Happy (belated) Birthday, Guild Kiosks!

Dont_do_drugs · August 2018

@Carbonised i totally agree and i know, to fund that bids u cant sell all day crowns over crowns, youd need to be pretty rich to do so, looking at the craglorn bids.

still there is a problem: you cant complain about some, leaving out the problems the others also bring into the trading system. you cant make one part of the problem to a victim, while same people are responsible for backup-trader missuse and bullying and also for crown missuse. it just ends up with one side complaining about the other side, making even worse things and making other people to react with even worse things. somewhere this spiral of nasty and rude competition has to stop and the only people who are able to stop it, are those who are already powerfull enough to make that decision because even rude activities cant hurt them. instead of that, they are going on soiling the trade system.

Even if the gold was legit, which it isn't in this case, there would still be the problem of obscure blind bids and crowded traders, that OP laid out in his post.

ps: as u read up, i agree on this problem and as said, i always was a supporter of bid spying as a strategic aspect of th game, securing that bids do not explode and make people go crazy over it.

Carbonised · August 2018

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

@Carbonised i totally agree and i know, to fund that bids u cant sell all day crowns over crowns, youd need to be pretty rich to do so, looking at the craglorn bids.

still there is a problem: you cant complain about some, leaving out the problems the others also bring into the trading system. you cant make one part of the problem to a victim, while same people are responsible for backup-trader missuse and bullying and also for crown missuse. it just ends up with one side complaining about the other side, making even worse things and making other people to react with even worse things. somewhere this spiral of nasty and rude competition has to stop and the only people who are able to stop it, are those who are already powerfull enough to make that decision because even rude activities cant hurt them. instead of that, they are going on soiling the trade system.

Don't really know where you want to go with all of this, sounds like you got some beef with the TTG guilds.
TTG does use a backup trader for when we get sniped by the troll trade guilds, but that has saved our behinds plenty of times when we would otherwise be completely without a trader for a week. It's not "misuse", it's a defensive tactic against trade guild aggression. If the underlying problem of trader competition was dealt with, there would be no need to secure a backup trader at all.

Dont_do_drugs · August 2018

Carbonised wrote: »

Dont_do_drugs wrote: »

@Carbonised i totally agree and i know, to fund that bids u cant sell all day crowns over crowns, youd need to be pretty rich to do so, looking at the craglorn bids.

still there is a problem: you cant complain about some, leaving out the problems the others also bring into the trading system. you cant make one part of the problem to a victim, while same people are responsible for backup-trader missuse and bullying and also for crown missuse. it just ends up with one side complaining about the other side, making even worse things and making other people to react with even worse things. somewhere this spiral of nasty and rude competition has to stop and the only people who are able to stop it, are those who are already powerfull enough to make that decision because even rude activities cant hurt them. instead of that, they are going on soiling the trade system.

Don't really know where you want to go with all of this, sounds like you got some beef with the TTG guilds.
TTG does use a backup trader for when we get sniped by the troll trade guilds, but that has saved our behinds plenty of times when we would otherwise be completely without a trader for a week. It's not "misuse", it's a defensive tactic against trade guild aggression. If the underlying problem of trader competition was dealt with, there would be no need to secure a backup trader at all.

its not a legit tactic at all. u still bid gold on a trader with a ghost guild, just to make it disappear. there is a competition for the free traders after bidding ends for all kicked guilds, the one which got it wins and its about beeing fast enough. a fair legit competition. there are a couple of threads here complaining about the missuse by making fake guilds to bid on traders to secure them in case they need a backup. this is nothing else than pummeling smaller guilds with the amount of gold you already own and the guild already owns. and just by fact: there has been a long time, where belkarth guilds could make a couple of million win each week, by lowballing bids, since nobody had the balls to face craglorns guilds, so yes, they have a huge backup after all.

so, one gm of one alliance has been making the offer to at least 2 other alliances to help with ghost guild biddings some months ago. the other 2 alliances declined that offer. some weeks later you could see ghost guilds, as example in elden root, vanishing and making the spot free as backup for the kicked bigger guild.

there is absolutely nothing legit about that.

