The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/

Monopoly of public traders!

  • ImmortalCX
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    Tandor wrote: »
    ImmortalCX wrote: »
    Trading guids are the perfect gold sink.

    If there wasn't this kind of gold sink, people would have billions of gold. Unknown what would happen to the economy, but chances are that slightly rare crafting materials would be priced out of range for players with less than three years of collecting gold.

    There would be no middle class. Just poor players who can't afford anything, and uber rich players who can afford everything.

    You describe the present players very well, non-traders and traders respectively.

    Anyone can join a good trader.
  • pauli133
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    Tandor wrote: »
    You describe the present players very well, non-traders and traders respectively.
    Traders, as a group, don't really seem to keep more gold on hand than non-traders I've talked to. It's all that pesky crafting, flipping, and collecting they do.
  • VaranisArano
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    Tandor wrote: »
    ImmortalCX wrote: »
    Trading guids are the perfect gold sink.

    If there wasn't this kind of gold sink, people would have billions of gold. Unknown what would happen to the economy, but chances are that slightly rare crafting materials would be priced out of range for players with less than three years of collecting gold.

    There would be no middle class. Just poor players who can't afford anything, and uber rich players who can afford everything.

    You describe the present players very well, non-traders and traders respectively.

    What do you need to afford that you can't get from playing the game?

    You can gather, loot, or grind for everything that's for sale. If you don't want to trade, you can just put in the time and effort to get it yourself.

    Now, players who don't trade do tend to complain when there's something they want but don't want to put in the time/effort to get it themselves. Its like they forget this is an MMO. Grinding for gold or grinding for stuff is the name of the game. Nobody really gets to jump straight to get the stuff they want because instant gratification leads to boredom.

    In short, its the lack of time that causes problems for players, but that's 100% intentional in an MMO.
  • JKorr
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    Tandor wrote: »
    ImmortalCX wrote: »
    Trading guids are the perfect gold sink.

    If there wasn't this kind of gold sink, people would have billions of gold. Unknown what would happen to the economy, but chances are that slightly rare crafting materials would be priced out of range for players with less than three years of collecting gold.

    There would be no middle class. Just poor players who can't afford anything, and uber rich players who can afford everything.

    You describe the present players very well, non-traders and traders respectively.

    Strangely enough, until I actually bothered to *use* the trader my casual pve guild got on a regular basis, I didn't really accumulate a lot of gold. Then I took the unprecedented step of looking for and joining a no-dues/no minimum sales trading guild. I do sell recipes and stuff on my casual social guild traders, usually at guild discount prices. I use the trading guild for selling jewelry tempers, the higher cost flowers, and motifs. After I started actually selling things, I did start accumulating gold. I'm under no illusion that I'm rich, but I was quite pleased and surprised when my gold hit a million. All by playing pve, and putting in slightly more than minimum effort. If I can do this, then there really shouldn't be any reason anyone else couldn't.
  • mavfin
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    I'm in two trading guilds, and I pay each only 5K a week in dues. 5K! In return I sell usually 75K-100K/week for each of the two guilds, and I contribute to their auctions when a good lot shows up.

    I'm no high-end trader. Just a guy who sells the stuff I pick off the ground as I quest and play.

    You don't have to pay a ton into the guild to get to a trader. Now, if you want a trader on the circle around the Mournhold wayshrine? Yeah, you'll have to pay up for those.

    But, with Tamriel Trading Center website, it's not nearly as hard for people to find stuff to buy and where to get it.

    (Just for comparison, the traders I sell from are in Evermore and Orsinium, not Mournhold, etc.)
    Edited by mavfin on June 1, 2020 2:18PM
  • AlnilamE
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    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.
    The Moot Councillor
  • Starlock
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    AlnilamE wrote: »
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.

    Enjoyment that is thoroughly diminished if one doesn't have access to the means to make the gold one needs to obtain one's gameplay goals...

    There's a reason why gold sellers are a thing. Quite obviously, it's because having the gold to actually get neat things helps people enjoy the game.
  • VaranisArano
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    Starlock wrote: »
    AlnilamE wrote: »
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.

    Enjoyment that is thoroughly diminished if one doesn't have access to the means to make the gold one needs to obtain one's gameplay goals...

