ARR Gil Cap Reduction

Cool, I'll have capped gil in 2.0 then...I'm ok with this lol. I feel bad though for people who have more then that...at least they announced it now so people can put it on alts or something :(

I think it really sucks because a lot of people put hard work into making gil.

At the same time there have been many gil exploitation - and then its funny.

I have worked 2 years for the gil i have, from making new items at launch and struggling with crafting with time and effort...i don't fancy losing a big chunk of it, there are numerous posts over what will happen and as far as what Bayohne had posted it is knocking off 1 digit from the Max gil you can hold! he even gives an example..


999,999,999 Becomes 99,999,999 gil

If you have over max then i am assuming you are rounded to that number! We need some clarification from the Devs. I don't think there are too many who exploited for gil, i know lots from launch still playing even on different servers who worked hard for it.

As someone who makes very efficient use of my gil (ie, I spend it as fast as I make it) I kind of find this funny, tbh. Imho, It's so easy to make gil in this game, there is absolutely no reason to horde that much gil.

I dont really see what the big deal is with the gil cap from SE. Yes I do understand their are legit ppl who put much effort into getting Gil but at the same time their are many who exploited the game. But honestly ppl their are so few of us currently playing the game now as is it really would be best for us after 2.0 along with all the newcomers to have gil reduced, since we all know SE will make Gil harder to earn in 2.0 the last thing we need are super jacked prices on everything rendering new players no chance to progress since they start with nothing. Its bad for SE and players alike to have us current players get into 2.0 with unneccessary amounts of Gil screwing up 2.0 bottom line.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

As someone who makes very efficient use of my gil (ie, I spend it as fast as I make it) I kind of find this funny, tbh. Imho, It's so easy to make gil in this game, there is absolutely no reason to horde that much gil.

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So basically what you're saying is you live paycheck to paycheck instead of investing your money and letting it work for you.

Yea, that sounds really efficient.

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Originally Posted by Enyyx

So basically what you're saying is you live paycheck to paycheck instead of investing your money and letting it work for you.

Yea, that sounds really efficient.

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When it's so damn easy to make, I don't worry about it. Gear on the other hand? I stockpile that.

I was just thinking about how the economy will work. You realize this is just going to make rich players even more wealthy. The majority will keep their fortune, but the prices of everything will drop. Its like converting a dollar to a euro with no penalty. Thank you SE.

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Originally Posted by Enyyx

So basically what you're saying is you live paycheck to paycheck instead of investing your money and letting it work for you.

Yea, that sounds really efficient.

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Let me know when SE adds VC firms, a stock market, or when your gil wallet accrues interest. Until then, the only investment you can make is exactly what Molly_Millions is doing: spending it on items.

You can't just parrot something you heard on Fox Business and expect it to apply here.

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Originally Posted by Enyyx

So basically what you're saying is you live paycheck to paycheck instead of investing your money and letting it work for you.

Yea, that sounds really efficient.

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basically how i live and i'm down to 572gil but just made a double meld rampager :D

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Originally Posted by Ceol

Let me know when SE adds VC firms, a stock market, or when your gil wallet accrues interest. Until then, the only investment you can make is exactly what Molly_Millions is doing: spending it on items.

You can't just parrot something you heard on Fox Business and expect it to apply here.

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Definitely. Don't get me wrong. I constantly work my ass off to make gil, it's just that there is no reason for me to save it when there is so much cool stuff to spend it on. After all, what good does it do you to not spend your gil? It's not accruing interest. The cost of items however, does rise and fall like the stock market. In the rare times that I do find myself with multiple millions, I spend it on items that are priced too low in my eyes and resell them at a profit. Your gil can't make more gil while it's just sitting in your inventory.

so the most cost effective thing to do is reduce your gil to <10,000 and stockpile gear you can then resell once ARR comes out. you lose no gil, but have invested it all.

I guess my plan is to get a stockpile of armors (which may become useless) and see how the materia systems is adjusted and remeld stuff based on what is now considered "optimal"

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Originally Posted by Xenor

100mil isn't a lot of money in this game and there will be thousands of pissed off players when including people who have quit and are waiting for V2.

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It'll be a lot of money in ARR once they cap you. :)

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Originally Posted by Xenor

You do realise that we will only have one retainer in V2 right?

