An Analysis Of The Crafting Endgame

This started out as a comment to Catfish Cassie's thread Crafting a Dead Horse: Work vs. Reward Seriously Needs a Revamp but became much longer than I originally intended it to be so I thought I'd make a thread.

The current Crafting endgame is suffering for a number of reasons:

1. The only benefits that Crafting provides to Combat at the moment is food, pots, and leveling gear. None of these are big ticket items that require even a single 2-Star item to reliably HQ.

2. Even when crafting 2-Star items you don't even need a single 2-Star piece of gear to craft it. Yes, melds are necessary however the price pales in comparison (In most cases) to the cost of a single 2-Star item.

3. The only Gathering 2-Star items that can be crafted at the moment are the Accessories and Offhand (Excluding FSH which has no Offhand), and even then they aren't even CLOSE to necessary to farm the current Folklore/Red Scrip nodes, which can be done in all white gear with safe melds. This leads Gatherers to save their Scrips for their left side gear before they even think of using them for Favors.

4. With a lack of Gatherers to farm the necessary Favor items there is a severe lack of them on the market, and the ones available are quite expensive as there is little competition (Depending on your server of course).

5. With the lack of materials on the market and the resulting high prices most Crafters have to resort to farming their own materials which requires getting BTN/MIN to 60 and capping Red Scrips. This is a double-edged sword if they plan to gear their Gatherers as well since their Scrips will be limited to one or the other.

6. The Favor system was atrocious and had a HUGE negative impact when first released. I personally have seen major improvement since the change, but the impression they left still has repercussions.

There are a number of glaring issues (I probably missed a few) however with time they will solve themselves. When Gatherers have their gear and start spending their Scrips on Favors stocks will rise and prices will fall. When/If Crafting becomes relevant for Combat many more people will have an incentive to start leveling and gearing their classes again, and a more stable income as well. These problems are mainly problems AT THE MOMENT. How long will we need to wait? Hopefully no longer than 3.1, though I honestly can't say.

There is nothing wrong with capping your Red Scrips and spending them on i180 gear or saving them until we know whats coming in 3.1. I highly doubt SE will release anything the i180 sets can't handle, especially since their intent with the sets was to give casual Crafters the ability to progress 1-2 Crafts without spending millions on HQ gear + melds.

These last 2 months have been the most painful for those who really want to craft the i170 sets either for the challenge, stats, glamour, or personal achievement, and get discouraged every time they look at the Market Board or the number of Favors they have to do for a single item. This is where I say that Work vs Reward is subjective. Here I'd like to clarify some numbers as far as how many Scrips are needed to complete all 2-Star Crafting/Gathering items:

Only Crafting has full left side at the moment and costs for a full set are as follows:

The Mainhand, Chestpiece, and Legs require 4 mats each, while the Offhand, Helm, Gloves, and Boots require 3 mats each for a total of 24 2-Star mats per set. The Accessories cost a total of 10 2-Star mats (2 each for Belt, Necklace, Earrings, and Wrist, and 1 each for the Rings) and do not need to be made more than once.

So with 8 Crafting sets it comes to 8 x 24 = 192 + 10 = 202 Scrips total to craft all 8 Crafting sets + Accessories. As Gathering only has Accessories and Offhand (FSH has no offhand) the total cost to craft the current Gathering 2-Star items would come to 10 + 6 = 16 Scrips total.

This brings us to a grand total of 218 Scrips needed to Craft every Crafting and Gathering 2-Star item which at 9 Scrips a week comes to 24.2 weeks, or 5-6 months total. 3-4 weeks per Crafting set (A little more than 1 week to craft the Accessories).

What I believe SE is attempting with the Crafting and Gathering systems is to extend it's lifespan in a similar fashion to Combat with weekly caps. If you were to try and get full Savage gear I'd imagine it would take much longer than 3-4 weeks, the primary difference between the two is you cannot "buy" a full Savage set in a week even if you wanted to. With Crafting you can purchase others' Red Scrips (Trade them BTN/MIN mats and they turn them in and give you the items) and craft far more endgame gear in a single week than either Combat or Gathering.

Was this the right move? Do changes need to be made? Maybe, I can't really say as everyone has a different motivation and amount of time they're willing/able to commit to a goal. I'm actually glad it's practically impossible to finish all 8 sets in a week as there is an immense feeling of accomplishment upon finally finishing a set.

I love the crafting system in FFXIV, I really do, so much to the point that I was insane enough to finish all 8 sets in about 2 months. I was absolutely furious with the Red Scrip system when it first released as it meant I couldn't do what I loved without doing what I hated (Gathering) or spending millions of gil in the process. No, I didn't start with 100m+ in gil to buy mats left and right with. I farmed at least 75% of the mats myself, and it took an insane amount of time to complete. But I did it, and whether it gets replaced in 3.1 (HIGHLY doubt it), or if I melded correctly, or if I over prepared and the new recipes can still be made with the white set, I could care less, because it was what I wanted to do and I found a way to do it.

