Console trader vs PC market post-Crosplay, and solo Gold farming - any insight, please?

Dalsinthus · February 10

I don't see how they can do this without massively screwing over console players and console trade guilds. I hope they find a way to keep this in mind and don't pull another subclassing style rushed job with massive unintended consequences.

AzuraFan · February 10

SkaiFaith wrote: »

If you are a PC player that never traded - how much gold do you have? Are you able to purchase anything you want off traders?

I'm a PC player who has put something up for sale once in all the time I've played, so that's pretty much never traded. I'm usually poor, and no, I can't buy anything I want off traders because I often can't afford it. I can buy lower-priced items, but a lot of stuff is outside my price range.

I'd trade more if there was a central auction house. I don't like the guild trader system in ESO.

Frayton · February 10

Wait. The servers are merging?

As for the topic, 50 mil is ok now on PCNA since the market dumped. If you ever need more gold just continue to flip things. It's just scaling, and your gold making will scale up.

Frayton · February 10

Hugie wrote: »

When they introduce crossplay and merge the economies, I imagine they will convert console players' gold to match PC economy numbers. I have utmost faith that that will make nobody upset and will be perfectly fair, since the calculations they did for population between servers for Writhing Wall event progress were flawless first try.

Jokes aside, I imagine there will be a gold conversion and I imagine that crossplay will make guild trader locations more competitive. I don't anticipate economies/traders will remain separate per server. Guess we'll see!

A central marketplace/guild kiosk hybrid would also work to even things out.

Ishtarknows · February 10

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Ishtarknows wrote: »

Those saying that Console players can just join PC guilds - aren't they all full already? Unless Zos increases the number that won't work.

What about the actual trader stalls? There's very little chance that Mournhold will gain more than the 7 it already has. Once the rich PC guilds get them what about the 7 Xbox and 7 PS guilds that used to get them?

This will be the same everywhere. Even if guild store rental economies were similar across the servers you've got over 3x the number of trading guilds vying for the same number of stalls. How is that going to work?

add in 3xs the spots to sale tho id say 2xs would be better but the more shops the more supplies means less price so they could add 4xs and really give everyone an market huh or better yet they could finally put in an global market and take out guild stails

Yeah so 21 spots for PC guilds in Mournhold while console guilds might manage to scrape a lone trader on the side of the road somewhere. That sounds perfect!
Add to this the injury that while TTT allows browsing of the backwater stalls for items you need on PC, as of yet console do not have an equivalent, (And from what little I know about how it works it doesn't seem likely there could be a console version) so a double whammy for console guilds.

tomofhyrule · February 10

Ishtarknows wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Ishtarknows wrote: »

Those saying that Console players can just join PC guilds - aren't they all full already? Unless Zos increases the number that won't work.

What about the actual trader stalls? There's very little chance that Mournhold will gain more than the 7 it already has. Once the rich PC guilds get them what about the 7 Xbox and 7 PS guilds that used to get them?

This will be the same everywhere. Even if guild store rental economies were similar across the servers you've got over 3x the number of trading guilds vying for the same number of stalls. How is that going to work?

add in 3xs the spots to sale tho id say 2xs would be better but the more shops the more supplies means less price so they could add 4xs and really give everyone an market huh or better yet they could finally put in an global market and take out guild stails

Yeah so 21 spots for PC guilds in Mournhold while console guilds might manage to scrape a lone trader on the side of the road somewhere. That sounds perfect!
Add to this the injury that while TTT allows browsing of the backwater stalls for items you need on PC, as of yet console do not have an equivalent, (And from what little I know about how it works it doesn't seem likely there could be a console version) so a double whammy for console guilds.

The thing with TTC though is that if it were a combined server, all it would take would be one person on PC going to the backwater stall to get the data uploaded to TTC, and then console could still use the functionality of the TTC site the same way PC does.

The major assumption here is how the crossplay would be set up. ESO’s system runs on megaservers unlike pretty well every other MMO, which means that any ESO players on the same megaserver can play together at any time but transfers are not possible. To keep this architecture, that essentially means they’re going to have to make two giant merged megaservers, one for NA and one for EU.

