SchizoidMetal wrote: »

Flame me for this, but this is pure truth and just looking at high valued items on their website. You will see how this addon allows for price control and fixing through the website. I know first hand how a website can be bot scanned for low priced items and bought and resold for stupid prices(price fixing). I thought the whole point of the guild trading system was to now allow trade to become centralized. Well it has and you dont have to run around looking at all the trade shops, you can simply go to their website search the item and it pops up the lowest priced one w/ where and who. This breaks the uniqueness of the trading in ESO.

Giving trading guilds a reason to exist is a nice idea, but the result for a buyer is massive inconvenience and higher prices. Not not mention the rules in many guilds: Don't sell enough: kick. Away for a week: kick.

This is just an idea, but changes I would like to see:

• all guild stores access a combined pool of items
• each guild can set a commission fee that is being added to the price and kept when an item is sold for a different guild
• the commission fee needs a minimum to prevent the creation of a normal auction house system and a reasonable maximum like 20% or similar

Due to the additional charge, items of the guild store owner are still the better choice to buy, that means checking different guildstores would still be favorable if you want to rather play the economy. This also means that good locations are still worth getting for all guilds.

This would make TTC obsolete, remove all the running around if you are willing to pay some more and reduce but not remove the sometimes crazy price differences.

Another side effect is, that it will remove quite a lot of unnecessary zoning. Considering the load times, which seem to be
caused mostly by server side processes, this might actually be beneficial for the game. ( I mentioned something similar regarding receiving mails in another thread).

Hardcore trader will hate it, I know, but they are the minority. And as I said, it's just _one_ idea what could be done and still keep the underlying mechanic and reasoning for the system alive.

Roovin wrote: »

TTC isn't very good for pricing stuff.
The website is indispensable for finding stuff.

The "finding stuff" is actually more important than the pricing. Teleporting / Zoning through Tramriel for shopping reasons is just unfun.

SchizoidMetal wrote: »

Flame me for this, but this is pure truth and just looking at high valued items on their website. You will see how this addon allows for price control and fixing through the website. I know first hand how a website can be bot scanned for low priced items and bought and resold for stupid prices(price fixing). I thought the whole point of the guild trading system was to now allow trade to become centralized. Well it has and you dont have to run around looking at all the trade shops, you can simply go to their website search the item and it pops up the lowest priced one w/ where and who. This breaks the uniqueness of the trading in ESO.

This is well known...yep, it sucks.

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Magıc wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Magıc wrote: »

Even before TTC came out, 1-3 people could manipulate prices to an extreme level. An example is flower prices on PC EU. 2 people, just 2 people nearly tripled the price of every single flower in the game until the bags from IC came out (columbine was 600 nearly 700 each). Spell power pots on PC EU went from 100 each to 180 each thanks to 3 people. The best example I can think of is Hakeijo's. 5k to 15k thanks to just 2 guys (same guys who did the flowers). Of course people will try bandwagon and jump on the opportunity if they can, but they don't have much impact.

So I don't see a problem with TTC when just 2 people can have that much of an impact anyway. Just helps me find items easier instead of searching every guild store in Tamriel for the cheapest.

It's possible to manipulate the average "master merchant price," but this is just the average recent sale price. It's not any limitation on the actual price that people are selling the item for.

I suppose if there were a global auction house, it might be possible for one or two extremely wealthy players to keep buying every single offer of a particular item instantly and control the prices this way.

Currently with TTC this is not possible as some would-be evil mastermind would still need to first hope that someone with TTC add on visits the guild trader, then updates the database, then after noticing the price on the website, he would still need to log into the game and travel to each guild trader to buy any items.

TTC isn't needed for 2-3 people to manipulate prices/MM. We didn't use it at all, we just checked every guild store every few hours and bought everything out (unless severely overpriced). We even bought out people try to bandwagon. They would raise prices knowing we're the ones buying from them (and we would of course gain less profit from them) but eventually they'd run out of stock while ours just kept growing to the point no one else could compete.

The flower manipulation they did is the greatest price manipulation I've ever seen. The two people doing it are hated on PC EU by anyone who isn't a trader, including PVPers cause as I said, they raised columbine to nearly 700 each (and even by some traders) even to do this day (they dumped all their flowers the second to last weekend before the flower bags were released, so they gained maximum profit).

What I mean is it's not possible to fully control supply of items in ESO. 2 - 3 people, even a dozen people playing 24/7 cannot physically purchase all the flowers at every guild trader, whether using TTC or not. In an auction house system, if you have enough gold, you could sit there and buy every flower.

On PC NA people did something similar with Columbine, but they never managed to control the supply of the flowers. Would not be possible for anyone to do that in this game. They did however, generate enough transactions to raise the M.M. average. Seems many people blindly believe whatever M.M. says is what the price "should be" - actually it's nothing more than a record of recent average selling price. This has little bearing on the actual value to the player who wants to buy the item.

It's virtually impossible to control the supply of any item in a global trade unless said item is rare. Rare items are expensive, that's how the world works, supply and demand is a thing. Global AH works just fine in every other MMO, as any free market would.

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

OP has a very ideosyncratic definition of "price fixing."

Price fixing involves collusion. Collusion requires an agreement among multiple actors. TTC involves no agreements on pricing whatsoever. It merely lets people know the going rates. People individually decide if they want to buy and resell and they individually decide what price they want to charge.

Please stop misusing the word "price fixing."

What???

Tacit collusion requires no agreement. And nobody is arguing that TTC fixes prices. They are arguing that it facilitates price fixing. Which it does. Tacit collusion requires that market participants know how items are being priced across the market.

LegacyDM wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how having a global ah leads to price fixing? I really don't know. Not being sarcastic. Don't the rules of supply and demand kick in? If someone tries to price fix they wouldn't be able to sell the items because they fixed the price too high. So ultimately, if they want to sell the item they have to sell at fair market value based on supply and demand? How does having a central website or ah change the basic fundamentals of economics?

By cornering the market buying all of a particular item and then fixing a price for your monopoly.

Skjoldur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Because nothing says amateur mindset like DAOC. Oh, wait.

DAOC is from the MMO stone ages. And one more or less successful game does not necessarily mean a lot. Look at Peter Molyneux.

I'm sorry, what are we considering Molyneux's singular success? Fable? Eh, maybe. Syndicate? Yeah, I need to go back and play that again some day. Populous? Black and White? I mean, it's not perfect but... you have one in mind, or just saying, "oh, hey, look at that wacky guy who does stupid stuff?"

Cherryblossom wrote: »

@starkerealm
Firstly, as already pointed out by people, Market manipulation happens in ESO, what is more surprising is how easy it is because it's such a ball ache to search everywhere for something at a low price.
More importantly as already pointed out, the economy in all other MMO are strong and there is very little issue.
As for Variety, what complete BS, we currently have no variety as the trade system is so restrictive with so few sellers. Or may be you can find me a lvl42 Prisoner Rags belt, actually find me a whole set for a level 36! Do you know why you can't! I'll let you think on it for a while.
The reason people want a AH is because they have played and seen how well it actually works in other games. so may be you should explain.

You'll never find a level 42 Prisoner Rags Belt. Ever. Because the item doesn't exist. No, I don't mean in a, "yeah, it can drop, but almost never does," kind of way. I mean, literally, it does not exist. It's like asking for a Spriggan's Girdle, or a Belt of Necropotence. You can get a Prisoner's Sash, that drops, and exists. There's a level 43 Well-Fitted one, and a level 45 Infused one in listed in Wrothgar. If you really want one.

There's utterly no point to them, because you'll level past them faster than you could put together a full set, but you can find them on the market.

So, if you were running around looking for a Prisoner's Belt, that one's all on you, not the market, not in the game, can never drop. But, I do applaud you for your outside the box thinking looking for a mediocre light armor set and trying to get it in medium armor, where it would kinda make sense.

Here's the thing, finding sub 160 gear is kinda pointless now. Because of how fast you level. Personally, I usually make a character four or five sets of gear and just run up through on that now, swapping out their equipment when they hit a new material tier.

On top of that, you're talking about a Cold Harbour overland set. Now, granted, it's not as level restricted as it once was, but that's still one of the least populated zones in the game. Because access is gated, and because there's not a lot there to grab. The overland sets are interesting but underwhelming, and ultimately, nobody is going to start farming for those pieces below 160 on a normal basis. So, it's really not something to blame the market for.

