Economy destined for super-inflation

[Felren]

For many years I've played this game, and I've watched the economy fluctuate depending on many factors. There are many things that I've seen done in the last few years that are destined to make this economy inflate even worse than It is at right now.

Dynamis- This used to be a HUGE gilsink that was balancing the gil coming into the economy, and even sinking a bit too much gil. At 1 million gil a run per 10-64 people twice per week (Earlier groups would go in with 64, eventually you would see more 10-20 man groups), dynamis ate a lot of gil from adventurers' pockets, and delivered nearly zero items that you could NPC for something back. The little you could npc were crafting mats, as you couldn't even npc the mass amount of relic weapons that dropped like candy. Eventually SE decided it was a good idea to lower the entry to 500k, and lately they even changed the cost of entry to a one-time cost per person of 10k.

So with dynamis we went from 1 Million/10-64 people (25 estimated average) twice per week, to 10k/person once.

Limbus- This was a very popular endgame even though the cost of entry was a bit hard to handle at times for some. At first the price was 50k/person per entry. At 50k/person for 25 people this was a good 1.25 million/entry for a LS of lets say 25 people to go in. Eventually the price was reduced to 30k, and later it was reduced even more to 15k. There was little to npc from here as well.

So with Limbus we went from 50k/person twice per week, to 15k/person per week

Einherjar- Another twice per week endgame, this one was priced at 180k/lamp, usually 20-36 people per group. This one had a bit more NPC capability than dynamis/limbus, but you were still sinking gil back into the server with it in the end. This last update put lamps at 60k/lamp now

So Einherjar went from 180k/lamp to 60k/lamp, usually 20-36 people per entry twice per week.

The only other big example of a gil sink I can think of at this time is:

Femina/Vir subligar- These were really weird items priced at 8 million gil a piece from a couple NPCs in tavnazian safehold. Gilsink why? because they could be disenchanted into cashmere thread or shining cloths. People actually desynthed these for awhile since cashmere was so rare to obtain. This was around the inflation peak we had mid-CoP.

This last example of a gilsink we don't have anymore is a bit abnormal, but its something we really don't see anymore. We kind of need a way to get rare materials at this time from NPCs to dump the gil building up right now.

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Those were all gilsinks that have been reduced hard or removed at a time when we can make gil out of nowhere faster than ever.
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Heres a couple examples of where we are getting gil from that is driving this economy into inflation.

Cruor- Cool idea, there has been Conquest points, Imperial standing, Allied notes, and you could turn these into gil be it from auction housing items or NPCing them. Cruor takes this idea to a new and VERY dangerous level. At first people saw you could npc the teal/aurore/perle gear for a decent amount. Some 3000 cruor pieces would npc for 7.1k gil. However at this time most people hadn't realized the potential cruor you could make.

Chocobo Blinkers now are the most profitable way to turn cruor into straight NPC gil. At 200 cruor per blinker, they sell for 529 gil to a NPC giving us a 2.645:1 gil:cruor ratio. This could be dangerous or harmless to the economy depending on the rate of cruor one could gain.

Without being one of those people brag about how much X i can make per hour, I'm going to throw out a good simple number that isn't hard to reach. 100k cruor/hour is fairly easy to reach with a decent group in a decent camp with Atma of Royal Lineage (+20% cruor gained). This means you could have a group of 18 people in one hour making 100k cruor, in turn making 264.5k gil per hour, per person.

Fishing- Though this has been around for ages, and has been used by many RMT/botters NPCing their catch for years. Many people know about this, and I'm not going to go into an anti-bot crusade in this post about it.

However, SE really didn't help the inflation potential these bots or people can bring in per day when they released Hakuryu. These fish are top-end, and hard to catch, and catching one is hard with an Lu shang's fishing rod, and a bit easier with an Ebisu fishing rod (though bots can make this much much easier to catch mind you) and these fish NPC for 10,516 gil. Though there is a catch limit now, players (usually bots do this) can determine what is on the end due to the message recieved when they bite, and they can let go any other bite than from the Hakuryu, making sure than Hakuryu are the 200 fish they real in that day, netting them over 2 million gil per day, per bot.

Abyssea- Just throwing in these two in general as well. Abyssea gold chest items tend to npc for 1-7k a piece, and it doesn't take long for those NPC'd items to add up.

WoE- Though it costs 1k gil/entry now, it is quite easy to get 2-3x your investment per run in NPCables per run. This isn't a lot, but its making the entry fee useless.
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TLDR- Gilsinks have gone down, ways to NPC for gil have gone up, going down a bad route.

[Monchat]

You're worng if you think dynamis/limbus was the major gil sink in the game. If anything it was neglectible. The #1 sink is probably AH fees. This is enormous as every one is using the AH, from the noob to the hardcore. #2 anything bought through vendor NPC. Look, AH fee everyone is paying. Then there is chocobos, outpost teleports. I probably give at least 50k per week to NPCs, and AH fees, and AH fees/teleports/NPC is concerning every player, while dynamis in its time was only a portion of endgame players.

Also: NPC fishing was never worth it. I have been lv 100 fisher and have done it a lot. Nashmau fishing was 30k /h, talaca clove a bit more but there was traveling time to sell the non stackable fish. vunkerl fishing for trumpet shells> ring > NPC was a bit more, 50k, but it needed them being crafted which was time consuming. Compare to this bugard farming (50k/h) and demon faring in Zwahl (100k/h) that had been possible forever, those didn't bring any inflation.

