Multi-bidding so far - GM & Officers how is it for you?

Dont_do_drugs

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

The actual problem is that super traders try to monopolise the trading system

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

tahol10069 wrote: »

Because the one guild I'm in, a pure trading guild, is out of trader for this week because we lost the bid, and we bid more than we did before this "upgraded bidding system".

I'm sorry that you are in such a situation, and I don't deny that you're not the only one in that situation, but it's not the case for *everyone*. That's all.

Ye clearly the multi bidding system is helping the small and medium (non cartel) guilds ... NOT.

Can u specify that claim, that they, are trying? How are they doing it and how u know monopolizing is the intention behind it?

So youre saying that a small guild, I say that because the trader only contained 14 items worth a total of 10K in sales will place a winning bid of over 2M for an outlier trader because of what reason exactly? Que bene? Who profits by such an action?

And u think any big trade guild player would be interested in an outlier trader? Not to mention that u think, putting 2m on such a trader could be a profit for anyone.

Well my example is not based on some hypothetical conjecture, its baed on actual occurence.

It's actually no real occurrence. According to ur answer u just got outbid by a guild with low amount of things to sell and assumed, since they bid that hight, it must be one biggie thinking this would be profitable. Sry to tell u, none of us got rich by throwing our golds on outlier spots guilds which barely do 300k taxes a week. It's not even worth it
No maths can justify the guess, it would be profitable. Lol. Just lol.

marius_buys

I say keep the current trader kiosks but establish a server based auction house where trade can happen via external search engine using guild store listing and mail to the buyer.

A similar system is already in place via the TTC search engine (Tamriel Trade Centre) where you can request an item from a seller via mail even if its not in a trader.

All ZOS needs to do is incorporate it or facilitate it into their playing engine. Like they have done with many other apps. The in game trader would then essentally become a status and convenience item whilst the virtual trading house would meet the needs of small and medium guilds who need customers beyond being limited to their own members.

marius_buys

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

The actual problem is that super traders try to monopolise the trading system

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

tahol10069 wrote: »

Because the one guild I'm in, a pure trading guild, is out of trader for this week because we lost the bid, and we bid more than we did before this "upgraded bidding system".

I'm sorry that you are in such a situation, and I don't deny that you're not the only one in that situation, but it's not the case for *everyone*. That's all.

Ye clearly the multi bidding system is helping the small and medium (non cartel) guilds ... NOT.

Can u specify that claim, that they, are trying? How are they doing it and how u know monopolizing is the intention behind it?

So youre saying that a small guild, I say that because the trader only contained 14 items worth a total of 10K in sales will place a winning bid of over 2M for an outlier trader because of what reason exactly? Que bene? Who profits by such an action?

And u think any big trade guild player would be interested in an outlier trader? Not to mention that u think, putting 2m on such a trader could be a profit for anyone.

Well my example is not based on some hypothetical conjecture, its baed on actual occurence.

It's actually no real occurrence. According to ur answer u just got outbid by a guild with low amount of things to sell and assumed, since they bid that hight, it must be one biggie thinking this would be profitable. Sry to tell u, none of us got rich by throwing our golds on outlier spots guilds which barely do 300k taxes a week. It's not even worth it
No maths can justify the guess, it would be profitable. Lol. Just lol.

Thank you for supporting my arguement lol

Dont_do_drugs

m( OK whatever. After all ure also supporting my, argument, that a lot of low sales guilds gm just don't do their homework. Obviously you didn't even do it when u were in 6th grade for the math lessons.

Alienoutlaw

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

m( OK whatever. After all ure also supporting my, argument, that a lot of low sales guilds gm just don't do their homework. Obviously you didn't even do it when u were in 6th grade for the math lessons.

i think the point trying to be made here is not to do with profit but monopolising zones for the main guilds trader by out bidding the smaller guilds thus ensuring sales from their trader, i know for a fact this practise goes on within the game i also know that the large guilds buy up stock from smaller guilds and "store it" so as to manipulate prices. if you seriously believe this is not happening then you dont understand business at all

Dont_do_drugs

Yeh, I don't understand Business at all. You're welcome.

Nicky33

Just some questions to small TRADE guilds GMs:
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?
2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?
3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.
4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?
Thanks!

marius_buys

My answers in brackets

Nicky33 wrote: »

Just some questions to small TRADE guilds GMs:

1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?
(Irrelevant to OP)

2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?
(Irrelevant to OP)

3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.
(Because of the new multibid system, and wanting a trader [snip])

4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?
(Any bigger guild that loses its spot cascades down and results in a guild having NO TRADER for the week, how is this a QUALITY OF LIFE change?)

