Dear Square Enix - I want to Craft

Just curious as to what people think about the fact that virtually everyone either absolutely hates the system (have even canceled accounts) , and the rest "are not big fans" or shall we just say "don't like" the entire system. Let us look at the response we got..... we got a patch that was designed to basically shut people up by making the mere acquisition of scrips cheaper. hey, how about the fact that the system is either hated or disliked by, well we could say everyone cause I haven't seen one post or person commenting otherwise. What should paying customers expect then, insofar as the 'system" aside from the fact that they took everything you've done (specifically in crafting and gathering) and rendered it useless ?

Is it even responsible for SE to not completely change it ? They are certainly aware they did something that is damaging if not destroying many paying customer's game play experience. Is it ok then, that they force this down the throats of their clientele to our extreme displeasure ? I suppose that ol' free market economy lover would say buyer beware, cancel account...... is that ultimately the answer? we either go along or cancel.......OR should SE flat out admit they have to change it? just wondering what the opinions are on that.

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Originally Posted by AnimaS

I'm surprised you think it's similar i have a level 60 Dragoon and Warrior, the gear I used was replaced with tomes and drops those COMBAT jobs are now functioning; the crafting gear is not. to replace that gear .... we must have all gatherers at 60, we must have all crafts at 60, we must gather virtually all day, first to get scrips then to use them, then to turn them in, then to craft 1 part of 8/8 crafters 3/3 gatherers. A bit different yes?

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A bit different, but hardly non-functional.

The crafting gear is absurdly difficult to get, entirely too many hoops to jump through, but it is certainly functional once you get it.

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Originally Posted by AnimaS

I suppose that ol' free market economy lover would say buyer beware, cancel account...... is that ultimately the answer? we either go along or cancel

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I don't know if that makes you an Free market economy lover, I think that's just common sense?, you are not subscribed to every subscription service in existence you pick and choose the ones that fit your desires (we see this all the time in the cable television space, people subscribe and unsubscribe as the types of shows they like come on and off television), you should constantly be evaluating if the enjoyment you receive from something is worth your money and I think the expectation that a dynamic experience like an MMO should always make you happy will set people up to be disappointed - This is from both perspectives they will surely make changes that won't always be targeted for you and at the same time You, yourself will change with time and the things you want from the experience will change ( we see this all the time with raiders needing to take breaks from a structured play time etc).

This is not to say I think it is wrong to lament or be sad when you come to face this decision, but just to say be weary of your own expectations so that we ourselves don't become the source of our own disappointment.

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Originally Posted by AnimaS

Just curious as to what people think about the fact that virtually everyone.

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I'm more curious at why you think less than 1% of the population of the game being vocally against it constitutes 'virtually everyone'.

I'm just sitting on my weekly tokens. Not sure what I want to do yet. There's no real carrot out there other than "ooo, pretty gear." It isn't like I need this to craft anything players want. And if they DID want 2-star adventuring gear, good luck finding someone willing to pay tens of millions of gear for something many iLvl below raid gear.

Some might have considered accessories... IF Tier V materia was available via spiritbonding.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

The change today was laughable. I don't think crafters cared about how many items they had to craft to get red scrip tokens. They care that they can:
1. Only craft 9 subcomponents per week...
2. .... assuming that gatherers are willing to spend their red tokens on favors.

Have them spend red tokens on unlocking the capability to get ooids. Then put the ooids on some rare node, hidden, whatever. But don't make them expend red tokens to obtain them every time.

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While the op has many complaints, and I agree with some and disagree with others (including your #1, 9 is fine we are being gated, I am okay with that, its an MMO. Should the gate be higher, yes but its not the end of the world. The ONLY thing to craft is the crafting gear itself right now, everything else is worthless). Your #2 is the real problem. The Favor system is fundamentally flawed. The purchase of crafting materials is also too expensive. When combined they make an untenable situation.

