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

xilfxlegion

Jeremy wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Sambucca1973 wrote: »

This is how economies work. Basic supply and demand.

This game's economy does not function like a free economy. Supply is intentionally kept out of the market to artificially raise prices. That is literally how this game's market structure was designed. Add that to the use of addons to hawk the market and buy up competing prices and what you have is something more akin to how a cartel would operate. So you can't really apply the rules of supply and demand to this game's economy. It was deliberately designed to keep the demand high in proportion to its supply.

The player economy is a free market. I can set whatever price i want for anything i want to sell. People can either buy it for that price from me, pay a different price from someone else, or farm it themselves. That is about as free as you can get. What addons make the trading in game cartel like? What items have demand that is high in proportion to their supply?

No they can't. Unless you belong to a trading guild in possession of a guild trader, you can't set the prices for anything. A free economy would be one that everyone could participate in and put up their goods for sale on the market no matter what guild they belong to. This was intentional, and done deliberately by the developers to keep prices artificially high by limiting the amount of supply coming into the market.

The "cartel" element I alluded to comes into the picture when you consider that the more popular trading hubs are dominated by specific guilds who hawk the market and then buy out their competition so they can control prices. If this was actually a free economy the prices of materials would not be what they are now. That I can promise you.

even if you dont belong to a trading guild you can sell in chat all day long - - there is no trader conspiracy and no monopoly -- anything you can get in a trader you can get for free if you farm it.

7 pages of the same round and round argument. everything is free if you take the time to farm it. its that simple.

Kwoung

Sylvermynx wrote: »

The most annoying thing is that over three years I have developed a fondness for certain guilds (three in particular) who always used to be in Vivec - and now they're not reliably IN Vivec any more. I actually don't know how to find them without spending all my time running around multiple cities instead of y'know, just playing the game (I don't spend my game time in cities outside of doing writs on my mains in Vivec).

Most of the traders in Vivec now are.... not guilds I want to buy from. WAY too expensive for the most part, and they're mostly guilds I used to see in Mournhold (where I wouldn't buy from them there either). Fortunately, I don't need a whole lot from traders....

Feline is in Daggerfall this week, I will assume that is one of the nice ones you are looking for. I recently left them as I really don't do enough trading anymore to justify having a second guild with a trader, but yes, they are a bunch of cool cats!

Sylvermynx

AlnilamE wrote: »

If you want to let me know which guilds those are, I can keep an eye out. I do trader bids for my social guild and I also hop around a lot shopping for motifs, so I'm sure I'll find them.

Kwoung wrote: »

Feline is in Daggerfall this week, I will assume that is one of the nice ones you are looking for. I recently left them as I really don't do enough trading anymore to justify having a second guild with a trader, but yes, they are a bunch of cool cats!

Thank you both! Yes, Feline Good/Great Meowporium is one (either one of them), and I will have to drag through my shoddy memory for the other two. Hmm. I think one of them might be in Vivec this week, but I haven't needed to "shop".... Yes, just checked - Savage Blade. Ah! The other one is Warmart Blade 'n' Trade. I find them occasionally in Mournhold, but not this week I think.

If you want to pm me here, I'm usually on for a couple of hours in the morning and again in the evening. Now that I saw Savage Blade, I'll pick up a few odds n ends when I'm back in game tomorrow.

FlopsyPrince

remosito wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

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.

A kingdom for a new green tree passive:

"survey spots will immediately respawn upon harvesting all 6 nodes when carrying more surveys for that spot"

As for the mar prices. Zos is certainly aware. Seeing they just added 2 cp passives that increase temper/mats drop rates.

My guess is they are monitoring effect on economy over the next few months. And if needed tune them upwards. Especially met. disasembly is pretty weak at 12.5% increase.

This should not be a new passive in any way. It should be part of the core game!

FlopsyPrince

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

<Disclaimer: This is not Baiting! This is an Elder Scrolls enthusiast worrying about his beloved community!>

Anyone talking about economy should understand something. Speculation bubbles do only burst, when creditors massively demand payment from debtors. Which then have to sell low for short term earnings.
Since neither are subject to (monetary) economic pressure in ESO, bubbles cannot pop! They might stretch, though.

The craft bag removing any cost of storage for mats is one of the major driving factors of the price increases for storable materials.
Infinite Storage without Cost! How can anyone claim that this is even remotely describable by economic theory?

The crafting bag is not new, so your basis is not accurate.

Though prices go up because of scarcity compared to demand.

The stickerbook may play a role in this.

FlopsyPrince

The modern guild trader system is lousy in many ways, but a few profit from it so they loudly support it.

You won't win the argument for a Central AH, not matter how good the argument.

Lots of drawbacks to guild traders (or worse, selling in chat). Though look for some older threads and you can see the arguments.

johnjetau

I'm going to give everyone a heads up, so that way you can plan ahead.

When the companions system comes in - where companions can fight along side of you and gear them up - the prices are really going to go thru the roof. I can almost guarantee some players will be giving their companions the best of everything.

So either buy up what you can now, learn to farm or just wait out the storm and hope this eventually clam down.

