Why is everything so expensive? (PC NA)

Kiralyn2000

tmbrinks wrote: »

Agree that the gold reward from writs could just be removed and a (small) bump in drop rate (although one may not even be needed with current prices), would help keep gold out of the economy.

Well, that would certainly screw me over completely.

Since quest & writ rewards, and vendoring gear drops, is the only gold I get. If you took the gold off of writs, my 'income' would drop like a rock. And I wouldn't be able to buy furniture from the weekend vendor, or another house to put it in, etc.

Because I'm never going to sell materials on the market. Adding more gold tempers to the writ rewards would do absolutely zero for me - I don't switch my gear due to nerfs, so I rarely need to gold out anything new. It just goes into my bank & craft bag. I've got plenty of tempers in stock, I don't have a use for more.

Amottica

tmbrinks wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

Alendrin wrote: »

First, stop giving out gold. Replace it with things people want, at conversion rates well below market (which will drive down prices). Example, instead of 100K gold (happening this month, it made me cringe), give out 20 tempering alloy or 200 mundane runes, which are conversion rates far below market, at least on PC. These are things that people want anyways and could be sold if they didn't. You are increasing supply of things that are harder to get and not flooding the market with gold. As a bonus, it breaks speculation and hoarding habits because people never know when huge supply is about to hit the market.

The same is true for crafting dailies. Reduce gold, increase non-gold rewards, either in additional tempers or perhaps housing materials. Do so at conversion rates well below market.

Iam not a fan of this. Like you said there are fewer ppl farming and more buying. In the core many inflation/price threads are about this very matter. These 2 ideas look more like you want to adapt the game towards these players and supprot their lazyness or unwillingness.

Actually, I think the lazy approach on both the devs and the playerbase is to want gold rewards. Whether it's the monthly reward being 20 Temp alloy instead of 100k gold, or crafting writs bumping their gold drops in exchange for the gold currency, you are requiring more work on the part of the player to get gold, because they actually have to engage in the economy.

People miss the point that this actually kills two birds with one stone. It tackles both the Inflation/deflation issue by reducing incoming gold (good thing IMO), AND it tackles the supply and demand issues we have by introducing more supply.

As it is now, the writs I do (or more accurately did aggressively in the past), print gold into the economy and give me more than I will ever need to spend. They also give me more gold mats, than I realistically could use (save maybe chromium). The result is that not only is it contributing to inflation but it is also impacting supply and demand. I never sell gold mats. I don't need to because I have all the gold I need. More importantly, because of inflation, it is smarter for me to hold my wealth in mats, not currency.

If you increase the drop rewards of mats, but reduce the gold, well 2 things happen. One, less gold coming into the economy, so inflation is curbed. Two, because I cant print the gold I need, I am more incentivized to sell my excess mats to generate it. That forces more mats into the market, again helping get prices under control. It is a win win.

Agree that the gold reward from writs could just be removed and a (small) bump in drop rate (although one may not even be needed with current prices), would help keep gold out of the economy.

I'm actually kicking myself (slightly) because I would sell some of my gold mats back in the day, selling those Wax for 8k, Platings for 90k, etc... and now I've lost "value" to the inflation because I converted it to gold instead of hoarding them in my craft bag where they can grow as an asset.

The non-gold drops from writs have always been the most valuable portion of the writs anyways.

But the gold from the writs does not seem to be an issue. We have not seen an indication of overall inflation which is the subject of this thread.

Kwoung

Amottica wrote: »

Nezyr_Jezz wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

Disagree. We had a huge shift in PVE meta and most dps builds swaped their jewelery, and if you take a look at how much spell/weapon damage you are losing on bloodthirsty between purple and gold you will know where the spike came from as well. Literally whole raiding groups were swaping their jewelery which was the first time they did that in about 2-3 years.

Then that probably explains the increase in price for that item. No one has provided a similar increase for anything else.

However, Zenimax specifically wanted the upgrading of jewelry to be rare compared to the other crafting so it is working as intended and not an indication of widespread inflation.

Well I can say without a doubt, that ~2 years ago I used to buy Hakeijo for 6k each and sell Tri-Stat glyphs for 10k... look at them now, Hakeijo is what 45k each now? It will be claimed that the supply dried up because no one goes to IC anymore, but IC was dead well before the price increase happened. The same pretty much goes for all the Alchemy mats used in the popular potions like Cornflower, which used to be around 120, now it's 900. Essence of Spell Power pots, used to sell those for like 89-100 gold, now they go for ~500 each. Basically, it depends on what you choose to look at on the charts.

Also, a chart of the last year doesn't actually show the whole picture, the prices have been going up for a much longer period.

MindOfTheSwarm

It’s also to do with how much gold people have acquired. As more and more gold enters the market the more prices will go up. Literal in game inflation.

Kwoung

Just for a little fun... since I used to craft a lot to sell stuff, here is my chart, last updated on 2/14/21, at which point things had already pretty much gone through the roof... The "Ingredients" section was the current average prices on those materials at the time I am pretty sure, although I only really updated the prices on the stuff I was selling at the time, so some aren't quite right and are low. Added a second link at the bottom that I dug out of my version history as well.

Link 2/14/21: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/896934142216896542/930322583201660958/unknown.png



Edit:
Here is a version from just 6 months earlier, where the price of Hakeijo was half the price of 6 months later.

Link 8/12/20: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/896934142216896542/930326068139798578/unknown.png

silvereyes

Kwoung wrote: »

Just for a little fun... since I used to craft a lot to sell stuff, here is my chart, last updated on 2/14/21, at which point things had already pretty much gone through the roof... The "Ingredients" section was the current average prices on those materials at the time I am pretty sure. Added a second link at the bottom that I dug out of my version history as well.

