Dear Square Enix - I want to Craft

[Katlyna]

Hi everyone and Square employs. I want to talk about the fundamental mess of problems with the new red scrip system. As a dedicated crafter with the new system. I'm not crafting much at all! The problem lies in the mess that is the red scrip system:

As designed the current system is as follows:

A) Save tokens for gear hand ins:
1) Macro Craft 20-40 items for 450 red scrips (once a week).
2) Hand in scrips for 9 crafting tokens.
3) Save up tokens multiple week in a row for a single gear hand in.

B) Save tokens for material hand ins:
1) Macro Craft 20-40 items for 450 red scrips (once a week).
2) Hand in scrips for 9 crafting tokens.
3) Acquire 10 Mining Ooids per token:
i) Gather them yourself using the broken Tome of X Folklore System
ii) Buy them for 100-200k EACH from gathers
4) Acquire 10 botanist folklore items per token:
i) Gather them yourself using the broken Tome of X Folklore System
ii) Buy them for 100-200k EACH from gathers
5) Trade each token for a SINGLE stack of materials, enough to make ONE leather, cloth, nugget, bar or wood.
6) Buy or gather additional gathered parts to combine with your 9 material stacks (MORE GATHERED PARTS?!?!)
7) Buy or gather final intermediary parts to finally construct your final item.
8) Make intermediary parts and hope for HQ
9) Make final 2 star item and hope for HQ

--------------------------------------------------

So first, the above system is 90% gathering 10% crafting... this is terrible. Its obvious the new system is highly lopsided on requiring a massive amount of gathered materials for a single final product. And these are some really rare materials. Likewise this results in some exceptional risk to a NQ vs HQ product now. Since each single crafting attempt represents hours and hours of gathering (and like 10 mins of crafting...).

Next I want to point out the biggest problem in the current system. In sequence B, where we actually make our 2 star items. Steps 3-5 are insane. Why in the heck are we doing red scrip hand ins as a crafter only to be BLOCKED by a MASSIVE number of ultra rare gather drops. On my server I can't even buy enough material to make a single Griffin leather because there are only two on the MB!!! The other materials are also suffering from similar shortages. Likewise even if I could buy all the mining/botanist folklore parts, they are running 100-200k. For a single chest this is four red scrip parts which is 40 mining folklore drops and 40 botanist folklore drops, which is 80 total! At 100k this will be 8 million in gil, at 200k it would be 16 million in gil!!! This doesn't include the cost of any additional parts!!!

Likewise the problem here isn't the cost of the materials. The cost is justified as the materials are STUPID rare. Someone at SE please explain to me why a crafted leather worker chest requires 4 red scrips (10-20 i150 items handed in), 80 ultra rare folklore drops, and other odds and ends.

As designed now, the entire red scrip system is spend X hours gathering, and spend maybe 30 mins crafting one or two final items for the ENTIRE WEEK. Someone at SE please explain how this system was deemed fun or even remotely acceptable?

--------------------------------------------------

The big question is how do you fix the current system. Personally I would do the following to fix the current economy problems and fix the red scrip system:

1) Further increase the red script crafting points for hand ins across all crafting types. The weekly red scrip crafting costs are still too high for your average crafter.
2) Remove sky spring water from red scrip venders and make it a frequent raid drop (maybe split it into 5 sky spring potions one for each dis-solvent just for flavor)
3) Reduce the required Ooids and botany Folklore drops from 10 of each to 4 or 5 of each. 10 is just obscene.
4) Increase the drop rate Ooids and botany Folklore by a factor of x3, and make sure that it is indeed something just done with blue scrips.
5) Add in 170 crafted foraging gear for all slots.
6) Decrease the cost of crafter red tokens so they can purchase ~15-20 a week. 9 is insanely low.
7) Change Red scrip HQ crafting material hand in from 3 crafter tokens to 1. You bought a high quality material from your gatherer... why in the heck should you be penalized?!

[Ranzan]

I wish I can just hold the like button down till a dev come and speak on this subject.Plz SE answer us! A Lil off topic but how is the Jpn side taking this crafting debacle?

[dspguy]

The change today was laughable. I don't think crafters cared about how many items they had to craft to get red scrip tokens. They care that they can:
1. Only craft 9 subcomponents per week...
2. .... assuming that gatherers are willing to spend their red tokens on favors.

