Auction House

Jeremy

Yes!

sociald100ub17_ESO wrote: »

It would guarantee a better selection because it would have more people supplying the market.

It would only guarantee anyone who tries to sell for a fair price gets bought out by a bot who shorts the market of an item and then puts it up for a high price when they are the only seller. it will happen.

[/quote]


If there was a such a bot it would be banned as it would be quite obvious on the market boards if someone named a;slkf was buying every item up and then reposting it.

I think you're exaggerating the threat of this super bot that will somehow hijack the whole economy. It's not going to happen.

Jeremy

Yes!

RomedyMC wrote: »

3.) "I cannot find the item I need."

This sentence carries the necessary caveat, (for the price that I want.)

Nope. Most of the time I can't find the item I need for any price. It's simply not there at all, because the market can't deliver due to its inadequate size.

Though I will admit the few times I do find them for sale they are unreasonably priced. But I pay it anyway out of desperation knowing full well I'm being ripped off.

But your necessary caveat isn't accurate and assumes the item is for sale just at prices people are unwilling to pay. That's not true. Most of the time it's not there at all, at any price.

besb16_ESO

Yes!

ESO have by far the worst AH I have ever seen. It's just junk!!

I'm "lucky" to be in several guilds that have 20+ pages of things to sell. But I don’t want to use an hour looking through it all. The filters in ESO AH are just poor. There are not much filter options, and no search options.

1. First of all the AH should be a server wide AH. (At least faction wide)
2. And it should have buy and sell order.
3. Good filtering (many options)
4. And good search function.

And don't bother telling me to stand in town for an hour selling/buying stuff in trade channel. I want to use my 2-3 hours a day playing, not standing around in town for half the time.

For me this one thing will tell me if they (Z) really take the players seriously. I doubt it, but for now I still hope they will.

RomedyMC

No!

TL;DR You really should just read the whole thing.

4.) Education on "Differentially Segregated Markets" and why you really do not understand the purpose of the "Trading Guild".

As I stated earlier, our video game market is clearly defined. However,were there no trading guilds, it would actually be 3 markets since the alliances are separate. Not only that, but it would be 3 unfair markets. Why? 2 reasons: They are mutually exclusive and do not include the same number of players.

But even this would satisfy a majority of "Yes!" answers to this thread, since the items would be much easier to come by. Simply "Search" the AH (like in every other modern MMO LOL!) and viola! There is my Beech Shield w/ Divines trait that I will need in 6d 21h 19m to research.

But wait ... a friend plays in the Ebonheart Pact (smallest playerbase by %) and I play in the Dominion (largest by percentage) and he just bought the exact same shield for half the price!

Wait! Shouldn't my shield have been cheaper since my market is larger!?

Not a single person (aside from an earlier post I made, which was ignored) has really talked about the effect currency has on the market, and this relationship with currency is why a larger market is not universally better

Purely by playing the percentages, I can assume that more players = more currency in the market. (player #'s, gold buyers, etc.) More available currency drives the price up. (Inflation) So the shield on the EP side was 250g, but the AD shield cost 600g.

So which shield was REALLY more expensive? The prices are entirely RELATIVE. Is the player rich or poor? Did they work for their gold, or buy it? Is 1g worth more to the EP or AD in this example? (I'll let you answer that.)

So the solution for players is to make an alt in each alliance and compare prices, right? Then the AD market has an unfair advantage since an AD player can purchase much more relative to the EP player.(In vanilla WoW on the Greymane server, alliance way outnumbered horde. So what happened? Rich alliance players would mule their gold to a horde alt through the Booty Bay AH, buy all of the rare (but relatively cheap!) items, and move them to the alliance side to be sold at profit. Are you beginning to see the problem?

In case you missed it, that was my answer to why a bigger market is not always better. But Romedy! having one universal AH solves all of that! Then you entirely missed my point That only serves to make the rich players richer and ensures that the "buying power" of 1g diminishes.

Enter the Trading Guild. Each trading guild differentially segregates our 3 monster markets since the guilds allow players from all 3 factions. So the trading guilds serve to maintain the balance between the 3 alliances by being "pipelines".

