An Analysis Of The Crafting Endgame

[Valesti_Peleiades]

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.

That's a good point. I agree that gatherers need to have an endgame too, but that doesn't mean that the crafting endgame has to revolve around gathering as heavily as it currently does. But perhaps the most salient point is something you've already articulated: namely, gatherers don't like favors either. Now I agree with your unsympathetic position, but if anything, this supports my point even more, because the fact of the matter is: favors suck; they're poorly designed and universally frustrating. So isn't this even more evidence that the endgames for *both* crafting and gathering need to be reworked in some way?

And for the record: I concede that favors became much better after the change in 3.07, but if you're starting from "atrocious", you still end up with "bad."

[Silverbane]

But perhaps the most salient point is something you've already articulated: namely, gatherers don't like favors either.

I'm sure some don't, but my wife and I like them. Sure, they are lot of work, but that's appropriate for the reward. Yes, it's sad when you get two or less mats from a favor, but it's pretty cool when you get 9 (which I have, twice). It's a mini-game that combines luck, technique, and motor skills. I've seen enough people out there doing them to know that some of the complaints are from people doing it wrong.

Running favors is also great for spirit-bonding i90 and i100 DoH items to get crafting materia IV, since perception seems unnecessary and 500 GP is almost always more than enough.

[Sollux]

Crafting Endgame has always revolved primarily around Gathering, with a few Combat-based mats sprinkled in. Any change to this would make Gathering less appealing which has a variety of implications to our markets on it's own.

In my honest opinion, right now there is nothing wrong with Favors themselves, rather the limited number of "useful" mats that can be obtained while using them. I consider a useful mat to be anything that costs at the very least more than a single crystal. If the Nodes that the Favors could proc off of held mats that you would farm anyways, either to use yourself or to sell, Favors would just be a major icing on that sweet Gathering cake, or vice versa for Crafters.

As it stands, out of the 5 areas and Nodes that can be farmed using Favors, Miners have 3/5 areas giving them "useful" mats with Yellows having Hardsilver Sand/Cloud Mica, Violets having Aurum Regis Sand, and Blues having Hardsilver ore, while Botanists have only a single "useful" mat that can be farmed which is Birch Logs while farming Void Nut Favors (Which have a horrible spawn placement btw). Every other area has mats that are often worth less than just farming crystals. This is also my theory as to why Ooids are always in higher stock and at lower prices than Botanist Favor Mats.

I'm sure plenty of Crafters would be much more willing to Gather if they had the incentive of making an additional profit or stocking up on mats while farming Favors, and Gatherers would be more willing to use Favors as an additional income to something they would have farmed anyways. I'm always happy to farm Yellow/Violet/Blue Ooids because I know I will make a definite profit while farming them. I could just buy the mats straight from the market and still make a profit, but when farming Favors is my priority the extra materials become my icing.

[XLauncher]

I'd had that same thought, regarding the difference between what miners and botanists can farm while they're doing favors. When I'm gathering violet ooids, I'm bored out of my mind, same as I am gathering any other favor mat, but at least I can soothe myself by remembering I'll be able to a buttload of aurum regis nuggets for my stockpile and get some spiritbonding done while I'm at it. Botany on the other hand...why is 99% of 56-60 Botany that's not attached to a timed node so useless?

[CatfishCassie]

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.

I guess I don't understand why. I'm not a raider currently... but I have been in the past, and I have been in other games as well. If crafted gear were relevant to the endgame, sure, that'd mean you'd feel obliged to buy crafted gear. Of course, people still raid without the Best-in-slot item... in fact, you have to raid to GET a lot of the best-in-slot items... so it's understandable that people would still raid without crafted gear even if that crafted gear was Best-in-slot. It's also understandable that the best raiding groups would have a crafter or two to hook them up with that gear... in fact, the best raiding groups already have a crafter or two for potions/food, and many of those crafters are lvl 60 in other crafts as well (in fact, many of them are lvl 60 in all crafts). So in terms of needing crafters, things wouldn't really change for most raiding groups. What WOULD change is that crafters who aren't raiders and raiders who don't have crafter friends might find themselves needing each other, which would enhance the game considerably for the crafters without really detracting from it for the raiders. And, in the end, it's not like I'm saying "Get rid of the endgame as it is now and require that all endgame armor be crafted". I'm just saying let crafters have a piece of the pie. Even if only one or two crafted pieces per tradeskill end up being best-in-slot, that's enough to reward the crafters that have spent months of time and millions of gil getting themselves up to the crafting endgame... crafters that currently have absolutely nothing to offer the rest of the game except for glamour items, food, and potions.

