Problem: Items are Worthless

[Griss]

I think they did take a stab at removing items from circulation, in both the way some items get upgraded and the fact that items that are not in "Mint" condition can not be sold.

But here we are facing over saturation and this gets compounded every time any one throws up there hands and says "F it i'm out". How ever i do not think that adding a super hq teir is the way to go about this. Again its another market that will suffer the same exact fate. while it might help in the short term in the long run its just not sustainable in fact it could very well have very negative ramifications on the market as a whole.

Like others said the solution to this problem is to take items out of circulation with out starting the whole mess over again. Now what if instead of taking 8 items out of circulation to create one, you took the 8 items out and were rewarded for doing so by gaining guild marks or faction credits, anima, guardian's favor, or a whole host of other things. Yes i realise that is not a perfect solution either.

[Solipse]

As I stated in an earlier post:

I'm not saying my idea is foolproof (it's not). But it does address the main issues:

Low quality gear and mats need to leave the economy.
Combat/Gatherers need a constant income stream.
Let people make progress and not have to play roulette to get ahead.

These are the 3 main problems in the system. I've highlighted them a few times - my suggestion was just a stab at an idea to fix those problems, there are plenty of others. The solution that is needed is one that addresses all of those 3, not just one or two of them.

[Chory]

There is really only one problem with crafting. We have a lot of materials and we need long long hours of spamming one synthesis to skill up crafting. The results are:

1. Garbage in inventory (every single mob drops like 3-4 different items + HQ versions, and they drop A LOT + rewards from leves).
2. Drops from monsters/gathering are worthless since theyre very common.
3. Crafters use A LOT of materials (spending BORING in game hours) crafting A LOT of items.
4. A LOT of crafted items means they are worthless items.

If, there was no item rewards from leves, drops from monsters/gathering were quite rare, and DoH SP/rank was much much lower, it would result in:

1. No such a garbage in inventory/retainers.
2. Rare drops means more valuable drops.
3. Crafters use much much less materials during skillup, spending much less time mashing STANDARD SYNTHESIS, and make much less items.
4. Less items = more valuable crafted items (even NQ).

Crafters still wouldnt rank up fast, because there woudnt be enough materials to skillup fast. And with demand much higher than supply, materials would be worth farming.

Currently in FFXIV one Goldsmith skilling on silver needles would make like 2 needles per every person on the server and still he would be getting decent skillups on that synthesis. This is crazy. How do you expect crafted items to be valuable?

[Xenor]

Easy to make items like the silver needle will never be valuable. If that needle required a rare mat sure it would become valuable but then no one would skill up on that. People will always exploit the cheapest and easiest recipes to skill up on.

I agree with some of what you say however, it's a similar idea to what I push where each item that is designed to be valuable includes one rare mat. Not every item or mat needs to be valuable and rare and I believe craft SP is too low not too high. It should be difficult to take a craft to the cap.

[Solipse]

Easy to make items like the silver needle will never be valuable. If that needle required a rare mat sure it would become valuable but then no one would skill up on that. People will always exploit the cheapest and easiest recipes to skill up on.

I agree with some of what you say however, it's a similar idea to what I push where each item that is designed to be valuable includes one rare mat. Not every item or mat needs to be valuable and rare and I believe craft SP is too low not too high. It should be difficult to take a craft to the cap.

Needles are one of the exceptions to the general rule, though.

When you compare needles to something like a Jade Hora, though, you can see the difference. NQ Horas aren't very expensive because people have to make 10-15 of them to get a +2/+3 version. Include the fact that pugilists aren't THAT popular and you can see the problem with excess items flooding the market.

[CoolBlitz]

SE, where is the solution on this?

[Haru]

This happens in every MMO, it's a by product of people wanting the best items and flooding the market to make them.

You cannot avoid it and never will unless there is influx of demand, as weapons do not break they will always be available..

Today there are 200 +1 bows
Tomorrow there are 300 +1 bows
Next Week 3000 +1 bows..

To bad there are only 2000 players so the demand for this is now worthless..



EDIT: What about making the repair materials cost a working bow..
NQ bow can use a normal item (say crab shell)
+1 requires 1 NQ bow
+2 requires 2 NQ bows
+3 requires 3 NQ bows

Silly idea but this would reduce your so called flooding.. Although it wont fix the prices I imagine they would stay low.

Real life economis mean that if you have a house for every person there would be no housing market.

[Dubont]

Think of it this way. You have say...500 crafter onry players in the game and only 100 battle classes in the game. If those 500 crafters are trying to get those 100 people to buy their stuff, the price is going to come down. Supply vs demand. There is too much supply and not near enough demand. Someone pumping out Crab Bows isn't going to sell them if someone is selling for just 1 gil cheaper.

[Amineri]

This happens in every MMO, it's a by product of people wanting the best items and flooding the market to make them.

You cannot avoid it and never will unless there is influx of demand, as weapons do not break they will always be available..

Today there are 200 +1 bows
Tomorrow there are 300 +1 bows
Next Week 3000 +1 bows..

To bad there are only 2000 players so the demand for this is now worthless..



EDIT: What about making the repair materials cost a working bow..
NQ bow can use a normal item (say crab shell)
+1 requires 1 NQ bow
+2 requires 2 NQ bows
+3 requires 3 NQ bows

Silly idea but this would reduce your so called flooding.. Although it wont fix the prices I imagine they would stay low.

Real life economis mean that if you have a house for every person there would be no housing market.

It's a novel idea! I never call an idea silly, because often the "silly" ideas serve as the basis for other ideas.

Two issues I see with your proposed system:
1) You would be making the repair material a non-stacking item. I think this would further kill a lot of peoples inventories. Requiring three inventory slots worth of items (i.e. 3 NQ bows) to perform one repair might result in some foaming at the mouth.
2) These bows would STILL be created faster than used for repairing. To balance the supply / consumption, I think that items would have to degrade much more quickly then they do now -- and SE already (a) reduced durability drop rate (b) changed damaged % to 35% from 50%.

This is the same reason why having items degrade and be destroyed to remove them from the game won't work. Items just can't degrade fast enough to balance the supply. One crafter can easily turn out 6 bows in one hour (counting time spent making subcomponents). To balance this, 6 bows would have to degrade to the point of breaking in that same hour. I think this would cause people to riot in the streets

Ultimately, some other form of excess item removal has to be introduced. Currently the options are (a) destroy (b) sell to NPC.

Realistic (to my mind) options that I've seen floated include (a) de-synthesis (b) using items to create materia.

De-synthesis creates another source of materials flowing into the system, and so would have to be balanced against gathering and combat drops, making it tricker.

My current best hope is for Materia-creation. Something along the lines of:
Item A + Item B + ... + Item X + Gathered Catalyst ~> Materia
Could use multiple of the same item, of various combinations of items. Depending on the items used, the type of Materia created is different.

Even this system will saturate eventually, once all the Materia that people want has been created, unless there is a form of consumable materia, thus creating continual demand for new Materia. Perhaps special-ability Materia like a summon spell is consumed upon use, while other forms aren't, or something along those lines.

[Scarface]

mad???????