Aggressive Gold Sinks

[Reinha]

Like, no, I understand that people will buy it, I don't doubt that, but It still doesn't make any sense. Because instead of paying 10mil for an item off the MB, which I can get over a month of just selling what my retainers bring back, and stuff from desynth, if I really like a glamour item that is 200mil, that will take much longer.

Like. You're speaking for "new players" but what if that new player wants the super shiny nice item, they're 100x further away from it, and will not be able to get the item, even if they take up crafting, because there will be an over-saturated market and very few ways to make money in selling things.

Like, to say this is to help the little guys is kinda silly.

If some people (who are not you) choose to save up for that super exclusive 200 mil glamour item, that's 200 mil not spent on 20 different items costing 10 mil on the MB. As the demand for 10 mil items goes down, the sellers will likely drop the price to be able to sell the items. Maybe the price drops to 7 mil or 5 mil and then anyone (including newer players) who wants that item can get it for a cheaper price.

[Alisi]

Old Everquest 1 probably had one of the better money sinks. They put in a casino. Pay some money to an npc for wheel tokens, use the tokens at a wheel and have a chance at winning some very rare sought after items, some that didn't even exist no longer in game. At a very low RNG chance of coarse.

I don't honestly think making mounts takes a ton of development time. But that aside, I'm all for this. I was thinking about something like this too. WoW has the black auction house, which is an NPC MB that sells rare items or things taken from the game at an earlier date. They have these mystery boxes which could grant you the rarest mounts in the game or give you something that's essentially junk. People buy that all the time.

Like. You're speaking for "new players" but what if that new player wants the super shiny nice item, they're 100x further away from it, and will not be able to get the item, even if they take up crafting, because there will be an over-saturated market and very few ways to make money in selling things.

I disagree. The more active crafters there are in the game, the more materials they need. Every patch brings out the crafters and those times the MB prices spike because of demand. The difference is that individual sellers will take home less and monopolies will be drastically reduced. And the prices for the gold sink items should fluctuate depending on the gil on each server.

Will there be people who can't afford the mounts? Certainly. But you have the tools you need to get them, just like other prestige items in the game. Should we take out rare savage mode mounts because they're rare and not everyone has the time to raid?

[MoroMurasaki]

Like, to say this is to help the little guys is kinda silly.

They are non-essential items, nothing here is needed for anything but vanity/status. It doesn't hurt anyone to not have them or have to wait for them because you get no actual benefit from having them. I thought this was exceedingly clear from the original post and subsequent explanatory posts but I guess not?

Taking gil out of the game will lower prices on the MB because everyone will have something they're striving for so those crafting and gathering moguls will keep selling their wares instead of realizing they're sitting on 700m gil and there is no where else for them to go with it barring the occasional 20m top at the launch of an expansion/patch.

I think this is a wonderful idea with far-reaching benefits and frankly I think it's been well explained. I'd wager the naysayers either still don't understand somehow or feel that they will never have that much gil so they don't want other people to have shiny things they can't have. While I don't expect to break into that gillionaire market myself I see no downside of other people who have invested the time and energy to do so having some pretty trophies for their efforts.

[Zojha]

I think this is a wonderful idea with far-reaching benefits and frankly I think it's been well explained. I'd wager the naysayers either still don't understand somehow[...]

Or maybe they just have a higher understanding of economy.

It starts with the very basic question: Why do prices go up if there is more money around?
The answer is: Because people are able and willing to buy at a higher price.

That means that people need to buy items in order for them to affect prices. If people don't actually pay higher prices - for example because they aren't buying the items in the first place, which is common among self-sufficient people - then the effect the dead gil has on the prices is nil. If you aren't willing to buy an item at all, having more money isn't going to make you willing to pay a higher price for it and thus, prices may even fall in spite of inflation. Just look at all those items going for 1 gil on the market board, they are the best example. In spite of having the money, nobody is willing to pay much for them, so prices are down. And they stay down, for years on end, even though the monetary supply keeps rising.

What exactly do those super rich people buy to affect prices so much? I can tell you: Not much, or else they wouldn't be rich. They are largely self-sufficient and make their items themselves and make items for others on top of it, which causes money to accumulate at them. That's why they are irrelevant for pricing and sinking their gil is pointless as well. The gil sinks actually need to compromise people's ability or will to buy stuff to affect pricing, i.e. hit those who aren't self-sufficient and have so little money that they need to think twice about a purchase. Cruel, but that's how it is.

What is very relevant to pricing is competition on the market. To drive down prices, you want more people selling any given item to drive price competition via undercutting to lower prices. How? SE likes to make items obtainable via other means, like putting them into retainer ventures or hoards. That always causes prices to decrease dramatically, so long as the content is relevant. You can also make them obtainable from a vendor, tomes or whathaveyou, you can make the recipes easier, the mats more abundant or whatever. This is what you really need to do if you want to lower prices substantially.
Balmung's market board is a great example of that, much as crafters around the globe hate it for its undercutting tendencies.

