Rising Trader Costs

Panomania · January 2017

Over the last few weeks the PC NA server has seen a lot of new players, a lot of returning players, and in general a lot of traffic. I see it in all the guilds I am in....even the smaller ones are at capacity. Great!

Except....for trade guilds its become a nightmare. I know of 5 several MAJOR selling guilds that lost their traders in the last couple weeks (traders who are nearly always in capital cities or Rawl'kha), including one I am in. They do 20 mil or so a week in sales, which means they make 700K in taxes (3.5%). Their losing bid for the trader this week was more than 3 times that.

ZOS, not sure if you know this or not, but MOST trade guilds anymore cannot make their bid back in taxes. Most use raffles or in guild auctions of donated items....or the guild leaders just supplement guild funds. Competition for the traders is high. Even in the guilds I am in that have out of the way traders with FAR lower bids to meet this is the case, because such places dont get the foot traffic. With no searchable database in game for items for sale you have to have foot traffic....and with the exception of capital cities, Rawl'Kha and Craglorn it by and large doesnt happen.

Perhaps its time to add more traders to the game....or put in a searchable database (far more work for you guys). Or perhaps quit taking half the taxes a guild brings in ON TOP of your listing fee.

AzraelKrieg · January 2017

Not a ZOS issue. Not something they can fix.

Gandrhulf_Harbard · January 2017

The Trade Kiosk system could work, if a little more joined-up thinking were involved in the development process.

I can't see it working for much longer as things stand.

However, there is only one course of action that will see Zeni take action: all Trade Guilds need to stop bidding on Kiosks.

Allow the internal market of the game to fail, and then Zeni will be forced to address the systemic flaws.

You don't need more traders as a whole I think, you need Traders in out of the way locations that no one uses to do exactly what they would do IRL - move to where the customers are.

Then you need a "Free Trader Kiosk" in each of the Faction Capitals, where smaller guilds who missed a Kiosk or even solo players can list a limited number of items for sale, at a higher taxed rate.

This offer two solutions - easier access to points of sale for the buyers, and some access to a point of sale for non-guild players.

Kiosk prices should drop, and that would mean commodity prices would also fall - giving more players more access, leading to higher overall sales.

All The Best

Panomania · January 2017

Not enough traders for the guilds who want to buy them? Pretty sure ONLY they can fix that.

Glurin · January 2017

Your guild lost the bid for their trader this week. Too bad. Put it towards next week's bid.

Big guilds losing their traders in the top locations once in a while is the system working as intended. It's a good thing. I know it sucks when you lose your trader, but when it happens you have two choices. You can either cry about it or you can work towards getting it back.

Panomania · January 2017

I understand that, and if that was a one time thing, and happening off and on, fine. Thats not the case. Again, competition is driving costs for traders through the roof. If you're in a capital city....ANY of them....the way things stand right now you need a full guild, every member selling over 170K a week average JUST to make what it takes to win a bid. Minimum. Thats over 85 million a week in sales.

DRXHarbinger · January 2017

Something else guilds need is to stop selling via chat. It makes no money for the guild. Some xbox guilds have very strict no direct sales rules, some don't though. It's generally someone always listing sharp weapons for huge money which results in huge losses.

Glurin · January 2017

Panomania wrote: »

I understand that, and if that was a one time thing, and happening off and on, fine. Thats not the case. Again, competition is driving costs for traders through the roof. If you're in a capital city....ANY of them....the way things stand right now you need a full guild, every member selling over 170K a week average JUST to make what it takes to win a bid. Minimum. Thats over 85 million a week in sales.

Then maybe you shouldn't be bidding on that trader if you can't get that 85 million a week in sales.

JezzaAKTT · January 2017

Zos is the only one who can fix this. The competition has become so fierce that most guilds cannot maintain a trader in one spot for more than a few weeks before either being outbid or going broke. Something needs to be done, I mean after all how much more can we ask of our members? Most guilds have had to insist on a minimum sales policy, which has had to be raised over and over, we count on our members to donate high end items and then expect them to buy them at auctions for more than they are worth, we have to have raffles and other money making events to supplement the taxes we make from our members sales, just to maybe make enough to get a trader? Seriously something needs to be done, before the whole guild trader systems crashes.

