Cheaper and Easiser to make ammo?

But then the recipe for about 3 stacks of bullets is getting you 12 stacks instead.

1-3 depending on normal HQ, but yes, you got the point. If a stack of bullets is 50k under current conditions, slashing that cost to 1/4 would be welcomed by many ammo users. Add a spritz of crafter competition and market saturation and prices could get even lower. I'd think it a no-brainer people would rather pay 150k or less instead of 600k for a stack of said ammo, and 1188 shots should last a while, especially for RNGs with Recycle merits/gear.

It's better than some generic NPC selling all ammo for 1-100g a pop, as it's circulating goods between players instead of just casting gil into the abyss. Besides, from the crafter's perspective, needing only 1-4 synths to make a stack instead of 12-36 would be a godsend in time saved. You know what sucks more than minimal profit? Taking a half hour to make it.

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Originally Posted by Malacite

Not sure where anyone's getting the notion that people don't like Synergy... Synergy is at least somewhat closer to FFXIV's crafting system in so far as you actually have control over the potential outcome.

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The proof is in the pudding. Just about everyone in my linkshell has at least 1 lvl 100 craft, but only 2 ppl have synergy leveled and neither of them are capped. The few synergy crafted items that are sold are made by a handful of people and the rest are rarely ever made.

Also comparisons to ff14 aren't going to help your argument.

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Originally Posted by Raksha

The proof is in the pudding. Just about everyone in my linkshell has at least 1 lvl 100 craft, but only 2 ppl have synergy leveled and neither of them are capped. The few synergy crafted items that are sold are made by a handful of people and the rest are rarely ever made.

Also comparisons to ff14 aren't going to help your argument.

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Synergy is superior to synthesis simply because you can't lose items.

Bottom line is that RNG/COR unpopularity coupled with overly difficult to acquire items is why ammo is expensive and rare.

Not only that, but seems impossible for Alchemists to go 71-80 in Synergy without doing the stall, which requires a GP item. This wouldn't be so bad if it required multiple elements, but since it's just one, and at 99 no less, you can't spam the element like prior skill synths and could get screwed out of your ingredients with an unlucky rush of energy if you don't end the synergy early enough, which just adds even more time and tedium to the process.

Honestly, I'd be more than happy to do synergy stuff for people if they asked, brought the ingredients, and covered fewell expenses. There's just jack, as an alchemist, that I can provide for them without having yet someone else of a given skill or three in the party. My rants for alchemy's sucktitude deserves its own thread, though.

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Originally Posted by Seriha

Honestly, I'd be more than happy to do synergy stuff for people if they asked, brought the ingredients, and covered fewell expenses. There's just jack, as an alchemist, that I can provide for them without having yet someone else of a given skill or three in the party. My rants for alchemy's sucktitude deserves its own thread, though.

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Most synergy items made are rare/ex items, where the person asking for the item actually does need to put the item in, and it uses their fewell to make it. They claim and put the stuff in, you do the process using their fewell (and possibly get skillups) and they get the item.

Some, yeah, but I figure if they don't have synergy leveled themselves, they're not gonna have fewell.

I just want one of our trusty CMs to come in and tell us everything is going to be ok. ; ;

If they're asking for a rare/ex item (which most synergy items are), they'll NEED synergy unlocked, and will NEED to supply their own fewell. They can always pay the npc to refill it if they must :P

As a goldsmith, synergist, and RNG, here is what I think. I agree with some of Oddwaffle's logic about why ammo is expensive. RNG is a relatively weaker DD than it has been and than it should be, and therefore few people play it. Therefore there is little demand for the ammo. And that translates to little incentive to synth it.

But I disagree that RNG ammo should be easier/cheaper to synth. If RNG was clearly the top DD, then people would play the job. At any cost. And that would create significant demand for synergists to fill. And, fill it they would. With all of the added profit potential, more people might even take up synergy, and like it. That would bring competition, and lower prices. That 100k stack of oberon bullets? Here's a little secret... it only costs 20-25k to make, and that's before HQ. If I thought I could sell a crap ton of them for 35k, I might be inclined to try.... but the demand just isn't there (although that's more of a COR problem than a RNG problem).

I also agree that scarcity of materials is a problem. Forget antlion arrows for a minute, because (as others have mentioned) Ruszor are better. But have you ever tried to farm ruszor tusks? I have. The ruszor tusks are a damn lie! And campaign... well, swamp ore and fool's gold ore used to be plentiful. And now it's not. If SE allowed us to skill up in Campaign battles, then I think that we would see a resurgence in participation. And that would be a Good Thing. Aluminum ingots (fusion bolts) actually are not that uncommon, as they now appear in GoV caskets.

Urth mentioned shuriken. Those have never been anywhere near cost effect to use, due to high cost of materials for relatively low yield. Synergy is the perfect opportunity to correct this problem! Throwing is still a neglected skill, however. In combination with new synergy recipes for shuriken, SE should add throwing weaponskills and make them useful.

So yeah, we have a problem. The answer, however - at least to start with - is to make RNG better. The rest will fall into place.

"Better" for RNG is pretty subjective. Some think that lies solely in damage, while I consider the ability to damage at range a useful utility that justifies not hitting as hard as melees at risk by AoEs. Cost of ammo aside, I feel their largest issue is actually their enmity gain, even if wearing gear with -enmity, as if you're doing high damage (my modest RNG was doing 500+ a shot with crits while EXPing it) and 2k+ WS, you'll cap sooner or later on mobs that last more than 30s. Once distance is compromised thanks to pulling hate, then you start introducing problems to the party.

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Originally Posted by Sparthos

Synergy is superior to synthesis simply because you can't lose items.

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This is nice, but doesn't make up for all of the shortcomings. Being able to HQ more than 1 stack of stuff is nice too, but like I said the proof is in the pudding.

I agree with Vxsote that making Rng and Cor as high demand jobs will probably fix the ammo scarcity problem. However, it's and delicate issue with game balancing when you try to fix it. If I were a SE dev, I wouldn't poke at game balance issue with a 10-foot pole without serious consideration to potential game breaking features. Changing the ammo supply by lowering craft requirements and materials is a lot easier. Of course, it's not going to fix any game balance but it's easy to do from a coding perspective and has little problems down the line if SE decide to poke the game balance issue.

Lowering the craft requirements is not going to make high level crafters out of a job if demand somehow picks up. Let me elaborate the point with an example of Ruzor Arrows. Suppose SE lowered the craft requirements of Ruzors Arrow to lv49 and everyone can make those if they want to. A high level craftsman with synergy skill can HQ those with little effort while a low level craftsman will be able to make those only. Suppose they wouldn't change Rng and demand were low. Craftsmen wouldn't bothered with the recipe and there would be none on AH. A single Rng could make an effort to make this own ammo for use. Due to low demand, he wouldn't need a lot of ammo anyways so even with just NQ crafts, he would be ok. Now, suppose SE changed Rng and made them awesome sauce and became as popular as Ninja. High demand pulled craftsmen into the market and became competitive with each other. However, we know ruzors aren't very generous with their drops so the price of ammo would go up rapidly depending on the ruzors supply. This would restrict the number of awesome rangers around so it would balance out.