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 It's overtly expensive, extremely time consuming, and just out of date with the current version of the game we have today.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.