PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for Multi-Bidding

Fiktius

@ZOS_PhilipDraven

First of all, it's very nice to see that you're actually communicating with us and by eliminating Ghost guild business you will help especially console guilds to get rid off Ghost guild problem, which is very nice.

However if you want to avoid decreasing the quality of trade guilds overall, seriously consider dropping the idea of implementing multi-bidding system.

During all these years it have been great that those guilds existed, which provided very casual friendly approach towards trading, without asking any sale or donation requirements being reached in order to remain in the guild.
This kind of guilds provided newcomers a chance to get started and get used to trading in casual friendly guilds.
This kind of small guilds should have a freedom to exist without changing their "no requirements" system and forcing them now charging requirements from their members in order to fight against absurd bids, which bigger guilds will be placing on their spots anyway.

This multi-bidding system is not a healthy addition in the game:

- Rich guilds which can fund very high bids don't have much to worry about. They have existed for years and managed to gather massive back up gold amount and they can maintain high bids if they wish, even on multiple locations.
This system will make sure that these big guilds very rarely have a week without a trader due they can scatter their high bids around without worries.
- Medium/Small guilds do not have that kind of funding. If multi-bidding system become a reality, many trade guilds are forced to increase their requirements in order to try to fight against expected bids on their spots and trying different ways to gather even more gold by fund raising, lotteries and so on. It will be constant stress about trying to gather one bid which could be high enough to fund a trader for the week without being shot. But even then let's be realistic: wealthy guild can outbid these smaller guilds anyway, if they just wanted. They got gold to do it.
- And then comes the worst part: domino effect. When someone goes and drops a mega bid on a big guild, loosing guild will be pushed towards back up spot which they won, which means that another guild will be pushed out of that spot and they will be moved to another spot, which will again move away another guild and etc. This will be going forwards till at the end weakest guild will be tossed out of the map. All of this just because these guilds affected happened to be in the same domino effect, thanks to this back up system. This kind of domino effect is not fair and it's definitely something which does not increase the quality of life of most trade guilds. This system is only favoring bigger guilds and should never arrive to live servers.

However if you actually want to increase quality of traders lives in this game, I do have some suggestions which you could think about as well:

1) Increase trader NPCs across entire Tamriel.
- For example add more trader spots in places like Stros M'Kai, Khenarthi's roost, Dragostar and smaller towns in Elsweyr.
Little guilds just wants to participate and get started somewhere. Increase their chances to do so.
Adding more traders on bigger hubs too would be very great as well.

2) Reconstruct some trading hubs.
- I'll use as an example Riften city:
This is a city where I spend most of my time, because crafting area and bank are very close to each others and players does not have to move much. However if we want to check out guild stores in that city, we have to go right out of the gates of the city and visit traders which are located there.
Riften city would be very amazing trading hub, if developers would move those trade spots outside of the gates inside the city, somewhere near crafting area and the bank. Also move that daily crafting writ board of consumables near the other daily writ board, so players can quickly pick up both daily types without having a need to travel further.

Thank you for reading.

Greetings,
Worried GM of 3 trade guilds on PC EU

SammiSakura

I 100% back everything @Fiktius says here. Very eloquently put.

girlpoison

reoskit wrote: »

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.

Saying my piece because of reoskit's post.

I'm not interested in testing this system because I'm really hoping it doesn't go live. No one asked for this, and it seems that no one wants it. I already spend enough, if not ALL of my time on ESO managing two full roster trade guilds, and this system is just going to increase our weekly workload by pushing and running fundraising events.

Our members don't deserve to be bled dry to increase the gold sink of trader bids. And games are supposed to be fun, not stressful.

I'm a returning player, and have been playing ESO almost exclusively since April 2017. I have over 4000 hours logged and I've spent close to $1000 on subscriptions, content and crowns. I've already considered giving up trade guilds and in turn, ESO completely, if this system goes live.

- Another Trade GM on PC/NA

Edit: fixed quotation

baratron

Who will be testing out multi-bidding on Sunday? I will be placing multiple bids for the three guilds that I have bid powers for.

Does anyone (especially PC-EU people) need to start up a temporary guild to test bid powers? I am willing to leave up to two of my real guilds to join (since it's only PTS and won't affect my membership on Live).

Let me know if you need me to be a warm body towards your 50 members.

silvereyes

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

n addition to multi-bidding, we are also removing the ability for guild traders to be transferred through guild dissolution in an upcoming PTS update for Update 23.

