Why is Crafting still in the game?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RegnumMagik

Sometimes I find it a little silly that people want the best gear, and yet they have no desire to do end game content for it.

---

But you can get the best gears without doing zero end game content. Just run HM dungeons (the very same dungeon you run to buy stuff for crafted items!) over and over, get myth and buy equip from vendor. With some jobs they are better than most coil/ct stuff. In fact, it's probably harder and time-expensive to penta-meld some stuff (getting the right material, the gil, the materia) than simply buying iLevel 90 equipment.


Super-hardcore.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Taruranto

But you can get the best gears without doing zero end game content. Just run HM dungeons (the very same dungeon you run to buy stuff for crafted items!) over and over, get myth and buy equip from vendor. With some jobs they are better than most coil/ct stuff. In fact, it's probably harder and time-expensive to penta-meld some stuff (getting the right material, the gil, the materia) than simply buying iLevel 90 equipment.


Super-hardcore.

---

It's gonna take a month+ to grind for the "best" gear due to lock out. And some pieces such as accessories for certain classes are completely crap.
At that point, there's 3 opitions: Pray to RNG god in coils, waste your weekly tomestone on a piece of crap that you can potentially use on an alt, or craft a piece that can substitute with better secondary stats.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

I don't necessarily want crafted gear equal to Allagan gear. I've said previously that gear dropped from the high end dungeons has every right to be a bit better than crafted.

What I find particularly irksome about high-end crafted gear, is that its requirements are exactly the same as for darklight. So, even if I wanted to use crafted gear for that mid-level area of i70, I'd STILL be required to get the same amount of tomestones as I would for darklight. Which means the same amount of dungeon grinding. In addition to the dungeon grinding, I'd have to gather/craft the rest of the materials for the i70 crafted gear.

That just doesn't make sense to me.

---

For a person that enjoys min-maxing, I like squeeze out every bit I can get. And like I said, some pieces with correct meld can be potentially better.

Is the amount of tomes required to craft a piece justified? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the extra.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RegnumMagik

It's gonna take a month+ to grind for the "best" gear due to lock out. And some pieces such as accessories for certain classes are completely crap.
At that point, there's 3 opitions: Pray to RNG god in coils, waste your weekly tomestone on a piece of crap that you can potentially use on an alt, or craft a piece that can substitute with better secondary stats.

---

My point still stand. It takes 2 week to get AF2 SCH BiS, 1 week for each accessory. They are all BiS. Myth are basically throw at you between CT/Treasures/DR/Dailies.


So yes, getting BiS gears in this game is a nobrainer, they are literally handled to you. Meanwhile, crafted items, require you to 1) Level a craft (or find and pay one), 2) Pay money for/farm items 3) Meld your equip/Buy materia 4) Run dungeons several times for tomes item. Then, when you finally have your crafted item, they are not better than most iLevel 90 (or even CT stuff, jeez) stuff from myth tomes that, I repeat, are freely given to you with little to no effort.

Does this seem fair, to you?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

Yeah, then I'm still in the same boat. I'm still going to be required to run dungeons to get the tomestones. And unless the crafted gear is better than the gear you can get via myth tomes, then nothing has changed.

:(

---

I don't get why the horrible attitude about this. Are you trying to play this without doing any of the content whatsoever, other than crafting?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Taruranto

My point still stand. It takes 2 week to get AF2 SCH BiS, 1 week for each accessory. They are all BiS. Myth are basically throw at you between CT/Treasures/DR/Dailies.


So yes, getting BiS gears in this game is a nobrainer, they are literally handled to you. Meanwhile, crafted items, require you to 1) Level a craft (or find and pay one), 2) Pay money for/farm items 3) Meld your equip/Buy materia 4) Run dungeons several times for tomes item. Then, when you finally have your crafted item, they are not better than most iLevel 90 (or even CT stuff, jeez) stuff from myth tomes that, I repeat, are freely given to you with little to no effort.

Does this seem fair, to you?

---

One is limited by lockout, the other is unlimited but requires more effort.

For people who don't have much time to spent to begin with, they will probably be able to wait it out without doubt.

