Discussion & Suggestions: What do you think of FFXIV economy?

[KatCnaa]

A few questions for my fellow crafters/gatherers:

How have the recent crafting changes affected you? Affected your outlet for crafting/mats markets? Motivation? Demand? Enjoyability?

How useful do you think the majority of gear/weapon recipes are? Have MSQ/dungeon changes affected demand for crafted items? Do you think there is enough glam/housing/endgame gear/consumables demand to balance any changes?

What adjustments would you want to see that would affect the overall economy to make it better for both buyers & sellers -- and make the game more enjoyable to play as a merchant/crafter/gatherer?


My own thoughts:
FFXIV has some limited crafted consumables: some basic dyes, pots, crafting/gathering/raiding food....aaand that's kinda it. When did you last use a remove paralysis potion? One tweak I would love to see (spitballing) are consumables that are crafted that make the game more interesting or interactive. Give me the ability to craft wedding or social emotes, like a prism for throwing roses at the couple. Or potions that allow a player to use an ability in a fight with a long cooldown--like a jump move or to dump all aggro. Or perhaps something that would be extremely fun or interesting to use, like putting a funny status effect on an enemy -- like wearing a stupid hat. Just some ideas. Something that players would /enjoy/ buying to have fun with, but wouldn't be something that raidmasters would be like "you must now have this". Pots like this could be restricted to unsynced duties, perhaps, to avoid causing issues for other players in matched duties.

Another tweak that could help the market just a touch would be to be able to toggle player housing to allow non-tenants to interact with the furnishings. This could potentially be an issue for blank walls or flower pots, but the goal would be so that those who have cafes or throw parties could allow guests to eat the food that's laid out before them. It would be a toggle, so that a player could toggle it on during a party, and switch it back off afterwards.

I would love to see other changes that increase the value of content that the game already has. SE has obviously put a lot of hours into creating the content the game already has, and I am a little sad to feel like a lot of it gets crammed into the corner and ignored. I encounter a lot of players who show up for patches and then flee because they see a game devoid of any other content. I think that if the game were made a bit more flexible (to what extent that is possible given the coding), to allow players to achieve more social connection and have more tools for player-driven events and content, then the player base could bring a lot more value to the game, given all the beautiful assets that already exist. I think SE recognizes this, with their mindfulness to increase props for screenshots and RP.

[Kes13a]

I want to see zero changes until the bot issue is addressed. seriously, they suck any enjoyment out of crafting

[Eloc]

I want to see zero changes until the bot issue is addressed. seriously, they suck any enjoyment out of crafting

^ This first!

I would like to feel like i am providing a service to the community instead of crafting for the sake of craftings sake. Crafting for scrips or some event meant as content for crafters seems like it took away the purpose of having crafting all together. Remove all crafting and the game pretty much stays in tact. One of the changes they made was to how materia was earned in the game. When extracting materia stopped destroying the item it took away the need for crafters to constantly add supply. Right now as 1 person i feel i could single handedly flood the market of all items in a day.

Its almost like they need to make it so raid gear can only be repaired with a material from destroying crafted gear.

Make Crafting Relevant Again

[Jojoya]

It's hard to separate out what economic impact comes from the crafting/gathering changes versus the economic impact of increased botting versus the economic impact of an increasing player population.

I doubt the crafting/gathering changes have contributed that much. Based on my personal experience talking to friends and others I know, it's removed some veteran
player buyers from the market (they're making their own items now) but hasn't really added new sellers. The increase to player population would offset the reduction in veteran player buyers since new players are more likely to turn to the marketboard for the things they want as they learn.

Increased botting has had much more of an impact but the bots would be there regardless of what changes were made to crafting or gathering since the time invested to level has no meaning to them.

There's still plenty of gil making opportunities for crafters/gatherers. It just takes watching the marketboard to see what players are buying and what the bots are ignoring.

Adding more items for crafters to make can help - but only if players are interested in buying those items. There don't seem to be a lot of players interested in using the Magicked Prisms and like items on a regular basis, at least not on the NA servers. I don't see players who stick to doing roulettes wasting gil on consumables that aren't needed to complete the content. A more diverse selection of crafted cosmetic gear would stimulate the markets considering the popularity of glamour. The relatively limited current offerings gated by treasure map RNG doesn't do much to stimulate that part of the market.

Making more housing items interactive would not impact the market economy because the Mannequins and Retainer Permits are the only items directly connected to marketboards and non-tenants can already interact with them. Making food items interactive by non-tenants would just get most house owners to stop using them - they place them for decoration, not for others to turn into an ugly empty plate. They're not going to keep rebuying items getting consumed by trolls. I don't see SE going to the effort of creating a food toggle for housing when they won't even give us shared food items for parties.

