Crafter/Gathering EXP Nerf Is Too Strong

I still do not understand why the nerf is so strong on the methods for crafting and gathering experience at levels 80 (for some things) and 90 (for everything).

1) Crafters get Trained Eye at level 80. I understand that this would allow for cheesing of collectables, which is something devs would want to prevent. BUT at level 88, collectables for level 80 and below are still awarding normal experience. Only once you hit level 90 does the experience drop to 1000 xp per item, and this is for all items from EW/level 90 and below. Level 90 crafts are *not* cheeseable at this point. I'm really frustrated and confused as to why this nerf happens at this point.

2) I can see this being applicable with the Society quests as well, but at level 80, the Dwarf quests also drop to 1000 xp per turn in. Quests which are from level 71-80 - again, this is not a range in which the Trained Eye skill will actually help in most of the cases! Why is this nerf implemented here? And so strongly?

3) Gatherers have the same problem, which really doesn't make sense because there is no skill that allows a gatherer to instantly max quality a collectable, like there is with crafters.

I can see scaling down the exp given for quests far below your level, but the keyword here is *far*. There's already a decreasing rate of return on lower level items due to the increase in exp needed to reach each subsequent level, but if you want to scale up that decrease, I can see the logic in that.

I do not see the logic in this punishment for hitting certain level milestones, and it's incredibly frustrating and dissuades players from doing things like the society quests. Once the dwarf quests dropped to a 1000 exp return per turn in, there's literally no point to finishing the questline anymore, at least not until I'm back at max level and just looking for stuff to do.

Please, re-evaluate this exp nerf and change it to something that's less punishing. There has to be some kind of middle ground here, and one that encourages players to participate in all the extra content that is available, such as the society quests.

The reason is simply to get players to do the level appropriate content. I mean, the scaling is only active for the levels of the current expansion. When I levelled during EW, I distrinctly remember completely overlevelling all my crafters into SB level range just by doing the ARR leves to checkmark the log. Then you got previous expansion society quests, daily GC turn ins and 12 custom delieveries weekly allowances on top of 6 leve allowances per day, all of which deliver quite a lot of low investment xp. I mean, leves are so powerful, people level up all their crafters and gatherers in a few hours after an expansion launch.

When was there a xp nerf? After the release of DT?

DT added an additional nerf. Especially of the collectables. And the severe drop from a normal amount of exp to just 1000.

I honestly have the biggest problem with the gatherer nerfs for collectables in general, and then the nerf of all EW turnins when you hit level 90. It would be one thing if they nerfed turnins after you were 10+ levels above, but nerfing level 80 society quests when you hit level 80, and level 90 collectables when you hit level 90 just feels like punishment for hitting a milestone.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

When was there a xp nerf? After the release of DT?

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No, it's the same spiel as for the previous expansions. The xp for House of Splendor turn ins of collectables from the previous expansions, society tribe quests of the previous expansions as well as levequests from the previous expansions, will be capped to 1000 xp for classes that have reached the previous expansion's max level. I.e. currently, that is lvl 90, with all the pre-DT stuff then being capped, and only DT versions of these turn ins giving appropriate xp.

No, it changed. At no point did House of Splendor/Collectables turn ins dip in exp until DT came out and levels beyond 90 were an option. My level 88 CUL on an alt still gets full EXP from collectables from ARR, HW, etc. It's only once you get to level 90 that it drops, and it drops for ALL collectables except the level 91 ones. So any extra level 90 collectables might as well be discarded for how useful they are.

It's possible that the Dwarf and Namazu Society quests got nerfed when you hit level 80/70 respectively already. I'm pretty sure Namazu didn't because I was working on those for a while back during SHB, but it's been a few years since them so I can't say for certain - though I probably wouldn't have finished that quest line if it wasn't giving me exp in return. I also finished all the Dwarf quests before EW came out, so I'm not sure about those either. I don't like that the exp nerf dis-incentivizes players from actually completing those quest lines though, especially since those quests have a set limit per day anyway.

It's one thing to encourage players to move on to the next expansion's crafting and gathering, but they should be dissuading people from doing SHB and below content when you get to DT, not EW stuff when you literally JUST got to the first level for DT (and technically the *last* level of EW).

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Originally Posted by SarriaKadijah

No, it changed.

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Yes, Dawntrail was released. As such, Endwalker became part of the "previous expansions" group. During Endwalker, doing Shadowbringer and below leves, turn ins and society quests would all give 1000 xp when the corresponding class hit lvl 80. It's a simple gameplay restriction. Again, it's basically a non-issue, the game throws so many ways to level crafters / gatherers at you for basically no investment, the capping of previous expansion is basically just to curb scrip generation. I mean, you still get full xp for all the Custom Deliveries, the low level ones you can instacraft to max collectabliity.