But for people who have time in their hands, and they have the time to invest....it's not too much to grind for a couple crafted pieces.

When it comes to new contents, I don't sit around and wait for my BIS so I can have an easier time getting a win. And as a person who plays multiple classes to fill roles, I simply can't acquire BIS through just weekly tomes and coil loots.

Neither you or I can justify what's fair just base on a small fraction of people's opinion.

I would have loved to have seen a system them involved both high level crafting and endgame dungeons. For example instead of obtaining an Ifrit weapon or accessory upon defeating Ifrit, you obtain a fragment of Ifrit's Horn that can be used to craft a weapon/accessory. This concept could apply to any equipment and any content and it supports both aspects of the game.

On a related note, I loved the system in 1.0 with battle regiments where you had to do something specific to get a drop, for example breaking off Great Buffalo's horn.

yes yes but people gearing up through myth alone are at least contributing to the health of the duty finder.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Taruranto

Does this seem fair, to you?

---

No, not fair. But - and this is the issue I think SE is desperately trying to avoid - whenever any crafted piece of gear is BiS, it encourages pay-to-win. Gilsellers don't even have to take the time to level a craft - they just need to sell enough gil to players who want to buy what the crafters are crafting.

Gilsellers and gilbuyers are a fact of life. However folks feel about whether SE is doing a good job of combatting RMT or not, it's unlikely that they will ever be totally rooted out. By insisting that BiS gear drops only from high-level dungeons (or, in this case, by collecting a special currency that is only obtainable via high-level dungeons), the only way that RMT can peddle those wares to folks is by going through the same level-grind and gear-grind that normal players do. If RMT DO go to those extremes, and SE managed to kill such an account (or, more likely, a Full Party's worth of such accounts), it's a much bigger blow than if a low-level FATE or Leve farmer was knocked out.

It's a kick in the 'nads to crafters, to be sure, but it's hard to argue with the logic. As it stands, for an RMT group to sell anyone BiS gear, they would either need to carry them through 450 Myth worth of dungeons every week until the piece is earned, or require use of the customer's log-in information so they can do everything for them. Either method, but especially the latter, puts a great deal of risk on the customer, which is a pretty potent deterrent, and requires the RMT crew to level characters to a point where they can do this Myth farming.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

Last time I made them it cost 800 gil to make 3. Made my own shark oils these are stupidly expensive if you dont make your own. They have a 100% hq rate they sold for 1000 each. I was making 2200 gil a synth profit.

You aren't hard core enough if you don't want to preform at max dps, I sell these potions pretty well.

---

different server = different market factors

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CamAlch

On a related note, I loved the system in 1.0 with battle regiments where you had to do something specific to get a drop, for example breaking off Great Buffalo's horn.

---

Yes, this was good.
But it was not with battle regiment. It was with specific skills from specific classes
Like Concussive Blow from PGL to break an antelope the horn or to punsh away the head from a skeleton
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com.../battle02.html

This is going to be a little bit of an odd rant on crafting that I have. People say that you can't expect crafting to be awesome and give you the best end game gear without unbalancing things. I say you're insane. Let's run down a list of games and how they managed to do some really awesome things with crafting.

Everquest - Scars of Velius probably one of the better expansions in terms of lore even with the unfinished storyline of the tower of frozen shadow. It had a three way war that you could participate in. It had GOOD gear you could craft that only raid gear could beat. On the same note it also had some of the hands down best loot, a shawl of awesome stats and bonuses that was the end of a long line of quests (Perhaps less grinding and waiting and more relicy like current games. If i hadn't been a druid with track this woulda been even more hell for me). The best of the best crafted gear often DID outperform raid gear. But it was no drop. And involved raiding in many cases. And involved putting in time and effort. So, you go into the next expansion. Good gear to craft and some nice toys you could use as well. Each expansion till the latest ones had good craftables but they required people to go and do things and minus things like bows(which gave up AC in a slot most tanks wanted so it was geared towards rangers or swapped in for pulls) very narrow in scope.

