Why is this not the solution?

[MilkieTea]

... do you want me running around yelling "TRUMP WON"?

Believe it or not, that's not American, it's just stupidity! :P There's a really fine line.

[Juun]

Instanced housing is not a solution, so we dont have to assume. The whole point of not having instanced housing means you get to walk through a ward and see peoples creative minds at work making their homes. Without it the appeal to housing drops 10 fold. If you want instanced housing get an apartment.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Instanced housing is not a solution, so we dont have to assume. The whole point of not having instanced housing means you get to walk through a ward and see peoples creative minds at work making their homes. Without it the appeal to housing drops 10 fold. If you want instanced housing get an apartment.

This was the intent. The intent has failed.

[Almagnus1]

This was the intent. The intent has failed.

It worked... until personal housing was allowed... that screwed everything up, and it's been a disaster since then.

[ForteNightshade]

Instanced housing is not a solution, so we dont have to assume. The whole point of not having instanced housing means you get to walk through a ward and see peoples creative minds at work making their homes. Without it the appeal to housing drops 10 fold. If you want instanced housing get an apartment.

Being able to own and decorate your own house increases the appeal 100 times over. People are more concerned with actually owning a house than they are showing off the outside of it, especially since Instanced Housing would likely allowing visiting. So you could still show off your house to your friends. It also wouldn't force people to stay subbed.

It worked... until personal housing was allowed... that screwed everything up, and it's been a disaster since then.

It still failed even before because housing was so prohibitively nobody could afford them. Even if they only lowered the prices but never allowed Personals, people would just create dummy FCs like they do already. The neighborhood system was doomed to fail from the moment of its inception.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

It worked... until personal housing was allowed... that screwed everything up, and it's been a disaster since then.

Absolutely correct. Honestly the best thing to do at this point would be to allow personal instanced housing and make the wards FC only. Grandfather anyone who has a personal ward house, but disallow relocation.

But SE won't make instanced housing, because potato.

[Jojoya]

I also see almost no one with these mounts, and I personally know at least one billionaire who has said he's not spending his money on it regardless of how much he has. The issue here isn't that big ticket gil sinks don't work, the issue here is that they didn't offer anything someone wanted.

I know a lot of players who have them. There were plenty to be seen when the vendors were first added. People bought them because they had nothing better to do with their gil.

You don't see them now because they're rather boring as mounts and players like other mounts they have more. It doesn't mean they don't have the mounts.

Your gil sink doesn't accomplish much because while a house is something that players want, a real estate purchase system would push prices out of the range of the ordinary player so only the wealthy could buy with gil they aren't using. Or desperate players would resort to RMT to get the gil they need.

It's not closing the RMT loophole at all. There are wealthy players already selling their gil under the table to players who want gil but fear the gil selling websites (one of the hunt discords had members spammed by such a player a couple of months back until the admins kicked that player). If they can't get their real money by selling the house direct, they'll get it by selling the gil needed to buy the house. That gil comes right back to them ready to be sold all over again.

Which will absolutely function as a gil sink, yes. What it won't do is remove the incentive for RMT bots to buy and flip houses, which is the other benefit of this idea..

The only way to stop RMT in housing is for SE to stop giving players control over specific game addresses and move to an instanced system that allows every player to get the house they want, similar to what other MMOs use.

As long as we have wards and a limited number of each house size/location, we will have RMT whether it's buying the gil needed to purchase or buying the item direct.

There will absolutely be a response to this that defeats the purpose. You have 10B gil spread across yourself and nine retainers when this is implemented? Good thing you can make alts, which also have nine retainers each.

Except part of what I mentioned was removing the ability to store gil on retainers. Retainers would be a temporary bank for what's received from marketboard listings, with that gil being automatically transferred to the player when they go to interact with the retainer, same as we automatically get gil when completing a duty/quest.

You also forgot that players can now get a 10th retainer if they have the paid companion app.

What I suggest would reduce the account wide gil cap from a potential 440 billion down to 4 billion.

And assuming they can't do that, they'll just start spending the gil, which will cause inflation.

Inflation that would be very short term at best because players won't have as much gil to spend after the lower gil cap goes into effect.

It's rarely the poor players selling the big ticket items. It's the players who have lots of time on their hands to play and they've become rich because of that extra time they have to farm for the rare items that bring in the big gil.

[ItMe]

Probably the biggest cause of inflation in the game is the gil cap. There's no reason for gil cap to be 999,999,999 per character/retainer when the largest game controlled purchase price is only 50,000,000. That's an insane amount of gil that can be accumulated compared to the typical gil reward for game play (usually between 500 and 8k gil).

If SE is really concerned about inflation in the player economy, they need to remove the ability to store gil on retainers and slash the gil cap to 100 million. That's high enough for a player to comfortably accumulate what they need to get the most expensive game purchases while reducing the gap between the rich players and poor players considerably. The poor player will have more buying power because what they have will be closer to what the richest players have. The rich players will still have more of the fun items and be more effective at making gil when it's time to replace what they spend but prices on player to player transactions would be reduced considerably because no one would have as much to spend.

That's an interesting idea, though I wonder how it might change people's approach to crafting when it takes 1/10th the time to cap gil and be "done" making money.
Maybe SQEX would just need to make a more gil sinks and "fun items" for people to buy, but I'm no virtual economist.
Either way, you're right, the gil cap feels nonsensically high.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Your gil sink doesn't accomplish much because while a house is something that players want, a real estate purchase system would push prices out of the range of the ordinary player so only the wealthy could buy with gil they aren't using.

The whole point of a gil sink is to stop this. After the first few months to a year, prices will drop significantly.