You say abyssea NPCing is bringing a lot of money but there is no inflation. Also tried it and cruor farming is about the same as demon farming yet you are limited ( by cruor). And gold box farming is lol at best compared to cruor.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Ther current game ecconomy reflacts the real world one. Less then 1% of the people now control over 90% of the wealth.

[Greatguardian]

Ther current game ecconomy reflacts the real world one. Less then 1% of the people now control over 90% of the wealth.

You don't know what the frack. Any noob can walk into Abyssea and get millions of gil. Go away.

@NPC Fishing, this has become exceptionally more profitable recently with the release of Hakuryu. Ebisu owners can NPC them at 10.5k/fish, so breaking 100k/hr isn't very difficult.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

You don't know what the frack. Any noob can walk into Abyssea and get millions of gil. Go away.Very thoughtless responce. If you're talking about gear drops, any meaningful ones require groups. If you're talking about XP conversion, this takes hours longer then most standard farming. Look into who's buying and selling. It's a very select group.
@NPC Fishing, this has become exceptionally more profitable recently with the release of Hakuryu. Ebisu owners can NPC them at 10.5k/fish, so breaking 100k/hr isn't very difficult.Also poorly thought out. 1.) You need high level fishing which takes months of constant work to level and 2.) your 100k an hour is implausible withthe fishing cap.

Both of your responces realy only aply to the same 1% of the player base with the pre-existing means to do so. In a post abyssea world, you're either previously established or you have next to nothing.

[Tamoa]

You don't have to get gear for cruor and npc that for gil. There's chocobo blinkers, and you can even get vwnm cells for cruor and sell them, they seem to sell pretty well. Assuming you don't do vwnm yourself, that is.

[Greatguardian]

People seriously think EXP parties are the best source of cruor around?

Make a Cruor party. Yes. Cruor. Alternate mob families. Make a few hundred thousand Cruor/Hr and turn it all into gil. It's not hard.

Also, fishing 10 fish an hour is hard...? And so what if there's a 200 fish/day cap? That's still 2.1M/day on fishing alone, leaving you spare time to supplement your income in other ways too. Getting an Ebisu is not that hard and doesn't require 100 fishing. It's just tedious and expensive to invest in. But it's a good investment.

[Risae]

The OP's points seem to have been slightly misunderstood in some cases?

Making gil quickly doesn't matter. Making gil easily and reliably from NPCs matters.

If you say 'well people could farm Bugards', you have to remember that even though it may be a bit 'high', that camp does run out of Bugards. You can't have the whole world doing it.

The 'whole world' can Cruor > Gil.

Fishers? I won't say but if they did want to do it, the fact that the gil comes directly that way is at least contribution to the issue.

WoE especially set off a red flag in my head for this because at the current rates, assuming people don't start dropping even the decent NPC-ables, it's always profit, for at least half the players in a Conflux, hourly. When the market saturates to the point where Waterja drops and there are 20 on AH, guess where that scroll is going...

Maybe none of these are an overall 'big deal' but the point was that if this sort of gil keeps coming in AND we got rid of a lot of ways that gil went out, it's gonna happen.

[Sparthos]

It's a good thing ive put my wealth into Gold and Silver then.

[Kaisha]

If there was really a problem with the economy we'd be seeing hints at it via the updates, but we're not.

Pretty sure the devs have learned their lessons regarding that after all these years.

[Felren]

My point is that gold being "sunk into the server" has been reduced over and over again over the years, while in the past year or so the rate that gil is "coming out of the server" has increased, so that people will have more and more gil without events to spend it on.

It's like each time someone sells something to a NPC it's the government printing more money. Each time someone spends gil to an NPC in an event its like the government burns that money. The government in this case is now printing A LOT more gil than is being burned due to lack of events that cost gil/ useful consumables or synthesis materials bought from NPC.

^
This is my topic that gil out of the server >>>> gil into the server at this point, and eventually this is going to cause huge inflation.

[MDenham]

It's a good thing ive put my wealth into Gold and Silver then.I went one step better and started investing in bacon.

[Atomic_Skull]

Also: NPC fishing was never worth it

The real money from fishing is in food, especially PLD foods now that Voidwatch has made them relevant again.




Also, fishing 10 fish an hour is hard...? And so what if there's a 200 fish/day cap? That's still 2.1M/day on fishing alone, leaving you spare time to supplement your income in other ways too. Getting an Ebisu is not that hard and doesn't require 100 fishing. It's just tedious and expensive to invest in. But it's a good investment.

No but 100k an hour sucks compared to what I can make by fishing up materials for certain foods. I'm more limited by the demand than I am by just feeding something into an NPC, but less work for the same amount of gil = better.

[Shiyo]

Tacos or sushi? The paladins I run with always use sushi in voidwatch.

[Afania]

Tacos or sushi? The paladins I run with always use sushi in voidwatch.

Considering some VW has very high eva and not easy to cap acc, sushi is probably more beneficial for PLD actually. On the other hand Taco probably won't help that much....

[scaevola]

Abyssea and Dynamis will not cause hyper-inflation, because they are events with time limits and are thus extremely difficult to bot effectively.

[Kristal]

The only time limit in abyssea is the 120 min entry limit (which only applies to traverser stones and left-over time). Once inside, you can stay inside indefinitely by using time extensions that rain down like candy.

[scaevola]

When somebody comes up with a bot that can intelligently choose target lights and open chests without keys, we'll talk.

[Economizer]

Bots are not the sole cause of hyper-inflation.

