King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you just quest, you'll be like my AD character, who finished her alliance zones with roughly 300k gold in the bank, IIRC. So, practically broke when you hit CP 160 and start looking at upgrading to gold materials.

Funnily enough, that's actually not a bad chunk of gold on Playstation for getting gear.

Let's say an newbie wanted to use fully crafted gear for their gear. Let's also say they have a guildmate that will craft it for them and make it purple for free, but they will need to provide the silk and gold mats. As that is a pretty typical occurrence on Playstation, at least in all the guilds I have been in.

So the newbie decides they want to use Mother's Sorrow and Order's Wrath or Julianos. That's also a fairly common setup I've seen requested for beginning magicka damage dealers in zone/guild chat, at least when it comes to the people who were vocal about asking straight away.

So....

Robe = 150 silk
Shoes = 130 silk
Bracers= 130 silk
Guards = 140 silk
Belt = 130 silk

Hat = 130 silk
Shoulders = 130 silk

940 total silk, typically someone will just buy 5 stacks. At 8,000 coins per stack that is 40k.

I see some Mother's Sorrow weapons on the guild trader for 25k right now, and some jewelry pieces for 25k. That's 125k.

So now their bill is 165k.

They can get Rosin for around 3k each. They need 16. That's another 48k. That's 213k all together to have full purple crafted gear with gold weapons, which is a fairly standard order.

If the guildmate doesn't offer the upgrades to purple....

I see a full stack of hemming for 2900 coins. That's 14.5 coins per hemming. That's 203 coins for the hemming.
I see a full stack of Embroider for 5000 coins. That's 25 coins per embroidery. That's 525 coins for the embroidery
I see a full stack of Elegant Lining for 9400 coins. That's 47 coins per lining. That's 1316 coins for the lining.

You can see why people often offer this free in guilds. That's a lot of time wasted doing math for very little coins LOL. Some people also just ask for a flat 2-3k.

That's an extra 2044 coin for the upgrade mats to purple. So that's around 215k coins altogether for a fully equipped character.

In other words, if they fairly typical help from a guild mate, they would have enough coin to get everything they needed to start playing their toon in beginner vet dungeons just from questing (assuming your 300k ish coin value is correct about the quest rewards) including gold weapons.

Gold Jewelry on the other hand is a different matter. Many people on here consider it too expensive to be worth it unless you're an endgame player.

Nice! Yeah, even on PC, my first guild would make purple gear free for lower level players, or for CP 160 if you provided the mats.

And while gold upgrade mats might be more expensive, it's not necessarily a bad thing. The first gear I golded was my early Whitestrake's Retribution set, which I promptly outgrew as I got better at tanking. I still have those pieces for nostalgia's sake...

Anyways, I digress. It's also really easy to defray the costs of crafted gear by farming one's own materials or doing crafting writs, which goes to show that it's pretty accessible even to newer players without much gold. My AD character didn't farm much. My main crafted her own gear as she leveled up (we'll not talk about the white cotton on the white snow of Eastmarch) and so was pretty well prepared for heading into dungeons when I decided to try it out.

It may be my biases showing here, but it seems to me that players who experience the most problems are the ones who refuse to engage in ESO's support systems, be it helpful guilds or spending their limited time doing activities like crafting and farming their own materials. I understand there are players who never ever want to join guilds, but they are cutting themselves off from a valuable source of help. Trying to be self-sufficient is possible, but naturally harder.

I don't really believe that joining guilds is the problem as most players that's established in the game usually always have 5 guild slots, even when leaving one, they immediately join another. I have two trading guilds on PC, a housing guild, a guild my friend asked me to join to assist newer players, and my own which is a pvp guild.

When it comes to selling materials, I don't sell mine, I'm more of the material buyer as I'm into player housing, have a guild hall of my own for my guild mates, and I make PvP builds to give away to players especially within my guild, I test these builds first hand too to make sure each build is viable.

PvPing gold acquisition can be fairly decent if you're buying and selling gold jewelry of worth... Or if you happen to "luckily" acquire a piece of gear with selling while the vast majority of pieces of gear you collect aren't worth selling on the traders as the worth of the item is so minuscule. Let alone how long items actually sit on the traders. For example the gold mara's balm ring I placed on the guild trader at the standard ttc rate didn't even sell, it just went through the whole 30 days and i got it back in the mail.

I'm definitely not new to buying and selling, it's just that ESOs trading system is extremely underwhelming compared to most...

I'm gonna be real blunt here.

Players who only buy materials instead of farming them are going to feel broke.
Players who spend way more than they make are going to feel broke.

It's basic economics.

Thing is, that's most players. Its been a while since ZOS gave us the stats, but several years ago, the 90th percentile of PC players had a million gold. Why?

Its nothing nefarious. It's just that most players have limited time. So they log in, think "shoot, I need pots for my dungeon/trial/PVP night," rush off to the nearest trader, look at the price of anything with cornflower in it, go 0.0, and whine about how they're broke.

Well, they spend more gold than they make. What did they expect?

Its nothing nefarious. Just Supply and Demand. There's a lot of demand for end game potions and not a lot of players running rings around the Hollow City picking flowers.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just picking flowers to sell to others.)


Or consider Housing. How many Housing people do you know who regularly farm their own materials?

Last time I tracked my Craglorn farming, I'd get roughly 10-15 heartwood and mundane runes an hour. I'm sure some Housing folks are like, "Yeah, that's one piece of furniture. I'm not spending an hour farming for one Furnishing." But then they go to the nearest trader, go 0.0 at the price, and whine "I'm broke!"

Supply and Demand. With relatively few people farming Housing mats to sell, I sold those 10-15 mats for a ton of gold, which let me buy the stuff I didn't want to farm for, like certain obnoxious motifs. Also, uh, think about Demand. The New Life Fesitval and the week that ZOS drops a giant house as an event reward are NOT the time to buy up a bunch of housing mats unless you want to pay through the nose.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just harvesting housing mats to sell to others.)


If players feel broke, it is a gameplay problem they can solve as early as they leave the tutorial zone by selling desirable materials to other players.

And if new players feel broke, it's also a gameplay problem solved by not spending as much gold, whether by asking guildmates for help with starter armor or farming their own materials for expensive investments like Housing and end game potions.

There are gameplay solutions for players who feel broke, just not instant gratification.

VaranisArano wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you just quest, you'll be like my AD character, who finished her alliance zones with roughly 300k gold in the bank, IIRC. So, practically broke when you hit CP 160 and start looking at upgrading to gold materials.

Funnily enough, that's actually not a bad chunk of gold on Playstation for getting gear.

Let's say an newbie wanted to use fully crafted gear for their gear. Let's also say they have a guildmate that will craft it for them and make it purple for free, but they will need to provide the silk and gold mats. As that is a pretty typical occurrence on Playstation, at least in all the guilds I have been in.

So the newbie decides they want to use Mother's Sorrow and Order's Wrath or Julianos. That's also a fairly common setup I've seen requested for beginning magicka damage dealers in zone/guild chat, at least when it comes to the people who were vocal about asking straight away.

So....

Robe = 150 silk
Shoes = 130 silk
Bracers= 130 silk
Guards = 140 silk
Belt = 130 silk

Hat = 130 silk
Shoulders = 130 silk

940 total silk, typically someone will just buy 5 stacks. At 8,000 coins per stack that is 40k.

I see some Mother's Sorrow weapons on the guild trader for 25k right now, and some jewelry pieces for 25k. That's 125k.

So now their bill is 165k.

They can get Rosin for around 3k each. They need 16. That's another 48k. That's 213k all together to have full purple crafted gear with gold weapons, which is a fairly standard order.

If the guildmate doesn't offer the upgrades to purple....

I see a full stack of hemming for 2900 coins. That's 14.5 coins per hemming. That's 203 coins for the hemming.
I see a full stack of Embroider for 5000 coins. That's 25 coins per embroidery. That's 525 coins for the embroidery
I see a full stack of Elegant Lining for 9400 coins. That's 47 coins per lining. That's 1316 coins for the lining.

You can see why people often offer this free in guilds. That's a lot of time wasted doing math for very little coins LOL. Some people also just ask for a flat 2-3k.

That's an extra 2044 coin for the upgrade mats to purple. So that's around 215k coins altogether for a fully equipped character.

In other words, if they fairly typical help from a guild mate, they would have enough coin to get everything they needed to start playing their toon in beginner vet dungeons just from questing (assuming your 300k ish coin value is correct about the quest rewards) including gold weapons.

Gold Jewelry on the other hand is a different matter. Many people on here consider it too expensive to be worth it unless you're an endgame player.

Nice! Yeah, even on PC, my first guild would make purple gear free for lower level players, or for CP 160 if you provided the mats.

And while gold upgrade mats might be more expensive, it's not necessarily a bad thing. The first gear I golded was my early Whitestrake's Retribution set, which I promptly outgrew as I got better at tanking. I still have those pieces for nostalgia's sake...

Anyways, I digress. It's also really easy to defray the costs of crafted gear by farming one's own materials or doing crafting writs, which goes to show that it's pretty accessible even to newer players without much gold. My AD character didn't farm much. My main crafted her own gear as she leveled up (we'll not talk about the white cotton on the white snow of Eastmarch) and so was pretty well prepared for heading into dungeons when I decided to try it out.

