Changes to 2-star crafts - discussion

[YuriRamona]

We understand that the cost of materials for 2-star crafts is a bit high when it comes to their ingredients purchased with Allagan tomestones of philosophy. Therefore, we will make the necessary changes to recipes that use more than 1125 tomestones and scale them down a bit so all of the recipes will no longer use more than 1125 tomestones.

Posting this here to notify crafters that aren't aware, and also to discuss SE's attitude towards crafting generally.

This issue, which had been identified from the very start, was left unacknowledged and unaddressed for months. We were therefore led to believe that this was not a problem, but a feature of the 2-star crafting system, however broken and nonsensical it seemed.

Players adjusted their routine to farm up these philosophy tomestone ingredients and crafters priced them accordingly. I doubt this will spur people to unsubscribe, but it removes incentives for these farmers/crafters to log on and play.

I'm not saying that this change is not a long time coming, to be expected, or fair. The market will recover and will be much healthier than it is now.

I just find it extremely strange that when their stance toward the economy has been so cautious (abolishing shard/crystal/cluster conversion/synthesis, withholding price information on housing, delaying repair cost decrease, and delaying high-level dungeon gil drops), that they would make such an announcement that obliterates the 2-star/philosophy ingredient market overnight.

They could have silently made this adjustment for 2.1 and indicated it in the patch notes. Of course, this would have angered players that purchased the big-ticket items right before the patch. I don't know what the more sensible approach is, but I'm not particularly certain if this is a genuine step towards transparency (which would be great) or simply a misstep that signals carelessness and incompetence with handling the in-game economy.

I lean towards the latter. Viewed alone, this change is fantastic. However, given their track record towards crafters, this change shows SE's lack of concern. Why sit on this glaring problem for so long? Why use us crafters as guinea pigs for their economic experiment?

[Faeye]

Here is my 2-cents and I'll repeat what has been said before...
By SE reducing the cost of the mats for 2 stars is wrong approach. As of now, there are plenty of players whom only sign on Monday to cap their Mythology then sign-off and don't sign back in until whichever day that player has Coil run. So, with reduced value in Philosophy mats, I can see more players jump into this trench.
Crafting Classes isn't needed for end-game except for melding for Relic quest.
So, reducing cost will slap Crafters and current of 2* items Owners in the face.
SE should increase effectiveness of 2* items.

[Norack]

Posting this here to notify crafters that aren't aware, and also to discuss SE's attitude towards crafting generally.

This issue, which had been identified from the very start, was left unacknowledged and unaddressed for months. We were therefore led to believe that this was not a problem, but a feature of the 2-star crafting system, however broken and nonsensical it seemed.

Thats the way SE rolls. I remember it took almost 6 months in FFXIV 1.0 to simply get a hardware mouse cursor in the game.

[rex1976]

i guess that would have been cool... if they werent bringing in lvl 80 unlimited repeat dungeon wich i assume drops i80 gear... making all 2star crafted gear completely obsolete. unless there is no i80 gear drops.

[Giantbane]

i guess that would have been cool... if they werent bringing in lvl 80 unlimited repeat dungeon wich i assume drops i80 gear... making all 2star crafted gear completely obsolete. unless there is no i80 gear drops.

...bringing in lvl 80 unlimited repeat + only able to loot 1 item per week dungeon...


but aside from that, I doubt the ilvl 80 stuff is going to be able to be melded, so the crafted stuff still has that going for it

[Githiun]

1. "Crafted gear isn't used in end game" - wrong.
I know countless coil runners including people who have towned Twintania (people in my FC) that use at least 1-2 pieces of Overmelded crafted gear. Especially ring and helm.

2. I personally think requiring 2250 tomes to make one piece of gear is a little extreme..... is nerfing it down the proper approach maybe not. In WoW if recall correctly high end crafting mats dropped at certain points of dungeons. Maybe upon completion those with a crafting class could roll on the crafting material. That would help speed it up a bit. If you won a drop that would essentially eliminate 1.25 WP runs you had to do to get yoru materials needed.

3. Another major concern I have with the 2star that require 2 main compoents is that they're not THAT much if any better stat wise then their 1component brothers. As Faeye mentioned, a small increase in quality of the 2250 Philo items would be nice even if maybe it's just 1 more guaranteed materia slots. That would reduce the overall overmelding cost significantly.

4. I don't care how "easy" it is to get gear. Crafted gear will never go away from end game because there are too many people with too much money that would rather just buy a crafted i70 set and meld it so they can walk a fresh 50 into end game content.....that is all =)

[Gurpsmeister]

...bringing in lvl 80 unlimited repeat + only able to loot 1 item per week dungeon...
but aside from that, I doubt the ilvl 80 stuff is going to be able to be melded, so the crafted stuff still has that going for it

The problem is you don't -NEED- the melded ILVL 70 to succeed. It's really more a trophy set than anything else and the price is already plumeting. Giving Ilvl 80 stuff atop of philo / myth items and allagan for those running coil there's just so many ways the game gives you suitable gear that it's cutting the crafter out of the picture entirely. The only exception to this that I can..sort of see..is if someone has a secondary class they don't wana gear up normally and just buy them their crafted stuff. Still with the ease of obtaining gear I dont' see that as a driving or thriving market.
Two star crafts are steadily declining in sales and value as it is. Reducing the materials will only drive them down farther to the point of not being worth crafting at all.

[Githiun]

We will get a boost in 2.2 though. So hopefully that'll reinvigorate the crafting section.