PC|NA Hyperinflation is out of control

Calm_Fury · January 2021

iksde wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax. Best you can do is sell your stuff now for high prices and wait till another saturation kicks in and it goes down again.

Certainly not the first time this is happening, and most likely not the last time.

so where is your god now? - my question targeted to people being against AH arguing with cases like in quote is only AH experience and it cant be done with current system xD

I am sorry to be so blunt but I highly doubt that can be remotely true.

Just doing a "back of the napkin" calculation here. If we go to TTC right now looking for gold mats, we have:

Wax: 6.204 entries
Plating: 1.816 entries
Alloy: 5.535 entries
Rosin: 3.317 entries

That totals 16.872 listings. That is NOT items, that is different entries.

So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

Considering a "night" is 8 hours, that means they needed to buy 2.109 items per hour. For 8 hours. That is ~211 items if the group is 10.

Now, you can say that is "doable". But let's look at the prices.

Taking the lowest price per unit, right now, on EU server, we have (and I'm giving you an advantage using only the lowest price for everything)

W: 33220 items x 5555 lowest price = 184.537.100
P: 3008 items x 86000 lowest price = 258.688.000
A: 5535 items x 2000 lowest price = 71.050.000
R: 24517 items x 1680 lowest price = 41.188.560

Total: 555,463,660

So, if this was even REMOTELY true, considering that every single gold mat was priced at the lowest price and bought, that group would have, in one night, bought:

Bought 16.872 listings
Spent 555.463.660 gold

Also assume that, during 8 hours, not a single player in EU server listed a single gold mat on any trader so that there were "none left".

As I said, it took me 5 minutes to check those numbers to show how utterly impossible it is to influence the market on those items.

And the most important thing is that this isn't even considering the time spent. This just assumes that the so called group had all items in the same place, without loading screens, and had all that money readily available. As I said in another post, just try going to all traders in the game. It will take you multiple hours just on loading screens.

Again, sorry for being so blunt, but this is very obviously not even close to resembling the truth.

I said it once and will say again: just due to the sheer amount of gold mat listings, the cost of those mats and the number of traders in the game, it is impossible for just a few people to have any lasting and significant effect in the economy.

By the time they finish buying all 16k listings, there will be at least a few thousand more.

Calm_Fury · January 2021

Sorry, I think I quoted the reply to the comment because that is what made me see the comment. I meant to reply to the original one.

silvereyes · January 2021

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

Calm_Fury · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

I obviously didn't take what they said literally, but look at all the concessions you made here and compare it to this thread.

1. "getting bought up for a period of a few hours"
2. "for a period of time, demand outstripped supply"
3. "at least for a short time"

This is not hyperinflation. This is a failed market manipulation attempt. That is the whole point here. Any player effect in the economy for those mats are extremely short lived. And I mean 1 hour at most for a very organized effort.

We are not here talking about Athereium Dust or those 5+ million Furnishing Plans that nobody gets by looting stuff.

We are talking about gold mats. The ones that anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day.

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

VilniusNastavnik · January 2021

Calm_Fury wrote: »

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

This as well. 2 years ago before I took a break, blue and green off trait useless items would sell for 300ish coins.
Lets use a Green, Precise, Resto staff of the Briarheart. This would sell for roughly 300 coins. Its useless to any Stam build. Effectively it would go either to decon for crafting experience, or be sold to a merchant for 50 coins.

Now, since the sticker book, there is one listed for 25K coins an hour ago.

Most of this type are comparably sitting between 5-10K range however for an item you are going to just buy from the traders, bind for the stickerbook, and sell or decon.. I cannot fathom what person would pay this much for an item that is going to be thrown away.

People are effectively preying upon the desire for people to complete their sticker books to reprint their off trait bits for half price of transmuting them (full set = 25 crystals per item to reprint vs 70+).

This now falls into @silvereyes comment regarding the value players put into gold.

The people who are willing to effectively throw away 25K coins for a staff that is decon material, must have more money than sense.

