Crafting and Gathering need a QoL change asap.

[Rowde]

Where was that said? Source please...

If true then that s awesome IMHO

Famitsu did an interview with Yoshi-P at e3 and an unofficial translation can be found on reddit.

However, the translation I read didn't explicitly say "all skills" will be made cross-class. The direct quote[from the translation]:
"Because of some Byregot skills, you had to level crafters in a specific order so far. We decided to give these skill to all crafters. So from now on, you can start with any crafter of your choosing. Our aim wasn’t to balance the crafters, but to get to a point where you were able to start “Crafting” with any of the crafting classes."

Which could imply that some skills could still be class-restricted (like the elemental brands and abilities... which are rarely used in the first place) and would still need to be cross-classed for the crafters that don't learn the ability through leveling.

[Barraind]

Yep totally didn't out in effort getting to 51

... lol. No, no you really didnt.

Gathering, especially at that level, is one of the single easiest things you can possibly do in this game. You can level to 50+ off ONLY items you will use in 95% of items you craft at level cap.

Similarily, you can level crafting off just doing ingots / lumber / thread / cloth. And cul/alc have mass production things as well (but significantly less useful).

And. if you feel like it, you can level everything to 70 without ever having to craft or gather a single thing. Which is stupid, but something you absolutely can do.

Honestly, the only thing about crafting that bugs me is how long it takes to mass produce stackable items like materials and infusions that are needed in large quantities.

Being able to increase the yield on stackable items by using more mats

Yes please.

The worst part of crafting sessions is realizing you need 750 lumber/ingot and that translating to over an hour of sitting afk.

Only those who have been playing the game for years.
Newbies, HAH! Good luck, come back in 5 years.

You can get every crafter and gatherer to 70 in a month of GC turnins, beast tribes and leves, without actually crafting anything.

Its not hard, it just takes more than minimal effort.

[Liam_Harper]

Crafting is probably one of the big reasons I play FF14 over WoW. Plenty of other reasons too, like the music, graphics and customization and so on, but starting out I loved crafting. It was such a huge change to come from WoW, where you simply click a button, rub your hands together and you're done and where the vast majority of crafted items are worthless, to this huge immersive side-game with 70 levels, thousands of useful items, indepth rotations, your own tools, crafting table, questlines. It was brilliant. It still is.

I love games that aren't afraid to add a little complexity and grind. There's nothing more satisfying than a long journey, figuring out things that aren't straightforward and finally reaching that end goal. I've thoroughly enjoyed every step and look forward to ShB.

So naturally people of the same opinion are going to be annoyed when others walk in and say "I don't like it, make it like WoW, I want gil".

[GenBroadaxe]

It can certainly seem overwhelming at times OP, but if crafting/gathering isn't something you enjoy then you shouldn't feel obligated to max those classes out. Personally I found it all a bit overwhelming when I first started, but there's plenty of low stress (and low cost) ways to level them available. GC dailies give great experience and Beast Tribes are basically free exp since give you all the mats to work with. You can actually jump 5-6 levels at a time if you make a stack of items for repeatable leve turn ins and then you can sell the rest for a tidy profit! Heck, I've been able to level my gatherers just by being cheap and getting most of the mats myself.

If you want to get everything up it is going to take time dedicated to it, but break it down into manageable chunks. Find a small goals to work towards, but don't do it if you're not enjoying it. You can get great gear and stuff to sell with tombstones, coins, dungeon drops, ect. Do what's fun for you.

[Avenger]

Craft leveling to 70 may be faster now than it was to level to 50 in ARR. I am a fan of GC turn-ins and ixal/moogle/namazu quests. The latter (and custom deliveries) are convenient since you don’t have to worry about materials.