ThorianB

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

The modern guild trader system is lousy in many ways, but a few profit from it so they loudly support it.

You won't win the argument for a Central AH, not matter how good the argument.

Lots of drawbacks to guild traders (or worse, selling in chat). Though look for some older threads and you can see the arguments.

There isn't a good argument for an AH. They are inferior to the current system in almost every way. All we really need is a few QoL improvements to the current system.

JKorr

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Only people who don't have a clue about player economies/markets think an central AH is a good thing.

I don't care about "player economies/markets". I just want to sell stuff, with low effort, with low volume. (i.e, I'm not a "trader", I'm just a player who would periodically like to sell something).

In an AH system, I can do this - on some random day, I have one or two items that might be worth something, so I can throw them on the AH for a slight undercut (having looked at the AH to see the price; as opposed to having to have addons to poll sales across many vendors), and sell them quick. Total time/effort - a minute or two.

I don't sell enough volume to bother belonging to a trading guild, and I'm not going to stand in chat yelling "<_____> for sale!" for who knows how long, and dealing with some number of /whisper conversations. A few more gold isn't worth all that hassle.

So I just vendor or delete 95% of the drops I get from the game, that I don't personally use. Which, as Jeremy mentioned, helps keep prices high by keeping supply out of the market. Every copy of a motif/recipe/etc that I (and everyone like me) just throws away, keeps supply down to keep prices higher for the people who are willing to jump through the hoops of this game's system.


Now, if that's what you mean by "maintaining a healthy economy"... then, yeah. This system is set up to do that. But it does it by making it hard for most players to actually participate in said economy.


tl;dr - games with an AH, I actually interact with the 'economy'. This game, I don't bother, because they made it annoying & tedious for anyone who doesn't enjoy Trading as an activity.

I belong to 5 guilds. One is an actual trading guild. 4 are social guilds. One doesn't care about trading. Four consistently get traders. None have dues or sales requirements. I don't bother to sell tons of stuff. I don't bother to sell stuff every day. I don't bother to fill all 30 slots in my trading guild. I seldom sell anything in my social guilds even though we have traders, usually giving away stuff I don't need. How much more "low-volume" could I get?

It really isn't hard to "participate" in the current economy, even for "low-volume" only want to sell stuff once a year players.

SownRose

It's supply and demand. I'm on Xbox na. I craft artaeum foods to sell. I buy a ton of clam gall & pmop for cheap. A while back ppl quit farming to do the events. The prices skyrocketed bc there was a lack of competition. I found farmers and still paid my usual price, but it wasn't easy.

Now, thanks to alchemy reagents being in the anniv boxes, the price of pmop is the lowest I've ever seen it. I'm fair, so I lowered the cost of my foods.

As to a money sink... Housing addiction 😜🤣

Butt this year has been the perfect example of supply and demand in full effect on a gaming market!

SownRose

Ps. I buy things listed below market value and sell them at market value for a small profit. I visit about 40 traders a day doing this. I also try to find the best price available on my ingredients.

I also buy bulk for less per item then break into four packs that a newer player can afford.

I don't see this as cheating the system. What is it when a grocery store buys 200 cans of beans for 10 cents each, then sells them for 80 cents each?

Kwoung

JKorr wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Only people who don't have a clue about player economies/markets think an central AH is a good thing.

I don't care about "player economies/markets". I just want to sell stuff, with low effort, with low volume. (i.e, I'm not a "trader", I'm just a player who would periodically like to sell something).

In an AH system, I can do this - on some random day, I have one or two items that might be worth something, so I can throw them on the AH for a slight undercut (having looked at the AH to see the price; as opposed to having to have addons to poll sales across many vendors), and sell them quick. Total time/effort - a minute or two.

I don't sell enough volume to bother belonging to a trading guild, and I'm not going to stand in chat yelling "<_____> for sale!" for who knows how long, and dealing with some number of /whisper conversations. A few more gold isn't worth all that hassle.

So I just vendor or delete 95% of the drops I get from the game, that I don't personally use. Which, as Jeremy mentioned, helps keep prices high by keeping supply out of the market. Every copy of a motif/recipe/etc that I (and everyone like me) just throws away, keeps supply down to keep prices higher for the people who are willing to jump through the hoops of this game's system.


Now, if that's what you mean by "maintaining a healthy economy"... then, yeah. This system is set up to do that. But it does it by making it hard for most players to actually participate in said economy.


tl;dr - games with an AH, I actually interact with the 'economy'. This game, I don't bother, because they made it annoying & tedious for anyone who doesn't enjoy Trading as an activity.

I belong to 5 guilds. One is an actual trading guild. 4 are social guilds. One doesn't care about trading. Four consistently get traders. None have dues or sales requirements. I don't bother to sell tons of stuff. I don't bother to sell stuff every day. I don't bother to fill all 30 slots in my trading guild. I seldom sell anything in my social guilds even though we have traders, usually giving away stuff I don't need. How much more "low-volume" could I get?

It really isn't hard to "participate" in the current economy, even for "low-volume" only want to sell stuff once a year players.

