What has happened to the economy?

ImmortalCX

Roughly five years ago, I used to be able to farm and sell mats, make a modest base 100K+/hr with occasional windfalls of rare motifs and nirncrux drops. It seemed like I could generate 1m gold in 5-10 hours.

Now I have done some farming loops and it is still contested in places like Craglorn (so obviously people are still farming), but Potent Nirncrux only worth 20K, and a stack of mats worth far less than 10K.

I haven't checked all the prices, but I'm trying to figure out what has changed. I know IA has purchaseable mat drops so that may explain the majority of it. It could also be because this is "off cycle" and fewer people playing, while nodes are still pumping out and collecting in inventories.

What were the significant factors that created what appears to be a surplus of everything?

JustLovely

The eso economy crashed about a year ago and hasn't recovered. Now almost nothing sells at a price that justifies the farm for any given item.

Most of the guilds that focused on trade have radically changed their membership requirements and most just quit participating in buying/selling all together.

My belief is that the player population has crashed and the economy crashed with their departure, but I could be wrong.

valenwood_vegan

Really too many things at play to offer an exhaustive analysis of what happened (I mean I could, but I don't have the time).

But some of the big factors imo are:

- Reduction in player population
(related to that, a lack of new players who stick around to the point where they participate substantially in the economy)

- Events like last year's extended anniversary celebration, which flooded the market with formerly expensive mats and items

- Reduction in content and lack of substantial changes to the meta so people aren't making new gear / no new systems that require an input of resources (we did get scribing, but it relies only on ink)

I see it as not just an over-supply of many items (which did happen), but more an issue of a drastic reduction in demand for all but the rarest of items and the slow trickle of hot new plans or motifs, which drop in value rapidly since *everyone* tries to farm them because nothing else is worth selling.

EDIT: One other aspect worth mentioning is the lack of long-term rewarding things to spend gold on, made worse by the crown-gifting issues. This makes gold increasingly worthless over time to many players and they may eventually stop interacting with the market because it's not worth the effort with low demand, slow sales, and not much to do with the gold you do make anyway.

coop500

I believe a part of it kinda boils down to a stagnant meta. Not many new players coming in that can afford insane prices, and most players who can afford your old prices already have what they want and don't need more.

The demand is poorer, so prices had to drop so they can afford it.

ImmortalCX

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Really too many things at play to offer an exhaustive analysis of what happened (I mean I could, but I don't have the time).

But some of the big factors imo are:

- Reduction in player population
(related to that, a lack of new players who stick around to the point where they participate substantially in the economy)

- Events like last year's extended anniversary celebration, which flooded the market with formerly expensive mats and items

- Reduction in content and lack of substantial changes to the meta so people aren't making new gear / no new systems that require an input of resources (we did get scribing, but it relies only on ink)

I see it as not just an over-supply of many items (which did happen), but more an issue of a drastic reduction in demand for all but the rarest of items and the slow trickle of hot new plans or motifs, which drop in value rapidly since *everyone* tries to farm them because nothing else is worth selling.

EDIT: One other aspect worth mentioning is the lack of long-term rewarding things to spend gold on, made worse by the crown-gifting issues. This makes gold increasingly worthless over time to many players and they may eventually stop interacting with the market because it's not worth the effort with low demand, slow sales, and not much to do with the gold you do make anyway.

I suspect this is by design. If gold is largely worthless, that means the gold/crown conversion becomes less favorable for crown buyers. Maybe they are transitioning to a post-guild trader era where gold doesn't matter except for new players.

The only real value gold had/has was its conversion to crowns and for bidding on traders.

valenwood_vegan

coop500 wrote: »

I believe a part of it kinda boils down to a stagnant meta. Not many new players coming in that can afford insane prices, and most players who can afford your old prices already have what they want and don't need more.

Yeah I think that's a great quick summary of the issue!

Those interested in the economics of it might also want to look up "deflationary spiral" - although this is yes just a video game, what happened with eso's market for much of last year does have many similarities with a real world deflationary spiral.

spartaxoxo

Events flooded the market with a bunch of new materials, including the (relatively) new Zeal of Zenithar event.

They stopped making huge sweeping balance changes, which decreased the demand for gear

They cut the amount of new content created, further decreasing demand

They indirectly upped the fees for selling items by shortening the amount of time you can list them, which made people have to lower prices in order to prevent needing to relist items.