    There's a reason why gold sellers are a thing. Quite obviously, it's because having the gold to actually get neat things helps people enjoy the game.

    What gameplay goals do you have that you can't get through grinding, looting, or farming it yourself?

    There's nothing being sold that you can't loot, farm, or grind for yourself, provided you are willing to put in the time and effort for it.

    Its the time and effort that's the kicker, isn't it?
    Where I see the most complaints are players with little time who nonetheless want to jump right into content that requires items like potions or furnishings that are relatively expensive to buy OR require a relatively high time investment to make oneself. They don't want to take time to make gold or take time to get the items themselves because they feel they have limited time and would rather only do the content they love. Except that MMOs don't work that way. Getting players to spend time in game doing other stuff in order to do the content they love is how they work. Especially ESO.

    That's the real reason there are gold-sellers. Its for people who want to bypass the time/effort requirement to get gold/items that MMOs thrive on in order to skip right to the content they enjoy.


    It really comes down to time.
    I have the time to farm and sell my gathered mats. That's why I'm rich compared to most players in ESO. Its not really because I joined cheap traders, though that helps. Its really because I can farm Craglorn for an hour a day so I get a ton more nirncrux and other saleable mats than the average player.

    Time really does equal money.
    The more time you have to invest in ESO, the more gold you can accumulate, and the more able you are to bypass time sinks like just buying event rewards if you'd rather skip the grind for style pages.
    The less time you have, the less gold you accumulate, and the more frustrating it gets when you want something expensive right now.
  • Xebov
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    ThePlayer wrote: »
    A pve guild whose only hobby is to do trials and dungeons how much should bid at week to take the public trader? 500k gold, 1 million at week? ridiculous

    Why do you need a trader? Players have 5 guild slots so having a dedicated trader guild is not an issue. Ppl also have dedicated PvE or PvE guilds. Ive been in PvE guilds that tried to get a trader every now and then, but ppl had so small amounts of stuff to sell that 5 ppl made up 95% of all sales. For ppl that want to trade these guild traders are not realy interesting to begin with. So what exactly is your problem?
    ThePlayer wrote: »
    The idea of leaving some spots only for the pve/pvp guilds and keeping the trading guilds away is excellent, ZOS do it!

    And now you create a rule on how to decide what guild is what category without creating false results and you will quickly notice that this is simply not possible.
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.

    You are aware that auction houses make it much easier to get a monopoly on rarer goods and will cause prices for them to rise? While at the same time prices for more common goods would drop emaning the average player would earn less money?
  • AlnilamE
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    Starlock wrote: »
    AlnilamE wrote: »
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.

    Enjoyment that is thoroughly diminished if one doesn't have access to the means to make the gold one needs to obtain one's gameplay goals...

    There's a reason why gold sellers are a thing. Quite obviously, it's because having the gold to actually get neat things helps people enjoy the game.

    Does it? Second richest player in my guild only has our guild and while we try to have a trader, it's by no means a guarantee. He sells some stuff, but it's definitely not his main source of gold. He just plays what he enjoys (questing, fishing and running Scalecaler Peak) and he has no trouble buying stuff to make him happy.

    Personally, I'm a cheapskate. I use guild traders to rid myself of excess stuff because I hate throwing stuff out that I think other people may use. But when it comes to buying, my price range is pretty low before I decide to go farm stuff myself (I'm looking at you, Mother's Sorrow staves...)
    The Moot Councillor
  • kichwas
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    There are members of my 'extremely casual does noting much but chat on Discord' guild that make around 100k a day individually ONLY DOING DAILY WRITS.

    If the going rate is only 100k... a lot of individual 'minimum number of accounts allowed' guilds could afford traders.

    Jah bless
    PST timezone - mostly PvE player.

    Super casual player
    Seeking a casual 'lets do some dungeons and world stuff together' guild.
  • kichwas
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    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    The longer I play this game the more I'm starting to prefer it's system.

    Think of how Blackreach was until the day before yesterday - insane lag and too many people.

    Now go fire up a 'demo account' of WoW, and head to the main auction houses of each faction and count the crowds...

    Imagine that problem in ESO.

    Even if they put the auction houses in many cities - people will all use the one that is closest to the Undaunted spot... itself already a source of major lag.

