How will Endwalker make crafting more of a brain dead activity like Shadowbringers?

[Kaurhz]

It was always braindead, regardless of the outlook you had. RNG, or elongating the whole process didn't exactly make for the most spectacular complexity in the world. Well done you were lucky enough that Rapid Synthesis hit; well done you got a good condition and your CP is >18 of what your baseline rotation requires, enjoy your Precise Touch. You were dealing with very mundane and simple situations, let's not kid ourselves that it was actually hard.

Considering it's fairly reasonable to say bots can do 'expert' recipes. You can reasonably infer that regardless of what approach they'd have taken, the bots would have got there either way. They've simply just developed more over time. - It was just inevitable. The extreme rampant botting has about as much to do with how developed they are as to how 'oversimplified' crafting currently. But largely it's down to Square Enix really showing a lot of people that they don't seem to have a proactive approach to the matter. So as far as people see it, it's a no-risk situation.

I think they can do more to make the whole process more engaging sure. There's no need why we can't have a unique expert-grade recipe to unlock the master tomes, instead of the traditional grinding a couple of scrips whilst watching an episode of anime or something on Netflix. Or even a combination of both.

We can argue about the whole process and cost of melding too, but let's not kid ourselves on that front either. The need for it was hardly necessary, it's something that made your life a little easier; it wasn't a barrier to entry. The entry was far lower, even in regards of having a modicum of efficiency. I found back in Heavensward that really regardless of your stats nothing was saving you from whether hasty touch simply did or didn't want to play ball on that craft. Stormblood really gave you a little more mileage, but you didn't really get much with it until the later recipes anyway - Stormblood 2* was just a doddle regardless of stats; they were drastically under-tuned, as much as ShadowBringers ones were too, in fact. Back then the price of the gear you crafted itself already turned to peanuts on Wednesday. The price of materia significantly plummeted before the materia was even really ever considered necessary or even nice to have.

This oversimplification has not just been something exclusive to ShadowBringers. It has been a thing for around 1445 days since 4.05. I have just seen a continuation of the trend that they really began back in Stormblood. So anyone that didn't really foresee this until recently, or even in Stormblood for that matter; shame on you.

There's not a single tool that beats the Skysteel tool without pentamelding unless I'm missing something. So it was best in slot unless you pentamelded. So obviously pentamelding is making crafting easier if it makes a substandard tool better than the Skysteel tool.

People here were drastically overestimating just how much the tool would in fact matter. Looking at the tool with a narrow mind will give you the impression that it's not very good, but you need to consider it with respect to preexisting stats. 17 control doesn't really have much of an impact with respect to our current macros, you can make an argument about expert recipes with this one, but then as far as master recipes were concerned the additional 48 craftsmanship that you'd get has the potential to significantly impact your rotation, both from step-count and CP cost perspective. I think overall for master recipes the Skybuilders' tool has a much greater potential, but alas it really released at a fairly poor time.

Calling a tool by itself is really just a folly since you need to take into account your stats already when you're looking at making any reasonable comparison between the tools, and really speaks to what has been stated here verbatim - “The best crafter is not the one with the best stats, but the one who makes the best use of one’s stats”

Why do "casual crafters" want things to be easier? Greed. You want the items without having to work for or pay someone else for them. You label effort as "tedious" when for crafters it's what made it satisfying. Why do you deserve the best items in the game on a plate for little work?

Arguably there's more greed in wanting exclusivity of crafting and cutting out the competition, or the 'little guy' as it would be so eloquently put so that you can reap larger rewards and profit, by definition actually is geed. So this is a two-way street. Let's not go around calling people greedy. Now, if you want to complain and include botters here, that is a different discussion entirely which has as much to do with Square Enix's lack of apparent proactivity in the matter.

Some people are inherently lazy and wanted everything on a platter, and in the end some other individuals just want more gil. Both are greedy.

[Liam_Harper]

Arguably there's more greed in wanting exclusivity of crafting and cutting out the competition, or the 'little guy' as it would be so eloquently put so that you can reap larger rewards and profit, by definition actually is geed. So this is a two-way street. Let's not go around calling people greedy. Now, if you want to complain and include botters here, that is a different discussion entirely which has as much to do with Square Enix's lack of apparent proactivity in the matter.

