Poorly thought out maintenance times and their conflict with economy mechanics

hiyde · August 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

At least when maintenance started shortly after switchover, I would get to see whether we won our bid - if we did, I could at least on those days go and do something else,

Kinda sad that those are "the good old days" lol

Cryptical · August 2016

Annalyse wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

So people overpay for a greasy product due to store location.

I have to disagree with you on that, at least where I live. I don't eat there anymore because the food is gross, but when I was in university I ate there a lot, despite the locations being somewhat inconvenient for me. Why? Prices. McDonalds was way cheaper than anywhere else to eat so if I really didn't want to cook, it was the best option. Occasionally I would spend more at the convenient places close to the university but in general, it was cheaper for me to go out of my way to McDonalds. (I do think your analogy would work using Starbucks, though. I find their stuff overpriced but there are so many of them that people just go there anyway.)

As to the topic of this thread, I find it ridiculous that this hasn't even gotten one reply from a ZOS official yet. This is a very big deal that could be fixed with absolutely no work at all. After all, they managed to change maintenance times just fine once already - so why not just do that again but this time actually think of what might benefit the playerbase?

It still applies, though you didn't realize it. Even though the McD was cheap for you, it was still overpriced. The franchise owner, after paying for the product and the labor and overhead and paying himself STILL had money to pay the franchise fee off the top, before counting profit. So your greasy burgers were still overpriced. That means they are also quite overpriced when in good locations

Annalyse · August 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

Annalyse wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

So people overpay for a greasy product due to store location.

I have to disagree with you on that, at least where I live. I don't eat there anymore because the food is gross, but when I was in university I ate there a lot, despite the locations being somewhat inconvenient for me. Why? Prices. McDonalds was way cheaper than anywhere else to eat so if I really didn't want to cook, it was the best option. Occasionally I would spend more at the convenient places close to the university but in general, it was cheaper for me to go out of my way to McDonalds. (I do think your analogy would work using Starbucks, though. I find their stuff overpriced but there are so many of them that people just go there anyway.)

As to the topic of this thread, I find it ridiculous that this hasn't even gotten one reply from a ZOS official yet. This is a very big deal that could be fixed with absolutely no work at all. After all, they managed to change maintenance times just fine once already - so why not just do that again but this time actually think of what might benefit the playerbase?

It still applies, though you didn't realize it. Even though the McD was cheap for you, it was still overpriced. The franchise owner, after paying for the product and the labor and overhead and paying himself STILL had money to pay the franchise fee off the top, before counting profit. So your greasy burgers were still overpriced. That means they are also quite overpriced when in good locations

I'm not saying they aren't overpriced. I was just pointing out that it is not so much location-based success as you'd said, since people more often go there for prices than due to location.

Ixtyr · August 2016

Nifty2g wrote: »

I think trade guilds might be more elitist than me, god damn

When you spend anywhere from 20-40+ hours a week playing the game, farming & selling items to raise funds that you yourself don't keep but rather dump back into a community guild just to be thrown away via a monstrous gold sink every single week, and have been doing that same thing for (for some people) the past two calendar years, nonstop, with no breaks and without fail (and largely without many complaints) - methinks we might be entitled to a moment of elistism.

clayandaudrey_ESO · August 2016

Ixtyr wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I think trade guilds might be more elitist than me, god damn

When you spend anywhere from 20-40+ hours a week playing the game, farming & selling items to raise funds that you yourself don't keep but rather dump back into a community guild just to be thrown away via a monstrous gold sink every single week, and have been doing that same thing for (for some people) the past two calendar years, nonstop, with no breaks and without fail (and largely without many complaints) - methinks we might be entitled to a moment of elistism.

I wouldn't call what you described as elitist.

Ixtyr · August 2016

redspecter23 wrote: »

The mechanic could change. Instead of unbid kiosks going for 100g to the first person to find them, why not start a new 24 hour bidding clock on unbid kiosks? Solves the maintenance issue while keeping away the guilds with no items for sale that will just pick it up for 100g for giggles and allow those that lose a kiosk a legit chance at another one for the week while only losing 1 day.

