Super Trader Backup Bids - unethical?

marius_buys

For those who do not know:
Supertrader A uses their 10 bids on their normal spot and others.
In addition Supertrader A sponsors a randomly created guild (Lets call it Backuptrader A) a large amount of gold to go and bid on outlier traders.

Both Supertrader A and Backuptrader A win their bids
Backuptrader has a total stock of 15 rings at 200 gold each in their trader YET their bid was 1M+

This leaves the erm, "trader" with a shortfall of just under 1 million gold and many smaller guilds without a trader.

How is this beneficial to anyone in the game at all?
How do you stop this phenomenon?

Mr_Walker

Backup bids was always going to be a failure, but don't expect zos to ever admit that or revert.

marius_buys

So basically supertraders are reducing the total number of available traders

marius_buys

I zm actaully quite befuddled at the complete lack of outcry

Flaminir

marius_buys wrote: »

I zm actaully quite befuddled at the complete lack of outcry

There was! Loads of it... Pages & pages on PTS forums.

GMs of big, medium, & small guilds all speaking with one voice...

It was all ignored.

They did a good thing in stopping guilds from disbanding to give/sell their trader's to reduce ghost guilds. Still waiting to hear a valid reason for ten backup bids.

mague

marius_buys wrote: »

How do you stop this phenomenon?

5-15 slots for every account at a city trader in your capital city. As the guild traders only local listing.
A stamp on every item (bought from @eso-gamer) that turns the item on purchase into untradable.

With this the "grass roots" are able to have their independent market.

Hamish999

That's 1 million gold out of the economy, just gone. Let the big guilds waste their money. They can't sustain it forever. And it all helps balance the in-game economy.

bmnoble

Don't really see the value in this concept at all, there are more than a 100 guild traders, what is the point of a big guild buying up an out of the way trader that in no real way competes with them.

I could understand it if they targeted a guild in the same big city location, since that would be one less trader that people would stop to look at, in a prime location but many of the bigger trade guilds have come to an understanding about which trader they are going to bid on so they don't waste time competing with each other.

Now to do that would take all most as much gold as to win the real traders spot, just don't see many guilds wasting that much gold on a regular basis, maybe a once off everyone and then against a guild they dislike, resulting in the big guild that got kicked out of their good location taking the spot of a smaller guild and the domino effect afterwards of a lot of smaller and mid sized guilds either moving to their chosen back up or not getting a trader.

While OP, happens, seen the occasional trader with next to nothing in their inventory, its far more common for smaller and mediums guilds to lose their spots as a result of a guild trying to gain a new better location after saving for some time, causing the above domino effect I mentioned above.


Trade guilds may sell a lot but they only get the gold from taxes and what their members are willing to contribute, don't think it a majority that are wasting gold for a trade location they gain no profit from, even if they get rid of another trader, it does not change the competition in the market by very much.

Until a small or medium trade guild manages to steal one of the big guilds spots for a week, they largely don't notice them, there is not some targeted conspiracy to take away your traders, just the new volatility for smaller/mid sized guilds, added to the weekly trader bid they have added with this multi bid system.

peacenote

Hamish999 wrote: »

That's 1 million gold out of the economy, just gone. Let the big guilds waste their money. They can't sustain it forever. And it all helps balance the in-game economy.

The problem is guilds can fall apart pretty quickly. Even sustaining it two to three weeks could be the death of many small to midsize guilds.

Really worried about what these failed bids for the smaller guilds is doing to our nice little communities.

Kagukan

Guild trader system = FAIL. Always will = Fail. Only a complete overhaul can fix it. Putting band aids on the system they they just tried will not work.

tahol10069

Another prime example of what a fail this trading system is. It is easy to exploit, unfair, unequal and expensive. I will never understand how people can keep defending this abomination.

marius_buys

So they stopped ghost guilds from disbanding but that did not stop the bidding at all and now were sitting with empty traders, frikkin lovely

Drachenfier

marius_buys wrote: »

How do you stop this phenomenon?

