Guild trader listings being changed to 14 days??!?

Rishikesa108 · May 3

SilverBride wrote: »

ESO is not dying. They are just trying to improve server performance.

Improve server performance ? This is not the right way.
This is the opposite.
There are other reasons... they don't want to tell...
I don't know if ESO will have a long life.
But this is not the right way for it to have it.

LaintalAy · May 3

Arcturus wrote: »

Who [snip] wants an item to take longer than 14 days to sell? I don't see the problem with this change.

If it's taking you more than 2 days you should probably check the price, besides, items that are really, really expensive don't get sold in guild traders, they're sold in zone chats to dodge the fees so I don't see the issue there either.

This is a wildly sensible response.

[edited to remove quote]

Jaraal · May 3

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ESO is not dying. They are just trying to improve server performance.

Improve server performance ? This is not the right way.
This is the opposite.
There are other reasons... they don't want to tell...
I don't know if ESO will have a long life.
But this is not the right way for it to have it.

They are cutting out and modifying long-standing parts of the game to "keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future." So as long as they want to continue adding more systems, sets, zones, houses, flashy mounts, costumes, polymorphs, arms packs, permaglows and whatnot, you can expect them to keep looking for ways to pare down the old data and traditions of the existing game as we know it.

LaintalAy · May 3

A fistful of waffle.

Console users need to accept their limitations, just as those of us connected-by-vapour to the game have to endure less than 20 FPS and more than 450 ping. There are some activities that are simply not possible. That said, the trading interface COULD be reworked to look more like AGS. There's no sound reason that it needs to be as cumbersome as it is. After all, some users came up with a better one...

However. If you are trading a motif valued at 1 000 000.00 gold pieces and don't have the funds to list it twice in 30 days, then you are doin' tradin' wrong. Run around Bal Foyen for 30 minutes and you might pick up some furnishing mats that you can undercut regular traders with and pay your listing fees.

I'm tempted to use the term 'first world' - but everyone knows that the 1st 2nd and 3rd worlds all collapsed with the Berlin Wall in 1989.

FlopsyPrince · May 3

Jaraal wrote: »

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ESO is not dying. They are just trying to improve server performance.

Improve server performance ? This is not the right way.
This is the opposite.
There are other reasons... they don't want to tell...
I don't know if ESO will have a long life.
But this is not the right way for it to have it.

They are cutting out and modifying long-standing parts of the game to "keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future." So as long as they want to continue adding more systems, sets, zones, houses, flashy mounts, costumes, polymorphs, arms packs, permaglows and whatnot, you can expect them to keep looking for ways to pare down the old data and traditions of the existing game as we know it.

That is what they say. That doesn't mean it is definitely true, just that it is the reasoning they are putting forth.

FlopsyPrince · May 3

SilverBride wrote: »

ESO is not dying. They are just trying to improve server performance.

Why just now? Systems are faster than ever. Needing to hyper manage this type of storage raises serious questions.

I am sure they believe the changes will help, but I have not seen this kind of change ever help with large systems and I have worked on many.

FluffyBird · May 3

Jaraal wrote: »

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ESO is not dying. They are just trying to improve server performance.

Improve server performance ? This is not the right way.
This is the opposite.
There are other reasons... they don't want to tell...
I don't know if ESO will have a long life.
But this is not the right way for it to have it.

They are cutting out and modifying long-standing parts of the game to "keep the game performant as we continue to add new content and achievements in the future." So as long as they want to continue adding more systems, sets, zones, houses, flashy mounts, costumes, polymorphs, arms packs, permaglows and whatnot, you can expect them to keep looking for ways to pare down the old data and traditions of the existing game as we know it.

ESO is an old game and I don't know a single thing about it's code and infrastructure. I can see why (very general why) ZOS would cut "boring" things (like mail or per-character achievements) to add new systems and sparkly mounts: because new shiny things sell.
But! How long the game has if:
1. they have to sacrifice QoL for new stuff,
2. they don't (can't?) rewrite the game systems to improve performance and just tweak numbers instead where they can,
3. even after relatively recent hardware refresh the state of the game is so bad that guild store listings "strain the database"?

