The Direction Of Crafting

1st of all am not here to say bring back all the glory of crafting and make crafting OP and all which even if I would love to see it happen, I also have come to understand Yoshi-P stance about it.

They even said so before about how OP melded gear can be even when its lower I level than the raid rewards, which is true and also untrue (you would need to spent stupid amount of money on the melds, so not many people could actually do it)

But lets accept it, people craft because they like to craft, and they are taking that away from us.

Then, (oh god i will hate myself for this) why not do it the WoW way (he already copied a lot of stuff from WoW anyway) and make crafters able to alterate/enhance gear from raids add materia slots, add a crafting component to add stats, there are so many things that could make crafting part of end-game raiding that doesn't need to be crafting whole new gear, and break the balance of the game like they fear.

But the lack of use for crafters in this patch beside making BIS gear for crafting the best crafting gear, is deplorable, Only interaction crafters have with raid groups are the alchemist and the culinarians and nothing else. Yoshi-P said so before that he doesn't want to put much attention on crafting and yes that is ok, but then don't add systems that break the people that want to craft and let them stranded in nowhere, let us participate, i even gave up on crafting on this patch cause the lack of incentive and I really like to craft.

Ps. Am not gonna go in the whole red scrips things since there are lots of treads about it already

Agreed 100%! There are posts all over the place about this problem. Hopefully they see how upset about the current situation most players are and make some changes.

I mentioned this idea in another thread, but it may be worth bringing up here as well.

Allow crafters to make special materia which can be attached to any gear without slots. Dungeon drops, raid drops, tokens, anything without slots.
Put the recipes into their own section, and have each crafter make this special materia for lets say 2 weapons and 1 armor type... Basically distribute the item-specific recipes evenly across all crafters in a logical way.
Additionally each crafter will have the ability to make the materia for EVERY stat, preventing absolute market domination by whichever crafter gets Det or Crit, and all materia use the same ingredients, again to make it as fair as possible... Also for the love of god dont make the materials retardedly rare... who am I kidding though? =/

Now the fun part. Make 2 versions of each recipe:
One version produces a tradeable materia which has a 75% chance to attach to the item.
The 2nd version produces an UNTRADEABLE personal materia, which has a 100% chance.

This gives people an incentive to level their crafting classes, but does not outright force them to do so. If the mats are not ridiculously hard to come by, and each materia costs maybe 50k in mats with a 75% chance to succeed, then people will not feel "forced" to make the personal versions.

As for the crafting end of things, lets say the recipes are all 1 star difficulty with a reduced (75%) max quality, but have a requirement that you must hit 100% quality for it to be useful. We cant exactly make this a cakewalk. ;)
And for the materials themselves, why not use something like the Unaspected Crystals? Just add a new hidden item on ALL lvl 60 nodes, with a 50% appearance rate called Materia Remnant or Aetherial Remnant.
Make it a lvl 60 item so it is obtainable with reasonable lvl 60 gear, and have the recipes use some... 20-30 per attempt.

Yes, 20-30 lvl 60 50% hidden gathers per attempt on a 1 star item that requires 100% (slightly reduced) quality. This is supposed to take some effort, but be entirely un-gated and fit within a reasonable timeframe.

When I saw this thread title I was SO reminded of the crafting compass bit in XI.

http://ffxi.lokyst.net/timer/crafttimer.html

It won't happen the stuff your suggesting would become mandatory for every progression raid group which is not what Yoshi wants.

Unless it can be raised by a small amount and no more than 2 matirea slots it won't happen.

They went the right way with having crafters make fun/glamour/non-essential gear like minions and furniture. However, they then limited the market extensively by having overpriced and underavailable housing.

Many of the things that should keep crafters and gatherers busy throughout patches has been greatly affected by things like this. I had hoped Airships would require teams if crafters all making things to put together in the home but it takes one person to click a button whilst three people stand and watch. Also, they limited it to FCs. Imagine if all households could become airship manufacturers & make, repair & upgrade personal airships for everyone?

