Follow Up Poll - Would a billionaire corner a GAH market?

AlnilamE

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Yes, but it depends on the item. You can see it on some things in this game already. Check out Inferno staves of a Mother's Sorrow, for example.

You wouldn't be able to corner the Ancestor Silk market, but a specific motif page? Sure. Chromium plating/grains? Very likely. Dubious Camoran Throne? After the Jester's Festival is over, very easily.

Tigerseye

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Of course, they do it all the time in the current trading system.

That wouldn't change with a GAH.

But, at least we (as buyers) could then just go to one venue, rather than suffering through endless load screens.

EchoirVarsoj

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Yes and also I can imagine people having set automated tools, so they instantly scoop up every bargain which a player happens to post.

idk

It would be much more difficult for someone to corner the market on anything with the trading system we have now. With a GAH they could drive up prices easily and fast.

So could they mess with the market on a specific item? Yes. Fortunately we have a system in place that makes it more challenging to do so than in other games.

How likely, not very. I am sure someone might try at some point after seeing your serious of threads as it can give someone the idea.

My concern is OP has an ulterior motive with all these threads and this will lead to suggesting fixing something that is not broken. After all, OP alluded to this thread in his other poll and hence biased it though it was already a trash poll by design as the results are meaningless. It is irrelevant how many people think there are billionaires in ESO as it merely demonstrates what people believe, not anything actual.

But I do agree that while this is garbage, it is entertainment.

MojaveHeld

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

We already saw what a very small cabal did to the price of corn flower a few months ago on PC NA, and that was with the trader system. So yeah, an auction house would certainly experience that kind of abuse in this game.

MythrialDrow

They already control on PS4 the guilds im in. I used to join a guild and just put something up for sale at what I thought was a decent price Now if I’m too low I will get a message saying stop undercutting?! Everyone has to sell at the same price according to certain guild conglomerates, Why?

Kidgangster101

@THEDKEXPERIENCE

So then what do you do about the people that are selling spots on console? That people claim doesn't happen but I'm 100% telling you it does, I have seen it first hand when my guild didn't get a spot lol.

Also what about all the people that are creating fake eso accounts so they can run multiple traders? They buy up entire areas (the most popular areas on top of that) with every single guild. Therefore others guilds have to submit to that person's will and join them for a good spot, or they have to buy a spot barely anyone goes to? (PS the leader of my trader guild is level 7............)

If you do get a good city spot the guilds that are there demand you price match them or you won't be able to get that spot again because they have more than enough money to jack up the price and kick you out.

Some guilds force you to pull down items that are more than 3 days old it has been reported on other threads just like this. How is that fair they are being told how to sell their items?

So please tell me how a global auction house wouldn't be better than guild mafias that can lock anyone out that they want? I have even heard of players being blackballed and not allowed into any trading guild on console. That is not fair.

Just on those examples alone it shows that having a trader system like this where the players are in charge of it is a terrible idea. The reason this doesn't happen in other games is you don't need a guild/trader to post items. Pugs won't care who you are they just want the item, therefore anyone can sell.

How is this alright? So you claim a player that could potentially corner a market is worse that guild traders cornering markets now?

Btw I still won't forget op trying to compare this mmo to FIFA soccer........ 2 different games 2 completely different systems.........

Bouldercleave

No, this is not something that would occur?

Impossible to corner the market on things that you can harvest for yourself.

Will some people try to corner the market on motifs and collectible things? Sure. But that is a gamble because if you price anything too high, you wind up hanging on to unsellable items.

With only 30 slots to sell (even if they doubled it to 60) you would have a tough time "cornering the market" on any item.

david_m_18b16_ESO

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

You dont ever need to be billionaire to do that.

Articulemort

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Frankly even without billions I would absolutely try to do it myself. Does that make me bad guy?

Bouldercleave

No, this is not something that would occur?

Articulemort wrote: »

I’m on mobile and have no idea how to make my vote show up in this post but yes, because frankly even without billions I would absolutely try to do it myself. Does that make me bad guy?

No it doesn't make you a bad guy at all.

Contrary to popular belief, "playing the market" (which is what you are effectively doing) is perfectly legit as 100% of the risk is on you.

Danikat

No, this is not something that would occur?

I feel like this debate is a lot like the concerns around being able to dye armour/costumes/shields/weapons before all of those options were added - endless threads about how every town would be filled with people in horribly clashing pink equipment ruining everyone's immersion. Or the current discussions about how the existence of ESO logs means toxic players will be constantly tracking and harassing anyone who doesn't meet their personal standards for DPS.

