This game needs an economy stimulant right meow

Makkir

7/19- Updated


The fact I went from 800-900k in sales per week to about 250k speaks loud volumes. I know a lot of people want an auction house, and although this discussion is not about that particular topic, I hope this does allow the pro-Auction House team to see why one right now would be devastating. I doubt there is a Trade Guild GM out there that would admit their guild sales have been increasing week over week.

The simple fact is this game severely lacks consumables (aka gold sinks). The in game economy is not fluid at all but sometimes feels that way (usually when new content is released) because of the guild trader system, but really that acts more of thickening agent that slows the process down. The problem is that the majority of the noteworthy gear in the game is Bind on Pickup, the materials become increasingly available as more and more players complete their crafted v16 sets, and the motifs become less in demand as more and more are introduced to the guild stores. The fact that motifs are not account wide is the only thing still keeping them in somewhat demand.

What am I about to suggest is one way to stimulate the economy and should be rather simple to implement.

1) Daily or Weekly resupply quests in Cyrodiil. War is expensive and to continue war efforts, your faction generals need supplies to feed troops and repair/build structures. The daily/weekly quest would look something like this, "Bring 200 Iron Ingots, 150 Quartz (crafting traits) and 100 Cornflower to your Alliance General in Cyrodiil," and the reward should be something along the lines of the RNG bags. I would add a small chance to acquire an alliance war related costume, mount, pet, and legendary rings along with AP and/or a new currency.

Not only would this reinvigorate the economy, but also put back a demand on items that are pretty much rendered useless now. We don't need to argue about the numbers I listed above for the quest as it was just an example, but yes careful consideration would need to be given to the quantity required to complete the quest.


2) Remove the loot boost in the trophy chests in Imperial City and instead increase the drop chance of the agility trophies.

This was just a disaster the day the loot was doubled. The value on everything had since tanked.


3) Remove Siege from the PvP vendors and instead make it player crafted.

Nuff said here.

4) Complete Trait makeover. We got this.

5) Consider purple jewelry in the PvP RNG bags- Right now, the gold per AP is still better with armor style (Like Lion Fangs) and motif pages than it is on the cp160 bags and selling the loot. The highest priced items are currently Morag rings/necklaces and the prices are below 8k. Since most avid players were sitting on heaps of AP, you flooded the market with new PvP sets that are now hard pressed to sell for 500-800 gold a piece.

6) Stolen Items- when housing is in place, laundering stolen goods should be able to be placed in your home. This will create a demand for some of the blue/purple harder to find stolen goods.



Thank you for your time,

MrDerrikk

5). Add a very expensive item that lets you "unbind" a BoP item, so it can be then traded to one person only before binding again.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

Only one move is needed make more things craftable why keep Iron at max level because you can make seige engines repair kits this could make a lot of things in demand.

Preyfar

ZOS just needs to remove BoP on DLC items. If the people who buy the DLC want to milk the economy... let them.

RAGUNAnoOne

I was expecting a cat picture... perhaps a white or black cat as one of the rewards.

MrDerrikk

RAGUNAnoOne wrote: »

I was expecting a cat picture... perhaps a white or black cat as one of the rewards.

Genomic

I'm actually not sure what your argument against an AH was. If you're making less money due to a lack of consumables, and lack of market activity, an AH could only improve that situation. A large reason why the market is flat is because it's a slower, more painful process to trade items (than say with a global AH) thus the economy is also slowed. Seems pretty obvious.

Sausage

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Only one move is needed make more things craftable why keep Iron at max level because you can make seige engines repair kits this could make a lot of things in demand.

I believe Housing is gonna add more craftable stuff, like Furnitures. Furnitures also adds new item to sell and buy.

MrDerrikk

Sausage wrote: »

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Only one move is needed make more things craftable why keep Iron at max level because you can make seige engines repair kits this could make a lot of things in demand.

I believe Housing is gonna add more craftable stuff, like Furnitures. Furnitures also adds new item to sell and buy.

I forgot about housing; OP, there is your answer.

Sausage

MrDerrikk wrote: »

Sausage wrote: »

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO wrote: »

Only one move is needed make more things craftable why keep Iron at max level because you can make seige engines repair kits this could make a lot of things in demand.

I believe Housing is gonna add more craftable stuff, like Furnitures. Furnitures also adds new item to sell and buy.

I forgot about housing; OP, there is your answer.

Its too early to say yet but I hope so.

What bugs me most is that when I find some Purple or Legendary item, it doesnt feel anything. I think they should add system where players can draw power from items, so when you actually find legendary items, you will get excited, not to mention when players can draw power from items, theres more stuff to sell and buy too. I dont know maybe they should design Gem Soul system again, instead of tons of gems, one could fill up their Gem Souls by drawing power from weapons and items.

