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Guild Vendor Cartel + Monopoly

  • therift
    therift
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    The real winners are the tinfoil-hat sellers

    I'm doing a booming business in those hats.

    By the way... WTB Tinfoil stacks. C.O.D. all ya got.
  • preevious
    preevious
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    I also heard that thet eat kittens, and perform dark ceremonies with human sacrifices.

    ..also, reptilians .. they are reptilians
  • Cryptical
    Cryptical
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    kargen27 wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    Yup. They run the market. That’s why they should have just made a global auction house.

    Yeah cause no way can a group who can supposedly control over 200 locations control just one. The better solution is if a guild wins a trader for the week the trader is theirs whether they disband or not. Sure you might get some trolling for a couple of weeks where they bid on traders then leave them empty but it wouldn't last long. Bidding millions to make zero would get tiresome quick.

    Actually, it’s not about how many storefronts there are. It’s about how many listings you have.

    Let’s say you and your spouse run around farming flowers each day, and you both put up 20 listings each day. That’s 40 listings. A cartel member buys those 40 and can only resell 30, putting the overflow 10 in their inventory. This happens EVERY DAY. Very soon, that cartel member is devoted entirely to trying to push out that growing back stock. They put out gold for if, they need to make back that gold because they are running at a negative cash flow.

    And that’s with a cartel reseller trying to cover just 2 casual alchemy farmers. But the problem scales up rapidly. If you look at the math, the actual situation is each cartel reseller trying to cover about 20 other people listing things.

    Not only can’t a cartel reseller use their 30 listing slots to keep up with the 600 listing slots of 20 people, very quickly those 20 people would raise their prices, effectively blockading that reseller from unloading the back stock that built up just from their attempt.

    On pc, there are the add-ons that would throw red flags when something begins deviating from historical sales data, so it wouldn’t go unnoticed. It also wouldn’t fly on console, because I’ve seen it attempted and fail on console.

    A public merchant where everyone can list things would definitely be faaaar too much for any cartel to dominate. That cartel might manage to suck up all of an item for a time, but could not possibly move that item back out of their inventory fast enough to keep up.

    Think of it like a street where all the houses are holding a yard sale. One person might buy up all the stuff their neighbors are selling, but that person could not possibly manage to display all of that stuff because their yard is only so big and the overstock must sit in their own garage until some yard space clears up. Their plot would utterly fail.
    Xbox NA
  • Varaug_Gaming
    Varaug_Gaming
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    preevious wrote: »
    I also heard that thet eat kittens, and perform dark ceremonies with human sacrifices.

    ..also, reptilians .. they are reptilians

    you got that mixed up there a little bit my friend

    the reptilian humans are actually cat humans disguised as reptilian humans disguised as regular humans and the only sacrifices they perform at their dark ceremonies are humans
  • CompM4s
    CompM4s
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    The first rule of fight club...don't talk about fight club.
  • Skoomah
    Skoomah
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    Unbelievable...
  • Thorvik_Tyrson
    Thorvik_Tyrson
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    ZonasArch wrote: »
    What you whiny party poopers don't get is that this system is designed to be evil, aggressive, anxiety inducing, to the point where the gold sink is just inevitable. That's how the economy stays so stable, through the magic of gold sinks, and traders are a major one, if not the highest.

    Now... Anyone with half a braincell would be able to argue advantages for both systems, but it does that you need more than half a brain cell to realize that changing systems now would change absolutely nothing to anyone, prices of most thing would plummet, prices of all desirable items would skyrocket, there would be no gold sink and then you, yourself OP, would be the first to come to forums complaining you can't afford anything "and the good old times were so much better".

    Here's my tip for you... Face trading as the PvP for the PvE players. That way you'll be more on the winning side than on the crying losing side.

    This system is great, btw, and it's about to become better with the multi bidding. Baby and medium guilds will not go without traders, because they'll snatch the ones that would potentially stay open, for only 10.001 coins. Any guild can come up with 100k in a week to bid on ten side traders no one wants and snatch the one they bid without competition. This is brilliant.

    Great isnt the word that I would have used to describe the trading system.

