Hey everyone

This actually greatly concerns me because of the current trend of FFXIV as someone that wants to see this game succeed and grow in population to the point that Yoshi-p hopes.

Currently gear fully slotted with materia (or slotted with at least 3)is unrivaled in many occasions. That's fine since the game is unfinished and doesn't really have anything worth mentioning as far as endgame goes, however as the game evolves I do see quite the issue since Yoshi-P plans to add a lot of content as well as pvp.

The major thing that needs to be considered, the vast majority of MMO players do not care about crafting nor do they want to feel forced to do it with the current materia and repair system I kind of feel like I have to or I'll end up spending literally millions on one item that isn't even worth the price.

The major problem here is that when people do endgame raids, when people pvp they want to see rewards directly from those. They want to see gear upgrades that are better then anything they can buy, including crafted items.

The reason this is an issue is a lesson that should have been learned from FFXI seems to have gone ignored and they seem to be overcompensating for the uselessness of most crafting in FFXI by making it almost required or at least feel required.

That lesson is, very few people if any will do an event or kill enemies just to do it if there is no real reward from it.

If materia is made more powerful or endgame/PVP rewards aren't as good as as gear slotted with 4-5 materia, I hate to say it but the majority of the worlds MMO community will just not bother which means content won't be done which means less subscribers.

CoP proves this in the fact that very few people have seen a benefit from Al'tieu in FFXI so it was the least done portion of endgame in FFXI next to HNMs with no real drops. Abyssea further proves it since almost no one went back to older content because it was "useless" Keep in mind most people that play in abyssea couldn't cut it in the older content for the most part.

SE could easily keep crafting very useful by either making new gear for newer content that crafters can make, or by making older ones(at the level cap) dated and allowing every craft to make the same item with upgraded stats. So for example The cobalt tanking set would have higher defense, hp, vit and so on then the one from the patch before.

This is a simple solution and does help keep crafting involved, materia also wouldn't suffer since people would buy these items if they couldn't get the gear from the previous set of content.

Lets all keep in mind they are clearly NOT following the FFXI model since its basically proven to not work in terms of major MMOs go, other MMO developers don't even see SE as a competitor in the MMO industry.

I do want to see FFXIV succeed but they won't if all they do is cater to crafters. The majority of the worlds MMO players want battle-related content, not to sit in the city and hit an anvil or play with a saw.. and in order to do that gear from endgame content and PVP needs to be the best for what its made for, nothing wrong with crafted gear coming close, but it shouldn't be better, even with full materia slots.