PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for Multi-Bidding

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the improvements for guild trader multi-bidding. First, please place multiple bids on Guild Traders on the PTS. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Were you notified appropriately when your bid(s) completed?
• Did the overall bidding process and bid tracking window function as expected?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

Dont_do_drugs

so if not enough people posted here, you will say, nobody complained? there are already 2 threads for it:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6194230#Comment_6194230

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6194563#Comment_6194563


nobody cares, wether the system is working right. most of the gm just dont want it and i am pretty sure, most think its a huge mistake.

sincerely yours

DragonRacer

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the improvements for guild trader multi-bidding. First, please place multiple bids on Guild Traders on the PTS. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Do you have any other general feedback?

I cannot comment on the first two bullet points, being that I am a console player. So, perhaps it is not appropriate to use this thread to provide "other general feedback", but as the other threads created do not have a ZOS response yet... I have to try.

Could some reasoning be provided as to why this has been created and why a number so high as 10?

Is this to try and somehow cut down on the "ghost guilds" some large guilds create as a "back-up" in case their bid loses?

Answers to those questions would help to better guide me in additional questions and appropriate, respectful feedback. Please. Asking as a large, dues-free console trading guild GM.

Fiktius

I guess this goes under tag "General Feedback" and since I've already said a lot about the case, I won't repeat myself over again and I will provide some quotes instead.

Fiktius wrote: »

So, what is this change actually trying to accomplish? Getting rid of proxy guild business?
That's not gonna happen. Those guilds which used proxy guild for purely having a profit in mind will continue doing so:
The change will just make sure that if the proxy loses their primary bid, they have 9 other chances to win one bid at different location. The business is still gonna flourish as long as there are guilds around who will loose all their bids and are willing to pay for the proxy spot. As long as there are demand, the business will continue.

Which leads to the second point I wanted to mention: Increased bid cost.
Now rich guilds which can afford for multiple bids will continue spreading their bids for increasing their chances to get a trader. Smaller guilds have to pray that bigger guilds actually do win their primary bids, because there's no need to be a Sherlock to guess where these bigger guilds will find their back up spot if bids on major cities are lost.
If this patch goes live like this and you happen to have a medium/small guild, you can realistically expect that you'll be more likely outbid than before. What if you can't afford several back up bids? Sorry, the system have no mercy for you.
That may sound rough, but that's apparently what ZOS wants.

And now let's look at perspective of stabilized guilds, which are trying to maintain their spots and defend from jumpers:
Now they are even more likely going to be sniped by wealthy guilds, who have a desire to move on your spot for reason X and Y. What would you do? Increase your requirements, charge more fees and sit still, trying to "defend the fortress" with higher cost? Or will you go mayhem and try your luck with increased bids, where everyone are sniping spots from left and right?
Costs of spots will only increase and the competition will become even rough for smaller guilds than ever before.

Fiktius wrote: »

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

And I would say that even reducing it to 2-3 bids will still create mayhem.

Yes and this is something very important:

Even IF developers consider that "as a compromise they will reduce the bid amount from 10 down to 3", this should be kept in mind:

Practically it does NOT matter how many back up bids guilds have a possibility to place. 3, 10 or even 50.
Every single time when a guild looses their primary bid and will land to alternative spot, that always will cause a domino effect which goes down to the bottom of the chain, where the weakest guild will be tossed out of the map.
As long as every guild have a possibility to place back up bids, this is gonna happen every week.

Fiktius wrote: »

Note that there still are more guilds around than there are trade spots. Even when everyone have a chance to place 10 bids (if they got gold of course), remember that so does others have. If you underestimate the value other guilds are gonna place gold on each spots, it's very likely that there will be guilds who loses every single bid they placed.
And since demand of back up spots will increase, it's very safe to assume that bids will increase entire Tamriel wide.
As long as big/medium guilds will keep loosing and there will be demand for ghost/proxy spots, the business will flourish.

