Glad you used the word "perceived" in the title.
Those three characters are not on the same account and Giss isn't a bot. I've been thinking about making a post for a while about crafting, mostly as a warning to new players who want to take up a craft.
To say that crafting is competitive is an understatement; to say that it's hyper competitive would be more accurate. Nasomi's population is small and one thing that I've noticed is that not everybody likes to play ffxi the same way. Some people love to craft, some people live to craft. We could talk a bit about dopamine, the brain's pleasure centres, and all that fun stuff, or I could just say that crafting is lot like gambling. Sorry, what I meant to say is that crafting is a lot like gambling!. It's addictive, seeing those HQ rings is what a lot of crafters live for. When you go a long stretch of NQs it's actually depressing. This is hard to understand for casual players or for anyone who hasn't been addicted to something. I myself have been accused of botting because I was snapping up mats of the AH very fast. While I was leveling my craft that's all I focused on, the main reason was because I did not, and still barely do not, have time to join an xp party. So either I would solo, mine or craft. My ffxi experience is my own and that's what I love about this game.
A lot of people work from home or they can log in at work and it takes nothing to camp the AH and when you're looking for specific synthesis materials your muscle memory takes you to where you need to be on the AH in seconds, literally. It's that simple.
The caution I have for anyone getting in to crafting is that since it's so competitive you really need to ask yourself if you have the available time to camp the AH for materials (I personally had a good 10 month stretch of my life where I could do that). Desirable materials do not, and will not (not ever), stay readily available on the AH for you to casually pick them up when you want them. I know this because as I was leveling up my craft I planned my route well in advance and I always looked at least 10 levels ahead to see what I would need next. In doing so I discovered that some materials that I needed were in high demand and low supply. It took me six months (for real) to gather enough materials to do what I needed to do. If I hadn't looked ahead and spent a fortune on mats that I couldn't even use yet it's likely I wouldn't have finished.
When you want to buy something off the AH and you see that they are either never in stock or they sell out in seconds, it's demoralizing to say the least.
As a new crafter, you either need to have the lifestyle that will allow for a bit of 'no lifing' the AH. Or you need to have a lot of friends that kill stuff that drops things you want to buy and you buy it direct from them. If you don't have either of these things then I can almost guarantee that the crafting life will be unfulfilling for you. It's fair to say that you don't make "big money" until your craft is 99-100. If you spent 30M+ gil getting to 98 and find it impossible to get to 99...it's a hard pill to swallow.
These are just my two cents and, as I said before, the beautiful thing about ffxi is that everyone's experience is there own and there's a lot of joy that can come from playing a game your way. We also accept that sometimes the way that other people enjoy playing the game might clash with our own. If you find this happens to you, you have to ask yourself if:
a) does it really matter? and b) is there anything positive you can do about it?
Believe it or not, there have been times when I really wanted something and I could never get it so I sent a message to certain players and asked nicely if they'd help me out. "Hey man, I'd really love it if my friend could sign me a SH but I'm having no luck getting a V.claw off the AH. Would you mind selling me one of yours?" Unless they've already synthed them, I can all but guarantee you'll get it.
Do I love this aspect of Nasomi? Absolutely not. But I do love this era of ffxi so when I look at my options I'm still happy to accept that it'll never be perfect.
-Swann
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