ZoS, We Need to Address the Mat Price Increase 2x-5x

Jem_Kindheart

As many have noticed, upgrade and base materials prices have exploded. In most cases doubled, in Legendary level prices have tripled. In some outlier cases, it's gone 5x. This is all within a timeframe of a few months.

This is all well and good if Gold income or flow was also increasing at similar rates. It has not. For the flippers and exploiters, this is all great and amazing!

For the regular player all the way up through upper level veteran players, even us long timers, this is not good and has set a dangerous precedent. Even with decent weekly sales and income from occasional hours of dedicated farming, it has become unrealistic to upgrade gear.

As a matter of perspective, the prices themselves aren't the problem. The issue is the relative value versus the players' ability to earn that coin to buy it. In this case, the value hasn't gone up, nor has the player's ability to earn that value in gold, but the price has gone up.

Through poor planning or poor game design, as well as controlling the artificial drop rates, ZoS is both allowing and is an accomplice to a rapidly growing inequality. It's getting to where even the advanced player has to sell Crowns just to upgrade gear. If this is the new game design or intention, then ZoS should just go ahead and directly sell us Gold for Crowns or real money so we can eliminate the middleperson.

For several examples, here's some examples that I had been noticing and watching skyrocket.

• Dreugh Wax: an absolute game flaw making the gold mat for light and medium the same item.
  year ago: 6k, then 7k, then a few months ago 9k, then suddenly 10k, then when the patch dropped 12k, quickly up and up, 14k last week, this week 17k.
  So from 6k to 17k.
  
• Tempering Alloy: a year ago 3.5k, then 5k, then when U29 dropped had gone to 8k, last week breached 10k.
  So 3.5k to 10k+
  
• Rosin: watched it go from 2.5k to 5k-8k, so not so bad, but still noted.
  
• Alchemy ingredient prices: almost all have undergone a 50% to 100% price increase during that same time.
  
• One outlier case I noticed go insane, and I don't care nor am in the market of nor for, is Aetherial Dust. Obviously it would go up due to the raised cap. Yet it has gone way deep into questionable and greed territory. A year ago or more it was 230k-275k, it had been there for quite some time. I watched the zone sellers since Update 29 go immediately to 350k, then a few days later 400k, then last week 500k then 600k, and a few days ago 750k.
  
  That is just totally nuts and a terrible design that allows for something to go from 230k to 750k within weeks.
  

This is setting a dangerous precedent ZoS, I'm telling you as a friend for years, this is dangerous and will backfire. If you want only the elites to get richer and everyone else to have to sell Crowns just to make gear or make potions to do content, the just come out and say so. Make a way for us to just buy the Gold.

Or, if you really want to fix it, just increase the drop rates. A Dreugh Wax is not worth 17k if it was 6k last year. Just up the drop rates of the mats and Surveys, we don't mind working for it.

We don't mind working for it, but it has to be realistic. 1.2 Million gold to fully upgrade 1 set of armor for 1 character is not realistic for most players.

redspecter23

ZOS is addressing this and they did just increase the drop rates with the new cp system and we also have an anniversary event running currently that will provide a short burst of extra mats into the economy.

Edaphon

Jem_Kindheart wrote: »

As many have noticed, upgrade and base materials prices have exploded. In most cases doubled, in Legendary level prices have tripled. In some outlier cases, it's gone 5x.

Really?

Note to self: sell a few hundred mats.

Lumsdenml

It's fine. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Samadhi

Buckle up, with the current event rewarding prize boxes for doing daily writs the demand is going to increase even higher for the next week+

linuxlady

attunable crafting stations went from about 140k each 6 months ago to easily double that

YandereGirlfriend

It's like the current GPU market is seeping into ESO...

Wolfpaw

You can sell crowns for gold, working as intended.

Blacknight841

If only you all had bots like on Xbox. Our wax is 3.5k!!! It’s actually not worth anyone’s time to farm materials because the bots do it for the whole community and Zos does nothing about it. Go to the alikr... bots, go to Rawlkha ... bots, starter zones... only bots. Even if you are trying to get through the tutorial as a new player, you can’t ... bots all over the wailing prison. If you are standing at any given wayshrine, and you tell your friend to come and find you at that wayshire without traveling to you ... chances are a group of bots will appear there before your friend. Wax is almost as low as when the pig farm existed. To put into perspective, 60% of the players that play eso on Xbox make it out of the wailing prison, but only half of those players actually make it to the harborage. That number is due there reduced to only 7% of the accounts created, not characters but accounts... actually make it to level 50.

