Can anyone clarify the auction houses?

Huzya · January 2018

I've read a few posts about auction houses, and it seems to get heated very quickly. I'm just hoping some folks can shed some light on this for me?

As I understand it, there is no global auction house in ESO. Instead, guilds (through some process that I haven't figured out yet) get access to a specific Guild Trader in a specific zone. From there, the members of the guild can post their wares for sale. So if I'm looking for a particular item (say a Nirnhorned bow so I can research it), I have to go from one vendor to another, possibly having to bounce through multiple towns and/or zones... just to find my desired item (at hopefully a decent price).

In other games I've played (WoW being the most recent), there was just a global auction house. I could buy and sell my wares from a single location, and wouldn't have to join a guild to do so.

In reading past posts, it looks like the common argument against a global auction house is that it'd promote farmers. The thing is, they never mention what kind of farmers. Are they referring to the classic "Chinese farmers" where a buncha kids overseas are playing for 12+ hours a day for the sole purpose of farming goods to be sold for real money... or are they talking about regular players that will dedicate a bunch of their play time (usually down times when they aren't raiding) to farming and selling crafting materials to make lots of in-game cash to be able to purchase high-end items for themselves?

The other part of the above argument is that the farmers will destroy commerce by flooding the market with goods and driving down prices. While I've definitely seen markets flooded in past games, it never ruined the game. But going with the logic that farmers 'could' ruin the game in a global marketplace... how does the existing setup prevent that? What's to stop a player from joining a trade guild, farming tons of items, and then selling those items at a price that undercuts the competition?

Again, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of the established set up. I've never played a game with auction houses set up this way.

And one last thing... can anyone provide any advice on what to look for when joining a trade guild? Does it even matter? I've banked a bunch of items (tradeskill materials, patterns and some purple weapons/armor) that I was hoping to sell off and put the cash into buying missing motiffs and whatnot.

gminkalis_ESO · January 2018

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

Aeorath · January 2018

Huzya wrote: »

...In other games I've played (WoW being the most recent), there was just a global auction house. I could buy and sell my wares from a single location, and wouldn't have to join a guild to do so.

This. This is what this game does not have. And it's not for fear of farmers, farmers are already present in this game as well. Probably at the time, the developers thought this would be a cool, novel idea. My opinion only, of course, system is not a complete fail by far, but having to join a guild to actually sell instead of yelling in chat promoting your wares in different zones is a little forcing your hand.

The system is what it is, just make sure to join a guild who can afford a good trader every week or so, because even in good guilds there could be some instance where they do not get a trader, it happens once in a while. You can be a member of up to five guilds at the same time, just because of that, as a kind of back up and at the same time you can also join a guild you actually like, not just a trading guild.

It's probably too late to implement any kind of auction house right now, and of course the big trading guilds wouldn't really like that either. So it's a kind of take it or leave it system.

Spacemonkey · January 2018

Because the guild traders act as 'gates'
it limits the amount of players selling on popular traders.
a lot of items that would normally come in from the masses that can't be bothered into joining a trading guild are atm not on the market, creating rarity or w/e

the bottom line, is that for the people playing the guild trader game, less sellers is good, as there is NO gate on who can buy. And thats the important part. Fewer sellers, but same amount of buyers.

This is where everything gets convoluted and mired in heavily biased arguments(mine included I guess) of the anti-trader crowd and anti-global-AH crowd. No middle ground seems acceptable as any change to the status quo will see that limited amount of players selling , possibly loose revenu.

And thats why everything seems so hopeless when it comes to trading in eso.
I've never experienced an mmo where it was such a hassle to sell anything either.

Elsonso · January 2018

Huzya wrote: »

I've read a few posts about auction houses, and it seems to get heated very quickly. I'm just hoping some folks can shed some light on this for me?

And one last thing... can anyone provide any advice on what to look for when joining a trade guild? Does it even matter? I've banked a bunch of items (tradeskill materials, patterns and some purple weapons/armor) that I was hoping to sell off and put the cash into buying missing motiffs and whatnot.

