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

[CookiesNCreams]

I like competition, I think it’s fun! However, let me explain two things. One, how competition=/= the enjoyment of endgame content for players, even the casual players. And two, what I do in the game and how that affects my answer.

I. So, competition. Back in 2.x and 3.x, it’s not like competition was super low. There were plenty of incoming crafters being competitive, especially in the accessories market. I would say the competition was about moderate. (Exception being the favors patch. Hardly anyone crafted then, so I agree with that not being in the game lol.) Stormblood? They added Prudent Touch, which, made a another wave of casual players move into the endgame market. Prices dropped, a lot. But here’s the thing, prices do not drop due to undercutting. They actually drop due to the difficulty of mats obtained.

They introduced an extremely overpowered move, called Delicate Synthesis. That move, has now brought upon a MASSIVE wave of casual crafters and even crafters that don’t know what they are doing. They are just copying rotations online and just pushing it on the market. There’s hundreds, thousands of these people split across all worlds. Many hardcore and serious crafters stopped producing much gear endgame, or just hardly care, because the time spent per craft plus the gil you get out of it is horrible. Players like me? I love competition, so stuff like world visit was like a holiday. But, while battling competition, I would like my time spent as a crafter to be worthwhile. Do you raid and expect to not get a single piece of gear or mount? Doubt it. We all want compensation. Gear prices as they are now are just horrific, lowest I’ve ever seen endgame content be in years.

II. Just recently, I started selling materia on my other accounts including this one, across 3 data centers. Earn about 40+ million in doing so, and it’s a lot of work. (I like hoarding Gil, it’s fun) Before that, I would craft Facet gear across Primal. I had everything at set (reasonable) prices, so undercutting isn’t a issue for me, I just set a price and it sells. Gear going at 400k...300k....200k....150k....100k...now 90k? I understand things drop, but the rate at which it was dropped is stupid fast, and that is a problem. Not only is price a problem, but the amount of endgame content with hard difficulty with equivalent rewards was 0%.

The real reason why crafting got too easy: I don’t mean to be rude to the guy above, but players with that mindset who were present during 2.x and 3.x who, had absolute disdain and hatred for end game crafters, were mostly just jealous. And judged me for being a mean person when I’m actually nice. (Someone has to say it.) So they went and complained and SE made it too easy. Luckily now, they see that it’s a problem doing that.

[CookiesNCreams]

Conclusion, I like competition, many crafters I know do. Hardly any competition beats me on the market because I love it, with the exception of maybe 2 players doing as much as me. But for my time spent, I would like compensation, a decent amount at least. Selling endgame gear on all of my accounts? 15 million a day...15. Across all accounts. Selling materia and some glam ? 40+ million.

Speaks for itself why crafting has got to change. Materia shouldn’t be endgame. Gear should. After all, it’s endgame gear.

[DrWho2010]

soo crafting has to change.... so that you don't feel its a waste of your time.

if it's become a waste of your time... you have to consider... do you even reallllllly want to play anymore?

why should endgame as you see it wall off more players? more accessibility the better things will be.

[Kabooa]

Alright, there's a fair amount to unpack here.

1. We're making assumptions again. I think if Delicate and Prudent didn't exist, we'd still see ourselves in a similar point. Copying a macro has nothing to do with the actions involved - A macro is a macro, and all you need is the stat thresh hold to use them. Macros are shared readily and widely, and even should those two abilities not exist, macros would still be made. They'd look different than now, but they'd still be made. Crafting difficulty largely doesn't change. If anything, the presence of those abilities simply narrowed how many macros you have to keep on hand.

I personally don't consider having 6 different macros more difficult than having 1.

2. The natural progression of this game is that, even at a few hours a week, over the life time of an expansion you can max out everything. Battle classes, gatherers, crafters. Given that content droughts exist, those who have leveled every battle job are going to move to what's left. The ARR area of crafting has not changed significantly from before. The amount of effort required to level it prior is basically the same as now. They even specifically called out the ARR area of crafting as an area they want to improve.

The amount of "effort" to get to max level has not changed. Those going 1-50 are putting in the same effort, while every bracket thereafter benefits from much more friendly design of progression, with crafter dailies aiding as well, which we have all benefited from, minus crafter dailies for the early Omnis.

Effectively, their point of entry into the market isn't unearned. If anything, those starting up now have to put in a greater amount of concentrated effort compared to those of us already at the starting line - Our max level gear carries over into new expansions, effectively rendering an annoying part of crafter progression between expansions moot, as our dead zone of progression generally only lasts for the first level, while those who, for example, hit 50, are at a significant disadvantage for Heavensward crafting.

That concentrated effort, for us, was slowly done over the course of the current expansion. It takes -less- effort in the moment for us to reach current end-game than someone starting up.

