Guild traders -- keeping the system but finding a compromise

Northwold

This came out of another thread where I mentioned it as an aside, but it feels like it could be worth wider discussion.

A lot of people like the guild trader system.

Specifically (and I'm sure I'll miss various reasons), people seem to like the broken up nature of the economy, which allows bargain hunting and something of the experience of "shopping" in game by going to different places to browse, and the effect that has on the dynamics of the economy. People also seem to like the role guilds play in it.

A lot of people, also, really *dislike* the guild trader system (indeed, there's currently a thread on reddit where the number one thing, by a humungous margin, people would rip out of ESO and replace with something from another MMO is the trading system).

Specifically, they dislike that you can't search for items you're looking for centrally or conduct any kind of meaningful price comparison (this problem is particularly acute on console, where Tamriel Trade Centre is effectively pointless -- it contains virtually no data because no one inputs data into it). They also dislike the hoop of having to join a guild to be able to sell effectively and, indeed, there are players who simply don't sell at all as a result.

If we accept (and I do) that moving to a central auction house, even if it were on the cards, would completely ruin the character of ESO's geographically fragmented economy, it strikes me that there still remain possible solutions that could meet the very longstanding objections to ESO's trading system as it currently functions, while preserving the character of the guild traders. So, make it better for everyone and broaden participation in the economy.


1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.


2. Alternative traders for those unwilling to sell via the guild traders.

Whether we like it or not, a fair chunk of players really, really don't like having to join guilds to sell goods and so either don't do it, or rarely do it.

There are a few consequences to this for the economy as a whole.

First, that's a big chunk of items that you could see on sale that simply aren't being sold. They're siting in crafting bags for all eternity, they're getting junked.

Second, because these people aren't selling, they're not *buying* to anything like the extent people who do sell via the guild traders buy, either, because they plain don't have enough gold to buy stuff. Because they don't participate in the economy, that's a significant level of potential *demand* for sellers' goods that's simply missing in action.

Third, players who don't sell do still buy, albeit to a lesser extent, but to do that they have to use in-game means to create the gold. That means doing crafting writs on oodles of characters, public dungeon gold farming, etc, etc, all of which involve the game creating gold out of thin air. That, at least in principle, causes inflation. And much of this activity players *wouldn't need to do at all* if they had a channel to sell goods -- which would then mean they had obtained gold that *already existed* in the economy which they then used to buy stuff from guild traders.

Can you square the circle and allow players like this to sell without doing damage to the existing guild traders (and indeed, while *benefiting* sellers with the guild traders by increasing demand)? I think the answer to that, actually, is yes you can.

I've raised this concept before, but the selling gate for players who don't participate in guilds could be removed by a new category of traders who operate in just the same way as the guild traders (they have stalls in physical locations or whatever) but who are controlled by the game, not player guilds.

In the past I've called these "pauper traders" but the name doesn't really matter.

How would you stop them cannibalising player guild members? Well that's easy, the pauper traders would have much greater restrictions on sales, eg number of listings, higher fees, etc. If you do that, you've created an opening for players who don't currently participate in the selling economy, but you haven't created a system so attractive that existing sellers would abandon the guild traders en masse. No one happy to sell at a guild trader is going to leave it for traders where they make less gold.


I don't know for certain, but it really seems to me that both these issues do have viable solutions that can keep up the charms of the guild trader system while addressing the many, many, many complaints it has drawn over the years, and continues to draw, from a lot of players.

Maybe worth a shot?

kargen27

I've suggested a central board in each zone that lists items for the traders in that zone. It would not show price and you would have to go to the trader location to purchase. This way players just wanting an item quick can go to the trader that has it most convenient for them and players looking for bargains will still need to visit each trader.
Players in need of that one item can find it and flippers can still hunt down bargains.

valenwood_vegan

I definitely used to enjoy and participate in and care about and defend the guild trader system, but have always thought the user experience could be improved in various ways, like incorporating a TTC-type functionality directly into the game; and sure, allowing at least some limited trading for players who don't want to join a guild.

But tbh, the market has collapsed to the point where I just use an addon to vendor or destroy about 99% of what I pick up now; activity has dwindled in my trading guilds to where some disbanded, and others I left because I have nothing to list; so it's hard to care like I used to.

I mean at least for me and several other former traders I know, it went from one of our main activities in the game to something we don't spend more than a few minutes a week thinking about anymore. So idk, perhaps that means it's actually the perfect time to change things up like OP has suggested, and/or in other ways.

Ph1p

There is way more common ground between supporters and opponents of the current trading system than forum threads may suggest. For example, I don't know a single player - guild trader or not - who would fundamentally oppose improving item searches or price transparency for everyone. There are other good ideas here and elsewhere, but looking at some recent ZOS decisions, most of them are probably limited by the server structure and performance questions.

I think the decentralized system was deemed a necessity due to the megaserver structure of ESO. A central trading house in ESO would be significantly larger and more cumbersome than ones in, say, World of Warcraft, which has hundreds of servers with auction houses only linking a few of those at a time.

ZOS has also hinted that other new features like the Arcanist class were only possible after they clawed back some server performance, especially when it comes to older consoles. That was likely one rationale behind hybridization, mail retention changes, and reduction in trader listing times. I don't know what would be required in that regard to implement an in-game TTC-like tool or additional "pauper guilds" for everybody.

Let me be clear - I'm absolutely in support of improvements and it's not our job as players to solve the feasibility issues of all this. I just want to highlight that the reason why some pain points exist isn't because people are in love with every aspect of the current system or because of a lack of broad support for good ideas.

Northwold

Ph1p wrote: »

There is way more common ground between supporters and opponents of the current trading system than forum threads may suggest. For example, I don't know a single player - guild trader or not - who would fundamentally oppose improving item searches or price transparency for everyone. There are other good ideas here and elsewhere, but looking at some recent ZOS decisions, most of them are probably limited by the server structure and performance questions.

I think the decentralized system was deemed a necessity due to the megaserver structure of ESO. A central trading house in ESO would be significantly larger and more cumbersome than ones in, say, World of Warcraft, which has hundreds of servers with auction houses only linking a few of those at a time.

ZOS has also hinted that other new features like the Arcanist class were only possible after they clawed back some server performance, especially when it comes to older consoles. That was likely one rationale behind hybridization, mail retention changes, and reduction in trader listing times. I don't know what would be required in that regard to implement an in-game TTC-like tool or additional "pauper guilds" for everybody.

Let me be clear - I'm absolutely in support of improvements and it's not our job as players to solve the feasibility issues of all this. I just want to highlight that the reason why some pain points exist isn't because people are in love with every aspect of the current system or because of a lack of broad support for good ideas.

Yes it's the search bit that potentially poses the most obvious problems. But if technical problems are behind its absence, I do find it utterly baffling that a third party website, albeit with a lower volume of information, does fine. It's not obvious to me why the trading database can't be parked on dedicated machines and queried by the game as necessary (if it isn't being already), and, indeed, businesses routinely run databases with literally thousands of times more data than the traders would involve without hiccups with the kinds of systems that have been around for decades. But then, of course, I have no deep knowledge of what the game is actually doing under the hood.

Who knows!

JARTHEGREY

Whilst I do not disagree with anythng being said here, I think the disparity comes from players on PC vs Console. On console the Guild Trader system, and 'search' in particular is a quite a task using the controller and on screen keyboard. In addition, listing things for sale via the Guild Bank is not so easy (if you are selling many items).

I'm aware that PC Players have many mods that can be used to research prices and availability and as such I can see why some might not feel the need to change the Trader system. But as a console player I do feel some change would be welcome. What that change could be, is a matter of discussion but I'm just putting my view out there.

My own personal point of view is that it would be useful for console players to be able to research prices easier and gauge availabilty. How that could be acheived is a matter for the wider community.

And please - don't spam me saying that if I wasn't happy with it, I should switch to playing on PC.

Danikat

One thing I'd really like is the option to list requests to buy items, as well as selling them.

Lets say I want a specific motif page and I can't find it (or can't find it at a price I want to pay), or maybe I simply don't have time to go looking. I could create a listing on my guild trader with what I want to buy and what I'll pay for it, then people visiting the trader, and people in my guild, can search for buy listings and if they have the item they can choose to sell it to me.

It would work exactly like selling does but in reverse - when I create the listing the trader takes my gold and holds it until someone chooses to sell that item for the price I've offered, then if they do I get mailed the item and they get mailed the gold. If no one does the listing expires and I get the gold back.

Northwold wrote: »

1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.

I'm one of the people who would like a search system (I never bought from guild traders until TTC came along) and if it worked like this I'd never use it. A search which deliberately excludes relevant results for the sake of keeping them secret is useless to me, and I doubt it would be popular with sellers who are excluded either.