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Do you have a source for this? I don't remember them saying we're losing a retainer, only that their max inventory will shrink.

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Originally Posted by Haldir90

so the most cost effective thing to do is reduce your gil to <10,000 and stockpile gear you can then resell once ARR comes out. you lose no gil, but have invested it all.

I guess my plan is to get a stockpile of armors (which may become useless) and see how the materia systems is adjusted and remeld stuff based on what is now considered "optimal"

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Pretty risky considering certain things may drop in value due to less money being in circulation, and we don't know how less effective materia will become.

100 million gil is quite a lot of money. I don't see any reason to go on some mass spending spree to hoard it all, unless you just have so much more over the new cap.

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Originally Posted by Ceol

Let me know when SE adds VC firms, a stock market, or when your gil wallet accrues interest. Until then, the only investment you can make is exactly what Molly_Millions is doing: spending it on items.

You can't just parrot something you heard on Fox Business and expect it to apply here.

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The stock market is all about buying low and selling high. I had no idea we couldn't do that here D:

OMG guys brb! Need to talk to chuck :P

i'm missing the part where this is a good idea

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Originally Posted by Orophin

Pretty risky considering certain things may drop in value due to less money being in circulation, and we don't know how less effective materia will become.

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But if you happen to be over the cap, then aside from putting some on a retainer, spending the rest on items is really the only thing you can do to ensure you don't just lose it.

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Originally Posted by Orophin

It'll be a lot of money in ARR once they cap you. :)

Do you have a source for this? I don't remember them saying we're losing a retainer, only that their max inventory will shrink

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No it won't, not if I'll only be 3 times as rich as you rather than 15 times as rich.

I do not, I thought it was common knowledge by now that the second retainer is temporary. But maybe not.

And no I won't "invest" in gear like some people suggest. This is a game where the price of things like Crab Bow +3 can drop from 20mil to 5k over the course of a patch. Who knows what will become trash in patch 2.0? Gambling is a one way path to losing everything. But if you must gamble you'd be safer investing in raw materials. Even then with changes to gathering we don't know how the supply chain will change.

Reading rein's translation it seemed to imply that everyone would just have a tenth of their total gil in 2.0 As has been mentioned earlier that means that if you have 150,000,000 you would drop down to 15,000,000 or if you had 1,000 you'd end up with 100.

The other people who made this assumption seem to have been shot down, though honestly it makes FAR MORE sense than saying everyone over cap will be capped and everyone else will stay where they are. Basically it would just be a worlds wide readjustment to the value of each individual gil. (reducing 90% of the amount of gil in the game OVERALL thus making everyone's gil worth more, the rich would stay JUST AS RICH, the poor would still be JUST AS POOR, the only thing that would change is the exact number everyone has in their inventory.)

Clarification is most certainly needed here, but hopefully that will come with the official translation. (Though sooner certainly wouldn't hurt matters.)

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Originally Posted by Ferth

Reading rein's translation it seemed to imply that everyone would just have a tenth of their total gil in 2.0 As has been mentioned earlier that means that if you have 150,000,000 you would drop down to 15,000,000 or if you had 1,000 you'd end up with 100.

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You should probably read Bayohne's translation, since while I appreciate Reinheart's work, he'll be the first one to admit his translations aren't always 100% accurate. People can sometimes interpret things incorrectly.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post826003 - Bayohne Translation

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Q: Will you wipe gil from our characters or change the currency with the launch of ARR?

A: No, there won't be a gil wipe. However, we do currently have plans to decrease the max digit by 1 (999,999,999 > 99,999,999)

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Nowhere does that say that EVERYONE's gil is getting reduced. All this implies is that anyone with a gil amount over 99,999,999 will be capped at that value in ARR. Reinheart's translation seems to expand on what Yoshida said, but all he said was that vendor items were going to be reduced in cost.

Reinheart translation:

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We already mentioned before we would not wipe but we will put this on topics but for example arrow price is bit expensive so stuff like that will change, and gil total will be less by 1 digit for all players and at same time all NPC sold items will be 1 less digit (1,000 gil > 100 gil)

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I emphasized the bolded part because I believe Bayohne's translation is more accurate for that specific part.

