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

[Liam_Harper]

No there is no dependability about it. Greed by definition is an intense and or selfish desire for wealth. If you desire wealth then by textbook definition you're greedy, just as the casual is just as greedy for wanting everything handed on a silver platter as a cost-cutting measure.

In which case the majority of players in the game are greedy by definition? I mean, who doesn't want gil, currency, rare items, ect. I suppose that's a fair way of looking at it. This type of greed is different to a real life selfish hoarding of wealth though, given currency isn't limited, every player has the tools available to acquire that wealth and the wealthy are often willing to guide and help them. It's just that it's often thrown out as a negative quality against the wealthy players, while I feel the desire to acquire anything special, be it huge amounts of gil, accomplishments or rare items for personal satisfaction is quite natural in a MMO. Greed is viewed as a negative quality, but at the same time it would never work to just give everyone everything.

I agree with everything you said though. Bots are a major issue, perhaps the biggest issue nowadays. They've opened the floodgates and both made it accessible to build one to 80 fast and demonstrated they have no power over them. It's hard to know if they even can crack down on them. Teamcraft is also true, along with several discords, but Experts did prove there's still the potential for crafts that invite theorycraft and discussion.

For me personally, what I want is something worthwhile to do with crafting. I just liked that it took time in the past, yet was satisfying to reach your goals simply because it kept me occupied. Experts didn't scratch that itch, because spamming the same recipe hundreds, maybe thousands of times for a mediocre reward just wasn't fun or satisfying. At least leveling and max-gearing used to have a sort of journey to it, but nowadays I'm fully max pentamelded within the first 3 days of a new patch. After that it's just spam the same expert a thousand times or sell endgame gear for peanuts due to bots (yes, that is greed, but I'd be fine competing with regular players even at lowered prices as long as the time feels worth it, because all I'm looking for is something worthwhile to do with my geared crafter).

So I suppose the question should be. What could Enix do with crafting or how could they alter their current systems, that could keep crafters happily occupied long-term even at endgame? Interested to hear others thoughts.

[Kaurhz]

snip

Sure we can go with that logic. I just took issue with you calling the greed card for a subset of players that want easier or more accessible crafting when the exact same can be attributed to someone that desires more difficult and prolonged crafting. It's just 2 sides of the same coin. Ultimately, I felt that it was just hypocritical and added nothing of little value to the discussion. There's a genuine reason for both, and it just seems like the powers that be decided that more accessible and easier crafting is healthier for the game.

I just take a serious issue with people that honestly think obfuscating the system, rotations, or abilities is actually going to just completely solve all their issues from rampant botting. When the fact remains that it would probably have very little impact. They can do experts, they don't tire from them, they have little concept of time or cost. Ultimately it's just something that would punish the players more than anything else. Unfortunately, bots just generally get more complex and sophisticated with time.

Yes, there is much more widespread communication. I would stand to argue that if such things of Teamcraft did not exist, or a centralized hub of resources such as Balance, then a lot more people would find crafting a hell of a lot more difficult. Even now. Ease of it is largely facilitated by how organized the community is, both from a communication and resource perspective. Anything that lends to uncertainty will also lead to an influx of communication and collaboration between players to solve the puzzle.

It's not a very widespread outlook mine. But you won't make crafting hard, all you will ever do is invite uncertainty/RNG to it. Beyond a certain point, it is just adding layers of RNG. Then at a certain point, your skill matters a whole lot less than the simple fact of RNG, and when you reach the point wherein RNG becomes a greater determining factor of your success than your actual skill then this is where issues come in. This is quite possibly the biggest flaw I find in crafting in this game; you reach that point very quickly. We could argue for something such as Experts with conditions and such that you need to handle the RNG. But even with experts. RNG leaning one way or another has a greater influence on your success than your skill itself. This really just takes into account that you have a rudimentary understanding of crafting itself.

