Is it me or is the Crafting market going to die?

[Nandrolone]

I consider "playing" the market the same as leeching, trying to get a profit out of someone elses work. its a kind of selfishness, trying to swindel money from the masses.

Its like those hedge fund marketeers, in just about every movie or series they are protrayed as moneyhungry evil bastards

If you want to make a profit be prepared to put some work into it.

Maybe in ARR and Heavensward you had to learn how to “play” a market. Now, you “spam” a market with gear using a generic 1 minute macro rotation that guarantees you HQ all the time. There’s really no thought needed in regular master book crafting. Those expert recipes truly required thought though, and it’s a shame those weren’t implemented into at least 1 master book. Would’ve been one heck of a valuable selection of items in said book.

[Shadygrove]

There were crafting macros in ARR. I used some then, have since. Some were for master book stuff.

Learning a market is not playing a market.

[Gemina]

When everyone and their aldgoat is a pentamelded omnicrafter, no one is.

Why are some hardcore crafters hell bent on having this content exclusive to them? To this day, I continue to get the impression that greed is the main reason for the flux of crafters and gatherers being a problem, and the desire for difficult recipes is to monopolize those goods on the marketboard, and prevent casuals from being able to craft them. It's load of selfish rubbish. Convince me I am wrong.

You don't create a mmo, and then figure out ways to reduce accessibility to its content for the playerbase. Crafting market won't die as a result of increased accessibility. It's still a continuous game of supply vs demand and prices will fluctuate and adjust as they always have. This should not be an issue when it comes to being able to easily budget your expenses while still making a profit. If you're FFXIV epeen however, is measured by how much gil you own then yeah, big problem for you.

[Commander_Justitia]

You don't create a mmo, and then figure out ways to reduce accessibility to its content for the playerbase.

Accessibility and casual/hardcore disparity is at least for me a bit different because some hardcore games can still be very accessible.
In the past Crafting and stuff like PvP wasn't very accessible. Now you can craft and pvp with any drawbacks in terms of Bis gear and in terms of unlocked skills. You just have them all immediately; you are set and ready the moment you have the level, you dont need to waste hours just to unlock another crossskill for example.

All this is nice in concept, it makes sense I give you that - but the thing is now - ff14 likes to make these things casual aswell. It is almost impossible to be really good at something, because everyone will be somewhat good anyway. There is no ceiling. Crafting and PvP need a bit of depth to be fun. It should be rewarding to be good at it. And this is lacking a lot.

It is not about gil, it is not about making things hard for casual players - it can still stay easy for them for the majority of items and let them one click macro stuff idc. But there have to be items that are rare. Rarity can be because it drops rarely, because the reward is limited or because it is simply difficult. An MMO without rarity doesn't feel rewarding, if you get the rewards for free it will not be special, I always like to achieve something in RPG after hours of investement. It is why ultimates have nice weapon models, high investment, hightier reward even if its only a skin.
So ye people just wanna be good at something and casualization mainly benefits the new players and destroys longterm interest. Its a slap in the face for veterans who invested to git gud at something.

Just look at the recent live letter, a big chunk of the "new" updates is catered to new players again. ARR flying, ARR story quests are shorter, ishgard restoration is the experience heaven for new crafters/gatherer, the new feature to play old primals on min ilvl but at lvl80 is also interesting to new players but not to old ones who beaten those fights legit anyway at that time. The 24 raid is outsourced. What we really get is one dungeon and hopefully a resistence weapon upgrade step that lasts longer than 30min. While in the background they start looking at their xbox launch to get even more new players.
This game had the most potential, the story and areas are super nice, the gameplay starts sucking more and more sadly imo.

[Mindiori]

Over-ease of accessibility and completion deletes reason, investment potential and value of long term participation. Not a difficult concept to understand, nor one requiring a dissertation.

Ageing MMO's have frequently been subject to the simplification and accessibility routine. Obviously the sentiment is, that as the game ages and appeal dwindles, the financially lucrative thing to do is to bait more new players to gain extra from the established world and content. There simply isn't the same interest in the opposite; driving new and innovative substance for veterans - because it requires more from the team to achieve comparitively, with the element of time.

Ultimately however, the newer players remaining interested isn't simply based around catching up. They also thrive on knowing that reaching the end goal is worthwhile and that becoming a long term player themselves, is an achievement marked by the entire playerbase. There are certainly those who simply want to skip everything. But their duration of interest will be small; as will their concern for staying in the world, if it is all overly trivial and simple. Ergo, a difficult balance for developers to get right and one that they commonly fail on; ultimately pleasing no-one.

If being anything than 'end game' mattered to the majority of aspiring players; and the world was more of an appreciated entirety; that would be less of a problem. As we have seen however, skipping opportunities are used liberally. The story and even the learning curve/effort altogether is bypassed given chance. A problem with people themselves that can't be amended without hard restrictions on the game and the removal of the accessibility.

