To summarize the argument against a GAH is that it would make it easier for people to exploit. I don’t know that this is really true as a smart person or crook will always exploit whatever they can to make/steal more money no matter the system.

Unfortunately I think we are beating a dead horse as I do not see ZOS backing away from guild trading system. One think I do not see really mentioned is a GAH would probably mean more server load and lord knows they can’t handle more load as it is.

Androconium wrote: »

Here's the real "end-game" as far as trading systems go:

If any proposal increases the performance load on the megaserver, it simply won't be done.
Any work ZOS has done to date (the revised DB; and throtling of DB queries), is about improving performance.

Talk until the cows come home about Auction House being better or worse than the current system, if it won't improve performance or increases performance load, it won't happen.


End of Story.


Find some other dead horse to beat.

Done properly it would reduce server load.

Engaging with the "Auctioneer" would be the gateway to a Trade Database, on a unique server instance, reducing load on the "gameplay instance".

Simple really.

All The Best

Androconium wrote: »

That's because it won't work in practice. Sorry.

Without any explanation why i can only LoL@ your comment. Sorry.

@StabbityDoom, tnx for liking a new idea.



Something else.
Dont know if GW2 has a patent on it, but. GW2 uses a completely seperate program to run the GAH.
And it communicates with the game program. I assume that that works better (for GW2)
Maybe an idea for ESO.

dagrdagaz_5912 wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

is the pvp guy who gank and murder scores of unsuspecting players evil? No he isn't .. is he an [snip]? No, absolutely not.
It's one of the way the world of eso works .. it's just a way of playing.

There is no BAD way of playing a MMO, as long as you don't grieve others.

Uhm....

Seriously?
When you are killed in pvp, even by surprise, it's the game's intended design.
I remember playing Age of conan, where PVP was enabled EVERYWHERE !
I got murdered everywhere, while doing anything. That's the way pvp works.
I rarely go to cyrodiil, since I don't enjoy pvp, but when I go, and I got zerged over or killed by surprise, I do not feel grieved..

[edited to remove quote]

Ydrisselle wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Barney, stop deluding yourself that Fang Lair chests sells for far more than the other pages in the motif because of market manipulation. It sells for far more because there is far more demand, as it allows people to outfit themselves skimpily.

Not true. All other pieces sell for 5 - 10k and there were fewer of the other pieces to be found than the chest pieces.. Setting the price at 197,777 just guarantees I buy it from the crown store, and in the process get the entire motif.

Sure is some brilliant trader strategy he said sarcastically

it IS actualy true. that chest is more expensive that even scalecaller chest, because is skimpy and closest thing you can get to Dark shaman costume. we had somilar thing happening with mazzatun pants cause its one of the few short skirts in a game. all the other pieces are far less in demand and thanks to anniversary event - are far more common. now, 200k is still a bit much, IMO, given that anniversary event made them more available, but that just means the seller's listing will sit there collecting dust and they will either have to lower the price or just not sell. if you'd rather buy it from crown store - that is your choice and a seller's loss. still not market manipulation. Fang lair is a pain to farm and chest doesn't drop very often to boot. now that its been a few months since anniversary event - prices for motifs are going up again.

but hey.. if you'd like to do your own farming and don't have a group to farm vet fang lair with, you COULD always just run a whole lot of battlegrounds and soon enough get a chest that looks almost identical to Fang Lair chest.

I picked up mazzatun skirt for around 20k. Fact is the Wood Elf medium shows more skin on females than Fang lair and you don't have to deal with the forearms being covered - which is part of the fang lair top. Is Fang lair rare to farm? Sure. But farming is certainly Not the only way to get it. Events boxes, it pops - that's how I got it on my first account. Have a subscription? Unless you had 0 credits to start with, in 3 months you can just buy the whole motif from the crown store - and in the process you don't have to buy ANY pieces from Sellers. You'd have a better point if you were talking about something that can't be bought in the crown store - but most of those items can't be Sold either.

But this is all a tangent. The point is the simple manipulation. When I spent a couple hours going to all the traders I could find, I found 8 chest pieces. EVERY ONE of them had the 197,777 price tag. I find it hard to believe that each seller road around for two hours, and the first person saw one at 197,777, and decided that was a good price to list it. If they are Sellers, on PC, (which is what I am on) they are going to use the addons. They check the addon and they see what the item has 'sold for'.

And THAT is the easiest thing in This trader system to Rig. It just takes 2 accounts. Account 1 sells for a ridiculous price, Account 2 buys it back. Rinse and repeat if you want. It is not costing the manipulator much, and they will make that gold back. So now it is registered in the Addons as having sold for the ridiculous price. Every other Seller checks the addon and thinks that people are really paying that much for the item. This is Waaaaayyy easier than trying to corner the market in a GAH.

