FFXI, The Anti-Gil

[Pascal]

Agreed, taking mass amounts of gil out of circulation would help fix the problem. I'm still curious as to how we got so much of it going around. Even with the high AH tax and inflated chocobo prices, how is more (and not just a little more, but a LOT more) gil coming in than going out of the system? Where is it coming from?

I can’t find my original post on this, so I’ll recreate it.

You can easily bring in 5000 gil (5k) an hour from certain repeatable quests and just off gil drops from farming. On average there are 2500 people online our server at any given time. Lets say an 8th (312 people) of them are doing theses quests or farming. That creates 1,560,000 new gil in one hour. In 10 hours that is 15,600,000 new gil coming onto the market.

The question from there is how much gil leaves the market in 10 hours.

 

[Raesvelg]

Not only that, but the gilsellers have had long established methods of generating quick gil from NPCs. While the latest batch of fishing revisions have fixed some loopholes, you can still go down into various places like Korroloka Tunnel and find a whole pack of level 1's with strange names fishing up rusty gear. Which is then taken back to Bastok to be synthed and sold to NPCs by gilseller smiths like Lloo.

Sadly, I've become quite familiar with this group... And to my great dismay, I've been responsible for their deaths on a few occasions, by being very sloppy in where I choose to fight my mobs. I mean, how was I to KNOW that one little Fluid Spread could kill off an entire party of people in the tunnel? ^^; Or that a Giant could wipe out a number of them with one of his attacks?

 

[Prentice]

Actually, to combat inflation/cap prices, is offer the item FOR SALE from an NPC at whatever they want the max price to be.

This is already the case for some items. Example: Scroll of Dispel will not sell on auction for much more than 70k because with high Rabao fame you can buy it there for less than 70k. It will sell for a bit more than you can buy it for, to account for people's laziness, but not by much.

This one simple tactic applied across the board for some items would help drastically. To start with, they should have NPCs who sell crystals to put caps on their prices. The other benefit is that IF people buy from NPCs, it tends to deflate the economy. The single biggest economic screw-up in this game is that there are TWO economies that are not really linked at all: The AH/Bazaar (i.e., P2P) economy and the NPC economy (which no longer is realistic by any reckoning).

Most desireable items (not crafting supplies) from NPCs are massively overpriced (probably to promote crafting), and the sales prices back to the game suck majorly. If they would just make shop prices and the AH influence each other, and cap prices on lots of stuff by offering it for NPC sale, it would help stabilize the overall world economy.

People pay so much for crystals because they are too lazy to farm them, it's that simple. Guess what? That's just like a free market. Why, just today I was too lazy to go trim my trees, so I paid someone else to do it for me. A guy showed up at my door and we worked out a price that was agreeable to both of us.

The difference is the items that are available only from particular mobs, that are owned by gilsellers; thus FORCING you to pay their price if you want the item bad enough.

In any exchange in a truly free market, both parties have to agree on the price--but when one party can eliminate your other means of obtaining the item, then they have a monopoly. This is why monopolies are BAD in general--without competition, they have you over a barrel.


So I guess what I'm saying is: provide some competition to the gilsellers / mob campers that absolutely, positively cannot be denied...have some NPC sell the item, or something very similar.


I guarantee that if SE did that, you would see lots of interesting things happen to the game economy. Would people still buy & sell gil? Yes. Would you be completely screwed over by it? No.

Soon enough, I imagine nobody would care whether you got that piece of gear using virtual money or real money.

Think about this: what makes buying gil so enticing? Is it because an amount of money that equals 4 hours of real-life work gets you more gil than you could possibly farm in 4 DAYS of (boring) farming? Ding, ding, ding, ding!!!! That's WHY people do it.

So if you want to stop it, address the WHY, not the HOW. I.e., treat the PROBLEM, not the SYMPTOM. All the crap that has been done so far has been like telling a cancer patient to take two aspirin and call you in the morning.

 

[Elemmire]

Fire Crystals: 2.5k like they origionally were. I dont think I have to go into why an item that can drop like water from the right low lvl mobs should be about 4k a stack.

Actually, I believe that fire crystals were around 4k a stack or so right before the NA release, or that's what I've heard anyways.

they were around 1.5k-2k for a stack when I started playing at the NA release

 

[Pascal]

Actually, to combat inflation/cap prices, is offer the item FOR SALE from an NPC at whatever they want the max price to be.

