An Open Letter to Square EnixFollow

Well, if you are not happy and want to have your voice to be heard, very easy. Just cancel your content ID and come back in March or June or Sept. A sudden drop in subscribers in January (even if you are planning to come back) will give their accounting dept something to hammer to those idiot developers. If we manage to drop 10% subscribers in a month, trust me, there will be hell to pay. And somebody will have to explain why, SE may dismiss our ranting, not want to address serious issues, and just plainly ignoring us. BUT when we strike back with our wallet, they will listen. Considering you are saving money in this recession time :-) Money talks.

I agree with everything you have said except for the part in bold. I don't know what job you are playing that you only have to carry 1 set of armor (SMN really only has one set?), but all the jobs I have played required several at each level range and then several at 75.

SE directly caused this by allowing gear swaps mid-battle. If it wasn't allowed, then the players wouldn't expect people to have more than one set of armor. SE also allowed the players to dictate pricing. By stepping away and allowing us to basically control everything, they directly sanctioned greed. You can blame the playerbase all you want, but SE is most certainly a big part of it.

Where do people get that this was an anti RMT measure?

The price of blood that dropped from leeches should have been reduced when the drop rate was increased. The only reason it sold for 500g in the first place was because it was supposed to be semi-rare.

SE wants us to make money by trading it from one person to the other via AH, crafting, HELMing, etc. If everyone made money purely from npcing items, there would be no reason for a crafting system.

To be honest i dont think SE ever intended on items costing multi-millions of gil in the first place, with the exception of extremely rare items like kc, speed belt, etc. That is probably why you cant obtain large amounts of gil directly from quests/npcs.

I think they are trying to reduce the amount of gil in circulation to get down to the economy level they feel is right. The only way to do that is to slow the amount of 'new' gil being brought into the game or increase the amount being taken out of the game.

IMO im glad they decided to go with the first choice instead of the second. People are complaining now, imagine if they decided to leave the item exchange the same and instead changed the dynamis entry cost to 2m, limbus entry cost to 60k.

Edit: Rate me down all you want, its much easier than trying to prove me wrong, eh.

Edited, Dec 10th 2008 1:05pm by iknoweverything

^^ That sounds accurate to me.

One thing S-E is doing more of is making a lot of the good gear R/E instead of AH sellable. This has become increasingly true since ToAU. The focus is more on earning your gear by doing "stuff" instead of making lots of gil and buying most of your gear. There may be some elite pieces that are AH-able, but for most jobs you can still get a very good setup with R/E alone.

There are some FANTASTIC pieces available that aren't obtained with gil (directly at least). Relic, AF+1, AF, Assault armor sets, Nyzul armor, ZNM drops, Homam/Nashira, Campaign Notes sets, Sea Gorgets, Einherjar rewards, CoP/ToAU rings, Apoc Nigh and DM earrings, Assault capes/neck/belts, ISP items, Fomor subligar armor, R/E quest rewards, R/E NM drops, R/E BCNM KSNM drops. The pay-to-enter events aren't that expensive with a group, which is the way they are intended to be done. S-E even adjusted prices of these events to reflect the current economy (Limbus now costing 15k, etc.).

Gil has become more for consumables for the vast majority of the population. Food, medicines, ammo, tools, entrance to Dyna/Limbus/Einherjar, OP warps, chocobos. Yes, there are some occasional important items that are crafted or sellable drops. But you can outfit most 75 jobs in GOOD (not even adequate, but truly good) gear 90% through R/E stuff. There's a smaller number of players who make up the super-hardcore group, buying Dyna currency to upgrade relics, upgrading Salvage armors, buying Alexandrite. But you can still have very high-end gear without taking a super costly path like that.

There may be some more expensive items that are important to jobs and generally purchased (e.g. Hauby, Scorp Harness). Those are the minority though. There are also some expensive AH items that are really nice but you're not really "gimp" for using NQ versions - e.g. a SMN with a full set of cheap NQ elemental staves instead of a full set of HQ staves.

And hey S-E, if you want to do something to help legit players, do something about ammo prices (reasonably priced NPC vendors for more types of ammo would help). COR RNG THF will thank you. As the focus for gil becomes one that's more about maintaining your daily expenses as opposed to buying expensive gear, ammo prices are a bit out of whack.

