Any plans to fix inflation in the economy? (PC/NA)

freespirit

It is entirely possible to get whatever you need by just playing the game and doing activities that reward that item.

If your argument is you dislike those activities and only want to do your favoured one, well then you need to buy those items from people who have done it for you and pay the prices asked!

Danikat

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Could be console economy is more controlled because we lack certain add ons.

But then apparently PC EU is in a much better state than PC NA, and both have all the same addons.

I have to admit I don't know what could be causing rampant inflation only on 1 of the 6 servers, and I don't play on NA enough to know how widespread it is, but if it was caused by addons I'd expect it to affect both PC servers equally.

ssewallb14_ESO

I have a suspicion there might be a disparity in crowns-gold selling between PC-NA and other servers, which would mean more gold in circulation on PC-NA.

Or maybe it's an illicit gold seller thing on the biggest market, who knows.

Czeri

NoTimeToWait explained the discrepancy in the 5th post - EU guilds spend a lot more gold on the traders, removing it from circulation.

Danikat

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I have a suspicion there might be a disparity in crowns-gold selling between PC-NA and other servers, which would mean more gold in circulation on PC-NA.

Or maybe it's an illicit gold seller thing on the biggest market, who knows.

Crown selling doesn't generate gold, the people buying the crowns have to have already earned it somehow.

hiyde

Czeri wrote: »

NoTimeToWait explained the discrepancy in the 5th post - EU guilds spend a lot more gold on the traders, removing it from circulation.

I'd love to know what bid ranges look like in the top cities on EU. My mind would be pretty blown if they are signfiicantly higher (the thought makes me shudder lol)

I_killed_Vivec

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

"I don't like doing [insert unfavoured task here]. ZoS, change the game so I don't have to do it."

It's a game not a job. If the game is making you do unfavoured tasks to progress, yes that's the game's problem.

There's no reason PvPers should need to spend hours picking flowers to be competitive in PvP.

"It's a game, not a job. I want to walk into Cyrodiil as a PvP god! Without having to work for it."

"I don't want to level up - unfavoured"

"I don't want to hunt down skyshards - unfavoured"

"I don't want to grind for gear - unfavoured"

"I don't want to farm materials - unfavoured"

"I don't want to craft potions - unfavoured"

"I really don't want to level up a horse - unfavoured"

The sense of entitlement is so strong. It's a game, not a job, so why not just say

"I push a button and you die."

virtus753

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

"I don't like doing [insert unfavoured task here]. ZoS, change the game so I don't have to do it."

It's a game not a job. If the game is making you do unfavoured tasks to progress, yes that's the game's problem.

There's no reason PvPers should need to spend hours picking flowers to be competitive in PvP.

"It's a game, not a job. I want to walk into Cyrodiil as a PvP god! Without having to work for it."

"I don't want to level up - unfavoured"

"I don't want to hunt down skyshards - unfavoured"

"I don't want to grind for gear - unfavoured"

"I don't want to farm materials - unfavoured"

"I don't want to craft potions - unfavoured"

"I really don't want to level up a horse - unfavoured"

The sense of entitlement is so strong. It's a game, not a job, so why not just say

"I push a button and you die."

The false analogies only help Xylena’s argument.

Gear is not a consumable. Farming it once gets you the gear for the life of the account. Horse feeding is another once-per-character activity, and it’s time gated, not time consuming; it can also be bypassed. Skill point farming is another once-per-character activity. It can also be bypassed. Players regularly do these activities (or pay) to progress their characters, accepting that as a one-time cost of attaining endgame power.

It also takes just seconds to make potions or other consumables - it’s the availability of materials that are the issue.

If you enjoy doing content where these consumables are important and you run out of mats or gold, you are facing a situation where you must *continually* farm mats or gold for a substantial amount of time in order to spend any time in the activities you want to do. There is neither a bypass nor a control on prices, like there is with some consumables (e.g. spell power and weapon power pots). It is against ToS to buy gold outright, and ZOS does not support trading crowns for gold, so that is not a solution. If you do not have the mats or gold, you must spend time farming, not as a one-time cost but as the continual cost of playing.

The higher the ratio of farming mats or gold to enjoyable content, the more onerous playing becomes. The more players are driven away because the ratio of work they don’t enjoy to the ratio of time spent on enjoyable content is too high. And it is getting higher. It has driven away some players already, and it will continue to do that until something is changed.