But if that’s how they do it, then there would also be no restrictions and console players would be able to join guilds originated on PC, or guilds originating on either server could merge or share resources. Essentially, there won’t be “PC guilds” and “console guilds,” it’ll just be “guilds.”

There are some concerns people still have that they need to address (like name conflicts; personally I hope they just make all communication go via account name and platform even if it does mean you can have 15 “Geralt of Riverhold”s running around). And yes, the economy will be very bumpy for a time and it’ll be tough for guilds originating from console to get a foothold without merging or allying with PC guilds. But as console players join PC guilds and make networks and more supply is available, it will even out, as long as people are not sticking with a “I only interact with my own platform” mindset.

SkaiFaith · February 10

AzuraFan wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

If you are a PC player that never traded - how much gold do you have? Are you able to purchase anything you want off traders?

I'm a PC player who has put something up for sale once in all the time I've played, so that's pretty much never traded. I'm usually poor, and no, I can't buy anything I want off traders because I often can't afford it. I can buy lower-priced items, but a lot of stuff is outside my price range.

I'd trade more if there was a central auction house. I don't like the guild trader system in ESO.

Frayton wrote: »

Wait. The servers are merging?

As for the topic, 50 mil is ok now on PCNA since the market dumped. If you ever need more gold just continue to flip things. It's just scaling, and your gold making will scale up.

Thank you both for the direct answers!

But thanks to everybody for contributing with your knowledge. Some useful infos - I didn't think about the hypothetical "PC guilds owning 21 trader kiosks in Mournhold leaving 0 for consoles"

DragonRacer · February 10

This is why I keep saying the only way to stay fair to all platforms (especially console who is at a natural gold deficit disadvantage due to the vastly different economies from PC) from a guild trader standpoint that I can think of is not simply adding additional traders for PC guilds to gobble up, but to structure a way that each platform can win X trader, so sellers can select from a dropdown. Say you walk up to Huzzin in Alinor. You can select to shop "PC Trader of the Week", "XBox Trader of the Week", or "PS Trader of the Week", or browse through each of the stores separately as you want. That keeps the same number of traders but allows for merging the platforms together (assuming there will still be a separation overall between NA and EU... I have no clue what ZOS is planning).

It's either that or just nuke it all from orbit and give folks the auction house they've been crying for over the past 10 years. Because otherwise, yeah, whenever this happens, the console trader guilds will die. A lovely waste and end to a decade of essentially a second full-time job.

heimdall14_9 · February 11

DragonRacer wrote: »

This is why I keep saying the only way to stay fair to all platforms (especially console who is at a natural gold deficit disadvantage due to the vastly different economies from PC) from a guild trader standpoint that I can think of is not simply adding additional traders for PC guilds to gobble up, but to structure a way that each platform can win X trader, so sellers can select from a dropdown. Say you walk up to Huzzin in Alinor. You can select to shop "PC Trader of the Week", "XBox Trader of the Week", or "PS Trader of the Week", or browse through each of the stores separately as you want. That keeps the same number of traders but allows for merging the platforms together (assuming there will still be a separation overall between NA and EU... I have no clue what ZOS is planning).

It's either that or just nuke it all from orbit and give folks the auction house they've been crying for over the past 10 years. Because otherwise, yeah, whenever this happens, the console trader guilds will die. A lovely waste and end to a decade of essentially a second full-time job.

this could never work as then youd be splitting the drops of 1 world between 3 worlds making it where one world would be favorable over the other two

like lets say PS d-wax is 3k per xbox its 3.5k and 5k on pc ( fake pricing) what you would get is the PC players buying out the other two so they can post in PC for higher pricing ... this is just an easy item for use in saying with 3 split slots PC players would just buy up the lot and re-sale on PC side for more

SilverBride · February 11

PC players aren't all multi millionaires, but the ones that are worked for it. I would be pretty irritated if they gave console players gold to "compensate".

What about the poor players on PC? Will they be "compensated" too?

What about the multimillionaires on PC? Will they get nothing even though they worked hard to build their assets?

If they merge us all together on one server they should leave the economy alone and let it work itself out, because it will.

DragonRacer · February 11

SilverBride wrote: »

PC players aren't all multi millionaires, but the ones that are worked for it. I would be pretty irritated if they gave console players gold to "compensate".

