Casual Player Enfranchisement through Guild Merchant Deflation

isailandshootub17_ESO

I'm a casual player. Every few months I stop in to play for a week or so. I usually end up spending a lot of time researching the new flavor-of-the-month builds, and then I attempt to employ it. Farming the gear is time consuming. And time is money. And that's why you're here! Am I right? You got all excited when you saw "Enfranchisement"!

So, instead of giving you my economic philosophy I will merely attempt to explain a simple mechanic which will make things better for most players in terms of a gold/gear to time ratio.

Problem: Using guild merchants to make gold on your trades is tremendously more effective than anything else in the game. If you're not familiar with this please look into it, as you're missing out on tons of gold. But why is this a problem? Lots of gold is great, right? Perhaps not in this case:

1) A minority of players who devote much more time into the game than others spend a lot of time with trading, and they make literally millions of gold. 2) The tremendous comparative wealth has a disproportionate effect on the most powerful items for any given patch. 3) Therefore the prices on these items become commensurately expensive (i.e. hundreds of thousands of gold in some cases). 4) This puts the best items out of the reach for the common player unless they are willing to spend weeks farming the appropriate gear unless they too decide to leave their questing/pvp/grinding to become a master Guild Merchant Trader.

Desired effect: Increase the value of game elements outside of Merchant trading. If we could find some way to make the more fun elements of the game, such as questing and PvP (dare I say) nearly as lucrative as merchant trading, the cost of items will be greatly deflated

Proposed Solution: Sadly, despite deep thought and deconstruction of Adam Smith, I'm afraid the solution is drastic. Unfortunately, the player trading system has become so efficient for some that it has essentially broken the economy for casual players (or even hardcore players if they don't want to spend the time to trade). My first thought is to do away, in some respect, with randomized loot. If a desired set or item could be acquired through a direct quest, that would be great. It would be even better if it could be incorporated into all existing quests.

There are many ways this could be done. For example. Imagine a clever daedra finds a niche in collecting rare armaments (i.e. set items). He carries almost every set item in game, all selectable through his trade menu. But he doesn't care for gold. Instead he desires a special form of life essence. He gives you a gem or something else whereby every enemy you kill grants life-force points to the object, which can be traded for his items (like soul gems, but automatic without need to aquire the gems).

Or you could have a faction merchant who awards glory points for quests completed to trade for these items. Or there could be a nefarious merchant who will accept infamy points for bad deeds, thieving, and dark brotherhood contracts. Anything. I suppose there is already something like this in Cyrodiil for certain PvP sets. But I'm talking comprehensive with even less chance.

The key here is that with a moderate amount of play, someone can receive the items they desire without having to engage with the Guild Merchant traders (which are too inflated for them). Furthermore, you can level and quest with your friends even though you both want something different.

What will this mean for Guild Merchants? Will it do away with the need for them? I certainly hope not! It seems that this would simply stabilize the value of set items and move the Guild Merchant market from such items to mats and crafted goods, which in turn enfranchises crafters.

So there you have it; my humble economic musings.

Back to Tamriel for me, before the next patch makes my nearly completed character non-competitive....

WhiteNoiseMaker

What would happen is that the already established 'big-guys' would simply get friends and minions to farm those essences, and then sell the essences at inflated prices. The cycle would continue.

AuldWolf

A treatise on why casuals never use guild merchants.

I agree, too. It's absolutely ridiculous. This is what I was worried about happening to the main game when they were clamouring for difficulty to be tuned to them. They have no job, no life responsibilities, and no one they care about to spend time with so they spend every free moment playing an online game. ZOS doesn't realise that these people a.) exist; and b.) are a minority who're made so effective simply by their excessive free time and ability to ignore monotony through addiction.

This isn't a large group of people, as I've always pointed out. ZOS already has looked at their data and saw that only a very tiny per centage of the game's players have even broken a million gold. The vast, vast majority (even of long time players) have not. Yet due to the lack of controls on the economy to stop this inflation from occurring, the economy is tailored purely towards those who have around at least a million gold as a base amount. This is why very, very, very few people actually bother using guild traders in the first place.

And on the rare chance something goes up on a guild trader for cheap, it's then bought and resold at a stupid price which is out of our budget. It has nothing to do with the lack of an auction house, but simply that the entire trade economy is focused entirely around those with the most money, rather than the largest amount of players. For this reason, the guild trader system is inaccessible to everyone except thosse who're rich in-game. This isn't something you want in a video game.

How I'd deal with this:

1.) Set a cap on what price can be given to an item, 12x over what a vendor would pay for it, for example;
2.) Use an algorithm to have the cap lower on guilds who have too much money, down to a minimum of 4x, giving other guilds a chance to catch up;
3.) If you buy an item it becomes bound in a way where it can't be resold, so if you buy it stays with you, no matter what;
4.) Make resource nodes instanced to the player to stop people from hoarding that way;
5.) Make nirnhoned drop the same way that all other traits do.

This would help to fix the economy and make it fair for everyone. Right now, casual players just don't bother with guild traders except in very rare instances. Look at your data, ZOS, see for yourself.

isailandshootub17_ESO

WhiteNoiseMaker wrote: »

What would happen is that the already established 'big-guys' would simply get friends and minions to farm those essences, and then sell the essences at inflated prices. The cycle would continue.

