Materia prices. Square-Enix will you look into it?

[Daniolaut]

In FFXIV 1.0 Enmity materia and Crit hit Materia was the most saught after materia in the game.

The price for these two materia was roughly around 1 million to rarely but sometimes 5 million.

It was very very very easy to farm materia and also fun, as well as plenty of places to farm it.

Now in 2.0, where the team did not want Materia to be so easily obtained due to gil seller (RMT) exploits were rather high we have few places to farm materia and its rather slow and mostly unenjoyable to the average player.


But..

Now we have content not only for DoW/DoM but also content for DoH and DoL where materia is required to progress.

All gil in 1.0 in transition to 2.0 was cut by 1/10th, but here is the issue if you look at it from a 1.0 standpoint.

Comparison:

1.0:.............................1.0 prices (before 1/10th).......2.0 prices(after 1/10th)
Enmity Materia...................1,000,000.............................100,000
Critical Hit.........................3,000,000.............................300,000
Average other materia........125,000..................................25,000

+1.0 prices would be the price were the materia was being sold in 1.0,

+2.0 prices reflect current prices on sargatanas

2.0:
Parry..............................1,115,000..............................115,000
Gathering........................1,390,000...............................139,000
Perception.......................620,000.................................62,000
GP.................................1,240,000...............................124,000
Craftsmanship.................1,190,000................................119,000
CP.................................440,000...................................44,000
Control...........................1,870,000................................187,000
Spell Speed.....................1,000,000................................100,00
Accuracy........................1,330,000................................133,000
Critical Hit.......................3,000,000................................300,000
Determination..................4,000,000.................................400,000


(So basically whats happened from 1.0 to 2.0 is, in 1.0 you have 3-5 different types of tier IV materia costing at or above 1 million gil, to now almost literally every tier IV matiera costing over 1 million gil.) (Keeping in mind the gil 1/10th reduction.)

Someone attempting to meld a Novus weapon with Tier IV materia (most of which require 12 tier IV without 100% success) is looking at needing to spend 4,800,000 gil if nothing blows up. Compared to the 12 million it cost to just buy your relic pre weapon in 1.0.


1.0 relic pre weapon already melded: 12,000,000 gil
2.0 novus melding if using determination: 40,800,000 gil (not failing a single meld)
(using 1.0 pricing methods)

Conclusion:

"AKA TLDR"

The prices are not the issue, the fact we need to go out and spiritbond instead of use an RMT to buy gil to progress is not the issue...

The issue is we need content that promotes a way to spiritbond more easily and enjoyably.

The developers removed spiritbonding ease from 1.0 to 2.0 due to gil sellers but now the issue has become worse because the players have much fewer methods of spiritbonding but the most recent content released promotes the use of materia.

I ask SE to create content that allows us to spiritbond in more places/or have more options.

Dungeons imo is not the answer.

[Xine]

If you're actually asking SE to "look at the price of materia" you're doing it wrong, its a player driven economy that SE has no say over. Though I have to agree that the ease of spiritbonding has gotten worse since 2.0 dropped since its almost impossible to find a "camp" of mobs of decent level that you can gather up and just mow down with a few AoEs, similar to 1.0's Blender parties in Natalan. To make it worse, you cant even spiritbind anything beyond i55 outside of a dungeon, it's kind of retarded.... Sure, they added Spiritbinding potions, which are erased when you die.... the benefit of which is apparently negligible according to what some people have reported. The same can be said about the Meteor Survivor Ring and the Gambler's Crown as well. Makes you wonder if SE actually expected people to farm dungeons to spiritbind gear to make materia, or fight each other in open world. (Yes I realize you gain exp and spiritbond from attacking monsters others have claimed, but not everyone is smart enough to realize that, I've seen it daily...)

[Daniolaut]

If you're actually asking SE to "look at the price of materia" you're doing it wrong, its a player driven economy that SE has no say over. Though I have to agree that the ease of spiritbonding has gotten worse since 2.0 dropped since its almost impossible to find a "camp" of mobs of decent level that you can gather up and just mow down with a few AoEs, similar to 1.0's Blender parties in Natalan. To make it worse, you cant even spiritbind anything beyond i55 outside of a dungeon, it's kind of retarded.... Sure, they added Spiritbinding potions, which are erased when you die.... the benefit of which is apparently negligible according to what some people have reported. The same can be said about the Meteor Survivor Ring and the Gambler's Crown as well. Makes you wonder if SE actually expected people to farm dungeons to spiritbind gear to make materia, or fight each other in open world. (Yes I realize you gain exp and spiritbond from attacking monsters others have claimed, but not everyone is smart enough to realize that, I've seen it daily...)

The topic and way of which i make new threads is not to be proper and perfect. If i did that it would get no hits and people wouldnt argue thus continuously bumping the thread. You gotta be a bit sarcastic throw in some arguable statements and sometimes even be rash to get people talking.

But i also attempt to be clear in my statement that the issue is there is no real content to get materia into a game where a good deal of the content requires it. Literally 75 materia per player doing Novus... at least. If a player blows up 1/5 of every meld youre looking at 90 materia per novus per player.

