Problem: Items are Worthless

[Solipse]

I don't know all the ramifications of each approach but I think what I like best is a take on #3/#4 where you also make gear attune when durability drops below 100% the first time.

Some thoughts:

1) This would require one fundamental change that would throw the entire crafting system into disarray : you wouldn't be able to HQ an item off NQ mats. If that isn't changed, then this solution doesn't address any of the base issues, and you still need an addition of a process for gear to leave the economy.

2) If #1 is implemented AND HQ item rarity is increased, think of what that is going to do to DoL classes - if they have to gather 50 oak logs before they get an HQ log, you are placing an incredible burden on them in the form of time spent just to get a HQ *part*. If this took 2 hours on average per part, then making a +1 or +2 item would conceivably force 10 hours of gathering - is that fair? As posted, the jist I get is "I shouldn't have to sit there for hours making an HQ item, someone else should have to spend their time so I can do it faster." - not sure trading off effort in that way is a good thing.

3) This is a fairly complex solution; it is hard enough to be exact with the ramifications of even my proposed 1-shot solution in the OP. When you start adding in a 4, 5 or 6 variable equation, you end up with a chaos-theory like effect; you cannot tell if you've covered anything, and even one missed part of the equation can throw it all out of whack. Solutions should be simple in design and effect.

Take the Dodore Doublet, there's a reason they cost 15 million on my server three months after it was implemented.

The problem is, doublets are 5m on Figaro now. We have 7 or 8 linkshells capable of killing Dodore and he (and every other NM) is farmed 24/7. Buffalo horns are down to 500k. From what I've read, many of the NMs in 11 were *rare*. NMs in 14 are *not* rare, just the opposite. It's easy to get the ones you want, in many cases they will spawn in less than an hour's time.

The economy will never be fixed for anything currently in the game, that's all trash and it will stay that way. Drop rates and item sources need looking at before the rank cap is increased and I do hope the gold nugget recipe is not going to be 4x gold ore/sand or we'll have the market flooded with gold mats right from the start, unlike darksteel and ebony logs which were removed from the game and will be fresh when the cap is raised. I hope the gold recipe requires an additional mat that can only be obtained from grade 6 nodes.

It feels like this kind of solution is imposing a penalty on people for playing, though. If I have to spend 200h to do or make anything worthwhile, even once, then what is the point in playing at all? That is one of the major gripes with the game so far from all of those MMO sites, and I think they're absolutely correct.

Playing an MMO shouldn't be about 'I do nothing for 90% of the time', but rather should be about making small steps toward some goal. Playing solely out of the RNG waiting for a +3 item to drop from a node because a) That's the only way you can make NQ and b) That's the only thing that you can get that's worthwhile - that's not really fun, and that's not really progress.

For 14 to really catch on, it needs to be much more lighthearted in scope. Instead of filling up a player's time with 90% junk actions, I believe pretty strongly that the game needs to overwhelm the player with microscopically scoped things that can each become a building block toward some greater goal.

The original solution goes a very long way toward helping _every_ class.

For DoL and DoM/W classes, materials gained from killing monsters, any materials, will be worthwhile. It will be worth holding on to more than just your HQ items. If I can make 512 crab bows, and combine those into 64 likely-higher quality bows (64 synths of 8 bows), combine those into 8 even higher quality and combine THOSE into 1 final product, that will take a HUGE amount of materials. It will give DoW classes a reason to go out and spend hours farming megalocrabs and slugs. It will give DoL classes a reason to go out and farm iron ore and oak logs. All of those items will sell well, especially when, in order to do 512 total synths, I need 512 of each sub item.

For people thinking that allowing items combined in this fashion will simply overwhelm the market with HQ items and make them so common, really think about it for a second.

