End game and crafting: a topic for discussion

Heya folks,

With Massively having all their end of the year awards or "awards" being.erm, awarded, I've been thinking about MMO endgame features and FFXIV specifically a bit lately. To start it off on a positive note; I *LOVE* FFXIV CRAFTING. It's one of the best in any of the few MMOs I've played. Props to the designers for that.

Idea for discussion-

Remove gear drops from all progression/endgame dungeon and raid content and replace them with items to upgrade crafted AND basic class relic gear to an appropriate ilvl and appearance. In fact, do this for ALL non-crafted/class relic gear in the game.

Say you just hit lvl 50 and have your shiny new set of relic gear. Hit the dungeons or DF farm raids (aka CT/ST) to get nifty materials to upgrade your gear.

Got a crafter to 50? Make a set of awesome crafted gear equivalent to class relics and hit the content for upgrade materials.

Not a crafter but have the mats and want to upgrade your gear? Do a fun short quest line to upgrade.

Got the mats and you're a crafter of high enough level? D I Y baby.

New raid/ilvl tier? Oh look, the crafters get new patterns to make the entry-level gear for that tier.


Your thoughts?

You're funny. I like you.

I do think they should have more combination of dungeon/raid drops and crafting, but it shouldn't include all drops.

My thoughts when i read this: Is this a troll thread?

If not you are indeed a funny guy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Illmaeran

Remove gear drops from all progression/endgame dungeon and raid content and replace them with items to upgrade crafted AND basic class relic gear to an appropriate ilvl and appearance. In fact, do this for ALL non-crafted/class relic gear in the game.

---

Crafting has no place in Current End-game content. Crafting is merely a gateway - you should be able to get all Entry-level gear crafted, but once you have that, there should be -no- more gear that comes from crafting.

It's, to me, like PVP and PVE. I do not want to have to PVP to get PVE gear. And I do not do PVE to get PVP gear. Keeping the worlds seperate means that each side gets to enjoy their own. Crafters enjoy crafting because they can make i110 gear that is useful for people trying to maximize within the cap (End-game raiders.) PVP'ers enjoy PVP because they're not being held at gunpoint to do PVE anymore (At least if I recall correctly) to get their gear that doesn't serve them in PVP. PVE'ers love our PVE because we don't have to deal with crafters, PVP, etc unless we -choose- to (Crafters, getting better armor sets / perfectly optimized)

Right now the balance is perfect. Kindly; keep crafters out of raids unless you plan to make my parties 10 man to accomodate them putting the work into the fight with us (Special Crafter Mechanic: Craft an item in 10 seconds or wipe the raid! :P Also it costs 10 mil per attempt for the crafter. /trollface)

I was, and am, indeed serious. However, I was just tossing ideas out there for people to talk about and see what other ideas come out of the discussion.

I feel strongly that raiding, and PVP too, should offer rewards commensurate with the difficulty of the content/time invested, so please don't think otherwise. What I would love to see is more synergy between crafting and other content. Making entry level or "gap filler" gear is nice and all, but it seem to me that there could be more to it.

In no way, as one posted mentioned, should a DoH class be allowed into a raid.
That being said, having raid specific material drops that a player with a high enough DoH class could use to upgrade gear would be a nice acknowledgement of the effort it takes to be a highest-tier crafter. Having a separate small quest for an NPC to do the upgrades if people don't want to bother with finding a DoH or leveling a DoH class to do the upgrades would be another nice touch.

Again, these are just crazy-ass thoughts I figured I'd throw out there to spark discussion

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday; whichever one you celebrate this time of year.

Crafting gear should be an option that can yield big payoffs if you play your cards right (look at the world firsts when they did the final coil fresh). People who never invested in crafting classes should not be punished for making that "mistake", nor should people feel like they have to go hunting for materials just to upgrade gear (you already got enough of that for relics).

