Economy and Guilds

Kelenan7368 · November 19

So in recent days there has been a lot of changes to the games economy resulting in a tanking of funds for everyone. In most recent of days it has caused 2 of my guilds to call it quits siting the economy.
So this is a plea to ZOS to please put scarcity back into the game and possibly the 30 day listing, if not that reduce the listing cost to half of what it was.
I have had these 2 guilds for years and for them to fail because that cant afford to keep going should be a red flag that the changes made are not good ones.
I personally am having a more difficult time maintaining a profit.

Please for the love of ZOS fix the economy!

Necrotech_Master · November 19

so you want everything to become more expensive to buy again? got it lol

i would rather items cost less so i would be more enticed to buy things

if the guilds are collapsing that is a guild management problem not adjusting their bids to the market

zos cant fix a player driven economy, your basically telling everyone that people need to start selling items for 3x what they are worth just so you can feel like your making gold again

i havent had any problems making gold, since the prices on everything have declined (starting around may this year) ive made between 4 and 6 million gold (ive actually spent about 2-3 mil buying motifs that are more within a price range i find acceptable)

Melivar · November 19

The players(guilds) need to adjust to the supply and demand of things, the everything always just going up was never going to be sustainable.

In my case particularly I buy things I don't want to farm on price thresholds. If recipes or motifs aren't available i will simply wait a month and check back around again.

The only very rare exceptions are when I really want something for a house or an appearance then I may spend 2-3x what I would normally for said item but even in those cases I keep it to a limit.

I have recently gone on several buying sprees as items hit the lower numbers I am willing to pay but haven't seen a huge overall decrease in my overall gold supply.

valenwood_vegan · November 19

IMO, it's just not that simple. The gold supply in the game has dwindled and the number of people *willing* to pay those higher amounts has dwindled with it.

Player behavior patterns have changed and many players involved in the "old market" have left or moved to other activities.

There hasn't been a major change to builds or the general meta or a new system added that consumes a lot of mats, so demand is down and the market remains flooded. And content overall has been reduced compared to past years - there's less to do, less new stuff to buy and collect, etc.

Another often overlooked issue is that the overall player population has taken a hit, and there hasn't been an obvious influx of new players who need to buy all the things and can spur some market activity - particularly those new players who move on from the brand new phase to the established player phase where they are more likely to start spending larger amounts of gold on rarer items and upgraded builds.

And many other factors are at play - it's been talked over quite a bit in various posts about the economy so I'm not trying to make an exhaustive list here, but just pointing out certain issues that I think have made this "down phase" more persistent than past ones.

None of the above means it's going to stay like this forever, but it's not like they can flip a switch tomorrow and put it back like it was.

Guilds need to adjust to a lower gold supply, fewer buyers, and lower demand - that may mean lower bids; accepting a "lesser" trading location (at least sometimes); or maybe focusing on some non-trading activities to keep their members engaged in the current market conditions.

Sellers need to adjust too. Aim lower - few are paying last year's prices.

[EDIT for typo, I always seem to manage to miss one].

freespirit · November 19

I think it is an adjustment period atm, Guilds need to adjust their bidding policy as much as sellers need to adjust their prices!

A lesser trader for a bit is preferable to closing down imo!

Out of interest I think this thread......

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/669074/i-received-a-reply-that-my-ticket-resulted-in-action-being-taken-against-a-gold-seller#latest

Is interesting and a welcome change that ZoS are willing to tell us our reporting of Gold Seller's is actually being actioned and maybe a bit telling about the movement of rmt gold within the game at the moment!

