RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Kieron Lohengrin · **12-11-2017, 04:10 AM**

(12-11-2017, 02:02 AM)Marisa Wrote:
Quote:And even then, because of magic and aether-powered fighting ability, superior tech doesn't translate to martial superiority, as seen with the Xaela annihilating the Garleans and their mecha during the Naadam.

Oh my god, super off-topic but it actually offends me how much this happens. So often we see fights where one side, usually the Garleans, out-classes the other side in every way: Better training, better equipment, better technology, more experience, greater numbers, better group coordination, air superiority, artillery superiority, etc etc. And yet the rag-tag group of jackasses with pitchforks beat them every. single. time. And why? Plot armor and shonen-willpower apparently. Probably the single biggest immersion-breaking thing for me is watching professional soldiers consistently be overpowered by people who have no actual experience in combat outside of bar brawls or hunting. And it's not like they're winning using guerrilla tactics, either. They just run straight into the melee and the Garleans just let them win. Why even have a military at that point?

There's historical precedent for it. The ancient Garleans were / still are incapable of using magic so the rest of the world bullied them into the far north. Only when they developed magitek were they able to start fighting back and do imperial conquest. I admit to chuckling during the MSQ when Sadu started casting her Meteor limit break to nuke the enemy, with her ha-ha-get-fucked-cackle all the while.

I suspect we'll start seeing more Zenos-level threats going forward in 5.0+ now that Garlemald has started dicking around with the artificial Echo.

(12-11-2017, 02:51 AM)hologramblue Wrote:
(12-10-2017, 10:16 PM)Kieron Lohengrin Wrote: The setting in general is a bit weird with its time dilation and tech level. The entirety of ARR, HW and SB take place across several months, a year at most. Large areas of Eorzea and many settlements remain pre-industrial, while an industrial revolution is taking place in Ishgard and the border outposts, driven by independent entrepreneurs like Garlond Ironworks and Rowena. Never mind the existence of airships, Garlemald magitek, the Gold Saucer, and linkpearls - which are effectively ham radios. Instantaneous long-distance communication like that drastically changed the real world.Â

Oh yeah, definitely. There is no One Great Trajectory of history or technological progress or anything of the sort; different corners of Hydaelyn take inspiration from different facets and periods of real-world history, but nothing maps perfectly to the world as we know it.

In the case of economic ablooblah, when I say "pre-industrial economy", I'm thinking of the specific developments that really shape how people in the "developed world" today relate to goods and currency. Things like the technology and infrastructure used to get goods from place to place, the communications technology we use to find out what's available in other places and what its value is (and thus standardize prices and currency values), and the political happenings that determine the shape of trade routes and the stability of currency.

I think of Eorzea's economy as being generally more similar to (what we think of as) a pre-industrial economy than a post-industrial one mainly for two reasons: first is the reliance on artisans and handmade goods over mass-manufacturing, and second is the apparent reliance on overland transport by chocobo.

The first is a gimme - mass-manufacturing (and automation in agriculture and natural resource extraction) totally changes a society's concept of what things are worth. Reading up on what life was like before those advances in reality gives a better impression of how an Eorzean might think of their money and what they buy with it.

The second kind of varies since there are airships whizzing around, but airships can't service every settlement on the continent, and we see tons of cargo movement by chocobo. Eorzeans have to contend with all kinds of hazards on the road, which complicates supply chains. One of the big effects of modern transportation tech is a slow equalizing of urban and rural areas in terms of what goods can be acquired, and sort of a trend of overcoming geography - think the seasonlessness of grocery stores, how you can walk in and buy an orange absolutely whenever because it's shipped in from Florida (assuming you're American), or how your proximity to the, idk, pencil factory doesn't affect the cost of a box of pencils because to transportation overhead was so low.

Eorzea is going to have way, way less of that.

