Removal of relevant crafted gear seems like an overreaction to me

Doesn't it seem like HW in general is a huge overreaction to FCoB being cleared in a week?

For this, we got A3S, which is currently murdering raid statics left-and-right and causing some players to just quit raiding entirely.

...And we also get the removal of any relevant crafted gear to help those raid groups meet DPS checks, because crafted gear helped the top raid groups in the world get clears in FCoB in a week.

Nevermind the fact that the same crafted gear in the hands of the average raider would not have the same results, due to the skill difference (and probably due to the fact that the average raider doesn't spend every waking hour in raid).

Seems like a massive overreaction to me to continue in this direction. SE is gutting crafting as a crutch to not being able to balance raid difficulty it seems. Removal of main-stat overmelds, along with melding to raid gear, are just more nails in the coffin.

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Originally Posted by Mindy_Macready

Doesn't it seem like HW in general is a huge overreaction to FCoB being cleared in a week?

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Pretty much. Honestly most of the trouble is that We have two raid difficulties and one is a bit too easy and the other is too hard. And the number of raid bosses is TERRIBLY low.

Honestly their time would be better spent doing thinks like adding 8man savage versions of void ark and things like that. Emphasizing on a longer line of interesting bosses rather than four insanely overtuned savage fights.

Honestly yes, it is a big overreaction, but I can see where they're coming from. Crafted gear making Raid gear obsolete is a big problem, both from a Developer and Player standpoint.

As a Developer, you're faced with the problem that players can clear Endgame content significantly faster than expected. Whether they could clear it in a week or a month using Crafted gear, this DRASTICALLY reduces the life cycle of the patch and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave. Not only that, with some Crafted pieces being better than the Endgame raid pieces it means players will have even less incentive to do endgame content as they have less pieces to farm for.

As a Player, you're faced with the problem that in order to be competitive some groups may REQUIRE overmelded Crafted gear. This goes hand in hand with the Vit Accessories issue in that a player who only wants to focus on Combat feels forced to find a way to make large amounts of gil in order to stay competitive. Not only that, but with the gear and materia being widely sought after it shoots their prices up and while this is great for a Crafter, for someone that is Combat focused and unable to make large quantities of gil it feels like a goal they cannot achieve through their own abilities.

It was definitely an overreaction, but not an unjustified one.

In general, they seem to overcompensate for a lot of things and then try to make adjustments afterwards when it becomes clear that their changes weren't effective. However, their stance on crafted gear being too powerful in the past is understandable for two reasons:

1. If endgame content is cleared too quickly, there won't be enough things for players to do between patches.
2. There's going to be player dissatisfaction if they believe that wealthy players with lots of gil can clear raids earlier due to a competitive advantage.

One of the reasons that crafted gear has been effective in the past is due to the overmelding of main stats. If removing these overmelds reduces the advantage, it should be an acceptable compromise provided that they release new somewhat relevant crafted battle gear and make some balance changes to the effectiveness of secondary stats. Personally, I'm of the opinion that relevant battle gear should be released a bit later than the raid and that BIS crafted pieces should either never be released or introduced late into the raid's life cycle.

Crafted gear will be more relevant in 3.2 supposedly.

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Originally Posted by Sollux

As a Developer, you're faced with the problem that players can clear Endgame content significantly faster than expected. Whether they could clear it in a week or a month using Crafted gear, this DRASTICALLY reduces the life cycle of the patch and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave.

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Which is ironic because with no incentive to craft pieces like this reduces the life cycle of the patch for crafters and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave.

This game is in a tough boat because they want to decouple Gil from progression. Almost all other MMOs I've played (except WoW) have had your gold/gil/rupees etc etc be able to directly influence your effectiveness as a player. All the same problems crop up, RMT becomes extremely prevalent, gearing is more of a matter of earning money and playing the market rather than actually forming teams to clear content.

