gold inflation is insane.

Playboy_Shrek

its worse than irl inflation. I only started playing eso in ~2020. since then. Crowns went from around 100-200 to about 1300 per crown. Heartwood went from ~150 to ~3k . same with most other furnishing mats, alchemy mats for most part tripled-quadrupled . yet quests give the same amount of gold. as someone who doesnt do writs because i certainly dont think i have to relog on multiple characters to make gold and should be doable by playing the game. its a pain now, your options are now is to 1) farm new style page/motif pages immediately as they drop in dungeons, 2) become a flipper (which is really what is driving inflation for most part). its just nuts, this game needs an ingame average price listing in stores so people stop buying what noobs list lower and reselling it for higher. now this isnt the only reason for inflation, the other is the lack of an ingame gold sink. there just isnt, it feels like you literally need to be a millionaire to do anything in this game, mats cost hundreds of thousands to million+ for a stack. even tho i have been playing for a little over 2 years I remember when cornflower was the most expensive mat at 300g a piece. the events that dont stop have rendered the prices of most motifs to practically nothing.

this game needs more ingame gold sinks and a live updated built in list to show people the average listing price to at least reduce flipping. you literally cant craft to make gold anymore because the mats sell for more than what the crafted items are actually worth.

chris25602

dude here is my rundown:
bought in 2015
came back for one tamriel and went nuts all (20)16-17
slowly fell off when cyro went *** up.
came back a month ago ish when i got blackwater for $10

its the antiquities system. when you can just grind 100-500k in a session with solo play...

yeah that causing price fluctuations.

this is neither real or fictional financial advice i just like eso

kargen27

Crowns prices have little to do with in game economy. Changes were made to how crowns could be purchased and that caused a price increase for many that were selling crowns. Also had a change where ZoS allowed homes to be gifted so that increased demand.

There has been some inflation in game but it isn't runaway inflation by any means. For the most part the economy is fluid and adjusts well to supply and demand. Items priced below market value being snatched up and flipped isn't causing inflation. If we could see average price the original price would be higher to match the true market value.

Furnishing materials have shot up in price because demand has greatly increased.

Playboy_Shrek

kargen27 wrote: »

Crowns prices have little to do with in game economy. Changes were made to how crowns could be purchased and that caused a price increase for many that were selling crowns. Also had a change where ZoS allowed homes to be gifted so that increased demand.

There has been some inflation in game but it isn't runaway inflation by any means. For the most part the economy is fluid and adjusts well to supply and demand. Items priced below market value being snatched up and flipped isn't causing inflation. If we could see average price the original price would be higher to match the true market value.

Furnishing materials have shot up in price because demand has greatly increased.

there has nothing to do with supply and demand, less people play this game now than they did in 2020 or 2021. the prices of mats and generally everything have to do with the lack of in game gold sink and flipping. ridiculous argument

Playboy_Shrek

to add on that. with the increased double drops from cp and other systems that improve drops. your argument is weak and really doesnt make any sense. when I started playing flipping was not common. or rare, now, a single flipper in one of my guilds makes 50+ million a week in gold. and most of the guild is in the business of flipping . Its a wide spread thing. less people play the game, more loot and mats drop per person now, and you're telling me it has to do supply and demand? please. your thinking is backwards

EF321

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

a single flipper in one of my guilds makes 50+ million a week in gold.

As in, they buy from others for 0 gold total, and sell for 50 million total?

Monte_Cristo

Another reason for the lower gold cost of crowns in the past is that when crown trading first arrived, the sellers had a surplus of crowns they didn't need. Once that supply went, the cost went up.

Playboy_Shrek

EF321 wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

a single flipper in one of my guilds makes 50+ million a week in gold.

As in, they buy from others for 0 gold total, and sell for 50 million total?

well. its better to not assume people are that stupid or post condescending comments, but the amount of money they make will keep compounding as their capital increases further making them spend more money on things and adding to the loop of inflation.

Playboy_Shrek

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

Another reason for the lower gold cost of crowns in the past is that when crown trading first arrived, the sellers had a surplus of crowns they didn't need. Once that supply went, the cost went up.

the crown ratio is directly tied to the gold economy of the game. on xbox the ratio is 100 gold. because the economy does not change. again, another comment stating a false fact. there is no functioning ttc or trade market or addons on xbox to make flipping easy. thats why the economy is the same. but please, keep posting more bulljive facts that arent true instead of supporting your argument with at least reasonably relevant facts or inferences. as I did. people sit infront of guild stores with notifier addons and macros to buy whatever is cheap and relist it for more. [snip]

[edited for flaming]

jecks33

There is no real inflaction, common things cost few gold (90% of the motifs, rubedite igot, ancestor silk, sanded ruby ash, runes, etc). Rare things and yellow mats cost more because they are rare and require time to farm.

