Do something about the AH and lower level gear????

Did you ever stop to think that perhaps a lot of the lower to mid level gears were also plentiful because people were leveling their crafts. 7+ years into the game, those players have leveled their crafts and the only incentive to make the lower level gears and sell it is if it can be done for a profit. If the mats aren't readily available and the resulting item can't be turned in a reasonable time frame for a reasonable profit--there is no incentive to make it.

There is a simple solution that has already been mentioned here--take advantage of the tools already present to combat the issue. Gather the mats your self and either ask your ls/friends or /shout for crafting assistance, or--heaven forbid--take some initiative and take up crafting like all those other people did years ago.

The responsibility to resolve your issue lies not with the developers--it lies with the player. The tools and opportunities exist to support yourself just fine. The way you guys with the complaints are talking, this game would have never gotten off the ground in the first place. You do realize that the PLAYERS THEMSELVES had to figure ALL this crap out through their OWN research and experimentation. Stop expecting everyone else to bear the burden of making the game easy for you and take some initiative. That's how it was in the beginning, that is how it shall be for days to come.

I don't expect new players to know where to look... but if they aren't complete douches.. usually people will tell them what community sites are out there.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

That said, I think the OP is being dense. Yes, the original point of the thread was to discuss measures to increase the armor supply that circumvent crafting. However, the Devs have always tried to be very careful when dealing with crafters and player-supplied goods. That's the entire point behind a player-driven economy. We may not be addressing your proposed solution, but we are directly addressing the cause. If there is a lack of armor on the AH, it is because the consumer is not willing to give the product a viable market. Make the market viable, then people will be willing to work in it.

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I do think that people are confusing "doesn't want to pay" with "not enough low-level players to support crafting low level items."

That's the issue here. There is no way to tell if newbies are willing to pay or not because the armor isn't on the AH. Again, my LS mate, I am pretty sure would have been overjoyed to pay any reasonable price for seer gear - but there was none up for Auction.

When a crafter puts something up for auction and gets sent back maybe they interpret that as "no one wants to pay X price" when the real answer is "no one wanted that piece of gear for the last three days."

Don't know what you guys are talking about making it profitable for crafters, I am making a killing off lower level equipment esp, the 12-30 gear.

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Originally Posted by Olor

I just don't understand why people who don't want to help the problem (by crafting and creating supply) don't support the idea of fixing the problem through game design (making crafting more accessible to new players/adding items to npcs)

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Um.. crafting is available at level 1, and mats are available from local vendors or from monsters/quests and the AH's. There is a system to send money and items to players in other areas that you also can access at level 1. If you are in Sandoria, you can buy mats and send items and gil to a crafter in another city to buy the remaining items. They crafti tnad voila--they send the item back to you.

You also don't really need much of anything but the gear you are given when you start to get your first 6 or 7 levels, as detailed in a previous post. Technically, you could solo all the way to level 15-17 without ever upgrading your gear at all if you wanted too. By that time, you have accumulated a moderate amount of gil and CP and are able to purchase some decent gear and start forming parties, get social with players, join an LS, and find crafters and such to help you out.

If a player never wants to get off their duff and just do it and instead expect someone else to do all the work for them....that's another problem, and more and more it sounds like what you guys want. You don't want to explore and socialize so you can ask people for assistance, and you don't want to take it upon yourself to make/farm your own stuff. So, the only option is for you to deal with vendor bought gear, which may not be as good as the crafted gear and may cost more (belive me, at one time this was not always the case--leather gears were simply bought and sould for a double markup in the AH's, and people BOUGHT it!!). Well, time to get up and do something about it yourself--stop crying foul because it's not being done for you.

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Originally Posted by Unctgtg

Don't know what you guys are talking about making it profitable for crafters, I am making a killing off lower level equipment esp, the 12-30 gear.

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Yeah, when people are willing to pay 20K+ for straight conquest gear I call bull-shiz on people that say there is no profit in crafting items which are better than conquest gear, or serve jobs not well served by the conquest gear. The truth is, it is easier to make profit selling Abyssea drops than crafting low level gear - which is why my favoured suggestion is to make it easier/cheaper to level crafting.

That will help new players be more self-sufficient, while also helping them supply their fellow adventurers who may not have as much time to craft. (Believe it or not, there are a lot of players that just want to adventure and kill stuff - rather than spending hours running all over vanadiel with no chocobo/teleports/fast travel options to get overpriced items from npc shops to craft with)

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Originally Posted by Runespider

I have numerous high level crafts on various chars, I haven't been near a craft synth since a while after the introduction of Abyssea.