Quit using this crap trade system?

marius_buys

Personally Ithink a solution would be to have a minimum stock value on city and outliers in that the bid may never be smaller than the average trade value of the stock in the guild store.

IE Outlier traders: if you bid a million then there may not be less than 1 million worth of stock in the trader at the time of bids being awarded.

Nestor

Your whole theory is based on the supposition that a trading guild profits from a kiosk. They lose money on a kiosk based on taxes. Without donations or dues, they cant bid on a kiosk. If any trader does this, it wont last long

marius_buys

Nestor wrote: »

Your whole theory is based on the supposition that a trading guild profits from a kiosk. They lose money on a kiosk based on taxes. Without donations or dues, they cant bid on a kiosk. If any trader does this, it wont last long

If youre selling 15 items worth a total of 5K in a kiosk you paid 1M+ gold for, you shouldnt be having a trader in the first place right?

VaranisArano

Remind me of the point of ghost guild bidding now?

As I understood it...

You can't use it as an actual backup bid, because you can't purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You can't resell the trader as they did before, since no one can purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You have to disband the ghost guild in order to get your money back, otherwise its a really, really expensive troll.

So the only possible reason to do ghost guilds any more is to troll by bidding on traders only to leave them empty and useless. Right?

Major_Lag

Either the ghost guilds didn't get the memo (yet), or they are just trolling for the sake of trolling.

The whole guild trader system is trash and should be completely redone.
On PC we have addons and TTC website which make this bearable, but I don't know how do console players put up with this BS.

Blobsky

VaranisArano wrote: »

Remind me of the point of ghost guild bidding now?

As I understood it...

You can't use it as an actual backup bid, because you can't purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You can't resell the trader as they did before, since no one can purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You have to disband the ghost guild in order to get your money back, otherwise its a really, really expensive troll.

So the only possible reason to do ghost guilds any more is to troll by bidding on traders only to leave them empty and useless. Right?

Actually, you don't even get the gold back after disbanding

kargen27

marius_buys wrote: »

For those who do not know:
Supertrader A uses their 10 bids on their normal spot and others.
In addition Supertrader A sponsors a randomly created guild (Lets call it Backuptrader A) a large amount of gold to go and bid on outlier traders.

Both Supertrader A and Backuptrader A win their bids
Backuptrader has a total stock of 15 rings at 200 gold each in their trader YET their bid was 1M+

This leaves the erm, "trader" with a shortfall of just under 1 million gold and many smaller guilds without a trader.

How is this beneficial to anyone in the game at all?
How do you stop this phenomenon?

You are describing an old problem that the update corrected.

Major_Lag

kargen27 wrote: »

You are describing an old problem that the update corrected.

Nope.
Ghost guilds can't hold traders for ransom anymore, so apparently they are now claiming the traders just to grief the competition.

kargen27

Major_Lag wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

You are describing an old problem that the update corrected.

Nope.
Ghost guilds can't hold traders for ransom anymore, so apparently they are now claiming the traders just to grief the competition.

That will not last long. They are throwing a little temper tantrum and like any toddler if you ignore them while they scream for a bit they will decide it is nap time.

VaranisArano

Blobsky wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Remind me of the point of ghost guild bidding now?

As I understood it...

You can't use it as an actual backup bid, because you can't purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You can't resell the trader as they did before, since no one can purchase the trader after the ghost guild disbands.

You have to disband the ghost guild in order to get your money back, otherwise its a really, really expensive troll.

So the only possible reason to do ghost guilds any more is to troll by bidding on traders only to leave them empty and useless. Right?

Actually, you don't even get the gold back after disbanding

Really? Huh. That's even more of a waste then.

StabbityDoom

marius_buys wrote: »

For those who do not know:
Supertrader A uses their 10 bids on their normal spot and others.
In addition Supertrader A sponsors a randomly created guild (Lets call it Backuptrader A) a large amount of gold to go and bid on outlier traders.

