ROYAL RUBY • NIGHTCLUB • BEHEMOTH/PRIMAL

[SturmChurro]

I did tell you all so, didn't I?

[LianaThorne]

Getting a lot of gil isn't really all that hard. You can find a venue that doesn't charge for drinks/food, you can discuss the RP idea with the venue operators to see if they'll play along with your RP concept. You can define new elements to your character that makes him more stingy. That seems to be creating a problem when there are obvious solutions. I don't really charge for food and drinks at my venue because I don't like putting that kind of effort into accepting gil. I'll just let people tip, and all our food is an in-RP offering anyways without the inventory clutter.

Already been said that outside of Crystal, free RP venues are basically non existent. So, that's not a solution until cross-DC becomes a thing.

Aether is full of venues that charge you real gil and personally in the almost year that I've been playing FF daily so far, I have NEVER seen a free venue. I think it really needs to be made clear that Primal & Aether's RP scene is different compared to the other DCs (from what I can see from this thread). Yes there are venue owners who love to RP, but they still will ultimately charge real gil because that's what our entire DC is doing.

I don't know what happened that made this change occur, but tbh it's kind of depressing that people are trying to turn RP venues into real life experiences complete with a real bill. Like the OP said, he think he's running a legit 5 star restaurant and thinks he deserves to price it like it would irl/everywhere else in their DC. That alone just shows me it's a money thing if they're trying to match other venues rather than AT LEAST setting a fair price and keeping it Eorzean or doing it for free like they do in Crystal.

Also, just pointing out the obvious, yeah it's not hard to make gil at end game (super easy as an omni ngl) but for those who are sprouts, you're basically leaning heavily on MSQ money for a while if you don't branch out into crafting or know what to do to start building up a savings.

For those sprouts that want to go out and have a good time, this venue for example would cost them a good chunk of their gil if they wanted to RP and go all out. It's not fair to exclude people from RP opportunities just because they feel like they can't afford your prices. That literally defeats the purpose and might even deter people from getting into RP if they can't find a free venue/one cheap enough to fit their budget. RP is meant to be a community that anyone can join and find a place in, not locked behind a paywall for the richest players.

[SaberMaxwell]

Hello!
I'm probably going to convince nobody with this post, but I do want to bring up that it is expensive to stock these bars. For my own venue, we sell Mors as one of our primary drinks, sometimes selling into the thousands within a month. That takes gil to supply, and a lot of it. As well, the bartender gets an hourly wage, though I'm unsure if other venues practice hourly wages, so on top of all of that, sometimes we don't even go black on our bar earnings for a month.

As far as "buy out the bar for the rest of the night for 600k" goes, again, it's a gamble on our end when somebody does that. It's possible and has happened we've sold more than 600k worth of goods on nights the bar has been bought out. The items may be digital, but they take real time and resources to gather for and craft for.

We've always kept a strict asking price of 5k gil as a limit, and we always make sure what we sell is HQ.

Like I said, I probably won't convince anyone who's already figured it in their head that gil transactions tarnish the sanctity of rp, but managing a venue cost-efficiently isn't a lazy way to earn gil at all lol. At least the way my venue does things, maybe we're just tryhards who reinvest any gil we *do* make into the venue itself.

[LianaThorne]

Hello!
I'm probably going to convince nobody with this post, but I do want to bring up that it is expensive to stock these bars. For my own venue, we sell Mors as one of our primary drinks, sometimes selling into the thousands within a month. That takes gil to supply, and a lot of it. As well, the bartender gets an hourly wage, though I'm unsure if other venues practice hourly wages, so on top of all of that, sometimes we don't even go black on our bar earnings for a month.

As far as "buy out the bar for the rest of the night for 600k" goes, again, it's a gamble on our end when somebody does that. It's possible and has happened we've sold more than 600k worth of goods on nights the bar has been bought out. The items may be digital, but they take real time and resources to gather for and craft for.

We've always kept a strict asking price of 5k gil as a limit, and we always make sure what we sell is HQ.

Like I said, I probably won't convince anyone who's already figured it in their head that gil transactions tarnish the sanctity of rp, but managing a venue cost-efficiently isn't a lazy way to earn gil at all lol. At least the way my venue does things, maybe we're just tryhards who reinvest any gil we *do* make into the venue itself.

Legitimate question, if you don't even make a profit for a month sometimes, why do you continue to work under high operating costs? Sounds more like you need to cut corners until you gain the popularity needed to profit at your current standards or switch it up so you do make a profit (sell items that don't take as much effort to gather/craft for example, pay people for the night rather than by hour, etc.) It just seems kind of "no gain" to put in so much effort to make master recipes, for example, to ultimately not see much return.