However, each guild is itself a small market. And! Since the markets are all selling the same thing they are in competition! Meaning if you cannot find that beech shield w/ Divines that you need perhaps you should consider looking for a better "trading" guild. Or, at the very least, look at the trading guilds you have and see how many people are online and active.

Look, I'm not saying it is perfect. We REALLY do need a trade chat, and the store window desperately needs some help. The Guild Store add-on gives some relief within the current GUI constraints and I HIGHLY recommend it until the solution is in place, whatever it may be. But what I am saying, and hopefully I got this across, is that there is MUCH more to consider than just convenience. And maybe, just maybe, you (the player. Not you, specifically.) have some tools at your disposal that you just haven't used either because you didn't realize that you had them or you just felt like being lazy.

* Look at your trading guild roster. Get out of guilds that aren't capped at 500 or have a ton of inactive players.
* If you have an extra guild slot, take a risk on a brand new trading guil. Get in, sell your stuff at the price you want, and get out. Worst case the guild winds up small and inactive like the one you left. Best case? You get a new, active guild and can make a profit.
* Actively seek a crafting guild. These generally are more generous with trait exchange and can be a cheap source of good gear while the crafters level.
* Even if you are in 5 guilds, actively seek established, full trading guilds. You are more likely to find what you want for a better price.
* Understand the game is 1 month old. The market is still an infant and you cannot expect it to look like a mature game's market. Prices are going to be volatile, supply/demand will have relative fluctuations, and there will be gaps in supply.

Regards,

Romedy

socomhdsb16_ESO

Yes!

people would be willing to spend hours and hours on trade chat? even though the trade chat is already filled with gold sellers, advertisement and its just hard. people what is wrong with auction house, if ya don't like it don't use it.

Turkwise

No!

I think many of the YES votes would change if Guild Store had any sort of functionality that wasn't awful or broken. Seriously, it's easily one of the most broken, worthless components of the game right now. It needs to be fixed, and it needs to be a priority. The already limited search options are further hampered by the fact that it rarely works properly.

RomedyMC

No!

Jeremy wrote: »

Nope. Most of the time I can't find the item I need for any price. It's simply not there at all, because the market can't deliver due to its inadequate size.

Though I will admit the few times I do find them for sale they are unreasonably priced. But I pay it anyway out of desperation knowing full well I'm being ripped off.

But your necessary caveat isn't accurate and assumes the item is for sale just at prices people are unwilling to pay. That's not true. Most of the time it's not there at all, at any price.

First, thank you for responding to me.

Second, you are wrong. Any hoarder likely has many of those items for sale, but do not want to sell them because they place a high value on them and want them for future use. (I am one of those.) Offer enough money in /zone (the current trade chat) and I'll sell. I have no intention of selling my car, but if you walked up to me and offered me mroe money than my perceived value, I'd sell it to you and walk home whistling.

But, that goes back to my caveat: it is too much for you to want to pay.

We can agree to disagree here, but I honestly think you're expectation is off. A new market will not have everything that you want at a click and you shouldn't expect it to. I would wager that even if we had a global AH, those "in-demand" items (tempurs, rare-traits, etc.) would still not be on the AH very often and would still be priced too highly from your perspective. The nature of "high demand" ...

It'll slow eventually and those items will be more available at a lower price. Give it time.

Viverim

Yes!

RomedyMC wrote: »

1.) "More sellers in the market means more buyers in the market."

I actually have not seen anyone make this claim. In fact, what I mostly see are the buyers who can't find sellers in most cases. I would, in your model, be a seller, however since I have only a fraction of the population to sell to, I have no clue what my efforts would be worth, nor if anyone would even buy it anyway, so I don't bother.

Your hot dog model, while cute, doesn't go far enough. What a regional market would do isn't add three hotdog stands on one corner. It would allow each of the three hotdog stands access to the entire pool of buyers. Thus, instead of one hot dog stand that sells to 5 clients having to split with two competitors, now all three have access to all 15 total buyers instead. So if Hot Dog stand A offers $3 for a hot dog, and stand C offers $15 for that same hot dog, A will raise its price somewhat and C will lower theirs. At some point, the price will equalize, which then determines the market value of the product. If this value is too low, sellers will simply not put their product on the market until the price raises (through supply and demand) to something they are more comfortable with.

