Craft grinding now impossible without self mutilation?

[Frein]

I hated crafting before the changes, but now I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I'm taking armorer to 50 and everything that I've grinded on can be easily turned into something useful without having to go hunt down so many extraneous materials. And the experience is great; at around lvl 35 armorer I was getting ~700+ on cobalt rings I think, close to 1k per synth with a manual.

There is no way the server demand can keep up with the supply of "useful" items. When I grind, I can make hundreds of Iron Greaves in one sitting. There are very few items the whole server uses that much of in a week. The exp/synth just isn't high enough to support crafting in a purely player to player economy. A single crafter simply produces so much more than the server demands.

Crafters are surely by far the largest contributors to money supply inflation simply because in order to level up in a reasonable time you have to make items that can be vendored for a minimal loss.

[Derkatron]

There is no way the server demand can keep up with the supply of "useful" items. When I grind, I can make hundreds of Iron Greaves in one sitting. There are very few items the whole server uses that much of in a week. The exp/synth just isn't high enough to support crafting in a purely player to player economy. A single crafter simply produces so much more than the server demands.

Crafters are surely by far the largest contributors to money supply inflation simply because in order to level up in a reasonable time you have to make items that can be vendored for a minimal loss.

As above, I love the new system, but I agree, one of the sole unaddressed problems with it is volume. In the last few levels of a craft, the sheer amount of items you have to craft (even at an optimal 500-600 exp per item) creates a glut of items in the market. The multi-materia destruction helps this a lot at those levels, so its probably ok there, but at mid-level you still get huge amounts of, say, brass needles, which are laregely not needed. Not sure what the solution to this would be, an exp bonus on finished items would be nice, or simply a normalization of total items needed per level above, say, 20. In other words, I agree, but don't know how to fix it.

[Carpe]

As above, I love the new system, but I agree, one of the sole unaddressed problems with it is volume. In the last few levels of a craft, the sheer amount of items you have to craft (even at an optimal 500-600 exp per item) creates a glut of items in the market. The multi-materia destruction helps this a lot at those levels, so its probably ok there, but at mid-level you still get huge amounts of, say, brass needles, which are laregely not needed. Not sure what the solution to this would be, an exp bonus on finished items would be nice, or simply a normalization of total items needed per level above, say, 20. In other words, I agree, but don't know how to fix it.

Well for now I think the best route for the high 40s is doing as many local leves as possible. The experience bonus on these is really good, but I can see how at the last few levels your "basic" synths might dry out in terms of xp/synth. Maybe giving high level crafters more options to gain experience through guild tasks or company supply quests could help, but for the most part those last few levels should take a while and once you do hit those levels you're basically able to craft any recipe anyway.

[Carpe]

There is no way the server demand can keep up with the supply of "useful" items. When I grind, I can make hundreds of Iron Greaves in one sitting. There are very few items the whole server uses that much of in a week. The exp/synth just isn't high enough to support crafting in a purely player to player economy. A single crafter simply produces so much more than the server demands.

Crafters are surely by far the largest contributors to money supply inflation simply because in order to level up in a reasonable time you have to make items that can be vendored for a minimal loss.

Iron Greaves are part of the old crafting recipes. After a while you won't be able to make these anymore. The new recipe designs don't have these kind of synths that are "just for skill points". The new "grind" synths are the basic mats that you will use over and over in your recipes and that are needed by other crafts for their recipes. Using Armorer as an example, to get to Armorer 40+ you literally do not need to make anything other than ingots, rivets, rings, and plates. These 4 basic materials are used in basically every finished product that an armorer can make in the new recipes. They're also needed by other crafters as well. That's what creates the demand for them and makes them "useful" synths. With leatherworking you skill up on making hides to leathers, carpentry logs to lumber, clothcraft making threads and cloths.

Iron Greaves are a perfect example of what was messed up with the OLD system. You took your materials and kept sything them into more and more specialized materials or "parts" until you ultimately had something like a weapon part, armor part, button, strap, etc. These parts could only go into a small number of finished products which was what made them worthless to try and sell in the wards in large numbers.

Also, inflation isn't caused by crafters selling things at a "loss". Game economies are fundamentally different from real economies because in a game resources are unlimited. Coblyns don't go extinct and nodes keep respawning. So in order to prevent inflation the game needs smart and effective money sinks. And inflation is only really a problem when there's a lack of supply to meet the server demands. That's why I think SE has been increasing drop rates. Having lot's of money is pretty meaningless when people with less money basically have the same buying power that you have and items are easily replenished. So then the only really advantage for the rich is being to be able to buy the best armor at the highest prices. But with the best items becoming increasingly untradeable, your money means nothing when you have to earn your gear instead of buying it.

[Frein]

Iron Greaves are part of the old crafting recipes. After a while you won't be able to make these anymore. The new recipe designs don't have these kind of synths that are "just for skill points". The new "grind" synths are the basic mats that you will use over and over in your recipes and that are needed by other crafts for their recipes. Using Armorer as an example, to get to Armorer 40+ you literally do not need to make anything other than ingots, rivets, rings, and plates. These 4 basic materials are used in basically every finished product that an armorer can make in the new recipes. They're also needed by other crafters as well. That's what creates the demand for them and makes them "useful" synths. With leatherworking you skill up on making hides to leathers, carpentry logs to lumber, clothcraft making threads and cloths.

Iron Greaves are a perfect example of what was messed up with the OLD system. You took your materials and kept sything them into more and more specialized materials or "parts" until you ultimately had something like a weapon part, armor part, button, strap, etc. These parts could only go into a small number of finished products which was what made them worthless to try and sell in the wards in large numbers.

I know Iron Greaves are an old recipe. The reason people use them is because ingots require a massive capital investment due to the raw material prices and people simply don't make enough gear to drain the system of them fast enough (the large investment also makes it infeasible to vendor the ingots).

Besides, the basic recipes don't give much exp past L44+ or so and finished gear is what you'll have to make if you want decent exp from the new recipes. On my server the wards are pretty much flooded with cobalt gear and moving them is slow despite the constantly falling prices. Clearly we have yet to hit market equilibrium in materials and gear, so the situation may eventually improve unless materia conversion rate creates a bottleneck to gear demand.

[MANTASTIC]

I know Iron Greaves are an old recipe. The reason people use them is because ingots require a massive capital investment due to the raw material prices and people simply don't make enough gear to drain the system of them fast enough (the large investment also makes it infeasible to vendor the ingots).

Besides, the basic recipes don't give much exp past L44+ or so and finished gear is what you'll have to make if you want decent exp from the new recipes. On my server the wards are pretty much flooded with cobalt gear and moving them is slow despite the constantly falling prices. Clearly we have yet to hit market equilibrium in materials and gear, so the situation may eventually improve unless materia conversion rate creates a bottleneck to gear demand.

I keep hoping they lower the spiritbind time and also remove the need to be a crafter to attach materia to fix this situation. It sound like a kick in the balls to crafters, but it might be the biggest boon the economy will ever see if they did it. materia everywhere, and DoW/Ms buying all our crap to either attach materia to or turn into more materia. DoW/Ms would also be breaking and buying more gear trying to attach multiple materia, making even more demand for gear. And really, that's whats missing the most in the current upper-tier economy: demand.

[Carpe]

I keep hoping they lower the spiritbind time and also remove the need to be a crafter to attach materia to fix this situation. It sound like a kick in the balls to crafters, but it might be the biggest boon the economy will ever see if they did it. materia everywhere, and DoW/Ms buying all our crap to either attach materia to or turn into more materia. DoW/Ms would also be breaking and buying more gear trying to attach multiple materia, making even more demand for gear. And really, that's whats missing the most in the current upper-tier economy: demand.

The spiritbind/materia system is definitely going to be the key to solving the upper-tier economy demand issue. Already, I think it's a big improvement over the situation we had before where everyone only had to buy their gear once and thus the market became saturated once that initial demand was met. I have to agree that lowering the spiritbind time will give players more incentive to risk attaching multiple materias to their gears and should be implemented.

One problem I have with materia is I feel like there is little incentive to use it at the lower levels and so the demand is so small at the lower tiers relative to the supply that they're all practically worthless. Why would I convert a tabard that I can maybe sell for 15-20k in the wards when the tier I materia that I get from it will only be worth 3k or less? You get the same problem where finished products are being reintroduced into the wards instead of being filtered out through materia conversion.

Maybe one solution could be to change the Materia system from instead of being a simple one materia to one slot system have materia applied to an item fill up a gauge. The size of the gauge could depend on the level/rarity of the item. So if I have a gauge that allows me to fill a maximum of +20 str, I could do this through a combination of lower or higher tier materia. Trying to apply materia to surpass this gauge would come with the risk of destroying the item.