Ok so to get this out of the way. The issue has come up a bunch of times over the last couple weeks and I finally have grasped the situation. To start, I do not believe that anyone is receiving any foreknowledge or "insider" tips of upcoming changes. It's an accusation with no merit and doesn't do anything constructive. Now to get to the real issue: "Price Fixing and Monopolies"

So basically I have been a spectator on MH LS to the Peacock Charm (PCC) drama unfolding, just taking in information and I realized what had happened and what made this so profound. Nasomi changed the Argus spawn back to what it was in era retail (36 hours) to what it originally was which was 1 hour. Now the action in itself is fine and well within his right to do, but I don't know if he took the most important thing into consideration which is other people taking advantage. If there is anything I have learned is that there will always be people will to exploit where legally possible (no risk of backlash) when given the opportunity which is what is happening in the PCC market.

Prior to the Argus change the AH was flooded with good affordable PCC's and they seem within grasp of the most standard player which is pretty cool. Now that the spawn has changed, someone named Bagholder has bought out the PCC market. I am not sure who this is but it is clear his intent is to take advantage and drive the price where he wants it to go by investing huge resources into acquiring every affordable PCC. And in order to stay within his limit on how many he can hold (According to Nasomi rules you can have infinite accounts but only 3 characters per account) he is either logged into multiple accounts, not at same time, in order to store these or he is taking advantage of an AH listing perk and bug in order to achieve this goal. Buy a PCC, relist it high, repeat. Since items for someone reason stay on AH permanently and are never kicked back into delivery box, he can put an infinite number of PCC's on the AH with no backlash (I think perma-listing items are a bug that need to be corrected to remedy this situation a little but it won't completely fix it). He will never lose any as long as this mule keeps them there he has a private stash of them.

So where am I going with this? Well with all this info he has every PCC under a certain gil amount that he can change at a moments notice and sell when the price is high. And since Nasomi changed the spawn, he unknowingly gave this guy a monopoly (most PCC's again were purchased after the Argus change) since there won't be enough PCC's circulating the AH anymore to challenge the price hike. This is where it gets tough and fairness goes out the window. One of the things that work on this server is that people should be playing fair. This is a private server. The economy is made up of every hard working individual in the game and will continue to thrive. However, this move has completely alienated every single new player coming onto the server. I bet you that the vast majority of players who are 3 months to 2 year vets on this server pretty much have that PCC. I can also assuredly say that with this price fixing taking place that the vast minority of new people coming in will have the chance at a PCC. It will take a very very long time to balance and I am thinking the price will eventually top out around a mil with a low supply. I am not saying that the changes should be undone to argus because that is the game, that is era and I can accept it. What I think needs to happen is price fixing and market abuse on such a small private server (there are no RMT which was constantly a problem on retail servers) need to be addressed and squashed swiftly. The AH needs to be fixed so that people can't abuse rare items like this. A small private server cannot thrive like this. Who knows what will be the next thing?

I've said my two cents. I want to add a poll to see what the community on here thinks. I will not keep making a huff about this anymore. If this is the direction of the game then so be it. I will find something else for that slot. But it will set a bad example on what people can get away with on a limited economy.

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Yuso - Mithra

I Want To Make Gil

Are you suggesting that people who speculate on the market should be punished? Because those people would be clumped under your umbrella, and I don't think there's anything wrong with speculation. I've been guilty of speculating on Magic cards and buying massive amounts of a card right before it jumped in price because I thought it had a use that people hadn't discovered yet. (Thanks, Cryptolith Rites!)

If insider information is involved then there should absolutely be a punishment, but speculation is healthy for an economy, and is a large portion of what the ACTUAL economy is built on. And much like the actual economy, insider information is highly unethical and punishable.

Lots of things have fluctuated in price since the newer players have joined the server over the last few months. Things that I used to farm to make my original money have dried up (RIP Spider Webs ) but other things that newer players would want have gotten more expensive. This seems like supply and demand working as intended. Things will plateau.

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Gweivyth - Skyward.
Gilgamesh 2002-2008.

Let's do the Time Warp again!

New to Nasomi and have a question? PM me, I'd be glad to help!

umm... if people are going to start doing this, this is not the only private server of FFXI, there are others... if this behavior continues, and i suspect it will, i can go check another place to play... seriously, i played 8 years of retail, and was sick of that kind of thing, we don't need this monopoly crap here.

I apologize in advance if i insulted anyone with my post.

There is hardly any 'insider information' going on here. The amount of PCC's on AH is directly associated with the fact that argus has been broken for quite some time. Things get fixed here based on priority, and often times stuff will go unnoticed for days, weeks, and months. Yes, Bagholder has bought up a large portion of the current PCC market, but at the end of the day it is merely speculation as stated by Gweivyth.

