Propositions to address crafting/economic woes circa 3.0.

[Ohiuu]

Due to lack of access and desirability of the end products (as we all now know) it has created a huge imbalance in the economy. Here is a short list of basic changes that would rapidly alleviate many of the primary issues:

1. Make the DoW/M gear i190. The crafted set shouldn't be sub-par to Alex normal stuff that's free and easy to obtain, esp. since materia scaling is bad atm.
2. Make the i190 gear require you to obtain some i170/180 craft gear to create.
3. Give adventurer's a way to make gil with a system similar to 2.x that comes from law and/or dungeon drops and add those mats into i190 battle gear.
4. DoH/L Rowena tokens should cost 25 to make gear cheaper for adventurer's.
5. Skyspring water should convert into Law tome item or dungeon drop (or just remove the red scrip token as others have suggested).
6. Make i170 crafted DoL set and a reason to have it.
7. Make draconian pots craft 3 or reduce mat requirements and make food worth using (scale better/raise the % limits on the stats).
8. Make high level fish that turns into potent food/pots (this one seems silly, but marrying raiders and crafters is good for everyone...also fishing should be more desirable).
9. Create crafted battle accessories BUT do not allow for melding of primary stats (stat cap them) because I'm assuming the reason these were taken out of the normal crafting recipe/iLVL cycle of the 2.2 era onward was due to the doubling up on primary stats for certain classes (i.e. tanks max melding str and vit and refusing to use the raid accessories) which could create an actual imbalance in end-game raiding.
10. Create EFFECTIVE consumable sinks for gatherers to funnel their folklore (so much work for so little payout)/ephemeral mats into to keep costs up (food no one needs doesn't count).
11. Create armor packs/gear enhancements that add permanent stats and/or materia slots onto existing equipment (this could pair strongly with point #10)

EDIT: I would love to hear input from the crafting community in regards to other possible solutions. This is a basic outline of some of the glaring points but I really would like to see some suggestions on how we could build a robust and sustainable economy. Relegating crafters to glamour pimps just means we're always going to be putting up chintzy crap that will quickly lose most of its market value...I for one love crafting and want it to be something great that gives us a real place in the overall scheme of the game.

EDIT #2: Thank you Kiara for bringing up the old prohibition on end-game (i210 circa 3.0) crafted gear. I really feel it's time for the dev team to readdress this concept. The i190 should have been an obvious choice since it's just a redux of the 2.x paradigm for crafted gear, but what about a horizontal set for the raiders? Let's reconsider what the harm of creating a crafted set of i210 that requires the equivalent Savage turn (say, a rare drop akin to abjurations in FFXI) as well as numerous other rare and expensive materials in addition to a skilled and geared crafter to create? It could be properly gated to require a large amount of effort to obtain (and also allow for the challenging of raid content more than once a week for potential benefit) but could bring together a wide variety of players to make gear for one another. The interest and excitement this would generate would be tremendous across the board and so long as it was properly implemented, I find it hard to envision the drawbacks. EVERYONE wants choices and players have been clamoring for horizontal progression since day 1. Economically, the implications are obvious: most of the player base would be willing to invest large amounts of time and energy into creating this sort of thing, and the materials would come from raiders, crafters, gatherers and even the casual adventurer's in the form of dungeon or older content drops (or Law tome mats, even Eso tome mats for that matter). I think it's time, don't you?

For an explanation of how abjurations worked in FFXI see this link: http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Abjuration.
Basically you get a drop that's binding from raid content (so people can't just buy them outright) and then buy a piece of unequippable gear made by crafters using rare mats then combine the two to make end-game gear.