Why did Tamriel "commodity" prices plummet?

HumbleThaumaturge · January 12

Have not looked at the prices for material in ages and ages. Looking at prices today, I see that prices (especially for gold-quality upgrade mats) are much, much lower than they used to be. What happened??? Yeah, I know: Supply and Demand. But did the Gods of Tamriel raise the drop-rates for gold mats? (Lots more mats on the market?) Or have players left the game?

Desiato · January 12

No one knows for certain. There are countless theories.

IMO, the introduction of the Arcanist with the Necrom Chapter followed that summer by the Epic giveaway on PC drove demand for many items.

As the prices of those items rose, so did activities to produce them: especially crafting writs for surveys and master writs.

The supercharged economy then triggered an increase in speculation. Players who buy and sell items to make a profit. There were so many flippers, flippers were probably selling to flippers who would sell to flippers, and so on..

And as players became more wealthy, they started throwing their gold around to buy vanity items, crowns, and services like carries.

When demand began to slow as console players who switched to PC during the Epic giveaway finished gearing up and most enthusiasts already had their Arcanists levelled and geared, prices stagnated for a while....

And then the 2024 Jubilee event hit. As far as I can recall, it was the most rewarding ever and players were highly engaged in getting the most out of it, flooding the game with rare materials -- AND, one method people used to get gift boxes was completing crafting writs on multiple characters, which meant more surveys and master writs being generated. The crafting writ turn-in areas were packed.

Most experienced sellers know there is a lull in activity and sales in the lead-up to a new chapter launch, so they sat on their inventory, expecting prices to rebound when the chapter hit. When this didn't happen, sellers started liquidating and the commodity bubble was revealed.

As prices began to drop, players started to panic sell and the process fed itself.

IMO, the ESO economy had been a bubble for years prior to these events because the craft bag makes it so easy to hoard resources. The extent of this bubble only became apparent after it burst.

On top of all of that, some would say ESO suffered a dip in player activity through 2024.

coop500 · January 12

I am guessing it's a combo of things.
A: The meta has been a bit stagnate gear wise, basically every build calls for the same handful of sets that have been around for awhile.
B: Recent events that have given us gold mats (that I sadly missed)

Sakiri · January 12

Event after event after event dropping mats like nuts inflated supply and killed the market.

I'm still annoyed by it.

freespirit · January 12

Not mentioned yet, sorry if it was and I missed it.....

Launch of Scribing with Gold Road, everyone wanted Ink, at launch some sources were bugged.

The most reliable way to get it was resource nodes, they were farmed continuously for many weeks. leading to an even bigger excess of materials than that already caused by the longer than usual Anniversary Event and Zeal of Zenithar too!

Personofsecrets · January 12

One issue that isn't mentioned enough was the the PTS clone accounts that made it to live. I'm sure that there are other factors, but massive amounts of duped resources making it into the economy would make the cheap prices make sense. For example, there were accounts selling bear haunch at 1/4th market price in absolutely massive numbers. Nobody is going to farm Roe forever to do that. Especially not multiple people all at the same time. My guess is that one or more of the gold sellers, people who already have 100s of accounts, found out about the clones and abused the bug without being caught.

tomofhyrule · January 12

The biggest downturn was because of the serious node farming at the launch of Gold Road for ink, combined with the fact that the Anniversary event was dropping those unique pages that had people farming like mad for those... and thereby getting more and more boxes of mats.

There were also reports of a massive ban wave that hit gold sellers right around that time as well. Since those 'players' (I use the term players loosely here) tend to hoard gold, that means the banning of those accounts also ended up essentially removing a lot of gold from the economy. I hear this from various trial groups, as one of the common things people do when they buy gold is to buy carries, so a lot of the talk in trial guilds around that time were saying that.

And of course, the change of the listing times from 30d to 15d didn't help anything, but that's definitely not the primary factor. It's just that that happened at the same time, so a lot of people blame the listing time change for all of the economic downturn, when the thing that was most hurt by that was the sales of premade furniture, not mats.

Kyip · January 12

They just keep adding more and more sources that drop *everything*. It's caused incredible deflation in crafting materials, motif style pages, everything, as it all becomes more available. They also made other system changes like the big mats change for jewelry, the listing time change in traders, etc. Carries and other services have likewise had to reduce prices. The only things that maintain their high price points (when available) are super rare drops like Chef Arquitus' Lost Thesis. Overall the deflation has been good for most players, even if it sucks for some of us.

Kyip · January 12

I'm just gonna be grumpy if they do not removed the rewards cap for sealed crafting writs during Zeal of Zenithar this year, after they have been flooding the markets with consumable recipes and style pages from every other possible source.

spartaxoxo · January 12

I don't think it's any one singular thing that you can point towards. I think it's a number of factors.

Some of these (but not all) are...

