Why Do Guild Dues Exist?

DragonRacer · December 2017

If you're more of a casual player and want to sell stuff, I'd advise keeping an eye out for guild advertisements in text chat. I found two guilds with traders and no weekly fees, so I joined up to see what they were like.

In both, I found pretty laid back, chill members who are very helpful. One guild helps to support its trader through voluntary donations (which aren't even asked for, so not like a guilt factor involved) and a weekly 50/50 raffle, where you can buy tickets $1,000 donation to guild bank and a lucky winner will get half of the lump sum and the other half goes to the trader. This guild typically gets a trader in Evermore or elsewhere in Bangokrai... not high traffic, but not out in the boondocks either.

The other guild is very active with in-guild raffles and auctions twice a week to raise money for a trader. And you can also donate if you feel like it. All of that is voluntary, no mandatory dues. This guild has a trader pretty much weekly in Windhelm, which has done quite well for me in sales. Again, not a big capital trader, but a darn good one.

So, I'm fairly pleased overall and don't have weekly dues for either. PS4 NA.

code65536 · December 2017

As a trade guild GM, let me set a few things straight:

The amount of taxes a guild gets from sales is just 3.5%. Guild leaders have no control over the tax rate. When you list an item, you pay a 1% listing fee that simply disappears from the game. When your item is sold, an additional 7% is deducted from the sale. Of this 7% (which the game labels as the "House Cut"), only half actually goes to the guild. The other half disappears from the game.

So you lose 8% on every sale. 3.5% goes to the guild. 4.5% goes into ZOS's gold sink.

Taxes only cover a fraction of the bid costs. So let's say you have a guild in a capital city. Something like Wayrest. The guild might do something like 30 million per week in sales. This translates to just a bit over 1 million in taxes at the 3.5% rate. Weekly bids of around 5 million or so is not unheard of for capital cities. So with taxes covering 1 million of that weekly cost, you need to extract 4 million from your members each week.

There are various ways to do this. Member donations. Raffles. Auctions. And yes, member dues. How each guild handles this fundraising is up to the leadership. Some guilds can sustain entirely off of voluntary contributions. Some cannot. Some only require mandatory dues if members don't sell a lot or don't participate in the other fundraisers. Some just keep it simple and just require a mandatory fee.

On PC/NA, fees are uncommon. This is in part a cultural thing (it's harder for a guild to justify fees when most other guilds on the server don't have fees) and in part because addons make guild management easier--you can see how much people sell, how much taxes you have coming in, and there are addons to manage raffles which make them easier options to pursue.

Traders in sub-prime locations are generally cheaper to maintain. Lesser cities get only a fraction of the foot traffic, but the bids there are also much less. Taxes will be able to cover a greater share of their bid than prime locations like Rawl, Craglorn, or the capitals. Casual players probably should seek these kinds of guilds out instead of trying to land themselves in a Rawl guild that has higher upkeep costs.

The high costs of the trader bid system is intended design. A lot of people talk about how insane the bid costs are, how this means the economy would be better served by an auction house, etc. But it's actually a sign that the system is working as intended.

Why are bids so high? Because guilds can afford it. If a would-be rival can afford a 4.5 million bid, then you need to be able to bid 5 million to maintain your spot. But why can guilds afford such high bids? Because there is so much gold sloshing around in the economy. ZOS has added so many gold spigots to the game, and most of their gold sinks don't keep up with the level of gold sloshing around the economy. And many of their biggest gold sinks are 1-time costs. Once you've bought that manor, once you've maxed out your bank space, then those gold sinks are plugged.

But not the trader bid system. The trader bid system is the one gold sink in the game that automatically increases in size as there is more gold sloshing around. And as the general level of gold wealth has increased in the game, the amount of contributions to guilds have also increased, driving up their ability to bid and in turn increasing the amount of gold that is flushed down the trader bid black hole each week. No other gold sink in the game has the ability to scale up as the economy scales up. Which is why ZOS will never change the trader bid system--because it is one of the biggest and most effective gold sinks in the game, and without it inflation will skyrocket.

