How does selling crowns work?

SilverBride · February 2021

I thought that you would pay a player a certain amount of gold then they would gift you a certain amount of crowns. But my friend told me that you can't gift crowns, and you just tell the seller what you want from the Crown Store then they gift that item to you.

So how does this work?

tmbrinks · February 2021

Exactly that. You make an arrangement with the seller to buy a specific item from the crown store for an amount of gold.

They gift you the item from the crown store, you give them the gold.

SownRose · February 2021

The going rate I've seen on Xbox NA is 100 gold to every crown.

SilverBride · February 2021

Well then I guess I can't just buy crowns to have on hand like I thought I could.

Starlock · February 2021

It works poorly.

Other MMOs provide an official in-game mechanism for these kinds of exchanges, which is a lot safer and more equitable for players. Not sure what ZoS's excuse is for not having this - should be mandatory if they are going to allow this sort of thing at all.

tmbrinks · February 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

Well then I guess I can't just buy crowns to have on hand like I thought I could.

Nope. The crowns themselves are non-transferrable. "selling crowns" is just the accepted lexicon for the transfer since it would be too many words to say it otherwise

Mancombe_Nosehair · February 2021

Be very careful when buying or selling crowns. It's a con artists market.

SilverBride · February 2021

Mancombe_Nosehair wrote: »

Be very careful when buying or selling crowns. It's a con artists market.

I know. I was considering buying crowns to purchase a house I want but I'm not very comfortable with the idea. I could just buy the crowns myself then spend them on the house, but I'd rather use gold.

If you could buy a house furnished with gold this wouldn't even be an issue. And I want this one furnished because I love the furnishings that come with it and it would cost a small fortune to buy the pieces individually, or craft them.

linuxlady · February 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

I thought that you would pay a player a certain amount of gold then they would gift you a certain amount of crowns. But my friend told me that you can't gift crowns, and you just tell the seller what you want from the Crown Store then they gift that item to you.

So how does this work?

trust is what makes it work. very dangerous

linuxlady · February 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

Mancombe_Nosehair wrote: »

Be very careful when buying or selling crowns. It's a con artists market.

I know. I was considering buying crowns to purchase a house I want but I'm not very comfortable with the idea. I could just buy the crowns myself then spend them on the house, but I'd rather use gold.

If you could buy a house furnished with gold this wouldn't even be an issue. And I want this one furnished because I love the furnishings that come with it and it would cost a small fortune to buy the pieces individually, or craft them.

how many crowns are the house? probably more than ive got on hand im sure. im trustworthy but i am not really a crown seller. i think i have 3k left over from my year of eso plus after buying some bankers and merchants

NagualV · February 2021

Is it possible to sell event tickets? I have 12 and dont have a use for them. Is that possible?

exeeter702 · February 2021

NagualV wrote: »

Is it possible to sell event tickets? I have 12 and dont have a use for them. Is that possible?

Negative. You could gift people tickets from the crown store I believe, but the ones in your procession cannot be used since they are spent at the event merchant and not on things in the crown store. Unless there are things the event merchant sells that are not bop but I dont believe that is the case since the events are specifically designed to either keep players around (time gated events and daily limit of tickets earnable) and to get their money outright (purchase tickets for real money on the crown store).

Oreyn_Bearclaw · February 2021

How does this work?

Think shady drug deal. About as close as you will get.

SilverBride · February 2021

linuxlady wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Mancombe_Nosehair wrote: »

Be very careful when buying or selling crowns. It's a con artists market.

I know. I was considering buying crowns to purchase a house I want but I'm not very comfortable with the idea. I could just buy the crowns myself then spend them on the house, but I'd rather use gold.

If you could buy a house furnished with gold this wouldn't even be an issue. And I want this one furnished because I love the furnishings that come with it and it would cost a small fortune to buy the pieces individually, or craft them.

how many crowns are the house? probably more than ive got on hand im sure. im trustworthy but i am not really a crown seller. i think i have 3k left over from my year of eso plus after buying some bankers and merchants

The house furnished is 7500 crowns. But I decided to just purchase it unfurnished with gold, because I'd probably only use about half the furnishings and would be unable to sell the rest since crown furnishings are bound.

It will take me a lot longer to decorate, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Jaimeh · February 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

How does this work?

Think shady drug deal. About as close as you will get.