ZoS seems to think that these unbid kiosks help smaller guilds get a foot in the door. I disagree. It helps those with a fast connection that can download the patch get a kiosk easier. Even if it was helpful in some way, the stress it causes the trade guild GM's is far worse than any imaginary positive impact ZoS thinks this system has.

You know, this is the first actually decent idea to modify the system that I've not been totally opposed to. In fact, I quite like it.

Very intardesting..

Ixtyr · August 2016

clayandaudrey_ESO wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I think trade guilds might be more elitist than me, god damn

When you spend anywhere from 20-40+ hours a week playing the game, farming & selling items to raise funds that you yourself don't keep but rather dump back into a community guild just to be thrown away via a monstrous gold sink every single week, and have been doing that same thing for (for some people) the past two calendar years, nonstop, with no breaks and without fail (and largely without many complaints) - methinks we might be entitled to a moment of elistism.

I wouldn't call what you described as elitist.

Fair point. Ixy is not thinking very clearly tonight, he's too busy being thoroughly outraged that this hasn't been addressed for three months now.

clayandaudrey_ESO · August 2016

Ixtyr wrote: »

clayandaudrey_ESO wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I think trade guilds might be more elitist than me, god damn

When you spend anywhere from 20-40+ hours a week playing the game, farming & selling items to raise funds that you yourself don't keep but rather dump back into a community guild just to be thrown away via a monstrous gold sink every single week, and have been doing that same thing for (for some people) the past two calendar years, nonstop, with no breaks and without fail (and largely without many complaints) - methinks we might be entitled to a moment of elistism.

I wouldn't call what you described as elitist.

Fair point. Ixy is not thinking very clearly tonight, he's too busy being thoroughly outraged that this hasn't been addressed for three months now.

That is a shame.

Anslay · August 2016

clayandaudrey_ESO wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

clayandaudrey_ESO wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I think trade guilds might be more elitist than me, god damn

When you spend anywhere from 20-40+ hours a week playing the game, farming & selling items to raise funds that you yourself don't keep but rather dump back into a community guild just to be thrown away via a monstrous gold sink every single week, and have been doing that same thing for (for some people) the past two calendar years, nonstop, with no breaks and without fail (and largely without many complaints) - methinks we might be entitled to a moment of elistism.

I wouldn't call what you described as elitist.

Fair point. Ixy is not thinking very clearly tonight, he's too busy being thoroughly outraged that this hasn't been addressed for three months now.

That is a shame.

This is a huge shame. It would be WONDERFUL if ZeniMax would give some care and weigh in on / resolve this. Right now the issue is still being ignored and disappointment only begins to describe how I feel.

Just a couple of small things would improve our quality of life immensely. What will it take to get some attention? FFS I'm a really chill person, but this is bull...

Karraxx · August 2016

The current maintenance timer is an absolute joke and affects me in 2 ways:

1 - Downtime begins at 6pm AEST. 6 p.m.

2. I place bids for 2 large trade guilds, the early downtime impedes the amount of time available to place additional, last minute bids, especially when the downtime is "delayed" for a timeframe after the server was meant to go down. If a guild is bid spying past the time the server was supposed to go down, there is sweet FA i can do about it apart from throw money and hope for the best.

If the downtime, for whatever reason is extended past 8am EDT, it is a literal race to see who has the fastest internet connection and download speed to see if a kiosk is open or not. Being in Australia means i have slow download speeds and either rely on others for information, or wait till the next morning wondering if the kiosk was hired or lost.

tl;dr - Zenimax, change the maintenance timer to a time that is not in close proximity to the kiosk flip, or change the time of the kiosk flip. The stress of this damn awful system is ridiculous at best.

Conquistador · August 2016

I guess it's always a good thing when you have so much gold you don't have to stress about selling stuff.

Rayya_Blackheart · August 2016

I fully agree with all of this. Or at least change the flip time. Something.

Shogunami · August 2016

It's things like this that make me appreciate just how much of a newbie company ZOS actually is. They keep implementing these strange ideas and making these strange changes, they keep having these strange ideas - very often to the dismay of every player in ESO, but they do it anyway because they somehow reasoned that it would be good - when in reality it's not even remotely acceptable.

silvereyes · August 2016

hiyde wrote: »

- Move kiosk flip time to something at or near "prime time" on Saturday or Sunday nights, when we're all online holding our end of week guild events.
- If the above isn't possible, can we please be told why?

