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

[Platinumstorm]

Gil sinks cannot ever take more money out of the economy than is put in because it creates sections of players who no longer can afford to advance in the game. In that regard, gil sinks act to slow inflation, but they can't stop it.

The game's economy is so bad that it needs massive intervention in the form of tiered redistribution.

Someone needs to do some statistics, remove all the gil from the game, and then hand out money based on relative wealth until there's an acceptable level of gil in the game so that everyone keeps their relative wealth based on the new in flow of gil, but also so they will remain in their position of wealth without taking a disadvantage. It's rough, certain people would quit, but it's the only way to permanently fix the economy without resetting it completely.

It's a major problem.

[darkstarpoet1]

Gil sinks cannot ever take more money out of the economy than is put in because it creates sections of players who no longer can afford to advance in the game. In that regard, gil sinks act to slow inflation, but they can't stop it.

The game's economy is so bad that it needs massive intervention in the form of tiered redistribution.

Someone needs to do some statistics, remove all the gil from the game, and then hand out money based on relative wealth until there's an acceptable level of gil in the game so that everyone keeps their relative wealth based on the new in flow of gil, but also so they will remain in their position of wealth without taking a disadvantage. It's rough, certain people would quit, but it's the only way to permanently fix the economy without resetting it completely.

It's a major problem.

and it's not going to stop the amount of gil in the game. i have quite a bit of gil and rarely ever sell anything in the wards. if you took my gil i'd just dedicate myself to making more instead of stockpiling mats like i have been so i'd build back to above what i have soon. i have gil and always will. no matter how much of my gil you take i will gain it back faster than i did the first time.

even if you only gave me 100k for every million i have i will still have the same percentage of gil in game as long as it happens to everyone else as well. even if it didn't i would still have more than they did shortly.

[Lucifer]

Gil sinks cannot ever take more money out of the economy than is put in because it creates sections of players who no longer can afford to advance in the game. In that regard, gil sinks act to slow inflation, but they can't stop it.

The game's economy is so bad that it needs massive intervention in the form of tiered redistribution.

Someone needs to do some statistics, remove all the gil from the game, and then hand out money based on relative wealth until there's an acceptable level of gil in the game so that everyone keeps their relative wealth based on the new in flow of gil, but also so they will remain in their position of wealth without taking a disadvantage. It's rough, certain people would quit, but it's the only way to permanently fix the economy without resetting it completely.

It's a major problem.

This is the only solution I see.

[grandm]

Gil sinks cannot ever take more money out of the economy than is put in because it creates sections of players who no longer can afford to advance in the game. In that regard, gil sinks act to slow inflation, but they can't stop it.

The game's economy is so bad that it needs massive intervention in the form of tiered redistribution.

Someone needs to do some statistics, remove all the gil from the game, and then hand out money based on relative wealth until there's an acceptable level of gil in the game so that everyone keeps their relative wealth based on the new in flow of gil, but also so they will remain in their position of wealth without taking a disadvantage. It's rough, certain people would quit, but it's the only way to permanently fix the economy without resetting it completely.

It's a major problem.

forget FF14, you want to contact all the world leaders, you might have just single handedly come up with a solution to the world economic crisis :P

[normalforce]

There was an interesting discussion in the Shops in Hamlets thread regarding players helping in the construction and maintenance of buildings. This could turn into a decent gil sink, especially if players had the choice of presenting 100 mats to construct/repair a building or 50k gil.

From the OP, I particular like these ideas:

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

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.

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.

[Maxthunder]

gil sink is fine if you do it right and some of what I have I have read here dosent need to be done. The issue is that there is very little weapons and armor that npc sell that people want. Now for those that are thrifty w their gil, they wont fall for most of the gil sink you maybe doing. I myself wont spend my gil unless there is something I need, and I dont care if I have 20- 100 mil I still wont spend it wastefully. Honestly instead of thinking of ways to take gil from players in the for a charge, think up ways that makes the players want to spend their gil on things like weapons armor and stuff, but dont over price said gear. I have seen level 15 gear that costs 89k in gil. So the best way to get players to part with there gil would be to introduce something that the players want. You can charge all these fee's all you want but people wont use that function if they deem it unfair, seems greedy, or over priced. I am pretty sure there are a lot of thrifty players out there and will not spend there gil the way the Devs want and I am one of them.

[SwordCoheir]

Gil sinks cannot ever take more money out of the economy than is put in because it creates sections of players who no longer can afford to advance in the game. In that regard, gil sinks act to slow inflation, but they can't stop it.

The game's economy is so bad that it needs massive intervention in the form of tiered redistribution.

Someone needs to do some statistics, remove all the gil from the game, and then hand out money based on relative wealth until there's an acceptable level of gil in the game so that everyone keeps their relative wealth based on the new in flow of gil, but also so they will remain in their position of wealth without taking a disadvantage. It's rough, certain people would quit, but it's the only way to permanently fix the economy without resetting it completely.

It's a major problem.

I doubt that would seriously fix the problem at hand, the fact there's nothing to really spend gil on (that's actually taken out of the system) would mean those who have millions would eventually build gil back up in no time. I myself have only been playing about three or four months and I'm sitting on a few million gil I don't know what to do with.

