Why is crafting so useless?

[Alise]

One upon a time~ the best gear only come from a material drop from boss monster which require 15-members to kill, into the hand of finest crafters of the server to turn them into the highest tier weapon, then let RNG determine the HG process from level 1 to 3.

[Ksenia]

The part I don't understand is I, a full on crafter who's first MMO was SWG, who lives and dies by the crafting as gear source said back in 1.00 they should give reward gear as good as any crafted. There should never be an opportunity for me as a crafter to exploit people who aren't interested in doing it. I want people to make a choice to buy stuff I make. I also want anything I make to have natural decay. I want to be forced to price it accordingly. My gear should be good for around 120 hrs of use, then it's trash, buy new stuff, make new stuff.

All that said, I know why they gimp it in 2.00 and 3.00 and what ever variant we are in. They have no restraint ability. Raid gear is over powered. If players could do any given raid with the best raid gear available, they would face roll the dungeon in 2 or 3 tries. They of course can't because they need to do the dungeon 200 times under geared to become over geared. I've said this 100 thousand times, there is no hard in a video game. There is can, there is can't. You either meet the iLevel requirements and know your rotation or you don't. Reward gear forces you to play content throttled. Crafted allows you to skip that. I feel kind of bad for Devs. They need to rely on an optic to keep us entertained. It's why I don't often put up much of a stink when I see design choices. I know they have their back up against a wall.

I'm going to go level up a few more retainers now. They never complain that my crafted stuffs is useless or that it sucks. Crafting for my NPC army.. not what I had in mind but I'll take it!

[fortuona]

i personally don't expect crafted gears to be equivalent to raid drops, but options never hurt.

[Terribad]

Serious question. IF crafted gear ever became as good as raid gear (which I HIGHLY doubt) or even slightly under it. What's the problem? It's not like raid drops, dungeon drops, and or tome gear will be removed. It would be just another option. Does it really matter that Timmy bought a piece of gear that you either couldn't afford or didn't want to buy it? Aside from gear, they could at least buff the pots and/or shorten the CD.

No I don't craft. I find crafting to be pointless.

[Airget]

It's tricky to find the perfect balance, it would be nice if some gear could be useful for doing dungeons with but it is true that dungeon gear easily outclasses anything that crafters could offer wherein crafters seem to only serve the purpose of vanity helpers wherein making HQs seem quite useless. We are currently in an ecosystem of crafters feeding off of crafters, gathererers supporting crafters and then those crafters feeding back into gatherers needs.

Airships have potential to offer more content however the long time in between makes it harder for it to have a noticeable influence on crafting/gathering. Quite honestly airships as they are now do serve as a hefty bit of content for DOH/DOL however the ease of completing the objective express a sense of how little "challenge" there is in actually succeeding in an objective.

Granted yes this would be unpopular for some as the amount of mats needed to make certain parts is crazy but a challenge aspect that could eb added would be for certain parts and materials to HAVE to be HQ in order to be used, that you can't just faceroll complete everything and turn it in.

Another gimmick that could serve to be more interesting than the dull favors could be a "dungeon exploration" system where you could explore a dungeon you've cleared in the mentality that this dungeon instance is now in a place in time in which there are no longer monster hordes nesting in it, giving you a chance to find new and interesting discoveries while offering a nice wide open space to explore.

Imagine a scenario where a DOL could go looking for 3 more to explore Satasha Exploration (15) *exploring Satasha after the lv 15 dungeon finished or Satasha Exploration (HM) exploring said dungeon after the HM was completed. It could be used to expand lore, to find unique items to make furniture or vanity and quite honestly it doesn't have to have any heay influence on gearing DOW/DOM but it would be a nice chunk of content that could add more rewards then the low amount of rewards that are currently in the game. Again there really is little incentive for CRP to gear up since all they have are pieces of gear to make other crafts better and the only "neat" thing they gain access to is a piece of furniture that requires a piece obtained from savage mode alexander to craft so we'll never see that as a common synth.

[Alise]

Just like how players now require lv 170 to join Ravana EX, when it was always only lv 160 during my time in the past.

If you make expensive craft gear become lv 200, then players might raise up the current lv 180 req to join Alex Savage into lv 195-200, and then the people with less gil will not be able to afford the gear and cannot join the party. (they might even enforced RMT in order to buy)

All in all, it is best to make a mixture. What if the raid drop part of the weapon which you require crafter to finish it. That would be better. So both raid and craft become necessary.

[Terribad]

Just like how players now require lv 170 to join Ravana EX, when it was always only lv 160 during my time in the past.

If you make expensive craft gear become lv 200, then players might raise up the current lv 180 req to join Alex Savage into lv 195-200, and then the people with less gil will not be able to afford the gear and cannot join the party. (they might even enforced RMT in order to buy)

All in all, it is best to make a mixture. What if the raid drop part of the weapon which you require crafter to finish it. That would be better. So both raid and craft become necessary.

Then don't play with those players? But I honestly don't think OP was asking for it to be on par with raid gear. I think someone just went crazy and complained about that.

[Atlaworks]

Just like how players now require lv 170 to join Ravana EX, when it was always only lv 160 during my time in the past.

If you make expensive craft gear become lv 200, then players might raise up the current lv 180 req to join Alex Savage into lv 195-200, and then the people with less gil will not be able to afford the gear and cannot join the party. (they might even enforced RMT in order to buy)

All in all, it is best to make a mixture. What if the raid drop part of the weapon which you require crafter to finish it. That would be better. So both raid and craft become necessary.

What

Lemme parse this. Crafting gear should not be stronger than raid gear, but it shouldn't be so weak as to invalidate it either. Current top tier crafted gear while fully melded is still weaker than law gear. God forbid it's even close to anything that takes effort or weekly lockouts to achieve, when the 180 itself has it's own weekly lockout in the form of red scrips. I understand the idea of both raiding and crafting being necessary, but raiding was never invalidated for obtaining gear. Even in 2.4, when crafting was on par with raid gear, you didn't NEED crafting gear to beat FCoB, it just gave raiders more of an edge. It was never a requirement, and it was never intended as such. But come today, the strongest crafted battle gear you put your time, money, and effort into- is weaker than raid gear, older easier raid gear, and tome gear that's not even got a weekly limit. Crafting is entirely invalidated in it's current form, save making items for other crafters and gatherers, which becomes a vicious cycle.

If crafting gear is both A: on par with, not above or below, raid gear, and B: isn't absurdly expensive to create, considering material, effort, time, and melding costs, then both would be viable. The problem is that SE can't parse the second one correctly.

[ShaneDawn]

Not much of a raider then huh. Any real raider would love to have an additional source of equipment.

You're not much of a raider unless you can somehow afford those high-end crafted gear too? Seeing as the most effective ways of making gil in this game are... crafting, market board flipping and selling runs. And please don't tell me selling runs to handless people should be an expectation if you're a keen raider who doesn't craft?

I agree though that raiding gear should be *close* to equal to raiding gear. It could act as decent gear for non-raiders, while being slightly weaker than the actual raiding gear. They could even add a few material drops to the latest raids to let raiders get some gil as well and make sure you can't buy that crafted gear to skip the weekly gear treadmill like in 2,3.

[ShaneDawn]

?I agree though that raiding gear should be *close* to equal to raiding gear.

Crafted gear to raiding gear***

Why can I still not edit on my phone SE?