I feel at this point, since it has been proven a thousand times over that you do not need to be in a trade guild for your guild to have a trader... that people simply want to reap the benefits of being in a guild, without having to actually join one.

rumple9

Bring back the bots

SownRose

rumple9 wrote: »

Bring back the bots

Um, no thanks!

luen79rwb17_ESO

This is definately worthy of an investigation. In my opinion, this is definately casued by higher amount of gold in the economy, how? Well, 1) people have figured out ways to make more gold, which I don't believe is the cause or you would have seem Youtube videos all over it, or 2) probably because the player base have expanded by a considerable amount and that is increasing the amount of gold and matt demand aswell. This last reason seems to relate to official statements recently.

Kwoung

luen79rwb17_ESO wrote: »

This is definately worthy of an investigation. In my opinion, this is definately casued by higher amount of gold in the economy, how? Well, 1) people have figured out ways to make more gold, which I don't believe is the cause or you would have seem Youtube videos all over it, or 2) probably because the player base have expanded by a considerable amount and that is increasing the amount of gold and matt demand aswell. This last reason seems to relate to official statements recently.

Also don't forget, that due to a ton of people staying at home, that they have *way* more time to play than they ever did before. So even older players that previously had limited playtime... are now generating tons more gold than they have ever done previously.

FlopsyPrince

ThorianB wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

The modern guild trader system is lousy in many ways, but a few profit from it so they loudly support it.

You won't win the argument for a Central AH, not matter how good the argument.

Lots of drawbacks to guild traders (or worse, selling in chat). Though look for some older threads and you can see the arguments.

There isn't a good argument for an AH. They are inferior to the current system in almost every way. All we really need is a few QoL improvements to the current system.

- Finding things.
- Finding a reasonable "going price for things"
- Selling things efficiently.

Many other reasons.

Some benefit from the lack of open information and make money flipping, so they favor keeping things as they are.

Your idea that "no good reason" exists would mean people would stop pushing for it. You may not think the reasons are good enough for you, but the regularly hinder my gameplay, for example, and I am a member of 5 decent trade guilds on both NA and EU.

[Edit to remove bait]

FlopsyPrince

rumple9 wrote: »

Bring back the bots

Who let the bots out? Who? Who? ....

ThorianB

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

- Finding things.
- Finding a reasonable "going price for things"
- Selling things efficiently.

The current system could use the QoL improvement of a global search function or even a regional multi trader search function but you should have to travel to each location to buy. I am not for sure what you mean by "selling things efficiently" though. Selling things efficiently requires you to properly price( or under price them).

An AH is very easy to exploit, so while its easy for you to unload a few items at first, when you go to buy stuff your going to struggle to find many items and your going to pay whatever a pro trader wants you to pay for it. So if they want 1 mil gold for aetherial dust, you are going to pay it because they will suck up anything lower priced as soon as it hits the market and reprice it.

Some benefit from the lack of open information and make money flipping, so they favor keeping things as they are.

Feel free to buy from the same out of the way traders us evil item flipping traders do. We aren't stopping you from shopping at the one trader in the middle of BFE. If you want the convenience of big city shopping and to have that big selection of many active sellers then your going to pay for it. But you have the freedom to get your items the same places we do. No one is stopping you.

Just FYI though, I play on PC and i dont use TTC when i go shopping for items to flip. Sometimes i don't even leave the banker as i will pull from lower tier trade guilds i am in and flip to higher level. All that information you think traders use to find items, most don't use. Newbies use TTC to find deals. Most experienced traders already know what traders to hit and when to hit them. No one is preventing you from partaking in any of this.

Your idea that "no good reason" exists would mean people would stop pushing for it.

We have already beat every argument on why ESO should never and will never have an AH to death. The people who want an AH always do it for the same reason. They don't actually care about the player economy or the impact a global system would have on the value of items in the game. They don't care that many things that are currently worth my time, their time, and Fred's time to farm, would no longer be worth even picking up under an AH system. They don't care that it would ruin the game for a lot of people that consider trading a major end game activity.

Do you know what they care about? That they can post their mostly worthless trinkets with little to no effort and that they can search for an item with little to no effort. No one that actually cares about player trading in an MMO thinks a AH is a good idea, especially not the ones that can easily manipulate and control trade on an AH. We will literally tell you how we will use our wealth to consume and control every thing that goes on the AH that has any desirability. How it will only be exploited and controlled by rich players. How we have the funds to run any competition out of business.

darvaria

They just need to 4x the drop rate. But I doubt they will. Why not? It takes 800K to gold up jewelry. The original idea of requiring 10X grains to make 1 chromium plating was just a rl money grab. Brilliant, I might add. Rl money being spent to upgrade.

Crowns going 300 to 350 to 1 will cost you 2600 to 3000 crowns. Just say 3000 crowns. With crowns on sale, that costs you about $13 rl money. How long does it take you to make $800K gold game? A lot of players would rather pay $13 than farm $800k gold. Unless your life situation is where you are not earning a rl income with enough disposable income (could be retired, laid off, in school, or a lot of time on your hands, etc). OR you simply choose not to spend rl money. Face it: there is a reason that it is mostly Chinese gold farmers in most games.

