Redo the Crafting system.

[Driavna]

GIL is no more or less useless than Tombstones; it is a currency. Currency is used to trade for services that you do not want to or cannot do yourself. Trying making raid food or pots without GIL and see how much time you spend gathering / crafting, instead of raiding.

It's is, this game lack of any real GIL sink, compared to others games like BnS where an equivalent currency is needed yo upgrade your gear or WoW with his optional gold sinks having big amount of GIL will be more tempting, in FFXIV this doesn't happen. So, a regular joe don't have that incentive to craft.

For early patch raid gear. I will agree with that. For alt class levelling gear and Glamour, the market is very large.

I disagree, during HW you can level to 60 with 130 gear with no problem at all (not to mention that PoTD is the most used way to LvL and there you don't need gear). Also, outside of consumables (if your server uses those, in my current one I hardly find any buyer for food/potions), the lack of decay create by itself a limited market.

Not to mention that everything is mad expensive compare to the gil a non-crafter generate, your average joe can't afford those prices.

There are not zero options but like anything, there more optimal options but there definitely different approaches which are viable.

In FFXIV I can only NQ or HQ (and you want to avoid NQ like a plague), back when I played SwG I have a total control over an item stats so I can create different versions of a same item to suit my clients needs (like a weapon with high durability to grind).

But since FFXIV is a theme park you can't have this.

How would you improve it?
This one suggestion I have seen many times.
Make it more of shop order scenario, buyer places bid order, buy 15 of item X at price Y; placing the money in the retainer. MB seller comes along and fills the order, GIL is removed from buyer retainer and item is place in retainer storage.

MB is the ultimate expression of QoL and by itself kill a lot of factors only present in games with players shops, also all items are the same. This can't be fixed (theme park problem again), so you can only undercut to compete and that's boring.

??????

In a sandbox all items come from crafter but in a theme park you can't do that, so the only real option is limite yourself to consumables (not only food/potions but gear improvements like enchants, gems, sharp stones, repair kits, etc) and one time only items (cosmetics mainly).