That said, in Abyssea, all you would have to do is get a bot that understands time limits, and how to farm more time when it gets low, or alternatively, farm enough Abyssea time for it that it can stay in Abyssea for a few days everyday. I've never programmed a bot or engaged in any remotely RMT activity in Final Fantasy, but it doesn't sound stupidly hard to make a bot that is capable of fighting monsters understand how to farm cruor, buy keys, and pop chests indiscriminately for more time, even if you have to have someone cap out their lights first.

For Dynamis, all you would need to do is get enough characters on one account to 95 (easy) and have them each farm currency - shoot, even someone with around four hours a day to farm in Dynamis could easily have a second character on an account made just for farming in Dynamis to boost their currency drops, without any illegal botting.

The proc systems aren't that hard to understand, and considering what bots have been able to do in the past in Final Fantasy XI and other MMOs, and what AI bots can do in other games, I don't think it would be impossible (maybe hard, but definitely not impossible). Not only that, but FFXI runs on such low requirements that with the right software you can run multiple instances on the same machine, even without breaking the ToS by running software that interfaces with FFXI at all, or a virtual machine.

Since leveling to 95 and getting Perle, Teal, or Aurore gear isn't that hard, it wouldn't even be that hard or expensive to level and equip throw away characters, as long as they aren't required to know every spell or tank anything using Utsusemi.

The way the game is currently, it is ripe for the RMT to move back in and start plaguing the game again as we get more and more high level gear that isn't tagged R/E. So unless SE has a plan, or has been secretly fending off RMT (I haven't heard anything from the Special Taskforce lately, and I doubt SE would be quite about keeping the RMT out of sight as effectively as they have the last year or two) things could get very bad, very quickly.

I'd really like to hear more regular news about the state of the economy (inflation, deflation, expectations, actions and also, the fight against RMT) of FFXI. It would be interesting information, much like the census information (although hopefully more often).

[scaevola]

That said, in Abyssea, all you would have to do is get a bot that understands time limits, and how to farm more time when it gets low, or alternatively, farm enough Abyssea time for it that it can stay in Abyssea for a few days everyday. I've never programmed a bot or engaged in any remotely RMT activity in Final Fantasy, but it doesn't sound stupidly hard to make a bot that is capable of fighting monsters understand how to farm cruor, buy keys, and pop chests indiscriminately for more time, even if you have to have someone cap out their lights first.

Accepting for the sake of argument that such a thing would 1) be possible to code at all, and assuming it would be, that 2) someone with the expertise necessary to script such a dynamic bot would waste their time and expertise writing one for FFXI (I certainly hope they're charging for it in this scenario), the issue is that if you were farming for cruor to make money, using keys to pop chests would defeat the whole purpose. The number-guessing games would be the main issue.

I guess you could spend a few hours building time on your own to let your bot run overnight, but if you were going to bot anyway, I'd have to ask why bother doing that when you could just fishbot overnight to make as much if not more money.

This is the biggest thing that makes me skeptical about inflationary fears, actually; fishbots are common enough to have already upset the economy if such a thing were likely to happen. The biggest reason why it hasn't is that money just isn't valuable enough anymore for the vast majority of players to reward the kind of effort it would take on the part of enough players to bring a repeat of Christmas 2005.

[Economizer]

Sorry for the walls of text, and thanks for the civil discussion.

I don't actually know how common fishing bots are currently, but you can make around 100k cruor an hour using a cruor alliance. Only on party member needs to open chests, but compensating for cruor chests and such, we could probably safely assume there the cruor build on that character is still net positive. Even assuming they don't make any cruor, but get enough cruor to come out about neutral, you still have 17 others soaking up cruor. Combine this with NPCing Chocobo Blinkers, and you will be making over 250k gil an hour, per character. Compare that with the harder investment of getting fishing materials and leveling fishing on a bot, which I heard somewhere in this thread could make 100k and hour NPCing things. Furthermore, unlike fishbots, you don't have fatigue - you could leave them running for hours. Even if you didn't or couldn't leave them running for an ideal 24 hours (assuming 17/18 of the characters are making 100k cruor an hour, this would translate to over 100 million gil in a day, if all conditions are fairly ideal), you could run them for around 8 and still net a cool 34 million gil. This should be more efficient then fishbots that NPC their finds, with plenty of room for error should my assumptions about keys or cruor are slightly off.

Now, you can generally make more money fishing by fishing cooking materials and cooking them from what I've heard, but with stuff like that on the table, it isn't far off to do stuff like bot farm seals and do fights for HNM popsets or Utsusemi: Ni. Ultimately, I won't be able to put a number on what method would be the absolute best, but there should definitely be more valuable methods then fishing.


The biggest reason why it hasn't is that money just isn't valuable enough anymore

Ultimately, I can't really argue with this at this point, but as we get more and more high level gear that can be bought or sold, or things like the 1000 metal plates stage of the Empyrean weapons, it is a very big risk that gil will become more valuable again, and inflation could sting.

That's why I'd really like to see a general report of what SE is doing with the economy on a regular basis to prevent them from coming back en masse, and to fight cheats no matter what, even if it just a problem of "fishbots are common" or whatever. Plus they'd have the added bonus of being interesting - back when the Special Taskforce would post somewhat commonly, the posts they did were pretty entertaining.

[Zagen]

What does having say 10 million gil really do to a player?

The best gear at the moment is R/Ex for almost every job which means the only way to "buy" it is from a merc group. And there are only a few of those around now oddly enough.