I find it rather amusing at this in game exploitation, that caters to a player base with more disposable income, since the company is clearly run by mostly self proclaimed liberals. (just gauging from content) But please, don't stop selling crowns. But, a higher drop rate would be more fair. If it only cost 200k to gold up jewelry, I might be inclined to actually farm in game.

And the "gambling". Lets not overlook that. Have sold most of my crowns to people buying those crates. Which I have bought myself recently, to get the 150% exp scrolls.

I do think it is really hard for most brand new players to catch up. LOWER the drop rates. I don't think they will. This might cut into revenues. If I ran the company, not sure I would. I would have to do a cost analysis to see how this would affect subscriptions vs crown sales.

Eedat

[snip]

Farming mats is legitimately the easiest thing in the game to do. They are legitimately everywhere just lying on the ground in the entire overworld. The game throws gold and materials at you for doing the most simple craft writs to the point where you can make literally millions of gold a month by doing daily crafting writs on 10 characters. [snip] And I'm saying "poor" because there is no actual concept of being poor in an MMO. There is exactly zero cost of living in an MMO. Literally every single item in the entire game is an optional luxury lol. You can literally make over 150k/hr (PC-NA prices) running around picking mats off the ground in Craglorn. You get handed 350k in raw gold per week for doing crafting writs on 10 characters and that really only accounts for at best a third of the value you get from crafting writs.

[snip] Everyone has every right to decide what they want to charge for their time and effort. Dont like the price? Put your own effort in. Dont want to put the effort in? Pay for someone else's. [snip]

[snip] Before I was even level 50 I asked enough questions to figure out why raw materials were worth more than finished mats and ran around the bottom of a delve in Auridon killing bats to get raw leather to sell lol.

[snip] The last thing you would ever want to try to price fix is something with massive volume and is ridiculously easy to acquire. It makes absolutely no sense other than an argument of convenience for some atrocious central auction house which is a thousand times easier to price fix on anyway. Like I could see people trying to control the price of a rare motif or a costume or something, but mats? [snip] You cant go more than 50 feet in the overland without running into them by accident lol.

You want a more logical solution why the price of mats went up? Population grew 20% in a single year. Stickerbook surged demand. Massive ban waves to the bots who are still massively reduced in number to this day (again, at least on PC-NA). PvP changes banned everyone's gear now they need to make new gear. Massive CP changes switching up the meta requiring new sets. You know, logical stuff like that.

[Edited to remove Bashing and Rude Comments]

ThorianB

Eedat wrote: »

[snip]

Farming mats is legitimately the easiest thing in the game to do. They are legitimately everywhere just lying on the ground in the entire overworld. The game throws gold and materials at you for doing the most simple craft writs to the point where you can make literally millions of gold a month by doing daily crafting writs on 10 characters. [snip] And I'm saying "poor" because there is no actual concept of being poor in an MMO. There is exactly zero cost of living in an MMO. Literally every single item in the entire game is an optional luxury lol. You can literally make over 150k/hr (PC-NA prices) running around picking mats off the ground in Craglorn. You get handed 350k in raw gold per week for doing crafting writs on 10 characters and that really only accounts for at best a third of the value you get from crafting writs.

[snip] Everyone has every right to decide what they want to charge for their time and effort. Dont like the price? Put your own effort in. Dont want to put the effort in? Pay for someone else's. [snip]

[snip] Before I was even level 50 I asked enough questions to figure out why raw materials were worth more than finished mats and ran around the bottom of a delve in Auridon killing bats to get raw leather to sell lol.

[snip] The last thing you would ever want to try to price fix is something with massive volume and is ridiculously easy to acquire. It makes absolutely no sense other than an argument of convenience for some atrocious central auction house which is a thousand times easier to price fix on anyway. Like I could see people trying to control the price of a rare motif or a costume or something, but mats? [snip] You cant go more than 50 feet in the overland without running into them by accident lol.

You want a more logical solution why the price of mats went up? Population grew 20% in a single year. Stickerbook surged demand. Massive ban waves to the bots who are still massively reduced in number to this day (again, at least on PC-NA). PvP changes banned everyone's gear now they need to make new gear. Massive CP changes switching up the meta requiring new sets. You know, logical stuff like that.

Very well put. Every argument i see as to why someone can't boils down to they want to put in low effort but want grand rewards. I make 4600ish gold on writs each day on each character and surveys and rewards basically sustain the ability to print money using daily writs. I sell my intricates and ornates as well and this pushes me over 5000 gold a day per character. It takes 5 minutes or less even with the current login lag, to do writs on a single character. That is 60k an hour. You get 9 free slots. That is 45k a day in writs and that is without selling any of the mat rewards you get for them.

When i was a newbie, i did writs and stealing on 3 characters everyday. I could make about 5k-10k a day stealing out of containers every day per character for about 15 or 20 minutes worth of work. That doesn't include some of the stuff i would launder and sell on a trader.

I then figured out what sells on traders and then started farming those items. If supply was really high because of an event or because it was new and every was farming it, i would farm other stuff that people weren't farming and sell that instead. I can spend an hour a day farming and get a hundred thousand gold or more worth of stuff to sell.