Lots of noise on the forum about how terrible it will be, but in reality it's a rare occurrence and largely irrelevant to most people.

VaranisArano wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Especially in this game - NO.

The individual who bragged about buying all the cornflower and then listing it at 5000 gold per - Now I REALLY want the GAH just to watch him go bankrupt.

Once you have committed to That strategy, you MUST continue it on. So now you MUST buy up all the new cornflower, every day, night and day. So all you are doing is Spending Your gold.

The problem is - No one is going to buy Your cornflower at 5000 per. Cornflower is a Free mat. If you need some, you can run over to a starter island and run around for a couple hours. A GAH or Trader system simply makes 'getting' Any mat quicker and easier than spending the time to gather it yourself.

So if someone tries to gouge everybody, all the players will simply farm their own. That happens Now. If you think the price is too high, you just go out and get your own for Free.

Then you sell any extras you want and you Know the 'smart person' cornering the market is going to buy them.

Cornflower is a terrible example. As you pointed out, its commonly available. This strategy only works with specific, desired items that aren't readily available for other players to flood the supply.

See my comment above if you want an example that actually happened in ESO with a specific motif piece.

But if this only works with items like motifs then what's the problem? It's not like anyone needs a specific motif.

If I, as a casual player who considers 150k to be a lot of money, wanted that motif I'd start saving up and given the process you described I'd quite likely find that long before I got 150k the price had dropped back down and that would be a nice surprise. Alternatively I'd decide it's too expensive and forget about getting it, then maybe buy it later if I notice the price has dropped.

VaranisArano wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

It wouldn't work, because the normal reaction to increasing price is increase in supply. The new items will be sold below the price "fixed" by the billionaire, but most of it will be sold above the profit the billionaire would be making from sales at his price after tax. So the billionaire has 2 options:

1. Buy stock just barely below his price to make sure his stock is sold, resulting in him buying more than he is selling.
2. Only buy stuff below his break even point, resulting in nothing being sold.

In either situation market manipulation will only be possible for a time. And considering the number of people participating in a global market and the resulting amount of gold and wares changing hands, this time won't be very long.

Depends on which stock.

The most effective price manipulation I've seen on PC/NA was for specific items that depend on RNG: specific desired motifs and gear.

When someone went to the effort of buying most of the Minotaur chests and listing them for 150k (when the rest of the set cost 5 to 15k), there's not really a way to increase supply of that item in an amount that will overwhelm their ability to buy and sell for a reasonable profit margin. Eventually, others will increase their price to match, and the profit margin drops off to the point it isnt worth it...but the damage is already done.

That's because from the perspective of the average player, it doesnt matter what the price fixer is doing once everyone else starts selling for below that new price. Let's say the price fixer is selling minotaur chest motifs for 150k and market minded players are selling theirs for 130k. That's still way overpriced, and its because someone decided to manipulate the price. Eventually, demand shrivel at that price, but for a while, an item was out of reach of the average player.

Now, that's what happened on PC/NA under the current system.

Now consider that a GAH makes it easier to do with a wide variety of items, and that there are a lot of RNG-limited items like motifs and desirable gear that its hard to flood the market with in supply. The same thing can and will happen...because the GAH makes it even easier to collect all of an item.

The point you're missing is that currently only a minority of players can really get involved in selling items in ESO - because you have to be part of a guild with a trader and even if all guilds wanted one and were willing to pay for it there are far more guilds than traders. With a global market everyone can sell anything to everyone else, so there's far more sellers to compete with the ones trying to control the market and that on it's own makes it harder to control.

I know the idea might terrify the dedicated traders but it wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of those rare, valuable motifs are currently sold to NPC merchants or even trashed because they drop for people who don't not get involved in trading at all and who couldn't care less what it's worth because for them it's simply not worth the trouble of selling it.

Of course prices will fluctuate, if anything they might change even more than they do now because a lot of those sellers will be 'casual traders' who aren't interested in maximum profits or average prices or long-term investments, they just want to get rid of their stuff quickly whilst getting as much gold for it as they can - so they'll undercut whatever price is currently listed whether it's what the hardcore traders consider market value or not - and they'll also buy stuff at above 'market value' because a quick purchase is more important than a quick one.

But the sheer volume of trade will make it difficult for any one person to control the market.

