Crafting vs. Buying Gil, which is wiser

[sudo]

***********************************
My name is MYSTERE. I am not SUDO, i'm borrowing my friend's account to write this.
***********************************

After a while of crafting and fishing, I wanted to know if it was actually better to buy gil than craft , timewise and moneywise.

These are all estimates. Please note that while you're reading.

Assume it takes an average of 18 mins per craft level (includes time to synth, downtime, closed shops, going to AH or store, buying the items, selling the items to NPCs, etc).

To power level (1-60) crafting skill, it would take 1080 mins or about 18 hours. You could do that in a weekend.

Let's say your initial investment to level the craft from 1-60 was roughly 500 - 700k (excluding goldsmithing and fishing craft). Now it is time to reap the benefits and start selling your items.

The unfortunate part of crafting is that we have to wait for it sell on the AH, which can take anywhere between an AVERAGE of 6 hours to 1.5 days. If you made a reasonable amount of 200k a week selling your crafted items in your Auction House, it would take 5-8 weeks to break even and start profitting.

Your investment would be...
Crafting 1-60:
18 hours.
Auction House:
2 hours/week (of uploading items for sale)
Crafting to make items to sell on AH:
14 mins/7 slots to sell on AH (2 mins/synth including time to buy items, receive, etc.)

SO you'd be looking at 18 hours initially to level your craft, and about 2 hours and 14 mins per week to make 200k.

AH TIME: Time it takes for item(s) to sell on AH.
WORK TIME: Time you are actually there working (synthing or doing a RL job)

Assuming you were consistent in your sales, it would take you 5 weeks AH TIME and 11 hours 10 mins WORK TIME (to synth the items, put it up for sale on AH) to make 1,000,000 gil.

In real life, 11 hours of WORK TIME at $10/hr gives you $110. You can buy 1,000,000 gil for $100 at www.playerauctions.com and have $10 left over.

So you guys decide?
Is it better to buy gil or craft and farm?
I'm confused.

I know I'm going to have a lot of opinions on this, so feel free to post them as you see fit.

SIDE NOTE:
When i keep saying AVERAGE, i mean that you're being reasonable in selling your items and sything them per week. Obviously you're not going to be sything 24/7 and selling items to full in all your mules and your main character every day of every week. If you do, then wow i congratulate you for working so hard and being so consistent. But for most people, we level and do other stuff, and occasionally synth for money. so when I say "on average" i mean for the regular gamer.


Mystere
Bismarck Server

[little ninja]

i still believe its wrong but here is my average



i make 40$ an hour. so in 2 an 1/2 hours i can make that 100$ to buy 1mil gil. so how long would it take a normal player to make this?? how many hours + would it take them.. thats why so many are tempted with gil buying..


this means less time farming, more time lvling, crafting, helping people with missions,af's, limit quests, it means more time with friends, an g/f. because your not worring about making a set amount of gil to buy something..


buying is the smarter way to go.. guess i will be dumb an work for mine..

[Patchinko]

Do not powerlevel craft to make money.

This same thing could generally be said for farming. Why farm yourself when you could just buy the gil that would take the same amount of time (= money in work hours). Well, we don't play this game at work, usually, it is played in our free time. So that is not time we would have spent doing a job, but time we would have spent lounging around, watching movies or playing other videogames, etc. So I agree with you in theory, but it doesn't fit in application. Unless you are playing the game during your working hours and using that money to buy the gil, it is not truly equivalent.

Also, crafting is a great way to make money with little effort, if intelligently done. There are ways in at least three crafts that I've tried to skill it up slowly (1 level every few days) and make significant money in the process.

My 2 cents. ()

[Elsurion]

You will spend real money on fake money?

If you don't want to take up the time to level something, which you can earn much more money the longterm, instead of buying all 3 weeks 1 Mio fake Money for real Money, then leave.

We don't want any more Gil Farmer supporter.

[Akiro]

sheesh there have been many open disscussions about gil farmers and how much we hate them and the ppl that support buying gil online and he posts about actually buying gil rather then taking the time to farm it which isnt that hard when you got someone to do it with

[Malleus]

Spending weeks & weeks farming, to gather the gil (fake money) to buy the equipment (fake gear) is the same as buying gil. It may end up actually being cheaper when you think about it. You're spending real money (monthly fee) to make fake money (farming, crafting, etc). He's just analyzing which is more effecient, spending the money in game, or out.