I moved on pc in 2020 and today I have near 50 milions gold just doing daily writs on 11 maxed characters, selling yellows mats, junk and overland sets.
Just with daily writs you can easily make 2/3 milions a month but if you are too lazy to relog all your chars every day, it's not Eso's problem

Playboy_Shrek

jecks33 wrote: »

There is no real inflaction, common things cost few gold (90% of the motifs, rubedite igot, ancestor silk, sanded ruby ash, runes, etc). Rare things and yellow mats cost more because they are rare and require time to farm.

I moved on pc in 2020 and today I have near 50 milions gold just doing daily writs on 11 maxed characters, selling yellows mats, junk and overland sets.
Just with daily writs you can easily make 2/3 milions a month but if you are too lazy to relog all your chars every day, it's not Eso's problem

first off. thats not the point. the things you are mentioning are improved mats. the worthy stuff is gone from them. also I literally did mention the motifs going down and thats not a good thing. that reduces ways you can make gold. there is real inflation. again what is it with these comments that sound like they are written by robots.

Tra_Lalan

1. You do get more gold for quests, and other sort of "playing the game" gold rewards. If you havent noticed check the green CP tree.

2. The price of crowns is mostly increased because of the fact you can't buy them for less money anymore. The fact that there is much more gold in game due the green cp tree is just another factor.

3. If you dont want to do writs, there are many more ways to earn gold just by plaing. You can join a trial group for example and earn by doing carry runs/gear runs for people.

4. Attacking every person who has a different opinion on something than you isn't a good way for getting to the thruth. Just saying.

ixthUA

On PC-EU crowns went up from 400g/crown to 2500g/crown, this happened in 2021 around CP 2.0.
Golden mats also went up in price.
Neither bother me, as i get my own crowns and materials.
Price is set up by how much someone is willing to pay for it. With database like TTC its not hard to search cheap items, buy them all and list for 10x price, which happens often.
What i do is use addon (awesome guild store) to search items that are of interest for me (currently its motifs) and buy all cheap ones. Also i sell alchemy and furnishing mats in guild store, so i have some money to spend.
Companion exp grind is another source of gold.

risfi

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

also I literally did mention the motifs going down and thats not a good thing. that reduces ways you can make gold. there is real inflation.

You complain of there being too much gold (no gold sinks) and too little gold (no ways of making gold), of prices being too high and prices being too low at the same time. That's not quite how inflation works.

Playboy_Shrek

risfi wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

also I literally did mention the motifs going down and thats not a good thing. that reduces ways you can make gold. there is real inflation.

You complain of there being too much gold (no gold sinks) and too little gold (no ways of making gold), of prices being too high and prices being too low at the same time. That's not quite how inflation works.

the things that you reuse over and over again cost more. while the things that you use once (consumables) cost less. ofcourse inflation only affects the rare ones of these because overtime. more and more people get them. like is it black and white? its like talking to robots.

Playboy_Shrek

Tra_Lalan wrote: »

1. You do get more gold for quests, and other sort of "playing the game" gold rewards. If you havent noticed check the green CP tree.

2. The price of crowns is mostly increased because of the fact you can't buy them for less money anymore. The fact that there is much more gold in game due the green cp tree is just another factor.

3. If you dont want to do writs, there are many more ways to earn gold just by plaing. You can join a trial group for example and earn by doing carry runs/gear runs for people.

4. Attacking every person who has a different opinion on something than you isn't a good way for getting to the thruth. Just saying.

a good way to getting to the truth is supporting your statement with actual facts or at least something that is relevant and true. not pure [snip]. what they are saying is factually [snip]. "back then crown trading started so now its more" okay. what about console? did the xbox version of the game come out yesterday? no its been around just as long. "its a supply and demand issue". literally less people play the game now and the supply is increased because of the new cp. their arguments are absurd

the green cp adds a couple percent of gold. so there goes that, and prices were going up WAY before cp 2.0 came out so thats point number 2. again you are providing garbage "Factoids". is telling someone the information they are providing is false because A B and C is attacking them then I guess am attacking people.

remember. double drop rate used to be 10%. now its 50%. so the supply is up way more. less people play eso, so the demand is way less. what gives?. its 50% flipping. 50% lack of an ingame gold sink

[edited for profanity bypass]

tmbrinks

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

Playboy_Shrek

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? [snip] it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

[edited for baiting]

Tsar_Gekkou

Monte_Cristo wrote: »

Another reason for the lower gold cost of crowns in the past is that when crown trading first arrived, the sellers had a surplus of crowns they didn't need. Once that supply went, the cost went up.

