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

Kwoung

ThorianB wrote: »

<Everything removed because dang, that was long!>

I thought I put some effort into my posts, you took it to a whole new level! I can relate though

Jeremy

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

Kwoung

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

Except it is never just one bot and incorrect, the truly well written ones are not easily detectable, they mimic player behavior in everything but being able to snap up a good deal immediately. The only game I have played with a AH that got around it was BDO, where you didn't get to set the sell or buy price, the game set it and it was by far the worst system ever. They enforced it by not allowing players to trade with each other either, you might as well of been selling / buying everything through a NPC vendor.

In ESO you would have to have over 200 bots, all with a character perma standing in front of each guild trader, which effectively negates that ever happening. Players (or bots) can run from trader to trader here, but unless they are camping one, they will most likely miss deal B in zone X while snapping up deal A in zone Y. Everyone here has the ability to find a good deal if they put in minimal effort.

Jeremy

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

Except it is never just one bot and incorrect....

Using multiple bots would be harder to detect. However that is not the context of my post, which was responding to a comment that said "one bot to rule them all".

Please view the entire context of my comments before responding. Because anyone who attempted to manipulate a global auction house hub by using a bot to buy up goods at a rapid rate and then instantly resell them would just be asking to get caught.

Kwoung

Jeremy wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

Except it is never just one bot and incorrect....

Using multiple bots would be harder to detect. However that is not the context of my post, which was responding to a comment that said "one bot to rule them all".

I got that... Zaria was making a joke with the one bot to rule them all statement (I am 99.99% sure). You seem to have taken it seriously though, so I answered.

Jeremy

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

Except it is never just one bot and incorrect....

Using multiple bots would be harder to detect. However that is not the context of my post, which was responding to a comment that said "one bot to rule them all".

I got that... Zaria was making a joke with the one bot to rule them all statement (I am 99.99% sure). You seem to have taken it seriously though, so I answered.

Perhaps it was a joke I took seriously. It's easy to miss sarcasm on the internet. But that's a popular argument among the anti-auction house crowd regardless, that global auction houses are more susceptible to bot manipulation because of the more concentrated hub. And it's a faulty argument. Because the truth is rather the opposite, because it would actually expose such activity and render it easier to detect. Which is why I've never seen this occur on any MMORPG I've ever played that had a global auction house (and I've played many).

ThorianB

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.

So say we all!

Kwoung wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

<Everything removed because dang, that was long!>

I thought I put some effort into my posts, you took it to a whole new level! I can relate though

Only when someone crams a bunch of random arguments in there and i have to dissect the post to refute it.

AlnilamE

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

And yet, so many items are listed for sale below vendor price.

Jaimeh

I think there's some manipulation happening from time to time, and there's definitely players who only play for that aspect of the game. I remember a couple of years ago how one day I suddenly couldn't find any mundane runes anywhere, and then a couple days later traders were flooded with stacks that were x3 times higher than what they were a few days previously. However, prices being up recently is multifactorial: stickerbook made it easy to gear up alts, mythics gave rise to new build combos, no proc pvp and new cp system being implemented, and as for jewels, the extra refining step will always ensure they remain expensive, same with furnishing mats: they don't drop form surveys so there's low supply and high demand since most recipes require them... I think the best way for a player to deal with it is to try and become as self-sufficient as possible: level your alts, do your writs, get hirelings, and if you have time, do some farming on the side. It will take some time to accummulate mats, but in this way, whatever happens to the market, you'll be fine, and if shady shenanigans go on, well you won't have to buy into them.

Kwoung

Jaimeh wrote: »

I think there's some manipulation happening from time to time, and there's definitely players who only play for that aspect of the game. I remember a couple of years ago how one day I suddenly couldn't find any mundane runes anywhere, and then a couple days later traders were flooded with stacks that were x3 times higher than what they were a few days previously.

I suspect that was around the Newlife festival, where every event writ requires *tons* of heartwood to complete? It happens every year, without fail. Anyone not clued in enough will have all their heartwood snapped up before the event by players "in the know" and they will put it back up for sale at event start for triple or more of the regular price. Nothing nefarious there, just a bunch of smart traders looking to increase their net worth. On the plus side, all the folks selling heartwood just then instantly sold their entire stock for exactly the price they were asking for it, most likely making them happy. Until they possibly realized they just missed a huge opportunity, which is 100% on them and not the buyers.

Jaimeh

Kwoung wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

I think there's some manipulation happening from time to time, and there's definitely players who only play for that aspect of the game. I remember a couple of years ago how one day I suddenly couldn't find any mundane runes anywhere, and then a couple days later traders were flooded with stacks that were x3 times higher than what they were a few days previously.

I suspect that was around the Newlife festival, where every event writ requires *tons* of heartwood to complete? It happens every year, without fail. Anyone not clued in enough will have all their heartwood snapped up before the event by players "in the know" and they will put it back up for sale at event start for triple or more of the regular price. Nothing nefarious there, just a bunch of smart traders looking to increase their net worth. On the plus side, all the folks selling heartwood just then instantly sold their entire stock for exactly the price they were asking for it, most likely making them happy. Until they possibly realized they just missed a huge opportunity, which is 100% on them and not the buyers.

It was mundane rune, like I said, not heartwood, and I don't remember exactly but I think it might have been before bastion sanguinaris was released, or maybe even earlier, at least a few years ago. It was uncanny, no mundane rune anywhere, I had to give up making some things, and started looking to buy the furnishings themselves, and then next day stacks of 600+ per, in all major traders. And in that case it was nefarious, because I had been decorating daily during that time and buying frequently stacks for 200-300g per, then suddenly all were gone and reappear at x3 times higher. I don't remember when it was but I do remember it happening, and this was very clear manipulation, and nothing to do with events, etc.

Also, very evident throughout this thread that people who support certain practices definitely participate in them, whether it's right or wrong, well it's an open market, but I think the denial comes from these people. So like I said in the previous post, OP, try to be self-sufficient as much as possible with your resources, and then you won't have to worry about the market game.

Kwoung

Jaimeh wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

I think there's some manipulation happening from time to time, and there's definitely players who only play for that aspect of the game. I remember a couple of years ago how one day I suddenly couldn't find any mundane runes anywhere, and then a couple days later traders were flooded with stacks that were x3 times higher than what they were a few days previously.

