.

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

thejadefalcon wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

It has been said a million times: a central AH allows controlling the narket and dictating the prices by pressing F5 (and basically by using a bit or macro to do all the work). We have been there before in other games. The annoyance of travvelling around is the only way to at least make it a little more tedious for those who are playung the market monopoly game.

I could think of another way to stop the flipping game: Simply make all items bought at traders Bind on pickup.

Sometimes, I just don't need an item in the end. I bought a bunch of treasure maps the other day to go lead farming, now I'm selling the spares. You would prevent that. The same goes for housing, I bought a lot of items I then decided against for my latest build. Now I'm stuck with them, thanks to you.

Sometimes, I am buying it for someone else. Maybe because they're not able to get online at the time and I know my friend will want it, maybe it's because someone wants an item but they have no access to the zone. You would prevent that as well.

And yes, sometimes, I'll buy something cheap because I know it's going to be worth more down the line. And that's okay too.

That is quite possibly the worst idea to fix this I've ever heard and I've read a *lot* of ways people have suggested stopping flipping.

Well, people who don't sell because they don't want to engage with guilds are "stuck with them" too, and have been ever since trading behind a bizarre player-managed guild gate was introduced.

I'm not sure why people introduce arguments that are based entirely on their own playing style and refuse to reflect on how, in an MMO, other people might play differently.

Stuck by choice. They have a perfectly fine system in place for selling multiple items. The idea of binding all items purchased from a trader takes away choice. Choice is a good thing. Those who chose not to participate in the trader system still have zone chat available. If your play style is solo, no guilds, then zone chat would be what fits that play style.

A perfectly fine system that about 50% of players actively despise? Hmm. It's well worth going somewhere like reddit to see how much less self-selecting players *really* like how trading is set up in ESO.

It would be interesting to see evidence of where this 50% of players number comes from. I think that the majority of players do not participate in any games forums. This statistic of 50% of players disliking the present system would appear to be pulled from thin air.

Well, you can easily start here https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/we7c1m/selling_stuff_pauper_npc_traders_for_players_who/

Although the numbers may well fluctuate as the ESO forum "purists" click away. They certainly did last time I linked to it, notwithstanding that as a suggestion it would do absolutely *nothing* to disadvantage fans of the existing trade setup.

But you can also just search reddit. The number of people defending the existing trading system is nothing like what it is on here. Most likely because people on here have to be ultra passionate about ESO / live in ESO to bother going through the hoops to sign up to these forums, whereas that does not apply on other fora so you get a more representative mix of players.

And you can Google roundups of which MMOs to play, which have from time to time singled out the trader system as a reason not to bother playing ESO at all and just find a better MMO. Not fair, as far as I'm concerned, because of what the rest of the game has to offer, but as a comparative take when lining up different MMOs people should look into, not unreasonable, either.

OK so no concrete evidence of the supposed 50% of ESO-players?

This answer in your Reddit thread is rather revealing:
---
"What an elaborate gymnastic stunt to try and substitute something akin to putting one foot ahead of another to move forward.

The current system works just fine."
---

Did you really just pluck out one answer out of almost two hundred that you agree with and ignore / gloss over literally all the others and their respective weightings?

I'm not sure I can really respond to that other than to say that the link, despite what you say, demonstrates a very noticeable plurality of views on the basic point of should a workaround for the existing trading system be introduced, with the votes splitting roughly 50:50. I don't remember what the final count was before reddit stops tracking it but it was approaching 30,000 impressions.

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Bottom line is, there are enough traders and trading guilds that virtually anyone who wants to be in a trading guild can be.
There are basic gold making opportunities available to everyone. If you like to pvp there are plenty of things to buy with AP and telvar that sell well, if you like to pve there are style materials and motifs to sell, if you like to do quests and overland content there are patterns and gear to sell, and if you don't want to sell anything every there are daily crafting writs.

EVERYONE has a way to make gold, no matter what you like to do in the game, and considering I'm in 2 guilds that only have around 300 players each but maintain a trader, the issue doesn't seem to be lack of space in these guild traders.

Everyone has the opportunity to make gold, how much gold you make is ENTIRELY dependent on how much effort you want to put in, no different than any other aspect of the game, really. There are tons of people who literally never buy or sell anything on guild traders, have simply never bothered, and they play the game quite happily. They farm their own mats, make their own food and potions, etc.
The system is fine as it is. A lot of people have turned it into their own mini game, and it's the biggest gold sink in the game.

