- Would you go to a butcher's stall to buy a sword?
- Would you go to your bank to buy groceries?
This is the sort of ridiculous thing players end up doing in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). That butcher's stall may or may not actually sell meat but is actually an emporium that sells a mish-mash of things because it's actually a Guild Kiosk.
If you want to buy from your own guild, the most convenient way is to actually go to the bank where you can access the Guild Traders of all the guilds you belong to.
Moreover, the implementation is so un-intuitive that new players don't even know where to start. In order for players to sell items to other players:
- They must join a guild
- To sell to anyone outside the guild, that guild must secure a kiosk
- To secure a kiosk, the guild must make a blind bid every week
- Lots of other guilds are also bidding for the same kiosk so there's no guarantee a guild can get or hold a kiosk
This model leads to all sorts of tedious complications. Many guilds have to fund-raise just to have money every week for what they think is a reasonable bid. Many guilds run a loss -- i.e., starting a business to lose money. And on top of this, ESO has had a history of recurring technical difficulties.
How to Change It
First, look to some smoothly running models of player market implementations. Final Fantasy XIV has a fairly good one. It can handle a lot of listings and search them quickly -- whereas whatever implementation ESO is using takes longer to search a single guild trader's listings than FFXIV can search all market listings.
FFXIV also collects sales data so players can see what the last few sales were for the item and thereby have some convenient price guildance.
Next, we should make some appropriate adjustments to account for the Elder Scrolls game.
To keep things fairly easy, the Banker can still be the point of contact where players list their items.
They can post listings there, and can access price guidance when they list, but not buy and sell.
To buy or sell something, players need to go to an actual stall. If a stall looks like it sells groceries, then that stall sells various groceries. Their stock would be of two types:
- What an NPC grocer sells.
- What appropriate items players are selling -- i.e., The stall automatically searches for those types of items and presents them when accessed.
This way, we have not just a clear and convenient system, but also an immersive one.
Additional upgrades can be sold in the Crown Store (cash shop):
- Dedicated broker Assistant you can summon or place in your home.
- Broker upgrades to increase listing duration, reduce listing fees, or reduce cancellation fees.
- Business upgrades to increase the total number of sales slots available.
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