This red scrip system doesn't seem very casual-friendly..

[Fenral]

What I've been saying (rather, trying to) is that there's a pretty obvious amount of progression required before you can jump into the two-star recipes, so not being able to now doesn't surprise me in the slightest. People need gear, and while some people are willing to forsake that for the sake of doing favors right off, many more are taking the safe route and gearing up first.

Me? I look at the Forgemaster's Hammer recipe in my Master Blacksmith III book and think, "that's gonna take some work." I'm not trying to craft it now because the materials required scare me, and I know my odds of success are fairly low with the gear I currently have. I also know that, once I am able to craft it in HQ, and hit the meld caps, I'll have a tool that will last me a pretty long time. I know the long-term investment will be worth it, but it's exactly that: a long-term investment.

[scarebearz]

What I've been saying (rather, trying to) is that there's a pretty obvious amount of progression required before you can jump into the two-star recipes, so not being able to now doesn't surprise me in the slightest. People need gear, and while some people are willing to forsake that for the sake of doing favors right off, many more are taking the safe route and gearing up first.

Sorry but you have no idea of what your saying.

The 2* crafts themselves are easy, there is no progression needed to craft them, 3.0 white gear is fine.

once I am able to craft it in HQ, and hit the meld caps, I'll have a tool that will last me a pretty long time. I know the long-term investment will be worth it, but it's exactly that: a long-term investment.

Because Lucis tools were a worthwhile long-term investment? xD

There was a big and expencive grind for those and in the end they were totally and uterly useless.

[Ranzan]

How would you know it's a long term investment? Do you have inside info? Also crafting =/= raiding Idk why people keep saying they are the same when they are not. This system is a failure cause it has improved on anything and has made the economy stagnate on alot of servers. Crafting shouldn't be this restricted ESPECIALLY if there goal was to help ease people into crafting. They did the complete opposite no way around that.

[PirateCat]

What I've been saying (rather, trying to) is that there's a pretty obvious amount of progression required before you can jump into the two-star recipes

It's possible to hit the stat requirements for the two-star crafts without any of the scrip gear, though granted, it takes a ton of melds to get there. Most of the people in this thread who are going for all of the crafting mats they can (myself included) are likely going this route. That being said, this is almost certainly not an accurate representative sample of the playerbase - the act of choosing to participate in a forum discussion tends to have people self-select toward being at the high end of the spectrum of interest/focus in the area.

Me? I look at the Forgemaster's Hammer recipe in my Master Blacksmith III book and think, "that's gonna take some work."

I look at the stats of the Forgemaster's Hammer and think, "no way that that's worth it over the scrips-only version." Having to HQ a recipe that takes that many trade-in mats, only to need to overmeld 15 craftsmanship and 8 control onto an item with one free slot just to break even? No thanks.

[RiceisNice]

..

If we're following patching patterns, we won't see new nodes until 3.2. And even then, you still need the offhand to be crafter, and all crafting gear needs to be crafted (you could do scrips, but there's a huge stat deficiency and probably won't be enough by the time new recipes roll out).

Even with cooperation, the timesink is utterly absurd to make one piece of crafting equipment. The materials themselves are already gated through crafting scrips so it's not like people are going to be bursting out of the gates on release week anyway. We had already decided to pool the materials obtained from red crafting tokens to one person so they can pump out offhands for the FC, but what we're hitting with now is that the materials also require favors that have a 15-minute gathering timer attached to them, for an incredibly varied yield due to RNG.

[Aeyis]

Well, in that case, that certainly sounds a lot like the crafter equivalent of progression raiding. It's slow, tedious, and painful, but the desire to get it down now as opposed to later compels you to press on as you always have rather than stop to reevaluate your approach.

This comment is beyond stupid silly.
Progression raiding is fun. You get to actually do what you enjoy, which is raiding.
Whereas with crafting you cant do what you enjoy most...because its limited behind half a dozen gates.

[Fenral]

So I'm stupid. Fine. It's slow, but I do feel like I'm making forward progress with the approach I've chosen to take, and I do still get to enjoy the parts of crafting that were fun for me. I'll just take my unpopular minority opinion elsewhere.

[Aeyis]

So I'm stupid. Fine. It's slow, but I do feel like I'm making forward progress with the approach I've chosen to take, and I do still get to enjoy the parts of crafting that were fun for me. I'll just take my unpopular minority opinion elsewhere.

Whether or not people are stupid cant be read from posts. Geniusses could write silly things, and fools could write masterpieces.
Arguments however can be stupid not well-thought out.


What parts of crafting do you find fun then? I mean, I don't find anything about this fun. And this is me, who upon (re)joining the game decided I wanted to buy a mansion -from scratch- within 3 months. And I did, so grinding or long term goals are not unknown to me.
I had fun working towards it, I have no fun with this system of crafting.

[DarthBuzzer]

So I'm stupid. Fine. It's slow, but I do feel like I'm making forward progress with the approach I've chosen to take, and I do still get to enjoy the parts of crafting that were fun for me. I'll just take my unpopular minority opinion elsewhere.

I'm not sure how crafting 10 level 60 items, spending 3-4 hours being FORCED as a crafter to gather red scrips, spending 11 hours a week on getting materials that have a low chance to appear so that you can finally craft some materials to make your one 2 star item for the week is progress. Then do it for the next year for your other items.

Because really, that's not much progress.

[PirateCat]

I'm not sure how crafting 10 level 60 items, spending 3-4 hours being FORCED as a crafter to gather red scrips, spending 11 hours a week on getting materials that have a low chance to appear so that you can finally craft some materials to make your one 2 star item for the week is progress. Then do it for the next year for your other items.

You're citing the worst part of the two different paths of progression. The numbers work out to it taking 60-something weeks worth of red scrips to gear up every DOH job provided that a player chooses the pure trade-in version of every gear item for which that is an option. Someone who's going that route isn't grinding the 11 hours of favors per week. Fenral seems content to choose this method, and I have to admit that it's tempting considering how awful the favor grind is right now.

I hate to say it, but this is very likely SE's intent - make it possible for really dedicated players to advance their gear faster, but gate it behind a mechanic that forces you to be really dedicated to going that route. Then provide the slower option for the people who can't be bothered with the "fast" method.