The red line is crossed now - Bots, cheaters, hackers, gil-seller

[KaivaC]

snip

Wait, hold on...are you kicking up a hornet's nest again?

[Nedkel]

Easier to let people botting in the game than adjusting the gathering system do the market needs i guess. xD

[JackHatchet]

Keep in mind guys, that if you really push for HARSH black and white ToS rules. That'll also clip the modding community and the damage meter communities.

Though, I'd really like to see FFXIV sell in-game tokens like Warcraft does.

[Nedkel]

That's not how economics work. If the price of every good on the market crashes, the result is hyper-deflation which causes currency to become worthless. If everyone has near unlimited buying power, the concept of "money" breaks down. This will also begin to break down game balance when there's a huge selection of power equipment becomes available for little cost, the resulting player challenge gets destroyed and there becomes little reason to acquire anything anymore.

It does not translate into this game, and you are missing the reason behind the price crash.
More products on the Market means price decrease since the demand is only set at certain level and will not get a lot of higher with lower prices. The lower the prices on the market, the lower the income for everyone since selling stuff on the market is still the largest source of income. This means gils are gaining their value, there is less gil flying around because of low prices.
This is exactly what happened on zodiark, it was low populated server when i started playing and the high end eq costed like 1.5 or even 3 million gil, today since this server has way more bots and players as well the prices of high end eq are set around 500-600k, also materia VI prices were flying around 100k for the crit and det ones, now it is 10-15k.

Market laws from real life does not translate well into this game. In game everyone is "working" for their gil on the market, while in real life it is far more complicated matter.

[Freyt]

Hey glad to see your suspension is over . Now that you have access to the forums again, you go and try to find me a single thread where players are advocating for higher priced lvl 1 items. Surely there's at least one in all these years this game's been up right.

What suspension? I've always had access to the forum.

I'm not going to dig through the forums for you. I'm asking for higher priced level 1 items. Why would I have to find you an example of someone saying what I'm saying?

Regardless, off of memory, I noticed someone said the same thing in the same topic on the same page in response to you before I replied to you.

Please pay attention.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

In the end there are two types of Crafters/Gatherers. Those who are in it to make money and those who are in it to save money. I am the latter. My token WVR and BTN were leveled for the sole purpose of granting me accessibility to items that were totally impossible due to grossly inflated prices on Faerie (RP servers are terrible for inflation). For a year and a half when I started, the MB was just for trying on things I could never ever own (unless I could get our omni-crafter FC leader to make them). Then we moved to Cactuar. And wow. I could afford materials. And the actual items I wanted without having to make them in some cases. I began to craft more because I had access to materials and realized what a thankless task it is. Especially when Deep Dungeon began dropping Dreadwyrm replicas and primal weapons. I understand the frustration when someone uses scripts to do what it takes people without them a lot of time and effort to do (see my Performance Action post) but the servers where players are basically held hostage by the few crafters and gatherers they have is no better. You are better off charging more for smaller stacks (because botters love selling stacks of 99) and making money by selling to the casual crafting crowd. All I can say is hold onto your butts when the doors are thrown wide because those people on the inflated servers are going to buy up everything on the cheaper servers like Cactuar. Those servers that mostly have legit crafters and gatherers are going to be hit the most because they won't be able to make a weeks earning from a handful of items anymore.

[MaybeOliverB]

What suspension? I've always had access to the forum.

I'm not going to dig through the forums for you. I'm asking for higher priced level 1 items. Why would I have to find you an example of someone saying what I'm saying?

Regardless, off of memory, I noticed someone said the same thing in the same topic on the same page in response to you before I replied to you.

Please pay attention.

Taken from Discord

[Gilgamesh] Robert Ackerman07/07/2018
So I got suspended from the forum for pointing out how someone was trying to buy up all the houses in a ward

[Gilgamesh] Robert Ackerman07/07/2018
I just posted a screenshot of the subdivision list
and then they came and said they were the player responsible
I hadn't even made any connections at the time
the last post I made was after I took a look at the subdivision itself and posted about what I found, and I guess that took it too far
I'd be a bit less salty about it if the player in question didn't come into the thread to boast about what they'd done and basically tell everyone they were losers for not doing it themselves, and the only after they do that is when I get suspended for pointing out exactly what it is they've done

So you're either lying or you lied. Either way, it doesn't make you look good when you're trying to prove a point. Doesn't help that you are unwilling to back your statement up other than pointing to this one person, which I have acknowledge mind you (pay attention), that gathered clusters in Mor Dhona 4 years ago.

