Patch 3.1: Crafting Not Reborn

[Pentt]

The most damaging thing they did to crafters in this patch was allow people to just buy any materia they want - even Tier V - via Diadem turn-ins instead of bothering with spiritbonding.

The amount I was looking forward to 3.2 because spiritbonding would become a needed thing... gone in a flash.

48 brass per V isn't a good rate.

The main issue is that there's no reason to have Rank 5 battle materia right now, so why bother spirit binding.

[Mindy_Macready]

If fact if you want a huge load of materia you should do both
Hunting in diadem for pink stuff to get materia
While wearing ilevel 185 to spiritbond and concert it into high materia (using the spiritbond bonus in diadem)

That would be the most efficient way

Plus... If you get lots of rank V materia you don't want it could also be use with mutamix to get DoL/DoH rank V materia
(Since you have a better chance using only grade V)

Except credit for kills in the Diadem is based on damage, not hate. So unless you tag the star monster first, you don't want gear nerfing your credit.

[Lobotomite]

The most damaging thing they did to crafters in this patch was allow people to just buy any materia they want - even Tier V - via Diadem turn-ins instead of bothering with spiritbonding.

The amount I was looking forward to 3.2 because spiritbonding would become a needed thing... gone in a flash.

No, the most damaging thing they did was not offering Tier V materia for DoH/DoL at the Diadem along with all the other materia.

So again, crafters have nothing to do this patch other than cook up raid food (if you're lucky enough to be on a server with a competitive endgame community that actually uses it), attempt to fight for table scraps in the new 1* market, or work on crafting their new gear with only the devs' vague promises of rewards coming down the pipe. Eventually.

Although the changes to Favors make failed Reclaims hurt less than they did before, there is still zero point in crafting your 2* gear because the levels of melding required for it to be an improvement over quad or pentamelded i150 are too expensive for anyone but the market board robber barons and hardcore omnicrafters.

I was relatively positive when the patch first dropped. Then I saw that it's still basically a stopgap with a big "We'll make things better in 3.2, we promise!" sign hanging off of it.

[chidarake]

crafting is not going to be like ARR, SE seem to think they have no choice but make it crazy hard / time gated so that crafters don't break there game with op gear.

the increase to red scrip mats trade is the only good thing for crafters and really the level they are now is the level they should of been introduced with.

the diadem is not an option for gather items either really unless you have no gather scrips because its super time gated on rare item spawns and enemies that one shot gatherers and you cant use stealth because it doesn't work in the diadem.

scrips are the only viable way to get the bis gear still, until a lot more people start to realise they can make gil from selling the mats from diadem gather trades but that just feeds into what some complain as gil flowing away from crafters.

but seriously if your into crafting just for the gil then go be a gatherer as they are the ones making gil since 3.0 hit and will continue to do so for he foreseeable future, last I saw gatherers make 16+mil from red scrips items alone per week, never mind taking into account legendary nodes and other random mats they can get.

[Lastelli]

crafting is not going to be like ARR...

This is the problem though. It's unacceptable that gatherers are the only ones making incredible profits. Their entry costs are low, the difficulty is low since you don't have to look for complex rotations each tailored for a particular kind of recipe, you get most of your gear without any help from crafters so you're more or less self sufficient...but most of all you need basic equipment to gather favor mats.
Crafters, on the other hand, have to undertake huge investments both to gear up and to buy the materials to craft your recipes, taking a significant risk since if you don't HQ your craft you basically have no way to make your money back and you'll surely incur a loss.
The only reason why right now there's a gil flow from crafters to gatherers is because in ARR crafters could make incredible profits and have amassed fortunes. SE is basically trying to balance things that were unbalanced in the past by introducing more disequilibrium now in the opposite direction.

[Lobotomite]

SE is basically trying to balance things that were unbalanced in the past by introducing more disequilibrium now in the opposite direction.

This is (probably) why DoH/L tier Vs are still incredibly rare; they're trying to use their rarity (and thus, cost) to sink some of the hardcores' gil stores out of the game. Thing is, (a) the hardcores are savvy enough to see what the devs are trying to do, and they're largely not going to bite/play ball, and (b) the entire non-hardcore crafting community's being held at gunpoint as well, especially if the recipe difficulty of 60 3* will require fully-melded 60 2* gear to reliably HQ (or, hell, even break past the drop-dead craftsmanship/control requirement).

