Thoughts on Guild Traders and Economics

Avoranti · April 2021

Thoughts on guild traders and economics?

My thoughts are that it doesn’t matter. As long as ZoS allows Bots to run resource nodes (ps4na) and players to launder the gold via traders (looking at you players selling a potato for 1Mil gold) honest guilds will never get a fair shake and the economy will always be controlled by those running the bots.

Avoranti · April 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

And if you think guild owners are making oodles of gold... most guilds struggle to just pay the guild trader fees, most guild owners I know are putting their personal gold from their playing INTO the guild (thus losing gold).

I don’t know what platform you are on but I know on PS4 NA there are a few guilds that make their gold from bot farming then launder that gold through a guild trader (probably to hide its trace). You’ll know these guilds because they will have 1 item (usually a potato) for 1M gold. I’ve seen solid guilds lose traders to fake guilds, or placeholders who bid the spot then sell the it to another real guild. This is why we see random, unheard of guilds taking spots from actual real guilds. I don’t know why these guilds and tactics are allowed in game but it’s cheating in my opinion.

Just recently I was searching a guild trader in Deshaan and they literally only had 8 items in the entire trader. All were like 1 potato 1M, 1 banana, 1M... so a real guild lost their spot to this kind of nonsense.

tmbrinks · April 2021

Avoranti wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

And if you think guild owners are making oodles of gold... most guilds struggle to just pay the guild trader fees, most guild owners I know are putting their personal gold from their playing INTO the guild (thus losing gold).

I don’t know what platform you are on but I know on PS4 NA there are a few guilds that make their gold from bot farming then launder that gold through a guild trader (probably to hide its trace). You’ll know these guilds because they will have 1 item (usually a potato) for 1M gold. I’ve seen solid guilds lose traders to fake guilds, or placeholders who bid the spot then sell the it to another real guild. This is why we see random, unheard of guilds taking spots from actual real guilds. I don’t know why these guilds and tactics are allowed in game but it’s cheating in my opinion.

Just recently I was searching a guild trader in Deshaan and they literally only had 8 items in the entire trader. All were like 1 potato 1M, 1 banana, 1M... so a real guild lost their spot to this kind of nonsense.

I never denied that there aren't some bad apples. Hence the use of the word "most" in my description. And I still stand by that statement. We had a "fake" person make 5 guilds and won the bid on all 5 traders in Raw'lka a few years back on PC/NA, then trolled people by only listing certain things for way over their actual price.

Some people just like to watch the world burn. But most are honest people, and most guild masters of regular, consistent trading guilds, lose money on the endeavor.

zaria · April 2021

Lysette wrote: »

I can't see a general inflationary tendency - there is just normal volatility following supply and demand - just let the market regulate itself for as long as there is no hyper-inflation - and so far there is no sign of it.

This said, there are still some remaining effects from the "reforge your character" event - it will even itself out though, just give it time.

This, stuff related to leveling like xp potions and master writs went trough the roof. Master writs was on an downward trend before cp changes was known.
Material prices, mostly related to the huge changes in the game and yes the recreation makes it much easier to make new gear.

Iarao · April 2021

Kurat wrote: »

You'll probably get bashed for these suggestions because people like to sit on their gold piles.
I don't even care about trading anymore because theres nothing to spend gold on. I only buy pots for raiding and occasional motif and my gold still keeps increasing by just playing the game.

you can buy crowns for gold via gifting. is there nothing you want in the store?

tmbrinks · April 2021

Iarao wrote: »

Kurat wrote: »

You'll probably get bashed for these suggestions because people like to sit on their gold piles.
I don't even care about trading anymore because theres nothing to spend gold on. I only buy pots for raiding and occasional motif and my gold still keeps increasing by just playing the game.

you can buy crowns for gold via gifting. is there nothing you want in the store?

but gold gifting/trading for crown items does nothing for the problem proposed, as it only moved gold around, and none of it is removed from the game.

DragonRacer · April 2021

Avoranti wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

And if you think guild owners are making oodles of gold... most guilds struggle to just pay the guild trader fees, most guild owners I know are putting their personal gold from their playing INTO the guild (thus losing gold).

I don’t know what platform you are on but I know on PS4 NA there are a few guilds that make their gold from bot farming then launder that gold through a guild trader (probably to hide its trace). You’ll know these guilds because they will have 1 item (usually a potato) for 1M gold. I’ve seen solid guilds lose traders to fake guilds, or placeholders who bid the spot then sell the it to another real guild. This is why we see random, unheard of guilds taking spots from actual real guilds. I don’t know why these guilds and tactics are allowed in game but it’s cheating in my opinion.

