Thoughts On Live Letter Crafting Changes

[Sollux]

There wasn't much shared in regards to the future of Crafting from the Live Letter (Not really surprised to be honest) however what WAS shared could have major implications on Crafting Progression and how Crafted gear is treated as a whole. I'll go ahead and list the changes here and share my thoughts on them, feel free to share your own if you like!

Some of my thoughts are pure speculation, take them with a grain of salt

In regards to Airship Exploratory Missions:
Q10: You mentioned that we could trade unwanted equipment we find for points, but how exactly will we be able to use these points?

A10: You’ll be able to use them on new flying mounts, materials necessary for new crafting recipes, red scrip materials, shards, materia, and more. You can also just desynthesize the equipment.

Thoughts:
Honestly I'm not surprised that DoW/M can now contribute to Crafting materials. This was a much needed change and provides benefits to both Crafters and DoW/M.

For Crafters, with a majority of the playerbase being Combat oriented it allows a much larger number of materials to enter the market at any time purely because more players have the ability to farm them. It also provides an outlet from Gathering for those who don't enjoy it or are burnt out but still want to Craft.

For DoW/M it provides a source of income that was honestly otherwise lacking. Being a couple months into the expansion anything a DoW/M could have farmed for gil has become cheap either through overabundance or lack of demand.

The part that intrigues me IMMENSELY though is the ability to trade for Red Scrip materials. This will drastically change the mindset behind the current Crafting grind and could have a huge impact on Crafting Progression, though how much will depend on which Red Scrip materials they're actually referring to:

If we're able to trade for Favor items (Ooids, Foxglove, etc.) it will not only allow Crafters without a max Gatherer to farm 2-Star trade-in items but also everyone else doing Exploratory Missions. This would allow a much wider range of players to contribute materials to 2-Star Crafting and would also bring some much needed bulk to the number of Favor items on the market for those who wish to buy them. The only downside to this is that 2-Stars would still be gated behind Crafting Scrips, which can be a good thing since it extends the amount of time it will take for inflation on 2-Star mats/gear to occur and 2-Stars will retain their value longer.

If we're able to trade for 2-Star sub-mats (Purified Coke, Dryad Sap, etc.) all of the above will happen, plus 2-Star Crafting would no longer be limited by Crafting Scrips and would be MUCH more accessible. I was skeptical that they would allow us to trade for straight 2-Star sub-mats as that would be akin to opening the floodgates to smashing Crafting Endgame, however after some thought I realized they're already doing this with Esoterics (Sort of, Void Ark weekly quest for Esoteric Upgrade items + Exploratory Missions dropping i180-i210 gear + Thordan likely dropping i205 weapons). Not only that, but they specifically mention red scrip materials. Favor items are not used as a "material" for anything and are closer to a token than a mat.

In regards to Crafted Glamour:
Q20: In a previous interview, Yoshida mentioned that racial gear might become dyeable, but how is this progressing? Also, would it be possible to make Allagan, High Allagan dyeable for glamour purpose?

A20: We’re planning to add this as a crafting recipe in the future.

Thoughts:
I'm both pleased and disappointed with this. I'm happy we'll be able to craft and dye glamour versions of gear that is still among the most popular in the game (Both for myself and the potential profit) but I'm disappointed they made no mention of when they would implement this.

The future of Crafted gear and Materia Melding is already being discussed in Thrustie's thread here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...afting-Melding

But for the sake of completion I'll leave my thoughts here:

In their explanation they specifically state: "It will not be possible to use advanced materia melding for primary stats on equipment created by crafters.". For those unaware, advanced materia melding refers to overmelds and does not include the 100% guaranteed melds which leads me to believe that we may still be able to meld a primary stat into one of the original materia slots on a piece of gear.

Also, they specifically mention "equipment created by crafters". Does this mean Raid/Tomestone gear can have primary stats overmelded? Is this just a poor translation or misused phrasing? Personally, I think it would make Raid/Tomestone gear even more worthwhile and would allow them to make Crafted gear more powerful but widen the gap between Crafted gear and Raid gear.

I think the removal of overmelding main stats is a good thing. I feel the massive benefit a player could get from overmelding (Primarily tanks) was severely limiting how strong SE felt they could make Crafted gear and this change would allow them to bring Crafted gear in line without there being as big of a gap between "A good alternative" and "Mandatory". This would also explain why they're making the Crafted gear stronger in 3.2 and why they aren't releasing new Accessories in 3.1.

Welp, those are my thoughts, take them with a grain of salt and feel free to share some of yours if you like!

[Valesti_Peleiades]

I'm definitely stoked about trading in airship points for red scrip materials; I haven't done any crafting progression for at least 2-3 weeks bc I'm so burnt out from favors. I'm really disappointed about no accessories until 3.1; I know we'll get meaningful crafted gear in 3.2 (or so they claim), but i180 accessories were my last hope for crafting to become relevant again before 3.2, and esp since red scrip mats will be more available, there would probably be a pretty high demand for those, esp for tanks/healers.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I dislike the idea of trading airship mats for red scrip mats. FCs with a single crafter is going to be blessed by the airship mats while FCs with 4+ crafters are gonna do what? Share them? Or should the head crafter just empowering herself/himself? So, should crafters all leave their FCs and start their own in order to take advantage of the airship?

