OK, so you have a current situation where nearly every aspect of the game is on the precipice of collapsing. You, as in ZOS, are having so many issues you have to yank guild sales data not once but twice. This just so happened to coincide with the turning on of guild finder. Now we are getting data but it trickles in which is a patchwork solution at best. This is not being fixed. LFG is such a mess you just cut access because your code is running out of control. PVP is utter trash. But you choose to do THIS with your dev time? This is what we talk about when we say stop with the new f

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ing features and fix the problems. You are not around Sunday evening, if this blows up the ramifications are going to last a week.This can have benefits but right now... you are pushing away vets who spend hundreds of dollars on this game per year because so many facets of the game are broke. The staff charges right in at the mere mention of something possibly being wrong with a Crown Store announcement yet the same staff completely ignores game breaking reports, videos and feedback. ZOS you are completely tone deaf when it comes to the problems.. and adding further complication to a system that is already on the precipice of a complete meltdown.

jaws343 wrote: »

GarnetFire17 wrote: »

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

Not sure why people are pissed about this or why they don't think the change will help small guilds.

The effects should be:

1) Smaller guilds will rarely loose their spot to a big dog since the big dogs will no longer have to buy up secondary spots on weeks they don't loose their primary and they rarely loose their primary.

2) Overall trader costs will lower as there are now fewer total guilds bidding for a spot (this is because you just removed all those shadow guilds of the big dogs.) Simple supply and demand here.

3) Week to week prices for specific traders will become more consistent and possibly also lower because the severe negative effect of loosing your bid (no trader at all) has been removed. You will now likely still get a lesser trader. (A secondary effect of this will be that spying will offer less advantages than it previously did.)

4) Guilds trader locations will move more often because, with a less disastrous worst case scenario, guilds will take more chances on bids to save money and will also take more chances on improving their location. This should be really pronounced right after the change as guilds currently have little data on how much location effects their sales and at least some of them will be adventuresome enough to want to find out if a move up or down in location is more profitable.

5) I expect the competition between guilds to become more dynamic and involve less cartel behavior (ie. getting other guilds leaders banned right before the bid to prevent them from bidding). In effect, being able to explore multiple options for trader locations based on price should bring the market closer to free market ideals and decrease the benefits of anti-competitive behavior. It certainly greatly lowers the barriers to entry to start and especially to grow a trade guild.

In short, I think the changes will make things dramatically better for almost all players in the market and that they should completely solve the problem of shadow trade guilds.

Some advice to many of you who have posted.... Just put your investments in index funds IRL. The lack of basic understanding about how markets work in here is just staggering.

1) smaller guilds don't often lose to the big guilds now, because the big guilds are where they want to be. And they have no reason to stop buying other spots up with shadow guilds. It's safer and it eliminates competition. Especially when there secondary bids are probably going to be bid against by other rich guilds too. They will just move the shadow guilds down the chain.

2) It doesn't make sense to say all the guilds will have less competition when all the guilds can now place 10 bids at once. The guilds that can afford to so will do it. And the ones who can't will have to try to squeeze more gold out their members in increased dues and quotas and fundraising to try pay for a higher bid to protect their spot and to also be able to afford a decent back up spot. And as I said the shadow guilds aren't going anywhere.

3) There is no way the prices will be more consistent with so many guilds paying for multiple bids. In my experience having to accept a lower level spot that you still have to pay for and that you don't want to be in and that you guild members didn't join for is pretty much just as bad as losing the spot for a week.

4) What you are talking about is instability and uncertainty. It's not good for making profit it's only good for those trying to move up the ladder. The guilds that are in the middle that have worked hard for a long time to establish themselves in a location they are happy with without making the huge profits of other guilds will be the ones that are screwed over.

5) I am not sure what Cartel problems you think are going to change because of this change. What ever guilds are working with each other will continue to do so. But for those that are not aligned there is probably going to be more shenanigans, because while it will encourage competition many don't like to compete fairly they just want to win.

You think you know markets really well. And you are probably pretty versed, but I don't think you know the ins and outs of what it is to be in the trade guild game of ESO. A guild with 2 shadows guilds can bid on 30 trader spots. This is very very dangerous. It's not going to be a good thing.

