Can we please get a Auction House?

Ph1p · May 2023

Northwold wrote: »

Now, MMO economies have something of a problem here that stems from the nature of what people are trying to buy and sell. For MMO commodities, in particular -- things like crafting materials -- demand is inelastic (it is relatively insensitive to movements in price) because there are no substitute products that people can switch to if the price of the product they want is too high.

[...]

That type of market gives the power of setting prices to sellers. It does not lead to efficient pricing. There is not an ultra competitive selling environment where everyone can see what everyone else is charging and buyers can take it or leave it, forcing sellers to compete with each other on price.

I fully agree that there are many factors at play and that we all try to simplify things, because we don't want to write an economic thesis here. But an MMO is much less complex than the real world and you also downplay key aspects to favor your arguments about price inelasticity:

One can't just ignore the substitution effect of farming materials over buying them. Necessity, which you even mention and then dismiss, plays a key role in defining elasticity. But every MMO buyer has the viable option to walk away from overpriced materials and farm them instead, and not buying in itself is part of price setting as well.
Demand inelasticity is not a constant function of price. Yes, within a certain range it can be relatively inelastic. There is enough demand there that you will still sell at a somewhat higher price, if you wait long enough. But go too high and demand crumbles, go too low and demand skyrockets. The price elasticity is not zero or close to zero across the board.
It's also funny how you dismiss the interaction of supply and demand, while claiming a "seller-led market", which is by definition an excess of demand over supply, causing abnormally high prices.
There is actually a real example of a (temporary) seller's market: Every ESO+ free trial, commodity prices go up with demand because people fill their craft bags at any cost. But as demand drops again after the event, so do prices.

There are of course situations where your argument about inelasticity can hold true: Rare items don't have much pricing data or alternatives, so the law of supply and demand breaks down. MMOs take advantage of players' fear of missing out, creating an addictiveness that contributes to price inelasticity. Guild members may choose buy from their own guilds out of loyalty, despite higher prices. Console players don't have pricing information via MM/ATT, which I very much agree should be an in-game feature for everyone - hmm, but console prices are much lower than on PC...

Giulietta · May 2023

I have been following your pretty entertaining discussion with great interest and even learned something from it:

from now on I won´t ever buy or sell stuff via guild trader, because either I sell at said "market value" set by flippers, or I sell below that amount and feed flippers' purses. I´m not about to play that game of yours anymore as I really despise greed. Practices such as flipping shouldn´t pay off and I´ll never have a part in it doing so again.

thx 4 the lesson

Ph1p · May 2023

Braffin wrote: »

The best way to combat inflation is to limit the practice of reselling goods at a completely fictional price, or better end it completely.

I don't think it makes sense to continue the discussion, if you still believe that prices can be arbitrarily set by resellers without impact from the demand side - all evidence to the contrary. I'm not claiming that the balance is perfect or that it's a buyers' market out there. But there is a reason why every trading guild advises its newer members to only flip with money they won't miss. It's easy to miscalculate and end up with items you can't resell.

We can probably agree that ZOS should provide better price transparency for everyone, so players don't have to rely on external add-ons any more. That would shift the balance a bit more towards the buy side. Still, thanks for the debate and all the best!

Braffin · May 2023

Ph1p wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

The best way to combat inflation is to limit the practice of reselling goods at a completely fictional price, or better end it completely.

I don't think it makes sense to continue the discussion, if you still believe that prices can be arbitrarily set by resellers without impact from the demand side - all evidence to the contrary. I'm not claiming that the balance is perfect or that it's a buyers' market out there. But there is a reason why every trading guild advises its newer members to only flip with money they won't miss. It's easy to miscalculate and end up with items you can't resell.

We can probably agree that ZOS should provide better price transparency for everyone, so players don't have to rely on external add-ons any more. That would shift the balance a bit more towards the buy side. Still, thanks for the debate and all the best!

