RIP SPARKS!!!

Umm yeah, because people used this as a means to make Gil, while still doing other things in the game. So if the well is about to run dry, some people may reprioritize their game time the next few days to make Gil while they still can.

Consider selling sparks gear to NPCs as the same as being able to print bills. Imagine you can print bills at will. You'll be happy and print 10,000 dollars every week because why not, and you'll feel you're getting richer and then start buying items you thought you couldn"t buy before.

Now imagine everyone doing the same as you. Everyone will also start buying items they couldn't buy before but due to a supply that isn't increasing, people will start buying the same item at higher price.

That's gil coming from thin air and the source of inflation.

Now if you push this reasoning further, a kraken club could sell for 999,999,999 gil soon which is a problem on its own because it's the maximum amount of gils one can carry at once.

And if you keep pushing it further, an Su5 weapon could aswell start selling for 999,999,999 gil. Compared to a kraken club, one could say it makes no sense to sell it at the same price.

And finally if you push it to the very extreme, even a flint stone could sell for 999,999,999 gil but obviously I assume SE would do something before that happens.

Only reason they did this was because they had a month off work, and so boss man was checking the logs.

Just as a thought experiment, I wonder what would happen if they capped inflation instead of sparks.

aka; absolutely nothing can be sold on the AH for more than 99m. Or like, no food can be more than 100k, no synth material can be worth more than a mil etc

You know that things don't have to get more expensive, just because you have more money... it's stupidity and greed (pride/ego) that drive the price up, not the amount of money.

just because you have 5 billion gil doesn't make it any less stupid to pay 600m for kc. it's worth what its worth because its worth it, not because you have money to waste. it's easy to conflate the two though.

... I hear you typing... but then no one would be driven to make money, they would have excess and no way to spend it. Sure, that's a good thing. You can play the game instead of slave for gil. There's no employment to worry about, why can't a game have a capped economy.

Eventually everything will cost 99 mil. They needed a much better Gil sink over all these years. But, Gil sinking everything, I think would also hurt players trying to save, but still keep up with content.

Kind of surprised that they made some of the common ones, that weren't that expensive to begin with, become way cheaper with RoV.

Legit all of their moves over the 5-6 years seem to have encouraged RMT take over. Cruor nerf was mid way through abyssea era, and then they turn around and add sparks/accolades a few years later?

So, if they really want to put a major blow to RMT, they should nerf it out right. Instead they limit what a non robot player can create at the same time. It's illogical.

In theory, the inflation will continue because no one can put down daddy's credit card, and demand will increase, so, an inflation angle I don't think will work either.

Country that had hyper inflation also had stupid measures like blocking prices in a short sighted solution.

In the end, what happened was simply shortage of good or them being sold outside formal market.

None can actually control Prices but supply and demand.

Im farming KCs, im at 400+ runs without a drop, and i suspect the drop rate is either 1/500 or 1/1000.

None going to do that for less than 100M

It obviously doesn't work "in a society*" but a virtual city with no jobs is a whole different beast.

(*It can, just not with humans as they are)

Mog locker is an example that could have an option to pay with Gil instead of ToAU coins. 1mil Gil per 6 months I would pay, I would pay for a couple years worth right off the bat. More Gil sinks that give you the original currency, or a Gil option also, that would soak up a lot of Gil. Add a few extra spicy items that can be bought with the defunct currencies to encourage people to spend.

they rightfully know the dependence that the game's life has on a certain number of RMT activities going on. The accounts:human for RMT activities dwarfs what the casual gamer has, that means more dollars in SE's pocket for reaching the same single human. But they have a strong, albeit small, core of extremely dedicated players who may hate that RMT, but their ability to play the game rests with that RMT.

That small core would get very vocal and make SE look bad if FFXI just shut down. We already see accusations in advance of a possible shutdown about "but its a member of the numbered series, SE has always ensured they're playable!". Ironically, if SE listened to that core about destroying the RMT presence in FFXI, they'd get more hate from those same people when that game was no longer fiscally sound and was shut down. So they pick their battles, and let RMT exist- to a point.

What's interesting to watch is to see the actual gamers start using RMT tactics to make gil in game for personal use, and then SE jumps in with a stop to it. Its like as long as those things are limited to the "professional" class of players its ok, but once it spreads to the masses then its effect is too large and must be stomped down.