Have them spend red tokens on unlocking the capability to get ooids. Then put the ooids on some rare node, hidden, whatever. But don't make them expend red tokens to obtain them every time.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Have them spend red tokens on unlocking the capability to get ooids. Then put the ooids on some rare node, hidden, whatever. But don't make them expend red tokens to obtain them every time.

While the change today was indeed rather laughable (it does not one bit to affect my ability to cap the Red crafter and Red Gather scrips)keeping the crafting materials walled off in a fortress made up of both red Gather and red Crafter scrips is just silly. They should be locked off behind the BLUE gather scrips. It would not reduce the tedium in getting them, but it would allow for a few more materials to be obtained and thus crafters could, y'know, actually CRAFT rather than trying to strike up an unhealthy relationship with some gatherer.

[dspguy]

They should be locked off behind the BLUE gather scrips. It would not reduce the tedium in getting them, but it would allow for a few more materials to be obtained and thus crafters could, y'know, actually CRAFT rather than trying to strike up an unhealthy relationship with some gatherer.

That would work very well.

[AnimaS]

The issue is very clear, their agenda is they do not have any content for crafters who put the time in to get to 60 or "Master of the Hand"

0 recipes were designed beyond the ones you see. The agenda is to get you to stay subscribed (people who enjoyed crafting and of course used it to turn a profit) while they take several months to develop newer recipes and the ilevel is naturally raised via new dungeon/raid content coming after Alexander and the coming new 24 man circus raid. We can come to the conclusion that SE infact loaded their first expansion with alot of eye candy via the leveling process and intentionally ignored the fact that people would reach 60 in all crafts and want to continue asap to make money or, even continue crafting for that matter.


Let's get real, people who were 8/8 50 in ARR were bound to get 8/8 60 fast. They knew this would happen, it is not an error. There is nothing else developed for crafting, they decided to just leave it out.

You've been had, duped and ripped off. They destroyed crafting in this phase of Heavensward because they flat-out didn't design anything beyond this recipe list and want you do wait another 6 (give or take) months to slowly accumulate gear to craft the recipes when they are good and ready.


What now? this patch is clearly evil trick to fool newer subscribers that perhaps are just getting into crafting now, that they now can get red scrips CHEAPER , AS IF that were the issue to begin with. Never mind the Splendor Vendor, the dictator that holds all the materials and will only release them if handed a handful of items that takes countless hours to get; in small quantities no less....

To those of us (including myself) that have been using the crafting system for well over a year, SE's silent message to us is, "We didn't feel like making content for you in this first expansion, too bad"

Any effort to rebel/complain will result in more trickery until they are good and ready to release usable recipes IF EVER........

[Katlyna]

Key 2.x Crafting recipes and how they were throttled:

• Adventuring gear suitable for entry raiding was available for crafting.
  Adventuring gear was throttled by raid drops.
  BIS Foraging gear was available for crafting.
  Foraging gear was throttled by daily quests
  BIS Crafting gear was available for crafting.
  Crafting gear was throttled by daily quests.
  Glamour gear was available for crafting.
  Glamour gear was throttled by raid drops.

Key 3.x Crafting recipes and how they were throttled:

• Adventuring gear suitable for entry raiding is available for crafting.
  Adventuring gear is throttled by weekly crafting hand ins, and weekly foraging drops.
  BIS Foraging gear is essentially NOT available for crafting.
  BIS Crafting gear is available for crafting.
  Crafting gear is throttled by weekly crafting hand ins, and weekly foraging drops.
  Glamour gear is available for crafting.
  Glamour gear is throttled by rare chest drops.

Now if you look at the old 2.x system and ask what some of the typically quoted problems were you would see why some of the 3.x changes were made. Two of the most important problems which were highlighted:
1) Crafting was primarily gated by adventures raid drops and daily faction rewards.
2) Forager gathered material was low priced, over abundant and was not the major cost in most gear.

