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

kargen27 · September 24

"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."
Trading guilds were demoralized by an influx of calendar rewards. The ten year celebrations brought in tons of materials and items greatly increasing supply. At the same time because there were now more ways for every player to obtain most in game items demand was lowered. The market needed a correction and that was about to happen even without all the events. What we got was a perfect storm that caused a severe over correction that the market is just beginning to correct.

The ESO economy is divided in two separate sectors. Trading and purchasing from NPCs. The trading sector to me is healthy and slowly correcting from a severe over supply. Almost every player (even new players) can get everything they need and a good chunk of what they want. We all have options in how to obtain what we desire. A player big into housing can farm recipes and materials for their creations or they can purchase them. It is all a matter if time invested either way. With the trading system selling duplicate recipes can provide the gold for materials. Reverse is also true excess materials can be sold to purchase recipes. They also have the option to purchase finished pieces from vendors or players.

I think the system works for the game because it gives incentive to participate in a variety of in game activities.

The other part of the economy is buying/selling with vendors. Again to me this seems to be working fairly well. For new players it is easier than ever to get the necessities as the daily log-in rewards are geared towards being beneficial to new players or players with new characters. They get the potions they need logging in and the gear they need playing the game. A player can create their own economic stress by getting in a hurry. We sometimes forget we had all this cool stuff distributed to us over the course of many years. New players have potential access to everything day one. That doesn't mean they should be able to actually acquire it all. It is good for the game that it takes years to be able to get all the fun stuff and the journey on the way should be fun and entertaining. That is the making of a good game.

I do think the game could use a few more high end gold sinks to help compress the low and high end of players accumulated gold. The problem with introducing the types of high end gold sinks that would make a difference is the players not generating huge amounts of gold will complain that something is unobtainable. Adding gold sinks requires a tricky balance but would help balance the economy.
Adding more gold would help throw the economy back into the turmoil we saw with the year ten events.

Orbital78 · September 24

Maybe if the combat team wasn't so out of touch, the population wouldn't be plummeting. I do think they need to increase resource sinks though. Oddly, unsure if this is just bad rng or zos' doing. I fished up 500 or so fish and got no roe in what I would normally have gotten at least 1-3.

rothan117 · September 24

Out of all the MMOs I have played, ESO has the worst trading/auction house system of them all. It throttles the ability of players to sell their surplus stuff to other players by having dozens of locations each with different stock instead of a centralized listing. Players have to resort to outside systems (e.g. TTC) to get information that is readily available in game in other MMO trading systems. The ESO system is overly complicated, inefficient and a waste of resources.

JHartEllis · September 24

Northwold wrote: »

The prices sellers on the traders set are very arguably not remotely based on supply and demand

Sellers have little information to work with on how to price things. I'd really rather have this moved more to the buyer's court with auctions, crafting bounties, finder's fees, and the like.

SolarRune · September 24

I think the TTC functionality should be made available in the game rather than through addons - the data is there and avilable (otherwise TTC couldn't work) - it baffles me that they dont look at the most used features from addons and add that into the game.

I dont have a problem with the current trade system, if this type of info was available through the base game.

DinoZavr · September 24

@JHartEllis, Zeni can also run big tournaments with stakes
- AvA all teams pay some entrance fee - game-makers sink half of the pool, throw in bound shinies, winner gets 75% second place 25%
- ToT tournaments (same idea as multitable poker tournaments) - 3 winners receive 60 - 25 - 15
- dungeons speed run - same idea, now officially with prizes
Zeni drains a solid part of total entries fee, but adds some shinies (like houses, unique style pages and mounts etc)
Unique spaceships awarded in EVE tournaments are insanley expensive, as they exist in only in 20 copies (trully limited edition goods (the spicy thing is that in EVE they are destructable as any other ships) so they are highly sought by collectors)

spartaxoxo · September 24

There needs to be a reason to use all those materials we've been getting flooded with again. People hated the gear treadmill for gameplay reasons but it was a big part of the economy.

There needs to be more coin rewarded for quests.

Luxury furniture needs to become cheaper. This is actually a significant coin drain for a lot of big coin generators and its prices have generally increased.

There needs to be new farmable stuff in group content. This stuff needs to feel actually obtainable but not so common it has no value. Too rare and nobody will bother, the few that do will command too high of a price to address the issue. Too common and it will be worthless.

PvP and Tales of Tribute need to be more rewarding. They nerfed Tales rewards and PvP hasn't had stuff the general playerbase would have high demand for in a while. What little they do have had been too rare. Niche activities are good places to put desirable items because it inherently limits supply since people will want them item but not want to do the activity to get it.

Northwold · September 24

JHartEllis wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

The prices sellers on the traders set are very arguably not remotely based on supply and demand

Sellers have little information to work with on how to price things. I'd really rather have this moved more to the buyer's court with auctions, crafting bounties, finder's fees, and the like.

