Asura Inflation - What's Going On?

0 chance theres even 2000 active players on asura doing ody. 0 chance theres even 500.

yes. they delete the mules and start over once they hit cap. it's not very unknown at this point they've been doing it for like 3 years.

i don't know a single player that is still doing segment farming unless they returned recently

There's definitely not 2000 but not sure about there not being 500 across NA+EU+JP. I'd say no less than 300 people on my hunch. I don't think it is Odyssey creating recent inflation.

How long has sparks farming for gil been a thing? IIRC they were added in 2013 and capped in 2020, but I don't remember if selling shields/powders started immediately or was added later. Either way, assuming a span of at most 11 years and at least 4, that's a long time for bots to generate billions of gil and stash it on inactive accounts, along with the amount generated by legitimate players before/after sparks cap and through other means like Odyssey.

Point being, that's a long time for a lot of gil production to be done even with them removing ~200-250bn per year via bans, but it's also been going on long enough that it can't be the only source of inflation for these items. I don't think it was a steady, organic increase over the course of a year, rather some seemed to spike upwards quickly and recently (last 6 months or so). I also don't think much has changed in terms of gil shoved into the economy in at least 3 years, the total amount has likely increased, but the rate at which it is added has either stayed the same or been reduced. If this were the sole driver then I think we'd see that prices scaled upwards over years, not several months, some of these items were cheaper months ago than they are now and I'm not sure availability or supply has changed that much.

I used to watch some items more carefully, but haven't recently. The K.club price seems to have steadily increased organically from ~450m to what it is now. On REMA mats, I've seen, on several occasions, price fixing of REMA mats when the price started to drop. You'll see the price dip below say 400k/stack to 250-300k, then someone buy just enough to flood the purchase history at a higher price to keep prices higher. I suspect price fixing for things like Rostams and Musas may be at play also, but it could just be fewer crafters available or higher cost of mats (I have no idea, I haven't paid attention to these). Without more price/purchase history, it's hard to tell, but the gil being introduced, while a major part, isn't the only source of the inflation I wouldn't think.

It also seems more limited to certain items, it doesn't seem the more common merc services have increased their prices and many items remain roughly the same or cheaper than they were.

Selling powder became a thing shortly before they nerfed it. They adjusted the stack size up to 99 so the process of farm/dump was expedited.





As compared to the great inflation of 2006 where everything jumped in price 3-5x overnight, this just seems like demand fluctuation or buying trend.

>inflation thread
>no pierce brosnan meme

You don't know a lot of people. I know of at least 3 groups running every day or attempting to run every day, all veteran players and we're on a tiny server.

There are groups recruiting on this very website for a couple other servers.

There are tons of people talking about their experiences with the NMs, about how often their groups farm segments, etc. and they're not new players.

No, I use an ad blocker, does BG wiki have ads? I've never seen a single one

Inflation only happens on XI when people choose to buy an item that was listed above the normal price, and future sellers list for that increased price. This only happens if stock is low on an item.

Sure, on an individual item level, but if gilsellers are selling billions of gil then more people will be in the market for items. If demand increases, stock will be lower, driving up prices.

Also if people stop farming, material costs will go up, causing crafters to charge more for the end result item and/or fewer people to craft items because of increased material costs.

While this all boils down to "stock is low", the REASON stock is low, or demand is high, can vary.

The reason stock is low seems pretty obvious, more players joined the game from XIV and want more stuff and many endgame players are playing less cause of the producer announcement so there is less stuff being listed.

So you get inflation, these are temporary. Either the demand falls off or more people farm them.

I do think western RMT that are very knowledgeable are playing their part here though. It's not hard to manipulate the auction house when you know demand is high.

Citation needed on this one. Looking at Rostam for example, in the last 25 sales there were 17 unique sellers and 25 unique buyers. On Asura, 4 sell per day and the price is extremely consistent; there are a dozen up at any given time. How are you going to manipulate the price, exactly? Start buying up other people's Rostams for a high price, then somehow offload 12 of yours in a row, in a highly competitive market? Sit on a billion gil's worth of Rostams, hoping nobody undercuts your wares when you go to offload them?

As much as people love to pretend there's some cabal managing the prices of items, it's really just supply and demand. If tons of people are trying to buy something, it will go up. If tons of people are trying to offload an item, they will undercut each other to make sure theirs sells first. If you try to manipulate this and raise (or lower) the prices, you will get bitten 9 times out of 10. Especially so on a server with high population.

Some people really think the market for beitetsu's is being manipulated by some nefarious seller.

