Bahamut's Economy wins most fucked up award!

[rahskala]

Wait, I know: Square-Enix is knowingly exploiting a bug introduced with the recent DRG changes to dupe Ancient Beastcoins, then selling them to players. Then they create false price histories on certain items at the Auction House to make it appear the prices are skyrocketing, which will increase the amount of gilbuying going on, allowing them to sell the gil from the Ancient Beastcoins to IGE at premium rates. IT'S A CONSPIRACY.

Edit: I'm sure Absolute Virtue is related to this somehow, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Edit edit: Also this plan was invented by a corrupt GM who is really running Square from behind the scenes, I swear it's true, he's the one who was responsible for FFX-2 too.

[FFXIFlux]

I don't think Limbus is solely to blame either, but saying that it's not some kind of contributing factor is pretty silly.

FFXIFlux's argument reads like this: "anyone who doesn't agree with my idea of currency inflation is wrong. I don't know how all the gil coming into the world is being created, but I'm still right. The only explanation I can come up with is massive secret gil duping that no one knows how to do and that hasn't spread like wildfire even though people can't keep secrets and every single other exploit eventually became known. But, this is perfectly logical because it's the only solution that is consistent with my theory."

You missed the part where I quoted actual economic theory and pointed out counter examples showing why people are wrong. But sure. Lets blame ancient beastcoins. It's not like I don't see 10x the mules selling dynamis coins (and those actually sell unlike ancient coins.) It's not like ENM drops aren't flooding through the economy at a much higher rate. But sure, lets blame ancient beastcoins which a tiny minority of the server can even farm and whose total sales across an entire month probably account for enough gil to buy a weekend's worth of venemous claw drops.

[Raineer]

Stuff about Limbus

Good point. The crafters have had ALOT of gil locked up for a very long time. Limbus could have presented an opening to free up some of that gil that has been sitting on mules forever... even the most old-school of JP crafters with everything will buy 75-150 coins in a heartbeat (think max-gil mules) in order to have one of the cool new toys.

Bottom line is that it was alot of things at once. However if people don't think that 95% of this was IGE's christmas sale you're insane. Maybe crafters jsut pay alot more attention to the economy than others, but it was plain as day to me. Anytime you have 90+ skillup synths selling for PROFIT, the end of the world may be coming.

[Shinryuu]

The real problem is duping, yo.

(20M Haubergeon 2 days ago on Remora, by the way)

[Raineer]

The real problem is duping, yo.

Think so?

[Byrd]

Stuff about Limbus

Good point. The crafters have had ALOT of gil locked up for a very long time. Limbus could have presented an opening to free up some of that gil that has been sitting on mules forever... even the most old-school of JP crafters with everything will buy 75-150 coins in a heartbeat (think max-gil mules) in order to have one of the cool new toys.

Bottom line is that it was alot of things at once. However if people don't think that 95% of this was IGE's christmas sale you're insane. Maybe crafters jsut pay alot more attention to the economy than others, but it was plain as day to me. Anytime you have 90+ skillup synths selling for PROFIT, the end of the world may be coming.

I think IGE's sale and certain things like selling Limbus coins might have contributed to the start of this inflationary push, but here's what I see happening.

Random Player A sees the price of the item he wants increasing in price due to the above reasons, decides "Damn, I better buy it now or it'll be super-expensive. How am I going to afford 4M for this item? Well, I'll just use IGE once, nobody has to know." He then proceeds to pay more than a normal person would.

Repeat Player A's action 30 times. Christmas sale and sudden influxes of cash to the game from previously unused resources of cash (like crafters buying Limbus coins) cause this to happen at a higher rate than itdid previously.

Now, Player B sees everything going up in price. Holy crap, I've got 10M today, but 10M will be worth half of what it was next week if I don't invest in an item. If I buy this Cassie Earring for 9.5M, I can sell it in three days for 15M! A "smart" player could have easily doubled, triped, quadrupled or more their cash in the last month just by riding the inflation wave while investing in a variety of items.
Any half-decent economist will tell you that this kind of market speculation due to inflation is very unhealthy, and will only continue to further accelerate inflation, perhaps even more rapidly than the people who have bought gil. If you are doing this, please stop. You're hurting everyone while only helping yourself (if you're even doing that).

It's a vicious cycle, and it might not end anytime soon unless both Player A and Player B quit doing the things that they are doing. Regardless of what originally started this hyperinflation (gilsellers, Limbus runs, Rusty caps), it's certainly taken a life of its own at this point.

I don't know if it will end anytime soon and I'm curious what SE will do to "fix" the game if the economy collapses completely. I have a horrible feeling it will be something like "Oh, we'll just add an extra digit to how much gil you can hold and how much gil you can put something in your bazaar for." Two weeks later: "What? That didn't work? I don't get it."

[Demosthenes11]

Has anyone actually SEEN someone with max gil?
Maybe 1 person on each server has that...if that...

[Erza]

I've got 750 mil

[NynJa]

FFXIFlux's argument reads like this: "if its not my way, its wrong, because everything I do is right and the best"

sounds like flux.

[epigram]

I have 300k, I keep no real gil just items.

Strangely enough Ni and Erase have only doubled in price (they have stayed pretty constant went as low as 250k but always rose back up to 1mil) since I stared playing (NA release), while cock charm hit an impressive 30mil (a nice 8x since NA release).

