Quote Originally Posted by Heartfire View Post
Crafting has, and always will be, a side chore. I understand that SE wanted it to be on the same scale as leveling an actual job. But let's face it: No one starts an MMO and says "Yeah! I'm going to be an epic blacksmith!"

In most MMOs, crafting is meant to be a side thing we do in between leveling. XIV's crafting system is cumbersome, takes too long, and ultimately isn't fun. It's even more annoying that XI's crafting system. So at this point, they have actually defeated their own purpose.

I completely agree with the OP. There is far too much emphasis on crafting. It takes away from my time adventuring to sit down and craft. At this point, I just try to avoid it all together. It isn't fun in the slightest. If it were a lesser part of the game, I wouldn't mind dabbling in it. But the idea to turn crafts into a class that equals in importance to a real class is simply laughable. Or it is, at least, until you realize that it actually happened. Then it just gets annoying.

So yeah. I won't be crafting until they fix some stuff.
Just because crafting always has a side chore doesn't mean it should stay that way.

Back when the first ever game was developed on the pc it was a side chore, and now we have people who use their pc only for games.
There are countless examples in history of things that used to be a 'side chore' but became the main focus of people.

I disagree with your statement of "No one starts an MMO and says "Yeah! I'm going to be an epic blacksmith!"". I've seen a lot of people in ffxiv who have multiple crafting jobs at rank 30 and 40 but their battle job is at rank 20 only. They value the crafting more than the battles, else they would have had higher rank battle classes.

So why is it that you don't often hear people say "Yeah! I'm going to be an epic blacksmith!"? Because they often don't have the chance. How many mmo's are out there that will allow you to be an epic blacksmith, and just that? Most of them allow you to be an epic blacksmith, but only if their fighting skill/level/rank is also 'epic'.

But now there is ffxiv, and crafting can be your main focus, and you can become an epic blacksmith. And what do we see?
We see people choosing that path.

I applaud the developers for this. They tried something new and they were even nice enough not to make crafters the main focus of the game, but have battle classes at equal height. I'm not saying their execution was/is flawless, but without innovation and trying out new ideas we would still be in the stone age.


Yes, I do agree crafting need improvements. It would be nice if it was made more fun(that's true for the complete game actually). But to degrade crafting to an 'optional' feature, something to point at and laugh, never!.