The Current Ecnomical State of ARR

Here are some interesting web post that should be a interesting read.

http://ffxivrealm.com/threads/frustr...ds.9332/page-2

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...omy-Issue.html

http://http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com...1/blog/722028/
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/67805...eborn/68710117
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-House-system

This thread is now open to suggestions. I Have put together a few post from other major game sites who have done a review on The Current Economy of ARR.

What do like about the current system? What don't you like about the current system? IS the current market-board system viable in this games economy? What would you have done differently? This is just to gage the viewpoints of the player-base in Realm reborn community. Please check out the above links also from different game sites who have done a review on this games current economic structure.


This next article comes from Reddit and make some very good valid points. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...emand_and_the/

I love the crafting & gathering system (main class: omnicrafter XD) of FFXIV, considering it one of the nicest I have seen so far. And I love "marketboarding".

But unfortunately at the current state I think the system is massively flawed because of 2 reasons (one hopefully find a fix semi-soon):



1) SE is doing very little (or the wrong things) against cartels, bots and the like. A bunch of people (maybe even with bots) create tons of stuff, put it on the MB really low-priced and at worst make sure they fill up the 100 hits you can have for an item -- there you are, they rule the market. Just as bots ruling the markets of certain items obtained by gathering. And even after it is claimed officially from time to time so-and-so many folks were banned for doing such -- you still see exactly the same bots being active. Which makes me think SE has no real interest in fighting anything harming the "Eorzean economy" -- bots pay subscription fees, too, and most players only want to battle -- the economy is totally irrelevant to 80%+ of the player base. SE is not in the business of making all gamers happy, they are in the business of selling subscription fees at low cost. So don't see this fixed any time soon...

2) Low demand thanks to SE handing out all decent gear for free (well, leveling quests and drops) or only for tomes and the like. Crafting (and gathering to supply crafting) outside crafting for yourself and other crafters & gatherers only creates glamour right now and leveling equipment for additional classes (furniture is also a no-seller for the most part, given housing is still so ridiculously scarce and so expensive only wealthy, self-sufficient crafters & FCs can afford it). Considering the amount of crafters out there vs. the amount of demand for the only things that DO actually sell, it is no surprise things are not working well. And by handing out HQ crafted items via quests in HW things actually got even worse, as crafters were the sole source at least for that pre-Heavensward -- now folks just sell their unwanted HQ gear from quests, ruining even that market.

I understand that SE wants to make FFXIV as simple & easy for causal gamers as possible, so throwing tons of "leveling gear freebies" at them is just "good business" for SE. But not allowing any kind of crafted battle gear to be really in well-priced demand beyond a bit of leveling stuff is not helping that approach, it is just harming those who love crafting (& gathering) in this game. Other games offer both approaches and do very well with this: Get great gear as loot from battle, or sell loot, make money and use that money to buy great gear from the crafting folks (or other people's loot).

SE has announced the upcoming patch will include crafted gear that is actually useful in battle (endgame-y), which would be wonderful if this holds true and
a) is gear that can be crafted without being decked out in tier V-pentamelded ilvl 170 gear (all the better given tier V isn't even really in the game yet, and yes I am a bit sarcastic here, given some past experiences) ... and ...

b) does not require mats which are so insanely rare and/or time-consuming to get that prices HAVE to be so high that hardly anyone is buying because few can afford such at all. What is going on with the mats for ilvl 170 crafting/gathering gear is a prime example of that, 40-60k for one piece of mat (justly priced at current time-investment, I say) and thanks to tons of mats like that needed the sheer costs of making that gear in the range of several 100k (so finished product accordingly worth even more, millions if HQ and risky to HQ, as star-crafting tends to be...) ... nope, that is not how you create demand.

So it would be good if SE tones down some of the insane requirements/costs of existing endgame-gear for gathering/crafting and offers us crafted battle gear at reasonable costs in terms of mats/time required. High, but not so high only very few can afford. Rather so that the time-investment to make gil for such gear and the time-investment to farm tomes, raid for drops etc. is more or less on par (which does have to include the profit for the one crafting, in relation to time-investment, level and difficulty of the crafting).

We will see what the upcoming patch will bring... because if this is fixed a real system of battle + gathering + crafting feeding each happily and decently on the MB would be awesome.

HQ item rewards for the 50-60 leveling main and sidequest was a mistake. An item might be worth 100k but anyone without a clue and having got it for free (no materials gathered or bought) can undercut that item basically as he pleases, and when you repeat it, suddenly a ton of gearpieces in the markets and filled with quest HQ items and prices are lower in some cases, than even level 30-40 items. Terrible call.

