End game and crafting: a topic for discussion

[Ceodore]

An issue with centralizing a gap bridging function around crafting, or really around ANY one aspect of the game is you then have that aspect become a must, and crafting is by far the worst choice of the possible progression choices. ABSOLUTELY worst! The market prices for materials, gear, etc., is already very inflated. Making a craft vital to bridging a gap between players of different ilvls means that this trend will inflate faster. So, no, I definitely, completely, and adamantly disagree with making crafting required in any way, shape, or form.

I won't sit here and pretend that the fresh 50s don't have issue with advancing quickly to catch up with others who are already well established, and this is a problem that needs to be handled, but not by funneling them into using any certain one method cored around one aspect of the game. What makes any MMO great is the availability of options to bring about a goal. Crafting, as it stands, is right where it should be, just right behind the end game gear, for one reason, the customization on it makes it far superior to gear of its equivalent ilvl. If they released ilvl 130 crafted gear along with Final Coil, there would be a sever lack of need of FCoB.

Other options that really need to be implemented are things that shouldn't have ever been removed in the first place. Philo tomes and Myth tomes shouldn't have been removed at all, only given the option of trading between the classes of tomes (while they implemented the function to trade up, but a function to trade down should have been made available too. This would make the previous gear drastically easier to get, instead of turning them into dungeon drops (Myth gear is effectively a dungeon drop now). New gear appearances should have been made instead for the new dungeons. One of the worst choices a designer can make in a game is removing any system already implemented. Outdated systems should only be made easier when newer systems are implemented that are harder. This ensures that your game keeps the relatively same level of progression for players who are freshly reaching the end of the game. As it stands, players reaching 50 are finding that they are struggling to get the tomes to buy Soldiery items because the dungeons they have unlocked already don't even give 1/10 of a piece of gear. And the items that use to be so easy to get with Philo or Myth are now squabbled over by players in a dungeon and subjected to the RNG of a dice roll.

With the massive hunt nerf too, getting the soldiery items from a hunt is just as difficult as it was before the removal of Myth tomes. Where Soldiery was suppose to essentially become the new myth in this sense, it remained stagnant... no, it became worse actually. Fewer people do hunts now. I'm not saying that hunts should drop Poetics now either. No. My ideal fix for this would have been instead to have all the hunts drop the same number of tomes, only different tomes (i.e. B ranks, Philo, A ranks, Myth, S ranks, Soldiery and 50 of each is fine) This way, Philo gear, will remain very common, and still be considered very introductory, Myth gear will be in the middle, and the Soldiery from the S ranks will only be slightly easier to acquire. And probably put the spawn rate of B ranks up a little, to maybe 5 to 10 minutes in random locations.

Another option I see is the use of Labyrinth and ST and the new 24 man. Since Labyrinth drops gear of ilvl 80, in between philo and myth, it should go back to dropping 100 philo and 50 myth. ST, which drops ilvl 100, in between myth and upgraded soldiery, should go back to dropping 100 myth and 50 soldiery as well as the upgrade items for soldiery pieces. The new 24 man should drop 100 soldiery and 50 poetics as well as the upgrade items for poetic gear.

All of these changes would ensure player just reaching end game wouldn't find progression in ilvl so difficult or jumpy. As it is, the only real reason they are running the lower ilvl dungeons is for the tomes to jump to the end game, but the rate at which they are able to acquire the gear is slowed due to SE decreasing the amount of tomes dropping in lower dungeons because the types of tomes are for a higher ilvl. This doesn't really help them at all. It simply makes the game feel like a complete grind. So, drop more tomes of a lower grade, so that these players can feel like the dungeon is more worth their time, but still effectively makes their progress no faster. We aren't talking about just giving players their gear, they will still have to put in work towards the gear, but their progress will FEEL better because they will be looking at new pieces more often instead of sitting on the same ilvl 50/55 pieces for weeks on end before replacing one piece with an ilvl 100 and repeating that same grind for weeks again for another piece.

[Sylve]

While i can certainly agree with wanting Crafters to interact more with Raiders, but forcing those who enjoy raiding to have their raid gear crafted by some random guy, who may not even get it HQ after you went to the all the trouble of downing the encounter sounds like a terrible idea.

