Basic Economics

[Souljacker]

I believe that if they implemented Nation specialization it would fix the XI Jeuno problem (if it is a problem). If each nation had specific abundant resources, and development skills, then each nation would be able to produce larger amounts of those goods for a cheaper price than the other nations. As for a Jeuno type city being a center of trade, well it should be, that's why they put it there.

If the nation specialization was in place, Jeuno wouldn't have any resources for production. Jeuno would simply be a trade center, but it should have much higher taxes (as a crossroads city would tax in real life). Those high taxes would drive people to sell their goods in the other cities.

If we want to motivate players to visit the different cities, there is no better way than nation specialization. If there is an instant global auction, there is no motivation to visit different areas.

As for availability of items, currently I agree that it would be difficult; however, in the future (with a large population) I don't believe it will be an issue. Players will move the goods over into the different cities, and create a living international trade market. At that point the market will become a very complex, and detailed portion of the game.

In the end these basic economic principles will make FFXIV a much better game for everyone.

And again, I respectfully disagree and ask if you have played XI. If you had, you would know that this is exactly what they did there. Jeuno had higher taxes on selling goods at the AH but it didn't drive people to rush back to the starter cities to sell things. They just stopped selling lower level things because it didn't turn any profit for them. As a result, the starter city AH's emptied, and new players couldn't get things. It didn't matter that Gustaberg was "the" place to go for Goldsmithing, everyone still sold the goods in Jeuno if they sold them at all. You might get lucky and see some beastcoins or someone grinding out low level bars and offloading them right there, but for the most part the money was in Jeuno and it didn't matter that the guild was in basty.

Besides that, we have to think beyond trade goods and have a care for new players looking for equipment. Crafters generally NPC the low level things that don't turn a profit because there isn't a market for it in the big city and those selling slots are precious (if we can assume that SE will continue to limit us by certain amounts of slots). If the AH's are linked, they can reach a wider audience for their wares and not be limited by only those people who happened to start in the "correct" city.

Some of you preach to know economics but the truth is that in the real world, profit is made by reaching as large an audience as possible, not by cutting trade off and only being specific to one region. There's a reason we have a global economy now.

The same thing will happen here as happened in XI if they choose to go this route.

[AngryNixon]

And again, I respectfully disagree and ask if you have played XI. If you had, you would know that this is exactly what they did there. Jeuno had higher taxes on selling goods at the AH but it didn't drive people to rush back to the starter cities to sell things. They just stopped selling lower level things because it didn't turn any profit for them. As a result, the starter city AH's emptied, and new players couldn't get things. It didn't matter that Gustaberg was "the" place to go for Goldsmithing, everyone still sold the goods in Jeuno if they sold them at all. You might get lucky and see some beastcoins or someone grinding out low level bars and offloading them right there, but for the most part the money was in Jeuno and it didn't matter that the guild was in basty.

Besides that, we have to think beyond trade goods and have a care for new players looking for equipment. Crafters generally NPC the low level things that don't turn a profit because there isn't a market for it in the big city and those selling slots are precious (if we can assume that SE will continue to limit us by certain amounts of slots). If the AH's are linked, they can reach a wider audience for their wares and not be limited by only those people who happened to start in the "correct" city.

Some of you preach to know economics but the truth is that in the real world, profit is made by reaching as large an audience as possible, not by cutting trade off and only being specific to one region. There's a reason we have a global economy now.

The same thing will happen here as happened in XI if they choose to go this route.

What is the expression people use... "Quoted for truth".

An economy should strive to be accessible, convenient and efficient. If it fails in any of those respects, the money will flow in whatever way most closely approximates those three things. In the case of FFXI that meant funneling all of it through Jeuno and ignoring the rest AND as was mentioned simply not selling items where the tax didn't allow for reasonable profit. You may as well make it properly global and accessible so that people will hang out in various cities because the path of least resistance is no longer confined to one place.

