Auction House

ScottK1994 · July 2016

Holycannoli wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

Okay, broken because you can't do a global search? Because you can't get in a guild with a good spot? What's your beef here? All you've said is that rich people want it to stay the way it currently is so that they stay rich (implying corruption or something similar) and that it's broken (somehow).

You shouldn't have to be in a guild at all to sell. You should be able to post your items for sale at a faction-wide auction house, like every other MMO from the past 12 years has.

Barring that, we should move all guild traders to a centralized zone like we saw with Everquest's bazaar. I still prefer a faction-wide auction house. Every other MMO has one, and ESO has to stop trying so hard to be different because they're killing the game.

I agree. They're different enough in that they have the world of elder scrolls to use. They should be winning like Charlie sheen when he pretended he didn't have aids

Grao · July 2016

AugustoCP wrote: »

Does anyone else think we really, really should get a centralized auction house? It'd be just so much easier to find things.

Yes, I know this is suggested every other hour, but the more we make these threads, the more we show how much we want it.

Every time a new thread on this subject is made I tell the same story. In WoW, a game with a central auction house, me and a group of friends had fun completely taking over the market, obliterating any competition. We did it by aggressively undercutting everyone that tried to sell their products and when prices got too low, we'd force them down a little bit more and buy out everyone before raising the prices higher than we actually thought the products were worth. We had so much gold amassed doing this was easy, all it took was time and we had the time.

All of this to say "you don't really want an auction house in ESO". Yes, they are more convenient when you are buying, but only to a point and when you look it from the position of one selling products, the current system is better as it does not favor a group of players completely monopolizing the market. Say you remove guild stores, what do you think the best guild store sellers and the guild masters them selves will do? They might as well create a new guild called 'The Mobsters', because that is what they'd become.

Beardimus · July 2016

The thing is people want something to fix a specific problem rather than find other solutions. Take your example, im amazed that you would trawl traders to find food!!! Food Mats are plentiful and you can level provisioning in a matter of hours so easily!!. So it comes back to effort, in the right way, in the right places!

Most things people moan about for wanting ESOEBAY can be sorted in other ways. Crafting, joining a few decent guilds. Join a good couple of trader guilds and you can find most stuff you want from the bank, viewing the guild stores - switching guilds even saves your search, i do this daily and get most of my regular stuff that way.

I don't mind a trawl, IF im getting a bargain which happens alot. Stuff people list without knowing or caring about the price, or out in the less popular traders. If you put the effort in you know where to go for deals. I ain't trailing round them to find basic items tho im talking set pieces with certain traits or tempers etc etc and when you find that bargain its amazing, that whole element would be lost with a central trader. The only gain is to reduce effort, which is a bad thing in my book, its no hardship if you do it right.

. Absolutely don't want it at all, and most people I know in guilds wtc playing the wider scope of the game are the same. Except people that want instant everything like its a FPS. Its an MMO, effort should be required!

Runefang · July 2016

Beardimus wrote: »

No no no, there are already deals to be had now as a buyer if you put in effort. Effort = Reward. People want everything to be effortless and easy in this game, am unsure why.

I'm happy if I get an hour of gaming time a day. I DO NOT want to spend that chasing down items which are hard find let alone ones which are affordable.

Honestly I think a happy medium is to have a global guild merchant search function. Then all guild merchants spots are equally valuable for guilds to buy. Still make the player go to the merchant to buy.

Anything is better than the garage sale approach

Tipsy · July 2016

I'm in favor of how it is now ,with local guild stores
Though i'd love to see their purpose extended.
Like when housing or guildhalls are released,
A guild could set a reward for bringing certain interior objects or furniture to their guild store

I think local guild stores allow you to make bad & good bargains as you actively have to compare prices.
this keeps the sport of selling/buying more interesting in my opinion/
With a global auction house you'd just have everyone udercutting each other by 1 gold and the thrill of bargaining would be gone.
At least to me its way more exciting to browse the guild stores and it gives players a reason to revisit all the regions too.
But I would be pro guild store merchants new purposes,
like they give you "contact details" or an application form if you are interested to join the guild which is represented at the stand.Or request you to bring them certain items desired by the guild.

