Amount of HQ items RIDONCULOUS!

[Meleena]

Ummm but the whole point of the original post is to say that its not skill based. Once you learn the rotations and necessary skills there is no skill involved. 100% HQ every time, using NQ materials.

That is a big lie, I have every skill available, teach me how to HQ 1-2 stars 40 durability recipes 100% of the time.
Teach me this rotation.
Thank you.

[Tarrick]

With the cost of materials and shards and the overall quality of NQ items versus what can be gotten from quests and dungeons, it is simply not profitable to make NQ items. The only purpose of crafting professions is to make HQ items. You could just rename "HQ item" to "crafted item" because that is how it is treated. NQ is not normal quality compared to alternatives; it is inferior quality.

[Asiaine]

The issue is not the guaranteed HQ of an item. Everyone who has the right skill / materials set should be able to guarantee 100% HQ when crafting (no randomization here).

The issues is that it should be harder to have the right items/skills/etc. needed to achieve the HQ of an item. For example:

-- Only certain rare buffs will give you the skills/stats needed to be able to achieve 100% HQ
-- Only using rare items will be able to achieve 100% HQ of an item.

So, let's say I want to 100% Sword of Cookiee
Today, I go get all the materials, sit down, craft, and have Quality 1000, no problem.
Let's say instead, if I did the exact same but could only max out Quality 750. Oh oh, big chance of no HQ.
Let us further say there is this rare and exotic item/gem/what-ever that grants you 250 Quality to your next craft. I could use that, and voila: 1000 Quality, and HQ!

The gating factor would now be the obtaining (and decision to use) this rare item. One would not spew out HQ items all the time due to its ease, but only for items that really warrant using this exquisite item.

[Taruranto]

It's a good think HQ are no longer random, crafters with all craft to 50 should be rewarded. However, since everyone can easily get a craft to 50, this creates a situation where HQ steadily lose their values. In short, SE gave you the cake and they let you eat it all too.

[Mezolitik]

Crafting HQ is only easy when you know how to do it; that makes sense.

When you're just starting out, HQ is a nightmare. It once took me 50 attempts to make 3 HQ masks as a low level carpenter. I burned through thousands of crystals trying to do the same thing on weaver.

The cross-class skills change everything.

[Rath]

I make rings, earrings, chokers, bracelets, and other items for SBing. I pay about 750, including shares. They go for 4500-9000. I sell about 30 combined daily. I have since I hit 50. There has never been a shortage of buyers or a permanent drop in price on any of the items I sell daily.

[Makior72]

Personally I think crafted gear should rival or be better than gear obtained from raids. Make them extremely hard to HQ, require very rare mats, whatever. But if crafting produces nothing useful to end game players then the craft itself is largely a waste of time. This is something I like about what the elder scrolls online has promised, they aim to make crafting matter in late game. /em equips his flame proof armor.

[Vaen]

Instead of making it harder to HQ items and making the system more random/frustrating/expensive/whatever, you all should be approaching this problem from a different angle.

They should bring back HQ +2.

The problems we're all having now are:

1) HQ mats are meaningless because you can craft NQ mats into HQ items
2) HQ crafted items are too common and that makes them more meaningless and less valuable
3) crafted equip can't rival the best raid gear, probably because SE doesn't want there to be a guaranteed way to make ilvl90 gear

Well, if we had a HQ +2 system that worked the right way, that would fix these problems without the headache of making HQing harder. Getting a HQ+2 just needs to be really, REALLY hard. Like, if you have the BEST skill rotation, all HQ mats, maxed control from amazing gear and food, etc, you have a much better chance of HQ+2 but it's still not guaranteed.

This will make HQ mats more important, and will give crafters a chance to make something that rivals ilvl90 gear if they work REALLY long and hard. If they made the power increase of HQ+2 high enough.

This doesn't necessarily solve problem #2, that HQ+1 items aren't as valuable as some crafters want them to be because HQ supply outweighs demand. To fix this, they need to find a way to increase demand for HQ items. Here's how they can do that:

Allow crafters to "disassemble" their crafted items to regain their mats back.

They would need to tune it just right, but it would work something like an 80% chance to get back each mat that went into an item, and, if you're disassembling an HQ item, a 70% chance to get the HQ version of the materials back. The supply of HQ equip will go down because more people will be using their crafted HQ equip to get their newly-valuable-with-this-new-system HQ mats back. So HQ items will be worth more.

The only problem with this disassembling thing is that it makes gathering a bit less useful because there will be less demand for new mats. But they could fix this reduced demand by reducing the supply gathering gives us: re-introducing a mini-game for gathering so it takes longer per gather, and increasing the EXP per gather since gathering is happening slower. Gathering is too spam-y and boring as it is now so that's a much better system anyway.

So there you go, I just made crafting and gathering way more awesome Now if only SE would listen to me

[IgnatiusCrumwald]

Again, there's a great+40 market for HQ items because of spirit bonding for materia. Yeah, the market is glutted at lower levels and stuff sells cheap, but it should be cheap and plentiful - it's low level stuff.

I really see no evidence of 45+market being glutted outside of the base relic weapons. Try buying level-3 materia for under 20 grand - good luck. I can turn out 3-4 savage aim 3's with the right jewlery every couple of hours and they still sell hand over fist for over 30k.

If anything, they need to make stuff easier to spirit bond as a sink for gear. Like maybe allowing you to spirit bond higher level stuff by completeing lower level dungeons were you queue multiples or random. That would sort of solve the problems of too much gear existing, over priced materia, low population, and lack of veteran assistance for dungeons

[scarebearz]

Crafter's can still make decent gil, anyone trying but failing to make gil, is simply doing something wrong. Being a good crafter is not enough to make gil, you need to know your market.

To be sure of HQ'ing with NQ mats you need many cross class skills and decently upgraded gears.

At low end - 1 star, the current system is fine. 2 star is ok currently, but could stand to be made more difficult.