DevTalk: GIL SINKS! Ideas to Stabilize the Economy and Curb Inflation

[Rentahamster]

Time for another analysis into implementing more features that this game sorely needs. This time, we'll take a look at another MMO staple that has been curiously missing since retail launch: gil sinks.

Money is so easy to accumulate in this game that the value of gil is quick to change and inflation is easy to occur. There needs to be a way for gil to exit the economy just as quickly as it flows in. Ideally, these gil sinks should be something that has a relatively high perceived value to players. Also, to maintain balance, they should not be so powerful that it gives rich players an unfair advantage over poor players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_sink

As we all know, the only gold sinks that we currently have in game are bazaar taxes, repairs, stall rental fees, favorite camp bookmarks, and items sold by the NPC vendors. Taxes and NPC-sold items probably take the most gil out of the economy, whereas hardly anyone uses NPC repairs because they cost too much and they don't even repair to 100%.


The following is a list of possible improvements to current gil sinks and ideas for even more gil sinks. If you have any questions why I proposed a particular suggestion and want to know more details about my reasoning, just ask.


Bazaar tax: good gil sink, but can be improved

• Add 10 more inventory slots to a player bazaar
• Fix repairs so that they only take up 1 inv slot instead of 2.
• Add bazaar comments like in FF11
• Increase player bazaar tax to 10%
• Implement 5 new sidequests that lower player bazaar taxes by 1% per quest.
• No changes to NPC retainer bazaars

NPC repairs: these should stress convenience in order to get players to use them over player repairs.

• NPC repairs items to 100%
• Rank 1-20 repairs cost a flat fee of 1,000 gil
• Rank 20-40 repairs cost a flat fee of 8,000 gil
• Rank 41-50 repairs cost a flat fee of 10,000 gil
• NPC repairs jewelry too
• "Repair all equipped items" option gives you a 20% discount on total repair bill
• Any rank 20+ item repaired by the NPC that is at 85% durability or above costs only 3,000 gil to repair.
• Add a repair NPC at every Aetheryte Camp.

Market Ward Stalls: no one uses these because they don't help you to sell at all.

• Renting a stall increases your retainer's bazaar space to 30 items
• Renting a stall puts your items at the top of the item list search
• Renting a stall lets you customize the appearance of your stall
• Player can choose which items for sale are visible on the stall
• If you rent a stall, buyers can purchase your items directly from the player item search menu
• Renting a stall costs 10,000 gil per day
• (a lot of these proposed fixes are merely band-aids. The stall system and the market ward system in general need MAJOR revisions)

Favorite Locations: a decent gil sink that can be improved

• Quadruple the prices of setting favorite locations from what they currently are
• Implement 2 new sidequests that allow you to increase your total number of favorite locations by 1 per quest
• Allow players to summon their retainers (like the bell desk) to any favorite location for a fee of 2,000 gil

NPC vendors: semi-worthless as a price regulator

• Add dynamic pricing so that the more people buy a particular NPC item, the more expensive it becomes.
• Add an easily-accessible list so that players can see what NPCs sell what item anywhere in the world

New forms of gil sinks that can be implemented


Player Housing: this adds sentimental value to in-game items that would otherwise have no value

• Rent something like FF11's moghouse for a fee of 10,000 gil per realtime week, or buy a moghouse for 1 million gil
• Any and all items can be placed in the moghouse and have a graphical representation.
• Players can purchase various upgrades and customizations for their house

Mailbox: let players easily transfer items at a cost

• Implement a mailbox delivery service
• Each inv space worth of items transferred incurrs a fee of 500 gil

Casino or Golden-saucer type area: fun mini games to part players with their money

• See this thread for more details:
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...r-style-thing?
• Casinos are a natural, addictive gold sink, since the house is usually favored to win.

Chocobo rentals, raising, and racing: lots of opportunities to eat up gil

• See this thread for more details:
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/10792-DevTalk-Chocobo-Thread.-Riding!-Raising!-Racing!-You-Know-You-Want-Your-Fix
• Chocobo rentals have dynamic pricing like in FF11
• Chobobo raising stalls cost gil to rent
• A basic stable costs 1,000 gil per real-time week to maintain and holds 1 chocobo.
• A breeder's stable costs 20,000 gil per real-time week to maintain and holds 4 chocobos.
• A master's stable costs 50,000 gil per real-time week to maintain and holds 8 chocobos.
• Tax on chocobo purchases and transfers.

