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Why the FFXIV Economy will FailFollow

#27 Sep 02 2013 at 2:26 PM Rating: Good
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139 posts
Squander wrote:
Eliminex wrote:
The thread is about not being able to buy 1 off of a stack of 99. Basically, it's the seller's discretion on how they want to sell their items.


Sellers have to make a decision on what they want to do with their 20 to 40 slots. This system creates an interesting variance in the price of items. It allows for bulk discounts.


I understand that.

I also understand that some people are crying because they used to be able to buy 1 item from a larger stack and SE took that option away.

What I don't understand is how this will "make the economy fail".
#28 Sep 02 2013 at 2:28 PM Rating: Excellent
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139 posts
Basically, the OP is saying:

1. We can't buy 1 item from a stack of 99 anymore and I'm pissed about SE's response
2. ???
3. The economy fails
#29 Sep 02 2013 at 2:38 PM Rating: Good
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334 posts
Eliminex wrote:
Basically, the OP is saying:

1. We can't buy 1 item from a stack of 99 anymore and I'm pissed about SE's response
2. ???
3. PROFIT!!!! The economy fails


FTFY
#30 Sep 02 2013 at 2:47 PM Rating: Default
@Eliminix

I think it's just a misunderstanding of what the devs are talking about. And his argument is more, because he doesn't understand what they are talking about, they must not know what they are doing, and if they don't know what they are doing, you should assume you can't trust them.

That's where he offered up his car mechanic anecdote. If a car mechanic uses nonsense words, you shouldn't expect them to fix your car competently.

He stated that FF doesn't have an economist working with them, I don't know that's true. The original quote doesn't indicated that to me.

@Azurymber

"What this system really does is let people "manipulate the market"
For example I can buy up the 2 or 3 bloody bardiche heads on the AH for 30k each. Then sell 2 on one retainer for 140k, and then 1 or 2 on the other retainer for 139,800. This makes it look like one person is undercutting the other, and creates a non-optimized price."

While you state knowing market history doesn't matter, knowing market history makes a huge difference in your above scenario.

Let's say I'm searching for Bloody Bardiche and you've got this market system where you're buying up all the ones selling for 30k. I get to the board and I see that there are your four listings. I then say, man, that seems a little steep. So I check the market history and I see that yours have never sold but that a couple of Bloody Bardiche's did sell recently for 30k. I decide to wait.

If you want to keep this lock on Bloody Bardiche's you will have to keep buying the ones people make, and that's a pretty risky endeavor.

As Eliminix eluded too, your manipulation of one item isn't going to have devastating effects on the global economy. Because you're limited to stacks and you're limited to 40 slots, your ability to manipulate the market is extremely small.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 4:50pm by Squander
#31 Sep 02 2013 at 7:40 PM Rating: Good
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3,653 posts
Quote:
Now here's the thing
This statement makes 0 sense
You can't "research demand" by looking at supply and magically guessing
Without knowing what has sold and what hasn't, there really isn't any way at all to gauge demand


But that's what the sales history does, shows you what has sold and at what price. Sounds like the kind of thing you could look at and draw a few conclusions about the market. Very similar to researching it, in fact.

My conclusion from this is the economy will be fine.

Going on experience from FFXI, they managed the economy quite well apart from the massive inflation that's been mentioned. That wasn't really that big a deal though, as long as you were smart enough to make a profit. The main issue with the FFXI Auction House was the ability for prices to be fixed so easily, i.e. sell items to a mule for an inflated price so the entire page of price history is now loaded with the new price. Then people pay your new price without even thinking about it. RMT probably had this down to a fine art with a lot of the consumables like Echo Drops and Silent Oils. A lot of bigger ticket, rarer items got abused in a similar way. People would buy up the stock and then re-list the items, with the price going up by an additional premium.
#32 Sep 02 2013 at 8:02 PM Rating: Good
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9,526 posts
JyIscariot wrote:
Hmmm...

Actually I think everyone is overlooking the fact that XIVs economy is being cushioned by vendors. The thing saving us from inflation is what is crushing/going to crush the player based economy. Gil is being introduced into the system at a crazy enormous rate. I don't have to farm items or craft to make money, I can harvest it all from the system. The developers recognized this as a problem and included quite a few gil sinks, the biggest of which is the ability to buy practically everything you need from NPC vendors. In order to compete with vendors you need to undercut and take a loss. The only reason people are doing this is because they are pumping through crafting levels or have extra gear and want to make some of their money back. In the long run this cripples incentive to even play the market though. This is suppressing incentive to craft, to farm, to gather. Why bother joining the economy when you can quest/fate/leve to multitask for gil/exp/seals and run straight to the vendors.


Cause you can't get HQ/materia from the vendors, and while a lot/most of dungeon gear is probably going to be better than the best crafted stuff, crafted stuff can fill gaps in RNG-dungeon gear. You say gil flows like fountains - well there will always be crafters looking to tap into your fountain. That said, I am concerned about balance but I am willing to give it some time to see. At any rate it is pretty convenient to craft the thing you want if it isn't on the Auction House.

