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

LordArconSeptim · August 2021

THE ONLY THING ZOS NEEDS TO DO IS TO LOWER REAL LIFE CURRENCY PRICE OF CROWNS, END OF STORY, CLOSE THE THREAD.

starkerealm · August 2021

LordArconSeptim wrote: »

THE ONLY THING ZOS NEEDS TO DO IS TO LOWER REAL LIFE CURRENCY PRICE OF CROWNS, END OF STORY, CLOSE THE THREAD.

I mean, you're not wrong. Crown Store prices have always seemed incongruously steep.

Fischblut · August 2021

A server-set exchange rate is an extremely bad idea as it would render a crown exchange meaningless. Doing so would be ZOS saying [X amt of Gold] = [Y amt of Crowns] = [Z amt of Real World Currency]. By the transitive property ZOS would create a very real Gold = Real World Money market. They would set themselves up to just be kicked off Microsoft and Sony platforms at the very least.

I don't understand this. I imagine, the official system would change the rate depending on amount of gold/crowns available in the game. Crowns or gold would not just appear out of thin air. I don't understand why it can be bad, and why would anyone be against it?

Maybe only brokers from Discord servers might be upset cause they would lose their tax. But this would also mean that they don't have to run those Discord servers anyomore, reducing their stress and giving them more time to play the game.
And scammers who intend to take away somebody's currency without offering their part of deal (cause they never intended to spend their own crowns/gold anyway)... yes, scammers would be upset for sure. They would never be able to scam anyone, so it's very good!

If people inject lot of gold there (by purchasing many crowns with their gold), gold rate of crowns will go up. If people inject lot of crowns there (by purchasing large amounts of gold with their crowns), the price of crowns will go down. It would not be worse than current "gifting" system

For example, in GW2 they have official "gold > gem" conversion system. Exchange rates are being constantly changed, depending on how many players inject gold or gems there. It fluctuates between 120 gold > 400 gems (when there is nothing interesting in cash shop), and 190 gold > 400 gems (when there is something new in cash shop).
One player can only purchase certain amount of gold/gems at a time. For example, if you've bought 120 gold or 400 gems, you need to refresh the page if you wish to buy more - cause the rate will need to update.
Nobody can't simply buy huge amounts of currency instantly at the best exchange rate. Every single transaction changes the rate, even if it's slight change from "120 gold > 400 gems" to "121 gold > 400 gems".

This system is amazing!

It's 100% safe and extremely flexible. You don't need to stress out by searching for sellers/buyers. You can buy any currency any time. I truly hope that one day, developers will finally add something like this into ESO! :'(

There are a multitude of players sitting on tens of millions of gold in the game with nothing really to spend it on except crown store items. Market fluctuations, new players, higher prices in game, none of those have an affect on these players and their ability to buy crowns. The only thing preventing them from spending millions and millions is the lack of available crowns.

Crowns are always available, at least in-game (without using any of those Discord servers)

The only thing which would prevent me from purchasing gifts is when sellers would ask for too high exchange rate.
I still buy at 400 gold rate, sometimes at 600 gold rate if I'm desperate. At higher rates, it simply becomes not worth buying gifts.
For me, who has to put lot of time into earning gold to sustain my cosmetic items addiction, gold is too valuable to throw away at very high rates.

People who don't value their gold for whatever reason, will agree to pay even crazy high exchange rates. This is very sad

I earn gold only to buy gifts from the store. I have to be careful not to spend lot of gold for items such as rare motifs, furnishings, in-game houses, rare gear... Even though I can afford everything, I prefer to save as much gold as possible for crates and standalone cosmetics. I was eyeing certain Undaunted and Achievement furnishings for years, and only iron will prevented me from buying them

And during some holiday, I've decided to give myself a "present" and finally purchase few Undaunted and Achievement furnishings

I still have one Achievement furnishing to purchase, but I will save that for some next holiday.
If I didn't save gold for gifts, I could puchase many fine things instantly... There are always options for gold sink even without gifting, and they depend on different interests. I don't understand how people can claim that there is no gold sink in the game

Maybe there is no gold sink for their own interests, but that's on them.