Drachenfier wrote: »

It's virtually impossible to control the supply of any item in a global trade unless said item is rare. Rare items are expensive, that's how the world works, supply and demand is a thing. Global AH works just fine in every other MMO, as any free market would.

It is, actually, comparatively easy. Especially with semi-rare items. Even more so with automation. All you need to do is stand at a terminal, refresh your search, and pick off any low price items that pop up, then relist them for their actual value or sit on them. Again, with automation this means the cheap items can sometimes be on the market for less than 10 seconds. And, yes, I know, automation is against the TOS for ESO, and a lot of other MMOs. Now, could I direct your attention to the bottrain in Shadowfen.

With ESO, if you wanted to do the same thing, you would need to interact with each guild kiosk individually. That means you either need to connect on something close to 200 accounts simultaneously (no, I don't have the exact Kiosk count in front of me right now), or you need to move between them. All of those points of access make it much harder to track down and snarf up anyone listing that semi-rare item below market.

And yes, single market systems lead to horrific inflation. Everyone seems to have the idea that the splintered market only limits how low you can price things, but in a single market game, it's way easier to undercut by trivial amounts. While here, you need to know what the going rate for something is outside of just your guild, if you're pricing something to move. If you want the money right now, you're going to price it far lower than you would in a single market game, where you know it would move instantly with a very minor discount.

lordrichter wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Acrolas wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

Half the features in this game were designed as if this was the first mmo ever created.

"ESO is a game unlike any other" - Firor

As I tend to say, amateur mindset, amateur results...

Because nothing says amateur mindset like DAOC. Oh, wait.

I mean, that is the thing to keep in mind here: These weren't rookie developers. These were a collection of MMO devs, that fans tend to cream themselves over.

The hilarious part is, where they weren't simply copying Blizzard, and suddenly, a lot of those same fans flip out and cry foul, because other games do it this way, so why does this game have different design goals.

Yup.

I am sure that there is something that Firor would do differently with ESO, if he had the opportunity to do it again, but it is a mistake to think that they are amateur. I get why players feel warm and comfy when games just copy each other. So do the studios. I will give ZOS credit for thinking outside of the MMO Box, though. It is much easier to just stay in the box. We are all here arguing about what went wrong, which says a lot about the parts that went right.

To be fair, the public kiosks were part of a reworking of the system.

lordrichter wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

This game is in dire need of an AH.

Not really.

I mean, when we're talking about people inflating the market, they're limited by how time consuming it is, and how restricted their ability to sell items is. Making that open to everyone? Yeah, I can't see how that would go horribly wrong.

By making the trading system open to all you create a level playing field. However, I can fully understand why those who make the most from the existing system are so desperate to hang onto it.

ESO trading system is pretty open. Yeah, there is a bar in that the player needs to be in a guild, but games often have some bar to achievement. The game itself has a couple bars, just to play. The hard part is finding the guild. There are more kiosks today, and more guilds have kiosks, and not all of those guilds are full of players and I have yet to see one that is not recruiting. At least, not on PC NA. Until such time as all of those guilds are full, the "traders want to keep the system to themselves" rhetoric seems to be hollow.

It's worth remembering, if you want to keep a kiosk in a major area, like Mournhold, Wayrest, or Rawl'Kha, you need to be doing as much business as possible. That means you need as many members as your roster will take, listing as many items as they can (ideally all 30 slots), and you need those items turning over regularly. Bids on those traders are stratospheric.

What this actually means is, those guilds are always looking for new people. They need new members to replace inactives, or (in some cases) members who couldn't meet their sales quotas. I get that a lot of players look at these, and say it's an exclusive club they could never get into, but, seriously, keep an eye on Zone chat. There are guilds, right now, with kiosks all over the place, advertising for members, begging for people to join them and sell stuff. At peak times, you can't go 15 minutes in most zones without someone barking out a recruitment message for their trading guild.

