Overflowing stupidity

[Alzelia]

Hello everyone debating about FFXIV's economy! The servers are down for yet another maintenance so instead of playing the markets tonight, I'm gonna educate you guys on how the economy really works, and what the real problem is with the economy (I read this entire thread and not one person mentioned the TRUE problem with FFXIVs economy).

First of all, let me tell every one my background in ffxiv. I have been playing ffxiv since about 4 or 5 months after 1.0's launch. I had almost all 50 crafting classes BEFORE 2.0. (my cul was only 46) The economy of ffxiv has always fascinated me until lately. I played through 1.0 with the intent of becomming as rich as possible for 2.0. Now I'm sitting on millions of gil, I have all DOH and DOL with BIS gear at 50. The economy towards the end of 1.0 was vastly healthier than the current economy in 2.1. But before we get to that, I'm gonna cover many of the topics that you guys have brought up.

First of all, I will cover the OP's issue of blind bidding. If blind bidding was actually a superior form of economics compared to a market system, then surely at least one country on Earth would use this are their economic system. Of course none do. In a free market, transparency is a good thing. It allows people to make smarter decisions since they know more facts. Blind bidding also makes it take possibly a lot more time to make a purchase. Do you think Yoshi, a man who has gone out of his way to try to streamline ffxiv's gameplay, would want that? Blind bidding is not gonna happen

Next topic. Why is "Overflowing stupidity" a problem? I would figure that an intelligent person would welcome stupidity and use their vast intellect to figure out how to take advantage and gain from the stupidity of others.

Undercutting. I will admit, I do find it frustrating to put something up for sale and come back an hour later to see 10 people selling the same thing for 1 gil less. First of all, they could have just sold it for the same price as my item. The most recent item up for sale apprears lower on the list on the wards if they are the same price. I have a question for those who are complaining about undercutting? Do you wish to ban undercutting and make it so that someone can only sell items at a higher price, and watch the prices go up and up and up towards infinity? Undercutting is how the free market works. Undercutting is a very good thing. Yes it sucks when someone undercuts the stuff you have up for sale, but that's how the economy works. Asking people to stop undercutting is like asking them to just give you their money. It's not going to happen.

2 star synths: trying to make gil on 2 star synths was purely gambling. First of all, you had the risk of being unable to HQ the synth. And second of all, you were gambling that you would be able to sell the gear for more than the cost of the mats. On top of that, people didn't really buy much HQ 2 star gear. It only took about a week into 2.0 for there to be enough crafters geared for 2 star synths to be able to meet the demand for the 2 star gear. I personally made 3 mil that first week selling HQ gryphonskin tunics, but I had them left over from 1.0. If you want to make gil (or money) its a diversity helps protect you from bad luck with investments, but the up front costs of 2 star gear was so high that it prevented diversification of investments.

Next I wish to cover the "I farmed all the mats, when I sold whatever item it was pure profit." While this is technically true, it ignores a concept in economics called an opportunity cost. Yes a person who did this made gil, but they also lost the gil they could have made. For example, and I'm just making up these numbers, but lets say it takes 5 minutes to farm the shards for a single synth, and 5 minutes to farm a different material, lets say fleece, for a single synth. If fleece sells for 500 gil and shards sell for 50, it makes more sense to farm the fleece for 10 minutes and buy the shards off the market. You would net 450 gil from that.

Well, now that I coverd those issues, let me tell you guys what the REAL problem with the economy is, and why 1.0 had a much healthier economy that 2.0. I will give you a hint, its not gil sellers, housing prices, botters, undercutters, or stupidity of the people who play ffxiv. The problem is the lack of gear and/or item sinks. The biggest gear sink in ffxiv right now is materia. Materia as it is now is nothing like the gear/material sink it was in 1.0. To those who didn't play 1.0, back then, if you failed a meld, you lost EVERYTHING, you lost the gear, the materia, and the catalyst. In order to get all 5 slots melded, you HAD to succeed on your first try EACH time. I blew up 50 HQ gryophonskin tunics in 1.0 just to have 1 of them left at the end with a triple meld.

In 1.0 it was worth it to spend so much effort on melding because melded gear was BIS, and being able to buy BIS gear definetely helped the economy stay active. However I DO NOT want crafted gear to be BIS NOR do I wish to return to 1.0's materia system. What I want is a damn good gear sink like materia was back in 1.0. I think PVP might have some potions and food sinks.

[Bape_Escape]

Snip

EXCELLENT breakdown, especially on the gear sinks. Identifying a market churn - commodities with lots of activity around them - is pretty much the "golden ticket" to making money. Market price isn't the only factor to making money - you also have to consider the opportunity cost (as you rightfully point out!) and time to market (in our case meaning the time from listing to sale). You would make more money in the long-term on selling highly active items at 500 a pop if you could sell 10 a day, compared to listing one item for 50k that didn't sell for 2 weeks.

Surely there are new markets heating up now that this content is out. Treasure Map items, specifically minions, seem to be SUPER valuable right now.

[Wazabi]

I think the only overflowing stupidity here are people who didn't do sufficient profit analysis, supply/demand analysis on an item that they want to sell, went on and craft the item anyway, fail to sell it at the price that they want, and then blame it to undercutters.