Out of control crown exchange gouging destroying economy for new players.

WhyMustItBe · August 2021

ZOS, I feel it is in your interest to address this issue.

As someone who has played since launch this doesn't affect me so much. But for new players it could become a huge deterrent to investing in the game moving forward.

Basically for the past year, prices on crown exchanges have skyrocketed almost 300%. This is for no reason other than greed of crown sellers. There is no more gold in the game, and no shortage of things which cost gold, from furniture to gold vendor to buying houses with gold, etc.

Yet we have seen the average exchange rate go from 300:1 to well over 700:1 in just a matter of months.

The result of this, has been the radical overpricing of many other things in the game, as the calue of gold has been artificially depreciated. For a perfect example, look at single item prices for things like this: Powerful Assault Ice Staff 3 Million Gold

Just last year, weapons for popular sets like Mother's Sorrow in gold with good traits would go for MAYBE around a million gold.

As prices continue to inflate artificially out of control due to a handful of "official" crown trading guilds ratcheting up the prices due to greed, it is creating a huge barrier to entry for newer players enjoying all the things you would normally be able to afford with a reasonable time investment in earning gold.

The fact is, the ability to earn gold in-game has not increased, yet the amount of gold needed for most things has doubled or trippled. This means earning the gold for things like your first gold cp160 set is taking an inordinate amount of time grinding which is a reality that tends to put people off playing.

ZOS: Is it time we follow through on the "gifting" system and make the exchange rate for crowns official, instead of relying on 3rd party sites and countless scammers to set the price, which is increasingly out of control?

@ZOS_GinaBruno any plans to move in this direction?

Disturbed_One · August 2021

Price of crowns went up 200-300% in several countries in the last few months.

Crown exchange prices are up the same 200-300% in the last few months.

Coincidence? I think no.

WhyMustItBe · August 2021

The situation I describe above is on the PC NA server. The NA price of crowns has not changed in years. I don't know what alleged countries have seen such radical increases or for what reason. But it should have no bearing on what is happening on NA servers.

joseayalac · August 2021

Even though I agree with most of what you said, there actually is more gold now than before in the game. That also factors toward inflation.

An easy example is the new green CP passive that increases all the gold you get. And many gold income sources have been added to the game, Battleground Memorabilia, Antiquities, etc.

tmbrinks · August 2021

I thought when crown trading was introduced that it would be well over 1000:1. I personally wouldn't sell my crowns for anything less that. My REAL LIFE MONEY that it takes to buy them, is worth far more that almost any "fake" in-game currency I can get for it.

Calling people who use their real money to buy crowns so people can get cosmetics at no real world cost "frauds", "greedy" etc... is insulting, demeaning, and downright mean to those spending REAL MONEY.

The only word I can use is selfish. People who are demanding that people take less for their REAL MONEY spent are selfish.

starkerealm · August 2021

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

The result of this, has been the radical overpricing of many other things in the game, as the calue of gold has been artificially depreciated. For a perfect example, look at single item prices for things like this: Powerful Assault Ice Staff 3 Million Gold

Just last year, weapons for popular sets like Mother's Sorrow in gold with good traits would go for MAYBE around a million gold.

Worth noting that Mother's Sorrow is relatively easy to farm in Deshaan, risk free.

Powerful Assault is an Imperial City Tel Var set. In order to farm it you need to collect Tel Var which is partially lost on death in a PvP zone that heavily favors ganking.

When you combine this with the fact that there is significantly less demand for tanking sets than for DPS sets, and it paints a picture of a weapon drop that is exceptionally rare in the community. This is compounded when you realize that it is possible to farm specific sets in the IC, meaning this staff is a unicorn drop, and excruciatingly difficult to obtain.

It is so difficult to obtain that it commands a price significantly higher than a much higher demand DPS set.

FrancisCrawford · August 2021

I don't know how anybody can claim to determine what a fair gold-to-crowns conversion price is. Most of the few things than can be bought both for crowns and for gold have a very low implied gold value for crowns (which usually makes me conclude that the crown prices are much too high). But one reason I've never bought the original notable houses for gold, now that I can easily afford them, is that they would actually have been cheaper in a gold-for-crowns swap. I gather that's finally no longer the case. (Another reason, admittedly, is that I don't actually like them all that well ...)

tsaescishoeshiner · August 2021

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

The situation I describe above is on the PC NA server. The NA price of crowns has not changed in years. I don't know what alleged countries have seen such radical increases or for what reason. But it should have no bearing on what is happening on NA servers.