Hmm... I suppose that is a bit more official... I just really, really hope se wouldn't do something so blatantly retarded. Rein's translation really would benefit new players starting at 0 because all the gil they earn would have a higher value, everyone else would have the same value of gil as before just in a smaller number.

Bayohne's translation would be like saying "hey all of you people who are really good at making money. Sucks to be you!"

Though I would also point out that both translations were done very quickly, so bayohne's could be missing important context as well.

Again, clarification would be needed.

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Originally Posted by Orophin

You should probably read Bayohne's translation, since while I appreciate Reinheart's work, he'll be the first one to admit his translations aren't always 100% accurate. People can sometimes interpret things incorrectly.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post826003 - Bayohne Translation

Nowhere does that say that EVERYONE's gil is getting reduced. All this implies is that anyone with a gil amount over 99,999,999 will be capped at that value in ARR. Reinheart's translation seems to expand on what Yoshida said, but all he said was that vendor items were going to be reduced in cost and what they buy items for will also be reduced.

Reinheart translation:


I emphasized the bolded part because I believe Bayohne's translation is more accurate for that specific part.

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Bayohne's translation is confusing because it begins with "No, there won't be a gil wipe". I consider losing hundreds of millions to be a gil wipe. I'm more inclined to believe it's a mis-translation and we'll be divided by 10. They do this kind of thing in the real world too, it's called redenomination. Look at Zimbabwe for a recent example.

If the change just shaves off any gil above the cap, that would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 99,999,999... If the change just knocks a digit off, it would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 15,000,000gil, which is 84,999,999gil less than the former, and yet some rich players seem to be an advocate of the latter... I'm not following here...

Also, where's that digit being knocked off from? If it's from the end, are we saying 123,456,789 gil would be 12,345,678 gil, or would it be 23,456,789? Regardless which end you shave that digit off though, someone over cap would still wind up with less gil than just having any extra gil over the cap shaved off... (EDIT: UNLESS, that someone happened to be exactly at the current cap of 999,999,999 gil, granted)

It sounds like some players don't like this simply because they want everyone to lose gil, not just them... Maybe it's just me, but the entire premise of Final Fantasy just doesn't seem to fit with that.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

If the change just shaves off any gil above the cap, that would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 99,999,999... If the change just knocks a digit off, it would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 15,000,000gil, which is 84,999,999gil less than the former, and yet some rich players seem to be an advocate of the latter... I'm not following here...

Also, where's that digit being knocked off from? if it's from the end, are we saying 123,456,789 gil would be 12,345,678 gil, or would it be 23,456,789? Regardless which end you shave that digit off though, someone over cap would still wind up with less gil than just having any extra gil over the cap shaved off...

It sounds like some players don't like this simply because they want everyone to lose gil, not just them... Maybe it's just me, but the entire premise of Final Fantasy just doesn't seem to fit with that.

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Less actual gil, but that gil would have the same inherent value as the higher number previously because EVERYONE would have lost the same percentage of their gil, thus making the value of the gil they have left go up by a proportional percentage.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

If the change just shaves off any gil above the cap, that would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 99,999,999... If the change just knocks a digit off, it would leave someone who has 150,000,000gil with 15,000,000gil, which is 84,999,999gil less than the former, and yet some rich players seem to be an advocate of the latter... I'm not following here...

Also, where's that digit being knocked off from? if it's from the end, are we saying 123,456,789 gil would be 12,345,678 gil, or would it be 23,456,789? Regardless which end you shave that digit off though, someone over cap would still wind up with less gil than just having any extra gil over the cap shaved off...

It sounds like some players don't like this simply because they want everyone to lose gil, not just them... Maybe it's just me, but the entire premise of Final Fantasy just doesn't seem to fit with that.

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Think there are two interpretations so far:

1. New "max" gil cap is being reduced by 1 digit, right now it's 999,999,999 which will bring it to 99,999,999. This would only affect people that are above the gil cap directly. This is the interpretation from Bayohne's post.

2. Cutting a digit off from the end would affect everyone directly. Relative fortune would still be the same since everyone is getting a digit knocked off not only the people who are above the "new cap." For this to work everything in the game should have a digit cut off. Basically, this just makes numbers smaller and nothing really changes. This interpretation lends itself to the translation where YoshiP explains that things will get "cheaper."

