Why not let crafters (repost to right board)

There are a lot of complaints about crafting losing relevance because of the inherent munchkin nature of MMOs. The best gear comes from raids so... (finish the sentence as you like.)

It seems that SE is banking on the housing items to cover the demand for crafting, but if I could, I'd suggest taking it a step further. Why not create an entire vanity market?

For example: a vanity gear set

I for one DESPISE having to look like every other character just because I don't want to be dead weight in a party. And what's the point of having all the character customization and "beauty reborn guy" if you're just going to have everyone dress the same? Why not let crafters make things like custom barding, tabards, different styled hats, and jewelry and suits and wedding dresses?

If people want to get married on the game (I know a lot of people asked about it in the legacy days), then it makes sense that they want to have other displays of affection on the game. Why not let people craft gifts (chocolates, friendship bracelets, valentine's and sympathy cards, etc.)? Wouldn't it be nice if people actually used their moogle delivery boxes for something other than sending mats?

And if you really want to go for extra credit, why not let people craft exclusive items that allowed people specific emotes? A jump rope for jumping rope, baseball gloves for playing catch (or horseshoes if you want to stay in period), kites, etc.

This would have the following benefits:
1. It would bring relevance, purpose and profit to all levels of crafting.
2. It would create an effective money sink
3. It would help create a more friendly game community.

I know this game doesn't have a lot of rp servers and no official rp servers, but I refuse to believe that everyone came just to munchkin and fight. We also came to hang out with our old friends and make new ones. We came to have fun.

But if you insist on everything must be battle oriented, then why not just bring back the hamlet feature from 1.0 and add fortifications and such that the disciples of the hand would have to repair or add materia to while the battle is going on?

Or even easier, let them "shine" gear pieces so they could have temporary effects, similar to signet? These shines could be scattered throughout all levels and allow everyone to be more versatile. For example, say you're about to fight Titan Extreme. Wouldn't you love it if your armor had more earth resistance? (Double so knockback resistance, but I digress.) You don't want to waste a materia space on earth resistance. And your fancy CT armor doesn't have materia slots anyway. So instead you simply ask for "shine", you now have 1,2 or even 24 (I do ideas, not logistics) hours of extra earth resistance, courtesy of your local disciple of the hand. That and the fact it would stack with food and potion effects and I have no doubt that people will be screaming for the disciples of the hand constantly.

At the end of the day, the point of any disciple is that they all are supposed to be equally important in Eorzea. That's the entire point of giving them all their own storylines and gear. So why not let disciples of the hand be equally important?

I'm sure vanity is coming, and in a big way. Despite people taking their self made conclusions, that they get from the PR scraps on this forum, as gospel, I'm sure crafting will be developed in some way as well. How exactly, how long and how well have yet to be seen or determined.

I like you op. Great post, great ideas.

I like the weapon and armor buff ideas. Make the process two-fold:

1) Buying the appropriate buff which is crafted, or purchased from the market board
2) "Shining" process which would be analogous to the "Request Meld"

This would benefit gatherers as well as crafters because the Oils/Sharpening stones for these buffs would require materials but you'd still need the crafter to actually apply the buff for you. This could also help certain crafts that are really lacking in terms of end-game usefulness (Alchemist comes to mind). You could also take it a step further and have the consumable buff require a materia of your choice in it's recipe (ex: using Vitality Materia would make a consumable that buffs Vitality) which would give a venue for the Tier 1/2 materia that often become vender trash while also providing a really simple and flexible system for crafters.