Player Titles: Spend money on superficial things

• Player titles awarded for completing certain quests, killing certain NMs, etc.
• From the menu, players can change their titles at will from a selection of all the past titles they have earned.
• Each title change costs 10,000 gil

Dyeing NPC: crafters synth dye, players buy that dye and pay an NPC to change the colors of their gear

• See these threads for more details:
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...thesis-Recipes
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...lothing-armour
• 1,000 gil to use any rank 1-20 dyes
• 5,000 gil to use any rank 21-30 dyes
• 10,000 gil to use any rank 31-50 dyes
• 1,000 gil to dye any rank 1-20 gear
• 5,000 gil to dye any rank 21-30 gear
• 10,000 gil to dye any rank 31-50 gear

Triple Triad: players can buy cards and booster packs for lots of gil

• See these posts for more details:
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post16036
• http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...6371#post16371
• Starter Pack 1: 5,000 gil - Contains 10 random low level cards, and one random medium level card.
• Booster Pack 1: 50,000 gil - Contains 5 random low to medium-high level cards.
• Booster Pack 2: 150,000 gil - Contains 5 random medium to medium-high level cards, with a chance for 1-2 of them being high level cards.

Airships: Charge players money to build and maintain their own personal airships, as well as rent public airships for transportation

• Airship rental that connects all towns, 5,000 gil for a 5 minute ride to another town or airship port.
• Personal airship dock - required to build and maintain your own airships - 10,000 gil per real time week
• various fees for NPC-only airship customizations like dyeing, logos, emblems, etc.

What are your ideas for gil sinks in this game? Please elaborate below

"like" this post if you like it

List of other threads to help revive FF14: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/s...vBForum_Thread

[Wolfie]

Reagent items for certain spells/skills, use these for the upcoming jobs.
Paid in-game hair re-customization.
Repairs should NOT be flat rate, they should scale appropriately with gear level. Should be relatively equal in price to player repairs, maybe slightly more expensive.

[AlexiaKidd]

As soon as I saw the title I thought about the Golden Saucer thread and I come in and you already had it, good work Rentahamster.

I really like some of the gill sink idea's in that thread, they could add costumes/fashion gear as prizes in the Casino/Mini Games like some funky hats or costumes of mobs or Final Fantasy characters.

Oh to add one which I saw you already kind of had which was buying items from the item search list for the Markets Wards. They could do that and then add a 5-10% delivery tax to the item so you could buy it directly from the item list and pay the tax or go into the ward and collect as normal with no tax. Obviously if you buy straight from the list the item goes straight into your inventory.

*EDIT*

Oh and for NPC Vedors, yes I want to see more of them but I also want to see travelling vendors walking along the roads out in the field to help give a bit more life to the game.

They could maybe make them so they got attacked by bandits or beastmen sometimes and you could go and help them out, maybe if you got there after the attack you could go and retrieve their stolen merchandise from the bandit/beastmen camp as a little quest too.

[Lumidus]

Hamster has great ideas. Other gil-sink could be paying NPCs for teleports. Like Outpost porting NPC in FFXI. I've spent thousands of gil on those guys. This would help people get around the world much easier also.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

LOVE the stall ideas. DD

[Loth]

Expensive (non craftable) potions that replenish a small amount of anima.

[SuzakuCMX]

Psssst remove Anima and use Gil instead. Pretty basic IMO.

[Rentahamster]

Reagent items for certain spells/skills, use these for the upcoming jobs.
Paid in-game hair re-customization.

Nice, yes.

Repairs should NOT be flat rate, they should scale appropriately with gear level. Should be relatively equal in price to player repairs, maybe slightly more expensive.

Huh? My NPC repair rates do scale with gear level.

If NPC repairs were equivalent in price to player repairs, there would be no reason to get repairs done by players (assuming repair NPC repairs to 100%).

[Jinko]

NPC repairs: these should stress convenience in order to get players to use them over player repairs.

NPC repairs items to 100%
Rank 1-20 repairs cost a flat fee of 1,000 gil
Rank 20-40 repairs cost a flat fee of 8,000 gil
Rank 41-50 repairs cost a flat fee of 10,000 gil
NPC repairs jewelry too
"Repair all equipped items" option gives you a 20% discount on total repair bill
Any rank 20+ item repaired by the NPC that is at 85% durability or above costs only 3,000 gil to repair.
Add a repair NPC at every Aetheryte Camp.

A better method to determine cost would be to have (item level x damage percentage = cost), this way you are only paying for what is damaged.

Agree that NPC's should repair to 100% and accessories should be included.

Teleportation

Remove Anima completely
Remove the option for players to teleport via the menu.
Allow players to select an Aerthyte and teleport between nodes for a charge in Gil, (the further you teleport the more it costs the player)

Alternatively you could add teleport NPC's similar to how FF11 did outpost warping.

Fatigue

I have recently been playing Allods online and they have a fatigue system also but a player can pay the Inn keeper money to regain the built up fatigue. (its actually a bonus system)

Although I think you are planning to remove the fatigue system if you did a similar system to allods you could keep the fatigue system and also make an extra gil sink.

** A player would only be able to build up a certain amount of fatigue each day**
** Cost increases with each rank**

FFXIV has Inn keepers but they serve no purpose so this could be a nice addition.

[SuzakuCMX]

Oh another one: you RENT Chocobos as mounts instead of owning them. You rent them for something like 5000 gil per hour and then they disappear after that amount of time (of course it warns you before it just up and disappears >.> something like 30/15/10/5 minutes before it's going to disappear).