No history = crippled trade guilds

Urigall

As of this morning, my MM seemed - seemed - to be sort of functional. I trade a lot and tend to rely on it to a certain extent. Over time, I've managed to get a rough idea of what items are worth. I still find MM pretty much essential in some cases.

Anyway, the MM thing is only part of the trading problem. Within the last, few weeks - say, four to six or so - the guild trader interface has been like waiting for Godot. No doubt anyone who trades a lot will have seen this happening to them. Sometimes it takes...hmmm...over a minute or so for the inventory data to load. I've simply exited a few times, after getting fed up waiting .

JPS

Ackwalan wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

A little more information might help just a little. @ZOS_G

Looks like we will have to wait till Monday.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6131840#Comment_6131840

And what about my lottery that ends with trader swap ? And what about my ranking and members? Shall I just kick everyone because they seem to have no sales?

Ohtimbar

This is bonkers. Can we not go a single week without some sort of technical disaster?

Acrolas

Wulfespirit wrote: »

How long have the people at zenimax watch the number's rise and congratulated themselves on how they're killing it only to come to a point where they can't even handle allowing addons to query guild history anymore.

But to be fair, how many people actually read the entire XBox Magazine article instead of the one page that wccftech copied from and where the "killing it" out of context quote comes from?

The article wasn't just about ESO. It was about Firor's entire career. He was responding to the question Adam Bryant gave him, "How does it feel to have ESO be as successful as it has been?"

It's not illegal for developers to take pride in all their work, even the difficult, still-in-progress stuff. Because the difference between the loud trolls on this forum and Zenimax Online Studios is that ZOS has actually published a product. You can tell from how people talk where they've been. Once you have to deal with success and failure and criticism you develop an empathy for people who have to deal with all of that on a much larger scale than you have to. Judge not lest ye be judged and *** like that.

I know it's frustrating and disappointing, but the player base has the freedom and liberty to take a deep breath and take a break. Do something else for a little while. Developers can't do that. Some people here like to envision ZOS as a company that sneaks down the emergency slide to escape their problems. Just because the developers aren't *** and moaning on here about their difficulties does not mean they're not totally stressed out about problems. It's just professional to not go on emotional online tirades and live tweet your dirty laundry. You suck it up and you work on the problem until it's fixed. And then you work on the next problem, and the next. Day in and day out. Because it's your job. It pays in legal tender, not likes and awesomes. So you report to the people paying you your salary, not the comments section.

So apologies if some people can't deal with a day or two of ZOS publicly recognizing the progress they've made. But anymore I take a day or two to recognize how I haven't rage quit the whole *** Internet over how immature and inflammatory it tends to get. I just do more work or have a beer or take a walk or play a sport or [NSFW comment]. Because that puts into perspective how tiny these problems really are in the scope of an entire lifespan, and how despite having ten stars here my life does not revolve around a single video game.

The guild history problem is going to get fixed. Add-ons will be functional again. Just take a step back. Donate directly to a nominated guild team member. Use the sales history you still have to price your items. Again, frustrating. Super frustrating for administrative members. But a temporary inconvenience compared to most other things.

JPS

Acrolas wrote: »

But a temporary inconvenience compared to most other things.

It's just too bad there is a temporary inconvenience almost after every maintenance. Not to mention the temporary inconveniences that have now lasted for months....

Apparently you don't get that running a guild is a continuous thing. One doesn't get to take a step back...

Sarjako

Wow the salt just keeps piling up. #Sad

All this BS just makes the devs want to help even less. They're trying to fix an issue. Anyone that says that "THIS ISNT THE RIGHT WAY"... kindly let YOUR customers tell you how to do YOUR job. I'll be it'd rub you the wrong way too.

Jaraal

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.

Even so, the logical and considerate thing to do would be to roll back the changes and figure out what went wrong on their own time, rather than just say, "Oops, we broke something, but we don't care about your gaming experience, so just deal with it for a week or more until we can throw something else at it that may or may not work."

More and more, they distance themselves from the customer with unresolved and chronic issues, and more recently, tossing years of established lore and playstyles for unclear purposes, promising to broaden the experience for users but actually narrowing functionality to niche builds, and so forth. Hard to fault those who are getting fed up with callous treatment, yet are pushed to spend more and more money on cosmetics, easy mode game mechanics, and other "features".

wavingblue

Sarjako wrote: »

Wow the salt just keeps piling up. #Sad

All this BS just makes the devs want to help even less. They're trying to fix an issue. Anyone that says that "THIS ISNT THE RIGHT WAY"... kindly let YOUR customers tell you how to do YOUR job. I'll be it'd rub you the wrong way too.