Whether it's good or not though is entirely underpinned by how proactive you are within the system itself. If you avidly engage in it or not. The more you engage and the more knowledgeable you are within crafting, the easier you find it becomes. Conversely, you look at a new player, now you imagine each expansion being as difficult as either ARR or HW. Asking players do 80 levels before they even get to the endgame with each expansion being just as monotonous as the last. I guarantee you that the vast majority of players complaining about crafting, complaining about the simplicity, would very quickly turn their sights to the other side of the argument. Being up to snuff, and relevant is something far, far too many people take for granted. - When I speak I'm not trying to think of myself but rather newer players at large. I long conceded to the fact that Square Enix would never meet my expectations within crafting. For as renowned as it is for being its own separate flushed out and complex system, which sure, it is. But it's still very flat and 'one-dimensional'


If I were to personally look towards how I think they should solve it, I would say they should look more in the direction of trying to make stats something that has more meaning, or some scaling factor. Now I don't mean to say that this isn't already present, because it quite clearly is. But I think something that tied your stats to the success rate of your abilities would make for a nice change of direction I think. Especially when you consider it with respect to Experts, as it adds another layer of complexity beyond cap CP, then deck out control, for the most part.

I do have quite a bit more to say on the matter, but I won't quite yet unless you wish to read.

[Sylvain]

Tbh a simple way to kill macro is to make much more prof related skills / effects.
Currently procs are rare enough and related skills are weak enough that you can ignore these and still manage your way.

Just make proc more common (with different prof if you will) and increase their effect.
This way macroing simply wouldn't work unless you'd use a very long set of that would try to use every proc rated ability after each non proc related ability. And you could go even further. Make that proc related abilities aren't grayed out when the proc isn't available but simply very weak skills (or that they have 75% chance to fail) like the second/third part of a melee combo that is always available to use even if you're not at that step yet

That would definitely solve the macro issue. But probably not the bot one as I suspect they'd be able to simply read the combat log and make choice accordingly with a more complex alogorithme.


As a side note, I'd like them to reduce the animation duration because it's really long to craft one thing when all you doing is waiting for each skill to finish their animation

[NanaWiloh]

Macro's: Crafting macro's existed into 2.0 for High end crafts. Just not as effective but effective enough they worth using.
Knowledge: Its all over the internet now,websites,discords,novice network,forums.

The latter is the Reaper of difficult crafting and you are powerless to kill it. I am on the balance discord one of the biggest if not the biggest crafting discord for FF14. Its like a holy grail for crafting information,stats,rotations,etc. Whats the point of making crafting harder when so many resources exist that help players spit,slap,stomp and laugh in the face of difficulty.As for rewards while I never did experts and barely touched skytools, I agree the rewards did not equal the effort put forth.

The crafting community is its own worst enemy when you think about it.

[Plastics]

Make the crafter sets above the base max level one market prohibited. Make the final crafter set one where every piece is an expert-level craft, but with bonuses on expert recipes, and add a bunch of cool cosmetic stuff as expert recipes that are extremely hard without that gear, but fairly doable with it.

They don't have to make it a nightmare to level, but they can add exclusivity which is what is currently missing. Having something to strive for if you want to do crafting is what exclusivity provides. Everyone gets crafters to 80 and then they're like "ok, I'm done with that" because realistically, they are. Pentamelded gear doesn't really do anything for you unless you want to compete with bots and sell gear for ~50k a piece, and expert recipes are basically not worth doing at all.

They should also replace all the class quests with ones like SB.

I doubt they'll do anything like that though, if anything I suspect specialists will be removed and we'll get some new skills that will make end game crafting even easier to macro.

[Nabril]

Make the crafter sets above the base max level one market prohibited. Make the final crafter set one where every piece is an expert-level craft, but with bonuses on expert recipes, and add a bunch of cool cosmetic stuff as expert recipes that are extremely hard without that gear, but fairly doable with it.

They don't have to make it a nightmare to level, but they can add exclusivity which is what is currently missing. Having something to strive for if you want to do crafting is what exclusivity provides. Everyone gets crafters to 80 and then they're like "ok, I'm done with that" because realistically, they are. Pentamelded gear doesn't really do anything for you unless you want to compete with bots and sell gear for ~50k a piece, and expert recipes are basically not worth doing at all.

