Should Auction House be Public or Guild only?

k9mouse

We didn't need an AH. Where is the option in the poll that for those of us do not want an AH?

Zilas

There's a problem with having an auction house.

Let's face it, nobody likes spamming their items in zone chat, as far as I know, there's no huge city with a trade chat, your best bet is probably advertising your item in a PvP zone lol.

To get to the point, being forced to spam your item in zone chat to sell it is lame.

Guilds have max 500 members, you think this is a lot, but it's nothing compared to how many people would check the auction house on a daily basis, and that's how it would be like for ONE eu server (Yeah, i'm mainly using WoW as an example)

However, the difference is that this game does not have seperate servers with exception of EU/US

Meaning.. if an auction house takes place, there would be a crazy amount of items, you'd be instantly undercut, prices would be crazy (considering all the bots would be on one big auction house) and the market would drop fast.


I really hate the current "AH" system and I HATE the cuts it takes (25% , really?)

But I'm not sure having a global auction house will fix this issue, it may make matters worse.

I've not put more thought into this yet as it won't matter anyway, I'm excited to see what the developers will do.




Oh and, I was thinking that eventually someone would make an online auction house if the developers do not think about something else soon.

Krayor

Tarelyn wrote: »

cant see any valid reasoning for Guild Only. Does anyone have any input on why its like that in the first place?
ive only played one other MMO (-DDO-) so maybe im bit clueless that way.
is it like this in other games?

The primary reason given by Zenimax was that it wanted to prevent a situation where the more powerful items in the game would be easily gotten by buying them in a global auction house. So rather than make the most powerful items in the game more difficult to acquire in the game world in general (either by limiting drop rates or creating obstacles to overcome in crafting), the developers just made it more difficult to buy from and sell to players in general. A very backwards philosophy to the issue that has failed miserably.

As I said in another thread, player trade in this game feels like an after thought that was not thoroughly thought out whatsoever. We are reduced to spamming chat. If we don't want to do that, we need to go through the trouble of finding a few of the right guilds to have access to the guild store with a marginal amount of players to buy and sell to. If you're lucky enough to have guilds with a claimed possession to set up the guild store to outside members, those players have to come to PvP zones to even access the stores. Besides dealing with those factors, we need to deal with a craptastic interface (and this is being nice) that barely functions the way it needs to and is sorely inadequate. If that isn't enough, just posting items on the stores requires a hefty fee. The developers call it a store cut, but that is a misleading term. A store cut would take place when the item is sold. What we have in this instance is actually a posting fee. The fee is paid for up front, whether the item is sold or not, and the items gets listed for a limited time.

To say that player trade in this game is ridiculous is an understatement. Player trade in this game feels outright punishing. It's like players are being punished for having the gull to interact in trade with each other. There is no other way to describe it. This is shameful.

Dev's put a lot of effort into this system and I see no reason to scrap it.

This statement is false based on the existing system. It doesn't appear that player trade was a very big priority on the list of implementations at all. This was sloppily put together.

TuterKing

Since there is just such a shear amount of weapons/armor that can be made in this game I think a public auction house would be to chaotic. Only thing I would want a sever wide AH would be for things like crafting materials because this is when the guild stores fail a bit. Also they should add a selling/buying forum section, if there isn't one already. Would make buying bulk amount of things a whole lot easier.

Korah_Eaglecry

Elember wrote: »

sully73 wrote: »

I feel a server wide auction house would destroy the economy in this game. Since there are only 2 severs NA and EU so many people will be posting the same item that it will tank the price. Especially on low level mats when selling to a vendor grants you 400 per stack

I have played another mega server style MMO, Star Trek Online, and it has global AH and the economy works just fine. Now before you start saying STO is not nearly as big as ESO and therefore it can sustain its economy with a global AH go try playing it. They have over 2 million registered accounts this is a KNOWN fact in the industry.

So the argument that ESO's server would not be able to handle the lag of a global AH, well if that is the case then they screwed up developing the netcode part of their server structure.

STO has one of the most worthless Economies amongst MMOs. The Energy Credit, is so easy to come by that most items on the AH is listed at ridiculous prices. The Devs also added numerous other types of in-game money that now cause confusion over which is more valuable. And its constantly fluctuating to extreme highs and lows between them. Whats worse is one of them is actually tied to real world money and is almost always undervalued.

KerinKor

Eris wrote: »

People just sit there all day buying up the cheap stuff and listing it for way more than its worth artificially inflating the value of items.