I watch broke people run by 100 containers but they don't have 5k gold to their name. I've made millions off looting places like banished cells. Everyone just blows through it a requeues for another one. I loot containers and get all kinds of goodies. Like with raw mats, money making items are laying all over the place.

I make millions because people are in to big of a hurry to pick up things they run by every day or to go to traders in out of the way places. I am literally filthy rich because other people are to lazy or in to big of a hurry to get their own stuff. Wealth requires effort. If you don't want to put in the effort, you are going to be poor.

Eedat

ThorianB wrote: »

Eedat wrote: »

[snip]

Farming mats is legitimately the easiest thing in the game to do. They are legitimately everywhere just lying on the ground in the entire overworld. The game throws gold and materials at you for doing the most simple craft writs to the point where you can make literally millions of gold a month by doing daily crafting writs on 10 characters. [snip] And I'm saying "poor" because there is no actual concept of being poor in an MMO. There is exactly zero cost of living in an MMO. Literally every single item in the entire game is an optional luxury lol. You can literally make over 150k/hr (PC-NA prices) running around picking mats off the ground in Craglorn. You get handed 350k in raw gold per week for doing crafting writs on 10 characters and that really only accounts for at best a third of the value you get from crafting writs.

[snip] Everyone has every right to decide what they want to charge for their time and effort. Dont like the price? Put your own effort in. Dont want to put the effort in? Pay for someone else's. [snip]

[snip] Before I was even level 50 I asked enough questions to figure out why raw materials were worth more than finished mats and ran around the bottom of a delve in Auridon killing bats to get raw leather to sell lol.

[snip] The last thing you would ever want to try to price fix is something with massive volume and is ridiculously easy to acquire. It makes absolutely no sense other than an argument of convenience for some atrocious central auction house which is a thousand times easier to price fix on anyway. Like I could see people trying to control the price of a rare motif or a costume or something, but mats? [snip] You cant go more than 50 feet in the overland without running into them by accident lol.

You want a more logical solution why the price of mats went up? Population grew 20% in a single year. Stickerbook surged demand. Massive ban waves to the bots who are still massively reduced in number to this day (again, at least on PC-NA). PvP changes banned everyone's gear now they need to make new gear. Massive CP changes switching up the meta requiring new sets. You know, logical stuff like that.

Very well put. Every argument i see as to why someone can't boils down to they want to put in low effort but want grand rewards. I make 4600ish gold of writs each day on each character and surveys and rewards basically sustain the ability to print money using daily writs. I sell my intricates and ornates as well and this pushes me over 5000 gold a day per character. It takes 5 minutes or less even with the current login lag, to do writs on a single character. That is 60k an hour. You get 9 free slots. That is 45k a day in writs and that is without selling any of the mat rewards you get for them.

When i was a newbie, i did writs and stealing on 3 characters everyday. I could make about 5k-10k a day stealing out of containers every day per character for about 15 or 20 minutes worth of work. That doesn't include some of the stuff i would launder and sell on a trader.

I then figured out what sells on traders and then started farming those items. If supply was really high because of an event or because it was new and every was farming it, i would farm other stuff that people weren't farming and sell that instead. I can spend an hour a day farming and get a hundred thousand gold or more worth of stuff to sell.

I watch broke people run by 100 containers but they don't have 5k gold to their name. I've made millions off looting places like banished cells. Everyone just blows through it a requeues for another one. I loot containers and get all kinds of goodies. Like with raw mats, money making items are laying all over the place.

I make millions because people are in to big of a hurry to pick up things they run by every day or to go to traders in out of the way places. I am literally filthy rich because other people are to lazy or in to big of a hurry to get their own stuff. Wealth requires effort. If you don't want to put in the effort, you are going to be poor.

There is a CP passive in the green tree that increases gold gained by 10% and it applies to writs. Now you make 5.1k gold per character . But yeah its absolutely absurd and the arguments make legitimately zero logical sense.

Mat prices being so high is fantastic for new players because they have a super easy activity that anyone can do and rake in huge sums of gold. Which is exactly what I did when I and many other did as a new player.

People think that the progression is step 1: new player. Step two: maxed out gold gear. Well lets be real they don't actually think that, they just present it that way because it's convenient for their argument. Really it's a bunch of end game players shelling out gold to people who put the time in to farm them including new to mid game players

Kwoung

Eedat wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Eedat wrote: »

[snip]

Farming mats is legitimately the easiest thing in the game to do. They are legitimately everywhere just lying on the ground in the entire overworld. The game throws gold and materials at you for doing the most simple craft writs to the point where you can make literally millions of gold a month by doing daily crafting writs on 10 characters. [snip] And I'm saying "poor" because there is no actual concept of being poor in an MMO. There is exactly zero cost of living in an MMO. Literally every single item in the entire game is an optional luxury lol. You can literally make over 150k/hr (PC-NA prices) running around picking mats off the ground in Craglorn. You get handed 350k in raw gold per week for doing crafting writs on 10 characters and that really only accounts for at best a third of the value you get from crafting writs.