Thanks!

[edited for non-constructive/baiting comment]

Dont_do_drugs

Dude ure attacking pretty successfull self made belkarth frontrow gm as if they are gming boobs, and as if they were pro this change. We all were against.

Nicky33

marius_buys wrote: »

My answers in brackets

Dear marius_buys,

Thanks a lot for your insightful answers. However I have to mention thant naming the first two questions irrelevant to OP is making all your presence in this topic irrelevant. But okay.

"Wanting a trader" is not a reason to have a trader. I want DPS of 100k, so what? Managing a successfull TRADE guild requires skills. If you lack them, you have to bid net sales to get a trader. This is not about multi-bidding, its only about how good GM you are.

There are 200+ traders and maybe 50-60 TRADE guilds with sales of 10m+/week. If cascades goes down, probably only pve/pvp/social guilds will not have a trader. All trade guilds will have a trader in Hews Bane as a worst case scenario.

I have to note that I don't like this multi-bidding as well, as it makes much harder and much more expensive to secure a guild in a TOP location on a regular basis due to jumping small guilds attacking primary spots (pc eu). It also a risk for medium guilds to get sniped by top guilds backup bids. But small guilds can just move to another zone/trader etc. Not something pleasant, but also not something expensive for sure.

Cheers.

ThePlayer

Always the same trading guildes, small guild can bid for +300k gold every week, this multi bidding is just useless most of the time.

driosketch

Nicky33 wrote: »

Just some questions to small TRADE guilds GMs:
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?
2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?
3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.
4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?
Thanks!

I'll take a crack at answering.

1. Well for starters, it's partly my fault. I don't have the strong social skills, or energy, to recruit effectively. (Guild search is Aedra sent.) However, I've found a smaller more intimate guild has its charm too. I mostly try and maintain a certain level of actives.

2. I don't think they do. We do however have a habit of undercutting prices on mats, and some have taken notice. As far as coming after our spot, I think that's more the medium guilds, who in turn are pushed out by the larger guilds.

3. It becomes clear when you are a small guild. Bigger, desperate guilds come looking for an easy target. I do the same to other small guilds after we get pushed out. If I plan to keep a spot for more than a week, it become necessary to flex on occasion. I call it the pufferfish defense.

With regards to being a social guild, we already are. But how can I put this? This being a multiplayer game, good people you enjoy playing with are worth more than their weight in gold, no pun intended. Because we have a limited number of guild slots which in turn is tied to the economy, even a part-time kiosk ownership makes it easier for those players to stay. That's why it's still worth bidding.

4. There's a domino effect here. But also keep in mind top guilds have rep, which dissuades bids against them, at least for economic reasons. (I know because another guild I was in, which was small but well connected, got a spot on two separate occasions for 10k in Rawl after learning a trade guild was giving up the spot.) So as you go down tiers, there is increased turnover. Small guilds don't have a lot of funds to bid around. You either put all your eggs in one basket or dilute your biding power.

Blobsky

marius_buys wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

Well I agree to some extent, and I always supported thoughts of guilds in other hubs trying to achieve more and eat some sales away from the "conglomerates", actually a lot of them would be even happy about that since it's also reducing pressure on the top tier spotdls with every motivated gm trying to hit those top Hubs. Truth also is, that a lot of guilds aren't using tge hub to its potential, like windhelm and so on, but this isn't tgd fault of the to tier guilds but also the problem of low efforts of the guilds there in making hubs attractive, advertising btw, making sales week and other stuff might bring more attention to those hubs. But the truth also is, that there aren't even 200 gm willing to build and maintain a guild and a hub to that extend. Not 100, not even 50 or 30. Hubs also prosper from those gm and conglomerates pushing it. Before ttu captured vivecs front spots it was on its way to another rotten hub with rotten guilds. I know it's harsh, but it's also the truth. Remember how windhelm grew when alchemist emporium advertised the heck out of windhelm? This is up to the guilds competing the other top Hubs as well, but they just don't want it. It's too much work for them, complaints here complaints there blabla.

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? lol Are you even a GM of an active trading guild? Its tough out there at the moment bro, real tough.

That's Verbakontinenz, GM of Just Traders, Tamriel Stock Exchange and former go GM of Handelsgilde, Handelsgenoffenschaft, Bait Trading House and joint leader of UTE alliance on PC EU...

