Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

Interesting that most of the DETRACTORS of the Global AH are talking about the dangers of a cornered market ... but as supporters of the current system, you are all most likely SELLERS first and foremost. This is where I find the argument disingenuous. You are not ACTUALLY worried about a cornered market, you are worried about losing your well established source of income that comes through the current guild-trader system.

There is not a single experienced and well-informed (from other MMOs) BUYER who is AGAINST a global AH ... think about that.

A possible solution to nipping ATTEMPTS at cornering before they even happen is the GW2 "orders" system. If you are not familiar with it, look it up, it is actually pretty good. In short, you can visit an AH and place an order, for example that you want to buy 10 pieces of X at a price of Y gold per piece. A seller then instead of simply posting his items for sale looks up ORDERS and sells the materials directly to the buyer who posted the order.

In short, it's like typing a "WTB" message in chat except that it stays active and searchable for a period of time, at a price that is SET by the BUYER.

Any attempt to corner the market with this mechanism in place would be futile.

No. You're making assumptions on motivation.

Here's mine. I've participated in behaviour in past games, including those listed by some as games where cartels/price fixing doesn't happen (hint, they're actually the worst), and I don't want that to happen here on that scale.

It already happens. There's a percentage of players who'll compete at every opportunity, including economically. And they do, but the current setup makes its harder for them to do so.

This free market, supply and demand global auction house is an utopia that doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in the real world either. We in the developed world benefit from a highly regulated form of trade and capitalism that, while peddling the ideals of economic freedom, is a lot more nuanced than the headline figure. The most important thing someone can bring to an economics discussion is not a one-line explanation of supply and demand, but a deep comprehension of human behaviour and an insight into the holes that are there to be exploited.

You can't get better than those who have direct experience of exploiting holes/engaging in that behaviour. People in this thread are literally telling everyone how it's done, they're doing it on their own volition and without collusion with one another are each describing the exact same behaviour and processes.

It's not a conspiracy, this is how the world works.

Malibulove wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Malibulove wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Malibulove wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

Many threads have been born about the lack of a global Auction House, they die, and then invariably resurface. We all know the "for" and "against" arguments in an EITHER / OR context, but let's take a look at the situation through a hypothetical scenario:

What would happen if ZOS did indeed introduce a global, server-wide one-stop auction house, the type found in WoW and SWTOR? And what if it was introduced IN PARALLEL to the existing system, so that they coincided?

My prediction is this: the thousands upon thousands of people who do not have access to good trading guilds would begin to sell their wares en masse in the new auction house, people would be undercutting each other on an hourly basis and prices for commodities and items alike would plummet due to their sheer availability. In a very short time, no one would visit guild traders anymore, because you would be guaranteed a lower price and a much more user-friendly search mechanism (with add-on help, of course) than at a trader.

In short, regardless of the positives that the guild trader system brings, the silent majority that vastly outnumbers the vocal few who support the guild trader mechanism would finally make their voice heard by selling commodities and items CHEAPLY and TO ALL on the open market.

And then as soon as the price dropped enough....someone comes along with 20 million gold, buys all the tempering alloys and jacks up the price 500% and reslists them. They cant do that now without visiting each and every guild trader. Rinse and repeat for every high demand item.

Lol people always say this, but I think you forget that an individual only has 30 listings.

If the floodgates were opened it wouldn't matter if you had infinite money it would be your 30 listings vs Millions. Even if you could buy up every single item and had inventory space for it somehow, the fact you couldn't sell but 0.0001% of it at a time would mean the market would continue to bottom out.

The only reason re-selling works now, is because the good sales spots are hard capped at 15,000, and most the playerbase has no selling power.

Depends how you're packaging stuff, and what you're selling. I mean, I usually sell Kutas in packages of 5, and most gold upgrade mats in packages of 8. Saves on slots.

That won't stop demand though, if 1000 players need Kuta, it's irrelevant how you package it you can't meet that demand no matter how much you buy and resell.

My point is power users impact the market less in an AH system, not more.

If 1000 players need Kuta the auction house is the perfect system to inflate prices. Buy the low priced ones and either relist them at a higher price or sit on them. Two or three people can watch the auction house for a couple of days and really force the price up simply by purchasing the lower priced Kuta. Once the price increases enough for a decent profit come in just under the artificial price you just created and sell like crazy. It isn't hard to do at all with only a few people willing to work together when everything is listed in one place. Power players will dominate an auction house or at least select items in the auction house. Scattering the product across many independent vendors helps slow the power players down but even with that there have been a few minor successes at manipulating prices on mid range items. One was when some players on the PTS realized there would be an increased demand for a particular item after an upgrade and went on a buying spree before the launch. Was a minor inconvenience for a few days with traders would have been a much greater problem had there been one central location.

