How to counter inflation (PC)

Sylvermynx · January 2022

To your #1 and #2, @DonRavello, I would never spend that sort of gold on inventory or bank slots. I always have plenty of room (and no, I don't use any of my alts as mules). Each of my many characters carries whatever s/he needs, and my banks are nicely cleaned out now with the stickerbook which I honestly don't even use - I'm not one to re-gear except for leveling lowbies, and I don't craft for them, they use what they find until they hit CP160 when one of my mains crafts whatever gear I want them to use.

Yes, I have quite a lot of gold. It sits in my bank for the most part. Last thing I did with some of it was buy Water's Edge on my accounts. I no longer craft on all my characters - doing antiquities on them all is a lot more fun.

francesinhalover · January 2022

Gold cost Lootboxes.

Yeah you heard me you pay 50k-100k gold per lootbox.
The thing is , this lootbox is probs like the auroborus, witha extremely rare chance to get a rare mount.

Arthtur · January 2022

Sigh... its not inflation fault this time...

Banning addons like TTC will make new players lifes harder and wont change anything. The only reason im using it is to check price of motifs and bluepritns. When i need something diffrent im just running around the world. I already know good locations and the prices on popular stuff.

Removing gold from daily writs will punish new players and all of those who spend time maxing crafting on multiple characters. Its not a solution. Also ppl would make up for it just by incerasing prices of upgrade materials...

As i said earlier its not inflation this time but combination of few things. Of course u dont have to belive me...

1) Meta change
As always when patch notes lands the meta changes. And prices are going up. The thing is before they even start going down we get another meta change...

2) Materials > gold
Materials are more valuable than gold. I know a person who has few thousands of Dreugh Wax... he doesnt have any problems with gold too and there is no reason for him to sell them. Its better to just keep materials as those are wroth more and more with every patch.

3) Demand > Supply
We need upgrade materials not only for PvE but for crafting too (master writs). Just by myself i can burn few hundreds of gold upgrade materials in a WEEK when i fell like doing some master writs. Also 2 previous points make this problem even bigger.

4) There is nothing to spend gold on
Like seriously. I play for a 1.5 year. There is only few things left that i want. My friend plays for few years and he has everything already. This problem is even bigger if someone doesnt like housing as its costs a lot of gold. If there is nothing to spend gold its better to collect upgrade materials which leads to point nr 2.

5) New system - smart loot (jewelery exclusive problem)
With new system u need to get everything from the dungeons before u will get again the same stuff. So farming jewelery from dungeons become a lot harder. If someone has few characters then its even worse. On PC EU u can sell Zircon Plating for 100k.... it doubled from last patch (2months of time).

And we will get a new patch in a month...

So i was searching for master writs few days ago. I was looking for cheaper materials too. There was almost no Zircon Plating in the world... only in the most popular locations.

So yeah combine all of those and here we are. How to change it? For me its 3 things.

1) Dont change the meta so often. Market needs time to recover from increased demand.

2) Add more stuff to buy with gold. A lot of stuff so there is a reason to get gold.

And one controversial...
3) Add NPC thats sells, lets say, 1000 "bound crowns" per month for like 1:1000 (on PC EU current rate is 1:2000 i think but im not sure. of course it would be a lot lower for consoles). It would pull out a lot of gold from the players and its a good reason to start making gold.

There is nothing we can do about players who already have millions of gold. Removing gold gain wont affect them and taking away their gold would be rly bad move.

Of course im just a human so im not perfect. That's all is just my opinion on the problem with market.

HyekAr · January 2022

1. I suggest, open lands areas limited in 15-20 places near by each city/village for ofline trading(sell and buy), for characters. So everyone will have posibility to participate in trading without being in a guild. This trading should be reduced to 4-5 trading item.
(So having 9 chars, 8 of them offline trading meanwhile playing with 1)

This will liberate the market from guild-auction, and will increase competency.