I failed to mention, the essences are non tradeable. Thanks for clarifying that. They are player specific. Good point, otherwise.

isailandshootub17_ESO

AuldWolf wrote: »

A treatise on why casuals never use guild merchants.

3.) If you buy an item it becomes bound in a way where it can't be resold, so if you buy it stays with you, no matter what;
4.) Make resource nodes instanced to the player to stop people from hoarding that way;

#3 alone would fix the inflation issue. Well done.

#4 just sounds awesome to a casual player like myself. ~10 hours per week for 5 or 6 weeks out of the year.

ArchMikem

And that's why you're here! Am I right? You got all excited when you saw "Enfranchisement"!

Will admit. Don't know what enfranchisement means.

bellatrixed

Nothing is broken for casual players.

It is incredibly easy to make gold in this game if you try even a *little*. If you are unwilling to try even a little you must not really want whatever you're grinding gold for.

Grinding gold to buy nice stuff is required in every single MMO ever... and ESO is a lot more forgiving than most.

Kawall

bellatrixed wrote: »

Nothing is broken for casual players.

It is incredibly easy to make gold in this game if you try even a *little*. If you are unwilling to try even a little you must not really want whatever you're grinding gold for.

Grinding gold to buy nice stuff is required in every single MMO ever... and ESO is a lot more forgiving than most.

You can make 75k - 100k a week by just selling battle master chests you get from daily battlegrounds.

Linaleah

I feel like you are missing a step here. the only reason selling on guild traders is effective is becasue..... drumroll... people, players are buying the stuff that is listed. it doesn't just magically sell to vendors or something like you seem to imagine. it sells to PEOPLE.

so what does that mean? it means that items have to be at a price that they will sell at. if they are listed too high,other players won't buy them. and seller doesn't make the gold. so what does THAT mean? well.. it means that prices actualy DECREASE rather increase with time, especially on things that can be continuously farmed. more people farm, more people compete for sales - prices go DOWN. the only exception to this paradigm are items that have limited time availability. holiday specific recipes, lux furniture. since you can only get them once a year, price inbetween goes up. but anything you can farm daily? price goes down.

last but not least. if you don't want to farm gear - that's fine! i'm not the biggest fan of gear grind either. that said... the only reason selling at traders is so effective is because there are a lot of people who are generating gold that they can be spending, just from selling. see... trading doesn't create gold. it shifts most of it between players, taking some out of economy. taking a lot out actualy, between listing fees, (which are not the same as guild tax - listing fees are removed from the game completely, while tax goes to the guild bank - its usually 50/50 of the total sale fee) and guild trader bids (large amounts of gold are taken out of the game weekly - primary reason why inflation in this game is kept to a minimum) so.. if trading shifts gold around or removes it.. then where is all this gold people are buying stuff with coming from?

completing quests, both one time and daily and vendoring trash rewards, as well as random drops you get just from killing some mobs on the way to completing your quests. stealing and fencing stolen loot. playing the game. which is something even the most casual player can do!

P.S. another thing about casual players is that they are often primary buyers of crafting mats. why? becasue casual gamers don't have the time it takes to farm large chunks of mats! believe it or not, it takes a lot less time to farm up gold needed to buy a stack of refined rubedite than it does to farm aforementioned rubedite. so making materials unsellable will actualy HURT casual players, not help them. becasue now they have to spend their limited game time farming if they want to craft. which means they get even less time to actualy play!

also. setting a cap on what item can sell for - will not help either. the reason why some items are particularly expensive is becasue they are difficult and time consuming to farm. setting a 12 times the vendor price cap for something like a purple Alinor pattern that can take WEEKS of daily farming to get? will just discourage people from farming them for sale, which measn guess what? you yourself are going to have to farm that pattern for WEEKS and possibly never see it anyways, if you want to use it, rather then spend a few hours to farm the gold needed to buy it.

abigfishy

Kawall wrote: »

bellatrixed wrote: »

Nothing is broken for casual players.

It is incredibly easy to make gold in this game if you try even a *little*. If you are unwilling to try even a little you must not really want whatever you're grinding gold for.

Grinding gold to buy nice stuff is required in every single MMO ever... and ESO is a lot more forgiving than most.

You can make 75k - 100k a week by just selling battle master chests you get from daily battlegrounds.

What the heck is this thing you get from daily battlegrounds that is worth 75-100K? All I get is a worthless piece of gear I list at the guild trader for 300 gold which doesn't sell for 30 days and then I deconstruct it for materials.

doctor_refuel

I agree that other moneymaking methods, especially PVP, could be boosted. However, you can get rich pretty easily without the excessive use of guild traders just by stealing. Find a good route, destroy white items and sell only green and above and you can make something like 40k per day in little over an hour (haven't been stealing for a while and going off memory).

But I don't think the word inflation or deflation is used correctly in this thread or actually very much ingame. Inflation isn't the growth of money supply in economy. It is the growth of overall price level, ie, your money buys you less stuff as time goes on (as witnessed in real life), which is easiest measured by constructing a general consumer's basket in time period 1 and time period 2 and measuring, how much their cost differs.

