Kwoung wrote: »

silvereyes wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

And yes, you could buy components and use them to craft items for resale and honestly, craft bag items wouldn't really need the limitation at all.

I'm glad you realize this. Having separate craft bags for bound and unbound mats would be super unpopular, as well as would having bound mats not allowed to enter the craft bag.

That said, materials, especially gold boosters, are the things I hear complained about the most when it comes to prices and inflation, so exactly what problem are we trying to solve here?

Not IMHO, I think the problem is more around stuff like recipes, motifs and rarish gear getting flipped.

You answered your own question there. They are rarish, and demand is high. Literally anyone in the game can farm them. But they are very time consuming to do so. A high price is justified.

The problem isn't flippers. The problem is the supply. If people could just go farm it themselves quickly, prices would drop like a rock.

Kwoung wrote: »

I agree. The ESO economy wasn't designed to include flipping and I am quite positive that ZOS never even considered that activity when they implemented trading

They also probably didn't consider TTC that makes it super easy for flippers to find the cheap items to buy and resell.

SilverBride wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

I agree. The ESO economy wasn't designed to include flipping and I am quite positive that ZOS never even considered that activity when they implemented trading

They also probably didn't consider TTC that makes it super easy for flippers to find the cheap items to buy and resell.

It also makes it super easy for non-flippers to find the item they are looking for. It also makes it super easy for sellers to do market research to find the median price they should sell at.

I don't understand this argument at all. How would reducing pricing information help the flipping problem? All I see that doing is making the market less efficient.

I agree with people who say that flippers aren't the problem,they buy cheap and sell for a normal price.
People being impatient and buying stuff for whatever price is part of the problem as well. I think.
I don't remember which motif it was but some weeks back I was looking for a specific motif page and saw 6 on the market on TTC all from the same guy selling for 10 times as much as it normally should.
I didn't rush to buy it even I could have been able to afford it without problems.
Next day I checked out TTC again and saw one page at normal price, did rush there and got it.

AJones43865 wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

There are a whole load of people who play ESO as an economics and trading game so that would go down about as well as fixing the oversupply by say disabling crafting writs for a month, or removing quest rewards.

The people "playing the market" in ESO should find a different game that is designed for that kind of gaming. Engaging in the activity in ESO hurts everyone trying to play the game how it was designed.

The game seems very much designed for it since players that take their time to find deals are players that purchase items in out-of-the-way traders and bring them to the more robust markets. That is performing a great service to people who use those out-of-the-way traders.

It is also an assumption this activity is causing notable inflation vs something that is one-off. Heck, a number of posts in this thread have pointed out the real negative effects this suggestion would have on the game.

silvereyes wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Kwoung wrote: »

I agree. The ESO economy wasn't designed to include flipping and I am quite positive that ZOS never even considered that activity when they implemented trading

They also probably didn't consider TTC that makes it super easy for flippers to find the cheap items to buy and resell.

It also makes it super easy for non-flippers to find the item they are looking for. It also makes it super easy for sellers to do market research to find the median price they should sell at.

I don't understand this argument at all. How would reducing pricing information help the flipping problem? All I see that doing is making the market less efficient.

I didn't suggest reducing pricing information. I was merely making an observation.

Kwoung wrote: »

AJones43865 wrote: »

The people "playing the market" in ESO should find a different game that is designed for that kind of gaming. Engaging in the activity in ESO hurts everyone trying to play the game how it was designed.

I agree. The ESO economy wasn't designed to include flipping and I am quite positive that ZOS never even considered that activity when they implemented trading. There is no reason a healthy economy can't exist without that activity, which is mostly pointless anyways. Yay, I amassed hundreds of millions of gold and wrecked thousands of other players game experience in the process... so what now, buy all the crown houses with gold and call it a day?

No way. I used to go around, looking for deals on motifs and re-selling them, years ago. I can't imagine anyone making a game with any kind of economy not expecting people to flip items.

Plus, the copyright on Tamriel Trade Centre is 2015! It's not exactly new. If this is a more recent problem, you need to look to more recent changes, imo.

Regardless, I don't like the no-resale idea. As others have said, my inventory has enough issues as it is. I don't have time to play the market anymore (in fact I barely consult the add-ons when I list things), but it still sounds horrible. And console players shouldn't be punished if it's not a universal problem.

Kwoung wrote: »

newtinmpls wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Don't buy overpriced items and the prices will go down.

You are so wild to think that folks would listen to [pause for emphasis] actual LOGIC

I totally agree.

Yes, I should just put my game on pause and forgo my goals for a couple months, while some guy buys up and flips every motif X that I need to finish a collection that pops up on the market and re-lists it at 10x normal value.

Honestly what even defines the 'normal value' of a motif lol, if people are buying at 10x the price, it is just your problem you aren't willing to spend that money.

If you really don't want to farm it or earn the gold to buy it or look out for cheaper prices, imo it is more on you than the flipper.

Araneae6537 wrote: »

That is absurd, would needlessly create new problems in inventory tracking and more, and anyway, would have a net effect of raising prices.

This, and it will not work on stackable items as it need an sold_by entry.
It could work for equipment but not materials, motifs or blueprints.

