Enough is enough!

Fizzyapple · April 2022

Roe is expensive because it's really hard for farm bots to farm roe. It's much harder than farming any other mat. You will sometimes see farm bots trying to farm roe at obscure fishing holes. There are a few delves in the game that have fish such as the one in Wrothgar. When I visit that delve there is usually at least one bot fishing there. If you don't believe that there are bots in this game then you're not paying attention.

I don't like bots period but they do keep prices low in that they are a counter to the incessant flipping that plagues the market.

xXSilverDragonXx · April 2022

It's called flipping. Personally, I hate it. But this has been going on for years. Way back when I first started in 2016 there were flippers buying up things and selling them double the price. It's only gotten worse. Now the prices are outrageous and frankly, I'm not going to sell things dirt cheap when the price is as high as it is. But yeah, roe was one of the things that got flipped liked crazy back then. Every weekend flippers would buy them all up and over the weekend the price would be abnormally high, basically double if not higher. I learned to buy roe during the week if I was going to want them.

MasterSpatula · April 2022

I think people underestimate how much the preposterous competition for traders contributes to inflation in this game.

Guilds pay nonsensical prices to get a good spot and outrageous prices to get a spot at all. These ludicrous prices get passed along to members who then have to charge significantly more to make a profit.

The Guild Trader system is supposed to help control inflation by taking gold out of the economy, but what it actually does is further advantage those who already have the most wealth and force the rest of us to pay more to keep the wealthy wealthy.

xXSilverDragonXx · April 2022

Bashev wrote: »

What do you expect when you can make writs and earn 60k easily without counting the resources? This is every day. When so much gold is generated then the price will increase.

Writs have zero to do with this. I know plenty who still won't buy at outrageous prices and they have absurd amount of millions. So stop just blaming writs. It's the flippers resetting the market by buying up things and reselling them much higher. Do that often enough and the prices keep going up.

Nothing to do with writs. In fact, I know some flippers who hate writs and will not do them. Even if it makes them that money. They get off on flipping. On buying things at good prices then selling them for much much more. They run around to different traders, usually the low key off beat ones looking for deals. Then they buy stuff up. They also buy up up things like roe then resell them. They would buy all the roe, then resell it all high.

This has nothing to do with writs. It's been going on since well before writs were even worth

Lumsdenml · April 2022

How did this get necroed?

wolfie1.0. · April 2022

MasterSpatula wrote: »

I think people underestimate how much the preposterous competition for traders contributes to inflation in this game.

Guilds pay nonsensical prices to get a good spot and outrageous prices to get a spot at all. These ludicrous prices get passed along to members who then have to charge significantly more to make a profit.

The Guild Trader system is supposed to help control inflation by taking gold out of the economy, but what it actually does is further advantage those who already have the most wealth and force the rest of us to pay more to keep the wealthy wealthy.

Who exactly is forcing you to buy anything?
Players keep saying this and I am truly curious about it.

Bait is cheap... just go fishing.

barney2525 · April 2022

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

probably on all characters - 3k x 20 = 60k

I make my money on events. find event that hand out motifs I can sell. make a bundle at one time and cruise on that until the next good event.

guarstompemoji · April 2022

Cozzy1991 wrote: »

Blame gold sellers. Their “services” inflate market prices. Needs to be harsher penalties for people who buy gold.

I can confirm this is a thing--I've had it admitted to me, people buying gold. I don't. I don't want my account banned.

Nor would I trust sharing ANY payment information with a person w this sort of ethics.

People blame this on crown selling and the like, but we're talking millions of gold for $1.50. If anything, the crown sellers are the ones being taken advantage of. A "gold seller" could turn $1.50 worth of gold into thousands of crowns via exchange, which had cost someone's hard-earned RL labor.

A presentation by Byfron Tech founders argued that the purchases of this sort of duping behavior increases when there's too much grind/high prices. It's sort of a self-feeding system. Lessening the grind and imposing account penalties appears the most effective in deterring purchasers.