    You'd end up with the 3 capitals being so lagged out actual use of their zones would be near impossible.

    After all... if you see those crowds in WoW - remember that there are actually dozens of auction houses all over the game... but people use the one closest to the current patch daily quest hub almost exclusively...

    If you have FFXIV and have reached endgame - there's a single spot on each server where you turn in weekly and raid tokens for gear - near it is a single 'bell' to summon your auction minions... bells like that are all over the game - but that one bell, almost always has more toons on it than your computer can render, so the people around you flicker in and out of view... lagfest...

    They'd need to do a number of things to make auction houses work:

    1. zone wide combat and dueling disable.
    2. zone wide disable of pets and mounts
    3. zone wide disable of assistants
    4. zone wide disable of using abilities
    5. and probably a few more things shut off as well...


    Which means you'd have to do things like place them in a new 'third floor' of the elden root tree, and inside a building for the other 2 factions - ie: in an instance that had nothing but the auction house... and you'd have to remove all the 'traders' that are in popular zones or zones with daily quest hubs... then let traders in out of the way zones work as auction houses too...

    In short... a mess...
    Jah bless
    PST timezone - mostly PvE player.

    Super casual player
    Seeking a casual 'lets do some dungeons and world stuff together' guild.
  • kargen27
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    ThePlayer wrote: »
    You can laugh as much as you want but i took the merchant in Elden Root for 70k in the past.
    I recently took them for 80k, up to 3 weeks ago, in other locations.
    Now i laugh :D
    The idea of leaving some spots only for the pve/pvp guilds and keeping the trading guilds away is excellent, ZOS do it!

    How does the game differentiate? I was in one of the most successful trading guilds in the game and their members were very active in all aspects of the game.
    and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."
  • kargen27
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    Starlock wrote: »
    AlnilamE wrote: »
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.

    Enjoyment that is thoroughly diminished if one doesn't have access to the means to make the gold one needs to obtain one's gameplay goals...

    There's a reason why gold sellers are a thing. Quite obviously, it's because having the gold to actually get neat things helps people enjoy the game.

    yes and that reason is players want instant gratification. They want the goodies without playing the game.
    and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."
  • Starlock
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    AlnilamE wrote: »
    Starlock wrote: »
    AlnilamE wrote: »
    RefLiberty wrote: »
    How about putting good old Auction house so people can sell their junk and so you can enjoy the game more, and grind less for merchant cartels.


    You can enjoy the game all you want without ever touching a guild trader.

    Enjoyment that is thoroughly diminished if one doesn't have access to the means to make the gold one needs to obtain one's gameplay goals...

    There's a reason why gold sellers are a thing. Quite obviously, it's because having the gold to actually get neat things helps people enjoy the game.

    Does it? Second richest player in my guild only has our guild and while we try to have a trader, it's by no means a guarantee. He sells some stuff, but it's definitely not his main source of gold. He just plays what he enjoys (questing, fishing and running Scalecaler Peak) and he has no trouble buying stuff to make him happy.

    Personally, I'm a cheapskate. I use guild traders to rid myself of excess stuff because I hate throwing stuff out that I think other people may use. But when it comes to buying, my price range is pretty low before I decide to go farm stuff myself (I'm looking at you, Mother's Sorrow staves...)

    It should go without saying that one's mileage may vary. Pardon for not making that clear. The point still stands that the ability of a player to earn in-game currency and engage in the trading system can and does impact their enjoyment of the game. How much of an impact it has will depend on one's gameplay priorities, of course. For some, just playing what they enjoy ends up being enough to get the income and resources necessary to support their priorities. For others it's not sufficient... sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. For those players, traders and trader access becomes essential to closing that gap. When trader access is restricted to guilds rather than through individual players directly, it can cause issues for some players. Overall, I don't think any of this is really that big of a deal, but I get why some folks dislike it. It's especially daunting for new players.
  • Taleof2Cities
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    Starlock wrote: »
    It should go without saying that one's mileage may vary. Pardon for not making that clear. The point still stands that the ability of a player to earn in-game currency and engage in the trading system can and does impact their enjoyment of the game. How much of an impact it has will depend on one's gameplay priorities, of course. For some, just playing what they enjoy ends up being enough to get the income and resources necessary to support their priorities. For others it's not sufficient... sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. For those players, traders and trader access becomes essential to closing that gap. When trader access is restricted to guilds rather than through individual players directly, it can cause issues for some players. Overall, I don't think any of this is really that big of a deal, but I get why some folks dislike it. It's especially daunting for new players.