Easy fix for that is make the item un-sellable once bought off the AH. Sadly no MMO does it and every MMO is full of leeches 'playing the AH'.

Bhakura

Dont see the need for public auction, im in three guilds now, two of them trade guilds. I have totally no problem selling my stuff or buying what i need, in other words, its fine as it is.

sebastiankarner

One problem i see with the auction house being absent is that the chat window is packed with people trying to sell things, that is not what its for.

macinley1ub17_ESO

One of the things i enjoy the most about this game is going out gathering stuff to sell and then finding someone to buy it. It's way more entertaining to me to do it this way then to just throw it up on an auction house and hope i wake up to a mail box full of gold.

The current system means i have to talk with people, and if i want to avoid a CoD shipping fee, i have to actually go and meet/see who is buying my stuff. Which personally i enjoy.

I would however like a more refined guild store UI, its pretty basic as it is now.

Frosthawk

There isnt nothing good in open AH it's mess every time when some just want see word burn, even Blidzard got enought of it in Diablo 3 and shut it for good.

Small change have its place on system like all guilds on server can sell each other but thats it, no common open market for griefing and other nonsense.
If open AH happens trolls/griefers destroy it in one or max three months.

Thybrinena

I'm not a fan of public AHs. You don't have to look further back than GW2 to see how much of a fail that economy quickly became with ridicilous prices put together with worthless commodities. Keep the system as it is.

gimarwb17_ESO

With a public auction house you have a much larger range of goods to chose from apart from the prices too. In the limited area of guild only they can basically ask whatever they want.

For instance in one very popular guild I could not even find a decent weapon for a level 8 and only one armor for level

Also, as a crafter you should have the opportunity to have as many potential purchasers as possible. That too is limited in the guild area.

Also, guildies become friends if they are not friends already, and they make stuff for each other or pass it on to other guildies. So that makes an auction house inside a guild kind of meaningless.

gimarwb17_ESO

I think back of the very very old days when there were no auction houses yet and you had the market place where players were sitting like ants offering their wares (causing lag in the area and you could hardly walk due to that and without stepping on somebody) - I think maybe with all the 'new' things they are trying to start a trend but to me it looks like going backwards in every respect.
-

Cydramech

Holycannoli wrote: »

I vote for a 3rd option: a dedicated market zone that works sort of similar to Everquest's bazaar from the Luclin era.

I don't remember much of it but I would like a separate zone where we can hire NPCs to sell our wares, who stand around stalls much like they do in the cities now. We pay a fee for the NPC, deposit what we want to sell and what price and that's it. We come back whenever we want to take profits.

The zone would have a search feature for buyers to locate NPCs who have the item they're interested in or a list of NPCs that have items that fit the search criteria. The search feature only tells them which NPC to browse and where to find them, they still need to run to that NPC and buy from it. If possible I'd want the search to work across multiple instances.

It's not quite an auction house but it does allow buying and AFK selling with your entire faction, not just one guild.

This is the only sensible and logical argument against a guild-based AH system. We also call it a Market Wards system, and on the whole far superior to any global AH system.

The only thing I'd suggest otherwise adding is a trade channel, if at all.

rawne1980b16_ESO

Eris wrote: »

I voted guild only mostly because I feel that server wide auction houses just lead to market manipulation and price gouging. People just sit there all day buying up the cheap stuff and listing it for way more than its worth artificially inflating the value of items.

People do that anyway.

I know folk in several trading guilds that buy cheap in one and sell for more in another.

Having guild only trading doesn't change anything it just narrows down buyer lists.

People that know how to make money using trading will still get incredibly rich only now that wealth won't be as spread around because there is no actual economy.

I only join small guilds so what i'd usually spend in an auction house is now gathering dust in my bank.

I'm not too bothered about an auction house either way. At least this way I get to watch the money roll in and not have to worry about buying overpriced materials.

Lynx7386

No public auction house. I find it much better, as a crafter, to not have to deal with the price gouging and market manipulation that comes from an open auction house. There's also more interaction with other players this way - if someone needs something, they come to me and I make it for them. With an auction house, there would never be any interaction between buyers and sellers.

As it is, most of the people I know dont even use the guild stores, just because there's a 25% gold cut. We trade materials through the guild bank, and when it comes to buying and selling items it ends up being face to face or through mail.

Krayor

KerinKor wrote: »

Eris wrote: »

People just sit there all day buying up the cheap stuff and listing it for way more than its worth artificially inflating the value of items.

Easy fix for that is make the item un-sellable once bought off the AH. Sadly no MMO does it and every MMO is full of leeches 'playing the AH'.

