Aggressive Gold Sinks

[Marcellus_Cassius]

I see no real advantage of gil sinks, within the current systems. For all intent and purpose, gil is only useful to acquire optional items. Little to no character advancement is possible with gil and every advancement gil allows has alternatives that will not cost any gil.

Character development is subjective, that extra mount, minion or house can play a strong role in how someone experiences their game.

As of now, there aren't many advantages of using gil, that is why some would like additional gil sinks. I think they are necessary, many of the posts made before this have outlined how removing gil from the economy and creating a more competitive market board would benefit the new player.

With this in mind, there is nothing that needs to be done to players hoarding gil, precisely because gil is near pointless.

I don't think of it as hoarding, there are people for which crafting is their endgame. When this game originally launched disciples of hand/land were marketed as classes you could "main" as. In its current state, it feels like a system that was retained as a consequence more so than anything that adds value to gameplay. If players are "hoarding gil" something should be done about it, it is a piece of evidence that shows accumulating wealth is an activity players participate in and developing the activities of which your customers part-take in builds your customer base.

The idea of creating more gil sinks has the purpose of giving more value to the gil, which is designed to be of little importance. It is a contradiction.

This is a bad excuse to say things are ok as they are designed to be bad and is essentially what we are challenging.

To address the elephant in the room, exclusive, high costs items purchased by gil only encourages gil buyers to throw real money at their computer's monitor.

If we ever stop doing things because of RMT then we have let them won.

If not gil sinks then something else, personally I would like to see crafters and gatherers get some gameplay love. Everything seems to be about pleasing the savage crowd, lets turn a role playing game into a sport... that just sounds so backwards.

[MoroMurasaki]

If not gil sinks then something else, personally I would like to see crafters and gatherers get some gameplay love. Everything seems to be about pleasing the savage crowd, lets turn a role playing game into a sport... that just sounds so backwards.

I'll preface with the fact that I agree with virtually everything you've said in this post and I would be thrilled with some more DoL/DoH love. It's my boyfriend's favorite part of playing, it'd be great for there to be more varied content there.

I have to ask though... outside of Savage what in the game is 'about pleasing the savage crowd'? I really don't see anything. I don't do (much) Savage myself but I feel like apart from subsiquent Savage and Ultimate encounters I'm not missing anything.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

I have to ask though... outside of Savage what in the game is 'about pleasing the savage crowd'? I really don't see anything. I don't do (much) Savage myself but I feel like apart from subsiquent Savage and Ultimate encounters I'm not missing anything.

Lack of better words, what I mean is most of the endgame focus is spent on battle content.

[LloydShade]

To avoid quoting quotes, this reply is intended for Marcellus_Cassius. I like where the debate is going, so I will counter-attack with my special attack, the wall-o-text.


Please do not confuse character development and character advancement. A character is developed by its actions, gains and losses. In roleplaying terms, this is the character's ongoing background. A character advancement is a more numerical and calculable progression with levels and gear. Gaining a mount, minion or house, as stated, all serves to develop the character, but does nothing to advance it, at least not in the current version of the game. A minor exception could be argued for the minions due to the mini-game, but it remains a side activity with no bearing on the advancement of the character itself. This distinction is important, because the advancement system is ultimately the core system of FFXIV. We start from the bottom, raise to the top level and proceed further with gear to face increasingly challenging encounters. That is FFXIV in a nutshell. Everything we do is eventually tied to this advancement process. This is true even for crafters and collectors due to the need of progressing the main story to gain access to the areas of Heavensward and Stormblood.

This is not to pretend that gil is a useless system, it has several uses, among which, acquiring optional items is the most notable right now. Outside of acquiring those items, gil serve as a minor risk. If your playstyle would lead you to run out of gil on a regular basis, you will be deprived of some of the game's conveniences (teleportation, repairs and a few other services). The effect can be severe if all your gear is broken, or minor if you cannot teleport anymore. This risk is very important, because any player with a max level job and minimal playtime will likely never be out of gil for more than a single roulette. The players the most at risk are the new players and those with more limited playtime.

Keeping that in mind, yes, taking gil out of the economy is a vital element in reducing inflation, which is inevitable because players generate gil out of nothing, constantly. Keyword is reducing. The only way to negate inflation would be to destroy just as much gil as it is created by every single players. It is possible, but it would also greatly increase the inherent risk of running out of gil and being locked out of not only optional items, but the conveniences brought by gil. In other words, for crafters to enjoy a solid economy and enjoy a playstyle that is secondary to the core advancement system, players who only take part in this core system will forever be poor. This is what a "no-inflation" scenario would look like. For example, if I get that many gil from completing a dungeon, then I will need most of those gil for repairs and the left over will eventually be depleted with teleportation. This ensures that I have not created inflation with the gil the game gave for doing this dungeon. If I am successful, then impact 0 on inflation and I have covered my basic needs for gil. I can then move on and stay balanced. If I am unsuccessful, this system will ensure that for every loss I encounter, I will lose more gil than I gain, unless I find alternatives to gain the gil I have lost in defeat.

