Will 5.0 ShadowBringers make crafting hard again?

Now before I begin, I want to start off by saying that the addition of Prudent Touch, a very over powered move, is both good and bad. Bad outweighing the good, but let’s speak about the good first.

Good - Less RNG involved. Use the right melds, gear, and food, your rotation will basically 100% HQ every time. Makes you less likely to rage quit from crafting.

Bad - Exactly the same reason as the Good.

Why: Well, I’ve been a crafter since 2.x, and I miss the days of Crafting being so RNG heavy, so difficult, and so risky to the point where it made people scared to craft. In turn, they learn how to adapt. They practice actual rotations, they learn buffs and how they work, basically turning them into good crafters. Now, in 4.x crafting is basically dumbed down, so much to the point where crafters that actually took the time to learn the crafting moves aren’t appreciated. Just google a rotation, have good melds and gear, boom, you can now 100% HQ gear and as a result, making crafting way too accessible than it needs to be.

I’ve had dozens of members ask me questions about crafting buffs while at level 70. Back then, there was no such thing as an endgame crafter asking you basic questions like that.

What needs to be done: Nerf Prudent Touch, it makes RNG basically non existent, which was what forced people to think outside the box and avoid mistakes. Either that, or re introduce Hasty Touch, like adding a Hasty Touch III for example.

At this point, both hardcore and casual crafters are rewarded the same. It never used to be like that. I miss people studying Caimie Tsukino’s crafting guides like exams were tomorrow, I miss the RNG, I miss the pressure, and I miss the reward. Now, crafters aren’t anything special. Raiders are rewarded, dungeon runners are rewarded, pvp players are heavily rewarded, but not crafters? Why do crafters have to be the ones to be less rewarded? Gatherers on a server with bots are screwed, so that’s 50/50.

That needs to change. If you agree or disagree, please do so in a civil manner. I won’t respond to negativity.

I half agree and half disagree on this. With the addition of an actual endgame content in the form of Ishgard restoration, I believe there SHOULD be more of a challenge to whatever crafting/gathering is needed for it, as endgame things should be somewhat difficult, and different classes SHOULD need to use their unique skills to get the craft done. At the same time, after experiencing the QoL the 60-70 abilities gave to crafters, I'm kinda reluctant to let them go.

And if Housing of all things is the final reward for the Restoration, well.... they might want to make that as accessible as possible or have the community actually riot with pitchforks.

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Originally Posted by MrThinker

I half agree and half disagree on this. With the addition of an actual endgame content in the form of Ishgard restoration, I believe there SHOULD be more of a challenge to whatever crafting/gathering is needed for it, as endgame things should be somewhat difficult, and different classes SHOULD need to use their unique skills to get the craft done. At the same time, after experiencing the QoL the 60-70 abilities gave to crafters, I'm kinda reluctant to let them go.

And if Housing of all things is the final reward for the Restoration, well.... they might want to make that as accessible as possible or have the community actually riot with pitchforks.

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Thing is, crafters are such a small minority of the player base, since so many people are concerned with things like Primals, raids, and even just regular dungeons. And with the whole riot over Vieras being female only? It shows me that SE is not too worried about a riot, so it confuses me. As for the Ishgard endgame content, I would hope it’s difficult to have access to.

Reducing RNG dependence is a good thing as far as I am concerned.
Top-level crafting is still not trivial. Just getting the gear needed for making 4-star crafts requires either spending a few million gil on the MB, or crafting them yourself from expensive materials.

No, having crafting be made actually hard is not a desirable thing - except maybe for those few crafters who like feeling special.

RNG back in ARR didnt meant crafting was depending on skill, it meant it was depending on luck.
RNG doesnt make crafting (or anything) difficult, it makes it luck based - which is the very opposite of difficult or "requires skill".

Crafting, specially endgame crafting, is still not enjoyed by the majority of people. And even as a hardcore-mastercrafter since ARR I never understood why people are pushing for crafting to be more exclusive - well, its probably due to those people wanting to make a bigger profit by driving all those filthy casuals out of the markets, I guess. But thats not a good reason to load crafting with more RNG.
Its also not as accessible as you might think - endgame-crafting still requires that you overmeld the most current crafting-gear, which can be quite an investment of either time or money - neither of which most casual players have a lot to invest.

I remember using macros in ARR as much as I did today, because even then, even without Prudent Touch you could come up with rotations that allowed you to macro the 1-star-stuff easly and relaybly enough.
And when I think about how many potions and food-stuff I crafted for my static over the years, I really, really dont want the macros to go anywhere.

