Well, looking at the current state of the crafting after both researching and playing the game - it's somewhat saddening. Even more so - as relatively to other mmos - FFXIV has pretty decent crafting system (or rather mini-game) going beyond simple "click to craft". Emphasis on word relatively - it's not without issues - enduring excuriating boredom of playing same simple mini-game thousands of times during leveling phase leads to obvious side effects (same applies to gathering sadly).

Nevermind pre-50 boring and almost completely pointless timesink - enter level 50, and what do we have ? Game handing down equipment indirectly by means of tokens (tomestones) and npcs/quests - /or/ - directly through full item drops (with RNG on top). Equipment crafting plays secondary role as essentially a single ilvl70 feature - an adventure rather time consuming and expensive relatively to other options, while hardly necessary in practice (min-maxing, etc.). As this is about equipment, we will leave ALC and CUL issues for different threads. Small ironic bonus issue: crafters can't even craft their own best mainhand tools (seriously that's lame).


Below is a simple outline of I'd say simple and logical system that makes both part of the game - dungeons and equipment crafting - both necessary at the same time, without making one of those roughly pointless.

So - instead of full item drops - make the respective bosses drop crafting key materials with craft-bound property. What does it mean ?
  • key materials stack with each other only if they are looted by the same person
  • all types of key materials supplied during crafting must come from the same looter (raider)
  • no constraints on trading

After the item is crafted:
  • it's automatically use-bound to the person that looted the key-materials - namely it cannot be equipped or converted by anyone else; at the same time:
  • no constraints on trading

Alternatively - as the game already has many recipes where other items are used as the crafting components - instead of materials, the item drops could remain as they are - but then could be improved through crafting (so they would be craft-bound as well - equippable/convertible by original looter, but tradable).

This system solves typical issues with the crafter vs. endgame dungeon loot:
  • crafter =/= raider (though of course it can be the same person)
  • both endgame crafting and dungeons play equally important role
  • for raiders: part of usually frustrating RNG is removed - namely getting drops they don't need [anymore] or want at all in the first place
  • crafted items are usable only in the hands of the rightful owner (person that looted the materials) - that property is of course simple on/off flip, mostly applicable to the endgame dungeons and BiS stuff
  • very fine grained control over the content gating (amount of materials required for a craft, amount of materials dropped per run)
  • this naturally opens tons of extra options that could be possible through crafting (e.g. customizing the item's base bonuses set)
  • no RMT related issues either

It's simple, elegant and fair to both craft and combat classes.