NerdyHayseed wrote: »Having retractable bids only addresses the excuse used by a guild that created 2 bids in the this last round of trader auctions.
Lots of great ideas for fixes....here is my take on it....
1) Allow for bid retraction. I don't know of ANYONE that hasn't placed an accidental bid. However, before this, we all just sucked it up and didn't exploit. So please CLOSE THAT LOOPHOLE!
2) Don't allow disbanded guilds empty a trader spot. Make it stick for the week. (Stop the KingPin!)
3) I love the city center trader bidding idea. So frustrating to lose a bid and have an empty kiosk next to you. Plus I like the idea that you won't individually get targeted out of spite. It obviously occurs.
4) NO AUCTION HOUSE! I love the uniqueness of the trading system. It feels so much more immersive to me. The economic game is a great part of the allure for some of us! Even more than PvE or PvP! So if you take that away, most of the game will be dead for me. I get that some people don't like to shop. But some of us love doing ESO retail therapy or just like the idea of checking out dusty little traders in the outback looking for deals.
5) Using a ghost guild (or series of them), it would be possible for moneyed guilds to actually pay less for a trader spot than they do now. The NUMBER ONE concern of a trading guild is having a guild trader. If you knew that you would have an available back up, you could actually take a chance to reduce your bidding on a prime spot knowing that you have a back up waiting in the wings. It would make it way easier for big guilds to drive out medium/small guilds - most of whom could not compete with that type of money.
I saw that you, ZOS, responded about not saying things about individuals/groups - but you have yet to comment on this latest practice of ghost guild bidding and disbanding. I am worried about keeping our trader - because it is our primary concern. (:::Looks at King Pin:::)
NerdyHayseed wrote: »Having retractable bids only addresses the excuse used by a guild that created 2 bids in the this last round of trader auctions.
Which is why I--quite explicitly--said in my post that both issues need to be addressed, and yet despite explaining why retraction is necessary in addition to doing something about disbands, you just dismiss it out of hand by telling people to "suck it up". And you wonder why you so deservingly drew my ire?
OrphanHelgen wrote: »Exploits? Never heard of that before, you must have mixed with a different game. The Elder Scrolls Online does not have that, and if exploits exist, there will be taken care of asap.
OrphanHelgen wrote: »Exploits? Never heard of that before, you must have mixed with a different game. The Elder Scrolls Online does not have that, and if exploits exist, there will be taken care of asap.
Did the amount that was bid ever become public?
If the dummy guild bid competitively for the spot and won it because they paid however millions a spot like that goes for, then it lends support to the story that this was just a workaround for the can't-retract-a-mistaken-bid problem (particularly since it appears the main guild had lost their trader last week, so they were probably scrambling for a spot after last week's close, and it's especially easy during that scramble to accidentally bid instead of hire). With the bid system the way it is, there really aren't any good options for them if that was indeed the case. While I doubt ZOS really intended for guilds to disband like that, I also doubt that they really intended for misplaced bids to be so easy to make and so punishing. Yet the system is such that both of these problems exist.
Now, if the dummy guild bid and won with some low nominal amount to cover the main guild's rear while the main guild made a competitive bid elsewhere, then, yes, that would indeed be cause for alarm and a dangerous precedent to set.
Either way, there are two problems with the bid system that need to be fixed here: traders shouldn't be hireable if the guild holding them disbands (the NPC already got paid; they should take a weeklong holiday) and there needs to be a way for a guild to cancel or retract a bid--in a blind bidding system, there's no reason why bids shouldn't be retractable. (Well, there are a lot of problems with the clunky guild and bidding system that need fixing, but that's a topic for another thread...)
Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »
Exactly, The guild traders are failing so hard right now it would be best to just implement a centralized Market place for One Tamriel or even if its just a market place for each Faction. True stuff will get inflated but it won't be as bad as single guilds running the entire games trading system, that is pretty much the end of casual trading there.
Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »
Exactly, The guild traders are failing so hard right now it would be best to just implement a centralized Market place for One Tamriel or even if its just a market place for each Faction. True stuff will get inflated but it won't be as bad as single guilds running the entire games trading system, that is pretty much the end of casual trading there.
Just an FYI, with a centralized market place the prices WILL get hugely inflated. I, personally, controlled ~90% of the trade in 'glyph' market in WARHAMMER. I would buy out the lower priced glyphs, (and mats to make um) and re-list at much higher prices. If you wanted any of those and did not have friends to get them from, the chances are you would of been buying them from me at inflated prices or do without.
Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »
Exactly, The guild traders are failing so hard right now it would be best to just implement a centralized Market place for One Tamriel or even if its just a market place for each Faction. True stuff will get inflated but it won't be as bad as single guilds running the entire games trading system, that is pretty much the end of casual trading there.
Just an FYI, with a centralized market place the prices WILL get hugely inflated. I, personally, controlled ~90% of the trade in 'glyph' market in WARHAMMER. I would buy out the lower priced glyphs, (and mats to make um) and re-list at much higher prices. If you wanted any of those and did not have friends to get them from, the chances are you would of been buying them from me at inflated prices or do without.
Or wait till cheaper ones get listed, cause yours probably wouldn't sell right away centralized AH works in every other MMO as of date.
JHartEllis wrote: »As far as I can tell, ZoS has laid out some goals of the guild trader system: a competitive environment that acts as a gold sink and is accessible to smaller/newer guilds. Underlying this is a recognition of the value that guild traders bring to players in making items relatively accessible regardless of their play styles. The decentralized trader system is also a big feature of ESO--giving an immersive feel and preventing monopolization of items, so it deserves to be preserved.
For smaller or newer guilds, the guild trader bid process is intimidating, and I think the system is currently failing in encouraging these sorts of guilds to form and grow. A big problem is there is no data to go off when putting in a bid for the guild. That means the guild has to either spend weeks of losing bids (and disappointing 50+ people each time) to try to get a grasp of what constitutes too low of prices, or they have to grossly overpay, eating into their ability to bid going forward. The losing message only relays that the guild ought to bid more or bid somewhere else--this is an oversimplification of the dynamic bidding process.
On the other side are the established guilds that want to entirely hide their bids in order to counter bid spying. I would love to be able to put in a final bid mid-week and not have to worry about spies. However, I can understand why this may not have been implemented yet inasmuch as this clamps down on whatever little information about guild bids does exist.
As such I would identify two changes: making the bid system MORE transparent to help the smaller guilds while also shielding the guild's gold balance change to counter spying to help the established guilds.
A few proposals on shielding have some drawbacks. Walling off the guild's gold bank balance behind permissions has a few problems--the biggest one being that members wouldn't be able to tell if their deposits actually go through, and they would have to constantly pester leadership to confirm deposits. Alternatively, holding the bid in escrow until the bids close would curtail spies for the given week but would then allow the exact gold change to be seen at trader flip time. I think the best way to shield the balance change is to either have a separate, permissioned-off guild bank balance designated for only bids or to allow bidders the option to use their personal gold balances to pay for the bid.
If spying is dealt with, then historic bids could be and ought to be more transparent. If the bid amounts are entirely blind, it would remove necessary accountability from the guild leadership--members would have to take the guild leadership's word on whether the guild is bidding in the best interests of the guild members (too high or too low can both be issues). Guilds would be more likely put in low bids, and then the guild traders wouldn't be acting as much of a gold sink.
I can imagine many reasons why guilds wouldn't want their exact week-to-week bids revealed, so something more in the ballpark would be ideal. What I would think could work as a compromise would be to post a range of the past several weeks of winning bids on the guild trader kiosk bid UI screen in half orders of magnitude: "This trader has been hired in recent weeks for between 300,000 and 1,000,000 gold per week". This would help smaller guilds gauge the market, and the message could also be mailed to losing bidders to give them a better sense of expectations. Revealing this sort of info would also allow guild members to know that the guild is maintaining healthy, competitive bids and sinking gold as intended. This is just one suggestion, and, really, there are many ways to be more transparent, and I think it would help the small and forming guilds the most to have at least some data.
I noticed something funky that happened in Rawl'kha during the trader flip on 1/22/2017.
The guild 'Guild for Testing' won the bid for the guild trader 'Ronuril'. Moments later the guild trader was owned by an entirely different guild.
Here are some screen shots showing the initial guild's ownership of the said guild trader:
It looks like the initial guild might have disbanded and the second guild hired the spot. This brings up some immediate concern for this behavior to be abused. If a large trade guild bids on one location, loses their bid, and makes a bid on a second location with a 'throw away guild' it seems as though the throw away guild could be disbanded and immediately hired by the primary guild. I cannot say whether or not this was the case in this scenario and I'm not going to name the guild that took over the spot, but this needs to be addressed.
Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »
Exactly, The guild traders are failing so hard right now it would be best to just implement a centralized Market place for One Tamriel or even if its just a market place for each Faction. True stuff will get inflated but it won't be as bad as single guilds running the entire games trading system, that is pretty much the end of casual trading there.
Just an FYI, with a centralized market place the prices WILL get hugely inflated. I, personally, controlled ~90% of the trade in 'glyph' market in WARHAMMER. I would buy out the lower priced glyphs, (and mats to make um) and re-list at much higher prices. If you wanted any of those and did not have friends to get them from, the chances are you would of been buying them from me at inflated prices or do without.
Or wait till cheaper ones get listed, cause yours probably wouldn't sell right away centralized AH works in every other MMO as of date.
Sort of, a few would get through, but if you check often enough, you will gain the majority of them... Hence the ~90 %. I did it, I know. I also did so with specific plants in the game Rift. The specific items you target won't get replenished fast enough to make a dent in your income from the inflated ones you sell. Only some will get though while you are asleep/at work etc. But if you check once in a while and buy up the cheaper ones to relist, while you are on, ya make a killing. Trust me, it's not a hypothetical situation as i personally controlled most of the market for 'glyphs' in WARHAMMER, and for specific plants in the game, Rift.
JHartEllis wrote: »As far as I can tell, ZoS has laid out some goals of the guild trader system: a competitive environment that acts as a gold sink and is accessible to smaller/newer guilds..
Could we please get an official response from ZOS on whether or not this bidding on multiple traders thing is acceptable?
@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom
JHartEllis wrote: »As far as I can tell, ZoS has laid out some goals of the guild trader system: a competitive environment that acts as a gold sink and is accessible to smaller/newer guilds. Underlying this is a recognition of the value that guild traders bring to players in making items relatively accessible regardless of their play styles. The decentralized trader system is also a big feature of ESO--giving an immersive feel and preventing monopolization of items, so it deserves to be preserved.
For smaller or newer guilds, the guild trader bid process is intimidating, and I think the system is currently failing in encouraging these sorts of guilds to form and grow. A big problem is there is no data to go off when putting in a bid for the guild. That means the guild has to either spend weeks of losing bids (and disappointing 50+ people each time) to try to get a grasp of what constitutes too low of prices, or they have to grossly overpay, eating into their ability to bid going forward. The losing message only relays that the guild ought to bid more or bid somewhere else--this is an oversimplification of the dynamic bidding process.
On the other side are the established guilds that want to entirely hide their bids in order to counter bid spying. I would love to be able to put in a final bid mid-week and not have to worry about spies. However, I can understand why this may not have been implemented yet inasmuch as this clamps down on whatever little information about guild bids does exist.
As such I would identify two changes: making the bid system MORE transparent to help the smaller guilds while also shielding the guild's gold balance change to counter spying to help the established guilds.
A few proposals on shielding have some drawbacks. Walling off the guild's gold bank balance behind permissions has a few problems--the biggest one being that members wouldn't be able to tell if their deposits actually go through, and they would have to constantly pester leadership to confirm deposits. Alternatively, holding the bid in escrow until the bids close would curtail spies for the given week but would then allow the exact gold change to be seen at trader flip time. I think the best way to shield the balance change is to either have a separate, permissioned-off guild bank balance designated for only bids or to allow bidders the option to use their personal gold balances to pay for the bid.
If spying is dealt with, then historic bids could be and ought to be more transparent. If the bid amounts are entirely blind, it would remove necessary accountability from the guild leadership--members would have to take the guild leadership's word on whether the guild is bidding in the best interests of the guild members (too high or too low can both be issues). Guilds would be more likely put in low bids, and then the guild traders wouldn't be acting as much of a gold sink.
I can imagine many reasons why guilds wouldn't want their exact week-to-week bids revealed, so something more in the ballpark would be ideal. What I would think could work as a compromise would be to post a range of the past several weeks of winning bids on the guild trader kiosk bid UI screen in half orders of magnitude: "This trader has been hired in recent weeks for between 300,000 and 1,000,000 gold per week". This would help smaller guilds gauge the market, and the message could also be mailed to losing bidders to give them a better sense of expectations. Revealing this sort of info would also allow guild members to know that the guild is maintaining healthy, competitive bids and sinking gold as intended. This is just one suggestion, and, really, there are many ways to be more transparent, and I think it would help the small and forming guilds the most to have at least some data.