Anarchy Online - Still going. VERY VERY involved crafting system. Have to use your level up stats to go into crafting rather than going into other stuff that would help you in combat. Often leads to crafting bots. But the crafter needs items that are gotten from dungeons as baselines and it's very VERY well done even if it is archaic.

DAoC - This game had wonderful gear with no stats at release. high quality giving huge damage resistance and damage(Store bought 85% quality drops 85% quality in most cases, some quests and drops could be 85%-100% quality but for the most part the only way to get above 90% was to craft it which had a bottom level of 90%. This had a very VERY bad crafting system by today's standards but it had an order/delivery service you could use to cap out your skills and make money from the begining of the game no matter your level and the ability to salvage items and use them for siege engines and defenses. In Shrouded isles you could enchant your gear that was crafted and even OE(over enchant) with the chance of breaking it. The amount o enchantment it could hold was based on it's quality. It wasn't till most everything got nerfed and EA pushed most the stuff that made the game good out the door that the game started dying).

EQ2 - Actually had a better crafting system than this game. I'll just leave it at that since the game itself didn't grab hold of me for very long.

FFXI - This game had so much in crafting. Cooking that was not just viable but essential. And not just essential but situational. You needed to figure out what food you wanted or needed and often times this changed as you upgraded gear. Cooking was huge, wood working alchemy and others were used to make things such as ninja tools and arrows and other consumeables that allowed people to perform at a higher standard. While again an Archaic form of crafting compared to say EQ2 or this game it was really fun. Add on to that the best tank gear for it when HQ'd or the gear for Promy(the empty gear for the first few) were really useful. Fishing bait was made cheaper. You could get items from vendors or you could get a crafter to amke one cheaper maybe. Or make a HQ of it.

What do 4 of the 5 of these have in common? 3 of them have had paid subscribers for around a decade. They've had closer knit communities because people work with one another. Raids provide gear yes. Crafting provides gears. Raids provide crafting materials FOR gear(Specific drops not this bullshit you buy from the vendors). Even if it's not open world(or even if it is and you handle it like rift or the Odin/Behemoth fights and make it a bit more forgiving. Iunno about you guys but I think that collecting the shards of Odin's sword and going on an adventure to restore it to it's true glory or crafting behemoth horn weapons, having to do all sorts of stuff to bring out the primal force that is a behemoth would be an interesting storyline AND work well.(Because honestly, the behemoth outside the CT is a hell of alot more scary than the one inside).

Materia needs to be expanded/uncapped or just removed and have crafted HQ's upped in stats. Because as it stands you can't stack good stats there are no side stats as people have said. And to those who said there was no good gear for crafting in WoW i'd say you were wrong. There was gateway raid stuff. Ilvl 200 or so when the expansion hit. And it was wonderful till the pity epics got thrown to everyone. You had a thriving economy and yes you have RMT. But the problem with RMT is when you put in too many controls. FFXI's biggest issues with controls was the 7 item limit on the AH. I dunno about the rest of the servers but argent dawn had a number of guilds who would flood the market undercutting super high prices by the gold sellers and had GM's actively doing their job and tracking them. This game seems content to just block them by making gil meaningless so let the RMT run free because nobody cares.

But that's my point. People DO care. Some people say "Crafting shouldn't have a place". Others say "Crafting should be able to craft great gear!" And others say "Crafting should be a stepping stone and nothing more.

My response to this is this. If this game is ever going to get out of it's gate without sacrificing the crafting classes to try (And unsuccessfully so far guys) kill RMT you need to make it so that player interaction is USEFUL for crafting. Add Tiers of crafting like the stars. Each tier would require different things. Now, if you wanted to do top end crafting to make the best gear in the game(Or rival) without setting foot in a dungeon, what's wrong with that? Should it be quick? No. Should it be easy? No. If you wanted to, could you take 1,000,000,000 light leather and then turn it into the highest quality leather (well a handful at this point probably) to craft a good armor piece in WoW? Yes. You could. Which would take less time and effort? Running a few dungeons or spending months farming and skinning boors that only give 2xp a pop(Yes I made that reference).

