Economics, FFXI, Gil Sellers and YouFollow

This was a great post. In fact, it may be one of the best posts I've read in a long time. These "rules" of S&D and turn certainly run the the game. The Japanese understand these rules very well - I believe Economics is a High School course for them.

As for stopping gil sellers - I don't think it possible to stop either Supply or Demand for this item, there are many options you could try that theoretically would bring the price down.

On the supply side, one, creating a new "company" that breaks the current price fix. An example would be players who band together and camp these items in the same fashion. This company would have to spend enormous resources to accomplish this though. And this company of players might have a difficult time not wanting to make more profit by going along with the price fix.

Two, kill the players - prevent the supply. This would also break the current price fix by killing the gilsellers, and allow players to get the items.

On the demand side. Either stop buying gil online, or stop buying sniper and archer rings. Both of these are also not realistic.

Don't like the 500K price tag? Your mind plays by economic rules on this as well. Is it worth the amount of time required for you to make 500K to buy these rings? If it takes you two weeks to make 500K, then pretend you are actually using that time to purchase the ring. Pretend you are a crafter, you can now actually make sniper rings, but this process takes you two weeks of hard work to produce one ring. Is this amount of time worth it?

On the other hand, lets say you can produce gil much faster. It only takes you a day to make 500K. IMO, A sniper ring is very easy to buy.

In these examples, you are playing by a supply production curve. I believe the two axis are time and quantity.

Let's look at one last example:

How long it takes you to farm 500K
vs.
The amount of time it would take you and some friends to get a drop off of stroper.

Which of these can you calculate to be quicker? IMO, camping stoper and competeing with the gilsellers is a faster way to get it. Then I would shout in Jeuno for a leather smither 90+ and ask him/her to make my sniper for a price. --You've just went around the whole system by producing the item your self.

But, I don't think many people do this, because 500K is a price some people will still pay. If people REALLY thought this price was too high, demand would fall, and so would the price.

Anyway - Really great post! Rate-ups!

Trolls - you are pathetic! Get an education! You are nothing but an example of a mob of people. Too stupid to understand and following everyone else. Damn sheep. And too afraid to voice your opinion - why? Because you KNOW you're stupid! Really irritates me.

BTW there's another problem with gil sellers. Archer's Knifes are a great example. It used to be (on Fairy) that archer's knives were 17K, steady. It's a garenteed drop, and a one hour spawn, so most people would just go get it themselves, and it really was no big deal. Well now there's gil sellers camping it 24/7 in groups. They use a lot of "underhanded" tactics too. For example, if you happen to beat them to the claim (which is hard when they outnumber you 6-to-1) they will spam cure you until you lose agro, and then run around with the mob chasing them until you lose your claim. They will also train mobs on you. For whatever reason, the GMs refuse to actaully do anything to the gil sellers, even if they get you killed.

Now, you would think that with this group pumping out 24 archer's knives a day, the supply could only be building up adn the price would soon drop to nothing. Problem, these guys are the only people farming these for profit (since they will kill anyone who tries to compete with them), so they can charge any price they want. And it's really not even worth trying to compete with them. Let's say that you can convince five of your friends to go out with you to camp it so you have a fighting chance of actaully getting the claim. Well you still can only do it for a few hours, not 24/7.

But you say if they really aren't worht that much money, then peopel won't pay for it. Except that there's this small problem, if you're a ranger and you don't have an archer's dagger, you can't hit. This wasn't a problem before b/c it was so easy for you to go out and get the dagger yourself. But you can't relaly do that anymore, so in order to still be effective in this game, you have to pay whatever ridiculous inflated price they're charging.

There's enough gil farmers now that you can probably replace the job/item in my example with different particulars for almost any job.

This is one good thread. It simply doesn't deserve to die so soon ; ;

~shameless bump~

EDIT : Weird server troubles which apparently didn't affect my posting, caused me to triple post...

Edited, Thu Aug 25 03:58:39 2005 by Hotcakes

Alright, here is the one point that kills this argument: S-E does not need to farm and camp NMs for gil. They can literally just create more gil if they were to sell it.

Good grief an OPEC for the AH would be nice, if for no other item than crystals. Since crystals are the key engine to crafting, there really ought to be a set price that everyone can agree on to help balance the rediculous inflation, as it's the basic and most necessary supply of them all.

Great read by the way. I wish more people would take an active role in the community and actually think about what they're doing rather than mindlessly undercutting/inflating.

Which reminds me, I do undercut regularly to get faster sales, but it's usually by such a meager ammount that even if I get caught on it, I don't care, and it's not going to have a domino effect. The only times it ever happens is if I a lot (7+) stacks of the same item to sell. People tend to catch on and suspect undercutting when the same person's name keeps popping up, especially if it's consecutive sales. But as you said, the prices always recover, usually within no more than 2 days.

Buying Gil isn't really "Adding" anything to the economy money-wise. This isn't like counterfeiting, which i swhat I think you're talking about. What's going on is they're re-distributing wealth. Since people who buy Gil know that they can simply buy more they're less likely to fight inflation and in some cases, will cause it to make more money.

By "Pulling" money out of the eonomy you force people to rely on NPC's to make money so basically you're doing nothing at all. Gilsellers will farm and sell to NPC's and recover the lost money.

Honestly we're the only ones that can and should fix the economy problems. Urge friends to not buy Gil and if you can, Alliance-camp mobs. Let's see 6 bots vs. 18 players!

When we are talking about the economy in FFXI then we are talking about Gil.

But other then in a regular economy there isn't a fix amout of currency in the world of Vanadiel. The amount of Gil on a server continues rising day by day.

Where does all the gil come from ?
From other players ? From Gil sellers ?

No! ALL the millions of gil come only from NPCs.

Started with 50 Gil for your Adventurer's Coupon you forced the NPC around in Vanadiel to print brand new Gil for you to spread it around to others in the world.

You get Gil for killing beastman, completing quests and missions or trade useless items to NPC vendors. This new money is added to the player part of the market.

On the other hand you have to pay AH fees, rent Chocobos and buy things you need from NPC vendors. This money is taken out of the player part of the market.

As a player you have a clear defined amout of gil. You can allway see this amount when you check your inventory.

As a NPC you have an unlimited amount of gil. NPC never stop to buy off your rabit hides, and never tell you they can't pay for your done quest. And a beastman never drop 0 gil when you kill him because he is broke.

Because of this NPC part of the market the whole economy slides into inflation.

Gilseller just do the farming work for people who don't want to farm for themself and pay real money to the gilsellers instead. They are not the reason why all things getting more and more expensive.

Sure thing, there are some players who monopolize items and rise the prises. But this are only some spezial items you can find this in the real world too. SE made most of this items a rare/ex drop meanwhile to solve this problem.

I would like to see SE change the drop system for rare item drops. Instead of making the items rare/ex they should record which item a player allready got as a drop. And then make sure that you can't get those items again as a drop. Next time it drops you will not be able to lot on it. You still can sell/buy this item but only get it once as a drop. This would make it possible for all players to kill the NM for the drop and stop player from monopolizing.

But this has nothing to do with the inflation going on. But inflation is only a problem if you hold a huge amount of gil. Player who just started are hurted a little because the quest rewards are still the same.

I don't think there is a easy way to fix the infation problem in the economy. But the market is still working fine for me.