kargen27 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Inflation would go off the charts with a central auction house, and every trade guild would instantly become obsolete. The way it is now people have a chance to find the items they need in most cases, even if it is tedious and time consuming. So while the system now is clunky, it way better than a central auction house.

This is the reason nothing will change significantly. Too much is built on the gold sink that the current system is. That is the fatal flaw and keeps us using something that may have seemed great 10 years ago but that fails so many today.

Juju_beans wrote: »

I've played other games with a central auction house.
It makes it easy for players to "corner the market"

I like the guild traders and having to travel to buy stuff. It's part of the immersiveness of the game.

That was not true when I played WoW. I could actually find what I want and know a good price to sell things for. Wasting hours heading around to find things from different guild traders (even with TTC, impossible on console) is not immersive anymore than removing mounts would make the game more immersive.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Juju_beans wrote: »

I've played other games with a central auction house.
It makes it easy for players to "corner the market"

I like the guild traders and having to travel to buy stuff. It's part of the immersiveness of the game.

Addons for ESO do exactly that on PC.

Which ones? They definitely aren't on console, but even using TTC is far from perfect. I have spent hours using the TTC website only to travel places and find the item I was looking for is no longer there.

kargen27 wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

JavaRen wrote: »

Swapping guild traders for an auction house, the math:

Number of players that will quit playing or stop buying crowns if this change is not made = X
Number of players that will quit playing or stop buying crowns if it is made = Y

X <<<<< Y

ZOS ain't that stupid.

Number of new players who will be more likely to stick around rather than ditch the game after three days....? This is what sometimes worries me about ESO and, especially, this forum. It seems overly preoccupied with people who have been playing for donkeys' years and are extremely attached to the status quo. Meanwhile, all sorts of things that are fairly unattractive for bringing in *new blood* are ignored.

This is akin to saying new players will leave because their level 15 character can't join vet trials. Everything a new player needs is readily available to that player. Gold is very easy to come by in game even for new players. Trading much like running trials has tiers. Players that dedicate massive amounts of time to trading get the most from trading. The players in a hurry to reach the end and want all the cool things now might become frustrated with how long it takes but that is on them. If they instead just enjoy the game they will find as they level they can get everything they need and a good amount of what they want.

So we need to keep broken things just as they are? Remember the advance that multi-crafting made? That "worked" prior to that and you could make money in spite of it not being there, but even the console experience is much better with it than the way it was.

Having TTC functionality built into the game, possibly making the "go fetch that item for me" be an extra gold sink as well, would make things much more enjoyable.

you are claiming something is broken when in fact it works quite well. Sure there could be a few tweaks but the system isn't broken. For how much people talk about TTC it really isn't all that is being made of it. If you count on TTC to find bargains you missed the bargain most the time. It isn't an up to date nor complete data base. It is good for finding rare items when you don't much care cost and don't want to spend a lot of time looking. Other than that you are better off without.

I would like to see a bulletin board in the main city of each zone that lists what every trader in that zone has available. There would be no prices listed and you would have to visit the trader to purchase the item. This would allow people who just want an item quick with no concern for price to go to most convenient location. It would also allow for bargain hunters to continue going from trader to trader searching for a good price.
As I've said many times this system is multi-tiered and players at any level can participate in trading. Those that treat trading like end game are rewarded. They should be. A central location takes their game away from them. It isn't their fault some choose not to participate in this one aspect of the game.

The current system is very broken if it is "working as intended". I don't use TTC for the best "bargains" I use it to help find (on the PC) things I am looking for, such as a motif I need for a Master Crafting Writ. The current system is a huge failure for that, though TTC will at least tell me a reasonable price (only on the PC).

The current system means most don't bother with much trading, especially on consoles, even if they are in a trading guild, as I am. (Dipping my toe back into both console and PC now.)

Why would allowing knowing the going price and locations for items break the game, except for those who focus mostly on flipping poor pricing decisions by others?