Beardimus · December 2017

code65536 wrote: »

As a trade guild GM, let me set a few things straight:

The amount of taxes a guild gets from sales is just 3.5%. Guild leaders have no control over the tax rate. When you list an item, you pay a 1% listing fee that simply disappears from the game. When your item is sold, an additional 7% is deducted from the sale. Of this 7% (which the game labels as the "House Cut"), only half actually goes to the guild. The other half disappears from the game.

So you lose 8% on every sale. 3.5% goes to the guild. 4.5% goes into ZOS's gold sink.

Taxes only cover a fraction of the bid costs. So let's say you have a guild in a capital city. Something like Wayrest. The guild might do something like 30 million per week in sales. This translates to just a bit over 1 million in taxes at the 3.5% rate. Weekly bids of around 5 million or so is not unheard of for capital cities. So with taxes covering 1 million of that weekly cost, you need to extract 4 million from your members each week.

There are various ways to do this. Member donations. Raffles. Auctions. And yes, member dues. How each guild handles this fundraising is up to the leadership. Some guilds can sustain entirely off of voluntary contributions. Some cannot. Some only require mandatory dues if members don't sell a lot or don't participate in the other fundraisers. Some just keep it simple and just require a mandatory fee.

On PC/NA, fees are uncommon. This is in part a cultural thing (it's harder for a guild to justify fees when most other guilds on the server don't have fees) and in part because addons make guild management easier--you can see how much people sell, how much taxes you have coming in, and there are addons to manage raffles which make them easier options to pursue.

Traders in sub-prime locations are generally cheaper to maintain. Lesser cities get only a fraction of the foot traffic, but the bids there are also much less. Taxes will be able to cover a greater share of their bid than prime locations like Rawl, Craglorn, or the capitals. Casual players probably should seek these kinds of guilds out instead of trying to land themselves in a Rawl guild that has higher upkeep costs.

The high costs of the trader bid system is intended design. A lot of people talk about how insane the bid costs are, how this means the economy would be better served by an auction house, etc. But it's actually a sign that the system is working as intended.

Why are bids so high? Because guilds can afford it. If a would-be rival can afford a 4.5 million bid, then you need to be able to bid 5 million to maintain your spot. But why can guilds afford such high bids? Because there is so much gold sloshing around in the economy. ZOS has added so many gold spigots to the game, and most of their gold sinks don't keep up with the level of gold sloshing around the economy. And many of their biggest gold sinks are 1-time costs. Once you've bought that manor, once you've maxed out your bank space, then those gold sinks are plugged.

But not the trader bid system. The trader bid system is the one gold sink in the game that automatically increases in size as there is more gold sloshing around. And as the general level of gold wealth has increased in the game, the amount of contributions to guilds have also increased, driving up their ability to bid and in turn increasing the amount of gold that is flushed down the trader bid black hole each week. No other gold sink in the game has the ability to scale up as the economy scales up. Which is why ZOS will never change the trader bid system--because it is one of the biggest and most effective gold sinks in the game, and without it inflation will skyrocket.

Cool update @code65536! Explains well

tommalmm · December 2017

@code65536 That's a great explanation of the guild store system and the reason why we don't observe a constant inflation in the game (it's actually deflation most of the time!).

pod88kk · December 2017

Pure greed

Hecker777 · December 2017

Speaking as on officer of a major trade guild, *dues* only exist to ensure that all of our 500 slots are being used to their fullest. But we and most other guilds don't charge a flat "you must pay this to be here" rate. What many do are Sell xx,xxx per week OR donate X to auction OR purchase X number of raffle tix. Meeting any one of those secures your spot.

Drummerx04 · December 2017

code65536 wrote: »

The high costs of the trader bid system is intended design. A lot of people talk about how insane the bid costs are, how this means the economy would be better served by an auction house, etc. But it's actually a sign that the system is working as intended.