Linaleah wrote: »

all global AH does, is making it easier for people to shop, but also easier to list, which balances itself out. the fun fact about places like WoW is that.. Ah is not actualy global. its per server. so especially on lower population servers - its easier to corner markets by the sheer virtue of having less competition by design. ESO is a megaserver. i'm pretty darn sure that even the busiest wow server doesn't have anywhere near the amount of people that ESO megaserver does. the ONLY thing that is regulating the amount of listings right now in ESO, is artificially reduced amount of competition by requiring seller to belong to a trading guild that has secured a trader.

That's really surprising to me (someone who never played WoW): considering WoW always seems to be held up as the example of how a global market place works and always seems to be the example people fall back on (hence commonly calling it an auction house, which I understand is WoW's name for it).

That means a lot of people are gauging how a global market would work based on a system which is not global at all and therefore not really comparable. You may as well talk about how your experience in Battlegrounds means you know exactly how Cyrodiil works.

(Although similarly my experience with Guild Wars 2 has the opposite problem - that game's Trading Post is shared across the entire game - all players on all servers use the same one and therefore see the same prices - whereas in ESO it would almost certainly be server specific, so you'd only actually be trading with 1/6 of the population. Although I imagine that's still far more than 1 low population server.)

Animal_Mother

No, this is not something that would occur?

No.

This is not planet Earth with a finite amount of resources.

Instead, it’s Tamriel with a near infinite amount of resources and items. Plus, traders are always willing to undercut each other for a sale. Buying up all of a particular resource or item, in no way, prevents others from farming or creating such items and undercutting those attempting monopolies.

An entire fortune could be lost instantly if ZOS fat-fingers a loot table or hears complaints of a lack of resources and ups the spawn rates.

bmnoble

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Depends more on how often someone can log in, would not need to be a billionaire in this game, to corner a market a multi millionaire would suffice.

It would be unlikely that one player alone would be able to buy up the supply of an item like raw/purple/gold mats, it would more likely be a group of rich players trying to create a new higher standard price, for those items, since they would find it hard to buy out the sheer supply of mats constantly being listed, especially since they can't be online all the time.

All people would have to do is wait for the under-cutters, rather than "must buy now" that rich players rely on, since they don't need things to sell right away or even all the items to make a profit.

All other sellers need to do is price there items, at a price, that leaves little profit for the re-sellers and they won't bother with your items and real buyers will buy them instead.

Rare items, anything there is a small supply of, gear with good traits/furniture plans/motifs/master writs, would be the kind of things that would quickly be cornered due to the low numbers of items on the market at any one time.

The main change a central auction house would bring, would be, every player with a bit of gold checking the low price items and relisting without having to travel, low end prices would be a thing of the past and more standard prices would become a thing.


That said if they don't have a good gold sink to replace the blind bidding for traders more gold will be in the game and prices will go up a bit.

Noblis01

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

The original question:

"...do you believe in a global auction house environment that one of these billionaires would be able to corner the market on some valuable product? "

So, I take the question as "WOULD THEY BE ABLE TO?"

Yes! They would be able to.

People that voted NO are saying, mostly, "players would not do it."
That has nothing to do with "would they be able to."

I wonder who these NO voters in the poll really are.

In MMOs and life, there are schemers. Don't imagine because you are pristine, everyone else is.

Blackbird_V

No, this is not something that would occur?

No and yes - why? It's already being done with current systen. rich guild owners buy important items like alch reagents and upgrade materials in MASSIVE - and I mean massive on a scale of 10's of mils worth... just to increase prices. Corn flower - few weeks ago PC EU was 300g healthy average price - now, none, always same trend - no 200x for x price - it's now over 700g per.


It's completely unsustainable. We know this happens because they even admit it. Last year they bought hundreds of Aetherial Dusts just to increase the price. So with a Global, It will happen, or, it may not if ZoS are smart enough to implement a system like Runescape 3 has - Global selling with every item being bought has a forced buy limit, where that limit resets every 4 hours.


ZoS can do something like this and make it work.

Apox

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

its folly to think that some wont, but theres literally nothing to stop them from doing *** like that anyways. see: that time some really lonely dude bought all 5 traders in rawlkha and did nothing with them.

auts are gonna do aut things, we cant stop them. what we can do is provide everyone else with a smoother game experience. aka one that doesnt require use of a third party website to unf**k the guild trader system

the serverwide auction house in wow has worked fine since 2006. the only complaint it ever got was that it was too laggy from people using it during peak hours. in otherwords, it works fine.

im one foot out the door of eso, and one of the mny small driving factors is the guild trader system. it just doesnt work.

jainiadral

No, this is not something that would occur?

