Guild members;Would you rather pay a set weekly guild fee than be asked for donations all the time?

wishlist14 · November 2021

I would rather have a tiered donation system rather than buy raffle tickets or participate in auctions or donations.
It seems every trading guild I join already has their top tier solid sellers team of officers etc and no newcomer will ever make the cut or team rather.
You join a new trading guild do your best to make big sales, buy raffle tickets etc only to realise the officers are really a tight clique of trusted friends. Youre just a rookie they humour so as to get gold out of you but you will never be one of them, one if the team.

So id rather just pay a reasonable fee to help support the trader without all the [snip]. It seems the officers win the raffles every week. Noone will ever be told how many tickets they are buying etc so youre slways going in blind. They announce the winners but theres nothing to show it was a fair draw...just the same names winning most weeks. No fun in it. Just feel lied to, stupid. Id rather pay a set fee.

Maybe they could announce what people are donating so members can get a clue as to the amounts needed to keep a trader. I only join mid to small traders

[edited for profanity bypass]

theyancey · November 2021

I pay a 10K weekly fee that can be offset by sales or raffle purchases. Works for me

Raideen · November 2021

I'd rather that guild traders not have to ask anything outside of the tax we pay on sold goods. That gold should be enough to cover all guild costs. I know its not, but that is because of a broken system.

VaranisArano · November 2021

On PC, so I join guilds where I can make requirements purely by selling. Then I sell stuff and make requirements.

I don't do raffles or fees (though the weekly fee is far more common on Console, so YMMV). So request for donations just go in one ear and out the other.

About Guild Officers:
I've been an officer in two guilds, a trading guild and a PVP guild. Both times, I'd been an active participant for about a year before the officer team looked at adding me. In the trading guild, I was a consistently high seller, occasional donated extras to the auction, and I was reasonably active in guild chat by helping other players with questions. In the PVP guild, I was an active raider.

Why a year? Why an active participant for a year?

It's not bias against newcomers. It's that a lot of players come to guilds all excited and then they find that it's not a great fit, or their playtime changes and they can't keep it up, or they - like many other players - don't consistently play ESO. Trading Guilds have a ton of turnover.

Guilds want consistent, dedicated players for officers because successful guilds provide a co sist experience for their long term players.They don't want bungee bosses.

That all being said, I have some major qualms about the transparency of their raffle. The guilds I've been in were transparent about their raffle tickets sold and usually had a sheet available for members to view offsite in their discord, guild site, or wherever. It's not necessary a red flag that the same names are winning (the same people tend to buy large volumes of tickets), or that the officers keep winning (guild officers tend to be active traders, thus rich, and thus able to buy lots of tickets.) However, the business of blind tickets makes me go 0.o

Personally, I'd be looking for a different guild where I could comfortably play for a year or more. You don't seem happy with the current one, and even if you did become an officer what good would it do for you or the guild?

DreamyLu · November 2021

I would rather have a "real" trading system properly integrated into the game content, that doesn't need to rely on guilds, bidding on a vendor and addons. It was one of my biggest surprises when I started with ESO and it remains part of the main changes I would like to see in this game.

As is now, it's normal that trading guilds need support from each members, due to the "costs" requested to put in place and maintain a trading system. Different guilds have different ways to secure that gold income, but unless the guild owner has unlimited income of gold, participation from guildies is necessary. Guilds have different ways to do that, and it's with each of us to find the one suiting us better.

Danikat · November 2021

I'm in a social guild with a trader which asks for donations and sells raffle tickets but neither is required. I sometimes donate gold because most of the stuff I sell isn't worth much so the tax won't contribute much to the cost of the trader and I appreciate having it so when I've got extra gold from elsewhere I'll donate some. But it's always been my choice to do that, I've never been told I have to donate and if I don't do it for a while no one ever says anything about it.

I never buy raffle tickets. I trust my guild leadership to do it honestly but the raffle is shared between multiple guilds and there's only about 5-7 prizes each time so I think I'd have to buy a huge number of tickets to have a chance of winning, which means it's not really worth doing for me. (Also a lot of the time I don't want the prizes anyway.)

If I was ever in a guild where I didn't trust the leader and officers to be doing things honestly for any reason or made demands I was unhappy with I'd leave. There's probably hundreds of guilds on your server, including ones very similar to the one you're in so there's no reason to stay if you're not happy with them.

etchedpixels · November 2021

The game needs more very large gold sinks (on PC anyway) and since they keep not giving us new houses to burn millions of gold on, and you can't use huge piles of gold to buy mounts and other shinies in a way that takes the gold out of the game for good the trader costs have to stay silly.

If I join a serious trading guild then I'm 1/500th of the revenue generation for the trading slot. If you don't have a fee model you'll get a guild where a bunch of big traders basically carry everyone.

Amottica · November 2021

I don’t pay any guild fee and haven’t been directly asked for donations.