    ESO is an MMO, @Starlock ... where players group together to share a common goal.

    Those goals could be completing a difficult group dungeon, PvP raids, role playing, crafting, and of course trading.

    If you're not into joining others for a common goal, should you be playing single-player games instead?

    Joining a guild is not difficult or "daunting".

    In fact, ESO has improved recently with the new guild finder feature ...

    Edited by Taleof2Cities on June 1, 2020 5:36PM
  • DaveMoeDee
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    ThePlayer wrote: »
    You can laugh as much as you want but i took the merchant in Elden Root for 70k in the past.
    I recently took them for 80k, up to 3 weeks ago, in other locations.
    Now i laugh :D
    The idea of leaving some spots only for the pve/pvp guilds and keeping the trading guilds away is excellent, ZOS do it!

    This makes no sense. You are basically saying you want to allow guilds that put in little effort to be able to make as much profit as the guilds that try hard to be profitable.

    If you don't want to commit to being a trading guild, don't be a trading guild.
  • Starlock
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    Starlock wrote: »
    It should go without saying that one's mileage may vary. Pardon for not making that clear. The point still stands that the ability of a player to earn in-game currency and engage in the trading system can and does impact their enjoyment of the game. How much of an impact it has will depend on one's gameplay priorities, of course. For some, just playing what they enjoy ends up being enough to get the income and resources necessary to support their priorities. For others it's not sufficient... sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. For those players, traders and trader access becomes essential to closing that gap. When trader access is restricted to guilds rather than through individual players directly, it can cause issues for some players. Overall, I don't think any of this is really that big of a deal, but I get why some folks dislike it. It's especially daunting for new players.

    ESO is an MMO, ... where players group together to share a common goal.

    Those goals could be completing a difficult group dungeon, PvP raids, role playing, crafting, and of course trading.

    If you're not into joining others for a common goal, should you be playing single-player games instead?

    Joining a guild is not difficult or "daunting".

    In fact, ESO has improved recently with the new guild finder feature ...

    Um... okay? I think you're misinterpreting what the point of that post was. Oh well. I don't have the inclination to try to communicate it better to you because you're making this personal for some weird reason...
    Edited by Starlock on June 1, 2020 5:48PM
  • VaranisArano
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    kargen27 wrote: »
    ThePlayer wrote: »
    You can laugh as much as you want but i took the merchant in Elden Root for 70k in the past.
    I recently took them for 80k, up to 3 weeks ago, in other locations.
    Now i laugh :D
    The idea of leaving some spots only for the pve/pvp guilds and keeping the trading guilds away is excellent, ZOS do it!

    How does the game differentiate? I was in one of the most successful trading guilds in the game and their members were very active in all aspects of the game.

    I assume they are describing guilds that primarily focus on PVE group content or PVP.

    For example, I'm in a PVP guild that only has a trader when we capture and claim a keep in Cyrodiil. Now, I'm hardly shut out of trading because I've got other open guild slots for trading guilds, but I guess I can see the point of making traders available for certain categories of guilds. I'm not sure how you'd enforce that though - seems like you'd get defacto trading guilds listing themselves as PVP guilds in order to qualify for the reserved traders.
  • PizzaCat82
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    The one thing that has always occurred, and always should occur, is that the developers make the game easier for new players as the game progresses so that they can catch up to the massive power creep that the entrenched players have.

    New players should not have to work as hard as me to get where I am right now.
  • kargen27
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    kargen27 wrote: »
    ThePlayer wrote: »
    You can laugh as much as you want but i took the merchant in Elden Root for 70k in the past.
    I recently took them for 80k, up to 3 weeks ago, in other locations.
    Now i laugh :D
    The idea of leaving some spots only for the pve/pvp guilds and keeping the trading guilds away is excellent, ZOS do it!

