The Great Vanadiel Depression 2012

The FFXI is facing an economic crisis, since there is very little means to take away money from the economy, the economy will inflate faster than Steve Irwin dieing in a tank of sting rays.

The 500k to pay for Dynamis hourglasses was a pretty big deal in reducing the amount of gil in the economy and serves as a perfect example, now that prospect is gone the gil created is being created by a massive margin due to particular events such as void watch, walk of echoes, etc. The misc items and ingredients from these events are no longer being sold on the ah because:

1) The price is almost always less than or equal to what the NPC pays for it.
2) Those items are a huge hassle because not only do you have to wait for it to be sold, you only have 7 spots on your own auction house to sell items, cluttering your storage and making you extremely impatient.

The amount of gil is increasing at a margin to the point where it should be considered a big problem and soon it won't be long until it is noticed in your server, because there are not very many means to reduce the gil in the market, or at least enough means to reduce the amount of gil in the market vs the amount of gil being created by the npcs buying your items.

So what is this called? Inflation. And when inflation happens you can expect things to get a lot more expensive.

But Meldity, is this a big problem? I don't know honestly, I'd love to hear some inputs though from other players cause I think it is interesting.

.... So... lost me. But I do know this, real life economics =/= game economics.

And if anything, if something is missing on the AH and you're not selling anything... you can always go farm it/quest it/make it and toss it up there yourself to turn a profit. Or at the very least, go buy some chocobo blinkers with crour if you aren't actually doing voidwatch.... or visit a guild store since most people who craft are much more likely to unload excess/unneeded materials there easily than attempting to oversell on the AH.

If gil becomes useless, we'll switch to ancient currency, alexandrites, devious dice and heavy plates as alternate currency.

It hurts gilsellers the most, because no matter how much gil they have on offer, players can get it just as easily for 'free', IF they needed it at all.

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Originally Posted by Kristal

If gil becomes useless, we'll switch to ancient currency, alexandrites, devious dice and heavy plates as alternate currency.

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If you switched to those types of currency i'm pretty sure you wouldn't find anyone shouting "Anyone wanna trade Alex for ancient currency?".

And by farming your own heavy metals I don't think you realize how long that would actually take..

Yes you can farm your own ancient currency, heavy metal plates, alex, but most people don't have the luxury of having a second account to constantly follow them around, which means those are the people that would be suffering the most during the inflation. The real culprits of the inflation are the people that can handle more than one account at the same time, because they force the prices to go up for less time, work and hassle. Nobody wants to go to salvage or dynamis with anyone anymore except by themselves, because in their head they say, "I'd rather do this with someone that can 2box or 2box it myself" and find a better(or more struggling) hobby to earn money. Because of this, 2boxing is becoming the economy standard, if you don't 2box, you'll be very behind in the market.



What SE can do:

1.)Create a method to stop 2boxers or make an event hard enough to prevent a 2boxer to not be able to effectively both accounts at the same time.
2.)Find better means to reduce the amount of gil in the market (possibly taking away npc's or lowering the item sold to them to a lower price)

Voidwatch is a good example of this, because not only do the current Voidwatch Bosses make it hard enough to handle both accounts or duo a mob at this point, it makes it almost impossible to trigger alignment spectrums. (However I fear the simple Warrior and WhiteMage combo in the future.. or a better combination of a 3boxer to handle the mob effectively.)

If SE can somehow create more events such as Voidwatch and reduce the amount of gil in the market, the economy can stabilize once more.

Relic, mythics, 90 + empys, food and new gear incoming loads to spend your gil on.

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Originally Posted by Meldity

What SE can do:

1.)Create a method to stop 2boxers or make an event hard enough to prevent a 2boxer to not be able to effectively both accounts at the same time.
2.)Find better means to reduce the amount of gil in the market (possibly taking away npc's or lowering the item sold to them to a lower price)

Voidwatch is a good example of this, because not only do the current Voidwatch Bosses make it hard enough to handle both accounts or duo a mob at this point, it makes it almost impossible to trigger alignment spectrums. (However I fear the simple Warrior and WhiteMage combo in the future.. or a better combination of a 3boxer to handle the mob effectively.)

