Enter Spamming (crafting)

[AlexiaKidd]

The problem I have with crafting is the tedious grind once you hit the 30's it becomes very slow making the same item over and over hundreds of times. I like the system when I am making items to sell or keep like armour and weapons as you have more control over what is happening, but using the same system to gain ranks is too much for me.

They need a different way to gain ranks for crafting, something that doesn't involve grinding over and over on the same synths.

[Raikki]

I have no problem with the crafting system when I'm, say, making a piece of armor I need. The problem is that the system is completely horrible for ranking up. Any solution needs to accept the fact that a lot of people are going to bot and get away with it if it gives them an advantage, and be designed to level the playing field so that legitimate players aren't screwed anymore. Otherwise, crafting can never be a major part of the economy without there being major issues of fairness.

I would personally vote for an auto-synth system with the speed of Hasty Hand, the success rate of standard spam, and maybe 20% less SP. We'll still be limited by materials, so I honestly don't think that's unreasonable. I realize lots of current crafters would look at that as trivializing that for which they worked hard. I can relate. I grinded my way to 3 rank 50 crafts before the SP buff, and about half of that was also before the shard cost reduction. Those changes made crafting a lot easier for the people who followed, but they were necessary changes. I believe this is also a necessary change. Let's face it, the alternative is that botters continue to AFK their way to 50's unchecked while we struggle with a tedious system, and there will be no hope for a legitimate fair crafting economy.

Edit: To clarify, I would want the regular craft system to remain in place and be necessary to be able to complete difficult synths or to HQ.

[AlexiaKidd]

How about a different way of ranking your crafts something along the lines of quests or something. So say you would go somewhere for each level and have to fulfill certain requirements. So at R30 for example you need to crafts someone 10 of this item and 20 of another and they have to be over a certain quality to advance to the next rank. I really don't think crafting should be about a mindless grind in FFXIV, you shouldn't need to churn the same synth over and over. It should focus on being able to produce high quality goods, that should be your form of progression.

I don't know but something needs to change even in FFXI which many consider a grind it was a lot faster to get levels. I took cooking to 50 in just a few days when I really focused on it in FFXIV that wouldn't even make a dint in the SP required to get to R50.

Also when the level cap goes up I shudder to think how much SP you will need to get to 60,75,99 and so on 98-99 could well be 1 million SP.

[TheVedis]

How about a different way of ranking your crafts something along the lines of quests or something. So say you would go somewhere for each level and have to fulfill certain requirements. So at R30 for example you need to crafts someone 10 of this item and 20 of another and they have to be over a certain quality to advance to the next rank. I really don't think crafting should be about a mindless grind in FFXIV, you shouldn't need to churn the same synth over and over. It should focus on being able to produce high quality goods, that should be your form of progression.

I don't know but something needs to change even in FFXI which many consider a grind it was a lot faster to get levels. I took cooking to 50 in just a few days when I really focused on it in FFXIV that wouldn't even make a dint in the SP required to get to R50.

Also when the level cap goes up I shudder to think how much SP you will need to get to 60,75,99 and so on 98-99 could well be 1 million SP.

the grind isnt as bad as some people make it out to be

HOWEVER, the final grind is pretty bad, but for reasons other then the fact its a grind

as you rank up, throughout all the levels, you can always go to the next best recipe to grind on whenever sp starts getting low
as you approach 50 you just do not have that option, so along with the sp needed going up, the sp earned goes down, something you only see in those final few ranks that you cant do anything about

i predict the sp needed to rank up to 60 will be horrendous(we already know there was a 10k jump from 50-51) but ill be looking forward to doing it no matter how bad it is just for the sake of doing it

[Colt47]

The problem I have with crafting is the tedious grind once you hit the 30's it becomes very slow making the same item over and over hundreds of times. I like the system when I am making items to sell or keep like armour and weapons as you have more control over what is happening, but using the same system to gain ranks is too much for me.

They need a different way to gain ranks for crafting, something that doesn't involve grinding over and over on the same synths.

