Enough is enough!

code65536 · August 2021

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Only up on PC. Console prices are still maxing out around 12-13k ea.

You want to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Get rid of add-ons which collectively allow players to meticulously overanalyze market aspects and min-max every transaction made.

You want ZOS to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Have them disable add-ons on live servers.

They can’t do more because if the prices aren’t outlandish for 2 out of the 3 platforms and everything else in-game is the same then it’s a player created problem, not ZOS.

You're barking up the wrong tree. Yes, there is an addon that is largely to blame for PC inflation. But it's not a pricing addon.

Writs are the single biggest source of gold coming into the economy, and being able to complete writs on a dozen characters in about half an hour is the biggest reason why there is so much gold sloshing around on PC.

That said, the solution is not to do anything about the addon (since manually doing writs is not enjoyable for anyone), but rather to rebalance the rewards from writs. If they slashed the gold reward from writs in half and, as compensation, nudged up the chances of receiving gold materials, the economy would be in a much healthier state.

starkerealm · August 2021

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

jle30303 · August 2021

Minnesinger wrote: »

Yea the prices have gone too high. Yesterday, I needed to buy a stack of 200 tri-pots. One of the biggest guilds had them priced just under 200k. The next trader had them for 70k.

...And meanwhile I can't use all my Crown Restoration Potions. I have tons more than I will ever use...

Aquatorch · August 2021

I think the issue is a lack of farmers because they're all leaving the game. I personally know a dozen players who used to spend all their time farming who have left for other games that have less lag or better crafting. Also... There's a lack of farmers because ESO went on a rampage, banning all the bots, which was obviously good and bad at the same time.

In this scenario, only ZOS can fix the problem. They will need to resolve lag, which they promise they're looking at every few months for the past five years, Yet they refuse to add more hardware even though everyone knows that's the problem. Also, they need to increase the drop rate to make up for the lack of farmers because increasing gold gained will only raise the prices more.

kringled_1 · August 2021

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

Sheezabeast · August 2021

Would your stats change /that/ much if you used a different food? If you can't afford something anymore, you adjust and get what you can afford, right? You live within your means, right? If your income doesn't match your lifestyle, you adjust, right? Not being able to run a specific food because you can't afford it because you don't want to dedicate the time to make it yourself seems like a non-issue for the economy. You could fish in Cyrodiil.

NettleCarrier · August 2021

The problem is the lack of gold sinks, not any one particular commodity. I "make a living" just buying items from sellers that list items for far less than I can get selling in my own guilds. The only reason I price things as high as I do is because it sells - literally no reason for me to undercut what people are willing to pay and therefor the cycle goes on and on. If I list something too high and it sits there for a week then it gets cancelled and listed lower, simple as that. People need to stop paying so much for simple things!

CSose · August 2021

code65536 wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Only up on PC. Console prices are still maxing out around 12-13k ea.

You want to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Get rid of add-ons which collectively allow players to meticulously overanalyze market aspects and min-max every transaction made.

You want ZOS to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Have them disable add-ons on live servers.

They can’t do more because if the prices aren’t outlandish for 2 out of the 3 platforms and everything else in-game is the same then it’s a player created problem, not ZOS.

You're barking up the wrong tree. Yes, there is an addon that is largely to blame for PC inflation. But it's not a pricing addon.

Writs are the single biggest source of gold coming into the economy, and being able to complete writs on a dozen characters in about half an hour is the biggest reason why there is so much gold sloshing around on PC.

That said, the solution is not to do anything about the addon (since manually doing writs is not enjoyable for anyone), but rather to rebalance the rewards from writs. If they slashed the gold reward from writs in half and, as compensation, nudged up the chances of receiving gold materials, the economy would be in a much healthier state.

Take away Dulgubons or reduce rewards very much and nobody will do writs anymore. If nobody doing writs, nobody needs extra bank space or the craft bag, so nobody would need ESO+.

