Why do I have to pay guild fees just to auction stuff off?

EJRose83 · April 2017

Seriously, every guild with access to a guild vendor charges fees. I don't blame the players for this though, it's simply a design flaw on the dev's part - One that needs to be fixed IMO.

Oakmontowls_ESO · April 2017

It's to help pay for the bid on the vendor spot.

colig · April 2017

Why is it a flaw? Guild traders are not free.

EJRose83 · April 2017

I know, but no one should have to pay weekly or monthly fees just to auction stuff off. Also, most guilds over charge for the vendors. It's a pointless money pit. A better system needs to be put into place if you ask me.

EJRose83 · April 2017

colig wrote: »

Why is it a flaw? Guild traders are not free.

In all the other MMOs I've played, I've never had to pay to auction stuff off. Also, when auctioning stuff in ESO, a portion of your profit is already skimmed (taxed) from the actual sale price. I'm not sure if this money just vanishes or if it is put back into the guild. If it's not put back into the guild, it should be. If it is put back in the guild, then what are guild fees for?

Narvuntien · April 2017

A money pit is not pointless, it is to stop inflation. Gold grows in zombies.

People are constantly gaining more and more gold and without a way to siphon that money back out of the game it just gets out of hand very fast.

My guild doesn't have required charges (no set value) but we all know the trader isn't free so volintary contributions, typically to the guild raffle, are strong encouraged.

but then we aren't in a major city and lost the trader last week (got a new one this time)

ScooberSteve · April 2017

Id rather pay a set fee than pressured to buy tickets and donate into guild bank

Erasure · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

colig wrote: »

Why is it a flaw? Guild traders are not free.

In all the other MMOs I've played, I've never had to pay to auction stuff off. Also, when auctioning stuff in ESO, a portion of your profit is already skimmed (taxed) from the actual sale price. I'm not sure if this money just vanishes or if it is put back into the guild. If it's not put back into the guild, it should be. If it is put back in the guild, then what are guild fees for?

Guilds receive about 3.5% of the gold from all item sales. The other portion of the tax is deleted as a gold sink.

So yes, just selling things helps the guild maintain itself. Each week, guilds must bid blindly on the spot their trader will be displayed on. If they fail, they get no trader. If they succeed, every drake they bid is deleted from the system. Since you can't know for sure who else may be bidding against you, or how much, this encourages guilds to hold fundraisers. The fundraisers allow them to bid higher than their sales revenue alone would, keeping the guild safer against random takeover attempts.

Any guild willing to go the extra mile in order to raise gold has a competitive advantage over guilds that do not. If you look hard enough I'm sure you'd be able to find a trade guild out there which charges no extra fees, and runs no fundraisers. Such an organization would be unlikely to hold a high-traffic location for any period of time. They'd get pushed out by those who do.

In summary, good trade kiosks cost time and money to keep. Contributing to that effort shouldn't be viewed negatively.

ADarklore · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

colig wrote: »

Why is it a flaw? Guild traders are not free.

In all the other MMOs I've played, I've never had to pay to auction stuff off. Also, when auctioning stuff in ESO, a portion of your profit is already skimmed (taxed) from the actual sale price. I'm not sure if this money just vanishes or if it is put back into the guild. If it's not put back into the guild, it should be. If it is put back in the guild, then what are guild fees for?

This isn't "all the other MMOs" this is ESO and they have proudly stated that they are not like other MMOs. Most other MMOs have an auction house, ESO does not... just another way ESO is 'not like other MMOs'.

Further, Guild Traders need a steady income to purchase locations, which is where all the collected money goes for. While you may feel the trade locations are 'too expensive' but this is a free market system where the highest bidder wins the location.

golfer.dub17_ESO · April 2017

Bit annoyed you have to join a guild just to sell stuff. Yes you can try to spam zone chat and try to list everything using a textbox with a character limit...but good luck with that.

Extremely frustrated that even after a couple of years guild stores lack a basic search function, making you dig through tons of items you don't care about to find what you want, and having to go from NPC to NPC to do this on top of that.

Unique is not the same as useful. A standard auction house would be preferable.

SHADOW2KK · April 2017

golfer.dub17_ESO wrote: »

Bit annoyed you have to join a guild just to sell stuff. Yes you can try to spam zone chat and try to list everything using a textbox with a character limit...but good luck with that.

Extremely frustrated that even after a couple of years guild stores lack a basic search function, making you dig through tons of items you don't care about to find what you want, and having to go from NPC to NPC to do this on top of that.

Unique is not the same as useful. A standard auction house would be preferable.

Awesome Guild Store addon is your friend, lets you search for stuff, cos ZoS in their eternal quest to annoy as many people as possible still have not put a simple quality of life improvement like this since beta days on PC

Kiralyn2000 · April 2017

Yeah, the lack of any standard functionality (keyword search, price/unit, etc) is pretty annoying. Even ignoring the deliberately exclusionary & time-sink-y nature of the basic system (still not sure why people defend it so hard. Or maybe I do - since it keeps 'casual' sellers from participating in the economy, the I Live For Selling types can make even more money than they would in a standard auction model.)