AzraelKrieg · January 2017

If you're guild can't handle competition in those areas, maybe they should consider relocating. It's all up to the guild management. When my guild loses a vendor, I reassess for the next week. If we regain our vendor, I call the previous week bad luck. If I were to consistently lose it and not regain it, then I would consider moving to somewhere else. I was in another guild that just got scuttled because the guild management kept changing and couldn't keep a vendor week to week if at all. People started to leave because of that and when they started demanding people enter the raffles, people left in droves until it was no longer feasible for the guild to continue. If the guilds you are in aren't making the sales to continue being in the location they are in, they should move elsewhere.

Glurin · January 2017

JezzaAKTT wrote: »

Zos is the only one who can fix this. The competition has become so fierce that most guilds cannot maintain a trader in one spot for more than a few weeks before either being outbid or going broke. Something needs to be done, I mean after all how much more can we ask of our members? Most guilds have had to insist on a minimum sales policy, which has had to be raised over and over, we count on our members to donate high end items and then expect them to buy them at auctions for more than they are worth, we have to have raffles and other money making events to supplement the taxes we make from our members sales, just to maybe make enough to get a trader? Seriously something needs to be done, before the whole guild trader systems crashes.

You know what happens when it crashes? It cleans out the trash. The "something" that "needs to be done" is "nothing at all", because the bubble popping is just the market self correcting.

Panomania · January 2017

Then maybe you shouldn't be bidding on that trader if you can't get that 85 million a week in sales.

Ok. so go to an area with lower competition, meaning less bid costs. Sure! Great idea! But if you do that, you WILL sell less, because its all about foot traffic. There isnt a way to advertise other than spamming zone chats, which isnt a solution anyone would find acceptable, and there isnt a searchable database other than one addon that I know of, and its rather flawed at best. And....competition is still the issue, so you will see the exact same thing no matter what trader you go to; all you've done is trade for the exact same problem but reduced your income.

Again....not that long ago it wasnt at all unusual to find unused traders in world in out of the way areas. Used to always find iem in Abah's Landing, for example. Lately, every trader in the game is taken....and eventually every one of these guilds is gonna start to see the crunch.

Glurin · January 2017

Yes, you will see less sales due to lower foot traffic. That's the reason people try to get traders in densely populated areas in the first place. Again, not a bad thing.

Perhaps you should reevaluate your inventory and pricing.

nooblybear · January 2017

Increasing the % given to the guild from taxes and increasing the maximum number of guild members from 500 to 1000 are all positive steps. Fixing how easy it is to "spy" on another's guild would also help alleviate some of the pressure and make the system truly a "blind bid".

JezzaAKTT · January 2017

My guild maintained the same trader for 6 months until just recently. So maybe it is just a bubble popping to self correct the market. We shall see over the next few weeks how that works out. Until then we will seek a trader in a less competitive area, and be happy to save the extra gold that we spent on the higher end trader area. Area's that are being forced to sell items for too much, just to try and keep those spots. Customers are looking for fair prices and are not finding them in places like Rawl or Mournhold.

Panomania · January 2017

Glurin, all of the ideas you put forth are sound....in a free market. This is not a free market. This is an entirely closed off system. In a free market there would be ways to drive business to my store (advertising). I could move my business to another area that already gets good traffic (build, buy, rent in new places).

Cant do that here.

Sheezabeast · January 2017

they totally could add more booths. easy solution. big cities like craglorn have plenty of space to add rows of kiosks, even wrothgar has space.

Rohamad_Ali · January 2017

30K for a Bee Keeper Prosperous shield blue on a Stormhaven vendor tonight . I laughed so hard . Some of the stuff people try to sell is so rediculous . Decon that garbage .

ElliottXO · January 2017

They need to centralize a couple of the traders. Half of them are pretty much pointless because no one ever goes there. E.g. We could use two additional traders in Rawlka.

Taternater · January 2017

If trade guilds earned more gold from the sales in the shop, it would apply to all trade guilds, not just yours. As a result every guild could afford to bid more so that's not a solution.