The kiosk flip is run by ITAPPMONROBOT, and if anyone touches it, everything will fall apart.

silvereyes · August 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

My relatively terrible ability at 'professional farming' had results that sell for 15k? 30k?!?! Why would people pay that, when it takes just an hour or less to do it themselves? Because those guild traders run on *location*, not supply/demand.

Ummm... no. No they do not "sell" for 30k.

I'm in two Rawl'kha trading guilds, one Mournhold, and one Wayrest in some of the choicest locations. And this is what the current price check for Ancestor Silk returns:
MM price (547 sales/68523 items, 10 days): 68.89 for [Ancestor Silk]

That's 13,778 gold / stack for "market" price.

As for why they are so expensive? Well, you said it: supply and demand. There are a lot of people at end game with plenty of gold that don't want to or don't have time to farm. And crafting a single CP 160 piece costs 150 ancestor silk.

Couple that with the fact that clothier 10 writs now require top tier mats, and you get a perfect storm for an expensive mat.

smacx250 · August 2016

These issues really should be addressed. I dare say that being a GM of a successful trade guild is probably the most consuming/stressful thing to do in the game. These players directly affect the ability of hundreds of players to continue with their normal game activities each and every week though the trader bid process (and more). We love our GM's for the dedication the they have in taking on this task, and insulating the members from the otherwise gritty process with fun things like auctions, raffles, etc. Please understand that while the GMs of such guilds are not great in population, they are "great" in the sense of the number of players that depend on them and in the heartfelt appreciation of their contributions to the gameplay. Please, listen to them when they describe the issues that need to be addressed - they know what they are talking about, and their dedication to the trade related aspects of the game is unwavering.

Bryndle · August 2016

Anslay wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

I'd like to take this opportunity to lay out a few of the issues we have with Kiosk flip times. Despite our best efforts of asking about this and suggesting specific solutions for over a year, we've never had any sort of response.

Bid Spying
It remains a huge issue in the game and is extremely easy to do. It is possible to calculate EXACTLY what a guild has bid *before* the bids process. This forces guilds in a competitive location to be on just before the kiosks flip to "top off" their bid. Numerous suggestions have been put forth to eliminate this issue once and for all. Removing bids from the history (which used to be posted after the bids processed) has accomplished nothing other than reducing transparency to members while allowing bid spies to keep right on spying. This also creates paranoia and bad blood between guilds.

Flip Time
In the summer, Kiosks flip at 5AM PDT / 8AM EDT. It's even worse in the winter - an hour earlier!
Highly active trade guilds typically do their biggest events on Sunday night and then have just a few hours to grab some sleep and be present for the flip. Even if bid-spying was eliminated, Officers still have to be on to search for an open location if the bid is lost. Why does this have to take place before the sun comes up on a *Monday* morning?

Maintenance
And now, maintenance has added a special new layer of hell. That means placing final bids at 4A East / 1A West and then being at the mercy of whenever servers come back up to know the results and search for a location if the bid isn't won.

Why do kiosk flip times have to be early Monday morning? How about something closer to peak play time so people don't have to interrupt their sleep 1-2 times every Monday just to secure a kiosk?

I realize this affects a small slice of the community and there are far more pressing issues that affect bigger portions of the population. But c'mon. These have been our main "pain points" with Trading Guilds for a very long time and despite extensive and thoughtful feedback, we can't even get an answer, let alone any sort of improvement to the situation.

Suggestions:
- Eliminate bid spying once and for all.
- Move kiosk flip time to something at or near "prime time" on Saturday or Sunday nights, when we're all online holding our end of week guild events.
- If the above isn't possible, can we please be told why? And if that's the case, then yes, the last resort would be a request to move maintenance so it doesn't directly conflict with this critical game mechanic for trading guilds, but it seems there are much greater benefits to moving Kiosk flip times instead, to a time that would never interfere with regular maintenance and would allow people to get a good night's sleep. Mondays are hard enough as it is!

