Does Anyone Think Crafting is Too Slow?

[Kilta_Firelotus]

I think the time investment is irrelevant.

The underlining problem is that the mini games are awful.

Fun is fun no matter how long it takes. Boring is boring the first time and every time after.

Currently enjoyment in MMO's come from advancement. One day it will come from activity. It used to be that way, i remember it, i swear.

personal opinion. I like the mini games.

[Commat]

personal opinion. I like the mini games.

What do you like about them?

[Kilta_Firelotus]

What do you like about them?

they are interactive instead of pressing mats and watching the character craft. I found that to be dull in ffxi and never took a craft higher then 40 (bonecraft). I can't sit and watch a game (minus cs) I need to be doing something. Which is why I really don;t wanna see Auto attack making a comback if it will end up similar to ffxi. The more activly I can play a game ther better for me.

[Seif]

they are interactive instead of pressing mats and watching the character craft. I found that to be dull in ffxi and never took a craft higher then 40 (bonecraft). I can't sit and watch a game (minus cs) I need to be doing something. Which is why I really don;t wanna see Auto attack making a comback if it will end up similar to ffxi. The more activly I can play a game ther better for me.

I'd like them too IF THEY WERE MINGAMES. They could so easily make it into something that requires skill by making it timing based "hit A when the bar is in the sweet spot" or just do whatever with them to make them feel like you're playing a GAME. Calling them minigames as they are is an insult to minigames everywhere. They don't require skill nor collecting materials from hard to kill/find mobs and there's nothing deep you need to know about how the system works and the result is always just as random.

I expect better quality from a company that made chocobo hot and cold minigame, triple triad, tetra master, all of the minigames in Final Fantasy Fables, mysterious dungeon card battle, FFX blitzball, FFX chocobo racing, IX sword fight QTE the list is almost endless.

I see indie devs create interesting simple minigames daily. I cannot understand how they decided THIS is better than have something entertaining.

Ideally ofcourse I'd like to see all the crafting jobs to have different gameplay. Is that really too much to ask from a company like SE? I don't think it is. People have just gotten used to how little content modern titles tend to have these days.

[Kirith]

What do you like about them?

She's trolling. I personally don't hate the mini games themselves, but their mechanics seem to be made as an afterthought, not as a core mechanic and even less as a staple activity of the game. Doing them once is interesting, doing them twice is okay, thrice will pass, but doing them a thousand times trying to level one of the disciplines will cause a player to quit. It could perhaps be acceptable to do them once or twice per week.

Every idea of enjoyment related to crafting and gathering was gone for me the second day of beta. I could have trained my dog to craft and gather for me, had it thumbs to manipulate the gamepad, and i can't believe SE estimated our average intelligence to be low enough to be perpetually entertained by such mini games.

Chocobo Raising in FF7 was a fun mini game. Triple Triad in FF8 was another. Treasure hunting in FF9. Blitzball in FF10. Square has proven it can make entertaining mini games, so why do they think we like spamming the same exact craft a hundred times per day?

Digressing & Ranting mode: ON

Also, i think "leveling crafts" for the sake of it (grinding) is wrong, however it's also true that you can't keep up your DOH and DOL at the same level of your Disciplines Of War without grinding. I don't think a blacksmith would make a thousand hammers he doesn't need and can't sell just for training. Why? Because he doesn't have that many materials (and time) to waste and because training doesn't work that way. Crafting an item should give you experience points only the first few times you craft it and you should be able to level your crafting discipline at the same speed of your fighting class just by making the items you and your friends need. Crafting excellence and exclusiveness should be only determined by the difficulty of finding or processing materials, not by the amount of grinding someone does or by how advanced their grinding bots are. Furthermore, i shouldn't be able to get twenty marmot pelts ready for crafting when i'm not looking for them. Only someone with the tanning tools should be able to do so, for example (one would think that amidst all the low res cartoony environments and ugly characters WoW has people would see that it's actually such mechanics that made it big...)

Digressing & Ranting mode: OFF

Then again, i don't see SE ever changing the crafting mechanics in design, so maybe, if we're lucky, they'll speed it up or remove the progress bar.

[Commat]

Then again, i don't see SE ever changing the crafting mechanics in design, so maybe, if we're lucky, they'll speed it up or remove the progress bar.

I believe in my heart that one day i will log on and the current mini games will be replaced with Angry Mog. Were i will shoot Moogles at Tonberrys for SP and crafted goods.

P.S. Kilta is many things but never a troll.

[rekijitsu]

She's trolling. I personally don't hate the mini games themselves, but their mechanics seem to be made as an afterthought, not as a core mechanic and even less as a staple activity of the game. Doing them once is interesting, doing them twice is okay, thrice will pass, but doing them a thousand times trying to level one of the disciplines will cause a player to quit. It could perhaps be acceptable to do them once or twice per week.