SkaiFaith · November 19

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

so you want everything to become more expensive to buy again? got it lol

i would rather items cost less so i would be more enticed to buy things

if the guilds are collapsing that is a guild management problem not adjusting their bids to the market

zos cant fix a player driven economy, your basically telling everyone that people need to start selling items for 3x what they are worth just so you can feel like your making gold again

i havent had any problems making gold, since the prices on everything have declined (starting around may this year) ive made between 4 and 6 million gold (ive actually spent about 2-3 mil buying motifs that are more within a price range i find acceptable)

4-6 millions May-November is nothing for a lot of people.
I know players that regularly made 3-5 millions per week, on console!
I used to make 1 Million per month but now it's 2 weeks that I have my trader empty.
As a consequence, I'm kinda leaving trading, except for occasional event pages.
Sure lower prices are good for buyers, but what I'm seeing is way less stuff put up for sale in general, and this is not good for anyone.
I see main cities that stay with empty traders the whole week...

DenverRalphy · November 19

Other than bidding on a Trader, what expenses does a guild have?

If a guild is shutting down because it can't afford it's usual trader kiosk, it's not the economy at fault. Because somebody is obvioiusly generating enough coin to win the bid, and they are operating under the same economy.

Necrotech_Master · November 19

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

so you want everything to become more expensive to buy again? got it lol

i would rather items cost less so i would be more enticed to buy things

if the guilds are collapsing that is a guild management problem not adjusting their bids to the market

zos cant fix a player driven economy, your basically telling everyone that people need to start selling items for 3x what they are worth just so you can feel like your making gold again

i havent had any problems making gold, since the prices on everything have declined (starting around may this year) ive made between 4 and 6 million gold (ive actually spent about 2-3 mil buying motifs that are more within a price range i find acceptable)

4-6 millions May-November is nothing for a lot of people.
I know players that regularly made 3-5 millions per week, on console!
I used to make 1 Million per month but now it's 2 weeks that I have my trader empty.
As a consequence, I'm kinda leaving trading, except for occasional event pages.
Sure lower prices are good for buyers, but what I'm seeing is way less stuff put up for sale in general, and this is not good for anyone.
I see main cities that stay with empty traders the whole week...

ive never relied on few high value sales items lol

ive almost always primarily made my gold by selling mats

im sure there are people on pc who could make several million a week too, but thats not been me unless i got luck with a high value drop i dont need and have a huge burst sale

generally speaking ive always been pretty consistent in the ~500k (sometimes +/- a couple hundred thousand) a week range, for many many years, and being on PC i have addons that track all of this so i know exactly how much im making

if your seeing less stuff put up, its all of those people who just want to "get rich quick" and wont even list stuff unless it sells for like 50k+ gold

for me, as long as an item is valued above like 500g, ill list it, i would rather get the item to someone who needs/wants it than outright deleting it, because 500g is still 500g, and it adds up over dozens of sales

combined with the lower prices, its still more than enough to make gold and still buy stuff that i want thats now not ridiculously overpriced

sarahthes · November 20

Prices have crashed enough that I make more in undaunted plunder than I spend on tripots in a given week (mostly due to running a LOT of cloudrest). I'm actually quite enjoying the changed economy.

katanagirl1 · November 20

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

so you want everything to become more expensive to buy again? got it lol

i would rather items cost less so i would be more enticed to buy things

if the guilds are collapsing that is a guild management problem not adjusting their bids to the market

zos cant fix a player driven economy, your basically telling everyone that people need to start selling items for 3x what they are worth just so you can feel like your making gold again

i havent had any problems making gold, since the prices on everything have declined (starting around may this year) ive made between 4 and 6 million gold (ive actually spent about 2-3 mil buying motifs that are more within a price range i find acceptable)

4-6 millions May-November is nothing for a lot of people.
I know players that regularly made 3-5 millions per week, on console!
I used to make 1 Million per month but now it's 2 weeks that I have my trader empty.
As a consequence, I'm kinda leaving trading, except for occasional event pages.
Sure lower prices are good for buyers, but what I'm seeing is way less stuff put up for sale in general, and this is not good for anyone.
I see main cities that stay with empty traders the whole week...