Making gold isn't the main issue. As you noted, there are very few gold sinks in the game. You can literally forgo the trading system in its entirety and still have enough gold to do what you want.

The problem with the current trading system is that there isn't a centralized way to access the system as a whole. Then, tack on the ever increasing barrier to entry if you want a vendor in a prime area. Yes, anyone can join a trading guild without a vendor, but then you are dealing with an active pool of people in the 100's or less, rather than the entirety of the game's trading population. If you want to join an guild with a trader in a prime spot, you are expected to meet a weekly quota either in sales, or donations via raffles. Read: meet the quotas or be removed from the guild. And then there is the option to win a bid on a spot in the middle of nowhere, with little to zero traffic.

Again, not a user friendly system.

As I've noted twice now, this is a very old system, and an old problem, that was carried forward into ESO from a long dead game. Some of the developers from that game founded ESO, and they grandfathered their ideas in. As I've also noted, just because it was someone's idea at one point, doesn't mean it is a great idea now. There are better ways to incorporate a trading system in a game, which every other major MMO has sensibly done.

Oh, and for curiosity's sake, the original reasoning for not having an AH was for "gear pricing". Since that concept has been blown out of the water, again, it boils down to keeping a system for the sake of not wanting to let go.

Last fall, developers explained that The Elder Scrolls Online would not have an in-game auction house in order to protect the value of the game's most powerful gear.

"You don't necessarily want to do a global auction house for a game with one giant server because that generally leads to all the best gear being available at very, very cheap prices," gameplay designer Nick Konkle told Shoddy Cast. "A lot of times that can trivialize the game. You cannot have a healthy economy when there are no restrictions on getting the best stuff in the game."

Even Dark Age of Camelot ended up with a central search and buy function.
Extra cost for not buying direct.

They had npc vendors for buying mats and a meaningful player crafted market.
Every build always required a couple player crafted pieces and crafting required effort to level.
Crafting in Eso is so automated as to be meaningless except for self or to give away free or cost of mats.
(Automation = PC addons, there are a lot of script running addons on PC which basically play the game for you)

wilykcat wrote: »

I would like an auction house.

I don't have much luck getting invited into traders guilds.

If the game does get a public auction house; it should be for subscribers only, similar set up/functions as the guild wars 2 auction house, and for those who can't join traders guilds ( player applications that have been declined from more than 4 traders guilds will also get the option).

Also a currency exchange feature would be nice as well.

Which would you rather have, a craft bag or an eso+ only selling system?

Because I would argue that you can't have both and have the game survive.

Paywall too much and the game is gone.

Having followed this discussion for a while I have to admit I'm rather surprised to find there are people who think the current system is absolutely fine, no problems.
This must be horrible on console, unless you have Tamriel Trade open on your PC at the same time.

I'm on PC but from a both a buyer's and a seller's point of view I still find the present system slow and cumbersome. If it wasn't for Tamriel Trade, I wouldn't bother with it at all.

Buying is a pain. Having to know the exact name of the item you need, checking the prices via the add-on or typing each one into the TT website, and then having to find the location of the trader you want to buy from.
New players have the added joy of possibly having to search to see how they can get into a some areas because they won't have all the wayshrines unlocked.
If the item is still on the trader when you arrive, all well and good, but if it's sold, you have to go through the whole process again.
Selling is pretty slow and painful too, assuming you have a guild who made a successful bid that week.

Compare this to:
Go to a nearby market board, search for your item by name or search by category, find it, choose your vendor and purchase.
or
Go to market board, check recent history of sales and recent prices, list your items.

I would like an auction house, but I very much doubt we'll get one at this stage of the game.
However, I think ZoS could do a lot to improve things.
A centralized way of checking prices and making purchases would remove a lot of the pain for buyers and being able to see recent sales history would enable sellers to pitch prices at a reasonable level and help buyers avoid being gouged.

I'd really like the option to have something like a market board in major towns and cities where you can make a purchase. If people are worried the world will look less populated if buyers don't have to travel to buy, they could always put a tiny surcharge on items for those who choose not to trudge all the way to the Trade Vendor and back again.
I'd also let sellers list through the market board and thereby cut down congestion at the banks.

Northwold wrote: »

.

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

thejadefalcon wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

It has been said a million times: a central AH allows controlling the narket and dictating the prices by pressing F5 (and basically by using a bit or macro to do all the work). We have been there before in other games. The annoyance of travvelling around is the only way to at least make it a little more tedious for those who are playung the market monopoly game.

