I suppose it depends on the guild and what their objectives are.

I'm in 4 trading guilds. Of them, one is super hardcore, bids 7 figures on Kiosks, mandates $5,000G per week minimum donation from every member and even requires members to stand around the kiosk in the guild tabards performing emotes. (no criticisms - good for them)

On the other end of the spectrum, my guild recently formed a secondary guild for trading. We'll be at 500 members this weekend (0-500 in 10 days). Our focus is buying and selling within our own store, money-making advice, crafting tips & help, pricing suggestions, etc. We use our bank gold to fund daily/weekly contesting. There is plenty of posting / purchasing volume.

Yes we will bid on Kiosks and we'll fundraise but not in a hardcore mandatory way.

So, like I said at the start, it really depends on what the guild chooses to focus on and there is room for plenty of different styles to be successful.

In my opinion, i found zero use in being in a trade guild and ultimately left all of them. As you said, it's mostly sellers now, and on top of that, all I ever saw in the ones I was in was full retail prices (or over inflated), which really defeated the purpose of me joining them in the first place. When I buy and sell, I'd rather do it in zone chat. I typically sell stuff below the full retail market price because usually that's too high anyway. I don't want to sell in a trade guild because someone will just buy it and ten minutes later is spamming it for the full retail price. I'd rather sell cheaper to someone who actually needs it and appreciates a good deal. Same goes for buying, if I need something, I'd rather just ask in chat and find someone who isn't greedy trying to get the over inflated price for every thing, when it's clearly not worth that much.

And the guild stores....I've only ever found one that had good prices. For example, I needed a vr12 purple ring for gf. In crag, one store had them for around 3-4k, which seems good and reasonable, and the other ones were selling them for 20k. Same thing with the Warlock ring...I bought both of the ones I had for 4-6k each, but if you look on the guild stores, the prices were 25k-40k.

The final straw for me was when I asked someone to make me a piece of mara's (also for gf), and the guy said he'd do it for 10k....and that was just for a plain white one. Sure he was just being a greedy jerk, but he was serious because 'it's a pain to go all the way over there'...which I knew, because I was there, but just couldn't make the last piece she needed for another week left on my research.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't even charge ppl to make stuff if they have the mats. I'll take a tip or whatever, but never much at all. In my mind, we're all in the same faction so should be on the same team, so to speak. I don't charge for making items with traits for research either. I'll basically just trade for those and if you don't have any I need, I just tell them to pay it forward.

Very interesting, and I agree.

hiyde wrote: »

Of them, one is super hardcore, bids 7 figures on Kiosks, mandates $5,000G per week minimum donation from every member and even requires members to stand around the kiosk in the guild tabards performing emotes. (no criticisms - good for them)

Just out of curiosity how long have the Scientologists had an ESO guild?

I have actually gotten a lot of good deals from the kiosks. There are some ridiculously over-priced items on some of them which I pass right over, however I have "hit jackpot" from a few of them so far.

As for the main point OP, it's not much different than real life commerce.

Shopkeeper and other similar addons are excellent tools for looking at sales history for items so you can price accordingly. I use it for every item I'm unsure of.

EvilEmpire wrote: »

In my opinion, i found zero use in being in a trade guild and ultimately left all of them. As you said, it's mostly sellers now, and on top of that, all I ever saw in the ones I was in was full retail prices (or over inflated), which really defeated the purpose of me joining them in the first place. When I buy and sell, I'd rather do it in zone chat. I typically sell stuff below the full retail market price because usually that's too high anyway. I don't want to sell in a trade guild because someone will just buy it and ten minutes later is spamming it for the full retail price. I'd rather sell cheaper to someone who actually needs it and appreciates a good deal. Same goes for buying, if I need something, I'd rather just ask in chat and find someone who isn't greedy trying to get the over inflated price for every thing, when it's clearly not worth that much.

And the guild stores....I've only ever found one that had good prices. For example, I needed a vr12 purple ring for gf. In crag, one store had them for around 3-4k, which seems good and reasonable, and the other ones were selling them for 20k. Same thing with the Warlock ring...I bought both of the ones I had for 4-6k each, but if you look on the guild stores, the prices were 25k-40k.

The final straw for me was when I asked someone to make me a piece of mara's (also for gf), and the guy said he'd do it for 10k....and that was just for a plain white one. Sure he was just being a greedy jerk, but he was serious because 'it's a pain to go all the way over there'...which I knew, because I was there, but just couldn't make the last piece she needed for another week left on my research.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't even charge ppl to make stuff if they have the mats. I'll take a tip or whatever, but never much at all. In my mind, we're all in the same faction so should be on the same team, so to speak. I don't charge for making items with traits for research either. I'll basically just trade for those and if you don't have any I need, I just tell them to pay it forward.

I belonged to about 5 or 6 "trade guilds" before I found one that is decent. So I was bordering on finding them useless, but now I see that they can be pretty great as well.

