ESO needs to add good gold generators to have a healthier economy

JHartEllis

ESO has a good variety of gold sinks, but it does not have gold generators to keep up. At least on PC, the in-game economy has been in a runaway deflationary death spiral, causing things like achievement furnishings and houses to become increasingly unattainable. Trading guilds are brutally demoralized. This is complex, but causes of this are partially a reduction in calendar rewards as well as the 14-day listing duration necessitating more frequent relistings. The market is generally oversupplied in most categories as items are randomly generated into the economy at a rate higher than player demand. A big separate issue would be how to boost demand in various item categories.

A stable to slightly inflationary environment would be better for the game. The higher the inflation, the more affordable all the fixed-cost purchases become, and guild trader activity mostly self regulates potential runaway inflation.

There would be bad, good, and great ways to add more gold to the game to keep the economic engine running. Generally speaking, whatever activities are given additional gold rewards will see more action. The best thing to add gold rewards to would be whatever is underperforming expectations, which I would put mostly at group content like dungeons, trials, and battlegrounds.

The coming consolidated leaderboard change presents a good opportunity to up the rewards with extra gold. The higher the prize, the more people will try for them. Something like 200-500k seems like a large feasible ballpark for actually feeling rewarding.

Golden Pursuits would be a good place to put larger gold rewards. A 500k-1m capstone reward for completing a wide variety of tasks would be very appealing. Individual task rewards of 20-100k for bigger things like specific trials would encourage those groups to form.

Bumping up the prizes from weekly coffers would help as well.

Ultimately, the current state of things precludes the development of additional gold sinks. For example, a unique mount at 5,000,000g would probably be extremely popular but would further exacerbate the deflation problem. Good gold generators would allow for great gold sinks to be added. It's time to look at both sides of this equation.

Pevey

The only reason for the deflation is the large amount of gold sunk on trader bids. And the reason GMs spend more on trader bids than they are worth is because they enjoy being the GM of a trade guild as part of their gaming experience. If more gold were generated, trader bids would just go up even more. It still would be net deflationary as long as GMs are willing to bid so high.

I'm not at all a fan of the ESO trade guild system, but so long as this is the design (and especially since multi-bidding was introduced), more gold will be spent on kiosk bids each week than the economy actually supports.

flizomica

Weren't we complaining about too few gold sinks and runaway inflation for years, at least on PC? Whats the problem with the current economy? Materials being cheaper is a net benefit for me.

L_Nici

Sooo, if its easier to get Gold you think thats healthier for the economy? Well, look into the real world, what happens if any Government starts printing more money? Right Inflation. You wouldn't end up with more Gold Value wise, as the prizes would just raise in an equal fashion until a Bread costs 1Mio Gold.

DinoZavr

Dear JHart,

you are he most generous ESO streamer, one of the most nice persons, also you are damn clever. So, i am not to argue. Dino's mind is simple, i just would like to simplify the picture to the level even a dinosaur can comprehend that, hoping, i won't throw away anything essential, that breaks the model, yes?

First, i decided to work out a model, which does not count many sinks and faucets.
Like in real-life, players apply efforts (in game this is investing theirs time) to run dungeons, do daily quests, do surveys, loot chests, steal stuff, refine and deconstruct
They obtain most of commodities be that gear, food, drinks, potions, poisons, raw and processed materials, style stones, recipes, plans, motifs, style pages
They also consume things (the act of binding an item to account makes item non-tradeable, so only deconstuctible ones retain some value) or literally consume the good be that potion or a motif page.
Also lets imagine there is no sales tax (like all players do direct trades between each other).
In this simplified model the item price should correlate/reflect the "labor intensity" - e.g. average amount of time required to obtain the goods.
Also, as gold is generously injected each and every day (quest rewards, loot, drops), while the time to complete a survey stays the same - we should face inflation, highly demanded goods will grow in price.
To counter constant inflation (otherwise it goes infinite like in Zimbabwe) game-makers should implement gold sinks - to limit amount of gold in circulation.

