Specialist System in 3.0

[Gillionaire]

No, I believe the lack of market activity in this game is simply the consequence of a huge design flaw on SE's part to create a consistent, consumable gil sink.

Reason WoW's AH is so active was because most people needed to buy whatever they needed on a weekly basis and it was the accepted norm to do so. How many people do you see in this game that brings potions/elixirs/whatever else into dungeons or raids?

Also, WoW had a way of keeping the general prices down with a simplified crafting system, so people had to account less for the actual crafting service and tack on a slight fee above material costs. IN ff14, I see 300-400% profit as the norm and I understand why, it takes so much time and is somewhat skill based (i.e. people who researched 3-4 star rotations properly will hit 95-100% hq with it, vs. people who don't will have trouble to get above 70%).

Of course, we can't compare the two fairly, WoW does have much bigger servers and it encourages everyone to have at least 2 crafting classes so everyone's involved in the market. Where as, in ff14, the player base is smaller and most don't participate in the MB.

I think what the devs are trying to do, is draw in more people to crafting by "casualizing" it, but the crafting system in ff14 is inherently hard core. (gathering, crafting, gearing for the two, every bit of it)


P.S. I do agree that we need more crafters in this game to create a healthy market board.. I just don't believe specialization will actually do that.
I think what we need is to show the incentives to have money in this game.. Some people are simply clueless as to how to make gil and carry below 1 million gil throughout their entire gaming experience here.. Some are simply uninterested because there's not much to spend the money on.. In either case, if we introduced more gil sinks that rewarded hoarding gil, I think we'll see an influx of new crafters.

I believe that's also the reason some of the high-end crafters can amass so much damn wealth.. Not because they're being stingy with it, but because there's just nothing to spend the money on.. In the past week, I've given away 2 artisan's aprons, 1 ice barding, and 2 artisan off hands (to friends of course, I'm not THAT generous) AND bought enough mats to make 2 inferno weapons (about 5m total) yet, I still somehow made it all back and more in the week since then..

It's actually starting to annoy me that gil in this game feels a lot like the how gold was in Diablo 2.. Repair bill, use for a little bit of gambling.. then nothing else, you just stockpile and let it sit.. I didn't get into crafting just so I could make gil and sit on it