It may be my biases showing here, but it seems to me that players who experience the most problems are the ones who refuse to engage in ESO's support systems, be it helpful guilds or spending their limited time doing activities like crafting and farming their own materials. I understand there are players who never ever want to join guilds, but they are cutting themselves off from a valuable source of help. Trying to be self-sufficient is possible, but naturally harder.

I don't really believe that joining guilds is the problem as most players that's established in the game usually always have 5 guild slots, even when leaving one, they immediately join another. I have two trading guilds on PC, a housing guild, a guild my friend asked me to join to assist newer players, and my own which is a pvp guild.

When it comes to selling materials, I don't sell mine, I'm more of the material buyer as I'm into player housing, have a guild hall of my own for my guild mates, and I make PvP builds to give away to players especially within my guild, I test these builds first hand too to make sure each build is viable.

PvPing gold acquisition can be fairly decent if you're buying and selling gold jewelry of worth... Or if you happen to "luckily" acquire a piece of gear with selling while the vast majority of pieces of gear you collect aren't worth selling on the traders as the worth of the item is so minuscule. Let alone how long items actually sit on the traders. For example the gold mara's balm ring I placed on the guild trader at the standard ttc rate didn't even sell, it just went through the whole 30 days and i got it back in the mail.

I'm definitely not new to buying and selling, it's just that ESOs trading system is extremely underwhelming compared to most...

I'm gonna be real blunt here.

Players who only buy materials instead of farming them are going to feel broke.
Players who spend way more than they make are going to feel broke.

It's basic economics.

Thing is, that's most players. Its been a while since ZOS gave us the stats, but several years ago, the 90th percentile of PC players had a million gold. Why?

Its nothing nefarious. It's just that most players have limited time. So they log in, think "shoot, I need pots for my dungeon/trial/PVP night," rush off to the nearest trader, look at the price of anything with cornflower in it, go 0.0, and whine about how they're broke.

Well, they spend more gold than they make. What did they expect?

Its nothing nefarious. Just Supply and Demand. There's a lot of demand for end game potions and not a lot of players running rings around the Hollow City picking flowers.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just picking flowers to sell to others.)


Or consider Housing. How many Housing people do you know who regularly farm their own materials?

Last time I tracked my Craglorn farming, I'd get roughly 10-15 heartwood and mundane runes an hour. I'm sure some Housing folks are like, "Yeah, that's one piece of furniture. I'm not spending an hour farming for one Furnishing." But then they go to the nearest trader, go 0.0 at the price, and whine "I'm broke!"

Supply and Demand. With relatively few people farming Housing mats to sell, I sold those 10-15 mats for a ton of gold, which let me buy the stuff I didn't want to farm for, like certain obnoxious motifs. Also, uh, think about Demand. The New Life Fesitval and the week that ZOS drops a giant house as an event reward are NOT the time to buy up a bunch of housing mats unless you want to pay through the nose.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just harvesting housing mats to sell to others.)


If players feel broke, it is a gameplay problem they can solve as early as they leave the tutorial zone by selling desirable materials to other players.

And if new players feel broke, it's also a gameplay problem solved by not spending as much gold, whether by asking guildmates for help with starter armor or farming their own materials for expensive investments like Housing and end game potions.

There are gameplay solutions for players who feel broke, just not instant gratification.

"basic economics" in the sense of market economics involves specialisation and the use of a medium of exchange to trade in what you do not specialise in.

You can pretty much guarantee that anyone using terms such as "the market" and "basic economics" here does not have the first idea about the concepts.

And when people trot out "supply and demand", as you do, they conveniently ignore that the existing trader system has the effect of artificially limiting supply and artificially concentrating demand, because players who do not engage with the guild system are locked out of the supply side. They just throw their stuff away.

Northwold wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you just quest, you'll be like my AD character, who finished her alliance zones with roughly 300k gold in the bank, IIRC. So, practically broke when you hit CP 160 and start looking at upgrading to gold materials.

Funnily enough, that's actually not a bad chunk of gold on Playstation for getting gear.

Let's say an newbie wanted to use fully crafted gear for their gear. Let's also say they have a guildmate that will craft it for them and make it purple for free, but they will need to provide the silk and gold mats. As that is a pretty typical occurrence on Playstation, at least in all the guilds I have been in.

So the newbie decides they want to use Mother's Sorrow and Order's Wrath or Julianos. That's also a fairly common setup I've seen requested for beginning magicka damage dealers in zone/guild chat, at least when it comes to the people who were vocal about asking straight away.

So....

Robe = 150 silk
Shoes = 130 silk
Bracers= 130 silk
Guards = 140 silk
Belt = 130 silk

Hat = 130 silk
Shoulders = 130 silk

940 total silk, typically someone will just buy 5 stacks. At 8,000 coins per stack that is 40k.

I see some Mother's Sorrow weapons on the guild trader for 25k right now, and some jewelry pieces for 25k. That's 125k.

So now their bill is 165k.

They can get Rosin for around 3k each. They need 16. That's another 48k. That's 213k all together to have full purple crafted gear with gold weapons, which is a fairly standard order.

If the guildmate doesn't offer the upgrades to purple....

I see a full stack of hemming for 2900 coins. That's 14.5 coins per hemming. That's 203 coins for the hemming.
I see a full stack of Embroider for 5000 coins. That's 25 coins per embroidery. That's 525 coins for the embroidery
I see a full stack of Elegant Lining for 9400 coins. That's 47 coins per lining. That's 1316 coins for the lining.

You can see why people often offer this free in guilds. That's a lot of time wasted doing math for very little coins LOL. Some people also just ask for a flat 2-3k.

That's an extra 2044 coin for the upgrade mats to purple. So that's around 215k coins altogether for a fully equipped character.

In other words, if they fairly typical help from a guild mate, they would have enough coin to get everything they needed to start playing their toon in beginner vet dungeons just from questing (assuming your 300k ish coin value is correct about the quest rewards) including gold weapons.

Gold Jewelry on the other hand is a different matter. Many people on here consider it too expensive to be worth it unless you're an endgame player.

Nice! Yeah, even on PC, my first guild would make purple gear free for lower level players, or for CP 160 if you provided the mats.

And while gold upgrade mats might be more expensive, it's not necessarily a bad thing. The first gear I golded was my early Whitestrake's Retribution set, which I promptly outgrew as I got better at tanking. I still have those pieces for nostalgia's sake...

Anyways, I digress. It's also really easy to defray the costs of crafted gear by farming one's own materials or doing crafting writs, which goes to show that it's pretty accessible even to newer players without much gold. My AD character didn't farm much. My main crafted her own gear as she leveled up (we'll not talk about the white cotton on the white snow of Eastmarch) and so was pretty well prepared for heading into dungeons when I decided to try it out.

It may be my biases showing here, but it seems to me that players who experience the most problems are the ones who refuse to engage in ESO's support systems, be it helpful guilds or spending their limited time doing activities like crafting and farming their own materials. I understand there are players who never ever want to join guilds, but they are cutting themselves off from a valuable source of help. Trying to be self-sufficient is possible, but naturally harder.

I don't really believe that joining guilds is the problem as most players that's established in the game usually always have 5 guild slots, even when leaving one, they immediately join another. I have two trading guilds on PC, a housing guild, a guild my friend asked me to join to assist newer players, and my own which is a pvp guild.

When it comes to selling materials, I don't sell mine, I'm more of the material buyer as I'm into player housing, have a guild hall of my own for my guild mates, and I make PvP builds to give away to players especially within my guild, I test these builds first hand too to make sure each build is viable.

PvPing gold acquisition can be fairly decent if you're buying and selling gold jewelry of worth... Or if you happen to "luckily" acquire a piece of gear with selling while the vast majority of pieces of gear you collect aren't worth selling on the traders as the worth of the item is so minuscule. Let alone how long items actually sit on the traders. For example the gold mara's balm ring I placed on the guild trader at the standard ttc rate didn't even sell, it just went through the whole 30 days and i got it back in the mail.

I'm definitely not new to buying and selling, it's just that ESOs trading system is extremely underwhelming compared to most...

I'm gonna be real blunt here.

Players who only buy materials instead of farming them are going to feel broke.
Players who spend way more than they make are going to feel broke.

It's basic economics.

Thing is, that's most players. Its been a while since ZOS gave us the stats, but several years ago, the 90th percentile of PC players had a million gold. Why?

Its nothing nefarious. It's just that most players have limited time. So they log in, think "shoot, I need pots for my dungeon/trial/PVP night," rush off to the nearest trader, look at the price of anything with cornflower in it, go 0.0, and whine about how they're broke.

Well, they spend more gold than they make. What did they expect?

Its nothing nefarious. Just Supply and Demand. There's a lot of demand for end game potions and not a lot of players running rings around the Hollow City picking flowers.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just picking flowers to sell to others.)


Or consider Housing. How many Housing people do you know who regularly farm their own materials?

Last time I tracked my Craglorn farming, I'd get roughly 10-15 heartwood and mundane runes an hour. I'm sure some Housing folks are like, "Yeah, that's one piece of furniture. I'm not spending an hour farming for one Furnishing." But then they go to the nearest trader, go 0.0 at the price, and whine "I'm broke!"

