No history = crippled trade guilds

JPS

Acrolas wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Why even have a test server, if you're just going to bypass it and use the paying customers as guinea pigs?

Things are tested internally. But test servers aren't the live server. Even on a cloned copy of a live server, test servers lack population. It's the actions of thousands and thousands of users that reveal problems and vulnerabilities.

No use playing the victim. There's always some risk in a frequently-patched product, as anything not on the live server is a best-approximation simulation. Errors are statistically going to happen. They're not intentional; that's why they're errors.

If the statistics are going towards +80%, something is terribly wrong.

LiraTaurwen

So...one or two months ago, after a maintenance EU server was having the same problem as last monday. There is also a topic from April 2018 when the same thing happened! People lost friends list and guilds etc and ZoS managed to solve the problem without drastic measures.

Yesterday morning I logged to EU server and everything was fine again, a couple hours later people started reporting the problem again and ZoS announced their solution.

The problem seems related, again, to server capacity and performance. Something some of us have been complaining about for months! All we got from ZoS was lies and a promise to trying to fix it in 6 or more months.

It is funny many people always disregarded (like the quote from the post above lol) many of us who tried to fight for a better server because the issues were mainly affecting pvp and dungeons, now look what happens! It was obvious that sooner or later it would affect everyone! I'm actually glad this happened and hope more people will vote with their money so maybe ZoS can finally stop messing around.

FlopsyPrince

StabbityDoom wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I wondered how they knew if we gave our gold each week.

Looks like they don't.

No, and a lot of GMs aren't home yet and cannot even inform their guilds not to deposit anything while this is going on.

Is this newly broken? I did look for a record of my deposits a week or two ago. I noticed that the list only showed items and missed gold deposits. I wondered how guild masters knew someone deposited gold?

FlopsyPrince

Dracheimflug wrote: »

Rygonix wrote: »

hope0burns wrote: »

Hopefully this is one of the first steps in killing trade guilds and the trade system as it is and replacing it with a mega-server wide global trade system. No more ridiculous "raffles," no more "dues," no more need for addons to try to figure out where you can find something you're looking for.

This will likely cause irreversible damage that the game will not recover from. Just about every mmo I've played or heard of that decided to up and change something that many people cherish just to appease a minority has ended up with one of two fates -
*Staying alive but realizing just how bad they screwed up and decide to open legacy servers set at a time when they didn't drop the ball so hard and move on from there
*The project being cancelled entirely
You can't stuff a genie back in its bottle, so be weary what you wish for.

When there is a global system, new sellers can see what prices are set to by those top sellers and set their own prices accordingly. And if those top sellers buy the goods from the lower priced sellers in an attempt to 'corner the market' those lower priced sellers still get paid what they were asking. And if the market sets the price too high then no one buys. Anyone trying to corner the market still has a demand curve to deal with. Even monopolies have limits on where they can successfully set prices.

Plus are you absolutely certain that it is the minority that have an issue with the current system, rather than you actually being part of a minority benefiting from the current system?

I am having major challenges figuring things out now. How much is something worth? No easy way to tell on the PS4.

mairwen85

Is the PTS 'vanilla', ie the core code without ability for addons?

What I've seen in most continuous deployment failures is where the UAT (user acceptance testing) environment is a direct clone of live, but is isolated from environment affecting variables (like plug ins) because those aren't in test remit if 3rd party. What then happens is post acceptance, the live deployment has unexpected bugs and fail over due to dependencies not behaving as expected for those 'add ons' in high volume.

Is this a similar scenario? The solution in that case is to stage pre deployment with addons enabled so 3rd party devs can test the interaction of their code.

