Gearbinding - can we get rid of it?

[CYoung187]

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!

[PArcher]

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

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.

[Nadrojj]

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.

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.

[Gilthas]

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".

[Tupsi]

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

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.

[Gilthas]

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.

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.

[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)

[Tupsi]

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.

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'.

[Mixxy]

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.

[Tiggy]

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

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.