So Thursday's maintenance is supposed to bring crafting/gardening adjustments...

[LineageRazor]

The grind in FFXIV isn't in leveling, it's in crafting 2 star equipment and up where you spend millions overmelding. It's in getting your Supra and Lucis. It's in leveling desynth skills (something that is basically copy/pasted FFXI crafting). I got all my DoH and DoL to 50. After getting perfect overmelds for all my DoL I simply gave up because spending millions on overmelds simply isn't fun. Spending all day farming gil in FFXI was my main reason for leaving the game.

Essentially, what you're getting down to, is you don't want craftng to be a grind at all. You want it to be an easy accompanyment to your DoW/DoM jobs, where you can focus on DoW/DoM and create your own gear for those jobs with only a token side effort into crafting. That is a fair opinion to have, even if I don't personally agree with it.

Personally, I feel the opposite, I don't feel that crafting is treated seriously enough. Just as combat jobs have high-difficulty activities and long grinds, so, too, should crafting. Crafting SHOULD array itself into tiers, with the casual crafters earning lesser rewards and the devoted crafters getting access to the best stuff. Just as combat classes have folks who raid and those who don't, crafters should have those who 4-star and those who don't.

People should be forced to make the hard decisions on where they want to focus their efforts in this game. Do they want to be an endgame raider? An endgame crafter? Something else? A career soldier probably isn't also a gourmet chef and a master jeweler. They chose to be a soldier, and while they may cook as a hobby and dabble in trinkets, those aren't what they do for a living. Acknowledging that, yes, there's always someone with more free time than you have who really CAN become an expert at everything, I don't feel like that should be an option for normal folks.

[Noxifer]

As an endgame crafter myself, I'm really , really disappointed after seeing what they brought us in 3.05.
Ok, 450 script per week. That's a great limit ! You can craft only several pieces per week, how fun is that ?

I'm slightly more puzzled by their decision to have 450 as the weekly cap and 500 as the hard cap O.o At least with tomestones, the hard cap is 2k. Admittedly, you have stuff that cost more than 500 tomes, but since the highest-costing thing with scrips is 480, and the highest-costing thing with tomes is 990, they could have gone with a 1k hard cap with tomes, and people would have cried foul XD
Here... Well, I dunno.

I giggled a bit when you mentioned "severe grinding mechanics". In FFXI

It's less of an issue with 50-60, but the "level grinding" with crafting wasn't really just getting that one class you wanted to 50. It meant getting all the classes to 50 to get those cross-class skills to enable you to actually craft anything serious.

Also, wasn't everything a longer grind in FFXI? That doesn't mean that the grind in FFXIV, whether it's exp-wise, gear-wise or gil-wise, is made inconsequential since it shouldn't be compared to something in another game but to how other things in the same game are treated. =)

[Aeyis]

You don't say!
Ah har har , that saved sooo much effort.

Yes, they have exactly the same skins as the 1* items, color scheme included.

[Jynx]

MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online, not Mandatory Multiplayer Online.

You want to play by yourself and access all the content but refuse to play the content.

...wha?

How about instead of "Socializing with the MB" You "Socialize with people"

[Nadirah]

Then you are hitting one tree every 5 mins. Cause there is no way you're doing actual leveling. I'm about to level my 2nd BTN sometime this week, and I will have 0 leves for it.

My botany is at 29. And I was doing gathering log, because standing in one spot hitting the same three trees in a small circle for six hours is boring as piss.

[LineageRazor]

It's less of an issue with 50-60, but the "level grinding" with crafting wasn't really just getting that one class you wanted to 50. It meant getting all the classes to 50 to get those cross-class skills to enable you to actually craft anything serious.

Also, wasn't everything a longer grind in FFXI? That doesn't mean that the grind in FFXIV, whether it's exp-wise, gear-wise or gil-wise, is made inconsequential since it shouldn't be compared to something in another game but to how other things in the same game are treated. =)

Even taking into account the scaling for FFXI's longer grinds, Relic weapons and crafting were ridiculous. The games can be compared - so long as you remember that a "casual grind" in FFXI was measured in months, while a similar "casual grind" in FFXIV is measured in weeks, or even just days.

