Suggestions for relevant crafting without making top gear buyable

I may not agree with the philosophy, but I think I need to accept that Square has decided that top gear should not be available for purchase, apparently due to RMT concerns. With that in mind, I'd like to collect suggestions for ways to make end game crafting much more relevant aside from adding ilvl80+ recipes (furniture and other vanity crafts most certainly don't count in my book!).

1. As many have suggested, craft-requests similar to the current meld requests, where one or more of the crafting materials are drops from high-end content. Separate rewards should be set for NQ and HQ outcomes.

2. Borrowing from the Relic quest, let crafters create unfinished items. This already happens to some extent in the relic quest for weapons, and could be done directly for other slots without adding full quest content. Unfinished items should be 2 star (or above?) and require drops appropriate to the end result ilvl.The end user can finish the item themselves (like trading to the forge for the relic zenith).

3. Make current high end gear singly meldable, but only by tier V materia. Tier V materia would of course need to come from ilvl 70+ crafted gear, and IMO not 100% of the time. The materia need not surpass ilvl caps to be desirable, and create significant demand for high level convertible gear.

I love your idea and I can't wait until crafting has a contribution to end game, as well as materia and dyes. Because right now, materia, crafting, and dyes are almost ignored in endgame raiding.

How about consumables that give buff to armor, jewelry and MH/OH slots. The consumable could be crafted (adding relevance to gatherers), but the buff would require a crafter to apply similar to how meld requests work. The consumables would naturally be crafted by the craft that made the gear it's applied to, as with melding.

those are pretty good ideas.

1 - love the idea, would be great.
2 - in FFXI some of the top gear was a cursed drop from end game, which was combined with crafted items from material that dropped from end game stuff, would love a similar system
3 - I like it, but I would rather see 3 star at ilvl 80, and a chance at tier V materia from 2 stars, guaranteed from 3 star. 27 tome items for a 3 star seems reasonable.

In my honest oppinion the craft request is the most affordable solution.

Consumables are often used as a cheap, a very cheap excuse of a usable crafting. But why should we be pleased with consumables if we can make so much more but SE doesn't intend us to?

1. Crafted Bags/crates/chests etc for Inn Room and/or House to store non-story based GEAR in. Let the retainers be only for items is fine.
2. Crafted armor vanity sets for mounts. Currently you can already buy stuff for your chocobo from your guild. What if an armorer could make new vanity sets for your magitek armor. Weaver could make new saddle or cloth type stuff for your chocobo. When using chocobo as yoru attacking minion maybe giving it an armor set that adds stats to its dmg that could be from crafters.
3. i55 crafted PVP gear is garbage..give us something actually worthwhile. Most people just put on their main set until they get i70 pvp gear
4. Add materia slots to Dungeon/raid gear. Would allow for more crafters to do melding for tips
5. Give alchemists the ability to craft teleport scrolls/return potions etc. Although it would be small amounts of gil it could be massive amounts of sales
6. I really enjoyed the enchanter crafting class from WoW. I wouldn't mind seeing something like that in the game
7. To make the furniture market worthwhile add in single occupancy homes for a reasonable price. 1-2million or something. I'd buy my own little house for that. Then peopel would start buying furniture off the MB.

add i80 crafted gear.....had to, just sayin

I already posted this in another thread a few days ago, but it seems valid to repost it here.

"Even with the decision they've made, there are are still other ways to make crafting relevant. Like making bags that would increase your inventory space per box (6x6 would become 7x7 with HQ, and maybe give the bags special or regular materia slots too), and a magitech speeder mount that would require parts to build and new parts to replace with the benefit of not drawing aggro from enemies while on the map. And to limit the number of players able to craft these items by having players having to select a main-crafting job, which could drive up prices on those items. We could even have design plans that could make your favorite piece of gear have the same stats as the best of it's class by taking it to get upgraded at a secret shop of sorts run by talking skeletons in snazzy suits, succubi, ahriman, and other void sent. That way you can still use your favorite pieces of armor. You would need to live through the journey to get there though."

