An educated rant: Why pentamelding is %@$&*!-backwards

[DerpyWhiskers]

It's basically crafter welfare. Most MMO try some form of it, to force people to be customers to the crafters. It's one of the things I really dislike about FFXIV is it makes crafters mega-rich compared to everyone else.


It's strange how people don't like dealing with crafters...well...it would be strange if most them weren't effing thieves. in their pricing. (of course they try to dress it up as "muh supply and demand")

This is just totally incorrect on several aspects. First, crafting doesn't get anyone rich in this game lol. If ever it did, it certainly doesn't now. By the time the crafter spends the many millions of Gil and months getting crafts and gear all up and together, with melds and all, then weeks to months getting the skills and macros dialed in, the crafter is very far into the red in time and money.

Ok yay then ready to craft and make some of dat sweet Gil back!?? Aw nawww sonnnn, now ya got a few things crafted n ready to sell at barely any profit at all, then welcome to the market bots! Welcome to the hell where, after all that work, things sell for LESS than the materials bc of ppl with retainer bots.

Hmmm well, geez I should be gathering this stuff for free then crafting it instead of buying mats. Aight homie... ok more months and millions getting DOH's up, geared, skills figured out, melded. Ok yay now we're ready to make money! Ok, now get to crafting kiddo! Hours and hours per day crafting stuff to sell, after months and millions invested, then the stuff DOESN'T EVEN SELL bc the normal human gets undercut repeatedly within seconds by what appears to be countless bots.

So yeah, how exactly is this "crafter welfare" lol? Believe me, the regular human crafters and the regular human buyers are BOTH losing to bots. My couple lucky income spurts have been just lucky foresight, I spent DAYS AND DAYS hand crafting a few 99 stacks of the AR Cotton bolts in HQ to sell the day the new recipes dropped. I made just a smidge over 1 Mil with that spurt, but that's not repeatable really. Been crafting almost 10 months and TBH I'm probably still in negative Gil compared to investment but idc.

And again, as other's have pointed out repeatedly, nobody is "at the mercy" or "held hostage" by crafters. Those materia clusters are raining like crazy from Roulettes, Hunts, etc. You can have the NPC do the double meld and that's enough to get into a raid with. Or ask anyone near an Aetherite for a meld and they'll do it for free using your free materia from Roulettes, Hunts, etc.

As for gear, rn the Classical crafted gear looks like about 120K a piece on Faerie and honestly at that price point it's not even worth gathering or buying the mats to craft as the profit would be so small, it could be considered a loss for the time invested.

[Kyu-Momo]

Hey, at least it's not like other mmo's: the gear doesn't break if we fail the meld, just the materia. /o/

SMALL MERCIES but stilllll ><

[Conundrum]

crafting doesn't get anyone rich in this game lol. If ever it did, it certainly doesn't now.

I didn't even bother reading passed this sentence, it's so comically inaccurate.

[LianaThorne]

If this isn't just a bait thread, I highly encourage the OP to ask around about how many raiders also wear the title of omnicrafter or have at least one crafter leveled for the sake of pentamelding. Also, if it's taking you months to level your crafters in general, you're doing it wrong.

[Vyrerus]

This is just totally incorrect

Success and wealth in MMOs is always a snowball effect. Once you've leveled crafters/gatherers and geared them in one expansion, it becomes even easier the next go of it.

Everything in FFXIV can generate gil for the player. Gatherers and Crafters, even if you're not using them for raw gil gains by playing the market board can still lead to far higher, steady wealth accumulation.

Leves give a timed allowance for gil and other rewards. This is a raw reward gated by time and materials, but the time gate means you never have to worry about rushing for materials. It's small, but it's easily done with auto crafting for even the lower rewards on the simpler leves.

Being able to meld for only the cost of the materia you gain by the many means is a big saver.

So even if you're not some kingpin mastermind, then by having crafters and gatherers leveled, your gil amount will basically rise automatically the more you play with everything you do. If you focus on gil accumulation over combat, then you can make a ton of money. You just have to learn to play the market and be patient. The biggest spurts always come at new gear patches from the fastest people, but there's always some moderate niche that can be filled that bots aren't getting their grubby mits on. In the past it was generally stuff gated by combat requirements, like crafted primal weapons or replica high allagan gear.