In summation; I find almost all argumentation for lessening of challenge or difficulty in the name of accessibility rather asinine. Even though human beings are selfish, fickle and pursue the path of least resistence - all people benefit from difficulty of achievement as it is a factor of respect, appreciation and sense of fulfilment. Ironically the very reason people want to skip to join the top tier, is because they believe it to be the 'value'. How sad then, that by rendering the journey so effortless they in turn destroy it.

Ofcourse compromise can be found. I remain confident however that most champions of accessibility care for little but themselves, paying no mind to the perspectives and reasoning of those who enjoy challenge. That in itself should tell you enough about their real virtue.

[Mikki]

There’s a lot of arguing going back and forth in this thread. People on both sides, casual and hardcore, pointing fingers and screaming.

But one recurring thing I keep seeing is people calling the hardcore players greedy and saying everyone deserves to enjoy the game, and not understanding why these people are so angry at these changes.

From my perspective, I’m angry because I worked so hard to level my crafters. It was something I really wanted to do. I did start in ARR, so you could say “you had it easy! You did it as the expansions came out.” Except, I didn’t. My original character, yes. But then I made a new one in SB. And I painstakingly leveled my gatherers and crafters together. I was gated by time, beast tribe allowances and levequests. I spent so much time and energy leveling my crafters - and sure, even then the market was already flooded by bots and tons of other omnicrafters. But at least it wasn’t as bad as it is now. And can you really blame people who spent hours upon hours working hard to level their crafters and gatherers for being upset that new players can level from 1 to cap in basically a day? I legitimately saw someone gain like 10 levels from a single turn in in Ishgard, man. I don’t really care that the market is shit but I at least want it to be shit because everyone in it worked as hard as I did to get into it. It just feels like a slap in the face that I spent so long working hard to level my crafters and now new people walking in can do so with no time or effort. There’s nothing to gate their progression. There’s no cap on how many things you can turn in for the Ishgard restoration.

A lot of people will say that the barrier to entry was way too high. But if you really wanted to craft then you would have sucked it up and done it, like I did. I did it last expansion. It took time and effort but I did it. If you don’t want to put in the work, why bother crafting at all? Crafting is meant to be an optional thing you do because you enjoy it. I don’t think crafting is ever intended to be something most players do, especially not omnicrafting. There are so many other ways to make Gil if your goal isn’t to stockpile huge amounts of it. It’s not as if you have to craft or else you can’t play the game.
Overall, for me, it just comes down to the simple fact that I really wanted to craft so I worked super hard to get into it. An expansion later, they decide to say “screw you and all your hard work. Here’s a way to 1 to cap your crafters for 5% of the effort.”

But yeah, SE seems to always find a way to crash every market (though that's not to say it's always a bad thing entirely - for example, the changes to glamour prisms. Cutting it down from different tiers? Good idea. Cutting it down to only one kind across the board? Meh, I can see why they would. Making it so you can buy it with GC seals? I think this was overstepping. There are already good options to spend seals on and it's not as if they were THAT expensive to purchase from the mb after the initial changes and the price would have came down even more with the additional change of lowering the level requirement to craft it from 50 to 15.) and they never implement any substantial Gil sinks. Again, I don’t necessarily care about the broken markets. Yes, I would love to make a lot of Gil but it’s not super useful to have and so I’m not that upset about it. The markets have always been bad so it’s not like that’s what’s driving my disappointment here. But even still, that feels like a poor excuse for making it even worse. “It was already terrible, who cares if they make it worse by allowing everyone and their dog to easily flood the market?”

That said, I love the game. Don’t mistake me for a “hater”. But I think there is legitimate reason to be upset with this change. It’s hilarious to me that now it’s easier to level up a crafter than it is to do so for an alt job. Hilarious and sad. Can deep dungeons get an exp boost comparable to the restoration when considering time investment for pay off? Especially considering all items needed for it are sold on the mb for pennies. (But this isn't actually necessary to do. Why? Because leveling alt jobs is optional and it isn't intended that everyone levels every class to max. This is why they even removed the cross class skill system, I'd wager. So it kind of drives my point in more... it should be something to WORK for, not something handed to you. Put in the time. It's not difficult, just time consuming. Same as crafting was, especially if you did it through beast tribes and if you gathered for yourself. Even low level crafters and gatherers could actually make money though because you could make gear at level and it would sell because you NEEDED to gear as you leveled. Now you don't really, so...lol?) ((As an aside, battle classes have always been a bit easier to level than crafters, traditionally speaking, but I think that's because the pull of this game is that you CAN level all classes and there are so many. Crafting was always meant to be a bit more niche, as it is in most any mmo.))

