Crown For Gold Prices Doubled since Endeavors

NotaDaedraWorshipper · July 2021

The price has gone steadily up on PC EU for like a year. Some months ago it was 500, then it went up to 600, 700, and around now it's over 1000.

Because of the very high demand and very little supply. The sale we had before did nothing. We need more sales or a very long one for it to drop down.

CaffeinatedMayhem · July 2021

WiseSky wrote: »

I though they would go down....

PC/NA

From 80:1 when the Pandemic started

To 750:1

Uh... I haven't seen 80:1 on PC/NA since LONG before the pandemic, sure you weren't thinking of Console?
And... PCNA is 450-500:1 if you're not on an exchange. If you want to pay exchange nonsense rates, be my guest. I have better uses for my gold.

OutLaw_Nynx · July 2021

I’ve always seen 100:1 on PS4 NA.

Ratzkifal · July 2021

The way I see it, there are two main factors at play here:

New high value crownstore items (like giftable houses) increase demand for crowns
Economy is getting more and more inflated because gold isn't draining out of circulation as fast as new gold is being introduced (antiquities, endeavors, the new CP boni).

Housing back when it was released revitalized the economy by introducing massive gold drains in the form of manors you could buy with 3.5million gold each as well as adding tons of new items to be traded. Since then ZOS has released one notable house that was purchasible with gold and only one 1million house per chapter, when every single one of the time limited notable houses should have been purchasible with gold. It was the perfect gold sink. Each purchase would drain gold out of the economy and increase the demand for goods to furnish your new purchase.
Now houses are being bought with crowns through crown sellers, which ironically keeps the money that would have been drained within the system. And because the money is still in the system, its value is going down relatively to the more stable currency of crowns, simply because more of it is available.

Sadly ZOS has no incentive to do anything here. The gifting system is making them cash, so why would they intentionally hurt their own profits just to fix the economy? As far as they are concerned everything is fine right now. People are still buying crowns and nobody has left the game over the state of the economy yet. To them, all is well. Only that this is literally a bubble that might burst on them if they never end up tackling this problem. Other MMOs have went through such periods already where some even completely abandoned the original currency in favor of trading different items as a replacement currency. Imagine if the currency of the future is unbound Mother's Sorrow Inferno staves.

ZOS should not let it come to this and needs to add a new proper gold sink not connected to the crown store. The outfit system, armor repair, guild trader fees and bids don't cut it. Housing was perfect, but with crown gifting and ZOS' unwillingness to allow us to buy all houses for vast sums of gold instead, it can't serve that purpose anymore.
Sadly the only thing that would work needs to be a system that makes people want to spend vast amounts of gold is prestige objects like houses. Ramping up armor repair costs for example would hurt new/poor players and would be perceived as draconic. Ironically something like an in-universe casino where you can gamble away your gold to win some exclusive mounts or something could get people to drain their money voluntarily, but I am not sure if ZOS wants that sort of attention with the whole "gambling" affair going on.

CaffeinatedMayhem · July 2021

Ratzkifal wrote: »

The way I see it, there are two main factors at play here:
New high value crownstore items (like giftable houses) increase demand for crowns

Economy is getting more and more inflated because gold isn't draining out of circulation as fast as new gold is being introduced (antiquities, endeavors, the new CP boni).

Housing back when it was released revitalized the economy by introducing massive gold drains in the form of manors you could buy with 3.5million gold each as well as adding tons of new items to be traded. Since then ZOS has released one notable house that was purchasible with gold and only one 1million house per chapter, when every single one of the time limited notable houses should have been purchasible with gold. It was the perfect gold sink. Each purchase would drain gold out of the economy and increase the demand for goods to furnish your new purchase.
Now houses are being bought with crowns through crown sellers, which ironically keeps the money that would have been drained within the system. And because the money is still in the system, its value is going down relatively to the more stable currency of crowns, simply because more of it is available.

Sadly ZOS has no incentive to do anything here. The gifting system is making them cash, so why would they intentionally hurt their own profits just to fix the economy? As far as they are concerned everything is fine right now. People are still buying crowns and nobody has left the game over the state of the economy yet. To them, all is well. Only that this is literally a bubble that might burst on them if they never end up tackling this problem. Other MMOs have went through such periods already where some even completely abandoned the original currency in favor of trading different items as a replacement currency. Imagine if the currency of the future is unbound Mother's Sorrow Inferno staves.

ZOS should not let it come to this and needs to add a new proper gold sink not connected to the crown store. The outfit system, armor repair, guild trader fees and bids don't cut it. Housing was perfect, but with crown gifting and ZOS' unwillingness to allow us to buy all houses for vast sums of gold instead, it can't serve that purpose anymore.
Sadly the only thing that would work needs to be a system that makes people want to spend vast amounts of gold is prestige objects like houses. Ramping up armor repair costs for example would hurt new/poor players and would be perceived as draconic. Ironically something like an in-universe casino where you can gamble away your gold to win some exclusive mounts or something could get people to drain their money voluntarily, but I am not sure if ZOS wants that sort of attention with the whole "gambling" affair going on.