Myself, someone who serves in the military, does not have the time to go and farm out mass quantities of gear each day, from world bosses, to motifs, to farming bits. I farm what I need on the chances I get, but I will probably never see more than 200K in one sitting (and thats because of this months crown rewards giving 100K). So ill always look for the cheapest deal to maximise the value I get for each coin I spend.

NoSoup · January 2021

Calm_Fury wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

I obviously didn't take what they said literally, but look at all the concessions you made here and compare it to this thread.

1. "getting bought up for a period of a few hours"
2. "for a period of time, demand outstripped supply"
3. "at least for a short time"

This is not hyperinflation. This is a failed market manipulation attempt. That is the whole point here. Any player effect in the economy for those mats are extremely short lived. And I mean 1 hour at most for a very organized effort.

We are not here talking about Athereium Dust or those 5+ million Furnishing Plans that nobody gets by looting stuff.

We are talking about gold mats. The ones that anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day.

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

lol.....right, anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day....if that was the case no one would need to buy them, jog on.....

kargen27 · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

The going rate determined by the wealthier players in the game.

The going rate is set by what players are willing to spend on the item. Even wealthy players are often frugal. That's how they became wealthy.

Flippers can set the price at what they want but if they set it too high it won't sell.

I agree that this is what's happening, but at the same time, I think @VilniusNastavnik makes a decent point. Despite the arguments about free market vs. price manipulation we see, I don't think that's what actually bothers people.

I think that a lot of the frustration people have is less about the mechanics of the high prices, and more about the fact that there is large wealth gap in the game, and they are on the losing side of that gap.

In such a large game, there are always going to be a bunch of folks who will naturally have the means and willingness to spend more. There's not really any magic to making gold in this game. Anyone can do it. But certain players will possess the qualities (enjoy making gold, more disposable time, optimized gold-making chars, IRL money to sell Crowns for gold, etc) that it takes to want to continually attain a lot of gold and spend a lot of gold.

They aren't being unethical by being willing to spend more. They just don't value gold equally as everyone else, and that can drive up prices for everyone else.

I don't really know what, if anything, can be done about it, though. To me, it seems like a natural feature of any MMORPG that enables player-to-player trading and offers a variety of ways to attain in-game currency.

There are gaps in the game. I am never going to do a no death speed run hard mode vet trial. I'm not willing to put in the time. There is a huge gap in the amount of DPS I can do and the amount of DPS the players running those trials are doing. Nothing wrong with the game though. They put more effort into it that I do. Simple as that. Same as making gold. For some that is why they play the game. Flipping items for profit is their end game. They will of course have much more gold than players that don't even want to join a trade guild. Oh and as another example I only got the achievement for winning duels because a guild mate agree to stand there and let me kill him a few times. Even doing that he accidently killed me once. Huge huge gap in my PvP skills compared to others.

Calm_Fury · January 2021

NoSoup wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

I obviously didn't take what they said literally, but look at all the concessions you made here and compare it to this thread.

1. "getting bought up for a period of a few hours"
2. "for a period of time, demand outstripped supply"
3. "at least for a short time"

This is not hyperinflation. This is a failed market manipulation attempt. That is the whole point here. Any player effect in the economy for those mats are extremely short lived. And I mean 1 hour at most for a very organized effort.

We are not here talking about Athereium Dust or those 5+ million Furnishing Plans that nobody gets by looting stuff.

We are talking about gold mats. The ones that anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day.

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

lol.....right, anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day....if that was the case no one would need to buy them, jog on.....

The same way I said I didn't take what they said literally, you shouldn't take this literally.

It is VERY clear that I meant that everyone that does a few writs a day will get more than 1 gold mat directly of via surveys.

Trying to pick on meaning technicalities when it is very clear what was meant adds 0 value to the conversation.

NoSoup · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

The going rate determined by the wealthier players in the game.

The going rate is set by what players are willing to spend on the item. Even wealthy players are often frugal. That's how they became wealthy.

Flippers can set the price at what they want but if they set it too high it won't sell.

I agree that this is what's happening, but at the same time, I think @VilniusNastavnik makes a decent point. Despite the arguments about free market vs. price manipulation we see, I don't think that's what actually bothers people.

