Syrpynt wrote: »

"Flipping" items for profit is what is killing the economy. It is literally middle-man behavior and is a major cause of inflation in real economies.

You can only flip an item because the original seller undervalued it, or in many cases wilfully sold it for a lower value because they wanted it to sell fast. It's not driving inflation, the rising value of items in game is down to supply and demand. Chromium platings haven't gotten more expensive over the long term in real terms, the in game gold has merely lost value because everyone who plays a lot has a lot of it and it's entering the game faster than it leaves.

Flipping items is an important in game gold sink. The more stuff is traded the more fees are paid the more the prices of the guild stores rises, the more of that imaginary created hold is sucked back out of the system. If you want to control inflation then the imaginary value you magicked into existence either has to be hoarded or magicked back out of existence - it's no different to all the fiat currency in the real world. You also need inflation so that all the people with insane amounts of gold in the bank keep losing value. The alternative would be to add a tax system, and I doubt that would b e quite so popular!

They do play with the behaviour subtly now and then. The new CP passive for refining effectively increases the drop rate of tempers for example. When jewellery prices rose a lot they've over time tweaked writ values (but not enough)

I see the problem as follows:

- Lack of strong gold sinks to get some gold out of the circulation
- Droprate of ressources are IMO too low and can't keep up with demand. Look at perfect Roe its prices just rise and rise
- Flippers buy with the intend to resell and a higher price instead of using the items themselves - this push the prices up when ESO is now flooded with flippers. Yes I believe community greed is part of the problem. This is on all of us.
- Nerf easy gold making solutions like daily login gold and writ gold. Instead give more ressource surveys to increase supply of ressource demand while halting the gold inflation.

Its what I would do.

I mean the lack of big or frequent gold sinks are part of it. The only really large purchases you can make are for crowns, which just recirculates the gold in the community. Over time, the people who trade and farm get richer and richer, without many opportunities to spend it all. Many do farm a lot of gold for the sake of buying crown items, as they cannot use IRL money for it (usually due to regional issues). If there was an official system to buy crowns at a flat rate, through some conversion for gold, gold would actually be removed from the economy (and it will put an end to crown inflation). I don't know how it would affect ZOS' bottom line, but I imagine those who have the means to buy CS items for money will continue to do so, while only those willing to put effort into generating gold will utilise the system.

I guess there is a misunderstanding of what inflation is in comparison to prices adapting to supply and demand. Inflation is an average prices increase over a selected group of products within a certain amount of time. Usually this group contains essential products (like milk, bread, ...) and a certain set of standardized convenience products. It does however not relate to a single product itself. If a single price goes up or down and this product is in that pool it may affect inflation, but a statement like price of product X went up by 20% and then saying inflation is 20% is just wrong unless everything in that pool went up by the same margin.

In regards to prices going up for certain items if they are either needed for an event or that are now an ingreedient in a new crafting pattern, that is natural. Some people just played the PTS and figured out that some itmes might be needed for that and eventually bought out all the available items currently offered in guild stores. People might then react by increasing the prices as they are all of a sudden now in demand and prices go up naturally. That prices fluctuate some times drastically is more or less due to the available information to the trader. On PC you have certain addons that tell you the average price of an item within a certain time period. AFAIK these addons do only calculate the average price based on the prices they actually scanned. This does not mean that this item is really sold. I.e. I know someonw who was lucky enough to get a frost staff from the Powerful Assault loot boxes. Prices here vary from 1M to 4M regardless of the trait and this item is usually only used by PvE meta trial-tanks and even those might swap Powerful Assault for other sets. I doubt that any of the 2M+ staffs will really be bought but I don't observe the market that much to be honest.

The difference between other MMOs and ESO however is that ESO does not have a single place prices are formed. So, it takes a bit of effort and time to roam the areas and visit every shop and compare prices. While on PC there is Tamriel Trading Center (TTC) available where players could potentially upload their findings, console players can't utilize that. As of such, there is usually not one price an item is offered at (like in the Powerful Assault frost staff example) and people who put in time and effort can snatch good offers and resell them elsewhere for a lot more (as it is done with all those Powerful Assault frost staffs). The likelihood that one guy can dominate the economy like it was the case in WoW or some other MMOs is rather minimal. I was told that during my absence from ESO ZOS at one time screwed up and returned the gold for the guild trader to those guild leaders but by a multiplicative factor and some smart guy used this gold to buy out all golden temper materials s/he could find and resell those to his/her conditions. Whether that story is true or not, I don't know, at least I was told such multiple times by different people.

