were an auction house, resellers would still resell. They would just be able to do it instantly instead of walking around a bit.

But to answer your question, it's most definitely not a TOS violation and is not actionable at all.

If there are any actual cheats or exploits involved, that may make things different.

Siohwenoeht

TTC can be unreliable for prices I've heard. It's essentially manually updated so the price could rise or fall in game, but it never makes it to TTC.

I've no idea the prices on PC, but on xb1 there are deals to be had as long as you take the time to look. Price manipulation is tough in ESO due to many factors, but the guild traders and mostly easy mat farming are two of them.

Zer0_CooL

Trading is a legit way to make money in ESO and using your economical power to take influence on prices is a common behaviour in a free market. So unless ZOS calls out socialism for tamriel there's nothing wrong with it.

ZonasArch

You know all those motifs you sold during the event? A good portion of them are in the banks of some long term investors, waiting for prices to go up by controlling supply. On a free market as we have, totally legit strat. And with everything else... So many people buying raw mats to sell refined mats and tempers... Is that also in the same category of flipping for a profit?

Learn from them, get rich too

idk

First of all, there is nothing wrong with finding extra good deals and reselling them at a profit. There is an inherent risk in that to begin with and one must have a good grasp at what stuff sells for.

Second, there is no such thing as permanent inflation in ESO as OP mentions. Prices go up and down based on supply and demand at the time. Mostly prices go down in the long run. Gold materials is a good example. Their price has dropped significantly over the years, but they can receive a bump when a new DLC drops that has good sets that people want.

Lake

ZonasArch wrote: »

You know all those motifs you sold during the event? A good portion of them are in the banks of some long term investors, waiting for prices to go up by controlling supply.

Learn from them, get rich too

This is also risky.
Like what happened with some previous "motif drop" events, where prices didn't go up - since demand also went down.

Vildebill

Have you heard of market economics? This is how it works. Supply and demand. Some wants to get rid of their stuff directly and sell it cheap, while others buy, stockpile, and portion their stuff at times to keep prices up. A lot of people like to play the trading game.

Or you could go the communist way and have the planned economy, controlling prices, supply and demand centrally. If you find one example of that working out, please let me know...

Girl_Number8

Reselling is not only okay but it is a sign of knowing the game economy well and how to play it. Nothing wrong with it at all.

richo262

We should replace gold with rations from our dearest leader. Only fair way.

mague

Zer0_CooL wrote: »

Trading is a legit way to make money in ESO and using your economical power to take influence on prices is a common behaviour in a free market. So unless ZOS calls out socialism for tamriel there's nothing wrong with it.

What an answer. LOL

Fair pricing is socialism and the capitalism has no anti trust laws ? Just as there are no laws against inside business or price rigging. Right, it is not about politics, but about criminal actions hiding behind good laws.

Fusozay

lbattros_ESO wrote: »

this makes it impossible for some newer players to progress so they go play a game where the economy works for everybody.....

newer players dont needed legendary items. blue and purple more then anough fo questing and dangeons. gold item only needed at vet trials and more. purple may farm easilly.

trial farmer can buy this, so sellers sell for this price.

Vapirko

I mean I always want things to be cheaper but most of this reselling I just see them resetting prices to what they were before a huge drop. For example the price of tempering alloys dropped at some point from about 7-8k each to as low as 3k. Then they disappeared and came back around 5-6k. It’s fair, people who farm mats gotta make money too. That stuff is rare. You can do writs for them fairly easily if you don’t wanna spend money. If you’ve only been playing a year you haven’t been around long enough to know that those things used to be more expensive. Actually I’ve only noticed this type of behavior to be quite fair. Whoever is doing it is trying to keep the market robust and avoid inflation. It’s annoying in the short term and good in the long term and for overall game health, imo.