I agree whole heartedly, and have actually made a similar comment in another thread regarding crafting.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

How about a different way of ranking your crafts something along the lines of quests or something. So say you would go somewhere for each level and have to fulfill certain requirements. So at R30 for example you need to crafts someone 10 of this item and 20 of another and they have to be over a certain quality to advance to the next rank. I really don't think crafting should be about a mindless grind in FFXIV, you shouldn't need to churn the same synth over and over. It should focus on being able to produce high quality goods, that should be your form of progression.

I don't know but something needs to change even in FFXI which many consider a grind it was a lot faster to get levels. I took cooking to 50 in just a few days when I really focused on it in FFXIV that wouldn't even make a dint in the SP required to get to R50.

Also when the level cap goes up I shudder to think how much SP you will need to get to 60,75,99 and so on 98-99 could well be 1 million SP.

I think this could be a great idea to rank up with quests, each level with a different item/amount/quality required to advance to the next level. This would maybe halt botters as well since you need to run around a bit more and hand in quests.

I know there will be people that feels like it should not change because THEY had to go through it and THEY think the grind isn't that bad, and I will not name anyone, but those people should put their personal interest aside for the benefit of the game.

[Atoli]

I like the quest idea

Another idea I had when reading this thread:
How about an auto crafting system with low quality output but minigames for higher quality?
Like..when you make item A with the auto crafting system, you get less items from it, the quality is worse, and you get less SP for making it.
But there's also a minigame you may decide to do ( I mean a real minigame, not what we have now), for example sewing some cloth parts together or cutting along a line drawn onto a wooden board (with your cursor within a time limit).
The closer you are to what you were supposed to do, the better is the quality of the result, and you get more SP as well.
So it's fine for lazy people because they can just leave their PC while crafting, but it's more interesting and rewarding for those who stay and do it manually, too.

[Colt47]

Honestly, I think this crafting system needs an even bigger overhaul than what they've had to do to get auto attack and class / rank merged. The original idea that appears to be present in the crafting system is a move towards quality crafting, and as both of you point out (referring to Atoli and Perrin), alternate means to gaining ranks need to be employed in order to avoid burning out on a mini-game that is really meant more so for final production than parts manufacturing. They probably need to have a different, less involving system of creating parts to compliment a more game like final product creation process.

[AngryNixon]

I don't mind the spamming to much as long as the items you're grinding on feed into the next thing you're grinding on whenever and wherever possible so that there is at least some sensible efficiency to what you're doing other than literally creating 100s of pieces of NPC junk with quite literally no other possible purpose than to end up being sold to an NPC.

As a side note the state of disrepair the wards are in contributes significantly to this problem (of not having any other viable outlet for items other than to dump them on an NPC). Maybe Silver Rings really should be extremely cheap and affordable for low level players instead of being artificially expensive because the now 1000s that have disappeared to the NPCs could have at least been somewhat diverted into the hands of new players for reasonable prices. Call it charity if you want but diverting even a percentage of all junk armor created for low prices to new players, in my mind anyhow, contributes to a fuller economy that has a good base of low/mid price gear and fosters a fuller sense of a player driven economy. As it is now the "spam" crafting is almost an island unto itself separated from the larger cycle of the economy.

That's not the fault of the crafters though at all, they're simply working with the broken mess they've been given. I think, ultimately, the question of the enjoyability of crafting and the state of the economy and its mechanics are inextricably linked. If one sucks, the other is handicapped as well.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

Honestly, I think this crafting system needs an even bigger overhaul than what they've had to do to get auto attack and class / rank merged. The original idea that appears to be present in the crafting system is a move towards quality crafting, and as both of you point out (referring to Atoli and Perrin), alternate means to gaining ranks need to be employed in order to avoid burning out on a mini-game that is really meant more so for final production than parts manufacturing. They probably need to have a different, less involving system of creating parts to compliment a more game like final product creation process.

Yeah parts could be made possible to auto-craft and final products should be made with the (or a different) mini-game. They could change the quality algorythm a bit and remove the +1+2+3 on parts to alleviate the inventory issues.

I'm all for something different than an auto-craft for parts, like quests or something else if they can cook up something, but I think auto-craft for parts/skill up and mini-game (challenge) for finished items would be a simple yet efficient fix.