Get Your Gil-Sinks Straight

[MariyaShidou]

Level 23 ARC, started over after 1.19 hit. I am fully decked in lv 22 gear, got all DoW and DoM classes to 10, leveled some DoL and DoH classes also. Used the market wards to sell stuff and I have around 250.000 gil left.

Didn't do anything special. Just GC quests, leves, sidequests and so on .... so what the hell is the problem?

To be fair, you started over, you have knowledge that a new player doesn't. Still, there are new low level sidequests that involves running around that give you 10k gil, and other sidequests give equipments straight away.

[Evenstar]

To be fair, you started over, you have knowledge that a new player doesn't. Still, there are new low level sidequests that involves running around that give you 10k gil, and other sidequests give equipments straight away.

Fair enough, but I did not play for almost 6 months, so I really needed time to get used to things again.

I simply do not think that the money sinks in this game are that bad, it is actually one of the few things that is not wrong with this game. It is perfectly balanced.

[Chardrizard]

It does destroys gil because the gears that people buys are gone from materia process.

[MariyaShidou]

It does destroys gil because the gears that people buys are gone from materia process.

It doesn't, the gears are 90% crafted, 8% drop and 2% bought from NPC. Only buying gears from NPC remove gil from the game.

[Platinumstorm]

It does destroys gil because the gears that people buys are gone from materia process.

Right, gil sinks destroy gil, but never at a rate in which players cannot earn more than they spend. If players are left with no purchasing power then they feel as if they cannot progress.

[Misteyes]

I agree with... most of this. Inflation will continue for as long as more money enters the economy than exits it, especially now that goods exit the economy (by being turned into materia), while money still largely does not. The only variable sink in the game is the market-tax, which means that the economy will balance when the following is true:

Money generated (Drops, Chests, Leves) = Money destroyed (Airship fees, Workshop fees, Chocobo rental, market tax).

Or, more particularly.
Market Tax (10% of player-to-player transactions) = (Drops+Chests+Leves) - (Airship+Worshop+Chocobo Rental).

With leves still (at the high levels) generating orders of magnitude more money than the fixed gilsinks are taking out, the one variable gilsink in the game will only take out money when items are priced so high (or change hands so quickly) that the player economy moves ten times as much gil every day as is generated.

The fixed gilsinks are also a regressive tax; they charge the poor a greater portion of their income than they charge the wealthy. Someone with an L50 DoH job is not going to care about the cost of the airship, but someone who's highest job is R15 sure as heck is. Even though they're paying half as much for it, that half as much makes up a much larger portion of their income than the artisans, which further decreases their purchasing power.

To some degree, that's okay, but it becomes a problem when my friend who I just introduced to the game hit L20 and we hit the market wards to look for gear for him, only to find that a single piece of appropriate gear for L20 would cost more than he had made in his entire time playing the game (doing levequests with me on a lowbie job to join him).

There are no luxuries for the super rich to spend their money on (unless airships are a luxury, but if they are, they're a pretty important one). Anything that the super rich want to buy comes from the same supply as what the poor do. Since, when leveling a new class, you still have access to all the money from your old class, this leads to L20 gear being priced well above what your average L20 can pay.

I disagree with anything that forcefully takes money out of people's hands, however. The best system, in my opinion, would be to give the super rich something else to spend their money on, such as faster chocobos, player housing, more inventory space, more retainers. Large opportunities were missed when the inventory space was increased from 100 to 200 for free, and another opportunity was missed when materia catalysts were gathered by DoH rather than sold by NPCs. Since the sinks I propose are pure luxury, they will not tax the poor at all unless the poor decide that they are more important than basic equipment.

"Inactive" gil as the poster on Page 2 mentioned doesn't actually matter until it becomes active again, at which point it will be subject to all the same sinks.

[smokymcweed]

gona have to agree with the op shit is to expensive not every player has 10-15 hours a day to play so yea lower the prices and add more bazzar slots on retainers and hey what was wrong with airship prices from xi NOTHING ok SE lets stop acting like all players are rich some of us just dont have the time to be able to afford 500k for a r20 armor piece or the paitence to put up with elitest attitudes like the ones posted in respons to the op

[Nabiri]

I'm not too worried about gil sinks right now because prices of things were just recently changed, and I trust SE will keep an eye on it like they said they would, and adjust if necessary.

I'm not rich but I don't consider myself poor either. I get by well enough, so I haven't experienced any issues with prices yet. May I ask, Anonymoose, what gil sinks specifically do you think are too expensive? What kinds of things would you like to see more expensive? Also, do you more often use dark matter (buying it I mean), or repair NPCs? (I apologize if you may have answered some of these questions already and I missed them.)
I'm just curious, but it's probably good for SE to hear this too.

As for market wards gear, I've been hearing a lot of complaints about the price of low level gear.. If people are really having a hard time affording them it would make sense that not too many sell (unless it's higher level players buying for newbs), so I can see the prices dropping a bit, in time. I've gotten quite a bit of gear from leves, so at least there's that in the meantime. It doesn't help a ton but, it still helps.

For me, I think repairing gear costs me more than anything else, but again, I'm not hurting for money at the moment.

If it's a problem, I wonder if at PS3 release costs will be lowered for new players.

In the future I would like to see more gil sinks. Not necessarily expensive.. just more. I still worry about more money going into the game than being taken out.

[Vaer]

With patch 1.19a, they are reducing the prices of the low level weapons and tools by a TON, so yeah.. The tools especially, they only cost a little more than what it would cost if you made them yourself.

[Anonymoose]

Oh, my. So much to respond to throughout the day @.@ I'll get one out of the way now, though. Moral of the story? Don't post n' sleep.

May I ask, Anonymoose, what gil sinks specifically do you think are too expensive? What kinds of things would you like to see more expensive? Also, do you more often use dark matter (buying it I mean), or repair NPCs? .

For me specifically, it's not so much one in particular or the other - just the general trend. 5K for an airship ride isn't unreasonable, but it sure is a lot more than I was expecting. Someday, I'd really like to see the return of the "make your money back if you're willing to pay attention" quest from FFXI. For instance, if you chose to take the scenic route on the airship (as opposed to instant travel), I'd LOVE if a player was given the opportunity to chance getting the 5K back.

I could continue to bitch about ~50k for a full repair, but what I'm really saying is "I think Gear Damage is a terrible mechanic aimed specifically at making people feel like making crafts classes instead of bonus abilities was a legitimate idea." ... and that's my own bias to bear, lol.

I use the repair NPC unless I'm in town or at the dungeon - I keep a spare stack of dark matter on me for just such an occasion that LS is around to help out. College has killed the entirety of my free time, so in reality every time I log in I'm losing cash without gaining any back just because I can only log in for the short time it takes to hang out with friends and DO something. (Which only deepens my rage at gear damage as a gil-sink, but again, my bias.)

What gil-sinks would I like to see? I'm not so sure! Like was just said, most of XI's gil-sinks were added to post-75 endgame itself, but by then I was buying so much food/medicine that I didn't need the sink to begin with ><

Personally, I think vendors are the best source of gil-sinks - vital minor items for common synthesis that are just slightly more expensive than you'd find in the wards just so impatient people (who tend to have more money) just pop in and buy a sh!t ton. In the words of my linkshell's #1 crafter (currently with a purse of 500m): "I'll probably just grind on those from the NPC. They're only a mil' a stack." It's all about tapping into the wallets of people who play all day and just keep repeating to themselves "Time is money! Time is money! {buys in bulk}"

The NPC prices in Eorzea are pretty goofy, as is, but Team Yoshi-P seems to be keeping a close eye on it.