ROYAL RUBY • NIGHTCLUB • BEHEMOTH/PRIMAL

[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.