Why are there no gil fountains?

[Hanabira]

Think about it this way: Other than housing (which at this point is intended to require funding from an FC instead of individuals), what is there in the game that can be bought with gil that you are unable to afford with 750k?

only quad melded HQ ilvl 70 crafted items.. and to put it in perspective, quad melded equipment in 1.0 could cost over 20 million.

[Roris]

Coincidentally the people promoting the markets are also concerned with their own wealth, especially considering there's really nothing essential worth buying at all aside from maybe some materia and most people are smart enough to wait until housing prices drop to buy one aside from getting world first or having lots of gil from selling runs or whatever. If people buy from the markets it's mostly out of or convenience of not having to gather the mats themselves or level a craft or maybe they don't know they can get those same mats from an NPC for cheaper, so yes just like the real world. A fresh 50 doesn't really need to buy anything aside from their relic materials anyway and if they're smart enough and have a friend they can have it crafted for free or cheap, the game keeps handling out free gear so there's no reason to buy that and the game hands out tomes by the truckload now so they can just buy the phil mats and have it crafted by someone else too, and food is irrelevant until Coil.

So back to the topic of gil fountains, people also forget new servers and new players at launch had problems with gil running out due to high repair costs and high rate of gear breaking, thus the importance of gil fountains because you can't buy repairs or teleports on the markets. Finally a player can just save the gil from those fountains and never touch the markets especially if they have the time and dedication to level gathering and crafting themselves and are smart enough to buy cheaper from NPCs or just farm or gather the mats, so yes markets are somewhat relevant but not really related to the original topic.

Don't forget personal housing is coming so buy my cheap Bluebird only 800k guaranteed 100% handiwork.

[LineageRazor]

Easy gil for one means easy gil for all. As long as you're buying things from other people, and not from the game itself (like housing), cost of purchases will rise as the methods for gaining gil from the game become easier. Say that SE goes ahead and adds an extra zero onto the end of all payoffs in the game. That Materia you've had your eye on worth 150k? In a very short period of time, it will cost 1.5 million.

Pumping more gil into the economy will do nothing for this. The ONLY way to guarantee that everything is affordable for everyone is to rip the economy out by the roots - don't allow players to exchange gil or items, ever, by any means. Then, you just need to make sure that the game pours enough gil into people's pockets so they can pay the game enough to get the items they want out of it. Would an MMO work with no player economy? I don't know; never played one. FFXIV is a game with a player economy, though, so the point is moot.

Any game with a player economy, there are going to be things that you can't afford unless, yes, you treat the MMO as a second job. Why? Because there are people who do exactly that, and you have to compete with them for the good stuff. If there are limited quantities of Helm of Awesome (HQ), and Basement-Dweller Brenda, Gilbuyer Greg, and Savvy Investor Suzie all want it and can afford it, they, and others like them, are the ones that are going to be setting the bar for the price. Mere mortal players with jobs and family, moderate incomes, and less market knowledge are going to have to save a long, long time to afford the items those others can buy on a whim. That's what you sign up for when you join an MMO.

The best solution is to just smile, relax, and enjoy the game. Understand that some things will always be out of your price range, and focus on the things you can afford. Railing against the devs is pointless - there's no "easy" fix, and if there was, a deluge of new gil would not be it.

[C-croft]

Simple supply and demand. Same supply but the demand dropped a bit since I need less food to get through events. So the prices drop to compensate slower sales.

The prices should have risen. Granted you now have more stock on hand, but nothing wrong with that. Of course when players ravage the market with ridiculous undercuts, I guess I can see how that works. lol

[C-croft]

Coincidentally the people promoting the markets are also concerned with their own wealth, especially consideringthere's really nothing essential worth buying at all aside from maybe some materia and most people are smart enough to wait until housing prices drop to buy one aside from getting world first or having lots of gil from selling runs or whatever. If people buy from the markets it's mostly out of or convenience of not having to gather the mats themselves or level a craft or maybe they don't know they can get those same mats from an NPC for cheaper, so yes just like the real world. A fresh 50 doesn't really need to buy anything aside from their relic materials anyway and if they're smart enough and have a friend they can have it crafted for free or cheap, the game keeps handling out free gear so there's no reason to buy that and the game hands out tomes by the truckload now so they can just buy the phil mats and have it crafted by someone else too, and food is irrelevant until Coil.

So back to the topic of gil fountains, people also forget new servers and new players at launch had problems with gil running out due to high repair costs and high rate of gear breaking, thus the importance of gil fountains because you can't buy repairs or teleports on the markets. Finally a player can just save the gil from those fountains and never touch the markets especially if they have the time and dedication to level gathering and crafting themselves and are smart enough to buy cheaper from NPCs or just farm or gather the mats, so yes markets are somewhat relevant but not really related to the original topic.