I also notice you ignored my comment about having a gold sink "helper" to task with getting an item for you.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

I'd like one too, I even suggested in the past putting it in Fargrave bazaar and making Fargrave a zone free for all players.

Be careful what you ask for. If you think inflation and prices are bad now, it would be 10x worse with a central auction house. A central auction house is a horrible idea. The only way it would work, as another poster pointed out, is if ZOS set the sale prices of items and the players had no way to game the system.

Have you ever played a game with a central AH? Your claims simply are not true in those games. Why would they be true in ESO? A central trader will not happen, but not because of this reason but because of the gold sink aspect the current system provides. Making TTC functionality in the game and open to all would fix much of the problem right away. Flippers might get hurt some, but even then I suspect people will poorly price things as I have seen in other games, keeping flippers busy if not focused differently.


========

Overall, this is at least as serious of a concern as the difficulty of open world content (which has its own thread) since it has posters on both sides anytime the issue comes up.

I personally bet those who say "the perfect system is just fine" either benefit greatly from it or would say that about any other quality of life change, such as crafting prior to multi-crafting. (Or the fileting that is now added to the provisioning locations.)

Yeah, the game worked prior to those improvements, but it was not as good.[/quote]

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Well the evidence is in the game…

WoW has a central auction house and there has never been an issue of corning the market on goods.

BlueRaven wrote: »

200+ different vendor locations makes it super difficult to control prices. (Central vendors makes it super easy for bots to flip goods to higher prices.)

Except addons allow for people who want to control prices the ability to do so. TTC itself is essentially a central auction house, but it takes place out of game and a game should never ask you to tab out to take care of in game activities.

BlueRaven wrote: »

And 200+ different vendors means that there are 200+ guilds participating, so it’s pretty easy to find a guild that is a right fit for you. (Stripping away a need for guilds, strips away a source for players to make friends. Players without other friends playing have a higher risk of leaving the game.)

Except trying to sell your goods in far away places, even at lower prices will often yield no sales. I constantly sell more at my big city trader than I do with my other 3, even when they have lower prices. This means in order to actually move stuff (unless you are selling it at a cut rate price, which a flipper then buys), you have to pay to be in a top tier trading guild.

BlueRaven wrote: »

200+ different vendors also makes people move through the world, maybe to zones they would normally skip. Suddenly a new place that seems interesting might be worthy of questing. (A central vendor removes the need to visit areas, which also lessens the need for ESO+.)

But again, Wow, New World, SWTOR all have central auction houses and that has not stopped anyone from moving through zones.

BlueRaven wrote: »

200+ different vendor locations also makes those zones populated with travelers who may have already quested through the area. (Everyone will be crowded around hub locations, unmoving, while other zones will appear dead. There is a reason why some vendors are in out of the way places.)

So the reason for guild traders is to give the illusion of a healthy thriving population? Becuase if the population is healthy, there is no reason to push people to zones outside of the zone content itself.


EDIT to add...

There seems to be a disconnect or a lack of imagination. There is no reason that there can't be 300 central auction house locations, brining people out all over Tamriel. There does not need to be one physical location but rather, the trade post should all be linked.

Final Fantasy has a central system and it had all kinds of monopoly problems when I played. I've been told some were fixed but not all. TTC isn't an accurate accounting of what items are available in game. If you count on TTC to find bargains you are going to miss most the bargains. Data in TTC can be hours old and very inaccurate.
I'm in a social guild that gets a trader maybe once every two months. Usually in an out of the way stand alone location. I've made more than seven million in one week with that guild. I'm also in a trade guild that gets a decent spot every week. Things sell quicker there but only if I price them decent. If I over price they sit.
Those other games started with a central system. Switching systems now would devastate the economy. Way to much gold in the game to try and stop potential monopolies if there was a central location.
The system we have could use a few tweaks but overall it works well. The market is vibrant and fluid. Guilds are built around the market keeping it fresh. No reason to disrupt that just to create more problems that would come with the introduction of a central system.