Thanks for responding! This makes me happy.

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The multi-bidding feature is part of an initiative to provide in-game supported methods for players to have fallback trader bidding options without the associated drawbacks for both guilds and their customers.

I think we can all agree that trying to find a backup kiosk right now is no fun. It's nearly impossible to find one fast enough. However, the implementation of the "fix" for the issue leaves much to be desired.

We don't need backup bids. We need to have more guilds be able to hire kiosks.

We don't need multi-bidding per guild. We need multiple guilds per kiosk. This approach has so many benefits, I can't believe it wasn't what was implemented.

• Multiple guild listings could be navigated one at a time at the same NPC, just like you can do at your own guilds at a banker.
• It's highly scalable. If more kiosks are needed in the future, just increase the guilds per kiosk limit. No need to worry about all the work that goes into creating more kiosks.
• More kiosks means fewer bid wars. Trader bids could be drastically reduced, making the system more accessible to small guilds, and less stressful for large guilds.
• More kiosks also means higher likelihood of finding a backup location should your bid fail.
• No domino effects when a large guild loses their bid. No small guilds need be harmed.
• Diminishes the power/notoriety of winning troll bids. Compare this to multi-bidding, which allows a troll bid targeting a large guild to start a chain reaction that affects dozens of guilds.
• Griefer bids targeting other guilds will still be risky. If you lose the bid, your guild has no spot. Compare this to multi-bidding, which allows griefers to still win their main spot if they lose their second bid, and just save and bid more to grief the next week.

Grimm13

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The guild trader system is a cornerstone of the in-game economy in ESO, but over time the enormous pressure on trading guilds to have a guild trader every single week has led to behaviors which reduce competition and negatively impact trader customers. Tactics employed to ensure guild trader ownership each week, such as the generation of alternate “shadow” guilds to bid on additional locations as well as guild trader speculation and resale through guild dissolution, often lead to fewer traders populated with goods and massive amounts of wasted gold.

The multi-bidding feature is part of an initiative to provide in-game supported methods for players to have fallback trader bidding options without the associated drawbacks for both guilds and their customers. In addition to multi-bidding, we are also removing the ability for guild traders to be transferred through guild dissolution in an upcoming PTS update for Update 23. We avoided making that change prior to the multi-bidding feature because we wanted to ensure trading guilds weren’t entirely dependent on winning their one single bid each week, which puts even more pressure on them to place exorbitant bids.

We appreciate the concerns being raised regarding this change and we are absolutely committed to monitoring the impact of this feature, as well as potentially making additional adjustments as necessary to ensure the ongoing health of the in-game economy.

Thank you for responding. Have to say, talk about burying the lead, really should have lead with the dissolution change. Yes very good that you will be stopping that behavior.

Not happy about multi-bidding, think it's not going to work out as good as you think with unforeseen problems it will cause.

But if you absolutely have to do this, suggest have only one extra bid. By having 2 bids in the Multi-Bidding system it gets the system into live where it can have real results. Watch and see what the data yields, then you could always adjust the number of extra bids gradually. You may find as we suspect that 10 is too many but you may see that 4 bids works for your purpose.

Also increasing the number of traders in each zone would be good to spur greater competition. Each zone has a major hub that a group of traders are close to a wayshrine. Some zones have a minor hub with a few traders that sort of or don't have a close wayshrine. Leave those major hubs alone and make a second equal hub in each by moving & adding traders close to a second wayshrine. With having two major hubs in each zone you should see more trade competition.

One part that has limited trade economics in ESO IMHO is that armor and weapons have no chance to wear out. Players do not have to replace anything. Items such as trials and dungeon gear that binds after a short count down should not wear out. But overland gear and crafted gear should have a chance if the items get to zero. Players will need to use repair kits to keep items in good shape so they do not break. So this change would have the repair kits as a commodity as well as keeping value to overland gear and crafted items.

