Bring back Lucis Crafting/Gathering!

[HakuroDK]

Hey there! So... I feel like crafting has gone the way of grinding the same old things forever through the use of macros and it's not really challenging. I would like to bring back Lucis Crafting (a.k.a. Savage Crafting).

Especially where there are so many new and unique skills we have in the game now that we didn't have back in A Realm Reborn, I really want to challenge myself with this and earn rewards for it.

For those of you who don't know, "Lucis Crafting" was where one procured materials for crafting through various methods (Allied Seals and GC Seals among them), which were then used along with popular endgame materials at the time to craft absurdly difficult recipes. As a reward for these (and I think you also needed 20 Moonstones and a Mastercraft Demimateria as well?), you would get a Lucis Tool, which was the best tool in the game. Gathering was similar, albeit a bit more grindy.

Now, there are some changes I would like to see if Lucis Crafting/Gathering (or Savage Crafting/Gathering) were to return.

What Should Stay:

-Procuring Untradeable Materials from non-gathering sources (Custom Deliveries, Ixali/Moogle Beast Tribes, etc. come to mind. This promotes doing this content more.)

-Incredibly Difficult Recipes for Crafting (This is the whole point, to test oneself)

-Fantastic Crafting/Gathering-related rewards to those who succeed ("All Classes" design variants of DoH/DoL AF Gear, Ornate Crafting/Gathering Gear, BiS tools, etc., just to name a few.)



What Should Change:

-Lucis/Savage Gathering. Make it collectability-based! You could do this for crafting too, if you wanted!

-Remove Recipes As Rewards. If memory serves, the same items used for crafting Lucis turn-ins were also used for Master Book IIs. This removes the fun from Lucis Crafting entirely as it forces crafters to do this just to remain competitive on the market.

-Don't force crafters/gatherers to directly participate in combat to buy untradeable mats (i.e. Hunts, Tomestones, etc.) Scrips, GC Seals, Tokens from Ixal/Moogle Beast Tribes, and maybe even a future Custom Delivery currency would do fine.

Thank you for reading. I hope we can establish a proper hardcore crafting/gathering scene with these changes that doesn't rob casual/midcore crafters of being able to craft whatever they are able to.

[Kaurhz]

snip.

I was only around to experience a portion of the Lucis devastation on my alt, as I wanted to see what the fuss was about, and immediately saw the case. If I do recall, a large portion of actually obtaining HQ on an item was down to, RNG, was it not? I mean you could have a fairly solid rotation with everything hitting, but again, to recall I believe the chance of getting HQ on this item was still down to attempting to bait a good/excellent on a Byregot's Blessing? I guess to an extent it makes it something far to complex to just, simply macro it, but at the same time it locks a great portion of the playerbase out, those without much gil. Couldn't really comment much on how it 'would' be, but when you say incredibly difficult, this is what comes to mind.


The idea that crafters/gatherers need to participate in getting stuff like Tomestones is ridiculous. However, I probably shouldn't see the system like this as it gives more inter-dependencies between battlecrafts and gatherers/crafters. It means that people focusing on battlecrafts have an opportunity to farm items that crafters need, outside of the standard hides/skins and manes/fleece. Which as tedious as it is, is something done well, and carried over. It also means that old Tomestones won't be obsolete when the newer ones come out, and won't change until the Tomestones succeeding creation come out.

Contrary to how I've trash posted, a given craft should be doable with a macro, however, just not effective to the extent which we have now. Crafting should be difficult to the extent in which you actually have benefit in manually crafting something, over just simply clicking 2 buttons. As it stands, there's very little benefit in crafting manually, over doing macros, in fact I'd say macros have it more favourable which is backwards from what an ability/skill based system should offer.

I'm inclined to say 4* in Heavensward was the right level. You could macro an end craft, but you rarely saw anyone daring enough to do it, the extent only reached to people macroing a base material rather than an end product. Again, having a craft gated behind a tremendous amount of RNG does not accomplish incredibly hard, at least in my perspective, RNG should be A factor, but not THE factor. Maybe I should've crafted more in the Lucis way before progressing, but I'd be damned if I'm going to slaughter a stack of Fieldcraft Demimateria, or click reclaim each time I never reached 11 stacks, or if possible, when I don't get a good for Byregot's Blessing.

Had they just not included Manipulation II, or Prudent Touch whatsoever then we would've had a fairly fine system, or least to say had their CP cost buffed. I still hope for the life of me something is changed with these 2 skills, or that they don't scale nearly as well as they have thus far. The only real system that I can see making omni, and mono equally satisfied and equally difficult/easy is a proper specialist system that makes up for the lack of cross class, e.g. 3-4 stacks of initial preparations and more skills/abilities related to the use of having initial preparations, e.g. difficulty/complexity reduction for [x] steps (Equal footing with Ingenuity/II). Hell, Manipulation II should've been a specialist skill, not standard, I don't think we should be getting overpowered stuff such as Manipulation II across all classes. The other system is just completely doing over with the CC system we have at the moment and just making it so all crafters have a selection of abilities to choose from in a pool of some sort, similar to what we have with the role-based system. YES I get that crafting is not a ROLE, but, again, something similar. Then the only real benefit of actually having omni is the fact you can make any given item you wish, rather than having just a WVR, and needing to buy items from LTW, you could craft both.