The value of content ultimately comes from how much fun we're having doing it, not how much gil we earn in the process. It's only different if you're trying to play the game as wealth accumulation simulator, which most players aren't doing. Gil is only useful if you want to buy the things you want instead of do the content required to earn them.

Personally, I'm having fun. The presence of bots is an annoyance since cheating should never be tolerated but only an annoyance. Outside of a couple of occasions where I had to go to extremes to kill some quest mobs that bot groups were farming, they haven't blocked my access to doing things and so haven't impact the value that content has for me.

There's also nothing wrong with players showing up for a few weeks when a patch is released then going off to play other games. It's healthier for gaming in general - more money getting dispersed to more game makers, which in turns inspires game makers to come up with more ideas for new games. It's not realistic to expect any game to keep all players satisfied 20+ hours a week every week.

I would like to feel like i am providing a service to the community instead of crafting for the sake of craftings sake.

That's easy - reach out to new players in Novice Network and offer to make gear for them. Until they're in a good position to start farming tomestones, they could use some reliable gear sources since they're generally leveling faster than MSQ keeps up with gear rewards. That's the part of the community that needs service, not veteran players fully capable of providing for themselves.

And it's easy (too easy in all honesty) to get into Novice Network as a tradecraft mentor. Half the players I know who have done it don't have a clue how to craft a master recipe without using a macro they got from someone else.

[KatCnaa]

These are really good points I hadn't thought about. Thank you for your perspective.

[Nixxe]

They need to stop with the "accessibility." Crafting was accessible from the start, since it was only ever a question of resource investment and not skill. The changes they're making now just undermine the value and purpose of crafting to make it more appealing to players who obviously aren't terribly interested in it at the expense of players who actually focus on it.

Needless to say, with "accessibility" comes worse markets. I like making gil and I like making gil by crafting rather than flipping, which is boring, but I don't want to grind for pennies.

[DrWho2010]

i mean that's the tradeoff. they looked at the numbers of people who were crafters/gatherers and those who were not and said "we don't like how this looks - we want to see those numbers get bigger, but without having to feel like players are being forced to do so." and so here we are.

[Jojoya]

They need to stop with the "accessibility." Crafting was accessible from the start, since it was only ever a question of resource investment and not skill. The changes they're making now just undermine the value and purpose of crafting to make it more appealing to players who obviously aren't terribly interested in it at the expense of players who actually focus on it.

Needless to say, with "accessibility" comes worse markets. I like making gil and I like making gil by crafting rather than flipping, which is boring, but I don't want to grind for pennies.

I don't mind the XP increases for crafting and gathering. Any MMO hits that point where you need to tighten up the leveling experience so new players don't get overwhelmed.

The change to recipe difficulty wasn't necessary, though.

[Nixxe]

I don't mind the XP increases for crafting and gathering. Any MMO hits that point where you need to tighten up the leveling experience so new players don't get overwhelmed.

The change to recipe difficulty wasn't necessary, though.

I don't care very much about the ease with which people can hit the level cap, save for the fact that they devoted an entire beast tribe to three classes this time around. I'd much rather have a second DoW/M tribe. Leveling DoH/L really doesn't need more help at the expense of opportunities for DoW/M. I'm fine with beast tribes and the like for crafting and gathering in general though. I wouldn't have been an omnicrafter by the end of HW without using them myself, and once you catch up, it's ridiculously easy in comparison to keep them caught up. Can't hate on people wanting the same opportunity.

I mostly want endgame crafting to really require current crafted gear, at least half-decent pentamelds, and food and/or tea. If people want to use casual scrip gear, they should be limited to last tier's crafts (so 2 star at the moment, with gear good enough for 3 star coming in 5.4). If you have top tier gear and melds, I'm fine with things being reliably macroed rather than having to use something like Rath's or trying to make expert crafts the normal state of affairs, but it should require that buy-in, especially since spiritbonding changes made materia cheap enough that anyone can reasonably afford it if they put the effort into doing so. Exclusivity and more relevant crafts can help people make a profit at any level of crafting, just as I made millions in ARR with just GSM leveled and no clue what I was doing by selling Sanguine Scepters melded with w/e the BLM relic required.

The desynth change is probably the only balance-affecting change I liked in ShB though. Desynthesis needed to have something done with it. It was functioning like a deprecated game system (because it was), was quite expensive to level if you needed to catch up, and carried the persistent threat of eventually being relevant again.

[Arch58]

Observation based upon my server only.

Economy is dead. Too many sellers chasing too few buyers.

Three reasons, I think:

A) General reduction in size of active player base
B) Crafting ruined by Ishgardian Restoration and resultant increase in players being able to craft more of their own requirements.
C) Botting ........