If that’s ok with you, then we’ll have to agree to disagree on it.

ItMustBeThursday

virtus753 wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

"I don't like doing [insert unfavoured task here]. ZoS, change the game so I don't have to do it."

It's a game not a job. If the game is making you do unfavoured tasks to progress, yes that's the game's problem.

There's no reason PvPers should need to spend hours picking flowers to be competitive in PvP.

"It's a game, not a job. I want to walk into Cyrodiil as a PvP god! Without having to work for it."

"I don't want to level up - unfavoured"

"I don't want to hunt down skyshards - unfavoured"

"I don't want to grind for gear - unfavoured"

"I don't want to farm materials - unfavoured"

"I don't want to craft potions - unfavoured"

"I really don't want to level up a horse - unfavoured"

The sense of entitlement is so strong. It's a game, not a job, so why not just say

"I push a button and you die."

The false analogies only help Xylena’s argument.

Gear is not a consumable. Farming it once gets you the gear for the life of the account. Horse feeding is another once-per-character activity, and it’s time gated, not time consuming; it can also be bypassed. Skill point farming is another once-per-character activity. It can also be bypassed. Players regularly do these activities (or pay) to progress their characters, accepting that as a one-time cost of attaining endgame power.

It also takes just seconds to make potions or other consumables - it’s the availability of materials that are the issue.

If you enjoy doing content where these consumables are important and you run out of mats or gold, you are facing a situation where you must *continually* farm mats or gold for a substantial amount of time in order to spend any time in the activities you want to do. There is neither a bypass nor a control on prices, like there is with some consumables (e.g. spell power and weapon power pots). It is against ToS to buy gold outright, and ZOS does not support trading crowns for gold, so that is not a solution. If you do not have the mats or gold, you must spend time farming, not as a one-time cost but as the continual cost of playing.

The higher the ratio of farming mats or gold to enjoyable content, the more onerous playing becomes. The more players are driven away because the ratio of work they don’t enjoy to the ratio of time spent on enjoyable content is too high. And it is getting higher. It has driven away some players already, and it will continue to do that until something is changed.

If that’s ok with you, then we’ll have to agree to disagree on it.

Exactly!!

ssewallb14_ESO

Danikat wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I have a suspicion there might be a disparity in crowns-gold selling between PC-NA and other servers, which would mean more gold in circulation on PC-NA.

Or maybe it's an illicit gold seller thing on the biggest market, who knows.

Crown selling doesn't generate gold, the people buying the crowns have to have already earned it somehow.

No, but it circulates unused gold throughout the economy. It's common for some players to have way more gold than they need, especially more casual playstyles or people who enjoy trading. If you give them something very expensive to spend it on that they might like, that gold ends up in the hands of someone who will use it rather than sitting in someone's bank.

XSTRONG

I think delete all Gold players have in game then massively increase in game gold for in game activitys for awhile would fix that and an insane gold grind would take place.

Other game I play have seasons so your gold dont carry over to next season, thats also one way to solve it.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

ItMustBeThursday wrote: »

I've been wondering if there is anything planned to address the rampant inflation affecting the in game economy.

The price of certain items has gone absolutely insane, and it feels like you'd have to aggressively farm gold to be able to buy even the most basic necessities.

Inflation and high prices will disappear if TTC is banned from the game. Pricing will crash because there wont' be any sales for few weeks and everyone will try to get the bargains. TTC is operating like an auction house no different found in other games, hence the inflation.

In addition on PC NA you will find certain 2 individuals running from zone to zone (especially in starter zones) buying from the players there mats and herbs (like columbine) in exuberant prices which then are transferred even higher at the market.

VisitHammerfell

"Replace the gold rewarded for completing daily crafting writs with tokens that can be exchanged for materials once you get enough or gold"

Absolutely not! Console exists and writs are pretty much the only way for us to get considerable amounts of gold. We shouldn't have to have our economy completely ruined to fix PC's inflation.

LaintalAy

Sakiri wrote: »

Gold sinks don't always work. I ignore them, for example.

ZOS can't fix a player created issue like inflation. Sorry.

Yep.

ItMustBeThursday wrote: »

Strongly disagree, ZOS is no different than a government, except that the "country" in question is a game world. They control all the systems necessary to adjust for inflation

Nope. Governments deploy systems to change market behaviour. The effect can be a reduction in the measured rate of inflation. In my country, interest rates went up. This means people now can't afford 'basic necessities' in order to pay a mortgage. So demand for those 'basic necessities' goes down and in theory, so does the price. In theory...

