Please let us socket materia without crafting

[Kaurie]

I don't think crafters have EVER worried about gil with crafting. I've never ONCE gotten gil for melding someone's gear, and I seriously doubt many others do either (and those that do wouldn't make enough from it to be a sustainable income, even.)
What crafters are saying is, they did a lot of work to be able to utilize that melding, it's one of the few things that makes those levels actually worthwhile, if you(proverbial, not direct) don't want to do that work, then talk to someone, simple as that.

This is perfectly fair, and I can respect that. However, the game was flipped on its head fundamentally with the change to materia slots on raid gear. No longer is this something that is an added convenience, but is a requirement.

I think that it would be great if they did a system similar to repairing, where anyone can go to an NPC and pay gil to repair, but those who leveled their crafters can go ahead and do it anywhere on their own. With materia, one could go ahead and slot materia at an NPC for a fee, or they can find a crafter to help them or they can do it themselves if they've crafted.

I feel this would keep the added convenience and keep crafters worthwhile for all the time they put into it, but also let those of us who really despise crafting in this game find an alternate avenue to do this. If this wasn't a gearing requirement it would be different.


Another system that may work is for crafters to create a mobile meld kit that they can sell on the market board. Then anyone could buy this to meld stuff on to their gear, this would allow for non-crafters to be able to meld without having to hunt someone down and it would provide an even more worthwhile aspect to crafting.

[Suirieko]

And ever since Material became available on new gear. Crafter have started raising prices on it.
I am NOT paying 200k to slot materia. Ever.

Anyone that charges you 200K to slot a materia is being a prick. Don't even give them a gil.

Removing melding would not make crafter obsolete.
In fact it would promote folks to meld more.
Having such a key gameplay aspect 100% tied/reliant on players is flawed.

No, it wouldn't make crafting obsolete, but it would pretty much be a slap in our face who actually worked hard to get to this.

It takes a few minutes to go shout, and if you don't like their price, shout again.

For the record: I never charge for melding. I take whatever tip people have to offer. I'm just that nice.

Crafter need to get over themselves. You make plenty of Gil.
Folks being able to slot and unslot materia will not break your bank accounts.

Wasn't about gil. It was about people demanding to have easy access to an option that pretty much all crafters have to work hard to get, in order to be self-sufficient. Maybe I'm tired of SE catering to players that feel entitled and have everything handed to them.

And on top of that, it's not even THAt hard to level crafts either. >_>

[Defias]

@Suirieko;

Don't you dare mistake my remarks as entitlement.
I have endured, bit & gritted my teeth and suffered all my crafters to 50. And have been preparing myself mentally to suffer the torment once again to lvl 60.

And I didn't give the crafter a dime and because I refused to pay she didn't do the meld. I gave her the tip of a detailed cuss out as a result.

But with folks setting high standards. People are already starting a "You must have _ materia melded to your gear." Meta.
So it's becoming a requirement.
So greedy players are exploiting it as easy money.

However, Materia in this game has honestly been a lackluster feature to begin with.
Considering it is a nod/homage to FF7 it does a horrible job of emulating it.
Not once in FF7 did Cloud and his team stop what they were doing hunt down a crafter and have them stick a ball in a hole.
I sure don't remember Kadaj & his troupe in Advent Children squatting down and melding. They just stuck the materia in their gear and went about their business.

When armor has slots open. I feel players should be able to slot & unslot Materia at will.
When it comes to Overmelding...aka: trying to slot Materia where there is no slot...
Now THAT should require a Crafter.

Now if they added in a materia NPC who can do melds with 100% success when melding to a slot.
NOT when overmelding.
Who charges like the repair NPC.
Let's say 1000gil per meld.
Overmelds being 10k per Materia but like with real crafters has a high chance of failure.
I'd honestly shut my mouth. But even then...that's a band-aid to a bad system.
Materia never should have required a crafter.
Like Chocobo Racing the system is complicated for no honest reason.

And for the record. I don't charge for melds. I don't charge for most of the crafting crap like others in this game.

I deliberately make HQ newbie gear and hand it out to newbies. And crash the market on newbie gear.
No newbie should have to pay 10 or 20k for gear. Period.

I leveled crafts so I could help out newbies, meld (which I want to see go away), and help out friends.

@Ilitsa

My point was that Materia is a direct nod to FF7. But it's done horribly.
As I stated above. It is becoming a requirement.
And while it may give an illusion of choice...
Folks are already stating that _ materia must be in blank slot for _ role/Job. So no...we're all STILL going to be the bland copy & paste of each other once the meta is set in stone.

[Ilenya]

Not once in FF7 did Cloud and his team stop what they were doing hunt down a crafter and have them stick a ball in a hole.
I sure don't remember Kadaj & his troupe in Advent Children squatting down and melding. They just stuck the materia in their gear and went about their business.

I love this, namely because the system for Materia between FFVII and FFXIV is different to begin with, but also the fact that Cloud himself was considered the expert on materia slotting, hence not needing to find anyone. Remember, Barrett had to ask Cloud how to do it for the tutorial, CLOUD ALREADY KNEW!