Would it be cool when they add Housing, There was some Gem Soul Chamber, player could put Gem Soul on some device, and put some Legendary items around it, and player could see how all that power from Legendary items transfer to your Gem Soul and gives you OverCharged Gem Soul.

Eurosolo

I think that something like a black market trader were the players not interested in trading could get rid of the odd rare motif, crafting material, etc. that they comes across while playing would help the economy.

This would provide them with gold which could then be spent at the traders.

If there was a limit on the number of items which could be sold in a period and a high commission then this should not affect the current trading system.

Acrolas

Makkir wrote: »

The fact I went from 800-900k in sales per week to about 250k speaks loud volumes.

It really doesn't. Guilds put pretty much zero input into their sales productivity and expect a lot of sales success output as a result. Instead, you rarely keep customers and your sales are going to fluctuate wildly.

Your customers don't really like you. That's the flaw of any artificial economy. They are not, by design, able to sustain themselves. You'll get lucky from time to time when you have things people want, but you have no way to keep customers and only a passive method for getting new ones. You expect a kiosk to guarantee sales. It doesn't.

You are on the right track. In this system, the economy is directly influenced by the content available. For your sales success to improve without any input, ZOS needs to add more content. But the other side of the coin is that a lot of people are going to buy that content and just do everything themselves, which dents your sales productivity to hell and back. Nobody's going to come to you if they don't need you.

Basically the only thing that can save the guild system long term is if there are things that can only be purchased in guild kiosks. But ZOS already took that job with the Crown store. So I'd say your sales are just going to keep declining unless you court new customers yourself or keep the ones you've already had.

Haenk

The AH will increase the number of traded items, but will also bring down prices extremely fast.
One option might be to only allow 5 items per account (not character) to be offered in the AH.

FlicksZ

Hmm I blame the guild trader system amongst other things. Personally I hardly touch them.

Also you say this game lacks gold sinks but are complaining about making less gold.

Septimus_Magna

BoP completely ruins the economy, I understand they dont want rich players to get BiS gear after a couple days when a new patch is released but this is stupid.

The guild store is now mainly used to sell Willpower/Agility jewelry, v15-16 crafting mats, upgrade tempers and motifs.

I miss the days where you could actually sell drops to make some gold..

Mettaricana

Make gold tempers more common allow chests to drop gold tempers atm they so rare with many reaching vr 16 and needing new gear they are shooting up so high in price a single legendary rubedite gear is like 60k in mats and 120k to upgrade it.. hirelings suck... extraction and refining sucks. Bad enough we can't ever get the drop we want much less afford the upgrades for it

Makkir

Genomic wrote: »

I'm actually not sure what your argument against an AH was. If you're making less money due to a lack of consumables, and lack of market activity, an AH could only improve that situation. A large reason why the market is flat is because it's a slower, more painful process to trade items (than say with a global AH) thus the economy is also slowed. Seems pretty obvious.

It's not that simple and is why I didn't want this to turn into an AH argument. In a nutshell, the guild trader system has only slowed down the inevitable current situation...the global AH speeds it up.

@Acrolas Yes it does speak loud volumes. I run addons. I am in two popular trade guilds that are placed in major Hubs. They see a lot of traffic. Basically, a stack of silk fetched me just about 200k over a month ago and now it's about 55k. In fact, there are probably only a very limited number of items that are currently priced over 200k (Robust agility rings, and I think pieces of v16 Lich set). The reason this is bad is because there are many casual players out there sitting on heaps of gold and nothing to spend it on...again, because there is literally nothing to spend it on. Too much gold in the economy isn't a good thing either. There is a lot of product in the market, and not a lot of demand for it.

willymchilybily

I suspect if the new gear wasn't BOP the market would be flooded with the maelstrom arena sets
Any gear that's handed to you at a rate of 7-10 pieces every day is too high a drop rate to allow it to be sold. but the other sets, briarheat/pariah/trinimacs etc could have all been BOE due to its potential rarity, and RNG drop rate.

The four options for loot/rewards in any game

1. high drop rate and wide span of RNG
2. low drop rate and wide span of RNG
3. high drop rate and narrow span of RNG
4. low drop rate and narrow span of RNG

Option 1: Lots of junk, some okay pieces, Bad for trading/selling, good for deconstructing.
Option 2: Good for trading, but worst option for player moral, the majority of loot is junk and a big grind to earn it
Option 3: Worst for trading, saturated market and people gear up quick
Option 4: The best for trading and if done right the best for player moral. (you may need to grind but you get something good)

This DLC ZOS seem to have gone for option 1 but made it BOP. its not the worst thing but...

