Blacknight841 wrote: »

If only you all had bots like on Xbox. Our wax is 3.5k!!!

This is absolutely not true. Wax is going for 7.5 up, though usually around 9.

Bots are also not as prevailent as you make it seem. Most of those characters are actually real players.

The big problem is lack of competition. The major guilds collude on prices. The smaller guilds usually along because there's no reason not to.

Most of (not all) the issues would disappear with a global marketplace. Console players have no way to search across zones to find the best prices. So either you spend 30 minutes or more traveling around or, what most people do, buy the cheapest listing on the zone they're already in.

Next, the drop rate for all mats when breaking down gear should be increased.

Finally, bring jewelry crafting in line with the rest. Remove grains and pull plating directly from gear. It shouldn't take (minimum) 40 Hel Ras to upgrade one ring to gold. This makes it financially impossible for most players to use crafted jewelry. Even zircon is way way overpriced.

"But if you do that I'll earn less." Per mat, yes, but if you're a farmer then you'll get more mats. More mats for sale should balance out the lower price per item.

Yesterday I got a Perfect Roe drop...these were/are selling at 30K. I've spent less on purple hardware.....I'm sorry, but fish eggs, no matter how pristine, should not cost more than a piece of hardware.

DigiAngel wrote: »

Yesterday, I got a Perfect Roe drop...these were/are selling at 30K. I've spent less on purple hardware.....I'm sorry, but fish eggs, no matter how pristine, should not cost more than a piece of hardware.

Yep. It shouldn't.

Know one reason perfect roe is skyrocketing? All of those wonderful hyper OMGNOOOOOOOOOOIMNOTATTHECAPGOTTAGRINDFASTFASTFASTMOAR players. Before the cp rework, the perfect roe was around 10k, which I was actually fine with because personally, I dislike fishing. It was worth the cost if I needed it because I didn't want to fish for it myself. Now with the super competitive people pushing to get to the new cap, the price has gone up. Aetherial Ambrosia has shown up again, too, after not being a thing for a while. [hmmm. Might be worth suffering through fishing for a few nights. So I can list the roe or other stuff at the prices I decide because my guilds aren't totalitarian units that dictate what guild members can sell or the prices they sell at. Sorry "colluding believers," it isn't true everywhere]

TheEndBringer wrote: »

The big problem is lack of competition. The major guilds collude on prices. The smaller guilds usually along because there's no reason not to.

Er, as a trading guild officer, the most we got into setting prices was to rarely say "Guys, don't wildly overprice your stuff, it makes the guild look bad."

I can't imagine trying to hold a meeting to collude over the prices of items even within the guild officers, much less between the leadership of multiple guilds. What would you do, send an email 'round with the approved prices for all the mats? Why would you, when on PC, TTC and MM already give you the general pricing data?

It's not collusion. It's that I check what my items are selling for in my guilds, and then I sell for about that price. Or I check what the goods are selling for in Mournhold, and then I undercut them a little bit on my guild.

DigiAngel wrote: »

Yesterday I got a Perfect Roe drop...these were/are selling at 30K. I've spent less on purple hardware.....I'm sorry, but fish eggs, no matter how pristine, should not cost more than a piece of hardware.

And what's your opinion on the value of the Exp pots that perfect roe is used to make?

Just like that purple gear was presumably valuable enough to you, those exp pots are worth it to other players who want to speed up their CP gain. In that sense, it doesn't matter what you or I think of the price. It's worth it to those players, or it wouldn't be selling at that rate.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

The major guilds collude on prices.

Can't speak for other guilds. But the two I am part of (one Mourn, one Crag) have never done anything like that.

The only thing they tell us is sell, sell, relist, keep 30 items in stock if possible and sell, sell...

VaranisArano wrote: »

Er, as a trading guild officer, the most we got into setting prices was to rarely say "Guys, don't wildly overprice your stuff, it makes the guild look bad."

Maybe you don't but it's confirmed on xbox by the major guilds. And even if it wasn't confirmed, anyone who spends time shopping for prices with tell you that overnight mats across all traders change.

Mythic Ambrosia went from 25k to 90k overnight before the jester festival. This means people pulled their stock out just to put them back up for the new price. This happened in a very short window which wouldn't make sense if there wasn't collusion.

No one needs to hold a meeting. They used the same pricing bot all their discords. They influence those prices by overcharging all at once.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Er, as a trading guild officer, the most we got into setting prices was to rarely say "Guys, don't wildly overprice your stuff, it makes the guild look bad."