What about the poor players on PC? Will they be "compensated" too?

What about the multimillionaires on PC? Will they get nothing even though they worked hard to build their assets?

If they merge us all together on one server they should leave the economy alone and let it work itself out, because it will.

I am only specifically speaking of trading guilds and not individuals.

When you see PC trading guilds talk about losing a 50 million bid in Rawl’kha when the highest winning bid on PS NA in Mournhold is roughly 15-25 million… that is an egregiously huge difference in economies. No console guild will be capable of competing against PC guilds if they just slam us all together in one server and tell us to sort it out amongst ourselves.

Console trading guilds will basically fold. Forced out of the trading game. But nobody cares about us anyway so whatever.

DragonRacer · February 11

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

This is why I keep saying the only way to stay fair to all platforms (especially console who is at a natural gold deficit disadvantage due to the vastly different economies from PC) from a guild trader standpoint that I can think of is not simply adding additional traders for PC guilds to gobble up, but to structure a way that each platform can win X trader, so sellers can select from a dropdown. Say you walk up to Huzzin in Alinor. You can select to shop "PC Trader of the Week", "XBox Trader of the Week", or "PS Trader of the Week", or browse through each of the stores separately as you want. That keeps the same number of traders but allows for merging the platforms together (assuming there will still be a separation overall between NA and EU... I have no clue what ZOS is planning).

It's either that or just nuke it all from orbit and give folks the auction house they've been crying for over the past 10 years. Because otherwise, yeah, whenever this happens, the console trader guilds will die. A lovely waste and end to a decade of essentially a second full-time job.

this could never work as then youd be splitting the drops of 1 world between 3 worlds making it where one world would be favorable over the other two

like lets say PS d-wax is 3k per xbox its 3.5k and 5k on pc ( fake pricing) what you would get is the PC players buying out the other two so they can post in PC for higher pricing ... this is just an easy item for use in saying with 3 split slots PC players would just buy up the lot and re-sale on PC side for more

Welp, I don’t have any better ideas. Do you?

Forced crossplay is going to end two platforms’ entire community of trading guilds. Might as well overhaul and just install the auction house everybody wants anyway, rip the bandaid off.

SilverBride · February 11

DragonRacer wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

PC players aren't all multi millionaires, but the ones that are worked for it. I would be pretty irritated if they gave console players gold to "compensate".

What about the poor players on PC? Will they be "compensated" too?

What about the multimillionaires on PC? Will they get nothing even though they worked hard to build their assets?

If they merge us all together on one server they should leave the economy alone and let it work itself out, because it will.

I am only specifically speaking of trading guilds and not individuals.

When you see PC trading guilds talk about losing a 50 million bid in Rawl’kha when the highest winning bid on PS NA in Mournhold is roughly 15-25 million… that is an egregiously huge difference in economies. No console guild will be capable of competing against PC guilds if they just slam us all together in one server and tell us to sort it out amongst ourselves.

Console trading guilds will basically fold. Forced out of the trading game. But nobody cares about us anyway so whatever.

There won't be enough traders for all of the trading guilds anyway, unless they add more somewhere. This is one of my biggest worries with cross play. The economy itself will find a medium and stabilize but I never factored in what will happen to the guilds that don't have the resources to obtain a spot. That is something they better find a solution for before they do anything else.

I've been with my trading guild for over 3 years now and I know how much it means to me. I'd be devastated if they were forced to disband over not being able to afford a trader and I don't want to see that happen to anyone else. And with 3 times as many guilds competing for a spot it will happen unless they come up with something.

heimdall14_9 · February 11

DragonRacer wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

This is why I keep saying the only way to stay fair to all platforms (especially console who is at a natural gold deficit disadvantage due to the vastly different economies from PC) from a guild trader standpoint that I can think of is not simply adding additional traders for PC guilds to gobble up, but to structure a way that each platform can win X trader, so sellers can select from a dropdown. Say you walk up to Huzzin in Alinor. You can select to shop "PC Trader of the Week", "XBox Trader of the Week", or "PS Trader of the Week", or browse through each of the stores separately as you want. That keeps the same number of traders but allows for merging the platforms together (assuming there will still be a separation overall between NA and EU... I have no clue what ZOS is planning).

