Gearbinding - can we get rid of it?

Gearbinding doesnt seem to be helping the economy since gear drops like candy from a pinata anyway.. With new gear being introduce can we omit the gear binding concept? I much more prefer using gear as i want and then selling it on the marketboard later.

Gearbinding itself just doesnt seem like a good concept unless kept to only specific certain pieces of gear.

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sorry, let me clear this up, im not talking about U/U items.. Im talking about the process by which after using a sellable piece of gear once it becomes bound to you and you can never sell or trade it again.

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Could the items not be made perishable so that after so much use it can no longer be resold or something? I would like that better.

Yeah, I loved all the arguments that allowing people to recycle gear hurts the economy and kills all crafting markets.


LOL.

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Originally Posted by Morticous

Gearbinding doesnt seem to be helping the economy since gear drops like candy from a pinata anyway.. With new gear being introduce can we omit the gear binding concept? I much more prefer using gear as i want and then selling it on the marketboard later.

Gearbinding itself just doesnt seem like a good concept unless kept to only specific certain pieces of gear.

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I don't think it's going anywhere. If you can sell it, the RMT can sell it.

Its almost like SE wanted to throw it in and force it on us just to say that its there and that its doing something. I've never seen a worse economy in a game then we have in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Nuinn

I don't think it's going anywhere. If you can sell it, the RMT can sell it.

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Pretty much this, it's SE's "RMT panic" (patent pending) model of game design. It's not actually doing anything to stop RMT, but as long as SE believes it is nothing is going to change and regular players be damned.

RMT is a different issue.. Btw.. You can sell gear before its gearbound so this argument is invalid.

In FFXI they learned the errors of having an economy where durables like gear are allowed to propagate endlessly from user to user. It killed any reason to craft or gather the gear at all because the market for these items was super saturated and there was no solution to fix it. You could say "well crafting isn't important here" or "but we all run dungeons a ton anyway" but that's just the way the game is today at this exact moment. To allow us to trade these items endlessly would have a long term negative effect on the game. As it stands it was a wonderful strategy to make crafted gear turn into materia. It keeps much of that market flowing. The only thing we need now is the ability to convert gear from dungeons as well.

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Originally Posted by Morticous

RMT is a different issue.. Btw.. You can sell gear before its gearbound so this argument is invalid.

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They're right though. It's one of many things Yoshi and crew axed because, "Oh no RMT!!!" Which is mind-boggling because I specifically remember him getting rid of anti-RMT measures in 1.xx.

Just weird. It's like he forgot that most "RMT fixes" only punish the players. Just look at what he did to fishing for the best example.

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Originally Posted by Morticous

Its almost like SE wanted to throw it in and force it on us just to say that its there and that its doing something. I've never seen a worse economy in a game then we have in FFXIV.

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That's not why the economy sux. Dropped gear is easy to get. In fact so easy that crafted+melded gear something 90% of the playerbase doesn't even have to think about. At all.

Unbinding the U/U items will not revamp the economy. It'll just make crafting (and consequently gathering) even less appealing to players.

They should just let you do this.

It's harder to make friends willing to give you the armor, than most fights in this game. It feels better to get things from a friend than it does for a game to just hand it to you.

RMT already have the marketboards.

The economy is poor because of large supply/little demand. What you are talking about would just inflate the problem. It is already hard for crafters to sell equipment, what happens when the board is flooded with everyones used stuff too? No need to run dungeons for your darklight gear, it is on the MB for 500 gil!

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Originally Posted by Jinrya-Geki

It's harder to make friends willing to give you the armor

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Why are you expecting handouts?
I'm sure if you offered to pay for mats crafters would be much more willing to craft for you.



And what Tiggy said is a lot more plausible than the whole "OMG RMT!!1!!1" excuse. No reason to craft whatsoever if people could just sell what they used a bit and don't need anymore.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

In FFXI they learned the errors of having an economy where durables like gear are allowed to propagate endlessly from user to user. It killed any reason to craft or gather the gear at all because the market for these items was super saturated and there was no solution to fix it. You could say "well crafting isn't important here" or "but we all run dungeons a ton anyway" but that's just the way the game is today at this exact moment. To allow us to trade these items endlessly would have a long term negative effect on the game. As it stands it was a wonderful strategy to make crafted gear turn into materia. It keeps much of that market flowing. The only thing we need now is the ability to convert gear from dungeons as well.

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A long term negative effect on an already crippled economy? LOL.

