SH 15M WTF?

[Krazi]

How in the fuck are we suppose to keep playing this game with the prices of shit doubling over night?

SH are now 15M
Haubys 12M
Evasion Earrings 6M
Elemental Torques 6.5M

All this shit was half this price a month ago? Where am I gonna get the money to afford my 70k a stack sushi now?

[tempus]

Dynamis singles are reliably 30-45k. Its how I pay for my sushi. =)

-t

[ooko]

Stacks of Pamamas 700 gil c.c'

[Markus]

I guess lots of people got gil for X-Mas lol.

[stahn]

lame lol

[Sosa]

Ochidu's Kotes have spiked approximately 250% in less than 2 weeks. There is now only a 1 million gil difference between the Ochidu's Kotes and Horimusha Kotes (which are a 24-hour spawn drop off of a mob in the Rivierne site from CoP missions.)

Wow.

I was writing a very long, detailed post on the current situation of the Titan economy... if you've been around long enough to see it, it's incredibly depressing. New players stand absolutely no chance to establish a foothold in the market... and old players (which are not at the very top of the food chain) are forced to watch in horror as the price on their next sets of gear double or even triple while they farm the gil to buy them.

At the current rate our economy is suffering under - it won't be very long at all before a large number of people simply quit out of frustration (I've heard at least three friends quit this week.)

Sadly, there is almost nothing we can do about it. We can blame gil-sellers all we want - but the REAL reason that our economy is so fucked up is much closer to home. FFXI, by nature of the time you're forced to invest in it, is a very elitist game - and a huge part of of the problem is nested in this fact. Luxury items which were once considered so rare that only a few people on the server had them have now become the standard against which all players are judged.

If you don't have sniper rings, a haubergeon/scorp harness (or both,) verm/nobles/black cloak and astral rings - you are gimp. No one will party with you, because you're gimp. Sadly, that's the culture that our player-base has evolved into... and the unfortunate fact of the matter is - not everyone can afford the time or money to invest in obtaining these items. Those that can will raise the prices out of greed, furthering this virtual economic divide.

Any attempts to lower the price via mass buyouts/price lowering are doomed to failure. If you buy out 40 stacks of Silk Threads on the auction house and list them lower - there is absolutely nothing to stop someone from buying your re-listed items in turn... and simply marking them right back up at a profit again. Players with the financial backing to make these kinds of unscrupulous transactions really have no effective deterrent barring them from doing so - and there is absolutely no method for keeping these types of high-demand/low-supply items' prices in check.

How the hell do we go about changing the economy, then? The short answer is that... unfortunately, we can't. Our economy has reached the point where it is no longer capable of self-recovery. The only thing I can see bringing it back into swing in the future is a significant change to the current auction and crafting/nm camping conventions that have been put into place.

The FIRST thing that needs to be done... is to make ALL NM drops player-exclusive, and raise the drop rates. If you want an item - you go and camp it against the three or four other people that need it - and you're done. You can't sell it or give it away, so the only competition you have are other people that directly need the item. Allowing players to sell these drops is very poor economic planning... because it simply aggravates our current market conditions by allowing groups or individuals to monopolize spawn points. We've seen it happen dozens of times.

With this in place... we can concentrate on options for people that either do not have the time or resources to camp the items. This is where the major crafting overhaul comes in. 90% of the store-vended (and a slightly smaller percentage of crafted gear prior to high levels) is COMPLETELY USELESS. Think about this for a second. Because of FFXI's unique ability to let you change jobs anytime you want - there is always a demand for low and mid-level gear. The number of totally useless recipes in this game are beyond the point of ridiculous. Scrap that shit - it has no purpose. What need to be put up instead are viable alternatives to campable gear - giving players the option to support a craft and spend money in the economy INSTEAD of camping if they so desire... as an example:

Leaping Boots (lv. 7) Def: 3 Dex +3 AGI +3

It took them damn well over TWO YEARS to make these EX drops by adding the item Bounding Boots. The problem is, Leaping Boots are still campable drops (albeit via BCNM now.) Prices skyrocketed, because although you can get the item via camping - the drop rate is still horrible and the camp is still largely camped now that people can simply sell the old version they have. This was a very poor decision that probably could have been avoided by simply warning players prior to the next patch - and then updating ALL instances of the boots causing them to be EX.