The only thing I could see being reasonably added (or make a comeback) is the "old" way you got mastercrafter-books with them not being locked behind cheap and easy yellow scrips but behind a limited amount of "difficult" crafts that you couldnt really use a macro for - proof your skill as a crafter, get the book, continue to use "easy" crafting methods for all normal crafts.

I would like to see more "difficult" crafting with the premise that its meant as a challenge for crafters who seek a challenge - but not as means to keep people locked out from crafting. The only reason to want to see this is the pure selfish wish to have less competition on the market or some weird idea of people having to meet your own standards of what a crafter should be.
Most people dont enjoy crafting as is, lets not make it even less enjoyable for everyone again by bringing back more RNG. Crafting should be truely based on skill and a solid rotation, not on dumb luck.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

The only thing I could see being reasonably added (or make a comeback) is the "old" way you got mastercrafter-books with them not being locked behind cheap and easy yellow scrips but behind a limited amount of "difficult" crafts that you couldnt really use a macro for - proof your skill as a crafter, get the book, continue to use "easy" crafting methods for all normal crafts.

I would like to see more "difficult" crafting with the premise that its meant as a challenge for crafters who seek a challenge - but not as means to keep people locked out from crafting. The only reason to want to see this is the pure selfish wish to have less competition on the market or some weird idea of people having to meet your own standards of what a crafter should be.
Most people dont enjoy crafting as is, lets not make it even less enjoyable for everyone again by bringing back more RNG. Crafting should be truely based on skill and a solid rotation, not on dumb luck.

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Exactly my position on this.

I don't mind having "harder" crafting as long as it is fair and not just lazy RNG. I'd also second the "identity" of each crafter or crafter clusters. Having the same rotation for each crafters sure is handy but it is kinda boring. If Blacksmith Armourer had a rotation, Weaver and Leatersmith another rotation etc. maybe it could be less braindead...

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Originally Posted by Vidu

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Yeah you make good points, really. Only disagreement I have is about accessibility. You are aware of how many players actually buy Gil, I’m sure. Many, by the way. If a player’s issue is Gil, they can easily buy 50-100 million off of a Gil selling website in turn, making crafting just a breeze to go through when it comes to both leveling and gearing up. Back then, it wasn’t that simple.

I’m sorry, but the accessibility of today’s crafting makes it to where crafters are under appreciated. That’s my main issue really. Raiders are highly appreciated for their knowledge, dungeon runners, and pvpers. However, crafting is seen as “meh, I have like 20 crafter friends that can make that for me.” Back then, it was more like “omg an Omni crafter that actually crafts! that’s great!” If you’re going to dumb down crafting, do it for raiding, etc as well. Otherwise its just being irrational, and basically saying “we don’t like how 2.X-3.X crafters get rewarded for actually taking the time to understand crafting. they are elitist! nerf crafting!” is really just spiteful.

I’m making a strange analogy here, but do you honestly expect Square Enix employees to dumb down their recruitment requirements because it’s “not fair and they are elitist?” Come on. If you want the job, learn C++, learn video game development, learn it. Don’t call them elitist for working hard.

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Originally Posted by CraftOs

Yeah you make good points, really. Only disagreement I have is about accessibility. You are aware of how many players actually buy Gil, I’m sure. Many, by the way. If a player’s issue is Gil, they can easily buy 50-100 million off of a Gil selling website in turn, making crafting just a breeze to go through when it comes to both leveling and gearing up. Back then, it wasn’t that simple.

I’m sorry, but the accessibility of today’s crafting makes it to where crafters are under appreciated. That’s my main issue really. Raiders are highly appreciated for their knowledge, dungeon runners, and pvpers. However, crafting is seen as “meh, I have like 20 crafter friends that can make that for me.” Back then, it was more like “omg an Omni crafter that actually crafts! that’s great!” If you’re going to dumb down crafting, do it for raiding, etc as well. Otherwise its just being irrational, and basically saying “we don’t like how 2.X-3.X crafters get rewarded for actually taking the time to understand crafting. they are elitist! nerf crafting!” is really just spiteful.

I’m making a strange analogy here, but do you honestly expect Square Enix employees to dumb down their recruitment requirements because it’s “not fair and they are elitist?” Come on. If you want the job, learn C++, learn video game development, learn it. Don’t call them elitist for working hard.

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To me its not the analogy thats strange, its the idea behind it - sorry, maybe its just because I never shared this mindset but I dont miss this "omg an omnicrafter"-fame. Quite frankly, I'm happy its gone - I've seen quite a few crafter friends burn out over it and leave the game because they were known as "the omni-crafter who can do everything and who everyone comes to". One got to the point where he put himself on busy for weeks because he wanted to actually play the game and not be bothered the whole time "Make this for me!"