You would thing things would get better over the course of 6 years, but in fact it is the worst it has ever been. As a new player you cannot even enjoy the game or find materials to farm because there is a bit sitting at it. Still, Zos does nothing about it.

Sylvermynx

Eh, no worries for me. I farm. I LOVE farming. I have everything I need without supporting people who think they deserve to make millions a week.

No. That is not sarcasm.

Sanctum74

Mat prices haven’t changed for me, they’ve always been free.

Runefang

Base mats are up due to Anniversary event, every year it happens.

Vlad9425

I’ve rarely actually had to buy mats in this game because I took the time to level multiple crafters and all my mats were earned by me. Something to consider for those worried about this.

FluffWit

Theyve gone upma little in ps4 but nothing like this?

Did Zenimax manage to ban the bots on PC? We usually get a 50% hike when they do on console.

YandereGirlfriend

FluffWit wrote: »

Theyve gone upma little in ps4 but nothing like this?

Did Zenimax manage to ban the bots on PC? We usually get a 50% hike when they do on console.

There was a large ban-wave several months ago that roughly coincides with the period of sharpest price escalation.

But prices were trending up even before the ban-wave hit, so I suspect that it was more of an accelerant than a cause.

nukk3r

Gear up a harvester toon and gather mats either for yourself or to sell.

ghost_bg_ESO

Crafting with couple characters, even if only one has maxed crafter skills, gives enough survey maps to sustain own needs for crafting and improvement mats... and most of the mats with insane prices are not so hard to farm; for example i can't see myself farming some dungeon for gold 10 hours to get 4 - 5 perfect roes as i can catch them faster...

bmnoble

They don't need to address anything. You see something you think is overpriced in a guild store, you don't buy it, its as simple as that.

There is no rush to gold out gear you can get by just fine with purple gear. If you do daily writs on multiple characters it might take a week or a fortnight even a month to gold out a set depending on the number of characters you have doing them daily but you won't have to pay those prices and when you don't need the gold mats you can sell them at what you think is a fair rate or hoard them for the future.

Canned_Apples

They increased the drop rate??? Hmmmm ohh... hmmm.

AlnilamE

OP, two things:

1. The jubilee event just started, so the actual base mats are going to be in demand for the next two weeks.
2. When you have a crafting bag, you don't have to sell mats to make room in your bank. There are players sitting on thousands of everything and they have no reason to sell it.

Actually, make that 3: Mats are not hard to farm yourself, and ZOS just added a CP passive that gives you more improvers when you refine.

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Mat prices haven’t changed for me, they’ve always been free.

I confess I bought a couple of stacks of Ancestor Silk before the event started, but other than that, I'm self-sufficient.

Rittings

People farm hard and work really hard to level up crafting to get those mats... It's nice to see their hard work pay off. You have 2 choices... pay it, or do your writs/farming to become self sufficient.

I appreciate it if bots have been purged from PC... I wish they would on PS4 too! I'm tired of a diluted market because of bot farmers who are just exploiting a video game to make real life money.

linuxlady

Vlad9425 wrote: »

I’ve rarely actually had to buy mats in this game because I took the time to level multiple crafters and all my mats were earned by me. Something to consider for those worried about this.

i dont agree. i have 22 toons and they all have maxed out skills in jewls and while i do get a lot of mats from dailies and from survey maps it is rarely enough to cover all the crafting writs i get in jewls and i dont mindfarming more as i go along but it's still not enough. There isn't enough time in the day to farm nodes and play the game in any other meaningful way and the costs are through the roof, so much so that the rewards are outweighed by the costs

Sergykid

i am afraid to sell materials anymore, because i might lose a lot of gold by not waiting a bit. Then i am afraid that if i wait a bit, the value could drop but this is less likely to happen than the former scenario.
last year i sold 100 zircon platings for 23k each (25k in guild stores, so with tax would gotten that anyway), now i have again 100 zircon platings but they're 35k each and going up. Same with golden materials of other professions, i have many of them and i am afraid to sell them.
same for vouchers, i have 3k vouchers now and i could sell transmute stations or whatever, but i am afraid prices will raise again so i am on the waiting loop again. Gold may fluctuate but vouchers will be always there

iksde

the best is how people are saying in threads like this how they dont feel anything bad as they themselves have loads of mats, many characters for daily crafts, etc etc how they dont need to even buy these mats because they have them xD

while they are sitting mountains of mats in their craftbags (I myself sit on that btw xD) they fail to see there need to be players who dont who actually have need to buy these mats and so we have prices which we have - becasue of demand of players who actually need to buy them and most probably because of people having tons of gold, just to much gold so they are hunting out of beredoom or their willingness just for cheaper mats to resell them with higher price (yeah, that not exclusive problem to AH )
I myself like to hunt o cheap mats when i have nothing to do just to make bigger stockpile in my crafbag when I have it active and I can see that problem of rising prices even on lowest mats while msot people here as we can see who also have loads of mats seems to not these raising prices because they just dont care about that becasue they are we can say just richer people who have their own mats and so are not beginners in this game

FluffWit

I farmed for an hour after the blast update just to test the new CP system. In 60 minutes I got 2400 raw mats- something like 1200 rubedite ore, 500 dust, 500 wood, 400 silk. My previous best was 1400.

