So my trade guild is closing...

Mathius_Mordred · September 20

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

Can you explain what advantage you mean, just to be clear? Thanks.

hiyde · September 20

MJallday wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

If people just priced competitively they might find their stuff sells and this problem goes away

Just because something is listed at an expensive price , doesn’t mean you have to buy it

I often look at something and think “meh for the prices of it I’ll farm it myself”

No it doesn't.
Guild dues are still the same, house prices are still the same and even crowns are not getting much cheaper (PC/EU). You just need to farm 10xharder to be able to afford anything that's not a basic crafting material or motif.
The only people who benefit from this situation are the ones who already have tons of gold and can now buy more stuff with it.
I personally just stopped doing writs on alts and left my trading guild. It is simply not worth it anymore. So I would rather not trade at all that waste my own limited time on farming and selling items that aren't worth anything.

Incorrect assumptions

1. Guild dues are not mandatory
2. House prices are nothing to do with the economy
3. You don’t have to farm any harder for anything you have done previously

I wish people would stop just making stuff up.

This post is a bit of a headscratcher. Maybe I'm missing something.

1. In a lot of trading guilds, there certainly are mandatory minimum amounts of contribution required via sales tax or other forms of fundraising. Guilds without mandatory minimums still have expectations that members will help with the bid somehow. Those contributing 0, or at the bottom of the list are going to be the first booted when it's time to make room for applicants.

2 & 3
The gold cost of say, the Daggerfall manor has not changed. If you're saving up gold to buy one, via farming nodes for instance, you're gonna have to farm 3-4 times as many nodes to get the gold needed than you would have needed to 6 months ago.

I'm not opining on the swift adjustment to the economy - but nothing the person you quoted said is "made up". A whole lot of traders feel this way.

You are missing something. its literally in your first 6 words

"in a lot of trading guilds.."

there is no requirement , no need or no prequestive to be in such a thing,
any guild with > 50 memebers can have a trading slot, and its literally a nominal amount to get a trader

no dues, no fees, no stress.

what people are talking about is the 10 or so guilds that have so called "prime" locations and making the entire argument about that.

factually, it isnt - and do you know what, if people stopped using them, and went to the smaller traders (in hideouts or the middle of noowhere) - they'd soon fall in line

supply and demand. its that simple.

I'm a little fuzzy on the point you're trying to make and I don't understand what you mean by "fall in line"? (I don't mean this in a negative way at all, I'm just not fully understanding your point).

As for "prime" locations, there are dozens, not 10. Mourn + Vivec + Graht + Wayrest + Craglorn + Rawl + Summerset + Leyawiin = over 50 of the higest traffic kiosks in the game.

It's only logical that the most convenient kiosks & the ones in the highest traffic cities are going to have higher sales (and higher bids).

Back in 2015, I was invited to be part of a group of trade guild GMs that attended voice meetings with ZOS. The most emphatic advice I gave them was to "create as many Rawl'khas" as possible (back when that was the top trading city), so that as many guilds as possible could sell in great locations. 10 years later, we could still use more Mourn/Rawl/Vivec/Summerset type layouts.

DenverRalphy · September 20

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

Can you explain what advantage you mean, just to be clear? Thanks.

Some players buy into the conspiracy theory that the top trade guilds sell crowns to generate the gold required to place their high bids on the capital zone kiosks. They somehow find it conceivable that there are guilds that willingly pay thousands of real dollars/pounds/euros/etc.. each week to fund their guild trader habits. And that selling crowns is like printing gold, because they don't realize that in order to sell crowns, somebody has to generate the gold.

Mathius_Mordred · September 20

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

Can you explain what advantage you mean, just to be clear? Thanks.

Some players buy into the conspiracy theory that the top trade guilds sell crowns to generate the gold required to place their high bids on the capital zone kiosks. They somehow find it conceivable that there are guilds that willingly pay thousands of real dollars/pounds/euros/etc.. each week to fund their guild trader habits. And that selling crowns is like printing gold, because they don't realize that in order to sell crowns, somebody has to generate the gold.

As I stated, that's exactly what I do. I sell crowns and have no difficulty getting tens of millions for them really fast. It's not hundreds of pounds a week though, that's silly. On average I pay 4-6 million for a town centre trader like Riften. Mournhold is more expensive of course but I could take one of those too if I wanted, but our guild isn't primarily a trading guild so there's no need. As long as it's in a base game town it's going to work well and as long as TTC is constantly updated it sees good sales.
I can easily see larger guilds supplementing their income with crown selling if they need to secure a spot, I am not rich, but if I were then I would have mournhold all the time, I have to act reasonably within my income.

