Poorly thought out maintenance times and their conflict with economy mechanics

koek777 · August 2016

The information on how much guilds are bidding on there trader should remain sercet and hardly detectable for other guilds. Of course people will try to spy on eachother but this is just to easy. Takes out the honest cometition so only the corrupt can stand a chance.

Please fix this and keep traders realistic.

Ixtyr · August 2016

Cryptical wrote: »

Shadowshire wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

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

Well, at least you got that right. As to the rest of your remarks, evidently you do not understand the role of the Guild Traders, i.e., of the "economy", in the play of the game. It is possible to design a game such as ESO without any provision for exchanging goods and/or services among players at all. But it would be a much less interesting game to play.

Trading allows players who have something that their characters don't need to exchange it for something that their characters do need. It also encourages and rewards players to use their characters to obtain and/or to create items that other players might need in order to exchange them for other items which they need for themselves.

One ESO feature allows us to trade items in "face-to-face" meetings between our respective characters, whether to exchange an item for Gold Pieces (GP) or as barter for another item instead. The Guild Store is another way to "sell" items for GP that we can then use to "buy" other items which we want. With the Guild Store, the seller does not have to be present, or currently playing the game, in order for the buyer to obtain what they want. This is convenient for both parties to the transaction.

Guild Traders simply make the content of a Guild Store available to players who are not members of its guild. This approach has its advantages, but also has disadvantages. In particular, there is no limit to the number of guilds that players may organize, but there must be a limit to the number of Guild Traders. Arguably, Bethesda Software could increase the number of Traders beyond the current number, in order to offer more guilds an opportunity to sell goods in their stores to non-members. But it is doubtful whether there will ever be enough Traders for every guild that seriously wants one.

As to whether any player produces or otherwise obtains items for the sake of simply accumulating GP from selling them, I suppose that their greed does not, in and of itself, adversely affect anyone. Personally, I only sell items because I want to get the GP that I will need to buy others. Of course, the more GP that I earn, the more likely it becomes that I can buy rare items which are currently in high demand. Regardless, in ESO the Gold Piece primarily functions as a medium of exchange, not as a store of wealth.

Note that it is Bethesda Software which is responsible for whether an item is plentiful or is scarce, not the players. So, if you don't like the economy, then you know to whom you should complain.

Oh, I understand the role of guild traders. What is apparently not widely understood is that the guild traders were not intended to be put to use this intensely.

There are signs that things with guild traders have gone beyond what they were made to handle.

Alphabetical listings are for long lists. No alphabetical listing option leads one to consider that long lists such as found on trading guilds are not what the design had in mind. Simple logic - if they expected long lists then they would have included better ways to navigate long lists.

Visible bank balance, bid history. Able to see the balance now and the original ability to see the history leads one to consider that the design considered these as safe things to see. It's only in these commerce-driven guild competitions that these pieces of data become sensitive info, so obviously the original intent did not include such commerce-driven guild competition.

Other guild-related elements point away from the driven-by-commerce model - chat channels, tabards, travel to player and mail both accessible through the roster and voice chat tabs. These are useless to the driven-by-commerce model as the primary info dissemination channel to the public would be motd and about-us.

Individually, these each can be dismissed as easily as a random drop of water falling from the sky. Taken together, they motivate one to go find an umbrella.

The 'trading guild' superstore that competes against other superstores was not an intended result. They made eso as a heroic sword and sorcery game, not as a build-a-superstore Walmart / Kroger / Costco game.

The problem isn't zos ignoring the people who turned the friendly guild trader system into a competitive business model... The problem is that people turned the friendly guild trader system into a competitive business model.

Zos has been supporting the elements of guilds that align with their intended use. I believe I saw a green text quote that they are working on the roster jumping when people log in or out. That's an element of participating in a friendly community - looking to interact with others, so it gets developer love. An alphabetical listing of items is not interacting with others at all, so it doesn't get developer love.

Real example - @ZOS_GinaBruno pass this along - Xbox the respec cost is still 1 gold per point. Last night some guild mates were running wayrest and getting wiped, then came into guild chat needing a healer. Another guild mate lamented that she had just respec'd out of her healing skill lines, but if they gave her a few minutes she would flip back and come help out. Does that happen if the point cost had been put back to 50 per point? Very doubtful. Low respec cost got developer love, because it assists people actually playing the heroic sword/sorcery game rather than some other thing. So I hope it doesn't get put back to the way it was before, because it then acts as a barrier to events like last night.