Yes, I agree. I don’t know about the PC market, but on PS even the three capital cities have traders I have never heard of and have little inventory. Personally, I have little to sell other than master writs. I doubt I make enough gold to fund my guild donation, I pull it off one of my daily writ crafters income.

moderatelyfatman · November 20

It's been rough: my trade guild went belly up a few months ago.

I agree with one of the posters above who says that it is simply not a price readjustment but also due to the decline in player population so that we now have a lot of longer term players with mats and not many buyers.

I'm not sure what can really be done?

DemonicGoat · November 20

Oh it might be a good tiem to get some eyes on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg4oeeLWMqs

Amottica · November 20

Supply and demand dictate prices. Outside of the events that give out many rewards that generally sell for a pretty penny, a practice that has been going on for years, I do not think Zenimax has adjusted drop rates.

Based on the leadership's efforts, I have seen long-time trading guilds rise and fall. Significantly, when they get burned out, as it takes a lot of work to lead a top trading guild, top members can jump ship and often do so based on getting traders. That can kill a guild fast.

Gabriel_H · November 20

What is shuttering trading guilds is other trading guilds.

Yes, goods are now more plentiful, and a large part of that is the proportion of newer players entering the game (who need lots of stuff) vs established players (who need very little) has altered. ZOS have certainly tweaked the supply chain but the over-riding factor remains a loyal player base.

This has casued a drop in prices, simply supply/demand economics. So how have the guilds responded? Did they lower their bid values for prime placement? Or did they keep them the same? Those with large cash reserves had the ability to maintain high bids for longer, pushing those that didn't out of prime retail space. This is how a capitalist market functions.

Now, can ZOS do things to address this issue? They could try to alter what is considered "prime retail space", impose taxes on various zone traders to encourage growth in less visited zones, as well as a host of other things purely directed at the retail space.

But, do ZOS need to do this? Are there Guild Trader NPCs anywhere in Tamriel that do not have a guild utilizing the NPC? I doubt it. So long as there enough trading guilds to utilize all NPCs then the system is functionning within market norms, and the guilds need to address the issue among themselves in terms of how much they are bidding each week.

robpr · November 20

Traders generate less coin, but the bid for the spot remains the same then no wonder guilds close down.

KromedeTheCorrupt · November 20

On PC/NA I’ve know about 9 trading guilds in the last week has official closed. The 3 I was in not even counting those 9 have closed as of Sunday, and yesterday. Joined 2 more and same thing both are now closing. So that’s 14 all together. I don’t think people were ready for what’s going to come and because it costs millions and millions to buy trader spots it’s only going to get worse. So imo they need a new system to replace traders since it’s not profitable anymore not for a lot of guilds. Trading has become cheap and I love it never been a fan of hoarding gold anyway but clearly this needs to be addressed. I’m not going to scream for a central trading auction house or anything like that but something is going to have to change. This also was a large majority of people just trading for RMT trades anyway which is against the rules so the population I assume is going too drop drastically over the next couple of months as well because of that. Not that I care just pointing out that was a big problem but seems it won’t be profitable too much longer for them either so I know those individuals will be gone as well.

Gabriel_H · November 20

KromedeTheCorrupt wrote: »

On PC/NA I’ve know about 9 trading guilds in the last week has official closed. The 3 I was in not even counting those 9 have closed as of Sunday, and yesterday. Joined 2 more and same thing both are now closing. So that’s 14 all together. I don’t think people were ready for what’s going to come and because it costs millions and millions to buy trader spots it’s only going to get worse.

It costs millions because other guilds bid millions. As to the closure of guilds: How many Guild Trader NPCs in all of Tamriel are currently not assigned to a guild? When that number reaches 1, then it might be time to have a wider conversation. Otherwise, its simply free-market capitalism in action.

manukartofanu · November 20

The tail is wagging the dog with you. Guilds don't shut down because of the state of the economy. The state of the economy is determined by people's behavior, and they are less inclined to spend time on this game anymore. The closure of guilds is just another consequence of the player base dwindling.

