Cocerns about the future of the economy

[PenutButter]

My first concern is that almost ALL of the items on the market are craftable items. The problem with this is that most of the wealthiest people are high level crafters (myself included), which means they have almost no incentives to spend their gil since they can just make whatever it is that they want to buy. This means that they are hogging a significant portion of the gil and are not putting it back into the economy.

There needs to be something to give these people incentives to spend their gil. Maybe allow some BiS droppable items to be sellable. Nothing crazy like the Kraken Club and I'm not suggesting that you should be able to buy ALL your BiS equipments, but there needs to be something. Droppable mats is not a solution, as their only purpose is to allow crafters to make even more money, which just makes things worse.

[PenutButter]

2nd concern is the future of crafting. Yoshida said that they will not be releasing any new higher tier craftable gear in 2.1. 2-star (at least on my server) is a dying market; a combination of people gearing up, the anticipation of 2.1, and the massive competition (due to crafting being so damn easy to level), the price and sales of 2-star has plummeted. With the release of 2.1, with its rise on myth cap and lots of other ways to get comparable gear, I imagine that the market on 2-star will be pretty much dead. What will high-level crafters sell now?

You might imagine that furniture would be the solution to both these problems but there are some problems I see with furniture. First: they are probably gonna be expensive since the mats are not exactly easy to get. Second: They have no purpose other than aesthetics, which means mostly the wealthy will be the main customers. The problem with this is that most of the wealthy are crafters and they can just make the things themselves.

[harkinate]

Never underestimate the power of Aesthetics in an MMO. People spend 10x more for something that looks pretty than they will for something that gives them a stat advantage.

[scarebearz]

There needs to be something to give these people incentives to spend their gil. Maybe allow some BiS droppable items to be sellable. Nothing crazy like the Kraken Club and I'm not suggesting that you should be able to buy ALL your BiS equipments, but there needs to be something. Droppable mats is not a solution, as their only purpose is to allow crafters to make even more money, which just makes things worse.

Totally agree, the way things are the rich keep getting richer and the poor get poorer.

People like myself with a lot of gil, having nothing to buy with it and those with little gil have very little they can get to sell, especially now that Tombstone mats have dropped with a huge bump.

[dspguy]

How exactly are the rich crafters getting richer if the market is dried up?

[scarebearz]

"High end" crafter's are still able to make ok gil, the main thing is that we hardly need to spend anything, as there are no high value items to buy.

DoW/DoM classes have little to offer for sale to crafter's these days, in my opinion.

If some BiS gears from dungeons were sellable, both the people farming and those will gil from crafting etc would do well from it.

Sure so will moan that this may cause people to turn to RMT, but the fact is people are RMT'ing already and "counter measures" like this affect legit players the most.

[PenutButter]

People are botting crafting and gathering already so I fail to see how making some droppable items sellable will change anything.

/snip

I agree that people are willing to spend a lot on aesthetics but it doesn't change the fact that most of the people with gils are crafters, who can make the items themselves. Sure there are gil buyers or non-crafters who somehow have a lot of gil but the majority will still probably be crafters. The only other people with gils are gatherers (especially botters). I guess since there is really nothing else to spend your gil on, everything might work out fine for crafters but the problem of rich crafters not having any incentives to put their gil back into the economy is very real. I am filthy rich and I know others who are rich too and we have absolutely no reason to spend our gil; we're only hoarding gil cuz we like to hoard gil.

[waca]

My first concern is that almost ALL of the items on the market are craftable items. The problem with this is that most of the wealthiest people are high level crafters (myself included), which means they have almost no incentives to spend their gil since they can just make whatever it is that they want to buy. This means that they are hogging a significant portion of the gil and are not putting it back into the economy.

I agree with OP that end game crafters have nothing to spend on their gil for now. But I do like to remind you SE has personal housing planned for future patch.

In game currency/Gil are generated out of nothing with time spent playing on the game itself, it is unlike our real world. Just crafters hugging big amount of money will not crash the economy.

[ApolloGenX]

Who cares? Gil really doesn't matter much anyway. Some crafters have gil, and it will be useful for purely aesthetic stuff. Fine. That is more use than it is now, which is nothing, really.

So, I don't really care who is rich or poor, when it really has no bearing on character advancement. If you want to buy pretty but useless things, then work on saving gil... if you want to advance your characters.... grind, grind, grind tomes!

The economy only matters to crafters... who only care because it is crafters selling to crafters for the most part, anyway.

If you skip crafting, then the market is mostly pointless. (Unless you are one of those RMT buyers that wants to just buy crafted gear to skip tome farming and twink your newest level 50... in which case- again I don't care about you).

[Makado]

From what I understand housing is going to cost a lot. I bet even a small home will be like 500k, with the largest home possibly being 2 million or something (just a guess). I'm talking individual housing so probably aways off but still, something to consider saving all your gil for.