Crafting and the future

I had a rather extended session of crafting last night.  Both for myself and for the new linkshell.  I recently did a harvesting leve in the Camp Tranquility area.  The reason for doing it was to get some guild marks.  But it sent me for oak trees.  Lord knows if these will still be Oak when I do just open world gathering,  but it did allow me to get a single oak log.

The crafting gods were with me (not to mention my crafting gear is usually up to snuff anyways) and I was able to get 4 lumbers out of it.  This, by the end of the evening allowed me to upgrade my Armorsmithing, Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing main tools.  I blew up the making of a handle for the Leatherworking tool.  Ah, well the next log for that one.

While this was going on I had my new LS leader and her lalafel character come by and pick up some pants and gloves for her archer job Cotton Slops and Cotton Halfgloves color coordinated with her existing Tabbard.  She then started some goldcrafting...  In the same clothes...  With a weathered hammer....   At rank 6...

And she was wondering why she was getting a lot of blowups...

A discussion on crafting and level appropriate equipment followed.  This was followed by me whipping up an entire set of low level crafting gear (Hempen Hat, Slops, Doublet Vest, Halfgloves, all in beige and a pair of Sheepskin Crakows as well as the rank 7 hammer.  And then had her equip it all looking at the relevant stats as she did so.  I do believe I proved my point.

Un-surprisingly all this crafting did get me some good skillups.  Most of it was just progress towards the next level.  Except for Goldsmith, where I managed to ding Rank 17.

I'm going to need to lay off the crafting for a bit and concentrate on getting some wind crystals and some ranks in my combat and magic classes.  Humm, going to need to work on fishing and cooking again as well.

On to the 2nd part of the post title.  The future.

As you all know we're getting an update today - the promised mid December update.  It's coming with a spare free retainer (and much rejoicing was heard - I danced a jig).  However the thing that worries me the most is what's going to happen about 3-6 months from now with the change of the guard that happened.  Many an interesting argument was heard about the potential change in direction of the game and it's future.  I am worried that with the replacement of a lot of the FFXIV developers with FFXI developers that the different direction that FFXIV started down will be headed back toward more of a FFXI clone with updated artwork.

I pray that crafting does not not get marginalized and I worry that it looks like the NM system will not need any crafter input in the loop.  The market needs to be fixed.  As far as this goes I simply am of the opinion that SE went entirely in the wrong direction with this.  I suspect that over exposure to asian F2P games and a lack of exposure to games with very good market systems (EVE for example) is to blame for this.  Simply put there is a very notable lack of any materials market.  This is entirely due to both the lack of storage and the limitations of the current market system (which limits you to 10 sales slots per character/retainer).  This is entirely insufficient to support any form of reasonable market.  Not to mention your main characters need to stay logged in (promoting lag) in order for your stuff to sell.  Can't use the retainers for that currently since I need them mobile in order to use them for storage...  Brilliant case of designers not thinking things through and shooting themselves in the foot.

Now the previous team had taken steps to correct these problems (pitiful shaky steps to be sure, but they were shuffling in that direction).  The fear I have is that the influence of the FFXI developers and their "you must camp mobs spawns at 4:00am in order to get necessary gear" attitude will simply put the nail in the coffin for this game.  Another fear is with the inclusion of more FFXI developers we'll see a reduction in the openness that we've seen from the FFXIV devs (for Squareenix anyways).  I figure we'll start having clues as to where things are going in about 3 months.  It will take that long for a serious change in direction to start making itself felt.

Physical: 43, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 11, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 18, Smithing: 17, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:17 , Leatherworking: 18, Clothcraft: 20, Alchemy: 19, Cooking16 , Mining: 21, Botany: 21, Fishing: 17.