Too much pressure on the 2000 cap endgame tomestone

[Colt47]

The drill did change for the better when 6.0 dropped. Then people apparently complained that crafting was too easy so now it is absolute crap again. Apparently, crafting can only be a monopoly for dedicated people who don't even do the content that requires half of the crap they make.

Lets say the idea that the FFXIV devs have is to make a living economy with crafting and gathering being a major part of the game. They decide that in order for this to exist, they need to have demand so they decide to make consumables required for completion of content, such as food and tinctures, and also decide to make the optimum gear for raiding crafted. To have this kind of content they have to make raiding challenging so the difficulty is tuned up, which increases the number of attempts needed to complete as well as coordination. So raiders naturally spend a lot of time, well, raiding.

So where do raiders get the gil from that powers this? They don't earn anything from failing to complete a savage run, so the only sources of income would have to come from other activities outside of the primary activity. They'd have to engage in things like map runs, roulettes, etc, to generate currency which can then be used to buy the things they need to do the content. Outside of this, extremes can drop a few rare items that can be sold to crafters and map runs can give raw gil.

The problem is that because raiders have to spend time raiding and rarely would have time to omni-craft, let alone spend time to craft due to how the system is setup, they don't have the ability to get materia as easily as dedicated crafters and gatherers. Gathering is time consuming due to node timings, while crafting is time consuming because of the steps and often prerequisite items necessary to craft, such as having to make craft food or gather scrips to then buy materials. So when pressure gets put onto the system such as a patch launch it gives crafters unimaginable power over the market. Gear like the new raid gear instantly is being sold at over a mil a piece, and unless someone has friends that gather and craft instead of doing savage or have a LOT more time than average, they are going to be spending a whole lot of gil trying to get geared day 1. Players who are new are likely not going to be able to do savage at all under this kind of a system without knowing the right people.

The common argument is that someone doesn't need crafted gear to do savage and that is true. If someone has full 630 gear they can probably start doing savage with just a few pieces from the new raid, but the community doesn't really support this assertion. If the optimal raid gear is crafted gear with pentamelds, people in the community will push others to have that gear. If the game was built so that raiding somehow was a resource generator even on failure this system would make some sense, but not as it stands because the person raiding is just burning everything with no real way to recover gil if they are going at it mid-core. The system basically depends on the raiders finishing up as fast as possible so that they can then farm maps and whatever else to recover resources.

Tomestone materials are one avenue that allow for recovery of resources through the market board, but with relic also using that resource in a way that doesn't convert to gil, it drains people doing the end game content and also reduces the quantity of tomestone materials on the AH, making them more expensive to purchase. The main gear that uses those are the crafted gear and while it wont hit crafters and gatherers hard, it does again double up and damage people who do not engage in those activities.