Tl;dr, Crafting will get easier with time. If you don't have the motivation to craft right now there's nothing wrong with saving your Scrips and waiting to see how 3.1 plays out, hopefully changes are implemented to make things easier. If you want to craft 2-Stars right now I know it seems daunting but don't be intimidated by the high prices of the mats. They're actually really easy to gather with the Favor change and if you can do that you cover the majority of the (Admittedly ludicrous) cost. Trust me, its worth it.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

Tl;dr, Crafting will get easier with time. If you don't have the motivation to craft right now there's nothing wrong with saving your Scrips and waiting to see how 3.1 plays out, hopefully changes are implemented to make things easier. If you want to craft 2-Stars right now I know it seems daunting but don't be intimidated by the high prices of the mats. They're actually really easy to gather with the Favor change and if you can do that you cover the majority of the (Admittedly ludicrous) cost. Trust me, its worth it.

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Great breakdown in general. I'm not sure time is going to really solve anything for me, personally, but I'm hoping we do see some changes in 3.1. I want to see some more useful recipes and the like so that there are stronger incentives than crafting to get more crafter gear. I would like to make the i170 sets, but I can't get over my intense dislike for BTN and MIN. At best, I'll probably end up making them when Red Scrips are someday uncapped using the i180 gear. But that's nothing I'm particularly excited about.

I'd like to see the materials requirements for DoW/DoM gear lessened or for the materials to be easier to acquire. If they want the longer grind for the best crafted gear, that's probably okay. But getting to 2-star level and being able to craft something of consequence (that you can price fairly enough such that people will actually want it) would go a long way toward making the system more palatable I think.

It amuses me how many of us end-game crafters have ranted about this. I think at this point, both we and SE know very well what the problems are and how to resolve them. The only remaining question is, will they address these problems in 3.1 effectively?

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved. If they don't... it's hard to say how many of us would quit. Oh, and when we quit, we don't just quit crafting, we just unsubcribe and play something else. If they wanna take their time to fix the mess, it's fine, we will take our time too... without paying. We're still crafting fans. We can always come back later after they fixed it.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved.

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A lot's riding on 3.1, and it's not just crafting. Part of me is afraid that they will have focused so much on improving the overall amount of meaningful content and problems with endgame in general that they won't do what's necessary to help with crafting. They've already demonstrated somewhat clearly that crafting is second-fiddle, if you ask me, and I'm running out of faith in them.

My subscription is paid for another six months so I'll be around at least in some fashion regardless, but I'm definitely playing far less than I ever have.

I think the problem for me is and has always been that crafted items for DoW/DoM cap in ilvl a tier or two below raiding items. When Turn 1 was the endgame, it had ilvl 90 gear and the best we could make was ilvl 70 gear. Later on we could make ilvl 90 gear, but turn 2 dropped ilvl 110 gear. Then we eventually got ilvl 110 gear, but the raids dropped ilvl 130 gear. Now it's ilvl 180 vs. ilvl 210, the largest disparity yet, and Alexander is (at least according to my raiding guild members) incredibly easy compared to Bahamut Turn 1 when it first came out. They need to add a system that allows our crafting skills to remain relevant to raiders so our gear isn't sidelined. Either that, or they need to significantly reduce the material requirements for those crafts... because right now, as it stands, only the richest and laziest players are going to pay ~5mil per piece for gear that's only marginally better than Law Tomestone gear, especially when a few days of dungeon grinding is all it takes for a full set but we're hard-capped at 1-3 pieces per week with red scrips.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

It amuses me how many of us end-game crafters have ranted about this. I think at this point, both we and SE know very well what the problems are and how to resolve them. The only remaining question is, will they address these problems in 3.1 effectively?

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved. If they don't... it's hard to say how many if us would quit. Oh, and when we quit, we don't just quit crafting, we just unsubcribe and play something else. If they wanna take their time to fix the mess, it's fine, we will take our time too... without paying. We can always come back later after they fixed it.

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Almost all the other serious crafters in my FC quit over a month ago. From what I've seen and heard around my server, we aren't the only FC losing crafters left and right... It will take a monumental amount of stubbornness and/or ignorance on SE's part to not have some major changes in the works for 3.1. The sad part is, however, I can already see them throwing that "sky pirate" glamour gear at us and calling it good enough... I guess we'll see.

I wish SE will be more communicative about the crafting and gathering aspect of the game in 3.1. So far all the 3.1 info is about Void Ark and some relic stuff - nothing about DoH/DoL.

Come 3.1, whatever fix they make will just hit the market like a giant bomb. If they:
- Implement specialist only recipes
then those who picked the "wrong spec" will be screwed (or at least will need new stones - are you SURE you want to specialize in alch and cul where you cook food that no one will buy?), as well as 2* omnicrafters whom have invested in multiple 170 MH and OH tools.
- Make favor mats more accessible
then the market for those will just crash hard. Screwing over everyone who have already gotten anything 2*.
- Introduce attractive 2*/3* battle gear
given the price/cost of the current 170 battlegears, those will probably become even more prohibitively expensive... no wait... if Void Ark is to drop ilvl 200 gear, will people still buy crafted gear?

And that's really the point. They need to find a way to let crafting be in parity with drops.Otherwise it'll be the same problem in 3.1 as we've consistently had throughout the game: people don't buy high end crafted gear because high end drops/currency gear are easier to obtain for better stats, and the difficulty of making high end crafted gear makes it too expensive.

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Originally Posted by CatfishCassie

And that's really the point. They need to find a way to let crafting be in parity with drops.

