I must say, FFXI is borked.

[Fiye]

I mean, FFXI is FUBARed, Borked, f'ed up beond all beleif at this moment. It's not because of the game, but rather the community. Mainly, its the way of obtaining gil.

As we all know, gil is a source of money in FFXI, but there's a problem of how it started. You see, back when it first began, everyone had a mere 60 gil to buy equipment with. So, they were forced to level on shitty weapons until they could do more quests and earn money. Once the market got on its feet and running, people began getting more gil, and with more gil, prices inflate and the overall worth of gil becomes less valuble.

I mean, when the game started, gil was worth alot. Throwing a mere thousand gil probabily sent people flying out of their chairs. Of course, time goes on and everything becomes bigger.

Now we have clots of people who have millions, maybe even billions of people. Much like celebrities without the status. They sell their money on IGE or other gil selling sites which causes money to spread around like butter. Which means there's amounts going to various people, with alot left behind without it. So they begin soaking up the money in exchange for the items, and then desposit the butter into for belly for the same price. While the economy becomes fatter.

Of course, this is a serious problem. When you get fatter, more problems occur. You get at risk for heart attacks, cancer, or other things. Right now, FFXI is getting hit by cancer, and may die of a heart attack if it can do something about the gil circling around.

So really, the game design with money was bad from the start. FFXI, to me, is going to die of a heart attack soon, since many people will quit due to over priced products.

Although, other MMORPGs are going through some tough times. Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside, both good games but lacked in proper developement, are going to die within 2006. Especially with the famed release of Huxley, I couldn't be more pleased to move on.

Although, I'll admit my FFXI account has been dormant, and the pricing surge had halted my desire to go back. Oh well, I guess I'll sit on Maple Story and Gaia Online for a few months before turning my face to Tabula Rasa, Huxley, and even Dark Fall Online.

P.S. If you ever crack open a text book on world history, you will find out that China's first try at paper money failed horribley, Since it was 1/10,000 times it value.

Butter kills, butter kills.

[Keavy]

Oh, God! The Alla forums have followed me!

*Cranks up the Slayer*

Damnit, that only works on hippies!

[Kailea]

man....every MMO is like this, FFXI has just joined the others, and as long as there are dedicated players, the game will never die (Ultima Online)

[Losfuin]

Forget online economies. The very basis of unregulated capitalism is set up to fail (Stockmarket crash pre-ww2, anyone?), and as such, any relatively free-market economy without a large set of regulations and checks will, eventually, collapse. Even then, there's always the possibility that the wrong set of checks are there, or that the right ones aren't being carried out properly.

I guess buying gil is akin to a corrupt business deal, or something similar. Regulations and laws say it shouldn't happen, but it does, and the effect on the economy can be pretty huge.

[Fiye]

Forget online economies. The very basis of unregulated capitalism is set up to fail (Stockmarket crash pre-ww2, anyone?), and as such, any relatively free-market economy without a large set of regulations and checks will, eventually, collapse. Even then, there's always the possibility that the wrong set of checks are there, or that the right ones aren't being carried out properly.

I guess buying gil is akin to a corrupt business deal, or something similar. Regulations and laws say it shouldn't happen, but it does, and the effect on the economy can be pretty huge.

That is true, but i can attribute this to one other problem.

There's a very small exit hole for the game's gil. The exit scource is considered to be NPC shops. Since you spend gold and it goes back into the system, never to be found again. Without that scource of releif, you can expect the gil to continue to circulate and grow in huge amounts.

I saw this with Anarchy Online, but it was not as much of a problem. It took about two years for the price of Fixer's nano grid armor MKI to grow from 17 million to 64 million. (A time span of one year.)

So, I hope the devs can somehow introduce better NPC markets with the release of the new expansion. However, for the high level crafters, just thank god one crafter can't do everything. SE made the right choice on that.

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

Forget online economies. The very basis of unregulated capitalism is set up to fail (Stockmarket crash pre-ww2, anyone?), and as such, any relatively free-market economy without a large set of regulations and checks will, eventually, collapse. Even then, there's always the possibility that the wrong set of checks are there, or that the right ones aren't being carried out properly.

I guess buying gil is akin to a corrupt business deal, or something similar. Regulations and laws say it shouldn't happen, but it does, and the effect on the economy can be pretty huge.

I prefer to think that a true free market economy would preform well with the young and hungry upstarts bringing down the bloated dinosaurs every time. But we have protectionism for the dinosaurs combined with high hurdles for the young and hungry.

We come about as close to a free market in your country and mine as the USSR ever did to actual Comunisim.

In FFXI we have a true free market economy with one fatal flaw.

[Yukira]

I must admit, I agree on the fact that the economy is the very weakest (not to mention frustrating) part of the game. I have thought of quitting sometimes, but the way I see it the good sides of the game are still somewhat ahead of the bad ones. Though I can imagine if this keeps up, I won't be online much after a few years...then again, you never know.

[Losfuin]

There's a very small exit hole for the game's gil. The exit scource is considered to be NPC shops. Since you spend gold and it goes back into the system, never to be found again. Without that scource of releif, you can expect the gil to continue to circulate and grow in huge amounts.[.quote]

There's also the AH fees and Jeuno Tax. People can avoid Jeuno Tax by bazaaring non-AH items in places like Rolanberry Fields, but most people still use the AH. And IMO, another 1% increase of AH fees would be a very good way of slowing inflaton down in the long term.

So, I hope the devs can somehow introduce better NPC markets with the release of the new expansion. However, for the high level crafters, just thank god one crafter can't do everything. SE made the right choice on that.

We can but hope.

And yes, not being able to get every craft to 100 is a brilliant thing. A single character able to make *anything* would be, well, an economic behemoth.

[Sheala]

Fiye

So, I hope the devs can somehow introduce better NPC markets with the release of the new expansion. However, for the high level crafters, just thank god one crafter can't do everything. SE made the right choice on that.

Losfuin wrote:

We can but hope.

And yes, not being able to get every craft to 100 is a brilliant thing. A single character able to make *anything* would be, well, an economic behemoth.

One way around the limit of only one craft to 100 is the use of mules. On our Pheonix server there is PurpleNV and his mules who is a relatively famous craftsman. He has a few mules and all of his characters have a different 100 craft skill. A gilseller could have an account with eight caracters and work each one up to 100/60/60/60/60/60/60/60 craft skill. If account varies the 100 skill on each character, you could put up a massive amount of good on the Auction House. This translates into a huge gil income for twenty U.S. dollars a month. Now imaging if it is a company account with three programmers taking shifts around the clock. I think its frightning. :!:

[Losfuin]

Ah, yes, I didn't consider that. Still, it requires someone to spend extra money each month, and takes up time and in-game gil, especially if you have to re-level a subcraft.