ZeroXFF · August 2018

sirinsidiator wrote: »

Don't let guilds bid on a trader when they have below x items on sale or are newer than x days, or at least not in a prime location (cities). Whenever a large guild with many thousand listings gets outbid, it is bad for the hundreds of players in that guild who cannot sell much in that week and also bad for customers, because these small guilds usually don't have many items for sale. Basically a loose-loose situation for the community as a whole.

You start to sound like those corporations lobbying the government to create excessive regulations to prevent smaller competitors from being able to afford to accommodate those regulations. Some of what you say sounds reasonable, but this is just pure anti-competitive special pleading. If I had my way, guilds making proposals like that would be shut down to allow more fair-minded people to get their foot in the door.

P.S. Just make a global AH already, it would solve all these problems.

Cpt_Teemo · August 2018

ZeroXFF wrote: »

sirinsidiator wrote: »

Don't let guilds bid on a trader when they have below x items on sale or are newer than x days, or at least not in a prime location (cities). Whenever a large guild with many thousand listings gets outbid, it is bad for the hundreds of players in that guild who cannot sell much in that week and also bad for customers, because these small guilds usually don't have many items for sale. Basically a loose-loose situation for the community as a whole.

You start to sound like those corporations lobbying the government to create excessive regulations to prevent smaller competitors from being able to afford to accommodate those regulations. Some of what you say sounds reasonable, but this is just pure anti-competitive special pleading. If I had my way, guilds making proposals like that would be shut down to allow more fair-minded people to get their foot in the door.

P.S. Just make a global AH already, it would solve all these problems.

Problem isn't the smaller guilds he was referring to I don't think, the ones that ghost the spot that do it on purpose to get competition out of the area and yes I do agree this game would have been much better with an AH instead cause it works for every other MMO on the current market.

ZeroXFF · August 2018

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

sirinsidiator wrote: »

Don't let guilds bid on a trader when they have below x items on sale or are newer than x days, or at least not in a prime location (cities). Whenever a large guild with many thousand listings gets outbid, it is bad for the hundreds of players in that guild who cannot sell much in that week and also bad for customers, because these small guilds usually don't have many items for sale. Basically a loose-loose situation for the community as a whole.

You start to sound like those corporations lobbying the government to create excessive regulations to prevent smaller competitors from being able to afford to accommodate those regulations. Some of what you say sounds reasonable, but this is just pure anti-competitive special pleading. If I had my way, guilds making proposals like that would be shut down to allow more fair-minded people to get their foot in the door.

P.S. Just make a global AH already, it would solve all these problems.

Problem isn't the smaller guilds he was referring to I don't think, the ones that ghost the spot that do it on purpose to get competition out of the area and yes I do agree this game would have been much better with an AH instead cause it works for every other MMO on the current market.

But that rule would affect the small guilds, regardless of whether they are "ghosts" or not.

pdblake · August 2018

From a purely player point of view (I'm not in a guild at all as yet), I'd rather see a central store where anyone can deposit stuff for sale and then just have a single trader in each town etc, where folk can buy it. Perhaps even use the bank for both.

I think all this buying and selling, swapping gold for crowns, stressing about sales etc is just far too real life for me. Crikey there's enough stress in life without having it in a game too.

I was thinking of selling some rare odds and ends that I'd found, but I think I'll just sell them to NPC traders in game for gold.

I just don't get the appeal. No wonder some people are asking 15k for a handful of worms.