This is already the case for some items. Example: Scroll of Dispel will not sell on auction for much more than 70k because with high Rabao fame you can buy it there for less than 70k. It will sell for a bit more than you can buy it for, to account for people's laziness, but not by much.

Level 1 Robes were floating around 800 to 1000 last week on Bastoks AH (I’ve not check them in the last few days). They sell for a little over 200 at the NPC.

 

[cokenn]

While the latest batch of fishing revisions have fixed some loopholes, you can still go down into various places like Korroloka Tunnel and find a whole pack of level 1's with strange names fishing up rusty gear. Which is then taken back to Bastok to be synthed and sold to NPCs by gilseller smiths like Lloo.

Are there some of these guys in Yughott Grotto too. I always noticed about 5 people fishing up rusty stuff, then another named Breezer (i think) synthing them into the real stuff.

 

[Skaw]

Nice post, Prentice.

One thing I want to add is why buy 1,000,000 gil at 2 times your Subscription fee of $13+ USD(Current IGE price as reference.) When you break it down, $13 for 30~ days = 43¢ a day. And assume it would take you 4 days of casual farming to get 1 million, thats only $1.72 spent.

People whine and cry about being bored while seeking in Jeuno, go out and kill some giants in Delkfutts while you're waiting and make gil too.

 

[Raesvelg]

Yeah, even after SE nerfed the return on some of those items it still remains a profitable enough venue for them to have several people down there at all times. Still, I haven't gone and said "Hi" to them in a while... I guess I should go get one of my Jelly buddies and visit them. >

 

[Kurgon]

4 days of casual farming to make a million gil! :shock:

*laughs and laughs and laughs and dies*

Seriously we need to compare notes so I know what I am doing wrong.

 

[Elemmire]

some people just don't have luck with drops and even so might not get people to buy... I've tried the farming run.. doesn't work to well for me and my TH-5000 >.>

 

[Rones]

4 days of casual farming to make a million gil!

*laughs and laughs and laughs and dies*

My thoughts as well. :lol: If I was lucky, I might get 200-250k from that.

Making gil easier/harder to gain has no real effect as it just changes what each individual gil is worth in labor. Best solution would be to probably make items drops more, and improve pop times. More items on the market means they would sell for less, gil would increase in value, people wouldn't be wasting 3-4 hours waiting for 24 hour pops, etc. This is a big thing in sky as the item production rate up there is constant, but there are more and more people veying for those few pieces. Cutting repop times would increase item production rates and really create a lot of relief on the economy. Demand is just getting too far beyond supply.

When you break it down, $13 for 30~ days = 43¢ a day. And assume it would take you 4 days of casual farming to get 1 million, thats only $1.72 spent.

If you really want to get into cost for your time. You can earn the money to buy that gil in 2-3 hours of work at a real job. Forget 4 days.

 

[Mortanius]

Well Kurgon, he's lvl 75 mnk and can go after the mobs that drop stuff worth the most money. I'm a lvl 51 BLM and can go after jack shit. Anything worth that kind of money would kill me in 3 hits. That's the difference. I'm not saying I can't farm, I'm saying I can't farm as much as a lvl 75. Or BCNMs. I do my BCNM 40s, but does that make as much cash as KS30 or BCNM 60? If it does, that's a bad example , but you get the general point.

Did most gilbuyers only start buying when they got to lvl 75 or did they start when they were low and couldn't farm much? You have to think about money making at their level, not yours.



As far as what Prentice said about NPC sales, that would be nice to see. Would lower prices on the AH back to reasonable levels. It would also take a bit of gil out of circulation until the AH price dropped, too. I don't know what the emp. hairpin is at, but say it's 900k on the AH and the NPC starts selling it for 500k. People would start buying then from the NPC (taking a half million gil out with every purchase) until the AH price matched it.

Or go even bigger. What about Strider boots? What are they, 12 mil on AH? Let the NPC sell for 8-10 million. 10 million gil going *poof* should certainly be a noticeable drop in the bucket. Not quite a dent (from what I'm guessing is in players' hands) with 1 sale, but what if 10 people bought those boots in 2 weeks from the NPC? That's 100 million gone in 2 weeks.

Sure, some people would still overpay at the AH rather than going somewhere to save a couple hundred thousand. But sales would slow down to a point that AH price would have to match or go below NPC to compete.

