Crafter and Gatherer Identity

[LanceSummers]

There is a large conversation about Job Identity right now, but two roles are being completely ignored in this discussion: Disciples of the Hand (Crafters) and Disciples of the Land (Gatherers). As it stands, all the crafters and all the gatherers are entirely reskins of one another with no purpose to their seperation apart from making the leveling and gearing process grindier. (Apart from Fisher, Fisher gets to be special.)
This needs to be fixed. Crafters and Gatherers should be allowed to be different from each other. Give them entirely unique abilities and even job gauges, and while we're at it, maybe re-introduce cross-class actions for Disciples of the Hand and Land specifically. In addition, the specialty system needs to be gutted and replaced with something far better: proper DoH/DoL Jobs with unique job stones.
And why have no new Crafters or Gatherers been added since the game's inception? Give us new ones, like a Rancher Disciple of the Land that can harvest from and raise creatures, or an Engineer crafter!
I want crafting and gathering to feel fun again, and hopefully changes like this can do that!

[Kaurhz]

I have a love hate relationship with cross-class on crafters...

They used to do it... But if you wanted to be self sufficient, then you were levelling all crafters anyway, which kind of made it moot... Consumables aside....

I do think they need to do more with quests though... It's absolutely tragic that the only action locked behind quests is Manipulation.

I don't necessarily agree that they need to be different... But DoH/L does need an actual fin system behind it, like Whistle While You Work was. Overall tone though... On DoH/L being ignored though, I completely agree with... And the amount they've lost is absurd..

[LanceSummers]

My main point is that if crafters and gatherers are going to be all the same, why even have the different classes for them at all?
It just feels like something that's there to make the game grindy instead of offering an opportunity for fun gameplay
I would love for them to be different again so that crafting and gathering could feel fresh to me!
I really hope Square does plan to address DoH and DoL in 8.0, though. If they do anything at least fully rework the specialty system, having to wait an entire week just to swap out specialties is absurd and just not fun

[Alicie]

Anyone really cares about crafting much?
If anything, most of the players would be in favor of removing these crafting rotations and replacing them with single "just craft it" button.

[LeCorbeaux]

There's a lot of things I'd do with crafters to make them unique (though I like the current system just fine too). Just off the top of my head:

Alchemists and Culinarians should have parts of their recipes which aren't consumed - catalysts and specific cooking utensils, specifically.

Alchemists should be able to transmute materials. The whole "lead to gold" part of alchemy. They should also be able to stain and colour materials beyond the dye system.

Culinarians should have flexible recipes: If the recipe asks for a tomato, any of Blood Tomato, Dzemael Tomato, Piennolo Tomato, Ruby Tomato, or Ut'ohmu Tomato should work. There's no reason to have a separate recipe for Blood Tomato Salad, Piennolo Tomato Salad or any other Tomato Salad - make it one Tomato Salad recipe, with some flexible parts and some optional parts, and the resulting item's effects will depend on the specific ingredients and their quality.

Crafters who create equipment should be able to upgrade and modify that type of equipment. Raise ILVL, modify bonuses, change from one type to another ("... of Aiming" to "... of Scouting" for example, if both exist) even for uncraftable equipment types.

Goldsmiths should be able to engrave messages into metal items (visible if you zoom in far enough). Leatherworkers should be able to to the same with leather-based items. Weavers should be able to create and use their own patterns. Carpenters should be able to engrave and burn text on wooden items, in particular furniture.

There could be recipes you only get from quests, FATEs, Golden Saucer, PvP, achievements, dungeon and raid drops, society shops after unlocking certain levels, and many more such sources.

Crafters could offer their services on the marketboard (or similar) for any item they crafted at least once at 100% quality without using any buffs. Not the ready-to-use items, but a "bring your own mats and some gil to pay me, the crafting happens automatically" kind of deal.

We have Carpenters, but no Masons (purely for creating housing-related items, which right now are mostly badly situated with the Goldsmiths; not every crafter needs to have PvE utility). We have Fishers, but no Hunters (could get most of the meat, skin and similar drops, gather special minions and mounts, and train new companions).

The quality system could be rolled into the collectible system, with various levels of quality possible, and items of different quality/collectability stackable together.

[Kaurhz]

Anyone really cares about crafting much?
If anything, most of the players would be in favor of removing these crafting rotations and replacing them with single "just craft it" button.

Let's not dilute even more of the game for people that can't be bothered, shall we? Imagine how far this game would fall if we started to deviate to this mentality.

My main point is that if crafters and gatherers are going to be all the same, why even have the different classes for them at all?
It just feels like something that's there to make the game grindy instead of offering an opportunity for fun gameplay
I would love for them to be different again so that crafting and gathering could feel fresh to me!
I really hope Square does plan to address DoH and DoL in 8.0, though. If they do anything at least fully rework the specialty system, having to wait an entire week just to swap out specialties is absurd and just not fun

I think this is a somewhat fair point... But beyond the whole cross-class..., I've never found them all too distinctive to begin with, as they all follow the same progression blueprint, both for levelling and both for end-game, even dating as far back as ARR to be honest.

... Like, if you actually wanted to be a crafter, you were doing them all anyway... But I agree in principle with the 'feeling fresh' sentiment... I'm not doing anything different this expansion what what I did 3 expansions ago.

[Valence]

Didn't Yoshi said something about differentiating doh/dol jobs and rethinking crafting entirely or did I dream it? I know he mentioned that the "crafting macros" design is showing its age and they're trying to think of other things to do with it, but for doh/dol profession identity, I actually can't remember well.

[Kaurhz]

Didn't Yoshi said something about differentiating doh/dol jobs and rethinking crafting entirely or did I dream it? I know he mentioned that the "crafting macros" design is showing its age and they're trying to think of other things to do with it, but for doh/dol profession identity, I actually can't remember well.

I don't remember anything this distinctive... But I do recall there have been talks about 'crafting macros', but this I do think they already addressed, as it was their rationale for the initial crafting rework... Something to the effect of... They wanted people to try and figure things out for themselves, and to do their own macros, rather than relying on things that other people had created... Hence simplifications.

Honestly though, if this is a case of something I have missed, and something you weren't dreaming, then I don't exactly have high hopes, because we all know how this works out.

[GraceHorizon]

I wouldn’t mind a single “craft it” button. Ordinary crafting isn’t bad, but master crafting is pretty annoying to me, and crafting a large number of items is boring af. I became a crafter because I wanted an unlimited supply of food and combat gear (and I hate paying people for it — market board prices are a ripoff), but the actual act of endgame crafting just isn’t fun to me, either manually going through the steps of the minigame or using macros.

Gatherers are fine to me, but I would be open to a rework as long as it doesn’t make the process too onerous.

I wonder, for crafting, if a model like fishing would be a good idea? I’m not a fan of the RNG of fishing, but the thing I do like is you can choose how deeply you want to engage with it. If you just want fish for crafting ingredients, they’re not hard to get, but if you want fish for bragging rights, there is (I hear) a lot more depth and skill expression. How about something similar for crafting, where your basic combat gear is quick and easy (and tbf combat food is already not too awful), but high end glamours and maybe also some higher tier combat gear are harder and require greater mastery?

[Aidorouge]

I'm not sure what else could be done with them since I barely engage with them as-is, and got tired having to deal with materials I couldn't easily obtain and mind-numbing levequests.