The issue with the economy is the fact that every single person in the game has the ability to level every crafting and every gathering job thus creating a huge influx of items.Why buy an item off the market if I can go gather the material and craft it myself. If you do craft the item expect it to sit there on the market board forever if you don't undercut the current lowest price that it's being listed for. The fact that they list every single item and what it's selling for leads the consumer to purchase the item for the lowest price available. This does nothing but drive prices into the ground. As mentioned I've never seen an in game economy as bad as what we have here in FFXIV.

Taking away the binding upon spirit bonding isn't the answer to the bad economy, it just adds more saturation to an already saturated market.

So people complain about the economy sucking (which is debatable) and then want to get rid of equipment binding?

The only improvements that the economy needs are:

- BiS equipment having a crafting component.
- Dungeon gear should be convertible AND capable of being melded.

And why do I think the economy doesn't suck? Probably because my definition of a working economy is "people buy and sell stuff on the MBs, and if you make an effort, you can make a lot of gil crafting and selling things", while the definition of people that are constantly complaining about it is "I have little to no competition when selling stuff so I can make loads of gil with one synth or two".

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

So people complain about the economy sucking (which is debatable)

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I'm curious..do you even deal with the economy? It's no where near debatable, it's even confirmed by SE themselves the economy is in the pits which is why every update they try to stimulate it.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

I'm curious..do you even deal with the economy? It's no where near debatable, it's even confirmed by SE themselves the economy is in the pits which is why every update they try to stimulate it.

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Ah, the standard response of "I don't believe it's possible to make money with crafting so you have to be lying" which stems directly from your belief that the only working economy is the one where you sell stuff for loads of gil. Yeah, SE did say that they will stimulate the economy with each big update, but that's very different from saying you don't make money with it.

Incredibly stupid thought. Would heavier taxes prevent undercutting? Like lets say you put a stack of items on the market board that has a market value of lets say 100gil, and someone puts a new item for 50gil. That 50gil item would be taxed heavily, leading to an end price of maybe 150 gil that the purchaser has to pay, and only a 50 gil profit for the crafter.

I am a computer scientist, i don't pretend to fathom how economics work, but from an outside looking in perspective, wouldn't this solve the undercutting issue?

(Though I'm still a fan of removing all items after 10-15 from NPC vendors)

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

Ah, the standard response of "I don't believe it's possible to make money with crafting so you have to be lying" which stems directly from your belief that the only working economy is the one where you sell stuff for loads of gil. Yeah, SE did say that they will stimulate the economy with each big update, but that's very different from saying you don't make money with it.

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Yoshi has come out and stated it's hard to make gil generally, which is why they want to try to stimulate it in every update. I've made plenty of gil with weaving and cooking, however, unless you're on a legacy world, you really wouldn't have seen how bad the economies can get. Newer worlds didn't get hard with, let's just say 'smart people'.

Remove trading restrictions from gear, and you have a game like TERA. One of TERA's major flaws, during my time playing, was that because you could purchase some of the best gear in game, you were expected to have it the moment you hit level cap. You had to buy gear from the hardest content in the game, or no group would allow you to do the easiest content in the game.

Now I can't remember half the names of anything from that game, but here's how this went down: My berserker friend got to level cap, and needed to do a certain dungeon. We'll call it 'Dungeon A'. The community, being as absurdly toxic and elitist as it was, unanimously decided that berserkers needed Axe B before they could run Dungeon A. The problem? Axe B dropped from Dungeon A. You couldn't get Axe B without running Dungeon A, and you weren't allowed to run Dungeon A until you had Axe B. The solution? Buy it from the Auction House. The new problem? Axe B cost more gold than anyone actually had.

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Originally Posted by Nadrojj

A long term negative effect on an already crippled economy? LOL.

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Two wrongs do not make a right. Knowingly adopting a failed strategy as a means to put a band-aid on a newer game will not work.

Also, the economy is MMOs is always player based. Knowing the previous prices does absolutely nothing to change supply and demand. The economy in this game, as in any game, works off supply and demand. The problem in this game is that supply outstrips the demand considerably. So prices are pushed lower and lower just to make a buck. This is in part because of the crafting scenario you listed, but it doesn't stop just there. In the end no amount of making dungeon gear tradable will fix this. It would simply add more supply to a system that has enough already. We need to create more demand for these items so that the supply can actually dwindle long enough for prices to rebound. That just isn't happening right now.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Yoshi has come out and stated it's hard to make gil generally, which is why they want to try to stimulate it in every update. I've made plenty of gil with weaving and cooking, however, unless you're on a legacy world, you really wouldn't have seen how bad the economies can get. Newer worlds didn't get hard with, let's just say 'smart people'.