They up a bunch of barriers to crown gifting. So, there's less crown sellers now. Used to be there would be more crown sellers who sell their crowns for coins so they could buy nice stuff at traders. That's not as common anymore.

Etc etc. It's not as any singular thing but the culmination of a lot of things.

ImmortalCX

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Events flooded the market with a bunch of new materials, including the (relatively) new Zeal of Zenithar event.

They stopped making huge sweeping balance changes, which decreased the demand for gear

They cut the amount of new content created, further decreasing demand

They indirectly upped the fees for selling items by shortening the amount of time you can list them, which made people have to lower prices in order to prevent needing to relist items.

They up a bunch of barriers to crown gifting. So, there's less crown sellers now. Used to be there would be more crown sellers who sell their crowns for coins so they could buy nice stuff at traders. That's not as common anymore.

Etc etc. It's not as any singular thing but the culmination of a lot of things.

What barriers are there to crown gifting? Is it not legal/allowed any more?

valenwood_vegan

ImmortalCX wrote: »

What barriers are there to crown gifting? Is it not legal/allowed any more?

Due to what zos called "a rapidly growing issue of “bad actors” using various fraudulent means to amass crowns without paying for them, then using them in turn to sell Crown Store items to players for cash", crown gifting was halted entirely, and is now available again but restricted to certain accounts that meet various (not entirely clear, to players) criteria set by zos.

If one's account is not currently enabled for gifting, they have to put in a support request - although some have been allowed to gift again, many players have been denied.

Soarora

I’d like to add to the lists of reasons: jewelry crafting mat drops got buffed and the reduction in how long things can be listed for.

spartaxoxo

ImmortalCX wrote: »

What barriers are there to crown gifting? Is it not legal/allowed any more?

It's still allowed, but as valenwood_vegan also noted, who can gift is severely restricted with unclear criteria.

ImmortalCX

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

What barriers are there to crown gifting? Is it not legal/allowed any more?

Due to what zos called "a rapidly growing issue of “bad actors” using various fraudulent means to amass crowns without paying for them, then using them in turn to sell Crown Store items to players for cash", crown gifting was halted entirely, and is now available again but restricted to certain accounts that meet various (not entirely clear, to players) criteria set by zos.

If one's account is not currently enabled for gifting, they have to put in a support request - although some have been allowed to gift again, many players have been denied.

Interesting. I see where they have gone with this.

It is probably something along the lines of a rough check to see the plausibility of accumulated crowns. If its a long standing ESO+ member then probably allowed. If a newish account has a stack of crowns (possibly hacked) it would be disallowed.

So getting crowns is difficult but not impossible. That also means more expensive. Got it.

Danikat

For what it's worth I mostly sell gear with the intricate trait (for levelling crafting) and provisioning materials and they still sell as well as they ever did. The materials especially tend to go within 24 hours, so I tend to use them as 'gap fillers' when I don't have anything else to sell. (I don't farm stuff to sell, just offer whatever I've picked up and don't have other uses for.)

I can't comment on changes in the high-end economy because I've never tied to make tons of gold farming and selling stuff, but I suspect it may be a matter of identifying what is currently in demand and shifting to farming that. I know that's easier said than done because people who know what sells won't tell because they don't want the competition and if it was easy to get everyone would do it, but I'm sure there are options.

Twohothardware

No Crossplay and lower player counts results in a limited number of buyers, especially on console, and bots are allowed to run uninterrupted in starter zones which floods the market with crafting materials.

tomofhyrule

Along with the listing time changes and the Anniversary event flooding the market, there was one other factor that happened at the same time.

There was a decent ban wave of gold sellers, which effectively removed a lot of their gold from the economy.

Sure we still see some, but there were *so many more* before that ban wave. And when people bought gold, it normally went back into the market due to various carry services, and now those aren’t doing as much either.

So yeah: an excess of supply and the removal of a bunch of gold from the economy, coupled with fewer players due to lackluster updates and the remaining ones being even more split to favor more casual playstyles that don’t need mats and the hardcore ones have what they need.

flaxegg

Interesting to hear about what went down while I was away. A couple years ago I easily made 2 mil+ per week, and now I'm making 300k or so, with so many things being worth half as much (or even less) than they were. Was quite a shock (although the prices of some items were just plainly ridiculous in my opinion, even if I did benefit from selling them, so maybe not all bad).

Tandor

I think people have just got sick of the guild trader system.