She was one of the most experienced (and thus exhausted) trade leaders on our server prior to retiring it lol

Yes and you dont think that the supertraders ARE the actual problem, its not tough for a guild earning 300M per week, I dont think youre seeing it as a medium and small guild issue, of course there is no problem for super traders. So yes, I still dont think a super trader know what they are talking about when they try to speak on behalf of small to medium sized guilds. We had the same spot for close on a year and I currently bid insane amounts to keep a consistent outlier trader from supetraders backup guilds that carry less than 10K stock.

So I say AGAIN: its VERY TOUGH OUT THERE FOR SMALL TO MEDIUM GUILDS and anyone else who disagree either does not run one or has an alternate agenda to their comment. We need an auction house. Period.

Wait, I just said she's an experienced GM - i haven't shared my opinion at all why am I getting attacked xD

Blobsky

marius_buys wrote: »

Some posters seem to have trouble distinguishing between a turnover of 300M and it's resultant net profit to the guild which is used for the next weeks bid? My point is that some small and medium traders are bidding more than their net sales nevermind their nett profit whilst supertraders sponsor bids via ghost guilds with almost no stock in the trader.

So when someone comments that all is fine and working as intended I will tell that person they have no idea what they are talking about and that is what I did. Blob The trader system is for everyone, not just a couple of trading cartels playing monopoly and commenting from their narrow entitled perspective. I hope you found that "insightfull"

Again, why am I getting attacked - I literally don't care about the system either way, I just get on with it xD

Dont_do_drugs

Blobsky wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Blobsky wrote: »

marius_buys wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

Well I agree to some extent, and I always supported thoughts of guilds in other hubs trying to achieve more and eat some sales away from the "conglomerates", actually a lot of them would be even happy about that since it's also reducing pressure on the top tier spotdls with every motivated gm trying to hit those top Hubs. Truth also is, that a lot of guilds aren't using tge hub to its potential, like windhelm and so on, but this isn't tgd fault of the to tier guilds but also the problem of low efforts of the guilds there in making hubs attractive, advertising btw, making sales week and other stuff might bring more attention to those hubs. But the truth also is, that there aren't even 200 gm willing to build and maintain a guild and a hub to that extend. Not 100, not even 50 or 30. Hubs also prosper from those gm and conglomerates pushing it. Before ttu captured vivecs front spots it was on its way to another rotten hub with rotten guilds. I know it's harsh, but it's also the truth. Remember how windhelm grew when alchemist emporium advertised the heck out of windhelm? This is up to the guilds competing the other top Hubs as well, but they just don't want it. It's too much work for them, complaints here complaints there blabla.

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? lol Are you even a GM of an active trading guild? Its tough out there at the moment bro, real tough.

That's Verbakontinenz, GM of Just Traders, Tamriel Stock Exchange and former go GM of Handelsgilde, Handelsgenoffenschaft, Bait Trading House and joint leader of UTE alliance on PC EU...

She was one of the most experienced (and thus exhausted) trade leaders on our server prior to retiring it lol

Yes and you dont think that the supertraders ARE the actual problem, its not tough for a guild earning 300M per week, I dont think youre seeing it as a medium and small guild issue, of course there is no problem for super traders. So yes, I still dont think a super trader know what they are talking about when they try to speak on behalf of small to medium sized guilds. We had the same spot for close on a year and I currently bid insane amounts to keep a consistent outlier trader from supetraders backup guilds that carry less than 10K stock.

So I say AGAIN: its VERY TOUGH OUT THERE FOR SMALL TO MEDIUM GUILDS and anyone else who disagree either does not run one or has an alternate agenda to their comment. We need an auction house. Period.

Wait, I just said she's an experienced GM - i haven't shared my opinion at all why am I getting attacked xD

psht, shut up and take ur weekly 300m, bro.

Alienoutlaw

Nicky33 wrote: »

Just some questions to small TRADE guilds GMs:
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?
2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?
3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.
4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?
Thanks!

ANSWERS
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?

small guilds are being forced out by larger multi guild groups and are not ALLOWED to grow

2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?

by outbidding all the smaller guilds in the zone the larger guilds force the foot traffic to their guild traders

3.Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social

we need to bid in the millions because of the larger guild GROUPS (who send gold to multi guilds to ensure a monopoly in a zone) price the smaller guilds out

4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?

this is false info.............the LARGE trade guilds actively seek out small traders and "buy them out" i know for a fact this happens as i have been approached and offered gold "not" to bid for that week, guilds are not "loosing" spots the large guilds are making sure they dont get them!!! why you think there are only 2-3 main trading guilds in the game? and that covers ALL servers and ALL platforms

