Why Guild Stores and not an actual Auction Market for everyone?

sliyerking · April 2014

What's your purpose in making an Auction Market for Guild Members only? Why not make it for everyone?
I haven't been excited for a game like this in 5 years. So, I'd really like an honest answer from a Dev. to help MMO players like me understand. I understand that ESO want people to be more co-operative with players and stuff, but from my point of view there are trade guilds and trade forums people wanting to optimize their game with items. It's really more of a hassle to find the best price. However, it'd be great to understand it from ESO's view on the topic.

*****Additional notes*****

Although there is an answer this thread poses a much larger purpose.
Paul Sage, ESO's Creative Director pretty much says to build the community small and grow.
5:00 into the video.
http://www.buffed.de/TESO-The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-PC-239823/News/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Creative-Director-Paul-Sage-aeussert-sich-zur-Item-Progression-zu-Mounts-und-zum-Gildensystem-im-Video-1072227/

What the majority of players are looking for are a huge auction marketplace for all players within the server, or for each faction. There is backlash from the guild store such as; the basic search mechanics (there's always something wrong with new Auction Housings, so this is a given), buy/sell spams, afraid of the economy hitting a one gold per item (there are a lot of games with great format for auction pricing to follow by), use of guilds solely on trading (the majority of players who uses trade-guilds don't use that trade-guild's chat, or have much social contact with the guild members). Also, having multiple guilds promotes this behavior and method of having a trade-guilds.

My proposal is to have three auction-marketplace for each faction, and of course separate servers goes without saying; all while having a marketer in each town.
Why this proposal? Well, removing the guild store for a marketplace for each faction can highly dispatch the buy/sell spams, and to those who don't like contact with others when trading. Many players such as myself like to optimize what we're getting, for a fair price and this would be in favor of a great start towards the ESO community.

Hyperventilate · April 2014

Something about the economy and wanting players to work with each other.

The "work with each other" part makes me laugh. I wonder what universe they're living in if they expect MMO-players to function like that.

sliyerking · April 2014

Hyperventilate wrote: »

Something about the economy and wanting players to work with each other.

The "work with each other" part makes me laugh. I wonder what universe they're living in if they expect MMO-players to function like that.

Haha, I guess this would be towards the majority of the players. However, there are some people who don't really bother with the Auction Market, for example my guild is a nice group of players who help each other out anyway we can. Unfortunately for me I get caught up in trading economy and I want to optimize my wealth, haha...
I'm the only one who uses the Guild Store in that guild and we throw everything into the Guild Bank it gets cleaned up almost two times a day.

Sihnfahl · April 2014

sliyerking wrote: »

Unfortunately for me I get caught up in trading economy and I want to optimize my wealth, haha...

That's why you can be a member of five guilds at once.

Join a large trading guild solely for their store, then filter out the chat of that guild.

Turelus · April 2014

Because with an auction house it will be so flooded most items will be worth 1gp.

sliyerking · April 2014

Sihnfahl wrote: »

sliyerking wrote: »

Unfortunately for me I get caught up in trading economy and I want to optimize my wealth, haha...

That's why you can be a member of five guilds at once.

Join a large trading guild solely for their store, then filter out the chat of that guild.

Turelus wrote: »

Because with an auction house it will be so flooded most items will be worth 1gp.

I understand what you guys are saying. Yes, I am in 4 trading guilds, I can see how the prices will lower too.
Runescape has a semi-decent-solid-trading-format that keeps players from setting the price too low or too high and changes every hour or so depending on the economy. It's a great format to follow based off the mats needed for items, and ESO could set the gold at it's standards with the economy. DnD Neverwinter from PWI has the same format with Astrodiamond(real money) currency to their in-game-gold. I'd think this would work out pretty well.

Supersomething · April 2014

Turelus wrote: »

Because with an auction house it will be so flooded most items will be worth 1gp.

Fun thing about economies is that eventually stuff like that gets rectified in the long run so that point is moot. Typically at launch many higher end materials will be sold for exorbitant prices, like what we are seeing for motifs although those prices are dropping.

I really do not understand the logic behind limiting the games economy to 500 people per guild you are apart of. It simply does not make sense.

If they want to encourage selling within the guilds then just pull LOTRO's AH model and let players choose between Guild only auctions and server wide auctions. The only thing that the current iteration of Guild Store is doing is severely limiting the economy.

daggit_ESO · April 2014

they need to put better search functions on the guild stores its a pain in the a** to find what you need without searching through tons of junk you dont need.

Jeremy · April 2014

Supersomething wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Because with an auction house it will be so flooded most items will be worth 1gp.