Just recently I was searching a guild trader in Deshaan and they literally only had 8 items in the entire trader. All were like 1 potato 1M, 1 banana, 1M... so a real guild lost their spot to this kind of nonsense.

Correction to the bolded part: thankfully, the update about 2 years ago that introduced multi-bidding actually destroyed the ability for ghost guilds to be dissolved to sell the spot to a real guild. I will be ever grateful that plague is gone from our server because it was a horrendous issue.

That, however, doesn't resolve the current issue that is now growing, which is this bickering fighting amongst two big alliances of guilds wanting to own the capitals and subcapitals. Case in point being what one would have called a ghost guild sitting on the top Vivec trader this week. Zero listings at trader flip last week, now a handful of token listings by one person. Same for the one in Mournhold that is very specifically aimed by name at one of those giant alliances. These are, in effect, still ghost guilds - they just can't be dissolved and sold to the highest bidder like the old days. Now they're basically just glorified you-know-what blocking guilds as the two giant alliances fight and bicker and show the whole server that they are small children with egos far too tied up in a video game trading system. And entirely too much money to personally burn in these shenanigans.

All it does is hurt every other trading guild in the game as they shove each other around and make these senseless, useless guilds with their "clever" little names and their "clever" little alt account names to peck at each other.

Sadly, I would expect absolutely no less nor any better from PS4 NA. It's all the same people and mentality as the old ghost guild days, after all. There is no fixing "character" that ZOS can make in a future update.

Nastassiya · April 2021

Just do what Escape from Tarkov does, base the listing tax on a percentage of how much each item is listed for. If people want to list something at a crazy high price, then it will cost more. If the item sells, refund part of the listing back to the person. This will keep a checks and balance on market manipulation, except if people are listing and de-listing prices.

TCC needs to resolve their system to prevent people from being able to list and delist items. It is not hard to remove all listings from a user if the system observes this action. It would effectively be a punishment and stop this behavior.

As for a global auction house, while I really like that system, I do prefer the population benefit that having traders across different areas. What I would prefer to see is regional auction houses instead of multiple traders. Guilds would still need to buy limited access slots and this would promote competition from different regional guilds and promote lower prices. Regional locations would still provide a gold sink and the top 6 bidding guilds would be listed sellers.

Kwoung · April 2021

Nastassiya wrote: »

Just do what Escape from Tarkov does, base the listing tax on a percentage of how much each item is listed for. If people want to list something at a crazy high price, then it will cost more. If the item sells, refund part of the listing back to the person. This will keep a checks and balance on market manipulation, except if people are listing and de-listing prices.

TCC needs to resolve their system to prevent people from being able to list and delist items. It is not hard to remove all listings from a user if the system observes this action. It would effectively be a punishment and stop this behavior.

As for a global auction house, while I really like that system, I do prefer the population benefit that having traders across different areas. What I would prefer to see is regional auction houses instead of multiple traders. Guilds would still need to buy limited access slots and this would promote competition from different regional guilds and promote lower prices. Regional locations would still provide a gold sink and the top 6 bidding guilds would be listed sellers.

While the game already does have a non-refundable listing fee of 1%, that is really chump change to many players. 10k on a 1mil listing to drive a price up, well if I pull it and relist what was a 100k item for 800k, I still come out *way* ahead after eating the 10k. So yeah, I agree that something like a 10% listing fee that refunds 9% of it *if* the item sells, would help keep prices in line.

HOWEVER... it would also hurt the folks who simply want to sell a few items here and there massively. Especially those in guilds that do not always have a trader. You list a 1 mil item worth 1mil and your guild lost it's trader, now the chance of it selling plummets and you are probably going to lose 100k... all while not trying to abuse the system and simply make a sale to get ahead a bit. Many players would not be able to even afford the listing fee either... I know many players that got lucky and have looted a high ticket item like an Aetherial Dust, but only have 10k gold to their name, so they would either have to sell it for well under it's actual worth, or simply sit on it until they had 20-30k to afford listing it (and possibly lose).

All things considered, the current system as is, is most likely the best solution other than making all items bound upon trading them, so they can only change hands once. But that would require a huge re-coding effort and double the size of the database storing this info at the very least, so probably won't happen.