I could think of another way to stop the flipping game: Simply make all items bought at traders Bind on pickup.

Sometimes, I just don't need an item in the end. I bought a bunch of treasure maps the other day to go lead farming, now I'm selling the spares. You would prevent that. The same goes for housing, I bought a lot of items I then decided against for my latest build. Now I'm stuck with them, thanks to you.

Sometimes, I am buying it for someone else. Maybe because they're not able to get online at the time and I know my friend will want it, maybe it's because someone wants an item but they have no access to the zone. You would prevent that as well.

And yes, sometimes, I'll buy something cheap because I know it's going to be worth more down the line. And that's okay too.

That is quite possibly the worst idea to fix this I've ever heard and I've read a *lot* of ways people have suggested stopping flipping.

Well, people who don't sell because they don't want to engage with guilds are "stuck with them" too, and have been ever since trading behind a bizarre player-managed guild gate was introduced.

I'm not sure why people introduce arguments that are based entirely on their own playing style and refuse to reflect on how, in an MMO, other people might play differently.

Stuck by choice. They have a perfectly fine system in place for selling multiple items. The idea of binding all items purchased from a trader takes away choice. Choice is a good thing. Those who chose not to participate in the trader system still have zone chat available. If your play style is solo, no guilds, then zone chat would be what fits that play style.

A perfectly fine system that about 50% of players actively despise? Hmm. It's well worth going somewhere like reddit to see how much less self-selecting players *really* like how trading is set up in ESO.

It would be interesting to see evidence of where this 50% of players number comes from. I think that the majority of players do not participate in any games forums. This statistic of 50% of players disliking the present system would appear to be pulled from thin air.

Well, you can easily start here https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/we7c1m/selling_stuff_pauper_npc_traders_for_players_who/

Although the numbers may well fluctuate as the ESO forum "purists" click away. They certainly did last time I linked to it, notwithstanding that as a suggestion it would do absolutely *nothing* to disadvantage fans of the existing trade setup.

But you can also just search reddit. The number of people defending the existing trading system is nothing like what it is on here. Most likely because people on here have to be ultra passionate about ESO / live in ESO to bother going through the hoops to sign up to these forums, whereas that does not apply on other fora so you get a more representative mix of players.

And you can Google roundups of which MMOs to play, which have from time to time singled out the trader system as a reason not to bother playing ESO at all and just find a better MMO. Not fair, as far as I'm concerned, because of what the rest of the game has to offer, but as a comparative take when lining up different MMOs people should look into, not unreasonable, either.

OK so no concrete evidence of the supposed 50% of ESO-players?

This answer in your Reddit thread is rather revealing:
---
"What an elaborate gymnastic stunt to try and substitute something akin to putting one foot ahead of another to move forward.

The current system works just fine."
---

Did you really just pluck out one answer out of almost two hundred that you agree with and ignore / gloss over literally all the others and their respective weightings?

I'm not sure I can really respond to that other than to say that the link, despite what you say, demonstrates a very noticeable plurality of views on the basic point of should a workaround for the existing trading system be introduced, with the votes splitting roughly 50:50. I don't remember what the final count was before reddit stops tracking it but it was approaching 30,000 impressions.

No, that was just an answer that caught my eye. Seriously your very own thread with 30,000 impressions is not concrete proof of anything when we have a total user population of 22m and a daily playerbase of 431k (approximate figures according to mmo-population.com).

There is still zero credible evidence of your claim that 50% of players want an auction house.

Northwold wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

.

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

thejadefalcon wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

It has been said a million times: a central AH allows controlling the narket and dictating the prices by pressing F5 (and basically by using a bit or macro to do all the work). We have been there before in other games. The annoyance of travvelling around is the only way to at least make it a little more tedious for those who are playung the market monopoly game.

I could think of another way to stop the flipping game: Simply make all items bought at traders Bind on pickup.

Sometimes, I just don't need an item in the end. I bought a bunch of treasure maps the other day to go lead farming, now I'm selling the spares. You would prevent that. The same goes for housing, I bought a lot of items I then decided against for my latest build. Now I'm stuck with them, thanks to you.

Sometimes, I am buying it for someone else. Maybe because they're not able to get online at the time and I know my friend will want it, maybe it's because someone wants an item but they have no access to the zone. You would prevent that as well.

And yes, sometimes, I'll buy something cheap because I know it's going to be worth more down the line. And that's okay too.

That is quite possibly the worst idea to fix this I've ever heard and I've read a *lot* of ways people have suggested stopping flipping.