It's only a factor for the first bid though. Only one bid can win, and then it erases their 9 other bids. So, for example, Guild A could bid 10M on one trader, and 9M on a second trader. Guild B could bid 1 gold on the second trader. If Guild A wins their 10M bid on the first trader, Guild B will win their 1 gold bid on the second trader because the 9M bid is wiped away as if it was never cast. (Of course I realize a 1 gold bid is absurd, and also that there will be other competition for a trader. But the point stills stands, the 2nd-10th bid by Guild A is meaningless if they win their 1st bid.)

I understand how it works. That Is not the point. The point is, that if one week a guild in rawlkha loses it's first bid, it's going to start a chain reaction that trickles all the way down the chain. Or if it happens in Vivec or Wayrest... same thing. the smaller guys will get shoved out because someone above them on the ladder lost and many guilds will be out of a spot at best in some other lesser spot they don't really want to be in. Now imagine that guy who out bid all the guilds in Rawlkha a month or so ago strikes again? You know who will still have the best locations, those 6 guilds that just got shoved out because they are real trading guilds and they just move down to the next rung for a week knocking out the guilds that were there, who knock out the guilds below them and so on. Unless the spot was taken buy a shadow guild who also have 10 bids each now.

some people forgot how the belkarth war on pc eu 2016 ended? it wasnt the guilds involved after all those fights losing spots in the end. but all other hubs beeing messed up, fighting and trying to settle and find their way back, frustrated traders which build own guilds to make it better and shaking it up and a chain reaction of guilds having to leave their better hubs for lower hubs.

Of course, making it so each account can only be a member of one guild would go some way to fixing this.

All The Best

redspecter23 wrote: »

OsManiaC wrote: »

Since there are still people who think only in shadow/ghost/backup/whatever issue,

think of this, seriously,

• 97.43% spots in main cities are already have same guilds for years -
• Sometimes they got overbid/snipe by another guilds - there are competition in main cities but most of the time the settled ones win
• with the backup thingie they had the chance for their alternative spots. But this was like 1 spot for 6-7 guilds in an alliance
• NOW RE-READ THE CHANGE
• "every" guild has "9" other chances, two major guilds fight for the spot in main city, loser one gots the one tier down spot - guess what that lower tier spot will not be the rivenspire
• every week the war in main cities will be increase, why not? if you cannot win you can go one lower, and one lower,
• bid amount for the lower tier cities will be increased "SIGNIFICANTLY"

Now I tell you what will have happen with example if you still not understand

• people will fight for rawl,craglorn and mournhold.
• They will lose the bidding mostly to the ones stay for years
• NO WORRIES because they have other choices now - which they dont have now ! don't dare to say backup ones!! no one has 1-to-1 backup spot, 6-7 guilds have one spot!
• since they lose fight in rawl,craglorn and mournhold, they will go wayrest, elder, alinor
• the chance of losing will not be the same as the first fight - these guys tried to battle the major players!! think the money they have
• who loses the wayrest,elder,alinor? DOES NOT MATTER, because the ones that are in rivenspire,alikr,greenshade cannot fight the losers of that war!!!

the chance of new guilds? the chance of low-tier trading guilds? do they have money to bid on 10 spots? really?

For an up and coming guild, there will now be no reason not to at least try to cement yourself in the location of your choice. Have your heart set on Stormhaven? Toss 7 bids there, 1 on your usual location and 2 refuge locations for backup. Sure, you probably won't win the Stormhaven spots if you bid is low, but you only have to get lucky every once in a while for a shakeup to happen. If you're the guys in Stormhaven squeaking in with a low bid week to week, this is very bad news for you indeed. People saying this will benefit top guilds with tons of cash are partly right. They have the resources to toss around multiple huge bids. They will very likely have a spot somewhere after the flip. The issue is that other than not wanting to pick a fight (which is still advantageous in some ways) there is little reason not to throw bids at locations that you may not have tried before. We'll very quickly be able to start extrapolating bid prices. It woudln't surprise me if an addon pops up that tracks bid prices from multiple guilds and gives a range over time that a location is expected to sell for. MM for guild traders in a way.

That is nice if you have a dream one week having a spot in wayrest. But if you dream is to actually have a spot in wayrest and keep that spot then this is is going to be a major obstacle.

psssst. Let it flow for a few weeks and pay attention to what guild stores are empty and you can then map where each guild is shadow bidding.

The overarching system choice is really dumb, but at least you can have a silver lining and identify where each big guild is using shadow bids.

