whats the point of crafting...

[Aylis]

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.

This, this right here. At the upper end the game has only a very small and limited synths that would be considered useful for the majority of the player base. As of now the game offers little incentive to craft a majority of the items for either personal use or for sale. At least on my server only the hardcore min maxers seem to want to take advantage of the two-star equipment. Which I'm not by trade and I know I'm not the only other one that isn't. With Philosopher Token, Mythical Token, Primal Weapons, Relic weapons so easy and fast to obtain. It seems kinda wonky the most time consuming and invested items in the game are also the weakest to a majority of players.

I understand the concern over RMT especially within crafting, sadly either way its handled it will always be a problem. More so with higher item costs, weither by the item itself or the costs in gil for materia it will always be a problem. It doesn't seem right however to punish the innocent players that want to make, use, sell the equipment legitly for themselves or others due to concerns over an outside source.

[Allyrion]

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.

------

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.

I'm not sure about the PVP gear. My impression is that you might be able to actually make pvp gear. It could just be materia related or as you said, consumable related.

Otherwise, I think you're missing something.

These issues will eventually be dealt with by raising the level cap, but crafters need not wait that long for change. Patch 2.1 will see the addition of the Wolves’ Den and the Housing system, and the services of crafters will be in high demand for both PvP-related items and furnishings. Looking ahead to Patch 2.2, crafters will be able to alter gear designs using a “template” system (official name TBD), giving them yet another role in creating desirable gear.
Rest assured that we will not sit idly by as crafters go neglected.

Adding vanity gear to crafting can potentially be huge.
That's 2.2 but since you said 6+ months, I'm guessing you're assuming that there won't be any additions but furniture till at least 2 patches away.

[Nenin]

I'm not sure about the PVP gear. My impression is that you might be able to actually make pvp gear. It could just be materia related or as you said, consumable related.

Otherwise, I think you're missing something.



Adding vanity gear to crafting can potentially be huge.
That's 2.2 but since you said 6+ months, I'm guessing you're assuming that there won't be any additions but furniture till at least 2 patches away.

Yes I have no complaints about changes slated for 2.2 and beyond but that's still pretty far away. I've always loved PVP and I'm hoping for some crafter involvement in the process upon its release.

[Ansumana]

I believe the assumption with PvP is that people will want gear that is more tailored for PvP encounters (more vit or other stats through materia), and consumables for that extra edge. Possibly that PvPers will be less likely to want to farm dungeons and prefer to just buy gear.

But who knows really, the fact that the dev staff is essentially saying that they created classes that become obsolete in the endgame - by design- is the takeaway.

Any significant changes to crafting are going to require a 6 month wait at least, so we just have to deal with that reality and make our choices.

[Cromstar]

Crafting and High-Level Items
FFXIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Yoshi-P here with a few thoughts on crafting and high-level items.

Preserving the Appeal of Dungeons
While there are a variety of ways to enjoy FFXIV, the desire to become powerful is a great motivator for many players. In particular, the impressive weapons and armor obtainable by triumphing in high-level PvE encounters attract many players to take on these challenges.
If the same items were made craftable, some players might find it easier to save up their gil, robbing them of this motivation to undertake the game’s toughest battles.

I realize this is a worst-case scenario. In a perfect world, it would simply be another option, and players would have the choice of either fighting or saving money to obtain their desired gear. Unfortunately, this remains a concern.

I agree with Yoshida that the desire to become Powerful is a Great Motivator. Lets stop there, become Powerful to what end? Not to walk arround in the cities or pick up flowers on the meadows. The desire to become powerful = To defeat Big Bad and Difficult Monsters. And in FFXIV the Big and Mean are in the Instanced Dungeons. Far from discouraging players from entering those Dungeons, availability of High Level Gear will encourage more players to enter those Dungeons.
Now I ask this? What is going to be the "Great Motivator" for us crafters? We pay the same monthly fee as everyone else. Why we have to be diminished or trivialized, so DoM and DoW can get "enhanced Dungeons?
I agree that RMT are a problem, I don't have the time to be reporting each /tell I get selling me gil. I do what most people do, /blist them. Currently I have 96/200 on my /blist. And Every now and then, one or 2 may appear as (Deleted), but the vast majority remains. This means SE need to be more "efficient" deleting these RMTs.
I really love this game, but this "Strategy" do deal with RMTs is seriously harming my Gaming Experience. Not fun to become a End of Game crafter to make Mediocre Gear.