Nah, the market for beitetsu's is being manipulated by someone who just finished their Mythic's magian trials and now needs to get their hands on 104 stacks (15 characters worth of AH slots, just for perspective) of beitetsu.

This absolutely happens, I've seen it numerous times especially on REMA mats. They aren't jacking the rate up necessarily, but they will buy at a higher price to bring the levels back to normal if it starts to dip below a certain point.

I screenshotted this very thing happening some time ago, I'll see if I can find it. In this case, I wanna say whatever mat it was (Alex IIRC) dropped to ~300k due to an easy ambu month and someone bought at >=400k to bring the price back to "normal" instead of letting it dip. They only bought enough to cover the price history in-game.

I don't know if this happened to su5s or not, I wasn't watching, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't have worked out the same way for certain items.

that's just people sending gil to a bank character, i dunno why people even need to still do that given you can add a bank in mog garden to put it in

Rooks may need to chime in on this one, but I highly doubt ffxiah's API is polling sales history often enough to catch every sale of items that move that quickly. If someone buys 50 stacks of an item back to back, will ffxiah's sales history catch all 50, or will it only catch the 10 listed in the history?

I don't understand the Peacock Charm thing, why is it that high?

Only the 10, so as you're implying, someone who was forced to buy at a higher price after buying 50+ stacks would leave an AH history where they only appeared to buy at the higher price.

That said, if you buy something out at 400k, even fake, and people continue to buy it at 400k.. then I'm still not sure it qualifies as price fixing. Other sellers still have to choose to list at 400k, and other buyers have to choose to pay 400k. If there was more supply than demand, sellers would get frustrated and it'd make it's way back down. It's more of a signal that you believe the market belongs higher IMO.

Price fixing would involve buying out all supply below your target price continuously, or creating an agreement between everyone selling to sell at a certain price(obviously that one's impossible).

The price history is pretty much the only orientation players have, once it's been fixed buyers can start chasing down cheap bazaar listings and then start shouting if they don't want to pay the fixed price.
The first thing potential sellers will do befor responding to the shout is checking the current AH price and then maybe lowball it by a bit, but the anker would still be the fixed AH price.

Sellers will want to sell as high as possible so their initial choice is obviouse.
Buyers don't really have a choice either, or so I got told recently, because you can't tell your team to wait 3 months for the price to go down.

The question is can the price fixer make his cut befor sellers get impatient and the price correction kicks in.

I find it funny how a price going up is "wrong" but a price going down is a "correction".

Prices are not "set" anywhere. They go up, they go down. There's nothing wrong with a price going up or down, it's just a reflection of how many people want that thing. It sucks when lots of people want the thing you want, sure. It also sucks when nobody wants the thing you want to sell, or too many people want to sell the thing you want to sell and not enough demand exists for it.

This is just economics. There is very little if any price fixing in this game. There's just scarcity.

If HP-Bayld are 600k/stack and there are 700 stacks on AH, you'd be certifiably insane to list yours for 600k, or 650k. If there are 10 stacks up and 120 stacks sell/day, you'd be stupid to list them for 550k. It's like...context..

As I suspected though, Iamaman's "I have a screenshot from ffxiah sales that shows someone only bought 10 to clear out in game history" means nothing.

Price going up is wrong because nothing imaginary gains value.

Only stupidity makes anything in xi appreciate. Literally everything is worth less today than it was yesterday. Unless a random *** update alters the item or game functionality.

You'd expect RMT to know the basics of economics.

Mrhappy encouraged a lot of XIV players to start on Bahamut, and since Peacock charm is a desired item 30+ demand has skyrocketed there. Same happened on Asura but there is more supply.

Gotta be wary of Big Beitetsu fixing the market.

This applies to lots of stuff in real life too, it is human nature to add value to things above what they actually are.

Why is a rare baseball card worth so much, or a issue one comic of superman, or a painting from an artist that died hundreds of years ago. Because they have some value to someone with a lot of money.

A cracker with a fly on it is worth 100 million dollars if Bill Gates wants it badly and that's all you'll sell it for.

None of these things have any real value behind what someone imbues into them, the rarest things on earth would be burned to keep warm after an apocalypse.

Remember when those steal+ items jumped millions in price? There always some FFXI kingpin behind these swings!

Why am I the only one surprised that PCC doesn't cost more?

It drops from a BCNM that nobody runs. The r/e version is still a rare drop so it's going to cost your time either way. Even novice players can obtain the gil to buy one in less time than they'd spend camping.