@ZOS_GinaBruno

This is perfectly stated. /signed

Also want to go on record for standing with my Guild Leader Anslay and the other guild leaders on this topic. As an officer in ETU I am deeply concerned that we are putting this stress on players for no good reason. This is a game to enjoy. The maintenance adds extra strain on an already problematic system. There is no reason for it and there is no reason for our game developers to ignore this issue. Do we need to formulate a petition from the player base? Lets see how many trade guilds at 500 members? That is a great number of paid subscriptions to simply ignore.

Bryn

zerosingularity · August 2016

I am a player who likes to make(and spend) money and I support this thread 100%.

Abeille · August 2016

I couldn't agree more with the OP.

The servers should not be offline during a critical time of the week like that. It is completely absurd.

Ixtyr · August 2016

How many more weeks of this are we going to be forced to tolerate?

I daresay there are a lot of us that simply can't and won't.

I'm tired of seeing fantastic guilds crumble in recent weeks, not because of anything they did wrong, but because this decision by ZOS has left them with no resource or reprieve when something bad happens. One week without your normal Trader is something you can swallow. One without ANY Trader is rough. But have that happen 3-4 times in 2-3 months? You lose your sellers, you lose a ton of revenue, and when bids are skyrocketing, you can't afford to resurrect your guild.

A year ago, bidding wars were something that were inconvenient and difficult. Now they're a death sentence after 2-3 weeks.

I've been a vocal proponent of ESO since well before the game launched. I've been hosting an ESO podcast for the past two years which has largely displayed this game in a positive light - in fact, our biggest criticism has been that we've been TOO supportive of ZOS and ESO.

I no longer enjoy logging into this game. That's the first time I've felt this way, EVER, about ESO, and it's due to the weight and stress placed on me by this decision by the developers to consciously screw both of the Trade Guilds I operate over.

I'm forced to dump the hundreds of thousands of gold I make every week back into Trader bids, on top of some of my own banked gold beyond that some weeks. We've had to cut back on the value of raffle prizes and giveaways because we can't afford to give back to our members with bids climbing to unprecedented levels. And my guilds are OVERACHIEVING for their areas, outselling multiple guilds in higher-traffic locations, and we get better raffle participation than most others. But we can't sustain this, especially as bids keep growing a few hundred thousand more every single week, week in and week out.

I log in and I have no desire to play anymore. My members and officers have been fabulous, helping to carry more and more of the load, but still I'm spending far more time farming and flipping to dump it back into this black hole of a gold sink, so much so that I can't even play the game that ZOS has developed. That's not fun, at all. It's painful, and frustrating, and exhausting, and frankly it's downright depressing.

I want to be excited about ESO. I want to look forward to One Tamriel and Player Housing. But I can't, because I can't help but think that One Tamriel will make farming even harder and more time consuming, and Player Housing will be something I can't afford to participate in because every penny I earn will be going to the Trader gold sink and not my own enjoyment of the game. I want to look forward to Clockwork City and Mephala's Realm and this upcoming Daedric war and the fantastic storytelling that ZOS can do, but I know that if things remain the way they are, I won't be able to devote the time to it - heck, I haven't been able to finish the Dark Brotherhood storyline yet, and my Thieves Guild still isn't maxed, and I can't spend hours farming vMA for weapons to improve my DPS so I can help my guild progress in Vet Trials because every waking second of my time is spent farming up other crap to give away to my guild raffles or dump into bids.

I honestly don't know what else to say here, without begging and groveling pathetically. Just fix it. Please.

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober

sylviermoone · August 2016

Thank you to everyone that has commented with your feedback and support here. There are some really great personal stories, and I love that people are chiming in to support their guild leaders, even if this issue isn't something that affects them directly.