If this system was about to decrease the harm which Ghost guilds are causing, I see this only as an epic failure:
Now Ghost guild owners can place multiple bids in hot spot like Mournhold and every single guild there have to increase their bids and cross fingers they guess the amount right or Ghost will take the spot. And when this happens, Ghost guild will move legit guild to alternative spot, which will make another guild loose the spot and the domino effect continues to the bottom of the chain, where a small guild is gonna get a headshot.
So overall the harm which Ghost guild can cause is now increased and it seriously looks like developers did not think about cons this change is gonna have among traders.

So if you want to avoid providing "quality of life" patch witch will only decrease the quality, I suggest throwing multi-bidding idea into the trash can.

Taleof2Cities

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

so if not enough people posted here, you will say, nobody complained? there are already 2 threads for it:

nobody cares, wether the system is working right. most of the gm just dont want it and i am pretty sure, most think its a huge mistake.

sincerely yours

It’s OK to have an opinion as long as it’s constructive.

Non-constructive opinions are the reason why we shouldn’t do drugs.

deleted008293

I think this can only be proper tested on the live server. But I would like to invite all the trade guilds GM to the test server and try to test the new bidding system and provide direct feedback towards ZOS.

I would like to suggest to increase the guild traders by 2-3x by letting 2 or 3 guilds have a trader on the same guild spot. And let people select which guild they want to interact with when they approach the NPC. I think this would work even better in parallel with multiple bidding system.

Another idea is to rework the current guild system and implement an guild achievement page... a lot to talk about... on short... guilds should have different rank system depending on sales, sizes, or other statistics. But in this case lets say we have 3 rank levels. S M L. And this in parallel with sharing a guild trader would give a HUGE chance for small and Medium trade guilds to improve by allowing them to bet on some really good spots. How? This way... in a good town a certain trader has 3 spots one for L guilds one for M one for S and guilds could bid accordingly. L to L M to M S to S.

DragonRacer

To provide a list of concerns:

• 10 is a VERY large number. This seems as if it would only really benefit the already-large guilds that regularly hold the major trader hubs. My opinion is that minimizing back-up bids to only 2-3 would be more reasonable? I do like the concept of being able to place a back-up bid in case my primary bid fails, but I'm concerned the system will be abused by the rich to bully the smaller and middle-sized and/or dues-free guilds out of the trading arena entirely.
• If this is being done to try and combat "ghost guilds" being used as back-up bid proxies, this new system will not solve that. Especially not on PS4 NA, where I play, as we see in real time with our own eyes ghost guilds bought and sold for in-game revenue rather than just serving as back-up bid proxies.
• If this new system is meant to try and combat my second point ^^^, a much more efficient method would be to either a) prevent a guild that currently holds a trader from disbanding or b) if a guild holding a trader disbands, let that trader sit empty for the remainder of the timeframe. Either one would stop the transfer of ownership of traders between guilds because they would not be able to "sell" the spot anymore to recoup their bid money. The goldsink is not currently working as intended when rich guilds can sell ghost trader spots and get their bid money right back.

Dont_do_drugs

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

so if not enough people posted here, you will say, nobody complained? there are already 2 threads for it:

nobody cares, wether the system is working right. most of the gm just dont want it and i am pretty sure, most think its a huge mistake.

sincerely yours

It’s OK to have an opinion as long as it’s constructive.

Non-constructive opinions are the reason why we shouldn’t do drugs.

i wrote already enough the recent days constructive. i even wrote constructive ways of preventing backup bidders and ghhost guilds half a year ago, allow me to feel tired and sick of repeating myself for people who do not care and do not listen.

Grimm13

Other General Feedback: Questions I've asked and would like to see answered.



Can we have dev notes on why and what they are attempting to change with this drastic bidding change?

Is there a problem you are trying to correct? If so, what is it?

What is your end goal with these changes?

Can we have a forum list that is for discussion of Guild and Trader, issues, wants and needs?

Which dev is responsible for tracking guild and trader forum concerns/ posts?

Is this change solely for the purpose to increase a goldsink?



Comment:

Ghost bidding should be stopped, the PTS does not do this. What would is if guild disbands then the trader sits empty until next bid. This takes away the incentive to resell, ransom or use as a back up trader for another guild.