The dupers/generators themselves ofc, do it for other reasons. They're much harder to deter, outside of legal threats, limiting the API, and I suspect making it less profitable by rearranging the grind in some ways to allow greater flexibility for gameplay styles and schedules. So, some heavy creative thinking.

Link to a discussion of the presentation, which discusses the types of cheating that occur in different games, why, and which methods are more effective deterrents.

Vulkunne · April 2022

vamp_emily wrote: »

I get it, everyone wants to make money ( gold ). Me too, but these freaking prices are crazy.

I went to several traders yesterday and perfect roe is costing between 40-50k gold. I remember paying 10k in the past. I am not getting paid any more than what I did in the past, and I don't want to spend my time fishing in the game. I can't even afford to fight for my faction with these prices.

Zeni, needs to step in and stop this madness. Increase the drop rate, or pay me more so I can afford to eat!

Serfs up! Next thing the Trade Guilds will start offering loans lol.

Problem is not the drop rate. Problem is this current economic system in place is badly in need of an overhaul on the front end. Fix the problems with availability and vendors not able to make it to the public market and the price will deflate rapidly.

Arunei · April 2022

barney2525 wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

probably on all characters - 3k x 20 = 60k

I make my money on events. find event that hand out motifs I can sell. make a bundle at one time and cruise on that until the next good event.

Uh...you can only have 18 characters though, not 20.

That aside, if someone doesn't want to spend the time farming for any given item in the game, then pay those who do. This whole thing of people not wanting to spend the time to get what they're after and expecting those who do to just sell it for peanuts gets tiring.

And yes I know this is a necro, but plenty of people still act this way.

wolfie1.0. · April 2022

Arunei wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

probably on all characters - 3k x 20 = 60k

I make my money on events. find event that hand out motifs I can sell. make a bundle at one time and cruise on that until the next good event.

Uh...you can only have 18 characters though, not 20.

That aside, if someone doesn't want to spend the time farming for any given item in the game, then pay those who do. This whole thing of people not wanting to spend the time to get what they're after and expecting those who do to just sell it for peanuts gets tiring.

And yes I know this is a necro, but plenty of people still act this way.

Second accounts are cheap.

Castagere · April 2022

Welcome to the traders of greed. The other day a saw the same dagger going for 350k gold and the next vendor has it for 10k.

DarrowLykos · April 2022

I love how people think they can dictate how much someone's time is worth to them. When they themselves are not willing to put the time in to get these items themselves. Instant gratification right? You are paying for the time it takes to get these items. Most of which takes a great deal of time. Not sure why this is such a hard concept to understand. If you don't have the time to put in like other people do how is that their problem and not yours? If everything was super easy to get and took no time or challenge where exactly is the fun in that? Maybe when we log in we should just have all the gold mats we need sitting in a pile at our feet

moleculardrugs · April 2022

What would happen if they added more guild traders? Would prices go down?

moleculardrugs · April 2022

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

Yeah I’m on Google Stadia and I’m missing out 😭 I hope they create addons for Stadia, I do my writs manually and it’s awful when my friends can do all theirs in under 2 minutes

RaikaNA · April 2022

I have the perfect solution to fight back against the high prices of perfect roe... Stop selecting foods that require this ingredient for your build so that you don't have to be heavily dependent on it. What's wrong with the poor man's food?

moleculardrugs · April 2022

RaikaNA wrote: »

I have the perfect solution to fight back against the high prices of perfect roe... Stop selecting foods that require this ingredient for your build so that you don't have to be heavily dependent on it. What's wrong with the poor man's food?

Maybe I’m always dying in Cyrodiil because everyone is eating rich man food and I’m stuck with some concoction I made with Nightshade from a recipe I got from a witch 😅

Honestly, I love poor man’s food. Whenever I see a recipe that’s blue or green and it gives HUGE stat boosts, I get so excited that I start to sweat profusely

chllorcab16_ESO · April 2022

I like fishing. I read during it, so it's pretty much just idle gaming.