Why are bids so high? Because guilds can afford it. If a would-be rival can afford a 4.5 million bid, then you need to be able to bid 5 million to maintain your spot. But why can guilds afford such high bids? Because there is so much gold sloshing around in the economy. ZOS has added so many gold spigots to the game, and most of their gold sinks don't keep up with the level of gold sloshing around the economy. And many of their biggest gold sinks are 1-time costs. Once you've bought that manor, once you've maxed out your bank space, then those gold sinks are plugged.

But not the trader bid system. The trader bid system is the one gold sink in the game that automatically increases in size as there is more gold sloshing around. And as the general level of gold wealth has increased in the game, the amount of contributions to guilds have also increased, driving up their ability to bid and in turn increasing the amount of gold that is flushed down the trader bid black hole each week. No other gold sink in the game has the ability to scale up as the economy scales up. Which is why ZOS will never change the trader bid system--because it is one of the biggest and most effective gold sinks in the game, and without it inflation will skyrocket.

Yup. This exactly. The trader gold sink is very important for controlling inflation within an economy where money is legally printed by every single player.

As for whether asking for dues is a sign of corruption and greed... It's really not. A guild master has a few choices to make when running a guild. They can pretty much sit back, set a mandatory due, then make their bid... or they can basically make a part time job out of running their guild, run weekly raffles, auctions, and petition voluntary donations every week and THEN make their bid.

Let's look at an example, I'm in a guild with no mandatory fees. The only way that guild stays afloat in Mournhold is to hold weekly raffles managed and run by multiple members, which costs IRL man hours to organize/advertise and relies on the item donations of other members every week. On top of the raffles, there is probably in the range of 1-2 million in private donations from various more affluential members every week. And yes, I am a recurring donor and when SOTH came out, I even donated a complete 14 chapter Silken Ring motif (market value at the time near 600k gold) to the auction.

I think a more interesting point...
@Brittany_Joy and others are outraged by the idea of giving a guild 10k per week to basically cover administrative costs, and you demand instead that others donate to keep the guild afloat so you can profit. Now who's greedy? Don't even bring out the 1% argument within ESO. Unlike irl, you literally don't need food or shelter, there is no student debt, no IRS, no retirement plan, no insurance, no medical bills, no diseases... there is no cost of living.

And here's a radical idea, if you literally cannot afford 10k per week then you really don't need to be in a trading guild. Truly. What are you trying to sell in the guild trader? Many motif styles have pages that sell for 20k+ each, gold tempers sell for several thousand each, BoE equipment can sell for tens of thousands, alchemy mats sell for several hundred each, etc.

Bryanonymous · December 2017

While a few of the comments in this thread sparked, or triggered if you will, some desire in me to respond, I’ll keep my point simple... if you don’t like their guilds management, then don’t participate. They obviously don’t need you, and the members willingly agree to pay whatever the cost for whatever reason they see fit. It’s no more an extortion than the cost of your meals each day, or the money you pay in taxes, however those are real costs, and this is a simulation. You are not obligated nor entitled to any other players guild, and they put much more effort into managing them than you care to bother or are even capable of understanding. And even the worst case scenario of greed is kind of a wtf... it’s a game. The gold is fake. Smh.

GimpyPorcupine · December 2017

XBox NA. I joined a guild with a trader in Wayrest and immediately paid 1M for lifetime membership. I made that back in 1 week's sales. Totally worth it to me.

But something most people don't seem to understand is money supply and macroeconomics as it pertains to the game. Every time a player kills a monster or completes a quest, that represents new currency entering into the economy. Money has to come out of the economy at roughly the same rate, and trader dues are the primary means of doing this.

Sanctum74 · December 2017

I've been in both free and pay guilds and I'm much happier paying for a good guild trader. Don't get me wrong the free guilds had some great people in them, but you would get a good trader one week and then next week either a bad trader or none at all.

I was also getting frustrated with the constant notifications all day about raffles, auctions, and asking for donations cause they are short for the next bid. It was also common for some top members to pay up to 300k a week to help cover the people that didn't sell or contribute and that's not fair to them or is it OP?