[snip] Everyone has every right to decide what they want to charge for their time and effort. Dont like the price? Put your own effort in. Dont want to put the effort in? Pay for someone else's. [snip]

[snip] Before I was even level 50 I asked enough questions to figure out why raw materials were worth more than finished mats and ran around the bottom of a delve in Auridon killing bats to get raw leather to sell lol.

[snip] The last thing you would ever want to try to price fix is something with massive volume and is ridiculously easy to acquire. It makes absolutely no sense other than an argument of convenience for some atrocious central auction house which is a thousand times easier to price fix on anyway. Like I could see people trying to control the price of a rare motif or a costume or something, but mats? [snip] You cant go more than 50 feet in the overland without running into them by accident lol.

You want a more logical solution why the price of mats went up? Population grew 20% in a single year. Stickerbook surged demand. Massive ban waves to the bots who are still massively reduced in number to this day (again, at least on PC-NA). PvP changes banned everyone's gear now they need to make new gear. Massive CP changes switching up the meta requiring new sets. You know, logical stuff like that.

Very well put. Every argument i see as to why someone can't boils down to they want to put in low effort but want grand rewards. I make 4600ish gold of writs each day on each character and surveys and rewards basically sustain the ability to print money using daily writs. I sell my intricates and ornates as well and this pushes me over 5000 gold a day per character. It takes 5 minutes or less even with the current login lag, to do writs on a single character. That is 60k an hour. You get 9 free slots. That is 45k a day in writs and that is without selling any of the mat rewards you get for them.

When i was a newbie, i did writs and stealing on 3 characters everyday. I could make about 5k-10k a day stealing out of containers every day per character for about 15 or 20 minutes worth of work. That doesn't include some of the stuff i would launder and sell on a trader.

I then figured out what sells on traders and then started farming those items. If supply was really high because of an event or because it was new and every was farming it, i would farm other stuff that people weren't farming and sell that instead. I can spend an hour a day farming and get a hundred thousand gold or more worth of stuff to sell.

I watch broke people run by 100 containers but they don't have 5k gold to their name. I've made millions off looting places like banished cells. Everyone just blows through it a requeues for another one. I loot containers and get all kinds of goodies. Like with raw mats, money making items are laying all over the place.

I make millions because people are in to big of a hurry to pick up things they run by every day or to go to traders in out of the way places. I am literally filthy rich because other people are to lazy or in to big of a hurry to get their own stuff. Wealth requires effort. If you don't want to put in the effort, you are going to be poor.

There is a CP passive in the green tree that increases gold gained by 10% and it applies to writs. Now you make 5.1k gold per character . But yeah its absolutely absurd and the arguments make legitimately zero logical sense.

Mat prices being so high is fantastic for new players because they have a super easy activity that anyone can do and rake in huge sums of gold. Which is exactly what I did when I and many other did as a new player.

People think that the progression is step 1: new player. Step two: maxed out gold gear. Well lets be real they don't actually think that, they just present it that way because it's convenient for their argument. Really it's a bunch of end game players shelling out gold to people who put the time in to farm them including new to mid game players

We make it a point in our guild to teach new players these things, and most of them are quite thankful. I think some are skeptical, but when they join our Sunday night harvest party (or simply see the posted results) and see many of their guild mates collecting 100-200K worth of mats in an single hour, they become believers. I would say your average newbie can harvest about 40-50K in an hour once they get a rhythm. One such member went out and harvested for another hour after the party once and let us know he quadrupled his net worth! He previously thought it was hard to make gold prior to that. We also harp on folks to never pass a bag, crate, dresser, etc... if they have the slightest desire to make gold... as that is where the game really gives it out and opening the right bag, instant 6 figures!

The folks I mostly see who are broke, are the ones who rushed to CP160 at the expense of everything else thinking getting there was all that mattered. Every one of them had a rude awakening when they didn't have the gold, crafting skills or mats on hand to even make or buy their first set of non-training gear, or swap the traits on a piece they got after seeing what buying it cost with the "right" trait.

I almost feel like it is this same type of person always going on about having a AH, like that will magically solve their not bothering to develop a well rounded character and learn how the game actually works. Luckily, these are few and far between in my guild at least, as they tend to leave when it becomes apparent that we mostly choose to only help those that help themselves... and we don't do "carries". Yes, we will help teach you how to make gold, but no... we won't be making the armor for that Alcast build for you golded out for free, that is literally 3+ million gold worth of crafting mats!

morph1976

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.

Same here, took the time (18m - 24m) to level 9 crafters one of which is my main for master writs. I can get why guys are cheesed with prices, I would be too but unfortunately it's the economy supply and demand. I usually get between 2 and 5 dreugh wax daily on all my writs which due to current long loading times can take upwards of 30 mins. I'm happy the prices are the way they are as I put time and effort in and can make a small fortune (1mil per month when taking surveys into account) I was also happy when they were not in demand as it was still gold for nothing. It didnt however happen overnight. Invest your time and then sit by

AlnilamE

Pinoh wrote: »

The game in general will ultimately be better off it it makes the game more enjoyable for the 99% not the 1%. That's simple math, no? New players need to buy everything, old players don't; if ZOS forces themselves into a closed loop the game will eventually die off. Zos is making a fundamental mistake when it caters to flippers and trolls rather than promoting a stable economy. This affects all aspects of the game not just trading. pvp trials w/e new or casual players are squeezed out if the game has too steep of a curve for buy in.

