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

[Olor]

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.

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

[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.

[Sayelle]

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.

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

[Sasukeuchiha]

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.

[Authority]

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.

[Selzak]

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

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?

[blowfin]

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

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.

[Sayelle]

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?

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.

[Alhanelem]

-Raising the level cap in Abyssea to 76.

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...)

[Greatguardian]

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.

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.