I suspect that was around the Newlife festival, where every event writ requires *tons* of heartwood to complete? It happens every year, without fail. Anyone not clued in enough will have all their heartwood snapped up before the event by players "in the know" and they will put it back up for sale at event start for triple or more of the regular price. Nothing nefarious there, just a bunch of smart traders looking to increase their net worth. On the plus side, all the folks selling heartwood just then instantly sold their entire stock for exactly the price they were asking for it, most likely making them happy. Until they possibly realized they just missed a huge opportunity, which is 100% on them and not the buyers.

It was mundane rune, like I said, not heartwood, and I don't remember exactly but I think it might have been before bastion sanguinaris was released, or maybe even earlier, at least a few years ago. It was uncanny, no mundane rune anywhere, I had to give up making some things, and started looking to buy the furnishings themselves, and then next day stacks of 600+ per, in all major traders. And in that case it was nefarious, because I had been decorating daily during that time and buying frequently stacks for 200-300g per, then suddenly all were gone and reappear at x3 times higher. I don't remember when it was but I do remember it happening, and this was very clear manipulation, and nothing to do with events, etc.

Also, very evident throughout this thread that people who support certain practices definitely participate in them, whether it's right or wrong, well it's an open market, but I think the denial comes from these people. So like I said in the previous post, OP, try to be self-sufficient as much as possible with your resources, and then you won't have to worry about the market game.

My wife feels your pain. She is completely into housing and that is why I had Heartwood on the brain, my bad. We are 4 months into the year and I am still hearing about heartwood and mundane rune prices... along with pretty much every other furniture related mat. For the record though, I don't flip and I am not motivated enough to snap up all the deals before an event. Made my gold searching out deals on alchemy mats, Kuta & Hakeijo's to make potions, poisons and glyphs to sell. Nowadays I am too busy running a guild and just do my crafting and other dailies, along with selling stuff I loot to keep even. I do however support the current system, it has served me, my friends & guildies well, and the trade game is quite an interesting mini-game to partake in, even if casually as long as you are careful about it or can afford huge losses. But even if you are only selling stuff you harvested or looted, it is quite profitable and fun, once again, as long as you aren't overpricing big ticket items and lose your listing fee, as I suspect many that were riding the Aetherial Dust wave just did.

Massacre_Wurm

Jeremy wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

Except it is never just one bot and incorrect....

Using multiple bots would be harder to detect. However that is not the context of my post, which was responding to a comment that said "one bot to rule them all".

I got that... Zaria was making a joke with the one bot to rule them all statement (I am 99.99% sure). You seem to have taken it seriously though, so I answered.

Perhaps it was a joke I took seriously. It's easy to miss sarcasm on the internet. But that's a popular argument among the anti-auction house crowd regardless, that global auction houses are more susceptible to bot manipulation because of the more concentrated hub. And it's a faulty argument. Because the truth is rather the opposite, because it would actually expose such activity and render it easier to detect. Which is why I've never seen this occur on any MMORPG I've ever played that had a global auction house (and I've played many).

I dont see how its a faulty argument.
In any MMORPG i played with a global auction house price manipulations were pretty common. Sometimes with help of bots.
In this game you at least have to buy stuff manually.

ThorianB

Jeremy wrote: »

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.

When you say it, it sounds like they are being malicious. But they know what happens with a central trade system. Fracturing trade into a bunch of traders all over makes it hard to exploit and manipulate the system, prevents penny wars, and allows healthy market competition between players. Which is why many of us traders push it so hard and argue against any calls to change it to a global system.

Jeremy wrote: »

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

Even if this is true, :
1. individual players buying out local competition isn't very effective. I consider this a noob move that is probably carried over from trading on Eve Online where this tactic works because you can literally spend 10-20 minutes flying to the next hub, one way, to get what you need.
2. If you are in a major hub, chances are most players there are already charging higher prices.
3. People will just go somewhere else if the price is to high.

You keep insisting that the guilds are cartel like/running monopolies. The guild leaders only care about the sellers generating income. They don't care if you sell 5 of that item this week for 100k or sell 1 of that item for 500k. All they care about is you selling the 500k in items. Guild leaders main goal is to make money off (any) sales and that they can keep a trader at the level their members are use to.

Any cartel like actions or attempts to monopolize the trade system in ESO, are individuals trying to figure out how to use the system to make money without farming 1 mil gold worth of stuff every week. Your statements do come off as conspiracies though.

xaraan

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

There is definitely reselling and similar market manipulation going on, but it tends to be more focused than people think and not the blame for all the high prices.

The biggest reason for prices going up is that the value of gold is going down. Players have complained endlessly about gold costs in the game, for guild traders, for changing outfits, etc. But fact is, there are not enough gold sinks and it is just too plentiful now.

Obviously there are things that will effect demand, like changing metas requiring people to remake gear and need more upgrade mats. Or changing player pop with new DLCs, etc. All those effect prices, but too many players overlook gold value depreciation when looking at inflation.

ZoS could do things to combat those that are involved with market manipulation without trying to outright say it's against TOS. For example, if Hakejo was one of those materials being controlled, they could simply add a new method of acquiring it to the game, like adding it to the master writ voucher vendor in addition to IC - that would make it easier to acquire and make prices go down and if players were trying to control it, they would have to dump inventory to avoid losing money.

For gold value, they could add more gold sinks to the game, like adding a barber. Everyone would cry about the gold price because it would be expensive if it were to have a real effect, but it would help. They could even add some other basic mats to the NPC vendors, that would help control prices on certain mats and take any gold spent on them through the NPC out of the game.

Last idea for gold sink would be adding a crown merchant that works like the weekend gold sellers. Give pacrooti a spot to show up every weekend and sell something that would be available in the crown store for those that want to spend crowns or let him sell a couple of those items for gold as well. Not suggesting everything be available, just could do particular items with a one time purchase. Could even do a single crate at certain weekends as well. It wouldn't replace selling crowns for gold, but would pull a bit of gold out of the market as it vanishes into NPC coffers.

ZOS already does impact certain high value items. Just not as much as some players would like. It's not long term, and it's not the sort of thing that's going to help an impatient player who wants something right now.