JeroenB

Looking at the non-guild player selling part of the issue rather than the buyer information part:
OP's suggestion as I understand it is to create an NPC 'guild' trader for non-guild players, that is in essence the same as normal guild traders (guild-to-consumer auctions) but necessarily hobbled in some ways to prevent too much competition with PC guild traders.

That would be better for non-guild players than the current situation, but I suspect the unavoidable reduced features would still rankle, and PC guild traders would probably still feel unfair competition as well (irrespective of whether the numbers bear that out; it's only natural). On the positive side, perhaps some experience with the hobbled NPC guild trader would convince a few to try joining a PC trading guild, which they otherwise never would have.

Another wrinkle I see in this proposal is that it still requires non-guild players to engage in an auction 'minigame'. Some will undoubtedly enjoy that; some won't, and just want to get rid of stuff from their inventory, even for a far smaller 'profit'. The alternative is vendoring or destroying after all, so as long as the income matches that with little extra effort, it's fine.

Common scenario: There's an event on. I have an inventory filling up with motifs and other collectibles that I no longer need myself. I can't sell them to a vendor because they're worth 0gp; I don't have access to a guild trader; trading via Zone Chat is way too much bother; my only realistic option is to destroy them all, despite the fact that there are presumably plenty of other players who still need those items. Conversely, there are event collectibles that I still need, but my only option would be guild traders, where they cost far too much for my purse, despite the fact that there are undoubtedly other non-trading-guild players destroying precisely those motifs because they don't need them and have no other way to get rid of them.

I would be happy enough with an NPC trading guild that individual players could 'sell' to, but itself only sold on to PC trading guilds, not individual players. As in, the adventurers go out and collect materials and treasures; they sell these to a wholesaler; and the merchants buy in bulk from the wholesaler to sell back to adventurers.

Importantly, the non-guild-player would not be setting the price at which they sell to the wholesaler NPC. Smarter people than I can debate the best ways to determine such a value; presumably something like a dynamic trend based on the recent sales from wholesaler to PC trading guilds. Though low-volume items would need some other system with safeguards against excessive lows or highs.

For materials and similar high-volume goods, this approach could have automatic below-vendor-value protection (a problem we see in other MMOs with a centralised AH): If the generated value the wholesaler would purchase for drops below the vendor value of the material, it is purchased from the non-guild player at vendor value, and the materials are destroyed rather than being made available to the PC trading guilds, thus reducing supply and in theory raising the price again.

Of course the performance issues with the current game means anything like this can't happen until 'ESO2' anyway.

LootAllTheStuff

JARTHEGREY wrote: »

Whilst I do not disagree with anythng being said here, I think the disparity comes from players on PC vs Console. On console the Guild Trader system, and 'search' in particular is a quite a task using the controller and on screen keyboard. In addition, listing things for sale via the Guild Bank is not so easy (if you are selling many items).

So much this. The UI is clunky as all get out. For example, if I am in my regular bank/inventory screen, I can split a stack of something in my inventory and deposit one of the resulting portions. In Guild Store setting up to sell, not only can I not split the stack, but existing stacks are added to one another beyond the usual 200 item limit. (The button that would normally call up the options menu is used to switch guild). Very frustrating to have to remember to store stuff at home before heading over to post it for sale. There are many other oddities in the console UI but, as far as Guild Trading is concerned, I find this one to be particularly egregious.

I'm aware that PC Players have many mods that can be used to research prices and availability and as such I can see why some might not feel the need to change the Trader system. But as a console player I do feel some change would be welcome. What that change could be, is a matter of discussion but I'm just putting my view out there.

My own personal point of view is that it would be useful for console players to be able to research prices easier and gauge availabilty. How that could be acheived is a matter for the wider community.

And please - don't spam me saying that if I wasn't happy with it, I should switch to playing on PC.

Echoing that last line with a +10.

JemadarofCaerSalis

Danikat wrote: »

One thing I'd really like is the option to list requests to buy items, as well as selling them.

Lets say I want a specific motif page and I can't find it (or can't find it at a price I want to pay), or maybe I simply don't have time to go looking. I could create a listing on my guild trader with what I want to buy and what I'll pay for it, then people visiting the trader, and people in my guild, can search for buy listings and if they have the item they can choose to sell it to me.

It would work exactly like selling does but in reverse - when I create the listing the trader takes my gold and holds it until someone chooses to sell that item for the price I've offered, then if they do I get mailed the item and they get mailed the gold. If no one does the listing expires and I get the gold back.

I would love this. There have been many times I have been looking for something, but it isn't in any of the guild traders I check. This way I could go 'hmm, I am willing to pay X for Y' and just put it up and go on without having to run from trader to trader searching for the item.

One issue I have with guild traders, even with things like TTC, is that by the time my computer loads to the place that TTC says has the 'best deal' that deal is often gone, which means I now need to look for it again and hope I can make it to that place before the item is sold out.

I also dislike having to run to multiple different places (it would be different if all guild traders were in a centralized hub, even ifthey were still split up into factions/dlc hubs, but you have some places where traders are out in the middle of nowhere, etc..) in order to 'price check' to make sure I am getting a good 'deal', again because if I realize that the first place I went did have the best deal, by the time I get back, it is often gone.

I also would love a non-guild related trader, though I would not like it if it could only sell to guilds, and not individual players. I don't think it should be too restrictive, compared to guild traders.

I definitely would prefer a centralized auction house, but understand that it probably wouldn't be good for the game (from an economy standpoint or server), but I feel that even without going as far as a centralized AH, there are a great many things that could be done to improve the way selling to other players works now.

sans-culottes

Northwold wrote: »

This came out of another thread where I mentioned it as an aside, but it feels like it could be worth wider discussion.

A lot of people like the guild trader system.

Specifically (and I'm sure I'll miss various reasons), people seem to like the broken up nature of the economy, which allows bargain hunting and something of the experience of "shopping" in game by going to different places to browse, and the effect that has on the dynamics of the economy. People also seem to like the role guilds play in it.

A lot of people, also, really *dislike* the guild trader system (indeed, there's currently a thread on reddit where the number one thing, by a humungous margin, people would rip out of ESO and replace with something from another MMO is the trading system).

Specifically, they dislike that you can't search for items you're looking for centrally or conduct any kind of meaningful price comparison (this problem is particularly acute on console, where Tamriel Trade Centre is effectively pointless -- it contains virtually no data because no one inputs data into it). They also dislike the hoop of having to join a guild to be able to sell effectively and, indeed, there are players who simply don't sell at all as a result.

If we accept (and I do) that moving to a central auction house, even if it were on the cards, would completely ruin the character of ESO's geographically fragmented economy, it strikes me that there still remain possible solutions that could meet the very longstanding objections to ESO's trading system as it currently functions, while preserving the character of the guild traders. So, make it better for everyone and broaden participation in the economy.


1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.


2. Alternative traders for those unwilling to sell via the guild traders.

Whether we like it or not, a fair chunk of players really, really don't like having to join guilds to sell goods and so either don't do it, or rarely do it.

There are a few consequences to this for the economy as a whole.

First, that's a big chunk of items that you could see on sale that simply aren't being sold. They're siting in crafting bags for all eternity, they're getting junked.

Second, because these people aren't selling, they're not *buying* to anything like the extent people who do sell via the guild traders buy, either, because they plain don't have enough gold to buy stuff. Because they don't participate in the economy, that's a significant level of potential *demand* for sellers' goods that's simply missing in action.

Third, players who don't sell do still buy, albeit to a lesser extent, but to do that they have to use in-game means to create the gold. That means doing crafting writs on oodles of characters, public dungeon gold farming, etc, etc, all of which involve the game creating gold out of thin air. That, at least in principle, causes inflation. And much of this activity players *wouldn't need to do at all* if they had a channel to sell goods -- which would then mean they had obtained gold that *already existed* in the economy which they then used to buy stuff from guild traders.

Can you square the circle and allow players like this to sell without doing damage to the existing guild traders (and indeed, while *benefiting* sellers with the guild traders by increasing demand)? I think the answer to that, actually, is yes you can.

I've raised this concept before, but the selling gate for players who don't participate in guilds could be removed by a new category of traders who operate in just the same way as the guild traders (they have stalls in physical locations or whatever) but who are controlled by the game, not player guilds.

In the past I've called these "pauper traders" but the name doesn't really matter.

How would you stop them cannibalising player guild members? Well that's easy, the pauper traders would have much greater restrictions on sales, eg number of listings, higher fees, etc. If you do that, you've created an opening for players who don't currently participate in the selling economy, but you haven't created a system so attractive that existing sellers would abandon the guild traders en masse. No one happy to sell at a guild trader is going to leave it for traders where they make less gold.


I don't know for certain, but it really seems to me that both these issues do have viable solutions that can keep up the charms of the guild trader system while addressing the many, many, many complaints it has drawn over the years, and continues to draw, from a lot of players.

