Future Endgame gear vs crafted gear with Materia.

[Hyrist]

The biggest problem with making crafted stuff so good is that you can get it solo. Like even the easiest group content we have requires more thought and skill than triple melding anything.

The counter to that, however, is the meterials risked in the process.

You can go fight a raid with a group, lose, and at worst, spend a round at the repair shop and lose a bit of gil.

You can loose several millions just trying for one good tripple meld, solo or not.

So it balances out. Tripple meld gear has lower entry requirements, but higher long term cost/risk.

Where Raiding has higher entry requirements, but low long term risks.

That should justify the rewards being equivalent.

[Churchill]

Not to mention that crafted items almost assuredly lose value in any good game. Better items to meld to are released, better items can be melded onto said slots, materia may become easier to obtain (for the more rare types). Darklight is free and takes your time, but you don't lose anything and likely make some cash from other drops along the way.

[Brannigan]

The counter to that, however, is the meterials risked in the process.

You can go fight a raid with a group, lose, and at worst, spend a round at the repair shop and lose a bit of gil.

You can loose several millions just trying for one good tripple meld, solo or not.

So it balances out. Tripple meld gear has lower entry requirements, but higher long term cost/risk.

Where Raiding has higher entry requirements, but low long term risks.

That should justify the rewards being equivalent.

Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

[Hyrist]

Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

And, in the time you went out for an hour and got a stack of ore, you could have gone out, done a speedrun with your LS, and gotten a larger chance at an equivilant piece of gear, than your successrate at a tripple meld.

And while you can mine the colbalt in an hour, spiritbonding the armor takes longer to do solo. Not to mention the Mereria gathering itself. This is all for a chance, mind you, not a success.

You can cut the costs the way you are describing, but no matter what you do to circumvent the gil costs, it's going to cost you time.

And this is just talking Colbalt, not even touching the subject of Darksteel, which costs even more and requires rare materials form Castra Novum.

In the end, it's actually less intensive to do raiding then to craft your own from scratch to finish. The fact that it can be done solo is irrelevant in this manner, as the best you can get in terms of crafting cannot be done solo unless you swallow the price of Castra Novum materials.

So if we're going by that logic, then Crafted Gear at this venture should actually be superior. I believe I'm making fair concessions to state they should at least be kept equal - but unique from one another.

[Wobi]

Cobalt level materials aren't exactly rare. You're not really risking shit when you can go out mining for an hour and come back with a stack of ore.

I think people were referring to the price of the materia itself, which yes I have been so unlucky to spend over a million just trying to get a decent double meld. Outside of +1 gear most of the items themselves are "relatively" affordable. This raid/major NM gear only attitude is for the birds. No melded gear exceeds that of Darklight or other top end endgame pieces with the exception of belts as most of them are garbage. You claim the sky is falling but it's still up there (now that red moon on the other hand...)

The personal attacks and vitriolic posts will get this thread locked, so lets put on our logic hats and discuss this like adults.

[Brannigan]

I think people were referring to the price of the materia itself, which yes I have been so unlucky to spend over a million just trying to get a decent double meld. Outside of +1 gear most of the items themselves are "relatively" affordable. This raid/major NM gear only attitude is for the birds. No melded gear exceeds that of Darklight or other top end endgame pieces with the exception of belts as most of them are garbage. You claim the sky is falling but it's still up there (now that red moon on the other hand...)

The personal attacks and vitriolic posts will get this thread locked, so lets put on our logic hats and discuss this like adults.

I haven't claimed the sky is falling or anything like that. The situation right now isn't that dire and I think with a few more dungeons the Tanaka crafting death-grip on this game will be completely loosened.

The point I'm trying to make is that gear acquired from group content should pretty much always be better than this materia slot machine stuff. Battle is the focus of this kind of MMORPG and it needs proper rewards and incentives.

In the end, it's actually less intensive to do raiding then to craft your own from scratch to finish. The fact that it can be done solo is irrelevant in this manner, as the best you can get in terms of crafting cannot be done solo unless you swallow the price of Castra Novum materials.

So if we're going by that logic, then Crafted Gear at this venture should actually be superior. I believe I'm making fair concessions to state they should at least be kept equal - but unique from one another.

And this is ridiculous. The time and effort required for 8 people to gear up, learn the dungeons, and actually get gear is more than that of a single person trying to make some doubles. Besides that, it's not entirely about time input. Difficulty of completion matters too. Crafting a thousand items to blow up might be time consuming but I'd never call it difficult.

[XxOstiaxX]

Crafting is more intense than raiding... Wow!! I have heard it all now LOL! Must be intense sitting in ulda'h spamming a key ......

[Eliseus]

Raiding gear should absolutely and 100% be the best gear in the game, crafting should be the best gear in the game to get you the the real best gear in the game.

This isn't Crafters Fantasy XIV.

[Asiaine]

Lots of interesting discussions back and forth. But if we are looking for constructive critisism that could actually be adopted by SE, perhaps keeping in mind the following would be helpful:

1) SE is a business. It has to compete. If it tries to clone WoW (or one of the other popular places out there), then it will be competing with that incumbant. And that will be very hard. This is not a wise business strategy.
2) SE is a business. If it wants to compete, it has to compete using one of the basic business strategy principles. For example, it offers something different to competitors, or targets a different group of people (or offers a lower price or does it a lot better than the incumbant).

SE can not compete on price. Too many free to play (or whatever) games out there.
SE can not compete head-to-head on offering a better version of WoW. That is a super high risk to do as WoW is so well established.

This leaves SE to compete on Differentiation and Niche. Therefore by definition, they must make themselves different from WoW and other places that are popular. And they must target people that WoW/etc does not target.

One of the many ways that SE can do this is with Crafting/Gathering. This is not the main focus of most other games. By putting a lot of weight and focus on that here, SE creates a differentiator. Also, by appealing to people who are interested in crafting/gathering, SE targets that niche market

It may not be apparent to everyone, but crafting/harvesting is actually a popular enough activity that many games are based around that concept. (Although not sure how popular it is in NA, there are a plethora of JP related games where this is a major focus).

This of course won't be the only thing SE does to differentiate and target. SE would need to do many things. But it would be wise to realize that this is a very viable business strategy for them, and most likely they will continue to persue it. Therefore, I would think it is best if suggestions/comments/etc focused on how to improve it and keep it a mainstay as those are most likely to yield results.

As I have alluded to before, I think the best approach is to ensure a system where both Crafters/Gathers and Adventurers can work well together or seperately. Working together should yield better rewards (this is a theme in final fantasy about cooperation), but working independent of each other should also be viable.

I envision/hope a day approaches where 'End Game' dungeon crawlers can defeat vicious foes to discover a rare and prized materia that can then be melded to gear by only a truly skilled artisan. We see some clues of this already, where harvesting nodes will be in dungeons. Where crafters have to make use of facilities in stronghold like locations. We even see co-operation in Hamlet Defense today.

This is where I think we are heading, and I think this is a good direction. Just.. please... remove the randomness on melding ^.^;; I want my melds to be strategic not luck based ^^;

[Kafeen]

This isn't Crafters Fantasy XIV.

No, its Raiders Fantasy XIV.

Oh, wait...

Why shouldn't crafting jobs be as legitimate as other jobs?

I'm not surprised games get a bad reputation. Some people just aren't happy unless they're killing things.