The reason, of course, is that right now we also have a rush of people trying to level crafts, which means that Ash Lumber exists in more abundance than the actual logs needed to make that lumber. With more people at high levels and unwilling to waste time on the low-level lumber, things will balance out a bit more. More supply than demand, in other words.

Of course, that’s not what most of these complaints are about. Usually if someone’s complaining about the game’s current economy they’re complaining about the fact that it’s quite possible for you to mount repair bills in Amdapor Keep without ever seeing a big influx of gil. And the thought is that this must be an oversight, that you’re playing the game correctly by chain-running this one instance and the game isn’t giving you proper rewards.

I honestly find this kind of amusing, because I’ve made more money since the relaunch than I had when it started. And that’s with buying relic precursors, gear, repairs, and so forth.

There are some issues with the game’s economy, definitely, but some of those issues simply come from people being unfamiliar with how the game handles things like making money. The past several years have taught us how to make money in an MMO, but FFXIV Gil doesn’t back those ideas up. It’s a different paradigm here.

I can wholeheartedly agree with people who claim the economy is a little borked right now. The real point of contention isn’t whether or not it has issues, it’s the reason and volume of those issues and whether or not those issues include being able to make money.

Right now, the lower-grade weapons and armor are severely devalued because of the fact that most of them can also be purchased on a vendor. Even high-end professions often are skewed to support selling component parts over finished products, because the finished products retail for much less unless you’ve rocked an HQ and someone’s willing to pay extra. A few places are actually selling some items for less than the vendor price, which is a quick way for observant players to make some cheap gil but not a good thing as a whole.

Nope! The rewards are where they’re supposed to be. The error lies not with the gil rewards, but with ourselves.