I agree if you mean an actual auction house -- auction house functionality in terms of price setting is effectively immediate as buyers can compare all prices in the same place. I do take people's point, raised at various times in discussions of this, however, that there is a certain charm to ESO's bargain hunt. For that reason I keep pressing the idea of non-guild dependent traders open for selling by all, and adding a better search functionality that is more comprehensive but not necessarily completely comprehensive to do away with the absurd situation where all prices are set by whatever people are selling things for at a tiny clutch of locations people can actually be bothered to visit in numbers (eg Mournhold). Personally I wouldn't mind an auction house for the greater good of the game but it does strip the shopping experience away.

tomofhyrule · September 24

spartaxoxo wrote: »

There needs to be a reason to use all those materials we've been getting flooded with again. People hated the gear treadmill for gameplay reasons but it was a big part of the economy.

This is one of the biggest things in my opinion. We got nothing new for combat since Scribing released, and Subclassing really only made it so all of our alts were totally unnecessary. It didn’t even change the meta gear that Arcanists already had for ages.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

There needs to be new farmable stuff in group content. This stuff needs to feel actually obtainable but not so common it has no value. Too rare and nobody will bother, the few that do will command too high of a price to address the issue. Too common and it will be worthless.

The big reasons people ran group content and farmable stuff was 1) Monster Helm styles and 2) Motif pages. And now that there have been several free motif events and a lot fewer people buying them, even the motifs aren’t as good sellers anymore. And as for the helms, we get those pages from the Archive now for way cheaper than we could get them from dungeons, and it’s not like ZOS is good at activating those drops in the first place. We still have 5 old styles from before this year that have never even seen a release, from up to 5 years old a dungeon.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

PvP and Tales of Tribute need to be more rewarding. They nerfed Tales rewards and PvP hasn't had stuff the general playerbase would have high demand for in a while. What little they do have had been too rare. Niche activities are good places to put desirable items because it inherently limits supply since people will want them item but not want to do the activity to get it.

This is another thing. Tribute coffers have basically nothing, and it’s not exactly a popular activity. I don’t understand why they nerfed the drop rates for things, especially the emote/houseguest fragments that I don’t know anyone who has seen one in two years now. But they also have style pages there, and those seem to never drop either.

——

Unlike many of the other posters here, I don’t think the problem is that there is not enough gold in the world. The problem is that there are not enough buyers because of the severely decreased population. That also means a lot fewer people generating gold via writs and other quests, but the sellers are still shelling out the same amount at the same gold sinks

Yes, trader bids are a huge gold sink. But I’m gonna bet that high-level trading guilds are still bidding the same or more than they were when things were booming. That means that we are removing more money from the economy than is going in (because fewer players are generating gold, but the guilds are still shelling out the same as they did before). The obvious answer is for the guilds to bid in accordance with where the economy is and not where it was… but it’s clear that if all of the top guilds don’t bid what they were bidding, then they all lose their Mournhold/Vivec slots.

Throwing more money into the economy isn’t going to fix this. It’ll just encourage those guilds to bid even higher, and then we’ll be back at square one when the next exodus happens (or if people get something big next year and come back, then we’ll be back to the 75k+ Dreugh Wax meta which was also unhealthy in the other direction). Yes, the gold generation and sinks need to be balanced, so since the generation is lower, then trader bids should logically decrease to match.

ZOS does have a responsibility to the market too though, though theirs is to ensure that a sufficient number of players are interacting with the economy. But now, they’re hard focusing the “I play exclusively solo and never interact with people” playerbase (which means they also do not interact with buying from guild traders) to the exclusion of others, and those other players are leaving. ZOS needs to stem that hemorrhage, full stop. And then, they need to give players a reason to want to interact with traders, e.g. combat rebalances that inspire upgrading new gear (or better, inspiration to make new characters like more slots or a new Class).

DenverRalphy · September 24

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This is another thing. Tribute coffers have basically nothing, and it’s not exactly a popular activity. I don’t understand why they nerfed the drop rates for things, especially the emote/houseguest fragments that I don’t know anyone who has seen one in two years now. But they also have style pages there, and those seem to never drop either.

I had a guildie show off their Captain Kaleen houseguest about 6 months back, and that player was edging close to his 1st year of playing ESO. So fragments are still dropping. He's often giving away style pages as well.

kevkj · 1:01AM

alakeyfox wrote: »

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.

This is like a subsistence fisherman in the Maldives saying he would buy more semiconductors if the prices came down.

katanagirl1 · 2:12AM

I wish I had commented last night before I got lost in keeping up with the replies.

I don’t have as much gold to purchase on PS NA as I used to, prices are low except for rare items like the most recent zone structural furnishing plans that inexplicably are higher than ever. I have given up the daily grind to get these and even new zone plans as the drop rate seems impossibly low for me. I have little to sell except purple master writs that I don’t use and sell for few gold per voucher just to get rid of them.

I think you understand this OP since you are into housing. Those who complain about the lack of gold sinks don’t do housing.

Housing is just too expensive now for this long-time housing enthusiast on PS NA. I have lots of houses now but getting furnishing plans and materials to decorate them takes too much gold and time that little actual decorating can be done.

Anumaril · 6:48AM

Maybe this is just my inexperienced economic knowledge talking, but lower prices/deflation seem like a good thing (at least in ESO). As an average player, prices were getting way too high for me to afford anything. From Crowns, to motifs, to furnishings, it was just unattainable.