IMHO

not sold for. listed for. and guess what? THIS SAME THING COULD AND DOES HAPPEN WITH GLOBAL TRADING. exactly the same thing and you don't even need 2 accounts for it. its actualy EASIER to do with global AH, because you don't have to travel around to buy all the listings to relist them. addons will still show the listing price (or if you are lazy like me, you just search for an item, see the other listed items, undercut it just slightly to put it at the top of the list and call it a day) and people will still try to list at it, and if they don't - their listing will be gone soon enough, leaving behind only your "average" price. i have seen it happen in WoW with rare pets and mounts and occasional transmog pieces. I have seen it happen in SWTOR. i have seen it happen in Neverwinter and SWL and GW2. people for the most part are going to try and list at an average. maybe slightly bellow average but not significantly so. and if you think that once in a blue moon someone doesn't come around and try to manipulate it with varying degree of success? i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you. heck - you make this game global, its going to happen MORE often.

I bought mazatun skirt for a lot more then 20k. but thats because I bought it years ago, when it used to be rarer. shadows of hist was out 2 years longer then Fang lair (edited to correct the duration, hist was released in 2016 and Dragon Bones in 2018). the motif had a chance to drop in MULTIPLE anniversary events. it its now easier dungeon to farm then Fang lair. next year? Fang lair everything is going to be more common.

The difference using the GAH is quantity. No one is Denied the ability to put items up for sale the way this current system does. That means Every character in the game with items to sell Can list them on the GAH. It much more difficult to corner a market and try to buy everything with the intention of flipping because of the sheer amount of resources needed up front, as well as the amount needed to continuously buy every new listing of said item.

Our Trader system Denies players the ability to put items up for sale. That's a Fact. The numbers have already been shown. There is a finite number of traders and a Finite number of players allowed into a Trading guild. You do not get a lot of ' buy everything and resell it higher' with a GAH because of the sheer volume of players that can list items. Even iuf someone Does pull it off on some item, it doesn't last. one individual cannot keep up with the demand Every day to buy the items other people list.

If there is One thing that is just plain Wrong about this game, it is that All paying players are Not ALLOWED to put items up for sale.

IMHO

sigh. /shakes head. while yes, global trading system is theoretically more accessible to more people, a lot of people STILL don't use it to sell things. becasue they don't want to. moreover, becasue everything is centralized, its EASIER to keep track of everything that gets listed and buy up the outliers. the reason manipulation fails sooner or later, whether its ESO or any game with global trading system is exactly the same. people think there is a demand. people start farming more. market gets flooded. budding manipulator gives up. one individual cannot exactly keep up with manipulating ESO system either. there are just too many locations and too many people listing. yes, even in out limiting system, becasue there are a LOT of guilds and not as many people who want to utilize these guilds. literally, one individual in ESO cannot keep up with trying to manipulate common enough items in ESO, anymore than they can in centralized trading systems. meanwhile, i have personaly seen people corner market on rare drops in WoW. when you see pages of listings and they are all from the same name. I have seen this in SWTOR as well. it doesn't last unless the item is sufficiently rare to guarantee that supply is not going to be overwhelming. but it DOES happen. consistently.

getting into trading guilds in ESO is far easier than people make it out to be, and no, you do NOT need to be in a top guild to make decent income. good locations have higher traffic and things sell faster, but that's the thing, even in not ideal locations - things still sell!.

you are not forced to buy from major guild trader only. you can travel around and look for deals the same way your hypothetical market manipulators do!

and once again, i'm not against allowing everyone to list whether they are in a guild or not, I'm not against global trade systems on principle, on the contrary. all i'm saying while you are not listening is - GLOBAL TRADING DOES NOT FIX PRICING "ISSUES" THAT YOU KEEP INSISTING EXISTS WITH ESO. global systems have exact. same. pricing. "issues"

But there is a tiny problem with that: there are no place for casual traders, who wants to sell 1 or 2 items per week. Getting into a trading guild is useless for them, and it's wasting the time of the trading guild leaders. It can be argued that they could sell that through zone chat, but it's still inconvenient, and likely they won't get the real price of the items that way.

Since there are ~200 guild traders in the game, the maximum number of the players who can use a trader to sell anything is 100k at maximum (it's less in reality since players are in more than one trading guild and the guilds have open spots too). ZOS claims there are 11 millions of accounts across 6 megaservers; let's assume that half of them is inactive, and the number of the active ones are equal in all megaservers - that means there are 1 million active players per megaserver (I'm rounding up the number). So 90+% of the players can't sell anything through a guild trader even if they want to do that. Yes, some of those players don't even want to sell anything, but there will always be some who wants to do it and doesn't even have the chance - and some of them will give up on the system entirely.

1. there are guilds that have no minimums. 2. there are guilds that are not even trading guilds as their primary goals - that sometimes get a trader. I'm currently in both types. if a casual player wants to trade? they can trade.

and to reiterate. again. i am NOT against giving an option to someone who may not want to be in guild but would like to participate in trade - ability to do so. I'm very much for it! what I have been arguing, over and over and over is 1. this will NOT somehow magically make things be less expensive or prevent arbitration, especially when it comes to rare things. 2. it needs to be done without removing current system because of two major reasons - one: its the most reliable gold sink i have seen in any mmo EVER and its what keeps inflation manageable and super slow, and two: good chunks of this game's identity revolve around it.

jdamuso wrote: »

The trader re-selling and trade guild price gouging is disgusting. anything and everything worth buying is constantly being bought up by players with billions of gold and being re-sold at unreasonable prices. The amount of gold being farmed out of the game is obscene and being filtered into the pocket of a handful of the community creating an economically dystopian capitalist garbage dump.