Not bragging really, just pointing out how easy it is to get stuff.

VaranisArano

iksde wrote: »

the best is how people are saying in threads like this how they dont feel anything bad as they themselves have loads of mats, many characters for daily crafts, etc etc how they dont need to even buy these mats because they have them xD

while they are sitting mountains of mats in their craftbags (I myself sit on that btw xD) they fail to see there need to be players who dont who actually have need to buy these mats and so we have prices which we have - becasue of demand of players who actually need to buy them and most probably because of people having tons of gold, just to much gold so they are hunting out of beredoom or their willingness just for cheaper mats to resell them with higher price (yeah, that not exclusive problem to AH )
I myself like to hunt o cheap mats when i have nothing to do just to make bigger stockpile in my crafbag when I have it active and I can see that problem of rising prices even on lowest mats while msot people here as we can see who also have loads of mats seems to not these raising prices because they just dont care about that becasue they are we can say just richer people who have their own mats and so are not beginners in this game

I suspect the point that many farmers are making is that for those players who need those mats and who are currently fueling the demand...they have a choice.

They can pay those prices...or they can farm the mats themselves, much like we do.

Yes, it's true I don't personally feel the crunch because I've farmed a ton of mats and stashed them in my craft bag during free ESO+ trials. On the other hand, if I need 200 ancester silk for something, well, I farm that much or more on a single loop of Craglorn. Any CP 160 player can farm their own mats.

It's all about how players want to spend their time. Would they rather farm the materials themselves? Or would they rather farm gold in other ways to buy the mats?

They do have a choice.

YandereGirlfriend

It should be obvious to all that there is more than normal market forces going on right now. No amount of bot-banning will account for 4x price inflation in 9 months.

The game is old enough such that there are many players (and guilds) that have hundreds of millions in gold. To them, dropping 25 million to clear out all of the X materials below Y price is a trivial endeavor. They will clear out supply and force the market to match the new manipulated price and then make back all of that 25 million plus a windfall profit. Once you have enough gold, it is one of the most efficient ways to make additional gold - it's just highly unfortunate that it necessarily inflicts misery on everyone who otherwise relies on that market.

Farmers, of course, simply ride the wave that the speculators create. Since they are largely self-sufficient, they are insulated from the price increases while simultaneously benefiting from the increased prices of their own wares.

To the casual player irritated by the price hikes - the farmers are not the ones robbing you, that's the work of speculators.

Sambucca1973

This is how economies work. Basic supply and demand.

I try to sell things for reasonable prices. But that may be influenced on my own need for money. But I also don’t undercut big items. If a motif usually sells for 85k gold, that’s what I’ll try to get for it.

There are also guilds. I’ll put things in the guild bank or on the guild store at a reduced prices. Yes, my in-game buddies get a break - usually. Those folks get the “discount” that isn’t seen in the public guild traders.

Then there’s the practice of investment (that’s what I call it). I’ll hold onto something, if its sale price drops too much. Eventually it will go back up. Everything is cyclical.

Is it fair? I don’t know. But the entire economy in ESO is its own mini-game. It has taken me four years of fairly regular play to get a bit of a grasp on it. But there are folks, I’m sure, who make me look like a skooma peddler in comparison,

Starlight_Whisper

FluffWit wrote: »

Theyve gone upma little in ps4 but nothing like this?

Did Zenimax manage to ban the bots on PC? We usually get a 50% hike when they do on console.

Very likely

iksde

VaranisArano wrote: »

iksde wrote: »

the best is how people are saying in threads like this how they dont feel anything bad as they themselves have loads of mats, many characters for daily crafts, etc etc how they dont need to even buy these mats because they have them xD

while they are sitting mountains of mats in their craftbags (I myself sit on that btw xD) they fail to see there need to be players who dont who actually have need to buy these mats and so we have prices which we have - becasue of demand of players who actually need to buy them and most probably because of people having tons of gold, just to much gold so they are hunting out of beredoom or their willingness just for cheaper mats to resell them with higher price (yeah, that not exclusive problem to AH )
I myself like to hunt o cheap mats when i have nothing to do just to make bigger stockpile in my crafbag when I have it active and I can see that problem of rising prices even on lowest mats while msot people here as we can see who also have loads of mats seems to not these raising prices because they just dont care about that becasue they are we can say just richer people who have their own mats and so are not beginners in this game

I suspect the point that many farmers are making is that for those players who need those mats and who are currently fueling the demand...they have a choice.