What I would like them to add is a bid option though.

Verbalinkontinenz · July 2016

Runefang wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

No no no, there are already deals to be had now as a buyer if you put in effort. Effort = Reward. People want everything to be effortless and easy in this game, am unsure why.

I'm happy if I get an hour of gaming time a day. I DO NOT want to spend that chasing down items which are hard find let alone ones which are affordable.

Honestly I think a happy medium is to have a global guild merchant search function. Then all guild merchants spots are equally valuable for guilds to buy. Still make the player go to the merchant to buy.

Anything is better than the garage sale approach

quite funny, having not even an hour in game but trolling since last night like a boss. maybe u focus on the wrong stuff.

Beardimus · July 2016

An hour a day on average is alot, I get no where near that over a week. What are these things you desperately need each time you play?? I really don't get it. I hear you are frustrated, but just look at quality effort in the right places. Between crafting and guild membership and stocking up on stuff you use regular 30 mins a week on a trawl is maximum once you get it honed!!

ScottK1994 · July 2016

TOBI LEGEND-TIME WILL PASS YOU BY:

https://youtu.be/-2NDl89QBSs

grom1024 · July 2016

I'm for AH as buyer and seller.

As buyer, I do not want visit 30 places to find what I need at reasonable price. For example, price for simple style material is not reasonable in many guilds. 50g for Flit - this is beyond unreasonable considering that NPC sales it for 15g.

As seller, I cannot sell now narrow niche goods, because auditory is too narrow. For example, I could not sell level-limited set pieces like cp100 lich set and now just deconstruct when such things come around. None is going to visit 100 shops to gather the entire set that will expire 20cp later. The only goods that sell well are cp160 set items and generic goods like recipes or crafting materials. Also someone buys cp140 purple items around 400g, and I do not understand why, 20cp later there will be need for other gear anyway. Also, crafted equipment does not sell well. I could not put on the sale level 20 seducer armor set knowing that it will likley sell, I only can take orders for the specific style and level.

Also, it is now simpler to develop crafting myself for my characters, then to seek equipment or even consumables on the market. Prices are not reasonable in many places, and it takes a lot of time to find something even with addons. So I'm buying only crafting materials and sometimes reciepts. The market is practically dead for me, and even in the current state I had to spend a lot of time trade instead of playing interesting parts of the game. I probably would not have invested efforts in developing the crafter charcter, if there were adequate market, where I could buy needed crafted set for my level.

TheDarkoil · July 2016

It would make it infinitely easier to find items as a buyer however people like myself would completely crash the regular prices of items. Take for example perfect roes and ambrosia. I do a lot of fishing and get about 2 perfect roes a day which have a usual price of 9500-11000g. Ambrosia sells for between 3k and 5k depending on how many you get in a bundle, think I've seen 5 for 15k recently which makes sense as the price is always going to be linked to perfect roes as people may buy them for 10k and still try and turn a profit on the 4 ambrosia they make. I catch my own fish and sell ambrosia for no more than 2k each in chat, I sold 10 for 18k, if I had the quick option to unload them in an auction house it would seriously undercut the other people still trying to sell them at higher prices, I'm sure the same would happen for most items.

grom1024 · July 2016

TheDarkoil wrote: »

It would make it infinitely easier to find items as a buyer however people like myself would completely crash the regular prices of items.

What you are going to do with gold? There are fixed gold sinks like reskill or horses, but all others are just relative. But there is also fixed gold income from different sources. Overall, if prices are lower, you will just sell more. I think that balance of prices will reestablish, but on the global level.

