The Joy of Crafting

[Cuervo]

I just started playing the game about two weeks ago so I never really had an idea how crafting worked before 1.19 and the differences between that and the current system.

I've been looking around to find the materials needed to craft dated items, specifically ones that required parts to try to get a feel for how the old system worked compared to the new recipes. What sucks is that most of all the items that these old recipes required are removed from the game. I really don't have the gil to spend on hunting down all the stuff on the markets either. Not that it's even a valid complaint though, because I started playing right in the middle of these adjustments.

If you ask my opinion however, I believe it is a mistake to remove parts from the system. Granted, I have no experience with it, and I imagine it was pretty tedious, but I think there were better ways to handle the complaints rather than truncating half the crafting system. To me, looking simply from an "on paper" aspect, the biggest problem was almost every part had to be dyed, and each cloth/leather had a different type of dye. Now with the introduction of all purpose dyes, I think it would have been fine to allow people to craft the parts, then construct the item from the parts, and then dye the finished product as a whole. The new recipes just seem a little too simplified for a system that stood out from crafting in many other MMO's. Especially since the DoH and DoL classes are treated as being viable playing experiences, making them vanilla is a bad concept. If that's where we are heading then you might as well just do away with them and make it more like FFXI where it was more like something to pass the time. That would be a shame though.

At the end of the day, all I can say is I would enjoy a crafting system that is both complex and requires time, patience and skill, just like our ancestors did things so many years ago. Crafting was treated realistically in this game, and such a system is simply not going to be enjoyed by everyone (as clearly outlined in the many posts/threads on this subject). From the beginning this game really seemed like it wanted to have half the people enjoying the battle system, questing, etc. and the other half enjoying their time crafting armor/weapons & tools and creating an economy. The reason why this didn't happen is because the actual process of synthesizing wasn't engaging enough, and instead resorted to recipes with a long list of materials. I've noticed most of the complaints right now aren't about the parts or material requirements, but rather synthesizing itself.

This game is really fun to play, but I find I get really tired of crafting because it just feels to monotonous. I've done the research on what I need to do to be successful, but I don't like that I still get those few synths that no matter what you do, they are doomed to fail. Crafting should be as skill based as possible. The current system does not feel like I'm using skill, even if people are arguing whether it does or not. The funny thing is what qualifies as 'skill' is different for each individual. For instance, some people equate skill with tactics, or calculations, while others equate it with timing and quick reflexes.