[kikix12]

Taking gil out of the game will lower prices on the MB because everyone will have something they're striving for so those crafting and gathering moguls will keep selling their wares instead of realizing they're sitting on 700m gil and there is no where else for them to go with it barring the occasional 20m top at the launch of an expansion/patch.

It won't. That's the point. These items are valuable and they would be bought, but they are also one-time use. If someone did reach a cap reasonably quickly in the first place, they will reach that cap reasonably quickly anyway.
And to begin with, people that reached the cap and no longer are involved with the market board (since they don't need anything there) in no way affect the prices in the first place. Quite the opposite. If they will suddenly lose half of that money, you will ADD their gil to the gil in circulation as they will try to get back to the cap. As long as their capped gil is not used though, they are a non-issue. That's why new items like glamour and orchestrion rolls will start high, until those moguls buy them, but then go down in price drastically. Since those rich people will no longer buy them...cause they have it already and their gil is no longer circulating.

And you seem to have ignored what I said as well. Putting things with such massive prices will lead to promoting gil-buying, and that will increase the bots and the gil generated. It will backfire, since it's a band-aid used on a chest-wide cut. The problem is not with lack of large expenses. The problem is with lack of constant expenses, and the cheaper those constant expenses will be the more people will use them. An army of people buying cheap stuff will remove more gil than a handful of people buying expensive stuff. That's part of the reason why a successful subscription game like WoW or Final Fantasy XIV still have a place in the world.


Things offered need to be consumables. A potion that restores 50TP with a price of 20 000 gil and 10sec cooldown will remove more gil in few days than a mount that costs 750mil will in few months. After all, it would need to be used only 37500 times to pay for the price of one such mount. With 10 000 players, that's 3,75 use per player. And that quota may be done in less than an hour. Heck, the rich players themselves may "eat" through dozens of them in a single run of whatever content they prefer.

Want something that doesn't give any sort of advantage (even though it cannot be called advantage, if it is easily accessible)?! A potion that removes death penalty and, if it does, restores 20% of HP, MP and TP. Since every content can be finished without anyone ever dying, it would only make mistakes less punishing, rather than give actual advantage. If your group is not up to par against the enemy, this won't help you. But if it is, it'll lessen the pressure a bit. And it will still see frequent use. Have it sell for 50 000-100 000gil and the rich players will use it on every death, while the poorer will use it in harder content when they see a chance of victory. But it will be used.
Alternatively, in a similar notion, they can sell a potion that revives characters, similar to Phoenix Feather in Palace of the Dead. It would save the healers mana they shouldn't have needed to use, but at the cost of the DPS's stopping their attacks, so not like it's completely free either. Or, just save the healers mana if it was the healer using it. But keep it limited to one per battle per player (no need to limit their inventory), and more deaths will still force use of revival spells.


Think about it. Teleportation and repair costs are "small", but they are used constantly by everyone in the game. There are hundredths of millions of gil sunk every single day. And they have no visible effect on the market. Do you really think that one-time expenses of few hundred gil would have any more than a two-three day long effect?! The one that does not understand the system is you, not the nay-sayers (though some of the nay-sayers don't understand the system either, to be fair, thinking that removal of gold doesn't drop the prices even if it's large and constant).

[Anarnee]

They are non-essential items, nothing here is needed for anything but vanity/status. It doesn't hurt anyone to not have them or have to wait for them because you get no actual benefit from having them. I thought this was exceedingly clear from the original post and subsequent explanatory posts but I guess not?

Except the stuff on the MB is optional too. Like... There is literally nothing on the MB that you NEED to play the game. The only thing this would do is take dev time away from creating items that we all can enjoy, and funnel it into something that only a handful of individuals can enjoy.

And where if I really like an item that is hard to get right now, I could raise 10mil in a little while, but now if there is an item that I like it would be 200mil.

I understand the OP, I still say it makes no sense.

[Sarevok_Thordin]

The Fashion report is something of a gold sink right now, once the 100 combination goes up on reddit people take control of the means to make the items there and jack the prices up SKY HIGH causing more and more gil to be erased in the taxes.

[Genz]

It's not needed. The game is purposely designed that way. Gils exist in FFXIV just to give the impression of a player-driven economy, but important things are separated in a special bubble, with special devise like tomestones or scrips. Thus inflation is not a concern.
It's a trend amongst mmorpg to make the job easier for the devs. Kind of similar thing with classes and equipments : dumb it down to make it easier to balance.

[Selova]

snip.

Yes it is needed. FFXIV is one of the only games that doesn't have more gil/gold sinks on the more expensive level outside of housing and a few select glamour pieces. Anyone who makes the claim that "they aren't needed." Doesn't understand how the economy works. Someone already pointed it out, with more expensive gold sinks it means there is less gil just being sat on by players because they have nothing to spend it on which causes prices to decrease on the mb for newer players, which in turn is a boon for the game. They need to add heavier gil sinks to the game, there isn't a valid reason to not add them.

[RubyCirha]

Ill be honest stuff on the mb will always be expensive cas people like milking the most they can out of stuff i mean 20 mill for a top no thanks ill farm the mats myself at that price what im saying is no amount of gill sink will fix the current mb problem