Stormblood Crafting System

[javid]

Dammit caimie you wrote a lot. When I leave the office I'm coming for you....������

[Driavna]

As I said, the game is already built with interdependencies in mind, but some of those interdependencies are an annoyance. FFXIV have a wannabe sandbox crafting system "too complex" for a theme park and to simple for a sandbox (no decay and all items are the same outside NQ/HQ).

Interdependencies are nice when are well done but that it's not the case, the market spin around materials (like ores, crystals) or complex final products, the rest has no value. Why bother selling Aurum Regis Nuggets when is more profitable to sold those materials? This problem is common to any MMO's that allow players to have all the crafting professions in some way, you either sold rare materials or final products from rare recipes. (Yeah, I know there is a market for HQ Leve quest items).

Back in games like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies this never existed, everyone needs something from others but crafting skills were fully independent (not like CRP, for a lot of his recipes the least material used is wood ).

BTW, I did not mention that the economy is dead but NA/EU server are in bad shape due to gil sellers, this is especially noticeable in "small" servers where anything is unaffordable from no crafter/gatherers, even raid consumables or basic tools (my main reason to level DOH/DOL).

So I don't see the point to force a player to level all crafting in order to be of use (560 Levels just for DoH'S after SB release), the perk of an omnicrafter is been available to craft anything but should not be better to an individual craft. In fact, if our system were deeper each profession should have their unique crafting process with a lot of little things to learn if you wanted to be a master of everything. Anything else should stay the same, it's very enjoyable and satisfactory.

Note: it's a giving that anyone depends on gathers.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

You're arguing against points not made....where did i say one fosters an economy and the other one doesn't? You copied my post then misquote me........

I said interdependence does more than independence for market activity. Price points have everything to do with supply and demand....very little to do with whether everyone is omni independent or interdependent. But actual market activity has more to do with competitive advantage(like you mentioned) AND absolute advantage (aka specialist recipes). And not being able to craft everything (without swapping crystals) drives ppl to interact more with the MB (whether to sell or buy) THAN being self sufficient would....

This was never a discussion about prices.

Lastly the anagloy was sufficient. It's just that you presuppose crafting should be a solo quest and I presuppose crafting should be a dungeon run....so all kinds of analogies can fit either pressuppostion.

The analogy was not sufficient, as Camie said above. Compare apples to apples. You have to party up for trials and dungeons. You have to party up for the FC workshop. You do not have to party up for crafting anything in your Crafting Log.

And no, you did not say that "interdependence does more than independence for market activity". You said "interdependence fosters an economy". That statement left a very obvious implication - that independence does not foster an economy.

The economy is all about getting Gil to move. Supply, demand, pricing, those all have huge impact on, and are impacted by, the overall economy. And those factors could very well be the ones that drive someone to be a single crafter, or an omnicrafter, or something in between.

Camie addressed everything else rather well, I'm not going to try to repeat what has already been said.

[javid]

snip

I was waiting until I got home to address cam's response, but by the time i got home i saw your response too, so I'm gonna get this tag team!!

lets first deal with the analogy b/c we're parsing it beyond what's necessary. Yes!!! for any raid content you need a team avail themselves all at the same time to complete that content; while as a crafter (outside the FC shop) you don't need a team of crafters present all at the same time to complete any craft. The simple comparison was you need more than one crafting job to complete any useful gear (for example) and I liked those several classes as a team of crafters necessary to complete any meaningful craft, yes it's possible to be that team all in one character now that nothing is gated behind spc; but when there were SPC gated recipes you literally needed separate characters (a team of crafters) to facilitate creating all the crafts in game.

Secondly, addressing yours/camie's "independent vs interdependence".....you are being pedantic....so I'll be pedantic too LOL. Economy literally means interdependence and independence is the exact opposite of economy; it's not physically possible to be titled independent if at any time you trade ANYTHING (even if its trading products/services for gil......so now that we're done being petty....lets go bk to the bigger picture).

Of course having some level of independence helps control price points on goods and services, again I agreed having a lot of competitors that can potentially compete encourages "competitive pricing" (or better known as MASSIVE UNDERCUTS!!! LOOL). But image this real life analogy:

if everyone in the world was master certified vehicle mechanic; no one would ever NEEED a mech! You would still have mech services being provided though due solely to competitive advantages (this guy has a bigger garage than me, or this guy has the tools I need, or I just dont have the time today, etc etc). And also with everyone being a master certified mech it would be "hard" to overcharge on services: "how much you charging??? naw, that's too much I'll go to next door instead---oh, oh, now you wanna negotiation....hmm." In this everyone-is-a-master-mech World there would still be economic transaction occurring, HOWEVER IT WOULD BE COMPLETELY DUE THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES.... you'd have to wonder how the economic activity in this made-up world full of master mechanics would fair... with most ppl being able to sit their cars/bikes/boats in their own garages and go to town!!

However in a world where everyone ISN'T a master mech, it would by definition require at minimum the same ppl to ppl interaction (MOST LIKELY MORE) in order to facilitate the level of repairs being done in the first world (the master mech World)---yes i'm assuming ppl dont all collectively decide "we aint getting shit fixed!!"

In the first world economy was a matter of CONVENIENCE, which is still a viable means for economy!! But in the second world economy is a matter of NECESSITY and it makes the interaction less elastic by definition.