Ultimately though, so many possible client addon configurations makes that nigh impossible with a user base where every client machine may be different.

skywarnmc27

This is a game breaker for trade guilds. Billions in game gold flow through the game every week, raffles being done, (mailers being send en mass, now all have to be done BY HAND ONE BY ONE) This needs to be fixed ASAP. MM=DEAD

IzzyStardust

rsantijw13 wrote: »

so this issue would have happened if no one had MM at all. Interesting, and as for my sense of humor maybe I am more grounded and realize that in the end its just a game. All the chatter and activity you would think they got hit by an EMP. I also find it funny and hilarious that the act is being defended. Guild events that rake in cash are the only ones effected, you dont need the guild history to run trials, pvp, rp or many other things. I learned early life doesnt give a crap about your feelings you want straight forward with no pillow talk then your looking at it. Life with out the filter is so much easier. You know there was a way we did things back in '14 believe it was called google docs, heck some used pen and paper. imagine that. This isnt crippling guilds its adding to the work load but not crippling.

If you prefer to get it straight: Learn the meanings of the words you use, then maybe you’ll realise how many times you’ve used the wrong word.

Now: if guild officers are spending their time sorting things caused by this change, how are they meant to also run guild events simultaneously?

Why not just go back to playing only tabletop games then; using your examples.

What you have said makes it seem like you have no idea what you’re even talking about.

IzzyStardust

rsantijw13 wrote: »

IzzyStardust wrote: »

redspecter23 wrote: »

A much bigger immediate issue needs to be addressed that is connected directly to the lack of history and this has been long standing. There is no way to turn off the ability to deposit gold into guild banks. Let that sink in for a moment. People are still depositing gold into the banks, possibly for legit raffles. There is zero record of this transaction. Even if the tracking is turned back on, will be be able to see these older deposits? 5 days? Once turned back on, if the history will only go back 5 days, you can't do a weekly raffle. The first two days will be cut off.

Please ZOS, enable the ability to turn off guild gold deposits while this stopgap is in place. Players are throwing gold into a void with no record. That's unacceptable.

Yes thankfully LEGIT DECENT trade guilds are spamming this and MOTDing it.

Eventually some responsibility MUST be on the Guild mate.

Also: it says ADD ONS cannot read history but Guild History should still show in bank or?
Holy ***.

Anslay wrote: »

reoskit wrote: »

StabbityDoom wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

This is just ridiculous. This is crippling to running guilds, especially trade guilds. Is ZoS truly this hellbent on destroying communities?

I also thought it was VERY INTERESTING that they dropped the world premiere of the trailer at EXACTLY trader flip. Like, to the second.... thanks. So much.

Who knew that'd be the nicest thing they did to trade guilds this week? I sure didn't.

Rright? Trying to find a way to manage through this fresh hell is a challenge that I never wanted to add to my life. Please remedy this at high priority; it's a nightmare.

I reckon many smaller trade guilds will pack up.

Does me not spamming this and putting it in my MoTD make my guild and I not legit or decent? God this theatre of drama is wonderful. So glad to know that only those doing this are real and decent people.

Alll you have done is bait this thread, talk trash at people, be annoying, and I don’t give a dying duck what you think.

As for what makes you decent or not; that ship has sailed.

ThePlayer

I dont care about the guildes trader, all the gold seller within these guildes can be banned for me, but i need the guild activity log for check who join and who leave the guild, then please fix it ZOS

Tyralbin

yodased wrote: »

Lol i can't believe I am actually going to so this, but....

a global auction house would alleviate all these concerns while making being in let alone being GM of a trading guild worthless.

I don't think so.

I think the reason there is no global AH is because the game could not cope with it.

A guild only has 500 members in it and look how laggy searching for items is now.

Imagine searching the complete player database for items. I think this in itself will cause just as many issues.

Dracheimflug

Tyralbin wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

Lol i can't believe I am actually going to so this, but....

a global auction house would alleviate all these concerns while making being in let alone being GM of a trading guild worthless.

I don't think so.

I think the reason there is no global AH is because the game could not cope with it.

A guild only has 500 members in it and look how laggy searching for items is now.

Imagine searching the complete player database for items. I think this in itself will cause just as many issues.

