An Analysis Of The Crafting Endgame

[Sollux]

This started out as a comment to Catfish Cassie's thread Crafting a Dead Horse: Work vs. Reward Seriously Needs a Revamp but became much longer than I originally intended it to be so I thought I'd make a thread.

The current Crafting endgame is suffering for a number of reasons:

1. The only benefits that Crafting provides to Combat at the moment is food, pots, and leveling gear. None of these are big ticket items that require even a single 2-Star item to reliably HQ.

2. Even when crafting 2-Star items you don't even need a single 2-Star piece of gear to craft it. Yes, melds are necessary however the price pales in comparison (In most cases) to the cost of a single 2-Star item.

3. The only Gathering 2-Star items that can be crafted at the moment are the Accessories and Offhand (Excluding FSH which has no Offhand), and even then they aren't even CLOSE to necessary to farm the current Folklore/Red Scrip nodes, which can be done in all white gear with safe melds. This leads Gatherers to save their Scrips for their left side gear before they even think of using them for Favors.

4. With a lack of Gatherers to farm the necessary Favor items there is a severe lack of them on the market, and the ones available are quite expensive as there is little competition (Depending on your server of course).

5. With the lack of materials on the market and the resulting high prices most Crafters have to resort to farming their own materials which requires getting BTN/MIN to 60 and capping Red Scrips. This is a double-edged sword if they plan to gear their Gatherers as well since their Scrips will be limited to one or the other.

6. The Favor system was atrocious and had a HUGE negative impact when first released. I personally have seen major improvement since the change, but the impression they left still has repercussions.

There are a number of glaring issues (I probably missed a few) however with time they will solve themselves. When Gatherers have their gear and start spending their Scrips on Favors stocks will rise and prices will fall. When/If Crafting becomes relevant for Combat many more people will have an incentive to start leveling and gearing their classes again, and a more stable income as well. These problems are mainly problems AT THE MOMENT. How long will we need to wait? Hopefully no longer than 3.1, though I honestly can't say.

There is nothing wrong with capping your Red Scrips and spending them on i180 gear or saving them until we know whats coming in 3.1. I highly doubt SE will release anything the i180 sets can't handle, especially since their intent with the sets was to give casual Crafters the ability to progress 1-2 Crafts without spending millions on HQ gear + melds.

These last 2 months have been the most painful for those who really want to craft the i170 sets either for the challenge, stats, glamour, or personal achievement, and get discouraged every time they look at the Market Board or the number of Favors they have to do for a single item. This is where I say that Work vs Reward is subjective. Here I'd like to clarify some numbers as far as how many Scrips are needed to complete all 2-Star Crafting/Gathering items:

Only Crafting has full left side at the moment and costs for a full set are as follows:

The Mainhand, Chestpiece, and Legs require 4 mats each, while the Offhand, Helm, Gloves, and Boots require 3 mats each for a total of 24 2-Star mats per set. The Accessories cost a total of 10 2-Star mats (2 each for Belt, Necklace, Earrings, and Wrist, and 1 each for the Rings) and do not need to be made more than once.

So with 8 Crafting sets it comes to 8 x 24 = 192 + 10 = 202 Scrips total to craft all 8 Crafting sets + Accessories. As Gathering only has Accessories and Offhand (FSH has no offhand) the total cost to craft the current Gathering 2-Star items would come to 10 + 6 = 16 Scrips total.

This brings us to a grand total of 218 Scrips needed to Craft every Crafting and Gathering 2-Star item which at 9 Scrips a week comes to 24.2 weeks, or 5-6 months total. 3-4 weeks per Crafting set (A little more than 1 week to craft the Accessories).

What I believe SE is attempting with the Crafting and Gathering systems is to extend it's lifespan in a similar fashion to Combat with weekly caps. If you were to try and get full Savage gear I'd imagine it would take much longer than 3-4 weeks, the primary difference between the two is you cannot "buy" a full Savage set in a week even if you wanted to. With Crafting you can purchase others' Red Scrips (Trade them BTN/MIN mats and they turn them in and give you the items) and craft far more endgame gear in a single week than either Combat or Gathering.

