gold inflation is insane.

mocap

It seems ZOS turned on resources fast respawn atm. Micro event. Didn't see any news about that.
They think it somehow can help lower prices a bit.

deleted220614-000183

Sorry but respawning resources is not a solution to inflation, it is only reaction on the demand.
Why is demand increased ?
Because writ factories are runing on resources
Just imagine this scenario.
One person 100 accounts 1000 chars.
You need tons of materials per day to run such huge normal writ factory.
If ZOS dont increase drop of resources, these cheaters would cause a severe shortage,
but as they are producing nearly unlimited golds, they can continue doing what are they doing even if prices go up but other players would suffer great,
items like sanded ruby ash, platinum ounce, rubedite ingot, ancestor silk etc will go up the roof.

I suppose ZOS updates it as they know how much mats were consumed and how much were harvested and trying keep it roughly in the same level.

And as less bots are harvesting and more bots are consuming.... guess what

saar

Maybe someone can explain this to me better. What I don't get is if crowns on console have always been sold for the standard price (no steam exploits), and now crowns in the PC market are being sold for the standard price, why the massive discrepancy in crown exchange rates?

It actually feels like the inflation is artificially generated i.e. by PC players who manipulated the market to increase the crown rates.

Woozywyvern

You cannot measure the in game economy using crowns as an example. Crowns are purchased with real life money, which is impacted by real world events.

Lysette

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.

Exactly that is the reason.

Tommy_The_Gun

Imho it is not a single reason, but rather multiple reasons behind "gold inflation".
I won't point out the minor ones (like addons or TTC websites). Imho the primary reason why we see prices going up is... the age of the game, the amount of gold sinks & um "disproportions" in players wealth.

Some players, simply put have "completed" all of the "gold sinks" (or the ones they were interested with) and they have millions on top of other millions of gold & nothing to spend them on. Even if there are new items added to the game, they can get those quite fast.

They have it all, so there are no "gold sinks" left for them. So that is why we see more & more players market flipping / scalping. They can afford in this kind of "investment". More & more players having cash to flip stuff = prices of stuff are going up.

For comparison, other players who are new to the game or they play longer but solo can earn more gold (new cp, login rewards, excavating), but paradoxically despite having like 5% - 10% more gold income than before they can buy significantly less for it than 2 or 4 years ago.

It all boils down to supply vs demand. Because I don't think that prices of things are a result of more & more people "accepting" higher prices & more & more people being able to afford more expensive items (posts on eso forums regarding prices going up started like 1,5 year ago). So it is not like players are "fine" with it.

In order to stop & reduce the prices imho the economy system would need a huge supply boost. Something to make item flipping less impactful for the global eso economy. There is imho a simple way to do it, but it is something that ZOS would have to add - The ability for the guild traders to buy stuff. Right now, if a trading guild has a vendor npc, players in that guild can post items they are selling. What if, players in a trading guild would also be able to post offers on what item they want to buy (what item, what price, what amount etc ?) Any player visiting trading npc will be able to see that offer and as long as they have items in question in their inventory - they will be able to sell it.

Imagine all of those ESO players who are not a part of the ESO trading supply chain all of the sudden to be able to contribute to it.

This will cause the base price of items to go SUBSTANTIALLY down, so even if someone will still flip / scalpel the items - they will keep same profit, but the final price will be significantly lower. It is a win-win.

[snip]
[edited for conspiracy theory/misinformation]

deleted220614-000183

Xinihp wrote: »

Carry guilds have begun organizing in Discord to raise prices for "consistency" because a handful of top sites (not posting names) decided to DOUBLE their rates from 4 million gold for titles/personality runs to 8 million, with trial carries running upwards of 30 MILLION GOLD.

All this is a direct result of the runaway crown to gold conversion rate.

It is not a conspiracy to observe that ZOS benefits from this increase, while new players (and players in general) suffer as their gold and thus TIME is worth less and less.

