The Great Debate 3: FFXI Has Benefited From Having RMT

if that's true then that would explain why SE hasn't sued or shutdown that website that is claiming to be SE and even has a pretty good log in page going on.

IMHO it was a mistake on SE's part to be so lax about RMT then coming down so hard LATER.

The reason being the deflation that cracking down brings about. Right now the game economy is in a deflationary death spiral. There's very little economic incentive for players to produce. Those who are already capped in crafting or have the uber gear to take down profitable NMs are OK but if you're a player who isn't there yet, all you see is disincentives to do so.

That ingredients are more expensive than end product is exactly what happens in deflation (look at JP in the 90s) and here we are.

It would have been a lot better if SE had just kept the amount of currency in the economy at a target growth rate. Since they are a de facto central bank, they need to act like it. Removing currency from the economy without managing other economic levers is how the economy gets derailed like it is now.

Personally, I am much worse off now than I was after my first year. My crafting doesn't make much money and leveling crafting is near impossible since I can't acquire the ingredients so that I can make any kind of margin. So that keeps me without much money...

Lastly, at this point they're willing to incur false positives in their RMT countermeasures and offend their loyal user base. That's pretty inexplicable. Every other MMO out there is doing everything they can to acquire new customers and keep their loyal ones. FFXI is just not that big at 500k subscribers. They're essentially throwing away money.

At some point, SE will announce that FF14 will be supporting microtxns which means they have recognized that managing the money in the economy is essential. I just hope that economy doesn't get as f**ked up as this one.

Your first example uses the stimulus package to show how you can take money and create wealth, but you used it wrong.

Lets use the stimulus package as an example. How do you think the government is able to PAY for this "stimulus package?" You honestly think they can just print money out and it in turns create value for that money?

I think Germany in 1920-1939 did that, and Zimbabwe (or however you spell it) is currently doing that. See how that fared? This isn't the same concept as game money. You don't kill a person and expect 10 bucks to drop out of their pockets and into yours. You don't expect to make something and sell it to some /random person for 100x what you spent to make it. Everything is different in the real world, and using real world economic problems to define game economic problems outside of concepts is just plain silly.

he's saying it causes inflation, and inflation is bad. mkay?

why does he also say that is a benifit?

cause it makes you feels good to have a few mil instead of a few hundred k now.

Someone referenced tele-bots, so here's my take as someone who used to teleport people for income a lot (back when Raise II was 400-500k, as were Reraise II and Erase).

I don't think that most of the telebots that were notorius on Odin were actually RMT, I think they were regular players with alt. characters botting.

The telebots ran so long that regular players gave up on trying to take the business since it was not worth the effort. When some of the more notorius Whitegate bots (Yagamlight... sp? was one, and is still around but not teleporting anymore) shut down on Odin, no one really filled in the gap.

The one Lower Jeuno bot (forgot name) that was running at the same time was still there, however, but again, since almost no one was competing, if it had been banned, it would be the same problem.

On a different chord... SE killing some legitimate players' methods of making gil in order to combat RMT definitely hurts, but really it just drove me to found new ways to make gil, which I did. At the same time, killing the easy items from some farming areas drove up prices on harder items from the same area because their rarity went way up

(Fire IV, for example, was something I used to NPC back in the Baileys prime days, but now it's worth a lot because people don't farm there like they used to, so there are a lot less on the market).

Anyway, Karusan, keep up the good work and if I come up with an idea for a topic, I'll fire a PM at ya!

FFXI has benefited from rmt... ?!?

um ok, wtf?! how does hacking players causing them to quit, irritating people to the point they dont want to play anymore, and making the rest of us feel uneasy about our accounts benefit ffxi?

I honestly miss the days when I could Craft NQ items and break even. And HQ was a perk to make gil. Now days leveling a craft is only for people that spend 90% of where waking momment making gil to craft it away. Or people that buy gil.

For this factor alone. FFXI was better with RMTs per SPAMMING... The spamming is really starting to hurt FFXI.

But when I could do a KSNM run and sell the item for 1 m gil and say spend 100k per level lossing say 10-50% a level this is all post 60 talk. It wasn't bad. But know that same KSNM nets 300k. now I'm spending 90k a level with a loss of 50-90%.

Here is my RMT story.
Looking for a skill up party for my WHM. Ran into a RMT camping an NM. Another RMT shows up. I get into one of the RMT groups because I didn't care I just wanted to wack things with my club. Well NM pop the RMT group I was with.. Got claim. The one tries to MPK. Yes this was a long time ago. I elemental seal Sleepga. All mob sleeping. We killed the NM it dropped 3 hides. the RMT gave me one. it sold for 300k. Back when I didn't have a lot of gil it was great!

They are people and do something nice and they will return the favor.