Universe · August 2018

Tasear wrote: »

I personally would like to see more guild system updates? Maybe there's so many trade guilds because they aren't inspired for anything else?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RobGarrett Instead of just thinking of new guild system updates, it is also important to focus on stopping the crown store items for gold trade.
This practice is ruining the all normal gold farming through normal sales and is interrupting the normal gameplay of so many players.
I already suggested the following, but here:
Gold buying is very bad for this game and billions of gold change hands.
Please limit the number of gifts an account can deliver, for example:
1 gift of 1-500 crowns per week.
1 gift of 501-1,000 crowns per month.
1 gift of 1,001-1,500 crowns per 2 months.
1 gift of 1,501-3,000 crowns per 3 months.
1 gift of 3,001-5,000+ crowns per 6 months.

In addition to the above it is possible to implement other methods of stopping this and/or disallow this trade.

Sogreth · August 2018

Guild Traders were an awful idea.

Yeah, that's good. Waste the time of every player as they travel around the entire world trying to find a decent deal on some mats or an item.

Useless. Happy birthday to the ground.

P2W anyways.

Universe · August 2018

Sogreth wrote: »

Guild Traders were an awful idea.

Yeah, that's good. Waste the time of every player as they travel around the entire world trying to find a decent deal on some mats or an item.

Useless. Happy birthday to the ground.

P2W anyways.

While guild traders system definitely needs improvements, I don't consider it an awful idea.
The P2W is the crown store items for gold trade which should vanish from the game as soon as possible.

idk · August 2018

Ixtyr wrote: »

I disagree with you regarding any sort of system that makes trader retention easier. The whole point of the system is to allow competition. If you make it more difficult to go from Mourn to Rawl, that actually allows rich GMs to get richer, rather than have rich GMs manage their gold to sustain their guild.

Don't make it easier for the established to stay established. As painful as it is to close a guild or fail (believe me, I've had several guilds fail since launch), sometimes there needs to be casualties. If I start a guild, know what I'm doing, surround myself with a good strong team and manage my guild significantly better than you, and I want your spot, I should be able to take it. If you let established guilds put backup bids everywhere, suddenly mid tier guilds get bumped more often due to high tier guilds getting hit. High tier guilds and mid tier guilds all get hit more because there's less risk. Bids will be driven up further and further, which just exacerbates the issue of outlier kiosks suddenly going for millions when they're worth only a few thousand in tax potential.

Everyone and their mother thinks they can run a trade guild now. That's a good sign, as it means competition is up. It's up because unlike in 2015, the game has a rapidly growing and retainable playerbase. Bids in 2015 were cheap cuz there wasnt anyone around to stir the pot.

With all due respect to you and your guild, as I know this next comment may sound harsh - if you're no longer able or willing to do the additional work to maintain your guild's kiosk location, and someone else is, the point of the entire system is to say "well, screw you then. They want it more, they're going to earn it, they should have it." I personally prefer it that way, rather than a system that makes it even easier to establish a static oligopoly to protect the first movers purely based on tenure.

---

That said, 100% agree on the Gifting ***. I'm spending a lot of cash selling crowns to fund bid wars for both of my guilds right now and it sucks. But if I don't, I know I have some GMs who don't like me. And they're doing the same thing. Previously I could count on knowing I just out-managed them, out-worked them, out-fundraised them, and had a stronger guild. That's not enough now. I need that, plus cash, to stay on top. And that, frankly, is *** *** and ZOS should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for reversing their stance with regards to the TOS and being able to buy/sell.

And, for what it's worth, I also want a guild leveling system and more guild tools and functionality just in general. So, agree there as well.

idk wrote: »

The guild traders you speak of was the second attempt to give guilds a means to sell their wares.

The initial design was had guild traders but only at Cyrodiil keeps. There was an issue plus it proved to be to limiting. They were shut down and the system we have now was added as OP mentions.

It was a short time later Zos brought back the Cyrodiil guild traders.

The trader system was planned since beta, it just wasn't ready for launch. The plan was never to only have Keeps as the sole option for sales.

Thx for hitting the one detail I left out. If your going to point out such an insignificant missing detail you could mention the more significant one I Zos left out since I couldn’t remember what the initial Cyrodiil keep traded system had failed to the point they needed to shut it down.