Yoshi and Square have always been very staunch that they designed this game to be a WoW clone. It was intended to be a very superficial, surface level action game intended to cater to the quick fix, raider heavy player base with a Final Fantasy wrapper. Unfortunately, unless they decide to change their mind on that crafting will never be anything in this game than an obligatory addition to appease some requirement to include 'some' crafting element.

As the comments in this thread have shown support for this kind of a change will be very difficult as they already have an entrenched player base that enjoys the end game drop/token grind and are going to fight tooth and nail any concept that would include having to either level or god forbid, talk to a crafter. As more of these players grind out and leave we may eventually see Square interested in focusing on the needs of the long term crafting types but honestly by then some other better crafting game will have launched and they will all be gone anyway.

Sorry Shadex, but I don't agree with making crafting mandatory for the sake of not restricting people on how they can progress. As I said, crafting gear should always be a comparable option, but never a mandatory solution to gear overall.

Well, you are a few years late OP.

Tanaka's 1.0 was like this, all gears were crafted and the NMs back then (Great Buffalo, Uraeus, etc.) drops mats so you can craft the rare gears.
Crafting was a very important part of the game and almost everyone was forced to craft at least for your own repairs because the repair NPC's price was crazy high.

It was a fun experience and I do like the idea because having a piece of gear drop directly from a monster kinda makes no sense to me.
Having the material drop, like Uraeus Skin dropping from the Uraeus and you bringing it to a crafter to make it into the Silver Tricone seems a lot more reasonable.

But then again, not everyone likes to be forced to craft and the economy were controlled by the crafters back then.
If you didn't know a good crafter or is a good crafter yourself, you are pretty much screwed.
People actually called it Final Crafting Fantasy back then before Yoshi-P took over.

Oh, those were the days....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Enis

If you didn't know a good crafter or is a good crafter yourself, you are pretty much screwed.

---

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

---

Depends, you can look at this in a few ways, spend 30 plus minutes to find that right crafter at the right price etc..., the searching alone for that 1 person isn't very social.
Raiding with 7/23 others in a common goal for a few hours a night is more socialable no?

I personally do not enjoy crafting and do not want to have to rely on crafters for gear progression.
I would accept crafted equipment as bring equal to dropped equipment but I do not want it to be necessary.

Interesting thoughts and opinions folks, thanks! Let's keep it going.

Upon reading another Massively article regarding crafting systems, I'm seeing some irony (in a good way) that many people feel this WoW clone, FFXIV, has the best/most robust crafting system of the current crop of major titles.

How then, can we increase the synergy between high-end crafting and high-end content while ensuring that players who place importance on their time spent on said high-end content feel satisfied while also giving continued relevance for the time spent leveling crafting?

Some more of my thoughts going on the assumption that most high-end FCs have at least one max level DoH for each discipline in them:

1. Give high-end raiders/PVPers access to content/ranke-exclusive glamour skins to go over crafted gear.

2. Make all materials needed to make and upgrade high-end gear exclusive drops in specific raids (FCoB gear mats drop in FCoB, etc) or require a certain PVP rank to purchase.

3. Make raid/rank exclusive crafting patterns available as drops (PVE) or for purchase (PVP).

Just some idle musings from a guy bored at work today...

Just now i see that "green" crafted items are bad sale. Materials costs, sales are very low. Most of gil are from lvl 50 and less item sales. This makes really huge efforts to levelup craft after 50 nonproductive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by raelgun

the searching alone for that 1 person isn't very social.

---

Yeah that's why games would form communities and guilds. You would know multiple crafters and the crafters would know multiple gatherers, who would in turn know you.

Everyone would work together to accomplish their goals instead of raiding with 7(23 you can't pick who to raid with so that's pointless to mention) other people isn't a social experience it's a experience in silence for the most part.

Knowing people allover the world, working together, traversing a dangerous overworld to gather materials and bring them back to your comrades to in turn make you gear to be more powerfull...now that is a social experience, not hitting the qeue button.

