ESO+ Auction house

spartaxoxo · July 2023

karthrag_inak wrote: »

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.

PC isn't the only platform and the console economies are pretty fantastic. The materials actually could use some more rarity because currently they are a bit deflated on my platform. But, overall the market is pretty healthy.

evan302 wrote: »

This must be horrible on console, unless you have Tamriel Trade open on your PC at the same time.

On the contrary. PlayStation has the most stable economy of any MMO I have ever played. I used to be a fan of the auction house because it's convenient and what I was used to. Now I think ESO has one of the best trading systems in the game. I think a large part of that is the decentralized nature of the trade.

All these years later and you can still get all of what you need and most of what you want with casual play.

Maximilian · July 2023

Just - No.

phairdon · July 2023

Unlikely to see a transition from trading guilds to an auction house after 9 years. Wanted to see a auction house too, alas its not to be.

Zodiarkslayer · July 2023

Ph1p wrote: »

...
Not sure what you learned in your economics seminar, but decreasing market transparency isn't the way to go for a healthy economy. Everyone should be able to see basic information about the spread and trend of prices, so they don't get ripped off. In my opinion, TTC and ATT/MM functionalities should be made available for every player, not just traders and others who make the effort of getting the addons. ...

That is what you get when an educational system is focusing on repetition, instead of comprehension.

The concept of "complete information" and "market transparency" derives from the fact that in real life all products have attributes that may or may not be known to all market participants at the time of the trade (the existence of an attribute, as well as its expression or value), generally all non consumables are re-tradeable and most importantly that a price for a trade is an agreed upon transaction, not an inherent value (in other words: prices are negotiable). Now these therefore constitute prerequisites for the application of the theorem of "complete information" and "market transparency".

HOW MANY OF THESE PREREQUISITES DOES THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE MEET???

none, because

Every quality of every tradeable item in ESO is described in its tooltip. There are no hidden qualities. There is not even decay or deterioration. Every item is the same as it was when RnG plucked it from the Aether. It's not like you can use s Ice staff of powerful assault for your 4th and 5th piece in yolnakriin. Video games do not work like that. Because they cannot work any other way.
Non consumables are not re-tradeable in ESO, because of account binding. Once an item is used, it cannot be sold via guild trading. It is therefore not part of the market.
Prices are not negotiated in ESO. They are posted, demanded if you will. No buyer can ask for a different price, there is no part of the guild trader system where a buyer can ask for an item at a price. Strictly speaking, half of the market forces do not exist in ESO's trade system. Or rather, they can only express themselves by not doing anything, i.e. not buying an overpriced item.

I said "ban OR regulate". Obviously ZOS would have to decide what and how to do it. They are the only ones that have a complete data set to make any kind of evaluation of the impact of a ban or a regulation.
Especially since general experience with outright bans says that there always will be unforeseen side effects. What I intended was shifting focus to the real problems of the guild trader system, creating awareness.

The assumption that these trade addons increase market transparency is ultimately wrong. Complete Information is the way to a healthy economy in real life, yes, but these addons (TTC in particular) are not creating that. And that is why I say "ban or regulate" them, if you want a better, healthier market situation.
And, technically speaking, the economic theory says all market participants should have the same information, not all should have all. The fact that it is practically impossible in reality, doesn't mean this practicality is simply applicable in a virtual trading system.

What TTC does, is taking only the offers that are registered by its companion app and make some calculations with it. And as a result the individual user gets a simple display of "that item is worth between this and that". Right? I mean it is nice to have all the thinking done by someone else and just having to copy some numbers.
And how can TTC even differentiate between an item being sold and an item being taken down, because it is hellishly overpriced?
There are some serious issues with that. Even if we completely ignore the psychology of a displayed value and its influence on price building by offering convenience over effort, we still have to note that there simply exists an external party influencing price building. A party that has no interest in participating in the market, but has a hell of an influence on it.

@Ph1p How is that "healthy" for a market?

Because of this problematic practise, the Master Merchant Addon actually tries to collect information about completed transactions, but aggregating the data in a decentralised system and especially cleaning the data set of false and double information has proven to be a very high hurdle.