If that happens, fishing is just will not be an serious income source, you will have to do something else to get income, and fish only for fun of it. I think roe will fix somewhere in range where would still worth investing time in it, otherwise people would not bother selling it. And considering how long cp grind is, it would probably sell even better.

And I'm getting about 5-10K gold just from doing three dungeons on single char (random normal, silver, gold) and selling loot to NPC. And I'm selling only ornate items and deconstruct others, I would have got more from it if I sold traitless and known trait items too. I do not feel like I'm lacking gold now, I'm getting 100k a week and only small portion of it comes from traders. After I'll upgrade the last level of bank and buy few rings I actually do not know what I'll spend gold on.

Makkir · July 2016

ScottK1994 wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Capitalism is an open market.

wayfarerx wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Above are some people with hundreds of thousands of gold and are worried that they'll seem less rich in a working system.

People say this a lot and it's nonsense. I'm in a good trade guild with a prime spot and I don't see any collusion or exploiting the system, just weekly raffles and such like any other guild.

What supporters of the global auction house overlook is that people like me will game the holy hell out of a global store front. I've done it in other MMOs and I'd do it here as well. I wouldn't need a guild or raffles or any of that nonsense, just me and a couple hours hacking some LUA and boom, your markets belong to me. The current system makes such market domination infeasible for the solo individual and difficult for large guilds. A global auction house would make it trivial for everyone.

Your cure is worse than the disease.

No you're putting things in my mouth that i didn't say. It's not corrupt it's just broken

Okay, broken because you can't do a global search? Because you can't get in a guild with a good spot? What's your beef here? All you've said is that rich people want it to stay the way it currently is so that they stay rich (implying corruption or something similar) and that it's broken (somehow).

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Capitalism is an open market. This is the most closed market I've ever experience in any game in my life. On console without being able to talk to people it's like being in the stone ages but without having a family that had taught me basic things so I've got a lot of stuff and nothing to do with it. Or I get money and have nothing to buy

What does this even mean? Capitalism is an "open" market? So you can just pop down to your local strip mall and set up a storefront whenever you like? No rent, no contracts, everyone is welcome? What are you talking about?

Are you daft?

I want a simple trade system. I want to search for items and find them in the same place every time. An auction house. I'm saying every single reason for not wanting to have an auction house is pure bull and then fair enough it gets close to corrupt if people are making money in a broken system and they refuse to accept it's broken.

then this game isnt for you. your convienence comes with a price....my content. Just like in SWG, I enjoy the commerce aspect of this game. Thats a large part of content to me. When I make millions of gold in a week from traders, it means I am not PvPing, raiding, or in vMA. It takes hours of farming (content) just like doing raids/vma (content). Just because you dont find one aspect fun, doesnt mean others agree.

Youre asking for a global auction house when players sittng on literally heaps of gold will just dominate certain markets. I can promise you one thing, you will never touch a tempering alloy again, unless you farm them yourself or buy them from me at 10k each.

The current trade system slows the hyper deflation process.

Done with this argument, it feels like each week we have to re-educate some world of warcraft refugee.

ScottK1994 · July 2016

Lol you're just made the argument against it while proving the opposite is true.

"Youre asking for a global auction house when players sittng on literally heaps of gold will just dominate certain markets." Is already happening because you said you make millions in a week omg are you blind to your denial?

idk · July 2016

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Fun fa

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

ScottK1994 wrote: »

Stealthbr wrote: »

Here's an idea: keep the Guild Traders and the entire system as it is, but introduce an NPC in every major city that, when interacted with, allows a player to search for the item they want and that NPC, perhaps for a fee, tells the player where to find it. The NPC does not tell how much of said item is available at the location(s) or how much it costs, only where the player can find it. An Item Scout.

It can't be complicated. Complicated and the buying and selling of goods isn't amicable.

You guys wouldn't be wanting this system in real life anyway. Need to find toilet roll. The shop down the road only has Lamborghini parts and candy. The next store you find has worn shoes and clown dolls. The next again store sells poison and food right next to eachither. Well guess what. You've *** your pants by the next shop but it does have toilet roll. Now you need detergent.