Now let's take your idea, while keeping gear drops from bosses, while adding unique crafting drops to them to make the best gear. Of course this best gear might also be terribly itemized, you'd also have to craft it yourself. It'd require 20+ kills of said boss to gather the materials to make it. It'd be themed to the raid tier of course. Not getting the loot you want from the current raid no matter how many times you've done it? Fret no longer, you can now make something that may or may not be better!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

Everyone would work together to accomplish their goals instead of raiding with 7(23 you can't pick who to raid with so that's pointless to mention) other people isn't a social experience it's a experience in silence for the most part.

---

You can actually form a full 24 premade group btw.

Also everything you have just described is also identical for raiding.

working together to accomplish a goal in raiding is the same concept, its just subjective preference, and its up to the person themselves what is deemed a social experience, not you as an observer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by raelgun

Also everything you have just described is also identical for raiding.

---

Can't say I agree with you but your entitled to your opinion.

I'm just not how you equate a dungeon to Crafting/gathering/battle all in one, spanning a community wider than 7 other players (Sorry even if you can pre-made Crystal tower the only relevant content happens with 7 other people and you can only do it once a week) involving a entire overworld.

But you could be right...in perspective that's all the same as a tightly controlled corridor.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

Can't say I agree with you but your entitled to your opinion.

I'm just not how you equate a dungeon to Crafting/gathering/battle all in one, spanning a community wider than 7 other players (Sorry even if you can pre-made Crystal tower the only relevant content happens with 7 other people and you can only do it once a week) involving a entire overworld.

But you could be right...in perspective that's all the same as a tightly controlled corridor.

---

Except the corridor works both ways. The crafting market really isn't a social function, in fact, most people in an 8 man raid group is bound to find at least one dedicated crafter among their static.


It's a failing of logic to say that a singular game mechanics is responsible for encouraging social function. A mechanic a veteran of FFXI often makes. This is simply not true. The higher social functions of older MMO titles such as Everquest and FFXI was due to a large, overcast environment of progressive inconveniences that forced players to interact. A lack of recruitment functions, exorbitant pricing and investments for any sort of accomplishments, high participation requirements for content to be completed and long... oh so long grinds.

People grouped out of desperation to get things done, not out of a desire to connect. This lead to many abusive social systems and stigmas that we are still dealing with in the genre today, in addition to it being one of the major factors that kept the MMO market highly niche.

If anything, the ease of play availability is allowing players who are more social in nature to actually socialize, to gather together for player-made content and open events, and the ease of FC recruitment and social interactions. The difficulty is, the scope of an individual player is narrowed the larger the actual player base becomes. The narrower the base, the more repeat faces you see, and the more social you become with them. The less you see them due to the wider group you're dealing with, the less social they become.

Thus having the social skills to actually get involved with someone becomes all the more important. The mechanics of the game aren't doing the work of establishing familiarity for you, at least, not unless you find yourself in more remote corners of the game where you see the same people more frequently. (PvP, high end crafing, Roleplaying, etc.) And still, more legwork on behalf of the player is needed because the average requirement for a play session is lower. Far less waiting around, more getting things actually done. A player with outside interests or obligations are far less likely to be social. And in a game with greater ease of time investment, there are going to be more present than before.

So, no, tieing crafts to progression isn't going to magically make the game more social. FFXIV 1.0 was more social due to the much smaller, closer knit base that stuck around in spite of the game's faults, not due to any one mechanic. Players who want to socialize in a modern MMO, need to do the necessary legwork require to sift tough the players who are not interested in a the trappings of old MMOs as an excuse or instrument to get others to socialize with them. It actually takes some networking.

An issue with centralizing a gap bridging function around crafting, or really around ANY one aspect of the game is you then have that aspect become a must, and crafting is by far the worst choice of the possible progression choices. ABSOLUTELY worst! The market prices for materials, gear, etc., is already very inflated. Making a craft vital to bridging a gap between players of different ilvls means that this trend will inflate faster. So, no, I definitely, completely, and adamantly disagree with making crafting required in any way, shape, or form.