I think that a lot of the frustration people have is less about the mechanics of the high prices, and more about the fact that there is large wealth gap in the game, and they are on the losing side of that gap.

In such a large game, there are always going to be a bunch of folks who will naturally have the means and willingness to spend more. There's not really any magic to making gold in this game. Anyone can do it. But certain players will possess the qualities (enjoy making gold, more disposable time, optimized gold-making chars, IRL money to sell Crowns for gold, etc) that it takes to want to continually attain a lot of gold and spend a lot of gold.

They aren't being unethical by being willing to spend more. They just don't value gold equally as everyone else, and that can drive up prices for everyone else.

I don't really know what, if anything, can be done about it, though. To me, it seems like a natural feature of any MMORPG that enables player-to-player trading and offers a variety of ways to attain in-game currency.

Except the ones that have all the money and the ability to manipulate market prices are the same people selling gold for real currency, just google ESO Gold and you'll see there is literally Billions worth of in game currency on the market selling for as low as $6 a million, these people have a very real (and unethical & against ZOS TOS) agenda for manipulating and artifically inflating prices......

NoSoup · January 2021

Calm_Fury wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

I obviously didn't take what they said literally, but look at all the concessions you made here and compare it to this thread.

1. "getting bought up for a period of a few hours"
2. "for a period of time, demand outstripped supply"
3. "at least for a short time"

This is not hyperinflation. This is a failed market manipulation attempt. That is the whole point here. Any player effect in the economy for those mats are extremely short lived. And I mean 1 hour at most for a very organized effort.

We are not here talking about Athereium Dust or those 5+ million Furnishing Plans that nobody gets by looting stuff.

We are talking about gold mats. The ones that anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day.

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

lol.....right, anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day....if that was the case no one would need to buy them, jog on.....

The same way I said I didn't take what they said literally, you shouldn't take this literally.

It is VERY clear that I meant that everyone that does a few writs a day will get more than 1 gold mat directly of via surveys.

Trying to pick on meaning technicalities when it is very clear what was meant adds 0 value to the conversation.

1 vs a few dozen is a bit different, someone complained earlier because I went from 2 months to 1 month but sure, go from 1 to 24, same same.....

Calm_Fury · January 2021

NoSoup wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Calm_Fury wrote: »

kiLLahweSPe wrote: »

On PC/EU theres a group of players which recently go around and bought Dreughwax, Platings, Rosin and Alloy. After that one night where nothing was in stores prices went up, doubled even for alloy and almost doubled on Dreughwax

[snip]
So you are saying that a "group" of players went around in one night and bough 16.872 entries so there was nothing on the market.

I doubt that's what they meant. They probably meant that all of the reasonably priced listings of the given items were bought up on TTC, or in the few stores they personally checked.

And you know what? All the lower-priced gold mats getting bought up for a period of a few hours during peak hours is normal. There's nothing insidious about it. It just means that for a period of time, demand outstripped supply. It happens almost every week, at least for a short time. Sometimes it's random. Sometimes there's a systemic reason, like a new patch where the meta changed or a new system was introduced and demand goes through the roof as people upgrade new gear. hint. hint.

I obviously didn't take what they said literally, but look at all the concessions you made here and compare it to this thread.

1. "getting bought up for a period of a few hours"
2. "for a period of time, demand outstripped supply"
3. "at least for a short time"

This is not hyperinflation. This is a failed market manipulation attempt. That is the whole point here. Any player effect in the economy for those mats are extremely short lived. And I mean 1 hour at most for a very organized effort.

We are not here talking about Athereium Dust or those 5+ million Furnishing Plans that nobody gets by looting stuff.

We are talking about gold mats. The ones that anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day.

I tried buying weapons for some sets like Mother's Sorrow after the patch hit. Sometimes every single weapon was 50k+ gold. I would do a dungeon and, you got it, 2 or 3 listings for 1-2k gold were up.

I know there are people out there right now compulsively searching all MS weapons on TTC and buying them all. I still had time in, about 1-2 hours, buy most of them well below those prices.

lol.....right, anyone that does crafting writs gets a few dozen a day....if that was the case no one would need to buy them, jog on.....

The same way I said I didn't take what they said literally, you shouldn't take this literally.

