So does the Anniversary Event destroy the economy?

MasterSpatula · April 4

It's been a concern every year, but never one I would have considered valid. But after last years massive deflation, it might actually be a problem this time.

DenverRalphy · April 4

The ESO economy is just a myth. A really big lie that players who like to hoard gold like to perpetuate whenever there's a dip in their acquisition rate.

At best, all events like Jubilee do is temporarily shift the Traders market from a Sellers market to a Buyers market. Nothing more.

There are no bills to pay. No mortgages. No financial oblligations. No going bankrupt or broke.

Trade guilds will rant and rave whenever they're even within spitting distance of other guilds being able to bid competitively against them. But that's about it. Because all the while they're screaming that the economy is failing, somebody is obviously generating enough coin to outbid them.

Heck, I myself do well with Trade guilds. But I can recognize the truth for what it is when there's a dip in my revenue. I'm still turning a profit. Sometimes just not as fast.

Karmen · April 4

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

ImmortalCX · April 4

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

wolfie1.0. · April 4

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Gold is only generated as fast as players do activities to create it. There is no passive generation of gold. I can't go afk for a day, week, month, year and come back and have created any new resource for the game. Remember that technically a guild trader sale is a transfer of gold with a fee assigned that is a net loss of gold generation so it doesn't count as a net gain for the game as a whole.

You have to actively log in and participate in activities to generate gold. So the resource is players time, effort, and activity choices.

More players, more time, more activities equals more gold generation. Fewer of those, equals less gold created on the macro level.

wolfie1.0. · April 4

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The ESO economy is just a myth. A really big lie that players who like to hoard gold like to perpetuate whenever there's a dip in their acquisition rate.

At best, all events like Jubilee do is temporarily shift the Traders market from a Sellers market to a Buyers market. Nothing more.

There are no bills to pay. No mortgages. No financial oblligations. No going bankrupt or broke.

Trade guilds will rant and rave whenever they're even within spitting distance of other guilds being able to bid competitively against them. But that's about it. Because all the while they're screaming that the economy is failing, somebody is obviously generating enough coin to outbid them.

Heck, I myself do well with Trade guilds. But I can recognize the truth for what it is when there's a dip in my revenue. I'm still turning a profit. Sometimes just not as fast.

The myth is that there are a ton of individual players out there that are sitting on billions of gold.

That's highly unlikely. There is a hard cap on how much gold you can store on a character. And most of the wealthy players prior to the crash would store their net worth value in mats that would have assumed to always increase in value.

When everything started crashing those players that didn't sell fast lost a lot of value, and the sell off crashed it further.

But many many, presumed billionaires didn't have that stored in actual gold. Most that did were probably guilds. And it took a long time for the losses to filter down through guild bids.

But the end reality is that the real myth is that a ton of billionaires exist in the game, when reality is more likely that those billionaires are more millionaires or less right now.

That isn't exactly a bad thing for the game either. Where ever prices settle, stable prices are better than hyper deflation or inflation and we have had both (oddly enough) within the last few years.

Gold is just a means to improve gameplay experience, it's not meant to be the game. Enjoy the game, play the game. Don't let the game play you.

XSTRONG · April 4

I would just hold on to the mats until later or I craft with them to sell, XP pots,
gold food etc

sarahthes · April 4

belial5221_ESO wrote: »

They need to atleast limit daily wirt crafting to one of each type per account,cause ppl will farm those on 20 chars,lol.They did it for zenithar event,cause of the flooding of stuff.

Honestly no. Being able to spam writs on my chars is actually what got me invested in the game and got me to create my first alts in the first place when I was new. That 5 year anniversary event was FIRE.

twisttop138 · April 4

Had a great time farming dragons with the guild, getting boxes for the dragons and the dailies we shared. Got tons from writs. Got some really cool stuff too. All in all it was an awesome night to play the game. I don't wanna disrespect how others enjoy the game. If you're into trading, cool. But why the dismay at your fellow players receiving things in the game? Feels greedy, but that's only my opinion.

Karmen · April 4

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

what do you mean ?

driosketch · April 4

Sure, sure, supply and demand and all that, but because it's a buyer's market you should also see an increase in volume like it's a Black Friday sale rush. I know myself will spend a few million gold looking for deals, especially towards the end of the event.

katanagirl1 · April 4

Talking about players who have successfully generated in-game wealth in a negative way is even more ridiculous than talking about a game economy. It’s not like those players have stolen from other players to get it.

