Crafting is dead

[GunnarWolfram]

The question that I think really needs to be addressed is "What is the end goal of crafting??" We have a well tuned crafting system that requires the user to pay attention to stats, resource uses, conditions, etc.... and yet it feels off. In 2.X SE had a formula for raiding gear. You could obtain i90/i110/i130 gear from raids and crafters could craft i70/i90/i110 gear which could be pentamelded to equivalently be the stepping stone for raiding. However they broke that system by not only gating it behind the red scrips but now the gap is 30 ilvls which changes the dynamic. As someone who enjoys this games crafting I am not asking for crafted gear to be the best, I just want crafted gear to be something other than glamour. Right now it feels like crafting is for houses/airships and glamour and if thats the case just give us a random percent chance of completing the craft with no thought required. Because what is the point of HQ aside from our own crafted gear. *Sigh*

[Xenitan]

As someone who enjoys this games crafting I am not asking for crafted gear to be the best

I am asking for crafted gear to be the best. Not every piece, mind, but itemization in 2.X was tomes/raid and crafting back a bit behind a materia wall. Itemization was also pretty awful in 2.x

It just gets worse when there are even fewer viable alternatives. Crafted gear is an expensive pain in the ass. If it's not best in slot, it's pretty useless. Not every recipe has to be useful, but when you make crafting much more annoying to obtain on top of it being worse, what's the point of it even being there? Upset that people took down your content early behind crafted gear? How about you just don't release that gear right away.

Itemization was and still is a problem in this game and they're just making it *worse*.