Economic woes

[nazlfrag]

I have yet to begin playing, but have been reading a lot of info on this and other forums. I was wondering why different servers have such varied economies - does the game just generate radom gil after a battle? wouldn't this lead to rampant inflation? What keeps this in check - do store prices increase as the auction prices go up?

hmm, I guess my real question is if any servers are better/worse to begin on, and what balances the economy?

thanx,
Nazlfrag

[kuu]

Re: Economic woes

Well since you mentioned you HAVE read other threads, then hopefully people won't rehash old worn out arguements.

But you are not getting the core essense of what economics is.

Inflation is natural. It's not good or bad. This can be said of the "market" which economics is based on, it is neither good or evil, it's a force of nature more or less.

Now to get to your question.

Servers are all different, new to old. The older ones you expect prices to be higher, because it's been around longer and there is more weath. 1 dollar vs 1 pound vs 1 yen, they are mearly mediums that have no value of themselves but to reflect other. The value of a dollar so the old saying goes. So usually the older the server the higher the gils going around.

This is normal, and not wrong, as if a players income is kept wit the market, it's fine. The complex side of it though, is how NPC interact because they do not change prices much(SE has been changing this slowly though).

This creates 2 markets inside ffxi, those that are devaluated because of NPC. Crafting mostly and some others, and the purely market (supply&demand) based , which is usually much higher, because there is no other way to get it. These two both help and hurt in various ways, I consider it much the same as our SS programs in US, some benifit, others complain.

And finally, some people always bring gillsellers/buyers into it, and I hope this thread doesn't get cluttered with it. They can do it on one of the hundreds of threads out there...
My own opinions is such that it doesn't have much basis in terms of economics, more rather, outsourcing(poor countries profiting from rich countries)...dubbed the Real world invading the Virtual world.

[fuz]

Re: Economic woes

Inflation would not matter if it happened equally for all items. But, it's pretty easy to see that say, a fire crystal doesn't inflate in price as much as a sniper ring. There is really no route to easy money unless you're a high level crafter cranking out HQ stuff (which sells at ridiculoulsy inflated prices).

If you farm low level items, you're not going to get anywhere fast.

[Kafeen]

Re: Economic woes

Inflation would not matter if it happened equally for all items. But, it's pretty easy to see that say, a fire crystal doesn't inflate in price as much as a sniper ring. There is really no route to easy money unless you're a high level crafter cranking out HQ stuff (which sells at ridiculoulsy inflated prices).

If you farm low level items, you're not going to get anywhere fast.

Fire Crystals can go from 2k-6k and 300% inflation is much more than you see on Sniper Rings over such a short period of time.

There's quite a few low level items that you can farm that are quite good earners. Sure, they aren't going to make you millions in a day you can do pretty well of items like silk thread and beetle jaws.

[fuz]

Re: Economic woes

Look at the over time average, don't just point to the highest outlaying data points. That's bad science, especially because you're looking at really short term.

For the last 2.5 years or so, the median price for fire crstals on my server have been 2k --> 5k (+250%). Sniper rings have gone from 200k --> 1200k (+600%). I'd call that uneven inflation.

Similarly, spider webs have gone from 7k --> 12k (+171%). Farming these common items will get you gil, but it's not as good as it used to be, especially if you want the highly inflated prices of rarer items.

[DakAttack]

Re: Economic woes

Emp hairpin, 300k --> 1.7mil =/

[Caspian]

Re: Economic woes

Beehive chips 3k/stack --> 20k/stack (~666% increase i blv)

[tdh]

Re: Economic woes

Let's put it this way, inflation on Lakshmi has gone to the point where I'd do anything not to pay 100k for any item. Now? "150k? {Hmmm} That's not a bad price."

Emp Hairpin: 400k » 1.3mil
Leeping Boots: 250k » 1.2mil
Sniper's Rings: 500k » 1.4mil

I spent 500k for my Lv.50 gear for my DRK. Damn near each piece for 100k+. I was not happy about that. Now I'm leveling RDM again, so I'm slowing trying to buy my Elemental Staves. 1/8 Ice Staff dropped down to 20k.

[nazlfrag]

Re: Economic woes

Thanks for the advice, I have a much better grasp of the inflation thingy. It seems a newbie like me should head to the youngest server (the default behaviour I believe) to avoid inflated prices.

You were saying its the same as the SS system - I don't see how. The SS system doesn't generate money out of thin air - it redistributes it. Where is this rebalancing in ffxi?

So it is like there is a fixed pool of gil that rapidly increases as the players on that server level up. If they just required mobs to gain gil from player kills (lose exp and gil) instead of creating it on the spot, there would be a slower increase in the pool, evening out the inflation problems. This would break some thief abilities, but they could be restored by treating each monster type as a 'clan' and pooling all loot - this way thieves could nab a larger slice of the clan's loot without resorting to making money out of thin air.

Backing the currency against the number of items in the world could be another move, which would allow for an even expansion of the gil pool vs. what you can use it for.

I am no economist but I am a developer and find the economies of these online games screwy to say the least. I guess i'm rambling but this is my biggest headache with these mmorpg's - not enough of an issue to stop me playing of course..

[Caspian]

Re: Economic woes

Dont always be fooled by "youngest servers have least inflation" Hades and Remora are the two newest and supposedly they're some of the worst. Reason being that they're by and large made up of ppl from other servers who migrated for endgame stuff, and brought all their money with them.
Most of the inflation is a result of npc'ing items (fishing is the majority of the this). It introduced massive amounts of brand new gil. That particular problem has been taken care of, but getting all that extra gil out is a different story.
Some items arent really fair to try and gauge the inflation..i.e. emp pin (got mine for 1 million and 3 days later it hit 3 million..now back to roughly 2 million, but still bouncing around a lot).
From what I've heard, middy has a pretty decent economy, atleast compared to fairy...but ours sucks.