If the entire player base is 10,000,000 and 20% of the player base does novus (i'm sure its much more than 20%) youre looking at 180,000,000 pieces of materia.

Then add to that the minimum of about 3 pieces of materia per crafter and gatherer meld with 1/5 materia blown up, and 1 person does 2 crafters and 1 gatherer, and only 20% of the player base again, youre looking at another 86,000,000 materia

This doesnt include the continuous melding of i55, then i70, then i90, then whatever the next level of crafted equipment is.

Then lets say only 1 group of people spiritbonding out in basically the only half decent place to spiritbond i48 equipment in quarrymill can pump out a full set every hour non stop (no crafting) per server at 64 servers thats 128 materia per hour.

To obtain enough materia to get that 20% their 2 crafters, 1 gatherer, and 1 novus weapon youre looking at taking 2,078,125 hours or 237 years.

The quarrymill camp can only hold up to about 8 people without serious down time or serious coordinated teamwork (and lets face it coordinated teamwork is something MMO's have serious issues achieving.)


Again what i'm asking is SE take into consideration that their "new" 2.0 Materia method not only didnt lower materia prices and eliminate it from the RMT gold mine, but also almost completely removed it from being something that anyone would want to do.

So either they can bring cracked materia as a reward for something, or make all gear convert-able or something that would drive the player base to want to do spiritbonding -not- in a dungeon.

[Kaaylryn]

It also does not help to have almost 80 to 90% of materia you get from spirit bonded gear be elemental materia which is, at this point in time, useless. The exchange of 5 for 1 materia is a horrible RNG joke. Penta melding is a horrible RNG joke. And spirit bonding in itself is a miserable slog for anything I55 and above.

I cannot afford to buy 8 savage might materia IV at the current cost of almost 1 mil gil each. So, I will meld what materia I have in stock and probably let my Novus sit unfinished until the RNG gods decide to give me the materia I need which will probably take months if I am even still playing at that point. And yes, I could put acc on the weapon, but I really do not trust SE to make removing a single stat later on to be anything remotely easy.

[Xine]

I think you're missing your own point though, SE said that gil was going to drop an entire digit off of the gil everyone has from 1.0 into the transition to 2.0 and that anything an NPC Vendors sells will see a digit dropped off as well, however since you could never buy materia from an NPC Vendor and still can't, I don't see how you're wanting SE to force players to lower their prices to match this. Granted I know all too well how annoying it is to spiritbind gear and to get the materia needed to meld onto gear and even more so for the damned Novus quest SE thought was a brilliant idea. But the Market Boards is not in any way set by the devs or anyone else who went into programming anything in FFXIV, those prices are set by the players themselves, SE has no control over that.

And for the record, I know all too well how expensive the Novus quest can be, I'm 2 melds away from finishing my bow and the materia I need is going for 340k+ per right now and I have a 60% and 50% meld chance on them, those two melds alone will probably cost me over 1-2 mil

[Daniolaut]

I think you're missing your own point though, SE said that gil was going to drop an entire digit off of the gil everyone has from 1.0 into the transition to 2.0 and that anything an NPC Vendors sells will see a digit dropped off as well, however since you could never buy materia from an NPC Vendor and still can't, I don't see how you're wanting SE to force players to lower their prices to match this. Granted I know all too well how annoying it is to spiritbind gear and to get the materia needed to meld onto gear and even more so for the damned Novus quest SE thought was a brilliant idea. But the Market Boards is not in any way set by the devs or anyone else who went into programming anything in FFXIV, those prices are set by the players themselves, SE has no control over that.

And for the record, I know all too well how expensive the Novus quest can be, I'm 2 melds away from finishing my bow and the materia I need is going for 340k+ per right now and I have a 60% and 50% meld chance on them, those two melds alone will probably cost me over 1-2 mil

Actually SE does have a big hand in how much materia costs. Prior to 2.2 and 2.3 materia was used only for the crafted items (DoW DoM) and those who just wanted to meld their DoH DoL, but since 2.2, 2.3 materia has more than tripled in price because of Novus, and i70 crafting tools.

I'm simply asking for content that can help balance out the materia costs so it doesnt cost someone 5 million gil to do there novus quest or have them spiritbonding for 4 weeks to get the right materia.

[Xine]

Actually SE does have a big hand in how much materia costs. Prior to 2.2 and 2.3 materia was used only for the crafted items (DoW DoM) and those who just wanted to meld their DoH DoL, but since 2.2, 2.3 materia has more than tripled in price because of Novus, and i70 crafting tools.

I'm simply asking for content that can help balance out the materia costs so it doesnt cost someone 5 million gil to do there novus quest or have them spiritbonding for 4 weeks to get the right materia.

Still, SE has no say over what people place materia for on the markets. You can't blame their content being added and justify it by saying SE has any say over what people place prices at, thats a pretty poor excuse to want to blame SE over something the players themselves decide. I'm sorry you think SE decided that players should increase the prices of materia simply because they added more content that requires the use of materia, but it doesn't really work that way.