The problem is less inflation and more performance issues. Everyone I know who's left has left due to performance issues....and 2/3rds of the people I used to play with have left the game already. It's not a matter of an add on's influence in game. The problem is performance issues this severe and persistent drive sane people away from the game and there are secondary effects from that.

alberichtano · August 2021

vamp_emily wrote: »

I get it, everyone wants to make money ( gold ). Me too, but these freaking prices are crazy.

I went to several traders yesterday and perfect roe is costing between 40-50k gold. I remember paying 10k in the past. I am not getting paid any more than what I did in the past, and I don't want to spend my time fishing in the game. I can't even afford to fight for my faction with these prices.

Zeni, needs to step in and stop this madness. Increase the drop rate, or pay me more so I can afford to eat!

How exactly would ZOS do anything about this? We are on a free market, after all...

vamp_emily · August 2021

EllieBlue wrote: »

How exactly would ZOS do anything about this? We are on a free market, after all...

Same way they deal with a lot of things. Example, an armor set is OP and everyone uses it.. they tone it down.

As far as Perfect Roe.. they could increase the drop rate which would increase the supply. The free market will still be there but if there is more supply than demand those 40-50k roe's might not sell and people might start selling at a cheaper price.

Almost like when ESO first came out.. people would pay top dollar for vampire bites but the more people got bit there was a higher supply and people started basically giving them away.

Yes.. I have fished and I don't enjoy it. I think 1 perfect roe lasts me about 8 hours game time. I'm not going to spend 2 hours fishing just to get a chance a perfect roe, I might stop by and fish if I am waiting on a pvp que but other than that it is not what I want to do. Nor am I going to pay 40k-50k at a guild trader. I think a fair price would be somewhere in the 20s I would probably buy it at 29k but not 40 to 50k.

Also, since I created this thread I've had people offer to sell it to me in the 20s and also someone was willing to give me it for free. Thanks for the offers, but I wasn't asking for charity I was just wanting food to be at a fair value. Some people say, well Hakejo sells for 40k but look at how long you get to use is. You attach it to your armor and it is good until you don't wear it any more. I don't have a problem paying 40k+ for items, but perfect roe for food I think is way over priced.

kargen27 · August 2021

I don't think we have a problem with inflation. The market is fluid and will eventually self correct. It takes longer for prices to go down than it does for them to go up. We are still seeing the affects of a volatile market created by several changes. Things will calm down.

Was looking for a motif yesterday to finish out a set. I bought it for 28k. I saw it listed for as high as 225k. I didn't use any add-ons to find it and only checked three trading hubs before buying. Might have been one cheaper at the next trader but I found a price I was willing to pay and went no farther.

Prices are all over the place now because the market is trying to right itself. The thirty days sitting in a trader thing makes the process of correction last a bit longer but eventually we get there.

vamp_emily · August 2021

Someone here found me in the game and gave me some free Perfect Roe. Thank you again!

I tried to turn it down, and offered 30k each but they turned that down.

I feel so refreshed right now. I have enough to last me a little over 72 hours of game play

Thanks again.

FlopsyPrince · August 2021

vamp_emily wrote: »

I get it, everyone wants to make money ( gold ). Me too, but these freaking prices are crazy.

I went to several traders yesterday and perfect roe is costing between 40-50k gold. I remember paying 10k in the past. I am not getting paid any more than what I did in the past, and I don't want to spend my time fishing in the game. I can't even afford to fight for my faction with these prices.

Zeni, needs to step in and stop this madness. Increase the drop rate, or pay me more so I can afford to eat!

It is called supply and demand. Many don't like it in real life or in the game, but it is realistic and reasonable.

I would argue that the drop rate of some things is much too low however, so that is something ZOS could fix!

FlopsyPrince · August 2021

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

Many alts. It also goes up as you level up the alt. I think I am getting 4.5K per day on my main which is both max level and maxed in most lines.

