Is there a reason you cant sell coins on AH?

[Wolfknight]

yugl, so you the bots have infinite gil to use for their or something, I mean cause way you're putting it they would NEVER ever run out of gil or need for currency right?

[Yugl]

yugl, so you the bots have infinite gil to use for their or something, I mean cause way you're putting it they would NEVER ever run out of gil or need for currency right?

Yes, we the bots have infinite gil.

What would be the significance of bots running out of gil? If you're trying to suggest that there are periods in which bots will be unable to purchase coins due to money troubles, you're forgetting that there can and will be multiple bots vying for coins. True, if it were one bot, then this wouldn't be an issue unless it were someone that already has enough gil to buy coins (And I've seen many such cases). However, even if there are only 5-6 people with bots and enough gil to buy a relic, it would be a problem. Why risk empowering AH bots (And especially gil buyers who are likely to use AH bots) when SE can leave coins Bazaar onry?

[Wolfknight]

Yes, we the bots have infinite gil.

What would be the significance of bots running out of gil? If you're trying to suggest that there are periods in which bots will be unable to purchase coins due to money troubles, you're forgetting that there can and will be multiple bots vying for coins. True, if it were one bot, then this wouldn't be an issue unless it were someone that already has enough gil to buy coins (And I've seen many such cases). However, even if there are only 5-6 people with bots and enough gil to buy a relic, it would be a problem. Why risk empowering AH bots (And especially gil buyers who are likely to use AH bots) when SE can leave coins Bazaar onry?

because constant shout spam wars here for currency are really fucking annoying and happen way too much, we have atleast 1 person shouting to buy and I've seen up to 5, so really I'd rather let the upgraders have to deal with AH, then make everyone have rest of server deal w/constant spam.

[Plow]

Dude if the bots wanted to pay 20k a piece for coins, sitting in whitegate shouting would eliminate any currency from the market they want as is anyway.

[Gergall]

Edit: This isn't a discussion of whether or not it's better to have coins AHable or Bazaar onry. It's a discussion of why SE kept them from the AH. Keep that in mind when responding. What is considered good or bad depends entirely on the individual.

SE kept coins off the AH because of AH bots?

[Absolutely Virtue]

It's really a basic price equilibrium question, and my point was that you won't reach the true equilibrium because the bots have an inherent advantage. You'll always have to pay more. A couple of things:

Bots don't have infinite gil. But I'm guessing that if RMT chose to do this, it would have a profound impact on prices. They've got much deeper pockets than the average person trying to fund a relic.

So they'll buy the coins on the way up, as legit buyers scramble to outbid them. And since they've got no incentive to upgrade weapons, they'll only re-list the currency at the new, inflated price point. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this means means even more profit for RMT, which allows them to continue to do this over and over again.

And 'regular' items are manipulated on the AH all the time. When I got to Phoenix a couple of weeks ago, Sniper Rings were 80k. Now they're 200k. That's not normal price fluctuation, that's fuckery. Given the 'zomg' factor of currency, and the overwhelming desire to upgrade relics (especially as you near the end), I'd argue that currency would actually behave differently than regular items- it would be even easier to manipulate.

But several people have raised a very good point: this can't go on forever, and prices would eventually settle to a 'normal' point (an equilibrium). So the patient buyer could, in the end, just wait it out til the bots get banned or give up or whatever. But I thought the entire fucking point of this argument was that you wanted to simplify and speed up the process by putting things on the AH. Now instead of hunting from bazaar to bazaar, you're battling RMT and botters. I don't see how this gets you your shiny any faster.

But then again hey, I failed Econ 101.

[Killkenny]

The bots won't give up because if/when the price does reach an equilibrium it will still fluctuate around this value and considering the quantities dynamis coins can be found in the margins don't need to be big for it to be worth the $12 or w/e an account costs per month (assuming they aren't just using the 1 month free trial and swapping gil over).

Its also really pointless in comparing dynamis currency to any other item availible on the AH because there is no consumable item that even comes remotely close to the demand or price.

[Spider-Dan]

Crystals easily eclipse currency in demand. And I'm pretty sure that there is a sh*tload of items that cost more than ancient currency.

