Gold Inflation and What Can Be Done

Gaeliannas · March 2022

barney2525 wrote: »

Arbitrarily scrugeeing over New Players simply because established players have amassed large amounts of gold is NOT a good formula. You want players to be required to spend 100k - 150k just to make One outfit on the Outfitter ??

That's beyond ridiculous.

The Market prices will be as high and low as the Market will bear. Put an item up for 200k - if players want it for that price, they will pay it. If they Don't want it for that price - They will Not pay it, and wait for it to drop into a level they feel it is worth.

Just wiping out all the gold won't change things in the short term. Everyone is used to the prices we have now. Everyone knows what to expect the price will be when selling/buying their items, It would take months before anything dropped, and even then, players would be making more gold during those months. So the eventual change would still be minimal.

Despite my disdain for the phrase, the market "is what it is". Its not going to change. And it shouldn't. Wiping out everyone's gold with huge sinks - which would be seen by players to be basically a game mechanic implemented to simply steal the player's gold - would have a negative effect permanently. The huge static gold sinks you installed would Not go away once the stashes of gold the players previously had were gone. At that point you have huge gold sinks and not enough gold income to sustain anything.

This is Not a good plan.

IMHO

A gold sink doesn't have to be anything like 'stealing gold from players". It could be as simple as a NPC that tosses you an hour long buff for X gold, rents you a full speed mount for the day, or any number of other completely optional things.

Xebov · March 2022

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Inaya wrote: »

If people would stop paying 21k for wax the price would come down. If people would start farming their own mats the prices would come down. As long as I'm using some of my time to farm something that others don't want to then I'll charge what the market will bear. And in truth, just like in real life it's no ones business how much gold someone has.

In real life, government's control how much currency is in circulation, just like a game should, in order to keep the game economy healthy.

In the real world money is constantly flowing, even what you have in your bank account is used. The mechanisms like loans or investments that cause this dont exist. Also you dont have things you need to pay for. As a result gold piles up in some corners and liomits would not work at all.

Runefang wrote: »

Adaarye wrote: »

Inaya wrote: »

If people would stop paying 21k for wax the price would come down. If people would start farming their own mats the prices would come down. As long as I'm using some of my time to farm something that others don't want to then I'll charge what the market will bear. And in truth, just like in real life it's no ones business how much gold someone has.

Agreed.

I think that's the most unsettling thing is players that need mats but don't want to spend time farming mats or buy mats at current market value want to place a value on the time spent by players who do farm and who sell some or all of the mats gained. That somehow doesn't seem fair to me.

Perhaps putting in the time to farm mats would change that perspective a little. It's time consuming to farm mats and everyone's time is valuable.

Well wax used to be 3.5k, then 7k now 21k. What made it 3.5k a few years ago? Was the wax farmers time back then worth less than now? Or is it gold supply after many years of this game running creating a world where 1 gold is just worth less than it was a few years ago?

And telling people to not pay 21k isn’t going to help. Many people have more gold than they know what to do with because there are no sinks. So they pay whatever they want for wax rather than farm it.

Thats not important. The important part is that the player market is a secondary market. Devs allow players to trade it, but the main way of aquiring goods is farming them.

The prices for some of the goods in the market increased over the years. That means buying stuff is more expansive, but also selling stuff gets you more gold.

These threads mostly exist because players dont want to farm for mats themselves and they dont want to pay (or farm to gain the gold) for them either, they simply complain because they expect other players to act like cheap labor for them. But ZOS will not do anything because the market itself stays in a balance (you can earn more gold and have to pay more gold) and its a secondary source. So why exactly should ZOS change anything about player markets just because ppl are to lazy to farm?

Amottica · March 2022

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

There's only one way to stop gold inflation. Gold created needs to be equal to gold destroyed. Right now gold is created in large scale through activities like writs, antiquities, thieving, vendoring loot and even trial plunder. The minimal gold sinks simply cannot keep up. The few expensive things that are worth spending gold on are one-time purchases, and a temporary solution at best (houses, bank/bag space). The fact is that useful recurring items cannot be purchased from NPC's, so gold remains in the economy.

I think gold generation needs to be vastly reduced, writs and trials should give alternate rewards, such as materials or gear to trade with other players. We also could use NPC's that sell items we need (not current NPC junk). Potions would be a great one, Alliance Potions can be purchased with AP, why not have a gold option. At current prices that would be 500x200 or 100,000 gold removed from the economy every time someone purchased a stack of spell power pots.

On the flip side, reducing gold from certain activities could, and likely would, curtail participation.

I will use trials as an example. To take raiding seriously, regardless of being competitive in the leaderboards or not, one must use potions and a lot of them. Take away the plunder and extra gold token received from clearing HM and it easily takes more gold than received.

Of course, this is your point. However, my point is to note that it means fewer people will be able to afford enough potions to raid as often or take it as seriously which in the end could have a negative impact on the raiding community. Yet, many of those who have deep pockets of gold will still be the ones who can most afford the rarer or more important items and those who struggle, likely including those complaining about "inflation" will still struggle to purchase these are items.

So in the end, what was really accomplished? Very little on the positive side as far as I can see it. This is not like the real world economy where other factors play into controlling inflation so anything did will merely rescale the gold in our pockets and prices items go for without making any real progress. The same people complaining in this thread will still have the same issue affording these costly items.

WrathOfInnos · March 2022

zaria wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

There's only one way to stop gold inflation. Gold created needs to be equal to gold destroyed. Right now gold is created in large scale through activities like writs, antiquities, thieving, vendoring loot and even trial plunder. The minimal gold sinks simply cannot keep up. The few expensive things that are worth spending gold on are one-time purchases, and a temporary solution at best (houses, bank/bag space). The fact is that useful recurring items cannot be purchased from NPC's, so gold remains in the economy.

I think gold generation needs to be vastly reduced, writs and trials should give alternate rewards, such as materials or gear to trade with other players. We also could use NPC's that sell items we need (not current NPC junk). Potions would be a great one, Alliance Potions can be purchased with AP, why not have a gold option. At current prices that would be 500x200 or 100,000 gold removed from the economy every time someone purchased a stack of spell power pots.

Guild trader fees is the primary tax and its an good one as it tax the rich players in good trading guilds most.

NPC merchants could be an way to solve the problem, especially for stuff like heartwood.
Spell power pots are worth 500 gold each on pc-eu, so making rading less lucrative will hurt some

Yes, guild trader fees are the best gold sink in the game, but still not enough.

I agree that raiding needs to be lucrative, but the old system of making gear tradeable or things like motifs or the Asylum polymorph are better methods IMO. All of these allow the raider to make gold, but adds no new gold into the economy because they are traded with other players. Potion prices are pretty ridiculous, they were 100 gold not too long ago. Maybe an NPC potion vendor could sell them for something like 200-300 gold each, which would effectively hard cap the price for crafted or AP ones as well.

HumbleThaumaturge · March 2022

Contributing to price inflation:

Yesterday, I watched one of my ESO "friends" convert real-world cash into in-game gold via selling Crowns. Crown sellers might raise 50 million to 100 million in gold in a flash (using just a few hours of real-world overtime pay). After that, they buy whatever they want (no farming required), and they simply don't care how much items costs. They just pay whatever is asked for whatever they want. Hence, prices rise. Lots of sellers list items for way above market price, just hoping some ESO hectomillionaire or billionaire will buy at the high price without hesitation. And they do!

The other issue: Overuse of Tamriel Trade Centre (TTC). There are many players who manipulate prices in TTC. Even if TCC excludes outliers (high and low prices), this price manipulation tends to drive TTC prices higher, and buyers believe they are getting a fair deal if they are paying "the suggested price."