Edited, Dec 10th 2008 2:43pm by Anza

Well I'm sure you guys heard about the fishing update, right? SE is trying to cut back on people who get banned and come right back under a new account. So if your character is brand new and under lv20, your fish claiming will bite. But what if they rewarded long time players with super easy CS quests for gil. You would only be able to flag these quests if you were in good standing. Meaning no temp bans and over 1 year play time. Because the STF is so good at removing the RMT now only to get new ones 24hrs later, this would work nicely. RMT's will never reach this reward point and our play base can benefit from it.

My ideas for the quests would be like adventurer appreciation day or something. Based on how much good you in game, it would give you so many merits in your favor. Say 3 hours in Dynamis might net you 30k for your time and so forth. Give real gil rewards off Campaign if you meet the criteria. RMT won't abuse it because it's only a paltry sum of gil for such a long commitment. Plus they get banned all the time thanks to the STF. Give gil rewards for bringing back NPCs lost in Besieged too. SE has so many ways to reward us without feeding the RMT.

Edited, Dec 10th 2008 3:15pm by ShadowedgeFFXI

I think the biggest complaint people have about this adjustment (and rightfully so IMO) is that SE has removed one more option for making gil. But it seems, based on some of the responses that this isn't anything to complain about or be concerned over. All though I'm sure that will change when those that were using this method to make gil start funneling into other lesser used methods or crafting.

And to those of you that claim this isn't a problem because there are so many other ways to make gil in this game. Then you shouldn't have a problem listing what it is that you farm, craft, camp, etc. for gil. After all if that becomes saturated with too many people doing it, there are plenty of other options available for you to fall back on. Right?

The "main point" people are missing is that SE only reduced a small number of popular and obviously over npc'd items.

This is not the harbinger of the economic apocalypse. There are still PLENTY of items out there for people to npc to bring gil back into the economy.

SE knows that they are lowering the ammount of gil in circulation. Why else would they be reducing the prices on things like limbus, dynamis, armor storage etc.

You are confusing beneficial with require.

I never said it is bad to carry a WS set, an Idle set, a MB set, a damage mitigation set, an accuracy set, and so on. I said you do not need them to play.

The thing is that we are currently seeing Players complaining that the cost to buy items Players demand Players use is set too high by Players and SE is to blame.

Can't you see how stupid this whole thing is?



So you are saying new players should be aware that they are not accepted by us old players unless they fork out 20 million on gear? Yea... that will make them stay and play FFXI.

I think telling them to buy what they can afford and enjoy the game sounds better... but just ignore me. I'm one of the old fools who think you should enjoy FFXI and not consider it your second job.

They won't be on the AH because any item that drops that easily will have a value approximately equal to rock salt and won't be worth wasting AH slots on.

One thing I said to my LS about this, is having this method of gil-making removed is kind of like getting layed off from your job (if this was your current method of farming). -_- You either are forced to stop making gil for a while, or you are forced to now work a minimum wage job. Yeah, kind of crappy.

I'm really interested to see if the AH will change drastically from this. >_> I know a lot of people have been NPC farming these days, so I'm expecting prices to drop? Maybe.

I think the sad thing is this happened right before Christmas. XD Just like in RL I'm gonna have to hold out on buying people's gifts this year haha.

But yeah, if SE is gonna do stuff like this I think they need to change some things on the AH. I was discussing this with my bf since he plays also, and I suggested that since SE is putting so much stops to these RMTs and in the process hurting us in a way, they should allow us to put more items on AH, and lower the AH tax drastically.

That is a very interesting point IMO. There does seem to be a very thin line between "awesome piece of gear" and "the standard" in this game. For example, many will tell you that as a monk or samurai, you need Ochiudo's Kote, accuracy rings, etc. And those three pieces alone would be about 800k on my server. Not to mention that they are also level 40 and below. And not only do you need the best gear for each slot, but multiple pieces for every situation so that you can macro swap when appropriate.

This mentality does seem like it would discourage some of the more casual players, who either don't dedicate as much time to the game per day, haven't been playing as long as the "veterans," or both.

Edited, Dec 11th 2008 1:08am by ChocoboDragoon

How is it abusing? Tell me how going to a zone, killing a mob, getting a drop and selling it is abusing. Please tell me, and the rest of the players how we are supposed to earn gil. Where is the gil supposed to come from?

Honestly, if you have an answer please, let's hear it.

Once I burn through all my seals to try to get a weapon I want that does not drop what am I supposed to do? Go kill endless beastman trying to get more seals to try again? How long can this go on? How many people have 17 friends to do a KSNM99 with?

What is sad is not this thread but your and others complete lack of understanding of the economy.