liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

Do I have to go through a guild a group? Nope

Do I have to go though a guild to use a vendor? Yep.

You can't compare the two.

What do you do to find a group then? Ask in Zone chat? Or maybe someone right next to you in the game?

Why don't you just do that for your sales? The vendor is a tool, a group is not a tool, so you cannot compare them. However, you can compare the act of grouping and the act of selling.

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Any MMO that fails to meet the needs of solo players is an MMO that is failing to tap into the fastest growing demographic in MMO games - the casual solo player.

That doesn't make a bad game or a bad design. That's still a choice for the company. Just because there is dollar signs going one route, doesn't mean they should or must take it.

And still ZOS don't come out to say if they're ever planning on doing anything or sticking with the current system. I love the current system, I'd just like them to comment so people stop feeling the need to start these repetitive threads.

Thymos wrote: »

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liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

No player should be dictating how another player should play.

Then stop dictating how I should have an auction house.

But if there were an auction house you would have the choice not to use it.

There's no reason we can't keep the kiosks for those that like them and have an AH For those guildless people who want to trade.

As @Tandor said maybe have it so that it charges a higher % of sale value in fees than a Trade Kiosk; but at least give those of who don't want to be in a guild the same access to basic game functions as everyone else.

Would you support a game that forced you do so something you didn't want to just to get a skillbar?

That is is in effect what the Guild Trade system does, it denies basic game functionality to close on 70% of the playerbase.

Not smart.

And it is more often than not (as @Tandor ) pointed out the portion of the playerbase that is still finding its feet and deciding whether or not to commit to the game.

I am one such player: I really like close on 90% of everything I have experienced so far; but the Trade System is close to being a game-breaker for me, so I'll probably not resub at the end of the month.

All The Best

Leeric wrote: »

Alright, my name is the same as it is in game. There are 10 spots left in an NA guild I am a mod of.
If you dont send me a message in game, except for you tallenn, and are still complaining that you cant find a guild that doesn't require you to pay, that isnt just a trade guild, and has a good location, then no one can help you.

Ill say it again, SEND ME A REQUEST VIA MAIL IN GAME, and ill invite you.

There should be no reason for anyone to be complaining then...

A few things
The guild is family friendly
I am not the leader but one of 20 mods that help guild members
It is not a trade guild, we do it all
There are special events and giveaways
No one is required to pay money to the guild to stay
2 week inactive policy
very active guild, i am usually the one on at the late, extreme early hours, we dont fall below 35 people online at anytime from what I have seen. (47 online now including myself and the leader)

Other perks ill tell you upon being a guild member....

@tallenn if your name was the same in game i sent you a mail

Im going to quote myself, in case anyone missed this.I know it hasn't been up for long BUT

I find it interesting, not one person has sent me a mail....except tall
Like I said, seems like these guys are just complaining to complain. I and some other have offered to help, but we cant do it all for you.

Oh and just for the record. Ive sold 12100 in 3 days. 480 of that went to guild on their "cut" as defined by when you put them up for sale. Considering these locations can cost 500k gold and up when you bid, thats not really a valid complaint that you don't get all the money...
And guild costs inflate prices? Then why do I find listings 2-3k under the Master Merchant amount for higher price items such as motifs?

I haven't seen one valid complaint yet in here....

Sylvyr wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

Having the economy be guild oriented and decentralized is a good thing, it keeps prices competitive and prevents a small group of people from completely hijacking the market for a particular rare item and skyrocketing the price.

You mean like the few large trading guilds that have cornered the market?

Hasn't happened, because smaller guilds have stripped those guilds of their kiosks from time to time and sometimes those guilds never recover. Remember when Merchant's Circle was a near constant presence in Rawl? with a near permanent spot near the waypoint? They were displaced and now operate out of Elden Root. Iron Bank of Bravos also has shifted spots due to being outbid and my trading guild has lost their trader multiple times in heated bidding wars over a Kiosk

The current system pits guilds against each other in fierce competition. You can't control the market.