    How does the game differentiate? I was in one of the most successful trading guilds in the game and their members were very active in all aspects of the game.

    I assume they are describing guilds that primarily focus on PVE group content or PVP.

    For example, I'm in a PVP guild that only has a trader when we capture and claim a keep in Cyrodiil. Now, I'm hardly shut out of trading because I've got other open guild slots for trading guilds, but I guess I can see the point of making traders available for certain categories of guilds. I'm not sure how you'd enforce that though - seems like you'd get defacto trading guilds listing themselves as PVP guilds in order to qualify for the reserved traders.

    Yeah that was my point. How will the game know other than the guild leader checking a box. We all know about fake tanks and fake healers. Fake PvP guilds would run rampant as they try to get an under priced trader.
    and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."
  • Varana
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    It's a myth that the system is being overly restrictive. It's really not hard to find and join a mid-tier trading guild with no or very low fees.
  • mavfin
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    Varana wrote: »
    It's a myth that the system is being overly restrictive. It's really not hard to find and join a mid-tier trading guild with no or very low fees.

    Very much so a myth.
  • Starlock
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    Varana wrote: »
    It's a myth that the system is being overly restrictive. It's really not hard to find and join a mid-tier trading guild with no or very low fees.

    Yes, it's certainly a lot better now, though myths are stories that reveal deeper truths. Compared to, say, an auction house the system really is overly restrictive and not all that intuitive. I still remember the VR days on console when... text chat? What text chat? There wasn't really any way to find out about much of anything if you didn't use external networking sources. The only reason I got into a no-dues trading guild early was through some gal spamming invites in the starting town. I had no clue what the pop-up message was at the time... some weird message about joining some weird thing? I sat there staring at it for probably five minutes before deciding to accept whatever weirdness it was... I don't doubt new players still have that experience today even with the improvements to the system. Text chat is still off by default on console... :s
  • JKorr
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    PizzaCat82 wrote: »
    The one thing that has always occurred, and always should occur, is that the developers make the game easier for new players as the game progresses so that they can catch up to the massive power creep that the entrenched players have.

    New players should not have to work as hard as me to get where I am right now.

    Make it easier for new players....hmm....you mean like the build/level advisor with all the rewards? Food boosts, experience scrolls, research scrolls, boxes of crafting materials, armor, jewelry, housing furnishings, riding skill scrolls.....stuff like that?

    Getting to where "entrenched" players are isn't as hard as it used to be. There are players and whole guilds in the game that make it a point to help new players with questions, gear, crafting, enchanting, and extra bodies when needed. Now there is a built in mechanic to help to even things out even more.
  • JKorr
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    Starlock wrote: »
    Varana wrote: »
    It's a myth that the system is being overly restrictive. It's really not hard to find and join a mid-tier trading guild with no or very low fees.

    Yes, it's certainly a lot better now, though myths are stories that reveal deeper truths. Compared to, say, an auction house the system really is overly restrictive and not all that intuitive. I still remember the VR days on console when... text chat? What text chat? There wasn't really any way to find out about much of anything if you didn't use external networking sources. The only reason I got into a no-dues trading guild early was through some gal spamming invites in the starting town. I had no clue what the pop-up message was at the time... some weird message about joining some weird thing? I sat there staring at it for probably five minutes before deciding to accept whatever weirdness it was... I don't doubt new players still have that experience today even with the improvements to the system. Text chat is still off by default on console... :s

    I honestly don't know because I don't use a console; does the guild finder work on console too? While messages in zone chat are still a thing, looking for what you want is also now available. It was a lot harder before; you might not be online when someone was advertising their guild, or you couldn't tell what a guild was like without joining it first. Finding a suitable guild might not be perfect now, but its easier than it was before.
  • Starlock
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    JKorr wrote: »
    Starlock wrote: »
    Varana wrote: »
    It's a myth that the system is being overly restrictive. It's really not hard to find and join a mid-tier trading guild with no or very low fees.

