Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

[Thoronas]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

The AH system from WOW would work perfectly in FFXI, only because there's no random items created on a daily basis, but rather the same set of crafted items with only new additions from expansions and updates. Players expect certain drops from monsters they fight, so this is a non issue.

God the auction house is already a slow load when there a lot of items in a category (such as body armour) can you imagine what it would be like if every item was listed individually? I shudder to think how long it would take me to get crafting supplies. I don't believe it would really change inflation because people would still bid and pay overinflated prices for items, rare items could potentially cost more as 10 people could all be bidding furiosly to get it. Then if people just used the buy it now option it wouldn't be very different from the FF system. That's my opinion anyways.

On a side note, I found a site that lists the real world value of every major MMORPG's currency. They have tracked the price of a million gil since the beginning of 2005 and its amazing how low the price for gil has gotten.
here's the proof
I found the site back in November and they're tracking of the gil has been spot on so it is very possible that a million gil did cost 50 bucks back in Jan 2005. Compared to now it seems ridiculous to pay that much but people did and now gil has been so undercut in the real world market that its only worth 9 bucks for a mil. The gil sellers have fucked themselves as well as our economy over by producing so much gil. Now they need to farm longer in order to get the same real money amount of gil. Can't say I feel sorry for them...

[Aeni]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Thoronas, there would be no way to track inflation because there wouldn't be a history anymore. This blindfold on sellers would be a buyer's market. Currently, the economy is a seller's market ... hence, inflation.

[Coinspinner]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Well, every five levels the base item would change too. And you have to wait for the auction to end unless you "Buy Out". If you go out and exp while waiting you can come back and find that you won on the "Scout's Cap of the Wolf" but you can now wear the "Ranger's Hood of the Wolf" which is slightly better. I think that's what Kafeen meant.

I didn't find it important to get every single upgrade... you level way too fast to worry about that.

[Thoronas]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Thoronas, there would be no way to track inflation because there wouldn't be a history anymore. This blindfold on sellers would be a buyer's market. Currently, the economy is a seller's market ... hence, inflation.

I can see how that might help since rare items would no longer have a price history people would have to go more on hearsay and memory and thus sellers may be at a disadvantage but even if they underpriced it, if the AH was the same as WoW's buyers could still potentially jack the price up with competing bids and gil sellers could make it worse by making phoney bids to bring the price higher. This is all hypothetical, so while it is interesting I don't think it will ever truly affect us. But I do enjoy hearing other peoples opinions so keep them coming.

Please check the link I included above which shows the price of gil in USD as it has declined during 2005. I believe that is also part of the inflation we are dealing with now as gil has become devalued and is more affordable thus buyers have more money to throw around and clearly they are doing so with gusto.

[Aeni]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Thoronas,

If you were to ask me if WOW's AH functions worked better for FFXI three years ago, I would've said no. No, because at the time, there was very little gil floating in the economy. I remember a time when a player had more than a million gil on hand while still being properly equipped, that player was really rich. Now, even having 50 million gil on hand is nothing, as you cannot easily distinguish between a gil buyer and a hardcore player with a lot of time on hand to play the game and various resources to create gil. Thus, the idea is to find ways to rein in on the inflation, remove all of this excess gil from ALL PLAYERS and figure out a way to readjust the way treasure/reward/drop/craft works in this game. As someone once said, ever since Rusty Cap fiasco, things have not been the same.

[lionx]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Isnt the only way gil being introduced is by stuff like killing beastmen and HNM gil drop and selling items to AH? So how do gilsellers who mostly camp NMs generate gil to affect THAT much, as well as those mining? If anything, if they buy from NPC for their picks, that would lower inflation right? >_>; I am pretty sure the gil comes elsewhere, but since so many actually go to them, it becomes more cheap...i agree also with the Rusty Cap thing...SE took too long in that regard to fix that problem..=/ But its not just SE or just gilsellers...i am pretty sure everyone (and i feel its more weight on players) that helped change things the most.

[Coinspinner]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

In:
Starting funds, Gil from mob kills, Rank up rewards, quests (tiger fangs, moss, etc.), Primes, NPC sales (Padded Cap, rolanberries, etc.), coffers and chests, npc exploits, ...

Out:
Character deletion, Chocobos, AH fees, Airship fees, bazaar tax, map sales, guild/regional/vendor NPC purchases for crafting, picks/sickles/axes, some medicines, subligars, outpost port, Dynamis, image support, colored chips, ...