Just one more thing that makes it a pain and inconsistency not only for the selling guild but also for the regular customers to track down a particular guild merchant if it moves or even exists from week to week.

Ah see but you're not supposed to hunt down a particular guild's store, you're supposed to go by location location location.

If I'm shopping for something and my internal guild store does not have it, and I'm not interested in getting the absolute best price but I want something quickly, the first place I go is Rawl, because that's where the most stocked stores tend to be if they can afford to be there, followed by places such as Elden Root, Mournhold, Wayrest, Daggerfall City,

if you're shopping for something in your town, and your favorite store closes, are you going to go travel across a state to find that store in another city? Probably not, you're probably going to buy from another store in your town

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Thymos wrote: »

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liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

No player should be dictating how another player should play.

Then stop dictating how I should have an auction house.

But if there were an auction house you would have the choice not to use it.

There's no reason we can't keep the kiosks for those that like them and have an AH For those guildless people who want to trade.

As @Tandor said maybe have it so that it charges a higher % of sale value in fees than a Trade Kiosk; but at least give those of who don't want to be in a guild the same access to basic game functions as everyone else.

Would you support a game that forced you do so something you didn't want to just to get a skillbar?

That is is in effect what the Guild Trade system does, it denies basic game functionality to close on 70% of the playerbase.

Not smart.

And it is more often than not (as @Tandor ) pointed out the portion of the playerbase that is still finding its feet and deciding whether or not to commit to the game.

I am one such player: I really like close on 90% of everything I have experienced so far; but the Trade System is close to being a game-breaker for me, so I'll probably not resub at the end of the month.

All The Best

Using your analogy, that's just it then. You're suggesting that he doesn't support a game that has this current system, because I definitely wouldn't support a game that forced me to do something just to get a skillbar, and would flat out refuse to play that game. So, by that inference, he should just stop playing the game.

Tandor wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

You would have to be either blind or have chat turned off to NOT be able to join any number of trading guilds that are CONSTANTLY advertising for recruitment in the low level zones.

But what if he doesn't want to be in a guild?

What then?

Yup, totally locked out of the trade system.

Any MMO that fails to meet the needs of solo players is an MMO that is failing to tap into the fastest growing demographic in MMO games - the casual solo player.

Precisely, thanks. Moreover, even if a casual player does join a trading guild there's a good chance he'll be kicked from it either through inactivity or because he doesn't play enough to be able to afford the cost of belonging to it.

However, as you say, it isn't just the casual player that is affected by this. Even a hardcore player must join a guild or be locked out of the trading system, which is crazy. No core part of any game should impose guild membership or other equivalent restriction on participation in that part of the game.

Is joining a guild really that onerous? There are plenty of casual oriented trading guilds out there that don't have listing or activity requirements, who will most likely gladly accept new members because bigger rosters are better for recruitment and revenue.

Even if you aren't in a guild you aren't locked out of trading, you can always go to population hubs and /zone advertise your goods and services.

Oh, and I still think it's a bad system - I always will, I'm a laissez faire free market kind of guy (even though i had to look up how to spell laissez faire ).

I do take back anything I said about casual gamers not having a shot at getting into a guild with a kiosk, though. When I'm wrong, I own up, and I was wrong about that.

Tandor wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

You would have to be either blind or have chat turned off to NOT be able to join any number of trading guilds that are CONSTANTLY advertising for recruitment in the low level zones.

But what if he doesn't want to be in a guild?

What then?

Yup, totally locked out of the trade system.

Any MMO that fails to meet the needs of solo players is an MMO that is failing to tap into the fastest growing demographic in MMO games - the casual solo player.

Precisely, thanks. Moreover, even if a casual player does join a trading guild there's a good chance he'll be kicked from it either through inactivity or because he doesn't play enough to be able to afford the cost of belonging to it.

