How to stop the crowns inflation

Amottica · October 2021

There are three major factors playing into the crown trading.

1. Supply which is how much players are willing to spend on crowns to trade for gold.
2. Demand which is the number of players that want to trade gold for crowns and the amount of gold they are willing or able to part with.

This is supply and demand and Zenimax should not step into this part of the equation. It is a matter of players deciding if the value is worth it to them.

3. Gold sellers. Being able to trade gold for crowns does help the gold-selling business. It also affects the price of crowns since there is clearly a point where it is cheaper to buy gold and then trade for crowns than to buy the crowns directly.

So clamping down on the bots is really the only way Zenimax could impact the trade without falsely propping up one side or the other.

WereElf · October 2021

Tigertron wrote: »

Everything you mentioned would destroy the game. You want a gold sink? Just add a taxes to our houses. Kill the game real fast.

Doing that will indeed be stupid. The gold sink should NOT be mandatory, but should still be desirable. Even having interchangeable currencies (such as gold - tel var stones, or gold - alliance points) would be some sort of gold sink, although I don't think it will be sufficient.

Tigertron wrote: »

No there is not too much gold, there is not enough crowns. I know plenty of crown sellers and they sell to the highest bidder. There was a hole that was plugged by ZOS where cheap money was exchanged for dollars or euros and then used to purchase crowns to resell. With that gone we have less crowns on the market. Demand remains and price goes up, basic stuff.

The crown exchange is self balancing. There is an unlimited supply of gold. If it takes 2 hours to get enough gold to buy 1 crown then that is the exchange. What is your time worth? I prefer to spend my gold in game on motifs and diagrams. In the past I would exchange gold for crowns but after it hit 700:1 on NA I stopped. I would rather spend RL money to get what I want and from my perspective I get what I want either way. From ZOS perspective they get more money.

That's basically what I was trying to say (not sure if I succeeded).
But while you are a player to start buying things with actual money instead of with ingame currency, there are other players who'd just give up and quit the game instead.
I have personal reasons to not buy anything from ZoS (let's call it a promise I made to them), so I think I might just quit the game when Blackwood becomes a DLC, if it costs more than 5 mil to get it then.

Tigertron wrote: »

BTW ZOS is a business. Businesses make money to employ people and provide a service that has value to the customer. I support that. If they don't make money they don't exist. Remember that great MMO where all the best mounts, armor styles and fully furnished houses were free? yeah. Neither do I.

There is something called "balance". If the upkeep is too high, you'll have less players, donating more money. If the upkeep is lower - you'll have more players, each donating less. You need to find which combination brings you the highest amount, and that's how economy works. It's wrong to think that they'll be making more profit by just making the game more expensive, or that they'll lose money, if they make it cheaper.

Tigertron wrote: »

I have my gripes about ZOS but their money making method is not one. Nothing irks me more than when people argue that ZOS has a predatory marketing system. It is anything but. I actually feel guilty for the little money I spend vs time I play.

I agree. Their model is 1000 times better than that of WoW or FF17.

Tigertron wrote: »

This is why crown crates are NOT gamboling. Gambling means you can spend all of you money and never get what you want. I guarantee you will ultimately get enough gems to buy outright what you are after if your luck is that bad. Once you have everything even an addict would stop at that point. Crates are just fun way to maybe get lucky.

A slot machine will bleed you dry and never give a payout, or tempt you with another payout to make up your loses. That is gambling. The potential to lose everything.

This is a bit of an off-topic, but now that you mentioned it... I've watched streamers open 10 crates several times. And from every 10 crates they seem to get the equivalent of what I've gotten from 100 crates combined. I think I've gotten a duplicate purple only 1-ce, and purple in general... perhaps no more than 4 times (98% of my loot is mimic stones and potions). But the streamers seem to be getting like 3-4 purples from 10 chests...
But yeah, that was an unrelated thing...

