ffxiah.com

[Navia]

I don't know you, I don't mean to disrespect you, but someone's gonna point out the fact that for someone with a relic you're paying a lotta attention to IGE... Just... how exactly do you find out that they "sell out" easily... is all

What a supremely stupid thing to post.

Personally, I'd be more suspicious of someone who makes vast amounts of money in a major way through crafting that pays zero particular interest to IGE at all, it's an extremely valuable tool to judge the trends in the economy, especially before Cliff released his server economy index graph.

I agree any serious crafter would be nuts to not watch the $ per mil sell price on IGE. Sell through on expensive items went to hell when gil was over $30/1m. it precipitated NQ items and synth materials dropping across the board while the HQ versions corrected much slower.

Undercutting sales on stored up caches of hq/big gil items to buy out the cheaper synth materials and milk the slowly correcting HQ synth market was pretty lucrative for some people.

Aurik is right about Totentanz getting raped by RMT, Check out how badly the Corse Cape has cratered in price on Asura >_>
-Around xmas the price was ~12m
-2 months ago I sold my Bat Cape and took the gil from that to buy one for 1.8m
-In the last 12 days its gone from 1m -> 500k ._.

Elemental ores lost 25% of their value in the last week, Talk about a race to the bottom on moving materials.

[aurik]

RMT sales of raw materials is also higher when (and immediately after) IGE & co. aren't "overstocked on gil", which is another indicator to watch. Want to know when Gant's gonna plunge the vclaw market by selling 10 in 2 days? Wait until currency resellers need money.

[Plow]

I'd just assume then that whichever servers you're checking were successfully nuked quite heavily in the last banning, and the rmt are having to actually work to keep up with demand.

With the amount of gil that gets given right back to them through things like strider boots (and everything else in the game), the giant christmas inflation was just what basically happened when they didn't even need their actual in game rmt'ers anymore. So, they dump massively because of an interruption in the chain:
rmt monopolize > people buy from rmt > money goes right back to rmt

I'd guess it was getting to the point where having the people who monopolize was costing more than they could possibly make purely thought the gil those people make. Remember now that ige is (supposedly at least) not in the market of actually playing the game, making the gil. However, they depend on the monopolization in game to drive people to buy gil.

Soooo, when it basically got to where they couldn't pay the farmers enough to keep them farming, they had to dump, and reduce the gil/$ ratio dramatically (and/or increase the gil/item ration).

If I'm completely right here, then basically by bringing in massive deflation, and removing the gil from the servers completely, not just from the hands of rmt, se has simply restarted the cycle.

I hope that made sense, I was having a hard time figuring out how to word it.

[aurik]

The RMT always have to work to keep up with demand. IGE sells 7m for $200 to Joe Gilbuyer, who then buys a scorpion harness +1, of which 3 mil goes to the lucky bonecrafter, and 4 mil goes to the RMT toons that killed serket for the claw. IGE then buys that 4 mil back for $50.

The net of that transaction:
IGE is $150 richer, but has 3m less (basically their net profit is $50 per million even though they sold it at under $30/mil)
The RMT farmers camped Serket for 3 hours and got $50
Joe Gilbuyer has the harness +1 I made, while Steve Scrapingby is out farming in his AF body because he can't/won't buy gil to afford to upgrade.

There's feedback in the system inherently; the more IGE sells, the higher that people can afford to pay for items, which means more goes to the RMT *and* cheaters need to buy larger quantities from IGE. When Christmas came around, this feedback caused a huge cascade of increasing prices, much like the concept of resonance. It would have probably kept going until we ran into the wall of how much gil we actually have in the system, because even with the huge velocity of money that month, IGE was still sitting on a huge cache of dormant gil; SE nuked it to smithereens rather than let this resonance make paupers of us all.

[Shuvo]

I always figured the inflation last xmas was due to limbus. Basically you had the old rich players (mostly jp) who had nothing to spend their gil on, but after limbus any 'ordinary' player could easilly obtain 2-3 coins each twice a week, each selling for 500k to those old rich players. While it didn't introduce new gil into the economy, it did release a lot of 'horded' gil into the economy.

BTW, how much of a profit did the tavnazian safehold glitch return per transaction?

[aurik]

Like 50k, but you could literally make 100k a minute with ease using it.
They banned people they found doing it.

[Snowknight26]

Perhaps an explaination for those not in the 'know'?

[aurik]

buy item from npc for 4.2 million
sell item to npc for 4.25 million
repeat.

