Is the Guild Trader Economy monopolistic like Big Tech?

marshill88

I was wondering what you guys think about the economy of Guild Traders. Due to the massive fees to hire the most choice guild traders, the only people that can ever get a shot at these are the Big Guilds (i'm calling them Big Tech guilds). They are fat with cash, and just keep sucking it in. they charge fees like 30k per member...a 488 member guild charging 30k each...do the math.

It reminds me of capitalist monopolies. Now I'm all for capitalism, I"m not a bernie socialist, but I do believe pure capitalism is inherently corrupt to the core. Capitalism must be regulated otherwise you end up with only a few players dominating the market so that no one else has a chance (Big Tech social media, IMHO needs to be forcibly broken up due to monopoly laws).
I find it interesting how pure capitalism runs the economy in ESO.

As a small timer with a ton of stuff to sell, I realize that unless I get in one of the BIG TECH GUILDS, I will never have the streams of flowing cash that these cash-cows make. Little guys just don't have a chance. It feels like a Ma and Pa store competing with Bezos.

Anyway, just my .02. Feel free to disagree, but please be polite, thank you!

marshill88

Should also mention...the people that run these guilds are fat with cash, they have massive mansions akin to the billionaires running twitter, FB, Google, etc.

Amottica

While I have only been around here for less than two months it would seem the guild trading system is fairly decentralized and broken up.

Might I add that I have bought and sold items via the guild trader without issue and without having to pay guild dues. That seems to be one of the contentions in the post that follows this one. I have no idea why anyone would pay guild dues if they do not have to.

JMadFour

Yes, and that is why people here are so adamantly against an Auction House, despite the fact that they all use an Auction House-type addon anyway.

Anything that makes it easier for people to buy and sell things without being forced to pay Guild dues to a Trading Guild is "bad for the economy" (aka, bad for the mega-trade guilds).

Personally though, I've given up on an AH type system, it'll never happen. I'd settle for being able to browse the traders on Xbox the way all the PC Players who use Tamriel Trade Center can. Having to Run to each Guild Trader individually to search for an item is just a really really bad, unfun, PITA user experience.

I'd prefer that functionality to be ingame, but I'd settle for just being able to search on a website at this point, tbh. To my knowledge TTC can only pull PC data. That's too bad.

ThorianB

marshill88 wrote: »

I was wondering what you guys think about the economy of Guild Traders. Due to the massive fees to hire the most choice guild traders, the only people that can ever get a shot at these are the Big Guilds (i'm calling them Big Tech guilds). They are fat with cash, and just keep sucking it in. they charge fees like 30k per member...a 488 member guild charging 30k each...do the math.

It reminds me of capitalist monopolies. Now I'm all for capitalism, I"m not a bernie socialist, but I do believe pure capitalism is inherently corrupt to the core. Capitalism must be regulated otherwise you end up with only a few players dominating the market so that no one else has a chance (Big Tech social media, IMHO needs to be forcibly broken up due to monopoly laws).
I find it interesting how pure capitalism runs the economy in ESO.

As a small timer with a ton of stuff to sell, I realize that unless I get in one of the BIG TECH GUILDS, I will never have the streams of flowing cash that these cash-cows make. Little guys just don't have a chance. It feels like a Ma and Pa store competing with Bezos.

Anyway, just my .02. Feel free to disagree, but please be polite, thank you!

You don't need to be in top trading guild nor pay fees to make good money. I make 6-7 figures a week depending on how lazy i am and i don't pay any fees to the guilds i am in. They are in top 10 locations. I also don't shop at top spots as they are usually overpriced, imo, because most of those people are paying fees to be in the guilds there.

JMadFour wrote: »

Yes, and that is why people here are so adamantly against an Auction House, despite the fact that they all use an Auction House-type addon anyway.

Anything that makes it easier for people to buy and sell things without being forced to pay Guild dues to a Trading Guild is "bad for the economy" (aka, bad for the mega-trade guilds).

Personally though, I've given up on an AH type system, it'll never happen. I'd settle for being able to browse the traders on Xbox the way all the PC Players who use Tamriel Trade Center can. Having to Run to each Guild Trader individually to search for an item is just a really really bad, unfun, PITA user experience.

I'd prefer that functionality to be ingame, but I'd settle for just being able to search on a website at this point, tbh. To my knowledge TTC can only pull PC data. That's too bad.

While i am all for some sort of integrated global search options, with a delayed listing, AH would kill the player economy like it has in every single game that has ever had one. AHs is what lazy devs put in games. They are very easy to control and exploit which murders the entire player economy.

This trading system might be a PITA for you to go get stuff but it's also what keeps all those reasonably priced items available for you.

remosito

Never had to pay one gold of guild fee. And I am in a trade guild in mournhold and one in craglorn.

LalMirchi

Is the Guild Trader Economy monopolistic like Big Tech?

In my opinion, no. I'm in five guilds without fees and sell well. I've seen no evidence of price fixing either.

WiseSky

Monopoly means no competition.
If you drop the ball, one week, your spot is out right away.
Cut throaty competition for top spots.