Link 2/14/21: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/896934142216896542/930322583201660958/unknown.png
Edit:
Here is a version from just 6 months earlier, where the price of Hakeijo was half the price of 6 months later.

Link 8/12/20: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/896934142216896542/930326068139798578/unknown.png

If you focus in on any one item, you can get a different story than if you look at others.

For example, if you look at the graph of all prices for Essence of Spell Critical since Greymoor launched, it's in a pretty constant, tight range:

(aside: I looked for other pots, like tri-pots and weapon power / spell power pots, but uesp doesn't have data going back as far for those, for some reason)

However, when you look at Dreugh Wax and other upgrade mats that are highly influenced by patch changes, you see a steady trend up and to the right. You can pretty much mark where each patch drops, not even looking at the dates.


Hakeijo is more a story of periods of stability punctuated with three sharp price increases, corresponding roughly to the Flames of Ambition, Blackwood and Deadlands releases.


That's why I asked the OP to specify exactly which items they are referring to. Specific items can have very specific reasons for their price charts based on specific patches or announcements, and it's not always as simple as blaming macroeconomic trends.

etchedpixels

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I will never say the differences on PC and Console are solely due to writs, but it is a clear difference in the two economies. Writs are absolutely a massive contributor to the rampant inflation on PC. It is far easier to create gold out of thin air on PC, and gold has far less value on PC. What we would expect to happen is happening. The story checks out.

It's one of the differences. PC folks also have better addons for some of the scrying related gold generation too. But these are easy to fix - 100% of the gold first toon per account writ of the day, 75% second, 66% third, 50 % fourth or similar. Won't make a big difference except to people who farm them.

Sidebar: It would be interesting to know if there is an active market for an exchange of gold between PC and console, and what the exchange rate is. Certainly, gold is worth more on console. In other words, If I had 10 mil in PC gold to trade to a console player, I wouldn't expect to receive any where near that in Console cold as an exchange. Console gold is worth more. Console doesn't have nearly the inflation problem that PC does.

All the in game currency is indirectly anchored to the real world via crown/gold trading (and also the ToS viollating black market dollars for gold dollars for materials stuff). They give you consistent numbers showing that PC has serious inflation and console does not. They why is open to argument, the level is easy to measure.

In theory the writ side is self correcting - gold becomes so worthless nobody bothers doing them. Unfortunately at that point it's also really bad for players trying to get from story to end game because the gold earned in questing/crafting is now junk.

Interestingly there is a cap we've not yet reached on gold jewellery mats. At some point gold becomes so worthless that the best way to get gold materials is to buy lots of golden vendor stuff to deconstruct.

Kwoung

etchedpixels wrote: »

Interestingly there is a cap we've not yet reached on gold jewellery mats. At some point gold becomes so worthless that the best way to get gold materials is to buy lots of golden vendor stuff to deconstruct.

It is getting closer all the time, but a long ways off.. since getting a grain is a 50/50 proposition and are only worth 25k. They would have to hit 300k per grain to make it worthwhile, which would be insane and put platings at 3 mil a pop. Of course I remember when upgrading a full set of jewelry was a 800-900k proposition, what is it now, 3.6 million or something?

SeaGtGruff

Prices are whatever the sellers ask for.

In my opinion, price increases are often due to an influx of new players who are obsessed with selling every little thing they find, and who want to get as much gold as they can for it. You see them posting in zone chat-- "What is [insert trash item here] worth?" Someone else posts a PC from TTC, then the first person tries to sell it for the highest price that was mentioned.

Established sellers also want to get the best possible price for their goods, and will increase their asking prices if they think people will pay those prices. They don't sit down and review how much gold is in the game first. They don't ask other players what they're capable of paying. They just increase their prices to whatever they feel like increasing them to.

The only way buyers can influence prices is through whether or not they buy items at particular prices.

Low prices are never an issue for buyers, because most people will buy at the lowest possible prices if they can. Low prices are an issue for sellers who want to control the average prices to be in their favor, which is why flippers will search the guild traders, buy up low-priced items, and relist them at what they deem to be "corrected" prices.

It's high prices which are always an issue for buyers, and the problem is that buyers can't really exert enough influence in the marketplace to "correct" high prices and bring them back down to what buyers consider to be reasonable prices.

As I see it, there are a few ways this situation might be addressed:

1) Institute some mechanism to control the practice of item flipping. Perhaps some items could be flagged as "not for resale" so that buyers must use the items themselves. This would hopefully stop flippers from buying up all of the low-priced items for no other reason than to relist them at higher prices. Unfortunately, I'm afraid hackers would simply figure out a way to turn off the "not for resale" flags on items so flippers could resell them anyway. Also, the addition of a mere bit flag to every item in the database, not to mention updating everything pertinent in the program to handle the new flag appropriately, would be a nightmare. So as wonderful as this suggestion may sound-- and I personally think it's a wonderful suggestion-- it will probably never happen.

2) Increase the tax for listing items. This would be unpopular, but if the sales tax were increased, it might cause sellers to be more cautious about how much they list items for. Also, if the item fails to sell, do not refund the sales tax.

3) Reduce the length of time that items are listed for. That way, items can't sit at the guild traders for a month or whatever at ridiculously-high prices. Let them sit at the traders for a week or two, then return them to the sellers (but keep the sales tax) if the items don't sell at the asked-for prices. If the sellers are serious about selling the items, they'll have to relist the items at more reasonable prices.

