FF XI -> XIV - Crafting!?

[Zerv]

Many of you already know all the information regarding FFXIV, but surprinsingly (or not) nothing about crafting or alike.

Not another speculation thread about the crafting in XIV, but the probably mistakes of the XI system, and ultimately the future of it in the next 10 to 11 months.

Im eager like everyone to step into Eorzia, and my hopes are high, but regarding FFXI randomness of the system, did everyone actually enjoyed that? lol

Not bitching or anything like that, just wondering what SE has in store for us crafters.

[dejet]

need to make more shit worth crafting. each craft only has around say 5-10 crafts that could be worth doing. Most comprise of Cursed gear.

Bone gets a few more bones with blm bodys and SH+1, wood gets their staves and lower HQ tools. i mean they all have their spot. However It became a large problem when more and more people got to 100 in a craft.

They need to add more and more gear that worth making without throwing other stuff out the window.

as for the random HQ system im ok with it.

[Ruuz]

I also cant wait to see a new crafting system (and be on the first wave of crafters :D). As for crafting in FFXI, I think it totally rocks. Sure, some crafts have hardly any worthwhile synths, but all the crafts I am working on have many synths.

I have to disagree with you though, dejet. I think crafting is far from dead in FFXI. Smithing, Gold, Leather, and Cloth may be hard hit by better R/Ex options available, but Wood, Alchemy, Cooking, and Bone (to a lesser extent) have a ton of things that are wanted at all levels and sell quickly.

[urat]

I think I'd like to see some form of skill added to crafting fishing style, a simple mini game for synths that rewards skills with better HQ rate and etc.

[Zerv]

Yes, i was talking more about the actual crafting system, as in, grab a bunch of stuff and a crystal and wait *cross fingers* to get skillups/HQ's. A system that u have to do more than hoping i guess.

In other hand, my guess is that on XI, alot of high-end crafters will move to XIV (i know i am) for a period of time, and does that means that no new items will be made like they used to be, and with that, maybe increase of the price? or in other hand, alot of people will try XIV and prices will go down in price Alot.

[Moosey]

I'd like to see them do away with the fractions of a level, and just go level to level with skill ups(all skills actually), makes leveling a craft unnecessarily expensive/frustrating.

As for HQ's, I don't mind the randomness to a certain extent, but I do think it would be cool if there were ways to increase your chances of HQ by meeting certain requirements.

Specializations ala WoW's crafting system would be neat too. Would help with "everyone having a 100 craft" and killing certain markets, you would have to choose a specialty depending on what you wanted to make. That system in itself would really need to be balanced though, as to not have everyone go with 1 specialization and nullify the point of specialization.

[Corwen]

For the most part, I thought FFXI's crafting system itself was pretty decent. The only real problem I had was that some crafts were neglected over the years receiving nothing but garbage synths with each new update, and/or had their synths that were once good becoming completely obsolete overnight due to newer gear coming out.

[Burrows]

Anyone who bitches about skilling up a craft is a pussy.

Imagine all these crafts to their real-life counterparts. Shit takes time, blood, sweat, tears, and MONEY. They're trades.... and I think the system was perfect, to be quite honest. Now I can pop out three tier 1 cursed items like pigs in shit, I can say all the work getting to 100 in my craft was worth it.

And Moosey, not everyone has the time or patience to get 100, and it's fair because there are plenty of bajillionaires who don't have a single craft passed 30. So for fuck's sake, shut the fuck up. If you like WoW better, go play that.

[Zerv]

I just wished that crafting was more interactive.
Hence my hopes in 14, and a new and/or improved system for it.

[Argettio]

Back when it first came out I tried Vanguard SoH, the game had a lot of issues, but one think I liked about it was the crafting system.

Vanguard Crafting Guide (Crafting Basics)
Quick guide.

Like WoW they used a bag system of storage, but there was special bag only for crafting items, which meant you could always have all your crafting gear/ingredients with you.

It made crafting a mini game, where you had to have some input into what happens next. There is a progress bar and a quality bar. You have a list of actions you can do, each action adds an amount to the quality or the progress bar. Each action cost 'action points'.

So you can just grind out Grade D for items that don't matter (like sub assembly items), or push for a Grade A to make a better item. (stats on the fiinal item was dependant on the grade, if you max out Grade A there is a chance of something special (HQ basically))

The progress bar must be filled to complete the item, so if you run out of action points before its complete you fail.

As you level up, you get more actions, which give bigger increases in progress or quality for less action points etc.

Depending on your skill, there was chance of complications, which you can resolve using action points or continue on with the penalty. Due to the user involvement, it was virtually impossible to fail on an item that is 1-2 tiers below you.

