ARR often feels very contradictory in its design (long)

[synaesthetic]

Leveling speed is not a problem. The problem is there isn't anything worthwhile that anyone can sell. Crafting doesn't make anything better than what you can get from drops and tokens. Consumables do not provide a large enough bonus to make them necessary raid boosts.

You should be able to get to the real meat of the game (endgame) quickly, which you can, and that's good, but crafters need to be able to actually make something people want. Right now they really don't, and supply far outstrips demand.

What needs to change:

- The materia system needs work. Stat caps need to be raised. All gear, including dungeon drops and raid drops, should have materia slots, but only crafted gear should allow over-melding. Materia should be crafted rather than obtained by burning gear. Let a crafting material be obtained from converting a piece ("protoaetheric matter," with a ~15% chance to obtain HQ protoaetheric matter) and use that precursor material be used, in conjunction with other materials, to make materia. Higher item level gear gives more protoaetheric matter when converted. Distribute the different types of materia among the existing crafting classes, ensuring that in order to craft all materia, one would need to have every crafting class leveled.
- We need more crafted gear. There should be a tier of item level 80 and item level 90 crafted gear. Why we're still stuck with ilvl70 as the highest is beyond me.
- Food and potions should provide a larger increase to a player's performance, making them much more necessary for endgame encounters.
- Crafted fluff items such as more dyes, fireworks, minions and mounts. Yes, mounts. There are loads of people who love nothing more than collecting mounts. Make them difficult to craft and you'll be giving people a good source of income.
- The highest-level crafted gear should require materials that only drop in raids and hardmode/endgame dungeons. This is so people who do not want to craft are not forced to craft, but instead can farm these materials and sell them to crafters. This would also make sure that the best gear in the game would require the cooperation of both battle-oriented players and crafting-oriented players.
- The repair interface should be fixed so that it's both possible for crafters to repair other players' gear and easier for crafters to quickly do their own repairs. Everyone still uses the NPCs to repair, unless they are crafters themselves. The "Request Meld" interface should allow for multiple melds in one shot.
- Implement a small (2%) listing fee on the market boards.
- (After 2.2) Give crafters the ability to create vanity weapon/armor skins in every existing armor model in the game with absolutely no class restrictions whatsoever (can be used by All Classes). This way, if someone wants to wear the sexy lab coat and short skirt ALC AF outfit and fight dragons, they can! But they have to buy an outfit from their friendly neighborhood crafter.