Four things I'd like to see implemented

Whistle is absolutely OP if craft became harder, it's not useless. There's a rotation involving whistle which allow infinite quality for any craft. I don't think any change is needed, or in fact, a nerf is actually warranted for it.

I have mixed feeling for the second quality bar, because as stated by many people here, buyer will just be expecting the best quality from crafter, and a high tier crafter will easily dominate the market by selling those item at cheap price to force lower tier crafter out of business. It will not be a problem to me and some omnicrafter here, but certainly a big problem to most crafter.

Glamour Polish - yes, to this, the armoire is a nice idea but so little goes into it.

Extra quality bar - I like this idea but think I'd prefer the simpler version suggested above that gives you the chance to add one extra slot.

I can't really comment on the whistle system as I've never used it.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

The second quality bar would be an absolutely terrible idea, due to the fact that an item with 3 guaranteed materia slots will have a lower amount of possible stats, since you can only overmeld one grade VI materia.

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Say nothing of the fact of right side pieces. Crafted gear is currently BiS for tanks, think how OP it would be if you could cap STR on it by melding 4 or 5 STR 6's on it. Or the crazy health pools everyone would have if they could have 100+ Vit on all there right side for prog. We would be back to the i110 like meta. The idea would not only need a crafting rework, it would need a full rework of the melding system.

It is not that bad from a left side point of view, we see that with Tales right now, and no one really values it that much more, that just goes back then to your expectations point, and it would really just screw crafters over. O great, I get to spend even more time crafting one piece.

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Originally Posted by AdamZ

Say nothing of the fact of right side pieces. Crafted gear is currently BiS for tanks, think how OP it would be if you could cap STR on it by melding 4 or 5 STR 6's on it.

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Your concerns are easily handleable. All SE has to do is lower the stat caps on such gear pieces this would be allowed on. There are many pieces right now which have say +74 Direct Hit as the max. Thus, a person has to choose, do I meld 2 Direct Materia (and not get full value for the materia) or 1 Direct Hit and 1 Crit Hit. The same logic could easily be extended to STR / VIT / etc...

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Originally Posted by ChameleonMS

Your concerns are easily handleable. All SE has to do is lower the stat caps on such gear pieces this would be allowed on. There are many pieces right now which have say +74 Direct Hit as the max. Thus, a person has to choose, do I meld 2 Direct Materia (and not get full value for the materia) or 1 Direct Hit and 1 Crit Hit. The same logic could easily be extended to STR / VIT / etc...

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As far as I can tell gear you are referring to, has direct hit is the lower secondary, and therefore you can only meld to the max stat of any secondary on that piece, for example the goon lost allagan pants (melded have 249 Det and 174 direct hit, so you can meld 75 direct hit, that is cause all stats cap at 249, and the meldable amount is just 249 less amount currently on the piece). Please show me a example of a piece where the max cap of a meldable stat is lower then the cap for that piece of gear. I was trying to find one, as your statement is news to me, but I could not locate one.

See my final point on the complete rework of the melding system, I am agreeing it is achievable, just it would be a very major overhaul. Even your solution makes right side pieces BiS in many cases, as you could just put in Direct, Crit, Det, SS, VIT/STR (Minus the capped stat) at +40 still, even if they set each of those to only cap at 40. It would just prevent players from having choices, which will like just put off a few min/maxers out there.

The key flaw in suggesting the over quality, second bar raises the standard on crafting is it assumes we are currently competing to make HQ gear and that hasn't been the case for 20 level.

We compete with main and side quest reward choice and HQ markets being destroyed before they ever happen with such rewards. The only reason any HQ markets have legs is through crafting leve requirements, crafting GC daily requirements and many of the side quests simply being more of a PITA than the slot warrants.

We don't compete right now as crafters, as said we haven't for 20 levels. Opening 3rd and up slots would allow us to again. The raise the bar debate was answered for us when SE lowered it by handing all our stuff out for kill 10 boar quests

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Originally Posted by AdamZ

As far as I can tell gear you are referring to, has direct hit is the lower secondary, and therefore you can only meld to the max stat of any secondary on that piece, for example the goon lost allagan pants (melded have 249 Det and 174 direct hit, so you can meld 75 direct hit, that is cause all stats cap at 249, and the meldable amount is just 249 less amount currently on the piece). Please show me a example of a piece where the max cap of a meldable stat is lower then the cap for that piece of gear. I was trying to find one, as your statement is news to me, but I could not locate one.

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The pieces right with limited stat caps right now are in the non-craftable gear area. I was using them as an example of what can be done.

We are talking about an idea for a new feature. Thus, direct examination of existing craftable gear stat caps would be pointless. By the time this feature would be added in a future patch the iLVL would increase would make the current gear pointless. If they added such a feature as being talked about the stat caps on that future gear should be adjusted to overcome your concern.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

The second quality bar would be an absolutely terrible idea, both due to costumer expectations, and especially with the way grade VI materia works right now. Just like people will be expecting a crafter to HQ an item right now, they will be expecting a crafter to get a piece to at least have 4 guaranteed materia slots. Anything less will be considered a failure, due to the fact that an item with 3 guaranteed materia slots will have a lower amount of possible stats, since you can only overmeld one grade VI materia.

