Why is Crafting still in the game?

[TrystWildkey]

Fellow players,

I pose a question to you, hoping that there is an answer that I've missed. I admit, when I get frustrated with something, I end up having tunnel vision and may miss some important things.

Currently, I am frustrated with crafting in ARR.

The entire crafting system was re-done. I am assuming that this took a lot of development time. The new crafting system is one of the things I really appreciate about ARR. When I first logged in and searched through my crafting logs, I was impressed.

The way it was structured made me feel like they appreciated crafters and had given us a sort of end-game equivalent path. this is what I saw when I looked at the crafting logs:

Go through your logs, creating things, level up and do the higher level crafts. One-star recipes lead to 2-star recipes. You craft your first set of AF, and work on one-star crafts until you spiritbond those. You turn them into materia and craft another set of AF to meld with. Using the melded AF, you create HQ AF, spiritbond it, create another set and meld it.

To my eyes, this seemed to indicate that we would have a neat sort of end-game-esque gear grind. The reality wasn't exactly how I saw it, since it takes way longer than I assumed it would to spiritbond your crafting AF, and since you could HQ and meld a set of Patrician's gear to suit your crafting needs.

Then, I realized that crafted gear for War/Magic classes required the same tomestones that were used to buy darklight. In some cases, the crafted gear needed more of them. That made crafting gear for War/Magic classes completely obsolete. Who in their right mind would collect an equivalent or higher number of tomestones and spend it on crafted gear instead of Darklight?

Still, I'm an optimist at heart, and hoped that the patches would help crafters.

Many recent dev postings have disabused me of this notion.

Greetings,

Also, in regards to the Disciples of the Hand repair system, the development team is concerned that even if they make adjustments to the system that it would not be used as much as mender NPCs; however, they would still like to make further adjustments. At the moment they are currently working on other elements that are higher in priority and the time period for this adjustment is undecided.

We designed FFXIV so that gear obtained from dungeons is more effective than crafted items.

There are currently no plans to add any end-game style content for Disciples of the Hand.

So, I pose the question: Why do the crafting professions still exist?


NOTE: If you're coming in this thread with the sole intent of being the first person to post a snarky reply, (as this seems to be a pattern lately) I feel sorry for you. Go hug a Lalafell and smile instead.

[Musashidon]

depends on how you see it, crafting is good from alts or helping lower lvl friends with gear. that or things like food which is very good end game.

i love that i am not required to craft end game gear or have someone craft me end game gear because personally i hate crafting.

now i am not saying i hate it so it should suck for everyone else, just saying how the crafting system is now suits how i like to play, that is where crafting is completely optional.

[Zumi]

You do know that come 2.2 they are putting in ilvl 90 crafted items, which will be better then all coil and myth gear because they can be melded. Hardcore people who are chasing world/server firsts will be making these and penta melding them to get an advantage till they are able to get the 110+ gear from coil 6-9.

If it is your goal to make gil with crafting you can make a lot at the start of 2.2.

[Felis]

Vanity gears.
I hope with 2.2 we get a lot of recipes for very good looking vanity gears.

Make raid gear the best in stats and the crafted gears the best in look (and raid gear not very good looking).

[TrystWildkey]

depends on how you see it, crafting is good from alts or helping lower lvl friends with gear. that or things like food which is very good end game.

i love that i am not required to craft end game gear or have someone craft me end game gear because personally i hate crafting.

now i am not saying i hate it so it should suck for everyone else, just saying how the crafting system is now suits how i like to play, that is where crafting is completely optional.

I have crafted gear for my other jobs. And it is useful up to a point, but, they throw SO MUCH GEAR at you through the game, and you level SO QUICKLY, that crafted gear for alts isn't as useful as some might think.

I do agree with you that crafting should not be required. No one wants to play a class that they're not interested in, and the game shouldn't force you. But, crafted gear should still be a viable option.

It comes down to finding a correct balance. You should be able to gear your character either through dungeon runs, or through crafting. Each method of obtaining gear should be viable, even for end-game content. They don't have to be exactly the same, dungeon gear has every right to be a bit stronger. However, crafted gear should be an acceptable way to fully gear your character and be able to hold your own in end-game content.

On the opposite side of your preference, I prefer to not have to dungeon grind for my gear. Which is why I leveled all crafts. Then, I found out that even if I wanted to craft my high level gear, I would be required to run dungeons to get tomestones. And if I'm running dungeons, I might as well just get darklight. Which is what led me to my current frustration

[XanderOlivieri]

I craft because it earns me money faster than FATE and Dungeon grinding. Even selling the materials gives me enough profit to satisfy me. As the time goes by we'll be able to craft bigger and better things. Even if its never good enough to surpass the current end game armor from dungeons, when we are able to craft i90 gear it will be close to being on par with current i90 gear with proper melds. You even have a little more leeway with it to make up for other stats that the armor can boost with only a small sacrifice to the stat you were aiming to improve originally.

Eventually we'll get better gear to craft and they may leave their current notion of End Game will always be better than craft. Keep in mind ARR is only around 6 months old. We can't have game breaking RMT bait this early in. We have to get shafted even a little to have a more structured future in the game. I don't feel many whines and complaints about gear coming out to be justified, because all that's being seen is the negatives of the current now instead of the future now. The positives of Dungeon gear, even with the way it is now, is that its a time biding game. You have to wait out. We cannot start off at a full run without being able to crawl first. Dungeon gear is to let us, the early players, get a start and progress as far as we can as new content appears. When others come in one or two years down the line, they'll be buying our armor which could be better or equal to current dungeon armor they can get at that moment.

Stay positive and keep looking towards a brighter future. With the ilevel cap rising, we get more crafting materials and craftable armor. With Glamour being something that Crafting classes will get a focus with, we'll have some time between patches to make money. New crafting recipes for the sake of Glamour as well as new ilevel and new stared gear and items to craft will continue to rise with each patch that focuses on them.

[TrystWildkey]

You do know that come 2.2 they are putting in ilvl 90 crafted items, which will be better then all coil and myth gear because they can be melded. Hardcore people who are chasing world/server firsts will be making these and penta melding them to get an advantage till they are able to get the 110+ gear from coil 6-9.

If it is your goal to make gil with crafting you can make a lot at the start of 2.2.

Is this confirmed? If so, then perhaps it's a good thing that I haven't run out of subscription time yet.

However, if the i90 crafted items follow the same pattern, and require tomestones, then I'm still in the same boat.

EDIT: I should also add, that earning gil is really not one of my goals. I craft because I enjoy it, and because originally, with 1.0 and 1.23, it was a great way for me to be able to contribute to my ls since I'm not one of the better players with regard to dungeons and raids.

[Rufalus]

I think crafting and then wearing your own low level gear is really rewarding to do. It's only really the endgame crafted gear that is made obsolete by superior raid gear.

[Zumi]

Is this confirmed? If so, then perhaps it's a good thing that I haven't run out of subscription time yet.

However, if the i90 crafted items follow the same pattern, and require tomestones, then I'm still in the same boat.

They said lvl90 crafted items come from mythology which will be uncapped in 2.2.

[Lazearus]

I wish they would reconsider making DoH/DoL as actual classes again, like being able to actively participate in end game content like 1.0's hamlet defence. That was such a unique experience.

It's such a waste of potential to develop the classes so much, only relegate them to playing passive roles end game.