Gil isn't anywhere near as needed as it was, so you don't have dedicated crafters crafting to make money. I haven't spent any money on anything at all except shihei for 6-7 months...aside from a handful of NPC bought scrolls (abyssea chest drops sold to npc more than covered these).

Crafting is dead, currently there is very little point to craft or raise one, many basic armor synths were cheap and stocked well on the AH cause they were skillups synths. Taking a craft up now is stupid since aside from the reasons already mentioned, HQ gear is useless and even one of the old reasons people crafted (making signed +1 armor for themselves) is now pointless cause everything you can synth is crap compared to Aby drops.

So many people leech in Abyssea now where you need no gear that demand is way down anyway.

All these things together means they need to make a new sub category on the AH for NPC sold armors, they aren't screwing the crafters cause nobody makes them or cares anymore. If they destroy the need for gil, allow very popular leeching and kill crafting they need to fix it so players can actually get gear from the NPCs and for the prices to not be stupid high.

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Good lord above...if THIS is not enough proof that abyssea is killing the game...idk what the heck else to say....-_-;

Ive been thinking about this problem. Maybe its time for the AHs all to be one. If the town Ah are no longer being fed gear and low level gear is becoming more rare, maybe its time to merge them all into one. A bit like the way the chocobo racing all converge into one area. After all RL is moving ah to telephone and internet bidding and not just local site bidding. Come on SE help us do this. Put all the gear from the towns onto the Jeuno auction and link them back to the town ah so people can check where ever they are. A bit like Whitegate links to Jeuno. While you are there increase the number of items to sell to 10.

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Originally Posted by katz

Ive been thinking about this problem. Maybe its time for the AHs all to be one. If the town Ah are no longer being fed gear and low level gear is becoming more rare, maybe its time to merge them all into one. A bit like the way the chocobo racing all converge into one area. After all RL is moving ah to telephone and internet bidding and not just local site bidding. Come on SE help us do this. Put all the gear from the towns onto the Jeuno auction and link them back to the town ah so people can check where ever they are. A bit like Whitegate links to Jeuno. While you are there increase the number of items to sell to 10.

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They already announced this was coming. Updates just got pushed back because of the earthquake situation, and the timeline is all monkeyed up right now.

EDIT: link to the announcement on AH merger from 1/20/2011:
http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics...39/detail.html

They also stated in a forum post that after the merger is completed and they can guage the impact on the servers they will consider increasing the cap on number of listings. This was reduced ages ago to balance server load. With auctions merged into one system, there may be less demand on resources and could allow for increasing the listing cap.

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Originally Posted by Flunklesnarkin

you can also search for crafters by server on ffxiah...

just point in click to w/e parameters you want.. ie. lvl 100 bonecraft / bismarck server and click.. you get all the results.. a lot of people use that website.

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Why do people need to go out of FFXI to get the information. SE should have a porter moggle information desk, find me a level x crafter who is on line.

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Originally Posted by katz

Why do people need to go out of FFXI to get the information. SE should have a porter moggle information desk, find me a level x crafter who is on line.

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Because you'd need to refer to information online to be aware of and find the moogle in the first place, so why not take that extra step and stop being a lazy waste of resources?

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Originally Posted by Krystal

Good lord above...if THIS is not enough proof that abyssea is killing the game...idk what the heck else to say....-_-;

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Crafting was pretty much dead long before abyssea came out aside from a few profitable synths and consumables like food and ninja tools anyway. Low level gear hasn't actively been made by the crafting community since probably about 2005. The entire crafting/synergy system needs a drastic overhaul and it has little to do with abyssea.

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Originally Posted by Flunklesnarkin

I don't expect new players to know where to look... but if they aren't complete douches.. usually people will tell them what community sites are out there.

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I would think that anyone starting to play FF11 these days would simply use Google to find relevant information regarding FF1 that they might need.

Some people in this thread seem to believe that new players have the intelligences of 5 year olds. I'm sure if they wanted to know something they would look it up. Most people have access to the Internet....especially people who are playing an online game.


As for this "problem", I don't think it really exists. It just sounds like someone who went to level some low level job and couldn't find a Spike Necklace on the auction house when they wanted to go level. You don't even need awesome gear when you're low level, a weapon and a few pieces here and there will do until 30-35, then you can get better pieces as you go along.