Maybe worth a shot?

@Northwold, this is one of the most well-reasoned proposals I’ve seen in this ongoing debate. The guild trader system has always had its charms, but it has also had its obvious pain points, particularly for newer or more casual players who don’t engage with trading guilds. Your approach doesn’t just recognize both perspectives—it actually seeks to improve the system for everyone rather than pushing for an all-or-nothing solution.

The regional price search idea is especially interesting because it maintains what people enjoy about shopping through ESO’s fragmented economy while addressing one of its most frustrating aspects: the sheer inefficiency of finding a specific item. What you’ve proposed is a structured, limited visibility system that nudges the market toward better-informed pricing without turning it into a full-fledged auction house. That’s a delicate balance, and I think it’s exactly the kind of refinement that ESO’s economy could benefit from.

The idea of limited-access NPC traders for non-guild sellers is a particularly smart solution. It addresses a long-standing problem: there are players who don’t want to—or simply won’t—engage with trading guilds. Right now, they either hoard materials indefinitely, vendor them for a fraction of their market value, or just ignore the trading economy entirely. That’s lost potential demand and supply.

By providing a higher-fee, restricted alternative, you’re not undercutting guild traders—you’re simply broadening the market. More players being able to sell means more players being able to afford purchases, which ultimately benefits those who already trade through guilds.

The usual arguments against economic changes in ESO tend to be reactionary rather than thoughtful—people assume any adjustment is a slippery slope toward a full auction house. What you’ve suggested keeps the identity of ESO’s economy intact while smoothing out the most frustrating frictions. It’s rare to see a proposal that actually makes sense for both sides of this debate, and I think it would be worth exploring how something like this could be implemented.

Would love to hear what others think—especially from those who have been on both sides of the trading experience. Does this seem like a reasonable compromise? Or do people see pitfalls that haven’t been considered yet?

Northwold

JeroenB wrote: »

I would be happy enough with an NPC trading guild that individual players could 'sell' to, but itself only sold on to PC trading guilds, not individual players. As in, the adventurers go out and collect materials and treasures; they sell these to a wholesaler; and the merchants buy in bulk from the wholesaler to sell back to adventurers.

Importantly, the non-guild-player would not be setting the price at which they sell to the wholesaler NPC. Smarter people than I can debate the best ways to determine such a value; presumably something like a dynamic trend based on the recent sales from wholesaler to PC trading guilds. Though low-volume items would need some other system with safeguards against excessive lows or highs.

I don't think I agree with this (sellers not being able to sell to players and not being able to set prices) because I think it would overcomplicate things and ignore what people actually want when participating in the player economy, with the net result that the alternative sales channel would be dead on arrival.

I agree though that some veteran trading players might be disgruntled (no matter how irrationally). That's more or less inevitable in an MMO this old, I suppose, but I'm not sure from the development side that it should be relevant. Live service games have to be able to evolve and cater to more players than just the ultra old guard. That's especially the case with incremental changes that are intended not fundamentally to disrupt the existing systems.

JeroenB

Northwold wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

I would be happy enough with an NPC trading guild that individual players could 'sell' to, but itself only sold on to PC trading guilds, not individual players. As in, the adventurers go out and collect materials and treasures; they sell these to a wholesaler; and the merchants buy in bulk from the wholesaler to sell back to adventurers.

Importantly, the non-guild-player would not be setting the price at which they sell to the wholesaler NPC. Smarter people than I can debate the best ways to determine such a value; presumably something like a dynamic trend based on the recent sales from wholesaler to PC trading guilds. Though low-volume items would need some other system with safeguards against excessive lows or highs.

I don't think I agree with this (sellers not being able to sell to players and not being able to set prices) because I think it would overcomplicate things and ignore what people actually want when participating in the player economy, with the net result that the alternative sales channel would be dead on arrival.

I agree though that some veteran trading players might be disgruntled (no matter how irrationally). That's more or less inevitable in an MMO this old, I suppose, but I'm not sure from the development side that it should be relevant. Live service games have to be able to evolve and cater to more players than just the ultra old guard. That's especially the case with incremental changes that are intended not fundamentally to disrupt the existing systems.

Responding to your first paragraph on "what people actually want when participating in the player economy": There are undoubtedly plenty of people for who that is true, but equally there are undoubtedly plenty of people who don't particularly want to engage with the player economy, and would be more than happy for their participation to be limited to essentially a new type of vendor where they get on average better prices than a normal vendor, and the feeling of participation (feeding resources into the economy) without the accompanying faff.

Northwold

JeroenB wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

I would be happy enough with an NPC trading guild that individual players could 'sell' to, but itself only sold on to PC trading guilds, not individual players. As in, the adventurers go out and collect materials and treasures; they sell these to a wholesaler; and the merchants buy in bulk from the wholesaler to sell back to adventurers.

Importantly, the non-guild-player would not be setting the price at which they sell to the wholesaler NPC. Smarter people than I can debate the best ways to determine such a value; presumably something like a dynamic trend based on the recent sales from wholesaler to PC trading guilds. Though low-volume items would need some other system with safeguards against excessive lows or highs.

I don't think I agree with this (sellers not being able to sell to players and not being able to set prices) because I think it would overcomplicate things and ignore what people actually want when participating in the player economy, with the net result that the alternative sales channel would be dead on arrival.

I agree though that some veteran trading players might be disgruntled (no matter how irrationally). That's more or less inevitable in an MMO this old, I suppose, but I'm not sure from the development side that it should be relevant. Live service games have to be able to evolve and cater to more players than just the ultra old guard. That's especially the case with incremental changes that are intended not fundamentally to disrupt the existing systems.

Responding to your first paragraph on "what people actually want when participating in the player economy": There are undoubtedly plenty of people for who that is true, but equally there are undoubtedly plenty of people who don't particularly want to engage with the player economy, and would be more than happy for their participation to be limited to essentially a new type of vendor where they get on average better prices than a normal vendor, and the feeling of participation (feeding resources into the economy) without the accompanying faff.

Well my issue with what you describe is that it seems to involve more faff from the seller point of view than using an (existing) guild trader? You'd not only potentially not know what you're being paid, which seems like a potential non-starter in itself, but on the existing guild trader side players need not only to engage with guild trading but also with a whole new element of wholesale purchasing and potentially price setting. It just feels very complicated for everyone compared to just setting a price and dumping it on an NPC trader, and consequently I'm not sure it would work. If such a change were made, we've then shut off the prospect of any further changes for a decade because "we tried it and no one cared". I don't know, it just feels to me too convoluted to win anyone over.

To be clear, I get the intent of the idea. I'm just not sure anyone would embrace it, including those whose involvement would be necessary among existing guild trader members (even I wouldn't embrace an alternative seller over which I have such little control -- it would feel almost offensive in just how limited it is).

Finedaible

The problem is that the game has vastly outgrown the guild trader system. I think that the original devs probably designed guild traders the way they are for the role-play factor, but they never anticipated how cumbersome and impractical it would become in scale 10 years and many zones down the line.

I think one thing they could do in the meantime is stop adding more trader spots with each new zone. Maybe add one or two more to existing areas if they really need to, but as it is jumping from zone to zone and basement to basement, to get bombarded with loading screen after loading screen only for an item to already be sold is less immersive than Starfield's loading screens.

Two_Ears

If you want something in the middle of the pack - keeping it decentralised, but allow some global overview why not do the EVE Online model. Each town is its own trading hub. Begone with the guild traders. sell low level stuff in starting towns, and have tradehubs. Make trade interesting, allow buy orders and people can start delivering materials from one location to the next.

I also don't like GW2 trading system - one trading post for the whole game (trade) market. it just invites barons sitting on their materials, buying out small farmers and selling high to crafters.

I for one really haven’t experienced the trading system in ESO. But im also not at the level where it matters. until lvl50 it feels like the game is designed around player being able to solo-self fund everything rather easy.

wolfie1.0.

Two_Ears wrote: »

If you want something in the middle of the pack - keeping it decentralised, but allow some global overview why not do the EVE Online model. Each town is its own trading hub. Begone with the guild traders. sell low level stuff in starting towns, and have tradehubs. Make trade interesting, allow buy orders and people can start delivering materials from one location to the next.

I also don't like GW2 trading system - one trading post for the whole game (trade) market. it just invites barons sitting on their materials, buying out small farmers and selling high to crafters.

I for one really haven’t experienced the trading system in ESO. But im also not at the level where it matters. until lvl50 it feels like the game is designed around player being able to solo-self fund everything rather easy.

Honestly, you really don't need to worry about gold.

It's when you start trying to be a completionist, get into endgame pvp/pve, housing, or elder fashion online that you really need to worry about gold.