Guild representatives bid on the kiosk, which opens the Guild Store to the public. Guild members can always buy and sell from the guild store. The guild store is there all the time, whether there is a kiosk or not. If there is no kiosk for the week, the guild store is "private" and only other guild members can buy.

When looking for a trade guild, find one that has (1) has a kiosk, (2) usually has a kiosk, and (3) usually has a kiosk in a good location. You can travel to the location to see for yourself if you like it. Some guilds have kiosks in the middle of nowhere. I am OK with those, generally, but some people don't.

It is up to you whether you want to deal with minimum sales, weekly membership fees, and stuff like that.

This thread can provide you with possible guilds to join if you reveal the server (platform and geography) that you are on.

Nestor · January 2018

The whole debate is pointless, as it will never happen in this game. WOW can do this because they have 200 plus servers and limit the number of people on each one. ESO has one server and everyone plays on it. Well, one for EU and one for NA. It is not technically feasible to have a Global Auction House in this game. ZOS would need orders of magnitude more computing power to achieve this.

Annalyse · January 2018

In the last game I played, richer people would continually buy all of the cheap popular/needed materials and re-list them at a very high price. It drove the prices up on a lot of things until I was finally not able to afford what I needed. That is mostly what I would fear happening.

Currently, it is a little annoying having to shop around (especially as I don't usually have a lot of play time), but I have saved a ton of money with just a little travelling to find the best prices.

SugaComa · January 2018

So should guild members be limited to setting they're guilds to types

PvP, pve, social, bank, trade

And you can only sell in your trade guild

See the current problem with how the current system works is

One guild has many members all of which have they're own guilds all of which then put in bids on "multiple" traders so as to ensure they've always got a trader in a good area

Sure we need a way to prevent that

On PS4 this is rife we know of one player who systemically prevents other guilds from getting decent traders

You can go to one town and one trader will have lots of stuff highly priced

Eg ring of war maiden in gold it will be set to 200k then all other will have it for 1 million gold essentially forcing the sale of the other trader

It's a con and it's unfair

QuebraRegra · January 2018

gminkalis_ESO wrote: »

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

that's a good thing right?

Ratzkifal · January 2018

QuebraRegra wrote: »

gminkalis_ESO wrote: »

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

that's a good thing right?

No, it is not. "for single players to corner the market on" means that powersellers with several hundred million gold will simply control the market for rare items through their immense buying power. Remember what has happened to the Morrowind furniture blueprints. False information was intentionally spread by a few people who had found the most valuable blueprints to secure a monopoly and increase prices artificially. A single Hlaalu bookshelf, orderly was worth 35k gold for months until other players finally learned the blueprint and got the price down to about 10k now (which is still a lot).

Zaldan · January 2018

Nestor wrote: »

The whole debate is pointless, as it will never happen in this game. WOW can do this because they have 200 plus servers and limit the number of people on each one. ESO has one server and everyone plays on it. Well, one for EU and one for NA. It is not technically feasible to have a Global Auction House in this game. ZOS would need orders of magnitude more computing power to achieve this.

I disagree, WOW servers are made of more than one server even four years ago when I last played (each of the continents at least were on different servers, several times one of the individual servers went down kicking everyone on that continent while players on other continents where fine), eso just took it a step further

Nestor · January 2018

Zaldan wrote: »

I disagree, WOW servers are made of more than one server even four years ago when I last played (each of the continents at least were on different servers, several times one of the individual servers went down kicking everyone on that continent while players on other continents where fine), eso just took it a step further

What do you disagree with? That WOW is on multiple servers?

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Realms_list

SirAndy · January 2018

Anyone have any tips on how to "corner the market" for 150+ Cherry Blossom Branch runeboxes?

Asking for a friend ...