The idealists or people who like to make their lives unnecessarily complicated might go to the small cities to peddle their wears on a street corner but not all of us play on Besaid spending our days RPing a shop-keep. Some of us want smooth efficient global commerce with price histories tracking back at least a year so the economy can better establish equilibrium prices for goods that will then properly fluctuate and not erratically change every 10 minutes because you're totally blind as to what it sold for 11 minutes ago. Some of us (probably just me) also want the system to better incorporate buy orders as well as sell orders so the information as to what items should cost (vis-a-vis what people are willing to sell them for and what people are willing to pay for them and meeting somewhere in the middle) is properly coming from both ends of the marketplace instead of being solely dictated by sellers.

That's what supply and demand is at its most superficial. Two lines on a graph converging and meeting somewhere along the way telling the world "this is probably the right price", not one line traveling willy-nilly all over the damn place fumbling in the dark for the best way to rip someone off.

[Haraldsson]

It didn't matter that Gustaberg was "the" place to go for Goldsmithing, everyone still sold the goods in Jeuno if they sold them at all.

Besides that, we have to think beyond trade goods and have a care for new players looking for equipment. Crafters generally NPC the low level things that don't turn a profit because there isn't a market for it in the big city and those selling slots are precious. If the AH's are linked, they can reach a wider audience for their wares and not be limited by only those people who happened to start in the "correct" city.

profit is made by reaching as large an audience as possible, not by cutting trade off and only being specific to one region. There's a reason we have a global economy now.

1st- I want to make myself clear. When I speak of specialization I am not talking about crafting guilds (anyone can craft anywhere). I am talking about resources. Such as, LL has mineral deposits that are better for goldsmithing than armouring. Therefore, if I live in blackforest I need to visit LL to get those materials. -or- players collect and import those goods to blackforest.
The taxes would be cheaper for goldsmithing goods in blackforest because that city wants to promote the import of those goods. Therefore, goldsmiths would work in LL, the lazy goldsmiths would sell in LL but not make a lot of gil. The more motivated goldsmiths would travel to blackforest, and sell their goods for a better profit.

2nd- low level items will be npc'd no matter what you do. As crafters gain rank, they craft more expensive things. There is no stopping that. NPC low level items will happen; unless a constant stream of new crafters continue to make these items. A global AH isn't going to change anything in this aspect.

3rd- I fail to see how this stops my goods from reaching a large audience. The system I propose encourages travel and trade. This system does REQUIRE a large server population. Enough players to actually move items around.
This system is real life global economics. This is what is happening everyday to all of our countries.

[AngryNixon]

1st- I want to make myself clear. When I speak of specialization I am not talking about crafting guilds (anyone can craft anywhere). I am talking about resources. Such as, LL has mineral deposits that are better for goldsmithing than armouring. Therefore, if I live in blackforest I need to visit LL to get those materials. -or- players collect and import those goods to blackforest.
The taxes would be cheaper for goldsmithing goods in blackforest because that city wants to promote the import of those goods. Therefore, goldsmiths would work in LL, the lazy goldsmiths would sell in LL but not make a lot of gil. The more motivated goldsmiths would travel to blackforest, and sell their goods for a better profit.

Are you saying that the tax rates would be high enough in the other two states that they might discourage people from trading there in favour of the third city where the tax rate is more "business friendly" to that particular craft?

I ask because you say that the lazy crafters would sell in LL and not make a lot of gil while the motivated ones would go sell in the other city. If we assume that to be the case than the tax rates must be such that there is a meaningful disparity between the profit you'll make in either city.

The threshold where various people start to care obviously changes but I think at 10% tax rates or less there won't be many people biting.

[Haraldsson]

the lazy crafters would sell in LL and not make a lot of gil while the motivated ones would go sell in the other city. If we assume that to be the case than the tax rates must be such that there is a meaningful disparity between the profit you'll make in either city.

The threshold where various people start to care obviously changes but I think at 10% tax rates or less there won't be many people biting.

Yes. I am saying that LL would have much higher tax rates for goldsmithing because there would be a very large supply of those goods in LL due to the natural resources, but the other two cities would have a much lower tax rate for those goods. Causing more motivated goldsmiths to sell at the other 2 cities.

