Is Tel Var trading allowed?

Sauce_B055 · October 2021

Seeing how ZOS is fine with currency exchange in the form of crowns:gold, would they be alright with tel var:gold as well?
It would go like this: Buyer gives gold to broker, seller lets buyer kill them in IC, broker gives gold to seller.
Someone said it might count as "boosting" and thus be bannable, so I'd really appreciate an official statement before trying anything.

OutLaw_Nynx · October 2021

Why not just have someone buy the item you want..?

bmnoble · October 2021

Why would you go through that round about method?

You could just check the guild traders the item you want to trade for might already be listed.

Just ask in chat for someone with Tel var, if they are willing to sell, to buy you a specific thing off one of the Tel var vendors and then buy the item off them.

Its less common than asking someone to buy you stuff with AP for gold, since its much easier to turn Tel var into gold, with prismatic glyphs and alchemy satchels and the lower population in Imperial city means less possible people to buy from.

Amottica · October 2021

We already have te var trading for gold. People buy Hakeijo runes then sell them and have done this since IC was released. It is no different than selling anything else obtained in game.

Kwoung · October 2021

If it is on the Tel Var vendor and worth having, you can generally find it on a guild trader.

FluffWit · October 2021

I don't think this would be considered boosting since it's not giving you an advantage like, say, me letting you kill me to get you alliance points and a better shot at Empreror is boosting.

The reason not to do it is it's very risky. If a 3rd party- even an npc, jumps into your fight they'll walk away with a chunk of the Tel Var.

wolfie1.0. · October 2021

FluffWit wrote: »

I don't think this would be considered boosting since it's not giving you an advantage like, say, me letting you kill me to get you alliance points and a better shot at Empreror is boosting.

The reason not to do it is it's very risky. If a 3rd party- even an npc, jumps into your fight they'll walk away with a chunk of the Tel Var.

The part that could be considered boosting is the part where the 4x tel var generation bonus kicks in.

VaranisArano · October 2021

Most of the items for sale for Tel Var are tradeable. Have the player buy the item. Then trade it for gold.

If you mean, "Can me and my buddy meet up in IC and kill each other with a high Tel Var modifier going," then that's no different from killing your friend at a Cyrodiil resource for the extra AP. So yes, that's boosting. ZOS has banned people for bossting before.

Here's why it's boosting. (Assuming my math is correct...

Consider Player A (10k TV, x4) meets Player B (10k TV, x4).
Player A kills Player B. Player A gets 5k x4 TV.

Now Player A (30k TV, x4) meets Player B (5k TV, x3). Player B kills Player A. Player B gets 15k x3 TV.

Now Player A (15k TV, x4) meets Player B (45k TV, x4). Player A kills Player B. Player A gets 22.5k x4 TV.

Once more, Player A (90k TV, x4) meets Player B (22.5k TV, x4). What do you know, Player B kills Player A. Player B gets 45k TV x4.

And so after only four times of meeting and killing each other, Player A has 45k TV (30k in pure profit). Player B now has a hefty 180k TV (170k in pure profit).

If they continue to meet in their prearranged spot and don't get sniped by some enemy player who just landed the windfall of their decade, then they can keep generating Tel Var. Even if they lose half of it to an enemy player, that's still a huge profit.

Wait a minute, enemy players can do this naturally, right? Like it doesn't take a conspiracy for two players to kill each other in a pattern, right? So what you describe here is not boosting!

Nah, no, it's totally boosting. Especially when you know you are doing it to generate Tel Var.

Besides, Storage Chests, one of the few items that aren't tradeable for Tel Var, cost about 100-200k a pop. By the time you've generated enough back-and-forth kills to pay for them all with Tel Var, I'd say ZOS has more than enough evidence to say that you two weren't "accidentally" doing it.

gariondavey · October 2021

I don't think your multiplier applies to stones taken from other players. I could be wrong, but obviously this opens up ridiculous situations like you posted, and I haven't heard of that. The concept has appeared in my mind over the years, though.

kringled_1 · October 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

I don't think your multiplier applies to stones taken from other players. I could be wrong, but obviously this opens up ridiculous situations like you posted, and I haven't heard of that. The concept has appeared in my mind over the years, though.

That's been my impression as well, but I haven't tested it stringently.

VaranisArano · October 2021

gariondavey wrote: »

I don't think your multiplier applies to stones taken from other players. I could be wrong, but obviously this opens up ridiculous situations like you posted, and I haven't heard of that. The concept has appeared in my mind over the years, though.

I might be wrong about about multipliers applying to player kills. It's been a long time since I killed another player in Imperial City. Normally I just do my quests and head out. Plus I've never killed someone when I knew how much TV they had, so IDK.

That being said, if the multipliers don't count for player kills, then trading still really isn't a great idea. You can only "trade" half of your Tel Var by dying.

There's no point to trading Tel Var in small amounts because all those items are tradeable on their own. You would just ask them to buy the hakeijo or whatever and then trade it to you. No risk or killing needed. Which leaves big ticket items like storage chests.

How would you realistically trade 100k+ Tel Var by killing the other player? That's a ton of risk. I mean, maybe you run down to your friend's Sewer base, they pop out with 200k Tel Var, you kill them and then use a Sigil of Imperial Retreat...but holy cow, my palms are sweaty just thinking about that! Any player wandering by at the wrong moment, and that's a ton of Tel Var gone.

Lots of risk for storage chests, which you can get from Crafting Writs too.

tim77 · October 2021

na, multiplier doesn't count for other players, just NPC.

my guess it's for the monster set shoulders, which is the only thing i can think of right now you cant buy in stores.

