Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Cleanse]

The player base at large is also largely irrelevant when considering the needs of the people who focus on particular types of content. Savage is likewise going to be niche content that a relatively small portion of the playerbase will ever engage with, yet it's still developed three times per expansion, not to mention Ultimate fights, and stocked with appropriate rewards for those who choose to pursue them. That many players will never fully commit to crafting is not a good argument against letting players who focus on crafting be rewarded for their commitment and investment, just as happens in other areas of the game. Crafting needs to be accessible, but it's already extremely accessible. It doesn't need to be trivialized.

Comparing crafting to Savage raiding is interesting considering the Crafter's "Savage" mode is coming in 5.1. Hopefully the challenge, rewards, and prestige meet your expectations. Also using your comparison, would it be fair to say that Crafting being as accessible as it is for everyone is similar to the accessibility of Normal Mode Raid content?

No. I mean like crafting actually in and of itself rewarding investment in it by opening up a wider selection of crafts, rather than the situation that existed in SB and will almost certainly exist in ShB where you can hammer out a few ezpz scrip turn ins and get casual gear that will still let you 100% HQ top tier crafts. If you are wearing vendor gear, you should not be able to make the current highest star crafts. Period.

If you're wearing the latest casual gear and using tedious craft rotations (Maker's Mark), I see no issue.

Those of us who craft and meld (max CP) our own gear can afford easier rotations which in turn means more profit, more time to do other things, etc.

--

What would you feel is a fair system?

[TaleraRistain]

As others have said, RNG is not even remotely adding challenge. There's no skill involved in beating it. You just have to get lucky.

There's also nothing truly challenging about crafting in a game where you can have things like crafting macros. If you want a truly challenging system, you want something like EQII that had events you had to react to that could completely tank your craft if you didn't do them right. There was no macroing there because you had to stay active and engaged the entire time.

All they've done is removed the frustrating and pointless RNG.

[Nixxe]

Comparing crafting to Savage raiding is interesting considering the Crafter's "Savage" mode is coming in 5.1. Hopefully the challenge, rewards, and prestige meet your expectations. Also using your comparison, would it be fair to say that Crafting being as accessible as it is for everyone is similar to the accessibility of Normal Mode Raid content?



If you're wearing the latest casual gear and using tedious craft rotations (Maker's Mark), I see no issue.

Those of us who craft and meld (max CP) our own gear can afford easier rotations which in turn means more profit, more time to do other things, etc.

--

What would you feel is a fair system?

The issue arises in the differences between the two systems: Part of raiding's reward package is the content per se (in addition to gear, titles, mounts, and minions), while crafting is pretty much entirely about resource acquisition, since there's very little actually limited to the crafters themselves, so you can obtain anything crafting can get without ever having to craft. Additionally, while everyone who plays this game could wake up tomorrow and decide to do Savage without taking anything from anyone else on account of instances being effectively limitless, increasing the number of crafters increases competition and makes crafting less effective. If you then go even further and make it easier to become a high level crafter, that reduces the value of new items right out of the gate, again increasing competition so that you have to spend more time babysitting the marketboard for lower prices, resulting less effective resource procurement. While there's an argument to be made that this isn't actually a problem because with reduced prices comes increased purchasing power, I don't believe for a second that the increases in purchasing power are on par with the loss of absolute income, though I will come back to this point later.

Normal mode raiding doesn't result in as good of rewards as Savage or Ultimate. It's a step under them. This is precisely why I say that if you use scrip gear you shouldn't get to make current max star crafts. In this view the scrip gear is the accessible gear, and the crafted gear with millions of gil of pentamelds, along with access to additional content (ie current top tier crafts), is a reward for the investment. This reward is greatly undermined if it doesn't provide enough additional functionality compared to the scrip gear, which it was already on the verge of not doing in SB. Why spend 20 mil on pentamelding when you can just spend half an hour doing scrips and then craft all the same stuff with slightly longer macros? The scrip gear should primarily serve as catchup gear for people who missed previous rounds of crafting, either because they weren't playing or didn't care. Likewise, crafting was already incredibly accessible with beast tribes basically being free levels. Rest assured, any serious crafter will be omnicraft/gather long before those are released. Those are very much catch up mechanics for casual or new crafters. Cross-class abilities have repeatedly been pushed to the back, and now Steady Hand II and Byregot's Blessing are no longer class specific (and tbh I'm completely fine with that change). They also added abilities that were similar to prominent cross-class abilities in SB and again in ShB, many of which were kind of overpowered and served to make crafting quite a bit easier in SB than HW (and probably about as easy as it should ever get at endgame). The Crystalline Mean quests give a ton of XP and are incredibly trivial crafts that basically don't scale at all with level. The quest items for that have much lower requirements than any actual craft of the same level.

