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[Column] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Crafting and Harvesting in FFXIV
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In our latest look at all things Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, we check out what the crafting and harvesting systems will be like for players. Find out more about the two and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
One of the benefits of a week off between beta-3 sessions is that my character had a good backlog of guildleves and rested experience ready and waiting when I logged in Friday. Crafters get bonus XP for their first creation of an item, this is tracked in the crafting log which doubles as your recipe book. I had completed a good number of my 16-20 recipes and I remembered I was going to be short some Elm Lumber, a mess of Iron Ingots, and some Ice Shards going into this weekend.
Read more of Ryahl Smith's Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Crafting and Harvesting in FFXIV.
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Comments
My only worry is that people are not going to use the markets enough to minimize the need for every crafter to level up a multitude of classes instead of just focusing on say one primary gathering class and an associated crafting class.
Couple that with cross-class skills to make life easier and crafting easier/more efficient, and any serious crafter is going to have to level multiple disciplines.
Which I guess isn't a bad thing, as once you hit level 10 and do the quest you don't have to do ANY combat anymore if you choose to focus 100% on crafting, which is nice.
What I'd like to see though is an addition to the Duty Finder system for crafters - it'd be SO nice to have an easy way to find local crafters capable of melding Materia into items.
As I understand it, everyone crafter or not gets the ability to break items down into Materia, but only the crafter can meld it?
It'd be so, so nice to be able to use the Duty finder to find an appropriate level crafter to do the Meld instead of having to spam chat channels (or just in guild etc.)
It is a fun and interesting system. Dungeons + crafting/gathering is going to be the primary focus of my next play sessions before the wipe.
I don't want to advance the stories or classes too much further on a throw away character, so time to switch gears and really delve deep into crafting/gathering! (after a trial dungeon run or two)
I've never been much of a crafter. So I know myself personally I might focus on gathering skills alone and sell to the crafters.
There's nothing STOPPING players from doing this to avoid AH fees etc.
There is NO reason to force people to have inconvenience, though. The AH addresses a multitude of problems, whether it's a crafter that plays at off-times so they wouldn't have anyone to sell to or just the fact that it actually gives a more fair economy based on more competition. I really wish players like you would stop trying to FORCE interaction because you think the old clunky games were the best.
Take off your rose colored glasses and realize that the reason we all spoke to each other so much was to actually figure out NEW things. MMORPGs were BRAND NEW, pulling a mob back to the group was new, knowing which ones would call friends for help was new, it was all new and therefore communication was needed. It's not new anymore, we all know what to expect and can do it without communication and adding in something that's inconvenient just for the sake of "trying to create community" just makes it so that people will harbor resentment for a poorly designed system.
Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.
My main concern is longevity and relevance. All it takes in these themeparks is one new raid or dungeon and crafted gear becomes nothing more than a temporary stepping stone. Another unfortunate thing that seems to happen a lot with themepark crafting is that end game materials and recipes are only available via end game raids. As a crafter, I don't want to have to raid in order to craft the best items. I don't mind as long as the materials and recipes are not soul bound. But in my experience, the best always are.
Leveling is so fast that i dont really see crafting usefull. Crafting make same gears that u find from vendors. crafting is also very slow and tis type crafting seen in EQ2.
Also game is so easy that its dont matter will u have 4 str more as dps.
A good crafting consignment system, as in EQ2, fixes the problem you reference (bolded). FFXIV should have a form of consignment crafting for materia melding and repairs (they did in FFXIV 1.0), so they do seem to recognize a need for crafters who aren't raiders.
Ryahl - writer of eye-bleeders
FFXIV Fansite | TSWGuides
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Id like to just play this game as a relevant crafter, get a house, hang out at the golden saucer, roleplay etc, hopefully they add a tcg. Thats the kind of mmo Ive been craving. Its difficult to find that in a themepark. This game seems to want to go down that road. We will see i guess.
