Does Anyone Think Crafting is Too Slow?

[rekijitsu]

She's trolling. I personally don't hate the mini games themselves, but their mechanics seem to be made as an afterthought, not as a core mechanic and even less as a staple activity of the game. Doing them once is interesting, doing them twice is okay, thrice will pass, but doing them a thousand times trying to level one of the disciplines will cause a player to quit. It could perhaps be acceptable to do them once or twice per week.

Every idea of enjoyment related to crafting and gathering was gone for me the second day of beta. I could have trained my dog to craft and gather for me, had it thumbs to manipulate the gamepad, and i can't believe SE estimated our average intelligence to be low enough to be perpetually entertained by such mini games.

Chocobo Raising in FF7 was a fun mini game. Triple Triad in FF8 was another. Treasure hunting in FF9. Blitzball in FF10. Square has proven it can make entertaining mini games, so why do they think we like spamming the same exact craft a hundred times per day?

Digressing & Ranting mode: ON

Also, i think "leveling crafts" for the sake of it (grinding) is wrong, however it's also true that you can't keep up your DOH and DOL at the same level of your Disciplines Of War without grinding. I don't think a blacksmith would make a thousand hammers he doesn't need and can't sell just for training. Why? Because he doesn't have that many materials (and time) to waste and because training doesn't work that way. Crafting an item should give you experience points only the first few times you craft it and you should be able to level your crafting discipline at the same speed of your fighting class just by making the items you and your friends need. Crafting excellence and exclusiveness should be only determined by the difficulty of finding or processing materials, not by the amount of grinding someone does or by how advanced their grinding bots are. Furthermore, i shouldn't be able to get twenty marmot pelts ready for crafting when i'm not looking for them. Only someone with the tanning tools should be able to do so, for example (one would think that amidst all the low res cartoony environments and ugly characters WoW has people would see that it's actually such mechanics that made it big...)

Digressing & Ranting mode: OFF

Then again, i don't see SE ever changing the crafting mechanics in design, so maybe, if we're lucky, they'll speed it up or remove the progress bar.

This, a million times this. I enjoy doing the crafting leves to keep up the Land/Hand things, but that should be it to keep it on par with your other War/Magic classes. The fact War/Magic leves take 5 minutes to do at times as opposed to Land/Hand ones is sort of a pain as well, but if they just made it so that crafting leves were enough to REALLY keep your crafts up, I would be happy even if those leves currently take *much* longer than the battle leves.

I also think you hinted at a good concept, that crafting the same thing over and over shouldn't somehow make you a more talented Blacksmith. If I'm a Blacksmith that does nothing but make Hammers all day, then I'm not a very good one. Maybe if the game encouraged and rewarded you a *lot* more than it currently does to create something new and useful, then yeah, it would probably be a lot more fun. As of right now though, you may as well be crafting your thousands of weapon grips or hammers if what you want to do is keep your craft up to par with your War/Magic disciplines.

[TheVedis]

This, a million times this. I enjoy doing the crafting leves to keep up the Land/Hand things, but that should be it to keep it on par with your other War/Magic classes. The fact War/Magic leves take 5 minutes to do at times as opposed to Land/Hand ones is sort of a pain as well, but if they just made it so that crafting leves were enough to REALLY keep your crafts up, I would be happy even if those leves currently take *much* longer than the battle leves.

I also think you hinted at a good concept, that crafting the same thing over and over shouldn't somehow make you a more talented Blacksmith. If I'm a Blacksmith that does nothing but make Hammers all day, then I'm not a very good one. Maybe if the game encouraged and rewarded you a *lot* more than it currently does to create something new and useful, then yeah, it would probably be a lot more fun. As of right now though, you may as well be crafting your thousands of weapon grips or hammers if what you want to do is keep your craft up to par with your War/Magic disciplines.

crafting lweves only take 5 minutes to do...

or rather, 1 minute per synth in them(the 7 synth ones take 7 minutes, the 4 synth ones take 4)
and just like combat ones they require traveling, the difference being that you have to travel before for combat and after for synthing

so i think your a bit off on that point

[rekijitsu]

That must be why as a level 36 armorer I can easily turn an abundant profit (hell, I can even as a level 25 Leather, mind you)?

Level 50 crafters make level 50 stuff. They have no reason to make lower level equipment that sells for less. With the fact that this game encourages leveling up multiple classes there is and there always will be demand for lower level equipment.
If you think that "the economy is dead" or one sided, then you simply lack the ability to assess what sells and what doesn't, which is a requisite to thriving in any economy. Probably crafting isn't for you.