This is essentially what happened in the early days of 2.0 to some players. We would quickly deplete our stock of gil made through leveling with repairs and teleportation, so we needed to grind to stay in the positive. Others would already be rich due to their playstyle and would breeze through those expenses. Needless to say, this setup is not exactly new player friendly. No inflation is thus a system that cannot be implemented without negatively affecting the new players and the players with limited playtime.

If we agree that inflation is inevitable to provide a smooth gaming experience for every player, then we also agree that gil sinks will not bring any advantage to the game. With the marketboard selling goods at a high price, this means that buyers are capable of buying those goods at that price. Inherently, a new player that take part in this economy will gain just as much profit as a veteran player for any goods both are capable of producing. The new player will not gain the wealth of a veteran player easily, but that new player will also accumulate his wealth at a quicker rate than the veteran. Of course, the flaw in this reasoning is that by this very definition, a veteran player should always stay ahead of a newer player until they both reach the maximum amount of gil one can have. That is to say that if a new player wants to play the market and be rich, that person will do so with relative ease.

Where there is a conflict, is about the player that does minimal amount of "work" to gain wealth. Think roulette bonus and the odd log bonus. That player is still accumulating wealth with the current system, but it will take a much longer time before this player is capable of purchasing something of higher value, giving the impression that everything is out of reach. By design, this very playstyle will never keep up with those playing the marketboard, no matter the gil sinks.

This brings us to the core of the "issue" about the inflation going on. There are playstyles that take advantage of the inflation and others that do not. Certain playstyles will inevitably lead a player to wealth beyond the average player's measure. Others are doomed to poverty. A no-inflation, reduced inflation or unchecked inflation will not changer this fact. As such, there is only one fair approach that will not invalidate a given playstyle. That is devaluation. If gil is near worthless, no matter how much you have, it is near worthless, therefore, nobody is truly rich. The player that has millions of gil will not teleport any more than I am, repair anymore than I am or do anything I do differently. That player can take a few more shortcuts than I can regarding crafting, levequests and have access to any housing element without further grinding for it. None of that is out of my reach.


One wall of text later, I reaffirm that I am confident that there are no real advantages to more gil sinks.

Will it stop inflation? No. Will it be fair? No. Will rich players lose their wealth? No. Will poor players somehow get richer? No. The status quo is the best we can expect to make all playstyles equally valuable with regard to gil. It is there if you want to hoard it and you only need so much if you don't. It would take MASSIVE gil sinks to make a dent in the rich players' wealth. Those would effectively be out of reach of the average player to pretend that rich players will get slightly poorer for a little while, just to recover their lost funds shortly after by the virtue of their playstyle. Is there any advantage to that? Rich players get something to brag about, assuming they care and gil buyers will spent more money at their screen for the same reason. On the flip-side, increasing fees for every player (which is insanely more effective against inflation) will keep rich players rich and increase the amount of poor players, potentially causing them trouble if they cannot afford repairs.


This brings me back to the gil buyers and the one quote I will be using.

If we ever stop doing things because of RMT then we have let them won.

This is nicely said, but poorly thought out. "Gil sellers" is an effect, not a cause. RMT exists because it is profitable. Advertising is all about repeating your message and falling into the right eyes/ears at the right moment. The message is indeed repeated and finding its target audience. Why is that? Simply because there is a demand and that demand is met. Why is that? Because there are enough gamers that are ready to pay to save some grinding, in a genre defined by grinding. Gil devaluation is one of the hardest hit possible on the gil selling business. The lower the value of gil, the more is needed to compensate, and a lower selling cost. The less players find themselves looking for gil, the less they are tempted to buy said gil. Sellers must compete amongst themselves for a shrinking amount of customers.


That is not to say there are no improvement to the crafting and gathering scene. There is a middle ground to reach between usefulness and accessibility. Fully melded crafted gear should be on par with gear purchasable with tomes, with one crafting set per set of tomes. Top quality gear should remain boss loot. To reach this benefit though, acquiring this gear needs to be a much slower and involved process. MMORPGs need grinds. If a player is to acquire the same quality gear as tome gear, then that player needs to spend just as much time in the game as with tomes once the purchase has been made. My suggestion with this regard would be to use some kind of restriction to have the crafted gear gradually reach the same level as the tome gear.

For instance, you can acquire the base crafted gear set, unmelded only. Melding materias in the gear to reach the full power should be restricted and require a similar time investment than acquiring the tomes. Let's use a levelling process for the gear. At each level, you get to meld one more materia and get closer to full power. The full leveling process should take roughly the same amount of time as the relevant tomes, with the same weekly cap. To avoid abuse, the activities which would level the crafted gear should not be the same as those granting the proper tomes. Such a system would allow a given player a double progression with his gear by combining tome gear and crafted gear, or to gear two jobs at once, at the cost of more time spent in the game.

Reducing inflation would not inherently make crafting more beneficial to the current end game. Allowing crafters to craft actually useful gear will. This, in turn, will make gathering more useful. The wealthy will obviously remain wealthy and the poor will keep going at those tomes for gil-free gear. The only drawback is that a player with time and gil will be able to progress twice as fast as an average player. This can in turn be mitigated with set bonuses to have full sets of the same source be more beneficial than a mix-match. If so, then the best you can do is work on two job sets at once.