FFXIV the worst economy in any P2P MMO?

[Aenarion]

If it is so easy to become a level 50 crafter, anything worth selling will soon be flooded with competition and profits go extremely low.

Ask yourself this, what is actually worth selling, and why is it actually selling? A large part of what drives the little market activity that we have are actually because of what you were railing against - other crafters trying to level their craft. Take that away, and you'll have nothing left.

"Competition" is not the problem, laying the blame for the economic woes on it is really just missing the point, which is that not only is there no underlying mechanic in the current game system that drives demand for crafted goods, it actively undermines it.



You are essentially a merchant trying to sell sand, to other sand merchants, in the middle of the desert, with SE the only one who has water - for (on my server) 312.5mil

[Aniforani]

It is super easy to cap a crafting class, but so is leveling any job. There is more time invested to get 50 in DoW/M but no added degree of difficulty. Neither of us deserve a medal for our class capping. The greatest barrier is fighting off boredom.
DoW/M are the foundation of this game, and focus should be towards their enjoyment, but DoL/H are paying for a ticket to this theme park as well. Give us a reason to stay.

[peaches]

Completely agree. All T4 materia is nearly worthless, having gone from 200k down to 20-40k or even less sometimes. Any crafted i70 is nearly worthless as well as the price of tome materials since it became much easier to obtain them. The tome items dropped from 30k to 5k on my server almost overnight. Potions have never sold (funny, I tried the best wind resistance potion on garuda extreme, 80 resistance and it didn't seem to reduce any damage), crafted gear sort of sells pre 50 but its all worth like 1-4k, and if you make more than one piece of something people will undercut you massively. The only thing that seems to be in demand is food, and even then it really isn't an amazing way to make money. I never see people asking for melds anymore, and the rare time someone does ask, literally the instant after they ask I PM them and they already have someone. Even shards have gone down, from 30 each to 10.

I haven't attempted to make money since 2.1, I had 800k that I've held on to and my dungeon runs generate enough gil to cover my repairs. I'm buying food that I don't use horribly often, but I plan on leveling CUL myself to eliminate any costs I may have, and hold on to my 800k in case something comes up I need.

[Ksenia]

Considering the level of scorched earth warfare the game has taken between RMT and Square Enix, we might as well all get some marshmellows and a stick and watch it burn. In for a penny, in for a pound and I really think it's too late to turn back.

[NefGP]

Here's what I feel coming from a legacy server.

- There's still way, WAY too much gil in circulation and I'm afraid housing isn't going to be the gil sink we need. IIRC, a good number of us were calling for a complete gil wipe for ARR and I still think that's what should have happened, along with any and all crafting materials as well. Keep EXP and gear in place but wipe all resources (and I say that as someone who purposely stock piled HQ mats prior to the game shutting down) because there were people in 1.0 who had literally HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF GIL.

- Being able to level every craft & gathering class to 50 is a problem. In XI you could only take fishing and 1 other craft to 100. You could get all of them to 60, but only had 40 levels to use up past that so your choice in crafting was more meaningful. With so many people being able to craft any item, it creates an overabundance of goods.

- ATP items were a very bad idea. All craft materials should be obtained through gathering or against certain high level NMs that are rare drops. By being able to simply spend tomes on them the markets have been flooded and the goods devalued.

- Being able to directly see the prices of your competitors is detrimental. Yes people undercut in XI too, but you wouldn't know by how much exactly unless the seller effectively got caught by a low-baller. So instead of looking at the price history and listing for what you think is a reasonable rate and hoping to sell, we end up with a race to the bottom with jerks undercutting to the point where there's little to no profit to be had. Heck most of the end game 2-star HQ stuff is sold at a loss on Excalibur, which begs the question "why bother?"

- Spirit Bonding is tedious and worthless. iLv70 gear is too impractical to SB for profit (and T4 prices recently crashed HARD) and the process takes forever so there's very little turnaround on durable goods. In 1.23 you could generally sell a tonne of weapons and armor and for a good price because there was such a rapid turnaround on them. With the slowed rates (and +SB gear doing absolutely nothing to speed up the process) in addition to all gear being bound now (which is DUMB) there's almost no market anymore for durable goods. Food spiked up in value recently now that we don't lose it upon death, but it's still somewhat anemic compared to 1.23 where Food had an immediate and powerful impact boosting more parameters and for considerably more than the current lackluster versions we have now. It also doesn't help that 99% of all fish are utterly worthless, as opposed to being used for things like Ink in XI (for Shihei).


I could go on but I kinda want to get back to my Relic quest atm :P

[FelisC]

the real issue is that there is NO NEED, NO DEMAND for anything that anyone can make, specialized or not.

