Hardcore crafters, SE has rewarded you big-time in this patch.

[Sollux]

Here's the thing. Endgame crafting was totally for me in 2.x. Why isn't it now? Why have so many others given up, as well?

Because 2.x Crafting didn't have any kind of gating aside from some Master books the speed that you could reach Endgame Crafting was almost entirely built around how much gil you could throw at it. 3.x Crafting has a gating system and an actual Endgame now, where if you want to do top-tier Crafting you have to put in the time as well as the gil. Those who made sure to cap Red Scrips each week for the i180 gear, or farmed/bought the mats for the i170 gear are reaping massive rewards this patch.

Softcore/Midcore Crafters are suffering right now primarily for 2 reasons:

1. For the longest time there was absolutely no reason to gear a Crafter past the white gear. Even 2* were easily Craftable with the right melds.

2. The i180 and i170 gear required a significant amount of time and/or gil to obtain with little to no benefit in sight.

For both of these reasons many Crafters chose not to bother with the new Red Scrip system at all, and now that the i180/i170 gear is neccessary those Crafters have fallen behind. This problem is also compounded by the fact that many players are trying to get back into Crafting at the same time which has made the prices on Red Scrip mats (Both for turn-ins and 2*), i170 gear/mats, and Crafting materia rise extremely quickly.

Tl;dr, Non-HC Crafters fell behind due to lack of incentive to Craft pre-3.2 and are being kept behind by a gating system they didn't want to invest in and massive price jumps due to the drastically increased popularity to Craft in 3.2.