Alphashado wrote: »

Nazon_Katts wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

I can't help but wonder how many people truly understand what they are asking for.

Ready to start counting?

Alphashado wrote: »

This isn't wow or your average MMO where the auction houses can be isolated to individual servers. This is one single gigantic server broken down into phases.

Of course you can. Have regional AHs and limit the items and total participants to break it up.

Alphashado wrote: »

A million people all using the same auction house is terrible. Everything would be worthless to the average joe. Wanna know who would love to see it though? Gold farmers. They could then sell all of their hacked goods in gigantic bulks and make a ton of gold. Gold that you no longer have by the way because that yellow temper you have that used to sell for 2k now sells for 2 gold.

How will they make tons of gold, if their farmed mats sell for 2 gold? By your definiton, this would actually hurt gold farmers. Not to forget that a million people not only up the supply, but raise the demand as well. So that's not going to happen, at least not for raw mats nor tempers.

Alphashado wrote: »

But no worries, because you can get all the gold you want from the gold sellers that are exploiting a million player auction house like Donald trump because they are the only ones able to sell a thousand stacks of jute per day.

Everyone can participate in an AH. Especially in a matured economy that already shows mudflation, it's a whole lot easier for new players to gain gold that way, as an AH will automatically adjust prices, while quest rewards and mob drops have to be manually altered by the developers.

Pop on over to GW2 and ask them how they like it. The reason the gold farmers gain where players do not is because they have the resources to farm in massive bulks. You do not.

I played GW2. I loved the auction house on that game.

Alphashado wrote: »

The reason the gold farmers gain where players do not is because they have the resources to farm in massive bulks. You do not.

First, Nazon_Katts did an awesome job pointing out the flaws in your logic, but your hatred of Gold Sellers is both evident and admirable, so I am inclined to like you...

I bought my second bank upgrade with materials I had farmed, processed and vendored, so I can evidently farm massive bulks, can I farm 4000 Maple? possibly, but why would I want to? on the other hand, if I decide to put 40 stacks of 100 sanded maple in an auction house, perhaps someone will look into it... if I ask more for less then a vendor will pay, someone will make money buying them and selling them to a vendor... if I ask more, then I may make a few gold... on the other hand, that VR5 guy that just took up Woodcrafting can blaze through the first few points using my wood... except you do better deconstructing then constructing... but the main point is if I stick 40 stacks of 100 Sanded Maple, it throws a flag and some GM looks at my account, if I have 10 or 15 characters with random letters as names sending me Rough Maple, and those 10 or 15 folks have never left Kenarthi's roost, perhaps I should be whacked with the Ban Stick (Ban Stave? Maple Inferno Staff of Banning!!!) along with the accounts of my suppliers

For the "Central AH" it can work, it works on EvE, CCP even hired a PHD in Economics to work with them on their player driven economy... and they have been very aggressive (as I remember when I played EvE) about limiting and eliminating Isk Farmers.

Both, auction house and inventory system as seen in GW2 are top notch.

In GW2 I never spent any real money in game, and I never farm. Yet, inventory management is a breeze, selling stuff and buying stuff is easy. I can "be what I want to be" - an ESO claim it yet has to fullfill.

In ESO it is a chore. If it stays that way after my six month subscription is over, I might leave this game, because I pay/play for fun, not for chores.

And it is obvious that the absence of an auction house and convenient/modern inventory system in ESO does not prevent bots and farmers from appearing. Quite to the contrary it seems...

You should have made a poll... i agree an AH is a must even if prices drop a lot... its now a hassle to try and find stuff and most things are vendored and not placed on sale as people don`t want to bother joining trading guilds and managing that crap.

People quit when it takes 20 minutes to search 5 separate guilds and not find the item you want....

Cogo wrote: »

Players who quit that easy....I still wonder what the heck they are doing in ESO in the first place? ESO is the freedome to do/build whatever you want. Choices are yours....but you live with your choices. And if you want a good tradeguild, then you have to find one.

A trade guild with 500 members says NOTHING. Effort for doing something that MIGHT give you something......thats what I want in a MMO.

I agree that a game that offers each player the chance to play their way with enough interest and adventure to keep them is worth some work.