We all start with zero gold and the clothes on our backs.

DenverRalphy · April 4

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Gold is only generated as fast as players do activities to create it. There is no passive generation of gold. I can't go afk for a day, week, month, year and come back and have created any new resource for the game. Remember that technically a guild trader sale is a transfer of gold with a fee assigned that is a net loss of gold generation so it doesn't count as a net gain for the game as a whole.

You have to actively log in and participate in activities to generate gold. So the resource is players time, effort, and activity choices.

More players, more time, more activities equals more gold generation. Fewer of those, equals less gold created on the macro level.

He said that it is infinite. Not that it generates on its own.

And he's right. There's an infinite amount of gold in the game. All a player needs to do is go out and get it. How fast players get it doesn't matter. There's an infinite supply to be had regardless whether you loot enough to make 1gp a day or 10mil a week.

[edit] Caveat: I just picked a random pronoun. If I got it wrong, apologies.

ImmortalCX · April 4

DenverRalphy wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Gold is only generated as fast as players do activities to create it. There is no passive generation of gold. I can't go afk for a day, week, month, year and come back and have created any new resource for the game. Remember that technically a guild trader sale is a transfer of gold with a fee assigned that is a net loss of gold generation so it doesn't count as a net gain for the game as a whole.

You have to actively log in and participate in activities to generate gold. So the resource is players time, effort, and activity choices.

More players, more time, more activities equals more gold generation. Fewer of those, equals less gold created on the macro level.

He said that it is infinite. Not that it generates on its own.

And he's right. There's an infinite amount of gold in the game. All a player needs to do is go out and get it. How fast players get it doesn't matter. There's an infinite supply to be had regardless whether you loot enough to make 1gp a day or 10mil a week.

[edit] Caveat: I just picked a random pronoun. If I got it wrong, apologies.

Is the speed of a rocket infinite? No.

It can accelerate at a fast rate, but it will never reach infinity. Same is true of eso gold. Unknown how they represent gold in the code, but time constrains it to never be infinite.

Your argument doesn't hold.

DenverRalphy · April 4

ImmortalCX wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Gold is only generated as fast as players do activities to create it. There is no passive generation of gold. I can't go afk for a day, week, month, year and come back and have created any new resource for the game. Remember that technically a guild trader sale is a transfer of gold with a fee assigned that is a net loss of gold generation so it doesn't count as a net gain for the game as a whole.

You have to actively log in and participate in activities to generate gold. So the resource is players time, effort, and activity choices.

More players, more time, more activities equals more gold generation. Fewer of those, equals less gold created on the macro level.

He said that it is infinite. Not that it generates on its own.

And he's right. There's an infinite amount of gold in the game. All a player needs to do is go out and get it. How fast players get it doesn't matter. There's an infinite supply to be had regardless whether you loot enough to make 1gp a day or 10mil a week.

[edit] Caveat: I just picked a random pronoun. If I got it wrong, apologies.

Is the speed of a rocket infinite? No.

It can accelerate at a fast rate, but it will never reach infinity. Same is true of eso gold. Unknown how they represent gold in the code, but time constrains it to never be infinite.

Your argument doesn't hold.

Why are you trying to quate speed with a quantity?

They weren't saying that gold can come in at an infinite rate. They were saying that there is an infinite supply of gold.

UrQuan · April 4

If we're going to get picky about whether the supply of gold in ESO is technically infinite or not, then the definitive answer is that no, it is not infinite. Forget about how fast gold can be awarded by the game to the players, that's not the ultimate constraint on the total amount of gold possible in ESO.

The ultimate constraint is the data type used by the game's databases for the fields that record how much gold each character or bank can have on them, in combination with the maximum number of account and character records the game's database can support. If that data type is BIGINT then the maximum each character or bank can have in gold is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807, if the data type is INT then the max is 2,147,483,647, and so on.

ImmortalCX · April 4

DenverRalphy wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Its not really infinite. The world can only produce gold at a certain rate. So gold is dependent on time (and the number of players.)

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Karmen wrote: »

Talking about economics in a game where gold is infinite is quite funny.

