hafgood wrote: »

Yup, there is no problem with the crown price. There is an entitlement problem with expecting to get them at a price that suits the purchaser rather than the seller.

There is no entitlement problem, it should suit both. There's people that understand the market sets the price, and that both buyers and sellers get a say in that. Buyers ofc try for the highest they can get, and sellers the lowest. If buyers make their price too high, buyers won't buy. They will be forced then to either lower prices or exit the market. If sellers want to pay too little, buyers decline the sale and then remove themselves from the market or are forced to increase the price they are willing to pay.

Sellers who think that other people's time and efforts are completely worthless and that a simple financial transaction that benefits both parties is somehow an act of charity is the entitled mindset imo.

It is not an act of charity. You're paying someone for a good they have that takes time to get, time that you don't want or can't spend getting yourself.

Buyers who think that prices are too high need to understand that the prices are still at what those markets can bear. And really understand they do this themselves by using services like ttc and lazy writs, and instead should be targeting those rather than sellers placings their prices at what their markets can afford.

Sellers aren't greedy for wanting the most they can get out of their hard earned money. Buyers aren't entitled to want their payment for the efforts they put into getting that coin to actually be worth the time they are putting into it.

So many pc players want to protect the primary sources of inflation and then just think adding more houses will fix everything. It won't. The gold sinks are already tuned well for what a person can do on their own. It's the 3rd party aided pc faucets that are the problem.

hafgood wrote: »

I think we will have to disagree on the entitlement point. The whole premise of this thread is steeped in entitlement, the aim is to reduce the cost of something because it is currently beyond someone's reach, rather than go out and earn the gold the desire is to reduce the purchase price.

No. The premise of the thread is to make their labor actually worth the time it takes to do it.

They don't want to play a week for 7 dollars worth of merchandise or whatever the conversion rate turns out to be. What you're doing is acting like there should only be one voice in a market, which is how you end up with unhealthy markets which does harm new player retention. Inflation and deflation can kill games.

You not agreeing with the solution (no to gold sinks because I'm on console) resulting in calling them entitled and painting them as just "not working hard enough" because you don't want your own coin devalued is no less greedy than anything they are saying.

.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

KalyanLazair wrote: »

hafgood wrote: »

The one thing I would say is this is a PC problem. It is not a console problem, therefore any controls put in place by Zos to reduce the amount of gold in the game would affect 2/3rds of the player base where inflation isn't an issue to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Yup, there is no problem with the crown price. There is an entitlement problem with expecting to get them at a price that suits the purchaser rather than the seller.

If crowns are too expensive to buy with your gold on PC I would suggest you start doing writs on multiple characters to increase your gold supply.

Zos are not going to introduce gold sinks or reduce the amount of gold coming into the game, there is no incentive, and no reason to do so, and as I said any changes they make affect 2/3rds of the player base unfairly.

So please stop trying to get the game changed because of "inflation" and start questioning whether that must have item that you can't afford in the crown store really is must have, and if it is maybe buy some crowns with your money rather than someone else's

Awesome. Been thinking about this ever since this topic popped up. Crowns are obtained via real world money, be it through buying them, or be it through subscription like in my case. Some users have more crowns than they need and decide to sell them for IN GAME money (which is a made up coin that's totally worthless outside of ESO, unlike euros or dollars or cryptos). Yet people want ZOS to force sellers to lower the price in worthless, made up coin, of something they paid real coin for.

Let's be fair, the coin is not worthless. It has value to people, which is why people are willing to buy crowns with RL money and sell them for in game gold. Again the issue is not that sellers are greedy or demanding to much for the IRL money, or that ZOS should somehow require them to lower their prices, the issue is that the commodity (in game gold) for which they exchange crowns, has been significantly devalued over time. The buying power of your gold will be worth less tomorrow than it is today. And that will continue to be the case.

I am 100% not surprised that crown prices have gone up. They will continue to go up because there is rampant inflation in this game, with no signs of slowing. It is absolutely worse on PC (crafting writs), so any solution should be tailored to a given platform. If you want to control inflation, you need to analyze BOTH the way gold comes into the game AND they way gold comes out of the game.

Not that they would, but if they simply cut everyone's bank accounts in ESO by 50% in the next update, or introduce some sort of wealth tax on people sitting on 10 figures of gold, crown prices would fall hard over night. Now that would cause mass outrage, despite the fact that it would probably be good for the game. A much better solution is to introduce new gold sinks AND lower the flow of money into the game.

You are indeed correct that it has a worth because people place a worth to it, which still doesn't change the fact that, objectively speaking, it's a worthless virtual coin that only has worth inside a very specific game and will completely vanish (thus taking with it all its worth) once the servers shut down (which will eventually happen). So we can assume we are both correct.