[Sollux]

I dislike the idea of trading airship mats for red scrip mats. FCs with a single crafter is going to be blessed by the airship mats while FCs with 4+ crafters are gonna do what? Share them? Or should the head crafter just empowering herself/himself? So, should crafters all leave their FCs and start their own in order to take advantage of the airship?

There might be some confusion here, and I may have used the wrong phrase when I said Exploratory Missions. These are the missions that you can embark upon as 8-man groups to explore islands, kill monsters, and find loot from, not the time-based airship missions bringing back a limited number of mats. The gear dropped from the kills can then be traded in for points that can be spent on Red Scrip mats.

The only way a Crafter could monopolize this is if their entire FC was willing to spend any points they get from gear on Red Scrip materials for that Crafter. Even then, I feel a number of FCs wouldn't have a problem doing this as everyone could help their Crafters and be helped in turn.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

There might be some confusion here, and I may have used the wrong phrase when I said Exploratory Missions. These are the missions that you can embark upon as 8-man groups to explore islands, kill monsters, and find loot from, not the time-based airship missions bringing back a limited number of mats. The gear dropped from the kills can then be traded in for points that can be spent on Red Scrip mats.

The only way a Crafter could monopolize this is if their entire FC was willing to spend any points they get from gear on Red Scrip materials for that Crafter. Even then, I feel a number of FCs wouldn't have a problem doing this as everyone could help their Crafters and be helped in turn.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanations!

[Lastelli]

I'm glad as well that we will be able to obtain points to be exchanged for red scrips mats via exploratory missions, but I suspect this won't change much, i.e. it will not really revitalize crafting and the economy as a whole, which right now is completely stagnant. It will however lay the foundations for a healthy economy after patch 3.2 is released since more crafters will be able to obtain their lvl170 gear and get ready for the new 3 star recipes. I'm assuming that it will still be hard and/or time and gil consuming to obtain those mats of course, so I expect the price of 2 star recipes to remain prohibitive for most players (even if prices are halved, they'll still be too high).

[Sollux]

I'm glad as well that we will be able to obtain points to be exchanged for red scrips mats via exploratory missions, but I suspect this won't change much, i.e. it will not really revitalize crafting and the economy as a whole, which right now is completely stagnant. It will however lay the foundations for a healthy economy after patch 3.2 is released since more crafters will be able to obtain their lvl170 gear and get ready for the new 3 star recipes. I'm assuming that it will still be hard and/or time and gil consuming to obtain those mats of course, so I expect the price of 2 star recipes to remain prohibitive for most players (even if prices are halved, they'll still be too high).

Nothing is certain until we see what the new Crafting recipes in 3.1 are. As for the market being stagnant, that really depends on your server and whether you're speaking towards a particular market (Such as 2-Stars) or the market as a whole. On Tonberry the 2-Star market isn't exactly jumping, however things have been picking up in sales (Especially for Favor items and 2-Star mats themselves) and I'm betting it will become much more active come 3.1 if only because there will be more 2-Star materials on the market.

We also may/may not get new Crafting gear come 3.2 if Crafting continues to have the same type of linear progression as Combat. I took an extended break before 2.1 so I honestly can't say, but it seems like SE is trying to bring Crafting and Gathering Endgame in-line with how they handle Combat gear and I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case as by the time we get to 3.2 it will likely have been 7-8 months into HW which is plenty of time to gear a few classes even through Red Scrip gear.

[Ranzan]

But would they really introduce a new tier of crafting gear(new crafter's gear) that soon? I was thinking maybe in 3.4 there would be new 1 size fits all gear for Craft/Gather like they did in ARR.

[Sollux]

But would they really introduce a new tier of crafting gear(new crafter's gear) that soon? I was thinking maybe in 3.4 there would be new 1 size fits all gear for Craft/Gather like they did in ARR.

I really can't say as I took a year and a half break (So most of ARR). From what I know, they tend to release new Tomestones at the same time as new Raid content (At least that's what they did for ARR) which come with new gear and a new grind. With HW they seem to be trying to give Crafting a Gathering an actual Endgame that takes time to complete due to weekly gated content similar to Combat gear which gives me an inkling that they might keep the similarities going with a release of new gear in 3.2 with a new Scrip to farm.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they released an all-in-one set (Minus Accessories) for 3.1 that was i160 to help lessen the curve into 2-Stars similar to how Void Ark will likely give gear between Alex NM and Eso to lessen the time it takes to get into/clear Savage.

[Alahra]

I really can't say as I took a year and a half break (So most of ARR).

Even without taking a break it's hard to guess what they're going to do. While the weekly lock does parallel the Tomestone system, there are some differences, too. The main one is that you can't currently buy a full set of i180 gear with Red Scrips, and I think that difference is a small hint toward their future plans.

This leaves them room to add i180 accessories without cycling in new Scrip gear, which would then be necessary to craft 3-stars in 3.2. If they go this route, it's likely in my mind that fully melded i170 gear won't need any upgrades to get to 3-stars--or very few upgrades, relative to the i180 sets.

That would, to some degree, mirror how the progression worked in ARR. We didn't have a full set of i55 gear originally, and they only introduced new crafting gear a few pieces at a time (a new tool and headpiece in 2.2, and a few new accessories, and then left side "omni" gear in 2.4).

But it's really hard to say. They could do a gear reset on crafters and gatherers every major raid patch just as they do with the combat classes, though I think in the long run that would heavily devalue the pentameld option.

I really wish we had more information.