Crafting is as much about a sense of accomplishment and goals as what everyone wants to go on about. Some people want world firsts. Some people want their name on their gear(Signable craft crystals in FFXI. Hi). Some people want to get past the RNG that hates them(It took me 63 kills total to get a moldy earring in FFXI with a TH5 half the time because my luck sucked that bad. I actually was told to sit out of HNM's IF i wanted things because my LS actually thought that I was cursed and that if i wanted it and was there it wouldn't drop. The sad part is that the drops i got were from me running into zone and getting them after months of refusing to listen to them. A funny story but true.) This game doesn't have to be an everything to everyone game but this game has three main flaws and this is one of them.

1) Crafting and gathering have little to no reward. I don't see people demanding they make millions of gil. I see people who are like the dragoons of old in FFXI after sam nerf. They couldn't hold out the DPS themselves and if their drake died... They lost about 30% of their DPS which made nobody want them. And unlike there you can't just sub a mage job and have 3 drg's soloing IT's with healing breath). Stating 2 items out EVERY CRAFT that is useful is not really very useful. Cooking is minimal at best but it did make me money and it did have a purpose. But most people refuse to use it anyhow. I've had to kick people for refusing to use food when progressing in coil when we had people who couldn't make it. But the fact of the matter is that gatherers and crafters want to feel like they are a PART of the game. As it stands yes you can get a minor upgrade going for it. But the amount of money is insane and few have the cash to meld so expensively.

2) 100% Vertical climb. With huge a limit on who you can take(As in numbers and class composition with how limit breaks work and the mechanics they're shoving down throats). This. I never imagined why anyone would say that everything before 50 doesn't matter. I imagined a DEV would say that and mean it. The journey is worth it. I can't think of a game that i played that the journey to cap level wasn't MORE than worth it. friendships and guilds forged in the adventures had. From black burrow to westfall to Darkness falls. (Yes many different games) you had people you'd run into you'd work together and you'd have fun. You'd develop relationships and could go do things together.