If enough gil were to leave the economy, prices would settle at a point lower than the NPC sales and everything would be in the players' hands again. Until enough gil comes back in and prices go up; then we'd have to go visit the long-forgotten NPCs again and hope they stabalize the prices once again.

It's the big items or the ones bought in mass quantities that's the problem. Sure, you can buy a lvl 1 robe from the NPC for 200 gil or 1 at the AH for 1000. But these aren't what everyone is freaking out about. It's the 700k Erase, it's the 700k Utsusemi: Ni, the 20 mil. peacock charm, the nearing-1-million emp pin, the crystals, the large quantities of crafting materials, food (which is actually caused by food ingredients). Just to name a few that I know off-hand; what I hear a lot of complaints about.


That was a very good idea, though probably just wishful thinking. :roll:

 

[Rones]

That kind of reminds me of dispel for rdm's from altepa. That puts a sort of cap on the spell's cost. Having npcs distribute high price items would do wonders on easing demand and deflating the economy a bit.

 

[Pascal]

Another Example
Copper Ore sells for 9gil at NPC, but yet it sells for 50 to 100 on the AH.

 

[Raesvelg]

lol, I've also noticed that some people tend to define "4 days" a bit differently than I do. I think "Hmm, 4 days of farming. Well, my typical day on FFXI involves 2-3 hours of play AT MOST. That seems impossible!" whereas what they're thinking is "4 days. 12 hour days. Eat at your PC." So yeah, 48 hours, 20K an hour, ANYONE can farm a million Gil. >.>

 

[Skaw]

Well, I said casual farming for a reason, as in no NMs, kill regular mobs at your own pace kind of deal. Like Magic Pots/Giants, Elementals, etc. Not exactly difficult to kill 500 elementals over the course of 4 days. Especially as BLM. Just head up to Beaucedine and you're almost gaurenteed elementals. Plus you can get Dark Clusters too.

It's all about finding something you can do to make gil, and just go at it at your own pace. Yes, it's boring, but it's part of the game. Plus it's better than just sitting around doing nothing while seeking.

 

[Rones]

Not exactly difficult to kill 500 elementals over the course of 4 days.

Ice clusters are averaging 1k a piece lately, so you would need to kill 1,000 ice elementals in glaciar/xarcarbard (ignoring ah fee). Whenever I try elemental farming with their spawns marked on my map, I can get an average of 5-7 an hour. This is an hour because it takes a while too kill them, time to regain 4/5 of my mp spent per elemental, time to find them, time when there is no weather, and when dealing with that many clusters you wil need time to visit jeuno often. A blm/whm also can't tele vahzel himself. I would be impressed if someone could get 1 mill gil in 4 days off elementals in glaciar and xarcarbd.

 

[Liefe]

You can make 50-100k/hr without breaking a sweat in this game.
I'm not going to hand-hold walkthrough it but you can make bank as a level 10 doing it right.

It's all about the level of dedication that you are willing to put forth.

HOWEVER, making gil easier to get WILL NOT fix the gilbuying/selling/NM hogging problems. It will simply contribute to a slowdown of inflation.

The real solution is to see what people are actually spending gil on and to creatively find ways of finding way to get gil given to players on said items taken out of player circulation.

Most purchased item on the AH per the survey was shihei. Make some NPCs that vend shihei at a price that competes with the mean AH price between servers.

Make an NPC that sells harness/haubergeon/vermillion cloak/etc items that are similar in stats/functionality or even slightly better, but make them cost less to purchase from an NPC than the mean AH price, and make them RA/EX.

Add training NPCs that you can pay gil to skill-up from.

There are ways to take gil out of the system. In the examples I gave crafters would lose out a bit, but ya know what? It would bring things back into balance and keep prices from spiralling into oblivion by making a control.

 

[Raesvelg]

I'm not overly keen on the idea of screwing over crafters to reduce inflation. Seems unfair to me. But I think the idea about paying NPCs for skillups DEFINITELY has some serious merit to it. ^^ God knows I'd gleefully pay 10K per point for some of my combat skills....

 

[Liefe]

Crafters wouldn't be screwed over at all. They could always farm their own stuff and make 100% profit on whatever they sell. Additionally, they could always HQ items which you could never obtain from NPCs.

Having NPCs selling items for a fixed price would keep crafters and farmers from being able to sell components/finished products at a price they can bend you over at.