Soundso · August 2018

Khajiit see some familiar faces here. Glad you also don't like the crown selling stuff.

Universe wrote: »

Please limit the number of gifts an account can deliver

Some limit here would be helpful yes.

Fiktius · August 2018

Carbonised wrote: »

- Make trader bids transparent. The blind bid system is a gamble, make it more transparent who has bid on a trader and how much, so you can counter-bid them.

No.

It's funny that you mentioned earlier that some top trade guilds are being sniped out, because these sniper guilds provides higher bids than your main guilds does. I can understand why is that annoying, but let's think about it for a moment.
What would happen if trade bid would be actually visible?
> These sniper guilds would see right away how much they need to outbid you at the last minutes when bidding is possible.
You are even more likely going to be outbid, if your enemies knows exactly how much gold they need to take your trader.
> Trade bid amounts would skyrocket especially on good spots, I doubt the bid amount would decrease in "trade hot spots" like Mournhold, Craglorn, Elden Root and Vivec City. Outcome would probably be completely another way around.
> Smaller guilds could never take any good place without opening their wallets over and over and over again.

It's happening even now, people are exchanging crowns to gold for affording bids, so why to make it even worse?

silvereyes · August 2018

In light of the recent feedback style suggestions from @ZOS_RobGarrett:

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

... a few pieces of advice are:
Avoid speculation and assuming intent, but feel free to ask about it.

Clearly described, and well researched, problems are usually more valuable to us than proposed solutions.

Don't forget to acknowledge changes and additions you enjoy. This is not about giving us praise but rather helping us identify success and successful patterns.

Don't be a jerk. =P

I'll do my best to sum up the problems with the guild trader system that I've seen reported again and again over the years.

Kiosk Location

Vast differences in trader kiosk locations relative to where players naturally congregate (e.g. in cities by banks, wayshrines, craft stations, daily quest givers/dropoff points, mount training stables) create a ridiculously high demand for kiosks in about 3-5 prime cities, and a very high demand for kiosks in about 5-7 additional pretty good cities. I made a video tour of all the city layouts back when One Tamriel came out, detailing my personal complaints about the disparity. You can see it embedded at the bottom of this section.
The laissez faire bidding system for kiosks has, in the past, guaranteed that the trade guilds making and/or raising the most gold are the ones that consistently occupy all kiosks in these prime and pretty good cities.
Those who do bother to list any items in poorly-located kiosks find that their items don't sell, even when competitively priced. This leads few members to bother listing items.
No new kiosks have been added to the base game since the introduction of outlaw refuges in v1.6.
New kiosks in DLC-locked areas generally have a lot of traffic right after the DLC is released, but tend to die off as their customers complete the content and don't return.*
With only a single kiosk gated behind a loading screen, and often a lengthy hike on foot and poor proximity to a wayshrine, outlaw refuge kiosks are probably the worst locations in the game.

* The one exception to this rule was when Vivec City was created for the Morrowind chapter. With the change to writ turn-ins no longer being isolated in Craglorn, it became one of, if not the most, convenient location for crafting writs. With kiosks right by the wayshrine, bank, stable, craft stations and writ turn-in location, it's probably only prevented from being the best spot by the paywall. I would love to see more kiosks located in areas of similar proximity to amenities.

One Tamriel city layout feedback / walkthrough:

https://youtu.be/OXuP7m9sln4

Shopping Experience

Searching guild stores is a nightmare without addons. Even with addons, it takes over an hour to just visit every kiosk in the game and run a fast search, meaning most people don't bother. This leads to poor visibility into out-of-the-way store listings.
A very poor guild store UI that hasn't been updated since launch makes finding items you care about at acceptable prices a time-consuming process per-kiosk. Even with addons, the underlying search API doesn't support text search.
Compounded with the sheer number of low-traffic kiosks in the game, it's no wonder few people bother visiting.
Tamriel Trade Center helps visibility somewhat on PC / Mac, but unless you have a rare, coveted item or deep discounts on a big-ticket items, most people won't consider it worth the trip.
With the limited offerings in most out-of-the-way kiosks, there is little incentive for buyers to visit, which just perpetuates the disincentive to list items there. Catch 22.

