Why does the game tax us gold?

waterfairy

We have to pay a fee to fast travel (which increases if you FT too soon from the previous) yet it's free to travel from wayshrine to wayshrine...what's the sense in forcing us to use shrines to avoid paying?

We pay postage to mail something to another player and the cost increases depending on the amount of gold involved or value of the item...why? There's no post office that needs our money to safely mail these things.

We pay a tax to the game when selling in a guild trader...that money should go back to the guild, not to some imaginary game governor.

There's plenty of gold sinks in this game, no need to pinch our pockets just to trade with players or get back to town from deep within a dungeon.

Voxicity

Vigarr wrote: »

gold sink

You answered your own question

Carbonised

Vigarr wrote: »

There's plenty of gold sinks in this game, no need to pinch our pockets just to trade with players or get back to town from deep within a dungeon.

Actually, there aren't. Even with the current gold sinks, there is still plenty of hyperinflation in the game. We will see if Homesteads make any difference, but complaining about gold sinks is really counterproductive, they're the only thing in this game that keeps hyperinflation from running amok, and in the end, move players from a monetary economy and over to a bargaining economy.

Or do we need to remind people of the Diablo Stone of Jordan economy?

Nestor

You can travel for free to anywhere in the game if you are in a Guild or have Friends or are in a Group.

waterfairy

KaiVox22 wrote: »

Vigarr wrote: »

gold sink

You answered your own question

True but not everybody has gold to sink, especially new players. This discourages travel and trade for people new to the game.

starkerealm

Vigarr wrote: »

KaiVox22 wrote: »

Vigarr wrote: »

gold sink

You answered your own question

True but not everybody has gold to sink, especially new players. This discourages travel and trade for people new to the game.

Most of the sinks scale their cost as you level up. Low level characters spend far less on repairs and shrine gating.

Postage and the listing fees are universal, but then again, the amounts associated with them are defined by the players involved, not the game, so it makes sense those would scale with the value players put on them rather than their level.

waterfairy

The point that I'm pointing out is that it's pointless. Gold to repair items and the like makes sense but not taxes to imaginary collectors just because it gives you something to waste gold on.
The postage hit me hard one night. I was drunk and messing around sending someone an item, requesting 1 million gold...the postage cost me half my gold before I realized it would.

Nestor wrote: »

You can travel for free to anywhere in the game if you are in a Guild or have Friends or are in a Group.

How many times have you traveled to a guild member hoping they were in Rawl'Kha, Wayrest or Mournhold only to arrive at a wasyshrine somewhere in the middle of nowhere?

KochDerDamonen

Gold sinks are very important to keep the in-game currency healthy, calling it "pointless" is far from the truth. This game has quite an economy, where the most expensive items cost hundreds of thousands of gold because they're a pain to get and not because gold is worthless.

starkerealm

Vigarr wrote: »

The point that I'm pointing out is that it's pointless. Gold to repair items and the like makes sense but not taxes to imaginary collectors just because it gives you something to waste gold on.
The postage hit me hard one night. I was drunk and messing around sending someone an item, requesting 1 million gold...the postage cost me half my gold before I realized it would.

Nestor wrote: »

You can travel for free to anywhere in the game if you are in a Guild or have Friends or are in a Group.

How many times have you traveled to a guild member hoping they were in Rawl'Kha, Wayrest or Mournhold only to arrive at a wasyshrine somewhere in the middle of nowhere?

Yes, but you did arrive at a wayshrine.

LadyNalcarya

Because the game generates a lot of gold (quests etc) so there should be some kind of gold sink.
Otherwise the inflation would be unbearable.

lehran

Gold sinks are beneficial as a whole to game economy if implemented well. I don't think fast travel's sink is implemented well, but I think it needs to go in the opposite direction: instead of removing the cost to port from anywhere to a wayshrine, they should implement (smaller, non-increasing) costs for porting from wayshrine-to-wayshrine and for hiring carriages/boats to take you to other places. A small fee of 20-40 gold per port won't impact any individual person too much, but will have a large effect on the playerbase as a whole for countering inflation. The travel to player command could then be implemented much like traveling to arbitrary wayshrines from anywhere: an increasing fee for each time it is used in rapid succession that over time goes back down to the base amount.

I know the above is likely going to be an incredibly unpopular opinion, but it's really the only way to make fast travel into an effective gold sink -- right now there are simply too many ways to bypass it for free.

Sigtric

You think any player with little wealth in game has it bad now, with out gold sinks the inflation would cause them to be priced right out of the market completely for buying things.

TheShadowScout

Really? Someone is complaining about having to take a dozend steps to the nearest wayshrine for free travel?
Kids these days...

Seriously though, it makes complete sese to me. Either take the time to walk to a wayshrine, or pay up. Your choice.