Supply and Demand. With relatively few people farming Housing mats to sell, I sold those 10-15 mats for a ton of gold, which let me buy the stuff I didn't want to farm for, like certain obnoxious motifs. Also, uh, think about Demand. The New Life Fesitval and the week that ZOS drops a giant house as an event reward are NOT the time to buy up a bunch of housing mats unless you want to pay through the nose.

(Just goes to show that even a level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can make plenty of gold just harvesting housing mats to sell to others.)


If players feel broke, it is a gameplay problem they can solve as early as they leave the tutorial zone by selling desirable materials to other players.

And if new players feel broke, it's also a gameplay problem solved by not spending as much gold, whether by asking guildmates for help with starter armor or farming their own materials for expensive investments like Housing and end game potions.

There are gameplay solutions for players who feel broke, just not instant gratification.

"basic economics" in the sense of market economics involves specialisation and the use of a medium of exchange to trade in what you do not specialise in.

You can pretty much guarantee that anyone using terms such as "the market" and "basic economics" here does not have the first idea about the concepts.

And when people trot out "supply and demand", as you do, they conveniently ignore that the existing trader system has the effect of artificially limiting supply and artificially concentrating demand, because players who do not engage with the guild system are locked out of the supply side. They just throw their stuff away.

Exactly, especially the people who can't afford ESO plus, they just destroy all of that stuff...

VaranisArano wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

You can't be serious?

The whole purpose of the trade system is so that you can bypass farming that yourself so you can spend more time decorating instead of slowly obtaining the goods needed to decorate.

Motifs? Please enlighten me how the average player is even good enough to farm those vet content for those motifs because they're really not... You can't even begin to deny this fact...

What exactly do you feel like the purpose of the trade system is for?

Also being fully self sufficient while having multiple goals is unrealistic unless you want to take multiple years to accomplish. God help you trying to collect all the attunable stations by yourself... Playing that way will never let you complete that goal. At least not for 1-3 years if not way more...

This is a game, not real life.you can't possibly enjoy the game playing it that way. Farming every little thing without utilizing trade. Extremely unrealistic in every meaning of the word. Please enlighten me about what's enjoyable about that. 🤷🏾

Trading implies that both parties bring something to the table.

I like farming reagents. It's actually really relaxing. Also, I like getting gold. I do not care for running the same dungeon over and over hoping to get a specific motif.

Another player might enjoy running the same dungeon over and over for their dailies. They get more motifs than they can use. They need gold to buy potions so they can continue running dungeons.

They buy my regeants. I buy their motif.

That's an extremely simplistic version of the actual trading system which boils down to "Players make gold selling items from how they like to play, so they can use the gold to buy items from the ways they don't like to play."
...........................

If you do not make gold from how you like to play or you make less gold than you are spending, you will feel broke.

Solution: find a way to make gold that you like in order to finance the way you like to spend money. Yes, it will take time. This is an MMO, where the Devs want you to spend time in the game.

If you want to participate in the trading system, you need to bring something to your end of the table.
.......................

As for the "self-sufficient" players, this is in reference to a subset of players who refuse to join Guild Traders. Or in this case, to FlopsyPrince who suggests that even checking Guild Traders for items is too onerous.

Thus, they refuse to use the trading system described above.

Everything that is in a Guild Trader was obtained by another player. Therefore, with sufficient time and effort, you could obtain it too without needing to spend gold or the onerous burden of checking various Guild Traders.

There's no excuse, really. If you don't want to trade for something or spend your time making gold to buy it, go get it yourself! After all, someone else got it to sell it in the first place, so it doesn't need to be easier than it is.

Why do you keep insinuating that players aren't bringing things of value to the table. Over and over again it's been explained how this trading system as a whole is lacking the basic tools for players to utilize buying and selling as they please to the utmost maximum efficiency.

Also You're awesome insinuating That players don't try to sell their goods who are actually broke. You're also insinuating that these players don't put in any work.

You're completely ignoring a lot of the responses and just assuming what you want to hear... Back to my point, ESO lacks products that you can farm and get a guaranteed item drop of decent worth for a player to farm and sell quickly and efficiently. These players are not lazy did not lacking the basic knowledge of supply and demand, The gameplay is not the issue, it's as simple as the guild trader is failing, and ESO fails to offer products as a guaranteed drop.

Even node farming isn't consistent in ESO, I'll explain... When you cut wood for the rubidite, that node vanishes, and another node might spawn in it's place as any other random node... Verses let's use RuneScape for example... Almost every tree you can cut, and it will leave a tree stump in it's place, then regrow after a period of time... You can go in this forest, create and run a route cutting down these trees to sell for profit. Also since it's a guaranteed loot item, you can time your route on how long it takes you to do this over and over and how much you roughly can obtain during your route. Then sum up the worth of the item and sell it on the market, it's simply not rocket science.

You can goto different forests that will have different trees that have different worth.

You can goto different fishing spots and use particular types of fishing tools that will guarantee the types of fish that you will obtain.

You can go kill a monster that will have a guaranteed drop or drops every time you kill it, plus some additional items that you might get as a bonus.

You can go mine different types of ore for profit that respond in the same place where there's an abundance of ore that you can farm.

When it comes to ESO none of this is offered. You can't even kill a single enemy to get a guaranteed drop every single time you kill it. That's why you cannot fathom making money at an hourly rate on elder scrolls online. This is why you sum everything up to what you've earned all together and the span of a week. You got to admit that your money making methods and view points is beyond slow and grotesque in comparison.

With every point that you've made I've easily countered and giving you examples. Then you go on and talk about supply and demand like people don't understand the basic concepts of that. Like people haven't already thrived another games. We're complaining about basic functions that the game doesn't offer. We're not complaining about the ability to trade one item for another. We are complaining about how the guild trader system works. We've never been talking about regular trade between one player to another.

This whole post is about how players utilize the guild trader system and with it offers the player and how it could be made a lot better for the player. I don't know what else to tell you. Lol

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The first premise or point is merely an opinion from people who want the current system to be like games such as FF14. Considering a large volume of trade occurs daily and has been for years, the current trade system is working. Because of that fact, these occasional threads wanting something different have failed to change the system. It will not happen anytime soon.

I wouldn't say the current system is working if this is a reoccurring topic from players who're frustrated enough to join the forums to speak up verses so many players who's never once even came to the forums that feel the same way. So many players are broke.

Those earlier comments about questing for a week
or maybe even longer if people are speed questing their way through it to complete all the zones for a measly 300k is a joke. 1mill a week is also a joke. The crazy thing to me is, I ask players in game verses hearing opinions in this forum and the responses are different. Different ends of the spectrum really.

Here is my question to you then and it's an honest one. What exactly are you spending your gold on? And yes I am trying to be genuine here.

You see I spend a set amount of hours playing eso and I make millions doing in game activities including selling. Roughly 50% of what I make goes to guilds for traders. The remaining? I hold onto it. I still have millions. So tell me where are you spending your funds?

Because to be perfectly honest the system you are wont make that problem go away. Really it could just make it worse.

Sure undercutting could happen the way you want, but that won't stop people from playing the trading game. Especially if you lower the costs of traders because then comes the fun part. Guilds have excess coin which means they can mess with that coin.

With competition reduced via your method the second largest recurring gold sink gets removed from the game, without a way to offset it.


You also have this thing called the craft bag. Where near infinite amounts of places to store mats. Sure 1 player probably couldn't manipulate the market enough to do anything, but 500 - 2500 all with craft bags could in fact do so. Especially if they locked down certian market places.

The core problem is that there is an assumption that a small part of the overall economy isn't working. And you may be correct in that it isn't. But making wide sweeping changes to just one aspect of it.

Really at issue is progression. Eso is vertical progression until cp 1200 or so. At that point it's more about gearing up and horizontal progression.

This means that zos wants players to grind for it. It's core to the game.

No system is perfect, but I found it much easier to craft in WoW (Cata->Mists time frame) because I could find out fair prices and buy things for fair prices on the Auction House. (Fair being "what it usually sells for".)

That is much harder here, though the problem is not the raw mats (though it can be for some) but the other stuff.

Try finding an uncommon mat! It is unlikely to be anyplace you look, though it may be selling somewhere.

To be quite honest, if I were to work on fixing any issues with the economy I would start on the material end of things. Drop rates, loot tables, uses, etc. It's a bit of a mess.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Yeah, the system does limit supply in guild traders, because players who aren't in guilds usually don't contribute unless they sell to someone in zone. Which does happen, albeit rarely in the grand scheme of things.

But that's not nefarious. It's intentionally how ZOS designed ESO. They felt that Auction Houses made the supply of good gear too plentiful and easy in ither MMOs. Moreover, the plethora of trade guilds recruiting suggests that any player who does want to participate in the Supply side of things can so practically, no one is locked out except by choice.

No one said it's nefarious. What it is is *bad game design*.

Trading is a system which all MMOs assume players will access. It lies behind housing, it lies behind buying gear, it lies behind crafting. ESO is literally the only major MMO that has chosen to gate itself behind guild membership -- something a large number of players plain do not want -- and that's without even mentioning the decentralised traders.

They have handicapped a primary mechanic of any MMO, anywhere, for no sensible reason and people on this forum just sit here saying it weeds out "lazy" players or other such nonsense and that trading has been designed to be a mini game, not an essential function. It may do so (if "lazy" means people who have normal lives outside the game), it may have been designed as such, but that was a very foolish thing to do and makes ESO fundamentally annoying to play purely to satisfy a niche of the player base.