Most early game items are about the same price except for HQs. I don't think most new players are suffering at all til they hit level 60. There really isn't anything wrong with Assault Jerkin at 67 either, I know a lot of people here leveled their first jobs with it. With sushi, swordbelt and NQ strength rings you can do reasonable dmg anyway.

I think that the only new people that are going to be hurt are the new nins since ninja tools went through the roof recently. I'm waiting to see shihei break 20k a stack.

[Flarega]

It is not limbus... all the money people are spending freely is still flowing through the ffxi economy in that case, not being stockpiled. And if it WAS limbus, these prices would have been much more gradual. But what happened was that prices on many items have doubled or tripled in the last few weeks, which seems more likely to have come from a massive addition of gil into the economy. (gilsellers stockpiling all of their gil)

The Limbus Theory could be possible, but doesn't seem to fit well in this case

[epigram]

In the end SE needs to make a move away from everything gil based and towards item based system. There is no reason why they couldn't have BCs and ENMs drop all the items you need to level your job. It also doesn't make a lot of sense that a level 75 BC drops an item that is only good for level 57 armor, and most drop an item that is used for level 59 armor (shouldn't these be for level 60 BCNM?).

At least AF +1 is pretty good, it's hard to believe that update got through SE QA.

[FFXIFlux]

IGE say "We are not currently accepting currency on this server (1)" so they claim to have gil for sale but they haven't been buying any for a while.

Why would anyone spend money on gil, let alone on gil that will be worth 1/2 as much in a week after it's bought?

[Raineer]

Has anyone actually SEEN someone with max gil?
Maybe 1 person on each server has that...if that...

You underestimate crafters...

Once you get past the 100m mark then you have the capital and leverage to make insane amounts of gil after that. I would easily have 600m if I wasn't so obsessed with buying every single HQ piece for all the jobs I have, however I'm running out of toys to buy and money is just piling up.

All that and I'm just a lowly NA that didn't start until PS2 release (damn PS2 noobs). I am certain that 3 jp's in my craft alone could easily have 2-3 mules with max gil each. I watch them make 30m per day easily just in lil shit synths, added on top of that is the big ticket HQ's like aristos and HQ cursed that you'll inevitably pop.

[epigram]

The problem at least with my craft is that most of the items are ls contained. Many times talons and claws will never make it to the AH, and when they do they are imediately bought which makes a lot of high end gear a pain to make. I've been trying to get a Byrnie +1 made by a friend but I haven't even seen hide on AH or in any bazaar for over a month. I've asked a few LS's in Behemoth's domain but none are willing to sell hide.

[Demosthenes11]

Has anyone actually SEEN someone with max gil?
Maybe 1 person on each server has that...if that...

You underestimate crafters...

Once you get past the 100m mark then you have the capital and leverage to make insane amounts of gil after that. I would easily have 600m if I wasn't so obsessed with buying every single HQ piece for all the jobs I have, however I'm running out of toys to buy and money is just piling up.

All that and I'm just a lowly NA that didn't start until PS2 release (damn PS2 noobs). I am certain that 3 jp's in my craft alone could easily have 2-3 mules with max gil each. I watch them make 30m per day easily just in lil shit synths, added on top of that is the big ticket HQ's like aristos and HQ cursed that you'll inevitably pop, which won't sell for 4 months.

Fixed

[Raineer]

Has anyone actually SEEN someone with max gil?
Maybe 1 person on each server has that...if that...

You underestimate crafters...

Once you get past the 100m mark then you have the capital and leverage to make insane amounts of gil after that. I would easily have 600m if I wasn't so obsessed with buying every single HQ piece for all the jobs I have, however I'm running out of toys to buy and money is just piling up.

All that and I'm just a lowly NA that didn't start until PS2 release (damn PS2 noobs). I am certain that 3 jp's in my craft alone could easily have 2-3 mules with max gil each. I watch them make 30m per day easily just in lil shit synths, added on top of that is the big ticket HQ's like aristos and HQ cursed that you'll inevitably pop, which won't sell for 4 months.

Fixed

Doesn't matter, it's still there and still gil.

[aurik]

I agree with Raineer. After a certain point, you just have the resources to make whatever money you want, and given enough time you'll accumulate max gil. It took me about 20 months to hit 100m gil on-hand, and then another 4 months to hit 200m on-hand, and in those last 4 months I've spent more money than ever on shiny baubles.

[DrObvious]

IGE say "We are not currently accepting currency on this server (1)" so they claim to have gil for sale but they haven't been buying any for a while.

Why would anyone spend money on gil, let alone on gil that will be worth 1/2 as much in a week after it's bought?

Why would people overbid on items in the first place? It's the same reason.

[Correction]

It took me about 20 months to hit 100m gil on-hand

But can you honestly say that the same avenues towards that 100mil are as open to people now as they were 20 months ago?

Yes the rich are getting richer, but the poor are getting poorer. Doesn't help that almost every avenue to riches is either competetive or quickly tapped AND that the market is basically cornered by those who are the establshed wealthy.

Right now the only thing someone can do to get rich is ENM. Over and over and over and over and over again.

Starting a craft from zero at this point is for idiots.

Fishing from zero at this point is for idiots.

If it weren't for ENM and ballista I'd have quit this fucking game months ago.