What has happened to the economy?

JiubLeRepenti

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.

While you were paying 25k for a Dreugh Wax on PC in the past, you could sell yours for 25k as well. Materials are pretty easy to farm once you've spent enough skill points in crafting lines, so it wasn’t very hard to make a lot of money and then make expensive items/materials affordable.

The same applies now: prices are lower and theoretically materials are easier to buy, but at the same time, you can't make as much money as you could before the economy crashed.

Regarding the the Crown price... well, it’s never been official, and I think it’s only regulated by supply and demand. There are probably more players on PC, which is why you can sell Crowns at a better price.

Btw I've never seen wax being sold at 40k?

xylena_lazarow

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Its great if you already have everything. Two tiers. They eliminated the middle class.

Nah I'm usually broke but this time my gold has actually lasted me because I can afford the stuff I need to PvP without having to waste my PvP time on Capitalism Simulator (no shade on those who enjoy it just not my thing).

Treeshka

Economy crashed a year ago. Now in a few weeks we will have another anniversary event.

katanagirl1

Treeshka wrote: »

Economy crashed a year ago. Now in a few weeks we will have another anniversary event.

Ah, that reminds me…just about everyone said the drop in the economy was caused only by cheap mats from last year’s anniversary and the market would recover by the end of the year. There was a lot of denial that the shorter guild listing times was a factor. Now we are approaching the next anniversary and at least on console, the economy has not recovered and it is still hard to sell anything. Just today I got back an alchemy writ for 5 vouchers that did not sell for 3k.

Desiato

Desiato wrote: »

No one knows for certain. There are countless theories.

IMO, the introduction of the Arcanist with the Necrom Chapter followed that summer by the Epic giveaway on PC drove demand for many items.

As the prices of those items rose, so did activities to produce them: especially crafting writs for surveys and master writs.

The supercharged economy then triggered an increase in speculation. Players who buy and sell items to make a profit. There were so many flippers, flippers were probably selling to flippers who would sell to flippers, and so on..

And as players became more wealthy, they started throwing their gold around to buy vanity items, crowns, and services like carries.

When demand began to slow as console players who switched to PC during the Epic giveaway finished gearing up and most enthusiasts already had their Arcanists levelled and geared, prices stagnated for a while....

And then the 2024 Jubilee event hit. As far as I can recall, it was the most rewarding ever and players were highly engaged in getting the most out of it, flooding the game with rare materials -- AND, one method people used to get gift boxes was completing crafting writs on multiple characters, which meant more surveys and master writs being generated. The crafting writ turn-in areas were packed.

Most experienced sellers know there is a lull in activity and sales in the lead-up to a new chapter launch, so they sat on their inventory, expecting prices to rebound when the chapter hit. When this didn't happen, sellers started liquidating and the commodity bubble was revealed.

As prices began to drop, players started to panic sell and the process fed itself.

IMO, the ESO economy had been a bubble for years prior to these events because the craft bag makes it so easy to hoard resources. The extent of this bubble only became apparent after it burst.

On top of all of that, some would say ESO suffered a dip in player activity through 2024.

This was my response to a similar question posted not too long ago.

Regardless of whether it was a speculative bubble or if there were other reasons, enough time has passed to call what happened a correction, IMO. The values today are more reflective of supply and demand than before the crash.

The bottom line is items have little value because they are so abundant.

Valinor88

The economy of the past was extremely inflated, today we are moving towards a normalization of it. Anniversary events play a very important role in making this regulation, even more so in times when the number of players has decreased significantly.

kargen27

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.

Players can't manipulate the market beyond just a day or two after new items appear. To many locations to try and monitor. If you are looking for bargains on TTC they will most likely be gone before they even get posted. Sometimes a few might slip through. TTC isn't a live representation of the items available.
I do think add-ons were a big part of why PC prices were higher. It is much easier to make gold using add-ons. Doing daily crafting writs is basically one click at each station then go turn in. More gold in shorter time
of course will devalue the gold. The PC servers needed a correction and I think all the events helped force that issue. We had an almost perfect storm of supply outweighing demand and that caused an over correction. Prices are now slowly creeping back to where it will be worth the effort to farm items.
I doubt we will ever see the high prices sellers enjoyed before the anniversary events began.

kargen27

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

Economy crashed a year ago. Now in a few weeks we will have another anniversary event.

