Something that has been bothering about the AH

[alt]

I have been thinking about this for a while now. This game has been out for what, 5 years in NA?

How is it that items such as the Emperor hairpin, etc. still have any value? Or better yet, why doesnt each person on each server own one?

Assuming that the Valkurm Emperor drops 3 hairpins each day on average.

If we break down the math: 3 hairpins a day * 365 days in a year = 1095 dropped per year.

1095 * 5 years = 5475 Emperor/ess hairpins dropped in the last 5 years.

I think it is safe to assume that most people do not purposely drop, or sell these to npc vendors, so the loss from these methods is most likely minimal.

When I did the math on this out of curiosity, it seemed kind of strange to me. Are there even 5475 accounts per server? Or is SE doing something to artificially reduce the supply? Or maybe i'm totally missing something...

[Venture]

Taking into account the relativly short amount of time the Rare/Ex version has been in circulation, the sellable version now part of a BC, and the likelihood of how many Pins get deleted along with RMT, gilbuyers and hackers that usually have them? Also taken into account how short level 24 to level 37 is nowadays, with Empress Band and the prevelance of the PL for people to either get their subjob and sell their Pin, or not even bother to farm the Rare/Ex or invest gil to purchase the sellable version for a short period of time.

Was never honestly a critical piece for that level, and it's price tag tends to be steep for the people who are likely to be slow enough at FFXI to not zoom right through that stretch, so a lot of factors to explain why more people don't have them. I never bothered, personally. Not worth the effort since I don't have THF past any decent level.

[alt]

Well Emp. pin was just a random item I choose. There are other examples you could use.

[Yutuyu]

Another thing that doesn't make sense is how much liquid gil is in the economy. I mean, where does it all come from? Millions in circulation, and a ton of it is being taken out of the supply every day from all of the NPC-based interactions we do. Dynamis, Limbus, Einherjar... they keep adding gilsyncs but it's still as difficult as ever to get raw gil. The biggest shot of liquid gil is hitting rank 10, 100k, but that's not really that much, seeing as how 1 Dynamis run takes 10x of that out of the system.

I'm guessing that you're right about SE buying stuff from the auction house. They probably do take a certain percentage of items which are sold regularly out of circulation at the same rate they enter in order to create a constant pool. That's also probably how the gil we all have enters the market as well, there's really no other explaination.

[Coren]

I have been thinking about this for a while now. This game has been out for what, 5 years in NA?

How is it that items such as the Emperor hairpin, etc. still have any value? Or better yet, why doesnt each person on each server own one?

Assuming that the Valkurm Emperor drops 3 hairpins each day on average.

If we break down the math: 3 hairpins a day * 365 days in a year = 1095 dropped per year.

1095 * 5 years = 5475 Emperor/ess hairpins dropped in the last 5 years.

I think it is safe to assume that most people do not purposely drop, or sell these to npc vendors, so the loss from these methods is most likely minimal.

When I did the math on this out of curiosity, it seemed kind of strange to me. Are there even 5475 accounts per server? Or is SE doing something to artificially reduce the supply? Or maybe i'm totally missing something...

Didn't the census say we still had something like half a million accounts (with over 1.5 million characters)? That gives you roughly 15k people per server. Now do you understand why only 1 in 3 people have emp pins after 5 years? Never mind the other repliers' points, referring to the number of people that quit or get banned with these items.

[MisterBob]

Another thing that doesn't make sense is how much liquid gil is in the economy. I mean, where does it all come from?

Someone wasn't around for Rusty Cap fishing

[Asdra]

Plus alot of crafters NPC nq items because it auctions for less than the NPC cost, pumping more liquid gil into the server.

Then think about the gil that drops off BCs, KSNMS, etc, and from all the various NMs like sky gods. Then all the random chests that are popped, people xping on goblins, people farming beastmen for coffer keys/scrolls/etc. Repeatable quests that give small amounts of gil.

All those add up over time. It doesn't seem like much per person, but its millions and millions a week all added up, and it all gets swirled and mixed through the AH.

[Sagacious Sundi]

Think of the Mamools killed daily! That gil adds up.

[Kaylia]

How many Emperor Hairpin quit the game/got banned? A ton for sure. There is also many people having one in storage for years and not using it (like me).