Take Ultima Online (UO) for example, we had to chop trees to get wood and then kill birds for their feathers, then shape the wood and fletch the feathers - just for the arrows. Same work went into every weapon or piece of armour etc. Made the game really immersive and whilst modern day graphics are awesome (ESO is truly spectacular) I still haven't come across a game that allowed the player to experience such detail (including building player housing and ships for sea battles).

However a modern game shouldn't be a chore to play, it should be fun. From the reaction of people on these forums it is clear that Zenimax has a lot of work to do in order to make the game not only fun but worthwhile. Having to join 5 trading guilds, many of which appear to go inactive so players have to constantly look for new guilds, their store has little or no inventory search facilities or ability to compare prices easily is not, in my opinion, fun nor worthwhile. I pay to play - play should be fun not work.

Makkir wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Auction houses do not give any single player a special set of rules with which to compete by. Trade agreements with countries like China do. And that is why corporations who take advantage of these agreements dominate the competition. So as I said, it's a very poor analogy.

OK, but I did not say AH's give anyone a special set of rules. The "unfair" advantage has to do with the fact there is no National minimum wage set in China. So we (Americans) ARE playing by a different rule set than Chinese. They are being paid in American Dollars for gold, via PayPal. Because of the value of the American Dollar to them, they are able to employ thousands of workers to farm crafting materials for them and flood the game's global Auction House, basically setting the prices. It is not competition between players at that point.

This is why it is a problem for you, and for me.
A quick google search will show that 30k ESO gold costs $11 bucks. I assume most gold sellers have a similar price range. How long does it take you to farm 30k gold Jeremy? A couple days? Next math question, if it took you 6 hours to farm 30k gold how much would you need to charge (if you were a gold selling company) to offset your expenses? Well, in NY minimum wage is 8/hr so that's 8x6= $48 bucks in wages(use your own state's wage in this example). Without considering profit, do you see my point now? $48/30k gold Vs $11/30k gold. In every scenario, the Chinese win.

This is a problem because it puts a massive amount of gold into our economy, and the auction house becomes an enabling tool for gold sellers to move their farmed products easily.

If crafters could set up their own shops or vendor tents and list their items for sale, then you wouldn't be limited to 5 Guild Stores for buying and selling your wares, and there would be some room for competition if people utilized the forums for advertising their businesses, or trade chat, or had their shops (not their products) listed on some global "mall-like" directory.

If you want a global auction house, then we need to ban Chinese IPs from our NA server. And of course, on top of that people need to take ownership in moral responsibility and stop buying gold in the first place.

I have to agree with this 100%. As much as I love the Trading Guild I am in, I very much miss a normal auction house. But the problem is the server and the way that it's structured. I DO NOT like a maga server auction house like the one in GW2. It isn't even close to the type of AH that games like WoW or Rift or Aion has because those games have set servers which creates a limited controlled market. Your items still have value on those kinds of auction houses.

As mentioned above, the only thing a maga server auction house does is facilitate gold sellers because they can farm in bulk with their army of bots. So while you sell your stack of 100 jute for 2 cents (because that is what it would be worth on a mega server AH). the gold seller can sell a thousand stacks of 100 that he gathered in a fraction of the time it took for you to gather one stack.

The other type of person that exploits this type of auction house is the guy that has 20 accounts open at the same time. All of them manipulating the market. There are videos of people doing this in GW2.


In a nutshell, I would LOVE a normal AH, but unless there is a drastic change to the structure of the mega server than I will pass. There is just no way to keep the markets contained because we all log into totally different phases every time we log into the game. The ONLY way you could make it somewhat regional would be to limit them to factions. But even then you would still have 3 auction houses with hundreds of thousands of people on each one.

Dumbledalf wrote: »

Please please please give us an auction house. the constant spamming of green and blue text items in zone chat is really annoying. If not an auction house the. At least make a trade channel that can be switched on or off.
Not sure where to post this but there is no general discussion threads.

Thanks.

No.

Gold sellers: Trading House vs None

Gold sellers will keep certain items that they think they can sell directly for real money.