FluffWit

On ps4 we switched from monopoly to a duopoly.... I think he monopoly was better for everyone tbh.

Kwoung

I run a small social/trade guild, we have a 4k a month contribution requirement, which can be met with sales tax, participating in events and numerous other ways. That 4k, doesn't even come close to covering the cost of our out of the way trader BTW. I am also in or have been in some of the top trade guilds in those prime locations. Not once has anyone told me what to do or how to price, other than to simply sell stuff to carry my own weight, because those traders cost a friggin fortune.

Quite honestly, I tend to make my gold selling crafted items and being in a large trade guild, the internal competition is fierce, there is always someone selling cheaper, put up a listing, and a guildie undercuts you immediately driving prices down, which is pretty much the exact opposite effect of what everyone claims about trade guilds with the made up price fixing stories, etc...

And FYI, no one has to be a small timer or in a huge trade guild to sell stuff. One of my members regularly sells 10+ million a week and our record is 64 million in guild wide sales one week... all on a out of the way trader in a social guild.

As for our guild "mansion", it was a team effort and a large portion of the guild chipped in to make it happen, we now have every amenity in it a guild hall can have and the entire guild is very proud they were able to make it happen, I just pointed them in the direction. I am also far from one of the richest people in game, even though we have managed to keep a trader for over a year now, most of my gold actually goes back into the guild, not the other way around.

My wife on the other hand, has about 15 of thos so called mansions, every one of which she earned or bought on her own. Have you seen the housing guild people, if you are going to judge my their tech empire mansions... they must be scamming the game to no end, because their entire memberships places are all crazy rich asian level mansions!

Runefang

There’s nobody competing with Facebook or Amazon. However there are multiple Vivec, Deshaan, Wayrest, Elden Root, Craglorn etc trading guilds that provide healthy competition with each other.

Also while barriers to entry for big guilds is pretty high, it’s fairly low for the traders themselves. I can easily generate the items to sell at a big guild to hit sales minimums.

FluffWit

@Kwoung

I had a similar experience with crafting food, glyphs etc. to sell. It's just so ruthless and it gets exhausting. Now I basically just craft furniture to sell. Sales are a lot slower but theres virtually no competition so I just sell what I know is popular and put a 30% mark up on what it cost me to craft.

I'm also in a housing guild, I think a lot of them just get their gold from selling crowns. When I need something from the crown store they're the first guild I ask and I almost always find someone straight away.

hafgood

Certainly on ps4 EU there is no "monopoly" different guilds win the big three cities and some.of thr big guilds end up elsewhere.

The whole idea of this big guild Mafia makes me laugh. You don't need to be in a big trade guild to make money, yes it helps on ps4 as we don't have TTC and there are a lot of lazy players that never go outside the top cities when looking for stuff.

My social guild has a lone trader and we do very nicely from it, we have no compulsory donations relying on those who want to help contributing and the sales tax to cover the costs, and it does. And what I spend on the trader is a fraction of the big city traders with their 10k requirement, which goes no where near covering their costs.

So I'm afraid I don't agree with you at all, the only bar to trading in this game is a willingness to join a guild

Kwoung

FluffWit wrote: »

@Kwoung

I had a similar experience with crafting food, glyphs etc. to sell. It's just so ruthless and it gets exhausting. Now I basically just craft furniture to sell. Sales are a lot slower but theres virtually no competition so I just sell what I know is popular and put a 30% mark up on what it cost me to craft.

I'm also in a housing guild, I think a lot of them just get their gold from selling crowns. When I need something from the crown store they're the first guild I ask and I almost always find someone straight away.

Yeah, I literally gave up selling crafted items, was too crazy with not only in guild competition, but buying the mats was nuts. People want more for the mats than the end product sells for most of the time and you have to search like crazy and camp TTC to find a deal good enough you can actually make a profit.

The recent Hakeijo/Prismatic Glyph situation is the perfect example, it has quadrupled in price over the last year and there was a rather long period that all the folks wanting to get rich quick selling the Hakeijo, were charging more than people would pay for the glyphs. It straightened out, at 4x the cost for the glyphs over time, but I was too exhausted from the experience as well to bother staying in that game.

I was just using housing guilds to make a point though, my wife is in a few and it boggles my mind when I see their houses. I suspect most of these so called trade guild meglo-millionaires would be highly jealous, as it makes their places look like trash.

Everyone I know, we sell mats now. Zero investment other than time, and a guaranteed quick sale every time. The trade guild mafia sent me a note and clued me in.

Danikat

I'm in a social guild which has a trader, usually in a DLC map but sometimes we move around. There's no fees and no requirement to use the guild store unless you want to, but it's enough to enable me to sell stuff I don't want to other players.

I don't make as much as people in the big trading guilds, but I think that's mainly as a result of what I sell rather than where our trader is (bearing in mind I'm on PC so many people use TTC to skip the mess of a trader system and find what they need directly). I don't farm or craft anything to sell, I just fill my slots with whatever is in my inventory that I don't want. So it's mostly green and the occasional blue recipe and equipment with the inspiration trait, plus the odd motif and sometimes provisioning materials to fill any gaps because those stack up very quickly. It's a good week for me when I get over 10k gold from sales, but as I don't do anything to get it except add junk from my inventory to the trader it's basically free money for me.

