Have a Materia Melding NPC

Seems long overdo to me. As someone who isn't a big fan of crafting, but appreciates crafters.. I feel kinda bad asking them to crack dozens of materias for a pentameld, or really having to stop anything to help with them.

I don't think anyone bothers tipping for it anymore since it's such a widely done thing amongst friends. It also requires no skill to do it, outside of getting the level.

Just seems like something I should be able to bother an NPC with rather than my friends.

Agree with this. I was big on crafting in 2.x, and after a while it did get kind of boring standing around for 30mins at a time clicking to confirm melds for friends/FC mates. The request meld stuff is also really clunky.

Oh, but the feeling of breaking other people's expensive materia! CRASH, CRASH, CRASH, I am the destroyer of wealth!

We don't even need the NPC, get rid of the crafting level requirement entirely.

They are just fine the way they are.

Yeah just get rid off all the social interactions that's left in the game one by one.

Definitely agree with the OP, +1 to that. But this is another idea that is acceptable:

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Originally Posted by Limecat

We don't even need the NPC, get rid of the crafting level requirement entirely.

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Originally Posted by CompSci88

Yeah just get rid off all the social interactions that's left in the game one by one.

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If anything it will just become more like chat you'd see in an MMO like WoW except it will be: "LF crafter to attach materia, will tip, have mats." Is it really that big a loss to not see that? I don't think so, we'll be fine without interactions like that. Also, for the folks that have crafters leveled already, they still have no need for the social interactions anyway.

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Originally Posted by Limecat

We don't even need the NPC, get rid of the crafting level requirement entirely.

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But then crafting will be worthless! But then crafting... will be worthless...

but then crafting will be WORTHLESS !!! :D

Seriously though, on one hand there needs to be a reason for why crafting exists, on the other hand, two many subsystems are shackled to the anchor that is crafting grind. Glamour crystals, materia melding, gear with materia slots, gear that can be turned into materia, certain dyes, etc.

Hopefully we're going to be seeing more changes, what with tomestone gear having meldable slots in 3.2, and materia redeemable from airship exploration missions.

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Originally Posted by CompSci88

Yeah just get rid off all the social interactions that's left in the game one by one.

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Some people have crazy behavior in this game, and while I'm chill with that and all, it does become something of a drag when their crazy behavior requires me to sit by their side and spam something for an hour. If you want to glamour all of your clothing 3 times a day, especially while leveling a new class, that's fine, but stop asking me for truckloads of glamour crystals when you can't even help me get the toadleather, velveteen cloth, steel ingots, or whatever. And yes, I get that you really want to get that 5th materia in the slot, but we've been trying for 20 minutes, and I'd really like to do something else.

The occasional "help me make something, meld a materia for a quest" is fine, but for the more ambitious requests, I'd love to have an NPC to point to.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

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Not sure if serious about crafting being "worthless" or if that was sarcasm. Assuming it's the former, crafters still have the stranglehold on glamour crystals (and with lots of new gear coming out there will always be a market for them) and they still make the best gear for gatherers and other crafters to until you start the BS that is scrip farming. If they reduced (or better, removed) the level minimum for melding, it would be fine. Another thought though, is that you could make it so that to overmeld (i.e. materia that has a chance to fail) it has a much higher chance of success based on the level of the crafter. That can actually encourage people to seek out higher level crafters or to just level it themselves.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

they still make the best gear for gatherers and other crafters

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Look, I love crafting, but come on. Its a classic case of the industry creating a demand for itself.

Outside of raid food and pots, and the occasional penta-meldable item that assists raiders in getting an edge, crafting has no point for endgame, and penta-melding is getting an overhaul soon. Crafting is mostly useful in keeping yourself and others geared while leveling, and providing various fun cosmetics either as personal glamour or housing decorations.

Glamour crystals is just a sub-system that was tacked onto crafting to make us feel relevant, but it comes as a determent to non-crafter's fun.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Crafting is mostly useful in keeping yourself and others geared while leveling, and providing various fun cosmetics either as personal glamour or housing decorations.

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I've recently started crafting myself, power leveled cul to 50 using a leveguide and about to do the same for the others (all my crafters besides Cul are 25+) with HQ crafting sets already prepared for me to go by a very kind omnicrafter buddy of mine. So I'm not saying this as a non-crafter, I'm serious about getting in to crafting myself and I actually really enjoy crafting and gathering in MMO's I play. But I have a question for you with the above quote specificially: Is that really so bad?