The problem, in a video game market, is that both resources and currency can and are spontaneously created from, literally, nothing. Need more money? Kill a bunch of mobs and 'poof!' Gold! Which is why things like gold sinks (ie, taxes on sales) become highly needed.

RomedyMC wrote: »

2.) "A larger market means better prices."

Actually this may come as a surprise to you, but I agree with this statement. Prices may or may not be 'better' (and better is a highly subjective term anyway), HOWEVER, a larger market often leads to prices becoming stable. It would take a few months, I would expect, but after time items would gain certain levels of value based on the ebb and flow of the market.

RomedyMC wrote: »

3.) "I cannot find the item I need."

This sentence carries the necessary caveat, (for the price that I want.) No further evaluation here.

This is addressed further in the thread, but I will reiterate it here. Most people aren't finding the items that they want for ANY price. And really, the word 'need' is a bit much. You should have said "I cannot find the item I want". This being a video game, you really don't need anything. Do people want instant gratification? Yes, many do. But... it's a game, and having to trog through multiple guilds lowers their level of enjoyment, reducing their level of fun, which in turn makes them less likely to tolerate other things in game which annoy them.

Viverim

Yes!

RomedyMC wrote: »

4.) Education on "Differentially Segregated Markets" and why you really do not understand the purpose of the "Trading Guild".

In case you missed it, that was my answer to why a bigger market is not always better. But Romedy! having one universal AH solves all of that! Then you entirely missed my point That only serves to make the rich players richer and ensures that the "buying power" of 1g diminishes.

Actually the "buying power" of 1g is doomed to diminish in any game economy where gold and resources can be spontaneously created. What is needed to keep the buying power of gold higher are gold sinks which destroy gold for no return, not smaller markets.

RomedyMC wrote: »

Enter the Trading Guild. Each trading guild differentially segregates our 3 monster markets since the guilds allow players from all 3 factions. So the trading guilds serve to maintain the balance between the 3 alliances by being "pipelines".

However, each guild is itself a small market. And! Since the markets are all selling the same thing they are in competition! Meaning if you cannot find that beech shield w/ Divines that you need perhaps you should consider looking for a better "trading" guild. Or, at the very least, look at the trading guilds you have and see how many people are online and active.

The trading guilds, however, are not actually in competition with each other. They would be if you knew what the prices everyone else was selling for was, but there is no way to advertise your guild prices to anyone outside of your guild, and thus no way anyone would know that Guild X is selling maple for 5g while Guild Z is selling it for 15g. Competition only works when the sellers are competing. Right now, they're not.

RomedyMC wrote: »

* Look at your trading guild roster. Get out of guilds that aren't capped at 500 or have a ton of inactive players.
* If you have an extra guild slot, take a risk on a brand new trading guil. Get in, sell your stuff at the price you want, and get out. Worst case the guild winds up small and inactive like the one you left. Best case? You get a new, active guild and can make a profit.
* Actively seek a crafting guild. These generally are more generous with trait exchange and can be a cheap source of good gear while the crafters level.
* Even if you are in 5 guilds, actively seek established, full trading guilds. You are more likely to find what you want for a better price.
* Understand the game is 1 month old. The market is still an infant and you cannot expect it to look like a mature game's market. Prices are going to be volatile, supply/demand will have relative fluctuations, and there will be gaps in supply.

Regards,

Romedy

I'm not sure if you have played a lot of online games or not, but most of the people I know don't like to guild hop, which is your suggestion for fixing things. Your own experiences may be very different from mine, but I find that people aren't looking at guilds as "oh, this is my market", they are looking at guilds as "oh, these are my adventuring partners".

Also, guilds don't include everyone, especially low level characters. Right now I have no incentive at all to craft lower level gear other than to give it to my alts. But if I had access to a wider market then I might just go into, say, Malabal Tor and make a set of Vampire gear (yes, this is a crafting set) out of steel and sell it in the level appropriate zone. If I make it blue then it has value which will last, and a lower level might actually purchase such a thing.