FlopsyPrince · August 2021

Darkstorne wrote: »

Agenericname wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

7 writs per character x 18 characters most likely.

Damn I quite like treating ESO as a game, not a job thanks

It definitely can be a job on the PS4. It is not that bad at all with addons on the PC. Lagging out and back in is the biggest delay (when swapping characters), though leveling everyone is more than a bit of a pain.

starkerealm · August 2021

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

Meanwhile, TTC and Master Merchant do not change the amount of gold in the market. They may contribute to concentrating that wealth, but they don't create it. So, they can't really contribute to inflation. (There is a minor gold sink associated with listing and selling items, but that gold isn't created, it came from another player.)

code65536 · August 2021

starkerealm wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

Meanwhile, TTC and Master Merchant do not change the amount of gold in the market. They may contribute to concentrating that wealth, but they don't create it. So, they can't really contribute to inflation. (There is a minor gold sink associated with listing and selling items, but that gold isn't created, it came from another player.)

@starkerealm I think the point that @kringled_1 was trying to make is that writs are also a significant source of gold materials entering the game, so it would balance out: There's more gold entering the game, but there are also more mats entering the game.

So my first counter to that is that writs are a source of gold materials only if your character does writs at max level. That requires a pretty substantial investment of skill points, and there are many people who will do max-level writs on a few characters, and then do tier-1 writs on others just for the gold.

The second is that there are material sinks but not many gold sinks. When you buy 8 dreugh wax from another player, that gold you spent doesn't disappear--it simply gets transferred to another player and remains in the economy. When you use those 8 wax to upgrade a piece of gear, they disappear. So the gold "sticks around", and over time, there is a cumulative imbalance that forms.

Because gold "sticks around" and accumulates in the economy, you can almost think of it like CO2 in the atmosphere, and in the context of that analogy, writs are a pretty "dirty" form of gold material generation, since they create gold mats but also a lot of gold. In contrast, hirelings and harvesting/refinement are "clean" sources of gold material generation, unaccompanied by gold. And I expect that, because writs are relatively more difficult to do on console, a greater proportion of console's gold mats come from these other "clean" sources.

Which is why what I would suggest is a rebalance (not a nerf, as an earlier poster characterized) of the rewards from writs: a significant reduction of the gold rewarded for doing them coupled with a modest compensatory increase in the materials that are rewarded would make writs more balanced, and well, "cleaner" in the context of this analogy.

(Note: Yes, in the context of this analogy, bots are "clean" sources too, and as ZOS gets better at banning bots, prices for materials increase, which causes players to do more writs in order to get materials, but since writs are "dirty" in this context, this exacerbates the inflationary pressures.)

Fennwitty · August 2021

New gold sinks are the cleanest way to take money out without seeming to 'punish' newer players who are trying to get money.

Daily writs are a conspicuous and easy money source. But tons of money literally falls out of skeever corpses and so on.

There's nothing (significant) for individual players to buy with in-game gold to an NPC except a few houses, the occasional luxury furniture or gold vendor item -- and then you're out of things to do with it except pass it around between players. All that's left is to play with the absurd quantities of money and 'flip' for even more absurd quantities of money.

The buying and selling from guild traders is almost nothing in the scheme of things. It doesn't function as a meaningful sink.

The biggest money sink in the game is almost certainly the gold spent on securing traders at good locations. That's mainly a player-driven issue -- the more cash competing guilds have available then the more is ultimately 'lost' when the winning bid goes through.