In many ways we have this same sytem in real life. We must go to different stores to buy what we need and (sans Internet) we aren't really sure what they carry in specific terms of what they have in stock until we get there. Heck, even with the Internet we don't always know what a store has in stock.

Granted, some may be younger than I am but this is how real life has been. We get to know which vendors and locations tend to have what we are looking for.

What I think would be funny is if Zos implemented a central trading house as the only source for trading and limited posting to 30 slots per account. Omg, the griping that would ensue. Cause their would be a limit. Obviously.

Its NOTHING similar to real life. Regardless of stock you know what types of items will be there.

This isn't a market. It's a hundred individual markets(or more) and its stupid for an online game.

And RL is hundreds of individual market places. So, it is nothing like real life except being a close mirror.

Beardimus wrote: »

No no no, there are already deals to be had now as a buyer if you put in effort. Effort = Reward. People want everything to be effortless and easy in this game, am unsure why.

Very true. While I often find players list things for absurdly high prices for which they never sell the item, I often find great deals.

Someone said the pro guild trader argument was all based on the seller point of view. Clearly not. If I am selling items well then someone, including myself, is buying a lot of stuff.

To the person who said that the idea is wrong that prices are stable under the current system and used 1970 televisions as an example, well, it does not make sense. Prices of new items in game, just as real live do decrease as more supply is introduced. We saw this with the rings from SO. However, for every guild trader having 3 - 4 players undercut prices a single trading location would mean 100 players cutting prices making the rings almost worthless.

The guild trader system has been fabulous for both sellers and buyers. While I understand players wanting their new game to have systems from their old game because they are familiar with them, ESO has made a refreshing departure from the stale central trading house. I applaud the devs in keeping steady with the current design.

ScottK1994 · July 2016

Prices haven't changed cheaper? The materials I have had increased in value on console since I started playing. The gold is like yen, a million seems like a hundred thousand. Or eventually there will be the same as real life where 1% has more than the other 95% combined

Zerok · July 2016

wayfarerx wrote: »

Zerok wrote: »

wayfarerx wrote: »

What supporters of the global auction house overlook is that people like me will game the holy hell out of a global store front. I've done it in other MMOs and I'd do it here as well. I wouldn't need a guild or raffles or any of that nonsense, just me and a couple hours hacking some LUA and boom, your markets belong to me. The current system makes such market domination infeasible for the solo individual and difficult for large guilds. A global auction house would make it trivial for everyone.

The bold part is completely false, market domination is already happening.

The bold part is also devoid of the quite important context that is sitting right next to it, I said infeasible for individuals and difficult (but not impossible) for guilds.

It's not difficult at all for guilds. In fact, it takes less than 10 players to split among themselves all the guild traders and control the market on specific goods.

Zerok wrote: »

This game needs antitrust laws to prevent the big guilds from controlling the market like they do. The current system is broken because it is not capitalism, it is anarchy.

Is this a thing on console or something? I just don't see it on PC/NA. Sure there are large trade guilds and syndicates of multiple guilds and whatnot, but they can't run the whole market. I buy stuff that I think is a good deal and sell stuff for good prices all the time and I never collude with anyone.

It's happening on PC. First material that comes to mind is nightwood. Only a few guilds sell large amounts of those at an excessive price. This is no coincidence.

Zerok wrote: »

As for the guild traders, it's just an annoyance. ZOS won't get rid of them because they want to force the players to increase their playtime. There is no other reason for them.

Well, many players like the guild trader system. It's not perfect but it does allow for a little bit of simulated information asymmetry in the market. A global auction house would be much worse when it came to groups controlling the price and flow of goods.

The only way to prevent market control is antitrust laws, guild traders or not. Without this kind of mechanism, the economy in this game is doomed.

