Please reevaluate the balance between crafted and U/U items.

[Jinko]

Completely agree with the OP, Materia has pretty much destoyed this game for me, sad to think there will be 2 new dungeons in 1.21 and unless they sort this issue no point in bothering with them.

[Brannigan]

Sentinels is like a +1 with two materias.

Sentinel's Sabatons
70 def
27 HP
3 vit
3 enmity

Red Cobalt Sabatons
68 def
30 HP
2 dex
2 vit

Now, Sentinel's set isn't U/U (except the trousers), which is unusual considering all the other stronghold sets ARE U/U. If they were U/U like they probably were meant to be then in what way are they even CLOSE to competing with Red Cobalt with a single tier 4? Mercenary's Acton has decent stats (30 hp/mp, 9 str) but would you ever, ever take it over a Red Cobalt Haub with a crit power materia? Which is harder to obtain?

You say I only respect one facet of the game but the fact is that in an MMORPG like this BATTLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CRAFTING. Item creation is a big portion of the game, but it shouldn't be as big as it is.

[Req]

Sentinel's Sabatons
70 def
27 HP
3 vit
3 enmity

Red Cobalt Sabatons
68 def
30 HP
2 dex
2 vit

Now, Sentinel's set isn't U/U (except the trousers), which is unusual considering all the other stronghold sets ARE U/U. If they were U/U like they probably were meant to be then in what way are they even CLOSE to competing with Red Cobalt with a single tier 4? Mercenary's Acton has decent stats (30 hp/mp, 9 str) but would you ever, ever take it over a Red Cobalt Haub with a crit power materia? Which is harder to obtain?

You say I only respect one facet of the game but the fact is that in an MMORPG like this BATTLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CRAFTING. Item creation is a big portion of the game, but it shouldn't be as big as it is.

Pretty much my whole mentality on the crafting/gathering situation. I have a level 50 gathering job and I will start leveling my crafts again soon since there is really nothing else to do. In my opinion though they are just ways to make money and supplement the bulk (which is the battle portion" of the game with services that help us all grow as characters. To all the crafters who panic every time there is a decent item that drops from anything if the current U/U items were materiable, the stat bonuses would be so minute that only a person who plays 40-50 hours a week would even want to put in the time to get that extra bit of damage or damage mitigation. You guys don't seem to understand how overpowered materia is in and of itself.

Here is a perfect example of an item that would be completely and totally awesome to a loser like me that plays the game 5-6 hours a night if it were materiable:

Mercenarys Mitts:
Attributes
Defense 61
MP 25
Attack Power 5
Magic Evasion 15

So we have our hand piece, it has the most attack in the game out of all the hand pieces, its better than cobalt mitt gauntlets which have 3 strength. I just added 50 attack to it with 2 double stacked tier 4 materias. It is still only 5 attack better than Cobalt mitt gauntlets with the same materia added to it. I just added 10 times the amount of attack power the best attack power gloves in the game have with 2 materia. The extra 5 attack on their isn't going to make or break me. I'm not going to run around going "loljustoenshottedifrit" I am going to do about 10 more damage per unbuffed weaponskill, and that for me, would be more than worth the time and effort to go out and farm these things, take them to a crafter I might add, and have them add the materia over and over again. That is the role of the crafter, to support the main bulk of the game, not rule over everything they do, and you will still be seen as gods for doing this and people will throw all of their money at you.

[Lavani]

Lol sounds good. I'm curious as to how SE will tackle this.. Because the crafters in here do have a point when they say crafting has to produce items of significant strength in order for them not to be eclipsed by raid gear.

In WoW crafting is a joke and the only reason to have one maxed out is to gain a few stat perks... It really doesn't have anything to do with crafting something meaningful to use.

On the flip side, if they make crafting produce the best items in the game, players can forgo fighting bosses and just buy the best in slot stuff w/ gil. Not only does this trivialize the content they're working so hard to release but it puts an additional, and in my opinion, unnecessary, emphasis on gil. Gil is already important in the game, I don't think we need to make it even more so by making it the best way to gear ourselves.