    They need to add more traders so that more can participate, and yes, I expect that will add to the overall gold sink that the trading system provides. The Multi bidding will just help to show that more traders are needed to satisfy the demand.
  • Urigall
    Urigall
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    I don't suppose there is a way of finding out how many members there are in each guild. Membership numbers change a lot. If such data were available, they would have to be an average over a suitable time period - say a month.

    Are the data available anywhere? A global figure for all guilds is not what I want to see - I'd like to see the data for each guild.
  • Thorvik_Tyrson
    Thorvik_Tyrson
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    Cryptical wrote: »
    kargen27 wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    Yup. They run the market. That’s why they should have just made a global auction house.

    Yeah cause no way can a group who can supposedly control over 200 locations control just one. The better solution is if a guild wins a trader for the week the trader is theirs whether they disband or not. Sure you might get some trolling for a couple of weeks where they bid on traders then leave them empty but it wouldn't last long. Bidding millions to make zero would get tiresome quick.

    Actually, it’s not about how many storefronts there are. It’s about how many listings you have.

    Let’s say you and your spouse run around farming flowers each day, and you both put up 20 listings each day. That’s 40 listings. A cartel member buys those 40 and can only resell 30, putting the overflow 10 in their inventory. This happens EVERY DAY. Very soon, that cartel member is devoted entirely to trying to push out that growing back stock. They put out gold for if, they need to make back that gold because they are running at a negative cash flow.

    And that’s with a cartel reseller trying to cover just 2 casual alchemy farmers. But the problem scales up rapidly. If you look at the math, the actual situation is each cartel reseller trying to cover about 20 other people listing things.

    Not only can’t a cartel reseller use their 30 listing slots to keep up with the 600 listing slots of 20 people, very quickly those 20 people would raise their prices, effectively blockading that reseller from unloading the back stock that built up just from their attempt.

    On pc, there are the add-ons that would throw red flags when something begins deviating from historical sales data, so it wouldn’t go unnoticed. It also wouldn’t fly on console, because I’ve seen it attempted and fail on console.

    A public merchant where everyone can list things would definitely be faaaar too much for any cartel to dominate. That cartel might manage to suck up all of an item for a time, but could not possibly move that item back out of their inventory fast enough to keep up.

    Think of it like a street where all the houses are holding a yard sale. One person might buy up all the stuff their neighbors are selling, but that person could not possibly manage to display all of that stuff because their yard is only so big and the overstock must sit in their own garage until some yard space clears up. Their plot would utterly fail.

    This helps explain one of the reasons why the average person like me that is looking for reasonably priced MATS cant find anything available to purchase. I think that more traders with more potential items to list would help solve my issue with the system.
  • iCaliban
    iCaliban
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    I have been a member of ETU for several years. This conspiracy doesnt exist, and if it did, the players who are allegedly members are some of the nicest and most helpful in the game. Join a trade guild, its not like there arent plenty of open slots.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    There are a half dozen players in game that are part of a secret cartel that set the prices of guild vendors. If you wish to win a bid and keep your spot, you gotta run it by them first, and get their blessing. But soon, they’ll be able to use their vast resources to fully control the market with an iron grip because they can bid on multiple vendors. Good luck to new players.

    Ever wonder why you can’t win that bid after weeks of trying?

    Ever wonder why there are empty guild vendors?

    What you gonna do ZOS? Secret’s out now! BAM!

    they will not be able to flip traders anymore. that's good.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    Yup. They run the market. That’s why they should have just made a global auction house.

    you dont think they would run that, too? buy up all the good stuff and resell it to you?
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    At least after scalebreaker you wont be able to buy a vendor after the trader reset since it will only make you bid for next week instead so the ghost guild are going to dissapear or at least wont make money at all

    ghost guilds can still bid and win trader. for whatever reason they decide they want to spend the money.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    Just roll over. The game has been out 5 years. They are now billionaires.

    thanks to their 20 ghost guilds buying and selling trader spots at a profit with zos's blessing.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    kargen27 wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    Yup. They run the market. That’s why they should have just made a global auction house.

