crafting is gone

I think the biggest problem is SE needed to do this a lot sooner like HW or SB and we are what 5 years in and finally they decided to clean up the crafting system, that's 5 years of ability bloat its bound to be a shock to the system seeing what looks like a gutting of skills being done.

Hopefully SE wont leave it so long the next time.

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Originally Posted by Stigmar

I think the biggest problem is SE needed to do this a lot sooner like HW or SB and we are what 5 years in and finally they decided to clean up the crafting system, that's 5 years of ability bloat its bound to be a shock to the system seeing what looks like a gutting of skills being done.

Hopefully SE wont leave it so long the next time.

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I would rather say that I hope SE learned their lesson and will stop with the endless ability bloat and continue to use sensible things like upgrade traits and upgrade existing abilities rather than feeling some need to reinvent the wheel every expansion. I really don't see why we need more than maybe 1 new skill per expansion to be honest.

I'm sure with enough creativity you can find ways to add things to existing abilities to mix things up a little.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

No one said crafting needs to be difficult. The "high end raider mentality sort of player" crafter merely wants a small handful of challenging crafts at max level only, while you, the regular player can now enjoy your streamlined 1-80 leveling and access to the vast bulk of recipes in the game. Yes, you see difficult crafts as tedious or boring or a mess or w/e, we however enjoy it. Different preferences.

Why are people so selfish over this? We're asking for a small 1-2% section of crafting right at the top to cater to that challenge we enjoy and casual players are still up in arms because they see it as some sort of attack on crafting as an entirety and want access to the entire 100% for themselves. Let us have that tiny bit of content.

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FFXIV seems to be the only game in existence where most of its community think they can drive out hardcore players and turn it into a casual only game, lol. Quite silly.... and It’s mostly trying to be pushed onto crafting the most because:

“OmG rIcH pLaYerS eliTiSt”
“cRafTiNg tOO haRD SE, PlS neRf 4 eAsY gIl maKinG”
“ItS nOT fAiR, hAStY tOuCh Is MeAN”.

Then they forget that Yoshida is a kind dude, and most likely will not “drive out” hardcore players because they say so. Casual players can have their own content, so hardcore players should too, even if it’s just 5%. It’s kind of a selfish mindset, really.

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Originally Posted by Stigmar

I think the biggest problem is SE needed to do this a lot sooner like HW or SB and we are what 5 years in and finally they decided to clean up the crafting system, that's 5 years of ability bloat its bound to be a shock to the system seeing what looks like a gutting of skills being done.

Hopefully SE wont leave it so long the next time.

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Honestly this. SB and ShB both saw significant ability pruning on combat classes, but there's never been any on crafting classes (unless you want to count the elemental abilities in ShB.. ok) and it's way WAY past time. If the different abilities actually mattered maybe it'd be ok to have 40 of them like we do right now, but most of the time one ability just obseletes another. But that's a thing we've been solving with combat classes for quite some time now.

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Originally Posted by CookiesNCreams

FFXIV seems to be the only game in existence where most of its community think they can drive out hardcore players and turn it into a casual only game, lol.

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You must not have played any other MMORPG... like ever. Because this is quite common in all of them.

Fun fact though: successful games are built on their casual audience, not the hardcores. Hardcore players are good to have around, don't get me wrong... it's good for the game that those players exist. But there aren't anywhere NEAR enough of them to sustain a product long term. Given that reality, skewing a game toward appealing to the casual player makes perfect sense.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Fun fact though: successful games are built on their casual audience, not the hardcores. Hardcore players are good to have around, don't get me wrong... it's good for the game that those players exist. But there aren't anywhere NEAR enough of them to sustain a product long term. Given that reality, skewing a game toward appealing to the casual player makes perfect sense.

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They just can't go overboard like Blizzard did with WoW. In its current state, WoW is basically a mobile app with some hardcore raiding attached. FF XIV isn't anywhere near that, nor will they be after these crafting changes, but it is a valid concern even if I don't necessarily agree with their (who you responded to) other points.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They just can't go overboard like Blizzard did with WoW. In its current state, WoW is basically a mobile app with some hardcore raiding attached. FF XIV isn't anywhere near that, nor will they be after these crafting changes, but it is a valid concern even if I don't necessarily agree with their (who you responded to) other points.

