Game Economy and the gil redenomination

[Punainen]

OP, that's EXACTLY how I believe it will go also. Most people disagree, but its human nature and human greed. Even if they drop prices by a LOT, I'd be willing to bet real money that they will NEVER drop to one tenth their current price, and therefore SE will have effectively caused wide-spread mass inflation.

Items that were selling for 2 mil are NOT going to drop to 200k...they just wont.

[Ferth]

I like how people seem to think pricing is only a function of the people selling the items... Or that items will maintain their exact value after 2.0 comes out.

It's entirely possible that a 2 million gil item in 1.0 will be very trivialized in 2.0 and might not even be worth the 200k relative value.

And honestly, we'll really never know what every item in 1.0 will carry over to in 2.0... Because the entire game will be different, which means the entire economy could be very different, too.

The value of items will have to find their own balance in 2.0. And those values will only be dependent upon their place in the new game. It's possible that for a period directly after launch items might maintain a relative value to their 1.0 prices, but my bet is that depending on how long beta testing happens, items will already start shifting in value based on what people learn from playing the beta.

But as has been stated to death, since the redenomination is global, everyone will be moving in to this new economy with the same relative wealth they will have when 1.0 goes down.

[Angelas]

I love how these people living in lala land thing that by changing the pricing of the NPC buy/sell rate will control the players greed... anyone who played FFXI knows how this is going to work out.. welcome to 3 million dollar scorpion harnesses.. why? because players can charge whatever they want for an item.. the NPCs have nothing to do with that

[NefGP]

Firstly: What happens in beta, stays in beta.. you will NOT have your current char in beta you will be starting from scratch. After Nov 11 you will not see your character again until 2.0 is on the market, in the first quarter of 2013.
Secondly: What i did was, I sold off all my armor, weapons, accessories of value. Reason When 2.0 hit's they may not be worth squat do to new items, redefined stats, and so on. So really what i would advice is convert what you can in to gil now. Liquid currency will not loose ANY value, items how ever will.

Not according to Yoshi P. Might want to actually follow the dev posts more closely before making statements like that. *everything* we have is transferring. IIRC, Yoshi said there could be a slight delay and we may need to use temporary new characters initially, but we will use our existing guys & gals for beta.

[Azurymber]

why is this thread still going x_x
this is not rocket science
supply and demand exist in any economy.
If supply and demand exist prices will always go towards equilibrium
Unless SE steps in and introduces price controls, prices will balance out to exactly what they should be

And game economies are no different that real life economies because economies are a result of human pyschology and neural decision making. And it's pretty obvious given that the entire world, including "communist" countries, are all capitalist. Even North Korea has capitalist markets.
So unless you can propose as a reason as to why people on a game are different than people in real life (you can't... because the only way to pay to play a game is to participate in capitalism), the game economy will be essentially the same as a real life economy.

[Punainen]

I love how these people living in lala land thing that by changing the pricing of the NPC buy/sell rate will control the players greed... anyone who played FFXI knows how this is going to work out.. welcome to 3 million dollar scorpion harnesses.. why? because players can charge whatever they want for an item.. the NPCs have nothing to do with that

Exactly...

[Punainen]

why is this thread still going x_x
this is not rocket science
supply and demand exist in any economy.
If supply and demand exist prices will always go towards equilibrium
Unless SE steps in and introduces price controls, prices will balance out to exactly what they should be

And game economies are no different that real life economies because economies are a result of human pyschology and neural decision making. And it's pretty obvious given that the entire world, including "communist" countries, are all capitalist. Even North Korea has capitalist markets.
So unless you can propose as a reason as to why people on a game are different than people in real life (you can't... because the only way to pay to play a game is to participate in capitalism), the game economy will be essentially the same as a real life economy.

Except all items with short supply and high demand will continue to have exorbitantly high prices, and only get worse for the fact that they will still want to feel like they got 'a couple mil' off the item. And people WILL end up paying it, because they wont have any damn choice.

Prime example while we're comparing real life to video games... Gas... Gas is preposterously overpriced, but guess what? Nobody is 'not buying it'. And the price can and will CONTINUE to rise...and people will continue to buy it. They'll bitch and moan, and the seller will just laugh and reap huge profits 'cause there isn't anything the buyer can really do besides boycott, which they ultimately wont do enough of in unison to have any meaningful impact.

[Felis]

why? because players can charge whatever they want for an item.. the NPCs have nothing to do with that

Saying this is like saying a money printing machine has nothing to do with the real economy because you get your money from other people, not from the machine.

[Chardrizard]

I love how these people living in lala land thing that by changing the pricing of the NPC buy/sell rate will control the players greed... anyone who played FFXI knows how this is going to work out.. welcome to 3 million dollar scorpion harnesses.. why? because players can charge whatever they want for an item.. the NPCs have nothing to do with that

Doesnt mean ppl will buy it for 3m.

[Roaran]

Let's say the average player has roughly 50,000,000 gil (not really a representation just an example). The item he wants right now the most is a relic, and the piece he needs most is that 20,000,000 gil double materia item. While in the current version, he could buy it. In 2.0 he would not be able to buy it. This will happen for every item in high demand. Only a very few people with more than an average amount of gil will be able to purchase this item.

Note: We're not even including the people who would be able, but not willing to buy this item. The effect would be even greater.

The people who think they can still sell the item at 20,000,000 gil prices, will find out that there is less people able to purchase at that price. Meaning there will be more items than people willing or able to purchase. This means supply > demand. Unless they are complete morons, they will lower their prices however much until they are selling their items.

Prime example while we're comparing real life to video games... Gas... Gas is preposterously overpriced, but guess what? Nobody is 'not buying it'. And the price can and will CONTINUE to rise...and people will continue to buy it. They'll bitch and moan, and the seller will just laugh and reap huge profits 'cause there isn't anything the buyer can really do besides boycott, which they ultimately wont do enough of in unison to have any meaningful impact.

You're so off base on this one sorry. OVER 99% of the price of gasoline involves the costs in bringing it to you. The actual profit margin of those oil companies is less than 1%. Yet, the actual ability for companies to draw oil from the ground and transport it to customers has gotten more cost effective. The reason gas prices go up is entirely government regulation, and inflation of currencies.