Gold is only generated as fast as players do activities to create it. There is no passive generation of gold. I can't go afk for a day, week, month, year and come back and have created any new resource for the game. Remember that technically a guild trader sale is a transfer of gold with a fee assigned that is a net loss of gold generation so it doesn't count as a net gain for the game as a whole.

You have to actively log in and participate in activities to generate gold. So the resource is players time, effort, and activity choices.

More players, more time, more activities equals more gold generation. Fewer of those, equals less gold created on the macro level.

He said that it is infinite. Not that it generates on its own.

And he's right. There's an infinite amount of gold in the game. All a player needs to do is go out and get it. How fast players get it doesn't matter. There's an infinite supply to be had regardless whether you loot enough to make 1gp a day or 10mil a week.

[edit] Caveat: I just picked a random pronoun. If I got it wrong, apologies.

Is the speed of a rocket infinite? No.

It can accelerate at a fast rate, but it will never reach infinity. Same is true of eso gold. Unknown how they represent gold in the code, but time constrains it to never be infinite.

Your argument doesn't hold.

Why are you trying to quate speed with a quantity?

They weren't saying that gold can come in at an infinite rate. They were saying that there is an infinite supply of gold.

A rocket's speed is technically infinite, if accelerating at a constant rate, but because time is required to generate speed, it will never reach infinity.

The same exact thing is true for eso gold. It takes time to generate.

He didn't seem to understand when we said that time/activity is the limiting factor, so I made a clever analogy. Horse. Water. Whatever.

reazea · April 5

Yes, it does. My main source of income was to sell items gathered from writs on 20 tunes. Now nothing gotten from the event is worth much of anything because everyone else has gotten the items, and there aren't enough new players to buy things anymore.

Arunei · April 5

belial5221_ESO wrote: »

They need to atleast limit daily wirt crafting to one of each type per account,cause ppl will farm those on 20 chars,lol.They did it for zenithar event,cause of the flooding of stuff.

I highly doubt they did it for the Zenithar event because of "flooding". If that was the case they'd have changed how the Jubilee gives out rewards/limited the dailies you can do more than they have/limited the rewards way before now. This is the 11th year of it and it runs the same way it always has.

And no, the Jubilee doesn't "ruin" the economy. The market gets flooded with stuff for a handful of months after it, but keep in mind all the rewards you get are consumables. People will flood the market and run down the price, but eventually all those items get bought up, and the price starts to increase again as the supply dries up.

Just save whatever valuable stuff you get until five or six months from now. By that time most impatient people will have sold their surplus and the prices will have gone back up on stuff. The longer you wait, the more the price should go back up. Trying to sell anything while the Jubilee is going or immediately after it ends is only going to lose you money.

About the only thing that you can sell for higher than normal during this time of year is gear crafting mats. The prices of stuff (especially low level mats like Jute, Iron, Pewter, or Jora) tends to increase, because everything and their mother are doing writs on low-level characters that have no ranks in any crafting trees. A lot of people who don't normally have a bunch of those mats already on hand. When I can remember to do it, I tend to buy a lot of Jute and stuff later in the year, like closer to around Halloween, when prices are going to have gone back down, in preparation for the Jubilee.

ETA: This is also the best time of year to buy various Blueprints/Recipes/Motifs you're missing, because of how many of them will wind up in the market. I almost always wind up spending 2-4m on things, but I easily recoup that gold throughout the year by selling all the stuff I get months after the event has ended. Sometimes if I get a decently expensive thing (like over 100k) I'll toss it up on the market at an undercut price (typically about 10-15k below the average selling price according to TTC/MM) to see if I can't get ahead of the rush who will inevitably do the same, but most of the stuff I get I just sit on and sell it throughout the year starting around June or July.

ghastley · April 5

It is only "broken" if you are selling. If you are buying, then it is "corrected".

Heren · April 5

reazea wrote: »

Yes, it does. My main source of income was to sell items gathered from writs on 20 tunes. Now nothing gotten from the event is worth much of anything because everyone else has gotten the items, and there aren't enough new players to buy things anymore.

I'm... I really can't understand your logic.

The anniversary event was your main source of income, so it was good for your economy. And you explicitly state that the lack of new players is a cause of this source of income becoming dry. So... maybe the main problem is not the event in itself, but the lack of new players ?

