Whats the point of AF and other drops if you can buy/craft better?

[Loony_BoB]

everyone say melded gear shouldnt be outshone by dungeon gear etc. ok, cant we do this then? to get 2 materia into an item, you must also add the corresponding materia crystal (items dropped from dungeon bosses, specific materia crystals for specific items, sword, chest etc) this way you must do dungeons to get it, and its still a point of being crafter. Crafter is its own class, so it should be able to make BOS, BUT it should be combined with dungeons to do it

This would leave one issue: Gatherers. If everyone gets their gear through dungeons, that's a significant chunk of gathering work you're throwing away. I genuinely think that SE have it right at the moment.

Put it this way: I'm a crafter, as is my girlfriend. We both really want darklight gear. Yes, some triple and quadruple melds are better, but with the price of the materia and the likelihood of losing untold amounts of gil being lost blowing things up, can we afford to triple/quadruple meld? No. So dungeon gear still has it's place. Maybe people with 50,000,000 gil to throw about can afford the effective triple or more melded gear, and perhaps those people will complain that it's too easy to get good crafted gear instead of darklight gear. But for most people, this is an unrealistic amount to pay for gear. They're better off finding a good group of people and having fun trying to get the drop that will make their gear that little bit better.

Crafters should have their endgame, too. This can be making triple or quad melds. The odds of getting darklight drops may be poor, but the time taken to not only make high level melded crafts but also to get the gil to buy the materia/mats for a hundred attempts may take a crafter longer than it takes you to get that drop.