Gil option to rent wardrobes, an absurd Gil to DI points ratio, 100kgil, 1 DI point maybe, they could soak up the Gil pretty fast if they wanted to.

Other games use their currency to pay subs too. That would've been smart. I probably would've started selling a lot later had I been able to spend a hundred mil on a year free sub instead.

More than extra income from RMTs accounts, but also they supply a legit demand from players that SE doesnt seems inclined to suply that is the demand to sell gil so they can make the most of content in limited play time without doing hours and hours of grinding.

RMTs deal with this demand with zero programming effort or hiring new teams for that.

FFXIV they basically made gil worthless (I didn't play long, but that was my impression)

FFBE they went "holy crap" overboard with monetizing the hell out of the game.

You'd think they'd figure out some kind of sweet spot... they've had nearly twenty years to nail this thing down and find a way to make money off of it themselves.

Or maybe they have, and that is why they don't fix the issue.

they are like plantation owners who's slaves pay to work there. Basically, they're sharecropping RMT.

It seems like the RMT market for gil is at least a large percentage of what the game makes through subscriptions.

I don't know why you wouldn't find a way to tap into that market.

Easy.

If you let me sell gil, I'm the bad guy. And you get a cut (subs) for ignoring it.

If you sell gil, you're the bad guy. and you lose your cut of my sub. (and maybe others don't like p2w and they quit)

My characters artificially inflate metrics (engagement, active accounts, time spent online, log ins) and you get a bonus for doing a good job keeping "players" playing.

I win. Square wins. Addicts that complain about "me" won't quit. There's no downside.

So you're saying that you're a necessary evil?

"me/I" as an idea/a subset, not a singularity

"I" specifically doesn't apply.

As far as "necessary evil". Sure seems that way. I don't know the threshold for "when less than X players still play, it makes sense to close XI" but I'll bet we're pushing there.

thats not the whole truth. if you have a scenario were multiple ppl equally desire the same thing, all of them have the same amount of resources at hand and the same time/effort ratio to generate more resources then that might be correct.

as soon as some of them have less desire to posses that thing he'll wait till everyone else got theirs and the last one will sell for less than it previously was worth.

if a group of them have more resources or a quicker way to generate them they'll start overbidding. the richest will get his thing first for the highest price and the poorest will get his one last for the lowest, if he can afford it, or not at all.

so a lot of other factors that determine the price of something such as desire, dependance, addiction, wealth...
for the one who has to work for their resources it be stupid to pay 600m. for the one with the money printer its not.

Yes, but imagine that same scenario when all of the people aren't stupid. No one pays the 600m. Everyone wins. No one thinks their E-PP is bigger.

not sure why RMT keep doing it but its just silly to pretend the influx of RMT and all the activities that go hand and hand with it had no negative impact on the game and the player count over the years.

if you have individuals with a money printers in their basement enter a previously healthy market it doesn't matter to them how much something costs, all that matters to them is to own it as fast as possible. they circumvent the usual bottleneck, resources, but they still run into the next one, time.
time is money.

True, but since players aren't robots, some will pay a higher price for an item if they can afford it and want it (whatever the reason is). And of course sellers will also increase their sell price because why sell something 100 when someone is ready to buy it 120 ?

there's also the difference between real world economy and game world economy. I still have dinner tonight if I blow 600m on a kclub.

Yea but you'll be whiffing with it cuz you got no sushi!

Think of much more (better) food you'd have with $200 dollars instead! (just sayin)

K-club should be worth way more than $200, considering how many collective man-hours on average it takes one to finally show....

$1000 maybe.

If I wanted $$$ instead of in-game stuff, I would just work OT.

Pretty much... people stopped thinking like Eiryl after they got real jobs.

Gil isn't worthless in 14, it's just that the game is very cyclical. When a new expansion comes out, all the gear and glams get rushed and gil flows to buy stuff related to that. then as each update comes out it's either r/e equivalent gear best in slot and gil stagnates a bit or a new crafted set comes out and it briefly blips in monetary flow. unlike XI with its horizontal progression and myriad of options, in XIV it's a constant treadmill up every patch.