Fun thing about economies is that eventually stuff like that gets rectified in the long run so that point is moot. Typically at launch many higher end materials will be sold for exorbitant prices, like what we are seeing for motifs although those prices are dropping.

I really do not understand the logic behind limiting the games economy to 500 people per guild you are apart of. It simply does not make sense.

If they want to encourage selling within the guilds then just pull LOTRO's AH model and let players choose between Guild only auctions and server wide auctions. The only thing that the current iteration of Guild Store is doing is severely limiting the economy.

Exactly.

The guild stores doing nothing of value for this game except limit the economy. They serve no worthy purpose, and are a huge drag on an otherwise excellent game.

And if they like the idea of guilds only trading with guilds, adopting the LOTRO model like you suggest would be a great compromise.

Turelus · April 2014

Well I can understand an economy that fluctuates in games like EVE Online where every day millions of items/assets are removed from the game via deaths but in ESO there is not item loss other than vendor sales or deconstruction.

Some items farmed from public dungeons or crafted by players would sink to all time low levels in no time and probably stay there because of being so over inflated. Other MMOs are all running sharded world remember splitting the populations up, here we would (assuming sub numbers are that high) have millions of people on a single server crafting identical items and trying to compete in price.

Jeremy · April 2014

Turelus wrote: »

Well I can understand an economy that fluctuates in games like EVE Online where every day millions of items/assets are removed from the game via deaths but in ESO there is not item loss other than vendor sales or deconstruction.

Some items farmed from public dungeons or crafted by players would sink to all time low levels in no time and probably stay there because of being so over inflated. Other MMOs are all running sharded world remember splitting the populations up, here we would (assuming sub numbers are that high) have millions of people on a single server crafting identical items and trying to compete in price.

I disagree.

Guild Wars2 had an auction house that encompassed everyone, and it worked magnificently.

The more people involved in an economy the healthier it tends to be. And markets work best when they are kept as free and open as possible. Your argument ignores that demand will go up too when the market base expands. Not just the supply.

Arsenic_Touch · April 2014

It condenses the economy. Plus there are a lot more items in this game than a game such as world of warcraft or guild wars 2, so there's a reason why their auction houses work, especially when they're separated by servers.

It also gives more utility to guilds. Next step is a guild hall where you can set your store and other players can visit them.

Supersomething · April 2014

Turelus wrote: »

Well I can understand an economy that fluctuates in games like EVE Online where every day millions of items/assets are removed from the game via deaths but in ESO there is not item loss other than vendor sales or deconstruction.

Some items farmed from public dungeons or crafted by players would sink to all time low levels in no time and probably stay there because of being so over inflated. Other MMOs are all running sharded world remember splitting the populations up, here we would (assuming sub numbers are that high) have millions of people on a single server crafting identical items and trying to compete in price.

Items that are over farmed such as public dungeon boss drops are already in the dirt as far as prices because you can get them easily. GW2 Auction house spans all of their servers and people are still able to make money on there due to the fact that some materials are exceptionally rare.

The tempers, or improvement items for all crafting professions would be a huge commodity along with essentially any Artifact/Legendary glyphs people could make or Improved set items people have created.

Limiting this to 500 people because of fear of over saturation is pointless because even the current Guild Stores are currently over saturated with items now, and prices have already dipped.

Turelus · April 2014

Isn't this call mudflation or something though, where eventually the demand on items wont be there because too few are removed from the game.

I'll concede though as I probably don't have the degree in economics needed to debate this.

zhevon · April 2014

Hyperventilate wrote: »

Something about the economy and wanting players to work with each other.

The "work with each other" part makes me laugh. I wonder what universe they're living in if they expect MMO-players to function like that.

Be glad your are not playing PathOfExile; everything boils down to a trade which you must do when BOTH parties are online.

KindaMayvelle · April 2014

One game that I thought handled their market pretty well was Asheron's Call. Players who wanted to sell their wares gathered in one area (originally in the Subway, but eventually the devs built the Marketplace for these trades to take place) and they'd hawk their wares in the local chat for that area, and players could browse through what they were selling, and the two could bargain prices until both parties were satisfied.

Of course, the drawback to that is that you'd basically have to stand there to sell your wares -- as in a real marketplace. Lots of people wouldn't enjoy that, because they'd be limited to that one area while trying to sell. However for those who honestly want to play the game as a crafter, and want to take that route, the idea might not be a bad one. I think the problem comes in when you try to find a good way for people who aren't as dedicated to sell their stuff to the masses, while still trying to limit the possibility of items losing their value over time as more and more people become able to farm/craft those materials for themselves.

Robbiejuve · April 2014

Promote working together? I am in 5 guilds, 4 of them have 500 players who never speak to each and just list goods on the guild store. I dont see how that is better than a global AH.