It depends on how you do it: if you pick a random seller from zone chat, most likely it's a scam, and there have been many cases reported. I've only bought crowns via the tamriel crown exchange discord, and though the exchange rate is higher, I never had issues. But it's not a practice officially sanctioned by ZOS (though they allow it because for them it's more profit anyways), so I'm not sure what happens if you get scammed, if they return the gold, etc.

ADarklore · February 2021

I've heard that, in order to make a safer transaction, the person BUYING the crowns sends their gold FIRST... and then you 'gift' them the crowns.

ThorianB · February 2021

Starlock wrote: »

It works poorly.

Other MMOs provide an official in-game mechanism for these kinds of exchanges, which is a lot safer and more equitable for players. Not sure what ZoS's excuse is for not having this - should be mandatory if they are going to allow this sort of thing at all.

Yeah they should make "crown containers" or something that you buy off the crown store and it is tradable so it can be sold on traders. Then whoever opens its get the crowns applied to their account.

Or they could could have a crown trader NPC that functions like a guild trader but only for crowns. I could sell 5 batches of 500 crowns for 200 gold each and someone else can just buy an entire batch for 100k gold. Could even add a flat 5% or 10% gold transaction tax to make it a gold sink.

They could also put the NPCs in outlaw refuges and drive some traffic to the poor souls who have their trader there. I would be a lot more interested in crown trading if the system was a lot better.

SilverBride · February 2021

ThorianB wrote: »

Yeah they should make "crown containers" or something that you buy off the crown store and it is tradable so it can be sold on traders. Then whoever opens its get the crowns applied to their account.

I love that idea.

spartaxoxo · February 2021

ADarklore wrote: »

I've heard that, in order to make a safer transaction, the person BUYING the crowns sends their gold FIRST... and then you 'gift' them the crowns.

That's safer for the seller but riskier for the buyer. The most safe way is to only barter with trusted sellers and buyers, find out whose generally trustworthy and keep track of them. Like there's this one guy in one my guilds that friends everyone he sells to, if someone tries to rip him off they get reported. If someone is safe, they get first dibs on crowns.

Personally I go with whatever the seller is comfortable with as protecting the seller is more important. But I have a list of people willing to send me item first and they are always my first choice. Because protecting myself is obviously important to me.

ThorianB · February 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Yeah they should make "crown containers" or something that you buy off the crown store and it is tradable so it can be sold on traders. Then whoever opens its get the crowns applied to their account.

I love that idea.

We could expand this further and use the rarity system:

White container = 1 crown, rare prize in event boxes( 5% drop chance)
Green container =10 crowns, very rare prize in event boxes (1% drop chance)
Blue container = 100 crowns, extremely rare prize in event boxes(0.1% drop chance), available on crown store
Purple container =1000 crowns, crown store only
Gold container =10,000 crowns, crown store only.

If you have crowns as a rare special reward in game, it allows a method to earn them. Those people are more likely to see what they can buy with crowns in the store. When you add a method for them to buy crowns safely from other players, such as allowing these containers on traders, they are more likely to buy, for gold, the crowns they need to purchase something. This drives up demand for crowns, which drive ups the gold price. That makes selling crowns more appealing to players who want to trade crowns for gold instead of earning gold in the game. That drives crown sales.

THAT is how you market, not LTOs and frustrating your customers because they can't ever buy what they want.

Viewsfrom6ix · February 2021

Always take screenshots of the conversation with the agreed terms and the trade.

I always pay 50% of the gold up front and rest when I receive the item. Don't trust a person that doesn't agree to that.

Goregrinder · February 2021

ThorianB wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Yeah they should make "crown containers" or something that you buy off the crown store and it is tradable so it can be sold on traders. Then whoever opens its get the crowns applied to their account.

I love that idea.

We could expand this further and use the rarity system:
White container = 1 crown, rare prize in event boxes( 5% drop chance)

Green container =10 crowns, very rare prize in event boxes (1% drop chance)

Blue container = 100 crowns, extremely rare prize in event boxes(0.1% drop chance), available on crown store

Purple container =1000 crowns, crown store only

Gold container =10,000 crowns, crown store only.

If you have crowns as a rare special reward in game, it allows a method to earn them. Those people are more likely to see what they can buy with crowns in the store. When you add a method for them to buy crowns safely from other players, such as allowing these containers on traders, they are more likely to buy, for gold, the crowns they need to purchase something. This drives up demand for crowns, which drive ups the gold price. That makes selling crowns more appealing to players who want to trade crowns for gold instead of earning gold in the game. That drives crown sales.