And even without considering this burn-out-thing, which one can argue is a personal problem, I dont see the need for any "crafter fame". You remind me of a person who was upset that their ARR-ponies werent special in SB anymore and who wanted unsyched gone because he wanted that "fame" to stay forever.

And I honestly dont see the majority of PvE-people be apperciated for their knowledge either. As I see it crafting and raiding arent so different in this regard:
The real difficult part is figuring the stuff out in the first place. For a battle those are the mechanics and how to deal with them. For crafting those are the rotations, specially in macro-form that we use.
For raiding this is done by a few people - world first, then the usual suspects when it comes to guides etc. And most other people consult those guides - they dont figure stuff out for themself, they follow a guide, maybe they even have automatic discord-callouts!
For crafting its very much the same - most people dont figure out their own rotations and macros, they just copy the stuff people like Camie post here.
Both is fine, obviously - but both is very similar. The actual difficult, challenging part is done by a minority of people and copied by the rest - wether its crafting, raids or even gathering!
Personally, I take pride in figuring everything out myself - but I also dont need anyone else to acknowledge this, which seems to be what you're after...

Nothing needs to be dumb down here - and nothing was dumb down. They shifted their focus with crafting-classes to make solo-crafting more viable (a good thing) and crafting in total more accessible (a good thing, in my book - there is no reason to lock this behind pure RNG, basically what you are proposing). Same was done for raids, actually - seeing how they added the Storymode to raids in HW and SB - basically a dumb down version of the actual raid.

And yes, your analogy is strange - and if only for the fact that this is a game, not a job. While I agree that people need to learn how classes etc. work that pretty much only applies when it effects the enjoyment of the game for other people directly, aka: a tank needs to learn their job and cant just do whatever they want. But a crafter? Thats a solo-aspect of the game and I dont see the need to treat it as a job - or rather a gambling addicition.

i don't want more rng added back into crafting. i would really love if i never have to use hasty touch ever again, prudent touch for life!

but i will agree with the point about master craft books. i would rather you have to turn in a difficult craft to get them rather than just grinding scrip for them, and it would have to be something you cannot craft for someone else.

The crafting system isn't multi-dimensional enough to be hard without being an absurd numbers game or an RNG fest.

If it's "hard", you just don't have enough numbers.
If you don't have enough numbers, you can use RNG methods to inflate it at a greater risk of faliure.

I don't see this changing in Shadowbringers.

A certain amount of RNG will always make a game slightly more "interesting" (Note: not more difficult, but more "interesting"). But there's a very critical issue that nobody has brought up yet. We don't necessarily need to introduce RNG to "TOUCHES". We have all experienced the nightmare of relying on Hasty Touches back in ARR and HW. Come on! We don't want that with our Prudent Touches! But having Prudent Touches at 100% success rate doesn't mean there's no RNG involved in the crafting game anymore now. As far as I'm concerned, "CONDITION" is a much more interesting RNG game than the stupid Hasty Touch failing. And knowing when and how to utilize "Goods" or "Excellent" is a lot more fun than praying for successful Hasty Touches. And this "RNG" game is somewhat skill-based game that involves decision-making rather than pure luck of having successful touches.

My two cents? Having Prudent Touches at 80% success rate does NOT make things difficult. It just makes the game nasty. Difficulty can be raised without introducing RNG into touches. For instance, difficulty can be raised when an item cannot be effectively HQ-ed from 10 touches + a buffed Byregot. You can have sufficient CP for 10 Prudent Touches + a buffed Byregot, but still can't HQ the item. Now you gotta figure out how to HQ it using your 100% secure Prudents. THAT is one way of increasing difficulty without introducing RNG into touches.

Relying on utilization of conditions to HQ an item also has the advantage that no one can easily macro the item, because you can't macro for conditions. Thus, this effectively increases difficulty.

So perhaps, I'd suggest "INTRODUCING 1 OR 2 MORE CONDITIONS" to the crafting game. This may increase the complexity (which does involve a bit of RNG, but also decision-making), while not screwing us up with stupid touches of 80% success rate (pure luck).

My issue is how quick and easy it is to get to a capped level in crafting. It can be achieved without actually completing an entry into the crafting log which, to me, is a little backwards.

What should have happened, was you couldn't progress through job quests without having crafted x amount of different items, similar to Blue Mage.

Maybe this can be implemented in Shadowbringers... For example, you can't accept a level 70 continuation quest (similar to what happened from ARR > HW) until you've crafted 150 recipes for that class? Lock important skills behind job quests so that the effort is rewarded. Whilst this won't bring back the challenge with crafting, it will soon make the crafting scene a lot more interesting and active than simply running a daily beast tribe (for the majority of players).