4) Buyers should learn how to walk away from items that are listed at unreasonably-high prices. As long as wealthy buyers are willing to pay those high prices, the less-wealthy buyers will end up suffering for it. But refusing to buy won't be as powerful of a tool if items can just sit there for a long time until some wealthy player finally comes along and buys them.

SidraWillowsky

Kwoung wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

Interestingly there is a cap we've not yet reached on gold jewellery mats. At some point gold becomes so worthless that the best way to get gold materials is to buy lots of golden vendor stuff to deconstruct.

It is getting closer all the time, but a long ways off.. since getting a grain is a 50/50 proposition and are only worth 25k. They would have to hit 300k per grain to make it worthwhile, which would be insane and put platings at 3 mil a pop. Of course I remember when upgrading a full set of jewelry was a 800-900k proposition, what is it now, 3.6 million or something?

Yeah, chromium plating used to cost less than 70k gold per, and I remember thinking that it was insane that it cost 800-900k gold to get the platings for a full set. Now, given that the chromium plating I listed for 225k sold immediately, and that zircon plating is going for over 70k per, you're looking at 3.3 mil gold (minimum) to gold out a set of jewelry....

Kiralyn2000

Felt like looking back to see how much gold has been in daily login rewards.

In the last year, there's been 100k twice.

Jan 22 - 100k
Dec 21 - 8k
Nov - 17.5k
Oct - 7k
Sept - 105k
Aug - 17.5k
July - 10k
June - 10k
May - 35.5k
April - 9k
March - 12k
Feb - 10k
Total - 341.5k

Or, 935g per day. About the equivalent of 2 quest rewards for a max level character.

(vs. ~4k for a single max level character doing writs)


So, yeah. While it's a bit of gold, it's not particularly huge in the grand scheme. "OMG 100k!" is easy to point at, but it's not really all that much in the long run.

(plus, some fraction of the smaller ones in the other months, are in the final 'people miss these days so nothing important' week of rewards. December's 8k was in the last 4 days, for instance. 10k of August's is in the last 4 days. Etc.)

Amottica

Kwoung wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Nezyr_Jezz wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

Disagree. We had a huge shift in PVE meta and most dps builds swaped their jewelery, and if you take a look at how much spell/weapon damage you are losing on bloodthirsty between purple and gold you will know where the spike came from as well. Literally whole raiding groups were swaping their jewelery which was the first time they did that in about 2-3 years.

Then that probably explains the increase in price for that item. No one has provided a similar increase for anything else.

However, Zenimax specifically wanted the upgrading of jewelry to be rare compared to the other crafting so it is working as intended and not an indication of widespread inflation.

Well I can say without a doubt, that ~2 years ago I used to buy Hakeijo for 6k each and sell Tri-Stat glyphs for 10k... look at them now, Hakeijo is what 45k each now? It will be claimed that the supply dried up because no one goes to IC anymore, but IC was dead well before the price increase happened. The same pretty much goes for all the Alchemy mats used in the popular potions like Cornflower, which used to be around 120, now it's 900. Essence of Spell Power pots, used to sell those for like 89-100 gold, now they go for ~500 each. Basically, it depends on what you choose to look at on the charts.

Also, a chart of the last year doesn't actually show the whole picture, the prices have been going up for a much longer period.

Hakeijo is like Chromium in that it is not a common material. The price will be affected more by both people farming for them and an increased desire to use it. As such it is not a good indicator.

As for the rest, please provide the data as I did in my earlier post. I did that post because someone chose Chromium which is probably one of the more limited items in the game so it is clearly more open to price spikes.

Regardless, the answer to price increases has already been provided to us by Zenimax. Farm for what you want. It works well.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Xebov

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Actually, I think the lazy approach on both the devs and the playerbase is to want gold rewards. Whether it's the monthly reward being 20 Temp alloy instead of 100k gold, or crafting writs bumping their gold drops in exchange for the gold currency, you are requiring more work on the part of the player to get gold, because they actually have to engage in the economy.

Gold can be used to buy things so its straight forward. Giving out materials instead requires players to sell it to someone and convert it to gold which requires a buyer, so there are more steps involved and the buyer also needs to have gold in the first place which is harder to come by with such changes.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

People miss the point that this actually kills two birds with one stone. It tackles both the Inflation/deflation issue by reducing incoming gold (good thing IMO), AND it tackles the supply and demand issues we have by introducing more supply.

The game has enought supply available. The problem behind the supply/demand issue is that a portion of the player base doesnt want to use the supply available by the game and rather wants to use trade, which creates the shortage. At the same time they also refuse to get some sort of steady income to cover the prices. Thats the reason iam against changing rewards at all because i dont see why players should supply others cheaper just because they are unwilling to get any supply themselves.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

If you increase the drop rewards of mats, but reduce the gold, well 2 things happen. One, less gold coming into the economy, so inflation is curbed. Two, because I cant print the gold I need, I am more incentivized to sell my excess mats to generate it. That forces more mats into the market, again helping get prices under control. It is a win win.

To work with a lower supply in gold you would need gold to constantly circulate. Thats not happening in the game. You have some ppl that sell way more than they buy and ppl that buy way more than they sell, so gold flows mostly into one direction.



We currently have players that constantly supply resources to the player market and we have players that constantly buy resources from the player market. Price trends indicate that the group of buyers clearly is or gets bigger. What i dont understand is how the discussed solution can be to change the game so the players that already constantly supply resources supply even more so the players that constantly buy can get them cheaper. To me this looks like the goal is not to solve inflation but instead change the game to cather towards players that dont want to do anything to aquire resources themselves.

Kiralyn2000

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players.