LalMirchi · November 20

I've had two long terms guilds fold on me, one on each server in the last months. Both had weekly dues as a requirement. My other 8 guilds have survived so far and none of these require weekly dues.

My trading frequency has declined from once a day to perhaps weekly except when I quest intensively which then provides saleable items.

As Grandfeather (my head crow) tirelessly opines "Grass bends while Oaks blow away" or something equally inane (I want to ignore his "wisdom"). I do tend to take his advice.

We are witnessing a severe shake-up within the game's basic economy and... who knows what the future will bring?

sarahthes · November 20

Both of the trade guilds I'm in are doing fine. They have both experimented with lowering bid prices and we've been in secondary locations once or twice over the past 6 months but generally wind up back where we were. For the one in Mournhold, minimum sales/ purchases or dues are still required and haven't changed. The one in Leyawiin doesn't have dues or minimums.

I know I haven't had a huge problem keeping up with the requirements. The dues are quite low, but I just make sure to purchase within the guild first as well and I think I've only had to pay dues 3x since April.

AllenaNightWood · November 20

Melivar wrote: »

The players(guilds) need to adjust to the supply and demand of things, the everything always just going up was never going to be sustainable.

In my case particularly I buy things I don't want to farm on price thresholds. If recipes or motifs aren't available i will simply wait a month and check back around again.

The only very rare exceptions are when I really want something for a house or an appearance then I may spend 2-3x what I would normally for said item but even in those cases I keep it to a limit.

I have recently gone on several buying sprees as items hit the lower numbers I am willing to pay but haven't seen a huge overall decrease in my overall gold supply.

i see alot of this its like most players dont understand what supply and demand is, you cant just continue to list items for high gold with no demand for because if your items haven't sold in the first week its probably not going to sell, this also brings on low supply and demand for things because the supply is low because the item is somewhat rng and difficult to farm up but then has no demand becasue not enough people are interested those items being priced high meand they wont sell at all

Necrotech_Master · November 20

Amottica wrote: »

Supply and demand dictate prices. Outside of the events that give out many rewards that generally sell for a pretty penny, a practice that has been going on for years, I do not think Zenimax has adjusted drop rates.

Based on the leadership's efforts, I have seen long-time trading guilds rise and fall. Significantly, when they get burned out, as it takes a lot of work to lead a top trading guild, top members can jump ship and often do so based on getting traders. That can kill a guild fast.

the only thing that i know of that had drop rates adjusted was housing mats and luminous ink, both were increased in the past couple of recent patches

mat prices were likely down because there were many long duration back to back events over the last few months that had double mat drops in either a particular zone or everywhere

as another poster mentioned, a lot of the decrease in prices is likely due to the heavier crackdown of zos on RMT gold market, which has removed massive amounts of gold from the economy by banning the offenders (essentially locking out their gold from entering the market as a side effect)

last year around this time was when they did that free eso account deal from the epic store, which opened a floodgate of RMT spammers again and i think zos is still cleaning up from that

rothan117 · November 20

Basic cause is too many sellers chasing too few buyers with the result that prices went down. There was no new class this year to drive sales for gearing up new alts. No new meta to drive sales of mats for upgrades. No new Best in Slot to drive sales. A decline in player population means fewer buyers. All the old players have bought all the rare motifs etc they need since those are once and done purchases, so demand has dropped for those items and prices along with that.

I still make gold selling mats I farm up, not nearly as much as I used to but I am making money.

Guilds that keep bidding high for "prime" locations are going to run out of reserve gold, the economy has changed for the long term and trade guilds need to adjust their bidding strategy or move to less expensive locations. Prices for traders will come down as more and more gold is sucked out of the economy by overpaying for trader spots.

freespirit · November 20

So last night, early this morning I decided to go shopping and avail myself of these new cheaper prices!

I visited EVERY guild trader on PC-EU, yes even those out in the wilds too, It was a quite interesting experience.....