There are gold launderers: These folks sell items at guild stores for prices much, much higher than normal (like 25 times higher than normal). Let's not explain the process of gold laundering, since that is probably against forum rules. Such sales happen day after day, week after week, month after month, so maybe TTC averages also include these outrageous prices. Again, folks look at TTC and think they are seeing the fair market price.

The Craft Bag (which everyone loves) has probably contributed greatly to price inflation of materials. Before the Craft Bag, players were forced to sell materials due to inventory limitation. Now that players with Craft Bag rarely sell materials, fewer mats are available for sale, resulting in high mat prices.

Personally, I'd like to see TCC and others like it banned. But that will never happen.

Northwold · March 2022

Trying to address some of the repeated misconceptions about why this has become a problem for some players (and, I imagine, an awful lot more players than the more prolific posters here think), some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

As I said above, it is not that they are "lazy". These people do farm, be it materials or gear or motifs or whatever. And in terms of effort there is no material distinction between someone who puts in a lot of hours at varying times and someone who logs in every single day for less time, except that the game is designed to funnel players into the latter behaviour (the business reasons for which I shan't explore).

It is not laziness, but that for a significant slice of the player base the selling mechanics are so unappealing that they do not use them. As such, those players do not benefit from selling on the products of their labours to other players, so they are sandwiched between the rewards they get -- which are just what the basic game without player economy offers -- in terms of income, and what the guild sales prices are for the occasionally needed additional items.

So they do see considerable inflation because the rewards from the basic game remain on the whole static.

To repeat myself, it is no answer that you personally think these people should play your way. They exist in large numbers and they don't want to. It is no answer to say "ESO is an MMO" as if that is some sort of spectacular and profound declaration. It functions, also, as a solo game and has been designed in large sections to be capable of functioning as a solo game. As such it has attracted a lot of solo players.

Given the way ESO was designed to cater both for MMO players and soloists waiting for Elder Scrolls 6, the decision not to have a central auction house, first of all, and, second, to gate the trade stores behind guilds, was completely and utterly baffling. The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic. The guild store setup has also become completely pointless on PC because the supposed advantages of guild traders stopped existing the moment Tamriel Trade Centre became a thing. But it is what it is.

But that being the case, more care does need to be taken in the balancing of certain activities in the game. That's things like drop rates for commonly used items and so on. Recourse to the player market would not be necessary for these items if they dropped at rates that made it reasonable to accrue them alone. There is a supply problem.

I am not talking here about chromium platings. I'm talking about basic things like heartwood, mundane runes and the like. Things the game throws out requirements for like confetti which the drop rates do not reflect.

And to the extent there is any genuine intent on the part of the developers to attempt to drive this slice of players into the existing selling mechanics, I would say that attempt is seriously misguided because those mechanics are to all intents and purposes red lines -- things that type of player will never use. Frankly, I doubt that is ZOS's intent because they are well aware that these players exist and they know how they behave.

Just cool it with "lazy, entitled, want things for free". Not every player plays the game the same way and the sometimes rather condescending tone of posters suggests they simply do not understand how different people play this game. It's quite likely that the players affected by this are "working" in the game harder than you do to achieve the same result. Some of the posts are plain silly, frankly, or wilfully blind, and are very hard to take seriously.

Lumenn · March 2022

Northwold wrote: »

Trying to address some of the repeated misconceptions about why this has become a problem for some players (and, I imagine, an awful lot more players than the more prolific posters here think), some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

As I said above, it is not that they are "lazy". These people do farm, be it materials or gear or motifs or whatever. And in terms of effort there is no material distinction between someone who puts in a lot of hours at varying times and someone who logs in every single day for less time, except that the game is designed to funnel players into the latter behaviour (the business reasons for which I shan't explore).

It is not laziness, but that for a significant slice of the player base the selling mechanics are so unappealing that they do not use them. As such, those players do not benefit from selling on the products of their labours to other players, so they are sandwiched between the rewards they get -- which are just what the basic game without player economy offers -- in terms of income, and what the guild sales prices are for the occasionally needed additional items.

So they do see considerable inflation because the rewards from the basic game remain on the whole static.

To repeat myself, it is no answer that you personally think these people should play your way. They exist in large numbers and they don't want to. It is no answer to say "ESO is an MMO" as if that is some sort of spectacular and profound declaration. It functions, also, as a solo game and has been designed in large sections to be capable of functioning as a solo game. As such it has attracted a lot of solo players.

Given the way ESO was designed to cater both for MMO players and soloists waiting for Elder Scrolls 6, the decision not to have a central auction house, first of all, and, second, to gate the trade stores behind guilds, was completely and utterly baffling. The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic. The guild store setup has also become completely pointless on PC because the supposed advantages of guild traders stopped existing the moment Tamriel Trade Centre became a thing. But it is what it is.

But that being the case, more care does need to be taken in the balancing of certain activities in the game. That's things like drop rates for commonly used items and so on. Recourse to the player market would not be necessary for these items if they dropped at rates that made it reasonable to accrue them alone. There is a supply problem.

I am not talking here about chromium platings. I'm talking about basic things like heartwood, mundane runes and the like. Things the game throws out requirements for like confetti which the drop rates do not reflect.

And to the extent there is any genuine intent on the part of the developers to attempt to drive this slice of players into the existing selling mechanics, I would say that attempt is seriously misguided because those mechanics are to all intents and purposes red lines -- things that type of player will never use. Frankly, I doubt that is ZOS's intent because they are well aware that these players exist and they know how they behave.

Just cool it with "lazy, entitled, want things for free". Not every player plays the game the same way and the sometimes rather condescending tone of posters suggests they simply do not understand how different people play this game. It's quite likely that the players affected by this are "working" in the game harder than you do to achieve the same result. Some of the posts are plain silly, frankly, or wilfully blind, and are very hard to take seriously.

I agree. I have played for years. While I have joined a CASUAL guild I have never sold anything through a trader. Yes, I'm quite sure there are guilds who don't require you to pay to be in their club AND give you traders and all the bells a whistles to boot but many of us (guild masters included) don't enjoy that aspect. I spent decades in that game in one of the most well known retailers in the world. Doing it in a game just isn't my bag.

As long as it's easier to farm gold than to farm materials, inflation will continue. Yes, there are many who farm materials to sell, and should be compensated for their time, but let's not pretend bots dont play a part of this too, or that there aren't enough bots to affect product. If it wasn't profitable, you wouldn't have so many. Many of us saw a person testing his set of 10 out in grahtwood tree on Xbox na. Bold as day, had them mount in sync, wave, ride around, all said hello, then ported out the shrine. Had no fear. That was just 10. How many more did they have? How many more are in remote areas and not so brazen? How effective would YOU be, farming 24-7 in just a week? never need a bio break. Never sleeping, eating, stretching? Constant farm. 10 of you. 20 of you. 100 of you. On a console. I've played for years and have more gold and resources than I need but I can't imagine what I'd rack up with free, constant, and never ending farming. Especially on that scale. Might just be a gold mat worth or heartwood in there somewhere 😉

If you want to stop inflation you can either

1.KILL the market completely and make EVERYTHING no drop(and that's non trade able, non sellable to those that DONT know) or

2. increase the drop rates on mats. Now recipes, styles, things bots can't(yet?) do you'd still have to farm/buy. You'd have to work for it, or pay someone else that worked for it.

Either suggestion though should go with the stipulation (to clarify -as in together WITH suggestion 1. Or 2. ) that zos making farming nodes appear in a random pattern/location/time that keeps bots from easily being programmed a route. It might not stop it all, but it would put those that farm honestly on a MORE even keel than those who break the rules for profit who would now have to have a stationary bot for every POSSIBLE spawn, while a live farmer is actively using their eyes. Now farming, while never fun, is more viable with higher drops rates, higher drop rates drive down prices on many items for those with gold to burn, and it's much more fair and honest. Just my two cents anyway.