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F: Related question but for 2.0 gil will it be wiped or change?
Y: We already mentioned before we would not wipe but we will put this on topics but for example arrow price is bit expensive so stuff like that will change, and gil total will be less by 1 digit for all players and at same time all NPC sold items will be 1 less digit (1,000 gil > 100 gil)

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Translation Doc

The confusion is between which is the actual case.

I see this more of a change for the overall game going forward, rather than targeting individuals who have a lot of money. (or targeting everyone based on how some people are interpreting the translation)

There's also nothing saying at this point that the same NPC that will hold your excess items over 100 won't hold your excess gil over 99,999,999 too. Probably just some coding they can put in during the database conversion, if char has more than 99,999,999 gil, transfer the difference to storage NPC. Once the new game is running, you should be able to mailbox gil across alts and then pick up your excess later. At least this is how I hope it can work.

I don't have anything against the people that have over 100 million gil (I surely don't fall into this category) so it'd be nice if they could get their excess somehow without having to spend it all on other things, hoping to recoup their value in ARR.

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Originally Posted by Ferth

Less actual gil, but that gil would have the same inherent value as the higher number previously because EVERYONE would have lost the same percentage of their gil, thus making the value of the gil they have left go up by a proportional percentage.

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I've seen this as well, and I'll admit I'm not exactly educated on financial stuff. But the value of the gil seems (to me) to be stapled, because gil is gil. While the value of, say, the US Dollar can go up and down because it's supposedly a promise note for a certain about of gold (or at least that was the original idea), Gil isn't a representative currency. There's no inflation or deflation, there's just total amount of gil in the collective pockets of all player characters/retainers put together.

There's unlimited gil in the game, NPC vendors, monsters, and quests are lined with it. Individual item prices may go up or down based on rarity and how much people are simply willing to fretter away, but I've yet to see anything to indicate Gil in and of itself having its own value, outside of RMT.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

I've seen this as well, and I'll admit I'm not exactly educated on financial stuff. But the value of the gil seems (to me) to be stapled, because gil is gil. While the value of, say, the US Dollar can go up and down because it's supposedly a promise note for a certain about of gold (or at least that was the original idea), Gil isn't a representative currency. There's no inflation or deflation, there's just total amount of gil in the collective pockets of all player characters/retainers put together.

There's unlimited gil in the game, NPC vendors, monsters, and quests are lined with it. Individual item prices may go up or down based on rarity and how much people are simply willing to fretter away, but I've yet to see anything to indicate Gil in and of itself having its own value, outside of RMT.

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The problem is people relate the price of the item and how much gil is in the economy. If you gave everyone a hundred million gil the prices on everything would rise - some items may be resistant because players refuse to raise it, but in general the prices would rise.


A big problem is what large amounts of gil can do to such a fickle system like the one SE has up. Its retainer market is no good on keeping prices steady.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

I've seen this as well, and I'll admit I'm not exactly educated on financial stuff. But the value of the gil seems (to me) to be stapled, because gil is gil. While the value of, say, the US Dollar can go up and down because it's supposedly a promise note for a certain about of gold (or at least that was the original idea), Gil isn't a representative currency. There's no inflation or deflation, there's just total amount of gil in the collective pockets of all player characters/retainers put together.

There's unlimited gil in the game, NPC vendors, monsters, and quests are lined with it. Individual item prices may go up or down based on rarity and how much people are simply willing to fretter away, but I've yet to see anything to indicate Gil in and of itself having its own value, outside of RMT.

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Time = money = gil.

Surely this concept denotes the value of gil. If it takes me an hour to farm a million whereas before it took me 10 minutes, it's surely more valuable now.

Every currency is representative of what you can buy with it, as well as subject to fluctuation based on quantities the currency itself and of the items that it can be used to purchase. The best example I can think of relating to FFXIV would be warped arrows. Right now the current gil cap is just under 1 billion gil. 999,999,999 and the value of 1 gil is equal to one warped arrow. if this is an across the board 1/10th reduction of cost and cap then someone who has 1 billion gil will find themselves with 100 million after 2.0 (100,000,000) if this were truly a universal change in the value of gil then warped arrows would now be 10 arrows for 1 gil. (each arrow is now 1/10th of a gil in value.)

