Urkraft wrote: »

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Urkraft wrote: »

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Once I hit 150M gold on PC EU, I am going to front for my guilds and actually block off Mournhold or Craglorn for 2-3 weeks so not a single one of these guilds will be able to trade there, nothing will be on sale in town when this happens. ETA about a month and I should be there, Don't care about the size of the outrageous bids that'll go down or how much I lose, I'll always make more. Feel the need to troll the trolls.

why would u do that? i dont see a good reason?

More simple solutions.. a Guild cannot bid on a trader within it's 1st month of creation.. that'll stamp it out instantly.

actually this is something i like.

Because it'll be communicated that the week after I intend to make bids of 10m per trader and it will happen. And then if they wish to continue to collude then it'll be too expensive to prove viable thus causing huge loses and maybe it'll die down. No trader makes anywhere near that kind of cheese.

srsly. thats your reason. lol

i mean hey, for some moments i enjoyed your text, since it confirms the stuff i wrote earlier today in this thread, and it also triggers the anarchist in me. but if thats all....

Yeah that's the only reason why, I have more gold than I can and ever probably spend in this game so why not troll people with my vast wealth. These traders do Collude, I know that 1st hand, to quote after a trader war I've had in the past..."I am powerful in this game, I'll make your life a misery, you don't know me" and also it boiled over to the point of getting death threats...lol the guy even said "Bro have you seen my Abs? I'll merc you in seconds bruv"

Anyone on XB EU this was the old Quiet Joey of the original Tamreal Traders (the beef started with Dezzyman - still owes me 200k - D and our Guild with the names, Visionaries and later on Dictators, with him quoting this is MY spot!) And doesn't play anymore after rage quitting, couldn't hack the power trip I guess, so powerful.

Never have I ever lol'd so hard in a game, there was even a glitch with promoting people that was caused by so much lag it ended up promoting people to GM, it ended up in mates ownership who transferred it over to him...he then slowly trolled us with the MOTD "Oh Dear look what happened"...days after everyone slowly being kicked...New Guild formed and still in his trading spot.

*** hate trade GMs with a passion, so yes I will outbid all of these cheating scum from time to time just so they have no way to make any coin after this, no selling spot = top sellers leave.

GreenhaloX wrote: »

I'm not such of those guilds that you speak of.. but, good luck, since this has been occurring, probably, for a year now. Blame it on the blind bidding. Legitimately, nobody really knows how much gold the competitors have placed a bid and each is forced to throw in outrageous amount in hopes it will outbid the others. Ultimately, the bid has increased to an ungodly amount, which forced GM and guilds to think outside the box. Call it human ingenuity or whatever..

I don't think this is very wide spread, this having 5 shell guilds business. If they want 5 spots they have to chuck down 1M a spot just to get the trader... Disbanding it they still lose that 1M per trader, meaning the only active trader cost them 5M.. No Guild makes 5M in taxes, not by a long shot, plus farming 50 people every week just for the sake of it so time consuming.

This isn't the issue that actually goes on, it's just they agree on how much they bid for a spot and only bid on set traders only.

If they actually are disbanding I think they just got lucky and no one bid on the trader or they got it for next to nothing. There is no financial viability in paying top dollar for several slots and only using 1.

Galenus_of_Pergamon wrote: »

I play on PS4 NA. I have a four month old trading guild. We are moving up in Tamriel.

We just learned about a huge cabal (a secret political clique or faction) of 10+ major trading guilds. They each have side guilds. We'll call these side guilds "shell" or "shadow" guilds.

Each major trading guild will have 1-4 shell guilds (20-50 total guilds controlled by 10 guilds). The shell guilds will bid on secondary and tertiary traders in case the main trading guild loses their primary trader bid. Then, late Sunday night/Monday morning, the shell guild will disband, making the Trader they held available for 10k, and an officer from the main guild will be on standby waiting to snatch up the trader immediately after the shell guild has disbanded.

What if ZoS restricted Trader bidding to a 24-hour window (Saturday night, 9pm Eastern to Sunday night, 9pm Eastern)? Legitimate trading guilds would still have a 24 hour window to bid and shady guilds holding 4-5 traders at once would be significantly less valuable. It's a great compromise.

This would almost eliminate powerhouse guilds from bidding on 4-5 traders each. No longer would one trading guild effectively control 4-5 traders.