What would create the most competition is to make each region an AH, with increasing the number of trader spots that zone. So guilds are not bidding on a trader but one of the spots in that AH for the zone. Access any trader in that zone, access that AH. Access the trader at the Bank, then you only access your guilds trader not all of the AH of the zone that was won in a bid. The keeps players able to use a guilds trader without owning a DLC but keeps players needing DLC to access AH feature of those zones. Still ten bids is too many, three could be good, and you have to increase the number of total spots in a zone. You could have the traders in the outlaw refuge's as a single AH instead of the zones. The added benefit is that reduces the server load from having 210 traders to 22 traders. This also counters targeted griefer bidding as they have no idea if they could knock out who they are targeting since Trading is no longer tied to a specific trader in the zone for the guilds. This gets 352 guilds into the trader game (30x21+22=352). No need to add traders into the outlaw AH as it will grow overtime as new zones are added, plus the benefit of being cross zones will make a strong competition to be there even gated by a zoning in after travel.

Grimm13

baratron wrote: »

Who will be testing out multi-bidding on Sunday? I will be placing multiple bids for the three guilds that I have bid powers for.

Does anyone (especially PC-EU people) need to start up a temporary guild to test bid powers? I am willing to leave up to two of my real guilds to join (since it's only PTS and won't affect my membership on Live).

Let me know if you need me to be a warm body towards your 50 members.

I already placed my 10 bids, not for the same amounts nor where I would have on live. I also think that PTS trader bid cycle needs to be on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday to give a better testing environment. Monday being patch day, just consider it a non-day so the three days are every other day.

forgottengd

@ZOS_PhilipDraven

Before doing these changes, do you think where many guilds found the gold?
do you know about bots epidemic?
I have one question only: will ZOS work on get rid of bots forever?

currently on EU prices on resources going down so quick so it's pointless to gather resources if you human, you will get 0 profit.
I expect no answer here, like before. You in ZOS never admit your mistakes

KerinKor

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

we are absolutely committed to monitoring the impact of this feature, as well as potentially making additional adjustments as necessary to ensure the ongoing health of the in-game economy.

LMFAO, so much time and effort wasted trying to save a brain-dead system that was broken from the start .. so much pointless tinkering due to being in denial about the real solution; the 'economy' in ESO has always been farcical, and sadly will contineu to be so.

martinhpb16_ESO

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

We appreciate the concerns being raised regarding this change and we are absolutely committed to monitoring the impact of this feature, as well as potentially making additional adjustments as necessary to ensure the ongoing health of the in-game economy.

Thanks for reaching out.

To be honest I think what would be better here would be a commitment to engaging with Trade Guild GM's and admins to ensure their ongoing health and well being, the people who do considerable hours of legwork, so that decisions like this are well thought through from all sides.

Monitoring the impact of this feature is all well and good but the impact is more likely to be on people as much as the economy, so although welcome, it does feel a little cold.

I think GMs will know exactly what I am saying here.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

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?

[*] Were you notified appropriately when your bid(s) completed?
Won't know till bidding cycle ends on Sun. We only have once per week to check this.

[*] Did the overall bidding process and bid tracking window function as expected?
Widow and tracking worked fine. Clear explanation on how it works.
But, bidding process NOT working due to only small handfull of GM's on PTS, empty, available kiosks in main hubs, etc.
PTS will NOT show a true reflective experience as it will never be able to reproduce how it will be on live.

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?
Yes, lots. 25+ pages of feedback from GM's of guilds big and small.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/482926/guild-bid-on-up-to-10-different-guild-trader-locations-each-week-with-update-23/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483891/guild-multi-bidding-why/p1
Main feedback? If you MUST do this, which majority want it totally scraped, 10 is TOO many. 2 -3 at most.

@ZOS_PhilipDraven
Thank you for responding and trying to explain why this is being considered.
But can we please get a open discussions going about this?
What ever happened to the "Council of Nirn"? The roundtable of GM's that ZoS would have discussions with about game problems and solutions?
ZoS once used to listen to the Guild Leaders, PLEASE! Listen now. This will not be a good thing for big, middle or small guilds.

Just my 2 drakes.... Huzzah!

SteamKitten01

I was doing some playing around on the PTS with the multi-bidding system and testing out placing more than one bid and noticed when placing identical bids, the order I bid in is not necessarily the order they show up on the bid list. Take the example below with bids # 4-7 for the guild in the image below. All 4 have the same bid but they are not listed in the order the bids were placed. I placed the Alinor bids first and then ported to Belkarth to place bids on traders there. I encountered the same issue when bidding for all 3 of my guilds that bids were not listed in the order they were placed. If I went back and added 1 gold to a bid, the correct bid would jump to the top, but if bids are exactly the same, it seemed to be random which bid was listed at the top of the list.

anitajoneb17_ESO

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

I think GMs will know exactly what I am saying here.