It's either that or just nuke it all from orbit and give folks the auction house they've been crying for over the past 10 years. Because otherwise, yeah, whenever this happens, the console trader guilds will die. A lovely waste and end to a decade of essentially a second full-time job.

this could never work as then youd be splitting the drops of 1 world between 3 worlds making it where one world would be favorable over the other two

like lets say PS d-wax is 3k per xbox its 3.5k and 5k on pc ( fake pricing) what you would get is the PC players buying out the other two so they can post in PC for higher pricing ... this is just an easy item for use in saying with 3 split slots PC players would just buy up the lot and re-sale on PC side for more

Welp, I don’t have any better ideas. Do you?

Forced crossplay is going to end two platforms’ entire community of trading guilds. Might as well overhaul and just install the auction house everybody wants anyway, rip the bandaid off.

1) add in 2xs the trade shops , tho wont be to healthy for PSN/XBOX as lots wont be able to last long
2) over populate with 3-xs the trade shops , same outcome as 1 just longer time to get there
3) put in an global trade shop day one of cross play and let the economy take care of itself ( best way imo )
they could use the shops for types of items , armor, crafting , foods/drinks , ect ect so as to make finding items easy for everyone js an idea of an way to use shop locations and break down the looking time for things

Danikat · February 11

How is 3x as many traders "over populating" when that's what we have now?

FWIW PC isn't all huge trade guilds with expensive fees and sales quotas. I'm in 2 social guilds which have traders and neither even requires members to use it, if you do you can sell as much or as little as you want. One of them usually only gets to 4-5 pages of items. I don't know what they spend on bids but it can be tens of millions every week. There's also lots of people on PC who use chat to trade, it's very common to see people selling or buying when you're in a town.

I don't understand why prices are so different on PC to consoles, but whatever the reason is I think it will equalise if cross play allows cross-trading because buyers will go for the cheapest price they can find, so if console guilds have lower prices PC players will mainly buy from them. (Although I suspect some will immediately put up their prices too.)

Also buyers can scan guild stores to upload their data to sites like TTC so console guilds will be added in as soon as PC players can access them, even if the guild can't do it themselves.

scrappy1342 · February 11

DragonRacer wrote: »

Say you walk up to Huzzin in Alinor. You can select to shop "PC Trader of the Week", "XBox Trader of the Week", or "PS Trader of the Week", or browse through each of the stores separately as you want. That keeps the same number of traders but allows for merging the platforms together (assuming there will still be a separation overall between NA and EU... I have no clue what ZOS is planning).

It's either that or just nuke it all from orbit and give folks the auction house they've been crying for over the past 10 years. Because otherwise, yeah, whenever this happens, the console trader guilds will die. A lovely waste and end to a decade of essentially a second full-time job.

if they did this, you would probably still end up with pc getting the spots. all it would take is someone from (or allied with) a pc guild to make a console character, start a guild and fill it with pc players. or even an existing console guild now filling up with pc players.

yes, please give us an auction house

DragonRacer · February 11

SilverBride wrote: »

DragonRacer wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

PC players aren't all multi millionaires, but the ones that are worked for it. I would be pretty irritated if they gave console players gold to "compensate".

What about the poor players on PC? Will they be "compensated" too?

What about the multimillionaires on PC? Will they get nothing even though they worked hard to build their assets?

If they merge us all together on one server they should leave the economy alone and let it work itself out, because it will.

I am only specifically speaking of trading guilds and not individuals.

When you see PC trading guilds talk about losing a 50 million bid in Rawl’kha when the highest winning bid on PS NA in Mournhold is roughly 15-25 million… that is an egregiously huge difference in economies. No console guild will be capable of competing against PC guilds if they just slam us all together in one server and tell us to sort it out amongst ourselves.

Console trading guilds will basically fold. Forced out of the trading game. But nobody cares about us anyway so whatever.

There won't be enough traders for all of the trading guilds anyway, unless they add more somewhere. This is one of my biggest worries with cross play. The economy itself will find a medium and stabilize but I never factored in what will happen to the guilds that don't have the resources to obtain a spot. That is something they better find a solution for before they do anything else.