My opinion is unpopular (even for my own interests): people should stop paying high rates for gifts. If gifting dies out - so be it!
Sooner or later, sellers would either have to lower their rates. Or they will stop buying lot of crowns (cause they would no longer need to sell gifts) - and developers will be forced to implement better system, to make people participate in it again and have the need to buy many crowns, again.

If "gifting" will remain the only option to obtain cosmetics, and the rates will increase, I will have to stop participating in it. It will no longer be worth spending my time to earn the same amount of gold for "scraps". 5 millions gold for measly 15 crates? No, thank you!

If I can't get as many cosmetics as I'm used to, I will have no reason to earn gold at all. I will buy some furnishings, few cheap in-game houses, some motifs - I don't need to earn as much gold for that, as I do for gifting. Some people might have no idea how many crates one has to buy per season if there are many nice rewards in them... That's why I'm always so interested in datamines - they allow me to plan my crate budget for at least 6 months, to see if i can relax or if I have to earn gold.

If I have no reason to earn gold, I don't need to play alot and I don't need to be subscribed.
I would not even need to buy "chapters" in such situation, even on sale. I could simply subscribe for a month a year (when previous chapter becomes DLC), play every available DLC content - and take a break till the next year. There is other game where I can have as much cosmetics as I want at reasonable rates, always... But I really like combat and questing in ESO, so I would prefer to not see such sad situation come true

Jackey · August 2021

The obvious short term solution to this:
Hop in to IC, have some PvPvE fun.
Make bank from selling the PA set.
$$$

Tan9oSuccka · August 2021

To be honest, in my opinion the old rate was a rip off for Crown Sellers.

Less and less sellers out there. More people looking to buy.

Seems normal to me.

corrosivechains · August 2021

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

Conduit0 wrote: »

The lack of Crown sales has greatly affected prices, ZOS used to have 3 to 4 Crown sales every year, now it's 1 or maybe 2 a year and the discount is smaller than it used to be.

So you have inflation decreasing the value of gold combined with lack of Crown sales resulting in fewer Crowns being purchased. So it makes sense that Crown prices are going up.

This still doesn't explain the sudden radical jump from ~400:1 to over 700:1 over the past two months alone.

Disturbed_One wrote: »

Was talking with a friend of mine in game and the topic of crowns came up... I was talking about this thread, and she said she used to broker at TCE back a few years ago. I asked about some of the comments/accusations/etc. in here (they aren't on the forums)...

It isn't that these "official" exchange sites don't provide a service to the community. The problem is ZOS not having a safe and secure way to exchange crowns in-game, leaving it up to the honor system, and thus manufacturing a need for such sites, which would not exist if this system was better implemented.

The scenario of "pay whatever the crown exchanges charge or get scammed" is 100% a result of ZOS not doing this.

However, if these exchanges were really in it to help the community, they would set a hard cap for exchange rates and simply create a first-come-first-serve queue for people wanting to buy crowns, if the supply of crowns was really so low at that rate. Their willingness to leap from 400:1 to over 700:1 does not seem like they are trying to do any favors for the community, regardless of anyone's attempted rationalization.

If they were, and played hard ball with the crown hoarders, the would eventually come down to earth and sell at a reasonable rate, when they realized the alternative was to not sell them at all. If anything it gives the appearance of the exchanges capitulating to the crown-holding price manipulators, if not being the outright manipulators themselves.

I have heard a lot of attempts to explain this away as being just "supply and demand" and other things, but none of these explanations can account for such a radical leap in such a short period of time.

If these go-to sites were to hold their ground and set a hard cap at a rational level new players could actually ever hope to participate in, then these holdouts would not be hoarding crowns waiting for a higher price to sell them at.

If you really want to split hairs that the exchanges aren't price fixing for their own benefit, then I guess you could say they are being manipulated by people holding the crown supply, who are refusing to sell crowns unless the "official" exchange everyone goes to dramatically increases pricing.

Either way it is greed driving this exponential short term leap, not the price of cabbage in Tijuana or anything else.

And regardless of who is ultimately responsible, it would ALL be solved if ZOS would just finish the system they started.

