Quote Originally Posted by Nanga View Post
I agree, and in addition to that, I feel the weekly cap is just way too low. We're already gated in so many other ways - mats being one of them - it just seems silly with how long we have to wait just to get one little gear improvement, that only crafters/gatherers can use. We're basically gated to gear up ourselves, forget about anyone else.
That's precisely the point of the cap, unfortunately. Gear yourself, then gear others. They're trying their damnedest to suppress the ability of those five people (you know, them) on a given server who can guarantee HQ anything at a cost that lets them sell just low enough suppress others from getting in on the market. The problem is that they've unintentionally hamstrung the people who actually do want to specialize, even though that's the playstyle they wanted to encourage.

The current cap and gear prices put it in line with the DoW/DoM gearing restrictions, which only let you focus on one Job at a time, which, as someone who only ever focused on a few of the many available crafters and gatherers, is fine with me. The idea is that different players will start off gearing different classes, and the inability to do everything on your own right off the bat will foster cooperation with other players, increasing the rate at which gil circulates, ultimately creating a better economy for everyone. It's a sound concept, but it's been implemented into an economy that was already too badly damaged for this kind of system to work as intended at launch.

By leaving the cap as-is, the overall speed of gearing stays the same as for combat classes, but by increasing the rate at which players can obtain red scrips towards that cap, it becomes a lot less punishing for specialists like myself to hit cap. The weekly cap also impacts the rate at which the materials for the crafted AF hit the market, which in the short term means that the people who already have the melded shared gear to acquire those materials now can sell at ridiculous prices to the extremely small minority that can afford them right now. Those players, however, still lack the gear required to guarantee HQ anything, so they are taking a rather sizeable risk by even attempting those recipes now. Ideally, they fail more than they succeed, putting tens of millions of gil (per attempt) back into circulation in the process and making them much more cautious of future attempts.

In a month or so, when players who skipped melding gear to go straight to red scrip gear have finally geared up enough on one class to spend red scrips on favors instead, the amount of materials on the market will increase dramatically, driving prices down to levels that will allow the less-wealthy red-scrip-geared crafters to buy them as well. That will increase the availability of crafted AF2, allowing people limited by the weekly cap to start gearing their other crafting classes in addition to their mains. There will even be a (small) market for the NQ crafted AF2, as it can simply be glamoured over the red-scrip version to make that same gear dyeable.


Tl;dr: the idea is that for the current omnicrafters to stay omnicrafters, they will need to buy things from other people, increasing the rate at which gil circulates, ultimately allowing more players to participate in the economy in smaller roles. It's also no longer possible to become an omnicrafter in a day.



...Or at least, I'm sure that's how this system was pitched to Yoshida. Time will tell if it really has a positive impact on the economy.