Future Endgame gear vs crafted gear with Materia.

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Originally Posted by Firon

pics plz i wanna see this 5.5k hp pld/war with melds cause i think its bs i know a pld on Sarg with triple hp tier III meld in all slots you can get it in and does not have 5.5k hp.

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I doubt you're going to get a screenshot. The character he's used for his profile here is just a sock. If someone isn't even prepared to say who they are they're not going to show themselves. That way they won't be able to continue to troll the forums without getting a bad rep ingame.

May as well stop feeling the troll.

As for the original topic, I think its absolutely ridiculous. Making raid gear better than anything else will only serve to remove what little is left for end-game DoH and DoL classes. With the exception of CUL and ALC who can still make food and pots, no one else will be needed.

I think the best solution is that that the game started with and several others here have already mentioned. Items like Dodore Doublet where the final item is crafted but the materials for the synth come from end-game raid/NMs along with other materials from high level gathering points. Have the top end-game equipment require ALL aspects of the game to be included, not just repeating the same few dungeons again and again because we know how fun that is from Primals, right?

If the issue is that they can be bought, then make the items and/or the materials untradable and offer an interface for people to have items crafted for them or don't and make the best gear require players to personally do all areas of game content in order to get the best gear. Its a harsh solution but getting the best shouldn't be easy.

For something that the OP says the vast majority of people want, I'm pleased to see that the vast majority of people here disagree.

It may have been brought up already, and I apologize if I am beating a dead horse, but personally I were a rather big fan of the Cursed Abjuration system in XI. It required both high-level crafts and endgame content to be done, a good middle-way between crafters and "raiders", both relying on one another. I'll admit to not have read all 13 pages of this thread.

I do not agree that crafted (and melded) equipment should come second to any drops you may find in end-game content. This removes the need for crafting more or less completely (you can argue that you can just as well level "naked" with leve rewarded equipment, until you get to NM drops at Lv.30 and 35, which you can use until Lv.50 and AF). Not everyone wants to do crafting, no, but you aren't exactly forced to do it either, as you can get others to craft, meld and repair for you. Currently, some of the absolute best equipment is from drops at any rate, and there are only a select few slots (mainly accessories), where crafted items are truly better and/or "needed".

Break it down, see how much you really need to do; In certain cases, do end-game content with friends to get the expensive materials (ie. Spruce Pattens—Garlean Rubber, Vanya Sash—Garlean Fiber, Darksteel Haubergeon—Garlean Steel Plate), sell what you don't need to purchase the remaining ones and find a crafter you trust (LS friend in example) to make your item. Go out and Spiritbond some cheap equipment (made by your friend and/or purchased on the Markets). Put up a Melding Request for your crafted item, once you get your desired Materia.

An example of a PLD tank gear setup (would be more or less the same on WAR):

Sword: Garuda's Gaze (Garuda)
Shield: Serpent Sergeant's Hoplon (Grand Company)
Body: Heavy Darklight Armor (Aurum Vale)
Hands: Heavy Darklight Gauntlets (Cutter's Cry)
Legs: Heavy Darklight Flanchard (Cutter's Cry)
Belt: Sentinel's Plate Belt w/ Touch of Rage and/or Bloodthirst Materia IV/III's (Natalan + Melded)
Ring 1: Electrum Ring +1 (Crafted)
Ring 2: Blessed Ring or Stonewall Ring (Aurum Vale)
Earrings: Stonewall Earrings (Cutter's Cry)
Neck: Militia Choker (Hamlet)
Wrists: Coral Armillae +1 (Crafted)

How much of this is crafted again? Two pieces and one meld? It's the same case for mostly all the jobs available to us, the better stuff, depending on what you focus on, is likely going to be from drops in end-game content, and not from crafting. There are a few exceptions to the slots, but that's only reasonable in order to keep a balance.

Should we take a look at a different class? How about DRG?

Weapon: Ifrit's Harpoon (Ifrit)
Head: Darklight Eyepatch (Cutter's Cry)
Body: Darklight Corselet (Aurum Vale)
Hands: Darklight Gauntlets (Cutter's Cry)
Legs: Militia Subligar (Hamlet)
Feet: Darklight Caligae (Cutter's Cry)
Belt: Veteran's Field Belt or Explorer's Belt (Aurum Vale)
Ring 1: Electrum Ring +1 (Crafted)
Ring 2: Explorer's Ring (Cutter's Cry)
Earrings: Explorer's Earrings (Aurum Vale)
Neck: Explorer's Choker (Cutter's Cry)
Wrists: Imperial Operative Wristlets (Castrum Novum)

With very good equipment, you only need one crafted ring. A single item, and no melds at all. How is this calling for crafts to be second to all drops? Sorry for disagreeing, but I would rather see them increase the amount of synergy between crafters and "raiders", through more drops "raiders" can use crafters for, to make their great equipment. Not for every slot, but more than what we currently have. This is why I really liked the Cursed Abjuration system of XI. The crafters depended on "raiders" to get their gil, the "raiders" depended on crafters to make their equipment after getting drops from end-game.