Jenadara

I'm in a medium guild that has ally guilds. I'm not an officer, but I'm see the crunch this is putting on the guilds. They are forcing their players to pay dues. The dueis a large amount for most casual players, so this will effect them as well. Personally, it will make me get kicked out of 2 my guilds shortly as I cannot afford it. I would assume this game has a lot of casual players, so I can see how it can hurt the smaller guilds. Every guild is paying more, which is silly. And no one wants to see a monopoly occur and fixed prices happen because only a few large guilds are doing it all.

chess1ukb16_ESO

I can only speak directly about PC EU; however, the majority of my points should be transferable to all platforms:

Large Trade Guilds/Alliances are not putting dead guilds on kiosks let alone blocking zones. We do not have the time, resources or motivation to do that.

Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders, as our members are constantly checking these stores for bargains to resell to our much larger customer base. It would be stupid to cut off our supply chains.

We would see negligible increased income compared to the required outlay to make these hypothetical and false scenarios happen as the extra traffic if say Auridon had no active guilds on its kiosks would be minimal to the point, I am not sure it could even be measured. It’s just nonsense and repeating these falsehoods over and over do not make them true. I accept one random player might have approached a GM to not bid on a kiosk though I cannot think of a single reason why it would benefit them, but regardless this anecdote should be considered in isolation as I see no evidence of this practice happening on our PC EU platform.

As for Multi bidding, I was in favour of it and still am; however, we still have many weeks of instability ahead as there is a lot, lot more gold to draw out of the system. This is clearly a ZoS priority to help control inflation.

Specifics from my point of view:

Our Alliance bids (9 Trade guilds) have more than doubled. That goes for our #1 selling trade guild on the pc eu server, all the way down to the lowest guild in the Alliances chain that sells less than 50m a week.

Despite these doubling of bid amounts, we are experiencing increased volatility.

For one, it appears multi bidding has encouraged more GMs to compete via P2W i.e. buying gold through crown exchanges or ebay black market. In one extreme case, our Belkarth guild, we are being outbid by a small, circa 160-member guild that makes about 2m income a week if that, and somehow can finance bids 1000% above income i.e. 20m+ week after week. I am sure this is going on to a lesser degree in a good number of guilds that want to make headway in what is essentially an unfair anti-competitive environment for any trade guild looking to improve its position. These ambitious GMs know it’s not an even playing field, and if some have the means, they must feel spending real money is their only way to progress.

However, because of the new multi bidding system, these hopefully anomalous skirmishes have far less impact on our income and our members’ selling experiences than they would have previously, as the next kiosk down in our chain is almost as good. This is why I, personally and somewhat selfishly admit, like the new system. It reduced the impact of p2w; grudge snipe bids; guilds hitting their competitors through a proxy etc.

That all said, the new system is definitely negatively impactful to almost every guild’s finances whilst this excess gold is drawn from the game, and I am afraid every guild wanting a kiosk is going to have to adjust either their ambitions or how they operate. Certainly, expending all the energy on forum rants will not fix it though it may make them feel better .

To accommodate these changes, I am transitioning one guild after another of the ones I run directly to a fee-based system to be able to meet these higher expenses and remain sustainable in the long term. This is necessary to fund winning bids whilst not making a hefty loss every week which is paid out of guild reserves or my own gold. It's more admin which is exacerbated by the woeful guild management tools we have at our disposal and for some players its something they hate, but it works.

marius_buys

chess1ukb16_ESO wrote: »

I can only speak directly about PC EU; however, the majority of my points should be transferable to all platforms:

Large Trade Guilds/Alliances are not putting dead guilds on kiosks let alone blocking zones. We do not have the time, resources or motivation to do that.

Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders, as our members are constantly checking these stores for bargains to resell to our much larger customer base. It would be stupid to cut off our supply chains.

We would see negligible increased income compared to the required outlay to make these hypothetical and false scenarios happen as the extra traffic if say Auridon had no active guilds on its kiosks would be minimal to the point, I am not sure it could even be measured. It’s just nonsense and repeating these falsehoods over and over do not make them true. I accept one random player might have approached a GM to not bid on a kiosk though I cannot think of a single reason why it would benefit them, but regardless this anecdote should be considered in isolation as I see no evidence of this practice happening on our PC EU platform.

As for Multi bidding, I was in favour of it and still am; however, we still have many weeks of instability ahead as there is a lot, lot more gold to draw out of the system. This is clearly a ZoS priority to help control inflation.

Specifics from my point of view:

Our Alliance bids (9 Trade guilds) have more than doubled. That goes for our #1 selling trade guild on the pc eu server, all the way down to the lowest guild in the Alliances chain that sells less than 50m a week.

