best way to make $$$

[Pounce]

Re: best way to make $$$

The reason people say gilsellers cause inflation is this:

Gilsellers sell gil. Gilbuyers buy the gil. A gilbuyer is probably going to be less scrupulous about how he spends the gil than someone who earned it legitimately in-game.

Let's say Item A goes for 2.5M gil.

Bob earns his gil legitimately. It took him a laborious month to save up barely 2.5M. He bids 2.5M. No go. He bids 2.55M. Still no go. He bids 2.6M. Still no go. Not willing to overpay, he gives up and hope the price will deflate back to 2.5M.

Joe buys gil. It took him 5 minutes to buy gil from an online broker. (And it took him a mere hour of working his real life job to earn enough dollars to buy that gil)

Joe bids 2.5M for Item A. No go. 2.6M. No go. 2.7M. No go. 2.8M. No go. 3M. No go. 3.1M. Yes! He wins the auction!

So Joe has overbid the average going price for Item A by 600K. For Bob, that sum is astronomical and would take him a week to earn that much. For Joe, it's just a half hour working his real life job.

At this point, all the greedy sellers see that someone paid 3.1M for a 2.5M item and flock to the AH. They start listing Item A for 3M+. And voila! Inflation!

Anyways, the point is, there are a lot of factors - a LOT of factors that have caused inflation.

[Aeni]

Re: best way to make $$$

Inflation and deflation is a gauge of the health of the overall economy. Inflation fluctuates because the economy is ever changing. Inflation was in the double digits during the late 70s and I believe there has been several periods of high inflation during the 20th Century (e.g., Depression, early Vietnam War Era) It is not 4~5% annually, but have been so as of recently.

As a golden rule, MMORPGs do not follow the law of economics that you observer in the real world. As it is, the world of FFXI should not feature influx of gil coming from an external source, as this not only breaks the equilibrium of the delicate game economy, but also defies a lot of the infrastructure in place that were not built to accomodate this issue.

A real scenario would be if the U.S. Treasury in conjunction with the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency ran an investigation and discovered that 40% of all currency within the U.S. economy were counterfeit.

Besides which ffxi has a pretty low inflation rate compared to many other mmo's because people don't actually "make gil" they make items. A large amount of stuff farmed are "items" not "gil" There is a big difference. You can find threads that discuss more on this issue.

This was not the case before the ban on fishing. NPCs can create gil on whim. There were no control mechanisms in place at the time (e.g., you could turn in 500 noble ladies to the NPC if you wished every hour - provided you actually could fish that amount) so that botters were able to artificially increased the supply of gil in the marketplace. They did not spend this gil in the economy, but instead offered it to RMT brokerage firms that paid IRL $ for the commodity (gil)

This commodity, or gil, "magically" appears in the game. I liken this to counterfeiters IRL producing currency out of nothing and putting it back into the economy. In small quantities, the change is hardly discernable. In copious quantities, it would be hell.

As more and more players start to tap into the commodities of the RMT houses, more and more gil that just magically appear in the game show up. There is no steady flow of gil into the economy. It is sizable quantities that are introduced and this became the fuel for inflation.

Once inflation took hold, it became rampant. Only a few players who serviced through the RMT houses were able to take the change in the economy in stride. Other players were quashed like bugs on the I-5. Crafting became redundant, as lower level items produced losses for the crafter and an ever increasing level range for a lot of mid level recipes that depend on the lower level items started to turn in losses as well.

To illustrate this point, take brass ingots. They are a base for a few higher level gold smithing recipes. In the beginning, when many new crafters clambored on to the guild, undercutting became happenstance and this recipe turned no profit and a lot of times losses, where severity depended upon the supply on hand.

However, note that the supply of zinc ores also increased as well, due to the influx of miners looking to cash in on this (and the fame craze for players looking to obtain their utsusemi: ichi scroll) It steadily increased until the supply was maxed (because mining points are finite, the number of miners are ever increasing and the laws of diminishing returns come back to spank you in this make believe world of Vana'Diel)

Prices kept on increasing. The powerlevelers looked to the RMT houses to provide them relief in the form of more artificially gained gil from sources that were not intended to. Fishing became a huge industry, as there was no real game mechanic that limited this activity (In otherwords, the supply of finish was infinite from this perspective)

More gil is created. Wealth abounds, but only for those privileged (gil buyers) and for a few that actually worked to obtain it (fishermen)

Higher level or end-game players also reaped huge benefits from this time. They were able to bring rare items into the market, where gil buyers then plied their gil and paid for these rare items. Because rare items were finite, yet the gil that was flowing in seemed INFINITE, inflation carried on up away and to the moon.

Now, this piece I illustrated (Because I could continue, but would rather not) already invalidates your counter argument of what ioshua had posted. Not entirely, as we already agreed upon several points (read ioshua's post again as he said that your remark was not entirely wrong)

Again, FFXI does not follow the law of economy very well because it's not a very thorough and complex economy like in the real world. There's issues to deal with (NPCs that are like the U.S. Treasury that can mint on whim) and unfortunately, as SE tried to fix this broken system, they were TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE. The current prices reflect this and while you can argue about the ratio of income to inflation, you've already omitted an important cost here that is prevalent in real economic discussions: TIME.

[kuu]

Re: best way to make $$$

Yes... and AH drains them all out.

You are trying to make fishing for an excuse, but, while there is a point about the masive influx of rusty npc trading, that was a year ago, and no longer an issue.

The key economic element that you're throwing out the air to make a point is that this is a marketplace, such that something builds on preexisting models. Thus, the idea of "everyone knows the value of a dollar". It doesn't matter if you have inflation, deflation, or anything else, as long as it's predictable, it's regular, and thus in a natural state of fluid balance.

