PC|NA Hyperinflation is out of control

tmbrinks

Wait... now we're talking about breaking ToS and buying gold for real life money?

I can't keep what this thread is about straight any longer.

ssewallb14_ESO

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

silvereyes

NoSoup wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

The increase in prices has not been limited to just some commodities such as materials, which might mean a bot crackdown or people wanting to craft new stuff after sticker book and widespread set changes. It also started well before sticker book announcement. As graphed here in this very excellent tracking of the issue from a dude with a worse @ name than me.

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Most of the price increase happened after Greymoor in a very short period of time. If you consider elasticity it would take a single very impactful event to do this.

I might add I first noticed the issue in august with motif prices I think these might have been the first commodities to move. Essentially all commodities have rapidly increased in price. Similarly, the value of gold measured in crown exchange rate also rapidly decreased despite there being only indirect and weak links between the relation of gold to commodity and gold to crown store prices. Other unmentionable gold exchange rates also massively reversed a long standing trend of appreciation in the value of gold which probably reflected increasing rather then decreasing popularity of the game.

The bottom line is that gold itself just plain lost massive amounts of value and fast relative to everything in game and out of it. I think the magnitude and rapidity of the change we experienced could really only have indicated either a gold dupe bug or a very efficient afk gold farm. Hopefully the graph shown by the user above which indicated a leveling off of prices reflects ZOS fixing the problem that caused the massive change. For what it is worth, my experience has also been that prices on most commodities appear to have leveled off or declined with the gold to crown exchange rate being the simplest example. Chromium seems to be the exception here but with ZOS broken jewelry system and the sticker book contributing to demand, that is no surprise. $1M+ for making jewelry gold seem to totally exclude 98% of the player base but if ZOS intended to fix the jewelry crafting issues they would have by now.

In the end, I had a lot of gold and a lot of mats and other assets so I both lost and gained a lot of value due to whatever mess ZOS clearly refused to tell us about. New players on the other hand just got totally hosed when it comes to advancing their gear, doing housing stuff, or anything else. They are like American workers every time the fed prints another few trillion and the price of assets such as housing or stocks shoots skyward to reflect this while their wages don't.

It would be nice for ZOS to let us know what went down and what they did about it but their policy has never been one of glasnost. I don't know how you easily help those newer players as assets will continue to be at high prices relative to earnings for years. Screw them though, there poor.

That graph is showing the price increase of Tempering Alloy, so, if anything, it points to a bot crackdown or a meta shift (or both) as the starting causes of the increase in material prices, which is kept high by the stickerbook demand.

As for motifs, no one has shown any data to shown this is more than the usual fluctuation after the glut of motifs from the Anniversary Event. We've certainly had less older zone events in Q2-Q4 than usual. So if you have data, I'd love to see it.

Similarly, no one has shown any data for the claim that "Essentially all commodities have rapidly increased in price." Again, since this is a crucial part of the claim that we're experiencing "too much gold" hyperinflation as opposed to "demand-driven" inflation, I'd love to see the data!

Absent such data, we're left to look at the gold/crown trade and wonder where the increased gold came from. Do we think its a "too much gold generation" problem which should leave evidence everywhere in the game?
Or is it related to the nature of the gold/crown trades, where high gold prices have always excluded gold-poor players? Rich players, particularly rich item flippers, are the likely beneficiaries of the profits from the boom in materials. That wealth transfer from poorer players buying mats to richer players selling and reselling them is a likely contributor to the increase in gold used for crown trades.


Finally, I'd like to address your interpretation of the "leveling off" on that graph.

In the absence of any ZOS patch notes (and from the data of tmbrinks, no noticeable change in tempering alloys drop rates) we can safely assume that no, ZOS didn't do anything to adjust the supply or impact the price or cut off a supply of gold generation. Instead, the far more likely answer is that we've simply reached market equilibrium and found the new price at which consumers are willing to buy tempering alloys.

This argues against "too much gold" hyperinflation, since if the supply of gold were still increasing (and recall that there are no patch notes that say ZOS changed anything), then gold should still be devaluing and the price of tempering alloys should still be rising.