DragonRacer wrote: »

Say goodbye to lucky 10k hires in your moment of bid loss panic. They were already becoming rare... now they will be extinct.

Tbch, I was (saltily) taking that as a silver lining win. If we lose our bid(s) there is going to be absolutely no point in attempting that 5 min scramble. Good riddance.

as long as you have gold...

this is the most disrespectful and offended thing I face since bosmer losing stealth passive.

Do you ever read what you write?

A small guild already gives every coin they got to bid a place in X level place

What were you thinking zos?, HOW DO YOU THINK they can give lesser amount for X-1 level place? and up to x-10 level?

@Tommy_The_Gun - maybe I’m reading you incorrectly, but I think it bears repeating that can only hire one of the 10 kiosks you bid on. You can’t buy up multiple kiosks with one guild.

SirAndy wrote: »

ZOS???

How is this going to help anyone except the large trading guilds? Seriously?

My main guild only has about 500k to bid each week which is rarely enough to get a trader. We would need 5 million gold to cover 10 spots. That is insane!

You are not expected to cover 10 spots. You are allowed to bid on 10 spots.

reoskit wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

Say goodbye to lucky 10k hires in your moment of bid loss panic. They were already becoming rare... now they will be extinct.

Tbch, I was (saltily) taking that as a silver lining win. If we lose our bid(s) there is going to be absolutely no point in attempting that 5 min scramble. Good riddance.

I think that a purpose of allowing multiple bids is to eliminate the rush to find a place if the bid failed.

I know people are asking "who asked for this", and I am pretty sure that it was us. It seems to me that the idea of multiple bids was floated more than once in here.

Two major concerns:

1. We've seen a major uptick in "Snipe" guilds in the Xbox NA community. These are empty/ghost guilds that bid huge sums on major locations just to stick it to the man and keep out major traders. The new system only further empowers these guilds, giving them the opportunity to theoretically bid on almost every stall in 2 major hubs, nearly guaranteeing at least 2-3 major traders get displaced a week. (This, coupled with increased competition, will inevitably increase bid prices, but that's not my issue and causes a whole other ripple effect.)

2. This leads to my second concern. I'm not convinced this update will eliminate shadow/burn guilds, to be frank. If I'm a major trade GM, I'm going to be seriously tempted to risk any alliances and toss those extra bids at other highly desirable stalls, knowing full and well my stall is more threatened than ever. I would probably only save maybe 2-3 bids for safety nets in mid-range zones. Even then, someone is gonna lose a stall, so why not use that shadow guild with an extra 10 bids as a little more cushion? There are zero penalties for doing so.

With the system now, let's say we have a guild family of five guilds. They are generally in the same location, spread out between major hubs - well established and well funded. That family probably has at least 2 shadow guilds in their pocket as a buffer that bid on lower zones. They make 7 bids a week. Introduce the new change, now they can make 70 - that one guild family has the capability of testing the waters on a third of all traders in the game. Yes, they can only win 7. But they have a horse in the race for 70. Competiton has gone way up. They will lose more often. There will be a domino effect, but that guild family will be fine because in the most likely scenario, eventually one of those bids is going to hold.

On the flip side, Baby Trader A uses the majority of their funds weekly to hold a stall somewhere fairly remote like Stormhold. They're breaking even every week, but it's okay because they're only losing their stall every now and then to a shadow guild. They get 1 bid a week. Introduce the new change, they still only have 1 solid bid a week. They might be able to toss a couple of throwaway bids on other stalls, but the amount would be so low that it would be a hail mary to win. Even still, they probably need that little bit of extra buffer for guild events. They can't afford to have it all tied up in bids. On top of that, they now have to worry about their stall not only being lost to a shadow guild, but also potentially to a backup bid of any of the dozens of major traders.

Zenimax has exponentially increased the market presences and staying power of wealthy guilds, while simultaneously throttling guilds that don't have the capacity to bid on multiple locations.

I see no indication that this change will eliminate shadow guilds. It most certainly will empower snipe guilds to headhunt an entire zone at a time, forcing GMs to bid more aggressively. I just don't see how the ripple effects won't seriously cripple the stability of the little guys.

reoskit wrote: »

So, wait... Serious question:

Is anyone happy about this change?

I see representatives from small and large guilds, all saying no. Is anyone good with it?

No you don't! I run a casual guild and I say it's fine and better even if there are no more shadow guilds. The sky is not falling! Tell chicken little to go take a pill!