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Economy?Follow

#1 Nov 08 2004 at 8:50 PM Rating: Decent
17 posts
i was just wondering what your thoughts were on lakshmi's economy

i know that its getting pretty crappy with all the gilsellers and stuff.....what do you think SE should do to help your economy and get rid of the gilsellers!
#2 Nov 09 2004 at 8:58 PM Rating: Decent
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51 posts
sooner or later, SE will do something about this. That is, if they already lost half of the population of the server due to these problems! >.<

( T .T) t(' - ' t)

(*.X(O=(' - ' Q)

( @.@) t(^-^t)

G.S^......me^
#3 Nov 09 2004 at 9:26 PM Rating: Decent
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153 posts
This topic has been talked about alot, so I have had some time to think about it. There are only 2 ideas which i believe would work.

1.) (isnt even my idea, read it on another post) Kinda extreme, but what is one way for SE to get rid of gil selling companies? Sell their own gil for ridiculously low prices. Then Companies couldnt compete.

2.) Actually put GM's to work by putting a limit on the amount of gil that can be obtained from player to player (trade, bazaars's, etc.) If you want to trade gil you owe over X amount, you have to call a GM to validate the transaction. At this point the GM could identify those accounts who repetedly disperse large amounts of gil. But there would have to be something to allow free trade to characters on the same account.(mules)

I dunno, just some ideas.
#4 Nov 09 2004 at 10:06 PM Rating: Decent
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1,892 posts
Allowing unlimited trade of Gil to other accounts on the same UserID should be allowed (allowing mules to sell stuff and that sort of thing).

But they should limit what can be sent unchecked to a user via delivery box. 100k total, not 100k per slot. As someone previously sent if SE restricted the amount they could send by flagging anything over say 1 million that got sent, the gil sellers would just send two lots of 500k.

If you limited total to 100k, then that's only 12.5k per slot they can do at a time. This will clog up their delivery slots as well as your's and they will have to reply on you getting your gil asap before they can send more, or send to someone else.

Sure this might be crap and annoying for people who are legit, but it will put a bottle neck on the gilsellers operation.
#5 Nov 10 2004 at 12:59 AM Rating: Decent
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101 posts
Now I am afraid to buy anything, since if the price dropped again then I will be at lost.

Yea, SE should do something fast. 200k increase in 1-2 weeks for several items is not a small thing. It shows where our economy is heading T_T
#6 Nov 10 2004 at 5:42 AM Rating: Good
31 posts
If the people who bought gil would just use it like hard earned regular gil, then we'd have no problem with inflation. But it's their willingness to continually "up the ante" and pay ever increasing ridiculous prices that makes things go crazy.

People need to stop buying things at the AH if the price is outlandish. Then, when it went back to the seller's inbox enough times, maybe they'd think about selling at a lower, more reasonable price.
#7 Nov 10 2004 at 2:31 PM Rating: Good
I hate the economy problems as much as anyone. And I really hate gil sellers (and gil buyers).

But we can't suggest things like, "the economy problems would be fixed if people would refuse to buy things that are too high." This will not happen. If you need something and the only way you can get it now is to pay the going rate at the AH, you are most likely going to buy it for that price. Your other choices are go without, or sit around and wait for the price to drop (which very well might never happen). Yes, if we all agreed to do that, prices would fall. But, we can never get everyone to do something like that, so its not a feasible suggestion to the problem.

On other threads similar to this I've heard people suggest their way to stop gil sellers: "For people to quit buying gil online." Once again, not a feasible solution. This is like saying "We can vastly lower the crime rate! All we need is for everyone to stop breaking the law."

Then we often pin the blame on people "overpricing" and "undercutting". These two complains not only contradict each other, but neither has merit IMO. We can't blame people for setting their prices too high. If I have one really hot item, I am going to get as much as I can from it off the AH. We can't blame people for undercutting the items we farm a lot, hence hurting our profits. If I need something to sell fast, and that something is in high supply, I will lower my price to get the item to sell.

We can blame the people who buy gil online, but we can't stop them. We can blame the gil sellers, but we can't stop them either, because there will always be people out there willing to spend RL money to bypass what arguably is the most boring and time consuming aspect of the game.