Well, people who don't sell because they don't want to engage with guilds are "stuck with them" too, and have been ever since trading behind a bizarre player-managed guild gate was introduced.

I'm not sure why people introduce arguments that are based entirely on their own playing style and refuse to reflect on how, in an MMO, other people might play differently.

Stuck by choice. They have a perfectly fine system in place for selling multiple items. The idea of binding all items purchased from a trader takes away choice. Choice is a good thing. Those who chose not to participate in the trader system still have zone chat available. If your play style is solo, no guilds, then zone chat would be what fits that play style.

A perfectly fine system that about 50% of players actively despise? Hmm. It's well worth going somewhere like reddit to see how much less self-selecting players *really* like how trading is set up in ESO.

It would be interesting to see evidence of where this 50% of players number comes from. I think that the majority of players do not participate in any games forums. This statistic of 50% of players disliking the present system would appear to be pulled from thin air.

Well, you can easily start here https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/we7c1m/selling_stuff_pauper_npc_traders_for_players_who/

Although the numbers may well fluctuate as the ESO forum "purists" click away. They certainly did last time I linked to it, notwithstanding that as a suggestion it would do absolutely *nothing* to disadvantage fans of the existing trade setup.

But you can also just search reddit. The number of people defending the existing trading system is nothing like what it is on here. Most likely because people on here have to be ultra passionate about ESO / live in ESO to bother going through the hoops to sign up to these forums, whereas that does not apply on other fora so you get a more representative mix of players.

And you can Google roundups of which MMOs to play, which have from time to time singled out the trader system as a reason not to bother playing ESO at all and just find a better MMO. Not fair, as far as I'm concerned, because of what the rest of the game has to offer, but as a comparative take when lining up different MMOs people should look into, not unreasonable, either.

OK so no concrete evidence of the supposed 50% of ESO-players?

This answer in your Reddit thread is rather revealing:
---
"What an elaborate gymnastic stunt to try and substitute something akin to putting one foot ahead of another to move forward.

The current system works just fine."
---

Did you really just pluck out one answer out of almost two hundred that you agree with and ignore / gloss over literally all the others and their respective weightings?

I'm not sure I can really respond to that other than to say that the link, despite what you say, demonstrates a very noticeable plurality of views on the basic point of should a workaround for the existing trading system be introduced, with the votes splitting roughly 50:50. I don't remember what the final count was before reddit stops tracking it but it was approaching 30,000 impressions.

No, that was just an answer that caught my eye. Seriously your very own thread with 30,000 impressions is not concrete proof of anything when we have a total user population of 22m and a daily playerbase of 431k (approximate figures according to mmo-population.com).

There is still zero credible evidence of your claim that 50% of players want an auction house.

Well that's great since I *didn't* claim that 50% of players wanted an auction house. I said: "A perfectly fine system that about 50% of players actively despise?" And I do stand by that comment. Everything I have seen, including on that reddit thread, suggests that that statement is on the money.

While I accept that some people want the existing trading system to remain absolutely the same as it always has been, I do not think it is credible to claim that a very sizable number of players do not have a problem with it. Consequently, I don't think blithe assertions along the lines that the system is perfectly fine get us anywhere.

Even if I liked the present system, it would be hard to argue that an MMO, of all things, should ignore that a fundamental back end system is attracting so many objections, so frequently. In a phrase beloved of some people here, that really is not "good for the health of the game".

There are a number of compromise suggestions that have been raised over the years that do not involve a wholesale switch to an auction house and which would have a negligible impact on the experience of players who already use the trading system (AND which can be made to function as gold sinks). It's becoming quite peculiar that they are being ignored. And if the fear is that players who already use the trading system would like those compromises more, well, that rather supports the view that it is problematic and not catering to what players actually want.

Mea culpa so let's take the claim "A perfectly fine system that about 50% of players actively despise?" . Where's the proof of that? Your very own Reddit thread with 191 comments is a microcosm compared to the sheer number of ESO customers 22m & 400k+ daily users. There are threads on this forum as well but nowhere do I see any evidence of 50% of ESO players on either side.

I am not at all opposed to reasonable changes to the trading system but I do call out hyperbolic claims with no concrete evidence to back them up.

faerigirl wrote: »

This discussion has happened many, many times over the last decade.

I was a rabid AH supporter back in days of yore but now that I don't 'struggle' for mats of any kind or have any need for more gold I'm a lot more tolerant of the guild traders.

