How to stop the inflation

[Kutch]

This is entirely based on opinion, but here's my very simple solution to inflation in game:

Make more servers

That's simply it. More people per server = more pressure on echonomy. There are more items being farmed/sold, and there are more people buying - inflation HAS to be a result of overpopulation. It's that simple (again, in my opinion).

Gilsellers exist because the market is there for them to get rich on. Thin out the number of potential buyers in each world, and suddenly you have cut the market for them. Make the necessary adjustments to the character creation, and offer server moves either for free, or for a small symbolic fee as a permanent service in order to let players move to less crowded worlds.

And it is time to make more servers! After about 3 years, Everquest did the same, made a few servers in Europe as well as Japan to take the pressure off both the game servers as well as the echonomy - it's not unprecedented, and by all means not a complicated matter (even though we're not talking your average joe's small office server here - I imagine these server farms have quite a size on them )

Just my 2cp, you can discuss back and forth ideas for getting rid of the inflation, but the simple core is just that - right now, there are too many people per server, creating a market for gilsellers, as well as an inflation that will not stop.

I for one, would swap in a heartbeat.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Well there have been new servers made, people have transferred to those servers, and now the economy is just as bad as on other servers. It's also possible that when the 360 version is released that new servers might be created. Greedy people go to a server and do exactly what they did on their server. New people go on forums and hear about prices on other servers and decide that helping raise the prices on their server will net them a good profit and the greed takes over. I thought new server = better economy too but after the honeymoon period I found out that just wasn't the case.

[Aeni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Found out why there's inflation. At $3 per million gil, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out just how many players managed to break down and buy gil, using whatever justification they had in their mind at the time.

GG GJ You ****** gil buying nubs out there. Sigh ...

[Kafeen]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Its kind of like sticking your finger in a hole in a dam. It works for a while but its no long term solution.

Long term there is no way to stop inflation, its the way of the world.

[Canuklehead]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Thing is, if people are used to paying, say, 2,000,000 gil for a specific item on one server that would otherwise sell for a quarter that price on a new server, people will still list if at 2,000,000 gil. Because they're used to it... that's what they think is the value now. And people WILL pay that, because they want it, (complain it's over-priced and that the economy sucks,) then go out and buy the gil for it because it's faster than the alternative.

[Aeni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Thing is, if people are used to paying, say, 2,000,000 gil for a specific item on one server that would otherwise sell for a quarter that price on a new server, people will still list if at 2,000,000 gil. Because they're used to it... that's what they think is the value now. And people WILL pay that, because they want it, (complain it's over-priced and that the economy sucks,) then go out and buy the gil for it because it's faster than the alternative.

Actually, it does work, but only for a limited time. I was part of the migration from Middie to Hades over a year ago. I left a server that was charging 1.2 million gil per sniper's, 4.5 mil per Haubu, 7 mil per VC to a new server where, for about 6 months or so, was charging 450K per sniper's, 1.2 mil per Haubu and 3.5 mil per VC. See the huge change in prices? Why? Because when you have SEVERAL HNM shells in the migration and they all had overstocked on luxury items (Not to mention a few rotten apples that stole their LS lewt) and a virgin economy where NO ONE has money in the first place and full of level 1 players, then the price will just topple until they find buyers.

Once the economy had settled, however, and RMT comes home to roost, that's when things usually start to turn for the worst. In our case, it was second migration that royally screwed us over, since our prices were actually cheaper than prices of certain servers that shifted here, such as Fairy, for example.

[DurEdhil]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Ive thought about this alot. Something that can be done is to make more of the items available at a vendor instead of AH only. That way the gil goes back into the game and not into someones pockets. Imagine if the Astral Ring could be purchased for say, 800k (instead of 2 million on the Valefor server) at a vendor.

The problem with gil farmers/sellers/buyers is they can continue to get their money back at the AH. Take the money away with a vendor and see what happens. However, as said before, inflation is the way of economy. All of them. Even the barter system. =(

[Omni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

what about making the auction house a real auction???
the way ffxi ah is setup is that its like ebay but everything has a reserve price. you arent really 'auctioning' off the item, all you are doing is putting the item up for sale and having people 'guess' the price by bidding. which is really no different than going on bazaar other than you are told the price up front.

the whole point of an auction is that you compete with other bidders, and the highest bid wins. ffxi ah is nothing but large organized for sale sign.

[Canuklehead]

Re: How to stop the inflation

what about making the auction house a real auction???
the way ffxi ah is setup is that its like ebay but everything has a reserve price. you arent really 'auctioning' off the item, all you are doing is putting the item up for sale and having people 'guess' the price by bidding. which is really no different than going on bazaar other than you are told the price up front.

the whole point of an auction is that you compete with other bidders, and the highest bid wins. ffxi ah is nothing but large organized for sale sign.

But don't you think that would make prices go up even more? If people start bidding, then the bidding price goes up...

Then the seller, finding out he got twice the amount of money he listed the item for, decides he'll list the same item HIGHER next time because it seems to sell so well.


No, the best way to combat high prices, really, is to simply not pay them.