The fact is, there is only one way to fix the FF economy. And that is for SE to step in and handle the situation themselves. Will this ever happen? I highly doubt it.
#8 Nov 10 2004 at 4:32 PM Rating: Excellent
The most feasible solutions I could think of are:

1) make most craftable items available to NPC vendors so that we won't have to rely on AH
2) increase the amount of gil available to make it a non-issue (like in SWG). gobs drop about 10 gil, and quests are ridiculous on their payouts (600 gil for 8 silver beastcoins??)
3) make certain jobs (like ranger and ninja) not so money intensive. this, in general, makes it so only hard core gamers can play them (it's a cause of a lot of elitism which is annoying).

People are complaining a lot, but no one is sure if SE will do anything about it.
My complaints about this game are more about the gil intensive jobs and the unwillingness for people to explore the game more than anything, but that's just me.

#9 Nov 11 2004 at 6:39 AM Rating: Good
31 posts
Okay, what do people who buy gil online use their bought gil for? Maybe if we take away the need for such vast amounts of gil, we'll help to solve the problem.

If people use it to buy rare drops, like from NM, SE could make those drops rare/exclusives.. making people who want to get them have to go and hunt the NM for them. Additionally, this would stop people from camping the same mob over and over again. The only people who would be camping it, would be those who needed it. Can't fight the NM by yourself? Get your LS to help you. The higher levels of the game pretty much require groups of people working together.

If people use bought gil to purchase materials for crafting, to allow them to "power-level" a craft, then perhaps SE could make guilds buy back crafted items at higher prices, so that crafters could break even by crafting from guild bought materials. Or at least change the buy-back prices to help lessen the financial blow from crafting.

I'm not very confident that anything we do will change the economy of the world any time soon, or that SE will do anything to change it either. I guess I'm just spinning my wheels a bit.

But, somehow, it makes me feel a bit better ^^.
#10 Nov 11 2004 at 9:50 AM Rating: Decent
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209 posts
We need like, an Alan Greenspan for Lakshmi, rofl.

Look at it this way... and goddamnit i feel like a nerd for doing this...

Lakshmi definately has an inflationary gap, and by all rights we are a Real Free Market Economy, meaning we have 0 government intereferance, it's Lazzie Faire to the extreme. Right now, our demand for items is very, VERY high, and it always will be with new players, new jobs, etc...

Market Economy:
Demand goes up, Price goes up. This is all of course based on Supply. D=Demand P=Price S=Supply

So, if you want to decrease P, D must go down.

D and S are Inversely Related, meaning if S goes Up, D goes Down.

Soooooooo in short terms, Supply of Items needs to go up, and demand for them will go down, forcing prices to drop.

If we truly want to fix the Economy by the rules of the Free Market Economy, we must must increase supply.

Let's take the example of the Sniper's Ring!

Currently, a Sniper Ring costs 1 million gil. Now, there are only 10 people on Lakshmi in this example. If these 10 people want to purchase these rings, and they already have an Archer Ring (same thing, lower stats) And the Cost to purchase Sniper's Ring is lower than the Benefits, they are going to purchase the ring. If the Benefits are lower than the cost, they aren't going to purchase. So if the cost is too high, they won't purchase, forcing the price to go down, or the Seller's to go out of buisness.

This is the only way to regulate the Free Market: Boycott or buy a substitute good, such as Archer's Rings.
#12 Nov 11 2004 at 2:21 PM Rating: Decent
Nicely put buff.
#13 Nov 11 2004 at 4:32 PM Rating: Decent
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1,892 posts
I know this is price fixing, but we need to regain control. SNR's are 1mil now, what did they used to be like 400-600? Someone in my LS suggested this (probably as a joke) but it could work. Ok say you have a SNR that you want to sell, but you want to help out the economy. Get a group of friend at the AH. Put your's on for 400k then get a friend to buy it, repeate and cycle friends. Nobody loses money and the price history drops. Then people who put it up for auction will see the price and follow suit, or those going to buy it won't try 1 million.

Can't people see that.... Gilsellers Farmers farm NM's to get the drop to sell it for Gil to fund produce Gil for Sale. Gilsellers fix the prices of highly wanted items so that they get more Gil that they can sell. Making the price higher not only means that they get more money but the person who just bought 1 million off them, has spent it all already and will probably want more. Vicious cycle that needs to be stopped.
#14 Nov 12 2004 at 8:22 AM Rating: Decent
32 posts
The problem with the economy is that the gil has been devalued, and the reason for that is that gilfarmers make gil accessible by RL means, i.e. simply buying it.