I'll respond to this entire comment by stating the very plain fact that Guild Management Tools and guilds in general have ALWAYS been a complete afterthought in this game. We couldn't even increase or decrease the amount of ranks that were available in a guild for like 5 whole patches after the game launched. Traders weren't even added to the game until August 2014, four months after the launch of the game. And we STILL have to rely on ADDONS to send out Guild Mail or keep track of how long a member has been a part of the guild, while we've LOST the ability to keep track of WHO invited someone to the guild in the logs.

It's a complete joke. And aside from that clarification, I pretty much entirely disagree with your response, based simply on the fact that ZOS advertised "Trading Guilds" as a FEATURE of the game back when it launched on PC. Your idea that "Traders aren't supposed to be used heavily" makes literally no logical sense whatsoever.

EDIT: Also, your assumption that "obviously the original intent wasn't for this to happen" and thus it's the PLAYERS fault, because ZOS poorly implemented a system or haven't kept up with it, is asinine.

Regardless, this argument detracts from the actual point of the thread, which is that we NEED scheduled maintenance times and Trader Flips to stop overlapping.

Cryptical · August 2016

moonbat wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

Shadowshire wrote: »

Cryptical wrote: »

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

Well, at least you got that right. As to the rest of your remarks, evidently you do not understand the role of the Guild Traders, i.e., of the "economy", in the play of the game. It is possible to design a game such as ESO without any provision for exchanging goods and/or services among players at all. But it would be a much less interesting game to play.

Trading allows players who have something that their characters don't need to exchange it for something that their characters do need. It also encourages and rewards players to use their characters to obtain and/or to create items that other players might need in order to exchange them for other items which they need for themselves.

One ESO feature allows us to trade items in "face-to-face" meetings between our respective characters, whether to exchange an item for Gold Pieces (GP) or as barter for another item instead. The Guild Store is another way to "sell" items for GP that we can then use to "buy" other items which we want. With the Guild Store, the seller does not have to be present, or currently playing the game, in order for the buyer to obtain what they want. This is convenient for both parties to the transaction.

Guild Traders simply make the content of a Guild Store available to players who are not members of its guild. This approach has its advantages, but also has disadvantages. In particular, there is no limit to the number of guilds that players may organize, but there must be a limit to the number of Guild Traders. Arguably, Bethesda Software could increase the number of Traders beyond the current number, in order to offer more guilds an opportunity to sell goods in their stores to non-members. But it is doubtful whether there will ever be enough Traders for every guild that seriously wants one.

As to whether any player produces or otherwise obtains items for the sake of simply accumulating GP from selling them, I suppose that their greed does not, in and of itself, adversely affect anyone. Personally, I only sell items because I want to get the GP that I will need to buy others. Of course, the more GP that I earn, the more likely it becomes that I can buy rare items which are currently in high demand. Regardless, in ESO the Gold Piece primarily functions as a medium of exchange, not as a store of wealth.

Note that it is Bethesda Software which is responsible for whether an item is plentiful or is scarce, not the players. So, if you don't like the economy, then you know to whom you should complain.

Oh, I understand the role of guild traders. What is apparently not widely understood is that the guild traders were not intended to be put to use this intensely.

There are signs that things with guild traders have gone beyond what they were made to handle.

And that is the fault of ZOS' faulty mechanics, *not* the players. You are blaming the players for something that was poorly implemented by ZOS.

Edited to add: And furthermore, stop telling people how to play. This game has something for everyone. You are tut-tutting people for not playing the game the way *you* think it should be played. How arrogant.

Nope. An analogy of this would be Zos building a baseball park, set aside a few tables for people to do small-scale yard-sale level lunch sales, and you being pissed off because they didn't do enough to support the concession stand business you built upon the picnic table foundation... They built a baseball park, for people to play baseball and do small scale trading on the side, not a shopping mall where people play baseball on the side.

Play however you want. I'm just telling you that you're trying to wedge a commerce driven business into a space that wasn't built for it, and it might work for a while but there will be problems. Play however you want - go ahead and play an altmer stamina Templar with all your points into health if that's what you like - but don't expect it to be zos's fault if you find it hard to function like that.

esofan86 · August 2016

Bid spying is easy to stop now. Just block the ability to see guild bank balance to anyone whom does not have ability to withdraw the gold. Simple. Same as with seeing the actual bid. If you can't bid you can't see it.
Would take zos about 30 seconds to change the code if they wished to.
As for maintenance overlapping the trader swap... Maintenance should move to a different day. Or move trader swap back by 12 hours to Sunday night when mostly everyone who wishes to can be online .

