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Taking the convenience from an GMMORPG(LONG on Crafting)
Lukekini
Member UncommonPosts: 75
That's pretty much what I have experienced thus far in beta. So let me explain a bit. Well... a lot.
An mmo by leaps and bounds has become easier for people to play. In some good ways and in some bad. In FFXIV you will find that most convenient things were taking away or simply not bothered with. But lets go over some of the good.
One good that changed in FFXIV compared to other MMO's is that we get a teleport and at the same time we are required to walk to our destinations. Most MMOs today are letting you skip all of the content you paid for with a simple flight/horse/etc. path to the next town. Let alone letting people afk fly in the air to the next town.
Yes there is teleport, but you cant just waste the points at any time.
Other good things:
You really have to pick your fights carefully and PAY attention. Now afking here while soloing.
Finding materials requires you to do some minigames.. a little inconvenient but more interesting than many other games.
There are more but my one bad thing is so long enough already.
Now one bad thing.
Crafting. Boy I love to craft... I love that the recipes require me to venture into some other crafting skills. However, its actually not just "some" other crafting skills. Lets look at making a Harpoon for example.
Remember this is a level 9 weapon. Level 9 skill can be obtained in about a day(gameplay) time easily.I got skill level 7 on my first day playing this game ever. Combat is pretty fun when the lag leaves you alone 
Ok Harpoon..
You start by thinking blacksmithing because Harpoon's are usually medal. But then you soon learn you need a maple shaft from carpentry. Which is perfectly sensible. I shouldnt just grab 10 copper nuggets throw it in a bowl and say DONE!. But then you look at all the materials required.
Harpoon(Skill level 9 Lancer Weapon)
Bone Harpoon Head (x1) |
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Maple Spear Shaft (x1) |
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Bronze Spear Clasp (x1) |
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Animal Glue (x1) |
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Bone Harpoon Butt (x1) |
Well that cant be that bad? Only 5 different things? Actually 4 since many NPCs sell Animal Glue.
How about the head? Well, you will need goldsmithing for that. For some reason or another. Ok so I picked up the blacksmithing tool and carpentry tool... why not train some in gold smith...
So you pick up the tool and look at what you need for the Bone Harpoon Head.
Bone Chip (x2) |
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Fish Glue (x1) |
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Soiled Femur (x2) |
**Also must purchase a book from an NPC for Bone Carving.
Not so bad I guess, just 3 things. Wait, the bones and femurs I can get from mining and NPCs.. What is this Fish Glue? Ahh I need to pick up a fishing poll. I dont mind fishing, however this is getting to be a bit of a time sink...
So what do I need to make Fish Glue?
Required Crystals |
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Water Shard (x4) |
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Fire Shard (x4) |
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Materials |
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Indigo Herring (x5) |
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Sea Pickle (x1) |
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Muddy Water (x1) |
Hmm looks like I am going to have to do a lot of fishing. Thats ok I guess? But what am I missing? Ohh yes I have to now pick up Alchemy. As yet another profession to skill up. Whats the good news? You get x24 when you have finished the Glue.
So I will have to level my Alchemy, Goldsmithing, and my other skills up to 10 in order to make these things. Needless to say this will take a few days.
Ok, if you did not fail anything.. you now have the Bone Harpoon Head.
The Bone Harpoon Butt requires Goldsmithing as well but you only need one bone chip and two wind shards to make it. Good news is you are set here! Just make this.
Great thats 3/5 things we need.
Now we can move onto Blacksmithing to make the Bronze Spear Clasp (x1).
Required Crystals |
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Fire Shard (x1) |
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Water Shard (x1) |
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Materials |
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Bronze Plate (x1) |
Not so bad, pretty much just a Bronze plate.
Though you do need to make the plate...You need a Bronze ignot... well in order to make a Bronze ignot you need to make bronze nugget(Which you can buy)... if you choose to make it you need to mine both copper and tin.
So if you dont fail here you got 4/5. This is one step I think is ok.. it just requires some blacksmithing and mining. They go hand to hand.