I forgot what the rest of this paragraph was going to be because it's 2 am and I'm wiped. Tl;dr lots of subtle little things inform our whole concept of what money is and what it means and what it's worth and those subtle little things are at play in Eorzea too and it's super cool and now I really want a Cadbury creme egg because I'm thinking about seasonal availability

I think you're right about the artisan-dependent economy and the lack of factory mass production. As well as supply chains in Eorzea getting more affected by bandits, monsters, beastman tribes and Garleans, so the Grand Companies and adventurers get plenty of work.

Many of the setting's events are driven by individuals who went against their societies' isolationism and prevailing groupthink: the Circle of Knowing and Sharlayan, Cid and the Empire, Haurchefant and Ishgard. Rowena amassing all that Allagan knowledge and partnering up with groups like the Ironworks and the Idyllshire goblins make me think she'll be the first mass production industrialist and robber baroness a few years down the line, JP Morgan-style.

Marisa · **12-11-2017, 08:46 AM**

(12-11-2017, 03:24 AM)Mermaid Wrote: Actually, aren't the seasons in Eorzea all screwed up right now? I seem to remember there being some quote from the game that said Gridania hadn't seen a winter in 5 years. Meanwhile, their next door neighbors in Coerthas see nothing but snow. I remember some of the HW crafting quests talking about things like fashions, armor, and popular dishes changing because of that.

I'm not sure if that would make it better or worse for getting seasonal goods.

I only vaguely remember something like that about Gridania, but you're 100% correct about at least Coerthas being all screwy. Being just North of Carteneau, most of the airborn particulate from Bahamut's little tirade seems to have all drifted their way, causing a miniature, localized ice age similar to when Krakatoa erupted on Earth.Â Â Â

Not sure why that would cause Gridania to do the opposite, but I get the feeling it has to do with the Elementals.

ExAtomos · **12-11-2017, 09:37 AM**

(full disclosure, I scanned the previous comments.)

I use gil prices in the same format as the yen. Therefore 4800 gil = 48 bucks. I feel this is in line with in game prices. You didn't think you were paying 5 bucks for one boiled egg, did you? More like 5 cents. X)

This is just my logic at least and why the Pizzeria prices are set accordingly. (ie: We have 900 gil specials on some days. 9 buck pizza is a pretty good deal.)

We have gil coins in different denominations too, so this cuts down on weight.

My characters carry between a lot to not much, depending on how wealthy and/or paranoid they are.

Moogle

Gegenji · **12-11-2017, 09:43 AM**

(12-11-2017, 09:37 AM)ExAtomos Wrote: We have gil coins in different denominations too, so this cuts down on weight.

I stumbled back on something that might support this in-lore too. They're likely older print and thus may not fully imply the approach is still in use, but in one of the Kojin daily quests you loot some Eorzean coins from some chests. You get silver and gold coins, so - if that format of minting is still in production - that could imply different denominations.

Sounsyy · **12-11-2017, 10:06 AM**

More evidence on gil denominations:

Encyclopedia Eorzea - On the Design of Gil Wrote:In times of eld, coins would typically bear designs inspired by heroes, leaders, or religious imagery of the nations that minted them. With the introduction of gil as a universal currency, however, a consensus of experts from all nations made the decision to adopt neutral designs - ones not rooted in the traditions of any one culture or nation - in the interest of avoiding needless debate. To this end, the face of Nymeia, the Spinner, was chosen to grace the one-hundred gil coin. An exception to the rule can be found in the commemorative one-gil coins issued by the grand companies for Foundation Day, which are emblazoned with the images of the leaders of their respective city-states.

And a bit on gil having varied worth depending on demand and location, since it was brought up earlier:

I'll Swap You Wrote:Gil has quite lost its value in some parts of Coerthas, wherewinterÂ is king and warmth the only coin of the realm. Bartering is the preferred method of commerce, and well-made doublets buy three times their own worth in wool grease.

I couldn't find the bit about Gridania not having a winter in 5 years though. 5 years ago, Gridania did have a very late winter? On a quick search I found this bit that makes it seem like Gridania is expecting a winter to come:

Going Green Wrote:Leafbleed slugs have infested the stable's gysahl fields, infecting almost a third of this season's crop. Without the greens, many of our chocobos will not survive theÂ winter. Help is sought in clearing the fields and surrounding forest of the troublesome pests.