Edit: Thank you, Karinya. Anyone else?

[JeanRC]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

1 good way of ensuring that the price of some useful item will not be so high is to have a GM system that fix a price for some shop selling item like sh, haub, sniper ring etc.
So the GM can change the price of the shop selling this item like 1week to 1 month per time or not. Example sh now is about 12-14m compare to 8m few week ago. What the GM can fix the price for sh at this shop is about 9-11M. So if a npc shop sell at 9-11m i am sure the ah price would not go above that price.

[Kafeen]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Kaf,

It was only because in WOW, there's just way too many kinds of items and their variations. Very much modeled after the Diablo games, the items are randomly generated when a drop occurs. You could have a Bandit's Gun of the Tiger and then the next day, off of the same mob, a Bandit's Gun of the Whale. You can't even get the same item to drop off the same monster.

So, it's not the AH's fault. You misplaced the blame entirely. You should blame the game's random drop generator off of non-Named monsters.

The AH system from WOW would work perfectly in FFXI, only because there's no random items created on a daily basis, but rather the same set of crafted items with only new additions from expansions and updates. Players expect certain drops from monsters they fight, so this is a non issue.

Basically, what it does is it limits inflation to an item only, not to an entire economy system. I could've paid 5 mil for a D Ingot one day while another crafter, several hours after me, would pay 3 mil. I'd price my Haubu at least for what I paid, but the other crafter could price his much lower. Yet, his item might eventually sell for 8 mil while mine ended on the buyout of 7 mil. It's like a confidential buyer to seller system which should be the way it is. No history, no fuss, no muss with all the listed entries showing the price up front. I could choose to sell, from an HNM LS perspective, that D ingot for 2 mil while some random joe blow from a BC fight sell his for 5 mil. Both listed at the same time, guess who's going to sell theirs faster? If that joe blow gets anxious waiting for the sale, he's going to cancel his auction and lower it to 3 mil even 2 ... see how that works?


I also wanted to add this ...


SE should increase the rate of which items used to synth stuff more accessible. 100% drop rates on all non-Rare/Ex items.

If SE wanted to make something special, they should have alter versions of all crafted equipment and weapons which are much superior, but with very rare drop rates. For example, have Vclaw drop 100% of the time from several different scorp NMs, yet also have a 1% drop rate from those scorps a rare/ex Scp. Harness with superior stats. Same goes for Sea and Sky NMs. This will make available good items at reasonable prices, normal items will stay the same or even be a lot cheaper (so no tiring excuses of how some level 21 player still equipped in level 1 sets because everything was too expensive) and superior items only rewarded to the best of the best players that belong to the best of the hunters out there - AS IT SHOULD BE. These top of the line goods should not be made available to commoners and gil buyers.

Changing the AH wouldn't fix price rises. If anything it would make them worse. Rather than people getting items as soon as they bid they stay on AH. Someone else comes along who wants the item and is forced to out bid. You then get into a bidding war with someone pushing the price higher and higher. The next person comes along seeing how high the prices has gone and puts their starting price higher and so it goes on.

[Karinya]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

In:
Starting funds, Gil from mob kills, Rank up rewards, quests (tiger fangs, moss, etc.), Primes, NPC sales (Padded Cap, rolanberries, etc.), coffers and chests, npc exploits ...

Out:
Character deletion, Chocobos, AH fees, Airship fees, bazaar tax, map sales, guild/regional/vendor NPC purchases for crafting, picks/sickles/axes, some medicines, subligars, outpost port ...

You left out Dynamis. The long timer keeps it from draining *that* much cash, but it does drain some. If there's 10 active Dynamis LS on your server, there goes 20M a week. Guild image support fee also drains a little, but probably not enough to be significant.

I think NPC sales have to be the big culprit here. Probably from people who buy their materials at AH (or farm them), craft for skillup and sell the product to the guild at a loss. There are a LOT of people doing this all the time and since the materials were originally farmed, the gil entering the economy from the product sale isn't balanced by a gil drain for the materials (for the economy as a whole - it certainly is a gil drain for the individual crafter, but that's not the point).