Hakeijo? Well, not only does it drop during the Anniversary Event and Midyear Mayhem from reward boxes, but the Imperial City event also doubles Tel Var, making Hakeijo much more affordable for a while.

Certain motifs have been controlled for a time - I remember the Minotaur chest motif being held at 100-150k for a month or two on PC/NA. ZOS' answer is a yearly glut of motifs in the Anniversary Event to make sure older motifs are accessible. (Brand new motifs aren't included, naturally, since ZOS wants players running the content or buying from the Crown Store to get them.)

Mats get periodic double resource nodes during zone events. But like with the previous examples, this helps ZOS control the total mat market, balanced with the giant material sink that is the Crafting Bag. It doesn't do jack diddly for players who won't farm their own items or who want those items at an high price point as opposed to waiting until prices drop.

And sure, ZOS could add more gold sinks. The last major gold sink they added was, IIRC, the Outfit System. Though it's funny that ZOS - the people with the data - just added CP passives and slottables that will actually increase the amount of gold players obtain through gameplay.

I've yet to see a hakeijo drop during the ann. event and I open hundreds of boxes every day and neither have any of my friends reported getting one. They were only in rare drops from the pvp event boxes. But either way, rare drops like that on something super rare will have little effect on the market. And it did have no effect during pvp event.

My point was that item is a prime candidate for market manipulation, and you can tell by the fact that the price has gone up significantly on it in a short time vs other rising prices, so it's not just inflation effecting it. Some of that is driven by an increase on demand b/c of people redoing PvP sets, but it has held steady because of a controlled market even after demand settled.

There are only two instances of IC that can be dominated by a small group if desired and drive out other earners. It's only competitive during events. And even if you do have others that earn telvar to buy them, it's a small enough number that anyone with the money can buy them up and keep control of market or even contact them directly to buy as they earn for a set price. So adding them to something like writ vouchers would add a flip side to how to earn them and open up the ability to control the market on them. And forum discussion here can also be polluted by anyone that enjoys the benefits of how it's handled right now in the market and start counterpoints for no other reason than to disparage it being handled in a better way. But you could also do something like adding them for AP if you wanted to keep them PvP related. It was an idea, not the only solution, but they should not remain connected only to tel var IMO with how IC is now handled and how tightly the market on them is controlled.

Anyway, it was one example and arguing about it specifically has zero effect on my point.

ZoS adding in some materials to be sold by NPCs would actually go a long way to controlling prices and acting as a gold sink. Even if they looked at the median price of something right now, like Shimmering Sand and made it the same price and had an NPC in that zone sell it, it would keep the price from going higher without making it worthless to sell, and also remove a ton of gold from the economy everytime someone used that NPC instead. (The ton of gold however comes from doing that on more items than just one). Or you could even add items like that to the weekend furniture vendor (mats used for making furniture, sell them at current average market prices - it wouldn't undercut anyone priced normally in market, but would remove gold from market instead of just shifting it around for those that used it).

I'd also say the drops in these events also have zero effect on people like me, and there are a lot of us, that do not sell mats. So the prices we see in traders isn't b/c of all the mats that exist, it's b/c of just the mats being sold (and controlled). So giving hoarders like me thousands of extra mats will not effect things much (outside of me having them when I need them), But, Having a vendor add mats to the market will drive prices down at the same time as removing gold from economy making it a gold sink that isn't viewed as punishing.

(Also - those CP passives that increase gold, just get you back to where you started. They actually stealth nerfed gold drops so you get less without those passives than you did before.)

TLDR: The point is 1. Market Manipulation is usually smaller focused goods, not as widespread as people think or effecting basic materials and can be somewhat fixed by eliminating the way it's controlled (usually availability).
and 2. Most cost increases you see on the market are due to inflation, which can be somewhat fixed by gold sinks.

OneKhajiitCrimeWave

I always find these threads frustrating, because I sit somewhere in the middle with this. While I wish more gold mats were more plentiful, I earn all of my own by farming, writs etc and as such i understand why the price has been slowly increasing.

Those who don't put in the effort to get their mats pay a premium in gold for the convenience of quick easy mats.

Still, I do believe the drop rate needs affecting in a positive manner.

Knockmaker

Mat prices surge is outrageous. But I believe this is somehow related to the trading system. Maybe more money-sink would be good. But in shorter term, increased gold mat drop rate is necessary imo.

VaranisArano

xaraan wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

There is definitely reselling and similar market manipulation going on, but it tends to be more focused than people think and not the blame for all the high prices.

The biggest reason for prices going up is that the value of gold is going down. Players have complained endlessly about gold costs in the game, for guild traders, for changing outfits, etc. But fact is, there are not enough gold sinks and it is just too plentiful now.

Obviously there are things that will effect demand, like changing metas requiring people to remake gear and need more upgrade mats. Or changing player pop with new DLCs, etc. All those effect prices, but too many players overlook gold value depreciation when looking at inflation.

ZoS could do things to combat those that are involved with market manipulation without trying to outright say it's against TOS. For example, if Hakejo was one of those materials being controlled, they could simply add a new method of acquiring it to the game, like adding it to the master writ voucher vendor in addition to IC - that would make it easier to acquire and make prices go down and if players were trying to control it, they would have to dump inventory to avoid losing money.

For gold value, they could add more gold sinks to the game, like adding a barber. Everyone would cry about the gold price because it would be expensive if it were to have a real effect, but it would help. They could even add some other basic mats to the NPC vendors, that would help control prices on certain mats and take any gold spent on them through the NPC out of the game.

Last idea for gold sink would be adding a crown merchant that works like the weekend gold sellers. Give pacrooti a spot to show up every weekend and sell something that would be available in the crown store for those that want to spend crowns or let him sell a couple of those items for gold as well. Not suggesting everything be available, just could do particular items with a one time purchase. Could even do a single crate at certain weekends as well. It wouldn't replace selling crowns for gold, but would pull a bit of gold out of the market as it vanishes into NPC coffers.

ZOS already does impact certain high value items. Just not as much as some players would like. It's not long term, and it's not the sort of thing that's going to help an impatient player who wants something right now.

Hakeijo? Well, not only does it drop during the Anniversary Event and Midyear Mayhem from reward boxes, but the Imperial City event also doubles Tel Var, making Hakeijo much more affordable for a while.