If you force ppl to be locked behind a spc class (even if its just for a time) by NECESSITY you have to interact with some other character (even its still YOUR OTHER CHARACTER) to get the crafts you want. This type of interaction is less elastic than if everyone can craft anything and they choose to interact out of convenience (today I might do it myself. tomorrow I get this other guy to do it.)

[Caimie_Tsukino]

Dammit caimie you wrote a lot. When I leave the office I'm coming for you....

OMG... *runs away*

As I said, the game is already built with interdependencies in mind, but some of those interdependencies are an annoyance. FFXIV have a wannabe sandbox crafting system "too complex" for a theme park and to simple for a sandbox (no decay and all items are the same outside NQ/HQ).

Interdependencies are nice when are well done but that it's not the case, the market spin around materials (like ores, crystals) or complex final products, the rest has no value. Why bother selling Aurum Regis Nuggets when is more profitable to sold those materials? This problem is common to any MMO's that allow players to have all the crafting professions in some way, you either sold rare materials or final products from rare recipes. (Yeah, I know there is a market for HQ Leve quest items).

Back in games like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies this never existed, everyone needs something from others but crafting skills were fully independent (not like CRP, for a lot of his recipes the least material used is wood ).

BTW, I did not mention that the economy is dead but NA/EU server are in bad shape due to gil sellers, this is especially noticeable in "small" servers where anything is unaffordable from no crafter/gatherers, even raid consumables or basic tools (my main reason to level DOH/DOL).

So I don't see the point to force a player to level all crafting in order to be of use (560 Levels just for DoH'S after SB release), the perk of an omnicrafter is been available craft anything but should not be better to an individual craft. In fact, if our system were deeper each profession should have their unique crafting process with a lot of little things to learn if you wanted to be a master of everything. Anything else should stay the same, it's very enjoyable and satisfactory.

Note: it's a giving that anyone depends on gathers.

You've made some valid points there

[Solarra]

I think Specialisation was introduced far too late in the game to be attractive. It is lot of work levelling all the crafting classes to 50, but there are clear advantages to doing so. Once you've put in the effort and done that, being asked to choose 3 and dump the other 5 seems unkind to say the least. Especially in HW when you only had 10 levels to go and the specialist skills were so poor hardly any crafters were using them.

The point about specialists forcing people to use the MB and 'interact' with each other is one I've changed my opinion on. I used to assume it was good for the economy, but after an earlier discussion on these boards, I came round to seeing that it's the lack of competition that keeps prices high. If there are only a few people crafting (especially on a small server), then the limited supply is going to mean higher prices. Since some specialisations far less popular than others (ALC for example), you also get huge discrepancies in the cost of materials, so a GSM might have to sell 5 nuggets to afford a single dissolvent.
New players don't have the reserves of gil that older players have, so they are particularly hard-hit by high material costs, especially early in an expansion. So, while specialisation might have been introduced with them in mind, in HW the high prices that resulted from specialist-only recipes, ironically encouraged them to continue omnicrafting beyond level 50 as a way of keeping costs down.

I'm hoping SB will see a move away from trying to discourage omnicrafting and will instead introduce measures to make single-class crafting more viable.
I don't like the specialist system and feel it is out of place in a game that claims you can have every class on one character. However, considering how much development time must have gone into it already, I wasn't expecting it to go away.

[Silverbane]

[RE:] Specialisation ... It is lot of work levelling all the crafting classes to 50, but there are clear advantages to doing so. Once you've put in the effort and done that, being asked to choose 3 and dump the other 5 seems unkind to say the least.

Canard. No one was ever asked to "choose 3 and dump the other 5." The Specialist system didn't require (or even provide a benefit for) not leveling your non-Specialist classes to 60.

Since some specialisations far less popular than others ... you also get huge discrepancies in the cost of materials [but] New players don't have the reserves of gil that older players have ...

Another canard. Specialization only affected bleeding-edge crafting for a patch cycle or two. New players weren't affected unless they leveled aggressively enough to catch up with the older players. Those who did that faced greater hurdles than the high cost of specialist materials.

[javid]

Well moving forward we know there is no weekly caps so omni is bk!!! Not in full force bc there is a time sink aspect of swapping specialist crystals. For hardcore crafter (most all of us nerds) we'll have a retainer stack of crystals ready for constant swapping.

Note: I highly discourse WASTING current red scripts weekly's on crystals. It's more profitable to get the materia Vs and sell those now while materia are still worth 150-300k.

What's yet to be seen is how new specialist will assist the solo crafter and if specialist will reward the already omni (as an omni I'm not satisfied with just being omni. I desire OPness mode!!)

Last note crystal swapping is what will make red scripts relevant in the long run. Yes at first it will be endless Vs but for that very reason the endless supply will drive materia prices down and at some price point players will stop spending 15min for just X gil..... personally if i spend 15min I want at least 100k......

[Driavna]

Don't assume the lack of scrip cap as the lack of any time gate, custom deliveries are capped to 6 ATM. Imagine if we need to raise our satisfaction with some kind of "trainer" for our DoL/DoH first in order to buy important stuff from him or something (like the new master books).

[javid]

Don't assume the lack of scrip cap as the lack of any time gate, custom deliveries are capped to 6 ATM. Imagine if we need to raise our satisfaction with some kind of "trainer" for our DoL/DoH first in order to buy important stuff from him or something (like the new master books).

I didn't quite understand your point? But i think you meant what if they have other important uses for red scripts that take priority? That's not a problem and i hope they actually do have other uses for reds and yellow that take priority to using reds on cyrstals. But all that can't possibly be the case forever. That is why I referenced IN THE LONG RUN.