Good points but you CAN buy houses with vast sums of gold. Good luck finder a crown seller with 15-18k to sell. (gifting houses was introduced with Markarth?)

WiseSky · July 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

1. High demand for items lately, popular crates, etc...
2. No "free" money from stimulus checks that was fueling some people having additional disposable income.
3. Crown pack prices were more than doubled in many countries.
4. Steam "loophole" where people were faking where they lived to take advantage of exchange rates was closed.
5. Inflation in game, lots of gold going around, makes the gold you have less valuable.

Combination of all the above has led to a sellers market and higher prices.

You can think it's because people are greedy, or manipulating the market or whatever, but there are real-life reasons for a crunch in the crown supply.

Remember, if you are buying items with in-game gold... that is "free" other than your time... the person you are purchasing crowns from is putting down real money.

I agree with your points... I remember when the USA stimulus Check hit first time Crown Crates Prices went 80:1...

WiseSky · July 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

I though they would go down....

PC/NA

From 80:1 when the Pandemic started

To 750:1

Uh... I haven't seen 80:1 on PC/NA since LONG before the pandemic, sure you weren't thinking of Console?
And... PCNA is 450-500:1 if you're not on an exchange. If you want to pay exchange nonsense rates, be my guest. I have better uses for my gold.

When the USA stimulus Checks dropped... the Prices were 80:1 for PC/NA I remember getting 60 Gloom Spore Crates for 1.6 Million now it's 15 Million for that many crates.

WiseSky · July 2021

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

WiseSky wrote: »

I though they would go down....

I rather work an extra of 2 hours a week and buy crowns to sell for gold, than spend 6 hours total in a week Crafting for the same amount of gold.

Can you freely just work 2 extra hours and get paid for it?

There are other means for making gold in the game that is fun.

Perks of being self employed.

Hotdog_23 · July 2021

Work to hard for money in real life to give it way for fictional money in a game. Purchase crowns and have a nice stack for personal use just not giving it away when I can make gold myself in game.

Stay safe everyone and ZOS please fix the green tree micromanaging

KyraCROgnon · July 2021

Being able to gift houses increased the demand for crowns,
While the lack of gold sink in game increases the amount of gold available , since almost every new house is crown only.
Plus the real life cost of crown crates increasing a lot in some countries

So gold piling up on one side, and crown supply getting lower on the other side => crown for gold rate are skyrocketing.

I must admit that now it got to the level where i non longer am interested. When a new type of crate was released i used to buy one pack of 15 crates for gold , and by the time the next one was released i had more or less made the gold back gaming and could repeat. At 800 G/ crown that was already getting difficult, at 1250 G/crown there is no way i will bankrupt my character.

Grandchamp1989 · July 2021

Something is completely off with the ESO economy.

Every month inflation on most things make the prices go up and up.

I barely buy anything from Traders anymore and focus on getting materials myself through writs/surveys, gathering etc.

Rossmann · July 2021

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

The price has gone steadily up on PC EU for like a year. Some months ago it was 500, then it went up to 600, 700, and around now it's over 1000.

Because of the very high demand and very little supply. The sale we had before did nothing. We need more sales or a very long one for it to drop down.

I am wondering if ZOS increasing the RL prices of crown related to in-game prices?

Cause if you don't pay increased prices to buy crowns there is literally no reason to increase crown prices in-game, because in the end if there are total 10000 crowns to sell, there is 10k crowns to buy. Only person who profits from this is the seller.

And please don't give me supply-demand ***. That is the lamest excuse.

Icy_Waffles · July 2021

It’s literally just supply and demand.

Ratzkifal · July 2021

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

The way I see it, there are two main factors at play here:
New high value crownstore items (like giftable houses) increase demand for crowns

Economy is getting more and more inflated because gold isn't draining out of circulation as fast as new gold is being introduced (antiquities, endeavors, the new CP boni).

Housing back when it was released revitalized the economy by introducing massive gold drains in the form of manors you could buy with 3.5million gold each as well as adding tons of new items to be traded. Since then ZOS has released one notable house that was purchasible with gold and only one 1million house per chapter, when every single one of the time limited notable houses should have been purchasible with gold. It was the perfect gold sink. Each purchase would drain gold out of the economy and increase the demand for goods to furnish your new purchase.
Now houses are being bought with crowns through crown sellers, which ironically keeps the money that would have been drained within the system. And because the money is still in the system, its value is going down relatively to the more stable currency of crowns, simply because more of it is available.

