Thinking About Economies While Watching Final Fantasy XVI

Over the last few days I've watched streamers play Final Fantasy XVI, the new single player game in the Final Fantasy series. I don't plan on playing the game anytime soon, and not just because I don't own a Playstation 5. At this point in my life, I don't want to lock myself away for tens of hours at a time with no human interaction at all. The biggest reason is a game's economy. Interacting with real people is so much more interesting than a generated script that allows one to buy and sell certain things at certain times.

A single player game by definition can't provide the human touch in the economy. Buying and selling items to and from NPCs isn't the same as knowing someone living hundreds if not thousands of miles away was affected by my gameplay. If someone uses a batch of ammunition I manufactured to blow someone else up in EVE or uses some high quality food I made in Final Fantasy XIV to help complete a raid, I made a difference. Perhaps a small difference, but a difference all the same.

The competition angle also comes into play. Play an MMO long enough and rivalries can occur. FFXIV tries to hide that a bit by making players sell items through retainers. In EVE Online, most of the serious industrialists have alt characters to allow them to sell more on the market. But I do remember in Everquest 2 the market war my guild engaged in with a rival guild whose guild leader liked to smack talk one of our leading members. The activity led to a lot of unintended gameplay.

I know some players hate the fact that other players can have an effect on prices and availability of items on the market. The dislike leads to systems in games like Black Desert Online in which players can only sell items within a pre-defined price range. Sorry, but if players think an item is only worth 10 silver and the devs think the appropriate minimum price is 50 silver, players will need to pay the 50 silver or go acquire the item through farming.

For me, give me games like EVE Online and Final Fantasy XIV where players have a greater impact on the economy. A game can have a great story like I see on streams of FFXVI, but a good player-run economy like EVE or player influenced economy like FFXIV is what I prefer. A single-player game just can't offer that.