IMO the best thing they can do for the economy would be to use an IC style model. Use a token system
The further you break down the rewards/trophies into their own subset. (a set has its own particular troken) the more value there is for the token on a guild trader and the easier it is to make the gear BOP keeping demand high.

And to add value to the less desirable token (there are less people collecting heavy armor sets than medium etc) you can make them traded via vendor (make the ratio high 3 tokens you don't want gets 1 you do want)

MrGigglypants

Genomic wrote: »

I'm actually not sure what your argument against an AH was. If you're making less money due to a lack of consumables, and lack of market activity, an AH could only improve that situation. A large reason why the market is flat is because it's a slower, more painful process to trade items (than say with a global AH) thus the economy is also slowed. Seems pretty obvious.

Regulations being the thickening agent in a real life market.

Oldmanlawlor

Do I look like a cat to you?!

Am I jumpin' around, all nimbly bimbly?!

Flaminir

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

BoP completely ruins the economy, I understand they dont want rich players to get BiS gear after a couple days when a new patch is released but this is stupid.

The guild store is now mainly used to sell Willpower/Agility jewelry, v15-16 crafting mats, upgrade tempers and motifs.

I miss the days where you could actually sell drops to make some gold..

Absolutely 100% spot on!

Sadly!

The drop rate on the new gear seems to be pretty dreadful so it would be a good way to boost the economy by just making it BoE. And this is just normal bog standard gear... not anything special.

No reason for anything outside of the REALLY special stuff (Like monster helms for example) to be BoP.

I did like the little idea above about making siege weapons craftable instead of buying from a vendor... that would add a little something else.... another use for the mats, and something that people could sell which is a repeat purchase.... which the economy desperately needs.

It would also make the merchants in the various keeps have a bit more of a purpose.... claim a keep... get your guild trader in there and people will go to it to buy siege! @ZOS_BrianWheeler has this been thought about? Would be a really positive change all round.

Molag_Crow

For PC players? sure, but this should exclude console players, due to the fact that (if you looked at the data) the average or majority of console ESO players don't even have 100k+ gold, especially if they only PvP.

Guild Traders are just tedious and dull, I stopped using them months ago.

tengri

Get used to it.
BoP gear is the one and only way this game will go from now on.
This has nothing to do with Z not wanting "rich" ppl to instantly buy their new gear - it is because BoP is the only way Z can make sure the ppl who want new gear have to actually buy the DLC, too.

Lorkhan

wow. 900k a week??
im so poor

demendred

MrDerrikk wrote: »

iamnotweakrwb17_ESO

This is what happens when you build gatekeeper systems. They parasite off the majority and consolidate the flow of power in fewer and fewer hands until there isn't enough power flowing within the system to sustain it. At which point it collapses forcing the hoarded power to be redistributed.

So what Zenimax built was a gate keeper system which forces people into guilds to sell there goods. The guilds compete against each other where the winners take the booty and the losers are either forced to join the more successful guilds or leave. The successful guilds slowly get a monopoly on the market at which point there are few and fewer people acquiring goods to be resold. The stocks start to dwindle and prices go up. The common player can no longer afford things or simply can't find what they want and the system of exchange starts to fall to bits,

Ishammael

1. Remove BoP gear -- replace with token system for VMA and dungeons.
2. Upgrade ALL old sets to vr16 (There are so many... with interesting bonuses. WTB VR16 Adroitness or Warlock or Healer or Light or Cyrodiil or you get the picture)
-- NOTE: this alone would add sooo much build diversity.
3. Add jewelry and amulets to select sets
4. Increase the number of things that can be done to get gold mats (beyond writs and hirelings)
5. Add "transmog" craftable items.
6. More interesting food and drinks.

Zerok

Yes, there is a deflation right now on a lot of items. This is very clear when you look at the graphs with Master Merchant. And this is particularly true for some rarer items, like purple motifs and even VR16 mats.

Now, is deflation a bad thing? It depends for whom. A poor player will be able to purchase stuff it couldn't have otherwise. A rich player will make less money, but his current cash will provide a bigger purchasing power.

Gidorick

One word and one word only...

WalkingLegacy

Needs more rarity all the way around. I like your ideas OP.

I hope they add more pets and mounts to game that are sellable for an economy boost and to make collections deeper. Make them rarer and hard to farm for.

I kind of hate the current guild selling option though. I miss auction houses but the way this game is set up I don't think they're would be a lot of variety to the items in it.

Elhanan

@Makkir Brilliant post! This thread needs a sticky and I truly hope ZOS at least considers some of the ideas brought up here.