Some people are inherently lazy and wanted everything on a platter, and in the end some other individuals just want more gil. Both are greedy.

It depends. High end crafters rarely wanted exclusivity which is why there were theorycraft threads and many put countless hours into making guides, sharing macros and answering questions. They wanted it to be an activity that was satisfying to reach the high end, but that anyone could join in if they liked crafting.

There are also benefits to having tiers of crafters, such as the maxed pentamelded crafters, the budget endgame crafters, the crafters who just hit 80, the crafters in the leveling process and so on because it creates different markets. Gear and furniture of all levels becomes useful and worth making. Currently a combination of crafting being so easy that everyone has a max geared lv80, and retainers churning out crafted items right up to and including current expansion, means there are far less viable markets while competition in those limited markets has skyrocketed. In past expansions even the little guy could make far more gil than nowadays.

I don't feel it's greedy to want to be able to make lots of gil if you put a lot of time, patience and effort into something. Very few people want to eliminate competition, but at the same time you can't give the entire playerbase a slice of a single pie. It's not a viable design. It has devalued many items to a point that I doubt even the devs intended.

[Kabooa]

I don't feel it's greedy to want to be able to make lots of gil if you put a lot of time, patience and effort into something. Very few people want to eliminate competition, but at the same time you can't give the entire playerbase a slice of a single pie. It's not a viable design. It has devalued many items to a point that I doubt even the devs intended.

The misconception here is you aren't making the gil. Someone else is. Crafting, outside Leves, doesn't make gil. It consolidates it.

So when someone says "I just want to make a lot of gil", it's literally "I want other players to buy this for what I deem is a lot of gil." It isn't as much an issue these days for two reasons - The removal of the heavy time gates that Crafting originally had, and the substantially higher system gil being introduced over the year, but I doubt anyone is pining for the days of eld.

As a reminder, it basically took them until around 3.4 to fix the heavy imbalance in 2.0 that existed between Crafter and Battle classes, heavily favoring crafter, and they still can't quite get Gathering their share of the pie other than hour-1 markets. There was only one time when Gatherers commanded any clout in this system, and boy howdy, did the crafters complain.

Also, I wouldn't try and dress up SE increasing accessibility to self sufficiency as a bad thing. "You can't give everyone a slice of the pie" is absolutely a greedy statement, because the implication is that when no one else has any pie, you can sell it to them at the price you and the rest decide.

[Jojoya]

Also, I wouldn't try and dress up SE increasing accessibility to self sufficiency as a bad thing. "You can't give everyone a slice of the pie" is absolutely a greedy statement, because the implication is that when no one else has any pie, you can sell it to them at the price you and the rest decide.

I would probably add that no one is being given the slice. No one is automatically being handed a level 80 crafter with a full set of gear.

They've been given the option to take a slice if they want. Not all do and there's still gil to be made from those players.

There's also gil to be made from the players who take the slice then don't really eat it. My FC is filling up with crafters who do nothing but spam Coffee Biscuits. They aren't selling things they craft on the MB at all but all the leve income has got them buying from it more than they used to.

[Kabooa]

There's also gil to be made from the players who take the slice then don't really eat it. My FC is filling up with crafters who do nothing but spam Coffee Biscuits. They aren't selling things they craft on the MB at all but all the leve income has got them buying from it more than they used to.

Who would have thought that the First's greatest contribution was coffee biscuits.

[Kaurhz]

It depends. High end crafters rarely wanted exclusivity which is why there were theorycraft threads and many put countless hours into making guides, sharing macros and answering questions. They wanted it to be an activity that was satisfying to reach the high end, but that anyone could join in if they liked crafting.