Ah, that reminds me…just about everyone said the drop in the economy was caused only by cheap mats from last year’s anniversary and the market would recover by the end of the year. There was a lot of denial that the shorter guild listing times was a factor. Now we are approaching the next anniversary and at least on console, the economy has not recovered and it is still hard to sell anything. Just today I got back an alchemy writ for 5 vouchers that did not sell for 3k.

You want to hold onto your alchemy writs until there is a double XP event. Prices always increase for those events. Maybe not as much as they used to but they will increase.

Rishikesa108

Events should be enjoyable and we should look forward to them. Instead we see the approaching anniversary event as a bogeyman for the economy...
This should make ZOS think...

ArchMikem

JustLovely wrote: »

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.

I just went looking for a Moongrave Fane Shield page, and what little Traders that did have one listed, it was like 150,000 gold. That's insane for a page that isn't something like Chests.

I dunno what exactly is going on over in PC land, but on Console prices are inflating.

Elvenheart

If somebody has already mentioned this, I missed it so I apologize for repeating it, but they upped the drop rate of some materials we use in furnishing plans for housing as well, such as mundane runes and heartwood. 🌳

Blackbird_V

JustLovely wrote: »

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.

[snip]

Dungeon farming for motifs is worthless as anniversary event boxes *** out top-end dungeon motifs. Imo at the very least, dungeon motifs should never drop from reward boxes to keep the profitability and replayability of dungeons. Raw materials also flood markets and when refined flood golden mats. That should be removed also, imo.

[Edit for profanity]

Valinor88

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

Events should be enjoyable and we should look forward to them. Instead we see the approaching anniversary event as a bogeyman for the economy...
This should make ZOS think...

I understand this kind of opinion, but it is not and never will be the opinion of the vast majority of players. The anniversary event is indeed expected with great appreciation for the more casual players and some newcomers who have the possibility of earning rare items by doing simple missions.

The event is a bogeyman only for sellers who want to accumulate more and more money, and these same sellers continue to make money, but on a smaller scale.

I think this type of discussion is healthy and I think it's even healthier to look for other ways to make money, as long as the price of crowns falls proportionally

Please do not understand my speech/opinion as a criticism of yours, I found it very important for showing an opinion on this subject. I hope that this topic will continue to be a great debate of ideas, because in the end, many different points can be presented and make us reflect on this subject, in a civilized way.

Elvenheart

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

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.

While you were paying 25k for a Dreugh Wax on PC in the past, you could sell yours for 25k as well. Materials are pretty easy to farm once you've spent enough skill points in crafting lines, so it wasn’t very hard to make a lot of money and then make expensive items/materials affordable.

The same applies now: prices are lower and theoretically materials are easier to buy, but at the same time, you can't make as much money as you could before the economy crashed.

Regarding the the Crown price... well, it’s never been official, and I think it’s only regulated by supply and demand. There are probably more players on PC, which is why you can sell Crowns at a better price.

Btw I've never seen wax being sold at 40k?

Oh, dreugh wax for 40k? This is actually something I can remember from personal experience. On PCNA I was once in a trade guild that required a minimum 200K sales each week. Back when dreugh wax was in its heyday I would always easily sell 5 dreugh wax for 40k each usually within 24 hours of listing them. Then, I started having to sell 6 to make it to 200K…then 7… and every few weeks it kept changing until I was having to sell 10 dreugh wax a week at 20K each to meet the goal. That must’ve been during the market crash people talk about.

Edited to add: just in case this also plays a factor, it may not, but I just thought I’d mention it… my 11 characters all have plenty of gold now to meet their basic needs, but that just got much better because of the change in the green tree that changed the active for cutting repair costs in half to passive. Now that it doesn’t take up a slot it seems a no brainer to put points in this if you have enough points. I kind of forgot I had done it and the first time I went to repair after the change I was shocked when I saw how low it was! 😊

Orbital78

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

Events should be enjoyable and we should look forward to them. Instead we see the approaching anniversary event as a bogeyman for the economy...
This should make ZOS think...

Many of us ARE looking forward to the rewards. You just need to adjust to the demand. Ttc, mm, and ESO hub tools help greatly.

freespirit

Orbital78 wrote: »

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

Events should be enjoyable and we should look forward to them. Instead we see the approaching anniversary event as a bogeyman for the economy...
This should make ZOS think...

Many of us ARE looking forward to the rewards. You just need to adjust to the demand. Ttc, mm, and ESO hub tools help greatly.

