[Malacite]

I wonder if there will be a Merchant class similar to Ragnarok Online?

[Kailea]

Originally Posted by Pwnagraphic

Whatever it is, I hope they fix the problem. Maybe instead of the player deciding how much it is, you can set the item up for sale and the computer sets the price for you.

The main problem is player greed, topped off with supply and demand..... you cant "fix" that ;p

[Pwnagraphic]

If the computer sets the price for you and you have no say in it, then that does fix it.

[Armando]

If the computer sets the price for you and you have no say in it, then that does fix it.

Until you start disagreeing with the game's prices.

People will whine no matter what system's in place.

[Pwnagraphic]

That's true, but will the problem not be fixed? lol

[Malacite]

Voodoo Economics.

[jenova_9]

Originally Posted by Armando

Until you start disagreeing with the game's prices.

People will whine no matter what system's in place.

They can whine all they want in their crib. it's for their own good.


at least it would maintain a more balanced economy that can't be manipulated. the only people who whine are those who just enjoy ruining things for others.

That's why prices set by NPC shops in the entire history of RPGs have always worked better than player driven economies (and no its not because they were single player.) It's much better than leaving pricing in the hands of people, we already seen enough examples of what can happen.


If the devs can set concrete fair prices for FF1-10 and 12, they can do the same for XIV, regardless of genre. I'd trust them more than players trying to get rich.

Players will still make good money, spend a fair amount for what they want, and the good times will roll on.
and if there are any price adjustments needed to be made, enough suggestions could just have SE tweak the prices to make things better.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by Cometgreen

Could someone explain why a player driven economy leads to "unfair" prices and "exploitation"?

Items consistently selling for 200k on the AH then jumping to 1.1 mil within a week of the price of gil dropping from $38/million gil down to $13 springs to mind.

[cidbahamut]

Originally Posted by Aksannyi

I just expect overpriced shout trades and mega spam in the public chat channels.

Oh yuck.

That is exactly what will happen too unless there's some alternative provided.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I didn't see a utopian economy mentioned either where gil is easy to make and everything is fair, either.

What I have seen is that moving from FFXI to FFXIV is going to require some serious behavior modification for players weened on FFXI. A lot of the decisions made aren't groundbreaking new ones, just lessons learned from FFXI and notes taken on other MMORPGs.

With weapons being destructable and there being no AH, this is going to mean people are going to have to barter and trade in a friendly fashion, not to mention emphasize need before greed in parties. FFXI players don't really have this concept. There's no need, just greed. Practically an eBay mentality. Here's mah copy FFVII, buy it for $200! Pay no attention to that $9.95 downloadable version on PSN!!!

With the economic outlook of the game being very different, I'm wondering what other behaviors FFXIV might attempt to change.

[Pwnagraphic]

We can only assume that it will be like that since SE decides to give us a fraction of info at a time.

[Kafeen]

Originally Posted by jenova_9

*Like say someone sells a rare weapon to a NPC weapon shop.

The shop list would now have that rare weapon for sale at the same price the NPC bought it for
(players don't set the price, the NPCs do. Just like in the classic FFs. that way greedy people can't make too much and people won't receive too little for their items/gear.)

But if shops sell an item for the same as what they buy it then they're going to have to sell for quite a bit. If they sell for quite a bit then people are going to over camp the mobs that drop them in order to make as much money as possible since they have a guaranteed income from it rather than needing to rely on other players wanting to buy that item.

Originally Posted by Icemage

I've made mention that one of the major failings of the FFXI economy was the permanence of items, and this supports that view I think.

That was one of the things I liked about FFXI's AH. I know people are probably sick of WoW comparisons by now but on the you don't have items permanently appearing on the AH. That means you have no history of previous sales to go by. While its true that people can rig those figures with multiple characters the majority of the time they do give a fair indication of the price of an item and when they don't its usually pretty obvious what's been going on. Also if you can't check how much an item has sold for in the past many players won't know how much to ask for when selling an item.

[Takelli]

Originally Posted by Kafeen

But if shops sell an item for the same as what they buy it then they're going to have to sell for quite a bit. If they sell for quite a bit then people are going to over camp the mobs that drop them in order to make as much money as possible since they have a guaranteed income from it rather than needing to rely on other players wanting to buy that item.

easy fix... The more of the item in the shop, the less the shop buys it for. Say theres 15 in the shop, and the normal buy price is... 18k. People sell 5 more to the shop making is 20 of them, and the normal buy price of the item drops down to 10k.

And, it will be teh same for the shop selling the item. at 15, it will sell for 20k, but when it s at 20, it drops down to 15k for the item. Its not too hard to fix.

---------- Post added at 08:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:27 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

With the economic outlook of the game being very different, I'm wondering what other behaviors FFXIV might attempt to change.

Yea. The peronalities of the people playing the game now kinda suck. The game was first based around team work. It did work for quite some time, but then it just went down the hole and everyoen is greedy. Being able to afford equipment from the Ah wasn't that bad, as people didn't really mind if you had "gimp" gear at first, now its like you must have this gear, or you wont get in out end game ls, and in order to get this gear, you need to buy the gear we are selling on the AH for an insane amount.

[Armando]

at least it would maintain a more balanced economy that can't be manipulated.

I think you mistake "inability to be manipulated" for balance. A player-run economy has pros and cons, but you only see cons and thus think there's nothing to lose in replacing the system. Just because players can't make things worse it doesn't mean the arbitrarily decided prices are fair. A balanced economy isn't necessarily one where you're wealthy with little work, either. That sounds a lot like our real world, fucked up economy. My idea of a balanced economy is one where you're rewarded in direct proportion to the quality and value of your work. Of course, this is an MMO so "quality" doesn't really come into play, so profit should be roughly proportional to the investment required (time and money) and risk (mining Ifrit's Cauldron should be inherently more profitable than mining a lower level zone that's just as far away.)

Most of all I don't understand where all this crying foul is coming from. I don't feel like I'm being mugged every time I do an AH transaction. I barely have to work to make gil. Yes, I don't have any e-peen items but e-peen items have hideous improvement-cost ratios. Anyone that wants to blow 1 mill on 5 Attack can be my guest. Yes, the system will bite you in the ass every once in a while but that's inevitable. Arbitrary prices can bite me in the ass too and that doesn't mean it's "for my own good" any more that it's for my own good to have to waste 3+ hours on an O-Hat run because there's an arbitrary 15 minute timer between each Hakutaku pop.

Moreover if you're going to take the posture that you can "simply" fix any potential issues by having prices scale according to how much has been sold to the NPC, you might as well say "fuck it" and have a player-run economy. You're less likely to see stupid prices when they're derived from real supply and demand than some arbitrary formula applied to an NPC in an attempt to mimic supply and demand. If there's one thing I don't trust Square with, is their willingness or ability to assign an acceptable amount of worth to an item. After all, it's in their best interest to keep me grinding as much as possible.

tl;dr if you think the system you're proposing is strictly superior or won't have its own set of significant problems you're deluded.

[Cyprius]

Originally Posted by Malacite

I wonder if there will be a Merchant class similar to Ragnarok Online?

That would be so awesome. I loved RO.