The Value of Gil

[Dis]

I also tend to do the sackful/handful of gil method, and no one's said much so far.  I know Glioca, for the candies she makes tends to charge a moderate amount (50 gil, so if assuming that 100 gil is a dollar, her candies are .50 cents each, roughly).  Ultimately, I think a non-specified amount is usually best, since there's no way of getting a universal equal amount out without consulting lore devs.  That said, that might be a good question to propose.  They might consider gil more like yen, and less like a dollar, which would make a little more sense, I think.

 

We've seen that the gillionaire achievement requires 10,000,000 gil, and in yen, that's a pretty good hunk of change.  I think counting it more literally might be the easiest way to go.  It technically deflates the value of gil, but given that FFXIV is originally a Japanese game, it would make more sense to me if the currency is based on their own, rather than any other currency system.

[OttoVann]

I posted a thread about this a while ago that had a lot of replies about this. Ill see if I can find it. Might help you

 

Actually I was wrong its barely related

 

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=8714

[SunTzu7]

Much like pokedollars, I think Gil is traditionally equated to the same value in Yen. I could be wrong, but that's how I usually imagine it.

[K'nahli]

I posted a thread about this a while ago that had a lot of replies about this.  Ill see if I can find it.  Might help you

 

Actually I was wrong its barely related

 

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=8714

 

I'm actually wondering If I had made this exact topic already a long time ago...

(And thank you for your replies so far, everyone!)

 

---------------

Thread has been merged with a topic that had the exact same name (+ a "the"!).

[Maril]

Moderator Note:

Thread has been merged from this point on.

 

 

 

Has it ever been "decided" what worth gil holds against real life currency? I have genuinely no idea is 100 gil would be like $/£/€100 if not more, or if it's comparable to pennies.

 

Perhaps it's one of those things that is mostly overlooked for the sake of keeping things simple but I am looking at the Wine Tasting event for example and I want to know how expensive things should be deemed by my character.

 

 

Also, while we're here.... how much would you suggest an inn room would cost for the night(in Ul'dah if it matters) along with perhaps a simple meal?

 

Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back I went to a lot of the in game merchants and I tried to calculate, what a meal was to put together, drinks etc. To try and find out what a person might need in gil per day to survive comfortably. I then held that up against the dollar and my native currency and I somehow got to the conclusion that 5 gil = 1$

I'm not a big maths genius and my methods are a bit flawed since npcs tend to be biased in such a way that higher level item = higher cost because of the levelling curve and how you earn more and more gil naturally as you level up.

With that in hand, I have done lots and lots of googling to find out barprices, rents for a room etc. Tonight I did it for the wine/dine event as well. In my FC we decided to stick with that conversion rate, it's made the financial part of RP easier to handle - I can directly say, your character earns around this much per week and they can adjust - for example when they're punished for breaking rules and lose gil as a result, they can for example run around asking people for food because they don't have gil enough to buy any.

 

Anyways. A full three course meal (in like, a semi good restaurant) I think was around 200 gil, more expensive if you add alcohol, and rooms could be from 500 and up.. Following that logic. The lower the cost the shabbier condition? But I reckon a person could survive, if they had a regular place rented and made all of their meals themselves, on 1000 gil at week. And I mean survive, not live comfortably, there.

 

.. I hope it makes sense and can help you some. I wouldn't expect many others to embrace the same thing as us, but its a place to start I guess.

[Zyrusticae]

It's worth noting that home ownership could actually be a rarity in Eorzea, and that would explain why the lowest-end houses start at roughly 3 million gil. Then again, housing prices make absolutely no sense when you consider there is no upkeep cost - when, in a separate reality, owners of those properties would definitely be paying property taxes at the very least. Speaking of taxes, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a significant proportion of the money that goes into the coffers of each city-state's respective government.

 

Also worth noting that billionaires do exist. I remember during the final Beast Tribe quest that the villain spent some billions (it might actually have been trillions - it's been awhile) of gil on his crazy little contraption, so while even us adventurers are most definitely upper-class citizens with our many millions, there are still NPCs with such wealth that they are untouchable for anyone save the absolute wealthiest of PCs (though I don't think there's a single player who has 1 billion gil in existence yet... or rather, maybe I just haven't heard of it).

 

I don't think using NPC-vendored food works for judging value, either, considering that in an actual reality that food would most definitely be dealing with supply shortages that video games with infinite quantities do not deal in. This is especially true when you consider that Eorzea is still not a heavily industrialized area, and modern agriculture is not yet a thing there (though they do, at least, possess some level of mechanization). If anything, I would expect that any given food item in Eorzea should actually be more expensive than their equivalents on Earth. We have huge quantities of food here relative to what we had in past eras, and TONS of it goes to waste. Eorzea likely deals with food in a very different fashion.