----

Back on topic, glad to see that some players actually understand how inflation works in this game.

[Melichoir]

It does not translate into this game, and you are missing the reason behind the price crash.
More products on the Market means price decrease since the demand is only set at certain level and will not get a lot of higher with lower prices. The lower the prices on the market, the lower the income for everyone since selling stuff on the market is still the largest source of income. This means gils are gaining their value, there is less gil flying around because of low prices.
This is exactly what happened on zodiark, it was low populated server when i started playing and the high end eq costed like 1.5 or even 3 million gil, today since this server has way more bots and players as well the prices of high end eq are set around 500-600k, also materia VI prices were flying around 100k for the crit and det ones, now it is 10-15k.

Market laws from real life does not translate well into this game. In game everyone is "working" for their gil on the market, while in real life it is far more complicated matter.

Im not quite sure what youre stating here but if I understand it right, youre not exactly correct cause youre not taking into consideration a few factors. For starters, If the demand is high, but the supply is low, prices stay high because sellers have their pick of pricing - to an extent. If the price point is too high, you price out all your potential buyers and the product does not move. In this case, lowering your price becomes the thing to do as to entice buyers to actually buy the item. It is better to sell an Nidhogg sword and get 1.5 mil for it, than price it for 10 mil and get nothing. This lends itself to a concept that sometimes you can make more money on lowering the price point, not less. As an example to this, if you lower the price of a product 30% but your sales increase by 200% as a result, youre earning more on that less priced item than if you kept it higher. In a more laymens example, if you price an apple at 1k, and only sell 5 a week, you earn 5k. If you price that apple at 100 gil, and sell 100 a week, you earn 10k. This means that just because you lower the price does not mean your income drops. It depends on a lot of factors.

As for another point, the materia price drop has little to do with botters and more to do with timing - Were at the end of the xpac where getting Tier six materia by the common player is easy. That means the supply drastically increased over the xpac. Compared to when it dropped, T6 Materia was rare as getting the cracked clusters (I think its clusters, I forget the name honestly) was not easy to come by. When that t6 materia was less prevalent, demand was higher, particulary for raiders who wanted to Delta savage. You can generally assume that as time goes on, typically things will drop in price as more players gain access to them. In your example, more players got more materia and saturated the board, dropping the price as they compete with one another.When ShB drops, adn we get T7 materia (probably), youll see those be extremely high early on until access becomes easier. More players (bots or players) is pushing prices down, but its also worth considering that the game "prints" money. You get it from quests and dungeons and the like, which is pouring more money into the market which deflates gil over time. The only way to combat that issue is to have more means of pulling gil out of hte market. This would be sales to NPCs in some fashion. As it currently is, Money from NPCs is poured into players, who trade amongst themselves. More money keeps getting dumped into the player pool, more inflation occurs.

But to the main point: Real life market laws do affect MMO economies. Maybe not as nuanced, but they still apply.

[KageTokage]

Keep in mind guys, that if you really push for HARSH black and white ToS rules. That'll also clip the modding community and the damage meter communities.

Though, I'd really like to see FFXIV sell in-game tokens like Warcraft does.

They can't realistically crack down on things like mods and ACT without use of invasive security software as they function on a strictly client-side level.

Bots on the other hand exhibit enough obvious red flags that simply having a diligent team policing them could eliminate them easily. Giving GMs the power to issue bans would go a long way in controlling them when they can simply attempt to contact a visibly suspicious player then punish them if they ignore them for a prolonged period of time.

[NYCAcimStudent]

Keep in mind guys, that if you really push for HARSH black and white ToS rules. That'll also clip the modding community and the damage meter communities.

Though, I'd really like to see FFXIV sell in-game tokens like Warcraft does.

No, I DON'T want to see that. I am a refugee from that token system in WoW. Unlimited buying power has created hyper-inflation in World of Warcraft.

Why is this bad? Check out the Blizzard forums. There are guilds that cannot raid anymore because they cannot afford the raw materials to make their pots. If they were to gather their own raw materials, the time it would take to get everything they need would far exceed the actual amount of time that they are in the raid. That is considered a BAD DEAL. The cost-benefit analysis tells us that the time put into gathering would not be worth the end result if it dramatically cuts down on raid time.

From what I see, the only time tokens work properly are if they are in a controlled economy, i.e., the vendors. Non-market board transactions do not jump up in price to meet the wallets of the players with the most gold.

FFXIV is in a weird sort of equilibrium now. Items are on the cheap side but not too cheap. Can we handle the opposite when things become way too expensive? If I am forced to choose, I will take too cheap.