How Would You Like to See Crafting Done?

[Stormfur]

I love crafting. I've got my Master II books on every class and just about had every Lucis at the time HW came out. I'm working toward 60s on everything now (with the exception of botany and fishing).

I hear all this stuff about red scrips and desynthing items to get other items, and other stuff that's gated and none of it being worthwhile and whatnot. So my question is -- I think by now the devs have heard us wringing our hands and hanging up our hammers in frustration.

Let's look at a more constructive way to move forward. How would YOU like to see crafting done? Are there other MMOs that handle this aspect well? For many people, crafting is their end game, and others (myself included) it's a little mix of raiding/crafting/gathering. It seems right now SE is catering to one and the other, but not people who do both.

What would you suggest?

[govtcheeze]

ARR was fine. Omni-crafting was fine. The grinds, RNG, and time sinks were fine. Casuals could easily get to 2* and hardcores could go all the way up to 4*. I got to 50 late and still made 3/4 of my money in at and below 2*. This whole focus on gating and gimmicks of 3.0 is just confused.

[PirateCat]

The current system has more similarities to the old grinds than people on the forums are giving it credit for. Red scrips at their core aren't all that far off from Ixali oaknots in their function, it's just a weekly cap rather than a daily one, and in both cases the mats that you ultimately buy from them are tradeable.

The big things I can see that would drastically reduce the current level of angst are:
1. The mats acquired from red scrips should have been usable to make crafting or gathering gear only, and the mats for the corresponding DOW/DOM gear should have been separate and obtainable via other means (e.g. law tomestones, possibly blue scrips if they wanted to make them reasonably accessible.) Similar to Ehcatl sealants being separate from kirimu etc.
2. Provide a means to obtain red scrips that doesn't require a lot of crossclassing or buying expensive mats. The cool thing about the Ehcatl quests was that you could complete them entirely on the strength of how good you were at the one crafting job you were using when making the components. Some of them required that you have a miner/botanist/fisher, but at such a low level requirement that it was trivially achievable.
3. Don't tie the gathering favor mechanic to red scrips, and make the favor items apply to the mats for the DOW/DOM gear recipes only. The current system requires crafters to have at least one level 60 DOL and to have both miner and botanist at level 56 minimum in order to be able to get the mats to progress in their crafting gear, which flies in the face of the stated "being an omnicrafter shouldn't be necessary" idea (see point 2) while also creating the potential for severe feel-bad moments when people get less than the expected reward for time-gated resources. There can still be a grind, and I applaud the effort to make spending time on gathering more relevant, but it's too limited and tied into everything else right now.

That's about it, really. I'm not too broken up about the fact that the current crafted DOW/DOM gear isn't terribly endgame relevant - we've had periods like that before and I expect that this will be brought a little more in line later on. As people have noted, it's possible to qualify for 2 star recipes right now without a single piece of i170/i180 gear, and they have an established pattern of making it possible to overgear for the current top recipes and then releasing harder recipes later on. We're obviously in the gearing up stage.

[Lorglath]

You can (almost) get away with any restriction/grind so long as crafting as useful. This can be through battle use, or glamour/furniture. Square's insistence on getting crafting gear out of end game and laziness on reskinning gear has gotten rid of this.

I'd like to see at the very least one slot for DoW/DoM being a crafted BiS. This could either be a different random slot each update, or if they're really terrified of that, a unique slot added that is only from crafting. This guarantees that whatever ups and downs they might have there will be something worthwhile. Find a way to let each craft make something for that BiS location so you don't have to be an Omni-crafter for it.

With that out of the way, rethink consumables. Get rid of all the shared cool-downs and lower the timers while you're at it. Have food that is maybe even worthwhile switching types in the middle of battles. Increase the experience buff from HQ food to 10%, I don't consider the 3% from food all that worth it. Tune battles to require potions/food so you go in with a stack of each to make alchemist relevant.

Work on QoL issues, it should not take me as much time to get materials out of my retainers/marketboard as it does to do the actual crafting.