OK, Zenimax implemented a Guild Traders system (it has some drawbacks compared to a Global Auction House, as number of Guild Traders is limited and increases just a little with new zones introduction) and set a sales tax, where any 1% of listing price goes to dev/nul and 3.5% extracted and exterminated when the item is sold (while the other 3.5% goes to a Guild Bank)

The huge sink is Guild Traders bids. On PC/NA a stake to hire Guild Trader in Mournhold exceeds 100M per week (and to estimate how much gold is required to sustain that we have to introduce the metrics called "gold velocity" - which indicates how many rotations a gold piece does per a unit of time (lets say a week). for example, player did surveys, refined tempers, sold them and instead of hoarding gold, bought potions which they consume running dungeons of PVPing
With lots of gold hoarded and "slow economy" we would have deflation as the huge bids become unsustainable.. but..

in my understanding we have the elephant entering the room. ta-da! Guild master can throw in some cash, buy some Crowns for a highly sought Mammoth mount (fancy housing etc) and gift that for gold in exchange as such transactions are not prohibited, they provide game-makers with a steady Crowns purchase flow
in this case, items are not "produced" by players (investing theirs game-time), but heaven sent. And these does not remove gold from economy - it only makes gold to change its owner.
When i started playing (that was with Summerset) crowns/gold "exchange rate" was like 1:300 at PC EU. Nowadays it is close to 1:2300. like 10x increase.
Crowns price has not changed, gold nowadays is 10x inflated compared to 2018.

I would prefer "direct" sink - like mammoth mount purchasable for 10M (or better for 5M) gold directly from Crown Store, as well as some exclusive manor houses, though game-makers might have theirs own ideas about Crown Store functions.

So, in my humble Dino’s understanding the troubles with economy are caused by the lack of regulating faucets.
Why to farm a rare motif if next Jubilee Event these will drop a plenty from the easy-to-obtain reward boxes?
Events like Jubilee, Zenithar or such - when "expensive" goods (motifs, style pages, rare materials (like Roe)) are basically given away massively not just provoking deflation, but decreasing "gold velocity",
so, again, in my limited dinosaurian understanding - the later trend should be countered either decreasing giveaways goods values and quantities (this would make Events less popular) and introducing flexible sinks (like varying sales tax in accordance with hoarded (inactive) gold value).
There is another question i have very little idea about - the distribution of gold among players. Big Guilds guildmasters can naturally get billions, while a completely new player with an iron dagger and pickax is normally rather poor. This should be important. But i can not imagine observable in game metric to pinpoint that.


TL/DR; sales tax is to vary in accordance with daily injected values, otherwise players might login only during the well-rewarding Events, or the daily gold turnover stales.
i m not for increasing faucets, but vice-versa for increasing sinks, when a lot of gold injected for free, as it stales and just hoarded, instead of feeding the economy. so, yes, i m kinda arguing. Sorry for that.

Spontaneous, but i am not an economy professor.
Did i got things right, professor @JHartEllis or what have i completely missed?

DinoZavr

re-read my own post. yet: too lengthy to be read entirely. so i have to simplify:

if game-makers decided to make players happier by momentarily injecting "free" billions of gold with Event rewards, they have to implement the gold sinks comparably efficient and fast (that is the key), like sales of expensive Crown Store items for a huge amounts of gold - to rapidly return back the value they have just given away fast and easy. i would call this "tactical measures"
or to implement "the strategical" flexible variable sinks (like variable sales tax) self-attuning with economy metrics which are not that fast, but still regulate the game economy in the long term.
or both.

the gold faucets work "out of the box", that is the sinks that do not.

better now?

exiars10

Deflation on PC EU, baby .

Not so long ago, 1 crown = 2.400 gold.
Which became 2.000 gold around April-May?
Now is low as 1.700 at verified gifters...

Is this good or bad, I don't know.
I'm the member of two big trading guilds, and yes, situation is not good.

In my guilds, there are members who give away randomly motifs and recipes.
I see players in zone chat give away them, too.
I stopped selling many things as there is no point.

TL; DR
You can't fix economy simply because after fake subclassing update and lucklaster Solstice, it's pretty obvious that less and less players* play it. No matter how many of you say that Steam numbers don't represent whole game - correct, but they represent trend. And trend is:

Much less players => much less demand and with the same or increased supply => prices going down (deflation).