That said, I'm not saying the choice SE made was WRONG. It's obviously a subjective opinion. Some people will love it, others will not. And for SE themselves, whatever drives player interaction and sub counts is going to be good from their perspective. All I'm doing with this post is trying to illuminate the reasoning behind why some players are upset so that maybe others can understand where they're coming from and sympathize. No one needs to be right or wrong here.

[Gemina]

Over-ease of accessibility and completion deletes reason, investment potential and value of long term participation. Not a difficult concept to understand, nor one requiring a dissertation.

That is a valid way to look at it. However, what I want to point out is that 'completion' within itself defeats reason. There is no reason in pursuing anything further beyond its completion. One could argue that increased accessibility affects investment potential and long term participation, but that is not the argument you are making. You are saying it outright deletes it, which I couldn't find to be more untrue. These values are set by the player based on what the game has to offer over the course of time that player invests into the game. If you feel it deletes it, then why are you investing anything?

Ageing MMO's have frequently been subject to the simplification and accessibility routine. Obviously the sentiment is, that as the game ages and appeal dwindles, the financially lucrative thing to do is to bait more new players to gain extra from the established world and content. There simply isn't the same interest in the opposite; driving new and innovative substance for veterans - because it requires more from the team to achieve comparitively, with the element of time.

Ultimately however, the newer players remaining interested isn't simply based around catching up. They also thrive on knowing that reaching the end goal is worthwhile and that becoming a long term player themselves, is an achievement marked by the entire playerbase. There are certainly those who simply want to skip everything. But their duration of interest will be small; as will their concern for staying in the world, if it is all overly trivial and simple. Ergo, a difficult balance for developers to get right and one that they commonly fail on; ultimately pleasing no-one.

It sounds like you understand perfectly the business perspective of the matter. However, the devs did not choose the lose/lose scenario. If they did, the game's current appeal to the lowest common denominator would not exist, which is the strongest case I see being made here. I am of a like-mind though, because when I am forced with a win/lose situation that cannot be made into a win/win, I default to lose/lose to be fair to everyone. This is likely not an option for the dev team though.

If being anything than 'end game' mattered to the majority of aspiring players; and the world was more of an appreciated entirety; that would be less of a problem. As we have seen however, skipping opportunities are used liberally. The story and even the learning curve/effort altogether is bypassed given chance. A problem with people themselves that can't be amended without hard restrictions on the game and the removal of the accessibility.

It's just the customization to instant-gratification that most westerners have. That's really all that is. This is not a new problem, nor one I find that has been exacerbated by accessibility and simplification. It has simply grown in proportion to the game and the playerbase. You said it yourself, "ageing mmos". It's not really something that can be avoided. The devs either have to adapt or accept a faster mortality rate for their mmo. The same applies to the veterans and their sub status.

In summation; I find almost all argumentation for lessening of challenge or difficulty in the name of accessibility rather asinine. Even though human beings are selfish, fickle and pursue the path of least resistence - all people benefit from difficulty of achievement as it is a factor of respect, appreciation and sense of fulfilment. Ironically the very reason people want to skip to join the top tier, is because they believe it to be the 'value'. How sad then, that by rendering the journey so effortless they in turn destroy it.

Ofcourse compromise can be found. I remain confident however that most champions of accessibility care for little but themselves, paying no mind to the perspectives and reasoning of those who enjoy challenge. That in itself should tell you enough about their real virtue.

And I still remain confident that I see a faction of players who desire exclusivity not for the health of the game, but their own purposes. Who instead of choosing to adapt and/or roll with the punches would much rather perpetuate the inaccessibility for whatever reason they find fit. It could be greed, nostalgic, stubborn, but all still just as selfish as those seeking the fastest means to an end. If you are of the mindset that the journey is greater than reaching the destination, and have more self-control as to not succumb to instant-gratification, then the game totally allows you to go at your own pace, and you can find ways to reward yourself in the game. As an example, you can hold off on a glamour plate you've designed until after you've met a goal you've set for yourself. I wonder how many players actually do things like that.

In any case, I get it. Believe me I do. It has to be understood though that even though the longtime subscribers and true veterans of the game are the most deserving of content filled with challenge and substance, they are also the game's unicorns. There just isn't enough of them to sustain the game.

[Gemina]

Accessibility and casual/hardcore disparity is at least for me a bit different because some hardcore games can still be very accessible.
In the past Crafting and stuff like PvP wasn't very accessible. Now you can craft and pvp with any drawbacks in terms of Bis gear and in terms of unlocked skills. You just have them all immediately; you are set and ready the moment you have the level, you dont need to waste hours just to unlock another crossskill for example.

All this is nice in concept, it makes sense I give you that - but the thing is now - ff14 likes to make these things casual aswell. It is almost impossible to be really good at something, because everyone will be somewhat good anyway. There is no ceiling. Crafting and PvP need a bit of depth to be fun. It should be rewarding to be good at it. And this is lacking a lot.