Maybe you don't but it's confirmed on xbox by the major guilds. And even if it wasn't confirmed, anyone who spends time shopping for prices with tell you that overnight mats across all traders change.

Mythic Ambrosia went from 25k to 90k overnight before the jester festival. This means people pulled their stock out just to put them back up for the new price. This happened in a very short window which wouldn't make sense if there wasn't collusion.

No one needs to hold a meeting. They used the same pricing bot all their discords. They influence those prices by overcharging all at once.

Nothing else could explain everyone hiking the price on rare exp pots right before the first festival with the 100% exp buff.

Maybe I'm just a jaded PC player, but a pricing bot sounds an awful lot like the TTC addon. Not seeing what's so terrible about that, except maybe that console players aren't used to what that does to the market.

[snip]

Yep, this is really not surprising to me. Some people here act like all trading guilds don't organize a single thing, which is true for some of them, certainly. But there are a few guilds out there who do what you demonstrated, and those few guilds are enough to mess up the entire economy.

I'm curious to see if anything will ever be done about this, but I think not. Money makers like those guys love the trading system in ESO, and ZOS would never want them to leave the game, so everything stays how it is. I hardly trade nowadays, I can't be bothered to buy anything, because it is so much cheaper to collect. And I don't want to sell at low prices, because those very same guilds will buy my stuff instead of normal players, and I refuse to sell for those artificially inflated high prices. Kind of a dead end.

[edited to remove quote]

ZaroktheImmortal wrote: »

NupidStoob wrote: »

Last year around christmas ZoS took care of Bots on PC EU and since then I haven't seen any. I remember all the whine thread about those... This is the reason Dreugh Wax prices constantly went up.

There is also a huge amount of inflation as what we spend gold on is incredibly limited and ZoS has added more and more ways to earn gold. Multiple times was the log in reward 100k per player which introduced millions into the economy and now with the new CP system we also earn more gold. I get now roughly 500G more per char that does all 7 writs. Roughly 90k gold a day simply for spending 45-50 minutes doing writs on 18 chars and that is just raw gold.

There is also a massive difference to the amount of gold endgame players have access to compared to what newer players have. As a result the prices spike because if people easily buy your Dreugh Wax for 16k, why list it for less? As I mentioned above I spend like 50 minutes doing writs a day and get 90k in raw gold + the mats from the rewards + hirelings. Thats easily 150k gold a day while hardly breaking a sweat. The amount of time and effort for a new player to get that much is just massively disproportionate.

We just have way too much money in the economy currently. In endgame it's not uncommon for people to have in the tens of millions, even 100s of millions doesn't feel too uncommon and reportedly there are even a few billionaires amongst the hardcore crown sellers/power traders. Imagine where the prices would be if people would push that money back into the economy.

This is also the best argument against a centralized auction house as it would be incredibly easy for people to dominate the entire market. Only reason Dreugh Wax isn't 50k atm is that nobody with the resources to buy them all up has the motivation to check every single trader in the game multiple times a day. We already had issues with people doing this to certain plants in the past, like the time when columbine was 500g+ for quite a long timeframe.

Yes, because it's all so hard for to dominate with pricings and raise it cause greed. Also you don't have to check every trader. I mean there Tamerial Trade Center does have a website that lists a lot of peoples listings and most people trading will use it. If anything the guild trader system just allows a certain number of people to control what average pricings things will usually go for.

1. You can't dominate this market very easily because you have to go to each trader individually. While i am running between traders buying up the items below a point i want it to sell at, other people are constantly putting new orders on the market. TTC also doesn't update immediately. Someone has to be running the program and the data has to be getting uploaded. You can miss a lot of those below the price you are trying to set. So it becomes a lot of work for very little gain. Instead it is just better to bargain shop traders and then resell the items at a much higher price in premium hubs. I often find incorrectly priced items that i can easily sell for 100-500% profit. So this becomes much more profitable than trying to dominate the market in ESO.

2. Supply and demand determines pricing. ESO has had over 3 million new players since january 2020. These are mostly consumers in ESO not producers. Since they have nothing and need everything, they consume a lot of what is on traders but add very little to traders themselves in comparison because they haven't acquired all the resources, prints, motifs, stickerbook gear, etc. yet like us vet players. Things i was selling on traders for 50-100 gold/ each in late 2019 i am selling for 200-500 gold/each now. Its not because we traders are greedy, its because those items shrunk from 50 pages of inventory to 15(on TTC). Demand kept pushing prices up as new players sucked up all the lower priced items they could afford. As the price gets higher, fewer people are willing to pay that price and demand slows down until supply and demand find an equilibrium. This is what determines the price point of items in ESO.

