Atomos = Inflation...

[Matsume]

Not necessarily so.

There are people, believe it or not, who still have other classes/jobs to level. I'm going to be leveling THM. I'm still going to be buying gear for that class - and eventually for others - from the Wards.

I am not in the position to know the validity of this next statement but based on my own experience I udnerstand that a great number of players just powerleveled most of their DoM/DoW classes to 50 forgoing gear altogether.

You're forgetting something else, though, that kinda shoots a hole in your theory/argument. NM Drops. You can get a good amount of good gear from NMs around Eorzea. I almost entirely geared up my LNC and PGL in that gear for many levels, hence not buying anything from the Ward at all, either. There wasn't much I had to buy during that time.

Further, if someone was so determined - or perhaps didn't have the money coming in to buy stuff outright - they could well have grinded out quests/missions for the GC and gotten their gear that way. That also would result in people not spending money in the wards.

And there are other examples. People leveled the classes themself, crafted their own gear and didn't need to buy it off wards. People had others in their LSs crafting the gear and selling it to them for extremely cheap, or for nothing at all.

Kinda? Are you kidding me? Those three "counter arguments" (if you could call them that) don't shoot a whole in my theory/argument, they only reinforce them. I am one of those players, matter of fact, that refused to buy ridculously over priced market ward gears. After lvling my first lvl 50 I went around all of eorzea collecting every NM drop, and thus had no more reason to acquire gear for my other DoM/DoW classes by means of market wards.

It's all well and easy to throw the whole thing at the feet of SE with Atomos. Truth is, though, there are, and always have been myriad ways that people could get good gear without having to buy from the Wards. It's a bit disingenuous to say "it's all Atomos".

It's all well and easy to throw quotes on both sides of any stupid phrase and put words in other peoples mouth but not once did I say "it's all Atomos" matter of fact, never did I say such a stupid, ignorant remark. Do you even read? Check what I wrote, then reread it, then think about what a carefully constructed comment is before posting blasphemous nonsense like this.

What I distincly said is:

1) it's ironic that SE overlooks an exploit that generates massive amounts of gil on the eve of a gil redenomination
2) the massive seals and gil generated by this exploit act synergystically on each other enabling people to purchase very good gear (gc gear) without gil thus reducing the need for them to spend gil on gear while simultaneously enriching those very players

Both facts, and for that matter the reasons you mentioned above also act synergystically to discourage players from buying GEAR on the market wards. No where did i say this was a bad thing did I? I'm just here to present the facts not pass judgement.

It's just like with the inflation thing. People are all eager to point at Atomos and say "that event is causing inflation! Prices are ridiculous!" Yet I can clearly remember wanting to buy lower level gear for a new class some months back and not being able to afford even level 10-ish stuff, 'cause it was all in the 100,000s. I couldn't afford to buy any of it and was running around in lowbie gear for upwards of 20 levels, until I got into range of using NM gear. When I posted on the forums about it, no one seemed to think it was a big deal. Strange how it's a huge issue now.

Oh that inflation thing? I am willing to bet money that exagerated prices on lower level items such as the ones you mention are not caused by inflation (increase in money supply) but more by human greed. Let me explain with a personal example.

Yesterday I entered the Uldah Wards in search of a lvl 18 main hand goldsmithing tool to skillup my lvl 18 goldsmith. There were none up for sale. So I though, that's okay I'll just buy one of those level 8 mainhand's instead, thankfully there was 1 up for sale. Guess how much it was priced at? 200,000 Gil. Why do you think that is? Because the raw materials cost 180,000gil? Or because some greedy player wants to net 195,000 gil profit on a low level item? I lean towards the latter.

That inflation thing concerns the upper tier items. Specifically materia. The reason Atomos has contributed to such inflation is the fact that hte profits being generated came from an npc. Let me spell it out for you. Player A buys 99 stacks of xtals for 1.4mil from Player B and resells via loopholes to an npc those same xtals for 2mil gil. Thats 500K new gil generated with none leaving the economy creating massive wealth for both Player A and B whom are now willing to pay much more for HQ3 Tier 4 Materia X because they have easy money.

My friend made 10mil gil a day doing this. There were DOZENS of peopel in all of the guilds doing this for what? 10 days straight? How many billions of gil were poured into the economy because of this?

By the way, there are other such exploits that still do and have always existed. Nuff said.