Vivec, Mournhold, Belkarth, Eldenroot, Wayrest all had traders whose names I recognised and were well stocked, there was only the odd one or two with very limited stock, however the items I was after were in general not cheap enough for me to buy.

I was not buying to flip but to use myself and likely to craft items(furniture) to sell, my main items I wanted were Heartwood, Mundane Rune, Decorative Wax and to a lesser extent other furnishing mats and some random style/trait mats.

Although the main hubs did have names I knew there were certainly other guilds in places that surprised me, there were also many, many guilds with NO mats on offer at all. To start with I did look to see what they were selling and very often the answer was one or two pages of random recipes, motifs, style pages etc etc, frequently very overpriced too.

Mundane and Heartwood were hugely cheaper in a lot of places, Decorative Wax was cheaper but I found less bargains, or what I considered bargains. What was very obvious is people are still listing these items at their old prices, I saw so many 14 day listings for double what I was willing to pay! I was basing my prices on my current MM and also keeping an eye on what TTC was saying.

I have three accounts I trade on, I have been separating some of my profits into my guild bank over the last month in preparation for this shopping trip, I spent it all but I am very happy with the results, I'm good for maybe a couple of months now, plus all my accounts still have more gold than they did a month ago, I didn't spend all my profits.

This was the first time I have done the whole map shopping trip in a while, for me not much has really changed, I think the main change that stuck out was the number of traders with little or no stock, definitely more of those around.

Necrotech_Master · November 20

freespirit wrote: »

So last night, early this morning I decided to go shopping and avail myself of these new cheaper prices!

I visited EVERY guild trader on PC-EU, yes even those out in the wilds too, It was a quite interesting experience.....

Vivec, Mournhold, Belkarth, Eldenroot, Wayrest all had traders whose names I recognised and were well stocked, there was only the odd one or two with very limited stock, however the items I was after were in general not cheap enough for me to buy.

I was not buying to flip but to use myself and likely to craft items(furniture) to sell, my main items I wanted were Heartwood, Mundane Rune, Decorative Wax and to a lesser extent other furnishing mats and some random style/trait mats.

Although the main hubs did have names I knew there were certainly other guilds in places that surprised me, there were also many, many guilds with NO mats on offer at all. To start with I did look to see what they were selling and very often the answer was one or two pages of random recipes, motifs, style pages etc etc, frequently very overpriced too.

Mundane and Heartwood were hugely cheaper in a lot of places, Decorative Wax was cheaper but I found less bargains, or what I considered bargains. What was very obvious is people are still listing these items at their old prices, I saw so many 14 day listings for double what I was willing to pay! I was basing my prices on my current MM and also keeping an eye on what TTC was saying.

I have three accounts I trade on, I have been separating some of my profits into my guild bank over the last month in preparation for this shopping trip, I spent it all but I am very happy with the results, I'm good for maybe a couple of months now, plus all my accounts still have more gold than they did a month ago, I didn't spend all my profits.

This was the first time I have done the whole map shopping trip in a while, for me not much has really changed, I think the main change that stuck out was the number of traders with little or no stock, definitely more of those around.

a lot of "top trader" guilds in the big cities dont usually sell mats cause they dont make enough money for those people

at least on PC NA a full stack (200) of say rubedite ingots is only like 1700g, a lot of those big trader ones wont even list things if its not like close to 100k in value

i think theres still a lot of guilds that havent adjusted to both the new market prices, and the new listing times

Zodiarkslayer · November 20

The guilds give up, because the guild coffers are empty and the competition for the trader spots is still as cut throat as ever.
Lots of old guilds with full coffers out there. Not all can compete.

Danikat · November 20

One of my guilds hasn't had a trader for a few weeks now, I'm not sure if they've been bidding every week and not getting one or if they gave up trying, but I do know the guild isn't at risk of shutting down because it's not exclusively a trade guild. We can keep going doing other things, and when the opportunity comes up maybe get another trader.