The only thing you really dump gil into are consumables (food/ammo/jugs/items/etc.) the problem there is the majority of players don't use them or opt for the cheapest option if at all, at least from what I've seen. Thus preventing the prices on consumables to skyrocket (they have gone up but not by much, and many have gone down (hi rcb)) as the demand isn't high enough and the supply isn't low enough to support hyper inflation.

Even when a player is sitting on that said 10 million gil and knows that in a few hours they could farm another few million they aren't all spending it on new shiny toys after the update.

Also why would SE need to step in? Gil is so easy to get most of the gil selling sites have given up on FFXI because it isn't profitable anymore.

Also just wanted to say if your Cruor group isn't breaking 200k/hr it really sucks. Even when factoring in time for lights/Cruor to rise.

Edit: as to the Emp items being an issue since they can be sold/traded. It will be like currency for relics. Few people will actually be focusing on 95 upgrades because most stopped at 85 and are happy at 85.

After the few dedicated people get the 95 upgrades and test the effects on them this might change but even then it won't change by a large amount as many will think it still isn't worth it. Even if say 95 version had 100% deals double damage because sometimes is "enough".

[Buffy]

They are going to add Gil sinks. Or they don't care.

[scaevola]

It's interesting; the majority of the farming firms have given up on FFXI, but the vendor sites still supply it. The most likely explanation is that actual player accounts are supplying pretty much all the gil now.

Not really so unthinkable, as the money's in Abyssea but in a larger sense there are actually pretty huge barriers to get over before you can really start making it, like getting the Atma/Abyssite necessary to maximize time-per-stone and solo efficiently. Why bother making RMT dummy accounts for FFXI when you can jump in and farm WoW gold for a much larger market without dealing with such hurdles? On the other hand, if you're a player with atma, abyssite, and a 300+ stone backlog, you've basically been granted a license to print money so if you can get past the moral hurdles I could see worse ways to spend your time than making some RL cash off your hobby.

Not condoning it, but hey.

[Economizer]

What does having say 10 million gil really do to a player?

The best gear at the moment is R/Ex for almost every job which means the only way to "buy" it is from a merc group. And there are only a few of those around now oddly enough.

Relics, Mythics, and Empyreans aren't cheap, nor is super new gear or even the Kraken Club. But considering merc groups, you could probably payroll a group with enough gil that they would do your bidding 24/7. They refuse? Pay more or find another merc group. The prices for merc groups will go up if several people do this too.

The mercs will eventually use it to buy something, and will be able to bid whatever they want too. Prices in general will go up as some players are elite enough to have the massive amounts of gil from the sources, and people need to sell high in order to buy things at higher prices, and so on.


Also just wanted to say if your Cruor group isn't breaking 200k/hr it really sucks. Even when factoring in time for lights/Cruor to rise.

To be honest, I haven't farmed for Cruor in a while, so I wasn't completely sure, so I went with 100k because I knew that much was definitely possible. It just strengthens the argument that you could make tons of gil by botting cruor farm if you wanted to be evil and break the ToS.


It's interesting; the majority of the farming firms have given up on FFXI

That's probably what is keeping FFXI safe for now. SE made it too hard long enough that they won the war. The question is, when less of the top gear is R/E and more of it is sellable in a more direct fashion, will they come back or not?

Perhaps you are right, perhaps they won't come back.

[scaevola]

That's probably what is keeping FFXI safe for now. SE made it too hard long enough that they won the war. The question is, when less of the top gear is R/E and more of it is sellable in a more direct fashion, will they come back or not?

Perhaps you are right, perhaps they won't come back.

Well, they DID make it hard, but not necessarily in the sense that you mean. The STF crack-downs accomplished absolutely nothing because SE did nothing to quash demand; ultimately what we got was the RMT/MMO version of the War on Drugs, and now I'm reminded of the banning of my poor, innocent gardening mule every time I watch the Wire. :(

What ultimately worked was destroying demand by making money really easy to get and much less useful to spend. This has actually done wonders to keep goldfarming under control in WoW; there's a substantial RMT industry built around that game, to be sure, but only because the playerbase itself is so ridiculously huge that there will always be enough demand to support it.

[Zagen]

Relics, Mythics, and Empyreans aren't cheap, nor is super new gear or even the Kraken Club. But considering merc groups, you could probably payroll a group with enough gil that they would do your bidding 24/7. They refuse? Pay more or find another merc group. The prices for merc groups will go up if several people do this too.

The mercs will eventually use it to buy something, and will be able to bid whatever they want too. Prices in general will go up as some players are elite enough to have the massive amounts of gil from the sources, and people need to sell high in order to buy things at higher prices, and so on.

Emps are a joke to get to 85 for any trio that is semi competent. It's only the 90 stage on some that is "hard". Which leads to the point that most Emp owners are happy with the level 85 version and until enough incentive from future upgrades are discovered they won't bother upgrading.

If you do get an Emp merced then you're spending about 20,000,000 gil to get to 85. Going past 85 gets you a slight damage/stat increase and to many that's not worth it. 95 at the moment is the same, once they are tested this might change but right now it isn't worth the gil.

Relics cost around 100 million gil to make on my server, some higher, some lower but you get the idea. In Cruor terms 40,000,000 Cruor or 200 hours of Cruor PTs. In the 13 months Chocoblinkers have been available you'd think a lot more people would have begun making a relic. But they haven't which is why Dynamis currency rates haven't changed much. Gil is plentiful but the depend for relics didn't rise with the rise of gil being circulated. After all you still have to kill NMs for parts of it and not many merc groups do that if at all, and few people are willing to lead a shout group.