Instead, the "leveling off" shows precisely what we'd expect when demand and supply have reached equilibrium at a new price point. That's the end result of temporary "demand-pull" inflation, and shows that supply has indeed risen to meet demand because more players decided it was worth their while. Additionally, this means that ZOS probably doesn't need to correct any supply-side issues, simply because the market has already done so, albeit at a higher price point than many players would like.

The problem is you're assuming a "fair" playing ground. In the real world we have agencies to protect against unfair competition and corruption, there are no such mechanisms in the game. The illegal gold trade highlights how much of an over supply of gold there is in the game. 2 years ago if you transferred another player 1million gold your account was almost immediately flagged and now there are 20 odd pages on google selling gold advertising prices on any amount from 1million - 20million......

Gold sellers have been around since launch. They don't create gold ex nihilo. They typically farm mats with bots and then sell them to other players in bulk. That doesn't add gold to the game. It just shuffles it around.

Nor do gold sellers' existence explain a massive surge in August 2020 as seen in @ssewallb14_ESO's excellent graph. It's hard to tell exact dates, but it seems like two main things that happened right before and during that massive price surge for Tempering Alloy:

• Quakecon, a free play promo and the very first deep discount of Greymoor, which released a mere two months earlier:
  https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/58595
• 100k gold for every player in the August 2020 daily login rewards: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Daily_Rewards/August_2020

That was also around the time that Stonethorn PTS was released and the EU server was melting with login queues and trader time swaps, but I'm not sure any of those played a role.

My best guess is just that between the pandemic and a new nostalgic Elder Scrolls game going on sale, a surge of new players showed up. Then, they were all given 100k gold - by the game, out of thin air - to do whatever they wanted with it.

That alone probably would have led to a temporary price increase, but then Markarth was announced with the sticker book to keep prices high, and all the new players who didn't know any better continued on as if this were all normal.

Is this actually what happened? I have no idea. But I feel like this story makes at least as much sense, if not more, than blaming everything on insidious gold sellers, bots and price-manipulating flippers, which have all been operating for some time and are already priced-in.

Edit: Also, a surge of players owning Greymoor and grinding Antiquities would add a bunch of gold to the game in a short period of time as well.

NoSoup

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

Motiffs are unreliable though as those that have been in the game for a while will have already learnt them and have no insentive to hold on to them or buy them. If you want to look at inflation the basket of goods needs to only contain items relevant to all players, ie "essential goods"....

ssewallb14_ESO

NoSoup wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

Motiffs are unreliable though as those that have been in the game for a while will have already learnt them and have no insentive to hold on to them or buy them. If you want to look at inflation the basket of goods needs to only contain items relevant to all players, ie "essential goods"....

There are always new players though and the equilibrium price will reflect that for items that have been in the game for a long time, that's why I chose Ra Gada and Dwemer. It takes 1-2 years to reach that point from what I've seen, depending on the item in question. That's why the price remains steady, short of celebration events messing with supply or large scale changes to the economy.

Here's Slaughterstone:

I don't really want to keep spamming this thread with these but I can't really create indices to prove a larger trend. My point is temper prices aren't caused by general inflation.

silvereyes

Another explanation, besides the sticker book, for the positive inflation (though not hyperinflation) immediately after Greymoor before Quakecon, as well as the inflation that we've seen since Markarth, would be some sort of imbalance between the gold produced by the new faucet of the Antiquities system and the gold sinks in the game.

I know someone at ZOS, I think @ZOS_PhilipDraven, mentioned during the launch of the justice system that they keep tabs on such things and seek to tweak the different sinks and faucets if it looks like things are starting to get out of hand. I don't think we have reached that point, yet, but it's possible that they may want to add some new small gold sinks in the next major update.

silvereyes

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I can't really create indices to prove a larger trend

But that would be amazing if you could! I love these graphs!

It's so hard to tell what's going on with any given item, or even small sampling of items.

WTB S&P 500 index of ESO prices.

NoSoup

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

Motiffs are unreliable though as those that have been in the game for a while will have already learnt them and have no insentive to hold on to them or buy them. If you want to look at inflation the basket of goods needs to only contain items relevant to all players, ie "essential goods"....