I would place things of general consumption like gold tempers, flowers / potions, glyphs and whatnot in such basket. And what we can see then is actually a deflation most of the time, as time goes on, this basket gets cheaper and cheaper and your gold buys you more stuff basically, with the occasional price spike, but generally all prices seem to be going down. I haven't been playing at that time, but I saw some older videos where the prices on flowers like corn flower or columbine were several times higher than what they are today. That's because the game's market has endless supply, limited demand and virtually perfect competition where everyone has access to the (almost) same information.

The luxury market is a little bit more volatile, depending on the current meta or new game additions, but again, prices are going down drastically as demand is satisfied and supply keeps growing. All prices on jewelrycrafting were several times higher a mere month ago. You used to be able to sell deconstructable jewelry as fast as you could list it in store. Not anymore. Motifs? The same, sped up by anniversary event, but they were dropping continually even before.

If you just found out about Mother's Sorrow and desperately need an inferno staff with the right trait, well, then there is the good old auction system. If you don't like the price, don't buy it and try to farm it. If there are enough people who don't want to buy it, sellers will have to drop price. In the meantime, more people will notice the good prices on MS staff and will think that they want their 300k as well, will start farming it and selling it which in turn will drop the prices again. lf you drop a MS staff not for sale, but for personal use, dont think of it as dropped MS staff, but in terms of gold at first. Someone might have bought it for 300k. You didn't, you found your own, you saved 300k. And money saved = money earned. If it took you two hours to farm it, compare it to other moneymaking methods you know. Can they get you 150k per hour?

If anything, this game needs even more open market, you should be able to sell almost everything in my opinion, maybe with the exception of trial gear which is often specifically tailored towards end game PVE and some other exceptional stuff. But there are a lot of dungeon sets usable in PVP for example and dungeons aren't that hard, it's no measure of skill to farm blue viper set for example. There is no reason why PVPers shouldn't be able to make money doing the thing they enjoy - playing PVP - and for said money buying stuff that will progress them in PVP.

So, OP, if there was higher money supply in economy after the implementation of your solutions, what we would most likely see is rising price level and therefore the actual inflation you are trying to battle. That's because the output of goods would not increase - increasing money in player's pockets means players would be momentarily able to afford more goods, their demand would go up. But the supply would not. Increasing gold rewards for whatever game aspect doesn't produce more corn flower, it doesn't produce more MS staffs, it only increases the demand for these things. Which in turn would increase the prices and lead to inflation - your money, whatever number you have on you, buys you less things. In Germany in 1920's people used to have billions of marks, there was even like 1 billion bank note or something ridiculous like that. But the people weren't super rich, they were actually super poor, even though they were transporting money in giant baskets, that's because one bread cost like 200 million marks : )

Lot of good set items already are rewarded for quests. Giving unlimited guaranteed good set drops from quests will completely dissolute the market, co you can omit the MS staff example from above, but for the rest of things it will still hold true. Here comes gameplay though and I don't think developers want us to have everything nice and easy and guaranteed. Gotta chase something.

And please, let Adam Smith have his rest, he was an 18th century political economist whose theories are obsolete as hell, if they were even correct at some point : )

WhiteNoiseMaker

There is however the clear cut examples of market manipulation that goes on.

For example, on NA PC finished Jute used to be commonly found a few months ago at the price of 7-9 gold apiece on average, sometimes even less. Then it suddenly spiked for no discernible reason to the price of 35-40 gold a unit. It stayed this way for two months, before gradually lowering now to the current price of 25 per unit. This is still remarkably higher than it was a mere season ago.,

Oko runes are another example of price manipulation on what used to be a trivially cheap rune. At least in this case, there's a partial reason in that writs have begun to make more use of Oko, but we're talking about price hikes over over 1000% to 2000% increase fro last year.

Just adding this in response to the suggestion that 'things in the basket get cheaper over time'. :-)

Pixel_Zealot

There isn't competition for the 'Master Traders.' My trading guild is currently in a great spot in Summerset, and I make 50 - 100k a week selling crafted items, motifs, trash etc.

Having said that, some prices are ridiculous 'cause the only way to compare prices in the game is to actually use TTC/MM or other add-ons, with that, if objects become less rare in the store, the price drops slowly. If the game was constructed in such a way as a Global (server) auction house, it would affect the market tremendously as rarity/frequency would have a stronger effect on price to stable it out quicker, at the end reaching the main objective to remove the ridiculous overpricing of some of these benign objects.

We've had numerous polls and several threads discussing this, and most people defending the current system are the die-hard Master Traders making millions monthly, as they're probably taking advantage of the current system. Scouring TTC for deals, buying them up and selling them for a profit.

The current system is made to be exploited as it is, causing the constant undesired effect on the economy. Changing the loot system wouldn't even temporarily fix it.

Peekachu99

The obvious solution is to do away with the current system altogether, but ZOS and established moguls are vehemently opposed to that for various reasons. A casual player can, however, now make millions of gold in a day simply by selling Crown Store items and circumvent that bs entirely. It’s not ideal, and you’re paying real world money, but it works.

Violynne

Linaleah wrote: »

if they are listed too high,other players won't buy them. and seller doesn't make the gold.

This has never been true, is not true, and will never be true. Do people not pay attention to the Crown Store at all?