I don't remember having awesome gear my first job and I'm sure new players don't expect to have awesome gear right away either.

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Originally Posted by katz

Why do people need to go out of FFXI to get the information. SE should have a porter moggle information desk, find me a level x crafter who is on line.

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They don't need too.. but it is an option that a lot of people use to find a crafter..

and I fail to see how telling a noob about community sites is a bad thing..


Could there be some super high speed crafting system.. sure..

other games i've played you could search for crafters like you searched for exp pt's.... ie.. lvl 100 goldsmithing.. looking for work.

something like that would be super awesome.

I agree with the OP in that low level gear is very hard to find on the Auction House. Its kind of annoying now to go back and level a job from 1-30 and have it not only take ages to find gear, but then have it be outdated so quickly and have to fart around again trying to find half decent gear (i.e. not be naked). You can certainly find bits and peices, but it usually involves going to the Jeuno auction house. CP armor is a good option if you had the foresight to choose the city which suits the job you want to level but for the average player theyre not going to make enough CP for this to be worthwhile straight away. "Go out and craft it yourself" is not really a good solution, most people don't want to be naked for a few days while they skill up a craft and newer players might not have the resources or the desire to level a craft. There should be options for them without HAVING to craft or use CP. At the moment there really isn't many besides level 1 RSE.

Some solutions are these (and yes they do involve crafting and making gil), and I think theyve been mentioned already.
- Reduce the cost of armor from NPC's and/or make a better range of items available in the starter cities from vendors. Despite what people have said armor from NPC's is priced incredibly highly for the current state of the game (i.e. none of those items on the AH).
- Make it viable for people to be selling or crafting (dirty word sorry) lower level armor again
- Link the auction houses! (this is the big one and looks like what we're going to get)

I have to say, Spending about 2/3 of the OP telling people this is not a flame topic and dont go off topic and all that stuff is not going to get people who weren't going to anyway to not post whatever they were going to post. Just post your topic and let the moderators intervene if something ebcomes a problem.

On the topic, I don't really see the issue being raised. As far as I can tell, any current problems with item availability will be solved by the merging of the AHes. It will be much easier to sell gear of varying levels because anyone who needs stuff will be able to access it from anywhere.

"- Link the auction houses!" - Unnecessary to suggest this, they are already doing it.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

"- Link the auction houses!" - Unnecessary to suggest this, they are already doing it.

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Yes, this thread is pretty much moot. Problem is already being looked at by the dev team.

*yawns* hai guys, whats going on.

The development team is aware of the problems you're all mentioning and are concerned about it as well. While we are planning on merging the Auction Houses in the next version update, we are aware that this won't completely resolve the issue. However, once the merge is completed, we'll closely monitor the situation and see what can be done to further address it.

I won't lie and say I read all of this thread (I gave up around page four), but I DO remember what it was like to be a new player back in 2003. I was just a FFVII and FFIX fan wanting to know what XI was all about. I started out in Bastok with a Hume Male and died ... a lot. Then I said to myself, "there has to be something I'm missing." So, though it gets a lot of grief, I got the Brady Guide. (Still have it too.) I read through it, learned some stuff and started again from scratch. I moved my character to Sandy and soloed til I was about level 15 or so, basically until soloing wasn't effective. I knew at the time I needed to start partying, but w/o prior experience, I was a bit timid ... oh, and when I did finally get a party, that was when I first found out about signet. ... So I started over yet again. This time when I leveled I made sure I had signet up at all times, and I that's when I started selling crystals for gil. I remember being able to get 10-20k per stack for dark crystals. By the time I was ready to party I had close to half a mil in Gil. It may not be that easy now, but last time i played, about 2 years ago, water crystals were still selling for about 1-2k/stack. That character I took to level 40 or so before I took my first break. I was able to find people to help me with the sub-job quest and unlocking NIN and a few other jobs, I even had a friend donate some gil, just because. By the time I took my first break I had nearly 1.5 mil from selling dark crystals, various materials, and assets combined. (I leveled several jobs from 1-15 just so I could farm dark crystals.)

I had a friend who started with me who played the auction house and preyed on people's laziness. He'd buy a few items from vendors and sell them for a profit on the AH. And that's just two ways two ways new people can turn a profit. That doesn't even include crafting; all you need is crystals and materials. (Yes it is time consuming, but that's how MMOs go.)