I might have a slightly different perspective because I am on a legacy server so I don't think people are all grinding out low level items right now. I mean some people are but on a non-legacy server people are trying to establish themselves - everyone who likes to get a craft up right away is grinding at the same time. It is bound to depress the economy.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 7:04pm by Olorinus
#33 Sep 02 2013 at 8:10 PM Rating: Decent
Scholar
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3,599 posts
Quote:
Without knowing what has sold and what hasn't, there really isn't any way at all to gauge demand


You can see the last 20 items sold.... what are you talking about..

Quote:
This could probably be made a little better by not displaying the name of your Retainer... but of the actual player.


Every single thing you make is signed by you. You can't hide. Hell, I've been playing the market and crafting base relics all week, I went from 200k gil to 1 mil from playing the market, assessing demand, checking the market, undercutting, and knowing when to drop a particular item, or buy out my competition and sell higher.

The market is really good, and there's a huge difference between smart crafters and everyone else.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 10:13pm by Louiscool
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[ffxivsig]1183812[/ffxivsig]
#34 Sep 02 2013 at 10:55 PM Rating: Excellent
Louiscool wrote:
Quote:
Without knowing what has sold and what hasn't, there really isn't any way at all to gauge demand


You can see the last 20 items sold.... what are you talking about..

Quote:
This could probably be made a little better by not displaying the name of your Retainer... but of the actual player.


Every single thing you make is signed by you. You can't hide. Hell, I've been playing the market and crafting base relics all week, I went from 200k gil to 1 mil from playing the market, assessing demand, checking the market, undercutting, and knowing when to drop a particular item, or buy out my competition and sell higher.

The market is really good, and there's a huge difference between smart crafters and everyone else.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 10:13pm by Louiscool


You, sir, would do well with EVE Online.
#35 Sep 03 2013 at 12:23 AM Rating: Decent
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751 posts
First up, the transaction history tab tells you the date and time of the transaction - that will suffice for me as a proxy for demand.

Secondly, you can see the name of sellers. Whilst I agree that the market prices can be manipulated, it will take some effort and multiple accounts to do so. Of course, a free company or linkshell could engage in group conduct to manipulate prices which is where my third point becomes relative.

Thirdly, a product will sell at a price a seller is willing to sell, and a buyer is willing to buy. That means that for items that are grossly overpriced by some sellers, others will move in and compete away the "surplus" profits. This is a well known feature of competition. This does not tend to happen in the early days of an economy, but in the longer term there are sufficient sellers that someone will be willing to accept a reasonable price.

The one remaining challenge to this is gil sellers. These guys do really distort the market because they heavily influence supply of cash in the economy. Increased supplies of money is, all things being equal (ceteris paribus - as economists say) inflationary. That these people dont play the game for fun, rather to earn gil and then sell it, it inflates prices in a way that an economy operating normally would not.

Crafty Hayllie MSc (Economics)
#36 Sep 03 2013 at 2:02 AM Rating: Decent
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88 posts
Azurymber wrote:

Imagine you went shopping at wal-mart and everything there cost 2-million dollars. Does that mean that people are willing to pay 2-million for a roll of toilet paper? Of course not.


Agreed. And if people are not willing to buy then Walmart won't sell a thing and will eventually lower their price.

Quote:
What this system really does is let people "manipulate the market"
For example I can buy up the 2 or 3 bloody bardiche heads on the AH for 30k each. Then sell 2 on one retainer for 140k, and then 1 or 2 on the other retainer for 139,800. This makes it look like one person is undercutting the other, and creates a non-optimized price.


And my retainer - who also knows karate btw - will undercut your retainers, so yours will have to undercut in again etc. Not sure why you use a rather technical term like "non-optimized price" but how is this different from the real economy, where companies make huge profits and still make it look like they are involved in serious price competition? It all boils down to what a person is willing to pay for a certain item.

Quote:
What this system really does is let people "manipulate the market"
For example I can buy up the 2 or 3 bloody bardiche heads on the AH for 30k each. Then sell 2 on one retainer for 140k, and then 1 or 2 on the other retainer for 139,800. This makes it look like one person is undercutting the other, and creates a non-optimized price.

Now the problem here isn't that the markets are bad (even though they are).
It's that SE has a silly nonsensical reason for creating the markets the way they are
What that shows, is that the people handling the economy have no real experience in economics
And in an age of gaming where MMOs hire economists to make sure their game's economy runs smooth, that is probably going to be a problem

This is nothing new. FFXI didn't bother using economists either, and ended up with hyper-inflation one year as a result


That hyperinflation - the price of a scorpion harness rose from 2.5 million to almost 23 million in only a few days on Seraph, 12 acid bolts went up from 2,5k to 15k - was mostly due to a great holiday offer from our gil selling friends. It created a sudden influx of money stored on mules and did a pretty good number on the prices. SE should have paid attention to that earlier, when gilsellers were building up (sleeping) mules with maxed out amounts of gil and every now and then sent a random person a few millions. Later SE did take some measures: money was taken out of the game by banning suspicious accounts, they finally started to address the third party program problem that made botting possible and they made it more difficult to send large amounts of gil. Way too late for my taste, but they did exactly what an economist would do in this case given the economic system of a game: take money out of the system and put a stop to unfair competition.

