How will Endwalker make crafting more of a brain dead activity like Shadowbringers?

[ForteNightshade]

The major problem is a disconnect between the playerbase and dev team. High end crafter typically don't care about super hard, RNG riddled systems. Their endgame is making hoards of gil hand over fist. Prior to Shadowbringers, we had that separation because only truly dedicated players could actually craft endgame gear, which, in turn, made them a sizable profit. The dev team assumed if they slapped a mount, it'd motivate people the same way but the lackluster profit takes away a huge incentive for many players.

[Nabril]

I never said RNG was skill. How you choose to react to RNG - that is skill. Do you make a good choice or a bad one?

There is no such think as skill in crafting. There never was. There never will be. It's crafting.

I keep trying to get that point across. Crafting in this game was designed to be engaging, not difficult. It was designed to be interactive and interesting, not the equivalent of working out the physics of the universe. Why do "elite crafters" want things to be harder? Greed. Every single thread on this subject has the exact same reasoning: Now everyone crafts and we don't make as much money anymore.

Solution: Every single one wishes the math would be just hard enough so that only they can still do it. The problem is that nearly every crafter can do math so that won't work. No, the only solution is to just admit that crafting isn't hard no matter how much they mess with our action bars. It's interactive and engaging. THAT was what it was designed for.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if they increased the math requirements for crafting. I'd love to see the complaints here on this forum when those that asked for it to be more difficult started complaining that it's now too hard! Imagine needing a calculator and a spreadsheet to determine what button you pushed next! Imagine if the equation being used was one that you couldn't enter on a standard calculator.

I just don't get all of the hate here. Square Enix created something interactive and engaging and players continually complain about it not being hard enough because there are too many people enjoying the content.

...Unless you can show me a source or something that shows that the original intent of crafting was to be super difficult. I haven't seen it. As far as I can tell, I just don't see it. It looks like something that was meant to be fun.

[Jojoya]

The major problem is a disconnect between the playerbase and dev team. High end crafter typically don't care about super hard, RNG riddled systems. Their endgame is making hoards of gil hand over fist. Prior to Shadowbringers, we had that separation because only truly dedicated players could actually craft endgame gear, which, in turn, made them a sizable profit. The dev team assumed if they slapped a mount, it'd motivate people the same way but the lackluster profit takes away a huge incentive for many players.

Even the high end crafters were in disagreement when this was being discussed after Expert was announced. There was a fairly large division between those who wanted more gil, who wanted prestige, or who wanted fun glamour items that could only be self-crafted.

Expert is still profitable. Earn scrip, buy items, sell on MB. The sad part was there are better ways to grind scrip. Normal level 80 recipes are easy to macro, quick to turn out compared to Expert and offer almost the same scrip as a reward.

The prestige turned out to be something you could also earn through time investment on normal recipes instead of skill on Expert so a lot of players chose botting to get the reward, tarnishing the prestige it should have had for those who earned it through skill.

The self-crafted glamour items never materialized until 5.51 and then it turned out to be a drawn out grind for yet another shiny tool when we had just completed a different drawn out grind for other shiny tools which many considered better. That's not to mention all the other grinds for shiny tools that already exist and are easier to complete.

The reward system for Expert has fallen flat because nothing has made it feel worth the extra effort Expert requires.

[Liam_Harper]

Why do "elite crafters" want things to be harder? Greed.

Why do "casual crafters" want things to be easier? Greed. You want the items without having to work for or pay someone else for them. You label effort as "tedious" when for crafters it's what made it satisfying. Why do you deserve the best items in the game on a plate for little work?

Crafting wasn't about skill, correct. Crafting was about patience and game knowledge. The leveling process making you feel like you were learning a profession, gradually improving over time and had that feeling of immersion. There was the satisfaction of making your own items and seeing them put to use. The theorycraft and research. Where do I find materia, how do I adjust this rotation to my stats, where do I gather these materials and putting the sum of your knowledge together. Sure you'll say it's "tedious" but many loved it and happily sank hundreds of hours into it.

Crafting has also always been about selling items. It's an endgame in itself, because what else are you going to do once you finally have that max level crafter decked out in fully melded endgame gear? In Stormblood and HW even casual crafters could make a large amount of gil selling furniture and non-master recipe items. There is no shame in enjoying making some gil from a profession you sank a lot of time into and labeling it as "greed" is ridiculous when you consider the "elite crafters" back in the day used to pour their time into writing guides, sharing rotations and trying to help the community join in.

[Neoyoshi]

I think most people hit the head on the nail, or the nail on the head -- i forget how that goes...

Crafters just need much more of a desirable reward for their efforts is all; but is more Gil the correct answer? I don't know, it doesn't feel like it is anymore, I don't think Gil has been that valuable for a long long while now.

So the dev's have the challenge (assuming this is the mindset) of figuring out: "what is more valuable then Gil to Crafters?"