Now let's take this a step further. What if you don't want to camp the boots? After all, if everything in the game worth getting has to be camped, what's the point in a crafting system? Well, first off, you have two basic types of recipes in the game... consumables (like potions, food, arrows and tools,) and non-consumables (mostly armor.) One part of the solution is to simply increase the number of consumable items that can be made by all of the trades. A good way to do this without ruining trade balance is to make the guilds a little more interdependent. If every guild can produce trade-skill items that another guild needs - it does two important things. First, it gives each craft a consumable outlet to expend resources in. Second - it brings all of the crafts together and helps to stabilize prices.

Now what about non-consumable items? Instead of filling the recipe lists with completely useless items, wouldn't it make a hell of a lot more sense to concentrate on non-consumable items that present a viable alternative to OTHER items around the same level? As an example, why ISN'T there a leather-crafting recipe that makes boots with AGI or DEX bonuses? (excluding winged boots, which require the *NM DROP* to make.) They wouldn't even need to be as powerful as the NM drops... they would simply need to present themselves as a viable alternative. Why not make a leather recipe for boots that look like this?

Leaping Chaussures (lv. 11) Def: 3 Dex +2 AGI +2

This immediately solves two problems. First off, it helps to bolster the player economy by allowing players an alternative to camping the NM (since, for example, they may only be leveling the job temporarily and don't want to waste several hours camping the mob.) It creates a new market. Second, it helps to stabilize the existing market by creating a demand for other trade-skill items. This is where the interdependency between crafts makes sense. Price raises in one craft directly impact on another - but because of the level of diversity within the market system - anyone trying to establish a monopoly on a specific item should be automatically thwarted. Attempts to artificially inflate prices by controlling one resource are pointless, because the resource can be found elsewhere. Expanded options and price competition lead to price cuts, which benefit the consumer (letting them put more money into their own crafts or spend it on other things.)

And perhaps most important of all - the new crafting system passively counters inflation by draining funds from players. If it's mostly in consumable items (and non-consumable items require consumables to make), it keeps the money changing hands. It may not remove it from circulation directly, (that's what you need money sinks, like AH / bazaar taxes or airship fees for,) but it helps to stabilize the economy by forcing players to invest in other players' crafts in order to progress within their own.

These ideas are far from perfect, there's still a lot of room for improvement... and the one thing that is made absolutely clear is that there is no clear-cut and simple answer to our problem. But I think we all know what to expect from Square-Enix... it will probably be a cold day in valkurm before they even CONSIDER making a change big enough to actually do anything about our problem. The alternative is to hope that the player-base simply wakes up one day and decides that they probably don't NEED half the shit that they have - and that 'normal' gear is perfectly ok for something as mundane as EXP grinding. Then again, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one either...

[tarick]

Has anyone seen the price of a Lamborghini these days? I mean, it's insane. Is it really worth all that money? Sure, it looks nice, and it performs better, but how the hell is a normal guy supposed to afford one?

He's not, just like you, your neighbor, and your neighbor's cat, are not all supposed to have a scorpion harness. Back when I first started, the only people who seemed to have a harness were people who already had a job to 75.

Leaping boots and Empy Pin. Can you still make decent xp without them? I never had trouble getting thief to 37 without boots or pin. My parties rocked at that level, and I still put up some nice damage (psst thf/war rules). Ochiudo's Kote? Those define the word "luxury." Hell, it's been argued that our AF gloves do equivalent damage. Evasion Earring? That didn't even exist when I started. (I don't think it did, at least)

Yes, gilbuying is affecting the economy. It appears a ton of people got a bunch of gil for x-mas. Already, much of that money is filtering through to all levels, hence the increase in prices of sushi, silent oil, etc. What it means is, the gil you had has decreased in value. What it does not mean, is that making gil will be any more difficult, after the money filters through.

New players will be fine as always, since they never saw the low prices of anything. They can make money on beehive chips, which also doubled, or any other method that low levels used to use, besides quest rewards.

If I could ask SE to change one thing, it would be to modify quest rewards to reflect the economy. It would have to be a variable, since the economy is so variable.

Anyway, the points are.

a) You don't need that stuff. You aren't all supposed to have that stuff. The only person who's commented on me not having a SH, is me. I pull hate just fine anyway, thank you.

b) The economy is no more broken than it already was. It will filter through, it already has started.

c) Do Not keep your assets liquid. Keep it in gear, or it will lose value.


Final point: If you had 15 million, would you buy the SH? I would, it's not going to go down in value. THAT is why it is 15 mil, because anybody who can raise that much, is willing to pay that much.