LeyaVader · August 2016

DEAR ZOS, MOST OF THE PEOPLE ON THIS THREAD RUN GUILDS. THAT MEANS THEY SUBSCRIBE AND BUY ALL THE DLC. THESE PEOPLE ARE YOUR **PAYING** CUSTOMERS. LISTEN TO THEM. DO SOMETHING TO HELP THEM BEFORE THEY STOP PLAYING YOUR GAME (AND PAYING YOUR SALARY.)

1) Even 8 AM Eastern time on a North American server is ridiculous when you consider North American time zones.
2) Maintenance time overlapping with a short trader bid window is just wrong and a slap in the face. You are daring people to leave you.

Rajajshka · August 2016

Zos needs to make it so the "hired trader" section of the guild history is only view-able to the guilds officers and the guild master at least..

hiyde · August 2016

Dreadhsif1978 wrote: »

Zos needs to make it so the "hired trader" section of the guild history is only view-able to the guilds officers and the guild master at least..

It's already more restrictive than that. Only those with bid permission can see that info.

The problem is that this does nothing to stop bid spying. All they have to do is watch the bank balance. And now there are addon(s) to make it even easier. Manual, or by addon, it is possible to determine *precisely* what is bid in advance.

phaseadept · August 2016

ZOS should just double the amount of guild traders. Them nobody has to lose sleep over it

hiyde · August 2016

phaseadept wrote: »

ZOS should just double the amount of guild traders. Them nobody has to lose sleep over it

Not to divert from the main points in this thread, but increasing kiosks has been suggested. And not just increasing, but having more cities configured with the convenience of Rawl.

And yet the trend with DLC's has been to put the kiosks FAR away from things like bank, crafting & wayshrine.

The only city that comes even close to Rawl's setup is Mournhold and, surprise, it's the #2 Trading hub on PC NA.

phaseadept · August 2016

It's hard not to look at this thread with some cynicism, mainly because of all the grief big trading guilds give players that are looking for other options to trade, like a public trader type system.

It also is a shame that a trading guild must have a guild trader every week or it falls apart. There's no loyalty or reason to be in the guild other than having a kiosk?

These are 500 man active guilds, there should be far more incentive than just selling stuff to people who can't afford to join the 1% Wall Street players.

esofan86 · August 2016

More trader kiosks . Yes.
Move some of the existing ones to match the setup of Rawl and Mourn.. Yes please .
Especially with one Tamriel coming. Should not have to own DLC to visit good traders

Lady_Ems · August 2016

So it has now been a week since this post was actually posted. And still no response from anyone at @ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom,@Zos_AlanG, or any other member from the Zos team. We as GM's and co-GM's of trading guilds would love to have some input so we know where this issue stands with Zos.

Before people go posting they all too busy to answer this.. That's BS. @ZOS_GinaBruno has already been posting in the forums this morning or whatever time of the day it is for you. Lets not mention the countless times someone from the Zos team replied to someone else's thread throughout the week. Even tho the grouping issue is a major pain in the ass.. This is a major problem both in the game and in real life. Time to wake up and give us some type of answer and not just ignore the population of the game that's asking and begging for some type of answer.

silvereyes · August 2016

phaseadept wrote: »

It's hard not to look at this thread with some cynicism, mainly because of all the grief big trading guilds give players that are looking for other options to trade, like a public trader type system....

These are 500 man active guilds, there should be far more incentive than just selling stuff to people who can't afford to join the 1% Wall Street players.

Is it so strange that the kiosk is what *makes* a top trade guild? In-guild sales usually only account for about 10% of the total.

This isn't about guild traders vs. auction house, although that is certainly a valid debate. This is about the most experienced, fanatical players for a particular aspect of the game not being able to do 90% of the thing they like to do most in the game. This is about their leaders being forced to turn their lives upside down dealing with asinine management decisions in order to ensure that doesn't happen.

Think of it this way ... what if an elite PvE guild were, overnight, only allowed by an arcane game mechanic to run 10% of the trials and dungeons they normally do? Or an elite PvP guild only allowed to queue for Cyrodiil on Thursdays?