I also agree that I would prefer to see something other than the same-old same-old. My own suggestino was to have markets in each zone that were unique to that zone. Want Maple? sell it in Auridon. Need Dwarven Ore? go look in Reaper's March. Now, your suggestion about player imbalances is something I hadn't thought about, and full points and credit for going there, however, if you do level appropriate markets tied to their respective zones then you could tie all three factions to the same market, but again limit them to zones. Thus instead of three markets or one huge mega-market, you would have five or six. (seven? Eight?? Not sure how to do the Veteran Levels)

I'm not claiming I have all of the answers either, but what we have right now is pretty much a hot mess.

p.s. - sorry for the editing of your earlier posts. I was trying to save some space in my reply.

sociald100ub17_ESO

No!

Jeremy wrote: »

sociald100ub17_ESO wrote: »

It would guarantee a better selection because it would have more people supplying the market.

It would only guarantee anyone who tries to sell for a fair price gets bought out by a bot who shorts the market of an item and then puts it up for a high price when they are the only seller. it will happen.

If there was a such a bot it would be banned as it would be quite obvious on the market boards if someone named a;slkf was buying every item up and then reposting it.

I think you're exaggerating the threat of this super bot that will somehow hijack the whole economy. It's not going to happen.


[/quote]

Apparently you haven't been around a lot of mmo's where this has happened then as ive seen this very thing happen lots of times. and so you ban the bot, and then another one shows up and does the same thing, meanwhile if they ban the one bought are they going to take the time to refund the items back to all the people that the bot bought out? no the items will just be gone

Tavore1138

No!

Isn't this another 'I want ESO to be a carbon copy of every other boring MMO' thread?

I vote no.

Viverim

Yes!

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Isn't this another 'I want ESO to be a carbon copy of every other boring MMO' thread?

I vote no.

No, this is a discussion of the current in-game market setting, how it is broken for many of us, and our suggestions on how it can be improved upon. Your answer, while succinct, in no way offers new insight into the problem.

Still, I at least, appreciate your willingness to make your view of the topic known.

Viverim

Yes!

sociald100ub17_ESO wrote: »

Apparently you haven't been around a lot of mmo's where this has happened then as ive seen this very thing happen lots of times. and so you ban the bot, and then another one shows up and does the same thing, meanwhile if they ban the one bought are they going to take the time to refund the items back to all the people that the bot bought out? no the items will just be gone

Why would you return the items that the bot bought out? The people who he bought it from got the gold form their purchase. Why give them back the items they were paid for? This makes no sense to me.

And your response is that we shouldn't fix the broken market because someone might break it?

My head hurts now...

Daverios

No!

If you support a global AH , you also support Gold Sellers.

Lets be 100% clear on this point.

ShinChuck

Yes!

Daverios wrote: »

If you support a global AH , you also support Gold Sellers.

Lets be 100% clear on this point.

And if you don't support a global AH, you drown kittens daily.

I mean, since we're just throwing accusations out there.

Dyvim

Yes!

LadyInTheWater wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

If that's true and it really is more than enough, then why is it I can rarely ever find what I am looking to buy in any of these guild stores?

A global AH wouldn't guarantee that anything you're looking for would be for sale.

That comment is ridiculous...THINK before you post. There are no guarantees, but your CHANCES would be INCREDIBLY better at 1) finding what you want, and 2) finding it in a reasonable amount of time, and 3) finding it at a more efficient price, since you are in a larger market that provides better information to its buyers and sellers.

Muletide

No!

No thanks. I don't want to have to accept one market that is manipulated by gold sellers, market capitalists, and 12 year olds trying to make a fortune off of a single item.

alphawolph

Yes!

Daverios wrote: »

If you support a global AH , you also support Gold Sellers.

Lets be 100% clear on this point.

Why? If I can sell to people instead of vendors I would have more gold. The system now means I vendor everything. I could sell things for more if I could find buyers.