If SE can somehow create more events such as Voidwatch and reduce the amount of gil in the market, the economy can stabilize once more.

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You give way too much credit to players that play multiple accounts at once, and not enough credit to RMT making a strong return by hiding under the radar and taking advantage of Voidwatch drops, Synergy, and PL cleaving.

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Originally Posted by uptempo

Relic, mythics, 90 + empys, food and new gear incoming loads to spend your gil on.

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Do those actually drain money out the economy though?

Dark rings from Abyssea Konschtat NPC for like 38k gil, and are very very easy to farm, things like that ruin the economy when you have 10+ mules with 80 empty slots filling up on them and running to npc them than coming back for more >.>

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Originally Posted by Meldity

If you switched to those types of currency i'm pretty sure you wouldn't find anyone shouting "Anyone wanna trade Alex for ancient currency?".

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Stop reading past this point. You're looking at it wrong.

In Aht Urhgan, you exchange Imperial Standing for Imperial Coin currency, which in turn can be exchanged for gil from fellow players. Also using Alexander as an example, one Alexander is worth 1.5% average over a single ancient currency of the highest value depending on the server you're on.

Do salvage, collect Alexander, sell for gil, then buy currency. Vice versa, rinse and repeat. Crour is a form of currency in abyssea and voidwatch, which can be converted through gil by the same format. Buy items to sell to an npc or players. Just off chocobo blinkers, you can convert 1mil in crour to roughly 2.5ish mil. (to lazy to do the math, but I did this to get a 3mil item with only 500k in gil at start.)

You can't stop the flow of gil that runs into the system, but no one is handicapped from making gil to stop the flow of money from one player to the next, re-indroduction of taxes in Jeuno is a way, but will fail cause people will flee back to rolanmart... I mean Rolanberry Fields. Increase the cost of entry into endgame content like Dynamis and Einherjar... although didn't they just reduce those? Oh I know, create a more expensive item to buy from npc stores, like the femina subligars, that can be desyth into materials to make better stuff.... oh wait, not many mastercrafters left... those that are would take advantage of this and still overcharge on their services, one among other scenarios.

Voidwatch does nothing to reduce the amount of gil in market when you consider you can use other forums of payment to participate in. Campaign Points, Imperial Standing, and Allied Notes among crour and gil. And the rare items that fall in into players hand can be fenced at a high price (until it's over stocked) so gil still remains in the hands of the players.

WoE, you pay 1k on entry, walk out with around 7-10k per run in sell-able junk at the least if you're unlucky to get good stuff.

You can't stop duel boxing either. Let's face it, when you don't have friends to follow you every minute of every day you play the game and you can't call your npc, who else will you rely on? Plus, they're paying an additional fee for a whole new account plus any other additional content id's on their profiles. As long as they are staying within the rules of the game, hypothetically speaking, they're fine. It seems like a case of jealous to handicap them for working around the game when not everything is solo'able but people pretty my force you to do so anyway.

And for reducing the items sold at lower prices... stuff generally sell at like 15% of original sales prices.

This is an issue with every game, not counting shady deals with RMT, the amount of money that circulates in the game is always bound to increase, never decrease or stable because not every one is doing the same activities or as often if they are.

Side note: Meh, my post is all over the place, I don't think I covered everything but there.

I used to be in a Linkshell with a guy that has 4 accounts.
yeah goes to event gets X4 drops X4 KI's X4 lock items of his choosing for w/e account he feels like equipping that day and its just a allowed because the mentality is that "He pays extra he should get extra"
i would like to point out that he FC by himself too but he does it for "cruor to gil" because apparently he doesn't know he can charge 15 people 700k per person per run which i think is a good thing.
When i left the LS they were working on Empyrians for him and two others, last time i checked hes done and now hes working on a relic bow leaving the rest of the LS members with -4 players for each run of their own Empy's due to his "Sudden" change in priorities..
that's a pretty good look at the future of this game people take a good hard look.