RaikaNA · April 2022

moleculardrugs wrote: »

RaikaNA wrote: »

I have the perfect solution to fight back against the high prices of perfect roe... Stop selecting foods that require this ingredient for your build so that you don't have to be heavily dependent on it. What's wrong with the poor man's food?

Maybe I’m always dying in Cyrodiil because everyone is eating rich man food and I’m stuck with some concoction I made with Nightshade from a recipe I got from a witch 😅

Honestly, I love poor man’s food. Whenever I see a recipe that’s blue or green and it gives HUGE stat boosts, I get so excited that I start to sweat profusely

Please accept my apologies if you think I'm offending you, but maybe it's a build issue that you're having that's causing you to die a lot? How do you know that everyone is using wealthy food? I'm certainly not the best PvPer in ESO, but the only foods that I use are the following:

For mage characters, I use witch mothers brew for stam Dubious Camoran Throne... I sometimes use sugar skulls for either build.

Itoq · April 2022

DarrowLykos wrote: »

I love how people think they can dictate how much someone's time is worth to them. When they themselves are not willing to put the time in to get these items themselves. Instant gratification right? You are paying for the time it takes to get these items. Most of which takes a great deal of time.

Some of that is true. However, I would argue that much if not most of the general inflation comes from re-sellers and not the players doing the farming. See below for example (which is not rare - there is way more nirn listed by resellers than nirn that is being sold by the player who farmed it):

Cuddlypuff · April 2022

moleculardrugs wrote: »

RaikaNA wrote: »

I have the perfect solution to fight back against the high prices of perfect roe... Stop selecting foods that require this ingredient for your build so that you don't have to be heavily dependent on it. What's wrong with the poor man's food?

Maybe I’m always dying in Cyrodiil because everyone is eating rich man food and I’m stuck with some concoction I made with Nightshade from a recipe I got from a witch 😅

Honestly, I love poor man’s food. Whenever I see a recipe that’s blue or green and it gives HUGE stat boosts, I get so excited that I start to sweat profusely

All my pvp chars use Bewitched Sugar Skulls or Jewels of Misrule...no need for roe foods

Cardhwion · April 2022

code65536 wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Only up on PC. Console prices are still maxing out around 12-13k ea.

You want to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Get rid of add-ons which collectively allow players to meticulously overanalyze market aspects and min-max every transaction made.

You want ZOS to stop the ridiculous prices on PC? Have them disable add-ons on live servers.

They can’t do more because if the prices aren’t outlandish for 2 out of the 3 platforms and everything else in-game is the same then it’s a player created problem, not ZOS.

You're barking up the wrong tree. Yes, there is an addon that is largely to blame for PC inflation. But it's not a pricing addon.

Writs are the single biggest source of gold coming into the economy, and being able to complete writs on a dozen characters in about half an hour is the biggest reason why there is so much gold sloshing around on PC.

That said, the solution is not to do anything about the addon (since manually doing writs is not enjoyable for anyone), but rather to rebalance the rewards from writs. If they slashed the gold reward from writs in half and, as compensation, nudged up the chances of receiving gold materials, the economy would be in a much healthier state.

I think you are on the wrong track here. Writs are a way for many players to make gold, who do not have a trading guild to make an income. They function as the option for all those players who are not in one of those guilds who have a useful trader

FeedbackOnly · April 2022

My theory is they got rid of the bots. So prices and turn rose up

Stania · April 2022

For every 200 fishes you have the chance of getting ONE roe. Catching 200 fishes takes time. Time that clearly you don't want to "waste" because you have more important things to do, but somehow is outrageous when someone else is valuing theirs by putting a price that you don't like on something that took them a while to get.

Basically you're saying "my time is more valuable than yours" which sounds entitled.

You can always use food with cheaper ingredients or fish the roes yourself, maybe you can also make some money in the process.

Lysette · April 2022

moo_2021 wrote: »

How do you make 60k by doing daily writs?