Time to make that Maple Spear Shaft (x1)
Required Crystals |
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Wind Crystal (x6) |
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Materials |
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Maple Lumber (x1) |
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Linseed Oil (x1) |
Yikes 6 crystals.. not shards for this bad boy. So how about the wood itself? Maple Lumber. Easy enough just requires 4 wind shards and a maple log which I can easily get if I go out logging for a bit.(Or if rich enough to just buy them from the NPCs)
So where do I go from here? ahh Linseed Oil. Sounds like something I can buy from an NPC? Well... its not. This is another Alchemist recipe. Well the good news its only rank 6 so I can handle it now at rank 10. Ahh I need to buy a Chemicking book as well to make this. I see I see..Ahh no I need to buy another tool to get the Flax to make the oil as well. My Hatchet doesnt let me forage very well. So I now have to get the subtool for logging. Thats another 600 or so but not important really because ill use it a lot.
So finally you can work on the harpoon(as long as your carpentry skill is the level for that atleast).
Dont fail!
Sure you might have spent a few weeks leveling each skill up all day, but you will be ahead of the game in the future. Just as long as they dont keep upping the skill requirements to make things. The other thing that could help with this is an Auction House. If there was an Auction house you could just focus on collection and 2 creation schools and be well off.
I think they should fix the over all crafting UI to where I dont have to play in window mode with ffxiv.yg.com up 24/7 reading the recipes and praying the skill requirements are correct on the website. Another is they need to simplify the process a bit. Let us use more raw materials. Let me use my fishing skill to break the fish to a pulp and use it. Dont make me learn Alchemy just to make fish glue because animal glue just doesnt do the job. Let me use the bones directly in my carpentry.. dont make me have to go goldsmithing just to carve a bone.
Just my opinion on that
Now what do you think? Does this need changed to make the game more enjoyable and less like you'd rather be working.
- ya I'm here
Comments
My guess is that SE are counting on the crafting community as an economy to help you out during the harder or more obscure parts of crafting.
For example, the fish glue. Likely the most annoying part (and by the way.. random placement here but you don't actually have to buy skill training books, you can just make the stuff). A fisherman makes one batch of fish glue. You said that's 24, right? Well here's where the economy comes into play and you can now buy tons. Every fisherman has lots extra.
I agree that they need some sort of a crafting menu where you can see recipes. Even if it's only the two or three easiest things to make and then different things that you discover along the way. Wholeheartedly I believe this. The system itself is flawed as is but the requirements themselves aren't too bad. The only hard part in making the armor that I needed for my lancer was bronze buckles. Heck if I could make them.. I had no way to. Luckily they came in sets of twelve and I found someone, even in beta, to buy from nearby. A bit tedious, but.. when there's a stable economy it should be fine.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
I hope they are counting on the community, but I cant help to look at some of these things and see a needless time sink. Hell they could make us type "Go Straight" when we wanted to move to make walking be more of a time sink. But it is needless really. Atleast in my opinion.
I think that 75% of my gripe could be fixed with an Auction House. I dont want to have to "get lucky" to craft everything I need.
And wow.. I just started fishing right now... I need to find a movie to watch while I do this :-p I just got rank 2 fisher atleast! hehe
- ya I'm here
I don't think an auction house really works with the world as they want it but it would be awesome if they had some sort of function that let you find who was selling what you needed, where and how much. That way they can still use retainers as they want to and you'll have to do a TINY bit of travelling (to the nearest or furthest market ward depending on price and how much you care) in order to find what you want.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
The idea is that you get those other components from other, specialized crafters, and not do everything yourself.
Only problem is, the way the game is currently set up, finding those other crafters is a PITA. FFXI's auction house allowed it to work just fine: just plug in the item you're looking for and see if anyone put one up for sale at a price you're willing to pay. In FFXIV, there is no auction house, you've got to physically search the world for a player or retainer that happens to have the exact item you want. In the process, you may go through hundreds that do not have what you want. There's a good chance none of them have it (or have it at a price you're willing to play). It's not so good when you can accomplish the same thing in FFXI in 30 seconds that would take you 2 hours in FFXIV.
(I suppose alternately you could bug the players directly and ask them to make it for you. A good place to look would be their respective guilds... except those guilds are spread all over the game world.)
Another thing I'd like to see is the synthesis made slightly less punishing. Not easy, that's boring, but right now it feels a tad too masochistic. One fix would change that: they should let you complete the item if it reaches 100% completion even if you hit 0 durability. It makes sense if you consider "durability" as referring to your synthesis crystals. What does it matter if the crystal blows up if the item is done?