If anything would be on a 'wish list' it would be a central board -updated every three hours or something- that you could find out which trader has what you a looking for-think same search function as on the traders now. You'd still have to bounce around but you would know which zone and who you were looking for.

What bugs me are the stories of greedy trading guilds. High dues, multiple guilds under the same people. Things to screw with the buying of traders. Ever been to a trader that has nearly nothing for sale? That's just a front for another guild.

Or maybe all that's changed -shrugs- I'm not in a guild because my time is little and the ***'s are annoying.

I've suggested each zone have a central board where you can see what all the traders in that zone have to offer. It wouldn't show any prices and you couldn't purchase from that board. It would only tell you what items each trader has. Players that want an item and don't care the cost can then go to the most convenient and purchase the item. Players that enjoy flipping or want to shop for a bargain would need to visit each trader with the item to see who has the best deal. Flippers would need to visit each zone and access the bulletin board then hit each trader if they want to stay competitive.

I don't think screwing with buying traders is near the problem it once was. There are so many choices for good trade guilds that consistently get a trader that no player should feel compelled to stay in an abusive or high priced guild. The guilds that get one of the prime spots every week will have higher dues but that comes with getting the prime location. I was in one of those guilds but for my play style it didn't make sense. The guild I am in now has two requirements. Log in at least once every two weeks and a 3,000 gold fee paid each week. I've been with them around two years now and they failed to get a trader only three times. When they fail to get a trader they roll the fees over to the next week so that is fair.

karthrag_inak wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Neither will selling mats to the npcs, because that would cause more inflation.

Wasn't suggesting to sell mats -to- npcs, Khajiit was suggesting that npc vendors sold mats at a reasonable price. Mat inflation issue solved.

Farming mats already exists in the game and also takes care of any increase in prices.

Jimbru wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

It has been said a million times: a central AH allows controlling the narket and dictating the prices by pressing F5 (and basically by using a bot or macro to do all the work). We have been there before in other games. The annoyance of travelling around is the only way to at least make it a little more tedious for those who are playing the market monopoly game.

The big trading guilds in this game manipulate the market like crazy. People post items for wild prices just to manipulate TTC and other trading addons. The fact that we need addons in the first place to make the system reasonably usable is a condemnation in itself. Just a few weeks ago one of the trading guilds was having some kind of contest or something and everybody else's sales tanked while it was going on. Every time there's new content there's a runaway capitalist economic rush to set ridiculous prices on the new things everyone wants. Don't pretend it isn't a problem because it is.

The best auction house I've seen out of all the games I've played is the trading post system in Guild Wars 2.

- Buyers can either buy outright for posted prices, or post bids for items they want, which sellers can choose to match when they are posting items. For both bidding and selling, there is an automatic overbid-underbid system. These things together help keep inflation under control and make prices less vulnerable to manipulation.
- It also includes a secure in-game currency exchange to exchange crowns for gold or vice versa, with the exchange rate being based on demand. This system kills gold sellers and prevents scamming because there's no second person involved. As opposed to the unofficial offline scam filled "system" for selling crowns that ESO currently has.

So, if I was going to implement central trading in ESO, GW2 is the system I would choose to emulate.

Selling new items at outrageous prices isn't a problem at all. It is a sign that the economy is healthy and vibrant. Some players are eager to run new content and some are eager for all the new drops. Those eager for the drops are willing to pay and because of the strong economy can do so. Later the price drops and players that were not in a hurry to get the new stuff can purchase or farm. Price fluidity and fluctuations based on supply and demand are indicators of a very healthy economy. Most players can get everything they need and most of what they want.

When someone suggests that 'there's no problem with the market, everything is fine', while refined max level mats were stable priced at around 5-10 gold per unit from launch until after Summerset was released, and even platinum ounces no more than 20 gold per unit after Elsweyr, and now there's uniform pricing of platinum and ancestor silk that is over 10x as high, well.... that makes khajiit think that that someone is benefiting distinctly from that problem they are trying to convince people doesn't exist.

A new player to ESO would have an almost impossible time getting into crafting on a large scale, something that was so easy to do 5-7 years ago. Khajiit says that as someone with a solid 9 digits worth of gold, who has done...~114k daily and sealed crafting writs in the past 1841 days, and has 8844 crafting surveys at his disposal.

Something must be done. This one cannot understand why it is sufficiently important to the devs to change a mundus stone "for balance" and yet the materials market is a catastrophe and there's nothing that is even considered.