Now I'm in a trader guild that charges a weekly fee and I love it. Haven't missed a weekly capital trader in over a year and I get no notifications or begging for money. I can sell things at any price or I can choose to sell nothing at all and not have to worry about losing my spot or a minimum. The dues I pay are easily covered by doing writs for 1 day or 20 minutes of grinding.

Some guilds just choose to raise money in different ways and you always have a choice to join or not so what's the problem? Personally I'd rather pay my own way then expect someone to do it for me.

oXI_Viper_IXo · December 2017

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

F_16C_VIPER wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

F_16C_VIPER wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how a guild could consistently get a prime trader stall without charging any dues? I highly doubt they could maintain it through donations alone.

Find a guild that doesn’t charge dues and see for yourself ...

So you don't know then?

I’m in two of them ... so I know.

Ok so instead of being helpful and simply answering my initial question, you tell me to "join one myself to find out." Thanks...?

R4TTIUS · December 2017

Im in 3 big trading guilds on xbox EU and have never been asked to pay to be in any guild, and have traders in rawl, way rest and mourn hold.

What we do is if someone helps u in a big way and doesnt want payment then it's nice to donate but not forced to do so, I will happily drop 50k in the bank of each one if I have a good week.

I do this because we can pay in excess of 1.5 million per trader per guild per week and it helps alot.

I dont think charging anyone is really needed anymore unless starting out, but when you see guilds with billions in bank and charging then that's just stupid.

ArchMikem · December 2017

It's sometimes an unfortunate necessity considering many of the choice Trader locations cost well into the millions per WEEK to hire. Even though I'd never see myself trying to get into a Guild that has dues cause I don't sell stuff often and I'm poor, I still understand why the fees are there in the first place. Every member pitches in to make sure the Guild can keep affording their Trader.

Though I'd like to see some actual numbers a Trading Guild deals with. Maybe it really is unnecessary and the Guild Master is just cash cowing their members and raking it in.

Defilted · December 2017

The ignorance on this thread is breath taking.

Try have a top guild trade spot on XBOX NA without having guild dues and raffles that make extra money. Never going to happen. My guild dues are 10K a week. They should be 20K.

1. At least in my trading guild the officers and the guild leaders spend so much time administrating the guild it is like a job for them. My trade guild is really 6 guilds. One of the best on XBOX NA.
2. The cost of a trader on XBOX NA is outrageous in some of the prime spots. Way into the millions of gold a week to hold these spots.

My trade guild has a guild hall for each of the separate guilds with a fully stocked guild hall with all the mundus and crafting stations for each armor set.

There is no way they accomplish all of this with no dues.

Will there be bad guilds out there that are really just trying to take advantage of people? Yes. Will this be the majority? Not by a long shot.

JKorr · December 2017

Currently in 4 guilds; none require dues, one is a dedicated trading guild, another usually gets a trader, but isn't a focused trading guild. Even the ones that don't have a trader still have the guild store to sell stuff to other guildmates.

For the dedicated trading guild I have no problem with buying raffle tickets or donating items for the weekly auction. The gm usually manages a trader in a good location, and I've sold a few rather expensive items without any hassle as a result. However I don't sell enough on a regular basis to do much towards the millions in gold needed to get a trader. The gold has to come from somewhere, and many members make additional donations of items and gold over and above their initial contributions if they have successful sales. I really don't expect the gm and other officers to organize the prizes for the raffle and the donations/items for the auction all on their own. They all contribute both items and gold to the effort to keep our trader.

No one has ever forced me joining a guild, or forced me to sign a contract saying I am not allowed to drop a guild. There are always options. If the op and a few other posters really believe that asking for dues or contributions towards keeping a trader is a scam intended to get billions of gold for the gm, why not start your own guild? Set your own rules, bid on traders and see how successful you can be if no one participates in your raffles or auctions by donating items or outright giving your guild gold.