I would much prefer ZOS to add a modern trading system which is available to everyone in the game without having to jump through hoops to get there, but I don't think the system we have means only the big trading guilds can function. It's a matter of finding the right guild for you.

Jeremy

marshill88 wrote: »

I was wondering what you guys think about the economy of Guild Traders. Due to the massive fees to hire the most choice guild traders, the only people that can ever get a shot at these are the Big Guilds (i'm calling them Big Tech guilds). They are fat with cash, and just keep sucking it in. they charge fees like 30k per member...a 488 member guild charging 30k each...do the math.

It reminds me of capitalist monopolies. Now I'm all for capitalism, I"m not a bernie socialist, but I do believe pure capitalism is inherently corrupt to the core. Capitalism must be regulated otherwise you end up with only a few players dominating the market so that no one else has a chance (Big Tech social media, IMHO needs to be forcibly broken up due to monopoly laws).
I find it interesting how pure capitalism runs the economy in ESO.

As a small timer with a ton of stuff to sell, I realize that unless I get in one of the BIG TECH GUILDS, I will never have the streams of flowing cash that these cash-cows make. Little guys just don't have a chance. It feels like a Ma and Pa store competing with Bezos.

Anyway, just my .02. Feel free to disagree, but please be polite, thank you!

It's a fair comparison in the sense rich guilds (corporations) dominate the market by controlling the popular hubs and then buying out their competition. Capitalism is a funny system because it's suppose to thrive on "competition" (or so they say) yet show me a capitalist who actually likes or wants competition. haha

There is a reason massive corporations like Disney, Google or Microsoft (which recently bought this company) do that. They do it for the explicit reason that they don't want any competition. Though in respect to the game's economy, it's specifically structured in such a way to keep prices artificially high by limiting the supply flowing into the market.

Ghostbane

Guild fee's exist to help the bid on the Guild Trader. The more lucrative and competitive the spot, the higher the fee would/should be. Trade Guilds only get 3.5% of every sale through their weekly trader.

So if a Guild sold 200m in one week, the taxes received would be 7m. Now, this sounds like al-oooo-t of gold, and to many people it certainly is. But if the 'bid' cost for their regular trader is say 10m, there is indeed a shortfall of 3m to make up.

This is why guild fee's exist. To make the shortfall on the competitive and aggressively growing atmosphere of Guild Trade Bids. This is also why Guilds have weekly Auctions, Lotteries and encourage Donations etc GMs don't spend a huge amount of their personal time preparing all this to make gold.

They don't look at the Guild profits that week and think, "There's a new Redguard rug for the aul Mansion!" GMs don't see that gold. That is bid gold. For this week, and the future. It is always about the bids and keeping their community happy with landing the right trader week-in and week-out.

Also about Guild Fee's. Most of the Guild doesn't even have to pay them. Majority of Guilds have unique requirements. Sell X or you will need to pay Y fee. In trader terms, the weekly sales target should be very very manageable, otherwise you are not suited to be at this relative trading tier.

Most GMs and their team run themselves ragged with constant administration, the events, questions from the new and old and somehow still finding the time to sell some stuff themselves. For when the time comes to make those bids, and the guild total is still short, its the GM that makes up the shortfall personally.

There are so many awesome communities in Trade Guilds, vibrant discords, great in-game events. GMs do it for that, the competition of being the best, taking something they've created/inherited and growing it to be bigger and better with the help of ~450 other people.

If GMs where in it for the gold, they would just be normal traders and capitalize without all the extra stresses.

BlueRaven

I am in four guilds that have traders.

Two of them are primarily trading focused.

None of them charge fees to be in them.

As a side note:

marshill88 wrote: »

Should also mention...the people that run these guilds are fat with cash, they have massive mansions akin to the billionaires running twitter, FB, Google, etc.

Is this talking about guild halls? Or just large player homes? What is this going on about?

JN_Slevin

There is one important part which everyone seems to forgetting. Rich people become GMs, not the other way around.

The people who get rich by being a GM of a large trade guild are few and far between if they even exist. I for my part would have much more gold now if i wouldn't lead a guild. Leading a trade guild is one of the hardest and most time consuming things you can choose to do in this game.

Another thing, you need gold for bids. Now what happens if the income of the guild is lower than your bid? Where is the gold coming from? Correct, the guild or the GMs (which a lot of times is one and the same). And given that they already do the most work in the guild (most of the time) it seems a bit unfair.

Also, if you are a GM who not only supports your Bids with your own gold but completely take over, what happens if this one person who has financed the bids burns out under the pressure to deliver every single week.

That's why most guilds who have been around for a long time have a system in place which "shares the work". There were, are and will always be guild masters who go and finance the bids by themselves alone, this is not a healthy way to lead a guild and your guild will be expecting you to deliver those great spots!

And for the bid prices, there is no bid price. If someone else is willing to pay 150M for one spot weekly you have 2 choices, pay more or leave the spot. That's it. The value of spots are determined by the amount what people are willing to pay for it.

ZOS_Ragnar

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