Have this conversation on reddit, and I guarantee you the defenders of the trading system will not be nearly so numerous as they are on here. It is a ridiculous set up that places needless and time wasting hoops in the way of a basic gaming mechanic.

Not everyone wants to play a game for hours every day, not everyone wants to be tied to having to log in with X frequency simply to make sure they can access a basic game function, not everyone wants their ability to trade to be controlled by other players. It is too important a system for an MMO to be hooked up to all that nonsense, not least in the MMO that prides itself on being open to casuals and makes a point of claiming you can play it any way you like.

Northwold wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Yeah, the system does limit supply in guild traders, because players who aren't in guilds usually don't contribute unless they sell to someone in zone. Which does happen, albeit rarely in the grand scheme of things.

But that's not nefarious. It's intentionally how ZOS designed ESO. They felt that Auction Houses made the supply of good gear too plentiful and easy in ither MMOs. Moreover, the plethora of trade guilds recruiting suggests that any player who does want to participate in the Supply side of things can so practically, no one is locked out except by choice.

No one said it's nefarious. What it is is *bad game design*.

Trading is a system which all MMOs assume players will access. It lies behind housing, it lies behind buying gear, it lies behind crafting. ESO is literally the only major MMO that has chosen to gate itself behind guild membership -- something a large number of players plain do not want -- and that's without even mentioning the decentralised traders.

They have handicapped a primary mechanic of any MMO, anywhere, for no sensible reason and people on this forum just sit here saying it weeds out "lazy" players or other such nonsense and that trading has been designed to be a mini game, not an essential function. It may do so (if "lazy" means people who have normal lives outside the game), it may have been designed as such, but that was a very foolish thing to do and makes ESO fundamentally annoying to play purely to satisfy a niche of the player base.

Have this conversation on reddit, and I guarantee you the defenders of the trading system will not be nearly so numerous as they are on here. It is a ridiculous set up that places needless and time wasting hoops in the way of a basic gaming mechanic.

Not everyone wants to play a game for hours every day, not everyone wants to be tied to having to log in with X frequency simply to make sure they can access a basic game function, not everyone wants their ability to trade to be controlled by other players. It is too important a system for an MMO to be hooked up to all that nonsense, not least in the MMO that prides itself on being open to casuals and makes a point of claiming you can play it any way you like.

Sigh... Thank you we'll said... Agreed whole heartedly. 👏🏾

King_*** wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

Zos has other more functional issues to worry about. Primarily they need to focus on replacing servers and fixing combat issues while also making money.

The type of upgrades we are talking is going to be very costly on the hardware end. For no guarantee that the system will improve.

So please explain exactly why zos should make this change at massive expense and possible loss of playerbase for almost no financial return, when the current system works.

Personally, if I were in charge and forced to consider something like this I would look at revamping loot tables and item drop rates, gold sinks, inventory options.

I would also go as far as making everything bind on pickup as the resulting loss of player base would be the same and it would cost the company less to implement.

Simple because it would bring more players back to the game. You gotta understand that the vast majority of the player base quit of frustration due to being broke,

I don't believe that for a second. Gold is easy to come by in game. Just by playing the game you can afford everything you need and a good amount of things you want. That aside there is no way we as players can know why the majority of players that left the game did so. The vast majority never posts here.

That's absolutely false but humor me this, how much money can you consistently make in an hour as profit and elder scrolls online and what exactly are you doing to make that cash? what are you selling?

All my toons have Jewelry lv50, so any intricate drops from the writs go on the free market All upgrade mats that I do not need. Surplus items with value, like hot overland drops in good traits Companion gear in purple Valuable stuff from all kinds of dailies Or high value ingredients for potion making, like corn flower, for example I even sell repair kits, because I get a free stack of 200 every week from writs [\list] A million per week is always possible and I am not even farming the valuable stuff, like the latest furnishing recipes or anything that is rare, valuable and in demand.

I gotcha, a million a week. But what do you make an hour guaranteed? If you decided you wanted to make some money, how much can you make an hour at a guaranteed rate that does not involve carries?

Carries? I play SOLO now, always.
Please do not insinuate anything. That keeps the forum civil. 🤨

The gold per hour thinking is not fitting to measure your success. ☝️
That thinking is totally 2010. 😂
The return in gold is often not happening straight away. I mean, it is not gold drops we are talking about, that make the profit.

You should look up your total income per week. Or even better per month.
Sales are often better at weekends, because of more population. And grinding is easier during graveyard time in the week, mondays to thursdays, because of a lot less population. You've got to bring these two together.
If not, you are just lying to yourself by creating a random and misleading number.

Gold per hour... 😞

And the true Masters of commerce know when to sell and when to keep/store.
You do not want to sell at low prices when you can expect them to rise again in the near future. Or at/before events. Good traders know that and utilise ESOplus, Alt accounts, storage mules and the craftbag to maximise storage and profit respectively.

And all these can be pruchased with RL money, which is why I see that critically. It's unlikely to change and I've made my peace with that.
But still, one can purchase himself an advantage, if one desires it.

And btw, that one million is considered "not even trying" in many trading guilds. It really comes in almost passively.
The GM of a partner guild made 300 millions in the first week of Zeal of Zenithar event. I am not kidding. He's very public about it. You can easily find him on YouTube, if you search. And before you ask, I will not call him out by name, because I do not know if it is against his will or even community rules on the forums. Okay?

If you feel you know nothing about trading, start by joining a trading guild with a discord. Most advertise in Zone Chat of the trading hubs they are in: Mournhold, Vivec City, Belkarth, etc.
Pay their fees and talk to them. Ask them. Learn from them. That is the best way. Youtubers rarely know what is what and are mostly clickbaiting you.

I believe I understand your line of thinking, you're not used to playing an MMO where you have plenty of products you can get as a guaranteed drop that can sell for a decent rate of cash. For example in RuneScape, you can sell dragon ones for 3k each, and green dragon hide for 1.5k each around the time I was playing many years ago. My character was strong so I calculated how much I could kill, how much I could profit an hour. That's common in MMORPGs.

This issue with ESO is the only thing you can kill for a close to a guaranteed drop is animals for hide, and it's not even always guaranteed, also it's not worth enough to make the average player want to farm it. It simply isn't worth enough. ESO doesn't have any product that you can farm at a guaranteed hourly rate for profit. You say it's not realistic to farm at an hourly rate, but that's just because ESO doesn't offer a proper reward loot system for players to utilize, however you can farm XP for an hourly rate, just not products for profit... If this has been your only MMORPG, just say that. Lol

Lol the point I'm getting at is that this is a game, not IRL, and also technically irl would have the features if you're doing online shopping.

Lol that's cute how you're going on about not knowing anything about trading as I merch in other MMORPGs. Your buddy made 300m by flipping. For example. The rare thesis recipe item used to make 150% xp pvp food is being flipped all the time where people might buy it for as low as 150m and re sell it for 300m. You need loads of gold to be able to flip like this and you can make a lot of money at a fast rate.

Getting there is an issue. Earning gold per hour isn't something you can fathom cause you're not used to it cause this game does it badly while other games do it flawlessly. During this event, powering leveling CP has got me casual rate of 9m XP an hour which could be raised to 9.5-10m an hour depending how try hard we want to be.

Just because you may not know much about trading doesn't mean you should dismiss the other side of trading. Lol

I dunno. It seems like there are a lot of assumptions you are making.

Here is the thing about eso, you are not required to trade to play. The trade system is a time saver nothing more. You can in fact bypass the entire system and still play just fine. Afterall there isn't anything that you can buy or trade that you can not obtain with time, effort, and/or skill. The trade system is a shortcut to those ends and rewards players who dedicate their time to fill those that don't want to do the above.

You don't need a lot of gold to actually play the game.

If you can point me to a single gameplay aspect that 100% requires gold expenditures that is debilitating to gameplay please let me know.

This what you're suggesting... For the players who do housing and have multiple characters... You want them to go farm out all of their needs to meet their goals. Which changes the whole dynamic of the game and how they want to play it... As trade is a basic necessity with any MMORPG, you need gold...

My friend was just complaining to me to where she often has a plan to that costs about 13 or more heartwood, and she might need like 30+ of that particular furniture for her housing project, and she's tried farming it, which takes her about an hour to just get 30 which isn't even close to a stack... She doesn't want to farm that long for so little...

I don't understand how you can defend not having better trade so hard... If you don't like acquiring gold or feel you don't need gold, then why are you so invested in objecting a new trade system? Essentially you wouldn't be affected since you farm every little thing in this game yourself right?

So housing is a singular game play type where you need to 100% spend money to acquire materials especially if you join a housing contest and have a deadline to meet.

Pvp, you want to go pvp with buddies and acquire the build you need to play with your friends so that you won't be fodder, upgrading gear to good is essential. You gotta buy your gear as your team doesn't have time to wait for you to farm the gear for months to get everything you need...

You do veteran trials and join a carry guild? You gotta acquire you multiple sets of gear depending on which trial has to be done. If you sign up for trial carries, you have that specific deadline to be ready to carry someone. So you have to have multiple sets of your gear golded out because you are the carrier, not the person getting carried...