Sellers priced themselves out of the market, as evidenced by the OP's reference to no longer being able to make a million gold in 5 or 10 hours. Buyers weren't going to continue supporting that level of profiteering forever, and sellers weren't going to consider it "worth their while" at significantly less, so the market such as it was has simply died.

Danikat

I just realised I completely forgot to mention buying. I typically only buy motifs (and style pages), and some platinum about once a year or so.

I haven't noticed any significant changes in the availability and price of motifs either. Of course the price has always been wildly variable, the racial motifs have sold for less an 100g for years now, while single pages from new motifs can be over 100k and whole books can sell for millions. It's possible more of the available motifs have shifted towards the lower end of that range, but I'll still find myself spending 50k+ for one each time I buy a bunch.

One of my guilds is a social guild which usually has a trader but does not require you to use it, so a lot of members are like me: casual traders selling, and buying, whatever but not seeking to be major particiants, and based on guild chatter it seems like 'the economy' crashing in the past year or so has affected many high-end items, but left a lot of stuff more casual players buy and sell unaffected, probably because there's a larger supply and more demand, so prices are more stable.

Lirkin

My view is that prices were to high so fewer players are buying and some are farming them for themselves. I myself think the prices were to high so I don't buy. (they are still to high for me)

Estin

I'm not making conspiracies or anything, but during last years anniversary event which was dropping gold mats and large stacks of alchemy ingredients like candy, there was a massive problem where the PTS was using the Live server database for I think an hour. If you made a template character on PTS, it would be available on live with max cash and everything in the game. Every account that has abused this was banned, but some of those players traded gold randomly to players, buying items from guild stores, etc, basically infecting the game with dirty gold. Individual accounts were rolled back, but not the entire server, and I suspect not everything was taken out of the game. A lot just happened all at once and the economy tanked. I started liquidating by the end of april because I knew it would crash, and I'm sure a lot of other players did so too which also contributed to prices dropping.

Most trading guilds adjusted to the weaker economy, but there's somehow still a few that ask for 200-250k gold in sales a week as a requirement and still have members.

xilfxlegion

some things go down, some go up.

i took a year break and just came back last month --- a lot of the motifs that were expensive before are dirt cheap now - but - some of the older ones that used to be dirt cheap sell for good coin now --- i am a hoarder and i have always bought stuff cheap and then just waited for it to go higher before selling.

i bought a ton of coldsnap motifs for like 1k each a year ago -- and i have made about 12 million in the past two weeks just selling them. my guess is no one wants to run that dungeon any more so its easier to buy the pages.

if you look around in traders or check your trader history you'll see what is now selling.

Veinblood1965

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Events flooded the market with a bunch of new materials, including the (relatively) new Zeal of Zenithar event.

They stopped making huge sweeping balance changes, which decreased the demand for gear

They cut the amount of new content created, further decreasing demand

They indirectly upped the fees for selling items by shortening the amount of time you can list them, which made people have to lower prices in order to prevent needing to relist items.

They up a bunch of barriers to crown gifting. So, there's less crown sellers now. Used to be there would be more crown sellers who sell their crowns for coins so they could buy nice stuff at traders. That's not as common anymore.

Etc etc. It's not as any singular thing but the culmination of a lot of things.

All of these and player population. I was in a major trading guild and recently they disbanded due to and I quote, "a significant decline in player population". And it was a LARGE guild. I was in four major trading guilds and now down to two and could get out of one as I'm loosing gold really.

I rarely sell anything lately, mats, furnishings, master writs, and that's about it and not much of any of those. I used to sell a LOT of furnishings. The change to two weeks without a drop in listing fees is not worth it for larger items.

Orbital78

I hear a lot of gold sellers were banned in a wave like a year ago, they were manipulating the market along with buyers who could get very large sums of gold for next to nothing (I assume). Many of those types are retired or moved on to new games. Then we have had quite a few good mat farming events. I recently bought up a few million gold worth of dreugh wax for like 10-12k each, I am happy but it isn't a good sign. I guess as prices go down there may be less competition for harvesting.

scrappy1342

Tandor wrote: »

I think people have just got sick of the guild trader system.

lots of different factors, but this is a big one for me. because of the trader system, i don't ever buy things. it's too much of a hassle trying to track something down and most of the time you end up overpaying because "well... it's here." 3+ years ago, game economy was great. i was making 2-6mil per week and it was super easy. i didn't have to spend much time playing. just did crafting writs, gathered the surveys and listed the mats for sale. i think the main difference between then and now has to do with the population, but a specific part of the population. there was a large number of ppl who all they did was flip things. they would go from trader to trader and bring them back to their own trader to list higher. i knew quite a few ppl that did NOTHING else in the game other than this. i feel like a lot of those ppl are gone now, so you don't have all these flippers buying things just to resell. you mostly have just ppl who are buying those things because they need them, which took most of the demand away and left us with so much supply

Silaf

Zos made all items abundant and easily accessible to help new players. The economy collapsed since we have nothing rare to sell. All crafting materials are really common now.