Amottica wrote: »

This is supply and demand and Zenimax should not step into this part of the equation. It is a matter of players deciding if the value is worth it to them.

3. Gold sellers. Being able to trade gold for crowns does help the gold-selling business. It also affects the price of crowns since there is clearly a point where it is cheaper to buy gold and then trade for crowns than to buy the crowns directly.

So clamping down on the bots is really the only way Zenimax could impact the trade without falsely propping up one side or the other.

I mean... just because things are, doesn't mean they should be. Whether ZoS wants a "free market" or a "regulated market" is entirely up to them. And having a free market shouldn't be a default assumption, just because that's how things work in most countries of the real world. I dare say, that a regulated marked might be better for the game.

It's hard for me to see the benefits from the free market in the game. The regulated one would bring more stability to the prices (which is the main topic of this thread).

bruta · October 2021

shame EU doesn't have TCE, awful rates on WCE and CBM

zaria · October 2021

Just saw this from Bellular about WOW and its a lot of the same stuff as in ESO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru8zxpdURdQ

The rich are getting richer as they know to make gold and has the gold to invest.
Now in real life it has been many attempt to fix this. The death toll was higher than WW 1 + WW 2, or stuff you don't try again.

Having an population an primary part of an MMO after all.
But yes next time do the simulation before the real life test.

Troodon80 · October 2021

Tigertron wrote: »

This is why crown crates are NOT gamboling. Gambling means you can spend all of you money and never get what you want. I guarantee you will ultimately get enough gems to buy outright what you are after if your luck is that bad. Once you have everything even an addict would stop at that point. Crates are just fun way to maybe get lucky.

A slot machine will bleed you dry and never give a payout, or tempt you with another payout to make up your loses. That is gambling. The potential to lose everything.

I'm going to spoiler this because it's largely off-topic.

I agree with some of what you've posted, except this bit. I don't want to nitpick, but this is important. The definition of gambling is not "the potential to lose everything." Playing the lottery with a £/€/$1 quick pick is still gambling despite not being close to "losing everything." I'd say that's called a gambling addiction. But in terms of the idea that having enough money (gems) means you'll eventually get what you want... you're partially right. These days even Radiant Apex mounts can be bought for gems, and even now it's limited time. In the past, they were not. But this is not a metric to decide what is or is not gambling. Even the lottery and betting offices have limitations and, with enough money to account for every possible number sequence, could be bought. With that logic, even gambling isn't gambling if you're willing to throw enough (implying you have enough) money at it.

Gambling, by its very definition, is the spending of money with the hope that you'll get something you consider of equal or greater value than what you put in while under the pretense of some element of randomness: AKA a game with an element of chance (not even specifically real life money). Aside from the fact that buying radiant apex mounts wasn't always a thing, if you spend £/€/$4000 on crates (I'd say something here, but I don't want to offend) and end up having to buy a radiant apex with gems, you've still gambled with the hope that you would get it for much, much less within the crates themselves rather than the gems.

In terms of the way crates work and why they are gambling, both in a theoretical and legal manner (which is why they're banned in Belgium among other countries), is that by buying and opening a crate with crowns, a currency obtained with real money, you always "win" something. No matter how small that something is. There are certain lotteries around the world where you are guaranteed to win something, whether its value lives up to what you expect or whether its value is as much, more, or less than how much you put in is largely irrelevant to that simple, immutable fact: it is still gambling. Crates are gambling. Gems are not.

If you want to continue this discussion, I would ask that you DM me rather than clutter up this forum thread.

OutLaw_Nynx · October 2021

Console is still 100:1

Araneae6537 · October 2021

Do you mean gold inflation rather than Crown inflation? Because Crowns buy as much as they used to, although some newer items do cost more than some of their older counterparts. On PC NA Crowns were around 200:1 when I started in mid-2019 and they have fluctuated up and down since then. This year the rate seemed to vary between 200 and 400 early on and now between 400 and 600. I think part of it is ZOS improving the Crown store and there are more items that people want so that’s a good thing. Some of my guildies say that it’s TCE setting prices and too many people blindly following what they set. I have no idea about that.