What i think should happen is that Raids, such as Coil and the Primals, drop materials themed to those Raids in addition to what they drop regularly. These materials can be used to create alternate, same item level gear with similar stats. Maybe even in some cases the crafted stuff is just exactly what the boss would ordinarily drop,
This would help take the sting out of RNG never ever dropping gear for that one guy who has no luck whatsoever and is forever behind the gear curve in your static as a result.

They could even have specialty sets from the Primals that are themed to the presentation of the Primal itself, Like Ifrit and Titan themed Armor.

Such a system would include the ability to have a Crafter make something with Materials in your Inventory, much like the way the Materia Meld Requests work. That would allow the Materials obtained to be non-tradeable while keeping the ability for Crafters to join in.
The Item would be automatically deposited in the Material owners Inventory so it doesn't just become another Market Board vanity thing.

Such an idea would allow crafters to be in some form of demand by Raiders outside of niche 1% cutting edge crews. Who most likely craft their own gear.

[Stihllodeing]

...snip (post#10) ...and the economy were controlled by the crafters back then.....

While I liked the entire post, this is what I thought was most relevant to the thread. I immediately thought about what Hyrist eluded to in post #20. If you were to have the class players dependent on disciple players, you would create an environment directly manipulated by those with access. You would essentially influence players to become segregated and recluse to the population as a whole.

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage, when the sample group is large enough, they will. You will have players who feel the game is social, when in fact they are disillusioned to the fact they are only social within their small demographic and antisocial to the player base as a whole. It's not intentional for the most part but people tend to mistake their experiences with 10-20 (or so) individuals in an mmo as an accurate measure to judge the social activities as a whole for that mmo, which is of course unknowingly ignorant and bias but understandable as it is natural.

The following quote is an example of the aforementioned misconception:

Yeah sure did suck when people had to be social in a MMO.

post #11 in response to a post by Enis

[Viridiana]

Making entry level or "gap filler" gear is nice and all, but it seem to me that there could be more to it. . .

That being said, having raid specific material drops that a player with a high enough DoH class could use to upgrade gear would be a nice acknowledgement of the effort it takes to be a highest-tier crafter.

Actually, a number of classes have crafted gear as part of their true BIS lists each patch (though we'll need new materia in 3.0 or I don't see the trend continuing). The only thing is each piece costs several million gil on most servers, so no one wants to pay it.

As for your actual idea, it's something I've kinda recommended before, but I would like to put a few caveats on there. First, the raid drops should be untradeable, I think. This is to prevent RMT concerns, primarily; that is, you don't want people buying gil to buy the item to craft stuff if you can avoid it. Plus, you want to make sure that the person getting the benefit was actually in the raid, right? Second, I don't think it should be the case for every slot of gear. More reasonable would be something like one or two pieces per job. Lastly, the "runner up" if you can't get the crafted item should be very, very close behind. Probably about on the order that current dropped gear is behind crafted: about 6 of your primary stat's worth of stats if you went all out.

Basically, I'd like to see a reason for crafting to be in endgame, but without ruining the fun of those who don't like crafting.

[scarebearz]

I'd rather see IV/III Materia drops from chests in place of the current crafting mats.

[Jynx]

When you create an environment that gives one particular group of individuals the power/means to directly hold another group hostage

But nobody has or ever will be "Held hostage" unless they choose to allow it. Everyone can craft, everyone can battle, everyone can gather. Allowing people to specialize and require each to rely on eachother is fundamental to community building not a powerplay to see who can screw who over.

That's pretty much allready in the game when you see materia prices, it sure isn't the "People with the power" it's the people who have the time to spiritbind and sell materia taking advantage of the people who either don't have time or are too lazy to do so.

I'm also unsure where you get the magic (10-20 or so people) to be considered what a hostage population considers social interaction because in games where people are reliant on eachother for progress and development you certainly mingle with far more than 10 people unless your avoiding social contact then nobody can help you, thankfully the game allows you to do everything and you don't need to be reliant on others, it is mutually benificial to do so but not required.

Currently it's hardly benificial and in many ways discouraged to socialize once you have a group of several people because anyone beyond that is bound to be left out of activities due to silly things such as lockouts and other restrictions.