Problems with The Fashion Report: Why it promotes Greed and Player Toxicity

[Inue]

The Fashion Report is an interesting piece of content. You're loosely given the ideas of certain pieces of equipment you need to fit into a slot and are encouraged to seek out information from other players on which pieces best suit the role, as the objective is the same for everyone. But therein lies the problem; it's the same for everyone.

By making the Fashion Report objective the same for each player it means that every player needs to look into getting the same items for each slot should they wish to receive a high score, and not all items can be gained through tomes and easy crafting. Much if it falls to high level crafts, and if you don't have the means to craft it you're left at the mercy of the Market Board which has become a horrific monstrocity due to this. Shirts that were once 5k are now 80k. Skirts that were once 20k are now 480k. Prices inflate rapidly due to greedy players looking to drain money from those who wish to partake in this piece of content, and not everyone is sitting on millions of gil that they can just throw at this and that.

The lack of information the content itself provides leads to players spreading information that only the super expensive clothing they're selling will result in a high score, rather than the fact that there are several options that will give you similar or at least close to similar results.

Another keyword the content used is "sharing", which is ironic as attempting to use a piece of clothing for the event will bind it to you, thus preventing you from sharing it with friends or other players who are looking to complete the weekly 80 point challenge as well. This is likely what attributes the most to prices skyrocketing on items as players are fully prevented from sharing or reselling their pieces, instead leaving them with an inventory clogged of expensive, bound, gaudy pieces of clothing.

There are a multitude of solutions that could fix this piece of content. Providing players with the items they need or giving better hints to where they can acquire the best pieces would work well, though I think the best quick solution would also be the most simple to implement: remove the Item Binding from The Fashion Report. By removing the Item Binding players would be able, if not entirely encouraged, to share or resell the gear they acquired for the weekly event. This would keep item prices lower, but keep the market moving as demand for new items would arise every week. Players could also share their gear this way, allowing an overall increase in positive player interactions.

Oh, and please add an Armoire next to the Masked Rose. It would be incredibly helpful for everyone and make me a very happy lizard.

[Awoo]

The system has been designed with the intention of having the market/crafters speculate. When this contest ends on Tuesday we'll get the next theme, then the contest proper won't start until Friday. 3 days will be spent speculating wildly on what the items are going to be for the next contest before anyone knows what gives gold coins. It's going to cause tonnes of interesting activity.

There isn't any toxicity, just soreness at things costing a bunch. I don't see how buying and selling on the market place can be considered toxic. Square have made that 3 day gap because they intentionally want massive amounts of speculation to occur in between each contest.

This is good for the market. It's interesting, it changes demand for various items on a weekly basis, it stops it from being stagnant to-and-fro of gear for new raids vs new cosmetics vs old difficult to find cosmetics.

Now it's going to have weekly supply and demand for the HOT NEW THING IN FASHION.

GET THE EORZEAN LOOK

[Elamys]

As much as it sucks to be unable to get the best of best items right now, keep in mind there's more than one good shirt for the theme right now (I'm assuming that's what everyone is bothered about) and we don't know if there may be even more that are good. While it won't be a game friendly to those with low gil, there's a good side to this - we never know what's going to be in demand next week, and it's highly possible that you could use the weeks in between to collect pieces of glamour when it's cheaper.

[KDSilver]

How is that toxic ?

I mean, it's only a minigame. There's no need to spend millions of gils for it.
And even so, people sell things that seems valuable because they want to earn more for their own purpose. What's wrong with that?

This isn't because you have no money that people suddenly become toxic and greedy...

[Hasrat]

It is a bit unfortunate that a minigame (for MGP no less) has such an impact on the economy. Was under the impression that most folks ran out of things to buy at GS ages ago.

Maybe once the novelty wears off, things will stabilize again.

[Elamys]

It is a bit unfortunate that a minigame (for MGP no less) has such an impact on the economy. Was under the impression that most folks ran out of things to buy at GS ages ago.

Maybe once the novelty wears off, things will stabilize again.

Really only if you are dedicated to doing the challenge log. For casual Saucer visitors like me, there's a lot of stuff to get. I'm still needing to get the Archon Throne and Fenrir and I just got the flying pea monster (which is the only mount that actually exists in the game)

Probably after the novelty wears off, yeah, things will go back to normal. I know when they revamped chocobo races a bit feed spiked up a little bit in price and now it's worthless again.

[Tsumdere]

This has been excellent for the Balmung markets. Pretty sure myself and my friend paid for a small house selling long skirts.

[Myon88]

This is actually one of the better ideas they've had in awhile. Stagnation is the bane of every mmo, and something like this that has the potential to shake up the market and keep it fresh is very welcome.

Otherwise yes it is very boring. At the start of every patch you have the usual big ticket items being DoW/DoH crafteds and the new designated expensive glamours (sweater and the robe now), you know the deal, and everything else is pretty ho hum and formulaic until the next patch.

It got lots of people to run old content like the Vault this week too, which is always good since it makes otherwise deprecated content feel relevant for a short time.

[DarkDedede]

They should get rid of the four-a-week attempt limit, so players aren't afraid to discover alternate options (assuming there are any). That way it would increase demand for more than just a select few items a week.

[tymora]

Think its designed with public forums in mind. People share info so quickly anyway.