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WoW is also the most successful MMORPG of all time.

I'm not saying everything they've done has been good. There's a reason I don't play it anymore. But their design goal from the outset was to make a casual-friendly MMORPG and damn if that hasn't worked brilliantly for them.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

WoW is also the most successful MMORPG of all time.

I'm not saying everything they've done has been good. There's a reason I don't play it anymore. But their design goal from the outset was to make a casual-friendly MMORPG and damn if that hasn't worked brilliantly for them.

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Oh yeah, it definitely worked for them for awhile. There's no mistaking that.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Honestly this. SB and ShB both saw significant ability pruning on combat classes, but there's never been any on crafting classes (unless you want to count the elemental abilities in ShB.. ok) and it's way WAY past time. If the different abilities actually mattered maybe it'd be ok to have 40 of them like we do right now, but most of the time one ability just obseletes another. But that's a thing we've been solving with combat classes for quite some time now.



You must not have played any other MMORPG... like ever. Because this is quite common in all of them.

Fun fact though: successful games are built on their casual audience, not the hardcores. Hardcore players are good to have around, don't get me wrong... it's good for the game that those players exist. But there aren't anywhere NEAR enough of them to sustain a product long term. Given that reality, skewing a game toward appealing to the casual player makes perfect sense.

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Yeah, that’s true. I’ve heard WildStar went that route, and it did pretty poorly. Thing is, that applies for games that only cater to hardcore players, without caring much for their casual players. Either that or at least 40% of the game is too hardcore. That’s a bit too harsh, even for me lol.

But, driving out your hardcore players isn’t optimal for maximizing sales. Also, there hasn’t been any statistical chart of FFXIV declining in 2.0 - 3.0 when crafting was super difficult, like, at all. And that’s likely because most of the game wasn’t hardcore, just the crafting.

For optimizing profits, no, driving out 100% of your hardcore players isn’t ideal, like, at all. Ideally, you’d want both players to be playing your game on a monthly basis.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

WoW is also the most successful MMORPG of all time.

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You mean, was.

The subscription numbers have tanked, and the only reason it is doing okay today is because of a bunch of people with rose-colored goggles all ooo and ahhh over Classic, but that will eventually wear off when the content stagnates and the playerbase gets split over whether or not to go to TBC classic or just stay at Vanilla classic. But it will eventually stagnate. That part is inevitable.

Without Classic WoW, their numbers were lower than XIV's. WoW's been on the decline since 8.0 while XIV has only been rising and rising and rising.

BfA was met with sharp criticism over... well.... the majority of the game systems, while ShB was received with astounding praises, other than perhaps Healers.

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Originally Posted by CookiesNCreams

But, driving out your hardcore players isn’t optimal for maximizing sales. Also, there hasn’t been any statistical chart of FFXIV declining in 2.0 - 3.0 when crafting was super difficult, like, at all. And that’s likely because most of the game wasn’t hardcore, just the crafting.

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Ideally, you want all game systems to be accessible to all players, and have tiers.

Battlecraft content is accessible to all players; Duty Finder content is do-able by.... most people, most of the time. But yet you have Savage and Extreme modes available for those looking for harder challenge.

Crafting has been kinda missing that ever since 3.0.

They decided that they would ramp up the number of materials needed to make anything, and you go from having an 80-90% chance on Level 50 materials to having a 60% chance to gather basic Lv51 materials in Heavensward, and there's a huge jump in crafting requirements, etc.

See, in Battlecraft, you had Poetics and you could buy Ironworks gear. But on the crafter side of things, they got scrips, but it seems like it takes a lot more work and effort to get yourself geared up that way in prep for the next expansion's content.

Anywho, my point is... crafting should have casual and hardcore content. I think anything that's not Star recipes should be made a bit more accessible and easier, but Star recipes should be difficult. 1-Star is like Extreme Primals, 3-Star is like Savage Raid, and 4-Star is Ultimate, IMO.

As much as I campaign for easier crafting, I am perfectly fine with not being able to do Star recipes. I don't, however, like seeing normal recipes being so bloody difficult to do while leveling. I just don't think that should be a thing.