Update 35 fall out. Not only did a lot of people who were early endgame/true endgame players leave the game, but many of those who stuck with got off the gear treadmill. Additionally, the developers listened to one of the points that caused backlash. At the time, people were getting really tired of the whiplash from constant huge balance patches. Since then, the devs have not rebalanced things that drastically. And have taken more care not to invalidate the gear people are using. This doesn't mean that aren't any sets/gear that haven't seen heavy nerfs e.g Azureblight or Oakensoul, but it does mean it happens less often. As a result, there is less need to change your gear. And therefore less need for mats. The constant gear changing was bad for trials playing but good for trading.

Trader Changes Back in the day, you could afford to have things sit at slightly higher prices until it sold because items wouldn't expire for 30 days. Now, people lower their prices much faster in order to be able to sell. The relisting fees have also been an effective gold sink at getting coin out of the market from those who most greatly influenced high prices since it's targeted at traders.

Events/Tales There's a greater supply of mats from events and Tales of Tribute than before. Zeal of Zenithar, for example, made it easier to get boxes that increased supply

Less New Content The lack of content has also seen the number of players drop as a result. Less players coming means less new and returning characters, and therefore less demand.

New Content is less integrated with the crafting system Scribing requires only a small amount of ink. Infinite Archive stuff requires archival fortunes, a new currency. We haven't had a new system that requires a lot of mats in a long time e.g. housing requires its own unique mats but also uses upgrade materials and some other mats.

All of it adds up to that we have increases in the supply of mats at the same time as we have less demand. Naturally, this means lower prices.

Arunei · January 12

I just want to point out that basically EVERY Jubilee, there are those of us who do full writs on our whole rosters. For a lot of us, it's the most engaging way of getting our Boxes, rather than messing with Trials or PvP or other methods. Plus a lot of us have crafters, so it's one of the best times to stock up on mats.

So people spamming crafting writs for our Boxes have been going on for a while. Maybe more people than normal did it last year (I wasn't around for last year's Jubilee because of irl circumstances), but in general every Jubilee has had lots of people turning in lots writs for Boxes and I don't think that alone has ever led to a long-term drop in mat prices (of course prices do tend to tank on stuff after a Jubilee for several months but then prices tend to go back up as people deplete their excess stores via selling).

The main culprit for price fluctuating tends to be big changes in meta. For a while Tempering Alloy were expensive as heck because of Heavy Armor or DW builds being popular. Then when hybridization came, Dreugh Wax absolutely shot up in value, despite having usually been one of the cheaper upgrade mats.

Plus like others have said, more and more sources of various mats have come up. One of the most recent updates increased the drop rate of furnishing mats like Heartwood (thank goodness too, because now it's actually feasible for us crafters to farm it ourselves).

Sakiri · January 12

Still convinced u35 leavers were concerned their dps would be lower, left, only to find out now it's probably twice what it was then. Most of left over peanuts. Styrofoam peanuts.

But no I think they did that to the mats market because new, poor players couldn't afford stuff, when all they had to do was sell alch ingredients.

irswat · January 13

Alot of factors. I think the two biggest factors are that ZOS cracked down on crown sellers that were using fraudulent credit cards to buy crowns then sell them for gold and then selling the gold for cash. This factor alone significantly deflated the economy as gold was much harder to come by. Even legitimate crown sellers couldn't sell crowns for a long time. The second factor was the change to guild store listings, it put serious downward pressure on everything. Another catalyst was the period of time where the guild store add-ons became unreliable due to API changes on backend. This coincided with the guild trader change. Stuff wasn't selling so every 14 days people just kept listing lower

Kyip · January 13

Yea everyone in my trade guilds spamming writ dailies during anniversary events and spamming sealed crafting writ turn ins during the first zeal of zenithar event didn't really drive prices down past a few weeks. Overall inflation came trending strongly upward for years regardless of those things, they just didn't have lasting impact. It's part of why I got so upset they nerfed the zeal of zenithar rewards after the first year, it was wonderful for traders and crafters to have a holiday with related rewards. All the big deflation happened over the past year, maybe for a host of reasons, but I don't think those two holidays made a big dent.

Kyip · January 13

Personally I still think the jewelry changes took away the easiest path to strong gold income for casual players. Just doing the daily crafting writs and surveys was really lucrative. Stuff is cheaper now, sure, but opportunities to make gold are also greatly reduced for casual players.

HumbleThaumaturge · January 13

Big thanks to all who took the time to leave a Reply. I was unaware of many of the changes and possible causes that were mentioned. Very helpful responses.

Djennku · January 13

Like others have previously stated, recent changes made it much more difficult gor people to manipulate prices and exploit the market system. As of now, prices are at a better spot and the economy in game is much healthier.

SaffronCitrusflower · January 13

It's a combination of many factors, as most other posters have pointed out. But the two main factors I think, in this order, played the biggest roles:

1- The player base, most notably the end game player base, has hit pretty close to an all time low, starting with U35 and migration away from ESO has only sped up since U35

2- a few events back to back that dropped a lot of resources. Namely the jubilee event when everyone who can does every daily writ on every one of their toons and the rewards add up fast. This happened at the same time people were farming like mad for ink drops. Now even ink is super affordable.