There was a trick a while back where pc players could make an account based in Argentina, which had an extremely low cost for crowns. you could buy crowns for absolutely dirt cheap and then sell them. Once zos fixed that, crown prices skyrocketed.

tmbrinks

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? lol. do you actually read what you say twice. because it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

Playboy_Shrek

tmbrinks wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? lol. do you actually read what you say twice. because it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

oh cmon people are not that stupid to not check the craft bag they signed up for.

tmbrinks

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? lol. do you actually read what you say twice. because it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

oh cmon people are not that stupid to not check the craft bag they signed up for.

That's not what I'm saying. People just simply don't sell items from it, and just accumulate it. Because they don't sell, they're not counted in the supply (since they aren't for sale), so there is some scarcity of the ones actually on the market that people sell.

And in an environment where there is inflation, it's much better to have the asset that is increasing than it is the gold. It's much like how people in the booming housing market in the US who already own a home are not feeling much of a crunch of pricing of housing, but those that do not are, because they don't possess the asset (renters) that is actually increasing in value, but are instead at the whim of those who do have (landlords)

bmnoble

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? lol. do you actually read what you say twice. because it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

oh cmon people are not that stupid to not check the craft bag they signed up for.

Its not a case of stupidity they have everything they need from daily writs and rarely have a reason to need to make a lot of gold.

Not everyone sells there mats, I know plenty of guild members with hundreds of each of gold upgrade mats, who only sell the bare minimum they need to buy stuff they want and only when they need to raise capital quickly for furniture plans or motifs.

The rest they hang onto and they make do with the gold from the quest rewards from daily writs for their normal gold needs.

Plenty of players with thousands of surveys they can't be stuffed doing either myself included.

Even with the increase in double mats from the CP perk, people don't have to farm as much as they did before to make a decent amount of gold.

Casul

As someone who had played on both PSN and PC. It is the addons. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just an outcome.

danno8

tmbrinks wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Crown prices went up when Steam closed a loophole that was allowing players to use a VPN and buy crowns from a collapsed economy in their native currency, so they were getting them for pennies on the dollar (to use USD as the native currency).

Once steam fixed that loophole (and ZoS raised crown prices by upwards of a factor of 2 in many countries), the price of crowns went up drastically on the only two servers where steam versions exist PC NA and EU. This is why you don't see the same effect on the console servers; because the exploit could not happen there.

Yes, prices have gone up on the PC servers. But the ways of making gold are still there. You can do writs, farm mats just the same as before.

Only thing I regret doing is actually selling some of my mats in the guild store for "gold" because it looks nice having millions of gold. It's just that the materials are the appreciating asset and gold loses its value, so I should have kept them there in the craft bag (which of course would have led to more inflation due to less supply of the materials). The craft bag is honestly one of the biggest culprits of consumable material inflation because much of the supply is not on the market but sequestered away in players' craft bags

sure. i agree but that means the prices should increase once with the price of dollar. not steadily with the inflation of ingame economy. and thats not the case on console either

so there is inflation because of excess supply? lol. do you actually read what you say twice. because it doesnt add up.

6 mo ago, crown ratio was ~700.now. its ~1300, does that have to do with the loophole that was closed nearly 2 years ago? no its tied to the game economy.

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

oh cmon people are not that stupid to not check the craft bag they signed up for.

That's not what I'm saying. People just simply don't sell items from it, and just accumulate it. Because they don't sell, they're not counted in the supply (since they aren't for sale), so there is some scarcity of the ones actually on the market that people sell.

And in an environment where there is inflation, it's much better to have the asset that is increasing than it is the gold. It's much like how people in the booming housing market in the US who already own a home are not feeling much of a crunch of pricing of housing, but those that do not are, because they don't possess the asset (renters) that is actually increasing in value, but are instead at the whim of those who do have (landlords)

I don't think I have ever taken anything out of my craftbag to sell. So yah it just sits there forever accumulating and contributing nothing to supply. If there was some practical limit to the craft bag then people would sell more excess junk and prices would come down, but I don't even know what the craft bag limit is since it must be so large I have never noticed.

Kiralyn2000

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

It's not supply if they aren't in the market and being sold, just sitting in the craft bag.

oh cmon people are not that stupid to not check the craft bag they signed up for.

I don't sell anything on the market. So all the gold mats/etc that I farm are "just sitting there" in the craft bag. I'm well aware that they're there. But I've got no patience for this silly 'guild vendor' system, so I don't participate in the economy. /shrug

(and then there's the people who do buy & sell, but are saving the gold mats for personal use. Or waiting for them to be Even Moar Expensive™. There's plenty of reasons besides stupidity, for someone to not sell their gold mats into the supply.)