Ah yes. If everyone is special, then no one is. Don't get me wrong, I know it can be very fulfilling to obtain rewards through an arduous journey through the game's content. I know how deflating it can feel if the devs turn around and give others an easier path to the same reward. When it comes to crafting though, being 'good' in terms of proficiency is a very tough argument for me to swallow. If we want to talk about ease of access, it has always been easy to go online to one of the many guides, simulators, advice of others and so forth to either get past a learning curve, or completely eliminate all the guess work that goes into figuring out how to HQ something entirely on your own. Over the course of time, most players have failed to convince me that they actually want to craft, but have done a great job giving me the impression that they want the benefits.

You don't have to pentameld to the nines to meet the requirements for starred recipes. Players however, choose to bout it out with RNG until they bleed out of their eyes to get maximum stats on their gear so they can use macros that they didn't even come up with themselves. This to me, is not crafting. It is also the furthest from any kind of enjoyable experience I find in this game.

It is not about gil, it is not about making things hard for casual players - it can still stay easy for them for the majority of items and let them one click macro stuff idc. But there have to be items that are rare. Rarity can be because it drops rarely, because the reward is limited or because it is simply difficult. An MMO without rarity doesn't feel rewarding, if you get the rewards for free it will not be special, I always like to achieve something in RPG after hours of investement. It is why ultimates have nice weapon models, high investment, hightier reward even if its only a skin.
So ye people just wanna be good at something and casualization mainly benefits the new players and destroys longterm interest. Its a slap in the face for veterans who invested to git gud at something.

Of course it's about gil. Unless you don't market any of your wares and you craft simply for sustainability. Greed doesn't necessarily imply gil hoarding. Greed is taking more than what you need, and in terms of exclusivity in the world of crafting it had to be asked if too much of this content was inaccessible to the general playerbase. It was. So the decision comes at a loss to those who previously had those exclusive rights. It stings. I am well aware.

Just look at the recent live letter, a big chunk of the "new" updates is catered to new players again. ARR flying, ARR story quests are shorter, ishgard restoration is the experience heaven for new crafters/gatherer, the new feature to play old primals on min ilvl but at lvl80 is also interesting to new players but not to old ones who beaten those fights legit anyway at that time. The 24 raid is outsourced. What we really get is one dungeon and hopefully a resistence weapon upgrade step that lasts longer than 30min. While in the background they start looking at their xbox launch to get even more new players.
This game had the most potential, the story and areas are super nice, the gameplay starts sucking more and more sadly imo.

Trust me my friend, hearing about the flying in ARR, and their continued rework of this expansion pissed me off to no end. But not because I feel like they are catering to the newer players, but because of all the resources and time that was used. If this is what they can accomplish in their "free time", then they must have an abundance of it. That is time that could have gone into more headgear/hairstyles for the Viera and Hrothgar, additional fresh content, a new deep dungeon, etc. It's a damn shame what they chose to use their free time on, and I totally get why Yoshi wasn't pleased.

[Jojoya]

Why are some hardcore crafters hell bent on having this content exclusive to them? To this day, I continue to get the impression that greed is the main reason for the flux of crafters and gatherers being a problem, and the desire for difficult recipes is to monopolize those goods on the marketboard, and prevent casuals from being able to craft them. It's load of selfish rubbish. Convince me I am wrong.

You don't create a mmo, and then figure out ways to reduce accessibility to its content for the playerbase. Crafting market won't die as a result of increased accessibility. It's still a continuous game of supply vs demand and prices will fluctuate and adjust as they always have. This should not be an issue when it comes to being able to easily budget your expenses while still making a profit. If you're FFXIV epeen however, is measured by how much gil you own then yeah, big problem for you.

The crafting market was always accessible. No one was being stopped from entering it if they wanted to be part of it.

People didn't do it because they didn't want to go to the effort, not because it wasn't accessible.

That's their problem, not the problem of those who were willing to go to the effort and profit it from it.

It's never a good thing to cater to the people who want more for doing less. I'm not one that argues for exclusivity but I do believe that reward should be commensurate with effort, and that those putting in the most effort should be rewarded more than those who put in minimal effort.

Right now crafting is drifting more and more toward giving max reward to those who put in minimal effort. That is not healthy in any situation.

[Nandrolone]

@Gemina

I think we are allowed to be upset over the easier casual changes to crafting. You say you think we are being greedy and whatnot, but everyone says that. Ever considered we just want the feeling of enjoyment from completing difficult crafts? But simultaneously wanting rewards for it also. I personally loved expert recipes, I thought they were amazingly built. Imagine if those mechanics were in at least one master book? Just one. Not asking for all...