ROYAL RUBY • NIGHTCLUB • BEHEMOTH/PRIMAL

[Saefinn]

Not sure it is. Let's stick to vendor gear bought from NPC's as that rules out marketboard fluctuations. A pair of level 70 Gazelleskin shoes in Kugane is G21,859. Just average work boots. https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Gazelleskin_Shoes

Let's equate that G21,859 to a rathr average pair of work boots on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Timberland-PR.../dp/B000XEX0Z0 as an example for US$95.

So, G1 = US$0.0043 (A bit under half a USA cent)

A 10,000 gil steak - served to you - is about US$43.21 based on NPC valuation.

What's a steak at a place like Outback cost? $35.00 ( https://online.flippingbook.com/view/250386/ has their menu )

So, is it really that far off the mark? It's not like Outback is Haute Cuisine, from what I hear.

And yet the most expensive steak in game is less than 500gil.

But again, it's not an IC justification here.

Take the prices you see here, and take the prices other people here have said they've been charge real gil for like 5000gil for an apple juice or another I've spotted where it's 4000gil for tea. Then take a look at price lists of venues that don't charge real gil. You'll find a big difference in prices. Typically you'd see around the 500gil range, some low balling to less than 100gil, the highest I've seen is around for 1,500 and that was for a very substantial meal.

At the end of the day the prices are designed to make money from players and are not based on in world logic or in-character logic.

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.

In this hypothetical situation I'd get turned away by one of these bars. Given the OP complained about how scarce and difficult it is to get RP on those datacentres, turning away a legit RPer with a legit character concept because they don't have the real gil to pay for RP would exclude me from RP until I could raise sufficient funds to play that character concept. Especially if it was a new character on a data centre I don't have access to money I have here (if talking specifically me) or if say it was a new or newish player doing this. Or somebody who didn't have money making down or heck, didn't fancy siphoning off lots of real gil away because their character is so frivolous.

I would have to seek out free venues like you mention, but from what the OP is saying and other posters are saying, charge high prices with real gil is the norm, so it sounds like my choice of free venues would be limited. Either way, it doesn't feel like a positive thing at all for this being the norm.

[Shibi]

And yet the most expensive steak in game is less than 500gil.

Clearly the chefs selling Fillet of Eft (Eft-Fil-A?) need to attend the same business school as the shoemakers!

[Saefinn]

Clearly the chefs selling Fillet of Eft (Eft-Fil-A?) need to attend the same business school as the shoemakers!

It still doesn't give IC justification for an item that:

- In Eorzea wouldn't be as expensive
- If sold by a venue that doesn't charge real gil would be sold for a lot less
- Isn't seemingly sold on the market board for near as much (but we know what the MB is like, people will over charge if they can)
- Costs nowhere as much to make
- But has a mark up that seems typical of venues trying to make real gil off of RPers and coincidentally is using real gil

It don't take a lot to figure out that the price isn't based on in character logic but is based on making money off of RPers logic. Nothing is stopping them from doing it and they're free to even if I disagree with it, but let's not pretend it's anything else
Heck even the OP has said they've based their prices on other venues who charge and that their market research was based on said other venues and took a very business like corporate mentality when looking what to charge real Gil for.



What he didn't do was look at what would be a fair price within the game's world, make reference to what would seem reasonable to a venue set in Eorzea. It very clearly has no in character justification.

My initial argument was that if it's the "best immersive experience" wouldn't the prices be more sensible to what you might expect when immersing yourself into an Eorzean setting? But ultimately they've taken a business mindset from the point of selling RP experiences and not from a business mindset within the frame of Eorzea. That's what they've set out to do, so I don't see any reason to try to make IC justifications for something not done for IC reasons.

[Shibi]

Nothing is stopping them from doing it and they're free to even if I disagree with it, but let's not pretend it's anything else

I'm actually not pretending anything.

Nobody is forcing anyone to attend said roleplay venue and eat a meal. If they get people who do, bully for them.

My initial argument was that if it's the "best immersive experience" wouldn't the prices be more sensible to what you might expect when immersing yourself into an Eorzean setting?

And that's sort of the point we have been discussing, no? The prices charged by NPCs are all over the place. 2 Steaks per Doman Enclave Restoration; 6 steaks per Dragonskin map. A steak being $40 if you take level 70 shoes, but a few hundred USD if you take the lower levels.