2. a. GOLD, should drop only from humans, chests.
b. And from all mystic creature 90% drop of non-charged soul gems.
c. Any teleport in the game should be done by consuming a charged gems

This will:

1. reduce direct GOLD adquisition from NPC, which will reduce the inflation,
2. Increase the need of a consumible (gem), this will make GOLD cyrcling faster, making ppl be less rich, which also reduce the inflation
3. Gain of the consumible will be the 90% which could be the TOOL to regulate the inflation in the future, so ZOS could always increase or decrese the % it if there is inflation or recession.

deleted220614-000183 · January 2022

francesinhalover wrote: »

Gold cost Lootboxes.

Yeah you heard me you pay 50k-100k gold per lootbox.
The thing is , this lootbox is probs like the auroborus, witha extremely rare chance to get a rare mount.

As I said before, ZOS is interested in earning real money - crown sales so they never do something that is threating their crown item sales and revenues.
That's why items sold for gold are all low grade/poor and "flawed" somehow and the only really good items are in crown store.

[snip]
If I remember the only good reward in the last year 2021 was Keldora and I'm sure they regret it.
Other things were mainly rubish including Doomchar Plateau which is very poor house comapring to the effort and amount of event tickets needed.

BTW ZOS has not a problem with inflation. Inflation is burning savings in golds so players are forced to "invest" these golds in crown/golds market rather then let them accumulate in personal bank account so more people are buying crowns.

Why on the earth would ZOS do anything to change it ? The more inflation, the more broken market, the uglier things sold by golds - the better for ZOS revenues until nobody plays this game anymore.

But people seems to be playing even if server performance is poor, rewards are poor, PVP is sick and items for golds are crappy so it means our self esteem as players is pretty low.

[edited for bashing]

DonRavello · January 2022

Danikat wrote: »

DonRavello wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

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 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.

How is there too much money going into the system on PC but not on consoles? Do they not get gold from login rewards, crafting writs and the other sources mentioned?

Didn't say so. I just denied that the trading guild system is the root of the high prices, which was a statement from Sylosi. The trading guild system is the same on both platforms, so it has nothing to do with the inflation.

There are many reasons why prices are a lot lower on console (e.g. crafting daily writs is a fraction of time with addons on PC compared to console), but this is not subject to discussion here.

HyekAr · January 2022

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.

This wont affect, bcz crown-gold change happens bcz ppl has more golds to offer for 1 crown

Sylosi wrote: »

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.

Well, i would say most of experienced players who play more with trade they use this to compare the range of price for selling the item. To not sell less or not offer high price which nobody will buy. And if some ppl use it to compare prices for selling, some other uses this to check where is lower.

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!

I agree, addons should be banned all of them or nothing, to be fair. Bcz some ppl use 1 addons other uses different one, if one player will be limited then others should.
Bcz in some way, ttc addons helps players with less financial possibilities to find what they want at good price.

Thats why giving lands for ofline trade will regulate even this auction ttc system.
Bcz this single traders wont be attach to guilf trader(auction-like) bcz the guild trader it is guild make an auction system inside of the guild, and ttc compare all the guild traders.

If zos create lands where trade, so every character can do offline trading, this ttc will only function with guilds, but not
with individual players.

Xebov · January 2022

trpajzla wrote: »

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.

I dont count the inflation as an issue to begin with because it only effects player to player trade and as all players have to pay more they can also earn more. The price tags constantly increase, but there is no down side to it. The higher prices get the more newly generated gold gets eaten up. Right now the prices cause me to use up ~70% of my gold generated by quests to pay for listing fees and taxes, which means sooner or later my income will consist only out of circulating gold.

DonRavello wrote: »

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.

What you fail to see here is this (i leave out the crown store): Mount training, houses, bag and bank slots are only available from NPCs. There is no other source in game. You cant get them looted or traded. They are a fixed commodity only available through this path. Thats what the quest gold and sell prices at NPCs is balanced against. Things like a bite or resources are freely available in the world and as such everyone can either get it themselves or trade it.