GMs... GMs... GMS...
Starts sounding like "me me me" even if I'm sure that not your intention. Just sayin'...

I know every analogy is doomed to fall apart when pushed too hard, but I'll still give it a try... Do you think world market regulations should be left in the hands of CEO and chairmen of Dow Jones companies... ?

Gandrhulf_Harbard

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The guild trader system is a cornerstone of the in-game economy in ESO, but over time the enormous pressure on trading guilds to have a guild trader every single week has led to behaviors which reduce competition and negatively impact trader customers. Tactics employed to ensure guild trader ownership each week, such as the generation of alternate “shadow” guilds to bid on additional locations as well as guild trader speculation and resale through guild dissolution, often lead to fewer traders populated with goods and massive amounts of wasted gold.

In what way is it a "cornerstone"?

I don't think it is, I don't know anyone who regularly buys from a Kiosk because finding what you want is such a pain in the ***.

Unless active player numbers are so low as to be bordering on economically non-viable for the future of the game your Trader System locks more players out of the economy than it brings into it.

Any functional Trade System MUST do two things:
1) Permit Sellers ease of access to a point of sale for their goods.
2) Permit Buyers to find the goods they are looking for.

Even for players within the Trade System (those guilds with a kiosk) it does not do 1) unless you are fortunate enough to get a Tier 1 Kiosk.

For players not in a Trade Guild it doesn't do it at all.

That is, on the First major function of a viable Trade System, your current system FAILS for most players.

And Buyers fare even worse, having to globe-trot to find X Item, and then spend time cross referencing prices.

That your chosen system is only just made marginally functional by the use of the third-party add-ons for those on PC is a testament to just haw bad it is as a "cornerstone".

That is, on the Second major function of a viable trade System, your system fails EVERYONE - except those able / willing to use third-party add-ons.

Buildings built on cornerstones this weak fall down.

Which is essentially what has happened with your trade system to require you to make these changes.

Changes that, at first glance, will actually make things WORSE, not better.


All The Best

ezio45

@ZOS_PhilipDraven

Please for the love of god, zos needs to back down on this.

There are pages and pages of gms and officers telling you we dont want this. We can tell you with 100% certainty that this is not going to make our bids less outrageous and is going to put even more pressure on us and our guilds to raise higher bids. Noone in the history of this planet has complained because they are raising to much money for what they need. If this ways going to have that effect gm's would be cheering right now.

This is going to start killing off guilds left, right and center. Zos implements this and your not going to be able to fix the damage with a hot patch or in a future patch or tweak the system and make alterations to it. All that stuff might be able to improve the system in the future. The damage it does though is going to be left to the gm's and officers to fix or just non repairable with guilds just being killed off entirely. If you think im being dramatic or exaggerating then you have no idea what trader guilds are actually like. 1 week of not having a trader can bleed you for 100+ members and thats takes a massive toll on these types of guilds. Losing 50 members can cripple a guild with how much we already have to raise each week.

Dolgubon

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

I think GMs will know exactly what I am saying here.

GMs... GMs... GMS...
Starts sounding like "me me me" even if I'm sure that not your intention. Just sayin'...

I know every analogy is doomed to fall apart when pushed too hard, but I'll still give it a try... Do you think world market regulations should be left in the hands of CEO and chairmen of Dow Jones companies... ?

A lot of people think being a trade guild GM is a lucrative position to have, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Trade guild GMs and officers are volunteers. Rather than making money from running a trade guild, they pour in hundreds of hours to run it, run auctions, raffles, and farm for the guild.

Regardless of your thoughts on it, the trader system is the one we have, and GMs are not out to scam you or their guild members. GMs are the ones complaining, because they're generally the ones who know how it'll impact the economy, and moreover, the average player.

It's more like asking a charity how much taxes they should pay rather than CEOs and chairmen of Dow Jones companies.

chess1ukb16_ESO

As someone that utilises multiple backups a week am happy with no backups being permitted if and ONLY if the multi-bid system is implemented to offer some insurance.

I admit I am not a great fan of the multi-bid system being proposed as it will add significant stress to many GM's playtimes trying to find gold, at least for the first few months and accept kiosk ownership will become a lot more fluid. Plus, with the new UI find guild system, Guild members are starting to become less loyal as they can so easily find an alternative in the location they desire through the UI. These proposed changes though implemented with good intent will reduce the community feeling overall; which is a shame as we should be trying to do the opposite.

