I love the crafting & gathering system (main class: omnicrafter XD) of FFXIV, considering it one of the nicest I have seen so far. And I love "marketboarding".

But unfortunately at the current state I think the system is massively flawed because of 2 reasons (one hopefully find a fix semi-soon):



1) SE is doing very little (or the wrong things) against cartels, bots and the like. A bunch of people (maybe even with bots) create tons of stuff, put it on the MB really low-priced and at worst make sure they fill up the 100 hits you can have for an item -- there you are, they rule the market. Just as bots ruling the markets of certain items obtained by gathering. And even after it is claimed officially from time to time so-and-so many folks were banned for doing such -- you still see exactly the same bots being active. Which makes me think SE has no real interest in fighting anything harming the "Eorzean economy" -- bots pay subscription fees, too, and most players only want to battle -- the economy is totally irrelevant to 80%+ of the player base. SE is not in the business of making all gamers happy, they are in the business of selling subscription fees at low cost. So don't see this fixed any time soon...

2) Low demand thanks to SE handing out all decent gear for free (well, leveling quests and drops) or only for tomes and the like. Crafting (and gathering to supply crafting) outside crafting for yourself and other crafters & gatherers only creates glamour right now and leveling equipment for additional classes (furniture is also a no-seller for the most part, given housing is still so ridiculously scarce and so expensive only wealthy, self-sufficient crafters & FCs can afford it). Considering the amount of crafters out there vs. the amount of demand for the only things that DO actually sell, it is no surprise things are not working well. And by handing out HQ crafted items via quests in HW things actually got even worse, as crafters were the sole source at least for that pre-Heavensward -- now folks just sell their unwanted HQ gear from quests, ruining even that market.

I understand that SE wants to make FFXIV as simple & easy for causal gamers as possible, so throwing tons of "leveling gear freebies" at them is just "good business" for SE. But not allowing any kind of crafted battle gear to be really in well-priced demand beyond a bit of leveling stuff is not helping that approach, it is just harming those who love crafting (& gathering) in this game. Other games offer both approaches and do very well with this: Get great gear as loot from battle, or sell loot, make money and use that money to buy great gear from the crafting folks (or other people's loot).

SE has announced the upcoming patch will include crafted gear that is actually useful in battle (endgame-y), which would be wonderful if this holds true and
a) is gear that can be crafted without being decked out in tier V-pentamelded ilvl 170 gear (all the better given tier V isn't even really in the game yet, and yes I am a bit sarcastic here, given some past experiences) ... and ...

b) does not require mats which are so insanely rare and/or time-consuming to get that prices HAVE to be so high that hardly anyone is buying because few can afford such at all. What is going on with the mats for ilvl 170 crafting/gathering gear is a prime example of that, 40-60k for one piece of mat (justly priced at current time-investment, I say) and thanks to tons of mats like that needed the sheer costs of making that gear in the range of several 100k (so finished product accordingly worth even more, millions if HQ and risky to HQ, as star-crafting tends to be...) ... nope, that is not how you create demand.

So it would be good if SE tones down some of the insane requirements/costs of existing endgame-gear for gathering/crafting and offers us crafted battle gear at reasonable costs in terms of mats/time required. High, but not so high only very few can afford. Rather so that the time-investment to make gil for such gear and the time-investment to farm tomes, raid for drops etc. is more or less on par (which does have to include the profit for the one crafting, in relation to time-investment, level and difficulty of the crafting).

We will see what the upcoming patch will bring... because if this is fixed a real system of battle + gathering + crafting feeding each happily and decently on the MB would be awesome.