So ... Update 12 has a lot of really great stuff in it. I have to say I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm disappointed that they are trying to do so much in a single update, though. It's likely to be full of bugs, and there is very little hope that their devs will have a moment to spare on fixing bid spying or the kiosk flip time.

Funny how they seem to find time to spend on a new massively unpopular cash store gambling feature, though.

...sigh...

Maintenance for the week of August 22:
• North American and European PC/Mac megaservers for patch maintenance – August 22, 4:00AM EDT (9:00 BST)

Cryptical wrote: »

moonbat wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

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.

I wish I could have expressed it so eloquently. I love running a trading guild. Contrary to popular belief, I do not get rich from it, quite the opposite. These maintenance/switchover overlap times are just destroying my sleep, and increasing the amount of money we have to bid on even a mid-range trading kiosk. I take on a huge responsibility when I take money donated by members and tax income and bid on a trader, this is not something I do for myself. I don't sit here for hours waiting to see whether we won our bid for myself.

I have noticed a theme here, that those who are blaming the GMs for these problems (and not ZOS for implementing a faulty mechanic) seem to think that those who run top trading guilds are guilty of some sort of sin for *striving* to do well in the game, and that they deserve any *punishment* that they get in the form of losing kiosks, sleep etc. That supposed 'greed' and the desire to do well should be *punished* in some fashion.

Clearly the trading guild mechanic is not constructed to support the likes of the trading guilds that have come to dominate the market.

When something exceeds the expected parameters, of course things fail to function smoothly.

If it's so damn hard to run a large guild on the kiosk mechanic but many other guilds run small on the kiosk mechanic then perhaps the issue is the size.

I have noticed a persistent lack of acknowledgement that there are guilds that run just fine when they don't get a kiosk for a week or a few weeks.

Are there guilds that run just fine when they don't get a kiosk for a week?

I run a small social Guild. We have around 300 members, of whom 77 logged in yesterday, 33 within the past week, 30 within the past month. Depending on what you count as "regular" members, that's somewhere between 110 and 140 regulars.

The services we offer for our members are:

• People to chat to about the game.
• Ability to find groups for Pledges and other group dungeons.
• Occasional Trial runs for CP 160 characters. (We're aiming for weekly, but this depends on having someone available to organise them).
• Very occasional socials such as Cyrodiil PvE groups, or fishing tournaments. (About once every 2 months).
• A Guild Bank, to exchange items you don't need for items you do need.
• A Guild Store, to sell items which have actual value.

Trading is not a big part of our Guild function. However, the majority of our members are people who have not played MMOs before and play mostly solo. Many of them are not in their full complement of five Guilds, let alone large Trading Guilds. Therefore, in order for our members to get the very best out of their Guild membership, it is very important for us to get a Guild Trader whenever we can.

Most weeks we manage to pick up a Guild Trader in a city such as Skywatch, Stormhaven, or Stormhold. Obviously I'm not going to give the exact price we bid, but let's say it's between 25 and 75,000 gold. A reasonable price for a small Guild.

Some weeks we get outbid, and the three people who both have the ability to bid and are able to be online at 7.55 am EDT have to run around like blue-assed flies trying to find an alternative. Sometimes, only one of us is able to get on. It's immensely stressful for all of us.

When we miss our usual Trader, we lose a lot of sales. I typically sell 26-54 items in a week when we have a good Trader in one of the cities. I typically sell around 10 items in a week when we have a "bad" Trader, by the side of a road or in an Outlaws' Refuge. I sell less than 3 items in a week when we don't have a Trader at all. I'm sure I could go into the game and pull data out of Master Merchant to put numbers on the total number of sales and the total amount of gold raised, but I only keep track of my own sales on paper.

We are a small Guild - the kind of guild that ZOS have explicitly stated they are trying to encourage with the current Guild Trader system. But the current Guild Trader system doesn't even work for us.

covenant11b14_ESO wrote: »

There was a short period of time when maintenance was happening on Tuesday. This was the absolute best. This allowed a reasonable amount of time for bidders to make bids and follow up after. As it stands you make a bid, cross your fingers. For the third time in six weeks my guild does not have a trader because of the conflict between maintenance and trader budding.

I do not understand why it isn't possible for Guild Trader changeover to happen at the same time that Weekly Leaderboards close - 8pm on a Sunday evening at local server time. Then the run-around to pick up a spare Guild Trader for 100 gold if you missed yours could be done at a time which is convenient for most people. Apparently 8pm EDT time is 9am in Japan (Tokyo), and 10am in Sydney (Australia). Similarly, on the European server, 8pm local server time would be between 6 and 10pm, depending on which part of Europe you were in. A little inconvenient for people in the far eastern parts of Russia, but fine for all Europeans.

It's as if the time for the trader reset has been chosen to be as inconvenient as possible, and I don't understand why.

baratron wrote: »

Are there guilds that run just fine when they don't get a kiosk for a week?

I run a small social Guild. We have around 300 members, of whom 77 logged in yesterday, 33 within the past week, 30 within the past month. Depending on what you count as "regular" members, that's somewhere between 110 and 140 regulars.