I mean, I don't really get your issue here, if you aren't interested in the story quests of the societies, don't do them. If you just want to grind as fast as possible, just do leves / current expansion scrip turn ins. Again, people max out all their crafters and gatherers before the evening on a launch day.

Edit 2: Retracting everything I said here because I was wrong and I can admit that and I was getting defensive, and that was distracting from my point and that's on me. But I do not think that hitting players with a nerf this strong this suddenly is good for the player base as a whole. It would be one thing if it hit in stages (nerf ARR when you get to STB levels, etc), but the sudden wham out of the blue when you are close to getting caught up with everyone else, especially if we're in the patch cycle and not right around release day of a new expac, feels bad man.

Edit: and maybe I'm just forgetting what it was like during EW but it is frustrating to get hit with that huge dip when I'm not actually up to the expansion mats yet. It would be fine if it hit at 91 - I fully get the need to push people to do new expansion stuff, but nothing takes the wind out of my sails more than seeing that return on the time and effort to collect and/or craft just go to waste like that.

If I remember correctly they added the exp nerfs after people were hoarding items before an expansion released to then turn them in once the expansion released to instantly hit the new level cap.

I think you are spoiled on how generous SE give exp for the rest of the jobs. It's not meant to level max in just 1 day. No need to rush it as it isn't even much of an issue.

I always thought the dip in exp was natural after all this is an rpg and you always got less from beating things your level or lower.

There are natural exp dips and I don't mind that at all, but the reduction of everything below the current expac levels to only 1000 exp feels very extreme to me. I harped on the collectables but I was incorrect about some of it, but I do still believe that it shouldn't be a sudden drop in exp as soon as you get to the current expac levels, but something that is done over time. After all, if you're up to level 80+, you probably shouldn't be doing collectables that are from ARR. The return on time to exp and scrips is already mediocre, but I can see motivating people to move on if they've stagnated. Slapping us with it at level 90 (which I would prefer to be level 91 because that allows for people to get gear from the current expac too) feels very sudden and too much.

I also stand by that nerfing exp for the Society quests at any level is too extreme. Those quests are already limited to 3-6 a day, and the society quests don't even come out until halfway through the wait for the next expac anyway. The rate at which lower level Society quests grant experience compared to higher level jobs is already enough of a motivation to move on to higher level quests (not that we have them for 90-100 yet). Those quests are generally good, and I think restoring the exp granted by them would encourage players to continue to finish those quest lines, even if they're out of the range for those Societies.

True there's also the level cap to consider perhaps it's to hamstring players to keep them from sprinting to the finish line.

ok, last changes were in 7.0, so no new nerf. So my experience from that time is still worth it. And my reaction to this is : "what are you even talking about?"

This game give you so much xp for anything it's ridiculous. Doing your daily Grand company delivery and you get from 90 to 100 in about 10 days, while spending 15 min a job at best. We get so much xp in this game it actually makes so much of the side activities useless and irrelevant (and don't get me started on how hte insane amount of xp helps making the world shallow, but that more a fighting class problem). Honestly, the xp given is fine (I would even argue it's too much), and if you find that not enough, maybe the mmo genra is not for you. I'm kinda tired of the game cutting everything remotely specific with genra.

Sounds as though the “previous expansion exp nerf” for collectibles and some other (NOT all) crafting/gathering activities is not being applied to any expansion but the current? So while back in the day, HW Collectibles were worth exp but that got nerfed to 1000 per hand in when Stormblood came out, that is no longer the case since Shadowbringers came along? Instead, that trigger point moved to the new expansions as each one came out?

Sounds like a rather stupid oversight, if so.

Back in ARR, there were no collectibles initially. If you were a crafter, you gained exp by:
- Doing levequests
- Completing your crafting log
- Actually crafting stuff - and you'd push as much quality as possible for the exp bonus

Collectibles seriously dropped the investment necessary to be a crafter. You earn about 8-10x experience for a collectible (plus the exp for crafting it) for one synth. And you earn tokens along the way to recoup your costs or buy recipe books. The only requirement is that from 91+, you have to do collectibles that are level appropriate. That's a small tradeoff for doing near-level recipes.

And as a bonus, you might have realized that DT materials are, for the most part, cheaper than previous tiers. Since there's an oversupply of them.

I miss the good old 1.0 times, when getting a single craft job to 50 took 6 months of excessive grinding and actually had a lot of value

now everyone is a "master crafter" on all jobs and anything to craft is plain worthless