Trading Linkshell...Follow

Almost all of us are crafters and/or farmers. We all have a way to make gils and in the end have to use the Auction house or Bazaar for selling our items.

As most MMORPG, FFXI has their RMT. Real Money Traders, people using the game to make a real money profit from players too lazy to actual play the game as it is meant to be played. However, FFXI has something that most other MMORPG don't have. An Auction House.

The concept was great on paper, but in the end it just gave the ultimate weapon that RMT needed to directly control how players plays the game.

In other MMORPG, players that wanted to play the game legally just had not to buy anything from the RMT. However, with the Auction House, every time we buy something from it, we run the risk of funding the RMT.

To gain back control of the economy we have two choices: Gain back control of the Auction House, or create a parallel economy under the direct control of players.

To take the Auction House back, we would need as much organisation and time as the RMT have. They are not playing the game, but working with it. We are here to play, so I doubt we would have enough people dedicating themselves to fight the RMT on their own turf.

So the most efficient solution would be the second. Create a new economy, controlled by the players, for the players, in which prices are set to make the game challenging yet enjoyable.

How? Simple. A Trading Linkshell made of any player who is interested in working toward making this happening. Crafters, Farmers, anyone who is able to make a profit and willing to invest some of their time into making the game better on the long run.

Right now merchant players sells on the Auction House, most of the time giving their item to the RMT or use their Bazaar, which are long and not really profitable. With this Linkshell all of you out there who works to make a profit would have a way to sell your items fast with a reasonable price, and buy mostly anything you want at a fixed rate. Call it a guild, or cooperative, this organisation would be there to control the economy at the best of it's capacities, but this time, for the players overall benefits.

So..here I wrote down the way I think it could work. I want input however, so anything you have to say, go ahead. And whoever is interested in joining such an organisation, speak up.
:)
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The Trading Guild

Normal Economy works on a simple concept of offer and demand. The higher the demand and the lower the offer: The price of an item goes up. If something is rare (low offer), or if an item is highly wanted (High demand), the price goes up. The reverse effect is also true. Boost the offer and on the long run, the price will go down, this is the main effect of competitive market.

This should also be the case in Vanadiel. The Auction House was a great concept. but with a great flaw. You can not see the offered price of every item on sale. Therefore people can not choose the lowest price, forcing those selling at a high price to lower it. This was not the greatest of its flaws.

Some people came in the game and saw the greatest of the Auction House flaw. They found out that they can control the economy by doing a few little things. First, they create a fake low offer. They buy everything they can at the listed price, leaving only THEIR item on sale, which of course they sale at a very high price.

Now, it would still be possible for people to get some money by selling the items they find, since anyway our little friends will have to buy them to control the market.

Unfortunately, these people (let's call them RMT from now on) found a solution to that problem. They ended up swarming the best farming camps, making it unable for legit players to get the money they needed to buy their items. Of course, there were places they couldn't control, while they never really had the necessary numbers to actually control every single farming spot at all times. However, overall, they managed to get an efficient control on the Auction House for their plan to work.

Their plan? We all know it. In the best of their scenarios, they would become the only source of Gils in all Vanadiel, forcing people to buy it from them. Through illegal means they sold their Gils for Real Money, hence their name of Real Money Traders or Gilsellers.

While their plan never worked so perfectly, this still led to an era where the prices skyrocketed so high that it took weeks and months to get one single item, or be forced to pay them for Gils, buying THEIR items, thus giving them back the gils they just sold you. This era is over for now as Square Enix took some actions toward banning these people while also changing how a few important monsters appears in the game, thus giving everyone access to these monsters, giving them access to their drops in the same time.

However, nothing is perfect, and I trust the Gilsellers to find a way to come back and take back what they lost. This is not something we want. If they ever come back, we want the economy to be in our hands, in a way they can not affect it. This solution exists, we just need to organize ourselves.

The Trading Guild

The Gilsellers built Linkshells and websites to organise themselves. Let's do the same thing. The Linkshell is already created and Square Enix gave us the Linkshell Community, a wondrous tool for a LS website.

This Linkshell would focus on Crafting and Farming, but with a specific goal. Opening a parallel market to the Auction House that would to become totally independant from it.

This market is composed of three types of items: Crafted, Drops and Ingredients.

Crafted items are created through crafts using Ingredients. For these items we need Crafters with the highest craft rating possible. The more we have, the better it will be.

Drops are items that cannot be crafted but instead drops from specific monsters. These items can be gathered by anyone with the proper level to defeat the monster. Some, called HNM, are only beatable by parties or alliances of level 75's, so these Drops may become tricky, but read below for further details on how we would do this.

Ingredients are unfinished items used in Crafts to build finished items. All Ingredients are Crafted or Dropped item.

Now what makes this Linkshell different from other Craft/Farm Linkshells is the Stocks. If we are to challenge the efficiency of the Auction House, we have to offer a delivery delay as fast as possible. When a customer asks for an item, we need to be able to craft it now, to deliver fast. The greater the delays in delivery, the higher the chance is that the customer will just buy it from Auction House if he has more gils than needed.

The only advantage the Gilsellers would still have over us is the advertisement. Their main tool for trade is the Auction House, and everyone knows where to find one. Someone needs an item, they go there, and buy it. No need to look around for someone to do it for them.

Simple and efficient.

This is where we will need to put effort. Advertising. We need people to know that we exist. People will sure be happy to know that there is a way to buy items at a reasonable price, but they need to know we are there. We will never be able to have a channel as efficient as the Auction House, but every customer that buys from us once, is a customer that will stay, as long as we can assure them a fast delivery. An happy customer will talk to others and given time we should have a pool of customer big enough to make it work.

A short word on Events. Most Linkshells have events, and many of them make their events mandatory. This will not be the case of the Guild. The Guilds focus will be on the economy and not end game events. However, some of these events gives access to items that are part of the economy. The Guild might eventually have events, but it will never supplant your other Linkshell in terms of loyalty and dedication. If an event is in conflict with any rule of your other Linkshell, don't participate. The Guild will still be able to attain it's goal without these events.

The Guild goal is to give back the game to its players and to make sure that it does not lose it again. It will act as a guardian over it's economy, making sure that everyone, regardless of how much time they play the game, can have an eventual chance at enjoying it in full.

The Guild must never become a greedy entity, using it's power over the economy to abuse the players, much like the Gilsellers we are fighting do. We are there to protect the economy, not use it for our own benefit. We will make profits off our activities, but reasonable ones.

To do so we will have to adopt a code of conduct, that will guide our activities as an entity and as members of it. People must be able to respect and trust us in order for our goal to be achieved.
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I think that's enough for now. If you want to add anything, go ahead.

{No thanks.}

The AH has two things your plan does not... ease of use and convenience.

As Lynch said... too complicated & impractical for the simple minded folk of Vana'D.