I completely agree. Annoying as hell. I lost 27 durability when at 98% once just because I went bold for extra quality. Turned a sure-fire completion to a loss of resources and time.. still hit 100% of course. Grr.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
It would be nice if we had seperate chat channels and could modify them. Then, we could do the whole WTB/WTS/WTT trade thing a lot easier.
--------
"Chemistry: 'We do stuff in lab that would be a felony in your garage.'"
The most awesomest after school special T-shirt:
Front: UNO Chemistry Club
Back: /\OH --> Bad Decisions
There has to be something more implimented to the trade system. Whether it is trade channels.. more active chat channels to say the least.. Easier UI... Less time consuming requirements that are not THAT fun(i.e. see fishing) to make 1 item you may need at low levels.
Auction House would like someone said before, turn a 2 hour task of searching possibly with no success into a frustrating game session.
The UI and recipe issue will still be there but a major source of frustration will be taking away.
- ya I'm here
It isn't made so that you can solo craft everything. It is made to be a more realistic interwoven crafting system. Each craft has items that can be traded for other items. In CB2 we formed a crafting party and we each sat and crafted supplies for each other and worked together to make weapons, etc. and it worked out great. All crafts have items that are needed by other crafts more than their own. If you try to solo it all then you will run out of money and probably go insane. You have to interact with others.
Crafting guilds/linkshells are a huge help with this.
I find the system to be a bit ...much, but I enjoy it nonetheless.
One "correction". You don't need a book, but I believe it assists with the completion rate.
My theory:
1. They want interdependcy because it helps with community. While searching retainers or running around asking is a pain, I don't think that will be what the true crafters will do. They will find suppliers that are reliable and deal with them or form a linkshell.
2. Yes, you can do every job. You probably shouldn't, but you can. With the variety of materials and recipes, it just works better to focus on one main craft.
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I think the worst part about crafting an end product will be calculating the darn price.
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Fallen Earth allowed you to craft everything yourself, and that is exactly what I did. Inventory was a total nightmare.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
I know many people who are heavily into crafting in many different MMOs. These are people who consider Mob-Killing a necessary chore to get better at crafting and mingling with the economy. For everyone of them i spoke to about this, the lack of auction house or any way to do a specific search is a complete gamebreaker even for the most diehard crafters i know. No one of them minds longwinded and difficult ways of crafting, on the contrary but the lack of economy tools is just too much for EVERYONE who doesn't have hours upon hours of time per day to waste. But even they had the time, they wouldn't bother because many get a kick out of actually SELLING their work and observing the market and the shifts of supply and demand. I know guys who even had difficulties explaining their massive amounts of ingame-money to game masters, who accused them of beeing involved in goldselling because they had so much. But it was just because of clever market analyzing and buying and selling at the right time. NONE of this is possible in FF XIV at the moment. so: NO FUN for the crafting professionals. I don't know who SE think they are developing for.
When I was reading the OP, after I got to the recipe 'tree' all I could think of was L2 Warsmithing. Made my heart leap for joy and sink in dismay at the same time. In general though, I'll wait until I play to pass final judgement.
I sure do not mind interacting with other players. I shouted, asked, everything short of begging for groups, items to buy, etc.
I don't like the idea of having to group to craft low level gear.
Not all of us can find a group to party with to harvest and craft and work together. Your only choice would be joining a good sized guild and hope the people are helpful.
This is even mroe dire for the ones who dont play the game starting on release day. There will be a sizable amount of people to group with for the first month or so at the low levels. After that point you are going to be a newb in a lonely world.
Then agian, this is IF they do not get some sort of AH with better chat system in the game.
BTW anyone know where to get:
Indigo Herring
Sea Pickle
hehe
- ya I'm here
http://ffxiv.yg.com/item/sea-pickle?id=3011229
looks like a sea pickle is from fishing...optimal lvl 24...hmm
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With the multiple class system, I think high levels will be in mid to low range zones levelling their alternate classes.
(unless of course you get massive skill points for fighting high level mobs and doing no damage)
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
Those optimal levels.. Im not sure if they translate to what your skill level is. As in even with 5 in fishing skill I may be able to track it down. If I knew where to fish. :-p Or does what you catch not depend on where but how high your skill is?
- ya I'm here
This crafting style (interdependent) has been done before.