I know things have changed over the past 7 years, but from what I can see it's for the better. (My first return to Vana'diel was during the height of the RMT, where my 1.5 mil just barely scathed the surface of what I needed for new gear, food, shehei, etc. (empress hairpin for 1.2+ mil, anyone?)) I don't know if I can speak for anyone else here, but I don't have a lot of sympathy because I had to go through the same thing ... we all did.

This game isn't like WoW where addiction is fed through attaining the next level, or getting the next piece of gear, or in other words "instant gratification." It's about community, working with others to achieve a common goal (I think Garrison and Besieged, and the reoccurring Eggs-travaganza were great examples of this), and building pride in what you've accomplished. Would have been nice for it to have been easier early on? Sure it would have, but I enjoyed figuring things out and became proud of what I had accomplished. That way when I was handed something, by a friend or a stranger, I felt like I had earned it rather than mooching.

This game isn't easy ... it's epic. Final Fantasy in-and-of itself is epic. I for one wouldn't want, or expect, anything less from SE or the FF franchise. (Which is kinda of why I'm on a break from FFXIV. /tear) Anyway, that's my $0.02

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Originally Posted by Camate

The development team is aware of the problems you're all mentioning and are concerned about it as well. While we are planning on merging the Auction Houses in the next version update, we are aware that this won't completely resolve the issue. However, once the merge is completed, we'll closely monitor the situation and see what can be done to further address it.

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Thanks so much for the response. I'm glad that the development team recognizes this as a genuine issue.

So you're asking us to discuss a problem, but at the same time demanding that we don't discuss the essential mechanisms of the subject?

Cool story bro.


You seem full of angst, calm down. If you're going to present something so loudly, make sure it's something that you actually understand a little bit.



The problem isn't with the game's economy as much as it is with the game's direction. The AH is bare because no one is playing the game that the AH was built around. Calling the situation complicated is almost an understatement, and I don't know that there is an obvious solution. What needs to happen is a draw away from Abyssea and into vanilla areas of the game.


Some things to consider:

-Adjusting level sync to much more isolated applications. Maybe it should only work within five levels of the sync'd level. Maybe this could scale somehow with progression too, since level populations have never been equally distributed. This would help to bring back traditional parties.

-Raising the level cap in Abyssea to 76.

-Maybe include some kind of statistic bonus for gaining EXP in the game's 'native dimension' whereby players leveling in the traditional way may come out slightly stronger than players who don't. Like gaining .001 STR per Incredibly Tough monster in zones outside of Abyssea. These bonuses could be job dependent or even mob dependent. This shouldn't be too crazy, but something where a DRK who leveled in the traditional way might expect to have 5 more STR at level 99 than one who didn't.

-Some kind of 'rebirth' concept applied to 99 jobs where a player can choose to reset it to level 1 while granting a very significant boost to the job's potential. Abilities, stats, traits, w/e.

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Originally Posted by Selzak

So you're asking us to discuss a problem, but at the same time demanding that we don't discuss the essential mechanisms of the subject?

Cool story bro.


You seem full of angst, calm down. If you're going to present something so loudly, make sure it's something that you actually understand a little bit.



The problem isn't with the game's economy as much as it is with the game's direction. The AH is bare because no one is playing the game that the AH was built around. Calling the situation complicated is almost an understatement, and I don't know that there is an obvious solution. What needs to happen is a draw away from Abyssea and into vanilla areas of the game.


Some things to consider:

-Adjusting level sync to much more isolated applications. Maybe it should only work within five levels of the sync'd level. Maybe this could scale somehow with progression too, since level populations have never been equally distributed. This would help to bring back traditional parties.

-Raising the level cap in Abyssea to 76.

-Maybe include some kind of statistic bonus for gaining EXP in the game's 'native dimension' whereby players leveling in the traditional way may come out slightly stronger than players who don't. Like gaining .001 STR per Incredibly Tough monster in zones outside of Abyssea. These bonuses could be job dependent or even mob dependent. This shouldn't be too crazy, but something where a DRK who leveled in the traditional way might expect to have 5 more STR at level 99 than one who didn't.

-Some kind of 'rebirth' concept applied to 99 jobs where a player can choose to reset it to level 1 while granting a very significant boost to the job's potential. Abilities, stats, traits, w/e.

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Those are all pretty terrible ideas and don't really address the root cause of the problem.