Outside of that, there's no significant gold sink I can think of. Please let me know if I'm overlooking something easy -- repairs and stuff don't really count in my eyes. All the while every single player in the game is printing money by doing almost any activity.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about spending gold that 'disappears'. Players spend millions and billions on housing and furniture but largely it cycles back into player hands.

kringled_1 · August 2021

starkerealm wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

I agree that there are a lot of PC players who can generate a lot of gold wealth. I'm sure LWC contributes, but I'm not sure if it contributes as much as you imply. I'm just being a bit nitpicky here, but 120-135k in gold quest rewards implies 24-27 characters, which is probably not that representative. My second quibble is that I don't think it's all on LWC here - I don't use it, and 2 days out of 3 I'm running about 3-4 minutes per character doing all 7 writs, and 2 minutes for those just doing consumable writs. I pre-craft, so 1 day of 3 is quite a bit slower, but actually takes less attention than manually crafting one day's worth of items, and just a tiny bit more time at the station. It does require discipline in inventory management.

code65536 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

Meanwhile, TTC and Master Merchant do not change the amount of gold in the market. They may contribute to concentrating that wealth, but they don't create it. So, they can't really contribute to inflation. (There is a minor gold sink associated with listing and selling items, but that gold isn't created, it came from another player.)

@starkerealm I think the point that @kringled_1 was trying to make is that writs are also a significant source of gold materials entering the game, so it would balance out: There's more gold entering the game, but there are also more mats entering the game.

So my first counter to that is that writs are a source of gold materials only if your character does writs at max level. That requires a pretty substantial investment of skill points, and there are many people who will do max-level writs on a few characters, and then do tier-1 writs on others just for the gold.

The second is that there are material sinks but not many gold sinks. When you buy 8 dreugh wax from another player, that gold you spent doesn't disappear--it simply gets transferred to another player and remains in the economy. When you use those 8 wax to upgrade a piece of gear, they disappear. So the gold "sticks around", and over time, there is a cumulative imbalance that forms.

Because gold "sticks around" and accumulates in the economy, you can almost think of it like CO2 in the atmosphere, and in the context of that analogy, writs are a pretty "dirty" form of gold material generation, since they create gold mats but also a lot of gold. In contrast, hirelings and harvesting/refinement are "clean" sources of gold material generation, unaccompanied by gold. And I expect that, because writs are relatively more difficult to do on console, a greater proportion of console's gold mats come from these other "clean" sources.

Which is why what I would suggest is a rebalance (not a nerf, as an earlier poster characterized) of the rewards from writs: a significant reduction of the gold rewarded for doing them coupled with a modest compensatory increase in the materials that are rewarded would make writs more balanced, and well, "cleaner" in the context of this analogy.

(Note: Yes, in the context of this analogy, bots are "clean" sources too, and as ZOS gets better at banning bots, prices for materials increase, which causes players to do more writs in order to get materials, but since writs are "dirty" in this context, this exacerbates the inflationary pressures.)

I'm pretty familiar with demand for skill points, and of the 10 characters I have doing all 7 writs, only 4 are doing top level writs, the others are doing level 1 for the gold and surveys. I still bring in more than enough gold mats for myself and to regularly sell in guild traders. And I'm not shy about upgrading armor I'll use more than once or twice, or jewelry for my pve dps.
You make a good point about mats having more sinks than gold, which I hadn't fully considered, and on first thought a small shift of writ rewards to upgrade materials and reduction in gold seems like a reasonable adjustment.
My position is more that there are multiple reasons why PC experiences higher inflation than consoles, not just LWC. Longer character load times will also make console writ earnings less efficient. I also think (but don't have data) that PC may have more long-term players, who have maxed out a number of gold sinks, and maybe players who run up more hours in a day of game time. When I look at the amounts of gold across my characters, it becomes obvious which ones I use for more content, as things like ornates, plunder, etc. do add up over the long term.

Ultimately I think the current gold sinks are inadequate. Housing has high potential but only pulls from a limited audience. Guild trader bids should scale in principle, but for the guilds I'm familiar with, can run into problems with getting that much from your membership.

code65536 · August 2021

kringled_1 wrote: »

I'm pretty familiar with demand for skill points, and of the 10 characters I have doing all 7 writs, only 4 are doing top level writs, the others are doing level 1 for the gold and surveys. I still bring in more than enough gold mats for myself and to regularly sell in guild traders. And I'm not shy about upgrading armor I'll use more than once or twice, or jewelry for my pve dps.

