Pelanora wrote: »

It's funny reading the comments, thinking how many markets IRL are regulated on price and behavior to ensure price gouging doesn't happen.... and have interventions to ensure fair pricing.... you'd think given the outrage at any suggestion there's price gouging in the markets in ESO that noone had ever heard of this.... the moralising that you just need to work harder is especially funny.

again, the buyer sets the price. if it is too high it simply will not sell.

i still do not understand why people complain about the prices of stuff in the game when the stuff in the game is free if you just go get it.

ps -- this isnt real life - it's an escape from real life. they're guild traders - not wall street.

Varana wrote: »

Pelanora wrote: »

It's funny reading the comments, thinking how many markets IRL are regulated on price and behavior to ensure price gouging doesn't happen.... and have interventions to ensure fair pricing.... you'd think given the outrage at any suggestion there's price gouging in the markets in ESO that noone had ever heard of this.... the moralising that you just need to work harder is especially funny.

These also tend to be markets for basic or necessary goods, like food, energy, or things like that.
If I'm selling gold-plated scented candles, the market is considerably less regulated.

And the shreds are nowhere near basic necessities. They're virtual luxury items.

Exactly. And not only are we talking about necessities IRL, not everyone has equal access and good are often limited. THIS IS A GAME. Everyone has equal chances for event rewards and other items, just a matter of how much time you put in and what you spend it doing. And there’s even multiple ways to get things. I’m not paying several 100k for fragments of a memento but neither have I much time to farm for it, and given the drop rate, I’m even less inclined to, so I’m buying some of the fragments with tickets.

Pelanora wrote: »

It's funny reading the comments, thinking how many markets IRL are regulated on price and behavior to ensure price gouging doesn't happen.... and have interventions to ensure fair pricing.... you'd think given the outrage at any suggestion there's price gouging in the markets in ESO that noone had ever heard of this.... the moralising that you just need to work harder is especially funny.

1. Price gauging occurs only in market with low competition, unless you can prove price fixing exists not only with in same trade guild and also cross guilds, price gauging is impossible, because someone (like me) undercut my neighbors more often than not.

2. This is basic micro-economics, in competitive markets (many producers with nearly identical product) individual sellers have next to little on price (0 influence in perfect competitive market)

3. Remember macro-economic is also a factor, when you have too many currencies chasing to little consumer goods, prices will increase. The lack of gold sink in this game results in total amount in circulation keep going up, and i have not seen unit bought/sold increase in years.

Neither the buyer or the seller sets the price, the market does.

If a seller over prices an item, it will not sell. And other buyers who set their prices appropriately make all the money.

If a buyer expects an item too cheaply, they will not find it. And buyers who are willing to pay will get the goods.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

The buyer does NOT set the price. The SELLER sets the price. If the buyer DID set the price, there would be no threads like this one, because everyone would just tell the sellers how much they want to buy stuff for. Then the BUYERS would be happy and it would be the SELLERS complaining about prices in the forums. Stop blaming buyers for outrageous prices that sellers are charging, because it is not the buyers who are putting prices on items when the sellers put them up for sale.

ESO sellers define an ask price, while buyers indeed cannot directly post a bid price in guild traders. But don't confuse this with setting the actual market price of an item. That involves both parties and the buyer helps define it by either accepting the ask price or not.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

And there tends to be diversity between the unit prices on some items, so how do you blame the buyers for supposedly setting the prices if an item is selling for reasonable prices from some sellers and several times more than that from other sellers? Shouldn't all of the unit prices be the same if the buyers who are setting the prices rather than the sellers?

This makes no sense. Even if buyers were posting bid prices, you would still have some who want to pay less and some who are willing to pay more, e.g., to make sure their "order" gets fulfilled more quickly. Why would prices ever be the same, when they are impacted by player preference, trader location, human mistakes, etc.? Besides, TTC data only include listings, not confirmed sales, which is again the difference between defining an ask or listing price vs. setting a market price.