So much potential, so little enthusiasm.

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Originally Posted by Dererk

It won't happen the stuff your suggesting would become mandatory for every progression raid group which is not what Yoshi wants.

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I love this game but the direction Yoshi is taking is just disappointing.
"Theme Park MMO" is a horrible concept and this is his entire concept.

Crafting is its own thing, its own section of the theme park and he doesn't want it to touch end-game PVE which is a terrible decision.
Things are going in a way where there's just no point in gearing up if its just to make better gear the next patch - whats the point in spending time and effort on gathers and crafts if its just for your own gather and craft gear?

It needs to evolve. Too many things in this game are so basic even MMOs older than WoW did it better.

I don't really think lack of making endgame gear is the problem. Rather, it's the massive amount of time and effort involved to earn a pitiful non-reward. They could give us more valuable items to make or they could stop pushing crafting into this ridiculously hardcore direction. Either one would work.

One thing that Yoshi et al forget is that elite raiding isn't the end game for the majority of players. Their own data shows that less than 300 people are on A4S & struggling with current topped gear.

Why can't crafters make gear that is BiS, or near BiS for PVP? Why not introduce saddles or other items for Chocobo Racing? There's so much more to FFXIV than Elite Raiding but everything tome wise is geared towards it which leaves a huge gap of nothing for crafters & gatherers alike.

I'll probably never set foot in Alex Savage so that's not *my* endgame. They need to remember that.

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Originally Posted by Culfinrandir

Their own data shows that less than 300 people are on A4S & struggling with current topped gear.

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This and

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Originally Posted by seorin

crafting into this ridiculously hardcore direction

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This

They seem determined to make everything about elitism and e-sport. Yet the community keep saying they don't want to devote all their game time to waving their digital penis around in adolescent sword fights.

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Originally Posted by Dererk

It won't happen the stuff your suggesting would become mandatory for every progression raid group which is not what Yoshi wants.

Unless it can be raised by a small amount and no more than 2 matirea slots it won't happen.

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Yea because Food and Potions are definitely not mandatory for every progression raid group... excellent logic.

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Originally Posted by seorin

I don't really think lack of making endgame gear is the problem. Rather, it's the massive amount of time and effort involved to earn a pitiful non-reward. They could give us more valuable items to make or they could stop pushing crafting into this ridiculously hardcore direction. Either one would work.

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Part of why this tier of crafting is so awful is the massive grind combined with the lack of desirable recipes. All the DoH gear that you care about (glamours) can be obtained without being a 2* crafter and the i160 chest pieces for DoW/DoM are the main piece people would go for which makes the i180 gear pointless.

As the OP suggests, WoW kept crafters in business by having consumables each of them crafted for upgrading gear. It's a way of making every crafter relevant for the duration of the patch because people are always upgrading pieces.

That's the issue, the end of the road for crafting just doesn't have recipes you look and go "SWEET I CAN"T WAIT TO MAKE THOSE" it's more like, meh. Carpenter especially, lookie at what I can do if I got the red scrip gear.

4 crafts for crafters, 3 accesories and 1 weaver secondary tool
1 Lumber used in 18 recipes
4 furniture

So for my efforts of gearing up Carpenter the above is all there is to look forward to, gear that improves crafting, and then I use it for Gear I can't even HQ lol.

It would be more fun if they actually had more recipes that one could actually look forward to but when the only non-craft used gear are 4 pieces of furniture there is just not much desire to care about reaching the top since there is nothing to look forward to.

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Originally Posted by Airget

That's the issue, the end of the road for crafting just doesn't have recipes you look and go "SWEET I CAN"T WAIT TO MAKE THOSE" it's more like, meh. Carpenter especially, lookie at what I can do if I got the red scrip gear.

4 crafts for crafters, 3 accesories and 1 weaver secondary tool
1 Lumber used in 18 recipes
4 furniture

So for my efforts of gearing up Carpenter the above is all there is to look forward to, gear that improves crafting, and then I use it for Gear I can't even HQ lol.

