If crafting was still inaccessible and difficult like Heavensward Patches, you’d quit

[Absurdity]

The RNG fail was a pain, but it was more fun overall. So, while I'd like to remove the RNG fail chance I'd add in a RNG mandated spell at points, something to completely remove crafting macros.

I'd likely craft more than I do now in easy mode (with maxed DOH/DOL), which is really just making stuff for me and my pocket tank to eat.

I can see not wanting to have macros work on everything but having to craft 500+ potions by hand just sounds like absolute insanity.

[ReynTime]

Not only did I max my crafters back then, but I felt rewarded since it encouraged omnicrafters to be sought by players who didn't have the patience and quite more profitable than it is now.
Bots would have been a problem regardless, but you'd be dead wrong if you tried to argue against the fact current crafter/gatherer design isn't a lot more bot-friendly.

I actually feel less inclined to keep leveling my crafters and gatherers now. It really doesn't seem worth the time.

I don't mind macros though. I definitely miss when they weren't so simple to hit HQ with.

[Eriane_Elis]

Why the hell would I play XIV only to craft?

You specifically? I don't know. But FF14 is full of diversity in terms of gameplay options. Some people play dungeons all day, some people play to glam, some play to be part of musical groups, some play to craft for the marketboard, there are people who play to be hired for whatever other players pay them for, some players eRP, there's a house decorating subculture, there are people who just play Mahjong, there are people who play gold saucer for the majority of the game, there are gatherer only, fishers only, crafters only, and the list keeps going on and on...

Not everyone who plays FF14 do so to eat primals for breakfast.

[Krojack]

I crafted then and I still craft now and enjoy then and now. Nothing for me would change.

I'm a little bummed that market prices plummet within days now though. It's almost pointless rushing to level on a new xpac/patch now as within 24 hours prices just drop so fast.

I can post some Grade 6 Tincture of Strength (HQ) on the MB for 4k each and within 3 hours they are down to 2k each now. It's not even worth my time to sit and HQ a stack of them to sell.

I would also like to point out that I'm already seeing lvl 90 gather bots non-stop gathering the Aetherial Reduction nodes.

[elizeugba]

I only came in at the tail end of it and didn't really actually bother crafting much beyond leveling GSM up... but I would imagine it was "inaccessible" for difficulty reasons. Likely higher stat requirements for crafting, particularly for Master Recipes, and in particular cross-class abilities, which meant to be optimal from a crafting perspective (not even talking getting the materials here, purely the act of crafting) you needed to specifically level certain jobs up for important abilities. I forget what job had what, but I recall Careful Synthesis and Manipulation being two very important cross-class abilities you really wanted to have.

Nowadays every job gets everything, so you don't need to level every job if you don't want to be an omnicrafter and just want to be an alchemist or something. And I'm able to craft the latest master recipe stuff with minimal overmelding. Now the hardest thing to do is to do the bloody job quests so you can get Manipulation from the 70 quest, as well as a couple of nice to have traits.

I prefer that, it doesn't make any sense having to level a different job to get essential abilities.

[Nezerius]

Inaccessible is a strong word but during HW we had to deal with:

- Specialization was a thing, you could only had access to all recipes if you level multiple characters.

- Capped red scrips needed for important recipes.

- Basic materials, like leather, got a jump in the number needed to produce 1. At that time any material coming from a monster was harder to obtain.

- Desyn was way harder to level and the amount of points you could spread around were also limited.

- RNG materials like titanium ore.

- Basic recipes to level up required materials from timed nodes.

- Way less XP sources.

- First ILvL170 set was class specific, fun times getting all and melding all if you wanted to be an omnicrafter.

- A very obnoxious system to obtain certain materials I don't even remember now.

Probably more stuff I just forgot. Anyway, back then YoshiP mentioned not being happy with current crafting/gathering participation and since then has slowly become more and more accesible till today situation.

This post brings up points on why OP is way too vague with asking "If crafting was still like HW", because some of them were vastly improved upon from patch 3.1 and on.

-While Specialization was a thing, recipes went from being Specialist all the time, to only being Specialist during the patch that they were added in, with fewer recipes being made Specialist-only over the course of the second half of HW.
-Capped red scrips being used for important recipes was only a pre-3.1 thing. Recipes after that were more focused on Diadem, Desynth/Beast Tribes, or uncapped Tomestones.
-While the first DoH set was class specific, they did make it far easier to gather the more annoying materials with patch 3.1. This was mainly done by tripling the amount of mats received from the Splendors Vendor.
-The obnoxious system, or rather the Favor system, was only used for recipes pre-3.1.

-Not on the quoted list, but there was also the case of crafted DoW/M gear being i180, while also using materials from the Favor system. This gear competed with the i170/i180 Law uncapped tomestone gear, which was purchased at i170 and upgraded to i180 with a low amount of Law tomestones. Pentamelding was still somewhat expensive at the time. The combination of all that + normal Gordias gear being i190 meant crafted DoW/M gear was DoA for the majority of the playerbase, turning crafting into "Crafters making DoH gear to sell to other crafters"

Patch 3.2 also set the trend to have DoW/M crafted gear be more accessible right away, while also competing with the normal raid gear (rather than being 10iLvls below it). Patch 3.3 then set the trend of always adding the new crafted DoH/L set (now used by all classes) one major patch prior to the addition of the next tier of DoW/M crafted gear, giving crafters/gatherers around 3.5-4 months to prepare.

Would I still be crafting with the pre-3.1 system? Probably, but I'd vastly prefer the post-3.1 improvements.

[Mezzoforte]

Thread title limit wouldn’t let me add the ? at the end. I was wondering if crafting was still as difficult, rng heavy, and grindy like Heavensward, would you still be playing ffxiv?

I wish crafting was much harder, much grindier, and was far more frustrating so there would be far fewer crafters and it would be even more profitable for me. I have been crafting since ARR.

[Lunalepsy]

Thread title limit wouldn’t let me add the ? at the end. I was wondering if crafting was still as difficult, rng heavy, and grindy like Heavensward, would you still be playing ffxiv?

I loved 1.0/2.0 crafting. It's a shame it has been reworked to cater to new audiences.

[Kakure]

It wasn't any harder than it is now... Still had to meld, still used macros. People just romanticize it.

HW crafting was definitely harder than modern crafting.

The requirements were tighter and we had a far lower CP buffer than we do today. Some abilities (Whistle While You Work and related skills) were more complicated than anything we have now and others, including some of our most powerful abilities (Ingenuity, Maker's Mark), had effects you couldn't even make sense of just by reading the tooltip. HW crafting was all about optimally nesting buffs (Comfort Zone, Steady Hand, Manipulation, Innovation, Waste Not, Ingenuity, Great Strides) and abusing percentage-based progress abilities (Muscle Memory, Maker's Mark, Piece-by-Piece), both of which required a deeper understanding of game mechanics than anything you're going to do when you're making ilvl 580 gear.

[Kakure]

This is the whole reason they added expert crafting, by the way.

Some people enjoy crafting. Others just want to make their own items without a lot of work or the expense of fully melding their gear.

Now we have a two-tiered crafting system. Baseline item crafting is pretty easy and accessible, while expert crafting provides a more dynamic and challenging minigame for players who want that.