Someone at the one billion cap right now would be able to purchase the same exact amount of warped arrows as someone at the cap after 2.0 with 100 million gil. The only thing that would change is the denomination of the bill.

the problem with theoretical currencies like gil is that it's very hard to balance the amount of gil that exists at a given time.

inflation occurs incredibly easy in MMO's because of the notion of "Vendor Trash." I can spend x amount of time earning y amount of items and they will sell for z amount of money to an npc. That is money that is being created out of thin air. much like if the US decided that to pay off it's debt it was just going to print trillions of dollars. It wouldn't pay off anything because each dollar they print would make every dollar in existence worth that much less.

The best example would be percentage based. All of the gil currently in the game equals 100% of the wealth. let's pretend the game is brand new and not very popular... there are only 10 people playing and they each only have 10 gil. that means that the numerical value for 100% is 100. Each gil is worth 1% of the total wealth. Now let's say the game has expanded. there are 1000 players and they each have 1,000,000 gil. 100% of the wealth is now 1,000,000,000 gil. that means each gil is worth 0.000000001% of the total wealth. (I may be off a decimal place or two, if someone wants to correct me.)

In any system of currency, real life or theoretical values fluctuate and have to be based off of a specific item and are subject to inflation. A gil will never be just a gil.

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Originally Posted by Ferth

Every currency is representative of what you can buy with it, as well as subject to fluctuation based on quantities the currency itself and of the items that it can be used to purchase. The best example I can think of relating to FFXIV would be warped arrows. Right now the current gil cap is just under 1 billion gil. 999,999,999 and the value of 1 gil is equal to one warped arrow. if this is an across the board 1/10th reduction of cost and cap then someone who has 1 billion gil will find themselves with 100 million after 2.0 (100,000,000) if this were truly a universal change in the value of gil then warped arrows would now be 10 arrows for 1 gil. (each arrow is now 1/10th of a gil in value.)

Someone at the one billion cap right now would be able to purchase the same exact amount of warped arrows as someone at the cap after 2.0 with 100 million gil. The only thing that would change is the denomination of the bill.

the problem with theoretical currencies like gil is that it's very hard to balance the amount of gil that exists at a given time.

inflation occurs incredibly easy in MMO's because of the notion of "Vendor Trash." I can spend x amount of time earning y amount of items and they will sell for z amount of money to an npc. That is money that is being created out of thin air. much like if the US decided that to pay off it's debt it was just going to print trillions of dollars. It wouldn't pay off anything because each dollar they print would make every dollar in existence worth that much less.

The best example would be percentage based. All of the gil currently in the game equals 100% of the wealth. let's pretend the game is brand new and not very popular... there are only 10 people playing and they each only have 10 gil. that means that the numerical value for 100% is 100. Each gil is worth 1% of the total wealth. Now let's say the game has expanded. there are 1000 players and they each have 1,000,000 gil. 100% of the wealth is now 1,000,000,000 gil. that means each gil is worth 0.000000001% of the total wealth. (I may be off a decimal place or two, if someone wants to correct me.)

In any system of currency, real life or theoretical values fluctuate and have to be based off of a specific item and are subject to inflation. A gil will never be just a gil.

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If 10 players each had 10 gil so they collectively have 100 gil, that means 1 gil IS 1% of the total wealth of all 10 players. It's not worth 1%. If it's worth 1% of something, that means you're able to exchange it for 1% of something, but you're saying it's worth 1% of 100 gil. To exchange it, you're paying 1 gil for 1 gil. 100 x 0.01 = 1. You can base the value of the gil off the vendor cost of a warped arrow, or the time it took to earn it through killing monsters and such, but I'm still not seeing how this causes everyone's gil being dropped raises the value of the individual gil.

If a warped arrow sells for 1 gil each before the cap drop, and is still worth 1 gil after, and the value of the gil is based on it, the gil's value remains the same regardless of who has how much after the drop. If it takes the same amount of time to earn gil by killing stuff before and after the drop, again, I don't see how how much everyone has after the drop affects the value of the gil, just how much everyone has.

Also, time = money = gil... but in FFXIV there's no money, just gil. Time = Gil. You put in time into the game, you get gil. I don't see how this relates to how much gil each player on a server has. I see how this relates to why a certain item should be worth a certain amount of gil, but not the value of the gil itself.