THAT is how you market, not LTOs and frustrating your customers because they can't ever buy what they want.

So how much would this model increase their ROI compared to what ROI ESO currently uses?

Eedat · February 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

Exactly that. You make an arrangement with the seller to buy a specific item from the crown store for an amount of gold.

They gift you the item from the crown store, you give them the gold.

Normally vice versa though. You give them the gold then they gift you.

Kwoung · February 2021

I would avoid buying/selling crowns to zone spammers. There are enough reports of players being ripped off on both sides of those transactions that you should expect it when you enter into one trying to save a few gold or get more for your crowns. There is TCE & WCE, maybe others as well, but they are very expensive. Then there are also a lot of guilds that have "safe" crown exchanges as well for their members, usually at reasonable rates (250:1 or less on PCNA) so while it may take a bit longer to have your order filled, you don't have to worry about getting ripped off and you are probably helping support your guild as well.

exeeter702 · February 2021

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I've heard that, in order to make a safer transaction, the person BUYING the crowns sends their gold FIRST... and then you 'gift' them the crowns.

That's safer for the seller but riskier for the buyer

which is frankly a non issue. The seller is the one putting up actual real life money. If you absolutely need to make this trade with a stranger without any other agreed methods, then the risk should entirely be on the person who is at risk of losing video game money.

Starlock · February 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Yeah they should make "crown containers" or something that you buy off the crown store and it is tradable so it can be sold on traders. Then whoever opens its get the crowns applied to their account.

I love that idea.

You'd probably like an exchange market even more.

The only other modern MMORPG I've played is Neverwinter. In Neverwinter, there was straight up an auction house style market where players could list up their premium currency and players could buy it for in-game currencies for little to no fuss. This is how ESO should do it because restricting exchanges to guild traders isn't equitable. A game-wide market that everyone has equal access to, on the other hand? Yup.

volkeswagon · February 2021

All crown exchanges should be with some sort of COD system to prevent fraud but for some reason ZOS hasn't implemented such a safeguard.

SilverBride · February 2021

volkeswagon wrote: »

All crown exchanges should be with some sort of COD system to prevent fraud but for some reason ZOS hasn't implemented such a safeguard.

That is a great idea!

markulrich1966 · February 2021

on xbox NA guilds suggest to use crownsellers verified by the guildmaster.

On xbox EU, guilds suggest to use an officer or other high-rank member as middleman, the method I prefer. Last month for once I did not use a middleman and immedeatly got my punishment, I was scammed by half a million.
Got a refund from ZOS, but they warned me they will not do it again as I am responsible myself.

So I suggest to use a middleman, this worked flawless so far for me.

(you send the middleman the gold, and he sends it to the crownseller once you received your gift).

JKorr · February 2021

Jaimeh wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

How does this work?

Think shady drug deal. About as close as you will get.

It depends on how you do it: if you pick a random seller from zone chat, most likely it's a scam, and there have been many cases reported. I've only bought crowns via the tamriel crown exchange discord, and though the exchange rate is higher, I never had issues. But it's not a practice officially sanctioned by ZOS (though they allow it because for them it's more profit anyways), so I'm not sure what happens if you get scammed, if they return the gold, etc.

There's another option if you have a great guild master; they mediate an escrow service. The GM will match the sellers with buyers, holding the gold until the people indicate they received the gifted items, then the GM sends the gold.

zaria · February 2021

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ADarklore wrote: »

I've heard that, in order to make a safer transaction, the person BUYING the crowns sends their gold FIRST... and then you 'gift' them the crowns.

That's safer for the seller but riskier for the buyer. The most safe way is to only barter with trusted sellers and buyers, find out whose generally trustworthy and keep track of them. Like there's this one guy in one my guilds that friends everyone he sells to, if someone tries to rip him off they get reported. If someone is safe, they get first dibs on crowns.

Personally I go with whatever the seller is comfortable with as protecting the seller is more important. But I have a list of people willing to send me item first and they are always my first choice. Because protecting myself is obviously important to me.

At lest on PC its some discord groups who works as middlemen here.
In short you post that you want to buy items, they find an seller who is online and a trusted middleman of the group.
You pay the middleman tho tell the seller that he has the gold, the seller then give you the item and the middleman give the seller the gold but keep an cut, say 10%. The middleman can be trusted as he is in there for the long term profit.

But yes its far more clunky and make it hard for some to just sell off some spare ESO+ crowns.

Having you buy an container with 1000 crowns you could then sell in an guild store would work so much better.