"Gold Sink" has meaning and you aren't using it correctly

Sergykid

you know, you don't have to actually use the outfit system. I am not, and not because i don't have gold for it, but because i like the dyed costume more. So gold is not forced into it. But in case with legendary materials, it is, because you need to upgrade your gear to become stronger.

Recremen wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Gold mats prices low from bots not gold sinks.

Implying bots are trading on the official market. 9_9 Gold sellers will sell mats directly same as gold, not take risks like going through traders.

and what do u think farm bots do with the mats? destroy them? they eventually reach into a human player which trade in the official market.

Recremen

Sergykid wrote: »

you know, you don't have to actually use the outfit system. I am not, and not because i don't have gold for it, but because i like the dyed costume more. So gold is not forced into it. But in case with legendary materials, it is, because you need to upgrade your gear to become stronger.

Recremen wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Gold mats prices low from bots not gold sinks.

Implying bots are trading on the official market. 9_9 Gold sellers will sell mats directly same as gold, not take risks like going through traders.

and what do u think farm bots do with the mats? destroy them? they eventually reach into a human player which trade in the official market.

Oh I don't have to use the outfit system, the one I've personally advocated for years to get? How about instead of giving up like a chump I continue to advocate for improvements that I believe are right for the game? I personally like that idea better. Don't act like criticism is off limits.

Farm bots are way more likely to be giving materials directly to the players who purchased them using real-world currency. Unless you think farm bots are being used to make in-game gold instead of real-world money, in which case... why do you think that? They are obviously tools of the gold sellers. At no point is it necessary to put such material up on guild traders. What would be the point? You can't ask Heat-On-Scales in Rawl'kha if she takes debit or credit, you can only pay with gold. That kind of defeats the purpose of a gold seller.

red_emu

STEVIL

Recremen wrote: »

You know how you can tell when a gold sink isn't working? When you add one despite the player market being stable/suffering from deflation. We call that an unnecessary burden. So which is the new outfit system? Well let's look at the price of goods on the player market to find out!

But, to me there is a huge difference here - this is cosmetic and optional.

Gold sinks that are there to influence in/deflation issues are ones that are more or less taxes - mandatory or that at least have an ongoing draw on power.

The cosmetic side is just fluff that folks can choose to play with or not with excess cash. its not that folks are gonna hold off on either of these three golding purchases in order to get the dyes changed?

So this new cosmetic system for outfits is just an optional part of the game that you can now play or avoid and it mostly allows more in-game options to the costumes you always could by with crowns anyway.

Someone giving you the ability to do something you could not before is not a burden... someone forcing you to do something you have not done before *may* be a burden but this is not that.

xaraan

Linaleah wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

Gold sinks take gold out of the market, not just move it from one player to another. True Gold sinks are like the outfit system, buying guild traders, etc.

outfit system takes gold out of the market. housing with luxury and achievement vendors not to mention house costs - take gold out of the market. trading takes some gold of out the market by the way of listing and sale fees (only half the sales tax goes to trading guild, the rest is taken out of the game as are listing fees, which btw, are not refunded if you cancel a listing or it expires and you relist it).

if we didn't have enough gold sinks, trading would show inflation of prices on traded goods. you can see it in pretty much every game that uses trading of some sort. so tracking price changes of goods exchanged between the players is a good way to judge whether there is significantly more gold created vs taken out of the game.

You didn't say anything that disagreed with what I said. So I guess this thread isn't complaining about outfitting system and everyone is in agreement the gold sinks that are with us working well.

this thread is stating that additional gold sink was NOT needed and is instead and unnecessary burden. it is complaining about costs of outfit system being prohibitive in a game where gold is already not exactly overabundant.

It's very arguably needed. I'm not even doing anything to actively earn extra gold and my gold just keeps going up without extra effort. Another gold sink didn't hurt.

Jhalin

Wrathmane wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

]

No, there are definitely a countable number of people sitting on literally millions of gold. It is, additionally, a very small number.

Oh..... you mean its like a reflection of the real world..... where 1% of the population hold 99% of the worlds wealth?

You just made their point for them. We don't start putting hundred-dollar taxes on common household necessities to try to make the 1% less rich, because it doesn't do anything to the rich, and makes the rest of us go broke. That's the Outfit system in a nutshell.

ZOS has proven they don't understand how statistics work. They see an average amount of gold across the player base, and decide all their pricing off of that, regardless of how wealth in the game is actually distributed.

Recremen

STEVIL wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

You know how you can tell when a gold sink isn't working? When you add one despite the player market being stable/suffering from deflation. We call that an unnecessary burden. So which is the new outfit system? Well let's look at the price of goods on the player market to find out!

But, to me there is a huge difference here - this is cosmetic and optional.

Gold sinks that are there to influence in/deflation issues are ones that are more or less taxes - mandatory or that at least have an ongoing draw on power.

The cosmetic side is just fluff that folks can choose to play with or not with excess cash. its not that folks are gonna hold off on either of these three golding purchases in order to get the dyes changed?

So this new cosmetic system for outfits is just an optional part of the game that you can now play or avoid and it mostly allows more in-game options to the costumes you always could by with crowns anyway.

Someone giving you the ability to do something you could not before is not a burden... someone forcing you to do something you have not done before *may* be a burden but this is not that.

Combat is optional too. Literally everything in the game is optional. The argument that something is cometic doesn't hold weight in a game where even the PvPers are having magickal cat barbie sessions once things wind down for the night.