Sure, its a chain reaction of sorts, and Sadana made some good suggestions, but I will go one step further and say this: Allowing materia to be reused will wind up in greater materia prices because people will think to themselves "hey, anyone who buys this can use this again if they fail, so I wont make as much gil off of it unless I jack up the prices even more." Unless you meant that when removing materia from gear, or converting melded gear into materia or desynthing it, you get the melded materia back, then the materia can be used as often as you want without ever having a market for people to Spiritbind.

Don't take my post as attacking either of your posts, take it as constructive criticism. SE will take what players suggest and decide for themselves how to do something as they have been since 1.0 and you will get these quests and other content that the rest of us hate because they take it the wrong way. If you want to make suggestions, please, for the love of Eorzea and your fellow players, put some added thought and details in so we avoid them adding content in a negative way.

Keep in mind though, SE has no say over what other players do, and people will ALWAYS take advantage of others when there is any possible way for them to. Adding more content that requires Materia to progress/complete it WILL cause this to get worse. Personally I believe SE has far too much faith in the players to not take advantage of each other and fight each other over ingame items and content.

[Daniolaut]

Still, SE has no say over what people place materia for on the markets. You can't blame their content being added and justify it by saying SE has any say over what people place prices at, thats a pretty poor excuse to want to blame SE over something the players themselves decide. I'm sorry you think SE decided that players should increase the prices of materia simply because they added more content that requires the use of materia, but it doesn't really work that way.

Sure, its a chain reaction of sorts, and Sadana made some good suggestions, but I will go one step further and say this: Allowing materia to be reused will wind up in greater materia prices because people will think to themselves "hey, anyone who buys this can use this again if they fail, so I wont make as much gil off of it unless I jack up the prices even more." Unless you meant that when removing materia from gear, or converting melded gear into materia or desynthing it, you get the melded materia back, then the materia can be used as often as you want without ever having a market for people to Spiritbind.

Don't take my post as attacking either of your posts, take it as constructive criticism. SE will take what players suggest and decide for themselves how to do something as they have been since 1.0 and you will get these quests and other content that the rest of us hate because they take it the wrong way. If you want to make suggestions, please, for the love of Eorzea and your fellow players, put some added thought and details in so we avoid them adding content in a negative way.

Keep in mind though, SE has no say over what other players do, and people will ALWAYS take advantage of others when there is any possible way for them to. Adding more content that requires Materia to progress/complete it WILL cause this to get worse. Personally I believe SE has far too much faith in the players to not take advantage of each other and fight each other over ingame items and content.

It seems youre totally neglecting simple market mechanics though.

Supply and Demand.

If demand goes up but supply does not at all, and in fact goes down then the prices will and must rise.

Its almost as if youre saying that players and RMT will actually keep the price low so that demand will sky rocket and completely wipe the market dry. That simply just wont happen.

People want gil and they want to make a profit and if something is selling very well, and is difficult to obtain it will rise in price.

Also, i dont take comments as attacks unless they are meant as attacks. Its clear to see that youre simply stating your opinion which i have no qualms about.


Lastly, i'm not blaming SE for lack of materia persay. Im more or less asking them to bring back a bit of content (I.E. Natalan wolf camp spiritbonding parties) that was removed but was highly enjoyable and done by most of the playerbase on a regular basis.

Edit:
One more thing actually. You said SE "puts faith in players not to take advantage of each other." If youre referring to Hunts as an example there is a huge difference between the Non JP player base and the JP playerbase. JP will actually go all healers and auto attack a hunt down whereas non JP players absolutely will not. They have to make content for both sides and hope it balances out.

Another thing i want to emphasize is i want them to simply add content that will inspire players to want to spiritbond. 1.0 we didnt have a supply issue even though when you blew up a meld it meant blowing up not only 1 materia at a time, but also the item and all the already melded materia. So that 5 million crit hit materia cost (which wasnt always at 5m was sometimes below it) wasnt blowing up just one at a time on a 35% meld, you were blowing up 2 on a second meld and if you managed to get to a second meld you were blowing up 3 to meld a third and if you managed to get to a third you were blowing up 4 and if you were rich enough for a 5x meld then you were blowing up 5 materia everytime. So materia was being blown up at much higher rates than it is now but the supply was so high because you had people fighting for mobs in natalan to spiritbond (because it was fun) etc.

And personally i dont feel any content was added in a negative way. I am someone who actually enjoys video games and like doing everything in XIV:ARR so i'm not entirely sure what youre referring to.

[Alistaire]

Enmity materia? Oi, glad we don't have to deal with that now.

[Sadana]

Increase chance of getting grade IV materia from SB
Improve chance of success when overmelding (by a LOT)
Allow reuse of materia

These are just my suggestions and I think they would help many people (especially gatherers/crafters who must have certain stats to accomplish high level things.) It's just with the Novus that those who focus solely on fighting are getting an idea of the awfulness that DoH/DoL have had to go through. :/