The Current Ecnomical State of ARR

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

I agree that a crafter should not be allowed to make BiS but currently crafters cannot even make entry level gear for Raids.
The best stuff we could make in 3.0 was i170 (mats for this gear are stupid rare) and you needed to be minimum i190 to have a chance a clearing AS1.
In 3.1, they bumped up the crafters to i185, still below the minimum threshold and gate locked the gear behind specialists.

A single crafter cannot iLvl jump a newbie, forcing that newbie to the MB, which should be good for the economy except that newbies do not have the Gil required to afford this gear. Just leaving the items to sit on the MB for long, long periods of time. Any crafter see this trend very soon and says to himself, forget bothering to make that ever again; which cause scarcity of the items driving the prices higher and perpetuates this problem.

The promise is, the new gear will be raid-viable and not so difficult to get materials for. 3.0-3.1 basically forced all crafters to gather themselves with the low supply/excesive price.

Yet, i go back to the raid selling problem. Why would anyone care to get entry level gear if it can just buy the raid get itself? And considering tomegear is always an option, is better to gear up in the free tomegear, save money for a while, then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

[-BlueGreen-]

Yet, i go back to the raid selling problem. Why would anyone care to get entry level gear if it can just buy the raid get itself? And considering tomegear is always an option, is better to gear up in the free tomegear, save money for a while, then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

That depends, if it's 100k to gear up and try yourself as much as you like vs. 1mil to get one easy ride, which will most players choose? It's true that tomestone gear provides a low cost alternative, but if it's gear that's released at the same time as new tomestones, that means grinding that's probably comparable to the effort to earn the gil. The big difference is that most of us don't start at 0 gil each time new tomestones are released. Beyond that, there's always the chance that gear from one set or another will have secondary stats that better suit your playstyle/class vs. the other options.

However, I have little faith in SE to get this right. Those recipes will probably be specialist-only, require harder-to-get materials than we would have thought, and probably still be inferior to new tomestone gear even in its non-upgraded state. I've got just enough time left on my subscription to sit back and watch MB prices go nuts with this for the next patch. Seeing relic weapons cost more than houses has shown just how poorly they have thought things through. On top of the fact that housing itself was pretty poorly though through (at least player-owned housing anyway), it shows that their track record isn't exactly stellar.

[ChameleonMS]

... then pay for your runs and gear drops later when raid groups start selling. POINTLESS.

With the current Raid loot rules, how is there any gear dropped on a purchased clear? All the true raiders clear it on Tuesday, and sell the clears later in the week. On sold clear there are too many people in the party that already have the clear for a chest to drop.

[Daeana]

SE has made a great system for many different styles of play but it has ran havoc on the economy for many different reasons. For starters the largest problem I see is that in FFXIV it is to easy and cheap to live. What do I have to spend money on. Technically I don't have to spend a Dime of in game money on anything. Consumables are nice, but are not needed for basic content, food can be found in Guildleve quests. Gear is handed out and if you play your Guild leve and content Correctly you really don't have to buy anything. If you spend all of your time on Battle content there is systems in place to give you gear for what ever it is that your trying to do. on top of that they do give steady income as well as other small rewards. Fate, Duty Roulette all of these aspects give gil my not be a lot but if your not spending it then your collecting it.

Most people use money for Looks (Glamour) and interior house and Room Decor if your involved with a guild as of right now till they potentially bring out apartments.

Now we will go into Crafting 101 and THE COST of crafting. How much does crafting cost you NOT A DAM THING= just like all things in life you start from Raw materials So gathering is where it starts whether it is by a pickaxes & hammer or Hatchet & scythe or even fishing pole or lastly Treasure hunting and content, all that it costs you is TIME. This is also related to real world economics as well. We want to be paid for our time. Why does that item cost 1 gil up to 4 million gil because SOME BODY OUT THERE WANTS IT.

Supply & Demand
There is always money to be made in these games I am an UNDERCUTTER and proud of it. I want my stuff to sell I don't care how low I have to go to make it go first and fast I also look at it from the perspective of how hard was this really to make for me. Did I have to buy my materials or did I go out and harvest them myself. what is a fair price to me for this item did I collect it though a quest can do i need it or can some poor other sap that is flat as broke use this to upgrade there gear set.

Crafting itself is a HUGE money sink for us because of the Items and materia NEEDED to be melded into our gear that just sucks our accounts dry unless you have found a way to pad your accounts before the updates if you are a small guild or solo crafter the world of crafting becomes hard fast. For me personally it is about picking your fights wisely and seeing what items and material you have readily available to you.

