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‘Dummy’ trading guilds - This system URGENTLY needs addressed.

amiiegee
amiiegee
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I am so sick and tired of people using dummy guilds and those people thinking they’re god tier for cheating the system.

I’m aware ZOS listened once and made it so a guild couldn’t be disbanded, but people can STILL kick all members and leave themselves thus leaving the trader location open and these people hiring for 10k with their real guild.

An idea I would suggest would be to make it so that a guild can NOT be deleted if there is currently a trader hired.


The farm bots in starter zones also need network banned or at least attempts made to stop them, it’s totally ridiculous how ZOS seemingly doesn’t care about the impact they have in game. I’ve played this game for years but all the cheating and exploitation makes it exhausting.
Edited by amiiegee on March 4, 2019 12:16PM
  • Pevey
    Pevey
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    It seems from reports that the botting issue has gotten better, so maybe zos quietly worked on it. We can only hope they will look at the ghost trader soon. Anything that erodes the already fragile trust people have in the trading system in this game is not good.
  • Hostee
    Hostee
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    Mournhold Mafia is real
  • Reverb
    Reverb
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    Both issues you mention are years old, and have been railed against on these forums dozens of times. Actually, the problem with bots probably has hundreds of threads. Zeni isvery unlikely to address these things at all, and certainly not with any urgency.

    Some things we just have to accept as zenis management strategy, or decide you can’t accept and move on from the game. Because zeni isn’t going to suddenly reverse direction and prioritize these problems over cash flow development.
    Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Androconium
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    Stop joining guilds that demand donations to retain their trader. If a guild threatens to kick you, let them. There are other guilds that will take you on.

    Stop donating and reduce their excessive incomes. The problem is not entirely with the guilds, its as much generated by players themselves.

    I sell 1-2 million a week. If the relevant guilds aren't happy with what that brings in, it isn't my problem.

    I change guilds frequently, mostly because of things I read in guild chat.
    Whatever income I generate from sales is spread around the community and not concentrated in one guild.

    Like it or lump it, I don't care. Neither does ZOS. It's up to ALL players to make it work. You have choice.
  • alexj4596b14_ESO
    alexj4596b14_ESO
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    Hostee wrote: »
    Mournhold Mafia is real

    I'm taking that guild name
  • marius_buys
    marius_buys
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    Very simple solution: Any player joining a trading guild has a 3 day cooldown before they can start trading via the external (hired) trader.
    Edited by marius_buys on March 5, 2019 2:12AM
    Golden Clover AD PvP on PC EU (since 2017) Guildex https://eso.guildex.org/view-guild/17669 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/131211320795196
  • ecru
    ecru
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    The easy solution is to not allow guild traders to be bought until the next week if a guild happens to "break up". Once a guild owns a trader, that trader cannot be purchased by any guild until the next week no matter what. The only people this would have any effect on are people using ghost guilds to secure multiple trade locations.
    Edited by ecru on March 5, 2019 2:22AM
    Gryphon Heart
    Godslayer
    Dawnbringer
  • Androconium
    Androconium
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    Very simple solution: Any player joining a trading guild has a 3 day cooldown before they can start trading via the external (hired) trader.

    Some guilds will kick players that haven't made a sale in the first three days.
  • Jameliel
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    The trader system is pure unnecessary bloat.
  • ZonasArch
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    Very simple solution: Any player joining a trading guild has a 3 day cooldown before they can start trading via the external (hired) trader.

    Some guilds will kick players that haven't made a sale in the first three days.

    I honestly don't see anything wrong with this. Just need to show activity. Sell materials, sell intricates, white decon glyphs... So many things that you can sell well on any trader that requires these things... They usually hold good spots and there are TONS of things you can sell easily. Blue and green decon gear, repair kits, soul gems... So many easy things. 3 days is fine.

    As a side note, on my guild, we don't require anything from anyone except being nice, we hold a trader in vivec city and we believe in creating a good environment to entice people to help. Doesn't mean a pure technical cold and by-the-numbers approach is all bad.
  • wishlist14
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    Reverb wrote: »
    Both issues you mention are years old, and have been railed against on these forums dozens of times. Actually, the problem with bots probably has hundreds of threads. Zeni isvery unlikely to address these things at all, and certainly not with any urgency.

    Some things we just have to accept as zenis management strategy, or decide you can’t accept and move on from the game. Because zeni isn’t going to suddenly reverse direction and prioritize these problems over cash flow development.