And, let's not forget that there was even greater importance in leveling multiple crafts in FFXI than there is in FFXIV. In FFXIV, multiple crafts give you useful skills to use, but you can, theoretically, manage without them (as long as you accept a much lower HQ rate). In FFXI, every craft had numerous recipes that you couldn't even attempt without having another craft sufficiently leveled. So, take that ludicrous grind, and tack on three or four additional ludicrous grinds (a bit less ludicrous, since you only needed to level to 70, rather than 110).

Even taking into account the scaling between games, leveling every craft to 50 in FFXIV is much less of an investment than leveling one craft in FFXI.

[MeiUshu]

I craft everything myself and gather everything myself, I buy only small amount of stuffs on the board mainly because I am lazy to go and gather only a couple of things that will have little use further on. I buy HQ high level gears, I suck in doing HQ and for that I sell enough stuff to get the gils required, I dont spend more then 1h per day during week days to level my artisans and gatheres, otherwise it feels like a chore, I do the Immortals daily quests and that is it. My gatheres and artisans level evenly and slowly, I still get out of the MB the gils I need for the immediate use but not for overly huge gains or anything of the sort, all I want is build stuff for me, friends and some gils, we all need to live somewhat right ? lol. I have to think what I want to do for specialization but that will be in time.

Mei

[Gilthas]

Personally, I feel the opposite, I don't feel that crafting is treated seriously enough. Just as combat jobs have high-difficulty activities and long grinds, so, too, should crafting. Crafting SHOULD array itself into tiers, with the casual crafters earning lesser rewards and the devoted crafters getting access to the best stuff. Just as combat classes have folks who raid and those who don't, crafters should have those who 4-star and those who don't.

The big difference (and my main complaint) is that the battle classes can pretty much ignore the MB entirely and complete all content. DoH and DoL have the MB shoved down their throats to progress.

People should be forced to make the hard decisions on where they want to focus their efforts in this game. Do they want to be an endgame raider? An endgame crafter? Something else? A career soldier probably isn't also a gourmet chef and a master jeweler. They chose to be a soldier, and while they may cook as a hobby and dabble in trinkets, those aren't what they do for a living. Acknowledging that, yes, there's always someone with more free time than you have who really CAN become an expert at everything, I don't feel like that should be an option for normal folks.

I completely disagree. When 2.0 was released all the game was for me. Ever since they started obsessing with keeping prices up when I read the patch notes crafting and gathering content are now stuff to be ignored. Like I mentioned already, it would be very informative if we had numbers on how many people with level 50 DoH/DoL got their Lucis or even a Supra.

You want to play by yourself and access all the content but refuse to play the content.

...wha?

How about instead of "Socializing with the MB" You "Socialize with people"

I do play with other people. I don't solo dungeons or raids. You're the one telling people to socialize with the MB.

Crafting and Gathering? That's solo content.

[KisaiTenshi]

during 1.0 craftin have only cost you gil if you did them outside of leves (8 leves every 36 hours). You went to the quest giver of the leve (in the city or over 3000 yalm away in another camp), spoke to him, got the materials from him (as key items) and then you started the leve to craft. No cost was involved, only rewards.

I seem to recall that if you blew up the items (failed crafting) it didn't fail the leve until the time was up, so you either had to have the materials or turn in one you already made.

At any rate the point still stands that leveling crafting is "broken" in a sense that leveling requires making crap nobody wants and thus costing gil if you don't harvest/stockpile or make precursor items yourself. Never mind the cost in crystals. Because you only have 20 slots, you can't just spam making an item and then dump them all on the market either (exception being food and pots.)

The game's MB doesn't really function properly, it functions enough (and superior to V1.0) in that you can at least usually find items for sale, but because non-crafting players never -ever- need to buy anything due to dungeon drops or quest-given gear, it seems like the purpose of crafting is really lost.

[Kyonika]

This was me the whole thread ...