I do not see any other way then makeing the game easier to drawn new people in by uping abyssea level cap. No new people to by the gear. Unless abyssea gets up to 70+ and theres a large influx of new players in the game to by the gear i do not see the isue being solved ether.

Camate, this isn't exactly to do with this topic but it is somewhat similar, and I didn't want to make an entirely new thread... have you ever considered changing the bazaar fees so people who are SELLING must pay the fee, not the buyers? I know the fees were removed in Jeuno, but not in Whitegate. It just seems kind of backwards.

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Originally Posted by Sayelle

Those are all pretty terrible ideas and don't really address the root cause of the problem.

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The root cause of the problem is that there aren't any new players, but we can't really do anything about that...


...so what next, if not draw players back to the core of the game?

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...so what next, if not draw players back to the core of the game?

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The core of the game isnt leveling from 1-75, and to be honest it never really was. Gear hardly matters until you get past 30 anyway, but I do agree it would be nice to have the Auction House stocked just a little more.

Seeing as this has somehow come up again, besides the fact that its not even the problem in the first place, raising the level cap in Abyssea would damage this game immensely. Im not going into details but let me put it this way, I would be one player who would seriously consider quitting if that happened. There would be thousands of others who would do the same. Thousands of subscription fees being cancelled, millions in fees not being used to improve and push this game forward. Raising the cap like that is a sure fire recipe for them to destroy much of this games new found popularity in one foul swoop. And that is the last thing any of us should be wishing for.

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Originally Posted by Selzak

The root cause of the problem is that there aren't any new players, but we can't really do anything about that...


...so what next, if not force players to level in a horribly inefficient way?

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Fixed that for you.

You are right that the root cause is the lack of new players and there isn't really anything that can be done about that at this stage of the games life cycle.

The big thing a lot of people are neglecting is that the the vast majority of low level gear has little to no effect on your character. Most of the items that do anything useful come from NMs so those items not being on the AH is not a big deal. As long as you have a decent weapon you can be naked and it won't really matter if you're a DD. Mages get a little more use out of gear, but not enough for it to really matter as long as they have the refresh FoV buff.

One possible way would be to simplify crafting recipes for low level equipment, as an extreme example the Trader's/Baron's Saio requires 8 items to synth which is ridiculous for a level 20 item. If they would cut that down to 4 items it could make those profitable again. It would also help if the increased the availability and reduced the cost of getting crafting materials from the guilds.

Another idea which I just thought of is to make it so that the NPC crafters at a guild can craft items for you for small fee, say 100-1k gil depending on the level of the synth, as long as it's a level 30ish recipe or lower with no possibility of an HQ item. This would make it so it's possible to actually get lower level gear and not destroy any remaining markets for higher level crafters.

These are just a couple of ideas that could make a difference at the lower levels and not require radical changes to the way the game is played right now.

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-Raising the level cap in Abyssea to 76.

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Should not be considered. This will not accomplish anything that can't be accomplished by the playerbase.

All your anti-abyssea ideas are terrible too. There is no reason to bash down abyssea, whatsoever. stuff for gear past 90 isn't going to be in there, and any new endgame won't be in there. Thus, abyssea can be left alone.

in before begin raise /dont raise the abyssea level requirement debate. (for the 400th time...)

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Originally Posted by Sayelle

You are right that the root cause is the lack of new players and there isn't really anything that can be done about that at this stage of the games life cycle.

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I cannot disagree with this more. Lack of low level gear on the AH has very little to do with the number of players after said gear. Changing Abyssea like the previous poster mentioned won't do a darn thing about it, either.

Look at it this way: In order for a piece of armor to be on the auction house, someone has to be selling it. In order to sell this piece of armor, you only have two possible scenarios:

1) You craft a new piece of low level armor and place it on the AH.

2) You place a piece of armor you bought/received previously on the AH as you no longer need it.

The first scenario plain does not happen any more for reasons that have already been addressed a dozen times in this thread.

The second scenario is how the majority of low level gear circulated on the AH from 2007-2009. When people would level new jobs, they would buy some gear for it, EXP, and then sell it back a week later. However, the price of many items has dropped to the point where it's generally not worth even wasting an AH slot putting this armor up. Personally, I've NPC'd/Tossed pretty much all of my low level gear as opposed to putting it on the AH because I don't feel it's worth the trouble to put up armor that only sells for 1k-5k.