However, due to the Developers inattention in permitting rampant botting going largely unchecked since the games inception and general gold inflation as a consequence of that and other poorly conceived ideas such as gold through the daily reward system. It might sadly be the right solution to negate malicious malcontents and real-life rich GM wannabees who are rife on all Platforms from 'pay to win antics' i.e buying gold with real money either via gold sellers or legitimately through crown gifting for gold, then lazily bidding way above a kiosk's value or their genuine Guilds capability i.e. what their typical income is week on week without such assistance.

Now let's have a hypothetical thought experiment. Imagine if you would, a successful Trader Guild or collective of Trade Guilds sliding backhander amounts of gold surreptitiously to smaller Trade Guilds and pointing them at their rivals with the motive of degrading them for long term success and just because it’s fun to do better than the ‘other side’. Of course I am sure this never happens in the lovely world that is Tamriel, despite there being a Daedric Prince of mischief with his delicious cheese fetish egging narcissistic people on, but just for the fun of this thought experiment let’s imagine if you will, this tragic event was to occur week after week after week; two things happen. Either the hard-working victim Guild have to overbid for months on end and essentially run at a loss which brings its own stresses and troubles or they accept losing bids way more frequently than a fair system should expect, which means they suffer losing their best Traders often to the malicious rival in the thrall of the God of Mischief as a consequence.

Now if this 'hypothetical, I am sure it has never happened dubious scenario' were to take place in a post implemented multi-bid system Tamriel, the victim Guild(s) have the quite delicious option of invoking the righteous powers of Meridia and counter bidding via these new 2-9 bids on all those lovely rivals that strangely never get targetted by these Daedric mischief funded jumping Guilds that only ever seem to hit a certain subsection of the Trading community. So, it would be Wabbajacks and tiny smelly pieces of ‘Sheogoraths Cheese’ vs the glorious light of Meridia! Ok, as I said, this is just a thought experiment of an overactive imagination and could not possibly happen, right??

One other suggestion if you please @ZOS_PhilipDraven . It would also be really good if we could remove a bid through this new multi-bid system. It is typically not good practice to keep large amounts of gold in a Guild Bank as there is a risk through the pretty horrible UI (sorry its bad) of accidentally adding a zero etc and bidding ten times what you planned and if I have to start putting 100-200m in most of my Guilds banks so I can bid ten times; the act of placing bids is going to become a fraught affair where I very slow check and check again the number of zeros. Please help an old man out and reduce my blood pressure by letting us take a bid back or at least amending it down as well as up during the active week.

"Change will preserve us! It is the lifeblood of the Isles. It will move mountains! It will mount movements!"
“Wonderful! Time for a celebration... Cheese for everyone!”
Lord Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness!

Dont_do_drugs

hypocrit...

VaranisArano

silvereyes wrote: »

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

n addition to multi-bidding, we are also removing the ability for guild traders to be transferred through guild dissolution in an upcoming PTS update for Update 23.

Thanks for responding! This makes me happy.

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The multi-bidding feature is part of an initiative to provide in-game supported methods for players to have fallback trader bidding options without the associated drawbacks for both guilds and their customers.

I think we can all agree that trying to find a backup kiosk right now is no fun. It's nearly impossible to find one fast enough. However, the implementation of the "fix" for the issue leaves much to be desired.

We don't need backup bids. We need to have more guilds be able to hire kiosks.

We don't need multi-bidding per guild. We need multiple guilds per kiosk. This approach has so many benefits, I can't believe it wasn't what was implemented.

• Multiple guild listings could be navigated one at a time at the same NPC, just like you can do at your own guilds at a banker.
• It's highly scalable. If more kiosks are needed in the future, just increase the guilds per kiosk limit. No need to worry about all the work that goes into creating more kiosks.
• More kiosks means fewer bid wars. Trader bids could be drastically reduced, making the system more accessible to small guilds, and less stressful for large guilds.
• More kiosks also means higher likelihood of finding a backup location should your bid fail.
• No domino effects when a large guild loses their bid. No small guilds need be harmed.
• Diminishes the power/notoriety of winning troll bids. Compare this to multi-bidding, which allows a troll bid targeting a large guild to start a chain reaction that affects dozens of guilds.
• Griefer bids targeting other guilds will still be risky. If you lose the bid, your guild has no spot. Compare this to multi-bidding, which allows griefers to still win their main spot if they lose their second bid, and just save and bid more to grief the next week.