Artem_gig · November 20

What's wrong with you... from year to year... Then the players complain that prices are rising, they say that the economy is dead and this will ruin the game... Then the players complain that prices, on the contrary, are falling and... that the economy is dead and this will ruin the game... So what is ultimately bad? That prices are rising or that they are falling?

Amottica · November 20

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Supply and demand dictate prices. Outside of the events that give out many rewards that generally sell for a pretty penny, a practice that has been going on for years, I do not think Zenimax has adjusted drop rates.

Based on the leadership's efforts, I have seen long-time trading guilds rise and fall. Significantly, when they get burned out, as it takes a lot of work to lead a top trading guild, top members can jump ship and often do so based on getting traders. That can kill a guild fast.

the only thing that i know of that had drop rates adjusted was housing mats and luminous ink, both were increased in the past couple of recent patches

mat prices were likely down because there were many long duration back to back events over the last few months that had double mat drops in either a particular zone or everywhere

as another poster mentioned, a lot of the decrease in prices is likely due to the heavier crackdown of zos on RMT gold market, which has removed massive amounts of gold from the economy by banning the offenders (essentially locking out their gold from entering the market as a side effect)

last year around this time was when they did that free eso account deal from the epic store, which opened a floodgate of RMT spammers again and i think zos is still cleaning up from that

The gold sellers are a good point. They cause inflation since more gold is in the market, which is not due to actual player activity.

Even trading gold for crowns causes inflation since it moves gold from a player who is less likely to spend it to one who will, but that is at least between legitimate players, which means it has a more limiting factor.

As the player market changes, so does the guild trader market. Guild leadership must be aware of these changes.

I was in a strong trading guild where the leader left and handed it down to one of their officers. The guild crashed under the poor leadership who complained about the guild trader system even though the guild had flourished under that system. Eventually, leadership was handed over to another player, and they successfully rebuilt the guild to its former glory.

Leadership means everything.

Zodiarkslayer · November 21

Compared to 9 months ago an ever higher amount of currency is in the game! Yet prices are a fraction of it. Explain that before you make any claims.
The guys selling high value items 9 months ago didn't disappear over night. And the gold they made is still in the game.
In fact, they are in the guilds that still hold the top spots of guild trading, because they still have mountains of gold that they are sitting on. Quite comfortably so.

The reason prices crashed is because the Gold Road Chapter was too weak to get enough new/returning players into the game, as a chapter release would normally do. Put that in context of massive influx of items due to anniversary box farming, ink farming and increased access barriers to participating in any aspect of guild trading and you get an idea of the cascading multiple effects that ultimately burst the speculation bubble.
That all was happening while the amount of ingame gold was steadily growing!

How people can still believe in this idea of amount of gold having any influence on prices in this game at all is beside me!
I guess there really is no I in denal, isn't there?

sarahthes · November 21

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Compared to 9 months ago an ever higher amount of currency is in the game! Yet prices are a fraction of it. Explain that before you make any claims.
The guys selling high value items 9 months ago didn't disappear over night. And the gold they made is still in the game.
In fact, they are in the guilds that still hold the top spots of guild trading, because they still have mountains of gold that they are sitting on. Quite comfortably so.

The reason prices crashed is because the Gold Road Chapter was too weak to get enough new/returning players into the game, as a chapter release would normally do. Put that in context of massive influx of items due to anniversary box farming, ink farming and increased access barriers to participating in any aspect of guild trading and you get an idea of the cascading multiple effects that ultimately burst the speculation bubble.
That all was happening while the amount of ingame gold was steadily growing!

How people can still believe in this idea of amount of gold having any influence on prices in this game at all is beside me!
I guess there really is no I in denal, isn't there?

They added massive amounts of gold sinks (scribing is a huge one) and banned a huge number of gold sellers, and also clawed back and deleted gold that had been acquired via RMT.

The amount of gold in game dramatically decreased. As did the amount of gold *in circulation*.