Possibly Largest Problem Facing The Game (Crafting)

[edgar131]

This is purely my opinion and I don't know how others feel but honestly I think the biggest problem facing the game is that half of the classes in this game (crafting) are incredibly boring and repetitive to level and are just plain not fun. I mean there are definitely rewards for leveling up crafting, but the process is just painful and nothing more. I'm in a couple linkshell's and I know most of them who craft purposely watch movies and stuff while crafting because it's just too boring to actually pay attention to. I think the only real solutions are to just make crafting faster and less tedious (little to no animations) or just make it more exciting with better rewards. Right now the only efficient way to level is to find recipes for around your rank and just do them over and over again and typically they don't produce anything very useful. This is sort of the antithesis of what the developers were trying to aim for I think. What do you all think?

[Lyraa]

Whilst i have only just started crafting, i can understand what you are saying, but it would imo be a shame to lose the animations, they are really good, and i hate click and collect crafting, thats even more boring, having the correct tools for the job and seeing them is awesome, but i do think its needs speeding up somehow when you get to higher lvl on your chosen craft/s

[Kimiahara]

In some respects I feel like XIV is too lifelike. Want to get better at something? Practice a lot.

[Rosalie]

My problem with crafting is just how low the threshold is for "bonus." I'm trying to catch my GLD up, but can't simply because I'm stuck in "bonus" mode for 75% of my week.

[edgar131]

My problem with crafting is just how low the threshold is for "bonus." I'm trying to catch my GLD up, but can't simply because I'm stuck in "bonus" mode for 75% of my week.

Crafting gets boring long before you hit the point of fatigue.

[origamikitsune]

@ MariyaShidou, you are right, it would disrupt the way things are currently done. I hadn't thought about that. Having some time to nosh on the idea however, I stand by my statement. If it takes a rank 35 to make the final product, it should not take a rank 45 to make the components. I would point out that IF it were the other way round, we would have the option skilling up on the components, and then either selling them so others can skillup on final items, OR we could just skill up on them ourselves. Either way, I think it would be worth the adjustment because no one is selling the components as is. The worst that would happen is a few days while we uncomfortably look for new recipes to skill up on, and things go back to the way they were.

Also, having gone on both a grinding binge and a leve binge (24 leves back to back to back, if you time it right), there are few more things, more minor, that I think need to be adjusted to make DoL/DoH more enjoyable without requiring massive overhauls.

First: Guild Marks. I don't play craps because I don't like it. I don't to roll the dice trying to get guild marks, either. Being able to see the guild marks would help me choose my leves. It would be a lot less painful taking lower rank leves for less SP if I knew that I was getting something worthwhile from it. As it stands now, I am finding it difficult to grind because I simply don't have the skills to make it effective, and the leves don't help because I don't know what I am getting.

Second: DoL leve linking. Its nice that I can link a leve. It totally sucks that both people can't hit the harvesting spot at the same time. Even without sharing SP, changing this little thing would make linking more worthwhile, because then at least we weren't essentially doubling the amount of time it takes to do the level (which is ALL that you get from linking DoL leves that I can tell). Of course, ultimately, making it so that we have some actual benefit to linking leves would be nice. Running around twice as many harvesting points might actually be worth it if, you know, the SP was doubled for each person.

Third: I like the idea of rank 1 levels offering better rewards and thus being listed in higher categories. For example, I did a rank 1 leve listed as rank 20, just to get some much needed toadskins. Even so, it would be nice if there was actually a noticeable increase in reward for higher quality output. Its nice to be able to get 400 quality on every synth, but in terms of gil, I still do better just scraping by on a higher level leve, and I still only get 2 skins.

Four: However, these rewards are frequently as random and worthless as the moko grass I got off my other rank 20 leve/ SO many of the mat rewards are completely useless. I hate to say it, but it is something that has to paid attention to with the knowledge that the economy changes. I'm not saying update the leves every month, but some attention needs to be paid to the viability of the rewards. We want something more useful. The rewards are often completely worthless in general. Did I mention yet, knowing what guild marks are on the rewards would be nice?

[Kerath]

When I am not doing a few local levels for a short period of time and I just need to grind craft, I turn on a movie or watch TV because there is no reason to actually pay attention to the "mini-game" I can just listen for the audio cues and glance over at the computer screen to see how I am doing.

If I am not watching something, I end up falling a sleep while crafting.

I really wish the game was more interesting. This may be a bad example, but a mini game like in BioShock would be more interesting because it is still timed and over time you have to get better at the mini-game because it continues to add extra elements that make the game harder. You are constantly doing actions instead of waiting for long animations to play. I do like the animations, but they need to be less than a second and go to the next action.

There we go we need a crafting system that is action packed kind of like the Disciplines of War classes.

[Cursive]

i think what leves you are offered relative to your level still needs adjusting.

i can get a crap ton of battle sp from leve grinding every reset, but i get 1-3 r40+ cloth leves...so maybe 8k if i'm lucky. meanwhile i'm getting 10x+ that from battle leves.

extremely disproportionate.

[Wolfie]

Just throwing out some suggestions:

1. Differentiate between crafting a finished item and component items. Finished items like a tunic should be the items that take longer to produce. Component items like lining, cloth, or thread should be produced very quick and relatively pain free to create.
2. Speed up animations like how they were sped up for DOL
3. Give crafters (and gatherers) more interesting things to do with their job besides sit in town. They could have their own form of behests via hamlets; i.e. help the hamlets rebuild a workshop, chop down some trees, whatever.
4. Allow items to be recolored after they've been produced. Process should be quick, simple, and award minor SP/EXP.

[Unowned]

Just throwing out some suggestions:
3. Give crafters (and gatherers) more interesting things to do with their job besides sit in town. They could have their own form of behests via hamlets; i.e. help the hamlets rebuild a workshop, chop down some trees, whatever.

There needs to be Crafting End-Game besides the HQ game. Like group crafting building a private airship for your linkshell.