Well, there have been a couple changes since this whole Crown Selling thing started.
1) long-time ESO+ members who had stockpiles of Crowns built up for years, have sold it; and
2) Steam closed loopholes that allowed people to buy extra-cheap Crowns from foreign countries

So, less supply. Which means that if demand doesn't go down, prices go up.



(when i was on doing my Endeavors a while ago, saw someone advertising 4k Crowns for sale at 600:1. This is on PC/NA, Glenumbra)

Xebov

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Crown prices increased alot after the mentioned loopholes for cheaper buying where closed and supply was reduced.

The remainder is a simple circular dependency. In general heavy sellers pile gold up but have limited use for it. When crown sales started these players bought crowns and used some of their gold which was going back into circulation. The players that received the gold became able to buy things from the player market in quantities they would otherwise not be able to, which increased the demand. This in turn increased prices for some items. That in turn (together with the loophole closing) increased crown prices, which in turn increased the gold moved back into circulation. Ultimatively you would end up with less and less players being able to buy crowns for gold which would but a natural stop to it and cause players to buy less from the market and farm more themselves.

Woozywyvern

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Sorry, but Crowns pricing is the worst benchmark you can use for measuring the inflation in game. Crowns pricing is hugely affected by real world events and far less affected by the in game economy. To name a few, reduced wages due to the pandemic, high (real world ) inflation, the closing of loopholes to get cheap crowns and the general trend towards free to play style gaming meaning less players willing to spend real money, will all factor more heavily than anything in game. Nothing speaks louder than real world money for people.

And besides, I don't think many people here are denying that there is inflation in game. There will be in any MMO. We are just arguing that it is nowhere near as bad or unhealthy as the doomsayers make out, and reacting with certain drastic measures will harm more players than is made out on here.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Woozywyvern wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Sorry, but Crowns pricing is the worst benchmark you can use for measuring the inflation in game. Crowns pricing is hugely affected by real world events and far less affected by the in game economy. To name a few, reduced wages due to the pandemic, high (real world ) inflation, the closing of loopholes to get cheap crowns and the general trend towards free to play style gaming meaning less players willing to spend real money, will all factor more heavily than anything in game. Nothing speaks louder than real world money for people.

And besides, I don't think many people here are denying that there is inflation in game. There will be in any MMO. We are just arguing that it is nowhere near as bad or unhealthy as the doomsayers make out, and reacting with certain drastic measures will harm more players than is made out on here.

I cant argue against the notion that all those real world factors could explain crown prices, IF crown prices where escalating on all platforms. They aren't. Because the increase in pricing is a PC issue, it stands to reason that it is something internal to those economies.

In fact, I would wager that people on PC generally have deeper RL pockets than console players as a good PC generally costs more than a console. Certainly, that is not true across the board. If real world inflation and wages were causing the escalation of crown prices, I think we would expect the issue to be more prevalent on consoles, or at the very least, just as prevalent.

Woozywyvern

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Woozywyvern wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Sorry, but Crowns pricing is the worst benchmark you can use for measuring the inflation in game. Crowns pricing is hugely affected by real world events and far less affected by the in game economy. To name a few, reduced wages due to the pandemic, high (real world ) inflation, the closing of loopholes to get cheap crowns and the general trend towards free to play style gaming meaning less players willing to spend real money, will all factor more heavily than anything in game. Nothing speaks louder than real world money for people.

And besides, I don't think many people here are denying that there is inflation in game. There will be in any MMO. We are just arguing that it is nowhere near as bad or unhealthy as the doomsayers make out, and reacting with certain drastic measures will harm more players than is made out on here.

I cant argue against the notion that all those real world factors could explain crown prices, IF crown prices where escalating on all platforms. They aren't. Because the increase in pricing is a PC issue, it stands to reason that it is something internal to those economies.

In fact, I would wager that people on PC generally have deeper RL pockets than console players as a good PC generally costs more than a console. Certainly, that is not true across the board. If real world inflation and wages were causing the escalation of crown prices, I think we would expect the issue to be more prevalent on consoles, or at the very least, just as prevalent.

Agreed, it is more limited on consoles. But console players are less used to MMO's, less used to monthly game subscriptions and less used to loot boxes and purchaseable cosmetics. It doesn't surprise me that the console market is more stable. Your are right in a way, I think PC players are more likely to spend real life money on a game once they own it. They have been trained to do this with years of MMO's and more recently loot boxes and in game purchases. They would certainly in the past have spent more on 'post game purchase', than I believe console players would. And when real world events affect the global economy, the PC player base is a bigger market to shrink, and therefore be affected by a bigger decrease in supply. This is only a belief of mine, I cannot back it up with anything, but I do believe it.

I do concede that add ons like Easy Writs have an effect on the economy, which helps contribute to the disparity between console players and PC players. But it is by no means the only factor and cannot be presented as such.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Xebov wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Actually, I think the lazy approach on both the devs and the playerbase is to want gold rewards. Whether it's the monthly reward being 20 Temp alloy instead of 100k gold, or crafting writs bumping their gold drops in exchange for the gold currency, you are requiring more work on the part of the player to get gold, because they actually have to engage in the economy.

Gold can be used to buy things so its straight forward. Giving out materials instead requires players to sell it to someone and convert it to gold which requires a buyer, so there are more steps involved and the buyer also needs to have gold in the first place which is harder to come by with such changes.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

People miss the point that this actually kills two birds with one stone. It tackles both the Inflation/deflation issue by reducing incoming gold (good thing IMO), AND it tackles the supply and demand issues we have by introducing more supply.