I've already challenged your notion 3 times where the player would not have the time to farm everything needed before that time limit...

You see, here are the issues you are running into.

Firstly you still failed to answer my last question about were gold is required to play. Because honestly it isn't.

Secondly, i am not actually opposed to changing the system, my goal here is to inform you that ZOS doesn't have any incentives to doing it and that changing how things are traded won't solve your economic problems or concerns.

You mention time limits for contests, group carries, pvp, etc. Those are limits set by players and are optional activities, you are not required to take part in those and can likely find a group or contest that you are more ready to participate in.

As for obtaining gear for pvp or pve activities, much of the most powerful sets in the game are found in dungeons and trials, which can't be traded at all. If you feel you want to buy a run for gear that is a choice you make, but your change won't make a dent in this particular case.

I will concede that Housing is a mess in eso. But changing how the entire economy works and possibly destabilizing it because the drop rates of Heartwood is too low is not a viable or reasonable solution as it doesn't address the core of the issue. It's like amputating your hand because you received a paper cut on your finger. There are easier solutions.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

Zos has other more functional issues to worry about. Primarily they need to focus on replacing servers and fixing combat issues while also making money.

The type of upgrades we are talking is going to be very costly on the hardware end. For no guarantee that the system will improve.

So please explain exactly why zos should make this change at massive expense and possible loss of playerbase for almost no financial return, when the current system works.

Personally, if I were in charge and forced to consider something like this I would look at revamping loot tables and item drop rates, gold sinks, inventory options.

I would also go as far as making everything bind on pickup as the resulting loss of player base would be the same and it would cost the company less to implement.

Simple because it would bring more players back to the game. You gotta understand that the vast majority of the player base quit of frustration due to being broke,

I don't believe that for a second. Gold is easy to come by in game. Just by playing the game you can afford everything you need and a good amount of things you want. That aside there is no way we as players can know why the majority of players that left the game did so. The vast majority never posts here.

That's absolutely false but humor me this, how much money can you consistently make in an hour as profit and elder scrolls online and what exactly are you doing to make that cash? what are you selling?

All my toons have Jewelry lv50, so any intricate drops from the writs go on the free market All upgrade mats that I do not need. Surplus items with value, like hot overland drops in good traits Companion gear in purple Valuable stuff from all kinds of dailies Or high value ingredients for potion making, like corn flower, for example I even sell repair kits, because I get a free stack of 200 every week from writs [\list] A million per week is always possible and I am not even farming the valuable stuff, like the latest furnishing recipes or anything that is rare, valuable and in demand.

I gotcha, a million a week. But what do you make an hour guaranteed? If you decided you wanted to make some money, how much can you make an hour at a guaranteed rate that does not involve carries?

Carries? I play SOLO now, always.
Please do not insinuate anything. That keeps the forum civil. 🤨

The gold per hour thinking is not fitting to measure your success. ☝️
That thinking is totally 2010. 😂
The return in gold is often not happening straight away. I mean, it is not gold drops we are talking about, that make the profit.

You should look up your total income per week. Or even better per month.
Sales are often better at weekends, because of more population. And grinding is easier during graveyard time in the week, mondays to thursdays, because of a lot less population. You've got to bring these two together.
If not, you are just lying to yourself by creating a random and misleading number.

Gold per hour... 😞

And the true Masters of commerce know when to sell and when to keep/store.
You do not want to sell at low prices when you can expect them to rise again in the near future. Or at/before events. Good traders know that and utilise ESOplus, Alt accounts, storage mules and the craftbag to maximise storage and profit respectively.

And all these can be pruchased with RL money, which is why I see that critically. It's unlikely to change and I've made my peace with that.
But still, one can purchase himself an advantage, if one desires it.

And btw, that one million is considered "not even trying" in many trading guilds. It really comes in almost passively.
The GM of a partner guild made 300 millions in the first week of Zeal of Zenithar event. I am not kidding. He's very public about it. You can easily find him on YouTube, if you search. And before you ask, I will not call him out by name, because I do not know if it is against his will or even community rules on the forums. Okay?

If you feel you know nothing about trading, start by joining a trading guild with a discord. Most advertise in Zone Chat of the trading hubs they are in: Mournhold, Vivec City, Belkarth, etc.
Pay their fees and talk to them. Ask them. Learn from them. That is the best way. Youtubers rarely know what is what and are mostly clickbaiting you.

I believe I understand your line of thinking, you're not used to playing an MMO where you have plenty of products you can get as a guaranteed drop that can sell for a decent rate of cash. For example in RuneScape, you can sell dragon ones for 3k each, and green dragon hide for 1.5k each around the time I was playing many years ago. My character was strong so I calculated how much I could kill, how much I could profit an hour. That's common in MMORPGs.

This issue with ESO is the only thing you can kill for a close to a guaranteed drop is animals for hide, and it's not even always guaranteed, also it's not worth enough to make the average player want to farm it. It simply isn't worth enough. ESO doesn't have any product that you can farm at a guaranteed hourly rate for profit. You say it's not realistic to farm at an hourly rate, but that's just because ESO doesn't offer a proper reward loot system for players to utilize, however you can farm XP for an hourly rate, just not products for profit... If this has been your only MMORPG, just say that. Lol

Lol the point I'm getting at is that this is a game, not IRL, and also technically irl would have the features if you're doing online shopping.

Lol that's cute how you're going on about not knowing anything about trading as I merch in other MMORPGs. Your buddy made 300m by flipping. For example. The rare thesis recipe item used to make 150% xp pvp food is being flipped all the time where people might buy it for as low as 150m and re sell it for 300m. You need loads of gold to be able to flip like this and you can make a lot of money at a fast rate.

Getting there is an issue. Earning gold per hour isn't something you can fathom cause you're not used to it cause this game does it badly while other games do it flawlessly. During this event, powering leveling CP has got me casual rate of 9m XP an hour which could be raised to 9.5-10m an hour depending how try hard we want to be.

Just because you may not know much about trading doesn't mean you should dismiss the other side of trading. Lol

I dunno. It seems like there are a lot of assumptions you are making.

Here is the thing about eso, you are not required to trade to play. The trade system is a time saver nothing more. You can in fact bypass the entire system and still play just fine. Afterall there isn't anything that you can buy or trade that you can not obtain with time, effort, and/or skill. The trade system is a shortcut to those ends and rewards players who dedicate their time to fill those that don't want to do the above.

You don't need a lot of gold to actually play the game.

If you can point me to a single gameplay aspect that 100% requires gold expenditures that is debilitating to gameplay please let me know.

This what you're suggesting... For the players who do housing and have multiple characters... You want them to go farm out all of their needs to meet their goals. Which changes the whole dynamic of the game and how they want to play it... As trade is a basic necessity with any MMORPG, you need gold...

My friend was just complaining to me to where she often has a plan to that costs about 13 or more heartwood, and she might need like 30+ of that particular furniture for her housing project, and she's tried farming it, which takes her about an hour to just get 30 which isn't even close to a stack... She doesn't want to farm that long for so little...

I don't understand how you can defend not having better trade so hard... If you don't like acquiring gold or feel you don't need gold, then why are you so invested in objecting a new trade system? Essentially you wouldn't be affected since you farm every little thing in this game yourself right?

So housing is a singular game play type where you need to 100% spend money to acquire materials especially if you join a housing contest and have a deadline to meet.

Pvp, you want to go pvp with buddies and acquire the build you need to play with your friends so that you won't be fodder, upgrading gear to good is essential. You gotta buy your gear as your team doesn't have time to wait for you to farm the gear for months to get everything you need...

You do veteran trials and join a carry guild? You gotta acquire you multiple sets of gear depending on which trial has to be done. If you sign up for trial carries, you have that specific deadline to be ready to carry someone. So you have to have multiple sets of your gear golded out because you are the carrier, not the person getting carried...

I've already challenged your notion 3 times where the player would not have the time to farm everything needed before that time limit...

You see, here are the issues you are running into.

Firstly you still failed to answer my last question about were gold is required to play. Because honestly it isn't.

Secondly, i am not actually opposed to changing the system, my goal here is to inform you that ZOS doesn't have any incentives to doing it and that changing how things are traded won't solve your economic problems or concerns.

You mention time limits for contests, group carries, pvp, etc. Those are limits set by players and are optional activities, you are not required to take part in those and can likely find a group or contest that you are more ready to participate in.

As for obtaining gear for pvp or pve activities, much of the most powerful sets in the game are found in dungeons and trials, which can't be traded at all. If you feel you want to buy a run for gear that is a choice you make, but your change won't make a dent in this particular case.

I will concede that Housing is a mess in eso. But changing how the entire economy works and possibly destabilizing it because the drop rates of Heartwood is too low is not a viable or reasonable solution as it doesn't address the core of the issue. It's like amputating your hand because you received a paper cut on your finger. There are easier solutions.

To answer your question Yes depending on the type of player that you are. Also what it is exactly that you're doing in the game.

That's fine if they don't, maybe they will change their minds but why try to convince players to give up trying to make a change. This is how changes are made by being persistent is not?

You are not required to take parts in these but if this is what you do for fun in the game that makes the game appealing to you then you can't deny that it's a factor. This might be a different type of play style than what you like to do but that doesn't take away That this is the reality of players that do housing.

