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

[Rentahamster]

^This. Let us bet on chocobo races

Let players take part in the Gladitorial Arena and Place bets on the winner.... just like in the cutscenes!

Normally, I'd be for these things. However, they are too easy to be exploited.

What is to stop the participants from taking a dive or losing on purpose? There is no way to guarantee the integrity of the contests if there is outside betting.

The only way to ensure that the participants will do their best to win is if they have their own money on the line.

[Amineri]

I am an adventurer, and I could care less about economies to be honost. I want to be able to do quests and endgame and whatnot without having to worry about if I have enough gil for things like a speed belt or salvage materials.

Most people in both the real-world and in MMOs (funny, that) don't care about the economy -- until it turns around and bites them on the ass.

Real world -- I don't care about the economy ~~ until the unemployment rate goes up and I can't find a job.
MMO -- I don't care about the economy ~~ until RMT and massive inflation keeps me from buying anything.

For better or worse, any MMO will have an economy. Even if money were removed from the game, as long as trading is allowed, there would be at least a barter economy (and damn if that wouldn't be a mess). Players would probably end up creating their own currency (maybe marmot pelts?).

You could go a step further and disallow trading, in an effort to make an "economy-less MMO". Even then if you can form a party to go after item drops, you could still have economic trades of the form "Player A will help Player B quest for item X if Player B helps Player A quest for item Y". Barter of services in this case. RMT would likely step in and offer to walk players through quests to get items in exchange for real-world currency.

The only way to get rid of an economy is to have a game with no player-exchangable currency, no player-trades, and nothing other than solo quests. This would basically be a single-player game with a glorified chat-room. Maybe that's the type of game you would prefer? It's not a bad game design, but it isn't an MMO.

The point is: any MMO is going to have an economy. If the economy is broken, the game is less enjoyable. Many game titles in the past have proven that point (I'll only point at Aion). If the development team doesn't care about the economy, they don't care about the game succeeding.

[Amineri]

Normally, I'd be for these things. However, they are too easy to be exploited.

What is to stop the participants from taking a dive or losing on purpose? There is no way to guarantee the integrity of the contests if there is outside betting.

The only way to ensure that the participants will do their best to win is if they have their own money on the line.

Even that isn't enough. If the money that the players involved have is small enough, they can afford to take a dive if the pay-off from the person fixing the match / race is big enough.

[Rentahamster]

Even that isn't enough. If the money that the players involved have is small enough, they can afford to take a dive if the pay-off from the person fixing the match / race is big enough.

Uh, what? The prize money is only as big as the total amount of entrance fees. As a group, they would all exit the race with the same amount of money as when the entered, just distributed differently depending upon who won.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/10792-DevTalk-Chocobo-Thread.-Riding!-Raising!-Racing!-You-Know-You-Want-Your-Fix

- players can race in 3 different classes. Player entry fees for each skill class are put into a single pot.

1st place: 70% of pot
2nd place: 15% of pot
3rd place: 5% of pot
4th place: 5% of pot
5th place: 5% of pot

In fact, to make the races a gil sink as well, we could have it so that the total payout to the winners does not equal to 100% of the combined entrance fee money.

Something like:

1st place: 60% of pot
2nd place: 10% of pot
3rd place: 5% of pot
4th place: 5% of pot

[SuzakuCMX]

It's not a problem for DoH, at least not for me. I spend a ton of gil on mats to level up my crafting outside of leves...enough that 8 R20-30 leves can barely outweigh the costs for R20 Weaver recipes.

However DoL/DoW/DoM can get lots of output without much input.

[Amineri]

Uh, what? The prize money is only as big as the total amount of entrance fees. As a group, they would all exit the race with the same amount of money as when the entered, just distributed differently depending upon who won.

Sorry, Renta, I was referring to the previous post (which I thought you were replying to) in which betting on player arena matches would be explicitly added into the game. I thought you were saying that if players had to bet on themselves (and others could as well) that would solve fixing of matches. My mistake

A zero-sum (or nearly so) system involving only the players involved in the match or race wouldn't have that issue, certainly!

[rsnider]

When exactly does gil become "easy to earn"? I can't afford anything except the weathered gear. Admittedly, I've only leveled all ranks to 5 and PUG to 11 (16 physical), but already I want to upgrade my hand-to-hand weapons but everything I find is 40,000 or more.

[sketch]

When exactly does gil become "easy to earn"? I can't afford anything except the weathered gear. Admittedly, I've only leveled all ranks to 5 and PUG to 11 (16 physical), but already I want to upgrade my hand-to-hand weapons but everything I find is 40,000 or more.

ye new players have it really hard atm, while i am not new and made money @ launch but even now returning to low lvl craft is a real money dump. inflatiion has made everything that used to be decent.. expensive

[Amineri]

When exactly does gil become "easy to earn"? I can't afford anything except the weathered gear. Admittedly, I've only leveled all ranks to 5 and PUG to 11 (16 physical), but already I want to upgrade my hand-to-hand weapons but everything I find is 40,000 or more.

I've been playing since the early CE release, so must admit to not being able to completely understand the plights of new players.

Here are my suggestions:

• Find a reasonably valuable material, gather it, and sell in the Ul'dah markets. This needn't be a gathering profession. On Besaid, sheepskins sell for 6k to 7k a piece, and drop from sheep around Limsa that are rank 1 to 10. The value is to higher rank tanners, alchemists and weavers that are using them to make fleece (r44), lanolin (r30) and wool yarn (r45).
• Alternatively, pick up a gathering profession. Only the top tier crafters are making lots of gil. You can slowly rank up a craft (and earn some gil) by doing the local leves, but seriously grinding up a craft by making lots of synths takes lots of gil. Iron ores, and silver ores sell well, and can be gotten starting at around rank 20ish mining, I think. Botany has some logs that sell well (walnut, for example, sells for 6k to 8k a log on Besaid). Certain fish sell well, as they are used to make crystals. You can either sell the fish directly, or rank up alchemy and sell the shards and crystals.
• The final option is to continue ranking up DoW/M The higher tier regional leves can easily offer 10k-20k gil or more for a single leve. These leves, incidentally, are the source of the inflation, since each player can generate 100k gil a day through leves. Also, team up to perform leves. Even leve-sharing with another person nets a gil reward. Generally something on the order of 3k to 7k for a rank 40 leve.
• In addition to leves, pay attention to the dropped items from monsters. Some of them are quite valuable. Bomb Ash, for example, I think sells for around 10k per piece. Certain +3 items can sell for 50k ore more.

Materials are valuable for one of the two following reasons:
a) used to grind up a craft
b) used to make HQ end-game items

Good luck!

[Colino]

Honestly though, ANY content we could actually spend our money on would be worthwhile. I mean, other than gear (with the exception of the NM stuff it's all really cheap and easy to find by now) there's nothing to do and nothing to spend money on.