Deflation is frustrating, but deflation alone will not kill FFXI. Deflation could however stop some people from doing events such as Limbus and Dynamis. I believe the prices of these events were orininally intended to be "gil sinks" to rememdy yesterday's inflation.

If you think about it, Deflation could actually save the game. Not Deflation alone, but Deflation and a campaign to bring newbies back to the game could save FFXI.

I still believe the biggest problem facing FFXI today is not Deflation, but the waning population in the starting cities. This "starting city" population decrease is mostly to blame on the emmence popularity of the ToAU expansion. Many players have set Whitegate as their homepoint and then rarely leave.

People will always be leaving this game due to RL intrests, finacial reasons or the feeling that they have finished FFXI. To combat this we need a healthy influx of new players to match or exceed the number of people who leave the game. Unfortunately, the small number of players who are just starting out on this game makes accomplishing the simple tasks of 2004, much more difficult. When was the last time you saw anyone shouting "Eco Warrior @12, 6 spaces available"? Do you remember when finding a decent camp in the dunes was difficult? Now this once popular level spot is often empty.

What SE needs to do, while armor and weapons are cheap and plentiful, is to increase the demand on these items by getting more people playing FFXI. The increased demand will drive prices (values) higher and stop Deflation. The smartest way for SE to gain new members is to make the game free for 30 days. Perhaps make FFXI, Zilhart and CoP free to download with a 30 day pass. Subscribers would still need to buy the latest expansion, but they won't need it for more than 30 days anyway.

Maybe SE is planning something like this already. Had they tried this a year ago, newbies would have been very frustrated with the high prices at the auction house. The stage is set for a very nice population explosion of newbies.

Eventually all the elite players have everything they want and move on to new games.

Only newbies can save FFXI.

Of the 3900 Accounts that were banned/suspended (3400 + 500), more than half of them are botters.

While everyone has a gripe with RMT, isn't anyone taking a more serious view on the issue of bots?

IMO, botting is, in certain ways, worse than RMT.

RMT is a very broad and general term. In any case, RMT depends on 2 willing Parties for a transaction, be it buying/selling of Customized or Existing Accounts, PLing, Gils, Rare/Ex Items. It is still an 'honest' transaction where 2 Parties come to a common business agreement.

Botting on the other hand, places ALL honest players in an unfair and disadvantaged position. Unlike human players, bots can go on for 24/7. This is plain cheating, no 2 ways about it.

If based on the assumption that we play an average of 4 to 6 hours everyday, whatever a human player can accomplish via repetative actions such as Synthesis, Fishing etc... bots will easily out-perform a human player by 4 to 6 times.

Remove the bots. This will bring about a chain-reaction which will result in Gils harder to farm for the Sellers. In-turn, prices of Gils will go up to the point where it is unfeasible for players to regularly purchase Gils. RMT will definitely go into further decline.

There is nothing much we can about buying/selling of Customized/Existing Accounts, paying RL cash for the PLing of a User's Character to 75 or paying money to tag along with RMT Groups when they go on Raids for the rights to lot on Rare/Ex items though.

I see a lot of people complaining here about the dropping prices. So, why is this so bad? Ok, so your former favorite money-making techniques are looking kinda sad because they dropped in price. However, consider that the item you want to buy has also dropped in price. If it took you 100 kills to buy that item before, chances are, it takes 100 kills to get it today. Even better, however, is the fact that stationary rewards are becoming more valuable. This is the perfect time to do those quests/missions that you wanted. I actually firmly believe that this is a good thing, because I'm introducing 5 new characters into the game, and they actually stand a chance. Try to imagine if you will what it was like for new players to get a foothold in our economy a year ago. This game is not dying, that's just a rumor. As a matter of fact, enrollment has been steadily increasing.

Believe me, it's hard to even make gil off HQ's now. I've had 2 Kingdom Horns on ah for almost a month w/no sale...and guess why? The last 5 or 6 asshats (yes I'm looking at you idiots who sold on Ramuh -.-)sold them for 10k...with a previous steady ah history of 80k. That's not even undercutting...it's straight up symptoms of down syndrome.

My Sand'orian Horns (the NQ version) sold for 17k....see a problem with that? lol

Overall bannings of course unbalance gil for a while, but it always stablizes...even if it's lower. What's the difference of beehive chips selling for 4k a stack or 40k if Hauby is down to 200k? >.>

I have been having the same problem.. I wish you could just buy the key item and thats all, not every run.

for one, the monthly due's from 3400 accounts would add up to a loss of around 500k/yr for SE, why would they do that?

as for the game:
1. the economy will NEVER recover....it will stabilize, but it will never be the economy it once was. imho, i actually miss the RMT, they turned the economy into a bull market, prices were always on the up and up. sure that means things are more expensive, but it was much easier to make money. now we have a bear market with sever deflation, everyone is slashing prices...i feel very sorry for the crafters, me being one myself, there have been some good write-ups about it and while there are opportunities to make money, they are no where near as plentiful as they used to be, you almost HAVE to HQ to make a buck.

2. the game is on it's way out, sure there will be some hardcore fans that stay around, but it's served it's purpose. when looking at other popular online games, ie. Everquest, Quake 3...they had runs of about 5-7 years...then most people moved on to something else. i mean i still log onto a Q3 server every now and then, there are still some who play. i think eventually SE will have to start removing servers and herd everyone onto just a few, which should keep things around for a while longer.

Edited, Apr 25th 2007 1:23pm by Aerias