The game has enought supply available. The problem behind the supply/demand issue is that a portion of the player base doesnt want to use the supply available by the game and rather wants to use trade, which creates the shortage. At the same time they also refuse to get some sort of steady income to cover the prices. Thats the reason iam against changing rewards at all because i dont see why players should supply others cheaper just because they are unwilling to get any supply themselves.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

If you increase the drop rewards of mats, but reduce the gold, well 2 things happen. One, less gold coming into the economy, so inflation is curbed. Two, because I cant print the gold I need, I am more incentivized to sell my excess mats to generate it. That forces more mats into the market, again helping get prices under control. It is a win win.

To work with a lower supply in gold you would need gold to constantly circulate. Thats not happening in the game. You have some ppl that sell way more than they buy and ppl that buy way more than they sell, so gold flows mostly into one direction.



We currently have players that constantly supply resources to the player market and we have players that constantly buy resources from the player market. Price trends indicate that the group of buyers clearly is or gets bigger. What i dont understand is how the discussed solution can be to change the game so the players that already constantly supply resources supply even more so the players that constantly buy can get them cheaper. To me this looks like the goal is not to solve inflation but instead change the game to cather towards players that dont want to do anything to aquire resources themselves.

That first bold point is something that I think needs to be incentivized. If you remove gold from something like writs, and replace with additional mats, you force more people into the selling market when they need gold for whatever reason. This would result in more gold moving around, which is a good thing, and it would also mean less gold being generated out of thin air, which helps inflation.

To the second bold point, I think you are oversimplifying. It's not binary, people are not simply buyers or sellers. Most people that play this game do both. They sell proceeds generated from their playstyle, and buy things they need that is not generated by their playstyle. You are also missing a third group, the group that really doesnt do either.

Writs as they are constructed now are very good if self sufficiency is your goal, that's why most of us do them. They are not good, however, at getting players to engage in the market. I NEVER sell gold mats. I have thousands of them. I hoard mats because writs encourage me to do so. First, they give me all the gold I need (which doesnt come from other players, it is brand new currency), so I have no incentive to sell. Because inflation is abundant, I am also incentivized to hold my wealth in mats, not gold, which also keeps me out of the market.

The reality is that with any situation involving price of an item, there are always dozens of factors in play. It is not a question of which one is the cause, its a question of magnitude. Crown prices can increase with Demand when there is something new and desirable in the crown store. Crown prices can increase with reduced supply as stock piles are depleted and loopholes are closed. Crown prices can increase because of inflation of the currency being used to buy them.

Again, I dont buy or sell crowns. I don't really care. I am simply suggesting that to combat inflation, you need to look at gold coming into the game and gold coming out of the game. The elephant in the room for gold coming into the game is crafting writs, and that is evident based on the fact the PC seems to be having more of an inflation issue than console, and writs are far easier to do on PC. Is that the only thing moving the needle here, of course not. But it is naïve to think that its not a very real factor.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Woozywyvern wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Woozywyvern wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Sorry, but Crowns pricing is the worst benchmark you can use for measuring the inflation in game. Crowns pricing is hugely affected by real world events and far less affected by the in game economy. To name a few, reduced wages due to the pandemic, high (real world ) inflation, the closing of loopholes to get cheap crowns and the general trend towards free to play style gaming meaning less players willing to spend real money, will all factor more heavily than anything in game. Nothing speaks louder than real world money for people.

And besides, I don't think many people here are denying that there is inflation in game. There will be in any MMO. We are just arguing that it is nowhere near as bad or unhealthy as the doomsayers make out, and reacting with certain drastic measures will harm more players than is made out on here.

I cant argue against the notion that all those real world factors could explain crown prices, IF crown prices where escalating on all platforms. They aren't. Because the increase in pricing is a PC issue, it stands to reason that it is something internal to those economies.

In fact, I would wager that people on PC generally have deeper RL pockets than console players as a good PC generally costs more than a console. Certainly, that is not true across the board. If real world inflation and wages were causing the escalation of crown prices, I think we would expect the issue to be more prevalent on consoles, or at the very least, just as prevalent.

Agreed, it is more limited on consoles. But console players are less used to MMO's, less used to monthly game subscriptions and less used to loot boxes and purchaseable cosmetics. It doesn't surprise me that the console market is more stable. Your are right in a way, I think PC players are more likely to spend real life money on a game once they own it. They have been trained to do this with years of MMO's and more recently loot boxes and in game purchases. They would certainly in the past have spent more on 'post game purchase', than I believe console players would. And when real world events affect the global economy, the PC player base is a bigger market to shrink, and therefore be affected by a bigger decrease in supply. This is only a belief of mine, I cannot back it up with anything, but I do believe it.

I do concede that add ons like Easy Writs have an effect on the economy, which helps contribute to the disparity between console players and PC players. But it is by no means the only factor and cannot be presented as such.

Never said it was the only factor. My belief is that it is a large factor. Unless ZOS shows us a pie chart that shows new money going into the economy and new money going out of the economy and the sources, we will never know how large.

What I do know is that the cost of virtually every in game item is more on PC than console. That tells me that the buying power of gold is less on PC than Console, which is almost certainly a result of inflation. Some inflation is to be expected, and because PC is an older economy than console, we would expect that to be more noticeable on PC, no question. That said, if we are looking at current gold sinks and gold sources (two of the leading factors in any inflation analysis), the most obvious difference between those two platforms is the gold generated by writs. It certainly moves the needle. How much, none of us know for certain.

Xebov

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

That first bold point is something that I think needs to be incentivized. If you remove gold from something like writs, and replace with additional mats, you force more people into the selling market when they need gold for whatever reason. This would result in more gold moving around, which is a good thing, and it would also mean less gold being generated out of thin air, which helps inflation.