Nord_Raseri · October 2021

Sounds like a PC issue. Ps4 has been same 100:1 for a long while.

Troodon80 · October 2021

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Do you mean gold inflation rather than Crown inflation? Because Crowns buy as much as they used to, although some newer items do cost more than some of their older counterparts. On PC NA Crowns were around 200:1 when I started in mid-2019 and they have fluctuated up and down since then. This year the rate seemed to vary between 200 and 400 early on and now between 400 and 600. I think part of it is ZOS improving the Crown store and there are more items that people want so that’s a good thing. Some of my guildies say that it’s TCE setting prices and too many people blindly following what they set. I have no idea about that.

I'm making a wild guess here in saying that they're referring primarily to PC-EU, where the average crown rate is 1500:1. Up from the ~400:1 that it started with in 2018.

DarkPicture · October 2021

The only reason of crowns inflation are crown discords. On pc/eu theres 1 guy from CBM who increased crown prices from 800:1 to 3000:1 within months, from 1000:1 to 3000:1 within few weeks (everyone should know who im talking about)

The inflation has started when more and more people joined crown discords and cause crown sellers has easy access to huge community they can post any price they want and people will buy it cause its safe and fast.

U want to stop inflation? Delete crown discords.

Amottica · October 2021

WereElf wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

This is supply and demand and Zenimax should not step into this part of the equation. It is a matter of players deciding if the value is worth it to them.

3. Gold sellers. Being able to trade gold for crowns does help the gold-selling business. It also affects the price of crowns since there is clearly a point where it is cheaper to buy gold and then trade for crowns than to buy the crowns directly.

So clamping down on the bots is really the only way Zenimax could impact the trade without falsely propping up one side or the other.

I mean... just because things are, doesn't mean they should be. Whether ZoS wants a "free market" or a "regulated market" is entirely up to them. And having a free market shouldn't be a default assumption, just because that's how things work in most countries of the real world. I dare say, that a regulated marked might be better for the game.

It's hard for me to see the benefits from the free market in the game. The regulated one would bring more stability to the prices (which is the main topic of this thread).

I am not sure why you found it necessary to edit out the supply and demand part as that is the crux of any trading scheme. It cannot be escaped and Zenimax cannot remove it so it should not be ignored.

Players dictate the price for crowns traded in the game. That is supply and demand. Forcing a lower price for buying crowns in-game will reduce the interest in players wanting to spend their real money to trade for less gold. In the number of players wanting and able to trade their gold for crowns would increase which means there would be a shortage of crowns available. This is a law of supply and demand economics. This is a law of supply and demand economics.

Heck, the people selling their crowns in-game would likely argue that Zenimax should prop up the in-game price for crowns but that would have the opposite, but similarly poor outcome, as a price ceiling.

In reality, the complaint registered is that other players are willing to spend more gold to buy crowns.

tmbrinks · October 2021

Always a fun read to see people complain about being able to trade crowns (which can only be bought with REAL money) for a fake in-game currency and being upset at the prices.

Don't like the in-game exchange rate? Buy them yourselves w/ your real money

DarkPicture · October 2021

Supply and demand doesnt have anything to ratio on pc/eu. Just saying

DrSlaughtr · October 2021

Either players need to stop paying that much with gold, which won't happen, or ZOS has to permanently decrease the price of crowns. Those are the only ways it could be leveled off.

Inflation is bad for any MMO but the trader system seems to be especially bad for it. At least add-ons on PC help alleviate this but on console if you aren't willing to travel zone to zone you just buy your goods at whatever rate the major trading guilds decide on.

