Will ShadowBringers DLC Make Crafting Hard Again?

[LastLevel]

It just seems ever since 4.0 started with the addition of Prudent Touch, the value and demand for crafters has dramatically decreased. It’s like everyone can easily just get all level 70 DoH jobs now. Especially if they are Gil buyers.

What made Crafting high in demand back then (in my opinion) was Hasty Touch. It made crafting frustrating sure, but the demand for it was extremely high because of it. There was so much at risk with a single craft.

So, makes me wonder, will 5.0 make crafting hard again? Or at least challenging end game?

This topic is NOT to start flaming debates and be rude to each other. Just say how you feel about it.

[JunseiKei]

IMO, Hasty Touch or Prudent Touch, it didn't matter or directly effect the demand of crafters. You knew before you ran out of CP if you didn't have enough stat to finish a craft and could just Reclaim - the actual frustration was reclaiming and that 90% chance of getting your materials back failed.

With the onset of World Visitation and being able to purchase goods from other servers, the influx of players during the course of Stormblood (be it WoW players fed up with Activision-Blizzard's inane choices or the expansion actually attracting new players), I don't see a reason to artificially increasing the difficulty of crafts. Especially if they plan to have crafting and gathering "high end activities" for Shadowbringers. That sounds like shooting yourself in the foot.

[Barraind]

Why would anyone want "you can accidentally lose millions of gil in materials" as a defining feature?

I make plenty of gil as a crafter without running the risk of "lol, 6 90% fails in a row".

[Burningskull]

I would actually like crafting to be more like battle classes with easy to figure out rotations rather than having to look up some super complicated 100% HQ rotation that requires a crap ton of cp and materia... But that's just me lol.

[Reynhart]

I would actually like crafting to be more like battle classes with easy to figure out rotations rather than having to look up some super complicated 100% HQ rotation that requires a crap ton of cp and materia... But that's just me lol.

Battle content is not simply about learning job rotation but dealing with the ennemy's mechanics. So unless your product starts to throw dangerous things at your face, it's likely to be what separates players' "skill".

[Liam_Harper]

I would actually like crafting to be more like battle classes with easy to figure out rotations rather than having to look up some super complicated 100% HQ rotation that requires a crap ton of cp and materia... But that's just me lol.

That's exactly what it's like though. Nearly everything in the game can be crafted with simple rotations you figure out yourself, except high end-game 3-4 star rotations. In the same way battle is easy to figure out, except high endgame savage and ultimate. Why does everyone who crafts need to be able to make 4 star?

I disagree with the OP on Hasty Touch, rng isn't fun, but I do agree the difficulty is far too easy. What has flooded the market with maxed crafters is materia plummeting in price, required endgame gear materials being way too easy to get hold of, 3 star difficulty being identical to 4 star, stat requirements being too lax, and the fact you barely need any HQ base mats to churn out HQ 4 star gear.
Imo crafting was at a perfect spot during the ala mhigan crafter set. The difficulty was on-point, materials like snailfish took a little effort to find but it still wasn't completely inaccessible. Why they nerfed that is beyond me.

I haven't crafted in weeks. There's nothing to do but churn out Rakshasa and Onishi to sell. The market has crashed, demand is low, there are thousands of maxed crafters, it's just pointless. I feel like an end-game raider in a game where Normal 8 man is the hardest content.

[Burningskull]

That's exactly what it's like though. Nearly everything in the game can be crafted with simple rotations you figure out yourself, except high end-game 3-4 star rotations. In the same way battle is easy to figure out, except high endgame savage and ultimate. Why does everyone who crafts need to be able to make 4 star?

I disagree with the OP on Hasty Touch, rng isn't fun, but I do agree the difficulty is far too easy. What has flooded the market with maxed crafters is materia plummeting in price, required endgame gear materials being way too easy to get hold of, 3 star difficulty being identical to 4 star, stat requirements being too lax, and the fact you barely need any HQ base mats to churn out HQ 4 star gear.
Imo crafting was at a perfect spot during the ala mhigan crafter set. The difficulty was on-point, materials like snailfish took a little effort to find but it still wasn't completely inaccessible. Why they nerfed that is beyond me.

