Why is Crafting still in the game?

[Taruranto]

Sometimes I find it a little silly that people want the best gear, and yet they have no desire to do end game content for it.

But you can get the best gears without doing zero end game content. Just run HM dungeons (the very same dungeon you run to buy stuff for crafted items!) over and over, get myth and buy equip from vendor. With some jobs they are better than most coil/ct stuff. In fact, it's probably harder and time-expensive to penta-meld some stuff (getting the right material, the gil, the materia) than simply buying iLevel 90 equipment.


Super-hardcore.

[RegnumMagik]

But you can get the best gears without doing zero end game content. Just run HM dungeons (the very same dungeon you run to buy stuff for crafted items!) over and over, get myth and buy equip from vendor. With some jobs they are better than most coil/ct stuff. In fact, it's probably harder and time-expensive to penta-meld some stuff (getting the right material, the gil, the materia) than simply buying iLevel 90 equipment.


Super-hardcore.

It's gonna take a month+ to grind for the "best" gear due to lock out. And some pieces such as accessories for certain classes are completely crap.
At that point, there's 3 opitions: Pray to RNG god in coils, waste your weekly tomestone on a piece of crap that you can potentially use on an alt, or craft a piece that can substitute with better secondary stats.

I don't necessarily want crafted gear equal to Allagan gear. I've said previously that gear dropped from the high end dungeons has every right to be a bit better than crafted.

What I find particularly irksome about high-end crafted gear, is that its requirements are exactly the same as for darklight. So, even if I wanted to use crafted gear for that mid-level area of i70, I'd STILL be required to get the same amount of tomestones as I would for darklight. Which means the same amount of dungeon grinding. In addition to the dungeon grinding, I'd have to gather/craft the rest of the materials for the i70 crafted gear.

That just doesn't make sense to me.

For a person that enjoys min-maxing, I like squeeze out every bit I can get. And like I said, some pieces with correct meld can be potentially better.

Is the amount of tomes required to craft a piece justified? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the extra.

[Taruranto]

It's gonna take a month+ to grind for the "best" gear due to lock out. And some pieces such as accessories for certain classes are completely crap.
At that point, there's 3 opitions: Pray to RNG god in coils, waste your weekly tomestone on a piece of crap that you can potentially use on an alt, or craft a piece that can substitute with better secondary stats.

My point still stand. It takes 2 week to get AF2 SCH BiS, 1 week for each accessory. They are all BiS. Myth are basically throw at you between CT/Treasures/DR/Dailies.


So yes, getting BiS gears in this game is a nobrainer, they are literally handled to you. Meanwhile, crafted items, require you to 1) Level a craft (or find and pay one), 2) Pay money for/farm items 3) Meld your equip/Buy materia 4) Run dungeons several times for tomes item. Then, when you finally have your crafted item, they are not better than most iLevel 90 (or even CT stuff, jeez) stuff from myth tomes that, I repeat, are freely given to you with little to no effort.

Does this seem fair, to you?

[RegnumMagik]

My point still stand. It takes 2 week to get AF2 SCH BiS, 1 week for each accessory. They are all BiS. Myth are basically throw at you between CT/Treasures/DR/Dailies.


So yes, getting BiS gears in this game is a nobrainer, they are literally handled to you. Meanwhile, crafted items, require you to 1) Level a craft (or find and pay one), 2) Pay money for/farm items 3) Meld your equip/Buy materia 4) Run dungeons several times for tomes item. Then, when you finally have your crafted item, they are not better than most iLevel 90 (or even CT stuff, jeez) stuff from myth tomes that, I repeat, are freely given to you with little to no effort.

Does this seem fair, to you?

One is limited by lockout, the other is unlimited but requires more effort.

For people who don't have much time to spent to begin with, they will probably be able to wait it out without doubt.

But for people who have time in their hands, and they have the time to invest....it's not too much to grind for a couple crafted pieces.

When it comes to new contents, I don't sit around and wait for my BIS so I can have an easier time getting a win. And as a person who plays multiple classes to fill roles, I simply can't acquire BIS through just weekly tomes and coil loots.

Neither you or I can justify what's fair just base on a small fraction of people's opinion.

[LineageRazor]

Does this seem fair, to you?

No, not fair. But - and this is the issue I think SE is desperately trying to avoid - whenever any crafted piece of gear is BiS, it encourages pay-to-win. Gilsellers don't even have to take the time to level a craft - they just need to sell enough gil to players who want to buy what the crafters are crafting.

Gilsellers and gilbuyers are a fact of life. However folks feel about whether SE is doing a good job of combatting RMT or not, it's unlikely that they will ever be totally rooted out. By insisting that BiS gear drops only from high-level dungeons (or, in this case, by collecting a special currency that is only obtainable via high-level dungeons), the only way that RMT can peddle those wares to folks is by going through the same level-grind and gear-grind that normal players do. If RMT DO go to those extremes, and SE managed to kill such an account (or, more likely, a Full Party's worth of such accounts), it's a much bigger blow than if a low-level FATE or Leve farmer was knocked out.

It's a kick in the 'nads to crafters, to be sure, but it's hard to argue with the logic. As it stands, for an RMT group to sell anyone BiS gear, they would either need to carry them through 450 Myth worth of dungeons every week until the piece is earned, or require use of the customer's log-in information so they can do everything for them. Either method, but especially the latter, puts a great deal of risk on the customer, which is a pretty potent deterrent, and requires the RMT crew to level characters to a point where they can do this Myth farming.