Necrotech_Master · September 20

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

MJallday wrote: »

If people just priced competitively they might find their stuff sells and this problem goes away

Just because something is listed at an expensive price , doesn’t mean you have to buy it

I often look at something and think “meh for the prices of it I’ll farm it myself”

No it doesn't.
Guild dues are still the same, house prices are still the same and even crowns are not getting much cheaper (PC/EU). You just need to farm 10xharder to be able to afford anything that's not a basic crafting material or motif.
The only people who benefit from this situation are the ones who already have tons of gold and can now buy more stuff with it.
I personally just stopped doing writs on alts and left my trading guild. It is simply not worth it anymore. So I would rather not trade at all that waste my own limited time on farming and selling items that aren't worth anything.

Incorrect assumptions

1. Guild dues are not mandatory
2. House prices are nothing to do with the economy
3. You don’t have to farm any harder for anything you have done previously

I wish people would stop just making stuff up.

1 But they are! It's usually that either you pay a certain amount of gold weekly or you must sell items for a certain amount of gold. If your guild requires 250-500k in sales, it's much harder to meet the requirements these days. Back in the day you could stay in those guilds as a casual player just by selling 1-2 chroming platings every week (which is very easy if you do writs).
2 Again, houses and luxury furnishings cost a fixed amount of gold. And when every farmable item is much cheaper, it takes more of them to afford these things. More farming, more time wasted for the same result.
3 That's not true at all. For example, lots of unique and interesting housing items are locked behind crowns. These crowns still sell for 2.5-3k on PC/EU because there are still many rich players who can afford that. But as an average/casual player it is now much harder to afford those. Same with pretty much everything else that is not just a crafting material or a motif.
Motifs, materials and other things that you can reliably farm used to be a good way to earn gold for those who do not sell crowns, carries or manipulate the market. Nowadays, they are pretty much worthless.
And no, selling them at low prices is not "fair". It takes time to farm those mats, and when I get nothing for my time, the farming is essentially pointless.

P.S. You could argue that upgrade mats used to be overpriced, but on a flipside they used to be a great way for casual players to farm gold. These days if you cannot do carries or sell crowns, or don't have time to constantly monitor the crashing market trying to find a niche, you are pretty much screwed.

most of what i still sell is mats

rubedite ingots for example are still selling around 9g each, this hasnt dropped much since before the anniversary event (i think it was maybe 12g each then)

if items are selling lower, a seller is getting less gold, but a buyer also needs less gold to buy the item, so newer players selling gold tempers for example would still have the same relative buying power

and for point 1, no, guilds absolutely do not need dues or minimum sales, i suspect a lot of guilds are vastly overbidding on trader locations because its a blind system and are just guessing that others are going to be bidding the same amounts

if the guilds are still bidding the same amounts, thats not going to be sustainable in the current market which is why the guilds are folding, because they dont try to bid less, or reduce dues or whatever to work with both the market and the members

Sure, it doesn't look so bad if you take the cheapest materials as an example. Even then, if it drops more, you might be better off selling it to an npc.
But rubedite ingots are just byproducts of farming upgrade mats, and those mats lost 50% or more of their price (depending on the type). And that is very significant. And sure, I could sell rubedite ingots and buy some ruby ash, their comparative value hasn't changed much. But why would I do that if I am already doing writs and I actually want to buy that new Merrywine house? And that house is now significantly harder to afford.
And it's the same with pretty much anything valuable.

a house is still a 1 time purchase, i remember when i got my first big house, probably back in 2017 when saving up a million gold took a good amount of time

even mostly selling mats and a few more valuable drops im still on avg making right now about 300k avg gold per week across my 3 trading guilds is it less than before? sure, but theres very little that i would spend more than 300k gold on at once (i bought out all of the houses with gold several years ago so virtually nothing i have to spend large sums of gold on, just started hoarding the gold for the most part)

i make good money selling mats because its a stable resource, if i remember even going back like 5 years the mat prices for say the ingots havent changed much (other mats such as furnishing ones or alchemy mats have been much more volatile)

most mats are not worth selling to the vendors, the only ones which were borderline like that was filled soul gems, as their avg sale price was almost spot on to the NPC vendor sale price, so it was better to vendor them to bypass taxes

wolfie1.0. · September 20

Amottica wrote: »

One significant issue with trader bids is that they are elevated because they involve exchanging real-world money for gold. Such things cause inflation in the game for the more desirable items.

Yes, we only trade in-game items for in-game items, but crowns are initially purchased with real-world money.

Been bidding on Traders for years now. I have never ever needed to sell crowns to be able to make a bid.

If guild mates do so and donate funds it's not my call to say anything.

But to imply that all guilds make bids this way is disingenuous. Some of us have budgeted contributions with donations and revenues and spent hours each week doing so just to ensure that not only we can bid this week but future weeks as well.

CrashTest · September 20

Seeing more new guilds in kiosks that were once long held by one guild or a guild conglomerate. That's a good thing because it means this new economy has opened the door to more guilds being able to even have a chance at winning a bid.