My mind is a little limited to devise a way to bring back the challenge other than increase the numbers required to craft an item, I'm sure they'll look into things with the new tier of skills, but in days there will always be someone to post rotations and melding requirements online, rightly or wrongly, and suddenly the entire playerbase can google how to craft at endgame.

I guess the idea of people getting angry about failing a HQ craft due to RNG isn't something SE want to deal with again. I still remember the pain of the earlier mastery books.... speaking of which...

They could go back to making mastery books only obtainable by crafting a difficult item!
/ramble

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What needs to be done: Nerf Prudent Touch, it makes RNG basically non existent, which was what forced people to think outside the box and avoid mistakes. Either that, or re introduce Hasty Touch, like adding a Hasty Touch III for example.

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I'm against increasing RNG for the reliability of skills. That maybe force people to think about things, but in the end it falls down to praying to RN-Jesus. But I agree that the crafting endgame now feels a little bit too easy.

I started playing this game somewhere after Stormblood release. So I didn't get to know the endgame crafting of ARR and HW, but while I made heavy use of hasty touches sometimes while leveling up and doing my job quests, I would not like it for endgame crafts. It is very frustrating if the stars are aligned with conditions etc. and 3 of your hasty touches fail in a row exactly at this point.

When I reached level 70, crafted iLvl 290 gear HQ and looked at the master receipes, I thought "now it gets a bit more difficult". Especially the snailfish oil (and the iLvl 320 crafter gear) was a huge step in difficulty. With I think around 6.3k progress and around 28k quality. Which is even harder than current endgame gear!
This was the point where I started to think a lot more about my skills and tried a bunch of things, just to push the most out of my gear at that moment. And it felt satisfying, when I finished that gear.

I already thought about the requirements of the next gear on this level, expecting it to be more difficult. But it wasn't, even worse, they nerfed snailfish oil etc. to a level almost easier than 1 star receipies. And I think here is the problem. I agree with Caimie: Rather than including more RNG to reliability make the receipies need more progress/quality and/or include more skills which work with different conditions. Precise touch for example is a very good use of RNG utilization. It can be 100% (with steady hand II), but cannot be used all the time, which makes its use in macros very limited but in manual crafting a decision you can take.

Currently I have build such strong macros, that I can craft the current 4 star 35 duration receipies from 0 to 100 and 70 duration to around 26k/29k on specialist and minus 2k quality on non specialist, with very low stats (1690 Craftsman and 1720 Control - with all buffs included). Except the 3 luxus overmelded VI HP Materia to max out my HP, I have very few level V materia overmelded and the rest are IV ones.
This feels kinda nice, but I miss the challenge of receipies with high requirements like snailfish oil pre nerf. Those made it not easy to macro stuff with low stats (at least with my basic knowledge I had back then, can't tell now).

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Maybe this can be implemented in Shadowbringers... For example, you can't accept a level 70 continuation quest (similar to what happened from ARR > HW) until you've crafted 150 recipes for that class? Lock important skills behind job quests so that the effort is rewarded. Whilst this won't bring back the challenge with crafting, it will soon make the crafting scene a lot more interesting and active than simply running a daily beast tribe (for the majority of players).

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I think it would be bad to lock level behind quests, rather lock receipies behind gear (stats) or crafts (maybe even skills behind a specific crafted item) you need to do. I also think that making mastery books just obtainable by crafting untradeable items, would be far better, than getting them by scrips.

Edit: Also bring back the requirements for all gatherers to be needed for endgame gear. I loved to farm the snailfish or the soulsand for the fisher (don't know name in english) to sell them, before I leveled my crafters.

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Originally Posted by Buuhuu

I think it would be bad to lock level behind quests, rather lock receipies behind gear (stats) or crafts (maybe even skills behind a specific crafted item) you need to do. I also think that making mastery books just obtainable by crafting untradeable items, would be far better, than getting them by scrips.

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Aye, I eventually thought that instead of locking levels behind recipes, it would be better to lock the skills behind them. I can imagine the anger at people not getting exp for dozens of crafts they neglected down the years ;D

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Originally Posted by JowyAtreides

My issue is how quick and easy it is to get to a capped level in crafting. It can be achieved without actually completing an entry into the crafting log which, to me, is a little backwards.

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Games have this weird notion where they should be -fun-.

The only thing I would like is more proc and "gentle rng" (like, bonus instead of malus) so that macro wouldn't be as effective.

I have nothing against macro usage for simple recipes, but it's kind of a bummer when the newest stuff can be macro'd to 100%HQ

I mean, you don't have have to know how to craft

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Games have this weird notion where they should be -fun-.

