Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Maeka]

Rhetorical question, sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude. I definitely believe you have played for a long time. It’s just, since you have, I’m shocked you would say it was easy, when it most certainly was not. (You didn’t literally say its “easy”, but saying it was “never hard” is quite a stretch.)

How things are now? That’s the true definition of “was never hard.”

Compared to FFXI crafting, Pre-5.1 FFXIV was easy.

I don't recall you risking your life trying to sneak by mobs that would utterly destroy you for a 0.1% chance at getting an adaman ore from Ifrit's Cauldron, for example anywhere in XIV. Having to take lots of Sneak Oils and Prism Powders, and of course you had to cancel Invisible to mine ore, but yet there were sight-aggressive bombs everywhere (which is why you couldn't cast sneak because they would aggro casting unless you were a ninja).

The only annoying part was how you had to look up rotations and junk and it took a lot of repetition and ridiculous amounts of time to keep up. It was never actually hard. Timed nodes, sure, but you could just pop sneak and you were never in any danger. Scrip grinding, meh.

In FFXI, it was actually physically dangerous to get the materials you needed and so they were insanely expensive on the AH. You had to know how to play the market to get anywhere in that game whatsoever.

Not that I'm saying it was a better system, don't get me wrong. FFXI was boring as balls in many ways. Nice world, nice atmosphere, nice storyline...

Most of the gameplay systems were boring as sin though.

EDIT: And BTW, I played since ARR. Maybe not ARR Launch, but I got a character up into the mid-40s before taking a hiatus, and this was well before Heavensward launch.