At least we can agree to disagree and let it be. You made your arguments, I made mine, neither of us will convince the other side as it seems. Nothing bad in that tho, as others can read through our walls of text and forming their own opinion based on that. And there is really no need to start a personal quarrel over different opinions regarding in-game economics in an MMO. Think we can agree on that too.

In all honesty best wishes to you too!

Northwold · May 2023

Ph1p wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Now, MMO economies have something of a problem here that stems from the nature of what people are trying to buy and sell. For MMO commodities, in particular -- things like crafting materials -- demand is inelastic (it is relatively insensitive to movements in price) because there are no substitute products that people can switch to if the price of the product they want is too high.

[...]

That type of market gives the power of setting prices to sellers. It does not lead to efficient pricing. There is not an ultra competitive selling environment where everyone can see what everyone else is charging and buyers can take it or leave it, forcing sellers to compete with each other on price.

I fully agree that there are many factors at play and that we all try to (quote removed only to keep the post shorter)

Look, there is so much that's askew of the underlying concepts in what you say that there's no real point in engaging with it from an economics perspective. I don't mean to be rude but you are taking accepted and widely discussed economic concepts such as elasticity and demand based product substitution (a different concept from leaving the market entirely, which happens when price sensitivity hits a lack of substitutable products *on the market*) and giving them completely wild definitions to suit your purposes / assuming that they do not mean what they mean. If you want to talk about supply and demand and what elasticity means, it's worth getting a textbook. Or simply state your arguments without reference to such concepts. Demand and supply can change in response to what happens on a market. We know that. But it doesn't take your argument anywhere.

Throughout this discussion, personally, I have repeatedly pointed out that there are advantages and disadvantages to the guild trader system, and advantages and disadvantages to an auction house. I have also acknowledged that an auction house is likely not on the cards but there are issues with the trader system that really need to be resolved (most obviously, that flipping undermines the trader idea, and the selling gate on players who won't join guilds artificially constrains supply and causes problems for a big chunk of the playerbase and /or forces people who really do not want to to join guilds in a game that is marketed as much as a solo playable game as as an MMO).

Many other posters have pointed out issues that could be ameliorated and there are various ways in which that might be approached. Doing so would not damage the game but improve it. Although it might possibly cause some minimal disadvantage to the relatively small handful of players who have made trading their sole focus in ESO (specifically, putting a throttle on flipping might damage industrial scale flippers -- introducing a heavily restricted non-guild NPC trader function would likely benefit everyone else as it would increase supply in the economy).

We don't need made up economic arguments that have no basis in actual economics to defend the status quo. If people want to cling rigidly to the existing system without explaining why nothing in it ever needs to be changed, it is better for them to just say that than to make up arguments based on "supply and demand" that are just that: made up.

Credible_Joe · May 2023

Giulietta wrote: »

I have been following your pretty entertaining discussion with great interest and even learned something from it:

from now on I won´t ever buy or sell stuff via guild trader, because either I sell at said "market value" set by flippers, or I sell below that amount and feed flippers' purses. I´m not about to play that game of yours anymore as I really despise greed. Practices such as flipping shouldn´t pay off and I´ll never have a part in it doing so again.

thx 4 the lesson

Aren't guild traders a direct counter to the flip problem?

Sure, you can use TTC to find flippable stuff, but it's a job of work. Constantly refresh your price tables, run back and forth across Nirn to snatch up that cipher listed at 10g with no guarantee that someone else won't just physically beat you to it.

Fragmenting the player economy and tying it to physical locations across the map makes it much more resistant to player manipulation. Especially bad actor manipulation; gold farmers are still in business. With a central auction house, any troll that buys gold can tank the economy in a few clicks.

With guild traders, they have to do it one trader at a time, and I'm sure there are measures to detect someone like that attempting this kind of attack. So it potentially doubles as a gold-buyer & troll detection system.

Flipping still works to an extent, but it's reduced from something that can be carried out by anyone with enough gold to something that has to be done opportunistically.

