Cost to buy from NPC vendors is far less than cost to craft.

atuday · March 3

I know that you can only get the most basic of rarity from NPC vendors but that doesn't change the fact that the cost of making an item yourself is more than the cost of just buying most items at the moment. I think this is the biggest issue in all of crafting. As for a fix, I would raise the cost of items from NPCs. Though some won't like this at the lower level once they begin the crafting journey I think the idea that time is money will come full force. You can buy instantly from a vendor, but crafting is a time investment that pays for itself by offsetting the cost of ready made items.

TLDR: Make the cost of items from NPC vendors equal to double the cost to craft the item yourself.

Azherae · March 4

I'll add my experience too.

MMO economies (where players craft and players also buy) rely on a sliding scale of 'Opportunistic->Stable->Niche' in terms of Outputs/Products, and I guess you can visualize an orthogonal axis of 'Intent to Acquire' for mostly Materials and also Products.

An item that can be purchased from an NPC can nearly never be either Opportunistic or Niche to produce. So the NPC version must cost more than it takes to make so it can be Stable in terms of demand (because demand has to be high enough that players will Supply it for less than the NPC cost, the moment this ceases to be true for too long, players will stop buying it from other players, and stop making it, and it will become a mostly 'dead item' even if you can produce and sell it for less than the NPC cost some of the time (or like BDO, 'spend less time creating it').

And since Gear and Consumables almost always have a high Intent to Acquire (and should, in a healthy game), they have to be either even more expensive or even less available. Materials to make the gear? Same thing, especially with a long Artisanship leveling like Ashes has. People will have a huge 'intent to acquire' on most materials just so they can raise their skill levels, and at first this will work because they will produce it for less than NPC at a loss in the hopes of 'reaching the end and making the real money'.

But then you will have to give new players catch-up mechanics in Artisanship or nerf the effectiveness of high level Artisans making lower tier stuff.

Well, that's just what basically two decades of FF11 has taught me, at least. There's more, of course, there's always more to rant about, but in short, plz fix.

MrWoolf · March 4

honestly vendors should only buy crap, and sell a few basic crafting mats and rations. they should not sell any gear.. and to make crafters even more important i also think gear should not fall from mobs.. only crafting mats should ( not like copper ingots or bear hide for example, but their emblems and such yes.) this keeps crafters relevant at all stages of game play. named bosses dropping completed items seems ok

Neurotoxin · March 6

If you're looking at crafting cost of a common item vs the vendor value, sure, but they can't help you above common, uncommon at best if you're paying node currency. Aside from level 10 node-specific cloaks, vendors don't have any "best" gear or even "good" gear. They have trash gear.

Gear from vendors only fills a few slots, uses the lowest grade and tier possible for that level, and is guaranteed to have minimal rarity bonuses. I'm more offended at how little vendors wanna buy stuff back for relative to how much they sell it for, that's crap.

Vendor gear is mostly there to help fill some slots early on. All the gear worth using for a level range is crafted or dropped from enemies. By level 20 players have likely already gotten drops at the level 20 range that are better than the vendor gear, and if they crafted up decent level 10 range gear (rare+) and enchanted it, common and uncommon level 20 items might still be weaker than their existing gear.

Azherae · March 8

Ok, sure, but if we for a moment assume that we are just helping test the power scaling across the rarity tiers right now, and the game sticks to what it originally 'implied'...

Legendary is going to be really hard and really rare, not like it is now. Which would mean that 'Rare' might be among the best possible and the gap would be smaller.

Basically I have the exact opposite experience and perception of this because I'm biased in my expectations of the system. I'm not figuring 'pure FF11', but I'd definitely expect it to be closer, and for that game, I 'have the receipts'.

https://www.ffxiah.com/item/12801/mythril-cuisses
'Bought from NPC cost' - Second column bottom under the price graph
'Sells to NPC return', - usually put in the Comments section by someone around 2008-2010, probably unchanged
'Cost to make' - Fluid, shown under comments using current Auction prices only, which may be misleading.

Basically, we've got a repository of data, i.e. 'the comment sections of every item that can be sold on Auction in the entire game', that backs up my observations of player trends from that time. My conclusions, of course, are my own and may not reflect AoC's playerbase now that it's shifted, but I offer it as a reminder that there are literally millions of people out there who 'remember this experience and therefore will have these reactions to Ashes' current system.

We 'know better', or think we do, at least.