Thread: Odd question, but would SE consider merging Blacksmith and Armorer in 2.0?

Hello, long time XI and smalltime XIV player who just rejoined after the welcome back campaign, with probably a different question than most people would ask...

In XI, smithing covered weapons as well as armor as long as they were involved in hard ores and metals in the synth process. This was pretty simple and worked out rather well for the most part, only needing sub crafts leveled up to make better quality items here and there then with just the plain smithing leveled.

In XIV, they have it branched out into two jobs that handle the same type of materials for the most part, but specialize in two different types of outputs as far as synths go. They can both make ingots and a few other things using the basically the same recipes, just that one makes weapons, while the other makes shields and armor.

I'm mostly just curious if there's been any consideration to condense them into a single job like XI and many other MMOs out on the market tend to do, since I'm under the impression that 2.0 is going to completely overhaul the game and how things work. Dunno, just tossing a random suggestion out there to see what happens with it. Please don't bite my head off!

Nah it won't happen since the reason why they are split is to balance out the crafts.
Smithing is for weapons
Armorcraft for heavy armor
Leathercraft for medium armor
Clothcraft for light armor
Carpenter for wood based gear
Alchemy for potions
Culinary for food
Goldsmith for accessories

This is the main grab of each craft and while they all have other items that they do offer if you look at it like this you'll see why smithing and armorcraft were split the way they were. To have it in one class would give them a superior boost over other crafts since they would be able to offer a wider variety of items compared to the other crafts.

How on earth would SE fairly reimburse 50 levels of grinding out BSM or ARM? A lot of people have both leveled. Also, if a person was 50 BSM and 0 ARM, it would hardly be fair to cut the BSM in half to 25 while leaving the other crafting jobs untiuched you understand?

Impossible at this point I think.

Alrighty, then. Some very nice and insightful posts basically laid it out perfectly for me to get it. Being out of the loop for so long and the sheer scope of those update notes makes it kinda hard to keep up with things they are / are not planning to do, so once again, thank you both for the replies.

Gonna get the pickaxe and hammers primed, then, since it sounds like I don't have to worry about 2.0 axing either of them. capitalism, HO!