It would be more fun if they actually had more recipes that one could actually look forward to but when the only non-craft used gear are 4 pieces of furniture there is just not much desire to care about reaching the top since there is nothing to look forward to.

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Alchemist is a good laugh.

5 Dissolvents used for DoW/DoM gear no one will ever craft.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

Alchemist is a good laugh.

5 Dissolvents used for DoW/DoM gear no one will ever craft.

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I try not to think about it. I've been an Alchemist since years ago in FFXI and it's my chosen craft in any other MMO if it's available. Granted, it's been in a sad state for awhile--the last time I felt like I was really getting mileage out of it was back when Terminus Putty was rather important. I still use it daily for AF Augmentations, but those aren't exactly engaging to craft (especially at 60).

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

As the OP suggests, WoW kept crafters in business by having consumables each of them crafted for upgrading gear. It's a way of making every crafter relevant for the duration of the patch because people are always upgrading pieces.

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On the one hand, I agree. On the other, that alone wouldn't be enough. Anything locked behind the current grind would be extremely expensive, and there just aren't enough people who can and will spend that kind of gil. Looking at the statistics from their live stream, less than 10% of players have even hit 60. The number of those with millions of gil to spend is a fraction of a fraction, and those willing to part with some of that gil are fewer still. Even if we made BiS gear, we'd still be fighting for scraps. That can't change until they severely cut down the time investment to something more sane to the average player.

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Originally Posted by seorin

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If they want to put a grind in front of end game crafting then they can't make our only contribution be catch up gear, or progression gear that's only relevant during the first few weeks. This gear is far too expensive to make even after the grind is surpassed to even be considered a "catch-up" piece.

However, if we were making some type of consumable upgrade that you apply to a piece of gear then that would be relevant at all phases of the patch and will always be necessary. It would work similarly to how a glamour prism works in that you'd need to reapply the buff every time you got a new piece of gear or if you wanted to change stats.

I'd understand the logic of hiding a consumable like this behind 2 adamantite ingots (or equivalent) because they'd always be useful and they'd make people think very hard about the piece of gear you'd want to use it on. Hell, the pointless dissolvents could be used to make each equivalent stat buff.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

Hell, the pointless dissolvents could be used to make each equivalent stat buff.

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That's honestly what the tooltip suggests they do, too. It would be a decent niche for ALC at this point since they've killed the stat potion market (and plain not introduced new Potions and Ethers).

This game has built the most beautiful crafting and gathering system I have seen in any MMO, but has done nothing worthwhile with it. They sandboxed it away from raids as much as possible. You'd think they would have pulled more from the predecessor FFXI and would have integrated crafting more with end game gear.

Welp atleast my Au'ra looks good in the 2 Star crafter gear I guess. Crafting is just one big Glamour chase now lol..

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Originally Posted by Ossom

Welp atleast my Au'ra looks good in the 2 Star crafter gear I guess. Crafting is just one big Glamour chase now lol..

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Sadly I prefer the level 50 AF for 2 out of 3 of my crafter mains, so I don't even have that to look forward to by and large. ;;

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Originally Posted by Alahra

That's honestly what the tooltip suggests they do, too. It would be a decent niche for ALC at this point since they've killed the stat potion market (and plain not introduced new Potions and Ethers).

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That's what I hoped. What we got was Grade 1 Terminus Putty of Strength, Grade 1 Termins Putty of Dex etc.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

That's what I hoped. What we got was Grade 1 Terminus Putty of Strength, Grade 1 Termins Putty of Dex etc.

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Yep. They sell fairly often on my server but at relatively poor margins. I doubt there will be a stable market for the Grade 2 Dissolvents until they either buff the item level of the 2-star gear or severely nerf the materials requirements.

I don't think it's either/or - we need both better recipes and lower costs before crafting will approach anything remotely as fun and useful as it was in 2.0. Even if we could craft BiS gear, you will never be able to sell enough gear at a high enough profit to offset all the time and gil spent gearing up and melding materia. They definitely need to add new stuff or improve the existing recipes, but it will barely do any good if the time and material costs stay the same.