Mythics cost about 150,000,000 yet they aren't being made in large quantities after all it would only another 100 hours over a relic. The large amount of other requirements prevent these from being made in large quantities, not counting the fact most suck compared to relics and/or emps.

As to the super new gear most of the AHable stuff isn't an upgrade to what R/Ex we already have available, they are mostly alternatives. The rest of the good new gear is R/Ex which means you have to find a merc group who is selling that gear and not keeping it for their group first.

Kraken Club has been downgraded to an overpriced skill up club.

Even if a merc group does bid whatever they want the prices won't stay high because there are few merc groups. Its the same reason consumables haven't risen to high amounts and stayed there.

I'm curious to see if the rise of successful merc groups will ever happen again. I only know of one on my server for example.
I'm curious if SE will release amazing AHable gear in large amounts(options not availability) that lead to comical inflation levels of that one Christmas so long ago (forgot the year).

[Vold]

Bring it on. Just give me that chance to be a billionaire. I missed out in 2005-06. I won't make the same mistake twice.

[detlef]

It's not so much that cruor can be turned into significant quantities of gil. I think it's more that everything is NPCed now. Do VW? NPC all your shit drops. Do Abyssea? NPC all your shit drops. Do WOE? NPC all your shit drops.

I do think that fish botting is a problem but at least it's limited to a handful of people. But everybody NPCs things.

[scaevola]

I'm curious to see if the rise of successful merc groups will ever happen again. I only know of one on my server for example.
I'm curious if SE will release amazing AHable gear in large amounts(options not availability) that lead to comical inflation levels of that one Christmas so long ago (forgot the year).

The market for this is wide open, but I think the limiting factors have been a lack of market data about what drops are actually worth* and a lack of advertising on the part of what few merc shells there are about their services. I know of one merc shell on Cerberus whose prices are exhaustively documented on their Guildwork site, but have never once been mentioned in the game (found them through FFXIAH bazaars for individual items).

I think the biggest issue is ultimately one of convenience; if someone is willing to commit to a schedule, they ought to be able to get together four or five shellmates to get their stuff done themselves, so if they're going to a merc shell it's because they want to get it done right now and I don't think committing to that level of flexibility and demand is something most potential mercs are willing to do.


*Speaking from experience, there is nothing more frustrating from a buyer's perspective than a merc offering to sell some sort of drop or service and not actually stating a price for it; I mean, if you think my offer of 200k for an Atheling Mantle is too low, then FFS make a counter offer.

[Zagen]

The market for this is wide open, but I think the limiting factors have been a lack of market data about what drops are actually worth* and a lack of advertising on the part of what few merc shells there are about their services. I know of one merc shell on Cerberus whose prices are exhaustively documented on their Guildwork site, but have never once been mentioned in the game (found them through FFXIAH bazaars for individual items).

I contacted several other people/groups I found through bazaar listings on FFXIAH for gear/+2s I want/ed only to be completely ignored. Only PlusTwo the one I mentioned earlier has ever gotten back to me about items I wanted. Also the other thing to be noted they only sell items from NMs they happen to be farming for their Emp upgrades at least from what I can tell.

I honestly don't know why others haven't stepped up to compete outside of the fact gil is worth so little in today's economy.

[Pyrobunny]

whats sad is ive yet to find a peice of gear thats really is worth over 2mil

[Rambus]

It's a good thing ive put my wealth into Gold and Silver then.

I found that funny. To the OP though I think you are misunderstanding. Back in the day dyna and limbus was not a gil sink. People could done split and sell while dividing the cost, people wanted relic gear, and people could sell ABCs for a profit. ABC profit was huge when limbus was new. SE HAD TO TONE THE COST DOWN because of how they got rid of so much damn gil that 1 mil for a glass and 50k for soap was retarded.

at times dyna coins where 10k-100k for singles and ABC at start of limbus was 100k-500k each

after all that auto ban crap even if the person might look rmt and wasn't it dropped to 4-8k for dyna coins and 3k-8k for abcs. dyna coins went up a bit since the lowest point i seen it at.

[Felren]

I found that funny. To the OP though I think you are misunderstanding. Back in the day dyna and limbus was not a gil sink. People could done split and sell while dividing the cost, people wanted relic gear, and people could sell ABCs for a profit. ABC profit was huge when limbus was new. SE HAD TO TONE THE COST DOWN because of how they got rid of so much damn gil that 1 mil for a glass and 50k for soap was retarded.

Gold sink is an economic process by which a video game's ingame currency ('gold'), or any item that can be valued against it, is removed. Most commonly the genres are role-playing game or massively multiplayer online game. The term is comparable to timesink, but usually used in reference to game design and balance, commonly to reduce inflation when commodities and wealth are continually fed to players through sources such as quests, looting monsters, or minigames.

I think you don't understand what a gil sink means.

[Rambus]

uh ok? what is your point of this thread? point is they reduced the cost because the gil gained was not keeping up after they went rmt bot pwnser crazy.

[Felren]

uh ok? what is your point of this thread? point is they reduced the cost because the gil gained was not keeping up after they went rmt bot pwnser crazy.

You must not read, I'm done with you.

Good day sir.

[Rambus]

Tip:
that is not how you talk to people when you want something changed or try explain yourself.

For many years I've played this game, and I've watched the economy fluctuate depending on many factors. There are many things that I've seen done in the last few years that are destined to make this economy inflate even worse than It is at right now.

