End game and crafting: a topic for discussion

[Illmaeran]

I was, and am, indeed serious. However, I was just tossing ideas out there for people to talk about and see what other ideas come out of the discussion.

I feel strongly that raiding, and PVP too, should offer rewards commensurate with the difficulty of the content/time invested, so please don't think otherwise. What I would love to see is more synergy between crafting and other content. Making entry level or "gap filler" gear is nice and all, but it seem to me that there could be more to it.

In no way, as one posted mentioned, should a DoH class be allowed into a raid.
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. Having a separate small quest for an NPC to do the upgrades if people don't want to bother with finding a DoH or leveling a DoH class to do the upgrades would be another nice touch.

Again, these are just crazy-ass thoughts I figured I'd throw out there to spark discussion

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday; whichever one you celebrate this time of year.

[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.