After getting some answers to the questions I am sure I and others will have more feedback. Encourage you to look at the two threads posted in the first comment.

On Live can say that already guilds are cutting deeper to get rid of lower sales and looking at raised dues in expectation of high bids needed.

True testing of the effects this change will have can not be properly tested on PTS, people do not have the same conditions as they do in live and behave differently.

cjhhickman39

As someone on the outside looking in,(not a gm) I think one thing might make this workable.
1st bid unlimited
2nd bid 1 million cap
3rd bid 900,000 cap
Scale down to bid ten at 100,000 off each time.
This would still allow you to go all out after your primary trader but still allow guilds that don’t have unlimited resources to have a shot at a good trader.
Please take this with a grain of salt and remember this is a suggestion from someone who has little information on this area.
Also l am old (salt reference does not have the same meaning to me as it does to the younger crowd 😃)

reoskit

Regarding general feedback:

I'll echo what was said earlier: there are already multiple threads where the general consensus appears to be that we do not want this change to go live. Feedback has been provided from all platforms, from GMs of small, medium, and large guilds.

Some who have spoken out in support of the change have followed up by saying they want to see chaos ensue. This is not an appropriate justification for this change, nor is it any way to treat the community who actually cares about and works for the stability of trade and the economy in this game.

Instead of reinventing the wheel and reposting everything that has been said thus far, I'd recommend looking in the following two threads:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483891/guild-multi-bidding-why/p1

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/482926/guild-bid-on-up-to-10-different-guild-trader-locations-each-week-with-update-23/p1

There is ample feedback. Much of it comes from a constructive and considered place. I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if our feedback was taken into serious consideration before moving forward with including multibidding in U23.

reoskit

Regarding technical feedback - On the PTS, in Deshaan, only half-ish of the kiosks were populated with current guilds. The other half were/are up for hire.

Whether that's part of the new system being launched, or just PTS wonk, I hope that won't be the situation after U23 go-live, presumably on a Monday or Tuesday morning post-flip.

sylviermoone

I have a lot of thoughts on this issue, and I'll post that feedback soon.

I'm concerned with the lack of testing that this new system will undoubtedly receive. As far as I'm aware, flip time on PTS is the same time that it is on live. The vast majority of GM's, I think, will be reluctant to leave to chance the trader flip on live to log in to the PTS to observe trader flip there, and rightly so. There isn't the same kind of high stakes environment on PTS; thus this system will never get the kind of testing it needs to be fully vetted before it goes live. I think that's highly problematic.

reoskit

sylviermoone wrote: »

I'm concerned with the lack of testing that this new system will undoubtedly receive. As far as I'm aware, flip time on PTS is the same time that it is on live. The vast majority of GM's, I think, will be reluctant to leave to chance the trader flip on live to log in to the PTS to observe trader flip there, and rightly so. There isn't the same kind of high stakes environment on PTS; thus this system will never get the kind of testing it needs to be fully vetted before it goes live. I think that's highly problematic.

reoskit wrote: »

We aren't going to see all the implications that this change has just by testing on the PTS. We're talking about upending inter-guild culture. We can never reproduce the high stakes or the volume of bidders/bids/kiosk flips on the PTS. [snip] This system, in its entirety (technically and culturally), cannot be tested.

Amen, sister. It's interesting how we all keep coming to the same logical conclusions regarding the ramifications of this change, including but absolutely not limited to its lack of testability.