16BitForestCat

Danikat wrote: »

One thing I'd really like is the option to list requests to buy items, as well as selling them.

Lets say I want a specific motif page and I can't find it (or can't find it at a price I want to pay), or maybe I simply don't have time to go looking. I could create a listing on my guild trader with what I want to buy and what I'll pay for it, then people visiting the trader, and people in my guild, can search for buy listings and if they have the item they can choose to sell it to me.

It would work exactly like selling does but in reverse - when I create the listing the trader takes my gold and holds it until someone chooses to sell that item for the price I've offered, then if they do I get mailed the item and they get mailed the gold. If no one does the listing expires and I get the gold back.

Want Lists would be AMAZING! @ZOS_Kevin, if you look at suggestions in this thread to pass along, this is the big one! I have the issue where I always have more items than I can quickly sell, even though I price low. These are items that people WANT; they're just not finding them because my guilds all use out-of-the-way traders and most people don't use TTC. We got a Belkarth trader for a week by sheer luck earlier this year, and my listings flew off the shelves almost as quickly as I put them up. If I could search for my item and find someone who wants it and sell to them directly, that would be absolutely incredible. And for the love of the Divines, do NOT require players to be in a guild to use want lists and direct sales.

(I got my start online trading back in the 1990s in the My Little Pony community. Want lists were a BIG thing in collector circles back then. You'd post yours to a mailing list or your website [usually Geocities lol], and people with the items you wanted could contact you to seal the deal.)

On the subject of a global auction house: I would not want a global auction house, but I'd be fine with a global store, not that I really see it happening in ESO. I had a lot of problems with Diablo III's global auction house, and they were to do with the RMT push and Diablo community toxicity, not the fact that it was a global setup.

Amottica

An alternative trader for those who choose not to participate in the existing trading system would work only if it was extremely limited and maybe even charged a higher fee. Logically, two systems would not work.

A server-wide search would also be problematic. By definition, it would be a monumental query compared to our current guild trader searches, and the ESO database seems to struggle. This is why the last time Zenimax added storage space, it was separate from our bag or bank space. The last time I opened a guild bank, there was a long load time, which is exactly this.

It also goes against the specific reasons Zenimax stated for the guild trader, which were social trading and a decentralized system to limit the downward pressure on prices. Since the top two people at Zenimax were part of making that decision, it is doubtful they will change it.

Every system has pros and cons, and everyone who deals with in-game trading has their opinions on the matter. The reality is that the current system is here to stay for a while, and major changes are not likely for the very reason I stated in the previous paragraph.

Djennku

If you want to encourage more trading between peope not in a guild, remove the biggest obstacle; TTC market police/ Zone hecklers aka bullies. ESO is a free market, and anyone can buy or sell in zone chat (or in a guild trader) for whatever they want.

These people going around trying to shame players because what they want to buy or sell at isn't "TTC average", or whatever these people want to deem as acceptable in their eyes (which mostly is used as a strategy to kill competition because their digital or irl wallets are at risk from anyone else making sales) make it incredibly difficult to do anything trade related in game, and put people off from buying or selling locally. They'll even get their friends (read: cheerleaders) to jump in zone and back them up.

It's these malicious, intentional, and downright bullying tactics that prevent more people from looking to buy/sell in zone. NOTE: this is mainly PC servers due to the TTC and other third party addons, which are not part of the game itself, mind you. If you look over on console you'll find a much healthier, thriving economy.



My other point I want to make is that a centralized trade center (which TTC is, effectively), ends up completely ruining the in game economy, which is reason number one why ZOS did not implement it in game at all.

You want to know why prices on PC skyrocketed so drastically for the past 5 or so years with no real decrease in prices until recently while console prices remained relatively low? It's all due to TTC and a centalized system being EXTREMELY easy to manipulate by large/wealthy groups or individuals. If you look at WoW or even other MMOs, their prices started low and reasonable, and now they've gotten to the point of being rediculous.

Because most tradable items valued by players are rated by the game as being 0 gold, we have to make up a value thatis worth it to us. The only people who should have any buisiness in determining that amount is the person selling the object, and whether others are willing to buy it at said price. no one at any time has any authority of what someone else decides to sell something at, but no one can force you to buy or sell to them at their asking price. Likewise it is not a scam or "rip off" to ask for a price, whether buying or selling that does not agree with anyone's set standards.

Northwold

Djennku wrote: »

These people going around trying to shame players because what they want to buy or sell at isn't "TTC average", or whatever these people want to deem as acceptable in their eyes (which mostly is used as a strategy to kill competition because their digital or irl wallets are at risk from anyone else making sales) make it incredibly difficult to do anything trade related in game, and put people off from buying or selling locally. They'll even get their friends (read: cheerleaders) to jump in zone and back them up.

[....]

My other point I want to make is that a centralized trade center (which TTC is, effectively), ends up completely ruining the in game economy, which is reason number one why ZOS did not implement it in game at all.

While I agree to extent on zone hecklers Just to note that every so often these people are doing a real service to the unwary in calling out wanted to buy predators who are offering extremely low prices, so it's not always a bad thing.

Also, note that the proposal for (more highly taxed and more highly limited) game-controlled traders is deliberately intended to *avoid* centralising the economy, while giving players who want it an alternative to selling in zone chat, which is a pretty useless alternative IMO to proper participation in the economy.

The search proposal, also, is to give players only a nudge, rather than provide comprehensive search results, for the same reason.

I agree that TTC, to those who use it, makes the buying experience behave like a severely hobbled and janky centralised economy (although its flaws mean a lot of people don't bother even on PC, meaning the problems with ESO's setup in terms of undesirable market dynamics persist even there), although it's also worth pointing out that the sheer scale of use of TTC makes obvious that people aren't happy with how ESO's economy was designed. It must be even more frustrating on console since over there TTC doesn't do anything.

kastylx

What i hate about the system is it pushes me away from using it as a new player.
I dont like hopping around just to figure out (if theres any listed) if somethong is worth listing or i should just sell it to a trader.
It is both boring, very time consuming and it often yield no results.
Everything in the game is casual friendly. Guilds, mechanics, account wide (almost) everything, yet if i want to participate in the market i have to spend my gaming time trying to find an item already listed.

Nowadays i only check main cities because every zone is just much.
Im on console

twisttop138

sans-culottes wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

This came out of another thread where I mentioned it as an aside, but it feels like it could be worth wider discussion.

A lot of people like the guild trader system.

Specifically (and I'm sure I'll miss various reasons), people seem to like the broken up nature of the economy, which allows bargain hunting and something of the experience of "shopping" in game by going to different places to browse, and the effect that has on the dynamics of the economy. People also seem to like the role guilds play in it.

A lot of people, also, really *dislike* the guild trader system (indeed, there's currently a thread on reddit where the number one thing, by a humungous margin, people would rip out of ESO and replace with something from another MMO is the trading system).

Specifically, they dislike that you can't search for items you're looking for centrally or conduct any kind of meaningful price comparison (this problem is particularly acute on console, where Tamriel Trade Centre is effectively pointless -- it contains virtually no data because no one inputs data into it). They also dislike the hoop of having to join a guild to be able to sell effectively and, indeed, there are players who simply don't sell at all as a result.

If we accept (and I do) that moving to a central auction house, even if it were on the cards, would completely ruin the character of ESO's geographically fragmented economy, it strikes me that there still remain possible solutions that could meet the very longstanding objections to ESO's trading system as it currently functions, while preserving the character of the guild traders. So, make it better for everyone and broaden participation in the economy.


1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.


2. Alternative traders for those unwilling to sell via the guild traders.

Whether we like it or not, a fair chunk of players really, really don't like having to join guilds to sell goods and so either don't do it, or rarely do it.

There are a few consequences to this for the economy as a whole.

First, that's a big chunk of items that you could see on sale that simply aren't being sold. They're siting in crafting bags for all eternity, they're getting junked.

Second, because these people aren't selling, they're not *buying* to anything like the extent people who do sell via the guild traders buy, either, because they plain don't have enough gold to buy stuff. Because they don't participate in the economy, that's a significant level of potential *demand* for sellers' goods that's simply missing in action.

Third, players who don't sell do still buy, albeit to a lesser extent, but to do that they have to use in-game means to create the gold. That means doing crafting writs on oodles of characters, public dungeon gold farming, etc, etc, all of which involve the game creating gold out of thin air. That, at least in principle, causes inflation. And much of this activity players *wouldn't need to do at all* if they had a channel to sell goods -- which would then mean they had obtained gold that *already existed* in the economy which they then used to buy stuff from guild traders.

Can you square the circle and allow players like this to sell without doing damage to the existing guild traders (and indeed, while *benefiting* sellers with the guild traders by increasing demand)? I think the answer to that, actually, is yes you can.