Again, wasn't the whole point of the 3.0 crafting rebalance to make it accessible to casuals? Where is this vaunted accessibility? I, for one, am not looking for the recipes to be faceroll easy. But I am looking for a clear progression path, a reason to care, and for recipe materials to be cheap enough so that I can play around and experiment with rotations just like when things were good with Lucis and 50 4* back in the glory days of 2.4 yore.

[Mindy_Macready]

There are certain recipes that need to be "faceroll easy" because the items are most useful in stacks, like battle potions.

If they're complaining that fewer people are meeting dps checks than they expected, they shouldn't have made Draconian potions gated behind ephemeral nodes that are in competition with collectibles people need, and they definitely shouldn't have nerfed the yield of potions per craft.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

Wtf are you talking about save crafting? Like it's fading away or something....ruhdonkulous.

I see that most of your crafting jobs aren't 60 yet, so I'm guessing that your involvement in the 3.0 crafting endgame is minimal. So I'll take the opportunity to inform you: crafting is very much fading away, for the simple reason that, for many people, the endgame just isn't fun anymore.

I can't speak for everyone, but as for myself: in the days of 2.x, I couldn't craft enough. Crafting was so much fun, and the reason why it was fun (beyond the design of the crafting mini-game itself) was simple: it offered rewards that were proportionate to the time, effort, and skill that it required. Sure, it was one hell of an investment to get started (and that's why it was prohibitive for many players), but once you did, crafting was a very powerful tool (whether or not it was too powerful is a question for another thread). Crafting was literally what kept me playing the game on a daily basis between raid nights; it was something to do, and it was a damn good thing to do.

When 3.0 launched, it was immediately apparent that the new endgame sucked, but I stuck with it for a long time. I have 4/8 classes decked out in full HQ i170 gear with full melds, and honestly, despite how terrible red scrips used to be, for a while, I was still having fun gearing up, even though I couldn't craft anything that was meaningful or valuable to other players. However, I essentially stopped crafting about a month and a half ago, because I realized that it's just not fun anymore. And the reason it isn't fun is precisely the opposite of what made it so much fun in 2.x: the rewards are NOT proportionate to the time, effort, skill, and risk involved. Even with the release of 3.1, there still isn't enough meaningful stuff to craft; the sky pirate gear can be a source of grade V materia, to be sure, but so is spamming the Diadem and turning in pink gear, which is easier, costs absolutely nothing but time, and guarantees that you'll get the materia you want.

As I said, I can't speak for others, but it's no secret to the denizens of this forum that plenty of crafters have lamented the sad state of the system, and some have openly given up. 3.1 was the last hope for crafting to become relevant again before 3.2, and so many crafters are left disappointed. And to be sure, the dev team has stated that crafted gear will be better in 3.2, but you'll have to forgive my lack of faith that the improvements will be meaningful.

Saltily yours,
-VP

P.S. Really? Max-Ethers aren't an ALC specialist recipe? Really? So glad I picked that specialization...

[Loony_BoB]

48 brass per V isn't a good rate.

The main issue is that there's no reason to have Rank 5 battle materia right now, so why bother spirit binding.

When you counter in the fact that you can choose which materia you get, yeah, it's a pretty bloody good rate. 0x Elemental Materia chance. You get exactly the materia you want.

[Mindy_Macready]

Refer to hammer reborn, steel spoils give the gathering mats.

You missed my initial point though. This isn't about where you can get red scrip materials without gathering. It is about the fact that you cannot SPEND the red scrip TOKENS farmed via crafting without using gathering items. Even with the nerf on the amount of gathered items needed, that was just another example of a bone-headed move by whomever is in charge of the crafting/red scrips system at SE.

I hope that whenever Rainbow Tokens of Crafting get added, they avoid that mess and allow crafters to initially buy crafting mats without having to have gatherer items. At least with that setup the system won't be skewed 100% to gatherers.