Ippokrates · October 2021

WereElf wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

2. There is no bigger gold sink than inflation. Check how much you had to pay for 14k crown mansion year ago, and how much you need to pay now. So we already have that. Adding more efficient riding lessons or something like that could be nice, but i don't think it will drastically change economy. Bah, we got whole new mechanics with Blackwood, and companions equipment are veeery good gold sink, yet it doesn't change the situation.

I don't think you understand what gold sink is. When you buy a house for 14k crowns from a player, you just give the gold to the other player. It doesn't leave the economy, it's simply redistributed.
While a gold sink is meant to drop the gold out of the economy and balance out the gold players are making from farming and stuff.

Or an example:
If there are 20 mil in the economy. Player A has 10 mil, Player B has 10 mil. If Player A buys something from Player B for 8 mil, Player A will have 2 mil, and player B will have 18 mil. There will still be 20mil in the economy.
While with an actual gold sink Player A will buy something from an NPC for 5 mil and there will be 15 mil in the economy remaining. And Player B will be unable to sell his thing for 8 mil anymore, since there is only 5 mil available.

I do understand, but ESO is not like other games. Trading is important part of "losing money" mechanics, because the economy is mainly player-based. So I was talking primarly about new tradable content that could be exchange for money, cause ESO simply do not have most of gold sink options like taxation or losing items due to usage.

But ok, lets stick to the narrow definition of gold sink, so spending money directly into engine. What we have? Luxury Furnisher - every week I am spending there hundreds of thousands. Golden Vendor? There was time when I was spending more than million for this stuff. Aaaand... how this affect me?

I was only more motivated to get more dailies, more vet dungs and more stuff for trade. The more you have, the more you want, and more you are able to get. Simple. So no, a typical gold sink would not work here.

Furthermore, remember that consoles doesn't have that problem. So do you want to implement golden sinks to their economy too? Even if they do not have such excessive amounts of gold? That doesn't sound fair...

The answer to question of inflation is relatively simple but no one will like it: writs. Every day a single account on single server can generate ca. 100k of pure gold (from writs & ornate weapons), not mentioning materials they can sold to trader - lets ignore the trade for a second. This is important, because we are talking about mechanics of putting GOLD into system. Sure, you can obtain GOLD from loot, from rewards, from quests, from fence BUT these are rather disproportionately less efficient sources of GOLD.

So you have 18 toons and want to get this sweet 100k. How long it takes to do it? When you are on console, it might take a while to complete all 7 writs, but i am not playing on console, so others can tell how long it takes them to complete whole operation. Login to alt, make writs, log out.

But on PC, with addons, it is matter of seconds. And you don't even need to do anything. So i bet there are people that can do all 18 writs in one hour, more or less, and you will spend most of this time with login screen, cause taking writs and making them is a matter of seconds. And with this options you can even have few accounts on one server, and money will flow...

I wonder, if anyone even compared how many writs per day are made by PC and by console players?

Here you are, not output means could solve this issue, but input.

Kiralyn2000 · October 2021

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Either players need to stop paying that much with gold, which won't happen, or ZOS has to permanently decrease the price of crowns. .

Which there's no reason for them to do, as the crown-gold exchange market is entirely a player-built and player-driven system. ZOS has no reason whatsoever to try to "balance" it.

(the one thing that they could/should do is make a secure trade interface. Since scamming people is part of the rules.)

hafgood · October 2021

Why? Why should Zos do anything? At the end of the day's they are selling the crowns to players at a standard price, occasionally reduced when they go for sale.

Remember this is for Pounds, Euros, Dollars, or whatever the buyers is local currency is. In other words for cold hard cash.

Those players are then closing to use them to gift other players items they want in exchange for gold. This secondary market is a grey market and as such unregulated. Had Zos wanted at the point they introduced gifting they could have introduced some regulation and possibly set the market rates.

However, had they done so they would still be having to do so and would have to take into account how many crowns are available (the more that are available in game in theory the cheaper they would be for gold) but then how do you know how many of these crowns are available?

I buy crowns, but only for my own use. How does Zos factor those into the equation?