[Saefinn]

Hello!
I'm probably going to convince nobody with this post, but I do want to bring up that it is expensive to stock these bars. For my own venue, we sell Mors as one of our primary drinks, sometimes selling into the thousands within a month. That takes gil to supply, and a lot of it. As well, the bartender gets an hourly wage, though I'm unsure if other venues practice hourly wages, so on top of all of that, sometimes we don't even go black on our bar earnings for a month.

As far as "buy out the bar for the rest of the night for 600k" goes, again, it's a gamble on our end when somebody does that. It's possible and has happened we've sold more than 600k worth of goods on nights the bar has been bought out. The items may be digital, but they take real time and resources to gather for and craft for.

We've always kept a strict asking price of 5k gil as a limit, and we always make sure what we sell is HQ.

Like I said, I probably won't convince anyone who's already figured it in their head that gil transactions tarnish the sanctity of rp, but managing a venue cost-efficiently isn't a lazy way to earn gil at all lol. At least the way my venue does things, maybe we're just tryhards who reinvest any gil we *do* make into the venue itself.

A few thoughts:
- it wouldn't be so bad if the mark up was realistic, some items are real cheap to craft
- real items don't have to be exchanged and that can save cost there
- placing housing items is another way of having a physical item for people to ICly consume without there be repeat costs and I'd argue plays the effect better because the food remains physically there and physically represents the food you've put down and not a generic eat emote
- allow people to pay in pretend Gil and thus receive pretend items.
- hired staff seems to be where the business mentality comes in, the idea of RP is to have fun, so my expectation is that the people serving are doing it because they enjoy the RP...and people do, it's not like work you get some great IC interactions. And you can rotate with other RPers or offer to help them out if they doing it as favour to you. Do people have this mentality in these places that they only RP in those scenarios if they get paid? And not because they enjoy RP?

[SaberMaxwell]

Legitimate question, if you don't even make a profit for a month sometimes, why do you continue to work under high operating costs? Sounds more like you need to cut corners until you gain the popularity needed to profit at your current standards or switch it up so you do make a profit (sell items that don't take as much effort to gather/craft for example, pay people for the night rather than by hour, etc.) It just seems kind of "no gain" to put in so much effort to make master recipes, for example, to ultimately not see much return.

Actually, we have cut a lot of costs over the year we've been operating, and we've expanded our menu with a variety of options, many of which far below 5k in asking price. Mors is just our most popular item by far.

At the end of the day, we can take months we go in the red because we only use generated gil to reinvest into the establishment (this mainly takes the form of renovations, so furniture costs and labour when we wanna spice things up) and make sure everyone's paid. A bad month now can be fixed by a good month yesterday, basically.

The reason I even poked in at all was because, even though we're transacting for gil, we're not in it for a profit. (I'll mention and apologize to OP, I'm not affiliated with his venue and me talking about my own in his thread feels a bit disrespectful. Anyway!)

For better or for worse, the model we've adopted is one our employees and clientele have grown accustomed to. We're not averse to evolving of course, but things like bartender pay are more or less set in stone (and the job can be exhausting, at our venue a bartender does more than serve drinks, they're actively chatting people up, directing people around, for ~5h a night).

[SaberMaxwell]

A few thoughts:
- it wouldn't be so bad if the mark up was realistic, some items are real cheap to craft
- real items don't have to be exchanged and that can save cost there
- placing housing items is another way of having a physical item for people to ICly consume without there be repeat costs and I'd argue plays the effect better because the food remains physically there and physically represents the food you've put down and not a generic eat emote
- allow people to pay in pretend Gil and thus receive pretend items.
- hired staff seems to be where the business mentality comes in, the idea of RP is to have fun, so my expectation is that the people serving are doing it because they enjoy the RP...and people do, it's not like work you get some great IC interactions. And you can rotate with other RPers or offer to help them out if they doing it as favour to you. Do people have this mentality in these places that they only RP in those scenarios if they get paid? And not because they enjoy RP?

- some items, yeah, but also take into account the actual time it takes to craft them. It's not a lot to craft 3 mors, but 300 can take a while.
- that's true, although that's not the model we've ended up choosing. For some, transacting real gil for real items is part of the charm.
- true also, and I can see how establishments can make that work, but as far in as my particular venue is, that kind of shake up would probably just get us deserted.
- again, we've just ended up catering to people who like transacting real gil for real items.
- if you're able to maintain a full staff of employees for your venue on the joy of being there alone, I wish you all the power in the world. Turnover is harsh, people burn out over time even with the gil incentive to come around. At some level, getting paid hourly is part of the roleplay as well.