Adaarye · March 2022

Well wax used to be 3.5k, then 7k now 21k. What made it 3.5k a few years ago? Was the wax farmers time back then worth less than now? Or is it gold supply after many years of this game running creating a world where 1 gold is just worth less than it was a few years ago?

Current market value according to add ons like TTC and Master Merchant.

wolfie1.0. · March 2022

barney2525 wrote: »

Arbitrarily scrugeeing over New Players simply because established players have amassed large amounts of gold is NOT a good formula. You want players to be required to spend 100k - 150k just to make One outfit on the Outfitter ??

That's beyond ridiculous.

The Market prices will be as high and low as the Market will bear. Put an item up for 200k - if players want it for that price, they will pay it. If they Don't want it for that price - They will Not pay it, and wait for it to drop into a level they feel it is worth.

Just wiping out all the gold won't change things in the short term. Everyone is used to the prices we have now. Everyone knows what to expect the price will be when selling/buying their items, It would take months before anything dropped, and even then, players would be making more gold during those months. So the eventual change would still be minimal.

Despite my disdain for the phrase, the market "is what it is". Its not going to change. And it shouldn't. Wiping out everyone's gold with huge sinks - which would be seen by players to be basically a game mechanic implemented to simply steal the player's gold - would have a negative effect permanently. The huge static gold sinks you installed would Not go away once the stashes of gold the players previously had were gone. At that point you have huge gold sinks and not enough gold income to sustain anything.

This is Not a good plan.

IMHO

Which is why I mentioned a server wipe. Remove all gold and anything that can be turned into gold via npc selling from the game. Wipe it all.

Or we could make the game economy really stable and just make everything bind on pickup then everything would cost 0 gold.

SimonThesis · March 2022

Inflation is only getting worse, its been following crown prices. They need more/better gold sinks. I agree they should put the burden more on the richer players not new ones, maybe reduce the abundance of those crown repair kits and charge more for repairing CP 160 gear only. I also think they need to find a way to increase trading guild competition this is the largest gold sink in the game.

Maybe if they added more features for trading guilds like customizable traders there would be more trading competition. Ex a guild could pay extra gold a week to give their trader a personality. Maybe they could upgrade the appearance of the traders shop for gold each or pay for more colors on their tabbard.

midgetfromtheshire · March 2022

SimonThesis wrote: »

Inflation is only getting worse, its been following crown prices. They need more/better gold sinks. I agree they should put the burden more on the richer players not new ones, maybe reduce the abundance of those crown repair kits and charge more for repairing CP 160 gear only. I also think they need to find a way to increase trading guild competition this is the largest gold sink in the game.

Maybe if they added more features for trading guilds like customizable traders there would be more trading competition. Ex a guild could pay extra gold a week to give their trader a personality. Maybe they could upgrade the appearance of the traders shop for gold each or pay for more colors on their tabbard.

Except this has a greater impact on players with less gold, not on the ones with more. ZOS would have to introduce a gold sink that would entice those with more gold to spend it rather than hoarding it, and it would have to be a mechanic that doesn't just transfer the wealth from one player to another.

DoggedBark24 · March 2022

I don't think the given examples would help solve inflation, just be harder on new or casual players at an attempt to lower the amount of gold.
One thing they could do on all platforms is up the mount upgrades to 1k each, but get rid of the 20 hour cooldown. if someone wants to get 60, 60, 60 and want to dump 180k on it day one of a new character let them do it. They won't though because it is in the crown store.

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

Iron_Warrior wrote: »

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

Iron_Warrior wrote: »

Pc market has inflation, console market is stable

Pc has add ones, consoles don't have add ones

So now tell me what is causing inflation on pc? You give me the answer

Let the console crowd have add-ons?

If you are worried about inflation, sell crown crates for 500k -1 million each I'm guessing the inflation will take care of itself.

Console not having add ones is causing pc inflation?

It's a simple problem with a simple solution. there are three versions of the same trading system on 3 three different platforms. 2 of them are stable and 1 is inflated. For solving the problem you have to see what is the difference between the stable ones and the inflated one and fix it. You don't need to add features to the game that also affect the 2 stable markets only to fix the inflated one.

To your first question, no, but it does make things uneven across platforms and as such leveling out the field is preferred because MANY would leave the PC platform, myself included, if they took away our addons. So my solution seems much more fair and balanced.

As to your second paragraph, I already made a suggestion that doesn't involve gutting the ability of PC players to enjoy the game, and that is put the crown crates up for sale. You could do this on all platforms too, so as to again, level the playing field on all platforms. Once you do this and gold is worth more the inflation would stop quickly IMO. I'm just spitballing here as ZOS would most likely never let that happen.

So I main Xbox NA and also play quite a bit on PC NA, and to kind of expand on this a bit starting with consoles.

1. On last gen consoles (especially the people that still have their original last gen console) you have about a 2-3 minute load screen in and out of each character, and if you're crafting in a dlc area the time is pushing the 3 minute mark. So each character crafting takes like 7-10 minutes with the main bulk of the time being load screens.
2. Console players have to manually do their crafting writs and manually pull out alchemy and provisioning writs (or take up like 10 slots of inventory on every character).
3. Consoles have a serious bot problem, 24/7 in the starter zones where resources are plentiful. We have bots that spam heavy attack farming leathers, and we have bots running in a rotation farming ores, alchemy ingredients, clothing ingredients, and rarely even farming the wood. Now as much as I'd like Zos to give me a bot stick to tag all of the bots and nuke them to Oblivion, the bots do keep our prices at a constant value and not spiral out of control like on PC.

I don't think the solution is to just turn off all addons on PC, BUT I do believe turning off lazy writ crafter might help a bit. I definitely wouldn't do all 10 of my characters on PC if the lazy writ crafter didn't exist outside of events that give boxes or double gold for doing writs (and I'm someone that does writs on 6-10 characters daily, manually on xbox depending on how much time I have after work and such)
The other thing that Zos can try to do is let the resource farming bots live on PC. I don't think that this will lower the prices on PC, but I definitely think that both of these would help stop inflation

saar · March 2022

I would like an easier option for crown items/houses to be available with gold, such as a gold-crown currency exchange. This will remove substantial amounts of gold from the community, and won't penalise new players.

Vulkunne · March 2022

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

targario wrote: »

hey dear community,

as everyone knows there is a crazy amounts of gold inflation in the game and i want to talk why this is a bad thing for "casual players"(as zos proved that they care casuals more) and my suggestions to fix this.

inflation is bad for new and casual players because it will fear them, the millions of gold is need to get some new items or upgrading stuff. jewelry upgrading was pricey even before this infilation and now its way worse.

what can be done?

well, zos needs to add some mechanics or activities that should require some gold from the players.

Examples: (all below just random thoughs, and prices can be changed accordingly)

Upgrading should ask for some gold:
Blue to Purple, usual mats + 10k gold
Purple to Yellow, usual mats + 100k gold

Outfit system should require for more gold:
500 gold is now 5k
1k gold is now 10k
3k gold is now 30k

Transmutating should require more gold.

and obviously daily writs should give less money, or maybe less for multiple characters.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this subject, and what other things could be done about this problem?

good days.

I'm not certain manual adjustments will fix this. However I can appreciate you and others wanting to understand how this inflation happened.

Based on my observations, it happened over time, starting with Tempers, then Dreugh Wax, Hakeijo's and so forth. And the conclusion I came up with is with a growing player base, all of these items are in high demand yet, think about how they're sold. The Guilds bring the stores and their merchants set the prices and some Guilds, even with a Store, cannot compete in the public marketplace without a Kiosk.