Tandor · January 2018

gminkalis_ESO wrote: »

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

Those things wouldn't necessarily apply, as in addition to more people selling goods there would be more people buying them. Don't under-estimate the number of players who don't have the time or inclination to travel around the world contending at each stop with the lack of a proper search function. While it's true that many prospective sellers are prevented by the restrictive nature of the present system from trading, many prospective buyers are deterred from doing so too. I've been active in both buying and selling in every other MMO I've played, but in this one I'm not a trader and in 4 years I've probably bought 3 or 4 items. Under a more open and accessible system there would be an increase in both supply and demand.

Runefang · January 2018

Extremely rich players are already capable of cornering the market on rare items. For some people ESO is just a trading game, they do nothing but wander from trader to trader buying good deals and rare items. I've got several in my main trade guild like this.

The current system heavily favours the seller who has a good location and is putting in a lot of time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, its just the whole casual vs hard-core argument in another form.

zaria · January 2018

lordrichter wrote: »

Huzya wrote: »

I've read a few posts about auction houses, and it seems to get heated very quickly. I'm just hoping some folks can shed some light on this for me?

And one last thing... can anyone provide any advice on what to look for when joining a trade guild? Does it even matter? I've banked a bunch of items (tradeskill materials, patterns and some purple weapons/armor) that I was hoping to sell off and put the cash into buying missing motiffs and whatnot.

Guild representatives bid on the kiosk, which opens the Guild Store to the public. Guild members can always buy and sell from the guild store. The guild store is there all the time, whether there is a kiosk or not. If there is no kiosk for the week, the guild store is "private" and only other guild members can buy.

When looking for a trade guild, find one that has (1) has a kiosk, (2) usually has a kiosk, and (3) usually has a kiosk in a good location. You can travel to the location to see for yourself if you like it. Some guilds have kiosks in the middle of nowhere. I am OK with those, generally, but some people don't.

It is up to you whether you want to deal with minimum sales, weekly membership fees, and stuff like that.

This thread can provide you with possible guilds to join if you reveal the server (platform and geography) that you are on.

Note that the kiosk in minor cities is an nice place to get cheap stuff as in farming gear or other special or cheap sets or motifs, its there you dump your <2K stuff, you don't shop cheap socks on fifth avenue.

deamor666eb17_ESO · January 2018

You can always go to Tamriel Trade Center website and see where to find the item you need.
Almost like having a global auction house.

wolfie1.0. · January 2018

SugaComa wrote: »

So should guild members be limited to setting they're guilds to types

PvP, pve, social, bank, trade

And you can only sell in your trade guild

See the current problem with how the current system works is

One guild has many members all of which have they're own guilds all of which then put in bids on "multiple" traders so as to ensure they've always got a trader in a good area

Sure we need a way to prevent that

On PS4 this is rife we know of one player who systemically prevents other guilds from getting decent traders

You can go to one town and one trader will have lots of stuff highly priced

Eg ring of war maiden in gold it will be set to 200k then all other will have it for 1 million gold essentially forcing the sale of the other trader

It's a con and it's unfair

Your idea of a guild being locked into one function is fundamentally flawed in that quite a few traders and guild leaders have alternate accounts.

wolfie1.0. · January 2018

One item that I want to point out here that people forget is this: guilds have limits. You can't have more than 500 accounts in a guild. Each account can not list more than 30 items at a time. And then there the 5 guild limit per account. This means that top trade guilds have to cull out the less productive members. ALL Zoe really needs to do to make guilds more inclusive is to increase the number of accounts that can be in the guild or increase the number items that can be listed.

QuebraRegra · January 2018

Ratzkifal wrote: »

QuebraRegra wrote: »

gminkalis_ESO wrote: »

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

that's a good thing right?

No, it is not. "for single players to corner the market on" means that powersellers with several hundred million gold will simply control the market for rare items through their immense buying power. Remember what has happened to the Morrowind furniture blueprints. False information was intentionally spread by a few people who had found the most valuable blueprints to secure a monopoly and increase prices artificially. A single Hlaalu bookshelf, orderly was worth 35k gold for months until other players finally learned the blueprint and got the price down to about 10k now (which is still a lot).