As for what I think is a fair system, I don't think fairness has much of anything to do with it. Crafting simply needs exclusivity to have value because its value is entirely wrapped up in resource acquisition. For an example of what happens to it if that exclusivity is lost, look at what happened to professions in World of Warcraft over the course of several expansions. Blizzard repeatedly made things more accessible. First, they normalized recipe acquisition, eliminating genuinely rare recipes almost entirely. Then they removed the need for a lot of old gathered materials in the leveling process. Old enchants were limited to ensure they became obsolete and the entire profession design was shifted to make professions self-contained within each expansion. Blizzard eventually more or less eliminated the need to even level the professions at all, while also nerfing the power of crafted gear, which led to the almost total devaluation of virtually all items. A handful of items needed by raiders retained value shortly after first released because raiders need them and won't be deterred by price. About the only other items that retained value were those that were somehow limited, whether they were like the Sky Golem which took 30 days to craft or they were like the Felsteel Blade (that may not be the right name), which was a unique model weapon that could only be obtained via an extremely rare world drop recipe in obsolete content. It certainly wasn't impossible to make money, but the best parts of crafting were the archaic content that hadn't been completely undermined in the name of "accessibility." This is also why I said earlier I don't think increases in purchasing power will keep up with loss of value: because I've already seen this happen before and they did not.

Now, crafting has been a big part of this game in a way that it simply wasn't in most contemporary MMOs when this was new. SE had a very good system with crafting and gathering classes being treated with the same care as battle classes, which was certainly a novel experience for me back in 2013. Other decisions, such as using old mats for new crafts, are extremely good, as that allows crafters and gatherers of any level to produce things of value so they can make money while leveling. Crafting received a lot of love in ARR, with a bunch of quests and items for it, but that love has been waning. We didn't even get new tool models in SB for the BiS set, instead getting a second round of the Ironworks stuff. We don't get special tool crafts for glamour like all of the primal stuff battle classes get, and we haven't even gotten anything like the Luminary tools again. This repeated push for "accessibility" is going to come at a cost, and it probably won't even be that effective at getting more people into crafting. Instead of gutting crafting to make it available to people who just aren't that interested in it and at the expense of people who are, SE should spend more time reflecting on what made crafting so engaging in this game in the first place.

[Flashgordon1975]

All this does it make people max on their overmelds. If it is not rng then a macro or rotation will always work no matter the recipe. I am not too sure what you think is going to make crafting more difficult. Tedious does not equate to difficult.

[Garten]

Op i strongly disagree with you. I am a casual crafter but a lot invested in the matter. I am a "pacifist" gamer and maybe i enjoy more crafting, tending my garden and do other stuff more than fighting, in fact i have a lvl79 WHM and never put a step in SHB xD..
I swear to you that i always find crafting/gathering, i won't say difficult, but neither easy.
For example i have all the crafters over 50, but i have not completed many of their job quests because i could not craft the items HQ required to progress, and a friend of mine has the same problem. Sure, i could buy the item from the MB or a friend from my Guild could help me, but should i not be supposed to be able to complete them BY MYSELF? Or maybe gathering the items with difficulty, put the hq bar to 50% like 6 times and FAILING 6 times in a row for RNG, is supposed to add COMPLEXITY for you?
How the hell is it possible (also in gathering) that i have the gear of my level, and i sometimes have to pray Gesus to be able to gather/craft something of my level..
Another example, regarding the mechanic "Appresail", useful (in theory) for level or made some scripts: I have the BEST gear for my level, i checked the rotations Online (because yes i admitted to myself that maybe it was me that was stupid) and i can MAYBE gather the more stupid item at the MINIMUM level of Rarity needed for the turn in, and in the process depleted all of may gpS (in case of gathering). What the hell????
In my guild they say: "Buy cordials".. Sorry but i am not buying it (no pun intended xD)
To me (also reading stories of people that have maxed all the crafters/gatherer ALREADY to 80 after only a few days of expansions even in this forum) there are factors (like gcs turn-ins) that are easily influenced from the fact that a lot of people have already A LOT of money and can AFFORD to buy HQ-items crafted by other players (or mats), and have already "started" from a position of "advantage" from other players that makes for people like me harder to catch up.
So, to summarize: i am NOT asking that crafting is made more easy, but i DO NOT WANT to become more difficult or complicated that already is. To me you and the other player already "AT THE TOP" just don't want for other players to catch up, but THAT in my opinion is not fair.