Value is what causes sales, not price. The guild system in this game artificially increases the prices because sellers know there is always someone out there who will pay "any price" in order to acquire the item of high value to them.

This does not mean everyone has the same value, which is why sellers in non-popular stores, often sell their stuff at a lower price. The person has to find value in the actual booth, too.

This is why all the popular guilds are around major cities. Anyone truly going to run down a road in the middle of BFE just to check out one cart to see if there really is an item for 1000g less?

Of course not, which is how convenience also plays a part in the pricing.

People who acquire stuff they do not want will do this every time: "What's the selling price of this thing?"

Never once do they say to themselves "I should sell this at a reasonable price because I was broke once too."

especially on things that can be continuously farmed. more people farm, more people compete for sales - prices go DOWN.

Real world economics doesn't apply in this game. Prices don't come down just because the market is flooded. Instead, something worse happens: they're all sold at the same price.

Again, because sellers aren't caring about what it means to sell. They only care about receiving the best amount for that particular item at that particular time.

A true retail store would sell at a lower price because they know moving inventory generates revenue (and also depletes inventory more quickly). Without inventory, there is no store. To offset this, most people only sell what they *think* others are really interested in.

Again, look at the Crown Store. Notice how the items are prepared for those who *may* want them, not the entire audience playing the game.

Did you spot the price tag?

The players in this game does precisely the same thing as ZoS does.

the only reason selling at traders is so effective is because there are a lot of people who are generating gold that they can be spending, just from selling. see... trading doesn't create gold.

I cannot agree with this. The only reason selling through guilds is effective is because the game literally makes it easy to access the goods being sold through the kiosks.

I guarantee if those kiosks were removed from the game, prices and gold selling would plummet. At this point, the only way to sell would be spamming the chat (which already happens and it would get much, much worse) or selling to guild members, which would be horrendous.

Imagine for a second what would happen if ZoS made a slight change to the kiosk system in which anyone could sell at them (provided they win a bid).

Instead of just filtering through a guild's list, we'd have the option to filter through everyone selling at the kiosk list.

Prices would drop instantly, because those who do need the gold would cut the competition to move more inventory faster to achieve faster return in gold.

This is usually because sellers often have things they want to buy but cannot acquire it because "trade" in this game means "This gold staff is more valuable than your gold staff because I found it in a better cave."

Never once do people notice the in-game price of legendary staves are the same.

...as well as random drops you get just from killing some mobs on the way to completing your quests. stealing and fencing stolen loot. playing the game. which is something even the most casual player can do!

From my experience, to make gold without selling the fastest is in order of:
Daily Writs
If you don't have 8 alts, make them. Don't worry about leveling them up. That's not the point with them. If each character does the 6 daily writs, that's an easy 1k gold per character, per day.

It literally is the fastest way to earn gold in the shortest amount of time possible.
Tip: if you want these to go even faster, store several quantities of each of the food, drink, and potion/poisons the writs require. They cycle, so you can easily extract them from the bank instead of creating them each and every time. Doesn't work for enchanting. Not sure about the weapons/armor - that was just too much to store in the bank for me.

Thieving
Starting out, this is painfully slow because chests have to be manually unlocked. As Legerdemain is increased in skill, Lockpicking and Trafficking become best friends.
It takes me about 1.5 hours to max out my 140 daily allowance, which nets me 14k gold minimum (green only), but is around 26k gold average (some days are better than others, as it goes).

Questing
Snoresville - the worst possible way to earn gold. Quests barely payout 350 gold each and the items offered are worth more broken down for mats than they are at selling to vendors.

I have 2 million in my account, and that's after spending 1 million on houses and motifs (where the true gold sink is if you want to do those master writs).

Making gold in this game is laughably easy.

Keeping gold in this game is arguably the hardest skill to master.

zaria

WhiteNoiseMaker wrote: »

There is however the clear cut examples of market manipulation that goes on.

For example, on NA PC finished Jute used to be commonly found a few months ago at the price of 7-9 gold apiece on average, sometimes even less. Then it suddenly spiked for no discernible reason to the price of 35-40 gold a unit. It stayed this way for two months, before gradually lowering now to the current price of 25 per unit. This is still remarkably higher than it was a mere season ago.,

Oko runes are another example of price manipulation on what used to be a trivially cheap rune. At least in this case, there's a partial reason in that writs have begun to make more use of Oko, but we're talking about price hikes over over 1000% to 2000% increase fro last year.

Just adding this in response to the suggestion that 'things in the basket get cheaper over time'. :-)

Jute tend to be cheap, it only used for low level crafted gear and level 1 clothing crafting writs.
Also people with no cloth crafting skill or low level find lots of it.

However the anniversary event happened, here all did not of low level crafting writs on all their alts, no time to farm better to do dailes so you bought jute at any price.
This inflated the jute price a lot.

On the same time it was an major influx of motifs and blueprints so this price fell a lot.

Another effect is that gold is limited, if lots of players use lots of money on jewelry crafting its less money for other stuff who is less priority like motifs. so their price go down.

Feanor

AuldWolf wrote: »

A treatise on why casuals never use guild merchants.

I agree, too. It's absolutely ridiculous. This is what I was worried about happening to the main game when they were clamouring for difficulty to be tuned to them. They have no job, no life responsibilities, and no one they care about to spend time with so they spend every free moment playing an online game. ZOS doesn't realise that these people a.) exist; and b.) are a minority who're made so effective simply by their excessive free time and ability to ignore monotony through addiction.

This isn't a large group of people, as I've always pointed out. ZOS already has looked at their data and saw that only a very tiny per centage of the game's players have even broken a million gold. The vast, vast majority (even of long time players) have not. Yet due to the lack of controls on the economy to stop this inflation from occurring, the economy is tailored purely towards those who have around at least a million gold as a base amount. This is why very, very, very few people actually bother using guild traders in the first place.

And on the rare chance something goes up on a guild trader for cheap, it's then bought and resold at a stupid price which is out of our budget. It has nothing to do with the lack of an auction house, but simply that the entire trade economy is focused entirely around those with the most money, rather than the largest amount of players. For this reason, the guild trader system is inaccessible to everyone except thosse who're rich in-game. This isn't something you want in a video game.

How I'd deal with this:

1.) Set a cap on what price can be given to an item, 12x over what a vendor would pay for it, for example;
2.) Use an algorithm to have the cap lower on guilds who have too much money, down to a minimum of 4x, giving other guilds a chance to catch up;
3.) If you buy an item it becomes bound in a way where it can't be resold, so if you buy it stays with you, no matter what;
4.) Make resource nodes instanced to the player to stop people from hoarding that way;
5.) Make nirnhoned drop the same way that all other traits do.

This would help to fix the economy and make it fair for everyone. Right now, casual players just don't bother with guild traders except in very rare instances. Look at your data, ZOS, see for yourself.

The „no life“ card just isn’t an argument. There are plenty of players who live responsible social lives with a job and a partner/family and are still successful in the game.

In fact it’s the other way round - there are very few things left in the game that aren’t tailored to the player who spends a few hours on the game a week.

doctor_refuel

WhiteNoiseMaker wrote: »

There is however the clear cut examples of market manipulation that goes on.

For example, on NA PC finished Jute used to be commonly found a few months ago at the price of 7-9 gold apiece on average, sometimes even less. Then it suddenly spiked for no discernible reason to the price of 35-40 gold a unit. It stayed this way for two months, before gradually lowering now to the current price of 25 per unit. This is still remarkably higher than it was a mere season ago.,

Oko runes are another example of price manipulation on what used to be a trivially cheap rune. At least in this case, there's a partial reason in that writs have begun to make more use of Oko, but we're talking about price hikes over over 1000% to 2000% increase fro last year.

Just adding this in response to the suggestion that 'things in the basket get cheaper over time'. :-)

That's the occasional price rise I mentioned, which is usually followed by some action in game, tempering alloys were also briefly 7k and now they were 5,5k and week later barely above 5k. About Jute, it is used in daily writs for level 1 quality. The reason the price went up was because the demand went up with anniversary event when loads of people did daily writs for boxes with their non-crafters and had none in stock. Players maybe found out that doing level 1 writs is rewarding even without anniversary box, so the price stayed higher. It doesn't work like you (perhaps, maybe) imagine that few select people manipulate the entire market to buy from them for super high prices. If no one needs Jute, no one buys it. If it isn't economical for your customers to buy it, you don't make any profit. You can't force anyone to buy from you, its completely voluntary. If someone was able to manipulate the market to buy from him for whatever price, why would they stop at 25?

Maybe the players defending this system are not as rich as you think but are smart, understand the parameters upon which it is built and play with them and they aren't defending it, because they are somehow exploiting it making millions of gold, but because they are enjoying it and the relative freedom it brings. Global house would bring new system with new parameters and I bet that there would again be a certain small part of population who would understand it better than most and in turn use it better. And I reckon global house would be actually better exploitable for several reasons.

code65536

Uhhhhhh. It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Period.

Let's say there is a best-in-slot item. 1000 people want it. This item drops rarely. There are only 10 on the market. That means the price will be pushed high enough that it'll be too high and out of reach for 990 people. That's just the way it is and the way it has to be. Lower prices won't change the fact that there just aren't enough of the items out there.

Regardless of what the final price point ends up being, if there's only enough supply to satisfy 1%, then the price will naturally be out of reach for the 99%.

You then complain that this means that people will then need to spend weeks farming the item. Well, maybe that's why it's so expensive? It's expensive because if you buy the item, it means that you're paying someone else to "farm for weeks" for the item. You hate wasting weeks worth of game time farming an item instead of actually having fun--but everyone else does too, and if someone else is going to make that kind of sacrifice for you, then they will want to be compensated handsomely, no?

Ultimately, the problem isn't guild traders or prices or anything of that nonsense. They are merely a reflection of drop rates. Why does an item take weeks to farm? Why is there such a small supply of the item that it drives the prices up? The answer to both is the same: the drop rate of that item for whatever reason is very low. If you have an issue with that, maybe you should complain to ZOS about drop rates?

(And to be fair, before transmutation, the gear grind was so much worse than what it is now.)

NoTimeToWait

You started with a wrong assumption. You assume that traders make millions of gold and that puts other players at a disadvantage. But you are wrong about disadvantage, because most of the really successful in-game traders don't quite play the game the way other players do.

