whats the point of crafting...

[Starplayer]

I personally just want to see some sort of crafting mastery system implemented that forces players to, for the highest tier of crafts, only be able to do one profession.

Because currently, on my server, the players who have all crafting professions maxed have absolutely invalidated the markets and competition. There needs to be some forced interaction between crafters to make the community and markets actually function.

I really like this idea. It's the best of both worlds - it falls in line with the 'be everything' mantra of the armory system while at the same time giving crafters the uniqueness that they so desire. I'm tired of the same person in our FC being asked to do anything related to craft because he has EVERYTHING leveled. I feel anonymous in my craft, even in my FC because I only have 2 crafts maxed out.

[Aylis]

My friend and I held a talk about the crafting of two-star items and compared them with time invested, usage, risk and effort along side the other equipment within the game. Crafted gear vs time and effort for the average player feels far to skewed in the upper end by costs. As it is now we have to buy multiple tombstone based items which add up to double the dungeon runs in costs vs a piece of darklight armor. We then either have to gather the materials in high quality to ensure high quality. Then we have to find a crafter capable of high qualitying said piece and even then its a risk of failure or a normal quality outcome, and then comes the materia costs.

Crafter gear doesn't have to be on par to Coils or myth token armor, a middle ground is plenty.

1) Increase two-star synth equipment to item level 75 or 80 and give them a stat boost.
2) Keep them the same levels, but decrease the costs of tombstone purchases to balance with the time and money invested.

[Keno]

So that means we shouldn't waste our time crafting it useless and they wonder why the company going bankrupt

[Ranzan]

I personally just want to see some sort of crafting mastery system implemented that forces players to, for the highest tier of crafts, only be able to do one profession.

Because currently, on my server, the players who have all crafting professions maxed have absolutely invalidated the markets and competition. There needs to be some forced interaction between crafters to make the community and markets actually function.

I have to disagree because it would defeat the whole "you can be anything" mantra this game is going for. Plus whats wrong with being self sufficient?

[Arale]

I have to disagree because it would defeat the whole "you can be anything" mantra this game is going for. Plus whats wrong with being self sufficient?

I think a middle man would be that you can craft up to 2 stars with any craft, but you can only specialize in 1 to make 3 stars or 4 stars, basically higher and more complicated recipes for that craft.

[Ranzan]

@Arale And... that will kill the whole self sufficient part of leveling all crafts. Then basically you shouldn't had level them all if you only can be good at 1.

[Mortechai]

I'd love for crafting to be relevant in the game Yoshi, I really would. But why should I bother with crafting when I have to worry about having my account stripped by over-zealous RMT witch hunting practices because I can HQ things and sell them on the market boards. Afraid to sell anything at all TBH. I'd rather make my own food and have repair/teleporting money come from the gil in AK/WP each week and stay dirt poor, than sell my HQ's on the market boards and risk getting my account locked and stripped. so IMO, until SE changes their practices to stop hurting honest players in an attempt to kill some RMT here and there, crafting and gathering to sell will remain irrelevant to me.

[Hitome]

In 15 minutes a crafter can easily make 15 items, put them on Market Board and come back later for a couple 100k's of profit. While the items are selling nothing is stopping you from farming WP .

And BTW, 2 stars crafted gears sell because they are much better than DL and cratfed accessories are quite close to ilevel90.

Less you are continually undercut which is happening much more frequently. Some 2 star crafted gear is better than DL but most of it is not better than AF2. It's easy to justify the wait on the AF2.

Again, like I said: you're free to make your money any way you see fit. Most crafters I know with all 50 maxed sit below me when it comes to gil.

My comment was a rebuttal to the special person who thought they'd buy peacock ore and sell their crafted accessories for a huge profit while acting like 'farming those phil. items' wasn't a viable path.

[Uveck]

Like others have said here, please implement a way to craft items for other players, with items dropped inside end game dungeons, in a similar fashion to materia meld requests and then have these items be un-tradeable.

I really like crafting in this game, I just hate that it's held back by the development team. I would like to make the best gear and wear it for myself. I don't need to sell it. There's nothing like going to war with a blade you slaved over crafting yourself.

[Nenin]

Ensuring Item Rarity

We also believe that the strongest gear available at a given time should not be obtainable by all players.
...

Crafted gear plays an important role in allowing players to triumph in battle and obtain the strongest gear. Furthermore, as the item level cap is raised in patches to come, new recipes for higher-item-level gear will be added, preserving the valuable role of crafters while maintaining this intentional gap.
...

At the moment, players are striving to improve themselves within a relatively limited range of power, but this range will gradually expand as new content is released, and as the difference in play styles between players leads to greater disparity over time. As a result, even if they lack the ability to create the highest-item-level gear, crafters will always have an essential role in Eorzea.

...

I hope all crafters will look forward to the changes to come!

I'm not trying to be rude here but I do not know how you can honestly expect crafters to look forward to, well, apparently nothing but furniture for the next 6+ months.




You've made it quite clear that crafted gear will never be Best In Slot and I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is how small the market for crafted gear is and how unimportant crafting is in general.

The problem is not simply that crafted gear is only worn for a short time, it's that for most people it is never even considered as a possible option. As the prices drop for philosophy tome items the cost of materia has stayed the same or in many cases gone up. So while an item might only cost 300,000 gil to make now it still costs well over 600,000 to make one and properly meld it.

Now assuming that the average player earns roughly 400,000 gil in total by completing the main quest line and getting their first class to 50 this means he/she will be unable to buy and meld a SINGLE piece of crafted 70 gear, let alone all 13 slots. The only players with the amount of gil necessary to purchase crafted gear are other crafters and Titan win sellers. This is a doubly weak market because other rich crafters can usually make the gear themselves and Titan win sellers need better gear than crafted gear to sell wins in the first place. This only leaves rich crafters with a new 50 battle class who do not already have all eight crafts at 50. I suppose you could also count people who do lots of WP speed runs but they share the problem of Titan sellers of already having significantly better gear.


In short, the only people who can afford more than 1-2 pieces of crafted 70 gear don't need it. If you cannot think of a good way to implement crafter involvement in higher item level gear can you at least reconsider the cost of the 70 gear? If you're unwilling to lower the overall cost of the gear then perhaps normalize the cost between the 70 pieces? By this I mean the current layout of ingredient requirements (9 vs 18 tome items) seems completely arbitrary. Why does it cost 18 tome ingredients to make the tank chest, head, and arm pieces combined, but 36 to make the same pieces for a Dragoon?





As a final note I'm also somewhat worried about the wording of 'PVP-related items'. I'm not sure if you're referring to new PVP gear/weapon recipes or just the increased demand for consumables in PVP. Alchemy has suffered from the worst of the two-star woes having the only useful recipes (X-Potions, X-Ethers, Hi-Elixirs) drop for free in dungeon chests. Three Hi-Elixirs also cost the same as the combined tank head+chest item. Can you imagine getting Heavy Darksteel items in random chests and having people sell them for 5k? Many of the high level Alchemy potions require Pudding Flesh and it currently only drops from one single monster in the entire game who can only be fought in a leve quest. The only other consumables are from Cooking and they have their share of problems like unreachable stat caps.