Something that has been bothering me about the economy is the correct decision of not allowing crafters to not make BiS gear, thus, making players to go and do content, yet allow without punish at all for particular groups of people to sell that content and even BiS drops after a few weeks. Best part is that most of these buyers are crafters, basically getting BiS, achievements and progress through content using gil... Which was what the first idea was supposed to prevent!

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

...the correct decision of not allowing crafters to not make BiS gear...

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I agree that a crafter should not be allowed to make BiS but currently crafters cannot even make entry level gear for Raids.
The best stuff we could make in 3.0 was i170 (mats for this gear are stupid rare) and you needed to be minimum i190 to have a chance a clearing AS1.
In 3.1, they bumped up the crafters to i185, still below the minimum threshold and gate locked the gear behind specialists.

A single crafter cannot iLvl jump a newbie, forcing that newbie to the MB, which should be good for the economy except that newbies do not have the Gil required to afford this gear. Just leaving the items to sit on the MB for long, long periods of time. Any crafter see this trend very soon and says to himself, forget bothering to make that ever again; which cause scarcity of the items driving the prices higher and perpetuates this problem.

The biggest issue right now is rarity of mats and the sheer quantity required to do anything. There's little immediate value when supply is so badly constrained and requirements inflated.

the main issue that FFXIV faces is that there is little to no way to gain gil outside playing the MB , in almost every other game u can go kill a bunch of mobs and vendor all that and get some money , u cant do that in FFXIV because almost all the items u gain are worth 1-10 gil.

I can understand why they did that ....but in the end u fix a issue and create another one , isnt hard to gain gil? nop , even if u dont craft or gather... but if u dont do that u have to work x100 harder than in any other game.

the only thing that cost gil atm is glamour, pets , relic quest items , and raid consumables ...the question is what is optional and what really isnt? and how to fix that w/o breaking anything in the process....

p.d Doesnt help that crafters and gatheres have been treated like trash this expansion...is almost like SE doesnt want ppl to craft / gather...

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

the main issue that FFXIV faces is that there is little to no way to gain gil outside playing the MB , in almost every other game u can go kill a bunch of mobs and vendor all that and get some money , u cant do that in FFXIV because almost all the items u gain are worth 1-10 gil.

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If you simply approach this like other games, then I can see how you'd think there's a problem with earning gil in the first place. You're overlooking the challenge log and levequests. With rather minimal effort, you can easily generate more than enough gil to satisfy repair and teleport costs. Leve allowances can even be banked such that casuals can do all their farming on a single day each week if they choose to do so. On top of that, gil practically rains on you during higher level dungeon runs (from what I hear, this is one of the main ways bots farm gil). Honestly, I'd even venture to say that it's a little too easy to earn gil using these methods (especially the dungeon route given the BLM bot spam waves I've seen around).

I do agree there are problems with the server economies, though. From a smaller server perspective, I don't see >100 slot problem on most items unless they're trash items to begin with (100 slots for 1 gil animal skins, lol). I have noticed that it feels like crafters are shrinking in numbers causing lower supply/competition. I've noticed more often lately that when I go to sell leftovers or things I simply don't need anymore, that prices are pretty crazy high, even on things that should be crazy common (1.2k each for HQ brass ingots, for instance). By the time you get into the specialist-only stuff the prices easily get out of reach of anyone relying almost exclusively on the income streams I mentioned at the beginning (good luck on that anima weapon). For the few people who do seem to be bothering with specialization, they seem to be doing it to hoard gil like mad (for what purpose?).

My thoughts on what they could do is re-evaluate what they actually think the average player earns in a week gil-wise after accounting for repairs/teleports and such. Then, figure out what they can do to bring prices down to more reasonable levels for things they expect most players to try to do. For example, the costs of land fall outside of this since the amount of plots is far fewer than the amount of players, but crafted items for anima weapons are basically unlimited meaning that most players could be expected to go for that (multiple times, even). 10-20mil total for anima weapon items is unacceptable... that's more than I paid for my small house! It's like saying that there should be more houses than anima weapons in the game.

They need crafting to be more appealing to more people to increase the supply and competition. The specialization system, and especially gating recipes behind specialization, isn't helping. For starters, I'd recommend one of these options:

Option 1
-Remove specialist requirements from recipes and do not ever require specialist for any recipe again.
-Make specialist accessible at level 30 instead of 50, and give much better skill rewards for specialization so that true specialists focusing on only a few crafting classes are able to get by more easily without cross class skills.

Option 2
Remove the limit on how many specialist stones you can have. Sure, still give 3 freebies from that quest, but if you buy more with red scripts make it so that you don't give up existing ones and that you simply add to your collection of specializations making it possible to specialize in all 8 at once. Honestly I prefer option 1 because option 2 is more inconvenient and would make specialization have practically no meaning to omnicrafters and doesn't help non-omnicrafters as much. Granted, option 1 would take more effort for them to implement, so option 2 could be seen as the lazy/cheap way out.