 

All this to say that, really, trying to deal in hard numbers here is likely to only add to your confusion. At the end of the day, it IS a video game, and lots of abstractions have to be made for gameplay concessions over lore. A bit of a shame if you really like the virtual world aspect of the genre, but it is something we just have to deal with.

[Mae]

I think something that's being forgotten is that we're used to the prices of things in today's economy. Let's look at flour (since it's a food staple that's been around at least as long as currency has) and the prices it's had in the US in the past 300-ish years:

 

In 2015 (today), the average price of flour in the US is $2.60 per 5 lbs.

In 1900, the average price of flour in the US was $0.12 per 5 lbs.

In 1800, the average price of flour in the US was $0.02 per 5 lbs.

In 1700, the average price of flour in the American Colonies was... uhh... 10 pence per 5 lbs... and since 12 pence equaled one shilling, and twenty shilling equaled one pound (currency)... uhh... someone else can do the math on that one.

 

So, I think the basic, 'raw' prices of standard things from NPC vendors would probably be... somewhat accurate to base the worth of gil on. Same with basic/low-level clothes bought from vendors.

 

HOWEVER, there's something else to consider that complicates and confuses things even more. We don't know the volume of what we're buying from an RP perspective. Mechanics-wise, the game requires just as many 4gil NPC units of sunset wheat flour for a Starlight Cake as it does for a Bowl of Raptor Stew. Meanwhile, anyone who cooks in the Real World knows that a cake as big as the Starlight Cake would require MUCH much more flour (several cups) than what would be needed to make a roux to thicken a single bowl of stew (a teaspoon or two). It's not just with the food, either. Mechanics say a cotton scarf (that little bandana-headgear that just covers the mouth) uses just as much cloth as a whole cotton acton, which is stuffed, quilted, and has multiple layers of the quilted/padded parts.... etc.

[Zaiaku]

Hmm, Never thought of my character being rich or anything like but he does have coin roughly lil over a mill. Though I do actually use real gil in my role play and make other people take when they don't say I have to. I like the realism aspect of this and balances out the way I spend gil and such. Keeps me from pretending I have unlimited gil in rp.

[Imo]

Any kind of "item X costs Z dollars in real life and Y gil in the game, that means 1 dollar = Y/Z gil" math is bound to fail and not make any sense, because the comparative prices of various items varied a lot over history, and a lot of the game prices were pulled out of nowhere anyway. And that's before magic enters the equation.

 

I think the only thing we can agree on is that an average PC/successful adventurer has much more money to spend than an average Eorzean.

[Khadan]

I go with the price of food and compare similar food items to RL for money comparisons. *shrug*. I know, I know, game-to-RL-comparison thought crime activate.

 

A decent meal can cost anywhere from 10-15 dollars while more expensive meals are obviously in the 20-30 dollar range. I think you can buy basic food items for like 10 gil sooooo, there we go.

 

As for making thousands of gil by level 20? Well you're also getting paid to go out weapon in hand and actively kill monsters that can easily kill you in return. PMC's IRL can make roughly 500-750 dollars a day or 15k to 22.5k a month. So it seems legit that you're holding thousands of gil by level 20ish.

[Ignacius]

I think it's pretty easy to ballpark, but it might be independent of us player characters.  Your common working stiff only needs the barest essentials to survive.  Food, clothing, shelter.  According to what I've seen around, those don't cost much.  I wouldn't be surprised if the average income of your traditional wage slave was 10-20k a year if they stayed in one place and did one job (a basket weaver or fisherman).

 

Now, something that changes from our world is that travel jacks up the amounts.  Tradesmen and adventurers put our lives technically on the line every time we step outside of town.  This drives up the price of trade goods since you have to cover the shortfall and expenses for danger.  That means your average international traveling man might make quite a bit more.

 

Then you've got us.  Our specialty, by and large, is fighting.  We have to upkeep armor.  We use Aetheryte.  Nation-states built us little paradises to sell us houses.  Even the poorest wandering sword, just to maintain his kit, is probably making a LOT more than your average peasant.

 

But we have our own pecking order, you'd think.  Just because you're rich compared to the guy butchering the animals you hunt doesn't mean you're rich compared to other adventurers, and isn't that what we all care about?

[D'aito Kuji]

I pretty much use the Yen to Dollar conversion, assuming that prices are far lower than we are used to today thanks to inflation.  This works with my head canon that D'aito earns around $250 to $500 a month, which works out to 30,000 to 50,000 Gil per month.  This is also the amount of Gil I actually earn as a player month to month.  This means that I and my character have to be careful with money.  I think that's good for the character and fits well into her role as an "underpaid" warrior for the Maelstrom and part-time bounty hunter.