Despite these doubling of bid amounts, we are experiencing increased volatility.

For one, it appears multi bidding has encouraged more GMs to compete via P2W i.e. buying gold through crown exchanges or ebay black market. In one extreme case, our Belkarth guild, we are being outbid by a small, circa 160-member guild that makes about 2m income a week if that, and somehow can finance bids 1000% above income i.e. 20m+ week after week. I am sure this is going on to a lesser degree in a good number of guilds that want to make headway in what is essentially an unfair anti-competitive environment for any trade guild looking to improve its position. These ambitious GMs know it’s not an even playing field, and if some have the means, they must feel spending real money is their only way to progress.

However, because of the new multi bidding system, these hopefully anomalous skirmishes have far less impact on our income and our members’ selling experiences than they would have previously, as the next kiosk down in our chain is almost as good. This is why I, personally and somewhat selfishly admit, like the new system. It reduced the impact of p2w; grudge snipe bids; guilds hitting their competitors through a proxy etc.

That all said, the new system is definitely negatively impactful to almost every guild’s finances whilst this excess gold is drawn from the game, and I am afraid every guild wanting a kiosk is going to have to adjust either their ambitions or how they operate. Certainly, expending all the energy on forum rants will not fix it though it may make them feel better .

To accommodate these changes, I am transitioning one guild after another of the ones I run directly to a fee-based system to be able to meet these higher expenses and remain sustainable in the long term. This is necessary to fund winning bids whilst not making a hefty loss every week which is paid out of guild reserves or my own gold. It's more admin which is exacerbated by the woeful guild management tools we have at our disposal and for some players its something they hate, but it works.

All the more reason to create a virtual trade house that incorporates every guild store and reserve in-game kiosks for those guilds who want them as a status symbol. This will stop monopoly and empire building at the cost of the enjoyment of the game by non cartel guilds which outnumber big operations considerably. You need to trade to get gold but this is unpleasant due to a limited number of available kiosks. We small and medium guilds pay for the game same as big operations and have a right to sell. Period.

Alienoutlaw

Jenadara wrote: »

I'm in a medium guild that has ally guilds. I'm not an officer, but I'm see the crunch this is putting on the guilds. They are forcing their players to pay dues. The dueis a large amount for most casual players, so this will effect them as well. Personally, it will make me get kicked out of 2 my guilds shortly as I cannot afford it. I would assume this game has a lot of casual players, so I can see how it can hurt the smaller guilds. Every guild is paying more, which is silly. And no one wants to see a monopoly occur and fixed prices happen because only a few large guilds are doing it all.

THIS!!!

Alienoutlaw

chess1ukb16_ESO wrote: »

I can only speak directly about PC EU; however, the majority of my points should be transferable to all platforms:

Large Trade Guilds/Alliances are not putting dead guilds on kiosks let alone blocking zones. We do not have the time, resources or motivation to do that.

Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders, as our members are constantly checking these stores for bargains to resell to our much larger customer base. It would be stupid to cut off our supply chains.

We would see negligible increased income compared to the required outlay to make these hypothetical and false scenarios happen as the extra traffic if say Auridon had no active guilds on its kiosks would be minimal to the point, I am not sure it could even be measured. It’s just nonsense and repeating these falsehoods over and over do not make them true. I accept one random player might have approached a GM to not bid on a kiosk though I cannot think of a single reason why it would benefit them, but regardless this anecdote should be considered in isolation as I see no evidence of this practice happening on our PC EU platform.

As for Multi bidding, I was in favour of it and still am; however, we still have many weeks of instability ahead as there is a lot, lot more gold to draw out of the system. This is clearly a ZoS priority to help control inflation.

Specifics from my point of view:

Our Alliance bids (9 Trade guilds) have more than doubled. That goes for our #1 selling trade guild on the pc eu server, all the way down to the lowest guild in the Alliances chain that sells less than 50m a week.

Despite these doubling of bid amounts, we are experiencing increased volatility.

For one, it appears multi bidding has encouraged more GMs to compete via P2W i.e. buying gold through crown exchanges or ebay black market. In one extreme case, our Belkarth guild, we are being outbid by a small, circa 160-member guild that makes about 2m income a week if that, and somehow can finance bids 1000% above income i.e. 20m+ week after week. I am sure this is going on to a lesser degree in a good number of guilds that want to make headway in what is essentially an unfair anti-competitive environment for any trade guild looking to improve its position. These ambitious GMs know it’s not an even playing field, and if some have the means, they must feel spending real money is their only way to progress.