How does ZOS benefit? With 1 or 2 massive crown exchange sites effectively corning the market and rigging prices higher and higher, the number with gold to buy crowns through gifting decreases, and the number who can't afford the gold or just give up and buy it with money increases.

This directly increases ZOS's earnings in the short term, while contributing to FOMO burnout in the long term.

The handful of super-monopolists only have so much they are interested in or can buy with that gold or crowns. But by effectively allowing the exchange rate to skyrocket out of control, ZOS effectively creates a defacto scenario that walks back their crown gifting system by making it inaccessible to the average player, who just ends up spending real money.

It also creates a very bad image of the company in the eyes of the average customer being pushed out and effectively told their time is no longer worth even half what it was just 3 years ago.

The best thing ZOS could do at this point is what WoW did with tokens, and just set a sliding scale exchange rate and allow people to buy things directly from the crown store with gold just like houses, and cut out the increasingly corrupt and greedy middlemen who are driving customers away with their exclusive price fixing.

Oh no,it is not about monopoly and Guilds and middlemen. It is caused directly by ZOS as they are:
- reducing quality of items and rewards available in the game
- reducing discounts on crownstore exclusive items
- reducing free ESO+ trials

etc

A for as WOW tokens, they (ZOS) did similar thing with seals of endeavors but if you make basic calculation, it takes 7 months !!!!!!! of collecting all daily and weekly seals just to earn enough of them for one radiant apex mount.

If you count in hours it is about 8 hours per week, 32 per month and 224 hours total just for that one mount.
Just completing seals of endeavors, nothing else.

Call it increasingly corrupt and greedy middlemen if you want but I'm pointing somewhere else.

Playboy_Shrek

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

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

Please explain to me why then green provisioning recipes can not be sold for more than 100 gold? Or why certain event motifs and styles sell for less? I have 1500 Firepot pieces of each type that I can't sell for 25 gold each. If inflation were not impacted by supply and demand then I should be able to sell those for several thousand gold each right?

Supply and demand are major factors of the in game economy, they are just not the only factors. Less people are playing right now.

And yes players flip items. But players doing the flipping have been doing it for years.

And yes I agree that we need more stuff to buy with gold preferably cosmetics. Zos really should consider more options around that.

because these items are learned once used, everything that is learned once used besides the ultra rare items all went down in price because less people need them now. they do not affect inflation. because you cant monopolize something that nobody wants to buy anyway. are you gonna buy all the green plans and relist them for more? good luck with that.

people are continuously buying the mats over and over and relisting them for more. and you people are saying that doesnt cause the prices to go up. unbelievable. literally probably 80% of my guilds income is through flipping. I mean thats being nice about it, its one of the top 10 trading guilds in the game. I was in another top 10 trading guild in the game. same deal, the vast majority of sold items in this game are flipped items. and the loop continous, people literally run macros through the game and ttc, sit infront of trading guilds and constantly relist items immediately. thats why everything costs more.

and then someone comes here and says "Well I made 50 Million doing writs" no shi sherlock. because those mats were not even 1/10th or their price a couple of years ago. flipping creates a middle man, where does the middle man makes their money? by overpricing items. i dont understand how people just ignore basic math. yall must be flippers that are being super defensive.


do you know what problem flipping introduces? it makes farming motifs (besides very difficult and super new ones) and furnishing mats, obsolete. I used to go and farm a couple of overland motifs and sell them for 50-100k a day or couple of days, thats USELESs now. because you could get that in mats in absolutely no time and thats a waste of time. the ways to make gold have been limited to like 3 ways.

deleted220614-000183

saar wrote: »

Maybe someone can explain this to me better. What I don't get is if crowns on console have always been sold for the standard price (no steam exploits), and now crowns in the PC market are being sold for the standard price, why the massive discrepancy in crown exchange rates?

It actually feels like the inflation is artificially generated i.e. by PC players who manipulated the market to increase the crown rates.