*It's even worse when long term high spending players leave, and siginificant minority did, so demand is even lower. New incoming players are going to be poor for a long time if they even stay long enough.

Pevey wrote: »

The only reason for the deflation is the large amount of gold sunk on trader bids. And the reason GMs spend more on trader bids than they are worth is because they enjoy being the GM of a trade guild as part of their gaming experience. If more gold were generated, trader bids would just go up even more. It still would be net deflationary as long as GMs are willing to bid so high.

I'm not at all a fan of the ESO trade guild system, but so long as this is the design (and especially since multi-bidding was introduced), more gold will be spent on kiosk bids each week than the economy actually supports.

Yep. GM of the one of my trading guild, has another one, too and gave up on bidding and having top location for it as is unsunstainable.

Flaaklypa

Deflation and inflation lose all meaning in a gaming world like ESO. Inflation is good in a healthy economy because it pushes investors to invest in companies, encourages consumers to buy products, and creates jobs. Deflation is bad because it causes the opposite effects: investors hold on to their money and jobs are cut. That isn’t an issue in a game like ESO, where there are no interest rates and no job cuts tied to deflation. The only likely outcome in an efficient in-game economy is that players will reduce grinding for materials once lower prices make it unprofitable, after which prices will readjust back to equilibrium.

So no, deflation and inflation have no real meaning, and they pose no issue in a game like this.

JHartEllis

The main issue is an imbalance between what is demanded in gold sinks (e.g. bound furnishings, houses, bag upgrades) and what is demanded in tradable markets. The markets have mostly collapsed aside from a few basics.

The current liquidity crisis helps show that real world corollaries aren't exactly relevant--players are increasingly unable to afford fixed cost purchases (something that doesn't exist in the real world), and in-game "wages" have been severely depressed with very few marketable item farm "jobs" being viable. This does not correct itself--there's just very little demand for much of anything. I've seen lots of guild members cite the crappy markets as a reason to quit, and guild trader kiosk availability indicates a large percentage of trading guilds have given up.

There are other big problems plaguing the economy, but striking a better balance between sinks and generators is critically important for a better future for ESO.

Veinblood1965

Good post but my take is that there has been an ever increasing population decline has caused the over-supply(at least on PS5 NA).

Several guilds I was in just for making friends and some for vendoring shut down due to that very thing. What used to be lively guild chats are almost non-existent. The two week trader change, the core abilities changes, PvP inattention, the constant unending skill and set changes causing people to scrap beloved builds(this is me), and the most recent blow, subclassing caused more people to leave than it drew in. ZoS just does not get it I don't think. Changes like these bring in relatively few new players that actually stay versus the amount of long term players that leave.

Trust has been broken. It's hard to get someone who has left to come back. I'll be one of those once my season pass runs out. The only thing that I would even consider staying for would be a commitment by ZoS to leave sets and skills alone unless absolutely necessary. I'm just worn out from all the combat changes.

Flaaklypa

JHartEllis wrote: »

The main issue is an imbalance between what is demanded in gold sinks (e.g. bound furnishings, houses, bag upgrades) and what is demanded in tradable markets. The markets have mostly collapsed aside from a few basics.

The current liquidity crisis helps show that real world corollaries aren't exactly relevant--players are increasingly unable to afford fixed cost purchases (something that doesn't exist in the real world), and in-game "wages" have been severely depressed with very few marketable item farm "jobs" being viable. This does not correct itself--there's just very little demand for much of anything. I've seen lots of guild members cite the crappy markets as a reason to quit, and guild trader kiosk availability indicates a large percentage of trading guilds have given up.

There are other big problems plaguing the economy, but striking a better balance between sinks and generators is critically important for a better future for ESO.

