We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Edax]

The design of fights will become unbalanced if you make the best gear of the tier easier to obtain and more available. So then that needs to be changed, then another thing needs to be changed because of that and on and on. It has a domino effect.

You seem to be under the impression that you can simply put A into B and the game design will just still work as is. Not likely.

It would break the structure of gear progression which then affects the fights themselves because they will lose depth/difficulty since you can simply get max item level immediately and removes the need to wait for more gear to progress easier, which then affect the longevity of the content, and so on and so on.

The gear does not necessarily need to be "easier" to obtain, but rather offer more pathways to obtain it. I can get that it might sound "easy" to must go to the MB so if I were to scrap that idea, then what would be so wrong if raid equivalent gear could be crafted with very rare materials? The progression would be intact, it would take some time to for a gatherer or crafter to obtain the necessary items, especially if the gathering/crafting system receive more development to reward the player for their effort?
If raid gear is hard to obtain, and the craft gear was hard to obtain, then the balance of the fights would still remain intact. Those willing to put the time and effort into raiding could receive the same reward as the those willing to put time and effort into obtaining rare materials. Crafting gear doesn't have to be easy. Would raiders truly give up raiding entirely if they could spend a weeks trying to get rare materials for a single piece of gear? I'm not so sure about that.

[MoroMurasaki]

The gear does not necessarily need to be "easier" to obtain, but rather offer more pathways to obtain it. I can get that it might sound "easy" to must go to the MB so if I were to scrap that idea, then what would be so wrong if raid equivalent gear could be crafted with very rare materials? The progression would be intact, it would take some time to for a gatherer or crafter to obtain the necessary items, especially if the gathering/crafting system receive more development to reward the player for their effort?
If raid gear is hard to obtain, and the craft gear was hard to obtain, then the balance of the fights would still remain intact. Those willing to put the time and effort into raiding could receive the same reward as the those willing to put time and effort into obtaining rare materials. Crafting gear doesn't have to be easy. Would raiders truly give up raiding entirely if they could spend a weeks trying to get rare materials for a single piece of gear? I'm not so sure about that.

Three important holes in this idea.

First - crafting and raiding are not mutually exclusive. People would just be pressured to progress both of these things now. I assume there would be some kind of weekly gating system (a la Savage) otherwise someone could nolife their way to BiS in X time.

Second - this is a self-sufficent way to get the best gear. This game is an MMO, if you can't pass or fail based on something other than your own merits when it comes to high end content it isn't truly an mmo, it's a singleplayer game with other people. If your crafting plan relies on other people to help you attain these materials I suppose this can be disregarded but I doubt it does.

Three - it's unbalanced. Right now you fight your way into top tier combat gear but there is no way to do the same and get the best crafting and gathering gear. I am 100% sure if there was a system like that implimented (turn in Savage books for HQ crafting gear for example) crafters and gatherers would throw a fit because it would crash the market for those items.

So which is it? Are you okay with me raiding my way to crafter BiS?

[OurMom]

The gear does not necessarily need to be "easier" to obtain, but rather offer more pathways to obtain it. I can get that it might sound "easy" to must go to the MB so if I were to scrap that idea, then what would be so wrong if raid equivalent gear could be crafted with very rare materials? The progression would be intact, it would take some time to for a gatherer or crafter to obtain the necessary items, especially if the gathering/crafting system receive more development to reward the player for their effort?

Wouldn't work here, gil is too easy to get and everyone can craft/gather everything.

In games where you can buy/craft high tier gear off the marketboard it's extremely hard to make enough money to be able to buy it. Then there's also the whole thing where people can only get 1 or 2 crafting professions good enough to craft it.

I wish crafted gear was decent in this game like how it is in Archeage but the whole economy just isn't set up for that sadly.