So in reply to a thread on a completely different topic, one of my replies sparked this train of thought. While the reduction in gil value (10 gil will become 1 gil etc) was a nice way to temporarily reduce the shiny number people have in their banks, it does not improve the game economy in a long term. Along with this, expendable items (such as throwing weapons / ammunition) are being removed.
My point? There is currently only one end-game gil sink in the current version of the game, and it is small. That is the 50-100k~ class weapon items, purchased from the NPC and unobtainable anywhere else. Everything else can be generated by the game via farming, levequests, etc.
I believe for a healthier economy that there needs to be a bigger focus on this, come 2.0. There always has to be a way to generate gil from nothing, but in the reverse sense there has to be a way to remove it. Removing throwing weapons / ammo (that could have been used as NPC only items) probably doesn't improve the economy so much.
Before people will bring up the melding point - that is not a sink by any means, as the gil is coming from a game generated source (converting items to materia that is made from materials that are originally farmed/game generated, or simply buying from another player which is simply gil circulation). Blowing this up, also isn't a gil sink as all of these come from a game generated source.
So if we break that down very quickly, the only things people actually throw money at - are the hamlet items used for class weapons. Let's look at best case - the most hardcore player who builds 7 relics, double melds at an 18% chance (so approximately 1 in 5), you are only looking at 35x of these 50k items that is being removed from the game. That's 1.75 mil. That same hardcore player can make that in a couple (to be generous) of hours, farming from generated sources.
My point in all of this? As much as people won't like hearing it - there needs to be more gil sinks, where gil is removed from the system in some form.
One suggestion would be to have an NPC that sells the base level IV materia (say STR +16) at a reasonable price (competative with the market) or potentially removing the ability to aquire some commonly used items from game generated sources like farming/gathering. These are probably the simplest methods I can think of, as I am no economist but unless this happens the general rule of gil being generated but not removed will simply cause economic issues.
Could even have a bit of fun with it - some thief class mobs in previous FF's could "steal" gil. Perhaps make it percentage based (kind of like a tax really)..
Anyway tldr version: Need more gil sinks.
The Current Economy
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11-08-2012, 12:23 PMAltenaThe Current Economy
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11-08-2012, 12:32 PMNix
There will be more gil sinks, in time♪
When the housing system hits, that's going to be a pretty decent sink and there will be more in the future~ -
11-08-2012, 12:41 PMAltenaThat's like saying "everything will be ok" without any actual point. The housing system is one example that may have an initial outlay (for land costs I am assuming) but from what I read in the live letter about it - the only real cost to that is the land. Going by how 1.xx economy went towards the end, with them having to reduce a digit as some people hit capped gil - isn't exactly a positive result.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nix
What they really need is a common item that everyone requires, yet is consumed frequently. Otherwise once everyone buys their block of land, makes a pretty house, they will go back to hoarding gil. -
11-08-2012, 12:44 PMNixYou're expecting everything right off the bat though and telling SE what they already know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Altena
Saying they need gil sinks is like saying a human needs oxygen to survive. - It's obvious and I'm sure they know this already -
11-08-2012, 12:57 PMAltenaWell I don't expect much, a simple NPC that sells stuff people need & forces gil out of the game would suffice, and I am sure that wouldn't take very long :/Quote:
Originally Posted by Nix
I was also under the belief that the housing system (the only example that is known) wasn't coming til a following patch? Pretty sure it was mentioned that it wasn't going to be ready for 2.0 release. I could eat my words sure, but the point needs to be made as I fear that the game will fall back into having the bad economy that we saw in 1.x..
I mean I have complete faith in yoshi & his team of devs, however going by the information available, the point has to be raised. -
11-08-2012, 12:59 PMInaaca
The redenomination isn't supposed to be an instant fix all for the economy. It also isn't a one time gil sink, nor is it supposed to be. Everything is redenominated, not just player wallets.
It merely reduces the overinflated gil values of everything in order to simplify things a bit and allow lower quantities of gil to have actual value. In other words, this does improve the economy in the long term, albeit in a different sense.