You could only skill up by making parts to order for the npcs, and they woud give you most of the ingredients, they would also pay you for the order. This meant the AH was not flooded with items people use to skill up. And you made a steady profit from skilling.

TL;DR version
I hope for:
*Crafting should be more involved or a minigame (less random chance)
*Crafting should have it's own inventory (avoid space issues)
*Skilling up should be done through crafting for the npcs ("make me 5 medal chains, here is the ingredients")
*Skilling should be profitable ("here is 5000gil for those chains")

[510Meeze]

Most of the players in XI were too lazy to craft, thats why SE went away from giving new crafts that make money. Most of the new armor that comes out are R/E.

When new crafts do come out that are worth crafting, SE makes the drops come from really hard mobs that take an alliance to take down, thereby only allowing crafters from those LSs to actually craft the item.

I think if you want to keep crafts profitable, you have to take away the ability for a crafter of a craft to craft everything under that craft. Maybe have some more crafts that don't suck that you can tier 1 or 2, but can't actually be 100 to make (ie 70WW 65 GS, you could hit tier 1 by being 81 WW, 76 GS).

The death of crafting came when people proved they didn't buy gil by leveling their clothcraft, i mean their craft, to 100 with bought gil. I think a lot of the economy has bounced back since the big gil explosion, but crafting never recovered.

[Moosey]

Anyone who bitches about skilling up a craft is a pussy.

Imagine all these crafts to their real-life counterparts. Shit takes time, blood, sweat, tears, and MONEY. They're trades.... and I think the system was perfect, to be quite honest. Now I can pop out three tier 1 cursed items like pigs in shit, I can say all the work getting to 100 in my craft was worth it.

And Moosey, not everyone has the time or patience to get 100, and it's fair because there are plenty of bajillionaires who don't have a single craft passed 30. So for fuck's sake, shut the fuck up. If you like WoW better, go play that.

You misunderstood what I was referring to when I said "everyone having a 100 craft". People are always complaining how too many people have one now and that their craft isn't profitable anymore. That's why I think something like specializations would help to prevent it.

As far as skillups go, we play games for enjoyment, not to work. I've had woodworking at 100 for several years with several others at 50+. If you want realism go build yourself a crib and lay in it you whiny bitch.

No one else was being an asshole until you came along, so take your attitude and get the fuck out of this thread.

[Phraust]

It sounds wierd, but in my opinion, the only thing that actually hurt crafting was the HQ system.

[Zerv]

It sounds wierd, but in my opinion, the only thing that actually hurt crafting was the HQ system.

This is somewhat true. If there was no HQ's the NQ would be higher in price, but then again, people wouldnt sell their NQ's for the HQ version, right?

In my opinion, when the NQ items started to being sold by less gil than the materials, was the start of the downfall of crafting, even more than multiple people having craft/s at 100.
If 14 will have a AH, would be a nice implement of make a mininum price of a certain item be 5% higher than the price of all mats, but that's maybe too much coding lol.

Regarding craft itself, an interactive system like Argettio showed (from Vanguard) would be welcome.. but with improvements of some degree.

[tymora]

FFXI still has the potential for fixing crafting with a single change.
-> Made-to-order arnaments for Shadowreign zones, for gil too. Can practically generate enough demand for almost all recipes in all crafts to support tons of crafters.
-> Need certain campaign rank to be a supplier (avoid RMT)
-> Well probably need to think of a good way to remove the extra gil.

E.g. 100 units of Studded Leather Armor required...etc Each unit fetches a certain amount of gil, or 100 units of Wax Swords.

[Nekio]

I think if you want to keep crafts profitable, you have to take away the ability for a crafter of a craft to craft everything under that craft. Maybe have some more crafts that don't suck that you can tier 1 or 2, but can't actually be 100 to make (ie 70WW 65 GS, you could hit tier 1 by being 81 WW, 76 GS).

Agreed. If SE would more often than not force customization of crafting levels in order to hit HQ tiers on high demand stuff, the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, SE is moving away from the unique system they developed and is kowtowing to the "I don't want to farm for good gear" crowd, so now anything new that's worth a damn is rare/ex.

[Phraust]

Tangled rebuttal to your statements (Agree and not):

I have to disagree with this, they're not really "kowtowing", they're actually doing the most logical thing they can under the circumstances. On one angle, as pissed off as I am at SE for changing shit to Rare/Ex and making the later part of the gear introduced into the game Rare/Ex, it was very smart of them do do so. It really did dent the RMT pretty bad(and my sources of income as well). And in the case of my server at least, a huge portion of that Rare/Ex gear goes completely uncamped. For the " "I don't want to farm for good gear" crowd" it isn't so much that, as it is exceedingly hard to farm or farm for gear. there's little to no way to make cash from 1-10, minimal ways from 10-60, and common ways that harbor a ton of competition between 60-75. That's just for "farming" if you're meaning 'farming' in the sense of say, going to see for torques; then you got to deal with SE's bullshit drops, or lack thereof. Throw in debilitating hacks to the economy when there's already too much "old money" matters just get worse.