I understand you can exchange gil for items. While too much money in the pool can make prices go up, if it's just dumped in via RMT, not the intended way for players to get in-game currency, you have a problem because people dump out that kind of cash and then are either broke (or they simply don't do it because they don't make that kind of gil easily), or they dump out that kind of cash because they bought it. They run out, they buy more, it's the vicious RMT cycle. But that's what RMT is and why RMT is considered bad to those who actually care about the game.

Sorry for the block of text here. I can see now how Gil's value can indeed raise and lower based on either a simple item at the bottom of the chain or the amount of time it takes to earn it through non-player-economy methods. However, it still seems to me that the amount of gil everyone has only affects the value assigned to it by RMT.

what happens is that there are multiple levels of in game economy that exist. One is the npc vendor economy, then there is also the player economy. The first one is static unless they make actual changes to the game. the second one relies on the first as a small portion of it's overall effectiveness, but (hopefully) would rely far more on the value of tradeable goods in the game

in a real economy it's not just the money that holds value. every single item that can be purchased also has a fluctuating value based on supply and demand.

In ffxiv that would be crafted items, tradeable gear, materia and consumables. those items have value based on the demand for the item compared to the available supply. A great example would be explorer's gear. When they first added it to the game, things like tabards and moccasins had a much higher value because the demand was high and the supply was low.

As people started doing the required 17 minute speed runs in efforts to get relics the supply of the items caught up and surpassed the demand, now with a few exceptions their value is significantly lower.

but that isn't a one way street. a prime example being the atomos exploit they just recently tried to fix. It was possible for people to get a crazy amount of GC seals in a very short period of time by purchasing low seal cost vendable items and then selling them to npcs for gil.

You see it most with RMT because that is all they do. though in reality that is happening all the time. In a well balanced game you shouldn't be too aware of it though. the problem is that FFXIV right now is not even remotely well balanced. (or rather it's balanced around an incredibly low value for gil.)

I would hope that the lowering of the gil cap is an effort to make each gil more valuable, the fairest way do to that would be to eliminate a percentage of total gil in the game. every person loses 90% of their gil, the value AND distribution of wealth as a whole stays the same, the quantity of gil is lowered significantly. if they were to just remove all gil that anyone had over the cap gil would be worth more than it is now, but not by much and it would really only take the wealthiest people at the top and take their % of the total wealth down. people under the cap would actually gain a higher % of the wealth.

When considering vendors, gil is a static value, because their prices and their quantities will never change. When considering a player driven economy it changes all the time, both based on the current quantity of gil AND based on the current quantity of items available and items needed/wanted by the community.

How is this fair to the players who put the time in and and faith in this game? Is this the reward we are getting?

SE you need to realize that all of those future new people had the chance to play this game from the start and they chose not to. So, why punish the rest of us? What are you guys doing to keep the old players?

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Originally Posted by dascorp

How is this fair to the players who put the time in and and faith in this game? Is this the reward we are getting?

SE you need to realize that all of those future new people had the chance to play this game from the start and they chose not to. So, why punish the rest of us? What are you guys doing to keep the old players?

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The sad reality is that they've already got you. How many people who have devoted 2 years into this game are going to just up and quit like that? It may not be right, it may not be fair, but since when did companies stop having their bottom line as their top priority?

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Originally Posted by Ferth

[...]

When considering vendors, gil is a static value, because their prices and their quantities will never change. When considering a player driven economy it changes all the time, both based on the current quantity of gil AND based on the current quantity of items available and items needed/wanted by the community.

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(Gotta say first that I love these kinds of discussions; Civil and beneficial in one way or another)

I agree with your post, and I really like how you summed up the two systems at the end there, but FFXIV consists of both systems in one.

That being said, I think I may finally be coming to understand here, so let me know if I've got this right:

The value of gil in the player driven economy will rise if everyone is knocked down by the same percentage? It seems like as far as the static system goes, that still relies entirely on the static system's parameters. But from the perspective of those who only earn their gil via the player driven market, I think I can finally understand why a 10% drop across the player board would be preferable.

Edit: Preferable over just a shave off the top of the cap, and why it'd be preferable to leave the cap as it is overall.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

(Gotta say first that I love these kinds of discussions; Civil and beneficial in one way or another)

I agree with your post, and I really like how you summed up the two systems at the end there, but FFXIV consists of both systems in one.

