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

Vevvev · August 2021

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

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.

Why do you assume that a Crown Exchange Interface would necessarily have a set exchange rate?

Star Trek Online, for ex, has an exchange... and the exchange rate is set by the players. The exchange rate varies up and down depending on supply & demand. The only control the devs put on it, is they set a maximum & minimum for the rate. Which, if ZoS followed that example, would have a pretty high top end.

(the exchange on STO is between Zen and a limited currency called Dilithium. You earn unrefined Dil from all sorts of things, but you can only refine 8k per day, per character. The maximum exchange rate is 500 Dil : 1 zen. So you can get 16 Zen/day, unless you run alts. So 500 is pretty darn expensive, compared to 700 gold:1 Crown.)

..actually, thinking about it, the other 'official' exchanges I've seen in past MMOs, also didn't have set rates. And yeah, as the gold supply in the games went up, new players couldn't afford much in the exchange. Natural side effect of a game having a endlessly increasing gold supply.

If you really want the exchange rate to go down, Gold has to become "more valuable"... which means they either need to cut the supply (reduce how much gold everyone gets), or increase the demand (more gold sinks, that people want to blow their gold on.)

That limit on the Zen market has actually recently crashed it in recent history. Nobody is selling and those that do immediately have it bought up. Due to supply and demand the actual value of Zen is much higher than the highest price it can be listed at.

thorwyn · August 2021

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

There sure seems to be alot of:
...

You can do whatever you want, nobody stops you from playing your way.
What you can't do is expect other players to spend their ingame time on farming materials and then selling them to you for a dumping price because you are too lazy and self-entitled to do it yourself.
You want gold gear? Get it! It's all out there somewhere and there are multiple ways of earning it.

Disturbed_One · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

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

There sure seems to be alot of:

snip

I was wondering when the "Play as you like" trope would be misused.

Play as you like has never meant what you just said it did. It's never been used that way by ZoS to describe their game.

What it has meant is that every class can perform each of the 3 basic roles (Tank/DPS/Heals) adequately enough to clear and do all content (yes, some are better than others), this is undeniably true.

It has also meant that every race can perform each role (some are still better than others), this is 98% true... there are some poor combinations, but in the hands of a good player, I guarantee they can still clear all content in the game. (You might not be able to get Planesbreaker, but everything else is probably in reach)

It DOES NOT mean... I only want to do 1 small aspect of the game, but I should still get "all the things"

That's like expecting to get 6 pack abs by only doing bicep curls. It's not going to happen.

The_Lex · August 2021

thorwyn wrote: »

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

There sure seems to be alot of:
...

You can do whatever you want, nobody stops you from playing your way.
What you can't do is expect other players to spend their ingame time on farming materials and then selling them to you for a dumping price because you are too lazy and self-entitled to do it yourself.
You want gold gear? Get it! It's all out there somewhere and there are multiple ways of earning it.

/thread

VaranisArano · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

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]

You know that's not what "Play the Way You Like" means, right?

Sources:

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B: The Developer Deep Dive on Class Identity, in which the Devs say, "One of our mantras for ESO is "play the way you want," and in this case, it means any class can fulfill any role (tank, dps, support/healer)....To be clear, our goal is for every class to be viable, not necessarily optimal, in any role without heavily relying on non-class skill lines."
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025 (emphasis is the Devs'.)

It doesn't mean that you can play ESO exactly the way you personally like and expect to get access to all the gold and resources of players who invest more time and effort into crafting and farming, or for that matter, to build any way you like and still be optimal at all levels of content. Those are both common misconceptions I see pretty often.

Also, bots suck, but that's not what you originally said. I appreciate the clarification. I certainly agree that bots make things unfair for actual players who want to farm materials and happily support ZOS removing them from the game. Though I will note that the bots don't price real players out of the markets I cited. Flowers, mushrooms, and nirncrux are easily farmed by level 3 players straight out of the tutorial. Leveling crafting makes refining low level materials a valid way to get improvement materials.

The rest of your post is unnecessarily combative.