My guess is one can find a trading guild designed as they like it if they are willing to look. If not they can start one and lead it as they see fit.

rexagamemnon · November 2021

I think if ZOS was able to implement a guild feature for guild masters where it requires a weekly or monthly or daily fee to access a guild bank once a guild member has been granted permission would be good for guilds. Also the ability to grant individual members regardless of guild rank to access the guild bank would be great to

AJones43865 · November 2021

wishlist14 wrote: »

I would rather have a tiered donation system rather than buy raffle tickets or participate in auctions or donations.
It seems every trading guild I join already has their top tier solid sellers team of officers etc and no newcomer will ever make the cut or team rather.
You join a new trading guild do your best to make big sales, buy raffle tickets etc only to realise the officers are really a tight clique of trusted friends. Youre just a rookie they humour so as to get gold out of you but you will never be one of them, one if the team.

So id rather just pay a reasonable fee to help support the trader without all the [snip]. It seems the officers win the raffles every week. Noone will ever be told how many tickets they are buying etc so youre slways going in blind. They announce the winners but theres nothing to show it was a fair draw...just the same names winning most weeks. No fun in it. Just feel lied to, stupid. Id rather pay a set fee.

Maybe they could announce what people are donating so members can get a clue as to the amounts needed to keep a trader. I only join mid to small traders

I fully agree. Thankfully there are at least a few guildmasters out there that feel the same way. You might have to keep looking for new trading guilds until you find one that fits you better. It might also help to be totally up front about what you want to do to maintain your guild status. Like me, you just want to pay your taxes then play what you want when you want. It is super expensive to maintain a trader in premium locations, so taxes should be 20-30k per guild member and include decent sales requirements every week. The problem is so many players do not meet these minimum requirements and the guild leaders end up scrambling to get the funds together every week to keep the trader.

[edited to remove quote]

Fennwitty · November 2021

I am all in favor of transparency.

There's no way to prove one way or another for any given guild, but I'll say the incentive to 'rig' raffle awards is almost nonexistent.

Any serious allegation of favoritism will effectively tank donations via raffles from the entire guild forever -- so the risk is super high.

The more relevant point, which is fair, is that officers tend to be the ones donating the most gold and items. This includes raffles.

I'm not a guild officer in any trading guild. I'm still 'small potatoes' but I've been here a while and do all right. When I started I'd give a couple thousand gold as the minimums, and that tended to result in 3-5 'raffle tickets' in a given guild per week.

Years later, I now often donate tens of thousands of gold at a time to trade guilds. So if I put in gold for 2,000 raffle tickets, I will of course have a much higher chance than the newer members who only purchased 2 raffle tickets.

And in almost no scenario will the prizes I get from a raffle compensate the amount of gold or item dontations I chose to put in. For people donating tens or hundreds of thousands of gold, they won't get that much back in prizes. Those players could have bought whatever the prize was directly on the market and still had stuff left over, so there's not much incentive at all to 'rig' raffles.

Now there have been times though when I won raffles with only a few tickets and that was a nice windfall.

Are there ways to have more prizes perhaps, and tier rewards to ensure members with less money get prizes more often? Perhaps there is.

But the basic mechanic of using random number generators and volume of tickets per person means it's automatically weighted to the biggest spenders getting winning tickets, with nothing unfair about it.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · November 2021

I was in a 150 - 200 player social guild that would lease a trader when we had the funds. The player had a choice of a minimum weekly donation or to purchase raffle tickets. I don't care much about raffles so I made a donation each week and would toss in more if I had had decent sales that week. I think the option to donate or buy raffle tickets to fund guild activities was a good way to go as those who did not trade had the option of vying for prizes which were typically things like gold crafting regents, rare plans, etc.

FluffWit · November 2021

I've been in every type over the years. Set fees vs donations, both have their advantages I guess. The thing with the set fee ones is they're still doing the 50/50s and auctions. So they're constantly spamming me to enter the 50/50 and donate to the auction.

If I like the guild I can be a pretty good donor.

I won't have anything to do with 50/50s. I don't buy lottery tickets in real life, I ain't buying em in a video game.

Nisekev · November 2021

I would rather see guild trader system go to Oblivion. I just wanna sell my stuff to other players without spamming in zone chat, why they had to overcomplicate it?

SilverBride · November 2021

The trade guild I'm in has gone through several changes the past few months. It initially required 1g in sales per week, but increased to 10k in sales every 2 weeks. This caused a lot of players who sold very little to leave because they were mainly in the guild for the social aspect.

Then the GMs left abruptly and leadership fell onto the officers without any prior warning. They are doing a great job but this did bring about more changes. Then a member who used to donate a lot to the guild left so requirements were increased to make up for this new deficit.

The new requirements are to sell 100k a week, or donate 10k a week, or buy a certain number of raffle tickets, or donate a certain amount for the guild auction or spend a certain amount at the guild auction. But it's still not enough and members are encouraged to do more.

I had stopped buying raffle tickets because the same member was winning frequently, but started again after the GMs addressed the issue. But I am going to stop again because I don't feel the burden of supporting the guild is being equally distributed among the members.