You are actually absolutely right. The difference between real-world markets and a gaming economy is that in ESO’s economy, prices do not necessarily readjust the way they would in an efficient market. Gold generators could help push the needed inflation, or alternatively the game could dynamically scale down fixed-cost assets based on current demand. Since the real goal in ESO is fun, not hoarding wealth, the growing imbalance could drive players away as you say

Vaqual

The current economy has ripped the buying power out of the hands of trading guilds and placed it back in the hands of players that actually play the game. As items continue to lose value we see a massive decrease in buyouts and investment gambling. I'd say the status quo is nearly ideal. Just a few hours of natural gameplay can create enough gold to buy any luxury furnishing off vendors.
This should rather incentivise farmers to double down on rare consumables and mats, where supply and demand is still a bit lopsided.
As long as some players retain large gold sums trader bids will be painfully high, but at the same time there are many more traders than e.g. 5 years ago. Just don't fight over Mournhold and Vivec, establish a high standard elsewhere and save 95 % of your bid.

alakeyfox

A lot of traders just seem to be completely detached from reality. They think just because they hoard hundreds of millions that means everyone else does too. 1mil for a heroism script? Are you out of your damn mind? It's like 15k when it comes around to the NPC shop, or better yet - you will most likely get dozens of them from daily quests. 10k per dreugh wax?! No, thanks, I'm not spending 20% of my total wealth on a single gear piece upgrade, keep your wax, I'll get mine from daily writs. Who do you think is going to need to browse guild stores more - a broke newbie looking to upgrade their gear or a vet who's got golden mats flowing out of their ears? Same goes for cosmetics and decorations. Make your prices sensible - people will start buying more things.

Ingenon

I think that ZOS needs to work on increasing the player population. I think that game economy is supply versus demand. If the active player count is dropping, I think that causes the demand to fall faster than the supply.

SolarRune

It is way to easy to generate gold in eso, if anything we need more gold sinks not more gold generation.

tomofhyrule

Ingenon wrote: »

I think that ZOS needs to work on increasing the player population. I think that game economy is supply versus demand. If the active player count is dropping, I think that causes the demand to fall faster than the supply.

Someone found the elephant in the room.

True, we don’t have official numbers, nor will we get any. But it really does seem that the past 12 months have been categorically designed to turn off as many players as possible: the “housing feature” that wasn’t increased limits got a lot of them annoyed (and now a different MMO is offering the 10k housing slots they wanted). Vengeance and the BG update are pushing PvPers out. The mid-tier story and smaller content is annoying casuals. Subclassing and the lack of balance done afterwards is infuriating high-level PvErs who dislike beams. The exceptionally flashy effects lately are getting the roleplayers fed up. And nobody’s a fan of endless “we know this is a light year, but trust us!” empty promises.

By every metric players do have access to (e.g. Steam Charts, number of streamers, amount of content coming from the official stream team, active population of friends lists or guild lists), ESO’s been going down this past year, and it’s not stopping. ZOS really needs to do something to stop hemorrhaging players before daddy Microsoft decides that the server space is no longer profitable.

But if we’re saying that the key metric to OP’s argument is that mats - particularly upgrade mats - aren’t selling, there’s an easier reason for that: we didn’t get anything new this whole year. Everyone already kitted out their Arcanist two years ago, and now the meta is to categorically ignore every other one of your alts because Subclassing allows them all to be the same in every meaningful way. And since then, no balance changes means nobody needs to upgrade anything else.

Just saying, that problem could be fixed if ZOS focused on balancing things instead of spending a full update cycle on making “loadouts” and “perks” for a test that will be active for one week. And if ZOS came out with a new Class next year, then there would be another mad rush for Perfect Roe to make ambrosia for levelling and upgrade mats for new character gear…

valenwood_vegan

I think another related part of the issue is that the game is not bringing in, and definitely not retaining, new players.

Since we don't have access to much real data, this is just my opinion from what I see and experience in game... but like for example, my social guild used to get dozens of new players every couple weeks. They'd stick around, ask questions, make their first builds, ask for help with bosses and dungeons, join guild trials and activities, etc. That has now slowed to a trickle and worse, they don't stick around. Literally 99% of them quit around 200-300cp, often while they are making or shortly after making their first real build.

Point is, they really don't stay long enough to start participating in the economy, so there's just no real demand for the stuff that these players used to buy when they moved from being "new" to being more established players.

Meanwhile the pace of new "stuff" being added has slowed considerably - most vets have nearly everything they want already and don't participate in the economy that often (except you see brief spikes for a short time when a new motif or some new plans drop). All the desirable stuff long-time players would want is in the crown store, not the in-game economy.

