Quote Originally Posted by Michieltjuhh View Post
I agree pentamelding is a horrible system. But I'm just amused because I can only assume the people complaining are former WoW players who left partially because they didn't like the pre-raid grind and were told that FF14 didn't have one, just to find out it's actually far worse in FF14.

Never believe that the grass is greener on the other side, folks. It really isn't.
In WoW if you actually want to take part of the world first race that's like $5000 for the team, but depending on patch that could be way way higher to get one of first spots, and likely RMT there as well - wherever Blizzard one or not. If you are in normal mythic progression guild you have 1-2 nights a week, 2-3h max and you progress through easy first bosses then hit wall and wait for gear or some game systems to nerf the encounters. Here in EW right now people seems to see only 580 pentameld but not 590 gear as well...

In case of EW I would say there is to many people blindly following some guides but not really understanding why, or not even asking questions. Some say there is to many crafters and the prices collapsed. Looking at reddit daily questions people constantly ask about DoL/DoH gear, melding and whatnot, often not really having experience with it ("Can i craft patch gear with lvl 80 Handsaints?"). Melding overall is even more common - people seems to follow this like it's mandatory. Not sure if those are actually WoW players that assume pentamelding = WoW enchants = mandatory+easy.

And then people, especially WoW players, go to Icy Veins website, they click their job guide and "melding" is up there and they assume it's like enchanting in WoW so they have to do it. There is no wider message or meta "if your group isn't hitting enrage regularly at few % day 1-2 of patch with solid parses then wait for your 590 gear instead of forcefully getting crafted gear and pentamelding it".

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But in the end dumping 100 materia for a slot or two is not very "engaging gameplay". It somewhat work (hunt trains, fate trains, expert dungeons) just because the game supports it and players optimize. And then people optimize even more and take omnicrafting as player power so they "have to have it" even when likely a lot of them got burned on patch day not giving them moogtylions of gil.

IMHO they should not increase barrier to entry for savage/ultimate tiers (or WoW happens), but also they should have some good system for those mastery crafts. Like you get "sphere scrolls" and you can make your own stats for given gear item based on challenges the sphere scroll will require from you (mini relic grind or something - variant for the crafter and variant for the end user). You can customize your stats just like with overmelds but without the RNG and with sane progression path (it can be gradual and not day one all crafted gear or bust).