It is VERY clear that I meant that everyone that does a few writs a day will get more than 1 gold mat directly of via surveys.

Trying to pick on meaning technicalities when it is very clear what was meant adds 0 value to the conversation.

1 vs a few dozen is a bit different, someone complained earlier because I went from 2 months to 1 month but sure, go from 1 to 24, same same.....

What?? Sorry, I really don't understand what you tried to say here.

Path · January 2021

Bookmarking this so I know what to sell!

Yup. I'm that bad.

silvereyes · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

People are effectively preying upon the desire for people to complete their sticker books to reprint their off trait bits for half price of transmuting them (full set = 25 crystals per item to reprint vs 70+).

This now falls into @silvereyes comment regarding the value players put into gold.

The people who are willing to effectively throw away 25K coins for a staff that is decon material, must have more money than sense.

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

VilniusNastavnik · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

zvavi · January 2021

I should have stocked on more mats before Markarth.

kargen27 · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

People are effectively preying upon the desire for people to complete their sticker books to reprint their off trait bits for half price of transmuting them (full set = 25 crystals per item to reprint vs 70+).

This now falls into @silvereyes comment regarding the value players put into gold.

The people who are willing to effectively throw away 25K coins for a staff that is decon material, must have more money than sense.

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Hmm that is odd. I'm not the one who posted the preying on commit. I would have said taking advantage of the situation. Kind of like when a new motif drops. Players who get the drop early can sell to players that want to be among the first to get it. Nothing wrong with that as both players go away happy.
I don't mean taking advantage of in a bad way. There are players that are in a hurry to complete sets. That means they are willing to pay higher prices to get it done now. Things will settle back down after some time has passed and those of us that are not rushed can get them done.

zaria · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

Except you only buy one, or you can do an 10 minute quest in Deshaan.
On the other hand you only need one and you can recreate as many as you want.

merevie · January 2021

There are more players. Zos has not increased resources to balance that out.

1. High demand on items like clams for food. (7k each NA -and one needs 3 for recipe) -not good. They drop in one zone, on a handful of beaches.

2. New players wanting cash are told to farm mats. So they do. When us old timers go to get mats we're faced with nothing unless it's the middle of the night. Happily that's my time zone so all good. This does mean that players have to buy since it's not on the ground. More demand.

3. New players do not want to spend years getting money. They want it now. This incentive leads them to push prices more than those of us who already have nice things and nice bank accounts.

4. Older players are making a killing of all these microsales to new players and stickerbook fanatics. And yes, they can go out and drop a mil on pot ingredients. Since there's rather a large number of us with disposable income, upcoming events like Mayhem in a week sees several thousand of us go shopping at once. No one can pick up columbine fast enough to support that demand. And colombine is needed for magic and stam immovables, and as we all know, CC 'has some problems' currently in pvp. People use about 70 per hr. 1500 people on NA about 14-16hrs of the day. Bad math for flower buying.

5. Yup, guilds are hiking prices. Why wouldn't they?

And...if you don't already have your mats and don't like the current 800-2k per columbine...just wait until next week -ouch.

heaven13 · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

No one was selling them before though, except maybe to an NPC merchant, because there was no demand for off-weapons. There is now a demand for these weapons so people can fill their stickerbooks and recreate the weapons they DO want at a much cheaper cost. So while you say it will be "thrown away", yes, kind of, but there is value to getting that item once for collection purposes. If you've got one thing left to hit 25 crystals, or maybe you're just over the 50 crystals threshold and one more item would drop below that and make it cheaper to reconstruct than transmute, that 5-10k could be worth it particularly if it's a set you would recreate on multiple alts.

"Prey upon" indicates that someone is victimizing or exploiting someone. Taking time to farm weapons and then list them for sale in an attempt to meet the demand is not predatory behavior. While I understand it can be frustrating to not have the time to either farm or make the gold yourself, but that doesn't make the people that do the bad guys.

Varana · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

Now, since the sticker book, there is one listed for 25K coins an hour ago.