Thus part of the idea of "natural rate of inflation" All accounting classes must learn some form of this.

Almost all economic princples from real world, applies to ffxi and mmorpgs, you just have to apply it rightly.

AH-> taxes
Gilsellers -> outsourcing,
RMT -> international exchange rates, via outsourcing,
crafting -> economics of scale. (Try to beat dell in making money on building computers, you can't)

And I don't know how you can remotely believe that RMT can "counterfeit". They can't, nobody but an elitely secret underground of hackers can do that. SE can easily at a single glance predict the rate of "gil printing", and change at will (like they did with AH, the equiviant of feds ordering an interest rate hike)

I'll reintroducted my example on the medicine killed faster then the disease.

Before: VE, lizzy, archer, and argus ->common blame RMT, gillsellers
After: No more, moved to BC -> raised all even higher.

Apply to economics: By removing gillseller(and a better part of people camping it for profit), you lower supply further, as gilsellers are what you call "grunts" that will work more for less. Thus on the demand vs supply graph, supply falls but demand remains the same, so prices go up.

To exaperate, the folly of trying to "fix things", people naturally go for the highest BC, peakcock, so in supply vs demand, peakcock dropped like a rock from 20mil down to 10, while everything else jumped by being ignored.

Gilsellers/RMT are merely scapegoats, they did nothing, except loose out like everyone else. You can hate them for mpk or whatever, but it's not the issue.

Back to topic, making gil. Find your niche, and follow the AH. The more you complain, the more you are not making gil, if you see everyone going after peackock charm bcnm, and it's dropping like a rock due to over supply. VE, and archers can make a "killing".

P.S.
And don't be afraid of undercutting, the faster the move inventory, the faster you can put more things.

[Akkio]

Re: best way to make $$$

i sell rabbit hides ^^

[lionx]

Re: best way to make $$$

I do not feel that Tree Saplings or whatever are worth my time, they take too long a time and by that time i rather do something else to make more gil. That and its too random, you can get crap for all your time spent and money too, so i feel the risk vs rewards are not consistant enough to warrant my time there. For me anyway.

[Shiro_Hayate]

Re: best way to make $$$

take my advice, don't level goldsmithing. I went to 40 and I'm now broke >,<

[aegina]

Re: best way to make $$$

gardening those ores did make good money, but i found to do well enough at gardening to make that money, i had to work harder at that gardening than i was working at my rl job, so i quit gardening... i might start back up again someday, but not right away.

this is what causes gillbuying. In wow it may be too easy to make money, but making gil in ffxi takes just a little bit too much work to be fun sometimes.

inflation is a sign of a healthy economy, as long as the inflation isn't caused by something unhealthy in the economy.
ffxi's inflation is clearly caused by something not working the way it should ><

edit: clarity

[Shiro_Hayate]

Re: best way to make $$$

gardening those ores did make good money, but i found to do well enough at gardening to make that money, i had to work harder at that gardening than i was working at my rl job. (or so it felt that way, at least) in other words, i was working harder to make in-game gil than i work to make rl dollars, so i quit gardening... i might start back up again someday, but not right away.

this is what causes gillbuying. wow may be too easy, but ffxi takes just a little bit too much work to be fun sometimes.

inflation is a sign of a healthy economy, as long as the inflation isn't caused by something unhealthy in the economy.
ffxi's inflation is clearly caused by something not working the way it should ><

i know what you mean, after looking at a few prices, i was so tempted to slap my credit card # into IGE and buy 10 millon gil. i mean, i've always loved this game, now i got a job and a lot of extra money going no where...argh, hard to keep my values straight now. i'm not sure what the hell happened to this game but making money has only gotten harder

[aegina]

Re: best way to make $$$

The reason people say gilsellers cause inflation is this:

Gilsellers sell gil. Gilbuyers buy the gil. A gilbuyer is probably going to be less scrupulous about how he spends the gil than someone who earned it legitimately in-game.

Let's say Item A goes for 2.5M gil.

Bob earns his gil legitimately. It took him a laborious month to save up barely 2.5M. He bids 2.5M. No go. He bids 2.55M. Still no go. He bids 2.6M. Still no go. Not willing to overpay, he gives up and hope the price will deflate back to 2.5M.

Joe buys gil. It took him 5 minutes to buy gil from an online broker. (And it took him a mere hour of working his real life job to earn enough dollars to buy that gil)

Joe bids 2.5M for Item A. No go. 2.6M. No go. 2.7M. No go. 2.8M. No go. 3M. No go. 3.1M. Yes! He wins the auction!

So Joe has overbid the average going price for Item A by 600K. For Bob, that sum is astronomical and would take him a week to earn that much. For Joe, it's just a half hour working his real life job.

At this point, all the greedy sellers see that someone paid 3.1M for a 2.5M item and flock to the AH. They start listing Item A for 3M+. And voila! Inflation!

Anyways, the point is, there are a lot of factors - a LOT of factors that have caused inflation.

this is all true, but there is more than just this messing up the economy.

for example, high level crafters often make their money by mass producing low level synths, rather than making high level ones, in an attempt to hq. they then sell the nq's for a loss, saturating the market and forcing low level crafters to sell their crafts at a loss.

npc's are another part of the problem. you spend 4k in materials to make an item, only to sell it for 2k because there's a npc selling it for 2k standing right next to the ah...

gil buying is not what's wrong with this game's economy. it's the result of what's wrong with this game's economy. gil buying only adds to the problem...