Not to mention the value of real estate. And I'm not talking about snapping up the best spot at a crafting hub, I mean the value of small and medium sized guilds at roadside guild traders. Those traders always have stuff at off-market prices, and you never know what you'll find there.

So if you really want to resist the flip game, don't bother with prime real estate traders. Shop with the little guys at cross roads, and non-capital cities and towns.

Giulietta · May 2023

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Giulietta wrote: »

I have been following your pretty entertaining discussion with great interest and even learned something from it:

from now on I won´t ever buy or sell stuff via guild trader, because either I sell at said "market value" set by flippers, or I sell below that amount and feed flippers' purses. I´m not about to play that game of yours anymore as I really despise greed. Practices such as flipping shouldn´t pay off and I´ll never have a part in it doing so again.

thx 4 the lesson

Aren't guild traders a direct counter to the flip problem?

Sure, you can use TTC to find flippable stuff, but it's a job of work. Constantly refresh your price tables, run back and forth across Nirn to snatch up that cipher listed at 10g with no guarantee that someone else won't just physically beat you to it.

Fragmenting the player economy and tying it to physical locations across the map makes it much more resistant to player manipulation. Especially bad actor manipulation; gold farmers are still in business. With a central auction house, any troll that buys gold can tank the economy in a few clicks.

With guild traders, they have to do it one trader at a time, and I'm sure there are measures to detect someone like that attempting this kind of attack. So it potentially doubles as a gold-buyer & troll detection system.

Flipping still works to an extent, but it's reduced from something that can be carried out by anyone with enough gold to something that has to be done opportunistically.

Not to mention the value of real estate. And I'm not talking about snapping up the best spot at a crafting hub, I mean the value of small and medium sized guilds at roadside guild traders. Those traders always have stuff at off-market prices, and you never know what you'll find there.

So if you really want to resist the flip game, don't bother with prime real estate traders. Shop with the little guys at cross roads, and non-capital cities and towns.

don´t get me wrong, I´m not voting for an auction house either. that would just kill trade as we know it (maybe not such a bad idea after all...). I´m saying that I won´t trade in any way again- instead I´ll just farm my own stuff and gift what I don´t need to people who really need them.

Ph1p · May 2023

Northwold wrote: »

Look, there is so much incoherent in this response that there's no real point in engaging with it. I don't mean to be rude but you are taking accepted and widely discussed economic concepts such as elasticity and substitution and giving them completely wild definitions to suit your purposes / pretending that they do not mean what they mean, possibly because you do not understand them. If you want to talk about supply and demand and what elasticity means, it's worth getting a textbook.

Funny, I was thinking the same about your post initially, but decided that was the wrong mindset. So I engaged with your comments and even found some agreement with your arguments of price inelasticity. You can of course choose to act like all this is beneath you. So I agree, there is no real point in engaging if the only response is a condescending "go read a textbook"

Good luck to you!

Northwold · May 2023

Ph1p wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Look, there is so much incoherent in this response that there's no real point in engaging with it. I don't mean to be rude but you are taking accepted and widely discussed economic concepts such as elasticity and substitution and giving them completely wild definitions to suit your purposes / pretending that they do not mean what they mean, possibly because you do not understand them. If you want to talk about supply and demand and what elasticity means, it's worth getting a textbook.

Funny, I was thinking the same about your post initially, but decided that was the wrong mindset. So I engaged with your comments and even found some agreement with your arguments of price inelasticity. You can of course choose to act like all this is beneath you. So I agree, there is no real point in engaging if the only response is a condescending "go read a textbook" Good luck to you!

I'm sorry but it's exceptionally hard to take seriously points like this:

"[...] while claiming a "seller-led market", which is by definition an excess of demand over supply [...] "

Unless, perhaps, perfect competition is a feature of all markets. Which, plainly, it is not and that is certainly not true of ESO's trading system.

But yes good luck to you too.

Jusey1 · May 2023

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Aren't guild traders a direct counter to the flip problem?.