3. I mostly agree that if it isn't worth the time it isn't worth doing. I generally only focus on the first week of a given patch myself, but that's been my MO since Heavensward. I'll take 3200% returns, and once that tapers off I skuddle off to sit on my gil pile fit for a lizard. Gil's worthless, but having a nice stockpile has its appeal. It's your high score, I won't tell you what to be happy with, but you make a lot of assumptions in this thread. Let me offer one of my own

I think the more likely reason that -gear- isn't selling is because the people coming in aren't flooding the market, they're just providing for themselves. That's one less person to buy, and, if they're anything like me, they also craft for friends for materials, which is also less people to buy. Casual crafters don't generally engage in the day to day market game. A 5% return isn't worth it. A 25% return isn't worth it. But crafting your own gear, and making stuff for friends? Totally worth it.

Stuff that has around a 100-300% mark up is where a casual takes more interest. They have limited time, so they go for what returns the most. Definitely won't be the people trying to sell Facet 3 months after the tier dropped.

Oh - and some of those crafters did it just to repair.

4. I know I've said this before, but 2.0 wasn't difficult. it was tedious and gated. We should stop holding that up as the gold standard to aim for. The base crafting system of FF14 is its own worst enemies when it comes to a healthy market game, and the moment Heavensward tried to remedy that, it got the biggest backfire I've ever seen. Some of it earned (Favors), some of it not (Specialists).

To give you some examples of how FF14 chokes itself.

A) Everyone can be everything. The part people like the most is also what harms it.
B) Resources are infinite. The exception being time gated resources (1 node per player per 36 minutes). For the most part, resources (Thanks to Bots) are effectively limitless while demand for the end result is not.
C) The crafting process is a Mathematical Equation. It can be -solved- and once it is, the solution can be replicated with basically 99.9% frequency.
D) Gear is permanent, putting a hard cap on how much useful gear can be crafted.
E) Consumables are de-emphasized compared to other games.
F) Cross class actions ensure every craft is the same, no matter what job / item it is.

This is all present in 2.0.

TL/DR - Regressing back means I need a few more macros than usual. Crafting won't get harder. Those players you want gone are already max level and on the same curve now, and no matter how many of them stay there, it is now, by virtue of being on the starting line, easier for them to keep up as the primary gate has already been cleared.

So moving forward, to make crafting -more- rewarding (Because, it's still very rewarding. You're just kind of running into that "Rich people problem" where 15 million now isn't 15 million 4 years ago) requires a fairly significant design shift.

[CookiesNCreams]

@Kabooa

Good point! Yes, even if things magically went back to 2.x, players would still be level 80, and still have the ability to push out tons of gear.....thing is, they won’t. In my experience as a crafter since 2.x, I can safely 99% say, that if Prudent and Delicate were removed or nerfed heavily, the amount of people crafting would decrease significantly, but to a healthy amount. People don’t like it when their crafts NQ or botch, so that alone will deter people away from endgame crafting, even if they are technically omnicrafters. Without the overpowered Prudent touch and delicate synthesis, people will have to actually keep at it.

Also, yes, theoretically you can still use macros. But for efficiency? Using macros is not advised. For example, during a Makers mark rotation in 3.x, using Tricks of the trade during your flawless synthesis and using ingenuity at the end would at least 95% of the time guarantee you HQ gear. If I used a macro, my crafts would NQ a little more frequently.

Also, 15 million across multiple characters. Please don’t misunderstand me. If I only had one account, it would be much less. To even make it worthwhile, I need multiple accounts. Back then, I only needed one account to earn that much, or close to it. It’s quite easy earning Gil, not really a “rich people” problem. You have the same ability as I do to earn gil, even with a 9 - 5 job. You just have to want it. And you clearly don’t, that’s the point I’m trying to make.

You have to want it, not be lazy and expect developers to hand things out to ya.

[CookiesNCreams]

soo crafting has to change.... so that you don't feel its a waste of your time.

if it's become a waste of your time... you have to consider... do you even reallllllly want to play anymore?

why should endgame as you see it wall off more players? more accessibility the better things will be.

More accessibility just means more players who, are lazy, can easily have access to things they otherwise could have had if they just bunkered down, and got down to business instead of chatting all day in limsa or doing dungeons all day.

Also, I play the game because I enjoy it. I make threads like these, because something that I and many others enjoy, is being absolutely destroyed by people who are just jealous of “rich people.” And like I said, it’s clear crafting was never intended to be this easy due to 2.x.

[Kabooa]

Also, I play the game because I enjoy it. I make threads like these, because something that I and many others enjoy, is being absolutely destroyed by people who are just jealous of “rich people.” And like I said, it’s clear crafting was never intended to be this easy due to 2.x.

It is more likely that the design of 2.0 stemmed directly from them launching with a small amount of End-game content. For much of the game's content cycle, about the only things we can know for certain is that they run 5 major patches, have a 24 man raid series, an 8 man raid series, anywhere from 2-3 dungeons per 'tier', and a relic series.

Other than the scrips / tomes, almost every other area of the game has seen itself go arse up as they work their various systems to try and bring new systems while keeping their content coming.

Given that Lucis and Artisian were essentially locked behind a massive time and grindfest, which tend to be artificial extenders so you don't get your carrots right away, I'd personally go with that explanation.

