An Analysis Of The Crafting Endgame

[Sollux]

1) All crafted raid/adventuring gear is now gated by crafter AND gathering tokens. This means that adventures must both craft and gather for the same gear to be generated which was available by the 2.0 raid drops. This is terrible because people who adventure have NO DESIRE TO DO THIS. Consequently the cost to produce 3.0 adventuring gear is impossibly high. And this is causing crafters to have no viable reason to produce half our recipies. Also the iLev for 2 star adventuring gear is too low.
2) Because adventurers no longer have any drops to sell to crafters, they get no gil from crafters.
3) Adventures no longer have equipment to buy from crafters (since we can't viably produce 2 star adventuring gear) so they no longer have any reason to pay crafters.
7) Gatherers require a massive number of red tokens to purchase their own upgrade gear.
8) Because of the time investment few gathers are actively acquiring red scripts making folklore tokens rare and expensive.

I think SE was planning for the long term with the new system and either lost sight of the short term or felt it was inevitable that there would be complaints at the start. With all of the limitations of the current system it actually does a pretty good job of keeping each class focused on their own progression, possibly in preparation for 3.1 and beyond when Combat, Crafting, and Gathering can (Hopefully) benefit each other in an equal way again.

4) Generating red crafting tokens requires ~0.5-1 million worth of parts to be handed in each week.
5) Because of the cost few crafters are participating in red scrips.

I can't honestly speak on this as I never have issues capping Red Scrips each week, though I do agree it is a heavy investment for those who don't know how to ply their Craft yet. This is one of the areas that Crafting kind of gets the shaft. If we choose not to Gather then we have to find a way to make gil, requiring knowledge of the market that can only be gained through experience (AKA not fresh Crafter friendly). While Combat and Gathering need only invest their time to cap, they do not have the option of buying their Scrips either and are required to put in a minimum amount of time to cap where Crafting can put in the time beforehand to make gil and cap within 10-15 minutes after reset.

6) Generating red folklore token items requires a massive time investment by foragers. Example 30 minutes to complete 5 favors x 9 tokens = 4.5 hours of gathering a week not including time to gather the red scripts in the first place.

A massive amount of time yes, but also a MASSIVE profit, or the majority of the cost of a 2-Star should you choose to use the items. Here I have no sympathy for Gatherers, especially after the change to Favors.

8) Two star foraging gear (except accessories) is unavailable for crafting. This means crafters have nothing to sell foragers... even though we are potentially paying them massive amounts of money for the new red scrip crafting drops.

Currently Gatherers can make bank and having virtually nothing to spend it on, I agree. There is no need for the i170 Accessories or even the i180 gear for that matter, but I'm betting 3.1 gives us something to craft for them and a reason for them to want it.

Also the whole 2 star system is needlessly complicated for all the wrong reasons. There are so many idiotic UI decisions in the mess which make things complicated for the wrong reasons. We can only hold one weeks worth of red scripts... red scripts are handed in for red tokens a secondary currency WHY?!?! There are 40 different folk lore token drops (20 if you don't include HQ). Red/blue script nodes only stay up for a VERY short time. Keeping track of node pops, what slot you're supposed to unveil, the collectablity number, etc requires a day planner or a website.... WHY?!?!! All of that information should be in the UI easily available for players. Why can't my character remember Chysahl greens come from slot 6... is she really that dumb? These are all pointless decisions which make the system more cumbersome for others to learn, adding to the overall problem.

These seem to be more QoL improvements than anything. I agree with the increase to maximum held Red Scrips, trading Scrips for Tokens allows us to save a ton of Tokens for a rainy day, many more than a 2000 Red Scrip maximum would allow, and I would say keeping track of Node spawns and item locations is part of being a good Gatherer, just like remembering when and what mechanics happen in a raid or what rotation to use for a certain level recipe. Also I'd rather not have a full list of Node spawns in my timer list D: