Well new things are always popular. Just wait a few days and it will go down. Its not like its a rare drop...

Also if TTC would be half as good as ppl are making it everyone in this game would be rich.

Dont trust TTC too much. Its not perfect. I sold many motifs for 100k+ or even 200k+ when TTC was showing them listed for 20k. And not because i got all other listed pages. Its just there was only 1 page on website of those motifs... Ppl werent farming it and price went up as supply went down. After a week it get back to normal as ppl started farming it again.
Its a tool to help u, not a tool to make decision instead of u.

And if this is rly happening then how much money can u make by simply farming it and selling for less?

Anyway have fun with event.

A couple of things:
TTC updates are not instant. First someone who posted/viewed items in store needs to relodui/logout/quit for listing to be even uploaded to TTC, then it take some short time for website to update with new listings. If it was posted in trading hub, chances are someone found it without TTC. I had things bought from me seconds after I posted.

Another thing, some people just post bait and cancel instantly, so item was never really there.

Some people still just don't understand the basic concepts of market economics, location, and most importantly, the value of time. There seems to be this false impression of players sitting with TTC feeding them constantly with every cheap price and the items just magically appearing in their inbox and gold automatically deducted. In reality, flipping efficiently takes a lot of research and physical time and effort to look up deals and also manually go around to different traders all over Tamriel.

Umbro100 wrote: »

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.

I was wondering about that actually because I believe it is possible, with some programs. For small things, try posting a gold jewelery plating cheap, like 20-30% less then the lowest price. It is bought almost immediately, like in a min or so. Or a weapon that goes for a high price normaly .Or a motif. I have done it a few times when I needed money fast. Hard to believe someone is sitting on ttc checking hundreds of items every minute just to see when one comes up cheap.So there must be a programme that does it for them. For longer runs, there are the Murkmire furnishing plans that I know were manipulated hard, because a year ago they all were like a few hundred K , some even half a mil. Now they are all 15 -20k top. So the group that was buying them all and reselling very high is no longer playing the game, or they are doing the same with some other plans, motifs etc. Regular players have no trading programs that let them now the minute something comes up, they have to rely on ttc and usually come up empty by the time they get to the trader. I see no solution for this, just saying I believe manipulation does exist and in some cases are very strong.

or.... the price dropped cause there is no longer market demand ?

Plenty of “price fixing” goes on, that’s true.

The good news is, if it’s for sale in a Guild Store, that means there’s an infinite supply of that thing in the game. That means you can find it yourself, or from someone else, if you look around.

My advice is simple - use every tool at your disposal and pay the lowest price you can. There are literally hundreds of guilds and many of them, especially the guilds that are out in the sticks or away from the main hubs, have many items for sale at reasonable prices. The price fixers tend to rely on trading hotspots to shift goods at high prices.

Hope that helps!

Saieden wrote: »

Some people still just don't understand the basic concepts of market economics, location, and most importantly, the value of time. There seems to be this false impression of players sitting with TTC feeding them constantly with every cheap price and the items just magically appearing in their inbox and gold automatically deducted. In reality, flipping efficiently takes a lot of research and physical time and effort to look up deals and also manually go around to different traders all over Tamriel.

But this doesn't really contribute anything to the debate of "is it actually desirable for the health of the game overall"? Frankly, I don't care how much time one person spends on X if it messes up the game for everyone else. This isn't Atlas Shrugged: the MMO.

Lysette wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Saieden wrote: »

Some people still just don't understand the basic concepts of market economics, location, and most importantly, the value of time. There seems to be this false impression of players sitting with TTC feeding them constantly with every cheap price and the items just magically appearing in their inbox and gold automatically deducted. In reality, flipping efficiently takes a lot of research and physical time and effort to look up deals and also manually go around to different traders all over Tamriel.

But this doesn't really contribute anything to the debate of "is it actually desirable for the health of the game overall"? Frankly, I don't care how much time one person spends on X if it messes up the game for everyone else. This isn't Atlas Shrugged: the MMO.

So you deem a game just to be healthy, if you can get what you want at the price you want?- If ZOS would mess with it, they would loose those players, for whom trading is their game - and if those are leaving, good luck to get what you want at the price you want, because you are not aware of what kind of service this kind of people do for the community by running those guilds and building a large enough guild able to pay for good guild traders in a convenient location, that you can quickly find what you want, eventually not at the price you want it, but it is most likely available. Let ZOS mess with these people and it might not be available anymore, at no price at all - and you will have to acquire it by yourself - what you can do now as well - why not try out how that is, if you cannot rely on the services of those people anymore - don't buy anything and acquire all by yourself - then you might find out, that this is what would be unhealthy, driving traders away.

I have contributed to these debates so many times that there's little point in me covering the same ground again (I'm sure we're all a bit weary of these conversations, but they do surface again and again for a reason).

But fundamentally, the problem is the guild store system itself, coupled with TTC. ZOS created that problem when they designed the game and it plain does not work (on PC). If people didn't want an auction house, TTC would not exist.