Your example on perfect roe is a very good one. Lets say the prices rise to that level. Players would still have the option between fishing and buying. If they opt for buying they have to do something else to gather the money needed. Now you can see many players across threads that would like to buy without farming anything in return.

Kiralyn2000 · January 2022

NupidStoob wrote: »

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.

But here's the thing - I don't sell gold mats from my writs. And I don't buy mats from guilds. I basically don't participate in the economy at all... except for buying things from NPC vendors, which sends the gold right back out of the economy. Those quest rewards (writs + others) and vendoring item drops (30-80g each, baby!) is how I make all my money, which I then spend on expensive NPC vendor furniture & houses. And repairs.

Get rid of quest/writ gold rewards, and I might as well just stop doing housing. Or playing, maybe.

edit: been playing since 2016. Most gold I've ever had was 1.3mil, and that's only twice (the first time, I'd specifically saved it up for Hunding's Palatial Hall, and spent it immediately. The second time is now.. and I'm pondering a new house, so I need to look at gold prices, locations, etc, to decide if I need to save up more for something a bit pricier or not.)

VaranisArano · January 2022

The solution ZOS won't do because it's not profitable: remove Crown Gifts for Gold. Without Crown items to buy, most player gold will end up stored in banks again and not in the hands of players spending it.

The solution players won't do because they don't want to: farm for items themselves or farm for items to sell at the current inflated prices. (Not all of my mats I sell are very inflated, but Ancestor Silk and Platinum Dust are a lot higher than last year.)

Other smaller fixes ZOS could do:

1. Fix Plentiful Harvest so that it's a 50% chance at doubled nodes like it says instead of closer to 40% like all the player data shows. More mats helps supply.

2. Proactively remove bots to reduce gold generation via exploits.

Xebov · January 2022

Arthtur wrote: »

1) Dont change the meta so often. Market needs time to recover from increased demand.

Why? The demand is only so high because many ppl think that they need 6-12 characters in golden meta gear each patch and they want to buy it rather than gatehring any materials themselves. The benefactors of this are players that colelct tehse materials. Why should the balance process of the game be slowed down just because ppl get crazy about their characters?

Sylosi · January 2022

DonRavello wrote: »

I just denied that the trading guild system is the root of the high prices, which was a statement from Sylosi.
The trading guild system is the same on both platforms, so it has nothing to do with the inflation.

Something being the root of a problem does not imply it is the sole factor, hence your conclusion is a logical fallacy.

Juomuuri · January 2022

To people who think Perfect Roe is too expensive: ZOS gives out a ton of free XP Scrolls thru the daily rewards. Just log in every day and BOOM - free XP.

I've never even touched the Psijic Ambrosias, all I ever use are the free scrolls. A good way to save money, but because people still buy, fishing is a good way to earn gold.

I dunno, there are so many factors into this whole inflation thingy, tbf. What I notice, is that most of the expensive items are something that's "super cool and epic", like style pages that look like bikini armor.. (or just mats to turn the ever-changing meta gear golden). And of course, because everyone wants these, rich players buy em cheap and sell em outrageous - which can be done via addons like TTC - how could you know otherwise where all the flippable goods are? The curse of the non-centralized trading post.

However, like in every MMO, the bots are the real culprit after all. Accumulating gold artificially doesn't really help the economy. Remove the bots and we are rid of this whole inflation problem.

DonRavello · January 2022

Sylosi wrote: »

Something being the root of a problem does not imply it is the sole factor, hence your conclusion is illogical.

well, it was you saying "And right there [in the trading systen] is the actual source of your high prices", not me. So apparently you have proven your own conclusion illogical?

Please elaborate. I have not seen any valid arguments why the trading system itself is the source of the high prices. Addons: sure, they have their share of the inflation cake. However, not only trading addons, but crafting etc.

kojou · January 2022

Bank and bag space would only be a temporary/one time dump. Sure I would do it, but it would barely even make a dent in my gold reserves.

I like the idea of gold for transmutes though. That is something that I would always need to spend gold on and I assume that others would too.

I also think that gold (and crown soul gems) should be taken out of the daily log in rewards.