Maybe that's not how things are, but that's how things look and we'll never know for sure because ZOS will never tell.

And it's event pages all over again. Someone will come shouting "if you grind your life away ask a friend to keep stuff in mail don't sell within two days, you're playing wrong!", defend ZOS and tell you to ignore something you are supposed to participate in or change your playstyle just because someone else is OK with the changes.
But it's not really about that, it's... well, if I had a nickel every time ZOS intentionally does something that's less fun or less convenient by design, I'd buy out the studio, but weird that it happened twice in a row.

Zodiarkslayer · May 3

FluffyBird wrote: »

So: how the shortening of a listing lifetime would reduce the AMOUNT of listings at any given time?

I am sure many players will force themselves to sell lower and faster than they normally would. Simply because the iteration intervall becomes shorter. Instead of being listed three months, an item will be on guild lists only two months or maybe even only four weeks.

That will lead to lower backend pressure in a couple of months, not immediately. It will be small, but eventually noticeable.
Instead the pressure gets shifted to player inventory, by returning items faster. I get that a lot of players won't like that. And I understand the frustration. I do, I really do. But being emotional about a decision already made is futile. It'll only hurt.

Eventually players have to go lower, deconstruct or sell to vendors. That is the real improvement, imo.

BretonMage · May 3

To me the biggest problem here is furnishings, as others have mentioned. I wouldn't normally mind selling at a lower price, but some furnishings cost much more to craft than people are willing to buy them for, due to the elevated cost of the materials. If we could deconstruct furnishings for a reasonable return of mats, there would be less pressure to sell at high prices.

h9dlb · May 3

Masks and high value motifs can take months to sell even when priced at the lowest TTC value. They will have to be relisted many times before a sale is achieved

FluffyBird · May 3

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

So: how the shortening of a listing lifetime would reduce the AMOUNT of listings at any given time?

I am sure many players will force themselves to sell lower and faster than they normally would. Simply because the iteration intervall becomes shorter. Instead of being listed three months, an item will be on guild lists only two months or maybe even only four weeks.

Items staying for a shorter amount of time does not equal less items listed in total.

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

That will lead to lower backend pressure in a couple of months, not immediately. It will be small, but eventually noticeable.
Instead the pressure gets shifted to player inventory, by returning items faster.

Again, same amount of items, but way more transactions.

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Eventually players have to go lower, deconstruct or sell to vendors. That is the real improvement, imo.

Again, same amount of guild store slots taken, more transactions. Some items will become not worth listing or some players will give up on trading, but their place will still be taken by other items and other players. Or did you mean "improvement" not as "reducing load on guild stores system" but as "players giving up on trading entirely"?

ZOS does not try to make players sell LESS, they try to make players sell FASTER.
Take a road: at any given time there's N cars. ZOS says: "these nasty cars wear out our road, so we'll make them run twice as fast, so they leave two times sooner!"
Can you see what happens? Same cars at any given moment, but twice as much cars in an hour.
Can you guess the result? The road wears out two times faster!

And this is why "reducing server strain" makes no sense. But! If you intend to close the road, it will also be free two times sooner. Which is why cold storage theory DOES make sense.

Lauranae · May 3

I took some time to think more about that famous lag that mails and traders is providing .......
And then, i realised how even more false it was.

Each time i meet a flashy lover mount and special recalling .... my time is like suspended for some seconds. Specifically the accursed and legionary recall. When a player use those near me, i lost all the visibility on my screen, as i am suddenly in this huge spell, and anyway i can not move until the player is gone.
Each new pack you introduce a special noisy flashy mount, and now recall spells.

I do not say you should stop to be creative (well for my taste sometimes i would prefer, i never had to see a mount that litterally made me sick in RL happily as in game), but may be you could really check on those. The noisy rumble, the explosion of flashy colours and then the volatile colours or stones following are certainly an issue.
Not even speaking of the trouble its create on the health of some of us.