However, as you say, it isn't just the casual player that is affected by this. Even a hardcore player must join a guild or be locked out of the trading system, which is crazy. No core part of any game should impose guild membership or other equivalent restriction on participation in that part of the game.

Did you not read my post? The guild i was talking about doesnt kick people for "not being able to pay" And would never ask players to pay in to stay. And if you cant log in, in 2 weeks for 1 second then I dont know what to tell you. You could also leave a note with the guild leader or on your profile in the guild saying youll be away longer than 2 weeks. And they wont kick you.

So what now?
If you dont want to join a guild then dont join it, I dont see what the big deal is why you cant join one.

Leeric wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

You would have to be either blind or have chat turned off to NOT be able to join any number of trading guilds that are CONSTANTLY advertising for recruitment in the low level zones.

But what if he doesn't want to be in a guild?

What then?

Yup, totally locked out of the trade system.

Any MMO that fails to meet the needs of solo players is an MMO that is failing to tap into the fastest growing demographic in MMO games - the casual solo player.

Precisely, thanks. Moreover, even if a casual player does join a trading guild there's a good chance he'll be kicked from it either through inactivity or because he doesn't play enough to be able to afford the cost of belonging to it.

However, as you say, it isn't just the casual player that is affected by this. Even a hardcore player must join a guild or be locked out of the trading system, which is crazy. No core part of any game should impose guild membership or other equivalent restriction on participation in that part of the game.

Did you not read my post? The guild i was talking about doesnt kick people for "not being able to pay" And would never ask players to pay in to stay. And if you cant log in, in 2 weeks for 1 second then I dont know what to tell you. You could also leave a note with the guild leader or on your profile in the guild saying youll be away longer than 2 weeks. And they wont kick you.

So what now?
If you dont want to join a guild then dont join it, I dont see what the big deal is why you cant join one.

I could as easily ask if you did not read my post ?

I wasn't talking about not wanting to join a guild, I was saying it shouldn't be required that you join a guild in order to be able to participate in a core aspect of the game. I feel the same way about being forced to do a group dungeon in FFXIV in order to unlock the auction system there. That's not because I don't want to group, it's because I don't think those sort of restrictions should be imposed as a pre-requisite to accessing a core part of the game.

As for your point about only one person taking up your guild offer, please don't assume that we all play on your server.

I find this system mostly a success story. The economy feels stable and many people tell me every week how well it is working for them. I run a large trading guild and we have built over time and I feel our member base has worked for and continues to earn the privilege of one of the 'better locations' in the game. If someone just started a guild and is complaining that they can't bid in Rawl'kha, then that's like opening a store in a strip mall and getting upset that they aren't automatically able to have the giant premium mall location. It's irrational to think that you'll have instant finances/backing to compete there and it's a slow, time-intensive, and mostly thankless process to build a community to great success in ANY aspect of the game. The economics mimic that of the real world and I feel it is healthy, but I do find the blind bid system and high competition to be very stressful at times. Honest good merchant guild leaders will build trust and gain the guild wealth to bid on better and better locations as time passes.

Being a high volume store with comparatively high costs, I need a guild of active participants, so yes I absolutely have in place some minimal participation requirements (presently 3k/wk per person in either store transactions or raffle entries to be exact) to ensure that people are there to be part of the trading community / supportive of our primary objective. I only have 500 guild spaces to offer and with high weekly expenses (recently in excess of 3 mil/wk), I would be a fool to let people ghost on our roster when there are others that will use our trading location to its potential. We keep a fun atmosphere and much like Hiyde was mentioning, we additionally run many not-for-profit events that are a ton of fun and give great prizes. Many of our successful traders work hard to educate others on how to enjoy the game economics. Remember that for some part of the game's member base, it *is* their way of enjoying the game just as some players enjoy PvP and others Trials and such. I understand that every guild is different and this might not be your experience, but the positive feedback I receive FAR outweighs the criticism.