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and I find crafting many of the different recipes to be a fun activity which benefits my gil-stash, desynth, progression to getting the shiny achievement weapons and FC members who are levelling low level classes (for example, I not long did all the green level50 gathering/crafting armours and someone happily took them off my hands to use for themselves)

To refer to your earlier post, crafting is one dimensional. If you have the numbers, you can craft an item and you are mostly certainly correct when saying this won't change. But then we get more threads like this one with players expressing a desire to get more from their crafting experience. I offered for discussion a suggestion on how to flesh out the classes a little, beyond just doing dailies and forgetting the classes exist until the next expansion.

I just want more crafters!!

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Originally Posted by JowyAtreides

and I find crafting many of the different recipes to be a fun activity which benefits my gil-stash, desynth, progression to getting the shiny achievement weapons and FC members who are levelling low level classes (for example, I not long did all the green level50 gathering/crafting armours and someone happily took them off my hands to use for themselves)

To refer to your earlier post, crafting is one dimensional. If you have the numbers, you can craft an item and you are mostly certainly correct when saying this won't change. But then we get more threads like this one with players expressing a desire to get more from their crafting experience. I offered for discussion a suggestion on how to flesh out the classes a little, beyond just doing dailies and forgetting the classes exist until the next expansion.

I just want more crafters!!

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And nothing is stopping you from doing that. Other people not doing it shouldn't detract from your fun. The only arbitrary requirement for class questing is the level up, and the only requirement for that is getting that XP to get the level up - The method in which you do it shouldn't be so one dimensional. There is room to expand this, but it should never contract.

Crafter Fates in towns that give XP, Gil, and Scrips or materials for stuff, sure.
Make Crafter Fates required to progress your class? No.

See the difference? Fun is subjective. Therefore the best way to ensure fun across multiple types of people is to provide multiple types of ways to meaningfully progress. First time recipe crafting awards a 200% bonus, so in terms of material to xp ratio, it is superior, but some people would rather churn out a quick 800 Iron daggers than go out and get the different type of leather they need to make the axe. Some people would rather just do leves, and others would quick synth materials until their gear is broken and they're blue in the face.

Maybe if the crafting system -was- more robust, I wouldn't see having to fill out the journal as a requirement to be such a chore. But it's not. You make a dagger like you make an axe like you make a laz-e-boi. It's all the same to me, so don't mind me if I churn out 800 daggers.

You need no better contemporary example of how a restrictive system sucks than their continued insistence of Fate Training for the Relics. If you like Fates, good for you!

If not, doesn't matter, because you have no alternative.

I think a simple solution would be to include both SB style crafts as well as a harder tier for advanced crafters.

It’s disingenuous to simply write off ARR and HW crafting as completely luck based simply because RNG was involved. It would be purely luck based only if you were unable to influence the odds (like melding or battle drops), but the system was designed entirely around RNG manipulation which was only effectively achieved through active crafting. Crafts were generally designed to be very fair and for you to be able to HQ most crafts at min craftsmanship/control and all NQ mats with ease, provided that you learned the system.

Let’s take a look at HW crafts first.

The common documented method was to use a semi-passive approach with 11 touches with the occasional PT or BT swap. Serviceable, but a few misses could really mess you up. That wasn’t the right amount of touches to effectively HQ because statistically, you had to be able to mitigate up to 5 or 6 misses. An active approach was required since you really needed to use that extra CP gained from good procs to aim for a minimum of 14 touches and not just for swapping HTs with other types of touches. Even with 14 HTs, 5 or more misses would happen 15% of the time, but 7 or misses would happen only 1% of the time. Which is why you wanted to be able to mitigate up to 6 misses (by adding touches and utilizing precise touch).

Each additional touch you added significantly increased your odds of an HQ so that took top priority, followed by precise touch and then any other RNG reducers and buffs.

But was that always the best approach? No, because if things went really well early and you had a ton of CP, your priorities changed and you focused on finishing up RNG free if possible. That might have to be assisted by buffing more touches (innovation) as well.

With enough experience, you more or less stopped thinking in rotations and crafted organically keeping in mind your different options at different points in the craft (plus the required CP for each option, pros, cons). New situations often presented new and different approaches, which you could add to your overall strategy once learned. It was your playground and that’s what made crafting fun. The more you crafted, the better you got at decision making and you “leveled up” as a player.

Even for the hardest crafts, if you added a little bit of starting quality, you could easily HQ almost 100% of the time. Starting from 0 quality would allow you to craft 2x faster but at a 95% or so HQ rate. Tradeoff!

ARR crafts were more variable (lower base CP but higher proc rate, harder balance, fewer options etc.) so you wanted to include some starting quality for the hardest (final) crafts (from all NQ, 4* could in general be HQed easily still but only at a 90% rate) but the same principles held. If you crafted actively rather than passively, you did far better and with some starting quality, you could virtually HQ close to 100% of your synths with ease.