As for the inflation issue, there might be one, but I doubt it has such a terrible impact on people's gaming ability. I've been perfectly capable of competitive gaming without spending barely any coin, mainly harvesting the stuff I need for my builds and my crafting. I honestly want to know how much is this inflation affecting people's gaming abilities. Are people incapable of getting a good set because they're so ludicrously expensive? People can't join dungeons because they don't have enough coin to fit themselves? I haven't spent a single septim in any of the mats or tempers I've used to improve my sets. I've farmed them from overland, and without much struggle since they're all over the place. Some stuff might have taken me a bit more dedication, but to be perfectly honest, the only things that have made me spend hours of mindnumbing farming have been furnishing blueprints and some leads. Good sets? I've had to work on them, but coin was never a factor as most of the best ones I use aren't even available for sale at all (as they're dungeon-trial sets).

So what is so gamebreaking about this inflation that we need ZOS to control the market? I'm totally in favor of it, by the way. Please, ZOS, do control the market. It's going to be so much fun.

A Golden Vendor that appears once a week with a random Gold Temper for a low price, people will buy hundreds of them, overtime the price of Tempers will go down and the Gold people spent on them from the vendor will take a large cut of gold out of the economy and when there is less Gold it's value will go up causing the price of Crowns to go down.

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

Addons are not the sole reason for inflation. Go look at the CP2.0 crafting tree.

None of the in-game things are causing it or console would also have it

Kwoung wrote: »

As for the person who mentioned they would need to play all week to afford a $7 crown item... Wouldn't it be easier to just earn an extra $7, or skip one cup of coffee (or whatever) a week and buy the crowns yourself, if that item is so important?

That's not how markets work. When you sell your crowns you're buying imaginary money, not truly. When you sell your crowns you're converting it into video game currency, which you cannot use to pay rent or anything at all. You've already trading one imaginary item for another. So what are you actually getting out of that transaction? Why even trade a fake currency that you spent real money on for a free fake currency?

Time.

It's not different than buying fast food or paying someone to cut your lawn. You're paying someone to do a simple task that you can't do or don't feel like doing yourself. You wouldn't expect someone to make your food for free, or act like it's act of charity. You wouldn't expect the chef their own time. And you shouldn't be doing it to crown buyers either or act like they are entitled for valuing their time. You clearly value it too or you wouldn't be spending real money on it.

Some players have more time than money to spend on the game. Some players have more money than time to spend on the game. The two groups negotiating for a price that doesn't send either party out of the market is what determines the market value of crowns.

If prices on pc are so high a lot of buyers are forced out of the market, then sellers will have to sell to a smaller market pool. That's not a problem when the market is still healthy sized. Just more expensive items to a smaller pool of people. If it rises too high though, then too many buyers may exit the market and that can cause issues for some sellers too. Don't know if that's the case on pc or not, don't play it.

Ippokrates wrote: »

KalyanLazair wrote: »

.

So what is so gamebreaking about this inflation that we need ZOS to control the market? I'm totally in favor of it, by the way. Please, ZOS, do control the market. It's going to be so much fun.

It is MMO, a game designed for people to play together. From this perspective galloping inflation is not a good thing, cause it is keeping new and more casual player from play. And i am not only talking about crowns. Look how much people pay for tempers. I seriously doubt that new players starting with 18 alts, addons and daily routine of writs to make themselves golden set ;p

Why? I repeat. I have never bought a single mat or temper ever, and I can fit all of my characters gold ten times each. I've gotten these many crafting materials by simply playing the game.
Also, allow me to point out the temper prices since I just happen to have ESO open right now and I'm using TTC. PC-EU.
Honing stone; 6-8
Dwarven oil; 8-10
Grain solvent; 222-278
Tempering alloy; 5,000-6-252

And the prices are similar for the rest of tempering alloys with two exceptions; jewelry and dreugh wax which has a price of 13k-17k. You CAN play the game very competitively in purple armor. Actually, considering how much ZOS likes to tamper with our builds, I've been playing purple armor for years and we've three manned vet dungeons hundreds of times.

Chromium plating which is SUPER expensive is not that expensive because of inflation. It's expensive because of rarity. Jewelry crafting is very expensive because the tempers are rare and there is a high demand of the products, which would inevitably push the prices up.

What I mean to say is that you people are saying that inflation is a catastrophe for some reason, but I've been able to play the game competitively (not casually, if you play casually it's even easier) without touching a single guild merchant. Actually the only time I've used guild merchants has been to buy useless trash (because that's what it is) like furnishing plans because I confess I'm that person that enjoys playing The Sims in ESO (yay me) but I'm also perfectly aware that housing is a useless passtime that does not affect the game at all.

Everything you might need to play the game drops from the game itself, and you don't have any sort of regulation like IRL that keeps you from, lets say, harvesting some pumpkins you might find laying around, or hunting wolves for leather because they are protected. Need leather? Go harvest it. Need iron? Go harvest it. The stuff is all over the place. You don't need to buy it from other players because you can get it yourself, which is basically the reason prices are so ridiculously low. Get rubedite, refine it and collect your tempers. You're not being kept from playing the game by inflation, specially since I already pointed out mats and tempers, aside from gold which are rarer and more expensive (because they're rare, that's what happens when there is a high demand of a rare thing, that rare things tend to be more expensive than common things because... well, they're rare) are very cheap. Rubedite ingot goes by 6-8 the ingot, again, because the thing is all over the place. It's common so even though there is high demand, my grandma can harvest it with her walking stick.