TL;DR
Balance crafting gear to be on par with raid and vice versa, that way neither is eclipsed by the other.

Actually asside from stat perks the crafting proffesions in WoW are given new items to craft when new content is released. These are usually always BiS untill you get into more progression raiding. And let's not talk about the Jewlcrafting or Alchemy craft because those are always usefull no matter what tier of content you are in.

[Jinko]

You say I only respect one facet of the game but the fact is that in an MMORPG like this BATTLE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CRAFTING. Item creation is a big portion of the game, but it shouldn't be as big as it is.

^ This.
I think Yoshi is too scared to stand up to the crafting community and it could potentially ruin this game

Agree with the above post regarding jewelcrafting in WoW, this is basically what I had hoped materia would be in FF14, (socketable gear) sadly I was wrong.

[Lavani]

^ This.
I think Yoshi is too scared to stand up to the crafting community and it could potentially ruin this game

Agree with the above post regarding jewlecrafting in WoW, this is basically what I had hoped materia would be in FF14, sadly I was wrong.

IIRC something was said by SE in regards to removing the focus of crafting/gathering classes as Primary classes. Also if they were so important to SE why not give them advanced jobs like all the battle classes?

[Chadwick]

Crafters put forth a great deal of time and effort to get to the point where they can even attempt to create valuable materia'd equipment. They deserve to have their profession be lucrative and purposeful.

That being said, rewarding crafters should not eclipse giving combat classes a real purpose. This game should be, first AND foremost, about battles, adventuring, and challenges that require skill and effort to overcome. What we've seen of the materia system thus far requires zero skill-- only large amounts of time are required. Killing mobs in stronghold for materia is mindless. Grinding a craft to 50 is mindless. Relying on random success for forbidden materia is mindless.

Defeating storyline and battle content can often be a bit of a grind (i.e. killing Ifrit 50+ times), but at least skill enters into the equation. It takes an understanding of your class's role in a party, game mechanics, and the unique aspects of the fight itself to kill Ifrit to even get a chance at items. Materia is simply time, gil, and luck. The top tier rare/exclusive (unique/untradable) equipment should be something that players strive towards, not something they simply obtain so they can idle in Ul'dah and glow in.

The top tier r/e gear should be, at the very least, equal in terms of usefulness and effectiveness as forbidden materia gear. As has been pointed out, there is perhaps room for both rare/exclusive gear and crafted gear to be the "best" gear if the stat bonuses are handled intelligently. But, if the developers devalue the rewards of high end content, then they devalue the content itself. I understand that crafting and gathering have played and will continue to play a larger role in this game than many MMOs, but the focus has to be on combat. The most rewarding content has to be combat.

Of course, the entire materia system is still quite young, so there's no reason to panic just yet. I just hope SE fully understands the ramifications of putting so much emphasis on crafted items, and doesn't make rare/exclusive gear worthless in comparison to those crafted items (which they have been doing thus far).

[Physic]

Crafters put forth a great deal of time and effort to get to the point where they can even attempt to create valuable materia'd equipment. They deserve to have their profession be lucrative and purposeful.

That being said, rewarding crafters should not eclipse giving combat classes a real purpose. This game should be, first AND foremost, about battles, adventuring, and challenges that require skill and effort to overcome. What we've seen of the materia system thus far requires zero skill-- only large amounts of time are required. Killing mobs in stronghold for materia is mindless. Grinding a craft to 50 is mindless. Relying on random success for forbidden materia is mindless.

Defeating storyline and battle content can often be a bit of a grind (i.e. killing Ifrit 50+ times), but at least skill enters into the equation. It takes an understanding of your class's role in a party, game mechanics, and the unique aspects of the fight itself to kill Ifrit to even get a chance at items. Materia is simply time, gil, and luck. The top tier rare/exclusive (unique/untradable) equipment should be something that players strive towards, not something they simply obtain so they can idle in Ul'dah and glow in.

