Just a check, interest levels dropping?Follow

The game's hit that point right now. Only thing to do is log on, cap ESO and log off, unless you're doing Alex Savage. This always happens 2 months post patch, things will pick up with the next major update. I log in on Tuesdays and Wednesday morning, cap and that's it for the week. With the release of Phantom Pain tomorrow, I'm sure things will slow down even more.

I've been really taking my time getting my crafts to 60, because I'm cheap and didn't want to invest money I knew I wouldn't make back. I would be hovering around the six million gil mark if I hadn't bought a house last month. (As it is I have around a million gil.)

But endgame crafting was never my thing; the midgame market is much more steady, especially on my server.

Agreed, though. This is the lull. This is the time to level alt jobs or if you don't want to do that, to take a break and play the other games you've been neglecting. If you pay by month, unsub until 3.1 comes out.

Crafting has always existed in this game for it's own sake. Aside from a few Relic weapons parts, crafting has always been more or less useless at endgame. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with it, but that's the way that the devs want it.

Edited, Aug 31st 2015 6:17pm by Turin

Yea, I spent 20 mil on materia alone getting my crafter to 720+ crfts, 700 control, 401 CP
And, for what?

That's really what it is. The balance is not good. It's far too much work for 0% utility.
At least in 2.4-2.55 we had platinum jewelry, that was actually quite useful loaded with vit and or str.

But, the ilvl of crafted gear is so far behind tome gear now (ESO), it's just not viable.

I really don't think I would pick up another FFXIV game. I may be a minority, but they really treat crafters like dirt in this game, like we aren't playing the game right or something. Pretty sick of it tbh.

I don't even know why they bother to have crafting if they are going to make it useless to the raiders.
Furniture, lol?

Edited, Aug 31st 2015 1:04pm by nielsa

I am lucky since HW launch if I play 1/50 of what I did.. Crafting was my main thing too and it is not very fun right now.
Leveling is same o same o as it has been from launch..
Only thing that drew me to even play the game is the story which was real good.
I used to play allot too...
Tesee my girlfriend gets on more than me but way less than she did and she used to play allot more than me.
Just nothing new really added with HW other than flying and a new story.
Same leveling, same dungeons, same hunts, same fates etc.
Actually thinking of going back for the end of FFXI or maybe elder scrolls online since a lot of my friends left FF for that game.




Too say the least, yea they messed it up. For me it is what saved me on the game too up to this point anyway. Even the people who write some of the guides I use seem lost and way behind.



Edited, Aug 31st 2015 1:54pm by Nashred

I got all my crafts to 60 on gc turn-ins, turned an overall profit, made myself 150 hq gear and melded it with the stacks of IV materia I bought for 5k each when 3.0 hit. Got the gathering to 60 and did the same thing. Want to repair all my gear and meld all my own things, be pretty much self sufficient, but I don't care for the scrips or anything higher than that just yet. Its all glamour as far as I'm concerned and I've got plenty of that.

I log in to cap eso every week and level the paladin, level retainers, play mini cactpot, run a map or two, slowly level all the rest of my battle jobs to 60 now that I have ground half of them there, and build up dragoon and caster with alex normal gear.

But I'm sitting out savage for now. I always sit out the first go. I know I'm not gonna ever be first. At best I'll be 300th. We aren't a hardcore FC, never will be, and I like that. The race to keep up with the Joneses is not gonna happen with my life schedule, I know.

However, when the new 24 man raid hits, the gear is usually better by then to the point where I don't have to use x-pots and poison to win games, otherwise micromanaging my button presses to bleed every little bit of damage I can muster. If I have to factor a poison or an xpot in my rotation in order to win, or buy a ridiculous ilvl 150 piece of jewelry and spend 5 million melding it to get an extra 10 dps, I am simply not interested.

My favorite times are where you can pick up group or do a half pug and take it down. Where the gear is enough to give you a challenge, but echo hasn't been applied just yet. Imo that's how the game is supposed to be played. I'll leave the ridiculous dps checks to the rich kids.

Funnily enough, this is the poor design of the game shining through. The game functions, but they spent so much time making sure every job is homogonized and in terms of vertical progression that there's no room for horizontal growth, the only way to really add difficulty is DPS check and shovel damage down your throat ala T13 and Savage Alexander. This is why I think as of now the only actual difficult encounter in this game is Savage alexander 3, purely because it's not just DPS check..it has mechanics that takes party coordination beyond team jump rope. In the same light I find Cutters Cry 1.0 harder than Cutters Cry 2.0 simply because not only did you have the boss to worry about, but you had adds and environmental hazards to deal with, which can also benefit you as well.