I have mixed feelings about taking gold out of crafting dailies, because there are probably new players that need it. It wouldn't affect me personally though.

They could increase the cost of gear repair on max level legendary gear. That would be an easy change, and it would not have an effect on newer players.

In general, gold for consumables is the way to go, IMO. There just needs to be a balance between gold in and gold out.

wolfie1.0. · January 2022

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!

banning addons won't do much, as players still do most gold making activities without them and will continue to do so. all you accomplish is making them take 1-3 minutes longer, which if things taking more time combats inflation then ZOS just needs to increase loading screen times.

if you truly want to combat inflation then simply ZOS needs to create more activities/purchases that cost gold and remove it from the game.

If inflation is something that you want to combat then you need to do a few things as players

HyekAr wrote: »

1. I suggest, open lands areas limited in 15-20 places near by each city/village for ofline trading(sell and buy), for characters. So everyone will have posibility to participate in trading without being in a guild. This trading should be reduced to 4-5 trading item.
(So having 9 chars, 8 of them offline trading meanwhile playing with 1)

This will liberate the market from guild-auction, and will increase competency.

2. a. GOLD, should drop only from humans, chests.
b. And from all mystic creature 90% drop of non-charged soul gems.
c. Any teleport in the game should be done by consuming a charged gems

This will:

1. reduce direct GOLD adquisition from NPC, which will reduce the inflation,
2. Increase the need of a consumible (gem), this will make GOLD cyrcling faster, making ppl be less rich, which also reduce the inflation
3. Gain of the consumible will be the 90% which could be the TOOL to regulate the inflation in the future, so ZOS could always increase or decrese the % it if there is inflation or recession.

1) your first suggestion sadly wont work.players and bots could just park empty characters or characters with extremely high priced items to block out other players. and encourages players to NOT login to the game (ZOS doesn't want that). Also the majority of player to player transactions have minimal impact on true inflation it just passes wealth around.

2a) reducing gold drops would help, but from what you are saying when you say that gold should only drop from humans and chests. i think you need to clarify. because if you mean that the ONLY sources of new gold generation would be to farm humans (i imagine humanoid is what you mean) this would be certain to help in the long run. but it will only hurt those players that don't have a lot of gold already, and it gives more economy control advantages to bots.

2b) soul gems are already in plentiful supply in game. i have over 20k of them empty, and about 10k full
2c) wont combat inflation.

the true effects of what you are proposing would be to price out newer players and make it harder for them to have a sustainable gameplay. your soul gem idea while interesting, actually won't do anything to combat inflation. it would in realit inflate the value of soul gems and make the demand for them go up, with a sale increase and make players wealthier. It would also remove a gold sink. a true change would be to make ALL teleportations cost gold including player and house teleports.

Lysette · January 2022

I think you didn't get why there is so less inventory space and so much clutter in pretty much everything - free slots have to be few and clutter a whole lot, to choke the inventory to the point, that people will say, I have enough of this, I go for ESO+ now - and there is an end to too less inventory space pretty suddenly - this is why there is not more bank and bag space and additional storage like chest are crown store items - so you can forget about getting more of this space for gold - it takes real world money to get there.

Another point - why do you want to get us less gold rewards - if it isn't profitable, it won't be done and those systems in place are less used, people might loose interest and play something else, what is more generous. The solution is not to nerf player rewards - this would cost ZOS in the end revenue. So far ZOS did quite well with QoL changes, but for a price - and that price is ESO+ - if they would nerf antiquities, I would have no reason to be here for very long - this is my fun stuff to do now in this game - beside exploration - if that is nerfed, I go and play no man's sky more intensively and rarely ESO - despite having 6 months of subscription now - it doesn't matter really, if my fun is ruined, I leave and play more no man's sky.

You know, developers want their designed systems to be used - inflation is normal in MMOs and it doesn't really matter, this is not the real world where this would be a problem - everyone can make money easily in this game and antiquities is one of those system which does not require to be in a trading guild for good income - not everyone wants to be in a trading guild - so this system is good and should stay as it is - nerfing it would be the wrong move.