Certain motifs have been controlled for a time - I remember the Minotaur chest motif being held at 100-150k for a month or two on PC/NA. ZOS' answer is a yearly glut of motifs in the Anniversary Event to make sure older motifs are accessible. (Brand new motifs aren't included, naturally, since ZOS wants players running the content or buying from the Crown Store to get them.)

Mats get periodic double resource nodes during zone events. But like with the previous examples, this helps ZOS control the total mat market, balanced with the giant material sink that is the Crafting Bag. It doesn't do jack diddly for players who won't farm their own items or who want those items at an high price point as opposed to waiting until prices drop.

And sure, ZOS could add more gold sinks. The last major gold sink they added was, IIRC, the Outfit System. Though it's funny that ZOS - the people with the data - just added CP passives and slottables that will actually increase the amount of gold players obtain through gameplay.

I've yet to see a hakeijo drop during the ann. event and I open hundreds of boxes every day and neither have any of my friends reported getting one. They were only in rare drops from the pvp event boxes. But either way, rare drops like that on something super rare will have little effect on the market. And it did have no effect during pvp event.

My point was that item is a prime candidate for market manipulation, and you can tell by the fact that the price has gone up significantly on it in a short time vs other rising prices, so it's not just inflation effecting it. Some of that is driven by an increase on demand b/c of people redoing PvP sets, but it has held steady because of a controlled market even after demand settled.

There are only two instances of IC that can be dominated by a small group if desired and drive out other earners. It's only competitive during events. And even if you do have others that earn telvar to buy them, it's a small enough number that anyone with the money can buy them up and keep control of market or even contact them directly to buy as they earn for a set price. So adding them to something like writ vouchers would add a flip side to how to earn them and open up the ability to control the market on them. And forum discussion here can also be polluted by anyone that enjoys the benefits of how it's handled right now in the market and start counterpoints for no other reason than to disparage it being handled in a better way. But you could also do something like adding them for AP if you wanted to keep them PvP related. It was an idea, not the only solution, but they should not remain connected only to tel var IMO with how IC is now handled and how tightly the market on them is controlled.

Anyway, it was one example and arguing about it specifically has zero effect on my point.

ZoS adding in some materials to be sold by NPCs would actually go a long way to controlling prices and acting as a gold sink. Even if they looked at the median price of something right now, like Shimmering Sand and made it the same price and had an NPC in that zone sell it, it would keep the price from going higher without making it worthless to sell, and also remove a ton of gold from the economy everytime someone used that NPC instead. (The ton of gold however comes from doing that on more items than just one). Or you could even add items like that to the weekend furniture vendor (mats used for making furniture, sell them at current average market prices - it wouldn't undercut anyone priced normally in market, but would remove gold from market instead of just shifting it around for those that used it).

I'd also say the drops in these events also have zero effect on people like me, and there are a lot of us, that do not sell mats. So the prices we see in traders isn't b/c of all the mats that exist, it's b/c of just the mats being sold (and controlled). So giving hoarders like me thousands of extra mats will not effect things much (outside of me having them when I need them), But, Having a vendor add mats to the market will drive prices down at the same time as removing gold from economy making it a gold sink that isn't viewed as punishing.

(Also - those CP passives that increase gold, just get you back to where you started. They actually stealth nerfed gold drops so you get less without those passives than you did before.)

TLDR: The point is 1. Market Manipulation is usually smaller focused goods, not as widespread as people think or effecting basic materials and can be somewhat fixed by eliminating the way it's controlled (usually availability).
and 2. Most cost increases you see on the market are due to inflation, which can be somewhat fixed by gold sinks.

I agree with your point 1, that market manipulation is typically smaller focused goods. That's due to the spread out trader system and the easy availability of basic materials.


I disagree with the Part 2, as I don't think that anyone has shown sufficient evidence that this is widespread inflation as opposed to examples that are fairly easily explained through supply/demand.

If it were indeed inflation, then yes, gold sinks would presumably help. However, the biggest gold sink is the guild trader bid, which is designed to keep pace with inflation. The more inflated gold gets, the more guilds have to bid as the bids get more competitive, and that gold gets pulled out of the system. Similarly, the listing fee and 3.5% ZOS fee is a flat tax. No matter how much gold is inflated, ZOS is pulling the same percentage from the higher prices.

And I definitely don't think the answer is to set price ceilings on basic materials via an NPC vendor. We have that with a few materials.. I don't think we need it for more. I would prefer to give materials as a reward for doing content, such as with the Tel Var Alchemy Satchels. But mine is a "supply-oriented" answer to high demand answer, not a "It's inflation, we need gold sinks!" answer.

If you want an effective gold-sink, I suggest looking at the most effective gold sinks we already have: the listing fee, the sales tax, and the guild trader bid.

I mean, even adding 1% to the sales tax is going to take a lot of gold out of circulation. The only problem is that it's a regressive flat tax, and what we need is a way to pull more gold from players like me, who make a high volume of sales or high value sales without bringing down the hammer on low-volume traders. I dunno what a progressive tax on transactions would look like, but that'd be my preference.

AlnilamE

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

There is definitely reselling and similar market manipulation going on, but it tends to be more focused than people think and not the blame for all the high prices.

The biggest reason for prices going up is that the value of gold is going down. Players have complained endlessly about gold costs in the game, for guild traders, for changing outfits, etc. But fact is, there are not enough gold sinks and it is just too plentiful now.

Obviously there are things that will effect demand, like changing metas requiring people to remake gear and need more upgrade mats. Or changing player pop with new DLCs, etc. All those effect prices, but too many players overlook gold value depreciation when looking at inflation.

ZoS could do things to combat those that are involved with market manipulation without trying to outright say it's against TOS. For example, if Hakejo was one of those materials being controlled, they could simply add a new method of acquiring it to the game, like adding it to the master writ voucher vendor in addition to IC - that would make it easier to acquire and make prices go down and if players were trying to control it, they would have to dump inventory to avoid losing money.

For gold value, they could add more gold sinks to the game, like adding a barber. Everyone would cry about the gold price because it would be expensive if it were to have a real effect, but it would help. They could even add some other basic mats to the NPC vendors, that would help control prices on certain mats and take any gold spent on them through the NPC out of the game.