Howabout account binding items sold through traders huh?

Even to obtain a trader you have to compete with this garbage, which is just encouraging the practice...

And before you come back with some snub retort to the point.... empirical evidence: the cheapest purple inferno staff of a mother's sorrow on the market is 55k yet there are well over 260 of this item available on the market right now. Suggesting there is not the demand for the supply. If it was rare enough to be so valuable then okay. but they are clearly its not that rare if there are 260 of it not being sold...


Now the problem is... EVERYTHING is being bought and re-sold..... EVERYTHING that will sell AT ALL. and being marked up 500-3000% regardless of the demand....

Trade system is broken... the add-ons allowed to interfere make it worse... The economy in this game is one of the worst ive seen EVER in 30 years of gaming... Its an abomination.

The only saving grace of this game... is that i dont mind farming stuff myself, and thank the lord for that, because the economy is a complete embarrassment.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. The addons in particular made price homogenization possible, so it pretty much is just a GAH with decentralized distribution and a massive gold sink attached to it.

But, you are right, it's purely optional. That's why I mostly just ignore this crap system.

preevious wrote: »

I remember playing Age of conan, where PVP was enabled EVERYWHERE !

That's because you were on a PvP server.

I played Age of Conan for a couple of years, never once did any PvP of any kind.


All The Best

Linaleah wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Barney, stop deluding yourself that Fang Lair chests sells for far more than the other pages in the motif because of market manipulation. It sells for far more because there is far more demand, as it allows people to outfit themselves skimpily.

Not true. All other pieces sell for 5 - 10k and there were fewer of the other pieces to be found than the chest pieces.. Setting the price at 197,777 just guarantees I buy it from the crown store, and in the process get the entire motif.

Sure is some brilliant trader strategy he said sarcastically

it IS actualy true. that chest is more expensive that even scalecaller chest, because is skimpy and closest thing you can get to Dark shaman costume. we had somilar thing happening with mazzatun pants cause its one of the few short skirts in a game. all the other pieces are far less in demand and thanks to anniversary event - are far more common. now, 200k is still a bit much, IMO, given that anniversary event made them more available, but that just means the seller's listing will sit there collecting dust and they will either have to lower the price or just not sell. if you'd rather buy it from crown store - that is your choice and a seller's loss. still not market manipulation. Fang lair is a pain to farm and chest doesn't drop very often to boot. now that its been a few months since anniversary event - prices for motifs are going up again.

but hey.. if you'd like to do your own farming and don't have a group to farm vet fang lair with, you COULD always just run a whole lot of battlegrounds and soon enough get a chest that looks almost identical to Fang Lair chest.

I picked up mazzatun skirt for around 20k. Fact is the Wood Elf medium shows more skin on females than Fang lair and you don't have to deal with the forearms being covered - which is part of the fang lair top. Is Fang lair rare to farm? Sure. But farming is certainly Not the only way to get it. Events boxes, it pops - that's how I got it on my first account. Have a subscription? Unless you had 0 credits to start with, in 3 months you can just buy the whole motif from the crown store - and in the process you don't have to buy ANY pieces from Sellers. You'd have a better point if you were talking about something that can't be bought in the crown store - but most of those items can't be Sold either.

But this is all a tangent. The point is the simple manipulation. When I spent a couple hours going to all the traders I could find, I found 8 chest pieces. EVERY ONE of them had the 197,777 price tag. I find it hard to believe that each seller road around for two hours, and the first person saw one at 197,777, and decided that was a good price to list it. If they are Sellers, on PC, (which is what I am on) they are going to use the addons. They check the addon and they see what the item has 'sold for'.

And THAT is the easiest thing in This trader system to Rig. It just takes 2 accounts. Account 1 sells for a ridiculous price, Account 2 buys it back. Rinse and repeat if you want. It is not costing the manipulator much, and they will make that gold back. So now it is registered in the Addons as having sold for the ridiculous price. Every other Seller checks the addon and thinks that people are really paying that much for the item. This is Waaaaayyy easier than trying to corner the market in a GAH.

IMHO

not sold for. listed for. and guess what? THIS SAME THING COULD AND DOES HAPPEN WITH GLOBAL TRADING. exactly the same thing and you don't even need 2 accounts for it. its actualy EASIER to do with global AH, because you don't have to travel around to buy all the listings to relist them. addons will still show the listing price (or if you are lazy like me, you just search for an item, see the other listed items, undercut it just slightly to put it at the top of the list and call it a day) and people will still try to list at it, and if they don't - their listing will be gone soon enough, leaving behind only your "average" price. i have seen it happen in WoW with rare pets and mounts and occasional transmog pieces. I have seen it happen in SWTOR. i have seen it happen in Neverwinter and SWL and GW2. people for the most part are going to try and list at an average. maybe slightly bellow average but not significantly so. and if you think that once in a blue moon someone doesn't come around and try to manipulate it with varying degree of success? i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you. heck - you make this game global, its going to happen MORE often.