It saddens me greatly to hear from other guild leaders that they're no longer having fun playing the game, or that running their guild is no longer a rewarding experience for them. There have been some fantastic contributors to the community leave the game in recent weeks due to the added stress of maintaining a trading guild specifically with the added pressure of the new maintenance times. I can't say that I don't understand where they are coming from. For me, on the West Coast, Sunday night to Monday morning is a living hell. I go to bed after our guild activities have completed, usually around 10:30 pm for me. I'm then up again at 12:45 am (after not really sleeping anyway) to drop the bid before the server goes down. Then back to bed until 4:30 am in hopes that the server will be up again before bid close (they haven't yet been). I usually wait until about 5 am before I get ready for work and go about my day, where I fret and stress until my team reports to me when the server comes up.

I'm not sharing my story to get a pity party. This is what life is like for a GM right now. It doesn't matter what time zone, that I need to do what I've described above in order to maintain my guild is ridiculous, and I'm far from the only one doing it. Pro tip: make sure you give your GM a hug today.

The current maintenance time, how it overlaps the bid closing and kiosk flipping time, and what this has done to kiosk prices due to uncertainty while simultaneously increasing the level of bid spying exponentially is creating an incredibly stressful and volatile environment for GMs. And yes, we're a small subset of the player population, I get that. But what we do and give to our community is SO important. Many of us spend more time managing our guilds than we do on our full time, real world jobs. We take this seriously, and it would be so nice to see that ZOS takes our plea seriously, too.

I believe many of us would say that changing the Kiosk bid close and flip time to Sunday night, while closing the loopholes in the system that allow people to run addons that can calculate the EXACT amount a guild has bid on a trader would be the preferred solution to the issue. A second feasible solution would be moving maintenance to virtually ANY OTHER TIME of the week while also closing the loopholes that allow for rampant bid spying. A third feasible solution would be to just shut down bid spying once and for all. Even that one thing would be of immeasurable help.

Please ZOS, for the love of all that is holy: PLEASE address this issue. Something has got to change. We are begging you.

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO · August 2016

I know they have internal metrics, so why not have kiosks flip several hours AFTER the completion of maintenance to coincide with peak play times?

That way, almost everyone is on and you can create a "most good for the most people" scenario. Is that realistic?

The_Payne_Train · August 2016

I just want it to change cause as an aussie servers go down at 8pm and come on at 12am. We miss a whole night of game play. Make me upsetti spaghetti.

howdawut · August 2016

This is an incredibly valid issue and I'm extremely surprised that ZOS has not even made a comment regarding this. It's easy for me to interpret their silence as a <shrug> and "eff what you're going through".

Bouldercleave · August 2016

code65536 wrote: »

It is already very stressful to manage a trading guild.

Here is the REAL problem. It should NEVER be stressful to play a game. If you are stressing out, either there is something wrong with you (DEFINITELY NOT THE CASE HERE) or there is something wrong with the game mechanics.

This whole time and money sink of guild traders, and Kiosks, and having to bid just to get a good spot, and MASSIVE gold and time investment involved is a crappy way of handling the global market for this (or ANY) MMO in my opinion.

fgoron2000 · August 2016

I know I'm prolly in the minority, but I like the maintenance on NA PC as it is now, because I work all weekend, and I get home about 8am ET on Monday. So at that point, unless there's an issue, maintenance is usually gonna be close to finished...I grab a bite, take a quick nap, and by then for sure, it's back up...but like I said, that's just me, because of my oddball schedule...

moonbat · August 2016

sylviermoone wrote: »

Thank you to everyone that has commented with your feedback and support here. There are some really great personal stories, and I love that people are chiming in to support their guild leaders, even if this issue isn't something that affects them directly.

It saddens me greatly to hear from other guild leaders that they're no longer having fun playing the game, or that running their guild is no longer a rewarding experience for them. There have been some fantastic contributors to the community leave the game in recent weeks due to the added stress of maintaining a trading guild specifically with the added pressure of the new maintenance times. I can't say that I don't understand where they are coming from. For me, on the West Coast, Sunday night to Monday morning is a living hell. I go to bed after our guild activities have completed, usually around 10:30 pm for me. I'm then up again at 12:45 am (after not really sleeping anyway) to drop the bid before the server goes down. Then back to bed until 4:30 am in hopes that the server will be up again before bid close (they haven't yet been). I usually wait until about 5 am before I get ready for work and go about my day, where I fret and stress until my team reports to me when the server comes up.

