An Analysis Of The Crafting Endgame

[Aniforani]

It doesn't take much creativity to devise ways to limit the impact crafting can have on endgame while giving them a market. Give raiders material drops from their victories required for our high level crafts, which also gives them a way to fund their potential purchase. Gate our acquisition rate of some unsaleable materials to help avoid RMT and prevent market flooding. If materia is too much of an issue the final craft could be devoid of slots, like very low level gear. Even with all those barriers it should not be the best the game has to offer, but if they turned out as ilvl 190nq 195hq. I think that would be pretty well balanced. Similar time/effort to get as eso gear, while being slightly less desirable and unable to upgrade to ilvl210.

[Lastelli]

I think you missed my suggestion from the earlier post

I understand your standpoint, but devs have a completely different opinion. They do not want crafting to be relevant for end game raiding, they clearly stated that. And, as both a crafter and a raider, I completely agree with them.

[Alex_Lenderson]

And that's really the point. They need to find a way to let crafting be in parity with drops.Otherwise it'll be the same problem in 3.1 as we've consistently had throughout the game: people don't buy high end crafted gear because high end drops/currency gear are easier to obtain for better stats, and the difficulty of making high end crafted gear makes it too expensive.

I agree with you but this will never change.

[Sollux]

Crafting isn't necessarily second fiddle to Combat so much as the majority of the playerbase has been and always will be Combat oriented.

With the introduction of Crafting/Gathering Red Scrips, Specializations, and lessened impact of Crafted Combat gear I believe SE is trying to do 2 things:

1. Bring Crafting/Gathering Endgame length in line with Combat, with each class having it's own set again and a weekly cap to reach. I personally don't see this as a bad thing, and here's why:

1a. I'll get flak for this I'm sure, but a 1-size-fits-all Crafting set ruins the Crafting Endgame. Its similar to only needing 11 pieces of gear from Savage and then you're done. Crafting is my Endgame. I enjoy it for the challenge and the satisfaction of reaching my goal, and when I returned in April after a 1.5 year break I was ecstatic at all of the new Crafting that I needed to catch up on and the challenge of 3-Stars and 4-Stars. I finished full Artisan's overmelded + Supras in a month. I was happy of course, and completing an entire Crafting set that was good for every class really helped me to catch up, but the challenge was short-lived and the satisfaction fleeting. After I caught up there was nothing left to do but make gil, which is nice yes, but it doesn't give me a goal and isn't necessarily a challenge.

1b. Let's be honest, a weekly cap is torture to Crafters, especially since we're used to the size of our wallets being the only limit to how quickly we can gear up, but it ensures you can't complete everything in a week or a month (At least not until well down the road when the market has a lot more mats on it). Plenty of people hate being artificially limited, but I ask you: If you can complete everything in a week, what is there left for you to do? Would you be truly satisfied?

1c. It also helps keep the market active. With an inherent limit to the number of items available on the market each week it takes much, much longer for the market to become saturated and the prices to drop. While this isn't a good thing for those wanting to speed up their gearing by buying these items, it keeps the market from stagnating and helps those who want to Craft but don't have the gil as they can choose to use their Scrips to sell 2-Star turn-in mats or sell the Scrips themselves.

2. Make it possible for each Class/Job to be self sufficient, where they can reach their own BIS gear and having another class geared and maxed is optimal, but not seen as a REQUIREMENT for Endgame. Let's talk about Gathering first, as it's the easiest:

2a. Gathering has historically been almost entirely self sufficient, save for relying on Combat to progress to new areas/fly at later levels. A Gatherer can start with very little investment, if anything at all, and can sell the materials they Gather to purchase new equipment. The introduction of Red Scrips had little impact as Gatherers require no cross-classes for their Endgame and can reach their current BIS gear by capping their Red Scrips (Which can be done with white gear and safe melds) and selling/using Favor mats to have their 2-Star OH/Accessories made.

2b. Crafting on the other hand is the exact opposite. Before Specializations you were practically REQUIRED to level other Crafts for their cross-class skills since almost no class could reliably HQ even lvl 50 recipes without them. Sales were slow going as the only things that really sold for a decent profit and regularly were HQ materials and gear which were difficult to make without leveling other Crafts, which was difficult to do due to lack of gil due to inability to HQ items due to...... you get my point. Specializations were introduced to address this, and while I've seen a number of complaints regarding their strength and reliability I think they're at exactly where they need to be. Specialist skills were never meant to be stronger than the original skills. They were meant to be used as a sub-par replacement until you were able to level your other Crafts. The only issue I really see with them is how complicated they can be to understand and the amount of time needed to really understand how they work together, which seems to contradict their intent to be used by more casual Crafters.

