Sharp drop in vendor sales since crown trading stopped?

Veinblood1965 · October 2023

Almost from day one of the change my sales went from quite a few a day to maybe two or three items at most on PS4/5. I'm in two top tier trader guilds also. I'm not playing to make gold as my main motivation but it is concerning. I was using the profits to support my PVP habit.

I've also seen one guild I'm which was semi-top tier trader go from having quite a few people online at a time in the evening to 15 to 20 on at the same time.

Anyone else noticing this? I hadn't realised that much of the vendor sales were from crown trading.

flizomica · October 2023

I've noticed the same thing in my trading guilds on PC NA. I'm pricing stuff very competitively relative to TTC and it's taking so long to sell anything. I'm at 60/60 slots filled and thinking about joining another trading guild just so that I can offload stuff out of my inventory and bank.

It really doesn't surprise me because without crown trading, there's shockingly little to spend gold on if you're a well-established player, so you'd expect the economy to slow down without it. Since a lot of actual content is unrewarding, I and many others were able to make their own reward system by farming stuff to sell and then buying crown items - but that entire gameplay loop is currently on pause. I don't think I'd have anything to really do in game if I wasn't enjoying decorating the new house. Now I'm struggling to recoup the gold loss spent on new furnishings because nothing is selling lol.

AstroST · October 2023

Same thing on PC EU.
On PC we also lost a big number of players to BG3/StarField.

DragonRacer · October 2023

Yup, PS NA has definitely seen a slump since Crown Store gifting was turned off. Hopefully it rebounds now that it is coming back here shortly (see pinned thread at top of forum).

adamsmith42 · October 2023

Yep.. I've had more listings expire in the last few weeks than I did in the ~2 years prior.

CrashTest · October 2023

Yep same on PCNA but crown gifting is coming back tomorrow (11th) so hopefully trading picks up again.

Veinblood1965 · October 2023

adamsmith42 wrote: »

Yep.. I've had more listings expire in the last few weeks than I did in the ~2 years prior.

Funny you said that, I had a lot expire at once the other day and though I'd gotten kicked from the guild lol.

Shagreth · October 2023

Definitely the case.

Kirawolfe · October 2023

Yep. It's been really bad. I'm not surprised, really. The crown trading thing drove a lot of it, and jewelry is taking a dive.

notyuu · October 2023

Well we won't have long to wait to see if this was the casue or if it was something, given that they are reenabled crown gifting tommrow

Twohothardware · October 2023

I think there was just a sharp drop in players in general after the Craglorn event when they disabled Crown gifting. Cyrodiil numbers have been the lowest I've seen since being on the game. Hopefully the release of Update 40 and the restoration of gifting brings players back.

I honestly don't understand why Zenimax hasn't moved ESO over to a free to play model. They make their money off the sales in the Crown Store, ESO+ subs, and yearly DLC drops. Making the base game free to play on all platforms like Bungie did with Destiny would bring in a lot of new players that otherwise wouldn't check out the game.

Free to play and potentially Crossplay in the future would both help this game a lot.

Marcus684 · October 2023

Everyone who has been pricing their guild store listings based on past sales numbers (including me) is now way, way overpriced for the present, deflated currency market. It's going to take weeks to months of new sales data for addon pricing to reflect the current item values, so sellers are going to have to adjust and drop our prices if we want to continue to make sales.

Reverb · October 2023

Sales plummeted in my guilds after the stendarr event and haven’t recovered yet. I’m not certain the loss of sales is related to killing crown store gifting.

Roztlin45 · October 2023

I have noticed a lot less players lately. Not enough to support sales so is my guess. Quality and service should be a focus to remain competitive.

Tieberion · October 2023

They took away an easy source of gold, I have over 25k crowns from having a sub since day 1, after gifting alot for gold. I would then use that gold to buy a million or more a week off Guild Traders. So now I'm not a huge in game gold maker as a casual player, so I had to cut my spending. Vendor sales will skyrocket agsin once gifting is enabled.