Outside of Food or Pots there isn't a huge amount of benefit for the amount of time and effort endgame crafting offers. There are glamours and furniture but most of the endgame stuff requires a pretty substantial time and effort investment or a lot of gil. Beyond glamours endgame crafting gear is mostly useless, particularly since endgame pieces are tied to Red Scrip time gating. That might change with the 3.2 changes but I'm incline to wait and see the detail.

The main use for crafting is Materia Melding, repairing your own gear (which is really a small convenience thing) and making glamour stuff and levelling gear. A lot of the pleasure I get out of my crafting is being able to offer some of these services to my friends and FC members.

The issue with this is, why? Nothing restricts you from leveling crafting so if melding is that important to you, you can level crafting, what are you doing with your leves? If melding is important and you don't want to socialize then you have an option but you just want an easier method. That's what I don't like about this, it's just asking for an "easy"/"lazy" way of doing it instead of taking that effort to leveling crafting yourself.

its not about social interaction, its fine if materia melding request have fixed price or something like that. normal melding is fine, but overmelding sometime just too much.

because of various reason,not every crafter can say, "hey pay us something, we already wasted 20-30 min, time is money for us (crafter), if we spend the time doing overmeld with craft/gather something,we already have thousand/hunded thousands more gil, than doing this annoying service for you, and not getting anyhting other than thank you from you".

I agree with this. Just so that crafters can still have a small influence they can make it so that NPC melders can only meld the available materia slots and not beyond that. That way crafters can be the only only that can meld beyond the available materia slots/ over melds

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Is that really so bad?

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Crafting is fine, even if it is mostly a fun side diversion. I leveled mine to 60, knowing that the only real reason to do so was to gear them to continue gearing themselves. The problem is that crafters often complain about not being relevant, and the devs throw them a bone by shackling new systems to crafting.

Case in point... I know a few fcs of moderate size, and they are excited for the upcoming airship exploration, but they can't build their own airship because they don't have players who have the appropriate levels of blsm, arm, and crp to turn in the items.

While I can just shrug and do my own thing, I can understand people who just want to have fun and don't want to play an mmo like a chore. And the need to constantly ask your crafter friends to make a thing, or put a ball into a slot, can lead to people not even bothering to do it. Do you ever see someone in ilevel 35 gear that has melded materia? No, because while they might have materia to do it themselves, it's not worth asking someone to give you a moment of their time.

Here's hoping that 3.2 brings relevant crafted combat gear (even if not BiS). Not 50 million gil glamours.

Create an item for each tier after 30. Allow crafters to make a simple box you can put your materia in and attempt a set number of melds.
Example:

Grade 4 Goldsmith's Leafed Box:
A box infused with the aetheric knowledge of a skilled craftsman. Does not come with a severed head.
Allows the user to attempt melding of materia on GSM attributed items level 60 and below. Bound once used.
Requirements: 1 materia and an appropriate catalyst.
Count: 10

This can be unlocked at level 50, but level 60 boxes can only be made by level 60 crafters. The materials to make them should be trivial, like glamour prisms.

Just an idea xD

I have a better idea, lets make this game into a single player game, that way there are no dungeon wait times at all and nobody is stealing my kills when I farm item drops.

Never heard so many sensitive people on this issue. Why don't we just take away the repair vendors as well. I leveled my GSM for this purpose to 50, it was tedious, I didn't enjoy it, and it was barely worth the effort.. had it not been for Ixal dailies I'd not have bothered. I have no shortage of crafter friends, but it is equally tedious to go through the menu options of repeatedly trying to get a 8% meld to hit. Their time is valuable, my time is valuable. There is barely any social interaction in getting a meld.. it's usually me asking my FC... them changing to GSM, me spamming them with materia melding requests.. and them being stuck doing it till they get sick of doing it, or I run out of items to attach.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Crafting is fine, even if it is mostly a fun side diversion. I leveled mine to 60, knowing that the only real reason to do so was to gear them to continue gearing themselves. The problem is that crafters often complain about not being relevant, and the devs throw them a bone by shackling new systems to crafting.