....

Some weeks we get outbid, and the three people who both have the ability to bid and are able to be online at 7.55 am EDT have to run around like blue-assed flies trying to find an alternative. Sometimes, only one of us is able to get on. It's immensely stressful for all of us.

Thanks for speaking up, baratron. Sorry to hear that the current system is stressing your team out as well.

Just want to say I've shopped at UESP lots of times, and I think it's the perfect example of the type of guild I would *love* to see more of in the game, and be rewarded with better high-traffic locations. Your store has a good selection of items, so it's really a pity to see you get outbid, even while I see sometimes stores with like 100 listings score a slot in Rawl'kha just because they got lucky on a week someone decided to move.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Please respond before guild leaders burn themselves out.

Signed,
lazy guild member.

Don't expect maintenance times to change. Those are real people who work real world jobs on a real schedule. However, why can't they adjust the time that the kiosk bids close? Ridiculous that they chose the exact time that the servers go down.

howdawut wrote: »

Lady_Ems wrote: »

Going on 2 weeks with this thread. 8 pages and still no word from Zos. No Go jump off a cliff, No we don't give a crap, or a we ain't gonna do nothing about it. Just complete utter silence in the fact of completely ignoring everyone posting on this thread, everyone tagging members of the Zos team @ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_JessicaFolsom, @ZOS_AlanG, to name a few, we just want and at this point need to hear something from the team that our pleas have at least been heard.

I honestly interpret their silence as an apathetic stance regarding this issue. Especially when I see them respond to issues/requests that have much less impact on the game. This is an exploit that breaks how it is intended to work. They have been shown how simple it is to do. Maybe the folks tagged in this thread just don't "get" what this is about and therefore can not empathize with trading guild masters.

And yet another week we have that ZOS has done this long maintenance time that has gone on long past trader flip time for a small patch. lol.. Another week has gone by with no word from zos on this matter as well, not even a go jump off a bridge, go play in traffic, or a plain we are not going to change it so just deal with it from the,. Another sleepless or little sleep for the many, many GM's out there trying to get the traders for their Guilds.

I think @howdawut may have a point in his comment. They don't care and they aren't going to change it. We all know that they see it they just don;t care to acknowledge the masses. They would rather ignore us.

WTB crown store bid cloaks

Is there some actual zeni thought behind having these overlap? Do they think it will give greater "variety" of trader . Such as last week we had a rawl'ka store on PV NA with 49 items, do they belive that is a positive outcome?
I am hopping it was not got by bid spying and just by ludicrous gold bid.

I get the need for Maintenance, But could we please have a decent explanation for why it is at the same time as Trader flip. If they gave some rationale it 'might' be easier to see from where they are coming. As it is it just seems like poorly thought out with no care for the player base big or small.

My thinking on it is that at this time Zeni is using it as a gold suck and sink. That is suck it out of guilds in exhorbitant bids so there is less in the economy to prevent it overheating. HAs to coincide with maintenance to force guilds to bid extra high " just to be sure"

Wacky way to do it. But if that is the reason just say something, silence is breeding terrible behavior.

If you realy want to keep the gold sink then remove the ability for anyone to see the bid but the bid placer. Then it comes down to a Guild trust of their leaders which they can vote on by staying or leaving a guild.

Well its that time of the week again. Guild stores have flipped and I am still waiting to see if we have a GS this week. Tonight it seems to be taking even longer than usual. Of course we have no feedback from ZOS to give any indication of when the servers will be back up and I am now officially tired and getting very cranky.

One of the things that annoys me the most about this is that ZOS won't even respond to our numerous posts about this conflict even though there have been many. Should I happen to forget my manners and swear I am sure they would respond to that but they cannot even acknowledge that we are upset about this maintenance conflict let alone give us any reassurance that they are looking at trying to find a solution. How long does this thread have to get before they will realise this is a reall issue in the community.

It may be argued that it affects only a small number of people but that is only if you look at it in the most simplistic manner. The GS changeover affects every person in the guild if a store is lost so if you look at it that way then there is a huge impact down the line. As much as people love to think they are in the game for the trials, grouping, pvp etc every likes to sell their unwanted loot.

Please take our posts seriously and at least let us know that you are willing to consider a solution. Or that you even care!

Even an acknowledgment that they have seen the thread and DGAF would be better than this roaring silence

We've been asking for them to change the bid times for about 2 years now. Instead of making it better they have made it worse. Didn't they used to have NA and EU maintenance on different days? Now they've grouped them the same day which appears to have doubled the length of maintenance, and instead of doing the whole thing Tuesday which seems very reasonable, they're still doing it Monday, the ONE day of the week we've asked them not to do it. We're not asking for much ZOS. This is cruel. This is just plain mean spirited behavior towards the people who help maintain your players and community. There is no reason for this, and the lack of response shows that you know there's no reason for it except maybe the theory you're trying to burn excess gold from the economy. You may succeed in that, but you're also destroying your communities. Give us alternative gold sinks we've been asking for for years, not this cruelty.

Just another manic Monday... good luck GMs, both mine and across the globe. You are appreciated.