starkerealm wrote: »

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.

And if the market were wide open, there'd be thousands more of them available. Me, and a lot of people like me, don't even bother with ESO's market system because it's too much of a hassle. I have tons of crap sitting in my craft bag that will never see the light of day unless I use it. Not because I'm a hoarder, but because I can't be assed to mess with ESO's backwards market system. I literally made millions in SWTOR just selling off crap i looted while leveling. I'm not a person that plays the market, either.

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.

Yes, because the economy itself grows as time goes on. More people join, people make more money, the amount of money in the circulation grows, currency loses it's value, prices on rare items goes up. How is this any different than the real world? Did you know there was a time when you could buy a brand new car for less than a thousand dollars? What would that 15 million be valued at in today's currency for STO?

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.

I want a system that doesn't require me to have to hunt all over creation to avoid the gougers. How hard is that to understand? I want a fair market, driven by supply and demand, not these isolated markets with artificially induced pricing.

Drachenfier wrote: »

I want a system that doesn't require me to have to hunt all over creation to avoid the gougers. How hard is that to understand? I want a fair market, driven by supply and demand, not these isolated markets with artificially induced pricing.

Well, then you should try to come up with a way to achieve that. The system you're describing would make things more expensive for you. It would increase the price gouging. It would make flipping under-priced goods trivially easy, meaning you'd never get a chance to engage in that unless you were sitting on the terminal 24/7 or got phenomenally lucky.

Drachenfier wrote: »

And if the market were wide open, there'd be thousands more of them available. Me, and a lot of people like me, don't even bother with ESO's market system because it's too much of a hassle. I have tons of crap sitting in my craft bag that will never see the light of day unless I use it. Not because I'm a hoarder, but because I can't be assed to mess with ESO's backwards market system.

Then don't cry about how the system doesn't work for you, if you can't be bothered to actually take a look.

Drachenfier wrote: »

I have looked. It's a poor system. I choose not to use it.

Then don't cry about not having access to it.

starkerealm wrote: »

An open market, as an abstract theory, would lead to less price gouging. The theory is that everyone plays along, and no one gets out of line. In practice, an unregulated market will lead to consolidation of wealth, and as a result, more price gouging. Why? Because some people are, legitimately, greedy, and will gobble up anything they can get their hands on.

It would lower the price of materials no one particularly cares about or needs, to a trivial degree, while increasing the price of stuff you might actually want way out of your reach.

Thank you for posting this line. I think it's one of the thing that gets missed the most during this market discussion.

All prices go up? Everything's gouged? Nope. A lot of things would get driven down to vendor price level. All of the things people have a lot of but are not hard to get.

Some things? For sure. All that stuff everybody wants and is not easy to get would probably go up. Alloys, Wax, Resins, certainly sharpened weapons, BiS gear.

If you don't care about any of that fancy stuff, you'd probably end up being able to buy things cheaper. The stuff you want isn't something that can be cornered. It'd be cheap, and there's a better chance you could find that level 36 set you want.

If you care about that fancy stuff? Open your wallet.

The other downside of liking that fancy stuff: If you're not also a person selling it for the higher price, you're probably making a lot less money. The stuff you'd be trying to sell isn't worth all that much anymore.

ZOS certainly has to weigh which is better: Increased access and many lower prices versus the inflation of the top tier stuff.

Without Guild Traders to siphon gold out of the economy, players will have a lot more cash to spend. The current system is actually a pretty decent gold sink. Would you be all for an AH if you had to pony up 5K to open up sales slots? If the taxes at the end of the sale were 25%?

Is the benefit of a central Trading House enough to basically take the game away from people who like playing the market and running trade guilds?

I am not the biggest fan of the current system, but let's not pretend that a centralized system is some kind of easy and certain fix. I'd be a lot more interested in seeing how the current system worked with these additions:

1. Text searching
2. Multiple saved searches
3. Search across my own guild stores

But mostly, I'd like to see ZOS spend the time to make a "Guild Finder." Guild leaders should be able to build a profile for their Guild. Players who want a guild should be able to check off the parameters they want in a guild. Then then enter a queue, see what is available, and are able to either join now, or send a request for an invite.

Imagine if you could search for guilds with open spots based on:
A. Weekly Dues
B. Trader only versus Trader +
C. If the Guild has events
D. If the guild allows bank usage

I've often felt like we have half of a trader system right now. I'd like to see what a finished Guild Trader system looks like before deciding to throw it away.

starkerealm wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

An open market increases price gouging? It actually does the exact opposite. To be honest, I'm amazed someone as seemingly intelligent as you would even make that kind of claim, especially considering ESO's extremely isolated market system.

An open market, as an abstract theory, would lead to less price gouging. The theory is that everyone plays along, and no one gets out of line. In practice, an unregulated market will lead to consolidation of wealth, and as a result, more price gouging. Why? Because some people are, legitimately, greedy, and will gobble up anything they can get their hands on.

It would lower the price of materials no one particularly cares about or needs, to a trivial degree, while increasing the price of stuff you might actually want way out of your reach.

Again, if this was about greed, I'd be right there with you saying, "yeah, listen to this schm... I mean, this smart and creative fellow." Why? Because I would make way more, on an open market, from my position. Of course, we'd also be looking at the very rare stuff, like sharpened Spriggan Daggers climbing over a million inside of a month. Maybe you'd get lucky with your rolls... probably not, though. Why? Because if you can find it, someone else can find it. Then they can buy it. Before you. And resell it for way more than you would have listed it. If you switched this over, you'd end up with a system where the rich would get richer, and your bank balance's value would crumble.

There's honestly a lot of factors here, but almost none of them break in your favor.

Again, this system is in play already in multiple games, and has been for years. They all break in my favor, because it can be proven effective. You saying it won't work is like telling me the ocean is made of chocolate. We aren't theory crafting here, it already exists, from single server to megaserver and is proven to work. They should have done this from the beginning, instead of implementing this convoluted isolationist system that's currently in the game. You have no idea how many people just don't even bother with it because it's such a ridiculous hassle.