Yes, people who do writs are usually materially self-sufficient, but that's not relevant. Let me ask you, what do you do with that gold?

So, in my case, I play on both NA and EU, but since EU is not my "home" server, I never bothered with the EU economy. I'm not in a trade guild. I don't sell things. I don't buy things. And because I do writs, I'm self-sufficient. On EU, I'm pretty much a closed system, so to speak.

So here's the problem. Yes, through writs, hirelings, etc., I have a pretty comfortable stash of several hundred of each gold mat even after spending them for master writs and gear upgrades. But I also have 60-70M gold. And the value of those gold mats are far less than half of the value of my gold, even at today's high prices.

My point here is this: Yes, you can be materially self-sufficient through writs and even have a surplus that you either sell (or in my case, hoard). But in addition to that, you also generate a lot of gold. In my case, though, since I almost never buy anything, my gold might as well not exist. It just sits in my account where I covet it as if I were Smaug. My 60-70M gold doesn't circulate through the economy.

But let's say I were to hypothetically step out of my economic isolation and engage in the player economy on EU. Let's say I list all my stockpiled gold mats for sale and release the 60M+ gold that I have into the player economy (e.g., if I blew it all on "buying" crowns from other players), and if I were to do that, I would inflate the economy, since the value of the mats that I've dumped into the economy is less than the current value of the gold that I've dumped into circulation.

And ultimately, it comes down to materials being ephemeral: they disappear when used, so that over time, I have accumulated much more gold than materials.

Yes, you could argue that we need more gold sinks. But what could you add that people would want to pay into, while at the same time that won't severely disadvantage new and casual players? It's much easier to adjust the other side of the equation: i.e., turn down the faucet. For example, slash the gold reward from a provisioning writ in half, but add a 1% chance for the writ to reward a Perfect Roe. Or have vet trial bosses drop things like alchemy satchels that can be used to craft expensive potions rather than plunder. Etc.

SilverBride · August 2021

code65536 wrote: »

Yes, people who do writs are usually materially self-sufficient, but that's not relevant. Let me ask you, what do you do with that gold?

I spend most of my gold on furnishings, furnishing patterns, mats to make furnishings, the lux vendor, and occasionally a new house. Rarely I purchase gear.

The rest I save so when I want something I will be able to afford it.

Fennwitty · August 2021

There's no single gold sink that will work forever, but the easiest place to start is with 'where do people spend money already?'

Housing and cosmetics.

Let's take a current PCNA Crown Rate of 400 gold to 1 crown (and that's still relatively good at time of writing).

How many people eagerly drop 3,000 crowns on a dress or housing item or some other kind of cosmetic thing? How many players 'buy' crowns to get crown store items with game gold?

Since 99% of everything is crown only (putting aside Endeavor seals which are new) lots of players pay that 1,200,000 gold to another player who 'sells' them the crown item. For a single cosmetic doodad.

That 1,200,000 doesn't get any tax at all unless sent through the mail!

Even if a fraction of such 'crown' items were available for gold, it would be an immense gold sink. Even people who wanted these things but were afraid to 'buy crowns' will jump on board in-game hyper-expensive cosmetics in a heartbeat.

Same with so many crown-only houses (some old).

If you make even a fraction of such cosmetics available for gold every now and again -- that's going to be a huge corrective factor. And one that doesn't unfairly disadvantage new players mechanically.

So would ZoS be willing to take a small hit on their weekly crown sales that go to the 'crown seller' market in order to fix the economy for everyone?

... They don't even have to. They can use the 'old' stuff they aren't even promoting. Some hairstyles or crown items haven't been seen for real life years they are doing nobody any good. "Bringbacks" sure must be temporary generators of sales but there's no way it's more valuable to the health of the game.