So you are saying the devs are doing this on purpose?

LiraTaurwen

Acrolas wrote: »

Wulfespirit wrote: »

How long have the people at zenimax watch the number's rise and congratulated themselves on how they're killing it only to come to a point where they can't even handle allowing addons to query guild history anymore.

But to be fair, how many people actually read the entire XBox Magazine article instead of the one page that wccftech copied from and where the "killing it" out of context quote comes from?

The article wasn't just about ESO. It was about Firor's entire career. He was responding to the question Adam Bryant gave him, "How does it feel to have ESO be as successful as it has been?"

It's not illegal for developers to take pride in all their work, even the difficult, still-in-progress stuff. Because the difference between the loud trolls on this forum and Zenimax Online Studios is that ZOS has actually published a product. You can tell from how people talk where they've been. Once you have to deal with success and failure and criticism you develop an empathy for people who have to deal with all of that on a much larger scale than you have to. Judge not lest ye be judged and *** like that.

I know it's frustrating and disappointing, but the player base has the freedom and liberty to take a deep breath and take a break. Do something else for a little while. Developers can't do that. Some people here like to envision ZOS as a company that sneaks down the emergency slide to escape their problems. Just because the developers aren't *** and moaning on here about their difficulties does not mean they're not totally stressed out about problems. It's just professional to not go on emotional online tirades and live tweet your dirty laundry. You suck it up and you work on the problem until it's fixed. And then you work on the next problem, and the next. Day in and day out. Because it's your job. It pays in legal tender, not likes and awesomes. So you report to the people paying you your salary, not the comments section.

So apologies if some people can't deal with a day or two of ZOS publicly recognizing the progress they've made. But anymore I take a day or two to recognize how I haven't rage quit the whole *** Internet over how immature and inflammatory it tends to get. I just do more work or have a beer or take a walk or play a sport or [NSFW comment]. Because that puts into perspective how tiny these problems really are in the scope of an entire lifespan, and how despite having ten stars here my life does not revolve around a single video game.

The guild history problem is going to get fixed. Add-ons will be functional again. Just take a step back. Donate directly to a nominated guild team member. Use the sales history you still have to price your items. Again, frustrating. Super frustrating for administrative members. But a temporary inconvenience compared to most other things.

Yep yep all sounds nice and cute but...we pay for this game. Honestly people are fed up with how things are, no one would be so angry about this if we didn't get so many performance issues and bugs all the time!
People complaining here does not mean they spend the rest of their day thinking about ESO etc it just means they want to express their opinion of how things are going. And things aren't going so well....

Acrolas

JPS wrote: »

Apparently you don't get that running a guild is a continuous thing. One doesn't get to take a step back...

I mentioned how. To spell it out further:

1. Don't enforce mins for a week or two and ask that all donations be sent to specific team members.
2. If people claim to have already made donations to the guild bank, take it on the honor system for a week or two.
3. If you lose a kiosk spot for a week or two, no big deal. It was due to factors out of your control.

It's disingenuous to claim there are issues after every maintenance or patch. So I'm not going to list the fourth point which would have been about being a responsible and level-headed mediator between your guild and the game...

Jaraal wrote: »

Even so, the logical and considerate thing to do would be to roll back the changes and figure out what went wrong on their own time

Rolling back anything on the live server is a severe risk to existing data and system stability. It's a last resort tactic, and we're just not there yet.

JPS

Acrolas wrote: »

Blablabla

[snip]

EDIT: And let me just be blunt here: I rather see everyone lag out and suffer while still having my logs than not being able to run my guild normally.

[edited for non-constructive comment]

Glaiceana

Also I know it goes without saying to be careful with your bank permissions anyway, but especially now, switch it all off! No permissions to withdraw or deposit for anyone until this is sorted, that is my advice to GMs with a non personal bank. Bank robbers will have a field day right now because they could get away with it completely anonymously, at least until Monday.

arena25

Glaiceana wrote: »

Also I know it goes without saying to be careful with your bank permissions anyway, but especially now, switch it all off! No permissions to withdraw or deposit for anyone until this is sorted, that is my advice to GMs with a non personal bank. Bank robbers will have a field day right now because they could get away with it completely anonymously, at least until Monday.