I won't sit here and pretend that the fresh 50s don't have issue with advancing quickly to catch up with others who are already well established, and this is a problem that needs to be handled, but not by funneling them into using any certain one method cored around one aspect of the game. What makes any MMO great is the availability of options to bring about a goal. Crafting, as it stands, is right where it should be, just right behind the end game gear, for one reason, the customization on it makes it far superior to gear of its equivalent ilvl. If they released ilvl 130 crafted gear along with Final Coil, there would be a sever lack of need of FCoB.

Other options that really need to be implemented are things that shouldn't have ever been removed in the first place. Philo tomes and Myth tomes shouldn't have been removed at all, only given the option of trading between the classes of tomes (while they implemented the function to trade up, but a function to trade down should have been made available too. This would make the previous gear drastically easier to get, instead of turning them into dungeon drops (Myth gear is effectively a dungeon drop now). New gear appearances should have been made instead for the new dungeons. One of the worst choices a designer can make in a game is removing any system already implemented. Outdated systems should only be made easier when newer systems are implemented that are harder. This ensures that your game keeps the relatively same level of progression for players who are freshly reaching the end of the game. As it stands, players reaching 50 are finding that they are struggling to get the tomes to buy Soldiery items because the dungeons they have unlocked already don't even give 1/10 of a piece of gear. And the items that use to be so easy to get with Philo or Myth are now squabbled over by players in a dungeon and subjected to the RNG of a dice roll.

With the massive hunt nerf too, getting the soldiery items from a hunt is just as difficult as it was before the removal of Myth tomes. Where Soldiery was suppose to essentially become the new myth in this sense, it remained stagnant... no, it became worse actually. Fewer people do hunts now. I'm not saying that hunts should drop Poetics now either. No. My ideal fix for this would have been instead to have all the hunts drop the same number of tomes, only different tomes (i.e. B ranks, Philo, A ranks, Myth, S ranks, Soldiery and 50 of each is fine) This way, Philo gear, will remain very common, and still be considered very introductory, Myth gear will be in the middle, and the Soldiery from the S ranks will only be slightly easier to acquire. And probably put the spawn rate of B ranks up a little, to maybe 5 to 10 minutes in random locations.

Another option I see is the use of Labyrinth and ST and the new 24 man. Since Labyrinth drops gear of ilvl 80, in between philo and myth, it should go back to dropping 100 philo and 50 myth. ST, which drops ilvl 100, in between myth and upgraded soldiery, should go back to dropping 100 myth and 50 soldiery as well as the upgrade items for soldiery pieces. The new 24 man should drop 100 soldiery and 50 poetics as well as the upgrade items for poetic gear.

All of these changes would ensure player just reaching end game wouldn't find progression in ilvl so difficult or jumpy. As it is, the only real reason they are running the lower ilvl dungeons is for the tomes to jump to the end game, but the rate at which they are able to acquire the gear is slowed due to SE decreasing the amount of tomes dropping in lower dungeons because the types of tomes are for a higher ilvl. This doesn't really help them at all. It simply makes the game feel like a complete grind. So, drop more tomes of a lower grade, so that these players can feel like the dungeon is more worth their time, but still effectively makes their progress no faster. We aren't talking about just giving players their gear, they will still have to put in work towards the gear, but their progress will FEEL better because they will be looking at new pieces more often instead of sitting on the same ilvl 50/55 pieces for weeks on end before replacing one piece with an ilvl 100 and repeating that same grind for weeks again for another piece.

While i can certainly agree with wanting Crafters to interact more with Raiders, but forcing those who enjoy raiding to have their raid gear crafted by some random guy, who may not even get it HQ after you went to the all the trouble of downing the encounter sounds like a terrible idea.

