FFXIV the worst economy in any P2P MMO?

[Hiruke]

When we complained about the economy before 2.1, they said "hey guys, PvP gear and furniture is coming!". Of course, a lot of people don't even bother getting the crafted PvP gear, and since nothing in it is particularly rare, everyone can make it easily and it was a quick race to the bottom in price. With furniture, since almost no one can even buy a house (I think there's only like 1 house on my whole server... lol), the supply for furniture is just about light years above demand, so expect prices on that stuff to always be pretty much rock bottom.

ATP items have dropped in price constantly since release, the rate of which was greatly increased with 2.1 since now it's even easier to get ATP items (like potash, coke, etc.).

Does no one at SE realize that if nothing is rare, nothing is going to be worth anything? It remains that the only thing of any particular value is high grade materia, and even that has taken a bit of a hit thanks to quests handing it out like candy. Though I do think it's kind of hilarious that the best way to make money is to run around in dungeons wearing trash gear, which is so counter-intuitive to how one would normally play a game it makes my heart hurt.

Anyway, would it be so hard to make some valuable items that aren't easily obtainable by everyone in the entire game? Making all the high level crafted items use ATP items as their "rare" ingredient does nothing to make them valuable, since everyone on earth can get ATP items very, very easily. In FFXI, you needed things like venomous claws to make scorpion harnesses. Stuff that only dropped off certain NMs or BCNMs. There were a lot of other rare ingredients that only came off of certain monsters that rarely spawned, etc.

It would be really nice if this game had high level raid fights against things that dropped rare crafted ingredients, that could actually have value so you could sell them for a worthwhile sum. Instead, everything is so common that it's an immediate and constant race to the bottom on price, to where everything loses value almost instantly.

It would be great if the game more easily allowed you to accumulate gil, and put in more gil sinks as well, rather than hoping people will blow hundreds of millions out of the economy for stuff like houses. Need more subtle gil sinks, not things where you're like "hey the economy is crazy, nothing is worth anything, yet their is insane amounts of gil in the hands of a few, so let's try to make them pay 300m for some houses". Maybe look more at the WoW economy, or even FFXI's, or really any game besides this one. Of course the economy is going to be terrible if nothing is of value so gil rarely trades hands in large amounts. You can't just rely on materia alone to drive everything. There needs to be rare stuff that people want that not everyone has the skill to get.

Speaking of FFXI's economy, I actually think it was a huge mistake to give crafters stealth. Part of why anything was valuable that you mined in FFXI was because it was in dangerous high level areas where you'd probably get killed while trying to mine. Unless there is an element of risk involved, preferably also involving a skill check, that stuff isn't going to have real value. In fact, people will just bot it up and flood the market. It doesn't matter if stuff only pops once a game day. That isn't going to do a damn thing to limit supply in any way that means anything, because supply will still overtake demand by an incredible margin.

[Syrellaris]

Agreed to be honest, I have 40 Apkallu Omellete in the market, but they are hardly selling these days. Electrum ore became pointless to sell with 1 selling for a whopping 10gill, same for other high lvl mining ore. Yes I am aware it is not a rare ore, but it is kind of sad that when the best ore and the last high levle range before 50 ore is selling for so little. In other MMO's the near highest and highest ore was always valuable, in FF14.. not at all.

[Xatsh]

Working as intended unfortunately.

It is assessable to everyone no barriers and almost no time sink, so there is almost 0 demand. No demand = no profits.

This is what happens when the "Everything has to be designed for the masses" is taken top to bottom on a game. Things simply do not work.

[indira]

crafting is useless = failed economy

everything you can get for free is better just need a couple runs through a dungeon.

you can also thank the bots for flooding the MW's with tons of crap and undercutting the prices like idiots, my darksteel ingots went down 150k in one week.

[Syrellaris]

Shamefully I would have to agree with that statement as well. The demand need to increase and by doing that, new recipe's need to be added that require tons of materials. Materials crafted with other materials etc. Recipe;s that use say 100 ingots made out of electrum ore with say 50 dark iron ore, some coal and maybe a hint of iron to make 1 special type of ingot, then that can be used in quantities of 10-25 to make a special item or weapon or chocbo barding or a special mount or I dont know what.

It will increase demand for those ores and it will go up in price. (above is an example / idea, it was never meant to be a good idea )

Regardless, demand needs to increase!

[Xatsh]

I feel the issue is the demand will never be big enough to handle the ease at which materials are gathered.

If a craft takes 400-500 ores or something yea it would increase the demand. But who is going to mine 500 ores for 15 gil a piece. Almost no one. As a gather I want to be able to make money mining. I do not do it for fun, I do not do it to get materials to craft. Anything less then 50k an hours is not acceptable.

SE has stated they do not want crafted gear to be good. So why would anyone be willing to spend any form of gil on an item.

The only solution at this point due to the fact so many people have capped crafting and gathering classes is a full reset on everyones crafting leveles and do a 100% revamp of how the whole economy, gear progression, crafting and gathering works. It would cause 10s of thousands of people to quit but it is the only real solution to save the economy in this game. Nothing can support this top heavy of an economy. The current system at this point is more or less unfixable.

New crafts, New Gear, PvP, Housing, insert something new is not going to fix anything for more then 1-2days. The economy needs to be stable for 6-8 yrs at least... they are alittle off their mark.

[Linadae]

Supply and demand is really just the tip of the problem. People aren't spending money because after seeing the FC house prices they know that personal housing will take a huge chunk of their wallets. Basically the majority of the population has gone into saving mode and are going to do their best to make money. Not spend it.

So Yoshida's ploy to rid the servers of money with fc housing has pretty much failed.

We can all see that for ourselves. So his next chance will come with personal housing.

So please look forward to more economic upheaval and recession.

[Emblemelite]

Welcome to the future of MMOs, where everything is geared towards the lowest common denominator.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

i would have to say is the Players fault. Keep undercutting and being ignorant to the fact that it ruins the market value of the items.

[GilbertLapine]

Agreed to be honest, I have 40 Apkallu Omellete in the market, but they are hardly selling these days. Electrum ore became pointless to sell with 1 selling for a whopping 10gill, same for other high lvl mining ore. Yes I am aware it is not a rare ore, but it is kind of sad that when the best ore and the last high levle range before 50 ore is selling for so little. In other MMO's the near highest and highest ore was always valuable, in FF14.. not at all.

Level goldsmith and craft you some ingots. Everybody loves ingots.