EQ2 on release had it. To make an item required you to refine a resource (required 2 classes) then those resources were made into sub combines (typically 2 from your class and 1 from another class). Then those subcombines came together for a final item. All in all it typically took 3 classes ~ 12-20 combines (total) to make 1 item. They had 9 crafting classes and all but 1 of the classes required resources from 2 others to make thier end product.
The overall system is so similar predicting the in game result after launch is rather easy.
The hardcore crafters will do fine (we made contacts with our suppliers and kept a reserve of subcombines in our banks).
Some made multiple crafters as I think will happen in this game, some what lowering community interaction.
The casual crafters will be overwhelmed unless they find a hardcore crafter to mentor with (many of my suppliers were new to crafting and I helped them become sufficent at turning out my subcombines, once in the system they spread from there).
After about a month from release the Auction House became stocked with commonly used subcombines (prices never did stop jumping up and down though, and we still tended to use our contacts).
This allowed not so hardcore crafters to enter the market although at a disadvantage.
Not sure how this will play out in this game as the AH/Selling system has not matured yet.
A couple months later they make changes to the sytem to lower the number of combines to make an item. If it takes a crafter ~ 1 hour to make an item then you expect the price of that item to be worth about 1 hour of adventure income. Total time to make an item will be adjusted to reflect the expected prices for those player made items (or there will be no crafting economy).
A little bit after that they removed the interdependancy so that you could turn out items faster and casual players could also get into crafting. (they made it 1 combine = 1 or more final items with better quality stuff requiring 2 or 3 combines).
So, the transition will be, a fun crafting game for hardcore crafters. It is enjoyable creating and maintaining a list of contacts / suppliers.
The system will be made a bit easier opening it up to advanced players by lowering total number of combines (between casual and hardcore).
Later we will loos interdependancy making crafting a casual sport.
How far SE will go, I don't know, but I'm looking forward to the hardcore crafting game while it lasts.
I was about to mention sub-combines in EQ2, now (or least since last subscription) crafting in EQ2 is still fun but a lot more trivial than it was.
I like and dislike the interdependency. I would have preferred to have a staggered introduction to it. Meaning, levels 1-8 or whatever were simple recipes that did not require so many 3rd party components. With maybe some advanced or rare recipes thrown in. After 10 ranks or so of gear, start adding more and more complexity up to legendary requirements at end game.
But to introduce this to me as a new crafter makes it so daunting, almost too much to start an initial investment.
Also lacking an in-game mechanism to track recipes to help with shopping is a litle too old school. I can't believe Elezen's don't have a pocket for a notebook and portable quill...
I remember using notepads in games like Might and Magic and even EQ.
I wouldn't get too bent out of shape about how inter-connected the crafting and gathering classes are. It's going to be what drives a great player run economy. Yes, if you want to do it ALL by yourself then you're in for a bit of a headache, but lord knows you'll be one bad mammajamma of a crafter after all of that!
The idea, I think, isn't to do it all yourself however. I believe the game kind of intends for you to craft your primary one two or three things, say in your example, the blacksmithing and carpentry parts but then for a good deal of the obscure bits and pieces I believe you're intended to go find someone selling fish glue, or bone bits or whatever. This way, if fish glue is an alchemists recipe for example..
The alchemist may not be a fisherman so bought the fish from a fisherman, the alchemist makes the glue, you buy the glue from the alchemist. Three people are made happy here, the fisherman sold off his unused or unwanted fare, the alchemist crafted something he hoped people would need and sure enough made some coin and you got a nice shiny new spear out of the deal.
As for costs, well it's a player driven economy, if someone ends up selling too high, I promise someone will be right behind that individual ready and willing to undercut to make the sale, especially on little component style things such as what you're talking about.
I think this idea of crafting is what has made me excited the most about this particular part of the game. So many games attempt to do something like this but the end result is nobody wanted the item you were guna craft anyhow so there's no reason to buy the components from someone else. In FFXIV that's not the case, there's a fairly good chance no matter what you make or gather, someone is going to want to buy it, it's just a matter of competitive pricing and getting your product to the people.
The markets seem like a fun idea but we'll have to wait and see if they'll hold water. I feel the moment an auction house style system enters the mix the player stalls in the markets will go empty quickly.
Ever considered outsourcing?
