How would you fix inflation?

[thompkinsthebrian]

i think along the lines of price inflation and gil inflation as the samething. slowing down wont put a stop to it. you make more things for people to spend their gil onthey are going to need more gil. while the sink holes will take away money there are still ways to make gil come back into the game. NPC, quests etc.

So you make sink holes. People want more money so they continue what ever "Fun" sink hole they are taking part in, they sell stuff, on AH at same prices, then there is a temporary price drop because a lot of people are really low on gil, and they have no choice but to lower the prices to get stuff to sell.

Then you have people that are going to go to the RMT route to make up for this cause they dont want to take the time to get their gil back up but they want to continue. So they start the buy low sell higher method on AH to make more gil. then the prices basically go back on the rise again. while not nearly as fast.

but this will also in my opinion give a reason for even more RMT on all servers. the more need there is for gil the more gil sellers there is going to be.

[ertyu]

Items that come into the game are not exactly considered to be money. Let's say someone kills mee deggi and gets the kote, that doesnt mean 5 mil just entered the server. If that person sells the ochi kotes to an NPC for 5000 gil, 5000 gil just entered the server. There is a way that mass amounts of money is being created. Is it selling items to NPCs? Is it killing goblins and getting 30-50 gil a drop? I doubt it, and i have no clue what it is honestly, gil sellers control the price for shit because they have a monopoly on it. So as long as people have this mass amount of gil to spend, the gil sellers can keep pushing it up.

Only way to fix inflation is to make the value of the monetary unit go up... which with the way the FFXI economy is run, can only be done by destroying it. They tried to counter this with making you pay for limbus and dynamis, which seemed like a good idea but obviously isnt enough.

My suggestion? Make some parts of upgrading relic weapons gil based rather than noit based. This would spur a large interest in upgrading since it is easier to obtain gil than noits, and would get rid of a lot of money.

[Not Kuno]

Maybe have all non-guild NPCs use the same sort of database.

Like... guy at random shop in South Sandy sells 30 wootz ingots to an NPC. The price of each ingot he gets reduced to like 200 or something. Not much later that day, some guy in Jueno wants to sell a bunch of wootz ingots but they're still 200 gil each or maybe a little higher, but go back down a bit each time he sells them.

[Cleveland]

Getting gil out of the system is what is needed most. But how do you do this? AH taxing is one wat, but SE cannot boost this too much with out starting a riot. People already bypass this with the "Battalia Mall" that has popped up on many, if not all the servers. And with the MPK Fix...the Mall cannot be closed like it could before. The next best place is NPC's....

But whatever this NPC is offering, must be so desireable that the new players will spend thousands, the mid range will spend 10s of thousands, the upper tier will spend 100's of thousands, and the elite will spend millions on it. This proposes a very difficult task.

Some have suggested Armor and Weapon degredation. For example, over time your armor and weapons become worn out, and thus will prevent or do less dmg. While nice, the issue is the game didnt start out with this, Alot of players would be upset to find out that the armor/weapon they just blew all their gil on only to find out they now have to maintain it. Paying to keep what you already payed for is kinda crappy if you think about it....unless this is how it always was. We cannot have melee giving up food because they have to save gil to keep their weapon going.

Armor upgrading is one I have been tinkering with. I would say weapon, but the issue there is at 75....you run the risk of upgrading a weapon beyond that of a Relic Weapon. Granted...general concensus is that 90% of relic weapons crap, we still cannot take that away from those who have completed them

Now, on to Armor upgrading. SE has implemented this for AF with Limbus, and AFv2 with the new Dynamis areas. However, these upgrades do not take gil...just drops from said areas, some of which are annoying as hell. What I am proposing is an NPC who will add stats to non-AF armor. Be it purchased, crafted, or dropped, rare/ex or not...this NPC can add stats, abilities to your gear...for a price of course. What upgrades are available are dependant on the level/type of armor. For example:

1-10 Armor: No upgrades.

10-20 Armor: A few. Melee armor could have some HP/STR/DEX/AGI added, Mage armor could have MP/CHR/MND/INT added. Prices for upgrades would be in 1000-9999 range.

20-30 Armor: Same as above. Maybe a few more boosts. Prices rise to upto 20000

30-50 Armor: Along with the above...attack accuracy, and the like are now options. Certain upgrades will cost upto 500k

50-75 Armor: Now the big boys. Auto-Refresh, Regen, Double Attack, and the like are now options. But these will cost you up to 10 million.

To balance things out, every armor will not have every option available to it. Someone cannot take an Errant Houppelande and turn it into an Osode...but as it is mage gear...Auto-Refresh could be added for 5 million.

To allow for +1 armor, these +1's would have more options open to them than the NQ's from the NPC. For example, Dragon Harness could have Triple Attack +5% added to it for 10 million. Dragon Harness+1 could have Triple Attack +8% added to it for the same price. This makes the +1 still wanted. This means crafters will be cranking out the armor synths, possibly buying materials from NPC's....removing more gil from the system.

All upgraded armor becomes Rare/Ex.

