Beware Scammers Obohh And Absurd

For a while, a lot of prices on things were dropping. The nerf to sparks/accolades, the expensive cost of AF/Relic armor upgrades. Of course, then SE changed course and gave a huge gil reward for Sheol.

But as people upgraded their AF/Relic armor, those gil sinks are not being used, whereas the big gil generator is done daily by many people.

Yeah I agree. Always said the Gil reward to Sheol was a very stupid idea but I felt like I was the only one whining about it at the time...

After they worked so hard to add Gil-sinks and remove the Accolade/Sparks thing, WOOOOSH they add Gil to Sheol.
I mean wtf SE?

The gil reward made a bit of sense considering the initial release price of armor, I don't think they thought ahead about the long term consequences of people farming segments for years straight after acquiring all the equipment.

They never think about anything properly before they do it. That would be doing more than the bare minimum.

Their "gil sink" effort was (is) laughable at best.

7 Digit per person, per job one time sink, to match 7 digit per person per day flow.

Sinks are like things you need over and over and over. Bullets. Tools. Food. Meds. Entry fees. Things you can't avoid and/or so good you have to buy. Not forgettable gear with a one time creation fee. A proper sink would be armor durability. Pay 1.1m per piece per week to keep max stats. That's how a sink works.

No it doesn't?
I mean I respect your point of view but imho it makes no sense.
It's not like there's no other way to make money in this game, even for solo players.

After working so hard to create moderate gil sinks and as we were slowly seeing economy getting bit by bit back to more reasonable levels, they created something stupid like that just to create an incentive.
I was all for incentivize Sheol, but it didn't have to be gil c'mon...

But it's pointless discussing about it now. Not like they could change it back lol, people would (rightfully) outrage about it.


But yeah, overly stupid. After them taking years to acknowledge the Accolades/Sparks issue it's beyond nonsensical to get back to square one, imho.

I'm not defending the choice now, I'm saying that at the time they released Odyssey the scope may have been as simple as 'lets just use gil for this instead of a new currency, so people who dont want to do the content can buy it and we have one less thing to track'. I don't think that at the time Odyssey was released, they intended people to full clear zones and get 1.5-2m a run.

If you look at what sort of return people were getting on early runs(500k a run?) and the price of armor (5m a piece * 35 pieces + accessories), you're talking well over a year of runs to get into the green. It was more likely intended to offset it's own impact than be a direct gil sink or source.

Obviously, 3 and a half years later, that isn't the case any more.

I got your point but to me it still doesn't look like a good choice not even at the time.
The gil you had to spend to buy Odyssey armor, from my point of view, was yet another (welcome) gil-sink reducing its relevance over time.

Giving free gil for runs, even if they didn't foresee people fullclearing, was a really bad choice imho, after finally gettin it right!

Content in FFXI very rarely gives you a straight gil reward. Look at Sortie, it literally has nothing you can sell. Sure, there may be some drops you can sell on from other content, but those drops are only as lucrative as the equipment they give/are crafted in to.

SE knew that most RMTs would not go through the hurdles it takes to unlock Odyssey, and giving segments alone would not have been enough to keep groups regularly doing it. Even if you don't need segments, you can help out and be happy to get something for your time.

This is a good way of pumping gil in to the game that can be used by actual players who aren't buying it from elsewhere. And I welcome that, because not only is it helping players to buy those luxury items, but the amount you get is also tied to performance, so everyone is motivated to try better each time they do it. Even with that dangling carrot, it doesn't mean everyone is doing Odyssey every day... I know I'm not. I probably only do it a few times a month because it isn't that fun.

The biggest difference between this and unlimited sparks/accolades is RMT and botters had an extremely easy way of printing money, and they were benefiting from it. Odyssey gil is going mostly to proper players, so inflation isn't an issue because players are naturally more capable of making their own gil, so increasing prices aren't anywhere near as harsh as they were. What is more prevalent as a side issue of easier gil is that we have way less crafters, but that is only felt on smaller servers.

Is it though? Helping those players.
When gil is so abundant the price of everything -everything- goes up.
Without that abundance of gil, people would be less willing to spend gil, and prices would (slowly) go down.
We've seen it happening, it was actually happening thanks to the Sparks/Accolades nerf.
Things were, slowly, going back into more reasonable scenarios but... enters Gil reward from Sheol, and we're back to Square 1, with pices skyrocketing for (almost) everything.

Things are way more complex than this of course, but I'm sure you get the idea.


tl;dr
That Gil reward is a nice psychological reward/drive, but it's mostly an illusion and, in the long run, it's not helping anyone at all, alas.

Rift Boulders gone from 80k to 400k in like 3 months

Idk how anyone can think thats a good thing.

You gain way more gil from regular Odyssey farming than the amount of inflation being seen. And as you said, there are other ways to make gil on top of that. You're talking like prices have risen by 100% across the board, when it is more like 10-20%.


Supply and demand. There are more people sitting around with gil waiting for stock than players actively farming. I made an absolute killing during last month's high tier battlefield campaign because of this, and I only use one character.

