Propositions to address crafting/economic woes circa 3.0.

[Nezerius]

@1: That's not reasonable. Crafted gear has ALWAYS been 20 ilevels below strongest tome gear available.

Keep in mind that the strongest tome gear is i210, comparable to the i210 Gordian gear that drops in Alexander Savage.
How it was in 2.x:

• First Coil: i70 crafted gear vs. i90 Myth/Coil gear, 20 iLvl difference
• Second Coil: i90 crafted gear vs. i110 upgraded Soldiery/High Allagan gear, 20 iLvl difference
• Final Coil: i110 crafted gear vs. i130 upgraded Poetics/Dreadwyrm gear, 20 iLvl difference

How it is now:

• i180 crafted gear vs. i210 upgraded Esoterics/Gordian, 30 iLvl difference

[Ohiuu]

In the lower tiers the pentamelded gear was actually stronger than it can be now (proportional to iLVL ofc). Determination was nearly twice as potent point per point pre-3.0 and due to the lower overall stat saturation on the gear the melded stats made up a large percentage of the overall benefit. Nowadays, a pentameld isn't even capable of stat capping one additional value. So truly any serious raider wouldn't be caught dead trying to go into savage progression wearing i180 crafted crap when they could be wearing i190 gear (for free) that is markedly better. To sum it up: 30 ilvl gap instead of 20 and poorer materia scaling compared to earlier crafted sets means the efficacy of this equipment is minimal...and combine that with the fact that its like 15 times more expensive due to the hydraulic despotism imposed by the favor system and you can see how the current predicament is almost laughable. By all estimates of stat weight that are available atm a pentamelded i180 crafted set would be decently better than upgraded Law but nowhere close to Gordian normal.

[Kiara]

Good ideas. I posted something about one of your points a while back (and many others did, too, during 1.0 and Beta phases).

To: Yoshi P & the Dev Team,

Somewhere along the way (right before 2.0), you made the awful decision to have Crafters be relegated to WORTHLESS Glamour Gear, or inferior gear to Dungeons / Raids. Always.

Somehow you thought that people wouldn't try your End Game Raids if there was actually good Crafted Gear?

There is something called CHOICE. And many ways to resolve that concern of yours. Some options:

1. Create End Game Level Crafted Gear Sets (SAME iLevel as highest Raid), but it requires a Rare Material Drop from the End Game Raids.

Your older Final Fantasy game did this very well (there were Abjurations that dropped in End Game Raids / Bosses and you used those along with rare Mats to have a Crafter create CURSED GEAR that you could UNCURSE).

It also made End Game Raids more enjoyable, because besides an actual Armor / Weapon dropping you might get a Rare Material (very valuable and meaningful) instead and it made the run still worth it. This connected Adventurers & Crafters in a great way.


2. Consider having more meaningful Stats so we get MORE Gear Sets (Same Item Level), so it's not just your boring Vertical Progression you have now (always just the same old +VIT and +[Main Stat] for every single new Item Level increase BORING).

Example Tank Sets (All Same Item Level)

* High Defense / VIT Set
* High Attack & Low Defense Set
* High Block / Parry Set (if Block and Parry were really scaling right)
* +X% Counterattack
* "Enhances Rampart" ("Enhances [XYZ] Ability / Spell" etc.)

There are so many interesting stats and Materia ideas that can be used from previous Final Fantasy games.

ALL of this would go a long way to getting Crafting to be more *meaningful*.

Please reconsider having Crafting mean something again, and NOT just be a Glamour, Furniture, Minion-making waste of time.

Thanks!