Would this be enough to fix the problem? My instinct is that it would help, but not nearly enough. Crafting has trouble attracting people to begin with due to the lack of action in it compared to dungeons. Simply put, almost no amount of goodies will attract some people. Others might be on the fence with crafting, interested, but not able to see the point or rewards for bothering with it. As is, if you don't happen to care much about glamours or housing, there's not much attractive about crafting, especially after 3.0 content.

I agree, we don't need crafted BiS gear. I could only imagine the problems that would cause.
On the other hand, entry-level raid gear might be an interesting option, especially if it's side-by-side with tomestone/dungeon gear that have different stat combinations. It would give more gear options to players while also creating demand for crafted goods that also happen to be somewhat capped in terms of price by having to compete with gear obtained by other means.

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Originally Posted by Melondra

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you say "current state" but your links are years old. most of them from 2013, right after the release of the game. i don't think those links have anything to do with the actual current economical state of the game.

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Originally Posted by Chiami

1) SE is doing very little....words

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You can't ban someone on first report - you want them to continue operating, finding a source or buyers. In the long run the same people doing the bad are actually doing some good.

I saw three characters(obviously the same person) who have their own little FC containing just the three of them that have clearly been botting on Coerthas Central Highlands for what has at the very least been a year and a half now. I reported all of them with a very comprehensive and detailed report each time at least six times over the course of those 1.5 years+ when I encountered them, always in the same spots, and yet they were always there when I returned. Always the exact same players, farming the Ornerys and spiritbonding crafting gear. Admittedly, it was quite frustrating to find them each time.

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

I agree that a crafter should not be allowed to make BiS but currently crafters cannot even make entry level gear for Raids.
The best stuff we could make in 3.0 was i170 (mats for this gear are stupid rare) and you needed to be minimum i190 to have a chance a clearing AS1.
In 3.1, they bumped up the crafters to i185, still below the minimum threshold and gate locked the gear behind specialists.

A single crafter cannot iLvl jump a newbie, forcing that newbie to the MB, which should be good for the economy except that newbies do not have the Gil required to afford this gear. Just leaving the items to sit on the MB for long, long periods of time. Any crafter see this trend very soon and says to himself, forget bothering to make that ever again; which cause scarcity of the items driving the prices higher and perpetuates this problem.

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The promise is, the new gear will be raid-viable and not so difficult to get materials for. 3.0-3.1 basically forced all crafters to gather themselves with the low supply/excesive price.

Yet, i go back to the raid selling problem. Why would anyone care to get entry level gear if it can just buy the raid get itself? And considering tomegear is always an option, is better to gear up in the free tomegear, save money for a while, then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

Yet, i go back to the raid selling problem. Why would anyone care to get entry level gear if it can just buy the raid get itself? And considering tomegear is always an option, is better to gear up in the free tomegear, save money for a while, then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

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That depends, if it's 100k to gear up and try yourself as much as you like vs. 1mil to get one easy ride, which will most players choose? It's true that tomestone gear provides a low cost alternative, but if it's gear that's released at the same time as new tomestones, that means grinding that's probably comparable to the effort to earn the gil. The big difference is that most of us don't start at 0 gil each time new tomestones are released. Beyond that, there's always the chance that gear from one set or another will have secondary stats that better suit your playstyle/class vs. the other options.

However, I have little faith in SE to get this right. Those recipes will probably be specialist-only, require harder-to-get materials than we would have thought, and probably still be inferior to new tomestone gear even in its non-upgraded state. I've got just enough time left on my subscription to sit back and watch MB prices go nuts with this for the next patch. Seeing relic weapons cost more than houses has shown just how poorly they have thought things through. On top of the fact that housing itself was pretty poorly though through (at least player-owned housing anyway), it shows that their track record isn't exactly stellar.

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

... then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

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With the current Raid loot rules, how is there any gear dropped on a purchased clear? All the true raiders clear it on Tuesday, and sell the clears later in the week. On sold clear there are too many people in the party that already have the clear for a chest to drop.

SE has made a great system for many different styles of play but it has ran havoc on the economy for many different reasons. For starters the largest problem I see is that in FFXIV it is to easy and cheap to live. What do I have to spend money on. Technically I don't have to spend a Dime of in game money on anything. Consumables are nice, but are not needed for basic content, food can be found in Guildleve quests. Gear is handed out and if you play your Guild leve and content Correctly you really don't have to buy anything. If you spend all of your time on Battle content there is systems in place to give you gear for what ever it is that your trying to do. on top of that they do give steady income as well as other small rewards. Fate, Duty Roulette all of these aspects give gil my not be a lot but if your not spending it then your collecting it.