Whether players in ESO have to much gold or not, I don't know. I know some who have actually couple of hundreds of millions while others have barely any gold. How people make gold varies also from player to player. Some have multiple accoutns and up to 18 chars and simply do crafting writs each day. On a single account with 18 chars that almost 2.7M per month. This may require roughly 1-2 hours of logging through your chars and crafting these items, but it can be done brain-afk while watching Netflix, YT-videos or your favorite TV-show. Others may just sell a more or less heavily demanded item for millions (like my friend did with the Powerful Assault staff). Though I doubt that he will be able to do such transactions on a daily basis

In the end what do we really need the gold for? Some use it for housing, some use it on the golden vendor and the market-driven guys use it to reinvest their gold into potential gold-makers just to pile up more wealth. I'm neither into housing nor into the guild trader thing and i usually don't care about gold. Doing daily writs on one or multiple of my 18 characters on my main account per day is enough to pile up the gold further and further.

Raideen wrote: »

This is why you dont see the same issue on consoles.

console has its own issues. probably exactly the opposite, As prices are in constant free fall, due to botters and people agressivley undercutting each other with ridiculous amounts of materials. Months ago tempers would go for 9k each, while now even at 4/4.5k each they sit at the trader expiring even in top trading locations.

so here we are, swimming in gold and at the same time swimming in materials too. I have no need to sell any gold mats or buy them. I currently make more money with selling obscure materials like kresh fibre and void cloth than with gold tempers and ancestor silk.

I don't think ZoS can do anything about it. Firstly, many will not get along with me, but I will say that there is no economy in the game. We just sell something that we found and that's it. We do not spend anything.

Secondly, this game seeks to ensure that the new player or casual is comfortable to play. Therefore, there will be no serious golden sinks in the game.

I think we need a crown token. This will make buying crowns for gold safe and convenient. It will also lower prices. But prices will still continue to rise over time.

hafgood wrote: »

Please can you all stop for a minute.

This is a PC problem.

It does not affect consoles.

Us console players (66% of the player base) do not need a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

It's time you PC players realised that you are in the minority and started looking for solutions to the PC problem and what is causing this to happen on PC's.

You also all need to stop with the Gold Sink suggestions - they do not work unless every player is affected and even then they affect poorer players more than wealthy players.

And remember they would affect console players as well - where this alleged problem doesn't exist.

So please start looking for PC solutions rather than global solutions because us console players do not want them

Have you considered that 2/6 platforms having major inflation issues is in fact a serious issue for the Devs to grapple with?

I've already talked about why this happened on PC specifically. PC players have more gold stored than Console players, and when a Steam exploit flooded PC markets with cheap Crowns, lots of gold came out of storage and is now washing around the economy. This is primarily a problem caused by gold-rich PC players spending their stored gold in vast quantities on Crown Store items during the pandemic, and during a period where exploited crowns magnified the amount of trading going on. The exploit has been closed, but the gold genie has to be stuffed back in the bottle.

And sure, we can have a PC-only gold sink.

See, when I'm talking gold sinks, I'm thinking that it's been ages since ZOS last offered a big house like Earthtear Cavern for gold. I'm thinking it's been a long time since we could buy new mounts from stablemasters for gold. I'm thinking that if ZOS were willing to give up a little of their profits from the Crowns for Gold trade, they could throw in some nice items that sell directly for gold to appeal to the Whales on PC who'll spend millions in gold for Crown Store items and thus get that gold out of the economy permanently instead of it just changing hands.

But if you don't want those on consoles because you don't have a problem with inflation, and it doesn't effect every single player, and it's just a tax on the players who want those items...well, I guess consoles can miss out on the opportunity to buy those items, right?

(Mind, this is all predicated on the idea that ZOS would give up some crown profit by selling expensive items directly for gold. And I'm not convinced they'd be willing to give up the $$$.)

Grandchamp1989 wrote: »

- Droprate of ressources are IMO too low and can't keep up with demand. Look at perfect Roe its prices just rise and rise

It's much much more complicated
- Perfect roe prices determine how many people farm it so if supply rises farming rates drop. Overall it may improve a bit but probably not much
- People are hoarding perfect roe due to massive gold inflation at least on PC (console is different)

In real terms the price of perfect roe appears to be fairly constant. PC in game gold is merely worth a lot less than it was (and I mean a lot). You can anchor all the calculations back to dollars (which ok themselves are also just a fiat currency but one we can compare with real goods).

