Inflation issues, is it really inflation that bothers us?

[Zigrah]

I know this is sort of a dead horse topic, but I am trying to take it in a new direction so bear with me for a moment please. Personally I was dissapointed at the response we received about how they plan to squash RMT and Inflation in the game and it got me thinking.

When you complain about inflation, are you upset that the numbers or the price is actually just annoying because it's a really large number or is it that you find something too expensive or otherwise somewhat unobtainable for purchase? I know it's a wierd question, but I don't find the two to be all that related to be honest and I think SE is getting the wrong message when all we do is complain about inflation.

I personally find things too expensive, and the price doesn't have to do so much about it but instead it's absolute value and rarity is what bothers me. I don't really care if it costs 30 million or 300 million gil, because gil is just a magic number and what's important is the relative cost in comparison to other items. 30 Million is just a number until I factor in that it's 3600 stacks if shihei. If the economy deflates so that shihei is below 1k a stack and the item I want is 3 million it's still going to cost me 3600 stacks of shihei and nothing has really changed, except a series of numbers.

Anyways I am just curious, maybe I am wrong and people are truly bothered by inflation itself. I'd like to know though, I wrote an article about it but it sounds more like a rant, but if we're giving SE the wrong message I think it would be good to maybe change the wording around and get the real problem fixed.

http://ffxi.stratics.com/content/fanfest/inflation.php

Any comments are appreciated, that article is posted but I will probably revise it shortly because it's too personal. I just wanted to see if I was on to something before I took it further.

[Vinen]

supply in demand?

Personally, I have 0 problems with the economny as it stands now... and im not rich at all. Yeah, I can't afford the big ticket items like HQ or Peacock Charm... but I can get what I want......

In a player controlled market there will always be items which will sell for amounts far beyond what they should. If you want it save for it... if you can't save for it.. grab the next best thing.

With Gillselling on a slight downturn do to the most recent patchs things have started to return to normal.

All games have followed this trend... what cost me 10k near the start of EQ1.. sold for 50k before something new and better was introduced and its value dropped to 0... be thankful that the expensive items in FFXI retain their value so if you buy them you will know you can sell them back for near what you paid.

[Daahan]

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with how prices dropped it past few weeks. I was surprised to hear that Hauby was close to 6mil again, after being 15mil+ a month ago.

The best way to see it is when a person has to pay 80k for a stack of Sole Sushi though.

[levish]

It's never inflation itself that bothers/affects people

It's the byproduct that your savings are now worth less

And when you are talking rampant 100%+ inflation that means those 5 months some people have been working towards saving for a SH have just resulted in less than 2 1/2 months worth of work at the new inflation rate.

Granted everyone can expect inflation, but excessive inflation like that makes Gil pretty much worthless.

I know FFXI is a virtual economy but a real life working economy is 3-4% inflation annually and we experienced something along the lines of 150-200% (if not more) in the span of 3-4 months

[Zigrah]

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with how prices dropped it past few weeks. I was surprised to hear that Hauby was close to 6mil again, after being 15mil+ a month ago.

The best way to see it is when a person has to pay 80k for a stack of Sole Sushi though.

Not everything dropped though and that's where it becomes an issue, but while everything dropped I have also found that every method I employ to make money had dropped significantly as well so the actual effort required to get myself a haubergeon has not really changed.

Supply and Demand is perfect and I think is how things should work which is why I don't believe in people having more items supplied by vendors, but the problem with prices is that demand for most items is way too high and a lot of items are just too rare that people keep charging more and more for them. I honestly don't think inflation effected that at all, just made it look more pronounced and this is my issue.

All those people who have been worried about inflation were you really just worried that numbers were too high? Or did you find that haubergeons are too expensive? Do you really find them to be cheaper now that most everything's price is dropping again? Increasing the drop rate on things would lessen things being overcamped and also have a direct impact on pricing too, and it would reduce a little bit of the elitism and create a more balanced world where you wouldn't feel forced to comprimise, cheat or just plain give up.