Every year I stash my motif haul from the Anniversary event and sell them around this time the next year.

Every year their total worth has increased, this year was no different but the increase was smaller than usual.

Nobody that I've noticed has mentioned that besides events dropping copious mats, last year we has the introduction of Luminous Ink which in it early days lead to everyone who wanted to participate in scribing, farming mats like crazy which didn't help an already flooded market(remember ink drops from mobs were bugged on release).

darvaria

The reduction in jewelry upgrade materials were a big part of it. And thankfully, ZOS reduced the amount needed. It just takes less gold now to play the game. And there are SO many gear sets now, new gear doesn't always lead to new meta's. I can't even tell that much difference in a lot of gear sets so I can mix and match sets and get basically the same thing from a variety of sets. And by now, a lot of player have maxed the gear put out by the golden vendor at Cyro, reducing the need to buy upgrades for a lot of pieces. And you have the legendary pieces that are earned in game ... that replaces need to buy and improve. You got the sticker books now .... so traits don't necessarily command a high price on gear. I mean some of us have toons full of transmutes and 100 plus gear pieces holding 25 transmutes.

And for those that have gold, it is just lasting a lot longer. A lot of players have 8 or more houses. No need to buy the newest model. Some players are sick of decorating. I just don't see as many gold sinks. Maybe some players have just quit farming, so makes market weaker. I'm just planning on playing on my 600M gold until it's gone ..... and then maybe sell some crowns, buy more crowns if needed but I am NOT farming gold. And I'm NOT changing and upgrading gear every intro of new gear. Going to take a REALLY big improvement .. something like Oakensoul to make me upgrade.

With TTC you can shop for cheaper prices and I think this sort of sets a market price. I just look there and get cheapest I can. This going around to traders is something a lot of players don't do. You can find everything on TTC without shopping at the major trade vendor hubs.

DreamyLu

Regarding resources, I believe it's mainly the results of 2 factors:

1. Like said by others before, there was a combo of events that gave everybody huge reserves of resources. It caused an overflood of the market, followed by a logic crash down of all prices. The market slowly stabilized after that, at a rather low level.

2. For several rare resources (logically expensive), players complained because they don't want to farm (it's grinding) and don't want to pay high prices either. ZOS consequently increase their drop rates. By now, "rare" resources don't really exist anymore.

Results is a sort of neutral market, rather flat. I'm not sure, but I believe that still now, offer is by far higher than demand, maintaining this status. I can see it myself: I still have a huge amount of resources remaining from the combo of events one year ago. I don't think I will need to farm

katanagirl1

kargen27 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

Economy crashed a year ago. Now in a few weeks we will have another anniversary event.

Ah, that reminds me…just about everyone said the drop in the economy was caused only by cheap mats from last year’s anniversary and the market would recover by the end of the year. There was a lot of denial that the shorter guild listing times was a factor. Now we are approaching the next anniversary and at least on console, the economy has not recovered and it is still hard to sell anything. Just today I got back an alchemy writ for 5 vouchers that did not sell for 3k.

You want to hold onto your alchemy writs until there is a double XP event. Prices always increase for those events. Maybe not as much as they used to but they will increase.

I only sell the ones with expensive ingredients like mudcrab chitin, violet coprinus, and torchbug thorax as I don’t have space to keep them all.

Orbital78

freespirit wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

Events should be enjoyable and we should look forward to them. Instead we see the approaching anniversary event as a bogeyman for the economy...
This should make ZOS think...

Many of us ARE looking forward to the rewards. You just need to adjust to the demand. Ttc, mm, and ESO hub tools help greatly.

Every year I stash my motif haul from the Anniversary event and sell them around this time the next year.

Every year their total worth has increased, this year was no different but the increase was smaller than usual.

Nobody that I've noticed has mentioned that besides events dropping copious mats, last year we has the introduction of Luminous Ink which in it early days lead to everyone who wanted to participate in scribing, farming mats like crazy which didn't help an already flooded market(remember ink drops from mobs were bugged on release).

It can be rough to hold onto things, this game is hell for inventory. After they last harrowstorm event, I had tons of the Nighthallow motifs, I held on to them since they were worth next to nothing. Lets face it no one wants to farm those incursions, after 6 months to a year they were selling quite well for double+ the price.

Barovia87

I have nothing but good things to say about the efforts ZoS has made to reset the market prices. Prices were downright silly. I recall regularly being able to sell a single stack of Columbine - a regular, base game Alchemy ingredient used for regular base game things - for 750k to 1mil gold on the regular for a while there.

