Facefister wrote: »

vgabor wrote: »

caesarvs wrote: »

Ingame sources of gold had always been the same. Inflation is caused by crowns prices.

That's not true at all. The high crown prices are not the cause of the inflation, they are the consequence of it.

When you trade gold for crowns the gold only changes hands but stays in circulation, the crowns are the ones which will be removed, so effectively the crown trade is a crown sink not a gold sink. No any gold getting created or removed during crown trade, the amount of gold stays the same only the distribution of it changes.

The only way you could use crowns in order to take out gold from the game is implementing a NPC which trades gold for crowns, a gold-seller so to speak.

Or more generally: The only way you can take out gold from the game is having in game merchants selling something the people want and willing to spend their gold on it

I don't remember if I have posted it in this thread or similar thread like this, but I think that there is a very simple way to counter inflation.

Allow guild trader vendor NPCs to also buy stuff from players.

Right now, they can only sell stuff to players. But, If players in a guild would be able to post a "buy offer" (post an item, amount, price per item etc, similar how current system works) - this would all of the sudden give an enormous, permanent boost to item supply on the market. Any player visiting trading NPC, as long as they have required items in their inventory - they would be able to sell those.

Just imagine that. All those solo players out there would be able to sell of their surplus motif style pages, gold & purple crafting mats etc. Even if players in a guild would re-sell those for more it would still mean that prices overall will go down by a lot.

There are so many comments that make me believe that people do not know what inflation actually is.

If you have more gold in the economy that gold is worth less.

Prices are simply a result of supply and demand. As long as people are willing to spend huge amounts of money on items they will be listed for these huge amounts and as long as there is as much gold as readily available as there is right now this won't change.

Inflation has nothing to do with trades between players as that gold is not being removed from the economy. Crown trading or trade addons are not the sources for the high prices. We as players constantly generate gold out of thin air and we also remove gold, but this has become completely imbalanced. Here is a list I posted before of things that happened over recent years that created this imbalance:

- We got more char slots overall which means more characters that can do writs for example. Due to crown trading people are also a lot less reluctant to buying those.

- CP. 2.0 cut costs for a lot of things that were tiny goldsinks such as repairs and teleporting etc. It also increases gold earned including from quests which factors in massively with writs.

- Daily writs generate insane amounts of money. Over 90k a day for someone with 18 chars. Just to put this into perspective if 10 people do writs on 18 chars for 12 days they generate over a hundred million gold. Or 20 people who do it on only 9 chars.

- Some Endeavors have gold rewards. Not much mind you, but considering how simple they are to do for everyone they just add to the pile.

- Daily login rewards regularly shower the economy with tons of gold by giving every player 100k gold plus lot's of little gold rewards.

- Pretty much every event nowadays rewards tons of little treasures which add up massively considering how crazy the majority of the playerbase seems to grind these events.

- Excavation also gives treasures although I think overall this is one of the least contributing factors.

- We have more trials and more players to do them. Due to powercreep it's also a lot faster and easier to complete the older ones which in turn creates huge amounts of rewards for the worthy.

On the other side of the scale we hardly got anything. CP 2.0 even took things away by making repeair and teleport cost cheaper etc. The only thing that has a tiny impact is housing, but even that is a drop in a bucket.


I will also repeat something else I said before: The main culprit really are writs. They generate 100s of millions of gold if not billions per month.

And before someone starts with the good old "new player" argument, have a look at this list and all the things new players nowadays have access to compared to a few years ago. They also greatly benefit from the inflation as any purchases they need to make that are static cost and usually daunting for new players such as bag and bank upgrades are way easier to acquire when you can just fish for a bit and sell perfect roe for 40000+. New players are the ones who the least of all the players benefit from writs. You need multiple leveled crafters, you need materials, you will greatly benefit from ESO+ and most importantly you need time. Newer players are usually a lot more occupied with actually playing the game than the veterans.

Stop using new players to further your own agendas.

vgabor wrote: »

but that won't remove the gold from circulation, and there are no in game merchants where people can buy interesting stuff for gold....

Nitpicking: Luxury vendor and Golden. The caveats that the first is only useful for housing aficionados, they’re only available during the weekend, and having their wares being on rotation with only a few new things added each time (Luxury) or available through other means (Golden) are probably neutering their current usefulness as gold sinks, but they do exist.