This is unneeded due to the limitations of the inventory system. There are not enough slots to accommodate reselling (at least not to a very great degree). The limited inventory space certainly will stifle it a lot. So the current inventory situation already works in favor of facilitating prevention of market abuse in a more open market. As does the hefty posting fees.

qwertyburnsb16_ESO

I voted for a server wide auction house as the market always adjusts prices to what the item or material is actually worth. I'm just guessing, but the restricted guild store and fixed prices is possibly the developers trying to restrict gold farmers/sellers and to guarantee an economy of sorts. In truth though prices will start to bomb down for items and materials that can be easily be obtained by everyone else.

Economy is only guaranteed when you restrict what toons can make and get so the stuff they provide is a lot more rare so the wider community depends on each other. Also have a feature where toons can make or invent something unique to create demand.

An alternative to the server wide auction house could be to make guild stores public to anyone to buy only?

unknowngamer

Absolutely yes.

Honestly I cannot believe this is even being debated against in this day and age. Its seems as if all the naysayers are liberal hipsters who took a couple courses in economics, graduated with rose-coloured glasses and want to take a grassroots approach to markets returning us to the stone age in terms of trading and wealth acquisition. Here are a couple rebuttals to common global AH worries:

1) Global AH destroys communities by negating face to face trading
Couple issues here. First off, this isn't the olden-days of 1999 EQ and UO where you spammed EC tunnels and posted wares on trading sites because that was your only option to trade in an efficient manner. AH's main purposes are to sell your goods quick and easy so you can get back to actually playing the game. For every guy /saying in EC chatting it up with others there were another 10 alt-tabbing to pass boredom. No community there.
Secondly, AH is the least of things to worry about with the megaserver phasing concept. Sure if you find friends you like you can add them and switch instances but as far as dynamic communities of good people its impossible. The game chooses which community we default to every time we log in. When 2/3 of zone chat is tradespam and you come across guilds named named Christpunchers and guys named Anahlphist (I'm not making this up) global AH is not what worries me in a community sense.

2) Global AH opens up possibilities for mass market manipulation and price gouging

As if Wall Street doesn't do this on a daily basis. You can't stop people from buying low and selling high its the foundation of trade and is what separates the wealthy from those that stay wealthy. Actually, price gouging will be more likely to happen in a closed market than an open one. Hell, its what us smiths in UO at the Britain forge did every day. We knew damn well that a full suit of plate wasn't worth 7.5-10k and so did the buyers - but it was either us or vendor trash so you paid what we told you. By not allowing a broad market to examine current lows and highs of pricing items your more likely to get screwed than not. Already rarer items are quoted by players as "make an offer". In trade, saying that is the same thing as saying "I have no clue about the value of goods I possess so you tell me what they are worth so I don't look like an idiot". This isn't poker where checking has a bluff-based tactile benefit. If the offer was not what you wanted your going to counter-offer the price you had in mind anyway so just say it up front and don't waste other people's time. In the end, you're more likely to feel pressured to undersell to unload quicker because god knows when you'll receive another offer due to the difficulty receiving recognition in chatspam. AH's at the very least allow you to ballpark the value of your goods.

3) The main concern is controlling the spread of epic/rare items
If ZOS biggest worry is to control the trade-based acquisition of end-game epic gear fine - make them BOP like the good old days and you remove this fear entirely. If people want the best then they have to earn it by doing. Sounds fair to me.

In closing, its quite clear most people want an auction house. Already most people have 4/5 of their guilds as trading guilds making their trading market already the size of a non-wow MMO server. And to be quite honest most people only fully commit to 1 guild, they tend to be an all-in affair and rightfully so. Nobody wants a part-time guild member with relaxed guild loyalty. Doesn't make for the best bedfellow.

Stop believing the free market is an omnipotent evil entity corrupting the world because it simply isn't. There are far more ravenous socio-economic systems and policies that damage the distribution of wealth. For all you Uni kiddies out there take what you need from your courses in Economics but don't turn into a social democrat calling for more market intervention - it will sort itself out. If your prof was really so smart he or she would be out there making a fortune as opposed to 50K a year with nothing to show for it but a set of Birkenstock sandals putting in time for their pension.

Ojustaboo

Samriel wrote: »

The whole point of guilds, at least in other games, is a group of players joining together for common goals and helping each other. Every guild I have ever been in, and in every MMO I've ever played has had the philosophy of GIVING items to guild members who need it and SELLING items to members outside the guild.

