Econ-Friday Ranting 10/16/26

One of the hardest parts of Game Design is cutting through the fluff of what your players think is wrong to find the thing to actually try to fix. For Economy Design this is compounded by the fact that the issues themselves are always ‘compound’, and Econ-History is ‘hard to read’ for old games, so this rant is offering what I know. Therefore it will focus on Final Fantasy XI, with some modern parallels from other current games like it.

There’s a basic formula to this, if you’re willing to oversimplify a little. Low Player Agency as defined here + High Player Economic Meta-Knowledge + Poorly Implemented Resource Sinks (some related opinions on that for context).

Add those up and you get an ingame Economic Collapse, with things like the gear system, Artisanship, or overall Complexity modifying how far-reaching, fast, or severe, that collapse is. This is also where, often, your players will ‘oppose’ you, by demanding Concessions for their own lack of time, skill, or attentiveness, but this is largely separate from the Factors that lead to the problem. It’s just often the catalyst for ‘making an unsuitable decision about one of the factors’.

I’ll use a Food as the first, simpler example because there are a lot of concepts and inter-relations between terms that need to be explained first, so:

Example #1 - Rolanberry Pie

FF11’s Rolanberry Pie is a staple item that could be considered part of the ‘structure’ of the game for a long time, and here’s the related historical data, specifically the Comments section lets you know what people were thinking about during the process that might lead to choosing this as their niche, and most importantly, how they were calculating the profit margin, which is good context for what I’m about to explain.

When making Rolanberry Pie, the player has multiple sources of Player Agency within the process of sourcing the Ingredients, and would be reacting to the Dynamism of the world. The availability of the Sugar used in this pie, for example, varies by which nation is in the lead in the Conquest system, by the current Auction House supply from other players, and from the Cooking Guild limited supply (though generally, one would assume this was all consumed, even though for this to happen, someone out there must be not assuming that). Similarly, profit would vary with the current World-supply of Fire Crystals used to make the Gelatin, or the price of Butter, but this is also a form of Player Agency, because the player is not limited to getting those things from the Auction House.

Food is a Consumable and therefore not really subject to the problem of Resource Sinks failing, in the long term, which helps to simplify the example:

A player who uses up 12 Fire Crystals makes 4 stacks of this item, sells each for 4k, let’s say, and hopes for quick turnover of their product. The general estimate for the profit margin if the player bought every single thing involved is 1k for each Stack, and making those 4 stacks, including the time to buy all ingredients AND list them for sale, is about 15 minutes. This item therefore has a high resistance to Economic Collapses in the base sense. As long as no obviously-superior item with similar ease-of-production appears in the game, the only thing that would cause it to collapse is some factor in Player Economic Meta-Knowledge, such as ‘players expecting the Developers to make obtaining Gelatin much easier’ or ‘players learning/intuiting that the Designers will be making Cooking as an Artisan Profession much more accessible’ (to make Rolanberry Pie at all requires Specialization or an Alt Account, since the character must surpass the ‘available to everyone’ level of Cooking and get to level 80 minimum to even reasonably try it, level 90 to minimize losses, level 98~100 to improve profits).

A high-level Cook of this type who also happens to enjoy the process of collecting Fire Crystals and possibly Ice Crystals, can then consider time spent collecting those things to be ‘adding to their Rolanberry Pie profits’ in a way, by sourcing their own Materials. This normally sparks debates about Opportunity Cost, but it’s certainly true that ‘if Fire Crystal prices go up because something caused the Fire Crystal supply to go down, the player with a stockpile of Fire Crystals has the option to avoid the flux of the Fire Crystal market, and instead attempt to temporarily take control of the Rolanberry Pie market’. This would also be subject to Player Economic Meta-Knowledge.

For anyone who needs an anchor to ‘what these numbers mean’, the Throne and Liberty Equivalent is ‘making 36 Vegetable Stir-Fry and selling that for 12 Lucent’, though there is no direct comparison due to the Artisanship Requirement aspect, and on TL’s side the ‘Great Success’ Requirement. It’s just an example of ‘time vs profit’.