The rest will get vendored for gold. This brings new gold into circulation for which it goes to a small % of the population that buys and and these buyers, in turn, are able to afford stuff at a higher price. This allows suppliers to sell their goods and services at higher prices and have it sell at an acceptable rate.

However at this price means it's over priced to most players.

With a trading house, gold sellers are far more likely to fulfill buy orders for the quick turn around. This brings the price of buy orders closer to what the vendors would give as the higher priced buy orders are filled. This effect is combined between everyone who is willing to fulfill buy orders.

There is a very important difference between gold sellers using a vendor and gold sellers using the trading house to get their gold.

With a vendor, this pulls new gold in circulation. With fulfilling buy orders, this is a redistribution of the existing level of currency.

Having 90% of the currency in the hands of 10% of the players is still a bad thing but if this is going to happen either way, it's better that they don't bring in new currency. It's better that they use the trading house instead of the vendor.

Makkir wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Auction houses do not give any single player a special set of rules with which to compete by. Trade agreements with countries like China do. And that is why corporations who take advantage of these agreements dominate the competition. So as I said, it's a very poor analogy.

OK, but I did not say AH's give anyone a special set of rules. The "unfair" advantage has to do with the fact there is no National minimum wage set in China. So we (Americans) ARE playing by a different rule set than Chinese. They are being paid in American Dollars for gold, via PayPal. Because of the value of the American Dollar to them, they are able to employ thousands of workers to farm crafting materials for them and flood the game's global Auction House, basically setting the prices. It is not competition between players at that point.

This is why it is a problem for you, and for me.
A quick google search will show that 30k ESO gold costs $11 bucks. I assume most gold sellers have a similar price range. How long does it take you to farm 30k gold Jeremy? A couple days? Next math question, if it took you 6 hours to farm 30k gold how much would you need to charge (if you were a gold selling company) to offset your expenses? Well, in NY minimum wage is 8/hr so that's 8x6= $48 bucks in wages(use your own state's wage in this example). Without considering profit, do you see my point now? $48/30k gold Vs $11/30k gold. In every scenario, the Chinese win.

This is a problem because it puts a massive amount of gold into our economy, and the auction house becomes an enabling tool for gold sellers to move their farmed products easily.

If crafters could set up their own shops or vendor tents and list their items for sale, then you wouldn't be limited to 5 Guild Stores for buying and selling your wares, and there would be some room for competition if people utilized the forums for advertising their businesses, or trade chat, or had their shops (not their products) listed on some global "mall-like" directory.

If you want a global auction house, then we need to ban Chinese IPs from our NA server. And of course, on top of that people need to take ownership in moral responsibility and stop buying gold in the first place.

Gold sellers/buyers are in the game rather there is an auction house or not. What enables gold sellers are the people who buy gold. Not an auction house.

And like I told you in an earlier post, an auction house would make it easier to identify and investigate possible gold sellers/buyers because their activities would be highlighted on the market boards.

So I don't agree with you that it would have some special enabling effect for gold sellers to sell their materials. Though even if it did, it wouldn't change my opinion any because ruining the economy for all of us just to provide some inconvenience to gold sellers is a horrible way to combat this problem.

So either way, I don't see us agreeing about this.

The issue with your player vendor idea is there becomes too many shops for an individual to have to sift through. So it quickly becomes tiresome and tedious. Because not all of us want to spend hours shopping on a video game. In fact I would wager most of us don't.

There needs to be a convenient way to list and compare goods. And expecting players to use commercials on a forum or trade channel isn't going to cut it for a lot of us.

I tend to view the guild stores as more of a community implementation than an economic one. It seems the current system is in order to boost guild involvement b way of encouraging them to capture keeps and interact with other guilds and players in order to gain substantial 'trading system' in order to get a substantial profit.

I agree that the current system needs tweaking, like a desperate need for a search function, but completely botching the current guild store system for the traditional AH seems to completely undermine the progress they made with the guild stores.

I won't say that the traditional AH have a lot more cons than pros, odds are they can trump the guild stores in terms of (lower) cost and simplicity of item acquisition. The only cons for the traditional AH that I can think of are potential exploitation by gold sellers and bots.

