NGL-- I think there should be a special place in heck for flippers, where every day they get a sales ad in their mail that shows all the things they want and need on sale for bargain prices, but when they go to the store to buy the items someone shoves them aside just as they're reaching for an item, scoops up every single one of the items on sale, buys them, and then promptly sets up a kiosk outside the store to offer each of the sale items for 1000 times the original sale prices.

Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »

For some players, the economy is their main/end game. Just an observation, not a judgement.

Maybe try posting WTB requests in zone chat for what you think is a reasonable price?

edit: typo

Pretty much this. I also doubt a single guild is buying up all items. Maybe a few players and some may happen to be in the same guild.

Also, if the fragments are new items, yes they will be hot and yes those posted for lower amounts will sell fast, not always to flippers.

I'd like to see proof of this cornering people like to claim keeps happening. Not once has a single person posted anything other than hearsay and anecdotal evidence.

With the number of guild traders and the fact that each one can have 500 members selling 30 things each, it's next to impossible for anyone to try and corner any market. And to do it regularly? Do people realize just how much gold that would actually take to do?

The prices on new items ALWAYS starts out high, because people are impatient and want the New Thing™ right away. It's like this with every new thing that gets released. They always start high and then tend to crash near the end of the event when a bunch of people have them and they flood the market.

There are a lot of people that only play this game to get rich on fake money.

radiostar wrote: »

Whatever you buy from the Traders needs to be bound. (I mean, they did it for trial gear bc of the profits.) But we know that won't happen, LOL

Not a good idea at all. When I was looking for the last couple of recipes so my cook would have every recipe in the game I had friends and guild members helping me when they stumbled across one. When a friend was looking for a certain weapon I found it and it even had the trait he wanted. Instead of risking him porting there to get it I bought it for him.

Also has happened plenty of times I've got in a hurry and bought the wrong motif. Having to eat that would be harsh given what some of the more rare motifs go for.

And there is an entire population in the game that treats trading as their end game. Not a small population either. They easily spend as much time getting good at trading as progression guilds do at earning trifecta runs in trials. Why ruin the game for so many and wreck the economy to solve a problem that doesn't exist?

Edited to add sometimes a player might need 10 of some item but can only find it being sold in lots of 50. Why should that player not be allowed to resell the 40 they do not need?

Buying low-selling high has been happening practically for ever, and if it's rare items that someone has gone and searched for manually in far away traders I don't mind so much, but when it's an orchestrated move to deplete the market of something with high demand, like mundane runes for eg., in order to later get a monopoly and eventually lead to setting higher prices, then it's really annoying. But like others have said, some players only play this aspect of the game, and have the funds to mess with certain items that are 'in vogue'. The only way for the rest of the players to deal with this is to be self-sufficient, though for event-related limited items it's not always easy to be self-sufficient if someone doesn't have time to farm. If you are on PCNA, OP, I have a couple of shards for the memento I can send your way.

Another tip is to try and find your item during certain hours. Our more distinguished players tend to be more business minded and they wake up around 5am normally. They storm the traders looking to buy anything they can make 1g reselling while waiting for their morning coffee to brew. They also tend to go to bed early and not stay up all night so maybe try then. I've found this to actually work so often that it's just what I do now and things that are always listed for 100k I can find much less during these "off hours". I find that 5am EST is when things listed for reasonable prices go poof not PST.

Also, TTC is terrible most the time at best. Many items will list as having no data even though there is plenty. If you use an addon to filter items at kiosks take a look at all the items listed as having no data. I've found some gems that way including a bow from Direfrost Keep (Ice Furnace) that someone ways sitting on from before one Tamriel. Back then you could trade dungeon sets like you can now with overland ones.

And as others have mentioned there are some players that only do this all day everyday and its literally their end-game. Some people just like to accumulate things (items gold) and that's never going to change unfortunately. Persistence is key and the beauty behind a system where anyone can find certain items make monopolies on those items not possible. It doesn't stop many from trying though I see it every time a new DLC drops with treasure maps. Some enterprising individual who hasn't taken economics gives it a whirl and then loses a lot of gold.

Lady_Galadhiel wrote: »

I will just add, TTC page is not always correct.
You may see some item as "posted 5 minutes ago" on the TTC website but in reality it has been posted already 2 hours ago, or even days ago.
Best example is when I look for specific furniture pieces, TTC lists some as recently posted for sale "posted 1 hour ago" while once I got to buy the item I saw on the guild trader that the item was listed already for several days.
This why I say, a good portion of luck together with being quick is needed to gather wanted items at a good price.

Wouldn't that depend on when the list is updated by the trading guild? TTC only updates on the info it has on hand, as I understand it?

Lysette wrote: »

There is a very simple cure for it - don't buy it - but if you buy it, then you are the problem, not the monopolist. He will stop, if it doesn't sell, but it requires your courage to withstand the urge to buy it.

Been “not buying” a PS5 for a while now…

Lady_Galadhiel wrote: »

I will just add, TTC page is not always correct.
You may see some item as "posted 5 minutes ago" on the TTC website but in reality it has been posted already 2 hours ago, or even days ago.
Best example is when I look for specific furniture pieces, TTC lists some as recently posted for sale "posted 1 hour ago" while once I got to buy the item I saw on the guild trader that the item was listed already for several days.
This why I say, a good portion of luck together with being quick is needed to gather wanted items at a good price.

@Lady_Galadhiel , say I listed an item 10 days ago but today I used the "scan store" option with the TTC Client open in the background and either zoned/reloadedui etc then that item would show on TTC Website as a few minutes ago.

Every time somebody who is playing with the TTC Client open sees one of my items that will also refresh the time that item was last seen at.

The time on the website isn't when posted but instead when last seen

Arunei wrote: »

tomstock wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

I'd like to see proof of this cornering people like to claim keeps happening. Not once has a single person posted anything other than hearsay and anecdotal evidence.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that this is happening. Rather than assuming those bringing up the issue are making things up, maybe ZOS should look into the issue and how to address it.

This is a weak argument to cover the fact that again, no proof had ever actually been put forward. If someone is going to make a claim, the onus is on them to prove that claim, it's not on everyone else to just accept it as fact. If it's happening so much and is so obvious that anyone can see it, why has literally no one provided the proof of it?

The reason ZOS hasn't done anything and people "assume" this is a made up problem is because it IS made up. There is no way a small group of people is going to corner any market, as that would cost too much gold and take too much time going to every single guild trader every minute of every hour of every day to ensure they're buying everything of their chosen stock that gets listed. It's not only not feasible, it's not possible.

Actually it happens all the time, but is in no way against the rules. This isn't real life, there are no "laws" in game against cornering a market. A couple years ago I know a group that spent months buying up every perfect roe and XP potion mat they could find, which drove the price up incredibly, and they made an absolute killing selling all levels of Ambrosia's during the event. No one could compete, because they purchased all their mats when the price was 1/8th the current rate when the event dropped. It was actually quite shrewd of them and very well planned.

If you want smaller scale proof, go look up almost any mid-high tier motif, you will find at least one of the pages going for 10-20x the price of all the other pages (like a helm one), and all the helm ones are all being sold by the same guy across his 3-4 traders. You can still get a deal at normal price if you camp TTC or get lucky, but it is common enough and enough folks have so much gold, they don't care how much they have to pay, so it works.

As for too much gold, I know numerous folks that easily have over 500 million gold, one had 800 million last we chatted, and pretty sure he has made 100 million more since. Funny thing is, I don't even know that many people in game, so can only imagine the amount of gold floating around out there.