[Omni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

no, b/c the seller doesnt get to touch the auction once he has put it up for sale. so if i start my auction at 100gil. and give it say 24 hr to be on the ah, what ever the price is at the end of that 24 hrs is what its sold as. so if someone bids on it for 200 gil. it goes as 200 gil. regardless of what i 'wanted' it to be. you can have a buy it now price like ebay has if you dont want to wait for the auction to end.

so if an items is listed really high to begin with people rather not bid on it. people would bid on ones taht start low. just like ebay.

the auction works more in favor for the seller than it does for the bidder. ive experienced countless times when buying an item that would say normally go for 10k but for some reason or another havent been on sale for awhile. then 1 goes on sale and some guy tries to jack it up to like 40k.

like i said, the auction house isnt an auction house. you are just basically trying to guess what the price is set as.

if you try to not pay for the price of the item then what do you expect people to do? i mean inflation isnt hitting only the luxary items but its hitting lots of NEED items too. like shihei. its 20k on my server last i checked. i lvld the bulk of my ninja on shihei ranging from 3-9k. this is a NEED item for ninja. how can we not pay the price the seller has put? if you say we can craft it ourselves, that is true but materials cost money. farm the materials? ok thats fine too but then you need to lvl alchemy AND woodworking to be able to self sufficeintly make shihei. farm all materials to craft everythign yourself? might as well not xp at all and save yourself the trouble.

make the ah a real auction. make npc's sell competitive items and materials that do not sell out. make things ex. make people risk beastmen seals to get GREAT items. make people feel they can xp and do their job well w/o the unnecessary need for luxary items. step in and adjust the economy. it wont adjust itself.

[Karinya]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Actually the FFXI AH is very well set up to keep prices *down*. The lowest priced item ALWAYS sells first, and the fact that you can't see what price that guy has set means some people give up before they reach it. 1M, no, 1.1M, no, 1.2M, no, 1.3M, no... screw this! So the guy who puts it up at 1.5M gets no sale, loses his AH fee and has to list it again - probably lower, unless he wants to lose another AH fee. This means that people who list items lower get their money faster and with less risk of losing their AH fee.

The reason why there's inflation *anyway* is just that the game is being flooded with gil. Too much money chasing too few goods - it's the textbook definition of inflation (from RL economics). Gil sources far, far outweigh gil sinks and something needs to be done to address that. One possible fix would be to extend the bazaar tax to Batallia, Rolanberry, Sauromugue and Qufim - or even worldwide. Batallia bazaars are used to evade both the Jeuno bazaar tax and AH fees on highly expensive items, which negates a lot of the usefulness of the AH as a gil sink.

Reducing gil dropped by beastmen, NMs and BCNMs would help too (particularly NMs and BCNMs, their other drops are quite adequate reason to fight them). Eliminating the chance of chests/coffers giving gil would both help the economy *and* the people who get the chests/coffers (since, because of inflation, the gil is almost always far below the value of items that could have been in the same coffer).

And finally, making more materials available through NPC merchants would control the prices of those materials directly, and by draining more gil out of the economy, control inflation indirectly. Taking away the money drops from HNM would limit interest in them by people who don't need the abjurations or other ex drops, which might help the overcrowding issue. Behemoth hide, Venomous claw 1M gil at NPC merchant? (|Yes, please.|) Dynamis currency would be another good target for this - the goblins could sell 100-pieces for 1M and control their prices while draining gil. Either of those measures would cause considerable economic shock for a while, but after a few weeks or at worst months, the economy would resettle at a more stable level.

[Outlaw]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Boycott the AH. that's the simplest plan. If they can't sell they lose the fee they have to pay to put stuff on auction and eventually they will either
1) Lower the price.. or...
2) Give up...

[Kafeen]

Re: How to stop the inflation

what about making the auction house a real auction???
the way ffxi ah is setup is that its like ebay but everything has a reserve price. you arent really 'auctioning' off the item, all you are doing is putting the item up for sale and having people 'guess' the price by bidding. which is really no different than going on bazaar other than you are told the price up front.

the whole point of an auction is that you compete with other bidders, and the highest bid wins. ffxi ah is nothing but large organized for sale sign.

If it was put on like a real auction people would just put the starting price at how much they want, what is is now, then see how much extra they can get out of it.

[Canuklehead]

Re: How to stop the inflation

If it was put on like a real auction people would just put the starting price at how much they want, what is is now, then see how much extra they can get out of it.

Exactly. Then, when they see they got X amount extra, they put their next auction of the same item at their original price PLUS X to see just how high it can go.

[Sanim]

Re: How to stop the inflation

I don't think that gilsellers are the real problem.

Inflation is linked to the quantity of money avaible in the market (M), if M increases, prices raise. The only solution to stop inflation is to destroy money (via NPC's -access to special content should cost X gils, etc-).

Gilsellers come in play to artificially keep prices high. If prices go to high they should automatically go down (less demand at a higher price).

To sum up, I believe that the only viable solution is destroying money (getting it out of the market).

There are other options but they wouldn't deal with the inflation problem itself. They would offer a "parallel market" -NPCs selling items, ex/rare itemization, etc-.