Thread: Will 5.0 ShadowBringers make crafting hard again?

If you want to make crafting more tedious and annoying than it already was before please do it to non-raid used stuff so like housing items lol. If I have to spend more time gathering and crafting food, gear, potions than raiding then we are going to have a problem. Gathering aethersands is already annoying enough. The game currently does not give out enough gil to compensate to make buying them a worthwhile investment especially when you are not clearing content (like while progging in raid). (and no using nq food does not work). I don't want the game to be a job and this would definitely make it a job.

I understand you want it to be more fun but this is a terrible suggestion.

I don't think crafting will become more difficult in general.
Things have changed a lot since the game started. As in war/magic we have now many more things to do, many ways to level up, many ways to cap the tomestones, the tomestone cap is higher, several ways to get relevant weapons and gear up. Dungeons are easier, you don't need to do that many dungeons, there are the roulettes, party finder, etc.


In crafting things have also changed. In ARR there were few things to do relatively. People did huge grinds for the Luminary tools, that didn't give that much advantage. The Supra weapons were super hard to get, later the Lucis. This was the same for the gathering classes. Many people that love gathering and crafting also love huge grinds. There are many people that did and do the big fish quests and achievements. The Honest Gillionare achievement. Desynthesis as a very important thing to level, for crafters and people who wanted to make gil, which was a great work.

Heavensward meant an easier end game crafting, and Stormblood an easier leveling of crafters, quests that give you the mats, quests that do not need HQ items made, etc. And high crafts that do not need top melds to make them manually with specialist. Only people that craft a lot and use macros systematically would need top melds and not even fully top, just high melds.
There were also more recipes available.
The consequence was, one one hand, the possibility of crafting for yourself, for example, accesories for all classes that allowed you to save tomestones for other items.
Also crafted weapons as an alternative to the tomestones ones or raid ones, at least as stepping stones.
And crafted gear and tools that can be made by most crafters that make the effort without a huge time or gil expense. They can even buy a few pieces of top gear, some from scrips, then craft the rest for themselves if they fancy it.
This meant that crafted items in general have been more available and at lower prices. High end crafting has been more accesible to more players. As happened with raiding, the lowering of the difficulty and accesibility to gear has made many more people raid than they did before. Now more crafters have reached the top gear and can craft the most difficult items
I think in Stormblood things have been much better than they were before. But...it really feels a bit too easy. Like the dungeons. But I'd rather have a dungeon a bit too easy than spend a lot of time with wipes, people that quit when they see the difficult dungeon has popped, etc. This has happened. The same with crafts. There was a recipe book that needed very difficult HQ items in ARR that was a nightmare. When reclaim became the ability you needed to learn to use best. PTSD.

But top tier crafters don't have that moat situation that kept competitors away. They don't make that much gil on each item they sell. And don't feel they are so exclusive since there are lots of players that can craft the higher items (but most don't, since gil is not that important and when time passes you usually accumulate a lot of gil without making special effort.)
Materia is also very available, and desynthesis and very expensive demimateria have disappeared. Now you get items easily (but not in unlimited quantities) from beast tribes or tomestones or scrips. There is no weekly cap for scrips and custom deliveries are an easy way to get them, but with a weekly limit.

What I think high tier crafters would enjoy (they might not know it, but really it is that they enjoy), and maybe they will get it, is some very grindy craft goal that takes a lot of effort, maybe a lot of gil and luck, just for an achievement or for glamour gear super difficult to get that makes it very exclusive. It won't help you craft easier or use macros where nobody can't use them, but you will have gear nobody has, at least for some months until something newer and rarer they will covet and show off appears.

I hope the Ishgard reconstruction will have, along with easy scrips and a side story for the normal players, maybe some ultra difficult or grindy thing for the top crafters and gatherers. A bit like the Tiger mount for hunts or the Astrope. Maybe not that hard, and not just one item, but a full set of tools or gear that are pure exclusive super difficult to get glamour. I see all that lalafell mega crafters boasting their super hard to get gear around. Gil is not all that matters. Some patches later, a new set of that type appears so new ultra exclusive glamour is here just when too many people were obtaining the previous.

Top crafters have that much more gil than they need, and frequently a lot of time to spare. A huge grind or very difficult crafts, or a mix, would be to the taste of many. Not for any play or gil advantage, but for showing off and glamour.

There is a reason everyone that craft often enough uses macros (and some manage to automate the whole process). For sure, crack down your perfect rotation is fun and all that but there is nothing more to it. I mean:

- We can't customize the gear.
- Materials only come in NQ or HQ.
- We can craft HQ without using HQ materials.
- Market boards are super convenient but kill all the fun of setting up, and advertising, your own shop.
- There is no gear decay so certain markets die over time.
- One player can be everything and that's "bad".

And no, I'm not going to suggest to change anything, at the end of the day FFXIV is a theme park, not a sandbox. What we have now is good enough, if anything I'll go for a hard recipe unlocking but after that, you can craft as many as you want with one click or a mini-game around building a workshop and hiring/training our workers to produce goods without macro AFK.