DEV PLEASE LOOK: Crafting Overhaul

OK I have been playing a long long time and I have decided to go ahead and address the thing on FFXI that makes me most angry. Crafting! I have played other MMOs and I think that FFXI's crafting is by far the worst for players. It's overtly expensive, extremely time consuming, and just out of date with the current version of the game we have today. I offer the following ideas to make it better and more up to date with the current times.

1. Remove breaks. I am not saying remove fails. But crafting in this game is way to expensive as is to do anything worthwhile and making a player lose materials with a failed synth is just annoying. This is most true if you spent 3 days farmin materials do a synth and BAM Synth fails lose all your mats. Losing a crystal no one cares about but when you lose lots of gil worth of materials it makes you want to pull your hair out and quit crafting. Breaks are by far the most unfun thing about crafting an with as long as crafting takes by itself it just makes it more depressing when you lose all your mats because a random chance roll says you do. As for the items, moghancements, and moogle tablets that help with breaks just turn them into low increases in HQ rate.

2. Make a que system to let you put your mats in a pool, specify the recipe to use, add crystals, and then let the game craft the mats into items until it runs out. This lets casual players (whom you are tryin to get into this game) to get their mats and synth an walk away come back with it done. I would also suggest with this you cut down the time needed to wait between synths so it can be done rapidly and not take all day for some crafting so casual players can craft some and then do some other stuff as well with their limited time.

3. Kill Guild Holidays, limited number of stock, price increases with stock sold, and closed times. This was something put in to make the game feel more alive and to slow down RMT way back in the day. Removing the holidays and closed times means no down time for crafters tryin to skill up early on when they use mostly items from the shop. Removing the limited number of stock allowed per item and the price increase makes this less of a camp and spam mission to buy stuff from the guild vendors. Trust me sometimes it is more competitive then King Arthos pops. All together the Holiday, closed times, limited stock, and price increases on stock makes the good time to get mats a damn ordeal as you have multiple people fighting for the limited cheap stock and this limits the synths that are getting done. Since most of the synths from the guild result in the items created bein sold to NPCs this removes gil from the game which means no RMT worries by changing this.

4. Rearrange recipes to let lower level crafters make lower level gear. A fine example of this is the Musketoon. Smithing 43, Goldsmithing 19, and Woodworking that is unknown at this time for a level 6 gun. There are no guns at vendors for this level either so low level Rangers and Corsair's who want to skill up Marksmanship have to get a mid level crafter (with the 2 most expensive crafts mind you) to make it for them or spend 3 weeks in West Saratuba farmin the Chest pop gun there. If you make the recipes tailored closer to the level of the intended user people can make their own stuff they will actually use and this makes them want to craft more!

This is my rant and while I am sure the trolls will be out in masse to bash me for wanting to change this I feel it is better for everyone if we change it and make it what it should be not the archaic thing we have now. Please leave your ideas or your opinions but please if your gonna troll please do not keep the whole topic one big troll ground. I would actually like the Devs to look at this.

Good stuff, support it for the most part, with a few tweaks maybe. /like

1. By far probly the best part of this thread. Nothing more needs to be said....THIS should be implemented, hands down. To get breaks on an item that fails because the system decides to HQ an item that has no HQ synth when you are grossly over the synth cap for it and loosing the mats on it (ie: yagudo drinks) is just plain maddening. Thankfully, I started up synergy so I have the option to make them there in advance (still can't use porta-furnace in a lot of areas), but that's just a bit of a work-around for some synths. That leads me to #2:

2. This sounds more like a tweak for Synergy. The whole dumping mats to an NPC or a device and then doing nothing and coming back for them is going a bit too far. Easing the Synergy system so it isn't so frustrating could be a solution towards this end. Make ALL normal craft synths doable by synergy (or at least consumables), but don't jack up the elemental target for making them--they need to be more inline with what you spend to make them with crafting. One crystal will make from 3-12 fewell--having a recipe that requires 50+ for one element and 30+ of another for a highly consumable item that will only HQ to 2, 3, or at best 4 on top tier results that uses up potentially a stacks worth or more of 2 different crystal elements is a bit out of whack. let's not forget that some synths will actually require a third elemnt via synergy as well. And while they're at it, lower the elemental requirements on some of the more consumable items already made by synergy.

