Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

Someone trying to unload before the gates of hell close and they're stuck holding the bag.

That makes sense, looks like a good time to buy because price could go up after? Or not if they can't be transferred off and they will continue to go down?

People can't take chars there with gil (basically RMTing anyway) and take items off, would have to buy gil on a char on Asura and move it off.

It's tough to say for certain.

You'll be able to jump items off asura, but you can't bring the gil back. What good is gil on a server that isn't asura? useless.

It's going to change drastically depending on if the herd takes bahamut, how long fujito takes to respond to it, and how long asura stays closed, or if asura never recovers.

many variables

People will definitely still transfer items off Asura as long as Asura remains the only place to reliably find them. Even if you can't bring gil in, you can buy gil on Asura and buy items with your mule then transfer it out. You can also pay RMT to transfer things to you.

The bigger question is whether Asura will still be as much of an auction hub as it is without transfers in. It has the most gilbuyers by far, but it's importing far more materials than it's exporting. Might hit a point where Asurans can't actually buy what they want any more without access to the natural resources of all the other servers. Just like America is headed.

You mean people import the mats into Asura for the su5+1 gear and others? Because there are the crafters there or what? I thought people had loads of material hoards from duping and cancelling breaking crafts?

Oh wow weird. One of the items that was heavily crafted during the no material loss exploit is being flooded into the market. Almost like somebody has a mule with 100s of them.

I don't see why they would flood them into Asura market rather than take them to other servers and bring the gil back later?

Because they'll actually sell on asura, instead of sit on the AH in bumfuckville for a week

Crafting mats come in, they sell faster on asura.

Crafted items go out, they sell higher on not asura.

I could be wrong, but my impression from looking at the market is that nobody is still holding hoards of medals or HQs. I don't think you actually appreciate the scale of how much gets sold on Asura.

Let's assume someone went turbo-autist and filled entire characters with only Stikini Rings+1, using all 8 wardrobes. Asura sells about 5 a day. It's been ~1800 days since the crafting exploit was patched. 8 wardrobes, safe, storage, locker, safe2, satchel, sack, case, inventory is 1278 space(assuming 2 slots for storage access). They would need to have filled 7 entire characters, using 18,000 dark matter which weren't dupable, and 9,000 kohs(which was, but that's more than a fully expanded character of just kohs). They also would've had to restrain themselves from selling on other servers, or add that many more. They would've needed to go unbanned the entire time. Obviously, you can adjust that downward based on what portion of market they'd be okay with occupying.

Asura goes through at least 2200 beastmen's medals, 1300 kindred's medals, and 1500 dark matter a week just looking at XIAH. That's not factoring anything that got used by the person who farmed it or their shell, transferred for someone's own use, missed because someone bought over 10 at a time, bought in bazaar, etc. Someone storing that many medals is slightly more feasible since they stack to 99, but it doesn't seem to be true either, since SE had to drop them into the login campaign because prices/availability were screwed last year.

Anyway, setting aside the dupe/exploit argument, there is actual evidence you can look at to support the idea Asura imports more than they export. Many materials sell for significantly more on Asura because there are multiple active crafters for each shield and there isn't enough supply now. Look at things like delve mats, Waktza Crests run nearly 10m/stack on Asura while half of the other servers are still below 5m/stack. Beastmen's medals are as low as 40m elsewhere, hovering around 60 on Asura.

Any RMT who crafts(and probably some hardcore normal players) will have no issues paying an extra $18 to save hundreds of millions by transferring mats around. Take a look at the AH history on some of those materials for small servers, you're right on XIAH. Characters with no other history selling a few upcharged things, buying a ton of mats, and disappearing. Very obviously RMT.

Could be I'm wrong on this too, but my impression is that tons of people are sitting there buying gil for their Su5 and +2s without actually farming anything. I would bet half of the beastmen's medals sold the month they were in login campaign ended up on Asura. If a considerable amount of the mats being used to sustain that are being transferred in from other servers, there's real potential that the availability advantage shrinks or disappears entirely vs Bahamut. It works out fine when the gear being transferred out is supplemented by mats being transferred in, not so much if one direction gets closed off..