What I mean is that traders mostly play trading game and sometimes housing game or being a guild master game, which is very different from Cyro and PVE games other players have in ESO. Since we (traders) spend most of the time trading, we don't really influence other game aspects as much as you think.

TL; DR Traders don't bother themselves with inflating prices (and it's a hard thing to achieve). Most part of our spendings goes to decorative things like skins, motifs, furnishings. Sometimes we indulge ourselves with top tier PVE or PVP gear, but that kind of spending doesn't impact the market in the way you describe

NoTimeToWait

And one more thing. Don't be delusional that another system will make a difference. People who make millions of gold do it because they know how to use information they get. In these terms they exploit the information itself, not the system.

The problem where some players get millions of gold by exercising their knowledge will persist no matter what while there are players who get late on the train. So, smart traders will just use their opportunities to get profits by being faster, that's the market rule which can't be changed while any kind of market exists.

And I can assure you, traders usually meet any new rules and restrictions with eagerness. Why? Because it is an opportunity to make gold. So, the more complex the system, the more rules and restrictions it has, the more ways exist to make money from that complexity. Some comments here that propose a number of convoluted rules in the end play in favor of those who will use this complexity.

Kawall

Battlemaster rivyn's reward box. Right now they're 17k in PC EU. I always sell them.

NoTimeToWait

Just for example I will show how even a simple change that looks like it will really cut inflation is going to backfire.

AuldWolf wrote: »

A treatise on why casuals never use guild merchants.

3.) If you buy an item it becomes bound in a way where it can't be resold, so if you buy it stays with you, no matter what;

First of all, most of the in-game gold is made by trading in prime guilds (of course, I don't mean that gold is being produced, only that the highest profits are in prime guilds). Most of the time because these prime guilds have the best spot, traders in this kind of guild can sell their stuff at market value (which is highest reasonable price).

Reselling value of these listings is minimal. So, most of the time these items go to a final buyer and won't be reselled.
Therefore, the rule won't impact the profits for these items.

Now, if you can't buy things to resell them, most of the resellers won't even bother to do it. They will buy their things to resell directly from players. That means, that the backwater trading guilds will see even less movement of goods. They will sell less, and small traders will be less eager to participate in guild trading.

This will mean less things on sale because of 2 reasons:
- even less players will participate
- there will be less things to sell because buying items will render them untradable

This will also mean less people will buy things because often we buy something knowing that we can sell it if we don't need it. Without this opportunity, players will buy only NECESSARY things they will immediately use.

Two previous statements effectively reduce the liquidity of many items, which in the end will make them rise in price. Considerably.

And I even haven't started to consider how to exploit these new restrictions, because I already see, that many things will go up in price and since many of my own goods I produce myself, I will see tremendous rise in profits.

isailandshootub17_ESO

Point 3 would fix the problem straightway. Well done.

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Just for example I will show how even a simple change that looks like it will really cut inflation is going to backfire.

AuldWolf wrote: »

A treatise on why casuals never use guild merchants.

3.) If you buy an item it becomes bound in a way where it can't be resold, so if you buy it stays with you, no matter what;

First of all, most of the in-game gold is made by trading in prime guilds (of course, I don't mean that gold is being produced, only that the highest profits are in prime guilds). Most of the time because these prime guilds have the best spot, traders in this kind of guild can sell their stuff at market value (which is highest reasonable price).

Reselling value of these listings is minimal. So, most of the time these items go to a final buyer and won't be reselled.
Therefore, the rule won't impact the profits for these items.

Now, if you can't buy things to resell them, most of the resellers won't even bother to do it. They will buy their things to resell directly from players. That means, that the backwater trading guilds will see even less movement of goods. They will sell less, and small traders will be less eager to participate in guild trading.

This will mean less things on sale because of 2 reasons:
- even less players will participate
- there will be less things to sell because buying items will render them untradable

This will also mean less people will buy things because often we buy something knowing that we can sell it if we don't need it. Without this opportunity, players will buy only NECESSARY things they will immediately use.

Two previous statements effectively reduce the liquidity of many items, which in the end will make them rise in price. Considerably.

And I even haven't started to consider how to exploit these new restrictions, because I already see, that many things will go up in price and since many of my own goods I produce myself, I will see tremendous rise in profits.

Wow, yeah, some good points here. The binding of set items which are purchased does fix the inflation of those goods through the Guild Merchant, but yes, it will significantly diminish the actual fun element of finding a nice item that you don't need and its profitability. I'm not certain it is clear that less players will participate, however. We would find that any given set item will now only be traded once might open the market for other retailers, and more items would be sold over time, perhaps.

But still, the OP didn't come with that recommendation. And could be employed simply to the balance of the economic system. You know, making money through Guild Merchant is like MagSorc, Questing is a less effective build, and PvP even less.

isailandshootub17_ESO

doctor_refuel wrote: »

I agree that other moneymaking methods, especially PVP, could be boosted. However, you can get rich pretty easily without the excessive use of guild traders just by stealing. Find a good route, destroy white items and sell only green and above and you can make something like 40k per day in little over an hour (haven't been stealing for a while and going off memory).