I don't mean that I want the exact same system, but I at least, enjoy the fact that Castrum Novum drops materials for very good end-game equipment. And hope to see them develop this trend further.

Hmm, very long discussion here.
Easy solution: SE can bring dungeon gear that is similiar to tripple materia gear with a lower droprate than the current AV+CC gear known as darklight gear (bette gear = lower droprate). Hmm, say 0,05%

Hardcore players keep their reward if they are hardcore enough, content don't get outdated too fast and crafters can still sell their stuff.

ITT: OP doesn't want to craft. Uses poorly informed argument to convince community crafting is bad mmkay.

Why not make a variety of tiered raid gear that is comparable to melds.

Some pieces, equivilant to double meld (through differing methods.) and some, comparable to triple meld?

This shouldn't be a matter of 'This should be better than another." Because you're going to want them anyways. They're trophies. Now, what you can do to entice others to do the raids is offer unique stats from the raid gear that's different from the raw stats from other gear.

Vice versa applies as well.

I've said this before, but the concept of 'one optimum build' is unhealthy for MMOs, it creates power creep and that can be detrimental to the long term life of content. Content should be clear-able without the 'best in slot' looming over each player's head. There are other prizes that can be won that people would desire - such as housing items, powerful consumables (Unique Materia anyone?), Summons, titles, and other perks that can be gained on the personal or even Company level.

You do not need to tie raiding to the best gear available in the game to make it desirable.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Hmm, very long discussion here.
Easy solution: SE can bring dungeon gear that is similiar to tripple materia gear with a lower droprate than the current AV+CC gear known as darklight gear (bette gear = lower droprate). Hmm, say 0,05%

Hardcore players keep their reward if they are hardcore enough, content don't get outdated too fast and crafters can still sell their stuff.

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Making things a random 0.05% drop rate isn't good game design, and something they hinted would be going away.

XI still has that going on if that's what suits your fancy.

Ok yea Im a troll, whatever you just dont like hearing about any real problems this game may come against. SE has 1 shot to get this right after 2.0. We can only hope that they make good decisions, and not cater too much to crafters which have the potential to ruin this game So just continue to stick your heads in the sand.....

The most helpful soloution I have heard is the abjurations idea. Make this the norm for drops from EG content, and that way crafters could still be useful w/o being OP. And you still have to do the dungeons to get the drops to complete the item. Have it work like in XI where non-crafters can just use the abjuration on the cursed item. However, the cursed items themselves dont need to be overly hard to make or use insane rare items, then the system will start breaking down and become too complicated if anything else is added. The only other thing I'd add is because the uncursed item was originally crafted, it should be able to be able to receive 1 or more melds. Leaving that last portion up to the player on whether or not they should risk it. As for hard mode dungeons, just make them require +1 abjurations and +1 cursed items. (Bind on creation of course) Its not what I'd love, but it is something I can get behind.

Who knows maybe SE has something like this in mind, but if they continue with the way it currently is .....
I'm just gonna favorite this page, so I can have it ready with my "I told you so" post when 2.0 implodes. And Im done with this thread, may you all live in interesting times.

Ah, the pattented "OH I'm going to save this to scream "I told you so" the instant FFXIV 2.0 comes out and isn't a wowkiller, cause, you know, I'm a bitter person like that."

Hey buddy, why not stop focusing on the "I" and put a little E-asy going in there and you'll become a Better person, eh?

People disagreeing with you is not the end of the world, nor the end of Eorza, for that matter. There's a big giant flaming ball of something up in the sky that threatens it already, and it sure ain't made of opinions.

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Originally Posted by Chardrizard

The discussion is over when OP said triple meld isnt rare, let alone quad meld, those are prolly close to non existent.

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Yeah, I stopped reading there to be honest. :D

The biggest problem with making crafted stuff so good is that you can get it solo. Like even the easiest group content we have requires more thought and skill than triple melding anything.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

The biggest problem with making crafted stuff so good is that you can get it solo. Like even the easiest group content we have requires more thought and skill than triple melding anything.

