MMORPG.com: Elder Scrolls Online: Examining the Economy in ESO

News from: MMORPG.com

The Elder Scrolls Online will not launch with a feature that some MMORPG players almost take for granted now - an auction house. Instead, ESO will feature a system where individuals are on their own, as well as an economy intricately tied into the game's guild system. This way of handling the player economy has multiple implications for ESO's features and seems intended to encourage players to actually talk to one another in some ways. Will it be a success?

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Solo players might not like this, bit I think we have no problems, being a big, friendly guild

I LOVE THIS FEATURE. Brings me back to Diablo2 going from trade room to trade room looking for someone with the exact item you need. Met some nice people in the process. The only problem I foresee is the endless spamming in the capital cities asking for items or people to trade with. Although now that I think about it, an AH never stopped that from happening.

I know in DAOC it helped that you could switch your title to your crafting title so people could search for crafters and ask you to make things.  Then some of the chat could be tells and not global spam.  Hope they have something like that in it.

I don't know for sure how the economy will work out, but I think ZOS has set up an interesting experiment.

FFXIV has a similar type of system where when you right click on another player to interact, it has an option to request certain crafting tasks. It only comes up if the player has the ability to do so.

Therefore if you were around the jeweller's guild for example, you usually have a large number of options if its jewellery items you require! I guess a similar thing could happen here with hanging out at the Blacksmith's bench e.g. :)

I love this idea.  I don't think solo players will have any trouble finding "street hawkers" willing to take their money.  

Interesting - this will certainly make players more self reliant since not being able to buy anything they want at any time means they'll often need to find it or make it themselves.

I can see our family crafting system becoming much more important in this case as we'll need the family to make things more often, plus the limit of 500 in each guild means our in-game guild store will be split up. Having the marketplace on the site like we do will help a lot.

I love this idea. As a person who loves the idea of crafting, I prefer to gather materials for others rather than leveling it up myself it will be ideal for my playstyle. As I havent attempted any of the crafting yet I hope I do not need to profession or a profession level to gather materials.

Ysolde, everyone can gather but there are skills you can put points into that will make it easier by making gatherable items more visible. You can also get hirelings in the crafting professions (by spending points) that will send materials to you. The materials they send may be dependent upon how many points you put into that craft - I'm not sure.

from the comments on this article

"Welcome to "Wholesalers of Tamriel", our guild consists of 100 crafters who make EVERYTHING.    The other 400 spots are reserved for "customers".   You get an invite for 1 hour, get to take your time browing the shop, then get kicked out by our friendly "storefront staff".    Come back soon!"

...I think players will be as inventive as they always are.

another thought would be if ESO incorporates player housing, you could tie a store for that crafter to that house.  With maybe a hireling to mind the store....  :)~

That's an interesting idea, Grymjack, if they decide to even add housing to the game in a future addition.  Have no idea on plans for that, though. 

I definitely plan on crafting.  Figured out quite a bit about it in testing and actually like how they did it even if researching traits gets progressively time consuming.  There will be no instant I can do it all crafters in this game.  Well, instant for the first 10 levels of gear without a lot of traits is possible.  ::chuckles::

We may not have the usual Gaiscioch marketplace on this website up immediately, but it's part of the plan.  Things are going to be a bit different with that and how our events work just due to the nature of the game.  However, I know we'll definitely be having multiple ways to help each other out.

Definitely harvesting the materials is worth it whether you give it to the family, get stuff made for yourself, craft yourself, or just sell it to a vendor.  Only way to get the crafting materials other than stones for crafting your racials and a couple minor items, is by harvesting nodes, killing animals for hides, and deconstructing stuff.

The crafting system is certainly complex. I find it very interesting that you can craft items of different levels AND choose the quality as a separate feature. So you can have a low level (e.g. 5) item but with a Legendary quality, or make a level 50 item that is only ordinary. The trait system is also nice because it really gives you the ability to customize your gear.

I'm used to systems where the recipes at a certain level of crafting were fixed, so you got the Level 18 gear for your level 18 character, and the classes were usually so rigid, that you had no choice of armor types, so that was pretty much it. This is going to be a lot of fun!

On the other hand, that complexity is going to make it much less likely that a crafter can safely make any particular item, and expect that there is demand for it. You might make the Level 34 Superior quality Orc-style Heavy shoulders with Impenetrable trait, and I wanted the Level 34 Superior quality Bosmer-style Heavy shoulders with Impenetrable trait, or the Level 34 Superior quality Orc-style Heavy shoulders with Infused trait. Selling crafted items (as opposed to mats) on an open AH probably would be very frustrating.

DAoC did it :-P (until housing where you could buy wares from a person's "stock" at their home)

Yeah I like it, even being a more casual player. I just hope this means that crafted gear will be viable.

I like this idea. Part of the fun of the game is interacting with other players :)

@joojoobees:

On the other hand, that complexity is going to make it much less likely that a crafter can safely make any particular item, and expect that there is demand for it. You might make the Level 34 Superior quality Orc-style Heavy shoulders with Impenetrable trait, and I wanted the Level 34 Superior quality Bosmer-style Heavy shoulders with Impenetrable trait, or the Level 34 Superior quality Orc-style Heavy shoulders with Infused trait. Selling crafted items (as opposed to mats) on an open AH probably would be very frustrating.

This level of complexity is a good thing for a well developed, long term game.  However, it would seem that supportive infrastructure would be needed.  Maybe an in game system where the buyer asks for something specific via a set of drop downs populated by the crafter's abilities.  They would then put down a deposit getting an in-game email once the item is finished.  It would also seem quite possible that an add-on could be made to handle all this.  I used TF's very cool tactical add-on over the weekend.  I would envision a crafter add-on something like this:

• Crafter parks themselves on a familiar corner.
• Add-on keeps them in-game with server pulses, etc
• Add-on handles PMs saying where to download to Crafting store add-on
• Purchasers with the crafting add-on will be able to interact with the crafter to buy existing stock sitting in crafter inventory, or make a special request.
• etc, add-in features from the inventive player minds

Problems with this are known.  Players using server resources while offline causing lag?  There will have to be some practical limits put on what the add-ons can do, otherwise the game will be populated by bots rather than players.

From my experience in several of the beta's, is they have put a pretty heavy need for crafting (which I like). Most MMO's (now-ah-days) treat crafting as a after thought (why spend 8 hours gathering, lvling, and making an item when you can do a end game dungeon spending 2 hours and get something better then you can actually craft?). But with ESO and 1-10 lvling I found myself wishing I had messed around with crafting more. This was pretty much b/c the items I was getting from drops and quests where trash. From prior experience when they where still wiping beta toon's every session I know I was making much better equipment. I love this cause crafter's have meaning again other then just being a vending machine for potions and enchantments/gems (modifier items).