But my main issue with that system, simply put, is the lack of interaction and dynamic that that system offers; it mainly consists of setting a price and depositing an item, and then your done. The system is singular, and as many have said, this singular system of global competition will likely cause costs to plummet to a 'reasonable' bargain.

Morals aside, this guild store system allows for various entrepreneurs to have a decent chance at success, no matter the type of approach--even overpricing pests can get a deal. But hey, at least everyone gets a chance. But then again, people are generally the same, so no one is going to buy from the people that constantly overprice everything ridiculously. In the traditional AH, the primary people who will profit will be the ones who set their price the lowest. Yes, yes, I know its a good thing, but now the chance for any person to profit is heightened in this system.

Guild stores have unique sense of competition that I have never seen before, and quite frankly, it is refreshing change from the bland traditional AH. Guilds have to both maintain themselves, and compete amongst other guilds in order to acquire a broader accessibility to the public. It is quite nice in my personal opinion.

[Please note that this is purely opinion, I am in no way claiming that my views are correct or that my assumptions are correct. I could very easily be wrong on many points.]

I thought name tags was a controversial topic along with the NB skills bugged, but at 1.1k replies, the ah is the most talked about topic.

I would just be glad for a trade channel, or alliance wide ah's (so yes 3 ah's). Some of us dont have time to play the market and sit down and post things for sale in 5 different guild stores. I have a family and a real life. When I play eso, I want to kill kill kill, not sit in town and buy/sell.

At least better guild store search features without HAVING to have addons. : /

Zorrashi wrote: »

I tend to view the guild stores as more of a community implementation than an economic one. It seems the current system is in order to boost guild involvement b way of encouraging them to capture keeps and interact with other guilds and players in order to gain substantial 'trading system' in order to get a substantial profit.

I agree that the current system needs tweaking, like a desperate need for a search function, but completely botching the current guild store system for the traditional AH seems to completely undermine the progress they made with the guild stores.

I won't say that the traditional AH have a lot more cons than pros, odds are they can trump the guild stores in terms of (lower) cost and simplicity of item acquisition. The only cons for the traditional AH that I can think of are potential exploitation by gold sellers and bots.

But my main issue with that system, simply put, is the lack of interaction and dynamic that that system offers; it mainly consists of setting a price and depositing an item, and then your done. The system is singular, and as many have said, this singular system of global competition will likely cause costs to plummet to a 'reasonable' bargain.

Morals aside, this guild store system allows for various entrepreneurs to have a decent chance at success, no matter the type of approach--even overpricing pests can get a deal. But hey, at least everyone gets a chance. But then again, people are generally the same, so no one is going to buy from the people that constantly overprice everything ridiculously. In the traditional AH, the primary people who will profit will be the ones who set their price the lowest. Yes, yes, I know its a good thing, but now the chance for any person to profit is heightened in this system.

Guild stores have unique sense of competition that I have never seen before, and quite frankly, it is refreshing change from the bland traditional AH. Guilds have to both maintain themselves, and compete amongst other guilds in order to acquire a broader accessibility to the public. It is quite nice in my personal opinion.

[Please note that this is purely opinion, I am in no way claiming that my views are correct or that my assumptions are correct. I could very easily be wrong on many points.]

But guild stores aren't refreshing or progressive. They limit the market size to the point they are nearly useless. There is no community building. In fact I would say they do the opposite and demean the purpose of guilds. They are good at wasting a player's time. But that's about it. So adding an auction house would be a step forwards not backwards.

And the problem with your logic is it assumes by opening the market up to allow for more competition among suppliers that automatically means people can't make profit. But that is incorrect. Because it completely ignores the consumer-side of things and the vast increase in available demand that would be made available for your products.

For example: very few people could afford computers when they first were introduced because of how expensive they were. Yet now that they have been made more affordable computer companies are more profitable than ever. And the reason for this is because they are able to sell to a much greater number of people.

In other words, open and free markets are good for everyone. Both the people who buy and sell. Artificial markets that allow for price gouging benefit only a very small amount of people and need to be diminished. Because over-pricing pests as you put it don't deserve a chance. And they wouldn't in a real economy not controlled by all of these ridiculous boundaries and market controls.