As for the rest, well, Duh! Of -course- the game will have gold sinks. I'd prefer it if the game had More gold sinks myself - pay gold for dyeing your gear, have a barbershop in-game where you can pay gold to change only your hairstyle, get an buff if you pay gold to "rent a room" to log out and back in, pay gold CoD for your hireling mails, whatever.

Not like it isn't super-easy to get a good income going anyhow, be it general adventuring and selling all the loot, or stealing everything not nailed down till you hit the daily fence limit...

NewBlacksmurf

basic economics and inflation guards to curve and influence predictable trends and behaviors.

SilentQ

Every game will have its gold sinks.

Otherwise there would be no gold leaving the system. As it is they are introducing the housing system because people are complaining that they have too much gold with nothing on which to spend it...

magnusthorek

I'd guess it a very poor attempt of religiousness. I may be wrong but see Wayshrines like overland altars to TES deities and the first time you use, it's free because your being "brought to the cause" of that deity. then you kind of forced to "contribute to the cause".

The fact this payment resets I guess it's because in TESO we're relieving the same days over and over from different perspectives if I'm not mistaken.

Nestor

Vigarr wrote: »

How many times have you traveled to a guild member hoping they were in Rawl'Kha, Wayrest or Mournhold only to arrive at a wasyshrine somewhere in the middle of nowhere?

Once your at a Wayshrine, then travel to anywhere you want.

Bouldercleave

All you have to do is get to a wayshrine and you travel anywhere. If you are that broke, run from the dungeon is any direction for 60 seconds and you will probably run into a wayshrine.

Personally I think some of the gold sinks are too low.

OrphanHelgen

Maybe it is to reduce some exploits? Not sure myself, but with free money transfer via mail, alot of stuff could be done I guess. About the travel part, I dont know why.

Danikat

Reposting this from another thread: You can debate whether these are a good way to do it or not, but games absolutely need gold sinks to have a healthy economy.

I used to play Ultima Online in the early days when MMOs were still very new and the devs were learning a lot of lessons as they went along. At first there were no real gold sinks in the game (you could buy from NPC merchants, but mostly stuff you could make or find yourself) and gold constantly pouring into the game from enemies killed, items sold to NPCs and everything else. As a result the price of everything sky-rocketed. Even basic armour cost thousands of gold (in a game where that was a lot of money), mounts were tens of thousands at least and placed houses were in the millions. (You could buy a blue-print to place your own house from an NPC for a few thousand but you'd never find land to put it on because it was all taken.)

I think they sorted it out eventually by adding a bunch of gold sinks to balance out what comes into the game, but I don't know because I quit before that really started happening - partially because unless you were willing to spend 5-8 hours a day farming you couldn't really achieve anything.

On a personal level it might suck to see your gold disappear for something you know could easily be free, but on a larger scale it's absolutely a useful and important system.

The specific gold sinks you picked up on are also quite good ways of doing it IMO.

Charging for wayshrines is basically Tamriel's equivalent of express shipping - it's a penalty for being impatient or in a hurry. Either you go to a wayshrine and travel for free or you travel instantly from where you are and pay for the privilege.

And paying to mail items and to use guild traders works well because it scales with the value of the item. This means that most of the money is coming from people who have the most money and can therefore more easily afford the hit. And because everyone is only paying a small part of what they're going to get and therefore in most cases (except where someone gets a very lucky drop) a small part of what they can afford, it's generally accepted (more so than a flat fee which would have to be so high to have any impact on big traders than casuals would be priced out of the market).

People who earn 500k a week trading will pay approximately 17.5k in fees, but someone who is making 2k selling odd items here and there will only pay about 70g.

bigmamajama

They are not just gold syncs they are there to control impulsive behavior. And I agree with them.

UrQuan

Vigarr wrote: »

There's plenty of gold sinks in this game,

No, there really aren't. In fact, there are very few gold sinks, and most of them can be avoided or mitigated. Not only that, but it's much much easier to generate gold (and by "generate gold" I mean getting gold from the game rather than from another player) now than it used to be, ever since things like the justice system, writs, guild dailies, etc were introduced.

Gold sinks in the game in no particular order (if I miss any hopefully someone will remind me of what I've missed):