I bought mazatun skirt for a lot more then 20k. but thats because I bought it years ago, when it used to be rarer. shadows of hist was out 2 years longer then Fang lair (edited to correct the duration, hist was released in 2016 and Dragon Bones in 2018). the motif had a chance to drop in MULTIPLE anniversary events. it its now easier dungeon to farm then Fang lair. next year? Fang lair everything is going to be more common.

The difference using the GAH is quantity. No one is Denied the ability to put items up for sale the way this current system does. That means Every character in the game with items to sell Can list them on the GAH. It much more difficult to corner a market and try to buy everything with the intention of flipping because of the sheer amount of resources needed up front, as well as the amount needed to continuously buy every new listing of said item.

Our Trader system Denies players the ability to put items up for sale. That's a Fact. The numbers have already been shown. There is a finite number of traders and a Finite number of players allowed into a Trading guild. You do not get a lot of ' buy everything and resell it higher' with a GAH because of the sheer volume of players that can list items. Even iuf someone Does pull it off on some item, it doesn't last. one individual cannot keep up with the demand Every day to buy the items other people list.

If there is One thing that is just plain Wrong about this game, it is that All paying players are Not ALLOWED to put items up for sale.

IMHO

sigh. /shakes head. while yes, global trading system is theoretically more accessible to more people, a lot of people STILL don't use it to sell things. becasue they don't want to. moreover, becasue everything is centralized, its EASIER to keep track of everything that gets listed and buy up the outliers. the reason manipulation fails sooner or later, whether its ESO or any game with global trading system is exactly the same. people think there is a demand. people start farming more. market gets flooded. budding manipulator gives up. one individual cannot exactly keep up with manipulating ESO system either. there are just too many locations and too many people listing. yes, even in out limiting system, becasue there are a LOT of guilds and not as many people who want to utilize these guilds. literally, one individual in ESO cannot keep up with trying to manipulate common enough items in ESO, anymore than they can in centralized trading systems. meanwhile, i have personaly seen people corner market on rare drops in WoW. when you see pages of listings and they are all from the same name. I have seen this in SWTOR as well. it doesn't last unless the item is sufficiently rare to guarantee that supply is not going to be overwhelming. but it DOES happen. consistently.

According to what data that you have access to proves that players access a GAH less? Im calling bs on this from the start. If youre first statement cant be verified and you know youre lying about it. Why should the rest of your opinion even be considered?

getting into trading guilds in ESO is far easier than people make it out to be, and no, you do NOT need to be in a top guild to make decent income. good locations have higher traffic and things sell faster, but that's the thing, even in not ideal locations - things still sell!.

Ease of access for many is not having to go through a guild to offload items. People want a GAH because it completely circumvents the hassle of Trade Guilds. Maybe its because they dont like the social aspect, maybe its because they want to keep that guild slot open for a competitive trials guild. Whatever the reason, its unfair that a paying player has to resign themselves to joining a guild built around selling and buying items to simply sell their wares to others without spamming chat.

There is no decent income if you cant even snag a trader. And if any location was so damn profitable, why wont one of the top trade guilds drop their prime spot next week and show all of us nonbelievers how lucrative one of these out of the way traders are?

you are not forced to buy from major guild trader only. you can travel around and look for deals the same way your hypothetical market manipulators do!

Its like you noticed players disagreeing with the system and thought "Instead of actually understanding their position, Ill just list all the things that annoy them about the player economy like it was to their benefit!".

Now why would players want a centralized place to sell all of their wares... Who doesnt love spending a few hours hunting down that one dagger and not finding it! See how much fun we're having!

and once again, i'm not against allowing everyone to list whether they are in a guild or not, I'm not against global trade systems on principle, on the contrary. all i'm saying while you are not listening is - GLOBAL TRADING DOES NOT FIX PRICING "ISSUES" THAT YOU KEEP INSISTING EXISTS WITH ESO. global systems have exact. same. pricing. "issues"

You arent against the very thing that you just spent time writing in opposition of? Well okay then.

boy do i LOVE getting blatantly misinterpreted and misquoted. I never said that players acess GAH less, I said that a ton of players never chose to acess it becasue they have NO interest in trading.

I also specifically said in there somewhere that prime locations get more traffic, but what i ALSO said is that you can still sell just fine in non prime locations. I said that its slower, but it DOES happen. becasue i'm in guilds that have non prime trade locations and i still sell. it takes longer, but it sells.

No *** there are players that dont access the player economy by choice. But if we are basing an argument on what they are or not doing, then why even have a discussion? This is about those that DO WANT access.

the claim was that arbitrators belonging to major guilds buy out good deals from farther away traders and relist them, making it so a shopper doesn't have acess to those good deals, and all i said is that NOTHING is stopping that shopper from going to those other traders in a first place.

Im pretty sure time and patience is stopping players from shopping at these out of the way locations. Otherwise there wouldnt be an argument for a centralized auction house.