So how are you measuring inflation?

I didn't realise that there were 'basic necessities' needed to play.

My gameplay sees me picking up a lot of free stuff that in a short time later, is available again for someone else to pick up for free. Obviously, I sell stuff using the Guild trader system. I use an addon to derive the average price for an item from the sales going through the various traders that I use.

Some things sell well, some don't. Reducing the price often helps. Those folk that use TTC to scan for low-priced items will then move in and resell for a higher price.

Despite protestations, the current system actually works pretty well. Any problems raised usually come from people who don't want to waste time crafting. Either for their own needs, or for selling to others.

LaintalAy

virtus753 wrote: »

<snip>

It also takes just seconds to make potions or other consumables - it’s the availability of materials that are the issue.

Really? I can just walk up to an alchemy station and craft 'Essence of Spell Power'?
If I don't want to skill up to be able to harvest 'Lorkan's Tears' - I'll need to buy it from someone that went to that effort, as well as the effort of harvesting it.

Really? I can just walk up to a cooking fire and make some 'Psyjic Ambrosia'?
Again, more skill points needed to use the Purple recipe. Once I either 'find' one or buy one.
Then I need to fish 500 fish or spend 70000 on one perfect roe.

But yeah, those trivial annoyances aside, it only takes seconds.

xylena_lazarow

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

The sense of entitlement is so strong. It's a game, not a job, so why not just say

More like you pay for a day at the theme park to drive some go-karts, and instead the carney tells you "no go-karts until you ride the kiddie teacups for 3 hours, no exceptions." Like no, that's not what I'm paying for. ESO is a theme park MMO, I'm only here to ride the PvP ride, the mat grind part is just a waste of time that takes away from PvP, there are lots of PvPers that literally don't have the time to mat grind and are at a competitive disadvantage for no good reason.

virtus753

LaintalAy wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

<snip>

It also takes just seconds to make potions or other consumables - it’s the availability of materials that are the issue.

Really? I can just walk up to an alchemy station and craft 'Essence of Spell Power'?
If I don't want to skill up to be able to harvest 'Lorkan's Tears' - I'll need to buy it from someone that went to that effort, as well as the effort of harvesting it.

Really? I can just walk up to a cooking fire and make some 'Psyjic Ambrosia'?
Again, more skill points needed to use the Purple recipe. Once I either 'find' one or buy one.
Then I need to fish 500 fish or spend 70000 on one perfect roe.

But yeah, those trivial annoyances aside, it only takes seconds.

...I'm very confused here. You seem to be agreeing with my point.

It's not the actual act of crafting that is time consuming or that players find "unfavored." It's all the stuff that goes into being able to craft that takes time or gold.

Also, as a brief side note: you don't need to "skill up" to get Lorkhan's Tears. Any level CP150+ character has a 50% chance of getting that from harvesting any water source. If you put points into alchemy to get the first passive to 8/8, that chance becomes 100%. That's true of harvesting any mat with tiers: the tier of the mat pulled has a 50% chance of matching your character's actual character level and a 50% chance of matching your character's rank (the points in the passive, so Solvent Proficiency in the case of Alchemy).

mook-eb16_ESO

Doesn't the golden vendor help with certain items?

VisitHammerfell

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

Doesn't the golden vendor help with certain items?

Somewhat but it's still chump change on PC (and golden vendor jewelry is still not worth it on console).

chessalavakia_ESO

VisitHammerfell wrote: »

"Replace the gold rewarded for completing daily crafting writs with tokens that can be exchanged for materials once you get enough or gold"

Absolutely not! Console exists and writs are pretty much the only way for us to get considerable amounts of gold. We shouldn't have to have our economy completely ruined to fix PC's inflation.

Re-read the post you quoted.

You would still be able to get gold if you choose to exchange the tokens for gold.

However, depending on the price of materials on your server that may not actually be the most effective choice for making gold.

ShadowPaladin

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I have a suspicion there might be a disparity in crowns-gold selling between PC-NA and other servers, which would mean more gold in circulation on PC-NA.

Or maybe it's an illicit gold seller thing on the biggest market, who knows.

Crown selling doesn't generate gold, the people buying the crowns have to have already earned it somehow.

