Removal of relevant crafted gear seems like an overreaction to me

[Mindy_Macready]

Doesn't it seem like HW in general is a huge overreaction to FCoB being cleared in a week?

For this, we got A3S, which is currently murdering raid statics left-and-right and causing some players to just quit raiding entirely.

...And we also get the removal of any relevant crafted gear to help those raid groups meet DPS checks, because crafted gear helped the top raid groups in the world get clears in FCoB in a week.

Nevermind the fact that the same crafted gear in the hands of the average raider would not have the same results, due to the skill difference (and probably due to the fact that the average raider doesn't spend every waking hour in raid).

Seems like a massive overreaction to me to continue in this direction. SE is gutting crafting as a crutch to not being able to balance raid difficulty it seems. Removal of main-stat overmelds, along with melding to raid gear, are just more nails in the coffin.

[Katlyna]

Doesn't it seem like HW in general is a huge overreaction to FCoB being cleared in a week?

Pretty much. Honestly most of the trouble is that We have two raid difficulties and one is a bit too easy and the other is too hard. And the number of raid bosses is TERRIBLY low.

Honestly their time would be better spent doing thinks like adding 8man savage versions of void ark and things like that. Emphasizing on a longer line of interesting bosses rather than four insanely overtuned savage fights.

[Sollux]

Honestly yes, it is a big overreaction, but I can see where they're coming from. Crafted gear making Raid gear obsolete is a big problem, both from a Developer and Player standpoint.

As a Developer, you're faced with the problem that players can clear Endgame content significantly faster than expected. Whether they could clear it in a week or a month using Crafted gear, this DRASTICALLY reduces the life cycle of the patch and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave. Not only that, with some Crafted pieces being better than the Endgame raid pieces it means players will have even less incentive to do endgame content as they have less pieces to farm for.

As a Player, you're faced with the problem that in order to be competitive some groups may REQUIRE overmelded Crafted gear. This goes hand in hand with the Vit Accessories issue in that a player who only wants to focus on Combat feels forced to find a way to make large amounts of gil in order to stay competitive. Not only that, but with the gear and materia being widely sought after it shoots their prices up and while this is great for a Crafter, for someone that is Combat focused and unable to make large quantities of gil it feels like a goal they cannot achieve through their own abilities.

It was definitely an overreaction, but not an unjustified one.

[MN_14]

In general, they seem to overcompensate for a lot of things and then try to make adjustments afterwards when it becomes clear that their changes weren't effective. However, their stance on crafted gear being too powerful in the past is understandable for two reasons:

1. If endgame content is cleared too quickly, there won't be enough things for players to do between patches.
2. There's going to be player dissatisfaction if they believe that wealthy players with lots of gil can clear raids earlier due to a competitive advantage.

One of the reasons that crafted gear has been effective in the past is due to the overmelding of main stats. If removing these overmelds reduces the advantage, it should be an acceptable compromise provided that they release new somewhat relevant crafted battle gear and make some balance changes to the effectiveness of secondary stats. Personally, I'm of the opinion that relevant battle gear should be released a bit later than the raid and that BIS crafted pieces should either never be released or introduced late into the raid's life cycle.

[SnugglesD]

Crafted gear will be more relevant in 3.2 supposedly.

[Katchoo]

As a Developer, you're faced with the problem that players can clear Endgame content significantly faster than expected. Whether they could clear it in a week or a month using Crafted gear, this DRASTICALLY reduces the life cycle of the patch and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave.

Which is ironic because with no incentive to craft pieces like this reduces the life cycle of the patch for crafters and means players will get bored much faster and unsub/leave.

[CookieMonsta]

This game is in a tough boat because they want to decouple Gil from progression. Almost all other MMOs I've played (except WoW) have had your gold/gil/rupees etc etc be able to directly influence your effectiveness as a player. All the same problems crop up, RMT becomes extremely prevalent, gearing is more of a matter of earning money and playing the market rather than actually forming teams to clear content.

In fact, on game I played, Aura Kingdom (ENG version of Fantasy Frontier), you had a situation where crafted gear was often BIS time AND welfare/catchup at the same time.
This was because of the way the dungeon drops worked, everything was random in combination with time-based dungeon lockouts. The raid drops was often equivalent to 10 iLevels higher than crafted in terms of base weapon/armor DMG/Defense, however, the random factor meant the stats could have a 100% (i.e. unmodified) or up to 140%.
Crafted gear on the other hand, was easy to spam, provided you can sustain the gold cost. You can customize the stats and effects to a degree but the base stats can only go up to 130%.

The balance then becomes borderline impossible for the devs. Those games I've played, the devs were simply forced to ignore balance and focus instead on cosmetics and thus the overall quality of game sunk.

On the other hand, crafting is almost completely dead in FFXIV. The devs have a difficult decision ahead, do they relax the balance and re-integrate crafted gear back to progression? or do they maintain current course and keep crafting irrelevant?

[Aniforani]

A lot of the problem could have just been solved with weekly red scrips as our limiting factor. This would create a grind to gear ourselves similar to DoW/DoM before we could even craft gear useful to endgame. Then the mats required for those crafts could have been tethered to another system that prevented us from flooding the market with powerful gear. I'm not a big fan of weekly limits like scrips, but if it let me craft an ilvl 200 item every other week I'd be less inclined to complain.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

A lot of the problem could have just been solved with weekly red scrips as our limiting factor. This would create a grind to gear ourselves similar to DoW/DoM before we could even craft gear useful to endgame. Then the mats required for those crafts could have been tethered to another system that prevented us from flooding the market with powerful gear. I'm not a big fan of weekly limits like scrips, but if it let me craft an ilvl 200 item every other week I'd be less inclined to complain.

Well, those i180 left were based on this idea. But with i180 being so weak comparing to i210, and with this i180 being insanely mat-heavy with scrip mats, they become obsolete. And yet even for such unfavorable i180, gil sellers still managed to sell them to players. You can imagine if they lower the requirement of scrip mats on it, the MB will just be flooded with them. If these gear are i190+, then you can imagine gil buyers wearing full sets of materia-melded gear in raids without the need of doing any kind of raiding activity.

SE is trying to find a solution, but everything seems like a failure so far. The only result so far is wrecking crafting.

[Katchoo]

I would be interested to see if they can even make the crafted pieces relevant again considering the current way stat weights work. We are currently in a situation where ilvl > all.

Sure we have decent access to V materia now be even then you would have to have some really good starting stats on say accessories for example AND have an ilvl starting at 200 before it would be even worth considering.

I never had an issue with crafted gear being as good as standard raid gear. Considering the vast amount of time you had to put into levelling all your classes, gearing those classes up, melding, unlocking those fucking 4* recipe books all before you actually gathering the mats and then have to HQ craft the item AND THEN FULLY OVERMELD that item.