And when you boil it down, what even is "real gil"? The stuff falls from the skies without even trying. Roleplay a strip club in Secondlife and you are spending real hard currency from your bank account, some reports over US$100 a night in tips.... but "real gil"? Unless you are buying it from a gold seller, it's stuff you stole from the pockets of the last Garlean you killed.

[Saefinn]

I'm actually not pretending anything.

Nobody is forcing anyone to attend said roleplay venue and eat a meal. If they get people who do, bully for them.

I never said they were. Heck, I even said it's their prerogative to run it like this, I'm not telling them that they "can't" do it either.

But OP makes the complaint that the situation for RP on these data centers is that it's really hard to find whilst also gatekeeping RP behind a payment wall.

Others make the complaint that people on these data centers have discovered RP is an easy way to make money and exploit it for that.

The people making that complaint and the OP themselves say it's the norm. If it is the norm rather than exception to the rule, then RPers on those datacenters don't have a lot of choice going for them without paying gil. And of course a part of the challenge of finding a venue to RP at that suits your character and runs at times you're available. Heck if it's the norm, they might not even know any better.

The alternative then is to pay for a server transfer to come here to Crystal where the vast majority of it is free. But they're not likely to do that if their friends, statics and so on are on their data center.

And that's sort of the point we have been discussing, no? The prices charged by NPCs are all over the place. 2 Steaks per Doman Enclave Restoration; 6 steaks per Dragonskin map. A steak being $40 if you take level 70 shoes, but a few hundred USD if you take the lower levels.

And when you boil it down, what even is "real gil"? The stuff falls from the skies without even trying. Roleplay a strip club in Secondlife and you are spending real hard currency from your bank account, some reports over US$100 a night in tips.... but "real gil"? Unless you are buying it from a gold seller, it's stuff you stole from the pockets of the last Garlean you killed.

Whilst we are discussing IC justification. The point was on the OP offering "the best immersive experience" and the point I argue is that in world consideration for the price point would come into account for immersion, which we've established hasn't and that's by the OP's admission. And it would come into account because venues who aren't thinking about how much they can charge players often think about what is a reasonable price point because ICly having a price point adds to the immersion. But a lot of places don't even use a pricelist, so it's not a requirement but I feel there are points here that sacrifice immersion as oppose to just not accommodate certain immersive points.

Heck if they justified it in the way you have and took your interpretation, I'd probably think it's a bit much, but I'd roll with it because you've put in game world thought into it rather than thinking about how much you can charge players to roleplay, especially if I'm not being expected to pay in game gil for it, and it'd be rude of me otherwise. This is because one thing you accept in public RP is that people don't always follow the same logic, aren't always on the same and it's question of how you deal with that and for most things, you roll with it because it's not a big deal and if needs be, you can adjust it in your own headcanon.

The being charged is also the second issue of immersion IMO (easy to let slide if it's tiny amounts), but by these standards your character's wealth is determined or influenced by how much gil you have in game. EG: 2 weeks ago, our bar had a guest who was in good spirits with the gil ICly to spare offered to pay the bar's drinks all night (heck, the boss of the company I work does this at Christmas IRL). According to what venues like this one prices at he'd have to cough up a huge amount of gil, which would have hindered the character's intentions. This is why I posed this hypothetical situation because it's one that has happened more than once at our venue.

But yes, prices do inflate from a gamification point of view. Which is why it makes more sense to look at average items as a base price for comparison, which is what I think people tend to do when they price stuff. Hence normally we don't see regular non-charging venues list items so high. Again bringing it back to the dzo steak, at what's being charged would mean my characters from the azim steppe could make a fortune hunting dzo.

But heck level 70 boots if anything aren't average work boots, we'd probably not have a real world equivalent because no work boots exist that can improve your crafting skill.

It's designer stuff in the real world is where you tend to see the inflation, so Jimmy Choos worker boots can cost around £1000. I can also get a pair of worker boots from Matalan for £7, they probably won't be very good, but an average pair might be £20. So the huge price jumps do exist in the real world too. But of course, is no comparison, because again, the kind of boots in Eorzea you're buying don't have an equivalent.

[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).