Add dungeons/fates focused around crafting and gathering. They did this in 1.0 and I understand it's hard to do right, but could make for some truly amazing battles. A post I saw on reddit mentioned what Steps of Faith could have been if you had crafters working on repairing/outfitting the defenses with materials brought from gatherers.

Understand that you should not be afraid of RMT or of crafters unbalancing your game. If you make every decision to make RMT pointless you might as well just get currency out of the game. Some crafters having a billion gil is not going to kill the economy, if anything it's going to increase it. They will have no problems dishing out large sums to move pieces no one else will buy, and they will craft things that might take months for anyone to be able to even consider.

Along this lines, put in more gil sinks for the uber rich. I know this will be content that maybe not everyone will be able to see, but coil started out that way as well. Make some elements of FC crafting/Airships require stupid expensive (100 million + mats). Plan things so that those FCs with less will be able to get content and have fun with lesser reward. (Think Alexander NM vs. Savage) Maybe put part of the requirements for getting these expensive mats inter-FC interactions. Smaller FCs required to work with you to make the new mat, and the reward for the smaller FCs are hand me downs from the larger. The rich get to experience content right away, and those less well off will eventually get there as well.

Crafting is a long term game, something that should be thought of on the level of an entire expansion if not more. It should not reset every single patch, and something from one patch should help towards the next. Any break in this line (no worthwhile gear to sell via 3.5 to justify the red scrips) causes a huge disruption for high end crafting.

[QT_Melon]

ARR was not "Fine" They switched to a new system because of the grinds and omnicrafting. I don't remember the specific words of the interview but I thought specialists which in theory is a good idea was supposed to benefit those trying to get into crafting. It still is somewhat broken because it depends on people being omnicrafters in their 50s. They should fix this where it's not necessary. Basically, for those to even get into crafting pretty much everything was leveled to 50, it's only natural people want to level all of them to 60 again.


Overmelds should stop. It's become a mockery of what made me love materia in the first place from FF7. Now it's disappointing as phoenix down. I don't mind gating some of the crafting but this system is overkill. When you're wasting as much or more time with gated, and timed nodes as you are with your regular class, it doesn't make the game fun. Crafting and gathering was the system that was good to waste time between dungeons or raids.

Collectibles for gathering actually has been a plus for many people who originally told me gathering was boring. The addition to it was fine. However, the threshold of end game content that is behind it, is a bit too much. Easing up a bit on how much of it would be gated or needed would probably alleviate a lot of problems and anxiety.

I think what would have helped crafting and gathering was getting Gardening down to something more entertaining, where you could have a Harvest Moon kind of side game with crops. In addition a new gathering class "Beastmaster" may have been more fun so that people could actually have a mini farm for their FC. It would have probably given the game the synergy they wanted amongst Gatherers and Crafters. Crafters would need to make tools to help upkeep the farms. Having gatherers around (similar to company airships - where you could form a small party but people not with your FC) to help with a farm may have been more useful.

It would have been more beneficial if you could craft, certain items that would be used for events but only people in your party could see or use (kinda like how people can only see maps, leves). Like crafters making items for the beach at Mist (like a volleyball minigame or something).

I think the biggest issue with crafting in its current state is that it developed mostly for end game raiding from ARR after people gave everyone the idea that Final Coil should be beaten with crafted gear. Therefore narrowing the scope of the crafting culture. Furniture and vanity items still had a place but most of these thread argue about raid food and crafted gear.

This should still have a place, but I think they need to take crafting to a new direction if they want synergy.

Like Farming is one suggestion.
Being able to Craft and gather mats to make certain kinds of events (that can even be alliance wide) as activities would also be fun.

Crafting grinds to help others grind that may not stick with the game doesn't seem to work imo in the long run. Crafting as an activity where people can participate as being a party member or gathering may create more synergy that they're intending.