I've raised this concept before, but the selling gate for players who don't participate in guilds could be removed by a new category of traders who operate in just the same way as the guild traders (they have stalls in physical locations or whatever) but who are controlled by the game, not player guilds.

In the past I've called these "pauper traders" but the name doesn't really matter.

How would you stop them cannibalising player guild members? Well that's easy, the pauper traders would have much greater restrictions on sales, eg number of listings, higher fees, etc. If you do that, you've created an opening for players who don't currently participate in the selling economy, but you haven't created a system so attractive that existing sellers would abandon the guild traders en masse. No one happy to sell at a guild trader is going to leave it for traders where they make less gold.


I don't know for certain, but it really seems to me that both these issues do have viable solutions that can keep up the charms of the guild trader system while addressing the many, many, many complaints it has drawn over the years, and continues to draw, from a lot of players.

Maybe worth a shot?

@Northwold, this is one of the most well-reasoned proposals I’ve seen in this ongoing debate. The guild trader system has always had its charms, but it has also had its obvious pain points, particularly for newer or more casual players who don’t engage with trading guilds. Your approach doesn’t just recognize both perspectives—it actually seeks to improve the system for everyone rather than pushing for an all-or-nothing solution.

The regional price search idea is especially interesting because it maintains what people enjoy about shopping through ESO’s fragmented economy while addressing one of its most frustrating aspects: the sheer inefficiency of finding a specific item. What you’ve proposed is a structured, limited visibility system that nudges the market toward better-informed pricing without turning it into a full-fledged auction house. That’s a delicate balance, and I think it’s exactly the kind of refinement that ESO’s economy could benefit from.

The idea of limited-access NPC traders for non-guild sellers is a particularly smart solution. It addresses a long-standing problem: there are players who don’t want to—or simply won’t—engage with trading guilds. Right now, they either hoard materials indefinitely, vendor them for a fraction of their market value, or just ignore the trading economy entirely. That’s lost potential demand and supply.

By providing a higher-fee, restricted alternative, you’re not undercutting guild traders—you’re simply broadening the market. More players being able to sell means more players being able to afford purchases, which ultimately benefits those who already trade through guilds.

The usual arguments against economic changes in ESO tend to be reactionary rather than thoughtful—people assume any adjustment is a slippery slope toward a full auction house. What you’ve suggested keeps the identity of ESO’s economy intact while smoothing out the most frustrating frictions. It’s rare to see a proposal that actually makes sense for both sides of this debate, and I think it would be worth exploring how something like this could be implemented.

Would love to hear what others think—especially from those who have been on both sides of the trading experience. Does this seem like a reasonable compromise? Or do people see pitfalls that haven’t been considered yet?

I read most of your replies in the thread I'm assuming he's talking about. They were extremely well reasoned and made me look at ESO in a different way. I've never really thought about the deeper aspects of trading in this game. I think this is partly due to limited game time but a big part of it is because I'm a PlayStation player. Our tools are so cumbersome and unfriendly. Especially when compared to PC.

My previous mmo experience is limited to some WoW and years of SWTOR. Both those had, as I'm sure you're aware, auction houses. It made things very easy for me to buy and sell. I don't know if this game should or can switch to that but reading the original post, these ideas are fantastic. Being able to include non guilded members into the economy in a meaningful way would be a fantastic improvement. I believe it could benefit everyone, letting more players make money to in turn buy more. Who wants to feel excluded from aspects of the game? (I get that it's their choice to become guilded or not)

The biggest thing about the post I like though is the inclusion of tools to help find things and find pricing. I'm just returning from an extended break and I have many many good furniture and motifs I'd love to sell but it's hard to figure out what this stuff is worth. The only thing I've gotten a handle on is master writs to sell. I think though, that with addon support coming for us PS5 plebs can really benefit us. I hope for things like TTC to make it's way to us. This is double edged for me though. I believe that things like this should be base game, as well as many other add-ons. Mini map, skyshards etc. It's poor design that your players have to write and support programs to fill the holes in the games quality of life, but I'm rambling. The Ops suggestions can really benefit the game but I don't hold my breath. Though it never hurts to ask. A closed mouth doesn't get fed.

Edit for spelling

sans-culottes

twisttop138 wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

This came out of another thread where I mentioned it as an aside, but it feels like it could be worth wider discussion.

A lot of people like the guild trader system.

Specifically (and I'm sure I'll miss various reasons), people seem to like the broken up nature of the economy, which allows bargain hunting and something of the experience of "shopping" in game by going to different places to browse, and the effect that has on the dynamics of the economy. People also seem to like the role guilds play in it.

A lot of people, also, really *dislike* the guild trader system (indeed, there's currently a thread on reddit where the number one thing, by a humungous margin, people would rip out of ESO and replace with something from another MMO is the trading system).

Specifically, they dislike that you can't search for items you're looking for centrally or conduct any kind of meaningful price comparison (this problem is particularly acute on console, where Tamriel Trade Centre is effectively pointless -- it contains virtually no data because no one inputs data into it). They also dislike the hoop of having to join a guild to be able to sell effectively and, indeed, there are players who simply don't sell at all as a result.

If we accept (and I do) that moving to a central auction house, even if it were on the cards, would completely ruin the character of ESO's geographically fragmented economy, it strikes me that there still remain possible solutions that could meet the very longstanding objections to ESO's trading system as it currently functions, while preserving the character of the guild traders. So, make it better for everyone and broaden participation in the economy.


1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.


2. Alternative traders for those unwilling to sell via the guild traders.

Whether we like it or not, a fair chunk of players really, really don't like having to join guilds to sell goods and so either don't do it, or rarely do it.

There are a few consequences to this for the economy as a whole.

First, that's a big chunk of items that you could see on sale that simply aren't being sold. They're siting in crafting bags for all eternity, they're getting junked.

Second, because these people aren't selling, they're not *buying* to anything like the extent people who do sell via the guild traders buy, either, because they plain don't have enough gold to buy stuff. Because they don't participate in the economy, that's a significant level of potential *demand* for sellers' goods that's simply missing in action.

Third, players who don't sell do still buy, albeit to a lesser extent, but to do that they have to use in-game means to create the gold. That means doing crafting writs on oodles of characters, public dungeon gold farming, etc, etc, all of which involve the game creating gold out of thin air. That, at least in principle, causes inflation. And much of this activity players *wouldn't need to do at all* if they had a channel to sell goods -- which would then mean they had obtained gold that *already existed* in the economy which they then used to buy stuff from guild traders.

Can you square the circle and allow players like this to sell without doing damage to the existing guild traders (and indeed, while *benefiting* sellers with the guild traders by increasing demand)? I think the answer to that, actually, is yes you can.

I've raised this concept before, but the selling gate for players who don't participate in guilds could be removed by a new category of traders who operate in just the same way as the guild traders (they have stalls in physical locations or whatever) but who are controlled by the game, not player guilds.

In the past I've called these "pauper traders" but the name doesn't really matter.

How would you stop them cannibalising player guild members? Well that's easy, the pauper traders would have much greater restrictions on sales, eg number of listings, higher fees, etc. If you do that, you've created an opening for players who don't currently participate in the selling economy, but you haven't created a system so attractive that existing sellers would abandon the guild traders en masse. No one happy to sell at a guild trader is going to leave it for traders where they make less gold.


I don't know for certain, but it really seems to me that both these issues do have viable solutions that can keep up the charms of the guild trader system while addressing the many, many, many complaints it has drawn over the years, and continues to draw, from a lot of players.

Maybe worth a shot?

@Northwold, this is one of the most well-reasoned proposals I’ve seen in this ongoing debate. The guild trader system has always had its charms, but it has also had its obvious pain points, particularly for newer or more casual players who don’t engage with trading guilds. Your approach doesn’t just recognize both perspectives—it actually seeks to improve the system for everyone rather than pushing for an all-or-nothing solution.

The regional price search idea is especially interesting because it maintains what people enjoy about shopping through ESO’s fragmented economy while addressing one of its most frustrating aspects: the sheer inefficiency of finding a specific item. What you’ve proposed is a structured, limited visibility system that nudges the market toward better-informed pricing without turning it into a full-fledged auction house. That’s a delicate balance, and I think it’s exactly the kind of refinement that ESO’s economy could benefit from.

The idea of limited-access NPC traders for non-guild sellers is a particularly smart solution. It addresses a long-standing problem: there are players who don’t want to—or simply won’t—engage with trading guilds. Right now, they either hoard materials indefinitely, vendor them for a fraction of their market value, or just ignore the trading economy entirely. That’s lost potential demand and supply.

By providing a higher-fee, restricted alternative, you’re not undercutting guild traders—you’re simply broadening the market. More players being able to sell means more players being able to afford purchases, which ultimately benefits those who already trade through guilds.