However, because of the new multi bidding system, these hopefully anomalous skirmishes have far less impact on our income and our members’ selling experiences than they would have previously, as the next kiosk down in our chain is almost as good. This is why I, personally and somewhat selfishly admit, like the new system. It reduced the impact of p2w; grudge snipe bids; guilds hitting their competitors through a proxy etc.

That all said, the new system is definitely negatively impactful to almost every guild’s finances whilst this excess gold is drawn from the game, and I am afraid every guild wanting a kiosk is going to have to adjust either their ambitions or how they operate. Certainly, expending all the energy on forum rants will not fix it though it may make them feel better .

To accommodate these changes, I am transitioning one guild after another of the ones I run directly to a fee-based system to be able to meet these higher expenses and remain sustainable in the long term. This is necessary to fund winning bids whilst not making a hefty loss every week which is paid out of guild reserves or my own gold. It's more admin which is exacerbated by the woeful guild management tools we have at our disposal and for some players its something they hate, but it works.

"Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders"
DONE GONE SHOT YA SELF IN THE FOOT THERE MY FRIEND

dvonpm

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

chess1ukb16_ESO wrote: »

I can only speak directly about PC EU; however, the majority of my points should be transferable to all platforms:

Large Trade Guilds/Alliances are not putting dead guilds on kiosks let alone blocking zones. We do not have the time, resources or motivation to do that.

Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders, as our members are constantly checking these stores for bargains to resell to our much larger customer base. It would be stupid to cut off our supply chains.

We would see negligible increased income compared to the required outlay to make these hypothetical and false scenarios happen as the extra traffic if say Auridon had no active guilds on its kiosks would be minimal to the point, I am not sure it could even be measured. It’s just nonsense and repeating these falsehoods over and over do not make them true. I accept one random player might have approached a GM to not bid on a kiosk though I cannot think of a single reason why it would benefit them, but regardless this anecdote should be considered in isolation as I see no evidence of this practice happening on our PC EU platform.

As for Multi bidding, I was in favour of it and still am; however, we still have many weeks of instability ahead as there is a lot, lot more gold to draw out of the system. This is clearly a ZoS priority to help control inflation.

Specifics from my point of view:

Our Alliance bids (9 Trade guilds) have more than doubled. That goes for our #1 selling trade guild on the pc eu server, all the way down to the lowest guild in the Alliances chain that sells less than 50m a week.

Despite these doubling of bid amounts, we are experiencing increased volatility.

For one, it appears multi bidding has encouraged more GMs to compete via P2W i.e. buying gold through crown exchanges or ebay black market. In one extreme case, our Belkarth guild, we are being outbid by a small, circa 160-member guild that makes about 2m income a week if that, and somehow can finance bids 1000% above income i.e. 20m+ week after week. I am sure this is going on to a lesser degree in a good number of guilds that want to make headway in what is essentially an unfair anti-competitive environment for any trade guild looking to improve its position. These ambitious GMs know it’s not an even playing field, and if some have the means, they must feel spending real money is their only way to progress.

However, because of the new multi bidding system, these hopefully anomalous skirmishes have far less impact on our income and our members’ selling experiences than they would have previously, as the next kiosk down in our chain is almost as good. This is why I, personally and somewhat selfishly admit, like the new system. It reduced the impact of p2w; grudge snipe bids; guilds hitting their competitors through a proxy etc.

That all said, the new system is definitely negatively impactful to almost every guild’s finances whilst this excess gold is drawn from the game, and I am afraid every guild wanting a kiosk is going to have to adjust either their ambitions or how they operate. Certainly, expending all the energy on forum rants will not fix it though it may make them feel better .

To accommodate these changes, I am transitioning one guild after another of the ones I run directly to a fee-based system to be able to meet these higher expenses and remain sustainable in the long term. This is necessary to fund winning bids whilst not making a hefty loss every week which is paid out of guild reserves or my own gold. It's more admin which is exacerbated by the woeful guild management tools we have at our disposal and for some players its something they hate, but it works.

"Indeed, our Guilds have a symbiotic relationship with smaller Traders"
DONE GONE SHOT YA SELF IN THE FOOT THERE MY FRIEND

Flipping might just be the biggest gold sink in the game 😂

ETA, I price my stuff competitively at my mid level guild. I know 90% of it will be poached and resold at inflated prices in, say, Rawl or Mournhold. But it's worth it to me. I do my part to make good deals available. I just have to hope that actual buyers and not just flippers can get some decent prices.

