Problem: Items are Worthless

[Solipse]

Re: "you could code this in under a day" - I'm not sure what your experience developing is but I work day to day with code bases that are several million lines of code written over 20+ years and something I can whip up in 20 minutes in Ruby or Java might take me the better part of a week in legacy C code once I get down to putting it under unit test to make sure I don't break anything and even finding the right place to put it and tracking down what invariably does break because the code is brittle and so on. I'm not sure if you were making a serious point with this or not but I figured I'd respond.

I've been involved in development for 16 years now, and have done work with just about every programming language available - except for Ruby, haven't really had time to sit down and learn it.

Coding time != End to end development cycle

The coding for my solution is as easy as it comes, and I do feel pretty strongly that they could bang it out in under a day. The testing for a system like that, of course, will take much longer.

Basically - in order to keep HQ goods rare someone needs to sit around forever doing something and no matter how you slice it it's not fair to someone. I prefer NQ mats = NQ goods and HQ mats = HQ goods because then it means something to a DoL / DoW when they get HQ mats and it means something to a DoH when they are able to acquire HQ mats.

In the proposed solution you are putting all the power into the hands of the DoH I think. There is no incentive to pay a premium to DoL/DoW to be able to make a HQ item. I don't think that seems really fair & balanced.

Well, to be fair, that's what those classes are for.

If you want free materials, you are forced to do DoL.
If you want free repairs and free items, you are forced to do DoH.
If you want to be able to farm mobs and get HQ drops from them, you are forced to do DoW/M

Let me first state that my opinion on this comes decided from lack-of-self-interest and more from my sense of what's right and fair. If you notice, I have no DoL jobs above R21. If this was self-interest, I would say the opposite:

I cannot support or agree with any opinion or option that would allow a DoH to completely bypass having a DoL job from gathering mats, or from supporting people with DoL jobs. If you need a hundred oak logs, you should either have to get them yourself or pay someone to get them. Not enough people do DoL, currently, however, because the reward for doing so is so small. This would add incentive for doing so.

In practice, you are not putting all of the power in the hands of a DoL, though. It's supply and demand and market equilibrium in practice - right now you are free to charge whatever you want for whatever you want. I routinely see people selling iron chain +3 for 500k - nobody buys it. You can only get as much money for something as someone else is willing to pay. If all of the DoL classes price gouge on basic materials, DoH classes will just level DoL classes and the DoL people will never, ever be able to sell anything, as the people who would consume what they're selling can do it themselves.

Thus, again, there is still incentive for selling things at a fair price. Not only that, but goods final price will invariably based off of materials prices. If the price of oak logs went up 10x through this change, then the price of final items should ideally go up 10x as well. Again, if the price of lumber goes up, the price of housing goes up, too. Believing that things will work any differently is like believing that if the price of lumber goes up, the price of housing goes down.

Free roaming NMS is a throwback to what I consider bad game design and prevents your players from playing the game.

You do have a point - however, this is only the case if that is the only place where these high end gear materials come from, as they are currently. If you had instanced dungeon bosses, even if they were hard and required 15 man r50 groups, that dropped similar level gear, would go a long way to not FORCING people to deal with NMs.

I think it's a bit too early in the game's lifetime to base any long term decisions off the content (or lack thereof) that we have now. There should be multiple ways to obtain good gear. Hopefully they realize that; I would be surprised if they didn't.

[moatcarp]

...Let me first state that my opinion on this comes decided from lack-of-self-interest and more from my sense of what's right and fair. If you notice, I have no DoL jobs above R21...

I don't think you understood my point. In your proposed system DoL are basically worthless (HQ mats are completely meaningless and may as well be removed from the game). Your proposal completely favors DoH. DoH can just grind out a ton of NQ goods using NQ items and end up with super expensive HQ end results.

HQ mat = HQ result is more balanced between DoL and DoH than your solution.

For your solution they may as well completely remove HQ materials all together. The other solution allows HQ materials to remain worth while and removes the problems with just being able to spam NQ mats to get HQ goods anyway (right now).

EDIT: if you want to get into who has worse DoL I think my highest is fisher at rank 18 .

[Solipse]

I don't think you understood my point. In your proposed system DoL are basically worthless (HQ mats are completely meaningless and may as well be removed from the game). Your proposal completely favors DoH. DoH can just grind out a ton of NQ goods using NQ items and end up with super expensive HQ end results.

HQ mat = HQ result is more balanced between DoL and DoH than your solution.

For your solution they may as well completely remove HQ materials all together. The other solution allows HQ materials to remain worth while and removes the problems with just being able to spam NQ mats to get HQ goods anyway (right now).

EDIT: if you want to get into who has worse DoL I think my highest is fisher at rank 18 .

No, I really don't think you're understanding the system as proposed.

How could you think that HQ mats are worthless under this system?

Suppose 1 assembly of crab bows is worth 100k in mats.
8*100k = 800k spent for a +1
8*800k = 6.4m spent for a +2
8*6.4m = 51.2m spent for a +3

Now suppose you can pretty much guarantee a +3 item with 10 combines of all +3 mats.

That means each combine of +3 mats is worth approximately 5.12m, or 51.2x as much as NQ mats. Please explain to me how that's "essentially worthless". In fact, the real value is much greater than this because instead of spending 10h assembling crap bows, you can instead spend 20m doing 10 synths.

If anything that will drive the cost of HQ mats way, way up. I hardly see how that makes DoL useless.

