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".

[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.

[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".