Thread: 4.05 crafting disappointment

*NOTE: Sorry if I haven't quoted you here. There're just so many replies, it's hard to copy and paste everything!

Originally Posted by QT_Melon

As far as reskins go, least the WoD reskins are not some insane glamour quest that after wasting your time becomes some random drop in PoTD. Reskinning has been around since...well




It's also a smart way to handle resources since, having as many outfits as they do, I'm sure the files start taking up more and more space if you did uniques for everything. Since this is the first wave I'm a bit more lenient, this is early 4.0, but I do hope to see more stuff pop up in 4.1.

Originally Posted by Nezerius

Might be the worst for you, but I find it to be the best thing. Now I'll be able to obtain the dyeable version of the WoD gear.

I guess you guys are right. WoD reskin isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some WoD gear do look nice when dyeable.

I think I probably was in a bad mood after some unlucky melds... I was trying to get one Tier V in at 17%, and it blew away over 35 of them materia. So after the melds, I was having some unrealistic expectations. But anyway, why does the first overmeld have only a 17% success rate anyway? That's not very sensible... We used to have about 30% success rate for a Tier IV as first overmeld. Does any of you think it's too low as well?

I guess I was thinking along the lines that the Ao Dai stuff should require 2 star status (i.e. post-meld, or yellow scrip gear requirement). Probably because of my expensive melds, I feel this sort of things should be a reward instead of being so available to anyone without the need of Master Book V nor effort of achieving higher stats. But don't you remember the Spring Dress and Spring Skirt were also 3 star back in the old days when they were released? They did have a stats requirement. I probably had this wrong expectation that I deserve something nice after going through the hell of melding, only to find that the Ao Dai is easily available to anyone with gil to buy silk... I was like "Maybe I should have spent my money on the silks instead of the melds"... MEH, I'm a cat-human too... have emotions XD

Originally Posted by Cleanse

The % changes based on the tier of materia as well. A tier V materia has a lower chance per socket compared to say the tier I.

I know that very well, since I was the one who drew this figure and included in my guide Part 2:


My point was, the % shouldn't be so darn low! If you look at the trend there, I would have expected Tier V to be 20-ish on the first overmeld.

As a crafter since the start of ARR release, crafting was hard then for the book turn ins and crafting in general. I do like the direction they took it to allow more players into crafting. Even with it being easier for those of use doing it forever, I still have friends I help teach crafting too and it takes time. As for the macros, yeah it wasn't too hard to do that. My only let down in crafting is that there is no AF crafted crafting or gathering gear as in ARR or the sets in HW for crafters. Having the same gear is a little lame though it does save gil on melds only having one set. Still very lame. The battle gear is re used, fine, was going to glamour over it and I would guess that is why SE re uses so much. I know very few players that stick with the actual look of the gear anyways.

Edit: as a side note, the specialist locked gear being gone was very nice. I had another char and alt to get around that stupid system and at least I don't have to level them. I hope the system stays as is and this locked for a patch doesn't come back up.

Originally Posted by Millen1

As a crafter since the start of ARR release, crafting was hard then for the book turn ins and crafting in general. I do like the direction they took it to allow more players into crafting. Even with it being easier for those of use doing it forever, I still have friends I help teach crafting too and it takes time. As for the macros, yeah it wasn't too hard to do that. My only let down in crafting is that there is no AF crafted crafting or gathering gear as in ARR or the sets in HW for crafters. Having the same gear is a little lame though it does save gil on melds only having one set. Still very lame. The battle gear is re used, fine, was going to glamour over it and I would guess that is why SE re uses so much. I know very few players that stick with the actual look of the gear anyways.

My issue with the current system is that they removed any depth that the system had originally (been slowly stripping it away since 3.0). It's completely shallow at the moment and is more or less a glamoured up version of a wow system. Lots of buttons and abilities but you largely don't have to think. Strategies, rotations, and macros are incredibly easy to design because you have so much CP, are overpowered, and all forms of RNG can be negated (RNG which forced you to constantly adapt, respond to procs, and often completely change your approach on the fly in ARR). It only looks similar to crafting from before on a superficial level and has become complete side content material in terms of complexity. It's not end game worthy atm.

It's fine to have some easy crafts, but they should include content for veterans as well.

In ARR, crafting was like battle in that you had to invest time into learning the system. It was actual end game content. Challenges like the master 2 tokens were like raids in that you had to design a completely optimized strategy that made use of all of your procs and then execute it flawlessly, otherwise you weren't able to reliably HQ. Figuring out what you could do with the incremental CP gained from procs was key. Even crafts like 4* mats required thought for you to HQ effectively. Macros or rotations (aka the popular slot machine crafting technique) gave poor results that caused a ton of NQs, failed reclaims, or in general a long arduous process just to push out a single piece of HQ gear. Differences in crafter methodology gave significantly different results, allowing for skill differentiation.

HW became rotation friendly, but you were in a major disadvantage speed wise if you chose to take that route (for gear anyways). Crafting reliably from all NQ still required you to fully optimize a strategy and execute it almost flawlessly, but it was way easier this time around. However, if you used a rotation, you likely had to repeat it over and over to HQ intermediate materials or face a much higher NQ rate so rotation users from what I saw tended to be left in the dust (eg. a 300k profit is not attractive if it takes you 15 min to craft a final item). Again, different methodologies gave different results and allowed for skill differentiation. Anyone could get HQ items but it paid very well to learn the system properly.

In SB, they introduced all sorts of new skills but it doesn't really matter because anyone can faceroll everything from all NQ even while using wildly different techniques. There is no differentiation between players (unlike raiding, dungeons, etc) and everyone is on equal footing. This raises the question as to why HQ materials even exist and why the game should stick with the current NQ/HQ system. Why not go all the way and scrap the abilities altogether? For all intents and purposes, you have a system that has as much depth as a wow style crafting system.

For now, the mini-game aspect to crafting has been removed and crafting has lost the distinctiveness that it once had over other systems.