That is some dead wrong information. Nobody, in the history of ever, can see the previous winning bid of a trader. What you CAN see is your own guild's history of won/lost bids for a certain timeframe if you have bidding permissions in that guild. Can be seen in the guild bank history and sales history after Sunday flip.

As far as knowing what to bid, sadly, trial and error. You're not really gonna find too many GMs willing to tell you what kind of bid might beat their own since this is competitive.

Bid somewhere between 1 gold and all your money.

Okay, so having now researched and spoken to a few trade guild leaders, this is an awful system. Guilds that make 18mil in taxes are still running at a loss. People are pumping in tons of their own gold too.

Zos, you ever thinking of changing this terrible system?

NOTE to ZOS: this is not a "necro" post because whether Guild Store price inflation exists, and why it does, can only be observed -- and discussed -- over a relatively long period of time.

Skwor wrote: »

arun_rajputb16_ESO wrote: »

Okay, so having now researched and spoken to a few trade guild leaders, this is an awful system. Guilds that make 18mil in taxes are still running at a loss. People are pumping in tons of their own gold too.

Zos, you ever thinking of changing this terrible system?

I think it is a brilliant system, seriously. It was intended as a gold sink and it does that marvelously well. I also like the whole set up for trading in general it limits anyone's ability to corner rares in the market.

This system has prevented runaway inflation give it some credit.

First, what is this obsession with "gold sinks" about? In my experience, those who talk about that as a desirable feature of a game are not the ones who do not endeavor to accumulate much gold. Rather, they are usually the players who promote higher prices for everything they sell, which means that the in-game bank and bags of their characters are the gold sinks, no?

Second, the market design in TESO does not prevent any player(s) from cornering the market on any particular item(s). I have witnessed players do that successfully. Whether they maintained control over the price depended upon the particular item, and whether anyone was willing and able to eventually break their control. Cornering the market, at least for a while, is most often done when an item is scarce, i.e., time-consuming or difficult to obtain, such as Nirncrux or Perfect Roe. I have seen players endeavor to do that with the herb Columbine while the Pseudorandom Number Generator was producing a severely low number of the herb relative to the demand for it. Finally, ZOS had to intervene and implement measures to make Columbine more reasonably available.

Third, since your last remark was posted, runaway inflation has indeed come to the Guild Stores accessed via Guild Traders!! In fact, I believe it began a couple of months prior to your post, with the price of Kuta rune-stones in particular.

The highest-priced Crafting Style Motifs are usually ones which are obtained as a reward (or loot) for successfully completing a Trial. Nonetheless, Crafting Style Motifs for just about every style since the Morrowind Chapter was introduced have doubled or more than doubled in price during the past 18 months. For each style, there are 14 "chapters" to acquire and use to learn how to craft its equipment. For each Motif, there is also a very rare Book that contains all 14 chapters, and the few of those available have tripled in price. Even chapters for styles for which there is less demand sell for 10,000 Gold Pieces and up to 50,000+ for at least one of the chapters -- for which the players who sell them seem to have a tacit practice of offering that chapter for as much as they believe that they can, eventually, get for it.

ZOS also profits from Guild Store inflation when they offer a Crafting Style Motif -- that can be obtained by playing the game -- for sale in the Crown Store. Any player who can afford to buy the Crowns with Real Money is seriously tempted to use them to obtain the motif, considering the time and effort that would be required to obtain the Gold Pieces to buy the motif chapters through playing the game. Every player who focuses upon Crafting and Merchandizing is not suited to participate in Trials, whether also in 4-Player Dungeons.

Be that as it may, in my observation, ZOS does not sell a Crafting Style Motif in the Crown Store until the Chapter or DLC (in which it was introduced into the game) has been available for at least a year. There are a few Crafting Style Motifs which are only available in the Crown Store, and they are not always available indefinitely.

The same runaway inflation has also happened to the prices of most materials which are required to craft Furnishings -- in particular -- and some Equipment. For example, Jewelry platings are now at least two or three times the price they were six months ago. The respective guild stores of the four prominent Trading Guilds of which I am a member have been flooded with blue and purple Sealed Master Jewelry Writs for sale, as a result. No one wants to pay so much more for the platings to craft the pieces, instead of selling the Writs.

