Fall back and regroup: time for crafting autoleveller?

[Mortikhan]

I think Peregrine made a good point. Churning out shoddy goods in bulk doesn't make someone a craftsman anymore than a kid chained to a sewing machine making cheap sneakers is a craftsman. The guy who hands carves the case for a Rolex watch from a block of steel is a craftsman. Craftsmen are a breed typified by pride in their work, and that is what we should aspire to be, but SE needs to adjust the system to encourage that kind of crafting imo. Currently people churn out electrum rings and NPC them for great SP, and that's not a good thing. That's FFXI style crafting and that created a market where raw materials cost more than processed materials which cost more than the goods made from them. In XIV mats are cheap and you can make gil selling goods.

EDIT: grammar and completed a thought.

You are referring to a RL craftsman. A trained and capable master of his/her craft. A person who practiced his craft time and time again until he was recognized for his skill. People are not born master craftsmen...they have to work at it. That means they have to spend hours and weeks and years learning and perfecting their craft. The phrase "Practice makes perfect" is not a punchline. In order to reach that state of perfection they needed to make something over and over again in the same manner. When they got to the point where making a basic version of that item was no longer an issue then they started to make better quality versions of that item and that is when they are recognized for their effort and years of practice as well as their ambition to make a better product.

I made a point about this before in another post about possibly making the item you are crafting have levels to it as well. maybe 1-10 levels and you must craft it multiple times before you can even have a chance of getting +1-3 qualities. In order to progress through those ranks they will have to make a certain amount of each kind of quality of item. That might sound a bit confusing so let me break it up:

You are making a pair of Canvas Half Gloves:

Rank 1 - starting point
Rank 2 - make 5 pair of NQ - still can only make NQ
Rank 3 - make 10 pair of NQ - still can only make NQ gloves
Rank 4 - make 20 pair of NQ - can make +1 version of gloves
Rank 5 - make 5 pair of +1 - can still only make +1 - better chance of making +1 items
Rank 6 - make 10 pair of +1 - can now make +2 version
Rank 7 - make 5 pair of +2 - can still only make +2 - better chance of producing +2 items
Rank 8 - make 10 pair of +2 - can now make +3 version
Rank 9 - make 5 pair of +3 - limit +3 reached - better chance at producing +3 items
Rank 10 - make 10 pair of +3 - better chance of creating +1-3 items

I doubt this would ever be implemented because of the time consumption necessary to truly perfect a craft but it would definitely separate the crafters from the spammers. I think it would also make gathering more significant since people would be looking for better materials for getting higher ranks so it creates a better and more constant market since not everyone will be on the same page all the time.

Another way of doing it would be to link the ranks of the items available directly to the leveling of the craft itself. You would not actually get SP to level on. Instead you would have to craft a particular item to obtain ranks in it up to a maximum of rank 10 for each item available in that level range.

Example:

You are level 1 in a craft. You have 30 items you can craft between levels 1 and 10. You would need lets say 5 total ranks between those 30 items in order to obtain level 2. To get to level 3 you would need an additional 10 ranks among those items etc. The catch would be that some of those items would be simple (less materials) to do and some more complicated (diverse materials) so when you run out of ranking up on the simple things if you want to break the boundary into the next tier you would need to use other synths.

This breaks the cycle of mindless repetition and forces someone to pay attention or waste a lot more time getting the ranks done. Botting is no longer a major factor since you can only bot so long before you run out of ranks for that item. Additionally the crafting abilities become far more valuable since failure would be less efficient so you would use the abilities more often to succeed. This system also offers diversity in the crafters themselves. Do you want to max all of the ranks out for the crafts or just get what you need to proceed to the next rank? Will you be a pro at a few things or be mediocre in everything in that tier? It really boils down to the individual.