Dynamis- This used to be a HUGE gilsink that was balancing the gil coming into the economy, and even sinking a bit too much gil. At 1 million gil a run per 10-64 people twice per week (Earlier groups would go in with 64, eventually you would see more 10-20 man groups), dynamis ate a lot of gil from adventurers' pockets, and delivered nearly zero items that you could NPC for something back. The little you could npc were crafting mats, as you couldn't even npc the mass amount of relic weapons that dropped like candy. Eventually SE decided it was a good idea to lower the entry to 500k, and lately they even changed the cost of entry to a one-time cost per person of 10k.


That is WRONG! it was not a huge gil sink back then. You had people making millions a day. they LOWERED the cost because people stopped making that kind of gil because rmt was not ciruclating it like it was before RMT pwner days. the ecnomony got slow tot he point of selling dyna coins to 4-8k each THEN IT WAS a huge gil sink, because people was not earning a good amount of gil to keep up spending that 1 mil every 3 days. Note i am talking about the FFXI encomony as a colective, not an an indvugal level. but back in the day 1 mil being tossed out the window was meangless. There is nothing wrong with a little inflation since it shows ecnomic growth, that is bad is deflation and hyper inflation both of what happened to FFXI. the cost was lowered after the huge deflation. you think you can quote something out of a wiki or something to look smart? I dought you have an understanding of the whole situation.

[Greatguardian]

To be perfectly honest, the market itself seems fairly stable despite the massive influx of gil into the system. Where is it all going anyways?

Prices have continued to fall on just about everything, despite the fact that the primary sources of gil for a vast majority of players are NPCs (Blinkers, Hakuryu) rather than player-to-player currency transfers.

Could this be caused by a higher concentration of wealth as compared to the inflation holidays of olde? You'd think that any scrub could walk into Abyssea and walk out with millions of gil, but this hardly seems to be the case in practice. People are lazy, and while gil is pouring into the system it seems to be pouring into the hands of the few who bother to go out and get it. As long as the number of people capable of making extravagant purchases is small, the market as a whole won't be capable of excessive inflation.

With that said, it is an inevitability that the have-nots will eventually become haves because there is no real, formidable gil sink in the game right now. Nothing costs money, but everything you do aside from standing in Jeuno like a lemming earns you money. When that happens, the prices of all goods will skyrocket unless some of this gil is removed from the system. But what in the world could the Devs add that would function as a decent gilsink?

An NPC that sold Voidstones for gil would be decent. Maybe they could allow various Shami orbs to be purchased with gil as well. That would also serve to make the 3-King nerf significantly more bearable, and make Black Belt a feasible option for new Monks again. Anything else?

[Greatguardian]

Tip:
that is not how you talk to people when you want something changed or try explain yourself.


That is WRONG! it was not a huge gil sink back then. You had people making millions a day. they LOWERED the cost because people stopped making that kind of gil because rmt was not ciruclating it like it was before RMT pwner days. the ecnomony got slow tot he point of selling dyna coins to 4-8k each THEN IT WAS a huge gil sink but back in the day it wasn't. There is nothing wrong with a little inflation since it shows ecnomic growth, that is bad is deflation and hyper inflation both of what happened to FFXI. the cost was lowered after the huge deflation. you think you can quote something out of a wiki or something to look smart? I dought you have an understanding of the whole situation.

You don't understand what gilsinks are.

Gilsink: A way for the game to remove Gil from the players.

When you sell an item to an NPC, or get a quest reward in gil, that gil is being made out of thin air and given to you. Unless there are equivalent processes which take your gil from you and make it disappear, then the amount of gil in circulation will increase rapidly over time.

Dynamis and Limbus used to remove gil from circulation when players paid the NPCs. Currency drops have never affected the amount of gil in circulation, because all of that gil is being traded between players. Am I making that clear? It doesn't matter if you made millions of gil from Dynamis because you were making that gil off of other players and not magicking it out of thin air.

The problem right now is that the primary methods for making gil in FFXI comes from NPCs. You are printing money out of thin air rather than trading existing money amongst the playerbase. The amount of gil in circulation will then continue to rise, causing a loss in the value of each individual gil.

Unless there is a way for gil to be taken out of circulation, by an NPC so that it disappears, this trend can only continue until the game economy collapses.

[Rambus]

The problem with seeing that happening or having that inflation happen I would think is does the gil itself hold vaule? Who really spends gil anymore execpt for food, relics and mythics? Why would I buy anything when emp +2 gear for the most part lets you perform higher then you need to be?

what do you mean gil was not being made from npcs back then? rmt did not make it out of thin air ether. Point is 1 mil back then ment nothing compared to what you could earn. the days of hyper inflation and before the rmt pwer days would be like the days now. the only difference now is that too much good gear comes from easy drops making gil harly used.

[Greatguardian]

The problem with seeing that happening or having that inflation happen I would think is does the gil itself hold vaule? Who really spends gil anymore execpt for food, relics and mythics? Why would I buy anything when emp +2 gear for the most part lets you perform higher then you need to be?

Look, I'm honestly not sure if English is even your first language. After posting on these boards with you for so long, I really just can't tell. If it's not, that's fine. But seriously, you're either just not reading anything at all for comprehension, or you're just trying to troll the hell out of the topic. If English is not your first language, please at least say so. If it is, well, take 2 minutes and bloody read before you spout off at the mouth about how "LOLWRONG" the OP is without understanding what the bloody hell a gilsink is.