100% on this. And as was pointed out to me yesterday, I was off on what buyers were paying by 100:1(the rate was 400:1, not 300:1 *eyeroll*). Something else which is also suspicious when monitoring the Crown Exchange discords is you'll often see white tagged sellers immediately selling crowns at or above the current seller rate regularly, while the sellers who have earned different color(ones who have earned their 'reliable seller' tags) aren't selling at or within a 100:1 ratio below the current seller rate. Obviously this isn't happening ALL the time(since some posters don't understand hyperbole), but it's happening enough to be suspicious [snip].

So again, there definitely appears to be something purposeful going on to inflate the crown prices that is not at all related to inflation, "popular items on the crown store", or a mysterious increase in players that runs absolutely counter to every other observation within the game.

[edited for profanity bypass]

VaranisArano · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

corrosivechains · August 2021

starkerealm wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

That's not what a monopoly is.

A monopoly is when a single party controls the supply of something into the market.

I think it is more complex than that. I think you have to consider HOW they maintain control. The factors I describe create a PERCEPTUAL monopoly. When people perceive their only options are "get scammed" or "pay the ridiculous price," they will pay the price.

I honestly think this is just semantics.

No, it's not.

You can't have it both ways. You cannot simultaneously have a monopoly, but also people outside the monopoly exploiting it's hypothetical existence.

Uh, yes you can. Black markets are things, which exist, in reality.

redlink1979 · August 2021

LordArconSeptim wrote: »

THE ONLY THING ZOS NEEDS TO DO IS TO LOWER REAL LIFE CURRENCY PRICE OF CROWNS, END OF STORY, CLOSE THE THREAD.

ZOS losing money? LOL

Ken_Koerperich · August 2021

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

The activity I enjoy is QUESTING....

So I'm SOL....

And there in lies the "Rub"...

Sanctum74 · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

The activity I enjoy is QUESTING....

So I'm SOL....

And there in lies the "Rub"...

And I enjoy pvp, but I also realize there are things in the game I want so I spend 10 minutes a day doing writs even though I don’t like them because it allows me to buy what I want and I’m always sitting on hundreds of each gold upgrade mats.

We all make choices, but telling people how much they should sell things they worked for should never be one of them.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · August 2021

joseayalac wrote: »

Even though I agree with most of what you said, there actually is more gold now than before in the game

Do you have anyway of actually proving that?

TX12001rwb17_ESO · August 2021

FluffWit wrote: »

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

Dreugh Wax is currently over 20,000 gold each
Chromium Platings are around 210,000 gold each
Hakiejo Runes are 35,000 gold each, they are not even hard to obtain

Prices are getting higher and higher which is creating a massive gap between players who can afford these prices and those who cannot, it takes almost a mil just to gold out a single piece of jewelry.

GimpyPorcupine · August 2021

If in-game currency is being created/destroyed at roughly the same rate, but the rate of creation of real-world currency is increased (because central banks are printing money), then that would put pressure on the Crown exchange rate.

I am not going to suggest that it's the only factor, but it cannot be completely eliminated as a contributing one.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · August 2021

Possible ways ZOS could fix this:

GOLD MATS

Make Gold Mats Buyable from merchants for a set price, something higher enough that it would both be the preferably method over obtaining them from players but not so low that it is easy to blow a large sum of gold on them

Something like 10,000 gold each, this means sellers would need to sell less then that if they want to make a profit from farming them therefore they make less, personally I would take a hit from this but I would be happy with it because it would add a permanent upper limit to how much these items can cost.

LUXURY VENDOR

Raise the value on items sold at the Luxury Vendor and make them bind on Pickup so the items can not be later flipped once they have become rare, I admit I am currently trying to do this with the Brotherhood Stained Glass that was there the other week but personally I would not be angry if this change took place.

And the most drastic idea

REDUCE THE GOLD GAP

Currently the Gold cap is around 2.1 billion, what ZOS needs to do is lower it to about 100 million, if you have more then that banked or on a single character well tough luck you lose it, it isn't like anyone even needs that much gold.

JKorr · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Million gold, at the rate I make it, ON ONE char = MONTHS....

