Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

Yeah the last part doesn't apply if they're using bots but not bugs or exploits.

It also doesn't seem to be against the tos to buy in game services with in game currency either.

I don't think it's against TOS to be AFK in someone's party not taking any actions on your character while they break TOS (botting or otherwise). I also don't think it's against TOS to give someone gil to do some in-game activity for you.

I still wouldn't recommend doing either of those things, for a variety of reasons.

It is against the TOS, if they are exploiting, because you are gaining an advantage from the exploit. Salvage bans are probably the most obvious example there, afk buyers were hit. Not exactly AFK, but there have been cases of collateral damage for being in party with someone speed/posing around neo-nyzul release, and again in the early days of dyna-D wave 3, so it has also been enforced at points in the past.

It doesn't seem to be against TOS to give someone gil to do some in-game activity for you.

I imagine a great majority of the "how did I get banned? All I was doing was <insert borderline activity here>?" were merely put under the microscope because of the obvious thing, and revealed a great deal more. If someone is ok with afk'ing for 8+ hours a day with what they clearly know are people botting MLs, its typically a safe bet that's not the only "questionable" behavior going on.

The much bigger concern for me is how some players think MLs actually matter to the level worth risking one's character over. That's the real gap in game knowledge for me.

I dont think the salvage bans are a fair comparison.

Someone could plead ignorance to ML botting, there's nothing unhuman about what theyre doing (to an extent). Everyone here who played pre-WOTG has spent hours straight massacring greater colibri and mamool ja in meripo. There's no plausible means of feigning ignorance to the alliance disbanding every time they fight a NM in Salvage. Same with the speed/pos hacks in NNI, if you see them running at 400 speed and continue to do the event with them instead of snitching, youre complicit.

I wasn't comparing them to leeching ML, there is a distinction between using third party tools and using exploits. Botting master levels isn't exploiting, and as you said, the buyer has no way to 'know' whether it's legit or not.

Inflation has very little to do with ML botting or any actual exchange between players. Buying something from another player only moves existing currency around, it doesn't create new currency. Inflation requires new currency to be introduced.

Anything sold to an NPC or any gil reward is what generates inflation. 1~1.4 million gil per player per day for sheol C farming along with 1.0 per week per player, plus whatever shenanigans someone might find is what is putting the extra currency into rotation.

This is how ML works
Player A pays 100M (SWAG) to RMT Joe for ML's. RMT Joe then sells that 100M to Player B. Player B then uses' that gil to buy something from Player A. Who then takes that gil and gives it to RMT Joe for more ML's.

Gil is not that difficult to make to anyone putting in some effort. Yes, we can't as easily generate gil from thin air like it was when sparks was uncapped, but there are plenty of ways to make gil in 2024 if you take advantage of campaigns/ambuscade/odyssey etc. I make plenty as a solo player, because I know what content to target.

And as Saevel says, it is the influx of gil from Odyssey and item selling at shops that drives inflation. Players have more gil to spend, so prices go up because they can afford to buy up all the stock, and they don't mind if prices go up, because they can afford it. But that's not an issue if you actively go out and make gil.

Gonna point out for the third time in as many pages, the RMT sparks bots generated 600 to 800 billion gil in 2023. The amount coming from Odyssey, NPCing, etc.. is probably not even 10% of that. The ML discussion is a derail, don't think anyone has made the case that ML are responsible for inflation.

It is a mix of both. Players who have the time and motivation to farm their own gil can do so, while RMT have plenty of stock for those who want to reach in to their pockets so they don't need to spend the time. And I agree that ML selling and those who AFK have little to nothing to do with this.

10% seems rather low, as thats suggesting ~70 billion gil from Sheol's.

How many active mains are there? Database reports 6093 accounts using the formula that every POLID is running 16 characters. Lets presume there are two thousand active mains that only go 5 times a week (260 days) and make 800k gil per Sheol run. Thats 416 billion gil over the year right there, and thats likely a very shorted active mains number. 3000 active mains = 624 billion gil.

Extremely low end variables of 1000 active mains doing Sheol 4 days a week (208 days) making 300k per run is 62.4 billion.

This is grossly overestimating. Only the minority of the playerbase farms this daily. I can't remember the last time I did it, and I know so many others who rarely do it.

600-800bn isn't even that much though? That's are middle Eastern players that buy 1bn every now and then and there are 100 of them?

UK player on one of the smallest server knows the happenings of NA and JP time on all 16 other servers, 13 of which are much much higher populated.

Not to mention you didnt even read what I wrote. I said 5 times a week, not daily. You just saw the final number and went "cap". I know there are people who dont go every day, but there are indeed people who go every day. Thats why I went with 5 times a week. We dont have any way to know what any of those actual numbers are though.

But ok, fill in your three variables:
How many active players that do Sheol?
How many runs per week on average?
How much gil generated per run?