Rupan

Yes!

why you don't want me to sell to everyone ?

AbraCadabra

No!

Fix the current guild store ui. Then see how it goes.

The gold sellers and bots are horrible now. I can only imagine how bad it will be if an AH was installed.

alphawolph

Yes!

AbraCadabra wrote: »

Fix the current guild store ui. Then see how it goes.

The gold sellers and bots are horrible now. I can only imagine how bad it will be if an AH was installed.

I still don't see how the two are related.

I have a good market = I have to buy gold?

I have a bad market = I don't need gold?

Do I need to buy gold because I can buy things off the AH?

Seriously, it makes no sense to me. Wouldn't the fact that I can make gold on the AH negate the need for gold buying?

Darastix

Yes!

I dont think a global AH would work, but some trading post in each major city should work.

sociald100ub17_ESO

No!

Viverim wrote: »

sociald100ub17_ESO wrote: »

Apparently you haven't been around a lot of mmo's where this has happened then as ive seen this very thing happen lots of times. and so you ban the bot, and then another one shows up and does the same thing, meanwhile if they ban the one bought are they going to take the time to refund the items back to all the people that the bot bought out? no the items will just be gone

Why would you return the items that the bot bought out? The people who he bought it from got the gold form their purchase. Why give them back the items they were paid for? This makes no sense to me.

And your response is that we shouldn't fix the broken market because someone might break it?

My head hurts now...

Your head hurts because you aren't grasping what im saying. Im saying an open world AH would break it much worse than it is now.
Im not saying you shouldn't fix it, im saying what you are suggesting wont fix it.

Red_Scarlet

No!

Didn't Blizzard's Auction house fail for Diablo III?

Should we go like the stock market, and have prices globally flux based on demand? I would love to see my potions go back up in price.

Set up requirements, that if a guild meets certain specs, they get access to a general "neutral" trading town, where they get to setup shop. They can list their items, and set there prices, etc. The shop is hosted by an NPC (hopefully you could create the look of that NPC, along with a guild banner.)

Non-guild players can access the town and shop around, allowing the players to search for their desired items. No guild strings attached.

You could go even further with setting the town up like a neutral black market, where all the alliances could access, allowing more diversity in the trade. As well, the guild shop could have settings, to select an item to be "bartered for" or "best offer".

The "bartered for" would be base on a preset a price range or package offer requirements. Obviously the player does not get to see the range. Package deals could be a separate category on the shopping menu or stated by the NPC, if it is an offer such as buying more then one.

The "best offer" could be a set undisclosed amount, with a set time frame and players can make offers to the NPC guild shop keeper, whom would reply, "too low", "no deal", etc (an offer would be no refundable if you met the right amount). At the end of the time frame if the item did not sell, the admin for that store has the name player with the best offer, and can choose to contact and make the sale. This option does rim around the idea of an auction house, but at least leaves me not thinking the other guy I was bidding against, was the seller on a different account.

Viverim

Yes!

Red_Scarlet wrote: »

Set up requirements, that if a guild meets certain specs, they get access to a general "neutral" trading town, where they get to setup shop. They can list their items, and set there prices, etc. The shop is hosted by an NPC (hopefully you could create the look of that NPC, along with a guild banner.)

Non-guild players can access the town and shop around, allowing the players to search for their desired items. No guild strings attached.

So, one town, accessible to all members of the server, where they can search for items, but have to go to five thousand vendors to do so... How is this not a global auction house with an unbelievably bad search function? i mean other than requiring a few hundred of extra hours of coding to make a small town in the middle of wherever, How is this better than having one building in all of the capitals and such that accesses the same information, but has it all in one place?

gimarwb17_ESO

Yes!

Every second comment in this thread seems to be Lady in the Water, strange, do I detect some kind of ulterior motives here?

joshisanonymous

No!

RomedyMC wrote: »

However, each guild is itself a small market. And! Since the markets are all selling the same thing they are in competition! Meaning if you cannot find that beech shield w/ Divines that you need perhaps you should consider looking for a better "trading" guild. Or, at the very least, look at the trading guilds you have and see how many people are online and active.