No, it is not about manipulation, it is about PC addons for daily writs which are generating unlimited golds for people, who are running writ factories and massive multiaccounts.

Playboy_Shrek

trpajzla wrote: »

saar wrote: »

Maybe someone can explain this to me better. What I don't get is if crowns on console have always been sold for the standard price (no steam exploits), and now crowns in the PC market are being sold for the standard price, why the massive discrepancy in crown exchange rates?

It actually feels like the inflation is artificially generated i.e. by PC players who manipulated the market to increase the crown rates.

No, it is not about manipulation, it is about PC addons for daily writs which are generating unlimited golds for people, who are running writ factories and massive multiaccounts.

what writ gold is nothing. the amount of mats being dropped is like 50% more than they did before the new cp yet the price steadily increase at the same rate? what gives. it is flipping. dont make absolute nonsense. and I agree to some degree that zos needs to make the game more reasonable for the one or two character players and not turn it into some sort of a labor like game where you log onto 18 toons like its an hourly job to do writs. but thats besides the point I know people that dont do writs anymore that did before because they just flat out flip tens of millions. a week. ofcourse its not all profit. but the more they do the more they can buy next time.

its absolutely flipping/price maniupulation. go list a mat for a bit lower than its list price, it will sell in minutes. why? because people run macros and addons that tell them if something is at lower than market. they immediately buy it and relist it.

deleted220614-000183

Playboy_Shrek wrote: »

what writ gold is nothing. the amount of mats being dropped is like 50% more ...

Just basic calculation about golds.
1 player, 100 multiaccounts, 1000 chars.
Every char completes
Alchemy Writ.
Blacksmithing Writ.
Clothier Writ.
Enchanting Writ.
Woodworking Writ.
Provisioning Writ

It is 6000 writs per day.
Besides other rewards like golden mats and valuable master writs they get 670 gold per daily writ
I call it 4m golds per day, 28M golds per week.

It doesnt matter that these golds are only pocket money comparing to the market value of golden mats they are getting as well as golden mats are more or less consumed by the factory owner himself to exp more and more chars and increase his factory size. As they are consumed, they are not causing inflation but new golds are not consumed and are causing inflation.

And nobody says that 1000 chars is the final number. With enough master writs and mats they can add hundred of new chars in the factory every week what is perfectly what are they doing.

It is not a rocket science.

Playboy_Shrek

lets say Item A is 5 gold. right? 5 gold everywhere in the game give or take, maybe 4 here or 6 there. but 5 on average. flippers buy it right? so to make gold. they list it for 10. just an example ignore the values, over the weeks. it becomes 10 everywhere as more and more flippers buy and relist it for 10. so now that its 10 everywhere. do flippers go like "oh well it was good while it lasted". no. they will buy it for 10 after everyone starts listing it for 10 and put it up 15? do you see the logic here. I dont know how this is hard to understand?. [snip]

[edited for baiting]

Tommy_The_Gun

trpajzla wrote: »

Just basic calculation about golds.
1 player, 100 multiaccounts, 1000 chars.
Every char completes
Alchemy Writ.
Blacksmithing Writ.
Clothier Writ.
Enchanting Writ.
Woodworking Writ.
Provisioning Writ

It is 6000 writs per day.

Day has only 24 hours... I don't think it is possible to do it as you suggest. Even if I do it on like 8 characters it takes 1,5 hours at minimum. And I need to prepare for something like this in advance. I need extra crafting mats stacks, but even then I have to stop at some point & resupply. Also I am lucky if the game won't kick if I re-log to other characters too often.

Oh and one more thing. The only situation in which I can see myself doing crafting dailies for 8 hours is if someone literally paid me RL cash to do so lol.

Playboy_Shrek

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

trpajzla wrote: »

Just basic calculation about golds.
1 player, 100 multiaccounts, 1000 chars.
Every char completes
Alchemy Writ.
Blacksmithing Writ.
Clothier Writ.
Enchanting Writ.
Woodworking Writ.
Provisioning Writ

It is 6000 writs per day.