In TESO, at least, greed is the fundamental motivation for inflation. Granted, sometimes there is a shortage of an item relative to the demand for it, which may naturally result in an increase in its price. However, quite evidently, almost every player consistently chooses to offer their items for sale at a price that is higher than the most recent sale price reported by the add-on Master Merchant.

Consequently, the fact that large quantities of a particular item are available through a large number of Guild Traders does not, in my observation, often lead to lower prices. The one exception that I've observed is that the prices of reagents (especially the 11 herbs) for crafting potions ordinarily does follow supply and demand. Of course, if a player wants to "dump" any specific item, they can use the Master Merchant price as a guide to how much to lower their offering price.

Players who want to buy an item can use the Tamriel Trade Centre add-on to find some of the guild stores (if any) in which it is offered. All a seller must do is have TTC installed, for it to report the item and its price to the TTC server. Regardless, there is no guarantee that an item retrieved by a TTC search will be available for sale when a player's character accesses the Guild Store through its Guild Trader. Sometimes all the buyer using TTC does is follow the trail of stores which another player took to buy the item where it was available.

During seven years of playing the game, a gradual but inexorable Inflation in prices over time has always been a reality in TESO stores. But since the release of Greymoor, such inflation began to take off like a rocket. And it clearly appears to be contrived by players who initiate it for each particular item.

Such greed is facilitated by add-ons such as Master Merchant and Tamriel Trade Centre, which can be used to learn the prices at which any given item is being offered for sale. All it takes is one or two Guilds which have Traders in good locations to flood the market with enough pieces of a higher-priced item to inspire every other player who sells that item to increase their price to match. Soon, many of them are offering it for sale at even higher prices than that.

By the way, it seems to me that, whatever the reason, Arkadius Trade Tools does not have the influence that MM and TTC have in this respect. However, I have not used that add-on over a long period of time.

Regardless, I am NOT saying that either Master Merchant and/or Tamriel Trade Centre are to blame for the runaway inflation. Without reliable sources of information as to the price at which an item is being offered for sale, and the stores in which it is offered for sale, there cannot be a market which has a rational basis for selling and purchasing finished items and raw materials.

Originally, TESO players could only buy items from the Guild Store of each guild of which they were a member, and could only sell items to other members of their guilds. Do I have to tell you how selling only to fellow guild-members affects prices? If you are not basically giving the item away, then you will face criticism from the freeloaders who think that they should be able to obtain what they need and want for little more than their time and effort to find it in the store of a guild of which they are a member. They do not enjoy spending any time and effort to find and get resources from the Tamriel world, and/or spend the time and effort to acquire the ability to craft items with them -- yet, they are reluctant to reward players who do that.

So there must be a way for those who obtain and produce items which other players need and want to find customers for their wares in a market with a relatively large number of potential buyers, with whom they are usually not acquainted. There must be a corresponding way for players who want to obtain items from others who have them to find those items, and compensate those who offer them for their time and effort spent to obtain them from the "world" in which this commerce occurs.

What this boils down to is whether the current TESO design by ZOS creates a free and open market in which items can be sold and bought at literally agreeable prices. IMHO, the current design is lacking insofar as there is no way for a buyer to negotiate a lower price with a Trader.

Whether they have been successful, I have seen Chat advertising by players who offer items (usually furnishings) available for sale via a homestead which they own. Another alternative is for some player characters to be peddlers who advertise their wares for character-to-character trade on a Chat channel -- such as the Trade Channel in World of Warcraft. There are plenty of WoW players who buy and sell goods by trading via the Trade Channel instead of offering them for sale in the so-called "auction house".

Neither an auction house in which there are no actual auctions, nor guild traders with whom a player cannot haggle for a lower price, are the model for a truly free market. Whether a "free market" can exist in a fantasy MMORPG is the matter to be addressed. Then again, "free market capitalism" generally does not exist in the USA, in which most goods and services are sold by monopolies. Just try to negotiate a lower price for a pizza at Pizza Hut or one of its corporate competitors.