Fixing the Broken Guild Trader System

hamgatan · April 30

ZOS - as you are aware the Guild Trader system has been broken for some time and is in need of drastic overhaul.

There is a significant lack of competitive fairness in the process with giant trading guilds exploiting the process by running multiple guilds to shoulder multiple bids.

Here are some ideas to implement toward fixing it.

1. Change the time for the GT bid close offs. Having it as a static 2:55PM US EDT is unfair to people on the other side of the world. We arent up at 3AM to combat bid snipers. Perhaps Split half the GT's cutoff times to Group A for bids to one timezone (GMT-4), the other half to Group B in the other timezone (GMT+8) so that bids can be alternated on a 12hr basis on Tuesday.

2. Remove Guilds that are clearly replicants of the same guild. Theres 4 that I can think of that have 3 or 4 clones (ETU, I'kiia, CoT etc). Its technically against your TOS.

3. Reduce the number of active bids on traders to 3. This limits the ability of the huge trade guilds to blockade multiple traders with multi-million gold bids (especially in the case of the Guilds with multiple clones). 10 is far too much, and when you have big guilds with 3 or 4 clones this is 40 Bids across Tamriel with huge bank balances to bankroll it.

4. List the previous weeks winning bid value after the GT's flip over - It doesn't help smaller guilds get into GT's if they don't know what they're up against.

5. Increase the amount of GT's available in more locations, don't saturate existing ones of course.

6. Don't show the current bid at the Trader itself during the week. Have the bid process completely silent-bid based to prevent bid sniping at the last minute. This isn't eBay. It also prevents the mega-guilds from locking out traders with multi million gold bids (that they have no intention of winning) and forcing small guilds to fork out ridiculous money on them

alexj4596b14_ESO · April 30

hamgatan wrote: »

6. Don't show the current bid at the Trader itself during the week. Have the bid process completely silent-bid based to prevent bid sniping at the last minute. This isn't eBay. It also prevents the mega-guilds from locking out traders with multi million gold bids (that they have no intention of winning) and forcing small guilds to fork out ridiculous money on them

This would solve the problem esp if no one knows how much to bid to win.

DragonRacer · May 1

#6 confuses me because it is already a blind bid system. The only people who can see your current bid at a trader is the GM and anyone in the guild they have given “view guild bank gold” permission to. Nobody is seeing what you bid at a trader and going at 10 minutes before flip to raise it above yours because other guilds can’t see your bid.

Also, bids can be placed at any time throughout the week starting 5 minutes after flip occurs and stopping 10 minutes before the next week’s flip. The timing of flip seems a bit irrelevant to me, especially since it is not one bid only anymore. Back when it was one bid to live or die by, it mattered. Sunday nights at 9pm were me and officers in chat waiting to see the results. If our bid lost, the race was on to try and find an open trader and wait for 5 minutes after flip for it to unlock to hiring. Now not so much if you have enough bankroll to place multiple bids and feel confident in one of them winning.

Agreed at not being a fan of giant alliance conglomerate guilds trying to own entire cities. As an independent guild, it is always a challenge.

I fervently do not agree that the past week’s winning bids should be shown. What a wonderful way to tell all your competitors what you won your trader for last week so they can all come at you with higher bids the next week. What do you think all those allied conglomerate guilds would do with that information, knowing what every single competing guild paid for their traders the week prior?

XxCaLxX · May 1

No one can see bids unless you let them. Can’t snipe at last minute with blind bids. I know a lot of ppl don’t like the guild trader system but it isn’t broken. It could have some improvements sure but from reading your post I’m not even sure you fully understand the bid system.

LaintalAy · May 1

hamgatan wrote: »

ZOS - as you are aware the Guild Trader system has been broken for some time and is in need of drastic overhaul.

There is a significant lack of competitive fairness in the process with giant trading guilds exploiting the process by running multiple guilds to shoulder multiple bids.

Here are some ideas to implement toward fixing it.

1. Change the time for the GT bid close offs. Having it as a static 2:55PM US EDT is unfair to people on the other side of the world. We arent up at 3AM to combat bid snipers. Perhaps Split half the GT's cutoff times to Group A for bids to one timezone (GMT-4), the other half to Group B in the other timezone (GMT+8) so that bids can be alternated on a 12hr basis on Tuesday.