3) This one is something that comes from 1 and 2. People talk about this "Toxic community" often and others make fun of it. I"ll let you in on a secret. FFXI wasn't half so toxic as this game is. WoW for the longest time wasn't toxic. Most of the fights i saw were over gearscore and alot of them were from people in full PVP gear without ANY pve stats (Hit etc that you need for raiding) bitching that someone with a 'worse score got in'). One thing that got me was when someone said that people would be upset about people not having new gear and having this happen. "Oh you don't have X item bought? Bye.". Why don't you look at all the "No relic? No full Mythology? Bye." I've seen people with the "Best" crafting stuff turned away from farm groups because they literally wanted ilevel 85 or 86+. That's how dumb it's gotten. And the worst part is that Yoshi P even said he had people play WoW to get an idea on how to do this right. The problem is WoW is hemorrhaging people for a number of issues. People are getting bored. People don't feel the challenge. People bitched and moaned about boss fights in FFXI WoW and EQ. All still take subscription(Although EQ has a terrible free system that forces you to sub if you ever raided and yeah. This comes from someone who has gone back a few times.) The best parts about WoW was the storylines in vanilla and Wrath of the lich king. TBC was ok but meh. You had crafting in both of those parts of it that were wonderful. You had gear that was insanely good not just in bonuses but in being nodrop for the crafter that required either dungeon runs or very long quests. Most the people I know who quit after lich king(I quit shortly after cata came out because i wasn't a fan of my classes being rebuilt from scratch every expansion, although that game STILL has more diversity in builds than here. Funny with the multiple jobs and everything huh? Oh wait that's sad not funny. i get it mixed up.) Except for now with the preorder to 90 thing they're trying to get people up to the same level as the majority of their fanbase(Because if you look at EQ making leveling easier and others it was there to catch people up to a fan base not to marginalize the world they built). Right now FFXIV seems to be doing what other games have done or attempted to do out of necessity to bring players closer together... But instead they're using it to drive them apart. No interdependence on crafting = no friendships. No interdependence on leveling at all?(And I have to say not a single dungeon in this game holds up to scarlet monastery in vanilla. And not a single raid holds up to Stratholme(which again is a group dungeon). With the lockouts on the "mini raids" and the no lock out on the "Crappy" raids you have it so that people who want to do high end stuff either ARE elitist, or are labeled as wannabe elitist. It separates everyone. Nobody bothers working together when leveling up unless they're on the same quest and don't wanna maybe fight for spawns. You might get a heal or something. That's about it. That's a bit if too. And this brings us to some of the reasons that other players I know have stated they've left wow. "What little community is left is eroding under the trolls and the 'elite' who think they're better. And what's left is just doing free raids that you eventually face roll through with the buffs." So it seems to me anyhow that they're looking at and copying the wrong parts of WoW... They should embrace the crafter. They should allow people to have melded armor or break spiritbonded armor regardless of the source(Except perhaps the artifact armor. stuff that MIGHT be used in updates at a later date. There should be an option in the party or duty finder to select "This server only" so that people can choose to try and group up with people they might say hi to. I think in all the times i used it leveling my jobs i met... 5 people total. That's it. just 5 people. Normally i ran with 1 person who was my friend, but still. out of however many runs I did that's just terrible. You lack accountability and you give out pity "epics" to people who can't actually play nice enough with people to actually go and do dungeons with friends but heaven forbid a crafter be able to do something useful in this game? At this point there are a VERY VERY few accessories that can be used if you spend the millions to meld them. You also have food. Could be improved but it's by far THE BEST. Then you have alchemy. Not the worst because potions when poped at the right time for stat boosts CAN be very useful. Say alchemy is the most useless and I'll deny it. Vit potions have saved my life as both a paladin and a warrior and our drg has saved our life with str potions when I still ran coil. Weak yes. Useless, no. Everything else though? Totally not worth anything. And that's the point. People have different wants. Different views. You have to try and make them all happy. But when so much work was put into this you have to wonder just what is FFXIV to them? They still aren't working with the ISP's (which most games do the moment this happens or even gives them forewarning.) I came back to this game after 1.0 wanting to love it. I found some friendly people of the same mind when I came back. I loved crafting in the other games i mentioned. The pride of wearing your own marked item was nice. Having a prestige item like a coldain prayer shawl(or it's later upgrades) and other crafted items were not only a sign of grit as a crafter but also of your dedication in raids. I mean, is it really that hard to have three sets of craftables? Sub dungeons. The whites. Can be Aetherial level if melded and HQ. Dungeon, requires specific drops from dungeons but has materia spots in it. and raid stuff. Screw the tomes. You want an ilvl 100 caster staff? You need the piece off the boss itself. Personally I think that they wanted to get as much money back as possible on this game and don't want any bad press so they just say accounts instead of subscriptions whenever they release information. It makes things look good, word gets out on sites and people look into it. But in the end they'll be lucky if the end up with the "sustainable" 400k people. Because remember, "casuals" are huge in number but leave on a whim. While the hardcore little taru who's trying her little heart out to help craft gear for her free company and friends would stay. (BTW, I do not view casual as someone with no time or skill to be 'hardcore'. I view them as the word suggests. They have a casual interest. They don't care all that much. it kills time they finish story get to the point they can't progress and unsub.)

I don't really have any hope of crafting or gathering ever being a significant part of this game. The game is made for players to be self sufficient, and for anything where crafting items are actually desired the supply is so ridiculously high that it still usually eclipses the demand and all but a few items are sold for pennies on the market board.

You can't have a game where every player gets handed everything they could ever want just for showing up and then also have resource gathering, item creation (crafting) or the economy hold any kind of substance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

Last time I made them it cost 800 gil to make 3. Made my own shark oils these are stupidly expensive if you dont make your own. They have a 100% hq rate they sold for 1000 each. I was making 2200 gil a synth profit.

You aren't hard core enough if you don't want to preform at max dps, I sell these potions pretty well.

---

The only expensive about the shark oil are the silver sharks. It take time to catch them (you need first to catch a HQ living bait before you can catch a silver shark with it). More time if you don't have a fisher ready.
The hammerhead sharks are easy to catch at the silver bazaar.