I'd say making vendors sell more attractive wares such as cobalt materials, weapons, armors and dyes would take more gil out of the game in the long run. But to be honest vendors would need a new type of system to compete with the prices on Wards, the base prices would need to be reasonable to low, but it would require an aggressive enough price scale that we can avoid market flooding, price campers, and making the wards irrelevant.

However, to avoid price fixing based off vendor prices or sell rates (which became an huge issue in FFXI) vendor goods should not incur a maximum limit to the price it can rise. If any of you are familiar with playing FFXI back in 2005 or so, rental chocobos had a similiar uncapped pricing system. There were time's prices reached well over 30k+ gil for chocobos and that's kind of what I'm aiming for in this type of system.

Proposed Scale Per Purchase:
Rare/Unique Items: Constant (Does not change in price)
Unstackable Items: Armors, Weapons, etc. Incur a 5%~10% (debatable) increase per purchase off the base price.
Stackable Items (12): 2% Increase per purchase.
Stackable Items (99): 1% Increase per purchase.
Stackable Items (999): Constant (Does not change in price)
Dark Matter (All Grades): Constant (Does not change in price)

Reduction Rate: All non-Constant items fall 5% per Real-Life day at JP Midnight until the items low base price is reached.

Resell Rate: Selling an item to a vendor will be sold for the base resell price, however it will lower the % of the item respectively for the next person purchasing that item.

Example 1:
Cobalt Ore sells for 200 gil at a vendor.
Person 1: Buys a single ore for 200 gil.
Single ore is bought so price increases by 1%.
Person 2: Buys a single ore but price is now 202 gil.
Single ore is bought so price increases by another 1%.
Person 3: Buys a single ore but price is now 204 gil.

There are some exceptions based on buying in bulk giving people a slight discount from buying from the vendor, but the effects are instantly calculated and applied towards the next purchase.

Example 2:
Cobalt Ore sells for 200 gil at a vendor.
Person 1: Buys a stack of the ore off the vendor 19800 (each ore is purchased for 200 gil instead of the 1% increase per individual ore).
99 Ores were purchased so next purchase price is increased by 99%.
Person 1: Buys a second stack of ore immediately after the first purchase paying the vendor 39402 gil (nearly double).
99 Ores were purchased so next price is increase by another 99%.
Person 1: Buys a third stack of ore immediately after the second purchase paying the vendor 59004 gil (nearly triple).

As a minor suggestion that might prevent any other issues from occuring, having the price of items sold by vendors change and update on a server wide scale instead of an individual vendor scale would likely cope and prevent any sudden market flooding that might occur from multiple individual sellers.

Example 3:
Cobalt Ore sells for 200 gil at vendors in Uldah/Limsa/Gridania
Person 1: Purchases a single ore for 200 gil in Uldah.
Price increases by 1% in all cities and vendors selling Cobalt Ores.
Person 2: Purchases a single ore for 202 gil in Limsa.
Price increases by another 1% in all cities and vendors selling Cobalt Ores.
Person 3: Purchases a single ore for 204 gil in Gridania.

I know its far from a perfect system, but if SE seriously intends on balancing the economy and getting the excess gil off the server, they have to have vendors with attractive wares and a good supply and demand structure that's on a comparable level with the market wards, but not so much it dictates ward prices or makes the market wards irrelevant for vendor sold items.

[Bowen]

All I know is is that I am not getting any gear anytime soon T>T

[GreyJorildyn]

Not sure if it's already been posted since I did not go through all 15 pages but imo the gathering/crafting stuff needs to be synched up better and synths should use reagents that are only npc buyable. Crafting ought to cost money to level and it's become relatively free thanks to leve allowances being abundant.

They are sorta on the right track with cooking. For example faerie apples are ~660g to purchase on npc, giving botanists a baseline price and room to discount from there (this is very good). However, going back to my first suggestion, these items should also he available at appropriate grades. Using these faerie apples as an example, we know they are used in a 40 and 50 culinarian synth, and yet they are grade 2 gather (this is very bad). Change this.

Anyway, sticking to the topic at hand, we can look at a synth like mugwort carp. The mugwort is npc purchase and the table salt is npc purchase or craftable, while the carp is just gatherable. This is an ideal spread for a recipe. Furthermore the carp are grade-appropriate in fishing for the level of the synth (both are level 41, grade 5).

Forcing crafters to buy one or more ingredients from the npc is a good way to delete gil. Most other mmos do this already and it's probably because somewhere way back when someone hired an economist that gave them this advice. It has since become a mmo crafting staple. We just need to see more of it in XIV.

Edit: another problem is that resellers can make money back too effectively, stifling crafter income. All items should be bind on equip or pickup, with few exceptions (bait, lures, arrows, etc).

[darkstarpoet1]

They are sorta on the right track with cooking. For example faerie apples are ~660g to purchase on npc, giving botanists a baseline price and room to discount from there (this is very good). However, going back to my first suggestion, these items should also he available at appropriate grades. Using these faerie apples as an example, we know they are used in a 40 and 50 culinarian synth, and yet they are grade 2 gather (this is very bad). Change this.

i can see your point if it was only used on 40 and 50 synths, but apples are also used on r11 and r15 items as well. you have to do the early synths before you can do the high level ones. if you want to say only at the appropriate grade then grade 2, which nodes are the 5-15 range, and that is exactly the first time they can be used.