The differences in approaches became especially noticeable with the release of the master 2 tokens. Whether you crafted passively or actively was the difference between losing dozens to hundreds of FC3s (due to extremely excessive reclaiming; this was extremely detrimental to crafters at the time) or only losing a handful of fc3s while obtaining all the books.

The bottom line is that RNG based crafting was never truly scary, frustrating or overly difficult (including the master 2 tokens from ARR) unless you made it that way yourself. If a crafter was getting a ton of NQs, it was most likely an issue with their approach, rather than an RNG issue. To overcome that, they just had to learn the system and beef up their decision making. If not, a crafter would be either effectively locked out of the hardest crafts or could not produce them with ease. But isn’t that a good motivation to learn the mechanics properly? After all, practice makes perfect!

I agree that crafts, in general, have always been rather simplistic as the system never evolved beyond ARR. HW added a bit more strategy due to maker’s mark and precise touch but that also significantly reduced the difficulty of crafts to accommodate passive crafting. I would love the introduction of new conditions and sub-systems to add some more depth.

That said, I don’t think easier crafts should be removed as crafting should also be accessible and not everyone is interested in the old minigame. But there isn’t any reason why harder crafts can’t be included as well. If raiders get ultimate raids, why shouldn’t crafters get an advanced mini tier of crafts?

I definitely disagree with RNG in crafting. Like Camie said, the condition system is plenty and works quite well (it rewards manual crafting and knowing how your abilities work together) but failing 3 touches in a row is just frustrating.

However I'd like to see a small bump in difficulty. I've said plenty of times before the pre-nerf Ala Mhigan set was perfect. It doesn't have to be super exclusive 0.5% of the population difficult, SB has introduced many nice changes to crafting and I feel everything below 2 star is in a reasonable spot, but it would be nice to have goals. I'd like to look at an endgame item and feel impressed and motivated to craft my own. Instead I simply churned out 2 full sets of Rakshasa 2 days into the patch. A few things I'd like to see.

-2-4 star recipe difficulty bumped back to Ala Mhigan craft set levels. Still macro'able, but HQ materials actually have a value.
-Makers Mark redone.
-Some slightly rarer materials needed for endgame. Snailfish were a good example. Something more than a Resui, some ore and some tome mats.
-Melds more important at endgame. Materia is very accessible now. We don't even need to pentameld or use 6's atm.
-4 Star crafting on a higher difficulty than 3 star. Currently the difficulty is almost identical.
-A much more difficult to make crafter exclusive battle set. Maybe just 5ilv higher than the regular set and untradable.
-Very difficult to make Primal crafting tools that glow even when not in use.

IMO crafting should have at least 3 options.

Option 1: You use something like makers mark and go through the horrible experience of spamming flawless synthesis for a long time. It is very effective but time consuming.

Option 2: You use skills like prudent touch and CS3 for a guaranteed outcome. For this you should need hq mats and good stats, because its pretty easy to hit a macro.

Option 3: You hasty touch and rapid synth and hope for the best. It requires you to know a rotation and input it, so should be much more effective then option 2 but still has a small risk of everything going wrong.

I think this is the model SE went for in stormblood, but they made prudent touch so overpowered that there was really no reason not to use it. Perhaps if crafting in general was not so easy at end game rng crafting might of had a place.

If you want to make crafting more tedious and annoying than it already was before please do it to non-raid used stuff so like housing items lol. If I have to spend more time gathering and crafting food, gear, potions than raiding then we are going to have a problem. Gathering aethersands is already annoying enough. The game currently does not give out enough gil to compensate to make buying them a worthwhile investment especially when you are not clearing content (like while progging in raid). (and no using nq food does not work). I don't want the game to be a job and this would definitely make it a job.

I understand you want it to be more fun but this is a terrible suggestion.

The gear is (or should be) an alternate path to raiding, rather than being a raid essential, so it's fairly justified for it to be a little time consuming or difficult.

However, I'd agree there's no need to make raid consumables excessively difficult, especially when you can go through stacks quite easily at the high end. They could even make those a little easier and bump up the yield tbh.

I don't think crafting will become more difficult in general.
Things have changed a lot since the game started. As in war/magic we have now many more things to do, many ways to level up, many ways to cap the tomestones, the tomestone cap is higher, several ways to get relevant weapons and gear up. Dungeons are easier, you don't need to do that many dungeons, there are the roulettes, party finder, etc.


