Quote Originally Posted by EaMett View Post
This is a normal trend in MMOs. Once you've established yourself as a game for enthusiasts you need to dumb things down over and over to cater to a wider and wider public. Eventually the game loses all substance and everything goes downhill from there.
I'm hopeful that one day, someone will get it right. And to some extent FF14 devs are aware of this and that's why we have content like ultimates that only cater to a tiny player base. They said they would make some really hard crafts in the upcoming patches, lets see how that goes.
But I wonder sometimes if it's enough, the current state of healers is a perfect example of how harmful the process can be.
I absolutely agree with OP on every point he has made. Trust me, I know all companies want is money/numbers. That’s all that matters to them. However, maximizing those numbers should also be a priority. You cannot maximize numbers if you’re only catering to one audience. (Casual oriented stuff) Because if you cater to both types of audiences (casual players and serious players) you get the most out of those numbers.

As for crafting. I’ve been a hardcore crafter since ARR, currently have several billion gil, and I can say with certainty, that crafting is not fun anymore to me. I used to enjoy how complex the crafting system was. I actually didn’t use macros, I manually made my gear, it was fun and engaging. Now, that HQ Touches are all 100% guaranteed and there is no variety or skill involved (literally you just spam 1-2 macros) ....I just essentially stopped competitively crafting. And like OP said, dumbing things down to a point, makes it to where things are not rewarding or valuable at all. I don’t even craft anymore because of the unnecessary simplicity, and am waiting until my sub runs out. I’ll try the Expert Recipes in 5.2, but I doubt it’ll be the same at all.

The whole “Expert Recipe” Ranking thing just seems like a “Hey! Like hard crafts? Well guess what! You can do those endlessly.....without any meaningful rewards! No gil! No exclusive rewards! Nothing worth of value! All you get are mounts, and minions....and titles! Isn’t that great!”

It’s like....I understand you don’t want people feeling left out, but at least be reasonable when implementing such features.