Sadly ZOS has no incentive to do anything here. The gifting system is making them cash, so why would they intentionally hurt their own profits just to fix the economy? As far as they are concerned everything is fine right now. People are still buying crowns and nobody has left the game over the state of the economy yet. To them, all is well. Only that this is literally a bubble that might burst on them if they never end up tackling this problem. Other MMOs have went through such periods already where some even completely abandoned the original currency in favor of trading different items as a replacement currency. Imagine if the currency of the future is unbound Mother's Sorrow Inferno staves.

ZOS should not let it come to this and needs to add a new proper gold sink not connected to the crown store. The outfit system, armor repair, guild trader fees and bids don't cut it. Housing was perfect, but with crown gifting and ZOS' unwillingness to allow us to buy all houses for vast sums of gold instead, it can't serve that purpose anymore.
Sadly the only thing that would work needs to be a system that makes people want to spend vast amounts of gold is prestige objects like houses. Ramping up armor repair costs for example would hurt new/poor players and would be perceived as draconic. Ironically something like an in-universe casino where you can gamble away your gold to win some exclusive mounts or something could get people to drain their money voluntarily, but I am not sure if ZOS wants that sort of attention with the whole "gambling" affair going on.

Good points but you CAN buy houses with vast sums of gold. Good luck finder a crown seller with 15-18k to sell. (gifting houses was introduced with Markarth?)

@CaffeinatedMayhem That's not the point. If you buy it with gold straight from the store, the money is burned. If you buy it from a crown seller, the house is essentially bought with crowns and gold is being transfered within the system from one player to another. It is still there. It does not get drained out. So for the purpose of analysing the economic system of the game, you can't buy the new houses with gold because the gold doesn't vanish. But from an individual's perspective you are right of course.
And yes, I believe house gifting was added with Markarth or shortly before it.

VaranisArano · July 2021

jssriot wrote: »

Crown sellers are exploiting a grey area in the TOS, so um, yeah, they sell for whatever people are willing to pay for, as long as ZOS isn't putting their foot down about it. And I don't know why people assume it's the sellers who just randomly make up prices when I've seen people in zone chat and in my guild chats making repeated offers of much higher prices to buy crowns, because they want the new crates or the crow assistants. It seems there are more WTBs then WTSs out there and so it's a seller's market. At least as long as ZOS is looking the other way.

Why do you think it's a grey area in the TOS? ZOS has said that gold for crown gifts is permitted.

Andre_Noir · July 2021

dcam86b14_ESO wrote: »

From the several guilds I am in that I sell crowns in the issue is that demand has gone up and supply has been low.

Such an unexpected and fresh fairytale story

josiahva · July 2021

Not sure that this matters honestly. It will be whatever the market decides its worth. I think people forget the system was implemented to gift your friends crown store items and upgrades. I personally have never sold crowns....but I have many times gifted friends with various upgrades(especially if they just started the game). Honestly I am surprised that the cost isn't 3000:1...crowns are far more valuable than gold since you don't actually NEED gold in the game for anything other than repairs and maybe wayshrine travel....its purely a currency that allows you to spend your time doing what you really like rather than farming mats, gear, etc.

Red_Feather · July 2021

CipherNine wrote: »

lol I refuse to pay more than 200:1. So I will never been buying crowns again unless they go back down in price

I feel the same way. I have not used crown exchange in ages. I bought crowns on a big crown sale 2 years ago. Only things I have bought are merchant and banker (OUCH!), Markath, and a dungeon dlc (which I regret). I am extremely stingy with crowns now so I will spend my last amounts very miserly over the years.

francesinhalover · July 2021

WiseSky wrote: »

I though they would go down....

PC/NA

From 80:1 when the Pandemic started

To 750:1

I don't understand how the demand doubled since endeavors came out it was 350:1 a month ago....

Could it be that people are browsing the rewards and decided they want to get crates too and demand skyrockets ?

Should I believe the Conspiracy Theory of market manipulation ?

One thing is for sure now....

I rather work an extra of 2 hours a week and buy crowns to sell for gold, than spend 6 hours total in a week Crafting for the same amount of gold.

hey, sorry to tell you, but it's related to the new cp points also.

And...
It's 1250 gold /1 now. Must feel good if you get scammed.

however people at least on pc eu seem to think the price is now 800/1.

francesinhalover · July 2021

I wanted so much the Opal engine Guardian daggers on pc eu, they were like 1500 000 gold, now people are forcing them to sell for 5 000 000 to 6 000 000
Useless to say, i can't afford them now

I barely had enough for 1 1mill one.

Kiralyn2000 · July 2021

Ratzkifal wrote: »

The way I see it, there are two main factors at play here:
New high value crownstore items (like giftable houses) increase demand for crowns

Economy is getting more and more inflated because gold isn't draining out of circulation as fast as new gold is being introduced (antiquities, endeavors, the new CP boni).