[ooko]

You guys write to much ; ;
i cant ready it my eyes refuse ><

[-=[Tork]=-]

i don't know man, you can say that the new players can make money and be fine but I really think you are wrong in that sense.... I always hear people saying blah blah blah bee chips... I don't think those or raised to the price that keeps up with the inflation... i mean if you look at it the total amount of gil they have to raise to buy such and such piece of item is increased while the lower consumerable items fluctate a great deal you even said it yourself i believe when you said "Do Not keep your assets liquid." which to mean ... i may be taking this slightly out of context, but to me that means don't keep your assests in things like food and consumeable items. even if bee chips blah blah have doulbed thatstill isn't going to help when the gear they are going after triples and quadruples... yes making gil will not get harder but it does in a sense we now have to spend greater amounts of time earning enough gil to buy the same armor and gear that used to take us half the time when the consumable selling area (bee chips, fire crystals and other lower lvl methods to make money) were closer together and easier to obtain... you can't say making 500k and 50k are the same thing.... the time involved to achieve greater amounts of gil by mere farming is insanity and very fustrating for new players.... i think you are way off base to say that new players have it easy just because they never saw the low prices.

[estara]

I never liked the idea of camping NMs to get rare/ex stuff... I'm just not one of those camp happy people...


You know, they could do 2 things which really help. They could leave everything as is in terms of rare/ex stuff, but 1) put reasonable caps on everything in the AH. A player controlled economy in a game is a bad idea anyway.

or 2) raise the drops rates on EVERYTHING. Known fact, the more there is of something, the cheaper it is. If more people are able to get and sell items from say, BCNMs and gods (which is where a lot of the expensive items come from) the prices will start to drop cause people will think "Oh, I can sell mine first if I lower the price".


of course, that's so obvious and easy that SE will never, ever do it. Cause you know, god forbid they should keep long time, die-hard, addict customers....

[Markus]

I think they did raise the drop rates and absolutely everyone is just trying to raise the prices.... When everyone owns a SH at 20 mill, then the price will drop....

[estara]

I was sorta meaning like um... 90% drop rate

but ya... I dunno... whole thing is fooked up... and with SE sitting on their thumbs, nothing good is gonna happen, and lots of people will end up leaving to play something easyer... like WoW

[tarick]

But what new player needs a scorpion harness?

When I say don't keep it liquid, I mean gil. Don't leave 2 million gil sitting in your account as you save up for something. Buy one of those pieces of equipment that will go up in price.

It took me a week of farming and GSing to make enough for republic knuckles as lvl 15 no sub. It took me a month of fishing with 59 fishing skill to make enough for Ochiudo's Kote at lvl 34. Yes, they rose in price during that time too. (This was around a year ago). There were and still are viable alternatives to these items that would not require nearly as much time to acquire.

It has always taken time to raise the money to acquire these items. Even at 6 million or whatever Ochiudo's is at, I still think it could be done within a month by someone at level 34.

Yes, it's shitty that gilbuyers are getting this awesome gear, while the normal player would have to farm for a month, and yes, I would love to personally kick each gilbuyer in the nuts.

[tarick]

I think price capping the AH would be horrible.

We'd have 10 times the amount of bazaars in rolanberry fields, and anything you wanted, you'd have to go hunt down.

If I have something that somebody is willing to pay 8 million for, but the price cap is 5 million, why the hell would I put it in there? So consequently, there's never any up for sale, and every expensive item becomes like a hakutaku eye hunt.

-Fine, so put caps on bazaars

Now you're playing with fire. Gil is not decreasing in this game, obviously. So with the increase in gil comes a corresponding decrease in value. So if everyone has twice as much gil, but now a SH is still only worth 5 mil, how is that more fair than the current system? Someone was willing to pay 15 million. They paid it, they have a harness, you don't.

The economy functions as well as it possibly could right now, with the gil-buying. 90% drop is just a way of saying, make it easier for me. Make it so I can have the best gear without having to try really hard. Same with asking for alternate gear, rare/ex gear, npc sales for expensive gear.

It's the best gear and it should not be easy to get.



(Just my opinion, of course)

[-=[Tork]=-]

you could just turn FFXI gil like every other mmorpg's money.... worth toliet paper that would solve a lot.... i mean it is worth toliet paper now but i'm talking about the other way... i don't play this game so i can spend half my time farming and making gil this isn't a job