Two of the three very active trading guilds I'm a part of have already taken this step. Messaged the guild master of the other guild to do the same.

If there's dues, either give a one or two week grace period until guild history comes back online, or ask that dues be sent to a designated guild officer until this is all sorted.

rumple9

Zos aren't killing it, they are just killing the game. Faction lock so no PvP, no trading posts. I'm done with this POS

Jhalin

Canceled my sub and I suggest everyone else dissatisfied with their approach of removing rather than fixing features, do the same

Hit them the only place they seem to care about, their wallets

The_Lex

ZOS is RPing a real world computer glitch in the global investment exchanges.

Gythral

Ohtimbar wrote: »

This is bonkers. Can we not go a single week without some sort of technical disaster?

Miracles may happen!!!

D0PAMINE

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.

This is basically what it's coming down too. We knew it was going to happen and it sucks. This game is getting so stressful now. I port into Cyro and im literally stuck in combat before I can even get to the trans shrine. Im whispered by guildies concerned that their deposit wasn't seen, or the GM's mailboxes(more than 1 acct) are full. I want to play ESO. I don't want to play another game. It sucks.

Edit: I hate draft save on these forums lol

Linaleah

to people who are all "consoles are trading just fine" especially if you are the same people complaining about trade guild dues. do you want trade guild dues to be mandatory on PC? becasue that is how you get trade guild dues to be mandatory.

addons reading and processing guild history is THE reason pc guilds, especially pc guilds in locations with high traffic (and as a result high weekly trader bids) can run without mandatory dues.

Jaraal

Acrolas wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Even so, the logical and considerate thing to do would be to roll back the changes and figure out what went wrong on their own time

Rolling back anything on the live server is a severe risk to existing data and system stability. It's a last resort tactic, and we're just not there yet.

I misspoke, I meant rolling back (removing) whatever they added that introduced the new problems.

srfrogg23

Linaleah wrote: »

to people who are all "consoles are trading just fine" especially if you are the same people complaining about trade guild dues. do you want trade guild dues to be mandatory on PC? becasue that is how you get trade guild dues to be mandatory.

addons reading and processing guild history is THE reason pc guilds, especially pc guilds in locations with high traffic (and as a result high weekly trader bids) can run without mandatory dues.

Yes. I think it's time for this stupid guild trader system to come crashing down. Mostly I just want to watch as people who used to defend it on the forums turn around and start complaining about it because they can't use their 3rd party addons to make it easy anymore.

If not being able to use addons is a breaking point for a gameplay mechanic, then it was just a crappy mechanic to begin with.

Linaleah

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

to people who are all "consoles are trading just fine" especially if you are the same people complaining about trade guild dues. do you want trade guild dues to be mandatory on PC? becasue that is how you get trade guild dues to be mandatory.

addons reading and processing guild history is THE reason pc guilds, especially pc guilds in locations with high traffic (and as a result high weekly trader bids) can run without mandatory dues.

Yes. I think it's time for this stupid guild trader system to come crashing down. Mostly I just want to watch as people who used to defend it on the forums turn around and start complaining about it because they can't use their 3rd party addons to make it easy anymore.

If not being able to use addons is a breaking point for a gameplay mechanic, then it was just a crappy mechanic to begin with.

its far from perfect, but even as much as i dislike this system for how annoying it is to shop with.... do you have a ready alternative that will provide as effective of a gold sink? becasue I do not. this system is what perversely allows players who would rather not mess with selling - still effectively generate gold. can you imagine what fencing stolen goods alone would do to economy without gold being taken OUT of economy in large consistent chunks (trader bids) being there?

when it comes to being a buyer, lord do I want a centralized trading of some sort. running around for hours trying to find a few recipes or motif pages I'm missing in my collection is NOT fun. but as i said, i don't have a consistent alternative for a gold sink either. and the reason I don't have it is becasue I don't know a single game that has one as effective as trader fees. every other MMO that I have personaly played - the longer it exists, the worse inflation becomes.

right now, WoW is trying to fix theirs by all but removing gold generation from it, while also adding super expensive purchases, but... people who are sitting on gold, aren't buying because they don't have to and people who didn't manage to make themselves piles of gold to sit on? can't really afford anything off the auction house that is relevant to this expansion.

its a catch 22

DLM

Linaleah wrote: »

when it comes to being a buyer, lord do I want a centralized trading of some sort. running around for hours trying to find a few recipes or motif pages I'm missing in my collection is NOT fun. but as i said, i don't have a consistent alternative for a gold sink either. and the reason I don't have it is becasue I don't know a single game that has one as effective as trader fees. every other MMO that I have personaly played - the longer it exists, the worse inflation becomes.

