Crafting Needs a Place in Endgame Raiding

[Akiva_Ninazu]

The market prices aren't determined just by crafters, but by everyone involved (material farmers, crafters, and those buying crafted items).

That's only true to a point. In any supply/production chain, the last stop before the end-user has the greatest impact on price and, in many cases, the greatest amount of discretion if they are willing to take the steps necessary to ensure relative competitive freedom.

[Susanoh]

That's only true to a point. In any supply/production chain, the last stop before the end-user has the greatest impact on price and, in many cases, the greatest amount of discretion if they are willing to take the steps necessary to ensure relative competitive freedom.

Anyone who takes the steps necessary can have an impact on the market in this game. Every group is just players putting various amounts of time into their activity of choice. In the same way that crafters could stop buying tome materials to force prices down, people could simply choose not to buy crafted gear to drive the prices down.

I've spent plenty of time on crafting in this game, but also farming dungeons and tomes, and it's absolutely no surprise to me why things worked out the way they did initially. Crafted gear was obscenely expensive to produce compared to darklight, and required the same resource as darklight. Requiring over 2,000 philosophy items for a single piece of crafted gear when darklight was raining from the sky with next to no effort involved is what caused the situation to become what it was. This isn't a case of "these guys are lazy" or "those guys should have sold cheaper materials," people did what they did because the game was designed in such a way that it was bound to happen from the beginning.