It still impacts Crown availability, and some people were using foreign steam accounts to buy Crowns at a much cheaper rate.

Viewsfrom6ix · August 2021

Simple answer, supply and demand.

Making gold is so easy in this game and I guess people have caught on.

I've only been playing for 1 year without ESO+ and I was able to buy all chapters, DLCs, banker and merchant assistant with gold.

Kiralyn2000 · August 2021

Yeah, what is there to "address"?

It's entirely player-driven, outside of 1) having a crown sale (so there's more crowns in circulation), or 2) banning trading outright; there's nothing ZoS can really do about this.

Just like there's nothing they do about the price of gold upgrade mats on guild traders. (same thing there - it's all supply & demand)

Also

Basically for the past year, prices on crown exchanges have skyrocketed almost 300%. This is for no reason other than greed of crown sellers.

Before crown trading came to be, people who subbed to ESO+ and had nothing to buy, just had their crowns balance keep going up.
Once they could sell/trade them, they could finally get rid of them.
But once that long-time-built supply ran out.... yeah, there's less Crowns in circulation than there were a year ago. Not "no reason other than greed".

Disturbed_One · August 2021

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

The situation I describe above is on the PC NA server. The NA price of crowns has not changed in years. I don't know what alleged countries have seen such radical increases or for what reason. But it should have no bearing on what is happening on NA servers.

It still impacts Crown availability, and some people were using foreign steam accounts to buy Crowns at a much cheaper rate.

Oh yeah... forgot that Steam mostly patched the way that people were scamming the real-world exchange rates to get super cheap crowns due to depressed economies in other parts of the world.

Giraffon · August 2021

Supply and Demand my friend. The prices will level off when they reach a point where a player would be better off just buying crowns themselves with real money. We aren't there yet.

trackdemon5512 · August 2021

@WhyMustItBe

ZOS has no control over the crown exchange rate which is solely a secondary market operated and controlled by individual players and set by concurrent in-game economy trends.

The prices of crowns remains the same in all territories. The exchange of crowns to DLC material hasn’t changed. None of this has changed in YEARS so ZOS changing anything now won’t do anything.

Your issue really is with how Add-Ons and the nature of PC players has led to PC servers having way too much gold thus devaluing currency to the point that the exchange rate is as you alluded to “ridiculous”.

None of the consoles have exchange rates anything close to what PC has. PS4 NA notably is steady at 100:1 and has been since crown exchanges were introduced.

Marillea · August 2021

I still don't see the issue? Those people invest their money to make gold, so it seems fair they are in charge of pricing.
You don't like it, you're free to purchase your own crowns or pop ESO+. For anyone who can't or doesn't want to, the crown exchange has permitted the purchase of many items/DLCs.

I know it sure helped me when I couldn't buy certain things I wanted, who am I to tell the crown sellers they cannot charge me 1000:1?
I can always choose not to spend my gold if I find the price too high.

I am already getting items for free, how can I complain? How can you call someone who is providing a service like this, a scammer?

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · August 2021

Crown price on PC EU: 1000-1500 gold/crown

Agreed it's a bit absurd. I think the fact that you can buy crowns for gold is absurd too in a way...then you have the gold farmers who sell online...it's all a bit shady and uncontrolled by our producer.
Add to that the high prices of housing and housing items....a lot of players are going get 'stumped' here.
Another example of a forgotten aspect of the game.

vivisectvib16_ESO · August 2021

Damn, that's wild. It's still only 100:1 on PlayStation.

deyjasagus · August 2021

Disturbed_One wrote: »

Price of crowns went up 200-300% in several countries in the last few months.

Crown exchange prices are up the same 200-300% in the last few months.

Coincidence? I think no.

I looked at overall pricing for crown purchases in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia recently and found the pricing in all three locations to be nearly the same regardless of which package you selected. I'm not sure where crown prices are nearly 200-300% higher unless you mean they made it so that all countries are now paying close to the same prices where they may have been paying less before.

tmbrinks · August 2021

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

@WhyMustItBe

ZOS has no control over the crown exchange rate which is solely a secondary market operated and controlled by individual players and set by concurrent in-game economy trends.

The prices of crowns remains the same in all territories. The exchange of crowns to DLC material hasn’t changed. None of this has changed in YEARS so ZOS changing anything now won’t do anything.

Your issue really is with how Add-Ons and the nature of PC players has led to PC servers having way too much gold thus devaluing currency to the point that the exchange rate is as you alluded to “ridiculous”.