Since TTC DOES exist, all guild stores do to the game is throw up absurd hurdles and wastes of time to buying anything, with literally none of the advantages that guild stores were expected to introduce. Most notably, price competition by being able to shop in different regions does not happen. Price following happens instead. And selling is gated behind the artificial requirement to join a guild, reducing supply.

I know they will not revisit it. But as an MMO trading system, it is insane.

BlossomDead wrote: »

To be honest I try to do everything myself. When I'm too lazy to farm something specifically I then start checking at least 5-10 guild traders before I buy anything. If it is too expensive I'm back to farming myself or enjoying the game in a different way.

Having said that, I would like some of the drops to be adjusted to better suit solo farming all you need. Maybe self-sufficiency in games should be a thing, you wouldn't then need the whole economy system.

Yes I agree with this. The aggravation comes when you want to be self sufficient but the game makes it very difficult NOT to want to interact with the trading system because requirements are so high that you'd have to be retired or unemployed to do everything on your own.

It's particularly acute with housing, where furnishing plans seem to be designed with such increasingly onerous requirements (see the thread on sandstone for the new Fargrave furnishings) that they look more like deliberate attempts to push you to the crown store to pay real money for stuff than serious gameplay items. It's just not fun.

The good news is that it's much more difficult, or at least annoying, to do this with the current system, over something like a game-wide trading house. The traders are all spread out, and the guilds on those traders refresh every week, amongst other things. At least this way people have a chance to break the monopoly, or in the very least lessen monopolizing's impact.

Gaeliannas wrote: »

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.

Okay but you're only providing anecdotal proof, again. I'd also wonder how these people were managing to buy every single mat for months considering how many traders there are and the fact that that would cost them probably as much as they'd make. If they were driving the price up then at some point they'd start losing money simply because they themselves would have to start paying more and more and more for everything they were buying. That's not sustainable and certainly not for months.

Your small-scale proof also isn't proof. People don't seem to understand how TTC works. Not everything listed on TTC is listed by people who use pricing addons. If someone visits a guild store while TTC is running, it'll scan the listings and send the data to the site. That means someone who priced something at x20 times its average doesn't even have to know what the average is, they're just listing it at what they think it will or want it to sell at. People always act like high prices are an indicator of price gouging or whatever, when...no, a lot of people probably just don't use trading addons because they aren't that serious about selling stuff.

As for people you know with that much gold, I'm skeptical on that. Without proof people can claim whatever they want to back up their arguments. Beyond that, knowing a handful of people who likely are in trade guilds is not indicative of the average player. A friend of mine has millions of gold too, but it's because he sells Crowns. Just because I know him doesn't mean there are a bunch of other players with that kind of gold, though.

Umbro100 wrote: »

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.

I was wondering about that actually because I believe it is possible, with some programs. For small things, try posting a gold jewelery plating cheap, like 20-30% less then the lowest price. It is bought almost immediately, like in a min or so. Or a weapon that goes for a high price normaly .Or a motif. I have done it a few times when I needed money fast. Hard to believe someone is sitting on ttc checking hundreds of items every minute just to see when one comes up cheap.So there must be a programme that does it for them. For longer runs, there are the Murkmire furnishing plans that I know were manipulated hard, because a year ago they all were like a few hundred K , some even half a mil. Now they are all 15 -20k top. So the group that was buying them all and reselling very high is no longer playing the game, or they are doing the same with some other plans, motifs etc. Regular players have no trading programs that let them now the minute something comes up, they have to rely on ttc and usually come up empty by the time they get to the trader. I see no solution for this, just saying I believe manipulation does exist and in some cases are very strong.

Er...no, no is using a program to search through TTC. The reason items that are listed low when they normally go for a high price sell super quickly is because there are thousands and thousands of people playing the game at any given time. There is literally no trading program constantly going through TTC's listings, since I'm pretty sure that would be illegal to manipulate a site like that, and also because it completely disregards the simple fact that there are slews of people playing the game at any time.

Your Murkmire example isn't proof. The prices on things naturally go down over time so long as the supply is higher than the demand. Things ALWAYS sell for more when they first come out, especially Furnishing plans and Motifs. The price on those tends to go down over time as more and more people get them, but the rarer or harder to get ones will stay at a higher price longer.

There's also no "trading program" in-game that would automatically tell someone where items are listed the second they're up. Addons can only do what the API allows, and no addon allows for that sort of communication. In fact, a few years ago ZOS throttled how much information guild stores and trading addons could access at any given time because the addons were requesting too much information too often and bogging down performance. There's no way they would allow for an addon to do what you claim, and if they were using a third-party program for that, it would more than likely be a violation of the ToS and something you could get banned for doing.

Northwold wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Saieden wrote: »

Some people still just don't understand the basic concepts of market economics, location, and most importantly, the value of time. There seems to be this false impression of players sitting with TTC feeding them constantly with every cheap price and the items just magically appearing in their inbox and gold automatically deducted. In reality, flipping efficiently takes a lot of research and physical time and effort to look up deals and also manually go around to different traders all over Tamriel.