Case in point... I know a few fcs of moderate size, and they are excited for the upcoming airship exploration, but they can't build their own airship because they don't have players who have the appropriate levels of blsm, arm, and crp to turn in the items.

While I can just shrug and do my own thing, I can understand people who just want to have fun and don't want to play an mmo like a chore. And the need to constantly ask your crafter friends to make a thing, or put a ball into a slot, can lead to people not even bothering to do it. Do you ever see someone in ilevel 35 gear that has melded materia? No, because while they might have materia to do it themselves, it's not worth asking someone to give you a moment of their time.

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With Airships you can buy the components of the MB if your FC all contributes funds to it. You don't have to build each component to have airships.

Seriously though, for the sake of balance, crafters don't make much in the way of endgame worthy gear. Crafting though takes a lot of work and while people enjoy it, they still want to feel rewarded for their efforts. Removing the perks of that effort is likely to make them unhappy.

Crafting shouldn't be mandatory for everyone, but likewise, it should be rewarding enough to match the effort it takes. Particularly now with all the gating/red scrip stuff.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

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There is a difference, though, between making crafting rewarding, and adding tedious restrictions to players that don't craft. The glamour system is absolutely atrocious in this game, and it exists in that form solely to make crafters feel "rewarded". Melding can be frustrating, and doubly so when two people are forced to do it together.

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once. An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate. It's just the people who haven't leveled crafts that are being penalized. But yeah, I've told people if they give me the mats, I'll make the airships in my own FC workshop and trade it to them.

It's a matter of knowing someone that won't rip you off because they want to be "rewarded".

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As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once.

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Then you didn't read what was said.

Current step asks for Varnish x12? Go on MB, buy Varnish x12.

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An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate.

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How about buying that darksteel plate??

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Originally Posted by SchalaZeal

How about buying that darksteel plate??

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You misunderstand. Multiple items actually require a specific rank of crafter to turn in these items you can just waltz in with any crafting job and submit materials, things such a garlond steel require high level crafters to turn the items in.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

There is a difference, though, between making crafting rewarding, and adding tedious restrictions to players that don't craft. The glamour system is absolutely atrocious in this game, and it exists in that form solely to make crafters feel "rewarded". Melding can be frustrating, and doubly so when two people are forced to do it together.

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once. An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate. It's just the people who haven't leveled crafts that are being penalized. But yeah, I've told people if they give me the mats, I'll make the airships in my own FC workshop and trade it to them.

It's a matter of knowing someone that won't rip you off because they want to be "rewarded".

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A fair point. I don't disagree with you that there are unfair issues, particularly with the FC Airships.

I would ask however, how you would balance things so that crafting didn't feel mandatory or restrictive to non-crafting players and still was rewarding for crafters for the substantial time investment endgame crafting has? I suspect the heart of the issue is this balance. This issue isn't simply linked to the FC Workshop. Even now a lvl 60 ARM in endgame gear has practically nothing worthwhile making except stuff for the FC Workshop, Glamour crystals and a couple of pieces of glamour.

I doubt crafting is 'mandatory', given I'm the only one in the FC that has all crafts at 60. Sure, I end up solo crafting the airship, but that's me not caring about cost or time. Since gil means nothing, while airship could be useful. Others are less motivated to craft, because of the low rewards, or other interests. Except "crafting itself" being enjoyable, there ain't much of a draw. You'd have to like it like a teacher likes teaching so much they do volunteering.

If anything, I think it might be nice if Drake, Gerolt's Apprentice, would be able to meld the weapon you need to for the Relic quests in the future. It's a rather simple title to earn at 50 but that stage was always a bit annoying.

If there were a melding NPC though, I'd have to say it probably couldn't pentameld. like most gear only shows 2 materia slots at best? well then the NPC can't meld more than that on an item. Keeps crafters still relevant for that endgame pentamelding.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

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Well on one hand, I don't think crafting particularly NEEDS to have a sweet reward besides basic leveling gear and cosmetic equipment. But, if we really wanted crafters to have some relevance, imagine if at the start of 3.05 each combat class had a single ilevel 200 item that was craftable. Maybe it would be a glove or hat. This would be in addition to the ilevel 200 tome item for the same slot, and the craftable one wouldn't be upgradable to 210 initially. Crafting gear wouldn't eclipse raid gear, because we are only talking about one piece, not the entire left side or a full set of penta-meld jewelry.