Bruh
Thats not just “supply and demand”.
Half the XI community didnt just decide to get back on the emp weapon train after the boulders have been steadily dropping from 300k down to 80k over a 3 year period. Were not talking one server, this is across the board.

You also seem to be mixing together moving gil via sales and generating gil, based on your “there are orher ways to make gil on top of [odyssey]”.

That's called inflation, not supply and demand, when the game rewards 6 people a day, that's gil being generated with nowhere to go, as there's nothing to sink the money into like some sort of entry fee, just a 1 time armor expense x however many sets you want.

With nowhere to go the value of gil decreases, and well here we are, again

It's the same old issue of Gil being moved between players (AH or Bazaars) and Gil being generated out of nowhere (Sparks/Accolades).

It took SE a long time, but they finally understood that the latter was bad for the game and the economy. Better late than never!
But then they add gil to Sheol... see what I'm trying to say?


I was all for adding additional drive/motivation to bring more people into doing Sheol, it's a good thing.
It's just that they shouldn't have used Gil as one of those, period.

Yes
The nerf to sparks-accolades coincided with SE adding a bunch of gil dumps. We already covered this. 1.1 mil per 119+2 af / 119+2 relic, over 5 mil per 119+3. Thats gil to NPC that comes out of the economy. Base Gaol armor was like 3 to 6 mil. Thats gil out of the economy. Those gil dumps were a one time use though.

There are way too many people talking economics who dont understand the difference between moving money and printing money.

Moving money:
I sell 7 stacks of alex at 500k each. I make ~3.5 mil, someone loses 3.5 mil, and i lost 50k to AH fees. The amount of gil in the economy losers by a negligible amount from the AH fees.

Printing money:
I 3 box Sheol and each char makes 1 million gil. Thats 3 million gil into the economy. While a paltry amount compared to the total amount of gil in the economy, 1000 people do that every day and thats a lot of gil entering the economy. Over time, that damages the economy over time thus devaluing gil in general.

It is both. No doubt that the value of gil has decreased, but who gets it has changed, so the inflation isn't as damaging as it was when RMTs were printing gil 24/7. That's all I'm saying. There is definitely an issue where players have so much disposable gil without enough materials available to buy. That is why we have inflation, because the amount of gil floating around outweighs the available supply. As soon as materials appear on AH, they are being bought up. Luxury crafted items are even more hurt by this (lack of crafters), mostly on smaller servers. They get bought up super quickly, and you end up having to camp the Auction House for days to beat others to the punch.

Ah yes
The old “demand for literally everything” has gone up situation. Despite being a pathetically easy ambu month, which traditionally has lead to a drop in prices as people are running multiple mules for extra materials flooding the supply, prices for all the sellables is actually increasing.

A handful of things going up 10-20% is supply and demand. Everything across the board shooting up in price drastically, including the price for a RMT PL party, is inflation. Once again, half of the entire XI community across all the servers didnt just all decide it was time to make a new empyrean weapon(s) and spike the cost of Boulders from 80k to 400k over 3 months.

They definitely turned off sub, there was no "getting hit"

wasn't even worth the effort to bazaar rema stones

Always the first place to check when you see a price spike in currency. The campaign for HTMB isn't active, but I would expect the ease of ambuscade to offset that. Maybe people aren't going ham with mules like they did last time it was around?

Asura htmb bots get banned, price for REM stones on the other 15 servers spike in price.

Gotcha.

Many conditions that contribute are general and not really locked to Asura. They're just more prominent because Asura has a higher head count so it's easier to see. There are also many people who transfer back and forth so smaller servers aren't as isolated as they'd think.

I'm sorry but no ones spending 18 bucks to server hop REM stones.

probably not, but they do take advantage of the free transfer periods. I can recall multiple times when on Leviathan a friend would say "I'm sending an alt to <insert server>, anyone need anything?"

Half price transfer*

If you had 500 stacks of Beitetsu on Sylph (500k per stack), sent them all to Asura to sell (1 mil per stack), you'd make 250 mil extra. If you sold that gil, at 25 cents per mil, thats $62.50. It will cost you $36 in server transfer fees.

That theory goes on the big presumption that this person has all the luck in the world and only gets Beitetsu, or has tossed their Pluton (plausible considering how cheap it is) and Boulders (highly unlikely). It seems weird to flat out toss the middle-value Boulders. It also presuming they're on Sylph, which currently has the lowest stack price for Beitetsu's. Most other servers are in the 600-700k range, which will cut into that 250 mil profit for server hopping.

Either way, were back to the original statement that no one is server hopping REM stones for the purpose of market manipulation.

REMA stones expand from parcels, cases and boxes. They're absolutely worth taking to Asura to sell.

While there are people who casually transfer back and forth during campaigns, there are also people who swap mules. IE I'm a mule on Asura selling items so I can buy harder to obtain items to transfer back to [insert small server]. Meanwhile, I've loaded another mule on [insert small server] with things to sell and I swap them at the same time.

In bulk its not bad. I regularly send mules to Asura either to buy cheaper things or sell plates or spheres. Can make a good profit.