kargen27 wrote: »

There is no abuse of the system. Prices on rare items would skyrocket. They are rare meaning the supply would stay about the same as now. It would be easy for two or three players to sit on the auction house and purchase let's say for example all the perfect roe that show up. With the system we have now they have to try and keep an eye on over 200 traders. With a central system they only need to watch the one.
More common items would drop in price near vendor prices because as you say there would be more. Supply would be greater than demand. You are not going to see a sudden uptick in supply of rare motifs. So your supply increase would lower prices only on the more common items hurting players that in the current system are able to make some gold posting those common items.
New and casual players get hurt on both ends. Harder to make gold on the common items and rarer items they might want will cost more gold.
Casual players can purchase everything they need at a decent price. Casual players can also purchase or farm almost everything they want. Needs are completely met and most wants are obtainable. The market is fluid and prices adjust based on supply and demand just like any healthy market would.
A casual player isn't going to be able to afford a rare item if there were a central market system. Prices would increase beyond their means. There have been ideas suggested that would make it easier to find items without drastically altering the system we have now. Switching to a central market now would devastate the market beyond repair. With the gold players have in game now there would be nothing stopping a few players from monopolizing many rare items.

There is no exploitation of the market now. There are flippers that spend time looking for bargains. Thing is the player that originally posted the item gets the price they asked the flipper is able to make some gold and the end buyer has an item that might otherwise not been available. Everybody involved got what they wanted at a price they were happy/willing to pay.

You can't corner the market. Players with many many millions of gold tried and the best they could do was raise the prices on an item new to the game for a few hours. Most that tried ended up losing gold. You can't watch 200 traders and there is no add-on that gives you real time listings. Even with a team of people you are not going to be able to corner the market no matter how much gold you have.
With a central system it would be simple though to monopolize rare items.

I assume this is all your words. The quote was a bit messed up so many of mine were not quoted. (I can adjust if needed of course.)

You can assert what would happen for some items, but nothing proves that. WoW has had a Central AH for years and things are still available. Rare things are expensive and common things less so.

Players will simply not buy them if they are too costly.

The price for some things is only down now because many players have no idea what something is really worth and thus they don't price it highly enough to make the most for their sale.

I dipped my toe back into the PS5 recently since I enjoy playing on my 70 inch TV, in spite of the limitations. I realized I did not have Ember in any good companion gear, so I tried to look for green or blue (purple and up are far too costly for me) but could not find a single pants (med, aggressive) listed on any guild vendor I visited even after spending an hour running around to all I thought of. (I am sure I missed some hubs.

I would much rather have been hunting skyshards for my new Arcanist, but instead I had to spend that time failing to find even green gear I wanted, at any price. This was on PS5 EU. Some may exist, but I will just live with the white stuff she started with.

That was definitely a failure of this system. At least I would have had suggestions to look on the PC, with the TTC site, but that should not be necessary either. I just wanted something to play with.

I did also try to look for some motifs for Master Writs I have, but I didn't want to repeat that for ones I needed. (Silver Dawn in this specific case.) It is already painful enough to craft Master Writs on console, I don't need a horrid load of maybe finding a motif for it someplace, or maybe not.

Tell me again how great this system is! I did not have fun and while I will still probably run around and kill things, the trading guilds I am in will not make as much off me as they probably could, though I do donate regularly. (I stockpiled enough before switching to the PC several years ago and can afford no income for a long time, but I can make some money with all my alt crafters as needed.)

The game should be fun, not a second job. Or 3rd job in my case.

tincanman wrote: »

I very much doubt eso's db functionality could cope with a centralised auction house - the only scenario where I might imagine some comparative functionality introduced would be via the crown store in the form of a new ally.