The part that's a joke is they say its intended to be "catch up" gear, but the time/gil cost to make these items is far beyond anything you'd expect an individual that is just returning to the game to have on them.

The other problem is that tome gear requires such a low time investment to equip yourself that it begs the question why you would even choose this alternative in the first place.

The sad irony is that SE has stated they don't want BiS crafting because it would encourage RMT, but the only people I can feasibly see having the resources to gear themselves in i180 crafted gear in less them than they'd spend farming tomes would be gil buyers.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

The part that's a joke is they say its intended to be "catch up" gear, but the time/gil cost to make these items is far beyond anything you'd expect an individual that is just returning to the game to have on them.

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I still don't understand why they couldn't have done two things:

1) make 2-star gear i170 and relatively as easy to produce as i70 gear was at ARR's launch, providing an alternative to tome gearing (melded i170 gear would be about on par with i180 gear, too, providing an avenue for people that dislike Hunts) and;
2) introduce i190 gear in 3.1 to coincide with the release of the new 24-man, with a grind not unlike the grind to produce i90/i110 gear in 2.2/2.4. Pentamelded i190 gear would be about on par with the (presumably) i200 gear, and the 24-man patches have always been catch up patches anyway, so if it's easier to gear than it's no big deal. They had already begun to do precisely this with weapons and accessories, so they could have moved *all* of the gear to the second patch and stopped it from having too much impact on progression, which is supposedly what they wanted.

Structured like this, they would have kept pentamelded gear from greatly impacting the Savage world firsts, but provided crafters with something relevant to craft, and the gear wouldn't have been so impactful that it would require a grind so ridiculous as the one we have now.

I just can't wrap my head around why they did things the way they did.

The only problem with that is i70 crafted gear and i70 tome gear both required Philosopher Tomes to acquire. The cost of the i180 gear would be less of a problem if you could just get the mats with Law tomes, and frankly the gear is so irrelevant making it easier to acquire would just make them more feasible as glamour pieces than as actual side progression.

Problem is that previously, with melding, you could argue that an HQ i110 piece is at least a good alternative to an i120 tome piece that had less than desirable stats and would allow you to free up tomes/twines for other slots. Given that tier V materia isn't widely available, I hesitate to say that HQ i180 gear is even on par with the Alex i190 gear.

Who were the target customers for this gear?

...and who are the target players that are supposed to be making it?

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

The only problem with that is i70 crafted gear and i70 tome gear both required Philosopher Tomes to acquire. The cost of the i180 gear would be less of a problem if you could just get the mats with Law tomes, and frankly the gear is so irrelevant making it easier to acquire would just make them more feasible as glamour pieces than as actual side progression.

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Oh, right, I'm not sure why they didn't keep the mats on the Law tomes, for that matter. In my head, it was implied they would have kept things that way when I was mentioning that above but I wasn't explicit about it. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the old system. They just needed to delay when we could acquire the "top" gear. They already solved the "progression problem" by increasing the gap between lower tier tome gear and high end tome gear/raid gear, anyway. They took far more steps than they needed to.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

Oh, right, I'm not sure why they didn't keep the mats on the Law tomes, for that matter. In my head, it was implied they would have kept things that way when I was mentioning that above but I wasn't explicit about it. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the old system. They just needed to delay when we could acquire the "top" gear. They already solved the "progression problem" by increasing the gap between lower tier tome gear and high end tome gear/raid gear, anyway. They took far more steps than they needed to.

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I'd have liked a Law tome mat if anything to provide a tome sink and provide a gil stream for non-crafters/gatherers. The accessibility of coke/scheelite/ehcatl sealant as a form of income is what allows non-crafters to afford 1-2 million gil accessories and armor pieces or 40-60k HQ food every week.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

I'd have liked a Law tome mat if anything to provide a tome sink and provide a gil stream for non-crafters/gatherers. The accessibility of coke/scheelite/ehcatl sealant as a form of income is what allows non-crafters to afford 1-2 million gil accessories and armor pieces or 40-60k HQ food every week.