I can't help but laugh over the fixation with AH bots, as if this is some sort of huge problem with the game. AH bots do nothing more than buy stuff really fast, which players can (and do!) do anyway! I know we all have this huge gag reflex every time the word "bot" is used because of idiotic NM spawn system, but honestly, AH bots are not a factor.

The efforts to compare currency to RMT price-jacks on snipers or what have you fails because the supply for currency on the server absolutely CRUSHES that of snipers. There is far too much currency changing hands for one entity to singlehandedly jack the price... and even if they did, if (say) RMT pricejack bynes to 50k each, then everyone will just sell their bynes to RMT until RMT goes broke. RMT are not f*cking magical gremlins with super powers.

The fundamental principle that the bot alarmists cannot seem to grasp is that AH bots cannot afford to buy all currency when it's on a central location with a price-history like the AH. NO ONE CAN AFFORD IT. It's actually EASIER for, say, RMT to have their legion of underemployed farmers camping WG, Jeuno and rol-mart for bazaar currency, because then no one knows how quickly they are buying currency and the community won't immediately raise prices in response!

All of the arguments being made against AHable currency, if valid, would mean that the AH itself is an irrevocably broken system and is unusable as is. Currency is really NOT as special as you think it is; if the AH can work for crystals, food, IS, d.ingots, hagun, wootz ingots, elemental ores, and shihei, I'm pretty sure it can work for ancient currency, too.

[Weeks]

The price would stabilize very quickly. RMTs/AH campers would quickly bid the price up past what most upgraders were willing to pay, the few willing to pay those amounts would quickly get the currency they need (There has to be somewhere around 10k currency entering each server per week) then the prices would go to what everyone else was willing to pay. My guess is that this would be somewhere between what people currently shout for (About 6k/10k/12k on my server) and what most of it sitting in bazaars is currently at (7-8k/12k/14-15k). The prices that people are willing to pay are pretty well-established--if anyone was willing to go much higher the same stacks of currency wouldn't be sitting in bazaars for weeks or months.

[Plow]

The price would stabilize very quickly.

This. Fish up 2 stacks of moat carp, sell one at 3990 and one at 4010, lol @ the results.

[Absolutely Virtue]

The price people are willing to pay is determined in part by the effort they put into buying. If it's easier to buy because it's concentrated in one place, people will pay more. Example: level 1 gear, level 1 spells, basic crafting materials. You can buy this stuff from vendors, but it's easier to just pay a bit more to get it all in one place.

If you could run around bazaars shopping for coins at 15k, or buy them all in the same place for 17k, you'd take the latter. Back to the bottom line: putting currency on the AH will raise prices.

[orson]

Spider-Dan is correct. All adding it to the AH would do, would be to standardize the prices. There's no way to know whether prices wouldn't normalize at the levels they are now in bazaars go up a little or go down a little but they would not sky rocket crazily.

If you're worried about hoarding (this is what I think people are bitching about not really AH bots) that's BS because ultimately there's a large amount of currency entering the market all the time. Most likely anyone who actually is trying to price jack would run out of gil before they could effectively pump the market up. Price jacking IS ALREADY HAPPENING WITH BAZAARS it's actually easier to do because there are no standardized records of currency prices. I know many people who have made millions sitting watching bazaars for lazy people that want to sell quickly for like 1/2 price. The thing is NO ONE has enough gil to actually raise the price of dynamis currency themselves. The maximum the currency will go to is what any given relic upgrader will be willing to pay or can afford. This literally is a small market as pointed out in comparison to crystals.

Edit: A good example of upgraders setting the price of certain things is Imp. Wootz Ingots on most servers even though the demand for these are huge they don't constantly rise because the majority of people do not have an infinite fountain of gil. Sure you'll have the odd spike but prices will ultimately hit a mean at the maximum people are willing to pay. If you check almost every server had Wootz Ore crash after ANNMs came out but Imp. Wootz Ingots stayed exactly the same. Now there are other factors such as crafting but overall the final product price is set by upgraders.

[Deimos]

I find it pretty funny that everybody totally ignores the possibility of a bazaar bot, as though botting the AH is the only option, and if that was ever opened up all hell would break loose. Do you really think that it would be difficult to write a bot that checks every new person with a bazaar as they zone into Rolanberry, and buys any currency that's below a pre-set threshold?