Yeah, there are some guilds that have cultivated a bad reputation, based on some seriously shady behavior. But, quite frankly, guilds like that hemorrhage members and can't keep up. Their guildmasters got what they wanted in the short run, but screwed themselves over in the long term.

lordrichter wrote: »

Cherryblossom wrote: »

Firstly, as already pointed out by people, Market manipulation happens in ESO, what is more surprising is how easy it is because it's such a ball ache to search everywhere for something at a low price.
More importantly as already pointed out, the economy in all other MMO are strong and there is very little issue.
As for Variety, what complete BS, we currently have no variety as the trade system is so restrictive with so few sellers. Or may be you can find me a lvl42 Prisoner Rags belt, actually find me a whole set for a level 36! Do you know why you can't! I'll let you think on it for a while.
The reason people want a AH is because they have played and seen how well it actually works in other games. so may be you should explain.

The "merchant princes" argument also rings hollow. I am sure that people will try to manipulate the market, but it is a lot more work in ESO, and it will never be global or perfectly executed. Yes, if a player shops only on Rodeo Drive, prices are going to be higher, and the stores there would like to keep it that way. However, those stores have little control over people who want to buy elsewhere, and the more people spread out, the easier it is to get stuff cheaper.

Why would anyone sell Level 42 Prisoner Rags belt, or a whole set for a Level 36? You would probably not find it even if everyone in the game was required, as a condition of playing the game, to constantly sell stuff in a global auction house. That is a very specific shopping list that is going to be useful for a few hours, and then it won't be. There is no gold to be made in this game selling that sort of thing. It depends on finding a sucker buyer at just the right point in time, and it is just much easier to stock more mainstream things. That is why it isn't for sale.

*Quietly points out that Prisoner's Rags is a light armor set, and a belt is a medium armor piece.*

Tan9oSuccka wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

This game is in dire need of an AH.

Not really.

I mean, when we're talking about people inflating the market, they're limited by how time consuming it is, and how restricted their ability to sell items is. Making that open to everyone? Yeah, I can't see how that would go horribly wrong.

Explain again how giving everyone the ability to sell is a bad thing?

I'd prefer not paying 9k per Tempering Alloy.

Well, I've been listing Alloys at 6.5k each. Though, to be fair, I might not have any up for sale at this moment.

The problem isn't about giving everyone the ability to sell, that's fine. The danger is in unifying them into a single interface. That's where you get a convenient malleable market that a handful of individuals can really mess with.

Tempering Alloys are actually a pretty good example. Rare enough to corner the market, and valuable enough to get people to pay through the nose. Stick everything through a single market, and you could easily see a handful of people snap up any that got listed for less than 25k, and suddenly, that's the new price. I mean, I'd make a killing, even with just my on hand stock, but still, not something that'd make your life better.

starkerealm wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Flipping =/= price fixing. If people are willing to pay the higher price, then that's the price people are willing to pay.

This. To give some perspective, I work in a field where im constantly trying to control the prices of light fixtures. Some of the benefits is seeing how much a product costs at retail and through distribution channels. Either way, for distributors and contractors to make a profit they will add what is called an "adder" for their services. Typically it is 20% of the total value of the light fixture package being purchased. So if a fixture is $150 and we have 200 being installed, the distribution/contruction is taking $6000 for their services. The manufacturer is setting the base cost so they earn a profit (which we never see the actual cost of making the fixture, just distributor net prices of the final product.). I'd imagine they also tack on 20% so the 150 is actually 120$.

For ESO, if base white item is 150, purple mat is 100 (400 for 4 required upgrade mats), sharp trait is 100, you are looking at a 650G item at base value. Tack on a kuda enchant, and it's 1700 (kudas are 1k and other runes are around 30g a piece?). 20% markup for 160cp purple weapons with kudas make the total at 2,040G.

People are overpaying for items based on how much they are considered BiS and availability. Even if the item is hard to find, is it really worth dropping a 8800% markup because it's BiS? (150k gold weapons I've seen in stores.). Probably not, but if people want to spend 150k nothing we can do lol.

Probably worth pointing out, with ESO, you're usually paying "labor" costs, primarily, for an item. A gold sharpened weapon will usually be from a drop set, meaning getting that piece intentionally is a lot of time investment. Beyond that, upgrading a weapon to gold costs ~50k, (most non-jewelry gold items you'll see started life as something considerably cheaper, and were upgraded to grab attention in the store).