How do you want to get ppl into spending gold and getting it circulated? Game economics dont work as well as real life because you dont have the typical circulation of money.
If i dont need anything i dont spend my gold, it simply piles up. On the other side you have ppl that need to generate gold somehow in order to be able to purchase items, so reducing the gold generation to much can actually cause the player economy to change into item trading because there is not enought currency available.
Inflation or not the economy on player trade works very well. Ppl complain about prices to some degree but most complaints boils down to players being unwilling to do something for the items they want. Everyone that wants to get items is able to get the items either directly or use a source for gold to get them. Even completely new players can do it.

silvereyes

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Woozywyvern wrote: »

Sorry, but Crowns pricing is the worst benchmark you can use for measuring the inflation in game. Crowns pricing is hugely affected by real world events and far less affected by the in game economy. To name a few, reduced wages due to the pandemic, high (real world ) inflation, the closing of loopholes to get cheap crowns and the general trend towards free to play style gaming meaning less players willing to spend real money, will all factor more heavily than anything in game. Nothing speaks louder than real world money for people.

And besides, I don't think many people here are denying that there is inflation in game. There will be in any MMO. We are just arguing that it is nowhere near as bad or unhealthy as the doomsayers make out, and reacting with certain drastic measures will harm more players than is made out on here.

I cant argue against the notion that all those real world factors could explain crown prices, IF crown prices where escalating on all platforms. They aren't. Because the increase in pricing is a PC issue, it stands to reason that it is something internal to those economies.

In fact, I would wager that people on PC generally have deeper RL pockets than console players as a good PC generally costs more than a console. Certainly, that is not true across the board. If real world inflation and wages were causing the escalation of crown prices, I think we would expect the issue to be more prevalent on consoles, or at the very least, just as prevalent.

There are a lot of assumptions being made here, and I'm not sure they are reasonable:

• Assuming what affect RL economic issues would have on Crown exchange rates on either platform.
• Assuming that the Steam loopholes being closed (PC-only action) had a small enough affect to be ignored. Who knows, maybe it could explain the entire imbalance between Crown supply and demand.
• Assuming the trend toward F2P gaming affects console the same as PC
• Assuming that the exchanges on console and PC are managed the same.

The way I see it, Crown exchange rates have only a tenuous connection to the in-game gold economy at best. It takes a very special kind of person to want to deal with the hassle of becoming a seller, and it's a much smaller population than the number of people who want to buy Crown Store items with gold. Especially with brokered transactions, there's an application process and it takes time to establish a reputation. If there's a sudden shock to number of sellers (e.g. due to the cheap Crowns from Steam drying up), it will take time for new sellers to be lured by the higher prices. If that shock happens to coincide with a surge in demand due to Crown Store FOMO promotions, it can leave the exchanges with not enough sellers to fulfill demand. With the inelasticity of these exchanges, the rates may never recover.

It's also quite possible that the console exchanges could handle a much higher exchange rate as well, but without some sort of temporary shock to force the rate change, the console exchanges' officers aren't forcing the increase.

All of this is just to say, I don't think there's enough evidence to justify using Crown exchange rates as a good metric for in-game inflation. There are a ton of additional moving parts to those exchanges, and it's hard to prove that those other factors don't introduce their own affects on the rate, independent on the value of gold in-game.

Amottica

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

@Oreyn_Bearclaw below is information I put together and it shows inflation on PC/NA is not rampant. Yes, there are items that have increased in value such as Chromium. However, I did not cherry-pick the items below as I looked as some items that are often used. They do indicate that inflation is not out of control by any means.

Below is Tempering Alloy which is a much more widely used gold upgrade material than Chromium. It's cost seems to have decreased over the past year which is deflation.

Rosin for wood. It shows a slight increase in price from a year ago, but a decrease in price from about 340 days ago.

there does not seem to be an indication of the inflation some are claiming.

I looked at Rubedite ingot, which did not show any inflation, and Rubedite ore, which has decreased in price over the past year, to see if the base material showed notable inflation. I did not post them here as the post would become annoyingly long, if not already.

I will also note that USEP considers this system to be Early Beta. It also appears to gather data from players using a specific addon USEP developed. So while it uses "real" information it may have a limited number of users.

Interesting data. I am not sure Rosin and Temp alloy are the best benchmarks of the economy. It is of course impossible to completely separate the price impact between Inflation/Deflation and supply/demand. Both are always at work on every item, it is just a question of magnitude.

The two items you listed are very very low in the demand department. Most old timers have an ample supply of rosin, and typically need between 8 (stam) and 16 (magic) for a meta build. Your average PVE player that is not a tank requires 0 Temp alloy these days as magic, and 8-16 as a stamina player. Recent changes to armor passives have actually lowered demand here, because 5/1/1 is pretty much gone.

Your average build always needs 30 chromium grains to max, and upwards 56 of Wax. Chromium is more recent to the economy, but why not use Wax as a metric of inflation. Or more relevant, why not use Crown price as metric of inflation? Crown prices are arguably the best metric and are likely the least impacted by supply demand considerations. Most supply/demand is a result of balance decisions. Anyone with cash can buy crowns to sell, and there are always new shineys to be bought.

Wax has been on an upward trajectory for a while that I dont think Supply Demand can explain by itself. Crowns are through the roof on one platform, but not another. I don't know how you explain that without looking at the value/purchasing power of the underlying currency, i.e. inflation/deflation. There are also ways to measure the value of your entire craft bag. I don't do many writs these days, but yet, every time I check it, the overall value is up. I could log out for 6 months, and my craft bag would be worth more when logged back in, I am 100% sure of that. If there was no inflation, that would almost certainly not be true.