ImmortalCX

Silaf wrote: »

Zos made all items abundant and easily accessible to help new players. The economy collapsed since we have nothing rare to sell. All crafting materials are really common now.

Its actually not helpful.

Since coming back to the game, I have just been playing and my gold total has not moved. Not selling or trying to make money. It seems balanced, but if I was a new player, I'd be unable to buy anything. Recipes and motifs would be relatively expensive.

Lower income means less purchasing power.

xylena_lazarow

They fixed it. Praise Zenithar.

ImmortalCX

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

They fixed it. Praise Zenithar.

Its great if you already have everything. Two tiers.

They eliminated the middle class.

JiubLeRepenti

A few years ago, I was making between 500k and 600k with crafting dailies on 20 characters, including:

• Hirelings on 20 characters
• Master writs
• Surveys (1h-2h per week to farm them all)
• Crafting dailies (40 mins. per day)
• Crafting gold rewards (20*5k)

Between 1st of February 2024 and 1st of May, I made 53M, which means 588k per day:



Today, I'm more around 200-300k per day:

Lags

prices were disgustingly over inflated. So personally i dont think its thats bad. You really have to ask yourself why were wax like 8k on xbox and 40k on pc. Or why crowns were 100 on xbox and 1600-2000 on pc. Its gross. The prices of many items make way more sense now. Higher than console but not insanely high.

However, I dont think its a good thing that it seems like a ton of people aren't interested in trading anymore. That seems like a bad thing, and it seems like it started with the trader and mail time changes. Which honestly seems really stupid to me. Its just not that big of a deal, but maybe it is to the people who only trade and move a ridiculous amount of items. Which brings me to my next point.

Ive said for years i think the reason prices on PC were so over inflated, compared to console, is because of addons like TTC make it a lot easier for richest players in the game to manipulate the market. People do it on console as well, but its much easier with something like TTC being a central auction house for many people. Maybe one of the reasons the prices have dropped so much is that many of those players arent trading or playing anymore because the trade and mail time reductions made it too annoying for them. And it probably doesnt help that the game is bleeding players in general. Idk, it could be a lot of things but thats my guess.

Again, its not a good thing in every way but personally i am happy to be far away from 40k wax, 26k temps, etc. Il admit I do miss selling my hakeijos for 100k though.

ImmortalCX

Lags wrote: »

prices were disgustingly over inflated. So personally i dont think its thats bad. You really have to ask yourself why were wax like 8k on xbox and 40k on pc. Or why crowns were 100 on xbox and 1600-2000 on pc. Its gross. The prices of many items make way more sense now. Higher than console but not insanely high.

However, I dont think its a good thing that it seems like a ton of people aren't interested in trading anymore. That seems like a bad thing, and it seems like it started with the trader and mail time changes. Which honestly seems really stupid to me. Its just not that big of a deal, but maybe it is to the people who only trade and move a ridiculous amount of items. Which brings me to my next point.

Ive said for years i think the reason prices on PC were so over inflated, compared to console, is because of addons like TTC make it a lot easier for richest players in the game to manipulate the market. People do it on console as well, but its much easier with something like TTC being a central auction house for many people. Maybe one of the reasons the prices have dropped so much is that many of those players arent trading or playing anymore because the trade and mail time reductions made it too annoying for them. And it probably doesnt help that the game is bleeding players in general. Idk, it could be a lot of things but thats my guess.

Again, its not a good thing in every way but personally i am happy to be far away from 40k wax, 26k temps, etc. Il admit I do miss selling my hakeijos for 100k though.

I'm trying to imagine how this worked. Some players probably had 20 character slots with a character at every major trading hub. They would use TTC and switch between characters (no travel time). Then mail to an alternate account(s).

I just play the game for content, but I imagine if someone wanted to really abuse the system they could.