The Great Vanadiel Depression 2012

[Soranika]

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.

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.

[Sappho]

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.

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?

[Soranika]

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?

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.

[Sappho]

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.

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

[SpankWustler]

Depression affects approximately 14 million Vana'diels in Vana'diel today.

If Vana'diel is living with depression, Vana'diel knows too well how it feels for Vana'diel. But each Vana'diel experiences depression in it's own way. One may sleep too much, while another sleeps too little. Some Vana'diels don't eat enough and lose weight, while others overeat and gain weight.

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is commonly known as depression. MDD can be diagnosed by a healthcare professional when a patient demonstrates at least 2 weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest accompanied by at least four additional symptoms of depression.

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Even so, if Vana'Diel is suffering from depression, there are things you can do that may help improve the way Vana'diel feels. Explore this link to learn more about some different options for managing depression, including lifestyle choices, antidepressant medications, and talk therapy.

[Godofgods]

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.

[Hikarino]

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.

[Limecat]

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.