whats the point of crafting...

[Teykos]

[...]
One of my current complaints is that HQing the highest level crafts is currently too easy (can use all NQ mats while still being a fair bit off of capping stats, nevermind how easy it is with capped stats and HQ mats).
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All they really need to do to cause a little havoc on that is is reduce the success rate on Steady Hand and Steady Hand II by -10% each to 10% and 20%.

[Feilina]

Do you think that it would have a countable result?
We should consider to cut one to three cross skills or up the needed quality.

[Xel]

@Teykos: If you reduce the success rate of crafter now without putting any new awesome thing for us to produce in you'll be sounding the death knell for the classes.

@ Feilina: If you reduce the cross class skills available to unless you permanently ban the ones that garuntee HQ there's no point, and if you do that read above response for same result.

They need to allow crafters to do buffs, that way those OH SO POWERFUL DoW/DoM have a reason to switch to crafting. And crafters leveling after getting all those crafts up have a leg up.

However crafters won't truely be useful until they get the idea that best crap ingame should come from drops, they say they don't want RMT to sell items, yet that's just an excuse, RMT is just as fine selling runs to get best gear as selling it from crafting it. The only way to stop is with active RMT hunting squad which doesn't exist in this game.

BUFFING. NOT NERFING. ANSWERS PROBLEMS temporarily.

[Vortok]

All they really need to do to cause a little havoc on that is is reduce the success rate on Steady Hand and Steady Hand II by -10% each to 10% and 20%.

That makes pretty much any worthwhile craft heavily RNG based, at which point everyone reverts to Hasty Touch spam since there's a chance of failing without using it anyway.

At least with the current system (when not using Hasty) RNG is mostly just a good thing. You know how well you'll be able to do, and more RNG from getting Good/Excellent procs just increases how well you do. There is the chance of getting Excellent on a Buff leaving you with Poor on a Touch action, but that can be dealt with via a different 'rotation' and/or planning ahead properly.

Random chance to suck is not all that fun. Random chance to do better than expected though, is a bit more pleasant. It's why Criticals are popular, and very few games have a 'negative crit' system. Closest I can think of offhand is Monster Hunter with weapon affinity. A negative affinity meant a chance to 'crit' for weaker damage, but the base damage was higher to compensate and people knew up front how the weapon would work (and they could get gear to negate the penalty).

[Dale]

I'm sympathetic to the OP.

Crafting does have some uses. But to be honest the stat caps on the gear are so low it barely helps at all. Not to mention you level up at such a fast pace it's really not worth even bothering with materia while you are leveling up.

So yes, it's nice to be able to craft your own gear. Independence is good. But it's not good enough. The crafting and gathering on this game (especially if you do many at a time) really takes away from the enjoyment of the game in my opinion. Shard farming is dull. Crafting gets dull. I spend way too much kneeling in town hunting for items in my inventory. I think it would have been better if they would have limited players to one craft. I would be enjoying this game a lot more if they had.

[Teykos]

@Xel and @Vortok, I don't think that's an accurate assessment about Steady Hand.

One thing dropping the success rate will do is knock down the "guaranteed 100% HQ" macros out there a bit, because it's no longer guaranteed and you wouldn't have the CP to afford the next Touch up to make it guaranteed. They'd still be good ways to get HQ, but they couldn't be 100% mindless with the way they are now. The fact that these macros exist is a BIG reason why it's "too easy" to HQ.

The second thing it would do is make reliance on Hasty Touch (or, for some people, Rapid Synthesis) more dangerous. These are gambling abilities. You get them for free because of their unreliability. If you make them the entire focal point of a tactic, then you should be getting unreliable results. This is not the case currently. That 70% -> 80% difference is a huge part of this.

If you want to eliminate RNG as a negative factor, use the more expensive abilities and HQ components. If you're willing to add in RNG as a factor, use the cheaper abilities.

The bottom line is, if they reduced the success rate of the Steady Hand abilities, people HAVE to use HQ components to guarantee things. It doesn't degenerate into a heavily RNG based system unless you choose to use the more heavily RNG-based abilities and refuse to use anything other than normal quality items.

[Vortok]

I think it would have been better if they would have limited players to one craft. I would be enjoying this game a lot more if they had.

All that would really accomplish (aside from the cross class abilities behind handled differently) is it would make people use a bunch of alts to still have access to every craft.

@Xel and @Vortok, I don't think that's an accurate assessment about Steady Hand.

One thing dropping the success rate will do is knock down the "guaranteed 100% HQ" macros out there a bit, because it's no longer guaranteed and you wouldn't have the CP to afford the next Touch up to make it guaranteed. They'd still be good ways to get HQ, but they couldn't be 100% mindless with the way they are now. The fact that these macros exist is a BIG reason why it's "too easy" to HQ.

The macros work because they can 0 to 100 with NQ mats. If SH gets nerfed, and it's still possible using Standard/Advanced Touch and BB, just with higher stats then it would do nothing.

Macros will always be around in some form even if they couldn't 0 to 100. Crafting is turn based, after all. They'd just require a certain amount of starting quality from HQ mats (which is kinda the point of what we're discussing, there's just more than one way of doing so). If SH were nerfed and there was a macro to guarantee 100% (so no Hasty/Basic) with HQ mats (which don't have a macro from NQ mats) then that would be the new standard and all you would've accomplished is making crafting RNG based and annoying (for those that find RNG irritating) for the vast majority who aren't in the very best gear, whether they craft manually or with macros. It's like trying to design gameplay to stop bots (which never works on anything but the weakest of bots) instead of finding the actual issue and addressing that instead (are you trying to stop crafting macros, or do something else with any change that is proposed/implemented?). I will say I much preferred crafting when my stats/abilities were such that Tricks of the Trade mattered - because it changed how I did the craft depending on how much extra CP I could get from it.