Why do so many people RMT? Just because they can or is it because they feel they have to, I wonder that sometimes. Anyways if everyone is happy by this way of "fixing" things then I will let it be.

And when you are talking rampant 100%+ inflation that means those 5 months some people have been working towards saving for a SH have just resulted in less than 2 1/2 months worth of work at the new inflation rate.

You're right here, and that's a completely acceptable answer. I felt the same way about that but I wasn't sure if people truly meant that. I know myself I would invest in items to make things retain worth and sell them when I needed gil, however those who did that just technically lost the fruit of their labors by this fix too, there is no middle ground.

I guess I took my focu off items like SH's and Hauby's long ago and am speaking more about the ridils, striders, thief's knives and so forth. The overcamping of NM's and the huge amount of RMT made apparent by the christmas sale that made inflation so visable.

It's hard to really sum it up, I mean ultimately I would like to see both issues repaired at the same time because I think they are sort of linked yet at the same time very seperate and equally serious issues.

Banning RMT accounts was sort of a "quick fix" though and didn't really solve the problem of how this happened and how to make it not happen again.

[layoneil]

I don't really care if it costs 30 million or 300 million gil, because gil is just a magic number and what's important is the relative cost in comparison to other items.

i care about that. i think if you can keep the number at a relative level, it opens up a lot more for players (generally lower level players).

doing Avatar Primes for 10k each 6 times in one day nets you 60k. if an HQ Staff is worth 600k instead of 6M, that becomes significant.

farming Tigers for 2100 from a quest is decent if a stack of Shihei was 1300 and not 13k.

teleport taxis would be profitable again (not sure if that's good or bad), but you can't run a teleport taxi in line with inflation because you'll get trumped by OP cost, Airship Fee, and Chocobo Fee. people will shout for 10k teleports now still but running a service no longer works.

i personally don't have a problem buying things i want, i don't have the best of the best (Sniper+1, Haubergeon+1, etc) but i can get things i want to get if i want them.

even still, lower level players can get by a lot easier, if some of the ways to gain gil from NPCs was returned where it would do something.

[Zigrah]

Ok your arguing that questing should be a good form of making money, yet that would be a direct cause of inflation as the quest reward technically produces gil out of nothing. When they aren't making money sinks but instead just banning accounts with lots of money preventing them from redistributing already accumulated wealth, let's just put the fact that it was RMT aside... it was already accumulated wealth.

Ideally it would be nice if questing was a good source of wealth and that it wouldn't impact inflation but this is not the case. I can't argue with you that it wouldn't be nice, but in the time it takes for someone to do a quest in FFXI they could sell a number of things, those teeth alone have more value to a crafter than an NPC which creates a proporly growing economy.

I don't know anybody new who couldn't make spending money off of low level items, I spent a lot of time during the bad inflation leveling subjobs and I must admit I was cleaning up on the auction house, I wish I got 100k for silk thread when I started. I pretty much found it proportional with the exception of NPC's. It also worked both ways though, I bought my mule an airship pass for a measely 500k, when I first started that seemed unfathomable. Now as a noob to the game I might have gone "hmm kazham keys or 100k? I'll take the 100k option."

Teleport Taxi's should be profitable, but that's the white mages fault and people's incessant whining, personally I saw no reason to be a taxi and felt bad for them... taxi service should have just ceased or gone up. Most people need teleports to benefit from OP as they HP in jeuno and teleport vahzl, the airship and chocobo's are slow and people will pay anything to avoid those.

[layoneil]

make more constant gil sinks and it would solve the quest inflation problem.

there are huge gil sinks that they've yet to take advantage of, NPC Kindred Seals, Beastman Seals, Dynamis Currency and Ancient Beastcoins.