I think workshops are pointing in that direction

[_Kakera_]

Remove Desynthesis and all of its horrific material requirements from Heavensward and I'm already twice as pleased with crafting in its current state. Still has a long way to go, but that alone will make me forget I'll never make anything 2 star for weeks. And by removing Desynthesis, I mean to not make use of MCDs or FCIIIs ever again. Keep them for old content, since old content required it already, but please, no more of this onward.

[Snugglebutt]

Being realistic what is likely to happen over the next few weeks or months is the following...

• The red script cap will be slightly raised, probably no more than by couple hundred/week.
• They may further balance the gathering and crafting stats, skills, maybe RNG and some item requirements.
• SE might add additional methods to gain 'some' of the materials but certainly not all.
• The material cost will through red scripts probably be lowered, maybe around 25-35% as a guess.
• New recipes will be added, especially ones focused more in branching out specializations over time.
• Prices of materials in the market will drop quite substantially over time of which I expect will be around 60% drop over the coming month for most.

• What will not happen is a removal of the existence of a cap or a ridiculously high raising of it.
• Red script system will not be removed and neither will the blue script system.
• The price of most materials gained from scripts will not stay as high as they currently are long term.
• SE will almost certainly not add new DoW/DoM (BiS) gear crafting recipes since it undermines those gained/earned/rewarded from actual DoW/DoM content participation.

[Kenji1134]

For the most part crafters want 2 things.
1. For their time to be of value.
2. For their time to be enjoyable.

Thats not a strange concept is it?

If you do not make anything valuable with the time you invest, why invest the time? This is one of the driving forces behind the retarded prices of some crafted items. When crafting becomes work, then you expect to receive the same kind of reward as you get via work... Personally after taxes and all the other BS I end up with $28/hr in my pocket for the work that I do. Gil sellers offer what, 1M for $5? So if I am forced to "work" as hard when crafting as I do at my actual job, then I expect to make a profit of 5.6M per hour... Its only fair right?

If crafters make endgame viable equipment, then high prices and difficult material acquisition is warranted. If crafters make crap, then it should be easy to get the mats and the items naturally become cheaper.

Of course you will always have the people who's sole purpose in life is to rule the virtual economy.
I think the most gil Ive had was about 5M, while some of the crafting-economics gurus have fortunes of 2.5 BILLION... but... what does that get you? Haha thats the best part right now, there is nothing to buy with that massive pile of gil, so people are taking advantage of that and making things seem retardedly expensive, because what choice do you have?

[Yeldir]

I would like to see the complete removal of the scrip system, and an additional tier of crafted DoM/DoW gear added that is the equivalent of raid gear, with a caveat: Each piece requires a token style drop from the raid it is the equivalent of to synthesize, and these tokens should be less common than the gear drops themselves, making them items of extreme value for raiders to sell at great profit.

I would also like to see every single piece of equipment from raids become materia-meldable (with their stats balanced accordingly), and a means of synthesizing materia introduced that is competitive but not superior to the conversion of existing items.

[Kenji1134]

Yeldir that... is actually a great idea...

Suppose that all raid gear came with 5 "special materia" slots, which were in fact crafted materia.
Lets throw a bit of desynth in there too, 1 of each FC and BC Demi for a total of 6.
Then 3 of the lvl 60 base material (Adam, Birch, Chimera, etc). So 7 different ingredients.
But this is only the intermediate item, therefore it is crafted as a collectable, and requires at least 50% quality to be worthwhile. Lets skew the quality weights such that having the 3 crafter specific mats only gives 1/5th initial quality... the point would be to see you craft well, not gather well.
So make the item to 50% quality as a collectable, and bring it to Mutamix who will extract blah-blah-blah... and convert it into any "Special Materia" of your choice.

Now you can sell this Special Materia to your friendly raiders who will attach it to their gear to customize it. Tanks will want STR and Parry, Healers will was some PIE, DPS will generally want Crit/Det/Spd and so on.
Make it reasonably, though slightly challenging to obtain the mats, and moderately challenging to craft, but so totally worth it. And crafters will have a use again.