So Thursday's maintenance is supposed to bring crafting/gardening adjustments...

I'm still seeing "I'm to lazy or poor to level a craft".

Between Dailies, leves, and collectables you can use those to level LTW (mainly leves). Cause that's pretty much the only complaint is Leathers.
Manage your time wisely. There is no race to get every craft to 60, cause if you haven't yet, you already lost.

Crafting is fine the way it is. And I'm pretty sure "Crafting Adjustments" mean Thav. Bustier, Yoshida said they will be reducing the amount of silks. Doubt much else will change to recipes.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

You know where silk comes from? Treasure maps. You know where treasure maps come from? Oh right, gathering skills.

I don't have the gil to waste buying them, and wanting the set myself, I sure as hell ain't selling them if I ever did get them. Generally the group I do maps with, the person that used the map is the person that get the silk/hide.
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I had already told you, to stop leveling crafts and go level miner. You told me that under cutters, cut everything by 90%. So I guess that meant you weren't going to do it.

Also Gatherers get the maps, again you're on my server, Those maps are selling for crap now(90k or less). Those silk are selling for around 2mil each. Farm your own maps, and then get a group and use it. Then you lose no gil.

Again leveling a MNR/BTN is fast even without leves. Once you hit 25 you'll start making a decent flow of gil.

"These items on the market board are way overpriced!"
So why don't you just gather/craft them yourself?
"That would take way too much time!"
Right.

The prices on the market board represent the value people are willing to pay to avoid obtaining the items manually. Capitalism works.

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Again leveling a MNR/BTN is fast even without leves. Once you hit 25 you'll start making a decent flow of gil.

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No, its actually not. Spent about three hours on BTN last night. Two levels.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

No, its actually not. Spent about three hours on BTN last night. Two levels.

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Two levels in THREE HOURS on an MMO isn't fast to you? <.<

I think you have your expectations set far too high when it comes to leveling speed.

Also: don't grind by farming if the materials you can gather don't sell for anything. Just spam Leves. You'll end up making MORE money that way just from gil rewards. Only farm the items that sell for a few hundred gil per, which you'll likely reach sometime in the late 20s or early 30s for most servers.

I feel this thread was useful, insomuch as I actually picked up a few good tips and strategies from the crafters posting in this thread regarding leveling and the MB. More useful knowledge here than I would have expected given how it started.

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

I've felt for a while that the systems they've introduced for crafting/gathering are great for people who love to spend time on those but rather poor for people who simply want to be self-sufficient without having to dive in deep on them. I really enjoyed leveling all my DoH/DoL during 2.0/2.1 but with 3.0 it's been a much bigger struggle. Mainly with regards to drop rates more than anything. I don't really understand why they would fix the problem of limited enemies with limited quantities before and then re-introduce it with Heavensward, but, I guess it'll just take a lot longer to get where I'm going casually compared to the hardcore crafters who dedicate to it. Today is only one month out from release anyway so there's plenty of time for systems to change and develop over upcoming patches.

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I agree that the game focuses on rewarding players who focus on one specific area, whether it be crafting, gathering, PvE, end-game PvE, Gold Saucer, or even PvP. It also rewards those with more than the average amount of time to spend focusing on specific tasks or goals. That's normal because people who spend their time and focus in that manner do need rewards to make it worth their while. However crafting is very different from PvE, PvP or the Gold Saucer because the rewards generally come in the shape of nice lucrative sales on the MB, or to put it another way, at the expense of other players.

All the other reward systems in the game have the game rewarding players for their achievements, but Crafting uniquely rewards you by allowing you to make rare items and sell them to other players, thereby obtaining your reward in the form of income. Flipping this around though, to players who are not crafters it seems that the game penalizes them because of the high cost of certain items on the MB. The higher the prices, the longer they stay high, the more arrogant crafters seem when they post, the more it cements the view among other players that crafters are greedy money loving exploiters of their fellow players. That's not to say that players who focus on crafting are like that, but the very design of the crafting system and MB, along with the way in which the rarer crafted items are gated and priced leads to this situation.

