Problem: Items are Worthless

[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

[moatcarp]

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

1 - right now you need HQ materials to create HQ+3 item (assuming rank 50 DoH & rank 50ish synth), correct?

2 - with your proposal a rank 50 DoH would be able to generate a HQ+3 rank 50ish synth by grinding out NQ mats into NQ end goods and then combining the NQ end goods into HQ end goods, correct?

3 - NQ materials are largely worthless (caveat: materials you need to farm for, NM drops, etc).

Therefore your proposal reduces the need to obtain HQ materials in order to obtain top-end gear.

In some cases that point you are making holds (NM drops for example). Even a NQ NM drop is worth quite a bit right now and a HQ is worth quite a bit more (the last I looked anyway). In this case then you could reasonably make a trade off between buying HQ components or NQ components.

For many other cases though your proposal undermines the value of HQ goods even more than they are undermined in the current system. At least in the current system people trying to obtain HQ gear (meaning +3) are seeking out HQ materials.

Aside from that - I could get hundreds of NQ oak logs or anything NQ DoL-able for free (or for whatever the NPC would pay if you want to be more even or even a bit more - so like 200g / item?). So can any crafter with any sort of social circle. That completely undermines your argument because the NQ can be had for 0g (or ~200g) rather than 2k. The trade off becomes "sit around for hours synthing NQ junk that cost me next to nothing or pay a bunch of gil to save some time".

EDIT: I didn't say it because I figured everyone here is smart enough to fill in the blanks but the trade off of spending a lot of time grinding out items that are basically free vs. spending a bunch of gil to save some time totally favors people who will bot crafting and thus runs against some important premises at the heart of how this game has been designed and balanced.

[Solipse]

1 - right now you need HQ materials to create HQ+3 item (assuming rank 50 DoH & rank 50ish synth), correct?

2 - with your proposal a rank 50 DoH would be able to generate a HQ+3 rank 50ish synth by grinding out NQ mats into NQ end goods and then combining the NQ end goods into HQ end goods, correct?

3 - NQ materials are largely worthless (caveat: materials you need to farm for, NM drops, etc).

Therefore your proposal reduces the need to obtain HQ materials in order to obtain top-end gear.

These are all covered by my explanation, though.

You are essentially saying that people would rather spend more money and more time synthing from NQ than they would from HQ.

In this system, I would pay 100k for a +3 log before I would pay 120k for 64 NQ logs. Why? Because it would take 64 NQ logs to get the equivalent of a +3 log. I can save myself many, many hours of time and frustration by just buying the +3 log at the inflated price, which, you will notice, is more than the +3 is worth now.

Seriously, I already covered this a couple times over in my responses to you. HQ materials will go up in this system. They will be just as in demand as they are now, except they'll most likely be worth even more since they become a better alternative than endlessly grinding materials.

[moatcarp]

These are all covered by my explanation, though.

You are essentially saying that people would rather spend more money and more time synthing from NQ than they would from HQ...

Spending more money? You keep saying the same thing and failing to respond to my answer to it. NQ mats are largely free. I'm not going to continue if you're going to be selectively blind while reading my replies. Have fun.