Narvuntien · April 2017

The guild store being terrible is a seperate but important issue but like most PC users I switched to awesome guildstore and never looked back. Seriously hire that guy.

I kind of understanding the frustation in the shopping experience, in that I hate it in real life. Yet somehow I find it much less annoying in this game, perhaps its the beautiful locations and fantastical world rather than terrible malls. It's like shopping while on holiday is somehow not as terrible.

This system encourages interaction with other players that is the point of an MMO. The acution house model means you never have to talk to another player.

There is a reasonably high barrier to entry to selling things, sure okay, but do we want people to be selling junk everywhere? There is basically no point in selling anything until you are 160 cp. Get your own collection then sell it all to NPCs. The game is easy enough you can complete it with terrible gear.

Eshelmen · April 2017

Try saying it isn't fair to pay a fee when your guild trader that's in mourn hold and such literally takes millions per week to keep.

Phinix1 · April 2017

ADarklore wrote: »

This isn't "all the other MMOs" this is ESO and they have proudly stated that they are not like other MMOs. Most other MMOs have an auction house, ESO does not... just another way ESO is 'not like other MMOs'.

I mostly love ESO for it's uniqueness. One Tamriel in particular. But honestly, the above sort of reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

Or maybe like a car manufacturer advertising cars with square wheels, "because we're not like all those other car manufacturers, selling their cliche cars with round wheels." Some things other MMO's do right shouldn't be excluded just because other MMO's did them.

That said, I think this was talked about and had something to do with Megaserver tech not being able to handle the load of all those people using a global auction house.

disintegr8 · April 2017

The trader bidding system is the reason guilds charge fees. I am in two guilds, one asks for donations and the other demands 5k a week fee for trader access. Guess which one always has a trader and which does not always get one?

I think as an individual, if you sell a million gold worth of stuff through your guild trader every week and they remove your trader access because you didn't pay a 5k fee, that would be pretty rough. The problem is that there would also be a lot of small time sellers who hardly sell anything or don't restock their goods, so the guild is getting stuff all from them.

The only fair thing to do is to charge everyone a flat fee. I also think that charging you a fee to trade encourages you to make sure you sell instead of just listing stuff that sits there for ever because it is over priced or junk.

I donate 20k a week to each of my guilds, so it is in my interest to make sure I at least get that money back through sales - which also means the guild gets more gold from their take of my sales. I don't have an issue with this.

KochDerDamonen · April 2017

Well...
1) There are guilds that hold different models, requiring a certain amount of sales or allowing the substitution of entries into a guild raffle
2) Not all guilds are so stringent, ones with traders that aren't in the capital cities can be more lax on figures
3) You don't need these guilds to sell things fullstop, of course it's considerably less convenient to have to announce it in zone chat

ArchMikem · April 2017

If there's no gold sink, then players will steadily grow out of control wealthy. And that's bad.

Since Traders are so incredibly expensive because they're gold sinks, Guild leaders are forced to implement things like mandatory membership fees because they can't afford the traders every week on their own. And that's bad.

Only way for players to actually make gold is to sell their stuff via Traders. Only way to access a good Trader is through whatever Guild owns that Trader. 9 times out of 10, that Guild required mandatory membership fees, and if the player doesn't sell well, the fees become too much for them and they're kicked out. And that's bad.

Does anyone else see the irony here?

Kiralyn2000 · April 2017

That leads to my main question - where do "small time sellers" fit into this system? Because that's all I've ever been in any MMO - in any particular week, I might sell 0-5 things, depending on what I got my hands on. And I'd always undercut, because I just wanted to get it over with and get the quick sale. I have no interest in living in the auction house, flipping underpriced items, etc..... I just want to sell a few things that happen to be worth something rather than just wastefully vendoring them. (from the last month of play, I've got about half a dozen blue furniture recipes, and 3 or 4 duplicate motifs. So that's what, 2.5 items a week to sell. Or vendor for 10g.)

As it is, in ESO, I vendor & disassemble all the gear I find, steal & fence some stuff, and periodically craft large piles of food & poisons.... which I then vendor. It's just such a waste.

(And buying is pretty bad too - between the limited search options, and the part where you need to run around many zones to talk to many NPCs, it's just not worth trying to buy anything from trade NPCs. Only thing I've bought in the last month is a handful of 200-500gp gear pieces to research traits off of. Trying to find an particular piece of gear to use, a specific motif needed for a Master Writ, or a stack of provisioning materials for a decent $/unit; is just a waste of time.)

johu31 · April 2017

Guild traders take millions. Your welcome for bidding on it for you and securing it. It's really a hassle got GMs

idk · April 2017

@EJRose83

In every MMO I have played there has always been a cut for the house even when the house was the game itself. Also a listing fee as well which is not returned if the item is delisted. ESO the total is 8%.