Nicky33

Alienoutlaw wrote: »

Nicky33 wrote: »

Just some questions to small TRADE guilds GMs:
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?
2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?
3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.
4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?
Thanks!

ANSWERS
1. Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?

small guilds are being forced out by larger multi guild groups and are not ALLOWED to grow

2. If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?

by outbidding all the smaller guilds in the zone the larger guilds force the foot traffic to their guild traders

3.Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social

we need to bid in the millions because of the larger guild GROUPS (who send gold to multi guilds to ensure a monopoly in a zone) price the smaller guilds out

4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?

this is false info.............the LARGE trade guilds actively seek out small traders and "buy them out" i know for a fact this happens as i have been approached and offered gold "not" to bid for that week, guilds are not "loosing" spots the large guilds are making sure they dont get them!!! why you think there are only 2-3 main trading guilds in the game? and that covers ALL servers and ALL platforms

small guilds are being forced out by larger multi guild groups and are not ALLOWED to grow - sorry this is a ***. On pc eu I can name -Cashflow (100m+ sales), Alchewmy Wizards (30m+ sales), Valinor Traders (30m+ sales), Tipsy Trader (30m+ sales) - all appeared in last 1-1.5 years and are already established guilds with notable sales. If your small guild doesn't grow - blame yourself, not top guilds.

by outbidding all the smaller guilds in the zone the larger guilds force the foot traffic to their guild traders - sorry, but there are no zones where LARGE trade guilds share traders with SMALL trade guilds. There are either top trading hubs like Mournhold, Vivec or Craglorn, where all guilds are LARGE or at least MEDIUM. And other zones, full of small trade guilds, pve guilds, etc.

we need to bid in the millions because of the larger guild GROUPS (who send gold to multi guilds to ensure a monopoly in a zone) price the smaller guilds out - this is not the case, at least on pc eu. Large groups do not finance anyone to bid in Auridon or Stonefalls. There is no sense in this as these locations provide zero competition to main trade hubs. All cheap stuff, which get listed in these location are bought out by flippers and listed in top guilds anyway, so why bother?

This is false info..... - sorry, but it is not and I don't think you have any right to say that I am lying. I expect the apologies. Please also specify about which server you are talking about, my knowledege is based on PC EU and I always state that my comments are relevant to PC EU only.

EllieBlue

From day one of the multi-bidding news came out, 95% of the trading guild GMs (of which half are from the large trading guilds and the other half from both medium and small) have felt very strongly against the multi-bidding system and we had expressed our feeling on the various post on the forum. We were ignored and called the fear-mongering lot, and many more names, some unfairly so. All that is happening right now are basically the scenarios we have foreseen and wrote about numerous times on those posts. From bidding cost rising exponentially, small and medium-sized guilds bearing the brunt of both rising bid cost and getting pushed out of their usual zones, to casual and new players getting pushed further out from mainstream trading due to trading guilds having to resort to fee-based practice and raising of requirements, in order to survive.

All said and done, it is what it is. Multi-bidding is here to stay. Like most things, when faced with change, one must evolve and adapt or perish. We have zero control over the system so there is no point in trying to blame anyone, small guild, medium, guild, large guild, the boogeyman over what is going on right now. Zos has decided that it is what we need in ESO, despite our objection, so we will have to roll with it the best we can. Or if you can't find it within you to do so, you can tell zos to go suck it instead and move on.

anitajoneb17_ESO

Nicky33 wrote: »

1 - Why are your guilds small? Why are they not growing?

Not every guild, even dedicated trading guild, is meant to "grow", just like every grocery out there is not meant to become Walmart. The "power traders", players who enjoy farming/selling/buying/flipping items for gold (which is, at this stage, not really more significant than a progression milestone, just like XP) are a very small percentage of the game, maybe 5K players per server or so. The rest of players just want to sell their occasional rare drops or their excess crafting mats. You need guilds to cater to the first category, and guilds to cater to the second category.

Nicky33 wrote: »

2 - If your guild is small, why do you think a big trade guild would care about your presence in Auridon? E.g. if a large trade guild is selling in Deshaan, how can your small guild affect its sales, being in Auridon?

I don't believe this is happening. A trading guild has three main duties : attract sellers, attract customers, and cover their one and only cost : their trader. Making that cost higher by "buying" another spot without really using it just for the sake of covering the cost of the main spot makes very little sense.
It can happen, but not for the reasons mentioned in this thread. It's more related to drama, personal vendetta, griefing and trolling, imho. But economically it makes no sense.

Nicky33 wrote: »

3. Why the hell you bid more than your total sales? I can understand that if you are just entering the market. But if your guild has been around for some months, you should either work on improving your sales or leave the business and change to social profile.

