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

[Nandrolone]

First, I bought FFXIV when it first came out back in 2010. My computer at the time could not handle the game so I didn't get to do more than create a character at that time. I came back during the ARR beta. Phase 3, I think and was delighted that I could finally play the game. I believe that was 2013. So, please don't pretend someone is lying when you have no proof of such. Seriously, you can't join the forums unless you play and my join date here was back in 2013. That should give a hint as to how long I've played.

I came here straight from FFXI. Compared to that, no, the crafting here was never hard. Neither was the game. Just because someone has a different opinion than you do is no reason to be snide.

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.” But let’s face it. Only sort of “hardcore” content crafters will get is 5.2+ Ishgard content. That’s all we are gonna get. As of this current mmo generation, FFXIV is on top. As for next generation, hopefully whatever is on top during that time isn’t anything directed by Yoshida, as he will just follow the same casual formula. Hopefully a brand new refreshing mmo game will come out next generation that has adequate amounts of hardcore content, and has no obvious bias towards casual players.

If it indeed is a brand new Final Fantasy mmo that rules next generation of MMOs, (Likely Final Fantasy 16 or 17, probably 17) hopefully it is NOT DIRECTED BY YOSHIDA. Because if it is, we all know how casual the game will end up being. Besides, one person shouldn’t dictate every company’s MMO strategy. It should be a different person every time. I truly believe if the next FF mmo is directed by someone other than Yoshida, it’ll actually be a nice mmo for casual and hardcore people.

[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.

[Nandrolone]

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.

WOW. Was FFXI seriously that intense? Holy crap, that sounds like heaven for me, lol!!!

[Maeka]

WOW. Was FFXI seriously that intense? Holy crap, that sounds like heaven for me, lol!!!

It was ..... very slow and boring.

You had to walk miles to get anywhere, and the only kind of fast travel you had for the longest period of time, was you could take a chocobo from a town. Once you got off said chocobo, it was on foot the whole way. No teleports, no return spell, unless you were a black mage or you were high enough to sub black mage, or you spent valuable conquest points on warp scrolls (which you could only hold one of at any given time). Later on they added more ways to get around, but way back when?

It was ridiculous.

To GET to the place I mentioned? You started out in a town called Kazham. You went into the Jungle, and the map... the map was barely useful at all because of how it was drawn, hopefully you knew exactly how to get to the correct entrance to Ifrit's Cauldron (a volcano). Once there, you had to use Sneak Oils/Invisible Powders which were not cheap to avoid getting attacked by enemies. At max level, they rated Very Tough to Incredibly Tough and you had exactly 0% chance of defeating one solo unless you were one of a couple jobs that could do it (and even then it'd probably take you 10 minutes+ to do).

Anyhow, the place was a maze, hopefully you know where you're going, and at random spots, there's these fire geysers that shoot fire and block your path but for 30 seconds every 5 minutes or so, the fire dies down and you can pass... or you can use an ice cluster on it, but to do so you had to drop the invisible status and there were always bombs near them. Well, once you do all that and get to the tunnels where Mining Points actually come out? Well, you can't SEE them just by looking at them, you had to keep mashing the Tab key to find and target one. Go up to it, trade a pickaxe to it.

40% of the time? "You mined nothing."
Another 40% of the time? "Your pickaxe breaks."
15% of the time? "You mined a ...." (pebble, copper ore, tin ore, iron ore, etc cheap crap you can find anywhere)
5% of the time, you MIGHT get something halfway valuable like Darksteel, Silver, etc.
0.1% of the time you MIGHT get an Adaman Ore.

You'd get 3-4 whacks out of 1 node then it disappears and..... who the heck knows where another spawned. So you gotta go up and down the mazy corridors looking for another.

Oh, and your item inventory was only 80 slots, INCLUDING your 16 slot inventory window (which took up space in your regular inventory too), and Ore did *NOT* stack.

EDIT: And if you did manage to get 4 Adaman Ores, you could make an Adaman Ingot! Yaaaay! But... you always had 10% chance of failing any synthesis, regardless of your level vs its level to start with. Yes, if you were a maxed out Blacksmith making a Bronze Ingot, 10% of the time you'd blow it and lose the materials. So... yeah. It took you hours and hours to get 4 Ores to make that Adaman Ingot. Wanna roll the dice to see if you fail the synth and lose 3-4 ore that took you 50 hours to get? And then, if you did make the ingot, you probably wanted to use it to make something else, right? There are a few weapons that can be made from it. So, you go to make THAT and it's ANOTHER 10% chance to fail and lose the materials. Gee, wouldn't that just suck if you blew THAT attempt only to see "Adaman Ingot was lost" come up in the chat window.

[Callinon]

As for next generation, hopefully whatever is on top during that time isn’t anything directed by Yoshida, as he will just follow the same casual formula.

By which you mean the formula that has FFXIV at a high degree of success and sustainability? Yeah that WOULD be a shame wouldn't it? Maybe the next FF MMO could be built to cater to hardcore players. Actually I think we had a game like that a while back... believe it was called Wildstar? How's that doing these days?