I've been with my trading guild for over 3 years now and I know how much it means to me. I'd be devastated if they were forced to disband over not being able to afford a trader and I don't want to see that happen to anyone else. And with 3 times as many guilds competing for a spot it will happen unless they come up with something.

Yup. I run a truly donation-based trading guild. No dues, no quotas. Have for the past 8 or so years after the original founder made me GM. I have been busting my butt in my free time hosting weekly auctions, running raffles, putting on housing contests and other fun events mixed in with other fundraisers, nurturing a trading guild with a good social aspect to it as well.

That is all of my ability to compete with just PS NA trading guilds. The prospect of then having to scrap against not only the XBox trading guilds but also the "I lost my 50 million gold bid" PC guilds, too? And it's not even just the PC and XBox guilds bidding against me directly to consider. I tend to have a trader in Alinor. What do you think will happen when the 25 million gold bidding PS NA trading guilds get shoved out of the capitals by the 50 million gold bidding PC guilds? They're gonna trickle down to all the other cities, likely pushing me and others like me out into the wasteland.

Will people stay in the guild for the social aspect? Some will who have been around forever. But the idea of being forced into becoming a social-only guild and people having to leave and join a PC trading guild just to not be locked out of the trading world is incredibly bleak.

And a ton of the forum will not care because it's trading guilds. I'd be willing to bet if ZOS was looking to force a change that would only negatively affect, say, PC trial guilds - would lock PC trial guilds out from ever being able to enter a trial or Group Finder again - people would suddenly care a whole lot more.

I always figured I'd eventually stop being a trading guild GM whenever the servers close some day or age eventually takes me. That is now no longer looking like the case.

SolarRune · February 11

Its hard to say what will happen, or speculate on the potential fixes, when we dont even know the scope of what crossplay covers. It's not something to worry about until we get some information. There are many ways crossplay could be achieved that would leave console and PC communities separate from each other. (not saying i agree with this, just we need more info before the sky is falling in)

Zodiarkslayer · February 11

SilverBride wrote: »

If they merge us all together on one server they should leave the economy alone and let it work itself out, because it will.

If you leave the economy alone, you'll most likely exclude two out of three players from selling their high value items at all.
The Devs have to find a reasonable way to include existing console guilds and players.

Sometimes the market has to be regulated.

heimdall14_9 · February 11

Danikat wrote: »

How is 3x as many traders "over populating" when that's what we have now?

FWIW PC isn't all huge trade guilds with expensive fees and sales quotas. I'm in 2 social guilds which have traders and neither even requires members to use it, if you do you can sell as much or as little as you want. One of them usually only gets to 4-5 pages of items. I don't know what they spend on bids but it can be tens of millions every week. There's also lots of people on PC who use chat to trade, it's very common to see people selling or buying when you're in a town.

I don't understand why prices are so different on PC to consoles, but whatever the reason is I think it will equalise if cross play allows cross-trading because buyers will go for the cheapest price they can find, so if console guilds have lower prices PC players will mainly buy from them. (Although I suspect some will immediately put up their prices too.)

Also buyers can scan guild stores to upload their data to sites like TTC so console guilds will be added in as soon as PC players can access them, even if the guild can't do it themselves.

idk now many empty shops PC or xbox has but on psn there is an good handful that have nothing in the shop to buy just an dummy shp to control the market

XxCaLxX · February 11

Kinda unrelated but another thing I wonder about cross play is what if someone(me) has accounts on 2 or 3 platforms using the same email? I mainly play Xbox ~3k CP but also have a PC account ~1k CP. Will I just lose one of the accounts or what. I'm sure this will ll be answered eventually but I like to worry.

katanagirl1 · February 12

This would probably be more complicated since this is totally outside my area of expertise and I can only speculate, but a crossplay option rather than forced crossplay maybe is a possibility. That way the economies are separate but just like I suggested before you can queue for group activities (like I said before group dungeons, trials, and Cyrodiil and BGs) with other platforms since that seems the area where the population is lower. The overland will always seem populated unless we get down to the point where there are only enough players online at one time worldwide to fill exactly one instance.