I seriously doubt that new players starting with 18 alts

Yeah, I want to talk about this here. I don't have 18 alts and I've been playing since 2016. That's not a new, casual players. That's the kind of player that would buy an account to jump straight to vet DLC dungeons without actually playing the game because they don't want to do the leveling and learning like we all did. Yes, definitely, that's the kind of user that would be more negatively affected by inflation, and their problem can easily be solved by... playing the game.

It's an MMO, like you very well said. MMOs have a heavy part of grind. EVE Online had a part of grind (and in EVE your ship gets destroyed, it gets destroyed for good, you don't get it back). WOT is HEAVY GRIND if I've ever seen one. WOW is grindy. Guild Wars is grindy.

Inflation most negatively affects not casual players (with 18 alts all fit in gold...), but the type of player that does not want to go through the grind and want to jump straight into top tier stuff.

And I'm not saying inflation is a good thing or anything. I'm saying I don't see it's that big of a problem since it has never kept me from competitive playing. For the record, when I bought the Braised Rabbit recipe on my main character (stam NB), I payed something around 4k-6k for it (it was years ago). Today it's worth around 1k if I remember correctly. There might be inflation, or there might be a high demand-low offer of some stuff that might be pushing prices up. Still, I rest my case, the game is perfectly playable without touching a Guild Trader at all. It just requires... playing the game.

Everything (outside of the crown store) can be earned by playing the game (or for a nominal amount of gold ala the luxury vendor/houses)

The crown store is simply cosmetic items or "pay to not play" items.

Using the prices of gold improvement materials is a strawman argument (one easily refuted I might add) because anybody can simply do in-game activities (farm for materials, do writs, etc) to get those items.

Using the add-on argument is a strawman argument since nobody gains any advantage over another by using them. They are accessible to all on a given platform (minus Stadia, but that's a choice). The platforms don't interact w/ one another, so the economies are separate and different.

It really is entitlement... people feel they are entitled to being able to buy things with their valueless (in real world terms) gold from people selling their crowns (which can only be bought with real money) for a certain price. I call that entitlement. I thought when they introduced the idea it was going to be well over 1000:1, and that was before prices had gone up because of the inevitable inflation... which would put it closer to 2000:1 or even 3000:1 now. I certainly wouldn't sell for less than that. My real-life money is worth too much to me. Time I have in spades. But that's just me.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

Addons are not the sole reason for inflation. Go look at the CP2.0 crafting tree.

None of the in-game things are causing it or console would also have it

Considering that both gold inflation and crown rates are in game things that people are complaining about they do matter.

When talking about inflation ANY feature or function that continues to generate new gold matters. In addition there are other factors that can influence prices. Addons? Yes. But you also have to ask how often do people play on console vs pc? What activities do they do? How many subs exist? Do they buy crowns more? What is the demand like? What is the supply like? I can assure you that taken as a whole each server has their unique personalities and idiosyncrasies that won't match up with other servers.

That Said, if consoles are so awesome. Then more people should play eso on them. I hear they have a perfect economy with excellent crown to gold exchange rates.

Kwoung wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

And the one thing that platform has that the others do not are addons that make gold making actions easier and quicker to do.

That is untrue, by a long shot. There are many many difference between consoles and PC's, the largest of which isn't that PC's have addons, it is who is using that platform to play ESO and the differences between those people. I won't go into the particulars, because some would be conjecture and of course there are always exceptions, but in general I am pretty sure there is a difference in age, social standing, free time, patience, and numerous other things, all of which greatly affect how the economy would play out on a particular server.

Food for thought though, on one platform everyone is playing on a $250-500 device, on the other everyone is using a $1,000-6,000+ device. This in itself can be interpreted many different ways (affordability, frugality, simple preference, etc...), but it is a fairly huge difference.

All of that is just biased speculation. None of which even accounts for the fact that console users have to pay a regular fee to even access online games, so over time, console users spend far more than an normal, average pc player.

The only tangible, factual, difference, is addons. That's it. The actual game itself is exactly the same. Addons are the only difference. Console players have access to all of the in game methods of making gold as pc players. But we don't make nearly as much gold as a whole because we do not have addons that remove the major obstacle that stands in the way of generating gold quicker: time. Addons greatly reduce the time it takes to run through crafting writs. On console it takes over an hour to do 18 characters worth of writs. On PC, you can get through multiple accounts in that time. That is a huge difference in gold generation even possible between the two platforms. All due to addons.

Kwoung wrote: »

This is the basic core difference between the two and why you cannot apply the "rules" from one to the other.

MMOs are basic economies that follow the principles of basic economics. Corporations even hire economists to manage them. That they are less complex than real world economies does not mean the basic rules don't apply to them.

Housing is a massive gold sink. I wish they would introduce furnishing surveys or deconstructing furniture.