If crafting was still inaccessible and difficult like Heavensward Patches, you’d quit

Thread title limit wouldn’t let me add the ? at the end. I was wondering if crafting was still as difficult, rng heavy, and grindy like Heavensward, would you still be playing ffxiv?

Yeah, I'd probably still play.

The only thing I wasn't a major fan of at the time was leveling for cross-class abilities tbh, but that applies to both Crafting and DoW/M classes.

I level crafting with beast tribes only really so I can keep repairing my own gear each expansion. That and to make items from previous expansions that're super easy to make if I need them (Potions/Ethers/ect)

I'd play, but I wouldn't craft.

I'm too much of a himbo to understand crafting in the ARR and HW era.

I didn't quit over it, though.

Crafting was inaccessible?

Idk, I just didn't craft until Ishgard restoration. I still hate crafting, though I can see the appeal for some.

I'd still play because crafting isn't as huge for me. But I'd probably have to really brute force myself to level crafters for the profit. I started playing during stormblood and I wanted to level my crafters. Hell, I tried to level them, really really hard. But I couldn't. You had to do leves, and beast tribes, but they gave so little xp compared to now, and it was really hard to do the crafts for the leves at low levels, so it was common to buy levekits from other players so you had all the leve crafts you needed to level. But they were very, very expensive. I managed to level culinarian I think, but it wasn't as feasible for me to level all of them. I only managed to level them when they made the XP gains super higher in late stormblood or early shadowbringers, and later they made leveling them even easier with ishgard restoration.


From what I hear people used to make way more money from crafting back then... now that anyone can easily become a crafter people craft their own stuff instead of buying from the market board.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Crafting was inaccessible?

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I only came in at the tail end of it and didn't really actually bother crafting much beyond leveling GSM up... but I would imagine it was "inaccessible" for difficulty reasons. Likely higher stat requirements for crafting, particularly for Master Recipes, and in particular cross-class abilities, which meant to be optimal from a crafting perspective (not even talking getting the materials here, purely the act of crafting) you needed to specifically level certain jobs up for important abilities. I forget what job had what, but I recall Careful Synthesis and Manipulation being two very important cross-class abilities you really wanted to have.

Nowadays every job gets everything, so you don't need to level every job if you don't want to be an omnicrafter and just want to be an alchemist or something. And I'm able to craft the latest master recipe stuff with minimal overmelding. Now the hardest thing to do is to do the bloody job quests so you can get Manipulation from the 70 quest, as well as a couple of nice to have traits.

Meh, the only hard part about crafting has been leveling up all the jobs related to it, and that's been the case since ARR. Once you get your foot in the door, it's always been relatively easy.

Crafting was by large, pretty inaccessible to most people because you would have to commit to it.

Crafting as it is now, simplified for the better. Yes I get that people want it to be harder and "for the pros" but crafting has so many benefits if it were more accessible. Things like melding your own materia, repairing your own gear and even crafting your own gear is satisfying. The whole argument of "now everyone can compete because we're all equal" which is wrong. Crafting and selling is very intense and requires prior knowledge and understanding of how the marketboard works. Not everyone is going to do that destroy competition. In fact, encouraging more competition on the marketboard is healthy as it is in reality with the economy. No more having drop tons of money just because there were only a handful of people selling and essentially controlling the pricing.

Also being able to efficiently crafting and selling at a high rate requires top tier melds and that requires overmelding and that in itself does not appeal it to a lot of people as dropping millions of gil to perfect your meld set.

Still having level all 8 crafters is rather daunting and obtaining master recipes for all of them is time-consuming.

So to answer your initial question, no. I get wanting more complexity in it as the desire to want complex jobs so you can feel a sense of accomplishment by understanding it but it's really unfair to people who isn't super into just trying to make crafts for themselves or a friend.

And no matter how much people complain about casuals ruining the game, remembering that casuals also fund the game so it is in SE's best interest to more things more accessible.

I like the way crafting is currently as its not super hard to understand and rewarding for anyone new to jump into.

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Originally Posted by CrayonsAndPaint

...I was wondering if crafting was still as difficult, rng heavy, and grindy like Heavensward, would you still be playing ffxiv?

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The RNG fail was a pain, but it was more fun overall. So, while I'd like to remove the RNG fail chance I'd add in a RNG mandated spell at points, something to completely remove crafting macros.

I'd likely craft more than I do now in easy mode (with maxed DOH/DOL), which is really just making stuff for me and my pocket tank to eat.

I'd still play. It was just extra effort to craft back then. No big deal. :/

Bring back Whistle While at Work :p

Crafting wouldn't be so terrible if you could use mats from retainers.

It wasn't any harder than it is now... Still had to meld, still used macros. People just romanticize it.

Crafting was never my main draw and even now that it's easy I still can't be bothered. I'm quitting for other reasons.

Funny you mention that; crafting/gathering was my main entertainment when HW came out, and what they did to them in 3.1 drove me to cancel my sub and not touch the game until SB came out.