Day has only 24 hours... I don't think it is possible to do it as you suggest. Even if I do it on like 8 characters it takes 1,5 hours at minimum. And I need to prepare for something like this in advance. I need extra crafting mats stacks, but even then I have to stop at some point & resupply. Also I am lucky if the game won't kick if I re-log to other characters too often.

Oh and one more thing. The only situation in which I can see myself doing crafting dailies for 8 hours is if someone literally paid RL cash to do so lol.

so at this point to make gold because of inflation you have to turn the game into your job or flip lol.

deleted220614-000183

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Day has only 24 hours... I don't think

[snip]
I'm very unhappy to burst your bubble but all the factory owner needs to do is one click to start the script as everything is automated and runs without any human supervision.

The only thing they need to care about and what needs manual work is creating new accounts and chars and lvl them to the level 6.
[snip]
[edited for baiting & bashing]

LalMirchi

trpajzla wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Day has only 24 hours... I don't think

[snip]
I'm very unhappy to burst your bubble but all the factory owner needs to do is one click to start the script as everything is automated and runs without any human supervision.

The only thing they need to care about and what needs manual work is creating new accounts and chars and lvl them to the level 6.
[snip]

This one would need proof of these supposed "factories" to believe this rather unbelievable statement.

[edited to remove quote]

Mayrael

Once again. This is not true inflation but merely a difference in supply and demand. Fluctuations in the number of players, what they are most interested in playing, the actions they take to acquire currency all have an effect on commodity prices.

Even on the example of material upgrades you can see that we are not dealing here with inflation per se (that is, a general decrease in the value of the currency) but only with an increase in certain goods - so if we start building shopping baskets then we will be able to prove both that there is inflation and there is not - so I do not try to choose goods for the thesis.

How do the prices of individual material upgrades change?
The price of Chromium Plating increased about 3 times.
Price of Dreugh Wax increased 2.5-3 times.
Tempering Alloy price increased 2 times.
Price of Kuta increased 1,5 times.
Price of Rosin did not change.

Prices of alchemical reagents.
Price of Lorkhan's Tears decreased.
Price of most reagents except Columbine, Corn Flower and Lady Smock remained unchanged.

And so each category can be analyzed. All in all, we are not dealing here with inflation but with supply and demand imbalance.

Perhaps the players who have provided larger amounts of materials so far have stopped doing so? Maybe there are more players focused on those aspects of the game that require the most sought after goods.

There are probably many reasons, which in effect overlapped contributed to the current situation.

Pepegrillos

There are flippers, there are bots, there are dupers, and then there are hackers that can create gold out of nowhere. Some things can be managed, some probably can't. If you look at other MMORPGs, inflation seems common and rarely gets eradicated.

deleted220614-000183

Pepegrillos wrote: »

There are flippers, there are bots, there are dupers, and then there are hackers that can create gold out of nowhere. Some things can be managed, some probably can't. If you look at other MMORPGs, inflation seems common and rarely gets eradicated.

If ZOS put fraction of their effort which they are using to moderate this forum to investigate the source of "dirty" golds pouring in PC platform, it could be fixed easily.

But as I stated before, in game golds are not a problem for ZOS as they have no savings in in game golds currency and it is not their property which is disappearing right before their eyes

It is property of the players so priority of the ZOS is one big ZERO.

As long as dirty golds are not sold for real currency, ZOSis perfectly OK with the situation as desperate players tends to "invest" their shrinking golds in crowns/gold exchange before the ratio even worsens and guess what... crown prices are stable, dictated by ZOS and paid by real money, so where is the problem ?

Why they should fix something what actually benefits them ?
Because of same "long term image" and sustainability ? Oh dear.
Old players quit, fresh players come.
Problem solved.

As I read this forum, people really don't have clue what is going on and how deep is the rabbit hole.
I'm sorry.

