FFXIV the worst economy in any P2P MMO?

[Millimidget]

Unlike every other MMO I've played, I'm actually engaging in the crafting system in this one, entirely because I can do so much of it myself. If that option wasn't available to me, I wouldn't engage in crafting at all, either as a crafter or as a customer; I'd live off quest rewards and dungeon drops, and otherwise sit on all my gil.

Because I can "do it all," I'm actually engaging in crafting. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't eliminate the need to purchase anything. I sometimes buy well priced gathering mats off the market boards, and I frequently search for HQ drops because farming those is time consuming. Until the introduction of gil spigots in 2.1, I tried not to spend any gil on the market board, because it was so precious. Unlike most others, I'm not panicked over housing prices, and recognize this as a great time to buy as everyone else tries to liquidate.

I don't see the advantage of a highly interdependent crafting system if the only way you can get the playerbase to engage enmasse is to literally force them to by dropping some BiS gear into a few craft classes. There's still plenty of demand out there, just not for endgame items that all the other endgame players already have. Actually, if the complaint is that there's just not enough profit to be made off endgame crafting, I really have to wonder what the hell you're doing trying to profit off of crafting when you have such a poor grasp on economics.

The best changes they could introduce right now to improve the economy would be to change how we post items, and to add a posting fee; a posting fee wouldn't really work under the current posting system, because you're actually re-posting items every time you interact with the retainer, hence why the market boards are oversaturated with a ton of overpriced junk that people just don't bother to remove from their retainers. Just changing the way in which we post items would itself be a worthwhile change, but adding a posting fee would at least help calm markets some.

Eventually, players will get over the sticker shock of company housing. They'll feel more secure about spending, and less compelled to liquidate rapidly. And they'll come to recognize that their income (sans market boards) is drastically higher.

Now only they had made better looking gear worth keeping as a skin.

The best skins I've seen were dungeon pieces. Crafted gear has the same appearance as quest reward gear, which is to say quest reward gear is just NQ crafted gear.

[Lafiele]

I feel i'm playing a different game here where I'm still able to earn and sell my items but everyone else can't. Lol...

[Millimidget]

I feel i'm playing a different game here where I'm still able to earn and sell my items but everyone else can't. Lol...

Seriously.

Maybe part of it is due to specific server circumstances? As far as I know, the market boards are server specific. I'm on a relatively low pop server; less motivation to liquidate due to more reasonable housing prices, and fewer players oversaturating the market or slashing prices in an attempt to liquidate probably both serve to offer me a more profitable environment, despite the decreased demand.

[Susanoh]

The best changes they could introduce right now to improve the economy would be to change how we post items, and to add a posting fee; a posting fee wouldn't really work under the current posting system, because you're actually re-posting items every time you interact with the retainer, hence why the market boards are oversaturated with a ton of overpriced junk that people just don't bother to remove from their retainers. Just changing the way in which we post items would itself be a worthwhile change, but adding a posting fee would at least help calm markets some.

I doubt any changes to the way we post items would have any significant effect on the economy. No posting changes are going to change the fact that a player with a little time on their hands can go gather a thousand or two flax or electrum ore and supply an army with whatever they want to make from it, just for one example.

Even if you look to FFXI, which used both blind bids and listing/relisting fees, those aren't even close to what made items valuable. Something like copper ore wasn't shooting through the roof because of its listing methods. It was still cheap because it was very abundant, anyone could get it easily and the supply greatly outnumbered the demand (similar to nearly everything FFXIV). Only the items that were in demand and didn't drop like candy held any worth. Gold ore was a fairly rare mid level item that generally sold for a decent price. Adaman ore was very rare, used in high level crafting and required more attention to gather due to being in an area with aggressive higher level mobs that would need to be avoided while gathering, and it sold for a high price. If players could go farm hundreds of these in an hour like they can with the vast majority of FFXIV, they wouldn't have retained their value in any scenario. And the same goes for items in this game. You can't put a bandaid over the fact that the entire world is filled with materials that can be obtained far more quickly than the demand could ever catch up. This point would need to be addressed for anything to change.

[Raminax]

I feel i'm playing a different game here where I'm still able to earn and sell my items but everyone else can't. Lol...

I think most people who are complaining are simply upset they can't make millions on every craft nowadays (especially with the astronomical prices on FC Housing currently, further enhancing their complex). I don't craft often, but I can still make lots of money on smaller sales like Goldsmith jewellery, Alchemist/Culinarian consumables or gathering materials used for popular leves when I feel like it. Though Phoenix is also in the next-cheapest group of houses, so I'd imagine we kind of suck.

Still... I wouldn't say the economy is perfectly fine as it is, because there's still the issue of a gigantic supply versus little demand, but that would likely need a full redesign of the gathering system (or drastically increasing material requirements of crafting) and rethinking of the game's philosophies (what with Yoshida not wanting to make crafting required for end-game) to make it work. :/

[Geobryn]

allowing all the gear to be meldable, and only the crafted one to be convertible could fix a lot imho
you would still be able to beat/progress through all content just by doing dungeons, the craft would just make it a bit easier

[Shneibel]

I feel i'm playing a different game here where I'm still able to earn and sell my items but everyone else can't. Lol...

it is not about can or cant, hell if you set a stack 99 of aldgoat skin for 5g each (had been this low on excalibur), you still be able to sell but you dont earn much.

[Kerwin]

I checked the market yesterday to see what was worth gathering to make money. Theres nothing. And with the limited amount of time I have to play when I get home from work, I would rather not spend it Spirit Binding for Materia aince I had already leveled my chocobo. At the current status of this economy, there is nothing more profitable thrn that. And this concerns me.

And please, you cant make me gather shards all day. Thats even worse then SB.

[IndigoHawk]

I agree FFXIV economy is pretty bad.

There's not much demand for gathering or crafting, so there's little profit. I can make some money at it, but it's not worth the time it takes. I can get more than enough gold for repairs from running dungeons.

Also, with the way Duty Roulette works, I don't need to buy crafted gear for alts. I'm leveling a WHM doing daily DR and Guildhests. Those usually are low level dungeons that don't need gear. I'm using level 20-30 gear at level 40+. It looks like I'll be able to get by with this gear until 50 when I can use DL/CT/etc.

[Yurikitty]

Well I was starting to make gil again with SB materia but the rampant bots on our server have made even that market crash. And the worst part about it is these aren't RMT, oh no, they are real players who will tell you off when you kill their botting asses. These same douche bags are putting up stacks of materia. And what does SE do about it? Tells us that if we kill them WE are the person breaking TOS. Botting players fall under the same category as players that would AFK for entire CM runs. I have to ask WTF is SE thinking sometimes?! Botting is now a personal play style?! Are you kidding me?