From what I have seen in game, that explanation is sadly believable.

anitajoneb17_ESO

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Is this newly broken? I did look for a record of my deposits a week or two ago. I noticed that the list only showed items and missed gold deposits. I wondered how guild masters knew someone deposited gold?

Yes. This happened with Monday's patch this week.
If you looked at your records last week, everything should be included.
And it's normal that you cannot see the gold movements in the guild bank. There's a setting (special permission) for it in the guild management interface. It's been added after years of spying drama and competition between trading guilds because everyone could see the guild gold and therefore guess, more or less, how much was bid or was going to be bid for the guild trader.
Your GMs, however, can see the gold deposits in the guild bank and know exactly how much and when it occurs. Until last Monday.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Dracheimflug wrote: »

Plus are you absolutely certain that it is the minority that have an issue with the current system, rather than you actually being part of a minority benefiting from the current system?

After 5+ years of "auction house debates" I can assure you that many, many people love the trading guild system and loathe the concept of a global "auction house" for ESO. And vice versa. It's a steady 50/50 split in opinions.
A global "auction house" is the one thing that would probably make me leave the game instantly and forever.

srfrogg23

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Dracheimflug wrote: »

Plus are you absolutely certain that it is the minority that have an issue with the current system, rather than you actually being part of a minority benefiting from the current system?

After 5+ years of "auction house debates" I can assure you that many, many people love the trading guild system and loathe the concept of a global "auction house" for ESO. And vice versa. It's a steady 50/50 split in opinions.
A global "auction house" is the one thing that would probably make me leave the game instantly and forever.

Are guild traders really the only reason for why you play ESO? Really? It's such a crappy system, though.

On the plus side, with all the addons being crippled, you all will be incentivized to use the guild traders the way they were meant to be used. You know, without all the 3rd party crutches. The economy is going to flourish on PC just like it does on console

DragonRacer

I'm going to ask a possibly dumb question here, as this seems to be affecting PC guilds at the moment only?

I am on PS4. What, exactly, is happening? A recent update/patch that PC has that console doesn't have yet has turned off viewing gold deposit history?

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I wondered how they knew if we gave our gold each week.

Looks like they don't.

I still currently do because on PS4, guild history still shows item and gold donation history for me. I also ensure any raffles we do, that people mail gold to me so that I can manually track it versus having anything dumped in our guild bank. Donations to the guild bank are just that - 100% donations not tied up in raffles or other prizes.

anitajoneb17_ESO

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Are guild traders really the only reason for why you play ESO? Really? It's such a crappy system, though.

Guild traders and trading are not the only reason I play ESO, of course. But a global auction house would (logically) mean the end of trading guilds and trading guilds are a wonderful source of nice socializing in this game. You find people there who are nice, who chat, and play, without all the "build advice", the "L2P", the "epeen-measuring", etc. It's much more open and relaxed in mentality than traditional "social" guilds, and in the end there are far more events and happenings in trading guilds than anywhere else, without all the obligations attached.
Without trading guilds, there's no satisfactory mean of socializing for me in ESO. And if I'm not socializing, then there are single player games I like better than ESO.

Also, thanks to the guild trader system and to the trading guilds, there's more to trading in ESO than just getting rid of stuff and piling up gold. It's nice to be part of a micro-community that faces up a challenge every week (the trader bid) and to be part of the common goal of keeping it in the best possible spots.

DragonRacer

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

StabbityDoom wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I wondered how they knew if we gave our gold each week.

Looks like they don't.

No, and a lot of GMs aren't home yet and cannot even inform their guilds not to deposit anything while this is going on.

Is this newly broken? I did look for a record of my deposits a week or two ago. I noticed that the list only showed items and missed gold deposits. I wondered how guild masters knew someone deposited gold?

Flopsy, there is nothing broken with guild history on PS4 (yet). You are talking to a bunch of people on PC.