More kiosks or more guilds at each kiosk also means:

• More sales information for the server to process
• More item listings for the server to process
• More guild store searches for the server to process
• On PC, lots more information that addons can query from the server

So given that ZOS has already admitted that the recent Guild History issues were caused by having lots more players in guilds than was previously the case, unless they've fixed their issues with Guild History having problems when under high demand, I don't expect them to jump for a solution that's going to add a lot more demand on the current servers.

Which is a shame, because yours is a good idea.

Dusk_Coven

I think ZOS just wants to introduce changes to end market manipulation of kiosks, and offer the convenience of how to secure a kiosk if your first choice fails.

The consequences of however they implement it would then just be market competition and up to the market to sort out.
Only empty kiosks and new tactics of market manipulation will get them to revisit their plan.

Because trying to shape an economy too much will probably end up in a huge furball of a mess with all sorts of unintended consequences. Just like the real world economy.

There's been no word from them about whether a global auction house is even a consideration, so Guild Stores must fulfill some sort of game objective for them. Maybe if they told us what it was, it might help, but they haven't really, so maybe it's something unpalatable to us.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Dolgubon wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

I think GMs will know exactly what I am saying here.

GMs... GMs... GMS...
Starts sounding like "me me me" even if I'm sure that not your intention. Just sayin'...

I know every analogy is doomed to fall apart when pushed too hard, but I'll still give it a try... Do you think world market regulations should be left in the hands of CEO and chairmen of Dow Jones companies... ?

A lot of people think being a trade guild GM is a lucrative position to have, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Trade guild GMs and officers are volunteers. Rather than making money from running a trade guild, they pour in hundreds of hours to run it, run auctions, raffles, and farm for the guild.

Regardless of your thoughts on it, the trader system is the one we have, and GMs are not out to scam you or their guild members. GMs are the ones complaining, because they're generally the ones who know how it'll impact the economy, and moreover, the average player.

It's more like asking a charity how much taxes they should pay rather than CEOs and chairmen of Dow Jones companies.

Whether GMs of established trading guilds do or don't scam or exploit their members or even make or don't make a lot of gold is irrelevant. The point is that they sit at the top of a system and benefit from it in either gold, fame, influence, power, fun, whatever, or all of it. And the people sitting at the top of ANY system are, although probably the best informed, also the less likely to provide an unbiased, selfless opinion on any potential change of said system. And that's valid for charities, too.

reoskit

I ask those of you who care about this topic to not engage with people who will bait you and attempt to derail the discussion.

We are here to talk about a change to the system. Please, stay on topic.


Edit: typo.

anitajoneb17_ESO

reoskit wrote: »

I ask those of you who care about this topic to not engage with people who will bait you and attempt to derail the discussion.

Are you referring to me ?
If so, sorry, but you're lying. I wasn't baiting, I wasn't derailing and I wasn't off-topic.

reoskit wrote: »

We are here to talk about a change to the system.

Then talk about this change, and not about yourself as GM being supposedly the only ones who can express an opinion about it.

Dusk_Coven

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The guild trader system is a cornerstone of the in-game economy in ESO, but over time the enormous pressure on trading guilds to have a guild trader every single week has led to behaviors which reduce competition

In what way is it a "cornerstone"?

SPECULATION: Extremely intense competition for kiosks involving huge bids is one of the objectives of the guild trader system because it is a gold sink, a way to remove gold from the system as more and more players enter it.
Unlike a real economy, there is unlimited gold and resources.

Maybe this is reading too much into it but the mention of "behaviors that REDUCE competition" might suggest they would like to see more competition -- and more gold exiting the system.

And without knowing what their goals are for the guild trader system, applying our own standards of "reasonable" might be completely irrelevant to them.

silvereyes

@Dusk_Coven, I was a bit confused by @ZOS_PhilipDraven's wording/reasoning, but to me, it sounds like the reduced competition he was referring to was from having legit guild bids being displaced by reseller and troll bids. This reduces the number of sellers in the marketplace competing, which can drive prices up for customers.

The wording was, "behaviors which reduce competition and negatively impact trader customers."