[Caimie_Tsukino]

Keep in mind that the strongest tome gear is i210, comparable to the i210 Gordian gear that drops in Alexander Savage.
How it was in 2.x:

• First Coil: i70 crafted gear vs. i90 Myth/Coil gear, 20 iLvl difference
• Second Coil: i90 crafted gear vs. i110 upgraded Soldiery/High Allagan gear, 20 iLvl difference
• Final Coil: i110 crafted gear vs. i130 upgraded Poetics/Dreadwyrm gear, 20 iLvl difference

How it is now:

• i180 crafted gear vs. i210 upgraded Esoterics/Gordian, 30 iLvl difference

In the lower tiers the pentamelded gear was actually stronger than it can be now (proportional to iLVL ofc). Determination was nearly twice as potent point per point pre-3.0 and due to the lower overall stat saturation on the gear the melded stats made up a large percentage of the overall benefit. Nowadays, a pentameld isn't even capable of stat capping one additional value. So truly any serious raider wouldn't be caught dead trying to go into savage progression wearing i180 crafted crap when they could be wearing i190 gear (for free) that is markedly better. To sum it up: 30 ilvl gap instead of 20 and poorer materia scaling compared to earlier crafted sets means the efficacy of this equipment is minimal...and combine that with the fact that its like 15 times more expensive due to the hydraulic despotism imposed by the favor system and you can see how the current predicament is almost laughable. By all estimates of stat weight that are available atm a pentamelded i180 crafted set would be decently better than upgraded Law but nowhere close to Gordian normal.

That's very true. It's i210 vs crafted i180, which is 30 ilvls. I agree with Ohiuu now with @1. Especially when we don't even have access to Tier V materia to max the caps of those gear, and especially when they have nerfed Det. The difference is probably too big now.

[Alahra]

The difference is probably too big now.

This is the problem with Heavensward, writ large. It seems that with every "problem" the developers tried to address, they applied too many solutions at once, or solutions that were too stringent. In the case of crafting, they didn't like the affect that pentameld gear had on progression. They solved that problem in myriad ways: the reduction of item level for crafted gear; the flattening of secondary stat growth curves; the inflation of item budget (making readily available materia unable to meet item level caps); the gating process of red scrips (meaning that the gear would never be available early in the progression cycle). There are probably others I'm not thinking of. Any one or two of these would have solved the problem. We didn't need all of them.

They went too far, and they completely neutered DoH as a meaningful aspect of the game.

[Kahr]

We need to copy this and mail it en masse to Yoshi, complete with a translated version in Japanese on reverse. Brilliant figure.

[TechnoTechie]

I'm pretty sure the devs wouldn't even look at this thread because they specifically designed it so that crafted gear wouldn't hold a candle to raid gear (i.e. not as good as i190) no matter how much gil you threw at it. They want people to actually do the content for how it was designed, not buy gear and laugh at how easy it is.

I agree though; removing the possibility of raiders and gatherers making gil off of crafters essentially gutted the economy into a stagnant state.

[Ohiuu]

@Kiara in regards to end-game crafted sets: I too remember the glory days of FFXI crafting an optical hat that my whole LS farmed for one of our rangers praying to any God that would listen that it didn't explode. Now, to be fair, that was a totally different kind of game but this is something I and many others have been stewing over since it was first stated that there was no way we'd be getting it...but why? Requiring raid drops like the abjuration system of FFXI would remove the fear of people pushing too far too fast and would allow for that precious horizontal progression we would all love. Additionally it would increase demand for materia (which is most effectively farmed by adventurer's) and create a real place for DoH in the overall hierarchy of the game outside of chintzy glamour gear. It could even be a rare drop that was still farmable after the loot lockout had been triggered allowing raiders to continue to challenge content outside of the once a week restriction which would keep servers more active and people more interested. Even for those who could only clear a1s, it would provide for a higher level of desire to push into advanced content which seems strangely uncommon as it stands. In addition to all of that it would also encourage more people to participate in the DoH classes in the first place (and they could even add in rare DoL components to this superior gear to bolster that crowd as well), unlocking a whole ton of content that not many people take advantage of these days. THAT is the kind of gear whole FCs would come together and push hard for.