Now considering the above you can understand now why SE moved us to a system focused on forager drops and crafting weekly token rewards as the primary throttle/gates for crafting gear. This was the logical choice. But there are some MAJOR problems with this change:
1) All raid/adventuring gear is now gated by crafter AND gather tokens. This means that adventures must both craft and gather for the same gear to be generated which was available by the 2.0 raid drops. This is terrible because people who adventure have NO DESIRE TO DO THIS. Consequently the cost to produce adventuring gear is too high. And this is causing crafters to have no viable reason to produce half our recipies.
2) Because adventurers no longer have any drops to sell to crafters, they get no gil from crafters!!!
3) Adventures no longer have drops to buy from crafters (since we can't viably produce 2 star adventuring gear) so they no longer have any reason to pay crafters!!!
4) Generating red crafting tokens requires 1-2 million worth of equipment to be handed in each week.
5) Because of the cost very few crafters can actually participate in red scrips
6) Generating red gathering token items requires a massive time investment by foragers.
7) Because of the time investment tokens are rare and cost considerable money.
8) Almost all foraging gear is not available for crafting. This means crafters have nothing to sell foragers... even though we are potentially paying them massive amounts of money for the new red scrip crafting drops.

---

So from the above problems its clear to me there is no immediate simple solution. One of the biggest problems has to do with who is participating in 2 star crafts. Because adventures are not contributing material and getting gil from their material, they are not going to have gil to buy the high priced items. Likewise Foragers have nothing to buy. So this leaves crafters as the only ones participating in purchases for the new 2 star market. This in itself is really screwed up.

Likewise because of the costs of generating red scrips is so high very few crafters are actually able to generate the scripts. This again is TERRIBLE.

Finally even if enough crafters can and are willing to generate red scrips, gathers can't generate enough of the token materials fast enough for crafters to keep up. And this is for just a miserable 9 intermediate materials per WEEK. This is because each material requires 20 freaking rare tokens!!!

Finally because of the above problems smart crafters know without sales to adventures or foragers, we simply cannot afford to pay for red scrips AND pay for super rare materials. So most of the crafters left participating in the system are simply doing all the gathering themselves.

---

As folks have seen the result of all the problems with the 3.0 2 star system is:
A) Massive market stagnation of 2 star goods
B) Unavailability of 2 star goods
C) The player base participating in 2 star goods is probably less than 1%

If you compare these exact problem to the old 2.x system you'll find they didn't exist! Why? Because everyone was participating in the system, due to raid drops. And the quest throttling didn't cost money and gave faction rewards (which non crafters would often want to complete). Likewise the daily faction reward and raid drops put money in adventures pockets making them feed money back into the current X star economy. Foragers certainly got the short stick, but they still were able to make some money gathering necessary parts.

[Ayerinn]

The change today was laughable. I don't think crafters cared about how many items they had to craft to get red scrip tokens.

Some of us did - I wasn't going to spend hours crafting 100's of items(I am including crafting all the components yourself) worth 2-5 million gil for 1/3 of a weapon for one job. There are MANY other issues with crafting at the moment, this helps ease the pain by a very small fraction but a fraction none the less. RED and BLUE scrips should be earned through daily quests like the Ixali dailies, not cost us millions every week. I don't think battle classes would appreciate paying 100k per boss kill to get their Esoterics and law which would be the equivalent.

[Kabooa]

If it's costing you millions to do red scripts each week, I'd love to be your gatherer.

[Katlyna]

Haha yeah being one of the gathers who sell materials to me is quite a nice job. It pays very well. I'm one of those rare crafters who pre red-script system gathered nothing. I bought all my materials from the market and FC members. But I would craft multiple high end items each day and sell just as many.

This red scrip system has resulted in a complete market stagnation of red scrip crafted goods!!! There are virtually no high end items which can be reasonably crafted and sold at price someone is willing to pay. Adventurers are not taking any part in the red script crafting market, so half the goods are not worth producing. That just leaves attempting to sell other red scrip items to other high end crafters who would rather make the item for themselves. Our server has listed a total of 9 red scrip items. One has sold being the BIS mining offhand. Likewise I personally have listed the BIS botany offhand. Technically speaking these are the only two items crafters can create where the consumer can't find a better/cheeper replacement. All other items are for crafters themselves (which we would prefer to make for us).

The system as a whole is a complete failure.

---

I will note the red script patch plus a favorable option this week ended up only costing me 600k to max scrips this week. As apposed to 1.5 million the week before.