Of all the inflation ideas...

[Celvantes]

... this one might work.

1) Create accounts for the dev team (or whomever is responsible for the day-to-day gameplay) and give them the ability to create items.

2) List a few high ticket items per day at market value (Vcloak, Hauby, etc...)

3) When the account is full of gil, delete it.

Likewise, if deflation is ever a problem (highly doubtful), they could just reverse the process. Create gil on one of these accounts, buy a high ticket item, then drop it.

If SE doesn't like the idea of handing out uber items, they could be just as effective with crafting supplies that will be destroyed anyway. Listing ten stacks of gold ingots spread across all four AHs won't really change the goldsmithing market, but it would take out 10-15 million from the economy.

As the gil supply falls, prices MUST fall accordingly. Lazy people will still buy from gilsellers, but the crippling inflation that results can be fought.

Also, I've never understood why SE couldn't set up "stings" on gilsellers. Creating an e-mail address and setting up a corporate credit card are not hard or time-comsuming things to do. Every other day or so, purchase gil from IGE. When they receive the gil - immediately delete the account from which it came (which will not only get the mule, but also all the other characters on the account). With any luck they'll not only destroy all the gil accumulated on the account, but also delete any high-level characters used to get the gil in the first place. With $1000 bucks (pocket change on the corporate level), you could nab at least 50 accounts. Gilsellers could combat this (creating new accounts and keeping levelled characters on different accounts from the mule characters that actually deliver the gil), but in the short run, SE could devastate the gil supply they control.

Even if the gilselilng companies started keeping their levelled characters on different accounts, I'm sure SE could trace where the gil is coming from, once they have the proven name of a delivery mule. In terms of protecting themselves legally, SE could easily re-write their ToS to allow this kind of snooping.

By making it riskier for companies to sell gil (each transaction could potentially be a sting), you raise their operating costs. This, in turn, raises their prices on gil. Make it expensive enough, and you'll have less people buying it.

Yes, it would cost a fair amount of money (32 servers x $1000 = $32k), but if SE suddenly came out with the annoucement that they had nabbed 1600 gilseller accounts across all servers, I know my player loyalty would shoot through the roof. I'm sure they would keep a lot of accounts that are strongly considering leaving the game. Heck, I'd rather see them throw $32k into nailing gilsellers than upgrading their servers.

 

[neophytal]

very interesting idea.. hmmm kinda like the GUILD but for the AH... hmmm

Yes, it would cost a fair amount of money (32 servers x $1000 = $32k), but if SE suddenly came out with the annoucement that they had nabbed 1600 gilseller accounts across all servers, I know my player loyalty would shoot through the roof. I'm sure they would keep a lot of accounts that are strongly considering leaving the game. Heck, I'd rather see them throw $32k into nailing gilsellers than upgrading their servers.

honestly the more accounts they delete, the less server upgrades are needed anyways due to less players online and less data in/out.

 

[Tagrineth]

Just for your information,

-Disclaimer- I am not a part of this system, and have not nor will I ever buy or sell gil; the only time I've ever associated myself with "known" gil sellers in game was for a free-lot Dynamis run that I hadn't even originally planned on attending, but wound up being a lot of fun and not really all that profitable for anyone involved. XD

I know for a fact that, while not all gil sellers use this system, there are some who adopt a system of recruiting normal players into private linkshells, and pay them "keep quiet" gil to distribute gil to other players using specially created mules.

I'm not saying that it's a widespread thing, but I do know for certain that there is at least one division of gil sellers that does use this system, and if SE head-hunted mules' accounts, there would be several legit players banned as well as gil seller characters.


I really like the idea of SE reps trickling items (Crafting materials, especially) at reduced prices to remove gil... maybe make an "official SE mule" NPC/Bazaar in Jeuno that sells a selection of mildly discounted items. Maybe they could even add a special-cased EX tag to all SE-sold items, to prevent them from being relisted on the AH at an inflated price - force players to use them for crafting purposes only.

 

[Dracoden]

I was just thinking about this the other day, sting operations. That would be very easy. All they would have to do is buy the minimum amount of gil from a few different companies, then ban the accounts they originated from. whats the minimum? 100k? 500k? wouldnt be hard or very expensive(for them).

 

[Sae-chan]

SE did do a "sting" about a year ago. Alot of Gilsellers accounts were deleted. But in about a month, they were back up to normal strength.

 

[Mokk]

What i find humorous is that everyone thinks there's too much gil.

The problem with FFXI from at least NA release was that there wasen't enough gil OR enough items to support the numbers of people on the servers who craft.

The solution is to flood the game with mining/harvesting/etc points and make gildrops higher or more frequent. If you drop the price of crafting or make crafting more accessable to the casual player the value of crafted items decreases with the frequency of which they auction.

Aside from that .... it's a japanese game primarily and has been since it's inception, what kind of economy did you expect?

 

[Sculli]

MMO economies are messed up, but they get even more messed up when the people who run the game start messing with them.