Mermaid · **12-11-2017, 10:31 AM**

(12-11-2017, 10:06 AM)Sounsyy Wrote: I couldn't find the bit about Gridania not having a winter in 5 years though. 5 years ago, Gridania did have a very late winter? On a quick search I found this bit that makes it seem like Gridania is expecting a winter to come:

Going Green Wrote:Leafbleed slugs have infested the stable's gysahl fields, infecting almost a third of this season's crop. Without the greens, many of our chocobos will not survive theÂ winter. Help is sought in clearing the fields and surrounding forest of the troublesome pests.

I genuinely have no clue where I heard it. Guess I must have read a misquote somewhere? The only thing I could dig up was a quote from an event saying winter hadn't come to the North Shroud specifically. I guess if there's some weird aether going on around there that'd make sense. It's closest to Coerthas which very clearly has some sort of ice aspected aether imbalance.

Geldnar Hothbane · **12-11-2017, 11:54 AM**

I am poor so I carry all my gil on me Sad

hologramblue · **12-11-2017, 11:58 AM**

OH RIGHT that's where that paragraph was going, re: rural vs urban, along the lines of that Coerthas leve.

Money gets its value from your ability to get things with it. The universality of its value today is a product of the reliability of trade networks; you can count on being able to go to the store and exchange $$$ for goods, because they can count on being able to exchange that $$$ to their suppliers for goods, and so on down the line. At the root of it, the value of money reflects confidence in the physical availability of goods.

So, if for whatever reason people aren't confident in their ability to trade a certain kind of coin for Stuff, the value of the coin dives. In the Coerthas example, these rural Coerthan towns can't eat or wear gil - it's a commodity for trading with merchants to get goods they can't produce on their own. Problem is that the snows have fucked up trade routes, so the presence of these merchants is unreliable, and bam presto, taking gil instead of barter is a gamble because it might not get you what you need. The value of gil dives.

And here's where I was going - I would imagine that other frontier-like locations in Eorzea have something similar going on (though not to the same extent as poor Coerthas), where it's common for people to be resource-rich and cash-poor because money isn't super crucial to trade within a small village, just for getting goods from elsewhere. Ever read a fairy tale where grandma pulls a few dusty coins out from under the bed and tells grandkid to go to the city and buy medicine/whatever? Yeah.

Something worth thinking on if you play a character from a remote area.

Sounsyy · **12-11-2017, 12:33 PM**

(12-11-2017, 10:31 AM)Mermaid Wrote: I genuinely have no clue where I heard it. Guess I must have read a misquote somewhere? The only thing I could dig up was a quote from an event saying winter hadn't come to the North Shroud specifically. I guess if there's some weird aether going on around there that'd make sense. It's closest to Coerthas which very clearly has some sort of ice aspected aether imbalance.

I think you're remembering the Winter's Knell event from 1.0, in which Gridania was facing an unseasonably late and warm winter. Which, during the course of the event, was corrected. The bit you said about North Shroud jogged my memory! But yeah, that happened in 1572, 5 years ago.

Ninipu Wrote:The Black Rabbit Traders be lookin' fer sure-armed folk t' help out with a certain festival. What sort o' festival, ye ask? Why, the one what ushers in the winter, missy. The weather up in the North Shroud don't seem t' be gettin' as cold as it rightly should this time o' year, ye see, an' them Gridanians is bloody wailin' about it. Bah! We're it up t' me, I'd strike the season from the reckonin' an' go straight to spring, but ye could be sure them tree-botherers would spout some bilge about the bleedin' circle o' life. Anyroad, the Gridanians was scratchin' their heads at the whole affair when some bollock-brained Ala Mhigans told 'em about this festival o' theirs calledÂ Winter's Knell. S'posed t' beckon the blessin' o' winter, or some such rubbish.

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[Discussion] What is the value of a Gil, and how much does your character carry on them?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes