Magnum opus: A dream for crafters.

[Hyrist]

I'm a bit concerned of someone who could craft these could eventually make their own custom build that could be utterly and entirely overpowered.

So as long as it's balanced well, I'm all for armor!

[Bluebun]

They are comming. It's called a house~

[Hyrist]

Which is absolutely nothing in common to what I was talking about.

I was talking about those who want to create legends instead of just tossing a bunch of random items to NPCs and have their time crafting max out at having a nicely decorated bedroom.

This is about putting hammer to forge and coming out with something of your own that would give a Relic a run for their money Real Steel style. There's nothing even close to that in the system right now and there really should be, in my opinion.

[Tetsaru]

Personally, I'd love to see something like this, where you can tweak certain things in an item's recipe to sway its stats in one direction or another, instead of just always saying "X + Y + Z always makes a Cobalt Winglet, now slap some materia on it and hope it doesn't blow up." Anyone who's gotten all their DoH's to 50 should be able to have perks like that. If I'm making a sword, why does it have to be a preset recipe? Why can't I make something ORIGINAL from scratch?

Example 1: I could make a blade out of darksteel, with a diamond edge, a hilt out of oak, inlaid with buffalo horn and wrapped with raptor leather, a counterweight made of adamantium, then adorn it with all sorts of gemstones and gold leaf, douse it with a Maddening Potion, and finally, name it what I want (such as "Tetsaru's Super-Duper Ohboyee Sword of BREAKIN' STUFF!!!"), along with using all-purpose dyes to give it a unique color scheme. Such a sword would obviously be very badass, due to all the materials it uses... but having a lot of heavy materials would probably make it very sluggish. The result would be a sword with very high damage, STR, and attack power, small boosts to other stats, a bonus to +enmity, but a long delay and a penalty to accuracy.

Example 2: The blade is - get this - a Silver Shark. The hilt is a long piece of bamboo skewered into the shark. A Prickly Pineapple provides the counterweight. The shark is coated in Spoken Blood, and numerous Cactuar Needles are protruding from its body. The result: a sword that attracts beast mobs but deters humans, deals small amounts of damage to attacking enemies, provides a reusable food effect at the cost of durability, and looks absolutely ridiculous.

And as the OP mentioned, you could use things like primal and NM drops too, or hell, even take actual primal weapons like Ifrit's Harpoon, and be able to modify them. Getting something like "Ifrit's Horn" and adding it to Ifrit's Harpoon could turn it into an Ifrit's Harpoon +1, or something similar. Imagine someone with Lv50 Armorer and Alchemy taking something like a Bomb Baron's Core, some ceruleum, and a Heavy Darklight Armor, and using a controlled explosion to break the armor into two separate body and head pieces? The possibilities are endless, and it would keep U/U items and other seemingly useless loot relevant, as you could keep experimenting with it (instead of just turning it into random useless materia, or NPC selling it, etc. ).

Still, I'm curious what other people think: should such customizable items be U/U, and help encourage players to level their DoH's, or should we be able to sell and trade them?

[AzuraSin]

I like this idea. Need more to do as a crafter than make the same stuff over and over and hope it sells ... so that you can buy more stuff to make more stuff with and sell it ... ad nauseum. Besides making DoH more pseudo-realistic and useful, it would feel more like those jobs were part of the game rather than shoehorned in for an alternative to killing mobs.

[Hyrist]

Eventually people are going to create identical pieces, because it will be perceived as "Best for build." But this is ok. But it would also promote custom builds that would provide depth to the available gameplay.

I'm not trying to take effort out of the system, mind you. I'm actually trying to provide more motivation for putting effort into it. Again, mass production isn't the kind of crafting I like, and FFXIV's 1.0 version fell into that rutt. The highest it was able to achieve was to create a component for a relic, rather than something that could cross with a Relic and survive.

and how would you accomplish that, exactly? by making the synth a 2% success rate? have you actually experienced ifrit extreme to form a basis of comparison in the first place?

No, it would be accomplished by fighting Ifrit Extreme and then taking a trophy from him to craft into a meterial with 100% success rate. And chosing that meterial gives you a static bonus for your final product.

[Kiote]

I've always believed that if we are looking for crafters to be close to if not full classes they should have the ability to become the best craftsman in the world.

Relics do not just exist, they were made.