Counter example : Zimbabwe. That's what happen when you inject too much money into the economy, enjoy your inflation. And that's exactly whats RMT did. Also you are completely speculating on the fact that the economy would have suffered if we didn't have RMT. There's no way to verify that beside using others MMOs, and lot of MMOs without a massive RMT presence worked quite well.

Can't make assumption like that when all your reasoning is based on speculation.

As for Mog Bonanza that's completely false. First of all less gils have been given back than the total amount of gils bet. Why is that ? Because only a small fraction of total players decided to get the cash instead of the item (especially thinking about all rank 4/3/2 winners). Therefore gils were REMOVED from the economy and been transformed into behemoth hide, imp wootz ingot, star sapphire, herald gaiters and so on... Not to mention all the rank 5 winner who just "lost" their money.



Well I know someone with entirely botted his fishing skill from 0 to 100 (and hit 100 recently), I'd like to say that these countermeasures doesn't really against -smart- players (= you don't fishbot while you sleep). Therefore your argument is invalid. SE waste money to fight RMT, while player botting ain't banned.

Same goes for all claim botters, HNMls using $3000 bots, etc. They're not banned.

some bots are banned. the problem is that the faster they ban them the faster they find more ways to bot undetected.

GJ throwing out a bunch of wild accusations and baseless attacks and then not backing them up at all. This is exactly the type of response i was hoping not to see.



You didn't read his original quote thoroughly. Zimbabwe is exactly the situation he described. He then went on to explain why FFXI's situation did not parallel Zimbabwe's situation. If you're going to attempt to debate, at least have enough respect for the other side to read what they write.

That's not exactly the situation he described.. You're just quoting half of his message.

"By giving out what could be called free money, people are able to spend that money on goods and services they normally would not have, thus stimulating the economy." Where does that apply to Zimbabwe seriously ? Government never gave "free money" to each person...



Which is completely false, not like Zimbabwe citizen can buy more service than before thanks to that..

My point : inflation kills purchase power
His point : inflation helps people to buy more goods and service

And slow injection of gils never been healthy, unless produced by players themselves and not generated by SE. Add to this the fact that the Mog Bonaza was a way for SE to remove gils from economy. So I'd like to understand how can his argument be valid when the justification he use ain't ?

I quoted the part that was relevant to your response. I'd rather not make everyone read an entire post over and over again. In 2000, Robert Mugabe forcefully confiscated land and belongings from the white minority, who held the vast majority, and redistributed it to natives.

Free land and possessions, having value, are economically synonymous with free currency. While i wouldn't say that this injection was solely responsible for Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, it was certainly a catalyst.



Slow, steady inflation is a hallmark of healthy economic growth. Quick example, compare american cost of living in 1940, and american cost of living in 2000. SE isn't creating the gil. like it or not, RMT are actual players, though certainly of a different kind.

I'd love to discuss economics with you, but we are getting off subject, so we may wish to take that discussion to PMs

Edit: Incidentally, i do agree with you on bots. I don't think RMT have done much to help botters get caught. If a botter gets caught, he's either not too intelligent, or he's using the wrong bots.

Correct me if I'm wrong or taking this the wrong way. But in this example above where you take existing gil, spend that at a NPC to buy items you are essentially removing gil from the game. You might make a profit off of those consumables from someone else's existing gil, however the total amount of gil on the server has now decreased. The tax of putting items on the AH further removes gil from the game.

This is making gil for the economy?

How can inflation help people buy more goods and services?

If a can of coke costs $1 before inflation, and inflation has made everything 1000x more expensive, so a can of coke costs $1000 to buy, you are still buying that can of coke at the same "price," you are just thinking that it costs more, but you are still putting the same amount of effort into buying that one can of coke. The thing about inflation in a healthy society is, the cost of living rises with the cost of wages equally. If inflation made it so you have to spend $1000 for one can of coke compared to $1 for that same can last year, in order to be in a healthy society, your job last year should have paid you $6/hr, and pay you today $6000/hr. Your cost of living stays equal to inflation, it has to be in order for the society to work.

But it won't. That is what makes hyper-inflation so bad. There is no hyper-pay raise to go up with hyper-cost of living raise.

Thats real world's problems. You might get that in game world, but more than likely you won't. Not with FFXI during the times of huge (but not hyper) inflation in 2005.

I've thought about this debate and I this sums it up...

Corruption controls the Almighty Dollar.

You are creating something that costs you about about 900 gil per synth if you buy all from NPC and creating an item worth 1k gil per synth. For you, thats a creation of gil. For the general population and economy, this isn't that big of an increase, so no inflation follows this.

Gil creation comes from the Job Traits Treasure Hunter and Gilfinder, and the Job Abilities Steal and Mug. They also come from killing NMs and Beastmen, because every time you do, you get gil.

A MMO closed economic market do not need a steady inflation, except during it's first years (well we all start with like 1000gils, not gonna go far with that lol, need to generate currency). But once the market is up and running fine, no more inflation is needed.