 

She can easily afford to eat, find a room, or book transportation, but can't always afford the best weapons or armor or clothes.

[Naunet]

I've always used 10 gil to the dollar as a good ratio.

 

A hard boiled egg from a vendor is 5 gil, while I can get one from the corner deli for $0.50.

 

The best man jacket and slacks are 30k for the set. A nice suit at Barney's goes for between $1500 and $5000, so $3000 fits nicely in that range.

 

This is pretty much what I assume, too. IMO, the vendor prices are a perfectly reasonable benchmark for determining gil value.

 

Also... hehe, this thread is a blast from the past!

[Ignacius]

I've always used 10 gil to the dollar as a good ratio.

 

A hard boiled egg from a vendor is 5 gil, while I can get one from the corner deli for $0.50.

 

The best man jacket and slacks are 30k for the set. A nice suit at Barney's goes for between $1500 and $5000, so $3000 fits nicely in that range.

 

This is pretty much what I assume, too. IMO, the vendor prices are a perfectly reasonable benchmark for determining gil value.

 

Also... hehe, this thread is a blast from the past!

 

/wave

[Kalooeh]

 

I don't think using NPC-vendored food works for judging value, either, considering that in an actual reality that food would most definitely be dealing with supply shortages that video games with infinite quantities do not deal in. This is especially true when you consider that Eorzea is still not a heavily industrialized area, and modern agriculture is not yet a thing there (though they do, at least, possess some level of mechanization). If anything, I would expect that any given food item in Eorzea should actually be more expensive than their equivalents on Earth. We have huge quantities of food here relative to what we had in past eras, and TONS of it goes to waste. Eorzea likely deals with food in a very different fashion.

 

That and it's a sliding scale to go off based on levels. Of course food in areas for higher leveled people is going to be more expensive because by a certain level it's somewhat expected for you to have at least a certain amount of money, and far more than as a lower level... unless you're really bad with it and blow it all right away on immediate armor upgrades all the time... esp from the ah.

 

It's not necessarily economic based (which can be explained from amount of resources available to just being in a rich area), but just scaled game mechanics.

[Lilia Lia]

This is interesting to think about.  I once tipped a performer 10,000 gil and she was grateful but she certainly didn't act like I was handing her a thousand dollars, nor did I really think of it as more than a modest token of appreciation. 

 

I think this is because you have to go out of way to distinguish in your mind the actual OOC value of gil and your character's IC valuation of gil, and most players don't really do this.

 

A lot of this is probably due to the fact that the cost of living for most players is so low that it's practically zero.  You don't really need to replace your clothes, eat food, or pay the electrical bill, so everything you spend gil on feels like a luxury.  Compare this with the fact that there are sources of income so steady and reliable that there's never any real peril of being broke, starving to death, being evicted from your FC.

 

And I don't think most people RP the financial aspect of their character's lives either, or at least I haven't seen people who do it, though that is likely just my limited experience.  It's kind of implied that your characters eat food and therefore buy food even though you don't RP every instance of it.  So it's also kind of implied that your character is spending a lot of the money that you are actually banking OOC.

[Blue]

I usually look at the price of food from NPC vendors to get an idea of how much gil is worth, and tend to disregard the Market Board, as the prices there are pretty obviously out of context (as well as housing prices, because it is based on the server's economy, which again is OOC). Poverty, meaning, having difficulty to come by with food for the day, should be seen as having no ways to gain more than in the tens of gil a day. 100 gil a day could be compared to a part-time job, or students job for non-professional, or laborers, or other exploited and underpaid classes.

 

To claim to have thousands of gil makes you a part of the middle classes, and it all goes up from there.

 

As for who should have how much, I tend to filter/disregard adventurers telling me they have millions or even hundreds of thousand of gil. If they are however upper-class members and spend all their days in jobs at work, I do can believe they can have that much.

 

If you instead meet someone who spends all his time adventuring, or jumping from a party to another, without spending their time to work AND claiming to not be covered by some filthy rich parents, then no, he cannot have millions, not on my account. Even if you are a thief or an assassin, you'd need to either work for years or to steal/kill someone Very Important in order to accumulate that much.

[K'nahli]

I took this screen the other day in case anyone thinks it might be a valid point of reference and can work out a real-life equivalent for such pricing. Albeit, if you take it as risen by and not risen to then it will be more difficult - and that's what it sounds like to me I guess.

 

 

 

 

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[Melkire]

That's definitely "risen by" and not "risen to."

[Naunet]

I think that is enough to assume, however, that average citizens are not going to be working in terms of thousands of gil.