How to stop the inflation

[aegina]

Re: How to stop the inflation

>.> i couldn't understand what you wrote, pantherball... it looked like just one long run-on sentence.

[Draco Dagon]

Re: How to stop the inflation

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.

Agreed. However, it would not be wise to think they are trying to get new servers installed and synchronized as they should be.

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.

Indeed. However, people must still be able to set the minimum price of any item they choose to auction also.

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...

That would require a mass-scale boycott on each server.

There is much focus on gil sellers that they are to be blamed and little on the buyers,
but I think the buyers are equally, if not more responsible.
Banning of the gil sellers accounts may have little effects for the companies that are selling,
but banning of the accounts from the players that are buyin should have a more intimidating effect.

Of course, banning those accounts would do little to the RMT companies, but it would do more in-game than anything, especially if SE managed to ban the right accounts at the right time, because I recall the maximum accumulation for a character's gil is 99,999,999, and thus if certain accounts managed to get banned-perhaps that much more would be destroyed.

Solid-jamz, again, you cannot assume how RMT will operate. You cite IGE as one such company but it is not the only player in the field. In fact, it may not even be the biggest player on the scene. An organized group is more efficient at what they do and has less problems with trying to float a financial documentation without it ever being publicly available (and thus jeopardizing their legality with authorities in their home countries) Even between RMT companies there is a trust factor involved, not unlike the ones you find in-game, when you have a situation where someone contacts a crafter and wishes to pay for the crafting involved. If the crafter up and stiffs the player it is much like one company that might stiff the other company, only in this case, real money exchanges hands, not just virtual currency.

You're assuming there that in any particular country it's illegal for such companies to make that kind of profit, which its not. It is only against the select-games terms of services which you cannot be prosecuted for if you do not follow.

While it might take a bit of effort, mob gil drops and NPC prices need to fluctuate. The longer a person is in a zone, the less gil drops for them, till it reaches 0, the less items should drop too probably as well. They need adequate measures in place to make sure that just zoning in and out doesn't reset it, that it is somehow time based.

That would in itself mess up many of the parties for the Limit Breaks and the likes thereof. I mean, how many times have people had to fight a lich until the Papyrus would drop? For me, even with a 6-party of 3-4 high-levels (all three, +60, one a RDM, one a BLM, and one a DRG) and 3 /thfs it took hours to get the Papyrus, I lost 7k in exp for it altogether.

[Sanim]

Re: How to stop the inflation

BUT the main way it works is through banks, which ffxi lack.

So ffxi needs a more creative, if not more basic way, most of which SE has implimented.

In one of the basic ways the core of what the US government does and it is not actually decreasing money supply(not a lot) but, decreasing the rate at which money transfers. To apply that to ffxi, is a little hard, since gil does move so fast and more people means it moves yet faster.

So then the problem is how to lower the popularity of trade, while at the same time, still making it fun and convient. Maybe some kind of creative sub system can be invented.

IMOO: The resent jump in prices wasn't because a system broken, but the wide spread abuse of another hack tool, (see pol for stealing problem). Nothing increases short term inflation faster then that.

You must be refering to MV = PY (where M is the quantity of money, V the "rate" of transfer, P the prices and Y the production -letters can change from country to country hehe-). You're right, both M and V affect inflation and as you said the only way to control both is by the action of BANK(s) (in US, the FED and in Europe, the European Bank). Vanadiel lacks both Banks and economic measures..

Lowering the transfers of money is near imposible if you want to keep the current trade system (player based system). So, imo, the only solution is to low the money entries and to increase the quantity of money that exits the market.

What would be very interesting is to have official numbers about the creation of GIL from gil drops/missions/NPC selling/etc..

PD: Excuse my english please

[kuu]

Re: How to stop the inflation

You must be refering to MV = PY (where M is the quantity of money, V the "rate" of transfer, P the prices and Y the production -letters can change from country to country hehe-). You're right, both M and V affect inflation and as you said the only way to control both is by the action of BANK(s) (in US, the FED and in Europe, the European Bank). Vanadiel lacks both Banks and economic measures..

Lowering the transfers of money is near imposible if you want to keep the current trade system (player based system). So, imo, the only solution is to low the money entries and to increase the quantity of money that exits the market.

What would be very interesting is to have official numbers about the creation of GIL from gil drops/missions/NPC selling/etc..

PD: Excuse my english please

Well...yes that would be a forumla, but it's a very shorten version of a much larger forumla, which included GDP, (in the M part).