(Ironically, during those days in December (2004, correct?) I met quite a few people who usually had regular, mediocre gear but all of a sudden started to run around in mighty expensive stuff... claiming they "played the market". Sure they did. Sure. ;) )

Could you elaborate on what economic sstem you would like to see in FFXIV?

Edited, Sep 3rd 2013 4:13am by Woofdram
#37 Sep 03 2013 at 2:24 AM Rating: Decent
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3,653 posts
Woofdram wrote:
That hyperinflation - the price of a scorpion harness rose from 2.5 million to almost 23 million in only a few days on Seraph, 12 acid bolts went up from 2,5k to 15k - was mostly due to a great holiday offer from our gil selling friends.


The root cause of high inflation periods was generally the discovery (and subsequent abuse) of an unchecked gil fountain in game (see: padded cap).

I actually started in October 2004 so I wouldn't have noticed the inflation in that particular year (I think that's the padded cap year) because I was probably still stuck in Valkurm Dunes. There were certainly other years where there was massive inflation leading into Xmas though, 2005, 2006. Probably every year before they really made a fist of dealing with it via the STF(U).

Edit: here's an example from Feb 2006 after the xmas inflation of 2005
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/99076/FFXI_Moves_To_Stop_Gold_Farmers_HyperInflation.php

Edited, Sep 3rd 2013 8:28am by blowfin
#38 Sep 03 2013 at 3:14 AM Rating: Decent
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51 posts
So basically we have summarized, resummarized and then revisited the same scenario. That scenario being the announcement of having wards and being able to capitalize on people who do not research market prices etc ad nauseum.

Somewhere someone interjected something about a Gil fountain in game. Then someone else interjected that we also have Gil sinks built into the game through generating materia off of gear that is 100% spirit linked or bonded (I can't remember the term unless I'm actually playing the game so excuse the improper use of inaccurate terms).

I think the line of reasoning was that he felt a general level of ineptitude on SE's part in handling the market. He also feels that this will lead to an overall market collapse. That's like my idiot brother-in-law and his theory that the US economy would collapse completely as a result of the basal three. This is equally outlandish.

You cannot present a theory without all the variables in place. People kindly interjected that there is such a thing a market history but you disregarded that fact. At least in one of your responses. Something about how it doesn't figure into SE's management of player driven economy. That is a false statement and everyone else knows this fact the pointed it out previously.

Gil is way easier to get ahold of in xiv than it was in xi. That being said there are a lot of sinks to pull it out of the system for balance. This in turn also makes crafting a potentially useful skill to have in this game to avoid being bent over by someone's retainer that has cornered the market on said item you want your character to wear for stats purposes as an example.

You need to just take a deep breath man and relax. Play the game instead of worrying about the economy...... Unless you're one of the people that got gouged as a result of not using the market history on said item..
#39 Sep 03 2013 at 3:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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58 posts
yo let me break it down homiiie. SO like some foo be slang'n fat crack rocks on my block 4 like 20 bucks, but word on the block is my homies gots them for like 15 bucks for like 2 cracks. So that trick *** be hustling for no reason or nothing dawg. cuz Word is crack worth 15 bills son. We all know this, cuz word of mouth. Chicken heads aint got nothing on them elephants yo! so he aint selling jack cuz we all going to the right dealer whos str8.
#40 Sep 03 2013 at 6:13 PM Rating: Good
supernokes wrote:
yo let me break it down homiiie. SO like some foo be slang'n fat crack rocks on my block 4 like 20 bucks, but word on the block is my homies gots them for like 15 bucks for like 2 cracks. So that trick *** be hustling for no reason or nothing dawg. cuz Word is crack worth 15 bills son. We all know this, cuz word of mouth. Chicken heads aint got nothing on them elephants yo! so he aint selling jack cuz we all going to the right dealer whos str8.


In all seriousness, this marks one of the most intelligent posts I've seen today on this forum, and most of the people here have made very very intelligent posts.
#41 Feb 07 2014 at 7:54 PM Rating: Default
19 posts
it will fail because its based on an auction house system. Remove the market boards and let people either auction their wares, or go through a bazaar environment.

you lose undercutting POOF just like that . you gain immersion POOF just like that. you build community POOF just like that. you cripple RMT POOF just like that...

oh but the kids will cry.. and we all know thats all it takes nowadays. Sigh
Necro Warning: This post occurred more than thirty days after the prior, and may be a necropost.
#42 Feb 07 2014 at 8:07 PM Rating: Good
NECRO'D

I'm make 10-50K a day easily keeping up with the market boards like SE described in the OP.

Turns out that they made it pretty easy, and since they're adding even more sorting options in the future, they'll make it even easier soon.
#43 Feb 07 2014 at 9:40 PM Rating: Good
klepp0906 wrote:
it will fail because its based on an auction house system. Remove the market boards and let people either auction their wares, or go through a bazaar environment.

you lose undercutting POOF just like that . you gain immersion POOF just like that. you build community POOF just like that. you cripple RMT POOF just like that...

oh but the kids will cry.. and we all know thats all it takes nowadays. Sigh


.......What?
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