UNDERCUTTING....

[Kiara]

Hi! Thanks for your input. I'll respond in order of your points.

RMTs can control prices using the methods you described to an extent, but items still have inherent value. If they try to inflate the price of a Tier IV materia for some reason, people are likely to notice that the item is disproportionately priced with respect to other similar materia or items. I guess it goes back to how covert this manipulation is-- 10k will probably not be noticed, but 100k likely will and subsequently adjusted for.

There is no price regulation for sure. The closest thing to this is NPC prices for items that can be used as a benchmark/estimate for how much the market will be charging... but again, even these prices appear to have been arbitrarily selected, with no real account for actual supply/demand dynamics. As far as anti-inflation measures, there are only two basic tactics that SE used in XI and is likely to employ in XIV: gil sinks (such as the repair NPC), and gil seizures (banning of RMT accounts that horde gil). I guess the bottom line here is that we'll probably never see any sophisticated price controls/regulations put into place. This is an MMO after all; I don't think SE has budgeted to hire an economist to manage the XIV economies.

In terms of activity, an economy can't function as a market if there aren't enough buyers and sellers. This is a really complicated problem that I'm too lazy, and honestly, probably not knowledgeable enough to speak to. All I'll say is that with more people there are more transactions and a greater likelihood of normal market behaviours.

Hi Onion,

Thanks again for the thoughtful reply.

Some great points. I really wish SE would hire a dedicated "Anti-Trust / Monopoly" Team (or put in engine checks) to see when potential Dumping would occur.

As you said, I think RMT Corporations could price dump and drive out real crafters & gatherers, and slowly increment their controlled market prices (keeping it super low, but with their army of bots / possessed Lalafell, they could probably earn a steady income at whatever pricing scheme they chose to run with, whether it was super low to keep regular players away, or suddenly jacking things up, and then price dumping again if people came in).

It's definitely a very complicated issue / situation and I'd say at least in some ways, XIV has been much more friendly to players to bypass RMT controlled situations: An individual player can take the time to farm their own mats (or with the help of a friend or two) and craft their own gear (or get real players to do it, etc.).

With most valuable Max Level Drops being U/U right now, that also effectively cuts out RMT Corporations as well.

I'll be curious to see how this develops later.