How to fix this red scrip nightmare:

[Ohiuu]

"It's the economy, stupid."
There's always been a grind, there's always been some kind of a gate, we've always had to shell out big if we wanted to bypass those previous two issues. However...the gate as it stands is too severe and the lack of participation between adventurers/crafters/gatherers is the real issue at hand. We'd all be a lot more tolerant if the favor mats sold regularly. In order for that to happen, we'd need adventurers that could farm and sell something to crafters and gatherers that would be able to buy something from crafters as well (besides OH and accessories). An economy isn't a one-way street. The current issue is that not enough people are willing/able to participate to create demand. Gathering by and large saw some interesting updates in 3.0 but the broken paradigm of crafting/farming has made it irrelevant. I would recommend reducing the red scrip token cost of favors to 25 (also probably lower the HQ mat cost in crafter tokens to 1) to allow for more access and then address the issues that left adventurers broke and crafters unable to sell anything in the 2star world. Beyond that the changes proposed would be a bit extreme if they were all to be implemented simultaneously.

If you're more of a visual person, look at the amazing diagram posted by Caimie_Tsukino in this thread's first page: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...woes-circa-3.0.