NPC Sellback prices

[Antithesis]

This is also one other thing thats been driving me crazy. I dont think in all of the years of playing SE has ever adjusted NPC sellsbacks with the exception of inplementation of New items and changing items for RMT purposes. To be honest I think SE knows they will never be able to get rid of the RMT completly but that does not mean that its player base has to sufer as well. Do they ever plan to adjust sellback prices? I mean seriously if you could sell a Ridill to a shop at least make it 500k instead of 12k lol. I know there are a shit ton of items in the game that are sellable but seriously ever other game I have played most people tend to make some amount of money back from NPC sellbacks.

[Terrain]

I actually agree with this pretty hard core. One thing that I have always believed is that if it were easier to make a basic living, there would be much less RMT activity overall. I don't buy into the "people buy gil out of laziness" argument, people buy gil because it takes a really long time to amass anything of worth until you start hitting higher levels and joining good linkshells that routinely do events. And when I say a really long time, I mean night after night of repetitive fishing or farming instead of enjoying the game, just to buy one piece of X gear, because if you don't, your performance in the game suffers. That's not laziness, that's frustration at wasting time on something that may not bring much enjoyment.


SE is kind of going about this whole thing backwards, by lowering drop rates and lowering sell back prices of the items that RMT routinely would hunt, but that doesn't solve the larger issue of: it can be really hard for Joe new player to make enough money to buy reasonable gear when he starts playing. Even gear you buy at the NPC at level 10 is 1700-2200 gil per EACH PIECE.

I never understood why they broke the economical system so hard in this game. You no longer get a certain amount of money from every kill (like you did in all the previous FF games) and the beastmen drop such a pitiful amount you aren't making money there. Actual drops are worthless at NPCs, yet prices for gear and meds at NPCs are pretty high in comparison. No other FF game was this unbalanced.

This is why we have an RMT problem. This system was broken from the start. I guess they were trying to avoid level 75 characters farming lower level monsters (can anyone say bee chips), but there are much better ways to handle it. I have played other online games (not saying any names) and every single time I log off I have earned quite a bit of money just doing basic things in the game, without even focusing on making money. That's far more enjoyable than sitting here at work thinking, "bloody hell I need to go farm for my Nobles Tunic again tonight. I am never gonna get one."

Big difference, and one that I think is a major one when people choose whether this game is worth playing.

[Spekkio]

you're stepping into the pancho villa problem. the solution of making currency more accessible for less effort doesn't solve the problem because the value of it deflates at the same time. since this is a functioning economy, the only way to affect the number of hours of effort required to purchase say a haub is to either increase the supply of haubs or decrease the demand for them. adding more currency to the mix won't do anything but devalue what we already have.

[Hyan]

Gardening makes a nice 20k+/character weekly with minimal effort without playing with AH, money quests can give you around 2mils of cash which I bet can take you to a pretty high level. Fishing can take you long way. Newbs just have to find these things out themselves. When I was a newb I didn't know and I farmed quadavs for that 50gil a kill... But I don't think it's too hard these days to get gil.

[Hanyoko]

My friend that quite about a year ago put it best
"I spend all day at work earning real money, I come home and log into FF to try and earn fake money I need to do the activites in FF I enjoy; thats why I found offline activities that brought enjoyment so I only have 1 income to worry about"

Accomplishing many things in FF is on par with the stress/frustration/time requirements of a real life job.

[altwight]

My friend that quite about a year ago put it best
"I spend all day at work earning real money, I come home and log into FF to try and earn fake money I need to do the activites in FF I enjoy; thats why I found offline activities that brought enjoyment so I only have 1 income to worry about"

Accomplishing many things in FF is on par with the stress/frustration/time requirements of a real life job.

that's a good way to put it.

[BRP]

Sounds like a RMT's wet dream


EDIT: Though I would think the optimal action to recover gil into the game economy would have crafters profiting from NPC sells.

[Terrain]

You only think that it will devalue what we have because we have an over-inflated idea of the worth of certain items. I'm not arguing that they should just dump a bunch of Gil into the game and hope for the best, but taking sources of Gil OUT of the game without adjusting in other ways isn't necessarily the answer either, and that's the route they have selected.

This isn't even taking into account crafted items, I am comparing basic things sold at NPCs being priced way too high. IT was clearly unbalanced from the start. Spells, NQ basic gear, NQ weapons, random junk, crafting materials, all these things are overpriced at NPC compared to what stuff sells back for, and those are the things that you should be able to buy with minimal effort. I would like to see them lower prices on at least low level things that are sold at NPCs. Some of the stuff really is outrageous and makes me wonder what the hell they were thinking.

We really should revisit the "devaluing" argument again anyway. How dies it devalue a Haubergeon if John only has to farm junk for 1 day to buy it rather than 5? More drops being sold at NPCs doesn't mean that the market will suddenly be flooded with Haubergeons. That's what causes the price to drop, not more people being able to buy them. Sure John might sell it back someday but I think we can all agree we spend many days farming for these high ticket items because we expect long-time use out of them.

And I would like to know what money quests are making someone 2mil.

>.> Seriously.

[Spekkio]

if a haubergeon costs 300k right now, and it takes 5 hours to farm 300k for john, it takes 5 hours for harry tom and richard. if all 4 are in the market for haubergeons and it now takes john, harry, tom, and richard 1 hr to accrue 300k there are insufficient haubergeons to supply the demand. thus harry will instead offer 400k, tom 500k, on up until one of the above offers about 1.5 million. the thing that sets the price is not how long it takes john to farm the money, but how long it takes harry tom and richard to farm that much up.

[Antithesis]

The thing is honestly were not demanding that NPC sellback prices be fixed so we can make a shit ton of money off of it. What we would LIKE though is that the sellbacks for items become reasonable. I can understand why SE did not want to adjust NPC Sellbacks back then with RMT and shit going on because of the fluctuating economy. However, that was then this is now. Prices will never ever get back to how they were Xmas of 05 with Sole Sushi being 120k a stack. With the STFU banning RMT every month the economy will probably be a little more stable now. Fixing NPC Sellbacks now would be the prime moment of doing so.

Also, not even just sellbacks, just buying stuff from NPC's in general. Wtf @ 47k for a Wool Robe seriously.

[Corrderio]

I do think it'd be nice if SE did it the right way...

I was thinking items (Excluding Weapons/Armor/NM Drops/Crystals) would be giving a "quality" factor which would effect the NPC price. You'd have qualities that range form something like....

Very Poor
Poor
Average
Above Average
Great
Perfect

You could tell the quality from the description. Lets's take Silver Ore for example it's say...

Chunk of silver ore
This ore contains
the precious metal silver
<Quality: Poor>

Maybe they could take it further and it'd effect HQ rates to.