Though I found the gathering and crafting a very fun experience to gather mats and craft HQ items, I did find the gathering portion a bit mind numbing, as you run around to basically 3 or 4 nodes in a circle and gather the item with 5 swings of the ave or scythe. Yes, you can switch up which items you are getting, but other than the specific material or shard you are gathering there is no real need to, though higher level items do give you a bit more exp. After an hour or so of gathering I just had to swap over to something else of go insane.
I really do like the crafting side of things, and balancing the quality of the item, and the chance to get a HQ item with the durability. Having the Mastery skill to bring back some of the Durability is good, but it really eats your CP to use it.
In all, I think it is a solid system, and like 1.0 I think the crafters will like it better than the last system.
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
Anyone who has ever played a total theme park game will tell you two things about crafting.
-Because of the loot-as-reward mentality of the actual combat part of the game, those items will always be much better than crafted items, thus making anything crafted worthless.
-Because of the insane leveling pace, whatever you make you will out level in a matter or hours.
Does anyone actually use any of the crafted gear in FFXIV? The 1.0 system was messed up, but I used crafted stuff because the loot rewards were actually the same thing.
I think what will be useful will be the consumable stuff like food or potions. Everything else will be not wanted or needed or just a waste of time.
Not exactly, but its very similar to a mix of EQ2 and Vanguard crafting. Both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I just managed to do my lvl 10 class quest before beta closed on Sunday, so will be giving the system a good looking at this Friday... I've had a look at some youtube vids to get a good idea of how it fits together. If you go looking for them just make sure you're not watching a vid from before the re-make...
In my beta testings, i went crafter quite abit to high 20s, it gets harder when aiming for high quality while trying to succeed. Also 75% of my wares did sell in AH when i put them up, mostly MRD, CNJ weps lvl 16+, you can start making armor and weps above vendors at around lvl 14-17 crafters.
Plus Not many games allow you to mine/harvest items that YOU CHOOSE. Most of the time, the node just gives you random stuff. Plus, HQ materials are VERY useful when trying to lvl crafting because quality determines the EXP Bonuses, also harvesting/mining HQ gives a huge boost to exp to gatherers(30 exp normally would go up to 250 exp per HQ depending on lvl of the node).
I found crafting and gathering to be fun and rewarding in FF14. Go me!
As for dungeon loot being better, Im not sure right now. I stopped at level 12 THM to get a bit of crafting and ran out of time to get more levels to do a dungeon.
If I were to hammer out a HQ crafted item and take the time to materia it up, it would easily keep pace with pink-tier (sub-boss) dungeon loot. It might even hold its own against green-tier (boss loot) dungeon loot of the same level range.
There's also a ton of randomness to dungeon drops. Specifically in a game with seven classes (soon to be eight), each with a unique weapon, getting the gear you want from a dungeon is very hit or miss. My Gladiator leveled from 15-26 primarily in dungeons. I then took the auto-promote to 29 (beta-3 feature only) to do Haukke Manor. End result, I'm still sporting some green-tier level 17 items from back in Tam Tara Deepcroft. I've seen tons of dungeon drops, for other classes.
I need to invest some time this next session and push for some HQ armor to replace some of my weaker slots of gear. HQ combines are hard, but they get a lot easier when you use HQ inputs. HQ inputs (ingots, rivets, and plates) are a lot easier when you have HQ raw materials (ore, leather, etc.)
I also need to finish doing some "blow through" gearing to soulbind and convert to materia for my HQ crafted gear. I had done that for a short while with shields, make myself a couple of disposable shields, run a few dungeons, break them down for Materia. That's largely where my stock came for testing out the Advanced Materia system at level 25 crafting.
Oh, and it turns out that at level 15, crafters get cross-class abilities just like other classes do. Each class gets a unique level 15 ability, which you can cross-class once you level up another crafter. This fleshes out the variety of things you can do as a crafter.
Basically, every time you think you have this system totally nailed down they give you a new layer of complexity.
Ryahl - writer of eye-bleeders
FFXIV Fansite | TSWGuides
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But I thought FFXIV was just a WoW-clone money grab?