There is a real logical reason to have gathering linked with crafting. Its almost impossible to unlink them in fact. However, they both need to work together. By making the gathering gear uncraftable, they are forcing the amount of players willing to use red scrips on favors much lower than it needs to be for the system to function.

I concur with your general summary Kaelie. Not everything HAS to happen in my lists. But most need to be considered in a developer meeting. They are missing some key economy things which cannot be overlooked IMO. And as you said the biggest gate right now is the number of rare gathered tokens required. Even if they fix that part though the economy is going to be a mess till other adjustments are made.

Also I agree I could live with 9 tokens a week... but what a crappy low gate IMO.

This is what happens when you want to eliminate competition and do absolutely nothing *but* craft.

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Originally Posted by niwaar

While the op has many complaints, and I agree with some and disagree with others (including your #1, 9 is fine we are being gated, I am okay with that, its an MMO. Should the gate be higher, yes but its not the end of the world.

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Ofcourse it is. We enjoy crafting. When you limit that you limit our enjoyment. Nevermind that 9 is only materials, and not actually 9 finished items.

In reality its closer to 2 items per week. And thats assuming you can gather them yourself, because not many freelance gatherers will be willing to grind hours a week on top of their normal gathering.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

We knew a reset was coming. That's not the problem. The problem is the new system removed raid drops, switched material progression to gathers but then removed gather created gear. The combination tanked the economy because someone was TRYING to fix problems but made things 10x worse because of lack of foresight.

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You misunderstand what he means. What he means is they didnt really any recipes. Hes not incorrect with that. Crp and bsm has no 1* crafts. Most of the others have only a handful, nearly all of which are glamour/housing.

In fact they filled the 51-60 logs with recipes for each DoW/DoM class despite giving all of those free items. Then they removed the level 60 recipes from the 56-60 log and placed them into the master books so that there would actually be recipes there.

Without this CRP and BSM would have zero master recipes.
Then they added 2* crafting which is essentially HW 1* crafting (because we have no actual 1* recipes) but which is heavily gated behind time and weekly caps.


If you ask me red scrips was originally intended to be released as 1* and master book recipes. But apparently someone said: ''hang on, if you give right away people will find it in early and they would know we killed crafting''

AnimaS is like squidward, first u think he's always being the sour puss but after a few good reads it seems like he is the only one logically thinking.
But regardless i will just craft my last few pieces of my 2 star bsm set and call it a day. I refuse to grind anymore favors after that.

At least i played in SE's dumb crafting system so yea i've been there done that kind of feeling vs the ppl who actually haven't even attempted crafting any 2 stars lmao.

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Originally Posted by Yumi_umi

AnimaS is like squidward, first u think he's always being the sour puss but after a few good reads it seems like he is the only one logically thinking.
But regardless i will just craft my last few pieces of my 2 star bsm set and call it a day. I refuse to grind anymore favors after that.

At least i played in SE's dumb crafting system so yea i've been there done that kind of feeling vs the ppl who actually haven't even attempted crafting any 2 stars lmao.

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No, he's being a sourpuss.

He just seems to agree with you, that's why you think it's logical. Echo chamber and all that.

-Logically speaking- it's still too early to say one way or the other. Have to wait until the next patch and then he and the others can be vindicated.

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

You misunderstand what he means. What he means is they didnt really any recipes. Hes not incorrect with that. Crp and bsm has no 1* crafts. '

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Yeah they could have done a better job with the distribution of crafts. All they really needed to do was label the level 60 mainhands and offhands as 1 star (and raise their difficulty to match) and likewise for the new crafting/gathering accessories for CRP.

The thing which is really missing is the forager i170 set. Which IS a very big problem because foragers no longer have anything to buy from crafters after getting their 1 star set. I concur they should have the option to grind red scrips OR buy crafted gear. The lack of crafted gear screws up the economy.