It's also true that more people are leveling in a more condensed manner than before. This has nothing to do with Abyssea, and everything to do with level sync. When players gained the option to artificially manipulate what level they were able to EXP at, of course they are going to gravitate to the levels which are more efficient. I'm not saying level sync was a bad idea; in fact, I'm certain the game would have been in a lot of trouble had they not implemented it. The population was dwindling, it was practically impossible for anyone to find a full party's worth of people seeking in the same level range as them; let alone people on compatible jobs. However, this is going to mean that armor and weapons in less efficient level ranges are going to circulate less.

If there is a sizable new player base which is unable to find any sort of armor (Taking into account the AH merge, which should help as well), the best things they can do are as follows:

1) Harvest. RMT are not pulling in mass amounts of base materials every day any more. Mining/Logging/Harvesting is a reliable way for low level players to generate income, and it provides crafters with the materials they would need to create new armor.

2) Encourage all players to level a craft skill. When I leveled Smithing, I ended up with tons of low level armor clogging my inventory and AH slots. At the time, I got more money just NPC'ing the darn things, but that ties into 3. Leveling a craft will directly increase the supply of armor.

3) Pay more for armor so that it is economically viable to sell it to players rather than an NPC. I wouldn't bother putting a subligar on the AH when it sells there for 2k, but sells to an NPC for 1,950g. This would encourage both new and old crafters to actually put new armor into the system. Making more synths economically viable will also allow newly leveling crafters to choose from a variety of potential synths for skill. For years, most of crafting was determining which synth produced the least profit loss to make and spamming that. If multiple pieces are actually profitable, you'll find more diversity in their production (though, you will still see a preference to spam that which is most profitable).

This isn't, and has never been, a Development issue. It is a player issue in a player-driven economy. The change has to come from players if they genuinely want one.

I am not up to speed about the merging. Is it a merge of all the AHs in one world? Or all AHs in all worlds?

Will I be able to buy the items in Jeuno AH from Bastok? Or is it a merge that only connects all Jeuno AHs from all worlds?

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I cannot disagree with this more. Lack of low level gear on the AH has very little to do with the number of players after said gear

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I think you`re probably understating a bit there. Higher demand would push up prices thus making it more viable to sell. It`s directly linked. Level sync probably did take a lot of lower level armor out of circulation, but I think the problem now is we`re still going backwards in terms of Auction House stock levels, and level sync has been around for a long time.

There`s also the fact that we level faster from 1-30 now than we ever have. The exp increase recently wouldn`t have helped either. Really it`s hard to see the role of the starter city auction houses as anything but catering to low level players, and that role is needed far less these days. Basically the cross section of time when both new players and old players alike are actually in one of those towns, and actually go to the auction house to buy something, is very slim indeed.

So yeah, this is very much about supply and demand, and the number of low level players (and the length of time they remain low level) is a big factor in determining the demand for low level gear. The micro economies that used to exist and were quite healthy in starter cities are pretty much gone now.

And it`s totally a development issue, the game has changed at the hands of SE around the start city auction houses, and they`ve remained the same. It`s all well and good suggesting people should go out and craft, or they don`t need low level gear but the facts are that some people don`t want to craft, and some people get a kick out of gearing themselves fully. The fact that the auction houses are being merged is also pretty clear evidence it`s a development issue.

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I am not up to speed about the merging. Is it a merge of all the AHs in one world? Or all AHs in all worlds?

Will I be able to buy the items in Jeuno AH from Bastok? Or is it a merge that only connects all Jeuno AHs from all worlds?

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They plan to link all the starter city auction houses with Jeuno or vice versa, whatever way you want to look at it. Nothing planned for inter world AH.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

I cannot disagree with this more. Lack of low level gear on the AH has very little to do with the number of players after said gear. Changing Abyssea like the previous poster mentioned won't do a darn thing about it, either.
*snip*

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I think that you misunderstood where I'm coming from, I completely agree that the best solution would come from the players since it is a player driven economy. I also don't think that any development changes are necessary to for a player driven change to happen, but some small changes could certainly encourage it to happen. Anyway, I'm about to leave work and don't have time to type a longer response, I'll do that when I get home later.

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Originally Posted by Camate

The development team is aware of the problems you're all mentioning and are concerned about it as well. While we are planning on merging the Auction Houses in the next version update, we are aware that this won't completely resolve the issue. However, once the merge is completed, we'll closely monitor the situation and see what can be done to further address it.