There are always new players though and the equilibrium price will reflect that for items that have been in the game for a long time, that's why I chose Ra Gada and Dwemer. It takes 1-2 years to reach that point from what I've seen, depending on the item in question. That's why the price remains steady, short of celebration events messing with supply or large scale changes to the economy.

Here's Slaughterstone:

I don't really want to keep spamming this thread with these but I can't really create indices to prove a larger trend. My point is temper prices aren't caused by general inflation.

Is the MM data stored locally or on a server, can the pricing files be shared? My MM is set to a 9 day average and I can't see back nearly as far as your data

VaranisArano

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

Your data is awesome. Just wanted to say I really appreciate getting more examples to compare. Thank you!

ssewallb14_ESO

The graphs are UESP log data. I won't link it directly because their bandwidth is limited, but it should be pretty easy to find.

iksde

Calm_Fury wrote: »

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.

sorry for late re4sponse but so...you are saying it wouldn't be so much possible even with global AH because of these costs

so like from ma side not the best argumen againast traders there is also still not the best argument againast global AH because of prices of total items

as for traders to manipulate price it wont be that hard anyway if you have gold for called item you want to manipulate or buy all of this and you have someone to help

I qwith friend after an event went for literally evey trader in group looking for cheap treasure maps, just duo...idk...it took us maybe around 2 hours? to run for literally every trader and buy all not expensive maps so it wouldn't be a problem to run with someone more to buy all items you want to buy from stores and just addtionally checking it on daily for some days if someone again listed it for this price you want to buy for

yes it will be time consuming so is already just trading here and as we have people liking so much this system so there wont be a problem to find people capable of doing this manipulation if they had gold and willing for this so at the end for arguments.....manipulation isn't only global AH thing and is very possible with this game trader system

barney2525

NoSoup wrote: »

Tempering alloy has nearly doubled in 2 months from a fairly consistent 7-8kea to 14-15k
Dreugh Wax is the same
Chromium plating has tripled over 12 months
and its not just the high end stuff

Corn Flower is trading for 1k EACH!!!!

I really do believe alot of this is artifical, you look at certain well known high traffic guilds and there will be one or two sellers listing certain items way above market cost, its as if these players are going around buying the cheaper items up and listing them for 2-3k higher than the average forcing all the price tracking addon's to inflate their recommended prices.

At what point will it all come undone, surely the only people this kind of inflation and market manipulation is helping are the chinese gold sellers???

Seriously? Corn flower is 1k each ?

I'm gonna be Rich !

NoSoup

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

The graphs are UESP log data. I won't link it directly because their bandwidth is limited, but it should be pretty easy to find.

Sweet, I've got the most recent data dump plus 1 from november which will allow we to collect enough data to create an actual CPI for NA server, will take a couple of days to compile it though.

Having said that, it is immediately clear that the graphs you've previously posted do not use the live data, looking at them they appear to be 2 months behind. This is why when you look at their live logs for say Tempering Alloy they show an avg sale price of 12.2k but the graph has it in the 8k range, a wopping 50% difference.....

ssewallb14_ESO

NoSoup wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

The graphs are UESP log data. I won't link it directly because their bandwidth is limited, but it should be pretty easy to find.

Sweet, I've got the most recent data dump plus 1 from november which will allow we to collect enough data to create an actual CPI for NA server, will take a couple of days to compile it though.

Having said that, it is immediately clear that the graphs you've previously posted do not use the live data, looking at them they appear to be 2 months behind. This is why when you look at their live logs for say Tempering Alloy they show an avg sale price of 12.2k but the graph has it in the 8k range, a wopping 50% difference.....

You're mixing up sale price with list price here. Average sale price for the last 365 days is 9.5k, list price is 12.1. Remember this averages in data before inflation.

The alloy graph specifically is clipping sales over 10k for a year range, that's why the average is about 1.2k lower. It's a bug with the range calculation, but the data is up to date. You can imagine the trend near the end of the graph increasing rather than flat-lining to get an idea of what it should be.