New players don't need to buy anything, though. They can get everything themselves, and A LOT more easily than we did when the game came out or certain updates happened. Remember when the only way to get Ancestor Silk, Rubedite and Rubedo Leather was by deconning items from Imperial City or buying them with Tel Var?

Now these mats are everywhere. They come from hirelings. They come from deconning gear. ZOS has also just introduced a CP passive that increases the amount of improvers you get from refining and deconning. That's an increased drop rate right there.

Not to mention that we are in the middle of the Jubilee event and crafting mats are raining from the sky.

Also a lot of the items people flip are from the golden vendor. The cost of upgrade materials has directly affected that market. It's not really market economics at play here. If Zos is going to inject end game items into the economy. It just needs to equalize the economy by having all the crafting vendors sell upgrade components furnishing materials provisioning materials as well. Players can sell off their excess for cheaper still if they don't need them or want to farm for money.

Zos already has a determined price for gold gear. And it's set at the golden vendor. ZOS just needs to stabilize the economy and sell those materials for a similar price to all crafting vendors 24/7. And if 1% of the game population has a cow and leaves, ZOS is far better off retaining 99% of its player base. It's simple math.

ZOS said that they didn't want gold jewelry to be too easy to get. That they wanted it to be the last thing people consider and they would be just as well off with purple, which is a lot easier to get, both from the world and via crafting.

If we're throwing around random stats, 99% of the player base is just as effective with purple jewelry as they are with gold. So it doesn't matter how much chromium plating is going for.

Araneae6537

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Only people who don't have a clue about player economies/markets think an central AH is a good thing.

I don't care about "player economies/markets". I just want to sell stuff, with low effort, with low volume. (i.e, I'm not a "trader", I'm just a player who would periodically like to sell something).

In an AH system, I can do this - on some random day, I have one or two items that might be worth something, so I can throw them on the AH for a slight undercut (having looked at the AH to see the price; as opposed to having to have addons to poll sales across many vendors), and sell them quick. Total time/effort - a minute or two.

I don't sell enough volume to bother belonging to a trading guild, and I'm not going to stand in chat yelling "<_____> for sale!" for who knows how long, and dealing with some number of /whisper conversations. A few more gold isn't worth all that hassle.

So I just vendor or delete 95% of the drops I get from the game, that I don't personally use. Which, as Jeremy mentioned, helps keep prices high by keeping supply out of the market. Every copy of a motif/recipe/etc that I (and everyone like me) just throws away, keeps supply down to keep prices higher for the people who are willing to jump through the hoops of this game's system.


Now, if that's what you mean by "maintaining a healthy economy"... then, yeah. This system is set up to do that. But it does it by making it hard for most players to actually participate in said economy.


tl;dr - games with an AH, I actually interact with the 'economy'. This game, I don't bother, because they made it annoying & tedious for anyone who doesn't enjoy Trading as an activity.

But why would you do this??? For most of my time in ESO, I was not in a trading guild but I would still occasionally have valuables to sell and so would do so in the more casual guilds I was in. Before I had TTC I would inquire of others about price if I had nothing else to go on and I would price on the low end. These are guilds that are active but not trading focused and so occasionally have traders in outlaw dens, etc. but members regularly sell to one another. I’ve sold a LOT this way and I check these guilds more than any others for what’s on sale in part because I’m more likely to see a great deal before someone else buys it and if I’m going to pay up to regular price, I’d rather keep the gold in-guild.

TL;DR You CAN participate in the game economy. List your items in any guild large enough to have a guild store.

zaria

ThorianB wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

The modern guild trader system is lousy in many ways, but a few profit from it so they loudly support it.

You won't win the argument for a Central AH, not matter how good the argument.

Lots of drawbacks to guild traders (or worse, selling in chat). Though look for some older threads and you can see the arguments.

There isn't a good argument for an AH. They are inferior to the current system in almost every way. All we really need is a few QoL improvements to the current system.

No an central AH is much better to play the marked on. One bot to rule them all.

Jeremy

VaranisArano wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Sambucca1973 wrote: »

This is how economies work. Basic supply and demand.

This game's economy does not function like a free economy. Supply is intentionally kept out of the market to artificially raise prices. That is literally how this game's market structure was designed. Add that to the use of addons to hawk the market and buy up competing prices and what you have is something more akin to how a cartel would operate. So you can't really apply the rules of supply and demand to this game's economy. It was deliberately designed to keep the demand high in proportion to its supply.

The player economy is a free market. I can set whatever price i want for anything i want to sell. People can either buy it for that price from me, pay a different price from someone else, or farm it themselves. That is about as free as you can get. What addons make the trading in game cartel like? What items have demand that is high in proportion to their supply?