And it really is an unnecessary burden. One of the main reasons for doing the outfit system at all was to make motifs have real value in the game. Previously they were massively underutilized because of certain design decisions and the preference for dropped gear in most builds. Now we can use them for the outfitting, which is great, but at an enormous per-use cost that diverges massively from the monetization strategy for every other cosmetic system in the game. If there were no cost then we could describe the system as helping the value of motifs finally catch up to the difficulty or expense in acquiring them. Instead, it's better described as a prohibitively expensive double-dipping money siphon.

Recremen

xaraan wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

Gold sinks take gold out of the market, not just move it from one player to another. True Gold sinks are like the outfit system, buying guild traders, etc.

outfit system takes gold out of the market. housing with luxury and achievement vendors not to mention house costs - take gold out of the market. trading takes some gold of out the market by the way of listing and sale fees (only half the sales tax goes to trading guild, the rest is taken out of the game as are listing fees, which btw, are not refunded if you cancel a listing or it expires and you relist it).

if we didn't have enough gold sinks, trading would show inflation of prices on traded goods. you can see it in pretty much every game that uses trading of some sort. so tracking price changes of goods exchanged between the players is a good way to judge whether there is significantly more gold created vs taken out of the game.

You didn't say anything that disagreed with what I said. So I guess this thread isn't complaining about outfitting system and everyone is in agreement the gold sinks that are with us working well.

this thread is stating that additional gold sink was NOT needed and is instead and unnecessary burden. it is complaining about costs of outfit system being prohibitive in a game where gold is already not exactly overabundant.

It's very arguably needed. I'm not even doing anything to actively earn extra gold and my gold just keeps going up without extra effort. Another gold sink didn't hurt.

Your experience is obviously not consistent with the general population. Maybe you're just not buying things enough. If you want to argue that it's needed, come back with some hard numbers from a wide sample, not your personal anecdotes.

NordSwordnBoard

Recremen wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Gold mats prices low from bots not gold sinks.

Implying bots are trading on the official market. 9_9 Gold sellers will sell mats directly same as gold, not take risks like going through traders.

Recremen wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

you know, you don't have to actually use the outfit system. I am not, and not because i don't have gold for it, but because i like the dyed costume more. So gold is not forced into it. But in case with legendary materials, it is, because you need to upgrade your gear to become stronger.

Recremen wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Gold mats prices low from bots not gold sinks.

Implying bots are trading on the official market. 9_9 Gold sellers will sell mats directly same as gold, not take risks like going through traders.

and what do u think farm bots do with the mats? destroy them? they eventually reach into a human player which trade in the official market.

Oh I don't have to use the outfit system, the one I've personally advocated for years to get? How about instead of giving up like a chump I continue to advocate for improvements that I believe are right for the game? I personally like that idea better. Don't act like criticism is off limits.

Farm bots are way more likely to be giving materials directly to the players who purchased them using real-world currency. Unless you think farm bots are being used to make in-game gold instead of real-world money, in which case... why do you think that? They are obviously tools of the gold sellers. At no point is it necessary to put such material up on guild traders. What would be the point? You can't ask Heat-On-Scales in Rawl'kha if she takes debit or credit, you can only pay with gold. That kind of defeats the purpose of a gold seller.

1 Not implying they sell directly in traders, implying they impact the entire market. After a bit of laundering, bot farmed gold and goods can end up anywhere in the economy.

2 Are you suggesting that a player who buys mats from a 3rd party botter with real money keeps them completely out of the economy? That's naive.

josiahva

Recremen wrote: »

As some of you know, gold sinks are an important part of any MMO economy to help battle inflation on the player market. Inflation is bad because new and casual players are not able to keep up with the price increases and are shut out from an important aspect of gameplay. The way gold sinks accomplish this is by permanently taking gold out of the market, such as via in-game vendors. A good example of gold sinks in ESO are Mount Training from stablemasters, Bag and Bank Space upgrades, Houses, gear repair bills, and the Luxury/Home Goods/Achievement furnishers. You can tell that gold sinks are working when prices on the player market remain stable.

You know how you can tell when a gold sink isn't working? When you add one despite the player market being stable/suffering from deflation. We call that an unnecessary burden. So which is the new outfit system? Well let's look at the price of goods on the player market to find out!





Oh look, all three of the major goods are distributed within an extremely tight and stable range! And we call that... a stable market! So if you've been following along, how do you think our existing gold sinks have been performing? That's right, they are JUST FINE AS IS! Which makes the outfit gold cost... correct, and UNNECESSARY BURDEN! Good job, gold stars all around!! So the next time someone says that this game "needs more gold sinks", be sure to ask them what market analysis they've done to determine that! Because chances are they're full of ***.

Deflation is not always a bad thing...its a bad thing for those who borrow money maybe, but I for one enjoy it when things cost LESS. Economists like to say that deflation makes consumers afraid to buy because the price might be lower tomorrow...but its simply not true. People buy things when they want or need them, not because they are watching deflation numbers. I NEED to eat, so I buy food today, regardless of whether its cheaper tomorrow. I WANT to buy a new car....the fact that it "might" be cheaper tomorrow is not going to stop me from buying something I WANT today. The real economy(and the in-game economy) could use a little deflation. In the real world the only thing deflation hurts is exports and money-borrowers(neither of which exist in-game)