Redo the Crafting system.

[Driavna]

1.0 was a wannabe sandbox, ARR crafting is the way it is because of this. IMO, complex craft system doesn't work for theme parks but FFXIV is not complex enough either to be a stand alone so it's in a strange limbo. Anyway, people, myself included, enjoy the current system but SE could do a few tweaks here and there to bring more players (the second you mention something about level all DoH...) and really split luxury from day to day items (like gear for leveling or consumables).

It's like materia V during HW, on my server so many people don't bother with it because is unnecessarily expensive (or annoying to grind a full set via Dia/PoTD)

[Shurrikhan]

As it should be. And I'd go a step further and also make battle content optional for players who'd rather just craft.

But that raises the question what crafting should be in the first place.

If it's supposed to be a supplement to battle content, it needs to be easily accessible to players who don't really want to bother with it, because they're actually interested in battle content and crafting is just a mere support system - Once click done crafting with but a handful of materials, no dedicated gear, low barrier of entry. The WoW model.

If it's supposed to be a separate progression line or even stand on par with battle content, it needs to be mostly self-contained and not offer any real benefits for activities outside of itself like the gold saucer. And the gameplay IMO is rather lacking for that - Hands up everyone who crafts for the joy of crafting and gives the finished product away for nigh free because it's just some byproduct junk to you. The crafts don't even have unique gameplay, they all share the same minigame. That's the way of making it a game within the game.

Crafting is in a bit of a weird spot. It doesn't seem good enough to stand on its own as battle content can, but it's also too complex and time consuming to be a real supplement to battle content, as only dedicated crafters can create anything of value to battle. It's just kind of there.

I feel like the two can be blended more than that; it just might take more means of entry or acquisition.

A suggestion that was tossed around during 1.x was to anything that could be said to apply to one or more crafts should give experience accordingly, including the final stage of making boots out of intermediate products from leatherworker, alchemist, armorer, etc, and should boost crafter leveling in a way that made it easier to catch up to keep up with one's battle classes. This included the sub-suggestion that either there should actually be more stages in crafting, with additional depth, wherein one goes from high-top moccasins, so to speak, to boots, to armored boots, as to distribute accordant experience across all three crafter that would logically be involved in making a pair of jackboots, but giving further convenience in place of the extra time required to level all the involved crafts (e.g. no need to swap between classes to craft their products, at most swapping to the optimal (prior to all gear having "required" level) gear for each instead such that there's no need to swap when your crafts are roughly the same level). Similarly, non-crafter tasks such using your own hand-made weapons, modifying or augmenting weapon drops, repairing gear, and so forth should all additionally grant related crafter exp.

Another suggestion I saw back then to roughly the same effect was similar to what WoW started doing in Legion, making it easier to skip crafting "material tiers" or focus on specific ones, thereby making it easier to catch up to crafting effectively for oneself or those of one's battle class level, and to extend the level range that a given material tier may supply.

Either of those things I think would still work well now, especially if we were to just reduce the inventory cost involved in crafting, or especially crafting at different DoH levels.

[TarynH]

I know! They can make a system where you open a menu and choose a crystal. Make sure you have the right crystal for the recipe! Then try to remember the recipe, as you put in 1-8 random materials in one of the 8 boxes. Make sure you got them all! Then hit OK. After that, cross your fingers and pray you get the super mega animation. Because that means you got a high quality item! Hopefully, it won't be the shattering crystal animation. Because that means you broke it. Sad face. Don't fret if you make a normal quality item! You can always desynthesize it and either break it, or get a random item back. Then you can try it all over again!

EDIT: For those of you who don't know, this is how FFXI's crafting worked. =P

[magnanimousCynic]

Let's just let this thread die. OP has only 3 posts and clearly just wants FFXIV to be more like FFXI when the two games shouldn't be compared.

And to answer the person above me.

snip

Why? How would this improve or make the Crafting System better than what it is, besides replacing the interesting part of crafting with pure RNG? Your proposed system would just default to people using Google or a recipe-dedicated website to search what items a recipe needs, which makes hiding the recipe obsolete. It sounds neat in a single player game but not in an MMO for this day and age.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I know! They can make a system where you open a menu and choose a crystal. Make sure you have the right crystal for the recipe! Then try to remember the recipe, as you put in 1-8 random materials in one of the 8 boxes. Make sure you got them all! Then hit OK. After that, cross your fingers and pray you get the super mega animation. Because that means you got a high quality item! Hopefully, it won't be the shattering crystal animation. Because that means you broke it. Sad face. Don't fret if you make a normal quality item! You can always desynthesize it and either break it, or get a random item back. Then you can try it all over again!

I have played something like that before in some other games, but that would mean the synthesis requires no puzzle-solving aspect, and would instead rely 100% on RNG.... No, thanks! I don't wanna play that ever again...

[javid]

snip

I agree it's not a simple fix as in "make syn. cost more mats". And of course at the end of the day DEMAND/SUPPLY together drives prices. Again you're right they could make gear more relevant by making crafted gear rival raid gear....BUT THAT WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN( technically it does happen at the start of new raid patch and near the end of raid patch; ex: 250 and later came 255).

But crafted/gathering gear aren't catch up gear; however, like you said, u can't make ppl want to buy something they dont want to buy. Actually I think there are 2 things that they do now that really helps keep low mats relevant past the first week of patch: GC turn ins and RED/BLUE scripts. Both these methods offer a use for excess mats at a reward of xp/scripts which are then used to buy more mats (lol) and intermediate gear.

[javid]

Why? How would this improve or make the Crafting System better than what it is, besides replacing the interesting part of crafting with pure RNG? Your proposed system would just default to people using Google or a recipe-dedicated website to search what items a recipe needs, which makes hiding the recipe obsolete. It sounds neat in a single player game but not in an MMO for this day and age.

he's just thinking out of the box!

But also your suggestions does tell us you're not a TRUE crafter, the kind that likes to manually HQ recipes and sell them on the MB for a premium.... that's ok.

But if i remember correctly back in 1.x recipes where given; but you had to select mats into a crafting box...it was tedious and lame.......godsend to have all mats preselected (if u have them).

[magnanimousCynic]

snip

I haven't made any suggestions? I'm giving feedback TO a suggestion. Please show me a quote of me giving a suggestion in this thread, because obviously you're seeing words that I didn't type.

And don't try to use the No True Scotsman fallacy on me. You don't know how I craft or how much I sell my items for. Maybe I do fit your definition of a "TRUE crafter" and you just assumed I didn't, making you look like a fool instead.

[Nezerius]

Why? How would this improve or make the Crafting System better than what it is, besides replacing the interesting part of crafting with pure RNG? Your proposed system would just default to people using Google or a recipe-dedicated website to search what items a recipe needs, which makes hiding the recipe obsolete. It sounds neat in a single player game but not in an MMO for this day and age.

They're poking fun at the OP's statement of XIV's crafting being worse than XI's, since they described crafting in XI.

[magnanimousCynic]

snip

Oh okay.

But I still can't figure out how FFXIV's system CAN be worse than "figure out or look up the items used in this craft and pray to RNG because you can't do anything about it." I'm probably thinking too hard about this.