Amottica wrote: »

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.

Do they though?

How much gold can a single gold seller generate in a day?
How many players are there?
What is the % of gold sellers to (real)players?

In the real world money is technically finite, but governments can print more to buy their own debt through QE, this increases inflation.

In ESO there is no debt, and no government prints money, BUT gold is not finite. Even just logging in to do the daily crafting quests generates ~3k of gold out of thin air.

Lets say there are 30,000 unique daily players - based off steam charts at a reasonable estimate of what other platforms/login methods there are.

Lets say that each player has an average of 3 characters, making a total of 90,000 characters who just do daily crafting quests.

90,000 characters x 3,000 gold = 270 million gold generated out of thin air simply by doing crafting quests.

Lets say 50% of the unique daily players do other things like dungeon runs, other dailies, trials etc, but only on one character.

A fair estimate for additional gold for a couple of hours play, selling just white gear drops and treasure and junk? Around 30,000 gold.

15,000 characters x 30,000 gold = 450 million gold generated. For four hours of play 900 million.

That imo is a conservative estimate. I do not see gold sellers even coming close to being able to farm and sell enough for them to have any significant impact unless they are making up a majority of the playerbase.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

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.

Do they though?

How much gold can a single gold seller generate in a day?
How many players are there?
What is the % of gold sellers to (real)players?

In the real world money is technically finite, but governments can print more to buy their own debt through QE, this increases inflation.

In ESO there is no debt, and no government prints money, BUT gold is not finite. Even just logging in to do the daily crafting quests generates ~3k of gold out of thin air.

Lets say there are 30,000 unique daily players - based off steam charts at a reasonable estimate of what other platforms/login methods there are.

Lets say that each player has an average of 3 characters, making a total of 90,000 characters who just do daily crafting quests.

90,000 characters x 3,000 gold = 270 million gold generated out of thin air simply by doing crafting quests.

Lets say 50% of the unique daily players do other things like dungeon runs, other dailies, trials etc, but only on one character.

A fair estimate for additional gold for a couple of hours play, selling just white gear drops and treasure and junk? Around 30,000 gold.

15,000 characters x 30,000 gold = 450 million gold generated. For four hours of play 900 million.

That imo is a conservative estimate. I do not see gold sellers even coming close to being able to farm and sell enough for them to have any significant impact unless they are making up a majority of the playerbase.

gold sellers are a problem because the huge quantities of gold they have enters circulation

gold only enters "public circulation" when its spend on guild stores or traded hands directly, if a player does writs on 10 characters but never buys anything on guild stores, their gold is staying out of circulation

there are also players like myself who rarely if ever do daily crafting writs (im only doing them right now for surveys to finish the newish achievements for completing surveys)

You are assuming where and how the gold will be spent. If it is spent on homes it is removed from the game. If it is spent on carries it just goes to players already sitting on a lot of gold. Gold sellers have to do something to generate the gold. If it is selling materials in guild stores that increases supply helping to fight any inflation.

kargen27 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

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.

Do they though?

How much gold can a single gold seller generate in a day?
How many players are there?
What is the % of gold sellers to (real)players?

In the real world money is technically finite, but governments can print more to buy their own debt through QE, this increases inflation.

In ESO there is no debt, and no government prints money, BUT gold is not finite. Even just logging in to do the daily crafting quests generates ~3k of gold out of thin air.

Lets say there are 30,000 unique daily players - based off steam charts at a reasonable estimate of what other platforms/login methods there are.

Lets say that each player has an average of 3 characters, making a total of 90,000 characters who just do daily crafting quests.

90,000 characters x 3,000 gold = 270 million gold generated out of thin air simply by doing crafting quests.

Lets say 50% of the unique daily players do other things like dungeon runs, other dailies, trials etc, but only on one character.

A fair estimate for additional gold for a couple of hours play, selling just white gear drops and treasure and junk? Around 30,000 gold.

15,000 characters x 30,000 gold = 450 million gold generated. For four hours of play 900 million.