The problem with justp playing with money supply is a sure way to get you a straight road to chaos, in that it will directly effect GDP, as well as speed tranfers (V).

To simplfy economic talk which seems to be voodoo to most people, is that quoted MV=Y is just a giantantic supply vs demand chart basically again, which is so interelated, is why it's so easy to screwed it up worse rather better.

Money supply stiffening is not what ffxi needs. It's already done in moderation by SE, and a good big dose of it is going into OD land.

Lowering transfer rates is not impossible, it's a matter of creativity as I mentioned, you simply try to shift consumer attention to something else.

[Sanim]

Re: How to stop the inflation

Lowering transfer rates is not impossible, it's a matter of creativity as I mentioned, you simply try to shift consumer attention to something else.

If they could do that it would be impressive. But I don't think they'll be able to.. This game is too dependant on the player side and in trading items (low drop rates, difficult encounters to get X item, etc). I'm not really sure about the role of the money transfer rate in inflation so I wont talk anymore about it

One question that remains unanswered (or at least I haven't read a good answer) is how much GIL is created by the NPC side. Is Vanadiel living the consequences of some trade bugs (rusty caps)? Or is this the normal quantity of GIL? Because beeing able to pay 20M+ for an item is quite sick..

PD: Kuu: It's nice to have a little chat about economics hehe What have you studied? I'm studying Economics (2nd year).

[kuu]

Re: How to stop the inflation

If they could do that it would be impressive. But I don't think they'll be able to.. This game is too dependant on the player side and in trading items (low drop rates, difficult encounters to get X item, etc). I'm not really sure about the role of the money transfer rate in inflation so I wont talk anymore about it

One question that remains unanswered (or at least I haven't read a good answer) is how much GIL is created by the NPC side. Is Vanadiel living the consequences of some trade bugs (rusty caps)? Or is this the normal quantity of GIL? Because beeing able to pay 20M+ for an item is quite sick..

PD: Kuu: It's nice to have a little chat about economics hehe What have you studied? I'm studying Economics (2nd year).

Getting a bit off topic, but yes I am(was?) an economics major..so I do tend to go into eco talk if it comes up.

As for numbers... I have some personal "IMO" numbers in my head to play with. There are only so many ways NPCs give out gil and yes the (rusty cap) thing did screw around with stuff.

I've made my points on those in other threads so some members wouldn't really appreciate me going into yet again.

But inflation in itself can not be attributed to money supply, nor can it be solved that way. As I touched on, GDP is a factor, and in many cases, the people always benefit from a raising GDP...the problem is like any graph, if you hit another part, GDP will go down as well, so like playing with numbers you try to figure out how to make only inflation lower and not GDP(as much) or other things that hurt.

Now the question you have is... Is there problems from before...answer is yes and no...we have had many problems that led to inflation, but just as many non-problems that raise inflation.

The old saying is, the more you tamper with it, the worse it screws up...which in this case is right. The best type of economy(in 101 theory) is a non changing one, the problem with that is, if you apply it to ffxi, is that people want updates! Something as simple as a new craft formula to something drastic like a food change, will cause problems.

If it feels like fighting with a live beast, it is, every time you move, it moves. Unless we got a heck of a lot of hindsight, we all make mistakes that make inflation worse( BCNMing the VP, lizzy, etc didn't make things better)

[Aeni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

IMOO: The resent jump in prices wasn't because a system broken, but the wide spread abuse of another hack tool, (see pol for stealing problem). Nothing increases short term inflation faster then that.

That hack tool isn't responsible for the rise in inflation. If you paid any attention at all, then you'd realize that gil buying is the major problem (Of course, where do these players buy gil from? NPCs in-game? I think not ...)

http://www.wgseller.com/index.php?cPath=24
http://www.itemgarden.com/index.jsp
http://www.belrion.com/en/sell.htm
http://www.guy4game.com/

This is just a fraction of the sites listed on Google Ad found on most FFXI community sites.

Even a Price Advantage type of tool on the web is available for "gil shoppers."

http://www.gamepricewatcher.com/ffxi

$3 per million gil is what is killing the economy. And there is no end in sight. Just HOW MUCH GIL have been hoarded over the years, I do not know. But this influx of gil is just nothing short of a death rattle in the throat of the economy. If it continues at this rate (IGE has yet to drop their prices) I do not know who would be left that wouldn't have purchased gil in order to stay afloat in this pre-WW2 Germany inflation situation ...