I'm a casual omni-crafter. I mainly craft for self, alt gearing, helping others out. I took one look at scripts and decided not to pursue them yet, even blues.

Why? I craft to make useful things, not win a craft/gather/auction money making game. What things? I am to spend HOW much of my time to make, what?

I do not understand what the system is supposed to achieve other than to let craft-only people grind into oblivion while gating them in an MMO-like bid to keep them here. The only winning move is not to play, from my view.

I just craft red scrips and buy the 180 variants of the gear personally. Screw this horrible favor system, I don't want to spend all my game time doing that to maybe make a HQ 170 version that is only slightly better after I've spent millions melding it. Just forget that.

The only time i craft now is when airship needs new components. I spent most of yesterday (about 12 hours, most of time AFKing) building 5 components (Odyssey) in a batch.

That 12 hours would be the same amount of time i needed to gather favors and craft i170 gears, but i rather spent it doing airship. Why? Because of the reward/return and the satisfaction of a TRUE progression.

Agreed, it took me less time to build the entire restaurant theme plus three airship parts from start to finish than it takes to get one ilvl 170 or 180 crafting item. When a solo crafter activity is more hardcore than something that's supposed to take the cooperation of your entire FC, something is seriously wrong.

SE's lack of reaction makes you think about whether they care if who they think are omnicrafters all just let their subs end. I'm probably not the only one here that has multiple accounts subbed and max retainers, and multiple purchases of the game for different devices.

I just hope the economy stagnates enough as a result of these changes so SE would take notice, and maybe consider making crafting either fun or worth the time investment. Substantial change only happens with intense discontent, so people should keep on voicing their dissatisfaction.

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Originally Posted by Aeolist

SE's lack of reaction makes you think about whether they care if who they think are omnicrafters

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Lack of reaction?

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings,

We are planning to make adjustments to the duration of the Favors purchased with red scrips and the frequency of the Concealed Nodes spawn so that it'll become easier for everyone to participate. Once we have more information, we'll make further announcements. We appreciate your patience while we work on these adjustments.

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And they also responded to a thread informing people in advance that they were going to change the values on red scripts, The reason you are not hearing much is because they are still working on what they think is a good solution.

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Originally Posted by Alysrea

Lack of reaction?



And they also responded to a thread informing people in advance that they were going to change the values on red scripts, The reason you are not hearing much is because they are still working on what they think is a good solution.

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That, as well as their reply before that relate to DoL. Grateful if you could point out where a specific response was made to crafters - that's what I was talking about if you would take a look at the second half of the sentence.

Assuming meaningful work is being done when there is no inkling of news to settle unrest is naive. There will probably be half hearted changes made to the supply of mats like they've done, but I sincerely doubt they will address core crafter concerns, without sufficient backlash as an impetus for it. Sure, more mats might become available. Available to feed into the crafter pyramid scheme.

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Originally Posted by Aeolist

That, as well as their reply before that relate to DoL. Grateful if you could point out where a specific response was made to crafters - that's what I was talking about if you would take a look at the second half of the sentence.
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They made a response to players, It is silly to try and create a sub culture and then be oblivious to things that have been said just because it doesn't have your sub cultures name written on it.
This effects both crafters and gatherers and so did the red script changes which were posted by them in advance prior to changes being made, They replied to the first posts they came across it would be an unrealistic waste of time to give the same response in every thread that's made on the same subject matter and everyone can see the post through the dev tracker, there is no reason for it to specifically be written to a crafter.

If you actually read the OP in this thread they them self are talking about the lack of materials to craft with from gathering because the favor system sucks (they go so far as to bold the points in their issue, which are all gathering related), So SE's response very much does pertain to this discussion at hand.

I have no problem with your lack of trust in them, you can believe that the changes they will make will not improve things, I just disagree with the sentiment that they are not paying attention and do not communicate.

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Originally Posted by Alysrea

I have no problem with your lack of trust in them, you can believe that the changes they will make will not improve things, I just disagree with the sentiment that they are not paying attention and do not communicate.