Most people use money for Looks (Glamour) and interior house and Room Decor if your involved with a guild as of right now till they potentially bring out apartments.

Now we will go into Crafting 101 and THE COST of crafting. How much does crafting cost you NOT A DAM THING= just like all things in life you start from Raw materials So gathering is where it starts whether it is by a pickaxes & hammer or Hatchet & scythe or even fishing pole or lastly Treasure hunting and content, all that it costs you is TIME. This is also related to real world economics as well. We want to be paid for our time. Why does that item cost 1 gil up to 4 million gil because SOME BODY OUT THERE WANTS IT.

Supply & Demand
There is always money to be made in these games I am an UNDERCUTTER and proud of it. I want my stuff to sell I don't care how low I have to go to make it go first and fast I also look at it from the perspective of how hard was this really to make for me. Did I have to buy my materials or did I go out and harvest them myself. what is a fair price to me for this item did I collect it though a quest can do i need it or can some poor other sap that is flat as broke use this to upgrade there gear set.

Crafting itself is a HUGE money sink for us because of the Items and materia NEEDED to be melded into our gear that just sucks our accounts dry unless you have found a way to pad your accounts before the updates if you are a small guild or solo crafter the world of crafting becomes hard fast. For me personally it is about picking your fights wisely and seeing what items and material you have readily available to you.

In my personal opinion the current system of crafting in FFXI isn't about making money as much as it is being useful to others in there time of need or creating a set of gear that looks different. The harder and faster you level it Presents opportunists the chance to make money but for the majority of us crafting is a means to an end and about outfitting our friends and family while being a time and money sink on the players trying to master it. I am not a rich player but I could be if I wanted to spend more time on the works of crafting but there Potential of what crafting has to offer in comparison to everything else in the game I find it lacking in the luster to be competitive with blue End Game Gear at this point. but the Glamour side of things and housing items is where the money is at currently.

Well, as a 3-star crafter who went through 3.1 and all of the hassle of favors, I\\\\'ll say that the newest crafting materials are light years easier than 3.1

Then: gathering Adamantite, trading for red scrips, gathering ooids, crafting for other red scrips, trading for mats, crafting other mats, using those to make gear. Weekly limits

Now: Gather a few mats with hourly nodes. Trade some esoterics for other mats. Craft advanced mats. Make gear. No weekly limits. Everything market-ready

So it\\\\'s more streamlined in a way. That said, you need to have some SERIOUS gear, either having invested months of red scrips or melded the crap out of your crafted gear. You also now need help to make all the gear. I think eventually the i220 gear, which is quite raid-viable, will be affordable for many and will make the cost of entry into that tier of gameplay somewhat reasonable compared with grinding gear to reach the next ilvl cap, then grinding again.

So them\\\\'s my thoughts

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Originally Posted by TahoeMax

Then: gathering Adamantite, trading for red scrips, gathering ooids, crafting for other red scrips, trading for mats, crafting other mats, using those to make gear. Weekly limits

Now: Gather a few mats with hourly nodes. Trade some esoterics for other mats. Craft advanced mats. Make gear. No weekly limits. Everything market-ready

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Now they just need to go back and fix 3.0 and 3.1 crafting to make it more along the lines of 3.2. I'm not saying make it easy, but the entire favors system was nuts and there are a variety of mats that are still severely limited in availability. The systems that they're locked behind give in game benefits to players who bot while players who are actually playing are severely disadvantaged.

Your sources are bad, and you should feel bad. Not one of your links have a date newer than 2014.

Due to the release of this current patch there is great money to be made in the crafting and gathering business right now. So far I have made around 3 million in about 2 days from crafting wish is pretty good. The question remains how long will it last till the market crashes again. My point is this, the economy should be showing a steady decline in its economy and then a incline at very low levels, but this games economy seem to go strait up,crash and then repeat instead of leveling off slowly over time.

This thread was not created for you to attack anothers viewpoint, is your view-point so weak it cannot stand a debate without your pride being injured? Stick to facts then. you tell me, why do you think this system is workable? What do you like about it "SwissArmyKnife"? and please do not attack another person viewpoint because it differs from yours that not why this thread was created.

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Originally Posted by TahoeMax

I think eventually the i220 gear, which is quite raid-viable, will be affordable for many and will make the cost of entry into that tier of gameplay somewhat reasonable compared with grinding gear to reach the next ilvl cap, then grinding again.