But, if the officers wanted to avoid that situation, they could be online 4 AM on Monday to submit a form, but only a limited number of forms are accepted and the last one in wins. But the officers would not find out whether it was accepted or rejected by ZOS until maintenance was over; maybe at 9 AM, maybe at 5 PM, depending on how the maintenance went.

To the rank-and-file members of the guild, not being able to play how they normally do 90% of the time would be inconvenient for 1 week. It would be highly annoying for 2. By week 3, they would start looking around for another guild.

It's a game. It's meant to be fun. None of the situation with kiosk bidding is fun right now, neither for the officers nor for the members of guilds that lose their bids because of it.

silvereyes · August 2016

phaseadept wrote: »

ZOS should just double the amount of guild traders. Them nobody has to lose sleep over it

We have already gotten way more kiosks with outlaw refuges and DLCs, but competition and bids for the traditional hot-spots has only increased; in some cases 400-500% since update 6 started increasing the number of kiosks.

Adding more kiosks in bad locations hasn't and won't solve anything. Relocating existing kiosks nearer to high-traffic areas like banks and wayshrines would allow more guilds to get *good* kiosks.

It's hard to know whether that would solve the problem. The new money-making opportunities might entice more players to become traders, increasing demand for good kiosks once more. But it's a far better idea than continuing to do something that has already proven not to work.

It's a moot point for the immediate situation, though. Both ideas would require significant development time on a system ZOS has displayed no interest in improving.

A much more likely solution would be to change the maintenance time to a different day from the kiosk flip.

Epona222 · August 2016

So the NA server has just gone down, like a lot of trading guild GMs and Officers I will sit here for however long it takes.

This isn't the best way to do it, it's not a fair way to do it, it doesn't help smaller or newer guilds. It does the opposite of that, by pushing prices up. It punishes those of us with less than top end internet connections, because our download speeds will be slower. It hurts the economy by pushing good trading guilds out of a slot, so fewer goods are on offer.

All it does is turn Monday into a nightmare of sleep deprivation (which the Geneva Convention recognises as an act of torture!) for trading guild GMs.

ElfFromSpace · August 2016

It's funny that even the people who bid against each other in game, all come here to agree. Fix this. It truly feels like you let someone on your team with a mean streak giggle and say "What is the absolutely MOST horrible way we can set up this bidding and the times? Let's do this!" This current system and time helps NOBODY.

Myself and many others like the trade kiosks system. We like that it stops a few people from being able to easily control or manipulate the market. We like that it adds color and interest to the economy. We like that it adds a gold sink that we have some control over and forces competition. All we keep asking is that the system get minorly tweaked to make it less painful for us involved. Change the bid close times OR maintenance times so the 2 don't overlap. Fix bid spying, we've proposed multiple easy solutions such as leaving gold in bank til bids process. And consider my suggestions to add some sort of back up bid similar to the city bid system I propose in my other thread to take a lot of the direct nasty competition out of the process.

We may never all be "friends" but can we please at least have a system that doesn't pit us so directly against each other and encourage so much negativity?

Lady_Ems · August 2016

OVERVIEW
The Elder Scrolls Online v2.5.7 is a small incremental patch that fixes a few issues including not being able to group properly, crafted poisons not working with some abilities and sets, Knight Commander Panthius not appearing in the Kvatch Arena, and more. The size of this patch is approximately 118MB.

Copied right from this weeks patch notes. 118MB and we are still offline at trader flip time. WTH is up with this game, that we still can't get an answer to this but they are posting on other threads...

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_DaryaK @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Soresina · August 2016

I agree with this post. This is not only causing stress with overseeing the guild store but it is also costing me some very nice friends that I have enjoyed playing with. So many of us who wait for this regularly are becoming burnt out with the stress of spending hours wondering if we have a guild store. The hours waiting for the guild store to come up is fraught with tension and is beginning to take the shine off playing the game. What used to be a 15 minute commitment has now become a nightmare.

Unfortunately this job is not something that can be shared around the guild either because it has now become a cutthroat business to get a store. Bid spying is so common it is ridiculous. This practice has increased exponentially with the difficulty of overseeing the kiosk changeover during maintenance.

And what is happening with maintenance anyway. The time keeps getting put back yet it keeps extending even later past kiosk changeover. Do you need some crowns to buy food for the hampsters?