[moatcarp]

From the OP:

...If I switch to carpenter and open up my synth menu and stick two, three or more crab bows into my synth box, I can attempt to fuse them together into a higher quality version...

This means that I just grind out a ton of NQ bows then synth them all together until they are HQs. This means that I don't need any HQ mats to get HQ goods. This means that HQ goods are essentially worthless; no one ever needs them for anything.

The whole problem you're trying to address is essentially the elemental staves market problem in XI. I don't think your proposed solution would work out as perfectly as you think.

[Solipse]

From the OP:


This means that I just grind out a ton of NQ bows then synth them all together until they are HQs. This means that I don't need any HQ mats to get HQ goods. This means that HQ goods are essentially worthless; no one ever needs them for anything.

The whole problem you're trying to address is essentially the elemental staves market problem in XI. I don't think your proposed solution would work out as perfectly as you think.

Maybe my last response was confusing. Let me highlight, here. Would you rather farm/buy:

512 red coral, 512 green megalocrab shells, 471 iron nugget, 43 iron ingot, 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.

or

10 red coral +3, 10 green megalocrab shells +3, 6 iron nugget +3, 2 iron ingot +3, 2 bronze wire +3, 2 bronze nugget +3, 30 antelope sinew +3, 4 ahriman wings +3, 2 buffalo hide +3, 20 aldgoat horns +3, 3 oak logs +3, 2 marmot pelts +3, 2 biast scales +3, 12 hippogryph sinews +3, 520 earth shards, 10 wind crystals, 48 wind shards, 7 fire crystals, 60 lightning shards and whatever crystals the 10 synths of each bow require.

You have your choice, here:

Farm/Buy 5,266 materials, 11,225 shards, 1,622 crystals
Farm/Buy 107 HQ materials, 628 shards, 37 crystals

Yeah, you're right, you don't NEED to buy HQ materials, but if the option is open to you and you'd RATHER gather that staggering amount of materials to do your synth, well, you're pretty dumb. I'll again insist that under a system like this, HQ materials will be at even more of a demand than they are right now.

Let's assume that under this system, NQ materials will be at X while +3 materials will be 50 times more expensive: Let's assume each shard is 200 gil and each crystal is 1500 gil.

NQ cost to make +3 bow: 64,995,000
HQ cost to make +3 bow: 62,981,100

Here's the thing, even if +3 mats are 50x higher price in the retainer area, they end up being CHEAPER in the long run to get your +3 bow (not guaranteed, but then again you may get lucky and get 2 or even 3 +3 bows since this is 10 combines worth of HQ mats). Not only THAT, but you only have to do 60 total combines instead of 2800. Let's figure out time savings assuming that each HQ combine takes 2 minutes. Let's also assume that each base combine (to make all 512 crab bows) takes 1 minute each, and that each additional combine (merging 8 bows into one higher tier bow) will take 30 seconds each.

Total synthing minutes for NQ materials : 2,777 minutes
Total synthing minutes for HQ materials : 118 minutes

So not only do you SAVE MONEY, have a chance at getting more than just a single HQ bow, you also save 44.5 hours of synthing time in making them.

Please explain, in detail, why you think this system makes HQ materials worthless, exactly? Stating that it will is not enough, please back up your opinion. Do you actually think that, with all this in mind, there's anyone who would willingly NOT pay for HQ materials so they can stockpile an entire retainer full of materials, pay more money for them over HQ AND spend two days synthing instead? Please back up your assertions with math or economic principle, not gut feeling.

"It may not work like you think" isn't good enough - every change to an economic system, no matter how minor, has a chance to affect that system in unexpected ways. The only "safe" alternative is to do nothing, which this game cannot afford. Please back up your assertions.

The point of this system isn't to make HQ materials worthless (as proven above, it does the opposite). The point of this system is to add a check/balance to item cost that when item costs for a particular item dip too low, there is an incentive for people to buy those items and combine them.

In a system like this, anyone who sets OUT to make a +3 item by combine NQ materials is idiotic. It's not something someone will set out to do, but rather something someone will do when goods costs dip too low.

[moatcarp]

Please explain, in detail, why you think this system makes HQ materials worthless, exactly?

Because most NQ mats are next to worthless. All the DoL I know regularly NPC stacks and stacks and stacks of materials (even after giving away stacks and stacks for free to friends / ls-mates). Crab Bow is a weird example because I don't think you can harvest all the materials. LW is another example that doesn't fit the norm.

For most crafts NQ mats are completely free in huge quantities if you have anything resembling a social network in the game.

So your example doesn't hold for most the items in the game (maybe it does for crab bow because you have to farm some of the mats).

[Solipse]

Because most NQ mats are next to worthless. All the DoL I know regularly NPC stacks and stacks and stacks of materials (even after giving away stacks and stacks for free to friends / ls-mates). Crab Bow is a weird example because I don't think you can harvest all the materials. LW is another example that doesn't fit the norm.

For most crafts NQ mats are completely free in huge quantities if you have anything resembling a social network in the game.

So your example doesn't hold for most the items in the game (maybe it does for crab bow because you have to farm some of the mats).

That's not an objection to the point I made, though.

Right now you can buy a non HQ oak log for 2k. You can usually buy a +3 oak log for 20k. Right now HQ items are only 10, maybe 20x as much as a non HQ item. The balance point in the system that I proposed, costwise, was 50x. IE, HQ items will be worth between 2 and 5x as much compared to non HQ items as they are right now.

How is making them worth more compared to non HQ items making them worthless? :P