Propositions to address crafting/economic woes circa 3.0.

[AnimaS]

Nothing will fix an economic system in a video game based on 100% Blind Vertical Progression . If the halfwits at SE knew there would be a breakdown in money velocity they could have AT THE VERY LEAST required various crafting classes to use the drops in Alexander (Gob whip etc) ; to apply it to the gear...... but all that was given was a few food recipes that are of interest and draconian potions. No poison pots; due to Yoshida's rampage on people beating his raids.......

Now we have literally NO idea , but i will take a stab at what will happen.... all the mats we've spend countless MILLIONS on will suddenly be more accessible in November as the crafted gear becomes utterly MORE useless. Tier V materia cannot supplement the massive increase in ILVL BOOST (+100 of a secondary? not happening) so they will attempt to move the crafting system to
A) Useless Glamour
B) food / alchemy (Already Done)
C) ...??...

It won't work. Content sales are lower then ever due to the dps checks in alexander so demand for anything not required is gone. The very measures they said would wipe out omni crafting will create the Omni Crafter/GATHERER and blow up in their faces. Only gear of use (since armorer, blacksmith etc... create ARMOR and TOOLS/WEAPONS) will be bought if put up for sale so back into the dark. t5 materia is utterly useless it can never even come close to a stat cap. Crit 100ish? +12 Savage Aim? Sorry 5 slots does not even nearly cover it.

[Sibyll]

snip

This is more or less how they've always designed it, but I still don't like this design simply because the crafted gear competes with easily obtained token gear. It more or less becomes irrelevant because as time goes on an even more easily obtained gear set (24-man gear) becomes available.

Nothing will fix an economic system in a video game based on 100% Blind Vertical Progression . If the halfwits at SE knew there would be a breakdown in money velocity they could have AT THE VERY LEAST required various crafting classes to use the drops in Alexander (Gob whip etc) ; to apply it to the gear...... but all that was given was a few food recipes that are of interest and draconian potions. No poison pots; due to Yoshida's rampage on people beating his raids.......

Now we have literally NO idea , but i will take a stab at what will happen.... all the mats we've spend countless MILLIONS on will suddenly be more accessible in November as the crafted gear becomes utterly MORE useless. Tier V materia cannot supplement the massive increase in ILVL BOOST (+100 of a secondary? not happening) so they will attempt to move the crafting system to
A) Useless Glamour
B) food / alchemy (Already Done)
C) ...??...

It won't work. Content sales are lower then ever due to the dps checks in alexander so demand for anything not required is gone. The very measures they said would wipe out omni crafting will create the Omni Crafter/GATHERER and blow up in their faces. Only gear of use (since armorer, blacksmith etc... create ARMOR and TOOLS/WEAPONS) will be bought if put up for sale so back into the dark. t5 materia is utterly useless it can never even come close to a stat cap. Crit 100ish? +12 Savage Aim? Sorry 5 slots does not even nearly cover it.

WoW/Rift had gem socketing (like materia melding but for all gear and not retarded RNG) and enhancement bonuses you'd have to apply every time you got a new piece of gear. This by itself would make all crafters relevant because people are always upgrading gear pieces.

But something like this would be way to obvious. They'll just give us Grade 6 Glamour Prisms and call it a day.

[Ohiuu]

Not trying to shamelessly bump my thread but I just added two additional points to my OP and would love to hear input on if this seems reasonable. I don't know what the difficulty of implementing this from a development perspective would be, but the concept would do wonders for the longevity and value of both crafters and gatherers for every patch to come. Points 10 and 11 are possibly two of the biggest permanent solutions to economic collapse that could be available since their usefulness would never recede completely. What we need to do (or rather what SE needs to do) is create a more complex and dynamic relationship between all facets of the economy. The ball was dropped pretty hard in 3.0 in regards to this.