Pevey · September 20

Even in the guilds who fund their bids through auctions and raffles, sometimes the thing being auction or raffled is crowns. It absolutely happens quite a bit.

Reading through that old thread was very interesting to me. Thank you to the person who posted the link. There were a lot of prescient comments.

I think most of the people who are really turned off by player-run trading guilds and the raffle/auction/donation game that comes with it have long since stopped playing ESO. It helps explain why this game is not nearly as popular as I think it could be.

wolfie1.0. · September 20

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

There are a lot of things that arnt good for trading.

Inability to trade currencies
BiS gear is found in BoP areas
BOP in general
Reconstructing bypassing mat requirements in favor of a non tradeable currency.
Outfit stations not requiring trait items to use.
Gear being repairable without using more materials
The entire concept of a craft bag.

Among others. Granted the above items are great for gameplay, but horrible for a stable trade economy

Nharimlur_Finor · September 20

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

As I stated, that's exactly what I do. I sell crowns and have no difficulty getting tens of millions for them really fast. It's not hundreds of pounds a week though, that's silly. On average I pay 4-6 million for a town centre trader like Riften. Mournhold is more expensive of course but I could take one of those too if I wanted, but our guild isn't primarily a trading guild so there's no need. As long as it's in a base game town it's going to work well and as long as TTC is constantly updated it sees good sales.
I can easily see larger guilds supplementing their income with crown selling if they need to secure a spot, I am not rich, but if I were then I would have mournhold all the time, I have to act reasonably within my income.

I followed the link in one of your zone ads a few weeks ago.

You have an external website
You have a discord channel.
At the time, you guild had 147 guild members.

I chose to decline your offer of guild membership.

Pevey · September 20

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

There are a lot of things that arnt good for trading.

Inability to trade currencies
BiS gear is found in BoP areas
BOP in general
Reconstructing bypassing mat requirements in favor of a non tradeable currency.
Outfit stations not requiring trait items to use.
Gear being repairable without using more materials
The entire concept of a craft bag.

Among others. Granted the above items are great for gameplay, but horrible for a stable trade economy

So basically everything that makes the game bearable.

If BiS gear were not BoP, there would be zero people running things like vCR2+ or later vets except a few uber sweaty farm groups who did it for profit. No training trials, no pve ladder. Not to mention there would be less of this content because fewer people would buy dungeon DLCs if they didn't have to in order to get the sets.

I wish even more things in the game were BOP and curated. I like this direction.

WitchyKiki · September 20

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

LikiLoki wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

We recently started trading again in my guild and have had a trader for the last 8 weeks, usually in a town centre. I was surprised at the amount of gold needed to hire a trader, in the millions. However we don't ask for donations or charge fees, instead I pay for it myself by selling crowns. I can earn in minutes IRL what would take days in the game so it makes sense for me to use real money to trade crowns for gold. Our guild would have to sell 150M a week to earn enough to hire the traders we use, we are on about 10% of that. That's fine, I do it as a service for our guild members, it's my hobby and I don't mind spending a few pounds a month doing it. Other guilds who rely entirely on trades, fees, donations and raffles to earn enough for trader hiring and don't have IRL income to supplement the costs will not last long in the current economic environment imo.

When the crown gifts were first introduced, I predicted that some guilds would get an unfair advantage. And I was right. The gift system was a good innovation for the overall gaming experience, but terrible for the trading system

There are a lot of things that arnt good for trading.

Inability to trade currencies
BiS gear is found in BoP areas
BOP in general
Reconstructing bypassing mat requirements in favor of a non tradeable currency.
Outfit stations not requiring trait items to use.
Gear being repairable without using more materials
The entire concept of a craft bag.

Among others. Granted the above items are great for gameplay, but horrible for a stable trade economy

sooo... the game isnt monopolized to your advantage is what you're saying.

Amottica · September 21

hiyde wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

One significant issue with trader bids is that they are elevated because they involve exchanging real-world money for gold.

How so,

Rather simple. Players can easily obtain more gold.

Amottica · September 21

hiyde wrote: »

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

Some guilds sell crowns to afford bids. That is how. And it is difficult to compete against such guilds when ingame items keep devaluing and the crowns stay more or less the same.

If the crowns are coming from member donations, any guild can do the same. If we're talking about GMs swiping credit cards, that's a couple hundred dollars a week for a top-tier location on PC-NA. If someone is willing to blow that kinda cash to win a kiosk (instead of building a community that will support the bids), well, bless their heart I guess.

Dang I need to find me a couple Sugar Daddies/Mommies so I can put my feet up & relax. Volunteers?🤣

There are a lot of whales in the game. Not every guild can do the same, as it requires having whales in the guild who are willing to put that much into it. The cherry trader locations are very competitive, and many, if not all, trading guilds in the top locations have players donating tons of gold weekly.

And no, I am not volunteering, lol.