Increase supply of Gold mats.
That should hopefully drive their prices down.

Perfect roe in particular I Think could use a buff to its droprate

In addition to these they can remove the gold rewards from daily log in rewards. It might sound very negligible amount of gold given to the players, but if you account everyone that number racks up so much in my opinion.

Maybe they can also change the Champion Point which increases your gold gain by ten percent or directly remove it. I suggest this because in the end it will slowly reduce the amount of gold that is circulating in player inventories. In addition to this removing or changing the Champion Point which decreases the fast travel cost, since the gold needs to be removed from players to counter inflation.

Not a very good idea but they might increase the price of horse training to a few thousands per day from its current price and maybe a very expensive choice to speed it up. But the speed up choice probably is not going to happen since there is a Crown Store equivalent of it.

Removing vendor prices of various items maybe help in log run. Like Alkahest currently is three gold per piece and many people has much in their bags which is basically a gold that they can generate if they want to, by just selling them to vendors. But this probably will force people to sell these anyway since they will probably announce this change via patch notes and people will sell them before live patch comes.

Here is another way to counter inflation. Stop crowns for gold transactions. Or at least place a plafond on the echange rate.

etchedpixels wrote: »

DonRavello wrote: »

4. Small but noteworthy: Remove the gold rewards from daily and master crafting writs. They are already very rewarding with rare materials, writ vouchers and experience. So there are plenty of reasons to do them. The additional gold reward is simply not necessary.

This one doesn't work. For new players the gold rewards from crafting writs early on are a really important bootstrap, and if you are playing the game as a Skryim style game they are pretty essential. You could certainly make the gold part per account or taper it down per characters done by day though.

I suspect a more practical gold sink that worked on end game players would be to offer a tier of things below the crown store exclusives. Non-blingy other mounts like guar and camels (4 guar, 4 camels, 4 whatever soon adds up for the end gamers), as well as more feature/achievement furnishings and more houses like Water's Edge that are not quite crown store but attractive enough to sell for a millions of gold.

I do like the transmute one simply because it's a consumable so it keeps on giving. However most end gamers can clock 150 transmutes in a couple of hours if they want.

Thanks for that insight - I adjusted my post and added your proposal regarding the mounts.

Increasing drop rates will not reduce the inflation. Just certain items would be more readily available, so others will get more expensive. Also crown transfers etc. will only circulate the available gold. In order to reduce inflation, money must be taken out of the marked by either not throwing in so much (reducing daily log in "rewards", good point) or by offering more attractive things to buy from NPCs, not players.

DonRavello wrote: »

4. Small but noteworthy: Remove the gold rewards from daily and master crafting writs after reaching lvl 50 or CP 160 (to still encourage new players). They are already very rewarding with rare materials, writ vouchers and experience. So there are plenty of reasons to do them. The additional gold reward is simply not necessary.

The gold reward is entirely necessary because not everyone wants to join a trading a guild, which is probably the worst trading system I've ever encountered, especially if you play sporadically, which lots of players do.

And right there is the actual source of your high prices, in games with a global AH what happens is nearly everything comes down to a reasonable price, except for very, very rare items like weapon/armour skins, because a much higher percentage of people engage in trading (there are no barriers), there is far greater price transparency and its actually more difficult to manipulate prices or supply as an individual or small group.

Oh and you might want to consider that this game is aggressively monetised and high prices suit Zenimax, because they earn money from people buying crowns to exchange for gold.

DonRavello wrote: »

This is not correct. On PC there are addons, which make up for this shortage like TTC, where players can see the average prices and select the kiosk they want to buy from. On console these addons do not exist and prices are MUCH lower, but the system is the same. The source of the high prices is not the guild trader system (whatever good or bad it is), the source is: too much money going into the market and not enough money is going out.

Wrong, because most players don't use those addons, the people who use TTC the most are those who want to flip or horde items which is one of the ways prices are pushed up in this game more than a global AH. The reality is things like TTC give more price information to the people who want to play the trading system than the general population who have less interest in using it and even less interest in running around from trader to trader trying to find what they are looking for at a decent price (this is one of those barriers to trading I mentioned previously). Which is part of the reason prices are so high on PC as opposed to console.