Last idea for gold sink would be adding a crown merchant that works like the weekend gold sellers. Give pacrooti a spot to show up every weekend and sell something that would be available in the crown store for those that want to spend crowns or let him sell a couple of those items for gold as well. Not suggesting everything be available, just could do particular items with a one time purchase. Could even do a single crate at certain weekends as well. It wouldn't replace selling crowns for gold, but would pull a bit of gold out of the market as it vanishes into NPC coffers.

ZOS already does impact certain high value items. Just not as much as some players would like. It's not long term, and it's not the sort of thing that's going to help an impatient player who wants something right now.

Hakeijo? Well, not only does it drop during the Anniversary Event and Midyear Mayhem from reward boxes, but the Imperial City event also doubles Tel Var, making Hakeijo much more affordable for a while.

Certain motifs have been controlled for a time - I remember the Minotaur chest motif being held at 100-150k for a month or two on PC/NA. ZOS' answer is a yearly glut of motifs in the Anniversary Event to make sure older motifs are accessible. (Brand new motifs aren't included, naturally, since ZOS wants players running the content or buying from the Crown Store to get them.)

Mats get periodic double resource nodes during zone events. But like with the previous examples, this helps ZOS control the total mat market, balanced with the giant material sink that is the Crafting Bag. It doesn't do jack diddly for players who won't farm their own items or who want those items at an high price point as opposed to waiting until prices drop.

And sure, ZOS could add more gold sinks. The last major gold sink they added was, IIRC, the Outfit System. Though it's funny that ZOS - the people with the data - just added CP passives and slottables that will actually increase the amount of gold players obtain through gameplay.

I've yet to see a hakeijo drop during the ann. event and I open hundreds of boxes every day and neither have any of my friends reported getting one. They were only in rare drops from the pvp event boxes. But either way, rare drops like that on something super rare will have little effect on the market. And it did have no effect during pvp event.

My point was that item is a prime candidate for market manipulation, and you can tell by the fact that the price has gone up significantly on it in a short time vs other rising prices, so it's not just inflation effecting it. Some of that is driven by an increase on demand b/c of people redoing PvP sets, but it has held steady because of a controlled market even after demand settled.

There are only two instances of IC that can be dominated by a small group if desired and drive out other earners. It's only competitive during events. And even if you do have others that earn telvar to buy them, it's a small enough number that anyone with the money can buy them up and keep control of market or even contact them directly to buy as they earn for a set price. So adding them to something like writ vouchers would add a flip side to how to earn them and open up the ability to control the market on them. And forum discussion here can also be polluted by anyone that enjoys the benefits of how it's handled right now in the market and start counterpoints for no other reason than to disparage it being handled in a better way. But you could also do something like adding them for AP if you wanted to keep them PvP related. It was an idea, not the only solution, but they should not remain connected only to tel var IMO with how IC is now handled and how tightly the market on them is controlled.

Anyway, it was one example and arguing about it specifically has zero effect on my point.

ZoS adding in some materials to be sold by NPCs would actually go a long way to controlling prices and acting as a gold sink. Even if they looked at the median price of something right now, like Shimmering Sand and made it the same price and had an NPC in that zone sell it, it would keep the price from going higher without making it worthless to sell, and also remove a ton of gold from the economy everytime someone used that NPC instead. (The ton of gold however comes from doing that on more items than just one). Or you could even add items like that to the weekend furniture vendor (mats used for making furniture, sell them at current average market prices - it wouldn't undercut anyone priced normally in market, but would remove gold from market instead of just shifting it around for those that used it).

I'd also say the drops in these events also have zero effect on people like me, and there are a lot of us, that do not sell mats. So the prices we see in traders isn't b/c of all the mats that exist, it's b/c of just the mats being sold (and controlled). So giving hoarders like me thousands of extra mats will not effect things much (outside of me having them when I need them), But, Having a vendor add mats to the market will drive prices down at the same time as removing gold from economy making it a gold sink that isn't viewed as punishing.

(Also - those CP passives that increase gold, just get you back to where you started. They actually stealth nerfed gold drops so you get less without those passives than you did before.)

TLDR: The point is 1. Market Manipulation is usually smaller focused goods, not as widespread as people think or effecting basic materials and can be somewhat fixed by eliminating the way it's controlled (usually availability).
and 2. Most cost increases you see on the market are due to inflation, which can be somewhat fixed by gold sinks.

I agree with your point 1, that market manipulation is typically smaller focused goods. That's due to the spread out trader system and the easy availability of basic materials.


I disagree with the Part 2, as I don't think that anyone has shown sufficient evidence that this is widespread inflation as opposed to examples that are fairly easily explained through supply/demand.

If it were indeed inflation, then yes, gold sinks would presumably help. However, the biggest gold sink is the guild trader bid, which is designed to keep pace with inflation. The more inflated gold gets, the more guilds have to bid as the bids get more competitive, and that gold gets pulled out of the system. Similarly, the listing fee and 3.5% ZOS fee is a flat tax. No matter how much gold is inflated, ZOS is pulling the same percentage from the higher prices.

And I definitely don't think the answer is to set price ceilings on basic materials via an NPC vendor. We have that with a few materials.. I don't think we need it for more. I would prefer to give materials as a reward for doing content, such as with the Tel Var Alchemy Satchels. But mine is a "supply-oriented" answer to high demand answer, not a "It's inflation, we need gold sinks!" answer.

If you want an effective gold-sink, I suggest looking at the most effective gold sinks we already have: the listing fee, the sales tax, and the guild trader bid.

I mean, even adding 1% to the sales tax is going to take a lot of gold out of circulation. The only problem is that it's a regressive flat tax, and what we need is a way to pull more gold from players like me, who make a high volume of sales or high value sales without bringing down the hammer on low-volume traders. I dunno what a progressive tax on transactions would look like, but that'd be my preference.

Don't forget also that the Golden and the Luxury vendor are gold sinks as well. Now, some people may use AP at the Golden, but lots use gold. And while some of the jewelry can be resold, the original amount has left the game and there will be taxes and listing fee applied to the sale price.

And I'm buying every monster piece I don't have yet at the Golden for the Sticker book, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Kwoung

AlnilamE wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

There is definitely reselling and similar market manipulation going on, but it tends to be more focused than people think and not the blame for all the high prices.