[Defias]

I love this, namely because the system for Materia between FFVII and FFXIV is different to begin with, but also the fact that Cloud himself was considered the expert on materia slotting, hence not needing to find anyone. Remember, Barrett had to ask Cloud how to do it for the tutorial, CLOUD ALREADY KNEW!

In that tutorial Cloud literally said to Barrett that if an item has a materia slot you just need to put the materia in the slot.
Aka: "Put the Ball in the Hole."

Cloud never mentioned needing a Catalyst, nor was Cloud trained in any crafts.
Barrett felt like an idiot.

It's also worth mentioning...that to Remove Materia they would just:
"Take the ball out of the hole."
And the Materia & item did not get destroyed in the process.

Video: https://youtu.be/XTXHFFOLUko

[Adventica6]

It's clear yoshi is trying to establish teamwork between the crafting and Raiding community, they have always been very separate. This change almost forces you to ask others to meld for you every time you get an upgrade, which is tedious I can understand that but it's also promoting community. The crafters can now charge for melds and people will pay for it if they don't have the craft, this is a good thing for the crafters but a slight annoyance for the pve raider crowd.

I am in the middle, I am maxed out with Goldsmithing for my right side of my gear but I don't feel like leveling a bunch of others crafts for my left side (2-3 crafts max for just left side melding).

If you understand the concept behind the change you can't really get mad even though it may be annoying at first.

[Tribunus]

I think a good comprimise would be to just require one craft at X level to meld Y grade materia, requiring 3 or more crafts to meld you gear on one class seems a bit much.

[AnaviAnael]

My friends ask me all the time to meld stuff for them. Really, it's no big deal. Most people with their crafts leveled understand that it's not something for everyone and therefore don't fuss over melding stuff. It's especially easy now that we don't have to change classes. So, if you're worried about "putting other people out," don't.

[Synestra]

OK, just let me go ahead and level GSM, LTW, WVR and ALC to 60 for the sole purpose of melding.

You also gain access for self-repairs so its just not for melds, repairing was actually a reason why i leveled all crafters in firstplace but after that i also noticed that crafting can also print lots of money.

[CosmicKirby]

It takes 5 seconds to ask someone to meld on your behalf. You are not forced to meld everything yourself, so this is literally the single dumbest argument ever made. You're also not forced to meld at all. You never have been, but many people did meld before, so why is it so different now? Oh right. because tome gear also has slots now, so you feel naked without shiny materia in them.

Is it really necessary to get into this argument again? If you're trying to clear endgame difficult content. You are expected to be doing everything within your reasonable ability and power to pull your weight. You're supposed to gear the best you can, learn your rotation the best you can, and perform the best you can, as there are 7 others counting on you to do so. Having SOMETHING melding into your materia slots is "required" in the sense that if you don't, you're either a douche, or you'll be short of a static if you don't. I'm not "forced" to wear pants when I go into work, but I'll probably be fired if I don't.

Because it's a vital part of the crafting role. It's like saying a healer can heal, but they're not allowed to remove status ailments. Or tanks can tank, but they're not allowed to Provoke.

This is a horrible analogy, there's nothing near equivalency here. Melded was never a vital part of crafting for anything other than crafting gear. SOME Combat builds and items needed it, but providing melding services is almost never lucrative or terribly common. It most certainly will be now that all end-game gear will need it, but that's not fair to say this has always been the case, it simply hasn't.

For what it's worth, I did actually prefer the system where crafting jobs repaired your gear, because it made them so much more relevant than they are now. There was an actual market for us that did not involve high end gear and ultra-rare items for glamour purposes only. Now, we have to break the bank grinding scrips and countless rare items just to craft something which doesn't even match tome gear.

Anything lucrative or involving large amounts of money in this game, is a DIRECT result of crafting or gathering. The only money there is to be made in combat gameplay, is selling runs. Something that less than half of 1% of players probably do.

SE doesn't want to give us relevance through gear, so we make the niceties that everyone can easily live without. The reason the market is so expensive, is because crafting is one heck of a grind just to get to a stage where we can make that stuff. As much as people love to point fingers at crafting jobs, claiming we're overpaid fat-cats with billions in the bank, they fail to realize how much effort went into getting there.

Right, your crafting system is flawed and heavily un-fun for the majority of players. That's why there's so few of you and why most crafters corner the market pretty hard on their servers.

So, no. I don't want crafting jobs to lose one of their benefits when they have so few of them to start with. Crafting has always been reliant on combat jobs, so why are you suddenly annoyed that it's the other way around for a change?

So why not give them new benefits and things to craft? As opposed to just adding in inconvenience for both them and non-crafters? This is, at best, a band aid to the crafting system being somewhat relevant.

This is a really poor defense. You want your system to be relevant, by being bothered every once in a while making almost nothing or nothing at all for clicking a button. Mesmerizingly intense and rewarding gameplay. Totally worth keeping in the game.