No they can't. Unless you belong to a trading guild in possession of a guild trader, you can't set the prices for anything. A free economy would be one that everyone could participate in and put up their goods for sale on the market no matter what guild they belong to. This was intentional, and done deliberately by the developers to keep prices artificially high by limiting the amount of supply coming into the market.

The "cartel" element I alluded to comes into the picture when you consider that the more popular trading hubs are dominated by specific guilds who hawk the market and then buy out their competition so they can control prices. If this was actually a free economy the prices of materials would not be what they are now. That I can promise you.

1) You don't need to be a trading guild to sell items. People sell stuff in zone chat all the time. You can post stuff for sale on TTC without being in a guild. You could make your own buy and sell discord. A trade guild is like storefront. Its a lot better to sell out of a store in a strip mall than it is out of your garage on Suburbia St.

2) There is nothing stopping people from joining trade guilds but themselves. There is nothing stopping players from forming guilds and and securing their own trader if they don't like how any of the current trade guilds are run.

3) Actually it wasn't to keep the prices artificially high. It was to create a healthy player economy. It is not hard for experienced traders like me to control and manipulate a centralized system. Not saying i would do it myself, but i have both the experience and skillset to control the market on an AH with relative ease and i am not uncommon in that skill and experience among serious traders. The ONLY thing keeping this market in a healthy competitive state is that it uses a fractured trader system that doesn't allow one person to stand at one NPC and continuously hoover up deals and set the prices higher.

I have played dozens of games with an AH and not a single one of them had a player economy that was worth two ***. You end up with really high priced rare items controlled by traders/bots and noobs posting random junk and also penny wars. Only people who don't have a clue about player economies/markets think an central AH is a good thing. Eve Online has probably the best player economy in any game every to exist. You want this economy to follow that one and fractured traders do that.

4) Your cartel statement is a conspiracy theory. I am in those guilds in tops spots. I am also in second tier guilds and have been in guilds that got lucky to get in places like Firsthold and outlaw refuges and really random places. Ive sold stuff and made profits in.every.single.guild i have been in. Yes you can make more in those top spots than others but it typically cost more in activity or fees to be in those spots. Those aren't top spots because trade guilds have some secret mafia that dictates where the top spots are. Those are top spots because the cities appeal to players who want to shop where they hang out and they will pay stupid prices for items in those cities.

Guess where a lot of the people in those spots get their supply? Lower tier traders. The people in those trade guilds in top spots know how to price stuff and know how to sell. That is why they are there selling incorrectly stuff off backwater traders. The people who post on traders in remote places have no clue what they are doing. I buy motif pages for 100 gold, Alloys for 200, I once bought 200 butterfly wings for 250 gold. And there are like 10-15 pages of items. My traders all run 50 plus pages of items. You can't make any money to afford a good trader if you can only fill 10-20 pages a week and half the stuff is way underpriced so it makes no money and the other half is way overpriced so it never sells.

You want a trader in a good spot you have to earn it by being good at trading. You can't sell your flea market items in a mall next to Chanel, Armani, and Gucci stores. Top tier locations require players that sell hundreds of thousands to millions of gold worth of items weekly or buy a bucket load of raffle tickets. Just like in the real world you pay for location but you don't need a top location to sell. You just need to know how to properly price things and what to put on the market.

I'll admit I only skimmed some of this, so I'll respond briefly (my time on here is short).

Zone chat is not an effective way to sell items, and is no replacement for a guild trader. So I don't find that a convincing argument. But even if you believe otherwise, it still remains unequal access to the market as some players must rely on zone chat to sell while others do not. So it is still not a free market with equal access.

In relation to my so-called "conspiracy" - I can assure it it is very much accurate to say guilds flip items on the market and then resell them at a higher value to keep prices high. I've seen it done myself. It is no conspiracy, trust me. It is a routine practice and you can go observe it taking place yourself by watching activity on Tamriel Market.

And to once again reiterate the main thrust of my comment: the whole point of the guild trader system and why it was developed by the developers in the first place was to limit the supply flow into the market and thus keep prices artificially high. That was their stated goal (I read the post myself). So not only is this game's economy not based on supply and demand, but it was purposely designed to circumvent it.

Perhaps you can point me to your source. The one I'm familiar with is talking about their desire to keep high level, desirable gear from flooding the market at cheap prices.

.

I remember reading the post where the developers talked about it. The whole idea as to why the developers did not want an auction house was because they feared the Mega Server would flood the market with supplies and bottom out the prices.

Their guild trader system was specifically designed to limit the supply coming into the market and thus artificially raise prices. The developers literally said as much.

Jeremy

zaria wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

The modern guild trader system is lousy in many ways, but a few profit from it so they loudly support it.

You won't win the argument for a Central AH, not matter how good the argument.

Lots of drawbacks to guild traders (or worse, selling in chat). Though look for some older threads and you can see the arguments.

There isn't a good argument for an AH. They are inferior to the current system in almost every way. All we really need is a few QoL improvements to the current system.

No an central AH is much better to play the marked on. One bot to rule them all.

One bot being used to manipulate an auction house would be easily detected.