It's not closing the RMT loophole at all.

I never claimed it stopped RMT entirely. I said it would get RMT bots out of housing, because they won't be spam-clicking something they can't flip for a profit. You will never stop RMT entirely.

The only way to stop RMT in housing is for SE to stop giving players control over specific game addresses and move to an instanced system that allows every player to get the house they want, similar to what other MMOs use.

Which SE won't do because potato. Leaving people like us to argue about the best ways to season a shit sandwich.

Except part of what I mentioned was removing the ability to store gil on retainers. Retainers would be a temporary bank for what's received from marketboard listings, with that gil being automatically transferred to the player when they go to interact with the retainer, same as we automatically get gil when completing a duty/quest.

You also forgot that players can now get a 10th retainer if they have the paid companion app.

What I suggest would reduce the account wide gil cap from a potential 440 billion down to 4 billion.

I didn't forget anything. I just picked a number and you assumed I forgot something. And also, great, get ready for mega inflation when they decide to spend all that gil on the market board rather than lose it.

Inflation that would be very short term at best because players won't have as much gil to spend after the lower gil cap goes into effect.

Like they're going to wait. They'll spend it before it goes into effect. And please don't tell me that SE should set the dangerous as hell precedent of just getting rid of gil without telling people. Great way to destroy trust. And no they didn't do it before either. They slashed a zero off of everything, including prices. Its like how some countries do old/new currency to stop zeros from adding up.

It's rarely the poor players selling the big ticket items. It's the players who have lots of time on their hands to play and they've become rich because of that extra time they have to farm for the rare items that bring in the big gil.

Is this a problem? That's basically how capitalism should actually work. More time and effort equals more money.

[Jojoya]

The whole point of a gil sink is to stop this. After the first few months to a year, prices will drop significantly.

Purchase-based gil sinks don't do anything if the item the player wants to purchase isn't available.

SE would have to increase supply, and that by itself would cause prices to drop as houses (or whatever item) became easier to obtain.

I never claimed it stopped RMT entirely. I said it would get RMT bots out of housing, because they won't be spam-clicking something they can't flip for a profit. You will never stop RMT entirely.

Except profit is still there in the currency that matters - real money - and that's always been handled outside of the game.

Which SE won't do because potato. Leaving people like us to argue about the best ways to season a [xxx] sandwich.

If you feel like it's nothing more than a sandwich with unsanitary ingredients, why are you wasting time talking about it?

I didn't forget anything. I just picked a number and you assumed I forgot something. And also, great, get ready for mega inflation when they decide to spend all that gil on the market board rather than lose it.

Like they're going to wait. They'll spend it before it goes into effect. And please don't tell me that SE should set the dangerous as hell precedent of just getting rid of gil without telling people. Great way to destroy trust. And no they didn't do it before either. They slashed a zero off of everything, including prices. Its like how some countries do old/new currency to stop zeros from adding up.

Why would you randomly pick a number lower than maximum when you're trying to discuss maximum wealth potential?

What are you expecting them to buy from the marketboard that would cause the mega inflation? They're not going to sit there buying Mahogany Logs for 1 million gil each nor would all the players selling them list that at that sort of price.

I never said they would wait. If they bother spending the excess gil, they would do it before the cap was lowered on items that they want. Who would they likely be buying from? Other rich players who have the rare big tickets items and who will likewise get hit by the lowered cap.

Any inflation would be purely temporary. It would disappear once the cap was lowered and prices returned to their normal patterns because all the excess gil was removed.

I also never said that SE wouldn't give players warning in advance of the change. Of course they would let players know it was going to happen.

Is this a problem? That's basically how capitalism should actually work. More time and effort equals more money.

Where did I say capitalism is a problem? Neither capitalism nor the free market economy is at issue here.

The root problem the outrageously high gil cap coupled with our ability to generate gil on demand instead of having to find ways to acquire gil that already exists in the game economy. Real life may not have a gil cap equivalent but as individual and businesses we're also certainly not able to generate new money on demand - that is something governments reserve for themselves and they're usually very careful before resorting to it. If you want money in real life then you need to do something that will get someone else to give it to you.

Compare that to the game. If there's something I want to buy on a character but I don't have enough gil, I don't have to sell things to another player to get the gil I need. I've got multiple ways of getting the gil I need, some being more time efficient (leves, treasure maps) and others being very time inefficient (random mob grinds for gil and crafting materials to sell to vendor) and yet others falling in between (roulettes, challenges logs, dungeon grinds for gear drops to sell to vendor).

If the item I want is sold by a vendor, there's no problem.The vendor is a gil sink removing what I just earned from the game.

If the item is being sold to another player, then I just infused the player economy with a fresh amount of gil that will contribute to inflation because the market tax only removed 5-10% of what I had earned.

If SE didn't want to lower the gil cap but wanted to get serious about gil sinks, then they should consider a tiered market tax based on per unit sale price. As an example, keep it at 5% for items with a unit price up to 10k gil. For unit prices of 10,001 to 100k, increase it to 10%. For unit prices of 100,001 to 1 million, increase it to 20%. For items over 1 million, increase it to 40%. Scale the seller tax in a similar fashion while retaining some discounts to incentivize sellers to place their retainers in the less congested markets (assuming SE still hasn't solved the global market programming issues they had mentioned back when world visit was announced).

That would do double duty when it comes to inflation checks by both pulling more gil out of the player economy and encouraging players to price lower to keep out of the higher tax brackets. Yet I imagine most players would like that idea even less than the idea of lowering the gil cap. Lowering the gil cap would only impact the wealthy players. A tiered market tax would affect everyone.