A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

[Ameroth]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Honestly, I really think the OP is blowing this out of proportion. This would seem like a little be larger issue for someone who has never played before, but not someone who already seems to know the ropes. Example, I started a new character, Mithran THF, not too long ago. At level 9 now, I have more than farmed up enough gil just from exping to provide the lowbie gear I need, and still save some gil up. And no, I didn't send my new character "starting gil" or whatever. Specialkay started off just like everyone else collecting her 50gil reward with the starter coupon.

Again, I think your money woes stem back to your insistence to have the uber lowbie gear. Like more than a few people have pointed out, selling 2-3 stacks of crystals, even at 500g a a pop, should net you plenty enough to buy the starter gear from NPCs with the exception of one or two pieces that are strangely only found in the other two nations you did not start in.

[Feenicks]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

If the OP thinks that prices are still around the same as it was when he quit, I ask him to look at the current price of the Noble's Tunic and take into account that my LS leader bought one of those for himself four years ago for 13 million.

[Balfree]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

There are other ways of making money now that maybe you didnt have 4 years ago. Things have changed, and its to be expected that since many of the equipment you mentioned dropped in price, the economy followed accordingly along with.

[Celeal]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Well, the economy is changing. However, that does not implies at all of a sudden a poor player will automatically become rich without spending the same (or more) efforts.

P.S. There isn't much point for +1 gear at starting level (unless it is very cheap or your can afford it very easily). On the other hand food and the exp. rings makes a huge impact. If the newbie got K.O-ed outside the starting city, just home-point and get back for exp. After killing a EP/DC few mobs for several minutes, the lost exp. will be returned.

[eticket109]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

I would just like to say I love how the OP praises prices going down on equipment and gear and then bitches that crystal prices went down too.

The entire economy went down but overall, for the most part, the ratios all stayed about the same.

[ishio]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

It amazes me how most of the people didn't actually read all the way to the bottom where I made my point. I even put the word "rant" in the title. Of course its gonna be a complaint. If some of you don't complaints, why did you even click on the thread?

It amazes me how most of the people that talk about the +1 gear have the mindset of, "There isn't much point for +1 gear at starting level (unless it is very cheap or your can afford it very easily).". If you can afford +1 gear 4 years ago as a noobie and you can't afford it today, does that not make my point correct?

It amazes me how most of the people that talk about the current economy have the mindset of, "The entire economy went down but overall, for the most part, the ratios all stayed about the same." The examples I gave throughout the thread point out that the ratios are no where near the same. There's a huge difference between 25%, 75%, and 150%.

Oh well. I tried to be civil. Thats what I get for thinking highly of this forum. I'm out.

[Taskmage]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Door's to your left.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Umm... OK.. Feel free to come back when you can handle different opinions than your own? Or be not so discourage by price change in crystals (did you raise other examples? I may have missed them)?

Newbies are not supposed to have most of the +1 gears, BTW; I certainly don't expect them them, and neither does 99% of the players. Even for veterans, I only ask for standard pieces like Spike Necklaces, and things which makes sense in the slot. (No more MP earrings for WAR/MNK, please. >_< )

It's great you want to spend the extra time to better gear yourself, but don't turn around and complain about having to spend the extra time to get enough gil and expect no one to point out you're the one who's making yourself miserable.

* * *

I've spent a lot of time farming and camping for my HQ staves, Brigandan +1, Auriga Xiphos, Solid Mail set, and other optional gears at varying levels. Many of my LS mates laughed at my obsessiveness (and slow farming), and I merely shrugged at them. The gear makes me happy, and thus was worth my time--even though I've always thought of +1 stuff as "optional".

If, however, the +1 stuff isn't making you happy enough to be worth the time farming or camping or whatever, skip them. Just put sensible things in every slot you can; no one will fault you for it. >_>

[Cometgreen]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

It amazes me how most of the people that talk about the +1 gear have the mindset of, "There isn't much point for +1 gear at starting level (unless it is very cheap or your can afford it very easily).". If you can afford +1 gear 4 years ago as a noobie and you can't afford it today, does that not make my point correct?

The economy does not revolve around low level +1 gear.

Rare items won't as easily deflate with the rest of the economy. If there are only one or two of item X on the AH at a time, the sellers have greater control over the price and can keep it artificially high. I don't know why +1 gear is harder to get now, as the supply could only have increased since you left, so the price should have gone down even more. Maybe you can find specific examples to fit your argument, but it seems to me like most equipment has been steadily falling in price.

[eticket109]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

It amazes me how most of the people that talk about the current economy have the mindset of, "The entire economy went down but overall, for the most part, the ratios all stayed about the same." The examples I gave throughout the thread point out that the ratios are no where near the same. There's a huge difference between 25%, 75%, and 150%.