Eyllora

@lbattros_ESO If it can reassure you, when I started to play almost 3 years ago, kuta were worth 10k each, over 12k for tempering alloys for example. So much more than nowadays !
So at that time I couldn't access golden gear instantly, and that was a good thing ! I had to earn my first golden gear, and think more than twice before deciding for what I wanted. I had to learn what to farm, how to trade, get my skill points to have all passives max in crafting. In short, I had to involve myself in this amazing game for progressing :-)
I guess that a new player who wants everything instantly should just play something else.

Also, if the market of all these mats in inflating, it's also because ZOS obviously kicked bots from the game, not all of them, but a lot of them most probably. So it's normal that prices are going up, as supply went down. You can also probably expect prices to continue this way with the new chapter, new class, new gear. People will be demanding a lot of these mats.

WolfingHour

What concerns is me is the potential of certain functionalities in tools/add-ons like Tamriel Trade Center of UESP's Sales Data to be abused by their owners, specifically the possibility of filtering out of specific items that have very high demand and little supply. In essence, a sort of Insider trading. There is no regulatory oversight in this situation, nor to be fair I think there should be. My solution is to limit the capability of crawling and publishing sales data at this scale.

To clarify, I have no problem with players playing the market game of buying low and selling, and all that as long as the playing field is levelled.

Cheezits94

I regularly check guild stores for underpriced items which I can then resell for the average price.
Once you have amassed a certain amount of gold, you can definitely decide to control the market of a certain item for a few days and make prices go up. It's how a market without regulations works, and I definitely don't want ZOS to bother implementing a Competetion Regulator like the Federal Trade Comission just because some people occasionally have fun playing ESO as a trading simulation. That would be ridiculous.

The items OP listed in the initial post can all be very well farmed by yourself and aren't even rare. Materials for Speed and Triune jewelry can be bought at NPCs for AP or Writ Vouchers. Hakeijos can still be easily be farmed in IC (With IC becoming it's own campaign, instead of it having several instances at once, Hakeijo prices are bound to go up, I have been buying cheap ones for weeks at this point just so I can resell them once the prices shoot up after Elsweyr). For golden crafting mats, level up crafting, do the daily writs for a while, collect the ton of mats from surveys and refine them. If you aren't able to do Master Writs because you didn't bother to learn any of the ~500 motif pages you got during the anniversary event because you sold all those pages, you should have some gold to pay for the items you need now.
If you 100% rely on other palyers to sell those to you, then you also are 100% at fault if you have to buy them for those prices.

Jack_TheImpaler

This is nothing that doesn't happen IRL...

Cheezits94

Oh, and I forgot something in my first post.

lbattros_ESO wrote: »

....and maybe even have an auction house so guilds can be guilds and not be obsessed with raising money for their selling spots.

Just strikes me as hurting the fun.

I have played WoW for over 10 years and if anything, a central auction house makes it even easier for players to corner the market and build a monopoly of an item, me and guild mates have done that regularly in WoW, randomly picked an item and then buys the complete amount that's up in the auction house on our server. The rarer the item is in the first place, the easier it gets.

In ESO, I have to travel around Tamriel for several HOURS just to check the guild stores at the big and medium hubs, and then some cheaper items will still be up somewhere at a smaller hub. It's a lot more work.

WolfingHour

Cheezits94 wrote: »

I regularly check guild stores for underpriced items which I can then resell for the average price.
Once you have amassed a certain amount of gold, you can definitely decide to control the market of a certain item for a few days and make prices go up. It's how a market without regulations works, and I definitely don't want ZOS to bother implementing a Competetion Regulator like the Federal Trade Comission just because some people occasionally have fun playing ESO as a trading simulation. That would be ridiculous.