I'm not sharing my story to get a pity party. This is what life is like for a GM right now. It doesn't matter what time zone, that I need to do what I've described above in order to maintain my guild is ridiculous, and I'm far from the only one doing it. Pro tip: make sure you give your GM a hug today.

The current maintenance time, how it overlaps the bid closing and kiosk flipping time, and what this has done to kiosk prices due to uncertainty while simultaneously increasing the level of bid spying exponentially is creating an incredibly stressful and volatile environment for GMs. And yes, we're a small subset of the player population, I get that. But what we do and give to our community is SO important. Many of us spend more time managing our guilds than we do on our full time, real world jobs. We take this seriously, and it would be so nice to see that ZOS takes our plea seriously, too.

I believe many of us would say that changing the Kiosk bid close and flip time to Sunday night, while closing the loopholes in the system that allow people to run addons that can calculate the EXACT amount a guild has bid on a trader would be the preferred solution to the issue. A second feasible solution would be moving maintenance to virtually ANY OTHER TIME of the week while also closing the loopholes that allow for rampant bid spying. A third feasible solution would be to just shut down bid spying once and for all. Even that one thing would be of immeasurable help.

Please ZOS, for the love of all that is holy: PLEASE address this issue. Something has got to change. We are begging you.

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober

The game is supposed to be fun. ZOS has turned it into a job for those who run Trade Guilds. It is past the point of absurdity now.

And thanks to all of the GMs who bust their rear-ends keeping the trade guilds afloat for those of us who will not take on the jobs ourselves. Thank you for working hard for *us*.

moonbat · August 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

By definition, the economy is created by the transactions performed by humans.

By procedure, the transactions that humans perform are only possible AFTER they have engaged in playing (at least one part of) the game. One must fish, or farm, or grind, or in some other manner must PLAY the game before a single transaction may be performed.

The economy is built on the foundation of playing the game, and therefore the game must take priority over any trade issues.

People seem to forget that the economy is the aggregate of human action, and that human action will always continue to exist even if they delete the program code for guilds and guild traders completely.

Hard truth - the economy will not disappear if the maintenance times mean that no trade guild gets a cart anywhere on the map. ESO is a game of killing monsters and enemy characters, not the 1995 game Capitalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_(video_game)

Except it is ZOS' fault for inventing the system of guild trading which puts players in the bind that they are in now. Perhaps people would not have to work so hard if ZOS had not implemented this system in the first place. ZOS implements the system and then punishes players for it.

Darkmage1337 · August 2016

sylviermoone wrote: »

Thank you to everyone that has commented with your feedback and support here. There are some really great personal stories, and I love that people are chiming in to support their guild leaders, even if this issue isn't something that affects them directly.

It saddens me greatly to hear from other guild leaders that they're no longer having fun playing the game, or that running their guild is no longer a rewarding experience for them. There have been some fantastic contributors to the community leave the game in recent weeks due to the added stress of maintaining a trading guild specifically with the added pressure of the new maintenance times. I can't say that I don't understand where they are coming from. For me, on the West Coast, Sunday night to Monday morning is a living hell. I go to bed after our guild activities have completed, usually around 10:30 pm for me. I'm then up again at 12:45 am (after not really sleeping anyway) to drop the bid before the server goes down. Then back to bed until 4:30 am in hopes that the server will be up again before bid close (they haven't yet been). I usually wait until about 5 am before I get ready for work and go about my day, where I fret and stress until my team reports to me when the server comes up.

I'm not sharing my story to get a pity party. This is what life is like for a GM right now. It doesn't matter what time zone, that I need to do what I've described above in order to maintain my guild is ridiculous, and I'm far from the only one doing it. Pro tip: make sure you give your GM a hug today.

The current maintenance time, how it overlaps the bid closing and kiosk flipping time, and what this has done to kiosk prices due to uncertainty while simultaneously increasing the level of bid spying exponentially is creating an incredibly stressful and volatile environment for GMs. And yes, we're a small subset of the player population, I get that. But what we do and give to our community is SO important. Many of us spend more time managing our guilds than we do on our full time, real world jobs. We take this seriously, and it would be so nice to see that ZOS takes our plea seriously, too.