Now, lets suppose that you have a lot of players who play the game do mostly main story quests and open field PvE, are not hardcore end-game or hardcore crafters/gatherers, but they dabble in a bit of everything. The game actually penalizes those players, discouraging them from wanting to do much of anything. What I mean is that for a player who is not an end-game raider, the top tier gear PvE will always remain out of reach, the top tier PvP gear will always be out of reach unless the player devotes their time to PvP (and finds others doing the same). The rarest glamor items will remain largely out of reach because of the cost, the best crafting/gathering gear remains our of reach unless the player devotes their time to crafting or gathering. Even things like the upgraded Relic weapons remain out of reach for many players because of the stupidly insane grind. So it leaves those players who most would probably call casual, the players who might play 2-3 hours a night, dipping into things here and there, running a dungeon one night, or doing FATE or leves another, and spend hours chatting to their friends; it leave those players literally stuck in the middle with the more mediocre gear, little chance of having millions of gil available to them, and surrounded by a *very* unsympathetic bunch of players.

Those unsympathetic players are the ones saying things like "git gud", or "level your crafters", or the ones calling others "lazy". The problem is those are not answers for the players caught in the middle. If those players could focus as you do, they would already have done so. The point I am making is that the game has ample reward systems for players who can and do focus their time and effort in specific areas, it has ample rewards for those with more than the average amount of time to play. What the game does a terrible job of is rewarding players with a broader play style. If such a player picked up the game right now, the mountain they have to climb is immense, and quite discouraging. Even for people who have played since the ARR beta, it can be daunting to return if you've had limited play time for a while, as I have.

The pity is that the unsympathetic attitudes simply create yet another divide in a community already pretty heavily split between 'hardcore raiders' and non-raiders. That said, it's not up to crafters to proactively make things better by offering rare goods at knock down prices, what is required is a greater focus on a two tier approach to some things that allow players with less time or focus to feel a sense of achievement and reward, while at the same time maintaining the rewards for those with the focus and greater time available. In some ways, perhaps it would be helpful of more of the reward for high level crafters came through the game rather than the wallets of other players. I'm not entirely sure how that could be accomplished though.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Those unsympathetic players are the ones saying things like "git gud", or "level your crafters", or the ones calling others "lazy". The problem is those are not answers for the players caught in the middle. If those players could focus as you do, they would already have done so. The point I am making is that the game has ample reward systems for players who can and do focus their time and effort in specific areas, it has ample rewards for those with more than the average amount of time to play. What the game does a terrible job of is rewarding players with a broader play style. If such a player picked up the game right now, the mountain they have to climb is immense, and quite discouraging. Even for people who have played since the ARR beta, it can be daunting to return if you've had limited play time for a while, as I have.

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To be fair, the "unsympathetic crafters" generally appear in threads where said caught-in-the-middle decides to go on a rampaging rant, blaming crafters for all of their woes, as has been the case in this thread. Players, especially these do-everything types, need to understand that the game is just too gosh-darned BIG to do everything without an amount of free time that is unreasonable to expect from a consumer. A player who has to work/school most of the day and maintain a healthy social life simply can't expect that they'll be a top-notch crafter, gather all their own items, raid four nights a week, do all the quests, collect all the gear, fish all the fish, etc., etc. They will need to pick and choose their goals. When they find a new goal that they don't have time for, the answer isn't to rant at SE and other players until they lower the difficulty of the goal so it is within their reach. Instead, they need to sacrifice one or more of their other goals to make room - or decide that the new goal isn't worth pursuing after all.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

All the other reward systems in the game have the game rewarding players for their achievements, but Crafting uniquely rewards you by allowing you to make rare items and sell them to other players, thereby obtaining your reward in the form of income. Flipping this around though, to players who are not crafters it seems that the game penalizes them because of the high cost of certain items on the MB.

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It's not a penalty to not be able to afford something on the MB, because buying things on the MB is entirely optional. SE could have went the route where MB and trading don't exist and we have no other option to get those items than to craft them ourselves. Right now we are given the option to trade it. I would call it a blessing both for the seller and the buyer. Another route for SE could've been to regulate prices. But that kind of system can essentially be reduced to an NPC selling everything "crafted" for gold for a set price (already in game for certain items) and DoH endgame being making tokens to exchange for gold. I think that would be rather dull and boring. What we have here is a very successful, thriving free market with fluctuating prices, which offers some amount of excitement for those who don't wish to participate in combat.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

So it leaves those players who most would probably call casual, the players who might play 2-3 hours a night, dipping into things here and there, running a dungeon one night, or doing FATE or leves another, and spend hours chatting to their friends; it leave those players literally stuck in the middle with the more mediocre gear, little chance of having millions of gil available to them, and surrounded by a *very* unsympathetic bunch of players.

