Why is Crafting still in the game?

[Seif]

Chayala wrote a wall of text there but all of it makes perfect sense.

[LineageRazor]

I dunno about the rest of the servers but argent dawn had a number of guilds who would flood the market undercutting super high prices by the gold sellers and had GM's actively doing their job and tracking them.

This indicates a pretty fundamental failure to understand how RMT crafters work. RMT don't OVERPRICE. They UNDERCUT, and substantially. Because they literally work the game for a living, they can mass produce items and sell them at prices so cheap that honest crafters (who, in addition to playing the game, have to work for a living, or go to school, or whatever) wouldn't bother with because the profits are too slim to be worth their limited time.

The rest of what Chayala wrote is pretty much true, but also not anything folks don't already know. Yes, other crafting systems were more robust and useful and (in some cases) enjoyable, and yes, they were hotbeds of RMT. Usually not directly, though - RMT would provide the gil/gold/whatever, and then gilbuyers would use the profits to buy the best crafted goods, pushing the prices of those goods uncomfortably high for players who played honestly.

Players complained, and that's why things are the way they are in FFXIV. Say what you like about whether it's a good thing or bad, the fact is that the effects of RMT are much neutered in this game. Sure, there's still plenty of advertising, but the only folks I can imagine actually buying gil are morons who want to buy their own house, or suckers who simply don't understand that the best equipment gil can buy will still only take you through the first stages of endgame content. (I can only imagine the nerdrage: "I spent $500 for this iLvl 70 equipment - WHY CAN'T I BEAT TITAN???")

In FFXIV, to progress through endgame, you need to earn your equipment THROUGH endgame. There's no shortcuts available to gilbuyers.