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No, that would we a catastrophe. Drops from savage should always be the best gear in the game, or you'll just see the top guilds using their crafters and gatherers as slaves just to have crafted gear as soon as possible and have a slight advantage for progression, which actually happened in ARR, though crafting high end gear was way easier back then. Also, crafters are a minority and raiders would really get pissed at devs if they do what you're suggesting (tanks are already complaining that they have to buy ilvl150 accessories, mind you), so having to choose which side to displease, they'll probably choose crafters. Moreover, devs clearly said that crafted gear will no longer be optimal for progression, this is the main point they were considering when designing the new DoH/DoL system. If they want to fix it, they'll have to find other ways.

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Originally Posted by Ragnvard

if Void Ark is to drop ilvl 200 gear, will people still buy crafted gear?

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Are people actually buying that stuff? I think 3 or 4 pieces of gear have been sold on my server (for DoW/M).

I think you missed my suggestion from the earlier post, which was to allow crafted gear to be upgraded like the Alex drops. The idea being that the crafted gear would not, itself, be the equivalent of the Alex drops, but could be upgraded to be the equivalent of those drops. The items that would upgrade it would be the same items they currently use to upgrade their Alex gear... which means they'd still have to raid to get the high level gear, but would now have the option of it being the dropped gear or the crafted gear. This keeps people from being able to skip raid progression with crafting, but keeps crafting relevant for raiders, which is currently the part that's missing.

The problem with MMOs in general is that if crafting stops being relevant to the endgame, it stops being relevant to the game at all. Even though Alex Savage raiders are a small minority of the players in the game, endgame considerations still drive a large portion of the game economy. Crafters put in as much if not more work than raiders, and deserve to see that work rewarded just as raiders do. The compromise shouldn't be to favor one group over the other... the compromise should be to find an itemization system that fills the needs of both.

It doesn't take much creativity to devise ways to limit the impact crafting can have on endgame while giving them a market. Give raiders material drops from their victories required for our high level crafts, which also gives them a way to fund their potential purchase. Gate our acquisition rate of some unsaleable materials to help avoid RMT and prevent market flooding. If materia is too much of an issue the final craft could be devoid of slots, like very low level gear. Even with all those barriers it should not be the best the game has to offer, but if they turned out as ilvl 190nq 195hq. I think that would be pretty well balanced. Similar time/effort to get as eso gear, while being slightly less desirable and unable to upgrade to ilvl210.

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Originally Posted by Aniforani

It doesn't take much creativity to devise ways to limit the impact crafting can have on endgame while giving them a market. Give raiders material drops from their victories required for our high level crafts, which also gives them a way to fund their potential purchase.

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They had a system like that in 2.x; remember those items you could buy with uncapped tomes?

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Originally Posted by CatfishCassie

I think you missed my suggestion from the earlier post

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I understand your standpoint, but devs have a completely different opinion. They do not want crafting to be relevant for end game raiding, they clearly stated that. And, as both a crafter and a raider, I completely agree with them.

Crafting isn't necessarily second fiddle to Combat so much as the majority of the playerbase has been and always will be Combat oriented.

With the introduction of Crafting/Gathering Red Scrips, Specializations, and lessened impact of Crafted Combat gear I believe SE is trying to do 2 things:

1. Bring Crafting/Gathering Endgame length in line with Combat, with each class having it's own set again and a weekly cap to reach. I personally don't see this as a bad thing, and here's why:

1a. I'll get flak for this I'm sure, but a 1-size-fits-all Crafting set ruins the Crafting Endgame. Its similar to only needing 11 pieces of gear from Savage and then you're done. Crafting is my Endgame. I enjoy it for the challenge and the satisfaction of reaching my goal, and when I returned in April after a 1.5 year break I was ecstatic at all of the new Crafting that I needed to catch up on and the challenge of 3-Stars and 4-Stars. I finished full Artisan's overmelded + Supras in a month. I was happy of course, and completing an entire Crafting set that was good for every class really helped me to catch up, but the challenge was short-lived and the satisfaction fleeting. After I caught up there was nothing left to do but make gil, which is nice yes, but it doesn't give me a goal and isn't necessarily a challenge.

1b. Let's be honest, a weekly cap is torture to Crafters, especially since we're used to the size of our wallets being the only limit to how quickly we can gear up, but it ensures you can't complete everything in a week or a month (At least not until well down the road when the market has a lot more mats on it). Plenty of people hate being artificially limited, but I ask you: If you can complete everything in a week, what is there left for you to do? Would you be truly satisfied?

1c. It also helps keep the market active. With an inherent limit to the number of items available on the market each week it takes much, much longer for the market to become saturated and the prices to drop. While this isn't a good thing for those wanting to speed up their gearing by buying these items, it keeps the market from stagnating and helps those who want to Craft but don't have the gil as they can choose to use their Scrips to sell 2-Star turn-in mats or sell the Scrips themselves.

2. Make it possible for each Class/Job to be self sufficient, where they can reach their own BIS gear and having another class geared and maxed is optimal, but not seen as a REQUIREMENT for Endgame. Let's talk about Gathering first, as it's the easiest:

2a. Gathering has historically been almost entirely self sufficient, save for relying on Combat to progress to new areas/fly at later levels. A Gatherer can start with very little investment, if anything at all, and can sell the materials they Gather to purchase new equipment. The introduction of Red Scrips had little impact as Gatherers require no cross-classes for their Endgame and can reach their current BIS gear by capping their Red Scrips (Which can be done with white gear and safe melds) and selling/using Favor mats to have their 2-Star OH/Accessories made.