Drummerx04 · December 2017

Another convenient way to look at dues is like an investment. 10k investment for the week, 50-500k in profit depending on how active I am with selling. Sounds like a good deal to me.

dodgehopper_ESO · December 2017

Even more than Guild Dues I generally find raffles an abomination that I've only seen in this game. I hate gambling and I have a general mistrust of authority. Trust is earned not presumed and if a leader does not place themselves in a position where they can be scrutinized I find it troubling. This also requires good judgment on the part of members as well to see through BS and to weigh and assess things. I put up with Raffles in guilds I've been in but I agree with the general sentiment that I do not like them. I Enjoy events within the setting of a Guild but the 'weekly raffle' I find to be a waste of my time. I come to games like these to fight things. Thing of it like playing digital basketball. If I show up to play basketball with friends and discover they're all playing poker to decide who will be on what team, and divvying off knockoff Rolexes I'll be thinking wtf and so would most of the other players. That's the nonsense in all of this.

Eyesinthedrk · December 2017

PS4 na server.

When the big stam update dropped with DB I made my first millions farming and selling leather. With a mournhold trader I could list 4 stacks a day at 25k a stack and sell them all within an hour, sometimes before I ported out of mournhold.

One day I looked and nothing had sold. Thought maybe I messed up my pricing but I was right in line with everyone else in the guild. Go to the MOTD and apparently we lost our mournhold bid and were in eldenroot this week. Nothing moved that week. The next Monday I log in and every thing i had listed was sold. Sure enough we were back in mournhold.

Saying “in a capital city” doesn’t mean squat. The difference between mournhold and eldenroot is about the same as the difference between eldenroot and some no name trader on the side of the road in B.F.Rivenspire.

I’ve heard numbers somewhere on the order of $13 million a week to secure a mournhold trader. So a 15k weekly due isn’t asking much. Especially when one vvardenfell or CWC motif can make that back over night. If that 13 million number is right it would take 400 million in total sales, per week, to secure that trader without dues.

JKorr · December 2017

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Even more than Guild Dues I generally find raffles an abomination that I've only seen in this game. I hate gambling and I have a general mistrust of authority. Trust is earned not presumed and if a leader does not place themselves in a position where they can be scrutinized I find it troubling. This also requires good judgment on the part of members as well to see through BS and to weigh and assess things. I put up with Raffles in guilds I've been in but I agree with the general sentiment that I do not like them. I Enjoy events within the setting of a Guild but the 'weekly raffle' I find to be a waste of my time. I come to games like these to fight things. Thing of it like playing digital basketball. If I show up to play basketball with friends and discover they're all playing poker to decide who will be on what team, and divvying off knockoff Rolexes I'll be thinking wtf and so would most of the other players. That's the nonsense in all of this.

Out of curiosity, why did you join a trading guild if you came here to fight things? The trading guild would be the main reason to hold raffles and auctions to support bidding for the trader. No trader bids, no reason for a raffle.

The one guild I have does nothing as far as selling or trading. No raffles, no auction, no dues, no donations required. We just group and fight things.......

randomkeyhits · December 2017

so many big posts when its mostly simple though there are always those who want to game the system.

supply + demand + escalation

limited supply, over demand leading to escalation of costs.

So long as players can afford to and are prepared to contribute to the bid amounts nothing will change.

dodgehopper_ESO · December 2017

JKorr wrote: »

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Even more than Guild Dues I generally find raffles an abomination that I've only seen in this game. I hate gambling and I have a general mistrust of authority. Trust is earned not presumed and if a leader does not place themselves in a position where they can be scrutinized I find it troubling. This also requires good judgment on the part of members as well to see through BS and to weigh and assess things. I put up with Raffles in guilds I've been in but I agree with the general sentiment that I do not like them. I Enjoy events within the setting of a Guild but the 'weekly raffle' I find to be a waste of my time. I come to games like these to fight things. Thing of it like playing digital basketball. If I show up to play basketball with friends and discover they're all playing poker to decide who will be on what team, and divvying off knockoff Rolexes I'll be thinking wtf and so would most of the other players. That's the nonsense in all of this.

Out of curiosity, why did you join a trading guild if you came here to fight things? The trading guild would be the main reason to hold raffles and auctions to support bidding for the trader. No trader bids, no reason for a raffle.

The one guild I have does nothing as far as selling or trading. No raffles, no auction, no dues, no donations required. We just group and fight things.......

