Quote Originally Posted by Colt47 View Post
Ah, thanks for catching that in the last paragraph. That's definitely a strawman argument right there without some elaboration and a rewrite. I was trying to get to the point that the system isn't new player friendly as it depends heavily on being familiar with the community in order to function.
You're right that new players may have a harder time. I still remember my first 3 weeks in Eorzea. First MMO ever. Not knowing anyone or anything about Final Fantasy "ways". It was a bit difficult and I made a lot of mistakes, including mistakes with items and gil -- like buying and selling everything at NPCs because I didn't know about the market wards, etc.

That said:

- New players should be using gear that only takes Grade 1 or Grade 2 material to repair, which shouldn't cost them very much to get fixed.

- The Repair NPC also doesn't charge very much for low level item repairs. I used them a lot when I first started and didn't know anyone on my server. They will only repair to 75% and the cost is high, but it's still a viable option if you don't have the time to seek repairs from other players.

- If you use appropriately ranked gear, the degradation isn't all that fast (IMO -- my gear goes down maybe 2 to 10% after a few hours of battles) and you should be able to accumulate a decent amount of gil before repairs do become necessary.

- It is an MMO and I think they intentionally build in benefits for interacting with other players. It's not absolutely necessary, but there are definitely benefits to playing nice with other people.