I'm not going to log on and dedicate my entire time for weeks to farming gold just to afford some basic things from Guild Stores. For the average player you accumulate gold gradually from in-game activities, daily rewards, etc. From what I could tell having friends in trading guilds it was only ever the ultra-high gold earners that bought those things for many years.

exiars10 · 8:26AM

I see 1.500 gold per crown on PC EU as the new trend.
Yep, it's going down baby

, and still no buyers.

kevkj wrote: »

alakeyfox wrote: »

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.

This is like a subsistence fisherman in the Maldives saying he would buy more semiconductors if the prices came down.

Exactly. Some players here simply don't understand or refuse to see reality that demand is cratering as player base is declining after U46, especially whales.
Players give away items.
I started to vendor so many things as there is no point in selling them.
I undercut whole server by a lot, still no buyers after a week. I mean, one person sells item X for 3.000, everybody else above 5.000, on average 9.000. As a joke, I put the same item for 300, stiill can't sell for days

. How is that normal?
This narrative how you can sell item if you undercut everybody doesn't work in reality for many items as there is no demand any more. Players who were buying them left the game or simply hoard gold (like me) because of the game direction which slowed down velocity of gold by a lot.

DinoZavr · 8:37AM

Anumaril wrote: »

Maybe this is just my inexperienced economic knowledge talking, but lower prices/deflation seem like a good thing (at least in ESO). As an average player, prices were getting way too high for me to afford anything. From Crowns, to motifs, to furnishings, it was just unattainable.

I'm not going to log on and dedicate my entire time for weeks to farming gold just to afford some basic things from Guild Stores. For the average player you accumulate gold gradually from in-game activities, daily rewards, etc. From what I could tell having friends in trading guilds it was only ever the ultra-high gold earners that bought those things for many years.

It takes half year, maybe a year, if you play in slow pace for new player to become established end-game player.
At that time you get nine traits crafter with 50+ full motifs learnt, capable to make a lot of green/blue furnishings, have good enough gear and your craftbag is overloaded with materials.
Here your priorities change. What you want the most are QoL features like assistants, furnishing vault, recharge well, trial training dummy, maybe some shiny mounts and huge houses. And that stuff is the courtesy of the allmighty Crown Store.
OK. what if you can not afford subscription? There is unformal gold/crowns exchange implemented via gifting.
The issue deflation causes - you can not sell your hoardings for megamillions.
I already wrote i have thousands of rubedite ingots and not even bother to try to sell them. Everyone has thousands of rubedite ingots and even you set a dirt cheap price - they won't sell. Besides deflation we already have overstocked economy with enormous supply and too little demand.

JHart (and many other discussion participants) are right - ESO needs supply to meet demand. There is no natural destruction of assets, so gear and crafting materials (except potions which have to be consumed for the endgame) are just hoarded, this way becoming the economy dead weight, while most expensive (and demanded) things in ESO are not players-produced, but CS exclusives.
Sometimes making direct sales of CS things for gold Zeni could remove a lot of gold from circulation, but still overstocking issue remains, as quite a lot of player-produced products are demanded only by new players, older players can produce these goods without a need to purchase anything.
I guess this is the issue. Low demand due to the game design.

manukartofanu · 8:53AM

JHartEllis wrote: »

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.

The proposed solution will only make the problem worse, essentially forcing players to engage in specific activities in the game where pure gold is generated. The current problem with the economy isn’t that there isn’t enough gold in the game. There’s an oversupply of it. The problem is that now everything drops for everyone from event boxes across too many events. As a result, everyone already has everything. And there’s no reason to buy. It’s precisely the lack of demand that drags all prices down. Increasing gold generation from some sources won’t solve this at all. What will happen instead? Everyone will be forced to go only to the places where that gold is generated, since inflation still won’t appear. The only thing that will significantly rise in price will be items that aren’t handed out every time from event boxes. And yes, in order to buy items from vendors, players will have to farm only in specific places where gold drops.

The second major problem is multiclassing. It allowed people to clear the content they wanted, and now they have no reason to keep playing. Online activity has collapsed. And that means even less demand. So no, fundamentally, the problems that need to be addressed are:
- stopping the outflow of players from the game
- finally putting an end to showering everyone with everything through events
If that happens, gold will naturally return to the economy along with the players, and inflation will appear.

DinoZavr · 10:16AM

There is still a partial solution for oversupply.
Game-makers have comprehensive stats of theirs gold sinks.
For example i (installed Gold Ledger addon) spend some of gold on gear repairs (buying furnishing plans is not a sink - money dont leave economy, just change owner)
Zeni could make:
- craftable repair kits and significantly raise the vendors' ones fixed prices to make player-crafted ones attractive moneywise
- craftable siege weapons, again, setting vendors prices to be supposedly higher than players-produced
- craftable hair dyes (offering the same by NPCs but for high price)
yes, this will cut off some of gold sinks, and this would provoke inflation, but the main idea is to incentivize using crafting materials instead of hoarding them. see what is destructible/consumable and offer players an opportunity to produce that.