SE could solve two problems at once by letting the Goblins sell ancient currencies for gil. The rare/ex item requirements would still restrict upgraded relic weapons/armors to those who have earned them, and it would control the spiraling price of Dynamis currency (worsened by the introduction of new zones and their more attainable relic armor upgrades) and at the same time drain a ton of gil out of the economy. But it's also self-limiting, if the economy deflates past a certain point, gil would become too valuable for it to be a worthwhile exchange.

1M gil per 100 coin/bill seems about right (a full weapon upgrade would cost ~200M, which is a lot especially if noticeable deflation results, but shouldn't be unattainable for such awesomely powerful weapons; and you can get a useful level of upgrades for much less.) You'd expect to usually get more than that out of a Dynamis run, plus AF2 and other drops, but even if you have the people, you can't do Dynamis more than every three Earth days, while you could buy from the goblin as often as you want.

At current market prices, the Dynamis currency required for one relic weapon full upgrade is worth about one billion gil. Yes, 1000 million. The weapons should be hard to get, but if the main way they're hard is requiring absurd amounts of gil, it only encourages gil buying and resentment among people who are sure that someone couldn't have finished them without gil buying.

[kuponutmog]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Arg... i am slightly regretting paying in excess of £400 to start playing the game if prices are like this... Tell me - newb items are still cheap, right? Pm me about it please

Don't want to have to shell out about 2mill for my Red mages first spells

[dragen3]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

New items are still relativly inexpensive, NPC prices don't seem to have changed all that much. If you try to buy your gear off the AH (player driven therefore not fixed) that it could be expensive. But if you buy off NPCs (System Programmed basically static) that it shouldn't be that far off from where the game started. I have seen some mention of a prices flucating somewhat based on AH prices but i picked up first 10 levels of black and white spells for something less than 2K since their is quests in the city you could earn the gil easily enough given a price of 2K their is a quest in Windy that gives 600 per 3 of a mob drop (crawler Calcus (spelling)) so the economy isn't all that bad for real basic equipment. For stronger items (like some of the ones discussed on here) you have to either camp the monster and hope it drops or buy it from the AH (this can be expensive) but keep in mind that higher prices in general means things sell higher than they used to as well.

[Aeni]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

Changing the AH wouldn't fix price rises. If anything it would make them worse. Rather than people getting items as soon as they bid they stay on AH. Someone else comes along who wants the item and is forced to out bid. You then get into a bidding war with someone pushing the price higher and higher. The next person comes along seeing how high the prices has gone and puts their starting price higher and so it goes on.

That's why you'll have a buyout option. For things like crystals which would benefit from a buyout option.

Also, what you said about bidding wars is not true. Not what I've seen in WOW. In fact, because the items tend to stay longer on the AH, the sellers UNDERCUT each other badly, to be the one to sell his/her stuff first. This introduces a method to dispel inflation, not encourage it. I can see for an item like Speed Belt, where it won't help, but then again, a Speed Belt is a very rare item anyway, so whatever price is paid for it is justified, simply because it is rare. But something like a Haubergeon should not be rare and that is why you need to read my other part of the post, where I've asked that SE either increases the drop rate or make available drops from NPCs at a static price. You create an artificial price cap in much the same way as you do with that whole cashmere example.

With certain items, SE can then create rare/ex versions and make them superior to anything that is crafted, normal or HQ. This way, it works out. Players with the skills and time to hunt the NMs that drop these rare/ex items will come out real winners while the normal blow joe can have the crafted versions, while lower in quality than the rare/ex versions, would still allow a player to play the game w/o being labelled as gimp.

You have to realize, this all stems from the fact that the amount of items and equipment in FFXI pales to games like WOW. This forces players to only have a couple of options when it comes to upgrading themselves. If SE simply had 3-5 times the number of equipment pieces and weapons available across all jobs, then we may not even have this issue or the issue would be diluted so that inflation would be limited to just a few select items and not the entire economy as we've seen recently ...

[x1ang]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

what if the price history was wiped (and removed) along with the buyout option added? >.>

[Lupine73]

Re: Inflaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation

The fix for this problem, to me, is quite simple in principal.. but will take time and dedication to pull off.

Turn the tables. Change the behavior. Stop accepting the prices as what they are. Refuse to buy specific items over a certain price. Sound ridiculous? It shouldn't. The reason prices have gotten the way they are is because people - the players - have gone along with the increases and allowed them to get the way they now are. We're here talking about how absurd prices have gotten.. yet we continue to allow them to get that way. There's a lyric from a Rush song that illustrates this perfectly:

"No one is blameless, but we're all without shame.
We fight the fire, while we're feeding the flames".