90 Slots won't inflate anything though.

2 or 3 players can't impact anything because a couple dozen undercuts will pop up for every price guage they try to run.

A handful of players simply don't have enough sale slots to meet the demand of all materials and items, the market will bypass them with ease.

I think you may have missed a critical portion of how supply and demand work.

You see, supply is what drives the price down. So, if there's a lot of something available, then it will be cheaper than if it's rare or relatively rare.

Demand drives the price up. So if people want or need something, that increases its value.

So, if you can artificially deplete the supply, while demand remains the same, the price will go up. The market won't, "bypass," this, because the supply is still diminished, and as a result the price will remain high.

What would happen in the scenario above, is other players would undercut the players doing the manipulation, but not by a significant enough margin to offset the increased prices. So, sure, you'd see someone undercutting their Kuta costs by 5 or even 15 gold. On an item they inflated from 2k to 5k. Yeah, that's a real victory there.

The problem is, for most traders, the prices people are listing something at becomes a guide to what you can charge for it. Someone who sufficiently skews the market doesn't ever need to satisfy demand. Eventually they'll want to dump their stock for maximum effect, but once they've forced the price up, they don't need to worry about other players undercutting them by a serious margin, in quantities sufficient to tank the value. Eventually the price would normalize back down, as the supply recovered, but that could take quite some time.

While I agree in principle with @starkerealm above, I think those that think the market can be cornered significantly on a given commodity are underestimating 2 things:

- how much stock there actually is in the inventories of players who do not (currently) participate in active trading
- how fast the supply will replenish itself every hour of every day through normal farming and extracting

Folks, we have gotten off-track from the original intent of my post.

While the discussion of market-cornering is interesting, it is not the point. Yes, perhaps many people would try it, to varying degrees of success and failure.

My hypothesis is that if there were a GAH, running concurrently with the guild-trader system, thousands of new sellers would list their items, buyers would flock there as well and eventually the old power sellers who favour the guild-trader system would move there as well.

The point being ...

For those of you who favour the guild-trader system, can you accept my hypothesis as reasonable? That the introduction of a GAH, even though players would still have a CHOICE of which system to use, would result in the guild-trader-system effectively disappearing?

If you can accept this hypothesis as reasonable or probable, answer me this:

What then is so good about the guild-trader system, if it would die upon the introduction of a GAH? I think the only honest answer is this:

I, the seller, profit from this system in a way that I would not from a GAH.

Not as large a change would occur as you would think.

What you see happening in guilds is how the economy is in this game, a global system would be similar just on a bigger scale. The peaks and troughs from dlc and expansion releases would be seen by a larger pool of the playerbase would be the main difference.

Beginners to the game would enjoy trading a lot more as they wouldn't have fees to pay to get sales going.

Mid level users would be more affected as they would find it difficult to pickup high end items cheap (many more item flippers snagging them up right away)

Experienced traders would enjoy it more as they would have a wider pool of resources to work with and not need to run around to every vendor to purchase.

I think it wold be fun to have in the game. My hope would be that the hired kiosks would be used for immersion styled guilds that enjoy specialising in item types for sale (have seen a few in game and they make it feel fun)

Malibulove wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Malibulove wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Malibulove wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Malibulove wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

Many threads have been born about the lack of a global Auction House, they die, and then invariably resurface. We all know the "for" and "against" arguments in an EITHER / OR context, but let's take a look at the situation through a hypothetical scenario:

What would happen if ZOS did indeed introduce a global, server-wide one-stop auction house, the type found in WoW and SWTOR? And what if it was introduced IN PARALLEL to the existing system, so that they coincided?

My prediction is this: the thousands upon thousands of people who do not have access to good trading guilds would begin to sell their wares en masse in the new auction house, people would be undercutting each other on an hourly basis and prices for commodities and items alike would plummet due to their sheer availability. In a very short time, no one would visit guild traders anymore, because you would be guaranteed a lower price and a much more user-friendly search mechanism (with add-on help, of course) than at a trader.

In short, regardless of the positives that the guild trader system brings, the silent majority that vastly outnumbers the vocal few who support the guild trader mechanism would finally make their voice heard by selling commodities and items CHEAPLY and TO ALL on the open market.

And then as soon as the price dropped enough....someone comes along with 20 million gold, buys all the tempering alloys and jacks up the price 500% and reslists them. They cant do that now without visiting each and every guild trader. Rinse and repeat for every high demand item.