In fact, on game I played, Aura Kingdom (ENG version of Fantasy Frontier), you had a situation where crafted gear was often BIS time AND welfare/catchup at the same time.
This was because of the way the dungeon drops worked, everything was random in combination with time-based dungeon lockouts. The raid drops was often equivalent to 10 iLevels higher than crafted in terms of base weapon/armor DMG/Defense, however, the random factor meant the stats could have a 100% (i.e. unmodified) or up to 140%.
Crafted gear on the other hand, was easy to spam, provided you can sustain the gold cost. You can customize the stats and effects to a degree but the base stats can only go up to 130%.

The balance then becomes borderline impossible for the devs. Those games I've played, the devs were simply forced to ignore balance and focus instead on cosmetics and thus the overall quality of game sunk.

On the other hand, crafting is almost completely dead in FFXIV. The devs have a difficult decision ahead, do they relax the balance and re-integrate crafted gear back to progression? or do they maintain current course and keep crafting irrelevant?

A lot of the problem could have just been solved with weekly red scrips as our limiting factor. This would create a grind to gear ourselves similar to DoW/DoM before we could even craft gear useful to endgame. Then the mats required for those crafts could have been tethered to another system that prevented us from flooding the market with powerful gear. I'm not a big fan of weekly limits like scrips, but if it let me craft an ilvl 200 item every other week I'd be less inclined to complain.

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Originally Posted by Aniforani

A lot of the problem could have just been solved with weekly red scrips as our limiting factor. This would create a grind to gear ourselves similar to DoW/DoM before we could even craft gear useful to endgame. Then the mats required for those crafts could have been tethered to another system that prevented us from flooding the market with powerful gear. I'm not a big fan of weekly limits like scrips, but if it let me craft an ilvl 200 item every other week I'd be less inclined to complain.

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Well, those i180 left were based on this idea. But with i180 being so weak comparing to i210, and with this i180 being insanely mat-heavy with scrip mats, they become obsolete. And yet even for such unfavorable i180, gil sellers still managed to sell them to players. You can imagine if they lower the requirement of scrip mats on it, the MB will just be flooded with them. If these gear are i190+, then you can imagine gil buyers wearing full sets of materia-melded gear in raids without the need of doing any kind of raiding activity.

SE is trying to find a solution, but everything seems like a failure so far. The only result so far is wrecking crafting.

I would be interested to see if they can even make the crafted pieces relevant again considering the current way stat weights work. We are currently in a situation where ilvl > all.

Sure we have decent access to V materia now be even then you would have to have some really good starting stats on say accessories for example AND have an ilvl starting at 200 before it would be even worth considering.

I never had an issue with crafted gear being as good as standard raid gear. Considering the vast amount of time you had to put into levelling all your classes, gearing those classes up, melding, unlocking those fucking 4* recipe books all before you actually gathering the mats and then have to HQ craft the item AND THEN FULLY OVERMELD that item.

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Originally Posted by Katchoo

I would be interested to see if they can even make the crafted pieces relevant again considering the current way stat weights work. We are currently in a situation where ilvl > all.

Sure we have decent access to V materia now be even then you would have to have some really good starting stats on say accessories for example AND have an ilvl starting at 200 before it would be even worth considering.

I never had an issue with crafted gear being as good as standard raid gear. Considering the vast amount of time you had to put into levelling all your classes, gearing those classes up, melding, unlocking those fucking 4* recipe books all before you actually gathering the mats and then have to HQ craft the item AND THEN FULLY OVERMELD that item.

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The problem was never the crafter, it was the fact the buyer could completely bypass raid tiers with Gil.

I remember threads like this when we were waiting impatiently for crafted 110 gear.

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If these gear are i190+, then you can imagine gil buyers wearing full sets of materia-melded gear in raids without the need of doing any kind of raiding activity.

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and getting banned for buying gil, scaring other potential buyers

The sad part is that if the devs were remotely creative, they'd have given us a system which allows us to upgrade existing gear instead of replacing it every update. Keeps older content relevant, and keeps crafters in the loop the whole time. This constant planned obsolescence is getting really old, really fast and I think people are finally starting to clue into this.

If every major update is just a new item level, with then same tome/raid grind as before, it quickly loses incentives to keep people playing. I'm not sure about you guys, but I've seen a nose-dive in activity over the past few months, and the last update did little to quell the lull.