In crafting things have also changed. In ARR there were few things to do relatively. People did huge grinds for the Luminary tools, that didn't give that much advantage. The Supra weapons were super hard to get, later the Lucis. This was the same for the gathering classes. Many people that love gathering and crafting also love huge grinds. There are many people that did and do the big fish quests and achievements. The Honest Gillionare achievement. Desynthesis as a very important thing to level, for crafters and people who wanted to make gil, which was a great work.

Heavensward meant an easier end game crafting, and Stormblood an easier leveling of crafters, quests that give you the mats, quests that do not need HQ items made, etc. And high crafts that do not need top melds to make them manually with specialist. Only people that craft a lot and use macros systematically would need top melds and not even fully top, just high melds.
There were also more recipes available.
The consequence was, one one hand, the possibility of crafting for yourself, for example, accesories for all classes that allowed you to save tomestones for other items.
Also crafted weapons as an alternative to the tomestones ones or raid ones, at least as stepping stones.
And crafted gear and tools that can be made by most crafters that make the effort without a huge time or gil expense. They can even buy a few pieces of top gear, some from scrips, then craft the rest for themselves if they fancy it.
This meant that crafted items in general have been more available and at lower prices. High end crafting has been more accesible to more players. As happened with raiding, the lowering of the difficulty and accesibility to gear has made many more people raid than they did before. Now more crafters have reached the top gear and can craft the most difficult items
I think in Stormblood things have been much better than they were before. But...it really feels a bit too easy. Like the dungeons. But I'd rather have a dungeon a bit too easy than spend a lot of time with wipes, people that quit when they see the difficult dungeon has popped, etc. This has happened. The same with crafts. There was a recipe book that needed very difficult HQ items in ARR that was a nightmare. When reclaim became the ability you needed to learn to use best. PTSD.

But top tier crafters don't have that moat situation that kept competitors away. They don't make that much gil on each item they sell. And don't feel they are so exclusive since there are lots of players that can craft the higher items (but most don't, since gil is not that important and when time passes you usually accumulate a lot of gil without making special effort.)
Materia is also very available, and desynthesis and very expensive demimateria have disappeared. Now you get items easily (but not in unlimited quantities) from beast tribes or tomestones or scrips. There is no weekly cap for scrips and custom deliveries are an easy way to get them, but with a weekly limit.

What I think high tier crafters would enjoy (they might not know it, but really it is that they enjoy), and maybe they will get it, is some very grindy craft goal that takes a lot of effort, maybe a lot of gil and luck, just for an achievement or for glamour gear super difficult to get that makes it very exclusive. It won't help you craft easier or use macros where nobody can't use them, but you will have gear nobody has, at least for some months until something newer and rarer they will covet and show off appears.

I hope the Ishgard reconstruction will have, along with easy scrips and a side story for the normal players, maybe some ultra difficult or grindy thing for the top crafters and gatherers. A bit like the Tiger mount for hunts or the Astrope. Maybe not that hard, and not just one item, but a full set of tools or gear that are pure exclusive super difficult to get glamour. I see all that lalafell mega crafters boasting their super hard to get gear around. Gil is not all that matters. Some patches later, a new set of that type appears so new ultra exclusive glamour is here just when too many people were obtaining the previous.

Top crafters have that much more gil than they need, and frequently a lot of time to spare. A huge grind or very difficult crafts, or a mix, would be to the taste of many. Not for any play or gil advantage, but for showing off and glamour.

I don't think crafting in this game is particularly "easy". I have NEVER had enough CP to ever use any of the macros, and it seems that the only reason that others do is that you penta-meld your gear. If you don't have a lot of gil, that's not really an option.

I reached the endgame of crafting in 4.2 for the first time and was stymied by the amount of work that would have gone in to get even the 320 gear. Now that I am back, I've been using custom delivery to get the 350 yellow script gear but even that is not going to give me enough CP to do any of the rotations I can find.

I'm not really complaining though. Just from the perspective of a newer player, it has not become the slightest bit easier to gear up and get into crafting if you don't have a bucketload of gil.

It seems like the high end crafting system is a combination of brute force + praying to RNG gods. There is a distinct lack of skills needed.

I hope so to make the craft hard again, because farmer for hours and craft to get to sell at a price of misery, because craft any casual can get there.

Reserve the craft at the hardcore farmer ! :P

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Originally Posted by XenabelleS

I don't think crafting in this game is particularly "easy". I have NEVER had enough CP to ever use any of the macros, and it seems that the only reason that others do is that you penta-meld your gear. If you don't have a lot of gil, that's not really an option.

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There isn't much point in going all out this late in the expansion, but you can pentameld for free.