Most of this type are comparably sitting between 5-10K range however for an item you are going to just buy from the traders, bind for the stickerbook, and sell or decon.. I cannot fathom what person would pay this much for an item that is going to be thrown away.

Completing the sticker book for a set is not "throwing it away", it's either getting the weapon but just reconstruct it in another trait, or at the least saving transmute crystals.

That said, just because something is listed at some price, doesn't necessarily mean that someone's going to buy it.

silvereyes · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

I guess if a new player wants to run a BiS set in Training, sure, their cost went up. But I would argue that the vast majority of purchases for off-trait BiS weapons before Markarth was so that they could be transmuted to the desired trait. For those players, the overall cost in terms of effort has gone down significantly.

The value of transmutes has changed drastically with Markarth, especially for those that don't PvP. Pre-Markarth, it would take 50 daily normal pledges to earn the transmute crystals required for a single trait change. That amount of effort was worth a decent amount in gold terms, which was reflected in a discounted price for off-trait items.

After Markarth, not only does the sticker book potentially lower the number of transmutes required to convert that off-trait staff into BiS by up to 50%, but random normal dungeon runs now drop 10x the number of transmutes as normal pledges used to. That's a massive reduction in effort required to turn an off-trait item into BiS, so that now gets reflected in the price.

heaven13 wrote: »

No one was selling them before though, except maybe to an NPC merchant, because there was no demand for off-weapons.

Depends on the set and how much gold the BiS weapons sold for. For my previous example of Mothers Sorrow Inferno Staffs, I used to farm them, and those definitely sold quite often in off-traits Pre-Markarth, even for tens of thousands of gold for Training, mainly due to the fact that they could be transmuted.

For less popular sets where a BiS weapon might cost 80k instead of 200k, off-trait weapons were practically worthless due to the effort required to acquire 50x transmutes exceeding the amount of effort needed to earn the gold to just buy or farm the BiS trait weapon outright.

VaranisArano · January 2021

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

Well, that would be true if you wanted that off-trait drop because it was that off-trait, pre-Markarth.

Like, say you really, really wanted that Powered Inferno Staff of the Mother's Sorrow. I don't know why you would, but maybe the extra healing really helps your build, and so yeah the price hike sucks.

But most people don't want to use the Powered Inferno Staff of the Mother's Sorrow. They really want to use the expensive Precise Inferno Staff of the Mother's Sorrow. For their purposes, buying the cheaper powered inferno staff then reconstructing it as a precise inferno staff now might actually be cheaper than paying for the expensive precise infernal staff item they needed to buy Pre-Markarth. Even if its about the same cost in the end, well, they eventually got to the same item, yeah?

Or, you know, they could farm the public dungeon bosses for off-trait inferno staves too, and get it for really cheap. That option is still out there.

Inaya · January 2021

Don't want to farm, pay market price to those who did the work.

Don't want to compensate players who farm by paying market price - go farm.

Really pretty simple.

silvereyes · January 2021

kargen27 wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

The going rate determined by the wealthier players in the game.

The going rate is set by what players are willing to spend on the item. Even wealthy players are often frugal. That's how they became wealthy.

Flippers can set the price at what they want but if they set it too high it won't sell.

I agree that this is what's happening, but at the same time, I think @VilniusNastavnik makes a decent point. Despite the arguments about free market vs. price manipulation we see, I don't think that's what actually bothers people.

I think that a lot of the frustration people have is less about the mechanics of the high prices, and more about the fact that there is large wealth gap in the game, and they are on the losing side of that gap.

In such a large game, there are always going to be a bunch of folks who will naturally have the means and willingness to spend more. There's not really any magic to making gold in this game. Anyone can do it. But certain players will possess the qualities (enjoy making gold, more disposable time, optimized gold-making chars, IRL money to sell Crowns for gold, etc) that it takes to want to continually attain a lot of gold and spend a lot of gold.

They aren't being unethical by being willing to spend more. They just don't value gold equally as everyone else, and that can drive up prices for everyone else.

I don't really know what, if anything, can be done about it, though. To me, it seems like a natural feature of any MMORPG that enables player-to-player trading and offers a variety of ways to attain in-game currency.

