Repair system discussion

[MrKupo]

Is your bazaar full or something? Repairing today is a lot simpler than it was pre 1.19 and i never even have to stop and wait to get something repaired. If you have a low level gear that needs repairing, put it in ur bazaar because I'm willing to bet you have space there next to your random item priced at 1 gil below a billion. It'll be repaired in 2 days max then you can sell it.

Not everyone's doing this but I think that'll change when SE adds the signature feature. I would hate to just NPC some gear that my closest friends made me. =D

[Liniont]

I don't think you people get what I'm trying to say... So let me elaborate.

Say I'm fully geared with level 40 equipment, which costs about 5k to 10k each to repair to 99% at an NPC. This gear took me to level 50 so I'm capped and need to replace my gear. The items durability is at 50% for everything. Ok, 13 slots which is roughly 65,000 to 130,000 gil to repair all to 99%. I have about that much on me at the moment but instead of repairing I'm gonna go back and start farming level 20 guild leve until I replace all my armor which will give me about 4,000 to 8,000 gil a leve not including the bonuses. I have 99 opportunities to do battle leves, I’m level 50 doing level 20 guild leves which wont take me but a few minutes to do each quest. So that’s 396,000 to 792,000 gil.

A few hours go by and I'm done, now I'm fully decked out in whatever gear I could find in the AH for sale. Now I have this old level 40 gear that I can either dump at an NPC or find someone to repair so I can sell it in the auction house, However regardless of whether the armor is 50% or 100% durability I can sell it to an NPC for about the same that it would cost to repair it to 99%.

I have really no incentive to sell the gear in the auction house for a profit because this really isn't an optimal way to gain gil in this game. I'd make more doing leves when I need gil then going out of my way to repair these items or make my own. However because I simply don't care, if the NPC could repair to 100% I could sell these items for dirt cheap and be rid of them in seconds and continue on my way.

The system requires that an item be 100% to sell it in the AH. Selling it to an NPC requires nothing, De-Synthesizing the item has nothing to do with its durability. Finding a player character with the right profession to repair my old gear would be very much a hassle I don’t want to deal with and I haven’t bothered with the materia system yet so there would be no point to De-synthesize the item.

So, because of the stupid limitations, perfectly good gear that is 100% soul bound simply goes to waste. Why? Because there isn’t a logical incentive to go about the mundane process of repairing to items 100% unless I want to (a) Give them away (b) Re-use them or (c) try to make a profit in the ah. None of these options have true incentives and I’ll explain why.

Giving them away: I basically don’t care about the item when I want to do this, but I’d be willing to just pass them off for severely lower then market value to give new players a fighting chance with item prices.

Re-using them: By the time I get another battle class to level 40 I would have made enough money to just buy new gear so there would be no point in taking up retainer space.

Try to make a profit in the AH: As I said before, I make gil faster by doing guild leves so playing the auction house would slow my profit margin down.
So in concluding, I’m not saying take the ability away from the crafters I’m saying give people options because you people whining about it costing to much to repair to 99% probably can’t manage their gil per second anyway.

To also answer the question about end game repairs, When I need money I’ll do the guild leves when I need quick repairs 99% is just as good as 100%. So while your waiting around for that measly 1% I’ll be back in the fight.

The system is flawed

[Alhanelem]

Ok, 13 slots which is roughly 65,000 to 130,000 gil to repair all to 99%

Or, you could have a player do it for a small fraction of that cost.

The system requires that an item be 100% to sell it in the AH. Selling it to an NPC requires nothing

Except for random junk materials, you will almost always get far more gil selling items to players than to NPCs. You can also sell far more items at once (30 if you count your player bazaar) than FFXI allowed, so it's not really that hard to sell stuff.

To also answer the question about end game repairs, When I need money I’ll do the guild leves when I need quick repairs 99% is just as good as 100%. So while your waiting around for that measly 1% I’ll be back in the fight.

Again, if you like burning gil, that's your perogative. If I do 99 leves I'd have to repair several times; so I might make 700k or more, but i'll also probably spend 150-200k on repairs. If I took those repairs to a player, i'd keep a lot more of the gil I obtained. You're wasting as much as 20-30% of your leve income on repairs. That's honestly a pretty high percentage, considering it's basically a tax. Instead of flushing that gil down the drain, when players repair your gear they get the gil and you saved a lot of it.

The repair system is not broken.

[Liniont]

Or, you could have a player do it for a small fraction of that cost.

Except for random junk materials, you will almost always get far more gil selling items to players than to NPCs. You can also sell far more items at once (30 if you count your player bazaar) than FFXI allowed, so it's not really that hard to sell stuff.

Again, if you like burning gil, that's your perogative. If I do 99 leves I'd have to repair several times; so I might make 700k or more, but i'll also probably spend 150-200k on repairs. If I took those repairs to a player, i'd keep a lot more of the gil I obtained. You're wasting as much as 20-30% of your leve income on repairs. That's honestly a pretty high percentage, considering it's basically a tax. Instead of flushing that gil down the drain, when players repair your gear they get the gil and you saved a lot of it.

The repair system is not broken.

...... I think you've missed my point completely

[Alhanelem]

...... I think you've missed my point completely

That's probably because you don't have one. Not a valid one, at least.

I'm also assuming you have a player on call 24/7 to repair your items at will whenever it's time for you to repair your items?

Yes, actually. Whenever I return to town my stuff usually gets repaired pretty quickly.

also 20 - 30% is not even near the accurate margin try 10 to 15% of 700k

That's still a huge loss. And a loss is a loss. The more of my gil I can keep in my pocket, the better.