But we're not talking about finite resources... eventually other players will list these items (competitively) and the prices will go down. Yer saying that price gouging already exists in the current system anyway.

Tetrafy · January 2018

Nestor wrote: »

The whole debate is pointless, as it will never happen in this game. WOW can do this because they have 200 plus servers and limit the number of people on each one. ESO has one server and everyone plays on it. Well, one for EU and one for NA. It is not technically feasible to have a Global Auction House in this game. ZOS would need orders of magnitude more computing power to achieve this.

FFXIV is played on a few server lists just due to popilation. But also acomplishes this no problem.

Tetrafy · January 2018

Runefang wrote: »

Extremely rich players are already capable of cornering the market on rare items. For some people ESO is just a trading game, they do nothing but wander from trader to trader buying good deals and rare items. I've got several in my main trade guild like this.

The current system heavily favours the seller who has a good location and is putting in a lot of time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, its just the whole casual vs hard-core argument in another form.

Probably why most people who already own the market come on here in shroves to destest votes on AH.

jedtb16_ESO · January 2018

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

One item that I want to point out here that people forget is this: guilds have limits. You can't have more than 500 accounts in a guild. Each account can not list more than 30 items at a time. And then there the 5 guild limit per account. This means that top trade guilds have to cull out the less productive members. ALL Zoe really needs to do to make guilds more inclusive is to increase the number of accounts that can be in the guild or increase the number items that can be listed.

i could be wrong.....

but i think this is the first original idea on this subject since 20 frozen to death.

it is a really good idea.

how about pushing it further?

not only more accounts per guild but more guilds per account as well as increasing the listing cap.

sho_nuff · January 2018

My problem with the current system is that everyone says you need Tamriel Trade Center for the current system. Tamriel Trade Center has nothing for the PS4.

I like the trader system. I think it adds a neat level to the economy - and I'm not in a trade guild. But I think there should be a global search function. Prime locations would still be valuable, but there wouldn't be so much time wasted running around.

kargen27 · January 2018

QuebraRegra wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

QuebraRegra wrote: »

gminkalis_ESO wrote: »

Global Auction house will drop the price on easily farmable materials as everyone will be able to sell them, Rare items will be much easier for single players to corner the market on as they wont have to run searching every trader for XYZ shiny, they can camp one location and buy up every one listed below what they want the cornered market price to be.

that's a good thing right?

No, it is not. "for single players to corner the market on" means that powersellers with several hundred million gold will simply control the market for rare items through their immense buying power. Remember what has happened to the Morrowind furniture blueprints. False information was intentionally spread by a few people who had found the most valuable blueprints to secure a monopoly and increase prices artificially. A single Hlaalu bookshelf, orderly was worth 35k gold for months until other players finally learned the blueprint and got the price down to about 10k now (which is still a lot).

But we're not talking about finite resources... eventually other players will list these items (competitively) and the prices will go down. Yer saying that price gouging already exists in the current system anyway.

Three people sitting at the auction house in shifts could easily buy any of the rare items as soon as they are listed if we had an auction house. It happens in other games. The not quite so rare items they won't care about so much. The common items (crafting mats as an example) they will not care about at all. With the common items with an auction house you could easily see common items listed slightly higher than what NPCs would purchase them for. Good for the buyer bad for the casual seller. Back to the rare items though. Potent Nirncrux is a semi rare item. Let's say a few players on the PTS see a change that will make more players desire the Nirn trait on their weapons. Those players as the system is now will be able to purchase a good number of Potent Nirncrux but they won't get them all. They will miss some locations as there is just to many for a few people to cover. With a central market they only have to be at one spot and they can buy them all. They can continue buying them all over several days stretching out to when the demand increases and people start looking for them. Then they let them go at very high prices. People are going to buy them and for a good while these three or four people will dominate the market for Potent Nirncrux and get very rich. Then they may move on to Perfect Roe or a motif everyone is looking for. Thing is with an auction house it would be really easy to control the market for rare items. Their only worry would be someone who had the same idea was also sitting on the auction house looking for that rare item.