If there were no gilselling, and Snipers ended up costing 1 million gil on AH, that would be fine, because the supply and demand within the FFXI world, and the gil-earning power for any given character would be appropriate, because the economy would be a contained system.

But this isn't the case. The FFXI economy is no longer an isolated system, because sale of gil for real life money begins to DIRECTLY tie real-life economy to FFXI economy which screws everything up.

A level 45 Paladin who has an appreciable amount of money in real-life should not hava any advantage over a level 45 Paladin who is in college eating Ramen noodles 2 out of every 3 meals, and checks his futon cushions for change for the McDonald's dollar menu. But gilsellers make it so that the former paladin does have an advantage.

Gilsellers devalue gil by removing how much gil means to a particular player because he or she didn't have to earn it in the actual game. Instead, the case might be "Hey the DOW went up a little more than I expected, I can go buy some Striders." By devaluing the gil, the cost of every item (excepting the very very common ones) goes up.

I think it might be interesting if they held Vanadiel elections or something for Server representatives to form a kind of player Senate to give direct feedback to Square Enix. This would be both useful and a fun aspect of the game. Imagine if say criteria were set at Minimum Level 60 Job, with at least 3 jobs leveled to 30, 2 jobs to 50.

You could have candidates and campaigning. To vote you must have a minimum level of 18 (to prevent mules from voting, and to kind of mimic the age 18 voting age). Registered candidates coudl publish statements/speeches in the "Vana'diel Tribune" about what they want to bring up and discuss to Square Enix, i.e. their position and suggestions on gilfarming.

Candidates could end up having strong support in certain camps. Like Dragoons might dislike one candidate but Samurais might love him/her.

And in the end each server would elect one representative and you'd have a Senate with a representative from each server so that every server's problems and needs are heard.

I think that'd be both fun and useful.
#15 Nov 12 2004 at 9:19 AM Rating: Excellent
Quote:
I think it might be interesting if they held Vanadiel elections or something for Server representatives to form a kind of player Senate to give direct feedback to Square Enix. This would be both useful and a fun aspect of the game. Imagine if say criteria were set at Minimum Level 60 Job, with at least 3 jobs leveled to 30, 2 jobs to 50.


this is a good idea, but i REALLY doubt that SE would care. besides, the criteria of min lvl 60 with 3 jobs at 30 and 2 jobs at 50? that's a bit much. i have been playing since last year and only have a job at 36. the reason is because i do a LOT more than just go levelling. there are tons of aspects to be enjoyed in this game besides xp parties. this doesn't mean that i deserve to represent this server. it means that job level alone is not indicative of being capable of representing the server.
but in any case, i can almost be 100% certain that SE is aware of this problem. there are only 2 possibilities here: 1) they can't resolve the problem or 2) they don't want to resolve the problem.
SE has done a lot of things in the past to purposely make the game more difficult (nerfing mug and making some jobs very gil intensive) and reduce the rewards we get when we accomplish certain tasks (the small amount of gil drops, making drops more and more rare even with TH, very small of gil rewards when completing quests). if anything, they are encouraging gilfarmers.

#16 Nov 12 2004 at 11:44 AM Rating: Decent
32 posts
Abzalom wrote:
[quote]I think it might be interesting if they
this is a good idea, but i REALLY doubt that SE would care.


Yeah, but it still might be fun. Just like how back in junior high those class president elections meant jack, cuz nobody's gonna listen to a 12 year old anyways, but they did 'em anyways.

Abzalom wrote:
[quote]SE has done a lot of things in the past to purposely make the game more difficult (nerfing mug and making some jobs very gil intensive) and reduce the rewards we get when we accomplish certain tasks (the small amount of gil drops, making drops more and more rare even with TH, very small of gil rewards when completing quests). if anything, they are encouraging gilfarmers.


It's in a way to SE's advantage (btu not necessarily ours) if they make gil hard to get by. The harder it is to get gil, the more time you'll spend tryign to get gil, the more time you spend, the more you're playing, and the more they can ensure that you have a reason to keep handing them $12 a month.
#17 Nov 12 2004 at 2:34 PM Rating: Decent
Actually, its not the selling of gil itself that is causing prices to rise. Selling gil just moves it from one account to another, it does not provide an influx of currency to the ecomony. I posted the message below on the Sniper Ring thread, but it's all relevant to this discussion.