Example #2 - Ruszor Leather

Ruszor Leather is an item with an almost singular use. We’ll focus entirely on that use, making the grip for the Ninja weapon Tsukumo in FF11. This weapon is, in turn, Augmented through a process that leads to a random result, which can then be changed.

The Demand for Ruszor Leather is therefore low enough that it could collapse to nothing, easily, based on multiple factors such as the current Meta, player luck with getting the Augments they desire on the Tsukumo, or a low number of Leatherworking Artisans competing for the Supply. The source of Ruszor Leather is a drop from a specific mob that nearly no player needs to interact with, though, and this high amount of Player Agency (of a slightly different form from the first example) is the reason there is no Layer Error (see previous rant). For comparison, if this item were in a lower Macro-Slot tier, it would be less likely to be ‘safe’, because it would be much more likely for players to fight the mob or get the drops, and therefore there would need to be a less flexible Demand due to the more constant (and probably higher) Supply.

If players somehow became aware that Tsukumo would be provided via Handouts in an upcoming update, or that some item would completely obsolete the Tsukumo in all or almost all circumstances (even general progression), they would change their behaviour toward Ruszor Leather. The aspect ‘protecting’ it from being an Economic Collapse for this Commodity, in that case, would be the one mentioned in the previous paragraph, high Player Agency relative to the choice of if to spend any time on obtaining it.

This is meant to be a simpler, ‘bridge’ example, an item with a single supply point and very few uses, so specifics of historical values and economic flows won’t be given, but what happens when the situation is similar but more interconnected in its complexity?

Example #3 - Kirin’s Osode Set

Unlike Food which is always consumed, and things like Tsukumo which are only obtained when absolutely intended, ‘regular gear’ runs into more problems if it drops from mobs that are intended to be fought often, especially if the system doesn’t grant much Agency in ‘targeting the drop by doing specific content’. To illustrate how this can apply to even fairly competitive, ‘endgame’ style content, we’ll look at an item that was once explicitly an Endgame item in FF11: Kirin’s Osode. This is an item that could only be sold from one player’s Bazaar listing, to other players, and each player was only allowed to have one in their direct inventory, so historical data isn’t exactly available, but the comment section still offers a little information.

This situation created two complementary pressures, because Kirin’s Osode drops, as you would expect, from Kirin. Only one can drop per fight, and getting to that fight requires a large amount of setup, yet this isn’t even the thing most groups would be aiming for from the fight, and it was in some ways almost a ‘pity drop’ after a while for most of them. Just getting to fight Kirin meant one also needed to fight the other four ‘Shijin’, and that meant drops from them too, so to get a single Wyrmal Abjuration: Legs for the Dragoon in your group, there was a decent chance you might get 3-6 Kirin’s Osode ‘first’, and just as many other pieces of other Armor in the same Set, e.g. Byakko’s Haidate.

This level of complexity is common to Classic MMORPGs, it’s practically part of their appeal, but that still means it should be dealt with. While the player can sell the Osode, for the other parts of the set, not even this is possible, and that illustrates the point better than nearly anything because we can decouple the specific ‘actual cost’ and ‘actual value’ from what any Auction House says.

“The player spends time trying to get a Neptunal Abjuration and ends up with multiple drops being unsellable, unclaimable Byakko’s Haidate.”

Supply and Demand for the non-Osode parts of this set are therefore entirely Social, but the Osode is a perfect example of where market Saturation due to failed Resource Sinks devalues not only an item but an interaction. An item that will, by nature, eventually stop having much value even though each player can only hold one, but also appears as a side-benefit of something else the player is pursuing, reducing Player Agency. The more players there are chasing some other Kirin drop, the faster the value of Kirin’s Osode falls, but the player is offered no true alternate path or agency related to this item. If players complain during the early phases about it not being easy enough to obtain quickly, and the droprate is changed as a Concession, this occurs faster.

This is one of the general problems of more Modern MMOs, players complain about not getting the best things quickly enough during the period of high Content Interest, sometimes a Concession is given, supply is increased, and without proper structure in the Design, oversupply follows, which, of course, applies even to ‘Currency’ of specific times, but that’s a rant for next week.