Improving the Game Economically

[Amineri]

As I said in the previous post, Xenor had valid points about the economy, albeit of a more systemic nature.

None of these suggestions are ways to improve the economy. They're suggestions to improve the buying process. To improve the economy you have to focus on what exists in the economy, not the means of trading it. So what does exist? Items and gil.

I will politely disagree that the suggestions would not improve the economy. Buying and selling are intrinsic to the economy, and if they don't work, the economy won't work. That said, I agree that simply addressing the buying and selling of items without correcting systemic problems won't by itself improve this portion of the game.

Gil! It's clear there is way too much of it in the economy when there's many people already close to or above 100 million gil only 7 months after the game was released. This gil needs removing from the economy otherwise people have the power to buy anything they want at any price. This will inevitably lead to massive inflation once worthwhile rare items are added. The average player won't be able to afford the 20-50 million asking prices.

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I don't agree that it is the sheer quantity of gil that is the problem. The number is only a number. What leads to inflation is an imbalance between the number of gil sources and the number of gil sinks.

Currently there are many sources of gil, and hardly any gil sinks in the game. The only gil sinks that I know of are (a) tax on items being bought / sold in markets (b) NPC repair costs (c) facility access for crafting (d) purchasing of items from NPCs. None of these sinks are significant enough to offset the gil flowing into the economy via the leves rewards.

To stabilize the economy, the sources and sink must balance (ideally the source is still slightly greater than the sinks). This can be done by reducing sources, as you have suggested, or by increasing the sinks.

The problem with reducing gil sources are two-fold -- it penalizes new players, and is viewed as a negative change by existing players. Alternatively, I suggest that new gil sinks be added. By adding something for players to spend their gil on, it is a positive change -- players have something worthwhile to spend their gil on, rather than having their income taken away. Additionally, keeping the gil sources allows new players to enter the game economically, and continue to earn gil as they need to.

Unfortunately, adding gil sinks means adding new content, something that takes time. In the meantime, we likely will have to deal with the current inflation.

Items! There's too many of them. People can sit and spam and spam items forever until they pop out +1 +2 and +3 versions. This makes the NQ market worthless within a day of a new item being introduced and the +1 market becomes worthless shortly after. You've got to lower the amount of items that can be spammed. You've got to solve the item problem at the source.

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Items are in the same category as gil. It's less an issue of too many items, as a balancing between item creation and item destruction.

Gathering does create a very large quantity of materials, it's true. Yet, under the current crafting system, these materials are needed in order to advance crafting. The issue, I feel, is less a problem between the gathering and crafting step, as between the crafting and using step.

Crafter must create a very large quantity of items in order to advance, far above the needs of people to consume such items. Since items never need be destroyed, the only current item sinks are (a) actually destroying an item (b) selling an item to an NPC. Both of these are used extensively now, and are somewhat unsatisfactory.

The new task system is a first step toward providing a sink for items both gathered and crafted. Hopefully this will be expanded upon in future patches.

I have thought about and discussed the concept of bind-on-equip items, as well as item deterioration to destruction. However, both of these ideas, while they do remove some items from the economy, cannot do so as quickly as items are created by crafters. Further, they are negatives, essentially taking options (or items) from the players.

Instead, some positive inducement to remove items from the economy should be introduced, as the new task system has. Hopefully, the alluded-to materia system will be such a system. In order to balance continuing item creation, however, such a system would have to be essentially consumable.

As a straw man, suppose that weapons and armor could be broken down (when combined with appropriate gathered items) into various types of materia, which could then be slotted into gear to provide it enhancements. If the slotting of materia is permanent, eventually the items are filled, and the situation would return to the current state.

However, if the slotted materia decayed over time, then items would be continuously needed to be broken down into replacement materia. For example, suppose that applying materia provided an enhancement that lasted for one hour of in-game use (approximately). Given the number of wearable items, this type of system could easily consume all of the excess item production, and create demand for more.

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In summary, I agree that there are systemic imbalances with both gil and items in the game. These are related to the creation and consumption of both gil and items -- currently there is far more creation than consumption.

However, rather than restrict creation, as you have suggested, my suggestion is that increasing consumption would create a game that is more fun to play.

[Roaran]

Thanks Amineri for you input .

I am glad we basically agree on what the problems are. I think that as long as we can agree on the problem a solution is inevitable, and the more we discuss it, the best solution can be found.

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Honestly I had not put much thought into the the bazaar seeking, as I rarely if ever see it being used. Though this is most likely, as you point out, because it is extremely unreliable. And from a seeker's perpsective, your solution would quite easily allow players to base themselves in another region, yet still participate in foreign markets. You would obviously still require a search feature to find what items are be sought after. However, outside of this very limited use, I think this may turn into being a very unintuitive feature.