They create HOW MANY new furniture recipes and items every single chapter? Dozens? Hundreds? Put a few of those on zone achievement merchants instead of rare drops.

Cozzy1991 · August 2021

Blame gold sellers. Their “services” inflate market prices. Needs to be harsher penalties for people who buy gold.

Pevey · August 2021

Cozzy1991 wrote: »

Blame gold sellers. Their “services” inflate market prices. Needs to be harsher penalties for people who buy gold.

I think this is a contributor. From what i understand, some gold selllers get their gold from other players, eg, existing gold. These methods are being a broker for carries or the extremely shady (and illegal) practice of using stolen credit cards to buy crowns, then sell crowns, then sell the gold.

But other common methods involve creating gold to sell, and this is inflationary. Things like botting. They are selling gold to other players, and those players are using the gold in the economy, and that gold would not exist legitimately.

VilniusNastavnik · August 2021

I only made my first mil after this years anniversary. I took a 2 year break just as murkmire only to come back this year and see everything hyper inflated. I refuse to pay more thsn 10k for a motif. Im an active duty serviceman. I play on my down time. I have no time to farm like these big trade guilds or research what is niche market sellings for big ticket cash.

code65536 · August 2021

Pevey wrote: »

But other common methods involve creating gold to sell, and this is inflationary. Things like botting. They are selling gold to other players, and those players are using the gold in the economy, and that gold would not exist legitimately.

How do they create gold? All the bot trains that I've seen in the game are grinding things that drop hides. And when we suspect that a botter is in a trade guild, we can tell because they're selling unusually vast quantities of materials at discounted rates.

As far as I can tell, botters get their gold my selling botted materials to players. So they are actually deflationary, not inflationary, since they don't generate gold and instead generate materials.

Pevey · August 2021

code65536 wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

But other common methods involve creating gold to sell, and this is inflationary. Things like botting. They are selling gold to other players, and those players are using the gold in the economy, and that gold would not exist legitimately.

How do they create gold? All the bot trains that I've seen in the game are grinding things that drop hides. And when we suspect that a botter is in a trade guild, we can tell because they're selling unusually vast quantities of materials at discounted rates.

As far as I can tell, botters get their gold my selling botted materials to players. So they are actually deflationary, not inflationary, since they don't generate gold and instead generate materials.

They don’t always sell through guilds. Selling through guilds is risky and can get them reported. Some GMs look the other way, and others do not. Another option is to just vendor items. This creates gold out of thin air. And botters don’t just play the rubedo hide game any more. The new crew after the last major ban wave are more sneaky. Even if it is less gold, it is low risk. You will find all sorts of weird info when you are googling things related to eso trading. I won’t link obviously.

kargen27 · August 2021

Pevey wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

But other common methods involve creating gold to sell, and this is inflationary. Things like botting. They are selling gold to other players, and those players are using the gold in the economy, and that gold would not exist legitimately.

How do they create gold? All the bot trains that I've seen in the game are grinding things that drop hides. And when we suspect that a botter is in a trade guild, we can tell because they're selling unusually vast quantities of materials at discounted rates.

As far as I can tell, botters get their gold my selling botted materials to players. So they are actually deflationary, not inflationary, since they don't generate gold and instead generate materials.

They don’t always sell through guilds. Selling through guilds is risky and can get them reported. Some GMs look the other way, and others do not. Another option is to just vendor items. This creates gold out of thin air. And botters don’t just play the rubedo hide game any more. The new crew after the last major ban wave are more sneaky. Even if it is less gold, it is low risk. You will find all sorts of weird info when you are googling things related to eso trading. I won’t link obviously.

Not that I think this is a good idea but a way to stop bots from selling items to vendors is put a cap on daily sales similar to what fencing and laundering items has. Number would need to be higher though.

Pevey · August 2021

kargen27 wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

But other common methods involve creating gold to sell, and this is inflationary. Things like botting. They are selling gold to other players, and those players are using the gold in the economy, and that gold would not exist legitimately.