    Yeah cause no way can a group who can supposedly control over 200 locations control just one. The better solution is if a guild wins a trader for the week the trader is theirs whether they disband or not. Sure you might get some trolling for a couple of weeks where they bid on traders then leave them empty but it wouldn't last long. Bidding millions to make zero would get tiresome quick.

    yes. start simple baby steps. deny them the abiltity to sell that trader. dont mess with the rest of it just yet.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    ZonasArch wrote: »
    What you whiny party poopers don't get is that this system is designed to be evil, aggressive, anxiety inducing, to the point where the gold sink is just inevitable. That's how the economy stays so stable, through the magic of gold sinks, and traders are a major one, if not the highest.

    Now... Anyone with half a braincell would be able to argue advantages for both systems, but it does that you need more than half a brain cell to realize that changing systems now would change absolutely nothing to anyone, prices of most thing would plummet, prices of all desirable items would skyrocket, there would be no gold sink and then you, yourself OP, would be the first to come to forums complaining you can't afford anything "and the good old times were so much better".

    Here's my tip for you... Face trading as the PvP for the PvE players. That way you'll be more on the winning side than on the crying losing side.

    This system is great, btw, and it's about to become better with the multi bidding. Baby and medium guilds will not go without traders, because they'll snatch the ones that would potentially stay open, for only 10.001 coins. Any guild can come up with 100k in a week to bid on ten side traders no one wants and snatch the one they bid without competition. This is brilliant.

    have a gander here for a bit. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/486185/up-coming-multi-bidding-changes/p1
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    Ackwalan wrote: »
    In order for the "secret cartel" to win a bid in their non primary location, they will first have to lose their primary location. They are not much of a cartel if they let that happen.

    hehe well they did in rawk a bit ago. remember? all were displaced by what appeared to be ONE person running all those guilds.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    MojaveHeld wrote: »
    It's incredible how many delusional people there are on these forums. No, there isn't some shady cartel behind the trading guilds in the game. At least not on PC NA. There are a few guilds who have multiple guilds associated with each other, but there are plenty of guilds who don't use that model. I'm part of a trading guild that has been in Rawl'kha for years, and has no sister/child guilds. It's just us. We don't collaborate with other guilds. We have a GM and staff of officers who are proactive about different, creative ways to raise the necessary funds for our trader. There's nothing nefarious about it, just good ol' fashioned hard work and good leadership. It's also an incredibly friendly, helpful guild. So I can tell you first hand, all of the morons claiming that the trade scene is ruled by a nefarious cartel, don't have even the slightest clue what you are talking about, and just made this garbage up. I'm not even a big seller in this guild, often do just enough to meet the very reasonable reqs, with a few great weeks every so often. So for all those people who dislike the current system, coming in here and lying to everyone's faces isn't going to make people think there is merit in your argument, all of those who know better just roll our eyes that you have so few valid arguments on your side that you just make stuff up out of thin air.

    ok so you KNOW this because you are the gm? cuz only the gm (or a relative type person) would really know, imo. if you are NOT the gm, then you really dont have a clue as to what it does behind the scenes and keeps a zipped mouth about it.
  • radiostar
    radiostar
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    The main thing is that you cannot sell unless in a guild. So the obvious solution is to make selling at the traders an option (in addition to zone chat, boards offline etc) ONLY IF YOU ARE NOT A GUILD MEMBER. That would probably work for about 90% of the problems fedback to Z.
    "Billions upon Billions of Stars"
  • D0PAMINE
    D0PAMINE
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    Just roll over. The game has been out 5 years. They are now billionaires.

    I’ll go down swinging and fighting, at least.

    “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

    Lol did you just quote moby *** to describe your struggle against the unfair market in an MMO? :lol:
    I mean quote whoever you want but it won't make your cause any less pointless.

    Some people get a kick out of the trading aspect of the game, so let them enjoy it.

    Edit: ofc the forums censored the book title haha.

    By far my favorite post of the day.
  • D0PAMINE
    D0PAMINE
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    I’ve known people who had to go kiss the ring to get the blessing to open up a trading guild out in the middle of nowhere.