Do not tell me its on my side. I play at max settings, and never have lag when i fight, travel, or stay in a city, until i met those.
i can even have 3 instances of the game logged, and i can do my crafting, or help second account travel, by sending the third account in a place she do not know. Not all together, but still i have the 3 accounts logged.
For the crafting, i have the 3 accounts, i log one character, then when this one log off, i log a character of the other account and this for a whole 50 characters using alt tab. And not lag at all

But i digress, i know that you will never stop adding those mounts, recalls (speaking of the huge spells, not the little colored ones) you sell them, so of course they will stay and you will introduce more and more of those.
But then why do we have to suffer the degradation of our game ? with the last years all you did was suppressing or reducing skills animation, skills duration, and that kind, while adding more and more crate stuff.

Huge and flashy is not sometimes the beauty, this can be find in small and colored as you did by the past

heaven13 · May 3

Arcturus wrote: »

Who [snip] wants an item to take longer than 14 days to sell? I don't see the problem with this change.

If it's taking you more than 2 days you should probably check the price, besides, items that are really, really expensive don't get sold in guild traders, they're sold in zone chats to dodge the fees so I don't see the issue there either.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Sorry, I don't have the time nor the desire to parade around in zone chat trying to find the one person who does housing who wants the million dollar rare furnishing plan I've just looted. I've got better things to do with my time, like actually playing the game (can't sell in zone chat if you're in a dungeon or a trial or an arena, for example). That's what the guild traders are supposed to be for.

CrashTest · May 3

This will primarily affect the high priced rarer items that go for millions bc those are the things that can take more than 2 weeks to sell. Everyday items like mats or expensive popular items that sell fast shouldn't be affected.

The listing fee is 10k per million. No one is going to constantly throw away that much gold to continuously relist their high priced items, so the server traffic is not going to spike due to relisting.

Prices will drop on these items if players still want to use the guild traders unless you want to spend hours zone hopping to spam WTS in zone chat across the entire game world.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · May 3

CrashTest wrote: »

This will primarily affect the high priced rarer items that go for millions bc those are the things that can take more than 2 weeks to sell. Everyday items like mats or expensive popular items that sell fast shouldn't be affected.

The listing fee is 10k per million. No one is going to constantly throw away that much gold to continuously relist their high priced items, so the server traffic is not going to spike due to relisting.

Prices will drop on these items if players still want to use the guild traders unless you want to spend hours zone hopping to spam WTS in zone chat across the entire game world.

It is also going to affect lower priced common items such as Daedric or Dwemer motifs. I'll frequently list these at low cost for new players and they can take a while to sell. I have no desire to spend my time managing these or paying extra listing fees so will likely vendor them from now on.

FlopsyPrince · May 4

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

CrashTest wrote: »

This will primarily affect the high priced rarer items that go for millions bc those are the things that can take more than 2 weeks to sell. Everyday items like mats or expensive popular items that sell fast shouldn't be affected.

The listing fee is 10k per million. No one is going to constantly throw away that much gold to continuously relist their high priced items, so the server traffic is not going to spike due to relisting.

Prices will drop on these items if players still want to use the guild traders unless you want to spend hours zone hopping to spam WTS in zone chat across the entire game world.

It is also going to affect lower priced common items such as Daedric or Dwemer motifs. I'll frequently list these at low cost for new players and they can take a while to sell. I have no desire to spend my time managing these or paying extra listing fees so will likely vendor them from now on.

Exactly! That is why this is a very bad move and those who say it is just "overpriced" are ignoring this part of the game (along with the expensive items comment just before).

FlopsyPrince · May 4

Lauranae wrote: »

I took some time to think more about that famous lag that mails and traders is providing .......
And then, i realised how even more false it was.

