Have a Materia Melding NPC

[Belhi]

Crafting is fine, even if it is mostly a fun side diversion. I leveled mine to 60, knowing that the only real reason to do so was to gear them to continue gearing themselves. The problem is that crafters often complain about not being relevant, and the devs throw them a bone by shackling new systems to crafting.

Case in point... I know a few fcs of moderate size, and they are excited for the upcoming airship exploration, but they can't build their own airship because they don't have players who have the appropriate levels of blsm, arm, and crp to turn in the items.

While I can just shrug and do my own thing, I can understand people who just want to have fun and don't want to play an mmo like a chore. And the need to constantly ask your crafter friends to make a thing, or put a ball into a slot, can lead to people not even bothering to do it. Do you ever see someone in ilevel 35 gear that has melded materia? No, because while they might have materia to do it themselves, it's not worth asking someone to give you a moment of their time.

With Airships you can buy the components of the MB if your FC all contributes funds to it. You don't have to build each component to have airships.

Seriously though, for the sake of balance, crafters don't make much in the way of endgame worthy gear. Crafting though takes a lot of work and while people enjoy it, they still want to feel rewarded for their efforts. Removing the perks of that effort is likely to make them unhappy.

Crafting shouldn't be mandatory for everyone, but likewise, it should be rewarding enough to match the effort it takes. Particularly now with all the gating/red scrip stuff.

[Gunspec]

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There is a difference, though, between making crafting rewarding, and adding tedious restrictions to players that don't craft. The glamour system is absolutely atrocious in this game, and it exists in that form solely to make crafters feel "rewarded". Melding can be frustrating, and doubly so when two people are forced to do it together.

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once. An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate. It's just the people who haven't leveled crafts that are being penalized. But yeah, I've told people if they give me the mats, I'll make the airships in my own FC workshop and trade it to them.

It's a matter of knowing someone that won't rip you off because they want to be "rewarded".

[SchalaZeal]

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once.

Then you didn't read what was said.

Current step asks for Varnish x12? Go on MB, buy Varnish x12.

An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate.

How about buying that darksteel plate??

[Jynx]

How about buying that darksteel plate??

You misunderstand. Multiple items actually require a specific rank of crafter to turn in these items you can just waltz in with any crafting job and submit materials, things such a garlond steel require high level crafters to turn the items in.

[Belhi]

There is a difference, though, between making crafting rewarding, and adding tedious restrictions to players that don't craft. The glamour system is absolutely atrocious in this game, and it exists in that form solely to make crafters feel "rewarded". Melding can be frustrating, and doubly so when two people are forced to do it together.

As for the FC airship stuff, I've never seen an airship on my server's marketboard besides the Tiny Bronco, and those are normally listed for well over material price. They usually don't even have all four pieces listed at once. An FC with every craft except armorer can't turn-in darksteel plate, and thus can't finish their airships, even if they have all the darksteel they need from the marketboard. It's not like crafters are being cheated if that restriction is removed, because SOMEONE on the server crafted that darksteel plate. It's just the people who haven't leveled crafts that are being penalized. But yeah, I've told people if they give me the mats, I'll make the airships in my own FC workshop and trade it to them.

It's a matter of knowing someone that won't rip you off because they want to be "rewarded".

A fair point. I don't disagree with you that there are unfair issues, particularly with the FC Airships.

I would ask however, how you would balance things so that crafting didn't feel mandatory or restrictive to non-crafting players and still was rewarding for crafters for the substantial time investment endgame crafting has? I suspect the heart of the issue is this balance. This issue isn't simply linked to the FC Workshop. Even now a lvl 60 ARM in endgame gear has practically nothing worthwhile making except stuff for the FC Workshop, Glamour crystals and a couple of pieces of glamour.

[SchalaZeal]

I doubt crafting is 'mandatory', given I'm the only one in the FC that has all crafts at 60. Sure, I end up solo crafting the airship, but that's me not caring about cost or time. Since gil means nothing, while airship could be useful. Others are less motivated to craft, because of the low rewards, or other interests. Except "crafting itself" being enjoyable, there ain't much of a draw. You'd have to like it like a teacher likes teaching so much they do volunteering.

[Terrini]

If anything, I think it might be nice if Drake, Gerolt's Apprentice, would be able to meld the weapon you need to for the Relic quests in the future. It's a rather simple title to earn at 50 but that stage was always a bit annoying.

If there were a melding NPC though, I'd have to say it probably couldn't pentameld. like most gear only shows 2 materia slots at best? well then the NPC can't meld more than that on an item. Keeps crafters still relevant for that endgame pentamelding.

[Gunspec]

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Well on one hand, I don't think crafting particularly NEEDS to have a sweet reward besides basic leveling gear and cosmetic equipment. But, if we really wanted crafters to have some relevance, imagine if at the start of 3.05 each combat class had a single ilevel 200 item that was craftable. Maybe it would be a glove or hat. This would be in addition to the ilevel 200 tome item for the same slot, and the craftable one wouldn't be upgradable to 210 initially. Crafting gear wouldn't eclipse raid gear, because we are only talking about one piece, not the entire left side or a full set of penta-meld jewelry.

The item would remain in relatively high demand for the duration of the raid tier, because every new level 60 job would want that particular ilevel boost right away. Each crafting class would have about 2 different items they would make. It sure makes a lot more sense than the junk ilevel 160 gear made at the beginning of 3.0, which was immediately outclassed by law, law upgrades, and alex normal gear.

BUT, this is just me throwing World of Warcraft ideas at the wall. FFXIV has a ton of that already, and I'm not sure we need more. Still, there are plenty of alternatives, and the devs need to be more creative than "let's chain everything new to crafting".

[marewa]

Some people have crazy behavior in this game, and while I'm chill with that and all, it does become something of a drag when their crazy behavior requires me to sit by their side and spam something for an hour. If you want to glamour all of your clothing 3 times a day, especially while leveling a new class, that's fine, but stop asking me for truckloads of glamour crystals when you can't even help me get the toadleather, velveteen cloth, steel ingots, or whatever. And yes, I get that you really want to get that 5th materia in the slot, but we've been trying for 20 minutes, and I'd really like to do something else.

Don't help them then, problem solved.

[SchalaZeal]

BUT, this is just me throwing World of Warcraft ideas at the wall. FFXIV has a ton of that already, and I'm not sure we need more. Still, there are plenty of alternatives, and the devs need to be more creative than "let's chain everything new to crafting".

Suppose capped tomes in 3.2 are i230, upgradable to i240.

Make craftable i225-230 gear, that also needs untradable items obtained from exploratory missions. That craftable gear would also be untradable. i230 would drop in 3.3 from the 24-man, i240 from the 8-man hard raid, and in 3.3, probably up to i240 from exploratory.

The craftable i225-230 gear wouldn't include weapons, and I'm saying i225-230 because I want it to not be better than i240 when the crafted is pentamelded, but i220 might be too low because of the reduced weight of secondary stats, even counting you'd meld V tier. The untradable bit makes it a reward for top-tier crafter that can't be sold, the from-untradable drops bit makes it not trivial content like expert roulette, while not outright being the raid itself. Raiders who aren't already top-tier crafters would keep doing what they're doing. And they'd still have BiS from upgraded tomes and raid. Crafters would simply be an alternate (and costly, and time-consuming, and untradable) way to get close to there.

Hopefully the 'costly' part is mainly the materia, not 2 million a piece mats. The time-consuming would be finding the untradable mat.