FFXIV the worst economy in any P2P MMO?

[Meshico]

What if they put averages, based on weekly sells, so people could not put anything under a certain amount...

Now I realize that this limitation will upset a lot of people that want to sell things as fast as possible, but it would also give people a chance to sell things for a decent profit. And in turn have some gil circulating.

You would not be able to NPC the said item for the Minimum amount of gil.

But setting minimums on certain items based off of averages that reset weekly well, and at the beginning of a month it would reset completely. People might rush to sell things at the beginning of the month and that might be spike sell times.

Either way this is a very rough, idea, that would need to be refined, molded and worked over by someone that has a much better understanding about economics...but at least it could be a start.

[DiceMan]

They would need to add more maps with high lvl 50 plus mobs. I mean you can almost solo every map at lvl 45 if your careful. They would have to implement a rare into every single crafting class. They would need to make the gathering classes have more then one node to farm so the botters don't farm them 24/7. They would need to make the best crafting mats drop in the hardest mode of the game which a lot of casuals don't have access to. There is a lot that would be needed to revamp the crafting in this game. A entire new patch if they wanted to get it right. And in the end that cost money and time. I don't see it happening.

[DokutoruGwydion]

Its a perfect storm of a bad economy.
1) Items drop off mobs at huge rates.
2) Gatherers have a high success rate, with nodes that replenish, and can CHOOSE what they want to harvest specifically, rather than allow random chance.
3) Very easy to level crafting classes.
4) Low demand for consumables (potions, food, etc). There's no turn over.
5) Crafted items blow compare to dungeon gear.
6) Crafted items took more time and money to make a sub-par piece than it took to just run a dungeon for the tomes to get a piece of DL.
7) No risk to gathering in dangerous, high level areas.
8) No cap per character on what you can do (i.e., you can be every gatherer and crafter, rather than say XI's only 1 craft to max or WoW's only allowed 2 profession system).
9) Recipes take only a few items to create, but the items themselves are numbered in the 100s and they're all pretty cheap.

[Nadrojj]

In a game where you do not have to be a dedicated gatherer and crafter, where you can be everything, there is little demand for anyone to buy crafted items because they can make them themselves.

The ability to be any class is one of the great things about FFXIV to attract people but sadly it is also one of the big problems.

This is it right here. The fact that you can have every single craft at 50 leads to the market being super saturated. In 11 you had to pick what you wanted to specialize in after 50, and that led to people being "known" for crafting that certain type. Now you can have every single craft to 50 you can make everything yourself which leads not no niches which leads to no profits. In ffxi I was the only one on my server supplying Ram Leather for a good year of game time. I made millions off it, somewhere around 10 million selling a stack of 12 ram leather for 25k. During rmt Christmas I was able to jack the price up to 55k a stack and I could not supply it fast enough, I would get tells asking from people checking the market history and asking me when the next time I was going to put up the next few stacks. It made logging into the game and farming for me a fun time because I knew people needed what I had, and the more I supplied the more money I would make.

There is nothing like that today. With every person able to not only level all gather but also all craft classes there is the instant ability to go out farm your mats and make your item.

This pared with the fact that there is nothing that is crafted that beats anything you can get in dungeons makes crafting useless. Gone are the days of scorpion harnesses, huabergeons, items that were entry level but vital for your job, items that dropped from notorious monsters and then were crafted into armors. Gone are the days of notorious monsters and items that you didn't need for your job, but you strove to get (strider boots, euryots' bow, dryad staff) I really think the will need to re-evaluate the economy in patches as we move forward or else there will be very little incentive to continue to craft. I really enjoy the crafting system they created, but I don't want to waste gil leveling it as there really is no point.

[Gidonoidon_Sur]

I agree with a lot of the points here. However, maybe this is just the foundation. Say with the expansion (or maybe even a patch) they could add recipes up to the new level cap (e.g., 55), however, constrain it so you can only pick 1 craft to "master." That way leveling other crafts to 50 would still be useful for the cross class skills, but there would also be specialization and therefore limited supply (creating value).

[Nadrojj]

I would love to see them do this, pick a craft, pick a gather, and then be able to master it. You can't level any higher in your other craft/gather classes but you get access to higher tier recipes, would shrink and help develop the current market.

[Shadex]

I agree with a lot of the points here. However, maybe this is just the foundation. Say with the expansion (or maybe even a patch) they could add recipes up to the new level cap (e.g., 55), however, constrain it so you can only pick 1 craft to "master." That way leveling other crafts to 50 would still be useful for the cross class skills, but there would also be specialization and therefore limited supply (creating value).

Think of that from a new player perspective though. Hey, spend countless hours on this trade that will only matter or have any possibility of selling once you get to end game. Too many developers do this. They focus so much on making everything about end game they forget the rest of the journey should be fun as well. If everyone can make everything even up to a certain level it dooms early crafters to frustration and maybe never becoming end game crafters.

[Gidonoidon_Sur]

Think of that from a new player perspective though. Hey, spend countless hours on this trade that will only matter or have any possibility of selling once you get to end game. Too many developers do this. They focus so much on making everything about end game they forget the rest of the journey should be fun as well. If everyone can make everything even up to a certain level it dooms early crafters to frustration and maybe never becoming end game crafters.

I agree but I think SE decided that crafting 1-49 would be pretty useless since you get gear from leveling and level so fast. I think they shouldn't have included gear from quests rather just gil and exp. Then if they just added vendors selling really basic gear every 5-10 levels cheap people could get by, but there would still be an incentive to buy the better crafted stuff.

[OSUBuckeye4]

As long as someone can make a profit (even if it's a small one), the economy is fine.




The economy becomes "broken" when one of a few things happen:

1) No one buys/sells anything (because they can make it themselves with relative ease, OR, because there is nothing worth buying because better things are more readily available via questing/dungeons)

2) People do buy/sell things, but, only at a net loss to the crafters who made the original item


We're not at that point yet (EDIT: On a global/server-wide basis), but, as more and more people hit all-50's... we're going to get there (to #1, which will lead people down the path of #2 when people just start to sell to clear up more inventory space).

I'm interested to see how SE addresses this. Level 50 crafting is not as big of a problem (right now) as a vocal minority are making it out to be (so, people went from making 150k pure profit to 10k pure profit on the rarest items... that's not a broken economy, it's just increased competition... you're still making a profit), but, down the road it is going to be a huge problem if not addressed.

EDIT: I'm not going to touch on pre-level 50 crafting because I think the ship has sailed on that. It's too easy to get to level 50 (which is a completely seperate issue), and there is no need for competent players to spend anything more than trivial amounts on pre-50 gear. There's not a whole lot SE can do to remedy this.


Giving everyone the ability to do everything is great on paper, but, there needs to be some kind of incentive for people to work with each other.

[Shadex]

My FC currently has all crafters and gatherers at 50 and a contract system where any member that needs anything goes through us rather than buy anything. It started as an experiment to see if it would help us save money for the FC house but it has ended up so successful no one in our FC has purchased anything off the AH in over a week. That is just us but I would venture a good guess that many FCs are close or doing the same thing. So there is the 'no one buying anything' issue. So now what Square? No one in my entire FC will ever buy anything off the AH again because we don't need to. Now sure, this same situation could have been acheived with more restrictive systems but it would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer so fewer would have done it. Now as easy as it is, this will become the norm, not the exception.