Guild Trader Enhancements that would reward creativity and improve the economy

Aashiana · October 24

GUILD TRADER BUNDLING

Everyone knows the guild economy is suffering right now - and there was a recent survey about guilds but it didn't really address this problem. The value of most goods has dramatically dropped and it's difficult for members to meet their dues and make a profit. I think everyone knows the guild trader system is important to the game in so many ways. This idea won't solve this whole problem, but I'd like to put it out there for a future "game systems" enhancement.

One issue is that there are only 30 trader slots, and the value of each item you can put on them is much lower than it was. I'm not advocating for more trader slots (although it probably wouldn't hurt) but more creativity with what you can do with them. If you can only sell one thing at a time, or a bundle of one thing with an upper limit of 200, you can't make much on each sale. Not only does that discourage putting up lower-value items that players actually need, but it's not that interesting after a while. So here are some thoughts.

The basic idea is to be able to bundle items together creatively. This would have so much utility and interest for buyers and keep us entertained in filling our guild slots.

A few examples of the types of things you could do, limited only by your imagination:

- A full set of crafted gear, with all the right traits, etc.
- A bundle of all the Wrothgar recipes
- A bundle of player-crafted furnishings that go together and would make a great house enhancement
- A themed group of furnishing plans
- A full set of motifs
- A "gift pack" themed around a holiday to give your friends
- A head/shoulder style page set
- A "newbie" crafting pack with a full set of researchable items

It would be nice to be able to name our bundle with a descriptive name and choose the category it goes in.

And last but not least to help address the problem with having hundreds of thousands of low-value mats that aren't worth using up a trader slot for currently:
- A limit of up to 1000 instead of 200 for mats in a single listing

Any or all of these ideas would allow traders to make more creative and valuable offerings that would be fun and exciting for players to peruse and allow us to offer more creative and high-value bundles to make better use of our trading slots.

**As an aside, I used to trade in Magic cards back in the day on eBay and had the same issue, and followed some of the strategies above very successfully. The difference was, you could put together any kind of offering you wanted to, to capture people's interest. For example, Dragon-themed packs, basic lands from every expansion, etc.

hiyde · October 24

I don't have a ton of optimism that we'll see it, but I love the idea. Both functional and creative and I think sellers would have fun with it.

bmnoble · October 24

Don't think it will happen but it would be nice to bundle intricate gear as well by level and craft type:

Say for example you could put all your CP150 or CP160 jewellery rings/necklaces into two listing slots instead of however many pieces you have.

Same with all your staffs/bows/shields all into two slots, all your swords/axes/maces/daggers/heavy armour, all your medium/light armour etc...

While I would like the max stack to be up to 200 even just being able to have 6 items bundled together so that all the mail slots are filled as opposed to one item per mail, though with the mass mail looting improvements its not as big a deal as in the past.

AlnilamE · October 24

That might work for sets of gear, but for a lot of stuff it's a lot less practical.

Like a bundle of all motif pages would only work if the motif had just come out. Or if it was a brand new player. Otherwise people will already be on their way to filling in the pages and are not willing to buy duplicates.

But maybe something like a stack each of the materials used to make a popular food or potion?

Jhava · October 24

I can see awesome furnish packs on offer in bundles.

Necrotech_Master · October 24

AlnilamE wrote: »

That might work for sets of gear, but for a lot of stuff it's a lot less practical.

Like a bundle of all motif pages would only work if the motif had just come out. Or if it was a brand new player. Otherwise people will already be on their way to filling in the pages and are not willing to buy duplicates.

But maybe something like a stack each of the materials used to make a popular food or potion?

what would be the point of bundling a stack of each material for a potion? wouldnt it make more sense to just craft and sell the potion at that point directly?

i get the OPs idea and it would work for some things, but i dont think this use case would make sense

alpha_synuclein · October 24

Bundling items and naming bundles creatively would make them practically unsearcheable.

Aashiana · October 24

I thought about the searching issue. Two possible work-arounds for that:

- The seller would choose a category to put them in, just like the normal items are automatically placed in. Bundles could be a subcategory. That way a person could search for furniture bundles, for example, and enjoy all the creative ideas they see.

- Any item a person was searching for that's in the bundle could cause the bundle to come up in the search. This would be a simpler option that would not require as much reconfiguring of the interface.

It's possible this could create a new economy for creative folks, if a person sees your bundle but it isn't exactly what they want, they could maybe contact that seller with a request.

katanagirl1 · October 24

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

Zombocalypse · October 24

Why didn't ESO choose to just get an NPC auctioneer for all player trading needs? Seriously, the very thought of working hard in procuring valuable items to sell, paying to be able to post them on a guild trader post, and then nobody ever buying them, is absolutely terrifying.

LaintalAy · October 24

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

yeah, we'd just see bundles of useless items being up that no-one will buy.
This idea would have worked 5 years ago, not now.

This part of the game is as dead as PvP now.

Necrotech_Master · October 24

LaintalAy wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

yeah, we'd just see bundles of useless items being up that no-one will buy.
This idea would have worked 5 years ago, not now.

This part of the game is as dead as PvP now.

trading is absolutely not dead

still on avg making half a mil gold a week right now mostly across 2 guilds

i do agree that bundles would likely not sell well, unless it was housing furnishings, almost anything else doesnt make sense to bundle to sell

katanagirl1 · October 25

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

yeah, we'd just see bundles of useless items being up that no-one will buy.
This idea would have worked 5 years ago, not now.