Sylosi wrote: »

DonRavello wrote: »

4. Small but noteworthy: Remove the gold rewards from daily and master crafting writs after reaching lvl 50 or CP 160 (to still encourage new players). They are already very rewarding with rare materials, writ vouchers and experience. So there are plenty of reasons to do them. The additional gold reward is simply not necessary.

The gold reward is entirely necessary because not everyone wants to join a trading a guild, which is probably the worst trading system I've ever encountered, especially if you play sporadically, which lots of players do.

And right there is the actual source of your high prices, in games with a global AH what happens is nearly everything comes down to a reasonable price, except for very, very rare items like weapon/armour skins, because a much higher percentage of people engage in trading (there are no barriers), there is far greater price transparency and its actually more difficult to manipulate prices or supply as an individual or small group.

Oh and you might want to consider that this game is aggressively monetised and Zenimax want high prices, because they earn money from people buying crowns to exchange for gold.

[snip]


Writ gold is probably the biggest source of inflation in the entire game. This gold is generated basically out of nothing. The availability of materials stands in no way in relation to the gold that is being generated. Someone with 18 chars generates more than 90k gold out of thin air everyday. This is billions of gold weekly across the player base that is being dumped into the economy.

Nobody really benefits from this longterm as you might be able to buy things with fixed prices easily, but anything player traded is subject to this massive inflation and will keep increasing in price.


"And right there is the actual source of your high prices, in games with a global AH what happens is nearly everything comes down to a reasonable price, except for very, very rare items like weapon/armour skins, because a much higher percentage of people engage in trading (there are no barriers), there is far greater price transparency and its actually more difficult to manipulate prices or supply as an individual or small group."

This is simply not true and idk where this convuluted logic comes from. With a global AH you would not be able to buy anything currently as the amount of gold in circulation is way too high and it would allow rich individuals to completely dominate the market. The prices would be infinitely higher than they are right now. The current trader system is the main reason that is not the case as nobody wants to spend hours running from trader to trader to buy up the entire stock of for example dreugh wax to flip it for more. We certainly have individuals rich enough to do so. The argument "it would only happen to some items" is just silly as it would happen to items that everybody wants like gold and potion mats. Everybody would be affected. You can see this phenomenon often in games like WoW that have a global AH and rich people just decide to push up the price of some meta material by a bunch of gold.

[edited for baiting]

No, to 4-6-7.
4: Dailies need the gold. As incentives, to buy supplies to do them, and for new players.
6: I like the gold rewards from anything. This makes me feel like I spend less whenever I spend gold.
7: No, champion points goldreduction nodes should stay! They are a choice some players choose specifically.

To be honest, there is really no need to combat gold inflation, all gold prices rise accordingly. So everything gets inflated the same way.

If ZOS truly wants to combat inflation, they should ban add-ons. They allow some players to make too much gold, too fast. Especially when compared to players who do not use add-ons.

The ideas to expand the inventory/bank slots at a major cost, is really good. Though that might just be because I want more space.

PS: You can also buy in-game houses for gold!

DonRavello wrote: »

We've all seen a massive (gold) price increase on items in the last months. There are several threads on why and how this happened including some very good analyses. To wrap it up: It is much too easy to get a lot of gold quickly, and the options to spend it are limited. I have some ideas to counter inflation, as may have others. So please share your ideas, so ZOS might take some of these ideas for a future patch. The idea is to offer additional quality of life features for hefty gold sums, which have a good benefit, but will not discriminate people with less gold, who can't afford it. So no "pay to win" options. Also no competition to crown sales (such as crates for gold), as ZOS won't implement them anyways.

Your ideas are heavily mixing up 2 seperate things into a single issue.

On one side you have the NPC economy. Goods and services that are available for a stable gold value from NPCs towards players. That includes Mount training, bag and bank space, repairs, teleportation, mounts for gold, houses for gold etc. All the gold given out through sales to NPCs and quest rewards are balanced towards this. You dont have to sell anything to a player and can stil efford a 3 million house just by playing long enought.