If your guild really has trouble staying on top then maybe every member should contact zos and ask that they add a new barrier to entry where players can only bid on a rawl'kha traders if they have some new achievement just made up for that.

Nickernator · January 2017

Highest bidder wins, if some small guild bids more then you, then they get it. And that's fair.

Get more gold next time or find a cheaper area if you cannot afford it.

Cpt_Teemo · January 2017

I heard there adding more trader spots next months patch in Homestead

Betheny · January 2017

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

I heard there adding more trader spots next months patch in Homestead

I didn't see any new trader spots...where did you "hear" this anyway?

Cpt_Teemo · January 2017

from the chat in Craglorn yesterday seemed like alot of people were talking about it but could just be data mined which means might or might not

Betheny · January 2017

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

from the chat in Craglorn yesterday seemed like alot of people were talking about it but could just be data mined which means might or might not

No info released afaik...maybe datamined or someone starting rumours.

UrQuan · January 2017

Betheny wrote: »

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

from the chat in Craglorn yesterday seemed like alot of people were talking about it but could just be data mined which means might or might not

No info released afaik...maybe datamined or someone starting rumours.

Yeah, nothing in the PTS patch notes. I'm guessing it's just a random rumour.

Logicbomb00 · January 2017

The best deals are found in the out of the way traders. Keep kiosks as they are. Only the dedicated get the good deals and the rest of you who only want to shop at Rawlk'ha, stormhaven and deshaan can pay the top dollar. I like it the way it is.

JezzaAKTT · January 2017

You know why the best deals are found in the outlier area's? Because the trader bid is low enough so that the guild doesn't have to force it's members to over price items just make to make a high sales minimum. So whether your guild is in a high traffic area or not your members may or may Not make more gold, depending on what the guild requires of its members. I'm sure that some guild masters are only in it for the gold that comes to their pockets, not how much they can help their members make. There has to be a happy medium where the guild AND the members are actually making gold. The only way I can see this happening to put in more trader kiosks. There are plenty of places where that could happen. All the capital cities have room for more kiosks and that certainly would reduce the cost of the traders in those area's. But look around in the game and you will find places for more or new kiosks everywhere. As the game ages there are bound to be more and more guilds and I feel the number of trader kiosks needs to reflect that. The only new trader kiosks that have been added since the game came online are the few that were added with the DLC's and oh hey, they added 1 trader in each outlaw refuge! Cause everyone wants a trader there. As it is now if you lose your trader bid, there are NO other options than to wait until next week, since ALL trader kiosks are full.

Bam_Bam · January 2017

Auction house....

Bam_Bam · January 2017

Gandrhulf_Harbard · January 2017

AzraelKrieg wrote: »

If you're guild can't handle competition in those areas, maybe they should consider relocating. It's all up to the guild management. When my guild loses a vendor, I reassess for the next week. If we regain our vendor, I call the previous week bad luck. If I were to consistently lose it and not regain it, then I would consider moving to somewhere else. I was in another guild that just got scuttled because the guild management kept changing and couldn't keep a vendor week to week if at all. People started to leave because of that and when they started demanding people enter the raffles, people left in droves until it was no longer feasible for the guild to continue. If the guilds you are in aren't making the sales to continue being in the location they are in, they should move elsewhere.

But the Kiosk System was supposed to reflect the trade systems in technologically and socially contemporary real-world economies.

What you have described above manifestly proves that this isn't happening, and thus demonstrates that the current system is no longer fit for purpose.

What happened in economies technologically and socially contemporary with Tamriel?

Well if you had Kiosk One in, for example, Mournhold and then were priced out by some other merchant (which wouldn't have been that common anyway because there would have been leasehold agreements in place) you would NOT just decamp and move a lonely crossroads in the middle of nowhere. with no customers. You'd rent a Kiosk as close to the one you lost as you could hope to poach custom from your rival. And if there was no such Kiosk available you'd either build one yourself, or find someone to build one for you.

Why would you do that?
Because the majority of the Customers are already there - and only a very poor merchant chooses to sell where there are no customers.

In technologically and socially contemporary economies as we see depicted in Tamriel 97% of all "trade" premises were in Urban areas. Higher prices on those premises would simply see some entrepreneur build more premises.

All The Best