Trial sets are often terrible for PVP however they are really powerful in PvE. Yes players can pay for those runs but at the pacing that you guys are suggesting how long would it take a player to pay for a run in a trial when those carriers are roughly around 35m gold? A player should farm 35 weeks for a mill a week to pay for one trial run? That sounds absolutely ridiculous.

I think you've got a misunderstanding going on there. You're talking about removing your hand for paper cut. It sounds to me like your belief is removing the economy system without a replacement. We're talking about replacing the economy system with a better system not removing it to where we have nothing.

Essentially what's being suggested for the economy system is like turning a regular individual into Captain America making it so much better than ever before.

@King_*** pardon the typos. I have to play with like four little children while writing this down.
Let's take a fresh look at the beginning, shall we? And try to be unbiased.

• The guild trader system alone is failing and in need of a massive overhaul. ESO has come out after older MMORPG's such as RuneScape, and FFXIV which have paved the way laying down ground work of what ESO should have followed and improved. Isn't it better to be different, than more of the same? Have a real USP?
  
  
• Player's should have a feature for viewing an item's history, past sales, a list prices the item were bought/sold for including the names of the players who bought/sold the item. An explanation would be nice, because what items get bought, do usually get bound to an account or consumed, completely removing it from trading.
  
  
• Player's should be able to find Market Boards in every country or a central trading Country/Island area that all guild traders in the game are linked too displaying all listed items in one place giving steady consistent pricing, and competitive prices. Other than lazy convenience, why?
  
  
• The idea of players traveling to one area searching for items, and seeing a whole list of that item Sounds a whole lot better than the alternative. That is just rephrasing the previous point.
  
  
• Currently the alternative is using a function outside of the game such as TTC, a website used as a tool to locate desired items which may have been gone for hours, but is still listed as last seen as if the item is still at the listed location.
  
  
• The game should still require a guild to purchase a guild trader in order to sell the products as usual. This change will make every guild trader a prime location making all the guild traders bids worth the same no matter the location as the race to the bid war would be to win and obtain a guild trader. Not to find the best location. Maybe, it would go this way. Or maybe more successful guilds will use their connections and alliances to drive off smaller guilds away once and for all? After all, if the new cost if a trader bid is so low, what stops one guild to branch out and found daughter guilds that just occupy the smaller places and effectively block thise trader spots. At that point a fixed price and guaranteed virtual spot have to be implemented or trading gets throttled off entirely. And of course eliminating one of the most efficient gold sinks can have unforeseen effects on inflation in game. I'drather not live through that.
  
  
• Prime location guild trader bids go down in price while simultaneously raising the price of all the other guild traders with terrible locations like the traders in the refuges. Please see above. Could turn out really bad, even if it goes your way.

How this would effect the economy?

• First and foremost, what I am suggesting is a Market Board, Not an Auction House. The difference between a Auction house and a Market Board is that Market Boards allow more freedom. see point n3
  
  
• Any item that is listed at any price, can be bought/sold without biding, exactly how guild traders work now which is first come, first served. see point n3
  
  
  
• The Auction House forces players to bid on the items instead of letting player flat out buy it. Market Board allows for competitive pricing and fair pricing increasing the gold rate for every player, not just the Rich Players which would be like the top 1% of the game. Okay. So no Auction House. But how does the market board even affect prices, compared to now? No explanation given here, or above. Just assumptions and bland statements. Is the pricing now competitive or fair? Both happening at the same time is unlikely. What is a gold rate per player even. No explanations. Just statements. Just promises
  
  
• Players would never be forced to go from guild trader to trader trying to find one particular item, or better price.
  
  
• Making a Market Board or Central trading Island/Country a one stop shop increasing the quality of life as everything would be convenient for the players. There it is. Convenience. Just Convenience.
  
  
• Player's should not have to waste time traveling from guild trader to trader, country to country for endless hours searching for items. Endless hours? Hardly. That's blown out of proportion. Do you have to put in some time? Yes. Is it endless hours? No. You will have to put in your back, make an effort. After all what makes one buyer more deserving than another buyer? The effort he makes! If one makes an effort he deserves the deals. That is what ESO does. It forces you to make an effort. I do not see the wrong in that.
  
  
• Less inflation as farmed items would be purchased/sold a lot faster due to undercutting and fair pricing. Fair pricing. Therre it is again. Low prices are not fair for the farmers. Full stop. If you disregard the producers side of trade, you completly blow out any reason to trade at all. It is important that both sides are satisfied. In real life high costs of storage and the thread of loosing their yield force producers to sell quick at low prices. That doesn't aplly in ESO because there is the craft bag and a corn flower picked years ago will still make the same potion as a corn flower picked today. Do not make the mistake of applying assumptions based in real life in ESO. A lot of real life economic principles do not apply in virtual economies.
  
  
• Less players being scammed, or taken advantage of as the players would have the tools IN GAME without the need of addons to have the information available to the player at all times. That sounds right, but players rarely get scammed, because they buy on traders. It's because they trust players in zone chat. Does that really go away? Maybe.
  
  
• Undercutting doesn't stop sales, it only slows sales, player's who undercut get sales faster, while player's who don't budge still sell, but not as fast. All items sold cheaper listed below would bought out until the next in line is next to be sold. This is a tricky one. You cannot foresee where prices go. The rarer an item is thr more incentive there is to sell higher than the average. Every trader knows that. Admittedly undercutting as a solution to high prices seems intuitive, but you have to look which items are priced high. It's the rare and demanded ones. That part will never change. Lamborghinies will always cost a lot.
  
  
• Having access to the history option will prevent players from exploiting the market placing items up at whatever unreasonable price the player wanted as players would be able to view the history of that items transaction history. I can only repeat the above. Why? A considerable amount of high priced items are consumed/bound on use. If you want to prevent/forbid flipping, than say it. And honestly what difference does it make? The price that I see is still the same, regardless of who sells it or owned it previously. It is not like an item degrades in ESO or developes misfunctions, because it traded hands or is years old. That kind of real world consumer thinking is totally misplaced in a virtual economy.
  
  An example would be a sold out item, A player holds the monopoly currently being the only individual listing the item at that time due to the item just selling out. Another player should be able to check the transaction history of the item and make a proper judgement of worth. Wow, you make it sohnd like it is amoral to buy and want to sell with profit. Maybe a clarification is due, perhaps?

Alright summing up:
You want to change the trader system as is, because it is inconvenient. I understand that easily, because it is inconvenient.
... But ...
that doesn't outweigh its advantages. Mainly, its function as a gold sink. Guild trader bidding is the last really good gold sink in ESO. Taking that away will have unforseen consequences.
It's just not worth the convenience.

And also, the system is unique. It is a USP for a lot of players. And ZOS knows this. It is why they tolerate TTC MM and ATT. And also why huge structural changes will probably not happen.

And also a more general notion, if you please.
Prices in ESO are generally an expression of rarity and demand. Specifically the demand is best understood as a huge amount of currency asking simultaneously for one item. The higher the amount of currency gets, the higher the prices get. It is directly proportional.
Also drop rates of the wanted items are ludacrisly low sometimes. That is really the worst aspect, because I have the feeling these rates get worse with every new zone. There are a lot of threads about this on the forum.

Those are the real reasons for high prices. But still, prices develop organically in the guild trader system. They are assisted by TTC and consorts, but that is not a weakness. It is an advantage that everyone can utilise it. You want information about availability? Use TTC. You want to know how the prices developed over the last month or so. Use Master Merchant. It is there already. And prices are still high. Maybe the conclusion you draw is wrong?

The trade system is not inherently failing, because it is inconvenient. To the contrary, it still does what it has to at the core and it even has beneficial side effects and a lot of players like it.

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@King_***

Economy or Minigame

Let's take a fresh look at the beginning, shall we? And try to be unbiased.

• The guild trader system alone is failing and in need of a massive overhaul. ESO has come out after older MMORPG's such as RuneScape, and FFXIV which have paved the way laying down ground work of what ESO should have followed and improved. Isn't it better to be different, than more of the same? Have a real USP?
  
  
• Player's should have a feature for viewing an item's history, past sales, a list prices the item were bought/sold for including the names of the players who bought/sold the item. An explanation would be nice, because what items get bought, do usually get bound to an account or consumed, completely removing it from trading.
  
  
• Player's should be able to find Market Boards in every country or a central trading Country/Island area that all guild traders in the game are linked too displaying all listed items in one place giving steady consistent pricing, and competitive prices. Other than lazy convenience, why?
  
  
• The idea of players traveling to one area searching for items, and seeing a whole list of that item Sounds a whole lot better than the alternative. That is just rephrasing the previous point.
  
  
• Currently the alternative is using a function outside of the game such as TTC, a website used as a tool to locate desired items which may have been gone for hours, but is still listed as last seen as if the item is still at the listed location.
  
  
• The game should still require a guild to purchase a guild trader in order to sell the products as usual. This change will make every guild trader a prime location making all the guild traders bids worth the same no matter the location as the race to the bid war would be to win and obtain a guild trader. Not to find the best location. Maybe, it would go this way. Or maybe more successful guilds will use their connections and alliances to drive off smaller guilds away once and for all? After all, if the new cost if a trader bid is so low, what stops one guild to branch out and found daughter guilds that just occupy the smaller places and effectively block thise trader spots. At that point a fixed price and guaranteed virtual spot have to be implemented or trading gets throttled off entirely. And of course eliminating one of the most efficient gold sinks can have unforeseen effects on inflation in game. I'drather not live through that.
  