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You're right, it is hard to make gil in general, but again, that's not the same thing as not being able to make a lot of gil. If the legacy worlds have bad economies while the new worlds have better economies, then the conclusion is actually that the problem comes from letting the 1.0 players keep all their items, gil, levels, etc.

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

They're right though. It's one of many things Yoshi and crew axed because, "Oh no RMT!!!" Which is mind-boggling because I specifically remember him getting rid of anti-RMT measures in 1.xx.

Just weird. It's like he forgot that most "RMT fixes" only punish the players. Just look at what he did to fishing for the best example.

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It is not about RMT, more about getting away used gears (know as gear sink).

Only way to change it would be to change it back how gear sink was in 1.0, with destroying the gear if a materia meld failed.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Only way to change it would be to change it back how gear sink was in 1.0, with destroying the gear if a materia meld failed.

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That wouldn't make much of a difference without dungeon drops being allowed to be melded.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

In FFXI they learned the errors of having an economy where durables like gear are allowed to propagate endlessly from user to user. It killed any reason to craft or gather the gear at all because the market for these items was super saturated and there was no solution to fix it. You could say "well crafting isn't important here" or "but we all run dungeons a ton anyway" but that's just the way the game is today at this exact moment. To allow us to trade these items endlessly would have a long term negative effect on the game. As it stands it was a wonderful strategy to make crafted gear turn into materia. It keeps much of that market flowing. The only thing we need now is the ability to convert gear from dungeons as well.

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Except a lot of ppl kept their old gears in FFXI because capped content (All CoP basically), as well it being useful for leveling other jobs. Crafting was also excellent in FFXI, because it was only useful when you reached the max leveled. This didn't allow the market to become over-saturated with items like with this game.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

That wouldn't make much of a difference without dungeon drops being allowed to be melded.

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It would if Yoshida change crafted overmeldet gear back how it was in 1.0, better than dungeon gear.
People want then overmelded crafted gear, destroying many gears to get it and use dungeon gear only until they have their overmelded gear.

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Originally Posted by Taruranto

Except a lot of ppl kept their old gears in FFXI because capped content (All CoP basically), as well it being useful for leveling other jobs. Crafting was also excellent in FFXI, because it was only useful when you reached the max leveled. This didn't allow the market to become over-saturated with items like with this game.

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The market most certainly did become over saturated with certain durables. The scorpion harness being a wonderful example. Even before the additional methods to get the crafting item the price was dropping constantly. This was because fewer and fewer people need it since they already had it. It wasn't until Aht Urghan that a decent alternative became available at all so demand for this item was still generally high since it was the best in slot for the type of stats it provided. This did not stop the price from dropping due to over saturation.

This is just one example.

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Originally Posted by Taruranto

Crafting was also excellent in FFXI, because it was only useful when you reached the max leveled.

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That's not excellent, that's just awful.

This is excellent crafting: when I level up I can gather materials to synth every single new piece of gear that I need.

I won't ever want to trade that for FFXI's system just so a few people can sell items for millions because they have next to no competition.

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Originally Posted by Felis

It would if Yoshida change crafted overmeldet gear back how it was in 1.0, better than dungeon gear.
People want then overmeldet crafted gear, destroying many gears to get it and use dungeon gear only until they have their overmeldet gear.

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Yes, that would indeed fix the problem (though I'd argue that if they did that, there's no longer a need for equipment to be lost if a meld fails). The current issue is that the top of the line gear in the game has no crafting element. If the BiS gear required melds, that would add a much larger drain of items to the economy.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

That's not excellent, that's just awful.

This is excellent crafting: when I level up I can gather materials to synth every single new piece of gear that I need.

I won't ever want to trade that for FFXI's system just so a few people can sell items for millions because they have next to no competition.

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That is exactly the problem and why crafting in this game is so...well...poor. Not the crafting itself but the situation. The thing is everybody can think like you do. And because it is not difficult to learn how to craft, many people do. And as such we end up in a situation where the market is saturated with to much supply and not enough demand.

If SWG told me anything is that a lively and healthy market can be made if players want it. No crafter is going to sell an item for 15.k gil if nobody is purchasing it for that price. Eventually the market will adjust to meet demand.