There are also benefits to having tiers of crafters, such as the maxed pentamelded crafters, the budget endgame crafters, the crafters who just hit 80, the crafters in the leveling process and so on because it creates different markets. Gear and furniture of all levels becomes useful and worth making. Currently a combination of crafting being so easy that everyone has a max geared lv80, and retainers churning out crafted items right up to and including current expansion, means there are far less viable markets while competition in those limited markets has skyrocketed. In past expansions even the little guy could make far more gil than nowadays.

I don't feel it's greedy to want to be able to make lots of gil if you put a lot of time, patience and effort into something. Very few people want to eliminate competition, but at the same time you can't give the entire playerbase a slice of a single pie. It's not a viable design. It has devalued many items to a point that I doubt even the devs intended.

No there is no dependability about it. Greed by definition is an intense and or selfish desire for wealth. If you desire wealth then by textbook definition you're greedy, just as the casual is just as greedy for wanting everything handed on a silver platter as a cost-cutting measure. There's no depends here. If you're going to call a casual wanting accessible crafting as being greedy, then be prepared to be called greedy yourself. simple as that, really. Regardless of the effort or lack thereof you put into it, it's still greed.


That being said I don't disagree with any of this, in the same vein I never really even called these points out. It's just a simple fact of the matter this has been the case since 4.05. The little guy can still make plenty of Gil if they put the effort in the endeavor, but the state from my experience was that this situation was just as bad in Stormblood with the only difference being how more widespread botting is now. But once again I chalk this up more to the simple fact of the matter that Square Enix's stance on the matter has been akin to simply letting them run amock consequences largely be damned. Bots are more developed now than they ever were, most likely. They can do expert, they certainly would have no issue whatsoever in doing the crafts incorporated in any other expansion.

Simplification of crafting aside, we're dealing with 2 entirely different situations. Teamcraft has become more widely adopted and wasn't present in the previous expansions. It didn't exist for Heavensward, at all, and in fact wasn't even adopted until around 4.1~ So we had a very limited scope of things that people could utilize and would often require verification from other people to validate the stats anyway since it wasn't accurate, not to mention stuff such as the in-game trial synthesis. so it is easier for anyone to create rotations with nigh on pinpoint accuracy now. So what is available to us now, and the significance of how accurate they are; play a significant part in the collaboration or lack thereof. There's just too much available to us now really requires any collaboration or significant theorycrafting. It's really apples and oranges regardless of the angle you take with comparing anything. Forums aside, I can at least tell you a significant amount of collaboration is still present on Balance discord.

It is still greed, really, at least by definition. The only difference is, is the effort you've put in or other people have done so, makes it as though it is your 'right' to have such things. Which sure, it is your right. But it's still greedy.

If we want to do the biggest favor to our system then they should be directing more attention into being more proactive with bots. It's quite clear given the lacking dimensions of crafting there's only a certain level you can approach with obfuscation. Given that it is apparent bots can more than likely do experts, it just stands to gain that this would be more of a detriment and deterrent to players. Bots don't care for difficulty or obfuscation, nor do they care for time and anything that comes as a product of that. Players however care for this. So you really ought to be directing all this towards the management of the botting situation as opposed to anything else. Then in time, they look towards the state of the system itself.

[Liam_Harper]

No there is no dependability about it. Greed by definition is an intense and or selfish desire for wealth. If you desire wealth then by textbook definition you're greedy, just as the casual is just as greedy for wanting everything handed on a silver platter as a cost-cutting measure.

In which case the majority of players in the game are greedy by definition? I mean, who doesn't want gil, currency, rare items, ect. I suppose that's a fair way of looking at it. This type of greed is different to a real life selfish hoarding of wealth though, given currency isn't limited, every player has the tools available to acquire that wealth and the wealthy are often willing to guide and help them. It's just that it's often thrown out as a negative quality against the wealthy players, while I feel the desire to acquire anything special, be it huge amounts of gil, accomplishments or rare items for personal satisfaction is quite natural in a MMO. Greed is viewed as a negative quality, but at the same time it would never work to just give everyone everything.

I agree with everything you said though. Bots are a major issue, perhaps the biggest issue nowadays. They've opened the floodgates and both made it accessible to build one to 80 fast and demonstrated they have no power over them. It's hard to know if they even can crack down on them. Teamcraft is also true, along with several discords, but Experts did prove there's still the potential for crafts that invite theorycraft and discussion.