There's still something between a centralized auction house and ESO's trading. The trader system can still remain in place and be centralized, anyone who played Star Wars Galaxies should see what I mean. This is how it worked in SWG: people —individually or collectively through guilds— set up a trader receiving their items for sale, anyone could check a bazaar (auction terminal) for price/availability from basically every hub and you still had to visit the trader to pick your purchase.

https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Vendor

Ardan147

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

to people who are all "consoles are trading just fine" especially if you are the same people complaining about trade guild dues. do you want trade guild dues to be mandatory on PC? becasue that is how you get trade guild dues to be mandatory.

addons reading and processing guild history is THE reason pc guilds, especially pc guilds in locations with high traffic (and as a result high weekly trader bids) can run without mandatory dues.

Yes. I think it's time for this stupid guild trader system to come crashing down. Mostly I just want to watch as people who used to defend it on the forums turn around and start complaining about it because they can't use their 3rd party addons to make it easy anymore.

If not being able to use addons is a breaking point for a gameplay mechanic, then it was just a crappy mechanic to begin with.

No. It worked quite well. The PC environment had certain conditions that were different from the console environments (namely the existence of addons that greatly simplified the job of managing trade guilds, among other things), and it developed around those conditions. Now the rug has been ripped out from under us. While console players have always had to make do without addons, PC players did not sign up for this. The people running the guilds - who already work very hard to make everything happen - absolutely did not sign up for this. While traders such as myself can work around this using TTC for pricing info, it is the people running the guilds that suffer the worst as none of the tools they depend on for managing their guilds work right now. Even if they turn viewing guild history back on (but keep API access disabled) it means that GM's will have to go through the whole deposit history and manually record who has deposited the required amount in the guild bank for that week. While console GM's have always had to deal with this, PC GM's never signed up for that.

This would not be taking a sledgehammer to the system - it would be like setting off a nuclear bomb.

Cpt_Teemo

Sarjako wrote: »

Wow the salt just keeps piling up. #Sad

All this BS just makes the devs want to help even less. They're trying to fix an issue. Anyone that says that "THIS ISNT THE RIGHT WAY"... kindly let YOUR customers tell you how to do YOUR job. I'll be it'd rub you the wrong way too.

I blame the consoles for downgrading PC

skywarnmc27

Community Manager
"To update you on this issue, we're working on the in-game guild history and the guild history data utilized by addons. The current plan is to re-enable the in-game portion, but leave the addon functionality that use the guild history turned off for now. This is still a temporary solution until we are able to implement a better, more permanent fix. This change is planned for Monday's PC incremental patch.

Additionally, we want to clarify that although you aren't able to currently view guild history (such as gold deposits, which we understand is very important to many of you) we can confirm all deposits are still successfully going through, and you'll be able to view this history on Monday once we turn it back on. During this time, we'll also adjust the guild history back to 10 days. Thanks for your continued patience."
Gina Bruno
Community Manager - The Elder Scrolls Online

Then I assume you as an zos employee have the wherewithal to mention to the devs to forgo this weeks trader bids? sInce GM's can not can see how much they bid, and if it went through?

Goregrinder

On launch day in April, back in 2014, there was also no history. The game survived.

redspecter23

Goregrinder wrote: »

On launch day in April, back in 2014, there was also no history. The game survived.

Back when I was a baby, I coudln't walk, feed myself or even go to work to earn a living. I survived.

You know why? Because I grew and evolved. Just as ESO did when it enabled history.

StabbityDoom

Sarjako wrote: »

Wow the salt just keeps piling up. #Sad

All this BS just makes the devs want to help even less. They're trying to fix an issue. Anyone that says that "THIS ISNT THE RIGHT WAY"... kindly let YOUR customers tell you how to do YOUR job. I'll be it'd rub you the wrong way too.

AS if the devs read the forums.

Goregrinder

redspecter23 wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

On launch day in April, back in 2014, there was also no history. The game survived.

Back when I was a baby, I coudln't walk, feed myself or even go to work to earn a living. I survived.

You know why? Because I grew and evolved. Just as ESO did when it enabled history.

Yup, so like an immune system, it can survive the same thing again, but even easier the 2nd time around.