Reduce cost of Soul of the Crafter

[Mindy_Macready]

I returned to the game a few months back in large part because I think the changes to the crafting system -- including, most notably, specialization restrictions -- take it in a positive direction.

Until you realize that undercutting will still happen even with the specialist system in place. You have less competition but your competition will still be willing to undercut unless you collude with them.

[Kakure]

Until you realize that undercutting will still happen even with the specialist system in place. You have less competition but your competition will still be willing to undercut unless you collude with them.

They will, and that's a good thing. The problem was never undercutting per se. The problem is that there's not enough granularity in the system to support large numbers of people all trying to sell the same thing (compare with the real world, where you can walk into an office supply store and find a hundred different kinds of pens for sale), which leads to degenerate, unenjoyable gameplay. By slotting us into specialized niches, SE has reduced the amount of people we have to compete with and increased the amount of people we can sell to. The crafting economy is cyclical. Specializations slow the ebb and give us things to sell to other crafters.

[Mindy_Macready]

By slotting us into specialized niches, SE has reduced the amount of people we have to compete with and increased the amount of people we can sell to. The crafting economy is cyclical. Specializations slow the ebb and give us things to sell to other crafters.

I have to disagree. Even with 8 retainers the most hardcore crafters couldn't corner every market. Coupled with crafting on request for higher-skilled crafts (by advertising yourself), you didn't have to subject yourself to the market board to make gil, and specialization only limits gameplay as a whole.

Specialist recipes are a band-aid to hide the fact that the specialist system failed to do what it intended.

Also, one of the main complaints about HW crafting was that the only customers were other crafters. Before specialist skills came out that's all we had to sell to, specialist doesn't change this.

[StouterTaru]

snip

The barrier for 2.x was you can throw tons of time and money at it, while the barrier in 3.2 is you can throw tons of time and money at it or use red scrips.

Even if you want to try 3 stars without access to favors, main/off/body and minor melds gets you there for less than 8 weeks worth of scrips. I just did 120+ 3-star synths this last weekend, most of them with 419 CP, and hit HQ on ~95% of them, including all 35 pieces of gear. The stuff isn't that hard.

[Mindy_Macready]

The barrier for 2.x was you can throw tons of time and money at it, while the barrier in 3.2 is you can throw tons of time and money at it or use red scrips.

Even if you want to try 3 stars without access to favors, main/off/body and minor melds gets you there for less than 8 weeks worth of scrips. I just did 120+ 3-star synths this last weekend, most of them with 419 CP, and hit HQ on ~95% of them, including all 35 pieces of gear. The stuff isn't that hard.

Sorry, 2.x was not as bad. Eight weeks to gear up one crafter for 3-stars in 3.x? Funny, in 2.x you'd have maxed EVERY crafting class easily by that time. Just re-read that last sentence.

Look at the cost of favor mats required to get red scrip items, or the red scrip items themselves. Buying ehcatl sealants was way more viable, mainly because the entire server was getting it.

You're over-generalizing the differences between 2.x and 3.x for the sake of arguing, it seems.

[StouterTaru]

Sorry, 2.x was not as bad. Eight weeks to gear up one crafter for 3-stars in 3.x? Funny, in 2.x you'd have maxed EVERY crafting class easily by that time. Just re-read that last sentence.

You can just as "easily" max every 3.x class in far fewer than 8 weeks, you just can't do specialist recipes for them.

You're either misremembering what 2.x was, or you didn't do top level crafting back then.

• Demimateria was a long grind between leveling desynth and making hundreds of tokens to turn in
• Masterbook II required HQ of recipes harder than anything we have now
• Lucis required difficult recipes locked behind a mountain GC seals

Sure you could have thrown tons of money at those to "easily" max each class, just like you can now in 3.x

[Mindy_Macready]

The amount of gil you'd need to throw at 2.x doesn't compare at all to the amount of gil you would need to throw at 3.x. The amount of time you'd need to throw at 2.x doesn't compare at all to the amount of time you would need to throw at 3.x.

Farming for demimateria was not difficult, unless you didn't know to level GSM desynth (and later LTR on vendored gear). And buying them outright still hurt less than buying favor mats and red scrip items outright.

The fact that you can farm for masterbooks with blue scrip farming makes 3.x easier to get to recipes, but mastercraft I books were a macro-able craft. The mastercraft IIIs were difficult crafts made easier by the fact that you got mats back. But mastercraft IIs required some skill to craft, so if you didn't understand high-skilled crafting back then I could see liking scrips more.

Lucis tools were not required for end-game crafting, they just made it easier. You remember being able to do 4* crafts with Supras, right...?

[StouterTaru]

<stuff used to be cheaper and take less time>

Cheaper is relative, it's like comparing buy a tablet today to a home computer 30 years ago, the economy is different. Some of the stuff back then was more time consuming, some of the stuff now is more time consuming. HW is not a carbon copy of ARR.

But mastercraft IIs required some skill to craft, so if you didn't understand high-skilled crafting back then I could see liking scrips more.

When did I even say that I liked scrips? Let me remind you what I said:

3.0 had a much smaller barrier, but unless red scrip gear/mats become more easily attainable in the next few months, the barrier will be just as bad or worse than 2.x come the end of 3.x

Then you went off talking about gear and recipes that didn't even exist in 3.0, and how it's so much worse now to reach top tier crafting. Right now it requires almost as much effort for a new crafter to hit top tier as it did toward the middle/end of 2.x

[Mindy_Macready]

When I say FC3 and Mastercraft "hurt" less than Aethersands, Favor Mats, and Red Scrip items, the term should easily be understood as a term relative to the given economies at the time. So no need for the first response because it doesn't address any points.

You never said you liked scrips. The post was merely a conditional.

As for your last paragraph, no. I pretty much just addressed the absurdity of claiming that 3.0 had a smaller barrier than 2.x in terms of high level crafting.

[StouterTaru]

I pretty much just addressed the absurdity of claiming that 3.0 had a smaller barrier than 2.x in terms of high level crafting.

It took me less than 3 weeks to be geared up enough to craft every single recipe in 3.0, and that includes the time to level all crafts to 60 and do other stuff in the game. All gear and mats were easy and abundant. 3.05 (or 3.06) is when 2 stars came out, and even they only required melds on that same common gear, as well as some common food.