Taggund

Flipping is not the issue. Supply is the issue. Flipping is someone just handling the inefficient ESO trader system, and for some, that is the game (like for some it's farming, fishing, thieving, pick-pocketing, dungeon runs, etc.).

We all have limits to how much we'll spend for something, and if price rises too high you get to the point you determine you don't need an item, or decide to farm/grind/earn the item yourself.

My general perspective is to set a price for items I'm comfortable with, and not worry about the flippers.

Tommy_The_Gun

Taggund wrote: »

Flipping is not the issue. Supply is the issue.

It seems that it is more like the proportion of those two that might be the issue. If more & more players have cash & budget for the "flipping" investment, but at the same time supply remains the same, then "flipping" kinda outpaces the supply, meaning that prices on things goes up. Less non-fliped items on the market also causes base price of those to go up.

Ratzkifal

I find that whole "writ factory" thing hard to believe. Having so many accounts, ESO+ for the craftbag and character slots unlocked takes a ton of real life money to make happen and to what end? You cannot make that money back by gold selling because at that point the people buying from you are better off simply selling their own crowns especially if writ factories devalue the perceived value of gold.
Having trillions of gold that aren't in circulation doesn't actually impact the economy at all. That's why Mansa Musa shocked the world with his gold even though that same gold had already existed prior to his pilgrimage - it just wasn't in circulation before. What this means is that neither saving up that gold nor flooding the market with it results in any net gain for the person doing it, unless they have debt to pay which isn't a thing in ESO. So again, to what end would people run these writ factories?

You claim that writ factories need tons of resources to run, but over long periods of time writs produce more resources than they consume, which is the whole reason why doing writs is recommended for making gold. Especially if you are running a "factory" you'd be piling up the same survey maps which thankfully stack now, making restocking once you run low even easier without you having to spend anything. Writ factories seem like an expensive, inefficient version of resource bots, which we have actual proof of - although thankfully I haven't seen any bot trains in a couple of years now.

No, "writ factories" are not the problem if they even exist. The actual problem is crown trading allowing for vast sums of otherwise dormant gold to enter circulation, combined with the constant need to gold out new gear every time you reconstruct or upgrade an item limiting the supply of upgrade mats, and with new houses keeping up the demand for furniture crafting materials, but with no large gold sink to drain gold out of the economy, prices skyrocket.
The guild stores only accelerate the issue because crown selling is used to guarantee winning bids, forcing others to do the same or up the prices or both. The guild store fee cannot keep up with the rate at which gold is being minted either and houses aren't being sold for gold anymore - not the largest ones anyway.
So in conclusion, in ESO money is constantly being printed but rarely being destroyed, thus gold value goes down making everything else go up. The higher the population of a server, the more people are printing money, thus the worse the problem becomes. And that is exactly why inflation is so much worse on PC EU than PC NA, Xbox and PS. It really is that simple.

JanTanhide

I've seen prices of mats scream up over the past few years. And of course Crown prices. I don't "flip" items from guild purchases but I guess it could make some gold if done well.

As for having to be a millionaire in game i don't think so. If you have to buy things because you just want them then yeah, I can see a player needing millions in gold.

I rarely buy anything in game with gold. Nothing really appeals to me that I just have to have. I play the game and sell the junk I get from mobs and dungeon runs. Right now I have close to 30 million and no, I'm not in any Trading guild and never have been over the last 8 years. I just don't need all the expensive stuff in game so my gold adds up.

In just a few hours I can easily make a few hundred thousand in gold just by selling to the in game merchants the junk I get. As for mats I "farm as I go" in the game so no matter which character I'm on it all goes to my Craft Bag. I make my own potions but lately have not had to make any at all. The free in game Crown potions from Daily login rewards has really piled up. I have thousands of them and nowadays I just use them in dungeon runs. So my mats have piled up as well.