    Yes, it's certainly a lot better now, though myths are stories that reveal deeper truths. Compared to, say, an auction house the system really is overly restrictive and not all that intuitive. I still remember the VR days on console when... text chat? What text chat? There wasn't really any way to find out about much of anything if you didn't use external networking sources. The only reason I got into a no-dues trading guild early was through some gal spamming invites in the starting town. I had no clue what the pop-up message was at the time... some weird message about joining some weird thing? I sat there staring at it for probably five minutes before deciding to accept whatever weirdness it was... I don't doubt new players still have that experience today even with the improvements to the system. Text chat is still off by default on console... :s

    I honestly don't know because I don't use a console; does the guild finder work on console too? While messages in zone chat are still a thing, looking for what you want is also now available. It was a lot harder before; you might not be online when someone was advertising their guild, or you couldn't tell what a guild was like without joining it first. Finding a suitable guild might not be perfect now, but its easier than it was before.

    Yes, the guild finder is a great new tool especially for console. Like I said, tools like this have certainly made things substantially better than they were for us. Before the guild finder, you basically had to just ask around in zone chat or hope to see a recruitment message to get into a trading guild. This, of course, assumes you knew text chat was a thing, have it turned on in your UI, and can tolerate typing anything on the default interface for console (which is crap). :D

    Lemme tell you, when a friendly guildie in an old guild I joined told me about Smartglass (aka, the xbox application that lets you turn your tablet into a keyboard), it completely changed how I could interact with the game...
  • idk
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    If a PvE guild that focuses on trials and dungeons is well run it will not be a very good trading guild. If it is well run it will not have a full roster which means it could not have the sales to compete with the top guilds. If it does have a full roster then it is not able to support the real needs of all those members.

    If a non-trade guild wants to start getting a trader they need to have one or more people willing to pay attention to secondary areas where they can obtain a trader with a low ball bid. If they were not successful with their bid then one or more of those people need to scour areas for a trader that is still available and grab them, but this needs to be done right after traders are swapped.

    Further, if the guild is not a trade guild a 100k bid is probably more than they should spend as they will likely not see much of a return since their guild members are not focused on using the guild as a trading guild.
  • DTStormfox
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    The fact that only a few trade guild conglomerates dominate the trade can be explained by the Matthew Principle and the Pareto distribution. Just like in real life, those who accumulate the most capital can use that capital to invest and gain more capital than those with little capital. Making it so that eventually most of the capital is owned by a few people (or guilds) at the top.

    These trade guild conglomerates are only focused on trading. Very often, there are no other activities in those guilds, and not people who are not trading (enough) are often punished. They only attract people who are willing to trade, thus they can have >400 people actively trading through their guild. And when you have >400 people actively trading through your shopping window, it accumulates a lot of money very fast through trading fees.

    Of course, those trade guild conglomerates have a competitive edge over (smaller) independent trade guilds. They can make use of their internal financial market and cover losses of one guild in their conglomerate with the proceedings of another guild in their conglomerate.

    How can we disrupt these conglomerates?
    Well, for starters, you could simply refuse to buy items from those guilds and refuse to sell items through those guilds. However, those large guilds will eventually simply be replaced by other guilds. We often see that when one guild is pushed off the throne, another guild simply replaces it. It will be a prayer without end.
    Another way is that the (smaller) independent trade guilds also start working together via a conglomerate structure to compete with the already existing conglomerates. However, that would also mean that one conglomerate will simply replace another at some point, and the independent trade guilds will become the new tyrant.

    Is it really a problem?
    For new guilds to enter the trading market through public vendors (the storefront NPCs) is made excessively difficult because these conglomerates can easily overbid new entrants.

    Can the problem be solved?
    Since a trading guild is not considered any different from other guilds from a technical point of view, the problem cannot be solved. Nothing will disallow you to have ownership over multiple trade guilds at the same time, or prevent you from managing multiple guilds at the same time. Nothing will prevent people from working together via systems outside ESO. Two guilds can easily work together using systems that are invisible to ZOS. ZOS cannot see if one guild owner is working together with another guild owner over Discord or any other external system.
    Only responds to constructive replies/mentions

    Immortal-Legends Guild Master
    Veteran PvP player


  • Varana
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    DTStormfox wrote: »
    Is it really a problem?
    For new guilds to enter the trading market through public vendors (the storefront NPCs) is made excessively difficult because these conglomerates can easily overbid new entrants.
    So you're suggesting every single one of the 200+ traders in the game is owned by some shady "conglomerate"?
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