Don't forget personal housing is coming so buy my cheap Bluebird only 800k guaranteed 100% handiwork.

New players and new servers really didn't have anything to do with anything. The gil fountain was there in the beginning. People simply didn't want to spend the time or effort to go through it. Getting to lvl 20 crafting is cake and can be done via vendor items. Then you have triple leves at 20 which turn a profit for HQ. Granted the 450k is for later levels, but making money has never been an issue. It was only an issue to people who didn't want to do anything other than spam AK. Even then, people didn't want to go out and farm and post stuff on the market for said crafters to use. It was always the same argument. I just want to kill things. I don't wanna craft. I don't want to put in more effort than needed. I want it to drop in my lap. Rather than letting players figure it out for themselves, SE turned it to easy mode by tuning down repairs and transportation, then increasing gil in end game dungeons. While the market may not be a gil fountain in itself, it is still a gil fountain in a direct sense that someone, who used a gil fountain to accrue funds, has moved that gil to you when you place something on the market to buy. This is only possible when gil fountains exist. If you don't want to work/find for your own gil fountains, have someone else do it for you.

Also markets become more relevant once you start leveling other classes/jobs as you out level gear faster than you can get drops in dungeons. Not necessarily a new set every level, but there comes a point when you either get drops in dungeons by grinding them or you need to hit the market.

[Roris]

You mean leves that have limited allowances and you can only do so many a day and you only get 6 a day and you only start with 3 allowances? I'm sure people did as many as they could but once they run out of them they had nothing to get gil from besides NPC mats maybe and of course quests but those also run out, and leves and other content also affects gear durability so there you go, only much "effort" new players could put into making gil with limited resources, though I'm sure plenty of people still love to feel hardcore and gloat about how repetition = skill. The term currency fountain is usually used for currency generated by the game itself, redistribution of that currency isn't exactly one so there's that too.

[Hanabira]

what crafting leve gives out 450k for doing 99 of them? that would mean it gives out almost 4.5k each.

[ExiaQuanta]

I pull in 20k a day just doing dailies, low, high, and main scenario roulette along with 3 peistskin maps. Also get some gil wen myth farming In the hm dungeons

[Ninix]

The economy is kind of fucked. There are indeed many gil fountains now, with dailies, treasure hunts, roulette, fates, levequests, and dungeon drops all providing new gil. But there's just very little reason to spend gil. Repair costs and teleport fees are the only real gil sinks most players encounter, and they are quite cheap, easily covered several times over by the aforementioned fountains. The player-driven market is completely trashed because of the oversaturation of max level crafters who can easily 100% HQ anything in the game, so crafted items have very little worth (it doesn't help that tomestones are ridiculously easy to acquire now). Tier 4 materia has been made much easier to obtain, so the value of that has dropped dramatically as well.

Housing is really the only thing in the game that costs a lot of money. But the cost is so astronomically high that it makes the current gil sources seem insufficient even though they cover all of the other gil sinks with plenty to spare, which is why you see people complaining that the current gil fountains are not enough even though they're about where they should be.

I believe SE set the initial housing prices so high to try to drain a ton of illicitly obtained money out of the system. The prices will naturally decay over time (because of the built-in decay, but also because of price adjustments they make manually) into more reasonable amounts that people will be able to afford through just the current sources of gil.

Unfortunately we'll still have the issue of everything on the player-driven market side being largely worthless, but that's a much more complicated issue they'll have to address later on.

[C-croft]

You mean leves that have limited allowances and you can only do so many a day and you only get 6 a day and you only start with 3 allowances? I'm sure people did as many as they could but once they run out of them they had nothing to get gil from besides NPC mats maybe and of course quests but those also run out, and leves and other content also affects gear durability so there you go, only much "effort" new players could put into making gil with limited resources, though I'm sure plenty of people still love to feel hardcore and gloat about how repetition = skill. The term currency fountain is usually used for currency generated by the game itself, redistribution of that currency isn't exactly one so there's that too.

You mean during a time, when you should also be questing and side questing as well which nets you more than enough gil and gear for the most part? Perhaps the lower level CRP leve for 5 walnut lumber which grants 493x3 for HQ turn in 6 times for 8874 sounds minor, but after 17 days of doing it daily nets you 150858. Granted you have repairs for crafting gear and botany. But it didn't cost thousands of gil to repair that gear at that level. And you still had to spend some time and effort for it.