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For kicks, I just checked this point on my server:
High Mythrite Helm of Fending 4-6 mil (no current listings)
High Mythrite Cuirass of Fending 4-8mil (currently only one listing at 8mil, history shows just four sales in this price range)
High Mythrite Gauntlets of Fending 4-6 mil (1 current listing at 5 mil)
High Mythrite Sabatons of Fending 4-6 mil (1 current listing at 5 mil)
High Mythrite Plate Belt of Fending 3-4 mil (2 listings for 3.1 mil each)
Each accessory in the range of 2-3 mil (a fair number of listings in this range for each type)

Without considering weapon, that's about 30 mil for the low end. How in the world can that be considered affordable? Will prices go down? Let's look at the items for anima weapons:
Kingcake x4 for a total of 2mil
Adamantite Francesca x4 for a total of 1.4mil
Titanium Alloy Mirror x4 for a total of 1.8 mil
Dispelling Arrow x4 for a total of 1.2 mil
Grand total of 6.4 mil. It's been a good few months, and this weapon is now outdated by 3.2 standards, yet still costs about double the max price of a small house on this server, and that's also not counting any of the other effort of grinding and such for this weapon.

Now, if I happened to be the greedy type, I could certainly power up a few specialist and have fun posting some of these items and rake in the gil. But what purpose would that serve? I don't want gil, I want to have fun. The specialist system sucks and I don't want any part of it. Besides, at these prices, how is this sustainable? Is this SE's way of endorsing the gil sellers? I can't think of any other way for this kind of gil to enter the economy for "most players" to use this stuff to gear up for entry level raiding. Going based on what I've seen before with prices, these will crash once they're obsolete and therefore won't do anyone any good for entry level raiding.

I did say "eventually". And apparently what I meant was "in a few days". Honestly, nothing is really selling on Famfrit other than materia. Sure, things are listed at 3-5m but they only sell if priced under 2m for the most part, and even then a sale happens every day or two. So you're closer to 10m for an HQ left side after a week. It'll likely drop from there, though perhaps not as precipitously

This is also not "entry level raiding'. Buying NQ gear for 1/3-1/2 the price is totally viable for Gordias, Void Ark, etc. This is end-game raiding, and with even a few of these pieces at HQ you are set for essentially everything in the game that isn't Sephirot EX or Midas Savage. If someone really wanted a shortcut to the endgame, they can hit 60, find a gilseller, give them 50 bucks, and away they go. Is SE tacitly endorsing gilsellers? Probably. Does it give players more options that didn't exist before? Absolutely. Depending on who you ask, that may be a reasonable trade-off or not.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

Besides, at these prices, how is this sustainable? Is this SE's way of endorsing the gil sellers? I can't think of any other way for this kind of gil to enter the economy for "most players" to use this stuff to gear up for entry level raiding. Going based on what I've seen before with prices, these will crash once they're obsolete and therefore won't do anyone any good for entry level raiding.

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The problem with your economy is almost certainly due to a low number of Endgame Crafters on that server. Either your server is small and a few people are holding a monopoly, the market isn't Crafter-friendly (Low mat costs, plentiful amounts listed, etc.), or others have taken the exact same stance you about the Specialist system.

The best explanation I can honestly give you is that since the start of 3.0 SE has been trying to appeal to all types of Crafters, including HC Crafters, but the Crafting Endgame for the past 6 months has been lackluster at best with no real motivation to improve gear other than self satisfaction. Now that Crafting gear is viable those who put off gearing their Crafters for the past 6 months are struggling due to inflated costs and no preparation (I.E. Didn't save Red Scrips). Because of this the only players capable of mass producing 3*s are those who planned for the future and those who Craft for enjoyment and progression like myself, and the demand is much MUCH higher than the current supply.

I can't really find a non-Elitist way to say this, but the drastic changes to Crafting since HW release has effectively separated the HC Crafters from the Casual Crafters, and there is a VERY small number of HC Crafters even when compared to HC Raiders.

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Originally Posted by TahoeMax

I did say "eventually". And apparently what I meant was "in a few days".

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I know you're being sarcastic, and I was being slightly unrealistic given that the content is so new, but that's also why I continued on by examining the costs of the anima weapon, which is inferior iLvl-wise and has been out a while. My basic point isn't so much that the prices aren't affordable within days of release, but rather that they're so slow to come down to reasonable levels that even being one patch outdated doesn't cut it. Want to gear up to pre-3.0 i110 in level 50 gear? That's affordable enough last I checked, but what would be the point? It's pretty obsolete and the 3.0 i115 gear is much easier to get the materials for.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

The problem with your economy is almost certainly due to a low number of Endgame Crafters on that server. Either your server is small and a few people are holding a monopoly, the market isn't Crafter-friendly (Low mat costs, plentiful amounts listed, etc.), or others have taken the exact same stance you about the Specialist system.