We do need some changes. An intuitive search inside the guild trader menu would help a ton. I also think it might be time to add more guild trading spots out in the remote areas. Instead of one trader by each wayshrine make it three. A change or two so the big guilds can't bid on backup traders would be nice. What we don't need is a central auction house. It would create more problems than it solved.

Nestor · January 2018

Tetrafy wrote: »

FFXIV is played on a few server lists just due to popilation. But also acomplishes this no problem.
[/quote]

Its a heck of a lot more than just a few:

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Servers

Tandor · January 2018

Nestor wrote: »

Zaldan wrote: »

I disagree, WOW servers are made of more than one server even four years ago when I last played (each of the continents at least were on different servers, several times one of the individual servers went down kicking everyone on that continent while players on other continents where fine), eso just took it a step further

What do you disagree with? That WOW is on multiple servers?

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Realms_list

I think there's confusion between realms and servers. I think Zaldan is saying that WoW's realms each consist of multiple servers - the argument presumably being that ESO is the same with each megaserver consisting of multiple servers, so that if WoW's realm system can support a global auction house through the multiple servers that make up each realm so could ESO's megaserver system through the multiple servers that make up each megaserver.

kargen27 · January 2018

I forgot to address the last question about finding a trading guild. I saw one of the top trading guilds recruiting players last night. Most the top guilds usually have a high turn around of members because of the amount of income you are expected to generate for the guild each week. A lot of the top guilds have weekly requirements but they don't care how you meet them. Doesn't always have to be sales. A friend of mine is in one of the top trading guilds and he auctions off his services each week. He wants to get the master fisherman achievement on several characters so he auctions off two hours of fishing time each week. That means for two hours of his fishing whoever is the high bidder gets everything he catches plus any mats he gathers between holes. That covers his membership costs easily.

Just starting out I would suggest trying to find a social guild that gets a trader most the time in a remote area. They usually do not have minimum requirements so you aren't pressured to keep your thirty slots filled with high end items. The casual guilds with traders gives you a good outlet to sell low to mid priced items instead of them sitting in your bags. Once you are ready to keep a steady supply of good items going you can look for the big trading guilds. Again they have a big turnover so they are looking for new members all the time. Just be real sure you know what the minimum requirements are. Those prime spots are expensive so they don't have a lot of wiggle room.

I am in a social guild that doesn't get a trader. I still list several low cost things in the store for guild mates though. Things like intricate armor for people leveling crafting or common recipes can be sold there. You don't make a lot doing that but it empties bag space and you get something for it.

swippy · January 2018

Huzya wrote: »

I've read a few posts about auction houses, and it seems to get heated very quickly. I'm just hoping some folks can shed some light on this for me?

As I understand it, there is no global auction house in ESO. Instead, guilds (through some process that I haven't figured out yet) get access to a specific Guild Trader in a specific zone. From there, the members of the guild can post their wares for sale. So if I'm looking for a particular item (say a Nirnhorned bow so I can research it), I have to go from one vendor to another, possibly having to bounce through multiple towns and/or zones... just to find my desired item (at hopefully a decent price).

In other games I've played (WoW being the most recent), there was just a global auction house. I could buy and sell my wares from a single location, and wouldn't have to join a guild to do so.

In reading past posts, it looks like the common argument against a global auction house is that it'd promote farmers. The thing is, they never mention what kind of farmers. Are they referring to the classic "Chinese farmers" where a buncha kids overseas are playing for 12+ hours a day for the sole purpose of farming goods to be sold for real money... or are they talking about regular players that will dedicate a bunch of their play time (usually down times when they aren't raiding) to farming and selling crafting materials to make lots of in-game cash to be able to purchase high-end items for themselves?