You get 6's from a few quests, yellow scrips, converting Eureka materia via Mutamix, converting spiritbond lv70 white DoH gear or fairly cheap on the MB. You only fill your main slots with 6's.
You get 4's and 5's over time from red scrips. You get a lot of red scrips from Custom Delivery, so once you have your books, they build fast. I have hundreds of each.
You also get 4's from Squadron chemistry and Ixal.
You get 1's, 2's and 3's from the upper Ixal dailies quite cheap.

You don't need expensive melds, you can basically meld V's in the main slots and IV's in the rest and you're good as long as your CP is high.

Rotations can also be custom adjusted to your stats. Sometimes you can make a macro 24-32cp cheaper with one tweak and you only need to add a little more HQ materials and it will work 100%. We can help you with that here, some crafters love theorycrafting.

Crafted is always better than scrip. If you can't craft it yourself, sell items you get from yellow scrips and buy a crafted set with the gil.

It is a grind, but you can get there without spending anything. Hopefully some of this helps :)

Adding more RNG isn't making anything hard.

There is a reason everyone that craft often enough uses macros (and some manage to automate the whole process). For sure, crack down your perfect rotation is fun and all that but there is nothing more to it. I mean:

- We can't customize the gear.
- Materials only come in NQ or HQ.
- We can craft HQ without using HQ materials.
- Market boards are super convenient but kill all the fun of setting up, and advertising, your own shop.
- There is no gear decay so certain markets die over time.
- One player can be everything and that's "bad".

And no, I'm not going to suggest to change anything, at the end of the day FFXIV is a theme park, not a sandbox. What we have now is good enough, if anything I'll go for a hard recipe unlocking but after that, you can craft as many as you want with one click or a mini-game around building a workshop and hiring/training our workers to produce goods without macro AFK.

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Originally Posted by Windsun33

It seems like the high end crafting system is a combination of brute force + praying to RNG gods. There is a distinct lack of skills needed.

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There is NO RNG in current end game crafting.

If you are a masochist whitch enjoys suffering and pain thats fine for you, but please let the rest of us who dont like lottery style and spending hours of farming for nothing enjoy the game. The crafting is fine as it is, if you want havy rng go and farm your gear via raids or dungeons. Crafting should be something reliable once mastered and not some stupid rng thing.

My highest crafting levels are 44 and 59, and I just want it to get easier, not harder.

If I get a crafting job quest to make some HQ item, I have to spend well over an hour gathering multiple HQ materials, and when I finally get a set of HQ mats together, it's maybe a 50-60% chance that the result will be HQ. (Which is why I have to gather multiple sets)
I've heard that players can make HO items from NQ mats, but I can't believe it.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

My highest crafting levels are 44 and 59, and I just want it to get easier, not harder.

If I get a crafting job quest to make some HQ item, I have to spend well over an hour gathering multiple HQ materials, and when I finally get a set of HQ mats together, it's maybe a 50-60% chance that the result will be HQ. (Which is why I have to gather multiple sets)
I've heard that players can make HO items from NQ mats, but I can't believe it.

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By pushing CRP and ALC to 50 you will gain powerful cross class abilities.

With the CC abilities you have you should be able to HQ stuff for your lower level crafts.

Honestly, all I'd want from crafting at this point is to make it faster somehow.

Like a skill that lets you increase the yield of a recipe (Only for stackable items), but at the expense of extra materials and a higher quality requirement for 100% HQ.

Personally, I'd like macroing to be made harder but not crafting itself. In other words, I would like more proc related skills to make macro less effective while rewarding player for learning how to properly use their skill. I also like high risk high reward skills As Long as they have viable alternative without RNG (the new hasty vs prudent touch is a good example or the lv 64 skill too)

I don't think should be harder, I think it's fine as it is, anyone with some investment can craft anything. What I don't like are being able to macro 4star without HQ items.

As I said, just adding more proc related skill could solve this issue since macro can't take benefit of proc

So...an interview claimed the Ishgard restoration is going to present extremely difficult crafts that will likely require heavy overmelding and what not.

It would be nice to get stuff that actually pushes the crafting system to its limits since you have the potential to get much higher quality values if you use the specialist skill and get good RNG.

I am, however, extremely concerned that the ranking system for the restoration is going to be exploited heavily by botters...

The 3PM today (Friday) producer letter should tell us more - supposed to cover a lot the DOL/DOH changes.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I am, however, extremely concerned that the ranking system for the restoration is going to be exploited heavily by botters...

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That's the first thing that came to mind when I read that too. Making challenges is great, a leaderboard for fun is great too, but once you tack on limited rewards to that leaderboard you're going to get people exploiting the system and it requires an active team to combat that. I would much rather the leaderboard not be tied to the rewards at all and simply allow people to attempt to reach challenge goals.

Well let's hope it's actually difficult and not just a question of how much materia you're willing to throw at it.