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I suspect it's a mix of those reasons, but given how crafting doesn't involve forming an 8-man static I would think that the ratio of crafters to non-crafters should be relatively similar across all of the servers. Although, a question: How does low mat costs/high mat availability hurt crafter-friendliness? What I've found so far is that if I need something for a craft, it's generally available and reasonably priced on my server unless it requires specialization.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

The best explanation I can honestly give you is that since the start of 3.0 SE has been trying to appeal to all types of Crafters, including HC Crafters.

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I can't really find a non-Elitist way to say this, but the drastic changes to Crafting since HW release has effectively separated the HC Crafters from the Casual Crafters, and there is a VERY small number of HC Crafters even when compared to HC Raiders.

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If that first part about SE's goal in this is accurate, then your closing statement acknowledges that SE has failed and that they need to re-evaluate the path they're on.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

I suspect it's a mix of those reasons, but given how crafting doesn't involve forming an 8-man static I would think that the ratio of crafters to non-crafters should be relatively similar across all of the servers. Although, a question: How does low mat costs/high mat availability hurt crafter-friendliness? What I've found so far is that if I need something for a craft, it's generally available and reasonably priced on my server unless it requires specialization.

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There are plenty of players who are also Crafters of course, but when I mentioned Endgame Crafters I was referring to the players who had their classes geared and ready for the current Endgame Crafting recipes. A properly overmelded white set could HQ all the way up to 2*, and given the potential time/gil sink getting i180/i170 gear requires coupled with no immediate benefits caused most players to not even touch Red Scrips at all. Because of this, the only players actually capable of Crafting the current 3* recipes are those who either had the gil/time to spare for the gear and were planning for the future or those who enjoy Crafting and geared their classes just to see improvements. Even combined, these types of players are an extremely small fraction of the Crafting community and I wouldn't be surprised if there was only 1 or 2 players capable of making 3* recipes at 3.2 release on smaller servers. I'm on Tonberry, a server I've been told has more high level Crafters than most and even now I usually only compete with 3-5 people max on most of my markets.

As to markets being Crafter friendly and my "(Low mat costs, plentiful amounts listed, etc.)" I was giving an example of what makes a market Crafter friendly. Some mats may be harder to find making the price rise and availability limited, and while this may not be true for Gathering mats it most certainly is in terms of 3* mats. Having a smaller playerbase means it's easier to have a monopoly on a certain market, and if you need a 3* mat that you can't make you're going to be forced to pay whatever price the person that has that monopoly deems fit, or spend a week+ worth of Scrips to change one of your classes. Higher mat cost means the final product will cost more to compensate, making it harder to sell (Or buy if you're trying to purchase it). You might make a large profit from big spenders every once in a while, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to how often you could have sold that item had it been at a more reasonable price.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

If that first part about SE's goal in this is accurate, then your closing statement acknowledges that SE has failed and that they need to re-evaluate the path they're on.

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Yes and no, the real issue lies with player mentality and SE's inability to interpret how the majority of players viewed Crafting. The biggest thing that caused most players to drop Endgame Crafting was the lack of any tangible benefit to gearing up. More 2* gear only helped in making 2* gear easier to Craft, but costs were so high and demand so little that there was no point to doing it if you were in it for the gil. It also didn't help that a gating system such as Red Scrips was a completely new concept and had it's own inherent flaws (15 minute Favors with no guarantee of getting anything at all was my biggest complaint). This was where SE dropped the ball.

As for the players, it took over 6 months for SE to release recipes that couldn't be Crafted with properly melded white gear. That's at least 25 weeks worth of Red Scrips, or 225 Red Scrips that could have been collected. With minimal melds on Accessories a player can Craft a 3* in full i180 gear + the OH, which costs 100 Red Scrips total IIRC. That's at least 2 classes that could have been 3* ready only by capping Red Scrips each week. Not only that, Red Scrip mats to craft i170 gear are literally 3 times easier (And cheaper) to get thanks to the increases near the end of last year. They may not have had the incentive to gear up their classes, but they had the ability to. This is the player's fault, but one I don't hold against them.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

This is the player's fault, but one I don't hold against them.

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But not the fault of new players, who get hit by this pretty hard.

Basically, red scrips are where they've really messed things up at. That's where the real problem lies.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

But not the fault of new players, who get hit by this pretty hard.

Basically, red scrips are where they've really messed things up at. That's where the real problem lies.