You'll always see some crazy prices in the guild store though. Someone loots their first purple item, thinks they hit the jackpot, puts it in the store for 40K (when you can get the same thing for 1-5K) and there it sits for a whole month, with all the other over-priced stuff that no one is going to buy. I think having listings be 7 days instead of 1 month would cut down on that a lot.

About half of my sales are made to guild members. The other half come from the traders. I just wish there was a way to set a price for guild members and another one for non-members.

Isn't this a good thing? 'Seller' guilds will hopefully begin to specialize and ensure quality in their wares in order to draw in customers. There'll no longer be a need to wade through 30 pages of vendor trash to find the diamond in the rough; instead, they'll all be quality merchandise. Of course, average prices around the board are going to go up, as now guilds have to spend gold for kiosks and sellers will be expected to pay dues.

Which is why this game should of had a global auction house from the start. Zdnimax are destroying an already flawed system

I've been in trading guilds since before kiosks were introduced; they've always been more seller than buyer oriented.

The scenario the OP predicts where all trading guilds will impose ridiculous requirements and be dominated by end gamers is a bit paranoid to say the least.

There are more than a few decent thriving trading guilds like the following that will prevent such a thing from happening:

Cuyler wrote: »

I'm the leader of a 500 member guild...most of my members could care less about a guild trader. we do good business without it.

All I can say is each guild has different priorities. find the one that works with what your needs are.

Me personally, I won't be forcing members to pay fees just to fund large bids (500k+) and for what exactly? A couple more thousand in sales a week? some notoriety? seems like a waste of perfectly good gold that could've been funneled back to the members with fun activities.

Plus every Monday morning there is guaranteed to be traders that no one has bid on and can be bought for the flat fee if your available at that time.

There are other benefits that a guild can provide like assistance and experience which warrant membership fees, but that is whole other topic. A trader alone is not worth the hype if your in an active guild.

Aeratus wrote: »

In the past, trading guilds were balanced between buyers and sellers. That is, they were each a self-contained market, where it was efficient to have 50% buying activity and 50% selling activity within the member guild.

>>>>With the new guild vendors, the "buyer" members of trade guilds have become obsolete, since anybody can buy from your guild vendor. <<<<

The consequence is that the performance of a trading guild is now based primarily upon the number of high level sellers in the guilds. That is, you would ideally want 500 members who are net sellers rather than net buyers. The sellers generate tax revenue, which allows the guild to bid on traders. Meanwhile, the guild members who are primarily buyers no longer contribute anything more than some random person on the streets of rawl kha, and thus are deadweights taking up potential space of sellers.

*Therefore, the balanced trading environment of guilds is now obsolete. Instead, we now have sellers guilds, which eventually will be dominated by high level pvpers and trial-runners bringing in lots of expensive loot. You already see guilds recruiting based on how much sales a member is expected to bring in.*

So is this shift from trading guilds to sellers guild a good thing? For me, the old system where each guild is a self-contained market never made any sense because the whole economy was too fragmented. With the guild vendors, the economy is less fragmented, but the change will bring in a new wave of elitism for sure.

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Yep - this is Zeni's version of 'be careful what you wish for'. Again, just like with the Vet+ content Nerfing, the reed is blowin' in the wind, instead of sticking with their original design intent. I realize there are those who wish for a full-on Auction house. This was supposed to be an alternative.

I see it as a halfway capitulation. Same with the nerfage of Vet+ content 1-10 instead of fixing the group finder, the phasing issues, and raising the group e x p bonus and reward/loot table for grouping. It was clear that would have a direct affect on this MMO's endgame, and it already has. Like this change to the guilds' trading structure is going to have a direct affect on the economy. Might not be huge, but whatever the extent its convoluted to say the least.

ZOS - yea, everyone seems to want you to consider player input more- but I'd say you're better at taking customer suggestions for FUTURE content instead of trying to amend/half-do players' requests with an existing structure you spent money and time on designing and which can't be readily/easily/completely modified well.

Stick to yer' guns. Own it. Of course, go with considerations of suggestions from players for new, upcoming content you are working on. But stop trying to completely re-do major parts of your baby. Except for what is broken. Blitz-market and reward the original target market you planned for. Stop blowin' in the wind. (*)

How about zeni take a bigger house cut when you sell something in the "wild" vs to a guildie, so it's more profitable for the players to sell to in-guild members, thus increasing the value of 'buyers' in a guild?

I like it this way, i get to go to the traders get all the cheap stuff and sell it in Normal level zones for x2 x3 the price

The law of unintended consequences in full force. They have tried to avoid a global trading service, and it's had this consequence.

They need to surrender and set up a global trading service, it's the only long term solution. I realise the difficulties, well as much as any none programmer can, and accept it won't happen over night, but it really does need to happen.