So far, every expansion has treated crafting differently so it's hard to really put a pattern down other than within each expansion itself. My expectations of the crafting system rework aren't extensive, I imagine they're just going to clean up a fair amount of space that bloat has created, retune some CP values, and look at Delicate and Prudent.

Prudent basically only exists to replace Waste Not, and if cross class is just now baseline, doesn't need to exist anymore. Delicate is a generic version of a Specialist Action and probably should be a 'Good' condition only action, but if Specialist actions also become baseline, Delicate also wouldn't need to exist anymore.

It also brings into question on how SE tunes things - Do they tune so single crafters can HQ their own crafts, which is why everything as an omni seems so easy when your toolbox is so much larger?

Knowing everyone has the same set of tools allows for them to tune differently, so "difficulty" itself could be raised on that assumption alone.

Who knows - That's kind of the point. We don't really have solid precendent because it's changed wildly every time.

[Miminming]

Crafting is easy yes, hardcore crafter want harder contents okay, but the problem is gear and market,
making end game gear(facet) harder to make is likely have more impact to the raider more than the casual crafter gil making,
ideally hardcore contents shouldn't effect another player progress... well at least not much (like how savage clear have nearly 0 impact to the people who don't do it),
the way to balance this is to make end game gear craft set need a material that can only be dropped in savage...
which is a fair trade off (Raider need crafter to make their gear, and crafter need Raider to collect their material) but i highly doubt lot of people will be happy with that...
(i'll welcome it since ill probably do both anyway .gg)

and like soooooo many people say it already but unless they put random input it'll be just increasing the macro line... which is not hard at all...
seriously though if TC make gil like he is saying he should have gil capped by long now... not hardcore enough?

Ps. game balance in mmo is more hard to control than what you think, especially something like market which can effect ALL player, not just your dominating gil making. also TC need to chill out, not many people care about the people who rich in VIDEO GAME... most people just say their opinion.

[KageTokage]

I've noticed that compared to some other games like WoW, crafted endgame gear in XIV is ridiculously easy to acquire the mats for.

While it does help savage to be more accessible, I feel like it makes for a rather stale economy with how flooded the market tends to be with any kind of mainstream craft.

I honestly wouldn't mind more crafts where you need to put a personal effort into acquiring the materials yourself through various means as opposed to just being able to buy everything off the MB.

[CookiesNCreams]

Crafting is easy yes, hardcore crafter want harder contents okay, but the problem is gear and market,
making end game gear(facet) harder to make is likely have more impact to the raider more than the casual crafter gil making,
ideally hardcore contents shouldn't effect another player progress... well at least not much (like how savage clear have nearly 0 impact to the people who don't do it),
the way to balance this is to make end game gear craft set need a material that can only be dropped in savage...
which is a fair trade off (Raider need crafter to make their gear, and crafter need Raider to collect their material) but i highly doubt lot of people will be happy with that...
(i'll welcome it since ill probably do both anyway .gg)

and like soooooo many people say it already but unless they put random input it'll be just increasing the macro line... which is not hard at all...
seriously though if TC make gil like he is saying he should have gil capped by long now... not hardcore enough?

Ps. game balance in mmo is more hard to control than what you think, especially something like market which can effect ALL player, not just your dominating gil making. also TC need to chill out, not many people care about the people who rich in VIDEO GAME... most people just say their opinion.

The gil cap limit is 999,999,999 lol. I just store every billion in each retainer I own across characters. Also, obviously people do care otherwise it wouldn’t be brought up so much in aggressive tones. Oh, and by the way, not sure what you mean by “TC” but assuming you mean me, I’m perfectly chill, trust me. :P

I've noticed that compared to some other games like WoW, crafted endgame gear in XIV is ridiculously easy to acquire the mats for.

While it does help savage to be more accessible, I feel like it makes for a rather stale economy with how flooded the market tends to be with any kind of mainstream craft.

I honestly wouldn't mind more crafts where you need to put a personal effort into acquiring the materials yourself through various means as opposed to just being able to buy everything off the MB.

I agree, that would work too. And yes, FFXIV’s economy in general is: “You’re a Level 80 crafter? Great! Just hop on in the market, spam Delicate Synthesis macros all day, and spam the market with tons of gear pieces just like everyone else!”

I feel like Yoshida doesn’t understand why over inflation is a problem for this game. Ever since Stormblood, he’s been wanting newer players to get into crafting (which is fine) but the issue is, he wants ANYBODY to be able to do this. Even the common raider that usually doesn’t craft. People are divided up by activities they enjoy. Some people like sports, some people like video games, some people like going to clubs, some people like fitness.

How this game has been since 4.0: “Some people like crafting, some people like crafting, crafting, crafting, and more crafting. Heck, let’s get your little sister to craft too! ”

So it’ll be interesting to see what exactly gets changed and how it gets changed in tomorrow’s live letter. Not getting my hopes up though. It’s still possible they’ll only nerf like 2% of the things that need to be nerfed and basically troll us. They might not even explain what it is they nerfed tomorrow, might not see what it is until the 29Th of October.