2b. Crafting on the other hand is the exact opposite. Before Specializations you were practically REQUIRED to level other Crafts for their cross-class skills since almost no class could reliably HQ even lvl 50 recipes without them. Sales were slow going as the only things that really sold for a decent profit and regularly were HQ materials and gear which were difficult to make without leveling other Crafts, which was difficult to do due to lack of gil due to inability to HQ items due to...... you get my point. Specializations were introduced to address this, and while I've seen a number of complaints regarding their strength and reliability I think they're at exactly where they need to be. Specialist skills were never meant to be stronger than the original skills. They were meant to be used as a sub-par replacement until you were able to level your other Crafts. The only issue I really see with them is how complicated they can be to understand and the amount of time needed to really understand how they work together, which seems to contradict their intent to be used by more casual Crafters.

2c. Onto Combat! Anyone who is really passionate about something will want the best of the best for what they do. When one item is inherently better than another most will view it as a necessity, whether we intend to or not. I see no reason as to why Crafted gear can't be viable in Endgame raiding, but the problem near the end of ARR and COB was that some Crafted gear was BIS, even over Poetic or Dreadwyrm gear. This created a huge issue with those who were pure Combat because getting their BIS gear didn't depend so much on their skills or abilities in a fight but rather their ability to make gil. Outside of selling runs or Endgame Crafting mats Combat pures had no way to reliably make gil without resorting to Gathering or Crafting, either of which they may have avoided because they hated it or because it wasn't what they wanted to do. That isn't to say Crafted gear shouldn't be used in Endgame raiding at all, rather it would be better if Endgame Crafted Combat gear could be on-par or slightly better than Eso gear. This way Crafters could contribute much more to Combat, Combat players who do happen to have gil can use the gear as an Eso replacement to get multiple classes raid ready faster, and pure Combat players could still rely on Eso gear on their way to Savage gear.

We all have high hopes for 3.1 and I have no doubt Crafting will be revitalized. We KNOW SE listens to their playerbase, and while hardcore Crafters are far from the majority we are no less passionate when it comes to what we love.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

1b. Let's be honest, a weekly cap is torture to Crafters

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You know, ultimately, I don't so much mind the weekly cap as I mind that it makes it harder to catch up. In ARR there were periods where I didn't craft much (especially as Relic stages were released), but I could always sit down and work on tokens for awhile to catch up. With the Red Scrip system in place, there's not really a good way to catch up if you miss a week for some reason or another, and I miss the flexibility of being able to not worry about crafting sometimes. The combat classes have always had this issue of course, but now that there are two (and potentially three, for gatherers, too) such structures, my playtime feel dictated rather than decided based on my mood.

the NEXT tier off crafting items should not required any favors at all, this favor system needs to stay ONLY for making the 2 star crafting sets/future gathering sets.

In my eyes the main issues are as follows focused on the issue of economic and script availability issues.

1) All crafted raid/adventuring gear is now gated by crafter AND gathering tokens. This means that adventures must both craft and gather for the same gear to be generated which was available by the 2.0 raid drops. This is terrible because people who adventure have NO DESIRE TO DO THIS. Consequently the cost to produce 3.0 adventuring gear is impossibly high. And this is causing crafters to have no viable reason to produce half our recipies. Also the iLev for 2 star adventuring gear is too low.
2) Because adventurers no longer have any drops to sell to crafters, they get no gil from crafters.
3) Adventures no longer have equipment to buy from crafters (since we can't viably produce 2 star adventuring gear) so they no longer have any reason to pay crafters.
4) Generating red crafting tokens requires ~0.5-1 million worth of parts to be handed in each week.
5) Because of the cost few crafters are participating in red scrips.
6) Generating red folklore token items requires a massive time investment by foragers. Example 30 minutes to complete 5 favors x 9 tokens = 4.5 hours of gathering a week not including time to gather the red scripts in the first place.
7) Gatherers require a massive number of red tokens to purchase their own upgrade gear.
8) Because of the time investment few gathers are actively acquiring red scripts making folklore tokens rare and expensive.
8) Two star foraging gear (except accessories) is unavailable for crafting. This means crafters have nothing to sell foragers... even though we are potentially paying them massive amounts of money for the new red scrip crafting drops.

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Also the whole 2 star system is needlessly complicated for all the wrong reasons. There are so many idiotic UI decisions in the mess which make things complicated for the wrong reasons. We can only hold one weeks worth of red scripts... red scripts are handed in for red tokens a secondary currency WHY?!?! There are 40 different folk lore token drops (20 if you don't include HQ). Red/blue script nodes only stay up for a VERY short time. Keeping track of node pops, what slot you're supposed to unveil, the collectablity number, etc requires a day planner or a website.... WHY?!?!! All of that information should be in the UI easily available for players. Why can't my character remember Chysahl greens come from slot 6... is she really that dumb? These are all pointless decisions which make the system more cumbersome for others to learn, adding to the overall problem.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

You know, ultimately, I don't so much mind the weekly cap as I mind that it makes it harder to catch up.... such structures makes my playtime feel dictated rather than decided based on my mood.

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I completely agree with this, although my mood ALWAYS demands Crafting so I fell behind in Eso myself. I got my first Eso item 2 weeks ago (MNK fists) because I had other priorities, but I was and still am happy with what I chose to focus on ^-^

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Originally Posted by Sollux

I completely agree with this, although my mood ALWAYS demands Crafting so I fell behind in Eso myself. I got my first Eso item 2 weeks ago (MNK fists) because I had other priorities, but I was and still am happy with what I chose to focus on ^-^

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I'm too...I don't know the word for it...to ever miss capping one week. I have to do both or I feel like I've messed up. I enjoyed crafting as a wonderful diversion from weekly caps, Relic grinds, and so on, and I certainly spent a lot of time on it in ARR. But now that I have to every week, it loses some of that...relaxing factor for me.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

1) All crafted raid/adventuring gear is now gated by crafter AND gathering tokens. This means that adventures must both craft and gather for the same gear to be generated which was available by the 2.0 raid drops. This is terrible because people who adventure have NO DESIRE TO DO THIS. Consequently the cost to produce 3.0 adventuring gear is impossibly high. And this is causing crafters to have no viable reason to produce half our recipies. Also the iLev for 2 star adventuring gear is too low.
2) Because adventurers no longer have any drops to sell to crafters, they get no gil from crafters.
3) Adventures no longer have equipment to buy from crafters (since we can't viably produce 2 star adventuring gear) so they no longer have any reason to pay crafters.
7) Gatherers require a massive number of red tokens to purchase their own upgrade gear.
8) Because of the time investment few gathers are actively acquiring red scripts making folklore tokens rare and expensive.

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I think SE was planning for the long term with the new system and either lost sight of the short term or felt it was inevitable that there would be complaints at the start. With all of the limitations of the current system it actually does a pretty good job of keeping each class focused on their own progression, possibly in preparation for 3.1 and beyond when Combat, Crafting, and Gathering can (Hopefully) benefit each other in an equal way again.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

4) Generating red crafting tokens requires ~0.5-1 million worth of parts to be handed in each week.
5) Because of the cost few crafters are participating in red scrips.

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I can't honestly speak on this as I never have issues capping Red Scrips each week, though I do agree it is a heavy investment for those who don't know how to ply their Craft yet. This is one of the areas that Crafting kind of gets the shaft. If we choose not to Gather then we have to find a way to make gil, requiring knowledge of the market that can only be gained through experience (AKA not fresh Crafter friendly). While Combat and Gathering need only invest their time to cap, they do not have the option of buying their Scrips either and are required to put in a minimum amount of time to cap where Crafting can put in the time beforehand to make gil and cap within 10-15 minutes after reset.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

6) Generating red folklore token items requires a massive time investment by foragers. Example 30 minutes to complete 5 favors x 9 tokens = 4.5 hours of gathering a week not including time to gather the red scripts in the first place.

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A massive amount of time yes, but also a MASSIVE profit, or the majority of the cost of a 2-Star should you choose to use the items. Here I have no sympathy for Gatherers, especially after the change to Favors.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

8) Two star foraging gear (except accessories) is unavailable for crafting. This means crafters have nothing to sell foragers... even though we are potentially paying them massive amounts of money for the new red scrip crafting drops.

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Currently Gatherers can make bank and having virtually nothing to spend it on, I agree. There is no need for the i170 Accessories or even the i180 gear for that matter, but I'm betting 3.1 gives us something to craft for them and a reason for them to want it.

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Originally Posted by Katlyna

Also the whole 2 star system is needlessly complicated for all the wrong reasons. There are so many idiotic UI decisions in the mess which make things complicated for the wrong reasons. We can only hold one weeks worth of red scripts... red scripts are handed in for red tokens a secondary currency WHY?!?! There are 40 different folk lore token drops (20 if you don't include HQ). Red/blue script nodes only stay up for a VERY short time. Keeping track of node pops, what slot you're supposed to unveil, the collectablity number, etc requires a day planner or a website.... WHY?!?!! All of that information should be in the UI easily available for players. Why can't my character remember Chysahl greens come from slot 6... is she really that dumb? These are all pointless decisions which make the system more cumbersome for others to learn, adding to the overall problem.

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These seem to be more QoL improvements than anything. I agree with the increase to maximum held Red Scrips, trading Scrips for Tokens allows us to save a ton of Tokens for a rainy day, many more than a 2000 Red Scrip maximum would allow, and I would say keeping track of Node spawns and item locations is part of being a good Gatherer, just like remembering when and what mechanics happen in a raid or what rotation to use for a certain level recipe. Also I'd rather not have a full list of Node spawns in my timer list D:

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Originally Posted by Sollux

I think SE was planning for the long term with the new system

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They probably were, though if the structure stays the same in the longterm, we're going to end up at roughly the same place again in 3.2, I have to imagine (unless they don't intend to reset crafter progression every tier the way they do DoW/DoM progression). For this raid cycle, at least, we'll never see the i180 DoW/DoM gear be worthwhile, as by the time the mats are readily available in such a way that they'll be affordable for the larger population, there will be plenty of other "free" gearing options that are higher item level (Esoterics, Void Ark, Alexander Normal, Exploratory Missions, etc).