[Faranim]

The problem with inflation is that it's detremental to people who save their money. In my case, I used to be "rich" back when Leaping Boots, Astral Ring, etc. cost 300k (Haub was 1 Mil, etc). I had several million gil but because I was a BRD, had no reason to buy expensive items like Sniper Rings, Haubs.

Now that so much time has passed, my 5 million gil can't even buy a single Haub.

How would you feel if you worked for 2 years and saved your money, and then suddenly inflation sky rockets and your 2 years worth of savings become the equivalent of 2 month's worth of work?

[Zigrah]

About as bad as I feel now that Items I owned at christmas I should have sold because they are now worthless in comparison. Basically we were forced to invest in items then that was ripped away but I do understand that point and I would ultimately like to see less inflation but my point is just that. They haven't really "fixed" anything. Nothing has been put in motion to prevent this mass amounts of gil to build up again and even if you chase away IGE it will not go away there will just be nobody "temporarily holding on to it"


Anyways I know you like to argue with me Sendoh but my point is that prices will never go so low that quests will be an alternative to farming, I dont think there was a time where they were except maybe the first couple months of the game. I agree money sinks are necessary but like I have said, they are currently non existant and that is the problem I see with their solutions to fix the problem.


Anyways I didn't mean to turn this in to a big debate I'm sorry, I seem to have received my answer. People do care about inflation and seem less concerned with things just being so rare they are too expensive or 200 people NM camps.


I think the biggest gil sink that we are all guilty of avoiding is jeuno tax and AH fees, every sale in rolanberry is contributing to inflation. They should really just fix things so tax is everywhere and people would complain at first but it would help with the problem for sure. I don't think making everything availible from NPC promotes a functioning economy and when you implement "huge gil sinks" your problem is not inflation but deflation, which presents much more serious problems than inflation ever can. Gil sinks need to be small and just more widely used like increased chocobo fees or airship fees, taxes and etc.

Large gilsinks just result in 1 month being able to purchase from then the next month nobody can afford that much for just 1 item, it would result in the value of gil bouncing all over the place. Stability is what we need. Anyways I've entered into the dead horse issues I was trying to avoid, it's my own fault sorry... but thanks everyone for answering my question.

[layoneil]

I dont think there was a time where they were except maybe the first couple months of the game.

i know someone that bought a Haubergeon +1 from Tiger Fangs.

I don't think making everything availible from NPC promotes a functioning economy

it definitely doesn't. people who suggest that are stupid. you want to sell very optional things that people still want.

and when you implement "huge gil sinks" your problem is not inflation but deflation, which presents much more serious problems than inflation ever can.

explain, deflation can only get to the point when people stop buying those items from NPCs. what serious problem can it cost?

Large gilsinks just result in 1 month being able to purchase from then the next month nobody can afford that much for just 1 item, it would result in the value of gil bouncing all over the place. Stability is what we need.

Stability is what is needed but who's to say you want to stabilize it at the current price? why can't there be a huge drop before stabilizing at a lower price?

it's never going to get the point where people can't afford to chocobo or OP or take the Airship or buy Distilled Water from NPCs.

major gil sinks should be designed to be completely optional.

[Lockecole]

I dont think there was a time where they were except maybe the first couple months of the game.

i know someone that bought a Haubergeon +1 from Tiger Fangs.

I paid 1.8mil for my Haubergeon +1 back in the day, paid solely with 40-60k stacks of Tree Cuttings...back in the day when your only competition was JPs.

[Eromenos-Ifrit]

Most people in my LS where pretty smart about it when we saw the inflation start. And we started to play the AH like it was the stock market with our gil. We didn't want all that hard work of our savings to go up in flames. So we purchaced things off the AH, that anyone with comon sense could have guessed would go up. To then later sell it when we needed money. Thus allowing our gil to move evenly with inflation in a sense. Then when we saw the market start to crash we cashed in. Hell some of us even sold our big ticket items and went gimp for a few weeks while we waited for the market to hit it's low and repurchase them, making the most bang for our buck.