That being said, I think I may finally be coming to understand here, so let me know if I've got this right:

The value of gil in the player driven economy will rise if everyone is knocked down by the same percentage? It seems like as far as the static system goes, that still relies entirely on the static system's parameters. But from the perspective of those who only earn their gil via the player driven market, I think I can finally understand why a 10% drop across the player board would be preferable.

Edit: Preferable over just a shave off the top of the cap, and why it'd be preferable to leave the cap as it is overall.

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Yes, sir. That's it exactly.

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Originally Posted by Ferth

Yes, sir. That's it exactly.

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Awesome, as geeky as I feel for saying this, I feel like I've accomplished something!

I was only confused at first because my perspective comes from one who earns next to no gil off the player market at all. SO since I'm only sitting on roughly 500,000gil at any one time, and I earn it off the static system 99% of the time, I'm not exactly chaffed regardless of how the cap drop is handled.

Now I appreciate the problem more, and would say that I'd gladly take a 10% drop off my lowly 500,000gil if it meant keeping the other side in balance!

After seeing the responses I'm a bit surprised, though my rational mind says I shouldn't be. Regardless of what side you fall on (over 99m, under 99m) you have to see how unfair this is. Disregarding emotional filters and personal feelings; objectively people must know this is unfair and wrong.

Now if they were to divide everybody's gil by a tenth, then that's fair. Somebody with 500m will have 50m, a person with 15m will have 1.5m, and somebody with 200k will have 20k. Adjust the gil rewards from quests/leves/etc. and the inflation is practically gone. If you split up 300m across three retainers, you still end up having only 30m at the end of the day, so it's fair and nobody can squirrel away their gil hoping to circumvent this horribly unfair cap.

If the cap is reduced from 999m to 99m, it stands to reason anybody with over 99m will walk into ARR with 99,999,999gil and not 102,000,000 or whatever they might have. I understand why this is necessary, inflation is ridiculous and in need of a fix. But just capping peoples gil, in effect deleting hard work and hours upon hours players put into their character, will do little to nothing to help in the long-run. However, lowering everybody's gil by a tenth as somebody suggested earlier would equalize gil to a lower level while allowing the same 99m cap to remain and combating inflation effectively as they can at this point.

A person with capped gil now, will have capped gil in ARR (999m -> 99m). That way gil that exists will be more valuable, lowering inflation by a massive margin and causing people to be completely confused how to price things, but eventually the prices will stabilize or people will just take a tenth off. A 1.2m mailbreaker ends up being 120k and still retains the same margin of profit / value it currently does (assuming prices are also decreased by a tenth, if they end up more/less that skews things a bit). Each gil becomes more valuable and therefore we're just removing a zero and curbing the inevitable "big numbers" we're seeing now. For those of you from FFXI, the prices of various things would likely look far more familiar.

Most players with 300m+ will likely just buy more characters before the 30th cut-off and then they'll be able to stash their money and when the time comes, they will have the capital to buy everything up for a drastic reduction in price yet their buying power won't be diminished at all, leading to a harshly lopsided economy. Herein lies the truth; if SE does this it won’t fix things. It will fix practically nothing.

Anybody with a lot of money will get more characters and stash the money away. When ARR comes they’ll still have 300, 500, 700 million gil and since many of them are likely legacy they’ll easily be able to keep the new bank-mules at no cost to themselves. People will figure a way around this, it’s in our nature and it really would further hurt the economy.

The buying power of these people will increase, while some of you may extol the benefits of knocking these millionaires down a few notches, you fail to realize anybody who has that sort of money will still have that money, if all they do is cap gil at 99m it won’t do anything. They’ll just have several characters full of 99m, with everything costing drastically less; they can buy whatever they want for an incredibly long time without worrying about spending any gil. If getting 7/7 relics on average costs ~150m, and after ARR it costs ~15-20m, they make out like bandits and contribute a fraction to the economy that they would have before.

