A TRULY Unbiased Poll About the Trading System

Artemiisia · April 2015

I prefer the current, guild-based trading system.

39 for 39 against currently the community is split 50/50% thats never happen yet

NewBlacksmurf · April 2015

I prefer the current, guild-based trading system.

I really think what we have is best.
I do feel that a Market Place would make things better (a zone where ppl can go trade and where all NPC would somehow give access to any guild ah who set it up in the market)

Now trading without guilds works as players go to trade vs spaming zone chats

Arkadius · April 2015

I prefer the current, guild-based trading system.

I simply like the current system because it's much more immersive than in other mmos. I acknowledge it's not the most comfortable system, but this is often a problem when it comes to immersion vs convenience.

Laerian · April 2015

I prefer to replace the current system with a global auction house.

Not only a biased poll, because a global AH is not the only option and it was never discussed that way in the beginning of ESO. Most discussions I remember agreed that a global AH applied to a megaserver could have some problems.

By the way, all these polls are answered by a community who already accepts somehow the current system. Those who consider that being forced to be in a guild (a fake one) to sell their wares (with even more restrictions) is an aberration, probably are no longer with us ; others may play the game but not be so close to ESO forums because the same reason.

So proving a point doing a biased poll to a biased non-representative community; it reveals nothing. Even if the global AH option wins (against the horde of economy ignorants and others who have been misled with false arguments) that won't show reliable numbers.

What the devs need to ask themselves is if it convenient for the game to continue pretending that a "healthy economy" is to keep a part of the community out of it while another part is restricted and pissed. In other words, to have a "healthy economy" is to have the less economy possible.

The mini AH are already in place, they only need to open them to everyone.

Adrastes · April 2015

I prefer to replace the current system with a global auction house.

Global auctionhouse will be thousand times better than current limited for guilds only.

onlinegamer1 · April 2015

I prefer to replace the current system with a global auction house.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/164642/why-zos-reason-for-no-global-auction-house-is-not-valid

First, I have been a software developer, development lead and product designer for over 26 years. This means I have more experience than everyone at ZoS. I even have more experience than most of ZoS ESO devs have been alive, going by what age they appear to be in the videos they release. (They are young'uns!

)

Second, everything I am about to post can be Googled.

Third, If you think I "don't know what ESO's software stack is, so I can't possibly judge if something is possible or not without knowing how the ESO server code is written", you're simply wrong.

Lets get to it.

Any software can use more than 1 technology. I could have a client/server application (ESO) written on a certain stack (lets say C#, java, MySQL for example) and even build it into a proprietary "engine" (an MMORPG engine). That does NOT prohibit me from adding a specific game feature which uses a completely different technology than the main application, especially if that feature is what's referred to as "modular". i.e. if it doesn't really have to integrate very much with the rest of the software. For example, I could add (to the stack I just mentioned) a feature which uses a "PhP/JQuery/Node/MongoDB" stack, and integrate that into my UI pretty seamlessly.

Now that we've established that, no matter HOW ZoS has coded ESO, I could add anything I want, in any technology, to the ESO game client easily, no matter what technology it needs or what tech stack ESO already uses. Got that? OK.

Global Auction House: ZoS says its "not possible due to the load it would have because of the # of players (due to using single megaservers)"

I have two words for that claim: Bah. Loney.

Using a No-SQL DB I could code a global auction house for ESO that could support 50 million players, each posting 1,000 items for auction, and you could search it and post bids in less than 50 ms (milliseconds) for each database access. In other words, any number of players of ESO could use this AH with no lag whatsoever, even on a megaserver. Again, all of this can be Googled if you so desire.

Conclusion
ZoS's reason that a global AH isn't possible due to performance reasons (due to using megaservers) is not a valid reason. The only thing preventing ZoS from having a global AH is to want to provide one, and to be willing to design it with proper technology which they can plug into their game easily.

My Recommendation
I actually do not support "Auction Houses" (i.e. players post items with bid/buyout prices, other players bid on item until the auction expires, etc.) Instead, I support what ZoS already has for guild stores, which is a "store' concept, just at the global (game) level. Here are my rules for such "Player Stores" which any good MMORPG should have:

- Players list items for sale only (no bidding system at all).

- Rigid categorization helps scaling: i.e. "Swords", "Maces", "Heavy Chest Armor", "Light Boot Armor", "Necklaces", "Rings", etc.
-- No ability to browse/search across these categories (i.e. you have to search "Swords" for "Lightning" (for example), then search "Shields" for "Lightning", etc.) It puts a little more onus on the player to do multiple searches, but you could mitigate this by some good UI features like preserving the search term as players swap categories so they don't have to re-type it over and over, even preserving search terms across sessions. Also, lots of good pre-set filters like rarity, material, quality, etc.

- Game-enforced price caps based on rarity of items to control/eliminate market exploitation and inflation.

- Account-level posting caps to prevent overloading and exploitation (for example, 10 items max for sale at once, per account)

arena25 · April 2015

Let me guess...Zeni will be in here shortly and will say for the third time there is an existing thread...

In 3...2...1...

ZOS_MichelleA · April 2015

Hello there, everyone. There was an existing, active poll for discussing the current trading system in game, which can be found here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/164357/unbiased-poll-trader-system-improved-trader-system-personal-kiosks-auction-house-something-else.

We encourage all interested in sharing their opinions to do so in the current thread. The reason we are consolidating these threads is to ensure that everyone interested in discussing this can do so in a central location. Thank you!