For the taxes, they generally pay roughly 1/3 what it takes to keep our high volume kiosk in a the MOST competitive city. Supplementing through raffles and other means are necessary to make up the remainder (and a HUGE time investment for GMs). It's so critical for me to note that MOST TRADING HUBS DON'T REQUIRE THIS. So in contrast I'll also state that I run a second guild that I started recently in another area where demand is not as high and that guild easily pays for itself between taxes and member donations using no gold from my main guild AND WITHOUT having any formalized requirements. This also supports what I see with many new guilds that have taken spots in great locations within cities. This barrier to entry that a 'new guild can't be successful' that keeps being thrown around in this thread just doesn't reflect what I have experienced and what I see week after week.

For the point of members being shut out of prime trading guilds or denied access based on trying to do the numbers of the population, any trade guild GM can speak to the availability of entry. I am constantly refreshing our roster to have 500 active participants in both guilds and thus am constantly recruiting. I believe that anyone that wants a quality selling location can EASILY get one or more in-game by watching zone chat as I see many large guilds with great trading locations recruiting constantly.

Lastly, as for not having anything in common with these other 499 members of a trading guild... you instantly do and for the reason you joined. You want to sell stuff and make money. You can do price checks on items you don't have data on, ask questions, etc. You might even find people that you like there. I know that I have built many great friendships that I'm sure will last long past the duration of ESO.

The system isn't perfect, but I and many others find it workable and have a great amount of fun regardless.

liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

Mishanya wrote: »

liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

Mishanya wrote: »

liammozzb16_ESO wrote: »

No one would put up with it if the forced you to be in a guild to do anything else, so why accept it with selling?

Imagine having to be in a guild before you could quest and the guild leader gets a cut of all your earnings.

Same thing goes for doing Dungeons or trials.

I shouldn't have to go through some 3rd party I don't even know and give him a cut of my earnings just to sell a item on a vendor.

This is the price of comfort, you can spam chat with your sellings for free, or pay to guild for privilege to put your sellings on sale and go offline.

You quoted what I said but ignored it completely.

You want nobody to force you to be in guild, but nobody does.
You can spam chat to sell, but if you want to sell through vendor, you should pay for this - you should pay to vendor, you should pay to guildleaders for worries about vendor hiring. But you just want everything for free.

Do I have to be in a guild to quest? No

Do I have to be in a guild to do dungeons/trials? No

Do I have to be in a guild to PvP? No

Do I have to be in a guild to craft? No

Do I have to be in a guild to sell my items though the most effective way to sell items the vendors? Yes

Don't say I am not forced into a guild to partake in a core aspect of the game because I am.

This is actually kind of misleading.

All of those activities can be accomplished on your own, including selling. The only bit you further clarify is the selling as "effectively" You can't do much "effectively" in this game on your own so why should selling be any different.

The cut of sales that go into a guild bank from the guild store is minimal and yes the GM has access to that gold and can also control who else might have access to it but the "people" you mention that are just stealing all of that won't have a worthwhile guild for very long or it will be populated by people who don't care as long as they get to sell their stuff. What happens more often is those funds are used for paying the sometimes absurdly high cost of getting high value trader kiosks and also events.

I think you might also be mistaking "effective" for "profitable". Selling a stack of ore/ingots to an NPC vendor for an immediate and guaranteed value of 400g is Effective. Selling that same stack of ore/ingots in a vendor stall CAN be profitable if you're able to sell it quite quickly but after you factor in the going rate for ore/ingots coupled with the listing cost and the tax, you're only making marginally more than what you would get if you just sold it to an NPC.

The armor pieces that are in demand right now sell just as quickly in zone chat as they potentially do in a guild store and the stuff that isn't would sell quickly if at all which is far and away from what I would classify as "effective". The stuff that sells well does so equally either in zone chat or a vendor stall. So the only real difference here is stuff can be sold when you're not online to sell it.

So, to me anyway, it sounds like you don't feel you should have to put any effort or gold into the benefit of potential sales when you're not online.

