Fantasia as RMT Currency

So one of the things that's very clear to everyone is that we have waaaaaay to much gil in the economy, and we need a way to drain this. Looking at games like EVE (and even WoW), perhaps the best way to solve this problem (and also put a quiver into the RMT one) is for SE to slightly tweak fantasia's usage in FFXIV.

Here's how Fantasia would change:

• Mog Station availability and pricing is unchanged
• Current functionality is unchanged
• Subscription can be extended by 30 days by giving a Fantasia to an innkeeper (subscription cannot be extended beyond 180 days)
• Fantasia will generate at an NPC in the Alchemist Guild in Ul'Dah at a rate of one per day per server
• Fantasia will cost 5M gil
• The NPC will keep a stock of no more than 5
• Fantasia can be sold on the marketplace

Thoughts/comments?

Edit:
As pointed out by Jojoya, the progression Fantasia should be market prohibited, as only the Mogg station or the spawned fantasia (which should spawn at a random time during the day) should be allowed on the market.

Fantasias sold by vendors or exchanged for game time would never happen. The price of Fantasia is less than the price of a standard subscription. SE is not going to start giving away game time.

If you just want players to be able to sell Mogstation purchased Fantasias on the MB as a game-sanctioned way to get gil for real money, I personally don't have any objections to it (I know others will). It would cut into illicit RMT activity some, though it still wouldn't get rid of it completely.

Allowing players to use the Fantasias rewarded by the game as part of the original veteran rewards program or from the level 50 quest rewards? Absolutely not. It's too easy to level a alt character to 50, sell the Fantasia and send the gil to a main character then delete the alt and start over. The RMT farming bots would have a field day as they're doing their normal leveling. Get the gil for Fantasia on top of what they farm by doing MSQ then sell it to players who like the gil seller prices more than the like the Fantasia prices on the MB. That really wouldn't work out well.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

[*]Fantasia will generate at an NPC in the Alchemist Guild in Ul'Dah at a rate of one per day per server[/LIST]

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This sounds like it could be a great way to bring all the pain and frustration of trying to get a house into a daily activity.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

This sounds like it could be a great way to bring all the pain and frustration of trying to get a house into a daily activity.

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Which is why I also suggested that:

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

• Fantasia can be sold on the marketplace

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And I'm also in favor of making all fantasia granted by progress be bound to the character (so it can't be sold on the marketplace).

It might cost more in the long run, but it would involve no coding, to just hire specialized GMs who server hop to catch and ban RMT /shouters.

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Originally Posted by Shadygrove

It might cost more in the long run, but it would involve no coding, to just hire specialized GMs who server hop to catch and ban RMT /shouters.

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That only nails the throwaway accounts, but doesn't do anything to combat the RMT sites themselves which are appearing in the search engines. You've got to go after the root of the problem.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

That only nails the throwaway accounts, but doesn't do anything to combat the RMT sites themselves which are appearing in the search engines. You've got to go after the root of the problem.

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Exactly. Banning the disposable spam and farming bots doesn't accomplish much when they come right back. Doing something that encourages change in the behavior of the buyers can lead to improvement.

I wonder if SE has talked to Blizzard about how the WoW token has impacted RMT activity there since its addition in 2015. We know the FFXIV and WoW development teams do talk on occasion.

If Blizzard feels it didn't really help, it could be why SE is choosing not to do something similar here.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Which is why I also suggested that: Fantasia can be sold on the marketplace.

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Yeah, I saw that in the original post, but didnt really see how it improves things any.
If you can sell it on the MB then it's appealing to a larger group than just the people who wanna use it for their sub or as a consumable, ratcheting up the number of interested parties without increasing the incredibly small supply.
And if its tradeable it's even more of a target for bots.
At the end of the day its just introducing another way crowds of angry and frustrated people can fight each other for something in very short supply (hence my housing comparison).

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Yeah, I saw that in the original post, but didnt really see how it improves things any.

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That's kinda the point of it, as it would be a FFXIV parallel to EVE Online's PLEX https://secure.eveonline.com/PLEX/ or WoW's game time token https://www.wowhead.com/wow-token-ba...-balance-guide. The entire point of an item like this is two fold:

1. Remove Gil from the economy by players purchasing the item ingame
2. Provide a safe way for a player with disposible income to convert money into gil

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Originally Posted by ItMe

If you can sell it on the MB then it's appealing to a larger group than just the people who wanna use it for their sub or as a consumable, ratcheting up the number of interested parties without increasing the incredibly small supply.

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That's kinda the point... except the supply wouldn't necessarily be incredibly small.

SE could also set the fantasia spawn rate at whatever it needs to be too. Realistically, one fantasia per day per server is probably too low... but I'd rather SE works cautiosly with this as setting the spawn rate too high and flooding the market with fantasia would be highly counterproductive here.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

And if its tradeable it's even more of a target for bots.

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The bots have to do something with the gil, though. If it's far safer for a player to buy fantasia from the Mogg Station and sell it on the marketboard, the it really doesn't matter about the bots too much because they're acruing gil... but not really doing anything else with it. Besides, if a player is botting (and I'm sure there's going to be PLENTY of signs that they are on the server side with this), SE has great incentive to go after the botters because it's cutting into their profits.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

At the end of the day its just introducing another way crowds of angry and frustrated people can fight each other for something in very short supply (hence my housing comparison).

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Not necessarily, especially if you've got mogg station fantasia entering the mix (and especially if SE increases the spawn rate beyond what is suggested).

This particular argument is a bit of a strawman considering there is an infinite supply of fantasia on the Mogg Station that I can always tap into if I'd like... and I doubt that would ever change.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

That only nails the throwaway accounts, but doesn't do anything to combat the RMT sites themselves which are appearing in the search engines. You've got to go after the root of the problem.

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The game would be so much more pleasant with the RMT spam. It would deny them in game advertising.

I understand that in some games the GMs can turn RMT spammer's voices off so they think the adds are still going out but no one else can see them. I would like that.

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Originally Posted by Shadygrove

The game would be so much more pleasant with the RMT spam. It would deny them in game advertising.

I understand that in some games the GMs can turn RMT spammer's voices off so they think the adds are still going out but no one else can see them. I would like that.

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I sometimes wondering if that's already happening here. Occasionally I'll catch an obvious bot near a city state Aetheryte (but not near a MB) doing absolutely nothing at all with no RMT spam going on. There will always be that little bit of spam that gets through before enough players report the bot for it to get bumped up to the top of the GM's queue to get silenced.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I sometimes wondering if that's already happening here. Occasionally I'll catch an obvious bot near a city state Aetheryte (but not near a MB) doing absolutely nothing at all with no RMT spam going on. There will always be that little bit of spam that gets through before enough players report the bot for it to get bumped up to the top of the GM's queue to get silenced.

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I think, though, that whatever they're making from the sites justifies the bots themselves. The ingame spam is a red herring as those sites need to be profitable enough to run the risks of the ingame currencies... and SE is doing a pretty poor job at catfishing and shutting them down.