Alpha First Look: Video 6 – Gathering and Crafting

[Bluebun]

There's one thing about the crafting I don't understand. WHY show the number of steps you've taken to perform your synthesis? Seems rather unnecessary when all it seems you have to do is fill the green bar for completion and the blue one to have a shot at HQ'ing an item.

It's to keep track for the abilities that are for "3" turns you have +100% more quality etc. Quiet often when I'm only half paying attention, I forget which turn I'm on.

[Reika]

the crafting/gathering is one of the best of any mmo around now

IMO FFXIV crafting and gathering has always been better than every other MMO. Its just going to be less of a hastle in ARR now.

[Rane]

Gathering minigame, I will not miss you. Not even a little bit.

As usual, thanks for the video!

[Rex]

didn't really understand the gathering. It looks like you just click what you want and get it???

...What's so hard to understand

[Felis]

Now to gathering... thank the twelve the gathering points have names on them now so they will be easier to see from the distance than just a sparkle. EXP chaining addition is nice too! Note that he isn't burning away that GP from normal gathering. I remember some people talking like it would be the new gather fatigue from watching yoshida do gathering in his version, but maybe it changed since then and thats good. Doesn't seem to be any uneccisary downtime from just chopping away normally.

The GP are skill costs like CP for crafting.
If you look at the skill descriptions it say GP cost: 0
I'm sure we learn more skills with different GP costs with higher level.

[Orophin]

There's one thing about the crafting I don't understand. WHY show the number of steps you've taken to perform your synthesis? Seems rather unnecessary when all it seems you have to do is fill the green bar for completion and the blue one to have a shot at HQ'ing an item.

It could be that on more difficult recipes if you do too many steps the recipe might go unstable or do that aetheric sparking like in 1.0. It might be a risk vs reward type thing of gauging when is the best time to try to finish the craft.

[Reika]

The GP are skill costs like CP for crafting.
If you look at the skill descriptions it say GP cost: 0
I'm sure we learn more skills with different GP costs with higher level.

Yea for advanced gathering. Normal gathering, clicking on what you want to gather, doesnt cost GP. people were worried that they would not be able to gather if their GP ran out, but that is not the case.

[Darshu]

I don't think Crafting now is vastly better than it was, at least not until I try it, but I agree it has some improvements. I don't dislike the new CP system, and I don't think it has been dumbed down as gathering has. Synthesis in general has been dumbed down in the past, more than once, but that isn't relevant anymore. I was speaking about the overall over simplification of systems in order to cater to a broader audience as opposed to making that system more complex and interesting to people who really want to do it. Did you take up Alchemy because you really enjoy crafting, because you were really into being an Alchemist, because you identified with its craft? Or did you do because it could become useful in the future? Was it a hassle you managed to get through with persistence and will power, or was it fun?

I'm not arguing 1.0 was a lot of fun or ideal, I'm arguing it can be made to be. And it doesn't have to be easy to be fun. At all. How can I make crafting and gathering more fun than the game allows it to be? Interested crafters will only be annoyed at how easy anyone can be a high lv crafter. In XI it was a time consuming ordeal, but it still kept the amateurs apart from the professionals. Unless you were really persistent or you thought you could make a lot of money out of it, you wouldn't take it past 30 if you didn't enjoy it.

I'll give you a different perspective: I never enjoyed crafting in past games. I did a bit of crafting in every game I played, but it never felt fun. It was boring, repetitive, sometimes necessary, but over all another grind I wasn't interested in.

I started XIV with Byregot as my protector god thing, and took Armorer up to 10 before any other job. Crafting in XIV was very unique, unique enough for me to really feel I was accomplishing something rather than doing some dull work for gear. Of course, with all of its shortcomings it was almost impossible to bear lvling it up past 20, for a long time. Mainly because the market was stupid and recipes were much harder than they should be, requiring higher lv materials from other crafts. But the minigames, to me, were fantastic, and creating weapons and armors out of complicated recipes, when I had the possibility to acquire them, was way more rewarding than in any other game. I genuinely think I could have become, in this game, a high lv crafter, possibly my main focus due to the prospective future of me not being able to play as much.

I had not realized gathering had the same CP mechanism, though, so it might in the future become a somewhat more engaging activity.

PS: perhaps what I meant was engaging instead of fun, as has been pointed out in this forum by someone before.

[Biggs]

Which is what all you will be doing after you fall asleep after an hour of this..

Actually from the looks of the new system, after an hour I will have gotten all I need for the day and moved on to something else instead of still blindly trying to meet the quota I set for myself for the day.

[HiirNoivl]

Casual gathering should be casual. If you want low level NQ items, one click and BAM you get it... this system is great for people who don't want to spend a whole lot of time gathering low level or NQ mats they need and filling their inventory with useless junk in the hours it takes to get just 1 stack of what they were actually aiming for!!

*takes a breath*

That said, there should be another level for HQ. This would be for all the people who spent HOURS hunting HQ darksteel which gather rate was a 14% if you stacked yourself to the gills with perception on a GOOD day. And that's just among darksteel. You would have 2 stacks of NQ darksteel by the time you got one stack of HQ steel and that was doing good??? Not to mention that hoards of other crap you gathered like zinc.......

Don't even get me STARTED on low level mats in high level areas.

*takes 2 breaths* Ok Hiir just keep it together... let the memories fade...

*ahem* HQ gathering should be like HQ crafting, methodical, sensible, and most of all, intentional. We should be able to gather HQ mats the way we make HQ items, with a bar, with abilities, with skill.

Ok I'm done now...