The same-old isn't going to work forever, so its time their creative department got a bit more creative.

But that would require planning and balancing instead of just quietly sweep everything under the rug because it's become old content!

They could design fights around mechanics and teamwork instead of strict dps checks and ilvls so people could costumize their equipment according to their preference instead of whatever number is needed (hello ACC) and make any kind of gear feasible. But it's so much easier to just lock everything, make it so a certain amount of time must pass before it's even possible to pull certain numbers and hope people don't get bored while they simply wait.

At the moment FFXIV is following the exact same model as WoW in almost all aspects and crafting is one of them. In the end we will reach item level 800+ with thousands of obsolete crafts.

Yeah. They should instead go Archeage's route.

Where every tier is needed to advance to the next tier.

And the stats are randomized.

And the materials needed to create a single, finished, top tier item numbered in the thousands. While still being random. But hey, at least a crafter and gatherer always has something to aim for!

Sometimes I don't think you all understand what you're asking for or what you want. It's easy to say "Give us something new."

Literally no one asked for that.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Yeah. They should instead go Archeage's route.

Where every tier is needed to advance to the next tier.

And the stats are randomized.

And the materials needed to create a single, finished, top tier item numbered in the thousands. While still being random. But hey, at least a crafter and gatherer always has something to aim for!

Sometimes I don't think you all understand what you're asking for or what you want. It's easy to say "Give us something new."

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God, please no more random stats :(

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

God, please no more random stats :(

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Random stats insure a much longer lifespan of current craft levels, because you -might- get your awesome coat tails of Dexterity +99, or you'll get shit.

ISN'T THAT A FUN WAY TO KEEP CRAFTING RELEVANT?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Random stats insure a much longer lifespan of current craft levels, because you -might- get your awesome coat tails of Dexterity +99, or you'll get shit.

ISN'T THAT A FUN WAY TO KEEP CRAFTING RELEVANT?

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It almost seems as though you simply hate crafters. Some players, myself included, find a level of peace with the gathering and crafting part of the game. Periodically I'll run some dungeons but I mostly gather/craft. If SE were to tell gatherers and crafters to shove off because it has no reason to remain relevant, they could actually lose a pretty large portion of their subscriber base.

SE needs to keep gathering and craft relevant. FFXIV has one of the best MMO crafting systems at this point. I'd really hate to see them throw it away because their "balancing" is really more of an overcompensation.

Edit: After seeing that you yourself craft, I don't understand the reason behind your sarcasm.

I used to be more focused on dungeon delving and raiding until I ran into a sort of wall of people taking their playing time WAY TOO SERIOUSLY. Trying to even ATTEMPT a run at A1S is impossible because even Party Finder entries of A1S Learning Parties require that everybody KNOW THE FIGHT. Nobody seems to want to just have fun dungeoneering or raiding anymore and so I turned to something I can take at my own pace. I don't have people yelling at me to watch videos prior to trying to learn what I'm doing.

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Originally Posted by Tango185

It almost seems as though you simply hate crafters.

Edit: After seeing that you yourself craft, I don't understand the reason behind your sarcasm.

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I 'hate' people saying 'make it better' or 'put it back' without giving thought to the reasons why it was changed to the current state.

Crafting was meant to be an optional pursuit. Beyond the initial 2.0 release where the only way to make money, and by 'make' I mean 'redistribute' it because it wasn't being brought on as new system gil, was to craft, every patch has brought a way to try and repair the economic wreck that happened in that early release.

This is why dungeon gil was increased, why roulettes offer sustainable (but not house buying) gil rewards, why the challenge log mainly rewards gil instead of other topical things, and why current crafting is gated.

It's an opt-in. That's what it was meant to be. It wasn't meant to be like it is in other games where it is either required or factored in heavily to battle progression.

I'm not sure how many of you actually -started- in 2.0, but your path to 50 as a battlecraft, doing almost every side quest and selling off the reward usually left you with about 300k gil with no tangible and sane of way of generating new gil.