In addition the special materia would be created through a mass fusion of high level spirit bounded equipment. They also need to double gil earnings through quests, and give out a stimulus package that would be double or more of what the estimated gil owned by RMT sellers, or just make an achievement that would award players 250k gil for beating the game's regular story mode with other achievements that award players 75k gil each time they get one of their combat classes to lv50. That should help getting people to start being a little more frivolous with their money.

EDIT 2: Besides new materia slots, we could also make things like bags have slots for talismans made with the mass spirit bounded materia, which would come in several design like a rosegold chocobo. This would give goldsmiths work as well. Especially, if the bags are rendered onto the characters, but that may be asking for too much.

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Originally Posted by Dalaren

1. As many have suggested, craft-requests similar to the current meld requests, where one or more of the crafting materials are drops from high-end content. Separate rewards should be set for NQ and HQ outcomes.

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This!

A couple additions to that:

Display crafter's stats (control, craftsmanship, cp) when requesting meld so the customer can make an informed decision.

Add "Guarantee" and "Guarantee HQ" amounts. If the crafter fails the synth and loses all the items, he will reimburse the customer this amount for the loss. The HQ Guarantee is paid if the crafted item is NQ only.

Process would be: Customer Request with NQ/HQ rewards -> Crafter accepts with NQ/HQ guarantee -> Customer sees crafter stats + guarantee amounts and gets the final OK -> crafter does his thing

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Originally Posted by Dalaren

2. Borrowing from the Relic quest, let crafters create unfinished items. This already happens to some extent in the relic quest for weapons, and could be done directly for other slots without adding full quest content. Unfinished items should be 2 star (or above?) and require drops appropriate to the end result ilvl.The end user can finish the item themselves (like trading to the forge for the relic zenith).

3. Make current high end gear singly meldable, but only by tier V materia. Tier V materia would of course need to come from ilvl 70+ crafted gear, and IMO not 100% of the time. The materia need not surpass ilvl caps to be desirable, and create significant demand for high level convertible gear.

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Also great ideas!

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Originally Posted by MPNZ

And to limit the number of players able to craft these items by having players having to select a main-crafting job,

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Being able to create anything is a good thing, not a bad one. It is a trade-off : do I find a crafter to make Item X for me, or do I spend the time and money to level up that crafting class high enough to make it myself? How much is the Item X worth to me, compared to the value of my time and plat/gil/whatever it would take to level and gear up enough?

Everquest originally allowed (assuming there were recipes that could take you that far) you to take only one crafting skill higher than 200. At the time, the max was 250. A few years after the game's initial release, they offered something new : Alternate Advancement Points, which were another pool for you to fill with experience gained from completing quests and killing mobs. I forget if it was Luclin (the 3rd expansion) or Power (the 4th expansion) that did it, but one of those two offered an AA that allowed you to take an additional skill higher than 200, per rank. Additionally, a t some point they also raised the skill cap to 300.

Now, EQ only has 7 general tradeskills, compared to FF14's 8 crafting classes. There are a couple class-specific tradeskills, only Rogues can do the Make Poison skill, only Shaman can do the Alchemy tradeskill, only Gnomes (regardless of class) can do the tinkering tradeskill, but because those are not available to every character, they are not part of the "general" tradeskill pool.

Now ... having "everyone" able to craft anything from those 7 general tradeskills sounds like a bad idea, based on things that people have said, both here and on the GameFAQs.com boards. Yet .. it has not hurt EQ at all. There is plenty of competition for crafted stuff, yes. There was also a decent enough market for it - one that is mostly dead due to the age of the game and the top-heaviness of the playerbase, rather than the rampant undercutting that most castigate in FF14 - decent enough that even today, people can make a nice profit off of going and making stuff and putting it up for sale.

My point is that having everyone able to do everything crafting-wise is not a detriment to this game. It is a factor, but it is both a positive and a negative, depending both upon how one chooses to view it and upon how one chooses to react to it. Just as people choose to level only one class (with at most 2 others for their cross class skills) you have people who choose not to level their crafting classes. And, just as you have people who choose to hit 50 in all their combat classes, you have people who choose to take all the crafting classes to 50 as well.