Which was nice enough, sure. But there's absolutely no reason for that kind of bloat, and it's absolutely off-putting and discouraging for new &/or casual players to stare down prices like that for basic materials. And shrieking that those people could also go play fetchy market games at the Guild Traders isn't actually helpful - not everyone logs in to a video game in their finite leisure time with the burning desire to analyze market patterns and dive in to econ-simulator Purgatory.

Yes: I make less gold now than I did then. But I feel like I have staggeringly more buying power with the money I do make than I did during those market "heights". People got greedy, and they could afford to put things up for ridiculous prices and just wait for desperate whales. I may have been making millions, but those millions also didn't go very far. Those big numbers were so pointless.

I can make 500k with a few hours of dedicated materials farming these days, and I feel like that 1/2 million goes WAAAAAYYYYY further than it did before. I buy so many more furnishing materials, motif pages, furnishing plans, etc with a smaller pool of gold than I ever did "making millions".

These are all good changes. I hope the pattern continues. There are a lot of people screaming that the sky is falling for no reason other than "big number get smaller!!! no like!!!". And the problem is simply not that dire, if you even consider it a problem (I do not).

And yes, I'm fully aware there are gold sinks with static pricing that are affected by this. It's harder to buy expensive Achievement properties with gold now than it was during the "market heights". But it isn't, in my experience, astronomically harder. A 3 million gold property is still very attainable with the current market - you just will probably have to save up for more than a day or two, or a week. Which, honestly: seems like intended design. That a 3 million gold palatial property is supposed to be a reward for a grind, not chump change.

The markets will become exactly as stupid as the developers let them. I log into Star Trek Online once every six months and laugh at the "everything costs BILLIONS" economy, play Space Barbie for five minutes, and then leave for another six months. I'm very grateful ZoS has taken steps to mitigate that kind of effect.

manukartofanu

Unstoppable and highly rewarding events have been happening in the game for two years now, and they are still ongoing. Some events are so rewarding that they crash various parts of the market.

There are so few players left who still believe in the market’s recovery that there’s simply no one to buy up all the items that keep dropping.

Take a look at this post from almost a year ago:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8147678/#Comment_8147678

It basically describes what has been happening and is still happening today. And just a few weeks ago, we had an event where items dropped just as abundantly and widely as during the Anniversary event. And in a month, we have yet another Anniversary event coming up.

I still remember how many people in July–August believed in some kind of magical market recovery, thinking it was all just a seasonal fluctuation. Some probably even voted with their gold, stocking up in advance.

Well, a year has passed, and nothing has recovered. Players simply don’t need the sheer volume of items that are still sitting in their inventories, and for investors, it seems doubtful to buy anything just a month before another market crash.

thorwyn

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.

Aaah... so basically you enjoy the low prices but can't understand why less people are even bothering spending their ingame time to feed your demands for less and less revenue. Gotcha. Maybe it's somehow connected!? Just a wild guess... idk.

Anyways, one more thing that contributed to the changes in the market situation was the introduction of the sticker book and the ability to reproduce an infinite number of items. That basically made gear farming redundant. A MS inferno staff went for 300k back in the day. Now it's like 5k because the trait doesn't matter.

twisttop138

Blackbird_V wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

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.

[snip]

Dungeon farming for motifs is worthless as anniversary event boxes *** out top-end dungeon motifs. Imo at the very least, dungeon motifs should never drop from reward boxes to keep the profitability and replayability of dungeons. Raw materials also flood markets and when refined flood golden mats. That should be removed also, imo.

[Edit for profanity]

The part about dungeon motifs I can certainly get behind. Preserving the replaying of dungeons, especially since some people are just getting into them or will in the future so it helps to have an extra reason to get others in there. It certainly isn't most of the set drops lol.

The last part of the statement though I have trouble with. I also have seen replies in this thread echo the same sentiment. That things should be scarce so people can charge more. Idk, I just don't agree with this. I know and understand that this is people's way to play and I don't begrudge them their enjoyment. No one has to agree with me and that's ok but I think things like crafting mats should be plentiful. I was on a break during the big event that keeps being referenced from last year so idk exactly what was rewarded but it's my opinion that we should be stoked that players were being blessed with cool stuff. This doesn't mean I don't think we should have to work towards stuff in game but this attitude that event rewards need to be toned down, or that it's bad that crafting nodes furniture mat drops got buffed is weird to me. Just my opinion.

madman65

I`ve actually went down to one guild store to try and make something so yeah the market is very bad. The prices have dropped so much that i`m actually getting more from a regular merchant than my guilds. Very sad but I will do what I have to do.

licenturion

I don't think there is much need to buy much these days.

If you are a new player; by the time you get a grip on all the different mechanics and loads of quests you already have accumulated some nice gear, materials, money and motifs.

If you are playing for a while and took part in a few events you have resources aplenty, motifs and style pages and a sticker book that lets you construct most stuff easily. It's not like most people change their whole build or outfit every week. In fact I have been playing with my 2 builds for more than a year and also have 5 outfits I made long a ago that I rotate a lot.

So lots of money comes in from playing and some sales, but not much goes out. I guess there are a lot of people like me out there as well.

SerafinaWaterstar

Economy is ok on PS - is this a PC-only thing?

tomofhyrule

licenturion wrote: »

I don't think there is much need to buy much these days.

If you are a new player; by the time you get a grip on all the different mechanics and loads of quests you already have accumulated some nice gear, materials, money and motifs.

If you are playing for a while and took part in a few events you have resources aplenty, motifs and style pages and a sticker book that lets you construct most stuff easily. It's not like most people change their whole build or outfit every week. In fact I have been playing with my 2 builds for more than a year and also have 5 outfits I made long a ago that I rotate a lot.

So lots of money comes in from playing and some sales, but not much goes out. I guess there are a lot of people like me out there as well.

In addition to this, we last got new character slots in 2023, and that was with Arcanist so people did rush to gear them up. Now that everyone and their brother has an Arcanist (and the meta is ‘just play an Arcanist with Deadly/Rele’) there really isn’t anything people need to improve anymore.

Don’t forget that the ESO playerbase’s “I have to have everything now!!!!” mentality was also the reason people wanted to farm all 500 Luminous Ink for the achieve within the first week of Scribing being out. It wasn’t dropping from chests or heavy sacks on release, and the drops from monsters was bugged, so people were farming mats like it was their job to get ink. That seriously flooded the market after Gold Road released.

So yeah, a flood of mats and no new gearing needed sounds like an incredible surplus of supply and no demand. QED

I guess ZOS should just give us a new Class then, then we’d all rush to gear up another character again.
(Half-joking, but god I want a new Class in the worst way)

coop500

tomofhyrule wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

I don't think there is much need to buy much these days.

If you are a new player; by the time you get a grip on all the different mechanics and loads of quests you already have accumulated some nice gear, materials, money and motifs.

If you are playing for a while and took part in a few events you have resources aplenty, motifs and style pages and a sticker book that lets you construct most stuff easily. It's not like most people change their whole build or outfit every week. In fact I have been playing with my 2 builds for more than a year and also have 5 outfits I made long a ago that I rotate a lot.

So lots of money comes in from playing and some sales, but not much goes out. I guess there are a lot of people like me out there as well.

In addition to this, we last got new character slots in 2023, and that was with Arcanist so people did rush to gear them up. Now that everyone and their brother has an Arcanist (and the meta is ‘just play an Arcanist with Deadly/Rele’) there really isn’t anything people need to improve anymore.

Don’t forget that the ESO playerbase’s “I have to have everything now!!!!” mentality was also the reason people wanted to farm all 500 Luminous Ink for the achieve within the first week of Scribing being out. It wasn’t dropping from chests or heavy sacks on release, and the drops from monsters was bugged, so people were farming mats like it was their job to get ink. That seriously flooded the market after Gold Road released.

So yeah, a flood of mats and no new gearing needed sounds like an incredible surplus of supply and no demand. QED

I guess ZOS should just give us a new Class then, then we’d all rush to gear up another character again.
(Half-joking, but god I want a new Class in the worst way)

Please give us a new class or even a new race, I'd buy that so friggen fast.

CatoUnchained

I believe the economy crashed due to a few factors already mentioned in this thread.

But by far, hands down no contest, it's supply and demand. The player base has been dwindling more and more rapidly since U35 and that's been a couple years now. Now there is no demand because there is very low new player recruitment and the long time players still sticking it out already have everything they need.

I used to be a top tier seller every week. Now I don't even try to list items most of the time and every time I get an item back that doesn't sell after 14 days I'm reminded of why I need to find a new game to invest my time in.