I have acknowledged. MULTIPLE TIMES. that yes GAH is more convenient and faster and that I totally get and agree that shopping with current system can be a time consuming pain. this is NOT WHAT I"M ARGUING FFS. what i'm arguing is that making a centralized AH WILL NOT MAKE THINGS MAGICALLY CHEAPER OR REMOVE ARBITRATION. what I'm ALSO arguing is that outright replacing current system is going to remove our primary gold sink and make things harder on a casual player in a long run by allowing inflation run amok. think of it as medical insurance with high premiums and deductibles. sure you have acess to it, but what good is it if you cannot afford to use it in a first place?

If the GAH is more convenient and faster and less of a strain on the average player. Then everything else is things that can be worked out with further development of the system. Prices will definitely drop when larger portions of the playerbase is allowed to sell their wares and the market becomes oversaturated with said items. This is not magic, its simple supply and demand. And so far I havent seen anyone argue that relisters will become something of the past. Thats a strawman youve created, which really is most of your arguments here in this thread. Empty and easily defeatable with simple common sense. Inflation exists, and yes it is a problem GAHs experience. But if inflation is the only thing that is keeping the majority of the player base from accessing the player economy easily and regularly. Then its a downside that Im willing to bare.

If you cant afford to use a service because of its inherent costs during its use. Then you cant afford it. Simple. Common. Sense. Items will still be listed based on their market value and the rarity of the item. Something hard to come by or takes time to grind will still have that added into the cost of the item upon being listed. The difference here is that this will not make things typically listed low suddenly much higher. This is fearmongering on your part to make inflation seem like this big scary monster that will prevent the average player from accessing a GAH.

I don't mind adding centralized trader in a way that allows for convenience without removing trading guilds. extra fees to shop or list was my proposal with acess to all the listings in the game. I have no idea if its even possible, given our already existing performance issues. but.. and again... this is frustrating to the point that after this - i give up, i cannot argue with people who are NOT arguing in good faith. global trading system is not a magical fix for OP's original concern. people use arbitration all. the. time. in global auction house. people list at an average price of other listings vast majority of the time and when they don't - its first come, first serve. sometimes its arbitrator that buys and relists. sometimes a buyer was lucky and was in the right place at the right time... same as with our current system right now. GAH's ONLY advantage over current system is convenience of shopping and listing. CONVENIENCE. not prices. NOT prevention of arbitration. certainly not prevention of attempted manipulation. attempted because vast majority of the time it fails here and it fails with auction houses.

If your position was that youre okay with the idea of a GAH. Youre not doing a very good job of reflecting this in your arguments. Because so far you've only thrown out weak already argued points meant to trip people up rather than address the actual issues of adding a GAH. I have yet to play a MMO with a GAH where the GAH had serious impacts on the games performance. And if thats the actual case, then the fix for that is not to keep the status quo here. Its to actually address the fundamental issues in the game engine that is causing said performance issues.

GAH is NOT some perfect system, vastly superior to guild traders. guild trader system is clunky, and comes with plenty of issues, but it is part of ESO's identity now and its value in keeping inflation down, in a way that i have NEVER SEEN GAH COME EVEN CLOSE TO can NOT be underestimated or ignored (because its not its purpose in a first place, that's the thing about guild traders - their purpose is 2 fold).

No ones arguing that the system is perfect. Are you noticing the pattern here? Because I am. If only there was a market for strawmans.

People are asking for a system with more access and ease of use. Not for perfection. ESOs "identity" was also a game without a bunch of numbers exploding all over the screen. But players pushed back against that with addons and eventually the developers relented by adding such displays. The game originally didnt advertise guild names and the names of players or their character players. People pushed for that to change and so it did. When the game first launched on console, players on console were arrogantly told that they preferred talking over headsets rather than text chat. Players pushed back against that and now not only is text chat a thing on consoles but it is used just as much as it is on PC. And you know what is rarely ever used outside of Groups and Guilds? Voice Chat. Things change. Arguments for keeping the status quo because its "apart of the games identity" is purely opinion and is far from something the overall playerbase agrees on.

P.S. the thing that I find incredibly amusing every time i see some of these arguments. so many of the same people would argue tooth and nail against any and all proposals of making a dungeon mode that lets anyone and everyone solo it for the purposes of experiencing a story, because and a loosely quite" god forbid someone must be social in an mmo /s" and yet.. god forbid you have to join a guild to participate in trade. god forbid, you have to be social in an MMO, even though being in a trading guild requires far less actual dealing with people then running a dungeon. sigh.

I find it incredibly amusing that you would in one moment argue for keeping the status quo because its the games identity and then ignore the very history of Trade Guilds. They werent always a thing. Originally your only options for selling anything was an NPC, your internal Guild Trading System, or the text chat. Trade Guilds only became a thing once the idea of turning your social guild into a corporation became a thing with the Kiosks. The ultimate goal of a Trade Guild is not friendship and fun. Its profits.

God forbid you had to give up your exclusive and limited system for something inclusive and opened the doors for players guild slots to be used for something actually social.

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Androconium wrote: »

Here's the real "end-game" as far as trading systems go:

If any proposal increases the performance load on the megaserver, it simply won't be done.
Any work ZOS has done to date (the revised DB; and throtling of DB queries), is about improving performance.