Which reminds me, is there any reason the normal siege weapons aren’t ALL available for gold? Why only AP for most of them instead of both? I can see gating the PVP Motifs and other higher tier things behind AP only, but the Ballista variants…?

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

vgabor wrote: »

but that won't remove the gold from circulation, and there are no in game merchants where people can buy interesting stuff for gold....

Nitpicking: Luxury vendor and Golden. The caveats that the first is only useful for housing aficionados, they’re only available during the weekend, and having their wares being on rotation with only a few new things added each time (Luxury) or available through other means (Golden) are probably neutering their current usefulness as gold sinks, but they do exist.

I'd hardly call that a nitpick. Nearly 90% of the gold I spend is on the Golden and Lux Furniture vendors these days. I've probably spent nearly 30-40 million on them in the last year alone, and I still have more to go.

Ever since the sticker book came out, I've been buying up the monster shoulders that I don't have yet, which is a surprising number for someone who's been playing all but a few months since beta. Farming Undaunted keys and fighting the RNG gods is not a good use of my time when chasing specific pieces. 100k to get exactly the piece I need? Yes, please and thank you!

There are also several sets that basically suck that I've never collected before, but I buy them from the Golden now anyways, just to fill out my precious sticker book.

I also buy up DLC dungeon helms, as I don't generally have time for vet DLC dungeons either, so there's a lot of pieces I'm missing. And of course, every new dungeon DLC adds two more sets to collect.

Multiply this by several alt accounts - because why not, it's a good deal, and I find it fun - and it adds up.

I know I'm not alone in this either. There's a lot of folks out there who only focus on ESO as if it's a single player TES game, and who won't ever set foot in a dungeon, especially a vet dungeon. The golden vendor is their only path to monster sets.

As for whether an item is new or not, it matters, but probably not as much as you might think. There are lots of newer players and players who missed the previous rotations - myself included - that are happy to jump on repeats at their OG prices. And then there are those who buy in bulk to flip for a profit later.

This is a more complicated and complex phenomenon than simply "too much gold." Why? Because if we were talking about a typical inflation, all the goods that can be bought for gold in the guild store would increase in price, but in reality only some of them are getting more expensive, while many of them remain at the same price and others become cheaper.

The most in demand are upgrade mats and SOME alchemy plants, but standard crafting materials keep their price unchanged for years, even less popular alchemy plants like Bugloss, Wormwood, Mountain Flower or Dragonthorn keep their price constant, while colectibles drop in price. Why? Supply and demand. The price of some materials has risen not because of inflation but because of increased demand and unchanged/lower supply, while others are holding their price because of balanced supply and demand, and those that are going down in price are not as marketable as they once were because the market has become saturated (since most of these things only need to be bought once).

What are the reasons for this? Without relevant data we can only guess. Quantitative changes in player population, qualitative changes (amount of inexperienced players vs. experienced players), changes in characteristics (those who follow the meta and those who don't care), etc. etc.

NupidStoob wrote: »

Mayrael wrote: »

This is a more complicated and complex phenomenon than simply "too much gold." Why? Because if we were talking about a typical inflation, all the goods that can be bought for gold in the guild store would increase in price, but in reality only some of them are getting more expensive, while many of them remain at the same price and others become cheaper.

The most in demand are upgrade mats and SOME alchemy plants, but standard crafting materials keep their price unchanged for years, even less popular alchemy plants like Bugloss, Wormwood, Mountain Flower or Dragonthorn keep their price constant, while colectibles drop in price. Why? Supply and demand. The price of some materials has risen not because of inflation but because of increased demand and unchanged/lower supply, while others are holding their price because of balanced supply and demand, and those that are going down in price are not as marketable as they once were because the market has become saturated (since most of these things only need to be bought once).

What are the reasons for this? Without relevant data we can only guess. Quantitative changes in player population, qualitative changes (amount of inexperienced players vs. experienced players), changes in characteristics (those who follow the meta and those who don't care), etc. etc.

Yes of course supply and demand is the main factor, but inflation is the reason why these numbers are getting so ridiculous. The more available gold makes people more willing to pay the high prices. The value of gold is simply lower than it was a year or two ago as there is way more in the economy than back then.

Recent meta changes are more than enough explanation as to why certain item prices increased a lot.

It’s supply and demand that causes inflation. Inflation cannot be the the cause for inflation.