Chayala wrote a wall of text there but all of it makes perfect sense.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Chayala

I dunno about the rest of the servers but argent dawn had a number of guilds who would flood the market undercutting super high prices by the gold sellers and had GM's actively doing their job and tracking them.

---

This indicates a pretty fundamental failure to understand how RMT crafters work. RMT don't OVERPRICE. They UNDERCUT, and substantially. Because they literally work the game for a living, they can mass produce items and sell them at prices so cheap that honest crafters (who, in addition to playing the game, have to work for a living, or go to school, or whatever) wouldn't bother with because the profits are too slim to be worth their limited time.

The rest of what Chayala wrote is pretty much true, but also not anything folks don't already know. Yes, other crafting systems were more robust and useful and (in some cases) enjoyable, and yes, they were hotbeds of RMT. Usually not directly, though - RMT would provide the gil/gold/whatever, and then gilbuyers would use the profits to buy the best crafted goods, pushing the prices of those goods uncomfortably high for players who played honestly.

Players complained, and that's why things are the way they are in FFXIV. Say what you like about whether it's a good thing or bad, the fact is that the effects of RMT are much neutered in this game. Sure, there's still plenty of advertising, but the only folks I can imagine actually buying gil are morons who want to buy their own house, or suckers who simply don't understand that the best equipment gil can buy will still only take you through the first stages of endgame content. (I can only imagine the nerdrage: "I spent $500 for this iLvl 70 equipment - WHY CAN'T I BEAT TITAN???")

In FFXIV, to progress through endgame, you need to earn your equipment THROUGH endgame. There's no shortcuts available to gilbuyers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lazearus

I wish they would reconsider making DoH/DoL as actual classes again, like being able to actively participate in end game content like 1.0's hamlet defence. That was such a unique experience.

It's such a waste of potential to develop the classes so much, only relegate them to playing passive roles end game.

---

Completely agree. Also let me say that this trend of crafting items from tomestones is ridiculous. A huge slap in the face to DoL....

It's a shame because this is the second game I've ever played (first one was Lime Odyssey) where crafters/gatherers have their own gears and skills. In other games, you had your "gathering" or "crafting" class without any personality at all (lvl 90 char with tons of irrelevant skills fishing in a random pond.) In this game, you can actually become a "fisher" or a "botanist" by fishing, harvesting or logging. You can use the right materials to craft gears and weapons that will let you improve your DotL/DotH stats. I don't think crafters/gatherers will be a major force in this game since it's a theme-park MMO. Unique armors/weapons can't be sold because they're "bound", so it's all about gear fetish and pure vanity.

There is always the possibility to bring untradeable crafted gears.
All what Yoshida need to do to make it possible would be bringing ingame untradeable mats from dungeons and a feature where other players can craft for you without giving them the mats for it (like the materia request feature).
This way dungeon raiders still get their gear from dungeons (even if only as a mat at first), crafters can craft for endlevel players and RMT are not involved

When Square can find a way to link the difficult endgame fights to the crafting system while still locking out RMT, they'll have done their work well.


The only problem is, I don't see how they can definitely accomplish that without requiring the crafter be one of the players who felled the difficult enemy.

I'll say it once, I'll say it a million times.

Making crafting actually worth doing is more important than stopping RMTs. I'll take all the stupid gil-seller spam you care to add to the game any day if it's a side effect of making crafting actually enjoyable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Penguinmayhem

I'll say it once, I'll say it a million times.

Making crafting actually worth doing is more important than stopping RMTs. I'll take all the stupid gil-seller spam you care to add to the game any day if it's a side effect of making crafting actually enjoyable.

---

Dear gods, no, I want to craft and gather in peace thank you very much. Maybe to you black listing a name every 10 seconds while crafting is enjoyable, but not to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Penguinmayhem

I'll say it once, I'll say it a million times.

Making crafting actually worth doing is more important than stopping RMTs. I'll take all the stupid gil-seller spam you care to add to the game any day if it's a side effect of making crafting actually enjoyable.

---

This. Having a fun game to play should always take priority over having a game with less spam. Always.