Souljacker
I do think that the different tax rates would motivate players to disperse items across the game. I'm not talking a nickle, I mean a significant tax rate. Just like real countries (i.e., Norway charges 213% on agricultural imports). So obviously the U.S. doesn't sell corn to Norway, the U.S. sells the corn to Mexico.

You are correct about the amount of players being a large factor. Again in order for this system to work, a high server population is a must. As well as an easier system to list goods.

[Souljacker]

Norway has those taxes because they don't want to import agricultural products for a variety of reasons, not because the global economy is "encouraging" the US to sell our exports elsewhere and spread things "across the world". The analogy doesn't fit and the whole system doesn't make sense. Why would you want to work on goldsmithing, but have to go to a different city to buy goldsmithing items as opposed to where the abundance of supplies are?

What it sounds to me like you are saying is we should tax the location that has the most abundance, and then let people overcharge for things because they had to avoid the tax in one location and instead the players have to pony up the "convenience fee" that will be tacked on to cover the "travel costs" of selling where the lower tax is.

No matter how you slice it, it will not be good for the players nor the population in general. Heavy taxation is never the way to a healthy economy.

[Souljacker]

You can split things up but without a central trade channel to distribute goods, it will fail every time because individuals aren't going to travel to some far away land just to be a good sport. They are going to stay where they can listen to the shouts, look through what's available, and not be inconvenienced regardless of how much extra gil it costs them. Eventually one city will be decided on by the players as the "best" despite any efforts to tax them to death, and I don't agree that heavy taxation is the way to go. Positive reinforcement works better than negative, after all.

There isn't enough player infrastructure nor interest to mirror a real world distribution network of global resources. One player (or a handful) will simply never have the amount of power to really mirror the real world trade systems where you have a country in need of a certain good that another country can provide. You are likening major corporations to individuals working individually and it simply won't work. Each player is not an Exxon unto himself. We've already seen with the market wards how willing people are to even list in the right ward much less in the right city-state.

The global marketplace works because there is a central backbone where countries can come together to get the goods to the right place for the people, not the other way around. Unless you are suggesting that SE truly build an economy MMO, then we need an AH and we need it linked from the start. There is a reason places like Amazon and Newegg and Ebay thrive - it's because craftsman of all kinds can buy and sell their goods all over the world. That is the future - not me traveling somewhere obscure to get system boards for my next build and then going to another obscure location to sell because I'll save a nickel on the tax and there *might* be enough people of the correct level to desire my goods in that particular area.

Don't lets be silly.

[kukurumei]

2nd- low level items will be npc'd no matter what you do. As crafters gain rank, they craft more expensive things. There is no stopping that. NPC low level items will happen; unless a constant stream of new crafters continue to make these items. A global AH isn't going to change anything in this aspect.

False. What you consider "low level items" is a term denoted from you the seller/buyer, not the system. Meaning the values you assign to it is unprofitable. That is a problem, not an occurrence.

Secondly, the world shouldn't be producing "low level items" in excess. If it is then that's another "problem". A crafter won't craft an item that's not going to be used, and thus, it wouldn't be NPC.

That means "low level items" are being produced by the system, which is consider a "mistake" and should be fixed.

It's the chicken and the egg. You don't get a population of two headed fish, if by definition those 2headed mutated fish don't have a chance to survive. Someone has to be making them on purpose.

And yes an AH would solve this to an extent. The AH would give a value to every item through supply and demand. If an item has such worthlessness that even the minimum acceptable price won't get noticed, then it will be naturally culled from the world like survival of the fittest.

[Haraldsson]

Kukurumei:
I agree with you. Your argument makes a lot of sense. A price history would fix that issue, but the AH doesn't need to be instant global in order to give a price history.

I know you didn't say that, but this thread is turning into that argument.

Souljacker:
I'm having trouble understanding you.

Of course Norway isn't putting Tariffs on agriculture to motivate the U.S.; However, whatever their motives, the effect is the same.

The effect of a tax would be that the seller moves the goods to a different city so that they are able to sell the same goods at a lower price, for a larger profit. If you sell your goods at a place with a high tax, you still have to sell at the world price. If you try to sell higher than the world price, you will have no gil.

Once more these taxes are not something that I suggest be implemented at the current economic state of the game.