Quote Originally Posted by Mindy_Macready View Post
I think there's gotta be a decent level between "not immediately catching up" and "needing at least a few months to catch up", and hopefully the next patch addresses this (probably via uncapped red scrips).
There is. Each week you can earn enough Scrips to trade for 9 Red Crafting Scrip Tokens. Each of those tokens can be exchanged for mats that are used to create up to 3 2-Star sub mats per Token for a total of up to 27 2-Star sub mats obtainable per week. Crafting a full set of i170 gear (MH OH included but minus Accessories and Belt) requires 25 2-Star sub mats, and if we include accessories (a 1-time Craft) the total comes to 35 2-Star sub mats for a complete i170 set. This means that in a little over a week you could potentially have a full i170 Crafting set completed, Accessories included, and from then on you can complete a set for each class every week.

No, I'm not even considering i180 gear as a "catch up" option, and I know I didn't even mention the difficulty/time-sink required to buy/farm Favor items or materia, but that difficulty is the entire point. You still have the potential to gear up a class extremely quickly, however you're going to have to invest a lot of time and/or gil to do so, and that wall is what is STILL rewarding those who were persistent enough to stay on top of their gearing either through weekly capping and i180 gear or farming/buying i170 gear. We're approaching 3.3 and i220 gear still has a decent profit margin (though sales have finally started to slow).

Crafting actually has an Endgame that can't be reached without investing a decent amount of time and/or gil and that's a good thing.