I sell way more than what is required. This doesn't mean the burden should fall to me and other good sellers to make up a deficit while others are getting by doing the bare minimum. It is my opinion that members should all have the same sales requirement first and foremost, and everything else such as donations and raffle tickets would just be extras that members could choose to participate in to go the extra mile.

It's a trade guild. Members should be required to sell.

spartaxoxo · November 2021

I am on console and am glad that there is generally not a sell requirement. Instead there's weekly donations (in which I am two that require weekly donations) and raffles/auctions to make up the deficit. I much prefer this system as I think it's more equal way to create wealth generation across the playerbase, and also allows for more different types of players to gain wealth as different activities and types of players can more readily find a good trader.

wishlist14 · November 2021

theyancey wrote: »

I pay a 10K weekly fee that can be offset by sales or raffle purchases. Works for me

Okay that sounds reasonable

wishlist14 · November 2021

rexagamemnon wrote: »

I think if ZOS was able to implement a guild feature for guild masters where it requires a weekly or monthly or daily fee to access a guild bank once a guild member has been granted permission would be good for guilds. Also the ability to grant individual members regardless of guild rank to access the guild bank would be great to

I love this idea 😊💕

wishlist14 · November 2021

AJones43865 wrote: »

wishlist14 wrote: »

I would rather have a tiered donation system rather than buy raffle tickets or participate in auctions or donations.
It seems every trading guild I join already has their top tier solid sellers team of officers etc and no newcomer will ever make the cut or team rather.
You join a new trading guild do your best to make big sales, buy raffle tickets etc only to realise the officers are really a tight clique of trusted friends. Youre just a rookie they humour so as to get gold out of you but you will never be one of them, one if the team.

So id rather just pay a reasonable fee to help support the trader without all the [snip]. It seems the officers win the raffles every week. Noone will ever be told how many tickets they are buying etc so youre slways going in blind. They announce the winners but theres nothing to show it was a fair draw...just the same names winning most weeks. No fun in it. Just feel lied to, stupid. Id rather pay a set fee.

Maybe they could announce what people are donating so members can get a clue as to the amounts needed to keep a trader. I only join mid to small traders

I fully agree. Thankfully there are at least a few guildmasters out there that feel the same way. You might have to keep looking for new trading guilds until you find one that fits you better. It might also help to be totally up front about what you want to do to maintain your guild status. Like me, you just want to pay your taxes then play what you want when you want. It is super expensive to maintain a trader in premium locations, so taxes should be 20-30k per guild member and include decent sales requirements every week. The problem is so many players do not meet these minimum requirements and the guild leaders end up scrambling to get the funds together every week to keep the trader.

[edited to remove quote]

Thank you i will be more careful next time I look for a trading guild and i will ask some questions. Your reply was very helpful.

newtinmpls · November 2021

I've been in one guild that had "sell enough to make X in guild fees, or make it up with donations."

I am in one guild that makes an effort to keep a decent trading spot, asks for donations and does raffles, but no other fees.

I'm in three other guilds; one is mostly about PvP, only rarely has traders, but I do a brisk business selling intricate items and mats; another only intermittently has a trader and I sell a lot during those weeks.

One last one that I've never seen hire a trader, technically has store, and the things that sell best there are lockpicks and occasional small amounts of mats.

Find a guild that works how you like

Mayrael · November 2021

theyancey wrote: »

I pay a 10K weekly fee that can be offset by sales or raffle purchases. Works for me

This is the same in at least one of my guilds. The other has voluntary dues, but there I also contribute the same amount and that's it.

LadyDestiny · November 2021

wishlist14 wrote: »

I would rather have a tiered donation system rather than buy raffle tickets or participate in auctions or donations.
It seems every trading guild I join already has their top tier solid sellers team of officers etc and no newcomer will ever make the cut or team rather.
You join a new trading guild do your best to make big sales, buy raffle tickets etc only to realise the officers are really a tight clique of trusted friends. Youre just a rookie they humour so as to get gold out of you but you will never be one of them, one if the team.

So id rather just pay a reasonable fee to help support the trader without all the [snip]. It seems the officers win the raffles every week. Noone will ever be told how many tickets they are buying etc so youre slways going in blind. They announce the winners but theres nothing to show it was a fair draw...just the same names winning most weeks. No fun in it. Just feel lied to, stupid. Id rather pay a set fee.

Maybe they could announce what people are donating so members can get a clue as to the amounts needed to keep a trader. I only join mid to small traders

[edited for profanity bypass]

Pretty much agree here. I never give money for raffles. I've already been through two guilds where the leader just up and took all the money and left. One of those was the top trading guild on console some time back. Also yes, the group of people running guilds that somehow manage to get raffle wins for their friends does happen. Not all, but it does happen.

I'm all for supporting the guild, even free trading guilds because the money has to come from somewhere. As long as they can maintain a somewhat decent location, I will pay weekly just like I do a with a fee paid guild.