To explain, suppose a rank 30 player, based in Limsa Lominsa, wishes to participate in the Gridania marketplace. Under the proposed system, our retainer would be able to help us. First, let us again suppose the adventurer is seeking an item that is in shorty supply in Limsa, yet is plentiful in Gridania. Through this system, the adventurer can place his retainer all the way in Gridania and start seeking for the item. But, after placing his retainer, the adventurer must wait or either move on to something else before he/she can recieve the wanted items. Even though there may be plenty of items in the bazaars, there is no independent interaction between bazaars; and, in order for the Limsa-based player to get the items they seek, it will require Gridania players to personally sell these items directly to the bazaar which may or may not require the players to first take items out of their bazaars find the seekers bazaar and then finally make the transaction.

A solution to this may be, to allow bazaars to have automatic transactions. Under certain circumstances bazaars would handle trades and transactions themselves. For example, if a bazaar is currently selling an item and another seeking the item; they would then be able to handle the transaction. But it would also require prices either matching, or implementing a new mechanic that allows players to seek items for a certain price range, and I do not see a mechanic like this ever being implemented.

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The Probelm with a single dominant Market in FFXIV

Before moving on, I would remind everyone, the particular problem we are dealing with here, is how best to spread the population out into the various regions. This particular problem has two roots: first the weak overall population encourages players to seek a common hub, and the second, markets are completely inaccessible from different regions. The former can only be solved with increased popularity, and an overall improvement in the game itself. The latter, however, can be fixed through a myriad of methods. Although, it may be said, that the latter may influence the former if done properly.

Also, in the future, Ishguard may become they new hub of popularity for players. This would mean a desertion of Ul'dah and the other regions completely, as the market would then move to Ishguard (assuming there is a market ward there).

This particular problem affects two groups of players in particular. Newer players and players playing in other regions. Newer players are the most uniformed player, and it is highly likely, in the current situation, that they will not choose Ul'dah as their starting location. Secondly, if the market place moves entirely away from the starting cities to Ishguard, a new player would most likely not be able to participate in a viable marketplace for a very long time. While newer players are unknowingly placing themselves at a disadvantage, there are some players who do so knowingly. These players like to play in the Black Shroud & La Noscea for the most part, and rarely make the long journey to Ul'dah for supplies. Aside from limiting their economic participation, it also places a unnecessary burden on these players. In addition, I don't believe Square-Enix developed equal amounts of content in each zone, just for only one zone to become so dominant. The coalescing of players also places severe pressure on server stability as well. Thus, from a developer and player stand point, it is better to fix this problem.

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I am concerned about your suggestion to link all of the market areas into one, however. Such a step, once done, cannot effectively be undone. I have seen many, many games that have been severely diminished by 'globalization' of the world.

I do agree with you on this one. Once done, a linking of the market wards would probably never ever be undone, as its convenience would be too hard to part with. For a very long time I shared your exact sentiments. I see the FFXIV economy being one of the most interesting of all online games right now, and it at least has very good potential. I also believed that linking the market wards should not be done or even considered until major means of transportation have been implemented. I still do hold this sentiment to a degree, I am not necessarily in a rush to link the wards. If there were no means of transportation coming, however, it would be almost required for the markets to be linked.

Yet, I have now come to the conclusion that an eventual linking of the markets should take place. I do not come to this conclusion lightly, as I hope you can see I have put a great amount of thought into this subject. By linking the market wards, certain aspects of a dynamic ecnonomy would be eliminated. Although most of these aspects in mind would arguably be more profound with better transportation, they currently are not being employed to any great degree. But, the main point is this: The economy and market system must serve the game, not vice versa, and that linking the market wards would, by helping to alleviate the problems I outlined above, would help lead to a better game.

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Finding the best method to improve the Markets.

I don't assume to have the best ideas, far from it in fact. I am just looking at the most visible problems, and giving suggestions. I believe that while linking the market wards is important, it may be more important to improve the Market Wards system first. I'll outline what we have as major problems so far:

• Placing Retainers
• Moving to each Retainer to Buy
• Unable to see what items are being sought after.
• Market Crashes

These are structural problems within the ward system itself. As I look at these, the best idea that comes to mind is the one I had suggested. Maybe the exact implementation is not best. But a single point to reference all bazaars for items would eliminate the need for players to place retainers in specific wards, and would remove the need for players to move to each retainer to buy the items. A mechanic to search for seeker's items would still need to be implemented. But the bazaar reference system would still be able to handle this. But the most important reason for my suggestion is this: as the game popularity increases. It becomes obvious how bad the market crashes might become. Already there are caps on certain market locations that prevent some retainers from being used effectively. If there is a 30% increase in population, there is no chance for the market wards to hold these retainers. Thus this problem only serves to show how unsustainable the market wards are in the future. It will always be a thorn in the side of the developers that must be continually addressed. This very problem may eventually force the developers to link the market wards, just to distribute the retainers more evenly across the other markets as well. Thus a system that is capable of only referencing the Retainers would be far more effecient, and cause far fewer technicaly problems for the developers.

