Redo the Crafting system.

[Gemina]

I have been an avid SE MMORPG Player for 13 years now. I love your games and always have. But not for the crafting. I honestly didn't think it could get any worse than FFXI as far as crafting goes. Congratulations. This game is far worse. I have avoided for a long time and this is due to the broken system. Please redo it. Please.

Sounds like someone had an unlucky HT streak.

But hey! At least you don't have to face northeast, during waning crescent, between 2-5am on Windsday.

[Choco_Breeder_Twirly]

I only leveled all my crafters b/c my FC is a bunch of lazy fluffs and dont properly work on Workshop stuff. Personally i can't stand the crafting system in this game. Granted it's different by a long shot from any MMO i have ever played but my main issues are this.

Why (just like Gathering classes) is Ironworks an 100% OVERMELDED MUST to make some items yet it's Lower Ilevel to Augmented Scrip gear? That to me is just illogical at the max.

A issue im hopping is going to be fixed the same way the actual fighting classes are is Cross Class abilities. Though it doesnt matter all that much now that i'm lvl 60 in everything anyways.

My bigger issue is the amount of RNG that is put in to crafting. If RNG dictates i can completely fail trying to make an iron ingot wearing full overmelded Ironworks. If nothing else Ilevel for gear in crafting should make it so you have less chance to fail at low level crafts. Only way i can think to explain it is like how Desynthing is calculated.

[MN_14]

My bigger issue is the amount of RNG that is put in to crafting. If RNG dictates i can completely fail trying to make an iron ingot wearing full overmelded Ironworks. If nothing else Ilevel for gear in crafting should make it so you have less chance to fail at low level crafts. Only way i can think to explain it is like how Desynthing is calculated.

There are a lot of RNG free abilities available for those and ultimately, your results in crafting are 95% user dictated. RNG plays a much smaller factor than a lot of players think.

It isn't at all like melding or even gathering.

[Elamys]

It is absolutely impossible to fail to HQ even level 60 crafts with fully melded Ironworks if you even sort of know what you're doing. Even 1 or 2 star, I haven't NQed in ages unless I did something wrong. You should have enough CP by then to use Basic Touch with Steady Hand up for all of your quality increases, which is a 100% successful quality increase. (I still have to use Hasty on starred crafts but I can still do enough to even out the RNG).

[Caimie_Tsukino]

If RNG dictates i can completely fail trying to make an iron ingot wearing full overmelded Ironworks. If nothing else Ilevel for gear in crafting should make it so you have less chance to fail at low level crafts. Only way i can think to explain it is like how Desynthing is calculated.

No offence, but if you're a level 60 crafter wearing Ironworks gear, while using Hasty Touch for making any level 1 to level 59 recipe items, then you're doing it all wrong.

[Solarra]

IMO, the one size fits all crafting design isn’t working well. Gearing and leveling aside, no matter how they rebalance and simplify crafting mechanics, it’s still too complicated for most players who really don’t care about learning the system. The end result is a niche crafting scene that is far too small for the developers pay attention to.

If you don't like FFXIV crafting and your friends don't like it, it's very easy to come away with the impression that the vast majority of players dislike it.
In my experience, crafters tend to gravitate to companies where there are people who share their interest. Our FC has a high proportion of crafters and new players tend to pick crafting up automatically, probably because there is so much of it going on.
Certainly it's a niche activity, but I think the niche is much larger than non-crafters might imagine. Even on a tiny server like Zodiark, you'll see crafters in every major city and also in Idyllshire, MorDhona and the Beast-tribe centres pretty much at any time of day. The huge number of online resources also suggests that there is a lot of people crafting.

The main problem with 'Re-doing' crafting to suit the people who don't like it, is that it's going to upset a huge number of people who do, which is what happened when they introduced Specialisation in HW. Personally, I like the system we have and I'm hoping SB doesn't bring any drastic changes.

OP - If FFXIV crafting isn't for you, then it's not really going to impact your character very much if you don't do it. We are about to enter the second expansion, asking for major changes to a system that a lot of other people are engaged with and enjoying, especially at such a late point in the game's development, seems unreasonable to me.

[ChameleonMS]

- Consume way to much time, even if you are doing very simple stuff.

+1 completely agree. Many crafters would love a Quick Synthesis system which was actually, well you know, QUICK!!!

- GIL is useless.

GIL is no more or less useless than Tombstones; it is a currency. Currency is used to trade for services that you do not want to or cannot do yourself. Trying making raid food or pots without GIL and see how much time you spend gathering / crafting, instead of raiding.

- Possible buyers are almost no existent for the majority of crafted goods.

For early patch raid gear. I will agree with that. For alt class levelling gear and Glamour, the market is very large.

- FXIV crafting system is complex for the sake of being complex but give players 0 options.

There are not zero options but like anything, there more optimal options but there definitely different approaches which are viable.

- MB is boring and less exciting compared to building your own shop.

How would you improve it?
This one suggestion I have seen many times.
Make it more of shop order scenario, buyer places bid order, buy 15 of item X at price Y; placing the money in the retainer. MB seller comes along and fills the order, GIL is removed from buyer retainer and item is place in retainer storage.

- In a theme park MMO crafting is something minor unless revolve around enhance gear from dungeons/raids and consumables.

??????

- You are forced to level everything.