  
• Prime location guild trader bids go down in price while simultaneously raising the price of all the other guild traders with terrible locations like the traders in the refuges. Please see above. Could turn out really bad, even if it goes your way.

How this would effect the economy?

• First and foremost, what I am suggesting is a Market Board, Not an Auction House. The difference between a Auction house and a Market Board is that Market Boards allow more freedom. see point n3
  
  
• Any item that is listed at any price, can be bought/sold without biding, exactly how guild traders work now which is first come, first served. see point n3
  
  
  
• The Auction House forces players to bid on the items instead of letting player flat out buy it. Market Board allows for competitive pricing and fair pricing increasing the gold rate for every player, not just the Rich Players which would be like the top 1% of the game. Okay. So no Auction House. But how does the market board even affect prices, compared to now? No explanation given here, or above. Just assumptions and bland statements. Is the pricing now competitive or fair? Both happening at the same time is unlikely. What is a gold rate per player even. No explanations. Just statements. Just promises
  
  
• Players would never be forced to go from guild trader to trader trying to find one particular item, or better price.
  
  
• Making a Market Board or Central trading Island/Country a one stop shop increasing the quality of life as everything would be convenient for the players. There it is. Convenience. Just Convenience.
  
  
• Player's should not have to waste time traveling from guild trader to trader, country to country for endless hours searching for items. Endless hours? Hardly. That's blown out of proportion. Do you have to put in some time? Yes. Is it endless hours? No. You will have to put in your back, make an effort. After all what makes one buyer more deserving than another buyer? The effort he makes! If one makes an effort he deserves the deals. That is what ESO does. It forces you to make an effort. I do not see the wrong in that.
  
  
• Less inflation as farmed items would be purchased/sold a lot faster due to undercutting and fair pricing. Fair pricing. Therre it is again. Low prices are not fair for the farmers. Full stop. If you disregard the producers side of trade, you completly blow out any reason to trade at all. It is important that both sides are satisfied. In real life high costs of storage and the thread of loosing their yield force producers to sell quick at low prices. That doesn't aplly in ESO because there is the craft bag and a corn flower picked years ago will still make the same potion as a corn flower picked today. Do not make the mistake of applying assumptions based in real life in ESO. A lot of real life economic principles do not apply in virtual economies.
  
  
• Less players being scammed, or taken advantage of as the players would have the tools IN GAME without the need of addons to have the information available to the player at all times. That sounds right, but players rarely get scammed, because they buy on traders. It's because they trust players in zone chat. Does that really go away? Maybe.
  
  
• Undercutting doesn't stop sales, it only slows sales, player's who undercut get sales faster, while player's who don't budge still sell, but not as fast. All items sold cheaper listed below would bought out until the next in line is next to be sold. This is a tricky one. You cannot foresee where prices go. The rarer an item is thr more incentive there is to sell higher than the average. Every trader knows that. Admittedly undercutting as a solution to high prices seems intuitive, but you have to look which items are priced high. It's the rare and demanded ones. That part will never change. Lamborghinies will always cost a lot.
  
  
• Having access to the history option will prevent players from exploiting the market placing items up at whatever unreasonable price the player wanted as players would be able to view the history of that items transaction history. I can only repeat the above. Why? A considerable amount of high priced items are consumed/bound on use. If you want to prevent/forbid flipping, than say it. And honestly what difference does it make? The price that I see is still the same, regardless of who sells it or owned it previously. It is not like an item degrades in ESO or developes misfunctions, because it traded hands or is years old. That kind of real world consumer thinking is totally misplaced in a virtual economy.
  
  An example would be a sold out item, A player holds the monopoly currently being the only individual listing the item at that time due to the item just selling out. Another player should be able to check the transaction history of the item and make a proper judgement of worth. Wow, you make it sohnd like it is amoral to buy and want to sell with profit. Maybe a clarification is due, perhaps?

Alright summing up:
You want to change the trader system as is, because it is inconvenient. I understand that easily, because it is inconvenient.
... But ...
that doesn't outweigh its advantages. Mainly, its function as a gold sink. Guild trader bidding is the last really good gold sink in ESO. Taking that away will have unforseen consequences.
It's just not worth the convenience.

And also, the system is unique. It is a USP for a lot of players. And ZOS knows this. It is why they tolerate TTC MM and ATT. And also why huge structural changes will probably not happen.

And also a more general notion, if you please.
Prices in ESO are generally an expression of rarity and demand. Specifically the demand is best understood as a huge amount of currency asking simultaneously for one item. The higher the amount of currency gets, the higher the prices get. It is directly proportional.
Also drop rates of the wanted items are ludacrisly low sometimes. That is really the worst aspect, because I have the feeling these rates get worse with every new zone. There are a lot of threads about this on the forum.

Those are the real reasons for high prices. But still, prices develop organically in the guild trader system. They are assisted by TTC and consorts, but that is not a weakness. It is an advantage that everyone can utilise it. You want information about availability? Use TTC. You want to know how the prices developed over the last month or so. Use Master Merchant. It is there already. And prices are still high. Maybe the conclusion you draw is wrong?

The trade system is not inherently failing, because it is inconvenient. To the contrary, it still does what it has to at the core and it even has beneficial side effects and a lot of players like it.

Again, I never said anything about taking away the guild trader as a gold sink. It would still function as such are they're still needed to sell you products. And having every area a prime location, more gold would be sinked, I've spoken on that already many times... I've elaborated on this countless times.

Or maybe the conclusion I'm drawing isn't wrong, and the system is primitive, not accurate, outside the actual game... Also the trading system is not a mini game, I don't know why you keep saying that. What exactly are you playing and winning? Lol the guild trader system is not a lotto or casino.

There's no beneficial side to the current system for player, however for the game devs yes, as they add massive amounts of playtime to your game due to your time wasted searching countless traders.

King_*** wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

King_*** wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

Then that means the system doesn't work well, and ZOS would have to change the system as a whole, which could be the main focus of the upcoming 2023. Upgrading the game giving player's and the servers a better quality of life that would fit better into the game.

Zos has other more functional issues to worry about. Primarily they need to focus on replacing servers and fixing combat issues while also making money.

The type of upgrades we are talking is going to be very costly on the hardware end. For no guarantee that the system will improve.

So please explain exactly why zos should make this change at massive expense and possible loss of playerbase for almost no financial return, when the current system works.

Personally, if I were in charge and forced to consider something like this I would look at revamping loot tables and item drop rates, gold sinks, inventory options.

I would also go as far as making everything bind on pickup as the resulting loss of player base would be the same and it would cost the company less to implement.

Simple because it would bring more players back to the game. You gotta understand that the vast majority of the player base quit of frustration due to being broke,

I don't believe that for a second. Gold is easy to come by in game. Just by playing the game you can afford everything you need and a good amount of things you want. That aside there is no way we as players can know why the majority of players that left the game did so. The vast majority never posts here.

That's absolutely false but humor me this, how much money can you consistently make in an hour as profit and elder scrolls online and what exactly are you doing to make that cash? what are you selling?

You look at it from the wrong side. It is not false that you can easily afford everything you need just by playing the game. It isn't how much you make an hour but how much gold you need. You might be confusing want with need. You don't need gold gear until you are ready to start running vet trials and DLC dungeons. By the time you need the gold gear you have plenty of gold or supplies to either buy or make your own.
Players confuse want with need quite often. With the current market system most players can get everything the need and most of what they want. The market is strong, fluid and vibrant. It ebb and flows with supply and demand as any healthy market would. And the most important thing is changing to a central type of system would only compound the problems you are looking to address.
As others have stated it isn't about how much can be made in an hour. That will always vary some in this game and that isn't a bad thing at all. Farming gear sometimes you get lucky and get the choice weapon with the preferred trait first run. Other times it may take many runs. For consistent and steady income crafting is the way to go. You won't build up a huge surplus of gold but you can keep yourself in good gear the the desired foods/potions easily enough.
I used to make a lot of gold by doing master writs, purchasing furniture plans with the vouchers then selling those plans. Then because I had a ton of AP I started purchasing things with AP then selling them for gold. Just playing at what I enjoyed I amassed a bit of a fortune.
I am in a guild that gets a trader maybe once every two months. It isn't in a prime location but during that one week I can usually come in with over seven million gold. Again that is just by doing things I find fun. I don't go out looking for gold or for items to sell. It just happens as I play the game.

Someone's said that before you, I'm not confusing wants with needs. I do end game content. I do participate in veteran trials. You do need multiple sets for particular trials, you're not supposed to go into each trial with the same gear as each fight and mechanics are different. You do want to be fully setup in the trial so that you're not holding your team back being as you would be setup to be the best that you can be as the same is expected of them.

I do participate in PvP content where gold gear is needed, I do participate in player housing. I don't work my 9-5 job just to come home and grind like a 9-5 job doing things I don't want to do where I can play the game the way the game allows me too. Who exactly wants to get on the game and acquire gold by thieving or antiquities that is a very slow gold acquisition. Who wants to spend their days farming killing animals for light armor and medium materials just to break down for gold materials? Sure I do my daily writs all the time, but I'm not gonna play the game in ways that feels like a job outside of my real job.