• Mounts from the stables. This was one of the biggest gold sinks at launch, but since the introduction of the crown store and mounts that can be purchased with crowns this has been vastly degraded as a viable gold sink. Very very few people buy the 40K horses these days (as a confirmed weirdo I own all of them, even though I didn't yet own all of them at the time the crown store was introduced), as there's no longer any in-game advantage that they offer, and there are tons of crown store mounts that look more impressive. People also used to buy multiple copies of horses from the stables, as each character needed their own horse, and in many cases you'd buy more than one horse for a particular character so that you'd be able to choose between using your carrying capacity horse, or your speed horse, etc. This doesn't happen any more, as once you buy a horse all of your characters have access to it, and riding lessons are now per character, not per horse. That brings us to:
• Riding lessons. This is still a viable gold sink, but it's also been degraded as a gold sink by the crown store, as people can simply buy riding lessons for crowns and increase their skill at a much more rapid pace that way. Aside from that it's a one-time gold sink (well, technically a 180-time gold sink). Once a character has maxed-out their riding skills, you never ever spend gold on it again unless you start doing it on another character.
• Teleportation fees. If it wasn't so easy to avoid paying to port to a wayshrine this would be a viable gold sink. Considering that it's very rare to ever be somewhere where it's a pain to get to the nearest wayshrine, and considering that you can port to a friend or guildie for free, most people simply don't end up using gold to port. I know I never do.
• Guild traders. Bidding on guild traders is one of the few truly viable gold sinks in the game. A guild trader in a good location attracts a lot of competing bids, so they can remove a lot of gold from the economy.
• Repair costs. Repair costs used to be much much higher, such that often you'd spend a couple of hours doing PVE and at the end of it your repair costs would be higher than the amount of gold you earned questing/killing mobs/whatever. That's no longer the case, and it's now pretty much guaranteed that you'll earn significantly more than your repair costs no matter what activity you're doing (OK, OK, that doesn't hold true with vMA), so between that and getting repair kits from writs (if you do writs) and/or crown store repair kits, repair costs have been largely degraded as a viable gold sink.
• Bag/bank space increases. These are a totally viable gold sink, but they're a one-and-done gold sink. Once you're done maxing them out, you never spend gold on them again.
• Housing. It's not here quite yet, but it's possibly the biggest best gold sink this game has ever seen. The problem with it as a gold sink, of course, is that not all of the player base is interested in housing (although I sure am, and I know a lot of my friends really are), and of those who are interested in it, a lot will be buying with crowns instead of gold.
• Guild store listing fees. These are still a marginally viable gold sink, but the fees are so negligible that they don't help much in removing gold from the economy.
• Mail fees for mailing items. These are also still a marginally viable gold sink, but the fees are so negligible that they don't help much in removing gold from the economy unless...

Vigarr wrote: »

I was drunk and messing around sending someone an item, requesting 1 million gold...the postage cost me half my gold before I realized it would.

Well, geez, maybe just don't mess around like that when you're drunk. Or if you do, make sure to put 100% of the blame for it on yourself.

Zvorgin

Vigarr wrote: »

KaiVox22 wrote: »

Vigarr wrote: »

gold sink

You answered your own question

True but not everybody has gold to sink, especially new players. This discourages travel and trade for people new to the game.

New players are encouraged to find way shrines because it pushes world exploration. I see no problem with this and 146 for fast travel is extremely cheap, even for new players.

I didn't join a trading guild until I was well into the CP levels and I had plenty from just selling loot.

Cpt_Teemo

Nestor wrote: »

You can travel for free to anywhere in the game if you are in a Guild or have Friends or are in a Group.

^ Join 5 guilds, problem solved even if its just a wayshrine that your not getting to atleast you can teleport to anyone and it lets you off at the nearest wayshrine, then you just take that one to your destination

Lord-Otto

Sorry, but wasn't BoP the biggest gold inflation of all time?
I remember the most expensive staff, Dylora's to be around half a million at max. Spinner's these days easily overcomes that, and it's arguably more common.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

In an artificial economy such as this one, there needs to be a way to remove gold from the game, aka, a gold sink. There are countless ways gold is introduced into the game, quest rewards, undaunted loot, killing mobs. If you dont have balance, you get inflation. It's the same thing that happens when a country just starts printing currency. It get's devalued very quickly.

People often confuse buying goods from other players with a gold sink, but it is not. If I buy something from you, the total gold in ESO remains the same. Only true gold sinks, repairs, fast travel, guild traders, the vendors, feeding horses, etc. actually combat the inflation and remove gold out of the game.

Hopefully, housing will act as a much needed gold sink. There is currently more money coming in than going out, which is a big reason we are seeing prices on commodities (gold mats, potions, etc.) continue to rise.

JKorr

Vigarr wrote: »

The point that I'm pointing out is that it's pointless. Gold to repair items and the like makes sense but not taxes to imaginary collectors just because it gives you something to waste gold on.
The postage hit me hard one night. I was drunk and messing around sending someone an item, requesting 1 million gold...the postage cost me half my gold before I realized it would.

Nestor wrote: »

You can travel for free to anywhere in the game if you are in a Guild or have Friends or are in a Group.

How many times have you traveled to a guild member hoping they were in Rawl'Kha, Wayrest or Mournhold only to arrive at a wasyshrine somewhere in the middle of nowhere?

um...you arrive at a wayshrine, that will cost you nothing to use to travel to the place you want to get to? This is a problem? If you port to someone in Reaper's March, and have no wayshrines marked on your map, you have to walk or ride there just like you would if you went there by cart or navigator.

In case you didn't know, if you look at the guild roster, you can see where someone is located. If they aren't in the city you want, don't port to them. Or port and know you'll have to travel.