As far as the rest though, yeah. Gil sinks are important to keep driving an economy. -
11-08-2012, 01:27 PMAltenaWell yes it doesn't change the value of the gil you own, I understand that, and welcome it etc. I just fear even after that happens, it will just allow those with capped gil in 1.x to start making gil again. It doesn't solve the issue of having more gil then people can spend, floating around on the server.Quote:
Originally Posted by Inaaca
With the assumed influx of new and returning players, this will be needed more then ever - as more people with access to farming / generating gil = a lot more gil in circulation. Without a few very solid sinks, things will go pear shaped. -
11-08-2012, 01:41 PMAbriael
@Altena: Nix has a point: housing is, historically, one of the biggest gil sinks in MMORPGs. There's no real reason to believe that housing will be cheap in ARR (as a matter of fact, Yoshida stated that it'll be costly). You don't necessarilly need MANY gil sinks. You just need big ones :D
Before calling for more gil sinks, we need to see what the ten ton gorilla will be like. If housing is costly enough, it can sink billions of gil easily.
Also, to be noted, housing normally tends to be a rather unintrusive gil sink for those that don't have much money, as it's an optional feature.
Those that don't have much money will get a very small house, spending little. Many of those that are really rich will spend a ton on it. With this kind of system you suck money out of the market from those that have a lot, leaving those that don't with a bit of breathing room. It's pretty much one of the best ways to do it. -
11-08-2012, 02:03 PMaxemtitanium
There are two major gilsinks currently implemented in the game.
1) Repair NPCs, which aren't quite as effective because you can just get your friends to repair for you in exchange for 500gil and DM. DM technically costs money but can also be found in a lot of places so this is mostly a bust. Chocobo rentals are equally useless.
2) Tax on Market Ward transactions. Currently, there's a tax for both buying and selling although the buyer's tax can be waived if you bother to actually go to the correct ward and purchase the item in person instead of using the Item Search Counter. This is a low % but high-volume gil sink since every sale loses 2-5% of the sale price to the void. Clearly it's not sufficient to counteract the effects of RMT though and it certainly couldn't deal with the amount of gil dumped into circulation as a result of Atomos.
I was also told that double-melding was a great gilsink but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it actually wasn't since gil isn't actually removed from circulation when equipment blows up. So that's out...
I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about here. What item is this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Altena
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11-08-2012, 02:23 PMShougun
Houses, from what YoshiP has said will range from cheap to ghastly expensive. So.. "Please look forward to that" :D (Beyond buying the house you will also have upgrading the house and filling it up - Seeing as YoshiP has also stated that Houses will get its own expansion packs, he plans this to be big).
Another gil sink that "may" go along with houses is reoccurring fees (rental/upkeep/and or tax) - though I dont believe there was any mention of that so far.
Currently
1. Repairs
2. MW Taxes
3. Materia/melds (if the item is destroyed the money you used to buy the gear / materia turns into a null reward. 100000 gil -> null, is a gil sink XD)
4. (Ammunition seems to be largely going by the wayside in ARR - but it was a gil sink)
5. Foods and other consumables -
11-08-2012, 02:23 PMAbriaelIt's an indirect gilsink. You don't blow gil directly, but you blow stuff you purchased with gil or that derives from stuff you purchased with gil. Even in the remote case that you got *everything* that blows up, and its ingredients, from drops, all of it has a monetary value, so it's still a gil sink.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
Basically every operation that removes anything of monetary value (either gil itself or items) from the market is a gil sink. -
11-08-2012, 02:31 PMaxemtitanium
Yeah I understand that items have value and when they disappear, that value goes away. However, the amount of currency that exists in circulation does not go down so it does not directly counteract the devaluation of currency that occurs when you NPC items and etc.
The other thing about double-melds is that the resulting item has a much higher value than its parts. Think of it this way: if you fail, the "total economic loss" is that of the cost of the materials (material, equipment, ingredients, etc.), but if you succeed, the "total economic gain" is that of an item with a much higher value than all of the ingredients combined. I'm not sure what effect this has on the double-meld process as a gilsink... -
11-08-2012, 02:32 PMAbriaelConceptually, items *are* currency, you just didn't transform them into it yet :DQuote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
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11-08-2012, 02:36 PMaxemtitanium
Items are not liquid in the same way that currency is though, and items are often NOT sold and thus stop being "treated" as a monetary instrument. A difficult problem to be sure and my economics background isn't necessarily up to snuff to de-tangle it lol.
