Quote Originally Posted by Solarra View Post
I agree that saying 'crafting is dead' is an exaggeration. However, I think the proof of these changes is going to come later on. If more people are crafting once they have their Ishgard rewards and all the hype has died down, then we can say it's been a success.
However, I loved crafting as it was and I'm worried that it's not going to have the same appeal for me going forward. Time to consider if I really need to stay subbed continually or if I should be looking for other games and pastimes. I'll wait and see for now but I'm not optimistic.
Yoshi-P wants you to play other games now and then. He never wanted you to sink all of your playtime into one single game, because that creates stagnation and will cause a player to get bored of a game no matter what. He wants you to take periodic breaks, to go play other games, and then when the next bit of story is released, to come back to this one and it'll feel more fresh when you pick your adventures back up again.

This is by design.

I'm glad you're enjoying the changes and finding it fun. From Square's point of view, I can see that ditching people like me, who were a minority, would make sense if it brings more people into crafting than before, as long as they stay. However, if the majority get to endgame and find crafting dull, repetitive and too simple, it's going to backfire.
Is there a reason crafting (or any activity in the game) absolutely must go on forever and ever and ever during an expansion? Can't there be some sense of fulfillment when you reach your goals and you take a break? Perpetually dangling the carrot in front of you only to yoink it away juuuuuust as you get barely a nibble on it is tiresome after awhile. It makes one want to give up chasing the thing they will never get to have.

Unless you are ridiculously dedicated, you would never get maxed out in crafting in SB and definitely not during HW. Only the ultra-rich with powerful connections ever did that sort of thing while it was current content. Rich got richer, and....everybody else eventually gave up and waited till next expansion after a point.

Personally, I don't see the problem with having niche activities in an MMO. Surely it's unrealistic to expect everyone to like everything on offer? Ultimate is niche, PVP is niche and I don't do either, but they each keep a dedicated core of players happy and paying their subs.
Adventurer Content (Dungeons, etc) has a scale. You have Duty Finder on one end of the spectrum and Ultimate Trials on the other end, and you got everything in-between. MSQ dungeons, Normal Raids, Extreme Trials, Savage Raids, and Ultimate Trials.

With crafting you have....grindy, grindier, and most grindy? There was no in-between. You got to the current expansion's content and you hit a brick wall of needing lots of money to buy tools from people who were able to start the expansion with the ludicrously powerful maxed out stuff from the previous expansion. These people started with an unfair advantage, and they were already waaaaaaay ahead of you before you even started. What was the point of even trying at that point, unless you didn't mind blowing several million gil on stuff to get you started.... and even then, it was a painful slow grind. Wasn't "difficult" as far as skill goes, just took forever, grinding away.

Crafting and gathering were definitely niche before, they are in most mmos, which makes me doubt they will ever gain mass-appeal. WoW attempted to give all players every craft and gathering class with the garrison, and while the playerbase was initially delighted with having easy access to everything, boredom soon set in.
I think you missed the point of what was wrong with Garrisons.

The problem wasn't with the Garrisons or their limited ability to gain access to crafts you did not have yourself. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was there was nothing ELSE to do in the entire expansion other than your daily heroic and weekly raid run.

There were no daily quests, no extra side content, nothing. Just the daily dungeon and weekly raid. Nothing else. For a good long while until they FINALLY added Tanaan Jungle. People were tired of sitting in LFG (their version of Duty Finder) in their Garrisons twiddling their thumbs because Blizzard forgot to add actual content outside of dungeons and raids.

That and you know, your garrisons gave you all the materials you ever wanted, without you having to lift a finger.

I honestly expect the same will happen here, unless they do something to keep those of us who liked the old crafting happy (but then people who didn't like the grind and the complexity are going to object to being excluded from endgame, I think). It does make me sad to see FFXIVs award-winning crafting system gutted like this.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if they made 3 and 4 star crafting difficult. I'm fine with that. I was not fine with no-star crafting being so hard to get into and/or it being so difficult to get to max level until most of the way through an expansion when the crafting tribe was finally released. I shouldn't have to wait until three quarters of the way through an expansion to be able to meld my own gear, thanks.

You can have your difficult 3 and 4 star crafts. That's fine. Just as long as I can get to max level reasonably and do at least basic crafts for myself. If I need a crafted weapon, armor, or food I shouldn't be forced to put months of grind in to do basic crafting, and/or pay ludicrous prices at the MB. A weapon shouldn't cost 100,000+. That's just ridiculous.

Craft classes took 10x the amount of work any adventurer class ever did, and the disparity was just off the charts. Now it's been evened out a bit more, though I would argue that craft classes are a bit faster to level, but eh. It's not like you're going to show up to a raid with your blacksmith or something. *shrug*

But either way, you can have your high-star crafting being hard. I'm fine with that.