This is when a 2star HQ item at the time was 500k.

This perpetuated a terrible cycle of crafter-centered loops, where you grinded tomes to buy materials to sell to crafters so you could afford to buy the crafted item from the crafter. The gatherer made minimal profits for their time, especially as bots began picking up speed, and no matter how much you grinded dungeons, the fact of the matter was that there was a net positive flow of gil going into the crafters when new gil was extremely hard to make and easily lost. Dungeons from 100% to 0% of your condition costs more to repair than you got, and guess who repaired things?

Crafters.

So yes. Forgive me for not feeling sorry for things being far more equivalent now, where Gatherers are given far better opportunities to make money, where Battlers aren't living in states of abject poverty, and where a crafter might, heaven forbid, not be making millions a day by logging in to craft an item now and then.

Sorry.

Ain't got no feels for them.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

The sad part is that if the devs were remotely creative, they'd have given us a system which allows us to upgrade existing gear instead of replacing it every update. Keeps older content relevant, and keeps crafters in the loop the whole time. This constant planned obsolescence is getting really old, really fast and I think people are finally starting to clue into this.

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Upgradeable gear is nice, and we already have it to an extent with Law/Eso, but unless it comes with other options that are easier to obtain it becomes a problem when it goes from 2-3 upgrade steps to 6-8 and so on. Whether the issue is with Crafting gear and gil or Combat gear and time, as the game progresses it will start to feel like there's a wall of "You must invest x amount of hours before you can enter Endgame". Think Relic, but for every armor piece and the upgrades NEVER END. Great for veteran players, not so much for new players or those looking to gear alts.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

If every major update is just a new item level, with then same tome/raid grind as before, it quickly loses incentives to keep people playing. I'm not sure about you guys, but I've seen a nose-dive in activity over the past few months, and the last update did little to quell the lull.

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I agree it gets pretty stale with the Tomes system, but I like that they're trying something new with Diadem gear, even if the process to get it is getting stale fast. As far as player activity, it always drops after the raiding scene dies down and people are "hibernating" for Relic. This is true for literally every MMO, though you are correct that the most recent update doesn't seem to have the retention they were likely hoping for.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I 'hate' people saying 'make it better' or 'put it back' without giving thought to the reasons why it was changed to the current state.

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The reason is the devs are lazy and more worried about how to gate raids through gear checks and lockouts than properly balancing the fights, gear distribution and recipies they introduce so when players find a loophole and exploit it, instead actually solving the problem they'd rather eradicate it entirely so they don't have to deal with it at all.

Don't blame the players and try to excuse the devs. If the stat distribution they put on raid and tome gear is terrible compared to costum made, the fault is solely on the devs that don't that test enough (if at all) their content. They're also responsible for the high prices on crafted gear since they were the ones that decided to gate those recipies behind millions of gils in materias and rare mats and players have to get that gil back somehow. It's all on them. And it didn't happen once, it happened thrice and in all that time all they could come up with was "well let's just take crafters out of the picture and keep doing what we've always done".

Instead of having crafting gear limited to a lower ilvl than dungeon/raid gear they could add unique bonuses to non crafted equipment. Things like lowered cooldowns for certain abilities, dmg bonus to a type of elemental spell, and triggered effects upon taking damage. I'd love to see some equipment without any stat increase, but offering situational buffs powerful enough to balance the loss.

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Originally Posted by Aniforani

I'd love to see some equipment without any stat increase, but offering situational buffs powerful enough to balance the loss.

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Personally, I'd have preferred to see more interesting materia / enchantment effects that crafters offer. It sort of achieves what you want to keep both sets of equipment interesting to juggle, but puts the expanded content into the player's hands.

Like, you have stats as they are now with a single materia slot, with the available materia / enchantment depending on the armor piece.

Boots? Faster move speed, reduced sprint cost / increased sprint duration, less damage from ground effects.
Chest? + resource regeneration, + health regeneration, + defense.

Maybe even let raid gear desynth into said materia for the crafter to socket.

Just need to adjust how Diadem loot works if that's going to be a thing going forward.