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11-08-2012, 02:37 PMShougunA by product of failing is a gil sink - wether players price the items perfectly above that gil sink or not doesn't exactly remove the gil sink in the first place. Specially since its RNG. Melding might be a whore of a gil sink to you if you failed every meld. And it might be a fountain of gil for someone who never failed.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
However I can see how you want to talk about it as a point rather then two objects (which is a valid method). Like doing point calculations for physics :P -
11-08-2012, 02:41 PMaxemtitanium
My big problem with the double-meld-as-gil-sink concept is that currency =/= items. The circulation of items is not nearly as tightly controlled (at least in theory) as that of currency. Monsters drop items that have value all the time but only rarely drop gil and gil drops are always small. Double-melding is certainly a VERY effective item-sink but I would say that it's a terrible gil-sink since it doesn't actually do what gil-sinks should do: remove currency from circulation.
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11-08-2012, 02:47 PMShougunFor items because of player inconsistencies (market flux) its safe to consider each and every item its own currency that can be converted between other currencies.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
So just like in the real world (lame comparisons to real life, everyone falls asleep .. . :D) when you convert Dollars to Yen or Yen to Dollars you get a different "market" but it is still a currency. You may buy into materia currency and then resell that same materia currency back into gil currency at a better price. -
11-08-2012, 03:15 PMZdenkaRMT doesn't add gil into the game; in theory they actually help remove gil from circulation through MW taxes. They farm a leve, which they gain no gil from because they don't complete it, and resale the skins on AH and remove 10% of the sale from the game. So actually RMT help's reduce inflation how they have operated in v1.0. Depending on what method's they use in 2.0 this might change.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
This is 100% wrong. Item's only have a monetary value only at the point they are sold to an NPC. If they never get sold to an NPC they are not a gil sink when they are removed since no gil was removed at the same time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abriael
Example: I farm all ingredients (mine/battle/fish etc) to make a Cobalt Haubergeon, this costs 0 gil, produces 0 gil. I then proceed to blow it up using farmed matters, and my own spirit bonded materia which also cost 0 gil to produce. This entire process neither added nor subtracted gil from the economy yet by your logic that Haub had value so when it blew up it somehow magically caused a gil sink.
Basically if item X isn't sold to the NPC (Inflation) or resold on the MW (Deflation) it has a value of 0 because its irrelevant to the economy. Because an item is "worth" something doesn't mean its a gil sink when it goes away because you could say the same thing about my Darklight Corselet if that was the case. If I drop that its a gilsink because items have value?
Anyways all means of inflation are:
1. Selling items to NPC Vendors.
2. Completing Quests/Leves/Missions.
3. Mob Drops (very small)
There is nothing else that causes inflation in the game.
Deflation (otherwise called "gilsink") is caused only by:
1. Ward Taxes.
2. Chocobo/Airship Rentals
3. Buying item's from NPC vendors.
Blowing up items by melding doesn't cause deflation, nor does dropping them on the ground etc. -
11-08-2012, 03:21 PMAbriaelA gil sink isn't defined by the fact it causes inflation or deflation. Causing deflation is a consequence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zdenka
It's simply the removal of currency from the market. Items *are* currency, as they can be automatically echanged for currency (by vendoring them).
By the way, not sure who told you that RMT don't complete levequests. They do, and that's the whole reason why they go around in trains of eight multiboxed lalafells. By leve linking they multiply the gil earning from every levequest.
Once they're done with the leve allowance of a group of lalas, they move to the next (they have access to a ton of them) over and over. -
11-08-2012, 05:44 PMAltena
We are talking about the value of gil, not the value of items. Farming/crafting items then blowing them up does not add or remove any actual gil value to the game. The only items that remove gil from the game, are items purchased with gil via an NPC (which are very few).
An item is farmed by person A, (increasing/decreasing the amount of gil on a server by 0).
Those items are then purchased by person B, so person A gets gil (this is circulation, not adding any gil into the game)
Person B makes Cobalt Hauby and sells it on the market (another example of circulation, no gil is being added or removed).
Person C buys that hauby and blows it up. No gil is removed from the game (aside from market taxes).
This is not a gil sink, as it does not increase or reduce the value of GIL in the game, it simply circulates it.
As for the items I was talking about - I am talking about "Coke" "Aquerius Whetstone" "hardened sap" etc etc -
11-08-2012, 06:10 PMMook_MookMateria melds are not gil sinks. This is the problem. The only gil sink in this game, is the 4% tax you get when you buy items off the market wards and the special crafting materils. Buying a materia on MW, just shifts the money around, thats it. They should have added the materia melding aspect as part of the gold sink to normalize costs around classes and prep the economy for 2.0 but they didn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shougun
Examples of gold sinks - Diablo III pony land staff .