Every idea of enjoyment related to crafting and gathering was gone for me the second day of beta. I could have trained my dog to craft and gather for me, had it thumbs to manipulate the gamepad, and i can't believe SE estimated our average intelligence to be low enough to be perpetually entertained by such mini games.

Chocobo Raising in FF7 was a fun mini game. Triple Triad in FF8 was another. Treasure hunting in FF9. Blitzball in FF10. Square has proven it can make entertaining mini games, so why do they think we like spamming the same exact craft a hundred times per day?

Digressing & Ranting mode: ON

Also, i think "leveling crafts" for the sake of it (grinding) is wrong, however it's also true that you can't keep up your DOH and DOL at the same level of your Disciplines Of War without grinding. I don't think a blacksmith would make a thousand hammers he doesn't need and can't sell just for training. Why? Because he doesn't have that many materials (and time) to waste and because training doesn't work that way. Crafting an item should give you experience points only the first few times you craft it and you should be able to level your crafting discipline at the same speed of your fighting class just by making the items you and your friends need. Crafting excellence and exclusiveness should be only determined by the difficulty of finding or processing materials, not by the amount of grinding someone does or by how advanced their grinding bots are. Furthermore, i shouldn't be able to get twenty marmot pelts ready for crafting when i'm not looking for them. Only someone with the tanning tools should be able to do so, for example (one would think that amidst all the low res cartoony environments and ugly characters WoW has people would see that it's actually such mechanics that made it big...)

Digressing & Ranting mode: OFF

Then again, i don't see SE ever changing the crafting mechanics in design, so maybe, if we're lucky, they'll speed it up or remove the progress bar.

This, a million times this. I enjoy doing the crafting leves to keep up the Land/Hand things, but that should be it to keep it on par with your other War/Magic classes. The fact War/Magic leves take 5 minutes to do at times as opposed to Land/Hand ones is sort of a pain as well, but if they just made it so that crafting leves were enough to REALLY keep your crafts up, I would be happy even if those leves currently take *much* longer than the battle leves.

I also think you hinted at a good concept, that crafting the same thing over and over shouldn't somehow make you a more talented Blacksmith. If I'm a Blacksmith that does nothing but make Hammers all day, then I'm not a very good one. Maybe if the game encouraged and rewarded you a *lot* more than it currently does to create something new and useful, then yeah, it would probably be a lot more fun. As of right now though, you may as well be crafting your thousands of weapon grips or hammers if what you want to do is keep your craft up to par with your War/Magic disciplines.

[TheVedis]

This, a million times this. I enjoy doing the crafting leves to keep up the Land/Hand things, but that should be it to keep it on par with your other War/Magic classes. The fact War/Magic leves take 5 minutes to do at times as opposed to Land/Hand ones is sort of a pain as well, but if they just made it so that crafting leves were enough to REALLY keep your crafts up, I would be happy even if those leves currently take *much* longer than the battle leves.

I also think you hinted at a good concept, that crafting the same thing over and over shouldn't somehow make you a more talented Blacksmith. If I'm a Blacksmith that does nothing but make Hammers all day, then I'm not a very good one. Maybe if the game encouraged and rewarded you a *lot* more than it currently does to create something new and useful, then yeah, it would probably be a lot more fun. As of right now though, you may as well be crafting your thousands of weapon grips or hammers if what you want to do is keep your craft up to par with your War/Magic disciplines.

crafting lweves only take 5 minutes to do...

or rather, 1 minute per synth in them(the 7 synth ones take 7 minutes, the 4 synth ones take 4)
and just like combat ones they require traveling, the difference being that you have to travel before for combat and after for synthing

so i think your a bit off on that point

[rekijitsu]

crafting lweves only take 5 minutes to do...

or rather, 1 minute per synth in them(the 7 synth ones take 7 minutes, the 4 synth ones take 4)
and just like combat ones they require traveling, the difference being that you have to travel before for combat and after for synthing

so i think your a bit off on that point

Traveling time is the main issue with them, and the crafting itself DOES take longer than a typical fight. Many leves require you to get materials from someone in town, and many require you to go to four different camps for delivery. Unless you're sitting on a lot of Anima, you're screwed.

With war disciplines, all your R20 leves are in the same location. It might help if all the crafting leves had you delivering to the same corresponding camps as well (R10 crafters turn in all R1-10 leves at R10 battle camps, etc.)

The other problem is you're delivering things to R30 camps and such when your crafts are R10. I remember having to go to a R30 camp and make it past aggroing mobs JUST to make a delivery and get the checkpoint when I wasn't even supposed to be there yet. That's a bit off topic, but its worth mentioning this makes the leves themselves longer.