This kind of crafting in a themepark is such a welcome change. I just hope the demand for high level crafters and their wears (and materia melding ability) keep them relevant compared to raid/dungeon gear.
Not that I plan to really be a high level crafter, but I think having them and making them important is a vital part of in-game community and economy.
One thing that worries me about FFXIV is that it is very easy to come away with exactly that perception in the first few levels of the game (and I know your comment is tongue in cheek). Make no mistake, I think it's absolutely an incorrect perception, but I can see where someone would mistakenly assume that.
The layers start getting added, but sometimes very subtly, and you don't realize it's gotten more complicated until you think back on the process. Most people either (a) don't wait for the layers to show up or (b) never think back on the process and thus come to the conclusion you made (tongue in cheek, of course).
As an example, consider Guildhest. These are 4-person quick adventures (30-minute timer, you will usually finish them in half that). The first pair (level 10) introduce very basic group mechanics. If that's your sample, its easy to conclude "ho-hum, so easy" if you're an experienced MMO player.
Having finished the level 25 guildhests (they come in a pair of two every five levels), those were fun and harken back to some of my favorite old-school MMO fights. In the first level 25-guildhest, you get waves of adds. These adds can mez the tank and really disrupt the party. You need to use some crowd control and really coordinate your team through five packs of this stuff while handling a boss. The second level 25-guildhest helps to use crowd control, but its doable without it. The final fight, though, has tons of ground effects. I'm reminded of a supervillain from "the Tick," the Mad Bomber (what bombs at midnight). You spend a good bit of time in that fight shifting positions, poorly choosing where to move can leave you stranded later on. Again, for experienced players, you recognize what you're up against and start reacting to it reflexively, but (a) for new players that's going to be a shocker and (b) even for experienced players you have to admit it really ratchets the bar up from the 10 and 15 guildhest.
If you bailed on Guildhest at level 10 because "ho-hum," you missed it completely. Looking back, it's very clear that the complexity was rising in each five-level increment, but it isn't noticeable until you compare across a larger sample.
Ryahl - writer of eye-bleeders
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I have thoroughly enjoyed the crafting system so far, and the fact that I can actually spend quality game time on leveling a character class to help support my main character is very refreshing to me. In the past you created multiple characters because you had crafting skill limits so you would create a new character and grind level him so that he would be another useful crafter, I don't miss those days at all. All of the interaction and experiences they have created to help with crafting and leveling seem to be a lot of fun and a mixture of different MMO styles.
It would be refreshing to be able to craft gear that was comparable to raid or high level dungeon gear, of course I would hope you would have to work a little to get the required materials to craft these items or else there would be no reason to ever experience that part of the game more than once or twice. But it would definitely help create a strong economy for players that wanted to put in the effort to craft quality items.
I am also interested to see how the system will unfold.
They take up a lot of space here too - though you have a lot of space. Besides your fairly large starting inventory, you also have an 'armoire' in your inn room that stores additional items, and at a certain level you get a retainer who can help manage things too. And I haven't tested this yet, but there's always that cheat: mailing items to yourself and letting them sit in your mail inbox on rotation
. But you'll probably see mules in this game too.
I just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write all of that. It definitely has me looking forward to Guildhest now!!
Agreed, Guildhests are one of my favorite original features of XIV; they are super quick bite-sized but fun and rewarding bits of content that really go a long way to teaching you the ropes while encouraging group coordination.
I also agree that if one plays even the level 10, then the level 15 (and then 20) hests, you can clearly tell that there is a pattern of increasing complexity (I hadn't gotten to try the 25s yet but it's good to hear the pattern continues), and that this was their intent, with each new guildhest fostering important strategic and group coordination skills that they can later 'test you on' in dungeon and other group content, for example (I've seen this in action already in the early dungeons). At the rate the complexity and effort/thought required is increasing through guildhests, it's natural to predict that late game content will be quite strategic/tactical.
Sounds very solo centric in the long term. I could be wrong.
We will see.
MMORPG Gamers/Developers need a reality check!