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.