[Sollux]

The reason Crafting items being BIS was an issue was because progression raiders were clearing Endgame raids MUCH faster than they were intended to be finished, IIRC FCOB was cleared within 2 weeks of it's release.

[Ibi]

The reason Crafting items being BIS was an issue was because progression raiders were clearing Endgame raids MUCH faster than they were intended to be finished, IIRC FCOB was cleared within 2 weeks of it's release.

It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

Firstly, SE have decided that they want the top raids balanced so that the top groups cannot clear them in just a couple of weeks, regardless of what resources they have available and regardless of what knock-on effect that has on the rest of the raiding population.

Secondly, forbidden melding. The fact that as soon as there's even one materia slot on an item, there are really five materia slots on an item means that anything with a materia slot has the capacity to be melded into something far more powerful than its item level would normally allow for. That's still the case even with secondary stats being as de-emphasized as they have been in 3.0. If the crafted i110 items in 2.4 had not had materia slots, the majority of them would have been much less desirable for progression raiders.

Thirdly, SE having no idea what they really want crafted gear to be. They've said they want it to function as catch-up gear, but have set up the methods of obtaining materials in such a way that the cost is completely prohibitive to their functioning as such. Why would I spend tens of millions of gil on a piece of armor when I can get something more-or-less equivalent in a matter of two/four weeks from Alexander Normal?

[Alahra]

It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

The other reason the i110 gear was BiS for some classes was a problem of itemization.

For the i130 gear, A lot of the main pieces had lots of Skill/Spell Speed, which was such a horrible stat (and really, still is for a number of classes). Additionally, a lot of the i110 gear was incredibly well itemized--tons of Det/Crit pieces that you could still hit accuracy caps on, or Acc/Det and Acc/Crit pieces, and very little Skill/Spell Speed overall.

What that resulted in was the ability to skip a ton of horrible Accuracy pieces (so many had Speed) and actually gain DPS because Speed is such a generally bad stat (except for a couple classes).

If the itemization were better, we probably wouldn't have seen the gear be so dominant.

[Sollux]

It was cleared the week of release. The issues are three-fold.

All 3 points you've made have been right on the money, and I'd like to add a third: One of the biggest problems is that players don't know what they want.

I'd love for Crafted gear to be relevant to Endgame raiding, on the other hand I don't want to finish my entire Endgame in a single week. I don't want to smash my face against a Turn for 2 weeks, but at the same time I don't want it to feel easy and one-shot it, regardless of how well I prepare. I want to get BIS gear quicker, but once I have it there's nothing left to do other than play/gear another class.

This is a problem that is much deeper than just "Crafted gear too stronk" or "You can only finish your Endgame when SE says so". It's an issue with the amount of time that a player can stay interested in a patch/game, and it stems from the players as much as it does the game itself. More content/longer raids would definitely ease feelings of "Nothing left to do", but so would the understanding that prolonging a patch's life through gating can be a good thing.

I know many wouldn't agree with me, and there are a ton of valid reasons gating can hurt rather than help such as "I don' want to play other classes, I want to play [Class] and there is nothing to do after I cap/clear Endgame", "If I'm willing to put in the time why can't I get BIS gear faster than others?", "Why can't I play at my own pace?", but if you could complete everything faster you would end up just as bored, only faster and with less time to enjoy the class(es) you love. This especially affects those who only like to play one or two classes and don't want to play anything else as it severely limits how much enjoyment they can get out of Endgame each week. Gating helps extend our enjoyment of the game and gives us room to try other activities or classes. For those who are adamant to only 1 or 2 classes I completely understand your dedication, but at the same time your boredom isn't entirely the game's fault. They simply cannot release enough content to keep absolutely every single class busy for 3+ months.

I've gone a little off track from Crafting itself, but I wanted to explain why Crafted items shouldn't be as powerful as Endgame raid items. At the same time though, they shouldn't be completely irrelevant, and my suggestion is something they might already be gravitating towards: Melded correctly, 2-3 Crafted items (Excluding big items such as Chest or Legs) should have the potential to be on-par with Eso gear in stats only, with Eso gear having better Defense and Endgame raid gear being better in both Stats and Defense. This would make a few pieces of Crafted gear viable for Endgame raiding, but not enough to really tip the scales, and it comes at the cost of the user's durability which can be punished by higher-damage lockouts on later Turns.