Having said that, it would be interesting to understand whether allowing buyers to post their bid prices would generally drive prices down a bit or not. But claiming that sellers unilaterally dictate high prices across the board is just not accurate.

Katheriah wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

For most of us, on a daily basis, it's things like columbine that make it not possible for most players to do simple tasks, like an hour of pvp, due to the insane costs of simple items like immov pots.

How long does it take you to farm enough columbine for *re-reads* an hour of pvp?

I mean, I don't really farm mats nor do I keep track of how often I pluck them from the ground or do my surveys (I hoard them until I'm desperate lol) but I know in an hour of PvP I can easily go through 50 to 60 tripots...

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Neither the buyer or the seller sets the price, the market does.

If a seller over prices an item, it will not sell. And other buyers who set their prices appropriately make all the money.

If a buyer expects an item too cheaply, they will not find it. And buyers who are willing to pay will get the goods.

I always find it funny when I read such a statement, for game (fantasy) markets or RL markets .

What most people seem not to understand or perhaps just don't know or don't want to know is, all markets are man-made. What does that mean?! It means, that *men* or to use another word *people* do influence those markets. They do this most of the time not through indirect means, but through DIRECT ones!!!

Alot of people always state that if a seller isn't able to sell an item (eg. here in ESO some Motifs or crafting mats), he will reduce the price in certain steps, until someone will buy the item. This would be the ideal way, but sadly it is NOT the common way how people do react. Quite alot of them just keep offering (in RL) or in case of ESO relisting items for the same price over and over again. Why? Simply because they have set their minds on a price THEY WANT to have for said item and if they won't be able to get that price, they won't be selling it. Even if there are people who gladly would buy it, if the price would be below a certain threshold. I have seen this happening countless times in alot of MMOs and also do see it happening in RL.

As some already wrote here, most of the time the *sellers* are the ones setting the prices. In some cases it also cloud be the buyers who may do so, but only if they do have a certain amount of influence on the sellers. An example in RL for that would be a high number of buyers pressuring the sellers or buyers who do own contracts with certain terms or buyers who do own parts of the sellers companies.
In ESO the influence buyers have over the sellers is at best minimal. Sure, they can stop buying items if those are too expensive, but never ever will *ALL* buyers stop doing so. Some will always buy the stuff, no matter the price. Why you ask? Simply because, sellers can position themselves in the way that they say: *If other players do want to have the stuff/items they want/need, they WILL HAVE TO pay the prices WE DECIDE on (we dictate). If they can't pay, they won't get anything and have to cope with playing ESO without them.* --- Which is for most a pain in the ass, because alot of people do want everything at once and as fast as possible. --- With that sellers will always be able to find someone who doesn't care and is willing to pay, therefore being able to sell their overpriced stuff .

ShadowPaladin wrote: »

Alot of people always state that if a seller isn't able to sell an item (eg. here in ESO some Motifs or crafting mats), he will reduce the price in certain steps, until someone will buy the item. This would be the ideal way, but sadly it is NOT the common way how people do react. Quite alot of them just keep offering (in RL) or in case of ESO relisting items for the same price over and over again.

I think you might be overestimating how many "quite alot" is in this instance, at least in the game. I'm part of an active trading guild, and from what I see, the common way people react IS to lower their prices. You have to keep in mind that the amount of items we can list on a trader is limited, so for most players who trade a lot the question isn't "what is the maximum profit I can get per item" but rather "what is the maximum profit I can get per trade slot". As we play the game we're always gathering more things to sell (and so could you), so items need to sell at a reasonable pace or we're just wasting a trade slot.

The items you are referring to are the outliers that don't get sold. A lot of the time I see this it's being done by inexperienced traders, who haven't learned how the market in eso works yet. It's all just a matter of supply and demand. If demand > supply, prices go up. If demand < supply, prices go down. There's always bargains to be found, but you have to actively visit traders and look at the most recent listings to find them, because those items get sold before they reach the ttc website.