The usual arguments against economic changes in ESO tend to be reactionary rather than thoughtful—people assume any adjustment is a slippery slope toward a full auction house. What you’ve suggested keeps the identity of ESO’s economy intact while smoothing out the most frustrating frictions. It’s rare to see a proposal that actually makes sense for both sides of this debate, and I think it would be worth exploring how something like this could be implemented.

Would love to hear what others think—especially from those who have been on both sides of the trading experience. Does this seem like a reasonable compromise? Or do people see pitfalls that haven’t been considered yet?

I read most of your replies in the thread I'm assuming he's talking about. They were extremely well reasoned and made me look at ESO in a different way. I've never really thought about the deeper aspects of trading in this game. I think this is partly due to limited game time but a big part of it is because I'm a PlayStation player. Our tools are so cumbersome and unfriendly. Especially when compared to PC.

My previous mmo experience is limited to some WoW and years of SWTOR. Both those had, as I'm sure you're aware, auction houses. It made things very easy for me to buy and sell. I don't know if this game should or can switch to that but reading the original post, these ideas are fantastic. Being able to include non guilded members into the economy in a meaningful way would be a fantastic improvement. I believe it could benefit everyone, letting more players make money to in turn buy more. Who wants to feel excluded from aspects of the game? (I get that it's their choice to become guilded or not)

The biggest thing about the post I like though is the inclusion of tools to help find things and find pricing. I'm just returning from an extended break and I have many many good furniture and motifs I'd love to sell but it's hard to figure out what this stuff is worth. The only thing I've gotten a handle on is master writs to sell. I think though, that with addon support coming for us PS5 plebs can really benefit us. I hope for things like TTC to make it's way to us. This is double edged for me though. I believe that things like this should be base game, as well as many other add-ons. Mini map, skyshards etc. It's poor design that your players have to write and support programs to fill the holes in the games quality of life, but I'm rambling. The Ops suggestions can really benefit the game but I don't hold my breath. Though it never hurts to ask. A closed mouth doesn't get fed.

Edit for spelling

@twisttop138, I really appreciate your perspective here. It’s great to hear from someone with experience in multiple MMO economies who can contrast ESO’s system with more traditional auction house models. And as a fellow PlayStation player, I completely understand the frustration of navigating the trading system without the tools available to PC players. Without access to add-ons like Tamriel Trade Centre, we’re operating at an unnecessary information deficit, which only exacerbates the difficulty of participating meaningfully in the economy.

I completely agree that one of the biggest issues isn’t just the structure of the guild trader system itself, but the lack of adequate tools to navigate it efficiently. That’s why I think the proposed regional price search (or something similar) would be such a valuable addition. It preserves the economic fragmentation that makes ESO’s system unique but removes the needless tedium of blindly checking traders across multiple zones.

Your experience returning after a break also highlights another key issue: the difficulty of pricing items. Even for those of us who’ve been active, pricing certain goods—especially furniture, motifs, and high-end crafting materials—can be a guessing game. A more accessible way to gauge market trends would benefit everyone, not just traders but also casual sellers who currently find the system too cumbersome to bother with.

And I completely get the mixed feelings about add-on support coming to consoles. On one hand, it’s exciting because we might finally get tools to help level the playing field. But on the other, the fact that so many fundamental QoL features are dependent on third-party solutions is a little frustrating. Things like a mini-map, skyshard tracking, and even basic market insights should really be part of the base game experience rather than something players have to create and maintain on their own.

I agree with you, though—none of this will happen if we don’t ask for it. The more players who voice reasonable, well-thought-out ideas like the ones Northwold proposed, the better the chance that ZOS at least takes them under consideration.

twisttop138

sans-culottes wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

This came out of another thread where I mentioned it as an aside, but it feels like it could be worth wider discussion.

A lot of people like the guild trader system.

Specifically (and I'm sure I'll miss various reasons), people seem to like the broken up nature of the economy, which allows bargain hunting and something of the experience of "shopping" in game by going to different places to browse, and the effect that has on the dynamics of the economy. People also seem to like the role guilds play in it.

A lot of people, also, really *dislike* the guild trader system (indeed, there's currently a thread on reddit where the number one thing, by a humungous margin, people would rip out of ESO and replace with something from another MMO is the trading system).

Specifically, they dislike that you can't search for items you're looking for centrally or conduct any kind of meaningful price comparison (this problem is particularly acute on console, where Tamriel Trade Centre is effectively pointless -- it contains virtually no data because no one inputs data into it). They also dislike the hoop of having to join a guild to be able to sell effectively and, indeed, there are players who simply don't sell at all as a result.

If we accept (and I do) that moving to a central auction house, even if it were on the cards, would completely ruin the character of ESO's geographically fragmented economy, it strikes me that there still remain possible solutions that could meet the very longstanding objections to ESO's trading system as it currently functions, while preserving the character of the guild traders. So, make it better for everyone and broaden participation in the economy.


1. Searching for items / prices.

People have sometimes suggested a comprehensive central search of items on sale. But this effectively turns trading into a wholly centralised system (which is, to an imperfect extent, what TTC achieves on PC for those who use it).

But what about a central search that, instead of returning all results, returns the top three (for example) prices in every major trading centre (eg Mournhold, Wayrest), and the top three prices among all other minor traders in each zone (eg "other Greenshade traders"), without naming the actual trader you can find these items at.

What you achieve with a system like that is giving players a sensible pointer of *where* to look to find what they want. But you don't lose the fact that they do still have to do some hunting of their own. That they may stumble across something unexpected or better, etc. It makes things simpler, but it doesn't lose the geographical charms of the system.


2. Alternative traders for those unwilling to sell via the guild traders.

Whether we like it or not, a fair chunk of players really, really don't like having to join guilds to sell goods and so either don't do it, or rarely do it.

There are a few consequences to this for the economy as a whole.

First, that's a big chunk of items that you could see on sale that simply aren't being sold. They're siting in crafting bags for all eternity, they're getting junked.

Second, because these people aren't selling, they're not *buying* to anything like the extent people who do sell via the guild traders buy, either, because they plain don't have enough gold to buy stuff. Because they don't participate in the economy, that's a significant level of potential *demand* for sellers' goods that's simply missing in action.

Third, players who don't sell do still buy, albeit to a lesser extent, but to do that they have to use in-game means to create the gold. That means doing crafting writs on oodles of characters, public dungeon gold farming, etc, etc, all of which involve the game creating gold out of thin air. That, at least in principle, causes inflation. And much of this activity players *wouldn't need to do at all* if they had a channel to sell goods -- which would then mean they had obtained gold that *already existed* in the economy which they then used to buy stuff from guild traders.

Can you square the circle and allow players like this to sell without doing damage to the existing guild traders (and indeed, while *benefiting* sellers with the guild traders by increasing demand)? I think the answer to that, actually, is yes you can.

I've raised this concept before, but the selling gate for players who don't participate in guilds could be removed by a new category of traders who operate in just the same way as the guild traders (they have stalls in physical locations or whatever) but who are controlled by the game, not player guilds.

In the past I've called these "pauper traders" but the name doesn't really matter.

How would you stop them cannibalising player guild members? Well that's easy, the pauper traders would have much greater restrictions on sales, eg number of listings, higher fees, etc. If you do that, you've created an opening for players who don't currently participate in the selling economy, but you haven't created a system so attractive that existing sellers would abandon the guild traders en masse. No one happy to sell at a guild trader is going to leave it for traders where they make less gold.


I don't know for certain, but it really seems to me that both these issues do have viable solutions that can keep up the charms of the guild trader system while addressing the many, many, many complaints it has drawn over the years, and continues to draw, from a lot of players.

Maybe worth a shot?

@Northwold, this is one of the most well-reasoned proposals I’ve seen in this ongoing debate. The guild trader system has always had its charms, but it has also had its obvious pain points, particularly for newer or more casual players who don’t engage with trading guilds. Your approach doesn’t just recognize both perspectives—it actually seeks to improve the system for everyone rather than pushing for an all-or-nothing solution.

The regional price search idea is especially interesting because it maintains what people enjoy about shopping through ESO’s fragmented economy while addressing one of its most frustrating aspects: the sheer inefficiency of finding a specific item. What you’ve proposed is a structured, limited visibility system that nudges the market toward better-informed pricing without turning it into a full-fledged auction house. That’s a delicate balance, and I think it’s exactly the kind of refinement that ESO’s economy could benefit from.

The idea of limited-access NPC traders for non-guild sellers is a particularly smart solution. It addresses a long-standing problem: there are players who don’t want to—or simply won’t—engage with trading guilds. Right now, they either hoard materials indefinitely, vendor them for a fraction of their market value, or just ignore the trading economy entirely. That’s lost potential demand and supply.

By providing a higher-fee, restricted alternative, you’re not undercutting guild traders—you’re simply broadening the market. More players being able to sell means more players being able to afford purchases, which ultimately benefits those who already trade through guilds.