2c. Onto Combat! Anyone who is really passionate about something will want the best of the best for what they do. When one item is inherently better than another most will view it as a necessity, whether we intend to or not. I see no reason as to why Crafted gear can't be viable in Endgame raiding, but the problem near the end of ARR and COB was that some Crafted gear was BIS, even over Poetic or Dreadwyrm gear. This created a huge issue with those who were pure Combat because getting their BIS gear didn't depend so much on their skills or abilities in a fight but rather their ability to make gil. Outside of selling runs or Endgame Crafting mats Combat pures had no way to reliably make gil without resorting to Gathering or Crafting, either of which they may have avoided because they hated it or because it wasn't what they wanted to do. That isn't to say Crafted gear shouldn't be used in Endgame raiding at all, rather it would be better if Endgame Crafted Combat gear could be on-par or slightly better than Eso gear. This way Crafters could contribute much more to Combat, Combat players who do happen to have gil can use the gear as an Eso replacement to get multiple classes raid ready faster, and pure Combat players could still rely on Eso gear on their way to Savage gear.

We all have high hopes for 3.1 and I have no doubt Crafting will be revitalized. We KNOW SE listens to their playerbase, and while hardcore Crafters are far from the majority we are no less passionate when it comes to what we love.

[Alahra]

1b. Let's be honest, a weekly cap is torture to Crafters

You know, ultimately, I don't so much mind the weekly cap as I mind that it makes it harder to catch up. In ARR there were periods where I didn't craft much (especially as Relic stages were released), but I could always sit down and work on tokens for awhile to catch up. With the Red Scrip system in place, there's not really a good way to catch up if you miss a week for some reason or another, and I miss the flexibility of being able to not worry about crafting sometimes. The combat classes have always had this issue of course, but now that there are two (and potentially three, for gatherers, too) such structures, my playtime feel dictated rather than decided based on my mood.

[Sollux]

You know, ultimately, I don't so much mind the weekly cap as I mind that it makes it harder to catch up.... such structures makes my playtime feel dictated rather than decided based on my mood.

I completely agree with this, although my mood ALWAYS demands Crafting so I fell behind in Eso myself. I got my first Eso item 2 weeks ago (MNK fists) because I had other priorities, but I was and still am happy with what I chose to focus on ^-^

[Alahra]

I completely agree with this, although my mood ALWAYS demands Crafting so I fell behind in Eso myself. I got my first Eso item 2 weeks ago (MNK fists) because I had other priorities, but I was and still am happy with what I chose to focus on ^-^

I'm too...I don't know the word for it...to ever miss capping one week. I have to do both or I feel like I've messed up. I enjoyed crafting as a wonderful diversion from weekly caps, Relic grinds, and so on, and I certainly spent a lot of time on it in ARR. But now that I have to every week, it loses some of that...relaxing factor for me.

[ValkyrieL]

the NEXT tier off crafting items should not required any favors at all, this favor system needs to stay ONLY for making the 2 star crafting sets/future gathering sets.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

the NEXT tier off crafting items should not required any favors at all, this favor system needs to stay ONLY for making the 2 star crafting sets/future gathering sets.

I couldn't agree more; favors need to go. Even if they did nothing else to improve the system, getting rid of favors (and making the 2-star mats ONLY require crafting red scrips) would alleviate one very large problem with the current endgame, at least in my eyes. Namely, the crafting endgame involves very little actual crafting. The vast majority (95%) of your time is gathering: gather the mats for your red gathering turn ins, gather your mats for your red crafting turn ins, and the cherry on top? 4 MORE HOURS of gathering with favors. Then when you *finally* get all your mats and sit down to craft the 2, maybe 3 gear pieces for the week...it takes you 30 min. TOPS. Just getting rid of those stupid favors would eliminate a lot of the grind that's getting so many crafters down.

[Sollux]

I couldn't agree more; favors need to go. Even if they did nothing else to improve the system, getting rid of favors (and making the 2-star mats ONLY require crafting red scrips) would alleviate one very large problem with the current endgame, at least in my eyes.

And creates another large problem, only this time it would be for Gatherers. Without Favor items to sell to Crafters the Gatherers wouldn't even HAVE an Endgame. When compared to the income Favors bring Folklore mats are laughably cheap. Even if demand shot up due to more Crafters attempting 2-Stars it wouldn't even scratch what a Gatherer can make with a week's worth of Favors without spending the same amount of time (Likely more) than they would have spent doing Favors. I have no sympathy when Gatherers complain about Favors, especially after the change, but that doesn't mean I want to destroy their Endgame.