As I said before, I think guild traders makes it easier to flip since the flippers only need to control the market in popular locations instead of everywhere and once they have control, they buy from the lesser populated guilds to resell at the higher ones that they do control. Plus, since you need to be in a guild to sell stuff (without using zone chat that is), it's much harder for more lesser social players and new players from taking part in the market so there's just less people that flippers have to worry about. Also, the price for acquiring a guild trader NPC constantly going up also takes part of inflation and crazy trader guild rules and what not.

UnabashedlyHonest · May 2023

Big no thank you on the global auction house for me.

Price fixing is already a bit out of control in ESO. A global auction house would radically increase the price fixing and traders buying up all the most popular mats and items for resale.

I_killed_Vivec · May 2023

The concept of "flippers" depends on several factors:

- There are people underselling the fruits of their farming labours.

- There are people who can take advantage of this by visiting the traders where those items are being sold below current market price.

- There's a market, people who want the items are unable or unwilling to either farm those items themselves or seek out the bargains that flippers find.

The final point means that people who are buying at market (flipper) price are paying a premium because either they don't want to farm or they don't want to seek out bargains. This is probably because they choose to spend their time doing something different. However, that is their choice. They have no right to say "I don't want to pay the going price, I want to pay the price you paid when you found that bargain", because they didn't invest the time in searching our that bargain. Just like they have no right to say "I can't be bothered to farm those mats, but I don't want to pay the price you are asking".

TLDR: There is a premium because sellers are doing something that buyers don't want to do themselves.
-

SatanicSister · May 2023

The only problem I have with this current system is the fact that trading is locked behind guilds. Which wouldn't be a problem but most guilds have sales requirements and max inactivity periods. I don't always want to sell things, I don't want to farm stuff only because I have to sell something or be kicked. There are also periods when I'm busy and can't log in just because I don't have any time for it. Again, it will most likely get me kicked. And I don't want to join guilds and be kicked from guilds over and over again, just so I could sell some style pages or motifs that I don't need myself.

Why can't there be just some guildless merchants that eveybody could use? Maybe set a limit like 10 active sales per account and people like me could still trade without a global auction house.

Credible_Joe · May 2023

Jusey1 wrote: »

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Aren't guild traders a direct counter to the flip problem?.

As I said before, I think guild traders makes it easier to flip since the flippers only need to control the market in popular locations instead of everywhere and once they have control, they buy from the lesser populated guilds to resell at the higher ones that they do control. Plus, since you need to be in a guild to sell stuff (without using zone chat that is), it's much harder for more lesser social players and new players from taking part in the market so there's just less people that flippers have to worry about. Also, the price for acquiring a guild trader NPC constantly going up also takes part of inflation and crazy trader guild rules and what not.

Except... With a global auction house, there would only be one popular location to control, and they can just loiter, monitoring all incoming commodities, regardless of price, vacuuming them up, and flipping them for grievously inflated costs.

And without the real estate gold sink, gold would flood the economy at the top, making everything orders of magnitude more expensive across the board. It'd be even worse for new and casual players; only the richest of the rich would be able to afford anything.

Flipping is for sure still possible with guild traders, but exactly what you described in your own words is much more effort and time than the alternative, on top of being a gold sink that mitigates inflation on its own.

I said resistant to player manipulation, not immune to. A global auction house would make this flipping problem we're blaming on the guild traders easier, not harder, on top of flooding the economy with billions of gold at the top that otherwise would have been spent on real estate.

Too high a price for convenience.

ZOS_Lunar · May 2023

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Toanis · May 2023

I'm in the "localised traders actually favour flippers" camp.

It's very tedious to watch all those loadscreens, going from town to town in search of an item, deterring casual buyers from searching for the cheapest listing. That gives item flippers plenty of time to get that underpriced item they found on TTC.

