The state of the economy, discussion.(inspired by reddit admittedly)

[Neviskio]

Hi guys, wanted to bring this topic here, kinda interested in your thoughts on the matter of the FFXIV economy right now.

I'll explain from where this comes from: on reddit a couple posts(most recent being this: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...50_im_nervous/ ) started questioning the situation of the GENERATION of gil and the general state of the game economy.

I'm not an expert but I'll try to sum it up since I can't find the other post and I'm a bit on the sleepy side:

The facts:

1)We are not talking about MAKING money on your character, but GENERATING currency in the system as a whole.Yes selling stuff at the market makes you rich, doesn't generate money but subtracts 5% gil from the transaction from the system.
2)Quests right now are not a renewable source.
3)repairs at lvl 50 when gear is a bit broken get upwards to 5k a few runs.Some people actually doing some hardcore raiding accrue 40-50k a DAY of repairs.
4)Repairing by dark matter is even MORE EXPENSIVE, I'll explain why below.
5) 2.1 should be adding dailies.Estimated time is 3 months
After these facts let's go to the speculation/theory that popped around:

the system feels set up for a huge deflation and a crash, because square enix didn't provide enough or reliable "gil fountains" to counterbalance the sinks.Quests are not renewable, fates/leves are either not enough, or the repairs just outweigh the reward.Gear gets damages by every sec you are in combat, being hit or not, so unless someone starts naked farming with smn pets, most of the times repairs are higher than mats since you can't npc them and cover the repairs.

You could buy with GC seals the dark matters, but again, you would NOT cover in any way the repairs, and if you do it's in extreme borderline cases which aren't going to be common.

So, considering that gil is evaporating every day quicker and people at 50 are founding themselves THEORETICALLY without a gil source(yes, the market still is generating gil with new players and you can sell on the market, but that doesn't appear to be stable enough.)

What do you guys think about this? I'll be honest, I don't want to sound an ass, but I believe by evidence of the last few years, that s-e is heading for a failure again.I don't believe they have much of a clue anymore in the last years on half what they do, so I'm believing they're heavily underestimating the issue as they did with servers.I also do believe that given the situation as presented, the game is surely giving more casual/inexpert players a rough time that could lead them to give up on the game, if, once they get up to 50, they see their gil vaporize.

Just to be clear: the world isn't falling for me, I just think there's a strong issue in the economy plan of ffxiv and I can see a few faults here and there, and I strongly agree with people on reddit that as soon as the rush stops, there will be a deflation and possibly a crash for the economy.I kinda believe square wanted the order of magnitude of the sales be different in hundreds of gils instead of thousands(think of 200k as old 20m of ffxi and you can get my point) but that's just my speculation.Either that or they just fail at economics if everything theorize is true...

So...besides my rambling and thinking, how do you feel on this? I surely changed my monetary expenses, just to be safe, less spam teleports more running, since I usually do raid hardcore and can't afford more than 3 days of 50k repairs if I start =P

[Ksandra]

how hard is it for lvl 50 to pay for things like repairs on non-legacy servers?

I can't say anything on this as legacy already has tons of gil floating around from 1.0.

[Shadowhusky]

Yeah I've noticed repairs are starting to get expensive and I'm not earning gil hand over fist here. I don't think SE planned the economy to be balanced around 2.0 but rather 2.1 when dailies come out. Kind of an oversight I guess.

[shepardG]

Yeah, this guy is not on a legacy server lmao.... you can litterly go farm snurbles for 2 hrs and make 150k on balmung.

[Shadowhusky]

Yeah, this guy is not on a legacy server lmao.... you can litterly go farm snurbles for 2 hrs and make 150k on balmung.

Once all the gil on legacy servers starts to shrink it'll be a problem for them too.

[Neviskio]

Yeah, this guy is not on a legacy server lmao.... you can litterly go farm snurbles for 2 hrs and make 150k on balmung.

And to say I bolded it even...It's not about making gil.I could play the ah and make 2 milions since I'm on a legacy server(had to reroll due to friends but still...), shit's easy.I always did in all games and ended with more money since there's always some way to accrue money.

The point is that I'm just transfering X money from someone, to me, not making new money for the "server".And in the meanwhile ragnarok as a server loses 5% of my transaction because it's cut from taxes which goes to the nether.Also every time i teleport I subtract X gil from the system, everyone does that.In other games as Xi/wow/rift this works because the game generates more money than what it loses(inflation begins usually), while the system is now set up for a deflation.And that's just a fact of math...