Indeed, later on in Phil's post, he mentions that multi-bidding was meant to, "ensure trading guilds weren’t entirely dependent on winning their one single bid each week, which puts even more pressure on them to place exorbitant bids." So the point of the system isn't to increase competitiveness for kiosk spots, which would increase pressure. The point was to increase competitiveness for goods in the market.

IMO, the current multi-bidding implementation will probably succeed in the goal of ensuring more active traders are competing every week, since fewer guilds with well-stocked stores will face weeks where they lose a trader spot. However, it seems to be having the opposite of the intended effect of reducing pressure on guild management.

silvereyes

VaranisArano wrote: »

So given that ZOS has already admitted that the recent Guild History issues were caused by having lots more players in guilds than was previously the case, unless they've fixed their issues with Guild History having problems when under high demand, I don't expect them to jump for a solution that's going to add a lot more demand on the current servers.

You bring up a very valid discussion point.

At the risk of going too far off topic, I do have some hope on the performance front:

• I've heard unofficially on the addon devs chat that the API changes designed to reduce server load from addons spamming guild history are planned for a later PTS incremental update this cycle. Nobody ever explained how that might affect the performance problems on console (maybe guild functions use a shared service with PC?), but ZOS apparently thinks this will help performance.
• A bunch of multicraft addon spam for refining / crafting will be going away this update with instantaneous multi-craft/multi-refine. I'm sure that can't hurt.
• Also due to insta-crafting, there's a good chance that people will stop trading their low-value mats (e.g. provisioning ingredients), instead choosing to quickly craft them into stacks of more valuable items to sell at a vendor.

Regarding whether multiple guilds per kiosk would actually hurt performance, I have a couple thoughts:

• The current multi-bidding implementation already seems designed to get more high-trade-volume guilds winning more kiosk bids. If ZOS doesn't object to that, they are obviously willing to accept some increase in sales traffic.
• ZOS needn't triple or quadruple the number of available trader slots available. Two per kiosk seems reasonable for the current demand and some future growth. They obviously don't want so many slots that many kiosks go unoccupied.
• The newly-freed spots would not be in the spots that have a lot of volume. Most no-requirements guilds I've been in with kiosks don't do a ton of sales, and these would primarily be the types of guilds occupying the new spots.
• I suspect that the more dangerous effect of multiple guilds per kiosk would probably be more centralization, as 2nd-tier guilds move into the current tier-1 cities, 3rd and 4th-tier guilds moving into tier-2 cities, etc.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

reoskit wrote: »

I ask those of you who care about this topic to not engage with people who will bait you and attempt to derail the discussion.

Are you referring to me ?
If so, sorry, but you're lying. I wasn't baiting, I wasn't derailing and I wasn't off-topic.

reoskit wrote: »

We are here to talk about a change to the system.

Then talk about this change, and not about yourself as GM being supposedly the only ones who can express an opinion about it.

I have to respond to this, and, I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude as we have agreed many times on things, But....
Yes, this change is about how it affects GM's.
I am sincere when I ask, do you run a guild Anita? Is it a trading guild? How will this change affect you?

I am a GM, not even a trading guild, just a nice little social guild that tries to keep a trader. I am also a officer in 2 other large trade guilds. We talk about "Us" because this is who these changes affect, along with the tens of thousands of members who will have to donate more gold, go without a trader maybe, and the many extra hours we will have to put in.

You have made some good points, but saying that it's not about the GM's and the problems it will cause for them and thousands of guild members, well, that's wrong, IMO...
My 2 drakes.... Huzzah!

Dusk_Coven

silvereyes wrote: »

The wording was, "behaviors which reduce competition and negatively impact trader customers."

You could be right. I did miss the point he made about guilds making exorbitant bids.

I thought the latter mention referred to guild stores which were won but essentially not used, thereby having a "negative impact" on customers.
For example, guilds making dummy guilds that actually won spots but didn't even bother to use them:
I've seen guild stores with zero listings. And also guild stores in supposedly insanely popular locations like Rawl'kha, but had weirdly priced items like https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/482964/guild-store-seach-bug-or-marketing-strategy-i-dont-understand

*

TL;DR version: guilds bidding lots is good for the ESO economy, but we've reached a point where most can't afford to bid enough

One of the reasons I suspected that they want money to aggressively exit via guild store bidding, is because if you let money accumulate with individual players, you could end up with a sizable enough population having enough gold to purchase items always posted at outrageous prices, locking them in that price bracket that excludes the rest of the players, especially new ones -- which may in turn lead to the use of RMT.
Neither of these are desirable, IMO.

