Kodrac wrote: »

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

alexkdd99 wrote: »

snakester320 wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

Hyrianeth wrote: »

Yup, the rich guilds gets richer. There's no place for the little guy trying to sell anything.

Maybe get in one of the guilds with a good trader?

Yeah that's typical ignorance that's expected from players who would cry like a baby if there was a AH..
I've got a trader and my guild prob has sister guilds throwing millions at traders so they can own a lot of the market and push the little guild or ppl out..

Kind of like how you are here crying like a baby because there isn't an auction house? The guilds that have put in the effort will be rewarded. Creating a guild and expecting it to have a trader in a prime location in a week is ridiculous. The large guilds have been putting in effort. To expect to be able to bypass all the work others have done just because is the definition of entitlement. You are not entitled to the prime locations, go build up your guild/ guild bank and bid on it line everyone else did. Crying about it will get you nowhere.

Also it takes way way way less time to upkeep the guild if your already in a prime location.

Wrong. Utterly.

So your claiming a guild without a vendor that can't sell anything but only to its own members can take a spot from a prime location ?

I like the trade guild kiosk system. Let's keep it the way it is.

There's no doubt in my mind that the present system needs some form of overhaul. It's fine for the comparatively few players who milk the playerbase through the severely restricted supply and in effect price-fixing through add-ons (directly on PC, indirectly on console), but for those who don't want to play those games or whose guilds can't compete there is no real alternative way of selling given that the forum is regularly full of complaints of people being scammed through both manual trading and COD trading in the mail.

Interestingly, one effect of Homestead has been a dramatic fall in prices and it didn't take long for the complaints to roll in from the traders unhappy at seeing their income falling!

All it needs in principle for sellers is for the trading system to be open to all players and not just those who belong to the main trading guilds. In practice that could be achieved by having a single NPC trader in the main guild trader locations, through whom anyone could list a small number of items at a high commission to be shared between the guilds trading in that location.

For buyers a centralised search function would be sensible, with the option either to travel to the trader to buy the item at a low commission or if you paid a higher commission it would be mailed to you.

Trading is a core part of any MMO and while there is nothing wrong with it allowing dedicated work for those who want to make the most of it as a full part of the game, that shouldn't be the only way to buy or sell for those who just want to do a bit of trading along the way. It should be open to all players without artificial barriers such as guild membership or blind bidding, and buying an item shouldn't involve traveling all over the world to find it only then to be in no position to know whether it's cheaper anywhere else without even more traveling. The system should work well with the default interface and not be dependent on add-ons, not least because only half the players can use them and some of them choose not to do so for perfectly valid reasons.

The present system sucks for everyone except those few who profit enormously from it, and there are an awful lot of players who will have nothing to do with it (quite apart from those who would like to participate but are constantly priced out). Personally I dump any surplus stuff in the bank or sell it at trash prices to NPC merchants because I just don't want anything to do with the present system. In three years there have been no more than a couple of occasions or so when I've bought a recipe needed for a writ or some other more-or-less essential item but only then if it was priced sensibly - 250 gold is probably the most I have paid for anything and I prefer to do without or spend time getting the item myself rather than travel all over the place and either end up empty-handed or being charged silly prices.

Kodrac wrote: »

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

Kodrac wrote: »

Kyle1983b14_ESO wrote: »

alexkdd99 wrote: »

snakester320 wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

Hyrianeth wrote: »

Yup, the rich guilds gets richer. There's no place for the little guy trying to sell anything.

Maybe get in one of the guilds with a good trader?

Yeah that's typical ignorance that's expected from players who would cry like a baby if there was a AH..
I've got a trader and my guild prob has sister guilds throwing millions at traders so they can own a lot of the market and push the little guild or ppl out..