The biggest reason for prices going up is that the value of gold is going down. Players have complained endlessly about gold costs in the game, for guild traders, for changing outfits, etc. But fact is, there are not enough gold sinks and it is just too plentiful now.

Obviously there are things that will effect demand, like changing metas requiring people to remake gear and need more upgrade mats. Or changing player pop with new DLCs, etc. All those effect prices, but too many players overlook gold value depreciation when looking at inflation.

ZoS could do things to combat those that are involved with market manipulation without trying to outright say it's against TOS. For example, if Hakejo was one of those materials being controlled, they could simply add a new method of acquiring it to the game, like adding it to the master writ voucher vendor in addition to IC - that would make it easier to acquire and make prices go down and if players were trying to control it, they would have to dump inventory to avoid losing money.

For gold value, they could add more gold sinks to the game, like adding a barber. Everyone would cry about the gold price because it would be expensive if it were to have a real effect, but it would help. They could even add some other basic mats to the NPC vendors, that would help control prices on certain mats and take any gold spent on them through the NPC out of the game.

Last idea for gold sink would be adding a crown merchant that works like the weekend gold sellers. Give pacrooti a spot to show up every weekend and sell something that would be available in the crown store for those that want to spend crowns or let him sell a couple of those items for gold as well. Not suggesting everything be available, just could do particular items with a one time purchase. Could even do a single crate at certain weekends as well. It wouldn't replace selling crowns for gold, but would pull a bit of gold out of the market as it vanishes into NPC coffers.

ZOS already does impact certain high value items. Just not as much as some players would like. It's not long term, and it's not the sort of thing that's going to help an impatient player who wants something right now.

Hakeijo? Well, not only does it drop during the Anniversary Event and Midyear Mayhem from reward boxes, but the Imperial City event also doubles Tel Var, making Hakeijo much more affordable for a while.

Certain motifs have been controlled for a time - I remember the Minotaur chest motif being held at 100-150k for a month or two on PC/NA. ZOS' answer is a yearly glut of motifs in the Anniversary Event to make sure older motifs are accessible. (Brand new motifs aren't included, naturally, since ZOS wants players running the content or buying from the Crown Store to get them.)

Mats get periodic double resource nodes during zone events. But like with the previous examples, this helps ZOS control the total mat market, balanced with the giant material sink that is the Crafting Bag. It doesn't do jack diddly for players who won't farm their own items or who want those items at an high price point as opposed to waiting until prices drop.

And sure, ZOS could add more gold sinks. The last major gold sink they added was, IIRC, the Outfit System. Though it's funny that ZOS - the people with the data - just added CP passives and slottables that will actually increase the amount of gold players obtain through gameplay.

I've yet to see a hakeijo drop during the ann. event and I open hundreds of boxes every day and neither have any of my friends reported getting one. They were only in rare drops from the pvp event boxes. But either way, rare drops like that on something super rare will have little effect on the market. And it did have no effect during pvp event.

My point was that item is a prime candidate for market manipulation, and you can tell by the fact that the price has gone up significantly on it in a short time vs other rising prices, so it's not just inflation effecting it. Some of that is driven by an increase on demand b/c of people redoing PvP sets, but it has held steady because of a controlled market even after demand settled.

There are only two instances of IC that can be dominated by a small group if desired and drive out other earners. It's only competitive during events. And even if you do have others that earn telvar to buy them, it's a small enough number that anyone with the money can buy them up and keep control of market or even contact them directly to buy as they earn for a set price. So adding them to something like writ vouchers would add a flip side to how to earn them and open up the ability to control the market on them. And forum discussion here can also be polluted by anyone that enjoys the benefits of how it's handled right now in the market and start counterpoints for no other reason than to disparage it being handled in a better way. But you could also do something like adding them for AP if you wanted to keep them PvP related. It was an idea, not the only solution, but they should not remain connected only to tel var IMO with how IC is now handled and how tightly the market on them is controlled.

Anyway, it was one example and arguing about it specifically has zero effect on my point.

ZoS adding in some materials to be sold by NPCs would actually go a long way to controlling prices and acting as a gold sink. Even if they looked at the median price of something right now, like Shimmering Sand and made it the same price and had an NPC in that zone sell it, it would keep the price from going higher without making it worthless to sell, and also remove a ton of gold from the economy everytime someone used that NPC instead. (The ton of gold however comes from doing that on more items than just one). Or you could even add items like that to the weekend furniture vendor (mats used for making furniture, sell them at current average market prices - it wouldn't undercut anyone priced normally in market, but would remove gold from market instead of just shifting it around for those that used it).

I'd also say the drops in these events also have zero effect on people like me, and there are a lot of us, that do not sell mats. So the prices we see in traders isn't b/c of all the mats that exist, it's b/c of just the mats being sold (and controlled). So giving hoarders like me thousands of extra mats will not effect things much (outside of me having them when I need them), But, Having a vendor add mats to the market will drive prices down at the same time as removing gold from economy making it a gold sink that isn't viewed as punishing.

(Also - those CP passives that increase gold, just get you back to where you started. They actually stealth nerfed gold drops so you get less without those passives than you did before.)

TLDR: The point is 1. Market Manipulation is usually smaller focused goods, not as widespread as people think or effecting basic materials and can be somewhat fixed by eliminating the way it's controlled (usually availability).
and 2. Most cost increases you see on the market are due to inflation, which can be somewhat fixed by gold sinks.

I agree with your point 1, that market manipulation is typically smaller focused goods. That's due to the spread out trader system and the easy availability of basic materials.


I disagree with the Part 2, as I don't think that anyone has shown sufficient evidence that this is widespread inflation as opposed to examples that are fairly easily explained through supply/demand.

If it were indeed inflation, then yes, gold sinks would presumably help. However, the biggest gold sink is the guild trader bid, which is designed to keep pace with inflation. The more inflated gold gets, the more guilds have to bid as the bids get more competitive, and that gold gets pulled out of the system. Similarly, the listing fee and 3.5% ZOS fee is a flat tax. No matter how much gold is inflated, ZOS is pulling the same percentage from the higher prices.