Now certainly, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums would have you believe. Most problems arent as severe as the internet says they are, but to act like inflation is doesn't even exist, not sure I can get behind that.

I am glad you mention how supply and demand work into this as they are the crux of any economy.

That same supply and demand explain why chromium has inflated significantly considering how rare it is to get. That rarity is also by design. Zenimax stated they want jewelry crafting to be special which is why the upgrade matts are so rare. They did not want it to be like the other crafting so this is working as intended. Do some crafting writs and get them for free.

However, no build needs to use Chromium. It hardly makes a difference in any build. The benefit is so small that it is a waste of gold to go and buy it.

To be fair, I can make that same argument about almost any gold upgrade. Other than perhaps your front bar weapon, most people wont notice the difference between gold and purple gear. The desire for gold gear has little to do with objective results. It's a fantasy world. People want gold because its the best, not because mathematically it increases your damage by .02% (yes I made that number up).

To be clear, Supply and Demand are very important in any discussion of price, but so is the value of the underlying currency. To many people that think they are economists cry Supply and Demand every time there is a discussion about prices, as if it is the only thing affecting them. If you live in a country that just started printing absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't be worrying about supply/demand when prices start increasing. You would be worrying about the government devaluing your currency. In an MMO like this, where there is a virtually limitless supply of currency, Inflation is something that needs to be managed.

ZOS does of course manage it. That is why there are gold sinks in the first place. That said, it doesn't mean they couldnt do a better job of it. I think the game could use better gold sinks certainly, but I think they could also do a better job regulating some of the areas where it is overly easy to simply print money. And again, I think the proof is in the pudding as they say. Prices are way higher on PC than console. That is because Gold has less value on PC than on Console, which I believe to be largely due to the fact that it is much easier to create money out of thin air on PC (inflation), and has very little to do with a supply and demand issue.

To truly be fair, I provided specific information on two items and general information on two other items demonstrating the lack of inflation over the past year. I have yet to see anyone provide anything of substance outside of Chromium to demonstrate there is an inflation problem in the game.

One item increasing in price, no matter how significant that increase is, demonstrates there is an inflation problem in the game. More people should take advantage of the price increase of this one item and do jewelry crafting writs. They will make bank and the price will eventually drop as more add to the supply of this one item.

I think one of the best benchmarks of inflation is crown pricing. Crown prices for cash really havent changed in years, but they cost more and more, at least on PC to buy with gold from other players. I don't think its an unreasonable assumption that its because the underlying currency (gold) has been devalued on PC (thats inflation). If it were simply "greed" on the part of a few sellers, somebody would come in an undercut the market at a fair price.

Again, inflation may not be as rampant as the forums suggest, but to act like it doesnt exist, well, that pill is pretty hard to swallow.

Crown to gold pricing is directly influenced by the real world and the number of players willing to spend real-world money to trade for gold. So it is probably the worst indicator for in-game inflation.

At best it could be the biggest driver of inflation since it could help put gold into the hands of players to drive purchasing but does nothing to increase supply. I need to buy a few dozen Chromium so I will just buy crowns and sell them for gold. Price of chromium increases. In every game where cash store items could be sold in-game inflation increased significantly for desirable items.

silvereyes

Amottica wrote: »

At best it could be the biggest driver of inflation since it could help put gold into the hands of players to drive purchasing but does nothing to increase supply. I need to buy a few dozen Chromium so I will just buy crowns and sell them for gold. Price of chromium increases. In every game where cash store items could be sold in-game inflation increased significantly for desirable items.

This is most certainly true. While not really inflation at the scale of the entire economy - since it doesn't create gold, just moves it around - it certainly can lead to price spikes at the individual level.

Perversely, the same process has also lead to a large increase in guild trader bid prices - as some GMs just bankroll their trader bids with Crown sales, and many many others supplement their bids. Bid prices went through the roof shortly after Crown gifting was introduced. This funnels more gold into one of the larger sinks in the game, combatting inflation at the global level.

Just another example of how the relationship between the Crown/gold markets and in-game inflation is complicated, and certainly not necessarily directly proportional.

Xebov

Amottica wrote: »

At best it could be the biggest driver of inflation since it could help put gold into the hands of players to drive purchasing but does nothing to increase supply. I need to buy a few dozen Chromium so I will just buy crowns and sell them for gold. Price of chromium increases. In every game where cash store items could be sold in-game inflation increased significantly for desirable items.

Thats a major point that many dont seem to get. There are alot of players that rather buy than farm and they dont seem to understand that creating more demand can easily raise prices alot.

DinoZavr

Amottica wrote: »

But the gold from the writs does not seem to be an issue. We have not seen an indication of overall inflation which is the subject of this thread.

@Amottica, i'd say it really depends.
We have very little clue of what an average "consumer basket" is and how it differs for different levels and occupations.
In the parallel blocked topic i said there are many different goods supplied and demanded on the market, and, to remind that, please, let me repeat that:

1) overland resources including processed:
1a - ores, wood, leather, cloth, jc ores, reagents, solvens, reagents, runes (theirs main trait is that these do not depend on RNG - if you mine and ore you get ore in 100% or cases (the exception are alchemy items dropped by mobs, but let us generalize)
plus one subcategory: 1b - improvement materials

2) non-bound gear subdivided into 2 categories
2a - overland sets, which drops are curated in the public dungeons (example: Mother's Sorrow or War Maiden)
2b - non-curated sets (example: Deadly Strike, Vengeance Leech and similar, as they do not drop in overland and you get these from doing dailies in Cyrodiil or buying containers from PVP Elite Vendors)

3) Crafting motifs and furnishing recipes (provisioning might also count but they are much cheaper) - drops of these heavily rely on RNG and for latest motifs (and i believe purple recipes) the 20 or 24 hours cooldowns exist

4) Event and ingame cosmetics: style pages, runeboxes, fragments which again can be subdivided into 2 subcategories:
4a - obtainable only during the events (example: Opal style pages, Nordic Bath Towel runebox)
4b - obtainable anytime (example: summerset kitty runebox, or Timbercrow costume or Undaunted style pages)

5) trait and style stones

6) Other stuff: master writs, treasure maps

Had i misses anything BIG ?