Kirawolfe · October 2023

notyuu wrote: »

Well we won't have long to wait to see if this was the casue or if it was something, given that they are reenabled crown gifting tommrow

For some. I am a little concerned this will not be implemented as clearly as we'd like.

EmEm_Oh · October 2023

Yeah, I haven't sold anything in weeks. Normally, I sell at least something, but this last month has been absolutely nothing.

SilverBride · October 2023

Kirawolfe wrote: »

notyuu wrote: »

Well we won't have long to wait to see if this was the casue or if it was something, given that they are reenabled crown gifting tommrow

For some. I am a little concerned this will not be implemented as clearly as we'd like.

It's enabled for me and I've rarely bought crowns from the store and never gifted anything. You can check this under account - billing history.

ForzaRammer · October 2023

And ofc the only golf sink in game become even less effective, hyper inflation just slowed down earlier this year and it’s definitely coming back

wolfie1.0. · October 2023

ForzaRammer wrote: »

And ofc the only golf sink in game become even less effective, hyper inflation just slowed down earlier this year and it’s definitely coming back

Crown store items is not a gold sink

Kiyakotari · October 2023

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

ForzaRammer wrote: »

And ofc the only golf sink in game become even less effective, hyper inflation just slowed down earlier this year and it’s definitely coming back

Crown store items is not a gold sink

Crown Store items are not directly a gold sink, because they're (in the referenced context) being purchased via gold trade with another player, which is recycled back into the economy. However, it's has not been uncommon for guild trader bids (which are a major gold sink in a big way) to be subsidized or just flat funded through gifting-Crowns-for-gold. In this manner, a major gold sink was indirectly removed from the game when gifting was disabled to deal with the issues of fraud. Which wasn't necessarily the wrong choice, it was just handled in ways that left a lot of the players upset with communication.

If you live on Earth, think of it this way: You don't pay for person XYZ's salary if they're a public employee and you pay taxes. But you bet those taxes pay a lot of that salary, and people just love pulling that tired old quote out and waving it at people who work in the public sector, regardless of their individual contribution to the budget overall.

wolfie1.0. · October 2023

Kiyakotari wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

ForzaRammer wrote: »

And ofc the only golf sink in game become even less effective, hyper inflation just slowed down earlier this year and it’s definitely coming back

Crown store items is not a gold sink

Crown Store items are not directly a gold sink, because they're (in the referenced context) being purchased via gold trade with another player, which is recycled back into the economy. However, it's has not been uncommon for guild trader bids (which are a major gold sink in a big way) to be subsidized or just flat funded through gifting-Crowns-for-gold. In this manner, a major gold sink was indirectly removed from the game when gifting was disabled to deal with the issues of fraud. Which wasn't necessarily the wrong choice, it was just handled in ways that left a lot of the players upset with communication.

If you live on Earth, think of it this way: You don't pay for person XYZ's salary if they're a public employee and you pay taxes. But you bet those taxes pay a lot of that salary, and people just love pulling that tired old quote out and waving it at people who work in the public sector, regardless of their individual contribution to the budget overall.

i see your point, but it just proves mine. Like governments or even businesses if one set of revenues dries up you adjust and change your revenue/taxes so that you can still maintain your position. if not you have to cut back or give up.

Guilds adjust the same way, if you funded your guild with crown sales, then you adjusted to something else during the freeze, or you didn't function. that doesn't change that the actual gold sink is the guild traders. All it changes is how that gold is transferred to the player/guild that will sink the gold from the system.

If its not a DIRECT gold sink then its not a gold sink, its a transfer of funds, and nothing more. especially since there is no guarantee that the funds will actually be sunk from the game.

i know of at least a few players (former) that at one time would sell crowns at increased rates, and then buy crowns at reduced rates, that isn't exactly the type of thing that one can do if any direct gold sink is in play.