And market control can be done with only one player with enough playtime. Here, go watch this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ffZfbi-wjto

You must realize that some players almost play exclusively the trading game.

Elsonso · July 2016

ScottK1994 wrote: »

The economy isnt that strong. It lacks buyers. I know it for a fact because I can't buy the things I need when I need them.

Again, this is not the case on PC/Mac and I think the big reason for that is the User Interface problems on console.

I frequently sell stuff I just posted before I can even leave the Guild Store and if I am not on top of things, I can have nothing in the kiosk in a matter of hours. This tells me that the buyers are out there.

I think that if ZOS would just enhance the UI on the console (and by proxy the Gamepad and PC) it would take the traders to an entirely new level.

1. Searching needs to be vastly improved, with the ability to at least retain the last search between traders. There needs to be a text box for keyword searches and it would be helpful if categories could be filtered by quality. All of this should include sorting by item name and price.
2. There needs to be a better way to get sales history, so that people know how much stuff sells for. Browsing through the log file in reverse chronological order is not the way to do it. The only way this could be less useful is if they sorted it randomly.

Grao wrote: »

Every time a new thread on this subject is made I tell the same story. In WoW, a game with a central auction house, me and a group of friends had fun completely taking over the market, obliterating any competition. We did it by aggressively undercutting everyone that tried to sell their products and when prices got too low, we'd force them down a little bit more and buy out everyone before raising the prices higher than we actually thought the products were worth. We had so much gold amassed doing this was easy, all it took was time and we had the time.

This is the number one reason I like the guild traders better than the auction house, and why ZOS made the absolutely correct decision to go local trader instead of global store. I am also familiar with the Auction House Game and played in that world for a while on WoW.

Although, because of the 500 player limit to guild size, it has caused large guilds to split. It has encouraged coordinated syndicates, at least on PS4 (which I avoid, by the way). These syndicates then try to capture more traders in a location. I am not sure if increasing the guild size would mitigate the syndicates or just make them worse. I suspect it would just make them worse and guilds would still split to try to take more spots, even if they were not full. If anything, smaller guilds (250) and twice as many traders would be better.

grom1024 wrote: »

What you are going to do with gold?

They don't have to do anything with the gold. It is a game just to collect it. Some people are spending tons of money on repairing CP 160 gear each week, but to others, it is just a game. The same applies to collecting Champion Points, raw materials, recipes, achievements, or whatever. The collecting of the thing can have more meaning than the thing itself.

ScottK1994 · July 2016

No your crony currency gets ruined and replaced with a working currency. Simple.

Makkir · July 2016

The other day I found some columbine on a trader out in some middle of nowhere area for like 20 gold each. Would never occur like that with a AH.

[snip]
[edited for baiting]

Beardimus · July 2016

Agreed @Makkir, people just don't listen tho, people want ESO to be WoW and wont listen to reason on other ways of resolving what they are trying to do.

ScottK1994 · July 2016

Makkir wrote: »

The other day I found some columbine on a trader out in some middle of nowhere area for like 20 gold each. Would never occur like that with a AH.

[snip]

So basically some poor guy was so unaware or unable to access the market he sold something worth decent amount for really cheap and you say that's good? What a crony.

[edited to remove quote]

Zerok · July 2016

Makkir wrote: »

The other day I found some columbine on a trader out in some middle of nowhere area for like 20 gold each. Would never occur like that with a AH.

Was it worth it? You lost what, one hour of playtime to save a few thousands gold?

Certainly you don't expect everyone is able to have that much playtime?

Makkir · July 2016

I went around and bought all the nightwood I could find and then list it for 5k a stack on my vendor in Rawlkha. Took me like 2 hours to farm trade stores for it. If you dont like the price, you have full access to go farm it yourself.

Call us cronies, but your leeches. Its MMO welfare. You want tools like an AH from the in game government as you so call it (zos), instead of working for what you need? Sounds pretty reflective of RL if you ask me.