I would like to know if this is a troll post or a genuine question. Lets make something clear. There is more than one type of trader in the world. There is the producer and there is the arbitrageur. You need both for there to be an actual economy. The arbitrageur hunts down for deals or mistaken postings and reposts them on another trader either now or at a later date for profit. The producer either hunts the material himself and then posts on a trader or crafts the material himself. Most players are some hybrid of both when trading. A person who 'bashes monsters and players' all the time will most certainly have plenty of goods to sell and therefore has as much right to be a trader as the guy who lurks from trader to trader to make his money. Money affords better gear which is used in the aforementioned bashing of monsters/players. Gear/Rules systems continually change thus requiring a change in gear every few months. Money is vital. I hope this clarifies your question if it is genuine. Everyone has reason to trade in this game.

I would like to add that there are other means of a guild to maintain funds to acquire traders.

notimetocare · December 2017

Seens it for a few RP guilds. Intended for housing.

Trade guild already got covered by others

LiquidPony · December 2017

Blanco wrote: »

It's just a way to take advantage of members. None of the guilds that ask for dues actually need them to keep their trader or to keep the guild running. It's just a form extortion really , oftentimes for the benefit of RL $$.

Uh, what?

On XB1, the good trader locations run 5 million gold easily, often more than that for spots in places like Rawl'kha and Mournhold.

500 members paying 5k weekly dues doesn't even come close to covering the cost of winning the bid on a good trader.

And a lot of the big trading guild consortiums (Finest, Sauce, Meta, etc.) offer guild halls that have all attunable crafting stations, transmutation stations, and other perks.

Totally worth the dues IMO. Even people who aren't playing the market (like me) can make a killing just moving improvement mats, motifs, BoE drops, master writs, etc. It's much harder to get steady income when you're in some podunk trader outside of Bergama that no one ever visits.

dodgehopper_ESO · December 2017

LiquidPony wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

It's just a way to take advantage of members. None of the guilds that ask for dues actually need them to keep their trader or to keep the guild running. It's just a form extortion really , oftentimes for the benefit of RL $$.

Uh, what?

On XB1, the good trader locations run 5 million gold easily, often more than that for spots in places like Rawl'kha and Mournhold.

500 members paying 5k weekly dues doesn't even come close to covering the cost of winning the bid on a good trader.

Tax is also a part of meeting that income and it should be noted that high sale high volume guilds earn vastly more in tax than guilds in lesser locations with fewer active members. This is what some people might say is 'working as intended'. I admit I would rather the vendor system worked a bit differently than it does but what can you do unless ZoS wants to change it?

Armatesz · December 2017

code65536 wrote: »

As a trade guild GM, let me set a few things straight:

The amount of taxes a guild gets from sales is just 3.5%. Guild leaders have no control over the tax rate. When you list an item, you pay a 1% listing fee that simply disappears from the game. When your item is sold, an additional 7% is deducted from the sale. Of this 7% (which the game labels as the "House Cut"), only half actually goes to the guild. The other half disappears from the game.

So you lose 8% on every sale. 3.5% goes to the guild. 4.5% goes into ZOS's gold sink.

Taxes only cover a fraction of the bid costs. So let's say you have a guild in a capital city. Something like Wayrest. The guild might do something like 30 million per week in sales. This translates to just a bit over 1 million in taxes at the 3.5% rate. Weekly bids of around 5 million or so is not unheard of for capital cities. So with taxes covering 1 million of that weekly cost, you need to extract 4 million from your members each week.

There are various ways to do this. Member donations. Raffles. Auctions. And yes, member dues. How each guild handles this fundraising is up to the leadership. Some guilds can sustain entirely off of voluntary contributions. Some cannot. Some only require mandatory dues if members don't sell a lot or don't participate in the other fundraisers. Some just keep it simple and just require a mandatory fee.

On PC/NA, fees are uncommon. This is in part a cultural thing (it's harder for a guild to justify fees when most other guilds on the server don't have fees) and in part because addons make guild management easier--you can see how much people sell, how much taxes you have coming in, and there are addons to manage raffles which make them easier options to pursue.