[Nandrolone]

By which you mean the formula that has FFXIV at a high degree of success and sustainability? Yeah that WOULD be a shame wouldn't it? Maybe the next FF MMO could be built to cater to hardcore players. Actually I think we had a game like that a while back... believe it was called Wildstar? How's that doing these days?

That’s not what I said in my post. I said a new director should rise up with the new Final Fantasy 17 MMO, rather than it being Yoshida every single time. I also said that whoever directs the next MMO, should not be bias towards casual players like Yoshida was, and favor both players. It’s overall more healthier long term for an mmo, rather than paying attention to just one audience.

I doubt Yoshida will direct the next MMO, it’ll likely be someone else. But if he is, hopefully he’s a bit more passionate for all types of his players.

[Jkap_Goat]

snip

I've been playing FFXI on and off this year (level 99 Dancer/ Warrior)

And it's much much easier now, there are crystals in every town and there are mounts too. No more walking everywhere anymore

[Ethelwind]

I don't think there ever was any game where crafting was seriously hard per se.
Its probably just not possible and what was considered hard was not technically hard but just due to time consumption aka hardcore grind albeit fun for some.
EQ1, EQ2 for about a month, Vanguard, FFXIV 1.0 ARR were hard, SWG was tricky. These were all games where if you commit the vast majority of your time you spent 3-4 months until you reached max in 1 craft and maybe 6 months if for most.

EQ1 was probably the hardest because gathering and getting the drops to drop was so rare sometimes, you could spend a whole week gathering every evening intensively for a couple of skill ups on the weekend (3-4 of 175, 225, 275, ...)
Vanguard was probably the most 'skill-based' because you had icons float through you had to click and use correct reactions on them, with time gaps of 3-4 seconds. The approach similar as in FFXIV, just that you had only that gap to use your skills.
FFXIV 1.0 beta was hard, because getting resources was either dangerous if you didn't gather yourself or very costly. Took 3 months for the top 8 botanists to reach 50, and about 3.5 months until first crafters hit 50.-
UO was hard in that crafting was a social & building community aspect which was extremely fun for me, but could be hard that people expected you to be around. It sometimes felt more like a job in that way, than a game.

Pure crafters - which didn't necessarily mean they didn't adventure - were known and I'll be honest - that can be a draw and was for me - when people all over server would come to you to make something. You knew them all, because there were only a couple of handful of them. You could become filthy rich or not depending how you went about it.

Those days won't come back and maybe thats a good thing. I also do not want any content arbitarily locked for any player!

However what I as a crafter foremost and adventurer second would like, is that if i spend 90% of my time crafting I should have some maybe even clear advantages vs. someone that spends 40 hours levelling up. It doesn't have anything to do with skill, because that is just not possible, so time spent remains the only difference (regardless that at the end of day we are just talking about some pixels :P)
Now many might disagree, why should I, not be equal with 40 hours to someone with many hundreds and that is an absolutely acceptable stance. This has been excarcerbated with the newest changes.

What cannot be expected is that those that advocate for more 'hardcore' aka time /commitment aspects in crafting will agree with that approach. Rationally i explain it as the 'entitlement-syndrome' which plays on both side of A fence regardless what activity is being done ingame or even out of game. That syndrome I would like to add has become much more prevalent imho in the last decade.

Yours,
Ethelwind

[Maeka]

I've been playing FFXI on and off this year (level 99 Dancer/ Warrior)

And it's much much easier now, there are crystals in every town and there are mounts too. No more walking everywhere anymore

Yeah, I know that. I was talking about back in the day, before they made 99% of the game's content obsolete and mostly useless.

[Liam_Harper]

Well, we're just a few weeks into Ishgard, it's almost empty besides a few levelers, the rewards aren't worth much, the theorycrafting and rotation chat is long since over, the mb's have crashed, DoH chat channels discuss other things, no one needs a crafter for anything and casual players who tried it have moved back to roulettes. Is this really what we wanted?

I really don't understand why anyone would want to make crafting "hardcore". I've been crafting since arr beta and keep my crafts maxed so I can make stuff for my friends. I see no need for hardcore crafting in a casual game.

Why wouldn't people want a challenge or a few crafts that feel satisfying? Just because you don't understand it, doesn't make others opinions invalid.

The "casual game" argument makes no sense when a wide variety of content has challenges. Eureka was a long grind and had BA. Triple Triad is a huge grind. Breeding r9 chocobos is difficult. Soloing the highest floors of PotD and HoH is very challenging. PvP has a top 100 leaderboard. Extreme, Savage and Ultimate exist. Verminion and Mahjong can be quite complex. The sightseeing log has pinpoint jumps that can take hours to master. And then crafting too used to require some dedication to make Master Recipe items.

Your friends won't need you anymore either. They can easily 1 button macro everything or buy it ridiculously cheap now.