Waiting for gold to drop into your hands doesn't work.

When I started playing I didn't really bother with trying to make gold. It took time to get gold together. Then one day I reached the point where I wasn't hunting motifs anymore, and decided to actually try to make gold.

Amazingly, that worked. Doing writs and farming mats for sale as is and refined works. I just don't understand the people who run past flowers, mushrooms, runes, wood, and unowned containers. Or leave "trash" behind in the nodes; worms always sell when I list them. I donate to my guilds, buy mats for under cp160 gear if I need them to craft for my guild mates for free,buy the odd motif I'm still missing and still have gold to bank.

Ken_Koerperich · August 2021

JKorr wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Million gold, at the rate I make it, ON ONE char = MONTHS....

Waiting for gold to drop into your hands doesn't work.

When I started playing I didn't really bother with trying to make gold. It took time to get gold together. Then one day I reached the point where I wasn't hunting motifs anymore, and decided to actually try to make gold.

Amazingly, that worked. Doing writs and farming mats for sale as is and refined works. I just don't understand the people who run past flowers, mushrooms, runes, wood, and unowned containers. Or leave "trash" behind in the nodes; worms always sell when I list them. I donate to my guilds, buy mats for under cp160 gear if I need them to craft for my guild mates for free,buy the odd motif I'm still missing and still have gold to bank.

Tried that, but thanks to "farmers" the price is so low on stuff "I" can currently farm, it's a waste of my game time...

Lady_Galadhiel · August 2021

@Ken_Koerperich
I started a new toon on NA,I started from 0 since I never had a character on the server.I didn't want to grind gold nor focusing too much on making gold either.
I started in Summerset and did daily quests.I joined a trading guild with low requirements and sold culanda.I know it is not bringing huge amounts of gold but for a start it's decent plus it does not feel like a grind as I am getting it from questing.
Before the Elsweyr event,Shimmering Sand also sold for a decent price and is even easier to obtain,plus you also get it from questing.

But one thing I would really recommend is daily writs.If you only have one character it takes less than 5 minutes and can be a game changer.I got a survey map with my lvl 35 toon and did go to get it and got an Aetherial dust from it which I sold.
I made like 600k in 2 weeks on NA without CP,passives or anything and spending less than an hour on that server each day.

thorwyn · August 2021

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs.

Actually you should be happy about the prices of wax and rosin. If this game was full of people like you, there would be no wax on the market at all.

JKorr · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

The activity I enjoy is QUESTING....

So I'm SOL....

And there in lies the "Rub"...

You enjoy questing.

So do I. While I'm going from quest giver to quest location, when I see rune nodes, ore, fiber nodes, crates, barrels, or sacks I take a few seconds and check them out. Mundane runes, decorating wax, kutas, corn flowers, mushrooms, even worms are not hard to find while questing. And all of them can be sold for gold. Worms were selling for 40 gold each at one point recently. They've been higher. Columbian and corn flower were 600+. I pick up gold while questing. Unless someone ignores the opportunities, its almost impossible not to.

Ken_Koerperich · August 2021

JKorr wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

The activity I enjoy is QUESTING....

So I'm SOL....

And there in lies the "Rub"...

You enjoy questing.

So do I. While I'm going from quest giver to quest location, when I see rune nodes, ore, fiber nodes, crates, barrels, or sacks I take a few seconds and check them out. Mundane runes, decorating wax, kutas, corn flowers, mushrooms, even worms are not hard to find while questing. And all of them can be sold for gold. Worms were selling for 40 gold each at one point recently. They've been higher. Columbian and corn flower were 600+. I pick up gold while questing. Unless someone ignores the opportunities, its almost impossible not to.

Cool, sounds all good. That's what you got for prices.

30 items up, posted under market value....

Sold exactly ZERO items in 40 days....

As for writs....Zero crafting points, my priority is combat skills....so writs at Lv1 give diddly squat IMO.

So again, it's a waste of my time.

Thanks for all of your input though.

I'll continue playing my 2 hours my way. Load up DF, wait upwards of an hour, grab a quest, maybe 2, then log out....