But this doesn't really contribute anything to the debate of "is it actually desirable for the health of the game overall"? Frankly, I don't care how much time one person spends on X if it messes up the game for everyone else. This isn't Atlas Shrugged: the MMO.

So you deem a game just to be healthy, if you can get what you want at the price you want?- If ZOS would mess with it, they would loose those players, for whom trading is their game - and if those are leaving, good luck to get what you want at the price you want, because you are not aware of what kind of service this kind of people do for the community by running those guilds and building a large enough guild able to pay for good guild traders in a convenient location, that you can quickly find what you want, eventually not at the price you want it, but it is most likely available. Let ZOS mess with these people and it might not be available anymore, at no price at all - and you will have to acquire it by yourself - what you can do now as well - why not try out how that is, if you cannot rely on the services of those people anymore - don't buy anything and acquire all by yourself - then you might find out, that this is what would be unhealthy, driving traders away.

I have contributed to these debates so many times that there's little point in me covering the same ground again (I'm sure we're all a bit weary of these conversations, but they do surface again and again for a reason).

But fundamentally, the problem is the guild store system itself, coupled with TTC. ZOS created that problem when they designed the game and it plain does not work (on PC). If people didn't want an auction house, TTC would not exist.

Since TTC DOES exist, all guild stores do to the game is throw up absurd hurdles and wastes of time to buying anything, with literally none of the advantages that guild stores were expected to introduce. Most notably, price competition by being able to shop in different regions does not happen. Price following happens instead. And selling is gated behind the artificial requirement to join a guild, reducing supply.

I know they will not revisit it. But as an MMO trading system, it is insane.

As annoying as guild traders are, TTC is not this magic button everyone seems to think it is. It's not universally used, it doesn't update in real time, it requires a third-party exe that collects information to send to the site. That exe has to be running when someone goes to a trader or else it won't grab anything. And even after someone running the exe does come by, it won't update after that time until someone else running it comes along and accesses the store.

This means it might be hours or even days between guild stores being updated. And just to get a sense of this, people can easily go look up a handful of items they want or need and see just how many listings come up. Certain things like mats there will probably be dozens of listings for, but numerous other items like Furnishing Plans, Motifs, Weapons/Armor, and so on will generally have only a handful of pages of listings. That doesn't mean only those ones are available, it means those are the only stores that have been scanned and have those items up until that search.

If TTC worked the way people always make it out to be, every item would have hundreds of listings because every listing from every guild would be there.

Xebov wrote: »

tomstock wrote: »

Is it possible to revamp how guild traders work to reduce a single guild's ability to buy up all of a certain item, only to sell at 100,000g, creating a monopoly on the item. This has happened with past events, but I noticed it instantly with the Jester's Festival. As I was looking to buy the memento fragments, referencing Tamriel Trade Center, I could see a single player or a group of players buying up every fair priced item and then instantly posting it for 100,000g upwards to 400,000g. This amounts to price fixing and really takes the fun away from the game.

So to make this a bit more clear.
You use a website that relies on players uploading data from guild traders they came accross that has no live data or any other data source available. In this situation you see a number of players that have a number of items you seek at a higher price. That also likely upload this data to make it visible.
From that situation you deduct that players bought all the cheap stuff and formed a monopoly.
You dont know how recent or accurate or complete the data you saw is. You also dont know if the cheap items where bought by players that need them, like you. You also dont know how the players offering the items got them.
You ignore all of these possibilities because "bad players forming a monopoly so you have to pay more" fits your stance best?

What they said does happen, during events the flippers or the wannabe flippers come out of the woodwork and anything having to do with event writs or achievements goes through the roof, that is undeniable.

That said, you are also correct, there are many things happening at once that cause a player to not be able to always buy the lowest priced item, pretty much all of which have been spelled out in this thread.

1. Flippers flipping good deals, never gonna stop.
2. Market cornering, an advanced flipping method done by those who can afford to risk the gold.
3. Purchases of opportunity, someone just spotted a good deal and bought it, who doesn't normally flip.
4. Someone simply bought it, like you (or whomever), they wanted that item and searched for the best deals.
5. Any of the above done by those those in the same guild as the trader, as they can be notified instantly upon a item getting listed and will always beat you to it since any banker works for them.
6. Someone did a bait & switch by listing it low, then pulled and relisted it at a higher price.
7. The TTC price is borked, and the item doesn't exist anywhere at that price because the market changed.

agelonestar wrote: »

Plenty of “price fixing” goes on, that’s true.

The good news is, if it’s for sale in a Guild Store, that means there’s an infinite supply of that thing in the game. That means you can find it yourself, or from someone else, if you look around.

My advice is simple - use every tool at your disposal and pay the lowest price you can. There are literally hundreds of guilds and many of them, especially the guilds that are out in the sticks or away from the main hubs, have many items for sale at reasonable prices. The price fixers tend to rely on trading hotspots to shift goods at high prices.

Hope that helps!

Like event style pages that either no longer drop, or drop very rarely? There's an infinite supply of them? Then why aren't there a lot more of them for sale? The guild stores should be flush with them, and the prices should be really low because there's so many of them.