Bouldercleave wrote: »

80,000,000 in virtual currency and an overstock of a commodity that can be obtained for free - Yea you!

Seriously though, my life and enjoyment of the game will continue with or without market manipulation. I have learned in real life and in game life - if there is an angle, some *** will manipulate it to get one up on everyone else.

It's really not a big deal.

It is a big deal man, people take their entertainment seriously. Aside from that, if you're spending time on something, that something is not free. All money is, is time already spent. Time's the most important currency we have, and some of us would rather use our already invested time (money) so we can spend time we haven't invested on other things.

These guilds are devaluing our time to extend their own, and it is underhanded

It's perfectly sane to be unhappy.

Shadeaux wrote: »

Anyone notice that tempering alloy just went up in price at pretty much all traders at exact same time?

In real life, that's a crime.

I still don't get why everything is so much more expensive on console.

Articulemort wrote: »

Shadesofkin wrote: »

Shadeaux wrote: »

Anyone notice that tempering alloy just went up in price at pretty much all traders at exact same time?

In real life, that's a crime.

I still don't get why everything is so much more expensive on console.

My guess...
Less players
Lack of add-ons
But most importantly, console players tend to be much more impatient about games. Therefore instead of farming themselves, they rather buy it. High demand = high price.

Probably the reason. On PC we get price surges after DLC drops but it usually bottoms out after a month and returns to pre-DLC levels. At the moment a Tempering Alloy costs 7k gold on the PC-NA server but before DBH hit, the price had settled down to just above 4k. I generally sell anywhere from 100-500g below the current price I get from Master Merchant. Not trying to lower the price, I'm just trying to move stock.

xilfxlegion wrote: »

Paneross wrote: »

If we had a price history tab or global guild trader this wouldn't happen as bad.

if we had a global trader or "auction house " this would happen every day and worse. they would only have to control one guild instead of trying to control ( but failing) many.

This is simply just not the case.

In larger and more accessible economy (a free one) if people attempted to jack up the prices they would be undercut by the hundreds and thousands of others who are not involved in the collusion. This idea you are peddling that a few guild traders is more difficult to manipulate than a mega-server wide economy that everyone would have readied access to is absurd.

Fallen_Ray wrote: »

Milvan wrote: »

It have nothing to do with guild vendors.

New DLC brings up more players;
More players brings up more demand;
More demand inflates prices.


Guild vendors are great.

Great at keeping the elite merchant guilds on the top and keeping on the bottom those that can't joint a good merchant guild. It's a flawed system that states: "If you don't win a 5 million gold bid on a popular trader you won't sell a thing" THose who control the popular traders in each region's capital have the gig monopolized.

Which is why I always see the same guilds in the same areas. BUT HEY!!! "It's working as intended" Right ZOS staff?

Yeah.. have a look in Eldenroot, EU, pc. 7 npc trader, 6 of them wearing the same tabard.. check out Rawl Kha, Mournhold, Craglorn. You can make your own conclusion as to what is happening in the trading world of ESO... @GinaBruno

Hashtag_ wrote: »

What happens is before DLC's drop all the temperings/wax/rosin/kuta are being bought up by the wealthy players/guilds of this game and horded until after the DLC. Once that drops those prices are dictated by those players/guilds, not the market.

You just gave an example of an ideal supply/demand curve. The "market" is not some god. Players/guilds and the people they sell to *are* the market. It is individual people, increasing prices because they see customers willing to pay higher prices - or dropping prices because things aren't selling at the current price.

The fact that people buy up a commodity they know will soon increase in price isn't collusion: it's smart business for any individual trader. And the whole point of such business is to flip for a profit, not artificially restrict supply to drive up prices.

Please stop accusing all members of big trade guilds of collusion and price fixing. I'm sure there are bad apples who try to game the system, but it's not the norm.

What is needed to combat price spikes during times of increased demand is an accordingly large increase in supply. An AH might help the supply side of the equation to a degree, but it wouldn't last. Most players won't have many gold tempers to sell, and what they have, they will probably want to keep to use themselves on the new gear / motifs. So the amount of extra supply an AH could provide during a demand spike would be exhausted pretty quickly.

To get a massive spike in supply, you need farmers to increase production and traders that have accumulated mats over a long period of time to start cashing in. These are exactly the same people that form the ranks of the largest trade guilds, and that is exactly what you see happening.

Ironically, you are blaming high prices on the very people that can help to decrease prices during demand spikes.

Guild traders are a far better solution. If this happened with AH the effect would be far far worse. The prices will always skyrocket. Fortunately with the guild traders there will always be discoveries left as covering every single guild trader is hard.
But covering a single location? With enough money its too easy, a single guild can control the entire market and before you start with your nonsense about the futility of it please consider that people are not selling stuff at low prices just because. If they want money for it they are going to sell them at the inflated prices and thus' contributing to the guild holding a monopoly over an AH.

This is why Guild traders are a far better solution, they already work well, AH wouldn't change a thing or worse it would make the market that much more inflated.

Shadesofkin wrote: »

Shadeaux wrote: »

Anyone notice that tempering alloy just went up in price at pretty much all traders at exact same time?

In real life, that's a crime.

I still don't get why everything is so much more expensive on console.

Because the top 5 trade owners are all friends...on EU anyway. Known fact..the top sellers as you see within that are known survey glitches. ..I know this from thier community feed them posting videos of them doing it, posting vids of them raking in sales from temp alloy, temp alloy, temp alloy.

They are the bulk of the supply...they remove thier listing and repost at 20k a pop, everyone in the guild then goes..oh right...I've put mine up at the same price..

Anyone that passes by then sees this and goes ah I must relist mine at a higher price...and so on and so forth.

Just don't buy any of them. I've told everyone I know not to, time to strangle them out. But the main issue is people do play this game to make gold and that's it. They are plain awful at everything else on it. So it's farm /cheat etc and then stand in Rawlka for 22hrs a day and then watch the sales roll in, brag about it and repeat the next day...and that is what people actually do in this game.

this one is pretty obvious, they let a horde of cheaters keep thousands and thousands of cheated tempers. When they all sold all of a sudden a month or so later the price of temper exploded with the same demand, the original cheaters swimming with millions of gold then bought up the market and jacked up the prices

ZOS can manipulate the supply, the artificially created rarity is what helps drive up prices.

In addition to the content that can only be completed by a min/max build.

Shadeaux wrote: »

Anyone notice that tempering alloy just went up in price at pretty much all traders at exact same time?

In real life, that's a crime.

Guild traders are syndicates always have been always will be. I can almost swear they are selling gold and paying people in zos; of which both want to keep the guild trader system to make real world monetary gains. The guild trader system the most cumbersome/corrupt trading system I have ever seen in a mmo. And 90% of the time I can not find anything I am looking for. And so many of them have trash items for sell too, I look at the listing thinking "Why even place that on the trader it's trash". Then they will have it marked up to some thing like 80k gold for the trash it doesn't make any sense, unless the listings are how they are indirectly trading gold.

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

it's not really practical to have antitrust laws in video games.

On the contrary, it would be even easier to implement in a video game than in real life.

Just implement some constraints to what an account/guild can own as a proportion of the total in the game.

1) Account X cannot own more than Y% of any material available on the server.

2) Guild Z cannot own more than AY% of any material available on the server, where A > 1

If a player tries to purchase something from a guild trader and the constraint is true, the game will prevent him from buying it.

Frankly, right now we don't even have a capitalist economy, we have anarchy.