Kwoung · January 2022

A few thoughts...

1. The type of trader system has nothing to do with inflation, as it is just a means with which existing gold is moved around, not the source of too much gold in the system.
2. The only way to combat mudflation is to remove gold from the game on an ongoing basis with something everyone needs to spend gold on consistently.
3. Things like added bag space, mounts, and whatnot are one time purchases and would not really help much at all. Upping the price of porting 10 fold and considering it a "luxury service" would work, but would also make the game neigh unplayable for poor folk. Removing the free port to player option however, would help a lot in the long run, especially with a small increase in port charges.
4. I am confused about those going on about bots. I have played forever and have never seen this bot army so many people love to reference. Why do they hide when I am around?
5. Lastly, as has been pointed out, it behooves ZOS to let inflation run rampant, because gold can be converted to crown sales, which is the entire purpose of this game... to generate crown sales off the players. And the worst the inflation gets and the higher the exchange rate goes... the more likely players are to sell crowns for gold, so they can afford to buy what they want/need in game.

Xebov · January 2022

Lysette wrote: »

and additional storage like chest are crown store items

They are sold for master writ vouchers and only cost 100 for the 30 slot and 200 for the 60 slot ones.

Larcomar · January 2022

Pretty simple - more gold sinks. Right now, it's basically mounts (small) bag /bank space (medium), and housing (prob infinite). But if you're not into housing - or just need one - there isn't much to spend it on once you're alts are decked out. Motifs etc just moves money around players. +1 for more bag and bank space...

Araneae6537 · January 2022

What is the perceived problem that you are trying to fix exactly?

Prices have gone up on a number of things, including many crafting materials. A number of factors could contribute to this, but it seems reasonable that inflation could be one of them. This is a problem for newer players being able to afford materials, especially as they won’t yet have all the skill and champion points to maximize what they can get themselves. And so part of OP’s proposed solution is to remove the most reliable modest income one can earn in the game (crafting writs)??? How does that help? The rewards have not increased and, assuming there has been inflation, they have relatively decreased.

The guild trader system has its positives and negatives and one positive pertinent to this discussion is being a giant gold sink paid by those making the most money by engaging in trading. That seems fair to me.

Banning add-ons makes no sense. It aids players in finding good deals, rare items, and having some idea of the value of various loot they collect. I was horrified when I learned one newer player was vendoring mundane runes because the name and color of the object indicated to them it was on the level of junk in value. Banning add-ons would make it easier for those who deliberately try to take advantage of newer players by offering to buy valuable mats for much less than their market value.

Lysette · January 2022

Inflation is just a problem for those with static income - which isn't rising accordingly - that is why rich people invest in shareholder value and not in money value for example - their wealth and income rises with the inflation and so they are nearly not effected by it - the poor guy, who goes for "safe" investments in money-value is the one who has to pay for the show in the end - his wealth and income goes down, seen from it's buying power - keep your wealth in assets instead of gold coins and you won't be effected that much if at all - you might even profit from inflation in the end like this.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · January 2022

Add shrines to the game for the various Divines/Daedra. Player gives a small sum to the shrine - say 500 gold (maybe level the amount) - for an hour long buff. Rinse and repeat once the buff expires. They could even expand on it, have the Daedric shrines give double the buff on their summoning days. Or make use of the beggars roaming towns - give them a donation for the buff instead, and then they don’t need to make new models.

Zulera301 · January 2022

housing was a fantastic gold sink when it first launched. Problem now is that other than an inn room and maybe a mid-sized house in the chapter zone, all the new houses are crown only, and so rather than gold getting removed from the game, it simply changes hands (via "buying" crowns for gold). obviously that's not a universal fix since not everyone loves housing, but Im sure more people like it than dislike it, so that would be a step in the right direction.