Traders in sub-prime locations are generally cheaper to maintain. Lesser cities get only a fraction of the foot traffic, but the bids there are also much less. Taxes will be able to cover a greater share of their bid than prime locations like Rawl, Craglorn, or the capitals. Casual players probably should seek these kinds of guilds out instead of trying to land themselves in a Rawl guild that has higher upkeep costs.

The high costs of the trader bid system is intended design. A lot of people talk about how insane the bid costs are, how this means the economy would be better served by an auction house, etc. But it's actually a sign that the system is working as intended.

Why are bids so high? Because guilds can afford it. If a would-be rival can afford a 4.5 million bid, then you need to be able to bid 5 million to maintain your spot. But why can guilds afford such high bids? Because there is so much gold sloshing around in the economy. ZOS has added so many gold spigots to the game, and most of their gold sinks don't keep up with the level of gold sloshing around the economy. And many of their biggest gold sinks are 1-time costs. Once you've bought that manor, once you've maxed out your bank space, then those gold sinks are plugged.

But not the trader bid system. The trader bid system is the one gold sink in the game that automatically increases in size as there is more gold sloshing around. And as the general level of gold wealth has increased in the game, the amount of contributions to guilds have also increased, driving up their ability to bid and in turn increasing the amount of gold that is flushed down the trader bid black hole each week. No other gold sink in the game has the ability to scale up as the economy scales up. Which is why ZOS will never change the trader bid system--because it is one of the biggest and most effective gold sinks in the game, and without it inflation will skyrocket.

I honestly would not go so far as to say it is immune to inflation but now instead of a generally all experiencing it there is pockets of areas that could happen to. Now note this does not make the market immune to price fluctuating, however it does make it so that no one has any real control on the market value on items. Remember any guild with enough people that pools enough money together can take over any prime or not so prime location and take in that spot. That being said there are naturally some spots where people don't often look at that are a city location.

I can say there are items that are far easier to just farm for than to buy from guild traders, and there are some items to be fairly honest is easier to just wait for someone to post in a zone chat than to farm for.

I think another factor that some or a lot of us can agree on is that bot accounts do also ruin the market value on items.

I can also think that another bad thing about guild traders is that it does not teach you how to actually make money outside of a guild trader at all.

I've talked to quite a bit of people that make their money somehow mainly from guild traders and I a person not in a guild that does not sell items to other players make far more money than they do. I don't understand it and I don't understand the need to stress oneself over making some insane amount of money.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · December 2017

@Brittany_Joy

Armatesz · December 2017

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO wrote: »

@Brittany_Joy

Lol I probably am

Tan9oSuccka · December 2017

The math doesn’t seem to add up to me. Dues plus sales should be more than an adequate amount of gold.

Every GM seems to be playing tiny violins which makes me raise an eyebrow.

I’ll withhold judgment since I’m quite happy with my one trade guild, and one donation guild.

zaria · December 2017

Defilted wrote: »

The ignorance on this thread is breath taking.

Try have a top guild trade spot on XBOX NA without having guild dues and raffles that make extra money. Never going to happen. My guild dues are 10K a week. They should be 20K.

1. At least in my trading guild the officers and the guild leaders spend so much time administrating the guild it is like a job for them. My trade guild is really 6 guilds. One of the best on XBOX NA.
2. The cost of a trader on XBOX NA is outrageous in some of the prime spots. Way into the millions of gold a week to hold these spots.

My trade guild has a guild hall for each of the separate guilds with a fully stocked guild hall with all the mundus and crafting stations for each armor set.

There is no way they accomplish all of this with no dues.

Will there be bad guilds out there that are really just trying to take advantage of people? Yes. Will this be the majority? Not by a long shot.

At least on pc-eu its an sort of union of trade guilds who agree to not fight over each others traders all the time.
This keeps traders bids lower.
Note that its not an monopoly, anybody can bid for traders and this can easy result in an bidding war however this is exception rather than rule

KanedaSyndrome · December 2017

Because people apparently accept them.