    So what? Players have a right to post a question concerning an issue they deem to be important to them. Just because it's been touched on before it doesn't mean a repost is going to hurt anyone. I'm getting pissed off by the forums police who think they have a right to tell people what they can and can't post. And how are you supporting your game by telling players to leave if they have an issue? You don't own eso or the forums so there....There are always issues with games and always will be...Sometimes players need a good vent and if they are heard by devs all the better if not at least they got it off their chest.

    I've been in dummy guilds where the guild master asked me for gold..I'm talking thousands so he could get a trader and he had a few friends backing up his scam by pretending they had contributed thiusands of gold themselves. I smelled a rat and quit since I had already been in another similar guild. I trust my intuition about people. Scammers are greedy and have a way about them. They literally want something from you from day one. Genuine guild masters want you to settle in and they actually offer you help etc.


    "To err is to be human"
    Edited by wishlist14 on March 5, 2019 6:23AM
  • Beardimus
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    Stop joining guilds that demand donations to retain their trader. If a guild threatens to kick you, let them. There are other guilds that will take you on.

    Stop donating and reduce their excessive incomes. The problem is not entirely with the guilds, its as much generated by players themselves.

    I sell 1-2 million a week. If the relevant guilds aren't happy with what that brings in, it isn't my problem.

    I change guilds frequently, mostly because of things I read in guild chat.
    Whatever income I generate from sales is spread around the community and not concentrated in one guild.

    Like it or lump it, I don't care. Neither does ZOS. It's up to ALL players to make it work. You have choice.

    I think you have missed the point entirely, the OP is talking about the big guilds on some platforms that buy all the traders in Mournhold with dummy traders, disband, then sell the slot cheap.

    I've not seen this on Xbox but its been a regular complaint from PC guys on here before and it does sound suspect.
    Xbox One | EU | EP
    Beardimus : VR16 Dunmer MagSorc [RIP MagDW 2015-2018]
    Emperor of Sotha Sil 02-2018 & Sheogorath 05-2019
    1st Emperor of Ravenwatch
    Alts - - for the Lolz
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    Scalimus - Argonian Sorc Healer / Pet master

    Fighting small scale with : The SAXON Guild
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    Xbox One | NA | EP
    Bëardimus : L43 Dunmer Magsorc / BG
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  • ezio45
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    this is a pretty big problem on ps4 na
  • Narvuntien
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    It must be a problem for consoles because I have never seen it on PC NA.

    I am not sure if time can solve this like PC has been around longer so that there are enough guilds with enough gold spread around that guilds can't just waste that much gold on multiple stalls.

    Or perhaps the addons help a lot for PC trading.

    Personally, I'd like for there to be a week lag on a stall switch over so you can plan ahead, having a stall then not having a stall is painful when you have listed all this stuff and without a stall it can be difficult to generate gold to reclaim the stall.
  • amiiegee
    amiiegee
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    ecru wrote: »
    The easy solution is to not allow guild traders to be bought until the next week if a guild happens to "break up". Once a guild owns a trader, that trader cannot be purchased by any guild until the next week no matter what. The only people this would have any effect on are people using ghost guilds to secure multiple trade locations.

    Yeah that’s the kind of solution I was talking about. I run a guild on PS4 EU. We don’t enforce donations but have a backing of excellent members who help and I and the other GM earn gold legitimacy all week to secure traders. When we get outbid we deal with it and wait until the next week, but it irritates me that half the time we lose it’s to a dummy guild which is then snagged up by the cheaters later in the day.

    I love running my guild but the energy and problems surrounding the trader system makes it exhausting. I’m not hoping for some quick overnight fix just wanted to vent.

    I agree with your solution. You would soon see who the legitimate ‘strong’ guilds are.

  • amiiegee
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    ezio45 wrote: »
    this is a pretty big problem on ps4 na

    Yeah I’ve heard. I’m on PS4 EU and it’s a huge issue.

  • amiiegee
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    wishlist14 wrote: »
    Reverb wrote: »
    Both issues you mention are years old, and have been railed against on these forums dozens of times. Actually, the problem with bots probably has hundreds of threads. Zeni isvery unlikely to address these things at all, and certainly not with any urgency.

    Some things we just have to accept as zenis management strategy, or decide you can’t accept and move on from the game. Because zeni isn’t going to suddenly reverse direction and prioritize these problems over cash flow development.

    So what? Players have a right to post a question concerning an issue they deem to be important to them. Just because it's been touched on before it doesn't mean a repost is going to hurt anyone. I'm getting pissed off by the forums police who think they have a right to tell people what they can and can't post. And how are you supporting your game by telling players to leave if they have an issue? You don't own eso or the forums so there....There are always issues with games and always will be...Sometimes players need a good vent and if they are heard by devs all the better if not at least they got it off their chest.