One potential solution is as others have said, to centralize sales around an Auction House. Although I must admit, I've never liked the idea, never wanted it, however seeing how it could work from my New World experiences, varies with population. What I can tell you is that doing this alone would almost certainly bring prices down by like alot.

Right now its basically Guilds vs Guilds however with a central Auction House sales would be based on the individual bidders with no Guild for price sheltering. But I agree you can't just turn you back and say this is not a problem or forcing people to spend days farming when something is clearly overpriced and then say it's ok. It's not ok, things like this are usually a symptom of a greater, yet to be diagnosed problem and will lead to more problems in the future, especially for newer players trying to make their way in the game.

It's not "forcing" people to farm. If people don't want to pay for whatever they're after, then the other option is to farm it themselves, or I guess ask others for it. You can't expect people to sell you whatever you want for cheap just because you don't want to pay.

And guess what? The people that are selling that stuff to begin with had to farm it themselves. If they could do it, anyone can, it might just take some time. Why should the people who are "forced" to farm stuff so others can buy it not be properly compensated for their time? Is their time somehow less important than that of those who can't farm, or those who just don't feel like it?

There really isn't a problem. Prices have gone up not because of inflation, but because of demand for things being greater than they were before. Heartwood is, again, another example. Years ago it was like 100g/piece. Now you're lucky to find it for less than 1k. It's not because "people have more gold" it's because more and more blueprints are always being released that take ridiculous amounts of it, and the fact that we keep getting new or rereleased Houses every so often.

And again, the people who are selling stuff went out there and farmed it. It might have taken them days or weeks, but they did it. If they could take the time to do it, most others can too. And for those who actually can't, rather than just not wanting to, you at least HAVE the option of buying it, even if that might take you some time of saving up gold.

And the "newer players making their way" thing? EVERYONE who's currently playing had to make their own way when they started, it's not anything new. Everyone was a new player at first who had to work to get the stuff they have.

The thing about economics is everyone has their way of looking at it and I'm not really here to hammer out an economic recovery plan for eso.

That said, I believe you and I actually agree on some things however unless I'm mistaken you may have missed my actual point in describing the marketplace itself. This is a problem that started there and the solution is in there, somewhere. But the way eso kiosks and such are setup, I'm concerned that the marketplace isn't as healthy because there is no friendly competition. Its there but, the guilds are still in control.

You can say whatever u like but paying 20k+ for Dreugh Wax is nothing but greed and I can't help but have a conscience for the less fortunate out there. Thankfully I do know some high end Guilds that try to take care of their people, so there's that. But for the price of 100k I was able to make almost a full build before and now that barely covers one piece, which turns this into a grind game when the point here is to enjoy questing and pvp now and then.

Lastly, let's all regardless of how we feel about this try and have a heart for the new people who are unable to afford the things that you and I were able to buy back in our day. I am, first and foremost in this game and NW a merchant and I know how to make bank. But as you said, we all started from somewhere and the way the economy in the game is setup is a house always wins, rich man's game.

Its almost like a form of Corporate Welfare where I put in -lots- of extra hours a week trying to pay something that is overpriced, the 'seller' knows its overpriced and yet he/she has no problem making a ton of extra money that they really didn't earn. Place I used to work we called this 'upselling'. I just don't think its fair people login to the game to work for someone else whose abusing their time and money. And ZOS doesn't care either then I don't know what to say haha. There's been many Empire's throughout history that fell because of inflation.

With inflation essentially turning citizens into indentured servants, ie rise of serfdom from the Medieval Ages. Its a very big problem but you'll never know it is unless you understand how economics affects different groups of people. Its really bad for everyone to have this attitude of 'self', me me me, I I I, I deserve a gazillion gold for something that is worth tree fitty. And that's a problem with people in general and one I cannot solve lol.

Does that make sense?

No your argument doesn't make sense. Look there isn't a material or other normal item in the game that you can use that hasn't dropped in game. You just need to be willing to invest the time to go get it. That's it, you just need time. Now to save you time I am willing to sell you X item at Y price so that you don't have to invest that time. If you think it's a good deal then you buy. If you don't then you can find someone else who will sell cheaper, pay more for the convenience, or go farm it yourself.

Me as the seller, if you buy my item at the price I am selling at then I will sell more at that price. If it doesn't sell then I either hold it until prices are back to where I feel I can sell it, I use it for myself, or I lower the price. If an item sells too quickly then I will raise the price.

There isn't any indentured servitude going on here. No one is forcing players to buy from me or others. No one is forcing players to go out and farm either. Players are choosing to do it.

If you really want to combat inflation as a player start a trading guild, then go out there and declare war on trading locations to get them to spend more on their locations. The more they spend the less gold there is in game.

I'm not certain what doesn't make any sense. Its easy to see how people's time is wasted by abusive and non-inclusive economic system. I don't know how much plainer that point can be made especially with so many guilds locked out of the public market. You don't need to explain trading to me hah I know how that works better than prob most people on here, even you perhaps. But just because you can trade doesn't mean the system is right and that's where I'm coming from. So far no one has bothered to comment on that.

Look, people across the community noticed the inflation and they complained about it before I even said a word. Think about it. Obviously its a problem for alot of people and worth looking into to see what, if anything, could be going wrong. Just turning a blind eye to this is dumb and demonstrates total lack of leadership and compassion for people.

Economics is not something most people understand well and there's so much more to this than just taking the concept at face value. People not listening does not hurt me.

I'm here because its like everyone is too scared to challenge the point directly. There is so much corruption going on its unreal but again, just like another problem we talked about not too long ago, if the Devs don't care or maybe something they can't change then.

Vulkunne · March 2022

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

#StopESOInflationNow

I suppose folks who are leaving comments are all active, regular players. These folks may say that inflation doesn't matter, because everyone just keeps up with the current economy.

Please point out which post said inflation does not matter.

Most of us note that it is part of MMORPGs and that developers trying to control it harms the game because it most selectivlhy8 harms new players (and we can add those who do not manage their gold well).

Most importantly, each of us can farm any of this stuff for free which means we have a choice. That alone debunks the suggested problem in a major way.[/quote]

Lumenn wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

Trying to address some of the repeated misconceptions about why this has become a problem for some players (and, I imagine, an awful lot more players than the more prolific posters here think), some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

As I said above, it is not that they are "lazy". These people do farm, be it materials or gear or motifs or whatever. And in terms of effort there is no material distinction between someone who puts in a lot of hours at varying times and someone who logs in every single day for less time, except that the game is designed to funnel players into the latter behaviour (the business reasons for which I shan't explore).

It is not laziness, but that for a significant slice of the player base the selling mechanics are so unappealing that they do not use them. As such, those players do not benefit from selling on the products of their labours to other players, so they are sandwiched between the rewards they get -- which are just what the basic game without player economy offers -- in terms of income, and what the guild sales prices are for the occasionally needed additional items.

So they do see considerable inflation because the rewards from the basic game remain on the whole static.

To repeat myself, it is no answer that you personally think these people should play your way. They exist in large numbers and they don't want to. It is no answer to say "ESO is an MMO" as if that is some sort of spectacular and profound declaration. It functions, also, as a solo game and has been designed in large sections to be capable of functioning as a solo game. As such it has attracted a lot of solo players.

Given the way ESO was designed to cater both for MMO players and soloists waiting for Elder Scrolls 6, the decision not to have a central auction house, first of all, and, second, to gate the trade stores behind guilds, was completely and utterly baffling. The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic. The guild store setup has also become completely pointless on PC because the supposed advantages of guild traders stopped existing the moment Tamriel Trade Centre became a thing. But it is what it is.

