Quote Originally Posted by Bigfish View Post
Honestly, I found that to be a major turn off. I mean, some degree of "figure it out" is ok (hence the multiboxing I suppose), but I intensely dislike flailing about wondering if I'm doing it right or not and having to spend an inordinate amount of time on forums looking up the data mined damage formulas, recipes, or what freaking direction you are supposed to face. (Yes, for those of you who didn't play FFXI, direction you were facing played a role in crafting.)

But maybe that's just my preference for analyzing the meta-game with most of the in-game numbers available. I mean, if I'm going to craft as a career, it should be about finding materials, finding a market, and minimizing time spent traveling the world looking for this stuff. It shouldn't be about figuring out if STR or DEX or INT affects the chance I succeed on a single whack of the anvil, or figuring out who I have to ask to find a crisp basalisk urethra so I can finish this piece of armor I wanted to craft.
I guess the point I was trying to make was that the game is more than just getting to max level as fast as you can. That was the biggest feature I loved about FFXI. From the level capped events or even the lvl sync that they added made the game fun to play at all levels instead of just racing to max level.

I know what you mean on the crafting after getting 95+ in a couple crafts over multiple characters. I think that we'll still see some of that in this game (moon phase, elements, etc., effecting your crafting). This will make the meta game a whole game in itself but it will be the same as ffxi, if you enjoy crafting you can be just fine with putting together the materials. If you want to craft hardcore, you'll spend large amounts of time researching everything.

The one thing that I do like about crafting is the quests you get. Most of them give you the materials at the start, the rest of them you talk to someone to get the materials. So, no spending your own money just to complete a quest. It also breaks the monotony of power leveling a craft.