[Minimee]

Re: Economic woes

i do not think it will make a difference which server you choose. its hard to make gil early on without advice and help. get signet before you leave town each time to fight so you get crystals as drops. all items that drop have a value on the ah some more than others. the prices also very alot from city to city. maybe try and make friends in other citys to help you find prices and bargains. do quests some quest items are valuable and some are about worthless in city where you get them but are higher value in other citys. doing quests also lower what you pay for items from npcs. want to make gil find the magic shop or weapons shop check the prices write them down then go to ah and find the prices of those items on ah. there are so many items sold by npcs that sell on ah for alot of profit.i have found items i can get for less than 500g ive sold on ah for around 20k. thats an exception but just shows what is possible if you put in the time.

[InuTrunks]

Re: Economic woes

Dont always be fooled by "youngest servers have least inflation" Hades and Remora are the two newest and supposedly they're some of the worst. Reason being that they're by and large made up of ppl from other servers who migrated for endgame stuff, and brought all their money with them.
Most of the inflation is a result of npc'ing items (fishing is the majority of the this). It introduced massive amounts of brand new gil. That particular problem has been taken care of, but getting all that extra gil out is a different story.
Some items arent really fair to try and gauge the inflation..i.e. emp pin (got mine for 1 million and 3 days later it hit 3 million..now back to roughly 2 million, but still bouncing around a lot).
From what I've heard, middy has a pretty decent economy, atleast compared to fairy...but ours sucks.

Damn right it's bad, things can change 100-200,000 gil in a matter of hours (and stay at that price for eternity).

I've personally watched my level 70 thf gear go up in price from 30k each to 150k each in the past week.

it's just really bad.

[kuu]

Re: Economic woes

Thanks for the advice, I have a much better grasp of the inflation thingy. It seems a newbie like me should head to the youngest server (the default behaviour I believe) to avoid inflated prices.

You were saying its the same as the SS system - I don't see how. The SS system doesn't generate money out of thin air - it redistributes it. Where is this rebalancing in ffxi?

So it is like there is a fixed pool of gil that rapidly increases as the players on that server level up. If they just required mobs to gain gil from player kills (lose exp and gil) instead of creating it on the spot, there would be a slower increase in the pool, evening out the inflation problems. This would break some thief abilities, but they could be restored by treating each monster type as a 'clan' and pooling all loot - this way thieves could nab a larger slice of the clan's loot without resorting to making money out of thin air.

Backing the currency against the number of items in the world could be another move, which would allow for an even expansion of the gil pool vs. what you can use it for.

I am no economist but I am a developer and find the economies of these online games screwy to say the least. I guess i'm rambling but this is my biggest headache with these mmorpg's - not enough of an issue to stop me playing of course..

There isn't any "gil" generated out of thin air either. What are you thinking? Everything is market driven(except things of NPC or byproduct). More items are increase, or goods, not gil. There are very little way to "make" gil in the game.

If anything I believe more gil is being taken away then made. Every day millions of gil is taken out from the AH tax system, and many other systems.

And for people here who see those inflation, I beleive they represent acturate situations. fire cystals were never 2k on my server for the past year. They always floated around 4k-6k, and this is as it should since there is more demand and supply isn't getting better because people are "richer" and does not farm it themselves.

Same for sniper ring, and emp. They are going "UP" because it's a BC that no one goes to. Everyone tries to get rich on peakcock charms, which is floating at 12mil "DOWN" from it's 20mil.

The economy is not your friend, it fixes itself like any force of nature. Who it hurts by it in the fixing, is not of its concern.

We "humans" did it to ourselves, and thus the economy rushes in to fix it. People clinging on to old price tags will forever be grumpy, because they can not accept that items worth can change. A baberuth baseball card went form $50cent to a mil, because supply go lower while demand goes higher.

I personally think anyone complaining on fire cystals, then try to justify it, are delusional. ANYONE can farm fire cystals. Cystals are probably the most equalizing product of the game. The fact people keep buying it and price keep raising means that it's undervalued not over, because farming < buy is still a better choice.

Now back to social security. It was ment to help people who's income suddenly dropped. This is kind of like the NPC system. Where a cheap alternative that will never really be very expensive. Is it good? Some would think, but it also disrupts the "market" and we end up paying for it in other ways. It skewers the supply and demand, where if you're a seller, it's bad, because you income isn't keeping up with inflation, but if you're a buyer, it's good because you're making more while prices are low.

Edit:
If you're a developer, it's a good lesson to learn here, to not always listen to your player community. The Emperior/sniper/peackcock inflation was brought about because SE listened to players complaining that they didn't want to camp the NMs and wanted it put in BC, BECAUSE prices on those items where high.

Well now it's even HIGHER, then before BECAUSE they were removed and put into a BC(a non competitive situation). This is because once they took it out, found out that people always "chose" the highest payout in this case peakcock charms, and almost no one did the others. This created a supply and demand issue, where naturally any economist worth his class credits would predict a "gold rush" pressing down on 1 product, and raising all the others.

This would probably go on until 1 of 2 situations. where peakcock goes to down to a price that makes it no longer wanted, and thus people start farming others, or S-E changes the drop rate to reflect above.

Nonethless, the old way was clearly better interms of prices, because you have 24hr camp, where it ensures supply and demand always met. Fighting gilsellers is another issue though.