The topic is about the diminishing value of the gil, and yes that would be a problem. The AH economy hasn't collapsed because of it yet, but the bazaar economy is already inflated as crap. People are lucky to get Alexandrites at 10k/piece. This is because the Bazaar economy is tailored to the people who have gil, while the AH economy is tailored to the people who don't. When those two begin to merge, there will be serious economic problems for anyone with non-liquid assets.

Edit: .... really? The problem is a newfound lack of gilsinks, not a newfound abundance of gil sources. There have always been gil sources. The problem is that there are no longer and consistent gilsinks to balance them out. Christ.

[Rambus]

Look, I'm honestly not sure if English is even your first language. After posting on these boards with you for so long, I really just can't tell. If it's not, that's fine. But seriously, you're either just not reading anything at all for comprehension, or you're just trying to troll the hell out of the topic. If English is not your first language, please at least say so. If it is, well, take 2 minutes and bloody read before you spout off at the mouth about how "LOLWRONG" the OP is without understanding what the bloody hell a gilsink is.

The topic is about the diminishing value of the gil, and yes that would be a problem. The AH economy hasn't collapsed because of it yet, but the bazaar economy is already inflated as crap. People are lucky to get Alexandrites at 10k/piece. This is because the Bazaar economy is tailored to the people who have gil, while the AH economy is tailored to the people who don't. When those two begin to merge, there will be serious economic problems for anyone with non-liquid assets.

Edit: .... really? The problem is a newfound lack of gilsinks, not a newfound abundance of gil sources. There have always been gil sources. The problem is that there are no longer and consistent gilsinks to balance them out. Christ.

yay i hit replay and post just vanished -.-

back in the day when you had rusty buckets and other things to make gil, there was still a huge gap with people that had lots of money and didn't, you could be the people that had cap gil or never seeing 1 million. So putting 1 mil in a glass was meaningless then. I still think there was more ways to make money back then before all the changes and before the rmt pnwer crap. I know what gil sink is but i do not think you are trying to see what i am trying to say. dropping 1 mil back then had about the same meaning as now. to be a true gil sink it has to keep up with the gil made and i dont think it was ever ballanced like that. The hyper inflation would never happened if it was a good gil sink system. No i am not trying to troll, and i hate when people acuse me of that.

Alex prices are high because there is no reason to do salavge. You have to take into account supply and damand. I think you could see salavge as a gil sink if you consider ' do i sell my IS or spend it on savage gear on top of the 10 mil cost that some used to cost.

[Olor]

People are lucky to get Alexandrites at 10k/piece.

You really think this is cause of inflation? People used to do Salvage often... now who does?

[Greatguardian]

You really think this is cause of inflation? People used to do Salvage often... now who does?

The supply has always been significantly smaller than the demand. As the supply decreased, so did the demand. There are still quite a few people who do Salvage for fun/gil, and they are able to make significantly more Alexandrite per run than they were able to at 75.

People sell at 10k because people will buy at 10k. People will buy at 10k because they can afford to buy at 10k. They can afford to buy at 10k because gil is inflated.

[Rambus]

I think the damand for mythics got higher since some changes happened but that is just me.

at 75 the only non mythics that where not complete crap was whm, smn, maybe drg, now the drg myhtic out does relic, the pld sword bypasses the phy cap ( i think if i herd right) and other changes.

so my view is when you compare the people that do savage to the people that want mythics, people wanted less mythics then they do now ( i might of word badly but i hope you understand)

[Neisan_Quetz]

None of the mythics are worth making for the time invested bar Drg since it beats out every other weapon for them? (even then it's still too much effort imo) Anything you'd bring Pld to Atonement's damage is nerfed to hell, You're better off with Excal or Almace. Smn's is only ~17% or so improvement over TotM MAB staff for nuking, Smn's are not wanted for their melee potential so the aftermath is superfluous.

Whm mythic lost a lot of luster after esuna/sacrifice/emp+2 head/Divine Benison.

Conquerer might actually be worth making outside.

[Greatguardian]

Drg Mythic is just broken and if I ever won a Cat's Eye or some other free-mythic deal in a Bonanza (that I never play anyways, so it'd have to be magic), I'd level and gear Dragoon just to use it.

The rest are extremely lackluster. Kenkonken is decent, as are Conquerer and sorta-Burtgang (PDT macro, yo). They just don't seem remotely worth it when looking at the effort involved.

[Rambus]

yeah I know they look better on paper then practice but how many people you know that actually uses logic when going for something? Some do it because it is my job, or because they can. Just saying there is a bit more reason then there once was. I have said the same thing myself to PLD mythic users or ones that say it is good.

I wonder if SE will change mythics to be better, i know i used to talk about it when these threads where new.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Well going down the list:

Whm: I really can't think of anything offhand.
Blm: change MAB to damage% or affinity.
Rdm: there's no hope other than revamping Death Blossom. And giving it damage%/magic affinity (Assuming it's not going to be used for just meleeing or macro'd in for convert)
Blu: Revamp Expacion.
Pld: Revamp Atonement and make it stop dealing nerfed damage.
Thf: Revamp Mandalic Stab.
Mnk: Buff Ascetic's to basically be VS.
Pup: Revamp Pup.
Drk: Revamp Insurgency.
Drg: Do nothing.
Sam: Revamp Tachi: Rana.
Brd: Vastly improve the song duration, and revamp Mordant Rime for when they do want to melee.
Dnc: Consult Byrthnoth.
Rng: Revamp Trueflight.
Cor: Buff Leaden Salute.
Sch: See blm, let them add an additional weather effect or something.
Summoner: Change it from Avatar: MAB to Avatar: Blood Pact Damage.
Ninja: Revamp Kamu, put relevant stats on it other than Magic accuracy...
Bst: Buff Primal Rend.