There are gaps in the game. I am never going to do a no death speed run hard mode vet trial. I'm not willing to put in the time. There is a huge gap in the amount of DPS I can do and the amount of DPS the players running those trials are doing. Nothing wrong with the game though. They put more effort into it that I do. Simple as that. Same as making gold. For some that is why they play the game. Flipping items for profit is their end game. They will of course have much more gold than players that don't even want to join a trade guild. Oh and as another example I only got the achievement for winning duels because a guild mate agree to stand there and let me kill him a few times. Even doing that he accidently killed me once. Huge huge gap in my PvP skills compared to others.

I don't disagree at all. My point wasn't to suggest that there is a problem with the game. It was more to detail that the deeper source of frustration with high prices for many is actually wealth-envy and that having a wealth gap is a feature of any capitalistic game economy, even an idealized one with no price manipulation, bots or gold selling.

Is there price manipulation or surge pricing shenanigans in ESO? Undoubtedly, for items with limited supply. I don't think that something as ubiquitous as gold mats has a huge problem with that, but people can disagree.

Are there bots and gold selling in ESO? Sure. Most people don't want to risk their accounts for such illicit activities, though, and bot farmers usually sell their bulk mats cheaper, not more expensive. They know that their account could be banned any second, so they want to get a fast sale and then launder the gold.

Even if all unethical activities were completely eliminated, however, we would still have a wealth gap, and we would still be hearing complaints about how expensive gold mats are.

heaven13 · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

VilniusNastavnik wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

It's not preying. It's a quite rational win-win scenario.

Pre-Markarth, precise MS inferno staffs were going for hundreds of thousands each. They were and are the meta for most magicka trials builds, so they went for a premium. And honestly, they are worth it, since the alternative is trying to get a False God’s Devotion inferno staff (good luck).

Post-Markarth, you can get the exact same staff for 30k-60k in an off-trait to unlock it in your sticker book, then run a few daily normal dungeons for the exact same BiS weapon.

The seller wins because they get more gold for their off-trait drops. The buyer wins, because they paid a lot less gold than they otherwise would have for the same trait.

Except that it is not a win-win scenario.
The seller wins because they get more gold for their off trait drops, but the buyer is now paying 100x what the item was going for pre Markarth. When the buyer was paying 300 coins vs now paying 30,000, that is not a win for the buyer. That's a price hike.

I guess if a new player wants to run a BiS set in Training, sure, their cost went up. But I would argue that the vast majority of purchases for off-trait BiS weapons before Markarth was so that they could be transmuted to the desired trait. For those players, the overall cost in terms of effort has gone down significantly.

The value of transmutes has changed drastically with Markarth, especially for those that don't PvP. Pre-Markarth, it would take 50 daily normal pledges to earn the transmute crystals required for a single trait change. That amount of effort was worth a decent amount in gold terms, which was reflected in a discounted price for off-trait items.

After Markarth, not only does the sticker book potentially lower the number of transmutes required to convert that off-trait staff into BiS by up to 50%, but random normal dungeon runs now drop 10x the number of transmutes as normal pledges used to. That's a massive reduction in effort required to turn an off-trait item into BiS, so that now gets reflected in the price.

heaven13 wrote: »

No one was selling them before though, except maybe to an NPC merchant, because there was no demand for off-weapons.

Depends on the set and how much gold the BiS weapons sold for. For my previous example of Mothers Sorrow Inferno Staffs, I used to farm them, and those definitely sold quite often in off-traits Pre-Markarth, even for tens of thousands of gold for Training, mainly due to the fact that they could be transmuted.

For less popular sets where a BiS weapon might cost 80k instead of 200k, off-trait weapons were practically worthless due to the effort required to acquire 50x transmutes exceeding the amount of effort needed to earn the gold to just buy or farm the BiS trait weapon outright.

Oh, I agree about off-trait BiS weapons. But pre-Markarth sticker book announcement, people weren't often selling things like daggers or shields of MS, or restoration staves of Briarheart. Now those things can and do sell.