The players that I know that have over 100m are all those who spend a great deal of time crafting, creating goods for the market; in essence these people consider themselves too busy to go mine. They are the ones buying 10+ stacks of darksteel ore, gold ore and other raw mats that people gather. They, in turn, produce finished goods from these raw mats, which sell to people who are in need of finished goods, whether to meld, to have or for relic. The reason 'why' doesn't matter, what do you think will happen if their gil is reduced to 99m and they're capped? If they can't shuffle it off onto a retainer, why would they bother making anything more? Most of them wouldn’t, there’s nothing for them to gain from it.

These people are consummate crafters and some like to treat the AH/MW like the stocks (they buy low, and then sell high on various materials). What happens when the main producers of goods stop making them? Consider the ramifications for a moment.

Miners won’t have as many buyers. They make less money, in return more miners begin to flood the market with raw goods, the reason is two-fold; firstly, they cannot get people to buy and while they and others mine at their usual rate the wards/AH accumulate with goods that have gone unsold, secondly the more that get put up the more undercutting begins to sell anything at all, this lowers the price on goods many average players could count on for gil.

Normally, this leads to more undercutting down the line now that a crafter’s profit margin is larger, they can afford to try and sell faster by undercutting, and the buyer is the one who prospers from lower prices. But in this scenario, there aren’t as many people making these items, so the few that do get made have less competition, in turn people have to pay more and put up with shortages of items (keep in mind the population is very likely to rise, the majority of them won’t have the ability to craft these items for quite a while). This leads to an overall detriment to the player.

If you can’t make money from materia, from crafting, then what would you do? The most occurring answer would be, “nothing, I’ll just enjoy the game.” Which would be well and properly right, but the economy would suffer for it. With so many new crafters and new players the opposite of what we have now would likely come into play, a lopsided shift in item availability. High-end items for capped players would dry up without those to produce them and newer crafters who can’t HQ as easily or can’t make the higher level goods will focus on lower levels.

Miners and procurers of raw goods will see this, and follow the trend by supplying lower-end materials since they sell faster, this will speed up the atrophy of top-end gear and items. If you’ve ever played any MMO where it was easy to get items for yourself while you leveled, and then suddenly at cap you’re gouged for the few items on the market, you’ll understand the potential severity of this issue.

You might say, “But, why don’t they just spend their gil before ARR, or buy stuff after ARR comes out to be able to make gil again?”

A lot of people in this situation already have what they want, they have the gear, the melds and the jobs/classes leveled with nothing to really spend on. They might not want Relics, or that super-rare 4x meld t4 STR gloves (which may or may not take them over-cap and be less useful).

That’s how a lot of these people got the money they have, being frugal or only buying what they needed, or even making what they needed for cheap. Nobody knows what will be for sale after ARR so that’s a question that can’t reliably be answered from either camp. Even still, having to spend gil so you can get cap again seems silly at best.

Now, nobody can truly know what will happen, all my postulation is based on my own educated guesses. I’m not saying this will definitively happen, but I believe it has a markedly high probability if they just cap gil at 99m and do little else. It’s a band-aid over a gut wound that will slowly infect and turn gangrene. I sincerely hope they have some additional answer that I’ve yet to see or that they change their minds and implement a proper adjustment that is fair to all parties. This is just food for thought, or rather, a full three-course dinner due to its length.

TL;DR – This is a poor adjustment, it fixes nothing while attempting to penalize players who have worked hard to amass gil. There are many reasons why somebody wouldn’t spend their gil, and in the end it’s their money to do with as they wish (like saving it). If it’s to thwart RMT; they’ll just find another loophole or glitch and get it all back anyways, the only ‘proven’ method against RMT is constant vigilance.

Well said, Kestiel.

I hope this is wrong only because some people are going to find an exploit. They will either spend all of their gil on materia and re-sell it early on in ARR before the prices go down 90% or spend all of their money on something that they can NPC to make back a big part of their losses.

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Originally Posted by Luhy

I hope this is wrong only because some people are going to find an exploit. They will either spend all of their gil on materia and re-sell it early on in ARR before the prices go down 90% or spend all of their money on something that they can NPC to make back a big part of their losses.

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That'd work if prices would still be insane afterwards, which only an incredibly ignorant person would put up the prices as they were. Additionally investing anything in any item pre-ARR is a harsh risk that is unlike to pay out (better/newer items, less desire for that etc.) And NPCs are being adjusted so that prices reflect the gil they want in the system with new caps. Buying something now to NPC later is likely going to give a lot less of a payout.