[Jinko]

Amineri and Roaran you have some great idea and its nice to see two people discussing idea's politely.

The problem I see is that what you are suggesting would require a lot of work on the developers part which is fine for the long term but they need to do something soon (before PS3 release).

FWIW we asked many times in beta that retainers be allowed to do our shopping, similar to how you suggested, ie tell retainer to look for item between the price of X and X, I guess we can assume it wasn't considered (mind you that was when Tanaka was leading the game) and as I said the amount of programming and variables to consider would be mind boggling I would imagine.

I do like the idea that you can intrust a retainer to go to a different city, this however brings up a few questions, assuming we send a retainer from Ul'dah to Gridania would this mean we couldn't summon the retainer for 30 mins (ie the length of the journey) or would they have their own Anima :P??

I'm not really a fan of waiting for things, say for example you suggest sending your retainer to buy something and do leves for 2 hours to wait for them to make the purchase and return, what if i have done my leves and want to crack on with some crafting and I'm missing the item/s i require to do that. Does that mean I would have to wait 2 hours for my retainer to return to me with the item or would it mean that if i wanted the item straight away I would have to go get the item/s myself? (this negates the purpose surely)

I feel right now the best way to solve the issue would be SE allowing people to teleport to any of the wards at the market entrance, ie I run up to the market wards in Ul'dah and get a choice which city ward I want to teleport to, obviously this adds another layer to the menu system which I'm not really a fan of but it could be a quick stop gap, there would be no need to link the wards together as they would be easily accessed between the 3 cities. (of course if you enter Limsa market wards from Ul'dah you would only have the choice to exit to the place in which you entered in this case The Fronds)

Another suggestion would be to make the MW's one place (ie one massive instance) and not specific to any one City state but perhaps this is just the same as linking them and would require a seperate server just to handle the traffic flow and crashing issues.

[AttacKat]

Sorry, a bit late on joining this thread ...

I just started playing FF14 couple of months ago. Having played a few player driven economy MMOs in the past few years, the two major ones are EVE Online and Entropia, I like to share my two gils on this matter ...

Running the risk of repeating what have already been stated, but to help understand, allow me to list some of the issues I have with FF14's market:

- Lacks system resources caused the market to be not fully functional (visual retainers)
- Lacks market data
- Lacks buying/selling functions
- Lacks storage in relation to the massive item inventory

First of all, while the Retainer idea is very noble and entertaining, IMHO it is the major cause of all the issues mentioned above. A lot of the changes can still be done in a form of a "Retainer", but with its functions changed/enhanced.

I suggest SE replace the Retainer, or redo its functionality, and make it a world inventory storage with a pre-defined items space (IE: 250). Additional items space can be purchased via monthly fee, (IE: 1USD = +250). We can access the storage in different terminals (NPC) in the major cities. This reduces the need of players having multiple retainers, as well as the need for players to do the inventory shuffle. (DB overload due to excessive unnecessary data calls.)

Replace the associated market function with retainers altogether and replace it with a world-wide Trade House (TH) AND an Auction House (AH). Both the TH/AH can be accessed via different locations in major cities, and maybe as well as major camps.

The TH needs two major operations, to list sell orders and buy orders. For selling, a player should be able to list items for sale, in whatever quality they like, and at the price they selling it at.

The buy orders will work in reverse. Buyer lists buy order at a set price, and seller sells their inventory to fill the buy order.

The player should be given the ability to set how long their list will stay on the market, eg: 1d, 1w, 30d, limited ability to update item price with time constraints such as once every 30 mins.

The AH will work like eBay, items are listed with a set end date, with or without a buy-out price. SE may or may not limited the AH to unique items.

Both the TH/AH should have low listing fees, and final fee based on transaction value.

With this new world-market, SE now can also gather market data and can make different market trend reports available in game and offer better UI with search ability.

The current visual retainer implementation just does not work, aside from being resource intensive due to all the animation, it is also location restrictive.

IMHO the world storage will help resolve the limitations set by the current retainer system. Being only level 50 with my THM/BLM, I have just and started to level up my DoH this past week, and I am running out of inventory space with two retainers, and I have not even begin serious crafting yet. Yet, none of this is my doing, but necessary caused by game design. The fact that one needs to be a Goldsmith, Blacksmith, Armorer, and Carpenter to craft a level 14 Brass Head Knife, a lot of inventory slots is required for just for one finished product.

In the end, as always, there is more then one way to skin a cat, this is just one additional one.

jc