Zulera301 · January 2021

Kwoung wrote: »

Flipping is a real problem. When a group of players band to take over markets and buy up every deal that pops up near instantly, just to list it again for a 50-1000% markup, it creates issues. There are numerous entire guilds on PCNA that do this now and do it so well they have managed to secure many of the top trader spots. They have also driven up the bid prices on traders considerably. Hopefully, this is not able to sustain long term, because all the gold going to a select few (who do god knows what with it), will outprice what the average player can afford, thus causing a downward market adjustment... hopefully.

It is not helpful that TTC is giving bad info either due to manipulation, allowing flippers to easily score great deals from people who list items based on that. It is few motifs at the moment that don't readily sell for 50-100% or more over what TTC "suggests" you sell them for.

Flipping has happened since forever though, and thanks to the fact that sellers are divided through 197+ traders instead of one central auction house, it'd be a lot harder for the "trading cartel" to monopolize something as numerous as crafting mats.

Now, rarer items like old motifs from zones no one visits anymore... Those are easy to flip due to the small "population" of items.

I find flipping to be too tedious and risky personally, but I'll list things well above MM/ATT and sometimes even TTC price, and still score sales within a day or two.

And I've got over 91 million to my name, and haven't even needed to tap into my craft bag yet.

Kwoung · January 2021

Zulera301 wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Flipping is a real problem. When a group of players band to take over markets and buy up every deal that pops up near instantly, just to list it again for a 50-1000% markup, it creates issues. There are numerous entire guilds on PCNA that do this now and do it so well they have managed to secure many of the top trader spots. They have also driven up the bid prices on traders considerably. Hopefully, this is not able to sustain long term, because all the gold going to a select few (who do god knows what with it), will outprice what the average player can afford, thus causing a downward market adjustment... hopefully.

It is not helpful that TTC is giving bad info either due to manipulation, allowing flippers to easily score great deals from people who list items based on that. It is few motifs at the moment that don't readily sell for 50-100% or more over what TTC "suggests" you sell them for.

Flipping has happened since forever though, and thanks to the fact that sellers are divided through 197+ traders instead of one central auction house, it'd be a lot harder for the "trading cartel" to monopolize something as numerous as crafting mats.

Now, rarer items like old motifs from zones no one visits anymore... Those are easy to flip due to the small "population" of items.

I find flipping to be too tedious and risky personally, but I'll list things well above MM/ATT and sometimes even TTC price, and still score sales within a day or two.

And I've got over 91 million to my name, and haven't even needed to tap into my craft bag yet.

I am not quite there yet, only 20 mil to my name, but like you... none of it was made from flipping, I also find it tedious.

My point though, that I obviously didn't make clear after re-reading my post, is that it isn't the actual flipping of items that is the issue, it is the manipulation of TTC to drive prices up or down to suit your needs. On mats it gets driven up, on motifs they drive it down so they can buy them well below market value. Manipulating TTC is incredibly easy and the main reason I never trust what it says anymore. Even reading the addon description on the website he says:

"Q:Whats the difference between MM's price and TTC's price?
TTC uses the listing price and the MM uses sold price. By statistic and Economic, those two numbers should align given enough sample set"

Which is no longer true by a long shot, which is a good indicator that one of the two data sets is actually wrong. In this case it is TTC, because people can edit the data in the file before it gets uploaded and ingested to the TTC website/database. Yes, he does calculations and tosses out outlier prices, but making sure your "fake" listing are not outliers, but just enough to drive a price up or down... you can easily manipulate the market.

While yes, some people unaware of market prices do put things up for the cheap and those get snapped up fast, others simply check the in-game TTC tooltip for pricing data. Unfortunately for them, none of the items that the TTC price was derived from exist, in some cases never did, so they list their motif worth 100k... for the TTC suggested of 23K. Which the person who manipulated that items price is camping TTC watching for those items to pop up so they can buy and flip them.

kargen27 · January 2021

merevie wrote: »

There are more players. Zos has not increased resources to balance that out.

1. High demand on items like clams for food. (7k each NA -and one needs 3 for recipe) -not good. They drop in one zone, on a handful of beaches.

2. New players wanting cash are told to farm mats. So they do. When us old timers go to get mats we're faced with nothing unless it's the middle of the night. Happily that's my time zone so all good. This does mean that players have to buy since it's not on the ground. More demand.