My approach is - i play PVE, craft on 18 toons, do my surveys and treasure maps, so my only (and very huge) expenses are motif pages and furnishing plans. And, certainly, i have an illusion of inflation, as for now the cheapest furnishing plans my crafter is missing are like 500K+ so are the motif pages.

Disregarding this fact: - MS Staves dropped in price, Deadly Daggers are 4x..5x more expensive that before
Non-event cosmetics get cheaper (though not much)
Hakeijo, Nirncruxes and Roe prices went up 2x .. 3x (this is clearly observe being a crafter)
and the Chromium plating price history i published you called manipulation.

My idea is that if i am concerned about gold inflation (like saving gold to buy CS Assistant) - i'd convert my gold into Chromium platings, or even Hakeijo or Perfct_Roe, as these are not devalued relative to Crowns that much.
Buying housing is not an investment, as you cannot refund houses bought.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Kwoung wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

Interestingly there is a cap we've not yet reached on gold jewellery mats. At some point gold becomes so worthless that the best way to get gold materials is to buy lots of golden vendor stuff to deconstruct.

It is getting closer all the time, but a long ways off.. since getting a grain is a 50/50 proposition and are only worth 25k. They would have to hit 300k per grain to make it worthwhile, which would be insane and put platings at 3 mil a pop. Of course I remember when upgrading a full set of jewelry was a 800-900k proposition, what is it now, 3.6 million or something?

About that, but yeah. Clearly, there is no inflation in this game... LMAO.

Kiralyn2000

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

Interestingly there is a cap we've not yet reached on gold jewellery mats. At some point gold becomes so worthless that the best way to get gold materials is to buy lots of golden vendor stuff to deconstruct.

It is getting closer all the time, but a long ways off.. since getting a grain is a 50/50 proposition and are only worth 25k. They would have to hit 300k per grain to make it worthwhile, which would be insane and put platings at 3 mil a pop. Of course I remember when upgrading a full set of jewelry was a 800-900k proposition, what is it now, 3.6 million or something?

About that, but yeah. Clearly, there is no inflation in this game... LMAO.

Everything getting more expensive is inflation.

A handful of things getting more expensive is a supply & demand issue.

Amottica

DinoZavr wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

But the gold from the writs does not seem to be an issue. We have not seen an indication of overall inflation which is the subject of this thread.

@Amottica, i'd say it really depends.
We have very little clue of what an average "consumer basket" is and how it differs for different levels and occupations.
In the parallel blocked topic i said there are many different goods supplied and demanded on the market, and, to remind that, please, let me repeat that:

1) overland resources including processed:
1a - ores, wood, leather, cloth, jc ores, reagents, solvens, reagents, runes (theirs main trait is that these do not depend on RNG - if you mine and ore you get ore in 100% or cases (the exception are alchemy items dropped by mobs, but let us generalize)
plus one subcategory: 1b - improvement materials

2) non-bound gear subdivided into 2 categories
2a - overland sets, which drops are curated in the public dungeons (example: Mother's Sorrow or War Maiden)
2b - non-curated sets (example: Deadly Strike, Vengeance Leech and similar, as they do not drop in overland and you get these from doing dailies in Cyrodiil or buying containers from PVP Elite Vendors)

3) Crafting motifs and furnishing recipes (provisioning might also count but they are much cheaper) - drops of these heavily rely on RNG and for latest motifs (and i believe purple recipes) the 20 or 24 hours cooldowns exist

4) Event and ingame cosmetics: style pages, runeboxes, fragments which again can be subdivided into 2 subcategories:
4a - obtainable only during the events (example: Opal style pages, Nordic Bath Towel runebox)
4b - obtainable anytime (example: summerset kitty runebox, or Timbercrow costume or Undaunted style pages)

5) trait and style stones

6) Other stuff: master writs, treasure maps

Had i misses anything BIG ?

My approach is - i play PVE, craft on 18 toons, do my surveys and treasure maps, so my only (and very huge) expenses are motif pages and furnishing plans. And, certainly, i have an illusion of inflation, as for now the cheapest furnishing plans my crafter is missing are like 500K+ so are the motif pages.

Disregarding this fact: - MS Staves dropped in price, Deadly Daggers are 4x..5x more expensive that before
Non-event cosmetics get cheaper (though not much)
Hakeijo, Nirncruxes and Roe prices went up 2x .. 3x (this is clearly observe being a crafter)
and the Chromium plating price history i published you called manipulation.

My idea is that if i am concerned about gold inflation (like saving gold to buy CS Assistant) - i'd convert my gold into Chromium platings, or even Hakeijo or Perfct_Roe, as these are not devalued relative to Crowns that much.
Buying housing is not an investment, as you cannot refund houses bought.

I doubt many players are thinking ahead and making long term speculation investing within the game to save up a nest egg. We can speculate all we want but that’s all we’re doing here. I am not going to advocate changes to the game based on guesses.