Item Binding

[Reika]

Another thought. Will melding requests be changed to allow multiple melds?

Bob over there has a double melded shield which he wants to try and triple. Unfortuantely Bob doesnt have armorer.

How then does bob try and get his shield triple melded if he can't trade it to a crafter?

You could say level a craft but then you end up in a game where there is no economy because everyone in the world has every craft at max because its the only way they can meld there stuff.

They may do that, lest joe shmoe who doesnt craft wont be able to have more than single melds on things he icreased spiritbond with. Not that I mind that...

[Taika]

I already wrote a long rant about this issue in the other thread, but I don't understand the need for this system and here's why:

The reason why crafters weren't able to sell stuff and make money in 1.0 wasn't because people were reselling their used stuff, but because people didn't need to buy gear from the wards. This gear bind change will not change this issue or make things any better.

The main issues were 1. everyone (well, almost everyone) having a few crafts leveled and 2. each craft having only a few profitable synths (which all the crafters were making and selling simultaneously). This was caused by not having any limits to max level crafts (in XI for example one character could only have 1 craft at max level) and crafts being way too easy and fast to level (it was even profitable to level a craft!). Most players either had all the crafts they needed to synth their own gear or could ask a friend to synth / meld gear for them, which meant nearly no one had to buy stuff from the wards.

The gear bind system will not fix any of the main problems in 1.0s gear economy or make it any easier for the crafters.

[Mihana]

I am completely against this idea, it's a definite step backwards. All this will do is more or less force people to start crafting equipment themselves taking away from those who focus on crafting as a regular deal. I really can't see how this benefits the economy at all. There's going to be less incentives to buy gear and less reason so even bother melding materia to equipment. Who's going to care to buy something decked out with materia that will cost a fortune if they can just use something infinitely cheaper with a couple bits of materia melded to it? The issue at hand wasn't ever an over abundance of equipment really, just a lack of it for the lower levels because nobody really bothered making it.

I know this might seem like a knee-jerk reaction but this news alone is enough to make me reconsider if I'll actually come back for 2.0 after all. I hated this system in a lot of other games, but at the same time equipment in those games was so easy to come by. Kill a mob and bam, get a piece of gear you can just sell. We already know gil is going to be harder to come by in 2.0 and even if they "removed a digit" to make stuff seemingly cheaper that still won't help in the long run. Triple-melded gear or quadruple melded will rarely if ever sell.

[AtryxEtair]

A few thoughts that came to me after my wall-o-text a couple pages back...

-This devalues pieces of equipment in game because everyone's first thought when needed new equipment will no longer be "Go the the auction house," which stimulates the economy.

-Their first thought will be "I can get that myself." Most likely not everyone will be able to and become frustrated with the entire process or otherwise buy what they need.

-If someone lacks the patience and discipline to get gear they need they will most likely lack the necessary funds to support their play-style in this environment and become frustrated with the entire process.

-If everyone can get the gear they need by themselves with little to no effort, this makes it completely worthless to everyone.

-This eliminates the majority of the interdependence in the in-game economy and makes it feel a lot more like a solo RPG.

Extremely unappealing. I was very close to purchasing new components to build a brand new hotrod of a desktop for this game. I am putting that on hold until further notice because of this nonsense.

[Mjollnir]

I had a Cuirass on loan from my Linkshell at close of 1.0, so I hope that all Spiritbond values are reset to zero for 2.0 launch so I can give it back if its owner wants it!

[Tinks]

Yet another change to make FFXIV just like every other MMO on the market. I'm so incredibly tired of the "every other 'modern' MMO has this, get with the times" argument. Just because the masses are doing it does not make it an ideal solution for every game.

The more I hear about the game, the more I'm convinced that SE is not targeting their built in audience (the Everquest/FFXI crowd), but that they're going after the WoW crowd. This is not inherently good or bad, but it does mean that the new FFXIV just may not be the game for me, and thats very disappointing. I haven't given up hope yet, but I'm also much less excited about 2.0 than I was 6 months ago.

[Judge_Xero]

The main issues were 1. everyone (well, almost everyone) having a few crafts leveled and 2. each craft having only a few profitable synths (which all the crafters were making and selling simultaneously). This was caused by not having any limits to max level crafts (in XI for example one character could only have 1 craft at max level) and crafts being way too easy and fast to level (it was even profitable to level a craft!). Most players either had all the crafts they needed to synth their own gear or could ask a friend to synth / meld gear for them, which meant nearly no one had to buy stuff from the wards.