I agree but every guild I've been in is also what I would call my only guild for any given game. Most guilds expect the members (*and most members wish this) to be loyal and in that one guild.

And the same applies to this game. I'm in a guild, our guild has two guilds so that we have one guild bank just for raw crafting mats (not including provisioning). And we don't sell to other guild members hence the guild store aspect is pointless for us.

However, that still leaves us 3 guilds to join trading guilds, wghere they arent really guilds in the sense we are used to, they are there purely to trade wiith.

I do not know how well this is going to work mind you, but I want to give the idea a go

The guild store goes directly against this and is an utterly pointless feature in my opinion and should be replaced with a public auction house.

While I sort of agree in that it's what I'm used to, unlike other mmos, we are all counted as one server (well two) and even if you did an AH by alliance, as soon as someone is high level and making a bit of gold, it's doubtful they would ever need to farm anything again as the amount of players selling and undercutting would be huge.

I can see page after page after page after page of iron ore getting lower and lower in price as people want to sell their stuff. I suspect there will be so many people selling that it wouldn't even be feasible for someone to buy the low cost ones and relist as there would simply be too many.

So I'm not convinced it could work how we are used to, although something like GW2 system might work fine.

Sharee

unknowngamer wrote: »

2) Global AH opens up possibilities for mass market manipulation and price gouging

As if Wall Street doesn't do this on a daily basis. You can't stop people from buying low and selling high its the foundation of trade and is what separates the wealthy from those that stay wealthy.

In MMO's money grows on trees. How wealthy you are only depends on how much time you spend in the game.

The game economy(money income/money sinks) is set up to suit the average player. One that logs in a couple hours of every day. It is not set up to handle bots/chinese sweatshop workers who grind the game 24/7, flooding the economy with far more money and materials and items than what it was supposed to handle.

Having a 'wall street' AH gives these 24/7's the option to ruin the game economy for everyone else.
They flood it with gold, gold is less and less valuable, item prices go up and up, and now the player who was supposed to be able to buy a new sword for the quest reward money discovers the quest reward money doesn't cover even 5% of the price the sword costs(which, incidentally, gives the gold seller a new potential customer).

A separate guild store mitigates this effect. No longer can the gold farmer sit in one spot all day and effectively control the whole market. If he wants to buy out all iron on the AH and repost it for 10x the price, he has to do it for 5 guild at once, and have multiple alts joined to multiple guilds to cover the whole market.

And, the most important thing - the guilds themselves have tools to deal with this kind of behavior - they can kick the gold farmer out once they realize what he's doing.

So, i am very much in favor of the way ESO handles trade.

Kolache

unknowngamer wrote: »

In closing, its quite clear most people want an auction house.

For all the good arguments on why there should be a public AH, this isn't one of them. If you had an in-game poll pop up asking if people wanted more gold, more EXP, more loot, faster mounts, free travel, free levels, or whatever else, people would take it.

I'm surprised there are as many votes for less convenience as there are. It's like asking a kid if they want a video game for Christmas or ALL video games for Christmas--there are repercussions that must be measured by the parents to avoid negative consequences in the long-run.

In closing, its quite clear why more design decisions aren't simply put to a popular vote.

Dunhilda

Woodwanderer wrote: »

"Trading guilds work really hard to provide their services..."
Really?
What does it mean? And what exactly do they do?

Couse how I see it's like 1 guy creates the guild (god bless him anyway) just to gather some planty of other folks to create some second best market just to be.

That one guy also get the Guild house cut, so the guild leader gets the gold from every sale, it's a 10% cut.

I want a public auction.

Vikova

Kolache wrote: »

In closing, its quite clear why more design decisions aren't simply put to a popular vote.

This.

Spryt

Don't see the need for global AH either. What items is it you so desperately need to buy/sell? It's true you can probably make more money on a AH then selling stuff to a npc merchant. But so far there isn't really anything worth buying other then mount, repairs and travel costs.For some reason I think people just enjoy being super rich in game for no real reason.

With the amount of gear and not much being bop and the way stats on gear work I think it can easily turn into Diablo 3 AH. Basically just farm random trash - convert to cash - buy everything on AH ("win" the game without playing it).

Tarelyn

Thanks for all the great input, -for and against.
meh own personal opinion is mostly along the lines of this gem:

unknowngamer wrote: »

Absolutely yes.