Talk until the cows come home about Auction House being better or worse than the current system, if it won't improve performance or increases performance load, it won't happen.


End of Story.


Find some other dead horse to beat.

Done properly it would reduce server load.

Engaging with the "Auctioneer" would be the gateway to a Trade Database, on a unique server instance, reducing load on the "gameplay instance".

Simple really.

All The Best

Additionally, if you do it like Archeage, you put the GAH access icon right on the GUI screen. No need to go anywhere, have any extra interactions with NPCs, no effect on performance whatsoever. Just click on it and you are in.

Again, the obvious solution is to simply ADD a GAH and keeper the Traders. If the initial response to THAT solution is that it would destroy the Traders, then we have all recognized which is the better system, haven't we?

IMHO

PizzaCat82 wrote: »

StabbityDoom wrote: »

PizzaCat82 wrote: »

Has anyone addressed the fact that like, less than a handful of people in game have control of capital city traders? Cause I feel like something that important shouldn't be in player hands, much less 10 random people.

Do you honestly think the gms of those guilds could do it without the 499 other people in their guilds, consistently? It's not in the hands of a few people. It's a LOT of people you are talking about.

[snip] We pay because there's no better choice.

Someone is standing next to you in your home, holding a gun to your head, forcing you to pay. Otherwise there is always a choice.

Let's see....better choice.....leave the guild and find another that isn't charging ridiculous dues. If you feel your life depends on selling 999 kazillion gold every day, you probably should find a less stressful game. Otherwise make a list for yourself; If I stay with Ridiculous Dues guild because I can sell 999 kazillion gold every day, does the benefit outweigh the outrageous demands on my game time to keep all the slots filled 24/7/365? [reasons] Would it be worth finding a different guild that doesn't charge ridiculous dues, a guild that will let me sell 99 kazillion a day? [reasons] Do I need to make 999 kazillion gold a day every day so I can keep paying the ridiculous dues? [reasons] Do I really need craptons of gold coming in constantly? [reasons] What is there to buy that requires that much gold?

[edited to remove quote]

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

Barney, stop deluding yourself that Fang Lair chests sells for far more than the other pages in the motif because of market manipulation. It sells for far more because there is far more demand, as it allows people to outfit themselves skimpily.

Not true. All other pieces sell for 5 - 10k and there were fewer of the other pieces to be found than the chest pieces.. Setting the price at 197,777 just guarantees I buy it from the crown store, and in the process get the entire motif.

Sure is some brilliant trader strategy he said sarcastically

it IS actualy true. that chest is more expensive that even scalecaller chest, because is skimpy and closest thing you can get to Dark shaman costume. we had somilar thing happening with mazzatun pants cause its one of the few short skirts in a game. all the other pieces are far less in demand and thanks to anniversary event - are far more common. now, 200k is still a bit much, IMO, given that anniversary event made them more available, but that just means the seller's listing will sit there collecting dust and they will either have to lower the price or just not sell. if you'd rather buy it from crown store - that is your choice and a seller's loss. still not market manipulation. Fang lair is a pain to farm and chest doesn't drop very often to boot. now that its been a few months since anniversary event - prices for motifs are going up again.

but hey.. if you'd like to do your own farming and don't have a group to farm vet fang lair with, you COULD always just run a whole lot of battlegrounds and soon enough get a chest that looks almost identical to Fang Lair chest.

I picked up mazzatun skirt for around 20k. Fact is the Wood Elf medium shows more skin on females than Fang lair and you don't have to deal with the forearms being covered - which is part of the fang lair top. Is Fang lair rare to farm? Sure. But farming is certainly Not the only way to get it. Events boxes, it pops - that's how I got it on my first account. Have a subscription? Unless you had 0 credits to start with, in 3 months you can just buy the whole motif from the crown store - and in the process you don't have to buy ANY pieces from Sellers. You'd have a better point if you were talking about something that can't be bought in the crown store - but most of those items can't be Sold either.

But this is all a tangent. The point is the simple manipulation. When I spent a couple hours going to all the traders I could find, I found 8 chest pieces. EVERY ONE of them had the 197,777 price tag. I find it hard to believe that each seller road around for two hours, and the first person saw one at 197,777, and decided that was a good price to list it. If they are Sellers, on PC, (which is what I am on) they are going to use the addons. They check the addon and they see what the item has 'sold for'.

And THAT is the easiest thing in This trader system to Rig. It just takes 2 accounts. Account 1 sells for a ridiculous price, Account 2 buys it back. Rinse and repeat if you want. It is not costing the manipulator much, and they will make that gold back. So now it is registered in the Addons as having sold for the ridiculous price. Every other Seller checks the addon and thinks that people are really paying that much for the item. This is Waaaaayyy easier than trying to corner the market in a GAH.