Nilmot · August 2016

Just from what is visible to me as a member, the business of running one of the major trading guilds is a ton of work and there are only a handful of people committed enough to keep doing it. ZOS, please respond to complaints about this seemingly indefensible oversight before you run these people off. We'll all suffer if more than a few of these guilds go under.

medusasfolly · August 2016

Like many have stated, I don't understand why trader transition isn't done on Sunday, around 3-5pm est. It would allow more guild members to help with the bidding and if needed, the identification of a back up location. And it wouldn't conflict with maintenance.

I also feel with the increase of the trader cost, it's getting harder and harder to squeeze more money out of the same 500 members. It's not like we can increase our available pool of members to spread the cost around more. It's tapping the same players for more and more contributions.

I'd also really like the ability for guilds to optionally allow sales from non-members for a higher percentage. This would allow players with just a few items to be able to list things without commitment and allow guilds to supplement their income.

Epona222 · August 2016

So tired. So so tired.

I'm not going to give up running my guild, but I don't see why Zeni thinks it is a good idea to do this to me, keeping me awake and anxious once a week. My husband is alarmed by it - if I suffer some sort of mental health issue because of the timing of it, Zeni should probably be prepared for some sort of lawsuit, because this schedule is ridiculous and untenable.

ElfFromSpace · August 2016

medusasfolly wrote: »

Like many have stated, I don't understand why trader transition isn't done on Sunday, around 3-5pm est. It would allow more guild members to help with the bidding and if needed, the identification of a back up location. And it wouldn't conflict with maintenance.

I also feel with the increase of the trader cost, it's getting harder and harder to squeeze more money out of the same 500 members. It's not like we can increase our available pool of members to spread the cost around more. It's tapping the same players for more and more contributions.

I'd also really like the ability for guilds to optionally allow sales from non-members for a higher percentage. This would allow players with just a few items to be able to list things without commitment and allow guilds to supplement their income.

As someone with a waitlist to get into my guild, I still don't believe that increasing the member limit or allowing non members to sell is a good idea. It seems like it would further concentrate the sales and thus the economy power into a small number of megastore guilds. Currently the limits on members which leads to sales minimums, inactivity limits, and screenings pushes a number of less competitive sellers into other markets, helping to keep places like Wayrest and Elden Root alive as trade hubs. Forcing members to chose a limited number of trade guilds also sets some limits on how much a megaseller can manipulate the market. No one player can get into every single guild as a non-member seller and then effectively control the pirce of certain items. This trading system is actually very cool, and makes for a completely unique economy. Let's just adjust the parts of it most painful.

For those who want to discuss the tangents like this to the topic, again, there is a thread that is more comprehensive and goes over a wide range of suggested changes in my signature.

Drishtan · August 2016

ZOS WHERE THE *** ARE YOU AT THIS MORNING????

Drishtan · August 2016

ZOS WILL ONLY COMMENT IF THEY NEED TO BAN SOMEONE FROM THE FORUMS!!!

Ill BE THAT GUY!!!!

*** YOU ZOSSY Y YOU NO ANSWER????

Drishtan · August 2016

ZOS WILL ONLY COMMENT IF THEY NEED TO BAN SOMEONE FROM THE FORUMS!!!

Ill BE THAT GUY!!!!

*** YOU ZOSSY Y YOU NO ANSWER????

Epona222 · August 2016

Drishtan wrote: »

ZOS WHERE THE *** ARE YOU AT THIS MORNING????

No matter where they are this morning, this thread has been going a while with no comment, I started a similar one a few weeks back that got no official comment.

Zeni - we as GMs and Officers of trade guilds would like to know that you are even hearing this. Please.

Drishtan · August 2016

Its cool watch and learn!!!

ZOS WILL ONLY COMMENT IF THEY NEED TO BAN SOMEONE FROM THE FORUMS!!!

Ill BE THAT GUY!!!!

*** YOU ZOSSY Y YOU NO ANSWER????

Drishtan · August 2016

ZOS WILL ONLY COMMENT IF THEY NEED TO BAN SOMEONE FROM THE FORUMS!!!

Ill BE THAT GUY!!!!

*** YOU ZOSSY Y YOU NO ANSWER???? Are you all have a gang bang or something???

PLAYER ARE *** ASKING FOR YOU TO RESPOND FOR A TOPIC THAT HAS BEEN BROUGHT UP FOR A *** YEAR!!!!!

Drishtan · August 2016

And if There is a gang bang my I join???

Maybe then I could get on of you to answer these kind ppl!!!

Drishtan · August 2016

COME ON ZOSSY WE KNOW YOU ARE WATCHING ME RIGHT NOW!!!!