[Omni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

i was a econ major in college too.
im a systems administrator now.

go go econ major!

sorry, stupid off topic post.

anyhow, given all of the reasons why the economy the way it is.
it boils down to SE taking the initiative. the economy wont correct itself b/c there are no means for it to do so on its own. you can't count on the will of the people, since its a game with no real consequences, self control goes out the window.

SE needs to step up and do something drastic. waving the 'if you violate the eula you will get banned' threat doesnt work. they need to take an invasive step into correcting this, which so far, they have been pretty much against tampering with the natural progression of their game in this respect. you can blame the gil sellers or the gil buyers or the hackers, but what it comes down to is SE not saving the players from themselves.

[kuu]

Re: How to stop the inflation

i was a econ major in college too.
im a systems administrator now.

go go econ major!

sorry, stupid off topic post.

anyhow, given all of the reasons why the economy the way it is.
it boils down to SE taking the initiative. the economy wont correct itself b/c there are no means for it to do so on its own. you can't count on the will of the people, since its a game with no real consequences, self control goes out the window.

SE needs to step up and do something drastic. waving the 'if you violate the eula you will get banned' threat doesnt work. they need to take an invasive step into correcting this, which so far, they have been pretty much against tampering with the natural progression of their game in this respect. you can blame the gil sellers or the gil buyers or the hackers, but what it comes down to is SE not saving the players from themselves.

Gee... name a movie, and you got that senerio going on... Kicking in a reboot is about the worse PR you're going to get. Being dracoian is a sure way to screw up just as fast. SE gives light touches, but light touches tend to work best in the long run even if the short run is full of shit...

Of course the other side of that is multiply light touches do crap if some of them are good and some of them are bad.

[Omni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

light touches?

as you said before, its like applying a bandaid to a punctured rib. it doesnt work when the hole is that big and you have little to no other corrective measures to help you along. now if you apply some sutures or maybe an even larger bandaid, in addition to having your blood clot, immune system fight infection, resting, taking medicine, it all works together and heals nicely.

what we have here is a hole in the chest and SE is giving us multiple finger sized bandaids once every so often and hoping things will get better. it isnt going to happen.

these light touches become overwhelmed by the very thing they are trying to correct.

as far as PR goes, im not sure what is worse. having a game that scares off new, potential subscribers AND irritates its loyal fan base b/c of the insane situation the economy is in or having a game where the developer meddles with its natural development.

[kuu]

Re: How to stop the inflation

light touches?

as you said before, its like applying a bandaid to a punctured rib. it doesnt work when the hole is that big and you have little to no other corrective measures to help you along. now if you apply some sutures or maybe an even larger bandaid, in addition to having your blood clot, immune system fight infection, resting, taking medicine, it all works together and heals nicely.

what we have here is a hole in the chest and SE is giving us multiple finger sized bandaids once every so often and hoping things will get better. it isnt going to happen.

these light touches become overwhelmed by the very thing they are trying to correct.

as far as PR goes, im not sure what is worse. having a game that scares off new, potential subscribers AND irritates its loyal fan base b/c of the insane situation the economy is in or having a game where the developer meddles with its natural development.

Very true, but you are assuming SE's remedies are all short term (bandaids), which IMO are not. While I do not agree with some of SE's moves, most of them are very sound "light touches" (some more then others) that do what they are intended to do.

One reason tackling money transfer isn't a bad idea IMO

[Timian]

Re: How to stop the inflation

They could just put a cap on the amount of gil it was possible to exchange at once.

If it was impossible to complete a transaction exceeding a set sum, then the prices would have to drop. The ridiculously priced items of today would probably sell for the "capped amount", while lesser items would have to drop accodingly, to be competitive on the market. Such, the value of gil would increase again.

Along with that, they should raise the prices on chocobos/airships/boats/dynamis hourglasses/etc/etc/etc (basically all npc trasactions) simply to remove gil from the servers.

A country only produces a set amount of valuta, to keep it's value up.

One problem FFXI has now, is that there's simply too much gil on the servers,

and upping the prices on these kinds of things are one way to get rid of some of it, since the gil you pay the npcs just disappear, and is not just moved.

