Crafting = Impossible to Guage

[RushLynx]

I apologize if someone has suggested this... And there are several other topics in this forum outlining the tragedies of synergy and how it has utterly destroyed the crafting community... But I suggested a long time ago to the development team for players to be able to advertise their crafting abilities more readily, and I suppose it's time to suggest it again... Why not make a way to search for players with specific crafting abilities? I'm sure both the crafters and non-crafters would greatly appreciate being able to just open a menu and search for someone of the needed skill levels rather than go down their friend list and all their LSs asking over and over if anyone knows anyone that has the skills...

[RAIST]

I apologize if someone has suggested this... And there are several other topics in this forum outlining the tragedies of synergy and how it has utterly destroyed the crafting community... But I suggested a long time ago to the development team for players to be able to advertise their crafting abilities more readily, and I suppose it's time to suggest it again... Why not make a way to search for players with specific crafting abilities? I'm sure both the crafters and non-crafters would greatly appreciate being able to just open a menu and search for someone of the needed skill levels rather than go down their friend list and all their LSs asking over and over if anyone knows anyone that has the skills...

This would have a big impact on the issue. There is another thread on here about the low availablity of items in the AH. Just the mere mentioning of seeking out a crafter or leveling a craft (no matter how easy it is, especially if you follow one of the 15 million guides available on line that walk you through a path to do it fast and expensive, slow and cheap, or steady and break-even--you pick your path) gets you attacked and flamed.

There are a BUNCH of crafters online. As has been stated already here and countless times elswhere--the demand for items just faded out and it became unprofitable to craft. Why blow money (or time farming) on an item that will only sell at best once a day for a loss or paultry profit now? The market has moved to consumables now simply because that is what is in demand. Things that used to sell for more to NPC's than AH have now reversed and become profitable in the AH now, so that is where they are focusing. If enough people start asking for certain items again, they may see a trend and start putting them up again. But as it is now, they KNOW they can turn high end accessories, tools like Shihei and Tsurara, Medicines, and foods like Sushi, meats and MP foods on a steady basis so that is what they are putting up. The supply/demand model has changed, and so went the market. Until a trend towards a different market shows up, the market won't change--the only way to fix that is to communicate with the crafters.

As for the difficulty of crafting, materials are easy to find for the lower level stuff. There are guides that not only walk you through what to craft, but also how to aquire the mats and where to sell the results (or hold onto for future tier of synths). I do agree that it gets tighter as you get higher up, but for the first 30 levels it's pretty easy. You just need to do a little research. For example, the post about the guild only selling so many thundermelons per day. Well, it is a guild in a city half-way across the continent from where they are grown natively. If you look them up, you would see there is a gob in Rabao that sells them all day long. If you can't go there yourself because of your job/level/current location, lack of Outpost warp or Tele-Altep--whatever your limit may be, you might be able to get someone in your friend list or LS to grab some for you. You could also try gardening maybe as well.

There are some very good sites out there with all the information about where and how to get items. Just look them up. FFXIAH has some tools to help you find crafters as well. Having a means to find crafters in-game would be a BIG help for people not inclined to use outside tools to find them or or otherwise ask in LS or shout in a city to find one.

Some sort of bulletin board could be interesting. Go to a guild and they have a list of crafters currently registered with the guild grouped by rank. Check the bulletin, pick your rank, and you get a list of registered players currently on line, pick there name and it opens a tell chatline for you to send them a message. Depending on the congestion in the list, there might need to be another level to filter by region (top level maybe like Jueno, Aht Urghan, etc.). Alternatively, integrate it into the ingame search engine itself. /sea all Leathercraft 40-50 to bring uip a list of current leathercrafters with skill 40-50.