I think this sort of gets to the crux of a lot of peoples' issues. I've read some comments about being in 500 person guilds where only 80 items are for sale because everyone stopped trying. That's a bad guild for trading then. If that's all you joined for, then find another. If it's not, then make one of your other guilds a trading guild. One of the guilds I'm in has 87 players and currently over 100 items for sale. I found a number of things I'd buy just skimming through.

It seems like a lot of people are used to internet shopping or didn't play games without auction houses much. There's all this talk of instant gratification and superior search functions. What about just taking some effort to learn how this economy works and playing it?

For instance, the poor search functionality that people are lamenting. It takes effort, but also means that you can potentially find really good deals that others won't find. Say someone has a really useful item that they put up for sale for a stupid low price. Say 50 other people put that item up for a stupid high price. Say 10 other people are like you and really want that item but they also don't feel like hunting for it. You, the one buyer here willing to put effort into the economy meta-game, will get that item for the stupid low price. The others might just give up entirely. Maybe it was an item with a trait and this turned them off of the idea of being a crafter all together. That means 10 crafters just disappeared, meaning you now have that much better of a chance at making money through your own crafting. (If every player in the game is a crafter, crafting is pretty useless for making money.) There are two benefits right there to the poor search functionality problem, which leads me to believe that it isn't really a problem.

Imagine how that scenario would play out with a global AH. Naive player gets a random drop that's useful for 10 people. They go to list it on the auction house and see that everyone else sells it for a gazillion gold. He lists it for a gazillion gold (minus 1s of course). You're all screwed. OR, he doesn't even bother to look at what other people are listing the item for an sells it stupid cheap, in which case it disappears immediately, probably sucked up by the people with the gazillion gold listings.

Of course, if that naive player represents way more people than the those who want to sell the item for a gazillion gold, then the price will be undercut to infinity. You can now get as many copies of this item as you want for practically nothing. That's good, in a sense, but it also means you can never expect to sell that item yourself for any profit either.

Basically, with the current system, the fact that it makes it difficult to have full knowledge of the market, means to me that almost everything can be valuable and cheap at the same time. If you're willing to put in the effort, and all the "Yes!'s" seem to be not so willing, then you should be able to do pretty well.

Viverim wrote: »

The trading guilds, however, are not actually in competition with each other. They would be if you knew what the prices everyone else was selling for was, but there is no way to advertise your guild prices to anyone outside of your guild, and thus no way anyone would know that Guild X is selling maple for 5g while Guild Z is selling it for 15g. Competition only works when the sellers are competing. Right now, they're not.

They kinda can know this, albeit not perfectly. First of all, the keep store thing would provide some insights. They might also get a clue when everyone leaves their "trade guild" because there are no good trades to be had there. But outside of those two points, remember that everyone in one guild is also in 4 other guilds, each with their own store. It's unlikely that all 500 players in Guild A are the same 500 players in Guild B, as well. This means everyone comes to the market in Guild A with a different perspective and a different idea of what's worth what. If there's an item that's desirable to a reasonable number of people in Guild A, but 2/3rds of them can find it for cheaper in one of their other guilds, then Guild A will have trouble selling it and might want to lower their prices. Or they might just remove it completely I guess. But people talk in guilds. So a Guild A member selling this desirable item may be like, "/g2 Why doesn't anyone want to buy this awesome item I have for sale?", and 5 people will response with, "Oh, I buy that from my other guild for cheaper." They can then sell it for that lower price. OR, since there are separate markets, the seller can go to one of THEIR other guilds and try to sell it again for the higher price. Maybe the members of this seller's 4th guild don't happen to be in guilds that sell that item for a cheap price and so will pay that higher price.

The point is, you don't need an auction house to know something about what happens in other guilds. You don't need any more than what you have now. The fact that it takes more effort to obtain this knowledge, though, means that the more savvy players, who are willing to put in the extra effort, will figure out where they can sell something for high and where they can buy something for low. Like I said, everything can be cheap and expensive at the same time without a global AH.

Viverim

Yes!