If they don't reset crafting progression in 3.2, though, it'll probably mean that our scrips will be able to be put toward materials from the get-go (or at least, much sooner than they generally will be now), which will both make the new items (probably around i200 or i210) available when they can actually be useful and bring their costs down.

Unfortunately, we've still got about 4 months before 3.2, most likely, so it's going to be awhile before we have a real sense of how this is all going to shake out.

As an aside, when it comes to Quality of Life stuff, I *really* hate that the vendors for Rowena's Tokens/Collectible turn ins and the vendor for the gear and mats are on opposite sides of the main plateau in Idyllshire. Would it have killed them to put them all three behind the same counter? x.x

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Originally Posted by Sollux

... I would say keeping track of Node spawns and item locations is part of being a good Gatherer, just like remembering when and what mechanics happen in a raid or what rotation to use for a certain level recipe. Also I'd rather not have a full list of Node spawns in my timer list D:

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Garland Bell (http://www.garlandtools.org/bell/) has all of such information that any gatherer needs, and is filterable so you can see only what you want to see: MIN/BOT/both, any or all of Legendary/Unspoiled/Ephemeral, and more.

The only caveat is that it relies on your system's time, so make sure your system time is accurate or the Eorzea time reported by Garland Bell will be off. Garland Bell and Garland Tools Database easily justify having a monopoly on one of my monitors.

You do have to get used to how the data is presented, but it's pretty cool once you are used to it.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

A massive amount of time yes, but also a MASSIVE profit, or the majority of the cost of a 2-Star should you choose to use the items. Here I have no sympathy for Gatherers, especially after the change to Favors.

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I concur I don't feel terrible for gatherers right now but, the time investment is high enough that casual gathers aren't' participating which makes it more painful for us. Also I don't particular like gathering for 6-7 hours a week... it blows big green nana bear tails.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

These seem to be more QoL improvements than anything.

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I'm a huge QoL freak and HATE idiotic and artificial UI decisions which make things require documentation or supplemental information. Coming up with an efficient gathering path and efficient rotations should make a good gatherer. Having a detailed spreadsheet or tool setup with all your timers, node slot, collectability information, etc... should NOT define what a good gather is. But currently both sets of skills are required. And this again pushes away more gathers. Gathering should be organic and interesting ingame... not out of game in spreadsheets lol.

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All in all though this whole thing is a bloody mess which has just made me personally need to gather 90% of time in order to reach the same kind of crafting pinnacle I used to reside in. Which makes me fairly unhappy. I now have less time to level combat classes and play the other side of the game than ever, and this makes me pretty grumpy.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

Garland Bell (http://www.garlandtools.org/bell/) has all of such information that any gatherer needs, and is filterable so you can see only what you want to see: MIN/BOT/both

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I need to show a video of what I track and how I set it up in garlandtools. You can make your own tab with all your timers (your choice) with minimaps and select timers to ding 1 minute before ready. Its really nice. Likewise you can organize them such that visibly they're in order of how you tend to gather them. Its helped me setup a really efficient combined red/blue gathering cycle.

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Originally Posted by ValkyrieL

the NEXT tier off crafting items should not required any favors at all, this favor system needs to stay ONLY for making the 2 star crafting sets/future gathering sets.

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I couldn't agree more; favors need to go. Even if they did nothing else to improve the system, getting rid of favors (and making the 2-star mats ONLY require crafting red scrips) would alleviate one very large problem with the current endgame, at least in my eyes. Namely, the crafting endgame involves very little actual crafting. The vast majority (95%) of your time is gathering: gather the mats for your red gathering turn ins, gather your mats for your red crafting turn ins, and the cherry on top? 4 MORE HOURS of gathering with favors. Then when you *finally* get all your mats and sit down to craft the 2, maybe 3 gear pieces for the week...it takes you 30 min. TOPS. Just getting rid of those stupid favors would eliminate a lot of the grind that's getting so many crafters down.

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Originally Posted by CatfishCassie

And that's really the point. They need to find a way to let crafting be in parity with drops.Otherwise it'll be the same problem in 3.1 as we've consistently had throughout the game: people don't buy high end crafted gear because high end drops/currency gear are easier to obtain for better stats, and the difficulty of making high end crafted gear makes it too expensive.

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I agree with you but this will never change.

The irony is with the difficulty of making the current battle gear, they could have aligned it with really high end drops even more so than in 3.x Like alternate Eso gear or just below (but equal with materia). But I concur development was not happy with good quality crafting battle gear... which is sad given it really didn't accelerate core raiders... They chewed through the content anyway with the easily available law/eso gear.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

1a. I'll get flak for this I'm sure, but a 1-size-fits-all Crafting set ruins the Crafting Endgame.

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I'm softcore completionist - I want all my classes raised up and geared to get out and do things. I also happen to hoard mats (just in case!!) and glamours. As much as I love the unique designs they have put to the new gear, it'll be way too much strain on my armory chest, especially with upgraded law/Alex gear that my DoW grew out of (saving for desyn/seals) and leveling sets for non-capped jobs. I wish they came up with something to soften the left side / rung armory chest spaces..

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Originally Posted by Valesti_Peleiades

I couldn't agree more; favors need to go. Even if they did nothing else to improve the system, getting rid of favors (and making the 2-star mats ONLY require crafting red scrips) would alleviate one very large problem with the current endgame, at least in my eyes.