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That too. The interplay between DoL/DoH and DoW/DoM-focused players was a substantial part of the economy in ARR. I really can't fathom why they eliminated it so completely. That aspect of the system worked quite well and I'm not sure why it was a casualty when their apparent goal was deadening the impact of crafted gear on progression.

The direction I am sure SE is heading in is that of decreased omni-crafting necessity, increased focus on specialization and further pushing people to cooperate and work together to accomplish their goals shown with such things like specializations and FC crafting workshops. They cannot stop omni-crafting from existing long term as people can get around it with alts in order to have every kind of specialist but they can lower the need to be an omni-crafter plus entice people to not go down that route via making each specialization highly rewarding as single entities. Such things as some unique specialist recipes would be a prime example of such rewards.

There are still issues too with red scrips, especially on the crafting side but those will be balanced over time. However having caps and/or limitations is something they have always done, it was done more so with DoW/DoM content in the past than DoL/DoH content but I think they will continue to make DoL/DoH more balanced on par with DoW/DoM style group cooperation in order to advance to the top of the food chain. They will continue to make minor adjustments in all areas until they feel it is balanced correctly but will be baby step changes not large scale knee jerk reactions.

They almost certainly won't allow for DoH to craft endgame top tier gear for a multitude of legitimate reasons so that is not likely to change in future too. Within a couple of months the market will also start being flooded with red scrip materials once more and more people no longer have to decide between gearing their DoL/DoH and spending their scrips on materials. It will be slow process as more and more people fully gear up on red scrip gear but eventually enough people will have progressed to that stage that they will switch to purely spending the scrips on materials for either sale of aforementioned materials or crafting items for sale, the availability on the market will continue to increase as time goes on as will the decrease in prices.

That's how I see SE's direction they are taking crafting in the long term.

The ONLY way to remove Omni-crafting from being a thing is to make all the cross class skills available to every class. Byregot's Brow was a step in that direction, but a very short and weak one.

The level 15 moves between 15 and 25. The level 37 CC moves would have to be added between 37 and 45. The 50 CC moves would have to be done around 51, 52.

The other part of that would be to reduce the inter-dependency for refined materials. Can't eliminate it, as that is part of the economy. But reduce it.

So I've got all my crafts to 60 and max melded the omni level 60 gear to 2 star stats. And I've come to these conclusions too. (Hence why I'm here) there really just isn't any "aim" for 2 star. I got here and thought "yay! I can make everything!" Only to find its locked behind an epic grind thats makes the whole process worthless. And people are right in saying there just isn't any point in crafting the said items.

I don't understand why they don't make UNTRADABLE gear crafts EQUIVALENT to raid gear. Gives incentive to level crafts yourself and doesn't make crafts pointless. He'll. Use your token system to be able to buy mats to make them for a quicker gear over buying them outright. Just.. something to make crafts relevent.

By token system I mean Alex savage token system not red/ blue scrips ;)

What this game is lacking is weapons and armors with unique bonuses. back in the FFXI days there were so many items that had unique abilities that kept it useful, and you had to choose to sacrifice defense for extra stats, etc. Everything is so linear, pick the highest ilvl gear and wear it, no brainer. How about certain crafting set items, or unique items that have extra bonuses when you wear the full set, gives more customization, of your character outside of just glamour. Materia/armor sets/weapons that alter certain abilities and spells, thats what makes loot interesting. No one cares about extra wind/water/fire protection stats, its not fun.

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Originally Posted by chumsy

What this game is lacking is weapons and armors with unique bonuses.

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It's lacking crafted gear that matters. Left side gear has always been trivial and useless, except for glamours and rare circumstances that 99.99% of players won't care about, and right side gear is only useful if you are a tank that is trying to balance dps and survivability.

Superior tome gear can be acquired at such a casual rate and the crafted gear is so expensive and time consuming to make that the devs calling it "catch up" gear seems to insult our intelligence.