Now, it's certainly acceptable to play ESO by focusing solely on combat, questing, and dungeons. In the process, however, you are cutting yourself off from the whole crafting side of the game. That's a choice you made - not a wrong choice, necessarily, but nonetheless a choice.

It then feels rather unfair to decide "crafting is a waste of time" then turn around and complain that crafters aren't selling you their crafting stuff at your price point. They put in the time and effort. They get to decide the price. And if you don't like it, the crafting side of the game is always open to you, and then you can set your own price.

I guess you could say I'm not a big fan of asking for sweeping changes to the game like an Auction House all in order to "solve" what is basically a personal matter of limited playtime and choosing to eschew crafting and/or gold-making activities.

[edited to remove quote]

Pevey · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

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]

Do you think prices are too high or too low? It is difficult to tell. It seems both. You think prices are too low for you to want to farm yourself (because farmers sell for “pennies”) but prices are too high and creating a supposed impediment for new players who need to gold out their gear (except they don’t need to gold out their gear, and if they want to gold out their gear they have the same option as everyone else to be patient and earn those materials themselves). No one is forced to buy anything at all from other players.

[edited to remove quote]

Ken_Koerperich · August 2021

And like always, it's your opinion vs someone's else.

Guess only you ALL are right, and everybody else that doesn't agree/do it YOUR way is WRONG!

Bye!

Disturbed_One · August 2021

Pointing out the official developer response to a phrase isn't an opinion.

You're 40 days into the game... some people who've been playing for 7 years + are trying to help. Take it or leave it. It won't affect us in any way.

VaranisArano · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

And like always, it's your opinion vs someone's else.

Guess only you ALL are right, and everybody else that doesn't agree/do it YOUR way is WRONG!

Bye!

I hope you have a good day too. Enjoy playing how you like!

Oreyn_Bearclaw · August 2021

I dont think they should have ever allowed crown "gifting" in the first place, but that horse is dead. Once they did, they should have simply started selling gold for cash and taken the middle man out of it, and they should have set it at a price that makes selling crowns an upside down transaction for the seller, thus removing it as a thing we need to worry about. They did not do that either.

That said, I do NOT agree with the following:

"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."

Every day there is more gold in this game. Every day, the buying power of your gold drops a tiny bit. This alone is why I have completely stopped selling gold mats. I could leave the game for 6 months and my craftbag would probably jump 10-20% in value. My bank account stays the same.

I also think ZOS has done a pretty poor job of giving seasoned players like myself (with fairly deep pockets) anything to spend gold that actually removes currency from the game. There is a massive shortage of things for me to spend gold on from my perspective, especially since I dont really care about housing, and I have more upgrade mats than I know what to do with. Even if I do buy a fancy recipe from another player, it doesnt impact the gold supply as its not a gold sink. This game needs way more actual gold sinks (they should start with a gold equivalent of Alliance potions).

And lastly, you completely miss real world market implications in the middle of a pandemic. My actual money is worth more to me than it was pre COVID. Or rather, uncertainty has made me extremely reluctant to spend cash on things like video games.

Call it greed if you want, but there are two markets that effect this particular exchange rate (ZOS only controls one). In game currency is subject to rampant inflation, and real life currency has become scare for a lot of people. Both of those in isolation would increase the price of crowns. Both together, well...

spartaxoxo · August 2021

Crowns have remained stable on ps4. I think outside factors such as Steam prices and the Crown Exchange are what's effecting prices moreso than coins.

The only thing they can do is the one thing they should have been done, give people a way to initialize a safe trade so that middleman is not needed. They shouldn't however be directly interfering with the price. And it's selfish to attack sellers for selling at prices people are willing to pay.

VaranisArano · August 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I dont think they should have ever allowed crown "gifting" in the first place, but that horse is dead. Once they did, they should have simply started selling gold for cash and taken the middle man out of it, and they should have set it at a price that makes selling crowns an upside down transaction for the seller, thus removing it as a thing we need to worry about. They did not do that either.

That said, I do NOT agree with the following:

"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."