To finish i just want to say that i am sure that i sounded more angry that i was but i am not a native english speaker and i wanted to be as clear as possible.
Garten

[Granyala]

First: RNG =/= challenge

This.

There is nothing more infuriating to me than RNG messing things up despite me doing everything right.
Why? Because I cannot compensate it with player skill. It is out of my hands.

So no: I do not want "difficult" and "hardcore" crafts back that way.

Now, is prudent touch a wee bit OP? Yeah I'd say so. 'Twould be nice to be forced to use other skills too to make ends meet but design it in a non RNG way.

There's also nothing truly challenging about crafting in a game where you can have things like crafting macros. If you want a truly challenging system, you want something like EQII that had events you had to react to that could completely tank your craft if you didn't do them right. There was no macroing there because you had to stay active and engaged the entire time.

Agreed. The only way to make crafting challenging is demanding reactions in very little time. Not sure whether that would be fun though, esp if expensive and rare mats are involved. :X

Macros or no macros make no difference to me difficulty wise, it is not hard to write down a step sequence and execute it ad nauseum. Macros for "farm items" feel like a nice progression from manual to me, because basically, Ifalna gathered enough experience to do the basic task w/o her Daddypon. ^_^

[CookiesNCreams]

As Nixx said, this mindless and selfish push for “accessible crafting” is really upsetting old school crafters on FFXIV that put a lot of time and love into the game. Also, it’s not getting people who aren’t interested in crafting to...craft. At all. They just try it, level it, make things, and that’s it. They don’t keep repeatedly competing on the market board on a hardcore level like I and many others do. (Which is what SE wants, but it’s not working)

I’ll be sure to ask this question and push for it hard to be answered in a future Live Letter. Hopefully Yoshida responds and at least gives us some hope for difficult crafting. Crafting is something that is neglected too much. Too much. And they really need to stop shitting on their hardcore/dedicated players.

Why change crafting so much? It was never intended to be this way. ARR and HW are proof of this.

[DrWho2010]

i dunno them changing it to be what it is now proves that people wanted easier so they gave them easier. ARR/HW crafting was too difficult imo.

[CookiesNCreams]

ARR/HW crafting was too difficult imo.

Well, I’m glad someone finally admitted it lol. I wish people would just be honest and say “i dont like old crafting cuz its hard and i like easy crafting” so I appreciate your honesty!

I just disagree with catering to one community over the other. Such a bad business move, really. Instead of catering to only casuals, they should cater to hardcore players as well at the same time. Both casual and hardcore crafters.

Wanting one to prosper over the other is just mildly spiteful and selfish. That seems to be what 90% of the posts here seem to want. Casual mechanics to overpower any sort of hardcore mechanics/recipes/content that SE could possibly add in. Everyone should have a fair shot tbh.

[dspguy]

The only time I could say crafting was hard in this game was one of the late patches in ARR when we needed to do some 35(?) durability synth on token items to get the new master books. I had max melded gear and I don't think there was a good rotation to get to 100%. It was about baiting for a good/excellent and relying on Reclaim when it didn't happen. Or letting the synth complete and hope that RNG gave you an HQ.

The way I see it now... crafting is all about finding that 100% rotation. All rotations that people go on about on various forums are all 100%. If not 100% HQ, they are 100% for each step. SH2 + some touch = 100% on each step. We are so risk adverse.

And the way we make the rotation 100% success both in progress and quality is by melding over the necessary cap. It is like leveling to 99 to fight a level 50 enemy. That's how we handle crafting. If anything, I think we'd see more interesting rotations if they took away the craft/control requirements completely. You might see more people leveraging RS3 and other non-guaranteed abilities.