Fall back and regroup: time for crafting autoleveller?

[Peregrine]

What is a "real crafter", in your opinion? No sarcasm. I'm asking an honest question. What actions should a real crafter be doing when he or she is crafting in FFXIV?

Someone who has fun analyzing the market, searching for demands and creating products for sale, rather than the crafting process in and of itself. Because the people who enjoy the crafting process itself only like it because very few people are willing to "play" something that terrible.

Think about that. It's the truth.

[Peregrine]

Again, auto leveling will never happen. Ever. A system that allows you to walk away from the game and allow you to get SP is just stupid. Why play the game? Not to mention many players won't be able to 'afford' crafting all the way up to 50, but whats' to stop anyone that has 'little time to play the game', due to work or whatever, from just buying gil and leveling a craft to 50 afk? Sure if people are gunna buy gil, they're gunna buy gil but allowing people to just afk to 50 will completely ruin the game.

They already commented they want to make crafting less tedious and I see that in the form of an instant synth(one animation for a NQ item) option. It'll cut the time way out of the equation while still requiring you to sit at the computer to level. I duno how you could ask for much more. Crafting will never be fun, it'll always be a grind, and it will always cost a lot of money to max it out. It's the way it's always been, always will be, and always should be. I don't like the current system(hours of tv watching to keep me from falling asleep) but what else(aside from instant synth and lolafkautoleveling) could be done? Crafting while trying to ride a peiste to get bonus SP?

I hate to inform you that Yoshida likes WoW. You don't want to be posturing like this.

Why buy gil when you can just buy the crafter from RMT? Hm?

Didn't think about THAT did you?

The game already lets cheaters afk to 50. It just doesn't let real players. The system encourages cheaters to dominate it.

Didn't think about that either.

The game is already ruined.
It needs revived. Autolevel is the answer. Simple. Easy. Sure it will kick the economy in the ass and need balancing adjustments, but it is the only logical solution to the desolate joke of gameplay that is crafting progression.

Tell all these town-sitting, time-spamming, free-loading crafters to pick up a gathering tool if they want to keep going up the crafting ranks, because their free and cheap mats POOF. Just disappeared.

Autolevelling actually takes a lot of crafters out of the game who don't belong there. It ends the illegitimate reign of squatters, cheaters, and drones and makes way for real, live, interactive players to dominate the market.

Crafting isn't for mindless enter spammers. Shouldn't be. Why waste content like that? No reason.

[Sorel]

What is a "real crafter", in your opinion? No sarcasm. I'm asking an honest question. What actions should a real crafter be doing when he or she is crafting in FFXIV?

Someone who has fun analyzing the market, searching for demands and creating products for sale, rather than the crafting process in and of itself.

Isn't that more of a shopkeeper/merchant/trader and not so much a crafter/maker?

[Perrin_Aybarra]

Again, auto leveling will never happen. Ever. A system that allows you to walk away from the game and allow you to get SP is just stupid. Why play the game? Not to mention many players won't be able to 'afford' crafting all the way up to 50, but whats' to stop anyone that has 'little time to play the game', due to work or whatever, from just buying gil and leveling a craft to 50 afk? Sure if people are gunna buy gil, they're gunna buy gil but allowing people to just afk to 50 will completely ruin the game.

I don't see why it couldn't be viable, like I said earlier, WoW does have auto-crafting and this could be applied somewhat to FFXIV for ranking up without being able to HQ and still keep a mini-game that promote skills to make HQ items. Your argument that people won't be able to afford to get to 50 crafting is moot because the time they save with auto-crafting they can use it to farm mats or complete quests to gain gil to fund their crafting leveling.

I'll even say that they will have an easier time ranking up because right now it takes a long long long time spamming the enter button to rank up, gathering mats is probably faster and more entertaining even.

Edit : please don't assume that I want this game to be like WoW, because I don't, but I just want to prove your point wrong. Auto-crafting will only make that it's less tedious to rank up, make the mats more valuable and create a more stable economy. Crafts and HQ crafts prices will be determined by the demand but also by the cost of making the craft. And they can keep their uniqueness with the HQ system that requires you to manually craft it through an improved mini-game.

[CrstyCaptin]

Crafting is a huge part of the game. I don't see SE, Yoshida being a 'fan of WoW' or not, allowing an auto leveling system. Having a 50 should be something to be proud of and should have cost you a lot of time/money to get there. Not something you just set up to auto level overnight while you sleep or while you work. Will people bot to 50? Sure. Plenty do. Did plenty do in XI? Yup. Did they do it in [insert any MMO ever here]? Yup. People always will and there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing TO do is for the STF do actually look into it and ban people. Obviously right now that's not really important to SE. They're actually spending their time wisely and fixing a game that sucks, outside of just crafting. Once the game is charging for subs, maybe even before, I see a massive ban incoming. Hey guess what! 50 won't even be the level cap within another year most likely! They've more than enough time to worry about the low number of people playing, and then the smaller number that bot, before this game is anywhere near play worthy.

RMT that grind all classes to 50 on a char to sell? No server transfers or name changes yet. Really not top of the list. While I agree these things are of concern you're really jumping the gun on "ZOMG BOTS TAKING OVER THE GAME" when the game isn't worth playing atm and won't be for months to come. Unless the number of people currently playing from day to day grows 10 fold the game won't last.

[Peregrine]

Isn't that more of a shopkeeper/merchant/trader and not so much a crafter/maker?

That is whatever the developers say it is. It's essentially both, emphasis on the businessman and not the producer. The producers are gatherers. The fun in producing should be holy **** look at all this stuff people want. The fun in crafting should be haha my bazaar sold.