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And creates another large problem, only this time it would be for Gatherers. Without Favor items to sell to Crafters the Gatherers wouldn't even HAVE an Endgame. When compared to the income Favors bring Folklore mats are laughably cheap. Even if demand shot up due to more Crafters attempting 2-Stars it wouldn't even scratch what a Gatherer can make with a week's worth of Favors without spending the same amount of time (Likely more) than they would have spent doing Favors. I have no sympathy when Gatherers complain about Favors, especially after the change, but that doesn't mean I want to destroy their Endgame.

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Originally Posted by raela

I'm softcore completionist - I want all my classes raised up and geared to get out and do things. I also happen to hoard mats (just in case!!) and glamours. As much as I love the unique designs they have put to the new gear, it'll be way too much strain on my armory chest, especially with upgraded law/Alex gear that my DoW grew out of (saving for desyn/seals) and leveling sets for non-capped jobs. I wish they came up with something to soften the left side / rung armory chest spaces..

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I think we're all pleading for some Armory Chest relief, and I believe they mentioned a potential fix during a Live Letter in the form of the ability to Glamour from a Retainer since a lot of people carry their Glamours with them, though I'm not exactly sure how they plan to do that.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

And creates another large problem, only this time it would be for Gatherers. Without Favor items to sell to Crafters the Gatherers wouldn't even HAVE an Endgame. When compared to the income Favors bring Folklore mats are laughably cheap. Even if demand shot up due to more Crafters attempting 2-Stars it wouldn't even scratch what a Gatherer can make with a week's worth of Favors without spending the same amount of time (Likely more) than they would have spent doing Favors. I have no sympathy when Gatherers complain about Favors, especially after the change, but that doesn't mean I want to destroy their Endgame.

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That's a good point. I agree that gatherers need to have an endgame too, but that doesn't mean that the crafting endgame has to revolve around gathering as heavily as it currently does. But perhaps the most salient point is something you've already articulated: namely, gatherers don't like favors either. Now I agree with your unsympathetic position, but if anything, this supports my point even more, because the fact of the matter is: favors suck; they're poorly designed and universally frustrating. So isn't this even more evidence that the endgames for *both* crafting and gathering need to be reworked in some way?

And for the record: I concede that favors became much better after the change in 3.07, but if you're starting from "atrocious", you still end up with "bad."

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Originally Posted by Valesti_Peleiades

But perhaps the most salient point is something you've already articulated: namely, gatherers don't like favors either.

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I'm sure some don't, but my wife and I like them. Sure, they are lot of work, but that's appropriate for the reward. Yes, it's sad when you get two or less mats from a favor, but it's pretty cool when you get 9 (which I have, twice). It's a mini-game that combines luck, technique, and motor skills. I've seen enough people out there doing them to know that some of the complaints are from people doing it wrong.

Running favors is also great for spirit-bonding i90 and i100 DoH items to get crafting materia IV, since perception seems unnecessary and 500 GP is almost always more than enough.

Crafting Endgame has always revolved primarily around Gathering, with a few Combat-based mats sprinkled in. Any change to this would make Gathering less appealing which has a variety of implications to our markets on it's own.

In my honest opinion, right now there is nothing wrong with Favors themselves, rather the limited number of "useful" mats that can be obtained while using them. I consider a useful mat to be anything that costs at the very least more than a single crystal. If the Nodes that the Favors could proc off of held mats that you would farm anyways, either to use yourself or to sell, Favors would just be a major icing on that sweet Gathering cake, or vice versa for Crafters.

As it stands, out of the 5 areas and Nodes that can be farmed using Favors, Miners have 3/5 areas giving them "useful" mats with Yellows having Hardsilver Sand/Cloud Mica, Violets having Aurum Regis Sand, and Blues having Hardsilver ore, while Botanists have only a single "useful" mat that can be farmed which is Birch Logs while farming Void Nut Favors (Which have a horrible spawn placement btw). Every other area has mats that are often worth less than just farming crystals. This is also my theory as to why Ooids are always in higher stock and at lower prices than Botanist Favor Mats.

I'm sure plenty of Crafters would be much more willing to Gather if they had the incentive of making an additional profit or stocking up on mats while farming Favors, and Gatherers would be more willing to use Favors as an additional income to something they would have farmed anyways. I'm always happy to farm Yellow/Violet/Blue Ooids because I know I will make a definite profit while farming them. I could just buy the mats straight from the market and still make a profit, but when farming Favors is my priority the extra materials become my icing.

I'd had that same thought, regarding the difference between what miners and botanists can farm while they're doing favors. When I'm gathering violet ooids, I'm bored out of my mind, same as I am gathering any other favor mat, but at least I can soothe myself by remembering I'll be able to a buttload of aurum regis nuggets for my stockpile and get some spiritbonding done while I'm at it. Botany on the other hand...why is 99% of 56-60 Botany that's not attached to a timed node so useless?

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

I understand your standpoint, but devs have a completely different opinion. They do not want crafting to be relevant for end game raiding, they clearly stated that. And, as both a crafter and a raider, I completely agree with them.