Concentration of Wealth

As @sirinsidiator points out in the OP, the game has grown steadily over time, and with it, the amount of gold and items have grown as well.
Wealth continues to concentrate to a larger degree in the largest trade guilds with kiosks in the best locations.
Consequently, members of these guilds regularly throw around hundreds of thousands of gold like it's nothing, while members not in those guilds struggle to earn even a fraction.
The in-game wealth gap can create real animosity between players.
Item listings continue to concentrate to a larger degree as well, undermining a key advantage of kiosks - geographic distribution - versus a standard auction house. There's little incentive for someone to list anything in a non-trade guild's kiosk. Things sell so quickly in the high-traffic kiosks that you can make more money by just waiting for some slots to free up and listing there rather than having your items sit unsold for days or weeks in a poor location.
Sales quotas in the big trade guilds can also discourage listing items elsewhere.
Lack of geographic distribution leads to increasing power to manipulate markets.
The disparity in wealth between the large guilds and all others makes it all but impossible for smaller guilds to grow big enough to win bids in prime locations.

Kiosk Bidding

GMs of the large trade guilds experience ever greater stress to not lose a trader bid, as the opportunity cost per member of a lost kiosk climbs.
The competition leads to larger kiosk bids and, consequently, increased dues and/or sales quotas to maintain membership in the trade guilds with prime kiosks.
Aggressive tactics to win kiosk bids have become increasingly normalized:
- "Ghost guilds" taking up desirable kiosks in less expensive locations, to serve as a backup in case the primary guild loses its bid for its first choice kiosk for the week.
- Bid-spying, leading many officers to make guild bank gold balance unviewable to guild members and reducing trust and transparency.
- Gold-buying via Crown store gifts, to pad bids with real-life money.
- Multiple officers camping cities with higher kiosk turnover right around the time of the trader flip. All unclaimed kiosks are usually snapped up within minutes by large guilds who lost their bids.
- Larger guilds that lose their bids targeting smaller expansion/sister guilds of the winner out of spite.
- Trade guild alliances both combating and contributing to kiosk-related inter-guild harassment.
- In other words: drama drama drama.
Increasing trade guild officer disenchantment and burn-out as financial costs mount, gold fundraising becomes real-life admin work, and lost kiosks lead to more complaints / dissension from their guild members.
Gold-buying allows wealthy individuals to directly purchase access to highly-coveted kiosk locations, displacing guilds that have worked their way up over years and offer better listings for customers.
With ghost guilds displacing kiosks in the more affordable locations, bid prices for even those locations go up.

Dont_do_drugs · August 2018

In other words: drama drama drama.

Carbonised · August 2018

@silvereyes pretty much lists up all the current problems with guild traders. It's ZOS' job to grab that ball and make some changes and improvements. Though the cynical side of me isn't really holding my breath waiting for it to happen, it's long overdue anyway.

baratron · September 2018

Every week, a couple of us from my guild (on PC-NA) visit every Guild Trader in the game to record data. There are currently 204 Guild Traders in game. Of these, we find that in a typical week, between 10 and 20 Guild Traders have fewer than 200 items. A further large percentage have fewer than 500 items. This seems counter-intuitive considering that a guild is required to have at least 50 members in order to hold a Guild Trader, and every member has the opportunity to list up to 30 items at a time.

I would suggest that a guild should have a minimum of 500 items listed in order to bid for a Guild Trader. This would be achievable by just 17 active members listing their maximum 30 items each, or by 50 less active members listing 10 items each. Knowing that there would be a reasonable stock would be more of an incentive for players to visit out-of-the-way Guild Traders. It could also be a disincentive for ghost guilds, since each member of the ghost guild would have their mail flooded with returned items when the guild was dissolved to make way for the "real" guild.