I can see where your concerns stem from. I just wanted to sort of show why some pricing is the way it is from the other side of the fence, as it were, maybe try and get it into the air that gil changing hands doesn't mean we're raking in money hand over fist. Well in gross we are but in net it's a lot closer to breaking even.

And you know what, I can also only speak for my own place, so take what I say with a grain of salt as well when looking at other places.

[Saefinn]

snip

No, by all means I appreciate your perspective and I realise you can only represent yourself and you seem quite conscientious on these things. So if anything it allows me to try and better look at it from another angle.

When people are talking about running RP like a business, it sounds like like people trying to generate money for profit especially when their mark up is rather...high. My obvious notes of concern with it being the norm is a payment wall gatekeeping RP, room for people to exploit RP for money and a situation where there's very little to accommodate RPers unless they're willing to pay. But if it's something the general community there is happy with, then it's hard for me to say it's wrong for said community, at least in the case of people who're in it for the RP and not the money.

Staffing can have its challenges, I can relate but we've had ours in check for our FC tavern for about a year now. I can relate in that I experienced burnout when I was doing too much as a bar person. We've got it set up help avoid burn out. With the market event I help run, staffing hasn't been an issue during the time I've been involved with it.

I guess the way it works well for us at our tavern is that we treat it as an RP scenario, like it's you're writing slice-of-life, meaning character development can happen between staff, it can happen between staff and regulars and people can make new IC friends through their interactions as staff and things like that can be a hook. One of the characters I serve on has become friends with another member of staff and it has create some good writing between then and this is to the point where I almost exclusively use that character as staff at the moment because I am invested and then it doesn't feel like it's work and she is getting good character development out of some of her other interactions there too. Guests still get attended to, and we help promote interactions with guests too, it's how we end up with regulars. And that also leads to RP away from the bar, because are part of our group we run plots and characters get tied up into each others plots through various social interactions. And this is stuff that can happen for both staff and guests.

There are costs for us as well because there are things that we do that require it (even if we don't stack up items to give out), but we keep our FC bank topped up and are able to front those costs. And we also have omnicrafters who can help us from delving too deep into that.

However,, it does sound like you guys have something that's working for you, but from what you say there is a demand for people to spend their gil like that. Aren't people And if it's the norm, aren't people worried it gatekeeps out potential RPers out from social venues?

So update on the whole RP thing for you other weridos like myself who don't get it. Bartenders don't seem to accept fish as payment for their NPC bought drinks. From what I remember in these sorts of medieval settings, bartering with items was common practice. But these fancy pants places with their heretical electricity apparently think they're above that.

I'll update you more as I continue my investigation. I'm gonna find out tonight if a foot rub requires me to unequip my shoes

People can normally smell a troll from a mile off. They REALLY stand out. You don't get it, it's fine, not everybody has to. It's just a thing.

But I suspect even then you might not have much success especially at venues that charge real gil.

[LianaThorne]

- some items, yeah, but also take into account the actual time it takes to craft them. It's not a lot to craft 3 mors, but 300 can take a while.
- that's true, although that's not the model we've ended up choosing. For some, transacting real gil for real items is part of the charm.
- true also, and I can see how establishments can make that work, but as far in as my particular venue is, that kind of shake up would probably just get us deserted.
- again, we've just ended up catering to people who like transacting real gil for real items.
- if you're able to maintain a full staff of employees for your venue on the joy of being there alone, I wish you all the power in the world. Turnover is harsh, people burn out over time even with the gil incentive to come around. At some level, getting paid hourly is part of the roleplay as well.

I can see where your concerns stem from. I just wanted to sort of show why some pricing is the way it is from the other side of the fence, as it were, maybe try and get it into the air that gil changing hands doesn't mean we're raking in money hand over fist. Well in gross we are but in net it's a lot closer to breaking even.

And you know what, I can also only speak for my own place, so take what I say with a grain of salt as well when looking at other places.

Is it that people like spending gil to participate in RP or is that venues made that the norm after seeing the potential of making money off it? Cause it's already been stated multiple times in this thread that free RP venues are the norm in other DCs. Aether and Primal seem to be the exception so far.

[SturmChurro]

I don't know about anyone else, but if I want to buy food items in-game I'll usually just go to the marketboard.