While I hate to admit it, things like assault, nizzle and even slavage(to an extent) were good methods to attain gear:

<tokens> = gear
or
<tokens> + <Crafted item> = Gear
or
<Targetable NM with a decent drop rate> = Gear

But only slavage added anything to do with crafting... And it was if anything just to burden people and slow them down to artificially make "rare" items. (i.e. poorly implemented)

Sky's dynamic on the other hand should have been extended. Little gear, Craft items and Abjurations for crafted items. Making "the best gear" crafted in most cases, while still leaving a good variety as drops. The Abjurations were just really creative ways to do "Bind on Equip". Had more things been like that, where there was a crafting counterpart for a wider majority of the items, crafting wouldn't have suffered as much.

And again, not to turn into a blowhard here, but most of the problems with crafting can, and are traced back to HQ's. People blowing fat wads to get to a tier so they can HQ, then flooding nq items at below cost killing those under 'tier'. Its cheesey, but it sustains a "rich get richer" scenario, and there's no real way to "fix" that really; too much damage was done.

But in the end you still got some tiny room packed to the teeth with kids playing a game for money. Anything that is tradable has value. So anywhere there's value, there's 50 dudes named "Pkljwstr", or close to it. And unfortunately anything thats craftable, is by definition tradable... So FFXI is fucked in that respect.

So to correct my previous statement, there are few things that FFXIV could do to improve a crafting system:

1) more Bind on equip gear thats crafted (keep certain items from recirculating),
2) no HQ (retain item and material value),
3) less gear and more materials from HNM and "raids" (Barriers to entry)

[Mistress Stowastiq]

Many of you already know all the information regarding FFXIV, but surprinsingly (or not) nothing about crafting or alike.

Not another speculation thread about the crafting in XIV, but the probably mistakes of the XI system, and ultimately the future of it in the next 10 to 11 months.

Im eager like everyone to step into Eorzia, and my hopes are high, but regarding FFXI randomness of the system, did everyone actually enjoyed that? lol

Not bitching or anything like that, just wondering what SE has in store for us crafters.

I was wondering as well if crafting will be part of the next game. From what I understand, some form of craft type pastime is in most MMOs, so I would expect a new MMO to have one. As for the current system's randomness, I really like most of it and I enjoy the pondering of its secrets as far as elemental relations.

The only issues I have are with three things, all related to not having to depend on a separate, out of game web site for in game info. I think the less out of game information tracking we need to do, the better we spend our satisfied game time. So looking at the info below, try and take the perspective of "What if we didn't have to leave the game to get this info?"

1: Lack of stats on the craftable items: If stats were on the items or in the game some how other than intensive testing, I believe items would be selling more. Less blank spaces would be in the auction listings for things. Perhaps an NPC to give you an "Appraisal" of your food or some form of nutrition specialist role/storyline might work and use less memory space than upgrading every single food item's nameplate.

2: Recipes for synthesis should be easier to obtain within the game than repeatedly asking the img support npc during the right level: Knowing skill-up recipes ahead of time, allows a crafter to more efficiently plan for farming and supplies collection.

3: The NPC offering up the Guild item of the day should also have the recipe and points value per item on hand vs. only the full value: This would be easier than having to sit with the img support npc and index through recipes to find yours. Then make the item first plus do the math by trading it in to see how much a single item is worth. As it stands, if you do not go out of game, you need to guesstimate how many supplies you need to mule or buy before hand. This can require several trips if the ingredients are not local.

If the new game allowed for crafting, I would wish for the above.

[Gilhaven]

I think the XI crafting system isnt tooooo bad atm. I'd like to see some tweaks in the XVI version tho. First off it would be nice to have a consistent rate of skill up's..set it at 50% across the board...not like xi where the first 30-40 levels u get skill ups 75% of the time then 10% post 50. Secondly, eliminate the synth breaks completely once you're at that particular recipe's cap. Im sick of having synths crit break when they're 30 levels below me...granted its not very often but still frustrating. Lastly, incorporate something to keep crafters busy and motivated to continue crafting..whether it be broken armor/weapons that ppl would need crafters to repair or have guilds employ your services in return for rare synth mats or cash or new(er) guild point items or even some guild related quests.


ps..if they could also tweak desynthesis so it's more consistent?

[Zerv]

ps..if they could also tweak desynthesis so it's more consistent?

This....