The item would remain in relatively high demand for the duration of the raid tier, because every new level 60 job would want that particular ilevel boost right away. Each crafting class would have about 2 different items they would make. It sure makes a lot more sense than the junk ilevel 160 gear made at the beginning of 3.0, which was immediately outclassed by law, law upgrades, and alex normal gear.

BUT, this is just me throwing World of Warcraft ideas at the wall. FFXIV has a ton of that already, and I'm not sure we need more. Still, there are plenty of alternatives, and the devs need to be more creative than "let's chain everything new to crafting".

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

Some people have crazy behavior in this game, and while I'm chill with that and all, it does become something of a drag when their crazy behavior requires me to sit by their side and spam something for an hour. If you want to glamour all of your clothing 3 times a day, especially while leveling a new class, that's fine, but stop asking me for truckloads of glamour crystals when you can't even help me get the toadleather, velveteen cloth, steel ingots, or whatever. And yes, I get that you really want to get that 5th materia in the slot, but we've been trying for 20 minutes, and I'd really like to do something else.

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Don't help them then, problem solved.

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BUT, this is just me throwing World of Warcraft ideas at the wall. FFXIV has a ton of that already, and I'm not sure we need more. Still, there are plenty of alternatives, and the devs need to be more creative than "let's chain everything new to crafting".

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Suppose capped tomes in 3.2 are i230, upgradable to i240.

Make craftable i225-230 gear, that also needs untradable items obtained from exploratory missions. That craftable gear would also be untradable. i230 would drop in 3.3 from the 24-man, i240 from the 8-man hard raid, and in 3.3, probably up to i240 from exploratory.

The craftable i225-230 gear wouldn't include weapons, and I'm saying i225-230 because I want it to not be better than i240 when the crafted is pentamelded, but i220 might be too low because of the reduced weight of secondary stats, even counting you'd meld V tier. The untradable bit makes it a reward for top-tier crafter that can't be sold, the from-untradable drops bit makes it not trivial content like expert roulette, while not outright being the raid itself. Raiders who aren't already top-tier crafters would keep doing what they're doing. And they'd still have BiS from upgraded tomes and raid. Crafters would simply be an alternate (and costly, and time-consuming, and untradable) way to get close to there.

Hopefully the 'costly' part is mainly the materia, not 2 million a piece mats. The time-consuming would be finding the untradable mat.

I like the convenience of being able to meld my own gear, and I still don't understand what the big deal is melding a slot for someone. The resources are taken from the requester's inventory. I think it's greedy for crafters to charge.

I do think there should be a melding NPC with 2 conditions:
1. They are unable to meld beyond the available slots
2. It's one of the goblin NPC's in Thanalan.

I would say no because it is not hard to level your crafts. If you want to be self sufficient then level them crafts.

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Originally Posted by CompSci88

Yeah just get rid off all the social interactions that's left in the game one by one.

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Wow, little extreme don'tcha think? I think it wouldn't be that bad of an idea. those saying crafting would be useless (which is the dumbest thing I ever heard) are obviously wrong because crafting literally builds the community through the markets with its rare items and needed crafting gears, and that won't change with melding NPC since melding rng will most likely not change either.

Thats said, I wouldn't mind it. The request meld system itself it rather bland as just about anyone who even bothers with materia melding would be like, "oh, im gonna need to meld this at some point, I better get me a crafter class. Hum durr dur..)" and just meld their own stuff.
When the new relic quest come out, well I guess we'll be swimming in character interaction when we're all doing the same thing together, at the same time not caring about anyone else but your friends and social groups you associate with. Rid of social interactions, Interaction is a choice to begin with. I'd be more worried about immersion. -_-

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Originally Posted by Airget

The issue with this is, why? Nothing restricts you from leveling crafting so if melding is that important to you, you can level crafting, what are you doing with your leves? If melding is important and you don't want to socialize then you have an option but you just want an easier method. That's what I don't like about this, it's just asking for an "easy"/"lazy" way of doing it instead of taking that effort to leveling crafting yourself.

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Then a better question for you is, why not? It isn't bothering progression, doesn't bother those crafting, doesn't bother gathering materia for melds. If a player has the time and effort to grind for materia, then they deserve to be able to use it whenever they want.