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Originally Posted by Rohelius

I used to be in a Linkshell with a guy that has 4 accounts.
yeah goes to event gets X4 drops X4 KI's X4 lock items of his choosing for w/e account he feels like equipping that day and its just a allowed because the mentality is that "He pays extra he should get extra"
i would like to point out that he FC by himself too but he does it for "cruor to gil" because apparently he doesn't know he can charge 15 people 700k per person per run which i think is a good thing.
When i left the LS they were working on Empyrians for him and two others, last time i checked hes done and now hes working on a relic bow leaving the rest of the LS members with -4 players for each run of their own Empy's due to his "Sudden" change in priorities..
that's a pretty good look at the future of this game people take a good hard look.

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No, that just mean that one guy out of many is a pure, straight up. I wouldn't trust anyone with more than two accounts that aren't just vendor mules.

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Originally Posted by Soranika

No, that just mean that one guy out of many is a pure, straight up. I wouldn't trust anyone with more than two accounts that aren't just vendor mules.

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With the ability to have 16 characters on one account, how many mules does a person really need?
Why the 2nd account if not dual-boxing?

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Originally Posted by Sappho

With the ability to have 16 characters on one account, how many mules does a person really need?
Why the 2nd account if not dual-boxing?

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I have one account with two characters on different servers. Because I don't play multiple jobs (mostly just only three) or craft often, I don't see a reason to have a mule account for inventory or vending. But it's a rather popular method among others to buy another content id. If they afford it, good for them. It's common on many mmo's with inventory restraints and wanting to sell their items while still playing. (On Ragnarok Online, if you choose to vend, you remain stationary, unable to move.)

I see some others with a duel boxing mule, usually a WHM slave. Which is fine for them I guess as long as they aren't using a third party program to control every action extra account does. Though lets face it, many do if they suck at duel boxing. But I don't condemn them for having an extra account to aid them. I know one person, my old LS leader, who recently went from having two accounts on to three, through some what questionable means.

Like everything though, some people, a small minority of players, find a way to abuse it, as with anything. In no LS should a person and their duel box character be considered two separate people thus taking multiple items. This definitely doesn't work in an event LS with a DKP system.

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Originally Posted by Soranika

Like everything though, some people, a small minority of players, find a way to abuse it, as with anything. In no LS should a person and their duel box character be considered two separate people thus taking multiple items. This definitely doesn't work in an event LS with a DKP system.

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Totally agree with you there. Seems like abuse of the system.

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Does it realy matter tho?

Over all nothing has changed. Dispite the money you have, some things are still cheap, some things to expencive. Just as it was before the realse of aby and the lvl increase. The only real change is the number. The number of the cost and the number u have.

Some people play only a little bit, some ppl all the time. The massive diffrence will always be their no matter how easy or hard gill is to get. The one real diffrence tho, is the effect on RMT buissnesses. With gill easier to get it hurts themm since less ppl have a need or desire to buy.

So weither its the complaining from the days of old about their not being enough variation of synths to make gill from in each craft, or todays complaining about it being to easy to get gill in general, Over all its realy the same issues. And that being said, im sure SE will take the path that hust RMT ppl more.

Things not being done in this topic that really should be done in order for people to take this seriously:

1. Come up with some hard figures. find out how much gil is introduced into the economy every day through NPC-means (gil drop from monster, selling item to NPC).
2. Compare these figures to more hard figures: More specifically, how is gil being removed from the system? Two biggest suspects of gil removal (in order of personal belief):
a. Auction house taxes. Even if you're not auctioning off those crappy synthesis materials, there's still million+ gil items being auctioned off; not to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of food items, geodes, crystals, craft materials, etc, etc, etc, etc ad infinitum being put up for auction every day.
b. NPC-bought craft materials. Face it, some items just are cheaper from an NPC and are used in still very common recipes. Distilled water for echo drops, anyone? Or holy water? For bast parchment for shihei? For black ink for shihei? A rather broad example, but that one item alone is probably a pretty good gil-removal tool.