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Originally Posted by Mixxy

Now I can't remember half the names of anything from that game, but here's how this went down: My berserker friend got to level cap, and needed to do a certain dungeon. We'll call it 'Dungeon A'. The community, being as absurdly toxic and elitist as it was, unanimously decided that berserkers needed Axe B before they could run Dungeon A. The problem? Axe B dropped from Dungeon A. You couldn't get Axe B without running Dungeon A, and you weren't allowed to run Dungeon A until you had Axe B

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Slightly different, but sounds exactly like pre-2.1. "Need Relic+1 for AK" AK is a prerequisite for getting your normal relic, I mean seriously...

I know the reasons for people doing it, but it doesn't make it any less asinine.

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

The thing is everybody can think like you do.

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They can, but they ultimately don't, which is why you can actually sell stuff on the MB. Hell, do you know what are some of the best things to sell on the MB? Items used in leves.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

Yes, that would indeed fix the problem (though I'd argue that if they did that, there's no longer a need for equipment to be lost if a meld fails). The current issue is that the top of the line gear in the game has no crafting element. If the BiS gear required melds, that would add a much larger drain of items to the economy.

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Yes, it would be good if we can at least meld dungeon gears over ilevel 60. Maybe with a lower success chance than normal gear to make it not overpowered.

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

Incredibly stupid thought. Would heavier taxes prevent undercutting? Like lets say you put a stack of items on the market board that has a market value of lets say 100gil, and someone puts a new item for 50gil. That 50gil item would be taxed heavily, leading to an end price of maybe 150 gil that the purchaser has to pay, and only a 50 gil profit for the crafter.

I am a computer scientist, i don't pretend to fathom how economics work, but from an outside looking in perspective, wouldn't this solve the undercutting issue?

(Though I'm still a fan of removing all items after 10-15 from NPC vendors)

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Something that would help a little against undercutting is charging a fee directly when putting up an item instead of removing that fee from what you get when the item is sold.
As it is now, you could look at the market board and as soon as someone undercuts you, you change price on your own sales to undercut again without the change costing anything.

Undercutting exists because of the layout of the sales side of the Market Board. Even if you were to price your goods as the same as everyone else, for example something cost 1000 gil and everyone prices such...the person more likely to sell their goods is the one who has the alphabetized advantage i.e. their retainer name comes first in the alphabet which puts them at the top of the list which means people can click on it and buy it without scrolling. If you're a Z retainer vs an A you're simply screwed. I do see people post "yeah well I decide to buy from the person who didn't undercut," yes well that's a rare thing and good on you for taking time to make a purchase, most people are not going to take more than a few seconds to buy the cheapest of an item. Yes there becomes a major problem when people do undercut by huge amounts but you can't blame people for wanting items to sell in such a crap market. They sell their items and move on to sell more, quicker it sells is the best. It means an item isn't taking up a slot of the 20 and they can get the gil and put up a new item for sell.

I hated the system in 1.0 when my gear blew up with failed materia melds, but now that the system is gone and I look back on it. It was a great system to keep the market alive, people needing gear and materia for melds. But with SE having poor stat caps on items with materia melds and their purposeful: dungeon gear > crafted gear even with penta melds even with a loss of the gear/materia system like 1.0 it wouldn't matter. The appeal of that 1.0 system was that you could make crafted gear better with the right melds. And honestly this is a system I think we need back. Darksteel/Vanya/Gryphonskin/etc are ALREADY practically dungeon drops...you farm the tomestones that way and despite it being ilvl 70, the HQ versions even without melds are better than the Darklight versions. If we're just gonna go down this road of crafted gear being 100% obsolete and the only materia market being invested in being DoH/DoL which aren't really going to have a place in endgame...then it's broken and just needs to be outright removed. No one is "filling" needs with crafted gear and materia in lower levels, the dungeons are easy enough to go into at level and gear gear for your level just in that dungeon. With the removal of open world grinding for exp, this also hurts the materia market and the community...proof is in the toxicity that exists when people see players spiritbonding in LotA. For me I don't mind people doing it..but when it's a player who is clearly slacking and sitting back, making everyone else do all the work as their spiritbond bars tick up it becomes a problem (course players not spiritbonding do this as well) -- a problem that already exists with the design of LotA is how tanks can be lazy in most fights (i.e. clicking towers on Behemoth, letting hands grab them on Acheron..I'm a main Paladin and it makes tanks look bad) so combine that with spiritbonding and helping the alliance none then yeah toxicity. /rant off

