An educated rant: Why pentamelding is %@$&*!-backwards

[Kakure]

If I have to play through hundreds of hours of story and six dozen dungeons/trials to access the game's crafting and gathering content, you can stand to spend thirty seconds /shouting for a melder in Limsa.

[Avidria]

I don't know in what world doing hunts in the hundreds within the first few weeks of the expansion - in addition to getting your dungeons done, getting your extremes done (doesn't take long, granted) and getting your jobs leveled - isn't a massive grind.


Prices spiked over 15000 gil per IX materia on my world. While I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the approach (as I'll refuse to participate in this nonsense), I have seen people dump 100+ materia for a single meld on a single item. That's absurdly expensive no matter how you put it.


The last thing they should've been made needed for is the top end PvE push, though. And while preparation can be done beforehand, it still has to all be done on the day itself, when people would.. you know, rather be raiding.

My point is I was doing that content anyway. I put in almost no effort at all getting ready for raid because I already had most of what I needed just playing as I normally do. The most grindy thing anyone in our group did was to make the gear itself, not even to meld it. My friends do more dungeons and roulettes than me, I'm assuming they got more stuff there instead of hunts probably. I actually rarely do extremes or experts since I don't pf much and don't like dungeon spamming.

So... How grindy or expensive it is depends a lot on what you do when you aren't raiding. I actually made a few million selling my leftover materia, so more than made up for what I did end up spending. Plus dropping to 7s / the next tier down is always a cheaper alternative that doesn't lose you too much in terms of stats.

And, again, Pentamelds are not necessary to anything. Except maybe pushing for record day clears I guess but I'm willing to bet those people are ready well ahead of time anyway.

[Kes13a]

The "race for world first" is as much in the developer's interest as it is in the player's. Viewers means exposure, which is basically free marketing. People talk about it, people have something to enjoy outside of playing the game, and it puts some extra interest in the raiding scene as a whole. It makes you feel like the game is more alive, gives players something to strive toward. Just like is the case in any other sport. Making it harder than it needs to be is, thus, shooting themselves in the foot.

so now your position is that you deserve special treatment and crafters should be removed because.... you are doing the game a favour?

I dont usually say this, but WoW suffered from those kinds of favours for years, and what put it where it is today. FFxiv has done well for years without your kind of favours... thanks anyway.

[Illmaeran]

I dont usually say this, but WoW suffered from those kinds of favours for years, and what put it where it is today. FFxiv has done well for years without your kind of favours... thanks anyway.

Indeed!! Some of my best times in WoW were when I was gathering to craft resistance gear for my raid group. Crafting in Vanilla was *important* and worthwhile. We made a meaningful contribution to our team, unlike later years when it was only good for gearing twinks.

[Mezzoforte]

You raiders need to shut up and DEAL with iut. God I am sick of you entiled hardcores demanding us crafters doi your bidding and for freee? Get out. SE should make it HARDER to pentameld and make it so you have to pentameld ALL combat gear. I still find it funny how raiders think savage and ultimate are the hardest thing in this game. look up expert crafts some time

Expert crafts are easy though. They all use the same flowcharts.

[Mezzoforte]

If crafters enjoy the content so much, why don't they transfer that passion into real-life hobbies and trades? I asked my crafter friend if they would like to make my food, clothing and medicine irl as well and they shouted profanities and told me I was being snide. I thought I made a very reasonable proposal.

Oh hey if you want transfer your passion for combat I can sign you up for the military

[Sqwall]

Lol what is this thread on about. Materia is gate keeping. L. Oooooo. L

Materia literally falls from the sky this expansion.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say those people complaining about materia markets being bad have NEVER fully bis penta melded. Like ever.

The barrier for entry to raiding is literally time. Farm 4 weeks to get your pandemonium normal gear, farm zodiark and hydalen. Congrats… ready for savage tier one.

I bought literally ZERO gear for savage. And the complaint is battle materia is to expensive? Please. Go check the cost for full penta meld for gathering bis. I personally dropped 14 million for gathering bis and I’m getting 36 legendary mats per node and full spirit bond in 4 nodes. Extract. Sell.

Omni craft and gather is brain dead easy to get btw. I got all crafters from 80-90 in like 48 hours. Gatherers in less time. Now I’m making 300-500k a day…..CASUALLY.

gate keeping. Please.

[Phaty]

So the new tier comes out and you want to do damage to the bosses. Right? Wrong. The ability to pentameld is locked behind unnecessary side quests and gatekept by the gil markets. Seriously. Has anyone ever questioned why you need CRAFTERS and GATHERERS so you can overmeld on COMBAT CLASSES? It's just a timesink that punishes people who want to do real content instead of blowing away their subscription time on garbage. Imagine you have your driver's license and you want to drive a car, but before you could even step into a car you had to learn how to learn how to play the violin. FFXIV is a world where only violinists can drive cars, and the actual racers are left taking the bus. And when you dare to point that out, all the violinists say "well it's not fair! Go learn to play some Vivaldi!!!". So you go "ah well, might as well look at a youtube tutorial on how to play this thing" and you realize that the violin is more expensive than your rent. It's prohibitively expensive to even get things melded. Seriously, it makes no sense to brickwall the people who want to actually play the game instead of jumping through pointless hoops. Solutions are to

1) Divorce pentamelding from non-combat classes, and give it to people who reach the level cap of an expansion OR
2) Make materia drop from current extreme trials and normal raids. When you clear a savage fight of the tier, then you're 100% guaranteed to have the overmeld go through.

God forbid the game have an active economy, it's almost like this is a mmorpg....

Materia drops from dungeons already. Add that with clusters from roulette and spiritbond makes gathering materia pretty easy, especially with a spiritbond pot. You only need 1 crafter to overmeld yourself, no gatherer needed.

Who are you to decide what real content is? Everything in the game is relevant to the game, crazy concept. It may just be me, but i feel paying a sub to do 2-6 5 min fights a week is more "blowing away subscription time" than engaging in all the game has to offer. But it's your money, you do you. Just don't demonize those that get more worth out of the game that you depend on

[Sqwall]

God forbid the game have an active economy, it's almost like this is a mmorpg....

Materia drops from dungeons already. Add that with clusters from roulette and spiritbond makes gathering materia pretty easy, especially with a spiritbond pot. You only need 1 crafter to overmeld yourself, no gatherer needed.

Who are you to decide what real content is? Everything in the game is relevant to the game, crazy content. It may just be me, but i feel paying a sub to do 2-6 5 min fights a week is more "blowing away subscription time" than engaging in all the game has to offer. But it's your money, you do you. Just don't demonize those that get more worth out of the game that you depend on

Or are by virtue better at playing the meta crafting game of buy low sell high, crafting items (barding, housing, glamour) which is always in demand.

Or can manage time more efficiently for scrips, collectibles, legendary nodes, and farm a whole evening to make pumpkin portage and take in 7 million because I just love charging 7k a unit to those that need food to get that perfect parse. Or 12k a piece for tinctures, the OP obviously has never gathered every and realized all the work of getting everything together to make all this crap they say is gatekeeping with useless crafting gathering jobs.

Just. Wow. Price of admission into savage must be to steep for some. Maybe they aren’t a serious raider then?

[Pyro2hell3]

first if your raid group needs or demands pentamelded gear something is seriously wrong. Also here's an easy way to experience pentamelding without lvling crafters. Take your entire stash of materia doesn't matter how big it is because it still won't be enough. Then throw them all into a fire or something. Now you've burnt all of you materia and accomplished nothing. Congratulations you've experienced pentameilding