At the same there is gatekeeping for sellers by A: requiring them to join a trading guild (scary for loners, a waste of a precious guild slot for socialites), and B: forcing that guild to make enough money (from sales, thus minimum sales requirement) to be able to afford a trader in a place where items are actually bought at a good price (item flippers don't buy high, normies can't be bothered to check out some remote trader a casual guild can afford.)

A global house is more convenient for item flippers, sure, but they also have to compete against tens of thousands of filthy casuals that might snatch that bargain from tight under their nose, and as a casual seller, you can easily see all the other offers and make an informed decision about your listing's price.

If we're talking about about someone trying to control the market for stuff like crafting mats, yeah, that's a possibility but usually doesn't work out. Instead of buying low and listing high, they end up pumping money into the pockets of that one guy who hoarded that mat for years, hoping that one day it will become valuable, and soon some youtuber tells everyone else how to effeciently farm that mat, that currently sells at an all time high.

kargen27 · May 2023

Jusey1 wrote: »

Credible_Joe wrote: »

Aren't guild traders a direct counter to the flip problem?.

As I said before, I think guild traders makes it easier to flip since the flippers only need to control the market in popular locations instead of everywhere and once they have control, they buy from the lesser populated guilds to resell at the higher ones that they do control. Plus, since you need to be in a guild to sell stuff (without using zone chat that is), it's much harder for more lesser social players and new players from taking part in the market so there's just less people that flippers have to worry about. Also, the price for acquiring a guild trader NPC constantly going up also takes part of inflation and crazy trader guild rules and what not.

If you consider popular locations only you are still looking at near 100 traders. If you try to concentrate on just one trade hub that is five traders you have to monitor. Those places are popular because they are high traffic areas. As you can only be at one trader at a time chances are you miss out on most the bargains as you run from trader to trader even in the same city.

The guilds in those top spots are usually near full of players allowed. So in one trade center being conservative you have 2,000 active individual sellers in one prime city. Guilds don't dictate prices to their members and players that join these guilds are usually active enough in trading to notice a sudden increase in sales of certain items. They are going to adjust their prices accordingly. A lone player would be hard pressed to control the price at even one trader. It isn't going to happen.

The price of acquiring a prime trader is what helps keep inflation in check. The amount of gold in game dictates the amount of gold traders can spend on their spot.
The top tier trade guild I was in only required you generate 10k gold for the guild each week. That could be through sales, raffles, donations, participating in specific events or whatever else that would give the guild 10K gold. Was very easy to do especially considering the trader location.
One trade guild I am in now requires a 3k gold donation each week. Again very easy given how much a player can sell at their location. Another trade guild I am in on the EU server (US is my main and I play two accounts) has no donation requirement and only requires you log in once every two weeks. They have only missed having a trader one time since I joined the guild.

Trading is a bit like trials in a sense. There are many levels in each activity. With trials you don't start doing trifectas and leader board runs without spending a lot of time learning the trial. You start on normal, advance to vet and then to hard mode. Eventually you start thinking about no death runs and beyond.
Just starting out it doesn't make sense to join a top tier trading guild. You might be able to meet their requirements but some weeks could be a struggle. If you are in a guild that doesn't have a public trader you can still post items in the guild trader. Other guild members will see it and possibly purchase your items. See if the guild leader will once a month or so remind members to check the trader. That is a decent way to start when your supply will be limited.
As you get more items or items with higher value consider joining a guild that consistently has a trader with no requirements or small requirements. The prime trade guilds are end game trading. Expect to dedicate time to take full advantage being at that level of trade. Top tier trade guilds might not be suitable for the casual traders. Other options do exist though.

CGPsaint · May 2023

The only thing that would accomplish would be to make it easier for the army of flippers to drive up the price of everything across the board.

SpacemanSpiff1 · May 2023

i want to buy items, not bid on them.

xFocused · May 2023

Naftal wrote: »

I really hate the term "auction house" because I'm sure that no one actually wants that but just one place to immediately buy their items instead of an auction.