But that being the case, more care does need to be taken in the balancing of certain activities in the game. That's things like drop rates for commonly used items and so on. Recourse to the player market would not be necessary for these items if they dropped at rates that made it reasonable to accrue them alone. There is a supply problem.

I am not talking here about chromium platings. I'm talking about basic things like heartwood, mundane runes and the like. Things the game throws out requirements for like confetti which the drop rates do not reflect.

And to the extent there is any genuine intent on the part of the developers to attempt to drive this slice of players into the existing selling mechanics, I would say that attempt is seriously misguided because those mechanics are to all intents and purposes red lines -- things that type of player will never use. Frankly, I doubt that is ZOS's intent because they are well aware that these players exist and they know how they behave.

Just cool it with "lazy, entitled, want things for free". Not every player plays the game the same way and the sometimes rather condescending tone of posters suggests they simply do not understand how different people play this game. It's quite likely that the players affected by this are "working" in the game harder than you do to achieve the same result. Some of the posts are plain silly, frankly, or wilfully blind, and are very hard to take seriously.

I agree. I have played for years. While I have joined a CASUAL guild I have never sold anything through a trader. Yes, I'm quite sure there are guilds who don't require you to pay to be in their club AND give you traders and all the bells a whistles to boot but many of us (guild masters included) don't enjoy that aspect. I spent decades in that game in one of the most well known retailers in the world. Doing it in a game just isn't my bag.

As long as it's easier to farm gold than to farm materials, inflation will continue. Yes, there are many who farm materials to sell, and should be compensated for their time, but let's not pretend bots dont play a part of this too, or that there aren't enough bots to affect product. If it wasn't profitable, you wouldn't have so many. Many of us saw a person testing his set of 10 out in grahtwood tree on Xbox na. Bold as day, had them mount in sync, wave, ride around, all said hello, then ported out the shrine. Had no fear. That was just 10. How many more did they have? How many more are in remote areas and not so brazen? How effective would YOU be, farming 24-7 in just a week? never need a bio break. Never sleeping, eating, stretching? Constant farm. 10 of you. 20 of you. 100 of you. On a console. I've played for years and have more gold and resources than I need but I can't imagine what I'd rack up with free, constant, and never ending farming. Especially on that scale. Might just be a gold mat worth or heartwood in there somewhere 😉

If you want to stop inflation you can either

1.KILL the market completely and make EVERYTHING no drop(and that's non trade able, non sellable to those that DONT know) or

2. increase the drop rates on mats. Now recipes, styles, things bots can't(yet?) do you'd still have to farm/buy. You'd have to work for it, or pay someone else that worked for it.

Either suggestion though should go with the stipulation (to clarify -as in together WITH suggestion 1. Or 2. ) that zos making farming nodes appear in a random pattern/location/time that keeps bots from easily being programmed a route. It might not stop it all, but it would put those that farm honestly on a MORE even keel than those who break the rules for profit who would now have to have a stationary bot for every POSSIBLE spawn, while a live farmer is actively using their eyes. Now farming, while never fun, is more viable with higher drops rates, higher drop rates drive down prices on many items for those with gold to burn, and it's much more fair and honest. Just my two cents anyway.

The bots are a big part of the problem in a major way.

And I'm kind of surprised those that keep pushing farming (for free.. which it's not for free) on everyone never mentioned the bots.

So technically the way inflation works, is your money is going to be worth less over time, ergo, you need more money. I'm absolutely amazed at some of the comments on here from folks who think you can just ah 'farm your way out of this' or that selling higher is a good thing. They have no idea.

The money is worth less and you are all working more for less. Some will see this, others can fight but ultimately it comes down to bot activity and the economic model that locks out a good chunk of player sales from the public marketplace. ESO economic model was fine for its time but is older and not flexible now for larger player base.

Woozywyvern · March 2022

Removing sources of income will not solve this, it will only harm the new and casual players that everyone cares so much about.

Trading Crowns for Gold is the biggest issue here, and unfortunately now that genie is out of the bottle it will be hard to recover from. It should never have been a thing to trade in game currency for real world money. This is the single biggest driving factor for people wanting to accrue more gold, and therefore manipulating prices on the market to achieve this.

Tommy_The_Gun · March 2022

I think that the game already has enough gold sinks. Especially for newer players or for players who don't play that often. So adding additional "gold sinks" may make matters worse.

As for what is causing prices to go up all of the sudden is that probably more & more players are pass through the majority of the gold sinks and for a certain number of players - there is nothing relevant left to spend gold on.

Adding yet more gold sinks "may" (but at the same time probably won't) be just a stop gap solution, since players that sit on piles of gold will just be past those new gold sink quite fast, while your "average Joe" will be even more unmotivated to earn gold.

The gold inflation eso economy is facing is not something old. It started to appear somewhere around Blackwood or maybe even Greymoor, so it is not something that existed for a long time. But definitely it got more severe recently.

I think that maybe, just maybe we are slowly approaching to the point in which ZOS will actually have to step in and do something about it. Because as far as I can tell, trading system in eso is probably the only system in ESO that was not touched since the game launched. I mean, sure - new trading npcs are being added with every new zone and new items are also being added (that can be traded) - but other than that nothing has been changed / overhauled. Even PvP, that many people say is something that ZOS does not care about, received way more changes than trading system.

Personally I think that if we want to make prices to go down, while also not ruining trading (which is an end-game for many) is to somehow increase the supply of the items on the market. This can be achieved by a very simple trick.

Trading NPCs can only sell stuff, right ? When you visit a vendor kiosk npc you can only buy stuff there. So what if, what if those trading npcs would also allow to buy stuff from other players ? Just like now you can post an item you want to sell - you could post an offer what item you want to buy, for what price and in what amount. So it could work just like CoD, but in reverse.

This would mean that all of the sudden there would be a huge supply boost, as pretty much every player visiting trading npc (as long as they have required item in their inventory) will be able to sell it to a trading guild. Trading guild would be still able to establish prices for things, but would definitely be able to buy stuff cheaper - meaning that if some one is re-selling stuff, they would still keep their regular profits, but because of the base price being lower - the price at which item is re-sold will also be lower. Everyone wins.

Northwold · March 2022

Carrying on from @Tommy_The_Gun 's thinking, basically there is a whole segment of the player base who will not use the current selling mechanics but who, if they did have access to the selling side of the economy, would contribute vastly to increasing the supply of items, at which point you could expect the price of more common materials to become more sane relative to what they are used for AND you could plug those players into the economy so that they did not experience so much inflation.

For whatever reason, ZOS has made clear multiple times that a central auction house is not going to be a thing and the guild traders are here to stay. So be it.

But why not an auction house minus?

- You have "emporia" or something at various key cities, or even at bad locations, that are functionally similar to guild stores but are *open to every player and nothing to do with guilds*.

- Each player gets a very limited number of selling slots to stop the emporia completely overtaking the guild stores that ZOS want to preserve.

- If you like, sales at emporia attract a tax to disadvantage them compared to guild stores.

I do not think guild stores are a good idea, least of all for a game like ESO which deliberately courted and courts a non-diehard MMO playerbase. But, plainly, the view is that they are sacred. But the game really, really needs a mechanic to allow players who want nothing to do with guild stores to sell.

Whole game mechanics depend on the player economy to work properly. Most obviously housing and the crafting of furnishings have been aimed at single players and fail the fun test if it takes players literally years to do what they are trying to do. If they fail the fun test, people will stop playing. And while it might seem terribly clever to charge the equivalent of over 70 pounds (in the UK) to someone for a house and then drive them to the Crown store to spend 5 pounds a pop on plants, it isn't in the end. It's exploitative, players will not engage with it and will resent it, and those players will leave.

Spamming zone chat with "WTS" is a joke solution to the problem.

