Future Ideas for Crafting

While crafting in FFXIV is enjoyable and at times, profitable, it does feel as if the crafting system is put to the side as a minor thing, rather than a system that can be included. I may find myself being flamed for this line, but I do feel that every player on the game should experience crafting at its most basic level, without having to go into endgame crafting. The following suggestions were made with the thought of having an inclusion of crafting into the battling scene besides crafted gear and bikini glamours. Discuss away, negative or positive, about my suggestions.



Endgame Raiding and Crafting

Square Enix improved the relevance of crafting in endgame with 3.2, by making ilvl 220 gear craftable and meldable, some pieces comparative to ilvl 240 drops, as well as making all blue-tier gear meldable. However, I feel as if there could be more done to include the crafting process in the raiding scene itself.

The current endgame raids reveal two chests upon victory, with RNG at its beck and call at what each of the two chest drop. Many of us probably would have experienced the scenario where, late in the patch cycle, accessories and gloves and boots drop to the floor because everyone has those ones and are looking for another item that refuses to drop. With the tokens from Alexander Savage, this RNG is alleviated somewhat, but seeing two items drop to the floor repeatedly is still something to break a heart.

My suggestion is to keep the two chests, but have only one gearable item drop. The other item would be a 100% drop rate crafting item, that can be used to craft a raid-item category of your choice.

Let's use Fist of the Son (Savage) as a theoretical example. With my suggestion above, upon victory the chests will drop, say, a Midan Neckband of Healing, and a Midan Nugget. The Midan Nugget could be used to craft any accessory piece or belt piece.

My suggestion to stop the Nugget from being sold for exuberant prices is to make the Nugget itself Untradeable, similar to the gear; whoever wins the Nugget thus cannot trade or sell it, and can only discard or use it to craft their desired accessory.

To further use the example of Midas Savage, each floor will drop a crafting item that's equivalent to what that floor usually drops, for example:

Fist of the Son (Savage) -> Midan Nugget, used for Accessories and Waist slots.
Cuff of the Son (Savage) -> Midan Leather, used for Gloves and Feet slots.
Arm of the Son (Savage) -> Midan Flax, used for Head and Legs slots.
Burden of the Son (Savage) -> Midan Silk, used for Body slots, and Midan Ingot, used for Weapon slots.

My suggestion for the actual crafting is for the recipe to be equivalent in difficulty to the current red-scrip turn ins, so easily accesssible to fresh lvl 60s. Upon fashioning the item, the gear would be unique and untradeable anyway, so there's no need to make it inaccessible to most people. Most raid people I know have at least most of their crafters to 50, so maybe even make it a lvl 50 recipe, just to make it less likely to fail.

The other mats for such an item should be cheap and affordable; after all, the crafting item is already the 'expensive' item. The one problem I can see with this method is the risk of failing the synth, or disconnecting during it. Maybe making the crafting item unable to be used until it HAS been successfully made into a gear piece will solve it, but I don't know if the programming allows for it. I know the programming allows for recipes to be used by multiple crafter classes (Ixali crafter quests) so this could be implemented to make a potential raider only level one crafter to 50/60 to make their desired pieces.

That's the suggestion I have. I feel that, in endgame raids, it will make crafting more appealing and inclusive, rather than as an aside used for melds and repairs as is normally the case. As for the recipes themselves; if SE continues to include storyline mode, then the recipe book for all the raid gear could be a quest reward after completing the last floor of the normal mode, or the quest reward after unlocking Savage mode.

Positives:
- Removes some RNG factor from drop rates by allowing raiders to select their desired gear piece to craft.
- Bring greater use of personal crafting to the raiding scene, without having to deal with a fluctuating market or expensive prices.
- Incentive to craft for people interested in creating their own pieces.

Negatives:
- Forces raiders who don't want to craft to pick up crafting. (As said above, I personally feel this is a non issue as most raiders have picked up crafting here and there)
- A slight increase in expense for other mats and time.
- Risk of failure from synth through mistake or disconnecting.


Alternative to Recipes

Frankly, I find opening books to obtain recipes boring. There's little excitement to be had about opening up your menu and finding all the information there. I want some other method of obtaining the crafting method that brings even that small spark of discovery and joy.

My suggestion is to have alongside Crafting Recipes are Crafting Plans. What I envision for Crafting Plans is, instead of the list that Recipes have right now, Plans instead have a silhouette of the intended generic crafting piece and boxes around the image equivalent to the amount of mats required to craft. But instead of having the names and quantity required, the boxes are empty, with the only hint of what that certain mat is being where the box is placed on the silhouette.

The goal is to have crafters pick and choose materials to slot into the Plan, and upon discovery of a successful combination, that Plan is then turned into a Recipe and placed in the crafter's crafting log. I see it as a way of spreading knowledge through the community of what people have discovered, and also a way to have branching recipes; for example, a silhouette of a neckband may have two of the same materials, but one combination with a dragon leather and the other with a griffin leather results in one being a GP+ neck and the other a Melee DPS neck piece.

What I suggest to obtain these Plans is similar to how we obtain Recipes atm; Blue Scrips, or, when a high tier of Scripts come out, Red Scrips. Exchanging them for the Plans will unlock, say, a "Crafting Material Crafter Plan (Cloth)" or a "Discipline of War & Mage Crafter Plan (Body)" under that respective craft, and from there, experimenting with materials will result in Recipes.

Something that branched off the Plans idea was to have Temporary Plans. The Crafting Plans proposed above are Permanent Plans; once they are bought or obtained, they can be used forever without re-purchasing or finding them again, and the items used to obtain them Untradeable. Temporary Plans, however, could be obtained from dungeon drops or GC headquarters through hunts or seals; in other words, Temporary Plans are used to make glamour gear to lessen the pain of RNG.

For example, say that Lost City of Amdapor (Hard) and The Antitower drops a "Temporary Dravanian Crafter Plan (Body)" from the final boss. A person who really wants the Dravanian Coat of Fending obtains the Plan, then slots in materials until he finds the right combination to get the Coat of Fending. After using the combination and crafted the body, the Crafter Plan and the recipe for the Coat of Fending disappears and cannot be used again until another one is obtained and the materials slotted in again.

That means that the Temporary Crafter Plans will be sellable, as I am suggesting them to be drops from dungeons in particular. I know many a person who wants an item from a certain dungeon for glamour; this way, RNG could be lessened while not giving free reign of the player to craft every glamourable piece consistently, especially as the piece would be a Unique/Untradeable item anyway.

Positives:
- An alternative way to finding recipes
- Glamourable pieces locked behind RNG could be more easily attained, but not to the extent of being floodable on the market.
- Greater freedom of choice.

Negatives
- Dat-miners could easily find all the combinations straight off the bat
- SE needs to make lots of combinations/recipes to make it worthwhile
- Too complicated for some.


Those are my two main suggestions for how crafting could be improved upon. Positive or negative feedback welcome; this is the discussion board after all.