[Zigma]

remember jellsica or jessica or whatever, the tele-taxi who did it 24/7

It got her a vermillion cloak and what not for her whm and everyone started calling her a gillseller and stuff...


yeah...






I'm trying to do tele taxi, all ports 10k no reply ;(

[Ichthyos]

Everyone here has posted good points, but I wanted to support layoneil in saying that quests for gil were some of the easiest, and best, farming that we could do in late 2003. Some people I know static'd the 6 avatar primes every single day, and my friend farmed up 5-10 stacks of tiger fangs a day. These people eventually bought Sniper's, Astrals, Valkyrie's Masks, and other big-ticket items with the gil they earned. Granted, back then we didn't have ENMs, and didn't have the levels or access required to farm sky.

Btw, Zigrah check your email.

[Demetrios]

Back in 2003 I was camping LOO and selling Kraken Clubs for 20 mil and camping Fafnir with zero competition w

OMG AVATAR AMONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! L333333333t

[SephYuyX]

I'm trying to do tele taxi, all ports 10k no reply ;(

When im bored, I do it for 5k, and I made about 200k in an hour the other day.

[Xavier]

Back in 2003 I was camping LOO and selling Kraken Clubs for 20 mil and camping Fafnir with zero competition w

OMG AVATAR AMONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! L333333333t

Judging from your sig, it looks like you might be missing those days. (I kid, I kid.)

[Demetrios]

Broke the piggy bank by buying a 60 mil pair of alky; ;

[Kenai]

Inflation itself didn't bother me, it was the rate of inflation. I'm no business major but I'm not an idiot either, I'll explain as best I can.

The relationship of buying and selling in the game was usually based on these pocketbook factors:

The people selling the raw materials and Rare/EX NM items

The people buying the raw materials, crafting and reselling

The people buying crafted items and Rare/ex items

Those three things are supposed to keep themselves balanced. Crafters buy for a certain price and resell at a certain price. If any overcharge or undercharge too much, they might get away with a few sales, but *usually* never very much (like selling a 600k item for 610k, it could just as easily be 590k). Each item has different pricing history, but generally mainstream, craftable items that everyone "needs" to be considered non-gimp (like SH for melee, Weskit for BLM, staves, stat boosting rings, ect), stayed at the same price. Sometimes it would go up or down if the market got flooded, and luxury items like Kraken, Astral Signa, or Pallas/Alkys, never seemed to drop, but those are just that...luxury items that are nice to have but fairly rare, one of a kind items no class every really needed.

If any of those 3 go out of wack, it upsets everything else.

When IGE gilbuying n00bs come into the picture, the inflation increased at a very unheathly and rapid rate. Suddenly, crafters could overcharge by amazing amounts (like 3 mill for a 2 mill item), and gilbuyers would just pay it, not caring. Heck, that item might have even been up there for 2.2 mill, and they just went ahead and bidded 3 mil.

Normal legit people would have, of course, waited for the price to drop, or at least tried to bid 2.1 or 2.2. but when you see people overbid by that much, guess what happens? You either craft and resell it, and make a huge profit, or you already have a, say, SH, know you bought it for a lot less, and resell for a profit. Raw materials sellers start charging more, and crafters keep buying because they know that they are still making profit, and gilbuyers keep overrbidding.

This whole time the people not buying gil feel like shit, and maybe even bought items at those pricers fearing they would rise even higher later.

When HQ staves jump from 2 mill ish to 7.1 mill in like 2 weeks, something is going wrong, rampant gilbuying /selling were VERY much to blame, and if you think otherwise, you are indeed a fool. Need more proof?

After the end of the IGE Christmas sale and the accountbanning, you don't see any more overrbidding like during December, and normal price fluctuating on most items. Also, crafted items are reflecting the price of the items used to make them.

I rest my case...