I was looking at my Nirncrux the other day and I have almost 500 Fortified and 190 Potent. I have five Master Crafters that are all completely done so a lot of Nirncrux was used in research and I make Nirn staves from time to time for certain builds.

Playing the game to just farm mats and make gold is tedious and a bit stressful. I use to do that about 6 years ago. Since then I just "farm as I go" and life in game has been much more enjoyable.

PC NA

deleted220614-000183

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Taggund wrote: »

Flipping is not the issue. Supply is the issue.

It seems that it is more like the proportion of those two that might be the issue. If more & more players have cash & budget for the "flipping" investment, but at the same time supply remains the same, then "flipping" kinda outpaces the supply, meaning that prices on things goes up. Less non-fliped items on the market also causes base price of those to go up.

No, it is Supply, not flipping.
If ZOS made everyday precise statistics about golds generated and golds consumed and keep it balanced we would have perfectly zero inflation, just flippers will be rich and people not able to flip would be poor and gold savings would not be degraded by the inflation and prices would be perfectly stable.

But as people not able to flip are big majority and they are unsatisfied and loud and wanting more golds and more golds and more golds, ZOS gives them more gold and thissurplus golds are accumulating in the game and notconsumed so it makes illusion that people are richer overall but it is not the case as the infaltion is driving prices up and flippers are richer as they were before and these not able the flip are poor, just the amount of golds in game is increased, prices go up and savings are destroyed.

It is absolutely waisting of time to explain the mechanics to the majority of people on the forum as they are not able of such abstraction... All they want is free bread and circuses as their ancestor wanted in ancient Rome already.

I tell you something. If one person generates by the daily writs factory 4M of effortles gold by automated script by single click a day and nobody cares, it has not consequences. If ten people do the same and generate 40M golds a day, it has no consequences.
But if it is 100 people doing it half an year with impunity and generated 72.000M golds, it has consequences.
That's all

Playboy_Shrek

Taggund wrote: »

Flipping is not the issue. Supply is the issue. Flipping is someone just handling the inefficient ESO trader system, and for some, that is the game (like for some it's farming, fishing, thieving, pick-pocketing, dungeon runs, etc.).

We all have limits to how much we'll spend for something, and if price rises too high you get to the point you determine you don't need an item, or decide to farm/grind/earn the item yourself.

My general perspective is to set a price for items I'm comfortable with, and not worry about the flippers.

thats [snip]. there are more resources out there than ever. there is 50% double drop compared to 10% with the old champion system. [snip] not to mention the node farming speed is faster, and movement speed is faster. [snip]

[edited for baiting & profanity bypass]

deleted221106-002999

Mayrael wrote: »

Once again. This is not true inflation but merely a difference in supply and demand. Fluctuations in the number of players, what they are most interested in playing, the actions they take to acquire currency all have an effect on commodity prices.

Even on the example of material upgrades you can see that we are not dealing here with inflation per se (that is, a general decrease in the value of the currency) but only with an increase in certain goods - so if we start building shopping baskets then we will be able to prove both that there is inflation and there is not - so I do not try to choose goods for the thesis.

How do the prices of individual material upgrades change?
The price of Chromium Plating increased about 3 times.
Price of Dreugh Wax increased 2.5-3 times.
Tempering Alloy price increased 2 times.
Price of Kuta increased 1,5 times.
Price of Rosin did not change.

Prices of alchemical reagents.
Price of Lorkhan's Tears decreased.
Price of most reagents except Columbine, Corn Flower and Lady Smock remained unchanged.

And so each category can be analyzed. All in all, we are not dealing here with inflation but with supply and demand imbalance.

Perhaps the players who have provided larger amounts of materials so far have stopped doing so? Maybe there are more players focused on those aspects of the game that require the most sought after goods.

There are probably many reasons, which in effect overlapped contributed to the current situation.

Great analysis - thanks.

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

Because there is a thread already open on this topic, we're going to close this one down so that all feedback can be consolidated in one place. You may continue the discussion here.

Thank you for your understanding.