So, OP, if there was higher money supply in economy after the implementation of your solutions, what we would most likely see is rising price level and therefore the actual inflation you are trying to battle. That's because the output of goods would not increase - increasing money in player's pockets means players would be momentarily able to afford more goods, their demand would go up. But the supply would not. Increasing gold rewards for whatever game aspect doesn't produce more corn flower, it doesn't produce more MS staffs, it only increases the demand for these things. Which in turn would increase the prices and lead to inflation - your money, whatever number you have on you, buys you less things. In Germany in 1920's people used to have billions of marks, there was even like 1 billion bank note or something ridiculous like that. But the people weren't super rich, they were actually super poor, even though they were transporting money in giant baskets, that's because one bread cost like 200 million marks : )

And please, let Adam Smith have his rest, he was an 18th century political economist whose theories are obsolete as hell, if they were even correct at some point : )

Thanks for the interaction, I think you missed part of my tedious and poorly written OP. You mention above that inflation would increase in my system due to their being no new goods, only new means of purchasing goods of more people. That might be true if there were no new goods, but I described a system in which there would be virtually unlimited goods purchased directly through a special merchant. The new *currency* could only be used to purchase through this merchant.

But I'm uncertain about your comment concerning Adam Smith. Is there a system outside of his economy of liberty (capitalism) that has produced more freedoms in the world? Perhaps there were a few good monarchs in history who did well at regulating theirs, but surely capitalism (and the economy of Western Civilization) isn't "obsolete as hell". Which reminds me... When did Hell become obsolete? We'd have to think pretty highly of ourselves to adopt that position

griffkhalifa

isailandshootub17_ESO wrote: »

I'm a casual player. Every few months I stop in to play for a week or so. I usually end up spending a lot of time researching the new flavor-of-the-month builds, and then I attempt to employ it. Farming the gear is time consuming. And time is money. And that's why you're here! Am I right? You got all excited when you saw "Enfranchisement"!

So, instead of giving you my economic philosophy I will merely attempt to explain a simple mechanic which will make things better for most players in terms of a gold/gear to time ratio.

Problem: Using guild merchants to make gold on your trades is tremendously more effective than anything else in the game. If you're not familiar with this please look into it, as you're missing out on tons of gold. But why is this a problem? Lots of gold is great, right? Perhaps not in this case:

1) A minority of players who devote much more time into the game than others spend a lot of time with trading, and they make literally millions of gold. 2) The tremendous comparative wealth has a disproportionate effect on the most powerful items for any given patch. 3) Therefore the prices on these items become commensurately expensive (i.e. hundreds of thousands of gold in some cases). 4) This puts the best items out of the reach for the common player unless they are willing to spend weeks farming the appropriate gear unless they too decide to leave their questing/pvp/grinding to become a master Guild Merchant Trader.

Desired effect: Increase the value of game elements outside of Merchant trading. If we could find some way to make the more fun elements of the game, such as questing and PvP (dare I say) nearly as lucrative as merchant trading, the cost of items will be greatly deflated

Proposed Solution: Sadly, despite deep thought and deconstruction of Adam Smith, I'm afraid the solution is drastic. Unfortunately, the player trading system has become so efficient for some that it has essentially broken the economy for casual players (or even hardcore players if they don't want to spend the time to trade). My first thought is to do away, in some respect, with randomized loot. If a desired set or item could be acquired through a direct quest, that would be great. It would be even better if it could be incorporated into all existing quests.

There are many ways this could be done. For example. Imagine a clever daedra finds a niche in collecting rare armaments (i.e. set items). He carries almost every set item in game, all selectable through his trade menu. But he doesn't care for gold. Instead he desires a special form of life essence. He gives you a gem or something else whereby every enemy you kill grants life-force points to the object, which can be traded for his items (like soul gems, but automatic without need to aquire the gems).

Or you could have a faction merchant who awards glory points for quests completed to trade for these items. Or there could be a nefarious merchant who will accept infamy points for bad deeds, thieving, and dark brotherhood contracts. Anything. I suppose there is already something like this in Cyrodiil for certain PvP sets. But I'm talking comprehensive with even less chance.

The key here is that with a moderate amount of play, someone can receive the items they desire without having to engage with the Guild Merchant traders (which are too inflated for them). Furthermore, you can level and quest with your friends even though you both want something different.

What will this mean for Guild Merchants? Will it do away with the need for them? I certainly hope not! It seems that this would simply stabilize the value of set items and move the Guild Merchant market from such items to mats and crafted goods, which in turn enfranchises crafters.

So there you have it; my humble economic musings.

Back to Tamriel for me, before the next patch makes my nearly completed character non-competitive....

I admittedly didn't read through your entire post...but essentially you're saying casual players should have easier access to items that dedicated, hardcore players have. If you want those items you need to play more...simple as that. If they aren't worth it to you to play more then they aren't worth it.

Dedicated players need to be rewarded for playing a lot. Making those items easier to obtain decreases incentive to play a lot and those players are keeping the game alive...not you, who logs in infrequently.

Odnoc

Kawall wrote: »

bellatrixed wrote: »

Nothing is broken for casual players.

It is incredibly easy to make gold in this game if you try even a *little*. If you are unwilling to try even a little you must not really want whatever you're grinding gold for.