Honestly, without specific information like that, I'm not inclined to believe it's a problem. I'm not denying that it could be a problem, I'm simply saying without evidence, there's no credence to either claim. And Square-Enix isn't releasing that information any time soon, I think, so odds are good you won't be able to form a very convincing argument.

Speaking of SE, however, I should mention that they probably know what they're doing. They have all the information listed above, and if it's a problem, they're probably waiting for 99 cap to figure out how to solve the issue, since they have to wait to see how the player-based economy normalizes before taking any action (it's not going to stabilize until 99 is reached and some amount of time has passed for players to renormalize difficulties on fights, allowing a judgement to be made on flow of goods through an economy to be made). Don't expect it to happen for about a year or more, depending on how SE goes about future content releases.

Personally, I don't see an issue with the economy as it stands. Gil making functions are available to all who play, unlike the RMT-inflated economy of years back. Actually, I'll use that particular economic period as an example to show what I mean.

Back when RMT was a much larger problem than it is now (no denying that it isn't a problem now; there's no such thing as an RMT-free MMO with a decent sized player base. You just can't escape people taking advantage of an economic opportunity), prices were at an all-time high. Normal quality elemental staffs were in the hundreds of thousands to millions, depending on what staff and server you were on, scorpion harness/haubergeon was an item you had to spend weeks to months farming to afford (or spend hours of real life time working to afford to buy the gil for and risk account suspension, basically throwing hard earned money straight into the toilet) before you would even be considered for any decent endgame shell, etc, etc. These prices wouldn't have been a problem, except that the gil wasn't available to everyone; There was an imbalance of gil being infused into the economy by RMT means and the normal player. I'm inclined to believe SE recognized this, because if I remember right (can't access the records right now, if nobody has corrected me/posted links to the information) they mentioned gil being removed from the economy when they started the mass bannings.

This time, the gil is available to everyone. Cruor, fields of valor, NPCed goods... If you need gil, you can go get it fairly easily without sidetracking too much time (heck, you're already there getting EXP with cruor and FoV). Is this a stable form of economy? I can't say. Again, I need that information I listed above to make any sound judgement.

Back to how SE is handling the issue. In any game economy, you want some level of inflation to occur. Obviously not the massive inflations that imbalance game play caused by RMT activity, but you have to have SOME form of inflation. It has to be high enough that long-term players continue to feel a sense of accomplishment being able to afford high-priced top-tier/luxury gear, but keep it low enough to encourage new players.

As a small aside, now that I think about it, there are some ways to measure economic inflation; there's goods you can track over long periods of time that demand remains constant for; The best possible example I can think of is for FFXI shihei; usage doesn't go down over time, and availability stays relatively constant. Close follow-ups would be medicines and food... although food is harder to track through level changes, since the "best" food to use changes as game mechanics move in one direction or another, it's okay if you can track the aggregate demand of multiple forms of food. If you can show some long-term changes (six months or greater) of these goods inflating in price at a rate of better than 5~10% (I'd vote 5% is already somewhat high for an economy's inflation, but this is an period of extreme fluctuation, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt), I'll be more inclined to believe it's a problem. Protip: Don't use dynamis currency for this, availability has only gone up while demand has gone down; that good is in a state of deflation.

Maybe take a cue from EVE, and have GMs pull select items out of thin air and put them up at the going price? Then they just delete the gil they receive from the sales. Of course that would eventually result in a flooded market of the items, but maybe they could use it as a bit of a temporary stop-gap. Perhaps a gil->brew NPC? That'd give an option for something expensive and expendable.