Are you happy with the current state of crafting?

[Zeldt]

Title. This is something I've wanted to discuss for a while now, or rather I'd like to hear what everyone elses opinion on that topic is. Both new crafters and veterans alike, now that we've had four star for a while - are you happy with SB's direction of DoH content?

All in all I am pretty disappointed with what they've done to DoH during SB. I left HW with pentamelded Ironworks and initially had a blast progressing from 60 to 70 while unlocking some of the new tools, such as Prudent Touch. After that it was pretty stale for a good while considering I didn't need to upgrade to 290 right away and could make item just fine with both my Ironworks and up to date tools. On one hand not having to gamble with Hasty Touch all the time was nice but it became clear that Prudent Touch is insanely strong and thus you'd have an easier time to macro anything endgame reliably without much investment nor effort.

Fast forward a bit, Ala Mhigan gear released. And oh boy, did I love the step up in difficulty! Crafting these by hand via specialist and later on with MuMe and Patient Touch felt great. Being able to craft these early felt super rewarding, even more so since a lot of people voiced their concerns about its difficulty - I felt accomplished as a DoH main when I could reliably produce these for both friends and the marketboard. People eventually caught up in stats and started using MaMa macro's for these too, but those took forever and didn't take away the feeling of being able to craft these pieces by hand. To me, this era of SB crafting felt great and I was looking forward to the upcoming three star recipes.

They eventually came, but oh boy was it underwhelming. Instead of stepping up from the previous difficulty of ala mhigan, they nerfed the former and three star stuff was super easy even without medium budget gear. Alright I thought, it is just preparing us for the upcoming four star recipes so they might aswell make it a bit easier so everyone has a good time catching up. XIV is known for making things easier over time so more people can access content. Four star will surely be challenging again and seperate macro boys from those who truly mastered the system. Right?

Oh boy, how wrong I was. The night before 4.4 datamining lready revealed what most didn't expect - super lax requirements for the upcoming recipes. To put it in comparison, anyone who had medium budget melds from the previous tier could easily use the same macro's we had for three star recipes. Excuse me square? Needless to say crafting the new items didn't impose any challenge at all, it was basically collecting some materials as fast possible and pressing two buttons for an guaranteed hq product. Hurray, I guess.

And this is my gripe with how crafting was handled for the most part of SB. I feel it became way too easy, up to a point where you can mostly disregard any factor of skill, knowledge and rng. In some ways it is nice to have the content namely crafting more accessible, but for me it somewhat lost a bit of its novelty being a decently skilled omnicrafter. Apart from the old relic weapons it was always optional side content and in no way required. Putting in time, acquiring knowledge about the system and putting said knowledge to use in order to produce items was what initially drew me to DoH. It had its own depth in many aspects, you could argue about efficiency, it rewarded good decision making and so on - battling both the progress and quality bar was once a game on its own and to me it was very fun.

Having a plethora of abilities and different ways to combat an craft was what made me love it during both arr and hw. As of now, for the most part of sb, it feels just like any other mmo where you collect a list of materials, press a button or two and it outputs a guaranteed result. Everytime, with little room for errors - if any. Heck, todays macro's compared to the stats we need are so efficient, anyone without any knowledge about crafting can produce any item in the game with the press of a few buttons. The current best gear, Onishi, can be bought on most servers for dirt cheap, melds are basically free too with weekly custom deliveries (welfare scrips are a mistake, imo - but this is another topic) and thus the level of entry has become super low.

Where is the fun and reward in that?

On a not so serious note, you can craft this expansions best DoH gear with old ironworks (mind you, not even pentamelded) and yellow scrip tools. I don't know if it is me growing old and grumpy, but I wish it would have been harder. Previously crafting at the highest level required a good amount of knowledge, time and dedication. Nowadays it feels like opening up your pockets, buying your way in and then do what you can do on previous mentioned games: Collect some materials, press two buttons and call it day. Zero knowledge required, just copy one of the many meld sets and macros flying around and you are good to go.

I could also rant about how they handled materials in this game, in regards to bots - namely Alchemics, but this is another story.


Now I'm curious - what is everyone elses take on this?

You can edit your post to get around the character limit.

Thanks.

[Dzian]

I kinda think crafting is easy because it's virtually never relevent.

In my eyes though crafting and gathering are both far to easy. and the items you make aren't really NQ and HQ. its more like NQ and LQ. It's so easy to HQ anything that HQ is more the standard quality than it is Higher Qualilty.

same can be said with gahtering. it's far too easy to HQ even the highest items so much so that again the HQ is more standard than it is Higher quality. and this also can be seen on the markets. where max grade level 70 metals and stuff are virtually identical in price to significantly lower grade mythrills and electrums in many cases. just because they're all so easy to get..

I don't think much can be done about itthough because this game is built around having such a low entry level and everything being so easy. there's really nothing you can do... if you made high end crafted materials harder to make you'd just make them not worth making at all given how long they'd typically last anyway..

[Bourne_Endeavor]

You can edit your post to get around the character limit.

That being said, I wholeheartedly agree. Crafting has become a complete joke nowadays. While I still enjoy it, there simply lacks even the slightest bit of challenge. I went with a cheaper alternative for overmelds and am damn glad I did since they were still overkill for the tiers we got. Heavensward really made you have to work if you wanted to macro anything. And even then, it remained a risk. With the lowered Durability/Quality rates and abilities like Manipulation II and Rapid Synthesis II, you can easily muscle through everything.