Every day there is more gold in this game. Every day, the buying power of your gold drops a tiny bit. This alone is why I have completely stopped selling gold mats. I could leave the game for 6 months and my craftbag would probably jump 10-20% in value. My bank account stays the same.

I also think ZOS has done a pretty poor job of giving seasoned players like myself (with fairly deep pockets) anything to spend gold that actually removes currency from the game. There is a massive shortage of things for me to spend gold on from my perspective, especially since I dont really care about housing, and I have more upgrade mats than I know what to do with. Even if I do buy a fancy recipe from another player, it doesnt impact the gold supply as its not a gold sink. This game needs way more actual gold sinks (they should start with a gold equivalent of Alliance potions).

And lastly, you completely miss real world market implications in the middle of a pandemic. My actual money is worth more to me than it was pre COVID. Or rather, uncertainty has made me extremely reluctant to spend cash on things like video games.

Call it greed if you want, but there are two markets that effect this particular exchange rate (ZOS only controls one). In game currency is subject to rampant inflation, and real life currency has become scare for a lot of people. Both of those in isolation would increase the price of crowns. Both together, well...

The major gold sink ZOS has is the weekly Guild Trader Bid, which should (theoretically) be able to keep pace with gold creation. The more gold there is flowing around, traders should have to bid higher and higher to compete.

Now, I'm not quite sure it's working that way in practice. I'd be interested to hear if guild trader bids have increased over time to keep pace with inflation as seen through mat prices, or whether the trader bids have largely "capped out" and thus aren't taking the extra gold out if the economy.

kargen27 · August 2021

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

that is true for the smaller things. Try to find someone with enough crowns to gift a home though. I'm guessing that is very rare in game.

Kalik_Gold · August 2021

VaranisArano wrote: »

The major gold sink ZOS has is the weekly Guild Trader Bid, which should (theoretically) be able to keep pace with gold creation. The more gold there is flowing around, traders should have to bid higher and higher to compete.

Now, I'm not quite sure it's working that way in practice. I'd be interested to hear if guild trader bids have increased over time to keep pace with inflation as seen through mat prices, or whether the trader bids have largely "capped out" and thus aren't taking the extra gold out if the economy.

Does adding 5 - 10 new guild trader spaces a year with the 2 new story arcs Cities create enough selling spots to remove gold? I wonder...

JKorr · August 2021

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

And like always, it's your opinion vs someone's else.

Guess only you ALL are right, and everybody else that doesn't agree/do it YOUR way is WRONG!

Bye!

Yeah, I'm wrong. Haven't got a clue. Totally hopeless, me.

I've been playing since beta. I remember the huge 25 gold rewards for turning in quests. Gold was hard to come by. I didn't actually start to bank any gold until I finally decided to actually try to earn some by doing very casual intermittent trading. Once I did actually put some effort into trading, I started to actually earn gold. I'm not particularly trying anymore, doing writs on my main crafter only, and I'm closing in on 11 million. From mundane runes, chromium grains, water hyacinth, columbine, cornflower, and mushrooms.

I find it rather strange that you put items like mundane runes, heartwood, columbine, cornflower, namira's rot, lady's smock etc up for sale and nothing sells. I use MM, and price items a little lower than the current going price, and my items, even the jewelry masterwrits, sell. If you try to sell items no one has any interest in, then, no, you won't sell anything. Ignoring any and everything the people who have been playing for a while say because we don't agree with you won't help any.

May the Divines bless your travels, whether in this game or another that suits you more.

VaranisArano · August 2021

Kalik_Gold wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The major gold sink ZOS has is the weekly Guild Trader Bid, which should (theoretically) be able to keep pace with gold creation. The more gold there is flowing around, traders should have to bid higher and higher to compete.

Now, I'm not quite sure it's working that way in practice. I'd be interested to hear if guild trader bids have increased over time to keep pace with inflation as seen through mat prices, or whether the trader bids have largely "capped out" and thus aren't taking the extra gold out if the economy.

Does adding 5 - 10 new guild trader spaces a year with the 2 new story arcs Cities create enough selling spots to remove gold? I wonder...

