Final Fantasy XIV crafting patch screws over high-level crafters

Apparently, people are complaining that 580 crafted gear is too easy to craft thus prices dropped too quickly, so they couldn't make good money on it. Full article is here: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles...level-crafters


My opinion on the problem is that it's not because recipes are easy to make but because now there are simply just too many crafters around. I think the trend started to occur at the late patches of Heavensward when they introduced Custom Deliveries, thus massively boosting overall experience you gain from crafting/gathering. Then at Stormblood they started to simplify crafting by removing "unneeded" skills, thus making it more casual friendly for new players. Also, they increased experience gained for finishing recipes. Then, Firmament got introduced which really turned the table. Now levelling crafters became a trivial thing because Firmament allowed you to max all your crafters in a mere week.

Before all that crafting was sort of a niche luxury for a few number of people who were really interested and were willing to invest sizable amount of time and effort into it, learning hard rotations because too many different skills etc etc. Now being a crafter is just a matter of spending a week in Firmament and then turning in collectables and boom, you have level 90. Crafting lost it's exclusivity. Hence the gear prices, in addition for recipes being quite easy to make, there are LOADS of people who are making them. No wonder price went down to trash so quickly.

The only solution to the problem is to make all green gear pentameld dependant so you need to have pentameld in order to craft it or make crafting and gathering master book harder to obtain because now they are super easy to get. For example, for one folklore book in HW you needed 50 books and 1 book costed like 50 scrips if I remember. So 2500 scrips compared to 1600 scrips now. Master recipes books are as easy as shit to get, you get 1200 scrips by turning in 8 collectables.

So imo, it's an array of factors that brought crafting situation to this. Mostly SE being keen on making crafting more casual and reachable for players than it was before and overpopulation of omnicrafters as a result.

Anyone have their own opinion on the matter?

Nope, crafting just became full casual, some of my guildmates who only craft and craft said the same... it became way more easier to craft a HQ gear than it was before, you don't even need good gear to craft anything now, it became that easy, you can make HQ items with just the basic 90ilvl gear without any melds in it, and that in itself is a problem. I think why people have problems now is because of this, HQ gear was made easy to do, way too easy, and because of this, anyone can do it without any preparations or big investment to max out their gear before even trying.

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Crafting lost its exclusivity.

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Hallelujah? I mean, being a tank, healer, or DPS isn't the exclusive domain of a relative few people.

That said, there do need to be things to test the limits of your skill in each role. I don't know that a pentamelding requirement for crafters is it, though. That's just a test of your patience with RNG, is it not?

I miss how each master recipe book in ARR required you to craft an item in high quality that was specific to the job that the book was for. The books lose something when I can acquire them all by piling up scrips via spamming collectables from a single job.

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Originally Posted by Hik3n

Nope, crafting just became full casual, some of my guildmates who only craft and craft said the same... it became way more easier to craft a HQ gear than it was before, you don't even need good gear to craft anything now, it became that easy, you can make HQ items with just the basic 90ilvl gear without any melds in it, and that in itself is a problem. I think why people have problems now is because of this, HQ gear was made easy to do, way too easy, and because of this, anyone can do it without any preparations or big investment to max out their gear before even trying.

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It is a shame, really. I know players who liked to craft and left the game since all the changes to crafting. It was their endgame, to provide gear, food and pots to raiders.

SE appears to be shifting toward Expert as content for high end crafters instead of marketboard domination through exclusivity caused by barrier to entry. There's going to be a lot of varied opinions on what is in the best interest of the game depending on interest.

Most players are probably finding it beneficial because they can get things cheaper. But there's still profit to be made for those who consider crafting their end game even if prices are lower. If all someone was after was profit in the past, they can still get it.

I'm making better money selling my stash of crafting/gathering materia than I am actually interacting with the crafting content.

Brainstorming wise it's like, how can you make at least the joy of making the HQ gear more engaging. As it stands now that aspect of being a it's either NQ or HQ really limits the worth of what crafters can do. Now I"m not saying that every patch should have a gearset that's fully customizable however I do think it would be interesting if SE tinkered with the idea of having a specific gear type with the ability to be customized for the rest of the patch cycle. If we consider each raid tier as the start of the next era of gear, then we could suggest something like a head piece, Hands and Feet as the three pieces of gear that can be retinkered throughout the patch cycle.

Say you start on 6.0, and they start with the head piece, now at first it won't look like anything special, 2 materia slots before overmelding, IL 580, etc etc, just a normal HQ piece of gear however with the help of other crafters aka difficult materials made to add modification to the equipment, would allow you to reach a point where say you can have 15 materia slots on the gear, and each time you reach the next row of materia your gear along with the primary/secondary stats are readjusted for the new IL, so with 6 materia you have an IL 600, with 10 it becomes 620, then 11 makes it 640 with the 15 making it 650 in theory if 650 becomes the highest IL in the game for this expansion.