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Well that is actually the point though isn't it? Form a linkshell, join that linkshell, ask on there if anyone can make or has the piece your not skilled in, work together. Supply and demand, an entire commerce community from the ground up all working together with eachones specialty assisting those that dont have that said specialty. Sure it will take a bit to get the linkshells formed and runngin smooth, but this game has the ability already built in to make it work. You already have the ability to be the member of multiple linkshells, jump on the one with the crafters/merchants and your up and running.
What we as the community (players) in this game will have to do is build server wide linkshells once this goes live that are dedicated to the crafter/supply chain. And then get everyone on board with it. There is nothign stopping us as players from building our own server wide linkshell for selling our goods (kind of a marketplace) where players can ask if someone can make them a ######, or if anyone already has a ###### for sale. If I am making my harpoon and i need fish glue, I just ask if anyoen is around that has any they can sell me, or trade for somethign they need.
Seriously though, the crafting system is not broken because its realistically complex. It is realistically complex in order to drive interdependancy and help build the thriving ecomony SE has intended for us, one we creat and maintain on our own.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
From my understanding, SE's goal was to make all Crafting Skills usefull and to create an economy. As such, someone who works a lot in Carpentry might need some items from Goldsmithing and a Goldsmith might needs some items from Carpentry. So there's a possibility for Trading here and that's the goal SE seems to be aiming at. That players specialize in a crafting skill and trade with other crafters to generate a very healthy economy.
Basically, some crafters will specialize in making materials and sell the materials to crafters who focus more on weapon and armor crafting, that they then sell to players who can then hunt more mobs and sell the loot to the first group of crafters I mentionned, and the wheel goes round and round.
Personally, I have high hopes in the trade part of the economy. I would absolutely love having a kind of old school horse-traders mentality in this game instead of just the monetary system. I know I wouldn't have a problem working out deals with others on a good for good swap. You specialize in being a wandering gatherer, chop down lots of trees and have tons of maple branches you dont need?? I may be a carpenter who just might have a need for those branches and you want a couple weapon handles made?? Sure I can do that, I'll make you 5 handles with my matts and swap you for 35 of those branches you got there.
The good part of this entire crafting/gathering/adventurering system is it allows for exactly this kind of thing. I'm not going to get very many sheep hides while I'm out fishing you know, but I do need a new pair of boots and yuo need to eat. So lets work somethign out. Every player type contributes in thier own specialty, even those whose specialty is getting bloody.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
See? This guy gets it.
I think the initial idea here is that Square-Enix is hoping you'd build up real contacts amongst the players, find out where they park their retainers, maybe join some crafting-related linkshells, ect. However, that's simply not working out.
The retainers don't have that much space, so they probalby don't have what you want.
The challenge of networking with other players is greater than simply switching your crafting job over and doing it all yourself.
Doing everything yourself quickly becomes overwhelming (see original post).
They really do need either an auction house or some means to search retainers for what you want.
My problem with the crafting system isn't the interdependency, its this idea that for some items you have to have leveled more than your stock crafting class.
For example, I reached level 5 Alchemist and took a guildleve to make the Alchemist Recipie: Rubber (I think). Aparently in order to make rubber, I required Level 5 Carpentry as well. That really irritated me, namely because it was without warning and I could imagine being a much higher level and getting that, realizing I'd need to level another crafting skill 20 or so levels.
So they want a tight knit interdependency, but they want you to have to level up every crafting class to the point you can make all the subcombines yourself for the item you want to make?
Many free to play games ditch the auction house system for a personal shop system, and all of them get by, even with crafting.
I figure FFXIV will end up being similar. You'll have the marketplace area where you shop people's retainers and people will probably be shouting to buy/sell stuff there too.
It works in many other games, so I think it should be alright. I prefer an auction house, but as someone has said, it does give a more 'realistic' spin to how the economy works.
I like the idea SE has but I think that some method of search is needed for it to work.
Getting rid of an AH looks good to me. This way you get rid of resellers (leechers for crafters), that are good part of the problem why prices on trivial things get so high that the final crafted thing price is beyond the real value of the item.
A search system with location and prices (like has been implemented before on other titles) would work very well with this tradeskill system.
Or an inverted search/AH system (No clue why it has never been tried) where you put what you need, the quantity, and the price you pay for it and people just fullfills your order. Imagine a basic but well done (like wow AH, eq2 broker) AH thing, where you put the batch/item on a window and just click "sell" to the guy who is looking for it if you like the price he is paying.