The killer always takes 50%, so if the dead one had 100 TV, the killer get 50,
if he had 10,000 the killer gets 5,000, no matter how much he had on himself at that point.
So when you wanna "buy" 100k, the seller has to bring 200k or you do it on multiple steps, like he is bringing a friend who can rezz to spawn right away.
Also i wouldnt trust people too much. They can tell their friends about the order, and after the deal a group of nightblades jumps at you immediately, knowing exactly the amount of telvar you have on you.

On one side i think it should be ok, since it's ingame currency vs. ingame currency, but the killing part is not exactly a service like gifting or carrying. So on the other side i wouldnt be too surprised if the needed kill could be the stopper of it.

If you think of ZOS' point of view, when doing it one person, nobody would care since its not really breaking the rules. But when they officially allow it, they must be fine with thousands doing it all the time (in theory) which then is not meant any more as intended, maybe breaks the gameplay when a group of tanks just deliver a guarded order through IC lol. Also considering all the hate reports when people got caught by chance by other players on a "delivery" or a planned guild "revenche" right after the deal.

belial5221_ESO · October 2021

You'd be safer buying for gold in trader(use ttc site for best prices),or getting someone you trust to buy the item for telvar then sell directly to you or send cod.Sometimes game will trigger you exploiting and ban you if you do things like that.

virtus753 · October 2021

VaranisArano wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

I don't think your multiplier applies to stones taken from other players. I could be wrong, but obviously this opens up ridiculous situations like you posted, and I haven't heard of that. The concept has appeared in my mind over the years, though.

I might be wrong about about multipliers applying to player kills. It's been a long time since I killed another player in Imperial City. Normally I just do my quests and head out. Plus I've never killed someone when I knew how much TV they had, so IDK.

That being said, if the multipliers don't count for player kills, then trading still really isn't a great idea. You can only "trade" half of your Tel Var by dying.

There's no point to trading Tel Var in small amounts because all those items are tradeable on their own. You would just ask them to buy the hakeijo or whatever and then trade it to you. No risk or killing needed. Which leaves big ticket items like storage chests.

How would you realistically trade 100k+ Tel Var by killing the other player? That's a ton of risk. I mean, maybe you run down to your friend's Sewer base, they pop out with 200k Tel Var, you kill them and then use a Sigil of Imperial Retreat...but holy cow, my palms are sweaty just thinking about that! Any player wandering by at the wrong moment, and that's a ton of Tel Var gone.

Lots of risk for storage chests, which you can get from Crafting Writs too.

Regardless of multiplier, feeding TV to other players like that can also be considered non-competition/subversion of fair gameplay, so I’d still err on the side of treating it as boosting or otherwise potentially a violation of ToS, as you described above.

tim77 · October 2021

virtus753 wrote: »

Regardless of multiplier, feeding TV to other players like that can also be considered non-competition/subversion of fair gameplay, so I’d still err on the side of treating it as boosting or otherwise potentially a violation of ToS, as you described above.

just for interesting... how does [TV vs Gold] differs from [Crowns vs Gold] or [Carryrun vs Gold], which are both fine with the ToS (apart from that one kill)? They are all ingame-currencies or ingame-"services".
(but i agee, that kill should be verified with zos first as it could be the show stopper)

virtus753 · October 2021

tim77 wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Regardless of multiplier, feeding TV to other players like that can also be considered non-competition/subversion of fair gameplay, so I’d still err on the side of treating it as boosting or otherwise potentially a violation of ToS, as you described above.

just for interesting... how does [TV vs Gold] differs from [Crowns vs Gold] or [Carryrun vs Gold], which are both fine with the ToS (apart from that one kill)? They are all ingame-currencies or ingame-"services".
(but i agee, that kill should be verified with zos first as it could be the show stopper)

Because you don’t need to PvP to earn crowns or gold or carries. The premise of PvP is that two or more players fight each other. Standing there and deliberately not fighting back (or fighting back with no real effort) so that someone else can loot your currency is intentionally subverting the premise of PvP. Many games have rules in their ToS or CoC that forbid this, some more explicitly than others.

Carries in PvE for gold have been specifically oked by ZOS. The proposed behavior for trading Tel Var by offering oneself without a fair fight has not. If ZOS says that’s ok, then it’s ok. Until and unless they do, I would err on the side of not assuming it’s ok, especially as they have come out against similar activities for AP gains.

This is of course different from buying a non-bound item with Tel Var and selling it to another player. That’s part of the design of the game. I’m speaking specifically of agreeing to a set up in which someone with TV intentionally loses those TV to another player to effect a trade that circumvents the design of PvP in ESO.

code65536 · October 2021

I'm 99.9% sure that it's fine.

First, as already noted, multipliers are not taken into account for player kills. So there's no way to exploit or game the system to generate Tel-Var.

Second, the difference between this and boosting in Cyrodiil is that the latter affects everyone else in the campaign. Specifically, the AP leaderboard for each faction is used to determine who gets crowned emp if that faction takes the ring keeps. And this is the main problem with AP boosting: it often involved people who are trying to emp and trying to get past other people who are playing fairly. With Tel-Var trading, the only people affected are the two people involved in the deal.

That said, Tel-Var trading is generally a pretty dumb idea, since it's easier to just sell the item in question, as the vast majority of Tel-Var items are unbound. (There are some exceptions, such as the polymorphs that can drop from the random coffers or the housing chests.) And because it's risky.

(And on the topic of whether or not people are breaking ToS when they refuse to fight back, that is a ridiculous notion. ZOS doesn't go around banning the multitudes of people who advertise "come duel me--I won't fight back--so we can both get our daily endeavor done" in zone chat. Again, the main reason this is a problem in Cyrodiil is because of the leaderboard.)