How do they create gold? All the bot trains that I've seen in the game are grinding things that drop hides. And when we suspect that a botter is in a trade guild, we can tell because they're selling unusually vast quantities of materials at discounted rates.

As far as I can tell, botters get their gold my selling botted materials to players. So they are actually deflationary, not inflationary, since they don't generate gold and instead generate materials.

They don’t always sell through guilds. Selling through guilds is risky and can get them reported. Some GMs look the other way, and others do not. Another option is to just vendor items. This creates gold out of thin air. And botters don’t just play the rubedo hide game any more. The new crew after the last major ban wave are more sneaky. Even if it is less gold, it is low risk. You will find all sorts of weird info when you are googling things related to eso trading. I won’t link obviously.

Not that I think this is a good idea but a way to stop bots from selling items to vendors is put a cap on daily sales similar to what fencing and laundering items has. Number would need to be higher though.

I think that’s not a bd idea at all. A really high limit would not impact regular players. They could try to get around it by making new toons, but there is already a protection against that in the way the game only lets you delete 3 toons and then 1 per day after that.

starkerealm · August 2021

kringled_1 wrote: »

I agree that there are a lot of PC players who can generate a lot of gold wealth. I'm sure LWC contributes, but I'm not sure if it contributes as much as you imply. I'm just being a bit nitpicky here, but 120-135k in gold quest rewards implies 24-27 characters, which is probably not that representative.

The actual number is 28. 18 on my main account, 10 on the alt account. That said, some of the alt's are not 50. If every character was at 50, it would be 140k.

I agree that I'm in the extreme minority here.

My main account pulls in a little over 90k a day from writs, which could a better analysis for how much money someone could reasonably generate.

kringled_1 wrote: »

My second quibble is that I don't think it's all on LWC here - I don't use it, and 2 days out of 3 I'm running about 3-4 minutes per character doing all 7 writs, and 2 minutes for those just doing consumable writs. I pre-craft, so 1 day of 3 is quite a bit slower, but actually takes less attention than manually crafting one day's worth of items, and just a tiny bit more time at the station. It does require discipline in inventory management.

Yeah, when I've been timing it, I've found that I'm spending less than two minutes per character (on average.) On my old PC, it literally took me longer to log in on each character, than it did to finish my writs on them. Ironically, one thing that slows me down on my current setup is just waiting for LWC to finish emptying containers. I'm not 100% reliable about cleaning inventories on the spot, and sometimes don't touch the bankers (meaning stuff does back up on individual characters.) I'm also using Bank Manager Revised to move stuff around there, so that further cuts down on time.

Figure, at my worst, when I'm taking my time, screwing around, and fiddling with my inventory, I'm matching your best times. I'm also only touching consumables on average 25% of the time, because the crafting multipliers mean each time I touch the table I'm effectively finishing three future writs (and, I do leave those spares in my inventory.) So, pretty often on alchemy and provisioning it's just pick 'em up, turn 'em in. But, I'm doing the other five anyway. This does skew the times down a bit.

Ironically, a bigger consideration for LWC is much harder to quantify. I don't have to think about them. I log in, in Vvardenfell, hit the stations in sequence, most days I literally couldn't tell you what I crafted for my equipment writs, and ~75% of the time, I never even see what my Provisioning and Alchemy writs ask for. So, I don't think about it. I'll watch a stream, dig through youtube, have one eye on the monitor, and I'm done. Then I'll go knock out my endeavors, or work towards whatever I'm doing. This post represents significantly more thought into writs than I usually engage in during the course of a month.

The better question is, "how many players actually do that?" I don't have an answer on that. And the focus on time has less to do with, "I can make so much money," and more, "I can reduce this activity to something trivial, pocket the rewards, and go on with my day." Like I said, the reduced mental load from LWC is probably far more important than the actual time savings.