Right now, every crafter and their mother is pumping out HQ bows by gathering HQ materials and synthing as many in a row as they can. Right *NOW* HQ items are overwhelming the market; It will not be long before HQ items are just as worthless as NQ items ... and this is how the game is *now*. While they do this, however, they further destroy the market on almost every other material, including the gathered and killed for materials : Why bother buying NQ crab shells and red coral to make crab bows? I can buy an NQ crab bow for less than I can buy just those two mats, let alone iron, oak, sinews, etc. Is that a healthy economy? It's like charging 10x current value for the materials to build a home, but charging 10% of the current value for the home itself.

In the system I proposed, because you actually add an incentive to MAKE NQ items (as in, that's actually the goal), you ensure that the market itself stays healthy because those NQ sub items are continually being consumed. Further, look at what it takes to do the massive synthfest I linked above:

512 red coral, 512 green megalocrab shells, 471 iron nugget, 43 bronze wire, 43 bronze nugget, 1536 antelope sinew, 86 ahriman wings, 142 buffalo hide, 1024 aldgoat horns, 256 oak logs, 43 marmot pelts, 43 biast scales, 512 hippogryph sinews, 6144 earth shards, 512 wind crystals, 2009 wind shards, 86 fire crystals, 3072 lightning shards and whatever crystals the 512 synths of each bow require.

It is not as simple an operation as it sounds on paper. It's actually a lot of work - and will keep crafters busy assembling large amounts of mats to do these kinds of synths. That is a LOOOOTTTTT of materials. Consider for a moment how many different economies, classes and sub economies this will both fix and create.

1) Crystal prices become worthwhile again (good, because lots of crystals would be created by people mat farming - mat farming being something that does NOT really occur, now).
2) NQ item markets will increase.

3) +1 item markets will increase by a factor of 800+% (or more, due to saved time) over NQ markets.
4) +2 item markets will increase by a factor of 800+% (or more, due to saved time) over +1 markets.
5) +3 item markets will increase by a factor of 800+% (or more, due to saved time) over +2 markets.

Let me explain before I go further: If each +3 item you get from a monster/node is roughly worth 512 NQ item synths, then it will be worth much more than 512x an NQ item. Consider what I pasted above was required to make 512 crab bows. Many millions of gil and thousands of hours of combined energy. How much would you pay to NOT have to sink that much energy into making a +3 bow? If that item in NQ form normally sold for 10k, I don't think it would be unusual for the +3 version of it to sell for 1 million. Crafters will make a lot of money selling HQ items from this, and HQ prices will go through the roof, but gatherers and combat classes will make a lot of money selling HQ sub parts. All you have to do, then, to earn the 40-50m that a +3 crab bow would require, is farm some monster/node for sp that drops in-demand HQ parts. You earn SP, you get materials, you make oodles of money (remember that the NQ items are very valuable, too) selling to crafters, you buy your bow. THAT is a healthy economy. I do work, someone benefits from my work, I make money from that benefit, I find someone who has done work I will benefit from, I pay them with the money I made from doing my work. That's free market/capitalism at its finest.

6) You keep a constant churn on materials - that is, if I go out and farm iron ore for a full day, the thousands of NQ ore I get are not going to sit on my retainer for weeks. They will sell quickly, enabling me to go out and get more ore the next day. If you incentivize buying NQ materials to make HQ mats, then you incentivize people actually BUYING NQ materials. This is a real market repercussion. We're back to talking about supply and demand, here.

In other words, you accomplish what the game's point was in the first place with this crafter->gatherer->combat class setup: One group of classes produces goods that another group of classes needs, who in turns supplies them with the things they need. Right now, very few people need very few of the items that any one class produces. 90% of the materials that ANY class produces is utter junk and vendor fodder. That is not a healthy economy.

7) And finally, you don't need to introduce any artificial time sinks that will turn people off. Nothing above is mandatory. You don't have to participate in it if you don't want to. If you just want to make your NQ item and get to playing, you don't have to spend hours/days making it because materials are super rare. NQ materials would be commonly farmed and commonly available. You can buy them up, making your one synth and get going. Enough people would involve themselves in the 512->64->8->1 synth chain to support it (really, all it takes is a dozen crafters using it to make it economically worthwhile) that every single crafter isn't going to have to be involved with it.

In before TL;DR