This hits the nail on the head. Any other issues are secondary to this and it will not be fixed until crafters can make items that people actually want to buy and use.

Oh please enlighten me then, if you know it so well.

The % increase on the two star foods is less than on the other foods, and no players have stats high enough for that increase to hit the higher cap that they have.

[Anjian]

Coming from PvP based MMOs, this is in my experience how PvP drives the economy.

1. Gear is expendable, destroyed or lost in PvP and PvE fights. That drives you to buy another.
2. Complete gear loot isn't dropped on missions, quests or dungeons. Only money, exp and raw or rare materials. Gear can only be obtained from crafting.
3. This leads to PvP battles to dominate resources, which is needed for crafting, which supplies gear. Go back to 1.

[FelisC]

Coming from PvP based MMOs, this is in my experience how PvP drives the economy.

1. Gear is expendable, destroyed or lost in PvP and PvE fights. That drives you to buy another.
2. Complete gear loot isn't dropped on missions, quests or dungeons. Only money, exp and raw or rare materials. Gear can only be obtained from crafting.
3. This leads to PvP battles to dominate resources, which is needed for crafting, which supplies gear. Go back to 1.

You're describing EVE's economy, which is fantastic. The problem is that I don't think people would accept losing gear in fights in this (or most) games.

[Aenarion]

- There's still way, WAY too much gil in circulation and I'm afraid housing isn't going to be the gil sink we need.

One time lump sump can never be a good gil sink.

Also, I'd love to see where you get the "too much gil in circulation" from, the price difference of goods on legacy and non-legacy world is rather miniscule at this point.

And no, the gil in people's wallet that is not being used is not "in circulation"

IIRC, a good number of us were calling for a complete gil wipe for ARR and I still think that's what should have happened, along with any and all crafting materials as well.

It's what should've happened, if you wanted ARR to be stillborne. Nothing destroys your core support in a MMO as fast as wiping their stuff.

because there were people in 1.0 who had literally HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF GIL.

Nothing destroys your credibility faster than this. Hundreds of bil? when the cap is 1 bil? what, did they buy 50 copies of the game and capped gil on all the characters on every slot along with their retainers

Being able to level every craft & gathering class to 50 is a problem. In XI you could only take fishing and 1 other craft to 100. You could get all of them to 60, but only had 40 levels to use up past that so your choice in crafting was more meaningful. With so many people being able to craft any item, it creates an overabundance of goods.

No, Overabundance of goods is the result of there being no demand for said goods. Go ahead, reduce the supplier of goods A from 10,000 to 1,000, but when the size of your customer base is 10, it's not going to make one bit of difference.

Being able to directly see the prices of your competitors is detrimental.

I never get this argument, more information, more informed customer and seller is NEVER detrimental, unless you're trying to depend on deception and ignorance to increase your profit margin.

In Eve Online we can not only see the price of the competitors, we also get price and volume for EVERY ITEM GOING BACK FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

You're essentially arguing that the economic system of a medieval nation is superior to that of a modern day country, think about that for a bit.

So instead of looking at the price history and listing for what you think is a reasonable rate and hoping to sell, we end up with a race to the bottom with jerks undercutting to the point where there's little to no profit to be had. Heck most of the end game 2-star HQ stuff is sold at a loss on Excalibur, which begs the question "why bother?"

Again, that "race to the bottom" is caused by the fact that THERE IS NO DEMAND THERE TO SUSTAIN THE PRICE.

In a working economy, if someone sells a goods for below cost, others will simply pick up and resell the item and net the profit, we don't have that in ARR, because nothing is worth buying in the first place.

If you make a steak sandwich, don't blame the Subway down the street when it doesn't sell because all your customers are vegetarians.

I could go on but I kinda want to get back to my Relic quest atm :P

Should go back to your econ textbook first

[SolArisa]

I used to sell Velvet for around 1k a piece , you can now buy the Velvet for like 130 gil from Beast tribe NPC.
[...]
Such madness

What SE is doing here makes me wonder if they ruin the economy on purpose. Yoshi-P always let us know that he is only interested in that kind of drop-focused MMO which plays like a rail shooter, and he has no personal interest in gathering or crafting. I got the impression that crafting only exists now because it has already been here when he got the lead.
Everyone should be aware of the fact that a NPC must ONLY sell basic ingredients which can not be obtained otherwise. And you ensure that consumables really are consumed and not useless. But our director doesn't respect this. He's excellent in marketing, but a terrrible project lead who misses deadlines, redefines goals and his customers are not the gamers, but the stockholders.
This will backfire one day, but I bet Yoshi-P has received his golden handshake until then.