The gear bind system will not fix any of the main problems in 1.0s gear economy or make it any easier for the crafters.

You have to look at the issue from more angles. What else do we know is changing.

- The number of tiers of materia is being reduced
- Increased odds to get higher tiers of materia from high level gear
- Hopefully increased population of new people

So we should have a pile of new people that have 0 crafts leveled and may not even be interested in crafting.
(don't assume that everyone in the whole world has every craft leveled, because the number of people that played Version 1 will be a very small % of people if ARR really takes off)

If you break it down and look at just high level gear and materia. If there are greater odds to get high level materia from high level gear, and with reduced tiers, there will be more good materia. So if the market gets flooded with good materia, then the value of the materia goes down.

Gathers sell to Crafters. Crafters sell to Adventurers/Spirit Bonders. Spirit Bonders sell to General Market.

If you take gear out of circulation through Binding and Spirit Bond, then there will always be a demand for it. Which means there will always be a demand for Raw Materials. Which opens up a huge range of Markets for items to be sold.

Looking at just the high level market in Version 1.
- Level 50 gear was worth a lot until single melded gear came.
- Single Melded Gear was worth a lot until Double Melds
- Near the end of Version 1 even Double melds were getting dirt cheap when Tripple Melds started popping up.

At that point it was only worth the Gatherers time to go after Darksteel, Cobalt, Gold, Copper, and a few others and whatever Botanists and Fishers gather, because the Niche Market was Darksteel Gear, Relic Weapons, Hamlet Provisioning Items, and some Foods (Raptor Stew etc)

The life of Version 1 wasn't long enough for us to see it completely Plateau the Market, but it was getting close.

People might be complaining now that their gear is worthless, but if you are a casual player and the markets were ruled by Hardcore players, and everything was Million Dollar Tripple Melds or Rare Dungeon Drops because nothing else was worth their time to sell:
- your time would be spent Leveling a gathering job because Raw Materials would be too expensive to buy, or there would only be items that the hardcore groups would buy.
- your time would be spent leveling a craft or four to craft the gear, because it's not worth the crafters time, and the raw materials for your gear are non-existent or super expensive.
- now you're angry because you really just want to run some dungeons, but this game forced you to gather and craft, just to make some better gear.

[Taika]

You have to look at the issue from more angles. What else do we know is changing.

- The number of tiers of materia is being reduced
- Increased odds to get higher tiers of materia from high level gear
- Hopefully increased population of new people

So we should have a pile of new people that have 0 crafts leveled and may not even be interested in crafting.
(don't assume that everyone in the whole world has every craft leveled, because the number of people that played Version 1 will be a very small % of people if ARR really takes off)

If you break it down and look at just high level gear and materia. If there are greater odds to get high level materia from high level gear, and with reduced tiers, there will be more good materia. So if the market gets flooded with good materia, then the value of the materia goes down.

Gathers sell to Crafters. Crafters sell to Adventurers/Spirit Bonders. Spirit Bonders sell to General Market.

If you take gear out of circulation through Binding and Spirit Bond, then there will always be a demand for it. Which means there will always be a demand for Raw Materials. Which opens up a huge range of Markets for items to be sold.

Looking at just the high level market in Version 1.
Level 50 gear was worth a lot until single melded gear came.
Single Melded Gear was worth a lot until Double Melds
Near the end of Version 1 even Double melds were getting dirt cheap when Tripple Melds started popping up.

At that point it was only worth the Gatherers time to go after Darksteel, Cobalt, Gold, Copper, and a few others and whatever Botanists and Fishers gather, because the Niche Market was Darksteel Gear, Relic Weapons, Hamlet Provisioning Items, and some Foods (Raptor Stew etc)

The life of Version 1 wasn't long enough for us to see it completely Plateau the Market, but it was getting close.

People might be complaining now that their gear is worthless, but if you are a casual player and the markets were ruled by Hardcore players, and everything was Million Dollar Tripple Melds or Rare Dungeon Drops because nothing else was worth their time to sell:
- your time would be spent Leveling a gathering job because Raw Materials would be too expensive to buy, or there would only be items that the hardcore groups would buy.
- your time would be spent leveling a craft or four to craft the gear, because it's not worth the crafters time, and the raw materials for your gear are non-existent or super expensive.
- now you're angry because you really just want to run some dungeons, but this game forced you to gather and craft, just to make some better gear.