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This isn't a problem, it's something that happens in every MMO. A new player cannot expect to immediately enter Endgame content for Crafting OR Combat if they start months later. The Crafting system functions differently in that the time between gear progressions is MUCH longer than it is for Combat, this hasn't changed since 2.0, the only difference is that the best gear is now locked behind a weekly cap. Even then, a properly melded white set can Craft everything up to 2* which means a diligent player can reach up to 2* levels of Crafting without touching Red Scrips at all.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

This isn't a problem, it's something that happens in every MMO. A new player cannot expect to immediately enter Endgame content for Crafting OR Combat if they start months later. The Crafting system functions differently in that the time between gear progressions is MUCH longer than it is for Combat, this hasn't changed since 2.0, the only difference is that the best gear is now locked behind a weekly cap. Even then, a properly melded white set can Craft everything up to 2* which means a diligent player can reach up to 2* levels of Crafting without touching Red Scrips at all.

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Not really. A player is combat endgame ready within a week of reaching level 60. Not so with crafting.

And to say it's something that happens in every MMO isn't quite true since it did not happen on this one until red scrips were added.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Not really. A player is combat endgame ready within a week of reaching level 60. Not so with crafting.

And to say it's something that happens in every MMO isn't quite true since it did not happen on this one until red scrips were added.

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3* Recipes are the Crafting equivalent of Midas Savage, and I guarantee you a new player would not have the skills or gear to clear Savage levels of content in a week. An experienced player starting a new character/class could probably clear A5S in the first week, but definitely not A6S+, and it's the same way for Crafting. An experienced Crafter making a new character/class could be Crafting 2* recipes in their first week of reaching 60, but definitely not 3* as it would require massive amounts of gil for i170 gear, something I don't assume everyone has.

And it IS something that happens in every MMO INCLUDING this one, the only difference is players are used to this kind of system for Combat, not Crafting/Gathering, and that's what is throwing people off. Before 3.0 you could be Crafting Endgame ready within a day depending on how much gil you spent on it, which was a shame because the Crafting system FFXIV has is complex enough that it deserves it's own Endgame and that's what we got with 3.0.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

3* Recipes are the Crafting equivalent of Midas Savage, and I guarantee you a new player would not have the skills or gear to clear Savage levels of content in a week.

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Which part am I missing? Beginning of 3.2: Current players had ilvl 210. New player within a week: ilvl 210 armor + 220 weapon. Skill is gained by doing the content, which they can do.

Crafters, on the other hand, can't. They're locked out of 3 star.

For 3 stars to be equivalent of Midas, you would be able to attempt them, but not guaranteed to succeed, in the same amount of time. They aren't equivalent. The barrier is set much higher for crafting. And skill is pretty much absent for crafting.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

Which part am I missing? Beginning of 3.2: Current players had ilvl 210. New player within a week: ilvl 210 armor + 220 weapon. Skill is gained by doing the content, which they can do.

Crafters, on the other hand, can't. They're locked out of 3 star.

For 3 stars to be equivalent of Midas, you would be able to attempt them, but not guaranteed to succeed, in the same amount of time. They aren't equivalent. The barrier is set much higher for crafting. And skill is pretty much absent for crafting.

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The example wasn't meant to compare difficulties, it was meant to compare how Crafting is gated similarly to Combat, and I apologize for not elaborating. In terms of gating in comparison to Combat, I consider 3* to be at least A7S+, and 1*-2* to be A1S-A6S.

Just because you can ENTER A5S doesn't mean you can clear it, and if you can't you're locked out of A6S+ until you can gear up through weekly caps.
Just because you can CRAFT 2* doesn't mean you can HQ it, and if you can't you're locked out of 3* until you can gear up through weekly caps.

Clearing A5S gets you better gear and unlocks A6S and eventually A7S and A8S.
Making HQ 2* gets you better gear (i170) and eventually unlocks 3*.

Speaking on skill, you're correct that there's no skill required when you can be told "Get these stats, use this rotation", but there most certainly is for the people who found those numbers and that rotation. Especially on a new patch with new gear/rotations, the first few Crafters to find those optimal stats and rotation are going to make much more than others unwilling to experiment.

The main thing hurting new players (Or new Crafters in general) is that there has been no catch-up gear for Crafting and no increase in Red Scrip cap or reduction of the token cost for the i180 gear. Yes, Crafting content is harder to break into than Combat, but it's also not as essential as Combat is to enjoying the majority of the content the game has to offer, nor does it get as many updates or additions. You can complete the entire storyline, every Primal, and every Raid without even unlocking a single Crafting class. The same can't be said in reverse.