So, introducing the hypothetical 'Ebeneezer' at 5k crowns - summon or home park, provides a drop-down list containing the names/locations of all game vendors enabling you to search each individual trader across tamriel from the same location (note:individually - this would be a limit imposed by the broken back-end). You could then use this npc 'ally' to search sequentially but all it would provide is a single-stop for already existing functionality - locating a listing would do just that and you'd still have to leg-it virtually to the point of sale.

Other than this, it seems highly unlikely zos would even consider allowing players to spam the server with resource-crippling requests for a data-dump of ALL extant traders.

That is similar to what I proposed. It is a shame that it would likely be a Crown Store item, but that would be better enough than what I have now that I would pay for it almost instantly, if at a price consistent with the other productive allies. (Banker, Merchant, etc.)

The "load" issue could be managed by both allowing filtering, as you can do now with built-in tools (on consoler for certain, I use an addon on the PC) and simply slowing the query down as much as is needed.

An important point that is never addressed by the auction house aficionados:

What is to be done about the dedicated trading guilds? Extinction?

What about the members of those guilds that have joined specifically for the trading aspect? What is their future in the very unlikely chance that changes to the in-game trading system would happen?

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

I believe the "answer" is a total, unreserved, unqualified "no" from the devs.

I've never heard that from the devs, just from players saying they don't like the idea for some bizarre reason. I'm actually interested about when they said this can you point me in the right direction since early in the game after launch I didn't pay attention to patch notes and dev interviews?

The reason why some players don't like could be that some sellers will not be able to sell for the same price. It will pool the offer of several thousand players in one spot and buyers will buy the same item for the lowest price available.

Of course price-conscious players will search the tools for prices of their item before they run off to the guild store in the hope that it is still there. Others will not bother that much for a few thousand gold. So the current system is better for sellers but worse for buyers.

On behalf of myself, and the hundreds of members of my trade guilds, we do not want an auction house; we enjoy the unique and engaging system that ESO offers and has offered for many years - and the vibrant guilds, friendships, and dynamic market it has fostered; and we are pleased that ZoS has not expressed any interest in radically changing the system.

kargen27 wrote: »

As I stated a couple of times if you are counting on TTC to find things you are going to miss the opportunity to purchase most of the time.

I use TTC hourly and rarely run into an issue where the item I intend to purchase is gone.

Most of the time the reason the item is gone is because one of the guild members is using an addon that pings them when an item is listed far below market value, they buy it up and flip it driving the price of those items up.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

As I stated a couple of times if you are counting on TTC to find things you are going to miss the opportunity to purchase most of the time.

I use TTC hourly and rarely run into an issue where the item I intend to purchase is gone.

Most of the time the reason the item is gone is because one of the guild members is using an addon that pings them when an item is listed far below market value, they buy it up and flip it driving the price of those items up.

You can tell who the people that just want to make their pockets fatter........ That's really what it comes down to. They claim to want a healthy economy but in reality they really want to fill their pockets.

I want an auction house system in ESO.

[/quote]

Vulkunne wrote: »

The in-game economy would exist to some degree, but main trade guilds economies would all collapse like tin cans. No Kiosk bidding eliminates gold sink and would drive inflation thru da roof.

Would almost certainly be the end of trade guilds as we know it.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

An important point that is never addressed by the auction house aficionados:

What is to be done about the dedicated trading guilds? Extinction?

What about the members of those guilds that have joined specifically for the trading aspect? What is their future in the very unlikely chance that changes to the in-game trading system would happen?

This has been addressed.

The answer is both. Keep the current guild traders and then create a central auction house (not centrally located, but where all the listings are in one central place). Limit the amount of gold an item can be listed for in the central auction house, this ensures guild traders maintain their money making by selling the expensive stuff. This allows for all the cheap stuff that new players may need to be sold without taking up one of the precious 30 slots members get in trade guilds.

Both systems can co-exist, all it takes is some creative problem solving and a willingness to do so.

Vulkunne wrote: »

The in-game economy would exist to some degree, but main trade guilds economies would all collapse like tin cans. No Kiosk bidding eliminates gold sink and would drive inflation thru da roof.