But by far the biggest reason is that the ESO population is collapsing, so the market is collapsing along with it.

KekwLord3000 · January 13

Beyond the events dropping mats and stuff like that player population in the pve and pvp scene lowered the demand for such items so naturally the market has cooled down.

Naftal · January 13

Imo the biggest reason is that they haven't done patches that change what gear people use in years. It's always the same gear for dds now from patch to another.

allochthons · January 13

@HumbleThaumaturge
Depending on the last time you checked prices, you might have missed the massive change in how jewelry mats work?

From: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/64689

Jewelry Crafting Rebalance

Also included in Update 40 is a rebalance of Jewelry Crafting to help bring its costs more in line with the game’s other crafting disciplines. This includes completely removing Jewelry Crafting grains and converting them into platings! However, to ensure that Jewelry Crafting’s costs line up with the other crafting types, we’ve also increased the total boosters needed to upgrade your jewelry, too. But don't worry, upgrading your rings and amulets in Update 40 will be easier and cheaper when compared to how it is currently.

After, prices for chromium dropped by an order of magnitude (at least on Playstation, from 80K to 5Kish per plate).

Kyip · January 13

They dropped way more than an order of magnitude. That's less than the drop in the stuff that lost the least value. So much now is just trash-tier.

ZOS_Icy · January 13

Greetings,

We have recently removed some unnecessary back and forth in addition to some off-topic posts from this thread. This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive. Please keep our Community Rules in mind moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding.

Kyip · January 13

Overall I appreciate their sentiment to make things better for people by making everything cheaper, but I feel like it's really counterproductive when it comes to the crafting materials, especially gold materials. Most players don't need better than purple, going gold is really needed for endgame veteran pve content and pvp content. So, before, when new players wanted to make gold, it was very easy to point them toward the daily crafting writs, which could be done on any character with virtually no difficulty. They could sell the gold materials to the endgame players, keeping the rest for their own use. Now it's much harder to point them toward something that provides as good a return on their time spent farming gold. I think this change has been good for endgame players, but worse for new players and casual players. This is anecdotal, but this has been my experience when talking to and helping newer players in my guilds.

wolfie1.0. · January 13

gear and build stagnation. The meta for BIS hasn't changed in years.

Scribing the new combat addiction doesn't require gear or gold crafting mats to use and makes many gear sets that people would normally consider not matter as much.

Kahnak · January 13

Arunei wrote: »

I just want to point out that basically EVERY Jubilee, there are those of us who do full writs on our whole rosters. For a lot of us, it's the most engaging way of getting our Boxes, rather than messing with Trials or PvP or other methods. Plus a lot of us have crafters, so it's one of the best times to stock up on mats.

So people spamming crafting writs for our Boxes have been going on for a while. Maybe more people than normal did it last year (I wasn't around for last year's Jubilee because of irl circumstances), but in general every Jubilee has had lots of people turning in lots writs for Boxes and I don't think that alone has ever led to a long-term drop in mat prices (of course prices do tend to tank on stuff after a Jubilee for several months but then prices tend to go back up as people deplete their excess stores via selling).

The main culprit for price fluctuating tends to be big changes in meta. For a while Tempering Alloy were expensive as heck because of Heavy Armor or DW builds being popular. Then when hybridization came, Dreugh Wax absolutely shot up in value, despite having usually been one of the cheaper upgrade mats.

Plus like others have said, more and more sources of various mats have come up. One of the most recent updates increased the drop rate of furnishing mats like Heartwood (thank goodness too, because now it's actually feasible for us crafters to farm it ourselves).

"I just want to point out that basically EVERY Jubilee, there are those of us who do full writs on our whole rosters. For a lot of us, it's the most engaging way of getting our Boxes, rather than messing with Trials or PvP or other methods. Plus a lot of us have crafters, so it's one of the best times to stock up on mats."

I think this is the culprit, as well. I've got 20 characters and I do this every year for the entire event.

Also, they just hand those materials out as log in rewards these days. It hasn't always been that way.

Speaking as someone who doesn't make their money exclusively from golden upgrade mats, I'm perfectly fine with not having to pay over a million gold just to upgrade a 5 piece set of light or medium.

wolfie1.0. · January 14

I will add that one factor is that players where treating tempers as investment tools.

Basically like irl real estate. Buy the item and have it go up in value and assume that gold always inflates.

Well that didn't work out so well and deflation set in. Things are mostly stable now but 9+ months later some players are in denial still about it.

MidniteOwl1913 · January 14

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

gear and build stagnation. The meta for BIS hasn't changed in years.

Scribing the new combat addiction doesn't require gear or gold crafting mats to use and makes many gear sets that people would normally consider not matter as much.

Personally I think it was everyone chasing ink that created an oversupply of basic materials. As that has tapered off, things have balanced, at least on the console, but the economy on the consoles does seem to be a bit more resilient.

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Why did Tamriel "commodity" prices plummet?

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