And in any way, the well you were tapping on and apparently made profits from would have become dry at some point, since, you know, everyone was tapping on it - appart from new players ? And anyway, a part of the things you were selling - motifs, plans - are not consumables, once someone got one, they don't need another. So, you were actively reducing your income the more you were selling.

So once again, according to your statement the problem is not the event in itself, it's... you generating income from it.

Could you please try to be a bit more rational in the future ?

Pepegrillos · April 5

The really big money ESO's economy has two main sources: hoarding high-fashion items that go out of the seasonal loop (items that dropped once but won't again, sometimes for years) and doing PvE carries (achievement sell runs). Anything else pales in comparison.

AngryPenguin · April 5

Heren wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Yes, it does. My main source of income was to sell items gathered from writs on 20 tunes. Now nothing gotten from the event is worth much of anything because everyone else has gotten the items, and there aren't enough new players to buy things anymore.

I'm... I really can't understand your logic.

The anniversary event was your main source of income, so it was good for your economy. And you explicitly state that the lack of new players is a cause of this source of income becoming dry. So... maybe the main problem is not the event in itself, but the lack of new players ?

And in any way, the well you were tapping on and apparently made profits from would have become dry at some point, since, you know, everyone was tapping on it - appart from new players ? And anyway, a part of the things you were selling - motifs, plans - are not consumables, once someone got one, they don't need another. So, you were actively reducing your income the more you were selling.

So once again, according to your statement the problem is not the event in itself, it's... you generating income from it.

Could you please try to be a bit more rational in the future ?

There is nothing irrational what so ever about reazea's post. I agree with him completely. The lack of market for the items gained from the event removes the motivation to participate in the event. It's really simple and straight forward.

DenverRalphy · April 5

I'm relatively confident that this annual injection/flood of goods into the market is intentional. Unless I'm mistaken, every other event where reward boxes drop as loot, there is a five minute cooldown put in place. Yet for Jubilee it seems the cooldown is left out, because the Craglorn farm where you can get a box every minute is still alive and kicking.

Arunei · April 5

AngryPenguin wrote: »

Heren wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Yes, it does. My main source of income was to sell items gathered from writs on 20 tunes. Now nothing gotten from the event is worth much of anything because everyone else has gotten the items, and there aren't enough new players to buy things anymore.

I'm... I really can't understand your logic.

The anniversary event was your main source of income, so it was good for your economy. And you explicitly state that the lack of new players is a cause of this source of income becoming dry. So... maybe the main problem is not the event in itself, but the lack of new players ?

And in any way, the well you were tapping on and apparently made profits from would have become dry at some point, since, you know, everyone was tapping on it - appart from new players ? And anyway, a part of the things you were selling - motifs, plans - are not consumables, once someone got one, they don't need another. So, you were actively reducing your income the more you were selling.

So once again, according to your statement the problem is not the event in itself, it's... you generating income from it.

Could you please try to be a bit more rational in the future ?

There is nothing irrational what so ever about reazea's post. I agree with him completely. The lack of market for the items gained from the event removes the motivation to participate in the event. It's really simple and straight forward.

Yeah, if you're trying to sell while the Jubilee is actively going or sell right after it ends. I've only missed like one Jubilee and that was last year's; I still get millions in gold from the event by selling the extra stuff I get AFTER the event has ended and AFTER prices have had a good four-6 months to go back up once most other people have already sold their stuff.

Also consider; if a bunch of people genuinely think they're losing money because the price of stuff naturally decreases over time regardless of the Jubilee and thus stop taking part...then that means fewer items will enter the market, which means the surplus will dry up faster, which means prices will more than likely go up on rarer things faster than they would otherwise.

So do you spend time and get stuff to sell even if it's a few million less than you might have gotten years ago (again because of general "inflation" and not because any given event itself) but still get a decent amount of gold at the end of it, or just not take part at all and get absolutely nothing?

Now if we're talking burnout that's another thing entirely, and no one should feel like they should be doing something they don't want to. But if it's just a matter of feeling like it's not worth it...eh, I guess everyone needs to decide that for themselves too. I personally make a couple million each year from the sheer number of writs I turn in on all my characters for the full event, and this year it's practically 3 weeks long instead of the usual two, so I'll get even more gold simply from the reward gold you get for turning in the writs themselves.