ffxiah.com

[Demosthenes]

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

Gil sinks only work well when everyone has money. What happens when mr. 10 gil is trapped in the sink?

[Miji]

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

Gil sinks only work well when everyone has money. What happens when mr. 10 gil is trapped in the sink?

In a perfect world, he farms. In FFXI, he buys gil.

[Plow]

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

Gil sinks only work well when everyone has money. What happens when mr. 10 gil is trapped in the sink?

They don't get a subligar? Wait no, seeing how every 75 brd and their dog has it, I guess they just go to IGE.

[layoneil]

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

there being sufficient gil sinks now doesn't mean there were before. when rusty cap fishing was in full effect, the gil sinks in the game at that time was hardly sufficient.

the bannings and a lot of the current gil sinks are still recovering from that and assorted other exploits.

[Kyreth]

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

RMT's aren't playing the game. They don't buy l33t gear or keep up their gear (hihi Altepa group in level 10 gear), buy food, or much of anything for that matter. RMT parasites contribute almost nothing to the economy to begin with, and those billions aren't being generated by legitimate methods.

You could have six billion new gil sinks- RMT's wouldn't give a flying fuck about any of them, and it wouldn't prevent them from generating a bazillion Gil and selling it into the economy. But note the deflation as RMT's no longer have those billions to pump into the economy. That's the existing Gil sinks pulling money out of the economy until it hits the point of equilibrium, where we haven't been for a long time.

Without the artificial methods of altering the FFXI economy, it actually works properly.

[Eaglestrike]

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

RMT's aren't playing the game. They don't buy l33t gear or keep up their gear (hihi Altepa group in level 10 gear), buy food, or much of anything for that matter. RMT parasites contribute almost nothing to the economy to begin with, and those billions aren't being generated by legitimate methods.

You could have six billion new gil sinks- RMT's wouldn't give a flying fuck about any of them, and it wouldn't prevent them from generating a bazillion Gil and selling it into the economy. But note the deflation as RMT's no longer have those billions to pump into the economy. That's the existing Gil sinks pulling money out of the economy until it hits the point of equilibrium, where we haven't been for a long time.

Without the artificial methods of altering the FFXI economy, it actually works properly.

Some RMT have some good gear. I've heard about RMT's with SH+1's and such, lol. But RMT's vary per server. Not a single RMT is doing CoP, they just recently found Megalobugard within the last few weeks and haven't touched ToAU on Shiva. I know of some servers that have Jaded Jody and Big Bomb camped by RMT's...

[Kyreth]

Some RMT have some good gear. I've heard about RMT's with SH+1's and such, lol. But RMT's vary per server. Not a single RMT is doing CoP, they just recently found Megalobugard within the last few weeks and haven't touched ToAU on Shiva. I know of some servers that have Jaded Jody and Big Bomb camped by RMT's...

Endgame, most of them are happily looting those accounts someone sold IGE for gears. I'm talking about the 1-50 gibberish-named hordes, before they start running AF quests en masse. And once again, 24/7 campfests = resource denial. If you can't pump the server full of Gil, try and dominate enough of the resources to name your own prices, run things up and sell the gil anyway. It used to work when they'd be botting Spook, now they're just doing it on bigger monsters.

[Khamsin]

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

Removing billions of gil through account banning isn't meant as a move to remove gil from the economy. It does this, but only as a side effect.

The real reason they ban those accounts is because they belong to people who violated the TOS and sell gil.

[Minions]

and speed hack to save time. Hail chocobo raising, now I can go 13% faster than my wlegs!

[Scorp]

We have an rmt ranger with Blood gear ....

[mikazuki]

server capacity: servers vary between active populations of something like 5k-10k characters (based on 500k/30 = 17k discount mules etc.)
SE in their wisdom decided to stuff players into servers before they opened new ones, which could be for three reasons~
1. they want players to compete
2. they want to maximise profit on each server
3. they're really stupid
note that WoW for example opens many new servers as such the player base for those is somewhat higher ie. 6 million of WoW. some choose to play on max capacity servers, other prefer low capacity, ffxi only caters for max capacity preference.
any new player entering the game is obviously going to be turned off by the struggle to get equipped.