Sorcery

DragonRacer wrote: »

To provide a list of concerns:

• 10 is a VERY large number. This seems as if it would only really benefit the already-large guilds that regularly hold the major trader hubs. My opinion is that minimizing back-up bids to only 2-3 would be more reasonable? I do like the concept of being able to place a back-up bid in case my primary bid fails, but I'm concerned the system will be abused by the rich to bully the smaller and middle-sized and/or dues-free guilds out of the trading arena entirely.
• If this is being done to try and combat "ghost guilds" being used as back-up bid proxies, this new system will not solve that. Especially not on PS4 NA, where I play, as we see in real time with our own eyes ghost guilds bought and sold for in-game revenue rather than just serving as back-up bid proxies.
• If this new system is meant to try and combat my second point ^^^, a much more efficient method would be to either a) prevent a guild that currently holds a trader from disbanding or b) if a guild holding a trader disbands, let that trader sit empty for the remainder of the timeframe. Either one would stop the transfer of ownership of traders between guilds because they would not be able to "sell" the spot anymore to recoup their bid money. The goldsink is not currently working as intended when rich guilds can sell ghost trader spots and get their bid money right back.

If it's not to prevent ghost guilds then i guess they just want a massive gold sink...but this change will benefit those at the very top first off and everyone below will start to lose bids. If the very top guilds have the highest bids and somehow lose then it's those right below that are next up. If this change happens i may as well just move my guild to the top, increase requirements, cull more, then that would be the safest bet. So expect a lot of musical chairs with this update all around. There's no longer any risk, 10 bids can blanket an entire zone and a half...not sure why they think this is a good idea..1 backup bid is enough unless they just want chaos in general which is what will happen.

If the goal is to prevent ghost bids, like said above, just don't allow a guild to disband if they've got a trader hired or another idea is only allow guilds with 250+ players to hire a trader, would at least make it harder for those to create 5+ ghost guilds.

If the goal is more of a gold sink - Just release some type of rare item/mount and sell it for 1-5M gold, this has been done in other games and would work as a gold sink...that or have a charity pool and for every 100k dropped in a sponsor donates money to a charity.

The only thing i can see coming out of this is GMs will have to spend more time weekly fundraising gold, culling the guild, increasing requirements just to stay ahead of the 100's of other guilds trying to outbid them.

Grimm13

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the improvements for guild trader multi-bidding. First, please place multiple bids on Guild Traders on the PTS. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Were you notified appropriately when your bid(s) completed?
• Did the overall bidding process and bid tracking window function as expected?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

I placed ten bids on PTS. Now have to wait for the bid day..... suggestion speed it up to every three days. This would give us more chances to see changes.

On the Guild Bank History only my first bid posted in History. All bids deducted. Would like to see a Bid section in the Guild Bank History section. I like a one stop quick reference, this also could be helpful to screen shot in case a ticket needs to be made.

bid tracking window????? Explain.

OTHER Feedback - Where's your Dev Notes, still not seen them. Don't treat us like a mushroom, feed us excrement then keep us in the dark.

Soundso

I think multibidding is a terrible idea.
It will lead to an unhealthy competition. Guilds that have the funds will place their regular bid 10 times. But it's kicking from top to bottom. And the casual and beginners friendly guilds with low requirements suffer most. Because they don't have the funds for this. And can't build funds with this new competition.
Feels like removing soccer leagues and let Manchester have a match against some village team. Not fair and not fun to watch.

I think we deserve to know at least why you do this and why you think this is a good idea. It doesn't look like this was ever requested from the community. The general reception is incredibly negative.
Only reason i can see is to increase the goldsink. But i think increasing the sale fee would be better.

Fixing the backup exploit is a regular community request. And an exploit should be fixed without the community begging for it anyway. But this isn't addressed at all.
As far as i see it the only comment about is from Kai Schober months ago. Now you implemented a multibidding system but had no time to fix this? If a guild has a trader it can't be disbanded. This doesn't sound too complicated to do compared to this multibidding system.
This is really disappointing!

WildRaptorX

Get rid of it

Dont_do_drugs

could someone from zos at least pretend to care for courtesy reasons?

Spage

I don't have the PTS running, but I can give "general feedback".

This whole idea sounds like an insane plan, hatched by someone who does not know what they want to achieve - and somehow it got past committee.

I can almost understand allowing 1 extra bid - especially for mistaken hires/bids, or bugged kiosks. I can't fathom why any more, and certainly not the ludicrous number of ten, would be implemented.

I'm really not interested in how it functions, but I am extremely keen to understand why.