Beyond that, prices float based on availability. High demand drop sets are common enough, but rarely drop pieces anyone wants to use. This is why you can look at a set like Mother's Sorrow, and find pieces that are worth less than 100g, while others are worth north of 50k. The supply of one piece to another is (roughly) equivalent, but, the demand for higher end weapons and armor is much greater than the supply. This is also part of why you can usually fudge together an off trait version of your build for a couple thousand, and then work on getting the right traits after the fact.

Agreed, it's not as cut/dry as my example makes it out to be. I do expect gold jewels to be such a high markup given their super-rarity. Just wanted to point out a way to give base values which players can use to make sure items are at a value they want to pay instead of watching an add-on give them the answer to.

Drachenfier wrote: »

The only way this could happen is if the game had virtually no player population. The supply with a global market is HUGE because of the amount of players that have direct access to it.

Actually, not so much. Right now, according to TTC, there are roughly 7500 Tempering Alloy listings. (Starting at about 5k.) While that might seem too be far too high for one person to corner the market, you're actually missing the point. It's incredibly easy to start low, pick off the low listings, flip them for an immediate profit, and gradually work your way up.

Again, this isn't a scenario where you'd see every item instantly disappear and reappear at five times the price. That wouldn't happen. But, a unified market would create a situation that drove prices up.

Ultimately, the supply of Alloy is limited by the number of people willing to grind out materials for it. The demand is much greater than the supply, and the price can climb much higher than it is now.

Drachenfier wrote: »

You act as if three or four overlords will control everything, and that is a virtual impossibility. If that were the case, every MMO that uses a global trade system would have a stunted economy, and yet somehow, none of them do. You really need to rethink your position on this, or step outside of the ESO box and see what everyone else is talking about.

So, you've never actually played another MMO for more than 15 minutes, I take it? Again, I made the comment about Star Trek Online a couple pages ago, but let's run with that as an example. In 2011, so, six years ago, a prize ship (specifically the Jem'Hadar Attack Ship) ran around 5 million to 15 million Energy Credits. The last time I checked (around 2015), prize ships were running around 500 to 750 million (a wide variety now, but I'm thinking of the one from the Iconian lockboxes specifically). That's (roughly) a 5000% inflation rate over four years.

I made the comment about holding on to keys. I bought a bunch of those back in 2013, for a little under 1m a piece, back in 2015, they were worth close to 4m each. That's only 400% inflation, so, not so bad, but the information carries.

So, yes, markets like this do lead to people cornering the market, and driving prices up. The prize ships are rare enough to corner the market on, and people did. If you think that can't apply to sharpened weapons, aetherial dust, or even just good old fashioned tempers and wax, you're kidding yourself. No one would be able to drive the price of tempers to 100k a piece (probably), but they could push it into the 20s pretty easily given a year or two to work on the market.

Again, you might not like it. It may be inconvenient for you. But, the fractured kiosk system does make things cheaper for you. It makes it harder for someone to game the system. Not, impossible, but harder. If you don't believe something like this could happen, go ask the PC-EU players about alchemy mats. They have a story you might not want to hear.

Drachenfier wrote: »

This..

and yes, single market systems lead to horrific inflation. Everyone seems to have the idea that the splintered market only limits how low you can price things, but in a single market game, it's way easier to undercut by trivial amounts. While here, you need to know what the going rate for something is outside of just your guild, if you're pricing something to move. If you want the money right now, you're going to price it far lower than you would in a single market game, where you know it would move instantly with a very minor discount.

is the real issue. You, and people like you, prefer this style of market because you can continue to overcharge for things due to limited access of information and comparison. "Undercutting" happens because value is dictated by availability. For the thousandth time, that's how supply and demand works.

Hardly. The only things I've deliberately overcharged for, in recent memory, were the Dubious Camoran Throne Recipes, and that Dwemer Street Light recipe.

Hey, you want to sell stuff? Get in a guild that has a kiosk. Don't give me any of those blubbering, "but my friend's, nephew's, former roommate got ripped off by one," crap. Find one, join it. If they're asking for an up front fee to join, pick someone else.

No, I get it, what you want is to not have to put forth any effort. You want a system that doesn't require you to interact with other players... in a game that is designed to force you to interact with other players on a regular basis. In fact, the entire point behind the guild stores in the first place was to create small communities that interacted and traded with one another. Not an impersonal system where people plop their butts down in front of a terminal and spend the next eight hours gaming the commodities available without speaking to, or interacting with, another player at all.