The main problem/issue to address, as I see it, is that 80 durability crafts generally have the same quality bar to increase as 40 durability crafts. The progress bar generally does not take 4 extra moves to finish so those actions can be spent on quality (and the extra max durability makes it easier to use longer duration buffs or things like Master's Mend II and just generally be a bit more flexible). That's why there isn't a macro to 100% 40 dura crafts from NQ mats - because those crafts actually function fairly well with the system/stats we have at the moment.

All a matter of whether the devs see it as a 'problem' or if the current ease of HQing things is working as intended (higher crafts to eventually be added after all). Also the matter of people HQing gear when leveling to consider (especially for class quests - would put higher emphasis on starting with HQ mats, though).

[Dale]

All that would really accomplish (aside from the cross class abilities behind handled differently) is it would make people use a bunch of alts to still have access to every craft.
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Fair point. Some would do that. But I wouldn't since I generally detest creating alts. So at least in my case, it would have been sufficient enough a barrier. And I would be enjoying this game a lot more as a result.

But for the alt/crafting crowd... could always limit it to a single craft per account.

[Ranzan]

I say cut all 80 durability synths to 60 (leaving the to 70 durability ones alone). Master's mend down to 50 cp(reduced cost of course). Make it harder to 100% hq with nq mats. But its really disheartening to hear yoshi-p that scared of RMTs. Throw us a bone give crafters just ONE BiS for like 4-6 jobs. Crafting feels so meaningless now. And this is probably the best crafting system I have ever seen.

[Teykos]

The macros work because they can 0 to 100 with NQ mats. If SH gets nerfed, and it's still possible using Standard/Advanced Touch and BB, just with higher stats then it would do nothing.

Macros will always be around in some form even if they couldn't 0 to 100. Crafting is turn based, after all. They'd just require a certain amount of starting quality from HQ mats (which is kinda the point of what we're discussing, there's just more than one way of doing so). If SH were nerfed and there was a macro to guarantee 100% (so no Hasty/Basic) with HQ mats (which don't have a macro from NQ mats) then that would be the new standard and all you would've accomplished is making crafting RNG based and annoying (for those that find RNG irritating) for the vast majority who aren't in the very best gear, whether they craft manually or with macros. It's like trying to design gameplay to stop bots (which never works on anything but the weakest of bots) instead of finding the actual issue and addressing that instead (are you trying to stop crafting macros, or do something else with any change that is proposed/implemented?). I will say I much preferred crafting when my stats/abilities were such that Tricks of the Trade mattered - because it changed how I did the craft depending on how much extra CP I could get from it.

The main problem/issue to address, as I see it, is that 80 durability crafts generally have the same quality bar to increase as 40 durability crafts. The progress bar generally does not take 4 extra moves to finish so those actions can be spent on quality (and the extra max durability makes it easier to use longer duration buffs or things like Master's Mend II and just generally be a bit more flexible). That's why there isn't a macro to 100% 40 dura crafts from NQ mats - because those crafts actually function fairly well with the system/stats we have at the moment.

All a matter of whether the devs see it as a 'problem' or if the current ease of HQing things is working as intended (higher crafts to eventually be added after all). Also the matter of people HQing gear when leveling to consider (especially for class quests - would put higher emphasis on starting with HQ mats, though).

I feel you're muddling your point about RNG by talking about how people find an RNG-based crafting system annoying in one breath, and then mentioning how much you preferred crafting when Tricks of the Trade -- which 100% relies on the RNG popping Good -- mattered.

That being said...

I'm not really seeing how having HQ components becoming a required part of the standard for a guaranteed 100% is an actual problem here, considering that's the whole reason of existence for HQ components in the first place -- so that you can more reliably HQ the products they make. The whole lack of need for HQ high end harvested components is almost certainly a very sore spot for gatherers.

And maybe I am missing something here, but from what I understand about the 0-100 HQ crafting macros, the whole point in how they are set up is to get as many successful Touches as possible to fuel the Byregot's Blessing's bonus, then stack boosting effects on it before letting it out, with the resulting jump being so massive that it really doesn't matter what you had before and what condition you are currently on (except Poor). Even with that, the most effective one I've seen -- Aphraell's -- cuts really close on CP. Admittedly, given the feedback you gave in the thread, I'm pretty sure you know the math on that more than I do, but if you were trying to compensate for that with Standard or Advanced Touches, how exactly would you be pulling out even more CP for it in a guaranteed manner that ignores RNG abilities like Tricks of the Trade?

I do agree that the 80 and 40 durability recipes both having the same requirements is an issue, though I don't know about it being THE main issue. It does almost feels like they should be flipped in durability though, with the finished product being 40 Durability by being primarily component assembly and the subcomponents being 80 durability to represent the care you would be taking in making sure the base material isn't shoddy enough to cause problems for you when making the final product.

Considering they made changes to Comfort Zone and Tricks of the Trade before (and the reason for it -- to break infinite CP), I can't see them NOT making some sort of change to crafting. And if it really is pointless to change the Steady Hands, then I don't think it'll look good for Byregot's Blessing.