Did the amount that was bid ever become public?
If the dummy guild bid competitively for the spot and won it because they paid however millions a spot like that goes for, then it lends support to the story that this was just a workaround for the can't-retract-a-mistaken-bid problem (particularly since it appears the main guild had lost their trader last week, so they were probably scrambling for a spot after last week's close, and it's especially easy during that scramble to accidentally bid instead of hire). With the bid system the way it is, there really aren't any good options for them if that was indeed the case. While I doubt ZOS really intended for guilds to disband like that, I also doubt that they really intended for misplaced bids to be so easy to make and so punishing. Yet the system is such that both of these problems exist.
Now, if the dummy guild bid and won with some low nominal amount to cover the main guild's rear while the main guild made a competitive bid elsewhere, then, yes, that would indeed be cause for alarm and a dangerous precedent to set.
Either way, there are two problems with the bid system that need to be fixed here: traders shouldn't be hireable if the guild holding them disbands (the NPC already got paid; they should take a weeklong holiday) and there needs to be a way for a guild to cancel or retract a bid--in a blind bidding system, there's no reason why bids shouldn't be retractable. (Well, there are a lot of problems with the clunky guild and bidding system that need fixing, but that's a topic for another thread...)
If I bid by accident on Sunday the 16th (while trying to hire) after the bid closed, my guild the XYZ Merchants would be locked into that spot for the week, until the following week's bid cycle opens on the 26th. Unless XYZ Merchants disbands, they would be stuck with that trader no matter what. Even if i had ABC Trading Company, a ghost guild, win a spot and disband, i would not be able to get that spot from them for XYZ Merchants, AS I WOULD BE LOCKED IN STILL. The argument that ABC Trading Company was created (to be disbanded and offer the spot to XYZ Merchants) because of a 'bug, accidental bid et al.' is null and void due to the lock in on the 'accidental' bid. The only way to do this - if the excuse of a bug or accidental bid was placed, - is to disband XYZ Merchants, reform them, then disband ABC Trading company, and offer XYZ the spot. Which did NOT happen. So folks, please do not buy into this excuse, as its just not physically possible. GuildForTesting was created to have a backup bid in case their main guild lost their bid, effectively giving the main guild a bid on two spots. As for $ wasted, if XYZ Merchants bid 4 million on Trader One, and their backup guild ABC Trading Company, bid 2 million on Trader Two, If they lose Trader One, they can win Trader Two for even cheaper then their first choice trader in the same city. 2 mil 10,000 (cost of hire). The intention was one bid per guild, circumventing this by creating a backup guild to have a backup bid is an exploit imho. It denies that spot to legitimate trade guilds. This is quite different from 'sister guilds' as those guilds actually have members of the community placing goods for sale, and ppl buying them, therefore creating more competition and lower prices. These are legitimate guilds, not just a 'place holder,' (with no goods for sale) for a large guild. We need not to support this, as its not only the smaller guilds that would be squeezed out, but the community loses out on more competitive places to shop in the interim.
However, if this continues, the King Pin and I are looking for a third master for our monopoly. Get in early or you would have to pay heftier dues! We all will still have to pay a 'protection tax' to the King Pin himself so he does not use his XYZ and ABC guilds to bid on a spot we wanted, but the dues get steeper, the longer you wait! Pssstt... We for a few spots for sale, $29.95 plus tax, a pound of skooma, and 10% of all your gold income from the spot. Message Scaena for details. Don't forget the proper etiquette. Groveling and begging is a must. The smaller your guild is, the less revenue you would likely bring in, so therefore the taxes levied on the peons will be adjusted on a sliding scale to compensate for the fact that you are not a 'super guild', and can't give us much tax.' Smaller guilds need to consider folding into us asap, to avoid further embarrassment.
Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »
Exactly, The guild traders are failing so hard right now it would be best to just implement a centralized Market place for One Tamriel or even if its just a market place for each Faction. True stuff will get inflated but it won't be as bad as single guilds running the entire games trading system, that is pretty much the end of casual trading there.
Just an FYI, with a centralized market place the prices WILL get hugely inflated. I, personally, controlled ~90% of the trade in 'glyph' market in WARHAMMER. I would buy out the lower priced glyphs, (and mats to make um) and re-list at much higher prices. If you wanted any of those and did not have friends to get them from, the chances are you would of been buying them from me at inflated prices or do without.
The best suggestions I've seen so far..