Over all, I think XIV does have a lot of interest dropping but it's still one of the only good MMOs out in the market at present time that's mainstream, so it's very easy to drop it and come back to it as you didn't end up dedicating yourself to another MMO. After maxing out my crafting and doing Alchemist Specialization..I still honestly prefer XI and GW2's crafting, yeah XI has a lot of "hidden factors" to it and RNG, but it's straight to the point. XIV's is more interactive..but it kind of feels it's simply the left over system Tanaka envisioned, since 1.0 you legitimately could go through the whole game as ONLY a DoL or DoH up until the ending, but in ARR that's virtually impossible.



This is why I still prefer XI's overall design. Things were "unbalanced" yet that is exactly what FF has always been about. No matter how much you try to overpower relevant content, it relies very heavily on YOUR ability to play the job and meshing with players, more so than "LOLOLOL YOU BETTER DO 7.2 MILLION DAMAGE IN THIRTY SECONDS OR ITS A WIIIIIIIIPE~"

This is why as much as I enjoy raiding..the design is just...needless when they can go about in such a better way. It's why I despise the alliance content, because it's a good design..but they undertune it so it can be done by everyone. Which isn't bad..but..alliance content should honestly be harder given it takes 24 people to do which sadly, is because of "Group A/B/C needs to be on a panel!" type of mechanic.

Edited, Aug 31st 2015 3:43pm by Theonehio

Actually Valk, we have 7 other reasonably well geared people who are curious about A1 Savage. We talked about taking a stab at it sometime to see how terrible it really is. Dancing Skylark is really an amazing raid leader - super calm and patient as she talked us though T6-T7 and the new folks through A3 and A4 just over the weekend.

So try to catch us on Thursday or Sunday sometime to see if we've convinced ourselves to be silly and try it or not, hehe.

Indeed, that's why I said I liked XI's overall design, it was an actual choice. You could burn it (until they did anti-burn measures ) or you can have your setup which will be efficient to do it. CoP area funnily enough, you still needed coordination with your party or the burn will be wasted, example: Ouryu. The newer voidwatch fights was a burn after you got all of the triggers/medicine spamming since some enemies were pretty dangerous when we initially started them (like that god forsaken grimoire..) so it did exist in XI..but it was more of a strategy rather than the fight SOLELY designed around DPS checks, which is why while Alexander 3 Savage has a DPS check, it's more along the lines of an overall party check so it actually feels like you need some thought going into it.

Take Alexander 4 Savage for example, no matter how far we get on it, it was virtually impossible to meet the DPS check because they designed it to have a certain check you couldn't meet until 2-3 weeks or so into eso A1-3 drops because by time you get through the brunt of the fight..you still have a hefty bit of millions of HP to burn through while prodding enrage.

Current XI is designed around ilvl and some even with the Trust NPCs in mind, so it makes things easier but the ability to actually choose how you go about it is what I liked more about XI. In any MMO people will take the path of least resistance but with XIV...there's really no choice lol, it's either follow the dance or die. Since XIV is rotation based, I do like the idea of needing to pop medicines and such, but that's more of a poor replacement of having a support role in the game. Yeah, BRD is support but even 1.x's BRD could enhance our accuracy for example.

So really I think meet DPS check or die is just the outcome of the game's design and they can't do anything else. Yeah it can be burn or strategy..given choice, I'd love to be able to do something that I can approach numerous ways rather than 'oh our MCH and DRK/PLD isn't maintaining 1300 DPS, wipe." So it does get dull and people who generally stay on the up an up tend to lose interest the quickest because the game honestly feels like if you choose progression, you're playing it wrong because a good chunk of people who are 'end-game' have the same opinion it feels...off.

Yeah it was a pretty awesome one, especially for that time.

I don't think we'll have an huge issue with the DPS check. Most of us are close to or at ilvl 190 now, and when we did A1 normal, we got Oppressor and 05 down to 50% before the split, which is pretty darn good.

I think the problem in linking crafting to raiding is that there are players who enjoy one one and not the other. that and if you craft raid ready gear, there really isn't a need to raid anyway. I guess they could try to split it up, but that would still divert attention away from raiding and that content is already a little lackluster for some.

I don't play currently, but that is mostly due to the nature of MMOs these days. I don't want to bother with something that only holds my attention for 6 weeks only to unsub and wait 6-10 weeks for more of the same. I also didn't like that I would slowly watch my FL shrink away as content patches wore on. Repetitive activities coupled with a shrinking list of friends to make it bearable ended up driving me away.

There IS a sizeable market that will pay top dollar for difficult to craft level 1 glamour gear. Look at the insane popularity of the Thavnarian Boustier and Bolero. The bulk of the cost comes from the rarity of the materials, but crafters will happily tack on a half a million gil premium if they go farm the crap themselves.