Hate to break the news for ya man.. but there are 2 large groups of trading guilds who do this. About 10 in each group on PS4 NA. With 20 guilds they dominate the capitals every week. I only know of three guilds who independently hold their own spots weekly in capital cities. ForTheNorth, Tribunal Council and Unprecedented. Mostly all other guilds u see in capital cites are either with the Mournhold Mafia or The Chaos Group. Don't get me wrong guilds come and go with huge bids in those cities when they have enough money. But 90% of the time it's those 2 groups. They also use "ghost" guilds in many other parts of Tamriel as well. They cordinate bids so none of them bid on each other and everything. If u need a list of all the guilds in the 2 groups let me know however, I will vote no on changing the bidding system only because I have heard of u camp out on one of these shell guilds u can some times buy it urself and steal it from them... so it's not 100% effective. U can steal a trader from them for 10k when they bought it for millions. Ur guild would love that!

iamkeebler wrote: »

On top of that, knowing that those guilds also coordinate their pricing for certain items, it also controls the cost of certain items in the market.

Really? On PC/NA, I'm in guilds in Rawl'kha, Mournhold and Wayrest, and have been in 1 or more well-located trading guilds pretty much through the life of the game. Nobody has ever asked me to coordinate pricing on anything.

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

iamkeebler wrote: »

On top of that, knowing that those guilds also coordinate their pricing for certain items, it also controls the cost of certain items in the market.

Really? On PC/NA, I'm in guilds in Rawl'kha, Mournhold and Wayrest, and have been in 1 or more well-located trading guilds pretty much through the life of the game. Nobody has ever asked me to coordinate pricing on anything.

I have seen that on XB before, really only relates to Gold mats and they dictated for a short period how much they were to be sold for, was in some MOTDs.

Then the banker glitch hit and prices collapsed as too many people dumped their vast stacks of them.

Also, if those guilds want to waste their time recruiting for 5 fake guilds they are just gonna disband every week.. let them. Sounds like a lot of work with not a lot of return.

ACTUALLY they need to completely overhaul the trading system in this game period. GET RID OF GUILD TRADERS COMPLETELY. They need to do one central trader in which individuals put their own items up for sale. Usual costs and limits apply like 30 items and 10% fee to list But get rid of guild trading completely. Not only is it a headache to go all over the map trying to check every single trader station for an item, NO ONE does it. Therefore those guild traders sitting out in the middle of nowhere or little rarely visited towns are a big waste. Still keep the locations of the NPC traders for convenience but when anyone clicks on one it will display the entire listing of everyone who has listed an item anywhere in the game. ALSO please make the searches more specific like by item set name and / or proper item name. Like if I want to search for corn flower specifically, I just type that in and it brings up every listing. I won't believe it if they say that it would be too big a drain on the resources to have it that way. I know of several MMO'S that do have it exactly that way.

Slurg wrote: »

Galenus_of_Pergamon wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

This would have no affect and might actually benefit the larger trading guilds as they would have an easier time of making sure someone was on to bid in that 24 hour period. At the end of the 24 hour period they could still disband the other guilds.

Not a great solution but if a guild wins a trader then disbands maybe that trader should just be locked for the week. The guild would lose the gold they bid and there would be fewer incentives to bid on traders you have no intention of using. Large trading guilds could still bid on other traders and leave them empty hoping to cut down on competition but that would be expensive quick to be very effective.

If it weren't a drain on resources and/or a pain to implement might also ban (from bidding) any account that has bid on a trader then had the guild fold. Even the big guilds would quickly run out of players able and willing to bid on sham traders.

"maybe that trader should just be locked for the week."

This is what I said. "Not being able to bid on an empty trader" is synonymous with "trader should be locked for a week".

No. You said limit the bids to 24 hours. It's not the same thing. In fact what you are saying means traders that are not bid on also will not be available for any of the non-cheating guilds to pick up as a backup if they lose their bid.

If a guild (person) can only bid on a trader for 24 hours (Saturday, 9pm to Sun 9pm), then by the power of logic they cannot bid on a trader for the other 144 hours.

Ergo, the trader is locked for a week if the original guild bands it (or at least for 144 hours). This is simple deduction.

Galenus_of_Pergamon wrote: »

Danksta wrote: »

Always have to vote for the opposite poll option in biased polls that the OP wanted. Especially in this case since you have no evidence to back your claim.

Providing evidence is tricky because revealing guild and player names may be a violation of terms of service.

I'll read the terms of service fully to verify this.