No, but it circulates unused gold throughout the economy. It's common for some players to have way more gold than they need, especially more casual playstyles or people who enjoy trading. If you give them something very expensive to spend it on that they might like, that gold ends up in the hands of someone who will use it rather than sitting in someone's bank.

That Crown selling does not contribute to an increase in the amount of gold isn't necessarily true! I've seen in other MMOs that if players do have the chance to get a game currency, for which you would need to spend *real* money, through instead spending another ingame currency, they will do just that. This means, that those players will start to *FARM* for the ingame currency, in case of ESO it is Gold, or they will buy it from others (eg. China-Farmers) who farmed it for them. With that the amount of gold will increase more and more over time, since there always will be players who do want to get stuff which can only be bought by using the currency you would need to spent real money for.

The only, more or less, reasonable way to influence (slow down) the speed of inflation is to create a regulated exchange-system for currencies and some real good currency (gold) sinks, where people do want to spent there currency (gold) on. The trick for those sinks would be, to make them so that they A ) do have a lot of stuff, a lot of people may be interested in and B ) prices setup in a way that people don't notice that they spent a lot of gold (or what ever) on those items. A few ultra rare items, which cost 1mio, 2mio or 10mio per item won't do the trick. Instead you need 100, 200, 500 or 1,000 items, with a price range from 100 gold for more common items to 1mio gold for ultra rare items.

As some already mentioned here, for ESO a possible good gold sink would be those *special* item vendores, which do run through a inventory change in certain time intervals. Instead of making them change their inventory, let them keep it and add the new items in addition to it. With that people could buy the stuff all year and spent their gold.

LaintalAy

virtus753 wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

<snip>

It also takes just seconds to make potions or other consumables - it’s the availability of materials that are the issue.

Really? I can just walk up to an alchemy station and craft 'Essence of Spell Power'?
If I don't want to skill up to be able to harvest 'Lorkan's Tears' - I'll need to buy it from someone that went to that effort, as well as the effort of harvesting it.

Really? I can just walk up to a cooking fire and make some 'Psyjic Ambrosia'?
Again, more skill points needed to use the Purple recipe. Once I either 'find' one or buy one.
Then I need to fish 500 fish or spend 70000 on one perfect roe.

But yeah, those trivial annoyances aside, it only takes seconds.

...I'm very confused here. You seem to be agreeing with my point.

It's not the actual act of crafting that is time consuming or that players find "unfavored." It's all the stuff that goes into being able to craft that takes time or gold.

Also, as a brief side note: you don't need to "skill up" to get Lorkhan's Tears. Any level CP150+ character has a 50% chance of getting that from harvesting any water source. If you put points into alchemy to get the first passive to 8/8, that chance becomes 100%. That's true of harvesting any mat with tiers: the tier of the mat pulled has a 50% chance of matching your character's actual character level and a 50% chance of matching your character's rank (the points in the passive, so Solvent Proficiency in the case of Alchemy).

I'm not agreeing with you. I am saying that I go to the trouble of making one char a fully skilled crafter. I use that char to create things that people like you can buy from me, should you prefer to.

I have 3 chars at CP200. So they have to farm twice as long for high-end mats until I have skill points to waste on max passives.

For me XP gain is important. Sometimes I choose to buy Perfect Roe and craft 4 pots to boost my XP a bit, usually on a sub-50 char to get them across the line. I pay 70000, (it used to be 10000) because the act of fishing bores me and I will pay to avoid that.

In terms of inflation, ZOS could increase the drop rate of Perfect Roe. But would that really effect the price?

There is no real inflation problem. There's a scalping problem, where players use TTC to hunt down rare items and corner the market and overcharge for them. If suddenly Perfect Roe was abundant and cheap, scalpers would just buy them all up and boost the prices again. ZOS strategy of not getting directly involved is probably a good one.

Right now, we have to back-to-back events with +100% XP gain. This will have an effect on various market elements as people won't need XP boost foods for a few weeks. Motifs as rewards etc. So some indirect action is possibly a balancing mechanism.

ElderSmitter

There is 1 simple Fix. ZOS needs to introduce a Crown Crate Vendor that sells Crates for Gold. It would not stop People from Spending Real money on Crown Crates either. They just need to create new types of Crates offering slightly different But Super fun and rare things that cannot be Sold.

Punishing Newer and Older Players is not the Answer.