I like grinding, so it would be more of a reason for me to play lol. if it was more inaccessible I'd just spend my time making more gil instead of crafting collectibles for 20 hours so i can pentameld my gear for free lmao

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Originally Posted by Velnora

Crafting wouldn't be so terrible if you could use mats from retainers.

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yes!!!!! the thing I hate most about crafting is having to go to my retainers and pull out each mat individually and then they end up cluttering my inventory so I have to put them back but then I need them again so I take them out lmao.... truly wish they'd just let you craft with items directly from your retainers. especially since a lot of the mats look similar, so it's kind of a pain to search for all of them, esp since I have basically every crafting mat (besides cul/alch ones) stored up from desynthing and gathering

Most of the people I know barely care or touch crafting in a meaningful way, they level it, buy gear and slap some macros in case they want to do something that requires more than 3 buttons and that's it, they level it with beast tribes and call it a day. I don't think most people would care.

Aren't most of the benefits from easily having crafters are solved by going into a npc or asking for a friend? I do kinda wish there was a more... "thought" aspect of it. Also, I liked the cross-skill thingy, at least for crafting at least helped to give each crafter a flavour, since they are sort of all the same.

I don't mind the fast levelling we have nowadays, however I do wish that it had some content that wasn't just macroable, perhaps a collectable aspect of it (like fishing) or some sort of mini-game. Also, a better inventory management so it's you don't need to be an organized gal to partake in it. The crafting section of the forums actually had a very deep discussion regarding this not long ago I believe;

I never tried it back in HW, so I don't have much opinions regarding the past (except for the cross-skill system), the system itself is interesting, but the execution is very lacking, I wouldn't mind having it to be a bit harder.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Crafting was inaccessible?

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Inaccessible is a strong word but during HW we had to deal with:

- Specialization was a thing, you could only had access to all recipes if you level multiple characters.

- Capped red scrips needed for important recipes.

- Basic materials, like leather, got a jump in the number needed to produce 1. At that time any material coming from a monster was harder to obtain.

- Desyn was way harder to level and the amount of points you could spread around were also limited.

- RNG materials like titanium ore.

- Basic recipes to level up required materials from timed nodes.

- Way less XP sources.

- First ILvL170 set was class specific, fun times getting all and melding all if you wanted to be an omnicrafter.

- A very obnoxious system to obtain certain materials I don't even remember now.

Probably more stuff I just forgot. Anyway, back then YoshiP mentioned not being happy with current crafting/gathering participation and since then has slowly become more and more accesible till today situation.

I don't even craft now, so I guess I would still play normally as I do now.

Getting my first crafter to 60 back in HW sure was an adventure yeah. I remember getting my specialist actions and counting multiples of 3 to try to HQ gear.. I was terrible at it, but I managed to get HQ gear despite only getting to 50%. I'm not sure that's possible anymore, so maybe it's not too bad after all haha.
Leveling is a breeze now. I think that's a good thing.

I got all my crafters to 60 via beast tribes. Went past that largely with custom deliveries. I don't actually care about crafting. I just level them for gear repairs. Nothing would change in my case.

If HW would be today then there would be calculated best solutions, guides, farming optimization and so on. The popularity would depend on profitability though - game on younger stage would have less developed markets and player wealth.

Been crafting since ARR. I'd still craft. The accessibility of crafting increased with the Ixal in ARR, and then again with the Moogles in HW.

It's just that in and around the beginning of SHB, a number of things happened to crafting and gathering to make it too easy.

-Exp got massively increased for everything. Leves, gathering, etc.
-The Firmament was added.
-On top of that, there was a gathering and crafting specific beast tribe.
-Crafting rotations were simplified for like the third time in a row.
-The horrible gathering collectible system was simplified.

I find the last two points to be fairly justified at any point in time, but maybe don't add the Firmament, buff exp, and give two freebie beasttribes all in the same expansion.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the Crystalline Mean quests represented another fairly easy avenue for big exp and scrips before 80. Not to mention that they keep adding Custom Deliveries NPCs. I like these NPCs, mind you, but there's no doubt that they've taken the massive struggle out of omnicrafting and made it fairly easy. To the point that I've got multiple omnicrafters on different servers.

I actually liked crafting the way it was up until then. It didn't seem any more inaccessible or grindy than it is now. Yes, leveling to 90 is much faster now, but once you hit 90, you still have to gather a bunch of scrips to buy the materia you need to pentameld your gear. On top of that, you have to farm for legendary mats unless you want to be out an arm and a leg. If you think it's not grindy now, then you're not actually trying to craft any high end items from the current expansion.

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Originally Posted by Ronduwil

I actually liked crafting the way it was up until then. It didn't seem any more inaccessible or grindy than it is now. Yes, leveling to 90 is much faster now, but once you hit 90, you still have to gather a bunch of scrips to buy the materia you need to pentameld your gear. On top of that, you have to farm for legendary mats unless you want to be out an arm and a leg. If you think it's not grindy now, then you're not actually trying to craft any high end items from the current expansion.