The overall problem is inflation. Basically, the NM campers would never be able to jack up the price if there weren't players able to afford the cost. Why are more players able to afford 1 million gil for a snipers today than a year ago? Inflation.

What causes inflation? Adding currecy to an economy. Its not the gilsellers that make their money by camping NMs, or crafting, or selling teleports, because as long as they sell their product to other players, you are not adding new currency to the economy. The only thing that adds currency to our game economy is selling to NPCs. However, since there are not a ton of items that are worthwhile for gilsellers farm or craft and sell to NPCs, that can't be the major factor in the inflation.

Which brings us to fishing. Hardcore fishers sell tons and tons of product to NPCs, thus bringing new gil into the economy every day. The ones who do this day in and day out, adding millions of gil into our ecomomy are largely...you guessed it...BOTS! A fairly simple analysis of FFXI's economic structure will show that fishing bots are by far the largest cause of inflation.

In short, adding selling caps to certain items, making items rare/ex, or capping the ammount of gil moved bewteen accounts are all solutions to SYMPTOMS of inflation, not solutions to the inflation itself. Now I don't have any great ideas for how to get rid of these fishing bots, but assuming SE actually wanted them gone, I'm sure they could figure out a way.

Edited, Fri Nov 12 14:38:01 2004 by coryfellers
#18 Nov 12 2004 at 3:12 PM Rating: Excellent
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It's in a way to SE's advantage (btu not necessarily ours) if they make gil hard to get by. The harder it is to get gil, the more time you'll spend tryign to get gil, the more time you spend, the more you're playing, and the more they can ensure that you have a reason to keep handing them $12 a month.


this would be true if the whole purpose of the game was to make gil. it's not. your statement would be true if i had said that mobs should give more XP rather than the 200 limit (non xp chain).
there are different aspects of the game to explore, and SE does a lot of things to make it more difficult to do so.
1600 for a rank 5 to set a home point? chocobo rides at the crags getting to 3k per ride?
you can only modify the game so much until it becomes an annoyance. if you make job abilities that are useless (like mug), why even put it there?
the only time i have seen SE make a modification to anything was when it decided to not do a scheduled maintenance on labor day.
i can almost guarantee that they really could care less about what we think. if there are gilsellers, that is our problem and not theirs.
unless people actually quit by the thousands, they won't do anything.
SE really pisses me off. they have a lot of nerve doing some of the stuff that they do (i will post their little known stunt in a new thread).
#19 Nov 12 2004 at 4:12 PM Rating: Decent
I agree with You Tzipporah!!

Quote:
It's in a way to SE's advantage (btu not necessarily ours) if they make gil hard to get by. The harder it is to get gil, the more time you'll spend tryign to get gil, the more time you spend, the more you're playing, and the more they can ensure that you have a reason to keep handing them $12 a month.


Ha-Ha!!! WRONG!!! It might be an advantage for a little while... but soon, enough people are just going to get pissed off at this 'game' and leave!! Why the hell pay for more fustrations in Life? You play games to help break away and to do something that brings you some bit of enjoyment...

Tzipporah, you're right. With all the stupid price hikes... if gil is starting to become so damn hard to come by (legally), why the hell would you want a high rank? or rent those damn over-priced chocos? and Then SE screws over the jobs... Nin used to be a godly tank. Now? Remember for H2H and duel weild? When EACH hit increased your TP? And when Rdm could raise at lvl 36? yes, I know they helped out Drgs, PLds, Smns... But have they done anything for Sams? Watch out, who knows what job they will ***** over next... and then people will just say, "oh, that just makes the game more challanging..." fools...

I've only started playing this year (PS2 release) but already I'm hating this game and wondering why I continue on... Sure, playing with real people can be fun, but enforced play...? NO!!! ***** that!! With so many other console games coming out, that wont take nearly a quarter of the time it takes to accomplish something worthwhile in FFXI... And if I want online playibility with others? Computer, and search for a better game!!
#20 Nov 12 2004 at 4:50 PM Rating: Excellent
Hey don't forget mug usable every 15 minutes. Do you know how much you get? I mugged a goblin shaman, and i got a whopping 30 gil!
This game is dedicated more to making gil than levelling.
Do you know why people at high levels don't form XP parties as much? It's because they're spending the rest of their lives trying to farm to make enough gil to buy equipment.
This needs to be more adventure oriented and less money making oriented.
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