    I've been in dummy guilds where the guild master asked me for gold..I'm talking thousands so he could get a trader and he had a few friends backing up his scam by pretending they had contributed thiusands of gold themselves. I smelled a rat and quit since I had already been in another similar guild. I trust my intuition about people. Scammers are greedy and have a way about them. They literally want something from you from day one. Genuine guild masters want you to settle in and they actually offer you help etc.


    "To err is to be human"

    Exactly. I’m aware that both issues are ‘years old’ I have played the game since launch. I’m also not under the impression that there will be a fix overnight I purely wanted to vent. The devs may see, they may not. They noticed once before when they took away disbanding guilds so who knows.

    I agree. Myself and my partner run a guild, we don’t enforce donations but we have a large helpful backbone of excellent members who are happy to help out. We treat our members like friends, not like just a way to make gold. That makes us strong. We have done everything legitimately since day one and it tooks us 2+ Years to become as strong as we are know. So it just gets disheartening when these people cheat and ruin the game for others who genuinely work hard on their guilds and value their members.
  • Skwor
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    Pevey wrote: »
    It seems from reports that the botting issue has gotten better, so maybe zos quietly worked on it. We can only hope they will look at the ghost trader soon. Anything that erodes the already fragile trust people have in the trading system in this game is not good.

    What reports? I just posted in another thread how I had to report 4 bots for almost a year with close to 100 emails as proof and just recently it looks like they may have been been removed.

    Yes if true they did something but I am not sure this is a measurable improvement for the effort required from the players.
  • DragonRacer
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    ecru wrote: »
    The easy solution is to not allow guild traders to be bought until the next week if a guild happens to "break up". Once a guild owns a trader, that trader cannot be purchased by any guild until the next week no matter what. The only people this would have any effect on are people using ghost guilds to secure multiple trade locations.

    Agreed. This would really solve the entire ghost guild issue on PS4 NA, which is very out of hand when you go to a city right after flip (a decent city, too, not some small place) and over half the guilds are ghost guilds waiting for some schmuck to buy them.

    One day a few months back, literally ALL of Rawl'kha was ghosts right after flip. SMH
    PS5 NA. GM of The PTK's - a free trading guild (CP 500+). Also a werewolf, bites are free when they're available. PSN = DragonRacer13
  • Myrkgrav
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    Honestly I wouldn't complain if trading was removed in the way it stands and replaced with an overarching world trader. I hate how the system currently is. It's disjointed, hard to navigate and allows people to be exploited easily.
    Morty | ♂ | @morti_macabre | PC NA | EST
    Member of Knights of the Sanguine, Sheogorath's Mortals & Sword Coast Traders
  • Skwor
    Skwor
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    Myrkgrav wrote: »
    Honestly I wouldn't complain if trading was removed in the way it stands and replaced with an overarching world trader. I hate how the system currently is. It's disjointed, hard to navigate and allows people to be exploited easily.

    Again NO to AH
  • generalmyrick
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    there is a large part of the game that will be unlocked for a lot of people if the dummy guild thing can be destroyed.

    not to be mean to the naysayers, whether its just everything they say no to or just auction house =

    @zos = people are making real life money and ingame gold for them to say anything but "no."
    "The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are a popular cultural meme, a metaphor representing the choice between:

    Knowledge, freedom, uncertainty and the brutal truths of reality (red pill)
    Security, happiness, beauty, and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill)"

    Insight to Agree to Awesome Ratio = 1:6.04:2.76 as of 1/25/2019

    Compared to people that I've ignored = I am 18% more insightful, 20% less agreeable, and 88% more awesome.
  • ApostateHobo
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    The bot problem I definitely agree with. There's hordes of them, sometimes there's multiple camping one node. I haven't seen many dummy guilds though, think I've only seen this a total of 2 times. One was a completely empty trader in Elden Root, the other was in Summerset and it's sole listing was a single ta for 1 million lmao. That one I believe was run by a botter or something because when I searched the psn there were dozens of other profiles with a nearly identical name plus exact same profile picture, and each one had only one game though not all had eso some had other games. So whoever that person is they're obviously an industrious little turd that does shady crap in multiple games.
  • agegarton
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    ecru wrote: »
    The easy solution is to not allow guild traders to be bought until the next week if a guild happens to "break up". Once a guild owns a trader, that trader cannot be purchased by any guild until the next week no matter what. The only people this would have any effect on are people using ghost guilds to secure multiple trade locations.