Cardhwion · March 2022

zaria wrote: »

Cardhwion wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

"There are plenty of opportunities to provide items to the market."

Sorry but this is the classic kind of statement you would expect to find on this forum that is actually very different from sentiments elsewhere.

No. There are two places where you can sell in ESO:

1. Through a guild store. And good luck if you don't intend to play more than weekly or have a casual play style because your guild will kick you when they decide to go big, which is not actually a very nice feeling for a casual player. It's actively alienating.

2. Through zone chat, which is plain annoying.

ESO courts casual players. There is nothing wrong with being a casual player, despite what some people here might think, and there is no sensible mechanism for casual players really to sell stuff in ESO. It is truly weird.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. I am a casual player, and I get very well along with my trading guild (over a year if time is a matter). It is not that hard, and does not eat that much time, if you know what you are doing. I could even cut down that time, if I was in a less prolific guild.

I don't think we need more gold sinks but there are some things that might entice players to spend more gold. Like buying 5 training points at the stable but for a higher price.

Its causal trading guilds and hardcore ones. I say Belkarth in Craglorn is probably the most professional, yes they are a bit high but not idiotic but even there on PC-EU its often an 30% difference on common bulk items.
Upgrade mats is more expensive because the sticker book make its much easier to make new gear.

Crown trade probably hurt housing as lots of the people selling 5K crowns do it for housing.
Its so much old money in this game, and yes this one has so much of it.
Now I assumed the guild trader change was mostly an way to break up the networks who worked so hard to keep the guild store rent prices low.
On the other hand once 25K dps qualified you an spot in vet dlc groups as in MOL
On the other hand Dro'mata chests sell easy for 1.5M, and the lesser stuff is 6-800K
https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade/SearchResult?SearchType=Sell&ItemID=9453&ItemNamePattern=Crafting+Motif+35:+Dro-m'Athra+Chests
Farm it.
Yes that is another way to get rich, this one does not bother.
Never trust an drunk Khajiit

I am on PC Eu in a Trading Guild having their regular trader in Mournhold. And still I am a casual player with a full time Real Life Job and familial commitments which limit my playtime. And it goes very well.

Cardhwion · March 2022

DarrowLykos wrote: »

It may be easy for "some" to farm. It's not about the physical aspect of going out and doing it, it's the overly massive amount of time it takes to do so. There is no casual farming for anything and making a decent living in this game. It all takes a lot of time and well most don't have that luxury but still would like to enjoy the game. Raising drop rates doesn't always work so well either, then if there is too much of something it becomes worth nothing and then what do you have but fodder. This can also cause a crash in the system. A happy medium would be nice and I have seen it from time to time in the game. Inflation is going to be affected by real world inflation. Just follow the pattern over the last 2 years. Being able to buy and sell crowns will have this affect.

*sigh* I really don't get it. I never "farm". I do my surveys, and then I go and play. I have a char who is level 50, but still has a lot of "shard tourism" to do, so I go, hunt my shards, do delves, quest, have fun and grab everything that I happen to stumble upon, which is quite a lot.

Sylvermynx · March 2022

Cardhwion wrote: »

*sigh* I really don't get it. I never "farm". I do my surveys, and then I go and play. I have a char who is level 50, but still has a lot of "shard tourism" to do, so I go, hunt my shards, do delves, quest, have fun and grab everything that I happen to stumble upon, which is quite a lot.

Agreed. Doesn't matter which alt I'm playing through what content, my alts are always picking up nodes as they run across them.

I don't EVER sell gold mats.... I keep them for myself and master writs.

Inaya · March 2022

Northwold wrote: »

Trying to address some of the repeated misconceptions about why this has become a problem for some players (and, I imagine, an awful lot more players than the more prolific posters here think), some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

As I said above, it is not that they are "lazy". These people do farm, be it materials or gear or motifs or whatever. And in terms of effort there is no material distinction between someone who puts in a lot of hours at varying times and someone who logs in every single day for less time, except that the game is designed to funnel players into the latter behaviour (the business reasons for which I shan't explore).

It is not laziness, but that for a significant slice of the player base the selling mechanics are so unappealing that they do not use them. As such, those players do not benefit from selling on the products of their labours to other players, so they are sandwiched between the rewards they get -- which are just what the basic game without player economy offers -- in terms of income, and what the guild sales prices are for the occasionally needed additional items.

So they do see considerable inflation because the rewards from the basic game remain on the whole static.

To repeat myself, it is no answer that you personally think these people should play your way. They exist in large numbers and they don't want to. It is no answer to say "ESO is an MMO" as if that is some sort of spectacular and profound declaration. It functions, also, as a solo game and has been designed in large sections to be capable of functioning as a solo game. As such it has attracted a lot of solo players.

Given the way ESO was designed to cater both for MMO players and soloists waiting for Elder Scrolls 6, the decision not to have a central auction house, first of all, and, second, to gate the trade stores behind guilds, was completely and utterly baffling. The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic. The guild store setup has also become completely pointless on PC because the supposed advantages of guild traders stopped existing the moment Tamriel Trade Centre became a thing. But it is what it is.

But that being the case, more care does need to be taken in the balancing of certain activities in the game. That's things like drop rates for commonly used items and so on. Recourse to the player market would not be necessary for these items if they dropped at rates that made it reasonable to accrue them alone. There is a supply problem.

I am not talking here about chromium platings. I'm talking about basic things like heartwood, mundane runes and the like. Things the game throws out requirements for like confetti which the drop rates do not reflect.

And to the extent there is any genuine intent on the part of the developers to attempt to drive this slice of players into the existing selling mechanics, I would say that attempt is seriously misguided because those mechanics are to all intents and purposes red lines -- things that type of player will never use. Frankly, I doubt that is ZOS's intent because they are well aware that these players exist and they know how they behave.

Just cool it with "lazy, entitled, want things for free". Not every player plays the game the same way and the sometimes rather condescending tone of posters suggests they simply do not understand how different people play this game. It's quite likely that the players affected by this are "working" in the game harder than you do to achieve the same result. Some of the posts are plain silly, frankly, or wilfully blind, and are very hard to take seriously.

The selling mechanics are PART of the game design. If people choose not to use it that's their perogative however that is in no way asking anyone to play "my" way. It's simply playing the way the game is designed.

Tra_Lalan · March 2022

Current inflation is associated with our higher ingame income (green CP),
so basicaly all of us make more gold, but we have to spend more on some desirable stuff.

But some of the players seem to forget, that there is a lot of stuff that still costs the same, because it has a fixed price.
I'm talking about things that mostly new players buy, like first bigger house for gold, bank upgrades, inventory upgrades. All those stuff you already forgot that was a thing, and was hard to achive as a new player (and as far as remember was the only thing you needed gold for back then)
With bigger player income all this stuff is much more accesible now, that is why:
IMHO new players benefit from the current game status (with so called inflation problem).

All of us benefit from it too, whenever we buy something for gold from game (like inv upgrades for alts, furniture from vendours, stuff for gold from the golden, extra houses, "the count" title, you name it.. ).
We earn more, and those stuff still costs the same, lets not forget about it.

As for the other things that go up in price, if you make more gold is it really such a problem to buy something for more gold?
If my sallary was doubled tommorow I wouldnt mind that the prices go +100% up. That is basicaly the case here, because that is what the green CP made.

Casul · March 2022

Addons are to blame.

I played on both ps4 and PC. The ability to push out 2 accounts worth of writs in 5 minutes and print out 50-100k gold every day is to blame. Same with addons such as harvestmap.

Not that it's an issue, just the way it is. If you want to engage in PC you better accept that you need addons.