The sad thing is, there are guild out there like the one that I run that welcomes all factions and levels and don't do anything dastardly and have found a way to generate reliable sales that would welcome you happily but you're too concerned with all these what ifs to take advantage of that.

The Selling system in this game isn't perfect, but it has it's merits and all of the solutions you have offered thus far would seem to make things worse or at least ruin it for those of us who have enjoyed it for what it is since the beginning.

*edited due to getting sales numbers mixed up*

I think the fact that a shift to a global auction house would cause the value of everything to come crashing down to basically nothing eludes people. There is not enough ways for gear to be removed from the economy vs what flows in.

There would be no value beyond selling everything you loot to the vendor as trash because nothing would be selling on the auction house in enough qty to raise the price above what it sells to a vendor.

The current system keeps these micro economies insulated from this happening.

Leeric wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Leeric wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

You would have to be either blind or have chat turned off to NOT be able to join any number of trading guilds that are CONSTANTLY advertising for recruitment in the low level zones.

But what if he doesn't want to be in a guild?

What then?

Yup, totally locked out of the trade system.

Any MMO that fails to meet the needs of solo players is an MMO that is failing to tap into the fastest growing demographic in MMO games - the casual solo player.

Precisely, thanks. Moreover, even if a casual player does join a trading guild there's a good chance he'll be kicked from it either through inactivity or because he doesn't play enough to be able to afford the cost of belonging to it.

However, as you say, it isn't just the casual player that is affected by this. Even a hardcore player must join a guild or be locked out of the trading system, which is crazy. No core part of any game should impose guild membership or other equivalent restriction on participation in that part of the game.

Did you not read my post? The guild i was talking about doesnt kick people for "not being able to pay" And would never ask players to pay in to stay. And if you cant log in, in 2 weeks for 1 second then I dont know what to tell you. You could also leave a note with the guild leader or on your profile in the guild saying youll be away longer than 2 weeks. And they wont kick you.

So what now?
If you dont want to join a guild then dont join it, I dont see what the big deal is why you cant join one.

I could as easily ask if you did not read my post ?

I wasn't talking about not wanting to join a guild, I was saying it shouldn't be required that you join a guild in order to be able to participate in a core aspect of the game. I feel the same way about being forced to do a group dungeon in FFXIV in order to unlock the auction system there. That's not because I don't want to group, it's because I don't think those sort of restrictions should be imposed as a pre-requisite to accessing a core part of the game.

As for your point about only one person taking up your guild offer, please don't assume that we all play on your server.

I would understand if this wasn't an MMO but, it is. And because this one runs off mega servers having a world auction house would cause way more problems than it would solve.

Personally I like this system better, it rewards those who are willing to look for the best price. Sort of like real life. I do think they should have better search functions though.

And im sure they have the same such guilds on EU...I doubt only NA guild do it.

And it isnt required to join a guild use /zone chat.

Guild Wars 2 had an auction house that included everyone and it worked great. This idea that a mega sever + auction house would cause a lot of problems is a dead horse that needs to finally die. Because it wouldn't.

Generally speaking : the larger and more free an economy is the more it thrives. It is true that supply would increase. But so would demand. The fact this game runs on a mega server would actually be an asset to the auction house. Not the other way around.

The OP is correct. Forcing people to join a guild to sell your wares doesn't make any sense. Expecting players to warp all over the world checking different vendors to compare prices is unrealistic. Very few players are going to have the time or patience to put up with that (including myself).

All this being said though and as flawed as the guild store system was and continues to be - the Justice System has alleviated a lot of these problems. My advice would be to go underground and use the black market as a means to sell goods and make money. It's reliable and fun. In this game crime does pay. It also beats wasting your time guild hopping around trying to find that special guild that will actually buy and sell what you need.

So this isn't the problem it used to be. You no longer have to rely solely on Guild Stores to make your gold. There are valid and effective alternatives.