World of warcraft mount training.
These are money sinks not money transfer because they effectively take money out of the game. That 2.8k gold you had out of the economy. That 5 mil or whatever, out of the economy. They sink the amount of gold in the game. and help provide a more stable economy for a longer period. Buying a materia just shifts that x amount of gold around but it still remains in the economy, and attributes to inflation. -
11-08-2012, 11:35 PMRoaran
People need to understand the role currency plays in an economy before making an informed decision.
Currency is only a medium of trade. The number of dollars that exist in the world has NO impact on our standard of living, the number of things we can produce or services we can provide. These products and services are determined solely by the limiting factors of labor ( the people, how well they have been trained and what they have been trained for) and the resources those people can take advantage of.
Similarily, in FFXIV, it does not matter if the total number of gil is 73 quadrillion, or 5. As long as you can divide of the total gil into a way that still allows it to be a medium of trade, it is sufficient.
Now, that is not to say that a change in the total number does not matter. The rate of change in the total gil is important, as it effects peoples' behaviors in a negative way.
The best thing SE can do once ARR is booted back up, is keep the total gil, whatever it may be or whatever concentration it may be in, stable.
The best way to do this is to have NO gil sinks and NO new influxes of gil. New additions of players does not warrant the need for a growing currency base, just as in real life, larger populations do not justify inflation.
This would mean, not being able to sell items to NPCs, as it is wasteful. You would sell everything on the market for cheap. This would improve the actual economy, as more resources would be available for a lower cost. This also means, things like chocobo rides and airship trips would be free. You would also have to purchase everything you wanted from the market as well. -
11-09-2012, 12:40 AMaxemtitaniumAh I didn't realize they were exclusive to vendors. Shows how much I know about crafting lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Altena
I think having 0 gil sinks and 0 gil influxes would cause huge deflation over time since the same fixed quantity of gil gets distributed over a larger and larger number of players. A very simplified example: There is exactly 1,000,000 gil in circulation and there are 1000 players. The average player has 1000 gil and can buy the average item for 100 gil (10% of each player's cash-in-hand). There is no way to create or destroy gil. Now let's say that 1000 new players joined the game and have integrated into the economy. Now the average player has 500 gil. The average item's price MUST go down to 50 gil because they are unwilling to pay the equivalent of 20% of their cash-in-hand when before they were only paying 10%.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roaran
Gil sinks and gil influxes must exist in order for the amount of gil-in-circulation to grow or shrink (ideally) based on the population size. The MW tax is a good gil sink because its effects are in direct proportion to the number of transactions that occur on MW, which is related to population size. The only problem is that MW taxes are not immediately responsive to large changes in circulation numbers (cf. Atomos), nor can it combat systematic introduction of currency on a large scale (cf. RMT) without harming regular players. However, a static currency is not the solution. -
11-09-2012, 01:11 AMRoaranCurrency/player would decrease yes, that is not deflation. The value of the currency would go up, not because of an actual change in the quantity of currency though. This is how currency should behave.Quote:
Originally Posted by axemtitanium
There was an argument among monetarists who thought that because the U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3% per year on average, the currency should be inflated or devalued by an average 3% as well. This is the argument you are making. The inflation servers noone. And it hurts pretty much everyone, although in different degrees. -
11-09-2012, 01:18 AMaxemtitanium
I guess that's just a disagreement over whether or not you should keep Consumer Price Index constant. Currently there is no world government that holds its currency circulation completely constant. If you did that, CPI would go down as the same amount of money is divided among more people (assuming increasing population) so a particular amount of money would buy you less stuff.
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11-09-2012, 05:11 AMRoaran
Keeping CPI constant is an arbitrary government decision that does not belong in a market. Stable prices always have and always will be a bad idea. Prices are meant to fluctuate or they no longer represent actual value which fluctuates with time.
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11-09-2012, 05:26 PMEstellios
Depending on the sources of dark matter in 2.0 NPC repairs might be more desirable than they are now. Grade 5 Dark matter is dirt cheap because it's the go-to dud prize and has been ever since Ifrit was implemented so there are tons of the stuff all over the place. With the token system being implemented and dark matter no longer being the consolation prize, it could become more valuable.