And I definitely don't think the answer is to set price ceilings on basic materials via an NPC vendor. We have that with a few materials.. I don't think we need it for more. I would prefer to give materials as a reward for doing content, such as with the Tel Var Alchemy Satchels. But mine is a "supply-oriented" answer to high demand answer, not a "It's inflation, we need gold sinks!" answer.

If you want an effective gold-sink, I suggest looking at the most effective gold sinks we already have: the listing fee, the sales tax, and the guild trader bid.

I mean, even adding 1% to the sales tax is going to take a lot of gold out of circulation. The only problem is that it's a regressive flat tax, and what we need is a way to pull more gold from players like me, who make a high volume of sales or high value sales without bringing down the hammer on low-volume traders. I dunno what a progressive tax on transactions would look like, but that'd be my preference.

Don't forget also that the Golden and the Luxury vendor are gold sinks as well. Now, some people may use AP at the Golden, but lots use gold. And while some of the jewelry can be resold, the original amount has left the game and there will be taxes and listing fee applied to the sale price.

And I'm buying every monster piece I don't have yet at the Golden for the Sticker book, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

You are not, although I do use AP and try to make sure I get enough to be able to do so.

As for the market manipulation of Hakeijo statement above by another poster, that is simple supply and demand. There is literally almost no one farming IC, the place is trash. It could be fun, but pretty much isn't, so no one goes there. Thus, the supply is incredibly low on a high demand item. No one has to control the market on that... and the 6-12 people that play there are probably not part of a cartel, they are more interested in ganking people than making gold. To most of them, the TelVar is simply a bonus to help them afford keeping up with the frequently changing PVP meta's.

Also, 2 of my guild members farm TelVar, with limited success and I can say for a fact they are not part of any cartel or whatnot, both are fairly casual players.

DestroyerPewnack

* laughs in 18-daily-writs-crafters-on-my-main-account-and-a-few-more-on-my-alt-accounts *

Goregrinder

Jeremy wrote: »

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

That's not exclusive to cartels though? I'm sure cartels use that particular financial tactic because they can, but that's not a "pro cartel move", that's just seeing a demand for something, buying out all of the stock as an investment, then re-selling it for the price you want to get for each item in order to see a return on your initial investment. Whether it's cartels, 50 Cent, or George Clooney doing this (buying out his movies so they look like they sell better than they would), is irrelevant.

Are you trying to compare people who try to seek amazing ROI's to Cartels?

remosito

New mythic gear:

Harvester's Hope-Ring (Ring) - Increases likelihood of harvesting more materials on a crafting node over time. Does not affect surveys/event boxes.

Looks like zos is staying on the ball.

no more wild hunt ring though.. time to recraft/buy/digoutofstorage some speed sets

kargen27

Jeremy wrote: »

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

My social guild got a trader this week for the first time in at least three months. So far in two days I have made 2.85 million gold from that trader. No cartel. No cartel like practices. Tamriel Trade Market can be used by any player on PC. It is simply a right place right time kind of thing and nothing more when it comes to low prices. Low priced things go in a hurry because many players are checking for bargains not just a few from elite trade guilds. I'm guessing some of the real bargains are gone before they ever make it to Tamriel Trade Center. We can sort by bargain in the store.

Tamriel Trade Center is always at least a little behind what actually is in traders and what has been posted recently. It doesn't track when things are put in the trader. It tracks when someone sees it in the trader then that person uploads that info.

Kwoung

kargen27 wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

My social guild got a trader this week for the first time in at least three months. So far in two days I have made 2.85 million gold from that trader. No cartel. No cartel like practices. Tamriel Trade Market can be used by any player on PC. It is simply a right place right time kind of thing and nothing more when it comes to low prices. Low priced things go in a hurry because many players are checking for bargains not just a few from elite trade guilds. I'm guessing some of the real bargains are gone before they ever make it to Tamriel Trade Center. We can sort by bargain in the store.

Tamriel Trade Center is always at least a little behind what actually is in traders and what has been posted recently. It doesn't track when things are put in the trader. It tracks when someone sees it in the trader then that person uploads that info.

IDK what to say to people with all those conspiracy theories really. Cartels, Mafioso, Monopolies, etc... Apparently the game is full of them Yet my little social guild does upwards of 64 million a week in sales on occasion and I would say only about half of them even use the trader. Yeah, a few of my members flip items, many farm items and a TON of them harvest materials and do writs for them to sell. Since we are in a outlaw refuge, of course we sell some stuff cheaper, that might be bought up by a flipper (ie: cartel member) and relisted in a better trade spot, but it looks to me like most of our sales are going to the local crafters honestly, and even if flippers were buying it up, who cares, we sold it and have the gold in our pocket, if someone can buy and sell it higher elsewhere, more power to them and I hope we all continue to get rich off their purchases (Which we are). Them driving prices up on purpose, if true, is doing nothing but helping us. The stuff we sell we create, we got it for free via one of the above methods, it is 100% profit for us. The flipper is actually making a lot less than we are, well because he had to buy it from us and his profit is definitely not higher than we made selling it to him. Even if he bought a motif for 200k and he flips it for 300k, who made more?

VaranisArano

remosito wrote: »

New mythic gear:

Harvester's Hope-Ring (Ring) - Increases likelihood of harvesting more materials on a crafting node over time. Does not affect surveys/event boxes.

Looks like zos is staying on the ball.

no more wild hunt ring though.. time to recraft/buy/digoutofstorage some speed sets

Is this an actual thing?

Because Plentiful Harvest still isn't giving the full 50% chance of doubled nodes. So of this is real, I'd like ZOS to fix their current RNG before they add a mythic on top.

DaveMoeDee

Kwoung wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

xilfxlegion 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.

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.

I never said there was a trader conspiracy or a monopoly.

What I said: is this game's economy functions like a cartel, in the sense rich consortiums/guilds that control the popular trading hubs buy out their competition for the purpose of maintaining higher prices. And that is accurate. If you do not believe me, then go watch it happen with your own eyes on Tamriel Trade Market.

My social guild got a trader this week for the first time in at least three months. So far in two days I have made 2.85 million gold from that trader. No cartel. No cartel like practices. Tamriel Trade Market can be used by any player on PC. It is simply a right place right time kind of thing and nothing more when it comes to low prices. Low priced things go in a hurry because many players are checking for bargains not just a few from elite trade guilds. I'm guessing some of the real bargains are gone before they ever make it to Tamriel Trade Center. We can sort by bargain in the store.