None of the consoles have exchange rates anything close to what PC has. PS4 NA notably is steady at 100:1 and has been since crown exchanges were introduced.

Except that 100:1 is actually about the same as the 600:1 (taking the middle) on PC/NA.

I can do writs on 36 characters on PC/NA, running two instances, in about 45 minutes. I make, at current PC/NA prices, about 1.5 million gold worth of "loot" if I sell it all

Talking with people in the crafting forum, the average was on you being able to do writs on about 8-12 characters in that same amount of time (depending on if you pre-craft or not). At PS4 prices, that's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-300k worth of "loot" in that time.

So the Time Ratio to Crown ratio is almost the same... and that's what buying crowns with gold is... is saving you time, so the ratios are fair

Yes, add-ons help make more gold, and have made things more expensive, but they also save you time, and those effects counteract one-another to come out almost equal. No need to ban add-ons, they're just different economies. (Now, if this game was cross platform, that'd be a whole different story)

Disturbed_One · August 2021

deyjasagus wrote: »

Disturbed_One wrote: »

Price of crowns went up 200-300% in several countries in the last few months.

Crown exchange prices are up the same 200-300% in the last few months.

Coincidence? I think no.

I looked at overall pricing for crown purchases in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia recently and found the pricing in all three locations to be nearly the same regardless of which package you selected. I'm not sure where crown prices are nearly 200-300% higher unless you mean they made it so that all countries are now paying close to the same prices where they may have been paying less before.

Yes, many countries had crowns that were significantly cheaper (relative to the US dollar, which I'll use because Zenimax is based in the US). This is why people were using VPNs to say they were from other countries through steam to take advantage of the exchange rates. They upped the rates in these countries, whether that makes them more expensive then US crowns or not, I don't know. But the fact of the matter is, there were some hefty increases to the cost of crowns in some other countries.

Either way, crowns are, in general, more expensive now than they were previously. Lower supply = higher cost in-game

jaws343 · August 2021

Here's the way I see it. The person who is putting REAL money into the game to get items for other players in exchange for fake in game currency can absolutely set the price for said exchange.

Players can do three things:
- Refuse the price, and maybe after not making any exchanges the person who put real money into it lowers their exchange rate
- Use your own real money to buy the items
- Accept that the person using real money to get items has more of a say in what they should receive in exchange for those items than the people trying to get them for easily farmable (and worthless) in game currency.

YandereGirlfriend · August 2021

What new players are buying Crowns with gold anyway?

That's normally the pastime of established players looking for a gold-sink.

Jaimeh · August 2021

Apparently people used vpns to buy crowns from cheaper places, and that's why they raised the crown prices. Thus supply fell, while demand didn't change, and the exchange rates increased as a result. Plus, there is a lot of gold accumulation in game, and not many gold sinks. The exchange rate usually falls when there's a crown sale going on. Regardless, I agree with some comments above that crowns cost real money so it makes sense that rates are high.

FluffWit · August 2021

Just curious have the prices of basic mats like Temps, Kuta, Sanded Ruby Ash and Corn Flower gone up much on PC over the last year or so.

On console Temps have dropped 30% plus (I blame CP2.0) but everything else seems to be pretty steady.

kargen27 · August 2021

"Basically for the past year, prices on crown exchanges have skyrocketed almost 300%. This is for no reason other than greed of crown sellers."

Prices increased when ZoS decided homes could be gifted. That created a huge demand for crowns.

WhyMustItBe · August 2021

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Yeah, what is there to "address"?

It's entirely player-driven, outside of 1) having a crown sale (so there's more crowns in circulation), or 2) banning trading outright; there's nothing ZoS can really do about this.

There totally is though, and I alluded to it in the OP.

It even has a precedent. World of Warcraft did something similar to what I suggest with their server-side setting of the exchange rate on tokens.

What ZOS could do it create an interface for crown exchange that bases the exchange rate on the current demand, so that anyone trading crowns are only able to do so at the server set rate, through the game's interface.

The current system is a stop-gap that relies on the "honor system" of players not scamming each other, and since ZOS will only restore your scammed gold/crowns ONCE, it creates an incentive to create throw-away accounts to scam people.

It also allows the human tendency to obsess over monopoly and exclusivity as a self valuation and status mechanism to run roughshod over the entire gaming economy in pursuit of that addiction.

A simple in-game interface for exchanging crowns with a server-set exchange rate would eliminate all of the scamming going on and bring the runaway inflation under control so that new players aren't increasingly pushed out of the market.