The other side is the player economy. Items sold by players to players. For the NPC side these items have no value and are given value by players. This is the only area effected by inflation, but since its a closed area it not only means that you have to pay more to buy stuff, it also means that you can earn more by selling stuff. Also keep in mind that all these items are freely available in the game, so the player market is a short cut to get what you want.

What your ideas doing now is to cross the border between these 2 sides. You want to add more bag and bank spaces at prices that would require players to go into player trading to afford it. Reducing or removing quest gold would also hurt players that dont want to jump into player trading as they would see their gains dry out.

The inflation in itself is not a real issue as it only exists in a specific bubble that doesnt hold exclusive items. Everyone can participate in that bubble and as such earn alot of money. The problem is that some ppl want to buy things out of the bubble without putting anything back in. Thats why ppl jumped into crown trading to create a real money shortcut into buying things out of the market and the gold that was released back into circulation this way increased the prices to what you see now. There is no way to solve this issue. If you remove gold sources some palyers might suffer, if you create more expansive gold sinks you would lock out players that dont participate in money making. You will reach issues left and right and thats why you dont see ZOS do anything here.

Sarannah wrote: »

No, to 4-6-7.
4: Dailies need the gold. As incentives, to buy supplies to do them, and for new players.
6: I like the gold rewards from anything. This makes me feel like I spend less whenever I spend gold.
7: No, champion points goldreduction nodes should stay! They are a choice some players choose specifically.

To be honest, there is really no need to combat gold inflation, all gold prices rise accordingly. So everything gets inflated the same way.

If ZOS truly wants to combat inflation, they should ban add-ons. They allow some players to make too much gold, too fast. Especially when compared to players who do not use add-ons.

The ideas to expand the inventory/bank slots at a major cost, is really good. Though that might just be because I want more space.

PS: You can also buy in-game houses for gold!

Why banning addons ? What does it solve ? Nothing.

If some players are clever enough and make 100M per week by flip flopping things using addons, why not ?
These golds were earned fairly and are not a problem.
The problem is when some ..... (how to say it a polite way) .... not so clever players gets 100k from daily reward and get another big amount of golds from daily writs, as they were not earned hard enough and everybody can do it easy way.
The super big problem is if army of thousands of bots are harvesting nodes including ones dropping golds and ZOS admins sit and drink cofee doing nothing.

As I said. There is not easy solution how to reduce inflation in the economy and complex solution would be more painful then inflation itself.
You want to curb inflation but you dont want to hurt people ?
That's impossible.

Xebov wrote: »

If you remove gold sources some palyers might suffer, if you create more expansive gold sinks you would lock out players that dont participate in money making. You will reach issues left and right and thats why you dont see ZOS do anything here.

Thanks for your comment. I don't agree though.
1. The money you get from crafting writs is irrelevant. If those players do not participate in the money making, they don't buy any mats from the guild traders, but farm the mats by themselves. They don't need money for that. If they do participate, they can sell their valuable items and get far more money than those 334 gold.

2. No one is locked out of any game content by increased bag or bank slots or the possiblity to buy Transmute Crystals. The game is perfectly doable as it is currently. Just denying a large group of the playerbase something that wouldn't be achievable for some, who actively choose not to participate in it, makes no sense. If people choose not to participate in trials, they will not get trial gear. If people choose not to participate in PvP, they can't even get the rewards from some events.

Ash_In_My_Sujamma wrote: »

Here is another way to counter inflation. Stop crowns for gold transactions. Or at least place a plafond on the echange rate.

Even better, make an ingame vendor that sells crowns for gold at a fixed rate. (and make crowns non tradable at the same time)

that way gold is taken out of circulation, instead of flipped between 2 players. The idea is to get gold out of circulation

Xebov wrote: »

DonRavello wrote: »

Xebov wrote: »

If you remove gold sources some palyers might suffer, if you create more expansive gold sinks you would lock out players that dont participate in money making. You will reach issues left and right and thats why you dont see ZOS do anything here.