Then we have real world inflation, the amount of money needed for the crowns may not change, or it might, if it goes up then what effect does that have on the crown to gold ratio? In theory it should be more gold per crown.

But just how much is a crown worth? When I found out how little they were worth on the ps4 EU at 100 to 150 gold per crown any thoughts of selling crowns went out the window, my money is worth more to me than that.

So Zos wpuld have to employ a team to oversee this, and why would they do that. At the end of the day the transaction concludes from their point of view with the sale of the crowns, what the player does with them is up to the player. Some spend, some save and wait for when the items they want are about and others gift crown items for gold. It is up to the buyer and the seller to agree a price, and ultimately its down to the seller to decide how much their crowns are worth to them - they bought them after all.

So basically if you can't get crowns at a price you like either (a) make more gold or (b) buy the crowns yourself.

I know many will say but I can't afford the crowns they can. Yep, and it's a sellers market.

jaws343 · October 2021

I've never sold my crowns. But if I did I would sell them for whatever gold price I wanted because I paid real money for them. My real money trumps anyones in game currency every time.

wolfie1.0. · October 2021

Ippokrates wrote: »

Well, last time when i refered to real life stuff, ZOS banned me for 3 days, so it would be extremely hard to participate in this conversation about economy. But i will try (if i got perma ban, it was pleasure to meet you. At least some of you ^^ )

1. Remember you are talking mainly about PC. Other platforms have things under control. Relatively. So any solution you will propose, might have negatively impact other platforms. Why is that? Well, probably because of addons & bots, but this is only my assumption. Nevertheless, it must be taken into consideration.

2. There is no bigger gold sink than inflation. Check how much you had to pay for 14k crown mansion year ago, and how much you need to pay now. So we already have that. Adding more efficient riding lessons or something like that could be nice, but i don't think it will drastically change economy. Bah, we got whole new mechanics with Blackwood, and companions equipment are veeery good gold sink, yet it doesn't change the situation.

3. Giving crowns for free... well, we had similar discussion regarding making ESO free to play, and most users were against, imho right, cause that would only attract bots and fake accounts. Also, remember we already have endeavours that could work as crowns, cause they are covering more or less the same stuff.
So we have that too.

4. Option for buying crowns for gold from engine... well, it is extremely bad idea, that would not only do not support in anyway ZOS, but will put an additional pressure to servers - cause people would start grinding as crazy. And in result, everyone will lose: zos & players.

So, what is the solution? First, ZOS must balance the RNG, because now it is not working properly and cannot offer reasonable and constant relation between time & money. Players should know that after spending this and that amount of time, they could get an item they want. If they see that this is not worthy of their time or they simply do not have this time to spend, they could just simply buy the item from the trader. In this scenario also traders would have better position to evaluate how much their time is worthy and how much they can charge for particular item to make it worthy.

First step has been made with introduction of weighted rng to weapon drop in U32, so maybe we wouldn't have to run hundreds of times to get this one item we need to made our build work (yes, this process also influenced a market because of limited trade options we have during dungs and trials). With this every player could decide if they want to spend whole day looting world bosses in Overland zone, or they could spend those few thousand crowns they have from writs to fill their stickerbook in the first place or MAYBE trade the particular item during dung or trial run -_-

Now, introduction of weighted rng to other stuff like motifs, recipies, parts AAAAND crown crates, would imho stabilize the market. People would be able to calculate more precisely how much money or crowns they need to get the item they want, and maybe this would help to end this galloping inflation.

[snip]
[edited for bashing]

Crown selling is not a gold sink, it's a wealth distribution. A gold sink is where the gold is fully removed from the game. Examples are below:
Gold housing purchases
Purchases made from NPCs
Successful guild trader bids, and associated guild trader costs.
Repair costs

Any interaction that involves giving gold to another player is a distribution not a sink. The only time that it would be a sink is if the character had gold on them when it was deleted. INFLATION is NOT a gold sink it is what you get when there is an overflow of currency. If we use the kitchen sink analogy inflation is that period when you sink starts to fill even if all of your drains are open. To combat it you can either add more drains or cut the flow. The economy goes bad when the sink starts to overflow.

