What would be a good "alternative trading currency"?

Zombocalypse · October 25

So we have gold to use to buy stuff from other players. But considering how lots of players have an abundance of gold simply by daily-spamming crafting writs, I feel like gold here is a little devalued among the rich players who do lots of writs.

So instead, I want to be a trader that uses certain stackable items as currency. Maybe filled soul gems? Food? Potions? Crafting materials? Daggers?

Anything that is of value to other players if there's say, twenty of them. I feel like soul gems are incredibly useful, but I also feel like it's pointless to trade with them since they're easy to acquire? Is that right?

notyuu · October 25

Filled soul gems are available from npc vendor and are given out like candy, mix in the null tier difficulty of things and they pile up very quickly to the point where most players have literal stacks of them.

Every other item you have listed as an idea is also readily available in abundance at npcs and guild traders, not to mention being extremely easy to make yourself.

The only thing that might work is making tripots by the ton and bartering with those, however getting enough reagents to make a suitable amount puts a heavy dent in time or gold, so it's not really viable.

So in the end while your idea is neat it's not doable due to the fact that a ven diagram of "things valuable enough to barter with" and "things you can get an abundance of" and "things most players can't easily get" is three separate circles, so again, neat idea but wouldn't work.

Danikat · October 25

Why would there be an alternative currency?

I know it happens in other MMOs, but as far as I know only when the game limits how much gold you can trade in one transaction, so players who want to sell things for more than that need to find an alternative. As far as I know ESO doesn't limit it (or if it does the limit is so huge no one has to worry about it) so there's never been a need for an alternative currency.

You can of course ask people you're trading with to give you items instead of gold (as long as you're not using a guild store, which is the main way of trading) but that also limits your potential buyers to people who have, or are willing to get, that item which is less likely when it's not a widely known 'currency'.

Crafting materials are probably your best choice, because anyone with ESO+ can keep them in the crafting bag which doesn't take up inventory/bank space so they tend to end up with thousands of them even if they don't actually need them for crafting and don't plan to sell them. (Even players without ESO+ can put whatever they've got in the craft bag when there's a free trial, so they will probably have some building up too.)

I'm not sure which material/s would be best though, you probably want something that's at least reasonably valuable so it's worth using (many items sell for thousands of gold, so it'd be annoying if you were using something which is only worth 5g each and the buyer has to trade you thousands of them), but you also don't want anything that's too difficult to get. I'd say something that holds it's value as well, but compared to other MMOs I've played the economy in ESO is fairly static (to the point where people tend to freak out if they do notice prices shifting) so that's probably not much of a problem.

But in general I'd say this is an example of a solution in search of a problem. There's no need for an alternative currency in this game, so requiring one from buyers is just complicating the process and I don't see an upside for them.

Heren · October 25

Yeah, let's trade with daggers, make trading a more dangerous experience !

Ph1p · October 25

In a world that already has a simple, universal currency, why would you try to revert to a bartering system? No one wants to book a hotel with cigarettes or have their employer to pay them in chicken wings…

colossalvoids · October 25

You could sure trade goods for goods in chat etc, but that's not common here. I like such systems like Path of Exile where rare crafting mats are the currency but that's a game with actually thought out and pretty serious market compared to ESO so won't do really as people want ease and things to be easily digestible.

Taril · October 25

Honestly, I thought this would be about some form of Crown conversion item...

Having some item that can be purchased for Crowns and redeemed for Crowns to enable the "Crowns for Gold" transactions between players in a way that circumvents the issue with potential scammers, by providing something that can be traded between players alongside the gold (Unlike the current method where you have to do 2 transactions, one where someone gifts the desired Crown item and one where the player trades the gold)

Which would have some merit.

Simply having a vendor that sells stuff for random junk is generally pointless. As it will often just come down to being a system of Gold with extra steps - I.e. You make any item valuable, then people will be trading them for gold...

I mean, unless you make the items non-tradable, non-craftable and hard to farm for... But then the question is "But why?"

The best reason would be to have artifical scarcity on some particular items... But what items would this vendor be selling that has worth to players but isn't already available via the regular trading systems between players for gold?

wolfie1.0. · October 25

Zombocalypse wrote: »

So we have gold to use to buy stuff from other players. But considering how lots of players have an abundance of gold simply by daily-spamming crafting writs, I feel like gold here is a little devalued among the rich players who do lots of writs.

So instead, I want to be a trader that uses certain stackable items as currency. Maybe filled soul gems? Food? Potions? Crafting materials? Daggers?

Anything that is of value to other players if there's say, twenty of them. I feel like soul gems are incredibly useful, but I also feel like it's pointless to trade with them since they're easy to acquire? Is that right?

After a mass deflationary period like we saw this year, gold is the best currency. The only other item that would suite is crowns. However, since crown trading is not available to all players it's a horrible alt currency.

Mats would make sense, but with the recent crash no one is willing to 100% rely on that.

So really the only thing that can be used that everyone has access to is time.

Necrotech_Master · October 25

you could technically trade like that, but you can only do so at an in-person trade

zaria · October 25

Only see this then people want to swap outfit styles or motifs from events in zone chat but even then its very tilted as chest is the big one, then helmet and legs and so on.
Now in some single player games where shopkeepers has limited coins you might want to buy stuff who you can resell without or minimal loss to sell heavy stuff locally.

AcadianPaladin · October 25

Gold, seals of endeavor, crowns, undaunted keys, transmute crystals, event tickets, archival fortunes, writ vouchers, alliance points, tel var stones . . . please, no more currencies. Please?

barney2525 · October 25

Good trading currency ? Dragon blood

katanagirl1 · October 25

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Gold, seals of endeavor, crowns, undaunted keys, transmute gems, event tickets, archival fortunes, alliance points, telvar stones . . . please, no more currencies. Please?

Yeah, especially ones like the transmute gems that can take up space in your inventory if you hit the limit.