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I am one of those players who only play a few hours a day, without focusing on anything special. Yet I'm happy with some of the rewards being locked behind a grind. I enjoy always having something to do and those long grinds offer exactly that. As for being rewarded for casual play, there is already beast tribe mounts, tome + hunt gear, spiritbonding while leveling or doing fates and hunts, achievements, easy glamour (vintage AF, dungeon greens, CT, poetic gear), dungeon minions, Cactpot (never won jumbo but I already have all minions) and challenge log. None of this requires much effort but it's still rewarding. In the past 5 months that I've played I have made over 6 million gil just from selling quest rewards, materia that I got from leveling gear and gear drops I didn't use. I've also gotten a variety of mounts, pets, titles and a couple of glamours. Trust me, this game showers you with stuff just for showing up. It's quite shocking to see some people on the forums asking for even more stuff to be given to them for no effort.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

The point I am making is that the game has ample reward systems for players who can and do focus their time and effort in specific areas, it has ample rewards for those with more than the average amount of time to play. What the game does a terrible job of is rewarding players with a broader play style.

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As I said above, there are quite a lot of rewards for doing the casual stuff. However, I have a suggestion that would further reward casual dabbling in everything. Better Grand Company rewards and making more activities reward GC seals. Hopefully patch 3.1 has more GC ranks and rewards included.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Players, especially these do-everything types, need to understand that the game is just too gosh-darned BIG to do everything without an amount of free time that is unreasonable to expect from a consumer.

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This only happens with crafting and gathering due to the choice to restrict item supply and to implement severe grinding mechanics designed to push players away and keep prices high. I had no problem with crafting/gathering at release. It was fun. Then they started making it progressively worse and worse. And Heavensward just upped it another notch with the ridiculous item requirements for recipees when compared to 2.0

If the development team posted numbers on how many people with a DoH/DoL actually bothered with getting a Lucis or even a Supra we'd have a clear indication on how bad these mechanics are.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

It's not a penalty to not be able to afford something on the MB, because buying things on the MB is entirely optional.

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Everything is optional, but look at the opening post and see the item requirements for recipees. SE is punishing players that want to be self-sufficient and forcing the MB down their throats.

And then look back at 2 star recipees and up and see how players had to make multimillion melds to even reach the requirements to attempt to craft said items. The battle classes aren't forced to meld to participate in content. Oh sure, overmelded accessories help a lot, but you can do without them. The same cannot be said about crafting and gathering.

And worse of all, look at Specializations. From 55 to 60 non-specialized DoH don't even get new abilities. The obsession of the development team is now locking players out of content.

High prices on the MB has only brought bad mechanics to the game.

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

This only happens with crafting and gathering due to the choice to restrict item supply and to implement severe grinding mechanics designed to push players away and keep prices high. I had no problem with crafting/gathering at release. It was fun. Then they started making it progressively worse and worse. And Heavensward just upped it another notch with the ridiculous item requirements for recipees when compared to 2.0

If the development team posted numbers on how many people with a DoH/DoL actually bothered with getting a Lucis or even a Supra we'd have a clear indication on how bad these mechanics are.

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While i dont really like the Supra and Lucis grind, i still did get some. You can see it as Relic for your Crafting job. Same as some people didnt bother with the actual Relic Weapon.
Yes it was a shame that we didnt have any other options for the Lucis, so you were basically locked out of 4 star crafting, but aint this the same with FCoB? If you werent geared enough you couldnt participate and/or nobody would take you.

They put stuff behind grinds to keep people playing, game is subscription based after all.
Also yes the new recipes do need alot of mats from other crafting classes, but i think the main point was to get people away from self-sufficiency (the specialist system was an indicator for that, but recipes are too easy at the moment) and have you interact with other people. It's like company crafting, you are supposed to build the Airship together and not on your own. Same can be said about maybe the new recipes. Do it together with your FC, you can trade mats between your fellow members, not just the market board.