Quote Originally Posted by Adren View Post
Why? Because SE didn't plan on there being a HW because of the debacle with FF14.
Uh, what? You realise that the release of ARR was well above their expectations, right? To the point of server issues.
You honestly think they didn't start planning HW at that point?

The issue that new players are having is because as they designed HW they made the completely illogical decision to make the starter level 51 crafting gear for HW Ilevel 65. BELOW ARR level 50 greens. So new players are given a choice. Stop leveling their combat class and go through the trudge of leveling every crafting class just to be able to get the ARR gear needed to HQ a HW item or ignore crafting until 70 because HW level 51 items suck for crafting. Most people do the later. I remember being told "welcome to the REAL end game" once I hit 70 in crafting.
They designed it with the idea of players helping each other (see specialization).
Even still, it's a non-issue, since there's plenty of ways to get from 50 to 51, which makes it easily possible to craft the HW recipes.

You said "I'd rather gathering and crafting not become a worthless side thing like it is in WoW." Well in a way it is worthless to new players. They can't HQ craft their own gear so they just get them from the vendor for their combat classes once they hit HW and forget HQing a leve item.
Whether crafting is worth it or not, is up to the new players themselves. Besides, new players will generally get their initial combat gear through the MSQ.

As for my reputation I write game reviews so my reputation means something to me. When I look at my feedback page and see 2 messages like "Dude you said (insert game name here) was good but it sucks because (insert reason here)" I usually ignore them. But when it comes to FF14 more then just several people left me a quite a few messages that, when I took the time to think about it, have merit. My IRL friends have tried the game before due to my recommendation, I even paid for their subs and the game, just to help the game grow, and they had bad experiences. Not because of the same reason but it seems this game is getting less and less recommendable.
Never heard of you, and I can't imagine your reputation being all that high up there considering your comment in the first quote of my post.

Your thread just sounds like some kind of post to speak for all the newer players, and how they'll just ignore crafting, simply because there's one small bump going from 50-51.
News flash: newer players are just as capable to figure out if they like crafting or not, before they reach even 50.