I have worked extremely hard to build inventory and enough capital in this game to do what I do in the commerce end game, all that at the expense of completing vMA, finishing in the top leaderboards of Cyrodiil campaigns, etc. It's no different than players who invested weeks and months into clearing VMA the first time.

The system to some degree is broken, but an AH isnt the answer. Heres a "for starters" list
- Get a freaking job. Join a good trade guild and work hard at it
- the trade guild UI needs work, namely a search bar
- text chat is needed on console since its harder to sell in "zone." And i hate playing in major cities on XB1 with people selling their crap via area voice (i play on both PC and XB1).

Krym · July 2016

Zerok wrote: »

Was it worth it? You lost what, one hour of playtime to save a few thousands gold?

Certainly you don't expect everyone is able to have that much playtime?

who says he was looking for it? you are aware people come by guild merchants simply by chance, especially the ones outside?

found dirt cheap hircine/agility pieces on a trader I came across after leaving an instance. it didn't took any more of my time than riding across it and picking up a flower.

if that stretches your daily allowance maybe a game that doesn't require such a tremendous amount of time to play would be better suited.

EDIT: you can check most merchants in less than 15 minutes, you can even cut that time down when you have a guild keeping an eye out for some stuff you need.

Zerok · July 2016

Krym wrote: »

if that stretches your daily allowance maybe a game that doesn't require such a tremendous amount of time to play would be better suited.

No because I believe the game should cater to the needs of the majority. And I feel that, on this issue, my interests are aligned with those of the majority, especially when it comes to implementing antitrust laws within the game to prevent what Makkir is doing.

ZOS_PeterT · July 2016

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Makkir · July 2016

Zerok wrote: »

Krym wrote: »

if that stretches your daily allowance maybe a game that doesn't require such a tremendous amount of time to play would be better suited.

No because I believe the game should cater to the needs of the majority. And I feel that, on this issue, my interests are aligned with those of the majority, especially when it comes to implementing antitrust laws within the game to prevent what Makkir is doing.

what prevents you from farming nightwood? Youll come back at me say you have better things to do, because you value the things you enjoy in game subtantially higher than what I and others enjoy. It's the same reason the pve crowd hates the pvp crowd (bc the latter cries for pvp nerfs that affect the pve group). You essentially want to nerf our content because it's not fun for you.

The difference here versus RL is there is literally an endless supply of nightwood (respawn times aside) for those who will farm it themselves. Relying on a trade store is called convenience, and as with everything in life, that comes at a premium.

grom1024 · July 2016

I suggest compromise solution. Lets keep guild stores. And lets add AH. Those who like guild stores will use them, and those who like AH will use AH. We will see what is better in long run for users and in year or two only most popular solution will remain.

But I think that opponents of AH will never agree with such approach, because they will loose in such less restricted market. Some of them are making some money off extremely inconvenient guild store UI (the lack of search function is ridiculous especially when visiting other guild stores), so they would like this artificial barrier to be kept.

grom1024 · July 2016

lordrichter wrote: »

grom1024 wrote: »

What you are going to do with gold?

They don't have to do anything with the gold. It is a game just to collect it. Some people are spending tons of money on repairing CP 160 gear each week, but to others, it is just a game. ...

Adding AH will not make things too different for those who play trade game, they will have to adapt to new rules and the trade game will be somewhat more challenging. They will have to bring some value beyond moving goods around guild stores.

xericdx · July 2016

My 2 cents from an average player with limited time to play.

Am in a few good trading guilds and can find almost everything I need there. For very specific items I might have to look elsewhere but a quick tour of the major hubs is normally more than enough. In any case, this is rare.

I like the trading system and wouldn't substitute for a easy and shallow global AH. I like trading as a part of the gaming experience and, if anything, I would agree that improvements can be made for facilitating this (UI not the best).

As said, this is only my 2 cents. We will never be unanimous on this, as on any other aspect of this massive game.