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I smiled at that. Im aware they are paying attention, but also aware not officially. Surely you understand or already know the implication of this as well as I do.


Lack of information, combined with the inability to do anything from this side is what you are thinking no doubt. Can't say I disagree with that sentiment, but people still care. They want to hear something meaningfull (or appearing like SE cares), offically.

We likely won't see any changes to the overall structure until 3.2. What we'll probably see until then is the easing of materials acquisition, which is their normal tactic when things are too scarce.

It's possible we'll see some major recipes in 3.1 that will be worthwhile, but I highly doubt it, at least on any major scale.

The right balance was what was back in 2.4 or whenever i110 crafter gear came out. When that stuff _first_ came out, crafters had to sink a lot of gil into their gear to be able to craft the new recipes. The ehcatl sealants and master materia were all very expensive. It took a decent amount of investment to be able to craft the i110 gear. And the recipes were by no way 100% HQ guaranteed.

It was good risk for good reward. Raiders could get immediate upgrades that would ultimately be surpassed by upgraded poetics or coil gear. But, there it was worthwhile to spend the time to get the master books and new gear that was out there to make this stuff.


Now? Um... no. Simply no. I could see people wanting the crafted accessories... if Tier V materia was from spiritbonding. It is pretty hard, if not impossible to come close to the STR/VIT caps w/o them. So, even if the items weren't gated behind weekly caps, who is going to want this gear with the severe lack of materia making this stuff worthwhile?

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Originally Posted by dspguy

The right balance was what was back in 2.4 or whenever i110 crafter gear came out. When that stuff _first_ came out, crafters had to sink a lot of gil into their gear to be able to craft the new recipes.

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That's about how I feel as well. The 110 gear seems to be the main reason we *don't* have worthwhile gear now, though, as Yoshida mentioned the power of pentamelded gear having affects on progression that they didn't like. I feel like they could have addressed that issue in any number of other ways though (make it impossible to cap the stats through melding by tuning how much Materia give, and so on), rather than neutering crafting entirely.

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Originally Posted by Jade-Nephrite

I want to make gear to sell again, end-game gear that not everyone can make and not 15 listings that are 2 gil difference in price. I miss the raiders sending me tells asking to make gear for them.

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Totally agree.

To: Yoshi P and the Dev Team,

This is a feeling that I sorely miss. A few weeks back, a low-level FC member asked me for some help to make gear:

* As I was gathering various materials, and HQ'ing a nice, shiny set of HQ Armor and Weapon for this player, I felt *genuinely happy* and *nostalgic* creating a useful set of gear that was treasured by another player and that could serve them well (even if it was only for a week or so (sad)).

THAT is the feeling I miss and I hope that you can restore in 3.0:

* Crafters that can make USEFUL, Meaningful End Game Gear, and be a part of the conversation / cycle of MMO Life in FF XIV.

You've strung us along for most of 2.0, relegating crafters to Glamour or Food / Potions. People *aren't* going to stop going to your Raids if you suddenly allowed Crafters to help make a worthy End Game Set of Gear.

As I posted in another thread:

1. Create End Game Level Crafted Gear Sets (SAME iLevel as highest Raid), but it requires a Rare Material Drop from the End Game Raids.

Your older Final Fantasy game did this very well (there were Abjurations that dropped in End Game Raids / Bosses and you used those along with rare Mats to have a Crafter create CURSED GEAR that you could UNCURSE).

It also made End Game Raids more enjoyable, because besides an actual Armor / Weapon dropping you might get a Rare Material (very valuable and meaningful) instead and it made the run still worth it. This connected Adventurers & Crafters in a great way.


This is just one possibility. Regardless, I hope to see a real change in the future, or else Crafting will just be a GREAT System that was WASTED, relegated to making mostly Garbage / Furniture / Glamour / Minions, which is just sad.