I'm sure it depends. It's hard to get a feel for bidding, since most guilds rightly don't advertise what they pay.

We know from the Rawlkha incident on PC/NA that one of the losing traders was bidding 22.5 million a week back in 2019. Rawlkha remains one of the major trader hubs.

Smaller traders go for considerably less - it's been several years since I was an officer in a PC/NA trading guild and knew our bid, but we regularly had a good trader for around 3 million a week, give or take a bit.

ZOS adds more traders with the DLC and Chapters, but most don't become major hubs unless they also have great crafting locations like Vivec. So if I had to guess, adding more traders takes some millions of gold as a straight gold sink from the weekly bid, but it's probably not hundreds of millions.

Perhaps anyone who deals with guild trader bidding could give a general feel of "Our bid has increased/has not increased to keep pace with mat prices," If they are willing?

starkerealm · August 2021

corrosivechains wrote: »

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.

In this case, not really, because neither the regulated exchange, nor the independent sellers, have any control over the supply.

For this to be a monopoly, the TCE would have to have the ability to control who could, and could not, purchase Crowns.

Ironically, your example does exist in this case. If you want to buy crowns, you have to get those from ZOS. That is a monopoly. After that, you have people selling Crowns on the gray market, which is not a monopoly.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · August 2021

VaranisArano wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I dont think they should have ever allowed crown "gifting" in the first place, but that horse is dead. Once they did, they should have simply started selling gold for cash and taken the middle man out of it, and they should have set it at a price that makes selling crowns an upside down transaction for the seller, thus removing it as a thing we need to worry about. They did not do that either.

That said, I do NOT agree with the following:

"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."

Every day there is more gold in this game. Every day, the buying power of your gold drops a tiny bit. This alone is why I have completely stopped selling gold mats. I could leave the game for 6 months and my craftbag would probably jump 10-20% in value. My bank account stays the same.

I also think ZOS has done a pretty poor job of giving seasoned players like myself (with fairly deep pockets) anything to spend gold that actually removes currency from the game. There is a massive shortage of things for me to spend gold on from my perspective, especially since I dont really care about housing, and I have more upgrade mats than I know what to do with. Even if I do buy a fancy recipe from another player, it doesnt impact the gold supply as its not a gold sink. This game needs way more actual gold sinks (they should start with a gold equivalent of Alliance potions).

And lastly, you completely miss real world market implications in the middle of a pandemic. My actual money is worth more to me than it was pre COVID. Or rather, uncertainty has made me extremely reluctant to spend cash on things like video games.

Call it greed if you want, but there are two markets that effect this particular exchange rate (ZOS only controls one). In game currency is subject to rampant inflation, and real life currency has become scare for a lot of people. Both of those in isolation would increase the price of crowns. Both together, well...

The major gold sink ZOS has is the weekly Guild Trader Bid, which should (theoretically) be able to keep pace with gold creation. The more gold there is flowing around, traders should have to bid higher and higher to compete.

Now, I'm not quite sure it's working that way in practice. I'd be interested to hear if guild trader bids have increased over time to keep pace with inflation as seen through mat prices, or whether the trader bids have largely "capped out" and thus aren't taking the extra gold out if the economy.

Oh, absolutely. Traders are by far the biggest gold sink in the game. That said, they don't reach everyone. I was in the biggest trader by Revenue on PC/NA for years, but I havent been in guild with an expensive trader for quite some time. I indirectly contribute to the sink when I buy from a trader, but it's not quite the same thing. It's also a shame how much secrecy there is about the bidding process and what actually wins. A little transparency in that department would certainly be nice.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that a lot of obvious gold sinks they would add do one of two things:

1. The serve to give ZOS direct control over the market of an item, which they are hesitant to do. Of course they indirectly control everything with how things drop, but that is not the same thing. They could put Wax in a vendor for 8K gold, and it would cap prices overnight. I get why they don't do this for a lot of items, mostly because if they miss the price point, people stop grinding (aka they stop playing), but it would be a heck of a gold sink.

