NPC Prices (CPI?)

[Nohmaan]

You don't want to sell your items to NPCs because they pay almost nothing.
You don't want to buy items from NPCs because they cost far too much for what they're worth.

That is working as intended. They're meant to be useable, endless, sources but you are still being encouraged to buy from and sell to other players.

It would still be the case, you're just looking at a player spending influenced change in the base values for which NPC items would be sold.

The NPC prices are designed to be hard limits.


The price of an item in the economy will never drop below what the NPC will buy it form you.
The price of an item in the economy will never raise abvoe what the NPC will sell it to you for.

That would only be true if NPCs sold every item, which I don't believe they do.

[Asiaine]

That would only be true if NPCs sold every item, which I don't believe they do.

They sell a LOT of basic crafting material and several high end equipment (although nothing crazy). Also the Company Stores sell a fair bit of high-end gear as well. These are some of the balances and checks put in to help put some controls on min/max prices of items.

So although they do not have a 100% hold on all aspects of the economy (which would really limit the freedom of a player economy) they do have enough controls to keep it from spinning out of wild control.

For example, you will never sew Dew Thread sell for insane prices (as you can buy it from the shops). Likewise you will not see Undyed Velveteen sell for a lot as it is also sold in the shops.

This in turns puts a soft cap on the cost of a lot of weaver made items in the level 30-40 range.

Likewise, you can buy Iron and Steel ingot in shops, so items made from those will have a controlled upper cost.

It's really only when you start getting to Level 50ish gear that there are less price controls in place, and more exposed market economy. This is good for new people (they have safe prices at low level) and high people (they can take advantage of the market for selling, or use some of their gil they earned when buying).

(And this too is balanced in a way with drops from dungeons/primals/etc. Why pay 10M for an Ivory Staff when you can get something from Ifrit/Moogle/Garuda or DH/AV/GC. Which is part of the reason why you can get an Ivory Staff cheap, even if it is the ONLY 2-h THM /BLM craftable weapon out there).

[Nohmaan]

Again, you're mentioning the few items they have added to NPC vendors at arbitrary prices. Those items will rarely sell for more in AH than at the NPC, but there isn't any regulation on the selling price. More things sell to NPCs for far less than what you make off 1 guild leve.

The point of the index would be to help monitor the factors of supply and demand in real time, and use those figures to help regulate currency flow.

And it seems that they want to have items available through a variety of means-- meaning while some good gear is obtained through primals and etc, other types may require purchasing the items from a skilled crafter.

I still don't see any good reason why the market would not benefit from NPC participation-- it would be beneficial to both new players and seasoned players. New players would be introduced into the value of the current market with NPC prices, and older players would have additional outlets for selling goods.

NPCs shouldn't be expected to be competitive with the player market, but can help regulate those values from hyper-inflating.

[Nohmaan]

The CPI is a key indicator of inflation rates, you're scoring the inflation in price of goods in the past vs. in the future. What I'm asking for IS a price index, so that the rate of gil required to purchase each item in each field has a mark on the rate in which gil is being given and taken by NPCs.

I'm also not asking for a free market system, while I would like to see NPC values inflate and deflate as needed there doesn't need to be a removal of certain hard or soft caps at some point. But having NPCs with items that are at set values isn't going to help a whole lot when those vendor items become outdated and useless- meaning their price values have no consequence since it's a good people don't want anyways.

Central Banks use the information to decide when to print or remove money from the system. NPC vendors (in addition to taxes and airship fees, materia melding, etc.) are the money printers in the game. And since there are unlimited ways to introduce new gil into the system, it needs to be able to be removed from the system to curb that inflation, and this is just one measure that may help.