    No, the simple answer is to close the trading kiosk when a guild disbands. If the primary guild can’t pick up the back-up spot, there’s literally no point in having the backup guild at all. The kiosk can open for business after the next bid cycle.
  • amiiegee
    amiiegee
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    agegarton wrote: »
    ecru wrote: »
    The easy solution is to not allow guild traders to be bought until the next week if a guild happens to "break up". Once a guild owns a trader, that trader cannot be purchased by any guild until the next week no matter what. The only people this would have any effect on are people using ghost guilds to secure multiple trade locations.

    No, the simple answer is to close the trading kiosk when a guild disbands. If the primary guild can’t pick up the back-up spot, there’s literally no point in having the backup guild at all. The kiosk can open for business after the next bid cycle.

    Exactly this! So it can be ‘bid’ on for next week but NOT hired by another guild if the guild on there disbands while on it.
    Edited by amiiegee on March 5, 2019 1:58PM
  • amiiegee
    amiiegee
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    The bot problem I definitely agree with. There's hordes of them, sometimes there's multiple camping one node. I haven't seen many dummy guilds though, think I've only seen this a total of 2 times. One was a completely empty trader in Elden Root, the other was in Summerset and it's sole listing was a single ta for 1 million lmao. That one I believe was run by a botter or something because when I searched the psn there were dozens of other profiles with a nearly identical name plus exact same profile picture, and each one had only one game though not all had eso some had other games. So whoever that person is they're obviously an industrious little turd that does shady crap in multiple games.

    Believe it or not the people who list items like that for a million are sometimes selling gold and using the trader essentially to launder the gold so Zos don’t get suspicious

  • FlopsyPrince
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    Pevey wrote: »
    It seems from reports that the botting issue has gotten better, so maybe zos quietly worked on it. We can only hope they will look at the ghost trader soon. Anything that erodes the already fragile trust people have in the trading system in this game is not good.

    I just ran across 3 or 4 bot accounts yesterday in the beginning area of Bal Foyen, so the problem is larger from my anecdotal view. They would run up to a spot where something spawned, wait a bit, then go to the next location. I found it odd they would open their menu or such along the way, but perhaps this was part of the effort to seem human.

    Nothing was in those spots much of the time, so it was not normal behavior. Ironic when 2 of them were running at the same time in one case.
    PC
    PS4/PS5
  • Myrkgrav
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    Skwor wrote: »
    Myrkgrav wrote: »
    Honestly I wouldn't complain if trading was removed in the way it stands and replaced with an overarching world trader. I hate how the system currently is. It's disjointed, hard to navigate and allows people to be exploited easily.

    Again NO to AH

    lol yes continue to champion this broken and frustrating system that requires a 3rd party add on to even make some sense of finding anything.
    Morty | ♂ | @morti_macabre | PC NA | EST
    Member of Knights of the Sanguine, Sheogorath's Mortals & Sword Coast Traders
  • DaveMoeDee
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    Skwor wrote: »
    Myrkgrav wrote: »
    Honestly I wouldn't complain if trading was removed in the way it stands and replaced with an overarching world trader. I hate how the system currently is. It's disjointed, hard to navigate and allows people to be exploited easily.

    Again NO to AH

    Don't need auction house. Just need a universal search. Many people won't want to travel to get cheaper item in the boondocks, but console really deserves to have something like TTC, which we have on PC.

    Wasting resources to corner the market in one city would not pay off if people could easily find better prices (due to not having to cover all that overhead) in lesser locations.

    Now that dealing with inventories is so much better since the recent update, a universal search seems more plausible. And if it helps reduce the prevalence of these idiotic guild raffles and auctions, that would be even better.
  • Skwor
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    Myrkgrav wrote: »
    Skwor wrote: »
    Myrkgrav wrote: »
    Honestly I wouldn't complain if trading was removed in the way it stands and replaced with an overarching world trader. I hate how the system currently is. It's disjointed, hard to navigate and allows people to be exploited easily.

    Again NO to AH

    lol yes continue to champion this broken and frustrating system that requires a 3rd party add on to even make some sense of finding anything.

    It is not broken. This system adds a flavor to the game worth keeping.

    I go way back and in EQ1 to sell an item everyone would go to the caves in EC (East Commons) to auction items in /say sometimes /zone. Was fun, social and made a great, interesting community.

    When EQ1 added the AH it killed EC and all the social fun of that process. A very significant and interactivly fun element was lost forever to EQ1 and it was not a good thing.

    It was a great loss to the game killing an organic social element that cuased many to look elsewhere for other games.
    Edited by Skwor on March 5, 2019 2:32PM
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