But the general idea is to create this resource draining material hog that gives players that extra option to push harder for those who want to be more competitive, now I"m not saying it's a perfect system, but I do imagine that if a raid tier say was made a bit more difficult and these Customizable pieces of gear could help tip success in your favor, it would definitely make it a more exciting game since it's not just the raiders fighting amongst one another now, it's also the crafters pushing their skills to the limit in an attempt to outfit their team with the best gear possible to give them the opportunity to clinch the content.

To be honest, when I was looking at past Master Recipes, I was noticing a potential problem given the influx of players, the fact that the options are very limited, it doesn't encourage a thriving market since it's just very bland and to the point, prep materials, armor, weapons, potions and food. There is nothing beyond that which requires "skill" to produce, once you HQ it's the end, you've done all you can with the gear.

However, this is just a thought to give crafters a more fun role in assisting battle content but if SE can deliver with Sanctuary and allow craft/gather skills be needed to a certain level to achieve certain things, I would enjoy that.

I would like to see some challenging feats for Crafters, it'd be nice if we could see them sooner but time will tell if they choose to acknowledge that above issue with high level crafters or rather lack of high level crafter content in the actual game.

im sure they will add another something where you would need to be specialist , and it would with that random rng . however propably without possibility of making money . you still can earn decent amount of money .

I was able to make decent money on patch day by selling things at prices normal players can afford as opposed to the ultra rich. I'm more of the side of making levelling crafters faster so that people can become more self-sufficient and less reliant on people who thinks it's ok to sell gear or glams at 1-2mil or higher.

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Originally Posted by ForctyusGold

im sure they will add another something where you would need to be specialist , and it would with that random rng . however propably without possibility of making money . you still can earn decent amount of money .

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The barrier to entry is so low at this point that it kinda devalues being an omnicrafter it seems like. Not just in Gil profit, I don't care about that so much, but just in general- not as many people need help making things when everyone* can just make them themselves. A big part of the "class fantasy" appeal of being a crafter in a MMO to me is providing a service to other players who didn't choose to invest their time into that side system. That's still technically true, of course, but when the time investment is like... a week of firmament it's like eh. And not just that- even the more casual crafters in my FC got from 80-90 in those jobs in the span of a few weeks outside of doing the MSQ and all that as well. So clearly the pace isn't slowing down anytime soon lol.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I was able to make decent money on patch day by selling things at prices normal players can afford as opposed to the ultra rich. I'm more of the side of making levelling crafters faster so that people can become more self-sufficient and less reliant on people who thinks it's ok to sell gear or glams at 1-2mil or higher.

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Gear is only that expensive on day 1, though? Prices on my server dropped to like 400-500k per each piece by the end of the day, and they're like 300k today. I'm pretty sure by the end of the week, they'll be more around 100k-150k, which is pretty reasonable. Like, nobody needs crafted gear. You can do 99% of the content in the game without dropping a million on crafted gear on patch day.

I mean, yeah, 3mil for a piece of gear is ridiculous. But if someone wants to buy a piece of gear I crafted 40 min after patch dropped for 3 mil instead of literally waiting a few days, that's on them. The only people who really need crafted gear the moment patch drops are really high end savage raiders (like people doing world race). And 99% of the time, glams are expensive because the mats are hard to get (like treasure map stuff), not because people are trying to price gouge you. Honestly, at least on my server, crafted glams generally sell for almost the same amount that it would take to just buy the mats and craft it yourself (or even for less lol).

But at the end of the day, if people are going to buy an item for a certain price, then why price it lower? If people aren't willing to pay that much, then the market will adjust until prices meet what people are willing to pay.

edit: and also, leveling your crafters (and gatherers) is already super easy. I levelled mine from 1-80 in a week, and from 80-90 in like 1 or 2 days? And if you don't want to put the effort in, you can just do what my friend did and level them from 1-80 over the course of 4-5 months by basically just doing grand company turn ins.

And if crafting was harder and more "exclusive" people would complain about that too. Can't please everyone unfortunately. If you want to make tons of gil, you can definitely find your market even with the current economy, you just gotta know where to look and when to switch to selling something else to make the biggest profit.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I was able to make decent money on patch day by selling things at prices normal players can afford as opposed to the ultra rich.

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Also this. Most people are unlikely to pay millions of gil for every single gear piece. More reasonable(/affordable to the average player) prices = more sales that add up nicely over time. Patience!

We (High-level crafters) have been screwed since they nerfed the time it takes to level back in shadowbringers coupled with the easing of the master craft recipes. It is simple, you increase the number of something, that something's value will go down, this includes jobs, items, etc... A real world example would be, if we increase the number of doctors, being a doctor loses a certain amount of value.