[Ralath]

So sorry if I misunderstand something. My understanding of economics is limited to supply-demand, what I read in the paper, and common sense.. xD

Essentially the best way to look at it is this: every time a person creates a new character in Fiesta, the economy has to inflate. The game naturally creates inflation to accomodate for every character. There is a fixed amount of money that a player's character can add to the economy (that is money not acquired through trades, but rather the amounts given from quests). This is the only form of inflation that I noted in particular in my post as being the point of interest.

Hmm... How does that differentiate between a person who, say, farms a lot of sap in the the sap farms in AEW and someone who only farms and only gets money from quests? Obviously, the person who has farmed a lot of Sap and then NPC'ed it has a lot more money to add than someone who has simply gotten money from the quests. The game has a near limitless supply of ways to earn money, simply by NPCing mushrooms, ore, petals, starfish, clam meat, whatever.

This inflation that would occur as it does with every other character is being held back by the gold sellers until they get someone who will pay real money for Fiesta Gold. So yes they are reducing the rate at which currency is being added to the economy so they are reducing inflation - the thing to note as some of you are aware, the inflation related to the Gold Sellers is inevitable, but this is a game mechanic, not a Gold Selling mechanic, every character helps Outspark deliver new currency straight into the economy. So very quickly, Gold Sellers do this too, but they don't dump it into the economy as soon as they get it like everybody else.

The thing with this is Gold Sellers don't... affect the economy otherwise in any other way. That is, they aren't spending money for skills, or equips, or HP/SP stones like real players do--that money "disappears" into the game forever (and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is good for keeping down inflation since it is removing money from the economy). Also I'm assuming they aren't getting their money from quests since the money that is earned through quests is actually not a lot compared to the same amount of time spent farming. Not to mention it's hard for bots to figure out quests and what to kill and to turn in quests. @.@

When Gold Sellers farm drops and sell them, they are shifting the overall economy from one in which prices can be easily shifted to one in which prices are fairly stationary (i.e. Dim Dusts tend to stay between 70c and 90c, if someone priced their Dims well outside of this, they will notice a drastic change in the amount of sales they're actually getting).

I dunno about this one but I don't think Gold Sellers actually sell (vend) the drops they farm. I've always been under the assumption that Gold Sellers are using bots that can farm or mine and they will later sell these drops to an NPC and since they aren't limited by time, this is highly profitable for them. (I wouldn't be surprised if one gold-selling company could be run by just a couple people.)

Also, another thing to note is that unlike the real world, there isn't a certain amount of money that players have to earn in order to "play." Yes, it's nice to have HP/SP stones, but those aren't necessary in the sense that IRL, food and other expenses are necessary. So for many people (like me), vending stuff that I don't want is a bonus. I would still do fine whether I sold/bought stuff or not. I know that whenever I cannot sell my equips, I will continually lower my price until I can sell them. However (and correct me on this if I'm wrong), retailers feel like they have to keep raising the price of everything to keep up with the expenses. A character's most basic expense in Fiesta is from the NPC, which do not ever change prices.

Basically, I don't consider Fiesta to be dependent on currency flow from one player to another.