Kind of like how you are here crying like a baby because there isn't an auction house? The guilds that have put in the effort will be rewarded. Creating a guild and expecting it to have a trader in a prime location in a week is ridiculous. The large guilds have been putting in effort. To expect to be able to bypass all the work others have done just because is the definition of entitlement. You are not entitled to the prime locations, go build up your guild/ guild bank and bid on it line everyone else did. Crying about it will get you nowhere.

Also it takes way way way less time to upkeep the guild if your already in a prime location.

Wrong. Utterly.

So your claiming a guild without a vendor that can't sell anything but only to its own members can take a spot from a prime location ?

No, I'm saying you're wrong that it takes less upkeep to run a guild in prime location. It takes more because it's very demading to keep that location.

I said it takes less time, not upkeep itself because the prime locations make so much more gold than ones without a trader or out in the middle of no where

oh hey this thread again.

probably not going to happen @ this point.

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

75K players.

You keep mentioning that number - 75k players... I'd like to know where you got it, because it is simply a lie.

I imagine that you think 150 traders x 500 per guild = 75000

I've seen that number bandied about on the many, many, many previous "I want..." threads. It ignores the fact that there are three platforms, and two servers for each. So you are out by a factor of six.

Imagine that - the real number is 450,000 !

And that ignores the fact that anyone in a guild of ten or more can sell to other guild members. Unlimited opportunities there.

And then again anyone can sell in chat - and from the messages I see plenty of people are doing just that. Unlimited opportunities there too.

As for the positives of guild trading... it's a game within a game. Anyone complaining about not being able to join in should get in a guild.

Anyone complaining that they don't want to join a guild then tough.- I might as well complain about not being able to complete group content if I don't want to join a group.

I'd rather sell to millions than 10-500 players.

Turelus wrote: »

Malanthor wrote: »

Not everyone want a job as a day trader in ESO and not everyone want to be in 5 trading guilds and spend a substantial amount of time to be able to effectively sell a few items from time to time.

Then don't run a guild and just join one. I don't spend any substantial time selling my items.

• Ask the item value in guild chat.
• Go to bank
• Search my guild for the item I have
• List it lower

Malanthor wrote: »

I see some people preaching doom and despair with an auction house. Jesus people! Pretty much every single MMO out there has an auction house. -and you know what? It works great. Look at WOW, look at Eve Online, look at DAOC back in the day.
Look at countless others. I have played lot of MMO's and i have never ever seen any issues with any auction house. I have bought and i have sold and it has worked great in every god damn instance.

I don't preach doom and despair, but I don't think we should throw inovation and attemps at new things away because it's not the norm. The MMO community has been asking for new attempts at old mechanics for years, but every time someone tries it gets told "WoW did it better, should do what WoW did" only to be called "WoW clone" when something is copied.

Malanthor wrote: »

I hope people keep making these posts so that Zenimax can see that people are not happy with the current system.
I did a quick search here and a google search and it seems to me that a lot of people are not happy with the current system.
In any case Zenimax should not rely on the overly vocal crowd lobbying for their interests on the forums that much but instead use logic and think for themselves, and if you do that then one thing becomes crystal clear ; the current system is ***. Both from a buyers and sellers perspective.

A lot of the threads have also been defended by people, there are players on both sides of this. Those who have stepped out of the norm and tried the system often enjoy it.
Hell I was here at launch when we had no guild traders, I had to buy everything in house and I was fine with then.

There is nothing wrong with trying to innovate. The problem with this game is their innovation was a step backwards and not forwards. Guild Traders are inferior to the economic systems of other MMORPGs in every way. It's more difficult to sell, more difficult to buy - and still suffers from the same deflation (as recent prices prove) as other systems since players use addons to compare prices anyway.

So if there is a good argument as to why this game should keep its current system over the more standard auction house approach then I haven't seen it. It needlessly alienates players for no good reason. Just being different for the sake of being different isn't well designed, especially when it's a more cumbersome and ineffective difference.

There may be a better way to design an MMO economy other than having a centralized auction house. But this game hasn't discovered it if there is one.

