Why wasn't the game designed like this?

[v_jones]

However, this is a huge wasted opportunity. The uniqueness of having a Miner or Carpenter with their own mine or workshop or their own 'missions' - or forming parties of DoH/L is something that would make FFXIV way more attractive to a large audience.

How would this even work?

The market is completely screwed up with many low level materials costing twice as much as higher level ones: velveteen > linen!!!???

This is how it always is. People spend more time at the higher levels than lower levels, and most don't want to waste time gathering in low areas, so they'd rather just purchase it.

Even the materia system with stat caps vs some of the higher leveled gear is extremely disappointing. It used to be that materia was greater than all - but with an extremely high price. Now the materia system is so watered down that of course they had to water down the stats... this doesn't really benefit anyone - its a lose/lose.

I'm very disappointed with Materia. I have had to get two Materia melded for my relic weapon... and that's it. Why are there no slots on dungeon/dark light gear? Why are there caps? I should be able to min/max and provide some diversity in how characters are built. It's all very vanilla right now.

[rabbitzero]

The market is completely screwed up with many low level materials costing twice as much as higher level ones: velveteen > linen!!!???

How does this confuse you? The base mat for linen can be gotten easily with botany, an hour i had three stacks of normal and a stack of HQ. Velveteen requires diremite webbing, a horribly overfarmed mat dropped by mobs that are camped by teleporting bots on most servers.

[Raxion]

Sounds like too much of a run-around to me.

But, of course, since I don't agree that it should take a small army plus 200 hours of gameplay to get geared, I'm a casual scumbag right?

[Lotarion]

Hold over what? I can't get my materials from thin air. Why everyone is saying that crafters would rule the world when the core materials would be aquired ONLY from DoW/DoM. Crafters would have only as much power as non-crafters would give them.

[Shadex]

Because in this day and age the average Massively 'Multiplayer' Online gamer does not want to have to do anything that requires interaction or dependency on another individual. As soon as system are incorporated that create a symbiotic relationship between one play style and another, one of them will make a bee line for the forums and embark on a non-stop tirade until the system is removed.

cont..

[Shadex]

...Adventurers will complain they do not want to 'have' to craft so crafting gets Nerfed. Regardless of the fact that no one asks them to craft, simply to take part on the economy and buy stuff. But in a system where crafted gear is good adventurers insist this means 'they' have to craft because, as mentioned above, everyone wants to be self-sufficient and not have to interact with others for gear. This causes developers to put amazing drops into instances completely negating the value of pretty much anything crafters make. Now the crafters complain because all their work is for naught and think longingly of MMOs like SWG pre-NGE where crafted items mattered. It is an unfortunate state of 'catering to the largest common denominator' and today that is the insta-fix, pew pew power grinder that would rather claw their eyes out then have to go 'shopping' for new gear.

[Yoko_Kurama]

Pure Gold

I bow to your epic insight, only those of the older mmorpg generation would really grasp the value or being in a game with systems in place that require you to interact with others to succeed and enjoy themselves. *claps for your logic*

Also to the Original Poster, it's about time someone made a post like this jeez, good job and hope a random developer may come to this thread and reap from it some core values that need to be instilled into todays mmo communities because your post isn't just about crafting specifically, if the things you mentioned took effect the entire community as a whole would benefit by being thrown into more situations which force us to not just party with each other for 20 minutes in a dungeon and never see each other again, but also to find people you meet and interact with them socially for other purposes like crafting and such....maybe I just enjoyed the anime Sword Art Online so much that the mmorpgs today just feel fail haha. Or maybe i just remember the days of an mmo where you didn't even get a map to know where your objective was and had to actually explore games with friends to succeed and by the time you got to end game you literally remembered every piece of gear you've had, and every monsters name you fought...those were real mmo rpgs..

[Lotarion]

Yeah let's play an MMO but don't you dare make a system where I need others for anything! This is the best economy ever cause provider (ME) will always sell for price that buyer (ME again!) will accept! This is perfect! /sarcasm off

[Gilthas]

Honestly, I'm also disappointed with how crafting is being handled in FFXIV.


Of course I'm not saying that dungeons and quests can't give gear. Low level gear being currently worthless has a lot more to do with the rapid leveling than easily accessible gear. HQ gear is often times better than dungeon/aetherial gear of comparable level, but why bother investing in HQ stuff when in a couple of hours you're already high enough in level to equip the next set?. But some BiS items should involve crafting so crafting has some relevance.

At the very least dungeon gear should be meldable. The decision to not allow them to be melded is just the final nail in the crafters coffin. That's why I just level them to gear myself for fun, because unless a lot of things change, both DoH and DoL are pretty meaningless.

[Yoko_Kurama]

but why bother investing in HQ stuff when in a couple of hours you're already high enough in level to equip the next set?.

That is something i've wanted to touch on for a while, I think that you have 2 possible paths to solve this based on my experiences with other mmos. You could either make each level require insane amounts of exp via grinding hundreds of mobs per level (which many people wouldn't want to do) or, you create check point incentives at various levels, for example one of the old mmos i played had 3 distinct pvp areas, one was at level 15, once you got to level 16 you could no longer go to that level 15 pvp area, the next was level 30, finally was the max level pvp area. These 3 areas caused people to purposely go out of their way to get the best possible gears for the level they wanted to hang out and pvp at for a few days/weeks. Some people in that game never even went to max level because they had more fun at level 30 or they'd make a max level character specifically to farm for money to afford lower level pvp gears etc..

But this is not a pvp game, it's a story driven game, and with that method in mind the only way to make crafting viable at lower levels is to create a system that somehow causes players to be at lower levels a lot longer than they are.