3. More good stuff. Best point I like about this is with the hours of operation. I don't mind so much limitations on stock and pricing--but having the NPC's there telling you they are closed for holiday is really annoying. hours of operation don't bother me as much, since many are only closed for about 8 game hours. Being out of stock and having to return the next day could still be an effective way at curbing supply/demand. Would be nice if the price didn't get jacked up during low supply too. Some items will wind up going for twice as much (or more) from an NPC then they do at the AH at times (looking at you Elm log). Just make them go for one base price, than adjust that by rank and such like all the other NPC's--but don't bind it to supply so much. We see this gouching effect on the AH too much as is already.

4. While the example of the gun and marksmanship may not have been the best one to use (many jobs can use a crossbow to skilllup to a reasonable level, then job change once you can pick up a more reasonable gun to use)--don't let this distract from the bigger point. There are a lot of items where the crafting requirements get out of whack for the level to use the items. Up to about level 20-ish gear, crafting recipes aren't too far-fetched. With caps being in the 15-25 range, you stand a decent chance of getting within crafting range to try to skill up on a lot of these items yourself as you are leveling your characters and synthing drops from mobs and such. But after about level 20-ish gear, the availability of mats and skillups just start to bog down considerably for a lot of crafts. This contributed to some heavy debates on the availability of crafted items a while back, and one such item came up: Bone Knife +1. A very popular level 46 item that has a synth cap of 41 Bonecraft. That's just to make the NQ. To make your own HQ requires a concerted effort to get high enough to have a decent shot at making the HQ. Even though the mats are fairly easy to come by at a moderate level, these simply aren't crafted much because either people aren't in a decent range to attempt the synth, or they are so high that it's just not worth it--60+ crafters have much better synths to make and sell, getting skillups along the way if they still need them.

Despite the low cost/effort to buy/farm the mats for a lot of this types of items, they just simply stopped being crafted often simply because it sells for a low price--level 60+ crafters have far more profitable synths to work on that provide chance for skillups. Only reason we are seeing a lot dumped on the AH now is because people have found better gears and they are pawning off those items they've been hanging on to forever until something better came along. Once that supply runs their course, we will be back to virtually no supply again until those who bought those used ones decide to pawn them off and the price will be driven down even further during that cycle, further reducing the incentive to craft them...it's a vicious cycle. Just look at that bone knife history...atm, on my server there are 2 NQ and 17 HQ up for sell. Those NQ's have been driven down to almost at cost (3k average) and the HQ has plummeted 6k from it's norm of 20k in roughly 2 or 3 days. That's an additional drop of 30% after it has already dropped almost 50% from where it sold at for years.

Ease the synth caps on these level 30-60 equipable items so people will have a greater incentive to craft them on their own, since they stand a better chance of skilling up the crafts more casually without having to power level it with a boat load of gil (aiding the few remaining gil sellers, by the way). At the very least, it might make them more attractive to those who already have the higher skill--if the tweaks make them move up an HQ tier, they may be more inclined to make more if they have better chances to HQ them.

Wow.. sorry for the wall of text...it's the Damn Yankee in me....stream of thought coupled with my tendency to talk too much... lol.

1. I would actuly dissagree. Even tho it would be a great help to a crafter, its not logical. Even if your a master crafter (game or rl) if you mess up.. you mess up, it happens... HOWEVER... the fail rate itself needs to be looked at. Its claimed to be an alwasy 5% chance of fail, but even at 100ww iv never exeprenced lower then 10%. (meaning 10% or higher) And thats a bit insain.


2. I unno if i like that or not. It would help those with low playing time, would also allow the market to get flooded.

3. Guild holidays are annoying as hell but somewhat understandable i guess. Limited number of stock is understandable as well. Cant have rare mets if their always available. Price increase - supply and demand - understandable. (annoying as hell again, but understandable)

4 however, i can completly agree with. With the game having advanced to this level i think ALL receipies for all crafts need to be reexamened.