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Lack of Variety is certainly not a Strech, how often do you see armour sets of levels other than 160cp? Majority of armour sets are for the main flavour of the day, even if they are 160cp. A system that encourages Trade Guilds to get sales, forces a situation where item that are known to sell well are only put in the guild stores.

This issue is not to do with the traders, its to do with the games other systems.
You're saying a trade system is flawed because players are not selling sets which hardly sell

Cherryblossom wrote: »

If someone could explain why this system is so good, I'd be more than happy to change my opinion, but sadly no ever gives an argument for the Traders, they just argue against an AH.

I and others have given you various reasons as to why this is good, but needs more work. You've not accepted them.
We have given reasons and debate as to why we feel this system is better than a global auction house and agreed on where the pain points are and how the system would be much better with them fixed.
I think we can also agree to disagree that maybe we like different systems.

Cherryblossom wrote: »

To make this point even clearer, many Trade Guild Leaders complain about how broken the bidding system is, Buyers complain that they can't find what they ultimately want. Most people are unable to sell effectively to the rest of the community. Yet people defend this broken arse system.

Then maybe we should fix the issues you mention, rather than ripping the system out of the game.

As a thought exercise for you @Cherryblossom think about constructively what could be done to the current system to help with your issues with it, without changing it entirely to an AH. Then post those ideas and see if it's possible to keep this system with some work done to it, rather than removing it entirely.

The guild trader is a great system. It makes cities more alive and feel like you are in an actual city.

If they went to an AH system you know the next thing would be people complaining.. I want a link to the AH in my mansion, eventually they would cave and there literally would be no reason for anybody to leave their house ever.

The closest to an AH I could get behind would be a central trader in each town, city, or possibly zone. You would still have to travel around to check every trader, but you at least have a central spot to check a large grouping of them

Cherryblossom wrote: »

As I've shown above I do make constructive ideas for improving the current system, but too many people who are against the idea of an AH, will blindly defend the current broken system.
Personally I'm happy to keep the current system if its improved and made totally inclusive. But as I said, currently it is totally broken, to claim otherwise is a lie.

So would you be happy with the current system if the following changes then.

1. A global search feature that lists how many of said item are for sale in each zone. The list being an expandable field which shows the name of each zone trader and how many they stock each (note this wouldn't show prices).
2. Completely revised UI to help buyers refine searches in a meaningful way.
3. Fixing the search do it doesn't take years or crash every other search.

The argument on inclusion is a little more complex and one I don't think we would find any agreement on.
The current system allows for everyone to try, but to succeed and own a high traffic trade place required effort from a guild master (and officers) to run a guild and members to make sure they're selling items which will actually sell.

Much of the complaining is that players don't want to have to join a guild in order to sell wares. This I feel is where we need to convince people that trade guilds are not some exploiting evil devil. There is far too much false propaganda thrown around which gets repeated yet doesn't hold true.
There are casual trade guilds out there which do not have fees and still hold traders, they just don't hold the premier traders.
Getting into a trade guild is as simple as asking in zone or on the forums.
You don't require a trader to sell your item, people were able to sell in house well enough before traders were a thing, if you're not selling things then check what you're listing is priced well or something people actually want to buy.

There is a finite number of traders in the game but many of these are not fully utilised yet and more are added every year, once the system is at breaking point for competition of these traders it could be argued there need something new.
Otherwise look at ways to open up access to trade stalls without simply gutting the current system.

Krileon wrote: »

I would prefer they simply add a means to search all guild traders at once and it give you a map marker to find them. IMO this is the only way to satisfy those that like the guild trader system and people like me who are tired of wasting hours searching for items. You will still have a lot of sales at traders in major cities due to instant gratification crowd. This also helps the more casual guilds actually sell things.

Agreed.

I think it's a shame ZOS hasn't gone back and address the older struggling systems within the game (guild traders, guilds banks etc.) it would be amazing to have a DLC release which focused on these issues as the "extra" on top of just more content and skill balance.