Anyway, the fact still stands. Want to craft faster? you can. You only need to know your basic abilities. Playing the game instead of the forums might help in that.

Except it only helps yourself at this point. The people here are are legitimately trying to make the game better so that it doesn't die off anytime soon because players interested in the game may look online and like what the battle system becomes one day, only to find they spend 95% of their time walking through copy pasta environments and spamming Standard Synth all day.

It's just poorly designed and slow, and telling us to grit our teeth through it (which I believe anyone could) doesn't make the design itself any better.

[rekijitsu]

crafting lweves only take 5 minutes to do...

or rather, 1 minute per synth in them(the 7 synth ones take 7 minutes, the 4 synth ones take 4)
and just like combat ones they require traveling, the difference being that you have to travel before for combat and after for synthing

so i think your a bit off on that point

Traveling time is the main issue with them, and the crafting itself DOES take longer than a typical fight. Many leves require you to get materials from someone in town, and many require you to go to four different camps for delivery. Unless you're sitting on a lot of Anima, you're screwed.

With war disciplines, all your R20 leves are in the same location. It might help if all the crafting leves had you delivering to the same corresponding camps as well (R10 crafters turn in all R1-10 leves at R10 battle camps, etc.)

The other problem is you're delivering things to R30 camps and such when your crafts are R10. I remember having to go to a R30 camp and make it past aggroing mobs JUST to make a delivery and get the checkpoint when I wasn't even supposed to be there yet. That's a bit off topic, but its worth mentioning this makes the leves themselves longer.

[rekijitsu]

I understand what you're saying Seif and Vana'diel had a story that pulled me in too.

I'm gonna have to pull a bit of a defeatist card on this one though and say:

Unfortunately we live in a world of ever-decreasing attention spans, where linear thought is dominant.


SE have to make games for babies now because our planet's governance has been stupefying the whole damned population!

I may be seeing where you're getting at, and I may not be at the same time. I think we can make the crafting more fun and/or faster without catering to low attention spans. Personally, it's not that the game is slow, I like that, and I like reaching max level and knowing it meant something.

What my problem with the crafting system, as it is right now, is that you can't reasonably expect it to be on par with your War/Magic disciplines without spending 10x more time and effort on your crafting disciplines. I hate logging on, saying "I should do my craft leves then grind some crafts to get them on par with my R20s/30s", only to find I spend my whole time crafting during the hours I'm playing, STILL not caught up to my War/Magic disciplines.

Personally, I found it easier when the game first released to keep War/Magic and Hand/Land jobs closer in level (and thus, more relevant for your War/Magic to use those crafting disciplines), because it took a lot longer back then to level War/Magic disciplines to R20 and beyond. I think it's a lot more noticeable how slow crafting is when you zoom through War/Magic at the rate you currently can.

I guess balance is more the issue for me. I think you should be able to enjoy the classes you like playing more (usually combat ones for most people) whilst keeping crafts up if you so desire by investing a *reasonable* amount of time doing so.

[Frebaut]

I think crafting is just slow enough. It's not to slow but it's not to fast either. It's like this thread slow.... but not slow enough.

[kurokawa]

Slow and too complex. I like the mini game essence but the current system is serious overkill

[Nabiri]

I love crafting and I enjoy the current pace. It just wouldn't feel as much of an accomplishment getting to 50 for me if it was really fast. I actually like the process or ranking up. I'm not one of the people who rush through ranks to get to the end result.

As was suggested by Anty, it would be really cool if they did something to make it more fun though. :3 Without changing the current pace.

i think the speed isnt the problem it's the variety and the dullness of these minigames. Spicing them up would help.
Making it faster would be a "quickfix" but i would prefer making it more fun > faster.

[TonyMontana]

This games crafting is really really terrible and thats coming from a person with around 250 ranks worth of DoHs leveled.

[Griss]

My problem with crafting is not so much the speed. its the repetitive and random nature of the minigame. now i will be the first to admit to having some exciting and finger crossing final actions while synthing and that's a good thing and in my mmo experience rather a rare occurrence. but really being a crafter in this game is a lot like being a law enforcement officer. Hours upon hours of boredom and tedious tasks capped with moments of shear terror and excitement.

My highest crafting skill is armoring its in the low 30's along with numerous others in the 20's. I just cant bring my self to do it any more, its not a lack of time or materials. I just cant bring my self to do it any more. hell i cant even force my self to do locals any more. The same three have been sitting in my journal for a month now and most likely there going to be there for a while longer.