I enjoyed the “game” part of crafting as well as the job quests, so I am not in favor of simplifying it to one job and one button. And crafting has been pretty useful in the past few patches, which is nice.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't agree with everything in the OP, but there are some issues with crafting and gathering in this game. For one, material requirements have been going up and up and up....but gatherer abilities haven't been adjusted nearly enough to compensate. So it can take an entire day or days just to get the materials you need to get a single stack of your basic supplies. When you make some of those hidden (like HW did on even basic mats) or timed that gets exponentially worse. if you want to increase your yield as a gatherer, it costs nearly your entire bar. And while they made a small adjustment of GP regen, it isn't enough when you need massive amounts of supplies. They very much need to adjust either gatherer yield or ability cost. Even some sort of proc that increases yield temporarily like with shards/crystals/clusters would be a small help.

Another issue I have with crafting is that it really comes down to spending massive amounts of gil on crafter materia to overmeld gear, work out a macro (or Google it) and that is considered endgame and hardcore. One of the most enjoyable crafting systems I've experienced was EverQuest II. In EQII, there were "events" that would happen that were either positive or negative. You needed to use the appropriate skill to react to them, either to avoid the negative outcome or cause the positive one. There was no pattern. You had to pay attention if you wanted to make a high quality item. It was still possible to put things on automatic and mass craft. But if you wanted to be considered a quality crafter, you needed to master the event system. When you can just macro the craft, there really isn't much more difference than the systems that have you put everything into a box and hit craft.

I do also think there's a decided barrier to entry for new crafters. I'm on omni on multiple characters. And while I drop some cash on an alt when I work up crafting, I level them the old fashioned way rather than just making leve kits to feed them. The characters can do leves once they can make their own materials. It's a matter of pride for me that they work their way up, but I'm a crafting mentor and I think it also helps me stay connected with the newbie experience. Pre-50 there there are issues when you don't have all your CC skills, or when you are only leveling one crafter. It sounds like ShB may be smoothing some of that out. I see anything that can streamline that process and even out that barrier to entry as only a good thing.

They also just need to overhaul fishing. The multiple bait system with no in-game way to track anything relating to which a fish prefers, time, or weather is really just ridiculous. The time and the weather restrictions cause the same issues that hidden and timed nodes cause for the other gathering classes. Fishing has massive amounts of frustrating RNG. It suffers from the same high ability cost that all gathering classes are plagued with. The one thing I can give it is that you don't need a rotation for collectibles. You just catch the HQ fish. But you also have absolutely no control or influence over whether you get that HQ fish, unlike with botany and mining. This has turned fishing into basically a non-class, outside of one or two fish desirable for aquariums or necessary in foods. There is very little it can bring to the table to make it able to compete on the same level as the other two gathering classes. Even spear-fishing was just putting a bandage on the problem without fixing the underlying issues with how the class functions.

[hydralus]

Also, I imagine they're going to release a level skip potion for gatherers/crafters with ShB.

[CookiesNCreams]

Also, I imagine they're going to release a level skip potion for gatherers/crafters with ShB.

As much as I hate to admit it, you’re probably right. I’m strongly against jump potions for economically valuable jobs like those, but it seems with every expansion and patch even, Yoshida and the dev team are more focused on aspiring crafters than existing crafters.

In my opinion he should really give experienced crafters like myself a challenge every once in awhile, instead of ignoring us for an entire expansion. (4.0 - 4.5)

Can’t imagine how healers feel. They get nothing until 6.0

[hydralus]

Can’t imagine how healers feel. They get nothing until 6.0

It's going to be really interesting to see what happens to queue times.

[TaleraRistain]

Also, I imagine they're going to release a level skip potion for gatherers/crafters with ShB.

You're probably right, but I'm really hoping not. It's not a "I did it so you should have to as well" situation. Jump potions are a necessary evil as the game gets more and more expansions. The adventure side is something everyone has to do. And SE may find it hard to get new people in when they can't jump right into that adventure content in the new expansion.

Crafting and gathering are optional. There are some things they can do to streamline the newbie experience. But that isn't the same as full on jump potions. So I wouldn't consider jump potions for DoH and DoL a necessary evil in the same way adventuring potions are.