Here's a narrower date range which seems to display correctly:


So the trend still seems to be the price leveling off, just that the initial inflation and markarth bump are higher than the first graph implies.

Iarao

it might be that lots of players now have hundreds of millions of gold cuz they have played for quite some time and really dont have many things to spend gold on. they now just buy without shopping around for a lower price. and of course these players can hit jsut about every trader and wipe out the supply without much of a dent in their bank. then relist for way higher and then reimburse a friend to buy it at that price, thereby driving up the averages.

i suggest you forage your hiney off so you can make a lot of gold

silvereyes

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

The alloy graph specifically is clipping sales over 10k for a year range, that's why the average is about 1.2k lower.

Looking at the code for UESP, I don't think it's a bug. It's a feature to trim any outliers that exceed two standard deviations from the average.
https://github.com/uesp/uesp-esolog/blob/master/viewSales.php

Such outliers are excluded from the stats, including the average, and are denoted by an "outlier" column in the CSV data, or a red background in the HTML table view.

It would be nice to be able to tweak the ESOVSD_MAXZSCORE value in that file...

Edit: On second thought, I guess you could consider it a bug to define an "outlier" with comparison to the entire data set, especially ones over long periods of time. For example in the original Tempering Alloy graph, there are many points on the left side that probably should have been classified as outliers but aren't, due to the overall shape of the graph. The problem is, classifying outliers can be a bit of an art, and it depends on the size and shape of the data set. A better general definition would probably be to compare deviation from the one or two week trailing average, and only throw out points that both exceed a certain deviation from that metric -AND- have a minimum number of data points in the trailing average.

silvereyes

Iarao wrote: »

it might be that lots of players now have hundreds of millions of gold cuz they have played for quite some time and really dont have many things to spend gold on. they now just buy without shopping around for a lower price. and of course these players can hit jsut about every trader and wipe out the supply without much of a dent in their bank. then relist for way higher and then reimburse a friend to buy it at that price, thereby driving up the averages.

So, let me get this straight. You think that there are lots of players who:

• Don't value gold very much, since they have too much and don't have anything to spend it on.
• Spend hours on end continuously walking around to all the different traders buying up all the supply.
• Indirectly buy said items back from themselves via a friend at a higher price, with a 7% (of the higher price) loss due to taxes and listing fees.

Do I have that straight? If so, I can't imagine what the motivation would be. To troll people with higher prices? To sink gold out of the economy? There are much easier ways.

They certainly won't make any gold that way, assuming we are talking about mats that anyone can pick up off of the ground. As soon as they stop buying the supply, prices would lower to equilibrium again as normal market forces reassert themselves. They would be left with a bunch of items that they bought at a premium price - not even figuring in the built-in 7% loss - that they now have nothing to do with other than sell at a lower price than they purchased at.

f047ys3v3n

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

I sold a few Ra Gada during the crazy price run up. Got north of 40k each. TTC seemed to think ~10k each but it also said there were ~50 of them listed at the time and they sold for 40k+ each. The numbers of Dwemer never went that low so I didn't try listing the few I had high. This was the general pattern for months. TTC says a motif or style page is selling for 5-10k but there are less than 100 of them. I list for 40-100k depending on how few are listed and if and how easily the item can currently be obtained in game. Boom, the item sells despite a price at or above the highest price listing in TTC. Your graphs only reflect how bad TTC's numbers were during this time. TTC can be good on items with 1000+ listings like tempering alloy but throwing out all the high cost stuff renders it valueless and easy to manipulate when you are dealing with <100 items.

Today, things are different. Items I listed last week showing less than 100 listings are showing 450 listings on average. I had to cancel them all and switched to selling the weapon drops I had that were building up. Whoever was keeping motif stock low stopped and looks to be dumping. Maybe they ran out of dough or dough supply, maybe jerks like me with stockpiles of motifs from multiple accounts and the anniversary event prevented them from every really cornering the market like they planned. Maybe, they moved on to cornering Chromium and taking advantage of ZOS unbalanced jewellery crafting system as there is certainly a number being done on those prices. Who knows, not me, but the fun seems to be over when it comes to selling relatively common motifs for big money. I was getting like 35k for thieves guild and clockwork city motifs. These things are not hard to obtain. They are drops for 10min or so dailies. I even got some 25k sales on skinchanger before this years event and those things drop like candy from an event for crying out loud.