VaranisArano · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Everything is out of control IMO.

Way to many "long time" multitoon players making gold hand over fist keep driving prices up so others, ie. single toon, new players can't afford to buy anything.

I'm looking at 8 Tempering Alloys, 16 Rosins, 48 Dreugh Wax costs.....

Way over the top pricing.....

No, I don't waste my tiny bit of time playing sitting and doing writs on one character, actually, I hate writs. Unless you got the stuff on hand, you spend your time running around fetching it all.

So where does that leave us? Out in the cold praying for the prices to drop.

As I said earlier, gold....lmfao! Been playing over 40 days now, and I finally reached 130k gold.

Still need to upgrade bag, mount, bank, and gear.....Were do you start when it all is so overpriced???

Something has to give guys/gals.....

Market is saturated with thousands of items, all at the same price, and if you're extremely lucky, you MAY stumble on that "cheap" item(s).....Very rarely.

So what's a new/casual supposed to do.....

And Crowns for gold, you see so many scammers trying to make offers for pennies on the dollar....Just this AM, some dude/dudette wanting 5k crowns for only 150k.....Damn near knocked me out of my chair with that low-ball offer....

But, I don't see the market changing much either, since players think what they have is "gold" and worth a mint every time they put it up for sale.

ZOS needs to just make an Auction House, that can be accessed from one point, and allow players to actually SHOP around. Then people would stop gouging, as they would see "average" prices and not keep inflating every thing. Would also make buying so much easier as you could see whole server of "sales" and take the best prices....

JMO...again, something has to give, because I'm not rich, and my list is upwards 1.3 m gold needed, just for my single toons gear....I can't afford that.....

You are 40+ days into an MMORPG. Those are designed to keep players playing for years, and moreover, are designed to get players to spend a lot of time in that MMO world grinding items or grinding the gold to get items. If you have limited time to do so, then it's very likely that you'll fundamentally struggle to "keep up" in an MMO.

It may be more helpful to consider it in terms of "hours played." How you spend those hours matters.

Questing is not particularly lucrative. I too had an AD character who went straight through all six AD zones questing and ended with about 140k gold, about the same as you.

Meanwhile, my farming character can run 12 hours of Craglorn loops and sell the raw materials and nirncrux for about 1 million gold to other players. That was well before the current pricing, so the amount would probably be higher now. Farming, not questing, is how I can afford to outfit my multiple characters in their end-game gear. That's an accessible method to anyone with a maxed crafter - and nirncrux from craglorn/regents from the Hollow City are available even earlier to level 3 characters straight from the tutorial.

Seriously, how you spend your limited playtime matters. Farming your own mats takes time. Doing crafting writs takes time. Getting items to sell takes time. Of course, questing as a thoroughly inefficient way to make gold also takes a lot of time too, and leaves players gold-poor at the end.

I find that it's worth spending some of my playtime farming stuff to sell to get gold. It saves me time in the long run - 12 hours of farming allows me to just straight up buy1 million of whatever I would otherwise have to grind for myself, like gear or improvement materials.

You know what the solution is: spend some of your limited playtime on activities that get you the items you need or the gold to buy those items.

It's up to you if you'll do it, or not and just complain when you remain perpetually gold-poor. Because unless you change how you spend your playtime, it's very likely you could double your hours played and have 260,000 gold to show for it. Meanwhile, expect fully upgrading your bank space to take about 760k gold in total. That's going to take you quite a while at your current rate.

ESO is an MMORPG. Even when you take all the possible inflation out of it and look purely at what ZOS expects you to pay, it's not that forgiving towards extremely casual players who don't spend some of their playtime making gold.

So sincerely, in the interests of helping you have a better experience, I strongly suggest you consider finding an activity that you enjoy that will also make you a decent amount of gold to do during some of your limited playtime. Refusing to do so is your right, but its also going to leave you frustrated and feeling left out in the cold, even though the door to come in is wide open.

The activity I enjoy is QUESTING....

So I'm SOL....

And there in lies the "Rub"...

You enjoy questing.