[divisortheory]

It's retarded they banned people for doing it, why not just delete all gil earned from those transactions and slap them on the wrist or something.

[Raineer]

It's retarded they banned people for doing it, why not just delete all gil earned from those transactions and slap them on the wrist or something.

I have to agree, it's a hard damn sell for a GM to say you're doing something not allowed by the TOS.

[aurik]

GMs being retards, who would have ever thought?

[Kyreth]

Mostly, it looks like what's "working" for RMT's right now is the resource denial side- Ulli/NM cockblocking, tradeskill undercuts and so on.

Now, that is something I can understand. People have been doing that since Ultima Online. The only thing is, there's no reason why a player wouldn't do the same thing here to get more money.

To function in the manner RMT's require takes a focused effort that literally needs cheating to be effective- running crafters continually (24/7), botting claims at specific locations, and other forms of automated and un-natural behaviour by character standards. That in itself is cheating- and will also need to be stopped as it does have damaging effects on the economy as well (and the game in general, of course.).

I've been talking to some friends about this, and I thought I'd run it by you guys. The real problem with the game, from my eyes, is the lack of money sinks. When FFXI started, all AH prices were extremely low, and the economy "worked". Players weren't having to think about buying gil. But because there is no way to drain all this money being generated from players, the total wealth slowly increased, which is exactly what leads to inflation in a game.

It's not that hard to think of ways of doing this, though they would have to be well designed. For instance, paying for storage (think up to like 300 items or so). Careful tuning could equalize the inflow and outflow of gil from the system, and certain one time events could be used to drain out large amounts of money for unexpected changes. To me, that's much more preferable than mass banning of accounts in order to drain the economy.

Once that is accomplished, all that is left is to fix systems that allow hoarding and undercutting of this nature. That though, is a topic that is incredibly sensitive in a live game environment where any change is immediately hated by a certain percentage of the population.

-Cliff

I disagree. I see the deflationary process in the economy as a clear pointer towards sufficent Gil sinking to account for normal player behaviour. Inflation began when RMT's deliberately overloaded the supply side and then repeatedly unbalanced the game economy with exploitive behaviours, causing the rapid slide upwards.

The most robust form of Gil removal, IMHO is the Auction House. The more activity, the greater the health of the system as Gil circulates and is drained away in fees. Oddly enough, seeing as a new form of currency (Imperial coins) has come into the game, this may lead to more Gil sinking through the AH, as trade in the stuff rises.

[Kyreth]

With RMT filling every zone so you can hardly even exp anymore, I cant see how there will be room for real players to make an economic living, besides maybe BCNM's and such.

Am I the only who finds it odd that the game was designed with such a small maximum capacity?

-Cliff

Actually, when I see this, I tend to laugh.

The last few weeks on Ragnarok, I've been working on my Alchemy and wandering around the low-level area of KRT, picking off the occasional item-dropping monsters as I go. It's a nice supply of flint stones and other goodies.

The high level area has had one party or no party whatsoever for most of the time I've been there. There's plenty of places to go- it's simply that people are all crowding into the "best" areas rather than spreading out.

If you have KRT all to yourselves, it's going to be a real nice hunting area, even sans Sanction bonuses. Hint hint.

The game has a much higher capacity than you'd assume from people stuffing themselves all in the "best" areas, when in truth other areas are ready and waiting to take the overflow and offer the same benefits (simply to a smaller number of PT's).

[Lithiani]

That would require people not to be Sheep. There are lots of Sheep.

[Kyreth]

That would require people not to be Sheep. There are lots of Sheep.

Yep. Which I find humor in. And frequent profit. Wanna leave those nice areas empty and unclaimed? Thanks.

I do find the occasional smart fellow who wanders in, realizes it's exp/farm bonanza time, and goes to town farming or with a PT. They get applause. Guess that makes us wolves (Fenrir? ) rather than sheep.

But hey, I'm waiting to see if IGE decides to start selling Imperial currency too. That'd be interesting, in a sick sort of way.

[TsingTao]

With RMT filling every zone so you can hardly even exp anymore, I cant see how there will be room for real players to make an economic living, besides maybe BCNM's and such.

Am I the only who finds it odd that the game was designed with such a small maximum capacity?

-Cliff

Actually, when I see this, I tend to laugh.

The last few weeks on Ragnarok, I've been working on my Alchemy and wandering around the low-level area of KRT, picking off the occasional item-dropping monsters as I go. It's a nice supply of flint stones and other goodies.