What i think should happen is that Raids, such as Coil and the Primals, drop materials themed to those Raids in addition to what they drop regularly. These materials can be used to create alternate, same item level gear with similar stats. Maybe even in some cases the crafted stuff is just exactly what the boss would ordinarily drop,
This would help take the sting out of RNG never ever dropping gear for that one guy who has no luck whatsoever and is forever behind the gear curve in your static as a result.

They could even have specialty sets from the Primals that are themed to the presentation of the Primal itself, Like Ifrit and Titan themed Armor.

Such a system would include the ability to have a Crafter make something with Materials in your Inventory, much like the way the Materia Meld Requests work. That would allow the Materials obtained to be non-tradeable while keeping the ability for Crafters to join in.
The Item would be automatically deposited in the Material owners Inventory so it doesn't just become another Market Board vanity thing.

Such an idea would allow crafters to be in some form of demand by Raiders outside of niche 1% cutting edge crews. Who most likely craft their own gear.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Enis

...snip (post#10) ...and the economy were controlled by the crafters back then.....

---

While I liked the entire post, this is what I thought was most relevant to the thread. I immediately thought about what Hyrist eluded to in post #20. If you were to have the class players dependent on disciple players, you would create an environment directly manipulated by those with access. You would essentially influence players to become segregated and recluse to the population as a whole.

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage, when the sample group is large enough, they will. You will have players who feel the game is social, when in fact they are disillusioned to the fact they are only social within their small demographic and antisocial to the player base as a whole. It's not intentional for the most part but people tend to mistake their experiences with 10-20 (or so) individuals in an mmo as an accurate measure to judge the social activities as a whole for that mmo, which is of course unknowingly ignorant and bias but understandable as it is natural.

The following quote is an example of the aforementioned misconception:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

---

post #11 in response to a post by Enis

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Illmaeran

Making entry level or "gap filler" gear is nice and all, but it seem to me that there could be more to it. . .

That being said, having raid specific material drops that a player with a high enough DoH class could use to upgrade gear would be a nice acknowledgement of the effort it takes to be a highest-tier crafter.

---

Actually, a number of classes have crafted gear as part of their true BIS lists each patch (though we'll need new materia in 3.0 or I don't see the trend continuing). The only thing is each piece costs several million gil on most servers, so no one wants to pay it.

As for your actual idea, it's something I've kinda recommended before, but I would like to put a few caveats on there. First, the raid drops should be untradeable, I think. This is to prevent RMT concerns, primarily; that is, you don't want people buying gil to buy the item to craft stuff if you can avoid it. Plus, you want to make sure that the person getting the benefit was actually in the raid, right? Second, I don't think it should be the case for every slot of gear. More reasonable would be something like one or two pieces per job. Lastly, the "runner up" if you can't get the crafted item should be very, very close behind. Probably about on the order that current dropped gear is behind crafted: about 6 of your primary stat's worth of stats if you went all out.

Basically, I'd like to see a reason for crafting to be in endgame, but without ruining the fun of those who don't like crafting.

I'd rather see IV/III Materia drops from chests in place of the current crafting mats.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stihllodeing

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage

---

But nobody has or ever will be "Held hostage" unless they choose to allow it. Everyone can craft, everyone can battle, everyone can gather. Allowing people to specialize and require each to rely on eachother is fundamental to community building not a powerplay to see who can screw who over.

That's pretty much allready in the game when you see materia prices, it sure isn't the "People with the power" it's the people who have the time to spiritbind and sell materia taking advantage of the people who either don't have time or are too lazy to do so.

I'm also unsure where you get the magic (10-20 or so people) to be considered what a hostage population considers social interaction because in games where people are reliant on eachother for progress and development you certainly mingle with far more than 10 people unless your avoiding social contact then nobody can help you, thankfully the game allows you to do everything and you don't need to be reliant on others, it is mutually benificial to do so but not required.

Currently it's hardly benificial and in many ways discouraged to socialize once you have a group of several people because anyone beyond that is bound to be left out of activities due to silly things such as lockouts and other restrictions.