Because of the fact that PS4 has had spies join trading guilds to figure out how much bidding gold they have, some guilds (such as ours) choose not to show gold transaction history. This is why you only see your item donations, not your gold donations. I see your 7k weekly deposit perfectly fine.

Reverb

Gina’s sorry if shutting off the guild history functions caused any confusion. That seems totally sincere, doesn’t it? It’s also rather cute that she thinks “confusion” is what we’re feeling. Confusion is not the primary thing I’m feeling from GMs and Officers. The deep impact of this deserves better acknowledgement than this!

To her credit, I am confused about how zeni thinks this is a valid strategy, to shut off parts of the game that are causing them problems.

- EU server is unstable? Limit people’s ability to login. Lock people out of being able to play, while simultaneously crowing about how many people have bought the game and now you’re “killing it”

- Groupfinder doesn’t work right. Limit people’s ability to use it.

- A small, incremental patch broke social functions? Turn those functions off rather than fix them.

And years of...

- Cyrodiil performance is unstable? Reduce the number of players that can be there. Still unstable? Reduce it again. Still unstable? Reduce it again. Still unstable? Give up and hope people go away.

Clearly what’s best for the game, and the devs, is a very small player base.

master_vanargand

Default ESO is too weak.
Addons are great, but without them it is very inconvenient.
I think ZOS is the foolish sloth.

StabbityDoom

Arkadius wrote: »

Please provide proof before spreading false information.

I trust Sylvie & philgo, but this isn’t my fight. I will remove my post here, you may want to remove any quotes.

If I am wrong about it, I apologize.

Pevey

StabbityDoom wrote: »

Arkadius wrote: »

Please provide proof before spreading false information.

I trust Sylvie & philgo, but this isn’t my fight. I will remove my post here, you may want to remove any quotes.

If I am wrong about it, I apologize.

I have also heard this accusation against ATT before, so I’m sure you believed it and meant no harm by it, Stabby.

But as someone who has just started to get into creating an ESO addon (after having created several Skyrim mods way back when), I started by digging into the code of certain addons I had been using to learn best practices. LUA is new to me.

Having heard this rumor, I expected similarities between MM and ATT. That is not the case at all. Now, I don’t know all the history. So maybe it was the case at one time and has been changed. I have no way of knowing.

But what I can say for sure is that today they are coded completely differently, down to different base architecture. There is no way I can see that any code was lifted unless, since that time, those parts have been completely rewritten.

Just because a mod looks similar in the front-end UI does not necessarily mean it’s at all similar in how it works under the hood.

Rexlupis

Reverb wrote: »

Gina’s sorry if shutting off the guild history functions caused any confusion. That seems totally sincere, doesn’t it? It’s also rather cute that she thinks “confusion” is what we’re feeling. Confusion is not the primary thing I’m feeling from GMs and Officers. The deep impact of this deserves better acknowledgement than this!

To her credit, I am confused about how zeni thinks this is a valid strategy, to shut off parts of the game that are causing them problems.

- EU server is unstable? Limit people’s ability to login. Lock people out of being able to play, while simultaneously crowing about how many people have bought the game and now you’re “killing it”

- Groupfinder doesn’t work right. Limit people’s ability to use it.

- A small, incremental patch broke social functions? Turn those functions off rather than fix them.

And years of...

- Cyrodiil performance is unstable? Reduce the number of players that can be there. Still unstable? Reduce it again. Still unstable? Reduce it again. Still unstable? Give up and hope people go away.

Clearly what’s best for the game, and the devs, is a very small player base.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Running a trade guild is already close enough to a job that doesn't pay; in fact, WE pay through donating things like gold and crowns to help our guilds sustain the increasingly outrageous bids it takes to maintain a spot and remain competitive. ZOS gets hundreds of millions of gold out of the economy every week on these bids and their response always seems to be to lean on us more instead of adding basic functionality to make our lives easier.

Now they want me to manually do book-keeping of virtual currency. This was made bearable in the past thanks to addons, but now they're removing that functionality from their systems entirely. It's not a small change, nor was there any warning.