There are teleporting bots, that's definitely more complex than a bazaar-checking bot. I guarantee that somebody out there has done this already. Hell, some enterprising soul probably has a bot that checks every bazaar, compares every item's price to their AH values (by querying ffxiah) and buys anything that's a significant discount, to resell for profit.

[Plow]

The price people are willing to pay is determined in part by the effort they put into buying. If it's easier to buy because it's concentrated in one place, people will pay more. Example: level 1 gear, level 1 spells, basic crafting materials. You can buy this stuff from vendors, but it's easier to just pay a bit more to get it all in one place.

If you could run around bazaars shopping for coins at 15k, or buy them all in the same place for 17k, you'd take the latter. Back to the bottom line: putting currency on the AH will raise prices.

There's a slight difference between buying a 100 gil piece of armor for 1000 gil and buying 18,000 things for 2k more a pop.

[thomassmith]

Because SE loves you and wants to make it as hard as possible to obtain a fully upgraded relic weapon.

[Weeks]

If you could run around bazaars shopping for coins at 15k, or buy them all in the same place for 17k, you'd take the latter. Back to the bottom line: putting currency on the AH will raise prices.

I'm already at that bazaar staring at 15k plus Bronzepieces and I'm not willing to buy them. Presumably most if not every other person in the market for currency has looked in that bazaar and been unwilling to pay it. I'm there--it's no extra work. The currency is not devalued in my eyes because I had to walk to Upper Jeuno and check a few dozeen bazaars.

Yeah, maybe there are relic upgraders who haven't bothered to check those bazaars and are willing to pay that price for the convenience of AH shopping, but those people are very rare and there is more than enough currency sitting in LS treasuries and bazaars to take care of them in the first day that currency is placed on AH.

[Yugl]

To answer an earlier question: SE probably didn't make Ancient Currency AHable due to Hoarding/bots/RMT trouble at the time. Moreover, they probably felt it wasn't apart of their design vision.

Crystals easily eclipse currency in demand. And I'm pretty sure that there is a sh*tload of items that cost more than ancient currency.

As mentioned earlier, you cannot compare Ancient Currency to other items. Crystals? I've seen those reach ridiculous prices. What happens? People farm them. Can you walk outside on your LV1 mule and farm them? No. Ancient Currency is restricted to a selective group that does Dynamis (Tbh we're talking about City/Beau mostly). Even that selective group has limitations due to time limit and schedules. Stop making comparisons that do not exist.

I can't help but laugh over the fixation with AH bots, as if this is some sort of huge problem with the game. AH bots do nothing more than buy stuff really fast, which players can (and do!) do anyway! I know we all have this huge gag reflex every time the word "bot" is used because of idiotic NM spawn system, but honestly, AH bots are not a factor.

Too bad the fact that they bid faster than other players is the exact problem. People trying to fund relics don't have time to camp the AH. People trying to fund relics cannot bid faster than bots. Since that's the case, the only coins the bots cannot buy are those not within their financial reach. To suggest that they "only" bid faster is to suggest that a drug "only" kills a person. Anyone can belittle the problem then say there is none.

The efforts to compare currency to RMT price-jacks on snipers or what have you fails because the supply for currency on the server absolutely CRUSHES that of snipers. There is far too much currency changing hands for one entity to singlehandedly jack the price... and even if they did, if (say) RMT pricejack bynes to 50k each, then everyone will just sell their bynes to RMT until RMT goes broke. RMT are not f*cking magical gremlins with super powers.

While the supply for currency may crush currency, you're forgetting to principle facts. One is that people collecting currency are reluctant to sell back their coins unless they intended to do so. What happens when prices on gear spikes? People flood the AH. It's happened with Snipers. It's happened with Flame Ring. It's happened with many items. The people collecting coins typically don't want to sell it back since they cannot predict the future and risk having to buy it back at an even greater price. LSs that do Dynamis cannot forcefully make coins and typically sell all of them at once. This plan to sell all your coins to RMT and make them broke is wishful thinking at best. Collective action on that scale in FFXI is unheard of and probably will never happen. If coin prices increase, some buyers will stop while others will continue.