The usual arguments against economic changes in ESO tend to be reactionary rather than thoughtful—people assume any adjustment is a slippery slope toward a full auction house. What you’ve suggested keeps the identity of ESO’s economy intact while smoothing out the most frustrating frictions. It’s rare to see a proposal that actually makes sense for both sides of this debate, and I think it would be worth exploring how something like this could be implemented.

Would love to hear what others think—especially from those who have been on both sides of the trading experience. Does this seem like a reasonable compromise? Or do people see pitfalls that haven’t been considered yet?

I read most of your replies in the thread I'm assuming he's talking about. They were extremely well reasoned and made me look at ESO in a different way. I've never really thought about the deeper aspects of trading in this game. I think this is partly due to limited game time but a big part of it is because I'm a PlayStation player. Our tools are so cumbersome and unfriendly. Especially when compared to PC.

My previous mmo experience is limited to some WoW and years of SWTOR. Both those had, as I'm sure you're aware, auction houses. It made things very easy for me to buy and sell. I don't know if this game should or can switch to that but reading the original post, these ideas are fantastic. Being able to include non guilded members into the economy in a meaningful way would be a fantastic improvement. I believe it could benefit everyone, letting more players make money to in turn buy more. Who wants to feel excluded from aspects of the game? (I get that it's their choice to become guilded or not)

The biggest thing about the post I like though is the inclusion of tools to help find things and find pricing. I'm just returning from an extended break and I have many many good furniture and motifs I'd love to sell but it's hard to figure out what this stuff is worth. The only thing I've gotten a handle on is master writs to sell. I think though, that with addon support coming for us PS5 plebs can really benefit us. I hope for things like TTC to make it's way to us. This is double edged for me though. I believe that things like this should be base game, as well as many other add-ons. Mini map, skyshards etc. It's poor design that your players have to write and support programs to fill the holes in the games quality of life, but I'm rambling. The Ops suggestions can really benefit the game but I don't hold my breath. Though it never hurts to ask. A closed mouth doesn't get fed.

Edit for spelling

@twisttop138, I really appreciate your perspective here. It’s great to hear from someone with experience in multiple MMO economies who can contrast ESO’s system with more traditional auction house models. And as a fellow PlayStation player, I completely understand the frustration of navigating the trading system without the tools available to PC players. Without access to add-ons like Tamriel Trade Centre, we’re operating at an unnecessary information deficit, which only exacerbates the difficulty of participating meaningfully in the economy.

I completely agree that one of the biggest issues isn’t just the structure of the guild trader system itself, but the lack of adequate tools to navigate it efficiently. That’s why I think the proposed regional price search (or something similar) would be such a valuable addition. It preserves the economic fragmentation that makes ESO’s system unique but removes the needless tedium of blindly checking traders across multiple zones.

Your experience returning after a break also highlights another key issue: the difficulty of pricing items. Even for those of us who’ve been active, pricing certain goods—especially furniture, motifs, and high-end crafting materials—can be a guessing game. A more accessible way to gauge market trends would benefit everyone, not just traders but also casual sellers who currently find the system too cumbersome to bother with.

And I completely get the mixed feelings about add-on support coming to consoles. On one hand, it’s exciting because we might finally get tools to help level the playing field. But on the other, the fact that so many fundamental QoL features are dependent on third-party solutions is a little frustrating. Things like a mini-map, skyshard tracking, and even basic market insights should really be part of the base game experience rather than something players have to create and maintain on their own.

I agree with you, though—none of this will happen if we don’t ask for it. The more players who voice reasonable, well-thought-out ideas like the ones Northwold proposed, the better the chance that ZOS at least takes them under consideration.

Thank you for your response, it's nice to know I'm not crazy and others kinda understand what I'm seeing since I've returned. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will see no change to the trader system, and that these conversations are mostly academic, but that's ok. As long as we continue to put the ideas forward, we as players have done our part. If all the years in game forums have taught me anything it's that players will not hold back on sharing their thoughts and concerns lol. Only time will tell. Fingers crossed for the amazing addon creators to take pity on us poor console players. 😉

wolfie1.0.

Djennku wrote: »

If you want to encourage more trading between peope not in a guild, remove the biggest obstacle; TTC market police/ Zone hecklers aka bullies. ESO is a free market, and anyone can buy or sell in zone chat (or in a guild trader) for whatever they want.

These people going around trying to shame players because what they want to buy or sell at isn't "TTC average", or whatever these people want to deem as acceptable in their eyes (which mostly is used as a strategy to kill competition because their digital or irl wallets are at risk from anyone else making sales) make it incredibly difficult to do anything trade related in game, and put people off from buying or selling locally. They'll even get their friends (read: cheerleaders) to jump in zone and back them up.

It's these malicious, intentional, and downright bullying tactics that prevent more people from looking to buy/sell in zone. NOTE: this is mainly PC servers due to the TTC and other third party addons, which are not part of the game itself, mind you. If you look over on console you'll find a much healthier, thriving economy.



My other point I want to make is that a centralized trade center (which TTC is, effectively), ends up completely ruining the in game economy, which is reason number one why ZOS did not implement it in game at all.

You want to know why prices on PC skyrocketed so drastically for the past 5 or so years with no real decrease in prices until recently while console prices remained relatively low? It's all due to TTC and a centalized system being EXTREMELY easy to manipulate by large/wealthy groups or individuals. If you look at WoW or even other MMOs, their prices started low and reasonable, and now they've gotten to the point of being rediculous.

Because most tradable items valued by players are rated by the game as being 0 gold, we have to make up a value thatis worth it to us. The only people who should have any buisiness in determining that amount is the person selling the object, and whether others are willing to buy it at said price. no one at any time has any authority of what someone else decides to sell something at, but no one can force you to buy or sell to them at their asking price. Likewise it is not a scam or "rip off" to ask for a price, whether buying or selling that does not agree with anyone's set standards.

If your prices are fair you shouldn't be afraid of ttc. All these people are doing is making sure that those that buy are informed about it

JeroenB

While I certainly agree that something like Northwold's NPC trader would be a real improvement over the current situation, and draw some greater portion of the player base into some level of engagement with the player economy, I do believe there is an element of over-optimism regarding the wider playerbase's preparedness to invest effort in that engagement.

My belief is that a sizeable chunk of the players who currently do not engage with the player economy do so not only because they do not want to join player guilds, but much more fundamentally because they do not want to engage with the whole bother of the auction concept, compared to vendoring/destroying.

To sell anything you need to develop an idea of the market value for each item each time, which already feels like a time-waste (if you're not here for the trading 'game'); choose too high and it probably won't sell, netting you not even the vendor price; not only that, but you get the item back and have to do the whole thing again; choose too low, and it will sell quickly, but you will feel like you made a mistake, which isn't a fun feeling.

If I can sell something immediately to an NPC trader for halfway between the vendor price and, say, the average auction price over the last month -- or heck even halfway between vendor and the lowest auction price over the last month -- that is far more desirable than having to 'manually' engage with an auction system. (...for some subset of the playerbase that I believe is larger than one might think, though with no evidence for that belief of course.)

(I realise there is a seeming contradiction between the previous two paragraphs regarding low pricing, but there is an important mental difference between consciously choosing a guaranteed and low-bother but low-return option, and investing effort to try and set a reasonable market price but then discovering you set it (far) too low. In the latter case you feel like you 'lost money' despite your effort, in the former case you simply chose not the invest the effort in the first place, accepting a low return in exchange.)

Possibly a merging of this into Northwold's broader idea could be something as follows:

• a player can hand items to the NPC trader;
• the player will receive the vendor price immediately, and that is set as the reserve price in the auction;
• if the item sells at auction for higher than the vendor price, the player is sent the remainder;
• if the item does not sell within the time limit, it is destroyed rather than being returned to the player.

If a player wants to fully engage with the economy, setting their own prices and receiving unsold items back, they need to join a player trading guild. Or alternatively the NPC trader could have two tiers of functionality with some cost associated with access to the higher tier. (Perhaps you need to become a member of that regional NPC trader to access the higher tier, but you can only be a member of one regional NPC trader at a time, whereas anyone can sell to any NPC trader at the lower functionality tier.) Either way would be one measure in reducing the feeling of unfair competition for the player trading guilds.

JeroenB

twisttop138 wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

"(cut only for space, not to dismiss the comments)"

Thank you for your response, it's nice to know I'm not crazy and others kinda understand what I'm seeing since I've returned. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will see no change to the trader system, and that these conversations are mostly academic, but that's ok. As long as we continue to put the ideas forward, we as players have done our part. If all the years in game forums have taught me anything it's that players will not hold back on sharing their thoughts and concerns lol. Only time will tell. Fingers crossed for the amazing addon creators to take pity on us poor console players. 😉

Agreed. It seems unlikely anything significant will change as long as ESO is on fundamentally the current game engine and database design. But perhaps our conversations can influence design thinking on a theoretical future 'ESO2'.