Demand for decent item like this one will alway be high, and and the number avaible on the market isn't large, especially now that they drop in a BC no one ever do. That's why the value is still high

[Sonomaa]

almost every rmt ninja or thf I see are sporting an empress pin, and since their accounts stay around 2-3 months tops on most servers except in the most extreme cases, you can assume that most of the empresses dropping and emps bought at AH have been lost

[Yutuyu]

You have to realize, for all those methods of gil getting into the economy there's a ton of gilsyncs.

- Anything gear bought from NPCs (low level stuff, scrolls, crafting materials, medicine)
- Taxes (on AH and Bazaar)
- Travel fees (choco and etc.)
- Event fees (Dynamis Einherjar Limbus)

Chest and etc. give really small amounts of gil. As do HNMs. When you compare to the amount of money spent on other things it's really not much at all. Especially when you consider every Dynamis attempt is 1000k gone.


The rusty cap fiasco in Rabot is a good example of where large quantities of liquid gil actually entered the economy, but with all the billions of gil lost by SE banning people, wouldn't we be getting hit heavily with deflation problems? My server seems to be starting to turn around somewhat in that regard.

[Kyreth]

I wouldn't be surprised to see S-E folks gently manipulating the economy as well, much like any owner of a real area does.

Even occasionally tweaking the rates at which chocobo fees rise/reset, or buying even a few items on the AH per server from odd listings would do. I mean, how much money per day (roughly) goes to the AH in fees? How much Gil does the server generate per day? Interesting questions for some.

[Vedder]

I wouldn't be surprised to see S-E folks gently manipulating the economy as well, much like any owner of a real area does.

Even occasionally tweaking the rates at which chocobo fees rise/reset, or buying even a few items on the AH per server from odd listings would do. I mean, how much money per day (roughly) goes to the AH in fees? How much Gil does the server generate per day? Interesting questions for some.

I would actually be surprised to see this. It would be a lot of work to research and implement all these little tweaks and then see how they affected the economy.

In general, I think SE just does ancillary manipulation of economy... mainly in the arena of bannings and removal of gil by cheaters. Every once in awhile, you'll see a patch hit with something that has economic ramifications (lower limbus fees, cheaper OP warps, etc), but in my mind those are reactionary measures to more drastic economic changes... not methods of tweaking future economic behavior.

[Yutuyu]

"It would be a lot of work to research and implement all these little tweaks and then see how they affected the economy."

I actually think you could figure out how to properly manipulate the economy and keep things stable just from using FFXIAH.com's statistics provided. >.>

[Vedder]

"It would be a lot of work to research and implement all these little tweaks and then see how they affected the economy."

I actually think you could figure out how to properly manipulate the economy and keep things stable just from using FFXIAH.com's statistics provided. >.>

I do too, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a lot of work and/or time consuming. In order to properly see the effects of a "tweak", one change would have to be implemented at a time so you could isolate the effects of that change. Then you'd need at least some period of time after that to analyze the effects. Sure, one of the tools you use to do that analysis could be ffxiah.com statistics.

My comments are more along the lines of "SE wouldn't dedicate the resources for that type of analysis" than "it's impossible to do."

[Yutuyu]

I dunno, I think it's a job one man could do easily. All they'd have to do is give him access to some statistics gathering protocols and a special GM character with infinite gil. That would be an awesome job: Virtual Alan Greenspan

[Hanyoko]

That job would be fun for the first few weeks and would take away from the 'player controlled' aspect of the market. Our AH system is rather well done (compared to other game's implementations). I would rather see someone assigned to fix all the connection problems with the AH then to monitor its gil flow.

[klvino]

...economy there's a ton of gilsyncs.

...there's a ton of gilsyncs.

...a ton of gilsyncs.

...gilsyncs.

Really, STFU if you don't know what you're talking about, which certainly sounds like the case here.

[BRP]

This is how you zoom, focus now, I'm only going to tell you once:

...economy there's a ton of gilsyncs.

...there's a ton of gilsyncs.

...ton of gilsyncs.

gilsyncs.

[Almalexia]

Think of the Mamools killed daily! That gil adds up.

And don't forget Moghancement: Money! You can pull in enough gil for a stack of sushi whacking Nyzool Ja for two hours.