Oh well. I tried to be civil. Thats what I get for thinking highly of this forum. I'm out.

You're right. The high level gear scaled down exponentionally compared to crystal prices. Unfortunately, low gear went down, but not as much. Once you get past 10 or so, you'll see that a lot of sellables will more then cover your basic gear needs.

At low levels I would recommend rabbit hides and beehive chips to make money over crystals anyway. Fishing, especially moat carp, is another good option.

[Lunaryn]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

I think SE did set deflation guards on the economy - but it hasn't hit most of them yet. In general it's not worth your while trying to open coffers for gil, for example; you either open them for items or don't bother because farming items for AH is a better return. Deflation could change that, but when it does, new gil will enter the economy. Some quest turn-in items AH for more than the quest value (did you know silk is a quest item? It's never in my knowledge been worthwhile to do the quest compared to just selling the silk to crafters, but if there's another factor of 10 or so deflation, it would be) so those quests don't get done and don't introduce gil.

The fact that deflation-proof money making methods (beastmen, coffers, npc selling, cash quests etc.) introduce new gil into the economy make them an automatic boost to the gil supply whenever it becomes low enough to make those methods viable compared to farming items for sale. Which it hasn't yet.

I note that in a few cases it's starting to hit these (and would have hit more if not for the inflation-era nerfs on some of the more significant NPC sources of gil). Almost every item that's not particularly rare or particularly worthless has had someone post a comment on ffxiah noting its NPC price and reminding people to sell to NPC when the price drops below that. I randomly got an Absorb-VIT scroll on a Dark Spark run yesterday and after a quick check sold it to an NPC in Bastok for 1536 gil (AH going rate was 1k).

I think what has been lost in the anti-OP vitriol (when was the last time I saw a thread complaining about anything besides technical "FFXI won't run"-type issues that wasn't followed by a series of attacks on the OP's understanding of the game, even when the attackers' viewpoints didn't differ all that substantially from the OP's?) is the fact that the economy has undergone a very radical transformation, and even veteran players are still having some trouble sorting out where everything stands with the economy as a whole. Many of us have worked out how to get by, but there was something almost intuitive about how the economy (or enough of it for most concerns) once functioned that seems to have been lost. I can't imagine an inflation-era player returning to today's economy and regarding it with anything less than shock and confusion.

To try to be somewhat constructive, here are some 'survival tips' to try to cope with this situation:

1) Farming will get you started, but it's not the same game it once was. High volume items have dropped in price substantially, low volume items may be hard to sell on the AH at all. You will need to give hard thought to whether to list items in starting nations (lower demand, sometimes higher or lower prices) or Jeuno (AH fees have been reduced, but more common items are straddling the price line where the base fee of 50 gil eats much of the earnings. I am serious, I see some things go for 100 gil or less on Jeuno AH). You will also always want to consider the NPC selling price; in most cases it will be too low to compare to AH selling, but some of the higher-NPC-price items are much more profitably NPCed today than auctioned.

2) Many specific ways of getting gil took very hard hits at the beginning of the massive deflation of the economy, and while many of them are starting to recover, things are a lot less stable in many areas. You will need to consider market conditions carefully before investing too much time and effort into a particular area. I can't recommend taking up crafting for profit, yet, but if you already have a craft you may have some options. At this point I'd recommend crafting more for utility purposes; it's becoming a lot more necessary to obtain certain types of resources yourself, some of which may be crafted. Items which used to sell cheaply and plentifully now often run out of supply because they're no longer seen as worth the effort of farming/crafting and selling.

3) Because gil is simply not a ridiculously plentiful thing anymore, the relative stability in value terms is a lot lower for any given method of acquiring it. Given that, it's much more vital than it previously was to use all the information resources available to you to predict the likely income of any given gil-making activity. Sites like ffxiah.com and ffxiclopedia.com are invaluable in making sure you know what items or raw gil an activity is likely to yield, what the going price and sales rate (in Jeuno) for those items is, whether the NPC price is high enough to warrant NPCing results or whether they are valuable in quests, whether you can craft them into something else and whether they are more valuable as raw material or finished goods. You will need to throw away many assumptions about what is viable and effective, as much has and continues to change. In the inflation-era economy, you needed to pay attention to markets and choose your targets wisely to make good gil, but you could make decent gil just by putting in effort to most any activity that offers rewards. In this economy, you need to pay attention and choose wisely just to make decent gil.

[Balfree]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Whoa.

It amazes me.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

1) Farming will get you started, but it's not the same game it once was. High volume items have dropped in price substantially, low volume items may be hard to sell on the AH at all.

AFAIK, high volume items have always been subjected to pricing volatility. Low volume items, too, have always been hard to sell--"hard to sell" is actually a pretty good way to define what's a "low volume" item.

some of the higher-NPC-price items are much more profitably NPCed today than auctioned.