Players who excel at crafting should have post 50 advancement that leads them to become the level of crafter than can make Relic weapons. Very long, very difficult quest lines that require even more effort than Relics.

This would also have to have some sever conditions to it. I'm not a big fan of being forced to choose a single path, but something equally as potent.

- The weapon can only be created by completing the Quest line involved in making the weapon
- The Quest line can only be completed once a year
- The Crafter must be max level in the Class perficient with the weapon being created
- The Crafting requires two or more crafts leveled to Max Level corresponding with the Weapon being Crafted

I want to be the Greatest Craftsman The World Has Ever Known. No just a craftsman.

Of course, these Weapons must Not Be Rare/Ex. We must be able to Sell them. Not that anyone ever would.

[fusional]

I've always believed that if we are looking for crafters to be close to if not full classes they should have the ability to become the best craftsman in the world.

Relics do not just exist, they were made.

Players who excel at crafting should have post 50 advancement that leads them to become the level of crafter than can make Relic weapons. Very long, very difficult quest lines that require even more effort than Relics.

This would also have to have some sever conditions to it. I'm not a big fan of being forced to choose a single path, but something equally as potent.

- The weapon can only be created by completing the Quest line involved in making the weapon
- The Quest line can only be completed once a year
- The Crafter must be max level in the Class perficient with the weapon being created
- The Crafting requires two or more crafts leveled to Max Level corresponding with the Weapon being Crafted

I want to be the Greatest Craftsman The World Has Ever Known. No just a craftsman.

Of course, these Weapons must Not Be Rare/Ex. We must be able to Sell them. Not that anyone ever would.

while only allowing people to complete the questline once a year seems a bit excessive, i agree with most everything else in theory.

a somewhat easy short-term way to accomplish this without raising crafting level caps is to allow players to work for items which give them +1 skill in a specific craft. the items should require a bit of a grind, and a fair amount of time to acquire. they'd be r/e naturally as they would be considered priceless. sort of like the guild items in XI which would increase your crafting skill.

this would serve two functions: first, making it slightly easier to HQ things in your main crafting discipline by having a higher effective crafting skill... and second, making it *possible* to craft a higher tier weapon associated with the kind of long, arduous questline you speak of. (ie: the weapon being effectively a level 64 synth, so you can only attempt to craft it once you've collected 4 guild items which give +1 each to that specific crafting skill, bringing your effective skill level to 54)

i don't really feel like you should be able to sell the weapons, though.

[Dzian]

I've always believed that if we are looking for crafters to be close to if not full classes they should have the ability to become the best craftsman in the world.

Relics do not just exist, they were made.

Players who excel at crafting should have post 50 advancement that leads them to become the level of crafter than can make Relic weapons. Very long, very difficult quest lines that require even more effort than Relics.

This would also have to have some sever conditions to it. I'm not a big fan of being forced to choose a single path, but something equally as potent.

- The weapon can only be created by completing the Quest line involved in making the weapon
- The Quest line can only be completed once a year
- The Crafter must be max level in the Class perficient with the weapon being created
- The Crafting requires two or more crafts leveled to Max Level corresponding with the Weapon being Crafted

I want to be the Greatest Craftsman The World Has Ever Known. No just a craftsman.

Of course, these Weapons must Not Be Rare/Ex. We must be able to Sell them. Not that anyone ever would.

Make it Unsellable and I could agree with that. That way if you want it you gotta work for it and not simply buy it. If I make a weapon of awesome I want it to be priceless. A real money can't buy item.

To be able to sell it would kind of undervalue all the work you put into forging or making it. It'd be like going up to the wards and "just" buying an Artemis Bow. Totally undermine the work of everyone who's done the relic quest.

But yeah I like the idea of being able to make something truly awesome and unique.
Comparable to relics? I'd hope so if there's that much work involved I'd want it to be something optimal that I would actually use.
Difficult? DAM RIGHT!

[Kiote]

I'm not in any way set to the terms I proposed, I was just giving an example of the kind of restrictions that need to be in place.

1.0 handed people a lot of thing with very little effort. I even feel like the Relic quest was far too easy. If we want crafters to be able to create something that excels to the level of Relics, I want blood sweat and tears.

Darksteel type synths except every Item is like the Obelisk Head. You must have unlocked your Luminary. I want it to be FFXI Relic Weapon pain in the ass level.

I want to have a craft so hard and time consuming, even if I could make as many as I want, it would still take a year.