The real issue is that bots do control the market, but that can be viewed positively in at least one aspect. That being that no tyrannical player can really control the market either. I remember in FFXI some folks who had all the time and money to make gil via crafting would create monopolies on a lot of items on the auction house, and you literally couldn't compete with them. They probably botted too, but it was one person behind the bots, rather than a conglomerate of RMTs. At least in the early days. Nowadays it's probably not much better.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I didn't even bother reading passed this sentence, it's so comically inaccurate.

There is some truth in what they’ve written.

Apparently I went through the same stages exactly as they’ve described. Crafting is more accessible than ever, more players (and bots) can raise their own DoH/L and make their own stuffs now. When some lv70s crafted gears sold for about 70% of current endgame crafted classical set in MB, you know there’s more to the story than what you’ve seen.

At this point my DoH/L works more to prevent me spending for items that I could’ve otherwise craft myself & let my gil piles up from elsewhere like daily roulettes, than to make profit for myself. Which.. technically I could. But at that point I’ll be taking this like a literal job: going through undercutting war against few human players & select known MB botters; It is comically easy to spot one of those, even moreso because some of them had been around for years.

In the end I concluded that my time can be spend elsewhere, so no thanks.

[LaylaTsarra]

The 1 gil undercuts every 30 minutes by crafting bot is ridiculous and has become pretty common place. I don't craft to sell but even trying to sell coffer gear can be a daunting task at times if you're not about to mb watch pricing endlessly.

That's not to say that they should remove penta melding as a responsibility from crafters although they did introduce the ability to fill materia slots by select NPC melders which was a good thing in my opinion.

[DerpyWhiskers]

There is some truth in what they’ve written.

Apparently I went through the same stages exactly as they’ve described. Crafting is more accessible than ever, more players (and bots) can raise their own DoH/L and make their own stuffs now. When some lv70s crafted gears sold for about 70% of current endgame crafted classical set in MB, you know there’s more to the story than what you’ve seen.

At this point my DoH/L works more to prevent me spending for items that I could’ve otherwise craft myself & let my gil piles up from elsewhere like daily roulettes, than to make profit for myself. Which.. technically I could. But at that point I’ll be taking this like a literal job: going through undercutting war against few human players & select known MB botters; It is comically easy to spot one of those, even moreso because some of them had been around for years.

In the end I concluded that my time can be spend elsewhere, so no thanks.

Exactly. The best boon to having oneself max crafts is so you can gather and craft your own gear for yourself. I'd recommend that if possible in any game. To someone too lazy to do that, yeah it might appear that 120k a piece for i580 is highway robbery and running some evil scheme lol to get rich. They don't realize the mats were probably 100k if bought outright, not to mention the 10M -20M the crafter spent getting themselves to where they are to make that item.

The only ones "getting rich" lol and the few people running the MB bots and maybe the even fewer truly dedicated to it like a job. I too say no thanks to that, but it does save massive Gil being able to do it oneself instead of buy it. Nothing is stopping anyone from using their gaming time to learn to make the stuff for themselves. Some types of people just expect everything free, now, and without effort *shrug* can't help with that haha

[Raikai]

And on top of that WE have to make the effort to get the materia for that gear?! We literally do not have the gil required to teleport

Wait, you don't have Gil to teleport?

I was about to suggest spending a few because you can level a crafter 80-90 in one hour or so with just the quest Deliveries and Levequests without even leaving Sharlayan, but nevermind that...

[Kakure]

It's basically crafter welfare. Most MMO try some form of it, to force people to be customers to the crafters. It's one of the things I really dislike about FFXIV is it makes crafters mega-rich compared to everyone else.


It's strange how people don't like dealing with crafters...well...it would be strange if most them weren't effing thieves. in their pricing. (of course they try to dress it up as "muh supply and demand")

You know who profits when a crafter sells you a Hades Barding for 2m gil? The person who sold the primal drop to the crafter for 1.9m gil. Tomestone materials account for 50-90% of the price of crafted 580 gear. If a crafted item seems expensive, it's almost always because it requires a rare drop to make (like from treasure maps or extreme primals). A lot of crafters will even make you stuff for free if you bring them the materials.

It sounds like maybe you aren't good at making money because you just don't understand how the in-game economy works.