The top tier r/e gear should be, at the very least, equal in terms of usefulness and effectiveness as forbidden materia gear. As has been pointed out, there is perhaps room for both rare/exclusive gear and crafted gear to be the "best" gear if the stat bonuses are handled intelligently. But, if the developers devalue the rewards of high end content, then they devalue the content itself. I understand that crafting and gathering have played and will continue to play a larger role in this game than many MMOs, but the focus has to be on combat. The most rewarding content has to be combat.

Of course, the entire materia system is still quite young, so there's no reason to panic just yet. I just hope SE fully understands the ramifications of putting so much emphasis on crafted items, and doesn't make rare/exclusive gear worthless in comparison to those crafted items (which they have been doing thus far).

making an HQ item requires knowledge and understanding of your class.

heres the thing, if crafted items are not endgame items they will have no value. if they have no value, then you will make no money gathering.

You guys just want battle to be the whole game, because the truth is, if crafting cannot make good gear it is completely worthless. The only crafts that will have any value is the ones that have consumables.

coming up with a solution to make battle more incentivized is fine, but really, you want to destroy any value for more than half the classes in the game. What exactly do you propose the purpose of crafters be, when they cant make good gear?

[Dalmore]

What ever happends I jsut hope to god that they dont go the WoW way(every few months gear is garbage and new gear comes into play) and More take on the FFXI gear value, where a piece of gear can last sometimes yrs if its that DAMN good.

[Req]

making an HQ item requires knowledge and understanding of your class.

heres the thing, if crafted items are not endgame items they will have no value. if they have no value, then you will make no money gathering.

You guys just want battle to be the whole game, because the truth is, if crafting cannot make good gear it is completely worthless. The only crafts that will have any value is the ones that have consumables.

coming up with a solution to make battle more incentivized is fine, but really, you want to destroy any value for more than half the classes in the game. What exactly do you propose the purpose of crafters be, when they cant make good gear?

Getting an HQ is a complete crap shoot, it takes no skill at all and the only knowledge you need to have is "oh hey hand of the gods is up, I better hit enter before this timer runs out in 20 seconds." Any crafter who believes that there is some sort of deep facet to crafting is completely delusional. Sure, you need the correct abilities to maximize your quality but from there on out it is completely random. You can get 600+ quality on an item and still get an nq and you can get 100 quality on an item and get an HQ. And until they completely rework the HQ system so that HQs are actually worth something more than just adding a little bit of extra defense to an item then it doesn't matter anyways because defense is not a priority for any class other than a tank. What you should really be upset about is the fact that the HQ system is garbage, not the fact that the people who want the meat of the game to drop things that are actually useful so we have something to do. I will reiterate this for the 8 billionth time this thread that people still don't seem to be understanding. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U/U DROPPED GEAR AND CRAFTED GEAR IS MARGINAL AT BEST, IF YOU WERE ABLE TO ADD MATERIA TO THEM THERE WOULD BE NO WAY FOR YOU TO NOTICE THAT YOUR DAMAGE MITIGATION OR OUTPUT HAS INCREASED WITHOUT HAVING YOUR OVERALL DAMAGE RECORDED.

If you crafters don't want the game ruined for you then stop trying to overinflate the value of the items you produce. There is no reason anyone should have to pay 20 million gil for an HQ+3 item that doesn't perform well enough to warrant even a 10th of that price unless you are a tank. And don't flood the market with the NQs so they are near worthless either, because that is exactly what the crafters of this game do. They flood the market with NQs so that they are near worthless while trying to produce the HQs, then sell the HQs for such a high price a person can just pay half that price to level up the craft themselves and farm the materials in the time it would take for them to ever save up enough to get the HQ+3 in the first place.

Like I said before, it is a crafters job to supplement the game and help move the content along. Not have it in a headlock.