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

[Aurida]

To answer your questions with a question, why is the rhetoric here entirely focused around the concept of 'casuals' as some kind of formless entity that have managed to invade the ivory tower? You do actually have it exactly right- people who seek out the resources to be able to craft can craft, and those who don't either make their own way with whatever degree of possibly reduced viability they have.

It's inevitably going to be the same with Ishgard, and we're inevitably going to see the same kinds of complaint threads from the elitist upper-crust when anyone with cursory knowledge of crafting and the manual dexterity to press Delicate Synthesis on their controller (or keyboard, I won't judge) is able to play competently in that space.

In order to create 'hardcore only' content, it necessitates the creation of an arbitrary gate that keeps people out. Is this even necessarily a bad thing? No! We don't even disagree on this. But without the presence of a meaningful barrier to execution, as it stands anyone that can meld CP onto their gear and learn a basic rotation from readily available resources can do this thing, and all of the ideas that set out to be spiteful and petty about this seem to actively be calling for the system to become worse in the name of 'crafting is MY special thing! it's what *I* do! none of the rest of you should be able to have it!' and that's what a lot of 'casual' players take umbrage with.

The question now is, does that necessarily make them the enemy?

[CookiesNCreams]

You calling us “elitists” basically just proves my point, lol. Arguing over this isn’t going to go anywhere. We simply want content, plain and simple. And yes, there should be a barrier that separates the two types of players. Also, since you really want to go there. You should stop treating hardcore players like they are some upper class, super secretive, super hateful, super snobby group of people that want everything to themselves. Ironically, the ones that seem to want everything to themselves would be a few casual players thinking they run FFXIV. Hardcore players are actually cool, we just want content.

And um, no. We’re not going to “inevitability” go through that. Really tired of repeating myself....but, Yoshida has made it clear that (we assume 5.2), HQ’ing recipes will require procs and cannot be macro’d like you for some reason, think it will. We just aren’t sure if that’s endgame recipes he’s referring to, or just high tier Ishgard content. The only thing that’ll “inevitably” happen would be players with your mindset making threads about how “unfair” it is that players actually earned their exclusive top tier Ishgard rewards and how they should have it too, with little effort.

I don’t know why you act like this is something so horrible and evil. Literally every video game you know of has some sort of barrier or gate, with rewards, that separates players who don’t care or are lazy, and players that are hardcore or just want rewards. Common practice in the industry. Stop trying to turn this into a casual only game, we pay for the game too. That’s my point here.

Sorry, but hardcore players are really fed up with 2+ years of easy crafting, and no hardcore content at the very least? There’s a limit. You can’t just completely butcher a system and expect 90%+ of your players to be okay with it. I’d say at least 40% of people aren’t okay with easy crafting. They just aren’t vocal on the forums because they have either ended their subscription or just given up trying to convince people. I’m basically their voice on this thread. Casuals and hardcores deserve content. By that, I mean, there should be a bubble for casuals....and a bubble for hardcores. Stop trying to lump them together in the same bubble. That’s ridiculous.