If not for occasionally wanting to sell my goods, I'd never be in a guild. Most of what I do sell is mats that I have gathered out on my adventures so nerfing that to npc vendors with a flat price would screw me over. I'll never sell by spamming in zone chat, just not my style. This approach has always seemed to me like an effort to drive people to guilds.

I've often wondered why they would allow people to scrape and compile market data. The current system has always felt like they are making an effort to encourage people to actually visit vendors and "window shop" as if you were living in the game space. If that's what they want, then stop letting people compile data and use 3rd party websites.

I would love to see the results.

Tarloch_S wrote: »

If not for occasionally wanting to sell my goods, I'd never be in a guild. Most of what I do sell is mats that I have gathered out on my adventures so nerfing that to npc vendors with a flat price would screw me over. I'll never sell by spamming in zone chat, just not my style. This approach has always seemed to me like an effort to drive people to guilds.

I've often wondered why they would allow people to scrape and compile market data. The current system has always felt like they are making an effort to encourage people to actually visit vendors and "window shop" as if you were living in the game space. If that's what they want, then stop letting people compile data and use 3rd party websites.

I would love to see the results.

Could you imagine the uproar if that happened? Worse yet, all add ons period? I mostly play on Xbox, but do have an account on PC. It's night and day.

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Ingenon wrote: »

Or perhaps the price for mats on PC is because more crafters on PC are buying mats? I only play on PS/NA, and do not do crafting writs every day on multiple alts, because of the time it takes. With add-ons on PC, it takes a fraction of the time to complete writs. More PC players doing writs on more alts, more demand for mats?

There's nothing 'supply-and-demand' at all about the market in ESO.

There are very few of the real-world costs and challenges for the 'supply side' - there's no penalty for near-infinite inventory, there's no expiration of perishables, there's no 'business costs and overhead', etc.

Without these, there's no downward pressure on prices to balance demand causing prices to rise. The system is broken, it was made broken, and it is only going to get worse until there's some kind of downward pressure applied to sales.

The easiest no-brainer solution is to have all the npc craft vendors provide unrefined mats and refined mats for some reasonable price. 200 gpu and 50 gpu, respectively, would be fair. Think of it this way - they provide racial style stones for 15 gpu, and folks still sell them on guild merchants for more than that. But not -much- more. They would be substantially higher if the npc merchants didn't sell them - look at daedra hearts - 10x as much.

The market is all about supply and demand. You have to include time involved when deciding price. Supply will dwindle if players are unwilling to put in the time to acquire those supplies. One of the most clear examples of supply and demand is when homes became giftable. Materials for crafting furniture shot up in price, stayed high for quite a while then slowly started coming back down. Again most players can in the current economy get everything they need and almost everything they want. Players can choose to spend time or gold on the items they want/need. The market is fluid. Prices do adjust based on activities that take place in game.
The near infinite inventory isn't what matters in this economy. The limited slots for selling items is your downward pressure. Players wanting to make gold don't want items sitting in one of their thirty slots for several days. They want the item to sell so they can list another. That means coming in under other listings. The system we have now is healthy and works well. We could use a few tweaks to improve things but we don't need anything drastic.

Leaving the economy out of it NPCs selling raw materials would still have negative impact on the game. Players out in the world gathering materials is what makes the game feel alive and populated. There would be little reason to ever venture into a zone once the stories are completed for many players. ZoS adds events and game systems such as Antiquities to get players to revisit these zones. Why would they want to create something that would undermine all that effort?

NPCs selling materials would have a negative impact on more than just the economy.

thejadefalcon wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

It has been said a million times: a central AH allows controlling the narket and dictating the prices by pressing F5 (and basically by using a bit or macro to do all the work). We have been there before in other games. The annoyance of travvelling around is the only way to at least make it a little more tedious for those who are playung the market monopoly game.

I could think of another way to stop the flipping game: Simply make all items bought at traders Bind on pickup.

...
That is quite possibly the worst idea to fix this I've ever heard and I've read a *lot* of ways people have suggested stopping flipping.

That kind of ridicule is the reason why this topic carries so much heat, generates so much hatred and divides the entire player base. Well done!

And do you want to hear some more?
Ban or regulate trading addons.
Ban or regulate Crown trade for RL money.
Ban or regulate multiple accounts per player.

Those would address the three most dire and impactful problems ESO trading has.
Selective advantage in knowledge of the market.
The ability to pump in RL money into the game to gain advantages in trading.
The (theoretically) infinite storage of items.

Just saying...