That's all cool, but how many people do you really expect to go through the electronic equivalent of flea market hunting for their items? I'm betting the real number will be way lower than you think it is. And if it only benefits the few who want to spend an hour or so of their game time window shopping then how does it really contribute to the game?

As for crafters leaving, I expect the opposite will wind up taking place. Normal non-crafters will start crafting so they can upgrade their own stuff, thus you will have a glut of crafters as opposed to a small number of them. Again, it doesn't affect me personally other than that I will never make anything to sell to anyone else as #1- I don't have a clue what it's true value is and #2 - few, if any, would buy it anyway. Massive numbers of crafters work with the current system because you can have tens of thousands of crafters serving hundreds of guilds, but don't pretend that this is in any way bringing people together. It just strengthens guild isolation.

RKLimes

No!

Fix the guild stores, and you won't need one.

joshisanonymous

No!

Viverim wrote: »

That's all cool, but how many people do you really expect to go through the electronic equivalent of flea market hunting for their items? I'm betting the real number will be way lower than you think it is. And if it only benefits the few who want to spend an hour or so of their game time window shopping then how does it really contribute to the game?

It benefits those who are willing to search flea-market style because they're more likely to find that deal. It doesn't so much benefit those who don't want to shop around, but they'll simply buy something at whatever price they find if they need to. As a result of the group that's too lazy to search, it benefits people who want to be able to sell their goods for an actual profit.

The only people who can't benefit from this system are those who don't want to put any effort into it. But, because effort is required, the payoff for those willing to do it is greater.

As for crafters leaving, I expect the opposite will wind up taking place. Normal non-crafters will start crafting so they can upgrade their own stuff, thus you will have a glut of crafters as opposed to a small number of them.

Maybe, but it seems unlikely. When traits start taking 7+ days to research, regular Joes are gonna be like, "Uhh, to hell with this. I'll find a way to pay for things or to farm drops." Take DAoC as an example: it was difficult to wade through pages of items to find a deal (effort, as is needed in ESO as well) and it took a huge amount of time to level up a single craft. The result? A limited number of crafters. I knew a handful of crafters in that game and I made sure to be super friendly with them because they were actually valuable. They could also regularly sell their wares at a profit. Even years later, when it became exponentially easier to level up a craft, I was personally able to regularly make substantial profits just by selling items I made.

I'd wager that someone who would not normally craft would simply not be patient enough to level a craft in ESO. It's pretty time consuming and not fun for someone who likes to run around hack-n-slashing. Heck, go look at the PvP tactics forum. There are numerous people there who can't even handle the fact that they have to play this game's PvE to level up at a reasonable pace. If they can't handle that, and they're also too lazy to hunt flea-market style for a good deal, are they suddenly gonna take up crafting? My guess is they'll simply buy your wares, at pretty much whatever price you decide to sell at.

(Not sure why you still claim that you have no idea what something is worth after my explanation of how guilds still compete. You know what the item is worth in your guild, right? Well, that's the whole local market. Not listed? Ok, then it's worth infinity. Not selling? Ask around. Maybe pay attention to /zone. Maybe see if your guildmates can find it in their other guilds cheaper. Saying you have no idea what it's worth everywhere and therefore will not sell it is like a farmer in Malaysia deciding that they can't be bothered to sell rice because they don't know what it's worth in Canada. They know pretty well what it's worth in Malaysia, and they have to make a living...)

Edit: It doesn't promote guild isolation, btw, because all the guilds are ultimately tied together through a huge network. It's the same as in the real world. Pretend that each guild is a country with its own economy, but then there's the bigger economy. The economy of Pakhistan might have no direct connection to the economy of South Africa, but I'm sure they're both connected within a couple steps through other countries. It's the same with guilds. If no one in Guild A is also in Guild Z, it doesn't mean they're isolated from eachother. Some members of Guild A might be in Guild F, and some in Guild F are in Guild P, which has some members in Guild Z. As a result, prices set in Guild A have the potential to ripple over to Guild Z, even though there's no clear connection. (And maybe think of /zone chat as a less efficient internet that connects all the guilds in a different way. Or maybe a black market. I dunno, find a metaphor.)