They should also replace all the class quests with ones like SB.

I doubt they'll do anything like that though, if anything I suspect specialists will be removed and we'll get some new skills that will make end game crafting even easier to macro.

Nothing you said would be difficult or extremely time consuming so I don't know what this would change. It really wouldn't change anything.

Step 1. Level to 80
Step 2. Complete Custom Deliveries and Leve Quests for Scrip Gear
Step 3. Craft a set of crafter gear and pentameld it
Step 4. Craft this final set that you mentioned that's market prohibited.

It would not be anymore difficult than that.

What you're describing seems a lot like the Skysteel tools which are already in the game.

[Jojoya]

Nothing you said would be difficult or extremely time consuming so I don't know what this would change. It really wouldn't change anything.

Step 1. Level to 80
Step 2. Complete Custom Deliveries and Leve Quests for Scrip Gear
Step 3. Craft a set of crafter gear and pentameld it
Step 4. Craft this final set that you mentioned that's market prohibited.

It would not be anymore difficult than that.

What you're describing seems a lot like the Skysteel tools which are already in the game.

Step 4 would be an obstacle for any crafter that relies on macros created by others since Plastics specified Expert. It would just need to be Resplendent Expert difficulty instead of Skybuilder.

Resplendent itself failed because they chose an excessively punishing grind and made the reward just another shiny tool we weren't going to use. The process wasn't fun, the reward was lackluster - who was going to bother unless all they wanted was bragging rights for something everyone else felt was a waste of time?

[Plastics]

Nothing you said would be difficult or extremely time consuming so I don't know what this would change. It really wouldn't change anything.

Step 1. Level to 80
Step 2. Complete Custom Deliveries and Leve Quests for Scrip Gear
Step 3. Craft a set of crafter gear and pentameld it
Step 4. Craft this final set that you mentioned that's market prohibited.

It would not be anymore difficult than that.

What you're describing seems a lot like the Skysteel tools which are already in the game.

Every patch you'd need to craft your own gear which provides a barrier. Right now you can buy a set and do some basic melds and then start flooding the market. To make a comparison to combat content, few (if any?) people are going to clear savage in lightly melded crafted gear. People who level them up late in the expansion would have to use scrip gear as a catch up.

As for Skysteel, they provide no benefit. They're basically equivalent to Aesthete's, but much harder to make than Aesthete's. Same with Resplendent. That's the issue -- they're not worth doing, except as glam, and you can do that in a later expansion. That's why having crafts for things people want be hard experts that are made easier with the expert crafted set, in addition to glam, would provide an actual reason to do them. It would also be there for people who want to compete in whatever expert competition they're going to replace Ishgard with.

[NanaWiloh]

Macro= Runs a list of commands. <---This is all a macro does period.
You are under no obiligation to use macro's.
Macro's have been used on high end crafts since 2.0.

Things a macro does not do!!!
-Does not alter the difficulty of a craft
-Does not change how successful a rotation is.
-Does not promise or ensure %100 hq on every craft.

[NanaWiloh]

Hardcore crafter's: Screw Casual crafter's they deserve no end game
Casual crafter's: Screw hardcore crafter's they deserve no end game

This all I see from this community. Nothing but selfishness and greed driving everyone.

To hardcore:
Not everyone likes difficult crafts.
Not everyone is interested in making gil.
Not all end game crafting needs to a be a brain melting experience.

To Casual:
There are players who like difficult crafts.
There are players who like making millions of gil off crafting.
Not all end game crafting needs to be a snooze fest.

Tired of thinking this community can find any middle ground. Is the idea of both sides having a end game of their own that Scary and insulting to both sides?
Thread Cammie made a year ago it was put forth why not have master recipes aimed at the general player base with Experts recipes being hard and full of stuff people would want but would not really be need to be a successful crafter.