Kwoung wrote: »

Lady_Galadhiel wrote: »

I agree with people who say that flippers aren't the problem,they buy cheap and sell for a normal price.
People being impatient and buying stuff for whatever price is part of the problem as well. I think.
I don't remember which motif it was but some weeks back I was looking for a specific motif page and saw 6 on the market on TTC all from the same guy selling for 10 times as much as it normally should.
I didn't rush to buy it even I could have been able to afford it without problems.
Next day I checked out TTC again and saw one page at normal price, did rush there and got it.

My wife had that exact same experience, it took her 1.5 months to buy the motif at the "normal" price, because some guy kept snapping them all up and re-listing them at 10x normal pricing. She also finally got lucky and one went up for sale while he wasn't online and was able to finally grab one at near-normal prices. I say near normal, because the guy snapping them all up managed to raise the average price due to his actions.

There's an easy solution to this problem. This guy selling at inflated prices doesn't have a monopoly on motifs, only those listed in the guild traders. If you think it would take you more time to earn the gold this guy is charging for the motifs than it would to farm them yourself, you can save yourself some value by farming them yourself. If not, then the motifs are obviously worth more to you than you give them credit for, and it's not this guy's fault for realizing that and trying to make a profit on it.

There's nothing that says that for a game economy to be healthy, you need to be able to always get every item you want right when you want it at a price comparable to what you saw it listed at before. If an item has supply problems, then it's natural for the price to be high.

TTC has been around forever, it’s not the problem. I think everything changed when “gifting” crown store items started.

Suddenly people who don’t normally have a lot of gold, became flush with it. And the “real” in game price of things became a bit meaningless.

“Oh I need 30 dwax to gold my gear, I will sell some crowns to make it possible. I have no idea what dwax normally costs, but I want it now and relatively convenient so I will pay whatever.”

I think the selling of crowns is just easier on pc as it’s easier to type offers or requests in zone chat, compared to console where many players may not have a keyboard attachment to help them.

Northwold wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Lots of comments lately about inflation and how the vast majority of traders end up posting goods for sale at the same price.

But a subset of that is people complaining that when people DON'T sell at the same price their items get snatched up at speed and resold at a profit at the same price as everyone else.

So what do people think of banning resale of an item bought in a guild store for, say, 30 days, to try to discourage this and improve price competition?

Doing daily writs on a few characters you can accumulate all the gold mats you need to upgrade your gear, all the mats you need for making food, potions, poisons, repair kits, of course you won't get those things instantly, even with 18 characters it can take me a week of mat drops to gold out a piece of jewelry for example, half a week for most sets of armor, a couple days for weapons if your lucky with RNG when it comes to the gold mat drops.

Quite honestly, who are these people who do 18 sets of daily writs a day? It is not a normal thing to do unless you spend the entirety of your free time playing ESO.

If so, there's nothing wrong with that, but it is vanishingly improbable that that is a normal playstyle.

One of the biggest issues with this sort of "game the market" behaviour is it means price competition does not happen and that pushes housing for example, and crafting furnishings, into a crown store or bust pursuit unless you really do play ESO every single day. Even more than ZOS already are doing by inflating the materials requirements in furnishing plans and requiring increasingly difficult to obtain region specific materials.

You will never find a bargain if people are scouring the listings on an industrial scale who literally spend all day every day playing. And that helps tip the game, more than is fun, towards the tiresome grind end of the spectrum.

Takes a bit over an hour a good 15 minutes of that is loading in and out of characters, with lazy writ crafter, took a few years to set all the characters up though, I didn't just start the game and start doing writs on 18 characters from day 1.

It took a long time before I was able to make a lot of gold regularly, heck spent the first month just playing the game leveling to CP160 doing quests completely ignored gold making, it wasn't until I started getting into group content that I felt the need for better quality gear but kept running into the issue of not being able to afford much from the quest gold.

I used nearly daily thieving to finance leveling up the crafting levels on all my alts and pay my first guild trader fees, it took a lot of time and effort to reach the point where I could make more gold than I know what to do with.


You don't need 18 you can manage with much less just takes more time to accumulate what you need, I mentioned my 18 characters to give an example:

When it comes to Chromium plating I get on average 4 platings a week take 3 weeks to gold out a full set of jewelry that way. If you had less characters it would probably take a few months but its still doable.

These days I alternate between doing writs one day gathering mats the other day and more often than not I have a break for a few months and don't bother with either during that time.



As for furniture and housing that is a gold sink, your not intended to start the game right away and be able to afford all that early on its something you work on over a long period of time.

If you don't figure out a way to make a reliable supply of gold of course your constantly going to be struggling to pay for things, they made it that way to push you into buying that stuff in the crown store, they are at the end of the day cosmetic items for the most part of course they are going to milk them for all they are worth.


The reason everyone eventually sells at a similar price is because they know there items will get bought and sold for profit if they sell too low, after awhile people just stop selling at a low rate. The furniture items and mats you have mentioned in particular are on the rarer end when it comes to supply its not surprise those prices are especially high because they are a pain to farm.

You ever think those items sell out quickly because people want them for all their furniture, you can lay the blame at re listers as much as you like but your competing against a lot more legitimate buyer as well. There are players out there who love their housing and won't hesitate to drop millions to get the furniture houses and mats they need for their own use, why do you think brand new furniture plans sell for so much because people out their have the gold to pay those prices without thinking about it, the prices only drop once the rich who are willing to pay those outlandish prices have their items and have moved on to the next shiny thing.