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Yea I thought about that. Currently NQ is UNACCEPTABLE to anybody who isn't in it for glamour so HQ is the only meta there is. I figured adding in more materia slots would indeed raise standards of purchases. But unfortunately I think the majority of people here missed a critical part of how I said the 2nd bar would work (not that it's an excuse, the "against" reasoning still applies) by you have to use an ability to activate the 2nd Quality bar. Meaning you'd have to hit the 100% quality cap and stop to activate the ability to go into the 2nd bar. To my knowledge, most people can't hit 100% Quality without a Great Strides crit and losing your Inner Quiet (Star Crafts, that is). That way a "Good" or "Excellent" will not go through into the second bar and you must start from scratch, and with even lower CP to boot. But as I said, that's no excuse about the crafted meta. ALTHOUGH now that I think about it, only going up to a possible 3-4 open materia as opposed to a full five would still be acceptable as the first or 2nd Overmeld isn't too difficult to hit anyways. So a single materia slot on it's own would be a significant buff to help crafted gear reach it's potential and compete with Tome gear. Although, even using that "expectations" logic, you can still reach that degree of stats without this system in place, it's just difficult and expensive. This will simply just lessen the pain of reaching it's potential.

A full Penta-Ornate is probably overkill, but reaching for a third (MAYBE 4th) slot by completing a fresh Quality Bar with an exhausted CP/Durability pool would be balanced. The point I was making is that the 2nd bar would be likely impossible to fill unless you have the luck of the devil and with that level of difficulty, standard HQ would still dominate the markets. That way, reaching crafted gear's current potential will lean ever so slightly more in favor of those with talent instead of luck. And by the time they ever do implement a system like this, we would already be in the age of Grade VII materia and they can bend the system to adjust for it as they please. They also have the rights to simply adjust current systems and stats as they see fit anyways or make the "unlocked" slots not count as "base" slots so Grade VI and beyond materia don't work past the 2nd Slot without a true Ornate set.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

Unfortunately I think the majority of people here missed a critical part of how I said the 2nd bar would work (not that it's an excuse, the "against" reasoning still applies) by you have to use an ability to activate the 2nd Quality bar. Meaning you'd have to hit the 100% quality cap and stop to activate the ability to go into the 2nd bar. To my knowledge, most people can't hit 100% Quality without a Great Strides crit and losing your Inner Quiet (Star Crafts, that is).

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This would definitely give more value to HQ materials as you would need the initial granted Quality to have enough quality touches to achieve the second HQ bar. And it would also pretty much require a crafter to use Byregot's Miracle on the first bar to have enough IQ stacks to get 100% on the second bar.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

To my knowledge, most people can't hit 100% Quality without a Great Strides crit and losing your Inner Quiet (Star Crafts, that is). That way a "Good" or "Excellent" will not go through into the second bar and you must start from scratch, and with even lower CP to boot.

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Crafters will just resort to using HQ mats. Using the current 2-star crafted chest as an example, all-HQ mats will give a starting quality of 7911/15837, so it wouldn't be unfathomable for the possibility of reaching 100% before using up all your Inner Quiet stacks.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

But as I said, that's no excuse about the crafted meta. ALTHOUGH now that I think about it, only going up to a possible 3-4 open materia as opposed to a full five would still be acceptable as the first or 2nd Overmeld isn't too difficult to hit anyways. So a single materia slot on it's own would be a significant buff to help crafted gear reach it's potential and compete with Tome gear. Although, even using that "expectations" logic, you can still reach that degree of stats without this system in place, it's just difficult and expensive. This will simply just lessen the pain of reaching it's potential.

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You can't reach that degree of stats currently, because you literally can't overmeld a grade VI materia past the first overmeld, hence my comment on 4 guaranteed materia slots being a bad idea.

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

A full Penta-Ornate is probably overkill, but reaching for a third (MAYBE 4th) slot by completing a fresh Quality Bar with an exhausted CP/Durability pool would be balanced. The point I was making is that the 2nd bar would be likely impossible to fill unless you have the luck of the devil and with that level of difficulty, standard HQ would still dominate the markets.

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Except it wouldn't dominate the market, just like NQ gear is useless aside from glamour purposes. If someone commissions a crafter to craft something for them, they'll always expect to get the best possible outcome. This 2nd quality bar will simply move that bar from "HQ, not NQ" to "Best amount of guaranteed meld slots, not just HQ".

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Originally Posted by Kazzoey

They also have the rights to simply adjust current systems and stats as they see fit anyways or make the "unlocked" slots not count as "base" slots so Grade VI and beyond materia don't work past the 2nd Slot without a true Ornate set.

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Then what would be the point of this addition, if it'll only save you from blowing up a few grade V materia? At that point, it'll just turn around completely, and no one will bother going through the effort of using the 2nd quality bar to begin with. Which, in turn, means wasted development resources that could be spent elsewhere.