Also, at some point all the unused Crowns that ESO+ subscribers had built up over the years had to run out, further reducing the supply. Now, of course, there are still subscribers getting 'free' crowns, but depending on if they sub monthly/yearly, those crowns come in at varying times & rates.

edit: an interesting statistic to see (that we'll never see) would be how many subscribers 'renew' in each month of the year. Are there more common times that people started their subs, etc? (like - when new Chapters hit, or Christmas, or tax refund time, or....)

francesinhalover · July 2021

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

My guess is the new polymorphs and apex radiant mounts being released in the crown store for gems. So the demand for crowns went up. I bought crowns for 400:1 last week. You can find cheap rates if you're patient and willing to use zone chat.

how many times have you been scammed?

Sylvermynx · July 2021

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

edit: an interesting statistic to see (that we'll never see) would be how many subscribers 'renew' in each month of the year. Are there more common times that people started their subs, etc? (like - when new Chapters hit, or Christmas, or tax refund time, or....)

Eh, obviously I'm not a "bunch" of statistics. I renew 2 subs every 6 months, one of them in April and October, the other in January and July. And I don't ever sell crowns; I use them myself - and I also buy two batches of 21k a year when on sale. I don't sell those either. I have plenty of gold, and the crowns are more useful to me most of the time.

Lady_Galadhiel · July 2021

I remember when prices where still 300/1 on PC EU.
Those were good days.

Casul · July 2021

One of this big reasons I couldn't stick with PC. Starting new wasnt too daunting but the idea of 300 to 1 at the time was difficult to cope with.

Eventually I found the culprit.

Addons that exist on PC that allow craft bag integration into guild traders and crafting stations allows for much easier movement of materials being stored. Compared to PS4 where all materials must be manually removed and manually listed for example.

I haven't had my sub since 2017, but seeing that integration exist makes since why so many feel a need to have it on PC.

Also access to auto crafting addons makes what equates to a few minutes of crafting per character on console (better now since the markers were added), into quite literally seconds for PC. This allows people to complete an entire account of writs in the time it takes a console account to cover 2-5 characters.

Considering the easy 4200 gold per character you easily acquire 67,200 gold per day without much time investment for some people.

All of these lead to an economy where gold is more plentiful and thus results in extreme prices like this. Of course assuming intentional market manipulation is not to blame, which is also a possibility.

Icy_Waffles · July 2021

Rossmann wrote: »

Icy_Waffles wrote: »

It’s literally just supply and demand.

[snip]

Your incorrect assumptions are both wrong and laughable. But way to be needlessly hostile. Also. I’m not on PC. Crowns on PS4 are 100 gold per crown. Standard.

[edited to remove quote]

Rex-Umbra · July 2021

Xbox na always been a stable 80-100 per crown. Pc players must have too much gold.

Odovacar · July 2021

six2fall wrote: »

Ps4 has been consistently 100:1

Yeah we're lucky because gold is not as inflated as PC.

trackdemon5512 · July 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

1. High demand for items lately, popular crates, etc...
2. No "free" money from stimulus checks that was fueling some people having additional disposable income.
3. Crown pack prices were more than doubled in many countries.
4. Steam "loophole" where people were faking where they lived to take advantage of exchange rates was closed.
5. Inflation in game, lots of gold going around, makes the gold you have less valuable.

Combination of all the above has led to a sellers market and higher prices.

You can think it's because people are greedy, or manipulating the market or whatever, but there are real-life reasons for a crunch in the crown supply.

Remember, if you are buying items with in-game gold... that is "free" other than your time... the person you are purchasing crowns from is putting down real money.

Point 2 involving the stimulus checks cant be a factor. If it were crown prices would have simultaneously dropped for all 3 platforms. Or more specifically for the 3 NA platforms with the EU ones taking no hits.

Instead we’ve only seen prices dramatically increase on PC NA and EU. Exchange prices for crowns have remained consistent on consoles for almost two to three years now at 100g per.

Even if crown pack prices doubled in several countries that hasn’t affected console at all so it can’t be that.

It boils down to not enough gold sinks and too much gold being accumulated too quickly on PC. And the only thing that really differentiates PC from consoles: ADD ONs.

tonyblack · July 2021

Thing is most of crown supply on discords come from RMT sellers and with argentinian crown price changes it become unprofitable practice since prices for gold stay relatively same. Coupled with the fact that this changes happened when new chapter dropped and new crate season introduced it led to price rise and you can see shortage of supply even at that rate. The number of legit players who need exchange their crowns for gold much smaller than the amount of players who want to buy them. So in the end it’s hard to find a sellers but demand stays so high the prices will continue to rise.