Each time i meet a flashy lover mount and special recalling .... my time is like suspended for some seconds. Specifically the accursed and legionary recall. When a player use those near me, i lost all the visibility on my screen, as i am suddenly in this huge spell, and anyway i can not move until the player is gone.
Each new pack you introduce a special noisy flashy mount, and now recall spells.

I do not say you should stop to be creative (well for my taste sometimes i would prefer, i never had to see a mount that litterally made me sick in RL happily as in game), but may be you could really check on those. The noisy rumble, the explosion of flashy colours and then the volatile colours or stones following are certainly an issue.
Not even speaking of the trouble its create on the health of some of us.

Do not tell me its on my side. I play at max settings, and never have lag when i fight, travel, or stay in a city, until i met those.
i can even have 3 instances of the game logged, and i can do my crafting, or help second account travel, by sending the third account in a place she do not know. Not all together, but still i have the 3 accounts logged.
For the crafting, i have the 3 accounts, i log one character, then when this one log off, i log a character of the other account and this for a whole 50 characters using alt tab. And not lag at all

But i digress, i know that you will never stop adding those mounts, recalls (speaking of the huge spells, not the little colored ones) you sell them, so of course they will stay and you will introduce more and more of those.
But then why do we have to suffer the degradation of our game ? with the last years all you did was suppressing or reducing skills animation, skills duration, and that kind, while adding more and more crate stuff.

Huge and flashy is not sometimes the beauty, this can be find in small and colored as you did by the past

Remember that they made the cost of server replacements such a big issue.

Sorry, but that is simply not true today. Yes, servers are not cheap, but they are comparatively cheap and things like this point to the likelihood that ANY expensive is anathema to ZOS leadership, which is what makes me concerned for the future of the game.

I want an MMO I play to be certain to be around a fairly long time. I would have thought I was safe on this with ESO, but things like this raise concerns.

Nestor · May 4

So, 14 day Mail delete, 14 day Store Return, be gone from the game for a month, lose 30, 60 or 90 items?

Yea, this is a good idea. Fiscally punish players for not logging in frequently. Perish the thought that life happens or a family emergency, or a work project takes me out of town for a couple off weeks 13 days after I list.

Seriously?

katanagirl1 · May 4

I guess if you plan on taking vacation you have to delist your items to make sure you don’t lose any gold. Then you relist them when you get back.

How will that affect trading?

Rishikesa108 · May 4

Maybe they will want to introduce new benefits for Plus Players?
"From now on it will be like this... but those who pay the Plus will once again have the 30 day listing time"
Is this possible?

FlopsyPrince · May 4

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

Maybe they will want to introduce new benefits for Plus Players?
"From now on it will be like this... but those who pay the Plus will once again have the 30 day listing time"
Is this possible?

I doubt it in this case, though they could. I don't think that would be a good move for them however, and I pay for ESO+.

Jaraal · May 4

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I guess if you plan on taking vacation you have to delist your items to make sure you don’t lose any gold. Then you relist them when you get back.

How will that affect trading?

My guilds depend on their members to keep their trader slots filled. Top locations on PC/NA cost 120m+ per week to rent. If a portion of the guilds' members are pulling their listings because they need to be away for a couple of weeks for vacations, medical issues, hardware/internet issues, and whatnot then the guilds will suffer. Trading will suffer. And all because ZOS has decided that stripping the game to fit the infrastructure is better than expanding the infrastructure to fit the game.

Desiato · May 4

Nestor wrote: »

So, 14 day Mail delete, 14 day Store Return, be gone from the game for a month, lose 30, 60 or 90 items?

Yea, this is a good idea. Fiscally punish players for not logging in frequently. Perish the thought that life happens or a family emergency, or a work project takes me out of town for a couple off weeks 13 days after I list.

Seriously?

It's ridiculously player unfriendly to change something like this without adding some kind of lost and found buffer storage that attachments from deleted mail would be sent to -- or another loss prevention mechanic.