Just to be clear again: if you go farming something you incur in gear damage, which is let's say, in this example is 1k.Maybe you farmed 20k of items worth at the ah.Those items are 20 gil at the npc, you can shuffle currency by selling those on the market, but the server loses a cut.That's just a sink.


As for ksandra: I pay personally with my af gear something around 2-5k depending how broken.Never seen anything less than 1-2k after a couple runs, and well...if I never make personal gains through the market, I don't have ways of making currency for me and the server, so basically, unless you can work the markets, you are bound to be broke in a few days of raids.Basically any person that isn't aware of this is doomed to be out of the repair game soon.(yeah I'm being a bit dramatic because let's face it, people will farm and sell on market.Just theories here folks)

People also think they are "generating" gil while doing leves or gathering, which is just false, because your gear wears, the npc pays 1 gil, and if you go to the market, back we go to the point of NOT generating but transfering+losing.repairs are also impossible unless under of some specific circumstances and generally it's just going in circles, you repair something and in the meanwhile break other pieces to farm the mats to repair...it's just impossible to make a gain or being just at par...

I guess that legacy servers have a bit more of a safety net for older players, but the system does feel just...broken if we're not missing something, which might be still happening mind you, I'm kinda not sure that se thought it through 100% though considering all the other issues or, as any good designer would've done, they would have added a basic safety net.Some gil fountain that is repetable while making gains and not losses..

Also the problem is the rate of how the gil is drying: if today 7k people are leveling 1-50, in a month there will be DEFINITELY less considering quests are really limited, then what? If we just lose 1mil a day per server and the currency is 2 billions it's a thing, if it's 200 billions that's another, if you get me.

I know it sounds just a bit catastrophic, I don't mean it, I'm just trying to see all the sides, even the worst possible outcome, I think there should've been a plan for launch, not for 2.1 because we can't know how quickly the money will dry up.Surely some people got caught with their pants down and now need to play the ah forcibly because they can't get money otherwise since it's like trying to tap the holes of a sinking ship, while new ones start.

The idea of a self sustaining economy felt nice when I read that crafters can repair the gear, when you check the costs it's just not doable and whoever says otherwise either knows something most player don't, or is just delusional right now...

edit: forgot to add one important point: who says that s-e planned dailies are going to make gains and not break even/more losses? Remember that gear is going to be wearing down during those dailies, they have to break even and give more to have a stable system.Still it's a bit worrisome considering the lack of foresight of the dev team in the past years...after all.

[shepardG]

/So i'm a bit confused on why using Dark Matter to repair gear is not an effective way of mitigating my gil loss? If all my gear 0% (hypo) and I use 18 pieces of Grade 5 DM to repair it. How has this not saved me thousands in repair expenses?

[shepardG]

And god please don't think i'm white knighting SE, cause I definetly am in aggreance with you, i'm just trying to see all the sides. Lord knows SE is a bunch of fucking idiots.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

grade 5 DM is 350g a pop. Unless your gear is under 20%~ the npc to repair the gear is less than 350g and it repairs everything at once. Since you don't run dungeons with gear at 20% in case of wipes, DM is actually the more expensive route compared to just the npc.

[shepardG]

You can buy DM with Company seals...? and those drop like water from fates (which also generate gil (albeit very little))

[Neviskio]

You can buy DM with Company seals...? and those drop like water from fates (which also generate gil (albeit very little))

Yeah don't worry I got you, just wanted to be sure we were on the same page.

Btw the problem with dark matter is that...when you do fates, you take wear on the equip,so if you had before 2k of repairs, now you have 2k+ the new damage.So unless they change the price of dark matter, farming gc/buying them/farming them is more expensive because of the added repair...

I also did some casual math, and actually, if everything here is true, the economy of a non-legacy server is actually in some dire straits.I'm sure it's not that bad because surely the numbers are not accurate, but as a general idea, if everyone makes 300k gil and we have a minimum of 7800 players online(meaning there could be...10 times that number) if every players loses just 5-10k a day from all expenses, I don't think the economy can last 3 months without a steady supply of new players generating gil or some method that I don't know.

I might be wrong here and there, and it's assumptions, but that's...interesting to say the least? I definitely need a hand from someone that knows economics and maths better than me though xD also could use more tests on the actual repairs.50k a day for a hardcore raider that is progressing in bahamut with a lot of wipes...might scarily be accurate if you also add the instance runs...Gear repairs are damn expensive...

[Kachiko]

You're not wrong; non-Legacy servers are boned for cash, and Legacy servers are just transferring cash through the AH; when housing hits the floor, then they'll notice this issue. Considering the current situation, you're boned for any kind of house on a Non-Legacy server.

