Thavnairian Bustier - evidence that SE adores Gil sellers.

[Silver_bells]

You want a civilized discussion? I'll bite.

Someone mentioned "don't say these things are easy - just because they're easy for you, doesn't mean they're easy for others". Let's play this argument - let's assume the common player doesn't have 20m gil available at all, a fair assumption. From the complaints I've seen, the average player seems to have anywhere from 100k to 2m. A lot of players like to be snark about how 18m is actually pocket change (since, depending on the point of view, it is) but they don't explain why. So let me try to elaborate.

I don't think RMT matters in this situation, especially not in the servers you mentioned. The amount of gil wealthy players have is really, really high. There are way more super wealthy players than you think. These are not necessarily crafters, they can be:

Combat Spiritbonders
DoH/DoL Spiritbonders
Primal/Coil run sellers
Gatherers
Market players
Estate resellers

Some of these are nasty activities depending on whom you ask, but all of these people exist, and they have huge amounts of Gil. The average player who's actively playing the game with a financial mindset should have at least 10m, usually 30m-50m. More seasoned players have 100m+. Almost all of the 1.0 veterans I've seen who play the market have at least 100m-200m. And then there are the whales with 500m,1b,2b,4b+.

What do all of these players have in common? RMT is irrelevant to them. The people buying these glamours have an insane amount of Gil. 18m is pretty much pocket change to these players. I can't stress this enough - the order of magnitude of Gil some players have is enormous.

So let's take a look at what's happening right now. What is happening is that all of these people who accumulated mountains of gil finally have a reason to spend their gil. And as a consequence the people who can provide any service is having a rain of gil poured over them. I don't think Square/anyone saw these prices coming (much less planned it), since these items arent particularly rare - this price is entirely based on the mid-tier crafters being aware of the whales holding tons of gil. They may seen rare now but this is gonna change eventually - as others have pointed out, this bubble won't last.


I do want to point out one thing, the issue with crafting at the moment. People like to say that glamour is the true endgame, and while they say it as a joke, it is nevertheless true in the economical sense. The insane price of glamour in general is a consequence of the high entry cost of crafting and the fact crafting is for all intents and purposes useless for gearing for combat. You're stuck selling cosmetic items and gear for crafters. House furnishing sells slow and even things that sell for millions arent really profitable due to the liquidity risk, which is very high. Every glamour item is eventually going to be subject to that - even the Thavnairian Bustier.

Let me say I do understand your position, though. The entry cost to being able to make gil in this game tends to be high, and if you're not used to it you're bound to miss opportunities that are transparent to seasoned players. This is extremely frustrating and disencouraging. Lastly, I am not gonna lie - I find the price of these items a little awkward. With that said, it is not bad that there are some crazy expensive cosmetic stuff, otherwise all that gil I pointed out wont come down. It is most unfortunate that sometimes this is stuff that's of interest to you, but do try to take advantage of the situations and see how they are profitable, be calm (since the items ARE gonna crash eventually!) and sooner than later you'll find yourself having all the toys you wanted.

I do hope my point of view offered you some new perspective on the issue at hand. Hopefully you'll have your Thavnairian Bustier!

[RaquelleAvarosa]

-snip-

You are my hero <3

[Silver_bells]

You are my hero <3

Thanks, thought I'd offer some perspective as someone who started late in 2.0 very poor and worked up to sell some bustiers eventually. Glad you appreciated.

[Felessan]

The thing is there is no skill requirement to level gathering and crafts required to make the vanity gear. This isn't doing hard raid content which actually takes skill to complete. This is just putting in time to get your gathering and crafts up to level. So in the end it is easy to obtain just takes some time. Crafts level way faster then battle classes as well so if you just focused on that you would be done sooner then you would doing battle jobs.

Vanity gear was always used as a mean to move money from rich to gatherers and usual folks who do maps - thus returning money to economy and reduce Gini coefficient in FF14.
As in real life - not every thing are meant for everybody.
Some people (mostly crafters) accumulate insane amounts of money (which they drain from casual folks) and to prevent economy distortion and inequality in goods access you need a way to drain this money, both as outflow (like housing was) and downflow back to casual folks. Which is why a lot of highest priced glamour required heavily randomized rare drops from relatively casual content (which limits ability to farm and force you to actually buy randomized items, thus spend money) or items from less wanted gatherers jobs (fishing gain a lot of popularity when summerbreeze items were introduced).

To put into perspective - there are quite a number of people with hundreds of million of gil. There even some people with more than a billion of gil. For them 20 mil price tag is not that much. And this amount of money are quite dangerous for game economy if left unchecked.

[BreathlessTao]

Y'know, as much as I can see certain things, like how so much gil needs to go somewhere, how crafting needs to be kept relevant, etc... I'm just not sure SE is going on about it in a good way. Personally, I'm just fed up with it though. With the fact that they created this situation (they opened the doors to it), and it's ~98% of the players who suffer because of that. With awesome new clothes being shown off before every patch, and knowing it's out of our reach anyway, so why care? It's only the rich getting richer over and over again, so why care?

Here's the thing:

...yes, well, I'm sorry, I thought this was a game and not a job - dunno about others, but that's what I have if I want to work. And it's something I get paid for, not something I spend money on.

There are already more than enough parts that feel more like chores instead of fun. (Want goals to work for? Hunt achievements. Do raids. Do PvP. Get all your jobs and classes to 50 60 and gear them up. Then do it again with retainers. More than enough to work, especially if you're not playing 24/7.) And yeah, surely, being teased for weeks with "cool stuff" and then having to wait months (or 1+ year) to be able to have it is just awesome! Yeah, best thing indeed, seeing beach sets released in the summer and getting to being able to actually have them in the middle of winter. Or next spring. Much sense. Such logic. Wow.

All I'm saying is some things were just nice if they didn't become the most difficult/complicated stuff to obtain, every now and again.

But no, now it's at the point where every time we see some fancy new outfits, we better just assume, by default, that it's not gonna be actually available for another half a year at least. That's in addition to having to wonder whether it'll be in-game or cash shop stuff (hello EB extras). And in addition to having to wonder whether some legit or made-up limits will completely restrict it or not (hello housing). So much for hype and excitement.