Undercutting crafted items that are "game drop" is a waste of time and money!

[Ftail]

Meanwhile me and my friends are celebrating the price drops and buying stuff for glamours we didn’t have before.

While it may upset you it brings joy to many others.

[Dzian]

I would suggest you look at some other content before you start blaming the relics fully.
The Firmiment also did this with the Moogle Lottery there. I remember there were a few items that you could make a decent amount of gil on that tanked hard because they added them in as prizes. The tomes as well have also tanked a few items.

Everything does it..

Moogles lottery thing.
Horde sacks from Palace of the dead /heaven on high.
Wanderlust tails rewards.
Retainer ventures.

All the same. Anything with any value gets absolutely destroyed. And it destroys contwntnin the process. Deep dungeons highlight this very well. For the first 2 maybe 3 days everyone's exploring every nook and cranny for every horde sacks they can get for rich valuable treasures.

Day 4 though the value of those treasures has absolutely tanked and forbthe rest of that contents life its just activate the portal and go go go getting the horde sacks is a waste ofntime because the markets have been so flooded you'll be lucky to get 500 gil for that cool primal weapon glamour or something such..

Content destroyed. Markets destroyed. And economy destroyed.

[Imora]

Different motivation. That was a pure money grab and had nothing to do with helping players out.

They did quite a few AH tweaks and killed the mobile AH to try to run off bots.

Crafted items were and still aren't a good source of income there. Raw materials are.

[Prrringles]

Crafted items were and still aren't a good source of income there. Raw materials are.

Never were. Only consumables and the mats to craft consumables. The only gear bought off the AH was maybe resistance gear back in the classic days. And even most of those were crafted by guilds.

[Imora]

Never were. Only consumables and the mats to craft consumables. The only gear bought off the AH was maybe resistance gear back in the classic days. And even most of those were crafted by guilds.

Yeah, herbs and ore land leather. Legendary crafting made some people money early on but ranking up your crafting for them only to sell for mats cost is a waste of gold

[Nythia]

Items are not being sold for mats cost, they are being sold for substantially less. The rate at which prices are falling on hundreds of items is to the point that it's not even profitable to buy and desynth the items, because when you list the mats at a profit, more flood the market within days.

The only things that remain profitable, so far, are items which only drop from treasure hunts, etc. (i.e. Dress Material). Outside of that, there is next to no profit in crafting/gathering anymore.

Even with desynthesis it's just a matter of weeks or a couple months at the rate things are going before there's no profit in that.

Unfortunately, S.E. has made crafting so easy they might as well just start everyone at level 80.

[Prrringles]

Items are not being sold for mats cost, they are being sold for substantially less. The rate at which prices are falling on hundreds of items is to the point that it's not even profitable to buy and desynth the items, because when you list the mats at a profit, more flood the market within days.

The only things that remain profitable, so far, are items which only drop from treasure hunts, etc. (i.e. Dress Material). Outside of that, there is next to no profit in crafting/gathering anymore.

Even with desynthesis it's just a matter of weeks or a couple months at the rate things are going before there's no profit in that.

Unfortunately, S.E. has made crafting so easy they might as well just start everyone at level 80.

Even map items sell bad because bots have taken over map farming. Crafting in general is a sinking shit. Just abandon it. Move on to pve or a different game. Crafting/trading is dead

[Jojoya]

Even map items sell bad because bots have taken over map farming. Crafting in general is a sinking shit. Just abandon it. Move on to pve or a different game. Crafting/trading is dead

To you perhaps. I'm still making gil on all my characters via crafting and sometimes gathering. It may be for smaller amounts than in the past but it's still profit that adds up well over time.

[Prrringles]

To you perhaps. I'm still making gil on all my characters via crafting and sometimes gathering. It may be for smaller amounts than in the past but it's still profit that adds up well over time.

I can still make gil but I have to work too hard for it. I have to compete with bots and update my prices very frequently. I have to compete with players selling their pve loot (which I craft) for WAY less than I pay for materials. Then I have to compete with some lame * players thinking they are robin hood and that everyone deserves "free" glamour items (selling at break-even).

This all escalated since Covid. Crafting/selling was for people who invested their time into it. Now it is for bots and common folk who had 1 week to spare and powerlevel their crafters because it's so easy now. Comon man, crafting is dead, admit it. Sure you can still make gil, but crafting and selling in every other aspect is dead.

I give you a good example. There is this guy on my server who just got into ffxiv. He has got 1 lvl 80 job and 2 lvl 80 crafters within 3 weeks time starting from zero. He is already "competing" with me for a good portion of items I am selling. I'm sure you know how much time and gil you had to invest back in the day to start making millions. It's all gone.

Can you still make gil? -yes. Do you have to compete with literally everyone and sell at bottomed out prices? -yes. Is it fun? -no (at least not for me and problably most veteran crafters). I know you like to disagree and argue with everyone here Jojoya, but you have to give me this one. Admit it.

EDIT: I'm not pretending to be entitled here. I just know change when I see it. And this change is for the worse for sure.

[Liam_Harper]

For me it's mainly the bots that are the problem. I don't care about other players playing "robin hood" or selling cheap to move items fast or whatever, that's a part of any free market in any MMO and supply and demand always balances it out. Other players can sell for whatever price they like.

But there's just no competing with a bot that has one character gathering 24/7 and another able to churn out tens of thousands of items at material cost and distribute them across the entire data center via a retainer army. This is what makes the time vs reward no longer worth it for me, even if I can still make some gil, because a bot has a significantly different value on time.

Other issues are the obvious crafting being too easy that floods supply. Retainer quick ventures and things like bozja lockboxes have not only starting flooding the supply of crafted items, but are even churning out current expansion furniture and gear now which significantly limits the number of markets. Also spiritbond has destroyed the prices of materia because bots are generating thousands of them just by botting. Cross-world hunts have kill the prices of battle materia too.

It felt healthier to me in past expansions because even if a lot of crafters didn't reach max level fully geared crafting, we used to have tiers of crafters and gatherers at all difficulties. Everything from low level materials, sub lv50 DoH/L gear, plain white level cap DoH/L gear, furniture at all levels, demimateria, materia, ect could sell for rather nice prices. There were far more useful items and markets for every type player to make solid profits.

Currently you can still make some gil, but if you're a past player sitting on a few hundred million or more, there's no point. You could put in countless hours to make a fraction of that. Which essentially removes gil-making as a part of crafting for many players. But when crafting is easy and you max gear week one of a patch, there's nothing to do with it anymore.

I'm also not sure SE actually intended it to be like this either. I'm sure they wanted a bit more accessibility, but more in making it streamlined, easy to pick up and learn, rather than handing it over on a plate. There's a reason craft materia costs a lot of scrips or you only get 2 materia clusters for a 24 man or new Normal raids have weekly lockouts on gear and so on. I doubt the plan was that we could just buy almost anything for peanuts on the market board and making items to sell would be pointless. They even made Exarchic impossible to 1-100% from NQ for once. There's probably a lot they misjudged and regret. Items having value or requiring some effort is part of any MMO.