Do you have any sources, facts, examples, or economic principles to back that up, or is that just your random unqualified unsupported opinion?

Forgive me if i'm less than willing to accept you as an expert on what makes an MMO tick.

I thought this was only a game, not a way of life.

It's more like "prove me wrong". Why would a MMO need steady inflation ? What would you gain for having more and more currency circulating ? (especially knowing the population is decreasing). It just doesn't make any sense. How would it helps players ?

Cannot use comparison with the USA between 1940 and 2000 for this, unless taking a different timeline. It's not like 4-5% inflation per year on a MMO will change anything for players.

Both Karusan and i mentioned it earlier in the thread. When a player buys gil, he is able to spend that money on goods and services he otherwise would not have would not have. This money goes to crafters and farmmers. Now they in turn spend their money. When everyone is buying things, people make more of them. The cycle continues. This is called stimulating the economy.

Now when you take away gil, as square has done in its fight against RMTs, people have no gil to spend. Therefore, they don't buy anything. Since if you try to make and sell something, no one buys it, and you just lose out on your AH fee. Soon, people stop making things, and the economy grinds to a halt. This is known as a depression.

It's basic economics guy. This is as simple as I can make it for you.

Doesn't work this way. When a player don't have gil, he's not able to spend that money on goods. What happen next ? The seller lower the price of its item seeing that nobody can afford it at the price he wanted it to sell (could be like trying to sell a KClub for 100M in 2009).

We have less gils in 2009 than we used to have back in 2005/2006. Does that prevent people to buy/sells things ? Is the economy dead ? I don't think so.

Same goes for farmings. If, let's take a igqira legs, these legs cannot be sold for 2M by the crafter, then the crafter will stops buying the M-bugard tusk @2M from farmers. Farmers will have to lower the price of raw material they farmed so they can be bought by crafter, which will be able to sell the manufactured goods to the end user at the right price.

Things like a kraken club can work that way. Most people don't make their gil off of kraken clubs. As any experienced crafter can tell you, many of the prices of their base ingredients are static. They come from NPCs, who don't change their prices to account for the economy. When the cost of the ingredients is more than the crafter can sell his item for, the crafter can't sell his stuff.

If you've been paying attention to the economic index on the front page, then you can probably affirm that yes, the economy is dying. Ask our aforementioned crafter, and he'll probably agree.

This point has not happened yet, and I doubt it ever will. If a crafter stops crafting something, when the demand goes back up, the price will go back up with it because the supply has run out. Basic economics state this.

Winterlight summed up the issue pretty well, i think.



I think Winterlight's personal experience backs up the theory pretty well. At its most basic, in a purely theoretical environment, the law of supply and demand holds true. In a depression, however those laws are warped. Pull money out of an economy, and everyone is too poor to spend, even on things they want/demand. If the law of supply and demand held true at all times in the real world, all depressions would be self-corrected near immediately.

In my opinion, there's only one thing RMTs have done that actually ended up helping this game: they forced SE to fix fishing.

Back in the day, you cast your line waited for something to catch the hook, and reeled it in. It wasn't hard to bot, as many RMTs did, or even hack, as many RMTs and a few "normal" players did. This resulted in RMTs dominating the fish market, bringing in a truly staggering amount of gil. Hardly anyone wanted to fish... it was slow, it was boring, and nobody could get their foot in the market because RMTs dominated it so thoroughly.

So SE changed it from what it was into a minigame, and stopped it from being so hackable. Since then, they added other things to it that wouldn't have been possible under the old system, like the Rings available from quests and Fish Ranking, and have added further restrictions and patches that have pretty much eliminated RMTs altogether. It's now my craft/hobby of choice, and it never would have gotten that way if RMTs hadn't exploited the hell out of it. That's all RMTs are ever good for... they find loopholes and exploits and the developers shore them up and make the game better.

Beyond that, they're worthless. They bug us, they steal from us, they take over parts of the market, they coddle the spoiled, lazy *** who buy from them, and they damn near ruined this game back in 2004-2005.

Has FFXI benefited from RMTs? Yes, by reacting to them. But they have caused far more harm than good.

Um, trust me. It's still quite hackable.

Most of people make their gils with items that worth a lot, and not by making 1K profit on a stack of melon pie really... KSNM, BCNM, all xNM in general, dynamis currency, limbus currency, but also straight farming, HNMs, mercenary service, or rare HQ'd items... People who craft using material from NPC* are a minority, just check SE stats about crafters, you'll see how many player got a lv90+ crafter. That's almost nobody.

You also forget something, SE can regulate NPC price at any time. But that will never be needed for a long long time. Economy is far from dying. Less money being exchanged is completely normal since the total number of players is decreasing.

*For items where material bought from NPC are like 70% of the total price, not talking about recipe that require 99% of farmed material and a random thing you buy 1K or less from NPC.