When 3 star crafting came out they should of either removed the red script cap or lowered the amount of scripts needed for the 180 gear. Granted I can craft any of the 2 star items but it gets extremely costly when melding. Granted all 180 will not get you to 3 star but the MH, OH and perhaps body with other pieces can greatly help and save you some gil in the long run without spending millions on overmelding. At least I have all the accessories and belt overmelded which greatly helps since you can use it on any crafting class :)

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Originally Posted by Sardonia

When 3 star crafting came out they should of either removed the red script cap or lowered the amount of scripts needed for the 180 gear.

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I completely agree with this statement, and don't know why they haven't at the very least increased the Red Scrip cap.

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Originally Posted by Sardonia

Granted all 180 will not get you to 3 star but the MH, OH and perhaps body with other pieces can greatly help and save you some gil in the long run without spending millions on overmelding. At least I have all the accessories and belt overmelded which greatly helps since you can use it on any crafting class :)

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Actually, it will. With full i180 including the new i180 OH, white accessories with minimal Tier IV overmelds, and HQ Seafood Stew you CAN reach 3* capabilities.

Source: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/TB9K

I put this together quickly and it could probably be cheaper, but this build only requires 4 29% Tier IV overmelds and a single 16% Tier IV overmeld. I even planned for it to have enough CP for Rath's rotation. If you have all your accessories capped and every i180 piece then you have the ability to Craft 3*.

And thats why i don't bother with crafting to much. I would like a set for all crafts, not one set per craft. We already are limited SEVERELY on the space we have as it is. No way i'm going through the hassle of switching it every time i want to make something else. Yuck

Being able to craft the 2* even with a gear for freshly leveled crafter doesn't help much when the materials required are gated behind the favor system, or obnoxiously high amount of gil.

I think people are exaggerating how hard it is to do endgame crafting, both from a rotation/skill point of view and in terms of the investment. I won't even talk about how easy it is to level crafting classes to level 60.

Let's start off with the gear. So many people look at the whole favor system and say screw it... I'm not spending days repeating the same crap over and over again and might not even be able to HQ the stuff in the end. I have some sympathy if your goal is to gear all crafting classes with endgame gears, which I have done and seen how much of a soul drain it can be. However, the fact is that you don't need to do that for every crafting class, since only the specialist classes really matter in the current system. Suddenly, the amount of gears you really need to get does down from 8 classes worth to just 3! That is a bargain? no? In fact, it's the people who have got all crafting classes at item level 170+ that really have the right to complain. They made all these extra investment and these don't pay off under the specialist system.

Now onto the mythical gil sink: these goddamn melds! I question if melds are that costly compared to how much money you can make if you put in that investment. You also don't need 'the perfect melds': you do not need a Command IV in every single slot of your gears. Generally when people complain about melds costing too much, it's because they are spending that extra mil to get that one more precious point of control or CP, which means absolutely nothing in practice but everything psychologically. We need to compromise a bit on the quality of the melds considering one less control isn't going to make or break. And really, with airships bringing back all materias like candies they are not that expensive.

The cost side of gearing crafters are justified by the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS you will end up making if you spend the time to use your investment. These costs are truly pitiful compared to the rewards. This is especially true on servers where there just isn't a large absolute number of endgame crafters. I am not talking about the ratio of crafters to the server size - just the absolute number, since more crafters mean more undercutting and a less concentrated supplier market. One or two people can more easily decide the price, ten of them cannot. So, if crap on your server are too expensive, the economically viable best solution is to start crafting, since your competition is abysmal.

Crafting rotations are dead easy with the internet being a ready source of guidance. Generally if you are patient and not trigger happy, and think about what you are doing each step of the way you cannot go wrong. Sometimes RNG comes into play and screws you, but generally that's because you cut too many corners the vast majority of the time that happens. have more HQ mats to start with and even really bad RNG won't be enough to stop you from HQing anything.

Really - I am surprised that everyone and their granmas are not churning out these 3 stars.

Agreed with everything you said.

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Originally Posted by BruceBear

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Can you explain how you got all of your crafters to 60? I'm almost done with getting all of the classes to 50 and I'm ready to make the next jump to 60 but it looks really difficult.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

Can you explain how you got all of your crafters to 60? I'm almost done with getting all of the classes to 50 and I'm ready to make the next jump to 60 but it looks really difficult.

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If you're an omnicrafter then you can do what I'm doing. Its a slow method but it works beautifully.

The first part of what I do is I create an HQ stack of the highest 2-3 mats on that craft that I'm able to craft. For a lv 50 wvr that would be things like your felt, jute and twinthread. Keep making new stacks of higher level mats as you level to keep earning xp. Do that for all your classes and keep them around the same level for a decent stock of mats on hand too.

The second part is to use those stacks of mats and turn in some leves until 55 or so. After 55 you can start using the collectible system for blue scrips, and later red scrips.

its time consuming, but its simple and it works...at least for me.