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I won't address insider info anymore because I beat that horse already if you actually read my post. I address it as the first thought.



Now Gweivyth, onto the rest of your response.

Speculation is not what I am saying is happening at all. People can speculate and more power to them if they would like to put up their hard earned money for a high risk/high reward investment. It may pay off it may not, which is completely fine and ethical. I stated in my original post that this all took place AFTER Argus was "fixed". What happened is that someone saw a change, responded with purchasing the supply up with their vast wealth because they knew the supply was going to drop immensely, and controlling that supply to price however they see fit. REMEMBER, this took place AFTER this fix, suggesting no insider info at all. Just plain and simple economics. This will have a profound impact on any new player coming in because most older players have this item so what do they care? I bet you have one too so it's no big deal for you.

But here's the thing, it IS a big deal. There is virtually no more supply and soon, within the coming months, will only be high demand with prices skyrocketing. The person doing this has no interest in the greater good of the server, just his bottom line and his pockets. And what is worse he is taking advantage of an AH bug that shouldn't exist that allows him to store all these rare items on the AH(you can only hold 1 but with the AH the way it is you can hold as many as you wish).

My point is that he took a change to the game and is using existing "Bugs" in order to pull off a monopoly because he has the funds for it.

Let me close with an example for people who still don't understand what happened:

Let's say Nas changes the spawn of Leaping Lizzy from 1-2 hours to 24 hours, but in doing so leaves leaping boots in the game. Someone see's this change occur and decided to buy up EVERY single pair he can find and stashes them on the AH. Pretty soon, the boots go from an affordable 55k/pair to a whopping 200k/pair because that is the price now. And he will continue to buy them out because people are paying for it. He can camp LL all day and the AH all day thanks to two-boxing and keep this up because he can afford to and cause that's what he wants to do.

People, this can happen! It already has begun with Argus which is why Nas needs to address it to keep game balance. And to paraphrase his code of conduct, this ruins peoples gaming experience.

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Yuso - Mithra

I Want To Make Gil

I stated in my original post that going back to working as intended is perfectly fine. I have no issue with it.

I guess when I boil it down I have 2 issues. 1 is that someone took advantage of the market after the fix in order to put the price where he wants it. The second thing is he is able to pull this off lucratively because of an AH bug that makes it so you can list infinite items and never getting things sent back after x amount of time.

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Yuso - Mithra

I Want To Make Gil

So you're upset that somebody came to the conclusion that supply wasn't going to meet demand for much longer and speculated that a price would rise, so they struck while the iron was hot and seized an opportunity? Anybody could have freely come to this conclusion based on what was apparently public knowledge. You just said you were okay with speculation, so what is the problem? This person isn't doing anything that's against the rules. We all use the auction house in the exact same way that this guy does, so your gripe with listing limits is pretty weird too.

I guess I just don't understand what there is to be upset about. Yeah, it sucks that new players are going to have to pay more gil for one of the best items in the game, but it's one of the best items in the game and that isn't going to change regardless of what its pricetag is.

People don't complain about things like Haubergeon being expensive because they've never been dirt cheap. I think you'll find that people won't protest Peacock Charm being expensive either because it's still a marquee item, and the fact that we were getting them for 60k was honestly absurd anyway.

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Gweivyth - Skyward.
Gilgamesh 2002-2008.

Let's do the Time Warp again!

New to Nasomi and have a question? PM me, I'd be glad to help!

I am Bagholder. The mule is only for convenience of storage, not anonymity.

The auction house has conducted some 7 billion worth of transactions. I think people would be shocked to learn how much of that figure was the sum of myself/my crafting mules.
I don't have much to say publicly on the speculation matter beyond a cautious warning that changes to the current AH system may have a reverse of the intended effect on prices.

This isn't a threat, it's just a statement based on the fact the current AH setup provides the least friction between supply and demand finding a good price point.

If anyone would like to discuss the matter in private, I am always on IRC.

I don't think that having items up forever without expiration on the AH is working as intended. Item listings need to expire in order to circulate inventory stock and keep pricing stable.

I also think that characters that hold more than 1 of a rare item by manipulating the AH for personal storage is not as intended either. This is where my main issue is and I feel it is something that shouldn't be taken advantage of. Do you have 13 plus mules with a charm on each or do you have them all on your AH "Storage" listings? Square-Enix was right when they made a major NM change that they removed that item from circulation and replaced it with a new ex version so that it kept the item and market stable.

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Yuso - Mithra

I Want To Make Gil

What badholder did was wrong, he should not be banned. But a few of his charms should be taken. We can have an event with a give away or something