Another possible step might be to make more items available from merchants, because right now the only useful things merchants sell at reasonable prices are the hanging map leads and the racial style mats. what items to make available is certainly up for debate, but the fact that guild stores sell racial style mats for more than 15g each shows that tha tdidn't even put a cap on the price people are willing to pay.

PeacefulAnarchy · January 2022

Inflation in the game is not consistent. The price of perfect roe and chromium plating has risen sharply, the price of gold mats and in demand alchemy mats has risen noticeably, the price of most other mats has not risen at all. The price of most motifs and recipes and furnishing plans is pretty on par with what they were before, high on release, cratering during events, otherwise dependent on the whims of buyers and sellers. The price of crowns is the one that has really exploded.

What this points to is that the issue is specific to what wealthy players can do with their gold. The things that have risen most are the scarce things that are functionally gold sinks (rare runeboxes, XP boosters, gold mats, crown store cosmetics) except that since they're all bought from other players the gold stays around to be used again.

The game has two parallel economies, the one for most people, which has not changed much, and the one for gold rich people which has spiraled away. Where the complaints come in is from the people wanting to bridge those economies in ways that were previously accessible, but no longer are. It used to be possible for the regular player to buy DLC and assistants through crown trading. Now they're priced out by the rich players buying houses and cosmetics. It used to be possible to buy gold mats with quest gold, but now you need to either farm yourself or do writs or get into trading.

The solution isn't removing gold sources, because that only hurts poor players. Writs are currently the most accessible way for poor players to become rich players, removing them will just sharpen the separation. The money will always flow upwards because the rich players can hoard both gold and mats and come out ahead no matter what happens.

The solution is to give those rich players something to sink their gold into. The inventory space suggestion is a good one, but it's a one time thing and not enough. Transmutes is an interesting and clever one, though some players are drowning in transmutes, so it won't be enough. A lux cosmetic vendor would be good, but it would require a lot of new asset design. A zos sponsored crown for gold exchange would work, but will never happen. There are other things as well, but they all require zos to design the system and feed it content, to fix a problem they may not have an issue with.

Increasing drop rates would help, not necessarily by fixing the economy but by making farming a more viable alternative for the casual player who doesn't want actually farm, just get gold mats from the random nodes they pick up along the way. But it will just move the gold and price spikes to whatever remains rare.

SeaGtGruff · January 2022

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 don't play the buying/selling game, so I don't sell the materials and master writs I get from doing daily writs like a lot of other players do. If the gold reward were removed, I would have very little reason to do daily writs on all of my characters (which are modest in number compared to some players-- 7 on one server, and 8 on the other server).

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.

Although I've managed to (finally) hit 8-digit amounts of gold on both servers, I still do not have enough to buy all of the more expensive player housing-- several, but by no means all. Even if my gold balances were doubled, I still wouldn't be able to buy all of the houses. And I do intend to buy all of them eventually. That doesn't even count what it would cost to buy all of the available furnishings, guild-related furnishings (such as Mage Guild book reproductions), and achievement-related furnishings to put in all of my houses.

If you take away my most reliable source of earning gold, you might think you're solving your problems for you, but you are just creating problems for me.

Just because some players farm the heck out of daily crafting writs and associated rewards, daily random dungeons and associated rewards, endlessly-repeatable Antiquity treasures, and so forth, that doesn't mean all players do.

Please don't come up with "solutions" that just end up punishing players who don't squeeze as much profit as they possibly can out of every activity or piece of loot in the game, while simultaneously failing to stop players who do squeeze as much profit as they possibly can out of the game.

VaranisArano · January 2022

Kwoung wrote: »

A few thoughts...

4. I am confused about those going on about bots. I have played forever and have never seen this bot army so many people love to reference. Why do they hide when I am around?

As for #4:

On PC/NA, there's a couple places and a couple ways I've seen bots.