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You guys aware that abyssea made a deep impact on thaty situation, you guys didn't see it comming making the area accessable at 30?

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I am not up to speed about the merging. Is it a merge of all the AHs in one world? Or all AHs in all worlds?

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All city AHes merged into the Jeuno AH. Same AH no matter where you go.

Not cross-server AHes.

ok from what i am seeing in all these post there are lots of ideas and i remember being a new player, and my suggestion to them is simple. if it drops from a mob and you dont need it sell it. AH NPC whatever gets you the most and save your gils. Low lvl gear is simple to get from ppl and we have the mentor system to help the new ppl. so i have to agree that if the new players arent staying it is there own fault for being lazy and wanting an easy economy to get rich in.

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Originally Posted by Sayelle

Fixed that for you.

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The point is to make it desirable so that people will want to do it.

The playerbase isn't going to just magically make a conscious decision to revive traditional components of the game if there's no direct reward involved. While my ideas were drastic, I did precede them with both the admission that I did not know a clear solution and by calling them considerations (I meant to imply that they are areas to look in to).

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Should not be considered. This will not accomplish anything that can't be accomplished by the playerbase.

All your anti-abyssea ideas are terrible too. There is no reason to bash down abyssea, whatsoever. stuff for gear past 90 isn't going to be in there, and any new endgame won't be in there. Thus, abyssea can be left alone.

in before begin raise /dont raise the abyssea level requirement debate. (for the 400th time...)

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I did not "bash down abyssea." I'm simply noting that the whole 'realm' of Abyssea has created a disconnect from the world of the core game, and suggesting that players should not be drawn to exist exclusively in the former- which is exactly what's happening. I don't miss the grinding, but I do miss the whole body of the game that was left behind with it. The AH is an extension of that, and when you don't have players leaving Kazham to go to Garlaige Citadel and leaving Garlaige Citadel to go to The Crawler's Nest you're not going to regularly see level 30-40 equipment on the AH.

Why does a level 30 character need to go into Abyssea? The only effect is that no one plays any jobs between level 30-75 now.

Playing a job has become:

Rush to level 30 solo / with PL / FoV
Key leech from level 30-70+
Throw on some Perle gear
Get to level 90.
Then start caring about the job.

To say that the playerbase can create a presence in the main construct of the game itself and that no adjustments need to be made to the cost/benefit ratio of doing that is extremely naive. Players aren't going to do something less beneficial for the sake of reviving key aspects of the game, players are going to do exactly what is most beneficial to them and nothing else- especially on a scale large enough to impact the game's economy and other functions.

If I could spend 300 extra hours taking a job from 1-99 to gain a five point stat bonus a few years ago I might have, but I sure as hell wouldn't now. I love Abyssea and all of the other log in and play changes that have been made to FFXI over the past year or so because I simply don't have the time to play LFP for an hour and a half then stay glued to a PT for five more- or you get nothing done scheme that the game grew up with. However, that traditional style (or at least some aspects of it, like a similarly leveled group of complimenting jobs taking advantage of skillchains and magic bursts) should be given some reason to exist. The old way was tedious and it was rightfully replaced, but what would be ideal is if the old way was revamped and both dimensions of the game could co-exist.

Players need incentives to create traditional six-man EXP parties to take their jobs to level 75, and they need a lot of them. Until that happens, the game's level 10-75 content will be in limbo.

I'm glad to see SE sees this as an issue. I have a developed character and have no problem making gil. However finding gear on the AH has become a pain lately. I want to start a new character but lack of gear on AH and difficulty to make gil as a frsh out of the gate player turns me off to the idea. Things like gardening and fishing use to be a great way to make gil for newbies but it was nerfed to stop RMT.

Unless things are fixed we won't get new players and sooner or later the game will cost more then it makes. Going to PC only has come up in other threads and that be a good idea. They could redo graphics, give us a new expansion. I see the devs in their replies that it a lot of things can't be done and I think a lot of it has to do with keeping the game on a console. Sorry for the long post I just got in a grove and I wrote what I was thinking.

they should make some Magian Trials that start off as lvl 10 gear, but work up into the 99s and have some awesome stats! and requires non abyssea exp/conquest points to upgrade and stufff but thats like a few hundred trials.... SE wont do it lol

i dunno

Just curious....was this an issue in 2002 when the game was first released? Just how did players make it back then?

Food for thought....discuss amongst yourselves....