Grinding gold to buy nice stuff is required in every single MMO ever... and ESO is a lot more forgiving than most.

You can make 75k - 100k a week by just selling battle master chests you get from daily battlegrounds.

What exactly are you selling from battlegrounds that brings in that much? I'm lucky if I can get anything that goes above 1000.

Feanor

Odnoc wrote: »

Kawall wrote: »

bellatrixed wrote: »

Nothing is broken for casual players.

It is incredibly easy to make gold in this game if you try even a *little*. If you are unwilling to try even a little you must not really want whatever you're grinding gold for.

Grinding gold to buy nice stuff is required in every single MMO ever... and ESO is a lot more forgiving than most.

You can make 75k - 100k a week by just selling battle master chests you get from daily battlegrounds.

What exactly are you selling from battlegrounds that brings in that much? I'm lucky if I can get anything that goes above 1000.

Selling the chests was a bug that has been fixed in a recent update.

NoTimeToWait

isailandshootub17_ESO wrote: »

Wow, yeah, some good points here. The binding of set items which are purchased does fix the inflation of those goods through the Guild Merchant, but yes, it will significantly diminish the actual fun element of finding a nice item that you don't need and its profitability. I'm not certain it is clear that less players will participate, however. We would find that any given set item will now only be traded once might open the market for other retailers, and more items would be sold over time, perhaps.

But still, the OP didn't come with that recommendation. And could be employed simply to the balance of the economic system. You know, making money through Guild Merchant is like MagSorc, Questing is a less effective build, and PvP even less.

You see, much less players participating will not happen at once. Market changes are incremental. And many drastic changes have positive feedback, which means that small things reinforce each other to become bigger. Like, at first change in liquidity won't be noticible. Say, resellers make 20% sales for backwater guilds. Now, 20% profits for smaller traders is gone. This 20% loss won't be spread evenly, some small traders will get hit lesser, say 5% loss of profits, some will get hit harder - like 35-40% profits lost.
Some of those, who were hit harder, will leave trading. Even if we consider, that there will be replacement for them, there are still small negatives which will keep increasing (like a bit less trading items will result in that other players will be less eager to check backwater guilds, because of lesser chances of finding items there, which will reduce profits for them a bit again, which will result in some traders leaving small trading guilds and so on) where at some point these incremental changes will become noticable.

Of course, this is not necessary what happens. But having multiple small negative processes working at once will result in total market value reduction which results in all prices going up to compensate (because the overall wealth stays mostly the same). That's one of the reasons consoles have higher prices, because most of their valuables have less liquidity due to some negative market factors.

---

The kind of player you mentioned in your post (the one who sells the things he finds but has no need for them) wouldn't make enough sales to sustain the guild. You see, people buy things in bulk way more often (for example, if you look for a set you usually want to buy multiple items of this set, not only one) - tempers, ingredients, furnishings, potions, set items are often bought in bulk. That's why many players choose big trading guilds, because there is enough diversity to provide them things in bulk (like modern supermarkets and malls).
It is possible that prohibition of reselling will reduce diversity in big guilds a bit. But not enough to provide significant rise in demand for backwater guilds to compensate for loss of resellers that buy from backwater guilds.

Crafts_Many_Boxes

I think something more important than the "casual versus hardcore" argument brewing here is something else that was touched upon - the inherent imbalance in gold gains between different types of content.

Traders make the most gold. They farm drops for stuff to sell at traders. They loot urns for rare motifs, ad nauseum. They do all the stuff in the game that makes them the most gold, because that's the way they want to play.

The problem is buying power. These traders, because of their money-making endeavors, have far, far more gold than Johnny loves-to-quest, or Billy Battleground. "Normal" pve and pvp content just doesn't award the same gold that farming for specific drops does.

So, the trader players have a lot more gold than everyone else, and they have a lot more buying power. They can buy most of the gear they could ever want, and for the gear they can't actually obtain by throwing money at it, they can pay groups for carries through veteran content, be it dungeons or trials. By comparison, the normal players are limited to doing the content they specialize in and hoping for the best. They just have less options than the traders.

So, the solution was touched upon by the OP here: make "normal" pve and PvP content worth more gold.

Complete a quest at max level? How about 2 or 3k gold instead of 600?

Complete a normal trial? How about 15k gold? How about 30k on veteran?

Your faction takes a keep in cyrodil, and you participated? How about a 15k payout right then and there? How about 10k for participating in a battleground? 15k for winning?

This way, a balance is created. Most traders will still stick to their money-making farming because it will, in theory, net the same profit as other content and be easier for them. PvE players will get equivalent amounts of gold for doing what they actually enjoy, and the same goes for PvPers.

There's nothing stopping a trader from throwing money at a trials guild to tag along on a trial run, so there should be nothing stopping a pver or a pvper from buying mats / gear / whatever that the traders put up in guild stores. That's how you strike a balance.

Now, IF they ever changed dungeons / trials so that non-skilled players simply couldn't enter, this whole argument would be invalid, but such is not the case thankfully.

Would this lead to price inflation in guild traders? Possibly, but possibly not. After all, a good chunk of the buying / selling done at guild traders is done between the traders themselves, and they won't have more gold flowing to them in this scenario.

idk

I got confused. It seemed OP wants to make trading complicated.