crafting is gone

[Fluffernuff]

But it doesn't take long to level crafting. A month ago I started 2 new accounts (accounts, not alts) and it took me 20 days to get them from 0 to all 80 crafts. And on top of that, you do not need to have all crafts at 80 to do end game crafts. BSM to lv 15 is needed (half an hour), all other cross class abilities help but are not necessary. I have 6 omnicrafting accounts, and if I wanted another lv 80 ALC crafting account it could literally be done within 24 hours. Leveling combat jobs takes longer. You can do end game crafts with a single crafting class at 80 just like you can do end game raids with a single combat class at 80.

then is the topic "endgame crafting"? or simply the ability to craft any singular item at all? flipping back and forth just makes this feels like moving goalposts. I dont really much care for playing semantics. if we want to consider singular 80s and what limited crafts they can do as "endgame" enough, that DOES shift the discussion quite a bit. would be nice to have that solidified rather than being used as some off-hand defense.
I personally feel that if you only have 1/8th of your potential "end" met, then you're not at the "endgame" yet. unlike battle jobs, crafting is NOT isolated between the classes. a level 80 ALC isnt going to be making a needle. a level 15 BSM might be enough for cross class, but you arent making the Pan to for CUL. and you arent going to have the stats to make whatever the level cap CP/Control food is. i simply dont consider that "endgame" myself.

As an aside, it really doesnt take that long to get to battle job to level 80 either. 24 hours is a far more than generous timeframe to get to 80 on a battle class. 20 days would get you pretty close to if not at omni-80 in battle if you really sat down and did it. there's.... not much different side from the sheer number of battle classes. the actual speed of leveling seems like a very odd hill to move the discussion to, honestly. nor is the leveling process indicative of what the "endgame" even is. for either crafting OR battle.

however, i will concede that IF you have levekits at the ready, you will get a singular crafting class to 80 before a battle class, though. that would take an afternoon. and then another 2 weeks to be able to do it again. but thats a discussion about leves more than it is about crafting in specific.


but again, my post was to highlight just how.... silly it is to compare.

the follow up is.... that crafting is still extremely static. There is little beyond a rework of the system and pruning of abilities that can make something so predetermined "hard". The system is simply "easy" by default. perhaps abilities like delicate synth are alot more obvious now, but they system hasnt changed. you cannot convince me that things were harder in the good ol' days of HW. that using flawless synthesis 18 times was "hard". if reworking it is so doom and gloom, then... frankly, you must accept that you want things to continue to be easy.

the reason things are so "easy baby game" is because of what crafting is. you have a %, you get it as close to 100% as you can, it succeeds, you get a specific unchanging number. it's calculated. unchanging. thats why basic research yields the same results. thats why when 1 person that understands crafting can post a specific string of abilities in a macro, it will work for everyone else. crafting is binary; its either 0 or 1. met or failed. the only real factor that changes this at all is a "excellent" condition. but im not sure any of us really care about or want to claim a very low % RNG occurrence has any significant bearing on difficulty