crafting changes

[ryouma17]

now that we are no longer able to gather/craft HQ items starting in 6.0 i think its time we also remove the shard/crystal/cluster requirements as well

[Sove92]

Well that's quite a leap.

[Recon1o6]

I mean it would deprive the bots a source of gil

[_Pigzig]

I mean it would deprive the bots a source of gil

this is off topic but do you find your character hard to see ingame sometimes?
the graphics of this game are quite dark, I used to have a black skinned character but quit him

[Illmaeran]

We'll be able to craft HQ intermediate and finished items, but won't be able to gather them. The ore needed to make an ingot will be NQ, but we can still make HQ ingots and armor, for example.

I'd LOVE to see them drop the item quantity requirement for a number of things. Needing upwards of 15 crystals per batch of 3 cookies is ridiculous. Having to make 5 leather that require 5 skins/hides each is bonkers. Drop the quantity needed for non-Master Recipe items; they have no significant impact on endgame so faster leveling doesn't matter terribly much. All that does is use up legit players' time and incentivize them to buy crystals from what are most likely bots or people using bots to gather for a non-bot MB character.

[Recon1o6]

this is off topic but do you find your character hard to see ingame sometimes?
the graphics of this game are quite dark, I used to have a black skinned character but quit him

Generally no. Though there's a couple of spots where she does indeed become hard to spot with eulmore during fog and inside certain spots in gyr abania. But it does work well for the effect I go for her (namely intimidating dragon girl who learnt combat so she could explore dangerous ruins in search of history rather than save the damn world)

The lodestone/aetherial sea lighting is very dark and the character creator doesnt help with that blasted blue filter. However ff14's graphics arent so much dark as unsaturated and lacking in vibrancy. My ps4's tv is mounted high on a wall bracket so I got to use a backlight and on the laptop, I have my nvidia graphics filter to make the game much prettier. Between those two I probably don't see the same picture you do
A friend did send me a couple of screenshots of my character, and at times she's dark, but other times she lights up fairly well actually.

[KitKatnip]

HQ materials would fill your HQ bar by about 15% (more or less depending on how many HQ materials you had) when trying to craft HQ items so I hope they at least boost the touch skills by that much. Otherwise it's going to make crafting HQ items more annoying.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Generally no. Though there's a couple of spots where she does indeed become hard to spot with eulmore during fog and inside certain spots in gyr abania. But it does work well for the effect I go for her (namely intimidating dragon girl who learnt combat so she could explore dangerous ruins in search of history rather than save the damn world)

The lodestone/aetherial sea lighting is very dark and the character creator doesnt help with that blasted blue filter. However ff14's graphics arent so much dark as unsaturated and lacking in vibrancy. My ps4's tv is mounted high on a wall bracket so I got to use a backlight and on the laptop, I have my nvidia graphics filter to make the game much prettier. Between those two I probably don't see the same picture you do
A friend did send me a couple of screenshots of my character, and at times she's dark, but other times she lights up fairly well actually.

In the past before one of the updates I recall some character selections producing an option of literally jet black skin (think Mr. Popo from the Dragonball series that wasn't butcher edited by some company to show in the US) as a skin tone option.

The crystal thing is annoying at times when I run out of a specific element. Given the way crafting works in this game from an aesthetic stance they could probably go away since it's not item synthesis crafting like we had in FFXI where we created the item by channeling materials through a crystal which exploded if you failed. (still think you should have gotten some juice when failing a juice synth and had it blow up in your face)

[kiagenwa]

(namely intimidating dragon girl who learnt combat so she could explore dangerous ruins in search of history rather than save the damn world)

I wish we can choose personality for our WoL so our reactions to MSQ events would suit more to our background or make our choices matter (like a different string of events should be made another choice, then go back to common point, diverge, and repeat).
But it would take tons of resources to make it work and not contradicting any lore so it would never be I guess.

On the topic, the shards are there as processing material. i.e. fire+wind needed to do blacksmithing.
So maybe the way that we can do crafting with only the equipment we have is only unique to us?

HQ items elimination would badly affects low level crafters, but at higher level it'd just be a small challenge.