Xebov · March 2022

Northwold wrote: »

some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

The trading mechanic is part of the game. Players can use it if they want. If tehy dont want to use it or spend the time get used to it its their personal choice. Its like complaining that you dont get tax returns because you didnt bother doing your taxes.

Northwold wrote: »

the decision not to have a central auction house, first of all, and, second, to gate the trade stores behind guilds, was completely and utterly baffling.

Because auction houses have their own set of downsides. Its not like traders are all bad and auction houses are all good. Both sides have their own up and downsides. If we would switch to auction houses tomorrow it would take days until you would see complain threads coming up about things happing on them.

Northwold wrote: »

The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic.

There are more than 200 Guild traders, thats enought space for more than 100.000 players. Yet enought guilds have open spots. So please explain how players are cut out?

Northwold wrote: »

The guild store setup has also become completely pointless on PC because the supposed advantages of guild traders stopped existing the moment Tamriel Trade Centre became a thing. But it is what it is.

No its not. TTC requires players to provide data. Its not working on its own and its not real time. Just because ppl are unable to understand what it does doesnt mean its bad or makes anything obsolete.

DoggedBark24 wrote: »

I don't think the solution is to just turn off all addons on PC, BUT I do believe turning off lazy writ crafter might help a bit.

It would have the opposite effect. Daily Writs are a big generator for golden upgrade mats. If less players do them or do them on less generators supply will run lower and prices will skyrocket. Its a simple supply and demand thing.

The gold generated by these writs is alro nearly unimportant. I spend around 70% on it on taxes and fees.

moleculardrugs · March 2022

Amottica wrote: »

joerginger wrote: »

Casual players can farm mats like everybody else and get their upgrade mats from refining. In additon, are you talking about casual players or about endgame players who want to gets things cheaply? The former most likely wouldn't need the gear you are talking about.

True. It is very easy to farm.

The reason the prices are high for certain items is more people are willing to pay the price than willing to do the farming. It is a choice.

It may also be showing that players (of all levels wishing to upgrade gear) are able to learn quickly how the ESO economy works and how to make gold from the workings of the ESO economy.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · March 2022

targario wrote: »

hey dear community,

as everyone knows there is a crazy amounts of gold inflation in the game and i want to talk why this is a bad thing for "casual players"(as zos proved that they care casuals more) and my suggestions to fix this.

inflation is bad for new and casual players because it will fear them, the millions of gold is need to get some new items or upgrading stuff. jewelry upgrading was pricey even before this infilation and now its way worse.

what can be done?

well, zos needs to add some mechanics or activities that should require some gold from the players.

Examples: (all below just random thoughs, and prices can be changed accordingly)

Upgrading should ask for some gold:
Blue to Purple, usual mats + 10k gold
Purple to Yellow, usual mats + 100k gold

Outfit system should require for more gold:
500 gold is now 5k
1k gold is now 10k
3k gold is now 30k

Transmutating should require more gold.

and obviously daily writs should give less money, or maybe less for multiple characters.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this subject, and what other things could be done about this problem?

good days.

I applaud you for not ignoring the gold influx. The two most common responses you will get are:

1. The game needs more gold sinks. True, but only half the equation.
2. There is not inflation in the game. Laughably absurd, but people will show charts of stable commodities like temp alloy or rosin over the last 12 months, and ingore that Wax, Haikejo, Chromium, Heartwood, Mundane Runs, Roe, etc. are all significantly higher than they were last year, and all if it is way higher than they were 3-4 years ago.

Inflation is certainly present in this game, and no secret its a much bigger issue on PC, where writs are much easier to do. It is obviously more complicated than this, but when more money comes into an economy than exits the economy, inflation is generally the result. Far more money comes into the PC economy than the console economy. I made a million gold just doing writs over the last event, which other than mondays load screens, was a few hours of work. That is brand new currency into the game. That drives inflation, full stop.

My concern for new players is that a lot of the gold sinks you discuss would hurt them far more than they would hurt me, someone that has 18 max crafters and a big pile of gold. It might also create a higher barrier of entry for new players to get geared and start experiencing (and enjoying) harder content.

It's also true that new players cant exploit writ rewards like I can, because they dont have 18 max crafters. So while it would certainly hurt me personally, a newer player likely wouldn't even notice. If you told me I needed to curb PC inflation, I would drastically reduce the Gold (not the other rewards, I might even increase them a bit), from crafting writs as a first start. It is simply too easy for players like myself to print nearly 100k of gold out of thin air in less than 45 minutes.

One of the most fundamental differences between PC and console is how easily we can do writs, and it's 100% not surprising that almost everything costs more on PC than Console. PC currency has less value, which is largely a result of inflation.

Paralyse · March 2022

ESO economy right now is kind of like real life economy. 10% of the players are insanely wealthy and the other 90% are barely scraping by to afford the basics.

i have maybe 4 million gold, all told, and yet I still don't have enough to gold out all of my gear and mats, or run the best food and potions on all of my toons. Mats cost keeps going up daily.

IMO this might be unpopular opinion but I think when ZOS refused to make crown selling a TOS violation/bannable offense, it opened the door to this massive inflation as people who had the means to do so were suddenly able to dump hundreds or even thousands of dollars into the game to obtain massive amounts of gold quickly.

The other aspect of that would be the fact that the trade guilds control the economy. With the largest traders having billions of gold (not an exaggeration) they exert a tremendous amount of influence on the economy. Players must use guild traders to buy things they don't wish to farm or craft on their own, and a percentage of those guild trader purchases (and sales to other players) goes straight into the trade guild leaders' pockets.

It would be like having a large city with, say, 500000 residents, but less than 200 total stores, all of which sold literally everything you could ever want or need to buy. The people who owned and ran those 200 stores would be unimaginably wealthy. The only other way to obtain things would be to farm them or build them yourselves, or standing on a street corner shouting that you have something to sell and hoping someone else is shouting that they have something you want to buy or that they want to buy from you. (Guild traders and zone chat in ESO.) Someone could have exactly what you want to buy but be 5 blocks away and you'd never know about it. At least IRL you'd have want ads and classifieds and such, but ESO has nothing of the sort.

Northwold · March 2022

Xebov wrote: »

Northwold wrote: »

some players here do not like the selling mechanics that ESO offers to the point that they will not sell anything.

The trading mechanic is part of the game. Players can use it if they want. If tehy dont want to use it or spend the time get used to it its their personal choice. Its like complaining that you dont get tax returns because you didnt bother doing your taxes.

Northwold wrote: »

The game cuts an appreciable chunk of the playerbase out of the selling mechanic.

There are more than 200 Guild traders, thats enought space for more than 100.000 players. Yet enought guilds have open spots. So please explain how players are cut out?

It's rather difficult to explain that when, having literally cut and pasted the explanation higher up, you choose simply to ignore it because it doesn't line up with your worldview and then say there is no explanation. But, then, that's not atypical of some responses in this thread.

And ESO is a maintained online game. It evolves. You might as well argue that they should have stuck with it the way it was at the beginning, with all the zones locked up. It wouldn't be around today if they'd taken that attitude.

You're correct, it's a choice. But ultimately when a problem becomes so significant it disrupts expected gameplay, it's less a choice of engage with the gameplay mechanic or not than play *the game* or not. If people get so fed up they walk away something is wrong, and that puts the game's future in danger.

wolfie1.0. · March 2022

Vulkunne wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Vulkunne wrote: »

targario wrote: »

hey dear community,

as everyone knows there is a crazy amounts of gold inflation in the game and i want to talk why this is a bad thing for "casual players"(as zos proved that they care casuals more) and my suggestions to fix this.

inflation is bad for new and casual players because it will fear them, the millions of gold is need to get some new items or upgrading stuff. jewelry upgrading was pricey even before this infilation and now its way worse.

what can be done?

well, zos needs to add some mechanics or activities that should require some gold from the players.