I do all writs and only ~3k gold

times 18 characters of course - it's roughly 60k then - plus there is a higher chance to get gold materials to sell with many characters. So 60k is more on the lower end of the spectrum.

Arunei · April 2022

moleculardrugs wrote: »

What would happen if they added more guild traders? Would prices go down?

No, because it has nothing to do with the number of traders. There are well over 200, each guild can have up to 500 members, and each member can list up to 30 things. The price on certain items is so high because it takes time to farm them. Perfect Roe is a good example because of how rare it is and the number of useful things it's used in, as well as a few different Furnishing plans.

It's nothing to do with lack of space to sell things, it's just people wanting to have their time spent providing others with goods to be worthwhile.

Itoq wrote: »

DarrowLykos wrote: »

I love how people think they can dictate how much someone's time is worth to them. When they themselves are not willing to put the time in to get these items themselves. Instant gratification right? You are paying for the time it takes to get these items. Most of which takes a great deal of time.

Some of that is true. However, I would argue that much if not most of the general inflation comes from re-sellers and not the players doing the farming. See below for example (which is not rare - there is way more nirn listed by resellers than nirn that is being sold by the player who farmed it):

I'm not sure how this proves at all that it's more people trying to flip things than original sellers setting prices. There's no way of knowing whether someone selling something farmed it themselves or is someone who bought it from someone else. Besides, flippers don't buy things to try and raise the price on them, which would more likely than not be a waste of gold. Flippers buy things at a low price and then relist it for the average. They aren't setting the cost, they're following it.

There's something else to consider as well. People see things priced at really high costs and automatically think those people are being greedy, but people also need to realize a simply truth; not everyone on PC uses addons. Those who price well above the average might just be people making a guess at what something is worth, if they happen upon it while playing. People often use their guild stores as a way of just dumping stuff they don't want or need, so they don't need to use pricing addons.

Lysette · April 2022

Arunei wrote: »

moleculardrugs wrote: »

What would happen if they added more guild traders? Would prices go down?

No, because it has nothing to do with the number of traders. There are well over 200, each guild can have up to 500 members, and each member can list up to 30 things. The price on certain items is so high because it takes time to farm them. Perfect Roe is a good example because of how rare it is and the number of useful things it's used in, as well as a few different Furnishing plans.

It's nothing to do with lack of space to sell things, it's just people wanting to have their time spent providing others with goods to be worthwhile.

Itoq wrote: »

DarrowLykos wrote: »

I love how people think they can dictate how much someone's time is worth to them. When they themselves are not willing to put the time in to get these items themselves. Instant gratification right? You are paying for the time it takes to get these items. Most of which takes a great deal of time.

Some of that is true. However, I would argue that much if not most of the general inflation comes from re-sellers and not the players doing the farming. See below for example (which is not rare - there is way more nirn listed by resellers than nirn that is being sold by the player who farmed it):

I'm not sure how this proves at all that it's more people trying to flip things than original sellers setting prices. There's no way of knowing whether someone is the selling something farmed it originally or is someone who bought it from someone else. Besides, flippers don't buy things to try and raise the price on them, which would more likely than not be a waste of gold. Flippers buy things at a low price and then relist it for the average. They aren't setting the cost, they're following it.

There's something else to consider as well. People see things priced at really high costs and automatically think those people are being greedy, but people also need to realize a simply truth; not everyone on PC uses addons. Those who price well above the average might just be people making a guess at what something is worth, if they happen upon it while playing. People often use their guild stores as a way of just dumping stuff they don't want or need, so they don't need to use pricing addons.

That and when I have more stuff to sell, I put them up for different prices - if the demand is low, I will just get the lower end of my offers, but if demand is high, I will achieve the average price of them for them all. This way it auto-adapts to the demand. If people don't want it at that price, they can just decide to not buy it - but from my experience everything sells within the given time frame, even if it is overpriced, if it isn't insanely overpriced - well but "insanely" has to be multiple times the normal price - otherwise it will sell, it just takes longer. There are always people who don't care if they have to buy it for double or triple the price, they are wealthy enough and want it right now and immediately - and that is why they pay that price nevertheless - it's convenience, not logic.