I believe many of us would say that changing the Kiosk bid close and flip time to Sunday night, while closing the loopholes in the system that allow people to run addons that can calculate the EXACT amount a guild has bid on a trader would be the preferred solution to the issue. A second feasible solution would be moving maintenance to virtually ANY OTHER TIME of the week while also closing the loopholes that allow for rampant bid spying. A third feasible solution would be to just shut down bid spying once and for all. Even that one thing would be of immeasurable help.

Please ZOS, for the love of all that is holy: PLEASE address this issue. Something has got to change. We are begging you.

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober

I completely agree with @sylviermoone, @Lady_Ems, @hiyde, and others who have commented with detailed, valid points here in this thread and elsewhere. These suggestions and changes need to be taken in to consideration; more importantly, the guild kiosk system needs to be improved upon, as a whole. Your loyal community is anxious to hear comments from you, ZOS.

As the GM of AV, a 1,000-member ESO community, and as a member of AUT along with @sylviermoone & @Lady_Ems , I wholly support this thread (from one guild-leader to another

). The representatives of the ESO community and the major, active guilds clearly agree that the guild-trader kiosk system is in need of some changes and renovations. The exact details of changes from ZOS are yet to be known and remain up-in-the-air, however. I hope ZOS has effective, creative solution(s) in development.

In my honest opinion, there is zero incentive and/or return-on-investment for guilds to rent traders when they cost 5-10mil+ gold _per week_. The guild-trader bidding system is an extreme e-peen contest and major gold-sink. Guild Kiosks are an atrocious waste of a guild's gold and more importantly, members' & players' gold.
I would prefer putting guild-gold towards guild-based & community-based elements such as Guild Halls (Player-housing), Guild Passives/Bonuses (character exp, crafting exp, [etc] when grouped together with X number of guildies), or other benefits.
Avoiding this gold-sink and e-peen contest is the exact reason AV isn't on trader stalls anymore, and our in-house guild-stores still sell well, considering 90% of our guild roster's still online within 14 days -- a statistic kept together since ESO launched, 2.5+ years ago.

Regardless, guild kiosk biddings are a self-defeating system because when the bids are inflated too highly and become too competitive, many of the large, conglomerate guilds will just merge together (as they have several times in the past) to drive the bidding prices down again. As the boom-bust cycle continues over again.

sylviermoone · August 2016

Today I forwarded an addon to the ZOS team that I hope will get some movement to correct bid-spying. I included the following message:

Greetings!!!

Please see the attached file. This addon was just written this morning, in the space of about 3 hours, to show the ZOS team how easy it is for guilds to bid spy against each other.

This is happening. People are using similar addons to cheat the intended "blind" mechanics of the kiosk bid system. And the change in maintenance time has made it easier than ever for this to happen.

With the old maintenance time of 8 AM, there was a hard cut off to bid times of 7:55 AM. And people were using addons like this then, I have no doubt. But the mechanics of the hard cut off made it so the spying could be circumvented by placing a last minute bid. This is not ideal, but at least it doesn't reward people for cheating the intended mechanics.

The current situation allows for easier bid spying in that there is no interaction with the hard cut off time, and since the server never actually goes down when it's supposed to at 4 AM there is plenty of time for people to calculate a guild's bid and bid higher. I have no issue losing my bid fair and square to a guild that legitimately bids higher than me. I have a HUGE problem losing my bid to people that are cheating.

This is causing bids to skyrocket everywhere; a kiosk in Rawl'kha that used to sell for about 4 million gold per week has jumped to nearly 15 million in just 3 weeks. This is insane, and no guilds can sustain this. It doesn't create for more competition, it doesn't allow smaller guilds a chance to get a foot in the door.

The kiosk bidding is intended to be blind, and the team at ZOS has been given so much constructive feedback as to how to make that actually happen. It is my sincere hope that you look at what is happening to your game economy and fix the issues immediately. I hope to see positive changes in this very soon.

Sylviermoone
Co-GM, Angry Unicorn Traders

I hope to see movement on this issue.