Examples: (all below just random thoughs, and prices can be changed accordingly)

Upgrading should ask for some gold:
Blue to Purple, usual mats + 10k gold
Purple to Yellow, usual mats + 100k gold

Outfit system should require for more gold:
500 gold is now 5k
1k gold is now 10k
3k gold is now 30k

Transmutating should require more gold.

and obviously daily writs should give less money, or maybe less for multiple characters.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this subject, and what other things could be done about this problem?

good days.

I'm not certain manual adjustments will fix this. However I can appreciate you and others wanting to understand how this inflation happened.

Based on my observations, it happened over time, starting with Tempers, then Dreugh Wax, Hakeijo's and so forth. And the conclusion I came up with is with a growing player base, all of these items are in high demand yet, think about how they're sold. The Guilds bring the stores and their merchants set the prices and some Guilds, even with a Store, cannot compete in the public marketplace without a Kiosk.

One potential solution is as others have said, to centralize sales around an Auction House. Although I must admit, I've never liked the idea, never wanted it, however seeing how it could work from my New World experiences, varies with population. What I can tell you is that doing this alone would almost certainly bring prices down by like alot.

Right now its basically Guilds vs Guilds however with a central Auction House sales would be based on the individual bidders with no Guild for price sheltering. But I agree you can't just turn you back and say this is not a problem or forcing people to spend days farming when something is clearly overpriced and then say it's ok. It's not ok, things like this are usually a symptom of a greater, yet to be diagnosed problem and will lead to more problems in the future, especially for newer players trying to make their way in the game.

It's not "forcing" people to farm. If people don't want to pay for whatever they're after, then the other option is to farm it themselves, or I guess ask others for it. You can't expect people to sell you whatever you want for cheap just because you don't want to pay.

And guess what? The people that are selling that stuff to begin with had to farm it themselves. If they could do it, anyone can, it might just take some time. Why should the people who are "forced" to farm stuff so others can buy it not be properly compensated for their time? Is their time somehow less important than that of those who can't farm, or those who just don't feel like it?

There really isn't a problem. Prices have gone up not because of inflation, but because of demand for things being greater than they were before. Heartwood is, again, another example. Years ago it was like 100g/piece. Now you're lucky to find it for less than 1k. It's not because "people have more gold" it's because more and more blueprints are always being released that take ridiculous amounts of it, and the fact that we keep getting new or rereleased Houses every so often.

And again, the people who are selling stuff went out there and farmed it. It might have taken them days or weeks, but they did it. If they could take the time to do it, most others can too. And for those who actually can't, rather than just not wanting to, you at least HAVE the option of buying it, even if that might take you some time of saving up gold.

And the "newer players making their way" thing? EVERYONE who's currently playing had to make their own way when they started, it's not anything new. Everyone was a new player at first who had to work to get the stuff they have.

The thing about economics is everyone has their way of looking at it and I'm not really here to hammer out an economic recovery plan for eso.

That said, I believe you and I actually agree on some things however unless I'm mistaken you may have missed my actual point in describing the marketplace itself. This is a problem that started there and the solution is in there, somewhere. But the way eso kiosks and such are setup, I'm concerned that the marketplace isn't as healthy because there is no friendly competition. Its there but, the guilds are still in control.

You can say whatever u like but paying 20k+ for Dreugh Wax is nothing but greed and I can't help but have a conscience for the less fortunate out there. Thankfully I do know some high end Guilds that try to take care of their people, so there's that. But for the price of 100k I was able to make almost a full build before and now that barely covers one piece, which turns this into a grind game when the point here is to enjoy questing and pvp now and then.

Lastly, let's all regardless of how we feel about this try and have a heart for the new people who are unable to afford the things that you and I were able to buy back in our day. I am, first and foremost in this game and NW a merchant and I know how to make bank. But as you said, we all started from somewhere and the way the economy in the game is setup is a house always wins, rich man's game.

Its almost like a form of Corporate Welfare where I put in -lots- of extra hours a week trying to pay something that is overpriced, the 'seller' knows its overpriced and yet he/she has no problem making a ton of extra money that they really didn't earn. Place I used to work we called this 'upselling'. I just don't think its fair people login to the game to work for someone else whose abusing their time and money. And ZOS doesn't care either then I don't know what to say haha. There's been many Empire's throughout history that fell because of inflation.

With inflation essentially turning citizens into indentured servants, ie rise of serfdom from the Medieval Ages. Its a very big problem but you'll never know it is unless you understand how economics affects different groups of people. Its really bad for everyone to have this attitude of 'self', me me me, I I I, I deserve a gazillion gold for something that is worth tree fitty. And that's a problem with people in general and one I cannot solve lol.

Does that make sense?

No your argument doesn't make sense. Look there isn't a material or other normal item in the game that you can use that hasn't dropped in game. You just need to be willing to invest the time to go get it. That's it, you just need time. Now to save you time I am willing to sell you X item at Y price so that you don't have to invest that time. If you think it's a good deal then you buy. If you don't then you can find someone else who will sell cheaper, pay more for the convenience, or go farm it yourself.

Me as the seller, if you buy my item at the price I am selling at then I will sell more at that price. If it doesn't sell then I either hold it until prices are back to where I feel I can sell it, I use it for myself, or I lower the price. If an item sells too quickly then I will raise the price.

There isn't any indentured servitude going on here. No one is forcing players to buy from me or others. No one is forcing players to go out and farm either. Players are choosing to do it.

If you really want to combat inflation as a player start a trading guild, then go out there and declare war on trading locations to get them to spend more on their locations. The more they spend the less gold there is in game.

I'm not certain what doesn't make any sense. Its easy to see how people's time is wasted by abusive and non-inclusive economic system. I don't know how much plainer that point can be made especially with so many guilds locked out of the public market. You don't need to explain trading to me hah I know how that works better than prob most people on here, even you perhaps. But just because you can trade doesn't mean the system is right and that's where I'm coming from. So far no one has bothered to comment on that.

Look, people across the community noticed the inflation and they complained about it before I even said a word. Think about it. Obviously its a problem for alot of people and worth looking into to see what, if anything, could be going wrong. Just turning a blind eye to this is dumb and demonstrates total lack of leadership and compassion for people.

Economics is not something most people understand well and there's so much more to this than just taking the concept at face value. People not listening does not hurt me. I'm here because its like everyone is too scared to challenge the point directly. There is so much corruption going on its unreal but again, just like another problem we talked about not too long ago, if the Devs don't care or maybe something they can't change then.

In this thread no. But if you want that conversation you can look at the Plentiful GAH vs Guild trader system threads.

I am in 5 guilds in PC NA. All trader guilds. Each one has 0 dues. In 4 of those guilds you only get booted for inactivity or if you are rude. The 5th one has an inactivity and participation policy which you can fulfill by simply selling and/or buying. Invitations for all 5 are sent out as much as possible and yet we still have open spots AND a portion of the players don't sell much. 90% of the support for traders is covered by the top 5 to 25% of traders in each guild. This is why people are booted. To make space for people that want to sell, to be more inclusive.

As the game currently stands it can't handle a trading system that would allow every player to sell something at any time. It is well known that guild history and sales data queries a while ago to the system down. Now imagine the traffic and outage it would have just loading the GAH UI? Zos even says that they made AwA a thing to free up performance space. And you know the hybridization initiative is to reduce combat calculations so that it can free up space.

Then there isnthe gold sync issue if you want all players to be able to sell at once then you need to come up with a method that will equally offset that transfer of funds to remove gold from the game. That's a hard thing to do and have it be fair.

Love it or hate it we are probably stuck with the system we have until/unless ZOS does a complete and comprehensive economic overhaul