I agree that drop rates on netch shreds could be better. But zos is setting the supply of those, and the players determine the demand. No reason to go accusing trader guilds of piracy...

Araneae6537 wrote: »

But none of these items are limited but are available to everyone: The pet can be bought from the Impressario with event tickets. I collect all columbine I come across and regularly sell it (and no, I am not wealthy nor part of any consortium, just earning doing what I can to make gold to fund housing and fashion, and pay others for the Scribes of Mora motif, for instance, which I could also earn myself and actually was lucky enough to get the head and chest drops, but I was impatient to make my arcanist look awesome and so pay for others’ time, even as others pay for me to pick flowers for them).

Pretty much this. The first 5 or 6 responses in this thread (that is as far as I read) pretty much state the OP is not correct.

We either do the work or pay the price. The trading in this game is extremely decentralized. This makes it obviously impossible for trading guilds to manipulate the market as is being suggested. Heck, they compete with each other and players that are members of these guilds compete with each other.

merevie wrote: »

People shouldn't have to wait a year to get an event item due to piracy. There are multiple ways Zos can manage their event drops.

Why blame the seller? Because the seller leaves 10k of the item in their bank, and selectively sell just a few, at greatly inflated prices -it benefits them and their guild to do so. The 'diamond' barons of ESO, as it were.

'Go get your own - I do'. Um... if one is employed, one does not have 10hrs a day to do that. As pvpr, I'm sure the poster knows how many pots they need per hour?

@merevie

1. Where is your proof of piracy? Seriously as it is easy to suggest such a claim.

2. If I choose to bank most of what I collected of any item that is my choice I did the work to get the items. That is my business and my business alone. So blaming the seller for a legitimate choice makes no sense.

I'd love to see a screenshot of someone with 350k netch shreds in the bank (or even 15k of them)

There are always constant assertions being made here that some unnamed nefarious individual or guild is part of some vast conspiracy to "buy up" all of (insert random item here) and relist it at higher prices, yet little or no evidence is ever provided by the conspiracy theorists to support these sort of claims. (I'll wait for those folks to tell me I must obviously be part of the conspiracy.)

Most people list items for sale based on TTC suggested sale prices or average trading prices.

Prices for items rise because demand exceeds supply. Individuals who pay attention to what is happening in the game -- and what is going to happen -- can make predictions as to what items are likely to rise in price in the future. This can be caused by changes to metas (e.g. the switch from spellpower to ultimate potions, or people buying gold mats ahead of meta shifts in gear sets because they will have to re-craft or upgrade gear), developer changes (the 10:1 revaluation of chromium platings), changes in supply (rare motifs such as Refabricated pages that are now both easier to farm and also sold on the Crown Store), more (or fewer) players farming mats such as we see when there is a Double Mats drop event like the Year One Event...all sorts of things.

New things such as the newest furnishing patterns and newest Event collectibles will always be high-priced at first.

Some of the old fragments stay high-priced even today, from Elsweyr and Summerset and High Isle, just because very few players are willing to run the public dungeons a dozen dozen times to farm them.

If you want netch fragments, all you have to do is earn a single gold plunder skull once per day. This can be accomplished in 5 minutes. Then buy them with tickets. You might also receive fragments from the same skulls along the way.

If you choose to shortcut that process by spending gold, that's up to you.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

For the stuff I sell, I lower the price if it doesn’t sell the first time. Every time I list it I have to pay a listing fee. If you do that long enough it eats into your profits.

Guild slots are limited, and a slot that stays full is as good as an empty one.

Yeah. On top of that. I set my prices for the general market range. I didn't decide to list my Witch Writ for 5k, the market did, and the dude abides.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Shreds or not, I really wish most items were "bound after bought". That way various problems with in-game economy would be avoided for an "average Joe", as no one would re-sell certain things & pump up the prices.