IMHO

not sold for. listed for. and guess what? THIS SAME THING COULD AND DOES HAPPEN WITH GLOBAL TRADING. exactly the same thing and you don't even need 2 accounts for it. its actualy EASIER to do with global AH, because you don't have to travel around to buy all the listings to relist them. addons will still show the listing price (or if you are lazy like me, you just search for an item, see the other listed items, undercut it just slightly to put it at the top of the list and call it a day) and people will still try to list at it, and if they don't - their listing will be gone soon enough, leaving behind only your "average" price. i have seen it happen in WoW with rare pets and mounts and occasional transmog pieces. I have seen it happen in SWTOR. i have seen it happen in Neverwinter and SWL and GW2. people for the most part are going to try and list at an average. maybe slightly bellow average but not significantly so. and if you think that once in a blue moon someone doesn't come around and try to manipulate it with varying degree of success? i have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you. heck - you make this game global, its going to happen MORE often.

I bought mazatun skirt for a lot more then 20k. but thats because I bought it years ago, when it used to be rarer. shadows of hist was out 2 years longer then Fang lair (edited to correct the duration, hist was released in 2016 and Dragon Bones in 2018). the motif had a chance to drop in MULTIPLE anniversary events. it its now easier dungeon to farm then Fang lair. next year? Fang lair everything is going to be more common.

The difference using the GAH is quantity. No one is Denied the ability to put items up for sale the way this current system does. That means Every character in the game with items to sell Can list them on the GAH. It much more difficult to corner a market and try to buy everything with the intention of flipping because of the sheer amount of resources needed up front, as well as the amount needed to continuously buy every new listing of said item.

Our Trader system Denies players the ability to put items up for sale. That's a Fact. The numbers have already been shown. There is a finite number of traders and a Finite number of players allowed into a Trading guild. You do not get a lot of ' buy everything and resell it higher' with a GAH because of the sheer volume of players that can list items. Even iuf someone Does pull it off on some item, it doesn't last. one individual cannot keep up with the demand Every day to buy the items other people list.

If there is One thing that is just plain Wrong about this game, it is that All paying players are Not ALLOWED to put items up for sale.

IMHO

sigh. /shakes head. while yes, global trading system is theoretically more accessible to more people, a lot of people STILL don't use it to sell things. becasue they don't want to. moreover, becasue everything is centralized, its EASIER to keep track of everything that gets listed and buy up the outliers. the reason manipulation fails sooner or later, whether its ESO or any game with global trading system is exactly the same. people think there is a demand. people start farming more. market gets flooded. budding manipulator gives up. one individual cannot exactly keep up with manipulating ESO system either. there are just too many locations and too many people listing. yes, even in out limiting system, becasue there are a LOT of guilds and not as many people who want to utilize these guilds. literally, one individual in ESO cannot keep up with trying to manipulate common enough items in ESO, anymore than they can in centralized trading systems. meanwhile, i have personaly seen people corner market on rare drops in WoW. when you see pages of listings and they are all from the same name. I have seen this in SWTOR as well. it doesn't last unless the item is sufficiently rare to guarantee that supply is not going to be overwhelming. but it DOES happen. consistently.

getting into trading guilds in ESO is far easier than people make it out to be, and no, you do NOT need to be in a top guild to make decent income. good locations have higher traffic and things sell faster, but that's the thing, even in not ideal locations - things still sell!.

you are not forced to buy from major guild trader only. you can travel around and look for deals the same way your hypothetical market manipulators do!

and once again, i'm not against allowing everyone to list whether they are in a guild or not, I'm not against global trade systems on principle, on the contrary. all i'm saying while you are not listening is - GLOBAL TRADING DOES NOT FIX PRICING "ISSUES" THAT YOU KEEP INSISTING EXISTS WITH ESO. global systems have exact. same. pricing. "issues"

Well, you are welcome to that belief, but I'm pretty sure you are wrong.

In a GAH, where Every person in the game who wants to can list theirs, if ALL the Fang Lair chest pieces were listed, I guarantee they would not ALL be at 197,777. You might find that when it was first listed, but there would a whole string of options listed after that, each new listing undercutting the previous one.

That is how the open market Should work. With Everyone being allowed to be involved.

IMHO

can =/= does. moreover Fang Lair chest is an equivalent of a rare transmog drop in WoW. would you like to hop on and check how much THOSE go for and how much THOSE are monopolized? becasue you seem to be speaking purely in theoretical and i'm speaking from actual experience.

rare items cost more. rare items sometimes are subject to attempted manipulation, YES THAT INCLUDES GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE. becasue rare items drops are limited and are NOT infinite like you seem to believe. Fang Lair chest is NOT cornflower that everyone can farm at will. outside of the anniversary event - it requires a group capable of running vet fang lair AND a bit of luck with rng for the actual chest to drop.

at that listing price? those chests are not going to sell anymore than rare transmog sells in WoW at vastly above market price. if you would just, i don't know... practiced a tiny bit of PATIENCE.. you would see those listings not sell and eventualy drop back down in price to something closer to their actual current market price which is, last i checked about 40-50k give or take.

there are items in GAH that you will see maybe, if you are lucky - 3 or 4 listed. becasue they are rare. sometimes they are listed at obsenely high prices and guess what? the next day, there aren't pages of that same item listed inexplicably radicaly cheaper. becasue. its. RARE. and that has nothing to do with GAH.