The other part of the above argument is that the farmers will destroy commerce by flooding the market with goods and driving down prices. While I've definitely seen markets flooded in past games, it never ruined the game. But going with the logic that farmers 'could' ruin the game in a global marketplace... how does the existing setup prevent that? What's to stop a player from joining a trade guild, farming tons of items, and then selling those items at a price that undercuts the competition?

Again, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of the established set up. I've never played a game with auction houses set up this way.

And one last thing... can anyone provide any advice on what to look for when joining a trade guild? Does it even matter? I've banked a bunch of items (tradeskill materials, patterns and some purple weapons/armor) that I was hoping to sell off and put the cash into buying missing motiffs and whatnot.

i'm gonna try to answer each question in one post (rather than keep a tally while scrolling down in between tangents).

...and i'm off to a bad start. i don't think it's so much that it'd "promote" farmers; i think the concern is this:
if the bots were to have a centralized marketplace to dump off items (stuff like Dreugh Wax is rarer when there aren't bots introducing lots more into the economy) then the price would plummet. on my server the price of that item is already significantly lower than comparable items, because it's easier to automate combat than it is to automate gathering from nodes. we don't like bots cutting into our profits.

the way the existing system mitigates that is that it takes time to find any place where the item is "flooding." currently an account can only have access to 5 points of sale, while there are several dozen exclusively searchable points of sale in the game. if i don't find the cheap stuff i have to move to another trader, which takes time, and the cheap stuff might be bought up before i locate the right trader. if i could see the entire market at any given instant, i can perform all kinds of market manipulations (like i've done in other games). i'm sure examples of that will be -- or have already been -- provided.

lastly, picking a trading guild mostly comes down to the location of the trader that they've hired, and how reliably they are able to retain that trader. (any particular point-of-sale has the potential to change which guild it's being controlled by once a week.) this is relevant because lots of people begin their shopping by going to a place where there are many traders, like Mournhold for example, while almost nobody starts out by checking the lone guy on Bleakrock Isle. more customers leads to higher turnover which obviously increases profits (of a renewable seller).
there are also the expectations on the guild member to weigh. some trading guilds charge a weekly fee in gold from members, some only require that you sell a certain amount each week (basically using the percentage-based House Cut as dues), some have a mix of both systems, and some others may have no expectation that i'm aware of.

i hope that's all relevant. anyone, feel free to correct or dispute.

Tandor · January 2018

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

One item that I want to point out here that people forget is this: guilds have limits. You can't have more than 500 accounts in a guild. Each account can not list more than 30 items at a time. And then there the 5 guild limit per account. This means that top trade guilds have to cull out the less productive members. ALL Zoe really needs to do to make guilds more inclusive is to increase the number of accounts that can be in the guild or increase the number items that can be listed.

This would go against the argument people make against an auction house when they say that the number of listings would overwhelm the server. It would especially be a problem on PC as the trading add-ons already cause performance issues with the present number of listings.

If you want to include more players within the trading system while not increasing the number of listings so as not to impact on performance then reducing the number of guilds through which a player can make trade listings would be an effective way of doing so. While plenty would argue against limiting their sales, do they really need to make that much gold every week? Most of them have run out of things to spend it on judging by the responses to polls asking how much gold players have!

Alternatively, the argument I've been making for ages is to include a single NPC trader in each main trading location through whom anyone could list just a few items at a high level of commission to be shared between the guilds trading in that location. It would enable casual sellers to participate as well as those who don't want to be in a trading guild or whose trading guild has not been successful in getting a kiosk at that time.

H3Li0S · January 2018

il explain the basics, those who profit of that trading system don't want auction house and those who doesnt... well they want an auction house, nothing to explain here.

Those forums are far from what the community wants, any answer you get here is the same as using a very small sample of a test. What the majority wants on this forum is often far from what the communiy really wants, they just speak louder than the rest hoping that people hear them. I am happy zenimax doesnt listen to the community most of the time

.