[scaevola]

Making Mythics better wouldn't address this potential problem, but I'd reiterate that there just really isn't enough to spend money on in FFXI anymore to fuel the economic tailspin we're talking about here. People didn't bot rusty caps to buy relics; they botted them to buy haubergeons and emperor hairpins and all the other AHable crap we were totally reliant on in 2005.

[Economizer]

An NPC that sold Voidstones for gil would be decent. Maybe they could allow various Shami orbs to be purchased with gil as well. That would also serve to make the 3-King nerf significantly more bearable, and make Black Belt a feasible option for new Monks again. Anything else?

They would have to be super expensive to make up for this, but it would just make gil more useful again, which could potentially contribute to the problem. Your solution has a very good chance of helping though, I just think it would have to be approached carefully.


Well going down the list:

Whm: I really can't think of anything offhand.
Blm: change MAB to damage% or affinity.
Rdm: there's no hope other than revamping Death Blossom. And giving it damage%/magic affinity (Assuming it's not going to be used for just meleeing or macro'd in for convert)
Blu: Revamp Expacion.
Pld: Revamp Atonement and make it stop dealing nerfed damage.
Thf: Revamp Mandalic Stab.
Mnk: Buff Ascetic's to basically be VS.
Pup: Revamp Pup.
Drk: Revamp Infernal Scythe.
Drg: Do nothing.
Sam: Revamp Tachi: Rana.
Brd: Vastly improve the song duration, and revamp Mordant Rime for when they do want to melee.
Dnc: Consult Byrthnoth.
Rng: Revamp Trueflight.
Cor: Buff Leaden Salute.
Sch: See blm, let them add an additional weather effect or something.
Summoner: Change it from Avatar: MAB to Avatar: Blood Pact Damage.
Ninja: Revamp Kamu, put relevant stats on it other than Magic accuracy...
Bst: Buff Primal Rend.

I'm not sure how this turned from a economy thread to a buff mythic weaponskill thread, but it would be nice to see a buff for mythic weaponskills.

At higher levels, most of these should do more damage in general, and scale their additional effects.

White Mage's weapon skill should get a damage boost considering higher MP requirements, especially when dropping cure potency to melee. For Death Blossom, the Magic Evasion down or whatever affect it does should be larger. Summoner's WS makes sense based on what it does, but the effect should be boosted. The Black Mage weapon skill lowers magic defense - scaling this up with levels would definitely make the weapon skill insanely better. The additional effect of the Scholar WS makes no sense however, unless you are fighting a caster. Basically, all the weapon skills were built for level 75, and unless they are still overpowered, they should scale up in damage and effect.

[Rambus]

Well going down the list:

Whm: I really can't think of anything offhand.
Blm: change MAB to damage% or affinity.
Rdm: there's no hope other than revamping Death Blossom. And giving it damage%/magic affinity (Assuming it's not going to be used for just meleeing or macro'd in for convert)
Blu: Revamp Expacion.
Pld: Revamp Atonement and make it stop dealing nerfed damage.
Thf: Revamp Mandalic Stab.
Mnk: Buff Ascetic's to basically be VS.
Pup: Revamp Pup.
Drk: Revamp Infernal Scythe.
Drg: Do nothing.
Sam: Revamp Tachi: Rana.
Brd: Vastly improve the song duration, and revamp Mordant Rime for when they do want to melee.
Dnc: Consult Byrthnoth.
Rng: Revamp Trueflight.
Cor: Buff Leaden Salute.
Sch: See blm, let them add an additional weather effect or something.
Summoner: Change it from Avatar: MAB to Avatar: Blood Pact Damage.
Ninja: Revamp Kamu, put relevant stats on it other than Magic accuracy...
Bst: Buff Primal Rend.

I think she was saying it was better then emp because of wasting steps trying to make the emp ws crt. from what i gather the dnc weapon is ok, it is not terrible like sch staff is (blm is staff can be used unlike some mythics, but it would be every 10 minutes where you can call it best) but the dnc weapon is not really stellar ether.

revamp pup is rather funny and dont you mean change insurgency? that ws is the 300 scythe ws.

@ scevola, that was one of my points, or was trying to say that, lets say they come out with a body with 50% haste on it that can be crafted, what would the point in getting it when most jobs cap out gear haste from emp+2? and keeping in mind the cap gear haste is 25/26%

The caps in the game is another problem, the only thing that really does not cap that i know of is MAB, and int is very hard to cap. I am not even sure if it is possible past stone II.

So with emp+2 gear it would be hard to get anything much better that would cause people to spend tons of money on some gear. Magic damage down caps are hit easy, enmity caps, and so on.

In other words unless a relic like weapon can be ahed, no one would be really flocking to spend gil or find the need to want to really earn it.

[Neisan_Quetz]

My bad, yea insurgency. Anything not Cata isn't a worthwhile scythe ws for drk really.

[scaevola]

Miratete's Memoirs for 15k a pop. Bam, problem solved.

[detlef]

What does that solve? Nobody needs XP.

[Economizer]

Miratete's Memoirs for 15k a pop. Bam, problem solved.

I know people who run experience leech parties for 250k-500k per person, usually for at least two hours. You get way more exp then you could from buying a MM for 15k by far.