Lol people always say this, but I think you forget that an individual only has 30 listings.

If the floodgates were opened it wouldn't matter if you had infinite money it would be your 30 listings vs Millions. Even if you could buy up every single item and had inventory space for it somehow, the fact you couldn't sell but 0.0001% of it at a time would mean the market would continue to bottom out.

The only reason re-selling works now, is because the good sales spots are hard capped at 15,000, and most the playerbase has no selling power.

Depends how you're packaging stuff, and what you're selling. I mean, I usually sell Kutas in packages of 5, and most gold upgrade mats in packages of 8. Saves on slots.

That won't stop demand though, if 1000 players need Kuta, it's irrelevant how you package it you can't meet that demand no matter how much you buy and resell.

My point is power users impact the market less in an AH system, not more.

If 1000 players need Kuta the auction house is the perfect system to inflate prices. Buy the low priced ones and either relist them at a higher price or sit on them. Two or three people can watch the auction house for a couple of days and really force the price up simply by purchasing the lower priced Kuta. Once the price increases enough for a decent profit come in just under the artificial price you just created and sell like crazy. It isn't hard to do at all with only a few people willing to work together when everything is listed in one place. Power players will dominate an auction house or at least select items in the auction house. Scattering the product across many independent vendors helps slow the power players down but even with that there have been a few minor successes at manipulating prices on mid range items. One was when some players on the PTS realized there would be an increased demand for a particular item after an upgrade and went on a buying spree before the launch. Was a minor inconvenience for a few days with traders would have been a much greater problem had there been one central location.

90 Slots won't inflate anything though.

2 or 3 players can't impact anything because a couple dozen undercuts will pop up for every price guage they try to run.

A handful of players simply don't have enough sale slots to meet the demand of all materials and items, the market will bypass them with ease.

I think you may have missed a critical portion of how supply and demand work.

You see, supply is what drives the price down. So, if there's a lot of something available, then it will be cheaper than if it's rare or relatively rare.

Demand drives the price up. So if people want or need something, that increases its value.

So, if you can artificially deplete the supply, while demand remains the same, the price will go up. The market won't, "bypass," this, because the supply is still diminished, and as a result the price will remain high.

What would happen in the scenario above, is other players would undercut the players doing the manipulation, but not by a significant enough margin to offset the increased prices. So, sure, you'd see someone undercutting their Kuta costs by 5 or even 15 gold. On an item they inflated from 2k to 5k. Yeah, that's a real victory there.

The problem is, for most traders, the prices people are listing something at becomes a guide to what you can charge for it. Someone who sufficiently skews the market doesn't ever need to satisfy demand. Eventually they'll want to dump their stock for maximum effect, but once they've forced the price up, they don't need to worry about other players undercutting them by a serious margin, in quantities sufficient to tank the value. Eventually the price would normalize back down, as the supply recovered, but that could take quite some time.

People undercut each other for 100 gold yet you seem to believe in an AH system people wouldn't undercut if it made them tens of millions?

You would pay tens of thousands of gold to list an item for 500%, whats to stop people from listing the same item for 499%? In that scenario those players would cost you millions of gold, because you would be forced to constantly cancel your trades or else spend 30 days maxed out not selling anything.

In the current system nothing stops you, you're at max competing against 499 other players.

In an AH system, you would be competing against every other player.

Really consider the difference, not a couple hundred but a couple million people could undercut you. Most items would be worth 0 gold in no time at all.

Do you honestly think casuals have enough items and or gold to tank prices? Could I manage it with my (approximately) 12 of each gold upgrade mat and 20 kutas?
What they contribute to the GAH will be equivalent to a fish pissing in the ocean. Then the Sharks will roll along and take all of the deals that are there, because the have the gold and enjoy playing with the economy.

One of the main debates seems to be around items that are currently more rare - such as gold upgrades. So it is likely that one of two things will happen, according to the major theories put forth:

1. An AH will make it easy for the super-rich to corner the market and control supply by buying up and re-listing everything that is listed below their target price
2. The supply from all players will cause the supply/demand ratio to be much greater than it is currently, and prices will drop significantly, and will be held down by the greater supply

I'd think that neither of these would be "better" than the current situation, because:

• In the case of #1, this would result in an artificially controlled market, at a higher average price than the current one, and further causing fewer players to control more of the in-game gold
• In the case of #2, ZOS expects these items to be rare, and a general oversupply would cause them to significantly nerf drop rates to make up for the change in the supply dynamics, thus making it harder for everyone to get these mats (especially those that don't currently purchase them), thus driving prices back up

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Essentially it works if you cut the mega server per platform and per region into 1/16 ths but global.....NO GAME IS DOING THAT because its too much.