This is what I was talking about when I said Auction house in my original post. Auction house was probably the wrong wording for it but I was thinking one giant store if you will that holds a handful of guilds in it. You search "dreugh wax" and you can see what's available to purchase from those guilds instead of traveling from zone to zone to zone looking for something specific. No bidding, just straight purchasing. Think of it as a giant flea market, lol

kargen27 · May 2023

xFocused wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

I really hate the term "auction house" because I'm sure that no one actually wants that but just one place to immediately buy their items instead of an auction.

This is what I was talking about when I said Auction house in my original post. Auction house was probably the wrong wording for it but I was thinking one giant store if you will that holds a handful of guilds in it. You search "dreugh wax" and you can see what's available to purchase from those guilds instead of traveling from zone to zone to zone looking for something specific. No bidding, just straight purchasing. Think of it as a giant flea market, lol

I suggested something like this with a limited capacity. A central board in each zone that shows only what the traders in that zone offer. You couldn't purchase from the central board nor would it show any prices. All it would do is show where items in that zone are being listed.
Players that want the item quick and don't care about price can just go to the most convenient location and purchase. Players looking for bargains would need to visit each location that has the item listed. Players that want items quick can get them and flippers are still able to search out those bargains.

BlueRaven · May 2023

kringled_1 wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

On supply and demand people are trivialising a very complex economic subject to favour whatever argument they happen to be making.

It is not the case, in most markets in the real world, and certainly not in ESO, that buyers simply pick a price that they are happy to pay and therefore that all markets are absolutely fine because you stuck the word "market" in the description.

Markets arrive on prices set, usually, by sellers, not buyers, based on a whole litany of concepts, including price elasticity of demand. That is, how much a buyer can or will pay before they won't buy a thing at all or will substitute it for another.

In theory, for most goods, people will move away to substitutes or never buying something at all as the price increases. So sellers may push the price up to see what they can get away with and -- in theory -- buyers will progressively walk away forming a neat line on a graph along which sellers realise where the right price to make the most money (and not to lose it) lies. Again, in theory, sellers have to be alive to the behaviour of buyers or they will not be able to sell.

Now, MMO economies have something of a problem here that stems from the nature of what people are trying to buy and sell. For MMO commodities, in particular -- things like crafting materials -- demand is inelastic (it is relatively insensitive to movements in price) because there are no substitute products that people can switch to if the price of the product they want is too high.

You cannot swap one type of tomato for another when cherry tomatoes, say, reach an outrageous price, because the only type of tomato available in the game is cherry tomatoes. There is only one rosin, there is only one dreugh wax, and so on.

Put to one side that no one ever "needs" anything in an MMO. It's a video game. But a great deal of what is sold in ESO has no substitutes. There is only one of that type of product, and you buy that product or you buy nothing.

That type of market gives the power of setting prices to sellers. It does not lead to efficient pricing but the pricing that allows sellers to make the most money.

It is what it is. That is how most MMO economies function. And because many players who buy are also players who sell, it can normally proceed without too many problems because those players are insulated from what, in the real world, would be called hyperinflation.

But people need to stop saying "it's supply and demand" as if this was some sort of clever and definitive resolution to any argument. It isn't. Supply and demand in an economy set up the way ESO's is doesn't work in the way being claimed. It creates a seller led market. Denying that simply is not persuasive. It looks self-serving and plain untrue.

And in ESO's economy, particularly, there are real problems with the way supply and demand function. The guild trader set up means there is a lack of price transparency; people cannot see, especially on console, what competing prices are so it is hard to tell if they are being ripped off.

But also, as I've mentioned previously, because selling is gated behind a trading structure that many players will not engage with, you do have a whole section of the playerbase who are exposed to all the problems that arise from seller-led markets and are not in a position to keep track with the way prices behave.

So, yes, you can say "this is supply and demand". It is. But that does not mean that it is a properly functioning, competitive market. It is how supply and demand behave in a market afflicted by serious problems. As an argument that all is well and no problems exist to be addressed, saying "it's supply and demand" is completely meaningless and suggests a deliberate failure to think about how the economy actually works.