I guess my comments kinda blow up for the rest of your post. But rather than making it seem almost mandatory in any manner is silly, if they were to have crafts as difficult as you suggest/propose difficult I'd like it to be for the sake of vanity, rather than BiS gear, otherwise that makes it mandatory for many people. *Cough cough* GIMME THAT GEMMASTERS GOWN (available on all classes *cough cough* I want to say perhaps a vanity tool similar to that of the blessed tool we have, except for the offhand, but if they're going to incorporate that it's likely going to be attached to some silly achievement like, craft every item in the game except a few pieces, similar to how the blessed main tool was. I for one would be over the moon if they attached something like this to the custom deliveries system with new clients we may get, rather than just, here's your weekly dose of free red/yellow scrips, and a 1 time bonus per of materia VI per rank, which it's likely going to be the case when we get around to the universal DoH set (Carbonweave/Ironworks), and likely the only time it'd be a major necessity. Interdependence is something an MMO needs, otherwise it's like 2 completely different realms.

These are only my personal thoughts so I hope nobody gets offended by them or anything like that?

[Caitlinzulu]

Kaurz you say in your wall of text that barely anyone had the guts to macro 4 star crafts....
I did that all the time including final products and rarely got nq results.
What i do agree upon is that crafting is too easy. WAY to easy. In my opinion there isnt even a profit to be made in crafting the latest pieces. Not compared to the effort you have to make in getting the materials.

[Nezerius]

Lucis crafting really wasn't all that difficult. You could easily bruteforce through it, for multiple reasons:
1. It was part of the Master Book I, meaning players didn't have to go through the Master Book II HQ crafts to access those recipes.
2. You could turn in the NQ versions of the Lucis items to get the important mats back.
For example, a NQ Fluorite Lens (GSM Lucis item) could be turned in to get the 3 Clear Fluorite and 1 Emery. You'd only lose a basilisk whetstone, a siltstone whetstone, and some wind/fire clusters.

[Kaurhz]

Kaurz you say in your wall of text that barely anyone had the guts to macro 4 star crafts....
I did that all the time including final products and rarely got nq results.
What i do agree upon is that crafting is too easy. WAY to easy. In my opinion there isnt even a profit to be made in crafting the latest pieces. Not compared to the effort you have to make in getting the materials.

I'm talking strictly end products on all NQ materials. It'd go smoothly, for a really good portion of the time, and you could always reclaim but the point I was attempting to make is that we had significant benefit of crafting manually, over macro crafting. Maybe that point should've been made explicitly clear, and should've worded it differently to 'guts' but rather just done it outright and all the time. It was a case of a macro is still more riskier than doing manually, so it was a case of potentially avoiding 500k potential additional profit. That is non existent now.

Also, it does come partially down to experience, I very rarely saw someone use macros on 4* crafts efficiently, I'm well aware how easy it is to macro 4* using Maker's Mark since you can get up to 12 touches if done correctly. Which over 90% of the time will HQ anything you throw at it. Most other crafters I had the pleasure of talking with were usually fairly nervous to actually do macros so they either manually crafted everything, or asked for people to HQ base materials for them.

Some servers have the real nightmare, here it's a little more secure with profits, but doing commission work is definitely a near loss of profits on some crafts, most it's a profit but I feel sorry for the servers where these items are selling for 200k. They've always done good with keeping a strong economy but this is just disaster

Sorry for the walls of text

[Kaurhz]

Lucis crafting really wasn't all that difficult. You could easily bruteforce through it, for multiple reasons:
1. It was part of the Master Book I, meaning players didn't have to go through the Master Book II HQ crafts to access those recipes.
2. You could turn in the NQ versions of the Lucis items to get the important mats back.
For example, a NQ Fluorite Lens (GSM Lucis item) could be turned in to get the 3 Clear Fluorite and 1 Emery. You'd only lose a basilisk whetstone, a siltstone whetstone, and some wind/fire clusters.

We are thinking of the items like the Calibrated Rose Gold Cog(HQ), right? If not then my brain cells are probably diminished, or least to say my mind is elsewhere.

EDIT: I just went back to the game and checked the recipe example you used, and no I'm not thinking of the same thing everyone else is. Generally when someone says difficult and ARR crafts in the same sentence my mind popped to getting the 3* items required for book II (801 difficulty & 8964 quality

[raela]

The Lucis took items were low stress due to the item exchange, so an 80% success rate for 20 items was no big deal. The master 2 books, however, were a bit more of a nail biter. However, the ARR end game crafting style is not really compatible with collectables, since a lot of it was crossing your fingere that lower quality managed to pull off HW anyway. Collectables are straight quality based.. so yeah, wouldn't really work.