Was this the right move? Do changes need to be made? Maybe, I can't really say as everyone has a different motivation and amount of time they're willing/able to commit to a goal. I'm actually glad it's practically impossible to finish all 8 sets in a week as there is an immense feeling of accomplishment upon finally finishing a set.

I love the crafting system in FFXIV, I really do, so much to the point that I was insane enough to finish all 8 sets in about 2 months. I was absolutely furious with the Red Scrip system when it first released as it meant I couldn't do what I loved without doing what I hated (Gathering) or spending millions of gil in the process. No, I didn't start with 100m+ in gil to buy mats left and right with. I farmed at least 75% of the mats myself, and it took an insane amount of time to complete. But I did it, and whether it gets replaced in 3.1 (HIGHLY doubt it), or if I melded correctly, or if I over prepared and the new recipes can still be made with the white set, I could care less, because it was what I wanted to do and I found a way to do it.

Tl;dr, Crafting will get easier with time. If you don't have the motivation to craft right now there's nothing wrong with saving your Scrips and waiting to see how 3.1 plays out, hopefully changes are implemented to make things easier. If you want to craft 2-Stars right now I know it seems daunting but don't be intimidated by the high prices of the mats. They're actually really easy to gather with the Favor change and if you can do that you cover the majority of the (Admittedly ludicrous) cost. Trust me, its worth it.

[Alahra]

Tl;dr, Crafting will get easier with time. If you don't have the motivation to craft right now there's nothing wrong with saving your Scrips and waiting to see how 3.1 plays out, hopefully changes are implemented to make things easier. If you want to craft 2-Stars right now I know it seems daunting but don't be intimidated by the high prices of the mats. They're actually really easy to gather with the Favor change and if you can do that you cover the majority of the (Admittedly ludicrous) cost. Trust me, its worth it.

Great breakdown in general. I'm not sure time is going to really solve anything for me, personally, but I'm hoping we do see some changes in 3.1. I want to see some more useful recipes and the like so that there are stronger incentives than crafting to get more crafter gear. I would like to make the i170 sets, but I can't get over my intense dislike for BTN and MIN. At best, I'll probably end up making them when Red Scrips are someday uncapped using the i180 gear. But that's nothing I'm particularly excited about.

I'd like to see the materials requirements for DoW/DoM gear lessened or for the materials to be easier to acquire. If they want the longer grind for the best crafted gear, that's probably okay. But getting to 2-star level and being able to craft something of consequence (that you can price fairly enough such that people will actually want it) would go a long way toward making the system more palatable I think.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

It amuses me how many of us end-game crafters have ranted about this. I think at this point, both we and SE know very well what the problems are and how to resolve them. The only remaining question is, will they address these problems in 3.1 effectively?

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved. If they don't... it's hard to say how many of us would quit. Oh, and when we quit, we don't just quit crafting, we just unsubcribe and play something else. If they wanna take their time to fix the mess, it's fine, we will take our time too... without paying. We're still crafting fans. We can always come back later after they fixed it.

[Alahra]

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved.

A lot's riding on 3.1, and it's not just crafting. Part of me is afraid that they will have focused so much on improving the overall amount of meaningful content and problems with endgame in general that they won't do what's necessary to help with crafting. They've already demonstrated somewhat clearly that crafting is second-fiddle, if you ask me, and I'm running out of faith in them.

My subscription is paid for another six months so I'll be around at least in some fashion regardless, but I'm definitely playing far less than I ever have.

[CatfishCassie]

I think the problem for me is and has always been that crafted items for DoW/DoM cap in ilvl a tier or two below raiding items. When Turn 1 was the endgame, it had ilvl 90 gear and the best we could make was ilvl 70 gear. Later on we could make ilvl 90 gear, but turn 2 dropped ilvl 110 gear. Then we eventually got ilvl 110 gear, but the raids dropped ilvl 130 gear. Now it's ilvl 180 vs. ilvl 210, the largest disparity yet, and Alexander is (at least according to my raiding guild members) incredibly easy compared to Bahamut Turn 1 when it first came out. They need to add a system that allows our crafting skills to remain relevant to raiders so our gear isn't sidelined. Either that, or they need to significantly reduce the material requirements for those crafts... because right now, as it stands, only the richest and laziest players are going to pay ~5mil per piece for gear that's only marginally better than Law Tomestone gear, especially when a few days of dungeon grinding is all it takes for a full set but we're hard-capped at 1-3 pieces per week with red scrips.