Arthtur

Prices from PC EU.
1. As somebody said, price of crowns went up so much because ZOS removed loophole to get them cheaper. Now in some countries crowns costs 3 times more.
Simple math. Crowns 300:1, 3x cheaper because of exploit. After they removed it Crowns 900:1, now because how they removed it for some countries crowns become 3 times more expensive so 2700:1 i guess. Of course not everyone live in those countries so price of course is lower than that. I think its around 2000:1 on PC EU.
2. Heartwood and other furnishing materials. The fault is New Life event and those master writs. We have already low supply on those and that crazy increased demand during event cripples it.
3. Its not "inflation". That gold was always in game, its just that ppl didnt have anything to spend it on. Prices updated to gold in rotation and now its just supply and demand.
For example not long ago Chromium plating was going for 315k while Zircon plating for 100k. Now those go for 260k and 65k so prices are going down.
Except purple upgrade materials. Those are going up. But as ppl know next event is about doing master writs... About that increased demand u know.

Also this is MMO. In every MMO there is the same situation. Gold from mobs is good only on the start. The longer game live, the more important becomes trading with other ppl and gold from mobs is worth less and less. Its player driven economy in the end. Everything is provided by other players. U pay for their time.

MEBengalsFan2001

It is like what we are seeing in the real world it is called supply and demand. When supply cannot meet demand the cost of goods/services go up.

Zezin

Arthtur wrote: »

Prices from PC EU.
1. As somebody said, price of crowns went up so much because ZOS removed loophole to get them cheaper. Now in some countries crowns costs 3 times more.
Simple math. Crowns 300:1, 3x cheaper because of exploit. After they removed it Crowns 900:1, now because how they removed it for some countries crowns become 3 times more expensive so 2700:1 i guess. Of course not everyone live in those countries so price of course is lower than that. I think its around 2000:1 on PC EU.
2. Heartwood and other furnishing materials. The fault is New Life event and those master writs. We have already low supply on those and that crazy increased demand during event cripples it.
3. Its not "inflation". That gold was always in game, its just that ppl didnt have anything to spend it on. Prices updated to gold in rotation and now its just supply and demand.
For example not long ago Chromium plating was going for 315k while Zircon plating for 100k. Now those go for 260k and 65k so prices are going down.
Except purple upgrade materials. Those are going up. But as ppl know next event is about doing master writs... About that increased demand u know.

Also this is MMO. In every MMO there is the same situation. Gold from mobs is good only on the start. The longer game live, the more important becomes trading with other ppl and gold from mobs is worth less and less. Its player driven economy in the end. Everything is provided by other players. U pay for their time.

From what I remember of buying them myself from Argentinian steam store they used to cost 1/8 of the US price, crown cost shot up as soon as they fixed the prices.

DMuehlhausen

[snip] Just print / earn more gold to lower inflation cause that's how it works.

[edited for political statement]

deleted220614-000183

kargen27 wrote: »

Crowns prices have little to do with in game economy. Changes were made to how crowns could be purchased and that caused a price increase for many that were selling crowns. Also had a change where ZoS allowed homes to be gifted so that increased demand.

There has been some inflation in game but it isn't runaway inflation by any means. For the most part the economy is fluid and adjusts well to supply and demand. Items priced below market value being snatched up and flipped isn't causing inflation. If we could see average price the original price would be higher to match the true market value.

Furnishing materials have shot up in price because demand has greatly increased.

I can't agree with this explanation. Crown prices are all about ingame economy and rules.
There is couple of reasons why golds are nearly worthless and the prime reason is Farming/Botting/Multiaccount writs "factories" producing massive amount of golds.
I'll not go for details but if one player runs 1000 chars multiaccount factory for daily writs, fully automated, without any real player logging in the game and moving a finger, this is a gap that ZOS should be able to recognize and ban, but they are not willing to do so from many reasons.

What they actually did is limiting good items as crownstore exclusive and reducing good ingame rewards .
So basicly all top end houses, mundus stones, furnishing packs etc cant be bought by gold, playing the game and making long and painfull quests hence the crown/gold ratio scyrocketed as it is driven by the ZOS policy.

[snip]

This has another very questionable impact, making crown/gold sellers really insane rich in golds and as I stated above, these golds want to buy something and has only limited possibility as nothing valuable in gold economy exists so they spend them mostly bidding on guild traders / NPC, so the weekly bids went insane high (up to 100M golds per week in Vivec as I was told)

This benefits small community of "players" (better say cheaters) and ruining old and interesting communities playing the game "normally" (it means not selling crowns and not running multiaccount factories)

So let sum it up. [snip]
Ingame mechanics have only limited possibility to cope with surplus amount of golds produced by robots (PC patform specific problem).
"Normal players" are huge majority of the playerbase (like 99percent) but in reality are neglible for ingame economy (making less then 10 percent of ingame economy driven by bots and crownsellers - my estimation)

The situation we are facing is the result of all these factors.

[edited for bashing]