That imo is a conservative estimate. I do not see gold sellers even coming close to being able to farm and sell enough for them to have any significant impact unless they are making up a majority of the playerbase.

gold sellers are a problem because the huge quantities of gold they have enters circulation

gold only enters "public circulation" when its spend on guild stores or traded hands directly, if a player does writs on 10 characters but never buys anything on guild stores, their gold is staying out of circulation

there are also players like myself who rarely if ever do daily crafting writs (im only doing them right now for surveys to finish the newish achievements for completing surveys)

You are assuming where and how the gold will be spent. If it is spent on homes it is removed from the game. If it is spent on carries it just goes to players already sitting on a lot of gold. Gold sellers have to do something to generate the gold. If it is selling materials in guild stores that increases supply helping to fight any inflation.

houses are 1 time cost, not much of a sink really

if the gold changes hands at all, its entering the wider market, as those that now have the gold could spend it on something

im sure buying carries is one of the reasons people buy gold, but that still goes to players who spent it on stuff, a lot of those top tier people usually end up buying mats for pots and whatnot which goes into circulation and spread out

i dont know what people would buy gold for outside of carries, theres really nothing in this game that needs massive amounts of gold, but if you were just given say a couple hundred million gold, wouldnt you want to spend it on buying up stuff you wanted (expensive/new furnishing plans, motifs, etc) all of which ends up in circulation still

if even a couple dozen players just dump a combined billion gold into the guild store market buying things, now you have say 1000 players with millions to 10s of millions of gold if they were all high cost purchases, then those sales get registered on tracking addons, and thats the "new price" people are going to list for, repeating the cycle demanding more gold

remove the gold sellers, and you remove the massive influx of currency into the market, and existing sources of gold sinks are able to compensate for a slower increase

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

gold sellers are a problem because the huge quantities of gold they have enters circulation

gold only enters "public circulation" when its spend on guild stores or traded hands directly, if a player does writs on 10 characters but never buys anything on guild stores, their gold is staying out of circulation

there are also players like myself who rarely if ever do daily crafting writs (im only doing them right now for surveys to finish the newish achievements for completing surveys)

They are not creating gold. They are primarily farming mats and selling them taking gold from one player, then selling that gold to another.

Meanwhile players ARE generating gold to the tune of billions a week, where as the creation of gold by gold sellers through the same means will be very small.

manukartofanu wrote: »

You get it right. At this stage, it is already a simple deflationary spiral.

It is more than just gold from thin air. It became a deflationary spiral the day that veteran active users (already have most of what they want) outnumbered newbie active users (have little of what they want).

The supply side outstrips the demand side. This can be addressed quite simply: Cut the number of people farming stuff to sell by 50% - I'll let you tell them which 50% they fall into.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

You get it right. At this stage, it is already a simple deflationary spiral.

It is more than just gold from thin air. It became a deflationary spiral the day that veteran active users (already have most of what they want) outnumbered newbie active users (have little of what they want).

The supply side outstrips the demand side. This can be addressed quite simply: Cut the number of people farming stuff to sell by 50% - I'll let you tell them which 50% they fall into.

If everything were that simple, the influx of players to events would drive prices up. However, in practice, events now significantly push prices down, while their absence allows prices to recover slightly. So, it's quite the opposite. Regular players still consume a lot and are willing to buy, but the increased drop rates over the past year on almost everything, along with constant event-related freebies, are driving prices lower and lower.

This is also indirectly confirmed by the much faster price drop for style pages during events compared to before. Even though these are entirely new items in the game and are consumed by all players, they are particularly appealing to regular players who are more willing to buy them. And these are not items that can simply be farmed.

The same trend can be seen in the behavior of prices for new motifs. Take a look at the 128th motif — its value plummeted immediately upon release. And so on.

The real difference is that in the past, new players could profit from such releases, with demand coming primarily from regular players. This created a steady flow of gold from veteran players to newcomers. New players, in turn, bought materials and other essentials from veteran players. Now, however, items drop in such abundance that there’s no need to buy anything, leaving new players without a way to earn gold. Farming gold directly is inefficient, and as a result, prices for everything are falling because overall activity is declining.

Honestly, I don't even know why I started describing what happens during a deflationary spiral. All of this can be read in any article on the topic of "deflationary spiral.