I've grossed about 100k so far, from the story, dungeons, and Fates I've done, but I certainly skimped on some gear upgrades to do so. If I went back and completed every single quest, using alts, I may get another 100k, but with 4-5k repair bills, on my lvl 50, that math isn't going to last long on a Non-Legacy server. We've also no guarantee the dailys will suply us with coin, and if they do, we'll be forced into doing them every day, which is going to piss the fuck out of many players.

[Berabouman]

While I agree with you guys in principle - very well thought out arguments here - there IS another gil source that you haven't considered yet, namely, NPCing drops. I don't have any numbers, but I remember that in FF11 some enemy drops were worth tons of gil.

Of course this is a stopgap measure at best because 1) drops are not exactly commonplace and 2) they may not NPC for much (actually I haven't seen them NPC for much) Just thought I'd throw that out there as another potential gil source. SE could of course increase the amount they NPCed for at some point in the future.

Also, I think that levees are intended to serve as another potential gil source. They don't give much but they ARE a renewable resource.

Everything so far that I've seen points to SE being extremely careful and conservative about their game economy. (kind like the actual Japanese economy, now that I think about it, though that is a far more complex issue) They seem to be over-concerned about inflation, so they've gone full speed in the opposite direction. Perhaps the dailies are intended to be a solution? It would certainly seem that they are planning for the future, rather than dealing with the current issues.

At least I HOPE they are planning...

[Eanae]

Housing hits along with dailies which will ideally provide gil so I'm unsure they'll ever feel an effect.

[Kachiko]

Everything so far that I've seen points to SE being extremely careful and conservative about their game economy.

They are over-concerned with RMT, to the point where they did make it possible to do everything you would want to do by yourself, without gil.

The problem is they didn't present a way for people to trade things; they still gave us a shitty AH interface with crappy storage managing capability (being fixed, but still a long ways off). It will also take you a metric ton of time to do it that way, and until you can, you still have the problem of your repair bill out-pacing your money creation power. Until that changes, their system is flat broken because nobody can afford to buy anything and there's no way to trade with anyone to get what you need unless your FC has one of everything and is always there to provide what you need; something that is highly impractical, given Non-Legacy server mechanics.

[The Stig]

How about levelling a new char for the purposes of selecting all the gil-nuggets you get from quests? Send some cheap/functional gear over to your alt from your main, and blast through the quests and anything that rewards bonus gil for first time completion., etc.

The game is not exactly hard (yet) for me. I've done level 1-16 in my starting gear with the occasional random piece here and there from levequests (I started choose gear at 16-odd because the stat boosts, especially def, seemed significant), everything else was gil nuggets.

[MrSamuels]

Honestly think they are wanting gil to come through leves, being as there is an Achievement to earn 10 million from them, however right now they just don't give that much, the crafting ones seem to be where the money comes from as you get 200% extra gil for a hand in but the most i have gotten from one is 1k. It is disappointing to not see them implement max levels earning more money through something like leves every other MMO has done this and right now there is no reason to do a leve on my max level as it is a waste of time and just not worth it.

I am on a non legacy server and just dropped 100k on my crafted item for Relic Quest, this will right now without going through the market places to make my money take about 2-3 weeks to get back from doing something that brings money into the server.

The Tax, teleport and repairs are rediculous in this game right now for none legacy servers, I must be dropping around 20k a day on nothing, why do these systems exist in MMO's is it supposed to make it feel like real life I can understand the repair function, but the tax is retarded as tax is never a fixed rate throughout time.

Whilst they are wanting to alleviate RMT, if all RMT are going to do is level 1-50 picking gold rewards they will be the only people generating actual income for the server and people who struggle will just end up going to them anyways and their tactics of not putting a lot of gil into the game will have failed.

[Hyan]

If there will be a problem in the future SE can just press a button to change the value of rewards / cost of repairs. Dunno whats the point of stressing about it.

[Churchill]

The achievement for leves was present in 1.0 where you could get 100,000g per leve. I don't think they've really put a lot of thought into the economy, repair bills are roughly the same price as they were in 1.0 and Dark Matter is not DoL and thus much more expensive. I've got another 2 stacks from 1.0 then I'm blowing cash.

[gaogaostegosaurus]

If there will be a problem in the future SE can just press a button to change the value of rewards / cost of repairs. Dunno whats the point of stressing about it.

I haven't done Keep myself so I haven't felt any of this personally, but I think it is an issue for some people currently running level 50 content on non legacy servers (like Keep). Like, running out of repair money faster than you can do things to get gil back, because those things also require repair money.