While there aren't substitutes for a lot of rare goods in ESO, there is absolutely an alternative players can go to: farm goods themselves. Wax/rosin/temper are all things that every player in this game can obtain, if they choose to spend their time doing so. Unlike the real world, there's not an enormous overhead cost to doing so.

Exactly. Let me show a sample of the amount of raw materials I have.

And I still farm all the time? Why? Because I refuse to buy building materials (and upgrade materials as well).

spartaxoxo · May 2023

An auction house would just inflate prices. No thanks. This is the only MMO I played where inflation wasn't high after years, and it's also the only one without a centralized trader. I much prefer this system. Notably PC does have these issues, and they have trade that is more centralized than console. It's not even close to the only thing contributing to that, but I wouldn't any of things increasing prices so much baked into the game. I'll take things being affordable without treating the game like a second job over easier browsing any day. I don't want to pay the premium for the convenience.

FatnissEverdeen1 · January 2024

Just came from a Cooperharley video on Youtube covering this forum thread. If ESO introduced a central auction house, this an idea for how it could be done.

Based on the alternative fates story beat introduced in the Necrom Chapter, what if we got to explore a fate (like an alternative timeline) where the Imperial City was friendly, and it could act as a centralized trading hub. The original PVP IC would still exist in the game; it would just be in the original fate/timeline. Perhaps trading guilds would still need to buy slots wherever they've been buying them (to maintain the gold sink), but players would no longer have to rezone to buy goods. For trading guilds, nothing would change, but for players, buying would be a lot more convenient if they wanted it to be.

To visualize it, there could be a number of NPC merchants with their own shops, but all of them would be windows to the central auction house. Players could buy an item in Mournhold or anywhere else still for immersion, convenience, etc., but players who value a global auction house could shop around the Imperial City.

Alternatively, NPCs could have different shops that act as a global auction house for a given category. For example, a tailor/armorer shop could act as the global auction house for motifs/crafted gear, and an alchemist shop could act as the global auction house for potions + alchemical reagents. The advantage here is that you make shopping more experiential and naturally intuitive instead of having a bunch of UI displays, tabs, & windows etc..

LalMirchi · January 2024

xFocused wrote: »

It's so time consuming to have to run to each and every zone checking every trader for a specific piece of gear when we could have a auction house in a major zone where multiple guilds can list items. You could even make 3-5 Auction Houses spread across Tamriel to hold multiple guilds as to not bog down one single zone. Just something that would make shopping/selling a lot easier in my opinion

Respectfully, no thank you.

reazea · January 2024

If you thinking inflation in game is excessive now, boy howdy just think how bad it would be with a single auction house. And what would happen to all the trade guilds? Three of my guilds would become useless overnight.

ESO is not set up to have a single auction house, thankfully.

Warhawke_80 · January 2024

Meh I could care less now..I refuse to use Guild Traders, so I trade with friends' and folks I know in game

Which is a ridiculous number of people lately we all hang on a Discord (One of the channel's is In-Character which can be a hoot) and I can usually find whatever I need in less time than it takes to trave to a Guild Trader, if you do it that way buying can be downright affordable in ESO.

BlueRaven · January 2024

Warhawke_80 wrote: »

Meh I could care less now..I refuse to use Guild Traders, so I trade with friends' and folks I know in game

Which is a ridiculous number of people lately we all hang on a Discord (One of the channel's is In-Character which can be a hoot) and I can usually find whatever I need in less time than it takes to trave to a Guild Trader, if you do it that way buying can be downright affordable in ESO.

Ya know, you and the friends you know can form a guild. Then you all can post things to sell to your friends at reasonable prices, even if you are offline…

Castagere · January 2024

I have the TCC website on my phone. I stand next to a Wayshrine and look up stuff on my phone. Saves a lot of time when you can just go to the trader that has what you want.

Katahdin · January 2024

That ship sailed so long ago it has barnacles on its hull older than most antiquities.