I'm like that as well - yesterday I bought a bunch of couches, which were offered as a bundle of 10 - price was about double what I normally pay for those - but those were 10 all at once - no hassle to look for others, if I just buy those 10 now, then I have it immediately and don't have to waste my time - this is how this works basically - it was a convenience offer, well overpriced - but I bought it nevertheless.

So to achieve a price you want for it - even if it is above the average price or even well above the average price - is to cleverly choose a cascade of prices were the bundle size is well thought out - one can achieve pretty much any price, even if it is double the normal price, it just takes to make the offer so, that it will sell within the given time frame - business is so easy, if you understand it's mechanics and the psychology which drives people to buy it at pretty much any price, which isn't insanely out of the way. double or triple of normal is not insane, if the offer supplies a demand - and convenience plays a big role.

And how do you get people to the guild trader where you are selling?- By underpricing a few of the items - well below market average. Those using a trading add-on will show up, to grab it - but then they see the cascade of prices and if they want to grab pretty much all to resell them at a higher price - they might start to buy the lower offers first - then see that there are higher ones as well with bigger bundle sizes - and if they are not that observant - and a lot are not - they will have in the end to buy all of them to be able to resell it - because the higher the price, the bigger the bundle size - in the end they will eventually buy all of them - and I got my average price for all of my stuff - it is not that often happening, but sometimes it does - and all the stuff is sold on a single day, even it was in average well overpriced. Simple principle first bait them then slowly lure them in to buy more very quickly (because those are still very baiting offers) until they have bought so much, that they cannot get out of it anymore, and then they are faced with the really high priced bigger bundle sizes - well it is like placing your bets at poker - follows the same principle - bait, lure in and and then put in the really big bets to catch them.

Edit: Just a comment to what you first said - prices are not about how much effort it took to make or acquire the item - it is in the end just about what people are willing to pay for it in the very moment where they are looking for it - and in that moment their mood and urge to get this item plays the major role - markets are always about people's behavior and desires and dislikes, never really about the actual value of an item - that is why one can sell at pretty much any price, if the buyer wants it desperately enough or just cares for convenience.

Molydeus · April 2022

code65536 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

Meanwhile, TTC and Master Merchant do not change the amount of gold in the market. They may contribute to concentrating that wealth, but they don't create it. So, they can't really contribute to inflation. (There is a minor gold sink associated with listing and selling items, but that gold isn't created, it came from another player.)

Because gold "sticks around" and accumulates in the economy, you can almost think of it like CO2 in the atmosphere, and in the context of that analogy, writs are a pretty "dirty" form of gold material generation, since they create gold mats but also a lot of gold. In contrast, hirelings and harvesting/refinement are "clean" sources of gold material generation, unaccompanied by gold. And I expect that, because writs are relatively more difficult to do on console, a greater proportion of console's gold mats come from these other "clean" sources.

Which is why what I would suggest is a rebalance (not a nerf, as an earlier poster characterized) of the rewards from writs: a significant reduction of the gold rewarded for doing them coupled with a modest compensatory increase in the materials that are rewarded would make writs more balanced, and well, "cleaner" in the context of this analogy.

(Note: Yes, in the context of this analogy, bots are "clean" sources too, and as ZOS gets better at banning bots, prices for materials increase, which causes players to do more writs in order to get materials, but since writs are "dirty" in this context, this exacerbates the inflationary pressures.)

CO2 gets scrubbed out of the atmosphere by several natural sources

code65536 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@trackdemon5512, I know we've talked about this before, but @code65536 is 100% correct here. It's not about market tracking, it's about Lazy Writ Crafter's ability to accelerate gold generation.