It has been said many times, and I echo it here: What exactly are you trying to achieve? How will this help that goal? It simply doesn't make any sense.

Sorcery

Spage wrote: »

I don't have the PTS running, but I can give "general feedback".

This whole idea sounds like an insane plan, hatched by someone who does not know what they want to achieve - and somehow it got past committee.

I can almost understand allowing 1 extra bid - especially for mistaken hires/bids, or bugged kiosks. I can't fathom why any more, and certainly not the ludicrous number of ten, would be implemented.

I'm really not interested in how it functions, but I am extremely keen to understand why.

It has been said many times, and I echo it here: What exactly are you trying to achieve? How will this help that goal? It simply doesn't make any sense.

This 100%. I say this as someone who's ran a trade guild since beta..this is not a good change unless you want GM's to slave fundraising even more, increase requirements ( already did that myself due to this change ), and just want overall chaos within the system.

Dusk_Coven

nordmarian wrote: »

I think this can only be proper tested on the live server. But I would like to invite all the trade guilds GM to the test server and try to test the new bidding system and provide direct feedback towards ZOS.

Even assuming that enough GMs join PTS, what is an "acceptable outcome"?

I think ZOS is pushing this through no matter what and are mostly just asking whether the interface is bugged.
Probably it is to somehow ease the scramble to find a trader when you realize you can't win the one you want. In an organic system there will be repercussions both intentional or otherwise.

Dont_do_drugs

Hello? Anyone out there? Orbs and other things were worth responding too. Why aren't trade guild GMs not worth anything to you? Never felt as mistreated and downgraded by zos like these times.

Not even when u replaced Craglorn map. Not even when you guys trolled me by telling me some specific goldsellers and aeth dust exploiter were banned just to see my guild outbid the following week by them with their exploited 100m which didnt get removed by you and which most likely attacked me for speaking out on their exploit on forums.

SteamKitten01

I'm a GM who co-runs a family of 3 guilds on PC/NA and think that this is a terrible idea. It punishes new guilds as they will only have the gold to bid on a single location, while well established guilds have saved enough to bid on multiple locations. Smaller guilds are also punished in this system because if a big guild loses, they're going to have a backup bid on a medium sized guild, who are going to have a backup bid on a smaller guild, leaving no place left for the smaller guild to go when they lose assuming they had the cash on hand to place multiple bids.

It's also very likely that bids overall will go up because there's so little risk in trying to bid on a new location when you still have your old (backup) location should you lose your new bid. This means even more time GMs will need to spend fundraising to afford these new higher bid prices. Not including the added time sink of having to travel to 10 different traders across Tamriel to place your bids.

I also worry that there's no real way to "stress test" this new bidding system as there will be significantly less bids placed on the PTS than there will in the liver version and people placing bids in the low-stakes PTS environment will not be bidding in the same way that they will on live.

reoskit

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Non-constructive opinions are the reason why we shouldn’t do drugs.

Not to be too quippy, but some of the non-constructive opinions in the other threads make me wish I did drugs.

Thank you all for continuing to explain the very real, considered reasons why this change is, across the board, detrimental.

Please, encourage your fellow GMs/trade officers to come in and make their voices heard. We're louder with more (diverse) voices.

I fear that if this change rolls out, it will never be rolled back. The time to prevent it is NOW.

praxis

Assuming the idea here is to shake up the hubs so the same traders don't occupy the spots they've occupied for years and attempting to give smaller guilds the opportunity to get into the bigger cities, I think this is going to catastrophically backfire. All this will do is raise prices across all the kiosks and ensure that the guilds with a huge bank are the only guilds to EVER get spots in big hubs, while the medium and smaller guilds that can't afford to drop 10 multi-million gold bids each week possibly get pushed out of kiosks entirely. In addition, it will force guilds to go after 9 additional locations they don't necessarily even want as a "backup" and cause enmity between guilds and players that doesn't need to exist.

