Redo the Crafting system.

[Dzian]

Only thing I'd change is the amount of materials required to make even basic stuff. Even a basic hardsilver ingot for example

4 hardcover ores
1 hardsilver nugget

That nugget though needs
5 hard silver sands
1 silver ore.

That's quite a complex recipe for what is essentially a basic crafting ingredient

And by the time you've got 3 or 4 of those ingredients together to actually make something it gets pretty crazy pretty fast.

[xJimmehx]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...re-to-complain

Pretty much sums up my feelings on crafting.

Naoki Yoshida once said something along the lines of "I do not care about crafting and gathering very much, so I do not intend to waste too much time on them."
With some more love, it could have been my favorite crafting of any mmo game to be honest. Its mostly the little things that bother me. Like needing to always go out and buy/gather shards. Not being able to sell my crafts to npc for reasonable amounts. Seriously. Level 60 weapons sell for like what? 100 gil or something? Its awful. Items that arent wanted by the playerbase are basically useless.

[javid]

Only thing I'd change is the amount of materials required to make even basic stuff. Even a basic hardsilver ingot for example

4 hardcover ores
1 hardsilver nugget

That nugget though needs
5 hard silver sands
1 silver ore.

That's quite a complex recipe for what is essentially a basic crafting ingredient

And by the time you've got 3 or 4 of those ingredients together to actually make something it gets pretty crazy pretty fast.

I don't think they use ENOUGH mats.... after first week of patch 80% ( i dare say 90%) of the mat required for a syn are in excess on the MB; making gather unhappy (since i'm a gatherer and a crafter). Although I would like some recipes to have less variance in the TYPE of mats required; like instead of recipes with 6 different types of mats; I'd like it maxed at 4 different types of items.

[XiXiQ]

I am hoping they have considered crafting the same as the have the batlle classes - you can't just keep piling it on and on. You can't make the recipes even longer and more complicated, requiring even more mats, and 50+ steps to hq/complete (particularly with RNG on top). Some classes required more x-class skills than they could hold at lvl 50, let alone 60.

[vigioX-Sun]

Love this crafting system, i make millions an millions with it, i hope it never change.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

What? Been a while since I played 11 but wasnt it just basically quick syth. I think the crafting system is great the only thing I would change is specialist actions.

[Aramina]

The crafting system of this game is probably 90% of the reason I play, so no... aside from a few QoL tweaks here and there, it shouldn't change.

[Dzian]

I don't think they use ENOUGH mats.... after first week of patch 80% ( i dare say 90%) of the mat required for a syn are in excess on the MB; making gather unhappy (since I'm a gatherer and a crafter). Although I would like some recipes to have less variance in the TYPE of mats required; like instead of recipes with 6 different types of mats; I'd like it maxed at 4 different types of items.

There's multiple reasons for that though.
One is simply the volume of mats which you can gather in a short time is very high. even HQ mats

Another reason is simply the market for crafted gear is extremely small. Very few players invest in crafted gear for Dow/Dom. Because it's usually very expensive and is replaced very very quickly.. it's also the fact that crafted gear is always "catch up" stuff.

And that ultimately is why the market is flooded for materials because there aren't many buyers...

Increasing the amount of mats required for a synth would only increase the cost of finished items, doing that would only further decrease the rate at which that stuff sells and thus all those mats will still be in excess because ultimately crafters won't male things they can't sell or people won't buy..

Picking a random item such as the heavy metal claws. they're about 700k on my server at the minute and falling quite quickly because they're 9 listed and maybe 1 gets bought a day...

if they took more materials to make. lets say double. then the price would likely double to 1.4 million. and they'd sell even slower than they already do because even less people would be willing to fork out 1.4million than they are 700k..

if you want to address the excess of materials on the markets you need to increase the demand in the actual finished products.... and to do that you need to make crafted gear more relevant than just catch up stuff

[Driavna]

But that won't happen because this is a theme park MMO and not a sandbox, drops are always going to outshine crafted gear. In a sandbox you can put a decay system so people will always replace their gear at some point, also, goods are usually cheaper to craft and your gains are more about quantity instead of selling a single item for millions to a small market.

The problem behind materials is all of them being similar, NQ and HQ are way too simple, so to fix it SE need to make it more complex and add stats to them. Randomize those stats every week or so leading to really good batches having a high value, but this system also requires to the craft itself become more complex and to drop NQ/HQ too.

Anyway, this game is designed so crafting can be totally ignored for your average player because no content outside savage need consumables and big amounts of gil are useless because this game doesn't have any mad, and optional, gil sinks (like 500m for Cloud's Bike). ATM is a big time sink that only produces luxury items and will become more and more niche with each expansion.

[Zojha]

Anyway, this game is designed so crafting can be totally ignored for your average player [...]

As it should be. And I'd go a step further and also make battle content optional for players who'd rather just craft.

But that raises the question what crafting should be in the first place.

If it's supposed to be a supplement to battle content, it needs to be easily accessible to players who don't really want to bother with it, because they're actually interested in battle content and crafting is just a mere support system - Once click done crafting with but a handful of materials, no dedicated gear, low barrier of entry. The WoW model.

If it's supposed to be a separate progression line or even stand on par with battle content, it needs to be mostly self-contained and not offer any real benefits for activities outside of itself like the gold saucer. And the gameplay IMO is rather lacking for that - Hands up everyone who crafts for the joy of crafting and gives the finished product away for nigh free because it's just some byproduct junk to you. The crafts don't even have unique gameplay, they all share the same minigame. That's the way of making it a game within the game.

Crafting is in a bit of a weird spot. It doesn't seem good enough to stand on its own as battle content can, but it's also too complex and time consuming to be a real supplement to battle content, as only dedicated crafters can create anything of value to battle. It's just kind of there.