Obviously there are many reasons why people remain in small guilds and don't simply amalgamate with others, and nor would I suggest that even as a joke. However, I feel it should be possible for smaller guilds to band together to hold a single Guild Trader. Perhaps one or several Trader/s in each zone could be designated as a "shared" trader where multiple guilds who have less than 500 items could pay a fixed fee of 10,000 gold per week for a combined listing. I guess the reason this hasn't already been done is due to the way the database handles Guild Traders (they must remain attached to a single guild), but the fact that something is technically difficult doesn't make it impossible - look at how ZOS finally managed to fix the skill respec UI so that we don't have to lose all of our skills!

IsharaMeradin · September 2018

Honestly, I didn't read much of this thread. They're going to take the electricity down here soon (to replace a pole) and I wanted to get my thoughts out before then.

Easy solution, add more dialog options to the guild traders. Let them offer stores from more than one guild. Guilds still need to bid on which trader. But it allows for more guilds to offer their wares to others. It may lower demand in the short term as there would be more guilds offering but eventually the supply would even out and demand would go back up. To further keep it competitive the order of dialog options should be listed in winning bid order. (there are people who just spam to get through dialog and do not pay attention to other options, highest bidder should have the right to sell to those people)

It may end up being less competition for the specific trader but more competition to actually sell items. And selling to the masses should be the real competition rather than the bidding for a spot.

My 2 cents for whatever it may be worth

Lyss1991 · September 2018

I personally think kiosks need to be done away with, And we need a global store. Trader business is toxic and I know of many guilds on PS4 NA that go to great lengths to make sure their guilds stay in the same spots week after week. Not only that, The trader prices are through the roof! 13 mil+ for a Mournhold trader is NUTS! Everyone should always have the option to sell their stuff without worrying if your guilds are going to win their bid that week. As a GM of a small social/trader guild, I try my hardest to provide a location for my members to sell things and make gold, But its almost impossible to keep up unless youre a dedicated trading guild charging weekly fees. Most of the top guilds charge 10-15k weely for trader access..I understand why they charge fees, But it would be much better (and less toxic!) if there was just a central location or multiple locations for people to access a global market.

Also, Guild banks need some updating. I cant tell you how many times the guilds im affiliated with have been accused of stealing deposits because the bank glitches out when they deposit and it doesnt show up on the history. Its happened to me before, But luckily it was with my own personal guild so I caught it on video and was able to get a refund from zos. Otherwise, Youre kinda just screwed.

Dont_do_drugs · November 2018

Still wondering, when ZOS will ever say anything about the guild trader exploit. Seemingly that exploit spread from consoles on all other platforms. I see often empty back up guilds formed by major guilds and alliances, blocking spots as backup, blackmailing other guilds to get ripped off their gold, rich guilds and rich traders playing god over all medium and smaller guilds by just deciding to block their spot for their guilds or alliances. pretty uncool. that problem is known since 1,5 or 2 years now, still nothing zos said about it in any ways. when will we get an answer bout this problem? my interpretation of this silent behaviour is just, that zos isnt able to fix or change anything about the guild trading system when its about the bidding process, i still remember zos stating, that they cant remove bids from traders...

@ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

sirinsidiator · December 2018

@ZOS_KaiSchober has finally made a statement about the guild trader exploit on the super secret german forums.
The important part translates to the following:

ZOS_KaiSchober wrote:

We are aware that the auction system can be circumvented in unfair ways. This is not in the meaning of the system and diminishes the available offer for players, when prominent spots stay empty or financially weak guilds get completely booted out.
There were many good ideas how this can be prevented. If and when we will go which way, I cannot write yet. For 2019 there are some good Quality of Life points - for guilds too - on the plan.

I am also aware of some changes to the guild trader API, which gives me hope for 2019.