[doctapeppa]

It amuses me how many of us end-game crafters have ranted about this. I think at this point, both we and SE know very well what the problems are and how to resolve them. The only remaining question is, will they address these problems in 3.1 effectively?

3.1 is like their last chance to mend this mess. If they do it right, the crafting game is saved. If they don't... it's hard to say how many if us would quit. Oh, and when we quit, we don't just quit crafting, we just unsubcribe and play something else. If they wanna take their time to fix the mess, it's fine, we will take our time too... without paying. We can always come back later after they fixed it.

Almost all the other serious crafters in my FC quit over a month ago. From what I've seen and heard around my server, we aren't the only FC losing crafters left and right... It will take a monumental amount of stubbornness and/or ignorance on SE's part to not have some major changes in the works for 3.1. The sad part is, however, I can already see them throwing that "sky pirate" glamour gear at us and calling it good enough... I guess we'll see.

[Ragnvard]

I wish SE will be more communicative about the crafting and gathering aspect of the game in 3.1. So far all the 3.1 info is about Void Ark and some relic stuff - nothing about DoH/DoL.

Come 3.1, whatever fix they make will just hit the market like a giant bomb. If they:
- Implement specialist only recipes
then those who picked the "wrong spec" will be screwed (or at least will need new stones - are you SURE you want to specialize in alch and cul where you cook food that no one will buy?), as well as 2* omnicrafters whom have invested in multiple 170 MH and OH tools.
- Make favor mats more accessible
then the market for those will just crash hard. Screwing over everyone who have already gotten anything 2*.
- Introduce attractive 2*/3* battle gear
given the price/cost of the current 170 battlegears, those will probably become even more prohibitively expensive... no wait... if Void Ark is to drop ilvl 200 gear, will people still buy crafted gear?

[CatfishCassie]

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.

[Lastelli]

And that's really the point. They need to find a way to let crafting be in parity with drops.

No, that would we a catastrophe. Drops from savage should always be the best gear in the game, or you'll just see the top guilds using their crafters and gatherers as slaves just to have crafted gear as soon as possible and have a slight advantage for progression, which actually happened in ARR, though crafting high end gear was way easier back then. Also, crafters are a minority and raiders would really get pissed at devs if they do what you're suggesting (tanks are already complaining that they have to buy ilvl150 accessories, mind you), so having to choose which side to displease, they'll probably choose crafters. Moreover, devs clearly said that crafted gear will no longer be optimal for progression, this is the main point they were considering when designing the new DoH/DoL system. If they want to fix it, they'll have to find other ways.

if Void Ark is to drop ilvl 200 gear, will people still buy crafted gear?

Are people actually buying that stuff? I think 3 or 4 pieces of gear have been sold on my server (for DoW/M).

[CatfishCassie]

I think you missed my suggestion from the earlier post, which was to allow crafted gear to be upgraded like the Alex drops. The idea being that the crafted gear would not, itself, be the equivalent of the Alex drops, but could be upgraded to be the equivalent of those drops. The items that would upgrade it would be the same items they currently use to upgrade their Alex gear... which means they'd still have to raid to get the high level gear, but would now have the option of it being the dropped gear or the crafted gear. This keeps people from being able to skip raid progression with crafting, but keeps crafting relevant for raiders, which is currently the part that's missing.

The problem with MMOs in general is that if crafting stops being relevant to the endgame, it stops being relevant to the game at all. Even though Alex Savage raiders are a small minority of the players in the game, endgame considerations still drive a large portion of the game economy. Crafters put in as much if not more work than raiders, and deserve to see that work rewarded just as raiders do. The compromise shouldn't be to favor one group over the other... the compromise should be to find an itemization system that fills the needs of both.