So do I. While I'm going from quest giver to quest location, when I see rune nodes, ore, fiber nodes, crates, barrels, or sacks I take a few seconds and check them out. Mundane runes, decorating wax, kutas, corn flowers, mushrooms, even worms are not hard to find while questing. And all of them can be sold for gold. Worms were selling for 40 gold each at one point recently. They've been higher. Columbian and corn flower were 600+. I pick up gold while questing. Unless someone ignores the opportunities, its almost impossible not to.

Cool, sounds all good. That's what you got for prices.

30 items up, posted under market value....

Sold exactly ZERO items in 40 days....

As for writs....Zero crafting points, my priority is combat skills....so writs at Lv1 give diddly squat IMO.

So again, it's a waste of my time.

Thanks for all of your input though.

I'll continue playing my 2 hours my way. Load up DF, wait upwards of an hour, grab a quest, maybe 2, then log out....

By all means, continue to play in the ways that make you happy (and the ways you know don't make you much gold.)

It is 100% your right to refuse to accept any of the solutions available to you - like using that time you spend waiting for the Dungeon Finder to farm regents and nirncrux, or steal items, or do something you enjoy that also gets you some more gold.

But refusing those solutions does not mean that the system is broken or needs to be changed to accommodate you. It does mean that you would be wise to accept the consequences of your decisions and adjust your gold budget accordingly.

If you are only earning 130k gold every 40+ days and farming for no materials or gear on your own, then its going to take you a long time to get your bag and bank space alone, much less gold quality gear (that you don't even need for questing or dungeons.)

Kiralyn2000 · August 2021

Wait, you said you enjoyed Questing. But now you're talking about waiting an hour for dungeon runs. That's a different thing. And also needs better gear than Questing.

I was going to say that, sure - Questing you can do without needing to spend any money or doing any grinding. You can manage questing on just the zone-drop armor sets & gear. Sure, a bit of crafting can help, to improve that gear, but that only matters once you hit 50/160

(you should also have plenty of skill points to grab combat skills + a bit of others like crafting - between story quests, leveling, and skyshards, there's a steady stream of them as you level. To do crafting, especially just writs & improving your personal gear? You don't have to nearly fill out those skill trees. Heck, my alts do writs with just the first point in each craft. The reward you get from daily writs is based on your character's level, not the level of their crafting.)

But yeah - if you have to go out farming mats for each writ, then it's not worth it. I've always (way back to Morrowind) grabbed every crafting material/alchemy plant/whatever that I walk past. So after a bit of questing when I started playing, I had materials to craft with. And now that they reduced the items you need to craft for the Smith/Cloth/Wood writs, you get back more than you use doing them at Rank 1. So the only thing you need to provide is style materials.

The way I manage materials is that I had a good stock to start with, and then just do writs on my alts (takes a few minutes, no mods). I collect up all the Crafting Surveys that drop, and then when a Free ESO+ weekend comes along, I spend a couple hours collecting & refining all those mats. Which refills anything I lost doing the previous months of writs. I don't have to go out gathering mats to do them. And yeah - that's not something a new player can do, and it's "not fair'.... but it's also typical for an MMO. Veteran players have all sorts of advantages, because they spent time gaining them.

Provisioning should also be trivial, assuming you loot boxes as you quest through dungeons/ruins/etc. And, of course, are subbed, so all that junk goes in your craft bag. And yes, I'm assuming that a New Player would at least be subbed for the first month - you're playing a fresh game, you're going to spend a lot of your time on it, it's totally worth subbing either first month, or second month. I think I subbed my first three months back in 2016, and then stopped.

I don't buy/sell materials & gear from other players. I make my money be vendoring things, fencing stolen goods, and quest rewards. I find or craft my gear. I don't do dungeons. There's nothing I've "needed" from either guild traders, or the Crown Store, so anything the economy has done in the last 4 years basically hasn't effected me.
(well, I did buy one expensive item from a trader, and had to wait a couple months after it's release for the price to drop down to ~250k gold - the Fang Lair chest motif.

)

edit: even if you don't want to Do Crafting™, you should probably still be doing Provisioning. The food is quite useful.

VaranisArano · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Million gold, at the rate I make it, ON ONE char = MONTHS....