I think I understand the points you're making, but I don't understand what they have to do with the gear bind system?

[Hirmu]

If you break it down and look at just high level gear and materia. If there are greater odds to get high level materia from high level gear, and with reduced tiers, there will be more good materia. So if the market gets flooded with good materia, then the value of the materia goes down.

If we start getting better materia more easily, it will probably make materia cheaper and more available, but there's also the other side to this: it also means that crafters will have a smaller market since people don't really need to SB twenty belts to get one or two good materia. They'll get the ones they want and since materia is generally cheap, there's less incentive to even bother SBing for money.

Of course you could always say that crafters will just raise the price on good SB items, but the fact is that crafting is easy to level, gathering is easy to level and there will always be enough crafters around to undercut the prices.

Looking at just the high level market in Version 1.
Level 50 gear was worth a lot until single melded gear came.
Single Melded Gear was worth a lot until Double Melds
Near the end of Version 1 even Double melds were getting dirt cheap when Tripple Melds started popping up.

At that point it was only worth the Gatherers time to go after Darksteel, Cobalt, Gold, Copper, and a few others and whatever Botanists and Fishers gather, because the Niche Market was Darksteel Gear, Relic Weapons, Hamlet Provisioning Items, and some Foods (Raptor Stew etc)

The life of Version 1 wasn't long enough for us to see it completely Plateau the Market, but it was getting close.

This is a good point, but there are other factors to consider too. The introduction of AF and GC gear made most crafted gear obsolete unless they were double or triple melded. There was also the massive amount of money floating around which caused many people to simply buy the stuff they needed even though they could easily gather or craft it themselves. Money was just so worthless that it's hard to make any assumptions based on the economy we had. I'd argue that the only truly valuable things were rare materia and smartly done double or triple melds and maybe a few dungeon drops. Anything else was just a matter of whether or not you bothered to go and get them.

So my point here is that there never was an issue of "people cluttering the market with their second hand gear." If anything this helped those who could not get a crafter to double meld for them to aquire some good pieces people would sell after upgrading past them. And to be honest I don't ever recall seeing good double melds for cheap. Maybe this change will cause some crafters to start selling multimelds just for the gil, but with the changes in materia system I can just see this becoming a case of whether or not someone bothers to make that small profit or not. The real issue (in my opinion) always was too few worthwhile craftable gear pieces and too easy leveling of crafting and gathering classes.

They're just importing a system which works in games where you level up your character only once and have multiple alts into a completely different setting. They're addressing a problem which never was with a system that causes more problems and frustration than it solves.

[Altanas]

I suppose the dev's felt everyone will be better off with Item Binding.

a) Item Binding reserves AH selling to the crafters, no more undercutting from DD looking to sell off their old gear. Crafters make a windfall.

b) Bound gear wont be worth it to sell to NPC and you cant give it to friends as there are no more Oxfam donations (harsh, but theres no charity in uldah). Players will be forced to max out spiritbind and convert it to materia. Gonna see a lot of gimps around maxing spiritbond though. DD's make a windfall selling materia.

c) There should consequently be more materia listed on the AH at all level brackets. No more seeing only seeing max tier materia in the AH which was a problem for a time in v1.

d) If used melded equipment can't be sold, there will be even greater demand for raw materials to make gear and for materia in order to put up melded gear on the AH. Gathers, crafters and DD make a windfall.


There are a few ancillary issues however, apart from the butthurt of not being able to sell a second hand melded item:

a) won't gathers and crafters be obsolete anyway given there will be dungeons every 5 levels or so like in SWTOR, there will be grand company gear every 10 levels, primal gear, artifact gear. You dont actually ever need to buy gear from the AH, and that gear can't be melded anyway

b) even if gathering and crafting remain relevant, being able to max all DOL/DOH classes destroys any reliance on others. It just seems strange DOL/DOH remain unrestricted. IMO, the amount of DOL/DOH you can be on a character should be capped, or even provide a boost to your DOW/DOM so you carefully choose which craft to take up (yes that would encourage players to focus on one job not play everything on one character though, but with the amount of "alts" we will be able to make it seems devs were thinking to limit such things). IMO DOL/DOH should not even be available from level 1, it should be something that opens up around level25 or so to intercede between the grind when the xp grind becomes more noticeable. (in swtor i have the equivalent of maxed crafters/gathers across all my alt's even though they are only about level 11, i never leave the AH and make a killing off it, I can gather/craft from the AH and i'm F2P too, it just seems absurd)