2. They directly work against ZOS's self interest, AKA, they hurt crown sales. If they put a trial dummy or aetherial well in a vendor, it would certainly remove gold, but it would hurt crown sales, which we know they wont do more than they have to.

Kiralyn2000 · August 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I dont think they should have ever allowed crown "gifting" in the first place, but that horse is dead.

So you disagree with people being able to give gifts to their friends?

Once they did, they should have simply started selling gold for cash and taken the middle man out of it, and they should have set it at a price that makes selling crowns an upside down transaction for the seller, thus removing it as a thing we need to worry about.

You do realize that the point isn't "selling gold", right? Being able to trade gold for cash shop items is a great boon to free players, and one of the best "anti-p2w" (not that there's p2w in this game) feature that an online game can have. It's about people being able to get cash shop items without having to pay cash for them. That's the primary goal here, not "buying gold with cash". So your idea of them just selling gold directly for crowns? Would be totally useless.

vgabor · August 2021

thorwyn wrote: »

You can do whatever you want, nobody stops you from playing your way.
What you can't do is expect other players to spend their ingame time on farming materials and then selling them to you for a dumping price because you are too lazy and self-entitled to do it yourself.
You want gold gear? Get it! It's all out there somewhere and there are multiple ways of earning it.

^^ This. If you feel prices are too high and you cannot buy what you want, what's preventing you to farm it yourself? Three weeks ago I noticed I'm running out of Kuta and only have 5 left. As of now I'm sitting on 34 of them. And didn't buy a single one, I farmed it myself doing writs. Whats preventing you doing the same, apart from sheer laziness?

Also anyone who call for market regulation at least take the effort to understand how markets are working. Like actually paying attention to that basic economy lectures in school instead of ignoring it as too boring. Then you would understand what consequences of regulated fixed prices has on the market. Here's an example just above in this very thread what happens if you limit the price lower then the market price would be:

Vevvev wrote: »

That limit on the Zen market has actually recently crashed it in recent history. Nobody is selling and those that do immediately have it bought up. Due to supply and demand the actual value of Zen is much higher than the highest price it can be listed at.

Also you can read up on relevant real life historic records of the 70's 80's east European communist countries where prices were fixed at low values leading to empty shelves and shortage of goods in shops.

It sounds nice for the buyers on PC to fix crown gold rate lets say at 1:100 and then buy it cheap, but buy it from whom if people not willing to sell at that rate? Or then you want to force the people having crowns to sell it too? And why would you fix prices in the buyers interest and not in sellers, let's say at 1:10000? I'm pretty sure plenty enough sellers would welcome getting 10k gold for 1 crown, so why you want to favour the buyers?

Directly fixing prices is not the answer, plenty examples proving it doesn't do any good. If you want influence the prices you need to do it indirectly via looking at the underlaying supply and demand, and in order to bring down prices then you need to either increase the supply or decrease the demand or doing both.

corrosivechains · August 2021

So yeah, the sellers here are blatantly ignoring the fact that similar systems already exist in other games where the market isn't determined by the developers, but by the supply and demand rates established by the player bases themselves.

WoW tokens prices aren't set by Actiblizz. They're determined by Buyers and Sellers.
Same with STO's system. Or many many other online games.

Trying to paint the suggestion as "Zeni fixing the prices" is quite the large strawman. Asking for a system in game for buyers and sellers to do this trade and eliminating the risk of scammers is not asking for price fixing. I can definitely see why people on the selling side would be against an implementation of such a system here though since when you look at those other games, the rates remain relatively steady, with the increase/decrease in value of the store currencies matching the actual levels of inflation many in here are claiming is the reason why it's happening now.

And when you look at the rates in similar systems you almost never see 200-300% increases in such short periods of time.

As to the argument that "there's nothing you need to buy with crowns", uh, DLC's are sold on the crown store. DLC's which have Meta gear sets which sell, or some of the methods of making gold you are claiming is so easy, such as jewelcrafting and antiquities. For people on a budget(IE the customer base for the crowns for gold) many of the methods are locked behind DLC. Let's not pretend the Crown Store is just cosmetic in nature.