Thanks for your comment. I don't agree though.
1. The money you get from crafting writs is irrelevant. If those players do not participate in the money making, they don't buy any mats from the guild traders, but farm the mats by themselves. They don't need money for that. If they do participate, they can sell their valuable items and get far more money than those 334 gold.

2. No one is locked out of any game content by increased bag or bank slots or the possiblity to buy Transmute Crystals. The game is perfectly doable as it is currently. Just denying a large group of the playerbase something that wouldn't be achievable for some, who actively choose not to participate in it, makes no sense. If people choose not to participate in trials, they will not get trial gear. If people choose not to participate in PvP, they can't even get the rewards from some events.

1.) How is the money from writs irrelevant? If a player is not participating into player trades they still have NPC services to pay for. Mount training, houses or bag spaces for example are still existing outside of player interaction and they have to be paid for. Not to forget porting and repairing costs.

2.) Noone is locked out, but you are tearing down a border between the 2 parts of the game by adding a good that resides in one half but has its price determined by the gains from the independed other half. Most ideas on reducing income are going into the same direction and thats something that should not happen.

I can repeat myself again, inflation as you see it right now is not an issue. Every player can gather goods and sell them and instantly make as much money as any existing player does. There are no bounderies. The problem is created by players that want gold gera on 10 characters but dont wnat to gather materials or gold and expect other players to sell their stuff for cheap.

All money on the server are relevant and issue contributing to inflation.
On the other hand, raw materials are not a problem.
They mainly end up refined in gold mats and burned in master writs with high amount of XP for player who can afford it - no problem.
But golds harvested by players, given as rewards to players or what's the most painful problem harvested by bots as byproduct by harvesting other things are very big problem as they are never burned or sink enough and tend to accumulate.

You can destroy existing golds only by :
hiring NPC guildtraders
sell via guildtrader taxes
buying items sold by NPC vendors
buying upgrades from NPC vendors
buying houses

and that's basically all and it is only fraction of the golds added day by day to the game.

I suggested in one of the earliest post increasing selling tax to 50 percent instea of existing 4 percent.
That would destroy enough of golds to keep prices constant but in the end, your savings will end up burned
by the tax instead of inflation and items will be still not affordable for majority of players as they are not affordable now.
So ZOS will never go this way because inflation is a "problem" but tax is a "studio decision".

And I must repeat myself for the 10th time.
You can't curb inflation and do not to hurt people at the same time.

Xebov wrote: »

1.) How is the money from writs irrelevant? If a player is not participating into player trades they still have NPC services to pay for. Mount training, houses or bag spaces for example are still existing outside of player interaction and they have to be paid for. Not to forget porting and repairing costs.

2.) Noone is locked out, but you are tearing down a border between the 2 parts of the game by adding a good that resides in one half but has its price determined by the gains from the independed other half. Most ideas on reducing income are going into the same direction and thats something that should not happen.

I can repeat myself again, inflation as you see it right now is not an issue. Every player can gather goods and sell them and instantly make as much money as any existing player does. There are no bounderies. The problem is created by players that want gold gera on 10 characters but dont wnat to gather materials or gold and expect other players to sell their stuff for cheap.

The border you are talking about is imaginary: It is a MMORP Game, not a single player game. So there are certain services you can get from NPCs and others from players, some from both. You can have a werewolf bite for free from the NPCs, for gold (or free if you are lucky) from players and for crowns from ZOS.

You contradict yourself: In a world without player interaction players can't gather and sell materials (unless for 6g) and make as much money as every other player does. Your example 1 is exactly from this world - and I don't know many ppl selling a Dreughwax to the NPC.

But I agree: If one wants to reduce inflation, it comes at a cost. If one does not (as you), everything remains as it is and Perfect Roe will cost ~100K gold next year (PC EU). Sadly, people who choose not to do fishing, are locked out from XP boost potions. For some this may be harder than being locked out from another 10 bag slots.