"Because everyone can be all lvl 50 DoH/DoL." Funny thing is this quote didn't apply in 1.0, the market worked because of the materia market...this in a game where the leves GAVE you the shards and mats to craft the items and turn in then GAVE you a reward of things like flax and snurble tuft and yet people bought the materials to craft and grind through for exp. What happened in 2.0 was just the items were and still are too readily available. The RNG hit-or-miss minigames for DoL became 100% never without fail gathering attempts that allow you to look at the picture of the item you want and gather it. Unspoiled nodes are a nice way of limiting the amount of an item that can be gathered but the nodes pop on the hour...Oh let's not forget to mention the fact that now maps drop various materials upon a win and many of these items are HQ versions of unspoiled node items and you can get upwards of 4 (don't quote me on this) from 1 map. Then we have the addition of Beastmen tribe NPCs that sell crafted materials and further reduces the reason to buy from the market or instead kills the price of the items because the NPCs sell for dirt cheap and don't need to factor in a shard price.

So problems all around but what we have is "working as intended."

Folks often say, "Crafting is so easy, everyone can level crafts and craft their own gear - so there's no market!" Except, I know for a fact that this isn't true. Easy or not, a LOT of folks simply don't like crafting. There IS a potential market for crafted items - folks that like to craft spend a lot of time crafting, and folks that don't like to craft spend the same time doing Leves and FATEs and stuff for gil to buy stuff from the crafter. In theory.

In practice, the game throws so much gear at you, and you can do so much with vastly underleveled gear, that folks simply don't bother. The markets are flooded with cheap low-level NQ gear that drops from Leves and job quests, and the stat differences between that and HQ gear are small enough that the incentive to buy the better piece is low. To make things worse, low level dungeons drop gear for their level range that outshines even HQ gear assuming you don't socket materia. Between cheap NQs and plentiful Aetherial gear, there's barely a market for the crafted stuff.

Now, the OP wants to sell his crafted gear when he's done with it? Might just as well remove crafting from the game entirely. :p

Seriously, I'm not even sure WHY he wants to sell it. Even the most sought-after, premium pieces of iLvl 70 crafted gear are AFFORDABLE, even to a casual player, in a reasonable amount of time. In FFXI, pieces of gear like the Scorpion Harness or Noble's Tunic required weeks or months of grinding gil to be able to afford them. High-tier equipment in FFXIV can be bought in just days. I'm a fairly casual player, and even I could afford to buy a Vanya Robe of Casting, blow my nose in it, and toss it aside.

@OP; the problem is not that gear binding is useless, it's that materia can only be put in crafted equipment and even then you would need to spend millions just getting the perfect penta-meld to do just a bit more damage than dungeon gear. IMO its almost not worth it other than bragging rights.

"If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense" DJ Quik.

They could add a third tier to the melding system, that has a pretty low chance, that can add one materia to non-materia gear, and takes a materia and some crafted item, preferably using potash or other philo mats, since those are starting to flood the market.

People can customize their gear, philo isn't worthless, and crafters can help with the BiS gear, but not provide it entirely.

The whole notion that stuff is cheap because there is more supply than demand means a bad economy is FALSE notion. Look at the real world, do you want an economy that creates vast disparity between rich and poor so that there are vast majoirty of poor and desperate people and select few with all the wealth? Or do want an economy where goods are readily available and vast majority of the people can have access to vast majority of goods? Seriously as much as I don't like Walmart selling out the U.S. to China and its labor relations, I can NOT fault Walmart for doing a fantastic job at making things cheaper for everyone, and they do well and the economy does as well. It is actually a very healthy economy when people can afford to get the stuff they need and want. The economy in game is actually very healthy. And to that end the market boards could be more efficient.

Two added side benefit of having things widely available are
1. It reduces the need or incentive to go RMT
2. Makes it much harder for flipper to take advantage of the other players mistakes.

Both of which helps the player base.

Similar to real life, items need a sink and way for them to disappear. Gear binding after use, means you can NOT sell used items. In real life, stuff that gets used break down and eventually become tossed out and exit the economy, or they are consumed like food products, soaps, paints, etc. So with gear binding all this means you can't have used item market, and I doubt people are too upset if they don't have to deal with the used item dealers (think used car dealers.) So getting rid of gear binding will mean your stuff can't be repaired forever and needs to wear out. Between that and gear binding, I think player will be happier to deal with gear-binding because they choose when the items exit the economy.