Both Supertrader A and Backuptrader A win their bids
Backuptrader has a total stock of 15 rings at 200 gold each in their trader YET their bid was 1M+

This leaves the erm, "trader" with a shortfall of just under 1 million gold and many smaller guilds without a trader.

How is this beneficial to anyone in the game at all?
How do you stop this phenomenon?

You can't. That's what consortiums are for. Eventually, if backuptrader (more honestly it'll be small consortium guild or feeder guilds) can't pull their weight, usually they disband or stop getting trade kiosks. If you notice, sometimes there will be bidding wars that go so high that there's no way the attacked guild could possibly sustain their spot - unless their consortium buddies kick in and help. It goes around.

Urigall

Something that is worth considering is a minimum, weekly sales target (total guild sales) being required before a bid can be submitted next week. Basing the figure on a percentage of the bidding fee seems fairest.

The figure needn't be high - just enough to create a bit of hassle for the proxy guilds and the fake guilds, without unduly pressuring genuine GMs. Wouldn't stop the problem but it's one more obstacle. At the very least, this would force proxy and fake guilds to sell at least, some items if they want to bid next week.

kargen27

Urigall wrote: »

Something that is worth considering is a minimum, weekly sales target (total guild sales) being required before a bid can be submitted next week. Basing the figure on a percentage of the bidding fee seems fairest.

The figure needn't be high - just enough to create a bit of hassle for the proxy guilds and the fake guilds, without unduly pressuring genuine GMs. Wouldn't stop the problem but it's one more obstacle. At the very least, this would force proxy and fake guilds to sell at least, some items if they want to bid next week.

Problem with this is the trolls will purchase their own goods and smaller guilds that have an off week are out.

Urigall

kargen27 wrote: »

Problem with this is the trolls will purchase their own goods and smaller guilds that have an off week are out.

Yup, that would probably happen.

Raises an interesting question though. If some players are so keen to accumulate as much (illusory) gold as possible...and do everything they can to stop competition...why spend so much effort on it?

I've read explanations that are less than persuasive. It must take up a lot of time and effort...for what? A number?

VaranisArano

Urigall wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Problem with this is the trolls will purchase their own goods and smaller guilds that have an off week are out.

Yup, that would probably happen.

Raises an interesting question though. If some players are so keen to accumulate as much (illusory) gold as possible...and do everything they can to stop competition...why spend so much effort on it?

I've read explanations that are less than persuasive. It must take up a lot of time and effort...for what? A number?

There's always the joy of trolling.

But more likely, its simply that there are different types of gamers. Some people play the "trading, moneymaking, and economy" game the way others play PVP, endgame PVE content, questing, or achievement hunting. We all get our joy from somewhere.

marius_buys

Major_Lag wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

You are describing an old problem that the update corrected.

Nope.
Ghost guilds can't hold traders for ransom anymore, so apparently they are now claiming the traders just to grief the competition.

Yes, in solving the ghost guild that disbands problem another was created because the suoertrader literally just leaves the trader abandoned, empty and useless.

It will be an interesing excercize to do a quick stocktake of outlier traders and outlaw refuges who actually own stock as a bona fide trader.

marius_buys

Ghost guilds are now basically creating a monopoly for super traders.

Oberick

kargen27 wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

You are describing an old problem that the update corrected.

Nope.
Ghost guilds can't hold traders for ransom anymore, so apparently they are now claiming the traders just to grief the competition.

That will not last long. They are throwing a little temper tantrum and like any toddler if you ignore them while they scream for a bit they will decide it is nap time.

Most players don't read the forums or know any of this stuff goes on. So if they can artificially inflate the prices of items by locking out other traders who can afford to sell items cheaper most people won't boycott them and just pay the price. The trader system is designed so that scumbags will always appear to exploit people without knowledge.

On xbox for example you will have people in zone chats offer to buy stuff for 1/3rd the price you can get from a good trader spot because the majority of people cant get a good trader nor do they search every trader for every item they got. Addon's somewhat removed this problem on pc so they had to find another way to exploit people.