 

[Peregrine]

Sony stung the main account of IGE's president. I don't remember much about the article, but it was something like 12 million dollars in assets that Sony deleted that character without hesitation.

IGE quickly wisened up, and my guess is that these days, as opposed to those days, you could never sting any single character for significant gain.

 

[Celvantes]

Be great if one could find that article. You don't really need to shut them down, just harrass them enough that the price of gil goes up so fewer people buy.

Even if the gilseller idea didn't fly, I think the concept of using SE-created characters to act as a sort of Federal Reserve has a lot of merit. A programmer screws up and lets people make multi-millions off rusty caps? No big deal, quitely bleed off the excess over the next few weeks. IGE has a sale? Again, no problem - vent the excess gil and let prices stabilize.

I'm sure they have a way of tracking total gil in the economy. All they have to do is find a good median level per player on server and either vent or inject gil to keep it around that number (my guess is they'll do more venting). Normal economic forces (and the existing gill inlets and outlets) will do the rest.

And Mokk - excess gil is a problem. Were it not, SE would have never instituted the hard 1% tax on AH listings. The more money in circulation, the less it is worth and the more is required to purchase goods. That goes for any economy, real or virtual.

 

[Direwolf]

I like this idea... If they only did a couple of certain incredibly high demand items then they would take a large chunck of change out of the system.

 

[Mokk]

B
And Mokk - excess gil is a problem. Were it not, SE would have never instituted the hard 1% tax on AH listings. The more money in circulation, the less it is worth and the more is required to purchase goods. That goes for any economy, real or virtual.

Unfortunately in a virtual economy the ammount of money in the system is relative. There cannot be too much or be too little, imbalance is created by the developement team not the currency. Thusly as anyone with any economic knowledge would be able to point out a 1% tax hike on the AH total does nothing whatsoever to the economy serverwide (what's 1k/10k/100k to a multi-gillionaire?), it was simply an attempt to make you folks think that they honestly give a crap. Once again i would point to the japanese economy for a frame of reference to this game. I've watched the economy on that game go from pristine (JP launch) to start to faulter (NA release/Crafting nerf) to blatantly boned (post CoP). Unfortunately the biggest thing the new expansion has to offer is an even greater gap in the economy for everyone to look forward too.

Once again i'll say it: the best way to ease the economy in the game is to pump the ammount of resources and make gil drop more often or off more mobs. It would also be nice if they introduced craftable alternatives to some more of the high end merchandise. A fiscally responsible player run blackmarket AH would work as well but i don't know anyone who has the talent or the responisbility to keep that running straight.

Chase the issue around for another 2 1/2-3 years, i bet someone is still hashing this crap over by then if the game is still running. The real unfortunate thing is that everyone puts up with this sort of thing. Even more unfortunate is that you have no control as players or recourse to the development team.

 

[Kupo]

Unfortunately in a virtual economy the ammount of money in the system is relative. There cannot be too much or be too little, imbalance is created by the developement team not the currency. Thusly as anyone with any economic knowledge would be able to point out a 1% tax hike on the AH total does nothing whatsoever to the economy serverwide (what's 1k/10k/100k to a multi-gillionaire?), it was simply an attempt to make you folks think that they honestly give a crap. Once again i would point to the japanese economy for a frame of reference to this game. I've watched the economy on that game go from pristine (JP launch) to start to faulter (NA release/Crafting nerf) to blatantly boned (post CoP). Unfortunately the biggest thing the new expansion has to offer is an even greater gap in the economy for everyone to look forward too.

Once again i'll say it: the best way to ease the economy in the game is to pump the ammount of resources and make gil drop more often or off more mobs. It would also be nice if they introduced craftable alternatives to some more of the high end merchandise. A fiscally responsible player run blackmarket AH would work as well but i don't know anyone who has the talent or the responisbility to keep that running straight.

Chase the issue around for another 2 1/2-3 years, i bet someone is still hashing this crap over by then if the game is still running. The real unfortunate thing is that everyone puts up with this sort of thing. Even more unfortunate is that you have no control as players or recourse to the development team.

Exactaly.

And also, Banning accounts never works. Every other MMO company has also banned Sellers accounts. They just buy more accounts and start leveling.

 

[Peregrine]

Of course you have control. Don't even bother with the armor if the prices bother you. You will never fail at something because your gear isn't good enough. You can get 6500 xp an hour wearing 5 million gil a piece. Ok with the inflation 10 million gil apiece, but still.

It's about time the broken economy caught up with the endgame best broken mentality. If you want to be the best, you have to be elite. Not just act elite. Pay for it. That's what you all wanted in the end, is it not? You wanted it to be hard. You wanted it to be elite. You wanted it high-end. So what's the problem? Scorpion harness just got more elite. HQ staves are 6 million each now. Sounds about right to me. Got to keep it away from the masses, man.

Spider webs are 45k a piece now. All it takes for anyone to keep up with this economy is to put your pride down now that farming is king.