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I guess I don't understand why. I'm not a raider currently... but I have been in the past, and I have been in other games as well. If crafted gear were relevant to the endgame, sure, that'd mean you'd feel obliged to buy crafted gear. Of course, people still raid without the Best-in-slot item... in fact, you have to raid to GET a lot of the best-in-slot items... so it's understandable that people would still raid without crafted gear even if that crafted gear was Best-in-slot. It's also understandable that the best raiding groups would have a crafter or two to hook them up with that gear... in fact, the best raiding groups already have a crafter or two for potions/food, and many of those crafters are lvl 60 in other crafts as well (in fact, many of them are lvl 60 in all crafts). So in terms of needing crafters, things wouldn't really change for most raiding groups. What WOULD change is that crafters who aren't raiders and raiders who don't have crafter friends might find themselves needing each other, which would enhance the game considerably for the crafters without really detracting from it for the raiders. And, in the end, it's not like I'm saying "Get rid of the endgame as it is now and require that all endgame armor be crafted". I'm just saying let crafters have a piece of the pie. Even if only one or two crafted pieces per tradeskill end up being best-in-slot, that's enough to reward the crafters that have spent months of time and millions of gil getting themselves up to the crafting endgame... crafters that currently have absolutely nothing to offer the rest of the game except for glamour items, food, and potions.

The reason Crafting items being BIS was an issue was because progression raiders were clearing Endgame raids MUCH faster than they were intended to be finished, IIRC FCOB was cleared within 2 weeks of it's release.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

The reason Crafting items being BIS was an issue was because progression raiders were clearing Endgame raids MUCH faster than they were intended to be finished, IIRC FCOB was cleared within 2 weeks of it's release.

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It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

Firstly, SE have decided that they want the top raids balanced so that the top groups cannot clear them in just a couple of weeks, regardless of what resources they have available and regardless of what knock-on effect that has on the rest of the raiding population.

Secondly, forbidden melding. The fact that as soon as there's even one materia slot on an item, there are really five materia slots on an item means that anything with a materia slot has the capacity to be melded into something far more powerful than its item level would normally allow for. That's still the case even with secondary stats being as de-emphasized as they have been in 3.0. If the crafted i110 items in 2.4 had not had materia slots, the majority of them would have been much less desirable for progression raiders.

Thirdly, SE having no idea what they really want crafted gear to be. They've said they want it to function as catch-up gear, but have set up the methods of obtaining materials in such a way that the cost is completely prohibitive to their functioning as such. Why would I spend tens of millions of gil on a piece of armor when I can get something more-or-less equivalent in a matter of two/four weeks from Alexander Normal?

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Originally Posted by Ibi

It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

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The other reason the i110 gear was BiS for some classes was a problem of itemization.

For the i130 gear, A lot of the main pieces had lots of Skill/Spell Speed, which was such a horrible stat (and really, still is for a number of classes). Additionally, a lot of the i110 gear was incredibly well itemized--tons of Det/Crit pieces that you could still hit accuracy caps on, or Acc/Det and Acc/Crit pieces, and very little Skill/Spell Speed overall.

What that resulted in was the ability to skip a ton of horrible Accuracy pieces (so many had Speed) and actually gain DPS because Speed is such a generally bad stat (except for a couple classes).

If the itemization were better, we probably wouldn't have seen the gear be so dominant.

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Originally Posted by Ibi

It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

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All 3 points you've made have been right on the money, and I'd like to add a third: One of the biggest problems is that players don't know what they want.

I'd love for Crafted gear to be relevant to Endgame raiding, on the other hand I don't want to finish my entire Endgame in a single week. I don't want to smash my face against a Turn for 2 weeks, but at the same time I don't want it to feel easy and one-shot it, regardless of how well I prepare. I want to get BIS gear quicker, but once I have it there's nothing left to do other than play/gear another class.

This is a problem that is much deeper than just "Crafted gear too stronk" or "You can only finish your Endgame when SE says so". It's an issue with the amount of time that a player can stay interested in a patch/game, and it stems from the players as much as it does the game itself. More content/longer raids would definitely ease feelings of "Nothing left to do", but so would the understanding that prolonging a patch's life through gating can be a good thing.

I know many wouldn't agree with me, and there are a ton of valid reasons gating can hurt rather than help such as "I don' want to play other classes, I want to play [Class] and there is nothing to do after I cap/clear Endgame", "If I'm willing to put in the time why can't I get BIS gear faster than others?", "Why can't I play at my own pace?", but if you could complete everything faster you would end up just as bored, only faster and with less time to enjoy the class(es) you love. This especially affects those who only like to play one or two classes and don't want to play anything else as it severely limits how much enjoyment they can get out of Endgame each week. Gating helps extend our enjoyment of the game and gives us room to try other activities or classes. For those who are adamant to only 1 or 2 classes I completely understand your dedication, but at the same time your boredom isn't entirely the game's fault. They simply cannot release enough content to keep absolutely every single class busy for 3+ months.

I've gone a little off track from Crafting itself, but I wanted to explain why Crafted items shouldn't be as powerful as Endgame raid items. At the same time though, they shouldn't be completely irrelevant, and my suggestion is something they might already be gravitating towards: Melded correctly, 2-3 Crafted items (Excluding big items such as Chest or Legs) should have the potential to be on-par with Eso gear in stats only, with Eso gear having better Defense and Endgame raid gear being better in both Stats and Defense. This would make a few pieces of Crafted gear viable for Endgame raiding, but not enough to really tip the scales, and it comes at the cost of the user's durability which can be punished by higher-damage lockouts on later Turns.