Also if you feel like money isn't a necessity in this game or a real need why are you so defensive on this topic?

I'm vocal on this topic because I believe going to a centrally located economy would be devastating to the game. I push back on people that try and convince others the economy is broken and use as proof items that are not needed for most content in the game.
I've not suggested a grind of any kind other than to say grinding XP can lead to a shortage of gold because you concentrate only on the XP. I've said play the game as you want and you will get enough gold to afford the things you need.

You see a problem that doesn't exist and offer a solution that would actually create the problem you claim to want to fix.

VaranisArano wrote: »

A practical objection: Trading guild pages can already start to chug when getting near their maximum of 15,000 items. A market board in a major city would be updating many more items than that, and I'm not sure how well the servers would cope.

Another practical objection: in the past, ZOS had to limit the number of calls trading add-ons like Master Merchant and TTC could make on the server in a short period of time because it was impacting server performance. When you talk about updating a large Market Board as well as item histories, price points, etc. as a base game feature rather than an addon and thus subject to a much higher demand from the broader playerbase, ZOS would have to address the underlying issues first for it to even be feasible.

An internal system that tracked and displayed that would require less processing than an external one finding out the same information from an external interface.

And that same internal system could be slowed enough to reduce load but still allow for global searching and such. Arguing against it on a "load" basis is not appropriate.

kargen27 wrote: »

I'm vocal on this topic because I believe going to a centrally located economy would be devastating to the game. I push back on people that try and convince others the economy is broken and use as proof items that are not needed for most content in the game.
I've not suggested a grind of any kind other than to say grinding XP can lead to a shortage of gold because you concentrate only on the XP. I've said play the game as you want and you will get enough gold to afford the things you need.

You see a problem that doesn't exist and offer a solution that would actually create the problem you claim to want to fix.

Whether the economy is "broken" or "working well" is a subjective view and involves far more than just mats. Look at the overall picture and your vocal argument is reinforcing a system that thrives on hidden information.

And so many continue to claim that a centralized system would kill the game, when many other games worked just fine with just such a system (including the behemoth, World of Warcraft). But even that shift is not required. Just let people search for what they want WITHIN the game instead of having to run from vendor to vendor to maybe find something (consoles and often even with something like TTC on PC).

Yet even that is regularly opposed.

I do see the guild trader system as foolish, but it is what we will almost certainly have while the game exists, so make it better and more accessible. All the other arguments are irrelevant.

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

You can't be serious?

The whole purpose of the trade system is so that you can bypass farming that yourself so you can spend more time decorating instead of slowly obtaining the goods needed to decorate.

Motifs? Please enlighten me how the average player is even good enough to farm those vet content for those motifs because they're really not... You can't even begin to deny this fact...

What exactly do you feel like the purpose of the trade system is for?

Also being fully self sufficient while having multiple goals is unrealistic unless you want to take multiple years to accomplish. God help you trying to collect all the attunable stations by yourself... Playing that way will never let you complete that goal. At least not for 1-3 years if not way more...

This is a game, not real life.you can't possibly enjoy the game playing it that way. Farming every little thing without utilizing trade. Extremely unrealistic in every meaning of the word. Please enlighten me about what's enjoyable about that. 🤷🏾

Trading implies that both parties bring something to the table.

I like farming reagents. It's actually really relaxing. Also, I like getting gold. I do not care for running the same dungeon over and over hoping to get a specific motif.

Another player might enjoy running the same dungeon over and over for their dailies. They get more motifs than they can use. They need gold to buy potions so they can continue running dungeons.

They buy my regeants. I buy their motif.

That's an extremely simplistic version of the actual trading system which boils down to "Players make gold selling items from how they like to play, so they can use the gold to buy items from the ways they don't like to play."
...........................

If you do not make gold from how you like to play or you make less gold than you are spending, you will feel broke.

Solution: find a way to make gold that you like in order to finance the way you like to spend money. Yes, it will take time. This is an MMO, where the Devs want you to spend time in the game.

If you want to participate in the trading system, you need to bring something to your end of the table.
.......................

As for the "self-sufficient" players, this is in reference to a subset of players who refuse to join Guild Traders. Or in this case, to FlopsyPrince who suggests that even checking Guild Traders for items is too onerous.

Thus, they refuse to use the trading system described above.

Everything that is in a Guild Trader was obtained by another player. Therefore, with sufficient time and effort, you could obtain it too without needing to spend gold or the onerous burden of checking various Guild Traders.

There's no excuse, really. If you don't want to trade for something or spend your time making gold to buy it, go get it yourself! After all, someone else got it to sell it in the first place, so it doesn't need to be easier than it is.

Nice argument, but that is not the point being made, at least by many of us.

The point is that the current trading system hides information very effectively, even with something like TTC, but especially on consoles. It is hard to find something at all, let alone at its "normal" price unless you make that your game. It is also hard in the reverse to find the right price to put something up for, especially on consoles. (TTC can help with that, though the "suggested" price is often one that will not sell even though it is theoretically built on real game data.

While a central AH would be better in the view of many of us, integrating something like TTC into the game, giving real-time information from the game, not older information that usually leads to running from trader to trader only to find the item is not there, wasting a lot of time.

That has nothing to do with the arguments you are making. It has to do with a system that has no way to find out what is selling where and what a "normal" price is. It benefits those who can find things to flip, but hinders most people. That is not a well-designed system and is a failure, even if it continues on and is used.

I learned to sell without using add-ons, have used add-ons, and now don't use them again.

Yeah, it takes more time and effort to figure out my general price range without TTC, but it's hardly impossible. When it comes to what I sell, I check what my items are selling for in two places: Mournhold and my own guild. Then I price a little lower than Mournhold and if necessary, in the lower range for my own guild. It's harder when buying rare items, but for relatively common, bulk items like mats or even most motifs, I can usually figure out a rough price range where I'm comfortable buying by visiting a few major Guild hubs. (Incidentally, one of the reasons my prices are "fair" compared to Mournhold is that I know resellers from the big guilds will come pick up my "bargains" thanks to TTC showing them that I'm selling cheaper than they are. Ironically, most of my lower priced items aren't bought by regular players but bulk resellers, thanks to TTC.)

So its possible. It takes time, yes, and I realize that' an irritation to many players even as it benefits the Devs.

I personally don't hate the idea of something like TTC becoming a base game functionality, even though Master Merchant was my preferred addon while I used it. I think the technical side of it may be difficult for the Devs to implement based on the way they've restricted those addons' API access in the past, but maybe they'll surprise me. It's already ubiquitous on PC, so in one sense, making TTC a base game function would just level the information playing field for PC traders.

But I do know that there are plenty of Console players who'd rather not have TTC or a base game equivalent become ubiquitous on their platform as well as those who wish they had it. I'm not on that platform, so I'll let those who are debate the merits of it amongst themselves.

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

King_*** wrote: »

You can't be serious?

The whole purpose of the trade system is so that you can bypass farming that yourself so you can spend more time decorating instead of slowly obtaining the goods needed to decorate.

Motifs? Please enlighten me how the average player is even good enough to farm those vet content for those motifs because they're really not... You can't even begin to deny this fact...

What exactly do you feel like the purpose of the trade system is for?

Also being fully self sufficient while having multiple goals is unrealistic unless you want to take multiple years to accomplish. God help you trying to collect all the attunable stations by yourself... Playing that way will never let you complete that goal. At least not for 1-3 years if not way more...

This is a game, not real life.you can't possibly enjoy the game playing it that way. Farming every little thing without utilizing trade. Extremely unrealistic in every meaning of the word. Please enlighten me about what's enjoyable about that. 🤷🏾

Trading implies that both parties bring something to the table.

I like farming reagents. It's actually really relaxing. Also, I like getting gold. I do not care for running the same dungeon over and over hoping to get a specific motif.

Another player might enjoy running the same dungeon over and over for their dailies. They get more motifs than they can use. They need gold to buy potions so they can continue running dungeons.

They buy my regeants. I buy their motif.

That's an extremely simplistic version of the actual trading system which boils down to "Players make gold selling items from how they like to play, so they can use the gold to buy items from the ways they don't like to play."
...........................

If you do not make gold from how you like to play or you make less gold than you are spending, you will feel broke.

Solution: find a way to make gold that you like in order to finance the way you like to spend money. Yes, it will take time. This is an MMO, where the Devs want you to spend time in the game.

If you want to participate in the trading system, you need to bring something to your end of the table.
.......................

As for the "self-sufficient" players, this is in reference to a subset of players who refuse to join Guild Traders. Or in this case, to FlopsyPrince who suggests that even checking Guild Traders for items is too onerous.

Thus, they refuse to use the trading system described above.

Everything that is in a Guild Trader was obtained by another player. Therefore, with sufficient time and effort, you could obtain it too without needing to spend gold or the onerous burden of checking various Guild Traders.

There's no excuse, really. If you don't want to trade for something or spend your time making gold to buy it, go get it yourself! After all, someone else got it to sell it in the first place, so it doesn't need to be easier than it is.

That is not a well-designed system and is a failure, even if it continues on and is used.

In the end, all that has been offered in this thread are opinions. Opinions on if the current system is well designed or not. The fact is, that is all that has been presented here.