One, bot trains. These are packs of bots attacking easily farmed enemies like harpies or mud crabs. They frequently look like a pack of players moving together with coordination that my PVP raid leads would kill for, or a couple players following the exact same track again and again, frequently with right angle turns. Sometimes you'll see one of these bots path away from the pack, sell off junk to a merchant, and then rejoin the pack.
Test: When you see them, it's pretty clear you aren't looking at real players.
Common places where they've botted in the past: Silverhoof Vale, the beach near Haven, Grahtwood

Two, single bots on a route. A player trots along a set route to different nodes, never deviating even when the resource isn't there or has just been picked up before their eyes.
Test: follow ahead of the bot, picking up the resources well before they get there. If they go to the empty node and pause each time, repeatedly, that's not normal player behavior.
Common places: starter zones. I see them in Bal Foyen, particularly in the safe locations like Fort Zeren.

Three, single bot standing over one node, picking the node once it spawns.
Test: place the questionable meat sack memento down where the node would be. If the bot picks it up repeatedly, that's not normal player behavior.
Location: I've seen this one in Craglorn and starter zones.

Also, keep in mind that zones have multiple instances. At one point when I was tracking bots several years ago, there was one Grahtwood instance that had a bot train farming mudcrabs and one that did not.

Kwoung · January 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

A few thoughts...

4. I am confused about those going on about bots. I have played forever and have never seen this bot army so many people love to reference. Why do they hide when I am around?

As for #4:

On PC/NA, there's a couple places and a couple ways I've seen bots.

One, bot trains. These are packs of bots attacking easily farmed enemies like harpies or mud crabs. They frequently look like a pack of players moving together with coordination that my PVP raid leads would kill for, or a couple players following the exact same track again and again, frequently with right angle turns. Sometimes you'll see one of these bots path away from the pack, sell off junk to a merchant, and then rejoin the pack.
Test: When you see them, it's pretty clear you aren't looking at real players.
Common places where they've botted in the past: Silverhoof Vale, the beach near Haven, Grahtwood

Two, single bots on a route. A player trots along a set route to different nodes, never deviating even when the resource isn't there or has just been picked up before their eyes.
Test: follow ahead of the bot, picking up the resources well before they get there. If they go to the empty node and pause each time, repeatedly, that's not normal player behavior.
Common places: starter zones. I see them in Bal Foyen, particularly in the safe locations like Fort Zeren.

Three, single bot standing over one node, picking the node once it spawns.
Test: place the questionable meat sack memento down where the node would be. If the bot picks it up repeatedly, that's not normal player behavior.
Location: I've seen this one in Craglorn and starter zones.

Also, keep in mind that zones have multiple instances. At one point when I was tracking bots several years ago, there was one Grahtwood instance that had a bot train farming mudcrabs and one that did not.

I guess I am just lucky to never run into them, as I have been all those places many times.. and yes, having played MMO's for 20 something years, I can spot them no problem, just never in ESO like in most other games. Of course my understanding of bots is, they are solely for selling gold off of 3rd party websites, which is a sketchy at best purchase to make, since it ends up with the players on both sides of the transaction being banned if caught.

DonRavello · January 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Please don't come up with "solutions" that just end up punishing players who don't squeeze as much profit as they possibly can out of every activity or piece of loot in the game, while simultaneously failing to stop players who do squeeze as much profit as they possibly can out of the game.

I see that this point is very controversial, so I removed it from the list.

kilroy5250 · January 2022

What if there was a new NPC trader that started selling mats. ZOS could cap those mats relative to scarcity. The goal is not to kill trade, but to bring some foundational items back in check. It creates supply and sets a hard limit on costs.

.1% Rare $$$$$$ (Atherial dust)
Rare gold $$$$$ (Chromium)
Gold $$$$ (Wax, Kuta, ...)
Purple $$$
Blue $$
Green $
White .$

It can also function as a gold sink as those items are always in demand, and people will buy them if trader costs are way out there or people can't find them.

Guild traders can still get pretty rich as long as they stay under the cap. Once they creep over, then the NPC traders act as a supply flow and bring prices back in line.

Unique and rare items should stay market based. If you want the latest most shiny thing, you get to pay exorbitant prices for it. If you can wait, then you will get it for more reasonable costs.

Just an idea.