No one here has argued about the morality of it, he's simply speaking on the effeciency (or lack thereof) of crafting/farming. When you analyze things objectively, the gentlemen who have posted earlier, are right, its cheaper, more effecient and, maybe, more fun, to just buy the gil. Herego, the temptation many people face.^^

[Faust]

Buying gil is nothing more than an easy out for people who are either too lazy to make the money within game or continually complain about things being "too hard."

Skilling up a craft, even though it's going to cost initially is overall a better way to make gil than a simple purchase because you get to keep that skill and continue to make money off of it later on.

When talking about spending money for playing the game, your spending money TO play the game. Spending real money for gil is actually just tossing it. Thinking about it, you're buying gil from gil sellers. A lot of the items you'll end up purchasing from the bought gil are put up in AH by gil sellers. What you'd be doing is buying gil from them and just handing it back for resale with the gil seller laughing his butt all the way to the bank.

If you think that farming or skilling up a craft is "too hard," take into consideration that the game wasn't meant to be easy. If it was, then there really wouldn't be any point in playing. If you have $110 to throw around, there's quite a few good games coming out soon that you'll probably have more fun with for a longer period of time then twirling a new item about until you level past it's effectiveness.

My pocket full of change....

[bonovoxpsu]

post lvl 60, it is cost prohibitive to buy gil.

however, buying gil is obviously the FASTEST way to get it. but still not worth it. don't do it.

[csBahamut]

Buying gil only takes away the gratification of actually working hard and putting effort into obtaining that hard to get item. How much fun is it to just buy all the hard to get/expensive stuff? You're cheating yourself when you buy gil. It's like a father paying a ref money so his son's sucky team could win. Sure, they won, but they still suck. Nothing is as gratifying as being able to overcome a supposedly impossible obsticle.

If affording good gear is too hard in FFXI, then maybe FFXI isn't the game for you (I'm not only refering to the poster here). There are much easier games out there to play.

[Cali]

Buying gil is wrong, crafting is right.

Buying gil is faster, which is why many lazybum lead-thick head brainless idiots choose to spend real life money on some VR money. It's effortless money earned, and a great way to support the gil farming industry.

Crafting is better fun if you do enjoy it, and you never know, some days your friends will need you to craft them something great. And what's more, you can look up to people face and laugh at them for buying gil, when you can make millions with crafting.

But more importantly, what do you enjoy? If you don't enjoy crafting, then don't craft. Craft is costly til you can actually make something useful, which by then, you have already spent a month or so, endlessly putting millions into AH for materials, of course, you can always go hunt the materials yourself. Buy gil if you have the ability to, what I said above are just my personal preference. As long as you believe that 10mil gil is worth your what? 300 USD??? then go for it.

[biglos]

ok. with fishing and my other crafting skills, i make about 3 mil a month. it takes me about 40 hours a month total to do that. no way would i spend 300 bucks a month for a game. its jsut not worth it for me. granted i dont make as much money in real like as you do but if my family and friends found out that i spend over 100 bucks a month on a video game, they would lock me up.

smart crafting is a much more efficient method of gaining gil especially at the higher levels of the game.

[Rogan]

yeah someone posted a link of IGE or whatever, suggesting people complain to them, while I was there I checked the prices, it's about 400$ for 1 mil...

[Elsurion]

400 US$ or 400 HK$?
Also that price for one simple million gil? are they nuts?
Well they rip off only the dumb lazy players,so go for it. Rise it to 500US$ a 500k

[Patchinko]

The major problem with the theory here is that it sounds like crafting or farming are the only two ways of making gil... when really they're probably the two least efficient ways of doing so until one reaches high levels. I can make so much more off the same amount of time in a BC than I could going out and farming.

[biglos]

yeah bc has alot to offer but crafting and farming do not have to be set up and can be done anytime. bcnm requires planning and getting a group of people who you trust together to do runs. but bc also is inefficient because it requires what thesame drawbacks as farming and crafting which are reaching a sufficient high level. you still have to farm massive amounts of seals, plus u end up buying supplies off of a crafter who is profiting. and also bc is very job specific. i dont see many thf doing bc.
but its still better then buying IMO. also, on my server, we just started a linkshell that helps people get into crafting alot cheaper then relying on the ah and npc for items.