In my personal opinion the current system of crafting in FFXI isn't about making money as much as it is being useful to others in there time of need or creating a set of gear that looks different. The harder and faster you level it Presents opportunists the chance to make money but for the majority of us crafting is a means to an end and about outfitting our friends and family while being a time and money sink on the players trying to master it. I am not a rich player but I could be if I wanted to spend more time on the works of crafting but there Potential of what crafting has to offer in comparison to everything else in the game I find it lacking in the luster to be competitive with blue End Game Gear at this point. but the Glamour side of things and housing items is where the money is at currently.

[TahoeMax]

Well, as a 3-star crafter who went through 3.1 and all of the hassle of favors, I\\\\'ll say that the newest crafting materials are light years easier than 3.1

Then: gathering Adamantite, trading for red scrips, gathering ooids, crafting for other red scrips, trading for mats, crafting other mats, using those to make gear. Weekly limits

Now: Gather a few mats with hourly nodes. Trade some esoterics for other mats. Craft advanced mats. Make gear. No weekly limits. Everything market-ready

So it\\\\'s more streamlined in a way. That said, you need to have some SERIOUS gear, either having invested months of red scrips or melded the crap out of your crafted gear. You also now need help to make all the gear. I think eventually the i220 gear, which is quite raid-viable, will be affordable for many and will make the cost of entry into that tier of gameplay somewhat reasonable compared with grinding gear to reach the next ilvl cap, then grinding again.

So them\\\\'s my thoughts

[aesteval]

Then: gathering Adamantite, trading for red scrips, gathering ooids, crafting for other red scrips, trading for mats, crafting other mats, using those to make gear. Weekly limits

Now: Gather a few mats with hourly nodes. Trade some esoterics for other mats. Craft advanced mats. Make gear. No weekly limits. Everything market-ready

Now they just need to go back and fix 3.0 and 3.1 crafting to make it more along the lines of 3.2. I'm not saying make it easy, but the entire favors system was nuts and there are a variety of mats that are still severely limited in availability. The systems that they're locked behind give in game benefits to players who bot while players who are actually playing are severely disadvantaged.

[SwissArmyKnife]

Your sources are bad, and you should feel bad. Not one of your links have a date newer than 2014.

[Melondra]

Due to the release of this current patch there is great money to be made in the crafting and gathering business right now. So far I have made around 3 million in about 2 days from crafting wish is pretty good. The question remains how long will it last till the market crashes again. My point is this, the economy should be showing a steady decline in its economy and then a incline at very low levels, but this games economy seem to go strait up,crash and then repeat instead of leveling off slowly over time.

[Melondra]

This thread was not created for you to attack anothers viewpoint, is your view-point so weak it cannot stand a debate without your pride being injured? Stick to facts then. you tell me, why do you think this system is workable? What do you like about it "SwissArmyKnife"? and please do not attack another person viewpoint because it differs from yours that not why this thread was created.

[-BlueGreen-]

I think eventually the i220 gear, which is quite raid-viable, will be affordable for many and will make the cost of entry into that tier of gameplay somewhat reasonable compared with grinding gear to reach the next ilvl cap, then grinding again.

For kicks, I just checked this point on my server:
High Mythrite Helm of Fending 4-6 mil (no current listings)
High Mythrite Cuirass of Fending 4-8mil (currently only one listing at 8mil, history shows just four sales in this price range)
High Mythrite Gauntlets of Fending 4-6 mil (1 current listing at 5 mil)
High Mythrite Sabatons of Fending 4-6 mil (1 current listing at 5 mil)
High Mythrite Plate Belt of Fending 3-4 mil (2 listings for 3.1 mil each)
Each accessory in the range of 2-3 mil (a fair number of listings in this range for each type)

Without considering weapon, that's about 30 mil for the low end. How in the world can that be considered affordable? Will prices go down? Let's look at the items for anima weapons:
Kingcake x4 for a total of 2mil
Adamantite Francesca x4 for a total of 1.4mil
Titanium Alloy Mirror x4 for a total of 1.8 mil
Dispelling Arrow x4 for a total of 1.2 mil
Grand total of 6.4 mil. It's been a good few months, and this weapon is now outdated by 3.2 standards, yet still costs about double the max price of a small house on this server, and that's also not counting any of the other effort of grinding and such for this weapon.

Now, if I happened to be the greedy type, I could certainly power up a few specialist and have fun posting some of these items and rake in the gil. But what purpose would that serve? I don't want gil, I want to have fun. The specialist system sucks and I don't want any part of it. Besides, at these prices, how is this sustainable? Is this SE's way of endorsing the gil sellers? I can't think of any other way for this kind of gil to enter the economy for "most players" to use this stuff to gear up for entry level raiding. Going based on what I've seen before with prices, these will crash once they're obsolete and therefore won't do anyone any good for entry level raiding.