I think the guilds who do this are not thinking in terms of economics. They just happen to have the extra gold lying around and offer the services of a trader o their members, for as long as they can, until they're out of gold, and that's it. Making gold (by simply playing the game) is really easy in ESO and there are piles of gold everywhere. People and guilds just spend it on traders (as opposed to investing it, as a proper trading guild thinking in the long term would do).

Nicky33 wrote: »

4. There are 3-4 top guilds losing their main spots every week (at least on pc eu). This results in 3-4 lower spots hit by their backup bids. Having another spot in lower zone for a big trade guild is a huge issue. While for the small trade guilds it is just a move to the equal spot in almost the same zone (Stonefalls or Malabal Tor? Whatever?) So why are you increasing the bids instead of bidding in multiply equal spots?

I guess there's a lot of "pride" in being in a top spot, if only for a week. Sort of equivalent of beating Hodor in a leaderboard - if only for a couple of hours. Also, there have been a lot of player interaction and drama over the years, so maybe there's some revenge being sorted out right now.
Either way, there's no way this will hold on for long. We must just wait and see how things settle once all this gold is pumped out from the game.

BansheeVT

Nicky33 wrote: »

small guilds are being forced out by larger multi guild groups and are not ALLOWED to grow - sorry this is a ***. On pc eu I can name -Cashflow (100m+ sales), Alchewmy Wizards (30m+ sales), Valinor Traders (30m+ sales), Tipsy Trader (30m+ sales) - all appeared in last 1-1.5 years and are already established guilds with notable sales. If your small guild doesn't grow - blame yourself, not top guilds. (...)

Thanks for mentioning us :P do I know you?

We actually grew a lot in the past year.. right now we're also struggling with the multi-bidding system. Some GMs here definitely increased their bids a lot but we're still here and had some successful weeks after multi-bidding was introduced. We started out in Khenartis Roost, then decided to get more serious and already had 40m+ sales (iirc) in Elden Root where we fought with an old, established, wealthy guild and finally decided to leave the spot a few months ago after some attacks from a new guild. Now we have sales of 60-100m+ in cities like Vivec, Mournhold, Wayrest, Rawl'kha, etc

It was not easy at all. We lost a lot of gold fighting with bigger guilds, we still struggle to afford our bids, guild managing and making gold for our bids is what I do 90%+ of the time that I play, we lost several officers, supporters and power sellers when we lost 2 bids in a row or had to get back to a worse spot for some time. Bids are so damn expensive and it seems impossible to win a good spot without the resources, power sellers and knowledge that big GMs (and their alliances) have.. BUT it is possible and even though my guild is still pretty new, even though we don't have many power sellers, even though we aren't in any alliance, we made it. Because we work for it like those big guilds did some years ago and like they still do now. We were definitely not "forced out by larger multi guild groups" and we're still able to keep our guild alive and to make it grow.

Also:

EllieBlue wrote: »

Like most things, when faced with change, one must evolve and adapt or perish. We have zero control over the system so there is no point in trying to blame anyone (...)

Therefore I have to agree: don't blame the big guild groups, they are just doing what they think is best for their guilds, decide for yourself if you also want to put that kind of work in it and fight, or don't.

Dont_do_drugs

u don't necessarily need to agree on everything, but here u can read, what separates the wheat from the chaff. Tinfoil hat dudes can and should learn from it

dvonpm

Also, ZOS, if you're going to keep upping the pressure you need to add some real guild and sales management tools.

If you are going to do this to people who are willing to be your customers while working part time jobs for you and not getting paid, Give us the tools we need to do that. At least.

Otherwise your free labor goes away. Your free advertising goes away. And your former customers will turn on you.

DragonRacer

Ah, there it is. Theeeeere's the trader price increase.

Placed 10 bids yesterday. Admittedly, only the first four were actually serious bids, but I like to have the others out there just in case.

The four serious bids, all of which should have been "overpaying" for the areas in general that they were placed based on recent past experience of wins... all lost.

So, no trader this week.

PS4 NA

GoodFella146

DragonRacer wrote: »

Ah, there it is. Theeeeere's the trader price increase.

Placed 10 bids yesterday. Admittedly, only the first four were actually serious bids, but I like to have the others out there just in case.

The four serious bids, all of which should have been "overpaying" for the areas in general that they were placed based on recent past experience of wins... all lost.

So, no trader this week.

PS4 NA

Sorry that's a crappy feeling but it would be a lot better if you didn't have to bid against so many guilds. That's just a fact.