The only good thing about guild stores is that it teaches younger people a history lesson of what the world was like before globalisation, sucks doesnt it.

randomaffliction66 · April 2014

Hyperventilate wrote: »

Something about the economy and wanting players to work with each other.

The "work with each other" part makes me laugh. I wonder what universe they're living in if they expect MMO-players to function like that.

Just people people like you have ruined the massive multilayer online role playing game genre, doesn't mean that all of us have forgotten what they used to be. But I do agree we should an auction house out side of the guild storre

TassenAruhn · April 2014

I'm already tired of spamming in chat about what I want to buy. In guild stores I will never find items 50k worth.

sliyerking · April 2014

All great views and opinions, but would be nice to hear from the Devs.

TassenAruhn · April 2014

They will keep ignoring threads like this.

sliyerking · April 2014

TassenAruhn wrote: »

They will keep ignoring threads like this.

Honestly I'm not asking for them to change it, but to hear from their side and understand why they interpreted this trading system.

Nox_Aeterna · April 2014

Sihnfahl wrote: »

sliyerking wrote: »

Unfortunately for me I get caught up in trading economy and I want to optimize my wealth, haha...

That's why you can be a member of five guilds at once.

Join a large trading guild solely for their store, then filter out the chat of that guild.

And this is the funniest part of all , what is the social part of this exactly?

Yes , i have 4 big guilds with 300/400 or something players i use just for trade , yes they are all muted.

So ... this was a lot more social because i had to answer to a guild invite before muting them :P?

danteafk · April 2014

worst about the guild auction house is that you can't search by terms. it`s so bloated you can't find anything in there. totally useless.

sliyerking · April 2014

Here we go, Paul Sage ESO's creative director pretty much says to build the community small and grow. However, as we can see there is a backlash on this trading system. I hate having to spam buys and sells, and see it everywhere I go. There's little room to appreciate what really matters, for example not having to contact the seller or buyer directly through in-game, because some people are just A-Butts behind the screen.

5:00 into the video.
http://www.buffed.de/TESO-The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-PC-239823/News/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Creative-Director-Paul-Sage-aeussert-sich-zur-Item-Progression-zu-Mounts-und-zum-Gildensystem-im-Video-1072227/

tarisb16_ESO2 · April 2014

While i really like the idea, that i can cross-trade between different merchant guilds, the real problem here is, that the guild store interface is utter garbage.
They urgently have to completely revamp that. Or at least give us a text search funktion.

felixgamingx1 · April 2014

Hyperventilate wrote: »

Something about the economy and wanting players to work with each other.

The "work with each other" part makes me laugh. I wonder what universe they're living in if they expect MMO-players to function like that.

In FFXI we did

Nazon_Katts · April 2014

I think there's two major factors (probably more, but those two seem to be the most obvious to me at least) that demand a smaller scale trade. Inflationary item drops and the ability to level crafting off of them via deconstructing.

Especially green items drop left and right and there's not that much demand for them, other than breaking them down for crafting and even for that reason you'd have too many. In a bigger scale AH, everyone could grab them dirt cheap and level most professions easily, especially later on, when high level greens will be overabundant.

With drops, even when you just vendored them, there's so much currency entering the game, that you need exorbitant money sinks (guild store fees) to balance that.

ESO economy is fundamentally flawed and restricting trade is just a band aid so it doesn't get all too worse all too soon. But a server wide AH would kill it, when implemented in it's current state.

Less item drops, more coin and/or resource based loot and a crafting revamp to level crafting with, you know, crafting and we might have a base for a broader market. Maybe localized/phased AH per zone with 10k players each, you could select one similarly to how it's done with campaigns.

moondoggy · April 2014

I like the idea of it all and if the game takes off like I hope it does it has potential to be better than an auction house!

murklor007neb18_ESO · April 2014

It doesnt have to be an auction house, but I do think access to guild stores is too... restricted.

When I first heard of the feature, I assumed you could somehow visit a trader to access a guild store. IE an actual store, open to the world but with content and prices set by a guild.

The fact that they only allow in-guild trading means that you end up with a ton of trash merchant guilds, no other purpose than selling stuff. That sort of reduce the meaning of a guild IMO, you're not "part" of it other than for peddling your crummy mushrooms or bits of ore. Being in a guild should be a way of life.

But whatever, maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, I dont think its a good system at the moment.

Perseas · April 2014

if they keep up supporting only guild stores and not giving soloers a solution, it will end up all soloers moving away and servers will get empty! You know how many soloers are in game? MANY.... I ve met several.

Its the only mmo that supports and benefits a group of people among the whole amount of players.