The players have it in their control to bring the prices down by not buying things at those absurd prices. Someone can try and sell a peacock charm for 100 million gil if they want. It means squat if no one buys it. The seller's auction runs out, they dont' make the sale, the item is returned unsold to their delivery box and now they have to pay the list price, again, to try and sell it. Eventually, they're gonna get the hint, the price is going to come down and these prices will be under control again.

Some might argue that the RMT'ers and farmers will just buy them cheap and sell them high.. Again.. they can sell them for whatever they want.. They still need the *buyers*. Let them see everyone else moving those items at far lower prices, while they have to keep re-listing them at a loss.. They'll get the idea, too.

Some will say it's a waste of time. I disagree. If it helps everyone in the end, I think it's an invaluable use of time and an extremely worthwhile community endeavor. Some will feel "Hey I have the money, I can afford it.. I'm going to buy it at that price!" Good for them! They want to blow millions on an item that simply isn't worth that much... hey, go right ahead. I'd be the first to tell them they're out of their mind. Those millions could have been invested in far more useful and reasonable things.

Finally.. some will say "So, I'm supposed to just go without "insert luxury item here" until they come down in price?" Well, you've done so up 'til now, haven't you? And.. believe it or not.. that "luxury item" is not necessary for you to progress in the game. Really.. it isn't. There are other items well within a normal price-range that will do the job perfectly well. Anyone who chides you or won't invite you to a group because you don't have all the top-ticket items is part of the reason why prices have gotten to where they are to begin with. I would openly tell them they're out of their minds as well.

Don't wanna get off track, but let me say this definitively: You don't need.. I repeat.. _do not_ need... those luxury items to succeed in FFXI as a skilled and effective player. Never have. Never will. Period. End of story. Please drive through. Anyone who insists otherwise needs a reality check. Are they nice to have? Yes. Are they helpful? Yes. Are they shiny and nice? Sure. Will your friends "ooh" and "ahh" and drool all over them? Likely so. Are they necessary? Absolutely not.

It's all about trends. For example... People started to notice that Ninja could tank.. Word got around. Suddenly, Ninja tanks are everywhere. People saw others power-leveling or being power-leveled... word got around. Over enough time, people came to believe power-leveling is part of how you're supposed to play the game. That's two examples of how word-of-mouth leads to a trend/change in player behavior/mentality... The same thing could be applied here.

Now.. I don't pretend to believe this will be an overnight change. Prices getting where they are wasn't instantaneouse, either (though there have been some leaps and bounds, the increase, overall, has been gradual). And I realize not everyone reads these forums... But.. the people who do read these forums likely play online with others on their server. So.. spread the word people. Talk to your LS members, talk to people you know any chance you get. If enough people don't take an apathetic stance on this, spread the word and help set the example, you *will* see prices come down... probably alot faster than they got that high.

So... where to start? Well.. how about coming to a consensus on a price-range that people could live with? How far back do we want to rewind? I would say we ask those who are veterans of the game.. who've been around the longest. What was the accepted cost of a Peacock charm back then? Leaping boots? Hairpin? And on and on... Let's come to an agreement there, then spread the word to everyone one we know and try and get as many on board as possible. Refuse to buy any item above the agreed price range... In time, enough people will become aware of it and it will become another trend. Only it will be one that makes FFXI much more approachable, affordable and, dare I say it, more enjoyable for everyone.

I focus on luxury items here.. but it applies across the board. On Pandemonium, a single silk thread can get 4k+ gil. When I first started, it was under 1k. 10k for a stack. Why is it so much more? The mob difficulty hasn't quadrupled. The yield of a single thread hasn't quadrupled. The effort to kill a crawler hasn't quadrupled. Why has the price quadrupled?!

Want another example of how out-of-whack the prices have gotten? The reward for hitting Rank 2 (in Windy) includes 1k gil. At the time I started, 1k gil was a nice amount of money at that level. You could buy a couple pieces of lowbie armor for that. Now you're lucky to see level 1 gear under 1k for a single piece. It's ridiculous.

Call me crazy, call me wacky, call me kooky... but I, for one, believe it could work.

Or.. we could just take an "I don't care" attitude and just keep floating along, complaining about the prices, while they continue to go higher and higher.