Party-based crafting

[Peregrine]

A difficult issue the developers are having is that if you make crafting a quick process, materials will become so expensive that players will have to farm for gil just to craft. This is more like the FFXI model. On the other hand, if you make materials plentiful you have to make the grind to 50 crafter very long. This is the FFXIV model. In the end they're the same result: painful, long grind to the top.

How do you fix that?
Well A, you don't have to. Being a top crafter means a little more and is more rare than being a top battler and always has been. Crafting sucks when everyone is high level in it.

Or you have to overhaul something. I suggest party-based crafting. Yoshi-P has seen the cake syntheses and has said that it's one thing to put it in the game. It's another thing to find a use for the cakes.

Make Cakes Efts. That is, a group of up to 8 crafters can choose to "fight" them in town for drops and sp. Why? Because there's weddings. There's birthday parties. We need cakes made.

They could make them leves so crafters levelink them. And they could make them free-roamers that you can just choose to make on the fly.

Now I know this introduces a whole lot of problems:

How does a blacksmith help make a cake? They just...they just do, okay! It'd be too hard to get 5 culinarians together, so they just do. They make the table its on. I dunno, they can think of something. In making airships, culinarians can make the team food. not real food, hypothetical sp food to make the action believable that culinarians can help make airships.

If you give crafters drops, what are you going to give battlers to keep up?
End-product drops that don't need crafters, which are already in planning. Easy!

If you make partying to R50 crafting more fun and quick, won't that ruin the balance?
Yes. It would make a R50 crafter about as "server important" as a R50 pugilist. That is, crafter influence would probably take a hit. It would take a redefining of what a crafter is and does at R50, because tehre would be a lot more of them.

Who would pay for the syntheses?
No idea. That's a hard one. If the game pays for them then I don't know how we handle the massive materials overload in the game and the shard economy that is dependent on sp grinding crafters.

BUT to actually see come to fruition this shout:
Looking for crafting party members. 4/8. R25-30. Ulda Cakes.

...would be awesome. You could also do this for gatherers.

[moatcarp]

Guess I should have read the forum a bit more before posting... just started a thread that is along the same lines as this. Reading this kind of reinforced in my head that it could work.

You could have a crafting instance where you start out clearing trash like Rivets and Planks only to work your way up to the Airship boss that you need to take down . The idea feels a little wacky to me but I think I like it. I imagine that people who didn't want to level a combat job might dislike it.

[Dyvid]

Let's look at in another way. Let's say you need a PT to build a house.

The player click on the "lot" and select what part of the house they are going to craft. Frame, windows, roof/walls, metal materials, etc... The players continue craft the varies pieces until everything is done.

Honestly alot of the items in the game could be party crafted. Look at the mats for a simple sword. You need a blacksmith, leatherworker, alchemist, and goldsmith.

I'm took tired right now but tomorrow i'll make a well thought out post about a party crafting system that works for everyone.

[Peregrine]

Yeah that's true. They could design fake synths that conveniently take every kind of crafter at about the same level. there's a...ceremonial weapon that requires a.... strap, a metal head, inlay, rivets, a wooden grip, cloth wrap, and magic powder. Is that everyone? If you don't have all the jobs the NPCs can just say they supply them and everyone's cool. If you have two of one craft whatever. Have the NPCs say your surplus will be used to help other teams without that crafter, which explains where you got your free mats.

Would this be crazy fun and balanced and deserving of all the consideration content and balance of battle system? No. Of course not. But it's be a cool way to implement party crafting.

Then throw in a little epic crafting endgame from some creative brainstorming from the dev team and you have yourselves some LEGIT claim that crafters and gatherers are battler equals.

This can all be done. It's just a matter of how big SE can dream to make it rather than settling for "the standard of current MMOs."

[MariyaShidou]

Like I've said in here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-DOH-DOL/page2

Make cake, build house, build Company Building, build statues, build Chocobo Carriage, build Cargo for Chocobo Carriage, build Airship, build Boat, repair building in Hamlet after defense mission, provide tonics for villagers after Hamlet defense mission, fortify Hamlet wall and tower for extra buff during defense mission, upgrade and repair road between cities and Hamlets, repair Mine infrastructure which in turn will allow Miner to mine in Nanawa and Copperbell (with say, extra SP + drop) for a specific time span (1h?) after which the infrastructure need repairing/reinforcing again.

Party crafting sometimes doesn't need to take all the different crafting jobs together, just like battle you don't need to have one job each in the party in order to finish. There need to have some flexibility in it as well.

[Peregrine]

Build chocobos: 6 choco feathers, 1 wing glue (GET it???), 1 Velociraptor.

Good luck, Adventurers!

[MariyaShidou]

Build chocobos: 6 choco feathers, 1 wing glue (GET it???), 1 Velociraptor.

Good luck, Adventurers!

You meant 1 Grass Raptor + 1 Yellow Velveteen Dye?

[moatcarp]

...Would this be crazy fun and balanced and deserving of all the consideration content and balance of battle system? No. Of course not...

So I'm wondering 2 things:
1 - Why not if crafters/harvesters are supposed to be just as much main jobs as battlers? It seems like if they are just as important then they should receive all the same balance and consideration and such.

2 - Why not just use the battle system for crafting? It could be made to work & time spent enhancing battle to be better would pay off in other areas as well.

[Peregrine]

I don't know if you could get crafters to buy into a system where miqo'te scream at their cakes when they have a critical success. Would scare the crap out of me in the guild.

There are a lot of crafters who craft because it's a solo activity, especially in Japan. That's probably the biggest barrier to changing crafting to party play, all the people who didn't sign up to craft to party.

I just don't know if you can make crafting fun and engaging as a solo activity without completely redoing it as its own 100 hour sub-RPG. People say they want to be engaged and have fun but what does that mean...functionally that means an entire other retail game just for crafting and gathering. One that scores at least a 6/10 on its own.