Item set curation won't have add much economy impact as you suspect. Most of the sets that will benefit from this mechanic are bind on pickup sets. Bind on equip sets will be less impacted. All it means is that you will spend less time farming gear and more time farming other things like transmute stones or doing activities you enjoy.

ALSO ZOS should not introduce item set collection pieces for crowns. This should never happen.

Players will never really know how much an item is worth. Not really. Value is subjective and so is how people value time. If people valued time the exact same then there would be more uniformity for various IRL things. But that would not have an impact on inflation, because values change all of the time. If I have nothing to do today IRL other than play ESO for 20 hours vs another day when I can only play eso for 3 hours I am going to value my time spent doing other activities differently. I may be willing to pay more for an item I want on the 3 hour day than I would be on the 20 hour day.

wolfie1.0. · October 2021

zaria wrote: »

Kezzic wrote: »

I posted a very similar topic on the WoW forums, pre-Shadowlands, and it was met with extreme vitriol because people don’t want their gold stashes diminished in any way. Though I did suggest something more radical, like a seasonal, flat % reduction across all player gold reserves.

Link to me getting roasted:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/

So mat prices will go up as people prefer to keep their valuables in easy to sell tempers than gold before the devaluation.
And yes will hurt the cp 180 trying to gold out his first weapons most as usual.

There are very few items that can not be actively obtained for free from world drops. Most of those are event items. The others are very very rare. Trading is a convenience and a time saver and things are priced according to demand, ease of farming, and other factors. My advice to a cp180 trying to gold their first set is to farm Mats until they can do so themselves.

wolfie1.0. · October 2021

There is a solution to all of this and tbh I expect ZOS to pull the trigger on it at some point. And that would be to simply make crown gifting in exchange for gold a banable offense. Or just remove the option to gift crown store items. They can do either.

Amottica · October 2021

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

There is a solution to all of this and tbh I expect ZOS to pull the trigger on it at some point. And that would be to simply make crown gifting in exchange for gold a banable offense. Or just remove the option to gift crown store items. They can do either.

I agree Zenimax can do that but I doubt they will. It creates more sales of crowns and wealth distribution in a game is not a significant issue. The gold sellers are because their gold comes from running bots which is a different issue, but related.

To ban the activity they would or should eliminate gifting since they have already clearly stated trading crowns store items for gold is trading an in-game item for an in-game item which has always been legitimate. It is hard to change that without being nakedly two-faced and i doubt Zenimax is that kind of company.

Sylvermynx · October 2021

I have a LOT of crowns. I'm not interested in selling them for gold - because I also have a LOT of gold. So much that there's really nothing I need it for....

Crowns. I get 19k when I renew each account for a year. Over several months I might spend a fair amount of them - IF there's something in the crown store I really want (and that's not real common any more - I have nearly everything I want from there already, on both PC accounts both megaservers).

Really, there's not much I want from the crown store these days. I don't like Radiant Apex or even "normal" Apex mounts for the most part. I have most of the cosmetics I really want. I sub for the perks, and my crowns and gems (and SOE) just sit there. Which is fine honestly - eventually the servers will go dark and ALL of it will go away.

At that point, I'll remember the fun I had, and will shrug off the rest.

Sheezabeast · October 2021

People are wanting middleman prices without the middleman....that's the problem. They see them selling high in the crown selling discords and expect to get that price without the safety or middleman.

spartaxoxo · October 2021

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

There is a solution to all of this and tbh I expect ZOS to pull the trigger on it at some point. And that would be to simply make crown gifting in exchange for gold a banable offense. Or just remove the option to gift crown store items. They can do either.