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Grindy isn't hard to most MMO players.

If I omni-crafted during Heavensward, why would I quit if crafting was like Heavensward? That makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

Inaccessible is a strong word but during HW we had to deal with:

- Specialization was a thing, you could only had access to all recipes if you level multiple characters.

- Capped red scrips needed for important recipes.

- Basic materials, like leather, got a jump in the number needed to produce 1. At that time any material coming from a monster was harder to obtain.

- Desyn was way harder to level and the amount of points you could spread around were also limited.

- RNG materials like titanium ore.

- Basic recipes to level up required materials from timed nodes.

- Way less XP sources.

- First ILvL170 set was class specific, fun times getting all and melding all if you wanted to be an omnicrafter.

- A very obnoxious system to obtain certain materials I don't even remember now.

Probably more stuff I just forgot. Anyway, back then YoshiP mentioned not being happy with current crafting/gathering participation and since then has slowly become more and more accesible till today situation.

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I know, I was there =]

I'm just a little confused at that word. It wasn't crazy easy like it is now.. but it wasn't inaccessible or any more complex than any other skilltree or rotation at the time. It was a little more luck based, but .. mneh

I'd still play. I didn't craft much back then, since I was still learning it, but if it stayed that way I probably would have kept working at it, slowly getting a better understanding of it, and being able to do the crafts. I probably would also have kept doing what I was doing, which was doing every single craft for each of the classes for completion sake.

I miss the time when leveling gathering / crafting was hard. It shouldn't be a walk in the park like it is today. That doesn't mean it's not expensive to equip/overmeld, it's still tens of millions to do but the leveling part is too fast.

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Originally Posted by Eriane_Elis

I miss the time when leveling gathering / crafting was hard. It shouldn't be a walk in the park like it is today. That doesn't mean it's not expensive to equip/overmeld, it's still tens of millions to do but the leveling part is too fast.

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It's insane at how much faster is is to level a profession over a job.

I like crafting that involves time investment and research, but I'll freely admit HW crafting wasn't good. They overdid it. Scrip caps, timed nodes being needed for many leveling crafts, hidden rng materials, limited specialist and desynth and so on.

Sadly, they did what many developers do when they make a mistake and make something too hard, they panicked and did a full U-turn. In my opinion, early Stormblood was when they got crafting just right. It involved some effort but was accessible to anyone and very rewarding. It was a shame when they wrecked that.

I would still be here, selling MSQ gear coffers and Eureka items.

HW was the last time endgame crafts actually were expensive. The last time you could make gil more easily by crafting, because it was more rng.
Feels like when you say "inaccessible" you mean not very bot/macro friendly.

Why the hell would I play XIV only to craft?

I played through ARR and all of HW, crafting the whole way. Once I got all my DoH/DoL maxed out and had to chase timed nodes for higher-end stuff I quit trying to make the high-end stuff out of frustration with that system. I kind of regret not pushing through and making a bigger stack of money for the future, but to be completely honest, I prefer crafting the way it is now. We still have to chase the timed nodes for things, but it doesn't seem like the burden it was in HW. The thing that really sucks for me is the small number of people who are essentially controlling the markets on entire DCs. With all the information available and means to optimize gameplay to the nth degree, it's easy to flood a market with cheap mass produced stuff. I've always been a lower, but steady, income rather than big ticket seller so this doesn't significantly impact my bottom line, it just bugs me on principle.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

I find the last two points to be fairly justified at any point in time, but maybe don't add the Firmament, buff exp, and give two freebie beasttribes all in the same expansion.

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Firmament is consistent but slow/boring. Beast tribes aren't omnicrafter efficient that much. You get way more from FC daily deliveries as omni, while as limited-jobs crafted beast tribe and leves are much more effective.

Joined in 2021 and did the omnicrafter path using various sources of exp including Firmament. In EW I did craft few 6.0.5 items but mostly tinctures and 35-durability HQ component to sell on the board - first time doing "end game" crafting when it's actually current. IMHO that's not my niche, I rather like crafting some housing or random gear, like I crafted 1-30 gear to all ARR jobs I recently leveled... because HQ lvl 5 weapon is a "must" :D I also crafted myself alchemy boxes to upgrade ARR warrior class gear to a dyable version and then ARR relic HQ crafts needed at one stage :)

If SE wants to have good end-game crafted gear and not more and more catchup-like gear that now "everyone" crafted then they would have to differentiate master crafting from non-master crafts. I think that demimateria idea from the past refined into some sort of "power" you store to then use later could be such differentiator. Yet it should not go that crazy to not make things like savage race gated behind high barrier of entry related to player wealth (like in WoW) - more like demimateria from EX trials is used to craft really fancy things.

Considering I've been crafting and gathering since 2014, nope, wouldn't quit and wouldn't stop crafting and gathering.

I do not mind the changes to make it more accessible in the slightest, though. When it's something a lot do, it will get a lot of love and attention and improvements. And they've started a good trend with the basics being easy and having harder stuff down the line for challenge.