    I’ve known people who were kicked out of their major city spot because they didn’t get along with other members of the cartel.

    Sad but true...

    Guilds originaly started working together when bid spying was a serious issue. I was an officer in Akaviri Imports on PCNA years ago. The same guild that bullied us was bullied as well.
  • ZonasArch
    ZonasArch
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    ZonasArch wrote: »
    What you whiny party poopers don't get is that this system is designed to be evil, aggressive, anxiety inducing, to the point where the gold sink is just inevitable. That's how the economy stays so stable, through the magic of gold sinks, and traders are a major one, if not the highest.

    Now... Anyone with half a braincell would be able to argue advantages for both systems, but it does that you need more than half a brain cell to realize that changing systems now would change absolutely nothing to anyone, prices of most thing would plummet, prices of all desirable items would skyrocket, there would be no gold sink and then you, yourself OP, would be the first to come to forums complaining you can't afford anything "and the good old times were so much better".

    Here's my tip for you... Face trading as the PvP for the PvE players. That way you'll be more on the winning side than on the crying losing side.

    This system is great, btw, and it's about to become better with the multi bidding. Baby and medium guilds will not go without traders, because they'll snatch the ones that would potentially stay open, for only 10.001 coins. Any guild can come up with 100k in a week to bid on ten side traders no one wants and snatch the one they bid without competition. This is brilliant.

    Great isnt the word that I would have used to describe the trading system.

    They need to add more traders so that more can participate, and yes, I expect that will add to the overall gold sink that the trading system provides. The Multi bidding will just help to show that more traders are needed to satisfy the demand.

    Ok, I agree with you that we need more traders. Not prime ones, just more medium ones, or maybe add in a single trader where there's already one, like wayshrines. Dunno.
  • Girl_Number8
    Girl_Number8
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    Kiss the ring :* owo
  • Ackwalan
    Ackwalan
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    Iarao wrote: »
    Ackwalan wrote: »
    In order for the "secret cartel" to win a bid in their non primary location, they will first have to lose their primary location. They are not much of a cartel if they let that happen.

    hehe well they did in rawk a bit ago. remember? all were displaced by what appeared to be ONE person running all those guilds.

    Yup, that was one person with lots of gold and he was able to do it once, then he had nothing after that. That was a one and done prank, not a cartel.
  • JobooAGS
    JobooAGS
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    As an officer of 2 trade guilds, I am loling at the idea of a cartel. Perhaps I should start selling tin foil hats, I'd make a killing.
  • Iarao
    Iarao
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    Skoomah wrote: »
    I’ve known people who had to go kiss the ring to get the blessing to open up a trading guild out in the middle of nowhere.

    I’ve known people who were kicked out of their major city spot because they didn’t get along with other members of the cartel.

    Sad but true...

    2-3 yrs ago someone posted in forums on a thread about traders that he had been in one of those guilds and it used shadow guilds to buy 20 traders a week. number may be a bit off as it is from memory. then they would sell the trader to another guild at a profit. nice way to pad your guild bottom line isnt it? they wont be able to do this anymore after this next big update. now before you say your guild isnt doing that, you dont know unless you are the GM. and if you think hard you can figure out just how a guild can control 20 shadow guilds.
  • Amira
    Amira
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    It's a mess but I don't see a gah solving it
  • therift
    therift
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    .
    Iarao wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    I’ve known people who had to go kiss the ring to get the blessing to open up a trading guild out in the middle of nowhere.

    I’ve known people who were kicked out of their major city spot because they didn’t get along with other members of the cartel.

    Sad but true...

    2-3 yrs ago someone posted in forums on a thread about traders that he had been in one of those guilds and it used shadow guilds to buy 20 traders a week. number may be a bit off as it is from memory. then they would sell the trader to another guild at a profit. nice way to pad your guild bottom line isnt it? they wont be able to do this anymore after this next big update. now before you say your guild isnt doing that, you dont know unless you are the GM. and if you think hard you can figure out just how a guild can control 20 shadow guilds.