2. Remove Guilds that are clearly replicants of the same guild. Theres 4 that I can think of that have 3 or 4 clones (ETU, I'kiia, CoT etc). Its technically against your TOS.

3. Reduce the number of active bids on traders to 3. This limits the ability of the huge trade guilds to blockade multiple traders with multi-million gold bids (especially in the case of the Guilds with multiple clones). 10 is far too much, and when you have big guilds with 3 or 4 clones this is 40 Bids across Tamriel with huge bank balances to bankroll it.

4. List the previous weeks winning bid value after the GT's flip over - It doesn't help smaller guilds get into GT's if they don't know what they're up against.

5. Increase the amount of GT's available in more locations, don't saturate existing ones of course.

6. Don't show the current bid at the Trader itself during the week. Have the bid process completely silent-bid based to prevent bid sniping at the last minute. This isn't eBay. It also prevents the mega-guilds from locking out traders with multi million gold bids (that they have no intention of winning) and forcing small guilds to fork out ridiculous money on them

The trading system is not broken.
Players are abusing it.

They doesn't make your above points invalid.

observertim · May 1

Um ... what game are you playing? I'll go point by point.

Arching statement: The system is broken.
Response: It's not broken, it's just (a) unfair, and (b) not fun. It works fine within those parameters.

1. Bid closing time are inconvenient. Considering there is ZERO interaction between bidders on the system, what time the evaluation ("flip") happens is kind of irrelevant.

2. Multiple guilds in the same group. Well, I'm not particularly fond of this, but it doesn't violate the TOS. If Zenimax wants to change that they'll have to amend the TOS.

3. Number of active bids. Given that a guild can only win ONE bid, how many bids a given guild can make is not particularly relevant. In fact, having 10 bids means that a guild that wants to win has to spend MORE money for the same result. This actually works in favour of smaller guilds.

4. Post the closing bids. Again, personally I wouldn't mind this, but for a different reason. It helps combat one of the unfairnesses in the system, which is inflation due to syndicate bidding. Of course, given the degree of dirty tricks in the trade system, that would be like taping a diaper to the Hoover Dam to stop a leak...

5. More guild traders, spread around more. That would be nice, but it wouldn't solve the problem. It would only make it more widespread.

6. Don't show bids during the week. They don't. If other people know your bids, it's because either (a) you are blabbing it, or (b) someone who has access to that information is spying on you.

You have a couple of valid points, but unfortunately your total misunderstanding of how the system works buries them. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

ObserverTim
GM, Rusty Old Dragons

hiyde · May 1

Overall, I feel like a lot of these suggestions would be detrimental to the issues they are trying to resolve and that OP should dig in a little further on how the system works and take another crack at this.

Nothing wrong with posting feedback about pain points when it comes to growing a guild. At the same time, it's entirely possible to thrive within the current system.

Any guild, over time, can rise to top tier locations if that is their goal. It takes (a large amount) of time & effort to start from scratch and build a roster and a management team that can support the bids needed. There aren't really any shortcuts. Even a billionaire who personally funds bids on top spots will quickly drain their fortune if the guild hasn't been built from the ground up to support the bids organically.

My advice would be to join guild(s) in the locations you are interested in (and elsewhere) and see how they operate. In most cases you're going to find that they're putting a lot of effort and, importantly, creativity into covering their weekly bid. Apply the ideas you like the best, mixed in with your own.

Yes, like with all things, there are some bad actors, but there's also a lot of friendly GMs out there who don't mind sharing their knowledge/experience, including myself.

Dawnblade · May 1

The system sucks, by design, and by technical (or at least technical budget) necessity.

What would help players are large increases in trading capacity (more traders, more slots, larger guild sizes), however, changes announced for Gold Road indicate ZOS would rather save a few bucks by reducing posting times and mail times (still not sure their changes will have a positive effect on their server capacity - but that seems to be their stated goals).

CrashTest · May 1

hamgatan wrote: »

2. Remove Guilds that are clearly replicants of the same guild. Theres 4 that I can think of that have 3 or 4 clones (ETU, I'kiia, CoT etc). Its technically against your TOS.

Wait what.

valenwood_vegan · May 2

CrashTest wrote: »

hamgatan wrote: »

2. Remove Guilds that are clearly replicants of the same guild. Theres 4 that I can think of that have 3 or 4 clones (ETU, I'kiia, CoT etc). Its technically against your TOS.

Wait what.

I would *love* to see the relevant section of the ToS.