They can pay those prices...or they can farm the mats themselves, much like we do.

Yes, it's true I don't personally feel the crunch because I've farmed a ton of mats and stashed them in my craft bag during free ESO+ trials. On the other hand, if I need 200 ancester silk for something, well, I farm that much or more on a single loop of Craglorn. Any CP 160 player can farm their own mats.

It's all about how players want to spend their time. Would they rather farm the materials themselves? Or would they rather farm gold in other ways to buy the mats?

They do have a choice.

yep, thats exactly this
and so not everyone have time at all to farm, grind that much for basics to be able to play something higher
as in eso I myself have so much I wont experience to much if even a pain of unavaibility to play something decent here because as how I want to play I dont want/dont have time to grind, farm milions of gold just to get decent gear for this, to be on par with rest players in that content

but I feel so much that feeling now in runescape to which I get back (again xD) when I want to play how I want but I ant until I grind one of needed skills which is most boring ever, especially on this not maxed level or grind of quests to get here where I want - but thats different, thats just progress of playtrough here which I need in order to get further in game and I wont be able to just buy this while in here in eso thats case is nothing from playthrough - thats a thing of callopsing market or something not working here or just with game
like mentioned before rich players getting profit from flipping items and so raising their price overall leaving not rich players at bigger disadvantage
less players willing to farm, gring mats and more players in need of them - showing there is more players willing to play how they want and there is not that much players having fun of farming items along so with not enough players keeping stack of items on market

for someone starting this game now is much much harder to get gold, to get decent gear, upgraded to be able to staart progressing for endgame than not that very long ago where mats literally was atleast 2x cheaper and more

I myself see problem with prices here over time, as I wrote I liked to hunt for cheap mats whne I was bored just to stockpile them in my craftbag, for fun I get to have over 1m of alcahest xD, I was buying that in same price as to vendor or even cheaper from guild stores, maybe price of this didnt raise to much but anyway it is rarely to see again this in price atlest of price to vendor this, this count to literally every material, whatever was very cheap or even worthless not it have its price or is even very expensive now and so thats the end of collecting so many mats as that is possible because it is no longer cheap, it is rather very expensive now so it will be evne more expensive for not veteran, old players here

wanna get geared for endgame? or even for pvp to have chances agaisnt other players? sorry but you need to go slowly farm gold for this with yout short time window for playing where you actually wanted just to play for fun withing not long time rather than grinding now gold for days to get geared to get chances with playing with other players who are longer in this game or are selling crowns

like example from 1 of my friends - he is pvp only player here, he always know I have much gold and I will always find something whih I could want from crown store xD so everytime when he needed gold because meta drasticly changed or because he get back after longer break and everything changed very much in this time - he have no willings to go into grind for gold or mats, he dont care for this as he dont want to waste his not long time of playing for this, the only reason he is in this game its just pvp, he doesnt step outside pvp unless he need to buy something or is forced to farm an set which is only in dung - if he didnt had me to sell me crons for gold - he would just find anyone else or even buy from someone else cheaper for real money gold instead for crowns just to not stay away from his only reason to play this game, I just know he will never even touch anything from grind aspect of this game, exp or gold, he is not for this here, he is just for fun, to play game for fun with his time for playing instead for grind to be able to play

FlopsyPrince

AlnilamE wrote: »

OP, two things:

1. The jubilee event just started, so the actual base mats are going to be in demand for the next two weeks.
2. When you have a crafting bag, you don't have to sell mats to make room in your bank. There are players sitting on thousands of everything and they have no reason to sell it.

Actually, make that 3: Mats are not hard to farm yourself, and ZOS just added a CP passive that gives you more improvers when you refine.

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Mat prices haven’t changed for me, they’ve always been free.

I confess I bought a couple of stacks of Ancestor Silk before the event started, but other than that, I'm self-sufficient.

I buy them every so often doing dailies on multiple characters. I could do many fewer if surveys weren't such a pain. I think I sucked up 2 hours the other day doing them in Northern Elsweyr, partially because getting some to reset was a pain and also because I stacked up 20+ of all of them there.