The entire economy is being squeezed at both ends - there are few new players who need most of what it generates, and it generates few things that vet players would need.

Tl;dr, the number of players participating in the economy is falling and new players aren't replacing them, and I suspect this is a *major* source of falling demand. As for what JHart has brought up - perhaps offering these players some better sources of early gold income might help them start participating in the economy sooner, but I'm not sure if that will, in and of itself, address whatever the underlying issues are that cause many of them to quit the game at fairly low cp.

DinoZavr

JHartEllis wrote: »

The main issue is an imbalance between what is demanded in gold sinks (e.g. bound furnishings, houses, bag upgrades) and what is demanded in tradable markets. The markets have mostly collapsed aside from a few basics.

The current liquidity crisis helps show that real world corollaries aren't exactly relevant--players are increasingly unable to afford fixed cost purchases (something that doesn't exist in the real world), and in-game "wages" have been severely depressed with very few marketable item farm "jobs" being viable. This does not correct itself--there's just very little demand for much of anything. I've seen lots of guild members cite the crappy markets as a reason to quit, and guild trader kiosk availability indicates a large percentage of trading guilds have given up.

There are other big problems plaguing the economy, but striking a better balance between sinks and generators is critically important for a better future for ESO.

i have told you are damn smart, haven't i?
yes a huge issue is what i want the most is not player produced, like assistants, character slots, even them "change" tokens..
if i need a craftable set - i go and craft it, improve and enchant and for that i need no cooperation.
if i need a dungeon set - i go and farm it, soloing dungeons on normal for gear is OK for me
only few overland items might be of some value (like Deadly weapons, maybe briarheart daggers, or mothers' sorrow items in proper traits), the issue is theirs supply overwhelms demand.
many players hoard megamillions in the materials in theirs craftbags. i don't bother selling rubedite ingots (and i guess i have thousands of them hoarded) they won't sell. everybody has thousands of rubedite ingots.

In several months after new furnishing plans introduced theirs prices drop to "dirt cheap" level, except rare to obtain purples.
i dump greens and blues to my Guild Bank.

i don't bother selling anything which is below 3K, and many items like old motifs won't sell - everyone and theirs mother already have these motifs.

Honestly, i don't see clear way to incentivize trade in ESO.
I played EVE Online for 3 years, mined asteroids, researched blueprints, manufactured t2 ships parts - but EVE has entirely different economy. It is a PVP game where player loses the ship often and has to purchase a new one each every often. Mass destruction drives mass production, so EVE economy is healthy. Hoarding stuff has very little sense there.
in ESO there is a bottomless craftbag, which very much encourage hoarding.

i don't propose to make gear destructable (though it could affect refined materials marked) - that drastic measure would cause megawhine (though we have a stickerbook since 2020), but, really, something should be done to make supply and demand meet.
Herbs and potions sell well, as despite you can fight overland barehand with no gear - in PVP or endgame missing consumable buffs is not smart. So some steady demand is essential.
Most of other stuff, once obtained is no longer demanded (known recipe, motifs and styles)
New players influx could partially resolve that, but the overall issue is the game overlittered and oversupplied.
inflation/deflation won't affect demand and activate gold turnover - there should be some magical mega masterwrits (like craft 1000 reinforced fortified brass cuirasses of blue quality to get a mount or a costume, or a character slot) or i dont see how else could this happen...

Araneae6537

I agree. While I’m glad that basic furnishing materials are more plentiful (it should NOT be expensive to make a basic wooden chair!), making items legendary should not be trivial IMHO. I preferred when chromium plating was a solid investment and thus getting gold jewelry from a trial or the Golden Vendor was a big deal.

Now, there seems to be little worth selling, at least not anything that one can farm in any way. I mean, I still do if I have the space on a trader and I can get more than selling to a merchant, but yeah, the fixed cost items such as achievement furnishings are now relatively more expensive.

exiars10

SolarRune wrote: »

It is way to easy to generate gold in eso, if anything we need more gold sinks not more gold generation.

Ah, the classic "I don't have a problem with X so everybody else neither".

In reality, demand is cratering, and it coincidentaly started after Update 46.