If it were me who personally would make that call, I'd be putting a lot more unique items inside of crafting that can only be obtained via crafting, and keep those items there and not introduce said items via other avenues later.

I believe the devs should also really begin thinking about a way of introducing new types of collectables within the crafting jobs, like for instance: "Interactive Toys" - similar to what ArenaNet does with toy's in Guild Wars 2

[Jojoya]

There is no such think as skill in crafting. There never was. There never will be. It's crafting.

If there is no skill, then everyone with the same gear would have the exact same success every craft attempt.

I don't see that happening, do you?

There is skill to crafting. It's called basic math skill. People with good basic math skills should have little trouble picking up crafting. Those with poor basic math skills are going to struggle. As Liam said, crafting knowledge is needed and knowledge is also a form a skill. Rote memorization of what each action does isn't going to help if you don't know how to put those actions to best use.

I've never claimed that crafting was ever hard or that it was intended to be hard. I won't even claim that SE's intent is to make crafting fun as opposed to just adding the standard MMO economic content that players have come to expect in RPGs but with a new twist to make it different from other games.

The problem with fun is that it is subjective. I know seen people post in the forums that crafting here should be like WoW's crafting because that's more fun, which blows my mind but that's their opinion.

Me, I'm having fun crafting so I'll keep doing it. It's a simple way to make some extra gil on top of what I make doing other content. I enjoy the Expert mini-game ("7 Rapid Synthesis failures in a row, can I still complete the craft at least minimum rating need to turn in?" crosses fingers while waiting to see what happens).

I get that others don't feel the same way and they're frustrated. So let's engage in constructive discussion.

What made crafting fun to each of us in the first place?
What changes would make it fun again for those who no longer find it fun?
Are expectations unrealistic because the player base is growing in size? More players naturally leads to more getting into the content along with more competition.

[Garten]

I'll Say something even if i know i'll get buried for this.. what i want from crafting?
If they gonna keep Rng aspect pls be honest. Not like when i fail a hq 6 Times in a Row when i had 86+% of hq rate.

[Garten]

Or i Guess maybe "the secret" of crafting Is "Always going for 100% or dont bother"?

[Buuhuu]

Crafting was all about skill. And I agree, that they gutted it down a lot.
The only difference to combat classes is, that the "skill" for crafting classes comes 99% of the time with building the rotation, instead of executing it. Often I see less skilled players asking for rotations/macros or "BiS-Gear" or whatever, when most often with minor adjustments to their gear and/or rotation they could make it suffice for every recipe. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, it's like going to balance discord to get the max dps rotation and BiS-Gear from the players invested into finding that stuff out.

However, they decreased the difficulty of building rotations by a lot and I think the players invested into creating those rotations (where I am including myself) find that to be more boring.

For example the buff Steady Hand was used to increase the success rate for skills and you needed to keep it active to achieve 100% while still using other buffs like Ingenuity/Innovation etc.
They removed it and gave almost all skills 100% success rate, which is not bad in itself, especially considering reactive crafting on expert recipes, but they didn't give us anything we need to keep active in return.
They also removed Ingenuity (lowered the recipe level and therefore increased progress and quality gain on highlevel/master recipes), another buff useful for quality gain used to together with innovation.
On top of that, they also gave us skills which have double the potency (Groundwork, Preparatory Touch), while often not CP efficient, those made buff handling more easier aswell, especially for the early endgame recipes.
And they increased the effect of HQ materials, which is not really bad, as it profits the gatherers, but adds onto the pile of things that made crafting more brainless.

I don't see a difference to other classes losing complexity or getting homogenized like healer or tanks etc.

I also don't understand the argument of "greed". I mean the community, dedicated to crafting, made guides and rotations for everyone publicly available. Or discussing how to optimize rotations for specific items in this forum. The resources were always there, for everyone to get into crafting if they want to. And that didn't change.
It's like telling tanks, who complain about the homogenization, that they are just angry, that other players new to this job can play it more easily now and are filling the queue, which might result in them to wait a few seconds longer.

I still hope they will give us more to work with in Endwalker instead of removing complexity again. Like more buffs to juggle or more usage of the expert recipes, like for normal items to craft. They build this new challenging system, but turned it into a boring grind, crafting a single item over and over for mediocre rewards and didn't even use it for a single real item recipe. I still had fun with it, but I hope they will expand on this system a bit more.

[Raikai]

We all know each and every expansion they dumb down crafting mechanics further and further to make it easier for BOTS to spam the market with gear and weapons. We also know they add in market damaging additions once in awhile, such as World Visit and Data Center visit.

So I’m just wondering, how will they dumb down Endwalker’s crafting system even more than Shadowbringers? And make it to where crafting bots can spam the market even worse than they already have? This isn’t even a salt thread, I’m just expecting it at this point.

I don't see what a simplification of crafting has to do with MB bots?...

TBH crafting macros have been a thing ever since forever, you don't even need to learn how to use your skills, you just copy a macro provided by a guide.