Quote Originally Posted by katsujin View Post
I think one of the problems that can never really be addressed in an MMO is the resourced called "labor." In game you could say that labor force are crafters, but since it is a part of the game there are a ton of crafters. In the real world the number of "producers" are much more limited compared to the number of consumers. (this is because of the relative time and capital investment necessary to produce goods)For example if 3/10 players are crafters that means that each crafter only has to produce a particular good 3 times to completely saturate the market. This results in a surplus, a surplus results in goods being sold at a loss.

In real life producers would produce less of an item if they could not sell them. They would purchase less raw materials, and then they would cut their employee hours and send less items to the market. Also in real life people are much less willing to take a loss where as in game the price of an object will often drop much further because players will sell products simply to get rid of them rather than to make a profit or break even.

What this ultimately means is that for most crafters, you will lose gil as a crafter. If someone offers an item for sale, if the price is high you will think "I might as well make it myself then." And you will produce it yourself. In the last link when the author talks about scarcity, he is correct. Everything is abundant in game, and players are used to getting things easily because the games and especially end game are gear centric. Sometimes people will immediately judge you as a player based on your gear. This is the social element of economics as it's considered a "social science."
i been saying this for a while and getting flamed. there no real economy.
other games fixed this problem by making many versions of one thing and mats and the best was SW galaxys.

star wars galaxys each thing you made was different from the last even had its own ID like a finger print and there were different qualitys. and crafters skills really mattered. and equip had a permanent decay till its no good anymore.

FFXIV you have normal equip then +1 and there are no other differences, once again i say the crafting system sucks almost pointless to not have it be a auto craft like WoW. everone can make the same thing which can make selling useless or not be worth anything worth the trouble