This system would allow players to customize theuir armor to suite their game play. Are you a SMN who like to solo...spend millions on getting a free Fenrir...or are you a SMN who likes big damage in a short time (like me)...spend millions on Avatar Attack and -BP timer. And the best part....billions of gil woul be removed as every HNMLS would have its players dumping all their money to pimp out their gear.

[BRP]

People RMTing isn't nearly as hurtful as a constant flow of money into the system. SE needs to heal from that scar left by rusty caps. Inflation is healthy, but the gil in the system literally tripled more than once on that. Billions and billions of gil were made weekly, for several months. This isn't about RMTing. People who RMT will RMT no matter what, may it be for a fun-cause or otherwise. RMTing has the same effect as someone giving away a gift of gil. Real life money doesn't effect our game, so leave RMT out of this.

I say add some kind of 'limbus/dynamis/new quest with NM' requirement to the boost armor idea, so one would need friends to get it done and to hurt some fun on gil buyers. Otherwise uber idea ;o.

[ertyu]

how about an NPC controlled FFXI stock market? :D

[Not Kuno]

Armor upgrading is one I have been tinkering with. I would say weapon, but the issue there is at 75....you run the risk of upgrading a weapon beyond that of a Relic Weapon. Granted...general concensus is that 90% of relic weapons crap, we still cannot take that away from those who have completed them

Now, on to Armor upgrading. SE has implemented this for AF with Limbus, and AFv2 with the new Dynamis areas. However, these upgrades do not take gil...just drops from said areas, some of which are annoying as hell. What I am proposing is an NPC who will add stats to non-AF armor. Be it purchased, crafted, or dropped, rare/ex or not...this NPC can add stats, abilities to your gear...for a price of course. What upgrades are available are dependant on the level/type of armor. For example:

1-10 Armor: No upgrades.

10-20 Armor: A few. Melee armor could have some HP/STR/DEX/AGI added, Mage armor could have MP/CHR/MND/INT added. Prices for upgrades would be in 1000-9999 range.

20-30 Armor: Same as above. Maybe a few more boosts. Prices rise to upto 20000

30-50 Armor: Along with the above...attack accuracy, and the like are now options. Certain upgrades will cost upto 500k

50-75 Armor: Now the big boys. Auto-Refresh, Regen, Double Attack, and the like are now options. But these will cost you up to 10 million.

To balance things out, every armor will not have every option available to it. Someone cannot take an Errant Houppelande and turn it into an Osode...but as it is mage gear...Auto-Refresh could be added for 5 million.

To allow for +1 armor, these +1's would have more options open to them than the NQ's from the NPC. For example, Dragon Harness could have Triple Attack +5% added to it for 10 million. Dragon Harness+1 could have Triple Attack +8% added to it for the same price. This makes the +1 still wanted. This means crafters will be cranking out the armor synths, possibly buying materials from NPC's....removing more gil from the system.

All upgraded armor becomes Rare/Ex.

This system would allow players to customize theuir armor to suite their game play. Are you a SMN who like to solo...spend millions on getting a free Fenrir...or are you a SMN who likes big damage in a short time (like me)...spend millions on Avatar Attack and -BP timer. And the best part....billions of gil woul be removed as every HNMLS would have its players dumping all their money to pimp out their gil.

Wow. Just wow. That would be pimp without nerfing people that already spent a ton of money on sweet gear.

[Okan]

. (At level 60, you can have 3-5 gold armor repairs..

Per weapon >.>.... non cloth are looking at 10-20gold in repairs a night.

It sucks, but it's a GREAT money sink to prevent over rampant inflation.. I'm level 29 and I have about 15gold and have easily made over 50 gold already but just spending it on training, etc.

[BRP]

btw, we can get these organized and send it to SE... I know you say it wouldn't do anything, but it could be a trivial reward if one dev sees it, because this is fun enough(to play God of Vana'diel for a day). Plus, we could send it in JP on the JP page to make it count ;o.

[XxSlusherxx]

SImple solution,

NPC sales of all consumables. Food prices are getting out of hand, and ninja tools keep a lot of players from playing the job, perhaps if in Norg you could buy tools at a decent rate (mabye 10k a stack of kaginawa and 7k a stack of shehei) and do this with food also yes it would cost less per party which is a good thing, it's getting out of hand, but because it's going to a NPC now, it would actually take a LOT of gil out of circulation. also add in all the jug pets to npc including HQ ones. basically any common consumable.

[Nagamaki]

Yeah cause cooks are raking in far too much gil.

No thanks.

The consumable nature of those items is part of the reason people level those crafts to begin with, if NPCs sell sushi then there is no more reason for cooking to exist. You could say they'd sell NQ only, in that case cooks would end up losing money to make NQs and HQ would go even higher, or people would simply quit cooking entirely. A different idea would be to make more of the ingredients for cooking buyable from NPCs, but there's already a pretty big share of them that are, and if you could buy Black Sole from NPCs fishermen would NPC it, fixing nothing.

Cooks get shafted enough as it is, lets not add to it

[BRP]

Made a list on first post ;o.