The cause and effect here is speculative of course, but I point to SWTOR where you have a global auction house and the ability to make vast amounts of money in the auction house by having as many as 100 sales slots PER TOON (not per account). Even worse, you get your listing fee refunded if the item expires naturally unsold.
There, some fashion items are priced so high that realistically only credit whales could afford more than a couple of them without being virtually bankrupted for weeks. And some people have enough to buy out even the entire inventory of those top-priced items and corner the market by relisting at even more outrageous prices (and then pretending to be undercut but actually list with an alt).

Guild Store bidding puts pressure on guilds to sell, in order to raise the gold to even place the bids. If you attempt to always sell everything at a stupidly high price such that your inventory doesn't move quickly enough to bring in gold, the guild won't have enough gold in the long term. This keeps prices somewhat in check for everyone and for most things while still allowing players to jackpot with the most exclusive low-listing high-desirability items.

However, the strategy would fail if guilds had to bid so much that even a market of reasonable prices couldn't allow them to afford the bids -- i.e. your business is running at a loss.
Maybe that tipping point had been reached by too many guilds -- evidenced by the prevalence of guild dues and other fundraising activities, which are in general not popular with players.

Gandrhulf_Harbard

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

ZOS_PhilipDraven wrote: »

The guild trader system is a cornerstone of the in-game economy in ESO, but over time the enormous pressure on trading guilds to have a guild trader every single week has led to behaviors which reduce competition

In what way is it a "cornerstone"?

SPECULATION: Extremely intense competition for kiosks involving huge bids is one of the objectives of the guild trader system because it is a gold sink, a way to remove gold from the system as more and more players enter it.
Unlike a real economy, there is unlimited gold and resources.

Maybe this is reading too much into it but the mention of "behaviors that REDUCE competition" might suggest they would like to see more competition -- and more gold exiting the system.

And without knowing what their goals are for the guild trader system, applying our own standards of "reasonable" might be completely irrelevant to them.

And that works if, and ONLY IF, the purpose of a Trade System is to act as a Gold Sink.
In that case the current system is indeed a cornerstone of what they want for the Trade System.


I would argue that the function of a Trade System is to "facilitate ease of trade for both sellers and buyers".
In which case the current system is not a cornerstone, it is a hindrance.


ZOS need to lay out, explicitly, what it is they think the Trade System does, and why and how it does it.
Only then can we as paying customers hold them properly to account for their ability to deliver to those specifications.

All The Best

martinhpb16_ESO

I think even reducing multi-bidding from 10 to 3 would have detrimental effects because:

- Most big guilds wont openly want to bid against each other in the name of stability. They wont want to risk a war, trouble neighbours and people they know. They will more likely slap large backup bids down on weak un-allianced guilds which is bad news. Backup bidding may even be agreed between factions. Factions can still maintain a ghost guild and "cascade" their multiple guild bids.
- It will still help Troll guilds who often exist purely to troll certain factions with overbids to cause anxiety to their GMs and members
- It facilitates even more one wealthy faction giving gold to a seemingly independent guild to hit another faction. Which can soon blow up.
- Increased bidding competition will naturally push up bid prices, again squeezing out weaker guilds. Dues, minimum sales requirements etc will go up. Social guilds who dont want to do this will either have to do it or die. Even a crappy spot is better than no spot.
- Large guilds can do deals with lesser guilds. Hey dude if you tell me what your bid is and I bid just over it then if I lose my spot, my guild takes your spot and I will give you 1 mill gold in compensation etc.

People are people. There was a huge trade war a few years back on PC EU. It went on for months and eventually drew in more and more guilds. The impact on trading and the community in general was extremely negative. In the long term threats to trader spots actually strengthens the bigger factions as they come up with new and ingenious ways to raise gold and maintain power.

There is relative stability at the moment. Stability improves trading. Stability improves the quality of life of GMs, officers and members.

Happy players, play more, spend more.

What the majority of trade guilds want is a trading spot. They don't want the chaos that ensues from mass bidding.

The consequence of this is not just about the theoretical impact on how bidding will create mobility, there is a serious and very real consequence for community relationships; impact on individuals stress levels and a direct effect on weaker guilds.

Its a bad idea.