That's the worst solution imaginable from both ZOS and the player's side, so I really doubt they'd do that. It's a truly terrible way of fixing things.

What they should do is simply destroy the Crown Exchange Discords by offering a proper trade interface for secure trading. If there was no longer a middleman destroying the economy, crown prices would stabilize.

MercilessnVexed · October 2021

Meh. It'll go back down as soon as things mellow out again. Every time we have a new release or new crates the crowns go up. They always go back down. Be patient, Padowan.

Sheezabeast · October 2021

Beastygrowls wrote: »

Meh. It'll go back down as soon as things mellow out again. Every time we have a new release or new crates the crowns go up. They always go back down. Be patient, Padowan.

Not true...less than a month after the last crown sale, on PCNA you could barely find anyone selling for under 650:1.

Hotdog_23 · October 2021

The problem is the economies are completely different on PC vs. Console or at least PSNA. The exchange rate has held steady at an average of 100 per crown. During crown sales it drops to 90 gold per crate a lot of times. Have seen people offer it at 150 but generally that someone who is in a hurry to buy something.

Any gold sink that ZOS introduces in the game that would seem good for PC would be way out of proportion related to console.

Stay safe and happy hunting

wolfie1.0. · October 2021

spartaxoxo wrote: »

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

There is a solution to all of this and tbh I expect ZOS to pull the trigger on it at some point. And that would be to simply make crown gifting in exchange for gold a banable offense. Or just remove the option to gift crown store items. They can do either.

That's the worst solution imaginable from both ZOS and the player's side, so I really doubt they'd do that. It's a truly terrible way of fixing things.

What they should do is simply destroy the Crown Exchange Discords by offering a proper trade interface for secure trading. If there was no longer a middleman destroying the economy, crown prices would stabilize.

It's not a good solution for ZOS to pull the plug on it. But it would be easier for them to do that than it would be to develop a secure way to process gifting for crowns, and any and all involved hassles. Like i said i expect them to do it at some point, doesn't mean that they will.

The Crown Exchange Discords would still exist because, assuming ZOS goes as far as making a secure way to transfer funds, there would still be a need to get buyers in touch with sellers to ensure the transactions happen. I even know of a few exchanges where the middleperson as it were took absolutely 0 cut from transactions and charged no fees. they do exist.

What a secure system would NOT do is overly impact the prices of the exchanges. I have sold crowns, and i have never had a breach of trust or been scammed. Crown Rates are player driven and based on supply and demand. Right now it is very much a sellers market.

Also, you have to remember this you are talking about IRL funds being consumed in exchange for currency in a digital world where those same digital funds can not be converted back into IRL funds. For someone in my local region to buy crowns right now for 21k its about $165 USD (includes sales tax) that is no small chunk of change, even after a sale. there are a lot of IRL things that I and others can/need to do with those funds that can and will take priority over crowns.

So at the end of the day what we have is ONE currency that is created by playing a game, that is exchanged for another currency that is generated by purchasing an ingame currency used for mostly cosmetic items using IRL funds.

To be perfectly honest here, the conversion rates are likely going to get worse before they get better, and the only relief to it is going to be if ZOS either stops producing crown only cosmetics, Allows players to buy crowns with gold directly from ZOS (setting their own locked conversion rate), or if ZOS permanently decreases crown costs (Sales are temporary relielf). I don't see ZOS doing any of this.

Minyassa · October 2021

I think part of the reason it started getting so high was scarcity of crowns. In TCE I was watching the prices go up whenever the economy dipped for recreational spending, and for a while they went back down after a crown sale. There came a point where they stopped going back down and from there on it was just worse and worse. I think because of the pandemic, people have had less money to spend on entertainment and this affected the number of crowns being sold and set a trend. The trend is self-sustaining, though--as long as there are people who can and will spend stupid amounts of gold on crowns, people are always going to ask that because all it takes is seeing that someone else sold crowns for x amount to make other people take that as a normal price.