@TechnoTechie: I would hardly consider Alex: normal a "raid". It can be easily pugged by anyone and was available well before the actual raid content was released. You can't realistically walk into alex: savage with Law gear on so really law gear was basically a toss-away stepping stone to the pre-raid puggable easy content that anyone and their mother has access to. Given the cost and difficulty of acquiring the crafted set why should it be Law level gear and not Alex: normal? Why can't I walk into a raid with a crafted set that is actually harder to acquire and only marginally better than the prototype gordian? TBH alex normal just seems like a distraction while they finished up making the real raid content. If they think alex normal deserves its place at the table then add a drop from that raid that's required to make the i190 set. All I can say is that I sincerely hope this new paradigm of i180 craft/tome > 190 proto gordian > eso > upgrade eso/gordian isn't their grand design for the 3.x series. For the love of god add some horizontal progression and give people a reason to push forward (everyone loves choices).

[Nutz]

I agree that they threw in too many systems to stymie the economy on top of making crafted gear impotent compared to easily accessible normal mode raid gear (or antiquated esoterics gear). Recipes for i180 gear are too expensive and require items from favors that a large portion of gatherers aren't even doing because it overlaps with their ability to acquire their own equipment through weekly capped red scrips. Crafters have a similar predicament and then to top it off the gear barely sells because it's noticeably weaker than easily acquired i190/i200 equipment, the former of which was actually available sooner and for free (actually by doing that content you can get the i190 gear and tomes for i170 gear -- and now i200 gear -- so more like it was available for a profit).

The whole materia system unraveling in 3.0 is just more incentive to not use crafted gear in 3.0 -- not that I saw a ton of crafted gear being used before. It was always a fairly small demographic that bought gear. Now it's just nobody.

[Lobotomite]

@1: That's not reasonable. Crafted gear has ALWAYS been 20 ilevels below strongest tome gear available. Currently the Esoretics i200 vs the crafted i180 is not a problem. S-E made it very clear from day 1 of ARR that crafted gear will NEVER be strongest in the game. If you make crafted gear i200, and meldable, they will surpass Esoretics. In case you haven't noticed, the effect of pentamelding is similar to adding an extra 20 ilevels. So a fully, properly melded i180 will be very close to the powers of an i200. However, we do not have the proper materia to do so at the moment. So the problem lies in the materia and in the availability of i180. Not something that we can fix by making crafted gear i190.
@2: I believe 3* i180 accessories needing i170 crafting gear / specialization to make would be a fair thing to have in the next patch.
@3: Yes, they need "raid mats"... it can be like Myth mats or Soldery mats in the past, or it can be like Allagan leathers / Silks which are "drops" / "loots". Some kinda of raid mat will ensure money flow from crafters to raiders... and in return, raiders will have money to buy i180 accessories from crafters.
@4: Well, we all want it easier and faster, don't we? I won't complain if they make it cost only 25! I just don't see it happening too soon.
@5: No, just make skyspring water needed for some kind of recipe, like i180 accessories (but uses fewer other Favor mats please).
@6: Yes, SERIOUSLY! Everybody is agreeing with this right now.
@7: Yes, whoever decided that potions should come in only 1 was really really really "UNWISE" (I'm being as civilized as I can here, trying my best not to use any swear words).
@8: Well, but high level fish are rare, and if they're used for making food, then that food will be come very unavailable... It can be another problem.

I'm kind of iffy on proposition 7 right now, just because a lot of gatherers, myself included, have thrown lots of time and effort into their own scrips so they can get their left-side gear, and introducing them now, several weeks after DoLs have been grinding for their gear, would cause a lot of drama.

As a compromise position:
1) Add craftable DoL gear, but not until 3.2 or whenever the next tier of DoH/L is.
2) Start adding craftable DoL gear, but keep the mainhand gated behind scrips, kind of like how the DoL Supras and Lucises were gated behind independent gathering in 2.x.

However, your figure is absolutely beautiful and summarizes the current situation far better than a paragraph can. Wonderful job, Caimie.