I just wanted to take a moment to point out the gross exaggeration in frein's example of needing to be 20 ranks higher than a synth to hq.

A skilled crafter can synth things above or on par with their current rank and still have a chance to HQ. The likely hood of the higher tiers of HQ are slimmer because they require such a higher level of quality. As it is if a crafter wants to make a high tier hq meaning a 2 or a 3 they can either be significantly higher than the level required to synth and they can crank out the quality because their actions are very likely to be successful, OR they can weigh the odds in their favor by starting with higher quality materials.

Skilled crafters can HQ regardless of their starting mats, but the starting mats increase the odds in their favor. I personally see nothing wrong with this.

My issue with these changes are very much the same issues I had with the first announced change of doing away with refined parts.

They don't fix the inherent issues in the system. They aren't fixing broken aspects to make crafting better, they are changing things just to change things. And this is what has me so confused about people who see the planned changes and cry Manna from Heaven! because these changes don't address the real problems with crafting... they are just arbitrary changes that in all likelihood will cause more problems than they solve.

The high level crafters who aim to crit for profit are still going to do it. They will still be able to charge exorbitant rates for their high level HQ synths. This change won't suddenly mean HQ items are within the reach of everyone, because the people who aren't willing to grind through the ranks of crafting will still largely be unwilling to do it.

Like Sorel, I am largely on the fence about these changes. But the main issue that keeps jumping out at me is most of these fixes are intended to fix things only obliquely related to them. Namely, the economy in general, and the market wards.

I think they are changing too much at once and not necessarily in the right places. And I can understand the standpoint that it's more cost effective to implement alot of changes at once rather than a few over time. But Materia is going to impact the economy in a huge way, as will all these planned crafting changes. Implementing them both at the same time is going to cause a huge mess of data that they aren't going to fully understand. I'd much rather see them introduce materia first and see how it effects the current economy and then plan out how they will change crafting based on the new standard materia creates.

Right now they are working with alot of conjecture, and frankly... I think most of the conjecture is flawed.