Flaaklypa wrote: »

Deflation and inflation lose all meaning in a gaming world like ESO. Inflation is good in a healthy economy because it pushes investors to invest in companies, encourages consumers to buy products, and creates jobs. Deflation is bad because it causes the opposite effects: investors hold on to their money and jobs are cut. That isn’t an issue in a game like ESO, where there are no interest rates and no job cuts tied to deflation. The only likely outcome in an efficient in-game economy is that players will reduce grinding for materials once lower prices make it unprofitable, after which prices will readjust back to equilibrium.

So no, deflation and inflation have no real meaning, and they pose no issue in a game like this.

Fundamental law of supply and demand applies, there is no around it.
Current deflation is just reflection of cratering demand.
PC EU was always the most pricier mega server.
In some 6 months from 2.400 gold per crown to 1.700.
Clearly whales are leaving, and there are not enough new whale players to replace them.
And whales who are still in ESO decided to stop / slow down spending gold because of the state of game (uncertainty) i.e. velocity of gold is collapsing.

JHartEllis wrote: »

The main issue is an imbalance between what is demanded in gold sinks (e.g. bound furnishings, houses, bag upgrades) and what is demanded in tradable markets. The markets have mostly collapsed aside from a few basics.

The current liquidity crisis helps show that real world corollaries aren't exactly relevant--players are increasingly unable to afford fixed cost purchases (something that doesn't exist in the real world), and in-game "wages" have been severely depressed with very few marketable item farm "jobs" being viable. This does not correct itself--there's just very little demand for much of anything. I've seen lots of guild members cite the crappy markets as a reason to quit, and guild trader kiosk availability indicates a large percentage of trading guilds have given up.

There are other big problems plaguing the economy, but striking a better balance between sinks and generators is critically important for a better future for ESO.

Maybe you can fix economy short term, but mid and long term, only increased demand can stabilize market, and IMO, this is not going to happen.

robpr

If the value of stuff go down why guilds insist on keeping the absurd bids?

Pepegrillos

I think, Jhart, that all of this is by design, and it's just another aspect of the casualization of the game. It first happened to the PvP, then to the PvE. Now they came for the economy. The rampant deflation helps the casual player get cheaper mats and cheaper everything while their gold income stays the same (as it was before). The whole economic end-game of chasing expensive items, flipping, and all that is largely dead. I know it because I made about 1 billion gold doing it before all these changes. Now the entire scene is pretty much dead on the water.

zaria

DinoZavr wrote: »

Dear JHart,
in my understanding we have the elephant entering the room. ta-da! Guild master can throw in some cash, buy some Crowns for a highly sought Mammoth mount (fancy housing etc) and gift that for gold in exchange as such transactions are not prohibited, they provide game-makers with a steady Crowns purchase flow
in this case, items are not "produced" by players (investing theirs game-time), but heaven sent. And these does not remove gold from economy - it only makes gold to change its owner.
When i started playing (that was with Summerset) crowns/gold "exchange rate" was like 1:300 at PC EU. Nowadays it is close to 1:2300. like 10x increase.
Crowns price has not changed, gold nowadays is 10x inflated compared to 2018.

I would prefer "direct" sink - like mammoth mount purchasable for 10M (or better for 5M) gold directly from Crown Store, as well as some exclusive manor houses, though game-makers might have theirs own ideas about Crown Store functions.

Good post, now I think the reason why crowns/ gold exchange range has changes is because in the start it was lots of people with years of crowns from ESO+ but did not care much about cosmetic, this has dried up but you also have lots of players with lots of gold who finally spend it while not only is the caches of ESO+ crown used up but its plenty of restrictions on crown gifting.

Now I would like an system there you bought an 1000 crown box with 1000 crowns in it in the crown store.
This box is like any other tradable item, you could gift it or sell it other could buy it and later sell it for an higher price if some sweet items was sold. if opened you receive 1000 crowns.

This would be restrictions to prevent scammers to use stolen credit cards. Limited how many you could buy in a period, you need to played for say a year, and if inactive for months you was blacklisted for some time until you was playing again.
Play would here be PvP, dungeons or just quests and exploring, not stuff bots could do because stolen accounts.
But it would make it much easier to use and very hard to scam.