The items OP listed in the initial post can all be very well farmed by yourself and aren't even rare. Materials for Speed and Triune jewelry can be bought at NPCs for AP or Writ Vouchers. Hakeijos can still be easily be farmed in IC (With IC becoming it's own campaign, instead of it having several instances at once, Hakeijo prices are bound to go up, I have been buying cheap ones for weeks at this point just so I can resell them once the prices shoot up after Elsweyr). For golden crafting mats, level up crafting, do the daily writs for a while, collect the ton of mats from surveys and refine them. If you aren't able to do Master Writs because you didn't bother to learn any of the ~500 motif pages you got during the anniversary event because you sold all those pages, you should have some gold to pay for the items you need now.
If you 100% rely on other palyers to sell those to you, then you also are 100% at fault if you have to buy them for those prices.

Damn, now I'm kicking myself for not realising the impact of the change in IC on Hakeijos. I suck so much at this market stuff.

NupidStoob

If there was no demand people wouldn't buy. If you list something for too much it won't be sold. That people are willing to pay that much is the only reason this works. Don't blame the people listing at prices that a large portion of the playerbase is willing to pay. Inflation happens a lot in this game simply due to gold being generated from nothing. The goldsinks we have do not match up to it.

I don't know how you would even want to restrict reselling. Make everything BoP that's bought from a guildtrader? Would just lead to a ton of items being removed from the market permanently.

New players hardly need to buy anything. Most often they just think they need something because they see it in some guide or similar. I've been farming a lot in Wrothgar lately and the amount of people with sub 300 CP attempting vMA or doing normal and are frustrated that they don't get vMA weapons was really surprising. There are also abundant ways to make money in ESO with many guides on how to do so.

Mitrenga

Reselling, what we call flipping, is an essential part of trading in every single MMO. If you see an item undervalued in the store, people simply buy it and sell it for the avg. price. That is normal. This is an open market, supply and demand created by players.

Auction house would devastate ESO economy. New players would need to farm or camp the AH for stuff. Now, I can tell from my experience, if there would be an auction house, a very basic trading guild or a group of friends can camp it for days to pick certain items constantly and sell for bizarre prices. Especially the corn flower, other alch mats and crafting mats. Guild store system is rewarding to those who would like to explore. IF the game had launched with AH in the beginning, it would work but now it is simply impossible. Many rich players with huge stocks (I'm talking about 100k+ of alch mats, gold mats...); market would be controlled by those and there will be no developing trade guilds for you to get your items for acceptable prices.

Tasear

It's like asking if crafting gear for another player is okay. It's simply apart of business.

VaranisArano

Vapirko wrote: »

I mean I always want things to be cheaper but most of this reselling I just see them resetting prices to what they were before a huge drop. For example the price of tempering alloys dropped at some point from about 7-8k each to as low as 3k. Then they disappeared and came back around 5-6k. It’s fair, people who farm mats gotta make money too. That stuff is rare. You can do writs for them fairly easily if you don’t wanna spend money. If you’ve only been playing a year you haven’t been around long enough to know that those things used to be more expensive. Actually I’ve only noticed this type of behavior to be quite fair. Whoever is doing it is trying to keep the market robust and avoid inflation. It’s annoying in the short term and good in the long term and for overall game health, imo.

IIRC, when the price of Tempering Alloy dropped to 3k, the explanation of players at the time was to blame bots. Summerset also had a big price drop as the supply soared with people farming ore along with jewelry seams.

When I started playing, Tempering Alloy sold for closer to 8k. As you say, it's dropped to around 5 to 6k for me, and most of the other gold mats have followed suit for me, dropping 2 to 3k in price since I started playing. Kuta is the exception, as the price plummeted after ZOS vastly increased the drop rate with the runestone changes. Honestly, I mostly attribute the drop to there being lots more people running crafting writs.


As for newer players, like the OP argues...

I'm sympathetic to some extent. I remember when spending nearly 50k to gold out a weapon seemed like a huge invesment.

I don't think the answer is to institute price controls. Thing is, new players have two options that are totally viable: invest in crafter to get their own gold mats OR invest time in making gold by selling stuff.