For me personally, what I want is something worthwhile to do with crafting. I just liked that it took time in the past, yet was satisfying to reach your goals simply because it kept me occupied. Experts didn't scratch that itch, because spamming the same recipe hundreds, maybe thousands of times for a mediocre reward just wasn't fun or satisfying. At least leveling and max-gearing used to have a sort of journey to it, but nowadays I'm fully max pentamelded within the first 3 days of a new patch. After that it's just spam the same expert a thousand times or sell endgame gear for peanuts due to bots (yes, that is greed, but I'd be fine competing with regular players even at lowered prices as long as the time feels worth it, because all I'm looking for is something worthwhile to do with my geared crafter).

So I suppose the question should be. What could Enix do with crafting or how could they alter their current systems, that could keep crafters happily occupied long-term even at endgame? Interested to hear others thoughts.

[Kaurhz]

snip

Sure we can go with that logic. I just took issue with you calling the greed card for a subset of players that want easier or more accessible crafting when the exact same can be attributed to someone that desires more difficult and prolonged crafting. It's just 2 sides of the same coin. Ultimately, I felt that it was just hypocritical and added nothing of little value to the discussion. There's a genuine reason for both, and it just seems like the powers that be decided that more accessible and easier crafting is healthier for the game.

I just take a serious issue with people that honestly think obfuscating the system, rotations, or abilities is actually going to just completely solve all their issues from rampant botting. When the fact remains that it would probably have very little impact. They can do experts, they don't tire from them, they have little concept of time or cost. Ultimately it's just something that would punish the players more than anything else. Unfortunately, bots just generally get more complex and sophisticated with time.

Yes, there is much more widespread communication. I would stand to argue that if such things of Teamcraft did not exist, or a centralized hub of resources such as Balance, then a lot more people would find crafting a hell of a lot more difficult. Even now. Ease of it is largely facilitated by how organized the community is, both from a communication and resource perspective. Anything that lends to uncertainty will also lead to an influx of communication and collaboration between players to solve the puzzle.

It's not a very widespread outlook mine. But you won't make crafting hard, all you will ever do is invite uncertainty/RNG to it. Beyond a certain point, it is just adding layers of RNG. Then at a certain point, your skill matters a whole lot less than the simple fact of RNG, and when you reach the point wherein RNG becomes a greater determining factor of your success than your actual skill then this is where issues come in. This is quite possibly the biggest flaw I find in crafting in this game; you reach that point very quickly. We could argue for something such as Experts with conditions and such that you need to handle the RNG. But even with experts. RNG leaning one way or another has a greater influence on your success than your skill itself. This really just takes into account that you have a rudimentary understanding of crafting itself.

Whether it's good or not though is entirely underpinned by how proactive you are within the system itself. If you avidly engage in it or not. The more you engage and the more knowledgeable you are within crafting, the easier you find it becomes. Conversely, you look at a new player, now you imagine each expansion being as difficult as either ARR or HW. Asking players do 80 levels before they even get to the endgame with each expansion being just as monotonous as the last. I guarantee you that the vast majority of players complaining about crafting, complaining about the simplicity, would very quickly turn their sights to the other side of the argument. Being up to snuff, and relevant is something far, far too many people take for granted. - When I speak I'm not trying to think of myself but rather newer players at large. I long conceded to the fact that Square Enix would never meet my expectations within crafting. For as renowned as it is for being its own separate flushed out and complex system, which sure, it is. But it's still very flat and 'one-dimensional'


If I were to personally look towards how I think they should solve it, I would say they should look more in the direction of trying to make stats something that has more meaning, or some scaling factor. Now I don't mean to say that this isn't already present, because it quite clearly is. But I think something that tied your stats to the success rate of your abilities would make for a nice change of direction I think. Especially when you consider it with respect to Experts, as it adds another layer of complexity beyond cap CP, then deck out control, for the most part.

I do have quite a bit more to say on the matter, but I won't quite yet unless you wish to read.