+1 completely agree. Specialist was suppose to balance this but it failed miserably.

[Driavna]

GIL is no more or less useless than Tombstones; it is a currency. Currency is used to trade for services that you do not want to or cannot do yourself. Trying making raid food or pots without GIL and see how much time you spend gathering / crafting, instead of raiding.

It's is, this game lack of any real GIL sink, compared to others games like BnS where an equivalent currency is needed yo upgrade your gear or WoW with his optional gold sinks having big amount of GIL will be more tempting, in FFXIV this doesn't happen. So, a regular joe don't have that incentive to craft.

For early patch raid gear. I will agree with that. For alt class levelling gear and Glamour, the market is very large.

I disagree, during HW you can level to 60 with 130 gear with no problem at all (not to mention that PoTD is the most used way to LvL and there you don't need gear). Also, outside of consumables (if your server uses those, in my current one I hardly find any buyer for food/potions), the lack of decay create by itself a limited market.

Not to mention that everything is mad expensive compare to the gil a non-crafter generate, your average joe can't afford those prices.

There are not zero options but like anything, there more optimal options but there definitely different approaches which are viable.

In FFXIV I can only NQ or HQ (and you want to avoid NQ like a plague), back when I played SwG I have a total control over an item stats so I can create different versions of a same item to suit my clients needs (like a weapon with high durability to grind).

But since FFXIV is a theme park you can't have this.

How would you improve it?
This one suggestion I have seen many times.
Make it more of shop order scenario, buyer places bid order, buy 15 of item X at price Y; placing the money in the retainer. MB seller comes along and fills the order, GIL is removed from buyer retainer and item is place in retainer storage.

MB is the ultimate expression of QoL and by itself kill a lot of factors only present in games with players shops, also all items are the same. This can't be fixed (theme park problem again), so you can only undercut to compete and that's boring.

??????

In a sandbox all items come from crafter but in a theme park you can't do that, so the only real option is limite yourself to consumables (not only food/potions but gear improvements like enchants, gems, sharp stones, repair kits, etc) and one time only items (cosmetics mainly).

[MN_14]

The main problem with 'Re-doing' crafting to suit the people who don't like it, is that it's going to upset a huge number of people who do, which is what happened when they introduced Specialisation in HW. Personally, I like the system we have and I'm hoping SB doesn't bring any drastic changes.

I can say for a certainty that HW caused a change on my server at least and it has nothing to do with specialization. Weak specialist skills don’t bother a crafter who has all of the cross-class skills since they simply wouldn’t use them. Considering their original intent, I doubt they were even designed particularly with omni-crafters in mind. The spec locks that were added after in 3.1 to slowly replace the 3.05 favor system and gear lockouts are an annoyance, but not a game breaker. You can still craft your own gear by changing specs and mass produce materials or items. As for new crafters, they are in no worse position than they were in by 2.3 or 2.4.

This is the composition of crafters that I noticed on my server in ARR:

- Most crafters were non-star crafters from levels 1-50. Many had all classes leveled but still did not move beyond maybe 1*. They just weren’t interested in higher level crafts or really learning the system. Prior to the 1* master crafts, you could HQ with a few buttons but once you hit 1*+, you had to start using a lot of your cross-class abilities to HQ an item. It was considered time consuming and not worthwhile, which is a complaint that I’ve heard to this day.

- There were “mid-core” crafters who worked on obtaining artisan’s/supra/lucis tools and both master recipe books because they were things to achieve or earn. They went through the content for the same reasons why someone might work toward clearing a raid or earning a difficult achievement. Many struggled with the master 2 books though (advanced difficulty by my definition), so it was probably a mistake to lock an entire tier of crafts behind them. Most “mid-core” crafters were actually still dedicated end game players and even raiders but didn’t have the time or patience or time to work on mastering the crafting system

- There were, of course, core crafters who could handle all of the content fairly reliably and made hundreds of millions off the MB

Things changed in HW, however. This was largely due to the watering down of the content and to make things worse, there was a failure to grab new crafters despite the dumbing down (millions of reasons for that so I won’t get into it; they are gearing/leveling issues that compounded the existing issues from ARR).

- Largest group of crafters early on were the glamour and housing crafters (usually with all classes leveled) but they mostly disappeared by 3.1. Some sold non-star master crafts.

- The “mid-core” disappeared. I had a lot of friends who dabbled in crafting as mid-core crafters back in 2.3-2.5. By 3.0, they didn’t bother with crafting anymore other than unlock the first set of master books. There was no sense of accomplishment or achievement so they just focused on other content like pvp or raiding. Among myself and my friends, I was the only one to stick with crafting.

- Most core crafters that I know still do keep up with crafting but we all agree that it’s really easy, boring, and dull right now. You don’t need to master the system at all and each tier is easier than the last (due to Maker’s mark). As well, the general strategy for each is virtually the same with some minor differences.

If they simply introduce different kinds of recipe types, they wouldn’t have to completely overhaul the mechanics or anything. You’d have one set for the players who’d rather HQ with only a few buttons (the Zhloe turn-ins and moogle quests are already an example of this kind of craft btw), other recipes for intermediate level (learning) crafters, and a final set (the challenges) for both the core and mid-core.

[Elamys]

I just want to point out that I absolutely HATE Maker's Mark and hope it dies a fiery death (it probably won't). I refuse to use it.