gil-sinks: uhh these make it more likely for players to buy gil, without them in approximately 2 years many items would have reached maximum gil carrying capacity value and consequently be unsaleable for full value, with them normal players run out of money but RMT never do due to usage habits others have noted. incidentally the players who would run out first would be the poorest (ie the majority), since they generally have no method to generate new currency - continue playing the game with respectable equipment and so they quit, because the gil of course flows up to the richest people (crafters or botters etc.)
in the sense of a working gil sink you'd have to punish the players with income tax/property tax, i can see SE implementing that just to enjoy all the ppl who continued playing making 15 mules to get a low tax rate on each set of holdings -_-

the root of the rmt trade is rarity - as we can discern from the server capacity discussion there is a smaller % of items dropped than items desired which leads to botting by smart players (smart ones can get everything they want with software made for free, go on try ethereal today) and rmt by the less smart ones (and endless farming by the really dumb ones) although maybe the ones who just quit are smartest of all...
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let's say you make all items 'ex' - at current drop rates the trade would then be in buying accounts with full sets of equipment, botting would increase slightly.
-
all items are made 'ex' and drops rates become 100% of demand - rmt becomes buying accounts for ppl who don't want to take a year gathering equip/lv, botting stays lv or increases for several months, then decays to a much lower rate once most players have everything they want.
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all items made 'ex' and anyone can fight any NM at any time (example BCNM) rmt is buying accounts and no-one has a bot.
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items continue to be traded and anyone can fight any NM at any time - rapid decrease in rmt activity but not complete, nonetheless they can no longer interfere with ppl who want super-items without breaking ToS.
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items continue to be traded and drop rates increase to perhaps 100% - rmt activity should increase so they can dominate markets and not become obsolete.
-
new servers are created - unemployment falls in china, ffxi subscriptions rise slightly
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lots more servers are created - as above but with a brief lull in rmt dominance while server populations are low, incidentally ffxi subscriptions rise a little more
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ffxviii is released with a non-rmt friendly environment with many more servers- ffxviii outsells ffxi by 10-1.

yeah i know this is a 1-post account, and you can hit me with a wall-o-text card now.

[Lithiani]

It's a mistake to compare WoW and FFXI on server population issues. WoWs system thrives on Re-roll value. People can and do restart with a new character from scratch, and on new servers. FFXI doesn't work that way, it is a completely different beast as far as the way it generate longevity of content.

[levish]

It's a mistake to compare WoW and FFXI on server population issues. WoWs system thrives on Re-roll value. People can and do restart with a new character from scratch, and on new servers. FFXI doesn't work that way, it is a completely different beast as far as the way it generate longevity of content.

It's a mistake more because the highly desired items/item-sets are for the most part drops off bosses in instanced areas, making population a non-issue in WoW.

You want the gear? Raid until you get it, no waiting in line either if multiple groups want to do the same instance at once, np.

[XaocRamuh]

and endless farming by the really dumb ones

So you're calling me dumb because I don't bot to get items?

[mikazuki]

no, farming fire crystals/beehive chips could be quite satisfying i guess, it would be dumb to compete on certain NM without a bot though, since your claim rate would be slightly over 0% since there will always be someone there botting this NM it wouldn't be sensible to not use 3rd pt tool yourself. i'm not saying it's the right attitude either, just practical.

as to comparing WoW and ffxi, http://mmogchart.com/
since there aren't enough games that i could find one where only one thing (server population) is varied between two of them. so like it or not the comparison is made.
as to other issues where WoW is improvement over ffxi, i think there are many and that these are significant contributions to subscriptions, but then it's a newer game and one would hope blizzard have learned from the mistakes of others. in turn WoW will be superseded by games which aren't so ugly ;D

edit: in terms of raids, how many must be made until a whole guild gets their dream equipment in WoW? i think the number is still too high for the casual player. exclusivity of equipment i think attracts less players than the casual market too.

[Lithiani]

You'll excuse me if I find the logic of "everyone else is cheating, so I will too" to be somewhat nauseous, I'm sure.

[mikazuki]

the logic is:
everyone bots fafnir
to get claim i must bot

alternatively you can say:
everyone bots fafnir
botting is wrong
i will never camp fafnir

i chose the second option personally, i think it would have taken me less than a day to use packet capture/response to write a bot.

[Lithiani]

Bots are not infalliable you realise. Cheating is wrong.

[mikazuki]

certainly the packets could be delayed for every botter etc. etc. if you have a statistic for how often you claim without botting against botters then please share it, noting your method for claiming (spamming enter key or macros...)

[Fhqwghads]

Ok maybe I'm just ignorant, naive, whatever, but didn't the claim-delay SE introduced render botting just as effective as trying to claim without being a jackass botter? Unless SE was stupid enough to let the client know when the window would be open, a 100% server-side claim system where the client sends request to claim, and the packet time stamp is compared to [ 1. is mob currently claimed 2. is time stamp greater than or equal to open window ] would mean a bot is pretty much useless. But wtf do I know, I just stand there and hope my voke doesn't fire too soon or too late...