Tamriel Trade Center is always at least a little behind what actually is in traders and what has been posted recently. It doesn't track when things are put in the trader. It tracks when someone sees it in the trader then that person uploads that info.

IDK what to say to people with all those conspiracy theories really. Cartels, Mafioso, Monopolies, etc... Apparently the game is full of them Yet my little social guild does upwards of 64 million a week in sales on occasion and I would say only about half of them even use the trader. Yeah, a few of my members flip items, many farm items and a TON of them harvest materials and do writs for them to sell. Since we are in a outlaw refuge, of course we sell some stuff cheaper, that might be bought up by a flipper (ie: cartel member) and relisted in a better trade spot, but it looks to me like most of our sales are going to the local crafters honestly, and even if flippers were buying it up, who cares, we sold it and have the gold in our pocket, if someone can buy and sell it higher elsewhere, more power to them and I hope we all continue to get rich off their purchases (Which we are). Them driving prices up on purpose, if true, is doing nothing but helping us. The stuff we sell we create, we got it for free via one of the above methods, it is 100% profit for us. The flipper is actually making a lot less than we are, well because he had to buy it from us and his profit is definitely not higher than we made selling it to him. Even if he bought a motif for 200k and he flips it for 300k, who made more?

The flipper makes more if they buy a lot of underpriced items at once. As far as motifs go, if they aren't 100% guaranteed to drop, if people are grinding motif drops, all the times it didn't drop need to be factored into their times spent.

I happen to share your perspective. If there are people buying up what I post, nice. I don't care who buys.

That being said, I try to maintain a slot in a good location. I don't work hard at selling these days, but I have a large inventory of things to sell that I can slowly sell to meet quotas.

remosito

VaranisArano wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

New mythic gear:

Harvester's Hope-Ring (Ring) - Increases likelihood of harvesting more materials on a crafting node over time. Does not affect surveys/event boxes.

Looks like zos is staying on the ball.

no more wild hunt ring though.. time to recraft/buy/digoutofstorage some speed sets

Is this an actual thing?

Because Plentiful Harvest still isn't giving the full 50% chance of doubled nodes. So of this is real, I'd like ZOS to fix their current RNG before they add a mythic on top.

you got harvest logss sufficiently big to be statistically significant?

so far i would guesstimate I am getting fifty/fifty single double harvests...

VaranisArano

remosito wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

New mythic gear:

Harvester's Hope-Ring (Ring) - Increases likelihood of harvesting more materials on a crafting node over time. Does not affect surveys/event boxes.

Looks like zos is staying on the ball.

no more wild hunt ring though.. time to recraft/buy/digoutofstorage some speed sets

Is this an actual thing?

Because Plentiful Harvest still isn't giving the full 50% chance of doubled nodes. So of this is real, I'd like ZOS to fix their current RNG before they add a mythic on top.

you got harvest logss sufficiently big to be statistically significant?

so far i would guesstimate I am getting fifty/fifty single double harvests...

Thanks for asking.

I've got Plentiful Harvest at 50% so my results should approach 50% the more I farm. They don't.



Result: 40% Doubled / 60% Single

If I flipped a coin 2,060 times and got that result, no one would hesitate to say that coin wasn't right.

Moreover, this is true of everyone who has posted their results. In fact, when I average all the results everyone has posted from 6,929 nodes at last calculation, the doubled node percentage drops to 35%. Individual batches are coming in between 30-40% with no one showing results of over 50% in a batch of any respectable size. (I also measured 1000 nodes in small batches of ten to see if I could get 5 nodes doubled or more. I did, but I got less that 5 nodes doubled in 70% of my batches.)

So to be blunt, nobody's shown any data that Plentiful Harvest is proccing 50% of the time. All the data we have shows that it's proccing less than 50%, and probably somewhere between 30-40%.


If you want more data or want to discuss it further, i'd encourage you to look at the community's results here. We'd love it if you are willing to track your data and add it to the pool! I go into more of my data and methods for that graph and my small batches on the first thread if you've got questions.
1.https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/566457/plentiful-harvest-passive-does-not-equal-50-tested/p1
2.https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/564705/plentiful-harvest-cp-star-underperforming/

remosito

VaranisArano wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

remosito wrote: »

New mythic gear:

Harvester's Hope-Ring (Ring) - Increases likelihood of harvesting more materials on a crafting node over time. Does not affect surveys/event boxes.

Looks like zos is staying on the ball.

no more wild hunt ring though.. time to recraft/buy/digoutofstorage some speed sets

Is this an actual thing?

Because Plentiful Harvest still isn't giving the full 50% chance of doubled nodes. So of this is real, I'd like ZOS to fix their current RNG before they add a mythic on top.

you got harvest logss sufficiently big to be statistically significant?

so far i would guesstimate I am getting fifty/fifty single double harvests...

Thanks for asking.

I've got Plentiful Harvest at 50% so my results should approach 50% the more I farm. They don't.



Result: 40% Doubled / 60% Single

If I flipped a coin 2,060 times and got that result, no one would hesitate to say that coin wasn't right.

Moreover, this is true of everyone who has posted their results. In fact, when I average all the results everyone has posted from 6,929 nodes at last calculation, the doubled node percentage drops to 35%. Individual batches are coming in between 30-40% with no one showing results of over 50% in a batch of any respectable size. (I also measured 1000 nodes in small batches of ten to see if I could get 5 nodes doubled or more. I did, but I got less that 5 nodes doubled in 70% of my batches.)

So to be blunt, nobody's shown any data that Plentiful Harvest is proccing 50% of the time. All the data we have shows that it's proccing less than 50%, and probably somewhere between 30-40%.


If you want more data or want to discuss it further, i'd encourage you to look at the community's results here. We'd love it if you are willing to track your data and add it to the pool! I go into more of my data and methods for that graph and my small batches on the first thread if you've got questions.
1.https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/566457/plentiful-harvest-passive-does-not-equal-50-tested/p1
2.https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/564705/plentiful-harvest-cp-star-underperforming/

thank you.

this is most certainly sufficient 👌

So I shall join your battle cry of "Fix plentyful harvest ZOS".