It takes less than a year of tryhard sheol-C runs to get enough segments to cap every piece in gaol. I'm not convinced that there are 3000 active mains doing sheol, much less doing it 5 days a week for excellent runs. It's not worth the effort when you no longer need segments, so the groups and players that are actually consistant about it have been gradually filtering themselves out.

10% may have been a low estimate, but I feel your estimate is grossly overrepresenting the level of progress the average player has. The smaller servers likely don't even have 50 people doing sheol 5x a week.

Racism aside, it's not about how much of it goes into the RMT market(much of it is just circling back through the master level bots anyway), it's about how much gil was created out of thin air via sparks. The fact it's being RMTed is irrelevant, which is why Odyssey is as impactful if it's of comparable volume. More gil circulating means less purchasing power per gil. Simple bidenomics.

Even if you dont need segs, its 1 million straight gil in 30 minutes. Can you make more in Ambu on certain currencies, of course. But you're also stuck waiting on AH sales. And then you hit the limits and you're either making mules for the sake of ambu, or you're dipping into less cost effective Scoria/Marrow.

It is far too varied to put any kind of numbers to it, is all I am saying. Also, I don't play in the typical EU timeslot, so me being English has nothing to do with it. I just believe that it is considerably less than you put, but it is still enough to have an impact on server economies over time.

I doubt they are banning for afk botting, seems more likely most of those people were probably warping around to/from camps or dumping points.

(essentially) Zero bots, all clippers

For Thorny and Nynja’s math you’re not also considering the amount of Gil that is extinguished (deflation) from things like purchasing silver vouchers, guild items such as ore/cermet, and odyssey armor. Hardly an exhaustive list - those are the biggest ticket items that come to mind. Obviously not even half of what is likely being created from sparks, but it’s not a single factor input.

How many runs per week on average?
Now not a lot back then 6-8

How much gil generated per run?
With a static group, back then 1.5+ every day, now in pug 1.2+/3-4 times a week

So 30M to 72M per group per week of Gil created/printed. So a boat load

So, the general inflation is highly related to Sortie/prime. There’s nothing to buy for the new content. So Gil can only be spent on old stuff like stones/material, armor upgrades, merc (yes ppl love to skip dyna for 4M and get 7-8K RP with real life +2 hours). Also there’s not enough NPC stuff you have to buy to compensate for the Gil created by sheol/sparks. So all the Gil pile up, just few items can be traded, and now that make the inflation. The fact that a mythic/emp cost 2-300 M Gil (nvm the time spent doing the NM/trial/assault) tell you that there’s no way to spend the Gil otherwise.

nah, it's definitely the spark bots in every zone. likely very little of it was ody

Following your logic, basic 4 run at 1M gil/player and just 2000 players doing that (Asura) a week that’s 8B gil a week. To equalize that 8B/2M= 4000 sparks bots weekly, do you think that’s the number of sparks bots? If yes that’s 16B/week, but you have to go back to the real cause of inflation, for no inflation that server "loot" (fair or not) got to be taken out. It’s not the couple ody gear you buy once or the couple crafting 1.1m items that equalize that. And so you have inflation.

I’ve always been genuinely curious if SE could post an average day of money created and money removed (i.e.: not purchases, home point warps, auction house tax) on a given day on all servers.

RMT don't really cause inflation as such on their own, buyers do. If RMT can't sell his gil he won't buy anything so it won't enter the economy, it will just sit on this character.

More gil in the wild only causes inflation if it's used.

RMT sitting on 300 billion gil that hasnt sold: "I better farm another 300 billion just incase"

Going to quote myself


When currency just goes in circles, there is no inflation or deflation, just status quot. Individual items might go up / down but overall we have the same currency chasing the same goods and services, supply and demand. Now when we introduce new currency, from selling anything to NPCs or the daily reward from Sheol C, that creates new currency causing there to be more currency chasing the same goods and services. When there is more currency chasing the same goods and services the prices for those goods and services will rise to balance out the new currency, this what drives inflation. Of course the developers have create a bunch of gil sinks, whenever we buy something from an NPC, that removes that gil from circulation.

His point was that RMT gil isnt in the economy until its bought by someone whos gonna introduce it into the economy. He's not wrong since RMT arent using that gil for in-game purposes. The in-game economy is based on gil in circulation. That gil is not in circulation until someone buys it. Aosfhaoughaogruha isnt buying Alex, HMP's, Detritus, Medals, etc.

The RMT got it from the economy to start with. Then they sell it to someone, who then give it back to them for a service. This is assuming ML RMT obviously, since Sparks / etc.. is a different bucket. RMT are still selling ML's right now, that means they are still moving gil in circles.

Except the discussion right now is about gil generated into the economy via sparks and odyssey. The topic about buying ML from rmt has fallen to the wayside.