Only if the Rare drop is truly Rare. And Fang Lair is NOT Rare.

Why?

Because there is more than One method of obtaining it. Let's take the actual situation.

I look for the chest piece, it is available for 197,777 gold, no matter where I go. However, it is also available in the Crown Store. I am a subscriber. I generate and save crowns every month.

Conclusion : Because the Gouger has it listed stupidly high, I simply buy it from the Crown store. In the process, I receive ALL the pieces of the motif, so other pieces that I might have bought from the Trader I no longer need to buy. The sellers of Those pieces now do not get a sale from me. The result - Zos gets my money, I get my motif, and the Traders get ZERO gold.

Just because they priced it stupidly high.

Great business plan <he said sarcastically>

Not everybody subs or buys crowns. For those of us who do not have such a luxury, our methoda of obtaining the said piece is to generate it via doing the content or buying from traders. (or buy crowns with gold)

The individual pieces are indeed rare. You can only get individual pieces from the said dungeon. The book is what, 5000 crowns in crown store? On PC-EU this is equal to 1.5 million gold. (because most of the time I see people selling 1 crown for 300 gold making 5000 crowns to be 300*5000 gold which equals to 1.5 million)

The fang lair chest motif is indeed pricier, because a lot of players wants it because how they look. The same happened with minotaur motifs when outfitting was released. Other minotaur pieces were selling for maybe 5 000 gold, but the chest piece was deemed to be worth 50 000 gold.


Why I like guild trading over global trading system? I think guild trading is a bit harder, more difficult way of trading. Increased difficulty means you need more skill to enjoy it - if they were to lower the skill level, I'd start to feel bored. Of course, this also means that players who starts to trying to master the art of trading in ESO will more likely feel anxiety comparing to the alternative. (global traders)

In guild trading, if you want to try to maximise your sales, you need to know what is selling in your localised spot. For example: if I have lots of high value items (such as rare, but wanted motif pieces, weapons or jewelry) I will prioritise them and sell them trough the trader that sells a lot of them according to sales history. If I have full 30/30 listing, I do not have room to sell materials and those I sell trough a smaller trader if I feel I need the gold right now. I use sales history to determine the price for the item, I get access to the history via Master Merchant, but I do not use the average price because its unreliable and easy to manipulate. These tricks would become obsolete on the hypothetical global trader. I would no longer need or be able to compare the trade locations to determine where I list my items - I would still look at the sales history to determine the price if I'm able to.

I also enjoy the non-complete information aspect on the buying side. If I for example want a deadly axe (from the deadly strike set), I can go and hunt it from the traders. When I find it in the price range I'm looking for, I need to make a decision: do I buy it from here and thus ending my hunt, or do I keep looking to try to find a better deal but risking to lose this one? Because of the non-complete information nature of guild traders, I sometimes can save thousands of gold if I devote some effort and time for it. If the trading system had complete information all the time, I would just see almost monotonous prices and I would be unable to hunt for bargains.

So, there's my selfish reasons to prefer guild traders. These are points where I know that at least 1 person (me) enjoys them - I do not know if there are others who view it the same way, but at least I know at least one - if I were to guess other selfish reasons, I would not know anyone who would see it as such.

There are of course more objective reasons. We do not know the design reasons, but we can try and guess them. You know what is the most obvious difference between a MMORPG and RPG? The MMO part, which means Massive Multiplayer Online. What aspect could such part introduce to the game? Social aspect. Should we make the social aspect meaningful?

If the game didn't embrace the social aspect, would it make a meaningful difference to make a MMORPG rather than RPG? I would think not, which is why I think it is good to embrace and reinforce the social aspect of the game. I think it is good for the game and to the genre to include socialisation and to encourage players to socialise. It is after all one of the main differences between MMORPG and RPG.

I think one of the reasons why we have Guild Traders, is because it encourages players to socialise. Let's look for more information about this hunch.

In The Elder Scrolls Online, you can join up to five different 500-player Guilds. With Guild activities ranging from PvP to roleplaying to trading or simply helping newer players, there’s hundreds of Guilds in game right now. This means that looking for and joining a Guild can be a daunting experience for some players, and this is what the team looked to improve with Update 22.

“A Guild is a great way to enrich your experience in ESO,” says Bobby Weir, ESO’s UI Design Lead. “A lot of our favorite memories in gaming are grounded within the Guilds that we’ve played with over the years, so we wanted to make finding and connecting with Guilds easier.”

With the new Guild tools in Update 22’s free base game update (meaning you don’t need to buy ESO: Elsweyr to enjoy these new features), you can both find a new Guild and more easily advertise your own Guild as open for new applications. It even allows you to search and filter results to reflect different activities and experience requirements.

(Source: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56483 ) To me, it seems like ZoS wants players to enrich their gaming experience via guilds. And the current trading system is built around guilds - could it be that guilds and socialisation is one of the reasons why we have guild traders and not a global trader?

As others have already argued in this thread, guild trading also fights against inflation. Thus the reasons why we have the current system includes at least:
- Guild traders reduce the inflation rate
- Guild traders encourages the usage of player guilds and thus encourages socialisation.