It is part and parcel of the game's Armoury System : what's the point of being able to be any crafting class if you are, even at max level, gimped because at some point months ago you needed to be able to make some 2 star item from a different crafting class? That would be analogous to being able to be a BLM, but because your main is SCH, you can only wear up to i55 BLM gear. If they were to somehow limit what you could craft to one of the 8 classes, you would still have competition based upon how many others went that route. You would also merely have a bunch of boxed characters pop up whose sole purpose would be to craft stuff that the main cannot. In the end, there would be just as much competition amongst crafters as there is now.

(Note - by "boxed" I mean a character run on a second account. Other games also use the term "bot" for such characters, but that term has certain negative implications here in FF14 that do not apply to the characters I am talking about, and as such to the point I am making.)

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

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Oh, I agree. Especially, since that is what i looks like they had in mind when developing this game. I'm just listing it as a way to create demand and mark up prices in order to pacify the players who are into crafting. Also, I never meant that they should limit players to only one specific crafting class at lv50, and the "main-craft" is something I meant for crafters to do after they hit lv50. Most of what I suggested was ideas for more alternatives to crafting gear for combat classes and more for all the classes in general with vanity, travel, and stuff.

TBH, the housing items were released way too soon, and they really need to give crafters something else that would get them excited and filled with some kind of purpose. I don't think a little bit of restrictive crafting is going to hurt us if it doesn't create specific gear for specific classes, and I think this is a nice compromise to what they want to do and what the crafters are demanding.

I know what was meant. Everyone can get to level 50 crafting classes, and can make the 1 star and 2 star stuff .. but new 3 star and 4 star stuff would be restricted, in that you had to pick one specialty and could only make the 3 and 4 star stuff from that specialty. Or, if they are not going that route, when they raise the level cap from 50 to whatever, you could only take one crafting class higher than 50. That sort of thing.

And no, that sort of thing is neither necessary, nor beneficial.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

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No, there's no need for people to get levels higher than 50 in most any game ever made. If they did any more than it becomes tedious, and any more after that turns levels into something of a joke like in Disgaea. It's just a suggestion for a list of new craftable items, which may or may not include crafting an "upgrade plans" item for specific or all of the different types of gear, which should only require parchment and ink or nothing at all (there is also no need for new materials either). What players choose to upgrade will be a choice by the individual player at the end-game secret tailor shop thingy, if you were ever worried about that suggestion (tangent). I severely doubt that they will ever increase the level cap for this game. Besides, this game would start to feel really yucky if the increased the level caps. Just, ew!

Also, I don't see any other way that could give specific crafting classes the demand and purpose they're demanding as instantaneously as that would right now. Would you happen to have any ideas that would be a better compromise? You seem to be more experienced when it comes to MMO economies, so what would be your suggestions?

New recipes for items that are actually meaningful would give crafting classes the demand and purpose they're demanding. Don't have to restrict them in any way other than through Craftsmanship and Control requirements. Housing recipes, seeing the sheer cost of the lots, really didn't do it for anyone. The crafted items would have to be meaningful - hard to get materials, but rather powerful gear. There are suggestions regarding that floating around on the boards.

Apparently, though, you didn't hear that there will be a level cap increase, though they were not very specific about when. I think it was something along the lines of a year, year and a half after 2.0 release? Two years? I'm not sure.

I don't agree with the whole "limit jobs" to specific classes when it comes to hand/field.
That's like saying players should stick with one "fighting" job.

Just because your able to craft "all" items doesn't mean your going to waste time running around and gathering everything needed(unless your me and have lotsa free time). So other players can still capitalize only players laziness.

What I'd like to see is fun additions to dungeons that has a mixed party. For example, Miners breaking walls, or gatherers farming "herbs" for immunties for the party while "fighting" classes protect them as they work.

More specifically, I'd like opportunities to gather "more" crafting supplies. Nothing worse then farming a leg or shell of something that takes forever with multiple people on the same farm spot.