Edit: If you are talking about fees a trading guild charges, there are plenty of guilds that do not charge and plenty of guild with low sales requirements. I am in one that is in a decent city and has only a 5k/week sales requirement. That is almost nothing.

Ajaxduo · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

Seriously, every guild with access to a guild vendor charges fees. I don't blame the players for this though, it's simply a design flaw on the dev's part - One that needs to be fixed IMO.

lol it's not a flaw at all, how do you expect trading guilds to afford their spot? It serves multiple purposes, gold sink, bidding system for traders. The leader alone shouldn't be made to pay out for everyone. If you really dislike it that much then use /z

Elsonso · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

Seriously, every guild with access to a guild vendor charges fees. I don't blame the players for this though, it's simply a design flaw on the dev's part - One that needs to be fixed IMO.

No, it is not a design flaw. Also, not every guild that has a trader charges an extra fee.

For ZOS the traders are a gold sink. The more gold that gets pumped into them, the better it works.

golfer.dub17_ESO wrote: »

Extremely frustrated that even after a couple of years guild stores lack a basic search function, making you dig through tons of items you don't care about to find what you want

Part of me wishes they would stop and just finish a few systems that they didn't finish before launch.

ThePonzzz · April 2017

I'm just glad we have soulless guildmasters willing to sink the time into the vendors. Thank you for wasting countless hours of your day just so I can sell my wares!

colig · April 2017

lordrichter wrote: »

Part of me wishes they would stop and just finish a few systems that they didn't finish before launch.

They pretty much outsourced this work to players as a result of addons.

Kiralyn2000 · April 2017

Ajaxduo wrote: »

EJRose83 wrote: »

Seriously, every guild with access to a guild vendor charges fees. I don't blame the players for this though, it's simply a design flaw on the dev's part - One that needs to be fixed IMO.

lol it's not a flaw at all, how do you expect trading guilds to afford their spot?

Clearly, by not having trading guilds needing to "afford" "spots". (i.e, having a centralized auction system, rather than this patchwork of NPC vendors scattered inconveniently across all corners of the map)

But yeah, this is the terrible system they decided on, that for some odd reason people defend. Eh, whatever. Just seems like such an awful inconvenient waste. Goods to be sold that can't be found by consumers, valuable goods destroyed/lost/vendored rather than be available for other players, etc. But for the few who can work the system for Massive Profit, I'm sure they love having an artificially-limited playing field to reap their gold from. /shrug

Saucy_Jack · April 2017

Let's put this in another perspective. Let's imagine that 100% of your potential sales for the week total...I dunno, let's lowball it, 50K. Let's assume you're not a super powerseller; 50k potential sales in a week.

Spamming zone chat (which a lot of people have muted, btw) and dealing with the character limit, in addition to the fact that you can only actively sell items when you're online...let's say you only make 20% of your potential sales, or 10K gold.

In a guild trader that asks for a weekly fee of 5k, you not only have the benefit of being able to deal directly with guildies in guild chat, but when you list your items you have the advantage of a) visibility and b) being able to still sell items even when you're offline. As a result, you make, say, 80% of you potential sales, or 40k.

(In both instances I didn't say any one method would allow for 100% of potential sales because let's face it, sometimes things just don't sell.)

At any rate, moral of the story:
No guild trader: 0g in fees, 10k in sales = 10k profit.
Guild trader: 5k in fees, 40k in sales = 35k profit.

So why would anyone complain about 5k in fees when it results in much higher profit overall? That doesn't make a lick of sense.

altemriel · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

Seriously, every guild with access to a guild vendor charges fees. I don't blame the players for this though, it's simply a design flaw on the dev's part - One that needs to be fixed IMO.

that is not true. not every trading guild is like that. there are many, which require regular fees. but some don`t, just require you to sell stuff in their guild store.

golfer.dub17_ESO · April 2017

Ajaxduo wrote: »

At any rate, moral of the story:
No guild trader: 0g in fees, 10k in sales = 10k profit.
Guild trader: 5k in fees, 40k in sales = 35k profit.

So why would anyone complain about 5k in fees when it results in much higher profit overall? That doesn't make a lick of sense.

Your post is factually correct in outlining how guild stores are better than zone chat.
I don't agree with the conclusion that complaining about fees is nonsensical.

It would be better to have an auction house, and still reach my full potential of 40k without paying any fees, than have the current system where I have to pay 5k to sell my items.

Brrrofski · April 2017

Not on of the three trading guilds i"'m in make you pay anything.

Turelus · April 2017

EJRose83 wrote: »

I know, but no one should have to pay weekly or monthly fees just to auction stuff off. Also, most guilds over charge for the vendors. It's a pointless money pit. A better system needs to be put into place if you ask me.

And so we reach the real subject and direction of this thread.

As others have said the fee is to cover the trader, not all guilds require one.