Would almost certainly be the end of trade guilds as we know it.

If you NEED this system as a gold sink doesn't that say more about a problem with the game itself? There are plenty of gold sinks you can do. A fetch system from the kiosk that charges extra to retrieve the item dependent on distance, you can give away good houses for gold, good cosmetics for gold, gold mounts for gold. Legit just some quick ones but they won't do any of those because it interferes with microtransactions for real cash. So again the game prioritizes microtransactions rather than helping fix the gold problem in the game. So please don't say this is the ONLY way to have a massive gold sink in the game. If they truly wanted to they could release some nice stuff at high gold prices to dump it into.

Vulkunne wrote: »

The in-game economy would exist to some degree, but main trade guilds economies would all collapse like tin cans. No Kiosk bidding eliminates gold sink and would drive inflation thru da roof.

Would almost certainly be the end of trade guilds as we know it.

This is asserted many times, but what can prove this?

Still a big no on an auction house. Why would you make it easier for people to control the market?

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

The in-game economy would exist to some degree, but main trade guilds economies would all collapse like tin cans. No Kiosk bidding eliminates gold sink and would drive inflation thru da roof.

Would almost certainly be the end of trade guilds as we know it.

This is asserted many times, but what can prove this?

A central Auction House eliminates healthy competition. In other words, I'm no longer free to market my sales or my legitimate idea to make gold in-house, I am forced to lower my prices to a lower price which can be forced on everyone by another party manipulating the market. Happened all the time with Iron Ore in New World, went from being a staple seller to being virtually worthless overnight. When they came after Starmetal I left the game.

Trade Guilds lost their cut, but still able to make some gold thru existing mechanisms (& experience) and not all of them but some of them will make sure no one makes anything either. Which hurts them but is fatal blow to the individual sellers unable to compete at a decent price. In short, you will be forced to cut prices and lose money because in a centralized marketplace the only thing that is really going to set your sale apart from someone else is how less it costs. Deep pockets can buy up existing mats and sell it to for peanuts, thus killing the market value. Exactly like what happened in New World.

Northwold wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

A central Auction House eliminates healthy competition. In other words, I'm no longer free to market my sales or my legitimate idea to make gold in-house, I am forced to lower my prices to a lower price which can be forced on everyone by another party manipulating the market.

Erm... (my emphasis in bold, yours preserved in bold italic)

Edit : To elaborate, you appear to be claiming predatory pricing would happen. Predatory pricing, in the real world, is rewarding behaviour where a market has high startup or capital / fixed costs because it causes competitors to make a loss that, eventually, they can't endure and have to leave the market. Eg running a factory below cost.

The premise that that would be an effective strategy in an MMO using an auction house is, er, questionable. If ex guilds wanted to do this, fine, maybe other sellers would be disgruntled, but what would be achieved? The moment they put the prices up again other sellers would come back because an MMO has effectively *no costs at all* except time spent farming something or other.

So, as a trading strategy, a guild doing this to drive people away would be completely and utterly pointless.

What you're actually describing is healthy price competition.

@Northwold

Thanks for your reply regarding the pricing component

So I would argue that in this scenario its not impossible to compete however there is no sport in having competition for the sake of competition. And when I look at the Trade Post and there's literal hundreds if not many times thousands of sellers all selling something for roughly the same really low price then no that's not right.

And thats what can happen you have someone buy up enough of a market to bring the price way down and then other individual, probably hard working sellers come along and no they can't compete with that as far as getting the price they would prefer for their sale. Just like the Iron Ore fiasco, yeah its cheap but no one wants to sell it because people will only buy it for the lowest price, aside from some random exception which does happen.

To me that's not a healthy market when I'm forced to lose money because someone else wants to basically give things away. You know I understand folks are different and have different opinions on things and that's fine but just don't stop other people from making money because someone else has a point to make.