Asking Yoshida to address crafting’s absurd easy difficulty...Live Letter?

[kidalutz]

I don't think we really can agree on that, I've seen some very bad players kill final floor Savage fights. The advent of X-World PF has allowed some very poor players to get carried, because most of these fights (even savage) can be done basically 7-man. There's also a depressing level of people who have been sockpuppeted through Ultimate, and some even started buying parses so that the Site that Shall Not be Named has a recorded ranking of their character clearing it, which makes it harder to see if the kill was legitimate (ie, not sockpuppeted).

I see the point you're trying to make, it's in service to my own point though. Progression gear, Square decided, cannot be too difficult to achieve because that causes arguments about non-elite gear having similar stats. It makes people who kill Gordias Savage 4 ask why people who do Diadem get i210, when Diadem doesn't ask for nearly the pound of flesh that Gordias Savage did. Prestige gear bypasses this, because you didn't kill Ultimate for the extra materia slot; you killed it for the title and the weapon glamour. That's the balance I think they're trying to strike with Ishgard--the rewards not being for progression, but rather for prestige.

I don't know what direction can be taken for crafting. I just know that the creation of Ultimate made all of the progression have an end. Savage is now a means to an end, and that end is the hardest fight series in the game. Having that direction made Savage bearable for me, because even in its dull ease, I knew I was working toward a greater goal, and a greater challenge.

Who cares how someone got thier clear? Just saying does it matter so long as YOU yourself achieved it how you wanted to achieve it? Just saying when you spend your time getting pissed off and depressed over how someone else spends thier time You miss out on the actual point which is for you yourself to have fun and do things your way within reason.

[Cleanse]

1st of all: your system isn't hardcore, your system is ony a dumb grind. With these changes, a trained monkey could still craft HQ it merely had to gather the HQ mats and the gear.
Again: TIME > everything else.

This is BORING. My brain would fall asleep with your "hardcore" crafting system and my blood would boil at the dumb and unnecessary RNG overmeld grind (17% chance of success on anything higher than IVs is bad enough as it is).

2nd:
- we already have specific gear for scripts, so that would be nothing new.
- being forced to buy materials from others would only end up in a gil grind. Again, no skill involved here.
- Overmeld system: see above. Gil/script grind w/o skill involved.
- specialists: again, the only thing you achieve would be yet another gil grind.
- divided markets: inconvenience for the sake of inconvenience you merely triple the time needed by having to check 3 markets every time. Again: no player skill needed.
- And more grind.

I actually like the idea of the HQ revamp. Even though it is just another layer of grind, I like the idea that you can't craft a HQ item from crap materials.
Just feels right.

Seriously people is that what you consider "hardcore"? Dumb and skilless grinds you need a movie on a second screen in order to not fall asleep?



I believe in order to have a fruitful discussion we need to differentiate two things:
1) The crafting process
2) The acquisition and impact of gear/stats on said process

Let me start with 2):
I believe leveling/gear acquisition is in a very good place right now. Decent effort required, a bit of grind to affix all the materia but not overcooked like "you have to spiritbind yourself if you don't want to dump XX millions in the AH". Upping the ante here has nothing to do with player skill and only increases the [time wasted] variable.

1) IMHO the actual crafting process needs some work. We will see how it turns out when they release the master books but to be frank: I should not be able to macro 100% collectibles with unmelded lv 80 gear. Macroing should only be feasible for stuff that is [current Tier -1] while I wear decently melded [current tier] gear. Everything else should require manual input for guaranteed success/HQ.

Also, I'd like for the crafting process to be more interactive but w/o RNG being the determining factor.
I'd like to be forced to make smart decisions in order to get what I want.
Maybe have sth. similar to dancer's dances as a random occurrence, basically demanding random actions (that cost no HP in said window) but with a severe punishment, to the point of a failed synthesis if you exceed a certain number of missteps and with a stricter time limit enforcing quick thinking. Not sure if such a system would work out.

TLDR: more brain in the crafting process, leave gear acquisition and leveling as is.

Great ideas and analysis.

[TwistedTea]

LV.80 Single Button 100% HQ from NQ Mats Macro w Reuse No Food!

[SaberMaxwell]

Who cares how someone got thier clear? Just saying does it matter so long as YOU yourself achieved it how you wanted to achieve it? Just saying when you spend your time getting pissed off and depressed over how someone else spends thier time You miss out on the actual point which is for you yourself to have fun and do things your way within reason.

It's a bit annoying when you spend upwards of hundreds of hours to get a clear of something, only to find Jimmy McTonsofbucks bought his kill for irl cash. Oh I'm sorry, can't make allegations like that; but if you're in any raiding discord you know somewhere cash is changing hands. Kind of cheapens what the title represents. Also in context "depressing" is just a colorful adjective, don't think too hard about it.

Either way is off-topic for this thread. The only reason Ultimate clear-buying was even brought up was to emphasize how even the hardest combat content in the game can be done for you.

[Driavna]

...

My points were a mockery, all they do is to increase annoyance and RNG. One will think that the "Korean spirit" will give it away.

Anyway, I think that any approach around making crafting "harder" without solving the problem of boredom after craft number X is a failure. After all, is the reason why people macro (me included).