But their most profitable audience won't even notice, so they don't care. This is life as an ESO enthusiast. This is why Cyrodiil is basically dead after 8+ years of this kind of lack of care.

To those defending the decision, what part of the game do you actually think will perform better as a result of these changes? The only conceivable aspects that would perform better are mail and trading, and they don't suffer from performance issues! It's just spin. They are doing this to save money.

katanagirl1 · May 4

Jaraal wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I guess if you plan on taking vacation you have to delist your items to make sure you don’t lose any gold. Then you relist them when you get back.

How will that affect trading?

My guilds depend on their members to keep their trader slots filled. Top locations on PC/NA cost 120m+ per week to rent. If a portion of the guilds' members are pulling their listings because they need to be away for a couple of weeks for vacations, medical issues, hardware/internet issues, and whatnot then the guilds will suffer. Trading will suffer. And all because ZOS has decided that stripping the game to fit the infrastructure is better than expanding the infrastructure to fit the game.

I guess we will have to hope this is something that was not foreseen and will cause them to rethink the policy.

Personally I think Eidetic Memory should be account wide to save a ton of database space myself instead.

FluffyBird · May 4

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I guess if you plan on taking vacation you have to delist your items to make sure you don’t lose any gold. Then you relist them when you get back.

How will that affect trading?

My guilds depend on their members to keep their trader slots filled. Top locations on PC/NA cost 120m+ per week to rent. If a portion of the guilds' members are pulling their listings because they need to be away for a couple of weeks for vacations, medical issues, hardware/internet issues, and whatnot then the guilds will suffer. Trading will suffer. And all because ZOS has decided that stripping the game to fit the infrastructure is better than expanding the infrastructure to fit the game.

I guess we will have to hope this is something that was not foreseen and will cause them to rethink the policy.

Personally I think Eidetic Memory should be account wide to save a ton of database space myself instead.

But then you won't spend hours of soul-numbingly boring grind and investors will think game's not popular!
Also, when was the last time when ZOS reacted to feedback with something aside from "we'll pass it to the team"? Update: scratch that, it appears they listened to some of the feedback on scribing

wolfie1.0. · May 4

I sure do wish I could buy and sell, amd check mail via a moblie app...

loosej · May 4

I've worked on databases in a professional setting, and maybe I'm missing something, but to me the statement "reducing the Mail expiration timers and the Guild Trader listings will allow for improvements in server performance by reducing strain on the database" only makes sense if the trade part of the eso database looks like this:

Doing database management right isn't rocket science, and in the setting of an mmorpg where client and server are constantly communicating everything that happens, the amount of interactions a player has with the trading system should really be negligible.

If the "strain" isn't the amount of interactions with the database but the amount of storage, they should just expand it. With 2 billion dollar revenue in 10 years, they can afford a couple of extra ssd's.

Unless we're shown some actual numbers, I'll consider this a pr statement to justify cost-cutting.

FeedbackOnly · May 4

Housing items aren't going to sell

Some motifs have small buyers so take longer to sell

Smaller traders will die

Alinhbo_Tyaka · May 4

Nestor wrote: »

So, 14 day Mail delete, 14 day Store Return, be gone from the game for a month, lose 30, 60 or 90 items?

Yea, this is a good idea. Fiscally punish players for not logging in frequently. Perish the thought that life happens or a family emergency, or a work project takes me out of town for a couple off weeks 13 days after I list.

Seriously?

Or someone follows the frequently given ZOS advice and takes a needed break from the game.

CrashTest · May 4

.

Nestor wrote: »

So, 14 day Mail delete, 14 day Store Return, be gone from the game for a month, lose 30, 60 or 90 items?

Yea, this is a good idea. Fiscally punish players for not logging in frequently. Perish the thought that life happens or a family emergency, or a work project takes me out of town for a couple off weeks 13 days after I list.

Seriously?

It's been very obvious for awhile now that ZOS is headed more and more in the FOMO direction. I gotta admit though that I didn't foresee basic game functions turning into FOMO, but it is what it is.