Noblis01 wrote: »

The original question:

"...do you believe in a global auction house environment that one of these billionaires would be able to corner the market on some valuable product? "

So, I take the question as "WOULD THEY BE ABLE TO?"

Yes! They would be able to.

People that voted NO are saying, mostly, "players would not do it."
That has nothing to do with "would they be able to."

I wonder who these NO voters in the poll really are.

In MMOs and life, there are schemers. Don't imagine because you are pristine, everyone else is.

What's that under your bed? Did you see it move? Could it be a... no!.. not a BILLIONAIRE! Run for the hills!

I'm guessing most of the "no" voters are people like me who have played other games on the current market that have some kind of central auction house. We've used these systems and haven't run into these problems-- or the problems haven't impacted us in any real capacity. These arguments hold zero water because any comptent AH designer builds in automated mechanisms to counter these kinds of behaviors.

Fearmongering and paranoia aren't good arguments for upholding an exclusionary system.

You want a couple of arguments that might sway me? Technical arguments involving databases, manpower to recode, etc. Enough "I'll quit and so will half of my trading guild" posts on the forum to feel like it might have an impact.

But stirring up suspicion and paranioa? Nah. Not gonna work.

FrancisCrawford

It's easy to "corner" a market by buying everything below a certain price level and re-offering at that price, IF the price is one that people generally are happy to pay. It's much harder to then force the price up to a particularly high level.

At least, that's my experience from various experiments on the Elendilmir server in Lotro.

Tigerseye

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

lordrichter wrote: »

In WoW, these people were my target market for selling stuff. I don't think I sold to other players, just to the middle man players. They bought my stuff almost instantly, mainly because I listed it at half the reseller's prices in order to attract their attention. Addons constantly watched the market and automatically purchased.

Never bought anything from the Auction Hoise, though. Not if I could help it. I knew I was paying way more than it should be.

Why would you do that, though, when you could just as easily sell direct to the end user?

You're on the same venue as the resellers, for goodness sake.

It's not like you're out in the middle of nowhere, with very low overheads, selling stuff you made to retailers in major cities, with very high overheads.

You're all in exactly the same place...

If you wanted a quick sale, why would you not just undercut them by 10%?

Assuming their stuff isn't just sitting there, permanently and not selling at all, at that price, obviously.

Then it would make sense to cut by more, but not with the intention of selling to the resellers - as they would probably already be aware, by then, that they had been overly optimistic with their prices - with the intention of selling direct to the end user.

Tigerseye

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

MythrialDrow wrote: »

They already control on PS4 the guilds im in. I used to join a guild and just put something up for sale at what I thought was a decent price Now if I’m too low I will get a message saying stop undercutting?! Everyone has to sell at the same price according to certain guild conglomerates, Why?

Well, because it makes no sense to undercut your own guildies, by a large margin, as that will just drive prices down.

Assuming certain things aren't totally ridiculously priced, obviously, when it would be a good thing if that happened.

If players in other guilds list lower, there is not much anyone (who isn't in that guild) can do about it.

However, if people in your own guild are doing it, of course you can politely request that they cease and desist. xD

I had the opposite experience...

Everything was fine - things were selling nice and steadily, then suddenly they stopped.

Turned out the GM had inved lots of new players (who, naturally, didn't yet have a clue) and had changed his policy to say that we should all relist items at a lower price, every 3 days.

Like some sort of nightmare reverse auction, basically, only one where we were supposed to be to taking the hit, not only on the sale prices, but also on all those cancelled listing fees.

It was an insane decision, frankly, as all it did (for us - might have done something else for him...) was trash everyone's sales and drive prices through the floor.

The only two good things about the current trade system - long list times and a relative lack of same venue undercutting - were undone in one fell swoop.

That is when I quit any attempt at serious trading.

I'm not really into it, anyway, but that was the last straw.

Dusk_Coven

The FFXIV global market has a last-N-number-of-sales feature where someone browsing an item or preparing to sell one can with one click of a button access.
With regards to cornering the market, someone could thereby realize this. Whether it is actionable or not -- such as simply waiting out the person trying to corner the market till there are no sales and they have to drop their price -- is debatable.

If we did move to a global market, I'd recommend taking a close look at how FFXIV does it.

Urigall

Valkyn_Eltrys wrote: »

No and yes - why? It's already being done with current systen. rich guild owners buy important items like alch reagents and upgrade materials in MASSIVE - and I mean massive on a scale of 10's of mils worth... just to increase prices. Corn flower - few weeks ago PC EU was 300g healthy average price - now, none, always same trend - no 200x for x price - it's now over 700g per.