Honestly I cannot believe this is even being debated against in this day and age. Its seems as if all the naysayers are liberal hipsters who took a couple courses in economics, graduated with rose-coloured glasses and want to take a grassroots approach to markets returning us to the stone age in terms of trading and wealth acquisition. Here are a couple rebuttals to common global AH worries:

1) Global AH destroys communities by negating face to face trading
Couple issues here. First off, this isn't the olden-days of 1999 EQ and UO where you spammed EC tunnels and posted wares on trading sites because that was your only option to trade in an efficient manner. AH's main purposes are to sell your goods quick and easy so you can get back to actually playing the game. For every guy /saying in EC chatting it up with others there were another 10 alt-tabbing to pass boredom. No community there.
Secondly, AH is the least of things to worry about with the megaserver phasing concept. Sure if you find friends you like you can add them and switch instances but as far as dynamic communities of good people its impossible. The game chooses which community we default to every time we log in. When 2/3 of zone chat is tradespam and you come across guilds named named Christpunchers and guys named Anahlphist (I'm not making this up) global AH is not what worries me in a community sense.

2) Global AH opens up possibilities for mass market manipulation and price gouging

As if Wall Street doesn't do this on a daily basis. You can't stop people from buying low and selling high its the foundation of trade and is what separates the wealthy from those that stay wealthy. Actually, price gouging will be more likely to happen in a closed market than an open one. Hell, its what us smiths in UO at the Britain forge did every day. We knew damn well that a full suit of plate wasn't worth 7.5-10k and so did the buyers - but it was either us or vendor trash so you paid what we told you. By not allowing a broad market to examine current lows and highs of pricing items your more likely to get screwed than not. Already rarer items are quoted by players as "make an offer". In trade, saying that is the same thing as saying "I have no clue about the value of goods I possess so you tell me what they are worth so I don't look like an idiot". This isn't poker where checking has a bluff-based tactile benefit. If the offer was not what you wanted your going to counter-offer the price you had in mind anyway so just say it up front and don't waste other people's time. In the end, you're more likely to feel pressured to undersell to unload quicker because god knows when you'll receive another offer due to the difficulty receiving recognition in chatspam. AH's at the very least allow you to ballpark the value of your goods.

3) The main concern is controlling the spread of epic/rare items
If ZOS biggest worry is to control the trade-based acquisition of end-game epic gear fine - make them BOP like the good old days and you remove this fear entirely. If people want the best then they have to earn it by doing. Sounds fair to me.

In closing, its quite clear most people want an auction house. Already most people have 4/5 of their guilds as trading guilds making their trading market already the size of a non-wow MMO server. And to be quite honest most people only fully commit to 1 guild, they tend to be an all-in affair and rightfully so. Nobody wants a part-time guild member with relaxed guild loyalty. Doesn't make for the best bedfellow.

Stop believing the free market is an omnipotent evil entity corrupting the world because it simply isn't. There are far more ravenous socio-economic systems and policies that damage the distribution of wealth. For all you Uni kiddies out there take what you need from your courses in Economics but don't turn into a social democrat calling for more market intervention - it will sort itself out. If your prof was really so smart he or she would be out there making a fortune as opposed to 50K a year with nothing to show for it but a set of Birkenstock sandals putting in time for their pension.

thank you for taking the time to post this.
-Tare

MysticAura

I may be in the minority here, but I'm perfectly content with no non guild AH. I find it incredibly frustrating to see everyone undercutting everyone else with no care about the state of the market in general due to their actions. At least being per guild keeps that from happening (to an extent) People may be less likely to undercut guild-mates, and if they do, they're more likely to be kicked for their destructive behavior.

Players still trade and sell on zone chat anyway so it's not really stopping anyone from getting what they need.

Greydog

Krayor wrote: »

Dev's put a lot of effort into this system and I see no reason to scrap it.

This statement is false based on the existing system. It doesn't appear that player trade was a very big priority on the list of implementations at all. This was sloppily put together.

Taken out of context as it is, that statement is also contrary to any point I've ever tried to make on this subject. In the post it came from I was pointing out that this system could still be used if all guilds were able to sell to an open market.

PvP keeps are fine if you're fortunate enough to be in one of the very few guilds to hold one.

As I said in my original post here. I cannot vote because the choices are either one or the other when neither is the better option.

@unknowngamer Great post! +1 (wish I were a wordsmith )

byghostlightrwb17_ESO

we dont need an Auction House, just because a certain game in the past had that doesnt mean every game after needs to. Its extremely refreshing to have to work for things and relying on other people. There is nothing at all that an auction house can bring.

Greydog

I work for a living ..I play for fun escapism