It will be interesting to see which types of add-on functionality will and won't work on consoles. TTC-like functionality requires reading in-game data to the local system, and then somehow merging it with everybody else's data elsewhere online, using an out-of-game method. Is such a flow achievable in a console environment? We'll have to see.

Northwold

JeroenB wrote: »

(cut only for space, not to dismiss the comment)

Just to give some insight into at least my own attitudes as a player (I can only speak for myself though over the years I've come across plenty of people who feel the same way), I don't sell because of player controlled guilds. That's it. I will never sell via that medium (and I have left the game multiple times because of the restriction because my main activity is housing, which becomes insufferably tedious if you have to go around generating gold through in-game means all the time). But I DO want to be able to participate properly in the economy. Selling stuff, being able to price stuff, would actually be fun but I do not want to be dealing with guilds.

It doesn't suit my life or my play style. I want to be able to be able to play casually. I want to be able to sell when I want without being subject to someone else's timetable, not have to find and apply to a guild to be able to do so. I do not want to tie myself into a video game to that extent, and I would rather drop the game than do so.

So while there may well be people who just don't want any complications at all, I do think you may be underestimating how much it's just the guild gate that's keeping people away from an activity they would otherwise enjoy.

I think the problem with setting up parallel systems with completely different mechanics is just that it makes it more unlikely that they would ever be considered or adopted. If you just have a system controlled trader that operates like all other traders except for higher fees and more stringent limits, that has the virtue that a lot of the development work already exists in game. The further you get from that, the more difficult it becomes to justify a change in developer time.

As I say, I respect what you're proposing. But I also see problems for existing sellers with introducing a system that purposely lowballs pricing -- you would undercut the existing guild trader pricing, which seems a serious issue. I would think if any new sales channel is to be accepted it needs to complement and, indeed, assist players who sell in guilds, most obviously by not creating an incentive to undercut them; by increasing the number of players making gold and thereby increasing demand for existing traders; and by not fundamentally changing how trading works as a geographically fragmented, walk up to a trader and buy stuff system. That's how, in my thinking, you get to crippled, game-controlled traders that are otherwise functionally the same, anyhow.

JeroenB

Northwold wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

(cut only for space, not to dismiss the comment)

Just to give some insight into at least my own attitudes as a player (I can only speak for myself though over the years I've come across plenty of people who feel the same way), I don't sell because of player controlled guilds. That's it. I will never sell via that medium (and I have left the game multiple times because of the restriction because my main activity is housing, which becomes insufferably tedious if you have to go around generating gold through in-game means all the time). But I DO want to be able to participate properly in the economy. Selling stuff, being able to price stuff, would actually be fun but I do not want to be dealing with guilds.

It doesn't suit my life or my play style. I want to be able to be able to play casually. I want to be able to sell when I want without being subject to someone else's timetable, not have to find and apply to a guild to be able to do so. I do not want to tie myself into a video game to that extent, and I would rather drop the game than do so.

So while there may well be people who just don't want any complications at all, I do think you may be underestimating how much it's just the guild gate that's keeping people away from an activity they would otherwise enjoy.

I think the problem with setting up parallel systems with completely different mechanics is just that it makes it more unlikely that they would ever be considered or adopted. If you just have a system controlled trader that operates like all other traders except for higher fees and more stringent limits, that has the virtue that a lot of the development work already exists in game. The further you get from that, the more difficult it becomes to justify a change in developer time.

As I say, I respect what you're proposing. But I also see problems for existing sellers with introducing a system that purposely lowballs pricing -- you would undercut the existing guild trader pricing, which seems a serious issue. I would think if any new sales channel is to be accepted it needs to complement and, indeed, assist players who sell in guilds, most obviously by not creating an incentive to undercut them; by increasing the number of players making gold and thereby increasing demand for existing traders; and by not fundamentally changing how trading works as a geographically fragmented, walk up to a trader and buy stuff system. That's how, in my thinking, you get to crippled, game-controlled traders that are otherwise functionally the same, anyhow.

It wasn't my intention to suggest the group of players for whom the guild gate is the main deterrent (such as yourself) was a minor group or anything, merely that the group of players for whom the 'price determining game' would already be a deterrent (such as myself) is also not a minor group to overlook.

I suspect we can agree that broadly there are:

• people who enjoy the trading game and enjoy being part of a guild (catered for by the current game);
• people who enjoy the trading game and do not want to be part of a guild;
• people who do not want to play the trading game but do want to participate in the economy (even if only for the feeling of feeding in resources rather than destroying them);
• people who don't care and will always just vendor/delete everything they don't need (catered for by the current game),

and each of those is a legitimate play style to desire, and a large enough portion of the playerbase to take into account for a good market design. (And that there would be no real point to us players attempting to quantify the relative portions, as we can't, and it's not really meaningful anyway.)

As I somewhat doubt anything significant will change as long as we're on the current game system due to its limitations, I felt more free to think about theoretical solutions, whereas your approach as you say is more based on something that might be possible now if ZOS were to put development resources in to it. (Which I would wholeheartedly support, as it would be a real improvement for me too, even if not optimal.)

Northwold

JeroenB wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

JeroenB wrote: »

(cut only for space, not to dismiss the comment)

Just to give some insight into at least my own attitudes as a player (I can only speak for myself though over the years I've come across plenty of people who feel the same way), I don't sell because of player controlled guilds. That's it. I will never sell via that medium (and I have left the game multiple times because of the restriction because my main activity is housing, which becomes insufferably tedious if you have to go around generating gold through in-game means all the time). But I DO want to be able to participate properly in the economy. Selling stuff, being able to price stuff, would actually be fun but I do not want to be dealing with guilds.

It doesn't suit my life or my play style. I want to be able to be able to play casually. I want to be able to sell when I want without being subject to someone else's timetable, not have to find and apply to a guild to be able to do so. I do not want to tie myself into a video game to that extent, and I would rather drop the game than do so.

So while there may well be people who just don't want any complications at all, I do think you may be underestimating how much it's just the guild gate that's keeping people away from an activity they would otherwise enjoy.

I think the problem with setting up parallel systems with completely different mechanics is just that it makes it more unlikely that they would ever be considered or adopted. If you just have a system controlled trader that operates like all other traders except for higher fees and more stringent limits, that has the virtue that a lot of the development work already exists in game. The further you get from that, the more difficult it becomes to justify a change in developer time.

As I say, I respect what you're proposing. But I also see problems for existing sellers with introducing a system that purposely lowballs pricing -- you would undercut the existing guild trader pricing, which seems a serious issue. I would think if any new sales channel is to be accepted it needs to complement and, indeed, assist players who sell in guilds, most obviously by not creating an incentive to undercut them; by increasing the number of players making gold and thereby increasing demand for existing traders; and by not fundamentally changing how trading works as a geographically fragmented, walk up to a trader and buy stuff system. That's how, in my thinking, you get to crippled, game-controlled traders that are otherwise functionally the same, anyhow.

It wasn't my intention to suggest the group of players for whom the guild gate is the main deterrent (such as yourself) was a minor group or anything, merely that the group of players for whom the 'price determining game' would already be a deterrent (such as myself) is also not a minor group to overlook.

I suspect we can agree that broadly there are:

• people who enjoy the trading game and enjoy being part of a guild (catered for by the current game);
• people who enjoy the trading game and do not want to be part of a guild;
• people who do not want to play the trading game but do want to participate in the economy (even if only for the feeling of feeding in resources rather than destroying them);
• people who don't care and will always just vendor/delete everything they don't need (catered for by the current game),

and each of those is a legitimate play style to desire, and a large enough portion of the playerbase to take into account for a good market design. (And that there would be no real point to us players attempting to quantify the relative portions, as we can't, and it's not really meaningful anyway.)

As I somewhat doubt anything significant will change as long as we're on the current game system due to its limitations, I felt more free to think about theoretical solutions, whereas your approach as you say is more based on something that might be possible now if ZOS were to put development resources in to it. (Which I would wholeheartedly support, as it would be a real improvement for me too, even if not optimal.)

I think I understand better where you're coming from now. For your "type" of player I wonder if there would be something in taking your idea, in terms of what feels practically achievable without wholly revising systems, and just applying it to the ordinary in-game merchants. A lot of the problem that arises from gating the selling system is because selling to in-game normal merchants is so ludicrously disconnected from the trading system prices. But the amount of new gold that would create does present an issue (it would add inflationary pressure). And to not kill the guild traders entirely the discount would have to be huge. Alternatively, they could just periodically update selling prices to merchants (I don't understand why they have never done this).