[Sorel]

I think its pretty obvious the majority of those playing ffxiv don't want ANYTHING easier, we want more of a challenge, crafting included.

Agreed. But how does one do that? How do you make crafting more challenging and simultaneously make it take less time? No sarcasm. I'm asking an honest question.

No one has tried to answer this question. Is it because it's too hard?

[Peregrine]

Crafting is a huge part of the game. I don't see SE, Yoshida being a 'fan of WoW' or not, allowing an auto leveling system. Having a 50 should be something to be proud of and should have cost you a lot of time/money to get there. Not something you just set up to auto level overnight while you sleep or while you work. Will people bot to 50? Sure. Plenty do. Did plenty do in XI? Yup. Did they do it in [insert any MMO ever here]? Yup. People always will and there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing TO do is for the STF do actually look into it and ban people. Obviously right now that's not really important to SE. They're actually spending their time wisely and fixing a game that sucks, outside of just crafting. Once the game is charging for subs, maybe even before, I see a massive ban incoming. Hey guess what! 50 won't even be the level cap within another year most likely! They've more than enough time to worry about the low number of people playing, and then the smaller number that bot, before this game is anywhere near play worthy.

RMT that grind all classes to 50 on a char to sell? No server transfers or name changes yet. Really not top of the list. While I agree these things are of concern you're really jumping the gun on "ZOMG BOTS TAKING OVER THE GAME" when the game isn't worth playing atm and won't be for months to come. Unless the number of people currently playing from day to day grows 10 fold the game won't last.

Should be should be should be... Isn't. Period.
You have nothing to be proud of if you have a rank 50 craft. You sat in town for 60 hours and spammed enter. Congratulations.
If you're proud of that, raise your standards. It should never have even been pretended to be worth congratulating.

If anything, people should be ashamed for wasting 260 hours of their life on THAT. It's just horrible. They should not even accept that as gameplay.

I'm not proud of my two R50 crafts. I'm proud of my gathering class. The two crafts are an unfortunate waste of time, and I'm only sorry that I had to hit the enter button that often while watching too much Netflix.

[Peregrine]

No one has tried to answer this question. Is it because it's too hard?

They don't want it more challenging. They just want fewer people to do it. Annoying. Time-consuming. Tedious. Monotonous. Boring. Same effect. They're in it to win it, others quit it and that's the main goal.

Let's see them try to afford gold ore in a system where autolevelling eats gold 900x faster than it can be produced.

I hated coming home from a 2 hour gathering session with metal, to the prospect of spending the next 4.5 hours hitting the enter button to convert that to levels. It's stupid. It facilitates gatherers just giving their **** away because no one want to spend the time to break it down except mindless drone crafters.

I want to come home from a long day of mining and inject the metal straight into my veins. Do I deserve it? Hell yes I deserve it. The botter thinks he does. The memory controller thinks he does. Why not a REAL player?

It's primarily because the cheaters know that if everyone did what they did, they'd be DESTROYED. Real players would steamroll them. The same reason they're too lazy to gather is the same reason they're too lazy to CRAFT. They'd rather cheat and PRETEND they did something than to actually do it, and those people would be out on their asses if this system were implemented and they know it.

I already put in my time. The townie crafter didn't. They still don't. They PRETEND they did. Let them work for a living instead of spamming enter.

It's simply better this way.

Hook the metal straight to my veins. Let that metal go to those who can pay with more than cheap life hours for it, or the pretense thereof.

[Xenor]

I remember someone on FFXIV Core during Month 1 or 2, giving an example of making a fun Crafting Mini-Game where you had to Smelt the Ore Down in a Forge, then take it and start Hammering and Forming it, and then, another step to Polish and complete the synth. That activity sounds far more engaging and interesting than what we have now. Just a quick example.

Yeah except when you're doing that for the 10000th time or even the 20th it will be damn well annoying. You simply can't make any repetitive task fun no matter how hard you try. Forcing SE to change one system to another to another etc. is just going to stop this game from going anywhere. The more time wasted on things like this, the less time for real content additions.

I think people are just being selfish. They have the mentality that can bang their head against 90 hours of enter pressing. Others don't. That gives them the advantage. Not others. They want systems they have advantages in. Not others. Everything else is "easy" to them.

No, everything else is "better" and they just have higher-caliber players for competition if it gets better. Would you all really rather have an advantage in a ****ty game just to have an advantage, rather than cut the nonsense and let the chips fall where they may? Crafters today are like the kings of curling. They're not great. They're just insistant. They're only good at curling because no one curls. If talent curled, they'd be sitting at home watching others do it.

Most "crafters" won't be able to afford to level up crafts if autolevelling gets implemented. Gold ore will be 90k each if the time it takes to level is no longer the major factor in cost of a craft. And that's the way it should be. Time spammers of monotony should not have advantage. Neither should botters and memory controllers.

It won't be easier. You won't be able to afford it, no matter how many times in a row you can press enter.

What makes your solution of paying 90k per gold ore any better than the way it is now? Everyone can afford to spend time pressing enter to rank up crafts but very few have the funds to blow away 10mil per rank to get to 50. You're just putting crafting into the hands of the super rich with that. Sure you could gather that gold, but you already can't gather it fast enough to rank up GLD on it, no way you could if it was auto levelled. So you'd be forced to pay that 90k regardless.

That said no one would rank up GLD on electrum if ore cost that much. People already bot sea hares for red coral to rank up GLD on that because it's easier than botting gathering nodes and they get more GLD SP. So the botters would just heavily bot mobs that drop skill up items while people like us will be forced to pay for the ores because we can't compete with people botting mobs.

But anyway if you put crafting into the hands of the super rich you create a situation where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor because they can't afford to catch up.