Yoshi P, you created a very interesting System (abilities, stacking, figuring out when to use what, etc.), now let us use it to craft meaningful stuff that matters!

^ everyone complaining about how long or how much it takes to fully gear out all their crafters...but why so in a rush to get 3* stats with no recipes to make them until months from now? You can make every current recipe without playing the red scrip game...so why the constant complaining?

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

I smiled at that. Im aware they are paying attention, but also aware not officially. Surely you understand or already know the implication of this as well as I do.


Lack of information, combined with the inability to do anything from this side is what you are thinking no doubt. Can't say I disagree with that sentiment, but people still care. They want to hear something meaningfull (or appearing like SE cares), offically.

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I agree that It would be wonderful to have more information or at least quality information is preferable, But I feel the current lack of information isn't from a source of not caring it really feels like they honestly don't have any good information to give us :(, They made bad choices and coming up with the right solution is not as easy as we players imply it to be, even if they have an answer they will still want to test it hopefully to make sure they are not going to commit another mistake upon us, I will (potentially mistakenly) trust when they say "Once we have more information, we'll make further announcements". Because otherwise I will sit here in anticipation generating wild expectations and ultimately disappoint myself lol.

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Originally Posted by uome

^ everyone complaining about how long or how much it takes to fully gear out all their crafters...but why so in a rush to get 3* stats with no recipes to make them until months from now? You can make every current recipe without playing the red scrip game...so why the constant complaining?

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Because the next set of recipes that comes along will require i180 gear stats, at a minimum, to produce. That's been the general pattern, anyway : it takes the Old Best gear to get the New Best. It takes a full set of heavily material-augmented level 60 gear to produce the 2 star stuff (notice there is no 1 star stepping stone). Its going to take a full set of heavily material-augmented i170, or the red scrip blocked i180 stuff to produce the 3 star stuff when that comes along.

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

I smiled at that. Im aware they are paying attention, but also aware not officially. Surely you understand or already know the implication of this as well as I do.


Lack of information, combined with the inability to do anything from this side is what you are thinking no doubt. Can't say I disagree with that sentiment, but people still care. They want to hear something meaningfull (or appearing like SE cares), offically.

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SE is far from the only company to keep less than open communications with the playerbase, and there is a very good reason for it. Players have a tendency to overhype or twist announcements out of proportion and hold SE to every little detail as if they were blood oaths. If SE came out right now and said, "We're looking into changing so and so" or "We're considering such and such alternatives," and then implemented something else later, want to guess how much the community will explode? Look at the personal housing debacle. "But Yoshida said personal housing would be far more affordable!" Sure, and about 6 months worth of gil inflation passed since he made that statement and likely had to revise the original numbers but some players still hold some eternal grudge against it. More recently, they adjusted the scrip values of many of the turn-ins, and despite being very clear with their intent (modifying turn-in values and not the favor system itself), players were outraged on the day of the patch because for whatever reason, they expected a massive overhaul of the entire system.

Even now, people are speculating favors will be cut down to 5 minutes and concealed node spawn rates doubled or tripled, and if SE doesn't implement it exactly that way they're going to be upset. It's a joke. If the community is going to treat every little announcement as a promise, then of course SE isn't going to announce anything until they're 100% sure it's a promise.

The people upset at the turn-in reward modification were upset when they announced it. Then they were also upset when they discovered what the modification was.

The turn-in rewards were the bottom of my list. And the modification was tiny. It wouldn't have mattered if they HAD tripled the turnin values though. I'd still be upset because I wanted them fixing the favor system. The turn-in rewards, in my case, barely register on the list of problems. The boost doesn't make enough of a difference to really register, because that was the LEAST frustrating part for me.

If SE makes changes to the favor system and they turn out to be less helpful then the community theories, then yes, the community will be upset. Because we want FIXES, not placebos. 1/3 time triple spawn would be a net 0, just cutting the time investment down to 1/3. I personally would rather they rebuild the entire system into something interesting. It's unlikely. Making it not consume all my game time is a poor second.