LordArconSeptim · August 2021

This situation basically reflects real life economy and currency exchange we experience with Euro Dollar fiat currencies lol with crypto currencies.

Where the ESO gold represents real life currencies which are held in monopol centers like in ESO those few billionaires who run trading guilds etc.
Were crypto system represented by crowns completely explains how it works.

jle30303 · August 2021

There is one thing I would like:

For houses that can be bought with gold, to be able to buy the "furnished" version also for gold, instead of that being a crowns-only purchase.

ApostateHobo · August 2021

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Crowns have remained stable on ps4. I think outside factors such as Steam prices and the Crown Exchange are what's effecting prices moreso than coins.

Yeah I was gonna say I haven't seen these high prices on ps4 they've stayed pretty much the same since gifting was introduced. Same with material prices. Pc's high population probably contributes a fair amount to these differences. For once I'm glad to be a console player if it means I don't have to shell out a fortune for materials haha.

VaranisArano · August 2021

corrosivechains wrote: »

So yeah, the sellers here are blatantly ignoring the fact that similar systems already exist in other games where the market isn't determined by the developers, but by the supply and demand rates established by the player bases themselves.

WoW tokens prices aren't set by Actiblizz. They're determined by Buyers and Sellers.
Same with STO's system. Or many many other online games.

Trying to paint the suggestion as "Zeni fixing the prices" is quite the large strawman. Asking for a system in game for buyers and sellers to do this trade and eliminating the risk of scammers is not asking for price fixing. I can definitely see why people on the selling side would be against an implementation of such a system here though since when you look at those other games, the rates remain relatively steady, with the increase/decrease in value of the store currencies matching the actual levels of inflation many in here are claiming is the reason why it's happening now.

And when you look at the rates in similar systems you almost never see 200-300% increases in such short periods of time.

As to the argument that "there's nothing you need to buy with crowns", uh, DLC's are sold on the crown store. DLC's which have Meta gear sets which sell, or some of the methods of making gold you are claiming is so easy, such as jewelcrafting and antiquities. For people on a budget(IE the customer base for the crowns for gold) many of the methods are locked behind DLC. Let's not pretend the Crown Store is just cosmetic in nature.

Most of the sellers in here have been in favor of ZOS offering a safe way to trade gifts for gold. Which makes sense - the sellers are risking real money.

I don't think it necessarily follows from a safe trade method that sellers will then automatically keep a steady rate. It's possible, of course.

Amottica · August 2021

I see a lot has been said here so I assume I have merely repeated what someone else has said. The crown trade pricing is directly related to supply and demand and in the same token is no different than buying a house as no one trades anything without two people agreeing to the price.

Basically, if the demand is high enough and people are willing to pay a higher price then it will cost more until something in that equation changes.

Lumsdenml · August 2021

There are exactly 0 things in the crown store that give you any advantage in the game. Gold to crown price is irrelevant to new players.

Viyvos · August 2021

If you pay real life money for crowns and people want to buy them from you for ingame gold I dont think selling 1 crown for 1000 gold is greedy.

EF321 · August 2021

Lumsdenml wrote: »

There are exactly 0 things in the crown store that give you any advantage in the game. Gold to crown price is irrelevant to new players.

Bankers, Merchants and inventory pets all give you give you advantages.
Some crown store only houses give you good teleport points.

Flamebait · August 2021

EF321 wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

There are exactly 0 things in the crown store that give you any advantage in the game. Gold to crown price is irrelevant to new players.

Bankers, Merchants and inventory pets all give you give you advantages.
Some crown store only houses give you good teleport points.

I am usually willing to be on the critical side of ZoS, however you are completely in the wrong here. [snip] there is no pay to win involved here and everything you have listed is merely a convenience. Bankers and merchants are in every town so the crown store ones are nice but not a requirement, especially since you can use any party members also. The inventory pets are a total of 10 slots of inventory, again a nice bonus but far from a mandatory thing or even really game changing. As for the houses being a good teleport point this is by far the weakest argument I have heard that you can teleport there instead of a wayshrine that's 15 seconds farther from some place you might go once in a while.

[edited for bashing]