Guildwars 2

Edit: To clarify. GW2 has only one AH. And it works pretty well. I would like an AH in ESO, not having an AH is the reason why i dont buy or sell anything.

ESO is now more an single Player game than an MMO, and i have really no interest in joining an trading guild to sell a few items, i dont need.

An AH would make it finaly possible to sell the items i dont need anymore an ppl would finaly be able to buy (and sell) stuff below 50/160. In my opinion it would be good for the Overall game.

I'd definitely like to see some kind of centralized trading. There's already enough grinding in the game. Buying something shouldn't be a tedious chore.

That said, I wouldn't like to see the trade guild system die off, so people who wanted to sell on a central system would still have to be a member of an active, highly populated guild.

Actually, just dramatically increasing the guild count in cities would be a big help.

Freaken swear this game is load screen central. Ugh.

@Drummerx04 and @Beardimus , you make valid points about simply liking the system as it is, both as buyers and sellers.

But with regards to the assumptions that I am making, specifically that the hordes would flock to an open Auction House, I cannot understand why people are so upset about me making assumptions and cannot consider the possibility that such an option would attract buyers and sellers, new and old alike. Prediciting consumer behaviour in a given environment is what makes companies successful, big and small.

If I were to turn the tables and say that YOU are making the assumption that OTHERS would not like an open AH just because YOU don't, then this discussion wouldn't get anywhere. But that is what you are doing. Just because a sliver of the game population who post on the forums don't like the idea of an open AH doesn't mean that there are not countless thousands who wouldn't immediately flock to it. And just because you and a few hundred others are happily involved in guild trading doesn't mean that there are not countless thousands who avoid trading like the plague because of the system itself.

Not wanting to start a debate club here, but I am advancing a hypothesis, admittedly based on an assumption, as a topic of discussion. So far the only there have been 2 basic types of responses:

1 - It wouldn't happen because I like the guild-trader system ... (but that does not mean others do)
2 - An open AH would lead to (attempts at) cornering the market ... (possible, but has nothing to do with my premise)

Can someone advance a reasonable argument, however hypothetical, as to WHY the masses would not flock to an open AH and thereby render guild-traders useless?

- edit -

There is a third type of (serious) reply, people who speculate about what would happen, good or bad, WHEN the presence of a global AH would take over guild-trading. The doomsayers make valid points, ZOS adjusting drop rates and killing BOP are certainly scary propositions.

But once again, my premise is that a global AH would indeed kill guild-trading, which I hope at least conceptually serves to illustrate that people who like guild trading, however justified, are in the minority.

Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

Can someone advance a reasonable argument, however hypothetical, as to WHY the masses would not flock to an open AH and thereby render guild-traders useless?

The same reason why people now go around shopping in out of place guild traders.
To get rare items and to get better deals.

Your global auction house doesnt offer anything better than the main trade city offer atm.
Overprized items, items that are not good enough wont be placed.
If you want to buy a rare item now, that not many people sell cos its needed for a niche build, and nobody sells in a major guild, then you have to go shop around, same with overprized items. YOu can find deals if you shop around in different zones.

With a AH that would be void. People could just sit there for hours, always picking up itmes as they get listed. First viewer gets the pick, and can relist at higher prize. People that dont have the time to sit there 24/7 have to pick overprized items.
Prizes overall wouldnt go down, they would stay the same. AH and guild traders would influence each other prizes, like MM now with different traders, nothing will change.

If you want deals you still would have to go around in small towns and get your items from guild traders

laksikus wrote: »

The same reason why people now go around shopping in out of place guild traders.
To get rare items and to get better deals.

Your global auction house doesnt offer anything better than the main trade city offer atm.
Overprized items, items that are not good enough wont be placed.
If you want to buy a rare item now, that not many people sell cos its needed for a niche build, and nobody sells in a major guild, then you have to go shop around, same with overprized items. YOu can find deals if you shop around in different zones.

With a AH that would be void. People could just sit there for hours, always picking up itmes as they get listed. First viewer gets the pick, and can relist at higher prize. People that dont have the time to sit there 24/7 have to pick overprized items.
Prizes overall wouldnt go down, they would stay the same. AH and guild traders would influence each other prizes, like MM now with different traders, nothing will change.

If you want deals you still would have to go around in small towns and get your items from guild traders

The only difference I've saw with out of place traders is they have less stuff for sale. A waste of time. I'm not seeing these rare items at all and the prices are just the same, or higher.