As many have noticed, upgrade and base materials prices have exploded. In most cases doubled, in Legendary level prices have tripled. In some outlier cases, it's gone 5x. This is all within a timeframe of a few months.
This is all well and good if Gold income or flow was also increasing at similar rates. It has not. For the flippers and exploiters, this is all great and amazing!
For the regular player all the way up through upper level veteran players, even us long timers, this is not good and has set a dangerous precedent. Even with decent weekly sales and income from occasional hours of dedicated farming, it has become unrealistic to upgrade gear.
As a matter of perspective, the prices themselves aren't the problem. The issue is the relative value versus the players' ability to earn that coin to buy it. In this case, the value hasn't gone up, nor has the player's ability to earn that value in gold, but the price has gone up.
Through poor planning or poor game design, as well as controlling the artificial drop rates, ZoS is both allowing and is an accomplice to a rapidly growing inequality. It's getting to where even the advanced player has to sell Crowns just to upgrade gear. If this is the new game design or intention, then ZoS should just go ahead and directly sell us Gold for Crowns or real money so we can eliminate the middleperson.
For several examples, here's some examples that I had been noticing and watching skyrocket.
- Dreugh Wax: an absolute game flaw making the gold mat for light and medium the same item.
year ago: 6k, then 7k, then a few months ago 9k, then suddenly 10k, then when the patch dropped 12k, quickly up and up, 14k last week, this week 17k.
So from 6k to 17k.
- Tempering Alloy: a year ago 3.5k, then 5k, then when U29 dropped had gone to 8k, last week breached 10k.
So 3.5k to 10k+
- Rosin: watched it go from 2.5k to 5k-8k, so not so bad, but still noted.
- Alchemy ingredient prices: almost all have undergone a 50% to 100% price increase during that same time.
- One outlier case I noticed go insane, and I don't care nor am in the market of nor for, is Aetherial Dust. Obviously it would go up due to the raised cap. Yet it has gone way deep into questionable and greed territory. A year ago or more it was 230k-275k, it had been there for quite some time. I watched the zone sellers since Update 29 go immediately to 350k, then a few days later 400k, then last week 500k then 600k, and a few days ago 750k.
That is just totally nuts and a terrible design that allows for something to go from 230k to 750k within weeks.
This is setting a dangerous precedent ZoS, I'm telling you as a friend for years, this is dangerous and will backfire. If you want only the elites to get richer and everyone else to have to sell Crowns just to make gear or make potions to do content, the just come out and say so. Make a way for us to just buy the Gold.
Or, if you really want to fix it, just increase the drop rates. A Dreugh Wax is not worth 17k if it was 6k last year. Just up the drop rates of the mats and Surveys, we don't mind working for it.
We don't mind working for it, but it has to be realistic. 1.2 Million gold to fully upgrade 1 set of armor for 1 character is not realistic for most players.