The people upset were those who were upset at the announcement and more who expected something bigger. This is why I don't get my hopes up at anything until it's confirmed.

The 1/3 * 3 change would be a fix, because a lot of the complaints are about how much time it takes gathering favor mats. In my opinion, it's also a poor one because you would be maintaining the same expected rate while reducing the number of nodes you actually hit, i.e. much higher variance.

And as much as we'd all love to see the system entirely reworked, face it, it's not going to happen. The best we can hope for are bandaid fixes that will at least make it tolerable, and honestly that's all I'm asking for at this point.

I think 1/3 time would be reasonable. 3 and a half hours a week extra to make better gear is fine for me. That's only 30 minutes a day and even though it's pretty monotonous, I could tolerate it.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

Players have a tendency to overhype or twist announcements out of proportion and hold SE to every little detail as if they were blood oaths.

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This is a good thing. Companies want passionate players giving them feedback, even if it's negative. Players who have stopped giving feedback have stopped caring, and it's not long after that they stop playing. This sentiment was presented by Yoshi himself at GDC 14 when talking about the ARR relaunch: http://www.siliconera.com/2014/03/19...-enix-revived/

"Learn to listen and adapt. A complaint is worth twice a compliment. The silent always leave first. If citizens are complaining, it means they still care."


The last thing SE wants to do is shut down player feedback, but that's one result of poor communication. It wouldn't hurt them to try and communicate more openly and quickly, even if that does mean more players screaming sometimes.

Personally speaking I'm not angry at SE for what happened. Instead I'm fairly certain parts of what happened occurred due to an attempt to make things better but failed due to lack of enough forsight or testing.

I suspect the crafting side did not get enough development or product testing hours (which often happens in any product development software).

So instead of getting a new better system. We got a new system which functions worse than the previous. We should salute SE for trying something new and different. But continue yelling until it works.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

Even now, people are speculating favors will be cut down to 5 minutes and concealed node spawn rates doubled or tripled, and if SE doesn't implement it exactly that way they're going to be upset. It's a joke. If the community is going to treat every little announcement as a promise, then of course SE isn't going to announce anything until they're 100% sure it's a promise.

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But still, that is no excuse. A lot of companies (or spokeman of various kinds) should 'man up' and just say things as they are.
And lets be fair, the main reason so much speculation is going down is because people are desperate for a change.
They didnt speculate this much last hotfix. They just had faith then, faith that wasnt rewarded.

Personally I dont speculate, I dont see the point. We will see if they change the system so that I might be interested in playing it again.

If they just removed the Red Script weekly cap and lowered the time duration of Favors to 10 minutes with comparable Concealed Node spawns, that would be feasible.

Gear --> Red Scripts --> Tokens --> Materials --> Gear. It's a cycle that keeps players buying and selling and making me gil :)

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Originally Posted by Jade-Nephrite

If they just removed the Red Script weekly cap and lowered the time duration of Favors to 10 minutes with comparable Concealed Node spawns, that would be feasible.

Gear --> Red Scripts --> Tokens --> Materials --> Gear. It's a cycle that keeps players buying and selling and making me gil :)

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10 minutes? That's only a reduction of 33%; still too much for me.

Yeah they need to reduce the time and increase the drop rate... its just so bad right now.

I'm highly curious what fixes we are going to get in 3.07 and if things will get better enough... been such a mess I'm pretty peeved at this point. Its taken them entirely too long to put in fixes.

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Upcoming Features:
We’ll be adding a Gold Saucer category to the challenge log. Players will be able to plan out how they will earn the MGP each week.
New crafting recipes will be added.

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Favor Adjustments:
We’re planning to make adjustments in Patch 3.07. Additionally, we’re looking over the effect duration as well. You’ll be able to do these in a shorter amount of time.

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