What is wrong with having a bias for justice?

Do you have a bias towards injustice? Are you violating terms of service? Are you knowingly in one of these trading guilds that have formed a cabal?

I never claimed to employ a non-biased poll. That is the job of a scientist - not that of a whistleblower who is seeking truth and justice for the masses.

It's a fact that this is happening on the PS4 NA service. It's also a fact that this is a violation of terms of service (says ZoS) because it exploits a game mechanic in a way other than intended.

Will you choose to listen to logic or to bathe in a tub of ignorance? Your call.

Well first off, I'm not even in a trade guild. I'm in a couple social guilds that most weeks get a trader that even though I donate to regularly I don't always post things to sell.

Secondly, I haven't heard any logic from you. So far all you've managed to do is spout off a bunch of conspiracy theory sounding jibberish that I've heard from a few others over the last 1 year+ but have yet to see any evidence of despite playing this game way more than anyone should.

Bottom line is as an up-and-coming trade guild you have a lot to gain by getting the top trade guilds banned. As someone who has a suspicious mind I'm not going to believe something like this from someone like you (nothing personal, just mean someone in your position) with out any evidence.

I've had this suspicion for a while now. Go to somewhere like wayrest, look for items and some of these traders have very little premium products to offer. Why? How can a trading guild buy a premium spot yet sell non premium items ? Answer? They are just shells, they keep the completion out and ensure prices stay high. Who ends up losing ? Us, the player base. Time ZOS took some action and let us, the player base have some real choices to buy products at a proper market rate. Kick these cartels out, give us a free market to choose from. Not rocket science ZOS.

jlboozer wrote: »

It does happen, but not worth giving up convenience. Maybe some other way like if guild disbands with trader then that trader can't be acquired by anybody until Sunday trader flip. Just leave the trader empty for that week.

This is a more streamlined solution than mine. It is better.

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

All this would do would be to restrict it so the larger guilds run every decent spot in the game. They are not doing anything wrong. They are playing the system the way it was designed. If you don't like it, adapt. The larger guilds by their very nature work together so they don't start needless bidding wars and hurt their own memebers. Them going the extra mile for their guild isn't shady at all, it takes a ton of work and coordination to accomplish what they have. Just because it is difficult for a new guild or business to become established does not mean that those who use and understand the system should be punished or labeled as malicious. Especially when they bring a considerable and of stability to the in game economy and provide the game with a much needed gold sink. I wold also like to point out that most guilds run at a complete loss and their GMs are often the ones footing the bill to maintain their communities.

Disbanding a guild that holds a trader, with the sole intent of having that trader acquired by another guild, is a direct violation of the Zenimax Terms of Service. This was confirmed by their customer support via a ticket.

Danksta wrote: »

Galenus_of_Pergamon wrote: »

Danksta wrote: »

Always have to vote for the opposite poll option in biased polls that the OP wanted. Especially in this case since you have no evidence to back your claim.

Providing evidence is tricky because revealing guild and player names may be a violation of terms of service.

I'll read the terms of service fully to verify this.

What is wrong with having a bias for justice?

Do you have a bias towards injustice? Are you violating terms of service? Are you knowingly in one of these trading guilds that have formed a cabal?

I never claimed to employ a non-biased poll. That is the job of a scientist - not that of a whistleblower who is seeking truth and justice for the masses.

It's a fact that this is happening on the PS4 NA service. It's also a fact that this is a violation of terms of service (says ZoS) because it exploits a game mechanic in a way other than intended.

Will you choose to listen to logic or to bathe in a tub of ignorance? Your call.

Well first off, I'm not even in a trade guild. I'm in a couple social guilds that most weeks get a trader that even though I donate to regularly I don't always post things to sell.

Secondly, I haven't heard any logic from you. So far all you've managed to do is spout off a bunch of conspiracy theory sounding jibberish that I've heard from a few others over the last 1 year+ but have yet to see any evidence of despite playing this game way more than anyone should.

Bottom line is as an up-and-coming trade guild you have a lot to gain by getting the top trade guilds banned. As someone who has a suspicious mind I'm not going to believe something like this from someone like you (nothing personal, just mean someone in your position) with out any evidence.

I mean this dude is correct. This does happen. You visit traders in busy cities and shop and theie stores are Empty.. no items posted. Then visit later and a new guild name is there with items fornsell. It's a real thing. Only option is Git Good and bid HEAVY on the spot u WANT.