Also, I have met with an opinion that "Craft bag" is an economy breaking feature.... and if you think about it, it technically is as it has a potential to allow one player to buy off every single crafting mat on the market and then dictate prices... at least in theory as it would require loads of gold... but again - if more players will organise & communicate - then it is certainly possible to manipulate prices like that (especially on PC with trading add-ons).

For the most part, I try to avoid scummy (or "unreasonable" ) prices. I just don't want to cause more & more gold inflation (which is slowly reaching "critical mass"). I mean, if I have 2 - 4 millions in my bank, but I an not taking part in trading, then technically I am not contributing to "gold inflation. And btw - gold inflation is primarily caused by the lack of cap on trading spots bids.

One player cannot reasonably buy every single crafting mat on the market. You underestimate the size of the market and the available supply. There are very few truly "rare" crafting materials. Even if it were an ultra-rare crafting material, it would be ultra-expensive due to that rarity. In addition, the sudden spike in prices caused by such a theoretical action would result in everyone who has said mats in their bank or crafting bag to sell them in order to take advantage of the rising prices, increasing supply and self-regulating the price. It is far easier to manipulate the market on ultra-rare furnishing patterns.

Gold inflation does not have a "primary" cause. It's a combination of a large number of factors past and present. Trader bids are actually one of the largest gold sinks in the game; without them, "gold inflation" would be much worse than it is now.

But when players have several different options to obtain an item such as shreds -- including two different options that involve spending zero gold (tickets and skull farming) -- for those same players to complain here about the price of shreds is mystifying. Like many other things in life or in a game, if you want to get something faster, you're going to pay more for it.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

The buyer does NOT set the price. The SELLER sets the price. If the buyer DID set the price, there would be no threads like this one, because everyone would just tell the sellers how much they want to buy stuff for. Then the BUYERS would be happy and it would be the SELLERS complaining about prices in the forums. Stop blaming buyers for outrageous prices that sellers are charging, because it is not the buyers who are putting prices on items when the sellers put them up for sale. And there tends to be diversity between the unit prices on some items, so how do you blame the buyers for supposedly setting the prices if an item is selling for reasonable prices from some sellers and several times more than that from other sellers? Shouldn't all of the unit prices be the same if the buyers who are setting the prices rather than the sellers?

Dreugh Wax - lowest unit price 3,781.82 on PC NA 2 hours ago
Dreugh Wax - highest unit price 533,215.19 on PC NA 2 hours ago

533,215.19 / 3,781.82 = 140.994333416

The highest unit price 2 hours ago was approximately 141 times as much as the lowest unit price at the same time and on the same server. Those unit prices were set by the sellers, not by the buyers.

THe term it takes two to tango comes to mind. If items were not selling at high prices those prices would come down. The price isn't set until the item is sold.

Varana wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Also, I have met with an opinion that "Craft bag" is an economy breaking feature.... and if you think about it, it technically is as it has a potential to allow one player to buy off every single crafting mat on the market and then dictate prices... at least in theory as it would require loads of gold... but again - if more players will organise & communicate - then it is certainly possible to manipulate prices like that (especially on PC with trading add-ons).

The Craft Bag does influence the market, but not in this way.

What the Craft Bag does is to keep ungodly amounts of farmed materials off the market, driving supply down. Many people who pick up materials or do a survey or writs don't bother to sell their materials but let them gather dust in their Craft Bag. Then you get people who suddenly discover they've got like 20k Columbine lying around. In this way, the Craft Bag is a gigantic supply sink - it makes farmed mats essentially vanish.

If you really wanted to corner a market, the addons are of limited use. They don't reflect the market in real time, and their listings are incomplete and always out of date. If you wanted to do that, especially with things like materials, then you have to physically visit every single trader in the game, possibly multiple times.

I doubt players hording materials drives down supply in any significant way. The spawn rate for materials is fairly quick and plenty of players farm with the intent of selling. Where the crafting bag could make a difference is if several players decided to drive down prices by unloading many many stacks of some material. The price drop would only last for a short time though.