It cannot simply be a relevance issue because Creator saw no such problem. And I know plenty of crafters who loved the Ala Mhigan sets. It's simply yet another accessibility change which can more or less be the Stormblood motto. Everything has gotten easier. Crafting is, sadly, no different.

[Cleanse]

You have to realize that the crafting community has created tools, guides, and shared their DoH knowledge in different forums. Even with all the information out there, people on my server still find it difficult to craft endgame items. It is tough for some after I help make them the same (or better) gear than me and point them towards guides. Designing content for a handful of people is a waste of resources.

On top of that, Hasty RNG is not fun at all, nor was it in HW etc. If you enjoyed those rotations or felt they were skilled, you can do the new Rath's/Maker's Mark rotations. The quality of life additions to the game keep people sane.

I think the current choices of rotation we have are nice (low cp, but long rotation vs high cp, shortened rotation).

Be careful when looking at things with rose tinted glasses. If you're looking for a challenge, then try out non macroable rotations (whistle) and avoid 'spoiler' sections of forums etc.

[Liam_Harper]

Definitely have to agree. I don't think crafting is absolutely face-roll or in a terrible spot, I still enjoy it and they ironed out some of the excessive bumps from HW, things like favours, scrip caps and the Holy leveling mats requiring timed nodes. But they've really gone too far with accessibility. Like you said, endgame crafts can be done with 2 presses of a macro and a guaranteed HQ result without even having max gear. In fact just recently I made a full set of end-game macros for a FC member who was still gearing and well below CP cap.

Currently I use NQ Tempura and nothing else, macro's that aren't the maximum potential but fit neatly into 2 buttons, half my mats are NQ, including non-specialist and my melds are all with materia I scraped together free from scrips and converting. I churn out guaranteed HQ 3 and 4 star with this. I'm not being tested or pushed anywhere close to my limit and I do wish I was.

The Ala Mhigan set was in a good spot for difficulty. I'm baffled why they changed it. I didn't see any topics here complaining it was too hard or requesting they make it easier. I was looking forward to really having to think hard for 3 star, work for the mats and pull some solid melds together.

Another thing is the Namazu which were fun for the first week or two but are now a 5 minute snooze that most endgame crafters don't bother with because Stormsap are so cheap. This might be debatable but I don't know why new crafters needed the catch-up mechanic, especially when you can turbo to 70 quite easily throwing out easy lv62 leve's. Too much catch up and no real endgame makes no sense to me, because what exactly are the new players catching up to? There's nothing waiting for them except buy a super cheap Onishi set at 70 and churn out 3 and 4 star for the mb with 2 button presses for the next 6-8 months.
With DoW/DoM, catch-up gear lets you step into current dungeons, Normal raids and 8 mans, which then lets you step into Ex, then into Savage and then even Ultimate if you master your class all the way. You always have a goal ahead of you. Us crafters don't have that goal anymore.

[Zeldt]

On top of that, Hasty RNG is not fun at all, nor was it in HW etc.

Agreed, RNG is not fun, but Hasty atleast had some decision making to it. If it failed you had to rethink your next steps, prioritized durability differently and so on. Don't get me wrong, Prudent Touch is great quality of life but it makes things too easy. Same thing can be said about Manipulation II, given how crazy good it is. Outside of some niche rotations it absolutely dominates its alternatives, even more so in combination with Prudent Touch.

Be careful when looking at things with rose tinted glasses. If you're looking for a challenge, then try out non macroable rotations (whistle) and avoid 'spoiler' sections of forums etc.

I'd agree if whistle would find a legit use outside of being heavily undergeared. The current stat requirements are so low, you can macro four star recipes on full yellow scrip gear reliably with hq mats. I do craft by hand from time to time for the fun of it, namely gambling with Patient Touch and Rapid Synth II, but overall there is no challenge to it.

[MrMagic]

This tier is so easy I don't have a single specialist macro and I craft the mats with a singular macro because most of the final mats only need NQ. While it is fast and 100%, I am less motivated to craft. I made the most Gil by far during the Ala Mhigo tier because I liked the challenge and there was less competition. This tier there is no challenge at all. There is not even a sense of accomplishment of fine tuning macro's because 94% quality, non-specialist crafting from all NQ mats is just ridiculous and difficult to stuff up.

This is end game crafting right? I think they must have shares in Netflix.

[Liam_Harper]

You have to realize that the crafting community has created tools, guides, and shared their DoH knowledge in different forums.

That's another thing though. We do indeed all share tools, guides and theorycraft together over macro's and ideal rotations and share our knowledge. Which is great to see the crafting community come together.

How much of this did you see for 4 star? One or two threads popped up which basically boiled down to "use your 3 star macros" and that was it. That really says a lot.

[Nezerius]

Post 3.2 crafting, and every even-numbered patch after that, wasn't really all that difficult compared to how it is now. This is because 3.2 is when their design philosophy changed to making sure that crafters were able to easily HQ craft DoW/M sets on even-numbered patches, while having plenty of time to prepare for it (for example, Ironworks DoH/L released in 3.3, the next DoW/M set released in 3.4).

ARR crafting, on the other hand...

[Cleanse]

I think you guys are forgetting Rath's was the only rotation you needed in HW, this expansion is very similar (another Maker's Mark rotation).

The only time a 'rotation' becomes interesting is when leveling. Even then it's a tweak here and there until the next level. Ala Mhigan was easy with Maker's Mark. I would like to see that removed due to how unfun it is to use.