Too Many people do not understand what a Gold Sink really means besides being a cool sounding word. Gold Sink means removing Gold from the Game not transferring it to other players.

You will always have Inflation and Deflation depending on what is going on.

hiyde

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

The sense of entitlement is so strong. It's a game, not a job, so why not just say

More like you pay for a day at the theme park to drive some go-karts, and instead the carney tells you "no go-karts until you ride the kiddie teacups for 3 hours, no exceptions." Like no, that's not what I'm paying for. ESO is a theme park MMO, I'm only here to ride the PvP ride, the mat grind part is just a waste of time that takes away from PvP, there are lots of PvPers that literally don't have the time to mat grind and are at a competitive disadvantage for no good reason.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying they shouldn't make any changes to how obtainable some of these bottleneck mats are.

But I'm not following this analogy. Seems more like buying a movie ticket and expecting the snack bar to be free. (though they should at those ticket prices lol). Or going to the gun range and expecting the ammo to be unlimited & free. Or going to the carnival and expecting those Corn Dogs & Deep Fried Oreos you're going to spew on the teacups to be free...

This conversation just happened over in another thread recently: A mediocre node farmer can make 500k an hour on PC-NA (on the low end) just farming nodes. How many potions does that buy? If that doesn't buy enough, then this isn't "I don't have the time" to farm/get gold to buy wha tI need in the example above. It's "I don't like the price of consumables and am not willing to spend a little bit of time farming up the income to buy them".

And that's fair. But the person who only has 1 hour a night to play in Cyro on the weekends isn't chewing through mountains of health pots. It's all proportional.

This is, after all, an MMO. Farming up mats (or gold) to get the consumables you need is a part of every AAA MMO I've played.

NoTimeToWait

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

I have a suspicion there might be a disparity in crowns-gold selling between PC-NA and other servers, which would mean more gold in circulation on PC-NA.

Or maybe it's an illicit gold seller thing on the biggest market, who knows.

Crown selling doesn't generate gold, the people buying the crowns have to have already earned it somehow.

No, but it circulates unused gold throughout the economy. It's common for some players to have way more gold than they need, especially more casual playstyles or people who enjoy trading. If you give them something very expensive to spend it on that they might like, that gold ends up in the hands of someone who will use it rather than sitting in someone's bank.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on how much gold an average player holds in their coffers (I think I remember ZOS posting this info once, though I don't quite remember the numbers, so won't spread any misinformation). I would assume any major trader holds at least 10-30 mil always available plus 10-15% of their total net worth in hard gold, everything else should be stored in wares (due to the very same inflation).

So if we go from assumption that major traders store at least half of their gold in wares (which would be a sensible thing to do), then crown selling doesn't benefit gold circulation too much

hiyde

LaintalAy wrote: »

Right now, we have to back-to-back events with +100% XP gain. This will have an effect on various market elements as people won't need XP boost foods for a few weeks.

Are you sure about that? It feels like events like these boost sales of Ambrosias so people can really level up fast...

spartaxoxo

They already have by increasing NPC prices

NoTimeToWait

hiyde wrote: »

Czeri wrote: »

NoTimeToWait explained the discrepancy in the 5th post - EU guilds spend a lot more gold on the traders, removing it from circulation.

I'd love to know what bid ranges look like in the top cities on EU. My mind would be pretty blown if they are signfiicantly higher (the thought makes me shudder lol)

The bids may be not that much higher nowadays (or even smaller), because EU might have its gold more evenly spread, if the gold was indeed better disposed of through bid wars than on NA. Plus, bid wars don't make highest bids that much higher (though they still do).
The more importand impact of bid wars is that there is a lesser number of established trading spots (where a single guild claims a single spot for consecutive weeks and months without much contest) and way more volatility and uncertainty. So even guilds that are not involved in bid wars directly risk losing their spot due to spillover. Therefore, even medium and sometimes small trading guilds have to offset this uncertainty with higher bids, which results in much higher bid volume overall

hiyde

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

The bids may be not that much higher nowadays (or even smaller)

Appreciate the clarification.

hiyde

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

The more importand impact of bid wars is that there is a lesser number of established trading spots (where a single guild claims a single spot for consecutive weeks and months without much contest) and way more volatility and uncertainty. So even guilds that are not involved in bid wars directly risk losing their spot due to spillover.

I'd also hazard a guess that the introduction of Multi-bidding had an impact as well.