It's completely unsustainable. We know this happens because they even admit it. Last year they bought hundreds of Aetherial Dusts just to increase the price. So with a Global, It will happen, or, it may not if ZoS are smart enough to implement a system like Runescape 3 has - Global selling with every item being bought has a forced buy limit, where that limit resets every 4 hours.


ZoS can do something like this and make it work.

There are constant calls in zone chat for "WTB all your Dreugh Wax" and other, high value mats - in any quantity. I've often wondered why someone wants to buy large quantities of high value mats at close to current, market value. One possibility is stock piling for whatever reason. There might be genuine, game play reasons - hard to say. All that is certain is one or more players seem keen to buy up large quantities of high value mats and at close to market value. Wanting to make an immediate profit can probably be ruled out, so the question of to what end arises.

We know that some players - if not guilds - buy up spots then leave inventories empty. One explanation is it's someone having a larf...hurr hurr. Doubtful. Something else I've seen is guilds where inventory hardly changes from one day to the next. Either that, or guilds with loads of single trait items for sale at 6 gold, or loads of Skinchanger motifs at 500% over market value. Guilds need to turn a profit for the next bid, so it's a strange way to go about ensuring the money comes in.

None of this stands up as definitive evidence of players at the capers. On the other hand, an impartial observer could be forgiven for suspecting there's more to it than meets the eye.

As for your final comment, yes, ZoS could implement a number of mechanisms to minimise shenanigans.

daemonios

GAH only makes it easier to corner the market (something that already happens in ESO right now) if no measures are taken to prevent it. I would favour preventing the resale of AH-bought items.

The in-game economy should be about making items flow among players, not skimming a margin off highly sought-after items. I'm sorry if you like that sort of gameplay, in the end it's a developer's choice and I believe they should take a stance against profiting off reselling at a mark-up.

Urigall

daemonios wrote: »

GAH only makes it easier to corner the market (something that already happens in ESO right now) if no measures are taken to prevent it. I would favour preventing the resale of AH-bought items.

The in-game economy should be about making items flow among players, not skimming a margin off highly sought-after items. I'm sorry if you like that sort of gameplay, in the end it's a developer's choice and I believe they should take a stance against profiting off reselling at a mark-up.

With motifs, furniture and all recipes, armour and weps, they could simply be bound on purchase. That's neuters the skimming practice at a stroke.

Mats are more difficult. I sometimes give my guildies mats and vice versa.

But making a lot of items bound upon purchase is a blindingly obvious way to stop buying for no other reason than asset flipping.

Edziu

No, this is not something that would occur?

and this wont be worse than already it is
market with many items and spots for traders depending on platform already was and is manipulated so no..GAH wont be worse than guild traders because of manipulation about which everyone is scared whithout even noticing how currently it is working for some players with tons of gold and willings to do it

as I wrote..if someone relly want to manipul;ate market nothing special will stop him especailly in system which from basics was flawled

Kidgangster101

So then what do you do about the people that are selling spots on console? That people claim doesn't happen but I'm 100% telling you it does, I have seen it first hand when my guild didn't get a spot lol.

Also what about all the people that are creating fake eso accounts so they can run multiple traders? They buy up entire areas (the most popular areas on top of that) with every single guild. Therefore others guilds have to submit to that person's will and join them for a good spot, or they have to buy a spot barely anyone goes to? (PS the leader of my trader guild is level 7............)

If you do get a good city spot the guilds that are there demand you price match them or you won't be able to get that spot again because they have more than enough money to jack up the price and kick you out.

Some guilds force you to pull down items that are more than 3 days old it has been reported on other threads just like this. How is that fair they are being told how to sell their items?

So please tell me how a global auction house wouldn't be better than guild mafias that can lock anyone out that they want? I have even heard of players being blackballed and not allowed into any trading guild on console. That is not fair.

Just on those examples alone it shows that having a trader system like this where the players are in charge of it is a terrible idea. The reason this doesn't happen in other games is you don't need a guild/trader to post items. Pugs won't care who you are they just want the item, therefore anyone can sell.

How is this alright? So you claim a player that could potentially corner a market is worse that guild traders cornering markets now?

MaxJrFTW

Yes, some billionaires would successfully buy up and corner certain vital items.

Absolutely. It was very common in WoW. It was also very common for blizzard to ban such players for monopolizing the market. They would just come back and do it again because a lot of them made a fair amount of money on the side from selling gold.