Why is crafting such a grind at 50?

[Lemuria]

Let's for a second put aside that I need high amounts of control and craftsmanship to make endgame worthy equipment. I'm perfectly happy with those restrictions, and I feel they offer incentive to enhance your character. What annoys me, however, is how every major endgame craft requires tomes.

Who thought this was a good idea? As a weaver, I'm not crazy enough to farm AK twelve times just so I can craft my friend a single Vanya robe nor stupid enough not to realise that the stats aren't much better than Darklight which costs less in total.

I think endgame crafts need a rethink. Hard to obtain materials I can live with, but non-stop dungeon grinding for parts is something I can live without.

[Kismet]

Or you could buy the items. I see TONS of people selling the items needed to craft the endgame gear. MMOs have always been a time vs. "money" (gil) scenario. If you don't want to farm for the ingredients yourself, make enough gil in other ways to fund the purchase of them from others.

[Lemuria]

What I'm really getting at is why does it need dungeon crawling at all? Where's the advantage to having a crafted item if you can grind the same tomes and get endgame equipment without needing to hunt down a crafter or spending a fortune crafting it yourself? Not only do these items require tomes, but they also require items which can only be harvested or mined by level 50 gatherers, and rose gold nuggets also require a level 50 goldsmith to craft.

I just feel there needs to be a divide between 'dungeonwear' and craftables. This mash-up of the two has really dampened my desire to bother with endgame content. As for buying them, good luck with that. On my server they're rarely on sale, and when they are they cost more than they're worth.

[Kismet]

I agree with you that there should be a disconnect between dungeon gear and crafting gear. One of the problems I believe is that they needed to make the endgame crafted gear relatively hard/time consuming to prevent everyone from having it at 50.

Keep in mind that the game is young, and with the crafting system being so intricate, Square Enix MUST have a plan for crafting professions as new end game content is released. Maybe newer dungeons will have rare recipe drops. Maybe there will be boss fights where you need resist gear and only 50 crafters can make it.

Most MMOs require SOME sort of dungeon drop for end game crafting. SE took a slightly different approach and let you spend tomes to get them. The alternative? Stick Cokes in WP as a rare drop off the last boss and let RNG to to work. I'll take the tomes thanks.....

[Feilina]

It needs dungeon crawling only for the fighters. And that is good. This is a team game, if we don't bang our heads together to play with each other and not along side we won't get much fun out of it.
I buy missing ingrediens or trade em for other good i can deliver, there isn't anything wrong about it.
What we see atm is a shortage of materials because the fighters will equip themselfs and don't see the money laying in front of them. (and they are whining about how to get repaired... )

The really only thing what concerns me is that the 2 star receipts aren't equal with bahamut gear.

[Xenobius]

It has been stated by SE that double-star recipes were "tweaked" (read - tomestone requirement increased nine-fold) to "throttle gear acquisition and ensure content longevity". Since it did not work and everyone just farmed DL, said "tweak" only serves to aggravate crafters atm.
TL;DR - Yet another bad design decision, nothing to see here, move along.

[Rainsford]

Using common sense, a crafted piece of gear should cost roughly the same number of tomestone items as its DL equivalent. So, 2-3 for accessories, 4-5 for body would make sense. The idea seems to have been that, while the crafted gear would be overall superior, it would take significantly more work to make/meld, and the DL gear is "good enough".

Unfortunately, lots of Legacy players came over with items like Coke and Potash. It seems like the increase in item requirement was to throttle the legacy servers more than the non-legacies, and we just fell victim to SE's "don't do any tweaking based on type of server" policy. Interestingly, the same policy is what has led to the rise in RMT on non-legacies thanks to no real way to generate gil at 50, where as the issue on legacy servers is a surplus of gil.

[Manila]

Using common sense, a crafted piece of gear should cost roughly the same number of tomestone items as its DL equivalent. So, 2-3 for accessories, 4-5 for body would make sense. The idea seems to have been that, while the crafted gear would be overall superior, it would take significantly more work to make/meld, and the DL gear is "good enough".

Unfortunately, lots of Legacy players came over with items like Coke and Potash. It seems like the increase in item requirement was to throttle the legacy servers more than the non-legacies, and we just fell victim to SE's "don't do any tweaking based on type of server" policy. Interestingly, the same policy is what has led to the rise in RMT on non-legacies thanks to no real way to generate gil at 50, where as the issue on legacy servers is a surplus of gil.

I actually think it should cost slightly more. The philo tomes items are tradeable, and you can acquire them without ever setting foot in a dungeon, so there should be a convenience fee associated with the cost. I don't want to guess what the most appropriate price is, but slightly more is entirely reasonable.

One of my biggest complaints with the whole 2 star crafting system is the complete inconsistency in material costs across the board, even among the same slot. For instance, the monk pants cost 9 tome items while the Bard pants costs 18, and the Vanya pants cost 27 (nothing should cost this much). Its like this was pulled out of a randomizer. It doesnt make any sense at all, and it needs to be revisited very soon.

If 9 is the magic number (its probably not), then everything should cost 9. Not 18, and definitely not 27. Except with alchemy. Having a consumable, especially a relatively useless one that's also available in dungeon chests, cost 9 tome items is trolling.

Variable 2 star component cost only really makes sense if the cost of a 2star component is much more reasonable, and it should never be so incongruous among same slots without a compelling reason. If the cost were 2-4 tome items per 2 star component, there'd be more room for this kind of cost variation among separate slots.

[ArgyAlzir]

I definitely agree with the sentiment in this thread but just wanted to say one thing. At least for a BLM, the DL cowl is most definitely not close enough to vanya's chest/hat (or rose gold circlet). The DL cowl is a steaming pile of poo and most people should try to get at least those 2 pieces (they are 9 potash each) because it's such a huge upgrade.