That, in a nutshell, is the deflation floor.

2) Many specific ways of getting gil took very hard hits at the beginning of the massive deflation of the economy, and while many of them are starting to recover, things are a lot less stable in many areas.

Which commonly farmed by lowbies items' relatively pricing dropped massively, other than crystals? One stack of beehive chips didn't buy much during inflation period, and still isn't buying much now--but if you sell enough of them your gil count will add up, then and now.

Honestly, aside from AH manipulations happening with some mid and high level items (Woodsman Ring, Enfeebling Torque on Ifrit, for example), the volatility of the market is about as same as always.

I try to buy stuff during early weekend when supplies go up and prices go down, and look for things to sell after weekend when supplies go down and prices go up. I did that last week, last month, the year before, as well as two years before--the basic fluctuation pattern hasn't changed much at all, and volatility and randomness has always been a part of the AH game.

You will need to consider market conditions carefully before investing too much time and effort into a particular area.

Sound advice for anyone, crafter or otherwise.

3) Because gil is simply not a ridiculously plentiful thing anymore, the relative stability in value terms is a lot lower for any given method of acquiring it.

If you look at it in absolute terms, sure, gil supply has gone down. If anything though, it makes farming easier, since a lot of items can now be sold to NPC for decent (relative) returns with less hassles, so people have more alternatives than just beehive chips and silk.

Deflation makes some of the newbie drops like some scrolls and insect wings actually worth the inventory space, too.

In the inflation-era economy, you needed to pay attention to markets and choose your targets wisely to make good gil, but you could make decent gil just by putting in effort to most any activity that offers rewards. In this economy, you need to pay attention and choose wisely just to make decent gil.

So, you need to pay attention and choose carefully during inflation periods, and you need to pay attention and choose carefully during deflation periods. How about we just shorten that to "Pay attention to market"?

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

The main difference in inflationary vs deflationary market?

Inflationary: buy from NPCs to make gil (e.g. buy lowbie gear, desynth it, and AH results)
Deflationary: sell to NPCs to make gil

[Vyuru]

Re: A Rant: Past Player In the Present Economy

Finally started to read this and got a few things to say....

Since crystals now sell for 1/5th their price, other items now sell for 1/5th thei-oh wait. No thats not what happened.

I was expecting a little logic in the economy after I came back. But this makes no sense at all.

Things are slightly more complicated than what they taught you in high school economics.

Obviously someone didn't take high school Econ, otherwise they'd know that not everything should deflate equally.

That's like... Basic common knowledge that they told you in Econ 200. Actually, that's something you should have learned in Pre Introductory Economics.

Second, you started off in Bastok, and you are farming wind crystals?! And you complain about the price?!

Even if I did start off in Bastok, it would be an easy matter to farm up for the +1 gear that I felt I needed, which frankly from lvl 5-20 isn't much, just two rings and perhaps a well chosen +1 weapon if I was felt that it would be worth it. HQ armor in general would be worthless at this stage of the game and you would be far wiser to save up gil for some of the Federation/Windurstian armor pieces.

And as far as HQ weapons go... I would say either get Brass Knuckles/Baghnakhs+1 if you really wanted a HQ weapon.... But myself I'd just use CP to buy the Legionnaire's Knuckles and either buy the Bastokan Knuckles since they'll be cheap as the unwanted HQ, or find someone with the crafting skill needed and hope for the Republic Knuckles. Your choice.

You however, aren't bothering to spend time mining, you aren't bothering to spend time doing quests, you aren't bothering spending time to exp/farm in another very lucrative area that is close by you, that is called being lazy. While the purpose of a rant is to let things out, people are not sympathetic when they hear that you aren't trying.

It's like someone crying about how they got shot in the foot only for the other people to find out that this person shot himself in the foot.

You remind me about someone I knew complain about the cost it took to level cooking, at level 5. I asked the fellow what he was making, his response, he was making honey. Now honey requires 4x beehive chips 1x wind crystal to make 4 honey, caps at lvl 12. A stack of beehive chips sold at 12k at that time, and honey hovered in the 3-4k range, not a smart move especially considering that he could be making orange juice for chump change.

Or another person you make me think of is that Drg who thought that activating healing breath with Stoneskin and Blink was the way to go.

Both of them fairly nice fellows, but both of them never put much thought into either their crafting, or soloing, and blamed someone/something else for the lack of results.

You also have not explored the option that if Bastok is so bad, you could travel to Windurst or Sand'Oria to farm/HELM in those areas. And yes, since I did it at level 5 no subjob no less, I fully expect any newb to be able to make those runs. Especially since maps of the areas are posted online now and more information about the zones is available now.

The economy is still as newbie friendly as it ever was, luxury HQ gear that makes no sense to buy however isn't.