This part of the game is as dead as PvP now.

trading is absolutely not dead

still on avg making half a mil gold a week right now mostly across 2 guilds

i do agree that bundles would likely not sell well, unless it was housing furnishings, almost anything else doesnt make sense to bundle to sell

Yeah, it’s not dead, but strangely I have to list at an extremely low price to sell but the purple furnishing plans for the last two chapters have not gone down in price at the traders much at all.

preevious · October 25

I think it's a formidable idea.
I think it would be a nightmare to implement, though .. so, I don't think we'll ever see this. It's quite sad, as this would be a never seen before feature.

Necrotech_Master · October 25

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

yeah, we'd just see bundles of useless items being up that no-one will buy.
This idea would have worked 5 years ago, not now.

This part of the game is as dead as PvP now.

trading is absolutely not dead

still on avg making half a mil gold a week right now mostly across 2 guilds

i do agree that bundles would likely not sell well, unless it was housing furnishings, almost anything else doesnt make sense to bundle to sell

Yeah, it’s not dead, but strangely I have to list at an extremely low price to sell but the purple furnishing plans for the last two chapters have not gone down in price at the traders much at all.

well it makes sense for the newest stuff to be highest priced, its new so high demand as everyone wants it, and the drop rates not being great is low supply

ive been glad other stuff is being listed cheap, ive been buying up a bunch of motifs that are now not outrageously overpriced (in the last 6 months ive finished off about 10-15 different motifs i was missing chapters on)

Ph1p · October 25

Aashiana wrote: »

One issue is that there are only 30 trader slots, and the value of each item you can put on them is much lower than it was. I'm not advocating for more trader slots (although it probably wouldn't hurt) but more creativity with what you can do with them. [...] The basic idea is to be able to bundle items together creatively. This would have so much utility and interest for buyers and keep us entertained in filling our guild slots.

Unfortunately, I think ZOS will sooner give us more trader slots than the possibility to bundle items together. The former is most likely just a small modification. But a bundle feature would require a different kind of unit/entity than the one already used by the inventory or bank space system. Plus, all guild trader interfaces would have to be reworked.

And the benefit is probably rather small. I can see the point of curated furnishing bundles, for example. But I suspect that many bundles would have some serious downsides in practice:

The target market is much smaller, because it excludes people who already have part of the bundle
Since listings are usually sorted by price, bundles will mostly fall to the bottom of the list by default
Fewer people can afford a whole bundle compared to its individual items
Pricing is less transparent with many items of varying prices grouped together
People expect bundles to sell at a discount, so it might actually depress prices further

katanagirl1 · October 25

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I used to have trouble with running out of trader slots but the rng in this game has gotten so terrible, plus the 14 day listing times, means I only have about 5 items in the trader at any given time now. Problem solved for me.

Bundles would almost always include one or more items that you do not want or need as well. Not my preference to buy and then have to possibly resell those.

yeah, we'd just see bundles of useless items being up that no-one will buy.
This idea would have worked 5 years ago, not now.

This part of the game is as dead as PvP now.

trading is absolutely not dead

still on avg making half a mil gold a week right now mostly across 2 guilds

i do agree that bundles would likely not sell well, unless it was housing furnishings, almost anything else doesnt make sense to bundle to sell

Yeah, it’s not dead, but strangely I have to list at an extremely low price to sell but the purple furnishing plans for the last two chapters have not gone down in price at the traders much at all.

well it makes sense for the newest stuff to be highest priced, its new so high demand as everyone wants it, and the drop rates not being great is low supply

ive been glad other stuff is being listed cheap, ive been buying up a bunch of motifs that are now not outrageously overpriced (in the last 6 months ive finished off about 10-15 different motifs i was missing chapters on)

I understand why the prices for those are so high, they are rare drops, but I can’t see sellers relisting often because the fee would be high, and I can’t see them selling for 1M+ on console. I keep hoping eventually they will come down, at least the Necrom and Apocrypha plans since they are a year old now.

XSTRONG · October 25

We need something else i guilds then just who have the most gold

Tandor · October 25

If some guild members aren't meeting their guild dues, then the answer is either to lower the dues or change guilds, especially when other guild members are still filling their bank with more gold than they know what to do with.

As for the economy, it only exists in the minds of those who are actively trading, and at a serious level, the game doesn't really have a meaningful economy in any other sense.

msgeek · October 25

I have a proposal that is along the lines of this, much easier to implement but is much more limited in scope:

Allow re-construction of 14 motif pages into a full book.
Allow de-construction of a motif book into 14 pages.

The current issues:
There are too many pages and motifs in game for people to be able to find one they need.
The value of motifs has dropped to the extent that there's questionable value in using up a trader slot with them.
Listing a full equivalent motif currently takes the equivalent of 14 pages.

Advantages:
Should increase trader<>trader sales as traders look to complete a whole book to list that.
Could reduce guild trader motif listings to _upto_ 1/14th of the existing level. (In reality it won't be this much as some pages will still be listed individually, but should still be significant).
No "wasted" pages buying the whole book if you already know some pages means you can decon, and sell un the unwanted pages.
Sale prices for the full book actually makes trader listing worthwhile.
Lets traders decide how to sell. Maybe bundle up a cheap Motif, but sell a more expensive motif as individual pages.
Probably other stuff