[Liniont]

Again, if you like burning gil, that's your perogative. If I do 99 leves I'd have to repair several times; so I might make 700k or more, but i'll also probably spend 150-200k on repairs. If I took those repairs to a player, i'd keep a lot more of the gil I obtained. You're wasting as much as 20-30% of your leve income on repairs. That's honestly a pretty high percentage, considering it's basically a tax. Instead of flushing that gil down the drain, when players repair your gear they get the gil and you saved a lot of it.

The repair system is not broken.

Have you actually done low level guild leves at higher levels? The durability decrease doesn't even match that of a fight with something your level because 1 to 4 hits the mobs die. I'm also assuming you have a player on call 24/7 to repair your items at will whenever it's time for you to repair your items? also 20 - 30% is not even near the accurate margin try 10 to 15% of 700k I've never felt the pain of having to repair at an NPC. We can also argue that your probably a crafter who makes his gil repairing if so your just fighting this topic to keep your business you don't care whether there's an optimal way or not.

[KaplanHomahru]

I still have no idea what OP is saying.

[Meta]

I think I know what the OP is saying, or at least know the question he is trying to ask:

Why can't we sell equipment in the Market Wards unless it is at 100% durability?

Better yet, I'll bring another example that doesn't involve profit. I'm doing leves with my fiancee, who is leveling GLA. Previously, when I was leveling GLA, I bought nifty Brass Gladius (with materia attached) from the Wards. She hits 18. There is not one Brass Gladius up on all three wards.

Here I am with a perfectly great weapon for her to use and I can't even trade it to her without jumping through hoops to add 3% more durability on the weapon's spec sheet. In what way is it intuitive that I should have to pay someone or have a craft leveled so that I can simply trade equipment to a friend, let alone participate in the core of the game's economy and assist other lower level players by selling my used gear in the Wards? How is this "fun" or "balanced" when crafters already profit, both in gil and enhanced attributes, from melding materia?

I understand that the devs want to weave (heh) the crafting classes deep into game's overarching systems, but does it have to be this restrictive? If the devs really want to preserve the "exciting" future of repairing the gear of other players, they should do so by providing positive incentives, such as the previously mentioned 100+% durability bonuses that increase the weapon's stats - and this is in addition to saving money when having someone else perform the repair. If they have to penalize us, then just add another Wards tax for having under 100% durability and let the players choose between quality and price.

So please, tell us why the game needs to be anymore cumbersome than it is already is, or when 2.0 launches. Truth be told, if it weren't for equipment durability acting as a gil sink and a replacement for losing EXP when dying, I'd scrap it entirely. I know I'm not the only one who thinks item degradation is stupid.

[Cthulhu]

I think I know what the OP is saying, or at least know the question he is trying to ask:

Why can't we sell equipment in the Market Wards unless it is at 100% durability?

The AH is for "new" or "like new" equipment. It's more of a retail store than a pawn shop.

In what way is it intuitive that I should have to pay someone or have a craft leveled so that I can simply trade equipment to a friend, let alone participate in the core of the game's economy and assist other lower level players by selling my used gear in the Wards?

For a little over 600 gil for a weathered tool and 4 goldsmith leves you could have repaired that brass gladius. What you and the OP are not seeing is that this is a mechanic to limit the amount of gear that recirculates in the system. Without the appropriate craft leveled your options are to vendor or materia your gear (or pay a DoH to repair so you can recirculate the item). This keeps the economic cycle humming, crafters need to make new gear to replace the stuff you couldn't recirc, and gatherers have to get items to sell to the crafters.

So yes, the system is working just fine. It is not "flawed" as the OP seems to think.

[Meta]

The AH is for "new" or "like new" equipment. It's more of a retail store than a pawn shop.

Retail stores sell pre-owned items. Also, why not allow player Bazaars to avoid this restriction as well? While we're at it, add a coat-opening "Whaddayou buyin'?" emote that invokes a black-market atmosphere

For a little over 600 gil for a weathered tool and 4 goldsmith leves you could have repaired that brass gladius. What you and the OP are not seeing is that this is a mechanic to limit the amount of gear that recirculates in the system. Without the appropriate craft leveled your options are to vendor or materia your gear (or pay a DoH to repair so you can recirculate the item). This keeps the economic cycle humming, crafters need to make new gear to replace the stuff you couldn't recirc, and gatherers have to get items to sell to the crafters.

So yes, the system is working just fine. It is not "flawed" as the OP seems to think.

Regardless of how easy it would have been to level the craft, that still doesn't change the fact that I couldn't simply hand over an item to a friend without jumping through a hoop. The only other MMO I've played is FFXI (on and off since the PS2 launch), which is morbidly inaccessible by today's standards, and even it did not have these restrictions. I would be shocked to see if this "feature" pervades most modern, successful MMOs. The trading restriction is neither convenient or "immersive", which is funny, because those two concepts seem to be diametrically opposed on this forum.

I understand that the repair system is a gil sink and SE wants to limit the amount of gear that flows throw the Wards. The problem is that this leads to inventory overload on the player's end, which leads exactly to what you said: vendor the gear or convert it.

As a result, in my experience, it has been difficult to find specific pieces of low to mid level gear in the wards. This makes sense: a crafter's primary behavior is likely going to be making the cheapest synths for the most EXP and/or profit, and that doesn't translate into variety of gear in the wards. Later, the materia system kicks in, increasing the possibility that rarely-made equipment simply vanishes from the economy.

The system is working too well if that is its intention. And before you say "just buy the mats and shout for someone to make it for you," I wouldn't need to waste any more time lingering in Ul'dah if other players could just sell their unwanted gear without requiring them to shout for someone to repair it.