Waiting for gold to drop into your hands doesn't work.

When I started playing I didn't really bother with trying to make gold. It took time to get gold together. Then one day I reached the point where I wasn't hunting motifs anymore, and decided to actually try to make gold.

Amazingly, that worked. Doing writs and farming mats for sale as is and refined works. I just don't understand the people who run past flowers, mushrooms, runes, wood, and unowned containers. Or leave "trash" behind in the nodes; worms always sell when I list them. I donate to my guilds, buy mats for under cp160 gear if I need them to craft for my guild mates for free,buy the odd motif I'm still missing and still have gold to bank.

Tried that, but thanks to "farmers" the price is so low on stuff "I" can currently farm, it's a waste of my game time...

Oh, and quit blaming other people. This isn't on "farmers." It's on you and your decisions.

There are plenty of mats you could be selling independent on your level. A level 3 player fresh out of the tutorial can farm and sell flowers, mushrooms, and nirncrux for the same price as a CP 1100ish player like me.

Furthermore, you say you haven't leveled up your crafting. Which means you are farming 1/2 level 1 mats and 1/2 mats at your level.

It shouldn't be too surprising that there's not a huge demand for level 1 materials so prices are lower. However, the refining chance doesn't change. So if you wanted to get more Tempering Alloys, you can put some skill points in that passive, then refine iron ore for the best chance at Alloys. Iron/rubedite doesn't make a difference for refinement. If you want improvement mats without having to pay for them, you'd do well to spend some skill points in the refinement passives.

There is a big demand for max level materials since obviously every player over CP 160 uses them, so again, you'd do well to make the investment of skill points to improve your crafting so you can break into that market.

Or don't, it's up to you.

Just don't blame "farmers" for something you've chosen not to do. It's fine that you don't want to. It's not cool that you are blaming the people who do.

Folkb · August 2021

I don't think there needs to be a regulated economy behind something that wasn't suppose to be an economy in the first place.

Gifting crowns seems like it was suppose to be something for friends to do or just something nice to.

I would honestly change gifting crowns and limit it to only be done with some who has been on your friends list for an x amount of time.

Obsidian3 · August 2021

Sorry, getting a little tired of these [snip] "X costs too much ZoS do something" threads.

[edited for baiting]

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO · August 2021

I didnt read most of this, tbh.

Crowns (for me) are for stuff you don't need to enjoy the game, so if you buy crowns your doing it of your own accord. Supply and demand and all that. Ive passed on plenty of crown store items i wanted because they cost too much for me. If they cost too much, don't buy them and if enough people don't, the price will come down.

I don't know about other countries and such, so if its the only way to get crowns, then my points are moot.

NOW a system to prevent scamming and secure honor trading, sure absolutely all for that.

CSose · August 2021

It feels like someone should interject a little perspective here.

Nobody needs anything that can be found in the crown store. It's strictly cosmetics that have no bearing on playing the game.

WrathOfInnos · August 2021

I don’t think it’s an issue of greed, just inflation on gold. It isn’t just crowns that have gone up in price, potions sell for 3-4X what they used to, Dreugh Wax is 4-5X what it was a year or two ago.

I’m not an MMO economy expert, but this gold inflation is definitely something that should be investigated and addressed. It doesn’t appear to be stopping, just continues to get worse with time.

Ken_Koerperich · August 2021

So, for a game that touts, Play as you like...

There sure seems to be alot of:

1) Want gold, play this way
2) Want to do Dungeons, you must do this
3) Meta this meta that or again, your SOL
4) Join a Guild...
5) If you don't "F", get lost mentality...
6) Must, Must, Must, Must, or you suck @ the game.....

And yes, the farmers are the problem, when they are selling the exact same thing I can farm, but selling it for pennies because they can put up 50 piles of 200 vs my 1 pile of 200... Bots, or "really" do you not see the 75+ bots running around Khenarthi's Roost everyday, flooding the list with low level stuff, as for high level stuff, I'm not 50 yet, so there's that.

[snip]

Lastly, why are you PAYING for a game you already PAID for anyway??

[snip]
[edited for baiting]