I am not as sure of that as you and code. One of the areas that has experienced high inflation and often the most complained about, is gold upgrade materials. However, people who do a lot of craft writs generate a lot of those same materials, usually enough to comfortably sell excess. If this were the primary source for additional gold income into the PC environment, then presumably the gold upgrade mat market would have much more supply than on other platforms and counter.

This one's actually pretty easy to articulate.

Lazy Writ Crafting means I can pull down ~120k in an hour, each day. It's pretty low effort, and I can do that while moderating a stream on Twitch. (Honestly, it's probably closer to 135k. And that's just the gold from quest turn ins, I'm not counting the additional gold from ornate items, or the value from the rewards.)

Without LWC, I would need to pay attention to the game, and it would take a couple hours minimum. (This is just from prior experience with doing writs before using LWC.)

The end result is that there are a lot of people on the PC servers who can generate significant wealth, on a daily basis. Over time, that has a significant impact.

Meanwhile, TTC and Master Merchant do not change the amount of gold in the market. They may contribute to concentrating that wealth, but they don't create it. So, they can't really contribute to inflation. (There is a minor gold sink associated with listing and selling items, but that gold isn't created, it came from another player.)

@starkerealm I think the point that @kringled_1 was trying to make is that writs are also a significant source of gold materials entering the game, so it would balance out: There's more gold entering the game, but there are also more mats entering the game.

So my first counter to that is that writs are a source of gold materials only if your character does writs at max level. That requires a pretty substantial investment of skill points, and there are many people who will do max-level writs on a few characters, and then do tier-1 writs on others just for the gold.

The second is that there are material sinks but not many gold sinks. When you buy 8 dreugh wax from another player, that gold you spent doesn't disappear--it simply gets transferred to another player and remains in the economy. When you use those 8 wax to upgrade a piece of gear, they disappear. So the gold "sticks around", and over time, there is a cumulative imbalance that forms.

Because gold "sticks around" and accumulates in the economy, you can almost think of it like CO2 in the atmosphere, and in the context of that analogy, writs are a pretty "dirty" form of gold material generation, since they create gold mats but also a lot of gold. In contrast, hirelings and harvesting/refinement are "clean" sources of gold material generation, unaccompanied by gold. And I expect that, because writs are relatively more difficult to do on console, a greater proportion of console's gold mats come from these other "clean" sources.

Which is why what I would suggest is a rebalance (not a nerf, as an earlier poster characterized) of the rewards from writs: a significant reduction of the gold rewarded for doing them coupled with a modest compensatory increase in the materials that are rewarded would make writs more balanced, and well, "cleaner" in the context of this analogy.

(Note: Yes, in the context of this analogy, bots are "clean" sources too, and as ZOS gets better at banning bots, prices for materials increase, which causes players to do more writs in order to get materials, but since writs are "dirty" in this context, this exacerbates the inflationary pressures.)

CO2 gets scrubbed out of the atmosphere by many natural sources though. It doesn't "stick around" forever.

dvonpm · April 2022

My theory is price creep from flippers.

Obviously there isn't 1 cause, but it seems like there are more people trying to flip than there is a pool of flippable items. So if they can't find anything really low, flippers end up buying higher and adding a percent or 2 each time, raising the bar for everyone.

And the rest of us list that high because now that's the new going rate.

And considering how many people are flipping, it makes good deals harder for a casual shopper to find. Meaning if you need stuff you probably have to pay higher whether you want to or not because nothing else is available and not everyone has the time, desire, or patience to shop like a flipper.

So... I have no way of measuring it, but I think a huge part of "demand" is artifical.

Shadowmite · April 2022

vamp_emily wrote: »

I get it, everyone wants to make money ( gold ). Me too, but these freaking prices are crazy.

I went to several traders yesterday and perfect roe is costing between 40-50k gold. I remember paying 10k in the past.

I can fish for several hours each day and save up 500 or 600 fish to filet. The filet process takes an hour, during which time you can't even click off the screen to do anything else, and I might get 5 perfect roe - sometimes I get none. I quit fishing after I got the achievement, it simply isn't worth the effort, at any price.