1) Make it so that a guild cannot disband if they currently hold a trader. By far the best solution, if it was a legit guild, you can wait a few days, or pass the guild on to a guildie to decide what they want to do. The x gm can then go his/her merry way, and perhaps the guild would still flourish, thus not frustrating all the guildies that were in it b4 that decision.
2) Make the trader unavailable for hire for the bid cycle. After all he/she did get paid, why work if ya don't have to and ya got paid already
3) Enable City Bidding with the top bidder choosing first, etc.
4) Only open bidding if XYZ items are in the stall/higher amount of guildies to access bidding. May be a pain to code, and there is always a workaround as people can post xyz amount of 'cheese' in the stall to get around the restriction. I disagree with the higher pop to bid though, as it would squeeze out smaller guilds, but i can see 100 or so as a good possible limit.
AFrostWolf wrote: »JHartEllis wrote: »As far as I can tell, ZoS has laid out some goals of the guild trader system: a competitive environment that acts as a gold sink and is accessible to smaller/newer guilds. Underlying this is a recognition of the value that guild traders bring to players in making items relatively accessible regardless of their play styles. The decentralized trader system is also a big feature of ESO--giving an immersive feel and preventing monopolization of items, so it deserves to be preserved.
For smaller or newer guilds, the guild trader bid process is intimidating, and I think the system is currently failing in encouraging these sorts of guilds to form and grow. A big problem is there is no data to go off when putting in a bid for the guild. That means the guild has to either spend weeks of losing bids (and disappointing 50+ people each time) to try to get a grasp of what constitutes too low of prices, or they have to grossly overpay, eating into their ability to bid going forward. The losing message only relays that the guild ought to bid more or bid somewhere else--this is an oversimplification of the dynamic bidding process.
On the other side are the established guilds that want to entirely hide their bids in order to counter bid spying. I would love to be able to put in a final bid mid-week and not have to worry about spies. However, I can understand why this may not have been implemented yet inasmuch as this clamps down on whatever little information about guild bids does exist.
As such I would identify two changes: making the bid system MORE transparent to help the smaller guilds while also shielding the guild's gold balance change to counter spying to help the established guilds.
A few proposals on shielding have some drawbacks. Walling off the guild's gold bank balance behind permissions has a few problems--the biggest one being that members wouldn't be able to tell if their deposits actually go through, and they would have to constantly pester leadership to confirm deposits. Alternatively, holding the bid in escrow until the bids close would curtail spies for the given week but would then allow the exact gold change to be seen at trader flip time. I think the best way to shield the balance change is to either have a separate, permissioned-off guild bank balance designated for only bids or to allow bidders the option to use their personal gold balances to pay for the bid.
If spying is dealt with, then historic bids could be and ought to be more transparent. If the bid amounts are entirely blind, it would remove necessary accountability from the guild leadership--members would have to take the guild leadership's word on whether the guild is bidding in the best interests of the guild members (too high or too low can both be issues). Guilds would be more likely put in low bids, and then the guild traders wouldn't be acting as much of a gold sink.
I can imagine many reasons why guilds wouldn't want their exact week-to-week bids revealed, so something more in the ballpark would be ideal. What I would think could work as a compromise would be to post a range of the past several weeks of winning bids on the guild trader kiosk bid UI screen in half orders of magnitude: "This trader has been hired in recent weeks for between 300,000 and 1,000,000 gold per week". This would help smaller guilds gauge the market, and the message could also be mailed to losing bidders to give them a better sense of expectations. Revealing this sort of info would also allow guild members to know that the guild is maintaining healthy, competitive bids and sinking gold as intended. This is just one suggestion, and, really, there are many ways to be more transparent, and I think it would help the small and forming guilds the most to have at least some data.
Wouldn't it just be easier to publicly state what the current highest bid for a trader is? Sort of how at a real auction everyone knows what the current bid is and the auctioneer is calling for more to get the bid higher. The bid amount can be public with the name hidden and the fee held till a winner is confirmed. It actually helps if people know exactly how much a spot is going for and if two guilds want to try to outbid each other then let them.
King Pin
Do you need an enforcer to help retrieve that protection money?
Volunteering
There are definitely problems with the current trader system in ESO, but global auction houses also have their own problems.
Why not have Faction auction houses in ESO. No individual traders, and each faction shares an auction house, with one Underground Auction house that lets you buy from other factions AH's for a 40% fee (goldsink)?