[Xel]

It would be cool if blacksmiths could provide temporary weapon buffs, armorsmiths temp defense buffs, cooks perm stat increases until death, leatherworkers perm improvements to leather armor stats until death, weavers perm improvements to cloth armor until death, goldsmith perm improvements on jewelry until death, carpenters well those bastards will get housing so screw them(j'king j'king) they can get the creation of wooden token stands that grant buffs in a temp circle around them, alchemists well there are so many ways improve the damn pots/shorten cd's/create poison bottles/create explosives/create the reagents that all the other classes would need and on and on and on.

Of course you'd need to tune monsters to be able to handle buffed out teams, put in new drops, buff dungeons, create new quests for all this, and in general have the devs do a ton more work on their already extensive workload. *sniffle*

[Vortok]

Asking for a specialization system wouldn't solve whatever problem it's supposed to fix, it would merely postpone it for a few months to a year because it doesn't force a player to specialize, it just forces one of their characters to specialize. Alts are a thing. In other MMOs where you can't do every craft/class on one character it is fairly common to have multiple alts to cover many/all of the other options. One of my favorite things about FFXIV, even back when 1.0 launched, was that I didn't need an army of alts anymore. It's one of the biggest reasons why I even bothered to check out ARR when I heard it was getting relaunched.

If you want crafters to work together, make crafts that require more than one crafter to perform the synthesis. Things could really get interesting with a system involving something like that.

One of my current complaints is that HQing the highest level crafts is currently too easy (can use all NQ mats while still being a fair bit off of capping stats, nevermind how easy it is with capped stats and HQ mats). I'm not sure if the crafts were 'balanced' around people only having one 50 craft (like 1-50 + Ifrit was apparently balanced around people not having all their cross class abilities), and crafting 55 HQs should be possible without a bunch of cross class 50 abilities (15 cross class should be assumed). One way or another though, gear is so laughably easy to HQ that tons of people can do it for even the 'hardest crafts' without major investments in their crafting gear/abilities, which results in the market being easily flooded. It could make a little bit of sense with higher item level crafts being planned if we aren't getting new crafting gear any time soon, but that list of items will be pretty small (in comparison to all the items available to be crafted) and the market for them will be even smaller.

Basically, HQ mats need to matter (current ease of HQing with NQ mats really isn't doing any favors for gatherers, either) but HQ mats currently don't matter for any crafter that's set up remotely decently.

I'm a bit concerned about furniture, too. I doubt it'll really help crafting all that much other than for a week or two during the initial rush. If it's like dyes/fishing lures and there's no reason to HQ it/can't HQ it at all then any idiot that bought their way to 50 with leves will be able to make the items with no issues. Much like people practically give away melding since the only requirement is being high enough level. Even if there is a HQ benefit (aside from the issue of HQing being a bit too easy), I imagine furniture recipes will be spread throughout the levels so everything sub-50 will be easily made anyway. It is nice that it'll be something that crafters, gatherers, and combat focused players will all want - just a little worried about how easily the market might get flooded and crashed.



As for the gear vs dungeon drops, several good points were made by other people as well as some by Yoshi. The concern of people being able to buy gear equivalent to what a dungeon drops before entering that dungeon is very valid. The tome (not gil) cost of crafted vs darklight gear is also out of whack, not even considering the extra cost/effort of melding.

The idea of BoP materials combined with a "request craft" option similar to the melding request feature was a good one (with the item itself being BoP, so that only people that have done the dungeon would be able to use the gear). If the mat was tradeable then regardless of the crafted item being BoP or not, people would be able to get the gear before entering the dungeon. If it required the person to have the craft themself, it would force people that may not want to engage in crafting to level a craft (aka, something they view as not fun) to get the gear they actually want, devaluing the effort of dedicated crafters. Not to mention it would force people that may want to just engage in crafting to run high level PvE content to get those BoP materials.