The high level area has had one party or no party whatsoever for most of the time I've been there. There's plenty of places to go- it's simply that people are all crowding into the "best" areas rather than spreading out.

If you have KRT all to yourselves, it's going to be a real nice hunting area, even sans Sanction bonuses. Hint hint.

The game has a much higher capacity than you'd assume from people stuffing themselves all in the "best" areas, when in truth other areas are ready and waiting to take the overflow and offer the same benefits (simply to a smaller number of PT's).

I'm pretty sure Cliff wasn't referring merely to exp zones. "End Game" in many places is highly restrictive and does not scale to so many high level players.

- Sky triggers, and the ability to lock them down, is a sign of a game not scaling to high volumes of people.
- 24HR HNM that are camped by 100+ people daily are a sign.
- Instanced areas like Dynamis or Limbus zones being usable by only one group at a time are a chocke point. Time restricted to access every 72 HR to boot.

Take away Sky, Kings/HNM, Dynamis, and Limbus and what's left that interesting and freely supports the amount of level 75 players that exist today?

- Level a new job so it can get stuck in the same mire @ 75.
- Stand around and wait for Besieged.
- Do Assault for 15 minutes once a day.
- Cyber

FFXI does a great job along the way, but it runs in to problems of scale once you're at 75. It's just not designed to suppors that many active 75s looking for a challenge.

[Eaglestrike]

Eventually with prices falling lower and lower, 'old' methods of making gil will be viable once again, which will start to introduce more gil into the economy. Some things that became near worthless that I knew about (and utlilized) back in the day:

Beadeaux farming - Garnet Quadavs, Old Quadavs - Mauls NPC for 2.2k and the Helms are a quest item for 900gil.
Tigers - 3x tiger fangs for 2100 gil

When prices for everything flew up, these sources of gil were essentially removed from the system, there was no reason to do it. With prices falling, they'll be back in the game again. The amount of gil could just cycle around and around for 2 years or so, soon with the gil sinks and bank bannings, methods to introduce gil into the economy will open up.

As well, Limbus/Dynamis get 'more expensive' as prices fall, as it's harder to make that static price.

[Demosthenes]

LOL my server is competeing with diablos for lowest. Win!

[TsingTao]

As well, Limbus/Dynamis get 'more expensive' as prices fall, as it's harder to make that static price.

Dynamis is more expensive from a cash out of pocket perspective. A million dollars buys a lot more than it did six months ago. Sponsorship is still a good bargain for someone upgrading their Relic weapon tho.

I doubt we'll ever go back to the days where currency is @ 3-5k per and you need 200+ coins to cover your enrty fee. Even if you're buying for 10k per that's only a measley 100 coins for break even...easy in a city.

That notwithsdanding you're correct. Regular Dynamus and Limbus fees are a pretty big gil sink compared to just a year ago. More people are participating now than when they were introduced too...they're removing more gil from the economy than ever.

[Miji]

I've been talking to some friends about this, and I thought I'd run it by you guys. The real problem with the game, from my eyes, is the lack of money sinks. When FFXI started, all AH prices were extremely low, and the economy "worked". Players weren't having to think about buying gil. But because there is no way to drain all this money being generated from players, the total wealth slowly increased, which is exactly what leads to inflation in a game.

It's not that hard to think of ways of doing this, though they would have to be well designed. For instance, paying for storage (think up to like 300 items or so). Careful tuning could equalize the inflow and outflow of gil from the system, and certain one time events could be used to drain out large amounts of money for unexpected changes. To me, that's much more preferable than mass banning of accounts in order to drain the economy.

Once that is accomplished, all that is left is to fix systems that allow hoarding and undercutting of this nature. That though, is a topic that is incredibly sensitive in a live game environment where any change is immediately hated by a certain percentage of the population.

-Cliff

I disagree. I see the deflationary process in the economy as a clear pointer towards sufficent Gil sinking to account for normal player behaviour. Inflation began when RMT's deliberately overloaded the supply side and then repeatedly unbalanced the game economy with exploitive behaviours, causing the rapid slide upwards.

The most robust form of Gil removal, IMHO is the Auction House. The more activity, the greater the health of the system as Gil circulates and is drained away in fees. Oddly enough, seeing as a new form of currency (Imperial coins) has come into the game, this may lead to more Gil sinking through the AH, as trade in the stuff rises.

If there were sufficient gil sinks, they wouldn't have to remove billions of gil through account banning.