Anyhow, I made some hay while the sun shone and spent pretty much all of it on crowns to buy content, and assistants for my son and daughters accounts. Wish I hadn't spend so much time farming monster style pages during the dungeon event though. Was hoping they would be 300k+ again next summer like the relatively few I had left and sold this summer. Man I made a killing on those. Not looking like that will happen again.

Lephrel

zaria

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

I sold a few Ra Gada during the crazy price run up. Got north of 40k each. TTC seemed to think ~10k each but it also said there were ~50 of them listed at the time and they sold for 40k+ each. The numbers of Dwemer never went that low so I didn't try listing the few I had high. This was the general pattern for months. TTC says a motif or style page is selling for 5-10k but there are less than 100 of them. I list for 40-100k depending on how few are listed and if and how easily the item can currently be obtained in game. Boom, the item sells despite a price at or above the highest price listing in TTC. Your graphs only reflect how bad TTC's numbers were during this time. TTC can be good on items with 1000+ listings like tempering alloy but throwing out all the high cost stuff renders it valueless and easy to manipulate when you are dealing with <100 items.

Today, things are different. Items I listed last week showing less than 100 listings are showing 450 listings on average. I had to cancel them all and switched to selling the weapon drops I had that were building up. Whoever was keeping motif stock low stopped and looks to be dumping. Maybe they ran out of dough or dough supply, maybe jerks like me with stockpiles of motifs from multiple accounts and the anniversary event prevented them from every really cornering the market like they planned. Maybe, they moved on to cornering Chromium and taking advantage of ZOS unbalanced jewellery crafting system as there is certainly a number being done on those prices. Who knows, not me, but the fun seems to be over when it comes to selling relatively common motifs for big money. I was getting like 35k for thieves guild and clockwork city motifs. These things are not hard to obtain. They are drops for 10min or so dailies. I even got some 25k sales on skinchanger before this years event and those things drop like candy from an event for crying out loud.

Anyhow, I made some hay while the sun shone and spent pretty much all of it on crowns to buy content, and assistants for my son and daughters accounts. Wish I hadn't spend so much time farming monster style pages during the dungeon event though. Was hoping they would be 300k+ again next summer like the relatively few I had left and sold this summer. Man I made a killing on those. Not looking like that will happen again.

On the other hand Dro-m'Athra is very expensive now, chests is over 500 K.
Weapons tend to be cheapest as in around 50K, I think the weapons are the cool part of the style.
Them I bought the set chests was 20-30K, granted back then we only had HoF and MoL.

But this is easy to explain: Far fewer runs vMoL today as newer trials are more popular and lots of new players.

starkerealm

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Here are two motif's which have been in the game for a long time and AFAIK aren't impacted by events. You don't see the same pattern here. This implies the problem isn't related to money supply changes or demand-pull inflation.

Dwemer Chests:

Ra Gada Chests:

Motiffs are unreliable though as those that have been in the game for a while will have already learnt them and have no insentive to hold on to them or buy them. If you want to look at inflation the basket of goods needs to only contain items relevant to all players, ie "essential goods"....

There are always new players though and the equilibrium price will reflect that for items that have been in the game for a long time, that's why I chose Ra Gada and Dwemer. It takes 1-2 years to reach that point from what I've seen, depending on the item in question. That's why the price remains steady, short of celebration events messing with supply or large scale changes to the economy.

Here's Slaughterstone:

I don't really want to keep spamming this thread with these but I can't really create indices to prove a larger trend. My point is temper prices aren't caused by general inflation.

What those graphs are showing is the effect of supply on prices. Each red dot represents the item being sold at that price, and you can see when the dot density is higher, the prices drop, when the density fades, prices go up. It's not a conspiracy, that's just basic supply and demand in action.

That said, that is some neat data. You rarely get to actually track supply based price shifts based on actual, variable, sales data. Usually it's either filtered data, or you're tracking using shortages.