Not only that, but it completely removes the ability to gauge member's performance based on sales. Going through tens of thousands of sales manually would be a full time job... This is a hobby that we pay for. The only other option is to have ranks completely based on dues and donations...

Frankly, I've always shied away from any mandatory dues... But without any other metrics to reasonably go by, what other choices are they giving us?

Things like raffles now are also liable to user error and a massive risk... For years I've run weekly raffles to help with fund raising but now even that seems like another chore.

Are GMs supposed to ONLY spend time on guild maintenance? Because with all these new responsibilities there certainly won't be enough time in the day for anything else. This doesn't sound like fun to me, nor does it sound like I'm getting the product I've been advertised with my subscription and purchases of the base game and every chapter. It sounds like an unpaid job just to allow basic functionality for the game's economy.

This is exactly why I say this is an abusive relationship. This is why I'm seriously considering just walking away from this game and ZOS as a company, regardless of what else they produce. I don't like giving money to a company that sees me as both a cash cow and a slave.

thermatico

@ZOS_GinaBruno - Can we please get an update on what's going on with this? ETA? Anything?

StabbityDoom

Pevey wrote: »

I have also heard this accusation against ATT before, so I’m sure you believed it and meant no harm by it, Stabby.

Thanks. I apologized privately and publicly, and have removed the statement. I did believe it, but since I know nothing about coding, I don't have any personal direct knowledge. So I shouldn't have said it. Apologies again. I sometimes get filled with protective feelings for friends and get shortsighted about things.

FlopsyPrince

Tyralbin wrote: »

I think the reason there is no global AH is because the game could not cope with it.

WoW, for all its flaws, has a very functional central AH with far more players.

master_vanargand wrote: »

Default ESO is too weak.
Addons are great, but without them it is very inconvenient.
I think ZOS is the foolish sloth.

And consoles don't allow addons.

DragonRacer wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

StabbityDoom wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I wondered how they knew if we gave our gold each week.

Looks like they don't.

No, and a lot of GMs aren't home yet and cannot even inform their guilds not to deposit anything while this is going on.

Is this newly broken? I did look for a record of my deposits a week or two ago. I noticed that the list only showed items and missed gold deposits. I wondered how guild masters knew someone deposited gold?

Flopsy, there is nothing broken with guild history on PS4 (yet). You are talking to a bunch of people on PC.

Because of the fact that PS4 has had spies join trading guilds to figure out how much bidding gold they have, some guilds (such as ours) choose not to show gold transaction history. This is why you only see your item donations, not your gold donations. I see your 7k weekly deposit perfectly fine.

I didn't see it on several guild histories I looked at when I had looked. Does that mean they all had it turned off?

I am just wondering on that one. I wanted to be able to see to make sure my donation was credited.

DragonRacer

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I didn't see it on several guild histories I looked at when I had looked. Does that mean they all had it turned off?

I am just wondering on that one. I wanted to be able to see to make sure my donation was credited.

Probably, yes. I can't say I know too many trading guild GMs who just let their guild bank money info dangle openly in the breeze.

As far as '"credited", as far as The PTK's goes, since we are a dues-free/donation-only guild, there's nothing really to credit. Nobody is going to be kicked for not donating and there's no "1 week/2 week/3 week/4 weeks paid" ranks like the 5-10-15k weekly guilds. It's just a nice act to do since without donations and the proceeds of our raffles/auctions, we would not have enough money weekly to place a bid on a guild trader. But I don't keep some extensive spreadsheet of who donated what amount at what time. I do, however, mentally note when someone consistently donates and might bump them up a rank or two in the roster as a "thank you".

Tyralbin

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Tyralbin wrote: »

I think the reason there is no global AH is because the game could not cope with it.

WoW, for all its flaws, has a very functional central AH with far more players.

But there is one major difference. WoW has multiple servers does it not?