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The counter to that, however, is the meterials risked in the process.

You can go fight a raid with a group, lose, and at worst, spend a round at the repair shop and lose a bit of gil.

You can loose several millions just trying for one good tripple meld, solo or not.

So it balances out. Tripple meld gear has lower entry requirements, but higher long term cost/risk.

Where Raiding has higher entry requirements, but low long term risks.

That should justify the rewards being equivalent.

Not to mention that crafted items almost assuredly lose value in any good game. Better items to meld to are released, better items can be melded onto said slots, materia may become easier to obtain (for the more rare types). Darklight is free and takes your time, but you don't lose anything and likely make some cash from other drops along the way.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

The counter to that, however, is the meterials risked in the process.

You can go fight a raid with a group, lose, and at worst, spend a round at the repair shop and lose a bit of gil.

You can loose several millions just trying for one good tripple meld, solo or not.

So it balances out. Tripple meld gear has lower entry requirements, but higher long term cost/risk.

Where Raiding has higher entry requirements, but low long term risks.

That should justify the rewards being equivalent.

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Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

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And, in the time you went out for an hour and got a stack of ore, you could have gone out, done a speedrun with your LS, and gotten a larger chance at an equivilant piece of gear, than your successrate at a tripple meld.

And while you can mine the colbalt in an hour, spiritbonding the armor takes longer to do solo. Not to mention the Mereria gathering itself. This is all for a chance, mind you, not a success.

You can cut the costs the way you are describing, but no matter what you do to circumvent the gil costs, it's going to cost you time.

And this is just talking Colbalt, not even touching the subject of Darksteel, which costs even more and requires rare materials form Castra Novum.

In the end, it's actually less intensive to do raiding then to craft your own from scratch to finish. The fact that it can be done solo is irrelevant in this manner, as the best you can get in terms of crafting cannot be done solo unless you swallow the price of Castra Novum materials.

So if we're going by that logic, then Crafted Gear at this venture should actually be superior. I believe I'm making fair concessions to state they should at least be kept equal - but unique from one another.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

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I think people were referring to the price of the materia itself, which yes I have been so unlucky to spend over a million just trying to get a decent double meld. Outside of +1 gear most of the items themselves are "relatively" affordable. This raid/major NM gear only attitude is for the birds. No melded gear exceeds that of Darklight or other top end endgame pieces with the exception of belts as most of them are garbage. You claim the sky is falling but it's still up there (now that red moon on the other hand...)

The personal attacks and vitriolic posts will get this thread locked, so lets put on our logic hats and discuss this like adults.

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Originally Posted by Wobi

I think people were referring to the price of the materia itself, which yes I have been so unlucky to spend over a million just trying to get a decent double meld. Outside of +1 gear most of the items themselves are "relatively" affordable. This raid/major NM gear only attitude is for the birds. No melded gear exceeds that of Darklight or other top end endgame pieces with the exception of belts as most of them are garbage. You claim the sky is falling but it's still up there (now that red moon on the other hand...)

The personal attacks and vitriolic posts will get this thread locked, so lets put on our logic hats and discuss this like adults.

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I haven't claimed the sky is falling or anything like that. The situation right now isn't that dire and I think with a few more dungeons the Tanaka crafting death-grip on this game will be completely loosened.

The point I'm trying to make is that gear acquired from group content should pretty much always be better than this materia slot machine stuff. Battle is the focus of this kind of MMORPG and it needs proper rewards and incentives.

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In the end, it's actually less intensive to do raiding then to craft your own from scratch to finish. The fact that it can be done solo is irrelevant in this manner, as the best you can get in terms of crafting cannot be done solo unless you swallow the price of Castra Novum materials.

So if we're going by that logic, then Crafted Gear at this venture should actually be superior. I believe I'm making fair concessions to state they should at least be kept equal - but unique from one another.

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And this is ridiculous. The time and effort required for 8 people to gear up, learn the dungeons, and actually get gear is more than that of a single person trying to make some doubles. Besides that, it's not entirely about time input. Difficulty of completion matters too. Crafting a thousand items to blow up might be time consuming but I'd never call it difficult.

Crafting is more intense than raiding... Wow!! I have heard it all now LOL! Must be intense sitting in ulda'h spamming a key ......

Raiding gear should absolutely and 100% be the best gear in the game, crafting should be the best gear in the game to get you the the real best gear in the game.

This isn't Crafters Fantasy XIV.