Most trading guilds that I know of have very dedicated officers who spend the majority of their game time (and quite a bit of their out-of-game time) raising gold for bids and making sure that the 500 players in those guilds have a steady, high-traffic kiosk every week to sell their stuff. Adding additional chaos to what is already a stressful bidding process, and then injecting additional toxicity, will likely turn off the player base that currently finds the trading aspect of ESO to be one of the more enjoyable and rewarding experiences in the game.

Since we can't thoroughly test any of this until it's live, this is speculation. Unfortunately, leaving this to actually make its way into the live server where issues are often slow to be addressed, probably means that the end result will just be players who get frustrated and leave.

Please reconsider this change. Thank you.

Treat

Personally, as an officer in 2 of these major trade guilds, I'm super against this multi-bidding. I don't think it will help at all. I am pretty sure it will backfire, cause far more stress for leadership and members both. We already need to bring in a huge amount of gold every week to be safe and make our bids. We sit every Sunday night clenching our cheeks for *one* bid, I can't imagine how we're going to feel when we don't even know *where* we will be and if our 10 enormous bids will be enough. I can feel my stomach dropping just thinking about it.

I fail to see how this will help smaller guilds - all the big guilds were built *over time*. We all will occupy the same spots more or less. If a small guild can't make one very large bid they aren't going to be able to make 10. They need to play the long game just like we did.

We are friendly with our neighbors and many of us are in more than one of our neighboring guilds. It will cause unrest and make people feel like they need to choose a guild to support. This is one of the very best communities within ESO - it's competitive, yes, but on the whole very civil. We all, at the end of the day, enjoy trading in ESO. Does it suck to lose your spot? Sure! It's kinda fun to win it back, too.

Grimm13

Still no response. Wish to point out that this does affect more than just Trade Guilds, it is all Guilds as at different points other types of Guilds will try to get a trader to sell excess items.

Also all Guilds need a forum area to have concerns and communications with ZOS that are not buried under a ton of irrelevant threads in general discussion. Guilds deserve a named Dev that we know is looking at those concerns, asking for continual feedback and communicating back.

It is time that you, ZOS, realize that guilds provide a valuable service in giving a social stability to the game that helps to retain players. Guilds should not be a after thought added in then forgotten. Guild Masters and ZOS have the same goal, to see that we retain players with a service but guilds need tools to do that. The first and most important tool needed to communication with the Dev's, not a vacum that nothing returns from.

Pairing Guilds and Crafting can make sense as parts overlap, Or Guilds and Housing again for the same reason. Just do not have all three in one as might start burying messages like it does in general.

Communication means two-way exchange of ideas and information. There has been no communication. @ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom Can Guilds start having that communication that should have been from the start.

Dusk_Coven

Grimm13 wrote: »

Still no response. … Guilds deserve a named Dev that we know is looking at those concerns, asking for continual feedback and communicating back.

It's frustrating, sure. However if they responded to every post where someone called them to respond, there'd be no end to it because people would abuse it with petty posts.
They might even have an internal handbook of what to do/not to do with the forums and responding every time their @name is mentioned is on the not-to-do list.

I think there's been enough posts on this topic that, IF they are reading or even skimming the PTS forums, they'd know to pay attention and we can only hope they're in some kind of group huddle mashing things out.

Rehdaun

Some trading cartels must be very happy right now. Bye bye little guy.

reoskit

To help ZOS see what their community is saying, I figured I’d consolidate some feedback.

These quotes are extracted from only the first 5 pages of ~21 pages of feedback on multibidding.

(Please don’t quote this post in its entirety or we may break the forums.)

This Section: Why was this change developed?

WardenofNirn wrote: »

Why did you implement this?

SammiSakura wrote: »

I dont understand the reasoning behind this.

Flaminir wrote: »

Feels like a poorly thought out solution to the ghost guild problem...

Starlock wrote: »

If this is some weird way the developers are trying to make a new gold sink or something, this... is really not a fair way to go about it.

Banshee1505 wrote: »

We asked for a way to make backup guilds disappear and now they implemented a whole backup bid system?

Fiktius wrote: »

So, what is this change actually trying to accomplish?

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

I am not sure what you want to accomplish with this move.