Much as it is in real life.

Naftal · August 2021

What they need to do is put a LOT more gold sinks in the game. As long as there's more gold created than destroyed, the value of gold will keep going down.

Disturbed_One · August 2021

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Yeah, what is there to "address"?

It's entirely player-driven, outside of 1) having a crown sale (so there's more crowns in circulation), or 2) banning trading outright; there's nothing ZoS can really do about this.

There totally is though, and I alluded to it in the OP.

It even has a precedent. World of Warcraft did something similar to what I suggest with their server-side setting of the exchange rate on tokens.

What ZOS could do it create an interface for crown exchange that bases the exchange rate on the current demand, so that anyone trading crowns are only able to do so at the server set rate, through the game's interface.

The current system is a stop-gap that relies on the "honor system" of players not scamming each other, and since ZOS will only restore your scammed gold/crowns ONCE, it creates an incentive to create throw-away accounts to scam people.

It also allows the human tendency to obsess over monopoly and exclusivity as a self valuation and status mechanism to run roughshod over the entire gaming economy in pursuit of that addiction.

A simple in-game interface for exchanging crowns with a server-set exchange rate would eliminate all of the scamming going on and bring the runaway inflation under control so that new players aren't increasingly pushed out of the market.

Much as it is in real life.

There's "set" prices in the real world? Only things I know of like that that have a minimum price to sell are things like cigarettes and alcohol.

Have you looked at the world economy lately... many people can't afford basic housing. "Much as it is in real life" LMAO.

Letting ZoS set it up so that you exchange crowns through the trade window, so that both sides must put the agreed upon goods/gold/crowns before trade happens... sure.

WhyMustItBe · August 2021

Disturbed_One wrote: »

There's "set" prices in the real world? Only things I know of like that that have a minimum price to sell are things like cigarettes and alcohol.

Have you looked at the world economy lately... many people can't afford basic housing. "Much as it is in real life" LMAO.

Letting ZoS set it up so that you exchange crowns through the trade window, so that both sides must put the agreed upon goods/gold/crowns before trade happens... sure.

I think you are reading my "as it is in the real world" out of order. It is my fault, I could have phrased that better. But to clarify, when I said "much as it is in real life" I was refering to this bit:

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

...the human tendency to obsess over monopoly and exclusivity as a self valuation and status mechanism to run roughshod over the entire gaming economy in pursuit of that addiction.

Which I think you will find, if you look at the current global economy, dominates the mindset of human civilization at this period in history.

So much seems out of control, so we settle on controlling things we can like the economy, and other people's lives by proxy. Somehow, that seems to make people feel better about all the things they can't control.

Instead of actually working together to do something about them. Like, by USING all that money. That is why I call it an addiction. Because I feel this behavior is very much a coping mechanism rather than a solution unto itself. But that is another story.

Chips_Ahoy · August 2021

"You can learn everything you need to know about a person by the things they take too seriously."

take it easy it's just a game.

WhyMustItBe · August 2021

Chips_Ahoy wrote: »

"You can learn everything you need to know about a person by the things they take too seriously."

take it easy it's just a game.

Honestly I don't want to get off topic here. [snip]

It is simply a better designed system than the "honor system" ZOS developed, which I can't help but feel was always meant to be little more than a stop-gap that simply never got fleshed out.

Hopefully Microsoft can finish the job here. Because in addition to the skyrocketing prices, scamming is off the charts as well. As soon as the community found out they would only restore your items ONCE, that was basically the opening of the flood gate for scamming.

There NEEDS to be a controlled system for exchange when it comes to real money.

[edited for inappropriate content]

Disturbed_One · August 2021

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Chips_Ahoy wrote: »

"You can learn everything you need to know about a person by the things they take too seriously."

take it easy it's just a game.

Honestly I don't want to get off topic here. [snip]

It is simply a better designed system than the "honor system" ZOS developed, which I can't help but feel was always meant to be little more than a stop-gap that simply never got fleshed out.

Hopefully Microsoft can finish the job here. Because in addition to the skyrocketing prices, scamming is off the charts as well. As soon as the community found out they would only restore your items ONCE, that was basically the opening of the flood gate for scamming.

There NEEDS to be a controlled system for exchange when it comes to real money.

Completely agree.

Make crowns actually tradable on the in-game menu. That way both parties have to put it up in there before it's accepted. No more honor system.

Just like you'd trade gold for goods in the game, you can trade gold for crowns directly.

But you're asking for price controls as well, that's an entirely different argument.

[edited to remove quote]