[Omni]

Re: How to stop the inflation

when and at what limit do they stop raising prices on chocobos, airships etc?
what is acceptable? if you do that, you'll be making gil more valuable i suppose but when the amount of gil available lowers and people have less money in their pockets. then you lower the prices again, and gil rises again. then do you raise prices again? it'll never end.

capping prices doesnt really solve anything. then you would have kote, leaping boots, peacock charm, etc etc all at the maximum price. or, you would have people bazaaring and having comments like... /tell for payments. kote= (maximum price x2).

[Timian]

Re: How to stop the inflation

yes, they would be at maximum price, but at least they wouldn't be rising.
Bazaaring items would obviously be one way to circumvent this,
but it is slower, and eventually as everything else went down in price, the bazaar owners wouldn't need as much gil themselves, and would be more persuadable to put their stuff on the AH for "max price" rather then sit with a bazaar for hours upon hours.
Another thing is the fact that they could very well cap the bazaars too (or rather lower it, from 99999999, to something feasable).

Also, I wouldn't mind a hypothetical max price going to 50 mill, if that was the case.
I'm not talking about items like the 40 mill Peacock Charm which is still affordable (due to the sheer amount of gil on the server), but last time I checked, the Kraken Club had gone from 60 to 240 mill, on Fairy. This kind of escalation will keep going, as long as SE doesn't cap the price an item can be sold for.

Also, when I suggested they raise the prices on npc transactions, I didn't mean it as a steady increase. Rather just update all the npc prices to fit the recent inflation.
Back when players ran around with 500k in their pockets, 200 gil seemed reasonable for an airship ticket. Now we carry around 300 mill, and quite honestly, raising the airship fee to 3000 per ticket would be just as affordable, in comparison.

If you look at real-life devaluation of currency, you will know that the most effecient way to counter it is to dispose of it, so that it's market value rises.

FFXI was flawed from infancy, with repeatable quests, and beastmen dropping gil, since there never was a limit to how much gil was on a server at any given time.
Since the supply of currency is infinite, the only way to stop it from losing value is to make the expense of it equal (or close to it) to the creation of it.

[kuu]

Re: How to stop the inflation

yes, they would be at maximum price, but at least they wouldn't be rising.
Bazaaring items would obviously be one way to circumvent this,
but it is slower, and eventually as everything else went down in price, the bazaar owners wouldn't need as much gil themselves, and would be more persuadable to put their stuff on the AH for "max price" rather then sit with a bazaar for hours upon hours.
Another thing is the fact that they could very well cap the bazaars too (or rather lower it, from 99999999, to something feasable).

Also, I wouldn't mind a hypothetical max price going to 50 mill, if that was the case.
I'm not talking about items like the 40 mill Peacock Charm which is still affordable (due to the sheer amount of gil on the server), but last time I checked, the Kraken Club had gone from 60 to 240 mill, on Fairy. This kind of escalation will keep going, as long as SE doesn't cap the price an item can be sold for.

Also, when I suggested they raise the prices on npc transactions, I didn't mean it as a steady increase. Rather just update all the npc prices to fit the recent inflation.
Back when players ran around with 500k in their pockets, 200 gil seemed reasonable for an airship ticket. Now we carry around 300 mill, and quite honestly, raising the airship fee to 3000 per ticket would be just as affordable, in comparison.

If you look at real-life devaluation of currency, you will know that the most effecient way to counter it is to dispose of it, so that it's market value rises.

FFXI was flawed from infancy, with repeatable quests, and beastmen dropping gil, since there never was a limit to how much gil was on a server at any given time.
Since the supply of currency is infinite, the only way to stop it from losing value is to make the expense of it equal (or close to it) to the creation of it.

That sounds...hmmm how do you call it...not exactily communism...though even that theory is very broad... maybe socialist ideal...but not quite

But in a word, "Wrong". No economy that uses wide range price capping has ever suceeded...eventually it all shall we say goes to heck.

Eco and business followers usally put it in the classic "naive policy" catagory, so you can look up why it's bad if you so choose.

Now the idea itself, is not completely unused, and ffxi also have that. It's call "cheap government sanctioned alternative" or "poor man's clothing", or what is now knowns in US as Social Security. (Gee how many SS reform issues are we debating in USA today??")

FFxi has a version of social security, in many subtle ways, like the NPC armor(chainmail will never float much pass 20k while bastok survives), To cheap Craft formulas. The "not quite the best, but useable" well-fare system.

Best example: Light staff vs healing staff.

Now if you think the broad type, "cap everything" senerio would be even better...well heh... there are plenty of alternatives that..shall we say, show what it's like.