As a trader, my price is determined by the prices i see on TTC. I decide what is a good price to sell at depending on what i see on there. You always have people that put up items for stupid prices so i look at a few factors. But my price is always determined by supply and demand and how fast i can flip an item. Ideally, i don't want to sit on any items more than 12 hours and less than 6 hours is ideal. If i go to high, i have to sit on it longer and that is often for only a small profit increase when i could make more money buy a bit lower and faster and freeing that slot up hours sooner.

remosito wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

The major guilds collude on prices.

Can't speak for other guilds. But the two I am part of (one Mourn, one Crag) have never done anything like that.

The only thing they tell us is sell, sell, relist, keep 30 items in stock if possible and sell, sell...

I am also in trade guilds in prime spots and they have never mentioned anything about pricing. This is just some conspiracy theory people came up with because:
1. They don't realize this game has had it's population increased by 20% in the last year which a huge amount of consumers that would tank a real economy.
2. They don't understand how supply and demand works.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Er, as a trading guild officer, the most we got into setting prices was to rarely say "Guys, don't wildly overprice your stuff, it makes the guild look bad."

Maybe you don't but it's confirmed on xbox by the major guilds. And even if it wasn't confirmed, anyone who spends time shopping for prices with tell you that overnight mats across all traders change.

Mythic Ambrosia went from 25k to 90k overnight before the jester festival. This means people pulled their stock out just to put them back up for the new price. This happened in a very short window which wouldn't make sense if there wasn't collusion.

No one needs to hold a meeting. They used the same pricing bot all their discords. They influence those prices by overcharging all at once.

I mean, I am in a handful of major Xbox trading guilds (and have been in a handful of others in the past) and not once have I been told what to list items at. The only listing rule I have ever seen was an undercutting rule of like 5%.

Mythic Ambrosia prices went up because they became more valuable. And many players in major trading guilds relist their items after a day or two to keep them at the top of the queue in a trader.

The biggest mistake players make with trading is keeping their items in the trader for 10+ days. Very rarely will anyone who is serious about trading look past the last 24 hours of listings in a kiosk. And usually if a player is doing that, they are looking for very specific items. Why? Because after the first day of a listing, the items have been picked over and all of the deals have been taken. Or, the player has already looked over those goods the previous day. So a better reason why those Mythic prices went up is that players actually know how to trade in the game and are doing so effectively.

Raegwyr wrote: »

Mats costs more only because the demand for them increase significantly lately:
1. Stickerbook gave ppl chance to prepare gear for alts with only mats cost and without time (grind) factor. I know a lot of players which spend hundreds of gold mats to have good gear on their alts. Also ppl are more eager to play different kind of builds now when gear is more accessible.
2. More ppl are into housing now since they can now buy crown houses with in game gold via gifting. And everybody knows how expensive furniture crafting can be.
3. Less bots on server (not eliminated completely, at least not at pc eu but situations seems to be better then year ago).
4. More players playing the game. Most of new players don't want to farm mats and would rather buy them with gold to play actual content (and new players have new way to earn gold fast like scrying).
5. Gold has less value then ever.
6. Constant meta shifts which create huge demand of gold mats.

Theory about dozen of super wealthy players controlling whole mats market is ridiculous but I guess it sounds more interesting then those 6 reasons.

Zos tries to help with that by for example introducing new cps for farmers or by giving a lot of mats during the event but it is not enough to satisfy the demand. They could introduce more sources of mats like they did with IC alchemy coffers (you know, rewards for playing the content).

To me point 1 has had a huge impact.

I now have 5 mag and 5 stam dds fully equipped both for solo and party plus two healers and a tank with multiple sets each to mix and match as the situation requires.

That was a lot of mats spent.

Pre-stickerbook it would have been unthinkable for me because I just don't run remotely enough 12-char trials to have so much gear lying around.

Arguably the pre-stickerbook arrangement was significantly less 'wasteful'; chars would share what I had and that was that. That meant that a lot of my mats would go on the guild trader.

Now other stuff goes to the guild trader and I keep the mats for my personal use.

Few years ago the standard price for a temp on xbox-eu was 18k+, saw a rise back up to this when U29 dropped but now they are back down to 6-9k.

It's just supply and demand.