3. New players do not want to spend years getting money. They want it now. This incentive leads them to push prices more than those of us who already have nice things and nice bank accounts.

4. Older players are making a killing of all these microsales to new players and stickerbook fanatics. And yes, they can go out and drop a mil on pot ingredients. Since there's rather a large number of us with disposable income, upcoming events like Mayhem in a week sees several thousand of us go shopping at once. No one can pick up columbine fast enough to support that demand. And colombine is needed for magic and stam immovables, and as we all know, CC 'has some problems' currently in pvp. People use about 70 per hr. 1500 people on NA about 14-16hrs of the day. Bad math for flower buying.

5. Yup, guilds are hiking prices. Why wouldn't they?

And...if you don't already have your mats and don't like the current 800-2k per columbine...just wait until next week -ouch.

Active players are what increases the resources. More players means more players getting resources.

If players are farming materials at such a rate that there are none to be farmed with the intent of selling those materials prices would drop accordingly. I'm not seeing a problem with farming for materials though. I just stay away from the starter zones and can find plenty.

New players also want max CP now and run dolmans or other activities to gain XP quick. They end up suffering for it in the long run but you have to let them do what they want to do. Same with gold. Those in a hurry for gold are going to miss out. Just playing the game, exploring, doing quests, dailies and other things provides plenty of gold for new players to get everything they need and a good portion of what they want. New players (I'm guessing) are not a big enough share of the market to push prices up. I also think the opposite would be true. In an effort for quick gold they would undercut prices.

silvereyes · January 2021

Kwoung wrote: »

My point though, that I obviously didn't make clear after re-reading my post, is that it isn't the actual flipping of items that is the issue, it is the manipulation of TTC to drive prices up or down to suit your needs. On mats it gets driven up, on motifs they drive it down so they can buy them well below market value. Manipulating TTC is incredibly easy and the main reason I never trust what it says anymore.

Manipulation of TTC is real, of course. The client uploader trusts players' saved vars files implicitly, and those files are basically text files that anyone can edit.

For materials, though, I don't really have much concern about manipulation, for a few reasons.

The supply of materials in the game is enormous, as is the group of legit players constantly uploading realistic listings for them, making the data sets for materials some of the most authentic that you will find in TTC. Items with lower supply and few listings have no such stream of good data, making them susceptible.
Due to the high supply of materials, it's usually not hard to find competitive prices the old fashioned way, by just shopping around a bit. I'm not going to pay for a material that matches some manipulated price if I can simply walk 3 meters to the next trader and find the same thing for 50% of the manipulated price.
People can always farm materials themselves. There's a built-in negative feedback response to trying to raise prices of commodities too high. Supply increases from other sellers who want a piece of the action and either start farming or opening up their craft bags. Simultaneously, demand decreases as players just start farming their own mats because they can't afford the high prices. For high-supply items like materials, this whole feedback cycle can happen brutally fast, and potential manipulators are left sitting with unsold items.

Kwoung · January 2021

silvereyes wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

My point though, that I obviously didn't make clear after re-reading my post, is that it isn't the actual flipping of items that is the issue, it is the manipulation of TTC to drive prices up or down to suit your needs. On mats it gets driven up, on motifs they drive it down so they can buy them well below market value. Manipulating TTC is incredibly easy and the main reason I never trust what it says anymore.

Manipulation of TTC is real, of course. The client uploader trusts players' saved vars files implicitly, and those files are basically text files that anyone can edit.

For materials, though, I don't really have much concern about manipulation, for a few reasons.

Agreed, mats are not an issue, except some of the really high end ones like Hakeijo, Clam Gall, etc... But still not an issue for me particularly either as I generally farm them myself. There are items like motifs and gear from Cyro I do sell though, that always sell for double or more what TTC has listed and you never see anywhere on vendors at those low TTC suggested prices. Motifs are probably the worst atm, supply is low, and they are ripe for flipping, but apparently either the high end prices never get taken into the TTC equation or more likely... someone is lowball hacking TTC in order to get them on the market cheaper to snap up and resell.