Making your crafter to do writs or gather and refine your own mats is the sort of investment that ends up playing for itself. It's not necessary for a new player to enjoy the game, but I found that having a crafter has been extremely beneficial. It has meant that I never have to buy mats if I don't want to, as long as I'm willing to farm my own mats.

While its possible to make gold via stealing, I think it's beneficial for new players to join in the trading guild system - the new guild ads will make finding trading guilds that fit their needs even easier. As much as some people like to complain about guilds, I've had very good experiences with my trading guilds because I chose guilds that fit how I gathered things to sell, and sold things that were in demand. Any new player can gather and sell things like alchemy reagents, which are in constant demand.

Yes, both of those solutions take some time and investment from a new player. I don't think that's a problem? When I was a new player, it was a long time before I was doing any content where I needed gold mats. And because I'd explored both crafting and trading, by the time I needed those gold weapons and armor, I had the mats and the money I needed to do it, once I convinced myself the cost was worth the benefit (which it was).

Riejael

This isn't the real world where you don't have access to resources. So there's no need to action or regulate prices.

At the very base of the system. If you want a material, and are willing to spend 3k gold on it, and someone else is willing to spend 10k. Who gets it? You, because you got in line to search for it first? That isn't how that works.

If there is a low supply of material and a high demand, people will adjust prices including reselling. Materials will always sell for the prices people will be willing to purchase them. The people who complain about this are those who find the materials outside their price range and well are upset by that.

Their only recourse is to simply obtain the material themselves. As no one is obligated to sell a material at prices that others think they should. Nor are they obligated to leave materials at prices they can afford and not resell them themselves.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

I made millions of gold by undercutting everyone just so that the investors would buy my stuff first. It works both ways.

therift

I wish we had those shopping add-ons for console. I'd love to have a mechanism that established a purported 'market value' that players accepted as gospel, so that my syndicate could manipulate that gospel at will.

Fortunately for console, the absence of 'market value' reporting tools means every player decides for herself how much to charge and how much to pay.

Tan9oSuccka

I don’t see anything wrong with buying low and selling high.

I do this on occasion. For example: (This happens a ton btw) Someone lists a stack of Alkahest for 200 gold.

Me: Buy. Turn around and VEND for 600.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Just yesterday I looked in my trading guild and saw that master writs (aside from jewelry) were all going for 400 a unit.

So I sold mine for 300 a unit and now have about 10,000 extra gold. I’m sure whoever bought them probably just relisted them for 400 a unit 5 minutes later. So I get my money, and after they wait - which I’m not willing to do - they get theirs with a bigger profit margin than they usually get. It’s a win win and essentially how wholesaling works.

Salvas_Aren

Tbh I would be surprised if TTC contributed to any price increase, considering how this crap established a downward spiral when it was new.

Asardes

Well it's OK if it works for you but I don't consider it worth while since constantly hunting bargains on guild traders is quite time consuming - TTC is quite unreliable, stuff that's listed there at good prices is long gone, having been snatched by someone else in the mean time - so you pretty much have to search them manually, particularly the ones in more obscure locations. I do hunt for bargains, for example before Wrathstone I used to buy large quantities of discounted refined materials to keep writs going, and right at the end of the anniversary event I did a long trip to every guild trader to get the heavily discounted motifs and blueprints, but usually I don't want to spend time doing that. I manage to earn quite a lot of gold without flipping anything, and only selling my own stuff so unless I would sell at reliably 1.2x the price I bought for - 8% goes into the guild fees - and sold 5M+ per week, it wouldn't really add much to what I already earn. Sure, if I was a person who only played the game for trading's sake, I could do that, but it wouldn't leave much time to do many other things.

DeadlyRecluse

It's easier than ever to make gold as a new player, and mats are lower than I ever remember, as long as you don't impulse-buy right after a patch.

I don't do the reselling/flipping game, but I think it's cool that it's an option for people who enjoy that "gameplay."