I don't know if you've ever witness RMT price manipulation in action, because you're suggesting that RMT would buy back the coins at 50k a piece. That is *not* how they operate. They buy out items from themselves at a very cheap price. When players sell their items on the AH at the same cheap price, they buy out the currency. Once they have enough items, they sell back to themselves for an event *greater* amount and try to manipulate AH prices. This is why you typically see an item cost 200k more than it usually would in an hr. At this point (Aka 50k Bynes point), they *sell* their coins. They won't buy them when they hit 50k. However, as soon as the price declines, they will buy them *faster* than a normal player would.

The fundamental principle that the bot alarmists cannot seem to grasp is that AH bots cannot afford to buy all currency when it's on a central location with a price-history like the AH. NO ONE CAN AFFORD IT. It's actually EASIER for, say, RMT to have their legion of underemployed farmers camping WG, Jeuno and rol-mart for bazaar currency, because then no one knows how quickly they are buying currency and the community won't immediately raise prices in response!

That's assuming bots are limited and solely for the purpose of funding a relic. If RMT or Resellers try to bot, they're making a *profit* each time they do. This means that they *can* continue for an indefinite amount of time. Add multiple bots and the situation escalates.

All of the arguments being made against AHable currency, if valid, would mean that the AH itself is an irrevocably broken system and is unusable as is. Currency is really NOT as special as you think it is; if the AH can work for crystals, food, IS, d.ingots, hagun, wootz ingots, elemental ores, and shihei, I'm pretty sure it can work for ancient currency, too.

In some respects the AH system is broken. There are times I've wanted to buy an item only to see it's 100k more than normal. You believe currency isn't it's own unique item, but I disagree. Currency takes on a unique combination of properties that almost no item in the game comes close to.

I'm already at that bazaar staring at 15k plus Bronzepieces and I'm not willing to buy them. Presumably most if not every other person in the market for currency has looked in that bazaar and been unwilling to pay it. I'm there--it's no extra work. The currency is not devalued in my eyes because I had to walk to Upper Jeuno and check a few dozeen bazaars.

Yeah, maybe there are relic upgraders who haven't bothered to check those bazaars and are willing to pay that price for the convenience of AH shopping, but those people are very rare and there is more than enough currency sitting in LS treasuries and bazaars to take care of them in the first day that currency is placed on AH.

Bazaar only items do not face the same price manipulation issues as Bazaars. How do you know if 5000 people have bought coins from Bazaars for 15k? You don't. There is no transparency in history when it comes to Bazaars as there is with AH. The AH acts as a "Trend setter". If the AH didn't have a history list, then it would be similar to Bazaars except that it condenses the currency collection.

I find it pretty funny that everybody totally ignores the possibility of a bazaar bot, as though botting the AH is the only option, and if that was ever opened up all hell would break loose. Do you really think that it would be difficult to write a bot that checks every new person with a bazaar as they zone into Rolanberry, and buys any currency that's below a pre-set threshold?

They may exist, but the problem is diffused by the mobility of bazaars. Why do bots work so well at HNM camps? Why don't don they so well for Ixion? Same reason there is a difference between AH and Bazaar bots. AH is an immovable entity where as Bazaars can be any anywhere. I was at the tree killing Goobue when I saw someone with currency in their bazaar. The tree. Not Rolanberry Fields. Not Upper Jueno (I hear this is popular on other servers). The Tree. Mobility is a bot's greatest enemy.

[Gergall]

This thread is going in circles.

Massive price spike caused by RMT will trigger new lowman farming groups to bring in greater supply and balance things out.

Currency is far more readily available than the types of items that RMT can price gouge. When RMT screw with Snipers+1 it's difficult to do anything about it, but when they screw with currency all you have to do is farm currency and enjoy the high prices.

[D44kpunk]

I think as someone posted earlier SE never intended for players to sell/re-sell coins. Was supposed to be a personal goal everyone worked for or something like that.

[Spider-Dan]

The price people are willing to pay is determined in part by the effort they put into buying. If it's easier to buy because it's concentrated in one place, people will pay more.

The flipside of this is that the price people are willing to accept is determined in part by the effort they put into selling. This is precisely why items sell for more in bazaars than they do in AH.

The mirror of your analogy is that while I might be selling coins for 15k in my bazaar, if I can just put it up in the AH and have the money delivered to my mailbox, I'm going to be willing to take less than 15k for them. So whatever pressure buyers feel to pay more is counteracted by the sellers' willingness to accept less.