[XxSlusherxx]

Cooks get shafted enough as it is, lets not add to it

yeah they get really shafted when they make gil leveling it

that being said this idea does fall under the list of ideas that could never work cause of the way things are. If NPCs sold black sole, it would not mean that fishermen would NPC it, you can't sell a barone armor peice to a NPC for 20M but you can sure as hell buy one. But food is basically the same thing as armor repair in WoW, it's just FFXI players veiw being unbuffed as "broken"

NPC that sells KS orbs for bcnms with rare/ex items would be nice. for instance an NPC that sold Air Tanks, FOrmor Codexs and whatever pops tatami NM, fuck if you could buy a king pop item for 10M people would do it.

[rahskala]

Everybody is suggesting money sinks, which will fix the problem..... eventually. In the meantime, everybody will bitch and moan about how much MORE money they need to get things done. The problem with money sinks is that they aren't fun.

There really isn't any easy answer to this. If you take the route WoW did and make more items Rare/Ex instead of adding money sinks, you bypass the entire idea of a player economy, and that takes away from some the fun as well.

[BRP]

everybody will bitch and moan about how much MORE money they need to get things done. The problem with money sinks is that they aren't fun.

For shorter than you'd think. After awhile, they will release the posstive effect of it. And if the armor bonus was added, how could that be bad?

[Nagamaki]

Cooks can make gil on some recipes levelling in tiny amounts, things that used to be profit to NPC no longer are because earth crystals aren't 300gil per stack and water 500. There are ways for cooks to make money, but it requires patience and like most crafts the majority of profit comes from HQs.

The majority of ingredients used in cooking are from NPCs, that makes cooking a kind of money sink as it is. For every stack of sole sushi made, something like 20k gil is dumped into tenshodo NPCs. Its not the whole price, but its a share of it. The more cooks produce, the more gil is sent out of the economy as they buy wasabi, rice vinegar, black pepper, semolina and so on, and the less gil is created by people putting Wild Onions and fish and meats on AH instead of NPCing them.

Same thing with consumable nin tools and ammo.

[Quicklet]

Fix the gil dupeing

Make some parts of upgrading relic weapons gil based rather than noit based.

(Already part of the game.)

There is so much RMTing going on they may aswell have a "swipe credit card here" option on the auction house.

The problem is so far beyond redemption on some servers that the only solution that would actually work involves eliminating gil as a means to obtain the best items. Adding moneysinks to the game will only penalize the people who don't RMT. Those who do will just RMT to afford the moneysinks as well.

Without having to totally rework their crafting system (because no crafted item can be rare/ex), the easiest solution is to continue using trade-in systems that require rare/ex items in addition to any crafted items, and to ensure that the crafted ingredients are usually obtainable by normal means. They don't need to make every good item rare/ex, but the majority should be.

They also have to make it harder to RMT rare/ex items by adding some restrictions to who can lot on items in a party or alliance. For starters, it shouldn't be too hard to code it so that anyone who joins an alliance after a mob dies auto-passes on any loot that's already in the treasure pool. If you don't make it hard to RMT ex gear, you inevitably end up with things like this:

http://www.theorderls.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5997

There are deeper issues underlying why this is such a big deal, such as Risk vs Reward, Time vs Reward, progression continuity, as well as demographic issues. When there were only a hundred or two hundred Level75s on each server, each having only one or two jobs, adding 3-6 king abjurations a week was not a major issue. When you have at least 500 Level75s on most servers, some with 5+ jobs, but you're still adding 3-6 king abjurations a week with no modifications (not to mention all the other HNM bottlenecks), it becomes a major issue.

Without fundamental changes to the way people acquire items, no matter how many moneysinks they added the situation won't get much better than it is now.

[derzoll]

My personal view of the inflation situation is that S&E fucked up bigtime when they added Limbus. On Pandemonium, the price of items have gone up horribly after the addition of Limbus. Why? Ancient Beastcoins.

From the start they were valued in people's yes for as much as 200k/coin. Now tons are frequently bazaared for 400k and are steadily going up. This means that every single person that has sea access (which by now are really many) can easily farm atleast 6 coins each every 3 days. Which means they get 2,400,000G every 3 days.

Now, who buys these coins? There are JP's on my server with full sets of AF+1's, both earrings, boxer's cape etc. Basically, the money has been more spread out since the start of Limbus since the one's with tons of gils are the one's buying them.

Instead of 100 people with 500M+, we now see 1000 people with 15M+. And a really easy way too access new money. Anyhow, it might be totally fucked up, but that's how i think it was able to escalate this fast.

Sorry for my english, i'm a silly swede:D

[BRP]

I don't think you know how inflation is made. Please read a few posts that explain it in this thread.

[shihei]

all for server whipes say "i"....

Maybe i can pay someone where the serves are keeped to let me in and ill blow them all up. Like a security guard or somthing.

oh yea, if you don't like the price on somthing just don't buy it, get it another way (cybering manthras lol)


SUCK IT UP PRINCESS