Quote Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato View Post
The problem is a fundamental disagreement on what a video game is. Many people, possibly billions, believe that video games exist to have fun. There is something they need to do and a challenge with some effort. The issue with CBU3 is they don’t have a good track record of making video games. The Dawntrail MSQ, for instance, can hardly be called a video game much like a visual novel isn’t a game either. Crafting in FFXIV exists in two phases: the easy macro-spam phase, which has no gameplay, and the expert crafting, which is the same but requires 20,000,000+ gil. Crafting can hardly be called video game content because, unlike combat, botting isn’t simply a cheat, it’s baked in to the design. You press a macro button and it works. Then you press it again. There are websites that will design your macro for you. The only challenge is obtaining the gil necessary for a fully-geared setup. But the crafting portion of Cosmic Exploration itself, outside of that investment, is not video game content.

I think there’s a little part of us that like and miss playing video games. It’s unfortunate that the opinions of video game-enjoyers are shunned in the FFXIV community with this new patch.
Expert crafting is actually a minigame, not “botting but with slightly higher stats”

If you look at expert crafting and only see a “well i can macro that but only when i get next expansions gear” you can’t claim that it’s not content because you are actively not engaging with it. Pentamelding current gear won’t let you properly macro all the experts