Salvas_Aren

Tranquilizer wrote: »

Nordic__Knights wrote: »

lot of bot farmers got hit so mats aint getting to the market as fast as before lol now everyone wants them back , that and new system that gave lots of gold put more gold into game for rich players to want lol

Exactly this. When gold farmers supply a steady flow of gold mats and keep the prices civil people complain about bots.

When ZOS axed bots people complain about prices skyrocketing.

As always, be careful what you wish for...

This. Just this.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

silvereyes wrote: »

Iarao wrote: »

it might be that lots of players now have hundreds of millions of gold cuz they have played for quite some time and really dont have many things to spend gold on. they now just buy without shopping around for a lower price. and of course these players can hit jsut about every trader and wipe out the supply without much of a dent in their bank. then relist for way higher and then reimburse a friend to buy it at that price, thereby driving up the averages.

So, let me get this straight. You think that there are lots of players who:

• Don't value gold very much, since they have too much and don't have anything to spend it on.
• Spend hours on end continuously walking around to all the different traders buying up all the supply.
• Indirectly buy said items back from themselves via a friend at a higher price, with a 7% (of the higher price) loss due to taxes and listing fees.

Do I have that straight? If so, I can't imagine what the motivation would be. To troll people with higher prices? To sink gold out of the economy? There are much easier ways.

They certainly won't make any gold that way, assuming we are talking about mats that anyone can pick up off of the ground. As soon as they stop buying the supply, prices would lower to equilibrium again as normal market forces reassert themselves. They would be left with a bunch of items that they bought at a premium price - not even figuring in the built-in 7% loss - that they now have nothing to do with other than sell at a lower price than they purchased at.

I think the most gold I ever had on hand was about 10 million and I don’t run a trade guild or have people to help me with it, but I used to do number 2 at least once a week myself. On console if you spend a morning porting to all of the traders that aren’t in main hubs it’s often very likely you can find valuable items for half the price. Alloy going for 9K in Mournhold, well it’s going for 5K in the one off middle of the woods trader.

As for point one, if I didn’t buy nearly every motif for 3 years I would have tens of millions in gold right now with nothing else I want to spend it on.

So yeah, people like this exist.

silvereyes

THEDKEXPERIENCE wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Iarao wrote: »

it might be that lots of players now have hundreds of millions of gold cuz they have played for quite some time and really dont have many things to spend gold on. they now just buy without shopping around for a lower price. and of course these players can hit jsut about every trader and wipe out the supply without much of a dent in their bank. then relist for way higher and then reimburse a friend to buy it at that price, thereby driving up the averages.

So, let me get this straight. You think that there are lots of players who:

• Don't value gold very much, since they have too much and don't have anything to spend it on.
• Spend hours on end continuously walking around to all the different traders buying up all the supply.
• Indirectly buy said items back from themselves via a friend at a higher price, with a 7% (of the higher price) loss due to taxes and listing fees.

Do I have that straight? If so, I can't imagine what the motivation would be. To troll people with higher prices? To sink gold out of the economy? There are much easier ways.

They certainly won't make any gold that way, assuming we are talking about mats that anyone can pick up off of the ground. As soon as they stop buying the supply, prices would lower to equilibrium again as normal market forces reassert themselves. They would be left with a bunch of items that they bought at a premium price - not even figuring in the built-in 7% loss - that they now have nothing to do with other than sell at a lower price than they purchased at.

I think the most gold I ever had on hand was about 10 million and I don’t run a trade guild or have people to help me with it, but I used to do number 2 at least once a week myself. On console if you spend a morning porting to all of the traders that aren’t in main hubs it’s often very likely you can find valuable items for half the price. Alloy going for 9K in Mournhold, well it’s going for 5K in the one off middle of the woods trader.

As for point one, if I didn’t buy nearly every motif for 3 years I would have tens of millions in gold right now with nothing else I want to spend it on.

So yeah, people like this exist.

I would have tens of millions in gold and nothing else to spend it on too, if I just ignored all the stuff I've ever wanted to spend it on.