ESO has a mega server.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Rexlupis wrote: »

This is why I'm seriously considering just walking away from this game and ZOS as a company, regardless of what else they produce. I don't like giving money to a company that sees me as both a cash cow and a slave.

This is my main fear in this episode. GMs just walking away because it's simply getting "too much".
I have written somewhere in this thread what trading guilds mean to me in ESO and that goes far beyond simply trading. I'm not the member who runs away after one or even two or three weeks of missed bids. I stick.
I don't know you nor your guilds but I write this to your attention as well as to all GMs of good, nice and well run trading guilds : I know the work involved, and I am always thankful for it. You are the guys that make this game enjoyable for me. Thank you for that.

Please don't go... we can live through a couple of days, and even weeks of mess. Ask for more donations if you need them, we'll follow. Even if it's not registered, anonymous and whatnot.

@ZOS_GinaBruno : see, this goes far beyond simply trading. Guilds are the skeleton and nervous system of an MMO. As amazing as are the stories and the world you design for us, what keeps us logging in after 5+ years is... social. And the heart of socialization in ESO is guilds. And trading guilds achieve much more in that regard than their generic names indicates.
Please, make fixing this - apparently secondary, but truly primary - issue a priority. A top priority. Thank you.

Dont_do_drugs

Pevey wrote: »

StabbityDoom wrote: »

Arkadius wrote: »

Please provide proof before spreading false information.

I trust Sylvie & philgo, but this isn’t my fight. I will remove my post here, you may want to remove any quotes.

If I am wrong about it, I apologize.

I have also heard this accusation against ATT before, so I’m sure you believed it and meant no harm by it, Stabby.

But as someone who has just started to get into creating an ESO addon (after having created several Skyrim mods way back when), I started by digging into the code of certain addons I had been using to learn best practices. LUA is new to me.

Having heard this rumor, I expected similarities between MM and ATT. That is not the case at all. Now, I don’t know all the history. So maybe it was the case at one time and has been changed. I have no way of knowing.

But what I can say for sure is that today they are coded completely differently, down to different base architecture. There is no way I can see that any code was lifted unless, since that time, those parts have been completely rewritten.

Just because a mod looks similar in the front-end UI does not necessarily mean it’s at all similar in how it works under the hood.

its been like that from the begining on. att has been built not to corner mm, but to provide those, which gain a huge amount of sales data a stable addon, since mm has been causing login problems after a while for some pc eu gm and traders (for me as example after not even one week, which is pretty problematic if u want to check your own guilds sales), especially with multiple accounts in different trade guilds, which tends to happen for very active sellers every now and then. thats also why att has been intentionally leaving out a lot of functionalities, which people are used from mm. after all i can assure you, that arkadius definitely isnt in the need to steal any code from anyone, i'd even consider him as one of the more/most capable addon authors this community has to offer.

Ardan147

What I want to know is how did they manage to screw this up so badly, and when is this going to be fixed? As far as I am concerned, right now in the state that that it is currently in, this game is a defective product. If the API functionality that Master Merchant depends on in order to work is down, then the game is not working.

And for everyone who says, "Well console never had addons to begin with," yes, that may be true, but the entire console ecosystem developed around that functionality not being available. While the PC economy developed around tools like Master Merchant and the real-time data that they provide. Take that away after people have been depending on it all this time and it's like taking a sledgehammer to the entire system.

Of course, right now it's much, much worse than even what is the normal state of affairs for consoles, as with all guild history disabled GM's have no way even to see who is depositing to the guild bank, meaning that dues/raffle ticket purchases would need to be done by mail (and filling up GM's mailboxes.) MM also makes it possible for GM's to track how members are contributing to their guilds without having to just charge flat dues each week, which from what I've read is pretty much standard on the consoles because there is no way to at all conveniently aggregate sales data to see how much each member has sold (if they wanted to do that it would have to be done manually, and no one is going to have time for that).

If ZOS decides that they are going to cancel MM and ATT, then I am going to very seriously consider canceling my ESO+ subscription.