How?

Theoretically, asura will open back up. Whether it will still be megaserver one, or become once again though...

(But, "we" don't typically play the long game, we assume the apocalypse comes tomorrow, and always stay ahead of it)

I know Thorny... I'm just bitter because I bought 650m worth of Medals after selling my beloved Kraken Club in the hopes I could turn some massive profit.

Little did I know that exploit was discovered right at that time and all SU5 and +2 necks I made would not sell because of the insane undercutting. I would have made back well over 1b with the success I had with that crafting run... I ended up only making 300m of that back.

That Kraken Club was from DRK zerg days. I kick myself for gambling with it.

Playing the long game, but it will be interesting to see that if they balance things out a bit then open it up again if everyone just jumps back to make one mega server.

How long was it known for? How many people knew?

Socks on his fingers

Imagine if they had live transfer service so you could switch to whatever one you want at anytime

Not sure I'd take that bet. Playing long in a game with no future doesn't sound very promising. I'm thinking that unless there's some mass exodus over the next few days, the best it will get is restoration of new character creation. Transfers are probably cooked.

When they see how much damage closing asura will cause to their income I'm at least semi confident they will 180 hard

It will not be timely however, and may be too late to fix

Don't think anyone has an exact answer to that. Certainly long enough that it's possible for someone to still be sitting on a stash from that if they never got banned and made dozens of accounts full of stuff.

I just don't see it, looking at the market.

Not really convinced of this either. Anyone doing organized large scale transfers is hitting 15 servers at a time for the same $18 fee anyway. I can't imagine there are enough random one off transfers to be a blip, especially compared to the current rising population. People like Dodik and Nynja are talking about doing it once every few months, and only during discount campaign.

They'll obviously unlock it when they're happy with the population changes. I don't think that counts as a 180 though, unless it's way sooner than expected.

It's not just the server smugglers, its the bots

New bots that can't be made on asura, won't be made anywhere else until they can be certain the gil can get back to asura. That's the primary loss.

Like the guy making 5 salvage bots every 24 hours, I can't imagine wanting to start doing that on shiva with no prospect of dumping 30k alex daily anywhere and having to hold it.

unless I'm misreading it, as long as your account has 1 character on Asura before 7/29 you can continue to make new characters there.

New mules. You can't make new mains regardless.

so make a ton of new accounts with 1 lvl 1 char now to reserve the right to turn them into something if a different account gets hit!

good business investment

It is but it's obnoxious. Should be making 50 new ones right now.

With no ability to forecast the closure duration, it's suboptimal

(overmake, undermake, maybe they finally banwave, maybe they don't, maybe this maybe that)

they just made us do that last month with bonanza kupons, maybe their real plan is to collect on fresh registration keys

More serious response.. any RMT with a stake in their output would be reserving slots like Kaffy said. However, if everyone who farms elsewhere and transfers their results to Asura were to transfer their farmers to Asura, it would be a shitshow. The type of thing that can be autofarmed by casuals/chinese with off-the-shelf bots (salvage, heavy metal pouch NMs, job points) is going to be thoroughly overwhelmed. But, higher content might also see some serious congestion increases.

The smart move on SE's part would be to go ban-heavy on Asura for a few weeks after shutdown. The increased RMT activity will give them plenty of opportunity to trim population.

Well won't it just mean gil buyers move to bahamut and the sellers follow?

"Eventually"

Theoretically

Optimally

Not certainly.

There must arise a consensus, that all commerce gather in a new hub. And all are willing to pay for it, under the threat of it closing and being forced to move again.

That's generally not a deal people make.

I think the size difference is so large it wouldn't happen if all buyers and sellers moved there. At least not for several years. 3+

All it takes is a day one ban of all the shout bots. No mercs. No asura.

It can happen in a blink or it can take 5 years or it can just blow over.

How aggressive will they go.

I think enough people would stay that it would become what bahamut is now, but better (still higher numbers than that have now and better average geared and quality players)