There are a set of general rates for crown/gold conversion. The ones people will pay at the various exchanges. You can combine the change in that with the inflation rate for US dollars and the price of crowns and do the math. Inflation relative to the real world is running at different values on each server. On that basis if I did my sums right gold on the EU server has an inflation rate over 250% a year. So the biggest real value sink in that server is actually all those millions of banked gold more than halving in value.

This btw is also why people currently hoard stuff like rare motifs and materials. There isn't a good reason to sell a rare motif. chromium platings or perfect roe unless you need the gold right now, because they have a fairly constant value (platings spike up on meta changes and then down again). You keep your assets in reasonably liquid high value objects. Materials are great because of the craft bag (free to store), otherwise you go for the really rare stuff and sit on it. My stash of perfect roe is staying put because it'll be worth the same in real terms in 6 months, but if I sell it then the gold will be worth half.

Thus half of your shortage is actually that in a hyperinflating economy assets are king, just like people have hoarded gold against inflation in the real world people hoard perfect roe in this one.

VaranisArano wrote: »

gamergirldk wrote: »

Let us buy Transmution crystals now that would drain gold out of ppl

You'd have to be able to buy Transmutation Crystals from an NPC that then takes the gold out of circulation.

This wouldn't be buying/selling from other players, since that's just more of the same wealth transfer that's currently subject to inflation.

Pretty much and while I would love to be able to buy undaunted keys and transmute stones directly from NPCs such an activity diverts from the goal of offering those things as incentives for participating in group content.

This is why I feel that ZOS left an opportunity at the door with the Amory system.

vgabor wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

Remove the API that MM and Tamriel Trade Center use and the economy will fix. Those addons allow for data that goes far beyond the scope of what the devs intended. They allow for too much flipping.

I'm sorry to say, but you're disillusioned if you think TTC will help you with any high volume flipping. While I didn't bother with flipping, I've been in top trading guilds where I saw serious flippers porting through each zone to check guild traders everywhere regularly and snatch up deals before they even are shown on TTC. If you try to follow TTC you're simply too late and the items you see really worth to flip will not be there at the merchant when you arrive as someone making their regular rounds already took them.

Agree, TTC is very nice finding rare items or uncommon items who is often overpriced.
Its not an flipper tool outside of perhaps looking for very under priced items.
The flippers simple read the PTS predictions like daedric style stones will be valuable because they will be used in new furniture, they might even ask in zone for trades as its not something most sell.
Or how prices for overland and PvP sets skyrocketed after we got transmute. Remember having to pay 20K for an junk trait briarheart shoulder simply so I could keep the set and run ring of wild hunt and dropping monster set in overland.
Solution is to use it to your benefit.
Well I wanted deadly strike for an templar so looked at all the ridiculous overpriced stuff in guild stores, bought a few, then went to Bruma, spent one million AP getting the pieces I wanted then selling the overflow for one million gols
Yes that is more than one CP for one gold as I uses some items.
I sold green blueprints for 19K.
Its so many people with too much gold and an patience of an toddler on an sugar rush.
Exploit them

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

SimonThesis wrote: »

The problem is the gold sinks aren't strong enough. We've had rampant inflation for a while, opposite problem of NW.

Only half of the equation. Game needs more gold sinks AND we need to seriously curb the supply of new gold into the game, cough cough, crafting writs. I will never understand why people refuse to look at the other side of the coin every time this conversation comes up.

Well nerf crafting writs the ZoS way

Well I guess Chromium Plating could very easy go way past a million a piece. As they also drop the main reason to to crafting writs. Be very careful that you ask for.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

SimonThesis wrote: »

The problem is the gold sinks aren't strong enough. We've had rampant inflation for a while, opposite problem of NW.

Only half of the equation. Game needs more gold sinks AND we need to seriously curb the supply of new gold into the game, cough cough, crafting writs. I will never understand why people refuse to look at the other side of the coin every time this conversation comes up.

Well, part of the reason not to touch the flow of new gold via writs/dailies is that lowering that amount hurts players with less gold and does little to the players who have a ton of gold. It's a little like trying to shut the barn door after the horses have gotten loose.

Another reason is that consoles generate a lot less gold due to writs because of no addons. So lowering the amount of gold hurts them when they don't have this problem.

If ZOS does want to slow gold generation by writs, there's two good ways to do it.

1. Remove the API used by addons like Lazy Writ Crafter and force all players to use the base game functionality. This hampers the ability of PC players to quickly do writs on multiple characters and brings future PC gold generation closer in line with console.

2. Lower the gold rewards on PC only, though again, that hurts PC players with less gold who craft for their money and doesn't touch the richer players who primarily trade for their money and have lots of stored gold. Don't touch console because their gold generation levels aren't a problem.