That said, the suggestion someone had about crafted items being Best in Slot for some slots, but not all was a great one. Especially if combined with the above so that people couldn't get gear equivalent (or better) than raid drops before even doing said raid.


Lastly, RMT. You can't really design gameplay to stop it. Runescape tried to do so for years and it failed miserably (many of the attempts only served to annoy honest players). Eventually they got smart and put some serious effort into anti-bot code that seemed to work fairly decently (ongoing battle of course), with the added bonus of not irritating their actual player base. Any time someone doesn't have instant gratification and they're willing to pay someone to provide it, things like RMT and run sellers will exist - and designing a game to be nothing but instant gratification would close off a lot of interesting options and depth.


In any case, I've found the crafting system pretty enjoyable (having not been a heavy crafter in other games) which is why I kept engaging in it, especially with gathering many of the mats myself as it gives me reason to travel all over the world rather that just sit in town or in small handful of dungeons. Done the MMO combat thing more than enough in the past. I just find the crafting 'endgame' to not be as fully polished and fleshed out as the leveling experience felt.

[scarebearz]

What is going to be the "Great Motivator" for us crafters?

So far it's gil and it's a pretty big motivator! lol

[Xel]

If the dev's truly think they have all the time in the world and no competition to their game, and therefore no reason to improve crafting...lol...

SE has been having financial issues for most of this year, and even as great as the sales have been for FFXIV so far unless they KEEP their playerbase and continue to expand things are bleak.

Right now is NOT the time to be pissing off crafters with crappy bones, and putting on band-aid dungeons with worse loot then currently available.

They need to make some major plays and make them fast or newer brighter toys comming out near christmas/2014 will rob them of the sheep sales and doom them.

[Cromstar]

scarebearz


Originally Posted by Cromstar
What is going to be the "Great Motivator" for us crafters?
So far it's gil and it's a pretty big motivator! lol

Gil is one out of 4 money Systems FFXIV currently have. The other are Grand Company Seals, Tomes of Philosophy, and Tomes of Mythology. Everybody gets gil, not only the crafters. You go and do a Leve, you get gil, you complete a quest get gil, most drops can be turned into gil.

What's so great and motivating about gil, NOTHING!!! All the Best Gear can only be obtained with Tomes. What's the Best Item A Crafter can buy with Gil? In my opinion, that would be the Double Star Multiple Melded Gear (Which btw we crafters already do), and that STILL is not the best Gear!!! So I ask again, what a Crafter can buy if he had all the gil in the World?

The FFXIV jobs are: 5 Disciples of War, 3 Disciples of Magic, 8 Disciples of the Hand, and 3 Disciples of the Land. So who gets the New Toys and the Best Gear?? Our "Blue" jobs, who gets Diminished and and Punished for the sake of Our guys in blue? Crafter/Gatherers are !!
Yoshi P and his Devs are doing a POOR job dealing with RMTs, and what's their Bright Idea? To Punish and diminish more than Half of its Jobs for the sake and enjoyment of the Disciples of War and Magic. So the OP was right when He asked: What's the point of Crafting??

Why Crafters have to be "Forced" into going to Dungeons (in order to gather Tomes for Double Star Crafting Materials)? The other choice is to buy those from DoW or DoM, who already get the best gear and get to exploit crafters for those materials, and most likely RMTs are selling those now, adding to the problem. I don't see DoW or DoM being forced to do level 50 crafting or gathering in order to experience and enjoy End of Game Content!! If DoM and Dow were forced to do Level 50 Crafting or Level 50 Gathering in order to "Become Powerful (The Great Motivator)", you will see postings 10X the size of this one. A Disciple of War or Magic can get to right to the End of Game (Best Gears and Rewards) without EVER doing any Crafting or Gathering, may need some Melds in order to get Relic (But for that a CONVENIENT service is provided) so still are not Forced to do Level 50 Crafting or Gathering. Again : What's the point of Crafting?? What will be Crafters "Great Motivator"?