I haven't crafted in weeks. There's nothing to do but churn out Rakshasa and Onishi to sell. The market has crashed, demand is low, there are thousands of maxed crafters, it's just pointless. I feel like an end-game raider in a game where Normal 8 man is the hardest content.

I think there is a big difference in figuring out Rotations and battle mechanics. Battle rotations on the other hand are easy to figure out. This weapons skill leads into this weapon skill which leads into this weapon skill. This move makes your next attack crit so use it before you highest damaging weaponskill... Crafting is like... make sure you pop all your buffs at once, do this one thing 5 times oh but if you get a good or excellent do this instead. oh and don't use those 2 and 3 tier abilities cause they cost to much cp. See what I mean? Order of operations isn't clear unlike battle classes... is all I'm saying.

[Vidu]

I have a few thoughts on your actual question, but let me start by saying that I dont believe that your assumption that Prudent Touch decreased the amount for crafted goods nor (at least in my experience) the price you can charge for them.

What, in my opinion, actually decreased the value of crafted gear since ARR is the constant addition of new ways to get gear of a proper ilvl - ARR basically had gear that you bought with tomestones, gear from Coil, crafted gear. Later to be complimented by 24-man-drops.
HW added the gear from NM-8-man-raids and... Diadem. Aswell as the token-system for the EX-primal-weapons, which made it easier to get weapons for a secondary class. Same for weapons from PotD.
SB has 8-man-gear again, aswell as Eureka-gear and the option to upgrade crafted gear through an exchange-system, making even NQ-gear viable. I'm also under the impression that dungeon-gear has become a lot more viable again.
On top of that, a jump from ilvl110 to 120 or 130 felt like it had a lot more impact compared to going from 310 to 320.

Bottomline: People have a lot more options to choose gear from. I dont feel like I'm competing so much with other crafters (who got into the crafting game because its easier now), I'm competing with all the other sources of gear.

My endgame rotation or macro for HW also didnt had that much risk within it - even with Hasty Touches. Most crafts didnt fail and HW-endgame-crafting looked excatly like SB-endgame-crafting: Hitting 2 buttons and having an 80-90% success rate when not on a specialist, that jumps to 100% if you are.
Crafting has never been "hard", it has been loaded with RNG or has been rather tedious.

So my hopes for 5.0 are this endgame content for crafting that they announced - I'm hoping for crafts that are more puzzle-like but also just a one time thing, kinda like the first masterbooks in ARR.
I honestly dont want crafting to be more "difficult", aka be less macro'able for the everyday stuff like food, potions and yes, gear, that I'm selling on the market. I would like to see some crafting-puzzles for the dedicated crafter that demand your attention for a weekend or so, but I dont want that to be every day life.

I havent seen a decrease in retail-value of items since HW - in my personal experience the people who were doing endgame crafting did it in SB again and most who didnt like it didnt picked it up.

Not wanting to be rude, but I also kinda dont like your attitude of "Please make this harder, so people will stop crafting and I can sell more stuff myself!" - thats not how it should work...

(Also, little nitpicky: Shadowbringers isnt a DLC... its a full grown expansion)

[Barraind]

I honestly dont want crafting to be more "difficult", aka be less macro'able for the everyday stuff like food, potions and yes, gear, that I'm selling on the market.

Yup.

Theres nothing challenging about pressing 35 buttons, most of which are the same 3 or 4 in mini rotations in a rotation. Macros happen because crafting as it is is tedious.

[Shurrikhan]

If anything I'd like to see more craft steps involved (i.e. completed components) again, even if that means more inventory space consumed. In that way, RNG feels slightly mitigated, as you can remake the particular part if things go poorly instead of it affecting the entire product, and you're forced into fewer steps per craft. That would best come with a crafting table or the like, though, to house the components without reducing effective maximum inventory size over the time between making a part and finishing the product.