    So a guild that lost a ten million gold bid suddenly has 12 million to pay a 'ghost guild'?
  • ZonasArch
    ZonasArch
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    therift wrote: »
    .
    Iarao wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    I’ve known people who had to go kiss the ring to get the blessing to open up a trading guild out in the middle of nowhere.

    I’ve known people who were kicked out of their major city spot because they didn’t get along with other members of the cartel.

    Sad but true...

    2-3 yrs ago someone posted in forums on a thread about traders that he had been in one of those guilds and it used shadow guilds to buy 20 traders a week. number may be a bit off as it is from memory. then they would sell the trader to another guild at a profit. nice way to pad your guild bottom line isnt it? they wont be able to do this anymore after this next big update. now before you say your guild isnt doing that, you dont know unless you are the GM. and if you think hard you can figure out just how a guild can control 20 shadow guilds.


    So a guild that lost a ten million gold bid suddenly has 12 million to pay a 'ghost guild'?

    Can't argue with this kind of people... They may also believe Earth is flat, moon landings were fake and lizard people run the world. Tin foil hat express to crazy land, sometimes. They'll see conspiracies everywhere and never show any proof. They believe what they want, not facts. Logic isn't a word known to this kind of conspiracy lover individual. Just let them be.

    This one you're arguing, in particular, went around all day yesterday necroing trader and bids related posts arguing dead posts. Excessively dedicated. One could argue this kind of obsession is borderline sick. So again... Just let them be. :/
  • kargen27
    kargen27
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    Cryptical wrote: »
    kargen27 wrote: »
    Skoomah wrote: »
    Yup. They run the market. That’s why they should have just made a global auction house.

    Yeah cause no way can a group who can supposedly control over 200 locations control just one. The better solution is if a guild wins a trader for the week the trader is theirs whether they disband or not. Sure you might get some trolling for a couple of weeks where they bid on traders then leave them empty but it wouldn't last long. Bidding millions to make zero would get tiresome quick.

    Actually, it’s not about how many storefronts there are. It’s about how many listings you have.

    Let’s say you and your spouse run around farming flowers each day, and you both put up 20 listings each day. That’s 40 listings. A cartel member buys those 40 and can only resell 30, putting the overflow 10 in their inventory. This happens EVERY DAY. Very soon, that cartel member is devoted entirely to trying to push out that growing back stock. They put out gold for if, they need to make back that gold because they are running at a negative cash flow.

    And that’s with a cartel reseller trying to cover just 2 casual alchemy farmers. But the problem scales up rapidly. If you look at the math, the actual situation is each cartel reseller trying to cover about 20 other people listing things.

    Not only can’t a cartel reseller use their 30 listing slots to keep up with the 600 listing slots of 20 people, very quickly those 20 people would raise their prices, effectively blockading that reseller from unloading the back stock that built up just from their attempt.

    On pc, there are the add-ons that would throw red flags when something begins deviating from historical sales data, so it wouldn’t go unnoticed. It also wouldn’t fly on console, because I’ve seen it attempted and fail on console.

    A public merchant where everyone can list things would definitely be faaaar too much for any cartel to dominate. That cartel might manage to suck up all of an item for a time, but could not possibly move that item back out of their inventory fast enough to keep up.

    Think of it like a street where all the houses are holding a yard sale. One person might buy up all the stuff their neighbors are selling, but that person could not possibly manage to display all of that stuff because their yard is only so big and the overstock must sit in their own garage until some yard space clears up. Their plot would utterly fail.

    I agree it would be hard to control the market with common items. With a single market place common items would be priced right around vendor price. Rare items would be very easy to control causing their prices to skyrocket. Both those results are bad.
    And according to those complaining of the cartel they have multiple guilds. That means multiple guild banks. I would guess they also have multiple accounts. I have a 2nd account that I use to store motifs until I think the prices are high enough to sell them. I'm sure people really serious about trading invested in a few extra accounts. Storage would not be a problem.

    Toss in crafting bags and no matter how many Perfect Roe hit the market one person could store them in one slot.
    and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."
This discussion has been closed.