Lots of interesting discussions back and forth. But if we are looking for constructive critisism that could actually be adopted by SE, perhaps keeping in mind the following would be helpful:

1) SE is a business. It has to compete. If it tries to clone WoW (or one of the other popular places out there), then it will be competing with that incumbant. And that will be very hard. This is not a wise business strategy.
2) SE is a business. If it wants to compete, it has to compete using one of the basic business strategy principles. For example, it offers something different to competitors, or targets a different group of people (or offers a lower price or does it a lot better than the incumbant).

SE can not compete on price. Too many free to play (or whatever) games out there.
SE can not compete head-to-head on offering a better version of WoW. That is a super high risk to do as WoW is so well established.

This leaves SE to compete on Differentiation and Niche. Therefore by definition, they must make themselves different from WoW and other places that are popular. And they must target people that WoW/etc does not target.

One of the many ways that SE can do this is with Crafting/Gathering. This is not the main focus of most other games. By putting a lot of weight and focus on that here, SE creates a differentiator. Also, by appealing to people who are interested in crafting/gathering, SE targets that niche market

It may not be apparent to everyone, but crafting/harvesting is actually a popular enough activity that many games are based around that concept. (Although not sure how popular it is in NA, there are a plethora of JP related games where this is a major focus).

This of course won't be the only thing SE does to differentiate and target. SE would need to do many things. But it would be wise to realize that this is a very viable business strategy for them, and most likely they will continue to persue it. Therefore, I would think it is best if suggestions/comments/etc focused on how to improve it and keep it a mainstay as those are most likely to yield results.

As I have alluded to before, I think the best approach is to ensure a system where both Crafters/Gathers and Adventurers can work well together or seperately. Working together should yield better rewards (this is a theme in final fantasy about cooperation), but working independent of each other should also be viable.

I envision/hope a day approaches where 'End Game' dungeon crawlers can defeat vicious foes to discover a rare and prized materia that can then be melded to gear by only a truly skilled artisan. We see some clues of this already, where harvesting nodes will be in dungeons. Where crafters have to make use of facilities in stronghold like locations. We even see co-operation in Hamlet Defense today.

This is where I think we are heading, and I think this is a good direction. Just.. please... remove the randomness on melding ^.^;; I want my melds to be strategic not luck based ^^;

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Originally Posted by Eliseus

This isn't Crafters Fantasy XIV.

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No, its Raiders Fantasy XIV.

Oh, wait...

Why shouldn't crafting jobs be as legitimate as other jobs?

I'm not surprised games get a bad reputation. Some people just aren't happy unless they're killing things.

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Originally Posted by Kafeen

No, its Raiders Fantasy XIV.

Oh, wait...

Why shouldn't crafting jobs be as legitimate as other jobs?

I'm not surprised games get a bad reputation. Some people just aren't happy unless they're killing things.

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This is the equivalent of you only being able to get materia out of raids
Do you understand now why they are upset?

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Originally Posted by Ricky

This is the equivalent of you only being able to get materia out of raids
Do you understand now why they are upset?

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But that isn't the case at all. As several people have already stated (such as this post), getting the best out of your gear requires you to use equipment for a range of places, from crafted, raids, NMs and Grand Company rewards.

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Originally Posted by Kafeen

No, its Raiders Fantasy XIV.

Oh, wait...

Why shouldn't crafting jobs be as legitimate as other jobs?

I'm not surprised games get a bad reputation. Some people just aren't happy unless they're killing things.

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Indeed, the point of making crafting/gathering professions into their own classes was to give them a legitimacy that no other MMO never had done (and yes, it's been a hard implementation on the devs' part, but it doesn't help that Yoshi had nearly trashed the idea).

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Originally Posted by Kafeen

getting the best out of your gear requires you to use equipment for a range of places, from crafted, raids, NMs and Grand Company rewards.

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Absolutly agree, I currently feel there is a nice balance of melded gear vs. dungeon/gc gear. I like the current system now, and hope they continue going down this path. The amount of money and luck needed to out-stat some of those pieces is not even worth it, and most people wont even try.

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Originally Posted by Kafeen

No, its Raiders Fantasy XIV.

Oh, wait...

Why shouldn't crafting jobs be as legitimate as other jobs?

I'm not surprised games get a bad reputation. Some people just aren't happy unless they're killing things.

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Have you ever played a Final Fantasy? I'm surprised for how much people like to compare stuff to the series in this game they don't realize that Final Fantasy isn't about crafting.

^^^ What!?! I rememeber how i had to level up my armorer in FFT to level 45 so i could make a level 5 armor for my knight, in order to progress the storyline :( It was all the rage then, so it must be now....